Sarcomical

A Slightly Embarrassing Video of my Bedroom

...and what's embarrassing about it is the fact that I blink about a million times at the beginning, and also? ramble on about kitty litter, and also? sound approximately 14 years old, and also? have a bandana on my head. SIGH. I really hate watching these videos back; they thrust me to my highest level of self-scrutiny, so hurry up and watch it before I push it down the page just so that I can avoid it entirely.

The Most Common Nightmares...

I seem to remember in the past that I would often have dreams that I could actually recall upon waking. Over the last few years, however, that seems to have become more and more rare. I usually wake as if from a drug-induced coma, or feel like Rip Van Winkle - completely incognizant of anything that has occurred in the real world (OR in my dream world) since my eyes finally fell shut the night before.

However, I still have a few that recur time and again, leaving me feeling crappy and ready to bite off the fingers of anyone who tries to be chipper with me before I've had my good 3 or 4 hours to wake up and really feel like I'm part of the World Society again.

Most pointedly, I have those dreams about High School. You know which ones I'm talking about. You've had them, too. I guess Life figures High School is not traumatic and identity-scalding enough to go through just once...NO. We need to relive the potential worst nightmares of that puberty-marred time of life over and over again just to remind us that We Are Not all That and a Bag of Chips, no matter how Cool and Utterly Awesome we are in our current adult lives, we are still at the core adolescent babies wandering through the unknown hallways of life.

(That just sounded incredibly and surprisingly dark. Sorry. If you are now feeling sad, just think of Kittens! and Sno-Cones! and Rainbows! and Pound Puppies! Remember Pound Puppies? ...You okay now? All right, moving on.)

Aaaanyway...

My most common High School-related dream is the one where I show up to an unimaginably crowded school, fighting against hordes of people on their way to class, only to show up at my locker with only a few minutes left and realizing that I never got my class schedule. WHERE IS MY CLASS SCHEDULE?!? Sometimes I have it but it's blank. Other times, I have to go down three floors to the office and beg them to FIND MY SCHEDULE PLEASE I'M GOING TO MISS EVERYTHING! and they can't "find me in the system", or some office secretary won't get off the phone and look at me, or the copier is broken, or something like that. Then I end up wandering the halls desperately, thinking to myself "I THINK that was a class I was supposed to be in" and I end up sitting outside in the hallway trying to listen to the teacher so I don't miss what's happening. OH, and also I never have the right books, AND I never remember to bring a notebook and pen.

...Doesn't take a genius to figure out how I'm feeling about my life when I have those dreams, does it?

(heh)

So, tell me, what is YOUR most common High School-related nightmare?

technorati tags: High School, nightmares, dreams

Self-Portrait: April 9, 2008

(since I know some may ask, here's the info for this photo: Canon 5D camera; Canon 16-35mm f2.8L lens; natural light from window; camera settings 640 ISO / manual setting / 1/60 sec shutter / f3.2 aperture; edited for color in Adobe Lightroom - utilizing my preset; edited for soft-focus look in Adobe Photoshop CS3 - utilizing clone stamp tool)

technorati tags: photography, self portrait

The Current State of My Armpits

I got very excited this past weekend during a late night Wal-Mart run while I was staying with my sister. Entirely too excited. It must have been all the secondhand smoke from the dark country bar we were in for an hour and a half (NOT drinking, but eating three different varieties of fried foods - pepper cheese balls, onion rings, and hot wings). Either that, or it was the fact that I had been too close to the paint thinner earlier that evening.

Basically, I got giddy over seeing Vanilla Chai-scented deodorant as we passed the aisle. So giddy that I had to stop and sniff it and marvel over "sweet-smelling deodorant, it's like I've been waiting for it my whole life!" at 12:30 in the morning. And of course, I HAD to buy it.

Well...that and a container of soy protein shake mix.

The lesson here? Don't go to Wal-Mart when you really should just be unconscious somewhere under a blanket.

(p.s. I do have Vanilla Chai-scented armpits at the moment, by the way. Jealous?)

To Tattoo Yourself

I had an opportunity to go to a local avant-garde fashion show last weekend, and backstage was definitely interesting. I might post a few shots of the outfits later. For now, here is one of the makeup artists working on a model. When I went back over the photos I noticed her tattoo again, and I wondered what it was that made that little guy significant enough to her to put him on her shoulder blade for all time.

