Miss Vedra

Hi [redacted]

I am going to to try and not write a novel here, lol. Sending along thought starters for my session in August, along with a couple of tattoos you've posted that had elements I really enjoyed. I have a decent handle on what we can get done in four hours, but here is my "wish list" and you can prioritize based on what sounds artistically enjoyable and possible in the timeframe.

I sketched ideas over the last year, and in the last two weeks I've tried to reduce them down to my favorites. Feel free to incorporate or not based on whatever hits/doesn't.

Areas:

1. Add a small bit to the chest piece (to bring it down to the bottom of my sternum with something delicate/ femme and geometric.

2. Right upper thigh piece

3. Gingko leaf arm additions.

The gingko leaves are particularly close to my heart. Three ginkgo trees survived the bombs in Hiroshima, and their cuttings have been sent all over the world for museums and memorials. I've been growing a gingko for years, the stamps and drawings I've attached are from my own tree where I printed or carved linocuts from the leaves. We've had a tough few years here, and a little memorial to thriving in the Dark Times would be lovely.

I've drawn a lot of stuff that looks like a hybrid between Giger, Mucha, and the futuristic femme stuff I love. Did you know that Japanese Edo-dynasty block prints largely inspired the Art Nouveau movement in Europe? The trade embargo against Japan lifted, and suddenly European artists could get all these really inexpensive Japanese block prints, and they bought them in droves. Fell down that wormhole for about a week! Nerd stuff but I love it.

I really loved on the one tattoo you did where the gray dot-work has negative space shapes, and I loved the way the geometric one is so crisp.

As always, you're the artist, and I'd love to hear thoughts/ feedback/ see what resonates with you. Can't wait to see you!

~~~

It’s challenging to want someone in such a genuine and heartfelt way, and then be shown so FAST how one-sided those feelings are in reality. It’s a downer. Distance growing again, when I so much wanted the opposite.

Back in April. I knew it was almost time and I knew how it would go but I just wanted to stay making and hopeful

I told a man to send another man a misdirected sex toy

. . .

the last man inside me I think didn’t love me at all

“When Are We Normal”

You should know: I will sit very close

On the other side of the line you drew

Asleep, because it’s the fastest way to wait, and in my mind, only ever almost holding your hand.

I’ve reached as far as my arms will go. Give

Me

Until he was the one holding the knife.

A shop I would have missed if he hadn’t been looking.

The little carnelian heart was too precious to pass up. The bell is very high and pure and quick and along with a Father’s Day card, I happily got those for myself. The jasper acorn was a surprise. And two black pencils with rainbow lead.

I am so interested to see how the colors work. I only cried once; I was really happy. A couple moments of my first real rest in a long long time.

I cried in the shower when I got home because…remember the first time something beautiful caught your heart off guard with the overwhelm, and you got goosebumps, or your whole smile came out, out of nowhere and maybe you cried a little?

Not because it was bad, or out of hurting, but simply it was beautiful and so very Much? I’d forgotten and it was much Much.

Came home and the peonies are blooming for the very first time. They do take their time.

A cat kissed my finger.

It’s a concept I used in therapy years ago, when I was trying to explain to my therapist how I feel as if I’ve kept a part of myself locked in a basement. That version of me was locked up because she was so angry, and I could feel the anger. I was so tired of people pleasing, always being small, having the dominant and strong parts of me labeled as loud and bitchy and Too Much.

I didn’t know how to integrate that feeling, when I’d done it to myself. I imagined the two halves talking to one another and it helped me accept that both versions had a lot to learn about one another, and both of them wanted to make peace.

That Basement half of me is the loud half, the mean half, the angry half. She loves screaming and drinking too much and crushing at competitions. She’s the power, the attitude that’s cynical and takes loss hard. She’s also the fighter, the crucial part of me I suppressed to feel safe and accepted.

Often when I am puzzling a life circumstance or an emotion, you’ll find Basement Me cheering at Upstairs Me to be a little louder, a more forceful.

Upstairs Me often holds Basement Me and reminds that version of how valuable she is and important and doesn’t deserve to be alone and unheard. Basement Me often gets lovingly questioned about the source of her feelings, and Upstairs Me is learning when to ask her for help.

Last night i brushed my teeth and got into bed. Heaved a sigh into the dark for the hundredth time that evening.

I went to the mental space where I essentially talk to myself, and for the very first time I can ever remember, we both sat down together and cried.

We both brought the best version of ourself to something that really mattered. We teamed up. We reminded one another of the patterns we won’t repeat, and the worth we each have.

We worked together in a real and aware way for the first time, and it was Right, in the end, but we both took a hit to the heart.

Upstairs Me doesn’t understand what she’d done wrong to not win. Basement Me is angry because she has a lion’s share of the strongest versions of desire, and she is a wildcat, and she grinds her teeth when denied things she wants.

“The right thing the wrong way isn’t the right thing at all,” said Basement Me.

“If it can’t be right, I don’t want it,” Upstairs Me sighed out through a bit lip.

So, cheers to teamwork, and waiting for whatever comes next that is Right.