to read

somehow i just picked it up by looking over my mother's shoulder as she read to my brother, who was just one year older; this was prior to school age. so it was awhile before i came to anything there that i didn't already know.
i started going to the branch library regularly. i got tired of kid's books pretty early because for me they ended too soon. so i started on the adult science fiction--at the beginning of the alphabet. by sometime in jr. high, i had read all of these. but after that i had found particular interests & i read more & more nonfiction & started going to the central library downtown. i'd come out with a huge stack of books i could barely manage, & by the time i got home i'd have read half of one.
i remember the year they introduced a sort of color-coded ranked reading system where you read a text & then answered questions about it. i went through the whole thing in a single day. this was the time when they figured i could read about 1200 words per minute (i wouldn't read anywhere near that today: i like the sounds of words too much).
the thing i regret most about adulthood is i have so little time anymore for that kind of voracious reading. now i just buy books i might like & it can take a couple of years before i get around to opening them. in college i would sit on the floor between the stacks & read a book in a few hours if i found one i liked. these days i still try to get into one big book every year (last summer it was War and Peace). i'm about 3 Pynchons behind...

drawing

drawing for me falls into distinct phases. i remember being very visual as a child & how, at some point, i realized i was becoming less so. when i read a book, i really didn't experience the words as words but as a dim set of imagery, something like a movie i was making up as it went along. i had a sense of loss after i began only reading words, the sense & sound of the words becoming something i was afterwards conscious of noticing.

in the earlier part of my life, i drew constantly. i liked to use pencil, ballpoint, felt-tip pens. i must have started by drawing monsters. then i entered a long period where i only drew cars.
in both these periods i used elements of things i had seen, but much else i had never seen. at the end of my car period, i could draw much of the underlying structural detail of the cars from memory. style had become as important as the quality of detail.

taking an art class in high school, after i had more or less reached a static point in my drawing, was a revelation. i fell in love with color & abstract art. although before this i had gone through a short phase of painting impressionistic landscapes in watercolor on dampened paper (a technique i discovered for myself), this was a new kind of art for me.

i eventually studied oil painting in great depth--without great commercial success. (the effects i was striving for were too idiosyncratic, for the most part.) on the other hand, i began to avoid a "too-studied" look to my drawing, & to prefer the "wild" look of children's & naive artists'. to achieve this end, i stopped drawing with my right hand, & took up drawing with my left exclusively.

that's where i am today.

quirks

i've gotten used to myself by this point in my life, so it's hard to pick out specific things unless someone (like my wife) picks up on them.
let's see. i don't drive on the freeway. (but i will the interstate--in a city this size that means driving 10 miles to the edge of town & then finding an onramp.)
my sack lunch has slowly evolved but it's not that different from when i first started doing that, in 1986 i guess it was. enough crunchy & chewy things that it takes me 30 minutes to eat it. i always read while i eat, with my shoes off if this is possible.
i always carry two folded sheets of paper in my shirt pocket & 3 pens in different colors, so i can note down any thoughts i have worth preserving. i alternate colors, & when i cross something off (since this includes practical lists as well) i use a contrasting color. i used to have a system whereby i transferred these when they got full, to a categorized set of notebooks. i don't have time for that anymore, but i do keep the old notesheets with a faint hope of going back & catching up someday.
my fashion defiance has gone so far as to include socks with sandals & wearing contrasting plaids. (these effects i actually like.) i don't remember when i started fixing my own clothes when they got holes in them. sometimes i just use 2 or 3 safety pins, instead of sewing it.
for a long time i wore a black wool cape in cold weather. i still have it.
i read several books at once. for example, at work i read 30 minutes of one book, then 30 minutes of another. at home i alternate, but with a little more leeway. i try to be reading 2 contrasting eras, or subjects, or styles. once during my college days i remember i was reading Plato & Mein Kampf at the same time.
i like to make synthesizer music while in a semitrance state; also drumming, though neither one of these resembles ordinary music very closely. i've never been able to play in a real band, though, because i never do things the same way twice.
sometimes in my poetry i will use madeup words, or words of phrases from several languages, or no syntax English--not to be confusing but because this is the only way i know how to follow what my thought becomes.
i collect esoteric symbols & scraps of religions, ktp, not for what they mean but what they suggest to me. it's kind of like a magpie mythology, without stories or characters, & everything i create has a part in it, as well as everything significant that has happened to me.
(oh well, that part is just like any other artist isn't it?)
when i was young, in idleness i used to be constantly drawing with my eyes, tracing out shapes, arbitrary though they were. later i became more verbal, & i think there is an analogous verbal activity constantly going on--all apart from my actual thoughts & perceptions--like a subterranean current i can draw on at will.
what interests me is like sticking your hand out a car window at speed, feeling the air like a liquid. that's what i write about. interacting with that current.

counting nickels, counting words

Part of my job involves counting coins: nickels & dimes two at a time, quarters four at a
time, pennies five. Not just reducing “chaos” (the uncounted) to “order” (one count in an
array of counts), for each integer is the name of a sum & bears its own identity.

Integers are as distinct as colors, as words. (3334 no more resembles 3324 than “cult”
does “c**t”.) Making a count is the birth of another instantiation of some integer.
It connects in a family way with all the other sums of counted things in the world,
regardless of what they happen to be (jellybeans? nuclear warheads?). That number has
oddness or evenness, which in numbers is like their gender. And sometimes it’s prime,
which is the chief specialness of counted things.

I like counting nickels best—they are just the right weight & thickness, & a better metal
than quarters IMHO. A prime sum of nickels is better than a birthday.

Thus I like to count syllables in writing a poem. Almost always it’s an odd number,
most often seven, to a line. I oscillate between same-length lines & lines that go longer
& shorter. These correspond to kinds of moods. When I really want more number in
my poetry, I resort to “rhime”: that is to say, by adding up the letters of a word (A=1,
B=2…Z=26), so that any two words with the same sum are pairable, exactly like a sound-
rhyme. I find that with enough practice I remember some of the words that go together; &
this for me forms a completely new matrix of order within the existing system of English
words.

I will never count all the words, so that matrix has mystery.

good smells

woodsmoke, yes.
the smell of rain on the wind (which i have named "jairce").
frankincense.
coffee, especially when i haven't had any.
old books, especially a room full of them.
my wife has a perfume called Secret of Venus (now no longer manufactured) which was the best artificial scent i'd ever smelled.
a wheat field at dawn.
myrrh, too.
new records fresh out of the shrinkwrap.
linseed oil.
sage smoke.
cooking potatos.
olive oil being heated.
crayolas.

rituals

there are quite a lot of complicated bits to my routine, & other things i don't do except at odd intervals.

making turkish coffee on the stove, for me is nearly as enjoyable as drinking it. i bring it to nearly boiling three times, just like you're supposed to. i think it's either the holy trinity or else this custom was invented by an aspie.

i also have numerous rituals associated with writing poems. e. g. taking a line & using only anagrams of that line for each of the following lines (this may take awhile). but my favorite here must be the composition of a poembook. i choose the total number of poems so it equals a square number, number them chronologically, then sort them according to the places of a magic square. e. g. 4-9-2-3-5-7-8-1-6 if i had only nine poems. the one i wrote earliest would be in eighth place.

not only does this satisfy my sense of hidden order, it always creates interesting juxtapositions i never would have thought of.