Hieroglyphics

"Gifting", with strings attached.

For years, I've doodled little shapes and swirly glyphs until they covered a page. It was something I typically did during a boring class, or in attendance at yet another dopey meeting for people at much slower speeds, so there was no point in me paying attention with the full force of my consciousness. Of course, I'd learn later on that's exactly what you're supposed to do with massive amounts of mostly useless data: use other parts of your brain to take in information, which has the unfortunate effect of giving my a memory recall so profound, it's like a party trick for me now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/doodling-benefits_n_7572182.html.

But they sometimes took on a deeper meaning to the people around me. One year, my former RISD classmate turned housemate used them to make fun Christmas cards."They're like wrapping paper", she said dismissively to me, and then took them to her day job to work on and show her co-workers, which was weird, since she was so paranoid about people ripping her off without getting paid. I didn't care, because she photocopied them onto colored paper and colored in the Christmas tree, so I used them for cards that year, too.

The pens bled through, creating a constellation of dots on the other side.

Sometimes people noticed me drawing in meetings, like they had in school, but given my chosen profession(s), it hardly seemed worth mentioning to an artist/designer like me, so no one did. Until the year I began working for a small Jewish family that had great book packaging deals with the retail conglomerate Barnes & Noble. It put a whole new focus on me, as their star designer for a major American retailer. People jumped out of their skin around me, with their claws fully out, just like in art school.

They had a dysfunctional receptionist ("No, I'm an 'Office Manager'", and then she'd tell everyone around her that she didn't do office work), who clung to me voraciously, with the desperation of the drowning. She left me alone for awhile, until she got her "best friend" from high school fired, and then she turned her obsessive focus elsewhere, which naturally fell on me, the shiniest object in the room. I knew she was mentally ill because of her twitchy mannerisms and oddly disjointed way of speaking, plus she interrupted my work in the middle of a major deadline, which is the largest taboo we have in my industry. 

Magical dancing snowflakes, forever etched into my mind.

My look registered such shock at her brute assertion into my face for attention (over a banal relationship thing or another email about her poor socialization skills), that she immediately blurted "Oh, I'm bipolar" because it was that out of place for someone to do that to me at that point in my career. She promptly tried to retract it later on, when she turned on me (which I knew she would), after embodying every single facet of her original medical diagnosis many times over, for 10+ years on the job. After many a run-in with the psycho co-worker, I laid some serious ground rules with her in that first intimate conversation about personal matters, which she promised to abide by, but of course, couldn't fulfill.

Anyway, the owner was pushing me hard to befriend her, with a twinkle in his eye, because he used her gossip like a seeing eye dog would, which was fine by me. I got coveted face-out shelf space to promote my imprint (which is actually part of the job), and he could pick her straw head about whatever weirdo thing he wanted to. I knew the game of "Telephone" like a pro. And so we hung out a few times after work, but she couldn't get the necessary dirt she wanted to have as leverage over me with my genuine after-hours bonhomie.

Windmill toys, like the ones we played with as children.

Besides that, she had briefly attended F.I.T. for painting, and it's also part of my job to mentor junior design staff. She could never be a designer because of her learning impairments, but she could do basic illustration work, and so I allowed her to grow closer to me, while I was the one with the authority to careful demarcate appropriate adult boundaries. I still needed good press at the time, and her dull PR about me would help me buoy up a imprint that had lay fallow, so I could have time to turn it into a major moneymaker for the company.

It worked like a charm. She sung like a canary to anyone who would listen to her, and I got to pull a very lucrative project out of the fire, to infamous success. And, I did really like any person with creative aspirations (as I've been taught to do) who want to learn and do better, which she did seem to have, in spurts that came and went with the ups-and-downs of her serious brain disorder. It was really therapy for her, but that was fine, too: RISD masters in degree programs like Art Therapy and Art Education. The better I could break through to the rough spots on her mind, the better I got at my job.

You're a major star, baby!

I used her as a training tool, to better my conversations with a staff that was sub par for big city publishing in the tri-state area, and that was also part of my job, because the owner of the company told me that on my very first review. And so I signed concepts like "books" and "design" and "art" over and over into their hands, realizing that his employees dysfunctions mirrored those of his family, and not me or mine, because I met a lot of his family during my employ.

