I dream I cut off all my hair, and am left with a short short bob. Unfortunately, I also grow a handlebar mustache.



I dream that the room is filled almost entirely with baking flour, and I am trapped in the middle, half-in and half-out as if it is water or quicksand. I call all of my friends to help me but they are either too far away, at work, or allergic to gluten.



I dream that I am part of a counter-resistance fighting in a Margaret Atwood-style universe. High school women are being taught that it's okay to be the complete subservient slaves of men and the male students are being taught that they are the only masters. The implications are already cruel, and so we pose as high school students and litter the grounds with messages, spray tags, and pamphlets hidden in the student bathrooms. There begins to be a resistance, and we see signs, notes, and signals devised by students, and we feel hope.

Our greatest victory comes when we learn of a leading group in charge, and take action. A priest offers to help us, "no matter what it takes," so we arrange for him to meet with a group of the head nuns that are rounding this out. He takes them into one of the student bathrooms to show them an elaborate wall-message we have written. I wait outside the windows until I see they are all inside, and then I quickly lock the doors with a chain. They hear me and begin to try to break out, but I walk away unperturbed. The building blows up behind me; I had laced the stalls with dynamite in order to take them all out. I am saddened by the loss of the priest but know that he would have backed out if he knew that "what it took" would be his life, and I couldn't pass up the chance. Unfortunately, it marks the first violently offensive move we have made. Now it is on.

I dream that I have just visited my parents house. We have barely arrived and I discover their house has burned down. It is a smoldering wreck of sooty frames and debris, and I walk carefully around the remains, poking around. I don't yet feel a sense of grief or anguish, and I think that I must be in shock, because I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that all of it is gone, that my parents will be in a sort of ruin for a while that they will need to recover from.

The animals are running through everything, as if events have them riled up, and I notice that the fire has spared the garage located a little bit away from the house. I think of this as a sense of relief, and with that first hint of emotion, it all hits me, all of it.



I dream that I am in a clothing store. It is very fancy and I mostly go to window-shop and get ideas for my own styles and makings, but the people are used to seeing me there and look forward to my conversation and insight, so I don't stand out. This time, I arrive and there is a tall man there, with very white-blond hair. He looks a little like a modern day Andy Warhol except he doesn't look so crazy and he is a little more meticulous with his appearance. After a few moments of looking at me, I realize he is 1)an albino, and 2)staring at me. We strike up a conversation and it turns out he is a musician in some obscure electronica, but I have heard of it, and when I reveal I am an artist, he gets excited. It turns out that strangely enough he has heard of me, and I apparently have a small cult following in Northern Europe. This surprises (and secretly amuses) me, but he is determined to have me design his CD and promotional materials for his next album, and he attempts to bribe me by offering to buy me some of the clothes I had been looking at.



I dream that I have been smuggling twins across the border. I have a large truck filled with twins and triplets; this voyage, it is seven kids total, between the ages of five, nine, and eleven. They are remarkably well-behaved for reasons I'm not aware of in the waking world, but it makes perfect sense in the dream world so I imagine it must be pretty serious and that, perhaps, I was helping them escape some sort of lab? We are driving when I get notice of a roadblock ahead, and they are checking vehicles, presumably for twins. I curse and quickly pull off on the next exit, which takes me into a steep and winding dangerous mountain road. I am familiar with the area, however, and as I drive past the fancy houses, I pull into one of the driveways. It is an old war buddy, and I know I can rely on him to help me find an alternate way to get across.

I dream I own a black laptop. As it sits on my desk, the outer plastic begins to crackle, and I realize with a series of shudders that it is shedding it's old carapace, like a beetle. Suddenly it is surrounded by the thin plastic and wearing shiny new skin.


I also dream again of zombies. In my dream, I am at Open Lot when the zombie invasion hits. I realize soon enough that this is not a secure area and after beaning a zombie with a power-tool, I make a run for my car. I don't have my keys, but with the touch pad, I manage to get inside just in time for another zombie body to slam furiously against my window. I am worried it will crack, but I (mostly) maintain a sense of calm long enough to dig out the spare key and start up, leaving a rush of fast zombies in my wake.

