Paper Kay's Blog

... fifteen hours later.

2012-02-19T21:18:00.000+01:00

Safely home. Mission accomplished. Got about 1300 shots to sieve through, plenty to work with. Mental note - next time more sandwiches. And better maps. And an umbrella. It wouldn't have been a challenge without a pregnant nimbus overhead...

Minus seventeen and road-trippin' #2

2012-02-18T20:07:00.000+01:00

Another big road trip tomorrow and although I don't expect it to be as super sunny as the other time, I just hope for the roads to lack frost'ing. It's about a seven hour drive, if we don't get lost anywhere along the way, and about a four hour field work. Sun rises at 7 and sets around 6... we'll see what we can see :)

There and back again ... :)

On a related subject, I placed the first month (out of six) today. Few more days and the text will be ready for proof reading and then, fingers crossed, I'll ship it off to the editors and then we'll know whether these past months of research have been well done or entirely amiss.

D

2012-02-17T23:10:00.002+01:00

Oh, and... to the boy with the white hair, gunmetal eyes and the-most-expensive-paper-like skin... To the man with the book-monger soul...

I really fucking missed you today. I know that I am the unforgiven, but today I really missed having a friend.

I am allowed one of such days every ten years, am I not, old times storyserf?

And Tamara... :)

2012-02-17T22:40:00.001+01:00

These were never used, because the commissioners said they sucked donkey balls. Ah, well. I'm fairly certain Tamy liked them and she's who counts.

Some of the old pickies of Špela, from warmer days :)

2012-02-17T22:30:00.000+01:00

Landscape photography

2012-02-17T15:31:00.000+01:00

Lately I've been put in a position where I am supposed to take lots of landscape photies. Everyone knows landscape is not my forte. I am sucky at architecture shots and mediocre at sunsets. Best I can do is take good reportage portrait, but for that you need events with happy folk aplenty and lately I've been simply cheating on catching those.

So I am trying to decide what sort of landscape shots would I like to try and make.
...The really over-lit and kind of kitschy ones? (That I like.)

...The classical, B&W, excellent grayscale ones? (That I like.)

... Or, for obvious reasons, the infamous HDR... (Which the jury is still out on.) Not that I have anything against hysterically dramatic shots, but while they may look super on iPads, I am not so sure they would in print. Maybe. But if you ask me, too much hustle.

... So... Decisions, decisions :))

Skara Brae

2012-02-16T18:54:00.000+01:00

Why reading informative books in better on iPad than on paper.

Lately, living with the General, I have gotten into the habit of multi-reading. That's like multitasking, only while all the tasks regard reading. I am a sucker for Wikipedia and also Google Pictures, so when I come across things such as, say, Skara Brae, I urge to instantly learn everything about it – in mid-sentence. If I was reading from a book, I would have to abandon my position and go sit behind my comp to enter the search. On an iPad, all you have to do, is poke the word and first the definition and then a link or, two pokes and one swift away, there's Google with Wiki in tow. I can read and poke and swift without ever having to interrupt my train of thought. Author only needs to brush the subject, only mention how amazing something is (at times taking for granted the fact not everyone studied something and hence does not instantly remember who did what to whom in the middle ages in the far north) and I have any number of other people’s photos and travel blogs and archeology dissertations at my disposal.

Reading the latest Bryson (At Home), my favorite non-fiction author, I've come across a really fascinating thing I haven't really ever been told of before. Oddly enough, you wouldn't believe the stuff they taught us in school, or in the university, neither my friends’ classes or mine. Some of the really cool bits were skipped. Granted, not only is our world full of stuff, add history to it and you get a three-dimensional mess you can never untangle, but it took me ten years *after* I left school to ever hear of Picts, Marcomanni or the Suebi. And just yesterday was the first time I ever heard of Skara Brae – which struck me as, archeologically, Neolithically, European, the cutest thing ever.

Orkney itself is a fascinating land, even for a non-historian. Even just geographically. I knew a girl who travelled it, and she brought back stories aplenty. Weather wise, I suppose, it would be tricky. Even in summer. I traveled Norway in summer and it was – on the plus side – always day – and on the minus side, always late autumn. Foggy, drizzly, rainy, windy, moody climate. Hitchhiking it would be predominantly moist. But I certainly wouldn’t mind trying. I have slept I far less fascinating archeological locations than this temporal anomaly.

Cause, just in case you’ve missed it – to me archeology is the one that got away. My life probably wouldn’t be any different if I had finished studying it, but just like literature, I rather abandoned that program and forever kept it at an arm’s reach, a mystery, a mistress, than to end up being a boring curator in one of the dumb local establishments. Archeology – and all that comes with it – anthropology, history, art, crafts, ethnology, restoration, entomology… is like the second best thing. It’s like chocolate to pancakes. I love both and could probably live off each, though preferably pancakes, but both together make for a perfect meal. I don’t think I will ever get enough of this.

And the best part is, archeology is an hourglass: so many things have happened that we know so little about and are yet to uncover so much. :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae

The nutria song

2012-02-15T18:29:00.001+01:00

Am conjuring poems, because, well, it's challenging. This one doesn't rhyme, cause apparently rimes are way out this century :D This one is Slovenian, so - bummer.

Sprehod ob reki;
Po imenu poznam že vso perjad in vse
Večje kosovne odpadke.
Po odzivih poznam vse pse
In vse njihove lastnike, hočeš-nočeš.
Redko me kaj preseneti,
Zato pa se tu tako rada sprehajam,
Odklapljam od preostalega sveta,
Naj se moja rita malo razmiga.
Naj se računalnik malo ohladi.
Najhuje, kar se mi lahko zgodi je to,
Da me pes ne uboga.
Všeč mi je takšno razmerje.
In nato…
In tedaj…
Brez opozorila…
(Ne, ni bil visoki, temni tujec.)
Obstanem, otrpnem, pes ne ve, ali
Naj napade ali je Božič?
Gleda vame par očesc, par rdečih zob,
Brki taki, kot bi razgnalo kolut laksa
Za lovljenje morskih psov.
Tačke ko pri kuni spredaj, zadaj pol od race,
Kožuh zimski, kot na ruski padli grofici,

Če bi čez rep peljal valjar, bi bil bober...

Karkoli je, je večje od beagla.
Ima pa rado pasje brikete.
In plavanje med ledom in čvek gosi.
In kako zelo sem vesela, da me nihče ni opazil,
Mene, neustrašne pustolovke,
Neuničljive popotnice,
Svetovljanke , ljubiteljske zoologinje,
Kako sem psu skočila v naročje,
Ko sem mislila, da se nama bliža Godzila podgana.
Pa je bila samo zelo zen nutrija.
Mežik, mežik. Hvala za briket.
Pa lep dan še naprej.

Stanko Od'Pr'jezu

2012-02-14T13:09:00.000+01:00

Oh, and by the way, this is a nutria. Or coypu. Or river rat. Sometimes, when you've walked the same doggie-walking path so many times you know all the feathery critters by their first names and have also names and made up stories about larger pieces of river garbage, you run into a novelty. We had some new swans around, two pairs, but I don't really like swans. They're aloof and feisty. hard to miss, either from sight or conversation of other doggie-walkers, however, is the latest biological event with whiskers. (As Drej would put it, whiskers the thickness of shark-fishing line.)

They are not from around here and most either escaped from farms or from Chekia, where they settled them instead of the extinct beavers (one of those ingenious things people sometimes do after they haven't messed up the nature just quite enough yet). But they do make an impression if you're not used to seeing them. I've never seen a beagle sized rat before, though, luckily, this one is super cute. If I didn't know very calm animals often mean there's something off about them, I would try to pet it. But I can't really afford medical treatment at this particular point, so I just took the other kind of shots - the kind one takes if they're obsessive enough to take their camera everywhere :P

2012-02-14T12:54:00.000+01:00

This is how I like my city. Gridlocked. Frozen stiff. People on streets. Active. Communicative. Enchanted, really. Minus eighteen and sunny. Playful. Very white :D

2012-02-14T06:22:00.003+01:00

Awww, Google has like the cutest Valentine's day promo ever. It starts with this little boy, googling V stuff for a girl that's skipping rope outside on the lawn – but she cares none for the rose he brings her (and Cold, cold heart by Tony Bennett is playing). He goes home defeated, googles some other stuff, brings her chocolates – still no go. He brings her a load of junk, none of which she even blinks at, until he eventually gives up entirely, gets his own skipping rope and just goes out to skip in silence. At this, she finally finds a friend to do stuff with her that she likes to do and they skip the same rope, and the promo ends with portraits of happy couples doing just this – of all shapes and colors and sizes, from interracial gays, aliens and astronauts, princesses and frogs, even Earth and technology …

The Once Upon A Time episode was about something similar – Beauty and the Beast – and even though it got utterly negative reviews, I am all for the ugly underdog being loved against all odds by a person that’s only ever been treated as a commodity, because she was lovely. If people stopped fucking around and just went for it, there would be a whole lot more of snuggling and a lot less misery in this world. Trust me, snuggling trumps greed any day of the week.

Lineage

2012-02-12T19:04:00.001+01:00

See these three women? I know what you may think. You may think that I am a time traveller. Because they all look exactly the same and they all look exactly like me. We all have the exact same colour eyes and it's probable we all have the same blood type. (Though I have a lot of my father in me and am, unlike them, more stout than lean.)
The first one is my great grandma. The second is my grandma. The third is my ma.
She looks EXACLY like me. (Though bit thinner.) I had to really drill my memory to think if anyone's ever taken a photo of me on this shore, with my mum. But neup, wrong generation. Which is pretty friggin awesome, if you ask me :)

On suicide

2012-02-10T23:14:00.000+01:00

To the people trying to kill themselves.
People. I am a pro when it comes to suicide. Okay, granted, I am still here, so that tilts my crown a little bit, but I have gotten so very close so many times I can safely say I am the authority on the subject. I know it so well, in fact, I not only know how to do it depending on what you want to achieve with it, I know how to trick it into not working. I got ridiculously close four times, but every time the sane part of me, the part that is in control 99,99% of the time, kicked my safety latches into effect, until the crazy wind blew over. The only time there was no such safety net was also the only time (right after my first marriage fell apart like a house of cards that it was) I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing and so a few hours later I woke up and thought: Amazing. This is so much harder than I was led to believe.

There had been people who asked me how to do it and I told them how to do it. But there’s a vast difference between people who are dark in their heads and people who simply cannot fucking stand their existence any longer. Their lives suck. The circumstances suck. Their loneliness is uncanny. But inside their minds, the weather is shiny.

