Days One Hundred Forty One to One Hundred Fifty One: Houses and Horcruxes, and Many Songs

Okay, it's official: I'm 98 days behind on documenting my Good Madness. I have been keeping up with it. I have a system where each day I'll jot a brief description of my daily creation on a post-it note, usually 6 or 7 per note. I use these to help with summarizing for this blog. Normally I'll have at most 3 or 4 stuck to my desk awaiting transferral to the blog. This is what I currently have to go through:



Yeah, it's a lot. So I'm just going to dive right in.

Day 141: I was on a definite song kick in here, so I wrote another one I call "Salamander Song" for lack of a better name:



Day 142: Rebekah and Jackson were in town visiting and we went to a sculpture park in uptown Charlotte. I took a number of photos, but I'm counting this one as my Good Madness for the day:



Day 143: I wrote another poem from the point of view of the same character in the 'House Between Worlds' story as Day 132, but it's much less spoilerish (and you probably won't understand all of it out of context anyway):

I tire of the cracks in the cieling and walls.
I tire of walls most of all.
And doorways and door frames
And keyholes and locks.
I tire of floorboards and dust.

There are shadows that move in the corner of my eye
But when I turn to talk to them they disappear.
It is lonely and quiet and terrifyingly blank
This endless stretch of days
I wake and I sleep
And the watch that I keep
Is there every moment, no stopping, no break.

I tire of the carpets and stairways and halls.
I tire of walls most of all.
Of closets and cupboards,
windows and nooks
And the sounds of something moving in the walls.

I tend to hear voices come from other rooms
But when I arrive no one’s there.
It is lonely and quiet and desperately sad
This empty stretch of days
I wake and I sleep
And the watch that I keep
Is so pointless, so foolish, so bleak.

And sometimes at night I swear I see her
And sometimes I dream that it’s a lie
And sometimes I wish that this was just madness
That I was just crazy
That all of this is in my head
Because then at least she’d still be here
Then none of it was true

But I always awake to the same tired sight
No matter the room or the bed.
Of the house all around me,
A place I will never leave.
It’s a prison - boxed in from all sides.

I know that I’m foolish to write this complaint
But I tire of this house all the same:
Weary of this curse,
So sick of this call.
But I tire of walls most of all.



Day 144: At work they asked me to design the poster for our Summer Movie series at the library. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it.

Day 145: I did some recording for the wizard rock song "Under the Stairs" that I'm creating as part of a charity album to raise money for the Harry Potter Alliance. More on that later...

Day 146: I wrote a scene for a potential 13 Days of Halloween story that involves a mysterious copy room that everyone in this otherwise normal-to-the-point-of-being-utterly-boring office building tends to avoid like the plague.

Day 147: I drove up to Raleigh for the day to participate in a NC area wizards meet-up where we had a cookout, wizard rock show, and "horcrux hunt" (geocaching). I even found one of the horcruxes!



In honor of the event, I brought a giant cookie, which I decorated myself:



Day 148: Yet another song, this one of a more eerie nature:



Day 149: Inspired by a post on a blog I enjoy reading called "Forever Young Adult," I wrote this blog post talking about some of the fictional men of my dreams.

Day 150: At the library, our Summer Reading Program was just kicking off, so I designed a sign for the multicultural book display.

Day 151: Yep, you guessed it: yet another song. This one is called "Fool Mistakes." It's a bit emo. I made a video for it using a bunch of shots of a city, even though it doesn't really have anything to do with a city. Oh, logic... so overrated.

Days One Hundred Thirty Two to One Hundred Forty: Fairy Tales and End of Days Fail

If you look at the dates on the entries you'll notice that it's been a while since I last blogged. That doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with my Good Madness. On the contrary, it's been surprisingly easy to keep up with despite being busier with travel, a heavier work schedule, and an upcoming move. But while it's not too hard for me to actually sit down and create, what has been hard is convincing myself to take the time to chronicle it.

You wouldn't think these blog posts take that long, but they do. Because not only do I type out these explanations, but I also have to upload pictures, embed videos, etc etc. It takes a good one to two hour chunk out of my day, depending on the breadth of material I have to cover. Technically as I am writing this it is day 159. That's 28 days to cover. I'm not going to do it in one blog post... I'm going to break it up into several smaller ones. And you don't have to read it all unless you want to. Because, let's face it: just because I create something every day doesn't mean that every day's creation is any good. Sometimes you surprise yourself. Sometimes amazing things pop up seemingly out of nowhere. But sometimes it's all just garbage. We'll see what this crop holds...

