There are two shots that are favorites of mine from my sabbatical, and my sister took both of them. There was no big preparation or primping, we were just sitting out in the patio area outside her mobile home attempting not to get too bitten from the mosquitos, that is the reason I have a shawl on my shoulders to cover up my bare arms.
It's such an excellent moment, which is what makes for great photography. I am crossed legged and barefoot, my hair is tied up, I have my glasses on, which really tells you I didn't pose for the shot. I usually always take my glasses off before being photographed. To my right is my older iPad Pro that got its screen cracked on the concrete right below my feet. The bottle of Raid brings me back to my childhood. And my sister's folded walker to my left is evidence of her declining health.
Between the colorful fabric on the table and the three different kinds I have on, of which no attempt was made to match. Curiously it all works. This was just five years ago, and I was feeling horrible about my weight which I would loose eight pounds of a year from the time this picture was taken. I would keep it off for three years before some of it slipping back. The other thing that is notable about this photo, at least to me, was this was the time before the park owner forced my sister to remove the little garden jungle she had on the side of her house. I actually loved that area, the plants hid the surrounding mobile homes giving us the impression of privacy in such a closely concentrated community.
Oh how could I forget about the Avengers band-aid on my little toe, I think I had picked at the skin or something and had a little bleeder, which was silly because I spent the six weeks at my sister's house complete barefoot, unless I had to go in a store. I would walk the mile to pick up my niece from work barefoot, and back barefoot with her. I even walked ten miles barefoot. It was the longest period of time of me being continually without foot coverings and it was lovely.
I was supposed to spend four to six months in Mexico for this sabbatical that just happened to fall on the tail end of the pandemic, but the racist behavior of the VRBO owner that I stayed at for a week forced me back to the states much earlier than I would have liked.
The last two shots are two of my favorite clothed self-portraits both taken in Mt. Helix, just outside of San Diego. The VRBO had no wifi, which I thought was just odd, she felt that everyone has a phone and doesn't need additional internet. I had neither. I would have to walk about a mile down the hill to a local Starbucks to do whatever it was I needed to do on the internet. Trust I will never stay in a VRBO again, she knew because of the wifi situation I had to leave quicker than I wanted to, and didn't have time to do the last minute cleaning, she gave me a poor rating for cleaning even knowing the situation. Her Elon Musk loving ass could go fuck herself!
These two shots were taken by the pool. I would usually sit out till the sun went down enjoying the sound of the water. I never used the pool, sticking nothing more than a toe in it just to see if it was heated. I am not a pool person, I really missed the ocean that was indeed forty steps from my front door as the bigoted VRBO owner advertised. Ultimately I spent about three months on my sabbatical and came back home refreshed, having shed all the negative energy from being a caregiver for my deceased grandmother.
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I have had this issue a very long time, forty-five years to be exact. I am not going to pull my own copy because why ruin how great this art looks with how it isn't looking four decades later. I am thinking I had the cross-over issue with the Avengers, but I recall that is actually another storyline and both annuals had a white border around them. This is the sweet spot of comic books for me. When it was clear who the baddy was, they were usually in purple or green and laughed maniacally a lot.
Damnit I couldn't resist pulling the book since during the lockdown I created a database of all my comic books I can find any issue in maybe thirty seconds or less.
I was watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for my binge-watch Monday, as one tends to do. I am currently about ten episodes into the seventh and final season, and the episode I was watching was exploring Nog's PTSD, and the station's counselor said something interesting. She said our subconscious minds know what we need when we face a trauma, and it will see out it's own coping mechanism on it's own. Nog was showing a holo-suite addiction, which is adorable in science fiction, but in the real world the thing that people go to nine times out of ten is alcohol and drugs. I have to applaud Nog for finding a healthier way to deal with his trauma, even if he was avoiding the real world, he needed time to heal mentally and emotionally from the extreme fatigue he had from battle, and ultimately losing his limb.
It made me think of my own mind and how it has handled trauma, like Nog I didn't retreat into negative vices, mines started as a child with things like hours of television, similar to a holo-suite, I was hiding in other people's stories as opposed to deal with the pain of my own traumas. As a young adult this was sex, which I didn't know at the time was laced with so much other luggage due to the sexual abuse I wouldn't discover until much later, that occurred when I was a child.
One of my healthier retreats was writing, and I have done that my entire life, from essays in schools, to a play about my finding my mom dead, to the zine I published post-college relating to the growing pains of an early twenty-something, trying to make their way on their own in such a cruel world. In the aughts this would turn digital with LiveJournal & Blogger, then I would use my Flickr account to write about my thoughts, I experimented with audio-blogs on SoundCloud, and even did a video journal on YouTube. Coming full circle I am now utilizing Apple's Journal app to keep my inner-most thoughts and share my views on any number of topics.
