Morning poem (I babble these on my way to work, freezing my ass off while the sun rises behind the industrial smoke towers)

The moon may be a harsh mistress
But the sun seems such a shy lover
I mean the earliest sun, with its gaze bent low
brushing sideways kisses to my freckles and eyelid
Rimming my cap and cheek gold
tripping all over my eyelashes
So shy and still such a glamorous difference
A young prince's first time at a ball.

Yeesh, seven below freezing and I got out before seven this morning, to finally walk the stupid dog, who's been giving me 'how do you mean you're going somewhere without me?' look for the past two days. The second day of work yesterday, slightly more stressful than the first - the put me right behind the register and I am not a cashier type a girl. I would be happier working five hours of setting shit on shelves than an hour behind the counter, though time certainly flies when you're worried you've just managed to get yourself fired on the first day for over-charging a customer because your fingers were shaking and you pressed 111 instead of 11 ... *Knock on wood*, I hadn't fucked up, yet. And at the end of the shift, out of nowhere, a shadow behind me. General came looking for me - twice, because he couldn't find me the first time around - to tell me he's made dinner and came to pick me up. Silly bunny. I keep replaying that verse from a song I like: all what turns into a miracle by your embrace ...

World was really pretty today. It hasn't snowed, so everything is in its right form, but covered in frost, sort of glittered all over, slightest hints of color under grey and the sunlight is extremely white. The sun seems to be kind to me these days - I see it when I go to work, all pompous and glorious, and oftentimes it's just setting when I finish. Moon may be a harsh mistress, but the sun certainly is a generous master. I thought of a word to describe the normals. Same as ghilly means 'human/decision maker', so I conjured an alternative to a Normal person - which translates roughly to 'them of meager passions'. 

On excercises in 'normal'

Someway it feels the General hopes my disdain of the Real world will waver with time, but I ask him to recognize how complicated it is for me to immerse myself in the goings-about of Normal people. It doesn’t get any easier, it actually only gets harder – without enthusiasm, certain commitments fall porous. I look back and marvel at all the stuff I’ve done. That was some bizarre logic right there. Today I took a job as plain an uncomplicated as can be – albeit in customer service, so there’s people – and every passing moment I am reminded how rich, famous and comfortable my life would be if I sucked just the right * and licked all the right *, selling my stuff for contracts untold. Instead, I rather pose as the lowliest of low employees, sweeping floors, setting shelves, being nice to strangers. I was so thrilled today, my first day, to be able to shelf notebooks neatly, I forgot the time and had to be told to go home. Truth is, my wish list is ridiculously short. Like, a couple of months of this role short – I’ll need new shoes at some point, nowadays shoes simply aren’t made for walking – my fucking top shelf hiking sneakers are all but sole-less by now, after one freaking season; I need the new camera bag, the damn thing is still costly as F, at least the one I have my intuitive eye set on …. Then I want a copy of my beloved smutty I Roved Out; some random shit from art shops and about a hundred bucks’ worth of … well… more shit from an art shop. Brush, medium, pigments, paper, the usual. You know me. Our deal is, I get to keep 10% of my measly paycheck every month for random checks off the list. And some little bit saved for the summer vacation. That’s still only a couple of months’ worth of pretending to be Normal. And it doesn’t matter what the body does, the brain will always be grateful for the change of scenery and already the little gears that have all but stopped after November shenanigans, after just a day, a simple day, begin to creak. 

Solstice moon all fancy and dramatic

Old gum :D

Added my own 'invented' gouaches to the array (lavender, vintage rose, titan buff, pale indigo...), they look like old dry chewing gum :D But they fit oh so nicely with their sweet sisters .. <3 As it turns out, although this box is half the size of what I was hoping for - exactly half - it's still lovely and it would fit a mid layer of tubs if need be. I've also managed to make a couple of my own half-tubs from hard passepartout cardboard. They're not a pinnacle of exactness, but they fit well enough if pushed hard enough, which is good enough for me :P

I wonder from time to time if results of medical examinations irk me because I am perfectly healthy, but I am not perfect, period? :D Hear, oh, hear, the egomaniac's rant ... :P

      .. At least I hope I'm perfectly healthy, the bloodworks haven't come back yet. But, yup, again, though I really really hate it, I had to do the whole 'new job doctors must' dance, being poked and prodded, measured and filling questionnaires. Summer check-up didn't fly with this contractor, so, once around we go. The blood nurse was cranky, too, had zero sympathy towards my unease. Others were very polite. There were dozens of us, so it took hours. Results, as per usual, are hanging onto perfection by the skin of its teeth. I have a slow heart, but out of 60 normal beats, I have 59. I have a lesser hearing on one ear, but not the ear itself, something is blocking the canal. (They asked if I have a cold and I said 'you can tell, huh?') One of my eyes had 90/100 less than flawless vision regarding distance and the other had 90/100 regarding proximity. I've shrunk for a whole cm and, well, that one is not so much lack of perfection as it is the abundance of it, I'm a chub chub, but we knew that one. And I really should be drinking more water. It sucks in winter, I am never thirsty at all. I nurse a mug of tea for ages, sipping. Then I sign my name in the show in sepia.

Acorn plate and hedgehog cup

Not that a plain ceramic plate wouldn't do for a mixing palette, or a normal cup for my meager bunch of tools, but life if simply cuter with dumb details that jump on you on your way out of the store. 

Couple of quotes I picked up today at random sources ... :)

Be so positive the negative people won't want to hang out with you ...
:D

"Have you ever fought anyone to the death in real life and lost?" (A random chat guy in Warcraft.)

The starry sky above my head is the moral law at the bottom of my heart.." (Kant)

"And idealist is one who, upon observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes it will also make a better soup." Mencken. (So, an undereducated idiot?)

Trees are the poetry that the earth writes onto the sky. We cut them down and change them into paper, only to be able to immortalize our emptiness.." (Gibran) - written on a paper poster. Double whammy irony right there, condescending bitches. Is it still immortalized if I just write shit in my blog?

Stupid little dream about being a sociopath

Had a great stoream tonight, almost a full movie. It was action and drama, but it was also realistically about me :D At first, not quite sure how, but somebody close to me was somehow involved with an international assassin/rogue agent – in the dream, like in a movie we meet him a character and find that he’s not a very nice person when his handler tells him he better stays known as British at the airport, meaning he better not gets found by the police and to achieve this, he uses silencer to shoot and kill several blameless police officers who are searching side passes. This man’s name is Mateo. He’s a young, handsome person, but a quiet, uncomfortable one. Why he is after someone I know I am not sure, but I get in his way and tell him that I can take a job if it means letting go of the leash of my friend/family member and as long as the job is about stealing books. He takes me to a forest where a rich man’s house is supposed to hold one. Yet instead of a simple lift job, this book is actually heavily guarded and the security are used to attacks, so they kill anyone whom they catch without any questions. I argue that I am neither trained, equipped, qualified or agreed for this kind of a mission, to which Mateo says I’ll just have to figure it out. We drive to the city, which is Paris or Bordeaux or one of the large French urban clusters; he is staying an African man in a small apartment when he is in this town and this African man is super friendly, they seem to be unusually close. The African man is slightly overweight, but he continues to admire the parts of his body that are fit and keeps fishing for (manly) compliments. He treats me less like a hostage and more like Mateo’s associate and seems to be a nice person. Though by now it’s evident Mateo is a sociopath and incapable of feeling anything, a handicap he regards as somewhat an allergy or something, he does not appear to be particularly antisocial. Sponging off his sociopathy, I sit next to him, watching him get stoned, saying I was hoping we’d at least fuck before we both get killed in a suicide gig. But he dozes off and I wander around the building, which is in a downtown, artsy district. I go through a small museum restoration studio and to a shop and conference depot, where two elder women, who are also acquaintances of Mateo, manage part of the museum. We go to have lunch in the park, talking – they can see I have some background in art history and are interested in my opinion. I complain to them I did not agree to work a violent job, but they have little to do with that, so they only offer advice that I flee, as he would not be interested enough in me to pursue me. Taking the advice, I wait until the museum welcomes a foreign female guest, which Mateo has been asked to take shopping for expensive gifts down the district. I see him in one of the elegant tiny antique shops and comparing him to the rich woman he is in the company of, I agree that although he is not very masculine, he does have a curious appeal to him (he is of Middle Eastern ancestry, so his hair and eyes are dark brown and he has red lips.). Using the crowd as a screen, I begin to walk towards the end of the shopping passageway, not looking back. By now, though, I am aware he’s sensed (if not seen) me and has begun following. I know as well that as soon as I start running, he will be able to pick me out of the crowd, same as cops can spot you, even if they couldn’t tell whom you were before. At the very edge of the shopping passage I charge and make for a sprint across the plaza. Mateo has the advantage of stamina – even though we start equally fast, the plaza is too long and I begin to tire. He catches me and we return to the African man’s flat. He lets me know that I will be invading the rich man’s house to get the book tonight. I ask to go to bed with him, even though I am really not turned on. He asks if I’m afraid and I say that I am worried he’ll disappoint me, the image of him having been built up so high by now. He retorts if shouldn’t I be worried about disappointing him? Then he chuckles: no pressure, eh? We have very brief, lacklustre sex, during which basically I am turning my head away, eyes shut and mostly holding my breath while he takes about a minute to get it done. It is the least sexy sex I’ve ever had. I wonder if this is how all sociopaths feel all the time. His condition unceasingly being contagious, I have by now also stopped perceiving the guards in the rich man’s house as people and see them only as moving pieces of a puzzle, or a rudimentary computer game, which I would not be above harming for my own gain. The dream ends when we drive back to the forest and I am looking at the lit house, almost all windows, costly looking, seeing plenty of armed men inside, moving a little bit like a complex lock for me to solve.

Booklet of paint

Made myself a chart booklet, because a lady on YT said if you're stuck while working, making charts and tests helps keep you warm. I now know what transparent and opaque means, in relation to w.c. quality :D It didn't use to matter, because I always used w.c. as one would use tempera anyway, my drawings having been too small and detailed for making the most of some proper waterworks.

       Schmincke not having Vintage Rose color, which is one of my fav, I made a few gouache alternatives into a macaroon tray. There was a cheap 24 piece w.c. set in a shop today, but having bought it, it's a bit of a beginner issue to the quality I'm operating on these days. Not the worst, but not the world leading either. But Drej was right about buying fairly cheap brushes sizes 1 and under, because it doesn't matter how good the bristle is, pushing that miniscule tip around paper that rough fucks it up within weeks. So it's just as well if you buy a one dollar brush or twenty, if you can use it for really thin line, as long as you can. 

Could not sleep AT ALL, some full moon shit or something (though Coke and cocoa peppered with coffee might also have had something to do with it ...) I know I had plans to draw all night, still on G's graveyard shift turn, but G couldn't sleep either, so he ordered me to bed at one. The day itself was miserable - an elder gentleman whom I was very fond of passed, a sudden shitty disease and that just pulls the rug out from under me every time, I hate hate hate death. There is no silvery cloud garden for me in my beliefs, no 70 virgin fuck-boys, no conscious make-over of the soul in another carbon frame. Deterioration, disease, death. Then no more. No person, no laughter, no more stories in their voice, no unique reactions or commentary on something you're dubious about. He had two amazing hunting dogs, clever as all, on their tiny short legs, walking them to the hunting ground usually on the same leash - they were adorable and the best we've had in the group. 

      I know you're supposed to remember people fondly and be grateful for the time you've been given to share with them. Well, remembrance is over-rated and gratitude is fake, time is always too short. To think I've lived more than half in the best of scenarios is too frightful not to cry. 

      So, could not sleep and was not allowed to draw. I've switched from the 'unable to copy Pinterest stuff' to 'able to copy Pinterest stuff', which is a step up. No wonder I am so obsessed with making paint - it's as close as one can get to painting without actually having to paint :D I wanted to read an eBook, but I only like horror lately and I'm not allowed to read horror when I'm in such a bad mood. The sex was not working either, we tried for about half an hour and it was fun enough, but gradually we just receded to embracing and then kind of dozing off - but not really sleeping either. I remember thinking G's alarm will go off at just before five, so then at least I'll be able to get up. Guess I finally managed to get some shut-eye towards morning, as I do remember the alarm, but then the dog woke me and she usually yelps at nine. In all, a miserable, sleepless night. 

GumArabic

These are from Lettersparrow, me thinks...

I have fallen completely in love with the concept of these tiny fuckers: it hadn't occurred to me until I saw this on Etsy, by chance, really, (it was probably even advertised to me) - that you can create your own watercolors. In fact, it's exceedingly easy: all you need is the pigment and the medium. Both readily available at Schmincke. Had I seen them a month ago, and if I managed to order from China the tubs and half-tubs and the cutesy miniature tin boxes, I'd be selling these now on the fair. The 'travel' packages of paint. Completely useless as anything but gifts, of course, but just soooo damn inspiring. I've tested some of my existing watercolors for mixing (you certainly end up with a whole lot of browns), but even just with the primary colors and black - yellow, red and blue - and of course gold, you can make a massive pallatte and A LOT of it, as making it for just one tub would be kind of a waste. It's the same with handmade paper - when you're at it, you make a lot of it, because it's too messy not to prepare for bulk. What I'm saying is, I could totally do this. I couldn't sell them, because I fucking suck at selling even the loveliest of things, but I could do this. Ultimately I'd graduate to making my own pigments out of nature. Trick is in the grind. 