Day 132: I wrote a poem from the point of view of a character (his name is Darius) in the "House Between Worlds" story I'm working on. It contains spoiler-ish material, though, so I won't post it here. (Not yet.)

Day 133: I had a dream about a giant pumpkin, so...



Day 134: There was a fairy tale I wrote when I was younger. Probably around 7 years old. It featured a boy and a girl and a magical golden cape that transports you to another world. The boy and girl had to rescue these weird magical forest creatures from the curse of an evil magician. The original version was probably about 100 words long, written and illustrated on a stapled booklet made of striped green-and-white computer paper from the super-old printers at the hospital my grandmother used to volunteer at. Well, that story's been wandering around in my head a bit lately and I thought it deserved a fuller retelling, so I started work on that and got about halfway through.

Day 135: This was a cool one. I was doing some errands, and a conversation I'd had with somebody about myth came to mind. It made me think of the Joseph Campbell's Monomyth, which, if you're unfamiliar, is basically a cyclical pattern that almost all major stories or myths follow in some sense. The conversation I'd been having with my friend was about the part of the hero's journey where they must descend into the "cave" or "depths" before reemerging to fight the final battle and win the victory. We'd been debating about literal versus figurative examples of this. A figurative example would be a character perhaps descending to emotional depths of despair before rallying and heading toward the climactic scene of the story. One literal example, however, was Pinocchio, who literally descends into the stomach of a whale to save Gepetto. It's only after this that he goes on to achieve his quest of becoming a Real Boy.

Anyway, that's a long discussion and probably put you to sleep unless you're a fan of literature classes. But, the long and short of it is that I was thinking about these two things and started humming, and a song came out. I call it "Pinocchio's Lament," and the idea is that Pinocchio is basically complaining to Jiminy Cricket (his conscience) because the process of becoming Real is difficult and painful and he's beginning to think maybe he should just give up. I'll post the lyrics below. I'm in the process of coming up with a piano accompaniment, then I'll record it as a proper song.

Jiminy
Criminy!
Won't you just
Leave me be?
I'm tired of hurting so much.
And pain's all you get
When you dare to care
Honestly,
I'm tired of hurting so much.

Conscience and consciousness
All of it leads to this
Terrible pain that I feel.
So let the world go on as such
I think it's just too much
To ever expect me to be something real.

Jiminy
Criminy!
Won't you just
Leave me be?
I'm tired of hurting so much.
And pain's all you know
When you try to grow
Honestly,
I'm tired of hurting so much.

Knowing the right and wrong
Won't make a better song
When it's been sad from the start.
Of all of the lies I tell
I lie worst to myself
To think I could ever change my sad splintered heart.

But Jiminy,
Criminy!
You won't give up on me
I'm tired of hurting so much.
But it seems that to feel
is what makes someone Real...
And the best way to heal is to love.

Day 136: There's a song I wrote a while ago called "A Strange One, She." I'll post the lyrics below. Anyway, the first recording I ever did of it was an eerie, slow kind of song. But driving home at night, I was trying to keep myself awake and started belting it out in this loud rock and roll version. A different melody, and a lot faster paced.... but it sounded cool, so when I got home I recorded it. Haven't made it into a video yet, but when I do I'll post it.

Day 137: At work I made a poster for my "No Passport, No Problem!" event about the USA. Only after I made it did anyone bother to tell me we weren't making full size posters for individual summer reading programs, just flyers. So yeah... an afternoon wasted, but at least I get to count it as my Good Madness for the day.

Day 138: Had a fantastic inspiration for a 13 Days of Halloween story, which includes these words: To be killed by malice or compassion, which hurts the worst? In the end it all comes out the same.

Day 139: I wrote this blog post in response to Carrie Ryan, author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, coming to speak at our library.

Day 140: The world was supposed to end today, but it didn't. As a joke, I set my clothing out on the lawn to stage my own "rapture."

