picture post.

I FINALLY uploaded photos from my camera into my computer. I have some from as far back as September 9th. I'm usually much more organized about it than that, but now I've got this new computer and I haven't even transferred over my favorites list yet.

I've been playing around with the settings a lot, so bear with me if some of them come out funky or fuzzy.


This was taken at least two weeks ago, when my parents and youngest brother and I went to visit my second-youngest brother at boarding school. (I guess the simplest way to describe that would be to say "Mom and Dad took #1 and #5 to visit #4. Yes, there are five of us. Apparently that's a "ton" of kids?)


I thought this plum looked like a heart.


Cooking with M-- our first time "really cooking" in the new place, since I don't count using a rice maker as "cooking." It was a one-pot Spanish chicken dish with tomato and rice. Not my thing, but it was actually really, really good. Can you tell I was figuring out the filters on my camera? It was so tasty-looking; I wish I'd set the ISO properly.


I hung out with Jen and we made things out of clay. This is her "penguin", which is more of an ambiguous bird (more like a partridge, perhaps) but it looked so adorable and soft and cuddly.


A. decided to be Davey Jones last week. As far as he knows from my explanations and a POTC book with magnets that he has, Davey Jones is a man-octopus who is covered in tentacles, so when A. wants to "be" Davey Jones he requests that I help him tie or tape strings and ribbons all over his body, and then attach small objects to the ends of the "tentacles" to repretsent Davey's conquests.


I did a ton of cleaning yesterday at the new place, so here are some random images that I took to show some of the changes we've made since we've been there.

This is our living room. All the furniture and art you see here is from M's dad. The patterned chairs aren't really to my liking, but we have a goregeous black leather couch (called the "casting couch" by Jen), an old country table with the legs sawed-off for a coffee table, some beautiful brass lamps and some cool artwork. I love that YWCA poster, and off to the right (I think you can see it in the picture; it depends on how it resized) is 17th century European sheet music. We also have a decent volume of "stuff" that we're trying to relocate and sort through...


Our dining room! I bought new curtains and candles, M hung up my old shell... well, I geuss you'd have to call it a "shell hanging." I don't know what else it would be. I bought it when I was 13 in Cape Cod and have never been able to hang it anywhere, so I was all excited about it.

You can't see all of them here, but I hung 6 framed wine labels the other day. You can see two; the other four are on the left wall just out of the picture.


We hung pictures up along the stairway. Left to right-- Louis Armstrong autographed by Dr. John, Rent poster signed by part of the cast, and Garbage poster signed by the band. M is big on autographed stuff. :)


My kitchen! My clean, clean kitchen! My kitchen which is no longer a warehouse for books and random appliances!!!


There's something I need to tell you all... I have a dark secret. My secret is that I am extremely anal-retentive. I try hard to be a spontaneous, fun, young, 20-something who is exciting and artistic and unpredictable... but then I do things like organize our Magnetic Poetry words on the fridge in groups by part of speech.


It was all I could do not to list them alphabetically as well. As it is, I spent half an hour doing this.

*sigh*

I sat and watched the Animal Planet Whatever-It's-Called dog show yesterday while organizing our spices. They need to be in the special glass bottles that go with the spice rack because it is prettier this way. M has learned to let me win my little battles because it makes me feel like I'm in control and it occupies me for a goof hour to do such things.


I have friends in high places, and those friends hooked me up with Buzz Lightyear today. I had the particular honor and privilege to see him up-close loading up his spaceship for a "great adventure," although he wasn't to where he was headed. He certainly made sure to pack everything he might need, including a shopping cart, a fishing pole, some power tools (in case the ship breaks down, duh) and an elephant.


He was able to take a brief reprieve from saving the universe from the Evil Lord Zurg to have a picnic with me at our log cabin house, and then to roast marshmellows over the campfire that we had "lit" to keep us warm during our picnic.


Saving the universe it tough work, though... especially after 3 hours at preschool and 45 minutes at ballet.

Another WTF.

I'm watching an HBO Documentary (yay for My DVR!) called "100% Woman," about a transgendered woman (possibly transsexual? I think she's on hormone treatments, at any rate) who is a professional mountain biker. All of her competitors are trying to get her disqualified because she's not, as they say, "a real woman."

Here I was thinking they just didn't want someone with the unfair advantage of a male muscle-to-fat ratio competeing against them, or something biological like that... but no, it's that "she might go to the championships and THEN what would people think about women's mountain biking???"

Yes, that's a huge concern. One transgendered woman might ruin mountain biking for everyone! Clearly that means all female mountain bikers are actually men.

It's almost funny how people don't realize that GLBT rights are the younger generation's civil rights movement. GLBT struggles are not synonymous with the racial struggles this country (and the world) have faced because the histories just aren't the same, but there's something to be said for the fact that strides have been made in the past 40-50 years towards racial equality-- although we're still light-years away from that being anything near "equal"-- and now we're doing something similar to GLBT people. What? It just BAFFLES me. This is going to be one more embarassing era in US history that could have been SO SIGNIFICANTLY SHORTENED if we just pushed through the paperwork already, made gay marriage legal ("marriage", in my mind, shouldn't be a government concern at all) and started pushing through this to actual social, political, and cultural equality for everyone.

GLBT rights is my voting issue this election. What's yours?

grumbling and wondering

Stupid graduate school. I'm so frustrated with them right now. I've had classes canceled on me last-minute (REQUIRED classes), had them combined with undergrads to save money (and therefore dumbed-down to an undergraduate level... no offense to undergrads, but there is a big difference in the style, level of intensity, and courseload, not to mention your courses are cheaper than ours, at least at this school, but we're still paying grad prices for an undergrad education!), and now the latest in my saga... I signed up for a class and was billed for it, but I was somehow never added to the course list. What? Doesn't the computer do that automatically? So I missed the first class two days ago because the professor didn't have me on her list, and therefore didn't email me to tell me when the course was starting, and in the end I only found out that I'd missed the class because a classmate of mine was chatting with the professor and was surprised to hear that I hadn't been in attendance.

Siiiiiiiigh. Let me tell you... I'm trying really hard to be professional in a public journal forum... but this school really is a mess. I've never had to work so hard to do so many other people's jobs in my life. Honestly, I shouldn't have to call an office, ask them how to fix something they've messed up, have them reassure me that they'll take care of it... and then have to call back twice more to ensure that it gets done. Isn't that what they get paid for?

In other news...

I've been itching to clean lately. I've been spending so much time cleaning at my & M's new place that I've completely abandoned the house I currently live in... my parents' house. My room and bathroom here are a disaster. I think it pisses my mom off that I've been cleaning at the new place and not here. There's just so much to go through! I was searching for something in my closet the other day-- a guitar pedal to bring to my friend's house-- and I found half of my life from high school in a giant pile. I need to box that stuff up before it all either gets destroyed under the weight of everything else in there, or just thoroughly traumatizes me. High school was heavy stuff! I don't really want to come face-to-face with "REMEMBER HOW MISERABLE YOU WERE?! SUCKED, DIDN'T IT?!" every time I look for a pair of shoes.

I want to paint, too. And I want to buy more artwork! M and I hung a bunch of pictures the past few days. We have such a random collection, almost entirely from his dad... 17th century European sheet music, a Louisiana Jazz Festival poster signed by Dr. John, a YWCA "Our Second Line of Defense" poster from... the 1940s? maybe?, 6 fancy gold-framed wine labels, an autographed Tori Amos CD insert, an autographed Garbage mini-poster, an autographed poster from the movie Dogma, and an Edward Hopper "Nighthawks" print... and that's just two rooms and a hallway. We have a LOT of artwork. I want more of my own, though. I want to buy a few things to personalize it a bit. I love all the stuff we have so far, but it's mostly hand-me-down art from M's dad and then some pieces of M's, and I want to mix in a few things of my own to make it all feel more like ours, you know?

I'm trying to think of what to buy. I definitely want a Mark Ryden print, I know that much. I've loved his work since high school-- I did a study on "The Bunny Butcher" my senior year, and own a book of some of his work (just up through maybe 2002). I'd like some artistic interpretations of the women I referenced in an earlier post... maybe Eve and the Black Mary in particular. But it would be great to find a set of all four done by one artist in a series.

Hmm. Looks like my Christmas list this year is going to be all artwork and educational materials...

Edited to add: Ooh, I definitely want Allegory of the Four Seasons.

Treasure Hunting

M and I spent over an hour digging things out of the basement today. When I say "we" I mean "he moved boxes and I watched," but I'd like to think my presence provided some sort of moral support or something. :) We were looking for some framed artwork that we had packed and transported to the new place long before the movers brought all of M's dad's stuff over, so basically it was buried beneath seven layers of old furniture, clothing, obsolete electrical equipment and appliances, and a million boxes of books. Which, incidentally, we were also looking for, except the exact box of books kept evading us.

It was not a fruitless pursuit, though... we found an old Nintendo system (THE old Nintendo system) and a million games to go with it. I had no idea that there was a game called "Elevator Action." It sounds dirty, but apparently elevators and video games were both novel technology back in the early 80's? I don't know; I was born is '83. I couldn't find Duck Hunt or Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, but I did find the first two Mario games, so I'm happy. And I have a Duck Hunt gun. :D Duck Hunt is down there somewhere, in another box...

We also found M's old Star Wars Talking Alarm Clock. Some ebay investigation revealed that this is not a particularly rare or valuable relic from times past, but it is pretty hilarious. We just might keep it. Apparently it says "It's time for young rebels to wake up!" instead of beeping. I give it a week before it irritates me. Ah, I love the 80's.

