Moondance

I knew that my relationship with a certain young Mr. Mulvihill wouldn't last for very long because he was too proud of being inbred and ignorant as fuck, in addition to his poor diet, lack of appropriate sleep habits, and near-daily drinking habit to the point of intoxication, not to mention his utter lack of a well-rounded education. Irish-American boys had become my comfort food, best dated between long-term romances like, say, during a summertime spent mostly at the beach, to be dropped once the party turned violent, and in their battered homes, it always did. Someone else always started swinging first.

But, for a time, it was easy enough for me to see someone who lived a half an hour's drive away from me (with no traffic), so I could pursue my work life in the city. He didn't like the patterns of our weekend romance, but I honestly didn't have much more to offer someone who, while financially successful, remained a high school dropout. He was lost without his "homies", even as he hated being stuck in a co-dependent drunkfest with the old gang at Gerritsen Beach. He was a mechanically-inclined millionaire with a depressingly unfinished house in an insular pocket of Brooklyn, with horrible social skills and a peculiarly small worldview.

There wasn't anything I could do for him unless he did it himself, and with the fistfuls of cash he always had on hand, he seemed to think that he called all the shots with me, a world-class art director. It was delusional and arrogant, but money will do that to ya. He could run his yard and his demented crew, and that was about it. I'd never had a life that small, and the tension of our ill-fitted pairing showed early and quick. I broke up with him often, and the stress of being stalked and pursued yet again in my late 30s, after all my life experiences, made me angrier than ever.

I didn't want the whole juvenile "push-and-pull" dating thing; I never had. I wanted a hot love affair that lasts forever. I was the "queen of clean breaks" who bore her former suitors no ill will, but John had inroads with my family that made me worth pursuing in his mind, which also made me incredibly dangerous to someone as small-time as him. I could wreck him and his family forever with a call to the cops because of his past, and he knew it. Ultimately, after one night's big showdown, that was it. He knew better than to push his way into my life and my home, because he begged me afterward not to press charges.

His "ex" wife (not officially divorced though legally separated, as I later found out that he lied to me) had pursued domestic violence charges with a vengeance designed to chain him even tighter to her, and I was more than fine with that. I didn't need their brutal mind games in my life. Besides, the whole weird love triangle between him, his best friend, and his best friend's wife totally freaked me out, as did the strange semi-incestuous attachment his half-sister had to him. It was creepy and weird, and it felt like I was living someone else's life besides mine. I wanted out, and I got it by fighting for it.

That isn't to say we didn't ever get long. Obviously, a handsome Mick with a good job rolls off me the way water does a duck's back. It wasn't exactly unflattering, and cute New York boys have tons of confidence and charm, especially on a Friday night with their pockets full of pay for boozy food-and-drink extravagances. But, I was no ingenue. More than one girl has sat back and watched a parade of savvy boys try to play me like a fiddle. It takes a lot of finesse. Suffice to say, we had enough cultural commonalities that being with him could be as fun as getting drunk at a football game with a tailgate party full of cheeseburgers. You don't do it often, but once in awhile is fine, you know? I just didn't need season tickets to the show.

One of our last dates was one of our best, though with his crew's challenged perceptions about time, it went on for far too long. They tried to squeeze a good time out of me the way show-biz parents overbearingly set up their kids for child molestation: maybe they didn't mean to hurt me at first, but after their tenth beer or ninth hour, I could feel the suppressed rage of their intolerance towards me chafe like an ugly wool sweater that itched a red rash all over you. It was oppressive. The concert we went to see at Jones Beach* was like that.

They were a little too happy about seeing a show by a notoriously temperamental artist who'd walk off the stage in a huff if he felt the "vibe" from the audience wasn't right. I had that to look forward to, as well as the long car ride (with his sister and best friends, again) who still thought drinking and driving was fun, like being trapped in a time machine from the 70s or 80s. It was a bad feeling, especially with their young girl in the car, too. We got there way too early, which meant more boring hours in a parking lot trying to drink and have fun with people who don't know how to talk.

Finally, it was time to see the show. John was huffy with me in the seats because he hated one of my more mild college stories that I told to pass the time. His best friend defended me by saying that John had an experience like that, too, and he was more subdued after being caught in another lie. And then, just like that, the magic happened. Van Morrison sang one of his most famous songs about the moon in October skies just as a pair of swans entwined neck-in-neck swam by the stage in the surrounding Long Island Sound, sparkling moonlight and twinkling pianos and all. I wished that could have been our good summertime ending, but it was not. Still, I have one more memory to go along with one heck of a talented Irishman, diva or no. It was much appreciated, lad. Ta!




* http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/66660.html

Death by Art Director

The Blood Vote: Anti-conscription handbill poem issued during anti-conscription campaign, 1917. Purportedly written by W.R. Winspear. Under Australian law this is now out of copyright and in the public domain.

Suffice to say, the disabled, disordered, demented, and delusional of the world are not sequestered together on one strange island by themselves, like ancient mythical lepers of Biblical days gone by. Besides, it doesn't work. Humans have mastered the art of moving around, sick or not. That means people with serious health problems are present in every sector of our daily lives, because no matter how weird of a shut-in that you style yourself to be, the world manages to seep in anyway. Life always finds a way, like Mother Nature itself.

In the work worlds of major media in New York City (and in "The Empire State", hint hint), we were (and are) not immune to smelly weirdos compulsively typing and muttering next to us at corporate-owned desktops everywhere. It's just that high performers like us don't have time to water the fucking company houseplants, and please shoot us if we ever do. Kidding. Don't do that, you fucking weirdo. We'd have lost all relevance in the human worlds by then if we're relegated to life's sidelines, which is highly unlikely as modern masters of this times' communication.

That doesn't stop resident nut-jobs from trying it anyway, dull as their unending mental problems are. Think I'm exaggerating? Imagine being sentenced to an eternity of "Dr. Phil" reruns, always with the exact same family of inbred hicks freaking out and living life as poorly as possible, in that ever-annoying regional twang they have, and you're not even close to the hell I'm describing at our work. Of course, transferring their homegrown pain onto as many healthy people as possible is part of the fun about having violently untreated psychoses, limited as those days now are, you blood-sucking freaks. 

Because the kicker is, for me to have received those plush newspaper union benefits of yore, I had to take a couple of piss tests at the drug-screening lab of their choice TWICE (paid by the union), so they would be reassured that their union-mandated income didn't fall into the hands of an addict who's so clearly fucked up, he/she couldn't even go two weeks without passing a urine sample cleanly. You dumb fuck. You don't deserve a job! And that wasn't all. 

I had to pass a psychological screening, too, further weeding out the crazies at other levels. That's right, jittery assholes: I had to fill out several multiple choice answer sheets, write out my handwritten answers to those essay questions that required it, and then mail it back to my potential employer in the time frame as requested in a sealed, time-stamped USPS package that was several pages long with clearly detailed instructions, and that was after I had two or three interviews appropriate to my level, which also included: answering the ad correctly with my relevant portfolio submissions included, meeting with the hiring creative and any of the other senior staff in the department, with yet another possible portfolio review that included other key members of my team, and that was before I even reached the Art Director's level. I actually had to pass (in my early 30s) a mental stability process that's more labor intensive than the process it takes for some Texan to walk into Wal-Mart to buy a handgun, just to design your special four-color newspaper inserts. Makes sense, right?

After my meteoric rise in any type of environment (set your internal clocks by it, grunts), the kooks come crawling out of the woodwork with full pockets and barely hidden agendas. Insult rock-star talent = handy firing with lazy benefits package included. In fact, it's become such an industry standard, we openly discuss it in offices as part of our managerial lives. At the end of my term in other people's offices, I "graduated" to the Maestro level, which means I am now the Grand Wizard of your fucking mental disorder, bitch. Get it? No more firings by pissing off that "pretty" girl in design who runs the show. Now, they just run in the opposite direction. That's what my former art school mentor meant when he said to me that "you are so made for this game, girl". Go get 'em! Ain't no one beatin' a working class New York kid. We work that fucking hard. See you in the funny pages.

Share the Project

http://www.arcofrockland.org/

Do you remember that homework assignment from your elementary school days called "Show and Tell"? You chose an object from home, brought it to class, and then you got up in front of the entire class and your teacher to deliver an impromptu speech about it. For most of us, it was our first real experience with speaking in front of a crowd, and a nerve-wracking one at that. What to choose? What to say?! You spent your free time thinking about it, and then on the day of your speech, you second-guessed yourself all the way to the front of the classroom by fretting over each minute that passed by on the classroom's big clock, while another classmate did the talking. It actually does a lot of important tasks for human brains, organs that operate at their peak efficiency through utilizing all the advanced arts that are necessary for human communication.

It was the same thing for me in college. I took "Public Speaking" because it was required for all S.U.N.Y. school attendees, and then I "graduated" on to much harder skill sets, like talking about the projects I made all by myself at the world's premier art and design school. Bullshitting people you don't really care about for a good grade is an easy trick for most of us to pull off, but to be emotionally invested from your labors enough that you actually care about what you've made, and you want it to be well-received unanimously, is par excellence. A lot of people with some technical abilities do enough that passes off as skills people pay for, but a lot of the time, it's work we don't want to do ourselves because it's boring or dirty.

