posteed

I have so many posts that I wrote that I never posted. I usually write my posts in word and then paste them into my blogs. I learned that trick in my early blogging days. I got sick of after working on a post for hours by some strange twist of fate it’s gone. Lost forever. If I had posted all of it, I wouldn’t seem like such a disinterested blogger.

I am feeling abnormally depressed today. In my work email there was a big letdown. I was slated to work on an engineering study that is worth a million euro that appears to have passed me by. I was hoping that we would be getting some new orders so that I could keep working. Everything just looks bleak today. I suppose it could have something to do with me missing my gel for four days in a row. Or, it could be that the economy is in the shitter big time, I’m just about broke due to working only three days a week, and the weather is gray cold and snowy. All I want to do is sleep all the time.

I am thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to take the fashion blogging too seriously. I should have known it would have been addictive like crack. I got so high from the experience that I am completely obsessed with doing it again, and this time to get paid for it. I think I am good enough, actually better than blogging, but blogging is so super hot at the moment that I can’t pass it up. I have the potential to write at a more advanced level than blogging, so I am hoping that through blogging I can work my way into some real writing. Full feature length articles preferably. I am struggling with how to get the most exposure to generate the most amount of leads for freelance assignments.

I loved the journalism aspect of the Fashion Week coverage. It felt so natural to be discussing the details with the designers. I felt almost like a peer, almost. I was able to at least speak their language and therefore got them to open up to me. I wanted to get inside their heads to get as much content as possible. The problem is condensing it afterward. That is something I need to work on. I take in so much visually that I have trouble with leaving something out, feeling the article incomplete or not telling the whole story.

How did blogs become so popular anyway? I started this one in 2005 and it served it’s purpose for me personally. It is a depository for written accounts of my experiences. With all the supposed visibility that I gained through blogging AIFW, it stands to reason that many people have visited my vault here. I wonder what they think of me now? I am not entirely the polished, confident persona that I displayed at the shows. Or am I? I think deep down inside I am that person, and that is my game face. Everyone needs a game face, especially in fashion.

I experienced almost total professionalism at AIFW. I wasn’t turned away by anyone, except for the official closing party. I wanted to go as a form of closure of the events. They wouldn’t let me past the door and I thought it seemed like the only pretentious situation I had encountered all week. The party seemed more like a Redken courting session from outside, and I don’t think anyone I know actually went. I got to look for a recognizable name on the guest list, but it seemed like there weren’t any discernible names, just the same email address over and over. The greeters were aloof but nice enough, and there was a total thug with really bad energy controlling the door. I went home and got to spend time with my fiancé. That was rewarding. We worked on getting my website organized together.

It does something to me to view a designer’s collection the very first time it is shown, before public consumption. I also see that it is a made up privilege, only to be shown to everyone who cares to look at photos a couple of minutes later. It is definitely different experiencing it live, the first view.  What a rush!

fatigue

I have been writing every day for what seems like weeks.  I need to shut off for a day or two.

I just submitted a cv and my portfolio for a professional blogger position.  I have nothing to lose at this point, so why not try?  I have 8 articles published online so far, with two in editing.  I loved every minute of the fashion week, and the last day was a nice finale.  I met many interesting people that day.  I think it cemented my will to pursue my dream job.

I put together a CV and cover letter this afternoon.  I had a resume already established, but it was geared toward selling my engineering background.  I wrote the CV with the concentration on selling my journalism and writing skills.  I wrote it relatively quickly, but then again I have been tossing all of the information around my brain over the past days.  It was just a question of dumping it out and sorting it.  I like the power that words have.

I have loathed my present job for quite some time, and wished I had some other opportunities.  The manufacturing sector worldwide, except for China, is in the shitter.  I stay home four days and go to work three, and there is not much signs of life on the horizon. I need to get moving on somehow, and I know I want to do something completely different.  Although, the fashion industry does have some parallels to the automotive industry, as with the incremented introduction of new lines and models.  Haute couture thankfully does not involve mass production, but I imagine RTW is probably somewhat similar.

