Chalkballerina: Weddings and Writings; Whimsy and Whining.

Kyra and Jason. Oregon City, OR

More to come - but click below to view a sampling of this beautiful couple and their wedding full of color and celebration.  

Kendall Brice [Graduation Photos]

My brother Kendall Brice is going to be famous someday.  He's one of these people that you start talking to and then think "Yeah, this dude is gonna be famous someday."  He has this FORCE coming from inside of him that just radiates onto everyone around him.  I think he has been told by every teacher in his life that he should pursue a business degree.  That boy can SELL - and he can sell because he can win you over.  He didn't have to work to win me over, but ya know, he could have.  He's been through hell and back in the past few years.  I wrote about him earlier this year.  He is graduating from high school in 2 days and I can hardly contain my pride.  He was good enough to allow me to take some graduation photos of him a few weeks ago.  Not his favorite thing to do, AHEM - actually far from it.  But he is a good man and succumbed just a smidgen to the photographic pressures I put on him.  (I threatened to cry.)  

Kendall you are hilarious, handsome, brilliant and kind and you grow more so every day.  You are such a good man and I am proud to call you my brother.  Congratulations on finishing your (hellishly, indescribably hard) high-school years strong.  I could not have done what you have done.  I am so proud of you I can seriously, seriously hardly stand it. 

I will be there in every way except in person on June 7th, 2008 (WOO HOOOOOOOO) when you walk across that stage. 

You are my hero, yo.  

 

Dirty Frank. Dirty Frank yeah. ["Weekend in Victoria"]

 

Lip gloss +

I was just walking downtown in the freezing cold June 4th weather that makes me feel unloved by God when a gust of wind blew over my face.  With the wind came a little blip.  Just a tiny blip... a little something extra bumping into my face.  I reacted without losing my "cool"; I spit, screamed, screwed up my face and frantically wiped my hands over my mouth and nose and cheeks (and the back of my head and inside my ears just in case) to get any remaining bug off.  It was probably just an unfortunately placed love-bug hanging on for dear life to it's freaky lover.  Probably just giving me a fly-by kiss, if you will.  No big deal

I walked into the camera shop, talked with the attractive salesman inside, consciously thought about how great my new lip-gloss looked (ya know, the kind that pumps up your lips but only a little bit... so you don't feel like you got plastic surgery or are having an allergic reaction, more like you kissed someone made of mint) and after doing my business went on my way.  

When I got back into my car I glanced at my face to see if it was still there as I do a couple hundred times a day... you just never know... and lo and behold, laying perfectly dead on my shiny pink slightly swollen lower lip, was a gnat.  

It looked like one of those necklaces you can buy with a perfectly preserved insect inside the amber.  Only it was on my lip.  I didn't react for a while.  He wasn't squished or uncomfortable looking... he looked like he was just hanging out... actually it was quite mesmerizing.  When I finally pulled him away and smeared him to rest on the bottom of my car seat, I thought back to the attractive salesman, and was glad I hadn't been rude to him.  Can you imagine? Getting all bitchy with someone and all the while there's this gleaming dead bug on your lip, gyrating up and down as you smack talk... up and down, up and down.  

I would throw up if I saw someone doing that.  

This is literally a picture I found on google that is titled "microscopic pictures of smashed gnats."  

So if you get in my car and look beneath the seat with a microscope, this is what you will see: 

Less sexy, please.

The rain is dumping down outside and I feel a bit like I'm back in Beaumont, Texas. (HOLLA!)  Flash-flooding anyone?  I know the world at large thinks it rains a lot in Seattle, but aaaccctttuuuaaallllyyyy... it just sorta sky sweats.  Sometimes sky-squirts, in case the first description wasn't disgusting enough.  Today is no sky-sweat OR squirt... it is definitely raining.  This is something that I know.  

I just read an article written by the Belltown Messenger (local online Seattle publication) about Mars Hill Graduate School.  Sigh.  It's a great article.  And it's a good thing, because MHGS needs some serious ass-covering, positive media coverage about five continuous minutes ago.  

Here's an excerpt - the first few sentences seem to show why the author would be the perfect candidate to be swept off his feet by MHGS: 

"O.K. Academia and faith are a double win for me. Throw in acute intoxication and you've got the Bob Oswald Trifecta. The way I live, think, and write... it doesn't involve actual events that take place in the actual world, so much.

But just to make it clear I'm not entirely ignorant... We're talking about the same Mars Hill Graduate School that recently paid out about 300 large to a former employee and co-founder in a sexual harassment suit. You can find out all about this on the Internet, where everybody and their mom (but not the moms' moms, who are too old to use the Internet) have posted their opinions about it. Maybe enough ink has been spilled on this or maybe I'm just apathetic, but this kind of thing doesn't hold much interest for me.

Look, there was this one time during my (turning my brain into) salad days, when I decided to take ecstasy every day for two weeks straight. At the beginning, I had a "reason" for this drastic action, but I can't remember it now. I guess what I'm saying is that people do stupid things and tragedy results. If this kind of thing is scintillating for you, by all means, google away. But in defense of my subject and my own craven disinclination to serve up the scandal-porn, it is also true that religious institutions, because they bear up the deepest hopes and fears of humankind, get judged a lot more harshly than their secular counterparts when this kind of thing happens, regardless of innocence, or guilt, or something in between. ‘Nuff said."

Just a few thoughts.  First of all, what the hell is this guy talking about?  He did drugs and admits it was dumb, therefore men in powerful positions at a graduate school can sexually harass students and it's not interesting?  That doesn't make sense.  If this guy wrote SAT questions he would be very poor.  And, NOT INTERESTING??  What in the WORLD?  Is the AIDS epidemic interesting?  Is child abuse interesting?  Is heroin addiction interesting?  His insinuation is funny and random and so deliciously passe, but the issues he dismisses are not funny, nor are they random, nor are they passe.  But they do fade so easily in the shadow of coolness.  I feel a bit nauseated by this approach.  An approach that the school has encouraged from the beginning: "Let's just get over it.  Let's just get on with it." (whatever "it" is.)  New slant on approach: "We are too artistic, "with-it", cool and post-modern (the school, the students, the faculty, the observers) to care about something as passe as sexual harassment.  It's just not interesting."

Nope.  We are not such a frivolous, fickle community as this.  The MHGS students' artistic bent and sense of style and investment in the aesthetic (fashion, architecture) and passion for literature and story and text and culture and soul and truth is an outpouring of and a seeking after things like beauty and justice and happiness, not merely a "post-modern boner." (Bob used this expression in the article... brilliant description yeah?) Surely the cool points the administration seems so desperate to receive from the community would be worth losing if they really did address the unsexy cancer that is growing. 

If I did not hold the perspective I have I would love this article.  Mars Hill Graduate School really is so damn cool.  It's one of the biggest reasons I went to school and work there.  And I don't really give a flying fuck about cool anymore.  I wish the school would stop cherishing post-modern boners... actually I wish the school would stop cherishing any type of boner, and begin instead to offer something less sexy.  Like safety.  Or consistency.  Or honesty.    

Great and timely positive, reparative coverage.  "The way I live, think and write... it doesn't involve actual events that take place in the actual world, so much." (Bob Oswald)       

I would have to agree.  It's more about the theological boner than it is actually facing a living, breathing theology: things like people who have been dismissed and made invisible; things like actual decisions and faces and reparations that require actual energy and care and time and, when ignored, money.  It's more about the post-modern boner than it is about actually saying words you believe are true or living in a way that is actually meaningful.  It's more about the sexy points than it is about doing the hard thing.    

I, like Bob, get post-modern boners (and theological ones, which are a little more comfortable and usually not quite as easily brought-on as the post-modern ones... in my opinion), and I don't blame anyone for getting them.  They're natural.  They're beautiful.   

It just gets weird when the boners everyone has are in exchange for actually seeing the woman in front of them.  

Kensey (baby sister) and Dustin

My sisters are gorgeous.  They really are.  Sometimes when I'm with them I get this weird wave of seeing them for a moment through the eyes of a stranger - eyes that haven't seen them every day since they were born. In those moments I gasp. My sisters are beautiful, glorious women. 

My sister Kensey is getting married in just a few months to a wonderful man named Dustin.  I can't BELIEVE it.  Not that she's marrying you, Dustin... =).. but that's she's getting married!!!!!!!!!!! 

Last time I was in Texas (a few weeks ago) I got another round of engagement photographs with her and her fiance Dustin.  I have a few samples up here.  

Here is the last batch (in case you are curious...).

They are so much fun to photograph - I have offered to just photograph them every 6 months for the rest of their lives... we'll see what they say. ;)  

Did I push repeat?