That's where we pick it up: you at the end of your rope, because you fear getting your hands really dirty, or because you're afraid of the risk that comes with those of us who are brave enough to fail in public without even trying. It means you're strong enough to survive a loss(es), so much so, you can visibly pick yourself up from the floor in front of a huge crowd, dust yourself off, heal, learn from your experience, and then get pissed off enough to do it better than next time. Some of us even publish the results. My father always told me that failure is essential to success, because it's true. If you win every single time you try something, then you aren't trying hard enough. Really brave warriors go out on a limb that can break at any time because that's where the sweetest, rarest fruit always is. So what if you fall down? Who hasn't?!

People afraid to fail in front of others are easily controlled through their visible fears. They're those athletes who illegally dose to have a secret edge over their opponents because deep down (or not so deep), they know they aren't good enough to succeed without rigging the contest to their advantage. They're the type of scumbag managers in your daily business who use access to your computer over a secure network to block or track your every move every chance they get, because they know they aren't good enough to be in your position of importance at a company. They're cowards, and cowardly people lie, cheat, and steal all the fucking time because they know they'd suck without you, their high performing muthfucka, to pick up their slack, and there's a lot of that to be had in this world.

I don't trust people who haven't been banged up enough by life because they're too afraid to live it. If you don't have war stories about your epic adventures (with some cool scars to show for your hard work), then you haven't lived enough, because you're too busy sitting on your fat ass peeking out from between lace curtains, like a punk ass bitch in your lazy cushy suburban home, passing judgement on those of us who love life enough to take risks, by taking a fall or two on our asses out in public. Ain't nuthin' but a thang to me, yo. In fact, in my chosen sport of MMA, we don't have "perfect" records (none of us do, really. Not one single athlete), because it isn't a fixed game like some of the shadier sports. There's no such thing as a "perfect" win in our world, because Samurai's accept that they are, like life, imperfect.

It can be jarring for fans of other sports that play dirty through drug use openly ignored, and/or with the assistance of funding from illicit gansta money to front their operation. Whachoo mean he lost? Whaaa....?! They can't even comprehend, because they've learned through a twisted game to expect a fake impression of perfection that's not real because it's a cheat. Some sports are choreographed for a narrative outcome like pro wrestling is, with it's funny over-acting and hammy role-playing, but make no mistake about it: when Brock Lesnar fought in the MMA, he fought a real fucking sport with skill sets so profound, it blows the minds of people who try it. There are just too many mathematical outcomes to predict statistically, and so our sport reflects the genius mentality of people who understand concepts like "hard" and "difficult to achieve" really well, because it's the life they live everyday: a tough game with the odds stacked so much against you, you can't help but draw on a crowd of admiring supporters.

And so it is with my charitable endeavors and active daily service to y'all. I do it because I love it, and I trained for it because I'm the best at it. But there are tons of fuck-ups. I don't have the money to operate a closed system of my own, so I "copy and paste" shit on some old fuckin' computer at the library, because it sucks too much to interact with my better (and older) plug-and-play Mac technology. I call them "Work-Arounds" that are essential to any "real world" type of living: those life situations that reflect the poorer thinking of the people around you who are too blind or dumb (or both) to put real money where it actually belongs. And so you see broken links with dead video uploads and missing photos (stuff I could never do for you at your rich white man's company without aggressive public censure in meetings or firing), because I'm operating under war-like conditions that accurately reflect the angst that I write to you about almost daily, on absolutely no budget whatsoever, because that's what the sick people around me choose in their deluded fantasies: a deliberately purposeful impoverishment that's my accurate lifelong reality.

I tell you this today, in this season of gratitude and thanks, because I don't ever want you to get it twisted with me, and because I care enough to commit my ideas and passion to you on this century's version of "paper" that is semi-permanent in this new digital age. This is my version of "Show and Tell" for you, because I care enough to humble myself by sharing broken work that is still better than any rich white muthfucka's gamed version that's aided and assisted by a thousand other people in support to just him and his goals (usually staffed with lots cheap women and other minority folk), who prop him up look like "Mr. Big Stuff", because he doesn't have the talent or the heart to fail publicly like I do. I want you to be clear about that moving forward, as we go forward on this enterprise that you support with your time and attention.

http://rocklandsample.org/

So, when you come across some joke of a "celebrity" who's puffed up with artificially padded social media accounts that are bought and paid for by advertisers and promoters (unlike yours, maybe), I don't want you to have any doubts about who they fuck they are, or how they got there. They're usually pumped up way beyond their actual skill sets, because most of them don't hold up to scrutiny up close and personal like I do, makeup-free on the daily and going on age 46, baby. That means no weirdo surgeries, no hidden cosmetic procedures behind closed doors, no airbrushing beyond all expectations tied to reality, no surreal overly moneyed shit to throw you off your game by bankrupting your pocketbook in service to someone else. I AM the real deal. Are you tho'? And why not, miss?

