By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

For the longest time — ever since I cleaned out a box and found it — I've been holding an old "Star of the Week" card from Mrs. Murray, second-grade teacher of my son in the year 1999 at Catholic School.

 

Various occasions came and went and I didn't get it together to make a photo of the Star of the Week card because I knew it wouldn't come out very well — too dark, or with a flash showing (I never know how to get rid of that flash — anybody? I can't seem to get the flash to stay turned "off" on my phone).

I tried and tried to ditch the flash but then I finally decided that the flash made the star shine!

Finally, when my son completed a long, hard re-vamp of his media consultant website I decided it was time to get off the dime. If you need help with social media, personal brand and story craft as well as web site building, give him a shout. He also does drone photography.

 

 

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

Artifacture by MidJourney

Years ago — I can't quite place when, perhaps when my son inherited some money from my folks? — he bequeathed our family what he dubbed "the Swag Lounge". The Swag Lounge was his — 21-year-old? — notion of what was "swag," all from Ikea:

o all white loungers in a black frame

o black table

o lamp (I think, but it went missing).

Years later, the Swag Lounge, long stashed away in the Store Room (AKA Bedroom) finally re-appeared in the Living Room/Office in my "new" COVID apartment (now 4 years old exactly) — or rather the one lounger that would fit, and the coffee table. White is hard to keep clean, especially with a cat who sleeps on it all the time.

I washed the Swag Lounge covers in the laundromat, but then it was HELLA hard to get the slipcovers slipped back on. I don't want to do that again. 

Hence, finally a hard scrubbing with soap and Chlorox and a dry-out on the radiator. 

As for the coffee table, it now ironically has a table cloth on it which actually makes it easier to clean — washing laminated wood tables never lasts but the tablecloth you can just periodically throw in the laundry.

AI art to the rescue again, because the Swag Lounge has seen better days.

But wouldn't you like to doze in the Swag Lounge in the desert, your thoughts clean and aligned?

 

Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

This thank-you card had to go to the person who sent me the two boxes of books…which sat in the hallway unopened for days…which were finally opened…and shelved…in another "just one thing" some time ago. To be sure, I photographed the return address to get that thank you done and then it stalled.

I need a magic pen to write it.

You know how your mom used to say, "That bed isn't going to make itself, you know!"

And my musician friend says "That music doesn't write itself, you know!"

Although people think these things happen now with chatGPT. Well, they don't. And I can't entrust this job to Jippity, because it's a complicated, personal missive, not just the thank you. No it's got to be sat out and done.

So once I got over the magic pen illusion, I still felt I had to have this Perfect Stationery, which is actually this stationery made from these really weird Russian religious paintings, and I've had at least one friend wonder what the hell message I was trying to convey with those damn weird paintings, and I refrained from sending the card to a relative after having thus been brought up abruptly to realize that not everyone understands the context of weird Russian religious paintings. 

Still, I felt they'd be great for this job! So I had to find them! And now I couldn't! Because I got too industrious and put them away somewhere…not in the file cabinet drawer where they used to be…who knows where…this wasted a couple of days….

And this is one of my insights from the Just One Thing regime. Everything is connected, and you always find something didn't get done because it was connected to something else. You wanted to write a thank you note. But you didn't have the address. Oh, actually you had photographed, but that meant trying to find it now on Google Photos. You wanted to send this note, but you couln't find that right stationery… Or maybe there wasn't a stamp.

When my boss from New York used to call me in Moscow when I worked at the Soros foundation and inquire why things weren't getting done (I was sent there to unsnarl a program that wasn't getting done), I would try to explain that one Russian was always dependent on another…that Russian couldn't get permission…was blocked…was ignored…another was disenfranchised…there was always a chain of inexplicable bureaucratic layers and maneuvers worthy of Ilf and Petrov or that Georgian movie about the painting Golubye Gory [Blue Mountains]…. Sometimes there would be simple explanations. Why did the email get turned off? Why didn't it flow over night from the New York office or visa versa? With the time difference  of 8 hours, this was vital. 

Come to find out that Dyadya Vanya (Uncle John) would vacuum the office at night. There was one working outlet. He had to unplug the computers to plug in the vacuum cleaner. He would clean the rooms for some hours with an extension cord…nothing worked then…sometimes he'd forget to plug the computers back in. Mystery solved. But most of the time it was these elaborate chains of permissions.

Later in life I realized that in fact it wasn't just Russia that worked that way — although it can be more obvious there because there are housing authorities and stamps and grandmothers on benches and all these inhibiting factors. Everything works that way and it works in your life that way. You didn't do a thing because it depended on another thing.

