fierce love

i am rethinking my thoughts about my teenager :) my daughter was my shadow, my playmate, at times my reason to keep going. she was a book worm (just like me), she was my shy violet. then....came 7th grade...

my little partner suddenly became a social butterfly. and quiet evenings with mom suddenly became a scarcity - and friends took on an urgency that i wasn't used to!...or was i?

several things in my recent past have made me wax nostalgic (the most recent of which is attending my cousin's wedding) and whenever i revisit my past, i realize how much i LOVE the characters who starred in my adolescence. to this day!!!! i carry a strong affection for the players in my adolescent drama. from friends to boyfriends - i still carry affection for them.

in my "older wisdom" i caution my daughter - your first love probably won't be your last. and that's likely true - but i warn her because i don't want her to be too attached - but i don't tell her how much i still love my first love because he was my first love. i think about my friends too - how much i loved them - how much i still do. and it is friends who have made the deepest imprint. my first (and second) true loves were my friends at the heart of it!

high school is such a strange thing. it is where we test who we want to be. and the people (male or female/ friends or lovers) who we love in HS we love FIERCELY because that's the only setting we have! and i love that i am 35 now and i can still feel the traces of the fierce love that i had for my friends.

and so i have to give my daughter a break. when her friends seem to be her world to the exclusion of the "real world" concerns i bring up - i have to remember the fierce love that accompanies teenage relationships/friendships and that that love can actually transcend time and place.
i have FIERCE love for my adolescent friends :)  which means i love you to this day! so - cass - i acknowledge your teen craziness - because i still retain some of mine :)

The Wendover Project

so 5 or 6 years ago my friend danielle invited me to be painted by an artist. this was not a gig to merely pose - this was a gig to actually have my (and others) naked body have paint applied to it. the artist (paul butler) was an accomplished painter and architect who had something nagging the back of his mind - why must we (humans) associate nakedness with sexuality? so he conceived an art where bodies were used as a canvas to explore the human body as shapes - with no judgement as to what shapes were "good" or "bad" (is a triangle good or bad? is a curve good or bad? is a square good or bad? - it sounds silly when you say it this way, but we judge our bodies'  shapes to be good or bad all the time).

so i have done numerous sessions with him over the past years. (almost) every year paul does something called the wendover project. the wendover project is where as many models as will consent to it go out to the salt flats (if you aren't familiar with utah - look up the salt flats) and are painted all together in one composition.

if you know me, then you know i am a pretty "free spirit" - but will admit i have issues with my body. so driving out to the salt flats you are in this like alien landscape. then all the models strip down - and it's surreal. because even the open-minded feel exposed - but we all do - and we all are. today there were 27 models. so there were 27 female bodies. and at first some of us are more or less shy. but we all get to see the amazing variety of bodies - and how we all have our own unique beauty - you see skinny, chubby, big boobs, tiny boobs, tattoos, piercings, cellulite, stretch marks... and then we have to stand there in the blistering sun having paint applied to our bodies. and as we stand there in the sun, with the paint drying and cracking,your habit of "holding in your tummy" or whatever  dissolves and you just become sisters with all the women who are there with you "letting it all hang out." it's pretty brutal standing on the (reflective) white salt in the heat - your vanity is really laid bare - and you don't even have time for obsessing about the things you dislike about your body. it is eye-opening and empowering to push past your personal insecurities about your body. and the funny thing is - you hear women talking about their insecurities!! it's like - because we are all out there, we can come clean with our secret dislikes about our bodies - and find out that we all have them.

it is a really amazing experience and i wish it (or a similar one) on all my lady friends. there is really nothing in the world like standing naked with 27 women (mostly strangers) on public land to create art