Category Archives: Totally unrelated

A Poem to Lift Your Heart on Monday

Many thanks to Jonathan Carroll for posting this in his blog:

ANTILAMENTATION

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

~Dorianne Laux

The Low-Down

Hi, everyone! It’s time to talk about why blog posts have been so sporadic and brief for such a long time. I try not to talk about myself on this blog, because this blog isn’t about me – it’s about fairy tales, art, writing, creativity, and inspiration. But today, it’s about me.

The honest truth is that I’ve been really overwhelmed, and failing at the work-life balance equation. Up until this past February (2011), I had a full-time job writing trivia for the Bing home page. On the surface, it might look like an easy job, researching beautiful photographs of exotic animals and places, then finding cool stuff on the internet to give people more information about them, then writing little clever trivia things, but appearances can be deceiving. One of the things I preach to my students is the lesson that the simpler the end result, the more difficult the creative process behind it.

In addition to working a full-time job writing stuff for millions of people on a daily basis, I train in aikido once or twice a week, take care of a high-energy dog (no back yard), have a relationship with a nice man who has a 5-year-old daughter, and try to maintain some semblance of a social life and give myself a little bit of down time. Plus keeping up with the blog, scheduling and teaching classes, and trying to get this illustrated anthology published.

So, you know. It’s a lot. And in February, while I was in the middle of trying to buy a house, I unexpectedly lost my job. Then my neighbor situation went crazy sour (there were bikers involved – bikers! From a gang!), and I had to find a rental house that would rent to an unemployed lady with a big dog, and I had to scrape together the money to move. Phew.

Now I’m finally getting settled into a new job that is a lot less stressful (though also less lucrative), and a new house in an amazing neighborhood. But I’m really tired. I’ve been burning it at both ends for two or three years now, and I need to rest.

What does this mean for the Fairy Tale Factory? I’m making a renewed commitment to the FTF blog, but classes are on hold until spring 2012. The anthology is illustrated, edited, and in layout, but I need to save money for an ISBN and printing costs. I’ve spent about $2000 of my own money on it so far (illustrations are expensive!), and I’m hoping to have it in stores for the Christmas shopping season, but I’m also trying to be very kind and gentle with myself about what I can afford, in terms of both time and energy.

Now you know. You can look forward to a lot more content on a regular schedule, but classes and workshops are mothballed through the holidays.

Thanks for reading and for caring!

xoxo
-amy leigh

Lapse in bloggery

BTW: I heartily apologize for November’s lapse in bloggery! Though the innernets are everywhere, the month’s events totally short-circuited all but my most essential functions.

To celebrate December, let us now enjoy a non-fairy-tale but ENTIRELY AWESOME collaboration between Kool Keith and Tom Waits. Not to mention the exquisite direction of Fluorescent Hill.