Lucid Waking

Archive for the ‘Nonfiction’ Category

The 2009 Review

        2009 has been a very rough year. It’s been difficult because of the many unexpected deaths being reported in the news and even in my own life. It’s been difficult because I have transitioned from living at home to living at school and managing my time on my own. It’s been difficult finding my muse and actually writing fiction. It’s been difficult watching time slip away and finding that all the time that was in the future had just passed.
        I’d like to have this year go by so differently than it did. I wish I could have published more this year; I had many opportunities to write that I chose to do something else. I wrote a grand total of 31 fiction pieces; less than half of what I wrote last year. Many people will give me very valid reasons why it’s ok that I have not written, but I feel that I am doing myself a disservice more than my readers. Every year I’ve improved, but without practicing, it’s hard to see the bar line ascend. I’ve even written this article last minute because I realized what day it was and I like to keep deadlines especially since Lucid Waking’s birthday was up late and my Christmas post didn’t get published at all.
        This year wasn’t a total waste, however, when it comes to Lucid Waking. I added a film page which should hopefully have something else if I can get my act together. My print shop on Deviant Art is fairly substantial and ever ready for more prints. This year I also put everything on the blog as opposed to maintaining separate pages and started putting my artwork in the archive. But I feel these are small achievements.
Never the less, this has been my fifth year writing an end-of-the-year review and even though I almost stopped doing Best of the Blog, I decided to continue it. So, I’m still trucking despite everything.
        There are personal reasons why this year was not as bad as some and worse than others. I think I triumphed through all the dragons sent my way and I hope that I can keep writing, keep thinking and keep going through many years to come. I want to wish everyone the best tonight and the next year to come.

p.s. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t forget about Best of the Blog!! Vote on your favorites and tomorrow I will post the winners!

‘Tis the Season

First order of business, please start reviewing the Best of the Blog so that we can get a modest voter turn out in December. Compared to other years, there aren’t many posts, so don’t be afraid to read and vote. I will be posting more between now and December 26, when I will take a break for final votes and maybe making a small buffer. Based on my schedule, this won’t be often, but keep in mind there will be a little more.

Second, I’ve been working on my print shop. Check it out, spread the word, and buy something! I’m still taking commissions, if you’re interested. Again, any art information can be found here. Any money I raise through this will most likely go towards a trip to the UK that my orchestra is planning on going on, so any help would be appreciated.

That’s it for now. Thanks for hanging in there during my busy months. I’m working hard, rest assured.

Newsflash: What Are We Teaching Our Girls?

I was perusing Yahoo!’s home page when two articles that caught my eye. The first said: “Is that pink ribbon doing what you think?” Naturally I was curious; I thought I was spending my money wisely by getting things I needed and being philanthropic. Well, it turns out that Lucy van Pelt was right when she exclaimed that “this sort of thing always has a loophole.” It turns out that many companies are using the pink ribbon-which is an unlicensed, unregulated image-on packaging so that people are more willing to buy it thinking that they are helping out Breast cancer.

Take Proctor & Gamble’s pink ribbon-bedecked Swiffer mop. Daily Finance’s Aimee Picchi reports that although the words “early detection saves” accompany the Swiffer’s pink ribbon, simply purchasing the mop will not help fundraising efforts.

Has marketing really stooped so low as to use a universal symbol to help their own gains? On principle, I’m not always against marketers and business. Knowing how hard it is to self advertise I can sympathize with businesses trying to make a profit. The money they make then goes to workers which in turn feeds families and, in a perfect world, will also go towards helping others. But I’m not naïve. I’m aware there is greed in the world, but why should we lump honest entrepreneurs who got lucky with their businesses and became big businesses with those trying to swindle people out of money? But obviously, trust only goes so far. Quite frankly, I’m disgusted that companies would claim to help out a cause while really filling their pockets because they are not legally bound to their claim. Well, I hope all those college students studying law are happy because the world is getting more and more corrupt and they have job security knowing that every single advantage taken is another law suit to follow through on. I’m just sad no one knows what ethics are anymore. What ever happened to class?

So after deciding I was just going to donate money direction to the Susan G. Koman foundation (which I know also uses a lot of the donations they get towards advertising and not free mammogram services), I return to the front page and am drawn by “Digitally altered model speaks on firing.” Being curious, I naturally click on the link and am confronted with a picture of the front page of a Ralph Lauren catalog. I’ve taken many art classes before and I know, at first glance, something is seriously wrong with the proportions in the photo. Not only is she too skinny, but her bone structure would be impossibly flat (even the ribcage to spinal column would create a curve) and her head was much too large. After skimming the article, I was even more horrified. Apparently, Ralph Lauren was called out for obviously photo shopping the picture and for making the model even skinnier than she really is. To remedy the situation they fired the poor girl claiming that she was “too fat to model for them.” She was 5′1″ and 120 lbs; if you ask me she’s slim. In fact anyone who weighs 120 pounds (unless its a small child) is perfectly healthy. I’ve always had issues with what passes as attractive in magazines (thanks a lot, Twiggy), but this made things worse. I just don’t understand how morals are the first thing to go out the window.

