Randomness Within Reason

- Randomness within reason:
_______________________

This just isn't random. It was supposed to happen. I was working the night shift at one of the side gates at Midsommarfest last weekend. i was working at a gate where hardly anyone passed through. It was the last 30 minutes of my shift. This boy passed by me and started talking about the bands being so loud. And I told him that I usually carry around earplugs. And he asked me what I do to be carrying those around. I told him my ears get sensitive, I studied in the sound department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It turns out that in the 80's he was a student at SAIC. And he is an experimental sound artist as well. YOU DON'T JUST RANDOMLY BUMP INTO ANOTHER EXPERIMENTAL SOUND ARTIST THE WAY I JUST DID LAST WEEK. We talked on and on about my favorite instructor Nic Collins and started getting into depth about living as an artist, for my need to read "The Long Emergency" and about getting into our own rituals to start the day in creating. We talked back and forth recommending things to read, to listen to, to check out. We talked about the pros and cons of being an artist in both the a small city and big city. His ex-boyfriend passed by and he was really funny about it and was happy that he was a like a chameleon and could not be seen.

The two things I took away in my 30 minutes of talking to this stranger that I needed so badly:

1. Damien, the boy I met, told me that Detroit has always and will always have one of the most powerful artist communities he has ever seen. There is a sense of healing in Detroit and rebuilding in Detroit that most cities have never experienced because they haven't been through the struggles that Detroit has been through. Detroit is a very, very important and powerful place.

2. "If you are an artist you have the responsibility to live out your visions."
As artists you have a voice, the ability to heal and reconstruct.

And then we introduced ourselves and departed. I know that I won't ever see this guy again, but he is exactly what I needed when I came back from Detroit just 48 hours before I met him and he is exactly what I needed to be strong, knowing what I need to do when I go back to Michigan and I didn't lose a thing about myself by moving back.

As most people have been telling me these last two weeks, "You know who you are and you will do really well in life because of this, no matter where you are."

It seems lately I have been accepting and letting go a lot of stuff in my life and receiving much mentally back. I keep getting giddy and happy about it.

Followed up talking to Damien, with sitting next to Emily at a bar. (She has majorly influenced me so many ways as an artist and has supported me greatly since I have known her.) She told me it will be good for me to rest. To not worry about bills and such that I have to maintain to keep my daily life here in Chicago. It will be good to be able to sit down and concentrate on my health and my artwork. I agree.

I am currently setting up my goodbye show. Contacting people that have been in my Chicago life in the last ten years. I feel loved, supported, and happy.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS in the last 2 months:

• Learning how to cook my mother's pansit and lumpia. I can now cook my own version of pansit and it has become second nature to me to know how to cook it.
• Finished REACH PLATE for Boston's REACH Beyond Domestic Violence Annual Plate Auction.
• Created 5 "Take-Home Art Activities" and samples of activities for the parenting class to work on with their children.
• Created a 20 minute end-of-the-year video presentation for the After School Program.
• Designed an AmeriCorps brochure for the program to recruit new members.
• Designing/Designing a postcard for LEAF to announce our move to the new location.
• Created a sample scrapbook/artists book for the parenting class using my nephew, Owen as the example.
• Assisted in helping the parenting class make scrapbooks/artists books of their children.
• Created several lesson plans for the daycare and samples of the lesson plans.
• Created 2 huge paintings/banners for Global Youth Service Day.
• Taught 1st graders a lesson about Recycling.
• Created 3 posters on Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse.
• Helped in the food can drive that us AmeriCorps members donated to Cornerstone Community Outreach.
• Taught the parenting class how to make butterfly kites with sticks, colored tissue paper, and string--they may or may not have flown.
• "Co-taught" staff how to make sushi rolls w/Julie.
• Sold one of my art pieces at Feed the Beast to one of my friends.
• Exhibiting artwork at the Chicago Cultural Center.

SHORT TERM GOALS/TO DO LIST:

• Get my bike fixed.
• Do my laundry.
• Clean my room.
• Update resume.
• Add paypal to website so people can start buying my comics on-line.
• Get cooking tools to aid my discovery in my love for wok-cooking.
• Buy a sushi knife.
• Getting boxes for the move.
• Create a farm scene/mural for the daycare wall on butch paper so the kids can begin adding farm animals and other farm stuff to it for this week's theme.
• Mail REACH plate.
• Teach high schoolers in 2 afternoons in the beginning of July how to make a DIY xerox comic book.
• Create "TO DO BEFORE I LEAVE CHICAGO" list.
  

LONG TERM GOALS:

• Start saving up to have my own artist studio and/or turn one of the bedrooms in Michigan into an artist studio.
• Use my AmeriCorps Education Award to get a new laptop and to take beginning classes in website design, graphic design, print production and/or children's illustration.
• Thinking about moving out to California to be with my comedian and artists friends who have moved out there in the last couple of years.
• File every piece of paper in my bedroom.
• Starting my own business painting murals for nurseries, children's bedrooms, elementary schools, and daycares.

GOOD THINGS:

• Bone folders.
• Adam Snow's "mixtapes" on the internet.
• Finally watching all of Star Wars. (I TOTALLY remember of course watching this countless of times when I was younger, more as a memory, but I never really knew the storyline.)
• My art supplies.
• Finally losing weight.
• Darkstar Video.
• Living in Chicago for ten years exactly at the end of August.
• Lola from Dr. Katz's office.
• Getting my haircut from Tigerlillie.
• Finding my ring with the dove on it while cleaning my bedroom a couple of weeks ago.
• Wearing necklaces again.
• Experimented and wore lipstick for the first time in 16 years.
• Buying super, super, super cheap sashimi at the Korean grocery store.
• Jodi's booklist.
• Adam's Pixelated Reviews.
• Remember the Milk.
• Goodreads.
• Malbec red wine.
• Remy Martin XO.
• Devin & the Straights.
• Borrowing James laptop for work.
• Scorpio Sardo's drinks.
• Spending Mother's Day with James and Jeremy and a bunch of Jeremy's friends--where Jeremy made miso soup, salmon maki, and edamame, and I made pansit and lumpia--It was a hit.
• Going to Six Flags with James and his son for Memorial Day.
• Grocery shopping at Harvest Time with Steve.
• Hanging out at good ol' Beans and Bagels with Adam and Steve.
• Going to finally be a part of my nephew's life now that I am moving back to Michigan.
• Facing the problems/situations that I left behind 10 years ago like an adult.
  
• Talking to Sharry about Maxwell's Street Market and her need to cook even when she is not hungry, which that conversation influenced me in cooking more as well.
• Hiromi's (Japanese/Filipino family owned restaurant open until 2 a.m. with karaoke in Tagalog, Japanese, Spanish, & English, BYOB)--this is where I am going to have my goodbye party.

CURRENTLY:

• Starting to feel a bit more grounded.
• Being able to relax and read.
• Realizing how much I don't care that much about the Kids in the Hall anymore because I didn't even know they were here in Chicago a while ago or the fact that I am now 6 degrees away from them through the people in comedy scene in Chicago.
• Wanting to attack Kristy's bing cherries and mango.
• Reading Augusten Burrough's "Dry."
• Reading Jeremy's copy of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet."
• About to go to Schuba's "Your Sunday's Best" with Kristy for pre-midnight celebrating/partying for her 30th birthday!/(It's been a long time since I've watched stand-up comedy.)
• Have artwork exhibiting at the Chicago Cultural Center until July 20th.

ESSENTIAL BLOG POSTS FOR ME TO READ

[Click on blog title to read more than the excerpts.]

Freed Om
"I had been hanging on and clinging to so much lately (worry, fear, anxiety, monkey mind), and this was like a smack in the forehead. — Hey Lope! Letting it go means freeing your spirit/god/universe/om and getting out of the way. It means connecting with something bigger than yourself and trusting in that instead of being closed off from it. Letting every outcome be what it is and trusting that it fits into a bigger picture that we are too close to see."


The Wind Is Blowing
"...with each of these choices I create my life. No one else does this. And I have been thinking about all these things lately… my choices. Sometimes we say one thing is important, and yet we do another. So is that really important to us? Or is it trumped by our actions?

Maybe it’s like steering a ship… you have to keep readjusting the sails to keep on course. And sometimes you have to put down the anchor and get the map back out to check your coordinates."


Personal Essay: Just Let it Roll
"I like to avoid stress. That is, I intentionally avoid adding stress, in addition to the everyday stresses I cannot avoid. For example, I can't avoid pain, no matter which way I dodge. I can't avoid the necessity of working or office politics. I can't avoid all family obligations and relationship strains, in fact, living with someone like me can't be easy."


The Gift of Receiving: Vulnerability Can Open to You to the Boundless Generosity of Others
"Several years ago, when I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both hips, I read everything I could find about coping with chronic illness. I was amazed at how often I'd stumble on a paragraph that advised patients to "look for the gift in your pain." Pain is a gift? Where's my return policy?

Pain is a gift? Thanks, but no thanks, I'd mutter to myself. I had just turned 44 and hadn't planned on slowing down so soon. I still had miles to go with my journalism career..."


Top 10 Study Tips and Suggestions For Those Living With A Chronic Illness
"Coming from a lover of all learning and a future teacher, school and all of the studying it encompasses means everything to me. A true perfectionist, I wanted to prove that my chronic illnesses would not keep me from succeeding in something that was so intrinsically personal to me..."


Lupus and Social Security Disability Benefits
"I think probably the most common mis-conception about SSD is that your disability claim will be determined by your medical records and what your own physician has stated in your medical records. This is NOT how it works! You need to know that right up front. The SSD Administration has their own staff which makes the determination on each claim, and these people are not physicians! They are administrative employees whose job is to determine that you are not disabled by their definitions. It is therefore imperative that you educate yourself on the inner workings of this system prior to making your application..."