Back to Work

Now that Labor Day is over and summer has arrived at the part I love — those last three weeks before the autumnal equinox — it is time to stop goofing off and get a few things done. We had a rainy weekend here which was good for me because I stayed home and took care of a few things. I did go out yesterday for the Schooner Races. The wonderful picture at left was taken by my friend Jay Albert who has taken some of the best photos of Gloucester Harbor I have ever seen. That’s the Thomas E. Lannon, a true Essex schooner, blowing by a Navy destroyer.

But now that summer has simmered down and business is picking up and I have a book to push, I have to get to work. So over the weekend I started work on the Parlez-Moi Press home page and web site. This is actually fun because my boss for this site is easy to get along with. I have known for quite awhile that I wanted to make a Flash movie and this weekend I started it. The one that is posted now isn’t exactly what I had in mind but it is getting close. I’m getting better with Flash the more I twiddle with it.

What I wanted for this page was something bluesy and dreamy — the kind of crazy, montage of images that make up dreams and finally settle into something interesting. The images I used all have meaning — at least to me — and I think people will enjoy them. I’ll be interested to hear feedback.

I always liked the dove gray and violet color scheme I chose for Parlez-Moi Press. It is dreamy all by itself. And I love my little mermaid logo which I adapted from a piece of clip art I found in an old engravers clip art collection. The eyes that have remained a constant through all my Parlez-Moi Press designs are from a pencil sketch I did a long time ago. I call them Baptiste’s Eyes because they always make me think of the main character in The Old Mermaid’s Tale. The other design elements are also evocative for me. Of course there is the pounding surf of the ocean that underscores my whole life these days. That is a photograph I took out at Niles Beach last winter.

I used the image of Michelangelo’s Prigioneri “Atlas” because I love the symbology of that — a strong, powerful figure still trapped in the marble that “imprisons it” as Michelangelo himself said. And I like having it morph into the statue of the entwined Hindu lovers from one ho the Khujaraho Temples. It’s a nice transition — the stone prisoner transforming into a pair of lovers. The other carved figure in the montage is from a photograph I took out by Niles Beach. There is a seaside house there with a number of stone sculptures in the yard. One of them, a sad looking lady, stands just inside an ornate iron gate with the ocean behind her. She made me think of the women who wait for their men to return from the sea. And I liked morphing that into a photo of the beautiful tall ship Picton Castle that I took out in the harbor here a couple years ago. The sad lady and the returning ship.

Well, creating these sorts of little Flash movies is sort of like inventing a dream all your own. In a way, it’s like writing a story in pictures.

So Parlez-Moi Press is getting a facelift and My Last Romance and other passions will soon be available from this site. This is exciting and overwhelming and I’m more than a bit intimidated by the whole project but, so what? You have to stretch, right?

Thanks for reading.