Defaced

"I sat in the gradually chilling room,

thinking of my whole past the way

a drowning man is supposed to,

and it seemed part of the present

part of the gray cold and 

the beggar woman without a face ..."

-- M.F.K. Fisher, 

The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition

Ceramic statue 12-31-13

"Th-th-th-that's all folks!"

-- Porky Pig

Memento mori

"All photographs are memento mori.

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's

(or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.

Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it,

all photographs testify to time's relentless melt."

-- Susan Sontag 

Self portrait 12-30-13

"It's being here now that's important.

There's no past and there's no future.

Time is a very misleading thing.

All there is ever, is the now.

We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it;

and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one."

-- George Harrison

"How did it get so late so soon?

 It's night before it's afternoon.

December is here before it's June.

My goodness how the time has flewn.

How did it get so late so soon?"

-- Dr. Seuss

memento mori

"remember that you will die"

There's that beautiful song in the musical Rent, called "Seasons of Love." The entire cast sings over and over about the five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes that make up a year in everybody's life. They repeatedly ask the question "How do you measure" the minutes that comprise those years, and they offer some possibilities:

In daylights, in sunsets

In midnights, in cups of coffee

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife ...

In truths that she learned

Or in times that he cried

In bridges he burned

Or the way that she died

They're all good suggestions. But I chose to measure the past year of my life in faces. 

And in doing so, along the way I simultaneously measured with pretty much all of the items on the Rent list: daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter, strife, truths, tears, burnt bridges, death. 

I don't know how significant my life is in the grand scheme of things. I'm guessing not very. When my life is finally over, probably aside from my family, I won't register on the radar much. The universe probably isn't going to buckle at the knees over the loss of a middle aged (former) insomniac from Ohio who spent her days in a small upstairs room taking pictures of herself and her toys. 

It's unlikely that any of my photographs from 2013 will wind up in a gallery, or a book, or a museum, or a store. My blog will never get a million hits. That was never my goal anyway. I'm not interested in where my photographs end up. I'm interested in where my photographs take me, whether they take me toward something I have yet to discover, or whether they take me away from something I need to leave behind.

As Susan Sontag said in today's top quote, "All photographs are memento mori." They're records and reminders of what we all have to lose, evidence of somethings and someones that will eventually be permanently erased. I guess my photographs represent that tiny, tinny voice inside us all that cries "I was here!" "I lived." "I loved." "I struggled." "I tried." "I kept going." "I learned." "I saw." "I cared." "I didn't give up when I was too exhausted to want to keep living." "I found a way to survive." "I wrestled the demons." "I stumbled upon joy."

It's been an unforgettable year.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to anyone who took a few minutes out of their five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred to stumble along with me.

Gold dust woman

"Pulvis et umbra sumus."
(We are but dust and shadow.)

-- Horace, The Odes of Horace

Self portrait 12-29-13

"We're all more than the person we show to everyone else.

At least I hope so.

Because I feel like there's more to me than that.

I just haven't had the chance yet to show it."

-- Jessi Kirby, Golden

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

-- Pablo Picasso

End of days

"Clouds come floating into my life,

no longer to carry rain or usher storm,

but to add color to my sunset sky."

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Self portrait 12-28-13

"And the sunset itself on such waves of ether

That I just can't comprehend

Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,

Or the mystery of mysteries in me again."

-- Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems

"'One day,' you said, 'I watched the sunset forty-three times!'

And a little later you added:

'You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.'

'Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunset?'

But the prince made no answer."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Silly old bear

"The first of my father's illusions was 

that bears could survive the life lived by human beings ..."

-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

Miniature wood mannequin in a bear mask 12-26-13

"We invent what we love, and what we fear."

-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

Gorgonbread

"I'm always down for a Spice Girls reunion.

I love the Scary hair and platforms."

-- Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown

Medusa gingerbread cookie 12-25-13 

"There's nothing sadder in this world

than to awake Christmas morning

and not be a child."

-- Erma Bombeck

My son Sam and I baked cutout gingerbread cookies together, for two very specific reasons:

1. Sam wanted to eat the dough. He's been overdosing on Starbucks gingerbread lattes and wanted a hit of the real thing.

2. I wanted to make a Medusa gingerbread "man."

Our cookbook that we got the recipe from didn't call them gingerbread men, though. It called them gingerbread "people."  So our cookies weren't just delicious, they were also PC. (Which, as you probably already know, stands for "pretty cute.")