To those people, who can no longer stand the people around them, their bosses, classmates, family members, spouses, kids, dirty uncles, even dirtier priests, TV hosts whatever… before you sink, or drop the toaster, or pull the trigger, or drink the detergent, this is what you should do: Without thinking put on your strongest shoes, your toughest pants, your warmest jacket, your favorite hat and get your passport. Walk outside the door, not window, and don’t stop walking. Pick a part of the world from the top of your thoughts. Don’t stop walking. Hitchhike. Jump trains. Bum rides. Hide on ships. Beg the food. Know your shelters. Gravitate towards warm, open places. Or deep, dark, dense cities of sin and street smarts. Whatever gets your blood up. Meet the people. See the world. Feel the sun on your skin. Don’t stop. Cry when sad. Giggle when glad. Scream when angry. Even if you circumnavigate the planet, don’t stop. Never make any decisions regarding anyone but yourself. Decide for yourself and learn to deal with your decisions.

I guarantee it: lust for life will catch up. Chances are, should you ever return to where you started, you’ll take far less shit from anyone than you did before.

Just don’t try this in winter. Freezing to death has a nasty way of sneaking up on you.

Tv shows and otherwise updates...

2012-02-09T23:14:00.000+01:00

Things I've been watching lately…

Well, there's Spartacus, which took me about an hour to go through all two and a half seasons, because I was skipping scenes of violence and sex to get to the story … I downloaded it so that the General would have stuff to watch while waiting for me in the car as I hopped around on the field, taking photos. And it has Craig Parker. He isn’t very good here, though if you are into fire-hydrant bloodworks and penises, this really is a show for you. Seriously, if you thought HBO’s Rome over-did it with their ONE gilded penis, the thin veil of hints of erotica over antique art is g-o-n-e. Triple penetration in slow motion is a little bit impressive in daytime TV, even for me. But the costumes are nice. And it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything Roman. And I like Rome. I haven’t been to Hadrian’s Villa in over a decade. *self-slap*

There’s a new show on called The River. It’s about the Amazon River, duhh, and it’s like super spooky, if you are the type to be afraid to go to pee down the dark hall in the middle of the night. (I am, but that’s just because there’s so much stuff in all our rooms you are almost certainly bound to dislocate a thumb if you try to walk without the light on.) It’s kind of like Blair Witch meets The Relic Hunter. But it has Thomas Kretschmann. Thou shall not, ever, overlook Thomas Kretschmann. You don’t have to listen to him speak; you just have to stare at his timeless Arian face. And hope he doesn’t die too soon. Unless he dies naked. Then it’s okay.

And Glee. You can’t go wrong with Glee. Nothing gory, sexy or scary there. And some of the songs are very well tribute. I especially like their take on Adele and C. Aguilera’s Candyman.

As movies go, I watched Winter’s Bone (great stuff)

Couple of minutes of Three Musketeers (No. No, no.)

Bit of Scarface (Really not my cup of tea)

And some Japanese or Taiwanese stuff that I don’t know the title of, because it wasn’t in Latin script.

2012-02-08T18:14:00.000+01:00

Some day, not far from now, it will be so warm it won't even be funny anymore. The evenings will be very long and the air will be very clear and full of lights as the city will continue to live on, comfortably, unlike now when people are miserable and cold and go to bed early, to sleep it off. Some day soon, I will be able to open my windows and city noise will pour in, the dog will bark at the walkers on the street, I will be able to feel air on my skin as oppose to now, when I feel several layers of different clothing, and cold. I will be able to wear thongs and flipflops again and my hair won't be greasy from caps all the time, I will be able to drink cold drinks and eat ice-cream, which I like so very much. The money now spent on heating will go for travel gas. A lot more money will be spent of coffee and cakes, because the doggie walks just won't be the same without stopping at Miško Knjižko, bathing our faces in the morning sun...

Some day. Some day. Though for now we can go snow sledding and throwing the dog around in piles of the white puff that makes it sneeze and act like a plow, pushing her snout under the blankets.

Also a haiku,

There is a tiny spider crawling three dimensionally

around my desk. Slowly. I have no idea where he came from.

Or why.

Minus seventeen and road-trippin'

2012-02-08T12:29:00.000+01:00

Off to Polzela. They make socks there. Which is good, because I am treading in two feet of snow to get these shots :))

Drej's proof party :D

2012-02-07T23:31:00.000+01:00

*glow with pride*

There's just something about stories on paper, that makes you really happy to be a part of creative process. It's likely the smell, because nothing smells as good as a newborn volume.

A little bit of snow, a lot of fun for doggies :)

2012-02-06T13:26:00.000+01:00

... and before you ask - yes, this is a two-headed, eightlegged dog in a spitfire parka.

The chase...

Sofi

Stay. And wait.

Nooo! No barking! No singing, no yawning.

Barky begging for the ball.

Barky demanding the ball.

Sofek.

Sofi wrangling.

I think I may have something stuck on my tooth.

Sofi & Drej

Not sure what you're doing, it looks fun, but *what* are you doing?!

2012-02-04T22:20:00.000+01:00

I find coupling amazing. I don't mean sex, anyone can do that, I mean pairing. People, who are supposed to live in couples. Not threes, not alone, not fours or a tribe. Two. The most natural, most easy-in condition in society: a pair. Particularly sleeping in couples. It's odd for a couple to sleep in separate beds, usually an indication something's way off. Not very many other creatures are suchlike. Watching ducks today I understand several species couple and remain monogamous, but very few actually spoon. I've been staying up late and with my room temperature and my metabolism, that simply means that by midnight, I'm stiff, numb and cold as a rock and then for the rest of the night, as I climb in the bed (literally, as my bed is up a steep tall ladder), I am embraced and warmed by the cushiest, hottest, most lovingly snoring human blankie made just for me - and the world is alright. It's like the most natural thing, ever - being comfortable with another human being when sleeping. Isn't that so weird? Something so simple being so amazing and something so amazing being so simple.

2012-02-04T21:32:00.000+01:00

Having failed to whistle Bridge on River Kwai in duet with Drej today (our faces tend to freeze), here's another haiku to *fuckbitchit'scold* and to the man that usually runs pass out like a gazelle.

The cranes have frozen.
The ninjas have frozen.
Now they walk.

Mornings of doggie-walking at minus ten°C

2012-02-04T16:10:00.001+01:00

... how is this not bleak?? :))

Hihi... I LIKE this :))

2012-02-04T06:52:00.000+01:00

To My Old Master

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.

UPDATE: Head over to Kottke for a brief but lovely little update about the later years of Jourdon and family.

(Source: The Freedmen's Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

Fairysteps

2012-02-03T17:33:00.002+01:00

Aw, for the love of ... fuck. I am not much of a shoe person (I am probably the only socialised human that only has two pairs and a pair of flipflops for the summer), but this is just so ... Their prices tell me, clearly, that what I really need for happiness now, is a sewing machine for leather. And some leather.

Okay, NOW it's out of my system...

2012-02-02T22:07:00.001+01:00

Am not quitting my dayjob yet, but now it's sketched and measured enough for me not to have to think about it all the time.

Which now just leaves the ellusive master bathroom ...

2012-02-02T11:54:00.000+01:00

»Have I ever told you how the shoemaker's lamp is my favorte object in the whole wide world?«
»No. My photo is your favorite object in the whole wide world.«

The cave house challenge for the statically impaired

2012-02-01T22:47:00.002+01:00

There is this house I dreamt of once, that I want to use as the new castel for a Dream king (so I don’t actually have to worry about the material, knowing glass that large can’t really be cast.) Good thing this is just theory, as I never really paid much attention to the statics when I probably should have (except for flying buttresses. You can't NOT notice something called a flying buttress.) and when we are building things, it's the General who does the real-world measuring. I just draw and point. Unlike the houses I usually dream about for myself, which are very clean and kind of Japanese chic meets sturdy Slovenian farm (I know. But it can be done. :P), this one is a designer’s nightmare. Not only it’s made of glass, mostly, it’s almost kind of like Escher’s stuff, because not a single floor is on the same level. And to top that, the house is always half in light, half in shadow, because it’s half built in a cave. The rooms are so designed that some always appear bright and airy and some always appear dark, and compressing. The building employs about fifteen different illusions and yet it’s still comfortable and cute. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in that house, refusing to wake up, particularly because it was so damn amazing, so I have a very clear picture in my head of what it was like, I just can’t seem to be able to make a credible sketch without making a complete mess out of it.

See what I mean? LoL.

I've gotten as far as the first room in the 'old part' (the dark part) called the Greenhouse, and already the numbers don't match.

2012-02-01T19:49:00.002+01:00

Taking a break from listing coordinates for curious trees and wenting with short-story Sandman porn. Made a dozen tiny little people into a demonstration of our country's national wear for the bookie and an illustration of Pipi L. Now off to build Murphy's new house.

