As I lay in bed this morning trying to summon the courage to a) wake up and b) step into anything other that the warmth of my bed, I realized that there are probably 5 ice-solid months between me and Not Freezing. We've come to the point where winter shoves itself right up our asses and I attempt not to freeze to death every single day. We will now spend the next Forever wishing we lived in tropical climates while being served Long Islands from a lawn chair. We've entered into the zone where time does not exist. I think I just made a Twilight Zone reference.
But seriously, geology played a cruel joke on the Midwest when it bestowed upon us this Merry-go-fuck-yourself ride of weather. I will never forgive my parents for staying here and torturing their children with Chicago winters and not moving to say, SOMEWHERE HOTTER, either.
Around this time of year -- between hourly hot showers, contemplating how to get away with not moving for most of the day and whether or not anyone would still talk to me if I wore a blanket around my shoulders -- I usually start getting calls from various drawing leagues in the area to come in and work. This is where I wonder whether or not to delve into the fact that I am -- in varying frequencies, depending upon the season -- an art model.
I guess that cat's out of the bag.
Just to answer your questions in advance, because I've revealed this too many times and had to navigate around those wanting to ask but simultaneously too shy:
- Yes, that means naked.
- You can stop laughing nervously while you try not to glance at my boobs.
- That was actually a pretty good boob joke.
- Yes, the money is fairly good when you're needed.
- No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable.
When I tell people this I mostly get men that glance shiftily at each other or laugh uncomfortable as mentioned above; or women that look at me as if I am some foreign creature who deems her body worthy enough to bring it into the outside world unclothed. Overall I just like seeing how fast I can get the receiving party to change the subject out of discomfort or ask me more questions hoping I might actually say "boob".
The truth is I really enjoy this work. Not because I get to be the center of attention for a few hours at a time or because I think I could have been friends with Athena, but because it is some of the only time in my life when I am forced to just sit down and shut up. For 3 hours, a few times a month, the only thing between me and my thoughts are the neurotransmitters synapsing across my hemispheres. If I were actually able to meditate on a daily basis, this is what it would look like. Maybe I'd wear clothes.
I began modeling as an experiment in self-acceptance back when I lost weight and have followed it all the way through getting fat and thin and fat-ish and thin-ish again. The bare bones and beauty of art modeling is that it doesn't matter two nipples from none what you look like. Life drawing is about what the student sees and how he puts it down on paper. And the more comfortable you are with yourself, the better it will be translated on the other end. And to be honest? I feel more comfortable in this type of setting, wearing nothing at all, than I often do clothed in the real world.
I learned through not caring how my stomach bulged when I sat a certain way or whether or not my cellulite showed in this or that light how to love and accept my body. I learned through how little those that drew me cared about the same things that the human form is in all its forms beautiful. And I learned from doing it that curvy bodies are more interesting to draw than those with straight lines. Sorry, twiggies.
Today, however, I remembered just how uncomfortable it can be when you're needed to sit around in the buff during colder months. If you've ever reclined in a cold warehouse for a few hours at a time NOT MOVING, then you know what I mean. As I lay there contemplating just how shivering keeps the body warm and what the hell kind of biological response goosebumps are (thoughts, Nichola?) I also remembered what it feels like to have your arm thoroughly and completely fall asleep. Note: it feels kind of like your arm is doing the chicken dance without you.
Despite the occasional discomforts and the odd sideways glance from people that think I engage in some form of prostitution, being an art model has been one of the best things I've ever done for myself. It's taught me to be a better artist and a better attention-payer. From art modeling I learned to be still, infinitely patient, and introspective. A few skills I didn't have much of a grasp on until I began.
I also like to play a little game where I make eye contact with new students and see how long it takes them to hastily look away. That's always fun.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Posted with Blogsy
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Accidental Parenting
In continuing my streak of being generally lame and a failure of a blogger (I'M SORRY, ok?? Moving has taken all my creativity and shoveled it into decoratively positioning my crappy furniture, lighting candles, and trying to figure out how to mask the fact that most of what I own has come from the garbage. Also to resist the urge to paint everything in varying shades of purple. GIVE ME A FEW DAYS, WILL YOU?) all I have the energy for today is a Daily Mosifer.