Their admin used me to gain artistic insight into creative genius, and I used her as a mouthpiece to telegraph whatever aspect of me that I felt the rest of the staff needed to know. She gained inspiration from me and my labors, which is also very typical for someone like me, too. I didn't mind. As I lectured to her at the reception desk, I could feel the entire company leaning in to listen to me, which was the gold in the bank that helped me to gain confidence and break through. I had an entire audience in the palm of my hand, every single day of my life, which has naturally led me here to you all.

A screw loose or two, or is it three, or...how many more?!

She was genuine in her admiration of me, as I was skillful in schooling her with the rest of the Special Needs adults who worked in the fringes of media. The first year of our acquaintance, she gave me a notebook, with the requisite hidden agenda attached: why don't you draw something we can sell to make money off of? I did no such fucking thing, because I was already making major bank that they could coattail off of, but I always enjoyed doodling. She once asked me what my scribblings meant, and I hesitated....who cares? But, as she eagerly awaited my answer, I gave her the most honest reply I could think of at the time: "I don't know....it doesn't really matter to me what they are. I call them 'hieroglyphics'".

A Keith Haring-inspired paramecium dancing in primordial fluid.

And now here we are years later, on a spiritual journey that has brought me back to very essence of my family's historical and cultural roots, buried deep in my DNA, but still very, very real: that time from our most sacred human area in a fertile river valley, tied forever to the lands of Ancient Mesopotamia, then Egypt, then the Greco-Roman era, onto modern Normans (be they Italian, Irish, or French-Swiss), and then my tribe that turned right and went east to India, walking (or sledding) over the Bering Land Bridge with our ancient dogs, to finally meet a boat of French men from Western Europe on the Americas most eastern shores, men who married the M'ikMak squaws from Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, people who drew the cuneiform shapes that resembled the ancient language for those of us who have always loyally worshipped The Great Spirit. 

A "commercial artist", indeed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Mikmaq_sample_%28ave_Maria%29.jpg

 

RISD’s Ongoing Mission

The mission of Rhode Island School of Design, through its college and museum, is to educate its students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to make lasting contributions to a global society through critical thinking, scholarship and innovation.

Original Mission Statement
On March 22, 1877, the Rhode Island General Assembly ratified “An Act to Incorporate the Rhode Island School of Design.” The corporation, comprised of a forward-thinking group of men and women, artists and business leaders, educators and politicians, was formed “for the purpose of aiding in the cultivation of the arts of design.” The original bylaws set forth the following key objectives for RISD:

First. The instruction of artisans in drawing, painting, modeling, and designing, that they may successfully apply the principles of Art to the requirements of trade and manufacture.

Second. The systematic training of students in the practice of Art, in order that they may understand its principles, give instruction to others, or become artists.

Third. The general advancement of public Art Education, by the exhibition of works of Art and of Art school studies, and by lectures on Art.

http://www.risd.edu/About/History_Mission_Governance/Mission/

Trail of Tears

http://bit.ly/1OtyMcW

I heard about a lot of holocausts growing up in the New York area: the killings during World War II (naturally), which led to my schoolmate's telling of her family's Armenian genocide, but the only story of mine I knew was in a book, albeit infamous epic form*. The grandeur and longing for home and love is something that never leaves you, even when my family left it out of family gatherings, the way my parents hinted at darker histories by naming our cousins "Dark Irish"; an apt way to describe the twin horrors of deliberate starvation through The Potato Famine** in Ireland, and the marking of Métis children by the darker color of their eyes, which must have sank a pit the size of the Atlantic Ocean in both of my parents' stomachs. Who would see it? Would they know the story? Who can they tell the knowing of it all? What would happen to us, in any time period, given the collected badness of centuries past?

And so they sank it way down deep below, like a hidden headdress fitted for a beautiful little girl, or a pair of handmade Baptismal moccasins that may be tucked away forever; two sharp shooting pains forever felt by burying it within, like a treasure chest to be discovered by someone strong enough to survive its' telling. And so I leave it to you to gather up all of our fallen tears, on a trail that leads the way back home, through a river journey I can feel like the wetness shed by the cries of so many parents who felt their beloved ripped out of their arms, in an act of murder so painful***, I can't really wrap my entire consciousness around it, let alone take on the pain of a mother and father who did nothing wrong in G-d's eyes but love each other willingly and with open hearts (http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/11204).

Today I give thanks to the loving qualities we have present in our free society, ones that many people have fought and died for. May we love each other always, with gladness in our hearts.

For My Beloved

 *     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangeline
**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
***  http://bit.ly/1QmerFQ

Indian Giver

Mi'kmaq warrior and dancer, Danny Boy Stephens, takes a moment to reflect on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada.

For years I lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world; 
a very affluent section of Brooklyn called "Park Slope", famous for its' artsy writing crowd, media types, ubiquitous designers, and lesbians, which suited me just fine. Except for the occasional coffee-house misunderstanding (volunteer firefighter "dude" with a preference for Great Danes and Christmas lights, I know you knew I was straight, girl, but thanks for being a weirdo to me when I was sitting alone), I was pretty much left to my own devices, which also suited me fine. 

I didn't have a lot of time for bullshit anymore. I was a full-time Art Director in publishing, and after I quit smoking, a part-time martial artist in training, which meant I had weekday evenings after 9pm and Saturday mornings to sleep in, which was exactly what I did, and I did it every week for years. I'd also tack on church and Sunday school classes when I worked from home, but it was pretty much the same deal, because no one around me was suitable for my company.

Sometimes I dated men I knew I could trust from my past, from places like old jobs or school, but that eventually went away, too, because they weren't suitable for me either. Mostly, I worked and walked and kept healthy, which kept me going. When the boom was lowered on me financially, I did double-time creatively by cutting out everything but food as an expense, but just like my training provided, I set up a new routine in which I could flourish and work, albeit more sporadically and with much less frills for decorating. 

It's the same productivity I have in place today: free Internet access at the library, while trying to keep the freaks off of me. But in Brooklyn, it was harder. People are savvier, and they know how to work you over. 
I met a man there that I knew was troubled, but because I grew up with it, I managed to stay safe by my own wits. He knew that, too, along with many other facts that were mixed in with his psychosis.

What my Nuyorican friend from Brownsville did not know, and had never known, was an Acadian Métis warrior. He thought his "street smarts" about welfare scams and rent cheats were powerful weapons that he had in his arsenal, along with an almost total lack of a moral compass, really bad acting skills, and one very serious mental illness. Over time, I put him through all the paces, but to no avail, which certainly didn't surprise me one bit.

If my friend said he needed a clock, I gave him the old one I'd had for more than 15 years hanging in my kitchen, because I had another one in my living room. If he said he was "learning" design at a broke-ass school on Staten Island, I gave him my old small spare portfolio to use, with deadlines in place for him to keep to, and he did absolutely nothing with the gifts I gave him, just like any other asshole white boy I've ever tried to trade with.

When I asked him to show me his portfolio pieces one day, as I was checking out his tiny room in a typical Brooklyn tenement in the Spanish-flavored part of the Slope that turns into Sunset Park, he shamefacedly opened it to reveal that he turned into a place to keep his checkbook and receipts for storage. Oh. OK. You've done nothing. Give it back to me, asshat. NO! I mean hand it over to me now.

He sputtered in shock. But, but...he's a welfare-case. Pretty white ladies usually give him stuff for being sick and broke! Yeah, bitch, meet the real deal ethnic minority. He tried to quibble with me about my genetic past, saying I just wanted to paint myself "exotic", like the mass murder in our Nova Scotian past was something I chose to brandish about town, like he did with his check from the government for school. You know, because he needed a "hand up", not a hand out.

Same thing with my room clock: you don't help me move my stuff after I run out of money "homeboy", you give me back my clock (which I eventually ditched at a Park Slope storage place when I ran out of money for that, too). By this point, I had him trained: he just sighed, took down the clock from the painted-over graffiti ghetto wall, and handed it back to me.

You see, esse, in my world, if you don't have something of equal value to trade, we don't trade with you at all, so give it back. All of it. It's okay, though. I've got a special lil' internal clock running, just to keep track of all the borrowed time you're on. Take your time with it.

 

from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver