Oh the places I’ll go.

I don’t write very often although my mom says I’m good at it.

As most people are pausing to reevaluate their lives at the beginning of a new year, I am finding that my life has taken a moment to pause and evaluate me.  It’s been a strange and somewhat unpleasant sensation.  I don’t at all like it.  2011 wound itself down with a great sigh and strong feelings of unease accompanied by an itch for change. As a firmly rooted Taurus, change is rarely something I seek, even when I’m itching for it.  My group of friends spread wide, my family, my apartment, my relationships with the men in my life, my body, even my fingernails were demanding so much more attention and maintenance and not supplying me with many rewarding feelings.  Everything was begging for change and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.  So, as I dug my lazy hooves around in the dirt, other forces decided my changes for me.  I could feel them working and smell the wind coming from a new direction, and though there was bubbling excitement, there was more fear of the unknown bubbling inside me too.  Then change struck.

I was fired.  The whys and hows are hardly important, but change was ready for me, whether I actively invited it or not.  As I left the building that night, walking upside down, cliches echoed in my head and danced around the wormy pit that had grown in my stomach.  “This is a blessing in disguise.”  “There’s nowhere left to go but up.”  “The Lord never gives us more than we can handle.”  As scared and hurt as I was, I also had a feeling that I was going to be ok.  One of my favorite sister missionaries always told me, often through veils of tears, that everything was always ok.  Things felt shitty sometimes, and things get scary other times, but by the by they are always ok.  Thanks Sister Denning.  So I tried to calm down, went home, prayed, and played dress up with my roommate until things didn’t seem so scary.

The next day brought with it a lot of phone calls and anxiety.  I spoke with a lot of folks to try and get things in order.  Unemployment, reaching out to friends with connections, praying, following leads I had previously abandoned, praying, and putting finances in order.  I was determined to be as active as possible.  Things were changing and although I was scared, being idle wasn’t the way for me.  Change had started, all aboard.

The following day, I had a little less drive and direction.  What now?  I went and bought groceries.  A 5lb bag of potatoes for 2$; Ramen noodles 3 for 89 cents; soup 2 for 2$; 1.50$ for a loaf of bread.  I was ready for a long stretch of making it stretch.  When I returned from the market, my phone rang. It was a company I had been interviewing with in October.  At the time, they had liked me and I liked them.  Then as new relationships often do, it suddenly fizzled.  It was harder and harder to get a hold of them.  They seemed less excited when we spoke.  Eventually they told me that they were going through some changes, and though still interested, weren’t sure where I would fit at the moment.  I was disappointed, but I already had a job.  No big deal.  This time, they called me, and offered me a position.  They are excited and confident and ready to rock my world and have theirs rocked in turn.  Alley-oop!

So it looks like everything is going to work out right?  I was unemployed for one day.  Here comes the sun and all of that.  The strange thing is, now I can’t shake the panic.  Yes, the stress of the unknown is relieved, but now I’m standing in front of a tidal wave of change.  There’s a shadow looming large, and while I can see things I want swimming around inside of it, I am terrified of the crash.  Try as I might to avoid change, it’s coming and it’s bringing friends.  So, here we go.  Sister Denning told me everything will always be ok.  I guess I believed her.  I guess I still do.

I stumbled across this video while perusing the interwebs.  It’s magical.  I hope you find in it the inspiration and empathy that I did and do.

The Lucky Nerds.

Tonight, I sat next to a pair of lucky nerds on the train. She was of the variety that could be rocketed to a new social bracket with a 100$ haircut, a Mui Mui dress and a few new hobbies. He wasn’t quite so fortunate; at least in that regard. They were enamoured with one another and continually took moments away to pinch themselves and ensure they weren’t dreaming. They were nerds. They were lucky… and so in love.

All the small things

         In the city that never sleeps, one takes repose where they can find it.  Today, for me it was on 53rd and 5th Ave.  I sat for thirty uninterrupted minutes; free from car horns, tourists, and miraculously enough, pigeons.  Sometimes it really is the small things.

