Called Out (Vaseline and Latex)

Okay. CZ asked.

So when I was in high school, I was one of those smart kids that all the teachers liked. I was also one of the artsy ones that made her own pants out of fun fur, shaved her head, wore long skirts, and danced funny.

Some of my teachers liked me so much that they gave me the curriculum for my grade 12 year and said, basically, 'demonstrate that you can do these things. Come to class and do whatever you want, I'll teach everyone else. Have fun'.

As a consequence, for more than an hour every day I had access to all the art supplies, including the potter's wheel, plaster, art paper, etc, in a very unstructured way. At one point my teacher was gonna help me get some fibreglass for a ten foot tall sculpture, but that never happened.

One of the things I did with that time was to make plaster casts of people. Cheesecloth and plaster, or the strips of plaster they use to make medical casts, can be placed over a vaselined-up face and they'll take the imprint. If you do it carefully, you get details-- eyelashes, eyebrows, necklaces, wrinkles at the corners of the eyes-- as well as the shape of the face. Then you put something slippery inside, where your face was, fill it with something that will hold the details, and pull it off. Suddenly you have an exact copy of that face (or whatever body part) at that moment.

It's awesome, especially because people are so pretty, and the plaster takes the form and removes colour so they're just breathtaking.

You can then sculpt with the bits, make flat wall panels by joining up bits, etc.

So last night, Graham and Juggler and I did some face casts. We put a sheet of vinyl that we'd been going to make stuff out of, smeared ourselves up with vaseline one at a time, and get casts taken. I removed my piercing first, cause that would be a *bad* way to get a piercing pulled out.

It reminded me so much of high school, it was fun, and it's cheap. I may start doing this again. I've been deliberately non-artsy for years now, perhaps it's time to change that. I'll have my own wallspace for sculptures. If I do that, I'll want your face. If you live far away, sucks to be me. If not, well then. I'm thinking that a 'wall of friends' would be awesome.

At one point, Juggler looks at me and sort of smirks. He's like, "so we're half-naked, sitting on latex, covered in vaseline..."

Anyhow, just thought I'd share.

Off to work for me. Be well, y'all.

Love.

Sometimes I am so deeply in love with all the people in my life, the core and the fringe and everyone in-between, that I can't breathe.

All The Old Phrases

My life is a cycle. It's round inside round, an endless progression of yesterdays set in a bigger progression of repetition. I change, everything changes, but the same things come around again and again.

I'm avoiding the wheel of life metaphor, because it sucks. Metaphor should be used mindfully, because the metaphor sheds light on the concept you're trying to convey, and not because your mind can conveniently buy into societally-accepted shortcuts. Well, unless you're trying to shortcut the thinking process, in which case, fine.

I was talking to an old friend online this morning. All my old friends are online, except Trevor. My old friend said, you say that you're happy, and that everyone is nice to you all the time, but you still have stuff to deal with. You sort of push it into a little back closet and take it out when you're safe. Things with Kynnin, things with your dad, they come out when you have control of your life and are doing well. I said, of course.

For the longest time I was trying to get back to where I was when I was three, or five, when I was living in Los Angeles and there was sunshine and the smell of fennel, when I was taken to the corner store for my birthday and told I could buy anything I wanted, and I bought a plant. I was trying to get back to the point where dad and I went ant-hunting with squirt guns (our apartment was infested with ants for awhile) and where I had jaundice and mom was told she could sit me in the sun for hours and hours each day and the sun would break down the poison or she could give me medicine, and so the beginning of my life was spent in the sun.

For the longest time I was trying to get back there, to the place before mom married dad who went crazy, to the time where I still remembered how to be happy with other people. I've always been happy; it's the other people that dropped out of that when we moved up to Grandma's and the most dysfunctional family I had never dreamed of. When we moved to the farm in Mission (I was eight) there was no one to play with for an hour of walking in any direction except my brothers and the one neighbor girl when she got old enough. I lived in my books and in the trees and my dogs, but not with other people.

I got back there, eventually. I returned to the time when I was five, I relearned all those things I'd forgotten. Kynnin taught me that there are people who are decent in the world no matter what you do to them, even if everyone is sometimes flawed. Kyle taught me that the world was bigger than Kynnin, and that I had power over my place in it. Jan taught me to playfight when he came from Germany, he taught me that you can have fun when you love someone. Juggler taught me steadiness and trust. CrazyChris taught me functionality. Mouse taught me the need for an internal balance.

These namings have power. These memories have power. Those people, whoever they are now, are burnt into me in the outcome of my life, and will be remembered. I am a mirror of the best in them, smudged at times but faithfully rendering at least some of the image. For the last couple of years I have been who I sought to be, more or less, and now it's time to move on.

When I was five years old I was fully human in the sense that a human is a social animal. I've come back to that. Now it's time to step forward. The next time that pulls me is the time I was fifteen or sixteen. That's when I met Kynnin (you're still with your high-school sweetheart they said to me, just a few years ago, how sweet) and began to step into the world. I got tangled hopelessly in my issues and in my past, I fell down, and I had to travel backwards to get myself on my feet.

Well, now I am on my feet. My feet are under my command. And instead of falling down, as I did then, I'm returning to fifteen to step forward into the rest of my life. I'm stepping into freedom, into power, into ground that shifts if you look at it too closely but not if you keep your eyes fixed on your goal.

I can't explain this feeling better than this. I can't tell you the whys behind it. Although I've always felt nostalgia for the pretty bits in my life, I've never wanted to return to my past, and I still don't exactly. I want to go forward, but the paths are circular, and so I go back and onwards at the same time. Now I can get on with the living part of my life, instead of simply the fixing from past mistakes.

I write cryptically now, only Kynnin will understand perhaps: Instead of my UBC, I've found my Winlaw. Instead of a boyfriend or a mom and a boat, I've found my plant company and soon my own apartment. I've finally learned the lesson Kyle was meant to teach me, and applied it to Juggler. I may be learning the lesson Jan was meant to teach me in that regard too. I haven't fallen down on these like I did before. Before I was a ghost, simply potential. Now, I'm me.

Addendum

(As if it were ten years ago)

Something is wrong with the sum of us
That I cant seem to erase
How can I be the only one
Without a smile on my face

Well now, you're laughing out loud
At just the thought of being alive
And I was wondering
Could I just be you tonight

( Read more... )

Matchbox Twenty- Could I Be You?

Imminence