This morning I got up late after tossing and twisting my way through the ninety-nine degree night. Even the dog was up and roaming...no place was cool. All the air conditioning did was freeze my butt and shake me out of semi-consciousness. When I flipped it off, I woke in a pool of dampness, feeling as if my brain had melted between blinks. So, I admit my mood. I'm feeling old and worried and slightly worn around the edges.
My sister in law's Mom was diagnosed with a return of her cancer--only now it's spread. Even as I deal with Bev's chemo therapy (maybe) issues and Dana Farber coming up fast, I get this news. So, our family, both blooded and extended, is in full battle gear with the generation before us going down fast. Between this and the sucky economy (and most of my friends being unemployed and losing their benefits in minutes) and too many talented, amazing, pure-hearted people suffering or just freeze-framed in their lives) it's no wonder the final slap of muggy weather has done me in.
Attempting to "refresh myself", I logged on to the L.A. scene, via the newspapers covering all those mean streets of my last life. The Suicide Club was hosting a book bash for a tattoo art school opening and was running a slide-show. Why do these slide shows always look the same? I mean, seriously. I could have clipped this from my first days in L.A., at the end of the 70's...I mean at least the punkside of town...same leather, same school-girl cut plaid shred skirts, thigh high spike boots (or Doc Martins!) pale foundations on everyone,no matter one's age or race; same dyed black, bleached or maroon locks; same chains and tats and black or blood lips and nails; same piercings (maybe more ornate jewelry); same twenty somethings trying too hard and same thirty and forty somethings trying to attract them; same worn out has been fifty and up somethings who sponsored the event and then try to populate it so they have "a cool thing" to go to and Tweet home about...also looking for desperate sex and ego-inflaters...the art was just High School anime and tat art..mostly on sketch paper and some with the binder ring tear outs at the top still intact. Even the photos were bad...not ironically so, either...just poor flash photos of girls either anorexic or chubbed out, squashed into ill-fitting bustiers and raggedy fishnet hose, their butts out and breasts reflecting the flash better than their teeth. Everybody had ciggies and drinks and was grinning.
Grinning.
Guess I used to, too.
In other clubs there were better d.j.'s ; better outfits; more expensive cover charges and probably even better art...or at least art that took more than an hour on the bus or between classes to "sketch" and then have framed at Aron Brothers...oh do I sound cranky? Or bitter? Or both? I guess it's just I keep hearing these high falutin' rants in technology classes, about how all this technology in the class room has elevated the learning potential sky high and how did we ever get along without it and that the new kids coming up are so much more original and sophisticated visually and aurally, etc. and then I see what's being published and pushed out there and it seems it is the same old same old...only now it's same old same old times four...the images being produced are anything but original or high minded (Where's evidence of Bloom's Taxonomy? Huh?). People are doing what they've been doing for the last fifty plus years--before the Net and cell and FaceBook and Twitter and Flickr and the rest...and it doesn't look or sound much better. Or even different. Except now, we can see it the next day via media feeds, links to video and slide shows and on YouTube...for free.
I hope the weather breaks. I hope we all find interesting and self-sustaining employment. I hope we all heal. I hope we make it past the breakers--all of us.
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