This is a post from another one of my favorite Funny Moms. If ever I have children and don't farm them out to child labor or lock them in the cellar of the giant home I'll somehow own, I hope this happens to me. Here's just a little sneak peek, to get your juices flowing:
This is a post from another one of my favorite Funny Moms. If ever I have children and don't farm them out to child labor or lock them in the cellar of the giant home I'll somehow own, I hope this happens to me. Here's just a little sneak peek, to get your juices flowing:
We told the girl she and her friend would be going to camp together. They were excited. We got applications and sent in the check. The husband, as he was filling out the check, said to me, "You know this is run by the Detroit Presbytery, don't you?" I was busy playing SuperMario or something and said, "Yeah, sure, that's fine," because although I had no idea what the Detroit Presbytery was and though it sounded kind of religious, I figured it was like the Girl Scouts or the YMCA. Sure, that Christian thing is in the YMCA, but I've not really seen how it affects their day to day operations of a swimming pool and tennis courts.
Then we got the information packet from the camp, including the packing list. Here are the first few items, which may have caused a more aware person to pause:
Bible
Pillow
Sleeping Bag
I'll leave you to your reading. Also for you parents out there, I await your stories of unexpected debauchery against the tiny heathens you are currently rearing. Or maybe what you thought your parents did to you on accident in your youth but you now understand was pure, unadulturated revenge. Your mom is still pissed about what you did to her boobs.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Fuck-It-Yourself
When your weekend consists of driving an hour to spend too much money on a "transparent red oxide" couch made of cardboard, an ancient form of velour and sturdy styrofoam (circa 1970); watching movies on your failing laptop propped on a stool because your $30 DVD player suddenly decides to only play the trailers of Redbox movies; driving around for 3 hours only to ditch the fabric line at JoAnn fabrics because the holiday crafters make you want to chuck a garden gnome at their overly-spirited heads; and soberly leave the Home Depot without lumber because you've realized you assumed the coffee table you'd planned to create would just magically build itself; I think this is the only thing that could cheer a halfhearted adult such as myself up.
(Is that enough semi-colons for you?)
If you are spitting your Velveeta cheese and Rotel dip at the screen right now, then I assume you understand my frustration with all that resembles "DIY" and "Home Decor." I think I'm nearing the end of the one week limit I seem to have in which I care about how my wall hangings "open up the room." God bless The Mother, who has a great way of pointing out all my ineptitudes in home-space management while simultaneously doing it for me. Don't mind me, I'll be drinking in the corner. If I fall into the couch, just pretend it was termites.
I swear I'll start writing writing like I care again soon. Just give me some time to go to the grocery store, first. Is anybody else aware of how valuable a parent's fridge is, right now? GO HUG YOUR PARENT'S FRIDGE.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Hyphens are for Women
I'm feeling a great fondness for Jada Pinkett-Smith today, for this wonderful excerpt from Sinuous magazine. Keep workin' that hyphen, WOMAN.
How is man to recognize his full self, his full power through the eye’s of an incomplete woman? The woman who has been stripped of Goddess recognition and diminished to a big ass and full breast for physical comfort only.
The woman who has been silenced so she may forget her spiritual essence because her words stir too much thought outside of the pleasure space. The woman who has been diminished to covering all that rots inside of her with weaves and red bottom shoes.
I am sure the men, who restructured our societies from cultures that honored woman, had no idea of the outcome. They had no idea that eventually, even men would render themselves empty and longing for meaning, depth and connection.
There is a deep sadness when I witness a man that can’t recognize the emptiness he feels when he objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on that offer.
He doesn’t recognize that the [creation] of a half woman has contributed to his repressed anger and frustration of feeling he is not enough. He then may love no woman or keep many half women as his prize.
He doesn’t recognize that it’s his submersion in the imbalanced warrior culture, where violence is the means of getting respect and power, as the reason he can break the face of the woman who bore him four children.
When woman is lost, so is man. The truth is, woman is the window to a man’s heart and a man’s heart is the gateway to his soul.
Power and control will NEVER out weigh love.
May we all find our way.