Speaking of the Evil Empire... the Red Sox and the Yankees are tied 1-1 in the 8th. I'm not much for sports, and I'm especially not interested in sitting and watching a slow-action 3-hour game on TV (that's three episodes of The L Word, or seven episodes of South Park!) but I am a Boston girl, and therefore have a vested interest in the success of the Red Sox. Plus my parents are at the game right now. Go, Sox, go!

Man, I'm excited about my new Nintendo. I hope it works!

Geez, it's been almost a week.

I guess I've been busy...

I got my new computer in the mail! It's one of those new make-your-own Dell laptops. I got the green one. I'm surprised it took so long to show up-- I ordered it August 8th-- but I think I hit the tail end of the going-back-to-school crowd. My brother ordered his computer a week before mine and he got it August 18th... mine came in this past Thursday.

I love it so far, although I'm still getting used to Vista. I'm not really a huge fan so far. I know enough about computers that I get irritated when they dumb things down and make it all "user friendly" for computer-illiterate people, and then I can't find things that I used to do myself manually because it's all "no no, we do for you! you relax!"

I love WiFi, too. I'm sitting in bed right now on the 3rd floor of my & M's new place... cozy.

I spent all morning cleaning yesterday. I cleaned the kitchen, living room and dining room, put a bunch of things away, sorted out the extra dishware that we don't want anymore (it's nice stuff but not microwave safe), vaccuumed, put away some more books, and then ironed and hung up 4 sets of curtains. My GOD ironing takes a long time. The curtains I bought for the living room are a polyester "these look like silk" blend and they were ridiculously wrinkled from the package. They're gold and shiny, so I was worried they'd make our living room (with what Jen calls the black leather "casting couch") look too much like the King's Personal Champagne Room, but they're actually quite subtle and nice.

So after all that cleaning, I've decided to be utterly useless today. Although actually when M comes back from the gym I want to organize the bedroom and vaccuum upstairs. (Look at me; I'm a real grown-up!)

Coming up next in the Exciting World of J's Home Organization Project: Picture wire! Stay tuned.

Oh, and a special belated birthday congrats for Vera. Hope you had a good one, darlin'. :)

a "WTF" moment

A mind-boggling moment at the park, courtesy of Monday being a strange day all-around...

A young woman, probably around my age, showed up with two kids-- a little girl who looked like an older 3, and a little boy who looked like a young 2. She let the little girl run ahead into the park while she talked to the boy as she and he walked in together about how he needed to have a time-out before he could go play.

Barely 2-years-old, I remind you. As in, still in diapers, short sentences only, limited self-control of emotions and VERY limited reasoning skills.

So she's telling him as they're entering the park area and he's thoroughly distracted that he needs to have a time-out for hitting her in the car. He's protesting, of course, in that angry "How DARE you!" toddler voice, and eventually she tells him that his time-out entails him sitting by himself a good 20 feet away from his nanny and sister while they sit together and eat a snack.

So the kid's sitting there, looking thoroughly despondent at being alone but clearly not thinking about having hit the nanny because, well, he's 2 and he's at the park now. And the nanny and older sister are sitting, laughing and chatting and eating a snack.

So this situation with the time-out is WTF moment #1. WTF moment #2? The snack they were eating. This woman brought a can of peanuts to the park.

I'm sorry, what?

I get that both of those children are now considered old enough to eat peanuts. But... isn't bringing peanuts to a public place that's likely to be, I don't know, full of children thought of as a bad idea??? There are peanut-free kindergarten classrooms because kids will eat a peanut-butter sandwich and not wash their hands carefully enough before touching something that an allergic kid might touch, even if at 5 or 6 the allergic kid knows better than to eat a bite of the sandwich.

So the woman calls out in a sing-song voice, "Okay, Callen/Cullen/Kellen/(whatever trendy last-name-first-name the child had), you can come over now!" And the 2-year-old trudges over to eat peanuts with the nanny and his sister.

They all move over to the sandbox across the playground. I walk over to where they were just sitting. I search around on the ground and what do I find? Yup... fallen peanuts. Not for anything, the ground at the playground is all woodchips, so it's not like they were easy to spot, but... well, I guess it would be too much to assume that a person who brings peanuts to the park might still somehow register that young children drop food when they eat it, and that she should check the ground for stray peanuts another child could find before abandoning the area. So I gathered up a good handful and tossed them out.

I know there's a lot to nannying and parenting that people don't understand or even know about until they get there (and as an additional caveat, I know that nannying, even full-time, is not the same as parenting, nor should it even be compared), but I really think awareness about the pervasiveness of peanut and other nut allergies is a no-brainer. It's right up there with "don't give small objects to babies," "don't leave a kid alone in the bathtub" and "keep sharp objects, medicines and household cleaners out of reach of children." One peanut could be just as poisonous or life-threatening as any of the above.

This all goes back to my rant about cute young college girls who decide to become nannies for the summer because it's good money. They all come out after mid-May. But that's a rant for another day.

productivity

Yep, today is September 11th. I'm not going to touch that one today. There's nothing I could say that everyone else on the internet hasn't already.

