"Smooth"

“Smooth” makes me think about cheeks: an old woman’s paper thin skin, a man after shaving, a baby’s softness.  I keep trying to think of other stuff, but I keep thinking about skin and touching, maybe because I don’t do enough of it.

My uncle has joked many times about my touchiness as a child.  He says if he sat down and made a lap, I was on it.  True, and I liked stroking his crew cut and holding his hand while sitting on his lap too.

I’ve told my dog that she fails me because she won’t cuddle.  She looks at me and thumps her tail while I’m talking and then goes back to protecting me from squirrels.  While I’m happy to be squirrel-free, I’d also like a dog that cuddles.

There are touchers and non-touchers in the world.  There are mates that sleep in the same bed, and mates that would rather sleep in different houses.  The separate bedroom people often say their mate snores, but I’ve also heard them admit they don’t want to touch, or even that they can’t stand someone else breathing their air.  I’m not quite sure how these people procreate.

My family isn’t very physically demonstrative, but when we went to Grandma’s house we lined up at the door when we came in and gave both Grandma and Grandpa a kiss on the cheek.  One day I decided that I was too old for this kind of thing and Grandma let it pass.  It’s one of my regrets.  I should’ve kept kissing her as long as she offered her cheek, but she let me think myself more grown and I didn’t kiss her again.  Sometimes the price of autonomy is too high.

We need to be touched.  Wolves rubbing noses and monkeys grooming each other aren’t that different from people.  Touch is part of our socialization.  Our skin needs it as much as our minds and souls.  Or maybe it’s empathetic people that need touch?

My early training means that I often sit with my hands in my lap like a “proper” female.  My Italian friend loosened me up enough that I sometimes use a hand to express a point, but I very rarely reach across the invisible personal borders to touch a friend’s arm while empathizing with them.  It’s so wrong, and it’s wrong that I fight my startle response when someone does it to me. 

Part of it can also be that not all touch is good.  I got swatted in school for laughing in the library.  Mr. Delzoppo made me bend in front of the corner of his desk and I pointed out that he was going to crack my head open.  He hit me with everything he had, and I pointed out that the only reason my head wasn’t bleeding is because I caught the desk in my hands before that could happen.  More swats with a heavy stick for insubordination.  Jerk.  Can’t really see how corporal punishment altered my behavior in any positive way so I’m against it.

I abused my computer this week.  I also had problems with 2 printers at work, broke the camera, and spilled a box of macaroni on the floor... so I'm going with old art.  Touching a salamander seems smooth.  They have very delicate skin.  I’m just not safe to exist in the world this week so for all this talk of touching, I think I’ll stay curl up with my non-cuddly dog an old-fashioned book this weekend.

"Puppet"

I was a toy-deprived child.  I know this sounds unthinkable today, but my leisure items were limited to books, Monopoly, chess, checkers, blocks, and Legos.  There was a stupid plastic baby doll with plastic hair, but I hated that thing.  It didn't love me and real babies are messy, noisy and a thousand other irritations.  I learned that fast.

Bro says illo #1 isn't a puppet so I made
this ghost. He says this isn't a puppet either.

My oldest sister had a Barbie knock off and a Ken doll.  I snuck into her things on a regular basis to play with Ken.  I could care less about Tammy, but Ken was dreamy.  Messing with Sis' stuff was flirting with real pain when caught, so eventually Ken and I ended our relationship.  So sad.  I wonder if he ever thinks of me?

Okay, I had a well-loved
hand-me-down Teddy too.

Thus ended my early days of make believe and toys until I was a teenager and the Muppets were on tv.  I bought a Kermit. 
Aware that I never enjoyed the prerequisite amount of play, I took Kermit with me to see his movie.  I went with a friend who brought her own Kermit.  Our mutual friend thought we were hopelessly nuts which just made the whole thing funnier.  I took Kermit to a lot more activities and enjoyed that friend's look of exasperation.

I got Animal to keep Kermit company.  I loved Animal.  He was everything I could relate to, unlike Sis' Tammy.  I wonder if Ken would love my inner "Animal"?

My relationship with toys was therefore somewhat formed, and I was happy with my 2 pets.  I didn't talk to them or anything.  I mean, I knew they were stuffed, inanimate objects, but they made me smile.

Until... yes, another painful parting.

