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.

Lensbaby Cometh

Apparently, I will have a lensbaby long before I have a real baby. Lensbaby is a set of three dynamic lens attachments for the digital camera that allow the photographer to create all sorts of beautiful, unique effects! My dad just emailed the info to me on the B&H Camera website. I am sooooo excited!! This could really move my look of work in totally new direction! I love camera tricks, and focal isolation and blur enhancements! OH!!! I want it now. I won't go into too much detail. I'll just show you what I come up with when I get the lenses.

There are three different kinds, The Composer, The Muse and The Control Freak. Each one gives a different effect when attached to the camera body as a lens and each lens has additional attachments, which enhance their effects even further like the Lensbaby creative aperture kit! Omigod, I can't even explain how fucking amazing this is.

In other news, I'm constantly on flickr, posting pictures, commenting on pictures, responding to comments on pictures, contacts and generally talking to people I've never met about photography, technique and Blythe doll obsession. Recently I was looking at the profile of a young lady, age eighteen who spends as much money as I do on impractical photo props. I like reading people's flickr profiles. Sometimes they are very insightful and will tell you little bit more about what they like about taking pictures and how it relates to their lives. Hers was very short and simple and frankly included way too much mention of unicorns and bubbles for my taste but in the last sentence, she says "Basically, when I'm alone, I'm off in my own little world." That one sentence described me totally when I was a little girl and frankly, still describes me now.

When I'm alone, I slip easily into my own little world and to be honest that little world is pretty big. It's why I need so much alone time. I've never really felt alone when I'm alone which may be interpreted as crazy in some circles and dysfunctional behavior for a child. My mom always worried that I preferred to play by myself and not with other kids. But I wasn't lonely. Get me? And I can never really explain how that works. I just know I'm not "alone" in that feeling. I think many of the women I've connected with on flickr are like this and that photography allows us to sort of bring back artifacts from that inner world in a creative, inspiring and functional way. It's not something I've ever really thought about as weird until recently, mostly because it was never discouraged in me but as I get older I find that I have to consciously juggle the act of being a "public me" with the "real me" which is just slightly more complex. It makes me wonder if what is more easily accepted is more "normal." But when I see what the majority of people define as "normal" it often seems like what I define as crazy, so I just embrace what makes me me feel good and the company of people who allow me to be "myself" and go with that. And when all else fails I just go off by myself into my own little world.

Paul and Joanne

"Acclaim is the false aspect of the job, which screws you up. You start to need it, like a drug, and in the final analysis, what does it all mean? I won my Academy Award when I was very young. Sitting in bed afterward, and drinking my Ovaltine, I said to Paul, 'Is that it?' Suddenly I became 'acceptable,' and I felt that I was being 'acceptable' on a very false level which had nothing to do with me per se, or whether someone liked me, but only because I became an asset, in a certain respect, that I hadn't been previously. A property."

Paul Newman, A Life
Pg136,137

3:35pm

3:35pm
Originally uploaded by TheWanderingEye

I've stared a second Flickr account under the name ThWanderingEye for my strictly non-Blythe Doll photos. It seems that Blythe has for now consumed my primary Flickr account at Zanalee and though I love her dearly, I still need very much to focus on my non-doll photography skills and to receive serious feedback on it from flickr members who don't see me as just another Blythe fan. So visit me at TheWanderingEye if you get a chance. I promise, there will not be a doll in sight.

: )

Dark Globe

Once upon a time before the internet I used to listen to the radio and I lived inside all these corny pathos filled, R&B Pop songs on top ten count downs and call in dedications and I cherished them all. And once upon a time there was once a magazine called Sassy, a magazine that spoke to the adolescent in me about things I was really concerned about, like visiting the gynecologist for the first time, birth control, candid interviews with artists I respected or had never heard of and fashion spreads with females who did not look like they had eating disorders.

In one particular issue there was a weird floppy pullout thing, which I discovered was a vinyl album which was somehow inside the pages. The album was a single by a band called REM, which I had never heard of. I figured out a way to play it on my father’s record player and heard this strange high sweet voice, which I think thought belonged to a man. It was a very short song and it left me with an odd feeling I had never experienced from hearing a song before. What was it about? Who was that singing? I played it several times never really sure if I liked. I knew somehow that this type of music was beyond my rock/RB/Pop aesthetic at the time but the sad sweetness of that feeling; I never forgot it and I never forgot the floppy record it was delivered on.
Years later I became a REM fan but could never recall that song or recover that album. But tonight, on the Sassy Facebook Fanpage, someone who has that exact album posted a live performance of Michael Stipe and REM singing that song: Dark Globe which is actually the cover of a the original song by Syd Barret.

Will my mind ever be so un-muddled again as it was when I sat as a new teenager and listened to that odd song? I still remembered the lyrics. How can something you haven’t heard in almost 18 years still be inside you, like something waiting to be found again, never leaving?

“Oh where are you now
Pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?
When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
Please, please, lift a hand
I'm only a person whose armbands beat
On his hands, hang tall
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?

The poppy birds way
Swing twigs coffee brands around
Brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
Please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?”

I didn't know they still made good music videos

Francis showed me these two on his ipod while we rode the train downtown to go see "Couples Retreat." To my surprise I loved them both.

Click air link.
Air
I'd like to live in this video for about five minutes every week or so.


Madonna Celebration

Ummm...she's 50. HOOOOT!!!

One of these things is not like the others.

One of these things is not like the others.
Originally uploaded by zanalee

My heart was beating so fast when I pseudo-wandered up to the counter as nonchalantly as possible. I looked at the menu hanging above me. I looked at the sign in the picture above. Yes, it has returned. I don't even want to talk too much about it. I just sat thankfully and enjoyed 20 of minutes of frozen black sesame bliss, which made me about a half hour late for a Dr's appointment but I just called and told them I was running late. I was on a really important date.

I could have cried, I was so happy.
EEEEEEeeeeee!
LOL!