It's not that I'm disrespectful. I'm just tired of what "September 11th" has turned into... a drop-everything, slap-a-bumper-sticker-on-your-pickup-truck and propaganda-filled day. There's nothing, short of a government conspiracy, that happened that day that we don't already know about. It was a terrible tragedy... innocent lives lost, a war begun, a nation shaken out of fear and grief. It's my generation's "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" But I need a break. I'm tired of this yearly renewal of our war vows. Let's talk about positive changes rather than renewing our angry at "the Muslims" and "the terrorists" all over again.

I guess I did touch it after all. Oh well.

I had a decently productive day, if by "day" I was to imply "after 3pm." I had yet another massive headache this morning... I keep waking up with these awful sinus headaches. It's either some new sort of seasonal allergy or it's something related to air-conditioning. Anyways, I had one, and I had to head over to M's/my new place to drop off some money I had borrowed from him, and then I hit Starbucks for some blessed caffeine and sugar (not too much... I know my limits with caffeine now). One grande Frappucino, two Advils and four episodes of The L Word, Season 2 (brought to me by the fabulous TV Links website; I may never buy TV show seasons on DVD ever again) I was all better. Except I'd wasted a few hours being useless, and continued to waste a few more watching more episodes. That show is so addictive. It made me a bit sad and moody, though... all these people in tumultuous relationships. So I headed out to see M, who was just getting home from a bunch of meetings. That helped :D

We cooked tonight! Our first time cooking in the new house. We'd made rice and beans before with naan and some tandoori sauce, but using a rice cooker is hardly "cooking." Tonight I made a fruit cup from some peaches, nectarines, plums and raspberries; and then we (*ahem* meaning M) whipped together a great one-pot arroz con pollo dish. It was actually pretty easy, especially since M did all the work-- a few chicken drumsticks, wings or thighs seared in olive oil; then add in some rice and brown it; and then add in a mixture of tomato paste, chicken broth, chopped garlic, salt, chopped onions and chopped green pepper, cover and simmer. We had to re-cook some of the pieces of chicken, but all told it was a tasty meal. I chopped up some yellow cherry tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette and chopped fresh basil for an accent. It was a pretty healthy meal, especially for us "eat out all the time" types. Although I did finish off my meal with a slice a cheesecake. Heh.

I'm up early for work tomorrow morning. A has two new classes tomorrow-- a "preschool experience" class at the YMCA, and a recreation department music class in the afternoon. (For anyone just joining us, "A" is a child and not a stray article. My sentence is grammatically correct, I swear!) It'll be so strange for me to drop him off at music class... last year it was a "Mommy (in my case, Nanny) & Me" for 3/4-year-olds... now that he's almost 4 1/2 and in his second year of preschool, he's old enough for the drop-off class. Seriously, nannying is not for the faint of heart... especially when you've yet to have children and you don't even know how much you weep inside when they grow up like this! I'm so proud of him, but it's bittersweet... he's not a little guy anymore...

I'll entertain myself during my two new 45-minute child-free blocks by working on my Great American Novel. That's right, kids, blogging is only my day job... and you thought all this talent was going to waste. ;) The fun thing about writing a fantasy novel is you get to invent a whole world of your own, with your own rules. I'm still working on the social and political climate and world history of this place. It's so FUN.

photo post.

Just some photos I've taken in the past week. I got my Canon PowerShot back in June, and I'm only just starting to figure out the settings (I've been relying on the Kids & Pets filter for everything) and some of these came out pretty well.

The water in town's been so low that you can see the bottom. It's so strange. This particular river has a tendency to flood whenever it rains heavily. The high school down the street got flooded about 6 years ago and the high schoolers had to use the middle school for the rest of the year; it gets that bad. I love how this picture came out. It looks very National Geographic.

A, the 4-year-old boy I nanny, was very pleased with the number of ducks we saw swimming around that day. I suspect he would have been excited had he not been in a melancholy mood. I don't blame him-- the poor kid's mother was abroad for a few days on a business trip, school's starting soon, and none of the neighborhood kids were around to play with. He was feeling a touch emotional and preferred to keep to himself. At any rate, there were a lot of ducks, and he enjoyed watching them swim under the bridge and come out the other side.

A did perk up enough to do a "photoshoot" involving him making funny faces, putting his leg on top of the bench and posing, and purposely "drinking" his bottled water wrong (with the cap on). He's not my child, so I can't post those here publicly to show you, but it was cute. If you have or know young kids, you probably get the jist of it anyways. :)

He found this one particularly funny because two of the ducks had their heads underwater.

A few days later, out at an All-You-Can-Eat Barbecue restaurant with Jay and Jen, I tested out my macro settings (once Jay told me what they mean, heh). Look at the detail! I've been wondering why I couldn't get the sort of clarity other people could with close-ups. I love textures.

A photo out the window at the restaurant. When I first took the picture, I didn't even realize that all those lights were reflections. It looks a touch like I'm dining in Vegas, heh. That's Jay and Jen in the window :)

And, yours truly. Not the best picture, but I think it's a bit cute. Jay took the picture while I was on the phone with M.

