jambo jambo means hello

Came home tonight after eight hours of writing a thesis about ancient Greece's warp-weighted looms to find that two packages had arrived: Zinka colored sunscreen and a pair of antique Zulu horse-hair bicep bracelets. Z, Z, Z. After staring at a computer screen all day talking about flax and pottery shards, Penelope and Arachne, blah-blah-blah, naturally the first thing a girl does is get her face-paint skills on and have a solo dance session. And photograph it by herself. 

I apparently have only two photograph-faces.

I wish that dressing this way were socially acceptable, or at least wouldn't be questioned or stared at. If I could wear facepaint and dress myself in foliage/found things/weird fur and hair/etc. daily I'd feel much more at ease. I'm a very shy person so normally in public I opt for less-obtrusive choices, even though paradoxically I feel less comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than, say, in old musty-smelling African dance bracelets. I don't want to send the message that I want attention. I just want to do what I want to do and have it be accepted, not seen as radical or strange or a cry for validation.

I find myself wishing for the one thousandthmillionth time that Thomas were still alive. He's the one playmate I've had that would not only not think it was weird that I: A) bought these objects, B) put them on at two in the morning, and C) documented it, but would think it was fun and wonderful and would definitely participate. Seriously, fuck life. It's got really sharp angles. 

I hate the fact that I'm already older than he'll ever be, and that that fault line is just gonna become a terrible time-chasm that keeps getting bigger and bigger and taking me further away from him every day.

Take it easy, fellow dreamers. 

CLOTH-EARS

Here is the content du jour of a folder on my desktop labeled "BLACKCURRENT." This folder contains my favorite eight or ten images of the moment, and is altered slightly on about a weekly basis. I am such a visual person that I derive a lot of joy just from sifting through images, and looking at the images in this particular file always makes me feel a strong sense of both inspiration and contentment.

Right now I can surmise that I am feeling very much washed-out pale blues and greens, along with washed-out reds next to brighter reds, wood and sand hues, and clean shapes (the natural black with cream fascination is a constant for me and goes without saying). Also, it would seem, images of female weavers. The hat is by Cosmic Wonder Light Source; the messenger bag is by Welcome Strangers; the belt is by Maison Boinet. The antique agate cuff is a recent purchase. Ever since I discovered a very similar piece with lapis at the Mauerpark in Berlin a few months back, I have been collecting bracelets in this style (which I wish I could find more information about). Something about the bone, the metalwork, the pin hinge, the weight: I love it. The look of the stone on this particular piece stuns me. It looks like a galaxy.

I am getting all the materialism out of my system now before I go off to India and am simultaneously:

-cowed at my disregard of the meaning of money

-have my tastes radically change due to circumstance. 

I am sure that coming back after five or six months and seeing the way my house and my closet look with new eyes is going to be a total trip.

Finally, I want to share the above with you, my favorite song of the moment. I have spent a lot of time the past couple of weeks roaming around in the woods with one earbud in, trying to perfect my own recreation of the vocal nuances in this song. "Haunting" is an overused adjective when it comes to female folk artists' music, but in this case, the shoe fits.

PRISMS AND PILGRIMS

... is a phrase which I came across recently reading an O. Henry anthology. It is apparently something one might have said in the early 1900s to summon good luck.

Images: Don't remember; amazing record from ponytone.com; a former classmate of mine from SAIC, Aylor Brown, killing it in a cape (I think I saved that from her livejournal back in the day-- hahaha); oh HELL yes; sweet paint job, dude; wish I remembered the name of this artist; stills from Fantastic Planet (thanks Thomas).

Today is Thanksgiving and I am giving thanks that my life is, while not fully as awesome as possible (working on it though), pretty amazing. I am thinking of getting a tattoo on the palm of my hand of a drawing from Thomas's journals of a star-eyed alien girl. I wonder if he would have thought that was a good idea. Time to consult the Ouija! Also: I had a dream last night that I was defending my haircut to someone. My mother just sent me a text reporting that I had been talking in my sleep this morning and had said very loudly: "Well, I think it's chic, so fuck off." You tell 'em, dream girl.

Also, I just found this image from when Thomas and I were living together a couple years back. He was drawing on my leg, and I caught on at the last minute that he was going to write "Give a dog a bone," which I found unappealing. I took over the project at the critical moment and changed the message to "Give a do-good day!" Well played.

ATTACK OF NERVES

 Got my partially-shaved-head haircut...

 got my bird-claw-holding-a-stone talisman von Berlin...

 got my vambraces...

got my poorly-photographed raccoon tail from Chinatown... but...

I've been reading The Portable Chekhov before bed recently, and last night I came across this passage in his short story "An Attack of Nerves": 

"'How unskillfully they sell themselves!' he thought. 'How can they fail to understand that vice is only alluring when it is beautiful and hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, mournful smiles, and darkness would be far more effective than this clumsy tinsel. Stupid things!'"

Fashion advice from Chekov (though admittedly he was referring to prostitutes here...)? Why not? Maybe I'd be well-advised to apply it.

P.S.: You ought to watch this. This man is living the life: http://stylelikeu.com/closets/carter-emmart/

KID ICARUS

           

           

        

May foliage over the traintracks in Adams, Tennessee; an invitation happening to contain my birthdate (did you know May 13th was the original Roman date of All Souls' Day? Called Lemuria, festivities included eating a "soul cake", clanging brass pots, and tossing black beans over your shoulder at midnight while reciting an incantation);good shoes and socks and floor from god knows where; a lovely painting gleaned from Emersonmerrick; Ysabel's feet beneath a bush as she picked Moonflowers this past July on a roadtrip we took.

I thought of a poem today by W.H. Auden. The second half of it is a theme in the film/book The Man Who Fell to Earth, and it's called "Musée des Beaux Arts":

"In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may

Have heard the splash, the foresaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something extraordinary, a boy falling out the the sky,

Had somewhere to go to and sailed calmly on."

Last night I was reading an anthology of Shakespeare's works and came across the following plate, with the best caption. I am going to get it framed:

                                   

"He stripped himself naked and chose to live with the wild beasts."

MOON OF THE CENTURY, CAMARALZAMAN

Good shop window in Montreal; close-up of same odd shop window; back of a street sign in New York with the paint wearing away from the wood; the best thing at the Wall Street protests, a fantastic off-white velvet-upholstered chair with Sharpie graffiti; detail of chair back; Becky planking TV sets in Chelsea; great hair idea on the shopgirl at IF in SoHo; fantastic Isabel Marant display; I Pop Pills! sign; good tattoos on a cool chick at Fresh Salt (my new favorite hangout spot in NYC); me and Ysabel in front of a strange stairstepped plant wall in Montreal somewhere in the Plateau. I guess I'm drawn more recently to fur, hair, off-white, old, dirty textural objects. Been reading Arabian Nights before bed, having crazy dreams and getting good ideas. India in exactly one month. Whaaaaaat.

P.S. I am 55% sure that I spotted Stephin Merritt in Chelsea, baseball cap and all... I had a mini-freakout but determined not to say anything. I just watched Strange Powers and am glad I chose not to. I highly recommend finding the torrent...

.