jamelah.net

Hi, Internet. I have not died.

Now that I’ve gotten that necessary bit of news out of the way, I figure I’ll set about updating my blog. It’s been hectic lately, though as I remarked to a friend recently, hectic is the norm these days, so much so that it doesn’t even really bear mentioning anymore. If it ever stays quiet and slightly dull for more than a few hours at a time, then I suppose I’ll have something to mention. Life is an adventure, but at least it’s not boring.

The point is that I’ve been kind of stressed out lately, and to make up for the fact that I feel like dealing with that stress by running around in circles and screaming at the top of my lungs like a kid who’s had way too much sugar (doesn’t that sound FUN?) I thought instead I would have a nice day today. A good day. A day I enjoyed if it killed me, dammit. And guess what? I did.

I got out of bed and poured a cup of coffee and I called Australia. Well not Australia. I wasn’t all, “Hello, Australia? How’s it going?” Specifically, I called my friend Jason, who happens to live in Australia. The photo at the top of this post is one I took years ago of a letter he sent me years before I took the photo. The letter is nearly a decade old now, which just goes to show you that I’ve known Jason a hell of a long time. Ours is a modern friendship, one that wouldn’t have existed were it not for the internet; we live on different continents and have never met in person, yet he’s one of my all-time favorite people. Also he has awesome tattoos. We talked about it a little today, meeting in person. It would definitely be fun, though it may also bring about the apocalypse. So if that ever happens, I promise to warn you, so you can be sure to wear a helmet.

I think helmets are going to be important during the apocalypse. Unless it’s a zombie apocalypse. Because then you’ll need orange sweatshirts and garden rakes. And bourbon.

Anyway, after chatting it up with Jason, I went with my mom to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, mainly because my mom was like “Oooh! Rembrandt!” and I was like “I like museums.” I’m not a huge fan of — how you say? ah, yes — Jesus art (I think I hit my lifetime quota of religious art-viewing when I was in Italy, because there’s a lot of Jesus art in churches, ok?), but I really enjoyed it. Except there was this twat who kept moving me out of the way. I didn’t enjoy that. But even though I’ve never been like “Oooh! Rembrandt!” I have a new appreciation after having seen the work in person. And then I wandered around the museum some more, because I like museums. I was standing in a gallery looking at an orange and brown Rothko painting (which, conveniently, is called Orange, Brown), when I heard some ladies behind me talking about how they’d seen a 7-foot-tall transvestite on TV. That conversation was inspired by this Giacometti:

FYI, I guess.

It was nice, walking around and looking at art, which is one of my favorite things to do (my favorite of the day was this one by Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, because of those blue and orange blobs of paint at the top — I liked the whole painting, but I liked that part best).

And then I had sweet potato pancakes for dinner. So yeah, it’s been a good day.