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.

“…we have  allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives out of all proportion  to “instinctual wisdom,” which we are allowing to slump into atrophy. As a consequence, we are war within ourselves- the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot understand. ~ In one way or another civilized man agrees with St. Frances in thinking of the body as Brother Ass. But even theologians have recognized that the source of evil and stupidity lies not in the physical organism as a whole, but in the cut-off, dissociated brain which they term the “will”.”

~Watts.

Credits: JamesDavid

“Our very psychology has been shaken to it’s foundation… to grasp the meaning of the world today we use language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true nature, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.” ~Antoine de Saint Exupery

                                  If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind and a drowned man can waken then I believe a broken man can heal.

Credits: Rick Sprain

My photo shoot with Rick Sprain... A few weeks ago? Time flies. 800 or so pictures I'm anxiously waiting to go through and we're already scheduling our next meet. When the weather seems to finally be cooling down, it heats right up. Throwing around sporadic  thunderstorms; I always seem to be fixed inside.

Credits: Rick Sprain

 I've finally downsized! In All most every aspect of my life… shoes, clothes, the abundance in room mates and the amount of food I have had to

keep in my refrigerator. The food thing was due to living in a house full of addicts who carried their thievery  aspect of “survival” with them into treatment. There was always something missing of mine: bananas, ice cream, salad dressing, tampons and peanut butter.   OMG! The peanut butter! I wasn't the only victim of peanut butter theft. Tubs upon tubs were stolen weekly. We could never figure out who or how these large amounts of peanut butter were disappearing.  Now I’m living in peace and tranquility. I actually enjoy coming home from work everyday! And the best part is shooting. Scheduling photo shoots whenever and where ever  I please and not having to tip toe around my modeling subject is just amiable. I finally have a sense of civilized freedom. I share an apartment with my friend Beany, who has shown great interest in modeling for me yet getting her out there is problematic. One day, some day.

Moving day was exciting. One of our more drastic days of monsoon season; streets flooded, power outages which all led to incompetent drivers. This experience has made me question whether or not to up my insurance policy! Three trips to Starbucks and Target we made our apartment semi livable.  Bottom line- our idea of  “standard of  living” is  too high!  Our list of  house hold items still to  buy is so large we decided to group it into categories because our income only excels to necessities. Another ‘one day, some day’ I’ll be living modestly yet comfortable!

~No more empty promises. No more solution to every problem. It is what it is... A fucking problem. I'm conditioned to accept and move forward... to what? The battle between the ideal of the heart and the reality of the heart. There is no heart- heart of hearts. 

 A feeling is only a feeling. My feelings are not fact, they don't make me who I am.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!  

          It is year number two... the 2nd year of his birthday celebrations with my absence. This time last year he was telling my mom I don't deserve him. He doesn't deserve to be treated like shit, and that he wanted my shit out of his place. We have done a complete 180 on the love addict Vs love avoidant spectrum this past year. It is rare to find absolute balance in any relationship but this relationship has been such a fucked up roller coaster- one which you would have to ask before boarding, "Is this ride really still operating!?"  

I have this vision in my mind from last December. Him packing up, driving out here, and settling with me in a little house... And the time is near yet those same feelings are pushed down by fear. 

In 2009 I made a decision. This decision did not play out the way it did in my mind. Instead of coping with my unhappiness rationally I turned to temporary comfort. One that led me further and further away from reality all together. I fucked my life and in return your's was squandered in the process. 

 I'm not angry. I'm still discontent with myself.

Credits: Solid Pro

This is how I feel right now.

 Exhausted. Drained. Darkness...

        My days are blending into one long endless story of repetition. The same road driven. The same song on the radio. The same meeting hall. The same faces... I'm ready for change. Change is what is going to keep me going, keep me motivated for further growth; expanding awareness. I'm feeling like stagnant water- in custody of yet another small mountain town. In some lighting it's beautiful alive and full of energy, but with that one hue of unlit color it becomes a pit of murky depression. Sad water that forever sits... and forever stops flowing.  

Credits: Sven Ellirand

                                                                                   We are getting our "brightest" full moon of the year. Tomorrow night I will attempt long exposure shots with out him... This just keeps getting more depressing. I miss Cali. I miss Joshua Tree.                           

           

       

               I miss our adventures. 

Still free to shoot this Sunday. Half off rate... TFP? ... I need to scout locations.

 http://mindaswater.com                             *Free and Optimistic

This is how I wish I felt, right now. I finally have a Sunday free and ready to shoot. I'm planning a shoot with Barr Images...He said the 15th. ...July 15th. Ooops. I'll make that date work too...Somehow! 

                                                                  And I almost forgot... the beautiful Chinese poetry. 

Credits: Neil Cowley

Bottom line, Cowley is a creative, clever, 'down to earth' and patient photographer.                                                                         I can't wait to do another project with this one. 

 http://mindaswater.com

A little lighting, backdrop and a snazzy shower nozzle went a long way...

Before I left...

 http://mindaswater.com

I met with Neil two weeks ago.

Credits: Neil Cowley

          He sent me this: to bring environmental awareness around world water issues.  This art project is a series of portraits in water with a disarming beauty and directness referencing our reliance on the element. Stripped of makeup and accouterment the subject is left to portray their spiritual strength.    

Of course I couldn't turn this down. 

Credits: Sven Ellirand

   To all of my dear future collaborators: I'll be in Cali this week. I'll be back in Arizona around the 2nd.

~ We will start setting up shoots then.

Credits: Sven Ellirand

“If you can be, be. If not, cheer up and go on about other people’s business, doing and undoing unto others till you drop.” ~ e.e. cumings 

http://facebook.com/mindaswater 

Wednesday- photoshoot~ This should be something new and excitingly different.
                                                                      https://vimeo.com/62498588

I have seven months of sobriety… This month could be a year celebration. But it’s not. I chose to take that drink last summer and I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.  I don't like to put blame on others for this disease. That would be like moving to LA and chain smoking and blaming God for the gift of cancer. You can chose to play the victim role or you can chose to accept and acknowledge  and… fix it ~That’s the path I have chosen. I’m the problem, not alcohol. I need to fix me. Simple.

Credits: Sven Ellirand

Albert Camus~ 
    The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world.

A woman committed suicide at our hotel Thursday night. She was found in the bathtub;overdosed on pain pills.The rumors between co-workers are endless. But she made it known she was fighting with her husband. ~We make courtesy calls to every guest shortly after their check-in to insure quality.           She left us with this. 

             Five years ago to this month there was another suicide at this hotel, same room-141. 

Pic Credit: Sven Ellirand 

 

I don’t understand what’s so seductive about being a victim. We brace the sense of being a victim almost to the extent that it blinds us to the pain of others. It’s like a suit of clothes that’s so comfortable today!    

I had flowers delivered to her and sent a Mother's Day card... of course it made her cry.  

I don't remember Mother's Day last year.