I know! Let's break the chain and ditch the idea of the Perfect Stationery and just use Any Old Card (except maybe a Christmas card). Didn't I see one out of the corner of my eye when shifting around desk drawers and file drawers? Oh, but it didn't have an envelope…but wait…we're going to go entirely through these drawers at some point but let's rifle quickly through one promising one called "Family" and see, isn't there some generic cards sent by some charity? There were. Didn't they have envelopes? They did.

Written — and mailed even.

And there's a way that the links turn positive as well as I explained in the post about the "Wires Drawer". The trick is to break the cycle of all the nay-staying and negative connections and try to flip them into the positive circuits. This sounds awfully cheesy, but it seems to work that way. Step by step.

Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

I haven't neglected to do "just one thing" every day, but I haven't been recording them. So I hope to make this go quickly.

I usually manage to clean the bathroom quite frequently especially because the cat makes messes. But the corners…no. That cold tile…

Corner after corner of cold tile…

Seems so hard to stoop and bend and reach and get behind everything, the rickety shelf threatens to fall, stuff falls over, there's the cat again…

But somehow it got done today, as I had some paper towels to work with (I don't always).

It will need doing again in two days…

Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

Artifacture by MidJourney

"Just One Thing" seems mainly about "doing".

There is a Gurdjieff saying that likely doesn't mean what it seems to, or means more than it seems to, but here it is anyways:

The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do.

But this day's task is about a more Zen-like "not-doing".

And that is not drinking tea after 6 pm, in the hope that this will help me go to sleep earlier and not keep me up (given that I have medicines that already cause insomnia).

I find it hard to believe in this because I don't think it makes that big a difference, but here goes.

Of course, Not-Doing is a kind of Doing, especially attempted by Westerners

No worries, I didn't attempt this again.

 

 

 

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator

Artifacture by MidJourney

A colleague sent two boxes of books. They sat in the hallways. For some weeks. 

Finally I put them away by rearranging the book shelves, 

That's it. That's the "Just One Thing."

It was made possible because instead of worrying about having to get up on a chair and risk falling, it happened that the couch was pushed up against that bookshelf, and I realized that made it less of a problem (although still not ideal).

Owls were not actually involved.

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

Artifacture by MidJourney

As I reflected on this over time, this Box of Treasures came to embody the realization that the negative change of things depending on each other and not getting done can (at least sometimes) turn into the  positive chain of solutions and getting things done.

I wonder how long the box was there. I think a year, maybe more — not months, related to the more recent desk clean-up. Yet these were once in/around the desk and were put in a separate box precisely because they are treasures and I didn't want them to break. Then somehow they got covered over by another box…

The treasures consisted of a leaded stain-glass candle holder I had gotten from an old friend as a wedding present ages ago which had held up very well over the years, and which had someone gotten carried away by my daughter to her house, then brought back again. Then the lavender spray that I looked all over for, because that's effective in keeping cats away from places plus it helps you sleep. There were those little painted green Russian chess pieces that were (like others around the house) endlessly separated from their fellows in a wooden box which needed to be rounded up.

There was some kind of stone that was supposed to align your chakras or who the hell knows. Not drawn here was a piece of black plastic which looked like a part or a cover to something, but I couldn't figure out what.

There are a fair number of things like that around the house, and I throw them out and then tend to regret it. All of a sudden I realized this was the cover to the paper tray on the printer (which is an exasperating beast). I wanted that cover to keep the cat from pawing the tray, which sticks out temptingly on the file cabinets where he frequently climbs up. And so it gets dusty and furry and stuck. So this was perfect. I closed up the paper tray — now that all was right with that world, the top of the filing cabinet did need cleaning up. It becomes the repository of things moved or brought into the house. It has a bunch of paintings and photos, some needed frames, some with broken frames that need at least to be propped up…

The funny thing is, a few weeks ago I wanted to make an imbolc scene, or some kind of spring ritual scene, and funnily enough, the treasures collection looks quite similar. But I have no idea how you stage such a ritual and it's more that I like the idea of the props than the ritual.

I guess it's because of the lavender…or the cornflowers…and the candles.

And there were masks…

Some kind of druid effect…

But I digress. Also within the treasures box was a long strip of cardboard made by my Postalist friend of 50+ years (Postalism is the practice of still mailing letters, particularly with collages or art work of interesting stamps). It said "A Few Twists and Turns on the Road These Years But Here's Hoping 2023 is Boffo!" I guess it was a New Year's cad. Yeah. Bing Image Create does better with words, but seldom perfectly.

So the treasurse were all put away on the desk hutch shelves — there was room — where they should have been put ages ago — the top of the filing cabinet was now cleared once the plastic cover set the tone; the bed was sprayed nicely; there was now a place to put the candle I sometimes brought out to have a pine scent and fretted about because the only candle holder I have is a heavy flat glass one that is very shallow; and I was inspired to put my friend's Postalist letters all in one of his Postalist artons sent to try to consoldiate the papers…

I can't begin on the chess yet which awaits in other tangled boxes in the other room, but the rock is sending out whatever rays it needs to send out and we're getting there. It's a positive chain. Plus there's now yet more room in the hallway and a chance to face boxes in the back closet now….

Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

So you can see where this is going now after our previous episode.

The Goodwill bag. Which has sat there more than a year, surely. I moved here four years ago, at the start of the pandemic, it was madness, so many things went wrong. Then I was fortunate I got two books to translate and had to work like mad to pay off back rent that had piled out when first one room mate fled when I couldn't promise I'd keep the two-bedroom as I was in line for the old folks' program, then another fled due to COVID, and I got stuck waiting months on end for the application to be processed, and the apartment to be readied and me to move — after the pandemic was already quite underway, pre-vaccines, in May 2020. Then in 2022 finally my son came and we put a lot of stuff into plastic crates, threw out a few amount of stuff, and got the other room organized enough to use the crates as a base for a mattress and to make a bedroom out of it, its natural purpose. My son did an enormous amount of work because I spent half the time with terrible gagging fits (which finally led to another operation in 2023). 

So, as I mentioned I backslid, then with renewed purpose the next day, after the patch was one and I could also actually make a rag bag (yay! no more using dish towels that are in perfectly could shape and shouldn't be used to clean with, but only dry!) — I managed to put some of the items I hesitated about BACK into the Goodwill back. Honestly, I'm not going to wear that too-tight blue short-sleeved shirt with the frilly collar, the sort of thing I hate. No, those too-big heavily flowery pants that are a chore to shorten or take in really should go, somebody gave me those (a lot of shopping for me used to be done for me by my mother-in-law, before she became more elderly, and with dementia. OK, progress. Not enough to really fill up the bag, however, and it was only a modest cloth grocery bag. So, now I had to look in the closet. At least one closet. There was no good reason to be keeping a velour green men's jacket, I have no idea where that came from. 

It might have even come from my cousin's local second-hand store where she volunteers, the Opportunity Shop — like the quilted vest my daughter rejected outright (though she shops regularly in the thrifts herself) — and which was too small for me. And now I had to also face that large, black, bulky top with the horrendous sequins all over it. My God, talk about Brighton Beach! I may hav worn this one…and only to Brighton Beach, to my mother-in-law's house (where there were only other Russians who would only say it was a nice top lol). My God, that I even wore it once! OK, this has to go. Now we also see another velour (I hate velour!) top probably my mother gave me which means it is truly ancient — and covered all over with paint from some long-ago job, not even Goodwill worthy. Rag bag! OK done!

I don't even have to walk all the way to the Good Will (or the Salvation Army) store, take your pick, as there is a collection box right at Stuyvesant, the housing complex near me, and I can toss it there. 

Naturally, I walk right by it after first becoming distracted with the community "take one/leave one" book box — where I left some off and took one — and then fastened on the Ufixit store where I wanted to see if they'd take my broken computer. They would. That Just One Thing still awaits, and I wonder how the hell I will get it down there, as hauling it in a cart might make it more broken.

So off I go to my aunt's still toting the Goodwill bag all the way to her house…where I should have tried to get her to part with some old stuff…but in any event I finally went BACK to the collection box on my way home and…DONE!

It's only a grocery-bag full of likely 5-10 pounds or a square foot of stuff gone out of the MOUNDS that await. But still. Progress! Remember, you don't want somebody to have to be doing this after you die!

 

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

Artifacture by MidJourney

When I got the two boxes associated with the desk clean-up done (medicines, pictures, trinkets, etc. to clean and put away) I still had to face a shallow cardboard box and a small, deep plastic basket that held…collage scraps. Papers, cards, newspaper clippings, magazines, found objects, odds 'n ends that I fancied I would make collages out of…some day. A normal person would either throw them out now — or better yet, wouldn't have kept them. But like those cross-country skis that you buy and stay in the garage, never used, as an aspiration of someday, shlussing through the woods in the silent snow, so those collage scraps stand as the testimony of some more creative, lighter life where one makes collages, hangs them, gives them to friends, photographs them and puts them in SL, and more!

Yes, MidJourney can't help making of this concept something rather foolish and hoarder-like, no?! That poor old lady looks like she is now penning in blood, and her suit is like a collage, made of old carpet scraps, and her hair is going to end up in the collage (the others in this set were even worse, with the women actually looking frightened! MidJourney, why???)

Meanwhile, back in RL, friends come to the house, they see the basket of interesting, odd cards and what-not, and say, oh, what's that… OK, one friend only actually does that. OK maybe one friend and a relative. One friend who himself is strange and sends out strange postcard artifactures….

In any event…The collages never get made. I study other, real artists' collages and I think: "HOW do they do that???" The fact is, I made collages back in the day, when I was a child or in my teenage years…I loved making collages of magazines then, carefully cut out. They didn't seem so hard to do them.

Of course, there was no Internet in those days so we actually sent letters. We would ask the man the hardware store to give us his old sample books of wallpaper which he was going to throw out (or which were already in the dumpster). We would then cut out and fold and paste-up colourful, patterned envelopes — an idea given us by a Girl Scouts counselor. And endlessly send letters where the envelope was more fascinating than the letter…and of course try to find colourful stamps to match. And sometimes inside would be a carefully-wrought collage.

I think I had some idea that I was giong to make a collage about COVID. Or about, scenes I happen across in the city. Or world events. Or who the hell knows. Yes, Norman Rockwell it is, a mess…

It really isn't that bad. I actually have the pieces mainly all in a box and a basket and…the question is to get it out of the living room where it is constantly an obstacle, where I constantly stub my toes and that really hurts.

So here's what I did. I went through the box. I threw out a few obvious mistakes like old bills or circulars from medicines or ads under the door, nothing to see here. Weeded out a few more things. Now I had the things to make a COVID collage, like rubber gloves, a badge, a postcard, a something…OMG what a cliche this will all be. Even so, I'm keeping most of it and who knows.

It's got to be better than what MidJourney turns out, right??? I noticed Chet Bliss on Twitter, whom I follow for his consistently inspirational and talented AI art, went back to RL to make collages, and put up some photos of those on Twitter. Maybe that's a natural process?

These are all terrible cliches. You would think something that was taking everybody's art and mashing it up to spew out what it spews out could make a goddamn collage with more elan than it does…

I wonder if back in the day, before the Internet, or even after the Internet, any artist or photographer sued a collage-maker over the images used…

I had the idea to photograph the bits and bobs, and then it might be easier to manipulate them and I'd be less stressed about ruining only one copy of something. But then…I couldn't figure out how you'd make the edges jaggedy. I tried making templates in MidJourney — they were terrible. Pre-made collage templates online were even worse. So it will be a challenge…

But here's what I did. I took all the collage scraps that were in that shallow box you couldn't fold the edges down into, and…I sealed it up with scotch tape.  I then put it in the bureau in the hallway — itself the triumph of a Just One Thing done some months ago, last year, when I finally ceased having an upturned mattress carton as my hallways console, and got the actual antique bureau out of the bedroom where it was overburned with boxes and junk and put that in the hallway — although originally I hadn't thought it would fit. It does. It's great. At least something worked right.

So collage scrap box? Done. Not collecting any more for now. Those are the ones that have to be used — or not, they'll go out in the garbage. In four years. Or something…

It's Just One Thing but it's getting more done than it was.

By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor

Since checks cost a whopping $58 to order from TD Bank (Yes! Go Google it!), and I hardly ever use checks (most things can be paid online), I started this thing where I get a money order from the post office. Of course, there's a fee for a money order ($2.10 for under $500) so that maybe doesn't make sense…except it's better to do a few of those a year than pay $58. Insurance companies seem to be the ones not letting you pay online. Or a check bounces, it took so long to mail, or an automatic debit bounces and to prevent it bouncing again, off you go to get a money order. It's good exercise.

We are now back at our friend the Madison Square USPS on E. 23rd St between Lex and 3rd, home of a fantastic set of WPA murals, and yes, bloggers have noticed how they are in bad repair and need cleaning and refreshing. And yes, I was just here yesterday — but then I didn't have a payment on PayPal to use to buy the money order. And it's important because it is accident insurance my son sold me years ago when he worked for an insurance company, and it's very cheap ($26 a quarter) and has paid out twice already when I fell and hurt myself, covering a day in the hospital, broken glasses, even missed days of work. So I decided to keep it because I fall fairly often, my left leg is weak from an injury that didn't heal and it gives out.

Obviously on the Smithsonian site, Kindred's works look a lot crisper.

There's one where I swear the kid is pick-pocketing a man who's back is turned.

Yes? No?

Some kind of flurry of activity. The woman looks like she is opening a letter with bad news.

Or she's going to mail a "Dear John" letter or something. She is wearing gloves, it seems, as women did.

If you go around to the other side of this post office, there is a huge, empty hall, a waste of government building space that ought to be used to put in more clerks, have more jobs, and shorter lines. But, you know, it's the Post Office… This has a whole gallery of WPA art, and not just the "workers" motifs, as if every artist studied socialist realism in the Soviet Union, but rich people in fur coats with doormen buildings…except the doorman is so gigantic, and there seems to also be a worker with a hammer, that it's probably still the communist touch.

 

And here is where I ask myself: why does every WPA mural look alike? Did they all go to the same school? Is this just the worldwide workers' world style of the 1930s?

So let's ask CoPilot:

Now let's try chatGPT: