Illumi-naughty!

Just came up with a gang sign for the masons.

maybe they've already thought of this one.. sweet tho.












So!
Totally unrelated-

A few notes on the art of Figure Modeling!

In Chicago, IL, the going base rate for a FM is $15-20/hr. Sometimes with tips, as people may take photographs in order to reference the pose and finish the painting/drawing later. Again, this rate varies. Lots of models out there are working to raise it, and to see to better working conditions.
Visually, artists seem to prefer few tattoos & piercings and if you can SIT STILL, that's a big plus. Believe it or not, people are getting into this gig w/o much discipline so far as holding a pose goes. As well as staying awake! In addition, flexibility is helpful, altho' most artists don't necessarily want to draw you going thru your yoga routine. A no-brainer perhaps, based on the above stated- but get enough rest and an average amount of stretching and exercise.
Further points:
Hydration- Take a water bottle. Most places provide a heater/fan, but clean water may be hard to procure. Esp. if you have to use the bathroom on that precious 5-min break instead of searching for a cup. Pre-hydration is key for almost anything physical one could be doing.
Light snack- Recommendations include: nuts and raisins, fruit (dried or whole) and other granola/trail mix concoctions like energy bars and other not-so-messy hand-held foods that require little reheating or clean up.
Other- Take a robe for comfort (it can get pretty cold in some of these classrooms) as well as modesty, and reading material.

Having trouble with feeling faint or tired even though you've taken care of these things?-
Ask for a break: If you need it, the rest is well deserved and the artists will be accommodating. The hardest time to re-assume the pose is the 1st time getting back into it. So while you're sitting, memorize how your body feels against itself, and against the furniture. Try to steady your gaze at something. And you don't want to stare down the artists while they're studying you.
If you're holding a longer pose, most artists will "tape" you (altho' potentially not very carefully) in order to help you get back into the pose. The hardest time to do this seems to be when you must resume the pose after the first 25-30 minutes. Here's a hint- your head will go where your eyes do, so you can also re-assume a head position, difficult or easy, by closing one eye, then the other while looking down at the end of your nose and remembering what it falls against.
Also: Always anticipate the next pose: Even if you're holding one for the entire "session" (a word which can be used interchangeably to describe all or a portion of a sitting). This keeps you engaged and you can help yourself do this by looking at art both modern and classic. By increasing your exposure to and vocabulary for poses you simultaneously increase your own creative capacities.
Enjoy!

F a n t a s y F e s t i v a l

In a perfect world, this bill is go-

Peter Gabriel & Tom Waits (and a 22 piece orchestra)
Sonic Youth
Huey Lewis & The News
Daft Punk (feat. Bjork)
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Fulflej
Astor Piazzolla
Lee Hazlewood and the Raveonettes (all acoustic set)
Sunny Day Real Estate (playing Failure/Jeremy Enigk solo covers)
John Zorn (feat. Herbie Hancock)
Hot Chip & Boards of Canada present "The Official Seance For Frank Zappa"
Diamanda Galas and Fiona Apple (dualing pianos on fire!!)
Prince B (of P.M. Dawn) with TV on the Radio
Cornelius (maybe with Rob Halford)
Six Finger Satellite
PJ Harvey & M. Ward with Jonny Greenwood


Further suggestions?

And what would I call this damn thing?

Goals (?)

For 2010 and beyond, in no particular order:

- travel
- save $/light more $ on fire
- don't get pregnant or get std
- write more letters/postcards
- finish a journal
- take a class
- get published
- read more
- make my 30th b-day memorable
- go hot-air ballooning
- make more friends

Haikuxistential

I need to find
a bartender
who is willing
to trade beer
for poems.

-
Pulling
pulled like a magnet
to nowhere like home
so where am I?

-
Thinness promoted in women
becomes a symbolic surrender
of creative power
to men.

HAPPINESS/WISH

At the artists colony there are some rainy days and many bright days. I see them often from the one long tall window in my quarters.

I wear black slip-on shoes with thin soles.
I take long walks in the shoes and wash them once during my two month stay.
By the end they are paint splattered, dirty and torn and I cut a piece of them to keep before putting them in the incinerator with the set of clothes I have worn all month long.

I stand naked under the late September stars watching the other fire we have built on the hill near the field. Into it also goes the detritus from my cleaned studio. Most of the work produced now hangs in a hall, or given away to accompanying artists.

I had loosely packed one suitcase. A large canvas carry trunk with things that I planned on using up completely or re-purpousing- either with an established method, or a new one.

My computer and classical music.
A small plant. Paper. Colors.

There are brief meetings and some stretch into long meetings with the flavor of our company. I learn new framing skills and watch live dance performances.

I memorize a few of my own poems and subsist on tea and light evening meals.
There is a library. Vast, and in its vastness I resist the urge to consume it all.
I complete my sketchbook and model a few times for the resident sculptress.

The hottest day comes and I exhaust myself with swimming. Staying up all hours with the typewriter and an oil lamp that night. Typing into the frozen dawn.

On other nights the wine is white and glitters in my stomach as it does in my glass against the single work lamp that burns a same quiet, consistent burn.

I have eliminated more writing from a stock of old poems and stories. Recycled some ideas and forgotten others. Ready again to return to the arms of the outside world.

From a new list of all the art projects I'm interested in, I've already accomplished 4 or 5 of them. Some repeatedly, and into a series.


I light a candle, and my body feels the light from the candle.

I am as light as the candle.

"As many yellow trumpyts as I want!" - Notes

1. http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2720488
Goodreads. Getting into this website because its better than keeping a reading log anymore.. I guess I'm over it on paper, but not over it enough to not do it on the internet. That trend has been happening with a lot of things, and I can't say I haven't been warned.

"Love's gone paperless!"


2. "H" (fictionsandthelike.blogspot) and I go to a soul-food place on the south side last night with some of her writing student pals. I stay over and this morning on the train we talk about "genius". I tell her the word needs to take a bath. So loaded, perhaps to the point of taking the lilt and the humor out of the thing or the person to which it's applied. Nevertheless, "genius" exists in unlikely places for a reason...

What are the characteristics of the "genius/es" in your life?


3. Writing- people ask me how it's going and I've got nothing but positive things to say. More editing than writing, lately. The whole process is becoming more alive, more connected.
Put a book together for H also, using blurb.com. Expensive, but its something to show for her grad school efforts. With her novella it comes to almost 200pgs. Not bad.

Today, Little Edie Beale (of Grey Gardens fame) would have been 92. She died at 84 in '92.
So, in the name of genius-requiring-bath, this one's for her:

The Libra Man-

I
just got to find!
This green,
in this grey.

Legs fold-
push, pull, hide at clothes
reveal mother!

Maybe she, won't.

Today, I'm not ready
but it's special!
So a birthday dance
around the mansion
for him, me
you.

Hello! No, I'm not coming in!

I've just got to find!
Sunshine
today and what
I'm wearing is
just
right.

The cusps of words are not boundaries, but silences which make their own stories.

The greatest part of any love I have ever had was the deafening stare exchanged between my eyes and those of the man sitting next to me – the man with me in the booth across from the bar, any bar, any place at all. He faces me, the window. I face him, the crowd- we practically watch time make us older and wiser.
I find him again in a coffee shop, years later when we are different, but the stare is the same. Not the same as the gaze afforded to and from the man with whom I have just made love. In my bed, in his bed- that man, that stare is different. (All other beds are “ours".)
Beside him at the dinner table or after a game- a pause. On the roof of a building, passing a smoke back and forth between us like the few and familiar, slight but delicious, words of one poem spoken over and over. It lights our faces from the bottom with rich pre-autumn glow in the windy city night. Our silhouettes facing each other are their own brand of stare.
Then the stare of the potential lover- the man I am meeting. The briefest stop in our handshake- a break, a touch, a stare. The burning stare of a man whose look I refuse to return. The whimpering stare of a man with whom I am ending a relationship.
These stoned silences stored up in a place that memories and pictures own before words. The stare- thru a wall, from down a hallway, from a car- driving away, looking back. A final curious stare after the person you just left telling you you will never see them again.
And you are a different person for acknowledging what kind of time-mad reverence this brand of stare offers you. Stares speak. They touch on living tissue and become parasite memory. Our eyes and brain the perceiving host accosted by unrelenting heartbeats sound of blood bringing love, love, love. No stare without the lasting speech of love’s dynamic voice. The final verbal look transcending syllabic function. The deep smile in a man’s stare- revealed or hidden. The tears he finds, unwarranted in his still-dry expression. These are the shaman. These are the teachings and the practice.

F Y I R L

You.

You- thing with secrets.
I've never wanted any one's secrets so bad before. Do you want them?
What do you rally against now? What hurts you? Does it/do they really?
Don't you know: Every day your magic works.

I'm your best opponent; arrived at just the right moment.
Then I say goodbye when I sleep and I woke and said goodbye but I didn't know how not to. The pattern is as sharp as it is lovely.

Nights afterward I came to you remembering where to touch you and touch you to please not only me. Smashing wet kiss against your mouths having never forgotten also the taste of your hair and hands. How your feet smell pointing their flavorful toes toward me.

From epochs ago the tears I cried into the carpet, and the poems hidden in the walls nourished ivy out from the mirrors, inviting green blades of new proud grass into the toilet tank. Roots arrived from behind the refrigerator, and pushed and propped at the ends of the couch.

Home was never just this tin can, but the can and the world- every heartbeat that built it back apart and tore it back together.

All this means is-

I've been grateful to know you and love you in this world,
and I will be grateful, happy, to know and love you in the next.


You know who you are.

Busier than a black hole in a galactic whorehouse

Ok-
I'm about to get all new-age and super-psychic on you, but bear with me, as some important questions are involved.

I've been casting or "pulling" runes. Runes- the ancient Nordic set of 24 symbols embodying all the world and the cycles of creation/destruction. (sometimes 25 if you count the symbol of no symbol.) Each with its own relatively hard-to-pronounce name and numeric value.
I've made my own deck of cards with a symbol on each, and have been using a small guidebook to do readings. Each reading pertaining to a specific issue or question. I've asked about relationships, friends, and most recently- work. This time pulling six runes in a specific order, and reading them according to a past-present-future outlook.

