Vive La France

Happy Bastille Day! I have a fondness for this holiday for many reasons.  Growing up I was not that impressed with the U.S of A.  I felt more of a connection to Europe, especially France.  As a young girl I went almost every summer to Lourdes, France.  A village nestled in the French Alps that upon summer gets inundated with busses, the sick, those helping the sick, Catholics, Christians, the list goes on.  Having been raised to be the perfect catholic girl I once dreamed of becoming a nun and helping the sick people at Lourdes.  I remember Bastille day staying at the Hotel de la Grotte.  Watching fireworks  go off by the old castle.  Sounds like a fairy tale doesn't it?  Well it may be many things, one of them is not a fairytale.  I do however have deep gratitude for my time spent there.

I loved France so much that I begged for years to be able to be an exchange student.  I am pretty sure that from the age of 13 I asked my mother every year if I could go live in France.  Every year it was the same answer. NO! Until my senior year of high school, which is the most important year of school especially if you are attending a college preparatory academy, my grandma gave the ok, and I was off to France.  I took 1 french lesson, bought myself a teach yourself french book and within five months I was on french soil taking a weeks worth of french immersion before heading over to the lovely town where I was to meet my french family and attend school.  A wonderful story begins here.  But for now, the hour of the night calls.  The beckoning of dreams, the heaviness of my eyelids all inspire me to say goodnight and sweet dreams, or good morning and have a blessed day,

A Page From My Standard Diary for Thursday June 10, 2014

Amongst the many gifts that my Grandmother would give out each Christmas, there was always included for all the kids and grandchildren a red Standard Diary with a page for each day of the year and a calendar for Butchart Gardens.  My lovely cousin adored these standard diaries while the majority of everyone else either put them on a bookshelf to never open again or gave away.  Who knows what happened to them! After my Grandmother had her stroke and stopped sending the Standard Diaries my lovely cousin began sending out an email to all of us cousins and uncles and aunts asking if anyone would like a Standard Diary.  Myself along with I think 2 other cousins said yes.  My intention for writing in them has often been better than my practice.  However, recently I am back on the train writing each day in my Standard Diary.  I figured I would share a page.  The writers voice is often different when documenting in a diary and also, I feel really grateful for what I was able to write today and want to share the love.  So here is what I wrote word for word for Thursday July 10, 2014.

Well I have been enjoying doing my daily practice.  The drops from the tinctures seem so sweet and full of life on my tongue.  I have boundless gratitude for my loved ones.  The ones that love me and the ones that I love.  Their words of encouragement, love pride in me.  I am very grateful for it feels wonderful being appreciated, receiving compliments when I haven't been expecting them, knowing that those around me believe that I'm "doing good." I can feel my heart swelling.  I have great love for all these people, even and especially for the ones that no longer play an active roll in my life.  I am grateful to loss for showing me how much I really have.  I am grateful for heartbreak for showing me how much I really do love.  I am grateful for every day that I wake up and choose to love myself more.  Thank you for the love.

She's Bad

Thank you Dent de Cuir for making this awesome video,whose song "She's Bad" is  a collaboration of Dye and Egyptian Lover, you had me going with your sexy vibe and creative interpretation of collage and really won me over during the shark attack.  

What I Did When I Was Not Making Art

One day I found myself on the phone with my lovely cousin.  I was about to tell her about how since my life was so crazy with the loss of my art studio and having to move homes as well that I hadn't made any art.  I caught myself right before I said that because I knew that it wasn't true.  I may not have manifested a profound body of work, yet I had been making art.  I have a little black Moleskin that I carry with my in my purse.  When I had the spare time, drinking a ginger beer at a bar or waiting for something I would pull out my little book and do a drawing.  After I told my cousin how I was about to say a false statement, we continued on talking about how sometimes we don't give ourselves credit for what we are doing.  We often think that we are not doing something because it doesn't live up to our grand perceptions that we had created, while truthfully though, we had been working on something.  So here are some drawings that I did during a pretty busy time in my life.

I bet there are somethings that you don't give yourself credit for.  I bet if you sit down and think about it more that you will actually have some of the dreams that you've wanted, maybe not the form you wanted, but still, some of the same aspirations.

Are you loving yourself right now?

     Standing on a dock someone very close to me asked me this.  " Are you loving yourself right now?"  I said yes, looking back I don't know if I was or not.  In fact, I don't know if I had every really pondered the concept of self love long enough to really know what role it played in my life.  Lately though, I've been looking closer at it.  I've noticed a couple things, for starters, I have been pretty mean to myself. I mean, the stuff that I say to myself is more mean than anything I would ever say to anyone else.  I've also noticed that in other ways I have felt shame or guilt for putting my needs ahead of others.  After a bit of a health scare,  I have committed myself to making healthy decisions.  If that means that I can't be there for someone else then I have to be ok with that because that is a part of self love.  They need to be ok with it as well and if they aren't, then their not someone that is whole heartedly beneficial having in my life.  Other times, I have felt unworthy for the gifts that I have had in my life.  I've also felt guilt for having the things in my life.  All a part of shame.  A very tricky thing that can get in the way of self love.

     The first image is kind of disturbing (its from the film Carrie,) I preferred focusing on the contents of the article and the "test" at the end.    Says some pretty important stuff.  I think we could all grow by looking at how shame affects our lives and value self love more.  I hope you love yourself as much as I do, in fact, I hope you love yourself more than I do.  May we all full heartedly love every ounce of ourselves, whether its the parts that make us "crazy" the parts that make us "slutty" or the parts of us that are "broken" .  By the way I don't think your crazy, slutty or broken.  These are words that other people often use to describe things that make them uncomfortable. xoxo

Detoxing Shame: A 5 Fold Path by Anjana Love Dixon
http://theanjananetwork.net/2014/07/06/detoxing-shame-a-5-fold-path/

P.S Here is Ani DiFranco singing Shameless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjizt4Ixt6E

"Happy Father's Day, Fuck you Dad"

           It's been way to long since I've put energy into this space.  I am just going to jump right into the mix of things.  It's Father's Day! Which means that my Newsfeed is filled with happy stories about fathers and pictures of families together. It is super cool to see all the photos of the fathers of my friends.  I admire parents and having been in a relationship with a dedicated father I was able to see first hand everything a good father does for his son.  I have mad respect for all the dads.   So I wanted to join in and say "Happy Father's Day", I typed it out, but it just didn't feel right, it felt like lying (which unless you ask me if I am having a good day and I may say fine even if I am not) is something that I am not very good at.  It's against my constitution.  My muscles begin to get all tense, my chest tightens and the room for my heart becomes smaller and smaller.
          I couldn't type it out, because although I appreciate all the fathers in my life I also have very little appreciation for the most important one who is not in my life, my own father.  So what I really wanted to say was "Fuck you Dad, Happy Father's Day" But it just doesn't bring across that spirit of love that I have for the other fathers in my life.
          The relationship between (lets call him G) "G" and I has been rather complicated.  For the majority of my life it was a revolving door policy. " Hey there's dad! I love you dad" then dads gone.  Then I get to spend a summer with "G" and then he doesn't call me on my birthday, when I call him and ask him why he didn't call, his response was "You never call me on my birthday" I was 11.  As I got older the emotional abuse got worse and then came the verbal abuse.  He would say that "I was a cunt, a whore, a crazy person."  If you asked G if he ever remembered this I don't know if he could answer that because he was so high when he said it.
         I kicked him out again of my life for another three years.  Then his mother, my grandmother passed away, I remember on the car ride to her funeral telling my Uncle "I'll be dammed if just because his mother is dead he thinks he can waltz back into my life.  Well he can't" and 3 days later he was back in my life.  Why? Because I wanted to be loved.  I wanted to have a dad in my life and I believed that he would change.  He did but then it went back to the same old, a different version. I won't go into detail about that ( it allegedly involves threats to my life, verbally abusive phone calls from "G" and  "C", stalking, me on the run living in constant fear and the eventual cut off from every single relative on that side of the family) but let me tell you that "G" is out of my life and I don't think he will ever get close to coming back in.  Maybe, just maybe,  I will visit him on his deathbed one day.
         So when I say "Happy Fathers Day" now after telling my story I can say it a bit more honestly.  But what's most important of all is that it's "Happy Father's day, Fuck you Dad."  Its been 8 years since I cut my dad out of my life, and not a day has gone by that I have regretted it.  I have missed him and the real person that I have been missing is just an illusion, not the whole truth.   And the loneliness that I feel for not having a father in my life really is really fucking strong and has had a tremendous impact on who I am today.  That very pain comes from and gives me strength, because no one should ever emotionally, verbally, physically or sexually abuse you, especially anyone that you say these three precious words to, "I love you." So I've been saving my "I love you's" for those that treat me right.  I have an adopted pappi, cousins, friends, flowers, trees, places and animals that receive my I love you's, along with two uncles.  In the end, I love everyone.  Everyone in the whole world.  I do.  Even "G", he just won't get to see it any time soon. I love you too! Remember that if you ever are having a hard day and don't feel the love that you need to.  Know that I love you.

