Soft Animal

I want to be high on life. I just made the most delicious scrabbled eggs with oregano, marjoram, and cheddar cheese. I enjoyed it so much that it literally tasted like happiness, especially with my tung ting ginseng oolong tea. I want more of that, simply enjoying what is happening to me.

I feel like I want to get out in that light, windy rain and go through a hike some place where there are trees, where it is green, gray, and heather brown....which could be many a place right now.

I found this poem on another blog today:

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

"You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves."
That part is my favorite.
Speaking of soft animals:
Me and my Tigerlily. She's still growing!
Yesterday we went out to the Marin Headlands for a fashion photoshoot. I don't have the pictures of myself modeling yet, but here are some of the location:



















I didn't take any of these, hopefully we can post our own soon. It was a post-Apocalyptic themed shoot, you could see how that would work out in a place like this:



























After that we went to Aziza for dinner. It was fantastic! I wish I could afford to eat there more often but sadly it is far, far out of my price range, we were only able to go because I had a gift certificate.
I had vegetable couscous with black trumpet mushrooms, and for dessert I had hazelnut dacquoise with pear, and burnt honey ice cream. It was as amazing as it sounds.

1970!

I always loved my parents' old pictures from their 'glory days' in the 1970s.
I'm actually quite envious of the sort of stuff they got up to! They traveled so much. My parents met each other in a political philosophy class, which goes to figure since I went on to become a Philosophy major; the perfect product of their union!
Anyway, here are some of my favorites from the mid to late 1970s, I'll start with Hawaii and other miscellaneous locations:


My mom.


































My dad.


























Total 70s! I love the shirt....
































San Francisco.....






Another one of my mom, with my dad reflected in her amazing 70s sunglasses! I now own that camera he's using.





















My all time FAVORITE picture of my mom:

Note the giant bowie knife and the hatchet. Because either one on it's own just wasn't enough, apparently. I have no idea what they were up to on this trek, but it looks amazing.
I know that at the time, my mom worked for the EPA as an entomologist, so she was often out and about getting dirty and playing with bugs. What a badass...
Also, my dad took all of the pictures excepting the ones he was in.

New Year's Resolutions 2010

New Year’s Resolutions 2010:

Last year I didn’t write up any particular New Year’s Resolutions, but around that time I was in a lot of turmoil so I wrote up some goals for myself to change my situation.
This year, things have been tumultuous, but mostly I have followed through and changed a lot of things for the better. New house, new relationship, new job. There has definitely been plenty of drama, but it seems like most of the loose ends have finally begun to tie themselves up.
Time to clean house and start fresh, and at such a seasonally appropriate time!

I’ve learned a lot this year, especially about relationships, so maybe that’ll be where a lot of my resolutions come from. But without any further ado, here they are:

1. Slowly start thinking about what I want to do with my life next. Now that the dust is settling, I can get pretty comfortable doing what I’m doing, where I’m doing it. So the next thing to think about is: what’s next when I have some savings and can go back to school? I don't know yet!!
2. Decorate the hell out of the house! I never did this in my other places because they never completely felt like home, but this place does so I want to make the most of it and do all the things I dreamed of doing when I was younger and imagined having my own place!
3. Stop stressing so much; I’ve just come out of a stressful situation that I literally couldn't legally extricate myself with (see: Oakland tenant laws)and the best way to appreciate it being over is to learn to enjoy my freedom. I have to not slip into anxiety too easily, which can sometimes happen when you’ve been wringing your hands too long. When you’ve been neurotic for months and suddenly it’s over, it’s surprisingly hard to let your guard down and enjoy things without constantly looking over your shoulder and expecting it all to crap out on you again.
4. Pay off my credit cards! This should be easy, I hardly have any debt (relative to most people my age) and I just got a really decent raise at my work ftw! So my goal is to do it by the end of the year. I’ve already taken the first big step, which is to almost exclusively buy on debit so I know I’m only getting what I can afford with my own money. Next is to polish off what little is left.
5. Stop forming co-dependent relationships with people. Next time I am in an unequal relationship, I need to recognize it up front. This resolution could also be titled ‘stop making excuses for people,’ because if I hear myself making excuses for a person over and over it’s probably a sign that I am too entangled in a situation I shouldn’t be in. If I get bent out of shape continually over a friend who’s self-destructing or being fucked up to others, it probably is a good signal to me that I should back away and just be less intimate with them, so I don’t have to force myself to be uncomfortable with behavior I feel compelled to judge.

This is my most important resolution this year, because I have to take responsibility for the fact that every time I have a falling out with some one it always feels like déjà vu. There’s a clear pattern, and that’s not something I can keep scratching my head quizzically about; I have to start blaming it on myself, because it’s not rocket science that I need to raise my standards and start picking up on warning signs after I go through the same disappointing scenarios 80 times in a row.

6. In congruency with #5: Don’t be reluctant to insure against harmful situations just because it seems awkward at the time. It’s better to err on the side of caution than let people into positions where it can affect your home, your work, and your finances, whatever. Example: I used to think that real friends didn’t need to sign leases, but now I know that real friends won’t have a problem signing leases because real friends would never ask you to put yourself in a situation where you would have to take needless risks for them. If they can say they’ll do it, they shouldn’t have a problem backing it up on paper. Stuff like that.

This resolution is about being confident, taking initiative, and being straight-forward with my needs from the get-go, and not letting reluctance stop me from doing easy things to avoid trouble in the future. It’s also about having the balls to call people on their shit; anything worth saying is worth backing up if they really mean it.

7. Also in congruency with the above resolution: reconnect with friends with whom I had equal relationships in the past, and make new friends to this effect. I don’t mind just having fewer friends but I know it’s probably a better idea to not be lazy and isolated, and to take the time and effort to foster positive relationships in place of the negative ones I’m pruning. Plus, there are so many interesting, independent, and neat people out there...I must seek them! ::strokes beard::
8. Travel more! Not only am I making more money than I was before, but my work schedule is waaaaaaaaaaay more flexible than at my last job. So I could easily arrange to take weekend trips (up to four days) without even using any vacation time! Poet and I can go to places within driving distance pretty easily and keep it cheap, camping or staying at b&bs or motels. I can’t wait to go up and down the coast, or visit the redwoods!
9. Last one: blog like I mean it. Like most people, I spend a bit too much time on the internet. So I want to make my time on here an experience worth having. Photos, art, ideas, etc......I want to share and find it all, and in a fulfilling way, instead of endlessly refreshing updates. I've already got a good start on this, but I want to make it a project.

Here are some totally unrelated beauteous photos by Andy Julia:

































I supervise the Lingerie department at my work. I have to admit I find it all so lovely, and have yet to grow tired of it. I'm also lucky enough to work at a swanky store that is very fashion forward and also luckily, not on the trashy side of things.





















I love lace in all it's forms!

Our Xmas Tree!

I wanted a potted one but by the time we got around to it, all the good ones were gone and only the scrappy potted trees were left.

New Things!
A friend of mine dropped off persimmons the other day. I am not a fan of persimmons, but growing up my family had a persimmon tree in the backyard and my mom would make persimmon bread that I loved, so I decided to make some.

It turned out pretty good, although I think next time I'll try my mother's recipe to see it come out a little more like a dessert bread. The kind I made came out more like a breakfast bread.

I can't really complain, however, as I am currently enjoying a breakfast of persimmon bread, a miniature tangerine, and silk formosa oolong tea.
Delicious!


Here's a picture of my current favorite fall/winter outfit, and one of my many weaves:
It's cold outside! 30 lows and 40 highs in Oakland, and we're at the low end, being right by the water.

More Dreaming

Speaking of a specific Recurring Dream:
I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Angeliska Gazette: Black Honey from the Bee-Log, and saw she had a made a post about Recurring Dreams. One of the Recurring Dreams she mentioned was about secret rooms. At first, I thought to myself that I'd never had a dream like that, but then I read her description:
"I’ve had this dream since I was little,
of discovering secret rooms or chambers.
One of the first dreams I can remember,
I found an enormous cathedral-like theater
in the steeple of my church. Swooping
red curtains. An apt analogy for my young
mind to make, hmm? When I lived in
a tiny baba yaga shack with only one room,
I constantly dreamed that I would find other rooms
that always been there, behind walls or partitions.
Once I dreamt of a whole second floor!"

I started having these dreams after I grew older and began to live on my own. I didn't recognize her description immediately because my dreams were so much more adult and less fantastical that what she was talking about.
It had a yearning attached to it that was both wondrous and wanting, and in that way you only learn to want once you have known some level of poverty. It is not the same wanting you have in childhood where you are trying to find ghosts or fairies or passages through wardrobes. The dreams still have an element of fantasy and wonder to them, but that yearning that accompanies it is unique to my adult experiences.

I would dream that I was in my apartment and I would begin to wander. I would open doors and find gardens, extended rooms, extra floors, or an extension of the the complex I lived in.
Why did these dreams only start when I got older and began to live on my own, away from my parents? Do the represent some sort of recognition of my lesser means now that I support myself, a sort of anticipation of what will come once I am able to save for myself and afford better lodgings? Or something else?


My most recent version of this dream happened the other night, and took place in our current house.
I love our house. It is a Victorian duplex in a flavorful part of town. It is long and narrow, we have room for our things but it takes some arranging. Inside the house all the original fixtures and wood molding is intact, with carved runners in every room.


In my dream, we had found a way to expand the space in our house by rearranging the furniture, and our duplex turned into a huge, expansive mansion with high ceilings.
However, in the dream, the house was in a level of rather deep decay. We had minimal furniture, the rafters were all exposed, and it was dark and drafty inside.


Just as the interior state of our old house was exaggerated, so was the exterior. Outside I could hear all sorts of ruckus, and people were loitering around conspicuously in a way that I found very unsettling.

The house was mostly a brick red, like the one in this picture I found.

The neighborhood was in decay too. I was anxious and relieved all at once. I had a grand interior, but it was in poor condition. And I was high up above the fray but it was closing in and the doors were weak. It was such a strange dream, filled with a desire to shut out the world and yet to escape.

And yet, near the end of the dream the people I was so fearful of noticed the house falling and propped up the walls and fastened them in place as I hid inside the crumbling structure.

All I can think is that maybe the dream is about my own anxiety. That it's all too easy to see things in great exaggeration and let your perception run away with your good sense. You are suddenly fighting flight or fight, and next thing you know the things you're so frightened of weren't so bad after all, and have a way of resolving themselves if you are just patient enough, and open-minded enough to give events a chance to unfold.
I am definitely in a tense situation involving home right now, where I have to wait for the other shoe to drop before I can decide what will become of our situation. We have no to little control over what we're waiting to here on, and all we can really do is determine whether we will leave our home or remain. In the mean time, waiting to find out...it is better not to let anxiety bubble up and become a storm. If there's nothing you can do, then spend your time waiting enjoying what you have instead of fearing what you can't control. Or something like that....
What do you think? Have you ever had a dream like this, and if so, what did it mean to you?

Last night I had nightmares that a serial killer was stalking me for a reason I didn't know, and he/she was sending me the body parts of friends of mine that he'd killed or maimed.
The landscape of the dream was entirely white; in a white house, with white walls and white furniture, and every time blood appeared it was a horribly vivid splash. I woke up several times to find myself alone in bed, but I was too frightened, disoriented, and tired to find out where Poet was.
Everytime I went to sleep my dreams changed slightly, but everyone of them was about a monster or a man trying to hunt me down to torture and kill me. In one dream, there were monsters made of shadows, in another a man who was angry with my father was electrocuting me and strangling me, but no one really knew what he was angry over.

Finally, some time after the sun had risen, I woke up to see that Poet had returned to bed. After that I had one last dream. It was a little better than the previous dreams. I was in Hawaii with some family members. We are heading towards to the beach in a group, and I'm trying to snap pictures of everything in sight, but I'm having a little trouble with my camera and am getting mixed results*, and it frustrates me. As we get nearer to the beach, I realize we are in a tourist van, and an announcer is directing us to look toward the ocean so that we could see the whales. I look at the water and I see that the waves have frozen like a wall, and there are gigantic whales hovering right over crowds of people on the beach.













I start trying to take pictures, but my camera won't work and I can't get a thing. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, and I notice that we're getting awfully close to the water and that the whales are making a lot of noise, and all of a sudden the sea begins to suck us in.

I'm afraid we'll drown but the van fills with water and is tossed on to the crowd.
We scream for people to run as we fall, I see one woman who can't get out of the way in time. Some how I catch her with just the tip of my finger and am able to pull her up and into the van with us just in time.

After the crash, no one is hurt. But I am upset by the even and run off, away from the beach. I meet up up with a friend of mine, and he tells me I'm in danger, that there are dark forces out to get the "other part" of me. I ask him what that means, and he explains to me that we all have three parts: our bodies of which we are aware, and also our souls and minds that walk around outside us everywhere we go.
He explains that a friend of his warned him that demons were out and hunting down my soul, to take it away from me.We decide to find a local voodoo witch to see if she can help us. We drawn a mandala, and she receives us warmly.








She has warm brown skin and lives in a bamboo hutch where she renders her services to the needy.
We also give her a gift of tarot cards, but the dream ends before we are offered a solution by her.















After all that, I wake up feeling pretty shaken. But then Poet tells me that he stayed up all night because he wants to go to bed early tonight to be able to get up tomorrow morning for Thanksgiving with my family, and to be sure to wake him up again so he give me a ride to work.
And then I come into the living room and he's left me a note saying he bought me fancy bagels and brie for breakfast. And he's picking up furniture all by himself today, and he's meeting the repair man to fix the cable today.
If you had asked me how I could feel better, I probably wouldn't have been able to come up with a whole lot, and some how he does just the right thing to make me feel better, and safe, and cared for. For a huge part of my dreams last night I was just running around trying to find someone to help me, it's nice to wake up and know that while you were sleeping some one was up caring about you and coming up with things to make you happy when you wake up.

I'm not happy with this scan at all, it's so grainy and the picture looks so much better in real life, but here it is:Brown color pencil on bristol paper.

A take off on this photo:

The unhappiness with technology aside, I'm very happy
with this piece and I feel like I finished it in good time.

When I usually draw women or girls, I tend to make them quite thin and lithe, probably because of the context of our current mainstream/alternative aesthetics, or perhaps as an act of self-insertion or a symbol of frailty, but probably for all of the above reasons.
When you look at these visions of beauty from the turn of the last century, they tend to be a good deal heavier that most pin-ups and models of our time. When I draw a girl from that era, I try to make her softer and fuller, to do otherwise feels disingenuous. Nonetheless I try to split the difference, use it as a bridge between this time and the past, one aesthetic bleeding in between inspiration and perspective.






This is a lovely movie:


I think I like Charlie Chaplin better behind the camera than in front of it.
What can I say, I'm a lover of Buster Keaton, that's the kind of lovable hard-luck case I fall for.
I still haven't seen the end of this movie, it's hard to make myself, I know it will be so sad!

New and Old Art

This is a quick pen sketch I did a couple weeks ago, however I do not have the means to complete it as I usually would before posting it online. While I wait for a new computer I don't have photoshop to add textures and correct color, I don't even have a scanner to use.
Believe it or not often half the work of using photoshop is to make an image resemble itself on a computer screen as it does in the real world.
In any case, here it is:



































And I'd also like to share an older one that I meant to upload previously but somehow missed:
This one was inspired by an image I found in a book of vintage erotica. I loved the concept of the image but it was done so simplistically for a magazine cover, and I wanted to try and spend a bit of time and detail on it, and do it justice.


I'm really proud of the line work and shading I did on this one. I titled it "Cannelle et Clous de Girofle"
which means "cinnamon and cloves."
I sort of love the somewhat naive concepts about eroticism and exotica that came from that era. Not that eroticism on it's own was a naive concept back then, we have a tendency in these times too look back on earlier times as being closeted and ignorant of sex, eroticism, and perversion. Trust me, they could be quite scandalous, they were human back then too, after all!
But I do love the idea of what at the time was considered "exotic" being automatically erotic, there are so many neat photos of such "naughty" fan girls haha....
Maybe I'll make some more art of that theme.






Here is the original:










































Mata Hari:

Other lovelies. Would we think these women were beautiful if they were walking around today? Probably not, we've learned such a critical eye! We should learn to relax and enjoy beauty out of context the way we do when we're looking at someone from another era.

Around the House

A few photos from my home.
It's still a work in progress, but here's a spot that's photo-worthy.
I'd like to put up more on the sides of the mirror as well.




Most of our walls are waiting for appropriate frames, at which point we have many lovely posters and pictures waiting to go up! When will that be? On Saturday! Our friend works at Michael's and is going to help us to pick some affordable frames. Frames can make a room, it's nice to know we don't have to wait indefinitely to find a reasonable deal that suits our budget.
This is all pretty exciting to me, this is the third place I've lived since I've moved away from home, but it's the first place I've really felt a connection to and that I've considered staying indefinitely. Therefore, decorating and home maintenance has become a constant preoccupation with me.
Also, I bought new "work" shoes yesterday:































Are the days of wearing combat boots everyday at an end? Perhaps. I work someplace quiet fashionable, I like to look at least somewhat professional at work, especially as a supervisor. I hope they are comfortable enough to wear all day! If not, at least I can wear them on the office days. I'm usually a stickler for comfortable shoes, but again...the budget!