Friday, February 06, 2009

Interview!

Tammie was so kind as to interview me! I love this stuff.

*Your "about me" states, "I read, cook, make art, and try to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing with my life." How is that going for you, specifically the last part?

Ha! I'm going to choose to believe that you mean that seriously, not sarcastically. How's that going for me... well, it's definitely up and down. I know some things: I'm here to help as much as I can. I'm here to share love. I'm here to... uh, make really good dinners. So the cooking part is going really well. The art part -- eh, sometimes. Career-wise? I'm very happy at my current job, but I would like to pursue other options, even just part-time. There's the side of me that obsesses over the Career Of The Month, and I've been doing prerequisites for a health-related career forever, but what I'd really really like to do is illustrate. Sadly, that's not usually much of a money-maker. However, I'm coming to see that there's no reason why i can't do it part-time and see how it goes. I'd really like to take some classes. advanced classes, not just community learning classes. So I'm looking into that, too.

*You're reading Anna Karenina this year, have you read it before? Are you enjoying it?

I have not read Anna before, but I am LOVING it. I really have a thing for Russian authors. I took a Russian lit class in college and I really wished that I had done a minor in it or something. But then again, if I could, I would have done three majors and fifteen minors (I kind of love school).

*If you could have dinner with any living author, who would it be? What would you want to ask him/her?

Hmmm. That is difficult. I don't know. I think that the poet Mary Oliver would be a wonderful person to have dinner with, perhaps at her house, or a picnic in the woods. I don't know what I'd ask her; mostly I'd want to just listen. I think I might also like to have dinner with Neil Gaiman, who seems like a PERFECT person to have dinner with. I would ask him about his dog, and about Coraline, and about Shadow from American Gods. Again, mostly I'd just want to listen.

*You've been doing owl paintings lately (which I love by the way)and when snooping through your Flickr pictures, there is a photo of you wearing a shirt with an owl on it. Do you feel any connection with this specific bird?

Funny you should ask... my mom always loved owls and we had some of her owl tole paintings and other owl-themed crafts in the house when I was growing up, so maybe it's something of an ode to her. They're in my subconscious for sure, since I was fascinated by the owls on our walls and spent a lot of time looking at them. Also, I think owls are very mysterious and beautiful, and I also think they are very easy to characterize (Owl in Winnie The Pooh, or the owl in The Once and Future King), which makes them sort of loveable.

*The title of your blog comes from an e.e. cummings poem....why did you choose it as your blog name?

Hey, good research! I love that poem very much, and think those first lines are so beautiful:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

I think it just captures something of the deeper layers of intimacy with another person -- those things you can get close to, the things you can't quite touch but you know are there. The deeper mystery of another person.

I started this blog after a particularly bleak period in my life, and I had had a LiveJournal account for a couple of years, but wanted to start fresh. I reread some of the LiveJournal entries a year or two ago and had to delete the account because it was just so depressing. I never want to be back in that space again, ever. So this blog has been, for me, a way to express some creativity, some joy, some of the things that make me happy (cooking, art, books, etc.). Also, it's just nice to have a place to vent sometimes. Blogs are great.

**
If anyone wants to play along, here's what you do:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

3 comments:

Ana S. said...

I like what you said about illustrating part time. More and more I think that's what I'll do. Find a job that makes me happy, even if it's not what I always wanted to do with my life, and do things that satisfy me in my spare time.

Dinner with Neil Gaiman would be awesome :D I'd love to hear him talk about Cabal or the cats or writing or whatever.

"I think it just captures something of the deeper layers of intimacy with another person -- those things you can get close to, the things you can't quite touch but you know are there. The deeper mystery of another person."

I couldn't agree more :) That poem is just perfect.

Anonymous said...

Dinner with Mary Oliver or Neil Gaiman would be awesome.

I can totally relate to your comment about school. That's one thing that is so appealing for me about librarianship at a unitversity. And if I weren't already in school I would be taking classes at my university for free in history, art history, Spanish, Latin, Philosophy and a bunch of other subjects.

Susan said...

Great interview, kudos to Tammie and to you for your answers! You do much better with Neil than I ever would :-D Yikes a dinner with him. I'd spill food for sure....though, it's a nice ice breaker - not the spilling food, but the dinner setting. I imagined a book signing for mine, which is why I became tongue tied!!

By the way, 'Somewhere I have Never Travelled' is my favorite e e cummings poem also. I love the ending: "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.' that always gives me the shivers when I read that line.
Have you read 'Owls and Other Fantasies' by Mary Oliver? I read it last year and loved it. Maybe you and I could have a dinner party with Mary and Neil, and you could do all the talking and I'd listen!! :-D
My best friend dreams about owls, especially white owls, and my mother collected them for a while. I really like the cardinal and the hawk, as well as the owl.

Fun post!