Fit or fat; my mood this week.

It may come as no surprise to you, to me it's a revelation - a beautiful moment of clarity, a glimpse of understanding in an otherwise foggy mirror: I have trouble with moderation.  Moderation in all things, goes the old adage...  Easy to say, hard to do.  Realizing this about myself absolutely helps me through times like these past ten days.  I've nothing bad to report; Zaphod hasn't contracted worms or been abducted by aliens, neither car troubles (for me at least) nor strange symptoms.  But nevertheless I've been struggling.  Perhaps it's the approach of my 30th birthday.  Perhaps it's my hormones.  Maybe it's the shrugging off of old ways that no longer serve me.  Maybe it's the looming approach the end of days (at least according to the Mayans).  Or maybe this is just part of my personal cycle.  In truth I think it's all of those things.

I've been hating myself again, I admit it.  Don't get me wrong, I fucking love myself too.  But I've transitioned from a transcendent period of inspiration, drive and clarity into something decidedly less pure.  All I've wanted to do lately is drink red wine and eat ice cream, and part of me hates it.  Of course it's easy to love myself when I'm truly motivated to go to yoga or go hiking five times a week.  Loving myself when I'm eating healthily and I feel fit and beautiful and I'm creating things every day.  It's a lot harder to love myself when all I want to do is get drunk and read novels, and I can find five million excuses not to go to yoga.  But this is the way it goes.

That's the funny thing about this: this is the way it goes.  I've been here before.  I've even had this revelation before!  But every time it's like brand new territory.  In a way, I suppose,  it is new territory, because I'm not the same me I was when I last experienced this gnarliness.  But look what came out of that; the August of SpaceCat!  Many many times during which I paused to thank the Universe for that divine spark, because I knew it would come to this again.  And here we are.

So what's the point?  I don't know.  I guess the point is to accept myself in every phase, whether it's the fit or the fat phase.  The point is to say it out loud (in writing) so that I have to be accountable to it.  The point is self-recognition and awareness, so that when my mood my life my spirit circles back to this place again I recognize and remember it.  So that I can continue moving up and out, into the vasty realms of space and time.  The point is for you to tell me, "Hey, I do this too, you're not alone."  The point is for me to remember next time I feel the urge to give myself utterly something - be it drinking five bottles of wine in as many days or an all-consuming art project or an intoxicating new love - that the faster I give it out the faster I'll need to recharge.  Or maybe there's some point I can't even comprehend, but it's waiting for me around the next turn in the road.

Things I don't need any more:

I feel fucking gnarly today
I have this grungy growly energy
spinning churning agitating in my belly

I want to tear the face off something
I want to shred it to bits
I want to sift through its leavings and let them run through my fingers
like the ashes of so many corpses

SpaceCat loves you.

Okay I've sat down to write this blog post at least three times, I think, and the damn thing doesn't want to get written.  I don't know why.  But here it is:

I have this thing I'm working on; it's called SpaceCat!  (That's all one word, in case you didn't notice.)  At various times I have described SpaceCat in the following ways: Ziggy Stardust+internet cat videos+ street art, my alter-ego, my artistic identity, an interdisciplinary web installation, Facebook art.  SpaceCat comprises the following things sometimes referred to as the Five Faces of SpaceCat: Zaphod in all his many photogenic moods, a stencil I designed of Zaphod as I imagine he would look in a spacesuit, shirts on which I have painted said stencil, me and my girlfriends (or boy friends - ahem Josh Tolle) wearing little to no makeup and posing in SpaceCat shirts, videos of me dressed up as a feline impersonating Zaphod (I'm imfelinating him, get it?), me dressed up as a superhero named SpaceCat, the Facebook page (SpaceBook page) I created to act as a home for all this.

Okay, I feel better having that all off my chest.  Sometimes I have to get out of my own way and just write it down without making it too complicated.  I'm going to save this now.

Okay, good, it's saved.  So what's left to tell?  What is the point, you may ask?  I wrote a response to that question a few weeks ago, but I have to admit that it is a valid question.  Well, I'm hoping to push my career further with this thing.  For a while there I was experiencing no joy in my art, and SpaceCat is nothing if not joyful.  I think ultimately by doing all this: making my weird videos, creating a story about a superhero named SpaceCat who fell to Earth, and painting shirts and putting them on my friends, that I am exploring and displaying a much rounder version of myself as an artist.  My hope is that I can really bring everything to the table, and ultimately have more success in my career as an artist.

