That dog is me.
Things have been cray-cray in the land of McCrayCray. The project to publish the new book of poems started in January, but since then I've been swooped off into another, more demanding, job. I've been to Ohio and back to bring a truck load of furniture to Albuquerque from Cleveland, where my parents live now. Then we found out we have to move in two months so we're trying to find new digs. Then our car breaks. Then there's a family reunion to get organized for. Actually two. I've been a big grumps 24/7. And of course no problems happen sequentially. They happen concurrently. So while I'm losing my mind, I'm finding some thread of sanity in the lessons of Cowboy Meditation Primer. Not that I'm great at it, mind you, but it's a practice and you just get tons more practice during the hard times.
But the book….is still…on schedule…for September.
It's been rough though. To make matters worse, I decided to write a Traveling Guide/Reader's Companion for the book, a map for traveling along the Goodnight Loving Trail with the characters of the book. The guide is also packed with New Mexico history and Zen Buddhist ideas referenced in the book, as well as where to stop along the way. It will all be a free and downloadable in September when the book goes on sale.
I might not get the eBook done, but…you can't have everything. Anyway, despite my complaining, a lot of great stuff has come together in the past few months.
Artist Emi Villavicencio did the cover for my last book of poems (see right) and I had such a good time working with her for that I decided to see if she was available for the new book. Lucky for me she was. We worked on this project from about late February to the end of June.
I told her we needed some kind of mashup between cowboys and Buddhists. So she sent me some pictures of belt designs and tattoos just so we could brainstorm off them. By April, she sent me the following drawings to see what would work.
I loved the Zen sand garden imagery and I also loved the simplicity of the rope, except it looked too much like a cattle brand. Ouch. So then Emi came up with the following two variations based on that feedback: the first based off of a style of Buddhist guidebooks and the second based off an idea we had for spurs dragging lines across the sand. I loved both of them and it was hard to choose which direction to go in.
From there it was working on variations of the boot idea, which we picked because the book has so references to taking care of your feet and feet being a focus of meditation. We could also focus on the iron-rich, red quality of New Mexico dirt. I was worried the New Mexico sky was the only element missing from the design, it's vibrant white and blues. So we decided the title might be a way to fit that element in.
In the first draft, Emi sketched everything out loosely. Then we tried a translucent boot and a more Zen font for the second version. The final draft returns to the more stylized cowboy boot, richer dirt, and the blue sky font coloring.
What a fun process. Meanwhile, I needed to get an author photo shot. Stephanie Howard did the photography in Marina Del Ray, California, for the last book. But she has since moved to Atlanta. Finding new people for this part of the project proved difficult. People I contacted weren't available at the same time, strangers wanted money up front. Shoots got planned and cancelled. Finally, my co-worker in Media Production here at CNM, Pat Vasquez-Cunningham, suggested some simple shots with his tintype app. We went down to Old Town Albuquerque one evening and took some great shots.
His app does crazy things to make your eyes look ghostly like a tin-type photo. I call the last one my country-music-album cover.
The shirt I'm wearing I just bought from my new favorite story, Soft Surroundings. It's called, (I kid you not), a poet's blouse, I suppose due to its ruffled sleeves, as if it were a shirt Lord Byron would wear.
Pat also took some shots that didn't turn out for some awesome reasons, including a series where his camera would only focus on my hands. I liked that since my hands did all the work (or a lot of it) typing out the book. In this photo you can also see my great-grandfather's cowboy boots on my feet.
Here he is wearing his own boots with my Dad and Uncle.
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