Ancient Music of the Spirits

Then I set the stick down and walked away.

Pocayenta and Geronowitz

There was this family of Schmohawk Indians sitting around the shtetl one night. The papa, Geronowitz; the mama, Pocayenta; and the beautiful young daughter, Minihorwitz.

"So, nu," says the daughter, "You'll never believe."

"What?" says the mama.

"Today, at high noon, I was proposed to in marriage."

"Yes?" says the mama, "so what did you say?"

"I said Yes."

"You said Yes?"

"I said Yes."

"That's wonderful," says the mama. "She said Yes! Did you hear that Geronowitz, Minihorwitz is getting married!"

"I heard," says the papa, "I'm kvelling. So who's the lucky boy?"

"Sittin' Bagel."

"Sittin' Bagel?" says the mama, "of the SoSiouxMe tribe?"

"That's the one," says Minihorowitz.

"Oy, Geronowitz! The SoSiouxMe's! There are so many of them! How can we feed them? How can we get them all in our teepee for the wedding?"

"We'll think of something," says Geronowitz.

"Geronowitz! Get off your tuches and bring me a buffalo!" says the mama.

"What, at this hour?"

"No, Geronowitz, for the wedding! I can make gedempte buffalo tsimmis from the meat, and we can make an extra teepee from the hide. Get me a buffalo!"

So Geronowitz goes out to hunt a buffalo. A day goes by, and a night and Geronowitz has not come back. Another day and another night, and still no sign of him. Another day and half the night, and Geronowitz comes home - Exhausted. Staggering. And empty-handed..

"Geronowitz! I've been worried sick. Where have you been? And where's my buffalo?!"

"It's like this," he says. "On my first day out, I hunted high, and I hunted low, and I finally found a buffalo. But this buffalo, he made Mickey Rooney look strong. It was a tiny, scrawny little buffalo, with no meat on his bones for gedempte buffalo tsimmis, and barely enough hide for a rain hat. So I settled in for the night to try again the next day.

"The second day, I looked high, and I looked low, from this way and that way, and I finally found a buffalo. He was a big buffalo, with lots of meat, and lots of hide, but I tell you, Pocayenta, this was the ugliest buffalo I ever saw in my life. 'This', I thought to myself, 'is not the buffalo for MY daughter's wedding.' So again, I settled in for the night to try again the next day.

"The third day, I got up early, and I looked high and I looked low, from this way and that way, going up hills and down hills, suddenly, there it was! A magnificent buffalo. It was a big buffalo. It was, as buffaloes go, a beautiful buffalo. It was, if I say so myself, the perfect buffalo. 'This', I says to myself, 'is the buffalo Pocayenta wants for Minihorowitz's wedding.'

"So I reach into my backpack quietly for my tomahawk and, as I tiptoe over to the buffalo, I raise my tomahawk slowly over the buffalo's neck, when suddenly, like a bolt of lightning from the sky, I see it."

"See what?" says Pocayenta.

"I've brought the milchedik tomahawk!"

Too Expensive To Eat!

With the steady increase in the price of...everything...lately, we've been becoming increasingly more broke, forcing my mother to go back to work and myself to seek "real" employment (at least temporarily).

Today I was sketching out food that I can afford and is easy to stretch while money is tight.

That Old Familial Feeling

I share a birthday with this person. In fact, when my mother found out she had to have a c-section she insisted on my being born on her birthday. "She" is my aunt.

I grew up knowing this story about her wanting me born on her birthday, which made me ponder even more from the time I could comprehend it until now why she never appeared to like me in the least. The person in this picture is not the 52 year-old woman I know. She is not the same person who kicked us out of our own family 10 years ago.

I don't know this girl. This girl is someone my mother liked and respected. These pictures were taken by the cops back in the mid 70s. I don't really know the whole story, because I didn't really ask, but she and my mother were walking home from school and a group of girls jumped them. 4 held my mother down while the others bashed in my aunt's face with their fists and class rings. I think my aunt was even on crutches at the time with a broken leg.

When I look at these pictures I see so many people in my family, myself included. We all have a really strong family resemblance, though none of us really look alike, you can just definitely tell we're all related.

I don't really know what my point is. I guess just nostalgia for something that I never even experienced, but nostalgia all the same.

Faren Makes...Tissue Paper

I have no packaging for large items, like pillows, so I went ahead and printed some tissue paper to wrap them in because the USPS mailers are not very fancy and definitely not Faren Makes Art-istic.

Once upon a time...

...in 1955, my grandmother ran away from home on a greyhound bus from Tennessee to Los Angeles.

I sort of yearn to follow suit and hop a bus somewhere far away. Too bad it's not 1955 anymore.

