Lost in Bliss

I mean Jill Bliss. Clearly, I'm not at work today.

As well as registering for permit classes online and journeying to the park across the street to take pictures I got on flickr and noticed that Jill Bliss, one of my favorite artists and stationary designers had some new work posted. I bought a journal by her years ago at Urban Outfitters and I was so knocked out by the design that I barely even wrote in it. I was so distracted by all her lovely illustrations of flowers. Later one I discovered that she also designed a series of note card sets, journals, journals sets and prints. Her set of "Native Flowers" is a part of my ridiculously mounting collection of stationary. I used to have such a bad stationary habit. I mean I never write anyone! No one writes anybody! But I just love stationary and I would go broke buying stationary just to have! That was a while ago. I finally cut myself off just so that I could afford lunch. I'm not very practical by nature but I had to reason with myself that stationary is about as useful as fencing these days. Incidentally, I was on the fencing team when I attended Bard College. Touche'

So anyway, Jill has a new line of forest and ocean illustrations that newly posted on her flickr account and they are unbelievable. I followed a link to her online shop and started to browse through more of her flora illustrations again when it dawned on me that much of her appeal for me has to do with the time I spent as a child in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I did two or three seasons in the Children's Garden as well and all we did besides garden was create things with natural materials and observe the way things grow and how they look and what their best uses were. There was one one guy who taught us only about insects. Jill Bliss' work really sort of brings that all back for me and it just occurred to me today.

I can tell just by looking at Jill's pictures that she really becomes these things. It's the only way to really see anything.




I love this picture of the black forest bear where the bear is actually composed of forest elements! And the octopus just makes we wanna dance! : )

The Second World

It is kind of a juggling act having two flickr accounts but as a typical Gemini, it is often necessary for me to experiment with duality or rather to have two or more of everything I really like, such as cameras, journals, blogs facebook pages,etc. You get the idea.

It's important to me to get a critical sense of my photography outside of the world of "It's so cute! She's so cute, that's so cute" doll land. Not that I don't take that photography just as seriously but I need more serious feedback in order to challenge myself.

At first my "The Wandering Eye" account felt a little lonely. My Zanalee account is securely established in a gigantic and probably growing community of well established doll collectors, craftswomen, photographers and just really cool people who pay attention to my work, constantly comment, respond to questions in group pools and are very supportive and fun, full of humor and creativity. In turn I love looking at their stuff and commenting on their amazing pictures. I have almost a hundred, if not more contacts, people whose work I look forward to seeing, whose clothes I love to look at and buy and people whose photographic aesthetic always blow me away. But in the world of Blythe, it all really comes down to her, not you. That's cool, but I also really just want to have a space for non- Blythe pictures where I can start to explore and expand my photographic voice again.

Early in my Zanalee flickr career I became a huge fan of a Baltimore photographer named "boyghost". I was incredibly inspired by his stuff. Personally, I'd just never seen anything like it and I was constantly moved by the composition and subtle unforced details of his work. He's one of the main reasons I wanted to get my Nikon D60.

Almost immediately upon opening my T.W.E. account, I discovered a photographer named "setsuna" who takes just some of them most amazing nature photos I have ever seen. It's not that she just takes a picture of something beautiful in nature which is relatively easy enough to do, but she shapes a way of seeing in that is incredibly intuitive and ethereal without being overly reverent or imitative.

View from Belvedere's Castle


This week she left a nice comment on the picture I took shown above which is great. I harassed her a little bit about her technique and printing so I'm glad I haven't scared her off. I also got a few other comments/criticisms from others this week, so I'm really happy about that. I need it and it's really wonderful to be able to do that on flickr, especially given how difficult it is to get people together to do this sort of thing in real time. Although at some point I would love to do that as well. Flickr just allows you to access work and present your work in such a diverse and freeing way. You're really traveling all over the world when you look at pictures, and not just geographic or proximal worlds, but inner, emotional and sensory worlds. Familiarity with strangers. Not so strange really.
: )

The Icemen cometh

The Icemen cometh
Originally uploaded by TheWanderingEye

Had a little low light photography fun this weekend. I went out for a second but the wind was just too strong so I just stayed inside and shot from my window. This was one of my favorites.

What will make us change?

From J. Krishnamurti, a man who did not beat around the fucking bush.

Are we willing to go into the question of knowing oneself? Because oneself is the world. Human beings, right throughout the world—whatever their color, their religion, their nationality, their beliefs—suffer psychologically, inwardly. They go through great anxieties, great loneliness, have an extraordinary sense of despair, depression, a sense of meaninglessness of living the way we do. Throughout the world, people are psychologically similar. That's a reality, that’s truth, that’s an actuality. So you are the world psychologically and the world is you; and when you understand yourself, you are understanding the whole human structure and nature. It is not mere selfish investigation, because when you understand yourself, a different dimension comes into being.

What will make us change? More shocks? More catastrophes? Different governments? Different images? Different ideals? You have had varieties of these, and yet you have not changed. The more sophisticated our education, the more civilized we become—civilized in the sense of being more removed from nature—the more inhuman we become. So what shall one do? As none of the things outside of me are going to help, including all the gods, then it becomes obvious that I alone have to understand myself. I have to see myself and change myself radically, Then goodness comes out of that. Then one can create a good society.

-This Light in Oneself

How Long?

Several years ago I used to work at a corporation that specialized in counseling for corporate types. I came by this receptionist job through a temp agency which ironically was in a building just a block or so from where I work now.

I worked as a receptionist there, doing data entry, answering calls and all that clerical stuff under the direct supervision of a woman who wore fur coats, had glass nails and ate sushi for lunch. The president of the company was an asshole who always had a cigar stuck in his face and was named Bob Levy.

Working with me as the full time office assistant was a woman of color (I believe she was West Indian but I do not remember the exact island of origin) who all but ran that place single-handed and sometimes with her little son behind the desk with us.

There was one particular day when I brought Mr. Levy a written message which he found illegible (I admit my hand writing sucks) and became furious at me cursing inappropriately or at least I found it inappropriate to be cursed at over a badly taken phone message. Young, and inexperienced at ass-kissing (I still suck at it)I gave him the cold shoulder for a while which was all I could do to stand up for myself.I may be kidding myself bit I believe he felt it. I was highly offended. Up until then, I had never been spoken to in this way before by anyone.

I remember relaying these events to the maverick female office assistant who incidentally told me see used to eat her lunch in a phone booth. I'll never for get what she said to me.
She said, "Do you want to be treated like a nigger?" I forget exactly what came after that statement but I feel it had something to with instructing me on ways on which to avoid being treated this way and how to learn from he experience, since, as she impressed upon me, I would surely be treated this way if I did not take certain precautions. I was so shocked that she had become accustomed to such conditions that I probably made up my mind then and there that I would not be staying on. I left that job to work full time at City College a few months later.
Now, in my present position with CUNY it has begun to occur to me that I am still struggling against being treated like a nigger but in much subtler and more dangerous forms. And the fucked up thing is I learned about this process here at this institute in classes about Poverty and Affluence, Urban Cultural Diversity and Race Class and Gender in America! And whenever I think about escaping to someplace "better", more "civilized" to work with mature people, I realize that I am fantasizing possibly about someplace that does not exist Because, some form of tyranny and racial prejudice will exist no matter where I work and for whom. And I feel trapped.

I know what the truth is. I don't feel crazy or misunderstood. I just feel powerless. And my facade is cracking. I've never known this part of myself before, this angry, frustrated, violent, stuck person and I feel myself behaving in ways I resent, often towards those I care about most, those who don't deserve it because I feel powerless to rage against those who are blindly going about bulldozing their bullshit agendas over those who they perceive as compliant. But I don't know how much longer I can go on doing that.

What I fear the most is really and truly losing it. I would like to be smart. I would like to not give in to that rage. But that seems so much like not doing anything at all. Like checking out. I'm not ready to do that yet. But what am I ready to do? I don't know.