The beginning of the end, for real. Page 781.

I am so close to the end of this project, at least as far as copying text on to rubber gloves goes. It has put me in an odd state of mind. I am almost nervous about it, as though the end is more of a challenge then starting it. I could have finished it today if I had wanted to, but I was not ready. I have other things to do and I just want to stick to my routine of about a page a day. Tomorrow I'll do the last full page. Thursday & Friday I think I'll take a break, and Saturday I'll do all but the last few sentences. I'm saving those for my party on June 16th, when I'll write the last bit in front of my friends.
Meanwhile, I heard that tonight there is going to be some sort of astro phenomena. The transit of Venus? The Venus transit? There are lots of postings on facebook about the implications as far as moods and feelings. I am such a tumultuous person anyway...I'm not sure any astrological event could have much of an effect on me that anyone would notice. I am up and down on an hourly basis. I am cranky and then corny with love. I want to do everything but I want to sleep in. As my husband says, I am uptight. The nice thing about this project is that I have had a plan for each and every day. I always write something of Ulysses on to a rubber glove. Soon, I won't have that. It's like studying meditation or yoga or being a runner, and then stopping cold turkey.
I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do next as far as art work. In a way I think I would like to do a series of still life's (or is it still lives?), just small paintings and drawings of things around the house. I feel like I want to do something kind of conventional to cleanse my palette. But, who knows? I don't have to decide for at least a few days more. Maybe Venus will give me a clue.

page 620

So, I have started part 111 of Ulysses, which began on page 613. I have still been able to write out one page a day, though I'm not sure I can keep to that goal. I hope so. If I can, I should be finished with this project in around six months, which will be in August.
This section is pretty hard going. The text is dense, a wall of words with only a few breaks for paragraphs and quotes. But it gets even harder toward the end, when Molly Bloom begins the 80 page four sentence stream of thought that has no breaks at all.
I thought it might interest people to know what audio books I have listened to so far, while I work on this project. A lot of times I just listen to CNN or MSNBC, but lately, what with each republican candidate leaning ever farther to the right, I have a limit to how much I want to hear.
So, the books are:
If I Stay
My Hollywood
The Sun Also Rises
Secrets to Happiness
Away
The Three Weismans of Westport
The Lakeshore Limited
The Widowers Tale
Heir To The Glimmering World
My Abandonment
The Septembers of Shiraz
Private Life
I'd Know You Anywhere
Strength in What Remains
This Beautiful Life
State of Wonder
Lost City of Z
It's quite a variety. Murder mystery, a couple of y.a. books, non fiction, lofty fiction, chick lit. Within this list I'd say my favorite was Septembers of Shiraz, which was heartbreaking and beautiful. The next one, coming soon from my library, will be The Sense of an Ending. Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am listening to books while writing Ulysses, because I can't really focus on what Joyce is saying when I am listening to a story. But mostly I think it helps me to focus and I feel like it enriches my life. I am a fairly slow reader and this allows me to "read" more than I could if I kept only to holding a book in my hands. I feel that listening to a book maximizes my time, and there are so many books I want to read and re-read, that doing this helps chip away at my ridiculously long list.
Anyway, I have not yet completed my page for this day, so off I go. Sadly, my new audio book isn't here yet, so I am stuck with politics.

page 600!

So, I am almost through with page 600. The past hundred pages or so have been very easy to do. Not easy like reading a magazine, but in the context of writing neat text onto a yellow rubber glove with a sharpie pen, easy. In approximately thirteen pages the party is over. There begins part three, and is the most difficult section in a difficult book. I think I read someplace that the last eighty pages of the book consist of just four sentences.
I have been able to do at least 1 and 1/2 pages each day for some time now, often getting through two or more pages. That's why this last hundred pages flew by. Soon my pace will slow down considerably. I'm trying to keep reminding myself that it is okay to finish just a half page, or three quarters of a page when the text is so dense, but it will be hard to keep myself from pushing to keep to a one page a day quote.

In equal parts I want to finish this project and not finish it. It will be hard to imagine what I'll do with the extra hour to two hours I now spend almost everyday on this thing. Also, there is the mounting anxiety about where this will end up...what gallery, room, space. Who will see it, write about it, want it, want to show it. For now though, I just have to keep myself in the right now, and today, make it to the end of page 601. A breeze.

