fanciful devices: 11/2009

A Stone Is Nobody's

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it.
Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the rest of his life.

His mother asked why.

He said, because it's held captive, because it is captured.

Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and the stone
are mother and daughter; it is you who are getting old. The stone is only sleeping.

But I caught it, mother, it is mine by conquest, he said.

A stone is nobody's, not even its own. It is you who are conquered; you are minding the prisoner, which is yourself,
because you are afraid to go out, she said.

Yes yes, I am afraid, because you have never loved me, he said.

Which is true, because you have always been to me as the stone is to you, she said.

Russell Edson

FAQs

1. Are you a Southeast Asian dancing girl from the 1800s?

No, sorry to disappoint. My avatar and banner images are from an ancient book I found in the depths of my grandmother's cabinets. More on that here.

2. How do you make everything look so old?

First, you need a good oxidizer to brush on every bit of metal you can reach. I'll tell you all about it here.

Then there's this wax. I first mentioned it here. You'll have to scroll down a lot.

3. How can you be so productive?

I'm insanely obsessed and I have no offspring. I do nothing else- I don't have a day job, I don't clean my house or cook, I spend all day in pjs, often completely abandoning personal hygiene... I only interact with other humans when I walk my dog. And I like people! But I prefer dogs.

And I'm sloppy- but I make that sloppiness work for me.

4. Any tips you'd like to share?

No! Except for these 16 posts about techniques and this one about how to find your aesthetic.

5. Would you be offended if I took some inspiration from your designs?

Well, I'd be happier if you outright copied them.

No really, imitation is how we learn. I have enough ideas to go around. And even if I don't- please. No one's going to do this obsessively enough to threaten my business. (Probably.) I learned by copying others and I've seen others copy me as a step toward developing their own voice. So feel free. (I'd love if you tossed me a link in my comments, so I can feel like a proud momma.)

6. What do you look like?

Why, what have you heard? Really? Wow.

11/25/09

Bye bye

They're off to Norway. I was showing a student the one w/the skull, and saying that I sold it. When he saw the price, he just about fell out of his shoes. I was laughing and going "I know, I know, it's crazy," all embarrassed. Saying I'd never buy a necklace over 14 bucks, myself. Oh, it was ridiculous. The juxtaposition of the economic level of an illegal immigrant with that of the world of white folks...

A really nice one

Here.

Another lovely treasury.

Although it took me a while to find my piece. Here.

11/24/09

Bye bye bought

Hoorah for subdued packaging. Bye to these just posteds:

And some other little guys:

whuddayawant- i'm 35 after all

Yeah, i only heard of them cuz of the palm pixi commercial. Still don't know what a palm pixi is, I mean other than another kind of one of those things that hold no interest for me. But good for them for getting the bills paid. I wish I liked the other songs on their CD this much- the dolphin-voiced hindi singer, the voot-voot synth, the dude going several octaves higher than testeecules should allow, the magical lyrics. Makes me almost cry.

11/22/09

New stuff burnout

Too much new stuff... totally uninspired to come up w/cool posts. The last few were literally, like "I got this little house... put it on a chain..."

Then I made a guhgillion of these slide pendants:

Let me show you the backs and fronts in pairs:

I've got a bunch more to post but ugh. I had the brilliant idea of getting this new translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies by Edward Snow- and yes, the translation is amazing, huge improvement on all previous attempts. However. Since it's not, ya know, on the internet ... I can't just cut and paste it into a post, but have to actually type it in. Wow that sounds lazy. But after a long day of taking pictures, and after a long menstrual week of dealing w/my OCD/autistic boss, I'm just burnt. None of the verses even make sense after a while. Or I just start to pair them w/jewelry pieces for no good reason and it thus becomes gibberish. Gibberish. I like that word.