Giving insomnia the finger (actually four fingers because I hate it that much)

“Every time you come in yelling that God damn "Rise and Shine!" "Rise and Shine!"
I say to myself, "How lucky dead people are!”

-- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Fingers with cutout faces, one in stitches 7-8-13

“Do you wake up as I do, having forgotten what it is that hurts or where, until you move? 

There is a second of consciousness that is clean again. 

A second that is you, without memory or experience,

the animal warm and waking into a brand new world.”

-- Jeanette Winterson

“I didn't want to wake up.

 I was having a much better time asleep. 

And that's really sad.”

-- Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

Owie

"I'm just like anyone.

I cut and I bleed."

-- Michael Jackson

Boo boo finger face 6-29-13

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. 

Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

-- Mel Brooks

Linoleum block with actual blood drop  6-29-13

"Mishaps are like knives, 

that either serve us or cut us, 

as we grasp them by the blade or the handle."

-- James Russell Lowell

Nobody can say I am not willing to bleed for my art.

I was carving a linoleum block self portrait, and the knife slipped and jabbed hard into my left thumb.

It hurt, but not too bad, and so I put a Bugs Bunny bandage on it and kept carving.

I should have known better.

I should have had enough common sense to realize what a knife that can cut through hard linoleum might be able to do soft flesh.

I should have put on some gloves.

Should-a. Could-a. Would-a.

A few moments later the knife slipped again, and this time I seriously cut the shit out of my left index finger. 

It hurt.

It bled.

A lot.

How does that saying go?

"If it happens once it's a mistake. If it happens twice, it's a choice."

Lucky for me there was a doctor in the house.

He injected a syringe full of Lidocaine into my finger to numb it, then scrubbed out all of the linoleum block debris and sewed me up with 8 stitches. 

He swaddled my "Frankenfinger" and said I was lucky because I just missed cutting the tendon.

I, of course, gave my boo boo finger a little sad face and took its picture.

I also gave him a name.

I'm calling him "Art."

Get it together

“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. 

Trying to control what cannot be controlled. 

I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. 

They will break no matter what we do.” 

-- Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Self portrait 6-5-13

“And oh she had been broken. 

She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience 

that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, 

you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall.”

-- Jodi Picoult, Second Glance 

“Something has got to hold it together. 

I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.” 

-- Tom Robbins