Rest.  That is what I need to let myself enjoy.  I am still high from the experiences of recent times and feel a fire pushing me forward, but I must rest.  Tomorrow will be here soon enough.

on my own

The title has nothing to do with this post. I just need to get some of my own thoughts out without censoring them. I find myself at the end of a tailspin.

Now I am allowed to crash and burn. I have the next four days off. I am on layoff Fridays and Mondays for the whole month of February. I haven't been sleeping much lately, due to the candle burning at both ends that I carry to light my way.

I have fantasies of being like the fashion column writer I read about that writes for the NYT. Spending lots of time in Paris and NYC. Experiencing fashion at it's best. Jetting around the world dedicated to fashion.

I was already obsessed with fashion before all this happened, now I am off my face. It's all I think about now, almost, well a lot. More than I probably should. The nun stops me mid sentence when I start talking about it. I need to be in it, like an addiction. I felt so high after speaking with tom s. at aifw, after I realized who he was. That was a big problem for me, that I don't really know many people involved. I do know more people now, though.

Tom told me that I made a statement with my personal presentation at the shows. I wish I wasn't so hard with him when he first approached me. "Well, you look good." he said. Then I came back without even thinking, like a defense reflex, "It's my business to look good." I honestly don't know where that came from. I normally don't act like that at all. There have been strange fits of over confidence and actually narcissism too that have come out. I find it a bit embarrassing now that I think back on the past three weeks.  I did manage to keep it together while mingling with the guests.

His complement was genuine, he even called me after he read my pieces on the shows. It made me feel somewhat good, not as much as it should have I guess. I felt more excited that I spoke with someone who could possibly use my writing talents. I find that my appearance in normal circumstances like my current job is out of place. I am way over dressed for the office most of the time. But at the shows I felt like my appearance fit in perfectly, the atmosphere felt normal and I felt dressed just right. That was a nice feeling. I guess I have been preparing for something like this to happen without even knowing it. The nun was wondering why I was buying so many shoes.  Now you know.

anxious anxiety

I am feeling a bit anxious about the runway blogging this weekend. I Packed my suitcase last night already, so that after work today I can quickly finish the last bit of packing and then catch my train.

Last weekend I took hand written notes and tried unsuccessfully to snap pictures of the models, and then after I wrote the post. This weekend I don't have much of a choice but to blog from the second row. I will have my format already together so that all I have to do is fill in the blanks. There is more to it than that, but it is essential that I prepare a bit beforehand. I don't want to just start with a clean piece of paper. There is much competition expected and I want to produce the best, fastest posting so far.

I just hope that my wireless card holds up.

shaku and stiring

I have been on a rollercoaster of emotions lately, with the instability mostly attributed to the hours I have been keeping. When I get overtired everything seems so heavy. I think it would help my condition if I try not to take things so seriously. If I am destined to have a writing career, it will happen on its own. Me pushing too hard is not yielding very good results.

I am satisfied with what I have written so far. I have been approaching my writing with a optimistic and positive eye, but I think I need to temper the positivity with a bit of the negative. After all, not everything I see is agreeable. I have been sort of ignoring what I think is completely pretentious and of poor quality.

I am gaining invaluable experience in the fashion industry. I have no one to coach me, and unfortunately I must go about this completely cold. I think that I am doing very well so far, considering the lack of experience. I am trying to meet and talk with as many people as possible.

After AIFW is finished, I plan to continue the journalism on my own. I will have to seek out events to report on, on my own. Doing that I think will be what puts me on the writing globe.

I think also that copywriting would be much less stressful, and I wouldn't have to deal with the flighty people. But the problem with that is: I love fashion! And I noticed that I felt completely comfortable attending the shows. This all happened so quickly. I wished I had time before to make new pieces for myself to wear. I am just making due with my old rags, but at least they are the rags of my own hands. That feels especially good. I am actually at a place where there is a high chance of meeting someone like me in that regard.

