Heraklium

In a rush: a great day, half spent drooling lazily into the pillow, still slightly awestruck from last night's zumba; half at a photo shoot with Kimi and Franka at the Heraclium: a powerful small ruin on the other side of the river bank that not everyone knows is there and is quite wonderful... And for the finish line, a coffee&cake with Franka, which I wouldn't mind at all having for a new coffee&cake friend. The afternoon went by in a flash!! It was almost eight by the time I got home, just as the General was returning. He went straight to bed, back on his night shift timetable, which is a good thing, as then he won't see what treats I got in turn for taking pics of pretty girls! Sometimes my life's just bumblebee-ish!! :D

Zumba FDW

OMG. I haven't been this sweaty since last night's sex! I'm actually all sticky and smelly and purple :D I love it! What some of these women can do with their stamina is absurd! If we assume I've moved only half the amount otherwise expected, my calves continuously stinging like a bitch, and having the fitness of a senior citizen snail, I didn't do half bad compared to my other strenuous activities (when alone and fully behind the computer). Walking the mutt 8 miles a day every day isn't good enough. The damn legs still hurt too much.

         So, Zumba is this salsa-like booty shaking, arms butterflying, half capoeira half ballet thingie with very loud music (Ricky Martin not amiss) and an instructor that seems to eat, drink, breathe and wash her teeth with Speed. I have to find something to do beforehand, because by the time it's finished, I'm just getting groovy. I think I will make this into one of my investments. It certainly is something to do before you get home all hyper and jumpy and your husband is half interested in going out for a summer evening walk with the doggie. How about an evening run? Also I could murder a coffee ice-cream right now :D

Another lovely movie night, spent entangled and cushy, watching weird old classics. This time's turn was Saturday Night Fiver - a movie which I, ironically, never saw before in full. The General felt like being in a super-retro mood, old Brooklyn fashion, music and disco groove... It's kind of funny to watch men dance from we're standing, though I have to say it is also quite admirable how some people come to life really only when they're on the dance floor. I suppose it is the same as with battlefields or operating rooms... Other than that, it is a ridiculously depressing movie and there is I think not a single character you don't feel profound pity for sooner or later. Everyone is such fucking losers and the most tragic are those who know it. No wonder the film was such a hit. 

I woke up with a dreadful urge to see Mugen again. My passion for him has not yielded since the first time I saw him and I still plan to name my kids after him, though to get my full dose of Champloo I would have to watch it again start to finish and I don't really have time to do that ATM. Plus I've failed to find an original copy, as the dubbed American one isn't half as lyrical. Sorry, but there is a difference between 'May God forgive you, because I won't...' and 'You shall not recieve the mercy of Buddha twice." Cuortesy of Jin :))
        Ironically, the line which sealed the deal for me in this story doesn't belong to the story at all, but to one of the fictions post festum: a ficlet in which Jin continues the search, only this time for his friends and muses he's met Fuu, who was fat and happy and married and pregnant and the kid wasn't her simple husbands, but most probably Mugen's...
        That story made up my whole winter day :D

The beauty of Helen

Cats commission

I have sketched so many cats in this past week they are coming out of my ears. But still the contractor is not content. This is what happens when they fire the previous illustrator over money and then hire a cheaper one and ask them to do exactly what the previous one did, just not in an obvious way. Ain't my job peachy keen?

An excellent saturday.

Another one of those picturesque crossroads farms underneath the hills that  am so very fond of lately

Though quite busy, it was another Saturday spent as days should be spent: triumphant, educational, outdoorsy, among friends, with yummy food and teaching the dog a new trick :D It was supposed to be stretched over the whole weekend, but Saturday was the only real sunny day scheduled, so we crammed it all in one go.

        In the morning I trekked again with the mutt and ran into one of my models. It reminded me of the days when I was in such great shape that I could run practically without limit - the effort no longer drained but instead fueled me with energy. That was basically the vital part of my evening in the Vipava army training period, where, like a horse, I literally needed to cool down. At first it sucked, of course, but after a few weeks I simply ran for hours, until the evening set, then got back, showered and passed out. 

         After the General returned, I got my first real lesson in making bullets. Like cameras, guns are put together by several delicate pieces: you need an excellent gun, yes, but you also need an excellent spyglass and then you require an excellent bullet. And there are a LOT of bullets. I felt so tiny and stupid, listening to the explanations of the difference in the quality of the casing and then the weight of the point and then the quality and the amount of the powder. NOT the caliber - no - this was all the same bullet, but how it is built. Now, of course if you ask me about the camera, the lenses or even Warcraft, I can be just as good with these numbers, but although I am so very passionate about sharpshooting, I am still embarrassingly ignorant of some of these stats.

          Although!... Then we went to the range, high above the valley, and met with the supervisor of the hunter's training area on top of a hill. The land there was so very lovely - we drove through regions I have never seen before and the tiny farmsteads, the huge ancient castle ruins on top of some hills, the little white churches and the forests with trees the size of rockets... If you asked me to WALK over it, I would gladly. The men first calibrated the bullet to the rifle as I spiraled around them with the dog, so she would get used to the noise. Starbark isn't gunshot shy, she is just cautious. When the shot sounds, she looks up, checks with me if all is okay and then checks where the General is, then waits for her treat, as I keep treating her for every time she doesn't panic :)

          Then it was my turn to shoot. Needles to say I remain supreme :D Even standing up, with that heavy device, and panting from running, I remain supreme. It's honestly no wonder the army officers never allowed me to use the sharpshooter's rifles, as I would embarrass the men so grievously. I am nowhere as good with a heavy handgun, because it hurts me way too much and after ten shots with a magnum I can barely make a fist (especially after double action, ugh! :s ), which made for some very interesting flower-picking afterwards, but things still get pierced. I'd have to try it again with Beretta, which was my favorite in the army, and have not had the opportunity to use since. Haha, the supervisor complained how his wife always bested him also and I told him a secret that women see worse when menstruating, so he should challenge her when she's in those days, and the two men looked at one another and replied: a hero has not yet been born who would dare put a gun in the woman's hands when she's menstruating.

     Quite true :P

         On our way back, we stopped by a buddy who checked the undercarriage of the car, which I supposedly broke, but as it turns out, the impact was just noisy - it was in no evident way destructive. Which is a stone off my chest. After driving flawlessly for 500 miles, I fuck the car up in the parking lot...

         The poker night, for all of us being a bit tired like a dog became a chat-and-dip-the-nachos-in-great-dipping night, during which the ladies chirped and chatted like we always do and men were trying to keep up to no veil, hehe. Poor suckers. Though, having observed the General surrounded by male company of people he's known a long time, I get to see him alive and happy like he isn't often while operating in the serious world. LoL, I especially loved how one of his mates that we met while driving in the countryside yelled at him: By God you are ugly, I wouldn't even DARE to go hunting with you in the woods anymore!!

          Ah, the courage of some men indeed! :D

The three things that make any photo excellent and the experience fun

1) Light. Light is the alpha and the omega of photography. You can have only a grain of sand of glow or the full blast sunshine, but you HAVE TO TAME it, meaning you have to know what it will do. Caught between the low sun and a reflective surface, anyone looks otherworldly. You either supply yourself with it or you adjust yourself to it. Either way it works.

2) The machine. Cameras go from mobile phone thingies to Hasselblads. It is the same as with the light - it doesn't matter what you have as long as you are familiar with it. My old Porky was already dieing and I still used it to make two hundred pictures of 'ladies underneath umbrellas'. The critical bit is knowing your camera. They all have flaws, they all have powers. Just make sure you use it A LOT. Knowing how to use Photoshop doesn't hurt either, though only for the finishing touches.