Page 544

Yesterday I realized that I will probably be finished with the Ulysses Project this year...the year 2012 (the end of the world according to some people). When I started it, the end didn't even seem like a possibility, and now, it is soon to be a reality.
Part of me longs to just plow through, doing three or four or more pages daily. But I am also thankful that I am not finished, because when it is done I have the expectation, the hope and dream of showing it someplace fabulous to great acclaim and glory. So, with the end comes the inevitable fear of crushing failure.
Meanwhile, I have been working on small slinky drawings on color aid paper, which I bought when I was in college. Each piece of 6" x 9" paper is silkscreened in some glorious saturated intense color. Any mark one makes with a pen, or with gouache, pops, and in real life much more than on screen the final works are just plain luscious. Real eye candy. I hope to have twenty of these eventually, but so far only have four.

It's always nice to have a couple of projects going at once. One to take me years, and some to give me more instant gratification.

page 519

The pillow above is what I use when I am so sleepy from writing Ulysses onto the gloves that I can't keep my eyes open. It happens especially on days when I have already driven my son and other kids to school, worked at the library, walked the dog a couple of times. I'll sit down to write and I have to force my eyes to stay open for each letter of each word. When the amount of effort is just too much and making the writing too slow I'll grab the ugly pillow off the chair and put it on my desk, right over whatever glove I am working on, take off my glasses, turn off the television or the audio book and close my eyes. Usually I fall sound asleep for ten or fifteen minutes and most of the time it does the trick.
At first when I wake up from my power nap I feel kind of groggy, but soon I have the focus and the energy to continue writing at a much faster pace.
I could probably be doing more than I am right now. I have had a lot of "free" time. But I feel like I need to make other sorts of art as I work on this project in case someone wants to buy something or needs something for a show.
I second guess almost every single thing I do. My art, this project, my housekeeping efforts, my past, my future and everything in between. That makes me tired, and so I grab the ugly pillow and sleep off the doubts.
Two days ago I was rejected, again, by RISCA. That stands for Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. I was rejected by a jury of my peers for this years grant for drawing or printmaking. I have never gotten this grant though I have applied more than a dozen times. It's not really a grant. It's really a contest. Anyway, I was so depressed that I gave myself a sort of sick day and decided to just draw whatever I wanted to draw and eat whatever I wanted to eat (scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese, toast with strawberry jam), and take my dog for long walks. It helped a little bit. I didn't need the ugly pillow at all. I had angry energy, sad energy and I worked all day long, until I had to pick up my son from school in the evening.
I did need the pillow today, but no matter how many doubts I have about everything I do not doubt for one instant that I won't finish this project.

Guilty Pleasure

Page 475. 

Right now the section of Ulysses I am copying is easy breezy. Many of the sentences are very short. It looks almost like the format you'd see in a play, and therefore, unlike the previous section, I am moving pretty quickly. I am doing almost two pages a day...sometimes a little more. Of course I feel guilty. I feel like I should be doing three or four pages a day right now. I should be zipping right along, but I can't bring myself to work on this more than an hour and a half a day. 

If I could eliminate guilt and worry and anxiety I would have so much extra space inside of my head. 

Late this afternoon I finally wrote out a short note asking to be paid for artwork that had been sold last April. I wrote the note on my i pad last week. I let my husband and a friend look at the note and edit it, slashing it to half it's original size. My husband took away all the bits about me feeling badly, about making sure the person who owes me money knows I don't hold any ill will, knows that I am probably more concerned about his emotional state than my financial state. But when the note was stripped of all the sticky goo I let it stay that way. Short, sweet, business like. I need to put it in the mail tomorrow. It is already stamped and the person it is addressed to should have it by Wednesday.  I already feel guilty about adding to his financial burden, even though if he sold every drawing of mine he has at the gallery it would add up to less than three thousand dollars. Anyway, I did write the note and I am going to send it and guilt won't stop me, because I feel more angry than guilty. 

As for writing more, I feel like I am doing enough for now. Maybe when I am really close to the end I'll do more. Maybe not. Haruki Murikami wakes every morning at around 4:00 a.m. and works each day on writing for five or six hours. It makes me feel guilty for not waking to do the same. If I did that I would be done with gloves each day by nine or so, and I could use studio time to make drawings, instead of sacrificing one for the other. But at four in the morning I want to be asleep. And Murikami goes to bed at nine, which would never do in my house. I would never see my husband and barely see my son. And that would make me feel more guilty. 

