Small Disasters & Changes

Well, I actually finished all of the pages of the book yesterday. I can’t believe it! The pages that definitely took the longest (the watercolors) are finally out of my hair.

I’d been collating them and was about to bind them when I discovered one of the fly pages was cut too narrow. This is the imported gold dandelion paper that I only had one sheet of.

Isn’t that just great? I’d had it from years ago. I could only find two places that carried it. So, a couple more sheets will be here by Friday, thank Jesus (or Google). I’ll have to draw the little flowers on it again, which is no big deal really:

The only thing is, I discovered that this very pretty paper is imported from Italy, not Japan. But my colophon page is already printed. It states that this special paper is Japanese. I don’t want to print all four sides over again, so I’m considering crossing out that one word and handwriting “Italian” on top of it. Hannah thinks it would be neat and add even more character to the thing. I think I agree.

Though I could have kept my mouth shut and left it alone. But it’s something that would eat at me–a technicality that would make me lose sleep if I didn’t “correct” it. And I need my sleep.

I did bind the first of the five books and then mistakenly tried to trim off one side of the edge in the paper chopper like some kind of moron, nearly ruining the whole book. That would have been a major catastrophe, and that’s definitely not how you do it. The correct way to trim off the right edge of a book is to have Hannah do it for you. One should know this by now.

So, I’ll probably bind the four remaining untrimmed books today. It’s a shame I can’t stay on course with all five until the weekend, but that’s okay. It won’t take me very long to get back on track.

I’m going to try to finish painting the cigar boxes before then. You just never know what the wind will be like here and I have to spray paint that shit outside. It’s actually pretty calm right now, so I’ll be right back…

I’m back! I did the first coat on the other side (the inside) of these boxes now, so both sides have a first good coat. The spray paint made me high as all hell and now I’m dizzy.

I’ll let these dry a good long while before I put more paint on them, but I’m doing light coats so they don’t get drippys.

In other somewhat unrelated news, I have decided to dissolve the publishing company I built with Hannah that published my memoir. Almost all of the links to the book site have been taken off both my website and my blog. There are no longer any social media buttons to Amazon or Goodreads. Now, only a couple of references to the book remain.

Of course, it’s still all over Google. I can’t erase the past. It’s just not prominent on my site anymore, as I don’t wish to promote it. The special limited edition is still available, however. Those come with original paintings and drawings, and it’s the very first edition bound in linen. Maybe one day I sell them out, but I doubt it.

For a long time, and maybe ever since I published it, It’s no secret that I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings. I began a new book after that (Queer as Mud), but I even stopped working on that one almost a year ago, maybe for the same reasons.

It all has to do with publicly sharing such intimate stuff. Maybe I do that quite a bit on my blog, but it’s really not the same. For one thing, it’s not nearly as serious. My blog is part art diary, part PR, part kvetch, and part hyperbole. It sort of just rolls off me. I don’t think much about it or the consequences. I also know that people are only getting a window into me, not the whole picture. I mean, I do hope readers are aware of that.

The memoir gives people too much information about me, my family, my past traumas, and everything else. Too big of a view I think. It’s too late now, but I have to say that I do regret publishing it, sans the effect it had on the people who were touched by it. That is, without any harsh judgments. People judge, but what can ya do?

It was a stark look into an intense time in my life, but many years have passed since then. I think I have grown a lot in the last fifteen years and have had a ton of therapy. I do the best I can anyway. We all do.

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