retrospective sketches of ikon, unfinishe...

snapshots of a selection of the works-in-progress that have been taking provisional shape over the last few days...









LB

kindergarDen

it's flip flop warm and sunny for the first time in a week.

i love the way young nasturtium plants stretch so enthusiastically toward the sun. i imagine them pleading in little voices, "pick me, miss, pick me!" when the teacher's selecting the lucky person who's going to get to feed the class gerbil.







LB

good times remembered

i've got very little done today since i rolled out of bed at ten. been some gb09 ikon mailing back and forth going on but i've mostly been stuck at my laptop following the confusing increasingly disturbing reports of violence coming out of tehran on the blogs and iran twazzup*.

think i'm gonna take a break from the desk and try get on with some creating.

peterson's uploaded more of his photos of our week in the north with words to make me smile. and blush, frankly. over there --> at Photos 4 Little Bird.

as always, lovely to be reminded of good times and how fortunate one is...

LB

*my guess would be that twitter is becoming increasingly unreliable as a source of info for those inside iran, assuming they are getting any access. this morning it was full of quite obvious state driven misinformation and this afternoon mostly seems full of ppl outside iran re-tweeting rumours without researching for confirmation and wasting everyone else's time by offering unhelpful or irrelevant comment. and even spamming with porn. :-|

3 signs

look familiar? ikon used detail from one of the lovely todd greene's amazing artworks. click here for more of his work. then covet. and perhaps purchase.

::

i headed into the city yesterday for a meet-and-greet conversation on behalf of ikon and detoured down to the Dáil a couple of hours after the march of solidarity (report here) to view the ribbons, children's shoes, flowers and placards that had been tied to and placed at the gates. the crowds had dispersed and the barriers folded away...



(molesworth street, dublin)

::

while in town, i had *intended* to pick up some academic texts that i'm looking to read before i get back to university. somehow i ended up in a comic store instead. oops. i picked up a copy of Persepolis, long overdue, and i now know where and when i can get my mitts on a copy of the collected edition of gaiman's recent Batman 2 parter, whatever happened to the caped crusader? and as if to remind me why i knew when i started reading graphic novels that i'd need to resist compulsive tendencies, it didn't end there...



(click image to enlarge)

and so it is that after several years of persistent-and-rather-shameful-not-getting-around-to-it, i'm finally reading, Watchmen.

it all looks amazing, the story is unputdownable, and this paperback edition feels gorgeous. i wish all books would be printed in this format. it's kind of floppy and the pages have a lovely texture.

the likelihood of me changing out of my sweats today, let alone doing anything remotely productive, is gonna be a challenge. the list of academic books will have to wait...

LB

then and now

then...




now. before...




and after:


forget about your worries and your strife...

LB

tyra banks can bite me

yesterday turned out good. choppy internal seas calmed thanks to some writing and then lunch with jayne in which we concluded that hormones are a rollercoaster of shit and that the only solution is a good cry and some cake. drinks in muriel's followed (photo's below) with lovely folks, and then ikon Last Supper at The Roost.

it was a privilege. peterson shared poetry, an extended scene from doin' time in the homo nomo halfway house and a wonderful extract from a brand new project he's writing.

and then peterson's partner, glen retief, shared an incredible chapter from his memoir, the jack bank, which is due to be published in 2010. an equally powerful extract available here. their offerings left me speechless, shaken and stirred. amazing stuff.

::

which brings me to today...
my plan was to return to dublin this morning but instead i'm staying an extra night. am heading to QUB tonight for an event peterson's doing (details here), and looking forward to a final nightcap with P&G after.

and the morning has proved rather eventful...

i awoke to find my plan B for 2009 of applying to be on America's Next Top Model cycle 13 (all models under 5'7") is no longer necessary. which is a relief, since Celia was knocked out of cycle 12's final 4 for being "too old". at 20-fricking-5.

so this plan B is in the bin thanks to,
(1) getting notification from UCD that,

"The Graduate Board of the College of Human Sciences has approved your application for the MA Women’s Studies programme (full-time)...We hope you will accept the offer and look forward to seeing you here in September"

colour me saying, "i will."

and

(2) at the age of 35 and a 1/2, i'm now adding "cover girl" to my resume - *without* the help of the above mentioned ms banks. seventeen magazine?, i hear you ask. oprah magazine? french vogue? ms.? bitch? bust? national enquirer? fly fishing weekly? nope. Christian Century. details here on pete's blog. the article's actually an interview with pete but the cover makes for a kind of ikon where's wally? of familiar faces and silhouettes.

as of tomorrow i'm gonna follow in ms evangelista's footsteps and won't get out of bed for less than $10,000. i presume this means i need to purchase a cathater forthwith.




















::

photos of some of the lovely folks of the week - sadly missing is a pic of steve lawson, who surprised us with a visit. he managed to convince me of the beauty and possiblity of twitter. and did so without the use of thumb screws. i usually don't get to see steve any other time than greenbelt so this made for an unexpected treat.


peterson and ian (mrs tumnus) strike a pose in muriel's...
















LittleBird and Pád, my love...
















The Father (our host for the week) and Glen sharing a lunchtime pint at The Nook,
before walking down to the Giant's Causeway on Monday...















right, i'm off to meet the rollins for lunch. which reminds me,

friday night, centaur, gb09. ikon will be committing theological arson. we is rubbing our collective and collaborative hands together gleefully at the plan that is coming together... we've now 3 months to do a Macgyver on it...

