Today's post should be a short one (though I've said that before and that doesn't happen, so who knows). This post will, however, be dedicated to one of my creative outlets: drawing. I'm not an amazing artist when it comes to drawing. I can make something that looks good, but I never took the time to study and make myself great. It takes a lot of time, lots of erasing, and often does not match what I wanted it to look like in my head. This does not mean it looks bad, but there are things I notice like shading, or how the body is posed, or the hands/feet of a person, that just look off. That being said, when I draw something it doesn't look horrible, and I realize this. But I've seen other people draw much better pictures than me, so when I say I'm not a "good" artist, it's because I don't think I could make a living off of my art as it stands right now. With that explanation out of the way...One of the authors I follow on Facebook (shout-out to Aidy Award and all her lovely romance novels!!! If you like romance, try her books, they're awesome), posted something that I found really awesome. Apparently, May is the month a portion of the internet dedicates to drawing mermaids. It is termed #MerMay, and it is amazing!!! Follow that hashtag (or the more specific #MerMay2019) on Twitter or Instagram if you love mermaids (which I do) because there is some lovely art out there! And what's even better is the diversity you see in the art. These aren't all Disney mermaids that are super thin with heteronormative relationships and are not all that dangerous to humans. You get some of those. There's a really cute piece of art that has Pudge from Lilo and Stitch as a mermaid hanging out with Lilo and Stitch. There are mermen, mermaids of pretty much every type of aquatic creature, every type of skin color, and every weight. I got so inspired that I decided to draw my own mermaid for #MerMay, so I thought I'd share my picture and the process it took to get me to the final product. So first steps, sketch things out. Below you can see my first "this is essentially what I want it to look like" sketch. This is after multiple erasures and dangits. I say sketch, but I don't actually know how, so I just draw lightly until I get an approximation of what I want, which is when I start drawing darker. As you can see, I don't have the face mapped out, and most of the lines are light enough that I could easily erase them without leaving too many marks on the paper. Step 2, once I'm satisfied with my sketches, is inking it out. If I'm scanning my drawings or taking a picture, sometimes pencil doesn't show up dark enough, so I tend to ink in the outlines of things. This also means that if I want to go back and make a line cleaner I can do so without worrying about erasing everything around that line too. I only ink after I'm sure of what details I want included. It's a prelude to the last step. The picture above isn't just the ink, I'd already started to color some of it in when I took the picture. At some point in my life I want to learn the art of ink drawing, but I'm not confident enough in my skills to create an entire piece of art with only pens. I like to be able to erase, or at least just make the whole thing a darker shade if I mess something up. Step 3 is coloring. As you see in the above picture, I already started. I use colored pencils mostly because if you start light enough it's relatively easy to hide any mistakes. But they're also pretty cheap and easy to find. I don't need to go to a craft store to get good ones. Below is my finished product. I've been thinking about lionfish mermaids for quite a few years, and so that's what I decided to draw. I chose brown colors because I wanted it to be somewhat realistic. I had a hard time with the hair (I was running out of browns but I also wanted everything but the dark brown streaks to be a noticeable different color) and the eyes. I had the 24-pack of Crayola colored pencils, so in some ways my color choices were limited by that. Overall, it would have been nice to have the hair and eyes blend in a bit more with the rest of the look but I'm very happy with how it turned out.
What creative pursuits do you explore sometimes? Do you have a dedicated activity? Or is it more of a "when I get the urge I do this..." type of thing for you? Let me know in the comments. Happy Reading!
0 Comments
Today, May 2, 2019, is Yom HaShoah. In English, that's Holocaust Memorial Day. For Jews such as myself, it is an important day because millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and people with disabilities were systematically destroyed by Nazis. Jews were not the only group that were targeted by the Nazis, but as a people we make sure to remember the Holocaust and all the lives lost to hatred, xenophobia, and white supremacy. I am writing this blog post in part because even as we remember the lives lost in the Holocaust today, we also are dealing with rising levels of antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia throughout the world. A piece of evidence supporting this is the shooting at the Poway Chabad in California on Saturday, April 27. While this shooting did not result in as many fatalities as another recent synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, life was still lost. One of the underlying reasons for the shooting was antisemitism. Another was white-supremacy. These were also two reasons the Jews were targeted during the Holocaust.
On Monday I was having a conversation with a few other young Jews in my community about how this shooting and antisemitism affected us. One of the topics revolved around how we as Jews can communicate to our friends how an event like Poway affects us even when it's "small." After all, "only" one person died and a few others were injured. It wasn't like Pittsburgh when 11 people died, or the shooting at the Mosque in Christchurch New Zealand when 51 people died, or the bombs at Catholic churches in Sri Lanka where hundreds died. So Poway, in some ways, is not as big a tragedy and does not get as much media coverage and so people who are not in a Jewish community may not be speaking of it. But it is still very important to our lives. Every shooting or violent act against us is. So how can we communicate this to others without seeming whiny. Because it may not be a big deal to them, but it is very important to us. I suggested writing a blog where you don't just post about tragedies but use the blog to share your truth. Which is what I am trying to do with this blog. I am trying to share my truth through the books I read, the days I live, and the research/writing that I do. And since I gave such a lovely suggestion to a friend, I decided to take my own advice and write a blog. Especially since what happened at Poway is actually relevant to Yom HaShoah. The second topic that stuck with me from my conversation with other young Jews about Poway is the following question: do you feel safe or scared? And my answer for this question was, do I ever feel safe? I didn't go through the Holocaust. None of my immediate family did. All my grandparents, and even great grandparents were safely in the U.S. when the Holocaust happened. I have no personal stories (removed by a few generations) about the antisemitism, the ghettos, the concentration camps, the underground, the death. But I've read books, I've attended classes, I've met others whose grandparents lived through the Holocaust, or maybe didn't. And I grew up in a place where there were very few Jews in a town that was not necessarily Jew friendly. A few of the other people I was speaking with on Friday mentioned that they don't necessarily feel unsafe except when they go to synagogue and see the armed guards there. That's when they're reminded of the shootings. Or sometimes there's a phrase people say that's antisemitic and they're triggered. They don't really notice feeling unsafe. When I grew up, every high holiday there was a cop car at our synagogue. My parents taught me that I don't mention my Judaism unless its with friends. Friends who are established. As I grew older, this changed somewhat. But I almost always laughed off the antisemitic comments people made. It's safer that way. And when people start throwing up "Heil Hitlers" you just keep walking. I don't want you to think it was dangerous back then. It really wasn't. Incidents were very few and very far between. But while sometimes a small thing will trigger me now (it may not have meant anything, but if I see a shirt with a stormtrooper helmet on it saying "Support Our Troops" I'm going to walk in the other direction, maybe jog if it won't be conspicuous), I don't feel any more unsafe being a Jew, and happy to be a Jew, than I ever did. And after thinking about it, it is partly because I have always been afraid. Jews are white, and therefore don't have it as badly as other minorities in the U.S. We are still a minority and still victims of white-supremacy, but because many of us also have white skin (no, not all of us, and internal prejudice is still a major problem unfortunately) many of us also don't worry as much about being shot by the police. Right now. We don't necessarily fear that gentrification will push us out of our homes. We don't usually fear that someone will call the cops on us only because of the color of our skin. We still fear that someone is going to get it into their head that Jews have too much money. That Jews run the state through a grand conspiracy. That "if only the Jews were gone things would be better for us." Antisemitism is an interesting form of prejudice because it relies on the victims not looking like victims. If the Jews look like scapegoats, a people who are privileged but not quite privileged enough, then we can take the blame of everyone's problems. It has been like this since medieval times. It was key to the Pittsburgh shooting. And so we are still afraid. Balanced between privilege and prejudice we never know when the scales will tip. And so we are always afraid. Violence is on the rise. Terrorism based on white supremacy is becoming more blatant (it's always been high, we just didn't want to recognize it). And the overt trends in the U.S. are looking more and more like Nazi Germany. The U.S. has always had issues. The country was built on the attempted genocide of indigenous peoples and the slavery of African nations. It has benefited from the exploitation of non-whites at every point in its history and we sweep that fact under the rug. But now the U.S. is letting those actions become acceptable, even celebrated, with no attempt to cushion the blows. Now, the U.S. is scapegoating immigrants and asylum seekers. The Latinx communities are bearing the brunt of this now. Soon it may change. Scapegoats might once again be Jews. Or Muslims. Or Blacks. Or Indigenous Nations. Or Asians. Or Pacific Islanders. Or homosexuals. Anyone that doesn't fit with white-supremacy. It happened before. It seems to be happening again. And so we are always afraid. These have been my thoughts this week. And I hope that my truth has made you uncomfortable. Because discomfort inspires action. Think about what you see and hear around you. Be kind. Stand up to authority to take care of your neighbors. Do not be complacent. And maybe we will be able to be less afraid. And because I like big books, when they all come in for me at once at the library it means I don't always finish them before they have to go back...Since I don't like to pay fines for overdue items, I bring them back and then have to put them on hold again. This has been my life the past few weeks. A lot of books that I really want to read have come in for me at the library, but I've also been pretty busy with work, applying for scholarships for an international PhD, and trying to finish the first draft of last year's NaNoWriMo novel. All this means, not as much time for reading, and therefore I've had to return books before I've finished them. :(
That being said, I am reading a book right now that I've had on hold for a while and I'm not going to let it go back to the library without finishing it because I've been waiting for it to be published for over a year! It isn't that big, actually, only 354 pages, and it is quite entertaining. What is the book you ask? The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden. It is the final book in a trilogy that are based on Russian folk-tales. One reason I love it so much is that here in the U.S., we don't always get to experience the mythologies of other cultures. Vikings and Greeks and Romans, yeah, we've pretty much all heard some form of those. And the Fae of Great Britain are pretty popular too. But outside of those "big" mythologies, we don't get much exposure to the mythologies of other cultures here in the U.S. The trilogy starts with The Bear and the Nightingale, which I say anyone who likes folk/fairy-tales should read. The series concludes with the book I'm currently reading, and while I'm only 60-something pages in, I definitely know it's going to be a good book. It's already been a wild ride and I'm really looking forward to what happens next! That's why today's post is going to be so short, because I really want to get back to reading while I have time today (I still need to spend some time on my novel and finish making lunches for the week). If you want, let me know what you're reading and what your favorite mythology/folk/fairy-tale stories are in the comments. I'm always up for discussing them and finding new stories to love! Happy Reading! So in case you didn't notice, I missed two weeks of posting, sorry about that. I believe I had a reasonable excuse for the first week though, because I totally felt like death. Whatever cold/flu whatever that was hitting the East coast of the USA (and might still be here) took me down hard. And it took all but one of my co-workers down at the same time. It was an interesting week at work, what with the chorus of hacks and nose blowing. Last week I was on the tail end of it all and probably should have posted but I lost track of time during the day and it just didn't happen. And that type of thing just kept happening throughout the whole week, so here we are.
I don't really have anything specific I want to write today. Not that I haven't been reading a lot and gathering up a lot of fodder for social commentary, but if I'm not in the right mood trying to discuss either of those is exhausting and I don't do it well. Case in point, someone asking about universal income at a dinner I was at, me saying we should abolish capitalism, and the conversation going nowhere because it was difficult for me to fully articulate why I think that. Keep in mind, I'm a budding leftist. I haven't read much of the material needed to bring up hard facts/figures off the top of my head, and most of my knowledge right now revolve around small facts that I learn and my feeling that the current system never really worked because if it had then why haven't we fixed the problems of poverty, starvation, and climate change yet? Look at the technology we have. Look at the number of videos on the internet about "this plate is fully compostable" or "this robot cleans the oceans" or "this shampoo has no plastic bottle." Yet, none of those initiatives seem to really get off the ground. Not to mention, individual pollution is minuscule compared to that of factories. Yet even though climate scientists have essentially said we're screwed if we don't fix this by 2050, I don't see a whole lot being done by companies to fix it. All of this combined with the fact that some studies show there are about five times as many empty domiciles for rent as there are homeless people in the US (Truthdig 2012), and that there are people in the US who are homeless but still work 40 hours a week(McCoy, 2019)...Well, that doesn't give me warm and happy feelings about capitalism. So even though I said I wasn't going to talk about it, I did. Go figure. The story told by McCoy? It was right across from my work building. I walk that stretch of road every day and see people in tents or huddled under blankets. I'm pretty sure I saw the altercation mentioned, when Monica was yelling at the clean-up crews. It was a few minutes before a conference call, I was dialing the number, and I looked out the window and saw a woman yelling at the people dragging her belongings away. It might not have been the woman referenced in the story; it might have been another person saying the same things. Another person who is trying so hard to keep on his/her/their feet but failing because the system we're in works against them. Some people may say that this system we're in is a bastardization of capitalism, and pure