IsadoraWing

May 8, 2013:
Taking a wee break from swapping to plan my wedding this summer. Will be swapping again in a month. Until then I am logging on each day to check messages and rate.

I'm a literature nerd in a hippie beach college town in California. I used to eat a lot of paste in grade school. And the powdered soap. Bassoons and oboes make me melancholy and I enjoy it.

Most things excite me in some way. I love birds, maps, the ocean, trains, westerns, writing fiction and poetry. I'm a skeptic and I like discussing world religions, science, quackery, and freethinking.

I go beachcombing to relax. I collect personal narratives. I try to get lost. I take photographs of bizarre things and myself in wigs.

I write short stories, prose poetry, and I work on a longer novel that keeps my imagination running at night when I'm trying to sleep.

Here is my parrot, Max:

He says "I love you", "Hey baby", "Oh chico", and "Stop screaming!" among other things.

• I carve stamps and make my own stationery and cards. I love the whole process of making a stamp from scratch - the drawing, editing, transferring, carving, adjusting, testing, adjusting, etc. The finished product is worth it.

• I've taken up quilting lately so I love interesting pieces of fabric. If I don't quilt with them, I can use them to make little purses or other sewn items.

• Drawing portraits is fun, but I can't promise any verisimilitude.

• I also collage in my own art journals, so send me any strange/beautiful pictures/illustrations/ephemera you found in a magazine or in a hotel room or in your attic or on the sidewalk.

• I can work maps into just about any craft.

If I was forced to make a top 10: Bjork (pre-2002), Radiohead, Andrew Bird, Bob Dylan, Wilco, Josh Ritter, Mountain Goats, Jandek, Burial, and Modest Mouse (pre-2004).

I'll love anything involving:

• maps,

• birds (budgies, parrots, penguins, kiwis or any cute boid),

• vegetarian cooking,

• collage,

• pretty papers/vellum/stuff I can collage with,

• round pins (1" or smaller), especially with maps or birds on them,

• foreign coins,

• photos,

• postcards - See below for my country and state postcard collection spreadsheet - please send me anything that's still missing!

• ephemera (subway tickets, interesting receipts, timetables, hotel keys, found notes, lost jewelry),

• a landscape of your mind,

• field recordings of your neighborhood, workplace, or house in sound files, illustrations or words. How do you live? Is it the way you want to live?

• anything bizarre or mysterious.

I'm absolutely obsessive with postcard collecting, and have finally finished my spreadsheet of countries, capitals, and the like.

If you have anything that's still white, please send it along (I don't even care if it's already written on!)

Here it is -----> My Postcard Collection

In addition to those place-specific cards, I also love the following: street scenes, portraits, birds, the desert, cards from lesser-known places outside the US, the ocean, motel/hotel ones - even more specifically those really old ones of funky little off-highway motels that you're like, "why did they ever make a postcard of this?". The cards I keep in my "prize collection" are mostly ones that ask that question. One is of a dusty 60s customs stop in Mexico, another is a lovely alcove/patio in some neighborhood in Spain, another is of a fence from 1912 that says "National Fence", another is a street scene in South Africa that looks like it could have been off a local's camera, and a good deal more are of birds, both photographs and artistic representations. I like the strange postcards!

• I really don't like Disney or any other mega-company for entertainment.

• I can't stand fan-fiction. Original ideas only, please!