I will try to keep an open mind and be as calm and relaxed as possible, and it will work itself out, somehow. I just hope my editor still wants to work with me, the problem child. I had a serious melt down last night that I am not proud of. I only hope I haven't soured any of the fresh relationships that I am trying to forge.

This is niether the beginning nor the end of my writing career. I think it has only yet to begin.

This is all just a warm-up. Stretching the rusty fingers and massaging the matter.

fff #7 - home coming

“Good morning, this is Cheri” I said.

“Cheri, what’s your location?” he said.

“I’m just coming out of the canyon.” I said grimacing, “Hi Jimmy, how are you this morning?”

“Get that look off your face, I can feel that look.” he said.

“You know how much I hate to bother you so early and all, but Sal wants you to go by Louis’ to see if he’s home.” he said. “He didn’t come in last night and Sal’s getting pissed.

“Why can’t someone else go this time?” I questioned, “I’m on the other side of town and I’m late for a nail appointment.”

“You gotta go cause Sal said so!” Jimmy said in that surly voice he uses when he is irritated. “Sal knows that Louis trusts you enough to let you in.” calming a bit, “Sal wants you find out if he’s holding out on him.”

“I’ll only do it if you give me a shadow and a couple of days off.” I said reluctantly as if I had room to negotiate, “this is a two person job, Jimmy.”

As he was hanging up the phone he murmured; “Just get over there, will ya?”

On the ride across town I began to ponder;

“I’m becoming wary of this family life. I only wanted to do a couple of small jobs to get a new car and other objects that I wanted. Didn’t need them, wanted them. That kind of thinking is what got me where I am now. It beats sitting at a desk all day working on a job that takes half a year. These jobs I do now last usually only a couple of minutes. Destroying all in one heartbeat what it has taken them all their lives to create. I would guess all those that met their fate with me probably had it coming. Why else would they send me if that wasn’t the case?”

“apparently I will be going in solo again, those bastards!” I thought as I drove around louis’ driveway. I hiked up my skirt to put my nickel plated friend in the band of my stocking. The new heated mother of pearl grips I bought for her keep her from cooling my thigh. I adjusted my skirt and got out of the car. Louis was waiting for me behind a pillar near the front door.

“Fancy getting a visit from you, Cheri, and so early in the day too.” Louis said with a smirk.

“If I had the choice you would have remained alone this morning.” I said offering him my hand.

We went into the house to the drawing room to continue our conversation.

“Shall I assume Sal sent you to visit me?” he asked; “because when you come for a social visit you usually call ahead.”

“Jimmy asked me for Sal to come visit you and ask if you were clear and when you were coming in.” I explained.

“I decided I wasn’t coming in, last night, and every last night of my life.” He said as if it was a choice.

“Louis don’t you think you should talk to Sal before you go making decisions on your own?” I coaxed; “you know how Sal likes to know what’s going on with his family. You know how he gets when you go out and you don’t come back in.”

“Shit-he’s getting nervous, where’s my shadow? I never should have come in alone” I thought.

Louis just stood there stoically behind his marble desk.

“Why don’t we just take a ride over to see Sal?” I pushed, “we’ll just tell him you were ill.”

Louis pulled a revolver out of his desk drawer and pointed it at me from across the desk.

“I’m not going anywhere” he asserted as the sun’s reflection on the barrel blinded me.

My phone began to ring and he motioned for me to answer it.

“It’s probably Sal.” He said.

Somehow retaining my composure, I put the phone to my ear and the only word the voice on the phone said was:

“Duck.”

I immediately fell to the floor as if my body suddenly had no skeleton. I heard a pane in the window behind me shatter as if it were a hundred miles away. I secured my nickel plated savior out of my stocking and peered out the window to see if I could find my shadow. She gave me the all clear from the roof of the pool house, and I went around the desk to check on Louis.

