picnic

last night i told more of what was going on inside my brain than the exterior stuff. what i was doing was cooking- i had these beets and this eggplant, as well as the leftover salady stuff from monday's cooking extravaganza. and see, pam and i had made plans to get together and work on my people drawing skills. we live too far away from each other, so we decided to meet downtown, and since it was noon we thought we'd just find someplace to eat first, but then when i got cooking last night i decided to make it a picnic, so that's what we did. she had a book to return to harold washington, so we met in the children's library. i'd gotten there early of course, and found an old friend- some fairy tales of robin mckindley's- and curled up on a brightly painted bench next to my german shopping korb. good ol goth pam came flowing in with her cooler and sarcaoughogus backpack, and we were off. we wandered east to grant park, trying to find a good picnicking spot (though lots of streets run through it, grant park is almost a square mile) the west side of congress was crowded with setup for this weekend's festival ( i don't know which one, gospel, maybe?) so we contiued east to buckingham fountain, and found a nice knoll under some trees by the rose garden. i laid out my aguao blanket and my spread of jicama arugala fennel salad, odessa beets (beets, pinapple and walnuts) and macedonian salad (roasted eggplant in a lemony herby vinagrette with parsley, peppers, and tomatoes). they complemented so nicely with pam's cheese cubes, buns, and fruit (nectarines, watermellon, and strawberries!) it was lavish and delicious. we chatted and then closed up the food, and talked for awhile about her sketchbook and her projects... then got down to the dirty work. i had to actually DRAW. ew. it was so fun, last night, choosing a new sketchbook, buying some good drawing paper (i lost all of my paper in the fire, and have only been replentishing it for classes, and no one's required drawing in the past year. so i only have tracing paper and watercolor paper and blocks). and getting other random things i neede while i was at utrecht, a silver rollerball (where DID mine go?) white glue, and then paintbrushes were on sale so i bought a size 1, but it's cotman, so we'll see if it's worth the 3 bucks. pam was a great help. she really quized me on my drawing history, and came up with the good suggestion of going back to drawing on the right side of the brain and doing activites from there, to see if i could shut up the frances voice in my head. it's funny, when i first started drawing i amazed myself, and i've always had that mean nasty voice, but now it definately sounds like frances. i can just hear her sighing, "now, shoulders don't look like that." i whine while i draw, as i'm sure g knows, but today it was all frances related, and i could hear myself. i said that that was it, i wasn't gonna talk about her anymore, but that shut me up. however, the person i'm happiest with came from that. pam's taken anatomy for the artist at her other school, and i can say things like, "now what in the world DO legs look like?" and she can say, well the knee curves like this, and the curve at the outside of the calf is smother and lower than the one on the inside, and the outside of the ankle is more lumpy than the inside..." and i kinda followed her suggestions, and what do you know? i've got decent legs. and then i'm like, wow, with legs this good she needs a short skirt! so i draw on a short skirt, and some fishnets, and then i give her a leather bra, and tada! unfortunately, i had some face issues, and the current one isn't phenominal, but it's ok. so one week done. now i just have to do it for the remaining 12 weeks of summer vacation...
but i'm gonna draw other things too! i'm gonna take pam's advice and go back to doing what i like to do- or what i feel like i can do. i haven't used pastels since i moved to chicago, i think, and meike gave me such a nice set for christmas, i really should do something beatiful for her. (unfortunately, all the beautiful veggies which were in my fridge are now cut up into salads...)
so, the conclusion is, drawing is still agonizing, and i still suck at it, but i may be able to make myself get the practice i need. and at least from the exterior, it was magical- a snapshot of my present i'd like to send back to my past. brando is always going back and visiting his younger self, and i can't do that, but one time in high school i'm walking home dejectedly down march street, and i see something colorful in the grass, and i pick it up, and it's a photograph of me and pam under our tree on my bright purple blanket, with the skyscrapers behind us and the picnic basket beside us, and there i am, with a friend, with our sketchbooks, and i'm wearing teh same outfit- meike's brown gauze skirt and the first amanda top i'd ever made. but the older me is obviously so much cooler- even without the sketchbook and cityscape, i've got my little dreadlocked bob tied up with the scarf i got from g, i've got a silver ring in my nose, and my acne's cleared up. and knowing that this photograph came from my future is enough encouragement for me to stick around long enough to get there.
that was supposed to be the end of the post, but now i'm wondering- why do i always send back photos to high school? have i taken any pictures yet to send back to su casa? lord knows i needed them then. and what about now? i should be receiving photographs now from my future. what do they look like. i have the feeling that i will be sending postcards then to me now, but unfortunately they're in german and i can't read them well enough yet to know what i'm telling me. but perhaps thee fact that they're postcards, and they're IN german, should be enough.