Monday, February 8, 2010

Damned Kids

All right, I'm only forty but I'm getting to be one mean old lady. I know I shouldn't pick on the kids, but, I got this the other day in my inbox:

Hi,
I am doing a goddess report and I'm using your
site. If you could give me your name that would
be great because I need the authors name for
my biblyography.
-G


And I just have to wonder what kind of reading comprehension they aren't teaching these days.

Okay, let's break this down.

This kid would like to use my site as a reference.

Okay, that's fine, though I would caution that I am simply an interested amateur and not an expert or anything. But, okay.

It's just, good grief.

I mean, sure, I'm hiding my name here, but on my main, public, art site? It's a good idea and a big deal to make sure everyone knows what my name is. So I'm kind of, um, up front about it. Obnoxiously up-front about it. In-your-face obviously up-front about it.

Seriously.

My site's url is www.myfirstnamemylastname.com. The email she contacted me at is myfirstname@myfirstnamemylastname.com. At my site itself it says in large letters at the top header bar, 'the art of my first name my last name'. At the bottom of every single page it says, 'copyright whichever year by my first name my last name'.

It's a little hard to miss.

Ai yi.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Popular

Saw this today, as I was browsing about an online book store:



And I though, Huh, John was right. They are more popular than Jesus.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Surrounded



Noticed this the other day and had to laugh. Wouldn't want that thing getting any ideas, y'know?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Vim

On the (very trivial sounding now) personal Glimmer of Hope front, however, Puss Two is finally done with the antibiotics course, and is doing well. Very well, actually, unbelievably well. It's like he's in a second kitten-hood. He's been charging around the house full of vim and vigor, knocking clocks off walls and playfully chasing poor Puss One, who didn't ask for it and does not deserve it; and he is acting so much better, in fact, I wonder how long he had been sliding into illness before it got bad enough we idiot humans could see it?

I am very grateful he is better.

No Words

Earlier today, when I went to get my email, I saw the following Yahoo News headline:

Elderly and abandoned, 85 Haitians await death (AP)

A few hours later, when I went to check my email again, this was the headline:

Elderly and abandoned, 84 Haitians await death (AP)

Angry Angry Angry

I'm just so damned angry lately; I can't seem to get around it. Blame feminism, I suppose, and eyes opened to the overwhelming injustice of this world and the way things are (deliberately, as far as I can honestly tell) set up to keep things that way. Well, no, to be fair, it's not feminism's fault, any more than a new pair of glasses is to blame for the fact that you suddenly find the wallpaper in the living room ugly, now that you can actually see it.

But I don't know what to do with it. I can't reasonably or ethically choose unawareness; but I don't know how I can hope to purge all this poison from my system when I have no way of stopping it from coming in in the first place. And it comes in. Continuously. Copiously. There is almost no where I can turn where it is not.

And so I find myself reading feminist blogs, as I've been doing for a couple years now, and getting angrier and angrier. And when I go over to Pagan blogs I can't just shut it off, and I end up commenting angrily in those places, too, even over at the lovely Ruby Sara's, where I have been accused of being 'anti-Christian' (not by Ruby Sara, I should add). And while there is a certain satisfaction in calling out certain assholes for being, well, assholes, and while I believe there is (when safe) a moral duty to calling out bad behavior, so that it does not just slide by unremarked, and so as accepted and normal, I don't think, maybe, that it is too good for me. Because when I do comment angrily I then spend a fair amount of time being anxious about it, with knotted stomach and all. ISFP, remember, Introverted-Sensing-Feeling-Perceiving, and one with anxiety to boot. Everything comes in.

But most of the time, still, I don't comment. It feels too selfish, or something; that in some way being angry, and expressing it, makes me selfish. This disturbed me, very much so, when I realized it. And what is at the root of that belief? That my anger is not valid, or that I am not allowed to be angry. Girls are supposed to be nice, right? I can't believe I am still coming up against that one. Boys are quite obviously not made of snips and snails, are they?

So I'm in this weird sort of place where I want to scream but am continually biting my tongue. This is not good. But I don't know how to get out of it.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

I Am A Bad, Bad, Bad Person

Because when I stumbled across the news that a former teacher of mine had died, well, I rejoiced.

A LOT.

This guy was a professor at the art school I went to; and I don't know that I have ever met someone who fit the term 'asshole' better. 'Edgy,' 'bold teaching style,' 'you either love him or hate him,' was what they'd say--yeah, what the fuck ever. Just an asshole, far as I could ever tell. A chain-smoking asshole who worked in a century and a half old building with floors soaked with turpentine and walls plastered with NO SMOKING signs. Just an asshole with a Hemingway complex. That guy did so much damage to my confidence in myself and my art. You cannot intimidate someone into being braver; and you cannot make someone confident by tearing them down. That class was hazing, pure and simple.

I found this on his website, hoping it would give cause of death (I'm assuming lung cancer):


[He] is an authentic artist...returning abstract art to the defiant purpose repressed by its objectification into a standard means of artistic practice: the purpose of introspecting and maintaining intimate contact with the transcendental Self in a detranscendentalizing world—indeed, maintaining the sense of the sacredness of the self in a secular world...

[He] has transmuted the old "decorative abstraction," as Gauguin put it, into a new one, in which the decorative is problematized, making it a vehicle for a new sense of the significance of abstraction.


Now guess what. I went to RISD; I actually have been trained to understand this kind of talk. And this? Makes no sense. It is pure, undiluted, egotistical bullshit.

How very appropriate.

[Edit: I took the guy's name out. Not because I was feeling particularly bad about speaking ill of the dead, but because a Google search for his name + "dead" put this post alarmingly high on the first page of results. No thanks.]

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Gah

I went for a walk yesterday, just a little one, about a mile down to the bank and drug store, and another mile back; down to the part of my town that they call, charmingly and for real, the Village.

I did it because I haven't been very active lately; and because, even though I am still pretty tired, I was feeling a bit of cabin fever. Not that surprising, even for an introvert like myself, since I work from home and do not commonly go out.

But it has snowed here, recently. Now this is a small town I live in, but the Village does have a main-ish highway going through it; and so there is a part where there are actually sidewalks. And because it wasn't a whole lot of snow, no one had bothered to clear them off; and so the sidewalks were pretty much unusable, covered with chunks of plowed ice and slush.

So I had to walk on the street, since it was exponentially more effort to walk on the sidewalk.

I live in a state famous for bad drivers. I would, normally, take this for mere exaggeration, but a study came out recently affirming that yes, people from my state are the worst in the country, hands down. So people are in the habit of ignoring pedestrians and acting as if they aren't even there; they neither slow down nor pull out to give a pedestrian room, just zip by at their usual faster-than-the-limit speed with less than an arm's-length to spare.

And so I spent an awful lot of my time swearing at assholes, who, as far as the lizard brain part of me knew, were actively trying to kill me; and I realized, that far from being good for my health, as a nice brisk walk in the fresh winter air is supposed to be, it was probably a net bad for my health, what with the raised blood pressure and just under the surface fight-or-flight response kicking in. Because really, that is what drivers who don't give pedestrians enough space are doing; they are endangering them, threatening them. I mean, really, if it's my squishy body of skin and organs and bone versus a hunk of metal and plastic weighing a ton or two and traveling 40 miles an hour, which of those is going to win?

Gah.

Haze

It's been a haze, these last couple weeks, of catching Puss Two four times a day, wrapping him in a blanket, fishing his head out baby-bunting style (which, don't get me wrong, is absolutely insanely adorable) and then squirting antibiotics/crunched up SAM-e pill in tuna juice into the side of his mouth while he squirms away as best he can; after he's dosed, more or less (how big a percentage of the dose he gets depends on how much actually makes it in his mouth) I let him go, and then give him some Mixed Grill Friskie's wet food and watch him carefully to see how much he eats; and it's a magic spell, really, each and every time, as I tell him he is a good kitty and send him serious positive energy while I hold my breath in the hopes he will eat lots and lots and get healthy again. So far it does seem to be working; he looks and is acting much better and is probably out of the woods. We brought him in for a checkup on Saturday and they took some more blood; and his liver enzyme levels are much better than they were. Enough that the vet reduced the antibiotics to twice a day, for another two weeks. Which means I only have to catch him, bundle him up, &c three times a day now. Ha.

Never mind that the main thing he had, pancreatitis, is not really curable, mostly something that will go away on its own, if it will (antibiotic treatment is actually somewhat controversial for pancreatitis, so I hear). And so a big part of it is to watch him, and to make sure his body is functioning well. So, we have to make sure that things are going into his body properly (that he is eating and drinking enough), that things that go in don't come back out the way they went in (that he does not vomit anything up) and that things come out the back end in a proper way (I think you can guess what that means). Which would be worrisome enough, except I find that I have never really watched his normal habits before this, and so don't actually know if eating half of what I give him, then wandering off and coming back to it later is normal or not.

And then there's the antibiotic itself. It has side effects, you see. Side effects like, oh, stomach upset (which will affect his appetite) to the point of vomiting being quite possible, as well as diarrhea, since it's one of those that also (bonus!) upsets the balance of bacteria in the digestive tract. So that leaves me wondering how the fuck am I to know what's him getting worse or not getting better, and what's just a side effect?

So I've spent the last couple of weeks second guessing the cat's habits, and worrying myself to a frazzle.

I am exhausted.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Drama

Well here we are, winding down to the Solstice again. There has been a bit of drama here the past few weeks which has sort of been taking up all my energy, though none of it directly involves myself, but the folks around me instead. Still, it's a whirlwind I'm caught up in whether I will or no.

For one, Puss Two is a bit under the weather, and has pancreatitis, an inflamed pancreas, which, because it is swollen is putting pressure on his bile ducts and is causing (let's see if I have this straight) conjugated bilirubin to back up into his blood, which is giving him jaundice, and making him feel pretty crummy indeed, I imagine. But he's been shuffled around to various vets and even was treated to an ultrasound on Friday, and The Plan now is to give him a daily pill of this liver-strengthening stuff (SAMe, is what it's called) and to give him a thrice-daily dose of liquid antibiotics. Which for some ridiculously fucked-up reason, are quite strongly bubble gum flavored. I know. The package is indeed specific for veterinary use, for cats and dogs, yet, there is no doubt at all that it is bubble gum flavored. Not tuna flavored, or liver flavored, or something logical, but something pretty much guaranteed to taste as vile as possible to a cat. I can only assume that the stuff is in fact primarily made for human children and has just been repackaged for cat use. Still, a rather egregious oversight on the part of the maker, don't you think?

And so I can't mix it in with his food at all; though he is eating pretty well (which is very good) he won't touch it at all if I put even a little bit of the stuff in it. So that means I basically have to hold him down and shove the little syringe into the side of his mouth and squirt it onto his tongue, which he does not like at all oh my God NO. And I don't like the idea of adding stress to the life of an ill cat, you know?

Though it is mostly working, and so far he does not HATE me. Luckily, I've also been giving him a lot of treats, since he's lost a little weight being ill. I worry though that to him it looks like the gas-lighting crazy-making technique abusers use when they alternate being super nice with being abusive and evil. Because my attempts at explaining why have so far not seem to have gotten through to him.

I do have on hand the number of a compounding pharmacy, so if it comes to it and it proves simply impossible, I may be able to have more made up with a more cat-friendly flavor.

The other thing whirling about is that my sibling's wife has asked for a divorce for Christmas! And well, now, this is not really my story to tell, but for my part I am truly astonished. Not at the fact that his wife wants a divorce or the reasons I've heard why she wants one (she is immature and manipulative, so I'm not finding any of her 'reasoning' to be very surprising); what is astonishing me is my sibling. The narcissistic one, remember? Who got me the telescope I didn't ask for, while getting himself a nicer model and talking all about how much more it cost and how it was so much nicer than mine, right? The classic narcissistic, criminally unaware behavior? Remember?

He's now all, Oh wow, I'm a real jerk.

Genuinely. I mean, really, seriously. We've had long talks, and good God, he actually has a clue under there. I had really figured him a lost cause. It wasn't the main issue, of course, but somewhere in there it did come up and I told him that, well, you know, he was a narcissist. And I explained about the classic narcissist inability to give gifts thing, specifically about the telescope (and the camera before that), and he said, Oh my God, that's horrible. I totally did that. I'm sorry.

Whoa. I'm sorry. I never though I'd hear that. I never thought he was even capable of seeing that. I am truly astonished. And it wasn't a narcissistic horrified response, which would probably be something along the lines of, Oh my God! How horrible that someone thinks I'm selfish! you know, that kind of thing, this was a genuine, Oh wow, that's a really crappy way to treat someone else, and so, actually, means he does not have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Just that he has narcissistic tendencies. Which are not impossible. (With NPD, he wouldn't even be able to see it, ever; his brain would just be wired the wrong way.) I mean, not that I'm a licensed (or not licensed) psychologist. But I do read.

He has voluntarily, all on his own and as far as I know not at the urging of anyone, started therapy. He is conversant in the five stages of grief, and I have heard him on several occasions say something and then pause, and remark, Oh I'm doing the bargaining thing again. He has actually talked about the male privilege he has. That one fucking astounds me. I had mentioned it briefly, in regards to the typical societal expectations of husband-wife relationships, and somehow, he took it into himself without getting all scary defensive. I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen.

And I'm left here blinking, with this mantra running through my head: WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BROTHER?

So it's all been... interesting around here lately, I guess. I suppose, really, this is all a bit of an explanation to assuage my guilt at not posting so frequently lately. Well.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Dear Uncle Bill

Do please take the time to learn about the history of your own religion. For when you write, in the annual Christmas printed out newsletter, which is, incidentally, not really a proper card (again, emphasis in the original):

We hope that this Holiday Season finds everyone ready to celebrate the BIRTH of our Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST - for that is the REAL reason for the season.


You couldn't be wronger. You pompous, arrogant, egotistical ASS.

After we read it, I told my mother that I was this close to sending him a long lecture on the actual history of the Christian holiday Christmas (including the part about it not even being a holiday for several centuries, and the part about it being moved to coincide with the older Pagan midwinter holidays, and the part, as well, about how, mythologically speaking, the newborn Jesus-in-a-manger and that baby that represents the New Year on January first are the exact same thing.) But then I said, No, I shouldn't, that wouldn't be nice, and she said, Go for it. It's not like I care; I'm not related to him.

So I just might.

(I think I need a new tag for rants.)

Um, wow...

The text of an email I received today, verbatim, bolded in the original:

Morgan la Faye didn't have black hair

The lady morgana la Faye, had firey Stayberry Blond hair a the most beautiful depthless emerald,green eyes.that is a fact,another fact I that Merlin ad morgana LaFaye were and are NEVER advisories,Merlin and morgana laFaye,are husband and wife,ad Mordrd was't king Arthur's Merlin ad Morgana LAFaye,are the parents of mordrid, that has his mothers,beautiful fireyStrawberryblond Hair,mogana lafaye beautiful green and merlins beautiful GreyGreen eyes,that are depthless like his mom and pop and modrids daughter Maya, has her Grand mothers beautiful strawberry Blond hair, ad the beautiful greygreen eyes from the family.
The real king Arthur would trust morgana LAFaye, Mordrid,Maya with Arthur's very life as Arthur would trust Merlin with Arthur life,now people don't now Gwinniver,was easily manipulate by Authurs enemies,and GwenniverFather was 1 of those enemies, that wanted Camelot for himself and used gwenniver to get it.these facts are about to be proven,everyone has a legend, those legends are going to become fact, in the Spring of 2010 the legend of the return of the Anasazi wil have occured, and by the return of the Anasazi, may legends will ao become fact.
[name withheld]
Woodvile tx


I really don't know what I can add to that.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Easy Peasy

About a week ago my brother came over and I again managed to persuade him to help me with the upstairs room, the one I plan to use as a studio room. Now, though it had gotten to a state where there were only three pieces of furniture in it, since then it's apparently gone backwards a bit.

