happy new years eve!

freedom

I feel free... something inside me has lifted and some of those things that mattered immensely once, not so long ago, are no longer of great consequence.
I have gone through so many changes in the last couple of years...
Let go of some of my security, taken a few risks...
It's worked out pretty well.
Lets continue this trend into the new year...

art 12-28-09

Getting a journal ready to do my morning pages in, to me this feels like a teenage expression, I almost painted back over it but then thought, nah... it's okay to embrace my inner teenager, who by the way has a rockin' mohawk. This was a plain blank journal that I started in 2008 and abandoned as I so often do... hopefully doing Dayna's Artist Way: Walking in this World class will help me get and stay inspired with my writing as well as other forms of artistic expression.

This was my other creation of the evening, I like this one better, it's not finished yet though I have a feeling - vintage thesaurus page with paint and ink. Might have to add some gold...

_/*Autonomy*/_

/I couldn't be there for your birth,/

/I hadn't been thought of,/

/or even considered,/

/someday I would be the momentary/

/disappointment, just another girl.../

/
/

/“Girls” they always said, /

/the phrase I remember most /

/from childhood, /

/when did we become separate?/

/When did we become
/

/Kelan,
/

/Shelby?/

/
/

/A thousand miles between us,/

/once that didn't even matter,/

/as I spent a thousand Saturdays/

/tied to the phone cord, /

/afraid to move/

/trying to make you laugh,/

/trying to make you see/

/that it was worth living.../

/when you were /

/visiting ghosts, /

/cliff diving into /

/the past, again and again and again/

/I was there to catch you/

/as you fell,/

/though sometimes I buckled /

/beneath the weight\/

/of shared memory/

/
/

/There was never anywhere/

/I would have rather been,/

/than there with you,/

/we were conjoined/

/as surely as twins,/

/although I wouldn't celebrate/

/your birthday for 2 more years.../

/
/

/Once you spent a million Sundays /

/trying to keep me from the razors edge,/

/from the deep end of the ocean,/

/from the call of my ribs, my bones, beautiful/

/beneath the skin, so close then,/

/to the surface,/

/You spent your youth,/

/trying to fix, what it took half a lifetime,/

/to break/

/Though your fingers bled/

/sometimes/

/from all that stitching/

/and no thimble to save you/

/and you wrote poems/

/in the blood.../

/always resourceful,/

/we were raised like pioneers./

...

written for my sister on her birthday. 12/19/09.

Christmas Art

While my son has been happily playing away on his new PS3 I was busy making art. I had a friend come over on Christmas night and we played with some mixed media techniques. These images are a combination of india ink, acrylic, marker, graphite, oil pastel and watercolor crayons with lots of gold rubbing and my own hand carved stamps added in to satisfy my fixations... the clippings are from vintage fairytale books and thesaurus'. Fueled by coffee and then wine, it was a lot of fun! Funny how sweet my art comes across in direct contrast to my photography which I think has a dark edge to it... I've always kind of fought against my own drawing style but I think slowly I'm learning to appreciate and embrace it. Hope all of you had as wonderful a holiday as I did, Monday I'm back to work after a week off... lets see what awaits me!

first visual journal highlights

I finally finished my visual journal, it's been nearly a year in the making, I feel exhilaration and loss at the same time...
this one is my favorite

The song lyrics on the second page are for Memory Lane by Elliott Smith - check it out... great song, wonderful lyrics...

this reads "close to my heart" and the insert is a dictionary entry for creative.

life as usual?

I'm up early this morning - did a 15 minute work out and got all clean and shiny... now it's time to relax and nag Damian about getting ready alternately.
Day before yesterday Damian got fitted with an ambulatory EEG machine and wore it for 24 hours, it was removed yesterday and life goes on as usual - other than the waiting to discover the results. Damian had an "event" while wearing the machine which means that he passed out cold and landed with eyes wide open completely unresponsive. I swooped in to soften the fall as I could see him heading face first, but I can't do anything else, the most frustrating things imaginable to me as a parent. So now, we wait.
My art has been taking a low priority to everything else in my life, but last weekend I went to my friend Michelle's and we were hip deep in arts and crafts after my visit to craft warehouse that morning. Right now I'm concentrating on getting my body healthy and hoping that my mind will follow. I've been exercising every single day for at least a half an hour for the past 2 weeks and have been keeping track of what I eat on sparkpeople.com. One more week to building a habit. I hate to talk about weight loss as it's hard for me to admit that I have a problem, but it's not likely anyone will be looking at me and not noticing that over the past year and a half I've gotten fat, it's just reality. What makes it really hard for me is that for over 11 years I had an active eating disorder - anorexia/bulimia. My metabolism is shot as a result and my self esteem as well... so it's important that I do this in a healthy way and don't let myself get too stressed, which is hard to do when you've got a child who has health issues and a job that requires a lot of you... but I'll just do my best. After all, I suppose for me, this is just life as usual.

Getting ready for my photoshoot with Destree today, woke up at 5:20 this morning and decided to go with it, only 25 mins earlier than i wake up on a work day. Destree will be dressed as a clown and we will be working this into the mood of a lost family theme... I did my own makeup this morning and took a couple of snapshots,.. the makeup isn't perfect but I think the mood is evident anyways.

poetry

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I anxiously waiting
For the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Hot in the City

Damian is playing in the California sunshine exploring L.A. and while he exhibits his independence I also get to explore mine. Thursday went to an outdoor concert with Michelle in the park in W. Salem and listended to some electro blues/funk music, saw Destree there. Today my friend Michele and I went shopping all over Downtown Salem today, getting to know our town. We had a great time! After 6 hours and heat that spiked at 91 degrees I sure was happy to be on my way home to my slightly cooler apartment, we've resolved to go shopping bi-monthly to see what we can see. Tonight I'm gonna shoot Candace... Pictures to follow... in fact she's on her way to pick us up some iced lattes as we speak!

Defeat:

First self portraits I've done in many months. My self image right now isn't very healthy. I thought that this reflected that.

thinking

"...ignorance is bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."
Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Trying to prove this wrong, trying to think myself into happiness.

destree

Photographs with Destree yesterday, was a great Saturday afternoon.

She rarely questions my ideas and even when you can see the question crossing her face, she plays along. Got hundreds of good photos, always the hard part is choosing the best of the best.

Destree is capable of a transparency and depth of emotion that is striking and is just generally one of the coolest people I know. What a privlege to have someone like that willing to be your creative collaborator. Of course it doesn't hurt that she's strikingly beautiful.