Gimme A Little Skin...

Body art, body modifications, piercing, tattoos, scarification, cutting... What images come to mind when you read or hear those words? Most people I find tend to fall into two camps; those that view the aforementioned words as a means to show their souls on their skins, and those that either don't understand that desire or find it uninteresting or abhorrent. Myself? I most definitely fall into the former camp. I have been decorating my body since I was young and wanting to express myself in a way that I was at a loss to do with words.

Some people wonder how it all begins. I think that motivations vary widely. For some, there is an inherent frustration in being able to express strong emotions verbally. Others may find it a comfort (or a very powerful addiction) to modify their flesh in a variety of ways. There are other reasons, but I'm not going to point them out here as this is not the point of what I am writing about today. It has always interested me how our American society views "acceptable" versus "non-acceptable/weird" changes to our bodies and how these views have evolved over the last 30 years or so. Coloring your hair in "appropriate" shades is OK, but bright hues are strange. A single set of pierced ears was fine for women, but with each additional hole in the earlobe a cultural line was crossed in the sand. Too many, and you approach freakish standards. For men the earlobes with jewelry determined whether he was gay or straight. Tattoos were unusual especially on women, and I had my first at age 18.

When I was a teenager, nose piercings and brightly colored (blue, orange, etc.) hair was generally seen as odd or freaky. Go figure, I had both. I remember vividly walking down the street as a young punk (it was the mid 1980's) toward a mom with her young child. As they grew closer, the mom gave me a shocked look, then pulled her child abruptly close to her and well out of my path. To my own young anti-establishment self, I was both proud and sad of that moment.

It makes me happy to see the greater acceptance of altered bodies today. While I don't care for some of those modifications for my own body, I can certainly understand the desire to stand out in a crowd or to wear my beliefs on my skin. Why does all this come up? Last night I dreamed about tattoos. It was a rather frustrating experience actually, since I kept waiting and waiting for the person to show up. Then they kept putting the wrong artwork on my skin, and I wasn't able to voice to them that I really didn't want these designs on my hands, I wanted something different. I never did get the art done that I wanted, but I am not sure if my dream-self ever would have.

My waking self, on the other hand, I hope will eventually have the artwork on my skin that I want. I have been thinking of tattoo designs for many years, and I have finally come up with a few that I want sooner than later. Two of them I need to refine the drawing to fit me a little better. The others will have to wait until I can find the time (and eventual money) to accomplish them. Maybe I will even splurge on a tattoo machine for myself and eventually make some trades...

So, what are your views on body modifications, and how did you come to them?

Just Mesmerizing

Tonight I think I am going to keep it short. The kids are in bed, and I am tired. I ran across this completely stunning video and wanted to share it here. It is so mesmerizing, and for some reason makes me feel rather sad. Maybe because of its breathtaking beauty despite the not-so-subtle evidence of our planets huge population. Either way, the detail it stunning. It is pretty amazing to watch, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

If the embedded video doesn't work for you, here is a link to the original video.

Bibliophilia

It is obvious in our household that we love books. Bookshelves line most walls in almost every room of the house. I draw the line at the bathroom, though. Paper and water mix too well to allow their presence in such a moist environment. Family photographs often have our heads cut through by the shelves that border our living spaces. We have several thousand, collected between us through a lifetime, yet it is still not enough. I have a huge "wish list" of books I would love to have someday. Not just books that I want to read, but old books that I grew up with. Like the set of hardbound "OZ" books I used to thumb through to stare at the pictures within. Or that old collection of "A Thousand and One Nights," or or a thousand other wonderful tomes I can think of.

Some of my earliest memories are of books. Our house was a close second to the local branch of our public library. So many books lined the walls that I am fairly certain they are sinking my parents old American Craftsman-style house into the ground. I have fond memories of reading comic books in the bathtub, and science fiction while hanging over the ends of the couch. I don't know if I was an early reader or not (my mother has forgotten my true childhood and replaced it with a more "perfect" one), but even my earliest memories are filled with books. The smell of the old pages fills my blood, and the feel of ancient cracked leather and dusty pages I can sense when I close my eyes. Some of my fondest places to visit have always been used bookstores (and hardware stores and art stores, oh and fabric stores, but those are different stories). I could sit on the floor for hours lost in another world, turning pages and oblivious to the rest of the world going by.