But there are other ways I have learned to cope, heading to the roof was part of that cycle, and discovering how much I enjoyed being unclothed outside in the open air. This led to my sabbatical after the source of my care-giving died and within that the travel was part of the healing activity. My forest-time during the part of my sabbatical in Florida, was something old and new, it was outside nudity in a private/public setting but this time an all natural one unlike the urban-contained rooftops. I also really leaned into barefoot-walking outside as something that was stimulating and exciting for me mentally and emotionally.
Lastly building on all of the things I had done before for my mental health there is my current naked walks around Prospect Park in the wee hours of the morning and my subsequent bare-footed bare-skinned walk back home starting at the library. All of these things was my mind finding what it needed to cope, to maintain, to get through whatever it was I was facing at the time. I love that on this sci-fi show set in the future that the idea of you figuring out what you need was a thing, it was a message I wanted and needed to hear.
I adored this first era of Ru. I had the album, I even bought all the 12" singles on vinyl so I would have the largest photo of her. I want to be clear I don't deny the wonderful success she finally had after so many years of struggle and attempts to stay relevant. I love that her persistence finally paid off. I was still a huge fan for the first ten seasons of the Drag Race, but slowly I begin to hear reports of the things she was doing with her new found wealth, and how her show had a bit of an anti-Black undertone, which was hard for me to stomach having remembered this Black As Fuck song from her first album. Then there was the fracking and I was just like, I can't really fuck with Ru anymore. I realized compromises were made as they are with anyone who is pursuing fame and wealth, but I couldn't stomach who she was becoming, or maybe who she always was. Sometimes all the wealth does is bring a stronger spotlight onto things that were always there. Seeing this video, I have decided I will go and purchase this first album, I was feeling apprehensive about showing any support, but this was a time when I still thought she literally walked on water, and I don't think there is anything wrong with embracing that.
As a kid I thought Matt Dillon was the second cumming of Christ. I was an avid reader of S.E. Hinton's book along with The Outsiders which he starred in, but I find myself longing for more Dillon in every coming of age film I watched. I think it was some time in the mid-aughts I saw him using a payphone in the village. Usually I am pretty calm and collected when I see celebrities in New York, it's par for the course living in this city, but I had to collect myself, because even older he was still very dashing.
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This is all that is left of the tooth that had been plaguing me with a low-level of pain for the last month or so. All of this was the result of not being to a dentist since the lockdown. Curiously I had an appointment that was canceled by my dentist office and never rescheduled. I don't know about anyone else but I never recall getting a clear signal when it was okay to return to the dentist, so my every six month visit for the last ten years or so lapsed to no visits for over five years.
I have always had issue with the rear teeth much more-so than anything in front. This tooth clearly previously had a cavity that was filled, and one day it just cracked, I can remember pulling bits of tooth out of my mouth wondering what the fuck just happened. It had pain initially that would usually only bother me before bed time so I would take some over-the-counter pain relief maybe a handful of times before it dialed down to a lower level that was as manageable as the daily pain I have from my mental health maladies.
For over the last week the tooth has been loose, sort of like they used to be with your primary teeth. And the familiar pain of moving the tooth in one direction or another was something that triggered decades-buried memory of doing the same as a child until the baby tooth finally loosened enough to fall out. I went through all those stages today, the loosening increased and I could feel the displacement in my mouth and went to a mirror to inspect what had happened.
A little more tongue-pushing and I could finally just pull the tooth out with my fingers. I have to say I could feel the switch, as that low-level of pain that I finally treated yesterday with an ibuprofen disappear. My persistent depressive disorder was still there, but it didn't have anyone rounding out its pain with the dying roots of the tooth. There was some light bleeding that I washed out with warm tap water. Then I filled up a glass with a mixture of baking soda and warm water as the AI suggested. I rinsed my mouth several times to get the bacteria out. Then for good measure I gargled a little hydrogen peroxide. I waited twenty minutes and then finally did a Listerine mouth-wash. I will give it a week before I start chewing on that side of my mouth again.
Curiously the coating I had felt in my mouth for the last few days seemed to be gone, some of it was related to the gingivitis, but I also think something about the tooth was disrupting the ecology of my mouth which is why my sense of taste was muted, and even drinking water felt removed like there was a perpetual coating in my mouth keeping me away from sweet, salty and even neutral taste like water. My mouth tastes like my mouth again. I just had some Frito Lays corn chips to prove that I could once again taste the salt. This is my least favorite part of aging, things that weren't even an issue you're so much more acutely aware of when something breaks down.
