Fiddlesticks

this is not to be confused with fiddleheads. one is edible, at a particular time of year, and one is not.

fiddlesticks is what you say when you are trying not to swear, and something is frustrating in a fairly benign but relentless sort of way.

(the way i’m feeling about my ears and their continuing saga is not benign, and is aggressive and full of paralyzing fear and despair. fyi)

fiddlesticks pertains to the kid who stayed home sick today, mostly as a result of exhaustion from Daylight Savings Time and an overly exciting weekend with Dad, in which sleep was just a third or fourth thought. or 12th, i don’t know.

fiddlesticks, baby.

-because the world is in something of a tizzy about the new flu, it makes me re-tell stories about my grandmother, the lovely of my life, who won Mother of the Year, for real, sometime in the 60s, and wrote letters to the newspaper about how kids who were sick should not be attending school, for the health of the community. so i’m there, quoting my long dead grandmother in hopes of winning the prize of a healthier community.  think it will work?

i’m tired. i’ve been reading, but its been magazines, a few wordless picture books and oooh, a beautiful comic.  yes, really. LM is a junkie of the comic book sort so i found myself at a huge sale this weekend.  Because i cannot stand in the midst of so much reading material and close my eyes, i asked which were the most visually stunning, because i thought that was a good place to start.

and so.  i give you Neil Gaiman’s comic book.   The, yes, Neil Gaiman.  you aren’t really surprised if you’ve read much of him. I know.  What I did was buy two copies of the same story, with different beautiful covers.  Because I am going to cut one of them up and use it, as my own art.

because i am a deviant.

Then, i read Return by Aaron Becker. (not from the comic book store, but of a family…since it is a wordless picture book) I’ve tried to capture the feeling of his illustrations in colors of my own, in wildly less beautiful paintings. . .   SO GORGEOUS.

sigh. the other beauty of a comic book is Silver Surfer Black Treasury Edition, which is so vibrant it almost knocks you over.

I’m not gonna kid you. My brain is not clicking along at its normal rate, but these are some gorgeous works of art, masquerading as fluff.  don’t be a fool and fall for it.

so there. and yes, i will figure out how to share illustrations, or my photos of these things, because man, oh man, my eyes are thirsty.