Not · Yet · Dead · and · Apparently · Still · Writing

I have a feeling a divine hand was guiding me today in Barnse and Noble. Having browsed through my usual sections and come up empty handed, I drifted towards the children's section.
Up in a corner of picture books, I discovered the Caldecott Prize winning tome "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick. I picked it up, and flipped it open to a random page: An beautiful charcoal pencil illustration of a boy. Another page: Harold Lloyd's classic photograph of him hanging off of giant clock hands. Another page: A clock work automaton. Another Page: Full spread reproductions of George Melies's drawings and movie stills.
I haven't mentioned my recent obsession with George Melies, one of the first French cinematographers, artist, painter, magician and creative genius. I found out about him while I was perusing my college library's collection of early film and jazz history. I watched a lengthy French documentary on him, and promptly fell in love. And there he was, in this charming children's book that I had picked up at random that was filled with basically everything on earth that I love. It was fate I tell you. This book and I were meant to be together.

And then it got better/stranger. The next item I stumbled upon in the nature section was called "Wesley the Owl". For the last three years I've referred to my male personage as Prince Wesley and my darling girl as my royal owl. We even have matching heart-shaped dog tags that identify us as such.
...Really? I mean really?? What is the universe trying to tell me today??!?

Somewhere along the way I ordered Hollow Kingdom and purchased a delicious feather quill pen and Silence of the Lambs, but left Wesley and a drool-inducing leather bound sketchbook on the shelves for later consideration. -A morning well spent, I feel. :)

The state of Idaho has been making a very bad impression lately.
I don't know how many of you heard about Mr. James von Brunn, the 88 year old white supremacist bigot who shot and killed a guard working at the Holocaust Museum before being killed himself. He was one of our local Idahoans apparently.
In an unrelated incident, some asshat at Lava Hotsprings denied a married lesbian couple with children the "family rate" because, the asshat quoted "Idaho law states that marriage is between a man and a woman."
I hope he realizes that aside from that being total idiocy and a hate crime, that policy also denies the concept of "family" to divorced couples, widows/ers, single parents, and anyone else whose family situation does not include strictly male and female spouses. If my aunt and my mother wanted to take me in for a family vacation, we wouldn't qualify for this rate. Likewise an unmarried couple with a mutually supported child would be denied the more economical rate. Money isn't the issue, obviously. The issue is that this sort of grade A bullshit is still being shat in this part of the country.
I am sick to death of waiting for people to look around and realize its the twenty-first goddamn century. I am outraged and disgusted and pained by news of friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers being harmed by other people's willing ignorance and hatred.

In better news, tomorrow in my town there is a sort of picnic/celebration called Loving Day, named after (appropriately) the Loving family:
" 'Loving Day' is celebrated in honor of the supreme Court’s decision in 1967 which declared that laws to prevent marriages between whites and African Americans, “miscegenation laws,” were unconstitutional. In 2007 Mildred Loving, the surviving partner from her marriage to her beloved husband Richard, declared that she believed all persons should be free to marry whomever they choose! In honor of Mildred Loving and all who work for the causes of freedom and equality this day is set aside here in Idaho Falls.
It will be lovely time for socializing and honoring those in this town who support social justice causes. Please consider yourselves invited! "

What better way to help make the future more livable than to celebrate and remember a past victory over Injustice? Everybody- Play some jazz, dance with someone who doesn't speak the same language as you, work with someone who doesn't look like you, pray to whatever god you want or don't as you so desire, read or write about indecent and kinky, and think about what it means to be an American. Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary there's something there worth saving, damnit.

In other news: My sweety owl is coming to visit at the end of the month! We are going to watch patriotic fireworks, eat some barbecues, cross the shit out of the Delaware, and have crazy weird boylesbian sex in top hats.

Prince Wesley, out.