Since October is breast cancer awareness month, go here to contribute to the cause. And if you know anyone (male or female) who is struggling with their self image, don’t be afraid to give them a hug and tell them that they’re beautiful. That’s all I ask.

A Little Art Information

Since I’ve been getting questions and comments about prints, I thought I’d mention my policy pertaining to them and how you can buy some.

1. You can buy prints by following this link or by going to the main page and click the tab at the top that says "Prints."
2. If you do not see a print of your favorite picture, email me and I will make it happen. I will notify you when your print is available for purchase.
3. Click on the picture you want, the size (which will be located at the right), and then "Add to cart"
4. If you want more prints, click "Continue shopping" at the top of the page. But if you’re done,
5. Fill out the form and then click "Place your order."

Note: Commissions will not be made into prints unless I have permission from the costumer.

Basic information on commissions and prints can be found on the "My Art" page as well as a link on the bottom to ask me questions.

Reach

        I needed to be alone. The day was warm and sunny, as was expected for an afternoon in late August. Needing my space, I found my feet leading me towards nearby gardens. I forced myself to slow down and take deep breaths and notice the dappled sunlight, the khaki green of the water in the reflection pond, and the bright orange fish under the surface. Mosquitoes flitted everywhere, but I ignored them and carried on, passing other insects that I thought might sting me, land on me, or otherwise make me uncomfortable. I made sure to note the damselflies and butterflies and flowers that were in bloom all the while pressing forward and away from all the chaos behind me and telling myself to just breathe.
        I needed to think and sit, so I found a bench in the shade farthest away from entrance to the gardens. I didn’t want to be found or bothered. I just wanted to breathe, maybe cry, and think. Just stop.
        I watched people go by and noted the various colors in the garden: shades of green, pink, orange, and blue. Everything was vibrant and warm and so calm. So very calm. I notice a woman pass me who seemed to be carrying something. From far away it looked like a baby but as she approached, I noticed it was just a lump of towels. She looked much older as she approached and I could see her braided hair was gray. She was long and thin, wearing bathing suit shorts and a bikini top.
        “Excuse me,” she said to me, “Can you help me? My bathing suit came untied and I have arthritis so I can’t tie it…”
        “Sure,” I said warmheartedly. Generally, I feel better after being nice to people and having felt pretty bad going into the garden, I thought a little kindness wouldn’t hurt.
        “Once upon a mattress,” she said noting my tee shirt. “Were you in it?”
        “No,” I answered as I tie a bow with the ribbons in back. “It’s my mom’s.”
        “Oh,” she said quietly before asking, “Are you a student at the University?”
        “Yes.”
        “Wonderful! It’s a very good institution. What’s your major?”
        “Music performance,” I answered, thinking that as long as I didn’t give her my name, a little information wouldn’t hurt.
        “So I might see you,” she said excitedly. “I go to every concert.”
        “Good,” I said smiling.
        “I love their symphony. Actually, there’s a lot of art around the city. The Fringe festival is this week—have you heard about it?”
        I shook my head.
        “All sorts of local artists come and perform. My favorite was this—well, this one performer started out on a farm milking cows and one day he told his dad he couldn’t do that the rest of his life and that he was going to be a clown. And he’s good at it. He has a routine…oh gosh I don’t remember what it’s called…well, anyway. It’s hilarious. And I saw this absolutely amazing singing group perform music written by a local composer. Oh, I’ve never heard anything so beautiful. And there was this mime—and I’ve seen Marcel Marceau when I lived in Austin. It was his last show, actually. But anyway, this mime was amazing. He mimed out the entire story of the Twelve Swans, which I don’t know very well, but you could follow along, anyway. You absolutely have to go.”
        “Sounds good,” I said.
        “But there’s also the art museum just down the street, which is great. I used to go there all the time with my daughter. She actually ended up going to Ball State, which was a huge challenge for her, but she loved it. She’s done with school now and engaged…I miss her so much. I call her up but…the last time we talked we ended up fighting. She went to get her hair done and I don’t know why she…I mean, it’s fine if that’s what she wants to do, but I don’t like being with all the chemicals and stuff. But I asked her why she was spending all the time getting her hair done when she could be doing tennis and…well, it was the wrong thing to say.
        “Excuse me,” she continued as she took off her sunglasses to rub her left eye. “I just had eye surgery this morning and my eye is really sore. I went swimming in the White River—do you know where that is?”
        I shook my head.
        “Its around that way. Oh, they had to remove twenty-five pieces of debris from my eye and…ugh…don’t go swimming in that river…I had five inches cut off from my hair because its so polluted, but anyway, my daughter was a very good tennis player. She played against the number one player in the state and won and her high school tennis team went from the number one spot when she was playing to number eleven once she left. I mean, she was really good…and I don’t know why she stopped. You know, I should call her up tonight and explain that I don’t mean to rule her life I just want her to do tennis because…”
        “She loves it.”
        “It gives her joy.”
        The woman paused while the sound of drums from the marching band at campus sounded through the fresh air.
        “I’ve been so lonely lately,” she continued, “that I considered renting my room out to University students who are really serious, you know? And can use a quiet place to study and work. I don’t know if you’d be interested—where would you look for that sort of thing?”
        “Well, there are bulletin boards around campus—”
        “That’s what I thought. I had a dance major come for an interview because she was interested, but she ended up living somewhere closer to campus.” She sighed. “Well, it was good talking to you; what’s your name?”
        I stood up and told her.
        “That’s a very pretty name. I’m Coleen and I hope to see you at the next concert.”
        “Ok, I hope to see you then,” I answered as she and I walked opposite ways.
        As I made my way back to campus, I watched the ground in front of me, thinking. I hadn’t gotten as much meditation as I wanted, but I felt less lost, scared and sad leaving the garden than I did going in. I realized that this woman just wanted to talk and wanted someone to listen because she had a lot of things to think about herself. While I was longing to go back home to my parents, she was longing for her daughter to come back home and live with her. I realized that this lost and lonely feeling I had was mutual. And through talking to me, she figured out how to make herself feel better and through listening, I felt better because I had a purpose; my day had purpose. I made someone feel better about herself and her life. I brought a little sunshine to her day which, proportionally, brought some into mine. I felt like I mattered and that my work would pay off because not everyone in the world is shallow and some just need a little love.
        Going back into the hectic, chaotic, and whirlwind campus for more orientation was draining and a little frustrating, but I felt like my day was worthwhile. Even though the weeks ahead will be busy and crazy and frustrating, I know I’ll make it through on my own, just like Colleen does every day of her life.

