Utah drilling

Alright, I cannot let this go. "W" wants to leave his last month to this. I just do not understand that this is what he wants to do on his last days as a president. Ripping apart this country is much more physical in this sense but still as destructive and ridiculous as his presidency has been. FYI, shale drilling is extremely destructive. What a legacy.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration Monday opened up two million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to oil-shale exploration, challenging congressional Democrats who have opposed the move.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) has indicated that she would prefer to limit shale drilling on environmental grounds, but found it politically difficult to extend a ban on oil-shale operations after oil prices surged to record highs earlier this year.

It is unclear what will happen after President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January. If he and other Democrats want to keep federal oil-shale lands off-limits, they would have time to change course, because requests for new commercial leases undergo a lengthy review by the Interior Department.

The shale region in the western U.S. holds the equivalent of about 800 billion barrels of oil, according to Bureau of Land Management estimates. That is enough to meet current levels of U.S. demand for 110 years.

But the recent slump in oil prices could damp the petroleum industry's interest in the oil-shale region. Shale oil is costly to produce, because the dense rock where it is found has to be heated to extract the petroleum. Exxon Corp. in 1982 abandoned a big oil-shale project in Colorado when oil prices collapsed.

Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have called oil shale one of the planet's dirtiest fuels. It can be converted into liquid petroleum, but only after being heated to 900 degrees Fahrenheit for five years or more, so production requires massive quantities of energy, the council says.

Into the Woods - not so far from Walden

OK :: Something weird is going on in these woods. No, I am not talking about the distant gunshots in the air heard at all times, nor the silent prayers as I am climbing steep hills/mountainsides that those same hunters don't mistake your dog's white lab butt as a deer - cos they are alarmingly similar if only seen from the hind. OR even the confession to having Johnny Cash on the ipod (his latest work mostly, and as I respect his music, it is just not something that I listen to often) OR!!! even the pondering which way North Carolina went in this seemingly liberal vs. conservative election on the blue/red map.... OR!!! even to stop to think for a moment that I am a girl alone in the woods with a lot of testosterone gunmen. it is the pondering of what is art and then finding this article in the NYT (sorry, more liberal-ness) about the author of a book called "The Gift". The journalist speaks with this man about doing art, the Walden way, the social way - no isolation and then the in between way. The idea of art in the public eye when it comes to the internet - and as if there were huge "!!!!" looming everywhere here in West Jefferson, NC. And if that were not enough, I am uploading images of the art that I have been making in isolation to MySpace as we speak. (And for all of those who know me, I am still cold and currently have 3 layers on.)

OK, this is weird. I have been sitting here in the woods pondering these issues. I even posted a late night rant a couple of days before the NYT posted this article. This idea of isolation that inspires the very art that you wish the public would consume. The public does not have to be a gallery it just means something beyond you. And then to add the thought of ownership of ideas and who owns it in an economical sense, is just right on target with where my head is right now. Back in school we debated the ideas of corporate greed and such over many cocktails, etc.. including the very thought of what it means to have Philip Morris sponsor art so heavily. But where does it leave us in the age of Facebook? MySpace? Blogging? Flickr? The very idea of posting your work wipes out the idea of ownership and it enters the realm of giving and sharing. But we are in a corporate world you say? Yeah, I know.

What gives?

Hell if I know. I just look at the money that it took to get to these woods and the distance from my job and its constant "noise" to see that this is a dichotomy that no amount of Johnny Walker Black is going to solve - yep, there it is again, an allusion to $.

I need to go drink a little more, ponder some more and then I will get back to it. But in the meantime, when is work copyrighted? What does that mean anymore? I am using Buddhist and Hindu symbolism in my work right now. Is it my right to interpret that work? I guess the irony of working alone is the time that one has to manifest these ideas about public consumption. I like the idea of questioning and forming opinions on culture. I think there is huge value in it. It is inspiring that others are doing it. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell just put out another book that discusses the idea of privilege and success. Again, these things are happening all at once and I feel that the questions I am raising and the ideas that I am thinking about are right on target. Even though there are few consumers out there who care about this and even less now since we are in a recession. (Yes, Bob Bernanke, I said it, the "R" word) so shoot me, not my dog.