So apparently my girl is the most fabulous fucking person on earth.
She graduates magna cum laude from art school and what does she do the day after? Fricken' tears up the New Orleans French Quarter, that's what. http://thecuriocabinets.blogspot.com/
So far her exploits in the last --TWO DAYS-- include buying an actualforrealnotpretendlengerie corset, a hoop skirt, masks/fans/etc., meeting a wandering WWII veteran secret chess master and was initiated into the secret underground society of chess champions, getting fussed over by professionally fabulous drag queens ("Honey, you need yourself a fan like THIS"), being invited to the Miss New Orleans drag contest, becoming a tourist attraction in her new hoop skirt and southern belle getup, touring the fetish club scene, waltzing into a classy Gentlemen's Club and getting petted by all the laydeez and eventually escorted by a cute tux-wearing politically conscious Swedish lad.

......... Aiighrhahhhhaahrg It is like she creates her own goddamn Magical Adventure Forcefield.
Meanwhile I've been at home knitting and reading up on women dandies of the 1920's and learning how to be worthy of the awesomeness of such a laydee. I don't know what I did to even show up on her radar- I'm the most inhibited, socially inept creature that ever crawled out of eastern Idaho. Oy.

Speaking of; I've been rather absorbed in my own independent studies lately. I spend my afternoons in the campus library with a cup of coffee, note book, sketchpad, and a stack of books on opium and gypsies and turn of the century American history and victorian architecture and director's manuals and biographies of gay jews in nazi Berlin- feeling quintessentially collegiate but very boring.

Most of this is research for Six Penny Opera and Paradise and other projects, with a bit of personal soul searching thrown in.
I'm trying to find out what the philosophy is behind this business of anachronistic dandyism, why I have a burning desire to wear dressy men's clothing and be a gentleman rather than a lady, what elements I'm comprised of, why I've been so overwhelmed with nostalgia for an era I never lived in, where I want to take my art and writing and where I want my art and writing to take me. I'm also rediscovering what attracted me to the German language and culture, and thinking about the what hell I'm going to do in Vienna next year.

Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised each time I put down a book and discover that I have the initiative and endurance to do this at all; a year ago I would have thought about doing heavyduty research for my own enlightenment, bought a bunch of books, and then I've forgotten about the whole thing in a week. These days I'm feeling more like a capable independent human with a place in the world and less like a manipulative, shy jewish princess who lives in an oyster- but oh my god, I've got a long way to go. I am so not yet emancipated of my oysterness.
Nevertheless, it's a glowy sort of feeling knowing that I'm capable of getting my shit together when I'm of a mind. Having only been alive for not-quite-two decades, I'm still not sure what kind of a person I am, how I fare in bad weather and how far I can go with favorable winds.

Anyway-
School's out in three weeks or so! Summer is going to be a whirlwind of travel and craziness and then Europe! Birthday in Dorfgastein, WOO HOO. :D imma be twenty.

I love you all so dearly,
~Prince

Your children are adorable. Thank you for letting them provide commentary on your birdwatching videos.
Sincerely,
me. "

Got this off of the wonderful Neil Gaiman's Blog: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/17-03/ff_moore_qa?currentPage=all

I don't know about you, but the prospect of Alan Moore doing the Three Penny Opera in his next League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book...project..musical..thing makes me blissfully incontinent and faint with joy.

In other news: I am coughing as gently and carefully as I can while waiting for the diabolical alien pustule at the back of my throat to hatch and/or heal. Please send the maid up with my tea before the bell-pull breaks from overuse. I swear that poor girl's going deaf.

Luv,
Rivvykins

Installed back in the college dorm today. Feeling ill and getting over a head cold. Must battle administrative dragon tomorrow. Polishing armor.

In other news: Owls rock. <3 Will report back as soon as something interesting happens.

luvluv,
RZ

I just spent my first night sleeping in an airport in Salt Lake City, on some commandeered bench-chairs without dividers between them, using my overstuffed rock hard backpack as a pillow, dressed rather smashingly but not very warmly without a blanket or coat, underneath the inescapable blaring TV's playing CNN at full volume that no one could turn off, waiting for dawn.

