Scrawl

As part of my proposal for the remainder of the semester, I said I would write for at least two hours about my experience being pregnant (so far), in order to document some things I don't want to forget, but also to go a little further in exploring my feelings and thoughts during this unique time of my life.

I did write for 2+ hours, and am so glad I did. The long-ish time period compelled me to dig deep for material. When I slowed down, I found myself exploring some ideas that were more difficult and personal. As a result, I felt that the writing was really too personal and special (almost... sacred) to share on the internet (no offense, comrades). So I created this entry that both presents and obscures what I wrote, by superimposing the ten pages of handwritten text. After considering bringing out some words or phrases that I was willing to share, I decided to allow the whole thing to remain sort of veiled and coded, and to exist as one big, shrouded visual form. That is how I feel about the experience of pregnancy, sometimes -- that it is really too special to explain, document, or translate. But everyone always tries anyway, me included.

For the other two entries, I extracted a couple of phrases that are less intimate, but still significant to me. I made some quick (less than 30 min. each) sketches from those, and that's what the other two entries are about.

Pits!

Landscape and narrative seemed like fitting elements for a two-page spread dealing with visual flow. Since I did most of my writing for this week's entries under an oak tree at Lake of Isles, I went ahead and sketched a little version of that scene, taking some text from the writing I did. Sketchy graphite, ink, and marker.

Feet

With this entry I kind of lost the thread of what I was doing aesthetically and stylistically, but it's part of the "raw sketch" series of entries intended to help me continue to loosen up with my visual journal. It turned out kind of dumb and I probably didn't put enough thought into it. But the text and subject matter came from the writing element of my process this week.

Anagrams

Click to see bigger.

After our perplexing experience registering for baby things last week, my husband and I sat around creating anagrams out of the names of items on the stores "must-have" baby stuff list, because we're cool like that. The list of Stuff You Must Buy Or Your Baby Will Be Totally Deprived, by the way, is a real load of crap. I remember my little brother sleeping in a dresser drawer when we visited family, so I'm pretty sure we don't need three different "sleep systems" for our baby!

Anyway, this is my "interactivity" entry because it was a collaboration. If anything, my brilliant husband did most of the work, because I only came up with like two anagrams and he thought of about a billion. My favorite is the one at the top, because I'm fairly certain we will indeed need to learn to speak Blork in order to communicate with our baby girl.