An online commonplace book
Thank You
for all my hands can hold--
apples red,
and melons gold,
yellow corn
both ripe and sweet,
peas and beans
so good to eat!
From the poem Thanksgiving, by Ivy O. Eastwick.
As read from the glorious Random House Book of Poetry for Children.
Let’s be thankful today too. Happy day-after-Thanksgiving everyone!
The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. United States, Random House Children’s Books, 1983. pg 47
When the video game artist Peter Chan was young, he loved to draw, but he would crumple up his “bad” drawings in fists of frustration. His father convinced him that if he laid the “bad” drawings flat instead of crumpling them up, he could fit more of them in the wastebasket. After his father died, Chan found a folder labeled “Peter” in his father’s possessions. When he looked inside, it was full of his old, discarded drawings. His father had snuck into his room and plucked the drawings he thought were worth saving from the wastebasket.
Encouragement takes many forms. Sometimes it’s fishing out beauty from a wastebasket.
As read from Austin Kleon’s Keep Going.
Kleon, Austin. Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad. United States, Workman Publishing Company, 2019. pg 33,34
One day, the writer was overwhelmed by the urge to paint again. He recognized in himself the desire that had been gagged and throttled, but never killed; he had stumbled upon the painter whom he had left for dead. He walked into a stationary shop, bought two bags of paints and pencils, and began to fill two dozen notebooks. His hand seemed to move of its own accord. One day it drew, the next day it wrote, “like someone autographing a page without even realizing they’re doing it.”
Collapse to the urge. Pull out the graphite. Pull out the pens. Pull out the paints.
Go!
from:
https://www.vqronline.org/fall-2024/art-portfolios/memories-distant-mountains
h/t – https://x.com/nabeelqu
Haven’t posted a Four Panel Fridays in ages. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s friendship revived it, for this week anyway…
Hendrix, John. The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien (A Graphic Novel). United States, Abrams Fanfare, 2024.
Of course there are, occasionally, clever antitheses, antitheses that draw fine distinctions or tell you something that you did not know already. Oscar Wilde was the master of these, with lines like, ‘The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves’. But we can’t all be Oscar Wilde, and it would be interminably dull if we were. The world would degenerate into one permanent epigram.
Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence is eloquent and full of surprise. The world degenerating into one permanent epigram isn’t a phrase I’d expect to see in a “writing” book.
Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase. United Kingdom, Icon Books, Limited, 2014. pg. 19
You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it’s much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap’s corpse has sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, ‘Full fathom five thy father lies’, you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way — e.g. ‘your father’s corpse is 9.144 meters below sea level’ — and you’re just a coastguard with bad news.
Alliteration is always alluring…
That from:
Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase. United Kingdom, Icon Books, Limited, 2014. pg. 10
Inspired by the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers, and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list, the Draplin Design Co., Portland, Ore. – in conjunction with Cloudal Partners, Chicago, Ill. – brings you “FIELD NOTES‘ in hopes of offering “An honest memo book worth fillin’ up with GOOD INFORMATION.”
Wow. That is a long sentence.
This from the inside back cover of any Field Notes memo book.
Fun marketing that makes you feel like a ranch hand, lone-ranger, or early 19th century boxing correspondent.
“Good grief the bodies are piling up.”
“Good grief the bodies are piling up..” Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron. Directed by Kaku Arakawa, NHK, 2024.
(*translated from Japanese)
Best movie, documentary or otherwise I’ve watched this year. It lingers in the mind after each viewing.
There’s a Dante reference.
Miyazaki works at the same type of desk as the rest of his team.
COVID-19 is brisked over – Miyazaki kept working.
The field they keep next to the studio is for the neighborhood kids. It has an abandoned soccer goal on one end. At one point the grass finally grows in and Miyazaki overhears a group of kids playing sandlot baseball.
Realizing a dream doesn’t make the suffering go away. Miyazaki suffers over thousands of binned sketches.
The longer you live the more you experience the death of friends and colleagues.
This is inescapable.
What was it about May ’68 that made you choose that time as the context of the second story? Is it a product of all the time you’ve spent in Paris? Is there a personal connection?
Mavis Gallant. That was the inspiration. Her experience of May ’68 as a foreigner in Montparnasse: that especially engaged me. Our apartment in Paris is less than a block from where she lived, and I love her descriptions of the neighborhood. I love her voice and her analysis in general: clear, sharp, sometimes even bluntly judgemental – but with deep feeling and understanding. She listens, and her opinions are her own. She sees the young people not how they see themselves, not how their parents see them. She is amused, annoyed, rolls her eyes, and really does love and admire them.
Mavis Gallant was Wes Anderson’s inspiration for Lucinda Krementz in the French Dispatch. Will report back.
Anderson, Wes. The French Dispatch. United Kingdom, Faber & Faber, 2021. pg viii
Floodlights and Goalposts 