I've tossed the idea around in my head a few times over the past several years about getting a tattoo of my own, something tiny and non-imposing but significant in some way to me personally. I've gone back and forth and back again between thinking it's a great idea and thinking it's a stupid one. The problem I run into when I'm thinking it's the most brilliant idea of all time is that I can't come up with something that would be meaningful enough to me to want to live with forever.

Personally, for me to commit to something like that would necessitate that it be some thing or phrase that reminds me of how I want to live when I look at it, or reaffirms something I want to always be thinking...you get the idea. I wouldn't go to the trouble just for a little butterfly or some insignificant symbol. I have come to the point where I figure, no sense in getting one unless that Perfect Thing hits me one day. If it does, I'll know. If not, my mother can continue to live blissfully happy that her child is unmarred.

My question to you is this:
Do you want to get a tattoo one day? Even if you can't fathom it, pretend for a moment that you would actually consider one. What do you think you'd want it to be? If you have one or more already, what are they of? Which ones, if any, do you regret?

Contact Caper: A GREAT BIG STUPID MYSTERY SOLVED

Today, on my way out the door, I got that horrifying pain in my left eye that indicates that either someone is scraping an opened safety pin across your eyeball, or some Fool Dog's hair or other such particle has wedged itself between your contact and that very sensitive squishy thing you see with.

I, of course, ran upstairs to the bathroom so I could pop it out and try to remove said scraping particle and replace the contact in my eye so that I could meet my hairstylist for lunch on time...preferably without one normal eye and one frighteningly teary, bloodshot, swollen, blinkity-blinkity eye.

Once I cleaned it off, I put some new solution on it and popped it back in.

Except it didn't GET IN THERE. The world was still half-blurry. I poked around my eye a bit, but didn't feel it. I have done this before (many, many, many, many, many times), and if you're a contact wearer you know that the First Rule of Finding a Dropped Contact Is: DON'T MOVE YOUR FEET. IN FACT, DON'T MOVE AT ALL. One wrong step and *crunch*. Not good. (I should point out that I wear those gas-permeable lenses and not the soft ones.) I've had instances when I spent over an hour gingerly searching for a contact, careful not to disturb the crime scene, freaking out that I might have to buy a new one WHEN THE OTHER ONE IS SOMEWHERE RIGHT HERE DAMNIT. In the end, I've always located them. Perseverance always prevails, my friends.

So, of course I ran through my tried-and-true checklist. I brushed my eyelashes carefully with my fingertip, as so many times I've gotten one that just sort of stuck there. Then I moved on to feeling the hair around my face, and then rolled my eyeball around and around to see if I could feel it actually on there. (On several uncomfortable occasions, the darn things get stuck up on the part of your eyeball that's pretty much in your brain, so you have to bend your head waay waay down, hold open your eyelid wide, and look down if you want any hope of retrieval.)

Next step on the checklist? Why, down my shirt of course. (Hey, you never know.) Then my bathroom counter. Then my pants, my shoes, and finally the floor around my shoes. By this time I'd called The Husband in, who basically just stood a safe non-crunching distance away and tried to scan the ground with a different and wholly non-blurry set of eyeballs.

"I just don't get it, it has to be somewhere!" I said. "I didn't hear it drop, so it has to be somewhere soft, but I've looked...I mean, I thought I got it in my eye, but I guess I didn't...oh, wait. Hold on a second..."

And then, Ladies & Gentlemen, I reached up just for the hell of it and felt on that area where the contacts are supposed to be, and lo and behold, it was IN MY DAMN EYE. It was just so blurry from some extra solution still underneath it and a smudge from my finger that I had been duped.

The Husband looked at me. "Wow. That one's going on The Wall," I said.

Even though there IS no Wall.

But if there was one, I assure you, that deserves to be on it.

Half-Week Haiku #47: Rear View Reflection & Your Week-Ago Self

What would you like to go back and tell your Week-Ago Self? Would you warn yourself about something? Advise yourself to make a different decision? Tell yourself to make more of an effort to make a certain someone smile? Scold yourself for that shoe choice with that outfit? Slap down the 5-7-5 and tell us all about it. I'll go first:

if i had the chance
i'd bestow this wise nugget:
"don't eat those scallops"

I'm Thinking My Sister Should Visit More Often, Judging by the Photos

(We took her out to dinner when she came to visit for her birthday, and as you can see we enjoyed ourselves enough to possibly annoy our server.)

Staring at the Blank Page & Being Solitary

Empty
Blank
Glaring
Daunting

These are all words that can march monotonously around your brain when you are faced with the empty slate of a creative project. The beginning...that wicked piece of the puzzle when you don't even have a process in motion to guide you this or that direction, because you haven't created it yet. There is no pace, no "next step", no easy slide into the the natural progression of something that already has a life of its own. You have to give life to This Thing first, you must imagine it into possibility and then put it in motion.

For me, this empty page really is the part of life which I stub my toe on more times than I care to admit. What to write, what to create, what to photograph...I've found that my muse hasn't been very strong lately. In fact, I think she may have recently been ill. I think she may have had pneumonia.

Poor muse.

But seriously, isn't it the initial birthing of a project where the strain and pain are most often the strongest? Once I've dived deeply into something, it constantly energizes me and I get into a zone that can last for days or weeks barely noticing the rest of the world spinning around me. That's the way I like to be, as someone who feeds ravenously off of the joy of productive solitary work. (Did I mention I'm an INFP?)

I most enjoy being able to savor something as My Very Own; I like holding some things almost secret as if they were tiny little diamonds in my pocket that no one else knows about. This is true in the things I do oftentimes as well as the things I am feeling.

The problem with this intense personality trait is threefold:

1. People believe you aren't sharing an important part of yourself with them and they can feel hurt, pushed away or insignificant in your life.
2. You tend to internalize so much that you can sabotage your own thinking and get stuck in a cycle of fear and self-doubt without realizing it.
3. Though you get joy and a certain fulfillment from creating alone, you miss out on the opportunity to receive reinforcing feedback and inspiration as well the benefit of collaborating with others.

As a result of spending some time considering this, I've begun to make a renewed effort to push past the point where I become frustrated with the Start of something I want to do, or write, or create. It's exciting, but at the same time scary to allow yourself that space to get into something perhaps a bit messy, hoping in the end that what you're left with is more worthwhile and rewarding than you had anticipated. And, I'm trying to do more of that among the creative company of others and getting past the fear that if I take the diamonds out of my pocket once in a while, they will turn into coal and crumble away.

I'm trying to rededicate myself to writing more and writing better. It's something that makes me feel good afterward, and it's important to fight beyond that first sentence instead of backing down like a damn pansy. One thing I don't want to be is afraid of a measly sentence or two.

I'm working on putting the finishing touches on my photography website and will soon be creating a photo blog to go along with it, and I have, with some trepidation, begun to make some decisions and contacts regarding some creative shoots I want to do. I'm overwhelmed initially with the weight of deciding exactly what I want to shoot, how I want it to look, etc., and I keep having to fight my Inner Finger-Wagger who likes to tell me that I'm getting in way over my head and will end up looking like a fumbling idiot. But fight that little gnat I will, because...um...I don't know if you noticed, but I'm almost 32 years old, and REALLY, if I'm going to keep letting the fear of The Blank Page scare me, I might as well just die now, right? (And let's be clear, I have no interest in doing that, so...)

One of the other things I'm doing has got me just BURSTING WITH ANTICIPATION. I just wrote the deposit check and filled out the registration form for the Squam Art Workshops in New Hampshire, and put it in the mailbox (some of you may know Bluepoppy, who is organizing much of it). I plan to meet some of my online inspirations, who I've long been desiring to meet with and create with. Denise, Andrea, Penelope, and more...I can't wait to be pushed past my comfort zone, inspired, and meet some potential soul sisters. It's going to be amazing.

That, plus the other ways I'm trying to push my life back into the direction it was meant to go, will hopefully mean that from now on, when I look at The Blank Page, instead of

Empty
Blank
Glaring
Daunting

...I'll see

Fresh
Clean
Untouched
Limitless

technorati tags: Squam, INFP

Scandalous

Don't they look like they've just been caught making out?