Thursday, January 27, 2011

Perfect, as always.

Today, I woke up with a half hour to get dressed, prepped, and to class. I almost didn't make it on time.

And in the rush to get out the door, I couldn't find my hat (which was sitting on the table in plain sight. I are hasing vision, really...). This wouldn't be a big deal, except that I showered late, and therefore slept on wet hair. Therefore, I stumbled into class, sat down, and informed my friends "I don't want to know what it's doing." I was informed that it looked like the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. I subsequently attempted to get it to look a little less like massive destruction.

Today, in class, we watched a video. I had seen it before. That didn't change how much I love it. And then, since we are studying Ireland and our teacher is big on kinetic learning, we sat down and drew celtic knotwork. Really, really simple knotwork. I and one of my friends were pointed out as resource people for this drawing, since we'd both done it before. I had to keep qualifying myself to my classmates. "I've been drawing since I was three. I'm not especially talented, I just have nineteen years of practice." After that, we all got taught to dance a jig step. During this, several of my classmates latched onto me as a guide for what to do. We were moving and I was grinning and giggling a little, and it felt good to get up and move and be jumping from side to side and making loud noises on the floor. I didn't really realize that I was encouraging and guiding my classmates until, with my back turned, I heard someone say "I'm just watching what Rori's feet do." Some time during the dancing, the teacher informed me that I was "Perfect, of course."

I was... pretty taken aback. I didn't feel like I was doing it perfect. I didn't feel like I was good enough to be followed. I felt like I was a lumbering bull with jiggling fatty bits and clumsy steps and clunky boots and shin-splints and bouncing hair. But I had done it before. The steps had stuck with me. The rhythms were something that had been engrained into me since childhood (Thanks, mom!), and I felt confident enough in my own skin to get up there in the middle of class and help the other students learn to dance.

Come to think of it, this year has been the best I've felt in my body since I was very small. Yes, I'm on the heavy side. Yes, I have these strange jiggly bits hanging off the front of me (even with a chest binder. They're huge. They jiggle.). Yes, I'm tall and gawky and more likely to fall flat on my face than successfully get off the bus or god forbid dance. But I am feeling good in my own skin. I am beginning to be able to see what I look like in a mirror.

I think it was Zoie who said it, years ago. "Sure, you're kinda average as a girl, but DAMN do you make a hot guy." As a girl, the best I could be described as is "Plain". But as a boy, not only do I look better, but I FEEL better, which I'm sure contributes. Sure, I'm jiggly and have hair like an Axolotl when I wear a hat, and like a mushroom cloud when I don't, but that's okay, because I think Axolotl(s?) are adorable, and mushroom clouds are a sure sign of great and terrible destruction, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is sure to follow once I step into a room. And I can draw. I can draw because I've been drawing for nineteen years. There are things I'm not good at. I'm not good at the guitar. I'm not good at running, and I can't do a cartwheel.


I'm not perfect. But I'm working on it. All it takes is practice. "Practice makes perfect", right? I'll get back to you on that in nineteen years.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Who says I personify everything I own...? >.>

This is my Tophat, Ozwald. Ozzy is an effeminate gay brit with a penchant for raspberry flavoured chocolate. His "Clothing" (The bits of flash all over him) are constantly changing, but he loves bright shiny things. This photo was taken summer of 2009, about three months after he was given to me.

Meredith is my Ukulele, a Makai Tenor, and I haven't gotten to know her enough yet, except to know that she's a lower-class island girl who works in a colonial household around 1880, and loves to wear a Trumpet Flower in her hair.

Rozalynd is my Violin. She's the second Violin I've had, after Andromeda, who now belongs at Leslie and will soon be given a new name. Rozie is a Proper English Lady who is really a wild Irish girl pulling a con on the English Aristocracy. She's in the middle of a wild love affair with her Sikh bodyguard Jassa Singh, who happens to be---

My guitar. He is strong, cryptic, and silent until you get him singing. Like Meredith, I don't know much about him yet, mostly because I'm not that practised on him yet.

Tess (Short for Tesora Tesla Jones) is my Tattoo machine. She's a 25-year-old artist from San Francisco in the mid-seventies, who took her grandmother's diamond earrings and put one of them through her bottom lip. She gave the other to her girlfriend, with whom she lives.

.... Like I said, I don't personify EVERYTHING, I mean it's not like my Bike (Her name is Kitten)... Er, bad example... Or my piggy bank Thomas... Erm... My Stuffed octopus Kefka... Uh... My sewing machine Eatsneedles... My iPod Aiwë or my computer Sam... Well my boots don't have a name and personality! ....Yet...

Saturday, January 8, 2011

New Boots - Why I Am Not A Good Son.

My grandfather is to this day my hero. He was a navigator in a bomber in WWII, and broke his neck bailing out his plane when it was shot down. He landed behind enemy lines, and spent -- if I am remembering this right -- 18 months in a POW camp, trying to dig his way out and smuggling the sand outside in his pantlegs.

Now, I have a long and glorious history of being the only child/grandchild/etc. interested in the things that my family has to pass down. As the only child interested in hearing his stories, I was given a wealth of knowledge and fascinating adventure stories. I was told about smuggling sand out of the camp. I was told about shaving chocolate bars into wormy porridge to make it easier to eat, and how the prisoners ended up stronger and healthier than the guards, who were given porridge without worms, and therefore without protein. I was told all sorts of things.

I'm not sure if this hero worship is what contributed to the child of a pair of hippies ending up sitting in a coffee shop in a Marine field jacket and Israeli combat boots  writing a comic about sky pirates and the british airship navy. However, it has been remarked that I was born for Military Chic. And I know that this pisses off my parents to no end.

My mother sat down in front of the troop trains and protested at ports. My father can be seen flashing a peace sign in his highschool graduation photo. I myself am an anti-military, hardcore pacifist.

And yet I love to look the part of the tired nam vet. I look considerably better in olive drab and russet brown than I do in tie-dye, and my favourite bag is a medic satchel. I am tall and have shoulders that would fit better on someone six inches taller. I hate looking like a hippie. I do not fit in the aesthetic that they have cultivated. Long hair doesn't really look right at this point, tie-dye just makes me look like I got caught in a holi celebration, ripped clothing looks... awkward... and sandals... just no.

But about the boots.

I have been searching for the prefect boots for years. I think I finally found them. Black, nine-eyelets, shined so bright you can practically see your reflection in it, and I love them. Among other things, they complete my look. Beyond that, they're waterproof, warm, full of traction, and make me feel like my grandfather is smiling at me.

At some point, I think I have to make a comic out of my grandfather's stories, if I can delve back to when I was eight and remember them.