the blankets were the stairs

One of my friends reminded me of Sunny Day Real Estate today when we were talking about formative high school years albums. And then a copy of Blankets crossed my desk at work and I was reminded once again of younger years and emotions that I thought I understood but didn't experience until much later.

A guy I went to Kent with who dropped out to move back to Pittsburgh to write comics and play in grindcore bands told me I'd love it. I did, and it also somewhat broke my heart because it was so familiar to me. The awfulness of youth group retreats, being the weird kid with spiritual doubts. It made me sad that by the end he'd lost his faith and his first love but oh goodness the artwork was so beautiful, every page so intensely rendered.

I had a conversation with a friend this weekend in regards to the science/religion binary that's been annoying the hell out of me the past couple weeks. We're on complete opposite sides of the fence when it comes to the culture wars, him being out and proud and skeptical and me being a self described bleeding heart hetero fundie, but neither of us want to fight those battles, because it's way nicer to just not be a jerk and assess people on their decency as humans rather than what sky-god they worship. Besides, we're too busy being good neighbors, eating dinner together, drinking Genessee and listening to punk rock. He said the other day that even though he believes in nothing, there's few things more devastating than watching believing people lose their faith. I'm inclined to agree with him.

black and white and light

I never did take a photography class in high school. I should have gotten a camera sooner than I did, and my early twenties are poorly documented, there are friends I've known for years that I have no pictures of, strange how my generation obsessively photographs everything from what they ate to important life events. The last wedding I was at was being Instagrammed in real time and being without an iPhone I know I'm still behind.

But one of my former teammates started a print room around the corner from my place of employment and had a pinhole camera workshop yesterday that I went to, where we took boxes and cans coated on the inside with black paint and festooned them with electrical tape to make makeshift shutters and to keep out the light, and it's kind of a crapshoot as to what you get, but these two came out all right, especially the top one. It's such a process, and strangely magical.

the existentials

So, despite all aversions to structure and whatnot, I ended up at some kind of art and spirituality retreat thing this weekend, in part because it was close by and I could bail if needed. It wasn't that good things weren't discussed, or that people weren't nice, I feel so profoundly square-peg even among those who'd consider themselves different from the norm, and averse to anything that remotely smacks of group therapy or whatever.

Part of this is leftover from certain church functions in my teens and in college where I went along to get along and then realized afterwards that I felt like it was all pretty ridiculous or just an exercise in navel-gazing/motivational absurdity with a spiritual veneer. I guess I don't totally trust other people, I analyze things a whole lot, and somehow I've evolved from a timid wallflower to someone who's still uber-introverted but way less averse to saying what I really think instead of tiptoeing around, sometimes to my detriment, in this case when I dropped some profanity in said explanation and was utterly misconstrued.

And it's strange being in this position, being the outlier among outliers, and yet much more doctrinally-traditional than my peers, emotional as anything, yet profoundly unpentecostal, not really buying into the narrative of marginalization of creatives in religious circles, maybe because I really believe in the whole one-body-many-parts thing, that we can't just say that other people who don't understand our artistic vision don't know anything, that we all have one common denominator, but a multiplicity of functions and giftings, and to be honest, the people I worship with love me in spite of my weirdness and encouraging me to do more with the art I do.  I like that where I go on Sunday morning means that I end up drinking coffee and sharing pews with people from completely different walks of life than my own, where we take each others' strangeness and warts in stride, that our politics and personal appearances and aesthetic preferences are secondary rather than primary.

So what was I left with? I guess I learned what works and what does not for yours truly, that for me the creative process is solitary, and that what seems like it'd work on paper doesn't always, that I feel like so much of this sequestering and self-separation is so overrated, and I wish I didn't feel like I was so damn contrary all the time.

viscous time

Some weekends fly by, and the others are mercifully long-feeling, amazing what that extra day can do. I forgot my camera so I have no pictures to post but there were a lot of photos taken this weekend, of the interior of my favorite glass studio in Clevelandia, where the Queen of the Bondo got a freelance journalist interview gig that I tagged along for, and most things interacted are redacted to protect the innocent, but any chance to hang out in a space where there's ample creativity is welcome. Here's some old shots of the place, my newer ones on the swanky camera are a little better.

 And then there was the family gathering, where I got to hold babies and argue politics with the family. It's reassuring to hear anxiety about drones and the lack of humanity and due process from my relateds, both with the geopolitical and the local. It seems that the seamless-garment-Catholics and the Kucinichistas might have more common ground than some would think. Though I'm evidently in the minority at my dismay at LAPD business-as-usual. I still have some weird belief that no matter how big of an awful scumbag person you are, you should still be treated with humanity and not burned alive. Then again, I don't watch much in the way of action movies except for kung fu and I don't have much in the way of revenge fantasies and have turned into a bit of a freako peacenik.

I was invited out to this winter festival thing but the roads were awful, and I spun out on a Parmastan sidestreet mercifully free of parked cars, and my friend who extended the invitation texted me to say not to bother coming down.The streets were slick, but the slow going was soundtracked by swank stoner rock so all was well.

Came home after church and slept awhile, felt kind of gross, weird stuff coming out of my nose sent me to the bibliotheque to self-diagnose and concluded that death wasn't imminent. Watched an Iranian movie about footie that was good.

