Journal 003

I know I promised that hippie entry, but now that it's expected of me, I find myself avoiding the task. At any rate, you'll have it by the end of the week, I promise, or else it would have made no sense to do the hippie theme on my music log this week (which I certainly can't change now). In the meantime...

I actually forced myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour yesterday (meaning 7 in the morning instead of 10 in the morning), so I was pretty well-rested. I still got up out of bed at the last minute, though, to hop in the shower and dress for dinner. It was sloppy joe's, which I'm not so thrilled by, and Kraft macaroni n' cheese (the blue box kind), which I'm incredibly thrilled by. I heaped the mac onto my plate and ate a full helping before even considering the sloppies.

I was a little aimless after dinner, but I eventually got around to trying to hook up my guitar directly to my computer, in the hopes of recording some instructional audio tracks for my Quick Riffs web page. It was a failure. I tried plugging each of the holes, and I didn't get any response at all. So I'm not sure what to do now. But at the time, I ended up jamming out a bunch of the riffs with the distortion on my amp, just to convince myself I could still play them all (by the way, no sweat). I guess I kind of exhausted myself that way, and after the amp started getting squeaky for some reason, I shut it off and just lay there on the floor, with the guitar sitting on top of me, for a little while. Just relaxing.

Then, I spent some time reading. I read through the second of the two volumes of School Rumble I got for Christmas. Great series. I guess you know by now that I'm not much into comedies, but this is one of the exceptions. This series actually succeeds at making me laugh every now and then! Plus, this particular volume had one of my favorite scenes from the series - after the fireside dance where Eri dances with Harima, when she's sitting at home, refusing to go to school, partly because she's afraid to show her face after dancing with Harima, and partly because she's utterly confused about her feelings for Harima. The anime series describes the scene as "Eri feeling the blues". Now, considering that Eri is my favorite character in the series, you tell me that's not the perfect scene for me.

After that, I read through some of the books on nude photography I recently received, having ordered them partly as a birthday gift to myself and partly to encourage my interest in the field. There was a risque title on 'the art of rope' (if you know what I mean), which managed to be sexy without being too trashy. I also got a book of poses in the context of nude life drawing, which includes a CD that's supposed to be chock full of poses. I intend to practice some of those and see how well I can hold them for extended periods of time.

Additionally, there was a collection by Jock Sturges, a photographer I've come to admire for his portrayal of real people (as opposed to models) in a naturist context, regardless of age and gender. There seems to have been some controversy surrounding his work; I think the FBI actually charged him for involvement in child pornography, but it was clearly a defamation scheme. Although his photographs hide nothing, they are far from exploitative, and sexuality is never the primary theme, from what I've seen. There's a classic and very human soul in his images, and it seems his subjects have nothing but the greatest respect for him. All the more reason for me to support him.

Around 11 o'clock, after my dad went to bed, I got undressed. Nudity is hard to accommodate during the winter. Even with the heat on indoors, it still tends to be chilly. If it were up to me, I'd just crank up the thermostat until I'm comfortable, but I'm not the head of this household, and I'm not about to begin dictating the temperature of the house. Still, despite the weather being colder than it has been the past two days, it wasn't so bad in the house today. So I decided to go completely nude - no robe, no slippers, no nothing - and it felt great! It was a little chilly in the kitchen when I went to get some food around 1am, but I get the feeling that, unless I was bundled up, I would have actually *felt* colder had I been wearing clothes. It's a funny thing, but I've noticed that my body seems to be able to regulate heat more efficiently without clothing. Maybe I'm just trying to rationalize being nude as much as I can, but that's the feeling I've been getting so far.

My brother showed up in the kitchen, and we ended up having a surprisingly long (at least for me) discussion that was partly engaging, and deeply depressing. Basically, I kept trying to convince him that there were some good things in life worth living for, and at every turn, he shot them down with some counterpoint from his negative perspective. Seriously, I consider myself to be a pretty cynical person, but compared to him, I'm a life-affirming spiritualist or something. And it's really frustrating, too, because you realize that this is really what his life is like, and it honestly sounds like it sucks. You get the impression that, as he often confirms, death would actually be the only positive experience for him. And that really is depressing. I don't even know what to say to that, because it's really hard to embrace that sort of a perspective, and I think I've tried just about everything I can try to convince him otherwise.

The cat was generally being a nuisance during the conversation. Have I mentioned our cat yet in this blog? She's a Siamese. If that doesn't mean anything to you, then let me tell you this - Siamese cats are known for being loud, and being highly dependent upon human companions. In other words, they are ABOMINATIONS of the feline race! Anyhow, this cat in particular is named Sasha, and she's basically my mom's cat, except that my mom abandoned her when my parents divorced some 6 or 7 years ago (allegedly because the place my mom moved into didn't allow pets). And my dad's never been a cat person, so Sasha has really gotten the bad end of the bargain. And because of that, I want really bad to care for her, but there are two problems with that. Firstly, I am not an animal person. You'd think that a naturist, or even just a person who respects nature in general, would be an animal-lover. Well, allow me to be the counterexample that disproves that stereotype. I don't like animals. I think they're dirty, and it bugs me that I can't reason with them. If I don't like the way they're acting, there's very little I can do about it. Which brings me to the second reason I have such a hard time with Sasha. She makes so much freaking noise! She won't quit! Even in the middle of the night! When I'm slipping into the kitchen in the middle of the night, nude and naturally in ninja mode, trying not to attract extra attention, she comes out and starts screaming like a madwoman! I've tried many things to get her to shut up, but most of the time it just makes her more irritable - and louder! The best you can do is endure it, and wait for her to get tired. Which isn't a very good compromise, in my mind.

Anyhow, that's the situation. I have a hard time hating her (since I really am a kind person), but I have a hard time liking her, too. She ended up scratching me (inadvertently - she may be obnoxious, but she's not at all violent) quite significantly across the ribs. This is one of those situations where I would have benefited from having a little armor. Luckily, it didn't really hurt. I just hope it doesn't leave a mark. At any rate, the most it's gonna do is make me even more conscious of keeping that cat away from me. It certainly hasn't hurt my enthusiasm for being nude.

After the convo, a storm started kicking up outside. Not so much a winter storm, but more your typical wind and rain storm, with an emphasis on the wind. I still hear the wind howling out there now. When the wind gets in the back door, the space between the inner and outer doors creates a kind of wind tunnel, which makes some rather loud noises, that can be quite unsettling when you aren't expecting them. It's been howling quite a bit the last few hours. There was a very brief period when the storm went into overdrive. I went downstairs and peered through the blinds on the front door - the rain was falling so hard it was like a thick fog! Naturally, I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. I absolutely love storms - I always have. Something about the energy of nature in those aggressive moments just ignites my excitement. The porch was wet under my feet, even standing just in front of the door, well under the overhang of the roof. I could feel the rain sprinkling against my skin, being sprayed almost horizontally by the heavy winds. It felt exhilarating, and I would have just loved to have gone out and danced through it, but it was much too cold - too cold even to stand there for more than about a minute. Still, that minute was totally worth it. Those kinds of moments are one of the things I live for. They're one of the things that makes life for me worth living.