I Don't Care What They Say About You, I Love You

It wasn't my intention to have my next entry be about another performance artist.  I was supposed to post pictures, lists and thoughts.  Yet, as I lay in bed, drinking tea, warming myself up and optimistically thinking that I am feeling better from my cold I found myself clicking on a link that said "Ummmmmmmmm No" with a video of a woman sitting knitting with no pants on knitting.

That woman is Casey Jenkins, an Australian performance artist and "craftavist" who has been performing a piece entitled "Casting off my Womb" by sitting in a gallery for 28 days as she knits from yarn that she has placed in her vagina.

Maybe I should also say that some people may be offended by this piece. It contents are of a "graphic nature" with subject material that may make people feel uncomfortable.  I didn't really want to say that but I did.

Here is a video where she eloquently talks about her piece with great clarity, sensitivity, and intimacy.

For me, this is a great piece of art because it makes me feel something.  There is a sensation in my heart that I can not quite describe right now. A tightness in my throat and chest.  And maybe a bit of arousal.  Not that this piece makes me want to masturbate or have sex, I am nowhere near the realm of that kinky at all, in fact, rather far from it,  but rather it creates a bit of intimacy between myself and my own vagina.  Maybe it was because as she reached out for the string to gently pull to create another casting, I found that gesture to be beautiful and gentle.  Maybe it was because I found her voice to be soothing and comfortable.  Maybe because a vulnerability in me related to her sitting there, pants off, on display, in a room where at the moment she is by herself.  Maybe because she creates a relation between this piece and her womb, a relationship with her vagina as it is, with herself as she is, before she possibly creates a child or maybe because she doesn't.  I don't know what her story will be and I don't fully know why I feel the way I do.  I do hope that you won't judge me for it though.  For we never really do know what is going on in anothers life, what has gone on, when we place judgement on them.  Normally, those judgements are far from the truth and just a way to label something that we don't understand, or relate to the un-relatable.

 Maybe I relate to it on a emotional and sexual level because I am confronting my own fertility, preparing for the future.  For my infertility.  I have begun doing research and making steps to freeze my eggs and it brings up a lot of emotions.  This time though I want to focus mostly on this piece.  I went a bit all over the place yesterday and there are many aspects of "Casting off my Womb" that deserve attention.  Not only because it's beautiful but also because of the reaction that it is getting from people on the internet.  A reaction that although doesn't shock me, I still find to be deeply saddening.

 I have seen this piece with introductions as "Oh my gosh this is SO GROSS," "Everyday This Woman Shoves a Ball of Yarn Up Her Vagina and Then Knits with it," and  "WTF VIDEO OF THE WEEK." First of all, I doubt that she "Shoves" the ball of yarn up her vagina.  I imagine that she places it there.  Secondly, these and comments such as "When will the rectal one be,"  "The things people do to get attention,"  " she is a nasty bitch. And not in the positive "nasty" way and not in the kinky "bitch" way,"  "this women is as sick as fuck......This women will have nothing to look forward to but loneliness at the end of a long selfish experiment of self awareness & lets not kid around, this nastiness was brought to you by Feminism,"  "She could of waxed her vagina ," further orchestrate a vagina fear that is still permeated in our society and also show a detachment that our society often had over our bodies and the bodies of others. Let me also say that these  comments were written by both women and men.  To call it immaturity would be correct yet to easy. In all reality, some people think its gross and don't know how to have a conversation about it so it is much easier to throw targets, call names, make fun of and question the sanity of Casey Jenkins It is much more complex than that, yet I have tried to touch the surface of it. Even though someone with a degree in feminism or something of that sorts would have a much better grasp on why this piece of art has created such strong reactions.  It appears that it is very challenging for a woman to create a sexual piece without it being completely sexualized.  What I mean is that once the subject uses her own body in the art piece, to be more specific, her vagina, people begin to treat her as a piece of meat and as a crazy person. If a woman does something that involves her vagina it must be sexual.   I can not help but remember how in the past women who masturbated were perceived to be insane and were as a result institutionalized.

What I believe to be the original site that posted the video, SBS2 Australia on YouTube,  has disabled all comments.  Which is a relief and also disheartening. While one can watch and enjoy, or in the case of many, be disgusted, one need not be distracted from whatever is coming from the peanut gallery.  Although, however sad those comments may be, they are also important, because they are a mirror of our society, and a reminder that there is still more progress to be made.

Do you like or dislike this piece?  If so why?  Does it confront any of your own ideas? Is there any art out there that is viewed as controversial that has caught your attention?

I hope you have a nice day, are kind to someone else and have someone be kind to you.