There you go. Once again I have said a load of nothing. But it is easy to do this without censor and with a keyboard and a sprinkling of scotch.

The Gift

As a follow up to my Art rant, I saw this in the NYT today. Serendipitous that I saw this a couple of days after my post as well as the fact that I have fled to the woods to get away from the noise of my job in order to create. So since they are bunches more eloquent than I can be, here is the link: "What is Art for?"


Couple of paragraphs:
Last April I asked the writer Lewis Hyde if he would take a trip with me to Walden Pond, in Concord, Mass. At 63, Hyde has boyishly tousled brown-gray hair, freckled, soft-looking cheeks and the slightly abstracted gaze of a man who spends a disproportionate amount of his time in library carrels. He has an ironic streak, but his default mode is a kind of easygoing acquiescence, and so one slate gray Saturday afternoon he picked me up in Cambridge, where he lives and works half the year, and drove us the 12 miles west to Walden.

Hyde knows the area well — among his ongoing projects is a detailed series of annotations of Henry David Thoreau’s essays — and he led me down a dirt path from the parking lot to the site of the cabin where, more than 150 years ago, Thoreau wrote his celebrated paean to solitude and self-reliance. The cabin no longer exists. In its place there is a lightly excavated, cordoned-off square of soil and, to its side, a waist-high cairn erected in commemoration by generations of pilgrims.

A Room of One's Own

I have had the privilege of working in a cabin in the woods in northwest North Carolina. Besides the fact that it is freezing here, I have been reading (Atlas Shrugged), walking with Zoe the dog, and doing art. I have not watched TV one bit - though I do have internet.

It has been amazing just to kick back, listen to music (strangely, Pink Floyd and not so strangely, Cowboy Junkies have been the go to soundtrack) and draw until early morning. I have been very happy that this has slipped into an easy habit as I have always wanted to do this and feared that procrastination would set it. But alas, it has not and I have done some great work. The picture above is a reaction to the surrounding landscape and the thought "How would Jackson Pollack respond to Buddhism?". Jackson Pollack's Blue Poles is the basic inspiration but it really takes his concept of wrist flicking paint to jazz and pulls it back to deliberate chaos. As I walk through these woods and think about my walks back in Austin, TX, I see things as a whole and I see things in parts. This work I have been doing reflects those walks, those disparate thoughts and all of the feelings of just letting go and being. I am not a Buddhist but I use this and Hindu imagery because it feels like meditation. Though to be honest, this work is almost opposite cos my mind wanders and the thoughts come and I let them. Meditation is too restrictive for me and a little too dogmatic for my tastes - as religion is for me as well. That said, I find that this place that I go to in order to create is like religion.

Now, if I can answer the question of "what is art?" or even "who is John Galt?" I may be onto something. In the meantime, know that I am making compisitional decisions, the works are deliberate and are not as mindless as they can seem. I like creating a beautiful peace of work and I love thinking of the leaves in the wind, the smell of the earth and the feel of the sun. These pieces have that for me so I will move forward with that thought and enjoy what I am doing.

When does something become art?

Alright, a blog without "w" bashing? Well since he is pretty much gone, then I will move on too.... for now anyway.



When does an "object" become art? As I am sitting here in the northern NC mountains during my two weeks of imposed solitude to make art, I am creating something that I question to be art. It is a beautiful object. It has a historical reference (Pollack's "Blue Poles"). It is "spiritual" lines of chaos forming a signified picture through Buddhist imagery. It is intellectual - giving into nature, pondering repetition, questioning minimalism and defining the "work of the hand". But I keep viewing it as decorative. At what point does something become art? Whether it is me or anyone else making an object, what makes it exist outside of that person? Is it the reaction it receives from a viewer? It is a likeness, as in a portrait? Is it art if you know the artist and they are inclined to make things? I know I stand before a Rembrandt and I tingle inside - someplace intangible (and understand, that is NOT my aesthetic) and I have utter sadness and absolute energy in front of a Rothko (more of my taste but he committed suicide), I gasp in front of Cy Twombly and I weep in front of a Deborah Butterfield.

