I made minor changes to my favorite “boring advice” to despairing friends. I’m going to letterpress print it with my revised knitbone symbol in a 3×7″ card format.
I’m also planning to print it as a bookmark.
I made minor changes to my favorite “boring advice” to despairing friends. I’m going to letterpress print it with my revised knitbone symbol in a 3×7″ card format.
I’m also planning to print it as a bookmark.
Rabbi Jeff Roth taught my wife a blessing: “May your wanting be wiser.”
This is something very much worth letterpress printing.
I do not see how I can go on without a printing press.
Some other things I want to print:
Or maybe I should just write and print my Enworldment book one chapbook at a time.
My very next project, though, is re-printing the Sefirot on a variety of papers (some hand-made) that are wandering their way across the country to my door. And hopefully, a third plate will also arrive from the die-maker soon, and unlike the first two, will be unblemished. I’m doing all these with the magical glow-gold ink I used on the 2025 pi posters.
I really need a printing press.
I spent the day yesterday in craft bliss.
An old friend of mine introduced me to a master letterpress printer who lives in the Atlanta metro area. The printer connected me with one of the nation’s best die makers. I immediately ordered a plate for my first project, which will be a letterpress sefirot.
I am doing this project because nobody else has. I have been unable to find a beautiful letterpress printed sefirot, so in order to have one I will have to print it myself. This is something that should exist. I’m excited to have a supply to give away to friends.
The final printed artifact will look like this:
Yesterday, despite UPS’s best efforts I managed to get both boxes of the printed spreads of Geometric Meditations. I unpacked and organized the components, and assembled the first sixteen copies. I gave the first three copies to Susan, Zoë and Helen. I put the fourth in my library, in the religion section with the Kabbalah books. This is a book I’ve wanted in my library for a long time.
The process of making these books is labor intensive. Here’s the process:
I’m working on methods to streamline production, but it is still time-consuming.
If you receive a copy of this book, please take care of it. In each book is fifteen years of intense thinking, hands-on use and iterative design, five years of obsessive writing, rewriting and editing, one year of final editing and design tweaking, two months of production work and about half an hour of handcraft.
I made everything as beautiful as I could, and I am uneasily pleased with how it turned out.
I just sent Geometric Meditations to the printer.
I am sending Geometric Meditations to the printer this weekend. I have continued to tweak the layout in vanishingly minuscule ways. Just about every word, every punctuation mark and every line break has been inspected, varied, experimented with, obsessed over.
I am posting what I think will be the final version which will be printed. If anyone happens to look at it and finds a mistake or flaw, please alert me. I know it cannot be perfect, but I’m pushing it as far in that direction as I can.
Once Susan gives it the last pass on Saturday and approves it, I am bundling it up and sending it off. I’m told the printing takes about fifteen days. After that, I will be hand-sewing each copy, and giving them to the people who participated in the development of the concepts and the design of the book.
Continue reading Publication of Geometric MeditationsI’ve contacted some letterpress printers about making my pamphlet, which used to be titled The 10,000 Everythings, but has been sobered up into Geometric Meditations, which is a more precise description of how I use the content of the book.
One printer has responded so far, and suggested some changes that seems to have improved it. I looked at the book again this morning, and I am still happy with it, so it must really be ready. There is only one word in the book that I’m not sure about.
I am producing it as a chapbook, sewn together with red thread, signifying both Ariadne’s thread as well as the Kabbalistic custom of typing a red thread around one’s left wrist to protect from the evil eye. Both are intensely relevant to this project. I have to remember how much I use these diagrams to generate understandings and to keep myself oriented. It is the red thread that connects all my thoughts. So the utility and value of the ideas is beyond doubt. It is true that the form does look and sound somewhat pompous, but it is the best (prettiest and most durable) form for these concepts, so I have to ignore my anxiety about scorn and ridicule from folks who know too little or two much (a.k.a. “evil eye”). At least one angle of understanding yields value, and hermeneutical decency requires that it be read from that angle.
I am incredibly nervous about putting this book out there. I am guessing I’ll just box all the copies up and hide them with my Tend the Root posters.