Herbert the Snail

My drawing exercise for today was a shell. I've decided that I'm the worst at shading in the whole of the world. I probably only make it worse because I get impatient and start scribbling, then I get patient again, but it's too late; I've already ruined it. Then I think, maybe I'll get creative and smudge everything with my fingers (this is fun), and try to balance the silly shading that way. It-never-looks-good. Month #1 sketching log: I'm the worst artist in the history of ever.
Right now, practice doesn't seem to be making perfect, it seems to be making pathetic. I'll keep trying.
So for my drawing project, I think the shell is for a mollusc, but when I was drawing one of them, I got frustrated and added a really silly looking snail. I like him a lot - he reminds me of the music machine and Herbert the Snail (have patience)
In other news, I've started reading The Brother's K (Duncan), and I'm getting along. I'm liking it more than I did on my first attempt. I think I like it all the more for having read the Brother's Karamazov (though the similarities are few), because in my head I keep pretending there are connections.
At church today, I drew a snail, a bird, a turtle and a fish, and none of them are on the same gravitational plane. The pastor discussed Thomas, and made him out to be something of an ISTJ, which I appreciated. I think there is more to Thomas than the doubting fellow we disdain, though the Bible contains few passages that even include him.
I won all the games today - I'm pretty much the luckiest.
That was my day.
And snails.




silent the shell your ear is in
echoes the ocean within,
for this mollusc has never been
subsumed by the sea.
oh, I exude the ocean -
it wells in my eyes,
runs in runnels down my spine,
wets my brow.
I swim in my mutable brine
and I am an island, John
unto myself, and this shell
is echoes of me, and I
am contained wholly inside -
hold your ear close and hear me
for I am the sea, old man,
and I will ever be
wild and whimsy -
don't pretend you know
the depths of me, or the swells
of my emotions.
How high I rise when the moon
summons me, and low I sink
when she moves beyond my reach
though she hides her face
or ripples in my waves
her gaze pierces my hide, this shell,
and I sing, howling at the night sky
oh, what heights I'll go
(though never sufficiently)
and in the end, she chose the night
and bears what's beneath behind
as the trail of a wedding dress
spiraling down into a whisper
that echoes in this shell

Moving as Snails

I'm crawling inch-by-inch towards becoming a well-rounded person in knowledge, reading, writing, thinking. I realize now how much my foolish attitude towards schooling in high school was a serious impediment for learning, nearly truncating several avenues of thought which I'd closed off as a sort of teenage bravado. Now I'm frantically scrambling to patch this fabric of my learning that I left in tatters because I didn't respect the teachers, or the system, or the students in the class as viable competition, or just was an angsty teenager struggling through life.
It isn't just art history, but journalism, short story writing, poetry, chemistry, certain regions of history, music, plant physiology - I'm worlds behind in numerous areas of knowledge that I should have gleaned naturally, but ignored because I was too independent, too much of a self-deemed autodidact. I was good, too, but only persistent in particular areas, and ignorant of so many others. Smart, but naive, clever, but ignorant.

I read thirty pages of The Story of Art, and I realize that even when I finish this book, I still will only understand the margins, the barest patina of dew on the landscape of art history. But each new page is crammed with learning and tidbits that fill my mind with fancy and fantastic new knowledge. Everything just seems to move so slowly.
I read forty pages of fiction, and a bunch of ee cummings poetry. I love ee cummings, but his poetry is crazy, rambunctious, absurd, playful, and esoteric as much as it is fantastic.
It's times like this where I realize that I need extra hours in my day. At least two. I'm considering trying and sleeping less every night just to get more done during the day, though I suspect I'll have more time starting mid next year than I do this year. Who couldn't use just a little more time in the day? I guess I should count my blessings in that I have no commute time.
I just want to learnlearnlearn and read, read, read and write.

Full of prayers this week:
mother - teeth pains
matthew - work angst (quit)
s - work angst (expected full years worth)
jf - death in the family
p - job situation
sicknesses about


(thanks Lisa - I think I still hear this poem in your voice)

For a Five-Year-Old
 A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

 I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed 
your closest relatives, and who purveyed 
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.
                Fleur Adcock


Moving right along, at the speed of snails.