Prior to it being Fox, it was just plain ole channel 5, where I think on Saturday after all the cartoons were shown all the Kung Fu movies ran for a few hours. I also remember watching '67 Spider-Man, the first animated Spider-Man series, and even with all the comments about the repetitive frames, the under-developed storylines and the very trippy second season, I loved it. It was Spider-Man and at this time Spidey could do no wrong for me. I fondly remember watching these, and when I later found them as an adult on YouTube I still very much enjoyed this classic cartoon.
I explained to my nephew, before everything was at your finger tips on demand you just had to show up and hope you caught all these superhero made-for-television films and series. I told them how I first fell in love with The Incredible Hulk during the '77 live-action headed by Bill Bixby on CBS, where the same year The Amazing Spider-Man debuted led by the charming and handsome Nicholas Hammond. I told him of the Wonder Woman film from '74 with Cathy Lee Crosby in a track suit, and how the MCU's sorcerer supreme first did live-action in '78's tv movie. I watched them all and loved them no matter how bad or misinterpreted they were, these were the heroes come to life that I loved so much in my comic books and I would take them anyway I could get them.
Sticking to my iconoclast nature I preferred The New Mutants to the X-Men. I have a tendency to not get into things because everyone else is into them. I think even my dad was an X-Men fan, it was one of the books he had a subscription to that went to his parents home. I think the fact that I first met the junior X-Men team in my pre-adolescence helped, their stories were very relatable to what I was going through at the time. Along with paper issues I also have three of the omnibus that collect all their adventures, I can't wait for the last one to come out so I can have a complete run of the one hundred issue first run.
Curiously as a child I saw this PSA many times, but never thought it applied to me. I wouldn't realize for at least another twenty-five years that sexual abuse can be initiated by another child. As an adult I figured out that this child who was actually a little bit younger than me was probably being sexual abused by an adult in the household. At the time I didn't consider this, I thought it might just be a form of sex play, not taking into consideration how predatory the child was towards me, mirroring the abuse they had faced. The sad thing is as adults we never had the opportunity to talk about this and compare notes. I am sure the perpetrator was his uncle, who was the only new person in the household. I do remember the physical abuse and the domestic violence this man had perpetrated against his cousin, that household was forever changed by his presence and not for good. I think Marvel did a great job with this campaign, but it took me reading about childhood sexual abuse to support my boyfriend at the time that I finally learned that I too had been sexual abused for years.
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The moral of the story is I shouldn't be buying music from a 41.7 billion dollar record company, but directly from the artist. I had trouble finding some albums in the past and ended up on UMG's mailing list, they had a sale on this artist I liked, and I made an impulse purchase. UMG sent me the incorrect album. I tried to asked for what I paid for, and all they had were threats of how it would take 90 days to get a refund. I disputed the purchase with PayPal got my money back in three minutes.
I strongly suggest folks think more about where they spend their money. Just a couple of weeks ago on Discogs, I had a similar issue. I contacted the seller, less than 90 seconds I got a notification of a full refund. Unlike UMG he had sent me three albums, not one, but ran me back my fifty bucks, and ate the loss. I now have an Aerosmith EP I didn't really want, but UMG isn't getting it back either. They are so big they think you will jump through their hoops to follow their convoluted processes even when they are in the wrong. I said, hell no!
There are like a handful of comic book artist who can seemingly in the most simplest ways elevate a narrative. Barry Windsor-Smith is one of them. You feel like you stumbled onto some kind of museum-quality fine art piece, not just a comic book you picked up for sixty-five cents. This Life-Death storyline with Ororo Munroe was groundbreaking for the character and I don't think there could have been any other artist than Windsor-Smith to communicate her pain, suffering and disillusion. I think I need to make a list of my favorite comic artist, Windsor-Smith would be in the top five.
I would have never attended the High School of Performing Arts if it wasn't for Leroy Johnson, albeit I never had his natural abilities I was very inspired by him and Lydia Grant. I would get in for Drama, but I danced every chance I got. #ThanksGeneAnthonyRay
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I think it was the eighth grade where I played Danny Zuko in our junior high school's production of Grease. Sandy was played by my JHS & HS friend Corina Dennison. I only have one shot from the production and of course the program without the actual contents, I am not sure how that happened, but this is is from the late eighties I should be glad my grandmother saved this much.
And I found that one photo of me and my T-Birds performing Greased Lightening [Vinnie to my left looking away, Tyrell to my right behind me, and one of the twins Robert I think, and that is Michael out front looking towards the audience]
I came to Batman Beyond later in life, but have now finished the entire run of the cartoon. Static I have been ride or die with since his inception and all later iterations. I am also a Beyoncé fan.