Oddly existing… together.

She had long blonde hair that was tangled in waves and curls around her face; around her neck.  It was covered with a red knitted cap and she wore a long “sleeping bag” coat that used to be white.  She was beautiful, and had bright red lips.  He was wearing a fedora with a green ribbon tied around it and a bustle of pigeon feathers, shoved into the functioning hatband.  His sport coat was wool, and pink over a murky white polo shirt.  A woman’s  turquoise necklace topped it all, along with thick black glasses.  Needless to say, they had my attention.

As we all vied for seats on the 7 train, they settled across the car from me.  From underneath her coat she produced an unfinished  bowl ,made from yarn, and a crochet needle.  She began working on the rim, expressionless.

I got lost in the Weepies playing on my iPod.  Movement from the couple caught my attention.  The man appeared to be keeping a quiet rhythm with his hands and began moving his mouth across from me.  Almost immediately the woman matched his words, and continued to work to the rhythm.  I removed my iPod, but they were so quiet I couldn’t make out the words.  For the rest of our ride he kept quiet rhythm while they silently chanted.  I eventually got off the train and they continued on to FLushing, or who knows, together.

A smile crossed my face as I walked home.  I felt like I had been witness to something rare.  Two people, both slightly odd, who perhaps would feel out-of-place individually had found a place with each other, and were oddly existing… together.

Perhaps someday I’ll meet someone to chant with me on the 7 train.

Oddly... together

Beating the Blog Block

I have been fervently writing blog posts.  Posts about love, and broken hearts, and strangers I’ve seen, and streets that I suspect are inter-dimensional tunnels.  Some have accompanying photos, some have sketches, all have insight and emotion.  But, not a one of them has seen the finish line, or the light of day.  I keep finding the fury of my typing stalled as I stare into space, not for lack of what to say, but for having too many things to say and not enough focus to choose.  Unfortunately that seems to be a common theme in many aspects of my life.  So…. beat the blog block, change my life.

To kick off the new free flow of ideas, creativity, and energy I’m posting something that I actually wrote several years ago.  At the ripe age of 24 my best gal pal, Krista, and I went to Europe to experience the world and to get a step closer to the women we are meant to be someday.  The trip, in its entirety, was life changing.  The following is just one experience we had on the flight to France.  I hope you laugh at me.  I am.

Parle Vous Français?

Mar 22, 2007

…Sitting directly behind us was an older couple that I predict were from Europe.  I want to believe that they were from France because then I can just clump them together, with the rest of the people on that particular plane, and say that French people in general are rude.  The reason behind my prediction of their nationality, aside from their behavior, was mostly due to their appearance.  Brace yourselves for some good old-fashioned spot judgements.  The man was tall and thin and what hair he had left was completely white.  He wore thick framed glasses with half rims, a button down woven with blue and red pinstripes, and a navy blazer…which he didn’t remove during the seven hour flight.  I neglected to notice what his trousers looked like, but his woven was buttoned to his throat.  Overall, he actually had a very dignified aire about him, which only added to his seeming arrogance and my ignorant assumptions about Europeans.

The woman he was with, whom I am assuming was his wife, was someone I had visually made acquaintances with long before we ever boarded our airbus.  She had a very unique and distinctive style which teetered dangerously close to the line between bold and ridiculous.  She too wore glasses, but her thick frames were a shade of purple and were bespotted with rhinestone (it’s entirely possible that I imagined the rhinestones).  As stunning as her eyewear surely was, it was doomed to live in the shadow of her hair.

It was cut short in the back and on the sides, which were dyed an auburn/brown color.  She had allowed the front to grow long and had styled it in some hybrid between a rock star swirl and a backwoods country “claw”.  As if that wasn’t enough to express her desire to “stick it to the man”(or whomever the French stick it too), she had to take it even further to really give her grandchildren a reason to beg her not to pick them up from school.  So, in spite of the advice that she surely must have received from close friends and family, she decided to dash for that threshold that has been the downfall of so many of our teenage brethren.

