Month: December 2020

RANT on Recommendation

***** RANT TIME read at your own risk RANT TIME *****

Reading an article by a guy who is going to hit 10 years of daily journaling. Ten years! Nice work writer! (no names here, this guy has lots of company) He then goes into how he got started and what kept him going. Write a little bit every day. It can be a line. Do not set your expectation high, no pages a day to journal just get out some lines about your day or whatever you want to write about. (Sounds familiar does it not?) Then nearing the close of the article he gives advice. Right after “Set realistic constraints …” he writes “Use Day One.” What is Day One? it is an app for your iPhone. Only for your iPhone.

This is when I got rumbling. iPhones have, at best, a 20% market share. This says that 80% of his people reading his blogs don’t have the tool he recommends. He then goes on to three bullet points about using Day One. He follows this with “If you’re not writing every day, try more constraints not more technology.” Right after what is, so far, 60% technology recommendations. Like so many others he approaches the world as if they too use iPhone as a platform. I understand that Apple buys a lot of placement. I get it. But if you are writing something for all people you need to consider them, all of them. Most of them do not use iPhones. AND, if you are an Android user, don’t forget the people with iPhones. There are not that many of them but there are enough of them to be considered.

*****END OF RANT you are welcome to come back to life RANT END ***

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

PS, If you are counting words in a document, do you count every five characters, like they do for typing, or the individual bits, like a computer does? Curiosity cares.

Art & Fear: The Truth

Art & Fear from David Bales and Ted Orland, subtitled “Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of ARTMAKING”, was the subject of a recent blog post from Austin Kleon, titled “Quantity leads to Quality (the origin of a parable)”. (search for it, it was published on December 10, 2020) Austin Kleon was amazed by a parallel in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. In one book it was a ceramist in the other a photography teacher. Both instructors divined the class into two groups. In one they would be graded solely on quality. The other half of the students would be graded on the quality of their output. You can make a bunch of bad pottery and you could still get an A in the class. In the photography class if you came up with 100 prints you would get an A. Output less and your grade would suffer. The other group could do one piece or a few, but they had to be good, very good. At the end of the semester the best work came from the group that did a lot of it. Sounds unbelievable? Yet, it happened. I wrote to Ted Orland asking about the story. He confirmed that it actually happened in a Beginning Photography class taught at the University of Florida by Jerry Uelsmann. (look him up, great work) So the story is true. For quality work to emerge do a huge quantity. I will tell you, this inspired me to get going with One Typed Page. It is a start. Now I just need to work on the quantity. I am still trying to find out what the quantity was in photography.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

PS The San Francisco Art Institute that I attended (1980 to 1983) had a similar take on work. If you did a bunch you go a Pass with Honors. Do some work you got a Pass,. I don’t recall anyone getting failed if the did something, anything.

A Book to Burn

Earlier this year I wrote about Anthony Madrid’s piece in the Paris Review, SIX BOOKS WE COULD AND SHOULD ALL WRITE. I thought I would come back to it and describe the xis?? gad, the six books one can and should write. On One Typed Page we are all participating in one or more of the suggested books. Certainly we are writing a book about ourselves. Whether we like that idea or not, there is a lot of people writing about themselves here. But for now, I will talk about a specific book he recommends. A Book to Burn.

This concept, A Book to Burn, comes from Li Ziu Li.  Ziu Li was a late Ming philosopher and gadfly. He wrote this book “thinking to enclose therein all his completely unacceptable views.” He named it “A Book to Burn” “implying that if you were caught with it, you would be executed.” He was caught with it, he was not executed for his heretical ideas because he commuted suicide first.

If you have, like I do, things that you do not want anyone to read, under any circumstance to read it, put it in your book to burn. In truth I do not write it down for others to find. Or I do not leave the writings around. I burn it, or put it in someplace, like a garbage bin, I put it in my mind and the do what I can to forget it. I do not want people to know about my thoughts. Never. Not at all. Not a bit of it.

Now you may have ideas that just need to be written to exorcise them from your psyche. Or perhaps they are not, to you, all that bad. But you do need to put them into some form. Typewriting is a fine place for them. Certainly much better than into a computer where some bit is stored somewhere. So type it, keep it someplace secure. And, dare I say, burn your book before someone reads it.

I will be back to this topic. For the record, the six books are:

* a book about oneself
* a book about others
* an anthology of favorites
* a book about words
* a book of lists
* a book to burn

Coming soon, or perhaps later, some commentary about these books.
Yes, I do have them on my computer.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48

The Best Thing

I uncapped the bottle of ink. I reached for a Q-tip, Alternator Crimson, found my hand first and a black red pool spread across my workspace. My workspace was in the living room. On our coffee table.

I went to my wife and asked for towels, rags she was standing in front of the bin where we kept them. I strode back into the living room and mopped up the mess. And I was happy. Because the pool of ink was in a giant John Pike watercolor pallet, or palete, or whichever spelling it has. All the ink spread over the surface that, sure as they said, just sat there until I took towels and mopped it up. This counts as the best thing that happened today. I had bought a supply of ½ inch (woo hoo! a reason to use the ½ on my typewriter!) ½ inch stickers. Put one on the top of each jar and sample vials and then dipped into then with the q-tips and colored the tops. Now I no longer need to lift the individual containers to check on the names to figure out what I need. Now I just need to sort through the six types of blue. That is a lot more fun. A lot.

