QWren

This week's blog is hiding in another blog of mine. Tricky, tricky!
http://qwren.blogspot.com/

Stylishly rough around the edges

Teetering on the edge of a cold and watching When Harry Met Sally this evening. Have finished my asymmetrical organza wrap skirt with volume save for the no-sew buttons, which require hammering. Knowing me, I plan to save this hammering business for when I am in a more shop-appropriate place. No longer going to live in the tiny mouse house. The Celesbian will no longer be my landlord. Loverboi and I are struggling to find peace as a couple under the stress of his job, which is currently wrought with negativity and scapegoating (celebs...go figure!), particularly in relation to this guest house.

I am about to move into my new place, which is in Echo Park, a cheap and particularly charming area of central L.A. with a Cuban bakery just a few yards from my back door and a more diverse version of the Wayward Cafe down the street. It's pretty much close to everything, and my closet is so big I could live in it. It has it's own light switch AND window. I can't wait! New roomie Carey is a witty and charming SF-stereotype who reminds me of my old buddy Rosco, and his gf, proclaimed addict-in-the-program with Rihanna's good looks and a personality I took to immediately. Last night Poni, Carey and Ashley (the gf) and I had dinner on the carpet and argued animatedly about decorating and told the stories of our romances...

I rode to the Abbey in the cats-and-dogs downpour to meet Mike Walker who's in town for the weekend, but he ended up "walkered" somewhere, which I predicted would happen (we're having brunch tomorrow with his posse) and I ended up dancing the night away at venues riddled with femmes, fags, and amazing, amazing dancers. Never have I been so inspired by a city to dance like a maniac. Never have I seen so many femmes dance on a bar, or had a true femme queer friend. I now have two. No three.

Also, the other day I saw some girls in literally their underwear at the local coffee shop. Forget workout gear, these fashion forward ladies were one step away from the full Monty. I wanted to take their picture, but I got embarrassed. Ha!

Tequila Breath

I smell like tequila this morning. Went to a party after house hunting all day and getting a couple offers for apartments. It's nice to walk into a party and be greeted by a bunch of bear hugs after weeks of being anti-social for schoolwork's sake. It's nice to feel young and wild still, watching the subtle dramas unfold as the fridge empties. It's nice to slow dance in a living room filled with conversations while the pop mixes stream endlessly from Ipod after Ipod. It's fun to finally let a little loose in Silverlake while Laurel Canyon sleeps as usual.

It's been raining here. Cats and Dogs fall from a full-moon sky bright and enabling. I hear the weather in Seattle has been lovely. I am looking forward to visiting my beloved home city for a couple of days at the beginning of April, perhaps, to see Glasses in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and my parents, and take my little bicycle back to LaLa with me on the Amtrak. It will be so romantic!

I am moving in with a cute kid named Carey. We met at a lesbo dance night in West Hollywood the day after he moved here from SF. As the girls doused themselves in booze and jiggled about the bar surfaces at Truckstoppin' those few months ago, we made a bunch of eye contact on the dance floor, knowing that our friendship was destiny. However, yesterday he told me that I'm actually just one of those "staring people" that stares a whole hell of a lot. He and his adorbs girlfriend told me that it seems like I'm thinking sexual things even when I may not. So there's that. Hmmm....no one has ever told me that before. AND apparently it's obvious I'm a gay. Girls at school assume my partner is a "she" automatically, or at least they did the other day. So now I'm an obviously gay stare-er. This brings up a funny conflict for me. On one hand, I really like the idea of people thinking I make a lot of eye contact, and that them perceiving me as a perv doesn't sway their interest in me as a friend. But on the other hand, I just really don't want babes--I mean girls--WOMEN--to think "Oh, God, that Lesbian over there keeps looking at me in a sexual way, " and getting scared or feeling awkward. I feel like one of the main reasons it took me so long to come out is because I just didn't want to make my girly girlfriends all uncomfortable. What if they don't want me to come to their sleepovers anymore? But I digress.

College is harder than I remember...

I have been doing so much homework I feel crazy. I've been getting almost no sleep, staying up late doing so much drawing I've had to get reading glasses to help my eyes. They keep doing this thing where they dart back and forth really fast--like a spasm--when I concentrate too hard for too long. My body is suffering a bit. I've got some dark circles, a weird pimple on my lower back (what?) and I've been eating too many snack bars as meals, so I've lost weight but I'm feeling bloated. I really shouldn't be blogging, but my presence on the internet must live on! I must remain on the map. I can't let my social life, even if it is only facebook and a blog entry every week, disappear completely. Superbowl Sunday was spent painstakingly hunched over a sewing machine, cursing searsucker and its tiny tiny stripes that simply must match on my bias-cut summer dress or I won't feel satisfied! I am going the over achiever route, as well, which doesn't make things easier, but I do get more out of my work. I am still completely in love with this, even if it kills me, I will still love it deeply.