Days One Hundred Twenty Four to One Hundred Thirty One: Roasting Marshmallows With Martians

Day 124: Today's creation was what I sometimes wish they all could be. It was nearly midnight. I grabbed a notebook and thought "I haven't created anything today." I started writing and didn't stop until four lines of text had bloomed on the page (It seemed instantaneous. I don't really remember actually writing them.) I looked at the four lines and started to read them aloud, but before I had even gotten through the first line I was singing it. And as I kept singing, another stanza appeared, then two more. And that was it. I had a song. I raced to the computer and recorded it before I could forget.

It's really strange. It tells a story, but I don't really know what the story is about. I guess you could interpret it as you wanted. Part of me thinks that this is strongly influenced by having just finished Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, because the main family in that comes from a stronghold known as Winterfell, and much of the book could be summed up in the line "blood kin with bloodlust all seek the same throne." But other than that, they don't have anything in common. The names (Andorall, Endower) don't show up in the book, and there was no mention of storms. But interpret it as you will. I'm also coupling this entry with Day 131, because that's when I finally got around to adding sound effects at the end and turning it into a video:



Day 125: I made signs for the yard sale I had with Mandy.



Day 126: Borrowing the idea from Melissa, I found a jar and decorated it to give to Mom for Mother's Day. Inside are a bunch of post-it notes with short messages from me, Zach, Laura, and Wes. Here's a (sideways) picture...



Day 127: I wrote a very silly poem...

I would ride a praying mantis
to the city of Atlantis
if it meant I'd get to spend some time with you.
I would go and eat spaghetti
with a very hairy yeti
'cause that's just the sort of thing a friend would do.

Roasting marshmallows with martians,
hunting giant rubber ducks,
learning karate kicks from kangaroos...
These things would be as boring
as a robot's programmed snoring
if I couldn't share them all with you.

So I'll act out famous dramas
with a herd of purple llamas
and I know you'll be there clapping at the end.
Even if those other meanies
squawk like toucans in tankinis,
it won't matter, 'cause I have you as a friend.

Day 128: I wrote something that included this scene...

They found her once on the floor of a bookstore surrounded by discarded books - heaps and stacks of them, some fallen open with pages fluttering, some with covers bent under, huge lopsided piles and towers leaning under the weight of paper and words. She was crying, which had been part of what attracted the crowd around her in the first place. Coffee drinkers and browsing shoppers pointed and whispered and tried not to look like they were leaning in for a better view.

"What the matter?" one wary bookseller asked, obviously at a loss as to what to do.

What was most terrible of all was that she didn't know. She had been looking for something important, something she couldn't quite name, and it was nowhere to be found.

Day 129: There was a thunderstorm tonight, so I sat down and wrote this:

Once upon a time we dreamed of another world. On nights like this, when lightning lit the whole sky brighter than daylight, with the rain pouring down, a soft rustle in the stuttering dark. We dreamed of another world knowing that surely it must be better than this one. And whether it was magic or the gods or some other force beyond reckoning, our dreams were heard. Those secret hopes we had harbored so long were made real.

We were shown a Door and offered the chance to open it, to step through into another place.

Tell me, and be honest: what else could we have done? What would you have done?

No, don't answer that. I already know. It's the same reason you're still reading these words.

You long as much as we once did to know what will happen next, to discover what awaits in that place just beyond.

Day 130: Rebekah was in town, and we got together and had fun with makeup. Not the fifth-grade slumber party kind of makeup (or if so, then your fifth grade slumber parties were way cooler than mine were!), but haunted house makeup. I became a zombie under her skilled hands. I'm counting this as my Good Madness, though, because I helped the teensiest bit. I added some blood to my nose, forehead, and a little to the peeling parts on my cheeks. Other than that, all of this is Rebekah's Good Madness. :)



Day 131: I made the Endower Castle video... (see above)

Days One Hundred Seventeen to One Hundred Twenty Three: The British Are Coming

Day 117: The night before this, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Ben Folds, and Damian Kulash (from OK Go) locked themselves in a studio for eight hours and attempted to write eight songs as part of a creative experiment in their own. Thus, they called their band "8in8." What actually ended up happening was that they wrote six songs in twelve hours, but still... they were some pretty rad songs. You can hear/buy them all HERE. They put out a call for fan-made music videos for each of the songs, and I made one for "The Problem With Saints." I filmed it all two hours before I had to leave for work, then edited it together that night when I got back, but despite the haste it still came out fairly well.

ALSO, Neil Gaiman saw it and mentioned it on his twitter feed... which made me very happy!