J
Vice Grips
Sometimes I have to force myself to sit down and write. Sometimes I have to physically put a timer on to make sure I don't leave the studio before it jolts me out of drooling at the easel. Sometimes the creative pursuits -- like almost anything else -- are what fuel us to keep going but can become as hard to pull out as a wedgie (especially if I'm wearing boy shorts. Girls with big butts don't wear boy shorts). Sometimes I have to go on menial errands like meandering around Target and buy everything but the tweezers I went there for, just to let some of the information trickle in and begin arranging itself before I'm ready to set it to type. Today was one of those days.
This post was especially hard to write because it goes way down into my vault of security, down past the guard dogs and fangs dripping with blood, screeching to a halt into one of my greatest insecurities and deepest shames. It's something so many women (and men, not to be exclusive) deal with but none of us want to talk about. At least not in the real sense, anyway. Forget about Dr. Oz and Raspberry Ketones. This is my story of Food:
Look, Here's The Thing:
I've been catching myself in the kitchen lately. I'll pull random things out of the fridge and stand at the counter eating. Not because I'm boredom eating -- which has very often been the case in years past -- but because somehow I'll find myself starving at the end of the day and the process of biting, chewing and swallowing just seems so boring that I might as well do it standing up; so that I may get it done as quickly as possible. Somehow, I'm forgetting throughout the day to feed myself. Somehow, I'm forgetting one of the most basic functions of human being. Somehow, I'm losing interest.
I noticed this initially when I became a human tension wire over my relationship issues and all thoughts of food made me want to vomit the nothing already in my stomach. Everything tasted like dirty socks (or maybe those boy shorts). Somehow chips and french onion dip became dinner -- to be served in high doses after midnight. I would have drip-fed myself coffee as a filler if I could. The only reason I find this so interesting "now" is because of how different it is from "before."
It's no secret to those that know me that I've always been curvy. I've always had an ass for days, cheeks a chipmunk would scratch its eyes out for and HELLO, thighs. For fuck's sake, I didn't even start looking in the mirror and seeing someone moderately attractive until I was like 19. And for a long time my weight fluctuated because eating was not something I did for nourishment, it was what I did to nourish the empty spaces. Give me something to worry about and you give me flapper arms. Hand me an empty afternoon and Thou Hast Bestowed Mine Winter Weight. The great tragedy is that none of the extra ever spread to my boobs.
I turned a 180 after high school, when I joined the ranks of women starving themselves on low-calorie ice cream and boca burgers on Weight Watchers. I lost a bunch of weight and felt like super woman. The problem? I was still as obsessed with food as I had been before I began. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in my head; from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed I was fitting together the food pieces and trying to create a picture of my day with as much as I could squeeze into it. Watching the Food Network late at night doesn't help either; though I think it would make Jim Gaffigan proud. I felt better about myself, but that was only when I could even think about anything other than what I as putting into myself (yes, I caught that...get your head out of the gutter).
After 9 months of insanity I came to a halfhearted conclusion that two opposites don't make a middle ground. And that some other avenue probably needed to be ventured, seeing as every time I'd go home from school I'd "take a break" from dieting and eat entire batches of cupcakes. I'm pretty sure you can black out from sugar, now.
Then I was bequeathed the gift of Geneen Roth. This woman is a genius of food obsession. Dude has dieted and binged enough to have gained and lost over 200 pounds in her lifetime, a fact she touts proudly in her profound recovery. From the insight of her finally reaching sanity, she has a magical way of taking you out of the compulsion and instilling the concept of food as health, rather than harm. All in a way that makes you laugh at the gallon of ice cream you just ate while simultaneously asking yourself, "who in there actually wants to eat a gallon of ice cream at a time?" Because when it comes down to it, if you really do love yourself, why would you want to eat a gallon of ice cream? When you sit down and truly feel how that feels in your body, what molecule in your stomach enjoys being drowned in frozen dairy?
After that I began paying attention to my body. I began listening to how it felt after each meal, and whether or not I was feeding it when I was hungry or just bored. My weight fluctuated a little bit and I spent brief moments panicking about it. I certainly considered going back on Weight Watchers after I split my pants at work one day and Lori laughed her own ass off, but I eventually convinced myself they were just really tight (they really are -- I still wear them now that they've loosened up a bit in the crotch, though).