Only apparently, though, since part of the job in removing the last pieces of furniture is making a place for them, which means cleaning out the closet at the top of the stairs, which was full to the gills with stuff.

So it all came out and into the once nigh-empty room, filling it back up. But last week we finally got to the back wall of the closet, and then It Was Time.

The moment had come to see if the giant bureau, the one that I think originally actually came in through the window, since there's no way in Hel it came up the narrow stairs, was going to fit out the door.

Now, I'm not an idiot. I had gotten measuring tape and done some calculations; and according to them, yes, it would (just) fit out the door to the room, and then (just) fit through the door into the closet.

However.

There is a massive chimney in the way, not far at all from both doors. Which meant I had some serious doubts as to whether there would be enough room to maneuver it out one door and in the other. I had visions of it getting stuck, diagonally, and just not being able to make it. And I didn't know what then. It certainly couldn't stay in the room. Break it up? With an axe? An antique?

But as it turns out there was plenty of room, and it went out, around the chimney, and into the closet in less than 30 seconds. Easy peasy. Not even a banged knuckle.

You never know.

Shift

He has been very faint lately; I've been feeling quite stuck, inspiration-wise. I suppose that this is really a chicken-and-egg question; still, mad irony that it is, I knew that if I could just see him I could get out of this hole. But I couldn't get that far.

Oh, he's been there, I suppose, just not clear, and not very present. It is in some ways a horrible feeling, in others, not at all. How do you miss desire when you have no desire?

But last night I finally got sick of sitting and staring at yet another angry feminist blog, and turned off the computer and went upstairs with the intent to make something, anything. But when I got up there I just sat on the bed, unable to figure out what I wanted to do. This has always been my problem. Too many choices, and too many things I might want to do, so that I just stare blankly at them all and cannot decide, and so do none of them.

But then I remembered something. And so I asked him, though I couldn't really see him: I asked if he could help me. Specifically, in that one step at a time kind of way, that micromovement way, as SARK would say.

And though he has been rather faint lately, he answered. Yes, he said. And so we began that process, the process where I let myself fall into his hands, and he tells me only what the next needful thing I must do is. And I do it. Things like: Put some socks on, your feet are cold. And, Pull the chair out from the drawing table. And, Take all the stuff off the drawing table.

But once the drawing table was clear, then he said, Pick up the guitar.

I was not expecting that.

But I did, and I tuned it and fiddled with it along to Buffalo Springfield's Go And Say Goodbye on repeat. It's in G, that lovely light-filled key, the one the color of morning sun. And it had been a while, such that I have no calluses on my fingertips anymore; and though I've played the piano since I was three years old still I despair I will ever be able to have the kind of coordination guitar demands, since it is so different and illogical compared to piano. But I persevered, at least for a bit; and when I put the guitar back down my fingers ached in a very lovely way. A useful way.

Then I went and sat at the drawing table, and doodled a bit; but it wasn't really working, still. I ended up pulling out the two portraits of him that I've done so far, the angel with wings of fire, and the one in deep indigo and black. And looking at them I could feel it returning, the longing, and that little delicious twist of almost heartbreak that is desire, that little melancholy feeling of wanting something different; and I could feel him there, his presence.

And I told him, "You love it when I play guitar." He is beside me, radiant.

"Yes," he says, and smiles. "What else is music but that of the Muse?"

Of course.

