3 posts tagged “lucas”
So I went and took a glass blowing class today. Truth be told it wasn't so much of a class as it was a place where for the same amount of money you would spend on a glass blown object you get to make it yourself and keep it. It turns out that this practice of blowing glass is ridiculously old. As a novel glass forming technique created in the middle of the last
century B.C., glassblowing exploited a working property of glass which
was previously unknown to the glass workers – inflation. Inflation
refers to the expansion of a molten blob of glass by introducing a
small amount of air to it. This property is based on the liquid
structure of glass where the atoms are held together by strong chemical
bonds in a disordered and random network,therefore molten glass is viscous enough to be blown and gradually hardens as it loses heat.
Wow!!! I am exhausted from that explanation of glass blowing that I copied and then pasted from Wikipedia. I myself have only a slight idea of how it is done at this point, and very little idea of why. I can tell you this though, that for the many years that it has been done, it has been mastered into a fine art. Some of the things these artists make destroy any image of glass blowing that you might have gotten while wandering Pier 1 for something "unique" for your home. The folks that took the time to let us get our hands dirty blowing glass are artists of a dangerous craft.
Enough of all that, here are some pictures.
Once the bowl that I made is done cooling, I will be sure to post a picture of it. It should only be a couple of days. In the mean time check out what these guys do, and click the link.
I received a message (via Facebook) from a friend Debbie which read, “I was pleasantly surprised to login to Facebook and see on my home page "LJ Daniels is now a fan of Lucas J Daniels" (or something like that). We should all be fans of ourselves. :)”, and it got me to thinking.
My reason for creating a “professional page” on Facebook, was honest from the start as long as you read yesterdays blog… but you have no way of constructing the correlation, so I will explain it to you.
Ethan one of my two generous benefactors, is quite the scientist, vastly intelligent on the universe and it’s structure ( which mostly goes over my head ). Ethan is beginning production of a film about such things and has produced a trailer. I am helping him network and “pimp himself” as I often do on many social websites. For that purpose I created a mock “professional page”, to show Ethan how it could work and benefit him. I am also a bit of an ego maniac so instead of just editing a page, I went ahead and published it to Facebook. I also went to the length that I became a fan of myself.
This is where Debbie and her message came in.
I responded to her “of course I am a fan of myself. I am helping a friend set up a batch of networking through his website, relevant to the movie he is making and made the page to show him how cool it can be. It's funny I think, but I must ask, why are you not a fan of me?”
… and of course this is where I got to thinking…
At first I was thinking how amusing it was to get that kind of message from a girl I “dated” in the 9th grade… and then…
…and then I thought to myself, “Why the fuck not?”
I might as well just own it. I am doing research for a book. I am finishing a number of other things I will be attempting to have published. I might as well do more than look at Google Analytics to figure out who I am writing to. It is important to know who actually reads this.
So I’m going to fucking own it.
Visit my Facebook page, this is where I am going to be keeping people who are authentically interested in my writing and being kept up to date.
Visit this link to join up and become a “fan of me” Lucas J. Daniels
On a slightly unrelated topic I felt very aged thinking this whole thing through before I wrote it down. I was outside, barefoot drinking a beer and leaning on the fire poker as if it were a cane. I lifted each foot individually for as long as they could stand to be warmed by the fire. I thought about things, poked at the fire… and looked at the sky.
I felt quite old while I thought about this thing.
I awoke today thinking about time again... more specifically where time has gone. I lost quite a few moments and memories by sacrificing them for no good reason other than to get high.
"I am un-sticking myself from time today.", I talk to myself in the shower, "Today is the spring of 1996, and the lilacs are in bloom along Moe Road."
TODAY IS LILAC DAY!
In the spring of 1996 I was approaching my graduation from High School and despite all my best efforts to liquefy my brain with pot, acid and alcohol I no worries about graduation. My G.P.A. was something Timothy Leary would have been proud of since it proved a number of theories about mind altering substances. I learned while high and was tested while high. I did well as long as those were not interrupted. I you tested me while sober I am sure I would have failed.
That spring in 1996 was when I fell in love with Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I had already been reading the stoners approved reading list (Huxley, Hemingway, Leary and Wolfe), but Slaughterhouse Five showed me something new, and validated all of my attempts at writing.
It reassured and comforted me.
It held me in it's paper arms and told me that everything was going to be okay.
What struck me most about this book at the time was the first few pages. It was all at the same time very funny, brave and glib. Mr. Vonnegut came outright and told you the story in but a few paragraphs. He told you what was going to happen and still made it so appealing that you were forced to read on. I had never read anything by Mr. Vonnegut at that point in my life and had no idea that was the essence of his tremendous style and the framework of his very personality. I would learn eventually in reading "Timequake", "Cats Cradle", and best of all "Breakfast of Champions" that this man was a mad genius.
I also learned that this is what I wanted to be. A mad genius traveling through time just by closing my eyes.
So in the shower, I close my eyes...
... and sail across time.
Spring of 1996, and the lilacs are all in bloom along Moe Road.
Listen:
Lucas has come unstuck in time.
