The story of the roots

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a multitude of different hairstyles. Her hair was long and then short and then curly and then long again. It was blonde and red and purple and brown and chocolate. She liked almost all of her hairstyles except for the pudding bowl one she got when she asked the hairdresser to cut her hair like Red Sonja's. She also didn't like it when the same hairdresser cut her left eyebrow off.
The brown one she liked most of all, but because of her pale nordic roots, it was a pain in the buttocks to maintain. But maintain it she did, for nearly 10 years and all the while she felt very intellectual and noticed she could easily fool people into smart(ish) conversations when pretending to be a brunette. At least she didn't have to flash them quite as much boob.
But the day came when she noted that she wasn't quite happy working a shitty job and paying 120 euros every 3-4 weeks to fool people into not treating her like a sack of weeners. So she asked her fairy godparents (who also happened to be her real parents) to get her the fuck out of the situation. With a wave of a credit card, they did and she was magically transported to Mexico.

In Mexico her fairy godfather told her: "You are pigheaded and plagued by bad spirits and you has Teh Dumb." And to prove his point, he rolled an egg on her head and neck and the egg broke and she was covered in goop and everyone went "eeeeeewwwww".
"See? Bad juju." said the fairy godfather.
"To fix your Dumb, you need to visit one museum in Mexico City per day" he started. "And you have to work hard on something you really enjoy. To fix your bad spirits, you need to wear lots of perfume and ditch the crap (people) you've associated with in the past. Why do you want to hang on to people who have even more Dumb than you do and who have no desire to fix their situation? Your soul is so burdened by sad history and filthy people that your neck is cracking. And since you feel so badly about your body that you feel like hiding it way constantly, we're going to give you these pills that will make you kind of hyper and bleach that hair of yours to get you back to yourself."

So she took the pills that made her only a little bit hyper but otherwise more like she used to feel when she was just a wee little ankle biter and they bleacher her hair though the hairdresser recommended they cut it all off because of colour-damage (but her fairy godfather insisted that rubbing eggs on it would do just as well just as long as she didn't take a sauna with the egg on her head) and she took a good hard look at who the hell she was keeping company with and noticed that her fairy godparents were pretty damn right about how infectious teh Dumb was and so she clicked "unfriend" a bunch cuz thankfully, a lot of the people on her FB account were never really friends of hers. Not when she stopped to think about it. And when she thought about it a little more, she also discovered that the answer to "if we sleep together, will you like me better?" is always "no".

And then she went to a museum with her fairy godparents and altough she felt a little bit lonely (she hadn't had sex in a really REALLY long time), she noticed that her posture was better and she was understanding the art and what she drew better and she kind of liked her damaged hair because the colour was almost her natural one. And her boobs looked pretty good too.

And she felt really really confident that she would enjoy it if nice people would ask her out on dates and that she'd be totally cool even if  they didn't turn out to be the Man Of Her Dreams, cuz let's be honest, she didn't have a type per se and she was pretty darn content to be working on things she liked.




She also felt that it was necessary to mention that she deleted her personal MySpace account (so this is the only place this blog can be found anymore) given that MySpace is a broken pile of ick. Sorry, Justin. I'm not keeping that thing even for you.

IF - "Vanity"

And then there was a goat on the dance floor

True story bro.
We went to Tehuacan for Day of The Dead celebrations. And by celebrations I mean doing-some-definitely-non-touristy-things-besides-that-cactus-reservation-bit and by "we" I mean my family and my friend Rachael who is in fact a real person and not a figment of my imagination or a piece of fruit. The sheer shock of going outside at all kept me quite busy for a while but the best bit was actually doing things outside. Like normal people things. Yes, things like walking and looking at stuff and talking to others. And that got me thinking: this is really nice, this talking to people bit. And being outside. Oh and this walking thing is simply brilliant! I must do this more often. Am I doing a Carrie Bradshaw monologue in my head? God I hated that character. There was so much "me" in her monologues it sounded like Beaker talking. Oo, shoes! No wait, a butterfly! Weee! YES I WILL HAVE SOME OF YOUR DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE! OMG WHY IS THIS TOILET NOT FLUSHING, FLUSH, FLUSH DAMN YOU!!
And then I calmed down and we took a look around Tehuacan.

The short version of how and why is that Tehuacan is little city about 4 hour bus ride from Mexico City with a population of about 500,000 people. It's tiny and quiet compared to Mexico DF. It also has a town hall with a mural that has dinosaurs in it. And the last time I was there I could've sworn I saw a hummingbird. Though with my eyesight, it might as well have been a giant mosquito...
But the real reason we went there is because my family's family is from the area and we wanted to show my friend a more traditional Day of the Dead.
Surprisingly the celebration doesn't include zombies. Not really anyway.