And as I slept that night, I had two dreams:

In the first I had just arrived in Wales. I was there, I think, a bit more than for a visit; I don't know if I was finally there to stay, or if I was planning on coming back here, but, still, it was more than just a week's vacation. I was so happy to be there. Even though it was night, and I'd been traveling all day and was exhausted, I went outside, barefoot, and put my feet in the grass, on the holy sacred soil of the land. The house was on a high hill, at the top, and I was in a meadow at the very top of the hill, with a couple of tall trees. On the other side of the house the ground was lower.

The night was clouded over and chilly, not depressing or scary, but perfectly appropriate for the time of year; and though it wasn't raining, there was some lightning and thunder playing about in the sky.

And I met Death there.

He was tall and thin, and dressed in the usual black robe and hood; but he was a handsome and young man, and I was not afraid of him.

Death came over to me. I saw his face. It was quite kind.

He said, "You are at the top of a hill in a lightning storm. I'm just sayin'." It was not a threat, just an appeal to sense; a friendly and caring warning from one who wished me no harm.

I laughed and said, "You're right." So I moved to the lower field, the one much less likely to be struck by lightning.

Later I was out and about in the local Welsh town, going to a pub with some friends (not that I drink), and he was there again, only he wasn't Death anymore, just a friend. He was him, I see now, though for once not in his usual form, instead looking like another man, one whose body he occasionally borrows. I loved him, of course.

The pub was at the seashore, and the beach was just down some stairs.

In the second dream I was in prison. I recall being escorted through doors, and waiting to be buzzed through each one; and I got to the dining room, with the long dreary tables and all the other prisoners. One of them, a man, came and sat quite close to me, in an uncomfortable leering way; I told him to knock it off. It was quite depressing, though not horrible or impossible.

But for some reason then I knew. I stood up and said, addressing all the other prisoners, "This is a dream! Look!" And I went up to the windows, the ones that never opened, and put my hand through one. It shifted and shimmered, like a soap bubble.

And I opened up the side of the building, and created the Sea, just outside, so that that the building now opened up onto a glorious beach.

And oddly enough, though I knew it was a dream for a moment, the dream continued, just now with an awareness of our power. For all the other prisoners got up, and changed things, and made the place beautiful, and safe, and without limits. The uniforms were gone; the dismal lunch became a feast; the day was bright and sunny, and, though the water was cold, we frisked and splashed in the waves. We had become free.

I don't know quite what has changed, or shifted in my own reality, but I feel a lot better. I am grateful.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

And The Rants Just Keep On Coming

Dear Museum Director and Tarot Guy:

While I appreciate your desire to use some of my work in your show in your bitty obscure museum in California, you really do need to work on a few things, chiefly but not exclusively restricted to the following:

Getting your (respective) scatterbrained and anal-retentive heads out of the asses in which they currently reside (which may or may not be your own, each others', or someone else's entirely);

Then, once out, you might also consider working on learning to communicate, to wit:

Do not contact me in a flurry in the spring, telling me the show will be in October, then not contact me again until the first week of November, at which time you are all OMG WE NEED THIS NOW two days before I am slated to go away for three weeks. Do not then get all flustered and panicky as if this is MY FAULT.

Also, if you could actually communicate with EACH OTHER, O Museum Director and Tarot Guy, to whom I explained everything (I thought) clearly and concisely back in the spring, and so understand, Museum Director, what the actual art you wish to have in your exhibit actually looks like, I WOULD very much appreciate it. It would save the current round of misunderstandings, and probably some panic on your part. Which is not my fault, and would be amusing, save for the fact that it gives me a rather stabby pain in my lovely round bottom.

I would also like you to understand that YOU ARE NOT PAYING ME. And so, when you tell me to Jump!, not only am I NOT going to say How high? I will probably shoot you a VERY sarcastically unimpressed look, whilst making a gesture that can be described thusly:

I will take my right hand, and curl my fingers and thumb as if around a tube-shaped object measuring about an inch and a half in diameter, and then make rapid up-and-down motions with it, in imitation of WANKING OFF.

Because that is what you can do.

Cordially,
Thalia