For all my love of books, in the last several years I haven't been able to read a tenth of the books I would like to for research much less for pleasure. It is a sad state of being, but I am slowly trying to remedy that. I have a few eBooks I am slowly reading through, as well as some "real" books and magazines I try to read a little bit of every now and then. I have tried to dutifully catalog all our books at LibraryThing, but I know I have probably missed a hundred or so. Every time we buy new books (or I receive them through PaperbackSwap, another awesome site,) I often forget to log them in. Someday I will get them all listed, and maybe some day I will have more of the books of my hearts desire. And maybe even someday I will have the leisure time to read to my hearts' content. Now, tell me about *your* earliest book memories, I would love to hear them....

Indulge Me A Little

I was sitting here tonight trying to decide what to write about, and feeling frustrated with this stupid cold making me feel slow. I am feeling uninspired right now. My three year old son is asking me several times to read to him, and I am realizing I would rather read to him right now (he LOVES books) than stare at my keyboard trying to figure out which of several topics to talk about tonight. Maybe tomorrow I will be feeling better to discuss any number of topics. So, I leave you tonight with some recent photos instead. These are not my own, but my daughters work. She really has an interesting way of staging photos, and I love to see her interest in the arts. We ended up buying her a digital camera about 18 months ago that she could use without us worrying she would break it. It is an actual digital camera, not a dumbed-down childish camera, and I am sure many adults would question such a young child (now 5 1/2 years old) having an expensive piece of equipment they could possibly break. I feel that I would rather she be given the responsibility as she is able to handle it (and she does very well), as well as encouraging her creativity. So here you go:

I Must Be Crazy

I know, it is a long-standing joke, at least to myself, that I must be crazy already. I haven't blogged (except in my head, and that doesn't really count) for several months. Granted, we have been busy, but I am sure I could have made time somewhere. My creative soul needs to be fed, even if it is through writing instead of my preferred method of the visual arts (or even dance, which I LOVE but just can't manage to do right now). One venue I have been thinking about for a few months is trying NaNoWriMo this year. If you haven't heard of it, look HERE. I don't know that I feel the need to write a novel, per se, but I do feel the need to tell my own story, and the story of my family history in some way.

Being November 1, and the first day of NaNoWriMo, I am still feeling conflicted about it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Gah! Or maybe I will do THIS instead....

And I really, really, really want to do THIS!! for November too.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get this nifty little bagde widget to actually appear where I want it to. This platform is really counter-intuitive to me.

Insomnia

When I was growing up, my mother used to have terrible insomnia. She would spend hours in the kindle of he journal awake, but she made good use of her time at least. We would often wake to freshly baked cobblers, cinnamon rolls, or tarts for breakfast, or bread just coming out of Tue oven to be gathered would a thick helping of butter and homemade jam. You could say that baking has pervaded my senses from a very young age, as the scents intertwined their way through my dreams as well as spirit. I have fond memories of waking up to these scents from the oven of my childhood. When she wasn't baking, she painted, drew, or worked metal; whatever medium she happened to be involved in at the moment. I suppose it was how she dealt with being unable to quiet her mind when most others were ensconced in slumber.

I rarely knew what it was like (the inability to sleep when every other signal around me said I should be) until I had children. As is often the case with the young or college bound, I stretched my wakeful hours into those nocturnal times readily; paying for it the following evening when the wall of sleep would hit me head on. Little did I understand the restlessness and frustration I would encounter when I didn't have the goal of a paper to finish or a game among friends to greet the sun with.

I first brushed up against this wakefulness when I was pregnant with my daughter. My belly round, I lay in bed thinking of who she would be, and how to be a good parent to her. The books and websites I read all said to treat insomnia as a sick child: stay in bed at all costs, sleep will come to your tired body eventually if you remain there. So I followed their advice. Tossing and turning as my growing family slumbers blissfully unaware. My mind turning, drawing, writing letters, stretching, baking, balancing. For five years I have lain here randomly awake (as the sleeplessness strikes erratically) and eventually slipping back into sleep with my loved ones surrounding me. Tonight I wonder if I had it all wrong. There is a certain utility to actually getting up and being productive without the inevitable interruptions that small children bring. And the peacefullness of the early morning is soothing. So to still my mind this early day, I instead chose to get up and look out at the falling snow and write out these errant thoughts while they were freshly baking. And now that they are done, I shall go back to bed. You see, I am truly my mothers daughter, but not so entirely that I cannot learn from her mistakes. Goodnight.