people are strange

remember those doors lyrics, people are strange when you're a stranger? love that song.

but if you ask me: people are stranger once you really know them. much stranger.

or maybe it is just my people?

love is a dangerous angel

tomorrow i will be heading home again. funny how when i'm there home is here, when i'm here home is there. i am mixed up right now, i know.

on the plane i will be re-reading one of the most wonderful books ever: dangerous angels by francisca lia block. i can (and have) read this book over and over and over.

the picture above is from the 1998 edition. why do they change? here's the current one:

new and old things

i finally took some pictures of where did the baby go?, my favorite book when i was a baby. my mom picked it up for me from a garage sale, but my neice wanted to keep it so i let her. this book is so sweet, the little girl finds a picture of a baby then looks around the house for her until she realizes it was her own baby picture. sweetly illustrated too.

back home means reminiscing on my childhood. i spent a lot of time yesterday watching retrojunk with my niece, showing her all of the cartoon that i liked when i was little. her favorites were popples and wuzzles. she wanted to watch the intro over and over. retrojunk is great - it's got all the shows i remember, and all the ones my boyfriend watched as a child and he is quite a bit older than i am to put it nicely.

i looked up some other toys that i loved too, oh, these toys on ghost of the doll make my heart glow! you have to have a look. (great). ooh, poochie and charmkins, oh, how i loved those...

these were a few of my very favorite toys in the world:





i even came across a my child resoration site. i guess i should have pulled my beloved my child out of our little katrina trash pile friday instead of my old kimberly clark doll:



back home also always means trips to wal-mart. this time i bought new makeup, which i haven't done in a long time. for a while i've been paring down on everything, but i think i'm ready to start having stuff around me again. i've been actually wanting stuff again, which sounds funny, but for a while i just didn't want anything.

i was in a little funk last week, i have been for a while, and i'm ready to be out of it. i've been trying to put on makeup and get dressed every day, which sounds like it should be a given, but, i'll admit it's not always. i always equate putting on makeup with feeling better, and apparently it's not just me... i read an article last week on being happy and it agreed that putting on makeup is a good start. makeup makes you and others feel better, and just the act of putting it on prepares you for positive social interaction. and it said that the act of buying new lipstick (which i did) makes you feel happier (which it did). something about the novelty of the new, which is what shopping high is all about, right?

portraits of loss, my own

a plastic heart-charm from an '80s childhood, fallen through the missing ceiling and onto the missing hallway floor.

i went back the first real time yesterday. i walked through the house -- the house my dad has spent every spare second for a year clawing through, cleaning, and trying to preserve. hardly anything is worth preseving, but when this is your life molding and rotting away, you do what you can.



the keys, rusty but still hanging in the keep-safe spot on the wrought-iron entryway to the living room. how did they survive when the doors they opened are gone?

the house was so strange. i lived for twenty-one years in this house, and yet, i couldn't place myself in it. i couldn't get oriented. i had difficulty telling where i was. this is the kitchen? this is the living room? this was my bedroom? my mind still sees it like it was and i couldn't put that together with what is there. i could see straight through the house, through beams and joints and joists.

i could see into the attic, through all of the rooms. everything looked so tiny. tiny, tiny, dwarfed even by the tiny fema trailor on the lawn. i don't know how or why, but the roof felt like it was right on top of my head. the backyard -- birthday and fourth of july parties, and endless summer nights in high school -- and i couldn't imagine all those people fitting there even though i knew they did.



and currently in the trash pile in front of the house: my childhood. preserved in the attic for twenty-five years for future grandkids i suppose. now waiting for garbage pickup under the styrofoam container from someone's lunch. and i see it all around, but i still can't imagine a whole city collectively sorting through and burying their lives.



for a year, i've been saying my dad should let it go, to start over. why try to save a toolbox or refinish a coffee table that's been through this mess? why waste time going back home, when it will never be home again? but i think i understand: right before i left, i pulled my old kimberly clark doll out of that trash pile and took her with me.

my first kitty!

so, here's the first sewing attempt. it makes me smile.

my boyfriend is very sweet. when i showed him the little cat, still inside out and unstuffed, he acted like it was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen. he's been trying to cheer me up.

i hadn't looked posted my pictures in about a week. here's our short little trip to new york last week:



including a dr. suess quote at the tranquility lounge, our lovely hotel:



and the christmas tree right before i took it down (yes, i caved, but the colored lights are staying up all year.):



and the one thing i can grow:

loss

i spent a few hours in borders the other day and came across this book in the photography section. anything like this--books, blog posts, t-shirts--makes me cry. still. in borders, standing in front of the bookshelf flipping through the book in my hand and my chest closes up and i cry. it has been so long already. will it be like this forever?

the book is a lie. you can't find beauty in so much loss. everyone i know has pictures like this, but in real life they are not romantic, or beautiful, or nostalgic, or gently faded. they are harsh and hateful. they are shattered dreams and hopes and lives.

the cover photo is a foyer in a house in chalmette. chalmette, where i spent the first 25 years of my life. where my family and friends lived, until katrina. the only place that i really know. i mean know everything about. not that i liked it, but it was... well... still home. like my sister said the other day, a place where your body feels at peace, because you know exactly where you are.

i feel a little like tom hanks in the terminal (which was not good at all). but he got on the plane and before he could go home his country had disolved and so he was trapped. i want to go home, but home is gone. now i don't even know what i want. i am tired and i have no place to rest. when do i get over this?

my sister

i am excited about my little studio! the room was just sitting there collecting clutter, and now it's mine. i'm excited about making art with my sister, we've seriously been talking about this for years. at least 5. and i wonder why i am the type of person who talks about things for years without ever doing them. when did that happen? anyway, my sewing machine. exciting. being excited is so exciting, it's been a while. i taped this picture to the wall today, then realized at one point this very picture of us as princess children one mardi gras had inspired a potential art business name that i can no longer remember. it was going to be on the splash page for our art business website, which never actually got off the ground (exibit here).



i decided to use this as my creativity journal. it's a journal my sister gave me after 9/11 with a really touching inscription inside the cover. i'd always been too precious to me to use, so it's been sitting with my favorite books for five? years. but i thought it fitting for this.



lastly, i had been meaning to scan this for a while, a little picture from one of those sister gift books my own sister gave me i can't remember when (start dating stuff, sis!). it's my favorite of the book, it says a sister is both your mirror and your opposite. (elizabeth fishel) it's so true.