In this day and age when we are about to dip into frugal ways once again, does art matter? Of course my education, the time and the passion I have spent making objects screams yes, but I have to go back to the point of need vs desire. Art is not a need. It is not shelter it is not food nor is it health. But throughout history it has been held in high esteem. It has ranged from historical recording, spiritual, narrative to community service. Andy Goldsworthy makes beautiful objects outside in the elements, takes photos for documentation and lets nature consume it back into the earth. So what is the art? The original piece of work or the preserved photo of the work that viewers will consume? At what point does making something go beyond the maker and reaches the consumer? There was a statement in a book written by Anita Politzer about Georgia O'Keefe. In her early years as a teacher in Amarillo, TX O'Keefe worked hard at her drawings. She put out piece after piece, drawing after drawing. Politzer gave some of these drawings/paintings to Steiglitz and he deemed them art. O'Keefe felt that it was at the point that her personal language became universal. When it was consumed and felt by another, it was art. But this was not instant. There was a trandscendance that occured. It went beyond the technical and it crossed over to another existance, a place that all artists understand inatetly.

I have no answer to this question and this is a rambling message but I wonder if we are part of a collective concious and we use our own symbolism as a language to communicate with others, is this art? When we are no longer the individual in the studio but the salesman with our wares that others respond too, are we making art? It takes isolation, individualism, quietness and observation to record something that trandscends the individual and makes it out into the larger world. Ironic, isn't it?

All things are possible...

I am sitting here just astounded. I am happy for us. I wasn't completely sure this was going to come about. I really thought that fear would leave people voting for what they knew. I also feel this was a close race. But overall I am sitting here thinking that I have a little bit less of a cynical outlook this morning. That is huge for me. I am happy at the turnout and as my friend wrote to me this am, "All things are possible." I can't help but to be happy for african americans... this is a huge message that all things are possible. To think 50 years ago, there were to different fountains for people to drink from. I think there are hard times ahead but I want to bask in this morning after of a huge night.

Peace

Doubt and Faith in a Post-Enron Crises of Ethics Era

So in this election I have thought long and hard about the division of the country right now. Staunch support for one side over the other. IMHO it comes down to Doubt and Faith. Doubt got us our nation, our constitution and our strive for something better. Faith, while in the personal sense is comforting, in the public sense can be and has been many times over, damaging. The medieval times is a great example of exploitation of faith. Rebuilding Iraq while the doubters are dead or have left their country because of doubt (or fear that their educated selves and family will be destroyed) becomes nothing more than a social experiment. Democracy for those who strive for it due to doubt of a regime is a worthy component of change. Democracy thrust upon warring religious tribes without the benefit of forward, prescient thinkers is a set up for disaster. I won't get into what I think of W or what he has cast about in the last years because it is time to look forward and cast our vote for a new leadership. I have looked hard at McCain. There I have said it, written it and it is now public record. I have liked where he has come from, the fact that Rush Lim... and Ann Coult... hates him makes me want to like him by default. He took on his party's greed and (every politician has a sketchy voting record so I am not going there) and he has stated the use of lobbyists as an issue in DC - I don't need to argue this either (even W. supporters would have to agree at some level). Go back to NH - both bids, and you will hear the real McCain. He is there. He really is in this due to his beliefs. I don't doubt that at all. But McCain went for the gimmick, Palin, and his campaign trail has painted them as a Reagan loving, abortion banning conservative and I feel that he missed his calling as a centrist that may have been the person to help heal a divided nation. I am extremely disappointed in this decision to follow the conservative vote (I am not making a judgment here on the right, just that he will get their vote by default) and leaving out the undecided and the "independents". I think he would have it in the bag if not for that and it shows weak leadership and not the forward thinking I expected. He would have brought one of his more centrists original picks, the election times would be different. Now back to the topic: Doubt versus Faith. So Obama brings the doubt and McCain brings the faith. And at this time of division and extreme selfishness of greed and the haves in our society, I have to side with doubt. What we have now is not working. And if I am called a liberal in an argument with staunch "Faithests" because I would rather support my community - or strive to have one, have a desire to protect our environment and fight for balance here on our shores, then I guess I am a liberal. If that phrase is cast about in angry consternation, then I accept it as I feel those are the values, morals, and ethics of an educated society that has the ability to choose Doubt or Faith. Maybe I am Ferdinand the Bull sniffing the flowers in the fighter's rink, but all out aggression has not gotten us too far either. I am definately not one to run this country. I expected McCain to be that person for me. I thought Obama was too soft...but now I see him as the one that has stayed true to his core beliefs. I mean, he voted against the war... right? Does't that show forward thinking? Here is an excerpt from a book I am reading on Bruce Springsteen "Two Hearts" by Dave Marsh where he is describing the writing of the "Nebraska" LP. He is a writer and I am not, and I think he sums up this post_Enron era beautifully and supports my desire to side with Doubt: “Anybody who traveled through America in 1980 and 1981 would have been thrown out of kilter. Double-digit unemployment was only the most accessible measurement of the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression. The United States was no longer the land of plenty, it was a land of limits; it was no longer the home of a dream of equality but of a nightmare of inequity…. ….An ugly spirit ascended, the most perverse rendering of “every man for himself.” The greed behind it all wasn’t anything new – in part, it was as old as the earliest European settlement on the continent – but it had rarely stood so naked and unapologetic. In this world, men saw each other not as brothers but as incomprehensible, threatening aliens."

Yeah, moving with Doubt 'cos sitting down together over a beer with Faith has really turned us into lambs before the slaughter.

DISGUSTING

BAILOUT???? WTF?????

From CNN:

Here is a taste of why this whole thing is disgusting and out of control.....


...Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman learned last week.

When WaMu failed and was seized by government regulators, Fishman had been on the job for just 17 days. However, he was contractually guaranteed $11.6 million in cash severance on top of the $7.5 million signing bonus he got for taking the job.

Basically, Fishman netted just under $20 million for 17 days of work, which is a pretty nice setup for the head of a collapsing corporation. (In Fishman's defense, it's tough to blame WaMu's failure on his leadership alone; it seems highly unlikely that any CEO, however determined, could crash such a large thrift in just two weeks.)

With the salaries and bonuses mentioned in this article, we can get some bailout funds for people and not banks.

I love you Dolly!

Too funny not to share:

Dolly Parton's fans wanted her to run for the white house and she quipped with ... "there were already too many boobs in the white house." (paraphrasing) but damned funny.

you go girl, you rock!

Iguana Piss in South Florida

So I guess after the recent posts, it is time for a lighter, airier note. Iguana Piss and all of the other things that do "nature" in the back yard. I have not been living here since June of 1988. To be specific, 2 days after graduating high school. Not really my scene, though I grew up in South Beach before the models took over and right at the point where it was a great place to dance to your freedom. We moved here when I was 11 - sometime in the summer of 1981. Big changes and bigtime culture shock. But that is not this story.

I just moved back to Fort Lauderdale in March (2008). I have not **really** experienced this place as an adult. I had many interesting **adult - like** experiences here but not as really as an independent being. So now I am working here, still thinking I am not an adult and I have a dog.

So the dog, Zoe, is now into chasing lizards. She even points. Just for the record, she is white lab going on 9 years in March 09 and by all breeding rights should be a bird dog. She will amusingly look at the wild parrots as they fly overhead but she POINTS at lizards. She would stare by the hour given half a chance. So this rambling brings me to the point of this blog. I like to believe I am a nature girl. Grew up in the woods in South Jersey (so far south, I do not have an exit - Cape May county). So I know woods. Would spend as much time in those woods as allowed and I never liked wearing shoes. But HERE I have discovered a few creatures that have really fucked me up.