Poni has left for the weekend to attend a college reunion, and I am left in a quiet house, with only my own mess, for three days. I think I'll throw a party! (Kidding, Poni...and like I'd have the time! Pshaw!)

Anyhow. How boring to only write about how busy I am! I am trying to find new ways to play with my gender on a daily basis. One day I am computer-nerd-meets-Ramona-Quimby and another day I'm fairy-princess-elf-meets-Sailor-Moon, or whatever it may be. I'm into the idea of mash-ups, taking two possibly opposing gender concepts and having them shake hands in clothing form on my body. I currently am into maintaining my hairy armpits, but properly grooming everything else. I just can't find shaved armpits attractive. They creep me out, and remind me too much of babies with diaper rash. Gross.

Looking forward to Valentine's Day, usually a fondly-remembered holiday for me, getting my own place in the next couple of months, having a break from school to let loose on my dress form, and writing a few songs while I'm at it.

Warrior Princess

My friend Kitt just sent me this link on Model Andrej Pejic, androgenous model and babe to boot. Very inspiring. Check it out. It makes perfect sense to me that people with a tad more XY than XX would make excellent models because they often naturally have the long, slightly spindly, or at least the ultra shapely legs required for looking painfully gorgeous in clothes. Why not leave the modeling to those with the natural bone structure?

My ideal runway show would feature all androgenous people, and no one in the audience would be able to tell, or care, what was under the skirts or in the pants of my models. That's also how I plan my future wedding. And my future post-apocalyptic commune, for that matter.

I had an artistic revelation last week. Pink Belly Dancer was in town and for her birthday, we perused Melrose Avenue with avengence, she acquiring tiny dress after tiny dress, our heads all buzzing with the clothes and the people and the weather and the friendship and the frantic fun of it all. I managed to get my ear pierced again, forgetting completely that body art inflicts a certain amount of trauma, on so many levels, to the wearer. My brain slowly congealed at the combination of (window) shopping and pierced adrenaline, eventually finding it rather hard to think, but suddenly bursting into tears over "it all!" when Poni and I finally made it home. Sweetness listened and cooked for us while I let out a slew of worries, most of them my being concerned over lack of inspiration. But the sensation of having my thoughts cancelled out by opposing experiences helped me get to the root of the matter. I had, for a brief window, insight into this very intensely awesome part of myself; the deep, gutteral artist, the cleverest me, the most sensitive to my powers.

I have since felt incredibly tapped into my "art crazy" as I like to think of it. I have been thinking of words that go well with art, like ART FOOD, or ART TART, or (as a reference to a brand my friend Biff invented in our early twenties) ART CRUSH. My theory in this is that in doing simple exercises to think of things in a creative context, even if it's a little tick-lick habit as such simple poetry, will bring me back into the moment and think for myself. Creatively. Melrose Ave. gave me an extra juicy shot of what I find so subtly overwhelming about Los Angeles, all in one not-so-subtle go. It helped me to feel more clearly how senstive I can be to it's influence, and it had started to cloud my own instincts. I should be free.

I feel a bit more liscence to do as I please, and my art projects have been wildly passionate deepening affairs in my head. I am in love with my work, and that feels amazing. The other day I imagined myself a dancing warrior princess while practicing yoga to Lorena McKennit. And you know what? I f*cking felt like a real warrior princess when I was done, having turned on my magical powers.

Freedom restored

The Prius is back in my life!

Freedom!

I decided to take the eco-friendly road this morning to school by parking it at a park-and-ride in Universal City and taking the Red Line train from there. I squeezed that beast miraculously into the sliver of a singular space left on the lot of hundreds of spaces, and hunched to keep myself from toppling under the incredible weight of my bookbag as I took confident lunges into the depths of the public transportation underground I am now so happy acquainted with. Upon realizing I had left my wallet in the car, I turned into a monstrous storm cloud and pillaged the energy back to the Prius, huge bookbag in tow, my grumbling in no way aiding the aching in my back. I would use the rolly bag I have for school, but it's impossible to get over the shoulder to haul up and down stairs when all of LA is in my way and I have to forgo the elevator/escalator (I get those two mixed up).

