Men

I've been working, in a rather desultory manner, on this series of prints of men I know. This idea is a blatant rip off from a couple of friends of mine, who were doing paintings and drawings of women he's kissed and another of women with whom he's friends.

The trouble with my endeavour, I've found, is that most of the men that are important to me do not live in the same state as I. Because of this, I've been getting source material from the internet, but most of my male friends are apparently very virtuous in that they display no outwards indications of physical vanity. This dearth of photographs has brought my project to a halt for the time being, to be resumed when I can personally photograph the individuals. I did consider simply asked everyone for pictures, but what if they take terrible ones and I can't use them but they think it's personal? What then! For now, though, I've got three fellows all finished with. The above picture is the plate, after printing, for a collograph of David Bessent, done with carborundum grit and tape. It looks a little like him, though apparently it also looks a little like Lenin.



This week has been one of many packages. My new camera arrived (witness above photograph), as well as my new knives for relief print carving. Yesterday, bis for Veganerotica were left on the porch, which isn't terrifically exiting, but today an entire couch and chaise showed up, all wrapped up in plastic. My camera can perform its function underwater without any deleterious effect to itself. How wonderful is that? Very.

Did you know that a few months ago I got a tattoo? Despite it being significantly more painful than I had anticipated, almost immediately after its completion I wanted more. Like the reasons for which cigarettes were abandoned, financial reasons are an impediment.

Sternenfall

A little poem surfaced yesterday, perfectly preserved in the recesses of my brain, reappearing now as waters shift in there.

O Sternenfall
von einer Brucke einmal eingesehn--:
Dich nicht vergessen

Stehn.

Translation:

Oh, falling star
once seen from a bridge--:
to not forget you

to endure.

~Rainier Maria Rilke



I don't know any German, not really, but I'm rather good with remembering seemingly meaningless ephemera--foreign words; the precise dates of occurrences inconsequential to me, happening to strangers; someone's face, still puffy with sleep and the old narrow bed; tiny objects held only briefly.

Figure modeling is excellent for memorizing things. You scan through reams of text in your brain as you hold still, so still, and when you come upon something you don't quite recall, caught on a snag, you worry at it, like a bad memory or a bad tooth, thumbing that page over and over in your brain until you can resolve the inaccuracy. I don't know what disturbed that snippet and made me recall it so vividly and suddenly. I stopped working and said the German words aloud. Rather poorly, I suspect, but there was no one else there to hear me torture the language. After writing it, Rilke changed it a little and ended "Der Tod" (Death) with those lines. Rilke said that the last three lines (the ones above) burst in on his brain unbidden, and resolved it suddenly.


Just won an Arty award for being a super genius. Sadly, I probably can't attend the awards party, complete with tantalizing open bar, because I don't actually live in Utah. Maybe I will allow myself a rare beer tonight to celebrate and make up for what I'll miss.

Someone keeps buying things off of my wishlist on Suicidegirls, but sending the gift to themselves or it is lost and absorbed by the postal system. I keep expecting these phantom gifts, in a continued state of mild expectation, checking for little brown packages on my return from school. No packages ever arrive, no stop motion animation DVDs to fill me with the half poison nostolgia from when Tommy and I had a non-dialogue film festival just for us two and his cat, the three of us curled on his couch having thought better of sex and diverting it into obscure sensualities, no behind-the-times comic books for my niche friends to remark on how I just barely started reading that. Is the phantom the gift?

Ping pong

I played table tennis, or rather ping-pong, at the group studio of my friends. The men are kind, gentlemanly, with me when we play. They compliment a good hit, and fail to keep score, patient when I repeatedly lose the tiny white ball. With each other they curl back their lips and expose their incisor teeth as they serve.



On the airplane ride home, I surreptitiously watch Olympic women's single table tennis on my seat mates television. Young asian girls with manly, unflattering haircuts play an awkward and ungainly game, and for some unknown sportsman's reason, players must retrieve errant white plastic balls by themselves. Climbing over barricades, and scrambling around after the ball only serves to make the sport that much more undignified. These girls, however accomplished they may be, will never be the subject of the fantasies of men too old for them, the realm reserved for half realized Amazonian women like countless gymnasts and volleyball players.



I attended the orientation for incoming graduate students three days ago in the courtyard between the college buildings. I don't yet know the better routes to take, and had to carry my bike up stairs in various places; sweat begins to gloss my forehead and back as I arrive at the half circle of unoccupied chairs, the little folding table of juice and chips. Early, I arrive early but am uncertain until I ask. Other people mull around the little galleries ringing the courtyard, filled with the artwork from other schools. I compare my age to their percieved age. Am I old, or young, in comparison to this group? The same question is better translated as "Am I accomplished or am I slow comparatively?" I do not come to a conclusion. My foot is trod on when I try to find a seat, and still I go unnoticed until I bring it to the attention of the person still standing on me. It's a photography student, which I find predictable in the way that personal prejudices are always noted when confirmed. Of course a photographer fails to observe her surroundings. I prefer to feed this dislike of people who have skills I don't have, rather than admitting that I'm the one who made myself omittable.



When the Olympic table tennis player serves the ball, she twists it in her hand, cupping it and turning her wrist around, concealing the action behind the paddle, flicking the ball out suddenly--graceful and deft, like a magic trick, like a promise. I doubt what it will be before the ball reappears, struck by the ready paddle and bouncing across the tiny taut net--perhaps this time it will be something else instead.

Graduate Student Open Studios
September 7th
2pm till 9pm

PS I just broke my camera. I was considering making some thing, like more teacups, to raise money to replace it and then realized that I now had no camera to photograph the items to sell to buy a working camera. Damnit!

Break

Consider this entry a break between the ridiculously overwrought and obtuse entries, because you know that's precisely what the next one will be.

Demon Tamer went live this morning on Suicidegirls.com. Take a looksie, should you want to and are in a place where naked girls are ok to look at.

Do any of you have pictures of the gallery during "Secret"? My pictures of it are predictably horrid.



Open studios this coming weekend at my new school. It's on the 7th, and by the 7th I will have been a graduate student for 6 days. Because of this, all of the stuff I'll have in my studio will not have been made at CSULB, but I'll also have the cleanest studio. Come and gawk at me and my stuff.
GLAMFA and Open Studios