“I don’t care if I was here when he got it, but I’m glad I didn’t have to do it this time.” I thought; “ugh, and with these nails.”

fff #6 - Of Scourge(s)

Of Scourge(s)

I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it sooner. I had been told by others that it eventually becomes personal. “What is that supposed to mean?” It didn’t matter how many times I had heard it, I wasn’t able then to grasp the ultimate meaning of what they tried to tell me.

I assume that I was in denial at first, after all who wants to acknowledge head-on the coming of the end of it all? I mean it took me until the third one to recognize it wasn’t just coincidence, as if the blinders I was wearing were able to render the pachyderm standing by the window invisible. It took a while afterwards to get over the false feeling of consolation, of being hoodwinked, that it was pink instead of white. While battling for victory over the third one, I had much time to contemplate the technicalities of fate. In the end it was just a diversion of the mind exquisitely protracted by the sickness to keep me from addressing the underlying affliction.

Some lessons were hard learned, and who would have guessed that breeding was the one thing that would remain as the only advantageous function? If I remember correctly, it was during the ill conceived pregnancy ban around the time of the first one that I suffered a serious lapse of judgment. I was so attached to worldly things, a candy apple red jag to be more specific, when they began offering big beans for ovaries. It stung when the fuel stopped flowing, a useless pile of steel rubber and glass couldn’t even begin to make me whole again. Anyway I can’t imagine it would help my case to carry another doomed life in my belly, in any case it would just slow me down. Is it being materialistic to want a child? Try not to… Functional footwear would have been a worthwhile investment, or at least flatter shoes would have been best. To think I used to get upset when I stepped on a piece of gum on the sidewalk, now I can’t walk two meters without having a skull cave in under the metallic pressure of my stiletto. Although they are far from ideal, they have served in their purpose on occasion.

This business of the end sure does force one into a mode of extreme flexibility to enable rapid radical adaptation to the presented circumstances. Intuition is and always will be the greatest attribute of the greatest survivors. Following one’s instinctual impulses most of the time makes the narrow difference in either achieving a bittersweet victory or becoming like the rest that just couldn’t cut it. After witnessing such things that would make the average person go stark raving mad, I took lots of concentration just to not think about the carnal imagery, much less to be able clear the mind. I was taught early on that having an empty head is the best cerebral state to enable one to receive and purely interpret the impulse. Only then can one’s response be swiftly formulated and executed.

Communication amongst the survivors has become a harrowing ordeal ever since they figured out that thought energy concentration was a factor in the intensity. The sledge hammer of irony crushed the collective spirit when we found that exactly what we need are united masses, but get more than three people together and you may as well be standing beside the cold stone slab that proudly holds your name inscribed. True, it had become easier to keep separation limits in order, since we were in ever decreasing numbers. I have not yet been able to come by the information about how many were still about making trouble for inevitable void. Would it really help if I knew?

I was lucky to come by the information before all this that metaphysics was the groove. It was a bit of work, but I am tending to think that the practice has carried me this far. Imagine the disappointment in the fidels when the ancient texts of monotheism were proved beyond a doubt to be the insidious joke of a well educated roman scholar called the “panther”. There’s nothing like getting the berber pulled right out from under your feet to take the aggression out of fighting. They seemed to perish simultaneously as if they were all in the same fold. That was the fifth one, I think, try not to… The spontaneous loss of life in numbers made for a messy time indeed. They thought they had the copyright on Armageddon, fools, really.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much I suppress them, there are still the infantile queries that always seem to bubble to the surface at the absolute worst time. It is as if their buoyancy was infused by the briny aftertaste of the deep dread often accompanied by the proximity of the void. We came to call “it” the void for lack of adequate reliable data, and the rigormortified witnesses tend toward silence on the matter. No one is even sure if there is an end or how close you come at any given time. I have found it is best not to trifle myself with such useless thought, and it is better to keep moving. But it leaves me never totally. Which brings me round to the beginning.

