Majesty

I need to be asleep right now, or at least very soon.  But instead, I’m not.  Instead I’m going back in time and reading old entries, mine and others.  It’s interesting to do that, since often I don’t remember writing some of the things I wrote.  I often read things I wrote that I don’t remember writing, but I can’t help but find them terribly clever in that, "No way did I come up with that!" sort of way.  This includes notes I leave on the entries of others. 

It’s actually sort of early for me to be talking about sleep– I normally stay up about two hours later than the time at which I am writing this.  But for whatever reason I’ve agreed to go with my father to his favorite places– flea markets– tomorrow morning.  We’ll be leaving here at roughtly 8 AM to go to Crump, which is a tiny town in TN that is only known to anybody for having a large outdoor flea market that only operates on the weekends.  I generally use the name of the town in reference to the flea market itself, since the town doesn’t matter a whit to me.  Dad also plans to go to First Monday in Ripley after we leave Crump.  I feel this is ill advised– it seems to me that it would be better to be there early as well.  Plus, I wonder if these places will be any different than normal based on the fact that tomorrow’s July 4th.  I hope not.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it previously, but I had plans to make my own shirts.  I had wanted to do this before we went on our trip, so I’d have several one-of-a-kind shirts to wear/show off to my friends.  I spent ten bucks on a pack of four blank shirts (colored dark blue and dark green, two of each), and about 11 on a pack of dark t-shirt iron-on transfer paper.  Got home, all excited, and got to work designing something awesome for my shirt, which is a story in and of itself because that was the night I discovered how bloody frustrating Photoshop can be.  Anyway, I squeezed out a design that wasn’t quite as interesting to look at as my original vision, and went to sleep satisifed that my five hours of work (no, seriously) would be an awesome shirt the next day.  Buuuut, it turned out that the damn printer seemed to be out of ink, and was thusly printing only in black and pink, and even those had weird lines in them.  Well Dad got all gung-ho on me and said, "Let’s go buy ink then!" but long story short that wasn’t the solution, since the problem was the same.  At least his printer uses cheap ink.  I did some toubleshooting on the Kodak website (I’m sure somebody out there will leave me some sort of "that’s why you shouldn’t use Kodak, I use {blank} because it’s better [leet leet leet]", so just spare me, okay?) and after absolutely none of the proposed fixes did a damn thing, it determined that we needed a new printhead.  I had never even heard of such a thing, but if you don’t know it’s a cradle in which the ink cartriges sit.  It also contains the ink nozzles.  And I’ve just realized how weird the word nozzle looks in type… did I spell it wrong or something?  Nozzle.  Weird. 

Anyway, I didn’t get to make the shirts, but the new (and free of charge, that was nice of them) printhead was waiting upon my return.  I installed it that very night, but for some reason had no hope of it actually working, so I didn’t work up the gumption to mess with it until today.  Turns out that did the trick, and I have now made two shirts.  One contains my design, which consists of a doctored picture of myself against a black background, with a lens flare and a wall of fire coming from my outstretched hand.  It also contains a fleur de lis, a neat, faded "echo" of said fleur de lis, the words "Das Machtige!" and a lot less creativity and visual interest than I actually intended.  It could have been so much more, but after working so long to understand Photoshop’s BS, I was just out of mojo. 

The other shirt features an 8×10 (or very close) print of a watercolor painting I did a couple years back.  I’ve talked about it before; its a samurai. I aped the Ukiyoe style, and I was very fond of the piece.  I had it framed and gave it as a gift to the Pumpkin King because he said he wanted some sort of picture of a samurai to hang in his bedroom back when he had an apartment.  The painting sat in his living room until he got some nails, and since I never went in his bedroom when I visited I’ve actually not laid eyes on it since he decided to hang it.  I’m honestly not even sure it got hung, or if it just disappeared.  I like to think it’s somewhere, safe and undamaged.  I know it was appreciated, but I also know how things can break if one doesn’t pay very specific attention to them when moving house. 