LB

p.s. i'm really rather proud and admiring of fr tim bartlett for standing up for his convictions. tim's a nice guy, was very supportive of zero28 and i've seen him faced with some very difficult questions over the years in various fora. but none as difficult as last sunday.

snapshots from Edinburgh

my aunt Morag (on left) enjoying her 60th birthday dinner...as did everyone else. that's 8:30pm, and the sun was beaming...














dinner started with Stornoway black pudding... the best i've ever tasted...
and ended with party favours... tablet. from DiRollo's. yum.














a glorious 2 hour dander through the botanical gardens...





































i found a little piece of AZ in the glasshouse...




























and hugged a tree in honour of my niece...












perfect haddock from Armstrongs of Stockbridge in The Orchard...


a grand couple of days was had...












LB

Collection of Stamps

can you help with a project?
my enthusiasm to do more of this decoupage but on a bigger scale (chest of drawers) is now limited by a much diminished stamp collection.
if you have,
(1) advice on where to find (cheaply!) loads of old stamps (either specific places or suggestions of generic places where they might turn up), or even better
(2) an old stamp collection* you or someone you know has and are not planning to do anything with and would be happy to give away, or,
(3) if you've got 15 secs on a daily basis to spare, start cutting stamps off your mail (they don't need to be removed from the envelope, a diagonal snip across the corner of the envelope, leaving the stamp intact will suffice) and keeping them in an envelope and posting them once the envelope is full, that'd also be very cool. it doesn't matter if the stamps seem uninteresting or you have lots of the same type.

then:
gimme a shout on email or post in the comments below. if you don't have my email or postal address, leave a message in the comments and i'll work out a way of getting them to you. (i'm not a fan of posting my email address online and i certainly won't be advertising my snailmail address publicly.)
i'll cover postage if we can't work out a way to pass the stamps via hand in as few degrees of separation as possible.

i'm happy to add the stamps to the chest over a number of months so consider this an ongoing request.

i can't say there's much in this for you, except maybe a pint or cocktail if we are in the same place at the same time, but if you can help, you'll certainly have much gratitude from me, and you can pat yourself on the back for a nice thing done.

LB
*if there's a Penny Black in the collection i'll be even more appreciative. ;)

big sister, little brother

*sniff*

i hope Lochlann will be as much of a blessing to Sequoia as Ewan has been, and continues to be, to me.

LB

getting there 2...

i've no art work up*, i'm a couple of bookcases short, i've not started on the deck, the windows aren't cleaned and "jayne's room" is still to be sorted, but the bathroom is spotless (thanks to bleach and an electric toothbrush) and there's food in the kitchen cupboards. so until the bookcases and art get here, the unpacking and sorting is on pause. so far so good. phew. LB
































*bar the jonny mcewen above the mantlepiece but that's in a category all of its own.

Lochlann... :)

getting there...

how to make a new home. with update.

here's the recipe.

1. take all, well, nearly all (as many as will fit in a van) of your worldly goods...













(foto taken yesterday evening by jayne, before the hardest of the "see you soons", which had me crying all the way to the border...)

2. open apartment. make inventory of,
a) furniture provided (marvel at ugliness of lounge furniture. make mental note to find throws and cushions at nearest opportunity)
b) kitchenware provided by landlord that one plans to put away in a box for duration of lease,ie. every single bit of it (while saying, i wouldn't eat off/drink out of/cook with that if you effing well paid me. )
c) miscellaneous crap found in cupboards
d) damage, broken things.

3. stir in insulting names for the previous tenants, who clearly had better things to do than clean. think up further insulting names for the supposedly professional cleaner who supposedly cleaned flat after aforementioned unhygennic messy scumbags vacated premises.
optional: curse previous tenants for removing lightbulbs.

4. take fotos for jayne et al to see.

the hall:














the main bathroom:














"jayne's room" aka the guest room:










as above, with shower room:












i could lie and say i'm being a generous host by letting my jayne and any other guests have the en-suite, but in truth
i'm taking the 2nd and only fractionally smaller room, because,
a. i may end up getting a flatmate to split the rent, and if they have the en suite, i get to have the main bathroom, with BATH, for me.
b. i didn't fancy sleeping between "his 'n' hers" wardrobes.

my room:













my room:










lounge:










kitchen (taken from dining area) containing miscellaneous shite provided by landlord/former scumerators:










lounge, looking toward dining area/kitchen:










5. add all ingredients from van to flat.
6. empty boxes
7. don rubber gloves and proceed to scrub, hoover, wash, polish, wipe. (may take several days.)
8. arrange to suit taste.

i'm currently at no 6 and have emptied 13 & 1/2 boxes already.
more pics to follow once it's all out of the oven...

::

a hard lesson...

last night i talked to my bro on skype, (birth watch update: still no sign of baby no.2 but all is well.) my 25 month old niece was looking through the banisters that lead from den up to kitchen and displaying her counting skills. on reaching 12, which impressed me no end, she disappeared screen left up the steps and then promptly came tumbling back into view head over heels on hard wood in a downward trajectory and exited screen right, where she came to a sudden halt on the tile floor at the bottom of the stairs. needless to say, my visit was cut short to the sound of tears, although i don't believe any lasting damage occurred. but if she grows up disliking maths, we know why. counting and keeping balance are big jobs when you're small.

sunday update: still no baby no.2. and sequoia's only damage is a small bruise on her foot. my brother checked that she can still count to 14. she can. he took this to be a good sign.
it never ceases to amaze me that the human body, especially the skeleton, evolved in such a way that at the very time when we are learning to master control of its movement, is capable of surviving these "accidents" relatively unscathed. that said, i'm not sure i want another skype visit involving quite such dramatic live streaming. next time, i want to see my neice on a chair. the use of duct tape is optional.

LB