3.31.10 – On my own wire

I’m feeling fairly stuck and overwhelmed these days, but at least the sky is blue.

3.30.10 – Bridge on a Wire

My favorite bridge is about to close for seven months for repairs and painting. It’s the closest bridge to me, which makes it even more annoying. Often I pretend it’s actually the Brooklyn Bridge (it was designed by the same engineer and looks very similar) and that I’m crossing into Manhattan instead of Cincinnati. It also has that lovely sound as you cross, which made a friend nickname it the “whistling bridge.”

Of course I am enjoying seeing more and more ropes and wires go across it, making me feel I’m part of the circus each time I cross for the next week…until it closes.

3.29.10 – What’s Underneath

This view of the trees and grass through the window screen reminded me of coloring projects at school when I was a child. We would use a cigar box and color it with lots of varied colors, then cover it all with black crayon, finally using an unfolded paper clip to scrap images or words. When I think back now, it seemed like such a tedious thing to do; yet I recall loving the process and the scraping noise, looking for what was underneath.



Below are some lovely awards from Jesse Noe Mendez. Thanks, Jesse! Best of luck on your move.

3.28.10 – Different Perspective

I purchased this small, mirrored ball last week at a thrift shop. I was looking for a mirror for one of my films and instead stumbled on this piece. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but ended up working out quite better than what I thought I wanted. I keep being surprised when I come to the sink and see my surroundings and myself. It all looks so different and so much larger through the view of the ball. Perhaps my life is actually different and larger than it seems to me.

3.27.10 – Plutocracy or bust?

I finally watched Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story today. I kept putting it off, believing it would upset or depress me. It did do a bit of both, especially after talking heatedly at a Coffee Party meeting today about politics and health care reform.

I grew up during the Reagan years of excess, and being poor, or more importantly, being from an unhappy and dysfunctional poor family, I dreamed of a life like what I saw on The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Dynasty. In graduate school, I ended up pursuing a focus in fundraising, one because I wanted to be able to support myself and didn’t have the courage to believe that would happen through art making and, somewhat subconsciously, a desire to be around people with money and escape my upbringing. My ten years as a nonprofit fundraiser was quite an eye-opener in seeing that the grass was most definitely not greener on the other side, at least not always. It’s still a necessity to have money in this country, but it really isn’t any guarantee you’ll be happy or free to do what you want.



One of the bonus segments featured on the Capitalism DVD was President Carter’s speech to the nation in 1979, where he stated, “owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.” I learned this first hand over the years and paid the financial price, as I kept accumulating things while I stifled my creativity.

Unfortunately there are still too many people suffering from greed and the need to fill their lives one way or another. One would think the current economic meltdown would have woken enough people up, yet too many still want to cling to the “all for me and none for anyone else” mindset that has gotten our country in such a mess.

3.26.10 – Winter or Spring?

Just yesterday I was thinking that I’ve got to get the air conditioner in my car working. Then I fell asleep to the sound of ice and snow falling! At 6:00 p.m. today there was still unmelted ice on the ground. What is this world coming to?

3.25.10 – Doing the A, B, Cs

I’m currently in physical therapy due to my recent car accident. It has been helpful so far. The one somewhat strange exercise I’ve been given is to spell out the alphabet with each hand and arm. It’s a bit of a challenge for me as I have very bad handwriting and tend to write very quickly (all wrist and no arm, which isn’t what this exercise is about). Once again I’m being forced to take the time. I am grateful I’m not dyslexic, although I do seem to have to think a bit about the next letter doing this sort of thing.

3.24.10 – Time Off

I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed and exhausted lately and needed a treat, so I became one of the last people to see Avatar. It felt a bit decadent sitting in the movie theater on a weekday afternoon, even though I went to work before the movie and stopped back in after. It’s nice to take a little time to yourself during the week; it makes life more livable.

3.23.10 – Yellow Roses

I bought these yellow roses several weeks ago, almost as if directed by someone else. I thought something had happened that I didn’t think would affect me, yet it did. It appears it was just a scare and not what I seemed convinced had happened, but somehow I still can’t throw out these roses.

3.22.10 – To fund or not to fund

Yesterday, the House of Representatives here in the U.S voted to support the health care reform bill. I’m still perplexed about how such an issue that, in my opinion, everyone should support, has become so divisive. I’m, of course, one of the people Republicans like to misquote by claiming I’m against the bill, when in reality I just don’t feel it went far enough. I want the public option, but think the bill is a step in the right direction. I do believe the politicians caved in to special interest groups (i.e. the insurance companies) and have left too many loopholes in the bill that will come back to bite us. True, the Republicans may still scuttle the bill when it heads back to the Senate, so nothing may change.

What upsets me the most is not that we may be in a status quo until this country finally collapses due to the insane medical insurance mess we’ve allowed to happen, it’s that people still don’t see what’s happening. Just this morning a friend of a friend on Facebook commented the same crazy fear mongering stuff and tried to use the fact that she got this information from watching the politicians debate, not from the news, as if that meant everything she was saying was the truth. The trouble is none of the elected politicians who voted either for or against the bill have actually READ IT, so what they say in a debate is nothing but BS! Politicians never read bills. They read summaries and rely on their aides, who also don’t have time to read the bills, so the politicians end up just making crap up. I myself did this in college when I decided I did better on my literature papers when I didn’t read the books. I did attend the classes and passages from the books were read there, which helped me.

The thing is the worst that could have happened to me in that situation is I could have made a fool of myself and received a bad grade. In politics, most people forget the stuff that politicians make up during arguments, but we the taxpayers are left with all the crap.

3.21.10 – Reflections of unanswered questions

I recently watched Agnès Varda’s film The Beaches of Agnès, which was somewhat of a documentary on her life. The film began with her setting up mirrors on the beach. There was something so beautiful about this. The images have been haunting me ever since.

I think for me, the mirrors are not just reflections on our life, but on the important questions that have come up during this time. Often these questions are either not asked for fear of what the answer might be or we are never given the opportunity to ask it. A person’s questions are the most revealing things about them.

3.20.10 – Coming Together

I often think about the strange and circuitous paths in life that have brought me where I am, mostly daydreaming about doing it all over differently. The thing is, I wonder if I had been smart, taken more risks, and made fewer mistakes, would I still be the same person and would I have met the same people. There are obviously many people I’ve met I’d prefer to erase from my memory, but others have positively affected me and I’d be sad to have not known them. If only we could choose the paths that bring us to the right point that brings it all together.

3.19.10 – Is it safe?

I’ve let fear affect the majority of my life up to now. Luckily it’s playing less and less of a part, but I still sometimes become like Laurence Olivier’s character in Marathon Man, wondering over and over again whether it’s safe to do something and wishing I could just stay home under the covers, where it is definitely safe.

3.18.10 – Forgiveness

I’m trying to be a better person, which can be quite difficult. Part of doing that is forgiving people. That can be extremely difficult, especially for me. I’m reminded of the saying “fake it until you make it,” and seeing if by saying it out loud enough, I might actually believe it.

3.17.10 – Chasing Shadows

I get hopeful and excited that things are happening only to find them vanishing again.

3.16.10 – What’s Next?

Lately I keep wondering what’s next and when will things begin to let up.

3.15.10 – Waiting for the Show to Begin

When will the fantasy life I fantasize about every waking minute begin?

3.14.10 – TMI Society

To me the worst part of cell phone use is that people using them become engrossed and completely forget that others are around them and can hear what they’re saying. It’s not the casual chitchat at the stores that gets to me; it’s the very personal, and sometimes confusing and disturbing, information that is blithely, and often loudly, uttered with lots of other people around. I find it difficult not to look at people when they’ve said something on their phone, not intended for me, but that I’ve been forced to hear, yet at the same time I don’t want to meet the person’s gaze and have them know that I’ve heard them.

3.13.10 – Searching the Nether Regions

Sometimes when I look through my drawers or closets I’m either overwhelmed by past memories of when I wore particular items last or I get confused wondering if I’ve been somehow transported into someone else’s home and am looking at someone else’s clothes.

3.12.10 – Can’t Seem to Blow My Own Horn

After the first car accident, my chiropractor told me I’d been weakened and that another accident or fall would be harder to recover from. I didn’t think much about it at the time, assuming naively that I would not be in another accident, at least not for a while. Well, things didn’t quite work out as I had assumed, and I am still really reeling from this latest accident. I’ve begun physical therapy, which seems to be helping, but I just have no energy. It doesn’t matter when I go to sleep or when I get up or whether I take the medication or not or even if I take supplements or not. It’s like the wind has been knocked out of me. There is so much I need and want to do, but am having trouble getting going. If I push myself, after a while things start coming together. It’s just getting the first notes that are the hardest.

3.11.10 – We the People…

I've been watching the news lately, which I really shouldn't do. Mostly it just makes me think WTF?? and feel I am very alone. If the news itself doesn't aggravate me in its growing right-wing tendency, its the commercials stating I should call my senator to tell him not to vote for health care reform, as we can't afford it. We can't NOT afford health care reform! It all just makes me crazy and start to wonder what country am I living in now and has what this country been founded on been changed while I wasn't paying attention.