Bro says sock puppet counts :)

I was living in the bottom half of a house when I was in college, when Stacey knocked on my door saying that my upstairs neighbors told her I was looking for a roommate.  I said okay since Pat and Matt recommended her.  They afterwards said they only sent her downstairs to get rid of her.  Aaagh!!!  Lesson: check references.

She wasn't all bad, but I wanted to kill her when her lesbian relationship stood between me and the bathroom.  I had to go outside and around the house to go in the back door, which is annoying enough, but they also xxxxx... Okay, some things don't need to be recorded in blogland.  I'm sure there are some very fine lesbians out there, but Stacey wasn't a desirable roommate.

Our house was broken into and Stacey's cache of cash got stolen with a bunch of other things that the thief obviously knew she had.  My stuff was just tossed around, but intact... except for Animal.  They stole Animal!!!

I wish they'd stolen Stacey instead.  So much for my life with puppets.

TV doodles for art this week.  While scribbling I came up with an idea I'd like to pursue, but that's nowhere near to unveiling yet since it's still just an idea.  What I will share is that sometimes I just scribble and then see what zen pictures are hiding in the scribbles like taking a Rorschach test.  Sometimes the best ideas are waiting to be found that way.

...maybe some fall leaves too?

 

 

"Trouble"

It's a rainy, cold Saturday.  I procrastinated my post for "trouble" and tormented myself with youtube videos.  Bawling my eyes out over singing competitions specifically.

Jonathan and Charlotte in Britain got things going.  Okay, I'm behind on these things.  They've gotten kind of famous when I wasn't looking, but having watched their videos and interviews I think I now know more about them than they know about themselves.  I'm worried about Jonathan.  He's got weight and depression problems.  What happens as life goes on and maybe Charlotte marries someone else or the stardust falls away or whatever else happens to young stars?  Sniffle.

                       

Some super sweet kids, a little boy who fell apart, gathered himself together, then gave a great performance... More sniffles.

Sung-bong Choi on the other hand... well.  Bring on the tissues.

If you think you've got troubles, walk a mile in Sung-bong's moccasins.  He was abandoned in an orphanage when he was 3, ran away when he was 5 after a beating, then lived on the streets alone for 10 years.  He was beaten, sold, and countless other miseries until a teacher got him into school for the first time as a teenager.  He came in second on Korea's Got Talent in 2011.

I know I'm not the only female who does this to herself.  I don't know about guys.  They probably close the curtains and turn off the lights before committing themselves to this kind of misery and release.  All I can say for sure is that crying about someone else's troubles makes me more able to handle my own sometimes.

Sometimes I think of the Marcia Bradys whose biggest problems are a zit on prom day.  Those people piss me off and I can get very self righteous about their petted lives -- but I don't really know what's going on with them.  Actress Maureen McCormick became drug addicted and had all sorts of family issues.  Wouldn't want to be her.

All sorts of miseries go on in the world.  125 million females suffer genital mutilation.  How many more are beaten or raped?  Males get abused too, so there's trouble enough to go around.  Sung-bung Choi has a talent to take him out of the gutter, but how many more don't have that?  It doesn't feel right to cry for him so I can feel better. But, he survived.  While there's life, there's hope.  Malala won the Nobel Prize and I feel that hope.

Sometimes I wonder if all this abuse is part of what makes the world go round?  Without real suffering, can we have art, love, achievement, empathy?

I did this painting doodle while thinking about DNA, our collective human nature and relatedness, and especially thinking that I'd like to loosen up and do something fun and free like Chris' paintings that I showed last week.  Obviously I didn't get there, but I clearly don't have anything to complain about when orphaned children live on the street.

But perhaps, opening my heart to others' suffering creates a connection that helps them somehow in the collective unconscious?  Call it prayer or anything else you'd like, but I wish for their happiness, recovery, and peace.

"Octopus"

I went to Chicago for a work conference.  Lectures, vendor meetings, fancy dinners (including an octopus appetizer)... but let's get the important part -- I saw a couple of my college buddies!!  Woo Hoo! YAY!!!

Chris, Alex, and I talked and laughed.  I am so glad to see them again after so many years and my heart is bursting with happiness to see them.  I would've liked to see more college friends in Chicago, but time was limited.  We are inspired by the 1981 class' reunion and blog site and want to do our own reunion.  We don't have photos from back in the day because we were too poor for luxuries like cameras and film, but if you were at Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) around the time of the graduating class of 1983 let us know if you're interested in a reunion and/or have photos. We're inclusive and would like to see everybody we knew and loved back then, including the 1981 folks.  I'll make a blog for photos if anyone sends them.