Bombardment of blasts form the past

2012-01-31T17:49:00.004+01:00

Doctor's waiting rooms would make anyone feel sick in two hours. I was sporting such a bad headache (and I don’t get headaches, I am a tummy-ache sort of a person) I was ready to cry. Also, the downside of having your iPad full of fun games, magazines and all the bookies you might want to ever read, is that when your iPad is unavailable, the world seems like it’s out to torture you. So much for intellectual addictions.
    There was an unsuspecting upside to the whole bacteria-infested happenstance, however … Or at least a curious one. This morning I wrote the chapter in which the power switches back from dDaniel to Mr. Murphy. The issue’s been nagging me for a couple of days now and after I woke up with the clear story in my head, it basically wrote itself. Now Mr. Murphy is back to being the Dream King and dDaniel has been dethroned to Chopin – a sickly, thin boy, unhappy during day hours, creative in music and poetry by night. It may be far from reality, though I think in reality he is simply normal and I have simply taken him as far out as he was on the other side.
    My reward for this – and good I am not overly religious, otherwise this would have been a tad too creepy/asskiss even for Dream Gods – was seeing Pumpkin again. Pumpkin. As if THE Pumpkin Prince. I can’t recall the last time I saw him, though I think I was still in the army and I gave him a hug when we met in a grocery store. (Meaning we were less on stalker-stalkee terms that we were when we started, no thanks to my messed up social skills.) Pumpkin was one of the men in my life ten years ago, when I began writing the Zurnizip stories. My sister & Co. would get hungry very late in the night and they would send me out to get pizza from the only place you could get pizza that late. One night, I was hungry myself and waiting and writing in the corner of the Zamorc pub, watching very handsome hands indeed, doing a strange little dance folding a bunch of pizza boxes. Only later did I look up to find a face of the handsomest boy I’ve ever seen: one with an olive skin of a Balkan teen, sharp nose, even sharper cheekbones, pout mouth and dangerous, deep and dark amber eyes… For years I would follow him around for places we went to get our drinks at – he would shift jobs often, so when we asked ourselves where to tonight, the answer would usually simply be ‘where’s Pumpkin working these days?’… I attempted to initiate a friendship often enough, probably seriously (tastelessly) imposing on him when clearly he was too polite to tell me straight off, and I can only dread what my friends did to do the same on my behalf in hope of getting me laid. The man probably thought I was a sad, fat, nerdy little loon, but still I think in the end we spoke like two human beings. If I ever got to have him, I probably wouldn’t have half a clue what to do with him, but the thought of him always, ever made me feel full of hot, fast, thin bright red blood. Not to mention he inspired one of my best picture books.
    Took me a while to realize it’s him when I saw him. If he recognized or even remembered me, I can’t say, and it’s not that I blame him, I’ve looked better; possibly out of range of sterile neon lights.) I had no idea he’s still in this town (though, frankly, where else would he be?). Not all of his boyish, cursed-prince-of-a-savage-land looks were gone. He was a man now, slightly taller, thicker than I remembered, with thinning black hair and a shock of eyelashes and a large Bosnian nose over a thinner, larger mouth. Don’t get me wrong – still a well enough looking man, but – not a golden-eyed boy from my stories. In fact I only began to recognize him, because he got upset at the nurse (he was always like that, bit primitive, bit too quick to get aggressive) and after he left all the old women began saying how rude he was. Riiight. As if they weren’t all wishing he was rude to them. (Not that I’m defending him, I’m just saying that after two hours of being sent back and forth for dumb reasons when you’re sick, your mind starts going ‘fuck this’ and you want to throttle the next person that treats you like you’re less than shit because they are the ones sitting down and you’re the one having to stand.)
    Funny how some people, as real people, fall so completely out of your memory, regardless of how very important they were for your creativity when you were young … And funny indeed how real people just don’t seem like a good enough reason to rejoin Facebook.

.... The next Morning.

2012-01-30T06:14:00.002+01:00

… and of course as soon as I wrote that down, I go to bed and wake up 6 hours later not with one, not with two but with three ideas for stories, witnessed in utter detail through storeams. The question is will I be able to write them down as excellent or will they make zero sense? Run, forest, run. I am so anxious to write them before they fade, I haven't even had the chance to brush my teeth and I could swear I smell my shmorn charcoaling.

The second story takes place in the dark night on some remote world, like another planet or an abandoned country. Something is there, in the dark and a large freight container with a probe is neatly set to test it. Another unit, a vehicle with crew, watches from a dark distance with their lights off. Very quickly something very large and powerful completely annihilates the probe and moves closer to destroy the car, too. It moves in a ship of its own, the very last inch of it hitting the car as it prowls by. Chase ensues and the car (I am partially in it and partially watching this as if it was a cameraman), which is an armored blue thing, tries to hide in an urban area. But in the garage they enter, there is a very large metal door and a woman, wired with explosives and detonator climbs the podium in front of it to give a speech. The drivers of the car know that the second they move she will push the button. It turns out she is a lovely, blonde, well educated, used-to-be-completely-normal wife or widow of one of their unit, recruited to become a suicide bomber in the fight against - the likes of us (who aren’t even really sure what is happening). She walks down to the car and around us, dragging the long colorful wires with her until she circles the car and we are sure it’s over, but then she untangles it again, walks through the big metal door and detonates there. The explosion is so powerful it knocks the iron gates towards us, tearing the car apart and we have to flee on foot. Now I switch to a tourist who is trying to smuggle out one of the members of the armored car crew. It’s still night, still kind of raining and I arrange for my mum abroad to purchase two plane tickets. Although it’s mandatory for all foreigners to avoid planes, because planes agitate people, I assure them I used to be a flight attendant. That gives me an idea. I dress the soldier woman, who is still in a bit of a shock and myself in pretty red stewardess outfits and go get the tickets. Another problem is that all people who appear simple must be tranquilized for the flight. We don’t want that to happen, because we worry the injections might be overdoses. While my passenger is sitting, waiting, worrying, and the woman behind the counter who wouldn’t calculate the difference between the paid tickets and their money goes away for a bit to tranquilize a mongoloid girl passenger, another clerk approaches me. He’s like Dr. Reid from Criminal Minds and he’s nice enough to calculate my debt, which is about 40 or 60 bucks. Not much, but more than I have. I ask him to lend me the money which I will mail back ASAP, or blow him for it or whatever, just to help us, which, I sense, he wants to, because he knows otherwise the lady I’m trying to help will die. I woke up as we walked through the boarding gate into a reasonable safety, although I dunno. Lots could happen afterwards.

The first story is more start to end and it’s closer to Name of the Rose and Vampire Hunter D – two search entries I wrote into Wiki just before I went to bed last night. (I was cold as a stone, by the way. It actually hurt and felt numb at the same time.)
The story began in a castle – like monastery, though in present time, on a heavy dark day. I was a part of s sort of hunting party. It was normal times, normal people, we were mostly talking about the landscape and economy and stuff like that. Then it became kind of clear this is more like a prison and we are visiting. I know because one of the party members suspected this and he got locked away for a while. I was in the cell with him, so when we were allowed to come out again, we agreed to participate in the hunt. And we could have sworn that at least one of the members of the party, wearing hooded robes, had death’s instead of a normal face.
At first it looked like we are going to hunt game, we mostly even wore olive outfits, but then we sort of had to use mailman scooters to ride around which in a hilly forest roads, full of old cones and wet spruce needles isn’t so easy. Some did great, of course, even across fields and clearings. I had a jolly good time driving around, the air was nice and warm, and even though the sky was so dark and packed it looked like it was about to rain any moment now. I had no intention to shoot anything, but then I saw, down in a valley below me on the left, that the hunters and villagers were chasing a banshee. They chased her into a power line, which she tore, but kept dragging behind her, until she pulled most of her chasers up on the road where she was ultimately overcome. I realized we were not hunting animals at all, we were hunting mythological monsters.
Upon rendezvous, most of my party members have slaughtered something and dead things were now on display in the castle yard. We were going to clean up and have a feast. However, now almost all of those who had killed something wore robes and they were taller and thinner. I watched them climb the stairs and as light hit their faces, I could see monsters, demons and fiends. Those of us who followed, some were pushed off walls, some were simply pushed into dark corners or wells, some were stabbed. One, who tried to joke when a demon leader asked him what’s inside of his body and said my internal organs/ intestines, got his head broken off. I knew that, once I was in the room where this all began, I was fucked. If I don’t come up with something. But what? They started talking about religion and so forth and for a while I listened to the prison noises, then interrupted the head speaker and said there are … I dunno … some other truths or something and that I don’t really believe in any God so intensely as to see the world according to anyone but myself. This made them all go quiet and they proclaimed me a heretic and thus one of them and I was safe. A girl in the midst of a demonic hunting party in a prison of last righteous souls…

DOES this make ANY sense?

LOL.

I’m gonna keep the third one for myself. I need it to answer a long-nagging-question and finish a book. Some stuff in my world should be alright again, after that’s done :) :)

PS Oh, wow. It snowed all night and there’s actually like an inch of snow on the rooftops.

From "Baker on Judgement day", musings of a paper pagan about Murphy:)

2012-01-29T22:39:00.000+01:00

The truth is… [Paper] Pagans have always avoided dreams, because – although, ironically, employed by the Dream king to protect stories – Pagans are supposed to believe in all the things substantial. That includes stories. As Heritage. Not hearsay. A story needs the vessels to preserve itself and whereas dreams are an endless supply of ideas and fiction, they are also the entirely without dimensions. Not even their timing is real. Upon waking, not a single evidence of them remains, not even reliable memory. As much gratitude and loyalty as pagans owe and pay their Oneiric patron, they never really liked him. If faced with impossible decisions, Pagans would chose to do what they can in the real world without him as opposed to going into the dreaming to read there. Any number of books they could open in those libraries would ultimately prove, in fact, empty.

2012-01-29T21:33:00.001+01:00

Tried to watch the latest Twilight four times by now, but I just can't get to it. I can't believe how can someone make such a terrible movie?? It's like all the creators - all the setting, the scenery, the costumes, the light is arranged to such perfection and then a bunch of people are placed in the middle to ... just ... staaaand... there ... not .... moving.... And saying weird things in an out-of-place monotone, usually as if half the dialogue is already missing.
And you got to love how she looks pregnant and feels the kicks from a single cell embrio.

Am back to watching Glee.

The weekend was lovely, me getting plenty of rest and Warcraft, I've read four books by Chelsea Handler and really didn't like them. (Once you get pass the fact she writes about people she's tapped and drinks she's drank, there really isn't much left to read about.) Will switch to Bryson's at home and some feisty fiction. I drew some other illustrations for the bookie-in-the-making and selected some of the old photos from my trips to add. I'm restless to starting to arange them in InDesign, but first things first. There's still plenty of tedious research to do...

2012-01-29T21:24:00.000+01:00

Watched Name of the Rose again. Well, half of it; the movie is a neon long. But I like it, especially because unlike the novel, it ends well. At least for the boy, not so much for the books. And I like how some of the issues are handled. I like the portrayal of Jorge's constant scold – of laughter, of ‘idolizing the reason’… Sick old fuck. How women are spoken of as if they were bacteria, admittedly the wombs of all the men, but sinners for it and thus disgusting. Christ. I love the way reality of cloisters is portrayed onscreen – what a dense, miser, horrible world that must have been. Still, it was better than the outside. It makes sense why pope wanted to abolish the Franciscans, who lived by the poverty oath and why the lovely were considered so filthy and corrupt. Compared to that entire gruesome monastery, being able to touch someone warm and beautiful and honest meant the world to Adso when he got laid to someone else than a fellow friar. It would make sense how those poor people lived in such terrible conditions: nobody ever taught them better. The Christians hid away all the knowledge, burnt all the midwives and herbalists and kept people in ignorance and in fear with silly stories and ugly statues. Nobody knew you *have* to bathe, you *have* to clean your home, you *have* to avoid fluids, you *have* to isolate the ill from the rest… That must have been such a terrible, terrible time to exist. Especially for the books. Originals got burnt, after being “translated” (read: heavily edited, forged and censored) so that it’s almost impossible to tell what the antique authors wrote, exactly.