3) The style. This is not quite so easy to find, but it helps to have a very clear image in your mind of what you want your photos to look like. There are amazing photographers out there who employ a zillion different routs to express their message, so deciding what you want to give to the world with your art is on the top of the list. It goes for all three that you should study, study, study.

tHE END OF vAIS

Today I have spoken to a person that I haven't spoken to in almost ten years. The last time we did, I almost kissed her, but I lacked the courage and, perhaps, the resolve. We chatted for about fifteen minutes and I finally understand why people say that a missed opportunity can never be repeated: you can stay the same, but the river couldn't care less. People change so badly, they drift from what we loved about them so viciously... Until there is nothing left to like about them but the distant memory of a youth folly and the adventurous gleam in their eyes that we followed into the battlefield. In the army, Vais was the best of the athletes in our group and I was the worst, but I was the one that everybody talked about. Often in not the nicest terms. Together, we were almost fierce. We were always the ones to volunteer for the worst of tasks and always brave and always clever and always passionate. We were, from two opposite directions, the scariest of soldiers. It's a good thing we never coupled, because what we are today would have been an even bigger crevasse. From the natural born leader and a commando, she is now a steady office officer, soccer mom and a nice wife. Kissing her today would be like walking into a lamp-post that's been put onto your childhood forest path. 

         I hate the normality. I hate that it is the last step in people's lives. It is so easy to stop dreaming and stop fighting and I can feel that I've grown old and fat and permissive - but normality for me is the first step, it's what you fall back onto when the life that your pursue bites too hard. I hate the thought of being a creature of the current as oppose to the creature of creation. There isn't even any reason to mourn the end of my would-be lover - we were all just circumstantial there. For some it was the best times of their lives and for some it was an excellent lesson in fucking with people with power. (Mentally. I wasn't very good at sex back then, I was married to a gay virgin. Though mentally I could poke indeed.)

         Being a wife, being a mother, being a dog owner should be one's HOME. NOT THEIR WHOLE WORLD!

I always forget how great it is to work outdoors, because I am always so reluctant to leave my castle - but it is. Today was an excellent case in point. Not just for the morning walk with the mut, in frosty mist hour, 

but also in the afternoon. We had a small warm-up spring trial photoshoot by the lake and the light was glorious. Even the drive there, Starbark mesmerized by the expirience of sitting on my knees while in the front of the car, ears flapping from the opened window, and the scenery and the bunch of young 'fishermen' who all wanted me to see their mobile photos of their various dogs :)) We shot for two hours while the sun was setting, blinded by the gold in the sky. It was SO rejuvenating. No way I could replicate such wild brightness in a studio - almost too much of it, and hard to tame. But it was a great day to be a photographer. And on the way back the model sang along to radio songs with such a glass bell voice, and the farmhouses passed us by, in the evening twilight, until we reached the city, busier than it's been since the winter began. Everyone was wearing skimpy clothes, half the people were on bikes. It was perfect :D

The springy mornings, coming right up

Poetry

I've been making an effort to write a poem as bad as the ones I heard last night. here are my so far established three stages.
I. just write anything, anything at all, that pops into the brain at random

The spiral neon light shines
Dog is barking out of loneliness. Too much coffee.
An atom of silence escapes into the current
While I'm shitting in my blue bathroom.

II. now cut and reorder...

The spiral blue dog needs coffee
While an atom of loneliness shines
on me shitting into the current
of my silent neon bathroom

III... and shake a lot.

An atom of a barking dog needs coffee
White loneliness is shitting in a spiral
of blue silence shining into the current
of my escaping neon bathroom.

.... and you get high art.
Jesus fuck.

Hell is other people's poetry recitals

I am quite poetophobic. It's always been just so: whatever profuse passion and affection I hold to literature in prose form, stops abruptly when things get 'poetical'. Nothing turns me off faster than a bunch of lines tossed and scrambled together to sound like they're an outcry of some profound social revolution while at the same time being experimental, erotic, original and personal... because it really, really isn not. The poems that these people recited tonight were like something bad I had written, then cut apart, glued back together and then washed in a washing machine. Bad. Baaaad. A woman was using 'Camera Obscura' so often, she managed to use its wrong form twice in one song. Of course it could be just me that's unable to see their greatness - some of these people could be downright geniuses of free style and only I would perceive them as a headache, but on the fundamental level, the one that couldn't escape fast enough, it felt like I was being beaten with a book that has random words falling out, into my eyes, burning me, cutting into my brain. The only two things I was not in pain to listen to were very very short haikus  from some old lady and the long passage of prose that Drey read from her novel. Everything else was like torture. The duo on vocals and guitar was worse than dDaniel once singing karaoke for his boyfriend's birthday (and we all still have nightmares from that, so... :p) The people there were nasty. A man spoke to me, starting with: so, did you survive an hour of literature being read? Geez, cause that's not aloof and condescending at all. Well, frankly, it felt like being bitchslapped by a book that's having an epileptic seizure. If it's radical truthfulness you're pursuing. Mr. Poet, the Almighty I-got-the-universe-by-the-shorts-and-curlies cause I say the words cunt and shit in my poems a lot. 

