Kickstart my art

[daidoji_gisei]

I normally get up around 5 am; this morning that is when I clocked out of work. I am, in a word, messed up. I've been dutifully trying to write all day, but with a brain that took about two hours of tea drinking before it could wrap itself around the concept of "making breakfast"--and this consisted of dishing yogurt into a bowl and getting two slices of cinnamon raisin bread out of a bag--I've had less than stellar success.

However, now that night is falling my topsy-turvy brain appears to be turning back on. In the interest of helping this process along I'm going to rev up my fingers by writing something light and frivolous. Specifically, an icon meme! yhlee has chosen five of my icons that she is curious about, and I'm going to write about them.

The lucky icons are:

Are we all ready?


This is a snippet from T.S. Eliot's poem "Ash Wednesday". The observant reader has probably guessed that I am somewhat fond of this poem. For me this icon (and that part of the poem) is about keeping going. I spend a lot of time reminding myself, or being reminded, of all the reasons I can't do things: I'm not smart, I'm not pretty, I'm not skilled, I'm not talented, the list goes on and on. I frequently go and do things anyway, because...because...I don't know why. But I think of it as 'climbing the third stair'.




This was from a collection of faux tabloid headline icons; they were all screamingly funny but this one mentioned my home, so it was the one I grabbed. I like to use it for Nebraska-centric things, but it has other uses.



I made this icon using the LJ icon tool--that's why it's so blurry. The image is taken from the Death card in the Rider-Waite tarot. (I almost wrote that is was from the Morgan-Greer, whose art I prefer overall, but then I noticed that my Empress icon is from Rider-Waite and so I had to go dig out my tarot decks to check. [I don't believe in fortune-telling, but I like tarot cards and have a small collection that I add to on very rare occasions.]) In my icon menu I have it listed as "the rose of changes" because Change is the traditional reading of the Death card, and I felt I needed a icon for Change. Also, roses are cool.



Another fuzzy icon of mine. The art is koshindou's, from the comic he drew of "Shadows of the Clan", the L5R KYD fanfic that we co-wrote. It is from the point of the story where Koshin and Natsugusa embrace, and he feels the pressure of her non-existent hand on his back. For me this is an icon about friendship, and the invisible support it brings.





Ah, yes--Zangetsu, from Bleach. This is an icon about strength. Early on in their acquaintence he tells Ichigo, "Retreat and you will age. Be afraid and you will die." Well, I'm going to age and die regardless--but it would be nice not to spend the meantime in fear. I have yet to achieve this goal, but it's something worth trying.

I haven't given the sources of the icons I didn't make, but I try to be scrupulous about such things, so if you check my userpic page you'll find the credits.