I avoid Gallatin North and instead try to find an alternate route on the other side of Douglas to head north or northeast, away from the city. I consider myself fortunate to have both my maps and to be on this side of town already. I am able to avoid most of the swarms, but manage to save two other people: a random guy, and a police officer who climbs into the back of the car. I yell to see if either of them were bitten or scratched, but I am paying too much attention to the roads to really check for myself.

We are approaching a bridge crossing a shallow but rocky river when it happens. The officer in the back changes; I hear the tone of his voice and realize immediately what has happened. He bursts between the two front seats just as I squeeze my eyes shut, throw open my door, and leap out of the car. I hit the ground hard, rolling, the wind knocked out of me for a moment from the awkward impact; the car continues to shoot ahead of it's own momentum, rocking from the attack on the other guy, who is not so fortunate. The wheel must have been jerked or pushed from inside, and the car screeches horribly as it turns and then flips, landing in a crunch of metal and a spew of glass. I find enough within myself to get to my feet, and I run to the side of the bridge to hide right before anything can crawl out of there, or before it blows up.

It does blow, and a blast of heat passes over my head. When it clears, I peer over the wall only to see two figures begin to climb out; one, thrown mostly clear from the blast, is stalking around the lanes, half-scorched head searching, heading towards my direction. I duck back down quickly, but realize I can't hide here. Unfortunately, the drop to the river is too far to slide safely, and I would be stuck down there with no way to get back up...but the bridge itself has spans of metal supporting it. If I hold on tight and move slowly, I can maybe -- maybe -- make it across to the other side.

It is a long process. It feels like it takes forever. There is a shout and a rattle of gunfire somewhere from the side of the road I am leaving, and the two zombies begin to head towards it. I close my eyes again tight for a moment and then continue, afraid to stay in the winds too long, which cut through my coat with nothing to stop them. Already my hands hurt from griping the cold metal, but I can't stop. There is nowhere to stop.

I am finally on the other side and all but exhausted when I look over to see a series of buildings embracing the side of the bridge. I decide to make my way to them no matter what; I need a place to stop and rest, and if I am hidden out of sight, I figure that is my best chance. My limbs hurt to stretch and walk normally, but I barely notice it as I am entirely focused on the approach to the building. It is mostly glass and so I see no movement in the dark interior, only my own haggard expression reflected back at me. I look as if ten years left me just crossing the bridge.

I am lucky; the door is open. It swings open silently, the reflection casting a glint of fading light into the room, and I tense, waiting to see if it summons anything. Nothing comes; I don't hear any noises, but the blood is rushing in my ears and I am tired. I am afraid I will miss the noise when it comes. As it is, I nearly stumble over a body when I cross the threshold into a darker, inner office, and the only reason I don't cry out is because my entire chest clenches with fear. The body isn't moving, though, and I can feel from how the ground sticks to my shoe that it has been dead for some time. The blood is congealed and heavy. I look up immediately, scanning the darkness for movement with wide eyes, almost knowing that the thing that killed this is still here. Nothing moves, though, and this room is so dark because there are barely any windows to the outside, and only one other door, shut tight. My shoulders relax...

...and tense again immediately at a sound behind me. Before I can turn, however, a voice responds lowly: "Freeze." It is calm, but I flinch anyway, but do exactly as it says. Zombies don't talk with words, and as I stand there, shivering, I see that Zombies don't wear full body armor and handle guns, either. "Are you the security guard?" I ask, finally, as the figure circles around me, inspecting me. "You could say that," the helmet nods briefly, almost conversationally, but the gun never leaves my face. "...Are you infected?"

"No, I'm fine," I say, and then because I talk too much when I'm nervous, I can't help a shaky laugh. "Well, actually, that's only half true, because I'm not fine, because there are zombies and I just stepped on a dead guy after climbing across a bridge and I'm freezing and exhausted and my hands hurt and there's a gun on me but I mean if you're asking if I'm infected then no, no I'm not, then I'm fine." I laugh again and even I catch the touch of terror in it, and my throat closes around the laugh before it can get away from me. The helmet regards me a moment more and then the gun lowers partway. I breathe a little again with the relief -- to have gotten this far and crossed that damn bridge only to get shot in the face by a hyped-up rent-a-cop, what a deal that would have been -- and the helmet looks to the other room for a moment. "Let's get you out of here before one of those things hears us," it says, and with a nod to the far door, begins to back up, gun pointed at the open doorway and its carpet of blood. I rest my hand on the handle with a sense of dread -- who knows what is on the other side? -- but the figure seems more focused on guarding our flank, so...here goes....

