Oddments of High Unimportance

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Finished reading: The Cursed Hermit by Kris Bertin (Writer), Alexander Forbes (Artist) 📚

A sequel to the duo’s previous The Case of the Missing Men though that isn’t strictly needed to appreciate this adventure. The story is not as bonkers as Missing Men but is still deranged and unhinged, with a deeper look at Pauline’s character. She showed hints in the previous book of second-sight, and she goes on a deep personal journey in Hermit.

Found myself going back to the beginning, going back to specific pages and sequences (that paint smudge over Pauline’s eye in the early pages! the kaleidoscope patterns!).

The art by Alexander Forbes is jaw-droppingly detailed and brilliant. I spent several minutes just studying the cross-hatching, shading, brushwork on the trees and cliff faces and rocky outcroppings. His landscapes and nature drawings have a solidly real look, while the fantasy images use that realism to unsettling effect. His character-acting is also great, especially during Pauline’s visions; the inhabitants of Hobtown all look dulled, dumpy, uncaring – and Bertin’s story explains why that is.

I don’t know how many hours and years it took them to create this book, but I will happily wait however long it takes for them to create another. This one really hit my sweet spot for comics, spookiness, character development (Pauline and Dana’s relationship felt real and caring).

I did a three-card reading using the World Spirit Tarot deck (1st edition). Instead of the usual “Past Present Future” layout, as I shuffled the cards I asked them to tell me something I needed to know about this year and to tell it as a story.

Here are the cards I drew.

The World Spirit Tarot site, maintained by Madame Onca, the deck’s artist, has these handy capsule descriptions of each card:

• SEVEN of SWORDS – “Strategy, stealth and wit are required to meet your goals. From tactful communication to outright manipulation, utilize the spectrum of strategy to obtain your objectives. Be honest about your motives and methods, as dishonesty can beget its own problems. Can you accomplish your ends without compromising your integrity? (Craftiness)”
• SAGE of CUPS – “Emotional maturity and a progressive nature allow the Sage to adapt to the changing times. Capable of great finesse and calculated communication, they lead well, and gaslight brutally. This empathetic personality struggles to maintain a most challenging balance between the rigors of worldly responsibility and a deeply emotional, artistic nature.”
• V THE HIEROPHANT – “Are you ready to expand your knowledge? Bringing together the worlds of inner spirit and outer learning, this card represents the laws and culture of religious and academic tradition. Study the collected wisdom of the ancestors with all its gifts and shortcomings, then find the truly Sacred in your own way.”

The Hierophant, by the way, is my Spirit Card, the Major Arcana card that aligns to certain numerological data associated to my name and birth date. Seeing that card turned over at the end made my eyes pop.

The swords are an air sign, symbolizing intellect, communications, and boundaries. The cups are a water sign, signifying emotions, intuition, love, dreams. The Hierophant, as a Major Arcana symbol, dominates the reading. If these cards tell a story – starting from the intellectual and moving to the emotional – then the Hierophant is a hell of a note to end on.

One of the things I note about the card’s figures: the Swords figure is facing left and down, bending over, picking up the swords in a freezing cold sea, while a ship is heading toward her in the distance. She has to work fast. She is also facing to the left while the Sage is facing right in contemplation. Opposites-ville. But both figures are in cold, blue settings with clouds stabbing diagonally across the sky. They’re telling different sides of the story but they’re swimming in the same sea.

The Swords card pretty accurately summarizes my head at the moment. I want to clear up various health issues this year, and I have a life-changing project simmering in the background that will come to fruition, I hope, later this year. I want to set lots of plates spinning on the tips of many swords, and am wondering how to coordinate it all.

Once those plates are spinning, though, time to be the Sage and contemplate where I am, how I’m feeling, and how I will negotiate the life-change transition that is headed my way. The Swords card is, I think, about planning the physical aspects of my life. The Sage reminds me not to forget the emotional side, which needs equal care and attention. The honest Sword turns away from the calculating, gaslighting, manipulative Sage. But that last sentence of the card description shows the Sage trying his best to bridge the needs of the world with the needs of the soul.

And how will the story end? The Hierophant. The Rules-Maker and Rules-Follower, the Lawgiver, who joins in one role the emotional (religious, yearning, soulful) and the academic (intellect, boundaries, order from chaos). The dark side of the Hierophant is a slavish devotion to the rules rather than balanced and knowing wisdom. The rather haughty pose in the card, and the supplicants, show for me a disposition to avoid, a haughtiness I do not want to emulate. But I do want to honor the Sacred in the card, the light of the torch, and – the mysteries. What lies behind that black curtain? The Hierophant represents a codified religious system, but that system’s purpose is to guide one to the mysteries that lie within.

I took this to be a very hopeful and beneficial reading. I will be working hard at the start of the year (Swords), by mid-year I’ll be assessing where I am and how I’m feeling about where I’m going (Cups), and – I hope – by the end of the year, I’ll be the writer of my own story, the master of my moment, enjoying the pleasures of the emotions and the intellect. And since the Hierophant is my Soul Card, perhaps the reading indicates that I will come into my own, be fully myself.

Spent all day turning the apartment and yesterday’s clothes inside out looking for my airpods case. I was just now reading my Gmail, put my hand in my front left jeans pocket, and there it was. I have zero memory of putting it there.

I had a productivity insight recently. Namely, that if my natural state is peace, and I’m the one whose thinking messes with that peace, then my natural state is focus and the only way I lose focus is when my thoughts distract me from it.

So I don’t need 12 steps to a distraction-free environment or the key understanding to controlling my attention. Instead, I just notice when my thoughts start to insist that I need a break. The insistence feels uncomfortable and that’s the cue to stand, stretch, breathe, make a cup of tea. Clear my head, in other words, rather than continue cluttering it with web-surfing or YouTube.

I’ve noticed my Self over the last few weeks unsubscribing from newsletters and podcasts, being more intentional about how I spend my attention energy, and deliberately opening up spaces in the evening where I don’t do anything, just sit, without consuming this intellectual snack food.

Anyway — a nice way to start the new year.

With the turnover of a new year, I did not want to carry the burden of imaginary work into 2024.

I looked at my Readwise Reader collection of saved web pages/PDFs/videos to process (~1,000 items). My YouTube Watch Later list totaled over 2,200 items. My default Amazon wishlist for Books has not been emptied in years.

I have always used my read-later, watch-later, and buy-later lists as “cooling off” platforms. When I returned to them later, I could assess whether an item captured in the heat of the moment retained its warmth. Most of the time, I’d think, “Why did I save this??” and thus saved myself the time and trouble of processing it.

It’s always interesting to me to scroll through the lists and see what captured my attention at specific periods of the year: plantar fasciitis remedies and exercises, note-taking, retirement planning, authors I was following, reviews of a specific book or movie I’d just read, breakfast prep videos, etc. Yes, if I had unlimited time and energy, I’d love to have read and viewed all these things.

But I don’t. No one has.

So, I decided to declare bankruptcy on all these lists and clear them out. If something really wants my attention, it’ll come back and then I’ll take action on it in the moment by reading it, viewing it, or buying it. Or capturing it in one of my cooling-off lists, which I’ll likely again have to clear out at the end of 2024.

How To - Readwise

Cleaning out the Readwise list was pretty easy; find the Bulk Actions command and Delete All.

I’ll still indiscriminately add web pages to Readwise for later reading in 2024. It’s a dumping ground for my current in-the-moment interests. If I want to keep something, Archive it.

How To - Amazon

Display the Books list, select More, then Manage List, scroll to the bottom, then Delete List. Repeat for all other specialty lists that are no longer needed.

In 2024, I’ll create specialty lists as I need them, and I’ll continue to use my new Books list as a cooling-off chamber for in-the-moment captures.

How To - Youtube

YouTube was the toughie. It’s not in Google’s best interests for users to delete all those yummy videos they’ve saved up. Fortunately, there are scripts you can enter into the browser Console to do the work for you. The scripts usually work in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Searching YouTube for “how to delete YouTube watch later list” yields how-to videos going back years; find ones that are recent, within the last few months ideally. YouTube changes its interface frequently, which breaks these scripts.

The easiest way to clear the Watch Later list is to use the Chrome extension YT Watch Later Assist. If you have thousands of items in the list, start the deletion process and ensure the screen doesn’t go asleep.

If you have other YouTube playlists you want to clear out, check out the scripts that run in the Console. They usually enable you to change the list name from “Watch later” to the another list name.

If you have over the years subscribed to too many YouTube channels (I had over 150 in my list), use the Console to run a mass unsubscribe script. While I had trouble getting the Watch Later scripts to run, this unsubscribe script ran perfectly. It ran so quickly though that it skipped some items. Running it 3 or 4 times did the trick and I am now unsubscribed from all YouTube channels.

Finished reading: Old Christmas by Washington Irving 📚

A classic set of stories that invigorated the Christmas spirit in 1820s America, which saw the holiday as too-English (the war of 1812 was still fresh) and which banned celebrations in some locales. Irving synthesized his research into older English Christmas customs, games, and rituals into a fictional story of a grumpy outsider whose heart is warmed by the lightness and gaiety. He even includes a ghost story. Dickens was an Irving fan and drew from this book for his own “Christmas Carol”.

It took a while for me to get into the style and pace of the writing, though judicious skimming helped and I did love the rich details.

What leapt out at me were the rather lechy old Master Simon who enjoys the company and attention of the pretty younger girls, and the clear and rigid caste system of gentry and peasants, which the narrator endorses (no one has a word of thanks for the busy kitchen staff who cooked all the extravagant foodstuffs), though he is aware of the class divide: his narrator looks sternly at some of the “peasants” knowingly playing up to the guvner.

Other reading, if you’re interested:

• How Washington Irving Shaped Christmas in America | The National Endowment for the Humanities
• The Root of Our Old Christmas Customs: Washington Irving: A Yuletide Story in its Own Write - HOAGonSight
• HOW THE OLD CHRISTMAS CAME TO SLEEPY HOLLOW
• Old Christmas | The Impact of Washington Irving - House of Cadmus
• How Charles Dickens Stole Christmas - Visit Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown

📚 Purchased from Block Shop Books on a day-trip to Lunenberg, whose picture-postcard downtown area boasts a large number of restaurants, gift shops, and book stores.

I remember entering at the end of our day there, with the store about to close in 10 minutes. With no time to linger, I scanned for the graphic novels section and plucked out these three beauties.

Take the Long Way Home by Jon Claytor.

I love diary comics and comics memoirs but this book bounced right off me. I remember reading this book but cannot tell you much more about it. The author takes a cross-country road trip after the collapse of a relationship while also struggling to stay sober. Along the way, he meets up with friends, children, family, talks to the animals, makes new friends, and along the way tries making friends with himself too. The drawings and some watercolors (the book is B&W and grayscale, no color) are mostly all photo-referenced with, more often than not, one big drawing to each page. The episodic, meandering nature of his journey (both external and internal), and the visually uninteresting pictures and layouts, made this big slab of a book feel rather thin. I will give it another try later; maybe I was having an off week.

Nova Graphica: A Graphic Anthology of Nova Scotia History

A fantastic collection of short pieces on Nova Scotian history and culture, with a rich blend of personal Nova Scotian history and culture, as well. I loved seeing the variety of drawing styles, the different types of storytelling, and the panorama of topics: Black history, Indigenous history, LGBTQ, ghost stories, family stories, folklore – the gamut. For some reason, I remember the last story called “Five Sided House” by Colleen MacIsaac. It’s a fiction piece about two high school girls who take on as a school project an archeological study of the hundreds of years old foundation of what appears to be a five-sided house located in the hills above Halifax. A little Googling reveals that it’s a real historical conundrum with no clear explanation of the structure’s origin or purpose. What could have been a dry retelling of the scant facts instead becomes a lovely meditation of the past and the present, with imagination as the necessary bridge between the two.

The Case of the Missing Men by Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes.

Bertin and Forbes contributed a spooky folk tale to Nova Graphica. In The Case of the Missing Men, they give themselves 300 pages to cut loose with their own brand of local legend, noir storytelling, dark mystery, and unsettling imagery. The first of the “Hobstown Mystery Stories” series, the book follows the investigation of a high school student’s missing father by the Teen Detective Club (a registered afterschool program!). Publishers Weekly nicely summed up the book as a cross between Scooby-Doo and David Lynch, though there are few shenanigans and high-jinks; instead, there are threatening law officers, a secret society, grotesque monster-men, deaths, bodies, chases, and just what is going on behind those kennel fences? The story is odd, compelling, weird, and the exquisitely etched line drawing, detailed cross-hatching, and frankly creepy images make the whole package delightful and re-readable.

