I've been posting "literary purchases" on my Facebook page for a while, but I've decided to move them over here. There are so many fun and interesting things to buy! Many of them are from Etsy, but not everything is. Feel free to contact me if you have something an item you've purchased that you want me to post here. I've never had a guest post before - I think it would be fun!
If I post something I plan to purchase, I'll say so and also post a review later. When I post something I already own I'll still be including links back to where it came from. I'll also be contacting the artists of handmade items in case they have any further information on their beautiful creations. I'll be sure to add that information as an update with a link back to the post.
Today's very first Literary Consumerism purchase is a folded paper teacup from Cafe Paperie on Etsy. As with all of the items I've found on Etsy that are made from books, the description says that they are made from recycled and/or discarded books. I'm operating under the assumption that there was something wrong with the book so that it could no longer be read or that it is a very, very common book that you can find anywhere. I know that I run across the same books over and over at thrift stores and library sales!
Folded book art is a wonderful way to upcycle a product and also to draw attention to the beauty of books. Books have their own special kind of beauty. There's something wonderful about flipping through the pages or just looking at a bookshelf. Folded bookart displays the pages in a way that a book on a shelf can't. Artists like Karen L at Cafe Paperie use their talents to show us a different way to see the books we love. This particular piece is special to me because having a nice cuppa tea while I read is one of the greatest joys in life.
The product page also notes that they'll make custom items. If a teacup isn't your thing, contact Karen about what you'd like to see in folded book art. I've found that all Etsy artisans are happy to work with you to make sure you get exactly what you want. It's one of the reasons I prefer to shop on Etsy and buy items from real people.
I've had this lovely literary item on my wishlist for a while and plan to purchase it before my Twisted Tea Party planned for the end of January (did you see all that alliteration?). I'll be sure to post a photo and review once the party is over, and I'll add comments from the party goers because I've got some beautiful wordsmiths attending the event and along with tea I'll be serving schnapps. Nothing like some homemade schnapps to get the real truth out of people!
Last week was the fourth year since I'd started my blog, and I completely forgot to post "Happy Birthday Blog!"
Help with Credits!*
Instead of trying to sort out some sort of sentimental whooey about my birthday, I'm going to take a page from the Penpal of the Week blog and write about ten of my quirks. Then at some point in the future, I'll write this blogpost down on some gorgeous stationery and mail it to Julie so that I can return to pen palling.
1. The Color Pink
I hated the color pink as a child. At some point over the last ten years I began to love the color pink, and when I wasn't living with a man any longer, I went pink-tastic. My current bedroom is slowly becoming a pink princess palace with pink shelves, a pink and lavender bedspread, pink curtains, and even a pink lamp shade that lights up my room in pink! I am wearing a pink, purple, white, and black dress as I type this, and I'm wearing my favorite pink hair clip. Unfortunately, I left my pink backpack on the bus and haven't managed to replace it, so I've been stuck using a black backpack with my pink and green and white polka dots.
2. A Small Good Thing
In 1993 an English professor introduced me to Raymond Carver's short stories. I don't read short stories very often, but his A Small Good Thing changed how I look at the world and my place in it.
3. I Like Wine
I realize that doesn't seem like a quirk, but I was married to someone who has a deep love of beer. I can enjoy and appreciate a good beer, but I rarely enjoy it. When I do want to enjoy beer, I can't because after one to three sips I'm done, and I hate throwing out an entire beer. Thankfully drinking beer is never a requirement, and I like wine. A lot. I have a bottle of 90+ Pinot Grigio at home just waiting to be poured into my wine glass.
