FINALLY! The new site is up, go check it out:
http://www.powderbluedeath.com

Exquisite Lass will be left up in this archival state, I’m not sure how long, but at least for the rest of the year.

Hey everybody!! Mike is very close to finishing Powder Blue Death. It will be up in a couple weeks or so. In the mean (meen?) time, I am closing for commissions. There’s a chance I may never take commissions again. I’m notice a correlation between working and sugar binges. But we’ll see.

If you want me to drop you an emai when the new site is up, please email me at eleanor@exquisitelass.com and I’ll be making a list.

Ok guys, so I stupidly tipped over the tripod today and completely broke my camera. There’s no way we can afford another one for awhile. So I’m using it as an excuse to take a break from this site for awhile. There’s a teaching from the Buddha that says something about using a raft to cross a lake, but then when you get across to leave the raft because on the land it will only be a burden. I’m not going to update anymore, and in a few months Exquisite Lass will be no more. BUT, in it’s place will be Powder Blue Death. Remember a few months back I posted how my tkd instructor had given me that nickname and Mike registered the domain name right away? I will still be sewing and designing and accepting commissions, the site will just be a little different. I haven’t decided just how. But anyway, I AM open for commissions right now, and the site will remain up until I make the switch so you can still see examples of my work. The more commissions i get, the sooner I can buy a new camera to show you what I’ve been working on. I’m not going away, just taking a break and metamorphosing (ok I know that’s not a word) the site. Take it easy and don’t go to far, I’ll be back =)

Ok, so I looked it up at dictionary.com and neither the entry for fare, nor fair says anything about community gatherings. So I don’t know whether I want to an Art Fare or an Art Fair on Saturday. But anyway, that’s what we did with my family as a little pre-mothers day outing. Usually we actually go on mothers day but we decided to do something different this year. I just love these things, where all the artists come and set up their booths and we get to drool over obscenely priced goodies. I’m getting thriftier though. Last year I bought a $300.00 purse by Gena Ollendieck. This year I only spend $80.00. I’m getting better, or poorer. I got a gorgeous purse made by Theresa Gallup from a Japanese obi sash, black and sky blue with butterflies. Then Mike and I got the coolest thing I’ve ever seen anywhere. The most perfect watch by Debra Dresler. It’s a zen watch with all the gears taken out of it, and it has a stone with the word “NOW” scratched in it, and then half filled with sand.

My dad loaned me One Taste by Ken Wilber. I have many many pages with the corners turned down, so I’ll probably be posting on this several different time to talk about different things. Let me just see what’s first, hmm..

I and many others do a lot of criticizing of Christians because they’re always going around trying to convert other people, and that pisses a lot of us off, me especially. But when I read this:
“What would motivate you if you saw everything as the dream of your own highest Self? What would actually move you in this playful dream world? Everything in the dream is basically fun, at some deep level, exept for this: when you see your friends suffering because they think the dream is real, you want to relieve their suffering, you want them to wake up, too. Watching them suffer is not fun. And so a deep and powerful compassion arises in the heart of the awakened ones, and they seek, above all else, to awaken others-and thus relieve them from the sorrow and the pity, the torment and the pain, the terror and the anguish that comes from taking with dreadful seriousness the passing dream of life.”
I totally related to that, but then realized the hypocrisy of looking down on that feeling in others just because what they’ve found is different than what I’ve found. I don’t know everyone’s motives, but I know some Christians out there have found genuine peace and happiness in what they believe, and want to offer it to others to relieve their unhappiness. Those I cannot criticize. Also, if someone does believe in such a thing as hell, and they think enough of me not to want me to go there, then I appreciate them as well. Anyway, the point is, I’m working on a little bit of heart softening here. Plus, I need to clear this up with myself before I can think about waking up other people.

My dad loaned me a book to read called Buddhism is Not What You Think. It was pretty repetative, which made it a little boring in parts. But there was one sentence that sums everything up to perfection. “There’s no way here.” Sometimes I go back to review a book and I can’t say for sure what it was about, I’m glad do know I’m not alone:
“We sometimes find it disquieting just to sit ad listen, not taking hold of anything. We hear a Dharma talk and afterward when someone asks us about it, we say, “It was good.” What was it about?” they ask. To our surprise, we find we can’t say. Still, we feel like we got a lot out of the talk, even though we didn’t wak away with anything particular-that is, with anything we could grasp.”
Sorry if that makes for bad book reviews =)

Please ignore the ratty mess on top of my head today. I washed it for the first time and have to wait for Mike to get home to help me re-wax it.

Anyway, the other day we went to see Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival. One of my favorite one’s wasn’t on the program, I can’t remember the name. Where the stick figure man walks up to different girls and says, hi, or how are you, and they freak out and say I want my space, your smothering me, I just want to be friends, and proceed to cut him to pieces in different bloody manners. Then he walks up to the last girl and says, I have money, and she says I love you and they live happily ever after. Anyway, of course there was Happy Tree Friends which is my friend Matt’s favorite, but they don’t make me laugh like they used to. My favorite was The Boy Who Could Smell the Future which basically opens on one of those clone neighborhoods, the majority of the time is like an aerial view of the street with the lines of houses, then we go into one house and there’s a boy eating toast, and he says, I smell smoke, then BOOM their house goes up in a mushroom cloud, the end. My second favorite was Here Comes Dr. Tran. I have NO idea why.

Last night at Tae Kwon Do, our instructor asked us why we train. Everyone had some really good answers, balance (in life), re-setting the day, confidence, don’t want to loose what we’ve worked for, etc. I’ve been trying to answer this question myself for two years now. Every once in awhile when I start to get burnt out and have to consider whether to continue, this question comes up. It never gets answered, and yet I haven’t quit yet. The only answer that came to me was that it’s so much a part of my identity I wouldn’t be real without it. Of course that’s a shortened version, or not completely accurate I don’t know. See I know that I’m not really real anyway, that “me” is a construct of my ego. I feel as though my ego self is in the front of my head, and there’s an infinite nothingness in the back. Anything that comes out of that nothingness has always been right. Getting dreads for instance was not a calculated ego idea, but seemed to come out of nowhere from the back, which communicated it to my front through my mouth. (I said it without thinking it first.) So I was thinking maybe my martial art training is a part of my ego identity that it clings to for it’s own dear life, but what’s weird about it is that it also comes from the nothingness. It exists on both planes. I sometimes think I’m not really that into it because I don’t dwell on it and think about it outside of class the way some people say they do. But could this just mean that it’s so integrated with “me”/infinity that I don’t have to? That may be reaching a tad considering that I’m really not all that good at it. But I did think of something else. Going back to the discussion a few weeks ago about a buttefly not returning to a caterpillar, I think there’s a tie in here. The caterpillar me, who I started out running from in that rambling, probably had the same reasons for starting training as everyone else, exercise, connecting with people, self-defense, etc. But I’ve shed that person, and the training is part of the DNA of the new organism, a butterfly can’t help but have wings. I can’t help but continue to train. Am I full of S@#&t or what? Maybe I just don’t know and I’m to stupid to figure it out. He said he knows, but he’s not going to tell me. Dangit.

So the other day I got a SECOND speeding ticket. I haven’t gotten a ticket since 96, now I’ve gotten two in a month. The first one I can kind of understand, it was late and there weren’t many cars on the road. But this one was in the middle of rush hour traffic, 74 miles per hour. I usually don’t worry too much about the speed when there’s lots of people because there’s no room to go too fast. I was going the same speed as everyone else. I can’t help but wonder if the hair is going to make me more of a target now. Anyway, I am a much safer driver above 70, anything less and I can’t stay awake. I propose IQ tests to go along with driver’s tests, and then color coded license plates to correspond with the scores, and an appropriate speed limit to go with each. Accidents don’t happen because people are going fast, they happen because people are either stupid, drunk, or falling asleep because the speed limit is set smack in the right spot for highway hypnosis.

I just finished reading Zen Lessons, the Art of Leadership. Oh my god, boring as F$#%k!

The other night we got together with the black belts to go to dinner and see Kung Fu Hustle. I must say, it looked cheesy as hell and it was, but I laughed way more than I’d like to admit. Then of course some of it was a little on the stupid side. MMm, Stephen Chow is SO fine!! The end battle with the frog style was a little drawn out and didn’t hold my interest, but the actual ending was sweet.

The other night we watched Final Cut. It’s so weird to see Robin Williams being serious, but he really is a great actor, not just a silly person. Anyway, it kind of made you think, would you live your life differently if you knew someone would be looking at it all? It was pretty good, but it ended rather abrubtly, as though they ran out of time.

So while I was sitting in the salon chair the other day I got a ton of reading done. I read an entire book (little book) called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It’s very short, and most of the pages are only pictures of seagulls. It’s a parable about a seagull who isn’t satisfied with flying just to eat like the rest of the flock. He strives to master flying and find that there’s something more to life, becomes outcast because of it… Anyway, the story is a spiritual metaphor, and it’s adorable and uplifting. I’d read it once when I was a little kid, but then it was just a story about a seagull.

Teehee, what an anarchist!! ok, just kidding, it was a pretty weak gesture, but it was my first. I used my tv turnoff while I was getting my oil changed the other day. The other two people in the waiting room were reading and didn’t seem to notice or care, which is actually a good thing. Maybe I’ll get a little bolder next time and turn off a tv people are actually watching, maybe at a restaurant during a game or something.

Ok, so they’re way big. I knew they would be, but you know how things are always different in your mind’s eye than in reality. They should fall down and be a little more tame after a week or so. The whole process took almost six hours, so I got a ton of reading done. Also they ended up a little shorter than I thought, but that may just be because they’re still sticking up. Now that that’s out of the way, I LOVE them!!! I feel like they make me look smaller, I’m this tiny little figure under this gigantic poof. I’ve done some strange things with my hair in the past, but this is by far the most drastic. I don’t regret it one bit, it feels so right. I don’t want to get all weird or anything, but I swear when she was doing it I could feel chi building up at the top of my head as though it were being dammed up. I read somewhere in passing that it’s believed that positive energy escapes through the head and dreads help hold it in. I smiled and forgot about it, until I was sitting in the chair and felt that. And as it built up I could feel it being forced back down and spiraling back into my body. It’s awesome. I also read that your personality determines their shape. I wonder what this means? Anyway, don’t judge it too quick, they will take weeks to properly form. Also I have to reacquaint myself with my face. It’s more masculine than I remember it being.

Now that I think of it some more, yesterday I couldn’t wait for them to lay down, now I’m not looking forward to it so much. I kind of like it this way.

Oh yeah, wasn’t I blond before?