         Right.

         If this is what poetry is these days, then I am genuinely missing nothing, swearing my allegiance to prose. 

 

Drey bringing us something I can relate to

Uh, but there was this one line I did like quite plenty: "Which God do angels choose for their home and which for their holiday retreat?"

           Haha. Clever.

In a hurry...

 Working on two nasty projects at the same run, having just finished the third, which came through surprisingly smoothly. I have so much illustration going on, I overlooked the fact it's the first day of spring and one of these days my once-best-friend has his thirty second birthday. (I'm still in the lead, though he's gaining :p) I have no idea how the projects might go, either entirely amiss or super successfully. I just don't know. I am in no mood to draw now, but I am also *wanting* the iPad, so I'm working on everything I can get my hands on. It usually helps, tricking my brain into inspiration, if I eat something nice and nap and have some sex before I get into the bubble of my mental studio and start doodling about, using often four different kinds of drawing methods. The General is helpful as it gets, causing my orgasms to feel like I'm drowning in hot honey spiced with fireworks... Possibly that's just because I promised that once these projects are done, I'll give him the large back tattoo... but it's the result that fuels the awe :P

            Okay. Fingers and my chubby small toes crossed and let's see if tomorrow's gonna be as good a day...

Girls night out

Fridays are becoming quite an upturn for my social life. Well, in the bigger picture  :D  It just feels so oddly good to go out, pretend it's warm, stroll and talk about stuff that men would never talk about in a million years  :P  And then we meet in a bar and there we talked some more until the music started - so loud (though amazingly appealing. Some don't sound half as good if listened to on room temperature  :ppp) that I can STILL hear it. We had to communicate writing semi absurd semi obscene and semi entirely silly statements on the back of our tabs, or with mime. Which can turn ugly :)pThere was also a bizarre episode with a canned bit of nuts (that I do not recommend) and a song playing during had the punch-line 'Just put my nuts in your mouth' that seemed to really fit at the time. We certainly all sat up like candles when we realized what we're hearing :))) It's been eons since I got home at one and spent another hour editing the uber underlit, blurry, psychedelic pickies  :D  All in all the girls nights out FDW. 8)  Even if we do need the rest of the weekend to regain out fit, old wives that we are :P

I got more heart! See, this is what friends are for. The back up unit of sanity, when the main drive turns to popcorn. Friends FDW. :D

Also, there is a froggie. Froggies help with making babbies. If I have as many babbies as froggies, then I'll know who to thank:D

But mainly there are friends. It's winter and it's raining and my husband has to drag me across the street and force me to buy clothes that don't make me look like a bum (Who needs clothes when there are so many iPad Apps!!!?) but I have a business date today, so those are connected ...
      Here's Drey, the heart supplier, in a dim, imrpovized hurry. Still looking like Antiunous, the lucky rowan. :P

the Marriage thing

I'm thinking about marriage. How do you know you're ready? Well. Sometimes that's the only thing you DO know. Is the other person good for you? Do you feel never as comfortable and okay as when you put your head in their lap?  Are you gratefully shedding all your stupid convictions to grow into something that doesn't disappoint? Are they someone you can see yourself growing old with? Are they someone can't wait to see again and tell them how you've been? Someone that whatever you've done, holds no appeal anymore unless you can do it again with them? Then yes. They are perfect. And yourself? How do you know you are good enough for them? I think... the answer to that is fairly simple. All you have to do, when things will get less fun, is to try and make it better as oppose of taking any opportunity, any excuse, to run the other way. When the shitstorm hits, you need to be the one who will try to hold the umbrella. If you want the other to be always safe and happy, they you're perfect for them, too.