We started off with a toilet that didn't flush, just slowly filled with water and floated pieces of whatever you left in it on the surface. Then there was no shower. Hey, no problem as long as everyone in the company is equally stinky. By noon we had hiked up a hill at a nature conservation area, gotten bitten by mosquitoes and learned that one area of Mexico likes calling a plant Bad Woman while the same plant in another part of Mexico is called Bad Man. There might be a seed of an interesting socio-historical debate there. Or it could just be a case of "oh yeah, well we'll see how you like it!". The conservation area is gorgeous, btw. It's well worth the trip just to hug the Elephant's Foot Tree. Which we did.
There were also snakes in jars and some sort of a coyote-squirrel hybrid, that could very well be just a coyote with a fancy tail. What do I know. I can't even operate a toilet.
After the hike we spotted a school throwing some sort of a traditional fest for the holidays and sauntered in to secretly photograph the whole thing. Should've guessed there's no such thing as "secretly" in Mexico, not sure if there's even a word for it. What happened was that as Rachael and I were taking pics of the kids dancing, we got tapped on the shoulder and asked to move to the front. And by front, I mean we were asked to go sit on the front stage. And then our little troupe got introduced to the whole dang school by the two young ladies operating as MCs. AND and, then we were given tamales and told to dance. Yup, that happened. And there was a guy carrying a goat around on the dance floor.
It's tradition.
(sidenote: all of this was really quite lovely. The dances we saw were traditional to the area, depicting war and how important the goats are to the people there, mainly because they can thrive easily and  pretty much all of the goat is used, except for the balls. Thought I've heard that balls are usually the best, most meaty part in an animal, so I don't know if someone was just messing with me because they like saying "balls". Anyhow, the dances were wonderful, and us perfect strangers were treated with nothing but kindness. This is something a jaded westerner like me has sometimes trouble adjusting to: being treated like a welcome guest when you don't know the people from Adam. After getting danced around, we were offered traditional local treats. How mindblowingly hospitable are these people? Mind. Blown.)

There was initially talk of going to see some goats getting sacrificed.. I mean slaughtered.. wait, somehow that doesn't make it sound better. Um..  killed? Stewed? Ehm.. anyway, they have this thing where they "eliminate" goats once a year to cook their heads and use the ears and hooves for mole and that once a year happens around the time of the Day of The Dead. I swear it's a lot less macarbe than it sounds. The goats are delicious.
Eh, yes, well after carefull consideration, it was decided to nix the killing part and just go straight to the "eating goats" part. Which we did. There was also tequila. And then we got lost at a cemetary. Which is a lot nicer than it sounds (was actually really nice. Definitely the place to get lost in a cemetary at). And has a lot less to do with the tequila than it might appear. And since our little altar for the deceased was left in Mexico DF, we asked around and were invited to go in people's homes to take pictures of their altars. Yes, people were totally ok with us bumbling camera geeks coming into their homes and taking pictures of the altars they set up for their dead loved ones.
Us westernes, we know nothing about how to be open to one another.
After a day of hijinks, we got back to the hotel to find a working toilet. It's true when they say you don't know what you got 'till it's gone.

What it actually made me consider is that I really love this place. Even with the giant bugs and tree coyotes and the polution that makes your eyes sting. That's nothing compared to all the things Mexico has to offer. You want spiritual growth? Goa is for tourists looking for new alternatives to pot. Mexico is where you want to go if you really, truly, want to know how to open your heart right to the bone.

That's not to say the traffic still isn't completely deranged and that all this "emotional and spiritual growth" business means I have done sweet bugger all as far as drawing goes. Curses.
Eh, mañana mañana... Thems the seeds of wisdom. :D

New things and my future home

This is my future home. Apparently locals kind of shun the gigantic, floor to cieling windows (that don't have bars on them) and the building has been pretty much empty since it was built a year or so ago. I think's magnificient. Roomy, white and has WAY too much exposure to ever allow for running around without pants and it's just perfect.
Lord knows I need some discipline with the pants issue....

Anyhow, before buying this entire building/just getting a single apartment to have orgies/torillas in, I should probably get good at spanish. And pass my therapy with a clean bill of health. And possibly learn salsa. Or not. I know the White Girl Shuffle, so I can be exotic and attract Le Suitors with my complete inability to connect with my hips. Falling on my face on the dancefloor is always funny. Gives potential mates the opportunity to show off their strenght. Getting carried to the ambulance = marriage potential. Getting dragged out by the hair = well... if they're cute...
Oh yeah, I started school last week. And went to my first ever therapy session. And burned my right eye and scalp by being a pasty european and standing outside. It happens. Good thing I only burned the skin around my right eye, otherwise I might look silly. Now it just looks like someone beat me up in school. But the best part is what I was told to do to treat it: dab milk on it before adding moisturiser. Done. That's not so bad. Only then I might have kind of overslept and not have the time to shower and yeah, I stil have milk from yesterday rubbed on my scalp, so it's starting to make more sense why people switched seats away from me in the class today . Sorry. I stink.
Sometimes I wonder if all these things I'm being told to do here actually ARE traditional local remedies or if step-dad is just messing with me. What do I know. He has street cred. He says to stick a lizard up my nose for good luck because it's a traditional mexican remedy, I go "ok!" and go find a lizard.