I throw the door open to reveal a neat and mostly empty walk-in closet. Crowded into the space, only then does the gun lower as the figure shuts the door behind us. It is pitch dark but quiet, and I hear the soft hum of machinery seconds before the light behind it silhouettes the keycard in his hands. The back wall has opened to reveal a hallway, smooth and clean, the light harsh in the suddenness. I lift a hand against it, squinting, but the figure takes my arm and pulls me inside. The gun is lowered now, and with an equally casual gesture, the helmet is lifted off, revealing an older black man, the hair in tight grey curls. He smiles at me, nodding down the hallway. "You'll need to be decontaminated and checked out, but I think we'll all be glad someone else made it."

"'We?'" I ask.


The dream fractures a little at this point as I start to wake up in stages. I find that the place is manned by scientists who were working for this company before the infection -- something innocuous, like research into bugs -- and I realize with a sense of relief that if anyone can come up with a solution, it might be these guys...but also that if something stupid is bound to happen, it'll happen here, because I mean, I saw "Day of the Dead" just like every other kid.

I wake, I fall asleep again, and this time something has happened. The security officer who saved me in the beginning has locked all of us inside the compound. The others are working on ways around his barricades and it is certain that we'll break through, but not in time. I leave the door and pound with the flat of my hands on the window instead, shouting out against the glass. He is doing something drastic, leaving with the ATV loaded with tons of some sort of poison or death meant for the zombies, but he is doing this without us, taking this terrible burden solely on himself. I shout again, begging him to stop even as I know he can't hear a word I'm saying past the glass and the thumps of the others trying to break out. He throws me one last wide smile through the window and salutes me, and I can only stare out as he leaves, the hordes following him desperately.

Storms, for the moment, have abated, and I am left with the rising sweet of rain and earth, with the breezes of fundamental things. It is the aroma of promise, of potential: clay and firing, growth and harvest. After a period of standing in what felt like inch-deep water, this is welcome weather, for sure.



Again, my hands are up to the elbows in inks, paints, pixels. I feel productive -- which is nice -- but a little pressured. As I spoke with the barrista at my Sunday Coffeeplace, we compared shop notes about doing design on the side: mostly the mental strain that comes with not being able to sit and work on something as long as we'd like. It takes effort to shift your mind from one frame of thinking to a whole new way of processing information, and to shift back. I feel like I lose valuable time in that.

I also attended an arts 'lecture' this past week -- I use the term "lecture" loosely as it was much, much more than that -- and it really turned my brain on its side. It was fun and thoughtful but it didn't take itself too seriously, and that's what really did it for me. I arrived feeling out-of-sorts and run down, and I left feeling energized and ready. And I realized: I need this. Not that lecture exactly, but this kind of environment, as often as possible. And I didn't realize how much I was being affected by not being in that environment as much until I went and found myself flipped inside out by it. That has caused a stir of thinking lately.

I have been dipping my toes in these waters for months now. Perhaps I need to bathe.

I am battening down hatches for another storm.

I've been under a rock while Life has been kicking me in the gut lately when it comes to deadlines, dealing, and just plain drudgery, but as stuff starts to wrap up, I've finally got some things to show for it.

One is my page for the Diary 2010 project. This is the third year running and for you international folks out there, it's available in English, French, and Spanish this year. And of course comes with the usual array of all the artists and crafters who have designed each page; you can take a look at last year's flickr album here.

Also, for any of you who promote or sell your work online, looks like there are some days still open. It's an excellent way to send out your name and has worked well for me in the past. Plus, it's always neat to design a page for a special day, which makes for a lovely gift when journals go to sale =)





P.S. Also, this page reveals a sneak peek at an upcoming revelation! Nothing up there yet, but soon to arrive =)

Dream: My mother calls us into the living room, where my sister and I sit meticulously in two small folding chairs. A woman with wild hair and eyes that open too wide above her chunky jewelry comes to sit on the couch next to my mother, and she begins to quiz my sister and I about our tastes and goals. I feel a little too old for this kind of direct asking, and am vaguely annoyed by it; the woman does not try to hold a conversation but instead speaks to us as if we are young children and not adults.

I grow suspicious of her constant and inconsistent questioning; why am I here? What does this have to do with anything, and who is this woman? I am about to interrupt -- and I feel she senses my intentions -- when she jumps up, gleefully exclaiming that she has "the right thing just for you!" She departs into the kitchen and out the back door with my curious eyes behind her, but she soon enters again.

She has on a leash a small tan boxer, a friendly female barely to my knee who demands her rear scratched and the tiny stump of her tail wiggles. I oblige but am confused, until the woman explains that based on my answers, she has picked out this dog for me. I eye the dog critically; it is a nice enough dog but not one I want to be responsible for. The woman senses my dissent and leads the dog out, returning to ask me more questions. I answer grudgingly, wondering what is next.

"Next," apparently, is a small reddish dog whose breed apparently were used to hunt foxes. He is small to fit under brambles, but I am confused by the explanation based on how furry the dog is. This dog is even smaller than the one before, and a bit aloof, and I am even more unsatisfied by the thought of being responsible for it. I stand up and say that I cannot take care of a dog at this point in my life. I try to pose it tactfully. "I would have to clear such a thing with my landlord," I say, and begin to head to the yellow-painted kitchen to leave.

The woman jumps up and follows me, proclaiming the benefits of having such a pet. I frown, and finally have enough of this. "For starters, if I had a dog, I would have a large dog. I don't like small or stupid dogs, and that's all you've 'found' for me. I don't trust your judgment. I trust mine. I like large dogs, smart dogs, strong dogs. But I don't want to have a dog, I have a cat."

Another back-dated entry.

July 7, 2009: Dream

Though it may not look like it, I've been journalling fairly consistently since March...just in a variety of formats as for a while I had no access to the internet. The habit stuck as I waded through long hours, but I like not only the accessibility of livejournal but also the stability of records, so...I'll be back-dating a lot, uploading entries.

Consider it a retrospective introspection inspection.

In smaller news, I've been battling migraines and minor headaches more than usual lately. It is most likely just stress-related, but it makes me feel more unproductive and unmanageable than usual. Hopefully this will help, as this is a project I've wanted to catch up on for a while now.

Today's back-dated entries:
May 30, 2009; Dream
May 29, 2009; Dream

I dreamt that there was a zombie outbreak that began in Europe. Where my dream started, though, was in a room full of all sorts of people. They were telling their stories of what had happened to them to bring them here, and I saw the dream through a third-person perspective.

The first story was from a man who was walking home from work to the apartment building where he lived on the fourth floor. Suddenly a cry went up on the street, and he turned around to see a plume of smoke rising into the air less than a mile away. Everyone on the street was asking what was going on, and he held a hand over his eyes, shading the noon sun, to try and see if he could figure any of it out. He couldn’t see the location of the fire through the buildings and houses, but someone shouted and pointed as figures moved out from between the spaces, running towards the crowd. He squinted. As he looked closer, it became obvious that some of the figures were badly burnt, and the man felt a chill go through his spine. They were too wounded to be running so fast, and he instinctively backed up a few steps, heading towards his building. As he watched, the first few figures approached and then tackled the person at the farthest edge of the group, and other figures soon followed suit as the crowd began to turn and run when they saw the violence. He turned as well, running into the building, heart pounding. He had heard news of people attacking people in a nearby country, but they were always having one little domestic war or another, and he had just been too preoccupied to really listen. Now, as he took the stairs two and three at a time, he was worried; it was obviously bigger than he had suspected.

He reached his apartment where his wife and four children were huddled by the windows. Two boys and two girls, and all wide eyes that turned to him, afraid of what was happening outside. He urged the children to ready a bag and turned to his wife, dumping out his own briefcase to stuff with food. “I don’t think any of them saw me so we should be okay for a few moments…but we need to leave!” He hugged his youngest daughter and at that moment the sound of a door shattering downstairs was heard. His bottom neighbors had fled and in doing so, revealed the apartments to the zombies, who were now scouting the rooms with blind, predatory instinct.

He urged his children and wife to hide beneath the stairs, shutting the panel door behind them, and he yelled to the zombies. They began to chase him up a flight of stairs, and as he rounded the hallway he realized they were not smart enough to back down the staircase and wait for him on the other. He also realized that they were slower going up the stairs than they were going down, as they were uncoordinated, so he devised a plan to get them up one staircase while he escaped with his family at the bottom of another. As they chased him up, he waited just long enough to make sure they were started up, and slid down the banister of the other staircase. Quickly he opened the door and urged his family out…but while his wife and two of the children ran out, the other two refused to move, petrified. It broke his heart, but he realized that if he was to save any of his family, he had to leave them behind…so he urged his wife to run, and shut the door again…and then yelled, running into the other direction to lead the zombies away from the secret door.

He never saw any of them again.

The second to speak her story was a woman who had traveled with her husband. They realized what the creatures were right away, and so had a little time to prepare. They had managed to survive well, and were crossing the urban landscape to get to the train station, where the trains still managed to funnel refugees safely out of the country. They were crossing town by cutting between houses. As they traveled through, it became apparent how quickly the outbreak had spread here: many of the tables were still set for dinner, with food spoiling on the dishes. She was careful to pick up any food that was still good, however, as they could only carry so much and keep up this pace, but they needed to eat. They ate as they walked, and at one house the husband refilled the two gallon jugs he wore in a back-pack style sling across his back.

They reached the train station but only as it was being overrun. The train was pulling from the station and the passengers, all refugees like them, were yelling for people “you can make it! Run! Run!” They did, sprinting across the tracks as the train sped up, and the woman, running, leapt onto a small box and used the height and her momentum to launch herself to the side of the train. She landed with most of her upper torso in the window, and the other passengers quickly pulled her in.

Her husband made the same leap, but he was heavier with the two gallons of water. His arms and shoulders landed against the window ledge, but the rest of his body dangled dangerously. The other passengers began to pull him in, but a zombie latched onto his leg, dragging at him. He managed to fend the teeth off with his other foot, but the zombie finally made a good bite. The man looked up to the other passengers with a look of dismay and resignation. “I can’t go with you now,” he said, almost too soft to be heard over the wheels, and then he lifted his arms and let go, leaving the passengers to pull in only the two gallons of water he had been carrying.

The water kept them alive.

The last (before I woke up at least) was a survivor from the United States. He had been at a sporting event. When the outbreak in Europe occurred, the North American continent turned to a policy of isolationism, feeling it would be better to let the outbreak die out rather than risk infection in the U.S. The thing that brought the most criticism was that they continued to hold a large, famous sporting event despite the turmoil in the European continent. Though the US saw it as a way to boost morale, many of the other countries declined the invitation to participate, feeling that this was arrogant and self-centered, that the States were more concerned with distracting themselves than trying to help.

One man felt the same way; he had illegally entered the country for the very purpose of waking the American people out of their bread-and-circuses stupor. He was wounded from a scratch from a zombie; it would not kill him quickly, but he felt certain that he would reanimate when he did finally die from the infection. After sneaking up down through the border, he got a quick-and-easy job being a mascot at a sizeable sporting event. He pushed himself so that his body was very weak by the night of the job, but he insisted on doing it. As it happened, he was out on the field when the crowd suddenly saw the mascot fall and lie still. For a moment, the game halted as men quickly approached the see if he was alright, and then suddenly the costume jerked again to its feet. The medics backed away, thinking that he was alright, but when the mascot began to assault another man, the crowd was confused again. As men piled on the mascot to stop the violence, the costume helmet came off. Suddenly there were bites, and more zombies, and the crowd panicked, trampling people in the efforts to get out of the narrow stands and stairs.


...I woke at that point, and did not remember any further.

A series of dreams from the night before.


I was on a bright green soccer field, eating a bright green spinach-tortilla wrap. A man in a Peruvian jersey tried to convince me to play.


I walk out of my apartment to water my plants. There are all the usual fellows and the little chicken bell on my door, and I have at some point added some japanese rain bells shaped like fat little owls. As I water and talk to the plants, I glance to my new neighbor; they have totally pimped out their little porch. A bright blue multi-plant pot dominates the corner, and they have hung beads and wind-chimes around the awning. White blossomed plants turn in the breeze. I feel significantly impressed and hearing a noise, look to my other neighbor's porch. She gives me a weird look and is frantically trying to move things onto her porch. "Oh no," I say to myself. "Here go the Joneses."


I am trying to solve the murder of a little girl which has happened in the crazily confusing house of a rich man. The house is very old English style, located in a forest estate, and I walk through plushly carpeted hallways and beneath mounted game trophies to search for clues. At one point we interrupt a man and a woman in an affair, and the man begins to come after us with a shotgun. I am disturbed but we make it away, and he follows slowly; he speaks as if he is confused or not in control of his actions. I am hiding in the lofts above the stables when my companions locate a bottle of pills, and quickly pass out handfuls. In eating them, we are able to see a ghostly aura trail that will lead us to the body by showing us the past and the future...but now it is confusing to avoid the man as we are distracted by where he will be but we do not know exactly when.


I have a portfolio case. It is smooth leather and the inside is cedar wood.


I dream that I twitter about my studio, but then regret it for some reason.



And then I wake up.

A brief nap dream:

I dreamt that there were a wide number of zombies. Unlike the snapping, flesh-seeking movie zombies, these were more like voodoo zombies. They generally shambled around, getting in the way; their outbursts of anger were more out of frustration than rage, and their violence more an accident of their own power than a directed action. They thought no more of removing an offending arm than you would, while hiking, break off a branch that blocked your way.

They were susceptible to language, however, and had their own. I was a linguist, and while hiding from them, managed to understand their rudimentary speech. By speaking it to them, I could easily convince them to follow my lead. Unfortunately, I was not the only one, and more than a few people used the zombies for destruction. When the dream got started, I was on a prison-style bus with 50 other members, being brought to a fortress held by one of the Speakers. He planned to use the population as labor forces.

A mid-level Speaker was in charge of the bus, while the zombies watched over us, lazily chewing on the remains of someone who had protested the ride. Most were too terrified to move, but when the zombies grew distracted, I snuck to the Speaker and began to suffocate him. As he was not directing them in their language, the zombies paid us no mind, and when he was dead, I ordered them to stop the bus.

The 50 of us crowded off into the wilderness, a series of fields. This was not safe, however, as the wilderness was dotted with the occasional wild zombie. Even for a Speaker, this was dangerous: as the days passed, there was the ever-growing risk of encountering the wild ones whose hunger might be too much to convince them to listen first and eat later. Though the busload was hesistant about the idea, they allowed me to Speak to the zombies who trailed after us in the way of pets, to gather and herd them for protection.

We reached a scientific outpost, protected by a tall strong fence that surrounded the enclave. Groups of men in white labcoats worked there, keeping watch by way of a large tower. They allowed us in, but were at first terrified by the zombies until I showed how I could communicate with them. As they had never seen this before, they allowed the zombies to stay, and I was grateful. The dumb things had become strangely fond to me, and I didn't like the idea of them descending into savagery or being used for evil again.

Dream:

I was on a ship. It was an old, wooden galleon, the kind with an enormous hold and a wide deck. However, it was not too big; the size of it didn't overwhelm me, but it didn't feel crowded either, despite the crates and rows of antiques that filled the boat.

I began the dream by wandering through the hold, the light coming in as dim and full of dust motes. It was not hard to breathe or stuffy, though, just...old. I made my way to the top deck of the ship, which was crowded with more pieces of furniture strapped to the desk. The whole ship groaned when the waves rolled it, but the sea was generally very calm. I did not look upon these things with a sense of dismay or disdain however. They simply were.

The ship stopped at an island of it's own accord; I did not steer it despite being the only one aboard. The island was little more than a spit of land, but suddenly I found myself on the beach, my arms full of small boxes filled with costume jewelry and tarnished silver teapots. My feet sunk to the ankle into the orange, pumice littered sand, but I did not worry about the sharpness of rocks or the presence of creatures buried in the shore. The island was flat, with low green foliage, so I don't know where the pumice came from. As I walked around the beach to circle the island, I dropped bits of the costume jewelry behind me as if to mark my path in case I got lost.

However, the low green bushes were filled with the sounds of birds, and I have no doubt that some of them would take the shiny bits of glass, and yet, this did not bother me.

I find myself oscillating between hyper-connectivity and detachment almost to the point of shunning connection. Not sure why, but for the moment I'm at the middle of the pendulum swing and have no clue which way it goes this time.

We'll see.

Recent events have made me consider accountability.
I've been doing a little self-tallying lately.

I try not to count what I have left to do, but instead what I've done today. I'm far too good at the pressure of to-be-done; what I remind myself that I need to remember is that I need the feeling of accomplishment as much as I do the feeling of motivation. Also, to remind myself that doing things just for me is just as important and as vital as my service to those around me. Doing things to better my community gives me a sense of purpose...but it's not my only purpose.