capitalism isn't like this. Pure capitalism will actually work. But I don't think that's true. And maybe it's partially because I haven't actually read Ayn Rand and just can't picture it. Maybe human beings are "just greedy" and the system isn't at fault. But what if it isn't that humans are "just greedy?" What if a system like capitalism, or at least the version we currently have, is the reason humans are "just greedy?" I see a system around us that rewards being greedy. It rewards looking out only for yourself. It rewards the hoarding of money (which by they way, is totally made up and doesn't actually mean anything unless you're in a system that forces it to mean something). And when you are rewarded for being greedy? Then that is what you become. And evolutionarily, those people who are "best" at being greedy and ignoring others? Well they're in prime position to reproduce. There's a reason the highest ratios of psychopathic traits are in CEOs. This turned into a very deep and dark post, and I apologize. But sometimes when I'm writing and can actually search for my references/facts I make better arguments. I do not want this to turn into an online argument. I just needed to express some of the inner worries and stresses of my life. Feel free to give your own opinions or point me towards other articles that support or don't support my views. Just don't turn it into an argument. Next week I'll have a happier topic. Maybe a book or movie review... Happy Reading! References: McCoy, T. (2019, March 22). Homeless, living in a tent and employed: The changing face of homelessness in the U.S. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com Truthdig. (2012) Vacant houses outnumber homeless people in the U.S. Retrieved from https://www.truthdig.com/articles/vacant-houses-outnumber-homeless-people-in-u-s/ We're taking a break from book-themed posts this week, because I have very little energy and my brain does not feel capable of making logical commentary on the books I've read this week. Consequently, today's post is also likely to be quite short.
Exhaustion is a funny thing, because there are some days when you should be exhausted and you are, some days you should be exhausted and you aren't, and some days when you shouldn't be exhausted but you are anyway. Today is one of the latter for me. I think part of it may be because I'm crashing after about a month of high stress all the time. With grad school application issues (thankfully they've all been resolved), a last minute conference, preparing for Purim at work, preparing for and hosting a Purim Extravaganza Shabbat, and calling in to my Colorado book club, it's been a long stretch of late (for me) nights and high adrenaline levels. Of course, what this means for me is that when all those tasks are complete, my adrenaline crashes and I'm actually aware of how tired I am. So really, today I just want to take a nap. That being said, I can't take a nap because that messes with my sleep cycle and just makes the exhaustion of tomorrow worse...And with another conference coming up this week I'm not willing to risk that. It does, however, remind me of a book I read on the recommendation of a co-worker, "The Age of Miracles" by Karen Thompson Walker. While it was not one of my favorite reads last year, it did have some beautiful language and does comment on the importance of the circadian rhythm (though that is most definitely not the main point of the story). The book is about something going wrong with the rotation of the Earth which results in days getting longer. While I forget what number of hours the days eventually stopped at, it was enough that the normal circadian rhythms of organisms all over the planet were getting screwed up. While the book is primarily a coming of age story framed around this disaster, it mentions two factions: those who simply get black-out blinds and continue to work with a 24-hour day schedule regardless of whether there is sunlight outside or not, and those who attempt to reset their sleeping rhythms by staying awake when it is light and going to sleep when it is dark. There's no real resolution between these two factions in the book (again, that wasn't the point of the story), but neither one really worked that well. And while I don't know whether one or the other would actually be better for human beings should such a strange thing happen, I do know that maintaining sleep rhythms in everyday life is pretty important. It's why I've read multiple blog articles in the past about how you shouldn't change your sleep/wake cycle on the weekends. It's also why people invest in products that help them sleep when they need to (e.g., sleep-masks, ear-plugs, blackout blinds, etc.) even if nature isn't cooperating. It's also why Daylight Savings tends to make everyone grumpy at some point. And because I believe in the importance of sleep, it means that as much as I want to nap today I'm going to keep pushing through the day so that I can sleep tonight without worrying about tossing and turning until midnight. Thankfully, reading isn't too strenuous and I have leftover food from my Shabbat dinner for lunches this week. ;) Happy Reading! |
AuthorThe author is a librarian who reads "too much" (is there such a thing?) and talks just as much. As an aspiring author she gets bogged down by grammar rules when she just wants to forget them to make a sentence flow, but never seems to be able to. She appreciates thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, but internet trolls beware, she's read enough fantasy novels to know how to defeat the monsters. Archives
October 2020
Categories
All
|