4. I Only Own One Wine Glass
I left the crystal wine glasses with my ex-husband when I moved to Massachusetts.I haven't purchased any other glasses because I miss the feel and the sound of the crystal glasses, so I was drinking my wine from a teacup until a friend gave me a wine glass painted with shoes and boots. One of these days I'm going to thrift store two crystal wine glasses. It sounds like getting inexpensive wine glasses is a good idea, but honestly, I want the full pleasure of that glass in my hand, and using a clear glass teacup isn't any better or worse than using a cheap wine glass, so why bother? My roommate uses small juice glasses to drink her wine, so at least I'm in good company. Perhaps I'll buy a juice glass. I lost the jam jars I used to use as wine glasses. I am super upset about this because I was collecting the character ones. I had a set of Charlie Browns, some smurfs, and a few other random ones. I rarely buy Smuckers jam so I never get the character glasses anymore. Besides, I'm so behind on current pop culture that I wouldn't even know what the current characters even are.
5. Shared Birthdays!
Speaking of blog birthdays and roommates, my roommate and I share a birthday! Oh, the year is different, but the day is the same. I was freaked out about getting into a roommate situation, but so far it's worked out well, and she's been super patient with how long it's taking me to unpack.
6. Dessert Plates
I don't use dinner plates at home. I only own dessert plates. A meal doesn't need to fill a huge, massive plate. If I have more food than can fit on my dessert plate, I grab a second plate, use a bowl, or get up and go get seconds later.
7. Tie Dye
For over ten years I wore tie dye every single day, although it wasn't always visible to the general public *waggles eyebrows*. I still love tie dye, but I haven't had the drive to tie dye my current underthings to ensure I'm always brightly colored somewhere..
8. I Dislike Taking Baths
So many folks like relaxing into a nice hot bath, but I get stuck
on the idea of how I'll have to scrub the tub clean then sit there
soaking in my own filth that I can't enjoy it. Plus, I'm a very large
woman, and the idea of squeezing into a small tub is uncomfortable, especially since I'll be too short for it and won't be able to properly lean back because I keep starting to drift down towards the other end.
A
hotel upgraded me once when I complained that there was blood in the
bathroom, and they put me in a massive two-story suite that had a hot-tub style
bathtub and a separate shower stall. The tub was big enough for two
people and was shaped so that I could sit and read and soak. I was able to take a shower both before and after soaking.
The hotel also provided some delightful and not overly scented bath oils, so I
enjoyed that one bath very much and came out with softer, happier skin. I doubt that sort of thing will ever happen again, though.
9. Paris Hilton's BFF
Back when I owned a tv, I spent two days at home on pain killers after dental work. I discovered the reality tv show about Paris Hilton's BFF. I have been fascinated with this show ever since. I don't remember the specific characters or if I ever saw all of the episodes, but it doesn't matter. I am fascinated with the show. In fact, I might actually find a way to watch all two seasons of it next time I'm sick. Oh, I didn't finish it, and I don't mind that I haven't. I was attached to the perversity of choosing a best friend via a contest, of being mean to these future best friends, of encouraging individuals to back stab each other as proof of their devotion to you, and of expecting best friends to make themselves sick then be perfectly presentable for horseback riding lessons two hours later.
10. I Love Questionable Content
What I mean by that is that I love the online comic Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques. Don't check it out from work because while it's often SFW it does have NSFW moments, and you really don't want your boss walking by during them.
* I found the adorable anime birthday on google image search, but when I tried to check the page, it was a broken link. The anime looks familiar, but I can't think of what it is. If you have any idea what the anime is, who to credit for this specific picture, or anything else, please let me know.
I was introduced to William Carlos Williams and was immediately impressed (and not just because he was from New Jersey). Williams syntax and style was fresh and new. I loved Emily Dickson but it was a down. And other than Maya Angelous, she was the only female poet I could have named at the time. Poetry was still more of a white man's game with Frost's lyrical poems
about fences and stormy nights. It was a Poe's obscure (to me)
references like Pallis' bust... it took dictionaries and encyclopedias
(remember those big books?) to decipher poetry. It was complicated,
confusing, and beyond me. I couldn't make head or tails from t.s.
elliot. Even after spending a week on it in a graduate class, I can barely follow The Wasteland. Too many "classically educated" references for this small town American girl. Although it is thanks to eliot I know the definition of the word belladonna.
Emily Dickinson was a female author, but still, she went in the grouping of white male poets. Her poems were different from theirs, but they were depressing with death riding with her at every turn. I later learned it was because of her own anxiety and depression. Her life fascinates me now, and her words inspired me. However, they did not captivate me. The only other female poet I could have named back then (high school? early college? dunno) was Maya Angelou, and last May we lost one of the greatest American writers when she died. Angelou's words melted into my bones.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you best with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumpking in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
(excerpt from Angelou's "Still I Rise")
Like Angelou, Williams was not beyond me. My teacher told us that Williams left poetry scribbled on the pack of prescription pad and that one night after being called out late at night to see a patient and returning home he ate the plums his wife had left in the icebox because "they were delicious so sweet and so cold." I think that the majority of folks who have read onnly one Williams poem it was this one since it has been the majority of literature texts that I have seen.
If you read that poem in class, you may have moved on and forgotten it, but I turned the page because I wanted to see more. Williams was so much more than a lover of plums.
The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city
A fire truck. Williams managed to make a fire truck come to life and scream past me in a classroom. He inspired art that is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I think this is what led me to believe he was a black doctor in the 1920s in New Jersey. His voice stood out among all the male poets and showed me pictures of the world around me. He was unique and completely American. In my mind only an African American poet could break away from the old style, the old way, because the only other African American poet I knew was Maya Angelou, and she never ceases to amaze me.
Never Ceases to Amaze Me (Split Enz)
What does it say about my educational background that when I was in high school, my automatic assumption was that innovative, powerful writing must be from a person of color because white folks poetry seemed so damned set in the old ways? I was at least partly mistaken because the works we covered were, for the most part, from before World War I, which is when folks really began breaking the mold in ways that I could understand and follow.
The imagist movement of the early 20th century was about creating images with small, simple words. Williams was part of the imagist movement with Ezra Pound but they eventually parted ways - so many of the imagists were, to Williams, sticking to older European ways. They weren't American enough for him; they weren't defining new American ways of writing. I don't know much about it, truthfully, because I do not have a background in poetry and have studied very little of it. Perhaps folks who know their poetry ould comment here. Maybe they'll say I'm full of hooey. That'd be awesome - I love debates and learning.
Williams style of imagery poetry works for me. In two pages sitting in a high school class poetry suddenly became accessible. It was vivid, it placed cold fruit, wet from being cleaned for the eating, into a bowl. I strongly dislike plums, but after reading that poem, beautiful dark plums, cold on a hot night stood in front of my eyes and left me aching to bite into them and experience the bittersweet joy he felt that made him write that lovely message to his wife.
There is something oddly satisfying about sitting at my friend's loom weaving while she reads Farmer Boy to her son. I have always loved the Laura Ingalls books, but I have never heard them read aloud. It seems right that I weave yarn she spun while she explains to her son about how people made clothes back then and couldn't just go to the store and buy new clothes if their shirts were ripped.
I used to live near the Wilder Homestead in Malone, New York. I always meant to visit, but I never made it. I always assumed there would be more time. Ah well, maybe one day I'll go to Minnesota to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Little House, Minnesota instead. Minnesota is not in my near future, though.
I think I should start seeing and doing things I want instead of waiting for some unknown future date. It's not good to assume that something will remain the same or good. Whole lives can change in seconds or minutes, and then when we do, we're left wondering why we didn't do or say or enjoy that thing that we were thinking about. I don't want to have so many of those "why didn't I" and "what if I'd" moments.
In the meantime, I'll listen to my friend read this book and other books to her son while I sit at the loom and weave or sit at the sofa with my embroidery or whatever it is that I choose to do. Maybe one day I'll even finish the embroidery project I started over a year ago.
