I found a picture of you accidentally on my computer today, and spent the majority of my computer graphics class making an illustration of you. It was fitting that soon after, we were asked to think of a poem and I thought of one of yours. We had a small typography assignment where we used text to visually represent a poem. You know how it is, practice your spacing, your apple tools and your colour coordination. Use the hierarchy. This is training for commercialization, how to make something show something even though all you have are words.
I thought it was very contradictory, Hero. How can they expect us to NOT be expressive with words? Aren't words the fundamental forms of expression? In our critical viewing of even images, our responses are always in words. Aren't words just that important?
So I decided to make my photography final about something to do with words. I made contact sheets of myself writing backwards on a pane of glass and used a long shutter speed so that you could see the motion. I wrote things like "Hello" and "Bloop" and "Fajer", then I wiped it all off and wrote Shakespeare quotes. "I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning." "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." "What a piece of work is man! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"
So you see, Hero, you live on through your words, and your words are beautiful, and my words are going to grow up to be just as beautiful someday. Until then, I need images to help me along.
"What happens when you're a dog pushed in the corner and you're hit so many times? You start biting back. Then what happens? They go shoot the dog. They don't say the master was beating the dog. Just that the dog bit somebody." - Tori Amos
hehehe
we are watching patrick's dog for a couple days while he and brienne help his dad move to chicago. the dog is a german shepherd/rottweiler mix named mackenzie. she is so cute! she's very lovey and demands attention, something i am not used to because comet was kind of a loner. she slept with me in my bed last night and right now she's taking a nap on it while i'm typing up a paper. her eyes are shut tight and she looks so cute! my camera isn't working so i couldn't take a picture, so i decided posting an entry about it was the next best thing to do.
per mccarthy's suggestion
tuesday night, i dreamt that i was on the freeway (looked like I-94 around Detroit) and suddenly i saw a downed airplane on the side of the road. people were being rescued from it. then i looked up and another plane in the sky was falling, as if the engines went out and it was free-falling. it crashed 10 feet in front of me. even though it looked normal sized in the sky, when i got close to it, was really small. the size of a car seat, maybe. on the outside were printed the words, "get pregnant." i ripped it open to see what was inside. there was a dog and he was okay, he just jumped up and ran away. there was also a cold styrofoam box. i opened it and there was some kind of human organ covered in bodily fluids - blood, mucus, etc. that was inside of a sealed plastic bag (not a ziplock bag, but industrial/medical type plastic). in the dream, i thought "this must have been a medical transportation plane that brings organs to hospitals for transplants and things. weird." that's all i can remember.
i tend to dream a lot about bodies of water, driving, freeways, and airplanes/aircraft stalling out and then falling to the ground. off the top of my head, i can think of at least 4 other times i've dreamt about planes crashing to the ground right in front of me. it's very strange.
There's something haunting about a face found completely at random. I had searched "stars" for a background, looking for - and expecting - an astrological chart or two, and some beautiful pictures of the night sky. Incidentally, I stumbled upon Snehprabha Pradhan.
All I know about her is she was an Indian actress from the silverscreen era. There is virtually no information on her anywhere on the internet and this is the only photo I could find. She was a starlett with "star quality" all around, and traditional to boot according to a story written by her "husband in everything but law":
When, while she was doing a shoot, she kicked off her sandals (the scene required her barefoot) and left them by this 'husband', he picked them up and carried them closer to the set to watch her up close. When she caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye, she stopped, cried out, ran to him and immediately dropped the sandals. She returned to the set, apoligizing to the camera crew and the director. Later in the car, she scolded him, assuring him "you shouldn't have humiliated yourself by bringing my sandals. What am I to do with you?"
"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." - Gloria Steinem
Fajer's last post, in response to my post, has prompted me to write this post. Comments just aren't enough, I'm afraid.
feminists critique religion
"it's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous." - gloria steinem, 1980
"it's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses." - flo kennedy in color me flo, 1976.
"man enjoys the great advantage of having a god endorse the code he writes." - simone de beauvoir, from her existentialist book, the second sex.
"one of my favorite fantasies is that next sunday not one single woman, in any country of the world, will go to church. if women simply stop giving our time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they would cease to be." - sonia johnson, 1984
"patriarchy itself is the prevailing religion of the entire planet." - mary daly
quick freak-out session
if i have to hear that women are "naturally just more emotional" or "have more emotions" than men one more fucking time, i'm gonna beat you to death just like the rest of my non-emotional male mates might.
okay, well of course not. but PLEASE. let's look up the definition of emotion before we speak. allow me to shell out some interesting statistics about over-emotional women. er, excuse me, i meant OVER-EMOTIONAL MEN.
1) more than three women are murdered by their husbnads or boyfriends in the US every day. in the year 2000 alone, 1,247 women were killed by an intimate partner.
2) in 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5% of the murders of women and less than 4% of the murders of men.
3) pregnant and recently pregnant women are more likely to be victims of homocide than to die of any other cause.
should i go into spousal abuse, child abuse, molestation, rape, and other irrational behaviors exhibited by men? or do they not count because crying isn't involved?
::
2006 12 September :: 11.32am
:: Music: Jefferson Airplane - Embryonic Journey
The inner workings of a thingy on a stick.
There's this book called The Tipping Point that is entirely dedicated to the study of fads. If people knew what made things so popular and what could suddenly trigger an entire city to generally get along nicer, no one can really tell.
Did you know that, statistically, New York is one of the safest cities in the US?
The book goes on to say that, in each of us, are millions upon millions of tipping points, little hairtriggers that will bring about the most drastic changes. Sometimes it's a car accident. Sometimes it's someone we don't know stopping to say hello. Sometimes it's falling in love. Whatever it may be, we are all subject to these triggers in different ways, and as soon as these hotspots are just brushed by the slightest presence, our world changes inside out and upside down.
So when you do reach that tipping point, when, for whatever reason, something happens and you find yourself changing, you can almost hear your mind rearranging itself, and you go through the course of a day feeling distinctly awkward and unsure just to wake up the next morning and find that you'll have togrow new skin all over again, when you find yourself at the brink of a tipping point so drastic, so dramatic, so fantastically new, take the plunge.
Then take the time to reflect on this one question: are you ever going to be happier?