I got to see some of Chris (Koronich) Nye's recent work when I was in Chicago.  See her website here.

Chris' work is expressive and happy, and I'll admit I'm a bit jealous that she paints what she wants and has found a market for it.  She combines her other interests in interior design, faux finishes, and yoga instruction into a cohesive plan for survival and self-expression.  She does what she wants artistically and in every other way.

I roamed around her house and contemplated her paintings, which I suppose is the real beauty of them.  They are beautiful in themselves, but they're also contemplative like Japanese landscapes which are intended to be viewed during meditations.  I wandered around in Chris' yard and stroked the lavender to get the calming scent on my hands.  When I went back inside with my lavender hands and there were the paintings again with all the colors of the garden.  They're suggestive, calming, exciting, and inspiring.

When I worked with naturalists, they liked to tell me to do things in "natureful colors".  I'd tell them that all colors are in nature, but they really just wanted tans, browns, and greens.  Chris' paintings have hot yellow chartreuses, purples, reds... an explosion of truly "natureful" colors.

Sometimes I throw paint around.  It's a happy activity that I don't take very seriously when I do it myself.  Sometimes I'll even hang one of those paintings, but I want people to notice things I've labored over, not the things I just had fun doing.  Another of my friends has scolded me for my wrong-headed attitude.  She says people enjoy it when I have fun with paint and also that other people can't do it.  No matter the people who say their kid could do it.  Let your kid try then.  There's a lot to be said for an expensive college education that taught us about color and design, right?

This all made crystal clear sense to me when I looked at Chris' paintings.  Sometimes I can do something similar, but it isn't the same, and I'll be the first to say Chris' paintings are better.  She understands things about interior spaces that I don't.  Her color choices are wonderful.  She brings flowers to life through suggestion.  I've got a blank canvas.  I think I'll follow her inspiration and throw some paint around!

Standing in front of the Chicago "Bean"

The octopus is just a doodle.  I don't want to take away from the beauty of Chris' art this week.

"Silence"

There's a sliver of time when night is over, but it isn't morning.  The plants are weighed down by dew and the wind is still.  The bats and frogs have eaten all the mosquitoes, the crickets and frogs have found their mates, and the night animals bed down for the day while the day animals still sleep.  Silence.

I like the in between times.  When evening starts, or before morning, or the twilight between waking and sleeping, or sleeping and waking.  Those are the slices of time for feeling instead of thinking.  When fairies are possible and our wishes are realities.  When we're alone with ourselves to feel the things that we really want instead of what the world wants us to want.

These can be the times of epiphanies.  We can remember our dreams, and our dreams make sense, before the day takes away our certainties.  All things are possible.

Those of you people who pop out of bed first thing in the morning, and start the coffee, check your emails, wash your windows, or whatever it is you do with the full energy of a night's rest are missing one of the best times of the day when you could be snuggling your partner or feeling the truth of your dreams.

Morning people are self-righteous about how they get the day going and how the rest of us are lazy slugs.  It's no wonder I've wanted to throttle some of them.  I almost came to physical violence when my college roommate threw open the windows in the middle of winter to air the place out.  I think it counts as justifiable homicide when my peaceful slumbers are disturbed by snow falling on my face.

Some people hate silence, and fill it with music, and activity, and chatter.  Maybe I'm the only one who enjoys it when the power goes out.  The refrigerator stops humming, and other stuff I've learned to tune out shuts off too.  It's so quiet.  Peaceful.  Healing.

I used to lay in bed and feel the wonder of my body.  Red blood cells going one way, white blood cells going another, the thump of my heart pushing them along, my breath pulling in oxygen... breathe in healing, breathe out stress...

And then the day starts.  The dog needs out and her bowls filled.  There's stuff to do, people to see, problems to solve.  Bosses are too often extraverted morning people who think everybody else should be just like them.  People who open windows in winter, and to hell with whoever isn't keeping up with their program.

It takes all types.  The world needs the dreamers, and this dreamer needs to sleep in the silence just before morning.

"Wish"

Our thoughts create our world.  We have to dream possibilities before we can make them real.  I know our practical world dismisses that as fantasy and "magical thinking", but it's still true.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about being the next Ralph William Williams, painting back covers of women's magazines for Breck Shampoo.  I spent hours and hours drawing people in preparation for my glorious future while I fantasized.  I supported my future employer by washing my hair with Breck even though the company and Williams were oblivious to my devotion -- but these dreams made my art career possible.

