On Hypatia Pickens

Hypatia is a flower, a female mathematician who was martyred by a mob of early Christians, a city in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a movie that is always about to come out in my town but not quite, and the name of my avatar on Second Life. Hypatia is younger than I am (only two years and some months old--I suppose I could say the same), prettier, more robust (she doesn't hurt if she falls), she never wearies (although she wearies me), she is a builder of impossible things, a book-maker, a terrible clothes-horse, and she has an inventory that is more disorganized than my closet. She resides on a laptop; she is subject to the whims of the now unstable Linden Labs. She is costing me money. She forces me to think outside the box, to draw, paint, scan, upload. She has made me obsessive. She has forced me to become a poet, and a careful one, for which she takes all the credit. Sometimes when I walk around in her skin, I wonder if we are the same. I hope she is kinder, more elegant, funnier, more even-tempered, but the line between myself and herself blurs a bit. I pour so much into her, and she demands, demands, demands things of me--like wakefulness--that is hard to keep up with. I hope to show some of her (and my) artwork here.

On caves.

I borrowed my pseudonym, “Caves,” from my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, which, we think, derived in France. Marie-Jeanette “Jennie” Caves was descended from the Huguenots—an ostracized group of political activists and Calvinists in France who sought to unite with protestant Switzerland. I was stirred by the ancestry of this name which suggested both revolution and darkness. I’m not sure of its origin and meaning: it may be related to Cavett, Cabot, something worn on the head (“cap-“), or a deformation of the head: baldness. Or it might have come from Latin cavus, “hollow,” hence “concave,” curved like the inner surface of a sphere. But in its present form, “caves,” it suggested to me places of hiding: that which is bent inward, reflective of one’s secrets, suggestive of the occult, perfect for the darker imaginings that have always colored my writing, my scholarship, my fiction, my fantasies.

On spoons as mirrors

A well-polished spoon gives you two views of yourself: one that is convex (you're all nose) and another that is concave (you are all ears). I write fiction and poetry under the nom de plume of "Sally Caves" and "Hypatia Pickens," both of whom distort and reflect their creator noseward or earward, broadly or narrowly. Let's see what gets put here.