While research­ing aerie, one of my project words, and try­ing to find more than “nest of a bird on a cliff or moun­tain top”, I came across Coven of the Mother Moun­tain Aerie. Now I won­der if there’s any way to include such a group as my ency­clo­pe­dia entry for aerie. Prob­a­bly not, since the COMMA folk, while being quite inter­est­ing, may not pro­vide the type of def­i­n­i­tion of my word nec­es­sary for the Project. At the exact time I per­formed the Mother Moun­tain Aerie research online, the story of Arthur, past King of all lovely tales of knight­hood and Right Over Might, came on the His­tory Chan­nel. Excel­lent timing.

Any­thing con­cern­ing Arthurian leg­end brings back mem­o­ries of my child­hood read­ing pref­er­ences. Just as I grad­u­ated from Dr. Seuss and moved, by per­sonal choice, into more meaty fic­tion, my teach­ers banded together to force upon me that awful of awful moment of schol­ar­ship — the intro­duc­tion of Clas­si­cal Lit­er­a­ture. Mrs. Warner gagged me with Les Mis­er­ables. Fol­lowed it closely with a Charles Dick­ens, the title of which remains, for my own san­ity, blocked from my mem­ory. Eighth grade Eng­lish. Class­room flash­backs crowd in and slam against the angst of pre-​early teen years. The shock of receiv­ing a grade lower than B+ sent me cry­ing to Mrs. Warner, beg­ging for a sec­ond chance at a grade above a D+. A book report, please please, I begged, extra credit…? She said, Fine then, you want extra credit? Read The Once and Future King by T.H. White… you have one week. I will quiz you about it myself, you will not write a report… no no… we’ll have an oral exam. Next Thurs­day after school.

You can under­stand why I do assem­blage art if you try to fol­low my writ­ing. Leaps and lags from point to counter-​point. Bits of one mem­ory flagged then tagged by another. Like my art. Pieces of me. Of the past. Ephemeral as junior high fashion.

The rest of the story of Arthur and my Eng­lish class? I read the book, every bit of it. In one week­end. I was twelve. Then came Mary Stewart’s book about Mer­lin, then more books through­out high school, cul­mi­nat­ing in a dis­cus­sion of Le Morte d’Arthur as a senior term paper. Between read­ing about King Arthur, Amelia Earhart, all the vil­lains who were hung by Judge Parker, and Tolkein’s nov­els — it’s a won­der I grad­u­ated high school at all. Which sends me dri­ving down another memo­r­ial high­way begin­ning with my not attend­ing grad­u­a­tion and end­ing with the Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas.

Hell, this is sup­posed to be about my art. The process of assem­blage. I’m sure the proof­read­ing of this blog post will be painful tomor­row. Today was much too filled with activ­ity for me to be lucid right now.

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