So how?  Aargh, that's another good question.  The two things I have in front of me right now are my videos and my shirts.  For a while now I've been exploring with paint and used tee-shirts (a great excuse to go to the thrift store) and my stencil, and having a lot of fun making designs.  I've been posting pictures of my process (along with all the inspiring things I see on my way about the world) on Instagram (you can follow me @nerdgirl).  So far I am really pleased and touched by the responses I've gotten to my SpaceCat shirts.  I have a pretty good variety at this point, and made my first sale last week.  Now I need to start really selling them, and also think about how I want to continue with my little business.  Things under consideration: Etsy, silk-screening, buying wholesale tee-shirts.  The important points for me are that they be affordable and fun, and ideally that I get to photograph everyone in their respective SpaceCat shirt.  This aspect of SpaceCat is called Imperfect Woman, but I'm not going to get into that right now.  After all, I've got to keep you interested, right?

As far as the videos go, I am currently working on the second one: SpaceCat and the Cone of Shame!  I am so excited, and I really hope you'll like it.  And again, I totally, TOTALLY appreciate the support we received for the first one.  Thank you.  I have ideas for other videos after that - some about SpaceCat, some about Chatty Cathy (hooray!!) and some other totally unrelated things.  The videos are important to me because even if they're low budget to begin with, I'm creating the habit of making my own work: following through with ideas start to finish, doing what I say I'm going to do, learning the skills I don't have, and putting art out into the world regularly.

So that's what I'm working on.  Something that should hopefully bring in a little money, and something else that should hopefully get me a little more exposure.  I don't know if this clarifies at all for you what SpaceCat is.  But you can follow the process and see how it develops if you're interested.  And of course, if you like what you see: 'like' my SpaceBook page, share it with your friends, contact me about buying a shirt, offer me your input, suggest a trade, smile.

I am eternally universally infinitely lovingly blessedly happily star-brightly sun-shiningly sweetly goofily thankfully joyously grateful for your continued presences in my life.

SpaceCat loves you.

Zaphod Bukowski

Ten days I woke up crashingly to the sound of breaking glass.  I immediately thought that someone (my ex-boyfriend) was breaking into my apartment, and fumbled for my bathrobe so I could go investigate.  In  the dull orange glow of the street lights I saw my cat crouched in the middle of the living room looking very freaked out.  Reaching him in the half-light I found a gigantic jagged piece of glass curving out of his chest.

I flipped internally, but still managed to channel enough  of my mother's calm-in-any-storm mojo to investigate.  His fur should've been soaked in blood - it wasn't.  Despite about ten inches of broken glass attached to his neck, my cat seemed fine.  Once I turned on the light I discovered the full extent of my cat's stupidity.

That's right, I said stupidity.  Cause I love my cat, and in some ways he is really intelligent (I'd say he has more emotional intelligence than many humans I know), but lately he is nothing but trouble.  Poor decision making is where the problem lies, I think.

picture this filled with kibbles

Before going to bed that evening I emptied out the canister of Zaphod's dry food, and apparently left the lid open.  And then my brilliant cat must've stuck his stupid furry face in there in the middle of the night.

And gotten stuck on the rim of the jar.

And fallen off the counter, smashing glass everywhere.

I figured this out as I examined Zaphod, who was wearing a beautiful broken glass collar with metal clamp detail.  Doesn't he look lovely Gina?  This unique piece can be yours for the price of BUY THE DAMN PET INSURANCE ALREADY.

A liberal amount of vaseline later I had my cat free, and some awesome early morning cleanup ahead of me. But everyone looks forward to thoroughly vacuuming their kitchen at 6am.

I swear, this cat is the feline incarnation of Charles Bukowski.  I feel like lately he's just an angry growly cat who goes around three days drunk picking fights and hurting himself.  Earlier this summer there was the episode of the cone.  More recently than that he had another scratch on his face and an upset tummy.  And let's not forget the car accident (I think?) last fall.  And now this.  If this is the stuff that I find out about, I don't want to know what he does when I'm not around.  So I'm keeping him under house arrest for a while.

Of course I say that and then three days later I'll let him out for his morning poo again, but I really mean it this time.  Because this morning he locked in a death match with Egypt and my neighbor had to dowse them in iced coffee to break it up.  And inevitably I found that Zaphod's paw was bloody.  I swear, it's like living with Will Hunting before he meets the girl.

The upshot is that there's got to be a video in this somewhere, right?