Dreaming, wishing, wanting, hoping, reading -- all of it expanded my world and made other things possible.  Why couldn't I be the next Breck artist?  Why limit my wishes?

Too many people have given up daydreaming because they don't think it gets you anywhere, but it's exactly the thing that can take you beyond your circumstances.  Thought creates what we think is possible.  Thought turns to action.  If you think you're limited, then you are.  If you think you can achieve something grand, you can.

What we believe draws opportunities and people into our experience.  If you believe men are abusive, you'll attract an abusive partner.  If you think men are kind, you'll attract a kind partner.  If you think all women are gold diggers, well, you get the idea.  Our thoughts create our experience.

I often wonder if other people, especially younger people, have given up self-directed fantasy because they are so busy in group activities or being passively entertained.  There's no time left over to dream their lives into being.  If they're too comfortable where they're at, then there's no reason to dream for more.

The other side of fantasy can sometimes be that we spend too much time thinking about the unpleasant situations and people who interfere with our happiness and success.  I'm pretty sure we've all thought about the justice we'd like to rain down on the heads of people who have wronged us.  The more time we think our hateful and/or depressing thoughts, the less time we have to think the world we want to live in.

When I was young, I didn't have much choice about living in my fantasy world.  I didn't have other kids to play with and tv was limited.  I read to my heart's content, and imagined heroes who always said and did the right things.  Real people are flawed in ways I couldn't imagine.  We can't make other people share our fantasies or play the roles we assign to them -- which makes life infinitely more interesting.

I've been thinking about all of these things a lot lately.  I hope I'm never too old to dream and create.  What's next beyond the next achievement or loss?  How do you want to leave your mark on the world?

"Novelty"

Companies keep telling us that they've got something "NEW!", but I'm not so sure there's anything new under the sun.  Everything is a variation on a theme, and sometimes the old stuff is way cooler.  The latest IPad is just a chalkboard without the chalk.  Might we be better off with the chalk?

I liked hula hoops for a while.  I could hula hoop forever around my waist, long time on my leg, even longer on my arm, a while on my neck.  I hula hooped 3 circles at a time making them spin in different orbits on my waist, or a couple of limbs and a waist.  Geez, I was bored with nothing to do.  I showed off to Grandpa and fell down laughing when he hula hooped too.

Grandpa was born in the 1800s and was retired by the time I was born.  He was from a small town in central Tennessee.  Our family is supposed to be related to Robert E. Lee, but folks down there make sure you know that there are 2 Lee families in the area, the rich ones and us.

I tried to get Grandpa to talk about his growing up, but he wasn't a story teller.  He was a doer.  The rush seat of my child's chair wore out?  Grandpa wove a new one on it with nylon cord.  Durable.  Cotton would've looked nicer, but nylon is forever.  Nobody would ever need to weave a new seat for that particular chair.  He made lye soap that could take the skin off you.  Effective.  Grandma used it for laundry and kids were threatened with that soap if we got too dirty.  I tried to stay clean when we visited.

I got an unusual email this week.  A woman wrote to say that she had my great grandfather's bed and is willing to sell it.  She said I was the only one of the family she could locate, I'm guessing because I wrote about my great aunt Ila Rhea on this blog.  Cool!  A side benefit I never expected from blogging.  Any family interested in the bed and dresser, let me know.  I've asked how much they're asking, but don't have an answer yet.  The furniture is currently in Florida, so you'd also have to figure out how to get it.  (I suppose I shouldn't mention my naughty wondering whether or not the owner of this bed has to do things Presbyterian missionary style or S&M?)  The "history" referred to in the note is the genealogy that my great grandfather wrote.  If there's any family that wants to read it, I've scanned it and can send it to you.

I suppose my great grandfather must've been studious to write a genealogy.  I know he wrote a lot of letters in order to write it because that was before ancestry.com.  He was a mailman, riding his horse around the county. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."  I suppose he got all of that on a horse, but I like to imagine that it was a good job for someone who liked to visit with people.

I can't really say much about him since he was before my time, but I imagine him a lot like his son, my grandpa.  The kind of man who'd use nylon cord for a child's seat, and who would do the twist with a hula hoop.

Just playing with PhotoShop brushes to make the hula hoop today :)

Note ~ Mom says the bed was part of a bigger bedroom set and was supposed to go to my grandpa, but he didn't know how to bring to Ohio so it was willed to Ila Rhea instead.