And let us hear it for John Pike and his great honking big holder of theing designed for painting. A palette. I have to look it up. Just like discrete or discreet. Except I know that I use discrete. I guess I need to use palettes more often and write about them more. I don’t want to confuse it with someones tasting abilities. So a bunch of cheers for John Pike and his palettes!

I think tomorrow I will get out my palette and watercolors and see about the collection of watercolors left by the previous owner. There are some honking big piles of pigment ready to be used. This is one great thing about watercolors, you let it dry and with water and patience you have it ready to use again.

Yes, this sounds like a plan for tomorrow. By the way, or PS for now, Austin Kleon wrote about what to write about when you are out of ides. “The Best Thing (cheerful retrospection)” is one of his blog posts. If you run in to problems with ideas, start by writing about the best thing that happened. Note this is not about something that happened. You can get stuck in something nasty. Ask yourself what is the best thing? Which I did and here we are. I spilled ink. Onto a safe surface while I was watching TV. Yes, it worked.

–MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48

Pike Palette

New Typewriting and Hypomnema

Let’s hear it for a new typewriter! This Royal KMM is a Christmas gift from my wife. It is the exact model I wanted. She figured it out with a time tested method, she siad “go buy it, here is some cash.” OK, that is not what she said. But it is what she intended when she gave me a wad of cash and encouraged me to get the typewriter I had wanted. May you all have spouses as kind as mindful as mine.

There has been some talk about journaling here. Cat, are you going to do Bullet Journaling? The rest of you, do you do Bullet Journaling? I am wondering about it. Do I want to get everything down to single line summaries. I am not sure how this works out. If you know, do tell.

Once we figure that out…what was I thinking? OK, look we do have a special place here. We have a HYPOMNEMA. That is a Greek word with “several translations into English including a reminder, a note, a public record, a commentary, an anecdotal record, a draft, a copy, and other variations on those terms.” That is from Wikipedia. Wikipedia got it from Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon online. It helps a lot if you can read Greek. There is a lot of references in the Liddell and Scott to explanations here. Or there. Wherever. But, my god, what a concept of a word. If I did not have a fistful of domains, I would register it for myself. But, Before I stray too far off the subject, yes, we have a hypomemna here in our collective writings.

About journaling again, I am doing it again. Or still rather. Morning Pages to start the day. A sketch journal after Lynda Barry’s example. It comes from page 61 of SYLLABUS. And other pages of other books from Lynda Berry with slight changes. The page is divided into four sections. This is a basic five minute diary. Write down 5 to 7 things you did, 5 to 7 things you Saw, something you heard someone say, and a 30 second sketch, Bang you are done. Except I do not do that. Most of the time. I just write. In other journals I have COOKED for things I have made to eat. Uke, for musical (well, if I can call it musical) bits, there is an empty exercise book. Mostly it is a book of things I wonder about and whatever is going on with that. There is a lot here.

I attempt to do something structured. Like what I plan to do in a day and then ater what I did. But I am distracted by life and not yet playing close attention to what I am up to. I am thinking about that now. I am going to go off and think about it more.

Keep it safe, dear,

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48

Wait, What Sleep

I slept today.
Yesterday I walked for two and a half miles.
Today I woke early. 4:00 or so I woke and could not sleep. I came home from the hospital, chilled, wrapped up in a blanket. Wrapped up in a blanket until l slept.

Now I have a night of sleepiness and not a mind of thoughts. Thoughts that mill around. Around and around they deem to a night of nothing. Nothing emerges from my mind of an evening. Evening is a night of reaching out into the emptiness. Emptiness pursues its steadfast pursuit of trying to find release. Release of its help with this game. Game of creation. Creation of discrete sentences. Sentences that swim like fish in a pond, laziness of chasing itself. Itself chasing the words of creation. Creation repeating in its pursuit of continuing. Continuing through sentences of nonsense. Nonsense picking up from our bit of a wait. Wait, what is this? This, a bit Of a wait. Wait, what do we have here in these revolving pursuits of what, where are we? We gather up another chase. Chase another sleepiness hoping to catch it. It is right there beckoning. Beckoning my pursuit. Pursuit of my start, where today slept I.

I will play that game again tomorrow or another day. Not today.

— MichaelRpdx. :: ih3k

Discrete or Discreet?

Her brow became furrowed. How could I not want my activities to be unobtrusive and tactful? I tried to explain how I needed to have distinct items to keep them apart. I could take, for instance, a group of 12 photos of our former dog, Fritzi, and make a calander. Then I have a thing, something complete. I did not do that. I just kept doing this and that and I did not do anything complete. I needed to make discrete things. To make them into complete bits, which is not something I had ever done. “I need to make discrete projects.” What? She wondered why I needed to make my projects so discreet?

Discrete or discreet? They are both pronounced /diss kréet/.
As we talked I was describing a need for discrete projects. She did not understand how that would make my projects any easier or more difficult. I was describing a need for discrete projects. She thought I was describing a need for discreet work. As it turned out we were both using discrete/discreet at the same time and not really understanding why we did not understand each other.

As it turns out I really do not care for discreetness. But I feel a great need for discrete projects. We pulled out a dictionary to determine the difference between the words.

Which variance of discrete or discreet do you prefer?

I need to have discrete things that I am working on. I have been reminded that I need to have more discreet references, to have some filters in what I do, what I present.

I had been advised “narrow your scope” at least when I start a project. Start small, build from there. I never did that. That lead to our conversation. I need to make discrete things.

For those of you that read this in the morning, I am having a barium swallow imaging this now time. It will be a first. I will be in the presence of other people without a mask on. This was originally scheduled for April.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

Earliest Sunset

Congratulations! You have made it! As I type this and when you read it the northern hemisphere you will have endured the earliest setting of the sun. For the next few days the earth will seemingly pause with sunset happening at the same time each transition to night, but be assured, each day the sun sets a little later each day. On its way to March when the days lengthen by so much it will seem like summer is right around the corner.

Some of you may be protesting, “wait, winter solstice does not happen until the 2lst or 22nd, that shortest day.” Yes, that is true. Because the sun rising happens later each day. This later and later continues until the 26th of December. This turning around, these shortest days of the winter actually starts on December 3, From then until the 16th the change is just a few seconds all labeled as 4:27 for Portland, Oregon. After that time the sun sets later and later. The sunrise takes until 7:50 in Portland. So shortest day overall is on the 21st the latest sunrise is on January 3 (until the 7th before it makes it into the next minute) earliest sunset on December 7th and everything is getting longer and longer on January 7.

Good thing Daniel accepts pieces shorter than a full page. I am off to watch the sun set for a day in which we can.
Rain is on its way.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

Pizza and Running

There is this thing I have. I live in a foodie city. There is great food of so many varieties. Mexican, Chinese, pizzas, Thai, BBQ (include Vegan there), New Orleans style, Indian, the list goes on. Most all of it comes in vegetarian and vegan variants. I took my wife to a vegan Isralian place for her last birthday. This come to mind because we had Neapolitan pizza tonight. It was a night to eat food with someone else cooking. (Look up Otto’s Pizza in Portland, Oregon – not Maine – to get some flavors) To get to Otto’s I had to break my thing. “Don’t pass more than a couple of places with the same kind of food.” Tonight to get our pizzas I had to drive by three other pizza places. OK, they were not Neapolitan style pizza places, but still, they were all good pizza places ALL of them. We have had pizzas from all of them. But Otto’s is so good and we have not had one from them in, well, forever. The other Otto’s is up on Sandy. We have been there and greatly enjoyed their pizzas. But to get there, too many pizza places to pass. So I stretched my rule about where to go for food out. Now I am thinking about Bahn Mi. Ah, num num num. It makes for a great place to live.

Covid is one of those things with no end in sight. You have to keep going. And going and going and … well there is a ultra marathon race with a similarity. The BIG DOG BACKYARD ULTRA.

Like any other ultra race it attracts really fit runners. But in this race there is no defined distance. There is also people who hold the honor of being in first place. If your in your in first place. Until you quit. Then you are a DNF. Those two classifications are all they have. DNF or First. And that is the goal of the race, to keep going. Alert: I am of not the type of person who will or would do this thing. But watching people do this thing, to keep going until you cannot go again, that is something I would do. Watch these people who will keep running until they cannot is fascinating. They do not sleep. They eat when they get to the end of the loop. What motivates these people? So this October I will be watching them. The current record is 75 loops, over three days of running. Wow.

Keep you masks up dears.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

Typing or Not

Oh dear. Oh my, oh dear. Oh dear, oh my, oh this is silly.
I should be able to come up with something to say.

A few days ago I had mentioned BORDERTOWN, a Finnish/Russian drama. The Netflix one that my wife did not care for because of the teenage nudity featured in the first episode and an opening of episode two with a rave, dance party with scads of teenagers doing a pool dance. I hung on and was rewarded with changes to the plot. I convinced my wife to try it again and Yep, she liked it also. We especially admire the crisp endings to the trilogies (triologies? trigologys?) We recommend it. Warnings: the dubbing is bad and they do not offer an option to listento it in Finnish: it is a Netflix thing; backstories are close to non-existent so you will need to watch a lot.

Isaac Asimov typed for six hours a day. He sat down and typed knowing that if he kept it up he could not type a bunch of drivel That he would produce good stuff. What is this? He was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University? (aside, my niece was an electronic engineer there.) As we or I was doing here he sat down and typed for six hours. Yet I am having problems getting a One Typed Page. Perhaps I need to do more work than one piece, to keep going. Instead I type out my page and quit. Then I go on to baking bread, mailing a letter, walk a mile or two, watch YouTube “Fountain Pens 101” (24 episodes and that is the theme of the day) marvel at the chilliness, and those things do not bring me any closer to what I need to write about.

Take a break, grill some cheese sandwiches, At least we have dome dinner. Yes, they were great.

Keep your masks on, dear.

— MichaelRpdx
mlr:ih3k