Late to the Party & the 12 Month Project

I've heard that lateness is inherited. I think that this might be true, if not genetically then at least as a learned behavior. It's not important, really, except that this post is showing up pretty late to the party. And maybe not in a glamorous way, but in the my-car-broke-down-because-it's-older-than-me-and-I-had-to-use-my-sweater-to-wipe-up-the-oil kind of way. It's here though, and I offer it with the hope that it doesn't smell too much of gasoline...

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I'm thrilled to announce a project that I'll be working on with the very talented illustrator and my dear friend Charlotte- you can find her here and here. We've decided to do a collaborative project where each month we both make a piece of art on the same theme; January's theme was "an inspirational quote". I took this loosely, and picked a quote from the Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume. Tom Robbins is an author, prophet, and crazy person. In any case, here's the print, and the context of the quote. Enjoy! And head on over to Charlotte's blog to look at her January print and other artwork. She's the best, right?

"If wild animals could talk, would they talk like cartoons? Would the dismal swamp resound with shrill, befuddled, childlike voices; a cute choir of cuddly Kermits delivering gentle froggy inanities?

"Or would beasts converse in the style of Hemingway, in sentences short, brave, and clear; each word a smooth pebble damp with blood; aboriginal speach, he-man speech, an economy of language borrowed by Gary Cooper from frontiersment who borrowed it from Apache and Ute?

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"'Well how about you?' we ask a fox. 'Have you seen a couple in Byzantine garb heading in the direction of Bohemia?'

"The fox is slow to speak. 'Tonight I dined on loon at the pond,' he says. 'It was a good meal. Food has an excellent place in my values. Quiet has an excellent place in my values. The forest has been quiet tonight. It is a god thing being a fox when the forest is quiet.'

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"Is that the way animals would talk?

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What a riotously unusual and usual season of thanksgiving this winter was. Both separate from family with whom I'm used to spending the holiday and together with family I assume are implied and all stitched up in the seams of my life (until someone says wait, what? And I respond, well...). We mused over how the holidays always bring up dramatic and teenage-worthy feelings of angst, abandonment, and suffocation. As surprising as these bulldozer emotions are, the truly surprising thing is that we're always surprised when they pop up again the next year. Thanksgiving is done and triumphantly so, and the next month was more of the same, if maybe this December was a little more stretched than usual. In all honesty, I can't say it wasn't perfect; I anxiously anticipated the arrival of far-away friends and the weekends off I'd scheduled months in advance in order that we might re-attempt a feat similar to our previously achieved watching of HIMYM in its entirety. I jest, this was not in the forefront of my goals for the season, but I was psyched nonetheless for the blisteringly-full weeks to come. I guess I'm very thankful for the holidays as a reason to celebrate, and for all those things in my world that are worthy of more frequent and outlandish celebration. So many things. Not least of which is having people to approach without fear of judgement or rejection with the suggestion, "Since it's Thanksgiving, let's face-paint vampire fangs. Get it? FANGS-giving?!" To have these people at the ready, unquestionably and endlessly present, to have some of them put up a bit of a fight, maybe roll their eyes, but in the end, we all knew who would win this one because it wasn't so much of a suggestion as a mandate, and they know me and I know them and we all knew it was a good idea, even if some of us (not me) did wash off our fangs immediately after the photo. It's ok, I'll take it. The tolerance of the escapade is the takeaway, and the fact that they'd do it for me, and that they'd do it at all because it's not like I'd want just anyone to be in my Fangs-giving holiday portrait. There's a reason I love the people I do, and it's not least because they find some humor in painting on fangs and taking a picture, even if it wasn't their idea.