The Land of "The Happy People"

Like my infamous composure and great passions, my happiness is deep and profound. You would think that's a blessing, until you meet the opposite of contentment in the form of a depressed psychotic who hates you for, uh, being "pretty". Yeah, that's it! All of my life, my ability to "right" myself like a boat that was in danger of capsizing has been noticed, studied from a distance, and just as often, despised. Having a healthy brain is a very difficult thing to describe to someone afflicted with many serious ailments, so as a result, I simply took on more work than humanly possible to make up for the difference in abilities present in myself that are so lacking in the people around me. 

During the first work week I had at yet another job with a workflow that was rife with incompetence, I was met with derision, nasty quips, and prolonged looks of anger thrown in my general direction, because unlike fictional movies and t.v. shows, the heroine of every drama is the often the least liked person in the room. "How are you doing all this?!", an incredulous publisher asked me in front of some douchebag production manager who was drowning in his own anger that'd been set to a slow simmer for many years. I hoisted up a company coffee cup in salute "With this," and then I deconstructed the next problem that was mine to solve for them through art, design, and production.

Genius is fun from afar, but not when you're always the only person in the room with all the answers, with real solutions that don't offer shelter to the mad and hopelessly addicted, because it exposes them overmuch in their shoddy thinking. Most people I worked for absolutely hated their jobs, but they felt that they needed money for healthcare and housing, which, in this century, is being reclassified as "Disability". Really, they didn't need money for much. These were not the kinds of people who can actually enjoy traveling, or really good music, or excellent gourmet food, because they simply do not have the type of brains to appreciate such things in life, which makes the concept of "upward mobility" a bit of a joke for them, unfortunately.

It was like the exact opposite of the old saying, except it was beer tastes on a champagne budget, and this was publishing, a supposedly "highbrow" endeavor for the wealthy WASPy trust fund set, made of those less inclined to strike Wall Street gold. And then I showed up. It was the same as anywhere else, for me. Sigh...yeah, I know. I don't fit in here. Right? Right! But, then, why are you so happy? You mean besides the brilliant and beautiful thing? Uh, not much, I guess! What to say? You work for me, even though it's not  "supposed" to be that way because of (pick one): age, sex, status, looks, etc. There was always a reason for my oppression at the hands of the less gifted.

In a fascinating twist, the most literary people on the planet never figured out "why", when it had been published to such great acclaim so long ago, so perhaps it's time for a reprint. I'm happy because it is a part of who I am, blessed to be alive on G-ds Green Earth, and the receiver of His Greatest Gifts. That's why. How's Monday working out for you, office grunts of the world? I'll bet it's just as bad as all the other weeks you've ever had, and I'm not there to blame, which is too bad. The right to pursue happiness is every American's right in this world we live in. Avail yourself of it. Live well, like we do. Bonjour, Acadies!

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

• Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie Part the First - I
• Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie Part the First - II
• Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie Part the First - III

In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pré
Lay in the fruitful valley.  Vast meadows stretched to the
eastward,
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without
number.
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor
incessant,
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the
flood-gates
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and
cornfields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the
northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station
Descended.
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village.
Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of
hemlock,
Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the
Henries.
Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables
projecting
Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway.
There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the
sunset
Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,
Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles
Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors
Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of
the maidens.
Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children
Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them.
Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens,
Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome.
Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun
sank
Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed.  Anon from the belfry
Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village
Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending,
Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment.
Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,--
Dwelt in the love of God and of man.  Alike were they free from
Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of
republics.
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;
But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their
owners;
There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.
Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas,
Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pré,
Dwelt on his goodly acres; and with him, directing his household,
Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village.
Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters;
Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes;
White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the
oak-leaves.
Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the
wayside,
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her
tresses!
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the
meadows.
When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide
Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden.
Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its
turret
Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them,
Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and
her missal,
Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings,
Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom,
Handed down from mother to child, through long generations.
But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty--
Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession,
Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite
music.

The Acne Artist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_%282002_film%29

Believe it or not (and since this is me, you should totally believe me, but if not, there's tons of actual documentation to back up my claims), book publishing attracts a lot of groupies. Educated (for the most part), highly technical groupies, but add-ons nonetheless. They're the type of people hooked on reading, which is usually a bad thing for other types of addiction, but in this case it creates someone who is uniquely over-educated and typically smarter than you, the average person. As James Baldwin once famously said, he didn't mind being born poor, black, and gay because he was a very gifted New Yorker who could work the odds against him. He felt blessed, and he felt that if public school neglected him, he would read every book in the local public library, which would make him very well-educated, and he was right: 

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”― James Baldwin

 

Readers form a synergy between the living and the past that cannot be broken, a rare type of erudition that eludes other types of education out there in the real world. It's been one of the biggest blessings of my life, but not the most compulsive one, because I'm not a compulsive addict. A friendly clerk here at my local library and I like to chat when I check out DVD's, most oftentimes movies, because I don't have cable t.v., nor do I go to the cinema very much. She sees me here and now, which led her to ask me, one of the most educated and well-read people on the planet, if "I ever read" yesterday (too funny), because she doesn't see me do it right underneath her nose. Obviously, right now I am busy writing to you all, which cuts into my other endeavors.

I went on to explain to her that there are people who only know me as a rock star book cover designer, because that was my trade for years. There are other people who wonder why I don't illustrate, photograph, and/or show my fine art in galleries anymore, because I am obviously busy being a publisher who utlizies all of those skills daily to publish for all of you, but compulsive people with learning disorders don't easily understand that. They simply don't get how I could, say, be at one time in my past, one of the best female Mixed Martial Artists in the world (and the only one in my age group), who gradually stopped training because of injury, a lack of time, and available funds, but that's exactly what happened with me. My parents are still baffled that I wasn't a professional ballerina, because I could have done that for living, too.

