Update: An E-version of “I Know Why They Call a Shell A Shell: Tales of Love Lost at Sea” will be released this Valentine’s Day February 14, 2012!!!
More to come!!!
You can keep up with related news by liking “I Know Why They Call a Shell A Shell: Tales of Love Lost at Sea” on Facebook!
Filed under Art
Art school was everything it was expected to be; full of all the most eccentric-self-indulgent weirdos that one could handle. I tended to be more conservative in dress, aside from the glitter. I loved sparkles but I was still quieter than the general art school population. I had already gone through my goth, dark lipstick, green hair, pink hair, pot head faze in high school. Somehow, I made it to college, and now my education had a tab. I decided I would try not to waste anymore time or money. I immersed myself in the experience, eager to learn.
Most of my teachers were cool, but because of the curriculum, I was forced to take introductory courses. The assignments were very rigid and structured, and I didn’t do rigid or structured. We had one project which was based on Paint By Numbers. We had to first create an outline of our face, carefully divide it in the same way they divide topographical maps, number the various altitudes, and paint accordingly. I had to redo mine three times. I just couldn’t stay in the lines no matter how hard I tried.
I have been told there is no love like in the movies. I disagree. For example, this weekend I went with my boyfriend to his family’s cabin in Vermont just over the border of Western Mass. It was a beautiful weekend, the fall leaves cascaded from the oaks and maples like delicate Chantilly drapery. Saturday afternoon, we road our mountain bikes to a summit where we had a picnic. It was perfect, he’s so sweet, he even brought my favorite, lavender champagne! To be honest, most of the weekend, we were cut off from the rest of the world holed up in the cabin’s foyer under its vaulted ceilings. It was so cozy by the roaring fireplace. The heat lit the room like a grenade in a fox hole.
A bit redundant, evocative artist. What is the artists job if not to produce emotions that captivate? I was doing a great job with the completion of my book when I ran into a huge writer’s block. Since I never believed in writer’s block, dealing with it was like a non-believer living in a haunted house. No matter what I did, accept it or deny it, it would not go away. For days I stressed. Why was this happening to me?
After speaking with a friend, I slowly began to dig my way out of my writer’s block. First I told him the suspected culprit of my writer’s block. That it was possibly related to a subject I was having doubts about putting in the book. The book is a work of creative non-fiction and although I have already spattered my soul across the Blogosphere there were still things I was afraid to write about. Mainly, I worried about people being judgmental.
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Filed under Art, Inspirational, Life Lessons
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Filed under Animal Rights, Art, Comic Strips, Vegetarianism
OK. So tonight my brain is fried from all the writing I’ve been doing this week, so I decided to try something new- a comic strip! I would like to make this a weekly addition to my blog, Hayley’s Comments: Introspection on Healing, Life, and Vegetarianism. I noticed tonight I have barely written anything about vegetarianism in weeks—maybe even months, so I unveil my new comic strip, “The Lonely Vegetarian.”
Filed under Art, Comic Strips, Vegetarianism
I find a lot of times in the Blogosphere people are passing around a lot of Haterade. Though most of the comments left on my articles are positive and encouraging, I do get some nasty ones, every so often. Under my most recent article, “Confronting My Rapist,” one person wrote the following:
“This is a tremendous step in your life, and I applaud you for it. But lady, your grammar is horrible. Pronoun-an tecedent agreement errors, run-ons. You get paid to write? I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”
There are so many things that are wrong here. First of all, there is the insensitivity factor. I wrote an article about confronting someone who raped me and this person has such little respect for people in general that he feels that a post about confronting my rapist is an appropriate place to air his grievances about my grammar. Obviously, he is trying to knock a survivor of rape, whom he has never met down a few pegs. (In case you were wondering) he didn’t succeed. I actually just rolled my eyes because people have said worse to me and I know that these types of comments are often the nature of the Blogosphere due to the blanket of anonymity one can easily hide behind.
What truly struck me about this was the insult itself. What he said is absolutely correct. I have horrible grammar. I cannot spell to save my life, and to be honest with you, I’m not even sure what an antecedent is. The run-ons, however, I consider my signature. He ends his small rant with, “I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”
I don’t know what this individual does for a living or if he is successful or even happy. I do know that he is missing the point. Before I dropped out of art school, I had the most awful professor you could possibly imagine. He was a graduate student who was just out of college. He was extremely full of himself and a total jerk. One day he instructed our class to go out and “spend our parent’s money” on the most expensive paint brushes we could get our hands on— the ones that cost $18 each.
Filed under Art, Heart, Life Lessons, Sexual Assault, Writing
Is it sad that Scarlett O’Hara, Vivien Leigh’s character in Gone with the Wind, used to be my idol? Is it ironic that I too grew up to be emotionally unavailable and heartless? I’m not really heartless (my boyfriend has dropped the H-bomb a few times during heated disagreements) but I am without a doubt “emotionally unavailable.” I can be compassionate, caring, concerned for others, but when people show the same feelings towards me, I am often just plain cold, and unsure of how to react. This is a common defense mechanism adopted by many who have experienced excruciating pain and rejection. It is just one of the results of abuse and neglect. I think this is why I idolized Scarlett O’Hara. It was not just her beauty and tenacity, but the strength and power she gained from being unfeeling. As a young girl who had already experienced much sadness, I too thought I could just put up an emotional wall like she did; rather than internalize the pain, I adopted her “I can’t think about that right now. If I do I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about it tomorrow,” attitude.
Filed under Art, Film, Life Lessons, Love
"The Two Fridas," by Frida Kahlo
If you look closely you will see that the conservative Frida in the white dress has cut her vein with scissors. This snip implies an end to the circuit that keeps the two Fridas together. But who is leaving who and which personality, each so different, will prevail?
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Filed under Animal Rights, Art, Vegetarianism
