Press Envy! Micachu! Kittens!

Reading the homepage of my friend MC Hyland's Double Cross Press has me drooling and wishing I were cool enough to print stuff as well as write it. She talks about searching for the right materials and appearance for each project in a way entirely evocative of the search for perfectly matching form and content that I always go through in poetry. 

A while back I was interviewing Micachu (of Micachu & the Shapes) and I told her that I first listened to her album because I heard she was a fan of Harry Partch, the 20th century composer/madman (what was that story about leaving a knife in somebody's pillow?) and creator of instruments. In fact, many of his pieces can only be played on those particular instruments, so to recreate them,  you must obtain or manufacture that instrument and learn it. In a way that's the height of pretension but also the height of creativity. Micachu says she sees it as starting with nothing and ending up with something, as really really being involved with all parts of writing a song. 

Artful presses have a similar effect in literature, I think. Is the other alternative creating our own language for all of our work? Or are there other manners I'm missing? The medium (in a web v. print way) plays into this, of course, as well as the actions one forces a reader to take in order to absorb or experience a work. (I.e. mouse-clicking, page-turning, unfolding, scrolling, etc.) Perhaps this is me looking for yet another path in which to extend my level of control-freakness over things I write.

Onto the topic of kittehs! Every now and then I think of "getting a kitten for my cat." I usually don't go farther than that once I realize the flawed logic of that idea. But last night I found myself browsing the "kitten personals" at my favorite local animal rescue place, which is where I got my beloved Dart. I was tempted by a couple cute faces but I know it's not the right time for a new pet. But I wanted to recommend them anyway. If you're in the Boston area, you can't go wrong with The Kitty Connection. They do a really good job of matching cats with owners--they'll tell you if a cat hates kids or dogs or people or whatever so you don't have an unpleasant surprise--and they even let you return your cat within a certain amount of time if you didn't get the right one. Now that's what I call quality!

Dart wants me to add that his personal said that he was the loviest cat you'll ever meet and likes to be held like a baby. Obviously, it worked on me and turned out to be totally true.