Interview With Z Budapest

Interview With Z Budapest

my "official" new desk

For years I used my dining room table as a desk, because it was large & could accommodate my laptop & whatever books & papers & I was working with, but when my son James decided to go to college, he appropriated my desk & like all good mothers, I made room for his books & notebooks & papers.  At the end of the past spring semester, I could hardly wait to use "my" desk again.  But halfway through the summer -- with James getting ready to start at the University at Buffalo after two years at Erie Community College, where he had been on the Dean's List each semester & been admitted to Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society -- yes! I am a proud mama! -- I decided that I had to have my own space.  

So I took a little end table that was in my bedroom in front of a window for the cats to sit upon to look out the window at the birds & the chickens in my neighbors' yard & opened up the wings so it's a nice round table.  It's a little bit low & will devil my aching back but it is my "official" new desk.  & I have to say -- on this hot humid day -- that it is quite nice to sit here with a cold drink in front of the window fan & write.  I really like looking out the window into my neighbors' yards -- my neighbors to the left (the green house), who have one of the prettiest yards in the entire neighborhood & my  neighbor to the right (the tan shingled house), who is an urban farmer, with chickens & beehives & a greenhouse made from old windows (which I have to say is really cool).  The vines on the our garage will turn a vibrant red in late September before they crinkle up & fall off.  In the spring, robins will make nests in the vines before the starlings come to raid & throw the little blue eggs to the ground.  Sometimes the robins actually make another nest.  Tenacious birds, those robins.  It's a constant battle between these two species of birds, which is why my cats love this window.  But by this time of year, they're long gone.  I still see robins around the neighborhood but I don't know where the starlings have gotten to.  Not that they're especially missed!  They poop everywhere & on everything!

So this is my new writing spot.  Very small but larger than the desk that Louisa May Alcott wrote "Little Women" upon.  I was amazed how tiny it was when I saw it at Orchard House this June.  A masterpiece written on a desk half the size of this current desk of mine!  I would have taken a picture of it but I wasn't allowed to.  I understand why I wasn't allowed to but still ... ya know, I'm special!  

Anyway, I suppose it isn't the size of the desk but the enormity of the ambition to write.  I have been reading blogs of (mostly) women but also some men & they write everyday so I am determined to do the same -- I do keep a personal diary on a daily basis but I am lazy when it comes to blogging.  But these fabulous writers have inspired me & kicked my ass & my brain to do more.  Like, write anything.  Just do it, like the Nike commercial used to say.  So today, I wrote about my little desk.   Thank you, fellow bloggers & keep me writing. 

collage & tarot & poetry

i have always wanted to be an artist but i can't draw very well.  so collage has always been my thing.  a long time ago, i created large mural-like collages that collapsed under their own weight after a few years.  i also made collages out of the walls of my rooms where i lived, taping & tacking pictures to the walls.  

you can see the pictures on the wall of my dining room here.  they went across the entire wall & around the corner & covered all the walls of the room.  it was really impressive.  when we moved, it took me a week to take all the pictures down.

poetry is a kind of collage.  you cut & paste words & phrases together.  i always thought that collages of words & collages of pictures were very much alike.  whenever i got stuck with one form, i switched to the other one. 

i have boxes & bags filled with pictures & i have folders & notebooks filled with poems & partial-poems.  between the two of them, i plan to write as many poems as i can & create as many collages as possible.

as for the tarot, i have been reading the cards since 1988.  my first deck was a rider-waite deck & i still read with that deck most often.  but i have other decks.  i particularly like collage decks & look for those decks online & in stores.  one of my favorites is kat black's golden tarot.  she puts together pictures from medieval & early renaissance art & the result is magnificent.  

another set i own is the love tarot.  a majors only set, it also features an innovative way of using collage imagery.  

i especially like the high priestess.  but all the cards are fabulous. 

which brings me to the card i created today, for the poem (ii the high priestess).  i used a picture i found on mythindex.com called "diana hunting" by guillaume seignac.  the link is here ... http://mythindex.com/greek-mythology/A/Artemis.html.  the columns were clip art that i had for a long time.  i really don't know where they came from.  i wanted to add a large crescent moon at her feet & i tried several times but didn't like the results so i removed them.  so this is a very simple card.

but i think one of my best so far.  i think if i would change anything, i would make the text bold face so you can see it better.  but other than that, i'm really pleased with it.

so over this weekend, i'm going to start working on the empress card & a few other little collages for a few other poems.  & post it here so the whole world knows about how creative i am. 

An end to writer's block

I have been suffering through one of the worst writer's blocks I have ever had.  I went eight months without writing any poetry whatsoever.  That's pretty grim.  I did write my diary, although not every day.  I kept up on emails.  But when I sat at the computer to write, I ended up playing game after game of solitaire.  The wheels of my brain weren't even spinning.  They were stuck in ice & snow as thick as the ice & snow building up on the roof of my house.  

So I focused on other things.  Knitting, for one.  I finished a shawl, a scarf, & started an afghan.  I cleaned the house almost non-stop, clearing out closets & cupboards, filling bags & boxes, & giving things to charity.  I radically changed my diet & daily work-out & lost twenty-five pounds since the New Year.  

No matter what, I kept reading.  This winter I read novels by Jean Plaidy, Jane Oliver, Elizabeth Byrd & Anya Seton; poetry by Bernadette Mayer, Jonathan Brannen, Carol Watts & William Shakespeare, of course; & feminist political essays.  

I could feel the stirring of creativity with the moving of the geese.  I wrote a new poem the very first day of April and posted on my sonnets blog for the poetry challenge.  Within days, I was writing almost non-stop again & I was also working on collages, an art form I hadn't worked with in almost 30 years.  I do not pretend to be any kind of great artist or any kind of artist at all.  But I am having FUN.  Which is really all that matters to me.