Goddamn you, Utah snow! I am coming for you and your kin! AND YOU, Airlines! WHY THE FUCK do you have NOTHING flying EAST after FIVE P.M.?????
I have feasted upon your most horrendous airport fare and expensive coffee, my girlfriend was left waiting yesterday, my lovely, uncomplicated one connection flight was replaced by a triple plane changing affair- And I have CARVED YOUR NAME INTO MY BARE ARMS SO THAT I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR CRIME. It reads: Delta Airlines. And I will come. >(

Brrrrr. *bags under eyes, in fraying pinstripes and an off kilter top hat and the remnants of attractively combed hair, nursing a starbucks latte.*

omg guy in camouflage jacket watching me sleep ._.

Oh Mr. Jourdain, you are ever so posh today. Have you been to a most marvelous party?

J: -and I couldn't have like it more. <3

Happy New Years, Kinder! <3 I kiss you all! *MWAH*

Many much snowings. X__X I am trapped indoors, eating my shoe bottoms and huddling by the furnace, and I will be doing so until Monday, when god willing, my father shows up with the industrial strength bondage tires of studded awesome and takes me home.

And THEN I get to go to the land of sun and oranges to visit my tropical girl darling. <3

My obsession with Hunchback of Notre Dam/Claude Frollo rages on like a burning, fiery, thing that burns. Actually reading the book (I am a bad, bad girl who didn't read it growing up) only made things worse. So. Much. Worse.
Some day I will understand what makes bitter, nasty, caustic men three times my age so attractive. XD

In other news: drawing serial killers.

Thank you, and goodnight.

So I had some artwork die on me the other day- proof that this computer is, in fact, the antichrist.

Luckily nothing I can't reproduce, but still. :( I was about halfway through the damn thing- getting 'round to that point where I thought "Hay, this is starting to look like a comic", and I, in my hubris, continued painting, never once having saved. Back to the sketchbook it is then.

YAY Apocalyptica concert on Friday! Happy happy happy. <3 This will be the second band concert I've gone to in my life. I should get out more.

In other news, I watched Takashi Miike's "Audition" last night, to my utter disgusted delight. It's always comforting to know there are always people in the world just slightly more twisted than you are.

Halloween costume sadly uninspired this year. Luckily I have a ridiculously creepy cloth mask that I made last year that I can wear, but it needs some kind of ... motivation. I need to be creepy with a CAUSE. What should I do? Take down people's names in a doomsday tome? Walk around asking people highly personal and slightly off kilter questions? (If you were executed tomorrow, which one of your loved one's would you have wield the ax?) Mutter gothic poetry under my breath and impart bits of graffiti-stained wisdom to any one who will listen? Spout riddles?
Throw popcorn? Throw me a bone here, oh best beloveds.

*kisses everybody, twirls around, flies away* <3

Miene liebe Freunde, it has been a hellish week.
I do not say that lightly; I mean that this was a week, and it was literally spent in a fiery pit.
I luckily had the foresight in my life to surround myself with wonderful, beautiful people to help me GET through this week.

Basically what happened after the minor emotional crisis Monday with which you are all now familiar was a string of punches from Reality itself in the form of writer's block, large assignments, late paperwork, and deadlines for Study Abroad applications that were due on the day I heard of their existence.

After much skipping about with mismatched shoes, pants falling off, spilling lattes, arms full of paperwork, a bagel stuffed in my mouth, eyes bloodshot and weeping, limbs flailing; operating my metabolism rough shod on three days of caffein and adrenaline with no sleep, battling administrative weirdness and pleading with beaten breast and torn hair with the International Affairs Office (who were very sweet), late night phone calls and a lot of literally running from one end of the campus and back several times a day- The Madness is finally at a Close.

( Note: The Above Run-on Sentence is Not an Exaggeration or in Any Way a Distortion of Actual Events: )

In the meantime, 8D WISH ME LUCK IN VIENNA NEXT YEAR WHOOOO!!!! *banzai* FREUDE SCHÖNER GOTTERFÜNKEN TOCHTER AUS EELEEEEYYSIUUUMMM

B LARGH entry 01:

For those of you who don't know already, Hiromitsu Takayama and Doctor Professor Jonathan Crane aka the Scarecrow are where I spend most of my time. They're my hobby and my vacation spot, therapy, comfort and pride. When I'm not here in the present, I'm moving them, like God, through their various trials.

