I'm not "super imposed"! 

Credits: Sven Ellirand

I'm just super =)

Guess what I did last week...













A new adventure awaits us.

With Out Further Adieu...

~I present to you, the continued collaboration of Sven and Lavender. 

Credits: Sven Ellirand

          What makes our story beautiful is just that. It's a story that is ever changing with no sides to the spectrum of realism. Our rocky roller coaster  of a relation was tied to my negligence caused from my own insecurities on a level of powerlessness and non acceptance.

Today, we can accomplish what we accomplish without the suicidal tendencies that used to fall into place; for me that place occured daily.

Credits: Sven Ellirand

It's beautiful to see how far I have come in just one year.

Credits: Sven Ellirand

I've noticed a change in myself this past week; discontent and anxious with evasive thought patterns. Then I realized I haven't  been writing. There is a sense of release amongst my thoughts drawn out when my pen meets my paper. My days have been overly hectic with work and school assignments and meetings on top of meetings that i haven't been able to attend ( thats a whole other issue with my 'priorities' or neglect there of). So this morning I took a few hours just for me.

 I picked up If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him by Sheldon Kopp. There is so much to go over from the past few weeks but with the little free time I have today, I have to put this out here. I laughed out loud...

           "An old Hebrew tradition holds that this first creation included a female called Lillith. She was the very first defender of the cause of women's liberation. When Adam told Lillith that she was to obey his wishes, she replied: "We are equal; we are made of the same earth." So saying she flew up into the air and transformed herself into a demon who ate children. Even that early, women who would not subjugate themselves to the will of men were seen as witches."

Credits: JamesDavid

"For the love that expresses itself in creative action is something which you can "feel" and "know," remember and define. Love is the organizing and unifying principle which make the world a universe and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of mind, and becomes manifest in action when the mind is whole."

There is no problem of how to love. We love. We are love, and the only problem is the direction of love, whether it is to go straight out like sunlight, or to try to turn back on itself like a "candle under a bushel."

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love all the bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love." ~Watts

So many...So soon. When I least expect, the more I receive.

Credits: JamesDavid

                                        I would call this one of his many action shots turned pose. I love it.

Credits: JamesDavid

I doubled booked yesterday. I can feel it today. I shot with
JamesDavid yesterday morning at Dry Beaver Creek where the Mosquitos never sleep. I have a few bites, but not nearly as many as my last shoot with rick Sprain, a couple of weeks ago, near Perkinsville. After climbing rocks and trees and mounds of asphalt, and lying in fields of flowers (mostly poisonous by consumption), smothering myself in mud and slithering around 'like a snake' and then rolling in gravelish sand to make what we now call 'the cookie', and twirling endlessly in about a foot of murky water... we got these:

Credits: JamesDavid

Credits: JamesDavid

And then it was of to my socially acceptable day job. The Black Canyon housed only about 200 people last night; three servers and two cooks, I think we did a pretty decent job. I believe there is always room for improvement and of course our clientele love to give suggestions as if the are part ownership. *cough. Anyways, my mom always told me to mark an x over my mosquito bites with my finger nail to stop the itch... well, last night it was so bad I just sliced right through one that was on my elbow. No!... Not on purpose. I was taking out the trash; threw it over the dumpster and someone had thrown a broken Stella Artois  glass into the mix, slicing my elbow ironically straight across the biggest mosquito bite I've ever experienced. At least now it doesnt itch! ;)

Credits: JamesDavid

"...the physical reality is that my body exists only in relation to this universe, and in fact I am as attached to it and dependent on it as a leaf on a tree. I feel cut off only because I am split within myself, because I try to be divided from my own feelings and sensations. What I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. And on being aware of the unreality of this division, the universe does not seem foreign any more." ~Watts

Credits: JamesDavid

Credits: Rick Sprain

As the relationship between collaborators evolve the pictures evolve. We are finding that balance between what we are both wanting to accomplish.


Prime example of trust:

Credits: Rick Sprain

It is about having the ability to separate yourself from social norms. I make the unjustifiable- justified.  You must be aware of your surroundings in this field, yes. But you can't anticipate what might happen next. I lose touch with the pose; the form and the lens when my mind wanders to past experiences when shooting nudes in public places. 

We did have a minor threat by an authority figure; the park ranger. This broken home is located just minutes off of the park's camp sites. We passed through the barbed wire. After about twenty minutes of shooting: she drove past, stopped, got out of her truck and we "hid" inside... not many places to hide in a decaying building.

 
 








 A wrong turn ended up being so right. If I had never been to Jerome before I would have most likely scared myself to death... Oh, have I mentioned I hate driving!? At the same time a panic from loss of direction took place, the storm settled over me. The rain was pounding as rapidly onto my windshield as my heart in  my chest. I survived. Another day.

Credits: JamesDavid

The shoot was fantastic. I've never felt more alive on a shoot; everything went so smoothly from the drive out
there to the the cusp; the broken down home. There is a difference in the picture when you get to know who you are collaborating with on a human level. I'm not here to take off my clothes, get paid and drive away... wow, that sounds bad. I'm here to explore, learn and grow as a creative. I'm not an actor. I've never taken classes. What I do is separate thee from me. This particular shoot was filled with experience, strength and hope... What person is not striving for that believable hope?

Credits: JamesDavid

Credit: JamesDavid

I hit my bottom over a year ago. All of our bottoms look different; mostly ending in jail, institutions and even death. My story doesn't veer into those directions, but I was close-to all three. I  started the program of AA and found myself surrounded not by alcoholics but by drug addicts. I’m not discriminating… we all need some level of help. To separate us does not make sense on a financial level for these treatment centers… I've only met two other girls who were seeking help for alcoholism. So, I have heard the stories of drug addicts- not glorified; only mere experiences which are supposed to lead to strength and hope for one another. I've been told it’s most difficult to be an alcoholic because it’s everywhere, well drugs are too- if you want them to be!

The condemned stories  became extremely real last weekend. I picked her up from work and noticed a change. Her level of anticipation was extremely annoying. She couldn't hold a conversation; the past five minutes kept repeating themselves. I tried to rationalize my thoughts, I went straight to denial. She has so much to stay sober for. Maybe she’s excited about getting her license back, visiting her children in Connecticut  in a few weeks, getting off of probation… the list goes on.  Sunday night was worse. It seemed as though her lower jaw wished to escape from the structure of her mouth. Her hips swayed as if music were playing. She always had a tendency to move her wrists when she spoke… but she wasn't talking.

I went to bed. The next morning I found myself in a horror movie. I found her body tense; tongue and lips swollen. She moaned in agony- and I left her there. I talked to one of our friends-she came over and another followed. Her bedroom was dark and still until we woke the beast. She glared at the three of us hovering around her bed. Her eyes were solid black; full of rage. Then tears poured when she hung up the phone with  work.

Credits: JamesDavid

 Five different extreme emotions rolled into minutes which seemed as though hours had passed. All I wanted to do was get out. I had a shoot that day. First thought was to cancel so I called a friend. I knew he would tell me what I needed to hear. So I took his advise. I packed a bag and got out of self. I drove an hour to the shoot and turned all of my pain and confusion into art. I wanted so much to end up back home and that morning been a dream. But that is my reality. That is my friend lying helplessly, in her mind, on a bed full of needles.  All I can be is a sober option for her and to others wandering aimlessly through this part of their journey.