So anyway, here's that video:



(Also, can I just add how weird it felt decapitating the Queen the night before a royal wedding?)

Day 118: This morning was indeed the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. I woke up super early to watch it, then went to work (a long shift... I was covering for somebody that day). I was in such a royal-wedding-y mood that I made this while at work:



Day 119: While cleaning the church I started humming and came up with a song that, for lack of a better title, I'm currently calling the "Fairy Tale song." I can't find the notebook I wrote it in right now, and the chorus is the only thing I can remember, so I'll just explain what the song is about. The first verse tells the story of the Green Children, which were these two green-skinned children that appeared to come up out of the earth in Woolpit, England in the early Middle Ages. They told a story about how they lived in a land underground where everyone was green-skinned like them and where bells rang and strange lights gleamed. People assumed they were faeries. The boy became sick right away and died, but the girl survived and eventually lost the greenish tint of her skin. The second verse talks about the Cottingley Fairies case, two little girls who claimed to have managed to take pictures of fairies, though it later turned out to be a hoax. The third verse talks about a couple's relationship, with the idea that things aren't working out between the two but that the singer wants to pretend that everything is okay. The chorus hopefully ties all these ideas together: Just because we made it up / Doesn't mean it isn't true. / I've found such joy and wonder / In my time with you. / So come my friend / and pretend with me again / because I'd much rather live in a fairy tale. / Come with me / there's so much that's left to be / For I'd much rather live in a dream.

Day 120: I made a birthday card for Dad's 60th birthday celebration!

Day 121: I created an example of Rangoli, an Indian art form we're using as a craft for Summer Reading this year:



Day 122: I tried and tried to write a story I came up with for 13 Days of Halloween, but nothing good came of it. Seriously, after an hour and a half of working on this, I think I have one usable paragraph, and even that is weak. (So weak I really don't want to share it here!) But I will share this interesting tidbit... I'm not hugely superstitious, but today (day 122) just happened to be May 3. I have a file on my computer of interesting quotes I save, and every in a once in a while I'll go through it looking for something to reference somewhere else. I happened to be glancing through it yesterday and found this quote that mentions May the 3rd:

"... the third of May, when the Devil and his angels were cast out of heaven (and therefore 3rd May is a day on which no important undertaking should be begun and on which it is unpardonable to commit a crime)..."
~The Inner-Hebride and Their Legends, by Otta F. Swire

So I'm just going to go with that and say I was doomed anyway. Or the other alternative: that it was just a bad day.

Day 123: I wrote a poem/nursery rhyme.

Your eyelids are so heavy that the giants in the North
would stagger and would falter at their weight.
Your yawn gapes open oh so wide a Hippogriff could fly inside
So close that drawbridge and shut fast the gate!

You're grumpy as an ogre when you grumble and you yell
You could shame a banshee with your shrieks and cries.
You're as dazed as king or commoner under a fairy's spell
Any wise old crone could see through you're disguise... ("But I'm not tired!")

So like a clumsy baby dragon, let your eyelids flutter and fall
Set swords aside, no need for you to fight.
Rest your head and dream until the dawning of the day
I love you, so sleep tight. Good night, dear knight.

Days One Hundred and Seven to One Hundred and Sixteen: Waaaay Too Much Stress

Day 107: So, I've had a story idea at the back of my mind since the fall of 2004 and never got around to doing anything with it. It's one of the weirder ideas I've ever had, and I do intend to link this blog to it when I'm finished, but to explain anything more about it right now would totally ruin the ending. I call it "GWIHH" for short. Each of those letters stands for a word, but the phrase is, again, a spoiler for the end of the story, so I won't tell you what it means. Anyway, GWIHH never really happened. I tried pecking away at bits and pieces over the years. I even tried a draft of it for 13 Days of Halloween last year, because while it isn't necessarily scary, it's definitely weird and a little eerie. But no luck. Anyway, something I read online stirred the memory in me, and I ended up writing a completely new scene that kind of gave the characters a backstory and made for a more interesting opening. Here's a snippet:

Headmaster Jenkins had contacted Edward's father about doing some restorations on a rare antique chair. When he came to the store to pick it up, he and Edward's father appeared in the back room only to find - to Mr. Jeffries' utter horror - Edward sitting on the chair, oblivious to all else, eyes flitting fast across the pages of a book.

Mr. Jeffries nearly couldn't breathe he was so angry. His face got all red and splotchy and he couldn't form proper sentences and Edward was so confused as to what was going on that he set the book aside and stood up and offered to get his father a glass of water. Headmaster Jenkins must have been too intrigued to express what Edward would later discover to be his normal boiling rage.

"Why were you sitting in that chair, boy?" he asked in his calm, strange tones.

Edward blinked at him like he was stupid.

"Chairs are made to be sat on."

Headmaster Jenkins' mouth nearly flickered from its normal straight line into a smile. Nearly.

"But surely," he continued, "You are furniture people. And furniture people know that a chair such as this is not just any chair."

"A chair is a chair," Edward said, not liking the way this man spoke, so slow and low, like he was doing you the favor of letting you in on a secret. "And a book is a book. And I'm much more interested in books, thank you. Besides, I'm not furniture people. They are." He nodded toward his father and the open door beyond, where one of his uncles was evident standing with a customer and a lamp.

Day 108: This...

It seems like I write a haiku
When I don't know what else I should do.
Too tired, too stressed -
Ah, you've heard all the rest.
It's kind of a cop-out, that's true.

And so I'll write limericks instead
With words I just pluck from my head.
Not much better, I know,
But it's something, and so
With that done I'm now going to bed.

Day 109 - 110: STRESS... Okay, so this should not have been stressful. I agreed to make a video advertising Summer Reading events at the library for Tweens (Ages 10-12) and Teens (Ages 13-18) so that people from our library could take them out to schools and have Media Specialists at the schools show them to kids. It's pretty standard stuff from a video-making perspective, but there were a couple problems: (1) I'm used to working in the video editing programs on my Mac computer at home, which are unbelievably user-friendly and have a lot of shortcuts so things don't take too long to accomplish. But since this was for work, I had to do it on the PC at work in Powerpoint, then figure out how to adapt the Powerpoint presentation into a video that could be burned onto a DVD. This takes time (since you have to do a lot of things the long way) and (2) It takes focus. Doing this at work while I was also supposed to be doing about twelve other things, including the main part of my job description, which is helping people find books, reshelving, etc... well, it was a miracle I managed to get ONE of the two DVDs done in those 2 days. Technically it was three, because most of my Day 111 was spent finishing the Teen DVD....

Day 111: So I finally finish one DVD on the day when I was supposed to have two ready. I'm stressed out at this point, especially since I'm nearing the end of an 8 hour shift, when my boss (who isn't really involved at all in this project; I'm doing it for someone in a completely different department, so really she shouldn't be sticking her nose in my business) comes over and says she wants to look at the DVD and give me feedback on things I can change. This was about forty-five minutes before it was time to go home for the day, the last day the library would be open before Easter weekend. They needed the DVD the following Monday morning. So she sits down and watches it and comes up with this list of things for me to change, and it's waaaaaay too much to do in 45 freaking minutes. And they're the sort of things that aren't even really important content kind of feedback. It's all stuff that's more a personal-aesthetic kind of decision. So at this point I had to choose between yelling at her or bursting into tears, and I did the latter. It made her feel so bad that she ended up shelving all the books that had amassed on my cart while I was desperately trying to finish the DVD.

BUT... all that being said, the DVD is not my Good Madness for the day. Instead, on my way home I wrote this song in honor of my boss and the way she made me feel:



Day 112: Even though I fully intended to finish the DVDs over the weekend, I needed at least one day away from that insanity to regain a little composure. So I went and hung out with Melissa instead. I got to meet the adorable new kitten Zoe and we had a crafty afternoon, during which I made this picture:



But something about the girl under the tree just didn't seem right to me, so when I got home I ended up cutting out a new figure, so the most recent draft looks like this:



Day 113: Ok, so today I finally sat down and got to work. I worked at home (And got paid to do it! Probably part of Shelley feeling bad about making me cry...) and finished both videos. The sad thing is that all that ridiculous stress was over about four minutes of actual video.

Here's the Teen Summer Reading video:



Here's the Tween one:



Day 114: I watched Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds, Neil Gaiman, and Damian Kulash (of OK Go) lock themselves in a studio for 8 hours and try to write 8 songs. For some reason, this made me feel like creating something unlikely, so while I watched them I made a teacup out of Post-It notes:



I even tried to drink out of it, but it kind of dissolved after the first sip:



Day 115: I started humming and liked the random melody that came, so I recorded it and came up with some harmonies. Here's the "Hum Song" that resulted.



Day 116: It was Dad's 60th birthday, so I decorated the guitar in his honor. Sadly, I don't have a picture but I will update when I get one.

Days Ninety Two to One Hundred and Six: AKA, It's Been A While

Day 92: I made the April-themed bulletin board in the picture book section of the library. No picture, unfortunately, but it's a giant "Poet-TREE" to celebrate National Poetry Month with suggestions of poetry for children.

Day 93: Today Melissa came over to have "craft day." The idea was that we'd both get some long-overdue scrapbooking done. Unfortunately, I didn't get my photos developed in time and my printer was on the fritz, so while Melissa scrapbooked, I compiled a bunch of old "snippets," story beginnings or poems or little pieces of various writing projects that I had printed out while moving files from my laptop to my desktop, and I organized them, hole-punched them, and divided them into different binders. It doesn't seem very creative, but technically I was creating different binders of collected poems, short fiction, and short nonfiction. Plus later after she left I got my printer working again and made them some covers. They were pretty plain, but still: at least that felt a bit more like outright creation.

Day 94: Speaking of compiled poetry, today at work I finished up the last bits and bobs of a project I've been helping with for months now at the library. An afterschool group has been coming to the library once a month for the last 6 months and each time we discussed different kinds of poetry and had them try to write poetry of their own. We went over haiku, limerick, concrete poetry (words form a picture of the thing they describe), and acrostic poems (first letter of each line spells out a word or name). In our last meeting they picked their favorite poem they had written and illustrated it, then my coworker Cheryl scanned and printed all the images and I added an introduction, table of contents, title page, cover, end note, and brief explanations of the poetry types. We then bound it all together as a book. We made five copies in total: one for their school library, one for our branch manager Shelley, one for the principal of the school, one for the head of the afterschool program, and one to be entered into the library system so kids can come in with their parents and check it out. This last copy made me pretty excited, because it meant that since Cheryl and I put the book together we are now both in the system as "authors," which you can see for yourself right HERE.

Day 95: I wrote a little nonsense rhyme that I may eventually make into something more...

How do you do, madam? How do you do?
My name's Anastasia Godiva Carue
Can you solve my riddle? I'll offer some clues,
And perhaps you'll soon see through my ruse.

Day 96: It was a very busy day, as I drove straight from work to meet Mandy and travel down to Savannah for the weekend. By the time we arrived at the hotel, I didn't have much left in the way of creative juices flowing. But I did draw this picture:



And when unpacking I discovered what happens when you accidentally leave a bottle of gummy vitamins in a hot car. Mandy insisted this should count as my Good Madness for the day, even if its creation was unintentional. Behold, the mega-vitamin:



Day 97: While listening to live music in Savannah's city market, I sketched this picture of Mandy:



Day 98: Our last day in Savannah, Mandy and I went to a Fairy and Gnome home festival. There was a contest where people were challenged to build a fairy home using all natural materials. There were some awesome entries, but since the whole thing seemed more geared toward kids I made a "fairy tepee," but didn't officially enter it. Mandy added the beautifying touches, the sprig on the top and the leaves for a path:



Day 99: More "house between worlds," including this scene:

"He can't have gotten far," whispered Hannigan.

"And you know it was that girl," Madeleine said, in a pompous I-know-exactly-what's-going-on tone of voice that made me want to hit her.

Instead, I spread the venom thick in my voice.

"We don't know any such thing," I said.

Only then did Em look up, and she stared straight at me as if seeing something she had somehow missed before.

"I mean," I added hastily,"You know... we can't be sure of anything."

But it was too late. I swear in that moment she knew everything. And that was all it took. It was back - that rage, its scorching hellfire blaze. I saw the thoughts rise in her eyes, watched them swell and take shape: Suspicion. Fury. Revenge.

I knew then that Jason, wherever he is now, is doomed.

And so am I.

Day 100: I got out the charcoal pencils and did a few sketches. The third one is a combination of images that have something to do with my "house between worlds" story and a quote from Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere.







Day 101: I wrote the first stanza of a poem and thought, "Ooh... I like this. I should write another stanza." But I couldn't think of anything and I was tired, so...