Sam likes to bake. He makes really delicious biscuits and beautiful pumpkin pies. He started "baking" when he was steady enough to stand on a chair beside me at the kitchen counter. He was about 1 1/2. I'd fold down one of my aprons and sort of swaddle him in it, then give him a bowl, some spoons and measuring cups, jars of spices, and let him go at it. He could put whatever he wanted into his bowl, and mix and stir to his heart's delight while I made muffins, or pizza crust, or cookies. I'd let him dump pre-measured cups of sugar and flour into whatever I was making. Sometimes it hit the bowl. Sometimes it hit the counter. Sometimes it hit the floor. There was usually a big mess to clean up, but it didn't matter. Being side-by-side together in the kitchen -- that's what mattered.

It still is.

Sam is all grown up. But something about baking cookies together brought back his little kid days, and that warmed me more than the heat coming from the oven or the spices in the gingerbread. While he licked batter from a spoon and piped faces and buttons on the "men," I made my Medusa cookie and cleaned up the bowls, the counter and the floor.

Some things never change.

Of course, I played with my food before I ate it:

Man. Person. Whatever.

I think I'll just call her a "Spice Girl."

Merry Christmas!

Pieces on Earth

'"But I never looked like that!'

'How do you know? ...

You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image;

you never see your eyes unless they are dulled 

by the gaze that rests upon the mirror or the lens 

(I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you) ..."

-- Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes

Self portrait 12-24-13

"You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful,

and before you know it, it's neither of those things ..."

-- Clive Barker

I look at myself.

A lot.

Not so much in the mirror, but through the lens.

As a self-portrait photographer, it's kinda part of the job.

Maybe I look at myself too much. Maybe not enough.

I am not exactly sure what it is I'm searching for.

What it is I'm chasing.

What it is I'm trying to reveal to myself.

But still, I look. I search. I chase.

I dissect.

And so often, when I pull up the images on my computer, I think, "Is that really how I look?"

Sometimes it's pleasing. Sometimes it's startling. Sometimes it's disappointing.

Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes it makes me think. Sometimes it makes me angry.

Sometimes it makes me wonder. Sometimes it makes me question. Sometimes it makes me sad.

Often, I alter the actual image, I vandalize it, until it feels right. Until it feels real. Until the picture hitting my eyes matches the one hidden in my head -- like two dissonant, agitating notes, one sharp, one flat, brought into tune little by little by little until there is peaceful harmony.

I suppose that when I find the whatever it is, I'll stop looking.

It's like that "hot and cold" game, where you're looking for a hidden something, and another person guides you towards it. When you're far away from it, they say "cold." "Colder." "Freezing." 

But when you home in, they say "warm." "Warmer." "Hot." "Hotter!" "Boiling!"

And often, you don't know what you're searching for until you find it.

Until you see it. Until it's right in front of your face, looking back at you.

Maybe when my eyes finally land on whatever I'm searching for, the dissonance will quiet down and I'll find that elusive harmony. 

I'll find that peace.

Maybe that's the "what."
Peace.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a happy one.
If you don't, then I hope you have a really incredible Tuesday night.

Peace out.

All wound up and hopping happy

"To get the full value of joy 

you must have someone to divide it with."

-- Mark Twain

Wind-up hopping happy faces 12-23-13

"You've got to S-M-I-L-E to be H-A-Double-P-Y!"

-- Shirley Temple Black

"Find ecstasy in life;

the mere sense of living is joy enough."

-- Emily Dickinson

"Jump!"

-- Van Halen

I'm dreaming of a wet ... White. Wait. WHAT? Christmas.

"... only darkened trails of rain could paint your face upon a pane ..."

-- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

Self portrait 12-22-13

"The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the house.

All that cold, cold wet day."

-- Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

"'I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.'

'I don't think I'd like that,' he said.

'You might if you tried.'

'I never have.'

She licked her lips. 'Rain even tastes good.'

'What do you do, go around trying everything once?' he asked.

'Sometimes twice.'"

-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I has been raining nonstop for days here in northern Ohio.

I went outside and played in it anyway.

I'd prefer snow. But sometimes you've gotta work with what you have.

If it was snowing, I'd be up to my eyeballs in it.

Oh, wait, I am up to my eyeballs in it.

Tangled up in b'loons

"We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them;

that all of life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.

But why should this make us unhappy?

Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice.

I don't believe in this world of sorrow."

-- E.M. Forster, A Room With a View

Smiley face balloon Medusa with smiley face balloon snakes hair 12-21-13

"Straightaway I was 'ware

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove ...