Another Expensive Friday...

I picked up my friend Jen today to do a bunch of errands and she commented, "Isn't this the third Friday in a row that we've gone shopping together?" I think she's right... that's where all my money went. Hrmph. Not like I can do much about the fact that, say, my bedroom and living room needed curtains, or that I needed to be fed mid-day (at McDonald's, shamefully), or that I needed tampons and a new blush and gas for my gas-guzzler. Last week I bought curtains for the dining room and-- oh, Jesus, I don't even remember. Something that was very, very important at the time, I'm sure. Oh, and I bought The L Word Season 1 on DVD. (Sooooo worth it.)

I picked up my wedding gown today! I've been calling it "the red pantsuit" when I mention it around M, because I don't want to tip him off about what it looks like by slipping any details. He reads this on occasion, so I can't tell you about it, either. Sorry! Let's just say it's perfect; absolutely the most beautiful dress in the world and I love love love it.

I felt so miserable earlier today. I'm very caffeine-sensitive-- I never, ever drink more than a coffee-cup full of regular coffee (or a Grande, at most, of a Frappucino or some other diluted-with-milk-sugar-and-ice coffee drink) because it makes me weak, dizzy, shaky and heart-racy. Well, I had one of my daily sinus headaches today (I need to figure out if I've developed seasonal allergies) and Jen offered me some Sudafed and some Excedrin for my head. I, of course, accepted, because although I'd never tried either medication before, I was in pain and I'd take anything she'd give me.

I started to feel ill right before we got food, so I figured I was just hungry. Food didn't help. I also had a Diet Coke, which by itself doesn't bother me.

Later in the day, after feeling weak and shaky but continuing to run errands because, well, I needed to do them, I called M while Jen ran into a store. He informed me that Sudafed and Excedrin both have caffeine or something like it in them. It occurred to me that Sudafed is the drug people are always trying to steal to make methamphetamines with.

Methamphetamines. Hmm. Shoulda thought of that.

The next hour and a half left me lying on Jen's bed, half-sleeping and half-reading, trying to ride it out. By the time I left I felt "okay." I still feel "okay," but a hell of a lot better. So I'm going to stay in tonight, and at some point in the evening I'm going to find out about what other products I currently or may use contain caffeine that I don't know about.

Muses.

I'm compiling a list of women who are symbolically powerful for me. It took me a long time personally to get comfortable with my womanhood-- for some reason, I didn't think I was "enough" of a woman for a while... not pretty enough, or thin enough, or seductive enough, I don't even know. But now I'm finding myself drawn to these figures that represent, to me, true female power and strength. I'm particularly interested in historical information/speculation on these women and artistic interpretations of their likenesses. So far, they're all Judeo-Christian religious figures. I think anything linking to Christianity has an underlying power in our society, and of course I was brought up Roman Catholic (although I am currently "on the market") so there's a familiarity entwined with a newfound mystery in these figures, for me.


First on the list is the Black Madonna.







I first saw her in a cathedral in Italy at age seventeen. I wasn't entirely prepared to appreciate the fact that I was in Italy and should have probably been, hmm, paying attention to the breathtaking artwork and architecture and history and life of all those buildings and statues and museums, but alas, I was too busy crouching down in the back seat of a rental car listening to KoRn (yes, with a capital R) and eating gelato three times a day. At any rate, I do remember the Black Madonna, because my aunt was so taken with her presence that she teared up (the only time in her life I've ever seen her cry). Then, a few years ago, I read the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I know some people who read and disliked the book, but I absolutely loved it. The imagery of the Black Madonna Honey... something about dark wood and honey just sounds breathtaking to me. I'm a very visual person. Of course, though, there was the character herself-- a beacon of strength, hope, and power. She still possesses that mystery that draws people to her.


I found a fascinating passage written about her by a fellow Blogspotter, a Gnostic priest:

The Black Madonna is Dark and calls us to the darkness. Darkness is something we need to get used to again "the Enlightenment" has deceived us into being afraid of the dark and distant from it. Light switches are illusory. They feed the notion that we can "master nature" (Descartes' false promise) and overcome all darkness with a flick of our finger. Meister Eckhart observes that "the ground of the soul is dark." Thus to avoid the darkness is to live superficially, cut off from one's ground, one's depth. The Black Madonna invites us into the dark and therefore into our depths. This is what the mystics call the "inside" of things, the essence of things. This is where Divinity lies. It is where the true self lies. It is where illusions are broken apart and the truth lies. Andrew Harvey puts it this way: "The Black Madonna is the transcendent Kali-Mother, the black womb of light out of which all of the worlds are always arising and into which they fall, the presence behind all things, the darkness of love and the loving unknowing into which the child of the Mother goes when his or her illumination is perfect." She calls us to that darkness which is mystery itself. She encourages us to be at home there, in the presence of deep, black, unsolveable mystery. She is, in Harvey's words, "the blackness of divine mystery, that mystery celebrated by the great Aphophatic mystics, such as Dionysisus Areopagite, who see the divine as forever unknowable, mysterious, beyond all our concepts, hidden from all our senses in a light so dazzling it registers on them as darkness." Eckhart calls God's darkness a "superessential darkness, a mystery behind mystery, a mystery within mystery that no light has penetrated."


Note to self: figure out what Gnosticism is, exactly, especially since it's so very unlike anything Christian I've ever experienced or encountered. Maybe I'll ask the priest.


Edited to add: I believe that section posted above was not written by the blogger, but was quoted from this article by Matthew Fox. My error! I really recommend reading the Fox article, though... it's fascinating.


Anyways.


I have also developed an obsession with artistic depictions of Eve.





This one above is, by far, my favorite out of all the paintings I've seen. It's the only one I know of in which Eve doesn't look evil, manipulative, or weak. I also like that the serpent is included in the imagery, but not directly as a puppeteer; nor is he hovering above her in a position of power.

We all know the story... Adam was a good boy, Eve gave him the apple, Adam was weak and he ate it and they were naked and God was pissed and now childbirth sucks. I'm a big Tori Amos fan, and she put a new spin on Eve that I'd never encountered or even considered before in a number of her songs on her 2005 album The Beekeeper. She describes the album concept really well in this interview:

"Maybe being a mom has pushed me to [speak and write about things in a way that I haven't before], without it being a studied sort of exercise. It changes your place in the tribe and in the structure when you're protecting a young voice, instead of being a young voice. So, maybe realizing that I needed to protect a young voice, I knew it was important. Because those voices won't have an opportunity to speak unless we give them access to certain information and civil liberties. So the beekeeper is really crawling inside and maybe creating another garden for people to walk into. Not just the Garden of Eden, or the Garden of Gethsemane- not the garden of original sin, but the garden of original "sinsuality." God's mother's garden Sophia, who is wisdom, who encourages Tori to eat of the forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge- And only then will she be able to see what's truly going on in her own life, much less the outside world.


"... a lot of women have had a hard time with holding the archetype of mother and mistress. In clearer terms- holding the sexual and the sacred. Sacred sexuality, which the honeybee represented in the ancient feminine mysteries. And that's one reason why (the album) is called The Beekeeper, because this is a record holding all aspects of women and trying to pull it together piece by piece- which is a reflection of the book.

"... Women have had to choose, even within the Christian story, either the Mary Magdalene path, or the Mother Mary path. The Mother Mary, as I have said, having been circumcised of her sexuality, and Mary Magdalene being stripped of her spirituality. So women have either gravitated towards an archetype of the sensual woman, or the nurturing mother. And it's been very hard to hold both within the being, because there's been an archetypal division. There hasn't been a place where you have a woman who holds both."


I love the feeling of that whole album-- it's this soundscape that feels like an actual place you can go to, mentally, and sometimes I need to be there. I want to embrace this concept of Eve as a real, rounded woman. Stepping back and really understanding who I am is something I've only just started to do, sadly, now in my mid-20's and I'm starting to love myself this way, so this image of Eve is very powerful for me.

Note I included some thoughts on "the Marys" as well. The Black Madonna is already listed above, but Mary Magdalene is next on the list.

Mary Magdalene is the "whore" of the Bible. We all got to "know" her a little better by watching The Da Vinci code, in which (don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to) she is revealed to be the secret wife of Jesus. Now, I imagine it had to be difficult to follow a suspected religious wacko around from town to town spreading the word about his alleged deeds and greatness for anyone, much less a woman back then... so I suppose it's no surprise she got slapped with the hussy label. After all, women weren't supposed to be bold back then! I'm a little irritated that I didn't know until now that there was a Gospel of Mary, a fifth gospel completely left out of the Bible. I feel like I should have been told! Argh. But again, I shouldn't be surprised-- apparently she broke some of the rules in writing it.

I don't know exactly who she was or what she's done. I do know, though, that she must have been someone amazing to have done what she did, and I think there's a lot to know about her that may have just been lost to history. I can't imagine anyone will ever know (or admit) the impact she may have had on early Christianity. That's huge.

And finally... there's Dinah.

Have you read this book? That's all I can say for a description. Read it. You'll get it. Essentially, I feel like she's the first woman to tell "the woman's story," and I think anyone who grew up horrified by some parts of the Old Testament will feel a bit better to "hear" another perspective. I don't even know why it makes me feel better. It makes it more real, at the very least. But I feel so connected to her.

tickling the ivories.

I've satisfied a small portion of my need-to-create-art-longing by playing the piano with my eyes closed. I've got two songs down now-- a dumbed-down version of Tori Amos's "China" and an improved set of chords and melody for Coldplay's "Trouble." I need to finish learning "Fix You" as well; that's my favorite Coldplay song.

