The word of 2020

Drej and I had this conversation earlier, while she was telling me about the month spent outdoors, on a Christmas fair. (I wanted to register fairs as one of my future occupations, but the General said he rather has me inside and for himself than outside and freezing. He doesn't get the appeal :D ). I doodled with an old photo of her, learning the ropes of the watercolour photoshop action, and of course, because she's hot, she got a ton of Likes when she put it up as a profile pic. Simultaneously an editor of a local photo magazine posted a long bitter rant about what shit pics on Facebook get Likes while the quality stuff - like his - gets so little. A lot of responses he got were, hey, man, listen, this is Facebook, not a National gallery - we Like mostly the photos of people we know and like. 

        I remember the time when suspecting such a rant was about me would break my heart. Because I would really want to be featured in such a prominent magazine and the opinion of the editor would mean the world to me. It wouldn't have occurred to me that these role models I aspire the respect and approval of are bitter old fucks who hardly ever got any respect of their own, dreaded the talented young competition, hated the better Liked and resented the taste of the general public who will vote a thousand times Yes on a hot ass and tits in the least original lighting, than their artistic view of the political now. Or some shit like that. 

        They would have shunned me and I would think it was me. 

      Creativity - and until you get this, you will suffer loneliness and defeat - is like a religion. It is between you and the Gods. Not the church/gallery, not the psalms/reviews, not the preachers/editors and critics. It is you, sitting down, to create and ten years later to create a lot better and 25 years later to create a legacy. If you want to sell and be famous and recognized, that is an entirely different strategy, you can learn that as well, or hire someone game-savvy. But you are not creating to impress or compete or compare with drunk old farts. They need never know the poetry under your fingertips you are tuning in in secret. It's not about them. It is about pulling on 

BIG GIRL PANTS.

I really should at least try to watch the latest Star Wars, shouldn't I ? 

I feel like I'm having a grown-up date with 2020

... pulling up my big girl pants.

January plans - finish Kasia, make a strategic plan for the rest, come up with five new product ideas

and in the book, send the guys off to a losing war. They need to die. That book needs to end. And never stop bleeding. No pressure.

And so the hunting season is over. I won't see the huntsman for another 11 months, but at least until now the dreams have subsided. Funny, innit, what pure and noble men my brain pursues - had he been the type to cheat on his beloved wife and thus present me with an opening, I would never in a thousand years favor him so. Such is my complex for knights of infinite resignation. And get this. He's a Sagittarius. An archer. Of course he is. The only sign more stubborn than Aries. 

Today's hunt began atop a ridge and going southwards, to the station G and I used on Thursday (I wasn't dressed for that station and having sex in a frozen wooden tower only makes you warm for about five minutes. Mental note to always carry warm tea, always, everywhere.) It was a heck of a terrain, way down and way up and over thorn and through an impossible cobweb of very young beech trees. It was long, too. I got lost twice, but nobody bothered to call for me, so I just wandered around and played in the swampy gorge. Supposedly the General could see me the whole last while, even phoning me to pause me when others circled a boar (utterly unsuccessfully - we had a feast later, but feasted on a domesticated piglet. What irony is that. I didn't eat it, I just ate cookies.) and at some point I climbed back out of the gorge to look for him, but got distracted by a pretty clearing and wandered in the wrong direction. He said he waved his signal flag at me. No idea. Either I am getting fucked for sight or I just wanted to be alone. 

On the minus side, my second favorite mug is cracking and starting to leak. I think I should give it a Viking funeral. 

Two more days to make the target sale - I mean the yearly target I set for myself. ALMOST. But I am not complaining, for a thorough freaking amateur, this could have gone a lot worse. I just need to invest some strategy in it.

  I set: 50 reviews, 160 sales, 211 times shop favorited

I met: 59 reviews, 159 sales, 234 times shop favorited

...

  Shall we set something for 2020? Mm? Let's set something wild.

300 reviews, 500 sales and a 1000 times shop favorited? I'll let you know? :D :D

Been f***ing around with these new 'watercolour' presets I purchased, trying to figure them out, testing to come up with some new promo model....

Families are a small pack of the worst possible people, all of whom look and sound exactly like you and whose murder is less punishable than a random killing, because psychologists understand.

So proud of the General, he was Batman today ...

Crazy busy - making photos, cards, listings, promotions and above all - because I told G that I will fucking saw him in half if on a DAY before holidays he gives me a credit card and sends me to the shopping mall to 'deal with it (presents)' - he gave me the card today and I actually did fairly well. Met a nephew - the fun one - who helped with suggestions, and Tinka, and I bought some good food for later. Even saved a quarter of the given budget. Go me!

     In the meanwhile, the General was Batman - he saw a no-good man just outside the window in the building entrance opposite, doing very unseemly things with his privates, and he called the police and then helped to chase the sick old man down. There's a kindergarten in our street for fuck's sakes! I do feel bad  - what kind of a sicko must you be to resist the urge to play with yourself in the middle of winter in the middle of the street in the middle of the day. Imagine focusing on the holidays and getting a call from the cops that your father or uncle has been arrested for indecent exposure in the city. The cops actually called G back to tell him thank you and that they got the guy. I could tell G was a little shaken by the whole thing. His brain is so pure, he cannot fathom the damage that could be done if a young mother with a kid from the daycare walked right into the sight. Needless to say we skipped sex today. It just felt icky.

So guess what happens when we suit up, gear up, gun up and get corn to go boar hunting?

The wheel gets torn off the car in a shallow dirt road puddle.
I am not even joking. 

Back from Prague. My brain is full. I think I have an idea of what I want to try for 2020, I am just waiting for my balls to drop.

New driftwood thingies on Etsy

It is no wonder people fear confrontation. I mean, not fear as one fears being hit by a bus, or the dog getting poisoned by crazy neighbours, but being put in a shitty situation by overwhelming, entitled people who are not used to being told no, thank you. There are only two possible outcomes. If you are me. One: you do what you are told to do and you feel miserable and frustrated and are in a situation where you are going to waste time and money accommodating someone. Two: you don't do what you are told and you are forever subjected to emotional blackmailing, rudeness, threats and overall negative energy from them for the rest of all times. 

      Of course, I am choosing two, I am no-one's bitch and far too old to be told to do something I don't want to do. The problem is, I haven't the option to just CBA. I do feel both of them, heavily. When I really don't want to be. I am minding entirely my own business out here, living detached, quiet, politically correct existence, and this gives some people an odd idea that I am pliable. Because we are friendly and we mow the communal lawn and shovel the snow off the parking lot a few times per winter. That for some reason I OWE people something when they ask it of me. If it were up to me, I would just shut myself further in and weather the dirty looks until finally, we move. General is more negotiatory in nature. But not because he is the sort of a person to try and accommodate everybody. Heck no. It is his most cruel mental weapon. After the negotiation people not only feel like their arguments have been proven porous, but he thus has the ammo to claim there WAS a negotiation and albeit he was willing to come to a middle ground, no middle ground was reached. 

Either way. I look forward to a day we have NO neighbors. None. For miles and eons. 

I have a hunter's heart, a love-poet's soul and a vegan brain.

What happens when you are really tired and you've spent the whole day creating and listing new items on the store. You don't list 1 item worth 57 bucks, you list 57 items worth 1 buck. 

Even on a good day half my coherence is meandering sexy thoughts of dark-eyed huntsmen, and half dealing with whatever Real World throws at me on regular basis, but today I have PMS and am racing to beat the Black Friday sales, posting as much as I can. 

And it's past 1 in the morning and I still can't sleep, because the General is out, working. Bought myself an airport book for the trip, tho, so I'm pleasure-delaying, otherwise I'll end up reading it BEFORE the trip, as I have been known to do. 

Had to go down to the police station to file a report regarding a petty theft, and the partner of the officer who took my statement was our age random-looking fella, but he spoke with the Goatland accent and my ovaries stood at attention like Doberman ears. Who needs Brad Pitt or Idris Elba, if you have Goatland yokels!

I hate my brain.

... Was thinking - that moment when you realize you're old - for me it was when the saying 'Youth is wasted on the young' made perfect sense ... And today I was passing the statue of an old medieval philosopher-poet, this proud, venerated bronze statue of an academy man, thinking "he was actually kinda hot"...

     I'm gaining on him, age-wise. 

I so wish that we were explorers and not hunters. You can still carry your Winchesters, guys. Or whatever that thing which looks like you could single-handedly liberate Afganistan with that the Huntsman carries is. A sniper's jerk stick. But why must we be hunters? Why can't we be cartographers or pathfinders or frontiersmen? Same fingerless leather gloves, same good shoes, same canteens and dry snacks, same shrubbery, thorn and mud, drizzle and fog, same crooked terrain and winter forest, the dark spruces and the rustle of birch leaves. Same pond pits and sudden gorges. Same tracks. Same animals. Same dogs.

Some new stuff promo pics :)

Shitty phone pic, I know, (this is a road I crossed, not walked. I walked the patches of spruces and thorn left and right and up and down :D ) but it was such a magnificent day in the woods. I am SOOO tired. Dirty to the gills. Tried honing in on G using Google maps synch, but missed him by about a 100 meters (which in woods like these is same as 10 miles.)

Guess who got the only kill.

Fuck I couldn't sleep last night... Which is not the best thing not to do a night before a hunt. And I did everything right - had a nice productive afternoon, nice dinner, nice movie, nice book, nice sex, nice bed, nice thoughts, and still, the brain would just not shut down. Could have been the fact that G worked a night shift week again and the inertia dragged on, or the gazillion ideas rolling around in my brain regarding paint, or that I wondered whether telling the Hunter, if I find him having shot another magnificent creature tomorrow: "I've known you for a quarter of my life and you are the most talented huntsman I know, but I still can't decide whether I want to kiss you or hit you in your stupid fucking face ... " would sound cute. He seems like a person who's frightfully unpleasant when he's angry. Oddly literate, though. I read some of his angry letters. Punctuation and all. Makes me really want to provoke him into losing his cool. But then the General would probably take away all my drawing pencils ... O.o

Osti jarej!

It seems like we won't be participating in the hunt this Sunday, as the General is still on a verge of dying from cholera (read: he has sniffles), so the universe has fired up my morning (spent thinking of the Hunter) by putting him directly on my path as I was off to shop for drawing paper in a mall just outside the town. I don't think I've ever seen him in civilian clothing, in the Real world, at least not for a couple of years. Never out of nowhere. Fuck he's hot. Good taste. Great color choices. If you can imagine me - in my old dirty (*paint dirty) trainers, ugly old battered shoes, cheap jacket that does nothing for my femininity and a cap that looks like part of PJs you get in a mental asylum, well, he is the opposite. Good, new clothes, good body, dark and elegant. Good stride on the man. I made a mocking serious frowny face when he failed to register me until we were nearly within reach, and then he snapped out of his trajectory and beamed up, recognizing me. He reached for my elbow in kinda half-hug closeness and I asked him 'sup. He asked how is the General and I commented he acts as defeated and miserable as my dog over there (as the dog looks like the sorriest, most abandoned stray ever when she has to wait outside a store and she really makes it work for all she's worth when she can tell I am looking at her.) I asked if he has time for a coffee and he said sorry, no, just on his way to (some city, I forget which.) I asked what's there and he gave me the knowing, slightly diabolical look: you know, fieldwork. (He's an inspector.) Oh, he must be hella scary, walking into places all official-like. I wonder if he's nasty. Beautiful AND cruel. Damn.

             I wish people didn't have such filthy minds. I wish I could go out and spend the whole winter night sitting in a hunter's outpost, looking at the forest, watching him breathe and think, study the woods and prowl, and nobody would assume something indecent took act. That way the General's reputation would not be challenged and this whole desire I keep adding fuel to, which has NOTHING to do with wanting to suck someone's dick - nothing, in a hundred years - would be understood for the giddy exhilaration that it is. 

            Made me laugh, the thought of kissing him, the other day, when the General again explained how the women of their region react. If he told his father and the hunter's son, the men would be insulted, their feelings hurt, their faith in me and my decency tarnished, but ... 'okay, it is just a kiss,' they would say. 'A kiss is nothing serious. Women act out in romantic crap like that.'

            Yet if he told his MOTHER and the hunter's WIFE, well. That would probably be the last you hear of me, dear blog. Nobody would ever find my scattered chopped-up pieces. You do NOT cross the kind, gentle women of the region these men are from. They have been known to choke a wild boar. 

Secondary silence (The poem version of the Hunter's dream)

In this poem, you are only human indoors
Thick dark-green wool clothes, felt, really
Moist and warm, shoed and standing
The breath, the smell, the sound, the taste,
the sense of you,
all human.
But I am not an indoor beast and although
meant thoroughly, kissing is not what I live for.
Outside, you are a fox
Dark gray, large and quiet, following me through the snow.
It is a high but weightless snow,
Waist-high and I am pushing through it
like it was feathers.
It is night and dead still, all of it,
No stars in the overcast sky, no light
Natural or human anywhere.
The hills, covered in silver
Spruces and ancient oaks, all pitch black silhouettes
Naught but the sound of my footwork
Grinding the snow like a metal
And you, traveling with me
We can only be hunters
For we are calm and want to be here
We want to walk these hills and woods for ages
Our existence in this moment is absolute.

New stuff :D