While I can’t be sure of what was occurring inside of her head, I can speculate.  I imagine that she envisioned some sort of blonde swatch sprouting from her forehead like a flaxen spray of field grass.  Perhaps she explained her vision to her stylist, who shrugged his shoulders and shirked his duty as an artist, human being, and most likely as a homosexual (it’s hard to be sure in Europe) to try to change her mind, and went ahead and applied the color.  Perhaps she did it herself…over the bidet? Either way, she must have pushed through the attempts from others to stop her.  Maybe it was a memory of those attempts that caused her to balk, halfway through the germination phase, and decide that she just couldn’t go through with it.

She must have stormed to the sink, or squawked at her poor stylist to rinse her immediately!  Obedient to a fault, he quickly did as he was bade, and our poor friend was left with a rock star claw a color combination of newly washed bricks, autumn leaves, and cat urine.  Can you imagine the horror?  In what must have been an attempt to cover up the travesty and distract attention, while still maintaining her Rock Grandma edge, she added some pink to the fray…and…volia!  What a woman?  To add insult to injury she wore a frumpy seeming, green, pullover and knee-high, black, boots.  The boots were canvas and laced up her leg to end at her knee, where she had strategically tucked in her jeans. This was the woman sitting behind dear Krista.

My first experience with this woman was actually while I was waiting outside of the restrooms in the Atlanta airport.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I find that when I am in public, people tend to stare at me.  I’m sure that there are a combination of reasons behind the stares, ranging from my clothes, to my hair, to my effeminate demeanor, to my vocal volume, to any number of facial blemishes.  While any or all of these factors may or may not be cause, I choose to believe that people stare at me because I’m incredibly attractive, incredibly well dressed, and incredibly charismatic…on a good day.  On a bad day, I truly believe that I more closely resemble a cross between, Golem, the Blob, and that annoying subway guy.  The difference between a good day and a bad day is vast, and one can become the other in a flash.  This particular day, was a good day.

Because of my high self-esteem, I suppose I was being more liberal, and therefore more harsh in my judgements of others in passing.  As you’ve been playing witness too, I was having a field day with this poor woman’s appearance.  I was lost in thought as she approached me, and for a brief moment we made eye contact.  Possibly because I was staring at her.  For a fraction of a second, my breath caught in my neck, and I rapidly slipped in and out of a good day.  As my gaze met this woman’s, she looked at me with such total disdain, and I was caught off guard.  It was as if she was offended by my uni-lingual, American presence, and she wanted me to know it.  Maybe she had some sort of crazy voodoo, to accompany the rest of her persona, and she could read my thoughts?  Maybe my internal dialogue was clearly written in my expression?  Perhaps, more likely, she was just as taken aback by her own appearance as I was and it caused a reaction, within her, of bitterness towards others and general insecurity?  Whatever the reasons, it was clear to me that this woman was not the foreign pen pal that I had been hoping for.

Krista and I boarded the plane and found our seats without consequence, or help, from the snooty French flight attendants.  We were making ourselves comfortable and chatting idly when the attack came.  Suddenly an arm sprouted from the back of Krista’s seat and begin tapping her on the head.  After the initial shock wore off, we realized that the mysterious arm belonged to the older man who was accompanying our excentric new friend, the Rock Claw Woman.  He told, not asked, Krista to put her seat up and withdrew his arm back into the dark recesses of the row behind us.  Of course we obliged and apologized, and resolved to stare at one another in confusion.  These folks didn’t play games.  We would have to be more careful in our future encounters.