Lucky Lizard

A very lucky lizard sits atop my sister's head. Judging by his battle scars, this lizard should be dead. Escaping for a second time from a feline's gnashing jaws, up an unsuspecting lady's leg, this lucky lizard crawls.

This lizard has puncture wounds and a new tail growing, evidence of a previous encounter with one of our cats. Today he got caught by another one of our cats and crawled up my mother's leg. He just sat on her hand for the longest time until my sister tried to get him to crawl on hers. Instead he ran up her arm and burrowed into her hair.

The Craft Barn

I went to the craft store I grew up going to for the first time in years to see if they had some tiny safety eyes that I was using for my bats that the big craft store no longer sells. When I was looking around the store I found some wooden mustaches and a 99 cent bear head.

The store smelled like my grandmother and my childhood, which was awesome and a giant bummer all at once.

Cabin Fever? Stir Crazy?

Nope. None of the above. In reality I'm suffering from a little PMS, boredom, and the frustration that comes from a whole city with not one single copy of Northern Exposure season 5.

Quite possibly my favorite TV show of all-time. Every few years I go through a big Northern Exposure phase where I become deeply addicted to the show and start wishing the town was real and frozen in time and start longing to run away to Alaska (even though the show was filmed in Washington... which I also love, so I could deal with that). The Hallmark Channel played reruns when I was in high school, I would watch it every night, remembering bits and pieces from when I was a kid and it was still on the air. When Hallmark got rid of it, I bought the first two seasons on DVD. Then several months ago I re-watched them and bought the next two. I'm currently on the last disc of season 4 and before I go into my own proverbial hibernation and start sewing for 2 weeks, I thought I'd grab season 5.

No such luck, I'm afraid. After transferring $43 from paypal to my bank account to run to town and buy season 5, I was left disappointed. First of all, my cash is stuck in limbo for a few days, and to top it off, there are 0 copies of any season in town now. So I opted to order it, but my money is still stuck neither here nor there and overstock.com takes paypal but my paypal money is now on its way to my bank account and goodness knows when it will arrive. Then I have to wait 2-15 days before I get the DVDs and by then I'll be at least half-way through my sewing and completely done with season 4.

Oh well!

More Tinks

Trink the Magical Tree Tink.


And two tinks I guess I never posted from May. That gold and maroon one is my favorite (as you can see I copied his face on the tree tink) but I can't find him anywhere...so I made a backup until I find this one.

Famous Tinks Throughout History

Who could forget Tinkey Tink, Hello Tinky, and Termit the Tink?

Death by pillow

Stayed up til about 10:00 am working on the first pillow prototype. I really need to use the sewing machine for these next time.

Coupling.

Maddie is one of my favorite girls and she and her boyfriend Pete are adorable. I am jealous. I want to be able to have couples artwork of me and someone in the not-so-distant future.

You know, other than this:

I really want to learn how to play the guitar. Every time I see wonderful girl musicians covering songs I love, or just being awesome in general, I cry a little inside because I can kind of sing but have no one to play with/for me!

Wind-chime and postcards.

The one on the left has a recipe for cooking rattlesnake. The one of the right is Billy the Kid.

Some dead friends. (Jesse James, Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid)

Yesterday we pretended we were not at home and did things around here that we've never done before. I wanted to go to the bead store outside of town that, in 24 years, I have never been to. They were, unfortunately closed (Tuesdays and Wednesdays. How. Bizarre.) So we went down the road a little bit further to this souvenir shop we've been to ONCE. I bought a skeleton wind-chime and some postcards. Then we drove back toward town but first we stopped at an antique (etc) shop I've never noticed (it's been there 21 years).

So Fresh

Earlier when I was in line at Walmart there was a, I’m sure, self-proclaimed “playa” behind me. He put his purchases up on the conveyor belt and they consisted of:

• A 24-pack of bottled water
• 2 Monster energy drinks
• A box of Snuggle Exhilarations dryer sheets scented “White Lavender and Sandalwood”

I guess even mad fly fellas need soft, pretty-smelling laundry.

Whoever you are. Wherever you are.

People don't understand the concept of a happy medium

At Target this evening a pregnant girl was in the line next to ours. Instead of investing in maternity clothes, she wore the clothes she clearly owned before she was pregnant, leaving the pants unfastened (revealing her red panties) and wearing a shirt that barely covered anything.

Once upon a time, maternity clothes were ghastly oversized pastel tents with lace and frills and bows and flowers. Today they make trendy, adorable, fitted clothing options for pregnant women (and even some of us unfortunate enough not to be able to find our size in regular stores and don't want to adorn ourselves in hideous plus-size monstrosities).

This is unnecessary. I wanted to apologize to her fetus.