There is one thing odd, however, that I notice… In the movie (well, the story; novel, too) Brother William is utterly restless until he finally finds the library – and then he’s on his turf. I know how restless I am as well, when I venture someplace and I can’t get to the books. We gravitate to the tomes as if they were oxygen. I know how I would feel if I was in an institution where I KNEW there was a library and couldn’t get t it. It would twist me like an addiction. Funny that. I suppose if a grand, bright library with a good view and an endless shelves of all shapes and sizes and cushy seating arrangements, too, is my Heaven, then I suppose being on the outside looking in would be my Hell. That which gives us wings can equally bring us wishing blindness, eh? How religious of me.

Uldum irrigation... don't ask.

2012-01-28T21:50:00.000+01:00

I haven't played WoW for so long, it took me 45 minutes to stop admiring Uldum irrigation after I logged in. The morning blissfully went for my favorite WoW occupation - archeology - to take my mind of work for a moment. With this bleak, gray winter, it feels like Egypt is the one place where I would really be happy. Just give me an orange desert and a thorough well.Well, and WiFi, obviously.

2012-01-28T20:53:00.001+01:00

Though still ill, we drove to some behind God's ass valley high up in the mountains to photograph the snow castles. Really cute. Somebody even did the Angry Birds scene. We didn't stay long, just about 400 shots or so, because I didn't want to risk getting worse. My tummy just stopped feeling like I have a chilly ten pound ostrige egg in it. The General followed me around, making sure I didn't get trampled or walled in, impersonating a popsicle. He was grumpy (of course he refused to wear double winter socks and three sweaters like other mortals) as his feet, hands and jaw froze. Then again I mentioned that we were only there for an hour and that's pretty much how the weather is when lately Drej and I walk our muts for twice as much *daily*. Men. Half the time on the field they're thinking about their lover's safety and the other half about being neatly tucked in and snuggled, cushy warm. And possibly watching something with guns in it on the iPad.

Would you look at that wooly mammoth?!! I'm talking of course about the baggie pendant.

2012-01-26T11:19:00.000+01:00

Writing about trees and drawing for the bookie. Easy tasks, as my brain is still heavy as a brick. House arrest is no fun. I got so bored I cleaned the fridge last night and I don't clean fridges. Not literally. Also the tea I'm drinking is like cold runny bitter iron.

2012-01-25T21:46:00.001+01:00

In a tradition of winter haikus that we usually duel with, Drej & moi, there's another one about snow recession:

One snowflake doesn't make
A snowstorm, says the plow;
Don’t even wake me.

Ena snežinka ni snežni vihar,
reče plug in doda,
ne me budit (do pomladi).

2012-01-25T21:40:00.000+01:00

Nice. Now I'm under a house arrest – which is only ever fun if you *have* to go somewhere. If you're really bored and unfocused and yearn for a bagel, then this sucks. All my ideas about spending five or so years in my lonely wooden tower usually last about a day – then I pick up the phone and call some of my girl homies and we hit the coffee&cake place down the street.

The real bitch about having my immune system (the nurse mentioned I visit twice a decade and even then it’s usually because I’ve crashed something), doctor tells me, is that all those tiny little fuckers that get into my body, instantly hit a wall of guards and most DOA – alas, a viruses are the most advanced life form in existence, some stay hidden, dormant, sleeping cells, stuck to the remote, lazy little corners of my vascular mess. Three years later, I am a carrier to about twenty infections, just waiting for one bad day. Not even my strict diets of chocolate, coke and kebabs can keep me up forever. General is so pleased: he claims I got sick when we climbed the Pyrewood hill, which is not something chubby old ladies are supposed to do. He now has me under house arrest. Normally I wouldn’t notice any difference, but being ill also means you feel like *. Nothing much I try to do engages me. Not even eating. And that’s def con five.

My antibiotics should come available tomorrow and although tempted to storm this one out by sheer will of force and fatty sugars, it’s only so much gasping and crying when peeing I can take before admitting defeat. And instead of a neat spring apple juice, my pee looks like a two week old tea, thick, brown and with funny bits swimming in it. Not to be too sentimental about a pee, but it was easier to pass water when I was in a desert, drinking things camels passed.

Vid Valič & Denis Avdić stand up

2012-01-23T23:04:00.001+01:00

I'm old, I admit it and I seem to be sporting a latent peepee infection, so about fifteen minutes before the show I was kind of wishing I didn't have to go, but the General only needs a hint of such behavior to call things off, so I wasn't going to admit to feeling poorly. It WAS a bit funny, though, to be in a full theater and sitting just by the door. I kept thinking what if someone dropped the chandelier or shot someone and all those crazy hysterical people would try to crawl over me… I am NOT fond of full theaters. If possible, I always sit in the front row and pretend I’m alone, if not invisible.

But the show was hilarious. Two and a half hours of laughing to sex, drugs and politics jokes (oddly enough those seem to always be the funniest) and mocking the showbiz colleagues. It’s so rare seeing the General laugh out loud and I am of course very easy to pee myself. You’d have to be there to get it, though I loved the remark about why do we seem to fear the gay so badly. Are the gay men ten feet tall, 400 pounds, hairy and bald, running around naked with their twelve inch erections in their hands, chasing random people in the streets screaming: BLOW ME!!??!... BLOW ME!!!! …

Although both were super funny, the little one, Avdić, was soooo good with dialects and mocking famous politicians... Though Valič's wish that women's orgasms were like the count-down traffic lights (he called them tiny personal New Years) instead of an endles mystical wanings and crescendos... That was uper funny, too :D At least to us, chicks.

2012-01-23T06:40:00.002+01:00

Doodling with the watercolor pencils, getting ready to do the winter illustrations for the bookie. Now I have a suitable portrait for Ilona Day Gaiai, one of my hitherto unused, yet fully fledged, manga characters :))

2012-01-20T21:50:00.000+01:00

A friend today asked me what my definition of success is... Do I want to be rich, famous, known for ages, revolutionary, overwhelming, praised… And the fact is I really don’t. I wouldn’t mind it, but that’s not why I do what I do. I write simply because I really like it. I photograph because I find it disciplinary to pursue such a seemingly done-to-death form of art, until it IS art. But the simple truth is my definition of success is the luxury of options. The less that limits you in the things you try to do, the more successful you seem to be. Can I go to North Korea on my next vacation? No. I am too poor, too little connected, not enough important yet – hence – I need to wire up my game a bit, and this option, too, will present itself.

Bored. Wrote a poem.

2012-01-20T12:52:00.000+01:00

Losers

I know your type, my quiet tall, dark stranger
I've met the men who always have to win.
I know that in the grand scale of ambition
For you 'to feel' bares the same bane as 'to sin'.
I know the shades you cast are cut to the perfection
And the thoughts you utter marvel in,
Statues could be made to stare at you
Marble, cut in awe of those who win.
The face may be a gem, may be a triumph,
The scent, the voice, the hair may be, the skin,
Like nothing ever so terribly created
Armor on the men who like to win.
The thoughts, the swords, the cars, the ships, the horses,
Matters all on just one side of a grin
On the other side are tiny honest secrets
Insignificance of hearts of men who win.
Just one touch from you and blood burns or stops flowing
A star might die if you sent your lust within
What are floods and earthquakes to ideas
Born by the men who always win.
To lose an argument would be to burn the world,
Nothing sheer of death on an entire nation would wear thin
The need to prove, the urge to harness logic
Bent, men who cannot stand, they shouldn’t win.
I know your kind; I know the beauty of your cruelty,
I recognize you think you have to win
I would follow you home, my only stranger
But even I can’t find where to begin.

2012-01-20T06:01:00.000+01:00

Watched Criminal Minds and in it there's a line by Dante:
There is no greater sorrow than to
Recall in Mysery the time
When we were happy...

BUT.
That's for pussies. As all dark things go, from this it follows:
There is no greater majesty
Than to recall in joy
The time in which things started getting better.
(Or, more poetically, when things started standing up.)
That's for kick-asses.

2012-01-19T13:54:00.002+01:00

At times writing this book makes my head swell up and keel over and I find myself morosely drooling into the keyboard, stoned on too much cultural information. General has to listen to me recite about buildings and events every day or I have a hysterical fit and I won't even admit the things I tell the dog, which has the supportive initiative of a yesterday’s cold coffee. I’m not saying I don’t learn very many interesting things about my realm, I’m just saying shoot me. Shoot me now. There’s only so many times one can listen to Video games to vent…
On today’s doggie walk (and you wouldn’t believe if I told you there were almost Styrofoam droplets of sleet on the ground in wee traces!!) Drej explained to me the rules of a doctoral dissertation. For about an hour I wondered what I would write if I had to write one – though of course I could never do it, because I write perky and dramatically even when I’m writing travel guides (No, really.) – but if I DID, I’d write about the underdogs on literature. Snufkin may not qualify, but Snufkin will get a tattoo, whereas the likes of Petyr Littlefinger in The Game of Thrones are a prime example.
Which reminds me. I need to eat and I need to shower and I need to see the last fifty episodes of Bleach that I’ve been slacking on. Oh, Byakuya… Oh, how I enjoy you stoically slash through villains and then pretend like you didn’t just die, defending you fragile little sister. Oh, those slate violet eyes. How I would write sexy stories about you, if only you weren’t my size and half my weight and didn’t have a disposition of an old granite statue on a cold winter’s day.

2012-01-18T16:43:00.002+01:00

I hate movies that are produced by environmentalists. They are all so fucking stupid. There's a new one out about too much light and of course it's putting everything – the cities and the non-cities into the same bucket of light-polluted end-of-days bullshit… A movie clearly made by people who have a) never spent a single day in their existence without seeing false light and b) probably never even been to anywhere but L.A. or New York or Vegas. I will never understand what these idiots are trying to achieve – make us lament a planet that was never particularly friendly to begin with and feel bad about out ten minutes of evolution that we are being tolerated within? Trying to convince us that we should exist as cavemen? Certainly – if that served a single purpose at all? And what would happen, if we all went back into the caves? We would, within a year, eat everything that this planet has to offer and then drown in shit that we cannot manage. There have been times that all this that they so vehemently preach against was indeed a lifestyle – it’s called post-world wars periods. Go see how fucking the planet was when there was no way to maintain us. Or would they just prefer to see us all gone already? Don’t worry; we’ll be gone soon enough. And then there will be no more climate changes, air pollution, species extinction, because our planet just doesn’t roll like that. Before we came this world was made of silver crystal and unicorns.

2012-01-18T09:32:00.000+01:00

And as if the world wasn't ignorant enough, Wiki has shut down for the day hours...
Rats :/

Alcatraz ... meh ... and I'm glad I'm not the only person who couldn't watch Lana Del Rey "sing" on SNL ... 'cause that was plain 'someone stop her, please'

2012-01-17T21:11:00.004+01:00

An interesting thing I fundamentally dislike: a gyroid.

Though on a related subject, Alcatraz show came out… and I am not convinced.

I can see now why they had such scriptwriters’ issues… The script just sucks. Most of the time people seem to not really know what to say, or do, or whom to stare at, or remember what to say and half the time when they say seems to belong to a different scene entirely. Oh, sure, there are plenty close-ups on people with amazing blue eyes, but even though there are plenty characters to like, and dislike, and more than a couple eerie sequences regarding that curious piece of marine real-estate, I just didn’t get it. Okay, so this is going to be a show about a cop chasing criminals? Or about an experiment gone bad? Or about how nasty prison is/was? Or government hide-ups and the likes, evil in the name of greater good or something? Honestly, I didn’t get it. I’m gonna keep watching, because I can’t get enough of Jorge Garcia and I couldn’t watch him in Lost, so… I hope to Gods of all that’s celluloid and downloadable, it gets better. I couldn’t cope with another Terra Nova.

2012-01-15T12:03:00.000+01:00

I love the way my dad and the General talk about war stuff when I ask them something - like they were actually there. They know all the names, all the locations, they checked all the sights later on, know all the urban legends of why someone killed someone else, who were the traitors, where the cowards were hiding, how the reinforcements arrived over which ravine and so forth... Down to the materials they used to make make-shift guns and the stuff they were eating. I only get to ask one question at a time per day, because they already tell me way too many things to write town or remember. Also, most of the stories are fucking depressing. I'm still deciding whether to include the war route into my book. The chapter is mostly written, the idea is kind of good, but still, I just don't know.

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

2012-01-14T19:17:00.000+01:00

Been writing about monks today. There are plenty very cool cloisters still active in this country and albeit antichristian, I am very fond of the romantic aspects of these institutions. Of course the coolest by far is the Charterhouse Pleterje folk, the Carthusians. These little dudes insist in their pristine white robes and pursuit of total contemplation and silence - not unlike pretty much the extremes of most mystical religions, but it’s still impressive to have them so close-by. For a little while I was worried I won’t be able to write anything substantial but their location in the chapter, but they of course have web sites like all earthly mortals everywhere. There are other orders to mention, but inevitably the wiki files led me to once-was my favorite book on the subject, Name of the Rose. I found myself smiling, being able to still fully remember the last line in three separate languages without even thinking about it. I remember it, because it used to haunt me. I read this book long before I became a book zealot, so the fire in which the library burns, haunted me for a long while. It was only with my buddy dDaniel that I realized the difference between us, pagans, burning books and the truth – burning of the shelves. The last line means something like: ‘The once-was rose stands firm in its name, but it's only empty names *we* are (left) holding…’ Yeah, it sucks to be a sentimental historian sometimes :D

Salmon Fishing in Yemen

2012-01-12T05:24:00.000+01:00

Finished reading Salmon Fishing in Yemen and of course it depressed me, because the book doesn't end well at all and I am such a sucker for happy endings that I am actually hoping for the movie to come from Hollywood and be a sort of a romantic comedy. I didn’t mind the old sheik dying – Drej warned me about that – but everyone else was a bit unexpected and quite disarming. Like in a proper novel, and this is probably what makes the book so good, you only got a glimpse of a bright, stolen moment, an excellent story, but before and after which the characters return to the murky current of the real life. I suppose the one who got out the least changed was the fuckup Wife. The rest suffered too much of a loss to ever be the same again. I thought in case of Harriet quite utterly pointlessly. Unlike sheik, who died in the best possible moment and possibly quite happy and at peace.

Funny how I nearly died in a desert flash flood and didn’t even know it at the time :) Then again it was the desert – I probably nearly died of many things and didn’t know it at the time.

So, since movies don’t need to invoke catharsis, they can simply entertain and inspire and show pretty, pretty scenery, I am going to watch it only if someone assures me everyone (except the sheik and Mary) lives happily ever after. It’s just the sort of a dreamy person I am.

PS I came up with a recipe for pancakes last night and actually dreamed about it. General argued with me that they way I did it probably wouldn’t be very good, and in the dream everyone hated it, kept throwing it away, vomiting or having diarrhea, but to me it actually tasted really great – despite the fact it had a lot of fructal acid, which hurts like a bitch if I try to swallow.
The pancake is called Biblioteca Corvinia and it’s made of five thin pancakes set into a sort of layered cake, first one painted purple and thin with blueberry jam (purple being regal color), second with chestnut mash 8because his eyes were brown), the third with bit of coconut powder, to remind of late march last frost on the fields, fourth with mild saffron jelly (that’s complicated, but trust me) and the last one, the top one, sprinkled with sweet lemon juice – to add that sort of bitterness that makes everything else for the better later on :D

Few more Tamara with bijou pics...

2012-01-11T20:08:00.001+01:00

2012-01-11T20:06:00.000+01:00

I like the way I did some of these catalogue pages for a draft. I am always so torn between the story, the cool elegance and the sheer impact of the object for sale... :)

Bit of a fashion shoot, since the day was so shiny :))

2012-01-10T14:26:00.000+01:00

Tamy with Rosa semi-precious stones bijou :)

PS

2012-01-09T19:41:00.000+01:00

We've invented a new color last night (Maja, Drey et moi.) It's called The Unexplained Love. CMYK - wise it's 89 / 61 / 34 / 14 and RGB it's 39 / 90 / 122.

Some things are ‘shoot me now’ and some things make you melt like toffee

2012-01-09T11:23:00.000+01:00

I wonder if people realize, when they read things, how they've been written. Written and printed and set. Some of us still have the image of a deep dark room with a small, book-stuffed window and a large dripping candle in the winter evening (Right, Puškin?)… And of Gutenberg, setting his mighty print tiny letter by letter. And then authors mention their learned colleagues, doctors of literary science and other esteemed authors, and you think – this sounds so very far away from the notepad and pen most of us write like, feeling like schoolgirls…

Well, let me tell you how we roll.
I have learned colleagues; I have literary doctors of science for friends. We meet in pubs and discuss all the heavy worldly subjects, such as vibrators and crazy small dogs. Just last night the three of us sat down to work on a book cover. It was serious business and we got some very cool work done, see?. But this was in thorough lack of Siberian winters, decadent French pubs and/or fits of epilepsy or pistol duels. There was half a cake and a moment in which I pretended to try and hit Maja in the head with a pancake pan as she walked through the door, which nearly resulted in half the cake becoming half the coat. General has been napping up until then, but he hastily retreated to his den, saying you never know what three crazy, lusty artists would do to his unconscious body. A day before Drej complained to Maja that our flat is so cold, when she turned on the cushy portable heater, just as it began radiating some warmth, I asked her to turn it off, as it got really hot and stuffy. Now they both came dressed for Siberia, but alas – the room was warm. So warm in fact that when we went to bed, General and I slept far away from one another, unused to such heat and stuffiness :D The dog was a bit uncomfortable also.

There was lots of laughing, debating, teasing, provoking and puppy YouTube videos, while we watched Maja do the graphic design out of one of my old ‘this is the make-up I would like on a model, please’ summer sketches and Drej’s text. The way Maja does it is slightly annoying, because she just hits three keys and does some clicks and InDesign obeys her COMPLETELY, talking very smart graphic designer talk to which the rest of us usually reply: Ahhhhhh! And try to look wise and learned. Drej had the strenuous challenge of having to capture her novel in just three lines, while I had cake. All in all it was a funky old evening and we created a book cover. It’s one of those things that make you really grateful someone meanwhile invented friends. And posted puppy videos on YouTube.

Drej's book 'Explain love to me' (Pojasni mi Ljubezen) should be out in March. It's about a love triangle from the prespective of all three angles :)

And to top that, Drej and I coined our first mutual haiku today (during the doggie walk, wondering if we’ll have any snow this year at all)

Even the winter is in recession
I think to myself
And put on flip-flops.

And this cool things meant for paper are done. :D

2012-01-08T15:32:00.000+01:00

If you can believe it, today are collective birthdays of Elvis, Stephen Hawking AND Kim Jong-un... not to mention Alma-Tadema. My favorite painting is by him :)

2012-01-06T18:24:00.001+01:00

Well, since the start of this year I’ve been working very avidly (read: disciplined…-ly) on my new, travel book about places to see and stuff to do there and other serious shit regarding my pretty country:)) I try to enweave all kinds of lore among the instructions and plenty of the stuff I write about one way or another crosses swords with a historical character with a cool name. Korvin. His dad’s campaign inspired the last prince of Cilli – once a vast realm, now my home town – to be assassinated and a cute little happy story about a king under the mountain seems to be inspired by him. Not much of this would really captivate me, because if anything I’ve read about all kinds of kings aplenty, but this dude actually managed to start a very powerful library. He even seemed to have his very own Aal.

On the hormones pills again, I am so horny I find fairly much everything arousing. Watching hentai and Dirty Dancing doesn’t help. Oh, look, a hot king of old, horny. Oh, young Patrick Swayze half naked! Horny! Oh, look, my husband’s home, horny. Oh, look, dog! Horny. Look – air! Horny!! So you can imagine what my short story – the ones I write on a side track to went - about the Hungarian warlord is like. There’s a little bit about Budapest in there, some mention of Doboš cakes and lots and lots and lots of……
Am impressed I got into a haiku writing duel with Drej and didn’t mention sex once. Not even in a lyrical way. Off to have coffee&cake now with the homies, and I’ve also managed to shoot a photo of the General beard-less! Go me :D But now I’m … again … :s Hopeless.

How can you not look forward to more of this?

2012-01-03T11:07:00.000+01:00

Oh, we LIKED the latest Sherlock (Scandal in Belgravia)

2012-01-03T05:40:00.000+01:00

Though What the fuck is a Belgravia?