          The problem has increasingly been with the freedom of choice. Cause then you think you have the right to act any which way you see excellent. People reach maturity in a terrible trial and once you're all grown up and independent, it's not quite so easy to learn how to depend on someone all over again. If everyone married at 14, before we're adults, then the growing-up period would be one rough, intertwining period of sex and trying to understand the world. By the time we would be 22, we would already be just one person. But trying to couple at the age of 30, that's like pushing together two Lego's that just don't fit. So every time something goes wrong, you place blame and demand your rightful recognition. Like a child, you demand to be treated as a person, not as half of a person. That's a scary intuition. People believe they have a right to be super selfish (as oppose to the little bit sexy selfish) and that if it all doesn't go their way, they should just run. It certainly is a lot easier to abandon a burning ship as it is to try and save it.

Feeling better. I should have gone out sooner, but this isn't the weather to pursue a reason to live outdoors. Man&Dog went to the first day of school 2.0, so the General told me to go out with a friend as not to be left behind alone. Things are certainly returning to normal - he even told me off afterwards for sinning. (I go out with a gorgeous woman and my shameful sin is a piece of cake. Literally. Fuck I'm old :s)p

          This is what my heart looks now:

It's small, patched, cracked and ugly, but it is there. I've finished the short smut story about sadistic sex crazed drug addicts, so that's that... I also figured it out how to explain what an iPad is. For Pete'ssakes - it's a *pad*. Like a notepad? Just a 21st century one. You probably couldn't launch a space shuttle with it or paint the Mona Lisa, but playing Plants Vs. Zombies while facetiming with your Australian mate, on a buss to a museum you've come prepared for... It's a pad. With monster movies in it.

Okay, just for the fact that mine is by far the prettiest Beagle ever - though I re-stress at this point I am a lot more than simply "a dog owner and a WoW player" - I feel alright. Counting backwards days until spring, when I will be hoarding out my models to spill naked over lush landscapes for my Mark, and when I will be able to paint more like a raving soul and less like a machine... All Zemotion's photos are deep dark blue lately. Perhaps we should not have ceased respecting the Kurents so lightly. Someone's got to get rid of the chill.

Postfestum

I'm attempting to slowly rebuild my mental health. It's slow going. For now every slightest bit disturbs me, most things sadden me and the rest depress me, so I have to convince myself I'm a little bit autistic and just be in awe of one thing at a time and not think about anything else. Yesterday I went with the General to place rock salt in the forest for the animals and while he was fixing it upon the trees, I poked around a creek for an hour, looking for different kinds of sand, silt and clay. Since that App commercial for Theodore Gray's chemistry and since David Liittschwager's photo of biodiversity for the Edward O. Wilson's article, I've revoked my passion for minute stone grains in their natural environment and plan to make my own iPad App with lots of pretty pickies on the subject. I also painted myself in summer mode. You can't see the Mark, the Kindle and the Pad (or the knitting), but they're in the bag  :p

The suicide curtain call

It's absurd how close I came to killing myself last night. It used to be a shorter impulse and far more latches, and last night it was just… It’s time.  I have had enough of this life. The day has been the day for it. I had a great time with dad in the morning. He feels sorry for me. The female individuals of my family will do, will ever only do anything that gives them the emotional and/or economic high-ground and as far as the General is concerned. Well… This man, who would eat sand so that I could eat pie... No doubt about it, suicide is selfish. It is the most fundamentally selfish act. But once you are as far, you honestly can no longer care about what everyone else will say.  For once. I would have cut my wrists and spooned into the bed next to him, so that he wouldn’t know I’m dying in his arms, he would just sleep, gently. But I didn’t have any very sharp blades and he saw me trying to get his hunting knife. He locked all the blades in the house after that into the gun safe and wanted to point a gun at me to test me, but that didn’t end well. Then I thought I could just hang myself, the place certainly has plenty tall strongholds, but he would probably hear me kicking. We have no pills to speak of and the second story window fall wouldn’t kill me. It shows I was lacking resolve; otherwise I wouldn’t be here to write this entry. General beat me and forced me onto the bed and took away the ladder, so I couldn’t get off. while he sat in silence in the dark on the sofa. Of course I could have gotten off if I wanted. But he climbed up himself and after a few hours of sobbing in the silence I remembered my mum isn’t speaking to me today because yesterday I picked the wrong pastry for lunch.  I had such a violent fit of sobbing bile came into my mouth and I ultimately passed out. Though for all the sleep when I woke up, my weeping just spontaneously continued. The General cannot understand this. His family doesn’t exist to continuously psychofuck one another over, insult, humiliate and abuse. They are normal people. Mine are extreme. And me, being stretched so wide between the two - the absolute optimism and happiness and such deep, disarming grief, cannot take it much longer.

         The truth is, I welcome the sweet, sweet darkness. The darkness in which I am still hopeful and where I can dream that someday I will have books published and children witty and toys and travels and I will look how I want and eat what I like and when I will say I love you, the reply won’t be ‘If you did, you wouldn’t do such things to me.’ Here, in Celje, all I have to look forward to is an ongoing decay of bright ideas, hope and my infamous life energy.

          I would not miss the things I’d leave behind; because I am sure they would all be there for me on the other side. My heaven’s also changed – for the longest time I thought it would be an endless nighttime library, but not anymore. Now I know my heaven will be trekking and traveling with the General: every day we will climb a mountain, every day we will dine in some lovely village, every day we will cross a new bridge. This will be an eternity in paradise. This is what waits for me on the other side of the sweet darkness.But then I get beaten up and stop thinking like this for a while.

Another glorious wake-up sex, so if I die today while driving to get the ill aunt out of the hospital, I shouldn't have too many regrets - provided somebody actually manages to get all those of my books on stand-by /posthumously/ published  :p  It's a long ride, dad will come along, probably commenting on my driving every single bit of the way, and I'm thinking about taking Starbark also. She should probably get used to long rides. Gods know I intend for her to joyride through many :D  Save for a few nooks, I should know the road by heart by now. Looks like the day is also going to be spotless.

In other headlines, we watched a couple episodes  of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, but they are hard to watch. I can't really put my finger on it, but that show just sucks. I mean, it has Forest Whitaker, whom I can never get enough of and I love his character and costume, sort of zen monk executioner mind and a body of a 30-year old, but he seems waaay overdone and his constant gym scenes are ridiculous.  The scripts just feel super flat. YES that was a sublime scene in the Criminal Minds episode where we first meet this shady new team, but do you have to re-do it *every* *single* *time*?? The rest of the cast is... well, there's Janeane Garofalo, who I am not sure what she is, but she looks either scared or ashamed to be in a TV show - hey, darling, TV is the next black!. There's some anorexic Irish dude that I can't understand half the time and last night he did the 'I'm s super sniper, so it's my fault the other evil sniper is doing the evil snipering thing just to mess with me'. Done to death, people?! And get better consultants, that's not how snipering works. (There is also some less handsome, more strong-silent unpredictable guy that likes to jump the justice system and shoot bad people, and the necessary retired supermodel that doesn't do much else than pout in a sexy way, wear tights and kind of flirts but not flirts, since she's supposedly a very capable agent woman. Or something.) Oh, and we also get a minute or so of the perky Kirsten Vangsness in the exact same role as she has in CM, only here she just always types and talks very fast and delivers half of the witty come-backs as she would if she actually had someone on the other side of the phone.

However, there is something that made my day yesterday (plus more tattooing the General and fine, fine coffee time with Drey:D) - I came across (my daily fishing for iApps) - Theodore Gray's Chemistry App introduction video. That just transfixed me. So the geeky science teachers aren't extinct yet?? :D I was  deeply in love for the duration of the video. It brought back my whole childhood zeal in one tidal wave :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiEqf5wb3g

Bled in BW