off and back.

i spent years feeling unsettled... always working towards a something. i don't remember when it started exactly. university? just after? i am not sure. it seems like forever ago. there was always a something. tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow... forever waiting to be living completely.

(probably it is a 20s something. feeling like you are preparing for being a whole thing. (almost out of those. 20s...))

anyways. i wasn't, anymore, for a little while. just for a few months. all of the things stopped being somewhere else and were just being. i loved all of the things right here and right now. i was present and happy and good. job life home friends love city. it's not that before i was unhappy. just not there.

and then: there.

still looking forward and excited and wondering and nervous... but there. here... present.

and now. not, again. waiting. looking. and it is harder to go backwards. it turns out. than to feel behind in the first place. i am sick of looking forward. making choices for then instead of now. i would like to just be here.

i was very happy and very here.

ff

this week has heralded a few great conversations about rape and rape culture. (some not so great, too, but let's not focus on those right now.)

people outside of the feminist blogisphere have been engaging in rape culture discussions triggered by the horrible so sad awful rage-tears-inducing gang rape in india. and. while i do agree with the following...

{@pushinghoops}

i am still grateful that soooomething is happening and people are thinking and speaking and learning.

jill over at feministe links to two really thoughtful pieces that discuss purity and virtue. read them both. they're worth spending some time with.  

{from e.j. graff's piece for the american prospect}

and then, too, mom sent me this little dude which is very yes and i like it very much. (because, say it with me friends, feminism is not about women wiiinnnnnning, its about gender equality and a world that is accepting of masculinity and feminity that fall outside of the rigid little set of descriptors we're all supposed to adhere to.)

and also, this video which a dear old friend (hi jess!!) sent me.

somedays my heart hurts so bad for the state of the world, and somedays i have slivers of hopefulness and somedays... and everydays i am thankful and thankful and thankful for my own personal world, where, jokes aside about 'erin's silly feminist posts', i am loved and respected by my friends and family and given autonomy. if only everyone was so lucky. (if only that, then... universe fixed...)

**and as always seems to be the case when i write an ff post that isn't 100% angry-sad a little in advance of friday, i came across this piece last night about two young men raping their jiu-jitsu teammate in a parking lot instead of driving her home safely like they said they would do. and oh, fuck it. ow. oh. my heart. my angry-sad heart.**

saved my life

christmastime! i am feeling all of the feelings all of the time. EXPLODE EXPLODE EXPLODE!



happy monday. don't forget you get to light two advent candles now!

(oh, and. i'm sure you've all heard by now. but in case you haven't. toronto is the best. ikeamonkey.)

mercy me (the night is long)

*warning. this post is heavy and has swears. i wrote it late last night during a particularly angry bout of the night-time-sads. i thought about not posting it. but i try to give valid time and space to my night-time-sads even in the much calmer light of day. because they are very much a part of me and they are as real and as fleeting as anything else. so being honest with them is being honest with myself and you. but don't worry. i'm fine.*

{photo by james nord}

i am so lonely it is killing me.

i hate that. because it is not that i can't be alone.

i love being alone.

i hate all those 'learn to spend time with yourself' preachy pieces. i am a master of doing things alone.
often i'd rather watch the play or the movie alone. for a less edited reaction. to actually feel the thing rather than moderate. so as to never make anyone uncomfortable? so as to be accommodating and apropos?

but i want my fucking someone, god damn it. i deserve my fucking someone. and sometimes it is so much a part of me - the lacking of that part of me - that i can feel it everywhere. and i want to throw up and i want to punch walls. and i want to scream at all the people who are doing it wrong. that it is unfair that they get to go around pretending. thinking they know better and that i could have what they have if i just relaxed or some bullshit. and i watch them smash and train wreck their way through. and i find it completely exhausting. i am completely exhausted.

more hearts pumping like your own

oh oh OH OH OH OH! i wanna be best friends with this girl. i wanna BE this girl. oh she is a dreeeam she is perrrrrfect. just when i'm about to be all 'i think i've looked at about all the resort collections i care to look at...' BAM! POW POW! HAZZAH!

that HAIR?! freaking hell. i'm freaking out. genevieve?! have you seen this? i feel like you would love this hair. yeah? makes me think of you.

SO GOOD, guys! ugh. ooof. ugh.

{cédric charlier resort 2013, photos courtesy of cédric charlier by way of style.com}

ff (mini)

{borrowed from design crush - which is really rocking my world lately}

i want to note, first of all, that i don't feel that my father is an uninspired man! for the record! and, you know. a few other things in there. maybe not so me.

but. the anxiety, the plans, the final line. yup. yup yup...

in artschool my favourite 'artisty' word was ache. now it is anxiety. when the aching grows up a bit, i guess.

break my arms around the one i love

drop what you are doing. come quickly. rodarte.

rodarte does something to me that i can't properly explain. (though i will try through the next chunk of text to do just that. explain.)

it makes me want to cup the faces of strangers in my hands and tell them 'no, no, don't be sad. it will all be alright. there is hope...' (which i suspect would have the opposite of a calming effect on same strangers). it makes me want to cry. it makes me hopelessly happy and sensucht-y and ache-y. it feels so far away and so contemporary. nostalgic and modern as hell. the hardness of this world today that is cradled in an afghan and the understanding of our grandparents and the very different hardness of that world then. the understanding that life is hard and beautiful and fulfilling, and it could not be beautiful and fulfilling without the hardship.

or maybe i am projecting. but that is what i get from it.

and there is my prairie-heart. and there is that perfect hair and makeup. and the fantastic sickness in my stomach that is those shoes.

i had to try very hard not to just clip the entire collection. laura and kate mulleavy, you are my champions of wonderment.

{fall rodarte 2012, photos by monica feudi at feudiguaineri.com by way of style.com}

little echo voice

remember that quote i brought up from e.l.a.i.c.? about feeling more feelings? i am thinking about it again today. (most days, really. such a great quote.)

today my heart broke a little reading about a blogger who is quitting blogging (for a while, for forever... who knows) because her marriage is ending. i don't know her. not really. not at all, really. but i look at photos of her life all the time. i know about what she thinks about every monday. i know her daughters' clameyes. and her goodbye post made me mega sads.

and sometimes i wonder about how heavily i feel things. how completely i can be taken over by other people's experiences. and i worry. it is easy to go around hurting all the time for everyone because there is always something happening that is bad or sad or unfair. and it is hard for me not to. go along. the bonus is, though, that i also get to steal the best bits of feelings. the happiest, sparklingest bits. i get to feel those too. like they are my very own.

and i bet that's better than not. at least that is what i tell myself. i wonder what it is like for the people who can just go around feeling their own feelings and that's that. i wonder if i'd like it...

{ranunculus by irving penn, photo from artnet}

while i'm on this sort of thoughtful-achey-heart track, i also had some questions i have been thinking about. for my artstuff. for so long i have made art about relationships, the spaces around and between people, the connections. you know i haven't been making much art for a while now. a drawing here and there, sure, but nothing substantial. and at first it was because i couldn't. i needed to not. for a while. but now i would like to again. but i don't yet have a language to go along with the kinds of things i want to be 'talking' about in my work. blah blah. here, art-friends, are some questions. and if you have any wisdom at all for me, i would be grateful for it. (in the comments, or in the email. ekhooper@telus.net)

* how do you make something about

• nothingness
• a void
• a loss
• movement

* how do you make something about this very moment and all that it is and is not

* how do you make something about things that have ceased to be

* how do you make something about a lack of action or a thing that was not done

????

if i can begin to consider answers for those questions, i think i can begin to make 'art' again. i think. i hope.