Poetic Contradiction

Well, back in cold, gray Seattle after a week of tropical bliss. Gratefully/surprisingly, while away I found myself largely able to shelve various life stressors, including xyz-baby-worry and "why oh why do I seem to get so frustratingly little done these days?" Alas, shortly after returning home a couple of days ago, anxiety managed to weasel its way back in, and I found/find myself bemoaning the shortage of hours in a day. (And we haven't even had the baby yet! Oof.) 

That said, some points of recognition: focused (preparatory!) breathing is my friend; clearing room, no matter how crazy life is feeling, for hands-on creativity is important and sanity preserving; and channeling the above experience (that warmth! those rolling, lulling waves! that sand--so fine--beneath my feet!) on a regular basis is in my interest. 

Also writing. Keeping up w/ my writing is deeply important. And reading, of course, too. For how else is one to discover such poignance as--

"Really, 'realism' seems just as difficult as any disorienting fantastical stuff does to me (or more); just simply trying to honestly get at that undertow of life slipping away, of memories drifting, of you and the people you love growing up or growing old while wanting it all to slow down, constantly guessing what everyone is really thinking and how they're living, all the while rewriting what you think it is you think about them and yourself and what you're actually going to do w/ your life--that seems plenty urgent and odd enough." --Chris Ware

and--

"When you think about it, everyone is a fiction writer, because any time you imagine what a person is thinking, or how he or she lives, or whether or not he or she finds you attractive, you're writing (or drawing, if one thinks in images), though we like to file it away as if it's reliable information." --Chris Ware

and--

"...I'm sure there will indeed be more and more people reading text on their iPads and iPhones every day, but there are also hundreds of thousands of people out there who love the considered finitude of books just as I do, and as long as we're alive ... books will live too. Additionally, there's something already so weightless and ineffable about what writers and artists do that I think it almost needs the certainty of paper and print as a sort of poetic contradiction to make it work. I generally feel cheated and disappointed in any e-purchase I make for that very reason; in art school terms, the form and the content just seem too much the same." --Chris Ware

and still more--

"...a book, if taken care of, communicates so much about its time and writer, from the tiny, crinkly pages of the leather-bound miniatures of the 1880s to the crappy, wood-pulp paperbacks of the 1970s--it shows what our culture values at any given time. You also don't have to plug them in or try to find a vitamin-D-deficient computer whiz who knows some outdated compression code to read them. All you need is a working eye and a brain and you've got one of the most mysterious interactive experiences ever invented." --who else? Chris Ware

A happy discovery, that.