I have yet to finish watching Russian Doll, in favor of listening to Mythbusters and fiddling with story notes, but I keep thinking about the interview with Natasha Lyonne I read earlier in the week (I'm sure a link from my reading list here, so thank you whoever you are). I love that Lyonne pays homage to The Cramps musician Poison Ivy instead of doing a traditional couture shoot, taking control of her image as a creative, and shining a light on a formative influence. I discovered The Cramps last year, so, it's never too late to find the good shit.

There weren't a lot of older women in media when I was coming up, though the few that I can recall were definitely using and playing with their own image in a subversive way (Bea Arthur, Phyllis Diller...urm...yeah even if you gave me a week I could probably still count on one hand the number of women performers above forty I saw as a wee feldman). So it's a relief to get to this age and finally see that changing, to see women my own age and older creating, performing, producing, writing, being recognized and their work being discussed. Some fucking exciting shit happens to art when an artist has more life experience to fold into the mix, instead of being hustled off stage for the next young hot thing who's talent can be molded and exploited into pre-approved shapes because she's hungry.

Lyonne also talks about how she's been writing versions of this story for a decade, describing an iterative process of filling notebooks, making playlists, compiling image refs, and the work of digging down into the emotional truth of hard experiences and then telling a story about it.

That's a process that takes time, and courage. It's very heartening to me to peek behind a stunning piece of art and see, no, here, it's okay for a story to take time, for it to force you open like steaming a mussel, to haunt you like a fucking creaky house, to seep out of you in a bunch of different ways like fuel soaking out of a buried rusting tank.

You're not alone, stories sometimes just do that to a human.

 So I did not make the Labor Day deadline for having a completed draft of what I'm calling "In Suburbia, Land Owns You".  But I've been doing some fierce wrestling with demons here and keep coming back to it and adding more words.  I've broken the 10k barrier that is littered with the busted skeletons of many previous projects, and instead of feeling broken it's started to get that organic feel of when wheat paste transforms into dough.

I had an interview today, which went pretty well, and could be a decent fit.  Now that my parents are finally in decent health and the kiddo is back in school, my schedule has gaping holes that I'm planning to fill with adult socialization and a paycheck.  I have another tentative offer, pending funding.  And today I may have scored a part-time tax-season gig.  Rains/pours.  But it bodes well for something to pan out, at least.

In entrepreneurial news, the store is open!  We've gotten a great response so far, which is wonderful to see in part because this has been a dream for Mr. F for a long time, and I love seeing him bring it into being and just rock the community building.

I made these little fingerless gloves for the kiddo, with this yarn made by a friend of mine.  Now I'm making these entrelac fingerless gloves, with this yarn that looks like the most shameless autumnal colors ever.  Take another look at these colorways, which she can make stripe fast, slow, or over the course of a full skein (or several).  Meg is a wizard of spatial math and gorgeous color.

I am pressed on many sides by people listening to their souls and making them happen in the world, and I think that I'm running out of excuses *not* to keep writing.