Got all super domestic, cleaned most of the apartment, cooked a bunch of really good food, went up to the radio station to guest on a friend's show. Played lots of noisy music, took advantage of the almost-balmy temperature to walk down to the beach where there were a bunch of Cleveland cops on the shore, who knows what was going on but I was trying not to chortle too much watching the cruiser spin its wheels in the sand and resist the urge to break out the camera.

sirens and rusalka

Sirens of the riverbed, dead souls of the woods....

de-comaed

Filled in on a homie's metal show, despite aspersions cast upon yours trvely's hesher credentials, I got a lot of phone calls wanting to know more about said jams, some of which have graced the airwaves prior due to their general rockitude and since no one else plays this stuff and I love giving my fellow lady-doomsters airtime. Played requested Testament and St. Vitus, doomed it up for the most part. It's archived til Wednesday here. 

Spent Thanksgiving morning with some friends I haven't seen since matrimony, drinking coffee and walking beneath trees still yellow in this late November. A good amount of cousins and relatives came in, and feasting was done, everything else too delicious to bother with turkey. 

Black Friday consumerism involved acquiring a new (but used and very cheap) turntable at the Best Record Store Ever and then hanging out at the station for open house dispensing college radio swag and hanging out with good folk and indulgence in reminisces of the Parmastani kind, lunch with my aunt, and then downtown to meet up with the Queen of the Bondo for Nostalgia Today (whatever that means) holiday festivities courtesy of the City of Clevelandia. 

It was more crowded down there than I ever remember it being, and while one could say that downtown for at least one weekend night feels "alive" again, it felt more Potterville than It's a Wonderful Life to me. Everything felt so made-in-China and consumer rat race. The LED lights had no warmth, the music was free of any meaning besides Santa and presents and sugar-plum fairies and not even The Nutcracker,  just that business of synthesizers and panpipes. It reminded me of why every year I spiritual detox and go to midnight mass if only to sit somewhere dark and quiet so that I can ponder the spiritual significance lost in the maelstrom. 

Still, it was not without entertainment if only for the trashy absurdity that is 21st century America in a dying city. 

 Some of my older friends don't believe that Bronies exist. This, and the accompanying fitted baseball caps and plush blankets also sold at the record store (who the hell shops here anymore?) seem to prove otherwise. I also realized how out of touch I am with pop culture, videogame, and boyband references, such arcana is not so much in my interest I guess, and I'm around less teenagers and little kids than I once was. Also, the phrase "Cray Cray" to describe craaaazy needs to die right now. Other dregs from the pop culture morass below:

Seriously, the photo from the store above is simply called GLITTER and is full of general dollar bling tackiness.Came home, did some tea and reading, went to the art museum for my birthday, looked at cool ancient stuff, went out for dinner with the folks and returned here for the daily grind. There was some exhibit of Peruvian coastal ancient art that included these super heavy-looking plugs for one's lobes. 

Somehow all that well-restedness turns into the usual need for caffeine and lighthearted crankiness that we've grown so used to. 

stanislaw wyspanski

Author, playwright, artist, designer, wish I could do at least one of those well enough to be somewhat memorable.

mikhail nesterov

I know there's a lot of church/state issues involving the Russian Orthodox Church (it's not like European Catholicism was any kinder or gentler in another time either), but damn if the art isn't beautiful.

Mikhail Nesterov, muralist, painter of portraits, landscapes, and icons.

tossed and turned

Attempts at sleep foiled by staring at the ceiling thinking. It was one of those nights where the breezes were blissful and I missed having roommates to sit on the half-finished front porch with or drive around all night listening to music and talking or taking a long walk along the dark beach a few blocks over.

I don't know why I love the nights so much, and why they bring these kinds of things out in me, maybe all those great memories of sitting on the back porch with my sister and our friends melting candles together into a huge pile of swirling wax or all those nights of driving of aimless driving to good music, singing classic rock songs in stupid voices, chilled out cruising to Massive Attack through the rain. I'm a nostalgic sap I guess.


The writer's block is unrelenting, attempts to break on through to the other side meet with mixed results. I'm envious of those who capture the world they see in crystal clear detail and vivid story, even more envious of those who can conjure entire worlds and make them convincing like Tolkien did. Randal got it right when he said that no one else could really do the swords and quests thing afterwards in a way that's really any good.

That being said, being a geek of the first degree, mad props to Tolkien for giving me swank stuff to read in my formative years, for being way smarter than me, for starting a book club for the drinking of beer and reading of epic poetry (which I'd love to start, if I had homies who were into that stuff), for writing about hobbits and Middle Earth and inspiring generation after generation of The Kids. My sister and I had maps of Middle Earth and she had the old 70's stoner poster below on our door. I never made any pretensions to coolness, because this stuff is great. We still are such geeks.

and of course, the Zeppelin.

dan eldon

A detour with the family way back when at a bookstore in Shaker Heights where I found a biography of photojournalist, collager extraordinaire Dan Eldon whose life was cut short too soon at 22 while covering the conflict in Somalia in 1992.

The fabulous resources of Ohiostan's public libraries netted me a copy of The Journey is the Destination my first year of college and I subsequently would order it and keep it out as long as I could before I finally snagged a copy of my own.

While I was never nearly so adventurous both in life and in collaging my ephemera so lushly, I've found it inspiring and worthy of a place at the coffeetable for browsing through and discovering new details. You can browse the complete journals here, but here's some images in the meantime.