No, gifted people suffer from the same life conditions as you do, just with way less time: there's not a lot of it for extremely talented people with genius level IQ's, which means you don't know how many different facets I have, which is also why I don't run out of things to write about, speak to you about, or make art about...ever. There's just a lot more of you than me. I am just one, as you are many. Book publishing is the same as the general public, which was the market I designed for: "Adult Trade" (although I designed for other markets, too), items of general interest for the general public, which means I know just about everything. It's weird, but it's a function of my trade. I've read every type of book there is several times over, as well those in my head that I haven't made, yet, which means you are my forever audience.

We do have specialists within our workflow as a production queue with some very dull technical aspects, so badly repetitive to a mind like mine that I transcend lower level jobs in a year or less, which is also typical for me: to catapult past people who have been laboring for years under just one of two types of conditions in the workplace. It's excruciating for me to be around them as I must be for them, although I cross through their viciously defended territories often enough to make it very uncomfortable for someone who is basically a human typewriter in this modern age. It's not a good fit, but I already knew that, it's just that I don't have the time to school each and every one of you individually, that's what I write it down here: for reference's sake. 

Same thing as my attention-getting design work at some commercial business: I'm there to do that specific trade (which encompasses more skill sets than you'll ever have), but obviously I don't have time to show you all of my G-d-given gifts, which makes me seem almost like divinity to the people who worship at the altar of book-making: I am their "Great One", The Maestro who always gets it right, even if you don't get it at the time. They publish my supposed "rejections" for years afterwards, too, which makes me seem like some magical golden goose who keeps producing even after my physical presence has long gone from their doorways. It's unnerving, and that's my life: to outlast all of you, as a final legacy that's my gift to the world.

It's created some absolutely havoc-wreaking dynamics on what can be a compulsive response to life, if you have disordered people manning the lead positions at the top who hate change like they can't see the germs on their clothes. In the industry, we have staffers who do one small chunk of the book process over and over again, without ever gaining any type of perspective or overview about the entire life-cycle of a book from concept to bound book, which often makes me the only one sitting at your round table meeting who knows what the fuck is going on, above and beyond your wonky V.P. widget of a human being, which is why the best of us "graduate" from a set industry to strike out on our own, which is why you are also now reading me, instead of the other way around. Oh, I've checked out a few books here, but it's really only if you can out-write or out-think me, which is highly improbable.

Occasionally we get "art fags" so disordered that they run screaming from our industry like we just set them on fire, which we have; a horrible state of affairs if your mind is already more jumbled than you can sort out. Making books is somewhat like making a really good movie: there's "money people" who produce, accountants who keep track of the books, managers who tend to the budget, and then there's the content-makers and content-generators at the top of the pyramid that include me, the editor, and our publisher, with or without some rich white "ladies who lunch" on the board joining us in meetings against our will because they're bored, thus forcing their boring presence upon skillful people like us, because we're truly exciting to be around.

We have a whole crew of onlookers we carry financially on the backs of our labors: secretaries, guys working the mail-room, that cool dude from IT...you get my point. They see a tiny portion of our labor, because that's what we have time for. You: fix my computer, NOW. You: how much time do we have in the schedule? None? Ah, that's what I thought, and yeah, no money either. That's how it goes at the top; it just gets harder and harder to perform under ever-changing heights of extremes that you can't handle, which leads to freak-outs that are so weird, I have to tell you about them. We attract kooks like magnets, ones who seek to impress others with their "creative"-ish jobs that drive them horribly mad because they can't do it.

BinBin was one such creature. Because she can't hack a real artistic life, she designs the same thing day after day after day, and when she finally complains about the monotony, someone like me tosses her a cover off the back-list with a tiny print run of no real consequence for her to design, which she fails at abysmally, thus sending her right back to the bottom of the workflow where she belongs. Oh, she hates us as much as she hates herself, and that's the weirdest part: BinBin telegraphed her Chinese hatred of the "White Man's" English language art-form by deliberately rubbing Vaseline all over face every evening before passing out in a drunk stupor, because she used her pus-filled acne to torture us with at face-to-face meetings, in the final irony of it. She isn't a real artist. No, her real artistry is using her body as a performance piece to hurt the people around her, because her father is an alcoholic who's a better artist than her as a professional musician, and she can't fucking handle that.

So, instead of working towards getting better, she decided to freak us all out by grossing us out, and that is her real genre: that of a gross-out artist, like the kid in your class who makes "boogie art" from his picked nose, or graffiti on the desk with his leftover chewing gum. It's offensive, but so what? There was nothing else to her besides the acne that she can or cannot clean up according to her not-so-very-hidden agenda tied to her worsening emotional state from her own incompetence and arrogance. Instead, she chose to spend her days playing weird head games with her hard-working co-workers, people who deeply love the printed word and the romantic poetry of the English language. She thanked us for allowing her to apprentice in our great trade by passing around horrible nude photos of herself through the company's in-house email network (stupid, too, like those ten "certificate" programs she has listed on her resume, with not one real art or design school degree), mugging her gross face at all of our productive meetings as a spite for her lack.

Don't forget history, people. Hitler was a failed artist before he became the anti-Christ, not the other way around. Be warned during this time of transition about the real horrors that exist in the world, while ignoring the fake distractions around you that mean nothing. The next great evil might just be the person sitting next to you who processes the same dull paperwork every day, in this rich character study about the banality of evil that's from me to you during this wicked Halloween season. Beware the techno-geek who seeks to harm you through your screen, because I hear what she has is catching....boo at you!

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/art.htm

20 Years After Man

http://on.mash.to/1roxBi5

By now you know all about the angry zeitgeist behind GenX methodology, because we want to blow the whistle on how we see the world, which takes us to some very strange places indeed, first and foremost is the human condition as it exists out in the world, because we sometimes stand up openly and in violent contrast to pop culture and its' requisite artifacts around us. It's hard: you're the problem and we clearly know that, but how to change you, a broken human? Answer: through intelligent design, and very often mindless repetition, resulting in positive growth. 

