Stopped into the Goodwill on the way home from yoga this morning in search of light-colored fabric for a photo backdrop. They had several options but also … this 99 cent plaque.
It might be a little cheesy if it weren’t so damn true. And exactly what I needed to hear right now.
In case you do too…
-ag
Art is really just an idea,” Mr. Axelrod said. “It’s follow through and direction. What makes a great artist nowadays is being able to put together a team. And he was willing to give up money to put his ideas to life.”
Maybe the greatest quality an artist can possess today isn’t skill or talent — it’s commitment to making a vision real. That means money and time. To create something to make the masses remember your name. What else is fame for?
Walking to work, I cross the path of a woman with tattoos on the back of her thighs. She skips downhill into the projects like a schoolgirl backpack swishing side to side under sun and cirrus clouds on this opening day of the Olympics.
This is why the every four years coincides with the presidential election. We need the news break. We need a distraction from America: Land of the privileged and home of the suppressed (but never not great). We need to feel young again- excited about the sports even amid exotic economic and social protests.
The radio describes a Rio in recession. Dirty filthy water, rodents and snakes, rampant crime, and other #rioproblems.
A physical education teacher who loves sports but he’s angry at the Olympics because there are no balls and no courts for kids to play but they came up with all that money to hold this international spectacle.
Radio program host tells us the BBC reporter at the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue is dancing when the cameras are off. Why shouldn’t she dance dance? Would you, if you were there on this glorious day?
-ag
excerpt from Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang:
“(Rejection) involves another person saying ‘no’ to us, often in favor of someone else, and often face to face. Rejection means that we wanted someone to believe in us, but they didn’t. That we wanted someone to like us, but they didn’t. We wanted them to see what we see and to think how we think and instead they disagreed and judged our way of looking at the world as inferior. That feels deeply personal to a lot of us. It doesn’t just feel like a rejection of our request, but also of our character, looks, ability, intelligence, personality, culture or beliefs. Even if the person rejecting our request doesn’t mean for his or her ‘no’ to feel personal, it’s going to. Rejection is an inherently unequal exchange between the rejecter and the rejectee and it affects the latter much more than the former.
When we experience rejection, we can’t easily blame the economy, the market or other people. If we can’t deal with it in a healthy manner, we are left with two unhealthy choices. If we believe we deserve the rejection, we blame ourselves and get flooded with feelings of shame and ineptitude. If we believe the rejection is unjust or undeserved, we blame the person and get consumed by feelings of anger and revenge.”
I’m listening to the audiobook. Hoping there are chapters coming up that will provide answers on how to deal in a healthy manner. 😉 -ag
Communicating with others is an art that can be practiced and should be, if we value our relationships with others. -ag
New York seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid men rushed by, pinching together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marching policemen passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes. The rain gave Amory a feeling of detachment, and the numerous unpleasant aspects of city life without money occurred to him in threatening procession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subwaythe car cards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grab your arm with another story; the querulous worry as to whether some one isn’t leaning on you; a man deciding not to give his seat to a woman, hating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst a squalid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth…
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Catherine Mary Stewart is coming to town
and you never watched Days of our Lives
or saw The Last Starfighter or Night of the Comet
but you know that face from before you knew the names of actresses.
She was everything you didn’t have in the ’80s:
skinny-belted, dark denim,
perky-collared, tucked blouse,
feathered waves of frosty highlights,
beach-ready bikini wax suntanned dignity,
insinuating blue eyes, nonchalant cinnamon lips and zeitgeist eyebrows
confident and strong with long aerobic dancer legs—
everything you couldn’t be
no matter how hard you tried.
The doctor said you were going to be 5’10.
He literally said, “You are going to be tall,”
when he looked at the x-rays
before your first bunionectomy in seventh grade,
but it was like a curse
and you never grew another inch.
In college you wore leotards and flowing skirts
with your hair twisted high in a knot,
but you didn’t dance unless you got drunk,
and you skipped dance class to sip bloody marys
mixed with Absolut peppar vodka by your friend Christopher,
the two of you passing Anais Nin’s diary back and forth
reading her descriptions of Antonin Artaud.
“To be kissed by Artaud was to be poisoned.”
This was after the acne faded,
and the braces came off and you got contacts
(Catherine Mary Stewart probably has perfect vision)
and you permed your hair like the other girls, now that it had grown out from when your mom clipped it short,
because you swam every day and the chlorine turned it to straw,
and she couldn’t comb through it anymore without making you cry.
Your mother wasn’t a professor like Catherine Mary Stewart’s
and you didn’t know your dad.
You don’t remember being encouraged,
not that they didn’t praise you, you just don’t remember that part.
You couldn’t hear their love under the roar of white trash doubt.
You weren’t Canadian and you missed your chance to go to London.
And now that you finally learned to love yourself after all these years,
you still aren’t photogenic—
you never had the right look at the right time,
you had child-bearing hips and peasant breasts even when you were skinny.
You didn’t get to take time off from work while you raised your kids,
and you still haven’t remarried.
You don’t understand how your daughter learned to be popular,
because she didn’t learn it from watching you.
Your social media accounts will not be verified.
You won’t go on tour or have a cult following.
You’d never look that good with short hair.
You’ll never be Catherine Mary Stewart.
—ali grega, may 2016
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