Working Artist Support

My nextdoor neighbor has an original Louise Burgeois piece hanging on his wall, amongst many other respectable artist pieces.

I want to start buying art for my house, but not traditional art. I want art pieces made by contemporaries: people that makes art nowadays, and plans to live out of it in the middle of XXI century.  Some starving artists are just starving because our lack of support, rather than lack of talent. I want pieces from people that make you reconsider art, and not only art but also life itself.
This are things that my husband and me would love to have framed in our livingroom.

I will post the artwork at home when we finally get it :)

"La Mona Lisa" by FontFace

 

 

 

"WORK HARD" by Anthony Burrill

Paris in February

I was at Paris for work. I was dating this guy- my now husband- and I had this strong and, at the same time scary feeling, that he was the one. That I was going to marry him. I wanted to believe I was wrong, I wanted to find his faults right there and then so I could get disappointed and let this crazy idea go; but I couldn't. My heart was right and eventually my head understood. Love has grown stronger everyday since. This song was everywhere back then, and it was very appropriate: he left no room for doubt .
http://youtu.be/f845_v41YFo

About my quirks: in 2012 I can tell you what I think

To someone that asked me about my quirks. I'm pretty pleased about being able to say what I think. Finally!

"I don't know what to tell you about my quirks, just things that you'd get to see as time goes by; things that are part of me that I can not even point out because it's people that find them weird to me they're normal. I am normal cause I am true to myself.
And well you know, my faith. There is no negotiation there. I will not sleep with anyone and not because it's written somewhere but because I believe that I want to sleep with the same person for the rest of my days. That's tragic for most men hahaha! I bet it makes them nauseous when they read it and they already had a structured plan of how to get into my pants! but you know, everybody has their deal breakers. That's mine. I like things in certain order- oh maybe that is one of my quirks!- and that just comes last. I don't open easily. I like to feel I'm like with my best friend to feel comfortable to enough, and as far as I remember I didn't picked my best friends out of a whim or in 2 days. It took me time to get to know them.
I think it should be really easy: you like someone or you don't; you feel like you will not be able to let it go, or you know that person will be easily replaced by anyone around the corner in 2 days time. It's easy. I don't believe any more in relationships that make you waste years of your life and go nowhere. Most of my friends from childhood and high school are boys, and I grew up with my cousins (all boys) and I learnt that you're either the girl someone wants or not. I tried to think that it was just real for those boys. Last year I proved in my own skin that it applies to everyone: they want you or you are just an spare part. Easy :)
is that quirk or one too many? or just me being rational?"

Forever after... How so?

It's the holiday season and you get updates from everyone in the family and what are they up to with their lives: divorce and misery has been all I've heard from my family in the last 2 weeks.
After all this year that is almost gone, and meeting people with such low umbral of tolerance and frustration, willing to make no effort for what they want for their life ; hedonistic and childish: Selfish people. I started wondering again: do I really want someone in my life? I've seen the tragedy of couples breaking down to bits because the relationship works more like jockey than waltz: there is no dance, no rhythm, no harmony. They don't move together looking at each other. It's just one thinking that can command the other to take all the weight on his back, all the work load, but with no right to decide the direction cause he/she is the rider on on top that leads... Then the rider picks up the medal and leaves the horse. It's not a team, not a couple. It's a rider and a horse and sadly that's what marriages and couples are like sometimes. Don't get me wrong there are worse case scenarios than this, but this is not the way life should be.
"Forever after" "until death due us part" sound closer everyday: they both sound like out of a fairy tale; an unrealistic story, written about a non human world.
This is not the most positive note I've ever written but I'm honestly concerned .

Laura had a little lamb, little lamb

I'm past the insults

Today I went for a bite at my new neighbours house. They invited me to come over because they had an "x factor night". I couldn't care about the x factor but I did care about knowing and bonding with my new neighbours: an engaged couple with zillions of nice friends.

When I was leaving to come back to mine, one of the girls asked me if I could tell her where the Liverpool street station was. I told her that I was actually going to walk that way. We were walking and chatting about our lives in detail. We chatted all night but, for instance, we hadn't tell each other our names. So, now knowing each others name everything was much better- at least for me.

We were close to the station and a guy stopped the car and said to me "oh nice glasses". There was silence. I said to her "don't worry, I'm past the insults. I don't care about them anymore". She said, well I don't think that was an insult. I think that is like when boys pull girls' hair at primary school:is just their inept way of saying I really like you". I sadi to her "oh really? I never really saw it that way. Then why were you in silence? I thought you felt embarrassed about our species just like me" and she said "because someone actually stopped their car just to say something to you. I have never seen that"

Why can't I read things like a normal girl? Why does it take me months, years or to be told by someone else how reality looks like to realize real life? Maybe I have bumped into great chances and I just picked the bad choices because they are more obvious.

Moving on: packing and moving

I came back from NY last week, dropped my suitcases and left straight for work. Work until late because I didn't wanted to come back to my flat. I was excited to come back to London. Not excited about leaving my friends or the new baby in the family -or even my mother- but I was excited about coming back to quit my old job, to sign for a new contract, look for a new place to live with a garden and some big windows: to start a new life.
I came back and found this package that this man sent me with some illustrations about our relationship (?) still sitting on my table, old receipts of things we did together,  a fridge full of left overs of things to be thrown away, my bobble bottle which he broke without noticing and I never said anything; I found that I had a new state of mind and had to live in the same polluted shit hole! I was living around the crumbs of my past in which I couldn't really recognize myself. A  not so long-ago past in which I was committing the same sin against myself I usually fall for: settling for less than I want and know I can get.
I was trying to build up happiness for someone- that once again- didn't even want me, but this time worse than prior times, because he lied to himself constantly he lied to me as well. He lied to himself not to feel the pain of all his loss, he rather delusions over real happiness. Did he ever said the true? I don't know and now I don't care. All I know is that I don't want to be in that situation again. I know what I want and that is not even close to it. The problem was -somehow still is- I am living in this space; the plot where this play happened. I needed to clean it to feel at least that we were in a blank stage, until I find a home.

I started cleaning right after work, with jetlag and all! Surprisingly I found more emotional corpses than expected... I found corpses from a year ago too. My mind started playing all this movies with smells and tastes from last December when I just first move; the feeling of excitement of my first dates: what to wear, the parfum, the food; the fact that I was having crackers and soda when he called me and asked me to go to this incredible Mexican restaurant because he craved to see me again. Then I looked at the counter and I looked at some knitted hats I had planned to put on a stuffed bear I was making for his Christmas present- the recent man's Christmas present; when I emptied the fridge I went back to February and found a frozen chicken stew I prepared for my ex and he never came home to try it. It was there frozen, just like the whole package of feelings: "how does that make you feel Laura?" and I couldn't processed that, not even to throw the stew away, so I just froze it.

I've had a long week at work, they know I'm leaving now so I have lots to leave organize: all the Christmas merchandising done, displays looking dandy, windows looking great...I haven't had the time to keep on cleanning. I have manage to make the space a little more liveable in the meantime I leave. The only thing that kills me is the fact that I live in flat 17. When I invited the first time this last guys for a movie he said " 17. I like that. It's a good number" I asked why and just for a change, he didn't say anything and it just kills me every time I look at my door when I get home, even if I try not to, I still know I'm 17.

Yesterday I came back from work early and I had too many options: visit the cats, going out for drinks with a friend, going for a movie, keep on cleaning my flat or just stay at home doing nothing. If you read me often would perhaps thought that I choose number 1, but yesterday I actually chose number 5: do nothing. I warmed up my challah and pour some fresh orange juice, took them to bed, chat with my friend about the baby and to my mom; watched 2 documentaries and fell asleep. While asleep I had a nightmare: I dreamed about him. He was always worried about me checking his stuff , rather phone or agenda or anything of his. I never really felt like,  I respect privacy but his reactions every time I took anything to tease him, always made me feel really uncomfortable. He had shit to hide and I honestly don't care what it is consciously at least. Apparently, my subconscious was too bothered about that because in my dream I opened all the things I didn't in real life and all the stuff I found was disturbing and a half! So this morning when I woke up I felt the URGENT need to keep on cleaning.

As I started to get rid of papers and old receipts, I found the receipts from what I used to call "my perfect Saturday". It was a Saturday when he had a bike ride, food at Southbank, a nap in the park and a movie at my house. That day I thought we had a bright future. I felt happy, relaxed and in peace just being myself. I found the bikes receipts, and other receipts that I was keeping to make a journal book about our adventures. That was the first one. When I saw that I felt nauseous. I felt like I can't trust myself, and that is the worst feeling on Earth for me. If I can't trust none and then I can't trust myself, what's left for me? So I realized I might just have God left. Maybe, I can't trust myself because I believe in the goodness of people. I believe that people mean what they say and turns out that it hasn't happened in too many cases, way too often in this last year. I don't want to live my life mistrusting just because there is sick people out there. I think I just need to learn what I realized I've been learning so far: how to make the difference between genuine and not. Sometimes is hard, with liars I can do, but the problem is when people lie to themselves, they talk to you saying the true: their truth... how fucked up is that?

I found a new place. I'm packing. It has a garden and big windows! Oh and a fireplace! I can't wait to have hot chocolate after work in bed with my fireplace on. Or for summer to come and plant different types of flowers all in white; plant some oregano and basil to cook with...have a compost area. Good thing this is a Georgian house I'm renting now, so no flat number certainly not 17.