'Guess now who holds thee!' -- 'Death,' I said, but there,

The silver answer rang ... 'Not Death, but Love.'"

-- Elizabeth Barret Browing,  

Sonnets from the Portuguese 1: "I Thought how Theocritus" 

"Amarantha sweet and fair,

Ah, braid no more that shining hair!

As my curious hand or eye,

Hovering round thee let it fly."

-- Richard Lovelace, 

"Song to Amarantha, that she would Dishevel her Hair"

Happiest Medusa ever.

Waddaya think cookies grow on TREES?

"Sophie and I would use her Christmas break to make 

homemade treats from our very own kitchen.

I mean, if thousands of meth addicts can do it, why can't we?"

-- Celia Rivenbark, 

You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning

Self portrait 12-20-13

 "They were almond cookies,

although they could have been made of

spinach and shoes for all I cared.

I ate eleven of them, right in a row.

It is rude to take the last cookie."

-- Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be At This Hour?

"The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes --

nothing was as calming as creaming butter --

and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating

and the smell of baking chocolate,

she took final stock of where she'd been and where she was going.

Everything was fine."

-- Jennifer Crusie, Maybe This Time

The holiday candy has really been piling up around here, and nobody was eating it.

And the pool where I swim is closed for re-painting, so I had the morning clear.

So I chopped up all of the candy into chunks -- chocolate bars, chocolate candies, six little chocolate Santas from last year, an entire Whitman's Sampler -- some filled with nuts, some filled with caramel, some filled with peanut butter, some filled with toffee. I chopped up two chocolate turkeys, a chocolate cornucopia, some chocolate covered Oreos, chocolate covered pretzels, and a little bit of leftover Halloween candy (i.e. one fun-size Nestle Crunch bar, and a mini $100 Grand Bar). If it had anything to do with chocolate, it went under the knife.

I had a pretty big bowlful of chunks.

Then I mixed up a double batch of my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe, but substituted the bowlful of chocolate-covered everything for the chocolate chips. So they were sort of like candy-bar cookies. Not quite chocolate chunk. More like chocolate junk.

And lemme tell ya, my house smelled pretty damn delicious.
(And baking is pretty effective therapy. Maybe that's why so many people bake during the holidays.)

Because people keep giving us plates and plates of cookies, and fudge, and bags of Chex Mix, and peanut brittle, and homemade candy, and ... well, you get the picture. It's the holidays, so people feel compelled to bake. And even though such gifts might appear to be gestures of kindness and generosity and good will, I'm starting to think these desperate folks are just trying to keep the crazy at bay.

(By the way, a note to anyone who has the urge to drop off any more sweets at our door: we'd rather have wine. Wine is also pretty effective therapy, with fewer calories and fewer dishes to wash. And just for the record, I am not leaving Santa Claus cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. I'm making him a Manhattan.)

Anyway, since we are all carbed-out around here, I popped my Chocolate Junk Cookies into the freezer for another day.

Costume? What costume?

Fine and dandy

"The dandy cleans his monocle every day,

a silver monocle with a lens of smoked gold,

given him by a beautiful lady but,

suddenly overcome with sadness,

he has lost the monocle case."

-- Erik Satie, 

Les Trois Valses Distingues Du PR Ciuex D Go T  

by Erik Satie for Solo Piano

Self portrait 12-15-13

Carving out an identity

"Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop."

-- Michelangelo

Self portrait 12-13-13

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others 

the image we long for, need, love or desire, 

often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment

because it does not fit them."

-- Anais Nin

The last time I carved a linoleum block to make a print, I cut the crap out of my finger.

And by "cut the crap" I mean eight stitches and almost a severed tendon.

That was June 29th. I have a scar on the inside of my left index finger to prove it, a scar that still twinges and tingles every now and then, and which hurts like a sonofabitch whenever I bump it just right ... or is it wrong?

It's taken me until now to muster the courage to carve another block. But this time I finally got smart and came up with a crazy, kooky scheme. 

I wore gloves!

I know. It's a madcap. It's extreme. But wouldn't you know? It worked.

Look Ma! No bloody slashed digits!

When I told Leo about my brilliant idea, you know, the one about the gloves, he just looked at me kind of deadpan and mumbled "What took you so long?"  (I'm pretty sure there was a "Duh" implied in there somewhere.)

Whatever. I'm back in the saddle and happy to report that no fingers were harmed in the making of today's face.