Author’s Note on post 335: This is based on something that happened to me today. I say based because, unfortunately, I don’t remember everything she said and I left some things that happened out of the story because they didn’t have relevance to the point I was making. I tried to make this a quick piece of prose with its merits and I think I succeeded.

A Lot Going On with Nothing to Show

Just thought I’d share a little of what’s going on. I haven’t been neglecting my blog, but a lot’s happening both artistically and not, so here’s the scoop:

1. I have a total of 5 story ideas floating around in my head. While I’d love to start writing all of them, I’ve forced myself to plan my stories out first before writing, so that I don’t get stuck and end up with a lot of loose ends. This means that I have spent less time writing and more time planning, so I don’t have anything to publish as I am busy mapping out these ideas.
2. I might be turning House of Animalia into a graphic novel so on top of planning it, I will be creating a script and working on character designs. It probably will never get on the web as I won’t publish it until I’m finished with the whole thing to prevent having to go back and redraw the beginning or not having pages done on time for a bi- or tri- weekly deadline. But, I’m brewing over that as well.
3. Since I’ve been trying to promote print buying (even in this recession) I’ve been working on taking new picture of my paintings so that you get a high quality print. Which leads to…
4. DeviantArt is having a print sale, so there probably isn’t a better time to buy prints. Email me and let me know what you want, browse what I have, and please buy something. I’m going to be a poor college student soon and it’s always good to have something colorful on your walls that pretty much no one else will have.
5. Yes, I’m going to college which is draining in more ways than one. I’m trying to take advantage of the diminishing time I’ll have with my family as well as shopping, working, and generally having a fantastic summer. Unfortunately, everything I mentioned in this list takes time, and so does spontaneous trips getting me prepped to live elsewhere.
6. However, I’m in the process of writing a prose story, but it takes a while and I’m hoping to finish it before I publish it. My goal is to get it up before the end of July.

Quite. Well, then, I’m off to keep working and editing and sewing and drawing and whatever else it is that I need to be doing. I’ve been quite a busy body this summer, even though I don’t have much to show for it.

What’s This?

Hi, you’re friendly author/artist here. I doubt anyone has noticed so far, but I thought I’d bring up some changes that have occurred recently. In order to get more feedback on my art as well as writing– and to break up all of the text that appears–I’ve decided to put photos and art on the home page, i.e. in the blog. Everything is going on the blog and it will be treated like it is–a log/diary/journal.

This isn’t to say that the rest of the site is going to be lax. My portfolios will be updated when I feel like it, but you’ll know when I’ve put something up because it will be on the home page and in the archives. I’ve gone through and added posts for all of the artwork on the days they were originally published. Stories, poems, and prose that I like will go up on the Favorites page as well as Best of the Blog winners. So if you don’t want to go through the archives, but want more than what’s on the front page, go there for your written work and the art pages for visual stuff.

But that’s not all! Commentary and Site Updates page…gone forever. Anything I have to say will be put in a post on the easily accessible front page. Commentary will be in an Author’s note on the bottom of the post. You don’t have to read it, but it’s there just in case. I’ll still keep a running tab on prose/poetry post numbers as well.

Pages may be renamed or added to make the site easier and more comprehensible. I’m still working, but expect changes–visual and otherwise–for the better.

2008 in Review

        Everyone has his or her traditions on New Year’s Eve and I’ve always had mine. But this year Dec. 31 snuck up on me. I didn’t have time to look up this year in review or go over the already numerous sources on what happened in 2008. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”…enough said. If I promised anything special, I’m going to apologize in advance that this isn’t going to be very special. But I think it’s important to reflect just how far Lucid Waking has grown over the past year and since its fruition in 2005.
        I wrote 97 fiction posts this year, pushing myself to a record high of 25 non-recycled posts in July. Last year, I only wrote 94, so despite November, I made progress. The first post I wrote for Lucid Waking was the Music Box. Unfortunately, Shades of Pink has disappeared off the face of the earth, so you can follow this link to see the first post that I ever published on the web. (Eesh!) If you need a refresher on what I write like now, click here. I think I’ve made some progress with my writing. But Lucid Waking will always remain a practice spot.
        I also made some gains with my artwork. The both new galleries are up and running sporting 54 photographs and 49 pieces of art. My deviantArt page was started in June, for prints. Lucid Waking, however, will have more artwork than deviantArt on the basis of keeping this an exclusive spot for my latest artwork.
        In June this year, lucidwaking.com turned 2 years old! With this year’s contribution, I have published 307 fiction posts on lucidwaking.com in that time. The commentary page turned into a general What’s New—not big news, but still a change all the same. The Best of the Blog contest was canceled and gotten rid of, due to no participation. It wasn’t worth it to keep it going, but Author’s Choice is still being updated on a rolling basis.
        In an effort to make the world a little better, I’ve decided to add links to the side bar on ways that you can help out. To Write Love on Her Arms is a site where you can buy some very awesome merchandise and the others you can help out for free. Every so often if I find a site that I like where you can do good in the world, I’ll put it up.
        And I suppose that’s it for the year! Not too shabby. Let’s hope 2009 is just as good, if not better. And again, I hope everyone has a healthy, safe, and productive year!

Newsflash: Where in the World Is…

…Santa Claus? I know many of you out there are skeptics of Santa Claus and might have a different point of view on NORAD’s tradition than I do. But really, there is something sort of cute about the whole thing and well, if we have a "holiday spirit" of Christmas, this does sort of fit the bill.
        But slow down…what is NORAD’s tradition? The whole thing started in 1955 when a hopeful child called the number listed on a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. advertisement as being the direct telephone number to Santa. Unfortunately, the little boy reached the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)–an organization that monitors air and space around the U.S. and Canada. Not wanting to let the little boy’s spirits down, Col. Harry W. Shoup who had picked up the phone pretended to be Santa Claus. Little did he know a myriad of calls would follow, the officers in charge of taking the calls would get carried away, and 53 years later its a tradition to "follow Santa’s flight" throughout the world for boys and girls curious when they will get their presents.
        Is it aiding in the commercialism of Santa? I’ll leave that up to you to answer. I think it’s cute. These people are giving children something besides physical presents to be happy about. And if you don’t believe me, you can read the article. No, it’s not penguins being knighted, but it isn’t about the world destroying itself, either. And really, a 53 year old tradition stemming from someone not wanting to disappoint an unknown boy…
        It’s a good thing that NORAD doesn’t have any threats to look out for in the air on Christmas.

Newsflash: An Honored Knight

Well, the last time I had to do a news post was because of the new Muppet on Sesame Street. That was more than two years ago on August 14, 2006. But today, I saw something just as cute and perhaps more perplexing. On August 15th of this year, an unusual candidate of the Norwegian Royal Guard was knighted. He had been a colonel-in-chief for years and honored with medals for long service and a statue in his honor. But what makes him so different from all the other wonderful Norwegian soldiers? He’s a penguin.

Yes, that’s right. You can see the video here if you don’t believe me. Nils Olav had been the army’s mascot for a while and he was finally knighted by the king of Norway at the Edinburgh Zoo. Darren McGarry, animal collector at the zoo, said Nils was on his best behavior for the event. He certainly did a good job checking the troops, although he did try to walk away when he was being knighted. He was being honored for strengthening ties between Norway and Scotland during his lifetime.

Unfortunately, the real Nils Olav died in the 1980s and was replaced, but obviously, his legacy continues on. I’m sure wherever he is now, he’s puffing his feathers with pride at being a knight for the king of Norway.