Day 102: ...I woke up the next morning and wrote a second stanza. Here's the combined total thus far:

She plays among the barrow downs
She knows that's where the ancients keep
Their secrets hidden among bones,
Locked safely in eternal sleep.
She knows that she might lose herself
If ever she crept in too deep
So she ignores the tempting sounds
That whisper from the barrow mounds.

She knows the rings of ancient stone
You'll often see her dancing there
Twirling to some unheard song
Out beneath the open air.
She sees the beauty in lost things
But knows she also must beware
The tug to spend her life alone
Among the cairns of sacred stone.

Day 103: Well, those two stanzas were all well and good, but the poem didn't feel finished. I felt like it needed one more stanza, to tie it all together and almost give it a meaning (if that makes any sense). But whenever I sat down to write, I didn't like anything I came up with. So as of now, it's an unfinished poem.

To prove that I did create today (even if it was fruitless) here are some of my abandoned stanzas:







Day 104: I wrote the following poem, which I also posted as a note on Facebook:

I know of dragons in the deep,
the scary kind that haunt your sleep:
big as mountains, wings spread wide
with eyes that gleam like sparks.
Let me at them, let me try...
On land or sea or even sky.
Let them at me; I won't hide.
Let fire light the dark.

I'd rather be the fool who's dead
than live in a world where people dread
to do the things they wish they'd tried -
shackled by doubt and shame.
I know of dragons, but you see
the dragons also know of me.
In tales they tell at fireside
they tremble at my name.

Day 105: My cat Mr Paws died tonight, and I wrote these haiku:

Every closed door is
Just waiting to be opened
So I can pass through.

Lounging in the sun
Chasing rabbits and squirrels.
Stray cats... stay away!

Wacky, playful cat
A paw darts under the door.
Chase feathers and string

Jingle in the dark
A warm house to come home to
Dear, you will be missed.

Day 106: In honor of Mandy's 25th birthday, I shaped two blocks of Boursin to mold a three-tiered mini-"cake". Mom added the candle on top:

Days Eighty Two to Ninety One: Songs, Zombies, and Unexpected Adventures

Day 82: As many of you probably already know, this July will mark the last big hurrah for my involvement in the Harry Potter fandom. It's the ultimate trifecta: the release of the seventh film, a conference with my fellow fans and wizard rock bands, and a chance to actually visit Hogwarts!! (The theme park, that is). It seems like a good stopping point, because as much as I've loved being this level of obsessed (the costumes, listening to music written from the perspective of fictional characters, obsessing about film adaptations, etc.) it really can't last forever. I've been wanting to figure out a way to say goodbye to the fandom through art, since the conference is going to have a fan art gallery and I thought it would be neat to submit something. So below is the idea I came up with, pretty much verbatim as I wrote it on the submission form:

“Harry Potter Fandom: the Game” is a piece of art, a visual representation of my experiences in the fandom. However, it can also function as a board game for 2-7 players, should anyone be interested in playing.

You can play as one of seven different pieces: Muggle (a newcomer to all things Harry Potter), Squib (an HP fan, but not active in the fandom), Word Witch (avid reader, fanfic writer, etc), Wizard Activist (someone passionate about social change, a card-carrying member of SPEW… or the HPA), Crafty Witch (craftsmen and fan artists), Computer Wizard (someone who frequents fan sites, messageboards, chatrooms, podcasts etc), or Wizard Rocker (someone who expresses their fandom through music). (There are seperate scarves in different house colors that can be attached to each game piece.)

The gameboard winds through many different areas of fandom, taking players from their first discovery of Harry and his world all the way to LeakyCon 2011 and the “End of An Era.” Collect tokens representing significant events (“midnight release,” “fan conference,” “wrock show,” etc.) and gain points for accomplishing fandom-related tasks. The game ends when the first player reaches LeakyCon ‘11, but the winner is decided by a tally of points and tokens. By the end of the game, the players should feel well-equipped for whatever the future may hold. This may be the “End of an Era,” but with these collected experiences and their fellow wizards at their side, the fun is only just beginning.