3.10.10 – Putting the Supplements Away

I actually didn’t feel the need to take my Vitamin D supplement this morning. While I’m not looking forward to the horrendous heat of summer, I am so glad that spring seems to finally be here.

3.9.10 – Collaboration

Lately a number of things have been making me think about collaborations, either romantic or otherwise. I’ve been reading Twyla Tharp’s book The Collaborative Habit, where she points out the importance of collaboration and how to make it work. Her ability to roll with the punches and gracefully deal with change is clearly a needed factor in this, and in life in general.

I haven’t had great luck in either working full-time in organizations (full-time is probably the key) or in relationships. There always seems to be an imbalance of power that I have trouble dealing with over time. I keep feeling that there has to be a way to find balance and have seen a few partnerships and relationships work out, but only a few.

3.8.10 – Beware

I helped a friend of mine today who got into some trouble over the weekend, which was a clear reminder to me of how quickly things can change. It also reminded me of my long-held belief that bad things happen in the country, especially at night.

3.7.10 – Art Criticism

For a while I was really annoyed that I was still stuck here in the Cincinnati area longer than I planned, which caused me to stop going to galleries and events. Of course, that just isolated me more and increased my frustration. I finally got to a place where I decided if I was going to be stuck here I should at least see what’s going on, so have been making up for lost time.

I’ve also gone back to reading more articles on the arts. Art reviews and criticism can be interesting, but it tends to be, a great deal of the time, from a very narrow mindset. I find it interesting to hear from other non-art critic voices.

My thanks to Russell Ihrig and Donnie for their involvement.

3.6.10 – Here Comes the Sun

It’s amazing what a ten or 20 degrees increase in temperature and the sun shining can do. People are smiling, they’re much more friendly at stores, and friends on Facebook are posting pictures of flowers beginning to bloom. Things may be okay after all.

3.5.10 – Wondering when the storm will end

Lately as soon as one catastrophe is dealt with another takes its place. I feel all I’m doing is righting the ship, although the alternative doesn’t sound appealing.

3.4.10 – Endless Paperwork

I recall years ago people saying that computers would end the need for mountains of paper and paperwork. With the amount of paper pertaining to either taxes or car accidents on my couch, coffee table, desk, dining room table, and every other piece of furniture in my home that clearly hasn’t happened. I did receive an email last week in regards to a meeting that stated at the bottom that I should think first about whether I needed to print out this email or not. As I’ve yet to acquire a

smart phone

and I needed the address and the directions on how to get in the building, I did need to print it out.

A photographer friend of mine has currently been photographing paper, which I have found to be quite beautiful, but that could be because it is not the paper cluttering my home.

3.3.10 – Cushioning Silence

I’ve been craving silence lately. There’s something about the foam acoustic tiles at the editing studio that I really love. When you move slightly, they give off a bit of a shine, and even though they don’t completely reduce the external noise, they dampen it enough. It makes me wish I could be constantly surrounded by it, like a large, moving shawl.

3.2.10 – Is it Recall time yet?

I tend to tell people that I live in either the Greater Cincinnati area or just Cincinnati, but actually I currently live in Northern Kentucky. It’s not that I’m ashamed of this, but I don’t feel I live in Kentucky, as I can see the downtown Cincinnati skyscrapers from my parking lot. With the current lunacy of Kentucky’s Sen. Jim Bunning (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-1-2010/senate-after-dark), I am ashamed to live here.

I didn’t vote for him, in fact my political views have progressively gone farther and farther to the left so much that I usually feel that the Democrats aren’t liberal enough anymore. Mostly I just feel frustrated that I don’t seem to have any power over the current situation in the country. I was so hopeful last November when Obama was elected president, yet I’m so disappointed and disillusioned now.

Trying to perk myself up, I looked up recall elections online, thinking maybe this could be the answer, but Kentucky, unfortunately, does not allow it. Eighteen other states do (http://www.ncsl.org/LegislaturesElections/ElectionsCampaigns/RecallofStateOfficials/tabid/16581/Default.aspx), in case anyone is interested.

3.1.10 – Shredded Hearts

I find it difficult to let go of things, which has made my apartment horribly overstuffed. With the recent winter weather I’ve been forced into prolonged confinement with all of my clutter. Some things I’d completely forgotten I still had, like photos of old love interests. A few times I nearly got rid of them, but somehow in the end couldn’t do it. It is time to let go, little by little.