the serrano incident -or- a short primer on the exfoliating effects of oatmeal

hey kids-

here's a new lesson of the day for you!

serrano peppers may produce a burning sensation on the skin if...i dont know...it floats in the air after you cut it and it lands on you.

symptoms can be indicated by an acute burning sensation on the face, like how spicy things make your mouth burn...except on the face

exhibit A:

notice in this photo series how she has spread softened oatmeal (at the behest of her roomate) all over said burning area in order to alleviate the burning

note that she is probably not having as much fun as it may appear.  after all, her face was on fire.

this is a true story...

all i know is that i was cutting up a serrano for a curry recipe i found and a couple minutes later, this.

i have to say, rubbing soft oatmeal on your face is actually kind of amazing.  it smells all oaty and you want to eat it...except my snot was dripping in it from the whole burning face thing so i decided against eating it.

happy to say, the burning went away after like, 15 or 20 minutes.

so take notes, kids.  

this could be you someday.

tales from the sculpture lab

my design teacher is one of the funniest teachers i will ever have.

we are making these wire sculptures and he'll walk around putting any sculpture he can on his head as a hat.

during our critique of our geometric cardboard sculptures, any sculpture that looked remotely like a rocket ship was zoomed around complete with sound affects.

God bless crazy art people

the girl i sit next to said something about how he should do some sort of improv comedy act, so when he made his way around to where we were sitting i asked him if he had ever done any acting before.

"i got kicked out of acting class.  i was too amped up for them."

"is it even possible to get actually kicked out of an acting class?" i asked.

"well, i just couldnt help it.  everytime i did an improv act i would just have to swing in from the stage rope."

i just put my head down on the desk in soundless hysterical laughter.

God bless crazy art people.

art-ery

its called "flowers destroy mathbot."

bloody amazing.

i dont even know who did it, but if i owned it i would hang it in my living room.

in other news, my hands are raw from my owl wire sculpture and stained from 3 hours in the print lab praying for and thus producing some satisfying miracles.  

the thought of spring break keeps me going.

the thought of graduating next spring keeps me going.

its sunny today so that helps too.

i painted a picture in a monastery orchard last week.

and with the help of my roomate and her boyfriend, managed to steal two bags of those oranges i've been longing for.

we are on the up and up.

God bless college

the life i am living now is hilarious.

just like this cardboard poster from the 80's that i found at the thrift store and carried back to my house in the freezing wind this morning (i'm sure you can imagine how fun that was).  i hope i can manage to keep this poster for the rest of my life.

and like those drawers in the background my roomate and i were too lazy too close.

and the 8am class on fridays.  friday.  friday.

and the invention of the subwoofer, which i didnt know until now, is the single largest cause for most of my anger.  Its not the sub in and of itself, but the sub in possession of the 20 year old neighbors around us.  it is strange feeling like a piece of technology is actually personally out to get you.  

someday cas.  someday you will have acres and acres between you and the screwballs next door.

and my sweet roomates who eat all the funny things i cook.  they are champs.

and the hundreds of pounds of oranges i stroll under every day.  left to rot right on the tree.

and the experimental art i'm making these days.  like this:

and this:

and my sweet jesus who will never leave.

"she looked pretty and happy and a little breathless, as though she had done a pleasant but dangerous thing..."

-steinbeck

a day in the life

wha...

hmmmmpf....

AAAAH!  whats that sound!

and why am i engaged in mortal combat with a large rat and his 2 mouse buddies?

wait.

i'm not.

class in an hour and its 7 am

cas.  how do you do this every morning.  why does the alarm know exactly what tone best enters dreams?

coffee.

walking.

i cant feel my fingers or my nose.

past the two gauntlet inspired one way streets.

past the bars on all four corners of fifth and ivy.

broken glass

now to orange trees planted in the sidewalk bursting with fruit a mere 15 feet up.  a mockery to every malnourished college kid who hasnt eaten in weeks.

speaking of college, i miss meat. 

meat has nothing to do with oranges.

except for thats why you are up this morning walking in 40 degrees.  so that someday meat will fit in your budget.

its too early though.

bird in the hand

these are a series of 8"X8" square pieces that i did for my friend's new baby, silas.