I’ve given away so many pieces of original (and not so original) work I think I’ve forgotten just how many there were.  I enjoy giving them away, provided the recipient likes them, but then I’ve got no record of their existence.  It occurs to me from time to time that most of my work that I actually retain posession of is stuff I’m not as proud of.  It also occurs to me from time to time how much work I have floating around in various places, and I wonder about them.  Just since I’m sitting here fighting the inevitable (and thereby ensuring I’ll be groggy tomorrow), I think I’ll try to make a list of stuff that might, by some freak accident, be seen by somebody who’d give a damn, but without me showing it to them.  Now granted, a lot of these are stuff I had to do as part of my classes.  I sadly had little love for those, but I knew that other people liked them, which is why I let those people have them.  It’s a different story with the things I made specifically to be gifts for a particular person.  I like those pieces, and I put as much effort into them as I can.

• Landscape painting in acrylic, last seen hanging in my Aunt Sandra’s living room.
• Woodburning of Alucard (from the anime Hellsing) last seen in Pam’s living room
• Woodburning of Link (from the Zelda games) last seen hanging in Tompall’s living room
• Woodburning (sensing a pattern?) of Gene Starwind and Melfina from the anime Outlaw Star– a gift to Justin in late 2007, last seen on the dresser in the room he was using in his parents’ house.
• Woodburning of Bub the zombie from Day of the Dead, last seen in Matt’s apartment.
• Random still-life in charcoal last seen on a shelf in Minnie’s bedroom. I was never fond of the piece because I thought the technique was stupid.  It was basically just an excercise in drawing class.  Minnie loved it though, so I gave it to her.
• The aforementioned samurai watercolor, last seen in Matt’s living room about three years ago.
• Watercolor of Omega Red from X-Men, another request from Matt.  Never got this one framed or anything, last seen tacked to his bedroom wall about three houses ago.
• I guess I should count the giant spider on Jordan’s garage door, but it won’t be going anywhere.  Enjoy, theoretical future owners!
• Large painting of apples in acryl

ic, given to my Aunt Donna.  Last seen when I packed it in bubble wrap to be mailed to Colorado. 

That about covers everything the location of which I know, or at least once knew.  There are a few things I’m unsure about.

• Chalk drawing of white sheet "drape" on brown paper, definitely given away, not sure to whom.  Interesting fact– my Drawing teacher actually thought this piece was good enough that I should sign it on the front.  After several minutes of me not understanding that she wanted me to create a signature rather than just using cursive handwriting, I came up with the signature I still use when I sign a piece today.  Sadly, I think I forget to do this way more than I remember to.
• Acrylic painting of a knight wearing gold armor and holding a sword.  I list this here, because I honestly can’t remember if it was given away or not.  It might still be in my mother’s bedroom. 

When I spell it all out like that, I realize I’ve done a whole lot of stuff if you ignore the fact that it comes from a span of about 10 years.  As much as I have spread out across the city, state, and indeed, even country (when you count the stuff in Oak Ridge and Colorado), I’ve actually got more than that here at home.  Most of what’s here is smaller, simpler, or just not as good, but some of it is large.  And as I sit and think about it, there’s some stuff I definitely gave away, but I don’t even remember what they are.  I’d know them instantly if I saw them,  (and not just because of my tell-tale signature), but I know I gave my Aunt Pat something the same day Donna picked out the apples.  I just can’t remember what it was.  Possibly the knight?  I may even be wrong about the recipient of the apples… But something is definitely in Colorado.  I’m not complaining that I don’t have this stuff– in fact I’m proud that other people liked it enough that they wanted it.  I guess I’m sort of wondering what it all means for me in an existential sort of way.

I have no idea how this entry turned into a boring bullet-list of "lost" art.  I also didn’t intend it to be so long, though it feels nice to write one this long.  But still under 10000 characters!  Amazing!