The book appears to be out of print, sadly, hence my using the Amazon link. I plan on getting myself their second novel, The Cursed Hermit, as a Christmas present to myself.

By a wonderful coincidence, all of these books were published by Conundrum Press, an independent Canadian publisher of literary graphic novels. They have an extensive catalog of works that are locally, culturally, and artistically daring. I love the range of titles and styles they offer and look forward to reading more of their books.

Found myself today repeating the “brown M&Ms” story about Van Halen and thought to check its veracity. This article persuades me that it was less quality control, more image management.

In the late 1990s, though, the story shifted as additional context emerged. David Lee Roth, the band’s lead singer in those early years, published a 1997 autobiography titled Crazy From the Heat, in which he claimed the bowl of curated candy had an entirely functional purpose: It was a quick way to see if the venue had actually read the whole contract, line by line.

Source: Why Did Van Halen Demand Concert Venues Remove Brown M&M’s From the Menu? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

I participated in NaNoWriMo three times in the past, all before 2006, I think. I “won” the first and last times I entered, while the second round was a pretty unsatisfying experience.

I remember at the time Cal Newport and other nobs of the blogosphere decrying NaNoWriMo for various reasons: the world doesn’t need more bad novels, people should read more and write less, what value are you actually producing, etc. I attended a recent StoryGrid webinar where the same dismay for NaNoWriMo was trotted out to a new set of negatives: it’s a waste of your time, you won’t make actual progress, it’s too unfocused, you don’t actually learn to be a better writer, etc. And of course, StoryGrid has its own programs that they think are better to help you develop as a writer, and – I’ve not used them yet – they almost certainly are.

But the comment I always want to make to these nattering nabobs of negativism is: would you relax, please? Can’t people engage in an event like this simply for the fun of it? Is it a waste of energy to want to run like the wind when what you want to do is just run and not compete in a 400-meter sprint?

I know that some very good novels started out as NaNoWriMo competitions – I think The Night Circus is one – and I agree that nothing beautiful simply falls out after a month of drafting 50K words.

If you’re lucky, though, maybe the makings of a novel are there. The third NaNoWriMo I participated in was a somewhat picaresque story where a fellow down on his luck tries out numerous self-help and self-improvement techniques like better eating and exercise, cleansing his aura, going to a tarot reader, going to a men-only drumming circle in the woods, nutty stuff like that. I’d discovered in my previous experiences that having an open-ended somewhat plotless journey worked well for me, and I was aiming to make it humorous also, and so I simply had fun playing with the content, the techniques, seeing where the overarching story took me, etc.

The result was I had tremendous fun writing the thing and couldn’t wait to get back to it every night. I cleaned up some of those chapters for the writing group I was in at the time, and they went over pretty well. The lesson I learned from that year was to have fun with the process, just get the material out and shape it later. Follow the energy.

The dismal experience I had was because I was trying for something heavy and serious, that started out as a murder mystery but then I saw that I really didn’t like the material I was creating, and it stymied me for a bit. By the time I recovered and started writing a new story, it was too late to catch up to the 50K count.

My first NaNoWriMo experience was in the early 2000’s, and there was a great little network here in Durham, NC, that would meet at coffee shops or pubs or libraries to sit as a group and write. On the last day of November, a bunch of us congregated at what is now The Fruit but what was then a sort of jumble shop/bookstore. It was great to meet other people who were sort of giddy from the trip they’d been on.

The community aspect of NaNoWriMo is something the nay-sayers never comment on; the joy of so many people participating in a shared endeavor is surely one of the most life-giving things we can do for ourselves, almost regardless of the content of the activity itself. The art habit is hard to start, which is no doubt why there are so many timed artistic challenges all through the year.

Sure, there may be some people who participate and have an idea of what they’ll get out of NaNoWriMo and they end the month disappointed with what happened. But I consider that part of the trial and error of making art; this technique worked, this method didn’t. No failure, only feedback.

The only feedback needed during NaNoWriMo is asking “am I enjoying myself?” If yes, please keep writing.

#nanowrimo ✏️ 📝