Autumn Colors

Some images from the San Telmo Sunday Fair -

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A New Direction

And the new city is...

drumroll.......

Buenos Aires!!!

Most of you already know that. Just thought I'd make it official.

Living in the city (but which one?)

Flying in, yesterday, from Los Angeles I went from a city where the air is usually so dry and hot that I forget how close I am to the ocean, to a city where the salty sea air is so ever present you can actually see it, for a few hours, until the fog burns away. Approaching the bay area, I saw many waterways, manmade and otherwise, and the dark, leafy green of vegetation in abundance. Leaving LA I mostly saw the pale, muted colors of parched earth and concrete dotted by the occasional bright blue swimming pool.

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about different cities. At least the one's I've been fortunate enough to have lived in or visited. And playing one of my favorite mental games (less a game than a necessity these days)---which city will I live in next?

First, San Francisco and the bay area. I love it here. Most of the best and the worst things in my life have happened here. I love how pretty this place is and all the distinctly different neighborhoods it has, like North Beach with it's bad coffee and overprice food balanced out by the colorful characters and bars full of free entertainment. The Mission where you never have to speak or hear a word of english if you don't want to. Alameda (where I live) with its quiet, small town cuteness, where I can walk around late at night and still feel perfectly safe, where every street I know by heart. Then again, I hate it here too. How, despite how close things are here, because of traffic and parking, it still takes forever to get to most places. How everything here is too familiar, too close. How too many relationships have soured in recent years. How ready I am for change.

Next Los Angeles. For most bay area natives LA seems like another state altogether. We have a lot of bad things to say about it. We bristle whenever we hear them say, Frisco. But on my most recent visit there I had time to reconsider some of my opinions. For one thing Los Angeles has amazing museums, places worth spending an entire day or more exploring. Since most people have to drive long distances to get there I suppose it has to be. And driving in LA, over the freeways and through different areas, after seeing mile after mile of unimaginative sameness which would lull me into some kind of eyeball stupor, I would then be struck, more times than I once thought possible, by the beauty of the place.

That unimaginative sameness, that cheap, quick to build architecture is, I think, justifiably poked fun of and disliked. Human beings need beauty and all those plain box buildings and nothing facades cheats viewers out of the pleasure they might have experienced had the builders spent a little more care and thought towards their neighbors. Then again you can choose to see all those plain buildings as blank canvases. How many creators have been drawn there to let their imaginations loose? (Hmm, didn't Steve Martin mention as much in some movie?) No wonder LA is known for its street art. I just wish everyone would get in on it, leaving no wall untouched by an artist, trained or not.

Next, New York. The Met, the Society of Illustrators, the history, the theatre, the shopping, the food. I would live there if I could afford it. Nuff said.

Ditto for London. At least, thank God, the museums are free in both cities.

Next, Vancouver B. C. and Seattle. They're both prettier and cheaper to live in than the bay area. Then again they're far too similar as well for me to consider moving there. Unless, of course, I got a job in either city.

Next, Toronto (and Quebec City, Montreal and Ottowa). All very nice cities, all very livable, cheap, pretty and interesting places to live or visit. But, again I'd have to get a job there to consider relocating to anywhere in that part of that world.

Next, Tokyo. My first impression of it, from my sister's high rise apartment in the American Embassy compound, was that it was indeed Blade Runner massive, gloomy and grey. After some exploring I saw it was also the cuteness and orderliness capitol of the world. Brightly lit signs, anonymous voices politely giving you directions, awe inspiring toy and electronic shops, quiet temples, perfectly manicured parks, weirdly dressed teenagers giving you the peace sign, the ubiquitous Beatles (in shops and in bars like Abbey Road and the Cavern Club. The tribute bands there sounded exactly like them, btw.) Course I didn't have to worry about rent in Tokyo and I made up to fifty dollars an hour teaching English, but I found I could get around, eat well and shop whenever I wanted to without spending a lot of money if I went to the right places. They have, for example, what has to be the best dollar store in the whole world. Four floors of diverse and surprisingly well made stuff. If you shopped no where else you could still get everything you needed there. And I could go to a sushi boat or noodle place and have a large, filling meal for less than ten dollars. If I had only less than five to spend, I'd go to the 7 eleven (which was everywhere in Tokyo, and full of much better, far more edible items than here in the states) and get a couple of seaweed wrapped (hopefully) tuna filled rice balls, a drink, and sometimes a dessert.

Not sure I'd ever want to relocate to Tokyo, though. Hard to say why. Same goes for Beijing which, though a wonderful place to shop, explore and eat in, as well, had tap water unsafe to drink and a constant, at times oppressive smell of burning tires going on, even indoors, all day and night. Not surprisingly, my oldest nephew developed asthma there and my two older nieces, little at the time, often got sick from the milk.

Next, Paris. I know, it's a common American dream, especially among artists, to run off to Paris. And I've only spent, in total, about two weeks there so I may well be mistaken. But this city is so ridiculously beautiful, with every street and alley worth exploring, worth taking out one's sketchbook to try to capture it's charm. Then with its museums, galleries, cafes and history Paris seems to have collected so much creative energy over the years that it is now a vortex of creativity. What magic must flow out of your imagination in such a place. I would like to find out.

Next, Buenos Aires. Those who know me and/or have been following this blog know how I feel about this city. This place, more so than any other city (except maybe Paris), made me want to tear up my plane ticket and never leave. And yes it is called the Paris of the south but it only vaguely looked to me like Paris, or it looks like what Paris might have looked like after the war. The streets were dirty, the air smelled mostly of car exhaust and cigarette smoke, the sidewalks were cracked and uneven, parents with small children rifled through garbage, and many of its most beautiful buildings were empty, boarded up and crumbling, giving parts of the city this haunted, haunting forlorn quality. The Ghost Hunters team could probably spend an entire season there investigating.

Somehow, though, this was part of its charm (well, except for the parents with small children rifling through garbage). Most of the cities on this list, except for maybe Beijing, felt well ordered, more or less. Even a young city like LA feels well ordered. Buenos Aires, on the other hand (which is just as young, I believe) feels like someone took a big eraser to the surface of it and wiped a lot of it away. Or tried to anyway. And what's left is a rough kind of beauty and a feeling of possibility and openness. Like Paris in the twenties or New York in the fifties. What artist wouldn't want to be part of that? The cafes, affordable restaurants (even if the menus all look pretty much the same), old world streets and all the charming people doesn't hurt its case either.

One thing I haven't mentioned is the friendliness of the people (or lack of) in any particular place. Only because I find people to be as friendly in one city as the next. Everyone has bad days, everyone wants to be treated well. I've heard many people say Paris was the capitol of rudeness, but I only found that to be true in one particular instance out of all the many people I met there. And in LA I was tempted to write everyone off as not that open, until I met a particularly nice cashier who I ended up talking to for quite a while. Maybe it was me who wasn't that open. And true, people did seem, on the whole, way friendlier in Buenos Aires than anywhere else. But maybe that's because I was particularly happy the whole time I was there. And I did run into the rare a-hole there as well.

So I guess what I'm saying is everywhere has a certain, overriding feeling to it, certain smells, certain sounds, a certain look and light found only there. And it all depends on what characteristics I want to incorporate into my life. The rest, friends, family, roots...is up to me.

More New Work!!

Avaible, also, on my Etsy shop.

New work!!

Workshop sketches...

also on sale on my Etsy shop
More goth project sketches. Don't really like this one. I think it was more like therapy, or a dream where my mind needed to unload a few things. This, though I doubt I'll turn this into a painting, I like more...

Some concepts...

Goth evolution

Hope and Doubt

I went to the New Living Expo on Saturday to get a psychic reading even though I wasn't sure I believed in them anymore considering how past readings that predicted I'd be married, with three kids and working for Lucas by now have obviously not come true. But I've been feeling an urgent need for guidance lately and thought a cheap reading couldn't hurt and might even be helpful.

I walked past booths selling special healing water, special healing clay, special healing jewelry -

"Hold it in your hand. You should feel some tingling."

I did as directed. I wanted to feel something---how neat would it be to heal emotional wounds and protect myself from negativity just by wearing something pretty!---but, I didn't feel a darned thing. And told her so. She didn't say, okay, disbeleiver, I am escaping the field of your negative energy now. But I imagined her thinking that as she walked away.

I also walked by people getting healed in various ways, a lot of them simply sitting in chairs while someone held their hands to their shoulders or chests. One blissful looking woman sat in a broom closet sized chamber which reminded me of a sauna, except it didn't heat up. The door was open and the woman wore a heavy jacket. The air or light inside, supposedly, was charged in some particular healing way. How the hell does that work? I wondered. Or does it work simply because the woman thinks it works?

Further down, a man sat with a string of copper wire thingies shaped into diamonds held against his chest as a woman stood before him dangling a singular diamond shaped thingy in small circular motions. Oh, come one! I thought. What bull.

After a while I wondered if anything there was real, the little devices promising to protect you from cell phone radiation, the crystals, the homeopathic, healing lotions, scents, and teas, the psychic claiming to channel a saint.

Speaking of psychics, anyone in a turban or the smallest whiff of barely scraping by as a psychic (aka: I will say anything you want because I really need your money) I walked right past. Otherwise, my only criteria was that the price be as low as possible. So when I happened across a pleasant looking young woman charging $20 per twenty minute reading, I thought, Well, she looks nice. She'll do.

But as I was signing up, she went on break, and I found myself paired with another, older woman. Is she a fake psychic brought to me by my negativity and doubt? Or, I wondered, is she the real deal I hoped for?

I wanted to tell her as little as possible, so when she asked for information, all I told her was that I was trying to decide between two options, with one feeling more like a move forward than the other. From this she went on to describe, perfectly, how I felt about x, how I was ready to do y and z, the circumstances surrounding my situation and how moving towards y and z will feel, in the meantime, like "walking on glass." But considering the alternative, here she described my energy leaks, the little pains here and there that I had begun to worry about but which were nothing more than my fear of speaking my truth and walking my own unique path. She even pointed to a particular pain I had been worrying about that very day, and as she cleared it energetically, I felt the discomfort completely disappear. Was what she did real? I don't know. But the discomfort is gone and the few times I've felt it start to return I tell it, oh no you don't. I ended up spending nearly an hour with her, fifty five well worth it bucks. Afterwards, I went for a long walk round the city, thinking about x, y and z...

I wish I could tell you more. But things are rather tricky at the moment. The psychic also mentioned how I was going through a grieving process. But one, I think, for more than just the loss of my father.

Well, that's it for now.