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July 09, 2008

Back to the Present Moment

Well, about ten hours later instead of two or three days later, anyway. I wrote this before bed last night, since during the hours that WiFi is available, I’m mostly not.

[As I write this] I’m lying on my bed, the lower bunk of one of two sets of bunkbeds in the room I have to myself. The bathroom window is open. So is the door to my room, since it smells vaguely of cat pee in here. I have been assured there have been no cats in the room, but this is a boarding school during the school year, and I wouldn’t put it past a set of high school students to smuggle a cat into their room.

I need a massage. I don’t know whether it’s the straining for breath as I hike up and down hills that remind me of the Palouse, only at 6000 feet, or the heaviness of the bag I’m carrying, or the hunching over my work as I make lots and lots of books that is making my neck and shoulders so tight, but something needs to change, because I’m starting to get a headache.

The days are really full here. I’m up around 6:30. They start serving breakfast at 7:15, and after breakfast I have just enough time to hike back to my dorm for my laptop, hike to the “Starbucks”, post what I’ve written the night before and check my email, then hike back to my dorm to dump the laptop and grab my bag and head to class. Class starts at 9am and runs until noon. We break for lunch (today I went to a lunchtime lecture about an exhibit currently up at the Field in Chicago), get back to the studio for class to begin at one and continue on until four. Dinner is at 5:30 and then there’s usually a lecture or an event at 7 or 7:30pm. After that, I come back to my room and write and then head to bed.

Today, though, was the day I really understood what the director of the program meant at the adult student orientation* when he said that there was a lot going on this week in the evenings, “But you’ll probably all be wanting to stay in your studios.” If I hadn’t wanted to attend the lecture, I would have stayed over lunch. As it was, I was in the studio until almost 6pm today, working on a book idea that just set me on fire.

We were supposed to be making prototypes and playing with various folded book styles and transfer possibilities, which I had been doing, but then I got excited by a combination of good paper of an interesting size and shape, a kickass poem, and a set of big, metal stencils. Suddenly, I knew what pages three and four of my book would look like, and then I was off and running. Even with all of the work I did on it, the book is still only about one third finished. I don’t know when I’ll get to complete it, since tomorrow is about an entirely new set of styles and techniques.

I would write more, but I am beginning to fade fairly quickly here, and I’d really not like to fall asleep with my contact lenses in again. It’s happened to me twice since I got here. On Sunday, when I was so tired I didn’t even think about it before I took a nap, and last night when I was lying on my bunk, whitening my teeth. I was supposed to leave the whitening strips on until ten. I woke up at 10:30. Oops.

Oh. A note for those of you with blogs on Blogger (Heather, Laura, Amy, Paul, Christy). I can’t read them here. All Blogger urls are blocked as potential spyware and malware on the school’s WiFi. It’s kind of frustrating. Anyway, I won’t be able to read your blogs again until Friday at the earliest, so I’m not ignoring you, I just can’t get to you. But I miss reading your stuff, so I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

**Morning addendum.

Here’s the poem:

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth.

I slept on it last night. By the time this book is done, I will have used acrylic & watercolor paints, fabric, leaves, ink, possibly jewels, ribbon, colored pencil, contact paper, acetone and PVA glue. Maybe also paste paper for the covers, though I’m not sure about that yet. I’ve got to get to the studio now. I can hardly wait to get started.

* There are several hundred high school students here for film, theatre, and music camp and a whole bunch of children here for various camps as well. Whenever I walk into the cafeteria, I feel ancient.

Posted by sally at July 9, 2008 08:08 AM

Comments

Posted by: inlandempiregirl at July 9, 2008 10:52 AM

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