I Just Figured Out Why I Love Art

When I was a teenager, heaven for me was 2 hours with a girlfriend flipping through posters, prints, graphics, art, celebrity pics, and landscapes at the PRINTS PLUS store at the mall.

Oh to buy a poster and have it framed was to take home a piece of heaven!

My mom used to wonder what I was looking for in those images so jumbled, mass produced, and commercializde.

How could we spend so long fli-fli-flipping image after image?

I know how now! We were waiting for our bodies to say yes to an image. It feels so good when that happens. When you connect to an image like I did to this one above on the left.

One time at PRINTS PLUS, I got a Herb Ritts picture of a cute guy in button flys. Another time, Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. But it wasn't all about boys for me. I remember feeling so sophisticated the day I bought Monet's Waterlilys, and so sexy the day I picked up Lord Leighton's Flaming June.

By the time I found Chagall and Gustav Klimt, PRINTS PLUS has gone - as had my teen years, but I felt the same way (physically in my body) when I fell in love with those artists, as I did the day I stood coveting Annie Leibovitz' Lennon Ono Rolling Stone cover-turned-poster.

And now I see… all that flipping through racks of images was a meditation of sorts. I was waiting and preparing myself to be in the moment. To be in my body.

I think standing in PRINTS PLUS in 1987 with Sue Philson, flipping through a jumble of art is probably the only time in my teen years I allowed myself to be connected with my only true compass, my body. No wonder I never wanted to leave. PRINTS PLUS was the only place it was really safe for me to tune into my self, listening and connecting with my body authentically and without judgement.

I was searching for an image that enabled ME to see MYSELF…

Oh look, here I am now…



My friend Jessica Hanff introduced me to this amazing artist named Richard Stine. (Both images on this post are his and there are about 100 more I would like to copy/paste here!)

I just spent the last hour flipping through his images on a website called Image Kind and I was transported back to the Meriden Square circa 1987.

It's nice to know all that flipping had a pretty spiritual purpose. Who knew a PRINTS PLUS could have been so holy.

Want to take a spin through Stine's amazing collection? Find it at ImageKind.com.

Some nights…

Some nights I want to write long passages.

Some nights I want to detail my decisions and open a hole for the world to crawl into my madness.

Some nights it feels okay to connect, to reach out, to be my imperfect self.

Some nights, after the crimson shades turn black, I feel a gentle openness and I think:
"Maybe everything does make sense after all."

Tonight, however, is not one of those nights.

Tonight is a night where words can’t fill in the hole in my heart.
Tonight imperfection is not a good enough answer.
Tonight the blackness feels more suffocating than gentle.

And to be honest, I’m really not sure why.

I’d be more okay with the ambiguity if I could sleep in a darkened room somewhere in a little anonymous B&B in Darwin or Cairns.
I’d be more okay with the ambiguity if time didn’t seem to be moving so fast.
I’d be more okay with the ambiguity if it didn’t suck so damn much.

Nights like this I understand why Americans watch so much reality tv.