Somehow I've strayed back to the starvation end of my spectrum, but this time it's not entirely on purpose. I'm trying to inch my way back to center, one cookie at a time. I made Laura, Katie and I chili last night and now that I am the master of my own kitchen again, I expect that to be a regular occurrence. Not to mention that I make damn good chili. Plus, I think I'm nearing my Deli Chicken Salad capacity. Maybe I'm nearing capacity for this particular vice of mine, too. Cheers to you, and your good health.
This post was especially hard to write because it goes way down into my vault of security, down past the guard dogs and fangs dripping with blood, screeching to a halt into one of my greatest insecurities and deepest shames. It's something so many women (and men, not to be exclusive) deal with but none of us want to talk about. At least not in the real sense, anyway. Forget about Dr. Oz and Raspberry Ketones. This is my story of Food:
Look, Here's The Thing:
I've been catching myself in the kitchen lately. I'll pull random things out of the fridge and stand at the counter eating. Not because I'm boredom eating -- which has very often been the case in years past -- but because somehow I'll find myself starving at the end of the day and the process of biting, chewing and swallowing just seems so boring that I might as well do it standing up; so that I may get it done as quickly as possible. Somehow, I'm forgetting throughout the day to feed myself. Somehow, I'm forgetting one of the most basic functions of human being. Somehow, I'm losing interest.
I noticed this initially when I became a human tension wire over my relationship issues and all thoughts of food made me want to vomit the nothing already in my stomach. Everything tasted like dirty socks (or maybe those boy shorts). Somehow chips and french onion dip became dinner -- to be served in high doses after midnight. I would have drip-fed myself coffee as a filler if I could. The only reason I find this so interesting "now" is because of how different it is from "before."
It's no secret to those that know me that I've always been curvy. I've always had an ass for days, cheeks a chipmunk would scratch its eyes out for and HELLO, thighs. For fuck's sake, I didn't even start looking in the mirror and seeing someone moderately attractive until I was like 19. And for a long time my weight fluctuated because eating was not something I did for nourishment, it was what I did to nourish the empty spaces. Give me something to worry about and you give me flapper arms. Hand me an empty afternoon and Thou Hast Bestowed Mine Winter Weight. The great tragedy is that none of the extra ever spread to my boobs.
I turned a 180 after high school, when I joined the ranks of women starving themselves on low-calorie ice cream and boca burgers on Weight Watchers. I lost a bunch of weight and felt like super woman. The problem? I was still as obsessed with food as I had been before I began. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in my head; from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed I was fitting together the food pieces and trying to create a picture of my day with as much as I could squeeze into it. Watching the Food Network late at night doesn't help either; though I think it would make Jim Gaffigan proud. I felt better about myself, but that was only when I could even think about anything other than what I as putting into myself (yes, I caught that...get your head out of the gutter).
After 9 months of insanity I came to a halfhearted conclusion that two opposites don't make a middle ground. And that some other avenue probably needed to be ventured, seeing as every time I'd go home from school I'd "take a break" from dieting and eat entire batches of cupcakes. I'm pretty sure you can black out from sugar, now.
Then I was bequeathed the gift of Geneen Roth. This woman is a genius of food obsession. Dude has dieted and binged enough to have gained and lost over 200 pounds in her lifetime, a fact she touts proudly in her profound recovery. From the insight of her finally reaching sanity, she has a magical way of taking you out of the compulsion and instilling the concept of food as health, rather than harm. All in a way that makes you laugh at the gallon of ice cream you just ate while simultaneously asking yourself, "who in there actually wants to eat a gallon of ice cream at a time?" Because when it comes down to it, if you really do love yourself, why would you want to eat a gallon of ice cream? When you sit down and truly feel how that feels in your body, what molecule in your stomach enjoys being drowned in frozen dairy?
After that I began paying attention to my body. I began listening to how it felt after each meal, and whether or not I was feeding it when I was hungry or just bored. My weight fluctuated a little bit and I spent brief moments panicking about it. I certainly considered going back on Weight Watchers after I split my pants at work one day and Lori laughed her own ass off, but I eventually convinced myself they were just really tight (they really are -- I still wear them now that they've loosened up a bit in the crotch, though).
Somehow I've strayed back to the starvation end of my spectrum, but this time it's not entirely on purpose. I'm trying to inch my way back to center, one cookie at a time. I made Laura, Katie and I chili last night and now that I am the master of my own kitchen again, I expect that to be a regular occurrence. Not to mention that I make damn good chili. Plus, I think I'm nearing my Deli Chicken Salad capacity. Maybe I'm nearing capacity for this particular vice of mine, too. Cheers to you, and your good health.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Gnar-ly, Dood
Maybe I'm the last to know, as usual. Maybe I'm just really impressed by men in drag when they don't pull it off very well. Maybe I just have an affinity for places like Denmark and Iceland where it's cold enough to justify drinking yourself warm every night. Maybe I just think this is a sign that we're headed into a greater time -- if only our own political system would get its head out of its ass.
Sigh.
Just click this and you'll see what I mean.
Circuitry
Don't worry.
I'm not dead.
I don't have Zombie virus.
I haven't run off to join a Mormon cult. And I wouldn't drink the kool-aid.
I've just been moving.
To be honest, I've been having the hardest time beginning this post because I feel like I've been away for so long. But when I think about it, it's been less than a week since we spoke last. In that week (reality: 5 days) I found the apartment of my dreams back in my favorite midwestern town, received the keys a mere day later, packed up every last bobby pin I own in one Sunday morning, painted a shitload of closet space and had it all moved in by Monday evening. I also drank a lot of celebratory beer.
(AHEM. Before I get in trouble, let me take a moment to thank those that actually painted the closet space, assisted me in packing, and donated their time to at a dime's notice moving all my crap on a Sunday afternoon: thank you Buddy Holly (painter extraordinaire), The Mother (moving dictator and master coordinator), brosef (stop drawing on my furniture and just put it together already) and the entire Kotecki family (no, Emma, you cannot hang your Big Time Rush posters in my room). You're the Rotel to my Velveeta.)
Tell me you're still with me.
Most of you -- most of my favorite people in existence -- don't even know that I've moved. Here's my announcement:
COME OVER RIGHT NOW. And bring me a couch, because there's nothing to sit on right now.
I've had a hard time believing I would get back to this point. When my apartment was foreclosed in August due to lackluster landlord performance (read: asshole hadn't paid his mortgage in 4 years), I thought my time as a Real Adult was coming to a soul-shattering end. I thought I was being squeezed back into the hole of my adolescence by some force of God or whatever brand you want to slap on it; stripped of the only space I'd ever let be truly "mine" and "solitary" and "quiet;" regressing back into some state of what-the-fuck-edness that only losing everything you've accumulated as your own can bring. You've been reading. You know that it messed with my head.
But I remember how I found the previous place. I had envisioned myself as never having the capacity to leave home, lest some Career Breakthrough stumbled my way or I sold my soul to the corporate takeover (I still don't think they'd take a college-dropout CEO-wannabe). But then when The Mother told me "get out of my house. You're miserable and you know it. It's annoying," and I actually listened, it took me a total of 7 days to make the decision and move out. I did my budget on a Tuesday and had gotten the keys on a Friday. That's how fast it goes, sometimes.
I'm a firm believer that when you admit to yourself what you want (and sometimes even when you don't), it will come to you. When I moved into my first place, it was very small but entirely mine. The moment I let myself believe I could have it, I did. And it was the first home I built all on my own (not literally. How awesome do you think I am?). But when I was forcibly moved, I still had not admitted to myself how unhappy I had become with it. It was too small. I'd outgrown it. My energy and my life were becoming stifled because I had moved on without admitting it to myself. And though I was devastated when I left, a tiny part of me was relieved.
A few things wouldn't have happened if I had not left that place:
1) I doubt I would have started writing. My creativity was so stifled by the discomfort I felt with my surroundings that I couldn't get myself to look outside of any kind of box. And though I didn't know why or how, I could feel it.
2) I would not have gotten that money I used to pay off my car and buy too many clothes in the interim, which made it possible for me to;
3) Find the apartment I had long known was waiting for me but took some stumbling to walk across.
So it goes.
From all of this I find myself back at one of my favorite conclusions; the one that I keep as true as anything but as hard to hold as a snake swimming in jello. The one that says that everything happens for a reason, simply because it happens. You have no choice but to go with it and hope for the light around the corner.
Our lives are not linear. They do not follow a cookie cutter or a play-doh mold. They are circular. And sometimes it takes working your way all the way around that circle to find where you begin again.
I'm not dead.
I don't have Zombie virus.
I haven't run off to join a Mormon cult. And I wouldn't drink the kool-aid.
I've just been moving.
To be honest, I've been having the hardest time beginning this post because I feel like I've been away for so long. But when I think about it, it's been less than a week since we spoke last. In that week (reality: 5 days) I found the apartment of my dreams back in my favorite midwestern town, received the keys a mere day later, packed up every last bobby pin I own in one Sunday morning, painted a shitload of closet space and had it all moved in by Monday evening. I also drank a lot of celebratory beer.
(AHEM. Before I get in trouble, let me take a moment to thank those that actually painted the closet space, assisted me in packing, and donated their time to at a dime's notice moving all my crap on a Sunday afternoon: thank you Buddy Holly (painter extraordinaire), The Mother (moving dictator and master coordinator), brosef (stop drawing on my furniture and just put it together already) and the entire Kotecki family (no, Emma, you cannot hang your Big Time Rush posters in my room). You're the Rotel to my Velveeta.)
Tell me you're still with me.
Most of you -- most of my favorite people in existence -- don't even know that I've moved. Here's my announcement:
COME OVER RIGHT NOW. And bring me a couch, because there's nothing to sit on right now.
I've had a hard time believing I would get back to this point. When my apartment was foreclosed in August due to lackluster landlord performance (read: asshole hadn't paid his mortgage in 4 years), I thought my time as a Real Adult was coming to a soul-shattering end. I thought I was being squeezed back into the hole of my adolescence by some force of God or whatever brand you want to slap on it; stripped of the only space I'd ever let be truly "mine" and "solitary" and "quiet;" regressing back into some state of what-the-fuck-edness that only losing everything you've accumulated as your own can bring. You've been reading. You know that it messed with my head.
But I remember how I found the previous place. I had envisioned myself as never having the capacity to leave home, lest some Career Breakthrough stumbled my way or I sold my soul to the corporate takeover (I still don't think they'd take a college-dropout CEO-wannabe). But then when The Mother told me "get out of my house. You're miserable and you know it. It's annoying," and I actually listened, it took me a total of 7 days to make the decision and move out. I did my budget on a Tuesday and had gotten the keys on a Friday. That's how fast it goes, sometimes.
I'm a firm believer that when you admit to yourself what you want (and sometimes even when you don't), it will come to you. When I moved into my first place, it was very small but entirely mine. The moment I let myself believe I could have it, I did. And it was the first home I built all on my own (not literally. How awesome do you think I am?). But when I was forcibly moved, I still had not admitted to myself how unhappy I had become with it. It was too small. I'd outgrown it. My energy and my life were becoming stifled because I had moved on without admitting it to myself. And though I was devastated when I left, a tiny part of me was relieved.
A few things wouldn't have happened if I had not left that place:
1) I doubt I would have started writing. My creativity was so stifled by the discomfort I felt with my surroundings that I couldn't get myself to look outside of any kind of box. And though I didn't know why or how, I could feel it.
2) I would not have gotten that money I used to pay off my car and buy too many clothes in the interim, which made it possible for me to;
3) Find the apartment I had long known was waiting for me but took some stumbling to walk across.
So it goes.
From all of this I find myself back at one of my favorite conclusions; the one that I keep as true as anything but as hard to hold as a snake swimming in jello. The one that says that everything happens for a reason, simply because it happens. You have no choice but to go with it and hope for the light around the corner.
Our lives are not linear. They do not follow a cookie cutter or a play-doh mold. They are circular. And sometimes it takes working your way all the way around that circle to find where you begin again.
 |
| First meal in the new digs, circa last night. Jealous of my table setting? |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)