I spent the last two weeks at an artists residency at TPH in Minneapolis MN. This is my report.

The house has a high wooden fence in front and a small brick courtyard on the side. The fence is painted emerald green, and the emerald effect is enhanced by an uneven paint job that makes it appear deep and luminous like an actual gemstone and not at all organic. The bricks are kind of wavy due to years of frost and also because of a big tree sending roots through the dirt below. The tree is on the property and I'd consider it the house's tree. The tree is a hackberry, and it's infested with galls. During my residency I sat under this tree, in the courtyard, at a small café table, a lot.

Galls are small abnormal growths of plant tissues caused by some type of parasite, in this case I believe it's Hackberry psyllids. They lay their eggs on the leafs and the eggs trick the plant, using chemical signals, into growing a little protective shell over the egg. Each type of gall-producing insect is specific to a type of tree, with each species speaking different chemical spells that affect the trees in different ways, producing different types of growths, different types of houses for different types of egg. It's a great system. The tree in Tom's yard seems to be affected only in the leaves, which are covered in little rice krispies from which a nymph emerged. When I got there in early September the courtyard was already covered in dead leaves and I raked them to the side, partly just to exert some control over the space, partly because the galls grossed me out.

Something I really enjoyed about the residency was just living there, accepting "here's my little house" as a reality, living a life not my own. As an example: the people who were here the month before left some food in the fridge, and I really liked eating it. They bought some avocados that didn't ripen in time for them, but were perfect for me. There was a big bag of Costco house brand coffee, which I drank freely, mixing in a little pinch of cloves from the spice drawer. A can of black beans, some tortillas, some salsa. They bought a jar of pasta sauce and never even opened it, plus 2 different kinds of parmesan cheese. A bag of frozen blueberries. I went out and bought pasta for the sauce, soy milk for the coffee, and yogurt for the blueberries. When I left I left even more tortillas, an onion, some garlic, and half a jar of peanut butter.

I would love to think that while I was in the residency I was an egg, and I exuded some type of chemical that caused my host to form a protective barrier around me. Don't get me wrong, I am an egg, I just don't know if my chemicals are so in tune with the host, or that they work at the house level. More likely I'm more of a social contagion. Still, I think my chemicals changed the house a little bit. At the very least I left behind a funny shape that might intrigue some and yuck others out.

In addition to the misc food items, here are the books I got in Minneapolis but left behind for lack of bag space. Until me, the house had no books at all. Now there's only these ones. They're on a shelf near the stairs, on the way to the bathroom.

Little Lulu #229 - someone wrote "#229" in magic marker on the cover, indicating that they DON'T care about the physical condition of the books, but they DO care about making sure they have every issue. Respect to the reader! NB: This is from after John Stanley's divine run on the series.

The Chocolate Cupid Killings by JoAnna Carl - there are a few mystery novel serieses with a food theme, but this one dials it in further, following chocolatier and chocoholic Lee McKinney Woodyard as she must solve a murder in her off-season coastal community while describing various chocolates in sumptuous detail. Got this out of the neighbor's trash in the alley behind Raisin Bird's house.

ZAP! Ray Gun Classics - I got this slender photobook because I'm perculating a ray gun concept at the moment, but then I remembered Missy Elliot saying that when her and Timbaland went in the studio for "Under Construction" they didn't listen to anyone else's music. And that record was a smash hit. I don't want ray gun aficianados praising my ray gun project for its fidelity to existing ray guns, I want to succeed the same way Missy did: inventive production, playful eroticism, and a commanding presence on the microphone. Got this out of a little free library, to which it might one day return.

Starchild by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson - no idea here, I just think it's nice to have something around that's about glorious worldlets of crystal where rebels from machine-bound Earth can find refuge from the inexorable Plan Of Man with its Body Bank and Programmed Living. I guess I'm just a romantic. Bought this from a store ($1)

Wedding Crashers DVD - I found a little free library with 20 copies of this inside, including the theatrical release, the unrated version, the uncorked edition, the widescreen version, and the fullscreen version (pan and scan). Then a half block away there was another little free library with 30 copies and then a bag in front with 20 more. I asked around and the answer to this mystery is that it was someone's project, and now they're done. They were trying to get 1000 copies together. I'm not sure if they did but I salute them for turning the page on this one. I wasn't paying attention to which one I got and it was the "uncorked edition", which I'm thinking is one with the deleted scenes undeleted. I don't know if I could watch this without thinking "I bet this scene got deleted" anytime the energy dips.

Oscar Levant "The Memoirs of an Amnesiac" AND "the Unimportance of Being Oscar" - long time readers may have clocked my fascination with Oscar Levant, who some have described as "a wincing boglin" in movies like the Band Wagon (1953) and An American In Paris (1951). He was also an extremely popular concert pianist who studied with Schoenberg, and a celebrated wit. After reading the first couple chapters of his first memoir it seems like maybe he was also the first high-profile guy with OCD? Or like the first one where that was his brand. I probably should've only got the first one but having both really adds to the mise en scène.

Nancy Drew #41, the Clue Of The Whistling Bagpipes - At some point in the life of this residency program, someone's going to be like "what's the deal with these books" and read a couple pages, or at least flip through and look at the illustrations. Maybe it's rainy and nothing's going on, maybe it's cold and they want something to read in the bath. "Actually this is kinda good" they'll say. They'll be right.

links / misc

• Tom's residency is not at the moment taking applications but for more info on Tom, check out his informative website at [www.tombubul.info]
• I know someone's going to ask me about the books I didn't leave behind, but there's nothing too noteable, other than I FINALLY got Vol 2 of Gershon Legman's "Rationale of the Dirty Joke". Vol 1 has "the clean dirty jokes", and Vol 2 has "the dirty dirty jokes". Legman also claims to be the person who introduced origami to the west, but that's a big time "[citation needed]". [wikipedia: Gershon Legman]
• Big thanks to the MN crew, I had a really nice time. For their contributions to a very nice time, this castle officially recognizes Tom, Flan, NJ, Raisin Bird, Julia, Shea'la, BVS, Patricia, Colleen, Hannah, Lee, Kenny Basil, Shivaun, "The Architect", the whole team at Ax Man, the red squirrel I saw on the walk to Tommy's, and the guy from Twin Cities Magic.

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