Later, hours later, we had been dozing and watching films, and we turned in our seats to face one another and enjoy a little stretch while looking for a vacant restroom.  Krista’s eyes had turned yellow from her need for the facilities, and as my focus drifted from her toward the back of the plane, I again made eye contact with Frenchie McCrazyhair.  She was still offering me the same disgusted expression without showing any sign of retracting it.  As I studied the facial narration of her disgust, I noticed that it now carried an additional flavor of haughtiness, signified by the edge of a curled nose.  I met her eye and offered her the customary pinched smile of acknowledgment, expecting that we would both quickly look away and continue with our travels.  Apparently it was too little too late, because she did not return the smile, nor did she look away.  So I did what any logical person would do, I dropped my smile and returned her disgusted stare.  Two can play at this game my dear!  Once I had forged through the awkward beginning stages, I begin to realize that I was indeed engaged in a game; a game I was surely familiar with.

This woman of unknown decent had challenged me, and I had accepted it full in the face.  I found comfort within the knowledge that some things people just understood.  Even across oceans, around languages, and through “interesting” venues of expression, everyone understood a staring contest.  I was prepared for a dual to the death.  It was going to be grueling and exhausting, but I am young and edgy, and I was up for it.  I could only imagine the steel of her wit after surviving an entire vacation with that concoction on top of her head.  This would be one for the record books.  It was an opportunity for me to stand up for my country and prove once and for all that though we have our shortcomings, America is still the leader on this tiny planet.  Not only would it be a triumph over France, but over all of Europe!  And you know what? Canada too!  Why not?  They speak French there.  My victory would ring out across the nations.  Ring it would have too, for I could sense that her defenses were weakening.  I had her by the throat, and I was going in for the kill…until the flight attendant grabbed my shoulder, breaking my concentration, and asked me to turn around in my seat.  CURSES!  FOILED!  I begrudgingly slumped back into my chair, but not before attempting eye contact one last time. I wanted to convey that though I may have been beaten, I was not broken.  There would be a day for a rematch, and next time she wouldn’t have French countrymen (flight attendant or otherwise) around to aid her.  It was imperative that I deliver one last look to convey my outrage at my defeat and my reassurance that it was a one time thing.  But my efforts were only met with sideways glances and covered whispers.

She was for sure French.

Another Christmas in the Trenches

Another Christmas in the Trenches

 

Tis the season in Manhattan.  Everything is in full swing here in the city.  The Swarovski star is on top of the tree in Rockefeller Center, people are skating in Central Park, the “Christmas Village” has turned Union Square into a field of red canopies , and Salvation Army recruits are ringing bells on every street corner.  I’ve always been a die-hard for a “good ‘Ole Country Christmas”, but even I have to admit that there is nothing quite like Christmas in New York City.  Let’s be honest, there really isn’t anything like anything in New York City.

I’ll be spending Christmas in New York again this year.  I’ve never kept secret my personal feelings about this city I live in.  It is wonderful and terrible in large doses.  It can take a lot from you, but more and more often I catch myself stopping to appreciate or enjoy in moments where I have sighed or grumbled before.  I’m still doing plenty of those things, mind you, and am rarely marveled or blown away… but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

For now, I’m willing to trade the lights at Temple Square for the windows at Bergdorf’s; the Forgotten Carols for the street performers who walk through the subway cars playing guitars, accordions, and mouth recorders; snow tubing in American Fork Canyon for watching tourists slip down the stairs at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; and dad’s Christmas Turkey for authentic Ethiopian, Thai, Indian, Japanese, Peruvian, or Italian food.  While some of the particulars of my life may not be as I imagined they would, and I will deeply miss my friends and family back in Zion, I’m looking forward to this particular season in this particular city.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Rainy Days and Mondays - Jefferson Healey

…Always get me down.

Ji’s Donnas

Delfina y Maria - Sylvia Ji

Yesterday as I was sitting with a friend in Barnes and Noble, thumbing through Hi Fructose magazine and grimacing at the nasty iced pumpkin latte I had ordered, I stumbled across something that knocked me slightly askew.  The article is called Night Shade and the artist is Sylvia Ji.  The first image I saw, Delfina y Maria, caused me to pause as if I had mistakenly walked onto the lot of some deadly circus full of beautiful and sad performers who weren’t necessarily interested in my personal safety. In an instant I was quickly flipping through the article trying to visually horde the rest of the romantic and terrible things I was discovering.  I originally started this blog as a way to share my work with the world (mostly my peeps back in Utah), but I also want it to be a place where I can share the amazing things I’m finding that inspire me.

Catrina in Stripes - Sylvia Ji

After flipping through the article, I went back and closely studied the faces and clothing of these amazing women.  The images stuck with me throughout the day and well into my overnight shift at work.  Those of you who know me, know that my attention span is brief at best and that the slightest explosion of color or spastic motion will tear me away from whomever or whatever I was previously focused on and consume my attention.  So, the ability of Sylvia’s Donnas to hold me speaks volumes of them already.

There's Nothing Like Living In A Bottle - Sylvia Ji

It’s apparent that Ji’s art is about the relationship with life and death and the cliché “no one is getting out alive” concept.  Generally I find that theme to be overplayed and stale.  Yeah, we’re all going to die.  Shut up.  But it’s the skill set of her painting (acrylic on wood with gold leafing), and the way these women look at you that I can’t turn away from.  They’re young and alive and defiant.  So, maybe that whole “we’re all going to die” thing isn’t as lost on me as I claimed?  Either way it’s worth the effort to snag an issue of Hi Fructose and check out the article.

You’ll be glad you did.

Red Quechquemitls - Sylvia Ji

This is a link to another, much shorter, interview with Sylvia Ji : http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2008/06/qa_sylvia_ji.php

As well as her personal website : http://www.sylviaji.com/

Untitled - Sylvia Ji

Falling

It has been over a year since I last posted a thought, quip, image, or update on my beloved blog.  I assure you that it hasn’t been because my mind has been elsewhere.  On the contrary, I often think of this little blog and the many, many, many, things that I want to post here.  … Perhaps too many.  I have always had the tendency to dream bigger than I could manage in reality.  Ho hum.

Michael Zavros - Falling

Falling

The past year has turned and left me in a very different place than I anticipated it would.  I suppose that is the habit of passing years.  I am currently living in a house in Queens that sometimes feels more like a hostel than a cozy home, but often accomplishes both functions.  There is a tree filled back yard, few rules, and plenty of decent people to converse with, or hide from in my room.  I sleep on a giant air mattress, covered with sheets commandeered from my ex boyfriend, that tilts to the right.  My trusty jersey pillow is here.  Together we have spooned our way across the country, through Mormonism, around awkward nighttime visitors, and over the hedge.  This summer I became a college grad (YAY!), an even longer term Banana zombie (BOO!), and a single New Yorker (…eh?). All and all it’s been eventful.  Now we’re on another adventure.

I’m tempted to quit here.  To not expound on what I’ve thought and felt.  I’ve been tempted to quit in a lot of places over the past months.  But I suppose the important thing to note is that I haven’t, not entirely.  I’ve spent a day or two in bed more than I should or shouldn’t.  I’ve eaten or not eaten when I should or shouldn’t.  I’ve cried, or yelled, or snapped when I should or shouldn’t.  I’ve been falling.  But I haven’t quit, not entirely.

Now.

It seems a little silly to claim that I am falling still, almost as silly as it seems to claim that I’m not.  But whether I’m falling or not, I need to buy a new bed… and new goddamn sheets.  Oh yeah, I’m going to get an awesome job too….

Whatever, it’s adorable!

Baby steps seem to always work best for me.  You all know that before too long I will end up posting everything I draw, paint, sew, or glue regardless of who will be seeing it, but I thought I’d start small.  This is an Ecoweb that I drew from my Environmental Science class this quarter.  I’m just going to assume that y’all know what that is, or can at least figure it out.  If not, it’s adorable and you should just enjoy it.  I tried so very hard to draw something more realistic but alas, my drawings are always a little cartoony so I just embraced it.  Unfortunately, my prof. wasn’t so impressed.  She just looked at it and looked at me, wrinkled her nose, and said that the paper was too big.  Ouch.  Whatever, it’s adorable!!

p.s. The color was a little distorted in the transfer to the computer so I had to adjust it.