It's excruciating slow in genius-time, which means me and my peer group often outsource intellectual capital (in the form of expert consultation) to do the more dreaded monotonous and daily grinding of your ax. We feel anger at you, but since you're the patient, we can't in all good ethics hurt you, so we seek to heal you. But, where does the energy go? Oftentimes, we channel it into our art, music, dance, clothes, speech, etc. You get the point: Mommy is mad, but it's against the law for me to slap the shit out of you at this point in time because I'm a registered human weapon, so I won't. Feel me?

With that in mind, take most local and evening news programs: it's made mostly for people who need the repeating of spoken words for their ADD/Dyslexia/BDP (like a lot of the anchors themselves), therefore it is the exact opposite of informative for someone like me. If I'm a regular viewer of television content, I often have to watch an alcoholic with shiny red-rimmed eyes sign his lack of comprehension live and on-air, in the form of the same question over and over again. Yes, it IS very painful. Thank you for not answering, and/or caring about me as a person, because your sickness takes precedence over me and my feelings each and every day.

So, I watch most stuff with a grain of salt. Oh, I know the anchors who are good at what they do, and the ones who are glorified actress/model/wannabes in tight dresses, but when I see and/or hear Ernie Anastos, that means "GREEK" to me in New Yorkese. He's been an anchor here for so long, that like The Mets or The Yankees, we would struggle with change; the real kind, not your temper tantrum over no chocolate ice cream left in the freezer.

It was with great trepidation and some degree of shock/awe/horror that I had to watch my man from New York sign weirdly easy questions at some New Age pale skinny gay gothic hipster in all black and some eyeliner from Ohio. Sorry, Middle American peeps, for your loss (sarcasm). The intellectual premise was thus: what to do when robots take over? I'm sorry....what the fuck did you just say? Did that fucking hipster just say "robots" in all seriousness to Ernie freakin' Anastos?! Dazed, I waited a bit, thinking this mess would right itself, but no; some 20-nothing "producer" even had the graphics guy throw up a cheesy (and quickly made) type graphic for this very serious and timely pertinent Robot Takeover story. Is it ethical to, like, be nice to them and stuff? Holy shit, yo. Excuse the fuck out of me? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

By now, I'm very used to media dip-shits, because publishing isn't exactly filled with just Harvard, Yale, and RISD, so I know I can expect a complete fucking idiot at any time in life, but sometimes the very fact that some ass thinks that we would want to watch his gay friend mouth their shared mental disorder makes me, well...mental. And then I went off, shouting at the t.v. like any Mad Dog-drinking Times Square bum pissing his pants in broad daylight. That's how fucked up you and your choices are to me sometimes. I re-grouped, shouted many choice and very appropriate curse words at my t.v set, and then I did what I do best: I "depantsed" intellectually some kid who has the nerve to invade my space, just because I want free t.v. and not some rip-off cable channel that makes YOU richer, and not me.

So, here it goes: we humans make robots, we humans then service the robots, and (THIS IS FUCKING KEY) because machines break down all the time with or without humans, our metallic equipment doesn't last long. When I did have some satellite channels in Brooklyn, and heavily rocked the NatGeo channel (among a few other choice channels), I actually discovered things; you know, like you do with educational programming. Disclaimer: you should know upfront that I an a huger fan of free PBS channels, mostly for the nature specials, but some other stuff, too.

And so I realize that I had the privilege to watch informing and entertaining specials about what happens to our stuff 20 years after <insert latest type of Apocalypse here>, which formed this brilliant deduction: shit breaks down when we aren't there to take care of it. Your house falls apart, weeds sprout up everywhere, and wild animals nest in your old bedroom. Chernobyl is a radioactive human nightmare BUT wolf cubs are born there, irradiated. So it's like that, asshole.

The Mars Rover spent half the Martian year docked on the side of a small hill, parked there by code sent to it through NASA engineers, so that it's solar cells and other mechanical works won't get gummed up when they try to power it back up after the annual sand storm season, with, yes, yet more slow code sent to it via space. Except for that one time, when the images that came back to the control center didn't accurately predict the small depression in the sand, so the guys had to send it messages in painfully long Computerese to move it very slowly back and forth (like parallel parking in the city with an angry mad trucker cursing at you for blocking traffic), because if it breaks down, there goes $40 billion U.S.D. of our taxpaying money, and if the robot is done, it's fate is to be forever covered in sand.

Ditto with episodes of "Taboo" that highlight fringe carnival freaks as entertainment. Yeah, I know that guy jerks off in his car and pretends it's his girlfriend, but do you want him dating your daughter? Same thing with Diaper Boy; he can't talk to you, A PERSON, because some crazy human beat him every day of his childhood so, lo and behold, he wants to be held like a small child instead of loving you. It happens, it's disturbing, but at the end of the day, your stupid fucking robot toy that kicks a soccer ball to the President (you know, the man we freely elected to kick a ball AND save the free world on a shoestring. Yeah, that guy.) is just that: a very fancy and nicely designed piece of equipment that breaks down. And it doesn't get to save the world. No. It gets that crazy IT guy who costs $XXX/hour to fix it, because your dumb fucking machine costs us $XX billion dollars to make, no Presidential addresses included. How's that for a price tag? No?! 

Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. I have to monitor your usage of what becomes (conceptually to me) that fancy fucking color copier with it's own hard drive, and then fix it for you when you become weird about using it, because you are too cheap to outsource it to some wonk who specializes in gadget repair. Oh, then please douchebag me around in a phony budget meeting because you ONLY UNDERSTAND spreadsheet numbers from your learning disordered brain, (that's why you work in the text-based industry of literature) plus I'm way better looking than you, and you really hate that. I PASS. YOU FAILED.

Just learn some real shit by clicking through the links below, yo, and more importantly: LEAVE ME ALONE.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/nuclear-tourism/johnson-text
• http://www.space.com/11773-nasa-mars-rover-spirit-mission-ends.html 


“I’ll be in the paper, the news with Ernie Anastos
They’ll even print my recipe for pasta with pesto”
—“Finger Lickin’ Good” by The Beastie Boys.

