This Essay brought to you by Creative Procrastination Techniques and the letter “W”.
I’ve been writing, honestly, new poems and half a short story, in addition to editing, editing, editing —novel and poems and getting ready for another chapbook. I also need to do a postcard for the Baren Chinese New Year Card Exchange. Researching my animal took a while, but I managed to sketch out an idea I liked, dropped it into Photoshop to play with colors, then printed out a template.
The bad news was that since I’d cleaned (well, some) my office, rearranged, and shoved things into plastic tubs, I couldn’t find my wood blocks to carve the animal. I did come across a block of plasticine left from my sculptural days, conveniently sitting alongside a wire frame and baseboard. The wire framework looked suspiciously like . . . a dinosaur. A hydrosaur. Last time I remember being really interested in hydrosaurs was when my eldest was five and could recite every name and type of dinosaur with ease. I finally remembered, the wire skeleton was one of his favorites, a parasaurolophus. Digging deeper in the tub, I found all kinds of reference materials.
You know what happened next.
Before I realized it, I had a fledgling parasaurolophus taking shape on the armature. The next thing I knew, it was hours later, and dogs were making those “Good doG, woman, aren’t you EVER going to feed us, we’re starving here” noises. I stuck the armature and fleshed out the dino on the corner of my drafting table, noticed a block of shina plywood hiding on the bookshelf next to it, reached over… and knocked Mr. Duckbill off the table right onto his fancy head crest. His cranium took a beating, as did the tail. I’ll be spending my next round of sculpture straightening the fancy head dodad so it doesn’t resemble a limp noodle, rebuilding the tail so it doesn’t look like a cat took a bite off the end, and yes, picking copious amounts of dog hair out of the plasticine.
I set the parasaurolophus in a safe place on a shelf (away from my elbows), got out my woodblock carving tools and bench hook, transferred the animal to the wood block, and did some preliminary carving. Somehow, going from smooth blocks of oily clay to splintery wood and sharp, pointy cutting tools doesn’t seem like the smartest plan, given my klutziness, but hey, at least I won’t feel guilty if the wood block ends up on the floor. As it was, I had to turn the parasaurolophus around, so I wouldn’t have to look at hisbedraggled crest and mildly accusatory expression, as if I had deliberately set out to give brain damage to such a stellar member of the Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Yes, it’s been a long winter. Why do you ask?