Because in my world, part of our "bragging rights" goes towards proud, prominently displayed post-fight photos that show you how we are never really injury-free from this life we battle through daily, smiling back at you through temporarily banged-up faces that show our hard-won war wounds, just like the bad-ass muthfuckas you know we are. I don't want you to be thrown by these supposed low numbers you think you see online, just like the too big ones represented by the false premise that some fat-ass porn star has got it all over you, because you care about teachin' yo kids right from wrong on the cheap, like my new friend Jeanne Newman does. Who the fuck are you compared to her, a woman who has devoted her entire life to public service through teaching and annual Thanksgiving dinners for her people? Just who the fuck are you, anyway? Because you ain't nuthin' to me.

You best be believin' that, because that's what time it is: only 350 followers on your page, or that many likes on your charitable site, or a paltry show of "thumbs-up" on your giving photo today? Oh hell, no. What the fuck is that, anyway?! Gone, baby. It's gone, gone, gone that-a-way. You are what's "it" to me. That's what's up. Same thing for my man Barnaby and his service to our beloved ARC friends, here in town (Hey, there Kevin! Mommy says "hi" and gives you big warm hugs all the time:), now takin' his act on the road to Massachusetts, armed with one of my lil' black stickers for prove positive of our unification. You know I do that, too! You think these people are unknown to me? Fuck y'all, then. You're a rock star to me in my world, baby. Don't think this false "divide-and-conquer" shit where you have to sweat it out alone on an isolated pocket is unknown to me as a strategy to keep you down. 

They're that afraid of us, my friends, because we are that strong and that good. Believe it. Believe in me. Believe. We've just grown out-of-bounds by one more person today, my friends. Yeah! That's it! We've grown by one, and now my wolf-pack is more full for it. Haha!

http://sharetheproject.org/20-2/

This one's for you today, Ms. Jeanne Newman! 

Thanks for all that you do daily. We see you!

https://www.facebook.com/sharetheproject/timeline

Paragraph President

A deleatur symbol, from Martin Vogel's freeware TrueType font, MarVoSym.ttf, available at http://www.marvosym.com

People have strange ideas about the arts, sometimes based solely on the flawed premise that Hollywood cares about getting it "right" over making movie sales. Witness on any given day the striking differences between the book version and the movie, or the actual way historical people look like over, say, the "sexy" movie-version of Stephen Hawking. Yeah, that vast. The same goes for me in my artistic life with art, design, publishing, and just about anything else, which are dependent on one solitary truth: I work at it until I get it right. The idea of hard work is something that's usually glossed over in a movies' musical montage, spanning over the soul-crushing hours of repetitive monotonous labor, but the truth is, once I learn the basics, I move through the rather pedestrian qualities behind my work onto the more difficult and infinitely harder intellectual questions that are at the center of each business, person, place, or thing that I meet with.

Take, for instance, my graduation from the world's best art school into the "real world" of work: I expected it to be a bumpy ride between student life and my apprenticeship, and so it was. I'd never used a fax machine with any sort of regularity before, or worked in an office environment, nor measured out a mechanical for its' adherence to printer's specs (which changes with country of origin and measurement systems), nor did I have any idea about how to price out a book for manufacturing purposes (with equations for paper weight, spine width, trim sizes, and their individual bulk), but soon I did know all that and more. I moved quickly through production to the art department, because as a RISD grad, I could breach the gap that existed between different departments with relative ease, unlike the rather rote qualities that mark the average "designer": typically a skilled craftsman who is highly dependent on the work of others, along with a strict sense of hierarchy that is guided by the Maestro sitting at the top of the pile, someone who supposedly also worked their way up the same corporate ladder very slowly.

But, I was different than the other people around me....very different. 
If designers couldn't guess the font used in a previous edition (which was supposed to be their "expertise"), they came to see me in the production department working as an assistant, so that I could give them my best guess, and I have never taken a type class in my life. One "designer" told me she went through art school and couldn't draw. Yep. She went to (and was accepted, and then, this is even weirder, graduated from) a noted New York art school knowing that she would never draw a single decent picture on any day of her professional life to come. Can you imagine that? I couldn't then, and I still can't now.

I did, however, quickly pick and choose which work qualities I liked, and what tasks I would farm out to that rather scary dull Asian girl from design, the one who always seems chronically tired and depressed. These were necessary assessments that I began right away in my career, so as to avoid boring tasks that were better suited to lower minds, like taking wild guesses with fonts. Gifted people suffer from other people's boredom rather quickly, and the effects can be markedly excruciatingly for us. I could never be a book designer in the last century. They ruled up boards, made sheets of black type on white photo paper, and then pasted them into lines, day after day after day after day. Always the same thing, over and over and over again.

If we didn't have desktop publishing now, I wouldn't be a book designer at all. I'd have been a children's book artist, or a greeting card painter, or a nature photographer. But I soon learned the key components of graphic design, text, and books during my apprenticeship by combining them into the rather unknown and new art-form that has become the rock star genre it is today, and the leading creative intellectual at any house: that of Lead Book Cover Designer. It was precisely because I could draw, and photograph, and then set the type, while mastering manufacturing materials, with an understanding of computer programming (for your innately disordered brain), that allowed me to rise above it so easily, carefully avoiding those currents that trap minor artists and craftsman into eddies they can't get out of, without spending a lot of money on other people for help.

I'm glad I don't have a compulsive disorder, or a lack of will, or any other sense of entitlement about myself, because if I did, do you know what I'd be today? I'd be the "President of a Paragraph", like the bitchy admin who uses the stockroom supplies to yank yer chain on any given Monday: a rather small unpleasant little pissant who hates their life, but does absolutely nothing to get out of it. That's why I made coffee before anyone else was in the office because I got there first, then I changed the water tank on the cooler by myself, put new toner in the color copier and ordered more cartridges, opened up the design department by turning on all the equipment, put on some tunes, and began working the keyboard through your lunch break and after you left at 5 p.m., to sit here today at a public library to absolutely no applause whatsoever, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Like any high-minded human, I wanted more from life. I still do. Don't you?

Half-Assed: A Homer Simpson Story

At my first "real" job after college (working for a publishing company), me and my art department friends quite quickly and easily noted a disturbing trend among office staff, a term forever "re-branded" for me by an ex-boyfriend as those low-paid women who are our "Office Cows": mostly useless ladies who wander around grazing on break room tidbits so they can gripe about their weight to anyone who will listen, gossip, backbite, email petty plots and schemes around using the company IM (not the smartest crowd, as me and my IT friends noted), talk on the phone, surf for shoes on the web, hate their friends on Facebook, and make bitchy comments under their breath each and every time you walk past them to use the bathroom, in case you ever forgot that you got your job through grueling years of hard work and a three-tier interview process that's harder than most exams the President takes on any given day, you know, because design is up there with a nuclear attack on the scale of importance for humanity. 

Oh, it isn't? Huh...well, that certainly isn't what that fat bitch behind the desk is projecting at me. She's telling me with her "death stare" that I rule the world, and so I must. I mean, it happens to me everywhere I go, so it has to be true. Kidding aside (I really do use my intelligent design to help save the world, as is the gist behind my intellectual and academic movement), gifted people are used to being the center of attention wherever we go, dull offices included. You saw "Whiplash", right? It's kinda like that, except instead of an overpaid actor starring in a hammy ripoff of every artist's actual life, it's the real thing that you cannot buy. We go into rigorous rounds of critiques with the biggest power brokers in business, while they sit there gleefully taking potshots at us, under cover of a "meeting". We're ready for it. We've been trained to do this exactly. But...you haven't had you? I imagine that must be really hard for you to withstand psychologically.

So, you do catch my drift, then? OK. That's what I thought. We can resume our regularly scheduled programming (one that doesn't include you) to return to the task at hand: the hard job done under an impossibly tight deadline (rigged for failure on purpose), with as many human douche-bag obstacles as middle management thinks they can safely get away with, to deliver you the best information available on Planet Earth, in each and every century, regardless of country or language. I'm sorry. I don't understand "Office Cow" when your mouth is full of donuts from the break room. "Gosh, she looks sooooo fat in those jeans!" (Whisper it loudly in a blatant showy stage-whisper for the best effect). Heh heh. Maybe you should go on a diet? Or, you could passively-aggressively suck at each and every task that we ask you to do for us, because you're a complete bitch who thinks we don't see your blind hate and envy coming right at us. Because we do.

You see, that's the "Homer Simpson Way": do each and every job task really half-assed, until someone better than you notices that you suck, and then re-does your shitty work on the company's dime with absolutely no support whatsoever. Yeah, just like that! Do everything really half-assed. That's why they pay me the big bucks. And hey, you're welcome for saving the company again, on an underpaid teacher's salary. Ah yes...there's the almost silent "fuck you" mouthed behind my back that I was waiting for. Thanks! It was the opening I needed to get you fired. Buh bye!

Focus

Doubly exposed, with a tensely unhappy look.

All my life, my mother has taken really bad photos. It's always been weird to me, because before I was born and for some short time afterwards, my mom loved painting. I still have the precious little watercolor that she made me for my baby room, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet floating on a watery green background that was supposed to reference grass, but I don't mind the abstraction. My first oil paint kit was my mom's old discarded one that I pulled out of the back of a basement closet. I was reminded every time I opened it, with it's old brushes, linseed oil, and postcards that she used for reference. She wasn't very good, but she also didn't stick with it. There's one painting I found (now hanging above her bed at my putting) that she did of a landscape from a photo. It has some brilliant elements, but just like me with a fondness for science, her vocations led her elsewhere.

Which made her utter lack of ability with cameras even more troubling. Why? She hated posing for pictures, gladly showing me her sulky pouting baby pictures in black and white that my grandparents made her pose for. She cited all sorts of excuses: she hated getting her hair set with curls, she didn't feel like posing, or she was "too busy" to take a good shot. Baffling answers all, but they didn't tell me the real story, because unlike my mother, I could read pictures like they were books. Her photos were all over the place; bad angles, blurry shots, jarringly off composition, always out of focus, or she had a really tight, forced expression of her face when she did pose.

Cutting me out of the picture, and getting away with it.

I didn't really make the connection until many years later, years after I expertly learned the businesses of visual communication, and the various methods of those mediums, because it's that complex. My mom hates posing for photos because she looks crazy in them, and she knows it. It gelled for me with my oldest brother and his wife: with all their compulsive traveling, not one single travel shot produced by them (they also shun the creativity of most social media). Not one. Oh, years of oddly posed Christmas cards of them that they framed for us as "gifts", my savvy marketing family even hiring a professional photographer for their staged Greenwich, CT shoots, but not once did they pick up a camera. They'd admire it in others, market themselves through the medium and put it on their walls, but not once have I ever seen one of them take an actual photograph. They say they don't need them or like them either, which is doubly weird, because they work out to maintain their images all the time. But, I suppose if I had a suicide mom and kids on serious psychiatric medication (like my brother and his wife), I'd hate reminders, too.

Ditto with pictures of me. Not one of me on any of their walls. My mom has these strange plastic-wrapped bundles of pictures, sometimes correctly labeled for the individual in the photo, and sometimes not. They come to me as she finds them stored throughout her household, or when her cleaning lady moves old furniture around. Her handwriting on them ranges from the perfect schoolgirl of her youth to the much more recent scrawl of her senior years. I have no idea why she randomly selected some pictures to be packed away in baggies and some not, except for the obvious proof that these photos show me, like time capsules of her madness: because she still struggles to make sense of the world around her, and who the people are in the photos.

Posing behind me, like I'm a trophy fish on the wall or a decorative lamp.

 
Nowadays, I use them as a form of art therapy for her, just like her onsite caregiver Lynette does in much more vivid detail with her, one image at a time: who are these people? What do they mean to you? Do you remember taking them, or how you felt at the time? More and more, I feel like all of my very learned expertise comes down to the feeling Anne Sullivan must have had breaking through Helen Keller's massively intricate self-defense system: I have done all this for her, to break through the walls of her mind that are like prisons for the many facets of her fractured self. I use my art to break through, very often to her, violently and aggressively, as you can plainly see why here. 

Some days, I simply sign the same messages of hope and loss, love and anger, here on this site and through other media outlets, over and over again until you get it. And sometimes, like this perfectly framed summertime photo obviously taken by grandfather for its' astonishingly stand-out clarity, I get help exactly when I need it, through a man who openly supported my art and personality without prejudice at great contrast to our unhealthy and immediate family. I can feel the power of His Eternal Undying Love, spoken loud and clear across the ages, through one simple, humble, and very beautiful photograph of a little girl trapped and angered by the madness of others, because that's exactly what my healthier grandparents lived through with their children and grandchildren, too.

It was the summer of '75 for me and my awesome Grandpa.

For the Many Faithful of the World: today I give thanks for the loving, beautiful, and gifted grandparents who were essential to my good health growing up. I would not have survived this life without them. Their patient care was often just a phone call and five minute drive away. I also give thanks for all of you who have survived the cruelty of other people's madness to achieve great personal success, by breaking through the many walls around you to greatness. Long may you reign in peace with us. Amen to you.

 (for Bernard and Ann, two of His Most Faithfully Devoted Servants)

Here's a hint: I'm the one in the middle.

Kids Books

Oh, "Peter Rabbit"! I loved this one, and it's Easter, too! Cute bun-buns.

My first love has always been children's books. Do you know John Roberts' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts_%28actor%29) "Mitty Moo" character, or his "Mom voice" from Bob's Burgers? No?! Well, if you're from New York, you should get in on that, because once you have the accent down pat, imagine any story being read to you with that kind of voice when you were a kid. I know, I know! 
It's outrageous, funny, and weird, which is the ultimate good fable.

Such bad squirrels! Jumping up and down on the trains' seats...

I love going back to my bookcase to look through my books. It's like a room full of warm, loving friends who had awesome, interesting experiences and the gift to tell it to you in the most entertaining fashion. It's the best feeling ever, so even though I have a crazy dysfunctional "New Yawk" family, I also have the steadying influence of a thousand rich voices to guide me along the way. As an artist, I know I'm never really alone, especially when I was a small lil Acadian girl trying to make her way on her own.

Hey! I marked this book as my own as a girl. Cool!

 
The greatest gift you can give children is a lifetime love of books and reading, for those times when the people around them fail (and they will), they will have what they need inside them to make it through. Because, dear readers, that's exactly what I did.

 See you soon between the stacks.

I learned my "ABC's and 1,2,3's" with these books.

Another bunny rabbit! What a strange Easter coincidence...

...and I'm still counting crows, too....hmmm.

Yay! A birthday cake! Ooo, the number "8". That's fun to draw...

...and I read each one cover to cover, many times over. See?

Fame and Fortune (Football and Farming)

When I was growing up, my dad used to say "if you have to choose between fame and fortune, you should choose fortune". Of course, he said this as a tentative, new businessman sensitive to humble origins, during a time when having our last name meant near-constant hazing and bullying on the mean streets of New York, especially on a rough, working class block in BedStuy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford%E2%80%93Stuyvesant,_Brooklyn), where standing out doesn't help you out at all. It hurts, sometimes a lot. Such is the fate of being just one among many; they (the people in our surroundings) have a lot more common ground than us, and we had our fair share of bullying and beatings during childhood, too.

Me and my brothers fared no better than my father did in the 'burbs or the country, and widening out our territory only drew more attention my way. My dad has chosen to be, as he puts it, a "big fish in a very small pond", tucked safely away in a extremely rural corner of the globe, where he retreats when life and family obligations become too demanding for him, but I have chosen to stop running away from the fates, which find me no matter where I go. I know. I've tried.

So when I see a story that centers around the good things that attention can do, my interest is piqued. When it uses fame and fortune as a leverage for the best things in life, like charity, farming G-d's green earth, and giving back, I'm sold. Farm, faith, and family? Never goes out of style. See for yourself. (Thanks, to Jason Brown).

Contract-Free Living

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract 

Like most Americans, I suffered from the effects of economic fallout in the usual ways: creative firing strategies at the office designed to hide layoffs with phony blame-filled situations so as to avoid expensive wrongful termination suits, actual money mismanagement from poor business, and extremely bad planning. You know, the usual stuff when times get hard and people get shifty and desperate. You want to see humans at their worst? Restrict resources, then watch people go ape-shit scrambling after a few bucks. It's vile nasty stuff, but such is the part of human nature that a money town like "Gotham" attracts, not least of which are it's shark-y natives, which is nothing new to a girl like me. You should meet my family.

Suffice to say, I was thrust back into an extremely low budget lifestyle, those dreaded waters where many try to swim and just as many fail. I'm a great swimmer, though, so for those times when I drop down,  I'm never fully inept or incompetent; such are the strengths of my naturally inherited gifts. But it does take me to some funky places with some very sharp contours, and more on that later. Be careful out there, y'all!

So, what's a gifted artist and writer with expert publishing skills to do? You're reading one of my "hobbies" on my "free" time right now. But other than this, I get serious about adhering to a disciplined lifestyle, which includes keeping a running ledger of expenses deducted from a set amount I have on hand that I saved. And that's it, my big secret about how I do it: basic working class know-how, without any weirdo shit. No drug running, no guns, no thieving, no stealing, no begging, no bartering that's loosely called "dating", or any other immoral behavior of any kind, in any way, shape, or form. It's all above-the-board, totally legit living. No hooker stuff happening!

Yeah, but, how exactly do I do it? Well, it takes thought and a lot of experience. When I couldn't afford a pricey "smart" phone anymore, I converted the device into a smaller version of an iPad that I still use today as a music player, calendar, camera, to-do list, and public Wi-Fi enabled Internet surfer, which can also serve as a desktop publishing device in a pinch (with very tiny type: good thing I have excellent vision). That's savvy companies pay big $$ for. I'm also not some gadget addict who "has to" have the latest electronics in order to feel relevant or hip, simply because I do not use tools for purely ego-driven satisfaction. In other words, I'm  woman about it, and not some big whiny baby. I couldn't survive thinking that way.

Next, I got a cheap no-contract phone that I load with minutes as I need them, which pretty much guarantees that I never go over budget, and that I have a built-in mechanism to control the length of my conversations. Since I pay for each and every minute, I am quite aware of time passing by. Try it sometime; it works. It's "Pay-as-you-go" for the 21st century, without getting locked into a loaded contract that gives a company undue power over me, my life, and my finances, by building in hard-to-find features that allow lawyers to operate hand-in-glove with banks, making your accounts vulnerable to anyone who has the time and resources to drain it, at their say-so. Uh uh. I don't think so. Why should you be penalized by a phone company for dropping a pricey plan because you lost your job?! Makes no sense.