(1) Crabs: yep. Crabs. Bluish ones. Ones that are in my back yard. After Trop Storm Faye, there was one in the back yard. I thought... hmmm "did it get blown in? washed in? dropped in? What the hell was it doing here and why my backyard??". I do live near a canal that drops into the ocean but still. I am kinda in the subs - urban subs but still, the subs. I thought it was random. Well it turns out, no, not random. I have encountered 5 more.

(2) Freakishly hairy caterpillar. As bright a green as my Honda Element. I stuck the back of my hand right on it and it freakin' HURT. For days. In fact, 3 weeks later I still have 2 little spots where its little vicious venomous hairs are. It musta moved in when I brought in the plants for trop storm Ike that brushed past. It seemed to be at home on the corner of the table I had at the front door. Of course after I hit it, I thought I sliced my hand open on the corner of the table until I turned on the light and found that thing. Probably laughing.

(3) Palmetto bugs - these I remember, I hate em' and I will not give them any more power over me by writing too much about them. Suffice it to say they make me scream, curse and flee.

(4) yep, more shit.... Slug. Got no idea what to say here cos I do not know much about them other than they are a dark Payne's gray color, long and thick (about 5 1/2" tall x 1" wide). If they do something with the mosquitoes, they can stay.

(5) Last but most certainly not least. The Pissing Iguana. Those fuckers are everywhere and they are hurting the indigenous lizard population - which is a sad aside and a result of the stupid people here that love exotic pets and then let them go for whatever reason. This afternoon I was sitting quietly reading outside - trying for a little of the vitamin D I have been missing because work has been crazy and sucky lately - and all of a sudden I thought someone through a glass/bucket of water over the fence. Yeah, no, you guessed it. I looked up and there s/he was. Pissing like a cow on a rock. Only this was no rock, it was my plants and I was dumbfounded on how much PRESSURE that thing had. I mean they are bigger than you would think since they are in the wild here but still!!! It was loud! I wasn't sure what to do but I was sure glad that it didn't piss on me. So I did the only thing I have the capacity to do in that situation. I calmly got up, came inside and sat down at the computer to look up iguana piss to see if it harmful to dogs. Salmonella is on their skin, so who knows, right?? Anyway, the next thing I knew to do was...to blog about it cos I just don't know.... what else to do with this new experience.

As I said, I think of myself as a nature girl but oddly my response to narrowly being pissed on by a rogue Iguana in my backyard was to come in and blog about it.

PS - one night there was some kind of Egret thing or something I saw on my walk with Zoe. I thought at first it was a badger, but since I was nowhere near a computer I couldn't look up whether badgers were part of Florida. Everything else is so why not??? If it could happen, it would be here.

Over and Out until the next thing rocks my world around here.

Civil Disobedience

All, now is the time:

Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying power, without resorting to physical violence. It is one of the primary tactics of nonviolent resistance. In its most nonviolent form (known as ahimsa or satyagraha) it could be said that it is compassion in the form of respectful disagreement.

Civil disobedience is one of the many ways people have rebelled against unfair laws. It has been used in many well-documented nonviolent resistance movements in India (Gandhi's social welfare campaigns and campaigns for independence from the British Empire), in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in the American Civil Rights Movement, Jehovah's Witnesses' stand against the Nazis (1929-1945), and in peace movements worldwide. One of its earliest massive implementations was by Egyptians against the British occupation in the nonviolent 1919 Revolution.

The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience, originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government". The driving idea behind the essay was that of self-reliance, and how one is in morally good standing as long as one can "get off another man's back"; so one does not have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it). This essay has had a wide influence on many later practitioners of civil disobedience. In the essay, Thoreau explained his reasons for having refused to pay taxes as an act of protest against slavery and against the Mexican-American War

New level of low

Highlight: The Bush administration had sought a narrow interpretation of the act to allow for fewer materials to be preserved by the National Archives.

Cheney must keep records, judge orders (from CNN)
Vice President Dick Cheney must preserve a broad range of records from his time in office, a federal judge ordered Saturday, ruling in favor of a private watchdog group.

Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were sued to ensure that presidential records are not destroyed.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the records are not excluded from preservation under Presidential Records Act, which gives the national archivist responsibility over the custody of and access to the records at the end of a president's final term.

The Bush administration had sought a narrow interpretation of the act to allow for fewer materials to be preserved by the National Archives.

"Defendants were only willing to agree to a preservation order that tracked their narrowed interpretation of the PRA's statutory language," Kollar-Kotelly said in her order. This position "heightens the Court's concern" that some records will not be preserved without an injunction.

Cheney chief of staff David Addington has told Congress that the vice president belongs to neither the executive nor legislative branch of government, AP reported. Instead, he said, the office is attached by the Constitution to Congress. The vice president presides over the Senate.

Give me an Effing break

Apparently a stain on a ceiling in a weight loss center looks like Jesus. How soon will the pilgrimage start??? I mean come on, it is a stain and it has recognizable stain-parts but it is not Jesus. I have no doubt there is a lot of praying going on there but I suspect this will not be part of the prayer.

Ghost of Tom Joad

"Kathy I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why... Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they've all gone to look for America..." from America, Simon and Garfunkel and it sums up my mood lately. I am empty and I am lost and I look to the future and I have have hope in Obama and I want to believe he will be our Tom Joad because the opposite is bleak. Our place in this world is so diminished by our current leaders. We have lost our connectivity. We build up the Lohans and we tear down the Obamas.

Wherever there is someone struggling to be free look in their eyes and you'll see me. ...The Ghost of Old Tom Joad is a fav Springsteen song of mine but right now I am not seeing hope and it is really getting to me. I need my Tom Joad but I am living in a Steinbeck world and I am hoping that Obama is the future. I would like to see the peace and not the war.
In the meantime, this video is amazing and it creates an energy: Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine

Kengo Kuma: Just sit with this

21 Grams or Blue Pearl

For the record, I have no clue about this ... but what if the meditation "blue pearl" of energy and the 21 grams of the "soul" was the same? What if we are energy? And we return to energy. As I draw my "buddhist art" aka seriously anal detailed drawing and I recreate buddhist symbolism in my work, I had this thought. I am a bit ADD to ever get to the blue pearl of meditation (hence the blog) but it is an interesting concept. There are experiments where they hooked up a buddhist monk to visualize his brain waves during meditation and the image was a bluish pearl/circle. Coincidence? I ran across the concept in the book "Eat, Pray, Love" and have kept it in my brain - contemplating its meaning. So as I sit and draw my buddhist symbols, and as they evolve into a series of connecting circles, I had to wonder about the connection of soul to energy and the two concepts: the blue pearl in meditation and the 21 grams that the body looses in death, attributed by some as the soul. (PS: I am not capitalizing buddhist or any other religious title. my blog, my rules, my affectation.)

… the Blue Pearl [is] the subtlest covering of the individual soul....

When we see this tiny blue light in meditation,
we should understand that we are seeing the form of the inner Self.
To experience this is the goal of human life.

[The Blue Pearl] is tiny, but it contains all the different planes of existence.

- Swami Muktananda

Social Networking

While looking up the site Zude for a project, I found this artist that I really admire. His name was Zude and he was a Chinese artist active in the 16th or early 17th century. I wonder if there is a connection to the name or a coincidence? A lot of the social networking sites look to the past for inspiration for community. Has our society turned the corner on relationships? As we grow closer online do we grow further apart physically? What does it mean to have a site like Twitter become so popular? Does anyone in my network need to know that I am on a conference call? finishing wire frames? eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Is IM enough? IM at least gives one the feeling that they are not alone because people on their list sign in and make their presence felt from afar in digital space.

Here is information about the picture shown:

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; 61 3/4 x 37 7/8 in. (156.8 x 96.2 cm)
This image of an elegant elderly lady shows how the Chinese portrait painter conveyed a sense of status through the figure's accouterments. The lady's wealth is suggested by her jewelry—gold and pearl earrings and an ornate headdress fashioned out of gold and kingfisher feathers—and the sumptuous blue brocade cloth draped over the back of her chair. Her family status is further underscored by the official belt inset with elaborately worked plaques and a large rank badge with Manchurian cranes—the insignia of a civil official of the highest rank. Since women were not eligible to hold government office, these marks of rank were probably inherited from her father.

