Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts

Sunday, April 7, 2013

20things : moving / seven years / and


1) All winter my cheeks were windlashed and wet.
2) After this winter I determined I no longer look good w/o makeup.
3) My face has these red flaky areas over my cheekbones. And lots of bumps and blemishes all over.
4) Also I've cried more in the past winter months than I did in seven years previous.
5) The other day I snapped the first buds of magnolia.
6) The picture reminded me of Spain, a raw almond, green and furred, still on the tree; another photo, over half a life ago.
7) I keep running aground on history.
8) It cracks me open every time.
9) I sink further.
10) One night, when I was young enough to barely remember, I cried into the rectangle of orange light that separated my bedroom from the rest of the house, where after dark I knew I couldn't leave.
11) I cried until someone came for me.
12) Sometimes they did not; that night, they did.
13) We were going on vacation in a few days --my first one.
14) I needed to know if the bed would be the same, if the sky would be the same, if I would be the same, were I in another place.
15) The answer was I don't know.
16) That was my mother.
17) That was my mother.
18) And I am again in another place, and the bed is not the same, and the sky is not the same, and I am not the same, and it is still almost too hard to hold onto, like in my childbrain.
19) I hear the present approaching the future, rushing faster and faster toward me. 
20) A train and I am trapped underneath the tracks.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

20things : up early

1. I got up at 630 this morning b/c my brain turned on and there you go. (a)
2. I wanted to amend some of the latency of yesterday where I basically lay around and cried the whole day and ate only when prodded.
3. So I decided to do some crafty chores.
4. These are tasks I have procrastinated, but of a nature that either involves, for example, jewelry fixing or gluing pieces of paper to other pieces of paper.
5. Firstly I added another item to my inspiration board.
6. It was the goodbye notes from all the people who were in group the day I left.
7. They have elaborate goodbye rituals which I have mixed but ultimately positive feelings about.
8. The purple paper is folded up lots of times so you have a one-inch swath to write a little note on and then you fold and pass to the next person; like an exquisite corpse of farewells.
9. I thought putting up a plain piece of paper was not very visually interesting. So I cut it into the strips with people's individual notes.
10. Originally I was going to make a flower but it turned out, ahem, a bit more free form. (b)
11. Then I fixed Luna's collar. She needed her new rabies vaccination tag attached. (c)
12. Then I fixed my favorite pair of purple earrings. (d)
13. They had come undone after becoming attached to my kitty-cat balaclava and I'd just sort of gone {yank} and the jump ring from the bottom circle twisted open.
14. Finally I had this necklace which I'd been very much wanting to wear but I'd assembled it in haste.
15. There was a lone jumpring at the bottom of it, indicating a charm should be there.
16. So I dug through the charms K bought me for my b-day and found one that looked like a bashed-up metal heart.
17. Fitting enough, I thought, so I put that on there. (e)
18. I tried to do everything mindfully, narrating in my head like now I am picking up the glue pen, now I am pressing it to the paper, now I am taking the chain-nose pliers and very carefully opening the new jump ring. 
19. The mindful narrating gave me a palpable sense of relief from the hardcore ruminating my brain has been up to lately.
20. I hope I can continue the day as productively. Perhaps it will make me feel better and more able to conquer Monday.

(a) This is me up early. 

(b) This is my inspiration board. Yes, it looks like something a teenager might have on her bedroom door, and I am biologically old enough to have a teenage daughter, but it makes me feel better. My favorite item on there says SOMEWHERE SOMEONE IS LOOKING FOR EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER. There is also KEEP CALM AND DO THE SNOOPY DANCE. However, someone suggested that it is in fact, impossible to remain calm and do the snoopy dance. I imagine a sort of slow-motion-tai-chi snoopy dance. Which probably looks even more ridiculous than my usual dance of happiness / enthusiasm.

(c) This is Luna, proudly displaying her new tag. Of course the picture is blurry because she never sits still. But I wanted to put it up there to test the theory that if you put any picture of a cat or dog, no matter how blurry, on your blog, you get mad amounts of additional pageviews.

(d) Here's my earrings all fixed, sitting on top of Luna's rabies vaccination certificate.

(e) And the fixed necklace. I was going for a sort of steampunk effect by combining the more delicate filigree with the distressed metal heart. We'll see how I feel about it. Note: I did not make either of these charms. They were merely purchased and strung on a ribbon. Sometimes I like simple things for which I did not have to invest too much time. Especially since August. Hmmmmmmm.

PS: I'm halfheartedly trying to figure out how to embed audio into a blog post here on Blogger, but I can't seem to do it. Anyone have any ideas? I thought maybe they don't offer that feature because of file size, but there's a link to "insert video." 

Monday, October 29, 2012

Mad Science

The night after our Halloween party it was calm enough to take pictures. I turned on all the electrical features in the dining room and turned off the lights. It was peaceful, ethereal. More pictures to come.

Click to enlarge.

Potions

Filament 1

Filament 2

Tesla 1

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Another box arrived yesterday

And it was packed with photos of my mother, yearbook, diploma, photos of me, a baby, in her lap. My grandfather rolling on the lawn with her childhood dog, Tramp. Envelopes stuffed with photos I haven't even opened yet. And at the bottom of the box, another box marked priority mail. I didn't untape it. In fact, I was expecting visitors so I taped the whole box up. There are enough photos there for two scrapbooks. One about me, and one about my mother.

We don't really do as many photo albums on paper anymore. But these photos are aging. One day they will be old. I want them preserved, not shoved in falling-apart packets.

I remember the family clamoring for wedding pictures. Just one picture. I was late on getting them out. Their claims were more than justified since we had eloped. I remember I was stressed about sending those pictures, but can't remember why, perhaps because that stress doesn't even compare to this one. In the box from Georgia was a slim album labeled PHOTOGRAPHS (sans-serif, small caps, stamped on black leather) and I thought oh what a cute album with the retro cover and I opened it and there were the wedding pictures I sent my mother.

memymothermemymothermemymothermemymother memymothermemymothermemymothermemymother

I remember the anxiety of picking them out. How much I wanted to share, how much to keep. Was that the year she disinvited me for Thanksgiving? Our relationship was complicated is what I tell people. It doesn't even begin to crest the issue.

So the box is in the middle of my living room floor. Mike asked me if I wanted him to take it to the attic. I said no because if it gets moved to the attic I will never deal with what's inside because it's overwhelming. And I bet if I asked N right now she would say that putting together those scrapbooks would be one way of dealing with my grief in a healthy manner unlike REDACTED

But it's in the middle of the floor now and here are some completely unrelated pictures. These are part of the southside series I've been posting lately.

Psychosmos

Three Fingers

Monday, October 15, 2012

Pushing back against agoraphobia

N says you don't present [yourself] as needy as you say you are, but I believe you.

I say I have good days and bad days. 

Recently I was offered an interview at an intensive (9 hrs / wk) group therapy program. It's on Friday. I'm thinking of making a bulleted list of shit. B/c I get flustered talking to strangers.

For me agoraphobia feels


  • Like people can touch me with their eyes. 
  • Like there's a magnetic field or something that projects from them to me. 
  • When I feel it it's like grating over my skin. 
  • Like pressing down on the nerves of my skin and I can't breathe the same.
  • Like every distance is too far away from safe.


This happened before once but it was so long ago that I [would rather not] have to dig through those years to remember what the solution was. Also I was 17.

I've decided to go back to being vegetarian.

B/c I'm worried about failure, I've decided to be veg + fish, like Mike. And not be too self-judgmental as to whether I "succeed" or not.

When I became veg for the first time it was b/c I was worried about the contribution I was making to factory farming, etc. When I went off it was b/c of curried chicken legs on the grill.

It's not like I never thought about those things after. About animals, the environment.

If you leave me a comment about how animals taste good or how my philosophy should have withstood curried chicken legs or how veg + fish isn't doing enough to blah blah blah I will delete it.

Maybe I decided I want to work towards veg again b/c I feel like it.

This morning is a good morning.

This morning is a good morning b/c Mike helped me by liberating me from C who is triggering lately just leave her a check and tell her to lock up and by driving me through the first leg of my travels.

Sometimes there's a line btwn interdependent and needy and it's blurry. I recognize also needy is a judgment I have put upon myself.

Maybe needy is what I feel when there isn't enough interdependence scenarios to make it work. My life work. Which is complicated right now. And I don't mean my life's work; I mean my life's working, its operation: showering and leaving the house.

My friends have been so good to me.

I have also decided that, for now, I'm using the white cane only for extremely necessitous situations: night, crowds, unfamiliar streets. It is a risk.

N said try to access your personality when you were in Pittsburgh before you used the cane. What were you like?

Smiley and friendly and I looked people in the face. And I felt like I was cute all the time or most of it.

And I didn't feel the eyes pressing pressing pressing on me all the time. I know I have regressed I know I have transgressed the cane is a tool but it is also a marker also a badge and not like (A) badge in The Scarlet Letter or something.

Badge of honor but I prevaricate I also feel in the part of me I don't want to explore I feel like it is (A) badge as well and that's why I need to put it away for now b/c my skin is so raw from everything and the nerves

it feels like iron filings rrrrrrrrub against my arms and neck when people look at me.

Fascia tighten tightens my protection my net my inadequate-

ness.

But here's also some pictures:

Brickface

Lamb Shank

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Playing with washes of light

I've been feeling like words are not quite saying what I want them to lately. So you get some images instead.

Gas

No Parking Bus Stop

Tattoo &