Right now I have a zit the size of a skittle ripening beneath the skin on my chin.  I have tried with all the squeezy-power my wee fingers possess to "invite" this evil pod to the world of my bathroom, and it absolutely refuses.  I am beginning to wonder if I have in fact conceived a child in my chin.  It really is huge.  If it continues to multiply and fortify I might have to use more drastic measures such as a fishing hook or pliers.  Hopefully the bit of Retin-A my friend just gave me will work wonders and shrink the little bastard down into the depths from which he came.   To get even he will probably be creepy and pop up on my stomach or eyeball. 

Friends are so wonderful.  Not just because they give you timely dollops of Retin-A for your freak chin pregnancy, but because they are what make life grand.  Grand like a delicious candy bar.  I recently read that Emily Dickinson once said, "...my friends are my estate."  This is either a really beautiful statement or she had lots of financial problems and had to live off her friends her whole life, but I am going to interpret it based on the first possibility.  

Imagine a huge, beautiful house with a kitchen and bank account to match - and no friends.  Just a lot of cows and chickens and strange neighbors who hated you for no reason and glared at you and called the cops whenever you didn’t take in your recycling on the same day it got picked up.  The image loses its luster immediately.  My life is not only enhanced by my friendships but it is changed and illuminated – relationships make life make sense.   My friend Steven has amazing games he always brings to the table. Today, for instance, the question was posed, "If there was a gun to your head and you had to either give up all coffee or all beer for the rest of your life, which would it be?"  I chose coffee.  My husband chose beer.  Karen said she'd probably deliberate until they pulled the trigger because she would simply be unable to choose.  I love friends.  

Ever noticed how stories get told differently every time they are told? Sometimes these differences exist due to tendencies to exaggerate (ahem) or impress or protect.  Sometimes we’re just sick of a story so we tell a condensed version.  Sometimes we tell it to piss off our in-laws.  But the weird thing is – our stories actually change as our storytelling changes.  I've been thinking of this almost constantly for the past 24 hours.  

Last night, sitting in a sushi restaurant after several hits of sake with my husband and our precious friends, we started telling stories.  As I listened to the love story my friends were telling about the beginning of their relationship, my eyes filled with tears.  Part of the loveliness of the story they told was of course the story itself, but only a very small part.  The loveliness came from the more recent stories I know about them; the conversations we've had; the thousands of moments where I have grown to love them.  The real loveliness in the story they told wasn't the story - it was the love in their faces as they told the story.  With kindness and compassion they threw a thick, warm blanket over their young, past selves. There was no less darkness in their story than any other story about love between two people, but it wasn't the darkness that illuminated as they spoke - it was the sweet, gentle fierceness of their storytelling. 

 

I so often fear that in order to be solid, happy and differentiated I need to get a new story.  Of course I don't imagine I can ever REALLY get a new one (witness protection program anyone?) - I'm not quite that delusional. But I do tend to feel trapped by my story, scared that the wall and details of who I have been and how I have loved will grow rigid around me until I have to either shrivel up and die or bust out completely.  

 

I forget that I can keep telling it.  I can have friends in my life who ask - again and again - even if they already "know" the story - to tell them again. There is a reason children curl up in the laps of their parents and say "tell the story again..."  I forget that I can cover my past (and present) self with a thick, warm blanket of compassion.  I forget that part of living life is living the same moments again and again and again.  I hate this repetition so easily.  It scares the shit out of me because I forget that I'm not stuck in a maze - the song is not skipping; I'm on new ground, and though the tune is the same (it always is), it's a new song - listen closely and the words are different.  

 

I forget too that I can keep offering blankets to those around me... to the people and the stories that feel too exposing, too scary, too ugly, too stupid, too cruel or too embarrassing to tell over delicious warm sake with kindness, compassion and good friends. 

 

"Built in the thirteenth century, the belfry had been constructed like a coil or a screw. It had one of those unexpected, helicoidal shapes - the surface like a helix - so that as it curved up it reflected every compass point of the landscape. We circled the church in the dark. Who had conceived and constructed this? Branka said that early historians claimed its builders were inspired by the form of a snail shell. Other explanations were that acarpenters had used wood that was too fresh, so it ultimately warped, or that a very strong wind had created the torsion. My friend disregarded these theories of fresh wood or strong winds. The belfry was for her an example of visionary craftsmanship...

All my life I have loved travelling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behaviour of the other. It's like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle's form refuses to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said. So the strange form of that belfry, turning onto itself again and again, felt familiar to me. For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell."

(Excerpt from pp.135-136 of Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje)