these days before the final installation are slow. i want to be moving on, to be making more drawings. it's good to focus on this one series, but i want to be making another series at the same time. i'm bored, even. but i go home and want only to watch movies, go on walks, and drink a little wine while i check my boring celebrity websites. how productive. i am obsessed with being productive. on saturday i went to a writing workshop and we had to write many lists of words, and one of the lists was about things that you're obsessed with on a daily basis, related to art or not. forward-movement was mine. and doing good in the world. i'm obsessed with character. the ben franklin idea of character. not surface, but practice. ben franklin wouldn't sit around drinking wine and watching movies, now would he?

i felt much more clear today about what the order of my drawings should be. strong enough feelings about it that i feel confident it's the way it needs to be. a book doesn't mean bound, or with words. what does a book mean? i love the idea of pushing the idea of the book. maybe the best form for many pages of images is that they're on the wall, even if it is a book. to get to see them all at once and consecutively both. so they can reference wall and page both.

i want my drawings to be more, but i love what they are right now, most of them anyway. i want to make a box for them and keep them on my table. or three boxes, always three faces up at the same time.

adventure: while slicing ragboard with a BRAND NEW exacto blade, so, so sharp, so sharp, i pushed so hard and the ruler slipped and off is hanging the diagonal tip of my thumb. lots of gushing blood and skin flapping, but no stitches. i didn't look at it, though, i didn't want to see if i needed stiches or not. i didn't want the drama, i just wanted to get to work. bloody thumb means difficulty working on my drawings because blood is not acid-free and could damage the paper, etc. but i held it above my heart for an hour and then for a little more and now the bleeding has stopped though the pain has subsided mostly but still is there. silly exact, silly ruler, silly my thumb in the way.

i will say right here a thought that consumes me and that is the elephant in the blog-room: it is very, very hard to be a parent-figure to a certain parent-needer, willful with dangerous and fretful undertones. will she find the right way despite so many signs in her actions that point otherwise? god i hope so. what have i done right or wrong? that is all i will say about that.