Seed

In the story I'm writing now, the stolen treasure is seed. Yuh, it is a double entendre, but it's not the porny seed that ultimately represents the spoils - it is a seed of a world tree, only one known left (because those fuckers are so old nobody even knows what brand they are.) Which got me thinking, 'seed' regarding trees is a very confusing term. It's not really a seed, is it? It does not require an egg to form baby tree, it's long been pollinated already during wood-in-bloom. It's much more of a nut or a pod or a stone at this point. English is a very cutting-the-corners tongue. Pips and all. Anyway, I put daisy SEEDs onto the paper. Technically, unless the ink or chemicals in the goo or ironing killed it, if you plant the lot, daisies will grow out. How adorable is that? :D

Making my own paper

Unused fair stuff

Most of this stuff is directly copied from Pinterest, very few are my own, very. But slowly and surely I'll get back into gear. Any day now :P

Pussy versus inertia

Incidentally sucker-punched my cat  O.o I wasn't planning on it and even if I did it would not work as flawlessly, but the cat is okay now and we can all go back to laughing about it ... 

       Thing is, Bishop tends to jump on people from the ground up. I know this and when I saw she was going to try it (I am wearing my hoodie now, in winter, but in summer my back is a map of ill attempts at climbing me by a retarded fucking feline), I wanted to raise my hand in a 'stop!' motion. Alas, she's already leaped at a praiseworthy 45° trajectory, elegant as only cats can be, at my face, which is around 5 ft up. My hand was still facing downwards at this point. Knuckles, meet kitty snout. Kitty snout, meet knuckles. Poor thing was punched so hard it fell out of mid-air like a log, like a statue in a still frame, arrested. Didn't even have time to meow or land properly. It took a little while of comforting and soothing her, though I suspect she'll be averse to leap assaults for a spell

       Out of courtesy, because we are decent human beings and do not condone jabbing animals, we left the room to piss ourselves laughing. 

You make it sound like divorce is a bad thing....

What, like you're supposed to know how huge the universe is at nineteen? Fact remains, were I to turn back time, go to when we were twenty, before it all went to pot, I would STILL look him up and do it all to kiss him. I would always want to be the owner of that memory. But not if the wellbeing of entire humanity depended on it, would I marry him, swearing I will always believe in him. He made me a liar and I am not particularly fond of lying. How was I supposed to know that of 8 billion humans on the planet, I'll manage to jump a broom with the one who has never met anyone he couldn't disappoint? Who the fuck has a right to believe I'd be a better woman to have stayed married to that? Exhaust myself trying to elevate that to a status of a gentleman? Fuck that. Behind every powerful man there's a charisma-less gold-digger without intelligence or balls to achieve her own mastery. 

It's certainly a scary word. With the exception of an ex-mother-in-law, I've never heard anyone get happy over the word 'divorce'. And I was just watching a TV show in which it's stated just how many modern marriages end in it.

So?

Thing is, people like to be married. Many,if not most. It feels good to belong; one whom you can trust completely, who doesn't have to pretend around you: it feels good to call someone HOME. Where you can cry ugly, where you can fart, open your pants when you eat. Not all at once, hopefully, but you know what I mean. Someone who knows just the kind of nachos you like, just how many kisses will fit into a moment, just the right way to curl around you before one of you has to wake up and go to work. Someone whose sleeping position matches yours like a  Lego. There has to be just one person - can be more, but it's great if there's just the one - to listen to all your shitty poetry and lay it for you gently that it's really shitty and offer to pay for a writing course for your birthday; someone who will eat the horrible buckwheat soup you prepare and who (after you've yelled at them: You have no idea what it feels like to be me!!) will look at their watch and say: ah, it's that time of the month , I better buy a lot of chocolate and tissues, and possibly a small fluffy furry pet.

Why would it be wrong to try somebody and then change the model if it doesn't fit? Nobody buys a car forever, a camera or a coat. Sure, back in the day there weren't many options and you really did have the same house, table, cart and shoes for life. But people grow up. The looks, vehemence and 'I want the whole world to lick my ass!' I found overwhelming in my first attempt proved poorly fitting, like a really large umbrella in high wind or a tray loaded with too many cocktail glasses. At the time it probably suited my own view of the skies. It certainly coincided with a sense of 'wolves mate for life, so you better pick someone who keeps your engines constantly running'.

I mind it when people consider divorce to be a bad thing. It's not the middle ages anymore. You get to live for more than thirty. (Except that one guy whose funeral we're going to attend tomorrow, but that's another story.) It's certainly romantic and it calls for some deep, long introspection at your values if you happen to have to compromise some. Many people choose to stop being bisexual. Many abandon being creative. Not because they are asked to, but because it feels great enough to be loved. All of that is fine and dandy, even if I notice not many people who married at twenty and stayed married until well into their old age were artists, at least not both of them. Maybe he was. Rarely she was. But I will always want to know what it tastes to kiss him and then I will never want to pay anything else regarding him. Doesn't matter how many lives I live. A perfect bad kiss, then an eternity spent with someone a lot better at kissing, who says: You jump. I'll wait here and if it turns out flying's not your strong suit, I'll catch you.