Art Attack Central
Fixing stuff, myself included…
Relationship or Romantic Fool?
I read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” when I was 13. I felt an instant kinship with, not her ladyship or his lordship, but rather with the gardener. Then the identification with the gardener was predicated on the intensity/passion of his feelings as he gazes up at the manor house in the darkness. What fascinates me about the gardener today is his alarm over the loss of his aloneness.
I didn’t have a comfort zone with aloneness until I was about 40; prior to that I was obsessed with seeking passion, be it in the arms of a lover or in the very search itself for love/relationship. Today it is very difficult for me to find a balance between intimacy and independence and between passion and practicality. Is there a relationship here, or is this merely a discourse on inadequacy? If it’s a discourse on inadequacy is it mine alone or do you share some of the responsibility?
Responsibility requires only that I be responsible for what I bring to the table. So what other mischief do I have in my carryon? The same year I read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, I read some hardcore porn. AT 13! WHERE DID YOU GET IT? I used to mow the lawn for a couple 2 blocks from my house. I had an electric lawn mower. The man and his wife both worked full time; they gave me a key to their house so that I could plug in the mower (back in the old days ordinary folks didn’t have outdoor outlets). Well, there were a number of books lying about, and being the inquisitive child that I was, I plugged in the mower, sat down in an overstuffed chair and started reading. In hindsight I think they purposely left the books where I would find them. Although they never attempted to communicate with me about anything other than the state of their lawn, every week there would be a new book stacked with the rest in the same place.
But, that was ages ago; how does it effect your life now?
On the one hand you have passion, and on the other you have sex, and infrequently you get to have both at the same time and that’s what we call love. So? Well… for me the nature of love will always be “tied up” with longing (ie the gazing gardener), while the nature of sex is “bound” to confound me by it’s ability to exist in isolation from passion/longing.
So what do you mean by a comfort zone with aloneness?
I mean being able to take great pleasure in being alone; I mean feeling fine without input or approval from anyone else. There is a wonderful sense of freedom in living one’s live without a significant other. Friendships are more meaningful when they’re nurtured in a way that seems impossible when your energy is devoted/focused on a love relationship. Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be capable of having a complete relationship, but I do manage to get involved now and then nevertheless. Enough already! I seem to have run off all over the place this morning.
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So Old So Fast
It’s just one of those mornings; a kind of hold your forehead in the palm of your hand morning. Seems like only yesterday I was running to catch the big yellow bus, playing marbles and dodge ball. Not only am I an old graduate student, I was also an old undergad. I returned to college in 1994 at the age of 46 and recieved my BA. in 1996. Imediately I enrolled in graduate school with grandiose ideas of getting a Phd.
So what happened, howcome you never got one?
Well, I got sidetracked for a while by my interest in computers. My initial introduction to computers came via a graduate course in statistics, which included learning to use a statistical program called SPSS: “Oh my god… I don’t know the difference between storm windows and windows 98″. Futhermore, it was no small thing that math was never my strong point. While struggling to keep up with the statistics, I managed to teach myself how to use the computer. Shortly after I completed all the course work and passed the comps. (thesis still outstanding), a good friend gave me a laptop. Suddenly I was wild about getting up a Web site; that summer of 98′ I taught myself HTML. In the fall I started fooling around with Photoshop. “It’s a Photoshop sky”, or “is it a skyblue sky?” My right brained artist side rushed foward and said, “you go girl, this is what you want to do”, and my left brained Nancy Drew side said, “hey girl how do these programs work, what is behind that curtain?”.
Which one did you choose?
Initially I chose to peer behind the curtain; I enrolled at a local community college in an introductory programing analysis course. Then I went on to take C and C++. I struggled with more hair pulling math (the underlying basis of programing). My father said to me,
“Don’t you remember what they said in the Wizard of Oz? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Duh, the lights went on and the right brained artist took her rightful place in the hierarchy of priorities.
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The Day After
It’s a gorgeous day in Baltimore hon. Speaking of hon, recently I had the brilliant idea of grabbing the domain name baltimorehon.com unfortunately it was already taken. Always the genius too late. “Lexicon of Bawlamarese: How to co-moon-icate wiff the natives”. Not exactly what I had in mind, but if you follow the link you’ll find lots of “balmorisms”, and if you know any others you can add them to the list. My thinking was more along the lines of a comic scandal sheet sprinkled with totally inappropriate honerisms.
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Moving Day
Can you guess what happened after making my big commitment. Spent much of today moving files, which luckily were on my hard drive to a new geocities site. Last night was kicked off anglefire (=denied access to my account). Most likely reason = my wild configuration of several image directories which I thought were allowing me to keep my blog going there. NOT! That said, and hours of agonzing labor pains later, I’m now the proud new parent of a geo baby.
What was the most difficult part of the birth process? Ftp failure over and over again getting the old 530 error (password or user name incorrect). Like everybody else out there, I know my own F-ing user name and password, thank you. Fix = finally changed my password and the ruby slippers began to click. I’m still working on “re URL-ing” my links, delete of old unnecessary test/transition posts and change over from archive list on main (not allowed on geocities) to a separate archive index. Will finally be able to sit back later today or tomorrow, and use this page for it’s intended purpose… ranting and raving and generally trying to figuring out what the hell it means to be alive, and just what it is I want to do with the rest of my life.
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Committed
I’ve committed myself to creating at least one post a day, and I’ve decided to be as real as possible within this forum meant for me. If anybody else is interested in what’s going on here, so be it. If not, fine. Yesterday I mentioned making a list of my “hats”.
Here’s a limited list in no particular order:
house painter
old psychology graduate student
imposter
painter
wantabee geek = what is behind that curtain?
programer
lucid dreamer
printmaker
Web designer
faux scholar
dream analyst
sometimes recovering alcoholic
sometimes not recovering
hypno therapist
romantic fool
debunker of myths
Most likely the list is incomplete, and maybe inaccurate; however it’s a place to begin. Shall I run through the list as it stands or write first about those which are most significant? Perhaps they are all equally signifcant, and I’ll close my eyes while pinning my finger to the screen (creating a sort of internet stigmata). Stigmata, that’s the place to begin. In the mid eighties (pre piercing days) I worked in Newark, NJ. I was wearing my printmaker hat at the time and was the only woman besides the secretary, in a small (20 person) sign shop. It was while working there, that I came up with the idea of a Stigmata Kit. The prototype sits proudly on my dresser top, a brightly colored tall red box with a photograph of an open palm on the lid of the box. On 2 sides of the box in white lettering:
Instructions Included
Perform Stigmata Anywhere
Without Undue Embarassment, Ridicule or Regret
What’s in the box:
10 copies of zerox palm prints
2 nails
1 rock
1 bottle blood red nail polish
1 pair of glasses, with nose, eyebrows and mustache attached
My dresser sits right up against the wall, and for many years, leaning against the wall behind the box, was an 18′ x 24′ cheap, framed print of Jesus complete with hallo and a dripping bleeding heart. About a year ago as I was dusting the top of the box, Jesus fell down behind the dresser, breaking the glass and destroying the frame. No I’m not going to tell you a story about seeing Jesus’s face in a taco or that the picture left an aura on the wall; however, the remains of print and glass still liter the floor under the dresser. Point of the confession = I’m not a very good housekeeper.
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So What kind of Blogger Are You?
Up at 6:00 this morning even though I would have to put last night in the quite rough category. Re yesterday’s post: made a few small changes on the Art Attack Central site. I decided not to change it’s look right now, but will reconsider a revamp later in the spring.
Decisions, decisions, decisions… “lions and tigers and bears, oh my”. Still undecided on what sort of persona/nonpersona I wish to convey on these pages, which are so far mostly about figuring out how to make this system behave in certain ways. Ha, sounds like me! How do I want my “system” to behave? or more to the point who is that under your hat? Perhaps I ought to make a list of the various hats I wear in order to avoid confusion (mine or yours). Today I feel like the person under my hat is rather pensively planning to elaborate on those things that make life worth hanging on to, at least another day or two.
Did you know we had a blue moon on Friday night? When you have two full moons in the same month, the second one is called a blue moon. “Ahhha so what”, you say. You just had to see it! In Baltimore the night was warm; by 8:30 the moon was high in the sky. Great white clouds were flying towards the northeast covering and uncovering the shinning disk. A night like that in late November, makes me wonder how anything could be wrong in a place (in a world) so lovely. How could there possibly be wars and famine and poverty; I watch entranced as the night sky flies over me?