My @ll3y c@+

Dearest Gentle Giants, this is my sister of 15 years, my sister of heart & thoughts, my sibling of soulful wordless wonder and troubly-troublesomeness, @ll3y c@+.

Today, FINALLY,  we watch mortalmovie, my s'elf in NY, she in Denmark. We watched it exactly the same time, 3888 miles or 6255.79 Kilometers between our seats, only were were together... while not at all knowing we were together!

Am I actually surprised this happen? nope, not at all, not with @ll3y & me. This has been our whole life, our shared existence.

Those are proud tears in her eyes. She's a happy crier though but I forgive her that, my @ll3y c@+. For serious, would you look a that magic, would you just lookit that!

 —

Remember how I mentioned it isn't the big screen that moves me about the work I do, Its The Connectivity.

 —

Last weekend, after my third big attempt to watch The Mortal Instruments; City of Bones fell through and I know, you'd really think it would be easier for me to see a film with my name somewhere in the credits (as my sister documented so blurringly with loves) but instead I did the thing, I mean THE THING I was meant to do instead.

I went to my tattoo shop. My footprints aren't on the ceiling anymore. My artwork isn't on the walls. The neighborhoods been sold, every storefront 3 times over at least. But there is something there that's certainly my home, you'd know it if you walked with me.

@shadowinked did exactly that. She came down from Canada. I found an old-school tattooist friend to work on her Angelic Rune piece. We held hands for an hour, she told me her story and how she came to find & love the Shadowhunters. I told her how the Shadowhunters came to be & where my awkward love stands. In the end even the tattooist wanted to hear more. 

Afterward, we told even more stories, hella-spoilers throughout, not just film or book or behind the scenes but just long lives, just spoiling each other rotten, walking around through hidden New York, places that only people both torn down & built up here could possibly know. 

Then parted ways, contentedly, peaceably-- for me? filled to the brim with gratitude for the connectivity, the intimacy my craft affords me.

Lucky me. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

Happy Aniversity, Far-Eviler!

a year ago, i joined hitRECord in a grand gesture 'to expand my horizons', etc. It was really an act of weakness-- I couldn't take on paying work anymore because I started dropping things, getting cramps & spasms from doing everyday things, I'd get tremors that'd sometimes last for days. I felt broken, unreliable & false when people wanted to talk shop.

I dunno what I thought it'd be like. I'd never really collaborated before; I thought it meant losing control. Since I was losing that anyway... I uploaded only things made for personal use, things I loved but was never going to get a chance to put them to use. I figured playing around with these RECorder's would placate artist-smartist self.

The word 'small' I doesn't begin to describe my thinking, but the word "Tiny" began to have a much better ring to it.

It's been a year; Fibromyalgia looks likely to be the culprit of my deterioration but with no really-for-real answer there is no satisfaction in the knowing this but there is satisfaction in getting this.

I hadn't seen it in print, so I wasn't certain. I hadn't known what I was getting into but then I never really do. I'm a published artist now, I'm handicapped, I am not giving up, I'm frightened everyday, I am certain this is not the end, I am grateful were it to be.

---

You can get your own

@  http://hitrecord.org/store/tiny_book.html

---

also, this guy here who signs my checks, you know My Boss is more Awesome than yours will ever be.

Thanks.

Especially to the Girl at the Library, so into reading "City of Bones" she didn't stop to watch where she walked... (I can only assume you go to PS.95, because of how young & petite you are, although I went to MS.143 around the bend & couldn't have been an inch bigger. Apologies for not getting your name.)

Normally an internet embargo on my part means I'm up to artistic doings and preparing for a flood of creative-goodness. And maybe this is, in a lengthy roundabout distinctly unfun way— in November of 2010 I sought treatment for problems with my joints, specifically my wrists & knees. And in the logical progression, for the depression that would follow. By December (17th to be morbidly precise) tremors and weakness in my hands made it difficult if not impossible to brush teeth, comb hair, open doors, type and if you haven't guessed yet, draw.

Anyone local, or who saw me over New Years/MoCCA Artfest certainly noted I am sporting my time-tested knee & hand braces once more! Tried and true little buggers they are. But by February physical therapy was proven ineffective. Now all sorts of experts have started poking, Ortho, Vascular, Neurological, etc.

I've never been a super healthy person but even at my worst, I've always had art to keep my sane. Going into my seventh month of being incapable of creating, commuting or even computing, I don't think I've ever been so scared—

• And then I get a praise from my ambulance driver ('sup Anesdi)
• And then I get written up in a school paper.
• And then get things like this forwarded to me; 

Phrases like "Courage" and "Fearless" aren't banter for me, they're works of art. Now I am learning "Faith" is as well.

Things are going to get harder before they get better but I feel like a fighter again.

Thank you for that :)

Val Freire is Far "Courageously" Eviler

This thing is bad-ass!! It's like a flipping NINJA STAR!


New Jewelry from Hebeldesign, meant to coincide with New Store & New Runes... so much newness :D

It's "Gratuitous Picture of Your Book Shelf Tuesday!"

The lovely curtain obscures the lovely section up-top that aught to be obscured, whilst giving the kidlings distracting tassels to play :D Everyone wins!

---

That 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' book-ended on its own, was a 134 years old when I first received it nearly ten years ago. I imagine it's a bit older now.

RE:CITIES

"Being born and raised in New York, but nowhere near Manhattan, gives a kid a skewed perspective of the term 'Hometown'. Things are still that "Larger Than Life" sort of big but never glamorous, still over-bright and siren-loud but somehow tuned to a different frequency, where the only constant is change. From that stems the weirdest sense of homesickness for a place you still live. But there is a bitter-sweetness to it. And there is an endlessness to it. Fast and fierce and furious as this town can be, you stick around long enough you learn 'keeping up' isn't the answer. Sometimes letting it overwhelm, just letting it flow is the only way to really be.

I left NY when I was 15. Sick to shit of it. Did the wanderlust tour of 30 homes in 3 years; London, London's much preferred bastard brother LIVERPOOL, Ballintoy, Paris, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, well,... I'll stop there cuz the list gets pretty effin' long.

But I missed New York, functioning anywhere else was work, New York just flows. I didn't mean to come back; I just stopped over from Los Angeles the morning of 9/11. It seemed the universe, the world, the city herself had grounded me.

For a year after 9/11, on my new queen-size bed in my new four-story walk up, I'd lay for hours, dangling my head back to look thru the window up at the broad hi-rise stapled sky and watch planes fly by, willing them to not fall.

Maybe we all did that, I don't know. I still travel, lots, but because the city needs me, I come home."

Dear Pseudo-Feminist;

Y'all do know who originated Slut-Shaming? Misogynist!

Soo, way to bring that back around.

In Conclusion; I add, presently being featured on hotnerdsreadingcomics is me.

I both own + rock everything in this photo, including them legs what god gave me.
[Okay, maybe I don't exactly own THAT shirt, but one can dream...]

Sincerely, a real F-in Woman.

Just got this in one of the coolest e-mails from a fan, just about, ever!

from jimmygreen

If anyone, anywhere, does anything nearly as cool as getting my designs tattooed on them, PLEASE share! Stuck. Sort of speechless. In grinning power-crazed creative amusement here. And I could really get used to it.