This week has been a quick one. All of my time has been devoted to school, although I have been taking periodic breaks to bask in sunlight. Oh, glorious, glorious sunlight. Part of me feels very smug about all of this sun. Poor Seattle, all cold and dreary. For endless months it will continue to be dreary. And I get to wear this crochet halter top and none but a light sweater in the evening. I get to squint under the shade of my hand in the city streets. I get to give my armpits air AND sun as I lay spread out on the mouse house patio. What has two thumbs and lives in a sunny place? THIS GUY.

Plans to move out are solidly planned as plans for sure. But the when and where are unsure. For now, I will be concerning myself with textiles, flats, croquis, and pinning my bias cut dress together so properly it will make my teacher's head spin.

Everything's Changed. As per usual. Sigh.

I am in no mood to blog, but I am obliged to write every week because I'm not giving up! Never will I ever give up! So what if I don't really have a stable, sane place to live or a car and I have to rely on Poni to cart me back and forth from the mouse house to the bus stop! So what if I feel like my hair might be thinning, or going grey, and I've still got stomach problems from India! So what if I might never be able to fill all the career demands my creative instincts inspire...I will be tortured with creativity forever! So what if I am down to two beebs and the only song I've written lately is a song commemorating the death of Winona, David's eternal love?! (long story, for those of you who do not know the intense relationships my budgies nurture...) So what if I miss my friends and family, but am numbed by the intensely perfect weather and the copious hours of schoolwork I must constantly be fitting in!

Anyhow...I don't even know why I'm complaining. Life is great, why would I be in a bad mood? I suppose a bit of bitterness is rising to the surface of me as seeming turmoil (i.e. change) again rakes its fingernails over my home life. Anytime my security (i.e. habits) is(are) threatened I become sullen. And that's that. I really am as sensitive as they say. Anything could set me off! The trick is: to hide or not to hide? To communicate or let it go? Which battles of the many that are possible are worth fighting?! GOD I love school. Nothing could be more riveting than the fiber content of every one's clothing in Textile Science, or draping a bias-cut Claire McCardell inspired seersucker dress, or deciding whether a baby hem as opposed to a single needle hem would be appropriate for a blouse, or journaling about fashion theorists and digressing into canyons of self-assertion that fashion matters, damn it! It matters to ME!

Poni got a massage from a lady named Goldenbear recently (a birthday present from me) who can tell you all about your past lives, and often the past lives of others in your life while she does so. She told him that he and I have known each other in a couple of other lives, but not many, and those she did mention included a life in which he and I were both little Russian tailor boys who made cool outfits for ourselves and sometimes got drunk and fooled around (we were into each other but communist Russia didn't allow our rainbows to come out, I'm sure). In another life Poni was an actor on the stage and I was his costume designer.

In any case, I have been into fashion (and gay, apparently) for many lifetimes. I feel like a little Russian tailor boy in many ways as I go about my life at this school. There are plenty of gays (men/MTFs) here, but they may as well be straight California girls, too. Really hot, really bitchy, and really intimidating. Today I was EXTRA fixated on the "fabric" on the other girls in my classes. Must have just been a full moon...yep. Very overwhelming and stimulating, to say the least, to be surrounded by so much beauty. These girls are true glamazons. They wear expensive clothes and are way too cool to be friendly to a nerdy, giggly little Seattle queer like me. I wonder if they can tell that I'm nearly ten years their senior? I wonder if they can tell that I'm queer and even if I were looking at their clothing and not their glistening...features, would they think I was perving on them like everyone else in the world must be? These days, here in California, I wonder that a lot...whether my gayness is written all over me or not? (aside from the rainbow on my wrist...I know, I know...) Whether my age is written all over me or not? Even if I wanted a reliable answer, everyone here in Los Angeles seems just a tad too fake (or is it nice? polite?) to ask.

Second Week of School and Full Upheaval of Sorts

Drama, drama, drama. For once, the world, rather than my own devices, has me sinking in a pool of dramatic circumstances. To view the world from an FIDM point of view would reveal a sea of nobodies with a smallish storm of fashion designers reigning overhead, judging the sea and raining on it because it wasn't wearing the correct water. Fashion students seem to feed on negativity, like high school students (which many of them barely used to be), and I find myself trapped in conversations in which the bulimic girl is not embraced, but shunned for being a bitch...in which the students text under the tables, and complain at the extensive amount of homework. I find it difficult to make friends here, to say the least. It makes me feel old to no longer be the brunt of dramatic episodes, the high priestess of gossip, the girl (or should I say..."woman"?...is that correct yet?) who enjoys and appreciates her schoolwork as a vice rather than a chore. When did I manifest into the homebody work-a-holic my Cancerian legacy promised I would become? When did everyone get so young and bitchy? I no longer look for fat rolls and zits in the mirror so much as wrinkles and gray hairs and varicose veins (we Cancers are also very vain)...that is, when I'm feeling terribly susceptible to the mutiny of fashion consciousness. The most vain of all art forms. Possibly the most ridiculous and necessary art form simultaneously.

Luckily, I feel a deep connection with this art form, and a supreme challenge to have come into this kind of scholastic environment at perhaps the very peak (or a little past the peak) of my youth and beauty. So much emphasis is placed on the designer to be competitive, not only as an artist, but as a beautiful individual representing their art in publicity. As an individual realizing my own deterioration and the sad reality of inevitable change, and as an extremely emotional and most certainly vain individual at that, embracing this career will be a challenge of utmost importance.

Moving on...

Aside from drama and judgment being a general theme as of late in my work life, I have been facing many dramatic and challenging mental twists in my home life as well. What is it about the holiday season that rapes one of so much...composure? Clarity? HAPPINESS? Why must the darkness bring upon darkness? I feel strangely empowered in this years wintry months, and found myself puzzling at the somber moods of my Seattle friends, and unpredictably, my Los Angeles family as well. Poni has found his job challenging in that he is a member of a family for a living, which is altogether invasive, subtle, and deeply impacting. To feel the wave of energy from a family blossoming and pubescent is very humbling, indeed. And I know so well the incredible power of pubescence. Oh, how I continue to marvel at my own ongoing pubescence to this day! Pubescent families, including my relationship with Poni, are like wildly hormonal teenagers. DYING for responsibility, unable to comprehend their inability to fully grapple with that responsibility, and also quite prone to DRAMATIC bursts of immaturity.

On top of all that was vaguely implied above, the car I have been using has broken down (RIP? Gotard the Prius), leaving me completely reliant on my mate for transportation to and from our bungalo in the rolling hills of Laurel Canyon. It is all I can do to keep myself feeling sane in the midst of almost total reliance on other people. My housing has been provided for me, my car was free-ish, my schooling is currently on loan but the same principle applies, and now I'm left without the ultimate freedom of transport. I'm trying to keep my composure and gratitude while enjoying the peace and magic of Laurel Canyon, but also praying from the depths of me to somehow find myself comfortably in the arms of the one person I feel truly comfortable relying on: Me. But alas, lessons are learned when we are uncomfortable, right? F*cking lessons can kiss my....I mean, I'm so happy to be able to have all of these incredibly interesting opportunities, and so many generous and amazing people in my life!!!

The library closes here (FIDM) at 7 PM on Fridays because no one aside from me is dorky enough to want to study on a weekend evening. It is quiet enough to hear the GaGa whining from the earbuds on the guy eight computers down from me. I henceforth pack up my rolling-tote and commence into the dark and tepid night, onto the bus and further into the bungalows of my coveted friendgroup, where we will toast reality all over again.

First Day of School...Again!

I have a love/hate relationship with the first day of school. Inevitably, I am a subtle jumble of knots inside. Nervous, bashful, and anticipating a wave of intense pressure and responsibility so great as to shrink me even further in stature. However, I have new school clothes, a fantastic number of slumber hours under my belt, a relaxed, healthy overall person thanks to an extensive and fulfilling holiday break, and a raring excitement to get back in the game of fashion. Bring on the textile science, draping, fashion sketching, and seminars! Bring on the Hogwarts-style instructors with their blood-painted nails and cat eyes! Bring on the swarm of highly fashion conscious but rarely friendly fellow fashion students! Bring on the young whipper-snappers and the older fashion students poised to hide their inner turmoil over the great tragedy of aging! Bring on the lack of time to eat, play, go out, or do anything but be a fashion design student! Bring on the lovely humming and buzzing of my life as a student, currently on the President's Honor Roll with a 4.0 GPA (we'll see how long that lasts!), armed with years of both matriculation at other establishments, and also years of partying-out-my-seemingly-endless-search-for-some-form-of-freedom-I-can't-put-my-finger-on-it.

Anyhow, I simply must do some asanas now. More updates to come on the fresh quarter of the "winter" we are experiencing here in the this city I fall harder for the longer I stay.

Cheers!