Next up, that all-powerful feelgood medium, The Holy TV Set, of such prominence to society that's it's placed in the center of our biggest rooms. I had an ex who was so addicted to t.v., he "had to" have one with cable, (and my old, pre-flat screen era t.v. with basic free t.v. would not do) so he forced one on me by saying it was my "Christmas" present, like an avid bowler who buys a bowling ball for his wife as an "anniversary" gift. When he turned violent on me, crashing uninvited in a drunken stupor on my couch that I came home to after a very long, hard, backstabbing day at work, he asked me to decide quickly which of his purchased items in my home he preferred I trash, in response to my break-up with him and subsequent ousting from my life and my apartment. I chose the big air conditioner he also couldn't "live" without, over his Almighty T.V., and that's what he kicked in.

But he is not like me, and he never will be. When I can't afford cable, I just go without, like I did in college, or when I'm in a tight spot financially. Feeling strapped because of the latest HD t.v.? Get a digital antenna with a digital signal converter, and now you're watching basic t.v. channels for free, just like me. No bills, no contracts, and no expensively lawyered-up financial devices to get what's left of your money that you need to buy food. You can do the same thing with Internet usage. Buy a low cost Wi-Fi enabled device, put bandwidth on it as you need or can afford, and voila: you're surfing the net without Big Brother watching you. You're welcome :)

Want to see the latest DVD movie release? Check it out for free from your local library, just like I do. My library is also a community center with timed Internet access from a bank of public computers, free yoga and Tai Chi lessons, free blood pressure readings every month, periodic blood drives, story time for kids, arts and crafts for them, too, art openings....you name it. They're always adding on stuff. There's no need for all this static over things and objects. These things do not own you; they are not more important to you than your fellow humans, so break free from these chains that bind you unnecessarily, because I want you to live in peace, my brothers and sisters. Amen to you.

I have the mug!

I wonder what I'll be when I grow up? So hard to know....

People love all sorts of folksy shit that I don't necessarily have time 
for, because it's excessively repetitive to someone like me. I know coaches who base their entire careers on delivering these neat little quips in the form of cutesy quotations (usually ripped off from
someone way more famous), and I don't specifically have a problem with sayings, except that I've heard them all my life. Why, you say? 
I'm so glad you asked! 

Oh, that's right! I have the fucking mug! Every damn day, people.

My dad programmed us (some would use the nicer word "trained"), like we were an elite military unit, and, look at that! Fast forward some 40 years, and here we are: leaders, all. So it's not that I personally find you distasteful, though if you try to cram too much of your crap down my throat, I will get angry (trust on that), it's just that I really don't need your fucking input at this particular point in time, because if I do, I will ask the questions I want to to get the answers I need. How do I know? I have the mug. 

Look! Here's a plaque my dad sent me with a quote on it.

p.s. - Yes, that's me in the morning, and yes, I am aware that shot is a bit overexposed (but that's not the point of that picture), and no, I am not wearing any makeup, because that's me having my morning cup of coffee (and no, I don't need makeup to drinking a fucking cup of coffee at home, alone), and yes, I am 44, and no, I have never had plastic surgery or used Botox, because (and this is important), I am a fucking working class New York girl. Get it together, ho. You're pissing me right the fuck off, and if you don't like it, then wear sunblock, bitch.

Birth, School, Work, Death

The concept of "work" has become so distorted from the relentless marketing push that drives modern commerce (which requires the constant ringing of cash machines to stay afloat as an economy), that many individuals maintain someone cannot be "normal" if they don't suffer through another meaningless day at an office, working at a dully repetitive job in a big company run by faceless people with money. That's what they call "life". Think about that for a moment; about how you spend most of your time. I have a vocation: a rich, passionate fulfilling one that is sometimes driven by the necessity for money, but take away the "job", and I'm still an artist and designer who writes, and I always will be, regardless of a whether or not a company pays me for my expertise. In fact, I will continue to develop my skills throughout my life, until the end of my time here on earth. It's a stance and a reality that puts jobs exactly where they belong: not the whole story of who we are. I couldn't fit my entire life into a 9-5 cubicle. Could you?

Instead of being driven in a panicked fashion from one place of employment to another, stop to think about what you would do, and who you would be without a corporation to define you. Is there anything of real value left? If not, why is that? Trust me, when you ponder those questions closely, you'd be surprised how much more respect drives your choices and decisions, in business and in life. Being able to rely on one's instincts (no matter how stressful or difficult life sometimes is) comes from a sense of self-worth that is the real American Dream, not the pre-packaged version sold to you by someone looking to profit from your hands, your mind, and your hard-fought for (and difficultly won) successes. I make work every day, whether or not someone pays me, because that's who I am, and that's what I do, which kind of obliterates old-fashioned concepts like vacations and desk jobs. Think about it, the next time you face an important life decision. Enjoy your time off, laborer.

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