20×200

I may be doing a limited edition print with one of my favorite art websites, 20×200. If you don’t know what they do, you must check them out. It is an amazing way to buy affordable art and support artists! They were nice enough to blog about my show today:

http://jenbekmanprojects.tumblr.com/post/378207195/some-people-2008-by-christina-mazzalupo-love

and here is the main site link:

http://www.20×200.com/

The opening is fast approaching. Today they installed the show. As far as what to hang, I am a maximalist and they are minimalists, so we both had to make some compromises. What this means is, if you go to the show and want to see more work, just ask. There are many more oil paintings, sculptures and small drawings that will be napping in a flat file or a back room but would love to be seen.

In honor of the exhibition, I have had a stomachache for two weeks now. Still working out the wheat gluten I ate. I am eating mashed potatoes for dinner. Everything makes me feel like barfing. Not to brag. Ok well I am hoping for a gigundo snowstorm and a snowday with sledding and movies tomorrow. But I don’t want to lose electricity. I hate losing electricity in the wintertime. Brrrrr.

Questionable Entertainment

There is a man who stands at various posts on 5th Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is where I live so I see him often. He is a street performer. He wears giant black sunglasses because I think he is supposed to be blind although I don’t think that he actually is, and he wears  a cowboy hat and cowboy boots Mexican style, and a bolero and fancy shirts and whatnot. He plays an accordion and sings Mexican songs. Normally I love this sort of thing. Yet what makes this street performer stand out is that he CAN NOT PLAY his instrument AT ALL. Nor can he sing. He has a terrible voice and can not play the accordion but he is there, day after day, making noises with the accordion and loud speaking some lines. I do not know whether he is meant to be a comedy act or if he is a crazy person. A few years ago at a neighborhood friend’s birthday party, someone brought him up to her apartment to serenade her. It was absolutely funny except we weren’t sure if he thought he was good. I wish I could post a video of him here for you to hear. I wonder, after all these years, why he hasn’t at least gotten a little better or able to play at least one or two actual songs. His playing literally sounds like someone driving forwards and backwards over an accordion someone left in the street. Perhaps I am spoiled because the street entertainment in New York City and Brooklyn is usually, at least 85% of the time, really good stuff.

In other news, my opening is in a few days. Looking forward to installing the show tomorrow with the wonderful Mixed Greens folks, and then the snowstorm comes! A proper snow day would be lovely.

There is a thing on NPR right now about artists/writers/musicians who go into seclusion (after JD Salinger’s death)…it is quite interesting. Compelling, tempting even.

Adios.

Ails.

I have managed to adopt a kitten who is as medically high-maintenance as I am. After having gotten rid of his baby stomach and poo issues, we moved on to his eye infections and sneezing from cat herpes. Now that this has cleared up, thanks to L-Lysine, Figaro decided to fall on Tuesday hard enough to injure his wee hip. We just left the vet, again, with pain medicine and some other joint medicine to insure his healing. They asked me to have him rest, which is hilarious since he is a kitten and all he does is climb and play and attack and jump. Anyhow, his limping is terribly sad, but he will heal soon. He just helped me eat some quiche which he was extremely enthusiastic about.

Overheard pet names at the vet: Casper, Seneca, Reggie, and Percy.

Music for Rats

There is something to be said for the times when you are hearing a sort of deep ethereal music in your headphones while standing on a train platform watching a rat on the subway tracks. The kind of music can definitely inform your sensual and perceptual experience. For example, a band like Elbow singing something like Grace Under Pressure can really expand the event.

The rat exists, six feet below at that moment in time on the same planet in the same city but under extremely different conditions than you, and it has no knowledge of your existence or that you are watching it while it is doing its business of being. There is something so humble about the busy city rat on the subway tracks. It seems to carry a certain guilt with it as if it knows it is unwanted. Or do I just feel guilt because it is unwanted? (There I go anthropomorphizing again) But there the rat is, scurrying for bits, sitting up with its mini lifted paws nibbling a nugget of trash, waiting for the warning rumble of the oncoming train. Yet with the accompaniment of the right music, the rat is somehow made dignified and poetic. Like the image of a pigeon in a king’s crown – ruling the sidewalks on which it struts, making the act of eating garbage almost regal.

Other music that would go well with rats: Devotchka’s Dark Eyes and James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World. I also recommend Edith Piaf, Miles Davis, and Hurricaine and Fire Survival Guide by Cloud Cult, these are all good songs for rats.

I recently had a dream with some rats and dead folks, it was probably because of the melatonin pill I took. I don’t like dreams with rats. Though years ago after my grandfather died, my grandmother dreamed he came to visit her and he was holding a rat and petting it. She said he was using it to show he was taking care of her. So that was nice.

Musicals

Last night I was given the gift of entertainment. My other family took me with them to go see FELA, which was incredible and astounding really. I generally hate musicals, but being that this was about music, with so much amazing dancing and excellent visuals, it didn’t feel like a “musical”. It was also another reminder that I have no idea about what has gone on in so many places on this planet. I don’t think I am supposed to know everything that goes on, because that would just be entirely too overwhelming, but important things should not go unnoticed. Fela’s experiences occurred in Nigeria when I was about 5 years old, so I have an excuse for never having heard of him. But again with our twisted History Books and their nonsense.

Thank god for the (RIP) Howard Zinn masterpiece People’s History of the United States and books like it. Nothing like the truth.

Anyhow the play was fabulous and the lead was so talented it was ridiculous. (Except these things always go on for too long, I guess they want you to get your money’s worth. I would definitely pay less for a shorter show. I feel this at almost all live performances).

As I was enjoying the second half, my curse happened. I am cursed at events such as being the one at a movie who sits in front of the person who kicks the chair the whole time, or to be next to the loudest possible snorer on an Amtrack Train. At the show last night we moved into some better seats at intermission and when the neighbors came and sat down I was the one seated next to them. They were 3 20something guys, and they were somehow involved with the production because they knew all the words to the songs and sang each of them, and they talked about every person on the stage and what they were doing, and they talked and talked and talked and the one next to me who was in his manly way stretching out encroaching on my space smelled like body odor. So the second half was a little harder on the senses, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Why are people SO unaware of their neighbors? And how their lack of consideration is so uncool? Ugh.

Scorpions – Not the band

I thought I should review how to deal with things I may run into in Panama, like scorpions for example. These are my findings:

Scorpions (I can’t even bear to look at the pictures of them, I get the shivers)

1. Be careful when camping or during other outdoor activities to make sure that a scorpion has not made a home in your clothes, shoes or sleeping bags.
2. Scorpions glow brightly under UV light (black light).
3. Scorpions are basically immune to most pesticides. If you suspect your house has scorpions, call a professional exterminator. Eliminating their food source (other insects) can help.
4. Very few people die from scorpion stings. Scorpion stings are most dangerous to the very young and the very old. Pets are also at risk.

This does not help me at all.

Because of this, I decided not to look up malaria or dengue fever or what other kinds of poisonous dart frogs and such might be in my islandy bed at night. What’s the use? I can’t even fathom waking up and seeing a scorpion on me. I think I would die of  heart failure right there. I can only hope my fears don’t find me. They are really so good at doing that.

Plank to Plank

While watching a fire crackle in a fireplace, I thought about how much I love to watch fire burn, how incredible it is as it whips around, the smells it creates and the colors moving and the way the heat feels. Yet I am at the same time terrified of fire and totally afraid of being burned. I then realized I feel the same way about water. I can stare at the ocean or a lake or a waterfall or the rain for hours, completely absorbed by its color, texture, movement and sound…yet I am terrified of drowning. I thought about how interesting it is to be so intensely pulled to something that is also so threatening. I have since been considering what other things fall into this category, at least for me. I was going to add standing on tops of mountains because I am afraid of heights, but I don’t feel the same love for tops of mountains as I do for fires and bodies of water.

Driving today I was stuck in some serious traffic on the West Side Highway and I eventually saw that it was due to a car accident. A car was completely upside-down and completely totaled, and I got the feeling that the person who had been driving the car had also been completely totaled. Meanwhile a song was playing on my stereo with the chorus plugging along with “Your name no more, your world no more” over and over. It was a dark moment for sure. There was a gigantic stereo speaker dangling out of the trunk of the destroyed car.

This is from the internet so I do not know if it is true: An average of 114 people die each day in car crashes in the U.S. (I will also add that 90 people are killed annually by lightening in the US alone.)

Driving to and fro over the last few days, I noticed how many people drive like maniacs. There are maniacs driving everywhere. Yet you can drive for hours among them and none of the cars touch. It is somewhat amazing to me, all of the cars going so fast and moving so close to each other with distracted tired texting maniacs driving them yet they do not bump into each other. Fascinating.

In other news:

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch -
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

-Emily Dickinson

and another perspective on things transitional:

http://blavatskyarchives.com/deathml.htm

WHY???

Why do we forget our past lives? Why do They erase our memories? I mean, I understand that a lot of our (past, multidimensional, future) experience is stored in our DNA and we bring it with us into each incarnation in a subconscious way. But c’mon already with the not knowing.

(Mom, if you are reading this post, just skip it. I am totally normal, don’t worry).

I was also thinking about why we don’t remember being born or the first few years of our lives, especially since They say those are the most important years. I know this has to do with the undeveloped Hippocampus and our little memory file cabinets not being ready yet. And also, I have read that being born is far more traumatic than dying. So maybe They don’t want us to remember being born since it is so scary and who wants to add more PTSD to the pile.

Just remember, when you are in the tunnel, and you see the light, go to it and ignore all of the arms that are grabbing at you trying to pull you back. If you hear the music, follow it.  Also do not go into the door on the left! If you are confused and unwilling to accept that you have died you will become a ghost, and you  will wonder why everyone is ignoring you and subsequently become very upset and start acting out and trying to get attention. If this is your situation, and everyone is suddenly ignoring you and walking through you, you are most likely dead – so ask one of your dead relatives or your Spirit Guide to help you find your way home. And do not go into the door on the left.

How do I meet my Spirit Guide? Last night before I fell asleep I asked it to visit me in my dreams. The name Rachel popped into my head immediately so I was like, huh alright her name is Rachel. But I did not see her in my dreams and if I did I forgot. Why? Why do we forget most of our dreams? Are our souls leaving our bodies? Are we having multidimensional travel escapades? Or are our brains just making a carnival of memories and fears and desires? I guess I can read books about dreams but I would rather just postulate and have no definitive answers.

Here is a link. I haven’t read it yet, I am just taking a chance that it will be interesting:

http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/gfk-lamp/lamps-06.htm

The Nerve!

Seen today:

Cars honking wildly at a schoolbus that was stopped so a kid in a wheelchair could get in. While it is pouring rain. The bus had nowhere else to park because of alternate side parking and all of the cars double parked. These jerk-faced people honking like maniacs! The rudeness was off the charts really.

Dungarees

This morning on the train I was contemplating Jeans. How so many people wear jeans as their daily pant, myself included.  I really like non-jeans but I get totally stressed out trying to shop for stylish pants that aren’t for special occasions. Like, everyday pants that aren’t jeans. I am good at buying shorts and shants (short pants) but I am not good at buying stylish everyday pants.

I remember the world before jeans became the everyday. We wore  pants.  And skirts or things like culottes for girls. But then suddenly designer jeans came out. Sergio Valente & Jordache and the 80’s craziness happened with giant feathered hair and stripes of makeup on cheeks. I did not go to that place myself, as I was not disco. I wanted to be preppy punk and no one was going to stop me.

I tried to buy jordache jeans once, I was probably in 6th or 7th grade, and I didn’t like how they looked so I returned them. I stuck to Lee’s or Wrangler’s at that time. Then I got some Levi’s and the rest is history.

What’s my point? There was a time when you could not wear jeans to work unless you were a laborer or something. I am an administrative assistant and I wear jeans everyday. It’s quite something. The dungaree has come a long way.

This is not a very interesting post. But it is Friday and I am sleepy. Oh also, for months there has been a noise outside my work window. At first I thought it was a cat in heat. But it isn’t. It is just this odd noise, that goes OEW OEW every once in awhile. And I don’t know where it comes from. It kind of drives me mental.

Tufted

I took Figaro to the vet tonight. We have been having trouble with his red watery eyes. The vet said Figgy looked like a lion, and that he was very pretty which was why he kept saying She instead of He. Then I heard him in the hall talking about the tufts in Fig’s ears, and how cute he is. And I felt so lucky to have a remarkably cute kitten.Hamlet was remarkably handsome and Phoebe was remarkably pretty. And Figgy is damn cute with his ear tufts so I must be blessed.

Sometimes I see an unsightly pet on petfinder.com and feel sad that no one will adopt it because it is kind of ghastly looking. I guess some people would adopt ghastly looking animals because the people have big hearts or a weird sense of humor. Generally on the streets of New York, 85% of the animals I see are cute. Sometimes there will be a crosseyed or really bugeyed dog, or one of those dogs whose tongue is permanently hanging out to one side. But there aren’t too many really ugly dogs with their owners on the streets. What am I even talking about? That I am lucky to have a history of cute pets I guess.

Figaro cutely sleeping on his paws.

The Final Frontier

I finally made a website:

http://www.christinamazzalupo.com