Intermezzo: the pretty pretty lights :D

2012-01-01T19:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was one of those perfect days. (Followed by an almost perfect today, except there's no snow and General has a cold :))
           In the morning - sky clear as a painting, frost making everything crunchy and paleand picturesque - Drej and our crazy bitches walked an unusually long walk, playing in the vast fields and getting ourselves tired for the afternoon nap (needed, because the night was going to be long.) She and her pack offed to a snowy land and I sent out about 40 greetings while the boys played Warcraft, slurping honeyed - everything.
            The supper was Maja's doing at her place. Such a cool last meal of the year. He dad can talk about amateur astronomy almost as much as me and twice as avidly, so the conversations never halted. The food was another happy event in the long line of holiday culinary overkills and another Radler went down, my third in a lifetime so far. It certainly does get me blinking, as I am so unused to alcohol even holding the tin envokes giddyness :))) General made his sublime pork slices in onion sauce with melted cheese and Maja made rice and pumpkins and chinese salad and suchlike... The trick was not to eat everything, as it was vital we don't pass out. A few Fererro Rocheres might have suffered for the lack of dessert.
            We drove to Ljubljana - General, Junior, Maja and me, and oddly enough even found a parking in smack center. Considering roads to there were clear and almost all of the country's population seemed to be roaming the streets, that was lucky. The crowds felt like a massive riot. Fortunately, it was a happy crowd. Drunk, stoned, high on music (Nothing beats Jan Plestenjak live and yes I am being grosely sarcastic), tourists times ten thousands and everyone in between. We circled the pretty bridges and would wait for the gala fireworks in the main square, but by then it was already so foggy, nothing much happened by comparisson. Pity the General hates crowds - I seem to sink in them and thrive. Really - nothing regarding people makes me feel so social as a grinding flood of civilians spilling and twirling about brightly lit old town streets. I could have stayed the night, but I'm too old and lazy :)) We drove back, tired and happy, and passed out. :D

Two musics from last night...

2012-01-01T12:23:00.001+01:00

I know these two look like the Winchester brothers from Supernatural, but I actually like the way they 'fight' using their cellos. From my experience lately, I've seen the cello take quite a lot of beating and oddly enough, still the music comes out. Appart from drums and mayhap the piano, I can't really think of such violent ontakes. Electric guitar usually end up broken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjOQac1vOEc

End of a year of Good Beginnings...

2011-12-31T06:20:00.000+01:00

Things that 'started of' this year:
- my photography career
- summat my (professional) writing career
- some other personal serious shit
- my marriage

Today is the last day that I get to work on Nasty Little Light and tomorrow I begin the comissioned book's main text body. It took me a little while to gather all the material, and mementum by finishing 'Heart (working title), so ... here we go. The year of excellent foundation.

On a non-related subject... :)) One of the articles on the Wiki front today is a story of the only regent empress of Vietnam, a lady who was very much not liked in history, as supposedly she only lasted a year before another dynasty took over altogether... For this reason, she was not worshipped as an ancestor and had no place in the temple, only a small shrine near-by. I have to admit, though supposedly mentally unstable, her predecessor obviously did have some wit about him, because if he had not named her but instead someone he actually liked, it would have been HIM that would be remembered as the failing kind and HE would be shunned from the temple. This way he pulled a very vicious, very selfish prank on a girl who probably had no idea what was happening, as at the time of all this turmoil, she was only six years old.

Girl with the dragon tattoo times two

2011-12-30T14:49:00.001+01:00

Last night the Gen and Maja and I went to the movies, to see the American remake of the Larsson story, starring R. Mara, D. Craig, directed by Fincher. We like Fincher. I’m a great fan of the original movie starring Nyqvist and Rapace and directed by Oplev as well and of all three books by the (supposedly) late Stieg Larsson. Perhaps not so much the second and third installments, but the first movie, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate women) I really liked. I knew it would be difficult to watch this soonish remake, because it is almost the exact copy of the original and yet trying desperately to be entirely different.

Standalone, it’s an excellent film. I think. The actors, director and cinematographer are actually doing a really good job. Craig is okay, although he feels a bit too tired and quite oddly thin for my taste, wearing tight jeans and falling all over. His face when she pulls down her undies and the walkie-talkie alarm code: Fuck fuck fuck is hilarious. Understandably he’s been aiming to remove himself from any Bond affiliation, but compared to Nyqvist he’s sort of like rice-paper to cardboard. Rooney Mara on the other hand, is amazing. She’s this dark punk ninja pixie that you can’t wait to see and hear next. If I had never seen any other version of her I would instantly love her. She’s a little rough diamond. I long to watch her again and I hope she inspires some cool deep heroines in the future.

Other actors did a good job as well. I especially loved the part where they all speak with the something of a Norse accent, except maybe Skarsgard, who is actually Swedish – he speaks perfect American. It was good to see Robin Wright Penn and Joely Richardson again, wearing very little make-up, old women that they are and still so very beautiful. And the casting of the rapist social worker was good. He displayed a great measure of paternal fondness and sadistic fucked-upness at the same time. In the original movie Bjurman (Bear man) is instantly repulsive.

The rape scene was powerful. Possibly one of the worst in history of cinema. I tried to warn my friend that this story contains a tremendously savage rape and she asked me if it will be graphic and I admitted that in an American version, I just don’t know. For a moment it actually seemed like it will be skipped altogether, but Fincher decided to go with it and delivered it all. It certainly splits you down the middle and makes you very, very happy this is only a movie.

… And so on and so forth. If you haven’t seen the original and like the genre, I coldly recommend it (I would say warmly, but it takes place in winter Sweden, so… You wish.). If you had read the books and seen the Swedish version, then perhaps wait a few decades. Even the Bond-like opening credits will confuse you. Seriosuly, what WAS that?

Now for the bad parts.

There is too much of everything in this one film. Too many gruesome murders. Like, three times as much. Everyone seemed to be raping everyone in that family, too. It would have been good enough to leave it at “You will be investigating thieves, misers, bullies. The most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet - My family.” Everyone knows how that feels and yet often it’s just family rivalry and things aren’t really as bad. It leaves the speculations and the mysteries opened. No need to over-sell it. Lots of stuff from the other two parts of the trilogy are crammed in here and also several parts that aren’t in the story at all.

Regardless of how excellent Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth is, Rapace’s is a whole lot better. More realistic, a lot tougher, a lot more unique and troubled looking even without the elaborate make-up and hair-cut. They are both supposed to look like troubled little girls, but Rooney’s looks about twelve and cute whereas Rapace’s looks old and hard. Perhaps these indeed are the European and the American editions. Very well to the point in fact.

In the Swedish version, it is she that helps him and then he is the one who falls for her. In the American it’s him who finds her and she is the one who then follows him around with big loving puppy eyes, hoping to be loved. Kind of defeats the point of Lisbeth, doesn’t it?

However good the casting in the American version was, the original was better. Then again the sort of appeal that original cast has isn’t really clear enough for the American standards. People need to be cuter, thinner and more hysterical and their hair always needs to be perfect, unless of course there’s something deeply wrong with them, in which case the hair is slightly tussled. There also needs to be more guns and winning fights and possibly airplane travel in American versions. And exactly how Lisbeth cleared the Cayman accounts needs to be told frame by frame, otherwise people wouldn’t really get it. Like… What the Hell are bonds, right?

I preferred the role of the missing girl in the original film. How she was Mika’s babysitter and how she actually moved to Australia and had a good life there. The solitary playing fake identity lady played by Richardson didn’t really make much sense.

What the fuck was that with the cat?!

PS. To all my friends and people whose phone number I know...

2011-12-28T06:56:00.001+01:00

Should you happen to ever recieve a slightly flirtatious or downright lesbian advance text message from me, chances are it was meant for the hubby and I am simply too madly in love to be able to choose the correct numbers from my phone. It happens. Don't be alarmed. He gets about five of those per day and he isn't worried yet :))p

Wishlist 2o12

2011-12-28T06:50:00.000+01:00

Photography:
A new computer or a better screen at least:

- Rotolight
- Maybe a studio. But not so vital anymore :D Love daylight.

...short list, I know :))

Paper:
- Books published, as per usual :D

+
- a tiny car

- ridiculously cool vibrator. If I'm gonna have one, it may as well be a work of art ;)

- mayhap another pet?

- and a small, not particularly painful trip with a hubby.

On sex toys, wet dreams and X-mas dinners with Predators

2011-12-27T07:23:00.003+01:00

I love it when the General gives me the sad eyes and says: I have no more clean T-shirts. As if that was such an irreparable condition, all that can fix it s a hug and a good cry. Yes, honey, I got it by now. Your theory of how shirts travel to and from the washer by themselves has tragically failed. I’ll make an exception and pose as a housekeeper just this once. Just no more big sad eyes.

On the other hand, he has made a face like he just saw The Blessed Virgin Mary this morning, when I asked about our plans for today and he said: Playing Warcraft and having sex and I said: Oh, gods, no, please, no more sex. I can’t do this any longer.

Spending more time on Lelo site than I was on Wikipedia lately has paid off. Also the toys we got for Christmas from our friends and the Generals’ words: I will root your sex drive out of you if I have to go buy new batteries during. And after a few days I am willing to feign defeat. I’m an old lady and I don’t have time to sleep four hours after those orgasms twice a day. I should probably invoke the quickie rule again, only this time in reverse: one vs. four ratio, please.

The family dinners have passed; I feel a year older. Recession has shown on the gifts, though I am proud of the doggie calendars I made for my folks. The parental injustice didn’t sadden me as much as I thought it would, though I did rename one of my family members into an Antichrist in my phone, and the food was, as always, absurdly excellent. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to watch my Predator quintology beforehand, so I just watched the really gruesome bits ASAP afterwards. It’s much needed to level my redefinition of good and evil. You know: my family is not the worst. There are bigger monsters out there.

I did dreamt an excellent stoream this morning. Maybe now as a story it lacks certain, if not all, sense, but within it it was quite pleasant. The theory that saliva production halts to zero during dormant hours is entirely false: a strong parasimpatico, particularly during such dreams, produces a lot more than normal. I literally soak my pillow.

Like an English TV mini-series, because I woke up during, there are two parts… J

It starts with me in a London or somesuch ministry or city hall, where I am trying to get my passport done to leave the country, but cannot remember my young son’s birth date. (His name and picture need to be included, but the date fazes me. This is due to the fact I can never remember my last name in proper order.) I try to call the General, but the connection is too bad and I cannot hear him well enough and I don’t want to get it wrong. To deal with this, I go to the other part of the building, across a small park to a more administrative area of the establishment where a friend of mine works and he might be able to help me more than the nervous teller ladies. The security lad in a small bunker room between the door and the hallway also knows me, so he lets me in while he phones my friend to come and get me. We chat and he mentions that the postman van parked in front is strange, as this is parcel region 18 but the van is marked 16. While he’s on the phone, I notice that the ‘mail man’ is approaching rapidly, holding nothing but a small wooden pepper-shaker-like object. My little red flags go up and I start to urge the security lad to leave the phone, open the door and allow us to flee into the hallway. Just as he does this and I run in, yelling at people to take cower, not even looking back, I hear the first explosion and just as I manage to hide behind one of the classroom-like door niches, the second, inner door blows and the metal panel flies clear across the hall. Glass is flying everywhere. More of it than usual, even, and a lot brighter. As I proceed to run, my legs badly cut and my calves kind of full of shards sticking out, I realize that the man attacking is actually using some sort of sonic scream to literally shatter people like glass. This shakes me so, that when he finds me, I can’t even look, I just hide and hope he ignores me. But he doesn’t, he begins to shatter me, too, and to my great relief and surprise, as my body is turning to tiny bits of very bright glass, it feels very painless and calm. I almost thank the man, who is now a source of sharp brightness, but then I blow into a million bits that continue to cut through people.

