DUUUUUUUN.

In one four hour, triple run marathon: that shit is printed. And it looks pretty much how Brandon's mock-up showed it. Not bad. The detail on that polymer is fairly mindblowing. If I like you, I'll send you one. Haha. No actually, if I remember your address, I'll send you one. So if you don't get anything, I still like you.

The early stages of the next letterpress adventure (polymer!) can be found here, as told by Brandon.

The Dead

Ode to Our Lady

This is the cover that will be on my paean to Betsy that I am attempting to set in type, (which is so much more trouble than I thought possible; I could write out a dozen copies faster than I could print them). I shouldn't be giving away the cover... but I couldn't resist. I did several color combinations, so each of the books will come out different.

Heavy Machinery + Beer = Hell yes we did.

Brandon, the owner of the Blue Barnhouse, brought the beer. I'd Vandercooked a thousand prints already, it was dark, and I was starving, but I agreed to stay. We shifted that monster C&P, just the two of us. Cranked up the jack, put rollers under 'er, and moved two thousand pounds of steel through several doors, around a paper cutter, and into the back. Dented some shit. Drank some more beer. Then tried out the NEW COLOSSAL PAPERCUTTER OF SUPREME DOOM. This is a machine that would sever your arm like a kid pinching off an ant's head. And let me tell you: it slices that paper smooth. Chopped another couple thousand sheets. And that is how we roll at the BBH.

Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps!

There are great and beautiful happenings afoot, though what they are, who knows.
It is finally autumn. This part of the world takes special pleasure in immolating itself. It is the final act of a tragic opera, wherein the heroine robed in flames screams out her lifeblood upon the stage with a gold sword in her heart and the hero falls down flat beside her like a black river. Let not your heart be troubled. She's Lady Lazarus. She dies in fact, but she comes back in fact as well.
All my high ideals pertaining to the use of my food stamps ended last week thus: A fine fall day. I squat on the curb outside a warehouse cramming a pound of smoked salmon into my mouth, with my fingers. My stomach begins to hurt. I don't stop until it's gone. Then I suck the fat off the skin. Unbelievably, I've run out of money and it's more than a week til the beginning of November. My dearest friend is coming to visit tomorrow and I didn't have the self-restraint to save enough to lavish yak milk ice cream on her. On the plus side, I sickened myself on the salmon, and so got what I deserved and will maybe learn a lesson. Though I have my doubts.
I have just read a book called The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, which I recommend very seriously to all readers of this missive. It is the kind of story which lodges in your chest and does not move ever again, suspended there like a water globe in perfect clarity and brightness with ample shadows.
My housemate works on her press incessantly, and something about the clanking of it infuses me with energy and daring. I am presently working on typesetting and printing a long poem to Betsy House, a story about two women who attempt to fund a sex change by counterfeiting, and a Prague + Antigone linocut I sadly fucked up by miscarving the words, but will repair in due time.
As of the end of the month, my apprenticeship is halfway done. Come February, where shall I fly? There are many, many possibilities, and so few obligations left to me. Not entirely by accident. Any off-hand suggestion could decide it all. If you have even the slightest desire to live vicariously through me, then just say a name and I will go. New Orleans? Providence? Flagstaff? Sarajevo?
St. Christopher look kindly on me.

FINAL CUT!

Icehouse linocut: second layer