Charles Bukowski & Other stuff

For the beginning of this blog I want to go way off topic and mention the greatness that is Charles Bukowski (author extraordinaire).  A new life goal of mine is to read every single one of his books!  If you have never heard of him or read anything of his I suggest starting with Factotum and move on from there.  I don't even know where to begin in describing his utter amazingness.  However, I do think he would have liked my legs.
As for Thesis talk, I think I may put most of my experiments on hold.  Do them on my own time and therefore giving me more time to brainstorm.  A former professor of mine suggested putting my ideas on flash cards, which isn't half bad.  It's a great way of organizing too, which I am a HUGE fan of!  Some ideas that I keep coming back to include: dying paper using oil & water based dyes/paints; photo transferring; snapshot (Tom Wood, Nan Goldin); and a new issue is privacy.  I mentioned in critique that I want to make my own paper and transfer the photo(s) onto it.  I like this idea because it's an added feature of the artist's hand in the work and I want to be a librarian one day and I LOVE books and paper.  Books are kind of a dying breed and I wish they weren't.  There's something so (I'm at a loss for words) so pleasing about holding a book, flipping through pages, carrying it, folding pages, rolling it, actual book marks!, knowing what a page looks like as a way of remembering it, the smell of it.  I think that if I made my own paper it would be reminiscent of a book in the way that you would want to feel it and smell it, it would be visually stimulating your sense of touch.  It would be more familiar and welcoming rather then the harsh crispness/gallery-suitable photo paper.  As for my subject matter, that is what I am struggling with.  I would love to do something different and use a landscape or objects as my main focus however I feel like it's too new of a subject to me and so I would need more time with it.  I want to go back to the figure.  I love it too much to ignore.  It's familiar and always always captivating and interesting and evokes so much more then I feel a landscape would.  However it is only mid October, so for now I will keep my options as open as I can.