It's a pretty crowded place in the internal landscape of my mind nowadays. It used to be just me and Anubis, who moved out when Treize came along, and now there's a bunch of people living between my ears that come and go as they please but always come back like lodgers in a mood-shifting apartment building. There's Tennant Ashe (Tenna), the small, noble leper prophet who sings with the universe; and Edmond Dantes, quiet, sophisticated, full of advice; the general himself of course and Isaac and Trevor who drop in to visit at least once a month in all their pixilated, domestic bliss. Crowded.
I don't mind. Mostly I don’t live in my brain, I'm off doing business, animating the otherwise frozen worlds that I write about, injecting my own spark of life into their static spaces, turning on the power and seeing where the machine takes me.

My current fetish is for floating around in the DC comics-verse, playing in the vast and ancient sandbox that is Batman. It's hard to find untilled patches of earth here: Gotham city is a fantasy so old and so well-turned by more creative and talented hands than mine that it's no small feat to find something to say about it that hasn't already been said a hundred times. I decided to take my games to a neighboring capital instead, and populated Paradise city with my own egotistical, masked crooks.
But mostly, just my love birds Hiro and Jonathan.

I have been accused, before, of writing only gay fiction and fantasy. For most of my adolescent life I have squealed in protest and denied this. "I don't mean to. I mean, that is, I don't set out to create exclusively gay and bisexual characters. They sort of just end up that way on their own. I can't help it, they're like children."
Big surprise- I'm bisexual and transgender myself. I like men the way men like men and I like women the way masculine women like women. I think. I don't know- every time I try and put down a concrete sentence about what I "like" I regret it an hour afterwards; my sexual preference is much akin to Chinese food.
But I digress- it's the height of Narcissism to write about one's self in such a manner, and while I do spend much of my time staring, dissatisfied, into pools of water, we shall move on.
I didn't actually come here to tell you about my little corner of fandom fame, but rather a response that it elicited.

I am no stranger to the homophobe. Some of my best friends are homophobes. I suppose I don't really blame them for the way they are; I'm fairly disgusted by a lot of what they consider normal too, but I don't bring it up in conversation.

Now, I draw and write my own comics. When I have a piece that I've finished, inked, sometimes colored, I usually post it on some purportedly enlightened and artist-friendly website that allows other people to view and comment on my work. Some of my friends from home and school follow me into this virtual realm to leave their kilobytes as offerings. As I mentioned, some of my best friends are homophobes.

It's really quite valiant of them. They try so hard not to be. They'll deny what they are with examples quite like this one, and then they attack you when you suggest that yet another one of your creations has a same sex love interest.

"ALL of your characters are gay."

Just like that. Like it would somehow leap down THEIR pants. And then more personally, like YOU did this to THEM, specifically to be irritating because you knew they were watching.

My best beloveds, I have succumbed, yea, OFT have I succumbed to the temptation of exhibitionism, but my greater vice by far is self-sufficiency. I can no more cease to create, draw, and write than I can sprout an extraneous appendage. It is what I do. I create to please others sometimes, but always, always do I create for myself. It is my artless art, the one freedom I have from the flywheel of karma and causality, and most importantly it is how I escape from the prison of 'I'.

Why on earth would I waste it on, no offense, any of you? Any single one of you?

I would no more expect each of you, dear readers, to sacrifice the one fire and light of your existence to satisfy my petty quantifications.

I look at the offending frames of still motion, and I see my Hiro and his Jonathan kissing sweetly on a train. For all my gifts of insight I cannot fathom why this moment, this grossly unobtrusive, gentle moment would provoke such growls and yapping.

These two orbit each other in my mind, a constantly reaffirming source of passion and support, the mythical closed system that gains energy without atrophying, Ouroboros; their light fills me as surely as it fills any lover. In the womb of my imagination, we share thoughts, sacred moments of quiet, brief spats of argument and the phoenix blaze of adoration and lust; I am each lover, both at once and individually, their pathos compounds and nourishes me even as I give life to them.

That is not for you, dear readers. You will only ever see the pictures and read the words. This is for –me-. You will not take this from me. You will not press your hot guilt onto me you will not somehow 'cure' me of this divine lunacy you will not break me you will not you will not you will NOT make Medea of me, I will not kill these children nor will I change them.

Any offspring of mine will have a safe place to come home to at the end of the day. I do not care how important you think yourself, nor what our past relationships have been, friends. Do not come between a mother and her babies. I will never force them on you.

If this seems a satisfactory resolution than you are welcome, best beloveds, to share a little of the light from my dreams.

/seething.

So I was thinking about my website, and about my personal coding skills, and I realize that I have no idea how to make/use a guestbook. And being the attention whore that I am, I like to know when people have visited my work and what they thought of it. My DA gallery is good for this, but it has its limitations which is true of any public art site.
My idea was this: I'll double up my journal, which far too often just sits here and gathers dust because I'm self-conscious and lazy, with my website, and let commenters leave their little graffitied marks here while I continue to post/notpost the usual.

And a little reverse engineering, just in case... Here is the website of which I speak: http://www.rivkaz.com/Newpage.html

and specifically what's being updated now because I'm obsessed: http://www.rivkaz.com/Fear/ParadiseHost.html

arrighty then.

Luv ya,
~RZ

New Yawk New Yawk!- as a visitor from a small town in Idaho, this city is almost indescribably different. Then I realized that Neil Gaiman had done it for me already, in Neverwhere, with his description of London. The following excerpt is basically a perfect, exquisitely precise snapshot of how I felt about the big apple (which is not a macintosh) :



"It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names—Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch—and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful roadwidening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the needs of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind. When he had first arrived, he had found London huge, odd, fundamentally incomprehensible, with only the Tube map, that elegant multicolored topographical display of underground railway lines and stations, giving it any semblance of order. Gradually he realized that the Tube map was a handy fiction that made life easier but bore no resemblance to the reality of the shape of the city above."



-So as many of you know I just returned from a fabulous two week excursion to EastCoastia to meet relatives, relative meat, and frolic with lads and lasses I met on the internet in Strawberry Fields. By this I mean Theodore (teddy /haru/ fedya/ Knyaz Pavlov/ odin_za_vseh/ master) and Sissi (Elisabeth /Bel /dreitropfenblut /Gwendoline /die Ärtze goddess), plus Sissi's brother (first american duck vocalist), Alice (who was delightful and hilarious even with maroon hair), and the charming but sadly underaged Luke, whom everyone present wished would hurry up and age two years so we could tie him to something bed-post shaped.

I met my first crazy homeless person, who was quite sweet, and was muttering to himself in something that will probably be English when it grows up while smoking on the subway and telling himself sternly to put out that cigarette, because you're not ALLOWED to smoke on the subway, and wasn't he listening?
Like I said. Adorable.
It was here also that I was taught to be cold and heartless under the careful guidance of Sissi, so that I would not give away money to everyone that offered me purse dvd watch good cheap from Switerland hungry need ride candy hotel biscuits. I did manage to pay a street performer who walked onto our train and burst forth with some of the best music known to man and complimented my hat. twice. It was awesome.

Purchased or otherwise obtained items include: Two cinnamon bunny squirrel rolls. Things. They were japanese, okay man? I don't know. Porn. Porn. Two vibrators. Porn. A french revolutionary jacket. A gray top hat. Bubble Tea. Scones. A song, a name from under the stone, and youth everlasting. Oh and hair dye. It's faded to a sexy gray-violet now, which combined with my glasses creates a perfect Shrew-Librarian-Stripper look.

There was much tromping around in massive, debilitating goth footwear, shopping, blind man's bluff playing, singing, dancing, art oggling, kissing, ass-slapping, eating, tea sipping, and fangirling. I loved it, and may never recover.

Bury my heart at Alice's Teacup.

In other news, my adoptive asianbabycousin Lauren is the new, perfected turbochild, is made of cuteness, and has the brain of a hacker genius. She's five.

Today was rather eventful- we went to a local Roy Zimmerman concert, which was side-bustingly funny and poignant- or would have been, had I not been staring primarily at his ass for the whole two hours. Ah, memories. http://www.royzimmerman.com/

Really though. Seriously. I am god's gift to pedophiles. (...not Roy. Btw. Don't let's interpret that statement in an accusatory fashion, hmm? He is regrettably hot though.)