I figured out the chords to Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around," too.. it's pretty simple. All it took was a glance online and a little improvisation. It's just Am, C, G, Dm over and over, with the Dm replaced by a D when he sings "... and I guess I was wrong" right before the "don't want to talk about it/don't want to think about it" bridge. It's amazing how many songs are built off of such simple chord progressions... did you know that Avril Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" and Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery" are nearly identical?

I've really gotten into Maria Mena lately. I found a link to a MySpace for this random 16-year-old girl that played one of Maria's songs, and I followed it to Maria's MySpace Music page. She's this amazing young Norweigan singer with a low, husky, airy voice. It's strange how some small quality of her voice reminds me of Bjork despite her not really sounding like Bjork at all. Maybe it's an accent thing, but Maria doesn't sound like she actually has an accent to me. The lyrics in her songs are really incredible... I love the line "I will no longer be disciplined by the frustrations of an insecure man," especially coming out of an 18-year-old (she's 22/23 now, I believe). Deep relationship-related songs for a young girl.

If you listen to Maria's stuff and really love it, I recommend Martina Sorbara and Imogen Heap as well, although I'm a fan of both women's older work and not the newer work. Martina Sorbara's 2000 album was golden but she got married and started an electro-poppy band with her husband which puts her floaty, birdlike, hearty voice to absolutely no good use at all; and I never really got into Imogen's work with FrouFrou nearly as much as her solo songs like "Come Here, Boy." I can't even find good links for either of them because it's all new stuff. Bleh. I think I need to order Martina's 2000 album before it goes out of print.

What the who now?

Oh, Google. How you bring the crazy to my fingertips with one click.

I've been researching a tattoo design that I'd like to put together and I found, under a number of fairly innocent-looking keyword searches, the following gems:

Firstly: Dan Gayman, a former high school principal, leads the Schell City, Missouri-based Church of Israel, and is widely regarded as one of the theological leaders of the Christian Identity movement. He has popularized the “two seedline” theory -- widely accepted among Identity adherents -- which purports that Jews descend from a sexual union between Eve and Satan (only white Christians descend from Adam and Eve). He has been credited with inspiring such groups and figures as The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord; James "Bo" Gritz; and Eric Rudolph, who pleaded guilty to bombing three abortion clinics, a gay nightclub, and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Gayman’s ability to provoke violent action through his teachings makes him an important force in the extremist world today.

Again, I say... what the who now?

And this one: The Bible is clear: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27) But what about the different races and skin colors? How did they come about?.... One idea that has surfaced comes from Genesis 4:15. After Cain killed Able the Bible says that Cain felt insecure about life and God said, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” and “the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.” Some have concluded that this “mark” was black skin. First of all, we don’t know what the mark was, but is it possible that the black gene was started with Cain and carried onto the ark in one of Noah’s sons or daughter-in-laws? Not very likely at all. That would be a very prejudiced viewpoint in our opinion, and a view that has no Scriptural evidence.

I almost forgot that you can completely take something back with a disclaimer at the end. That might come in handy!

pieces.

I miss art.

I've been packing and unpacking, carrying boxes, cleaning and organizing for the past... well, two months. M moved into his new place, which we're calling "our" new place even though I won't be living there for a year, and it feels like this endless mountain of sheer stuff that needs to be moved around and put into Just The Right Spot. It's become overwhelming. I don't handle long-term stress well; I'd much rather just get it all done at once and have things As They Should Be but between M's stuff (minimal), my stuff (very minimal, at the moment) and M's father's stuff (three houses worth of furniture, artwork, vases, lamps and a metric ton of steak knives, some of which is staying with him downstairs and some of which is coming upstairs to us) and I'm really wondering if we'll ever find places for everything!

I've been so busy, I almost forgot I used to do things like draw, or paint, or write (crappy) song lyrics about how miserable my upperclass white suburban teenage life was (eyeroll), or just playing the piano when no one's home. I started doing that again this summer, when my family was up at the summer house and I could sneak a few minutes back at home before or after work. I really missed the piano.

I need to slow down. My mother's been telling me I'll drive myself crazy with this whole "new house thing." Things have slowed down a bit, now that I've drained most of my finances on cute candle holders and placemats and cloth napkins and curtains. Are there 12-step programs for people who burn themselves out trying to be Martha Stewart?

I started this journal, in part, because I needed to finally carve out a peaceful space for myself in the internets. I've been Livejournaling for so long that it became, for me, a friends network rather than, well, a journal. With all that I've been doing these past few months I've hardly taken a moment to examine the state of my brain. When I do take a few moments to check Livejournal, it's to skim through my friends list to keep up with what about five people are doing, leave quick comments, and move on to something else.

I think I need a bit of space from that need for validation, as well... there are comments here on blogspot, but without that intensive community feeling that places like Livejournal have with the particular type of interface and friends lists and all that, I don't get that "I'm talking to you and you're not listening and commenting and leaving tons of messages!" feeling. This space looks and feels more like a personal website to me, which gives me some breathing room from that "conversation in a crowd" atmosphere. It's quieter here. Erm, e-quiet.

That said... M and I watched Justin Timberlake's HBO Concert Special tonight. M was so sweet; he set it to record so when I showed up at his/our place and realized I'd missed a big chunk of it I could still go back and watch it. Then he set "The Pick-Up Artist" to record for me in-- well, 6 minutes-- because I missed it while watching "The L Word" upstairs. (New favorite DVD, by the way. I'm hooked!)

Anyways, Justin... he did a little Tori Amos thing at the piano with the vocal & piano improv'ed intro to some song of his I don't know, and I thought it was awesome. I love that Justin Timberlake is not at all facially attractive (hey, just my opinion) but he does the "I wear hot suits" and "I can dance" and "I have a cool, intense-yet-laid-back attitude" thing and it totally makes him hot. Guys can get away with just charisma... what a double-standard. Boo!

Ack, it's late. I have to be up early tomorrow... I want to get back to M's place while the rug guys are still there, and then I'm picking my dog up at his doctor's appointment. I wonder exactly how many pounds overweight the little guy is this time, now that we're home from the beach and he's not running around as much...

the beginning. (what else do you call the first post?)

I'm partial to Earth's moon, particularly since I got my contact lense prescription "sharpened," so to speak, last summer. The moon is rather unimpressive to the slightly unfocused eye-- to those of us here on planet Earth who have grown accustomed to seeing a large orb of some variety hanging over us, at any rate. Generally people don't really pay much attention to the moon (formally named Luna) unless it happens to be perfectly round, partly hidden by the sun, a strange orangey color, or garnishing an otherwise beautiful scene like still ocean water or a mountain top. I developed a sudden love affair with the moon, however, when I finally saw it clearly for the first time in about ten years. Isn't medical science something! I had learned about the maria (MARR-e-uh, as I was told; the dark "oceans" on the moon) and could even name some of them after half an undergrad Astronomy course, so I won't lie, it was pretty cool to finally see them and go, "... OH. Neat!"



Okay, fine, I won't lie. I have a sort of pagan side as well, and I think the moon is a pretty cool representation of the female-goddess-chick-with-huge-knockers-and-long-hair sort of thing you see in a lot of fantasy art. Although I do place some spirituality in the earth and galaxy and universe, and after living on the ocean for a few summers I won't deny the huge impact of the tidal shifts on both the earth and my moods.



Well, technically speaking, our glamorous grey glowing moon is all we've got, which according to the rest of the solar system is kinda slumming it.



The planet Saturn has nineteen moons at last count, the largest of which is named Titan. Someone had the great idea to name all these moons and planets after Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, and I'm a little irritated there aren't any Italian moons out there (Vinnie? Luciano? Fonzarelli?), but Titan's my favorite moon aside from my loyalty to the one I spend most of my time with. It's second in size only to Ganymede, one of Jupiter's, in the solar system. Jupiter's moons are pretty cool all on their own, very nice colors and patterns from afar, but Titan has oceans. Actual oceans! From far away it just looks like a smooth orangey marble, but were you able to make it through the thick layers of smog (yes, smog), crushing pressure, and extreme cold temperatures and land on the surface, it would look something like this:

http://www.arcadiastreet.com/cgvistas/saturn_220.htm

Obviously, that's a computer-generated image based on the information scientists currently have.

"The clouds are probably composed of liquid nitrogen and methane drops, and it is speculated that Titan may be coverered with hydrocarbon lakes or oceans (specifically, methane and ethane). Although many of the organic chemicals thought to have been the precursors to life on Earth are present on Titan, it appears to be too cold for life as we know it to have evolved there."

The's an equation called The Drake Equation that calculates out the probability of extraterrestrial life in the galaxy. It factors in how many stars there are in the galaxy, the probability of planets capable of sustaining life based on the number of stars, the fraction of planets that might go on to actually develop that life... you get the picture. So how amazing is it that somewhere, close enough for us to see it with a telescope, there is a moon containing many of the same chemicals that were a factor in life beginning on this planet. In oceans... oceans that, when you really think about it, don't really look all that different from ours.

I remember learning about this in Astronomy. Do you ever have those "oh my god!" moments where you've learned something and for a second it blows your mind? The first time that happened to me was in fourth grade, when I held a meter stick and suddenly realized that there were a million millimeter marks on it. Of course, I was disappointed when I found out that "milli-" doesn't mean "million," but rather "thousand," but for that moment I was thrown by the sheer gravity of how much I thought I was seeing-- of how big things could be. And now, looking up at that picture above... it blows my mind to be presented with something so very similar to us-- different enough, of course, that it looks unfamiliar at first, but similar in its basic nature-- which is so alien at the same time.

I named this blog "ethane oceans" because I'm always examining and grasping at things and trying to piece this world together. Mostly I'm looking for connections-- the things that make us the same, no matter how different we appear, and the things that reach out like branches and connect us to the universe around us even when we don't understand how or why.