Oh well. Maybe I can figure out a way to use all this guilt to spur me to action. 

In the mean time I continue along, getting things done, slowly, but most definitely surely.

Page 383

I am so, so close to the halfway mark, on page 290. It's been difficult these last couple of weeks. The pages are so dense with type. Barely a break for a paragraph, and pages 282 and 283 were full of giant words combined in such a way that I can't even believe it is English. Why did my dad love this book so much? Why did I never ask him?
For this portion of Ulysses I have been listening to The Sun Also Rises. I thought I hated Hemmingway, but I don't hate this novel though I don't love it. It irritates me when the female character (and in this book there is really only one woman, in a sea of hovering men)in any book  is gorgeous, stunningly beautiful, mesmerizing, etc. I mean, very few people are so beautiful, and can someone really fall in love just because of beauty? Maybe so. It is just so far removed from my life. But to my surprise I have loved the descriptions of the place, especially the parts in Spain, and even the fishing. It is clear to me that Earnest knew so much more about fishing, war, and bullfighting than he did about women. And the drinking. Oh la la. I feel like I should have a tumbler of scotch anytime I listen to his words.
Anyway, it's been a nice contrast to the long, difficult pages of Ulysses that I am now writing. And it isn't going to get any easier for at least forty more pages. Still, reaching the halfway point should count for something.
Meanwhile, hurricane Irene is heading our way.

Page 363 - August 5, 2011

There are only 27 more pages to write until I am halfway through this project. Sometimes when I am writing on a glove my mind wanders to the time when I will be really close...like a few pages from the end. But no matter how much time I have each day to work on this, even if I do get a residency (not likely) it is going to take at least another year, and probably closer to two. I pretty much work on it every single day, writing anywhere from a page to a page and a half. In a way it's a good thing that it is so time consuming. There is something peaceful about the time it takes to do this. I can't speed through it. It just takes a lot of time to write word after word after word, onto a rubber glove that needs to be turned over each time I run out of space on one side. Write and write and write, then turn. Write and write and write, then turn. The glove is a little smaller down towards the fingers but also more difficult to write on, because of the thumb sleeve, which starts higher than the other finger sleeves. So, no matter what this is just very time consuming and labor intensive. And I can't make the book fewer pages than it is (783).  I have learned how to incorporate this hour or hour and a half of writing on a glove each and every day, same as I spend time each day brushing my teeth, showering, doing the dishes, walking the dog, eating and sleeping. The time has always been there. If I weren't doing this I might be doing more of my other artwork. But probably I would waste it. I could probably even find two hours a day to do this, but what's the rush?

sunday. June 26

Page 323
So, I have passed the three hundred page mark. My next milestone is page 390, which is the half way point of my edition. I should be keeping track of all the audio books I have heard while doing this project. Right now I am listening to The Septembers of Shiraz. It's a beautiful, poetic book, about a  Jewish family who lives in Iran, after the shah was thrown out. There is a father, a mother, a daughter, and a son. The son lives in Brooklyn, the father has been thrown in prison for crimes he has not committed, and the wife and daughter are left to their own devices. It's one of those books that one might put off because it is serious, and it forces you, or me anyway, to think about things you don't want to know happen to this day. People put into and tortured in prison, for perceived crimes against some new government. But it is beautiful, and I am glad I have it to listen to while I write Ulysses, most of which passes right through me.
Sometimes I feel ashamed of my lack of lightness, but at least along with my tendency to want to think about the dark side of life, I do have a sense of humour.

April 26, 2011

Page 253.
This has been a long, difficult two pages to transcribe. Most of the time I barely know what I am writing. I memorize two to four words at a time, trying not to make mistakes, though if I do, I just keep going. This page doesn't even have an indentation for a paragraph break. It's just a continuous band of type. I've worked for about forty minutes, but am going to take a break and do some more later. My goal for today is just to finish this page.
Meanwhile, there is a news feed on my television. Big deadly storms in the Midwest, floods, tornadoes. Chatter about the royal wedding (big snoozefest as far as I am concerned). More publicity for Donald Trump who seems to want to argue with every celebrity he can find.
I'm going to try to work on a large slinky drawing I thought was finished. But there is something not right about it. It needs more...words to go on my gravestone.