i covered the canvases in pages from an old robert frost poetry book.  painted the birds and tree based on some fabric silas' mum sent me....added buttons...added orange stamped letters.  they are more "scrap-booky" than i would like, but i had an amazing time doing them.

i dont know how the blog will place them but they are a series.  from left to right it's brown bird, tree, and then orange bird.  and yes, those are real buttons.

in every room in the art building are a bunch of hand made signs that someone posted too high for anyone else to reach and one of them that inspired me to do these last night was a sign that said "doing art at 4am makes me happy."  so ya.  i stayed up till midnight making art.  i had forgotten how much fun that is.

some of the other signs are really funny too-- "not going to a snotty art school makes me happy."  "coffee and cigarettes make me happy."  "not fitting into the artsy stereotype makes me happy."  "knowing i will always answer to the title 'artist' makes me happy."  in class i always stare up at the signs wondering what grad student finishing a project at 3 am decided to grab a bunch of his buddies and a ladder and make the art rooms a better place.  

Thy name shall be called no more Jacob

well kids, just like you knew it would, it feels better already here.

i see now how much of a funny farm my old house really was.  you thought i would fit right in, didnt you.  but let me tell you, there are certain shades of crazy that will wreck a girl's complexion.  

its kind of amazing how different i am towards being here and even school itself than i was a month ago.  just a month.  

it was just a run on the beach actually that did it.

the day and 2 miles after art school fell through, i faced the sea because tears ache, like a river, to tell the ocean their secrets.

i dont know what made that time of prayer/desperation any different than the others, but the rocking horse snapped beneath my feet and something like submission (but lacking the metallic taste we have been taught to notice) knocked the wind out of the chase.

something consented.

something asked for a blessing.

something told me the touch on the hip was it.

the shrunken sinew

that to this day his people will not eat.

for i have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

God is superbly and perfectly mighty for us...it just takes a "yes" to Him that you can feel down to your toes.

"and jacob went on his way, and the angel of God met him."

my light is blue, how bout you?

someday, while you are still wild,

this is what you need to do

-wait for full moon and ten o'clock.

-46: both the speed and the hwy.

-yo yo ma's applachian waltz and beethoven's moonlight sonata (God bless the obvious).

and no head lights.

bloody amazing.  

you feel like you're flying.

rachel hazel

before i left tehachapi two days yore, mo and i decided we would each write a murder ballad before we saw each other again.  why?  because music that tells a story is interesting...and plus how could you not love an old fashioned murder ballad?  just ask townes van zandt or gillian welch.

here is mine.  see if you can put the pieces together.

(keep in mind it is set to music.  poem wise it doesnt do itself justice...i like it to music much better)...

rachel hazel

rachel hazel eyes like her mother

true as the clouds in the lake

that storm and wind and plates and glasses

just arent sufficient to break

where would you find it if it still existed?

what part would carry the blame?

where would you find him if he still existed?

feeling the sky in the lake

o, how she slept

that night in the bullrush

dreaming of how the waters close

rachel hazel binds on her bible

true as the words she wont take

the wind forgets us still as his  breathing

out through the clouds on the lake

i am listening

5 stage E ticket ride

well kids, it looks like i really will be going back to chico next semester.  i had so much faith in the possibility of moving away for good that i threw away everything i didnt need/could buy again/wasnt that cool anyway and made every item i own fit into the back of my pickup (it still ended up dribbling into the cab, but what's a girl to do?)

i have officially attempted every possible escape from the Vanilla city and find myself still standing at the same amount of brick wall that i first began clawing at.  the pile of dust soiling my shoes may not seem like worthy fruit for such efforts, ah, but in it the resignation lies.  when one has done all that can be done, there is merely left the arranging of one's hair and the settling down of nerves to await what cannot be held back from arriving.  maybe it would even be called "rest."

in Him it surely is.  

thats why we have our coffee every morning, our wine at night: to herald in regal glory the coy faithfulness of a world spinning out of our control, carrying us on it's back, rising and falling heedless to our wishes.  rising and falling careful towards His.   

please pass the sugar,

my how nice the scenery is.

He must be taking us somewhere fine.

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance:

check.

now that the 5 stages are done, lets move on, shalst we.

. . .

"what will sustain us through the winter?

where did last year's lessons go?

walk me out into the rain and snow

i dream a highway back to you."

T-minus

this here is a horrible picture of my color theory final.  (it looks better in real life, i promise...click on it to make it bigger).  She was originally an opera singer...but i made her face a hymnal page :).  i dont know what that makes her now...

chico is going to last about 36 hours and then i'm free.  kinda free.  "kinda free" is better than NOT free, right?  

ooooo, lawd.

the twenty something most random things i want for christamas

*a black light booklight...right?  with strobe option.  clubbin'

*a lifetime supply of canned fish and lima beans

*the opposite of serious

*a concertina

*a bird in the hand

*a friend who plays the cello

*people skills

*the live near a HUGE asian market

*to find that pair of von dutch aviators that i lost awhile ago.  dang, those things were sic.

*a horsey

*a kitty

*to love my neighbor

*a fixed exhaust manifold

*kale

*an ocean breeze.  here.  in chico.

*health insurance

*to keep it real

*a time machine and/or a flight to britain

*to become a famous artist after i die

*for everything to taste like coffee and/or chocoloate and/ or curry and/or plum skin

*abject fearlessness

really real

i have been thinking about sincerity lately.

trying to hold them next to each other and see how similar now and ago really are.

what if i would have been honest with myself

sooner.

what if my love could be sincere, with that honesty a child gains by being born 

and forgets about 

each day following day 

that teaches him fear and greed and practicality.

like when i was small 

asleep in my parents bed

because of the spider or the dream in my room.

let love be without hypocrisy

like a Man weeping

calling Himself a hen

longing to gather His chicks

calling Himself a Dad

because of the spider or the dream in my room.

forlorn foundling rescued by compassion

thats what that little part says above the picture that i taped to the front of my bible this morning :)  its a picture of a lamb in a burlap bag attached to a saddled horse.

i've decided i will tape more things into my bible from now on.

i also taped a picture of the sea of galilee that i found in a 1950's national geographic to the back inside flap of this my Holy Book.  according to the caption, "Galilean fishermen still set their nets in circles around lights to enclose fish drawn to the glow,"  and it shows these boats with large bulb lights hanging off the bow of the boats over the sea.  

i found that "lights" part extremely profound.  

they fish at night.  

they fish with lights.

the fish seem to know the difference

and come easily to the glow.

.......

spent thanksgiving with my sweet tehachapi friends (if you dont know where tehachapi is, ask your neighbor).  i still dont want to live in chico...but what else is new.  after this i'm swearing off northern california forever and if you are my friend you will hold me to it.  if any of you want to move somewhere and take me along with you, i think you'll be surprised at how little i object.

maybe i'll get over it in time to graduate (graduate...ah, the word does knell its sweetness to my soul.)

......

there is a persimmon tree by the mansion down the street.  the persimmon is a fruit that hangs naked on the tree with no leaves around it so that everyone can see.  

it is no time for greenery, but it is still time for fruit.  

fruit is the business of a tree, leaves are its passing pleasures that flutter and fall with a mind all their own.

but the fruit is more faithful.

of more worth.

dear persimmon tree,

you are better off in your beauty 

of rest

despite the cold.

my favorite one yet

exist in theory

so this is a drawing i did today from a picture taken during the depression

...and

here's me with a red wig on.

the amazing thing is that the wig is the same color of chemical red that my jacket is.  i mean, when does THAT ever happen?

like Tiffany's

"if i could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's,

then i'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name."

-Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

USPS

have you ever noticed how the ladies who work at the post office are really into guessing what you might be sending, and they push and shake your poor unsuspecting parcel like a christmas present...

which would be cute, 

except its not addressed to them, 

and for a second you feel like they're that teacher in grade school that always wanted to catch you doing something wrong.  like sending a bomb or anthrax or a fire cracker in the mail.

and its even less cute while they're molesting your package that they peer at you through their caked on eyeliner and say "anything liquid, hazardous or fragile?"  

"well, if anything was fragile, your bony, probing, violating fingers would already have found me out by now," i want to say.

instead you play an old playground initiation game with them.  see who looks away first.

"its a painting," i say, as if its her business, with a little of that "what are you going to do about it" tone in my voice...but steady gaze.  you HAVE to keep a steady gaze or you lose.  you're instantly a terrorist or a miscreant or both.

and its all over when they put their little red stamp on it that probably says, "please bend and mutilate...i dont like the look of the one sending it...she's trouble."