Small Rubicon

I’ve landed in New Mex­ico. Tonight my team launches An Under­ground Guide to Albur­querque #6. This week­end I unpack some, try not to unspool. I’m just eager to get on to the next phase. This year has demol­ished and rebuilt me.

Developments

In which my design/​writing port­fo­lio goes live, my strange fea­ture in Man­ches­ter leaves me burned out on poetry, my research has gone off the rails – and two very sig­nif­i­cant forces are poised to haul it back on track.

Dredge Poetics (Full Text)

Well, it’s been deliv­ered. The mighty Bren­dan Con­stan­tine also deliv­ered a deli­cious lit­tle lec­ture, and it was an honor to open this new com­mu­nity series with him. Here’s the full text. If you like or if you don’t, please say so!

The new undergroundABQ is live!

After months of plan­ning, design and tweak­ing, the absolutely awe­some new web­site for An Under­ground Guide to Albur­querque is now live! Go check it out! Rate reviews! Comb through the mounds of good­ies hid­ing all over the site, and come back soon for more.

Webdesign Can Bite My Ass

I’ve spent a lot of the last six weeks hack­ing the hell out of Word­press themes, and today, at last, I found time to con­tinue work on my own damn port­fo­lio. God assist me, after a ton of thought I’ve decided to build myself a Word­press theme, so I can get just the amount of sexy I want, and not a drop more. However.

Curious Dream

I haven’t been dream­ing much of Welles­ley lately; been absorbed in other things. The last few weeks – largely why I’ve been absent here – I’ve been slav­ing on An Under­ground Guide to Alburquerque’s new web­site. But mean­while, the pull from the Dredgery has been slack. Last night, I dreamt the two were the same thing.

Ah, Re-Beginning

As you may have noticed by now, Gourmet Book Design is now offi­cially closed for ren­o­va­tions. This is the first step toward the new site, which will include this blog, so I’m stoked. And I’m really happy with the splash page, which took me, with lim­ited but improv­ing skills, about 4 days to design and code. What a relief I don’t sell web design. Any­way. Do me a quick favor: drop in and let me know what you think? It’s gonna be a long, backache-​​​​addled jour­ney, and I’d love all the encour­age­ment I can scare up as I take my next steps up the mountain.

In Which I Reject Your Stories, pt. 2

Part 1. I think our cul­tural rela­tion­ship with our dreams rep­re­sents our rela­tion­ship with spir­i­tu­al­ity. Let’s talk about some depic­tions of the uncon­scious in recent cul­tural mem­ory: Other Mother (Cora­line), Drop Dead Fred, Mau­rice (Lit­tle Mon­sters) and Betel­geuse. Of course, through them all, I’m think­ing of Mor­pheus, Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch. Since I’ve already cov­ered the Other House, let’s start with Drop Dead Fred. He’s the invis­i­ble best friend incar­nate. After a bad end to an unhealthy rela­tion­ship, Fred reap­pears to rein­voke Lizzie’s child­hood. Ulti­mately he grants her entry to her uncon­scious, where she can face the spec­tre of her mother  –  and “grow up.” Presto. When she wakes up, Fred’s gone, no longer needed. She does…

Off the Hook

One of the bet­ter bios I’ve read in a long time, in the back of Sand­man 6: [next to his pic­ture] This is Mark Buck­ing­ham, so you don’t have to be. Clever and, in a bizarre, almost round­about way, hum­ble. Appro­pri­ately, I’m think­ing today about an anony­mous man­u­script I got a few years back, that never panned. “This is this book you couldn’t write, so you don’t have to.”

Recurring and Returning

Augus­tus Cae­sar: Many dreams come through the Gates of Ivory, Lycius, and they lie. A few dreams come from the Gates of Horn, and they speak to us truly. – Gaiman On the long-​​​​procrastinated advice of my friend Anders, I’ve been read­ing The Sand­man. Yeah, I’m enthralled. By con­trast, Cora­line reads more like fan fic than Gaiman. Here, his insights line the land­scape, and his sto­ry­telling, a lit­tle shaky at first, quickly climbs to top-​​​​notch. There are a lot of things worth dis­cussing, from the way he rec­on­ciles mytholo­gies to his Clive Barker-​​​​backed insis­tence that the world behaves as it does, not as we want it to. But I want to drill in on something…