Er, yes, back to the school thing. So pronouciation, spanish in spanish and a class of salsa that I took because I had to take something and it was only supposed to be 2 hours once a week. But it seems our salsa teacher takes salsa very seriously indeed and once a week has now turned into twice a week and it's not so much swinging your hips and laughing at how awkward all of us Europeans are, but practising for dear life to perform in front of the entire university on December.
This is not what I signed up for. I am not having fun. Yet.
Also, it's not really falling on my face as it is realising that somewhere during the past 15 years, I completely lost touch with my body. I took ballet, for crying out loud! This cannot be so hard! unles I sucked at ballet and no one wanted to point that out....
.. best not think about that.
But yes. So far have only managed to feel like a gaseous blimp, swinging my arms around in what I think is an attractive manner but resembling mostly a motorboat. Or a blimp. If the blimp had arms and was wearing a dress and didn't know what rhythm was. Which is something that eludes a lot of blimps (little known fact).
Not a happy bunny. Maybe I'll learn to enjoy it? They say that people who get kidnapped eventually learn to like their captors.

It's probably not a good sign that I'm trying my damnest to NOT think about salsa classes even if I love the fact that the group is big and OMGALLTHESENEWPEOPLEICOULDGETTOKNOWANDSQUEEEPEOPLE!!!!

It's been a damn fast few weeks. I did promise art blog sort of stuff, and yet I can't deliver right now. There are computer and scanner issues (one computer does uploading faster but sucks at other things, the other computer does NOT like uploading at all and kind of has The Blue Screen Of Death, but has all the appropriate programs.. when you can keep it from dying on you. Getting programs on the less fatally ill computer is not an option for now) as well as some tiny little scheduling issues with there only being 24 hours in a day and some of those should ideally be used for sleeping. I'm working on that. Eventually, I might not have to sleep at all. It's good to have goals. But it could very well be that I might possibly just get something posted in an artsy manner tomorrow. Which would be nice. Cuz it would make me feel fussy with accomplishment. Fuzzy is good.
Really, it's all more organised than it sounds, but dang it I think my brain has turned to frijoles. Mmmmmm.. frijoles...

K, I think I might need to sleep a little now. By-e.

Serious matters are semi-serious

Now what does that even mean. I guess it means that yes, serious business is serious, but there's a very absurd side to almost everything. It means that while you need to invest yourself 100% to whatever it is you want out of life (or more precisely, whatever it is you want your life to be), if you do so by furrowing your brow so hard your eyes start bleeding, you're doing it wrong. Working hard doesn't mean stop laughing. If you ever find yourself doing that, you're in trouble. What are you really looking for in life if whatever you're doing is not bringing you joy? Are you waiting for someone to come and do things for you? Are you waiting for the unpleasantness to somehow magically turn into whatever it is you're dreaming about?
Life is not a montage.. fortunately. We are priviliged to be present and take part in every single moment of our lives. Even the bits we don't like.

What I'm getting at is a bunch of clichés that make more sense the more you think about them:
"Whatever you do in life, make sure it fulfills 3 basic rules: 1. it serves a purpose, 2. it has beauty, 3. it brings you pleasure." (think about that outside the measures of beauty = photoshopped model in Marie Claire or pleasure = getting your naughty bits out and rubbing them)
"There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going."
"We're all in a rush to get in line to reach our goals until we realise there's no goal, just a line." (Mexican version of the buddhist lesson of not doing your dishes to get the dishes done, but to do them to do the dishes)

Should you choose to accept this mission, you will have to invest +100% of yourself to your life and happiness, be present in every situation of it, listen carefully, love your heart out, wrap yourself in a blanket of awesome positive people and speak up for yourself.
Oh speaking, you elusive beast. As much as we like to produce words and talk, it seems actually talking about the things that matter is the second hardest thing in the world. It's a skill that you have to learn. Learn it, be happy.

On a side note on people who didn't worry too much, it's said that da Vinci had 3 dinner rules:
1. You are not allowed to murder anyone in the table during dinner.
2. You are not allowed to wipe your mouth on anyone else's clothing because..
3. .. that's what the cat tied to the table leg is for

On a side note to that side note in a completely unrelated subject... sort of...; this week will get some art/comics blog stuff going. Hold your breath, plaz. ;)