Turning Japanese

http://godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/Shobijin

I met Atusko as a transfer student to RISD, over the foundation summer session that's required for each and every student. No one gets a waiver, not even Picasso himself (and he probably would've been kicked out for being a total fucking dick who couldn't paint, anyway), because they do not accept studio credits from any school on Planet Earth (or famous artist, living or dead). She immediately didn't like me, but given her rather traditionally affluent Japanese upbringing, she chose to hide it in plain sight, which is really odd when you are exposing yourself in intimate studio classes everyday.

But, like any other generic wanna-be "art fag", she chose to do bitchy battle with me (mostly one-sided, because, honestly, I had no fucking clue what she was thinking most of the time, nor did I really care) by sublimating her lesbian energy towards me in strange and unusual ways. I didn't know she was bisexual until later on in the summer, when my gay fashion design friends finally told me, as we sat gossiping about her and all the other students. 

She was a total snob in crits, and overly sensitive. She cried a lot, which gave her very red eyes all summer long, and led to a series of drippy red paintings that were either about human blood or being gay and rolling around in period blood with her ex-girlfriend. We didn't really know, and besides that, it was total schlock shock value and really gross. I should be perfectly honest with you at this point: I have never had a lesbian friend. Ever. I've never met a gay woman who actually liked me enough to be a real friend to me.

Anyway, into this heady cocktail of insane competition and mind-blowing academics, she chose to betray another female student by being one of the weirdest assholes I've met to date, and that is hard to beat for a New Yorker, so it actually helped me to remember her over the years, when I would have forgotten her as just another rich Japanese girl with a typically short haircut that they liked in the 90s. Through her friendship with my friend from Minnesota (who would become a housemate and roommate with me for much longer than I ever wanted, but that's another great story or two), I could at least be around her without being a primary target, because my fag hag fashion friend diffused some of her gay anger at me, and life itself.

And so, unbeknown to her, I actually learned a lot about her by being part of a group, and listening to my new arty, wealthy friends speak. They thought they were extremely sophisticated, which was funny for me as a New Yorker. We'd trade stories about where we were from, and we were from all over the globe, in several different languages. I knew she loved her brother, and that she did the same weirdly passive-aggressive and oddly sexually hostile thing with him over his girlfriend, because in "Depressionville", it's okay to sabotage other people's relationships if you can justify it by claiming "jealously" (even if it's incestuous, which is very cool, hip, and strange). With her, it came about at a red-faced and drunk "goodbye" family dinner at a sushi joint, with lots of free-flowing sake. She showed me the pictures from their last visit, as we sat talking and smoking.

By the end of the summer, she tried to convince me that her zitty, greasy-haired, and dyed blonde roomie was as beautiful as a Supermodel, and that Pam's sister was just as gorgeous, too! "Look, MAAHHRIE!" She showed me some glossy mag of a skincare ad with two blue-eyed models: one blonde and one brunette, like the American sisters she was now lucky enough to know firsthand. "Here's PAHHM, and her seester!". Uh, okay. I didn't have the heart to unload my brief experiences with New York, photography, and modeling, which would have driven her madder anyway, so I just said "Yeah", briefly and noncommittally, and let it drop.

She must have sensed that I had some edge I wasn't divulging to her right away, because she nervously fretted around my summertime dorm room in an old house owned by the school, finally landing on my old cassette types, to scrutinize them and judge my musical tastes. Uh oh. This was also really bad dyke territory for me. Chicks could always tell I really knew music by my collection. And there it was: her dip-shit, passive-aggressive opening: "Ohhhh, MAAHHHrie..." she tsk-tsked over my tapes, "you must not like women!" She pulled out one cassette, "See? You have no music by women!!" It was a frightening thing for her to say aloud, because we were in a room full of just female artists, and every single one of them wanted to sabotage me without getting caught.

It was a great move, but unfortunately for her, I actually did have some female recording artists hidden into the mix, with serious tastes in punk rock, New Wave, Ska, R&B, Jazz, and the blues: genres classically difficult for American women to succeed in. I hit her with Exene Cervanka from the L.A. band "X" and Chrissie Hyde from "The Pretenders", but she clammed up coldly, narrowing her eyes at me viciously. Okay, fine. I also have ONLY BOYS in my family, Atsuko. Oh, right! She brightened up at the suggestion that led to her ripping apart her brother's girlfriend, hence the photos she busted out and passed around.

But it led us to better places conversationally, and the room once again opened up to other people wandering around the dorm, looking for something to do after summer studios quit for the day. A nice gay Mexican kid wandered in with his new redhead "bestie" from Long Island (they LOVED dishing over gossip mags and worshipped Linda Evangelista like she was a plastic mannequin), which spread the weirdo tension around the room more equitably. We got higher and drunker, which led me back to happier memories, too. She dropped an A-Bomb then that I never forgot, and it was the most charming thing I knew about her during our brief and tense acquaintance. 

I must have been talking about watching monster movies with my bros, when she cut in excitedly, to top me in the conversation: "Yes! I know what you mean, MAAHRIE. When I was leetle girl in Tokyo, I cried when I saw Godzilla on t.v. I ran to keetchen to mom, and ask her if Tokyo was burning and people die. 'No, Atsuko!', my mommy said. 'Look! Only on t.v. Eats not real!' And she pull back curtain in keetchain to show me city. Not burned! Tokyo okay!"

Hahaha! Awesome!! I didn't care that she hated me in what passed for "subtle" in Japan, or that each and every student in the room wanted to kill me and eat me (or sleep with me) to get ahead. I only knew that one other kid there that summer thought monster movies were great, and I could finally have a decent, well-informed conversation with another girl about my love for all things Mothra and Ghidorah. Finally! 

It was a first for me outside of my immediate family circle. So, for that brief respite, during that overwhelmingly hot and unairconditioned summer, I thank you, Atsuko, for finally being real with me, for a moment anyway, in a faraway land that must have been very scary for you, despite all of your family's money, connections, and prestige. "Look out, Atsuko! IT'S GODZILLA!!"

Jimmy O.D.

Years ago, I worked for a small Jewish family business in trouble. The two kids hated the business of publishing, which they tried to use for their "creative" endeavors, like screenwriting and music. It didn't work for them, because publishing is about books. And so, I was left with two spoiled "Manhattanites" who'd been told all their lives that they were gifted from their parents. Into this mess, I was charged with righting the ship of one of their Barnes and Noble imprints. It had been ditched into the gutter for being "crass" in comparison to the other Classic series of copyright-free works, which was a total joke. 

The bargain books were face-out on the shelf in every store in the nation, a fact that had become a traveling game for me. In each town, I'd look for my name on the jackets of titles I worked on, and wherever I went in America, there I was in book form, too. Because I broke my ass for two years to put it back into shape, I had a lot of pull in the company (and the industry), which gave me the power to make some tricky decisions, especially uncomfortable ones that included their family who drew income but produced no revenue. Their single daughter would sweep in from London to treat me like a Kinko's kid making copies for her, because she wanted to brag about her designer apartment that just got a write-up. Did I want to see it? They had tons of people in their lives like that, but such was the era of housewife decorators and artsy stay-at-home moms. You know the type.

When I finally conflicted artfully well with their small son over IT support (it'd been a handy weapon from Day 1 of my time), I knew I carried the whole history of desktop publishing and Mac computers with me. My enemy camp kept making petty remarks about Apple's business tactics and the inherent snobbery designers had about their corporate-sponsored trophy computers, neither of which I disputed. I pointed that out in several meetings with the enemy camp; a row of rich white men on one side, with me and my cowardly deaf mute designer on the other. She always backed out of speaking up in meetings by citing her deafness, which usually worked at stalling the machine, but not for me, because I have a deaf father. And so, when they finally realized that shutting out design and technology had dearly cost them their business edge, the son surprisingly decided it was time to finally pursue that music career full time, by touring and cutting a self-made CD, another type of business he knew I had under my belt, too.

Enter the scene one dramatic and showy character named Jimmy. The company admin gave him "advice" within my earshot about how to work me over as a client, by giving him "tips" like appealing to my Irish side and being charming, Yeah, Mick. Fooking do that. I liked Jimmy, as I typically do with my kind. He was smart, gifted, quick, and good with the older crowd who feared computers like they were boxes sent form Hell to deliberately torture them. Because he was older than me, he knew how to mock and demonize technology so that the older rich guy would cough up the dough. After all, Jimmy was a trained actor, as well as an IT guy, professional musician, lapsed Catholic, martial artist, and newly graduated fine artist.

He showed me pictures he took of his beautiful wife and classically Celtic sons: a striking "Black Irish" clan with bright blue eyes, fair skin, red lips, and dark dark hair. Yeah, I know. The boys were into Mohawk hair designs and boxing poses, which slayed me, but I wanted him to play me like a fiddle to get us what we needed, and he knew I knew the game cold. On one warm St. Pat's evening, I took the publisher's intern nephew on a long walk with me that spanned from the East 30's all the way down to Stone Street, to hear him play. It was loud brash standards (which embarrassed him a bit), but I could tell he was good. I wanted to show him support in lieu of his recent divorce, a shock that rocked him to the core.

I didn't know how bad it was until he showed up at the job with a bagel and hysteric tears, which frightened me. I told him about my own brief brush up with a marriage I'd been suckered into, but I realized it was much worse for him. His wife had done herself up buff at the gym while he worked and played around, which couldn't have meant he spent much time at home, and the kind he did was questionable at best. You don't cry onto your client's keyboard without a really bad heartache, because I paid him every penny he was worth. 

When he broke down in front of me, I knew I could either save him or lose him in that very moment. And so I did what anyone like me would do: when he bitched about his weight gain, I caught his darting red eyes, locked in on him, and told him the truth flat-out. He was in danger of something a lot more serious than a brief spat with gluttony, and he knew what I meant, because he bowed his head down for a moment. I left to get coffee in the company kitchen, and let him collect himself. By the time I came back, he'd put on a brave front with a sheepish grin. He knew I'd never fire him, but he'd embarrassed himself at work, and that was a lapse I knew he didn't do often, because I worked under the same threats as he.

After St. Patrick's Day, I only saw him once. The struggling family outfit finally let me go to "clean house", after they'd tried to use every political card they had against me. He'd done me a right turn by getting me an interview at his day job. I wasn't suited for it as a lowbrow market and I knew it, but it was good PR for me, because it let the industry know I was shopping around. I heard him gossip to the art director of a splashy photo mag there that she'd seen my portfolio with CD's. He asked her quietly: "How did it look?". She said she caught one minor error about a tiny line of 5 point copyright info placed too close to the donut whole on one disc layout (I did all my own layouts and production), but that my music creds were solid and true. I did have a famous musician or two in my book, complete with logos, booklets, cases, and all. "Shit", he said under his breath. I could see them out of the corner of my eye in his office from my vantage point in the conference room, him at his desk with her standing over him. 

The interview was over, and the next time I heard anything about Jimmy was on Facebook, because he committed suicide that winter by taking a handful of sleeping pills while home alone in Woodstock, packing up his stuff during his first Christmas alone and without his family. He'd been gracious enough to post us a good-bye photo on Facebook, with a caption below his last self-portrait that read about how tired he was, and that was the last of it. Forever.

For Jimmy 

 http://www.silive.com/obituaries/index.ssf/2011/01/james_odonnell_55.html

Baby Genius

"Look, Mommy! I can read!"

My oldest brother James was a baby genius, and he knew it. We all knew it. We taught ourselves to read to entertain ourselves during those long, tense quiet silences that fall over unhappy households, each family member in their own room (if they had one to retreat to, though privacy was always violated as needed, for leverage in yet another battle or war), after our parents fully checked out of their difficult marriage in these half-hearted attempts to solve the problems they have yet to fully resolve, in all the usual ways that adults do. And so it went: need to cook a gourmet meal? Oh, that what those books are for! You can read, can't you? 

Taunts, jeers, mocking tones, and much nasty teasing followed, and that was just when we were kids. Same with making a Halloween costume, or throwing a baseball well, or any of the other gazillion things that those pesky creatures called "kids" need to know, or at least want their parents to pass on to them, so they can spend some time with them. And so we did it, each and every one of us. Not one person in my family is a professional writer, reader, designer, artist, photographer, publisher, singer, dancer, martial artist, athlete, yogi, healer, counselor, therapist, master chef, mother, leader, public speaker, archivist, researcher, librarian, linguist, communicator, innovator, technologist, or naturalist except me, and so I became all those things, and so much more, because I had to.

"Here, you take him. He's too heavy for me to carry. My back hurts."

Schools stopped regular, standardized IQ testing in the 70s because it supposedly "hurt" the other children's self-esteem, but that's pure bullshit. They needed the bright kids to pull up the ratings for the rest of the class, and so I was docked in a senior year at high school that went very bad for me very quickly, because it was supposed to do just that out of envy and spite (so I wouldn't beat my mom graduating at 16, thus debunking her as the make-believe family intellectual), even though my oldest brother's last official IQ test in the public school system topped at 146. At 16, I already had college credits and all my high school requirements met. That book-reading served us well throughout our rough childhood years, when we were left to our own devices, so much so, that every decent professional I've related to has told me so, to my face: my parents are lucky we're not dead, because we should be, and several times over, each and every one of us.

And so, when I looked through a pack of old photos that were supposedly sorted by my mom specifically for me to have (more on that some other time), I found nothing organized into neat categories, but then, I never needed her to do that, did I? Instead I found more evidence in this ridiculous farce of an ongoing trial within my family that requires even more truth, and that's in just one photo of the two that I post here: that of a very sweet and very adorable, chubby-cheeked, little baby genius we called "Jimmy", reading to himself as my mom shoved food into her mouth, oblivious or simply spiteful to his needs, because he can.

We all can.

Into Great Silence

A beacon of light in the early morning.

I knew before I saw this documentary that it would blow me away, and it did. I've always been deeply envious of the monastic life that my Catholic brothers and sisters live in Christ, because I know I am capable of such discipline, as it is evidenced in almost facet of my daily life: the ability to hone in on difficult concepts and easily grasp them (in any language I find them in), my superior (and manifold) modes of communication, and my vastly rich interior spiritual life (that exists beneath the surface of the human eye, mostly); such is my innate understanding of complex material. I just get it. And so, my mission has not been to a beautiful mountain retreat, but rather to master the arts of walking among humankind without being unduly hurt by them, which I have so far succeeded in doing, clad as I am in a sort of natural protection that is also heightened by the martial arts of self defense I have learned along the way thus far.

But that doesn't mean I don't still long for it, especially after particularly challenging days as a lay person out among so many troubled, average people. Get me off this planet! G-d hears me, and knows that my task is to talk with you, sometimes at you, in the hopes that even through your incomprehension, you gain something through the repetition, just like any master teacher would do in any field of study.

And so I watched the DVD walking step by step with them but also apart from my brothers, and felt much frustration from the distance, even as we have an intimacy through our worship that is so acute, you may not ever feel it, though I am forever grateful for this expression of our shared faith. They are some of my best friends that I have never met in person, separated as we are by time and space, close as that gap is dissolved through our One True and Only Begotten Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Through Him, we have become One, a manifestation of the divine that is as unique as an individual, and also as close together as The Holy Trinity exists in perfect union, permeable as these states of being are spiritually.

As I watched them in the dark early morning hours, so the film opened with early morning vespers, our common calls to prayer bathed in the same fragile, dawning blue light, and even as I was sometimes moved by tears of joy about this shared connection and experience, while also feeling frustration and some anger at our physical distance, I know am never alone. Tucked away in a remote corner of this good green earth are a group of devoutly beautiful humans who know exactly how I feel, without me laboring to speak it to them, nor sign it to them, nor repeat it over and over like some brute form of water torture, like I am speaking to a dumb, mute beast stricken with ignorance. 

That is the perfection of our shared understanding and knowledge. Come see it for yourself, and find that you will never have a more beautiful art experience than this in a movie, for it is done. You will not top this, as so many of you are incapable of achieving this glory that is G-d in the Highest, even as my life as a prayer will ever be devoted to igniting that flame of passion within the heart of each and every one of you, in fellowship and kindness.

Live, my friends. Live it, and then maybe you will be some form of it some day, but most importantly....just live. Live and love life, a precious gift. See it, and know it, and be still. Live.

Times Square

After I graduated mid-session from art school, a few of my friends made their way to my aunts' apartment in Kensington for cheap rent, some sanity, and a crash pad while they began their own art and design careers. It served us well. I began my apprenticeship in publishing for an annual salary of just $11,500 in 1993, and rates have not gone up much. A recent stint in an lowbrow indie house had interns who began full-time work at a wage of just $20,000, doing just what we did back then: sharing small apartments in the city by tripling and quadrupling up, such is the way of our chosen vocation.

We split the monthly maintenance fee of just $400.00 because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to eat food or pursue our various vocations. There was Lisa, an old housemate from RISD who worked at a sweater manufacturer, Ed, who worked for MTV studios, and then, after he left, an old friend from Oneonta who was in love with me stayed and wouldn't leave, working first as a waiter before beginning his carpentry apprenticeship under my support.

Lisa and Ed were both terrified and enthralled with New York City. At first, neither had understood my time at their tony white tower design school. Ed came from a wealthy family who catered to his every need, and Lisa learned to sew and make clothes under her mothers' wing. They both had it much, much easier than me, so my slow start fooled them into thinking they had a superiority that quickly evaporated in the Big Apple. Oh. Tough city kid from the craziest, hardest place on the planet. Yep, kids. Welcome to the Capital of the World! They started connecting with exactly where my true grit came from, and it greatly discomfited them. My seemingly junior status as a student began to cast itself into what it actually was: a working class kid who attended an upstate New York teacher's college for basic liberal arts studies at the age of 17, per my parent's orders.

Nowadays, students can co-jointly enroll at Brown and RISD for liberal arts and specialized design studies, which is basically what I did on my own back then, anyway. If I hadn't diverged paths to their white castle, I would have gone on to F.I.T. in the city for my senior year, after spending three at Oneonta. It was called a "3:1 Program", meaning I would have earned two degrees in just four quick years: a Bachelor's in studio arts and an Associate's degree in Advertising Design, but my dad's business sprouted and profited, thus allowing me to change tracks with his approval, which I did, because that was the deal we struck up, one dark, lonely, rainy upstate night in the rain, a young me talking to him on a payphone. Oh. It was really like that. I simply hadn't had money at the time.

In my hometown they began rapidly putting the pieces of my puzzle together, and they didn't like. Not one bit. There was no "spoiled rich girl" routine, no bullshit phony act, no pouty foot-stomping that needed appeasing, just the brutal reality of my daily work and commuting grind on a shoestring salary, though in true competitive envy, they did try to sabotage me still, even after school, which exactly what my mentor at RISD told me would happen with supposed "art school stars". I began disappearing with grace into my habitat, and they couldn't swim on their own in my environment, and I knew it. School begins now, kids!

They had toted along all of their false preconceived ideas about my town, too, mostly petty generic stuff like tourist traps and bad food. I gave them the real deal every day, served up warm, and they hated it, choosing time and again for the phony thing over authenticity. Kids love dream worlds and fake fantasies, and this was no different. Ed drew other people's ideas during the day, and Lisa ran errands for other designers. She never successfully drew a single sketch that was approved or made on the production floor. She learned to get out sooner rather than later, which she did. They both did, running to points out west in sunny Southern Cali, a fool's paradise if ever there was, which they pitched and promoted to the hilt, just like they had bragged about "making it" in New York City on me and my father's dime with money, rent, and resources that they have never paid me for in full, to this very day that I write to you on a humble public library computer.

It was a huge slice of humble pie for them. No one cared about their fancy degrees! And why would they? At my publishing house, Yalies and Harvard grads were everywhere, littering each floor of the Flatiron with trust funds in their back pockets, in case they failed. And then, the truth finally struck them, because I read it all over their faces: I played the game hard, with no safety net. It was just me, running on my juice. Oh. Another bad realization for them, again, like <ooooff> a soft punch to the gut. Yep, they are indeed catching onto to our fair Gotham. That's the level, yo. Cue song, begin scene: "This is how we do it!"

And so, like every other "idea" they had about my town, they brought New Year's Eve to the table for me to enlighten them about, and I tried, dear readers, I really did, but like most disillusioned kids, they insisted on seeing it for themselves. Sigh. Oh, good, just what every tired and broke single "parent" like me needs: Times Square on New Year's Eve! And, just like I spelled it out for them, like I type it out word for word for you to recount with me, each and every scary bad thing that could happen did. You know, because I can read minds and shit, like some fucking t.v. psychic. It's magic!

We climbed the subway stars to a smoky Hell right out of any Hollywood movie, complete with terrifying cops in full riot gear, with battle regalia like huge Uzi guns, weapons Ed drew in his boyish cartoons but had never seen in person, because people like me shield him from it. Tear gas completed the hellish effect, casting a greenish haze everywhere that made shapes appear suddenly out of nowhere, drunk people careening and screaming and puking and stumbling, packing themselves into the square like rats. They clung to me, shaky and almost in tears, as I guided them through the insanely packed streets, delivering them safely to a party with, yep, more out-of-touch RISD kids. Wow! "Guys, it was just like Marie said!" My words spoken to them in the warmth and safety of my family's Brooklyn apartment were now finally made real to them through the conjuring that every good parents already knows; that of experience.

They cut ties with me eventually by turning on me, in recognition of my greater gifts that they could no longer pretend did not exist like they had done back at school, and like any embarrassed kid always does, they did it by withholding "thank you" to my face, knowing that I deserved for it my many services and kindnesses, instead choosing to hurt me with their feigned indifference, but isn't that always the way it is with children? They were beautiful and very young to me, then; spoiled and ungrateful, yes, as they lashed out at me in fright and anger because my ferocious home town was ill-suited to them like I knew it would be, but if you could see my face as I write this right now, you parents in my audience already know what you'd see: a softness that comes from empathy, compassion, understanding, and a mother's undying devotion to the very people she gave shelter to, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Amen to you, during this holiday week. Beware the many bugaboos that may be lurking behind a darkened street corner.   

'Tis the season for such things, my dears.

Magic

A horror show. No, not a fake movie: the real deal.

Every year my aunt Marilyn gave us the worst gifts should could get away with, and that was the point. She had responsibilities an an adult she hated. She gave one son to her mother to take care of, then left her daughter by another father to drugs, jail, and prostitution, hiding behind the falsely fretting, hand-wringing, long-suffering mother posture. It was sneaky and clever, which was also the point. She wanted to be seen as devilishly smart, like the thief who can't get caught, locked in a childish game of cat and mouse with life that included the people around her who were closest to her. She had a wild teenage past, complete with bad tattoos and a stint as a Go-Go dancer, with lurid white vinyl boots and the also-requisite bad attitude that fell flat with the laissez-faire Acadians in her clan, pragmatic and slow to anger, every single one of us. Wayward youth? So what! Same, man! And ain't that the world we were dealt? Ho hum.