This is when I woke up, so the next ‘episode’ began with a camera POV and it was on the roof of the ministry, where a politician lady was talking to her head security consultant and the roof they were walking was also where sometimes they tortured and experimented on suspects. But this time there was a young soldier there, painfully tied up in wires and pulleys and sort of elastic material with cutlery pulled away from him and then aimed for his eyes and the like. Supposedly this soldier once ventured into another world and was there tortured like this, so now they tortured, semi-willingly him again to try and establish what they were dealing with. There was a debate about how they used forks, but never making a sound, so when they dropped their fork onto a platter, it made a difficult, almost sonic sound and they realized something. Dunno what. Something pivotal.

Cut scene to a young woman in front of a mirror, putting make-up to cover the eyes under her bags and the song is playing something about how she spent the whole night up with her boss. She’s not very pretty and quite pale and bit of lower middle class, though small and lovely in a tired, desperate way. She is wearing a nighty and a thin over-robe, and goes to clean up the bed of her baby son, who managed to wet it again, because she forgot to put on a diaper. Her son is absurdly large for a baby, which somehow agrees to a theory her boss is a very large and obese man. The baby patiently lies on her bed with white sheets and blue covers, but is amused because the ceiling is also starting to drip while she complains how he is a constant source of water.

Meanwhile, three men dressed in desert storm Special Forces outfits which they probably bought on-line, one of whom is the same sonic mail-man who assaulted the ministry; break into the very same building. They go through the receptionist’s book of tenants (well, one does, the other two have fun disposing of the poor guy), until they find one they like. They make a call and that young woman with the baby answers. They seem to ask her some random questions though she cannot help but to flirt a little with the strangers on the phone. However, talking to them, she finally sees her ceiling is almost completely wet and quite swollen and dripping on her son. She takes the son quickly to the other room, where situation soon becomes the same. Though not very bright, she gives into her instincts and starts to run out of the apartment, shutting the front door just as the bedroom ceiling gives in under the burden of the upper apartment being completely flooded.

Running out, she pulls the neighbor old lady, which can be her mum or her grandma and they start to run down the stairs, arguing. They may for some reason be the only tenants who run, because even though there seems to be water everywhere, others don’t notice it. And the windows and doors of this building appear to be very tight. Once outside, it’s clear this is a rather poor but tall apartment sky-scraper, surrounded by a few more and a neat, shy park with threes and some green patches in between parking lots. Even as the three are fleeing, they can see splashes of water coming from an opened window row, making them realize the building is swaying. Not only that, it’s so heavy with the extra weight of water in every apartment on every floor that it’s literally sinking. There are some hands trying to call for help, but it’s too late. The only happy trio is the strange terrorists, now on that opened row balcony, enjoying their achievement. They notice us – mum, daughter and baby – running away as other people are approaching to see what’s going on. They even shoot something at a bunch of young school-skippers that tease the daughter’s wardrobe. But they also shoot at us, which is what wakes me up for the second time… So alas, I am not sure how this story ends :P

Winter officialy here :)

2011-12-22T16:15:00.002+01:00

Barky

2011-12-22T16:14:00.000+01:00

Interesting way of self-soothing - plug your snout into your pooper and dream happy dreams :))

Almost there... ;)

2011-12-22T09:55:00.000+01:00

It took me a decade to stop masturbating over some of the characters in LotR and I wonder if anyone in The Hobbit will hit me so straight as some of them did. I'm thinking this guy? :))

Though I am very curious about what they will make of Legolas's evil dad and of course of my beloved Beorn.

I knew it was premature to close down my show in the shire :P

2011-12-19T19:05:00.001+01:00

I am starting to drink beer more than usual. By that I mean I ordered my first beer today. I never even particularly liked it until along came Maja (and I could say she's a real bad influence, because all we ever do is drink and talk about sex, but then I remember it's me who orders the drinks and always talks about sex and she just listens like friends do, hopefully not thinking about running away screaming :P) and ordered my first grapefruit Radler. Granted, it was during a sex fair and we were very thirsty, but it was still an excellent drink. I wonder how my family will react seeing me drink alcohol on X-mas.

On a related subject - I have been going way too often to religious events lately as well. It's starting to brew something in me, some odd need to belong to a ritual or faith. As puzzling as it may be how any intelligent person would ever believe any of the nonsense most religions sell, I can imagine why one would overlook the retarded rules (I'm thinking mostly Muslims here and an occasional Buddhist) in order to feel blessed by the wisdom and the revelations of gods and sages. I am happy believing in nature and circle of life and that most things have personality if not soul, which clashes heavily with having to endure General's need for slaughter, but I do miss the ritual. For this reason I may make Gennonsuke, the male lead and love-interest in The Nasty Little Light a shinigami AND Jewish. He's half Swedish as it is. Might as well learn a thing or two from his layer cake personality...

2011-12-19T12:12:00.000+01:00

Ow shit. Kim Jong-il died. One of the last truly whacko dictators. And he was reported to pass on from a heart attack while traveling by a train. Was that the same train that he liked staffed with former beauty queens and teen models I wonder?

On socks and boobs

2011-12-16T06:39:00.001+01:00

It took me about 45 seconds to get addicted to these....

(The grippy knobbies, I mean, not the toe things.) Feeling them ALL the time, walking, flexing my soles - and when you take them off and put on regular socks, you feel like your foot is in a bucket of water. Am seriously considering getting more shoes and socks. I suppose one pair of trekking shoes and one pair of flip flops is a disgrace for a woman. Though if my life depended on it, I am certain I could dig out some army issued ladies heels, boots and of course two old pairs of training bullers.

I have skipped right over this guy, Pejić.

Lovely he may be, but he is also dumb as fuck and I am so over halfwit models. That drawer is stuck as it is with Gackt. (Aware that that man exists brings whole new light to my own species.) Regardless of my turn on for manga (where even the worst of male villains may look like little girls sometimes). I'm thinking Kuja.

I am nigh finished with the latest book, but it's too large to be printed for easy money. Granted, I am a fan of a hard cover, but hitherto I just can't afford it. Luckily I couldn't afford it even if it was half the price, so I merrily sail on, already flirting with the sequel. I stole these planets from Wiki to doodle around with a cover, but I didn't do it because I didn't have a better one, I did it because at the same time the book speaks about distant planets and my great boobs :P

Nafis

2011-12-13T14:17:00.000+01:00

Couple of pickies of Nafis Umerkulova, a little piano wrangler I met when I shot the classical concerts taking place these holiday season. A minute Uzbek taming a grand Steinbeck certainly is a sight to behold and you know me - I tend to sit, alone, in the front line and pretend there's just music and me and the face of the people playing. Half of what I understand of sounds is what I interpret from teh expression of the musicians :) She studies in Glasgow with Katarina Majcen and she was super nice to me, when I joined the friends/family of the stars for drinks afterwards and would of course just sit and observe quietly.

On funerals, sex fairs and slaughter

2011-12-11T20:46:00.006+01:00

It's been a week since I've tried reaching out into the world for lessons and approval, and my hands have been healing nicely. The nasty wounds on my palms (a little less stigmata and a little more psoriasis, though I could fool you) have been healing very neatly and I no longer cringe from shaking people's hands.

In the past three days, I have gone to the extremes of human condition. Each and every one was traumatic and rejuvenating to the point of primal urge to yell.

First was a fuck-lot-depressing funeral. I have gone to more funerals this year than all the rest of my life combined and each one was worse than the other. This time the corrupt shit-hearted faith-whore of a priest delivered such a disturbed sermon, I literally started crying. Luckily it was a funeral, but I was so upset I shook and trembled and would have had it much worse if my parents didn’t agree: this was ridiculous. We are communists (or at least one communist, one atheist and me respectfully in the middle) but we do respect other faiths if they are genuine and intimately between people and their needs to not feel small and alone, but this was simply awful. I was about to lose it when the guy said children conceived in test tubes have no chance of ever meeting the grace of that dude hanging from two sticks, so basically, because we need a little help of science to conceive, the General’s kids by me won’t stand a right to be baptized? (Though by now I think the General comprehends I would rather raise my offspring as Jewish than ever have them speak to the likes of these preachers.) If that didn’t seal my hatred of the lot, his comments on how we should be as devout as zealot Islamists in our faith – and of course no matter how much he charged for this, because they charge a lot for these masses, he still sent out the large basket and stared at people how much money they will give, more – that certainly did. I thought my dad will be upset when I put my hands in my pockets and showed my back to the creep in a dress when he approached me, but, in a moment of excellent family camaraderie, my dad did the same. We would have done much worse if this was not a funeral of our family member.

The second event, a day later, was a sex fair. We get one of these each years and as it turned out, people from all over, far across the borders, come, to check out the products and XXX starlets… I know I am a newbie and would have never gone alone if it were not for a very good friend of mine, who is the only other person I know to have the same taste in porn and speaks about sex the same cheerful, liberal way. She has also done this before, so she was not as shy as me and would explain a lot of stuff. I have to say, as far as some of the more costly products go, the temptation is indeed overwhelming. I especially liked this: http://en.lelo.com/index.php?collectionName=insignia-luxe&groupName=TIANI

…. Whereas the peoples on stage… That was a smack certain libido killer. Some people were so ugly, so sadly cheap-silicone, it made us blush. Some were just sad, old and … sad. There were very few that were not terrible and perhaps two of the visitors there would make me horny if I happened to be ovulating. The rest were just mostly sweaty single men who came to rub against ‘naughty nurses ‘in fishnets and whatever some of the others were supposed to be… Butt implants commercias or something. Then again I haven't seen these many tele-lenses and puffed up semi-professional cameras since the Nikon fair last week.

The finish day of this bizarre trio was the slaughter of the pigs in the General’s home farm. It’s still a double murder, terrible and nightmare-inducing, very cruel, very painful and to people like me, messed up. However, I tend to face the things that freak me out through a lens, so I got some good pictures. And I am a big fan of gross anatomy and like the study of internal organs, as long as there isn’t any blood involved. Plus there is something to be said about the General ripping out a pig’s spine as if he just met a Predator and fucked it up and said: “Wrong ooman, asshole.”

Imago

2011-12-03T10:35:00.003+01:00

I woke up feeling so incredibly small today. So incredibly unborn. I felt like I should just curl up and die and stop wasting the air of this insensitive little world. Luckily I’ve felt like this before and I know what it is. In the insect world it’s called imago. Shedding a shell.

One of the options was sending buck shots through my photography bag, but I don’t really want to kill Mark, not yet. He was kissed and neatly packed into his bag and will sleep, the gentle prince, until the spring comes. Sure, I will shoot plenty of dogs and winter family sports and places we’ll visit, but no more expecting money for my work. I have no idea how I will get the money to live, but I got it before and besides – lately most of my photography work was just simply stolen or published without my name signed and for all I tried, for all I invested, time and resources, it kept coming back to nothing. Normally I’d just abandon my ambition, because it’s been so long since I’ve been doing this – but I love my light, my colors, this beauty captured and stolen from time, too much. So March it is.

People who will want to find me will find me. People who will want to hire me will hire me. But no more evenings away from my husband, begging people for deals and clinging onto false promises like a naïve, approval starved child. I’ve given so much and achieved so little the way I’ve approached it until now.

It’s time to go to sleep and shed this shell – something that always feels awful, painful and rotten on this end and always feels like getting wings on the other. It’s time for pain and helplessness now. In spring it’ll be another story.

2011-12-02T23:00:00.002+01:00

I have to say I love the way my brain works. Not that it's doing me any favors, but I am still in awe of its predictability. :D

My day hasn’t been the best. Finding out yet more of my published photos have not been signed and yet more people posing as professionals have degraded my efforts, not to mention a photo shoot I’ve been really looking forward to has been cancelled and Barki seems to be a little bit sick. I’ve tried writing a single page of a book I am obliged to write and instead ended up writing fourteen pages of a book I am only writing to blow off steam that builds while I’m focusing on the research of the first. It’s not exactly Mozart – finished in the first go – but it makes for an excellent skeleton structure for the narrative I will eventually, probably, embellish. Huge chunks of the last part of my space adventure are coming together, even if in a strange and unfamiliar tone. There is a scene in which I kill my first real person, but I only wrote about three lines on the subject. The writing should probably rest for a bit, a month or so, so that I can re-read it and decide if this cold, detached, shallow and dry tone fits perfectly to the mental state of the heroine at the time of the final showdown or can I do a lot better… Either which way, it was an unexpected positive closure of a bad day.

2011-12-01T20:58:00.003+01:00

Oddly enough, I have not listened to Tori Amos for over fifteen years. She reminds me of a period of my life when my dreams were plagued by Gaiman's Sandman (and when I say plagued I mean there were oozes of fucked up nightmares and black holes of confidence and creativity, only a numbing fear of death that extended well into my waking hours.) I hung out with a girl back then, which I still consider a filthy snake, the biblical type of someone who betrays one’s trust and friendship without the slightest emotional aftermath. Tori Amos was the backsound of bad dreams, rape issues and feeling very very left behind to die alone.

It’s always curious to hear such a strong song again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PAxJ_kJtkM) during a photo shoot and feel nothing but inspiration and power. How the lowly have changed :D Indeed.

Before the doggie walk today, because I have started working more intently on the travel book, I also started writing stuff in the counter-balance mode. It’s the way I write – one part is difficult, focused and serious and the other is playful, silly, funky and comes naturally, in great bursts of color. In an hour I wrote a two-page short story for my next collection of stories, about my lovers. I wrote a piece of it to the General and he pulled my head back and aimed a fist at my bent neck, saying it will be over very quickly. He is not happy with my fictional view on open marriage. It’s probably the reaction of someone who only ever read non-fiction books. There should be a long conversation about the merits of fiction and fantasy before I read him something from my list again.

There’s a line in that story, though, that I find worth translating :)

“That I love books is a gross understatement. I worship books. I steal them, I forge them, I take them even from museums and monasteries. I am obsessed with preserving the tales often left between only two mouse-nibbled covers at all. To me they are like diamonds: each is precious, but there are rare samples which are more precious still. I like to wait and see who will be the one to take them home and then befriend those people.”

The Rosa Accessories catalogue shots...

2011-12-01T19:36:00.002+01:00

Publishing some of the catalogue work... Work like this really makes you itch and hop on toetips, as you're so anxious to show it to everyone :D

The brainstorm behind the beauty of the baggies are Mateja Bobek and Nina Škoberne

The models are the magnificent Claire Pecniq, Tamara Kolenc and Levin Oparenović
Make up was done by the lovely Nea Likar
Hair by Nevenka Bobek
Stylings were from S.Oliver
The concepts, drafts and direction was by the fantastic pair Dare Vasiljevič and Tanja Špan of ARHIMETRICS

Manca Ljubej

2011-11-30T17:15:00.001+01:00

Manca posted two more of her pickies, which means so can I :D Which just made my whole day, because I really like the stuff I did with her and can't wait to work with her again, some day, some day :D

Some people, without any cosmetics and in the most natural, basic light, are simply glorious.

The doggies for calendar photoshoot....

2011-11-30T01:21:00.002+01:00

THERE! It's nigh 1:3o and I made THIRTY pickies just to prove that today was an excellent doggie day :D About 400 left to go... :P

The General is at work and although it's damn cold here, I don't like the bed without him. So I'm making pickies.

Pascal with Mags on a leash, Lyra with the General on the leash and Sophie with Drej on the leash, underneath the ginko tree :D

Look! Look at the nice lady with the blinky light! Look!

Mags, Paski, The General, Barky, Drej and Sophie :)

Paski, the prime sample of his breed :D

Sophie, the ballerina

The Reservoir Dogs

Who? Me?! I would never!

The walkie trick :D

The fuzzy beard trick :P

The "Gimme that food! Gimme that food!" trick.

Give nose :D Give nose :D (You can't see it on this pic, but she actually licked the hand just a tiny bit, tenderly :D

"I'm NOT looking! Come on, get it, I am NOT looking!"

.... ah, but it was so worth it :D

You may not be able to spy the wisdom behind those eyes, but she certainly has the coolest twirl on her chest :D

The flying beagle, the exploding spaniel and a seriously too clever parsons :D

The feral hounds... Wait till you've seen them take on a great dane.

"Look, bitch, are you gonna get that picture or am I suppose to just roll around for you the rest of the day?"

Tamara in the park... again.... :))

2011-11-29T21:15:00.000+01:00

Lady Dead of Winter...

2011-11-28T20:18:00.000+01:00

With eyes like these, Špela would be ideal for a thriller noir movie :D

Couple more pickies from the fashion shoot preps...

2011-11-28T18:36:00.000+01:00

2011-11-26T19:57:00.000+01:00

I owe an apology to Z, for telling her off so often, due to her lack of recent entries… Well, lately I know how she feels! Not only you a) work all the time b) on stuff you cannot show until it’s published, but also c) there’s so much going on and d) not much of it feels worth the mention compared to some of the stuff that’s really going on that you can’t say! Seriously, it’s a mess. One of those really kinky, cool ones. Plus there’s the early elections thing going on and the streets are full of shameless peddlers, promoting their candidates like they were cattle, and it’s so noisy it’s impossible to think. Mostly I just go hide someplace off. It’s clear that some of the things I hate the most is noise. Noise unhinges me. Perish the thought I have to listen to two sources of noise at the same time. That’s just mind-scrambling.

We shot in an old-alike pubbish place today, very friendly, super picturesque, but unfortunately it also got unexpectedly crowded and we couldn’t really stretch out as much as I probably intended. Also the light was shit, so I ended up using the flash… again… all the time :D I was going for a more noir mood and actually captured some very ‘silent movie’ slides…

As music goes, it’s been about fifteen years since I last heard Tori Amos and, as per usual, it fitted the mood then and there perfectly. Other than that, I’ve listened to Crying in the Rain about 450 times and the other times I’ve listened to Horehronie, plotting a trip to .. well, Horehronie. I’ve been reading the Hunger Games almost famished and actually even wrote some of my fiction and non-fiction drafts. Drej got her hands on the published Ph.D dissertation, in actual physical form, and this leads by a point :) Time to step up :P

I notice I am much more afraid lately. No, not afraid… Spooked. I am unhappy in dark places, I am not happy to have to deal with people going ‘boo!’. I saw blood today on the stairway and hated that. I avoid situations in which consequences would last longer than a day (like frozen rivers), steer clear of ugly movies, always read plots in advance before I watch or read anything… Funny, that. There were times when I just rolled my eyes in the face of danger. But then I got stightly overly reactive and violent, so perhaps now it’s a good thing I send the dog in first and follow, slowly, cautiously, with my finger on the big button of the camera :P

And by the way – one can always tell when someone is crying in the rain. Water has nothing to do with it. Even the color of one’s face is different, if you look right enough.

Teja & Claire in the green

2011-11-26T19:13:00.000+01:00

A new face...

2011-11-26T19:12:00.002+01:00

Tamara

2011-11-26T19:11:00.002+01:00

The face of Teja...

2011-11-26T19:10:00.003+01:00

Claire in the Gösta Berling era...

2011-11-26T19:10:00.000+01:00

The beauty shots of the Immortal Models

2011-11-25T05:48:00.002+01:00

http://www.immortal-models.com/index.php?en/langId/

2011-11-25T05:42:00.000+01:00

Because Kindle died, I've been having these nightmares - the latest ugly ones. I dream a lot about being in Homeland (the really cool and spooky series I watch lately), but those are not the bad bit. The bad bit is that I keep having my photo equipment burn, and melt. Tonight I first dreamt there was a house fire, and although I tried wrapping the whole bag into a baby blanket, it mattered little - the contents have simply cooked. Everything, even the cracked iPad, was still working, but very badly, like a screen of a broken phone. Later on, the same gear was close to one of the studio lamps that cought fire on my desk and it slightly, ever so slightly, ruined all my lenses and the flash. I hate this feeling, the mortality of things I rely on so much these days. I hate to think that by the time I have finally made back some money I've invested in them, their span has run out.

Kindle R.I.P.

2011-11-24T10:54:00.001+01:00

My beloved beautiful Kindle has gone into the e-book heaven... No more, no more... R.I.P., my loyal companion, my tiny librarian friend. Already I feel the lack of you like a black hole on the homey corner of my room, where you used to look at me funny if I ignored you for too long...

couple more Katja Aine pickies...

2011-11-21T13:19:00.000+01:00