I have to say, one only invests power and respect in these things if they believe in the ability of a divination tool (tarot, palm reading, crystal balls, whatever.) to sincerely have insight into how one can CHOOSE to live; to change after connections are made based on the readings.

And...wow, guys. The runes are really working for me.

I've been wondering: are there specific archetypal "keys" that one uses to access the collective unconscious?

My work so far suggests that yes, if there were a set of keys, they are runes.

My "magic" has brought me to a certain point here. Meditation is important, as is writing. With runes I've also been doing some "dreamwork". I will usually relax and light a candle, shuffle the cards, choose one, meditate on it, attempt to respect it ceremoniously by touching it to my forehead and pillow. Then it is tucked it into my journal between the pages where I will write the next morning and compare the image and the meanings associated with it, with the download of images or dream happenings from the "collective unconscious" aka the internet of the mind. Of every mind. That's right, Jung was cooler than Freud.

Guys, I have wanted to find a way to do this for so long, and now here it is- right in front of me. I am giddy with good fortune- this is a gift, an awareness, that everyone can have. Somehow I think its foolish to assume it stops with humans.

But here's the flip: No keys needed necessarily- every idea is a doorway to what some describe as the "transcendental" state.
I'll say that again: Every Idea Is A Doorway.

Perhaps the "keys" are really only helpful at discovering and interpreting patterns after one enters a door.
But it's a relief to find that to access it, all one has to do is surrender effort. Simply breathe, and fall asleep.


PS-
On a media related note, I've been catching up on episodes of "Xavier: Renegade Angel" - Adult Swim's computer animated spastic shaman and his multi-dimentional adventures. Really an amazing comedy series that lampoons the shit out of vision quests and other ethereal hippy noise (as illustrated above!) in the name of a little bit of potty humor and triple entandres (sp?).

In a world full of decaf radio and television, I find myself turning more and more to animation for challenging content.

Let me know if you've stumbled on anything lately that's blown your mind.
XO!

"Four Letter World"?

Why that title?
Well, it's amazing what can happen when you realize you're sexy.
When you realize.. EVERYTHING is sexy. Sex is all over everywhere, and there's no denying our sweeter, baser nature.
"Yes, it too can happen to you!"
The dirty possibilities challenge you to explore while maintaining your innocence. Finding the courage to try new things, and still admit some ignorance to life. Step to the line and accept the calling, as it were. (A whole note on bondage/BDSM fits in here, but Ill save that.)

With that, life and love are one magnificent process- This is precisely the instruction I received upon moving to Chicago for the first time, and it's part of why I'm going back..

But getting back to the title: writing fiction has been tough for me. Its been hard to accept that brevity is my strong point when it comes to writing anything, really. I'd like to think that I have more to say, and that I can go deeper on a subject.

This is why writing erotica has been extraordinarily helpful.
When all you have to do is get 2 or more characters to get together and physically engage in some form, that single criteria frees you up to work any set of circumstances. Maybe this is a no-brainer for some, but I had to work it out.

That said, my current efforts involve putting together a short story collection that will be erotica-based, but not exclusively. The general theme will just be short fictions with a lusty underbelly;
I've decided to call it "Four Letter World".

No doubt, it will contain some four-letter words, and some 50c words. The images/product of course, will be a little more expensive. ;)
Most of the writing is complete, the editing process just begun. But I'm still very interested in fielding ideas for further writing. Got a plot line or some image or story element that you've thought about, but never thought you would write out? Let me know.

The first poem in my introductory collection Briefly, The Heart has an ending line:
"Without words they tell me: having sex is the one best way to take over the world."

And so, in the best way I know how, I will attempt to do just that. Wish me luck!

Don't worry- its going to take me awhile to find a press and get somebody to back me and market this thing, but you'll be the first to know when it hits the shelf.

Thanx, Team-
Dana


PS- (a journal entry from 6/08)
"Quick argument for the sexual revolutions' potential contributions to human longevity"

It all comes down to this: illuminating the taboo...
Anal bleaching gets us talking about our asses. Breast implants get us talking about... BOOBS! And there seems to be no end to the things we don't know about ourselves, just as there is no end to the pleasure one can receive in relaxing into the exploration of one's sexual faculties.
A stress reliever + physical equalizer, the erotic act, and the extent to which it can be discussed/shared + generally fessed-up to, is a powerful tool for life-long education. By doing so, we expand the possibilities of our nature and quite possibly the lifespan of our species.

Book of Matches

Folks-
First Post! I'm finding that I could use a new outlet on the web and I enjoy this particular blog format, so here goes. Hope to satisfy with a poem and pix of some tasty graf from a recent trip to New Orleans. Stay awesome.
- -

Book of Matches-

Window
white wash cement

Past park
embankments captured
by sculptures of men

City tide
thickened in brick
made mad to siren
and falling children.

Cigarettes, pizza.
almost cheap as free.

Stopped to read
sidewalk covenant
bristling by
excuseme
and
thankyou

The polite sneer
pressure stop
over gates to guiderails

Instant
summer
disappearances.