Interacting With An Old Friend

Here's a photo of the spathaphilum in my studio. I's blooms have finally begun to open. I'm not sure why it's taken so long; maybe it's because the plant has been too dry. I always water it when the leaves feel limp, but yeterday I gave it some water before I thought it needed some and this was the result. There's another bloom around on the other side.

I've been looking at a journal I created exactly two years ago in which I kept various paper that I encountered in my life. I also used it for sketching and writing. It's a wonderful collage of things that were going on in my life at the time. I created it in an old cookbook. I'm not interested in cooking, so I didn't mind altering the book to use for my own purpose. I then started a second book which I didn't finish. It was more structured and not as inherently creative. I now find that I'd like to start a new book of the same type. I keep various journals and notebooks currently and certainly combining them together would be useful for giving my life a sense of unity. However, when I looked at my various journals and calendars, I was hesitant to combine them into one by destroying the existing ones. So maybe I'll either wait or not try to combine so much together.

Altered books are a popular new art form, stemming I believe from the movie The English Patient in which the main character had a book filled with all kinds of scraps of information, photos, and sketches added by another character. The idea is an intriguing one. The idea of combining all the divergent pieces of a life into one whole is a desire that lots of us have these days, I would think. Life with all it's myriad of parts and directions can be fragmenting to us.

The other thing about a book is that it has an immediacy that files stored on a computer don't have. You can hold a book in your hand and page through it. You can argue that you can do the same with a computer, but a computer has a certain transitory feeling to it. There's something about the actual weight, feel, and texture of real paper that digits don't provide. Call me old-fashioned, but that's how I feel. Believe me, I've tried moving to a paperless world, but I found myself going back. Certainly there are some things like email that are wonderful, but I find paper comforts me.

I spent the day working on more etchings, today for jewelry. I'd like to get a bracelet made tomorrow. However, I've got several stumbling blocks in my way, one of which I have no control over. I still need to find a bottle of ammonia to use as a neutralizer for the ferric chloride after I finish etching the copper in it. Then I also need to anneal my piece of copper. If the kiln isn't turned on in the Enamel Guild, I won't be able to do that. However, it occurs to me that I might be able to use the torch that the glassblower next door uses. The other problem I have is that the piece of copper is too long to fit in the dish I have. But I can cut it off. That part isn't a problem if I can solve the other parts of the equation.

This morning I received an email from an old friend, a woman I met at the swapmeet who originally told me about the etching class that I took for so many semesters. She and I became friends. On one of her trips to China, she purchased and imported a printing press which she keeps in her condo. We have talked in the past about getting together and doing some printing. I don't think she's ever used her press. But now that I'm beginning to do some more with etching copper, we might start printing together at her condo. For over a year she's been urging me to come over and work with her. But I see that my life has to take it's own time. Eventually I'll get to all the things I want to do. It just takes time.