Japanse New-Girl Monkey Network
Things Ending, Things Beginning
It's been weird.
A couple of weeks ago, I got word from both of my parents that, just shy of their 30th anniversary, they are calling it quits.
Yeah, I'm OK. Everyone's been worried about me. I think it's funny, in an ironic way. I'm not 10 years old and watching mommy and daddy fight. I'm OK. Shocked, definitely. Saddened, yes, and confused and uncertain. But it's not my marriage, and I know it doesn't change my friendships with either of my parents independently. They're the ones that are really going to have the hardest time, go through the big changes.
But it's definitely a weird thing. And it makes life a little shaky. Ultimately, though, if things had to end up this way, they could hardly end up better. My parents aren't doing the bitter divorce thing. They are actually trying to be adult about this dissolution. It's a far from ideal situation, but it's also not The War of the Roses (did I just date myself?). They want to remain friends, and I think they can. But if neither person is getting anything out of a marriage, then there isn't much reason for the marriage to exist.
So I've been thinking a lot about death and change. At funerals, it's pretty traditional for everyone to just be grim. But sometimes there's a really good wake where people just want to celebrate the life-that-was and be thankful for it. I'm thankful for the marriage-that-was. It gave me a stable, loving, healthy home when I was a little girl and a teenager. From my parents, I learned how to be honest and communicative and affectionate. The fact that there is no longer romantic love between them now doesn't negate the goodness that came before. And it doesn't negate goodness in the future.
On the flipside, I've been mentally birthing out all these new creative endeavors. Next Monday will be my third class in printmaking. The first two weeks covered woodblock techniques, and Monday I will learn drypoint. I find myself extremely fascinated by printmaking, and the class is thoroughly enjoyable. Next week I should have my practice woodblock prints back (they had to stay back at the classroom to dry) and I will try to post pictures of them; without access to a scanner, it may be tricky, but I think I can get a decent photo of them on my digicam.
I'm looking forward to drypoint, but there's something about woodblock that I just love. I keep finding all these sites via Google about ukiyo-e. Woodblock.com is a gem of information on technique, if a little hard to get around. I like the idea of ukiyo-e, but I don't want to make Edo-era Japanese-style prints. I want to take the technique and the idea and apply it to my life, my world.
The word "ukiyo-e" means "the picture of buoyant world" and incorporates in its meaning the common man's daily pleasures, such as Kabuki plays, Geisha houses, and so on.
--The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum Guide
My daily pleasures: afternoon coffee with Mr Wiggins, the pattern of the bare trees against the early morning sky in the kitchen window, the lavendar bush outside my front door, Sydney Park on a sunny weekend, going past the Harbour Bridge and watching the city skyline. I am thinking about how to make these into pictures I can carve out on a small square of wood.
Mr Wiggins and I have turned ourselves into the Ultimate Geek Couple™ by conspiring with a group of friends to get a roleplaying game going. We have five people, and some rough-around-the-edges characters (that is, we're still fine tuning them), ready for a Shadowrun game. This week we did sort of a "practice" run, though we were missing one person and we played a little hard and fast with the rules. That was pretty fun as it was, so I'm really looking forward to next week. However, I do feel slightly conspicuous as a) the only girl, and b) the only character without badass firepower to back me up in a fight. My girl, Kel, she's sort of the scheming, quiet type. So I'm kinda boring in the fight scenes. But hopefully I can still make her a viable, important character in the game.
Now, if I could only find some time in between all that to just write. Or if I could at least stop whinging about it.
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