Speaking of peace & cataclysms……

On wednesday morning I woke from a dream in which I’d been in a plane crash. The front half of the fuselage had split off, leaving the rest of us strapped in and falling towards our doom. Time seemed to slow itself; I remember knowing the names of a few of the passengers who had been suddenly flung through the ragged opening, and I specifically recall feeling empathy towards one couple -still strapped to their seats- who were staring horrified at the empty spot where a friend of theirs had been torn from the plane.  I even had the time and wherewithal to notice the colors of the clouds as we  plummeted past, to say some prayers in french, and to wonder how long it would take until we smashed into the ground. Where would we crash? Would it hurt? Why us?

As it turned out, we didn’t actually crash. Somehow the dilapidated remnants of our craft glided back to earth unharmed – perhaps due to the fervency of my french prayers? At any rate, it all seemed a miracle. I contemplated the odds of living versus dying, and then woke up. I lay in bed for a while thinking about it.

Just in case, I checked the news. Since it was one of those dreams, and that kind of thing has happened to me before. No french speaking people falling out of the sky in a fiery disaster to be found, thank god. I did catch the live video of the space shuttle landing, which had me on edge for a little while. But even that went off without a hitch. Phew!

So I decided to cheer the fuck up, since nobody was dying that day. Made a pot of tea. Sat sipping it in the morning sunshine. A little later, I heard the mail slide through the slot. Usually I ignore the mail for a bit, because if it’s not beads, it’s bills, and I haven’t ordered beads in a while. But this sounded heavy. Not that it was anything large…. just…. significant.

But first, let me fill you in on some recent drama: the ex-convict-ex boyfriend has been giving me trouble. There had been some bru-ha-ha over the possibility or impossibility of a friendship between us since his release, I was attempting to be kind to him, but his efforts to ingratiate himself back into my life were becoming obsessive and violent. Nevermind that he’d started dating somebody else (with my blessing- hey, whatever got him off my case!) and had no business bothering me anymore. But for years this guy had been doing me some serious mental harm, it was like a tacky white-trash abusive habit, and all I wanted was to recover and move on. Most of all, I wanted everybody to just be happy. Matt, however, was freaking out a little bit about the situation, and there had been some tears and some arguing, and I felt like absolute shit because it was all rapidly deteriorating and it seemed like I’d never find any goddamned peace with the whole fricking scenario. But the ex refused to let me go.

Back to the mail slot- I immediately recognized the prison stationery and ECEB’s googly handwriting. Turns out, he violated some terms of his probation or something and his mother (great gal- yeesh) had tipped off the police as to his whereabouts. Shacking up with the new thingathing and her little kid, as it were. Anyways, he was considerate enough to write and tell me I was off the hook as far as he was concerned, since he was going to be locked up for some time and he’d recently figured out he was really in love with his new girlfriend. Poor thing, I feel really sorry for her.

But YAH-FUCKING-HOO, that asshole is finally out of my hair!!!

I laughed my ass off at first, and then the significance finally hit me- I was free. For the first time in nearly four years, I was absolutely free of his concern. The curse was broken. Best of all, everybody involved had found a way to move on and find some peace, even after all the terrible things that had happened. That felt really good. And then, like water, all the sadness and worry started just melting right off me, years and years of it, and I must have cried for about an hour.

So then I was thinking about my dream, it having been one of those dreams, and I realized I’d initially made the mistake of assuming it was literally prophetic. I think it was in fact a forecast- although not about my [french] prayers finally be answered- but more like some kind of cosmic reassurance that even in the face of a terrible disaster, things will unfold just as they should. Some crash landings are softer than others, I guess. I can’t even begin to say how blessed I feel.

Recently i’ve been digging around in some of my old sketchbooks and media files, in hopes of preserving some of my earlier stuff for posterity. I came across this collection of teeny tiny artworks (and accompanying poems), and put them all together here. Aww, mousies.

I also saved a bunch of old drawings and paintings and flung them unceremoniously into the digital age, so now you can also see just about everything i’ve ever drawn on my newly revamped Flickr page.

As much as I love our little house on the hill, one of the serious drawbacks to living in a place with “character” is the ancient heating system beneath us. The oil burner and boiler date from the forties, and are at the center of a maze of poorly insulated ducts and pipes in our dirty, scary-ass basement. The whole thing is decrepit and inefficient, and soot covers everything downstairs, and sometimes wafts up through the floorboards. Our bed happens to be directly upstairs from the behemoth, and when it clicks on at night i can sometimes smell the oil. In our house, the cobwebs are all black.

Like I said, the place has plenty of…. character. 

The heat also regularly fails us, and is ridiculously expensive. That’s partly our fault for choosing a place with beautiful 12 foot high ceilings and big windows, but the fact that some of the radiator pipes aren’t even insulated means we’re operating fairly inefficiently from the outset, here. They can’t even repair our burner if it comes down to it, since nobody  manufactures parts for it anymore.  Add in outrageous fuel prices, and we’re talking six hundred dollars a month just to keep the place minimally warm.

At first, during the beginning months of the winter, it was only a mild concern. We even found humor in how scary the basement is, or the fact that the boiler is older than my parents. Ugmoe’s feet have become black with soot, which is more worrisome. But things seem much less funny now that we’re paying hand over fist to heat a place that’s filled with fumes and soot. It’s like living in Dickensian London or something.

Don’t get me wrong; I love this house. It’s the first place that feels like home since I don’t know when. We’ve done our best to be proactive with the landlord and fuel company and have been careful about conserving heat. We’ve had technicians come at least three times this winter to rummage in our basement and fiddle with the boiler for various reasons; we keep hoping it will get a little better, or maybe someone will tel us if it’s a do-or-die sort of situation. They always joked about how old and decrepit it is, and usually make some minimal recommendations about getting a new this-or-that, and then go on their merry way.

But it’s still just old and dirty and expensive. I’m not the type to get freaked out over dark, filthy basements and old machinery, but this thing gives me the mechanical heebie jeebies. Not to mention that ever since about a month ago, since we had the whole system “cleaned”, i’ve started finding black, oily soot upstairs.

What gives me serious pause is my own health, since i’m pretty much puttering around here all day long. I haven’t been breathing so well lately, and my initial thought was the typical winter culprits: maybe i’m not getting enough exercise since it’s been cold out, or perhaps it’s allergies, or just a malingering low-level respiratory infection. I get seriously winded when i walk up the hill, to the point where I’m gasping for air. And for the past month or so I’ve been waking up in the night, unable to breathe at all.

So, yesterday the heat conked out on us again. The tech arrived this morning to come have a look and get us up and running again. I lead him downstairs to have a look, and made the usual banter about how old and disgusting the thing was. He agreed, then poked around a bit and got the boiler going. I waited up in the kitchen. What he said when he came upstairs, though, has given me cause for deep concern.

Apparently the thing is not only old and dirty and poorly insulated, but now the insulation is decaying. Asbestos insulation. Bits of it are falling off, along with the usual oily soot and grime, and are strewn all over the unit and surrounding area. Which is, like i said, directly beneath the warped and cracked floorboards of our bedroom. He didn’t even have me sign off on the service slip; he just said he was going to put in a call to his office and that it was pretty urgent that our landlord get in contact with them. Other than that, he said the system was crap and should be replaced not only for efficiency reasons, but because it was unhealthy and unsafe.

I called Matt in the middle of having a low-level freakout. He immediately put in a call to the city inspection services, and notified our landlord. Tomorrow someone is going to come and look and let us know if we are in any danger; if so, I am very much going to flip the eff out. It’s not like nobody’s been down there (at least three times this winter!) who could have possibly missed that shit, and i don’t care who’s specifically responsible if our health has been put at risk during the nine months we’ve lived here.

Heads are going to farking roll, i tell you.

Checked out the Purse Blog (i usually scope out the Fug Bags category for my dose of fashion snark), and they were featuring the new spring Fairies line from Prada.

1. Pretty bag. pretty art. oooh. chic.

2. Prettier bag! Instead of paying two grand, though, I’ma going to hit up a thrift store and get a vintage white leather bag, then doodle some naughty nudie nymphs on it in sharpie. Take that, fashion elitism!!

3. nifty video. Mostly i like the art nouveau bit, and coco rosie is always nice to listen to; however, the animation of the woman is clunky and distracting and bugs the hell out of me. Like baaad nineties CGI. And hello? Pan’s labyrinth much? jeesh.

…. a website which asks the world 20 questions, and then pairs the resulting brief stories with original artwork. The best results are posted every friday. I was particularly moved by this one:

I’ma going to have me a little rant, because today has been an up and downer. Not going to bother you with the details, but there was a some phone-drama with the ex-convict-ex-boyfriend which made me sad, and then I spent all day waiting for some furniture to get delivered. Impatient, bored. I ate some chocolate to make me feel better. Felt better. Put on some new music. Felt even betterer. The furniture finally came, and i got out my tools and started to flex my assembly-mojo. Woo! Had some beer while doing this. Feeling MUCH much betterer at that point.

And then I log on to Xanga and notice some people are now being labeled “true” xangans, while I am not.

WTF, xanga. I’ve been with you for five frickin’ years, far longer than any boyfriend, and even came to you first when said boyfriends were being buttheads (see above). I thought we were tight. I even said I’d stick with you for life. And you go and snub me like this??

Fine, be that way. Just for that, I’m not posting pictures of the coffee table i just built. Jerk!

This cheered up my fairly drab morning.

In an effort to convince my dear friend Ryan that I sincerely worship her artwork and she really ought to lend me something for our new gallery / studio space, i am poaching some photos from her Flickr site and posting them here.

She was pals with all of us in art school, but went to a non-art college across town. She ended up studying graphic design, but she has always been modest about her prowess as painter. Her aesthetic is amazing. I think she’s pretty much blown the rest of us out of the water at this point. Le sigh.

Want. Now.