Grace, Eventually

I am currently reading essays by Anne Lamott (Grace, Eventually). I came across a story of her and her struggles with addiction. Alcoholism and Bulimia. I guess I capitalized those words because of the power they hold over people. I am very involved with how Food has a hold over me. So below are some pieces of her essay as this is her territory, not mine:


"Until a few weeks ago I had been scootching along pretty well for a while in size-ten pants having lost a little weight, feeling I'd nailed the food and weight and body image business when all of a sudden my foot met air, and I was unmoored. Within minutes, I was on the edge of full on food binge, assault eating. I couldn't even remotely find my way back to the path that I'd relied on in the past fifteen years, the path of feeding myself when I am really hungry, trusting my own appetite and staying at the same weight without too much painful obsession. I was starving, and nuts. I prayed for God to help me find my way out, and what I heard was, "call a friend." But something edgier was speaking more loudly, and I pricked up my ears at the sound, even though an old man at a church once told me never to give the devil a ride. Because if he likes the ride, pretty soon he'll want to drive. It felt as if someone determined and famished had taken the wheel. ...I was so lost. I couldn't follow the bread crumbs back to the path of mental health, because I'd eaten them all. ..."

I have been on a "diet" with the assistance of pills for a little over one week. They are helping suppress the sugary crazy void-inspiring cravings. I have even returned two handbags that I recently bought (those that know me will understand this is huge). I am not sure that I will ever come to terms with my body image. I fear that it may not happen. But the alternative is would be to spiral so far down the path of disassociation of who I am that I may never come up for air. I have not had cravings like I did before the (sugar?) pills but there are times that I am so frustrated at having to be so in control and so ReSPonsiBLE for my food intake that I want to scream into the void.

Who knows? The positive? I have begun to make art again. There is always going to be a void and I have to choose its filling. Sometimes I may want it to be filled with cheesecake but for now it is watercolors.

-b

Redneck Stonehenge

Gotta love this story from Associate Press



HOOPER, Utah - A farmer has erected a fence in his backyard made of three old cars sticking up in the air to send a message to new neighbors that he can do whatever he wants on his farm. "This is just a fun way for me to say, 'Hey boys, I'm still here,'" said Rhett Davis. "This is my redneck Stonehenge."

Davis came up with the idea after neighbors who recently moved into homes next to his hayfield complained about his farm.

"The people who bought the homes say, 'Well, we love looking into your yard and seeing the horses and the cattle, but we don't like the flies, and we don't like the mosquitoes,' and when I cut my field to bale it, they say, 'We don't like the dust in the air,' " Davis said.

Davis said he offered to pay half the cost of a fence between his property and the others and to build it. He said his neighbors declined the offer, saying it would block their view.

Read Full Article

Library Find

This weekend I went to the Ft Lauderdale downtown (7 story) library and stumbled across a really beautiful find. Inrō Boxes. I love our library and it was great just to wander the shelves in search of inspiration to my pattern sketches/paintings.

Here is a description via the wiki: An Inrō was a case for holding small objects. Because traditional Japanese garb lacked pockets, objects were often carried by hanging them from the sash (obi). Inrō were suited for carrying anything small. Consisting of a stack of tiny, nested boxes, inro were most commonly used to carry identity seals and medicines. Inrō were made of a variety of materials, including wood, ivory, bone, and lacquer. Lacquer was also used to decorate inro made of other materials. Inrō evolved over time from strictly utilitarian articles into objects of high art and immense craftsmanship.

The book I saw is: Japanese Inro by Julia Hutt Here is a (grainy) shot I took from the book itself...



I fell in love with these objects. They are stunning. I am now imagining the items I would carry in mine...


Now from high art to low art but I have to say pretty cool: an Inrō Ipod case:





Quick Zwitter:
Out like a light... it's nighty night time.



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Sleep tight!