Day 83: In addition to working at the library I'm also paid to clean the two buildings at my church every week. I'm probably not supposed to do this, but since we don't have a piano at home anymore and my keyboard is too much of a pain to set up and put away frequently I often play a bit on the piano and/or keyboard in the sanctuary while I'm there. The keyboard especially is nice because it has a "record" option where you can record yourself playing then play it back again later. I came up with a nice chord progression and recorded it a few weeks back, then this past weekend when I went to clean I brought my laptop and recorded myself singing along with it. It's short, but it came out better than I expected:



Day 84: If you haven't figured it out by now, I often have ideas for stories, jot them down quickly, and abandon them for several months. Then I pull them out, add a bit more, then set them aside again. In a way this is fun because you get to revisit stories over time and you may have better ideas for them than you would have had if you'd tried writing it all in one go. But mostly this isn't a good habit: you tend to have many beginnings and not nearly enough endings.

Today I worked on another of these story ideas, one I've nicknamed "The February Faery." When I originally had the idea, the thought was to send it out as a belated Christmas letter. The protagonist is a faery who is never on time for anything, so the thought of sending it out as part of a holiday letter a few months late seemed pretty funny. If I manage to work on it later this year, I may finally get around to sending it out by February 2012.

Here's the intro:

Someday when you're bored and tired of being indoors, wander down to the bottom of your garden. This is one of the best places to be near the faery folk. If you're like me, you're bound to have heard many a story about the faeries. You may even count yourself as something of an expert. Surely you'd know that there are many kinds of faeries (from the tiniest pixie to the most towering giant), and that many of them - no, most of them - aren't meek and innocent at all, but wild and mischievous and dangerous. You probably have a favorite kind of faery (I like gnomes myself), and I'm betting you know your fair share of fairy tales.

Have you heard of the Littlewings? Of course you have! That's what my grandmother always used to call the flower faeries, the little winged people mere inches high that have a special bond with the seasons. The Littlewings were always her favorite kind of faery, which is why she told me this story. Have you heard it? Perhaps. Stories like this one tend to spread. But in case you haven't, let us begin the tale of the February Faery.

Day 85: Twice in the past few weeks I've had dreams of zombies. The last one I had was more a body-snatcher-alien kind of zombie. The one I had on this particular night was more of the infecting-virus kind of zombie. It didn't have enough of a narrative for it to make a good "13 Days of Halloween" story candidate, but I did write it up on my other blog, and you can read it HERE.

Day 86: More on the "The House Between Worlds," including this description:

The “For Sale” sign—the kind that hung from its post on two chains—was so old that one of the rusted chains had broken and the faded letterboard now dangled listlessly. The untended yard was a tangle of weeds, the gutters clogged with many years’ worth of dead leaves. The whole place had an air of having been wonderful once, but now it was just tired and sad.

Day 87: Carrie Ryan, author of the Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy (which, fittingly, is about zombies), is coming to our library to do a reading/signing on May 15. I got to design the flyer:



Day 88: My Oma and Aunt Barbara drove down from Indiana to visit for a few days. In their honor, I switched the message on the chalkboard guitar:



Day 89: More on "The House Between Worlds," including this:

I awoke to the sounds of Em screaming. Not a shriek of something like terror, but more of a loud, deep moan. A horrified sound, and utterly chilling. Like something in her had broken and her soul was seeping out of her mouth.

Day 90: I was hoping to come up with some elaborate April Fool's Day prank that would involve creating something, but alas... inspiration abandoned me. Instead, for some reason I was feeling a little hormonal or something and I wrote this poem:

PANACEA

I troll the internet and books for poems
that will express what it is I feel
because I do not know what it is I feel
but I suspect that reading a poem
will tug at whatever it is,
will dislodge it like a magnet
might tug metal fragments
up to the surface of a wound.

I did not know till now that I was wounded.
I do not feel - really, have not felt,
not felt in a while.
Could this be my wound, then?
And could the very fact that I now
sense this twinge or pulse of something
mean that, though I can't name it,
I'm feeling my own cure?

Day 91: There's an tradition started a couple years ago by author Maureen Johnson called "Blog Every Day in April" (BEDA for short). A lot of YouTubers have adapted it for video blogs, so if you ever see VEDA on the title of a video, that's what it means. Anyway, I figured in addition to Good Madness I'd give BEDA a try this year. Those posts are over on my other blog. I only intend to count a BEDA post as Good Madness if it involves a good amount of thought, effort, or polished writing. The ones that are just me venting, more personal-journal style, won't count.

Anyway, the one I wrote today was about an adventure with a stalled train, a gravel road leading seemingly nowhere, and a hidden graveyard. I posted it as a note on facebook HERE.