I consider what I'm wearing: how many things today did I pay for? How many of those things that I paid for are things I have consciously been proud or glad to buy and treasure? How many things today were gifts I can be grateful for? How many things were restored, recycled, reused? I am glad to say that most days, aside from my rings and my underwear, the things I wear answer the last question first. I met an artist who made a pact to wear things that were only hand-made or bought from other artists, and while I am not so experienced in craft to rely on the first and not really able to afford the second, I have been trying to be mindful of the origins of things. I've been so-so in the past, but this lately has become my mantra.

I want to retake the statement of "Will Work For Food." It has such a pathetic and negative connotation, the idea that it means someone is broke, desperate. I want to empower it instead: wealth is evident in so many forms other than currency. I should be blessed to barter, to have people give and receive that kind of trust. We hold money over people's heads far too often, and it is a terrible double-edged sword. I feel - albeit perhaps a bit idealistically - that we could make do with so much less if we could just be assured we wouldn't starve, wouldn't lack for shelter, wouldn't be alone. Instead we - all of us, and myself included - hoard on so many levels because we're afraid we'll never have anything else.

I suppose I've had a lot to think about.

...

Post-script: Hah! Stumbled on Obsessive Consumption and Kate Bingaman-Burt" shortly after posting. What interesting places we end up at!

I dreamt that I went on a field trip to see a group of contemporary feminist art exhibits. In particular, a room installation that was a single long, empty, pink hallway lit only by track lights set into the floor, a series of soft pink bulbs whose under-lighting made the otherwise dark room visible at all. The installation was called "The Uterus," which led into the exhibition space, called "Exhibit U."

I knew a lot about the art but no one believed me when I tried to explain it. Afterwards, riding on the bus back from the field trip, I felt frustrated and stared out the window.

I dreamt that my mother exchanged my box of art supplies for furniture. I was anxious about the situation but had no clue how approach the issue since I knew she had meant only the best of intentions and would be hurt by my apparent ingratitude. I also did not know how to explain to her how important those had been, and how it was not her place to make the exchange. However, I felt like I should speak up.

A brief yodel from the mountains of cyberspace:

My trail is finally winding closer to home. I've gotten settled in an apartment and finally have internet on any sort of regular basis again. My schedule is still jam packed these days - the 9 to 5, the 5-10s, and the usual pattering of design jobs - but the empty spaces are far from empty. I know if I keep walking at this pace eventually I'll stumble, but for now the briskness of it burns in all the right places.

I have more than a few comics to upload, and a domain name to design. I'm taking a certificate seminar about the non-profit process and picking up a ton of business tips along the way. It's good to add those to my rucksack especially as several friends and I are in the planning stages of a whole new journey. Who knows how far these trails will wind, but I find it's a trip worth taking.

For now, I'm back on the road.

It's been a while since I've done anything more realistically-slanted on the visual front, but an hour or so with Corel was a nice relapse into the form and the process of the self-portrait. There is something about working on a realistic self-portrait that is different than the quick ink jots I normally do...while those are nice for capturing expression and moment, the longer process is more about capturing a...a "sense." It's hard to explain exactly. A presence. Working realistically constructs the figure out of so much evidence it becomes a crime scene.

Looking over it, it's me and it's not quite me. The face is a little too round, with none of the harder lines that have crept into my face over the past few months and the past few years. The forehead is still a little too small; the Freud in me wonders if that's some sort of subconscious effort to dumb down that ignorance is bliss. The lips do not look as near as chapped as nervous tendencies would indicate. And the nose is a little wide as I am sometimes prone to draw out of ethnic habit. But it was a nice enough process as is, and even if you discount artistic process, in terms of importance it was as much a part of the reflective process of staring myself in the face as I have forced myself to do each day this year.


...In other news, one of my resolutions was to draw a small loose comic panel every day, something not quite autobiographical, not quite coherent, not quite cohesive. I've given myself no limitations on subject or form or format, though I am prone to small portable notebook sizes and ink lines and esoteric poetry texts. The first week is already scanned, being sized and shaped, though I go back and forth on where and how to post.

a poem for heights

the fondest lemon:
teeth grip the rind; letting go,
the mouth cannot spit

my favorite mistakes were always made for you