It was the eighth deadly scourge, yes, indeed the eighth. I didn’t need that lull in between after the seventh, thanks. Let’s just move it right along, no it can’t be, that’s what those bastards meant? I imagined it would be something out of my nightmares, since they have free reign over it all it seems. C’mon… This one is going to be a cinch. How difficult can it be to spend an indefinite amount of time with a version of myself sitting across from me at the table? She is very inquisitive, how did they get my mind that empty? Maybe that intellectual copyright did prove fruitful? I have been trying for years without significant result. I am slowly realizing that every childhood story and every anecdote increases her knowledge of me, and consequently herself, or me? I feel like a cloud emptying my precious moisture onto her thirsty palate, with every gust I diminish ever further while she only grows stronger, furtively pressing on with the pestilent inquisition. I can no longer discern my smoke like core from her freshly ascertained charm. Try not to…

*************************

I really enjoyed writing this one. Just let it carry me where it wanted to go. Think it may be too raw to post, but I don’t have sufficient time left to come back to it. I feel like I have removed that creative obstruction. Now on to sewing and making dinner.

TAG-02-03

I guess I should try to write something today. Since I am falling apart quickly it seems. The surgery went well yesterday. The surgeon came for his rounds late in the afternoon with the interns. I had thought after surgery that he had not done any work on my urethra because I didn’t find the belly catheter, but rather just the normal urethral one. Seeing that type of catheter I assumed he didn’t decide to work on it, but when he came for his rounds, he mentioned that he had shortened the urethra and reduced the swell bulb somewhat, and decided to try to use the urethral catheter with the disadvantage being extra bleeding.

I awoke in the recovery room at 9:50 am with an IV in my arm and a catheter in my urethra. They nurses in the recovery asked me if I had any pain, I replied yes, and immediately was administered pain medicine through the IV. I felt nice and relaxed, like I was floating. I was doing well without any nausea or any other complications, except for a bit of pressure in my bladder. I had been in surgery for an hour and a half roughly. This time they were relatively careful about the bandages that they used on my very sensitive skin. The anesthesiologist said afterwards that I needed a bit more than normal to keep me under, although I don’t remember a thing about it. He was a very nice man with good bedside manner and handsome to boot.

I find it weird that when the surgeon goes through on his rounds he tends to speak with his interns and not directly to me the patient, except to ask if I had any pain. When he started to discuss with the interns about what he had done with my genitals, I asked for his confirmation that he had shortened my urethra. He also told me that he did the mons pubis plastic and in the end, removed almost no tissue from my labia. He said that he had stretched them, distributing them evenly between top and bottom and therefore not needing to remove anything. I am anxious to see what he has done. I think I was a bit open at the bottom more than normal, and I wonder if it was from when I stupidly decided to climb stairs here in the hospital and ripped a stitch or two. I was hoping to see it today, but I still have a little bit of residual bleeding, I assume coming from the urethra. The doc said that was the price to pay for not having the belly catheter. I will see if it was worth it or not. I remember the belly catheter was no fun.

I slept most of the afternoon off and on because of the lasting effects of the anesthesia and the pain medication. It was so easy to drift in and out of sleep. I was supposed to get the normal lunch, but the nurse went to check to see if I was allowed to eat and probably got sidetracked and *poof* I went hungry. I slept a lot so I didn’t notice so much, until I awoke and the rest of my roommates were eating their dinner. I almost lost it, but then the nurse came and asked me if I wanted to eat dinner, to which I replied “affirmative”. They also still had my lunch somewhere and I had them heat it up and bring it to me. I ate both in one sitting.

Sleeping was not so easy and I drifted in and out. When I awoke I began to cry for no discernable reason. Day 3. I ate breakfast and felt a bit better and then checked email and read a bit. I started watching the film coralline and then my friend and work colleague Helmut came to visit with me. He brought me diverse fruits and juice and snacks. He stayed for a few hours which helped elevate my mood quite a bit. The whole time I had been also chatting and video calling with my sisters and the nun0 with skype.