Cardbored

"Inside a big cardboard box, a child is transported to a world of his or her own,

one where anything is possible."

-- "Cardboard Box," toyhalloffame.org

Self portrait 12-12-13

"The best birthday present is an empty box. 

Smile, it contains all my love for you."

-- Jarod Kintz, 

My love can only occupy one person at a time

"'I'm bored' is a useless thing to say.

I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you've seen none percent of.

Even the inside of your own mind is endless;

it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand?

The fact that you're alive is amazing, so you don't get to say 'I'm bored.'"

-- Louis C.K.

"I could party in a cardboard box with people who are funny and don't care."

-- Ke$ha

In living color

"If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

-- Edward Hopper

Self portrait 12-10-13

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,

because I am the person I know best."

-- Frida Kahlo

"No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting.

I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love."

-- Edvard Munch

Who the f*** you callin' Sylvia?

"I love you more than I love goats, 

and you know how I feel about goats."

-- James Patterson, The Christmas Wedding

Goat face 11-23-13

"A close family member once offered his opinion 

that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat,

then promptly withdrew the charge -- 

out of fairness to goats."

-- Jeffrey Kluger

Goat, 11-23-13

Marshall Eriksen:  

"We can't keep a goat."

Lily Aldrin:  

"But she's so cute and fuzzy and soft."

Marshall Eriksen:  

"Yeah, and it also sheds, eats garbage and can't control it's bowel movements.

Why don't we just call Duluth Mental Hospital and say my Uncle Linus can live with us?"

-- How I Met Your Mother, ("The Goat")

This is the goat who lives on the farm, who lives with the standoffish sheep, who lives with the curious cat, who lives with the chickens.

That swallowed the spider,

That swallowed the fly,

I don't know why.

Don't judge a face by its title, because this face doesn't have one

"Your title is what you are;

your visions are who you are.

When you know who you are, 

then you will know where 

you can be useful most."

-- Israelmore Ayivor

Self portrait 11-21-13

"I don't want any title. 

I just say what I say I say, 

and hopefully somebody gets it, man."

-- Nas

The lady is a tramp

"Imagination means nothing without doing."

-- Charlie Chaplin

Self portrait 11-17-13

"Failure is unimportant.

It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."

-- Charlie Chaplin

Self portrait (2) 11-17-13

"She won't dish the dirt with the rest of the broads

that's why the lady is a tramp."

-- Frank Sinatra, "The Lady is a Tramp"

Just because it isn't October anymore doesn't mean I can't still pull out a disguise once in a while.

Plus, I have all these mustaches.

Accentuate the positive

"Your soul has a natural taste aversion towards negativity.

It will not let you swallow it.

Spit it out!"

-- Dodinsky

Self portrait 11-15-13

"A strong, positive self-image is the

best possible preparation for success."

-- Joyce Brothers

"Just because I'm sassy and have a mouth on me 

doesn't mean I'm coming from a negative place."

-- Ke$ha

I own two Polaroid cameras.

One was given to me.

My other one cost $1.99 at the thrift store.

This is my $1.99 one. You can even see the little blue price tag on top.

The cameras may have been cheap, but the film for them is super duper expensive and tricky to find. Places keep it in super secret back rooms so people don't steal it. It's like the holy grail of film. When I find some, I buy lots.

The cool thing about a Polaroid image (besides being "instant") is that there's no negative. The pictures are all about a chemical reaction. A Polaroid spits out positive images all day long.

For about $4 a print.

But I'm not complaining. 

This is about Polaroid pictures, so nothing negative. 

Death becomes her

Rory:  "So what do you think?"

Dean:  "I think you look like a cotton ball."

Rory:  "Why, thank you, Jeeves."

Dean:  "But a really cute cotton ball."

-- Gilmore Girls, 

Season 2 Episode 6: "Presenting Lorelai Gilmore"

Cotton ball skull face with black eyeliner 11-13-13

"She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse,

and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn."

-- John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Sometimes inspiration comes in everyday places. The bathroom, for instance.

I was putting on makeup when I noticed a couple of Q-tips on the sink edge, forming an X. They looked like crossbones, so I popped a cotton ball next to them and, well.

I don't know about you, but I suck at applying liquid eyeliner. I've never been good at it. I get it everywhere but where it's supposed to go. I usually end up using a Q-tip to erase my mistakes, which usually just smudges them even more, making the whole thing worse. So in addition to this being a super cute puffball skull face, it is also my commentary on how I feel about liquid eyeliner.