Yearly Archives: 2008

Mute And Muse

Assume as nec­es­sary.

Why is it so polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect to show your feel­ings? Would it be inap­pro­pri­ate to tell you that I’m in love?

That your dim­ples are like hinges that purse your lips in the most adorable way, and I want to kiss them. That I want to have you here next to me, to feel the weight of your body press­ing against mine. That I want to smell you on my fin­gers, I want to fold my sheets around you, I want to feel your curls under my hands as I lath­er and rinse.

Because I’m sick of being polite and I’m tired of pro­pri­ety.

So let’s deal with this attrac­tion. Let’s not ignore what’s between us.

All Work And No Play

I’m sit­ting on my chaise in the dark, Macbook Pro in lap, cur­tains open to the snow out­side. Every now and then, the wind catch­es a loose patch of snow, and it sounds like sand drag­ging along the ground out­side. If you close your eyes, it’s like you’re sit­ting on a beach at low-tide under a night sky.

I haven’t done this in a while.

The show is over. There’s sup­posed to be one more inter­view next week, but at least I can breathe now. I’ve final­ly had time to clean the house, which is prob­a­bly why I feel com­fort­able enough to write.

There are icons for movies on my desk­top, ones I’ve start­ed watch­ing but haven’t fin­ished, because I haven’t been able to emo­tion­al­ly invest in them. I did, how­ev­er, get a chance to watch Cidade de Deus which is the best movie I’ve seen in months, and Constantine, pure­ly for the Tilda-Swinton-as-angel fac­tor.

Tilda Swinton in Constantine

I real­ized that I like girls who look like boys. I hope this does­n’t mean I’m gay.

On a sticky, I seem to have writ­ten “a small pair of skis”. I don’t remem­ber doing this, or what for. There’s also a phone num­ber there with no name. I want to call the num­ber to find out who it is, but I’d just hang up if some­one answered and that’d be rude.

I should call Dan. I should reor­ga­nize my pho­tos for appro­pri­ate back­up. I should be prac­tic­ing Tai Chi. I should be hav­ing more fun. I should be fill­ing out my thought record work­sheets.

But right now, I should real­ly be in bed.

Last Day of the Exhibition

An article in the Metro.

There’s a lit­tle arti­cle in The Metro today about the gallery. In the pic­ture, around the harpist, is part of my Fruit and Body series. I’ve decid­ed to make it a lim­it­ed edi­tion print of 100 each at 18″×12″. So far I’ve sold four, with two poten­tials.

It’s the last day of the exhib­it. I’ll be there again tonight because anoth­er paper wants some pic­tures of the artists, and so I can meet with any guests, includ­ing one of my buy­ers. If you stop by, don’t for­get to sign the guest­book!

Psychoanalytic Reflections 02

My ther­a­pist is still get­ting to know me. Now I have books to read and work­sheets to fill out. It’s some­what strange; I’ve been putting myself through self-help for years, but I’ve nev­er traced it so far back to my child­hood. I don’t like to blame my par­ents because I see how Darren and Pat have sur­vived far “worse” but it’s get­ting more and more obvi­ous that there’s trau­ma in my child­hood that still affects me to this day.

  • Apparently, I’m mod­er­ate­ly depressed, and “mod­er­ate” is not nor­mal.
  • We’ve fig­ured out that my unassertive­ness is the result of con­flict avoid­ance. Even if I prac­tice a sit­u­a­tion in my head where I say some­thing that may bring up con­flict, I often can’t fol­low through. I feel help­less to fix this, and this leads to a self-defeat­ing atti­tude.
    • This stems from my child­hood. I’ve almost nev­er argued with my par­ents (there were two times in my life I felt strong­ly enough to stand up against them, both end­ing in me sub­mit­ting because there was no rea­son­ing with them). I’ve always felt like I would­n’t be loved unless I got good grades and did every­thing I was told. In oth­er words, it was an extreme­ly con­di­tion­al love.
    • This means I care about what peo­ple think of me, and I define or eval­u­ate my self-worth through them. Knowing this piss­es me off because philo­soph­i­cal­ly and prag­mat­i­cal­ly I don’t agree, but can’t do any­thing about it.
  • Every time I’ve been in ther­a­py, I’ve cried at least once. This hap­pens when­ev­er I bring up spe­cif­ic aspects of my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
  • Hearing my ther­a­pist say, “Wow, that’s bad” brings me a com­fort­ing val­i­da­tion to what I feel.
  • Aside from being slight­ly ver­bose, my ther­a­pist is great. He’s a non-judg­men­tal, eth­i­cal, open-mind­ed intel­lec­tu­al. He’s also a good lis­ten­er.

The Spot

If a woman sleeps alone, it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not for­give: if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.

—Zorba the Greek

There exists a spot on every woman that needs to be kissed.

It can be as innocu­ous as the curl of the lip, the web of the hand, or a mark on a land­scape of skin.

It’s the respon­si­bil­i­ty of a man to find this spot. Not as a ser­vice to the woman — some­times she isn’t even aware of such a spot — but as a ser­vice to the cre­ator of such things.