Yes, welcome to the conversation!
Let's hear that again: I DIG OLD/ER MEN.

Like, what IS that? Is there word for whatever that is? BECAUSE I HAVE IT.
The: I'm-only-into-guys-who-if-they-were-into-me-would-BE-pedophiles-syndrome. Reverse pedophilia? I don't know. I blame it all on Jonathan (not cillian!jonathan, whom I also adore for different reasons, but OLD school J.C.; skinny, nerdy, glasses wearing, hair thinned, sarcastic, bitter, middle aged Jonathan. Yeah. Oh, and House. Damn you, you gimpy Brit.)

Ignoring my weirdness, the concert was ridiculous and delicious and pants-wetting. Construe that how you will.
oh god, the Irish Beatles. Oh. God.

So yeah. I'm back. Drawing, writing, all that nonsense. It's back to college for me in about a week, though, so savor my presen- oh wait the internet! :D Savor me anyway!

Over'n'out,
RivkaZ/Wesley Caesirel

-everything was going so well!-

Upstate- so many graves, so much history. Ichabod dear I prey on superstition, my hobby is fear. I'd chase you if I could. Legends and old memories may haunt these stones, these trees and piebald streets, but nothing else.
The silence here is companionable, interested; as Sleepy as its name suggests. Nothing wakes the dead here.

Hessian, I visit your grave. 'Es tut mir leid' I say, 'if I knew where you lay I'd tread more carefully.'
So quiet. Men came following the sound of thunder and cannon fire, now resting soundly through the centuries. Irving, you too. Stately and alabaster amongst your admiring granite friends. Monarchs tumble through the briar and over the Coffin steps. Soft as warm rain.

___

They serve a damn fine gyro in Sleepy Hollow. I'm not even kidding. Lots of giant old Rockafellor estates and manor houses. So far no ghosts, but I live in perpetual hope. It's like, unbelievably pretty, peaceful, and quiet here. Not an unquiet soul in sight. Pfui.

Over'n'Out,
RivkaZ

P.S. I totally got a headless horseman statue. I am a nerd. >w>

Remember that other journal? I talked about Ellis? Fabulous singer laydee? Major crushingi-on-ness? eh? Eh?
>D PICTURES!!! She has picture! A website! Look at them! Go! EEeeH! <3<3<3

http://www.ellis-music.com/photos/

Oh my best beloveds! I need your help! :D In the best of ways!


Rivka requires resources of a balletic nature!
Meaning that I wish to become an expert in all things ballet-related, desperately, and soon!


Any direction you could give me as to history, style, opinions, techniques, terminology, videos, images, names, places, events, pitfalls- Anything, classical or contemporary, would be greatly, incredibly, and whole-heartedly appreciated! ^___^ Specifically, anything that comes under the heading "1800's", "Russian", and "The best thereof" would be extraespecially fine! <3<3<3

Oh! And the art of poisoning. ^_^;;; This too would be usefull, but not to the same extent.


I am your vessel! Fill me with knoweldge! Or snobbery! Or whatever you prefer! <3


Much adoration and love,
RivkaZ
(who, if you haven't guessed, is up to more mischief.)

So, last Thursday I decided to forgo my homework and instead to visit Live Music night in the campus coffee shop.
There were two artists there; one was a dark, glittery sort of fellow who sang and played an excellent mixture of blues and folk music of his own design.


The other was the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life. Until I found out he was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. Her name was Ellis, which was prounounced 'Ellias', and she wore her heart and soul on her sleeve and insisted upon dousing everyone in the audience with it everytime she moved, sang, or smiled, which was constantly. She sang a love song to coffee. It was love at first sight.
She reminded me, in the best of ways, of a horse- of the young, springy, energetic and utterly delightful variety that can't keep still and makes you feel better to be alive just by looking at. You could see it in the way she laughed and stamped her feet while she played. I bought her CD. Twice.
I wish I could show you a picture of her. I am quite smitten, and I hope she comes back to our campus again when she is an ultra famous folk idol, so I can throw my panties at her. :)


Over'n'out.
~RZ