I noticed that one of the sketches I posted to flickr (again, part of the sketch-a-day project) had recently gained a lot of view hits. The hits all seemed to fall on August 7th and 8th, which coincided with the announcement that CERN was going to begin testing of the Large Hadron Collider the following weekend.
I hope that the people who found my image by searching for “Large Hadron Collider” were pleased.
Dangers of the Large Hadron Collider, March 2008
I sketched this last night before bed and I really like it. (It’s part of my drawing-a-day stay-in-the-groove project.) Please ignore the strange tonal artifacts created by my rickety, dying scanner.
I’ve lived in Seattle almost my whole life (if you count growing up on the east side of the lake, which shouldn’t really count, as that area (Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue) is mainly populated by hostile extraterrestrials), and in living here, I have accidentally developed the skill to taste and enjoy coffee. I know what I like when it comes to espresso.
Basically this means that if I go anywhere outside of metro Seattle, all coffee tastes like crap. Once I was somewhere in the Saskatchewan with Richard and I ordered an Americano at an espresso stand… that was pretty funny. I first had to explain what it was, and then walk the barista through making it, and then… it tasted like… wow, I can’t even describe it. My vocabulary isn’t developed enough.
Yesterday Richard informed me that he has decided Tully’s makes a poorer latte than Starbucks. Okay, that sounds plausible. I am also able to confidently bet that the lattes made at the Tully’s stand in the I-wing rotunda of the Health Sciences Building at the University of Washington are worse than those found in normal Tully’s stores.
I’m trying to envision a bell curve of coffee tastiness. Vivace and Herkimer, Stumptown and Trabant, Cafe Vita and Solstice, Ugly Mug– those are all far outliers. In the middle of the bell curve is the swamp of crap coffee establishments: Starbucks and Tully’s, SBCs and all the places where the baristas aren’t really actually trained to do a good job and have no idea what they’re doing, or things are done assembly line style. (Of course I don’t blame the baristas… if they aren’t trained, it’s the manager’s fault.)
I have this funny idea of putting on waders and delving into the muck of the center of the bell curve of crap coffee… can I decultivate my palate? Should I seek out the shittiest coffee in all of Seattle? I’m not sure where I would start. I guess the Tully’s rotunda in UW HSB was a good start. But where to go from there?
(By the way, I’m not talking about diner coffee here. Everyone knows diner coffee is crappy in that awesome way that makes you want to chain smoke cigarettes and drink 15 cups. I’m talking about espresso. Grinding those beans and pulling the shots.)
Who does it the worst? Maybe identifying the establishment can be a winter project. I would make them a special certificate. “Beemouse Laboratories certifies this establishment serves the worst latte in Seattle” and then I would add a sweet drawing or something.
This completely useless and depressing digression concerning coffee has been sponsored by the letter W, the heavy cloud cover over the last few days, and the knowledge that summer is probably over, even thought I’m pretty sure it never started. Assholes.
Skin of mold on top of a container of old coffee, 2008
Ahoy!
This is a quick note to let you know I just listed a framed print of my favorite opium poppy photograph on Etsy.
Here it sits, on my couch, longing for its forever home:
I just learned about the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and read her poem “Renascence”.
Here’s an excerpt:
“…The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast…”
“The sky, I thought, is not so grand…”, May 2008
Ahhh… I found the poem moving. It’s psychedelic in a way.
I don’t know why I never liked poetry before. Maybe because it’s so personal and emotional and that kind of writing was hard for me to get into. It requires vulnerability on the part of the reader, too…
Yesterday was my one-year BLOG-O-VERSARY! I can’t believe I’ve been writing here for a year. For this occasion, let me introduce the following sketch I drew a little over a year ago:
Yeah, I really don’t know, either, but it was the only almost-appropriate birthday-related image I could find for this post. I think I might’ve drawn that on the train back from Portland. I don’t think it was anyone’s birthday. Whatever, Jessie.
Anyway, moving on– more importantly, today is my friend Jen’s birthday! Jen the Hotball, that is. I’ve been close friends with her since about 1999. Let’s celebrate the joyful and innocent spirit of the Hotball today!
Last week during therapy I was talking about the periods into which my life is divided. A common symptom of chronic PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is that the patient automatically creates a demarcation line in their mind that separates life “before” the event, and life “after” the event.
In my case, since I was chronically psychologically abused throughout childhood, there are multiple demarcation lines. In therapy I had started talking about the Olympic equestrian events, and my psychologist asked if I rode horses, and I said, well, yes… and went on to explain the following…
The first demarcation line was created when I was in elementary school, and my horseback riding lessons were taken away after only a year. Before you label me as a spoiled little rich girl, I will tell you that yes, we were rich (well, upper middle class– seems rich to me), but I was not spoiled in the least. I was anti-spoiled. When I was given the gift of horseback riding lessons, it was the best thing that had ever happened to me in my life. I could go on about it forever… but sinking back into memory… I think that Alison, my step-mom, was angry about something, and took it out on me by stopping my horseback riding lessons. I really did “die a little”. At that time in my life the lessons were the only thing keeping me afloat.
2nd demarcation line: I moved out of my dad and Alison’s house at the beginning of 12th grade (1997) because I couldn’t take Alison’s abuse anymore. I moved in with one of my best friends, whose parents were away on business the whole year, and wanted me to keep an eye on her. Suddenly my life opened up. I didn’t realize then how un-socialized I was to other humans, but looking back on it, it seems incredible. I had to start learning how to make friends, how to interact with people in a “normal” way. (I learned to fake it.)
3rd demarcation line: I moved to Boston in fall of 1997 for my freshman year of college. I went to Boston University on a full scholarship, and was not used to being around all the other rich east coast people. It was a total mindfuck. I basically went batshit crazy inside, from the culture shock, the stress of my double major (music performance and physics), and some other very unfortunate events that occurred that year. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and medicated with very bad meds. (Diagnosis since rescinded.)
4th demarcation line: I moved back to Seattle in the summer of 1998 at the behest of my father, to transfer to the UW. I met my current best friend. I started partying and socializing more. I got my kitty Newps. Still very mentally unstable.
5th demarcation line: I started dating my husband Richard some time in 2001. It was at this point that my memories of daily life events started sticking. My memories of my life “before” Richard are much different than my memories gained after I met him. The Before memories are fuzzy, jagged, full of holes, like data written to a bad disk that can’t be recovered. (If only there was Time Machine for the brain.)
6th demarcation line: In 2005 I had a mental breakdown– my chronic PTSD symptoms were triggered by a giant drama involving close friends. I was diagnosed with lupus. I quit my job. I was suicidal. I started going to therapy and taking excellent psych meds. I ate raman every day and watched Twilight Zone reruns for comfort. My husband stood by me, fearful but faithful.
I think a 7th line has been forming in the past year. Because of the excellent psychologist I found, who specializes in trauma, I have made huge progress inside my mind. At times I feel like I can do whatever I want, I’m shamelessly exuberant, and that I don’t have to be held back by anyone. The feeling comes and goes, but at least it’s there. I’m learning how to ride the ups and downs– to cultivate a relationship with the wild horses of my emotions. These healthy neural pathways have been created for the first time ever. I think this might be the last demarcation line of my life.
I used to like to write extremely weird and silly rhyming poems when I was in my early 20s… Years ago, my best friend Jen printed out a collection of poems I e-mailed her throughout 1999, which I wrote while I was bored in the library at the U of Washington, waiting between classes. They are totally unfettered and undignified, and sometimes when I hear them in the present day, I have trouble remembering what the hell I was writing about or who I was making fun of. A lot of them are about mice.
I found a more recent poem I wrote about Richard and I in September 2006:
‘Twas a brilliant day, in a land far away, and two tinies did go for a stroll
They danced hand in hand, and walked in the sands of riparian berrytree groves
They sat on a rock at the end of a dock and shared butter and wholegrain rolls
then ran away at the end of the day when mosquitoes descended in droves.
Of course anyone who is familiar with “The Owl and the Pussycat” will recognize some phrases and the meter. (Uh… anapestic heptameter?) That used to be one of my favorite poems when I was very little. My mom used to read it to me.
Riparian berrytree grove, Golden Gardens, Seattle, September 2007
So, I’m quite sure how it happened (I blame my bloated-beyond-all-measure Google Reader RSS feed), but somehow I found a tab open with Colin Chillag’s flickr account.
My first thought was “Who is this guy?” and then as I looked at the images, my second thought was, “… Holy crap!”
Check this out. His painting entitled “An erroneous model”:
Oh, and here’s a DETAIL:
I have no idea who this guy is, but he’s amazing. I hope people buy his work and he becomes famous etc.
The whole point of this post was that I realized, as I looked at this incredible painting and its detail, that I have an attention span the size of a flea.
I am hard pressed to draw a sketch every day– how could I sit down and paint something this amazing? I think I might be bored with the idea by the time I was done. But it’s imperative that the finished works be created. How does one maintain faith and interest in one’s vision throughout the entire creation of a work of art? I hope I find out…
August seems to be my month for fake fashion photography. I’ve been having much fun taking photos of my friends wearing things they don’t usually wear, doing things they don’t usually do.
Witness…
Hanna with kitty:
Jen the crazed Polish widow:
Faith, shut out:
Kitty Jasmine, chasing a butterfly:
