here stuff you look

"The elementary nucleus, two creatures clasped together, as at the creation of the world."

"The eternal innocence of the world expresses itself."

"In your language there is a mysterious world."

"blah blah blah"

"The smelly hobo that harvests the stars." It doesn't say that, I'm just entertaining myself. And speaking of entertaining, beadybaby quoth, "I think I understand everything in the studio except the TP. And if you ran out of regular tissues, I think I understand everything!     :-)."

Tissues? Hu? Nah, it's just that sometimes I'm so into my making I can't stop to poop so I just poop there right on the floor among all my stuff. Yup.                    (And yeah, there's some weird matte thing going on with this one, but oh well.)

 Beatnheart wroth, "Ah ha... 3 empty cans of " energy drinks". Could that be what helps to fuel the fire?" Sorry, no. I was setting up a shot for a tute using drink can bottoms for bezels and then lost all will to make tutes.

 

What's going on here? Well, I resined this old post-card and it was too lovely to cut any further than in half lengthwise. So for that to work it had to become some sort of cuff. So I affixed it with iron nail rivets (I dunno, saw them at ACE and here they are) to a piece of aluminum. 

Then I added the cutesy ephemera all around and sealed it first with matte medium, then a thin layer of resin because I was resining and it was there. And then it was so shiny I sprayed it with matte sealant spray. Did it need three different kinds of acrylic glue-like finishes? Well, it's my hot body.

Kimberly opined: "How do you keep your remotes so clean? Or are they just supplies for your next amazing jewelry assemblage? OK, so you're not going to be on the cover of "Where bloggers create". ..."

Yeah those "lookit my totes adorbs studio" folks leave me baffled. The remotes are clean? Wow. Maybe if the image was more close up...

This thing is a lighter! You fill it with butane, unscrew the cap, run it along that side slot and TA-DA! Quest for fire can be checked off your to-do list.

I got some seriously lovely comments and convos from that 2nd to last post. I should write meaningful shit more often. 

Or maybe just copy convos to Kim. She always gets the good stuff out of me. Certain people have a way of asking things so openly and innocently- not like they already know the answer, you know?

 So you know how my hubs had his guts fixed up at the docs? He now realizes he's been in pain for the last three years and in a godawful mood because of it.

 (Above, an antique japanese metal stamp with the character 'despair' as a protective amulet against despair.)
 Nothing like pain to make everything suck beyond belief.

 Now he sleeps well, asshole customers don't bother him, co-workers don't stress him, he comes home all happy instead of grumpy, it's wonderful.

 Just the relief of pain feels like ecstasy if you've ever been in pain for a long time. Most people have.

 Everyone has tragedies and horrors. I don't get the 'why me' contingent. I'm always like 'why not me?'

 Cuz I'm an original that way. I'm a reaction-to-horror rebel.

 Oh this is a cuff made of a long very iconic alchemy image that I resined on a piece of sheet metal and then curved but those cracks showed up and I don't know if I should try to fix it, which can always bring more fuck-ups, or offer it as is. Opinions? Really, I'm looking for everyone here to be like "It's awesome all fucked up! You don't need to keep sweating over that shit!"

I found a copy of the original here. As I use these images and wonder over them, I realize that everything mystical that people experienced outside of the traditional church in the middle ages, they sort of understood or interpreted or organized in terms of metaphorical fables. It's gorgeous, really, and sort of new-agey in its exclusion of the judeochristian world view.

"The alchemists call the first stage, or Blackness, 'Putrefaction'. In it the three principles which compose the "whole man" of body, soul and spirit, are "sublimated" till they appear as a black powder full of corruption, and the imperfect body is "dissolved and purified by subtle Mercury"; as man is purified by the darkness, misery, and despair which follows the emergence of his spiritual consciousness. As psychic uproar and disorder seems part of the process of mental growth, so Solve et Coagula --break down that you may build up--is the watchword of the spiritual alchemist. The "black beast," the passional element, of the lower nature must emerge and be dealt with before anything further can be done. "There is a black beast in our forest," says the highly allegorical "Book of Lambspring," "his name is Putrefaction."

- Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill

This mating of the empress and emperor, sun and moon, human and divine, finite and infinite, is considered the central archetype in Carl Jung's psychological theories, a concept he referred to as the alchemical union of opposites.

The 'Great Work' consists of finding the Red Stone, also known as the Philosophers Stone or the Elixir. This (not only a physical substance but also a spiritual one) will transmute everything. Lead into Gold. Man into Superman.

- Alchemists By Anders Sandberg

 So that all has been very entertaining, especially seeing as how back when I was pre-med (get it? before I was medicated?) and totally inundated with what might be considered spiritual experiences and concerns, I, too, experienced everything in metaphorical form.

Everything echoing everything else, patterns in the macro and micro scale recognising each other, human life being at just the right angle among a million crystalline mirrors so that anything seems distinct and time and space seem possible, but only because at that angle makes us see, like, pain and pleasure, pulled apart in opposite directions from a central nothingness ...  

Ugh. It would take way too much animus to go back to the above paragraph and try to make it coherent. Poopersticks.

It is all too much effort. Much more fun to tell of how the 3-yr-old niece said, "I don't like day care, I like Abuela care."

Or of all these new apps I'm discovering. This just means programs for your computer that incorporate etsy/paypal/facebook/etc and does things automatically, it has nothing to do with phones. Except that there are those too. I'm looking into an automated accountant one, a bulk listings one, one that gives me a cute shop in facebook, one that manages sales events and a couple others I already lost track of. If you are curious there's bunches available here. Now, keep looking through them there's lots that do similar things and you see them by the recentest added. There might be something similar that's been around longer, is what I mean. Yay more confusing things intended to make life simpler!