Sequence & Chaos

I made some extra collages on pre-painted journal pages with some of the black and white print outs I used for water damage collages recently. There's something uniquely pleasing about seeing sequences of the same image to me. Maybe it speaks to my organisational interests, or maybe it's just one more manifestation of my love of documenting and cataloguing things. Who knows.

There's a nice juxtaposition of order and chaos, and I think that's a really interesting thing that you see all the time in collages. They're a structured positioning of often random things, or ripped things, or things that you can tell aren't perfectly, mathematically matched. That's part of the charm.

I Love Mario

I don't know if it's the moustache, the cool dungarees, or the plumbing proficiency, but I love Mario. He is a beautiful and good man. My favourite Mario, however, is Tanooki Mario, or Raccoon Mario (they are slightly different variations on a theme - the badge shown above is Raccoon Mario - but they're close enough that I'm lumping them together as my Mario form of choice).

Mario was impressive enough already, but in these forms he can glide majestically through the sky, and into my heart. Please offer your love, respect, and admiration to Mario. That is all.

Moth Poetry

A little while ago I created a Steam group to post snail-based poetry to (this action kinda sums me up as a person), and it sparked a stream of insectile limericks. Here are some about moths (because moths are my favourite).

There once was a moth called Dave
Who lived in a nice serene cave
He sat by the sea
Whilst having a pee
And narrowly dodged a big wave

Moths are big fans of the moon
And fear getting trapped by a spoon
They're just like me
'Cause when I stir tea
I always stir with a harpoon

My dear moth brother named Tim
Is sweet but remarkably dim
He flies round the lamp
Calls himself "champ"
And makes up rude songs on a whim

Book Review: We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

★★★★★: The gleefully sinister tale of a girl outcast who sends shudders through a small village.

I read this book a little while ago and found myself captivated by its eerie and innocently poetic tone. The story surrounds two girls who live isolated in a large old house and are subject to the whisperings of the village surrounding it. The story itself is wonderfully told and smartly revealed, but what stands out for me is the atmosphere it possesses. At once haunting and mirthful, and tiptoeing in this glorious space between sly matter-of-fact and a manic, teasing bliss.

Merricat, our protagonist, is hard to pin down. She is erratic. Calm and wild almost at the same time. Extreme and yet meticulous in her actions, superstitions, and word-based spells. Shirley Jackson writes in such a delicious, intense way. I felt the force of every juddering and careening thought and feeling displayed by the book's characters throughout, and the representations of the sense of the excluded and the sense of the sinister were perfectly portrayed.

This has become my favourite book, because I love cats and spells and weird superstitions and poetry and precocious girls and secrets and death. I'm very glad to have read this hidden ruby of a book this year.

Diary: Trees, Spooky Things, & Impressive Toilets

This week has been a nice one. The weather has gone back to a non-brain-melting level, and I've been reading a book about making stuff from an ash tree (The Man who Made Things out of Trees by Robert Penn) as if I'm in a reading race. It's a good book about trees, and I'd like to read a lot more books about trees and become a wood turner or a fletcher or something. My last name is Ashton after all, which Penn says means "farmstead by the ash trees" - present in place names up and down the country.

Moving on from trees, another strong interest this week has been spooky Netflix series Stranger Things. Yes, it's the TV show everyone won't shut up about at the moment, and for once I am hooked on a show that other people are super interested in at the same time. Also I really like Winona Ryder a lot. I mean, my other current TV show love, Prisoner: Cell Block H, is a really popular show, but not so much in 2016 with people my age. It's nice to enjoy something with a swarm of other people sometimes and I don't often get the chance. Mind you, I love the stuff I don't get to talk to other people about much too.

There's nothing like finding a good book and a good show to make me feel excited to create and discuss and do. It looks like my main interests are spooky things and trees, which reminds me, I also went to a restaurant this week that had an incredible Twin Peaks downstairs and bathroom. The food was good too. It's Red's True Barbecue in Shoreditch. I've been to a few barbecue restaurants in London and Red's has been some of the best flavoured stuff so far. Seriously though, I got really excited about the toilets. Here's an embarrassing picture from my phone:

Good toilets. A+

Creepy Body

When I first started making scans like this I would drag parts of myself around on the scanner bed to make creepy, stretched images. These days I usually make quite straightforward scans of my face, but sometimes I miss making them weirder.

Today is a day for weird scans, and sometimes I think these scans show my true self even more than the normal ones. All of us are stretched and warped multiples inside a malleable body, and I love playing with the edges of corporeality.

Journal: Eyes & Fingers

Here are some miscellaneous journal pages. I'm enjoying going back to that kinda feverish and flippant way of journaling - uncalculated and messy and rapid. It's the best.

There's a place for the thought out and systematic journal, but my heart mostly sits in the wildest journals with torn out pages and eclectic assortments of different kinds of things with different kinds of feelings.

I've been painting on bigger pages and then ripping them apart to splice all the paintings together. I've been finger painting, just a little bit, and I remembered how good it feels to press the paint along with my fingers. Enjoyable and pure.