In response to our sangfroid demeanor, she upped the ante to get the attention she wanted. And so, she embarked on a career as a petty antagonist, with her barbs and pat, trite, oft-repeated quips, her rapid-fire, snappy replies, and her nearly constant smoking and drinking. It still didn't really bother us, though, because we love a raucous bon temp, too! What's next? She had a genius IQ that she hid out of laziness and spite, choosing to become my father's ever-dependent. When she lost a job, he had her go to a bank (my dad started in business as a banker), where they promptly sent her to a facility for IQ testing, which, unfortunately for her schemes, came back genius level. They told my dad that she could do whatever she wanted, but that she chose not to. She could have any job at the bank, but she chose the easiest one of all: a teller. She liked being easy, and that's what she did, over and over again, in full view of us.

It was the same with our so-called "Christmas gifts", or birthday presents, or school graduations, or weddings, or...you get the point. She had to make an appearance to save face by honoring her benefactor's kids (my father), but how best to subtly show her disdain? Aha! Tacky presents. Eureka! It wasn't something you could necessarily prove in a court of law, but it delivered the intended bad effects upon the recipient, with just the right amount of bitchy, clever pettiness, the exact affect she wanted.

And so it went, the same bad joke every year: ugly wool sweaters that immediately caused our skin to itch, which my mom backed up by forcing us to wear in front of her as a "thank you" that was really a "fuck you" without the gesture or words to prove it. Huh. Clever, girl. 
If the scariest horror movie that year was an evil puppet gone psycho, she sat there at the table, smoking and listening to us talk about it, so she could buy a ventriloquist dummy for me that she could pass off as a beloved relic from her youth: "Oh, Mortimer Snerd! I loved him!", from a show none of us kids had ever heard of. She laughed when I said it gave me the heebie jeebies at night (because that was the point), so I simply solved the problem by putting it in the back of my small bedroom closet with a blanket over it. Done. It went away eventually at a garage sale, just like her pin cushion that was the shape of a Victorian woman's expensively shod foot, knowing that I didn't sew regularly as a hobby, because I had so many others that she could openly ignore.

She pretended not to know me, just like she neglected the birth connection she shared with her offspring. We were disposable, and she remained angry that she was never center stage until the day she died from a slow suicide of cigarettes and alcohol, refusing until the very last day she struggled for breath on this earth, choking on the kitchen floor of the house my father bought then gave to her after he moved on, refusing to quit her bad habits even after the diagnosis was delivered with an oxygen tank for her to breathe with, and oh, the horror of that, forever depriving us of someone who could be the funniest, warmest soul you ever met, delivering a big loss we all keenly felt, the power of her final hurt put upon us for the rest of our lives. 

Long may she rest in the peace she never found nor gave to those she was supposed to love the most and hold onto the hardest. She was my father's only sibling in the world, a man who paid dearly for her every sin with generosity and faithfulness without ever getting the genuine, heartfelt "thank you" he deserved for his consistent, regular attendance and filial duty to her, by leaving him alone in a world he chose to excel in, because he chose to live. 

Amen to you, my faithful who are also "The Faithful", during this time that is our continued Holy Week.
 

A horror show in a box cleverly disguised as a "gift".

Brood Cicadia: Back Again in 2014

No way! What an incredible specimen.

Last year, a certain type of cicadia that only breeds every 17 years or so (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/06/nature-brood-ii.html), emerged from their dormant state to spectacular profusion, and they are enormous. This lovely specimen (pictured above), was so completely fresh and intact, some of its' front legs still moved from the fluid flowing within. Yes! That's fresh, yo.

Bug specimen next to piece of wood for size comparison.

So, I did what any self-respecting, wanna-be, 21st century da Vinci would: I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and took a picture of it, then wrapped that bitch up in a couple of pieces of paper torn out of a notebook I always carry, so I could look at it more closely at home later on in the day.

Last years' specimen, labeled and protected for future preservation.

It was even more beautiful up close, a phenomenally unique specimen. Keen observation out in the field is so essential to our type of scholarship, that an art student cannot enter the hallowed halls of RISD (The Rhode Island School of Design) without it. 

The Nature Lab, at the Rhode Island School of Design

We have a nature lab on campus that speaks to the core of who we are as a people out in the world: artists, designers, scientists, engineers, educators, leaders, and mentors. We are the builders, makers, doers, thinkers, and hardcore scholars that make the world go forward in such beautifully perfect harmony. Well, most of the time. 

One cannot be an intellectual without a foundation like this at their core, and I wouldn't want to even try it. I've been bringing home samples since I was a kid. It's more than some pretty picture, this is who I am. Happy hunting, collectors.

Reel Life: A Sensei's Vampire Senses

In order to become a master of the arts, one must succumb to it wholly and completely. Where there is great love, there can be no half way. Once an art has chosen you, you must follow where it takes you, dedicated to the end. That's the price of great passion; utter devotion, and the sublimation of the self in search of the attainment of mastery. Many a sensei has often said that "in the pursuit of perfection, we attain excellence", and so it goes for the artist in their search. We hone our senses to their human heights, hoping to achieve greatness, and in doing so, we may attain immortality, or what passes for it in our human world, limited as that is by our perceptions.


 
I submit to you for your perusal two such examples of artistry and devotion in cinema, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" and "Frostbitten": one, the story of a lifelong chef in his noble quest for mastery with his chosen elements through the Art of Sushi, and the other a perfect show about the joys of a well-done horror movie; there's camp, humor, fun, gore, suspense, and irony. Sometimes, there isn't an obvious harmony between the movies I select, but the cognitive dissonance of what appears to be a random selection, that then stitches itself into a matched set before my very eyes, forming connections by what feels to be of its' own will, but is indeed of my making. Everyday magic is the ability of the best human minds to stretch out to reach the edge of it's vast limits through the daily discipline of practice. In doing so, the master vaults way past the average person in abilities, attaining powers of craft that allude the individual incapable of such acts of constancy.  Look, and see.