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the house looks like a party tornado went through it. we are nearly ready, minus food. it's been insane. entire days of shopping and finding the last bits. the pay off? well, the obvious, plus b. does look divine in that gown...
slowly getting various burning man stuff together. i don't have pics of the big furry pink bee outfit just yet. ok, that one maybe never. but it should be appropriate.
as for the above, i'm working on the fur skirt to go with.
a night of bad and panicked dreams, difficult to extract myself from. this morning the animals piled themselves on me while i finished sleeping. still, waking with a horrible headache, it was good to find pele sleeping on my head, gently pawing at my face, and buck tucked up under my arm with his head on my shoulder.
of course luna was watching from her perch. she's funny that way, guarding and looking for monsters from a slightly larger remove.
the photo doesn't really do justice to how awful this dress is. you can't even see the butt bow!
we've started, albeit a bit late, shopping for burning man.
needless to say, that's the before pic on the dress. it will be shorter, and just this second i had a thought - perhaps there should be some stencil grafitti involved. perhaps something as simple as red flames painted on it. who knows.
today is b's birthday. :)
i can't believe we've been living together a year (starting with the second date, such as it was). that we're engaged. that this is the most wonderful relationship i could hope for.
what a wonderful man. lucky me.
i like bees - honey bees and fuzzy bees, not the generic bee class which might include hornets or wasps or other spooky flying things.
maybe because i love honey so much. but also because they are just graphically cool. symmetical, interesting, a relatively friendly insect given that you don't have sting allergies.
there was a great logo on a box, queen bee brand something or other, at trader joe's in portland.
and this t-shirt is cool.
or... well... miss beeville... great photo.
this didn't start to be about bees. it's free association on the quote below.
It becomes visibly agitated around the mouth of its entrance.
The colony whines in a centerless loud drone that vibrates the neighborhood. It begins to spit out masses of bees, as if it were emptying not only its guts but its soul.
A poltergeist-like storm of tiny wills materializes over the hive box. It grows to be a small dark cloud of purpose, opaque with life. Boosted by a tremendous buzzing racket, the ghost slowly rises into the sky, leaving behind the empty box and quiet bafflement.
The German theosophist Rudolf Steiner writes lucidly in his otherwise kooky Nine Lectures on Bees: "Just as the human soul takes leave of the body...one can truly see in the flying swarm an image of the departing human soul."
For many years Mark Thompson, a beekeeper local to my area, had the bizarre urge to build a Live-In Hive-an active bee home you could visit by inserting your head into it. He was working in a yard once when a beehive spewed a swarm of bees "like a flow of black lava, dissolving, then taking wing." The black cloud coalesced into a 20-foot-round black halo of 30,000 bees that hovered, UFO-like, six feet off the ground, exactly at eye level. The flickering insect halo began to drift slowly away, keeping a constant six feet above the earth. It was a Live-In Hive dream come true.
-Kevin Kelly from Out of Control
i want to go here. tell me this isn't the greatest elephant on a carousel that you've ever seen in your life.
if i was 8 my dream would be to participate in the above.
on another note, isn't this the domain that leslie harpold lost?
we finally got downtown yesterday to check out the new central library. (i like it better than the prada store.)
it was fun, we took a bunch of pics (there were about 1,546,624,329 opportunities for mirror shots) - although b's camera ran out of battery early on, so we both got to play with mine. if you know what i mean.
here are too many of the many more photos:
you may recall that on my old sidebar in the photo section there were some links to groovy urban ruins photography, comme ca:
zone tour
abandoned places
modern ruins
closed metro stations
subterranean britain
i found another one yesterday, more or less through satan's laundromat.
undercity. i defy you to not be fascinated. i am pretty sure that i looked at all the photos and read all the words on the entire site.
it's the moon taxi. that's the story.
yesterday was the birthday of mrs mion. the girls went to a crave party, and the boys went to dinner, we met up afterwards at the tractor to hear the bastard sons of johnny cash. i don't know what it is about the song viva las vegas, but man, it just strikes me the right way (note: we didn't change out of our pjs. it's seattle, no one even commented about us wandering around dressed that way).
so, you were supposed to wear your pajamas to the crave party. it's a spa/shopping/girly event. the girls partook in much massage. i ended up getting a mehndi thing on my hand. i've always wanted to see how well it worked, and it totally got dark overnight.
it's harder than it seems to take a picture of your own hand.
mardella, love, happiest of birthdays to you. i can't even tell you how uber awesomo fabulous i think you are.
(yes, it's a penis cupcake, complete with frosted bodily fluids.)
there is sometimes a disconnect between my creative brain and reality. it frustrates me to no end, and i'd really like to change that. i notice it most when b. and i do art projects (aka "let's make some shit").
b. and i have different creative processes. long ago we called a detante on the whole issue of Who Is The Creative Master and we can play nice together now. it's great. but frequently he gets more done than i do. he's better at jumping into the middle of things. for me things percolate in the brainpan until i have a pretty clear idea of what i want and then i can do it. and i was being totally project-ADD yesterday. b. on the other hand, made headway on our lotteria project. i have one of my 6 clear in my head, maybe 2 of 6. (we each have 6 paintings to do).
i think i need to go sit in on a 2nd grade art class to free up my inner non-ADD child.
i have a thousand ideas, it's wrangling those little jackasses into being.
and it's totally time to go back to work.
ok. so. technically i'm not allowed to post the video i just took with my groovy camera (not made for chuckleheads, i'm still figuring it out). i will say though, that if you email me i might be able to send it to you. it's 14mb but the last second and a half are priceless.
with the right caption it could totally go to one of those stupid video shows.
i was told that i relinquish veto power on his site if i post it. did i mention it's funny? if nothing else i can save it to show buck when he grows up.
note the photostream via flickr over there in the right sidebar. i haven't really figured out how i am going to balance the ones in the regular posts with the photostream stuff, but i suspect they will be extras or pics that don't need to have a blog entry. i dunno, checking out flickr and seeing how it will go. seems like the moblogging capabilities are there too, if you are into that sort of thing.
i've been craving movies lately - probably some escapist thing - or some vitamin deficiency caused by lack of viewing movies. dave came over last night, so i went to the local craptastic video store to get a movie or two. wanting to make everyone happy i picked up Paycheck. which sounded interesting sort of even with ben affleck in it. i wanted a mystery thriller kind of thing, and taking lives isn't out on DVD yet. anyway. i couldn't settle on number 2. the old manchurian candidate was out, and as much as i've been in the mood for katherine hepburn movies i didn't think that would fly.
called b.
me: honey, would it make you happy if i rent hellboy?
him: {stunned silence} yes. yes it would.
me: {explains movie selection options}
him: you could get that weird asian kungfu scifi thing we saw last time.
me: i have no idea what you are talking about. do you want me to look for that or just get hellboy?
him: hellboy.
so, it wasn't *that* bad. and the effects were great. and i get my cool girlfriend points.
b., my love, you have my heart and soul. thank you for giving me yours.
john mayer is the ache of new love.
tom waits (closing time) is the ache of life.
alexander calder is the ache of delicate balance.
84 charing cross road (a. bancroft & a. hopkins) is the ache of loss.
voices of light (einhorn) is the ache of transcendence.
mark strand, li-young lee, anne michaels put more and better words to the ache. (links are my catacombs)
and there is this poem, perpetually re-discovered.
The Hardness Scale
- Joyce Peseroff
Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz
which is # 7 on the hardness scale
and it's hard enough to get to know anybody these days
if only to scratch the surface
and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces:
It will scratch glass
it will scratch gold
it will even
scratch you eyes out one morning - you can't be
too careful.
Diamonds are industrial so I bought
a ring of topaz
which is #8 on the hardness scale.
I wear it on my right hand, the way it was
supposed to be, right? No tears and fewer regrets
for reasons smooth and clear as glass. Topaz will scratch glass,
it will scratch your quartz,
and all your radio crystals. You'll have to be silent
the rest of your days
not to mention your nights. Not to mention
the night you ran away very drunk very
very drunk and you tried to cross the border
but couldn't make it across the lake.
Stirring up geysers with the oars you drove the red canoe
in circles, tried to pole it but
your left hand didn't know
what the right hand was doing.
You fell asleep
and let everyone know it when you woke up.
In a gin-soaked morning (hair of the dog) you went
hunting for geese,
shot three lake trout in violation fo the game laws,
told me to clean them and that
my eyes were bright as sapphires
which is # 9 on the hardness scale.
A sapphire will cut a pearl
it will cut stainless steel
it will cut vinyl and mylar and will probably
cut a record this fall
to be released on an obscure label known only to aficionados.
I will buy a copy.
I may buy you a copy
depending on how your tastes have changed.
I will by copies for my friends
we'll get a new needle,
a diamond needle,
which is # 10 on the hardness scale
and will cut anything.
It will cut wood and mortar,
plaster and iron,
it will cut the sapphires in my eyes and I will bleed
blind as 4 A.M. in the subways when even degenerates
are dreaming, blind as the time
you shot up the room with a new hunting rifle
blind drunk
as you were.
You were #11 on the hardness scale
later that night
apologetic as
you worked your way up
slowly from the knees
and you worked your way down
from the open-throated blouse.
Diamonds are forever so I give you softer things.
however we did manage large amounts of eating, drinking and sleeping this weekend at iron springs. it's very relaxing (except when the drains work very poorly) to lounge about the dilapidated cottages.
iron springs has a lovely beach, and it's such a pleasant place to be.
we were there with mion and shace. in the interest of more (certainly not full) disclosure, we garnered the collective nickname of bribecca. and of course, buck and zorro.
it was very relaxing, and totally unplugged. b. told dion that even reading wired was too close to being online.
my favorite story was grace recounting when dion was given a moleskin notebook as a gift. he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. grace had to explain "think of it as a blog, only in 1980". benissimo!
so, here are some pics. i'm mighty tired.
