i have a piece featured in the September issue of Ceramics Monthly!

you can see it HERE HERE HERE! i am all the way down at the bottom. A piece of Megan’s is also featured as well (our beleaguered graduate program is finally getting the respect it deserves). this is pretty exciting, considering that the exhibition in question featured at least 60-70 works.

CM is an industry publication, but probably the one most widely read in the field of ceramic art and education.

as soon as i get paid i will have to buy myself a copy.

well, this Defamer post depressed the hell out me, because it is sadly true:

it seems de riguer for any aging demographic (in our current case, Generation X, a generation i belong to if not in actual age then in spirit) to criticize MTV as a stupid, vapid, ridiculous waste of time, usually ending with a futile entreaty of: “why don’t they play more videos?”. i remember around 1993 or 1994 or 1995, at the height of my teenage watching of MTV, my father waxing rhapsodic about the original set of VJs or the John Whatever Mellancamp videos that were kept in regular rotation. to which i rolled my eyes, and went back to watching the Pumpkins:

i’ve always loved that video. i thought it was so cool, with its silent film inspiration, the drumming, and of course, swoon, Billy Corgan. i source my bald/shaved head fetish in men to approximately 23% Billy Corgon (the other 77% is Patrick Stewart). but, like, really? can you imagine something like this being on MTV today? they’re too busy slappin’ their ho’s and drinking their Cristal.

and of course, perhaps the current MTV demographic (which, at this point, was born in the Clinton administration, for chrissakes), ten or fifteen years hence will look back and sigh with nostalgia….

no. wait. fuck that. what the hell do they have to be nostalgic about? TRL? My Super Sweet 16? bish please. i can’t imagine MTV actually getting worse. but it probably will.

but i digress. getting back to the Pumpkins and Mr. Corgan. i had a conversation with my dear love Malcolm a few days ago, which i will relate thus:

(i should preface this with a quick background: Malcolm is not only five and a half years younger than me, he spent his entire childhood in South Africa, thus rendering him far outside the mainstream of MTV and American popular music of the 1990s)

Malcolm : so, i’m starting to get into some old stuff from the 90’s. like Garbage and stuff. they’re really good! i don’t know how i missed them.

M. Rav : oh, i’ll have to play you The Smashing Pumpkins, you’ll love them, if you want to get into 90’s music.

Malcolm : the what? the smashing who?

M. Rav : *head on wall*

weird clouds over New Bedford, originally uploaded by m. ravian.

look! Thomas Kinkade has taken over the skies of New Bedford! this is the view from my kitchen window. i love being on the third floor.

so, i had a crap day. all these dumb little things. since last week, every day i have been making a list to help motivate me to do stuff, to increase my inertia and reduce my sloth. so far, it has been only partially successful - i spent all of yesterday watching episodes of Project Runway and Star Trek: The Next Generation on my laptop. look at that! right there, beauty and the geek.

the day began promisingly enough. went to the library, got out more DVDs and Brideshead Revisited. went to Target and got some hairspray to nurture my baby fauxhawk. i also got BLONDE bobbypins. who knew such a thing existed?

after a few more errands, i got home to find my boarder abruptly gone. she had been staying with me for the last week, doing some research at the marine campus down on the peninsula. she was slated to stay with me through the end of this weekend, but i came home to find a hastily scribbled note, a check for three fourths of what we had agreed upon, and the house keys i had lent her. i had been gone for a mere two hours, in that timeframe she had cleared out entirely, leaving american cheese, a full loaf of bread and an instant meal in her wake. not a text message or a phone call as to how, what and why. very, very weird. plus she inexplicably post-dated her check for the end of the week, which is very unhelpful considering i have forty bucks in the bank at the moment.

so you may remember the cryptic post i made last week about my anxiety about going back to school, and the people i had to deal with that cause me such distress. let’s just say stuff happened today that makes my fears entirely founded. i internally freaked out, wrote a couple venting emails to people who would understand, and then calmed down.

i went into school, putzed around a bit, applied for a job at the coffee house across the street, had an ice coffee that will keep me up well past three this morning, talked to my mom, reorganized things, stared out my window and watched the homeless men that permanently camp out on a bench on Purchase Street.

i went for a walk on the peninsula. ten steps into my walk i realized my iPod was dead. so i walked in the silence of my own stupid, chaotic thoughts. there was a constant breeze coming off the water, evaporating any sweat, but i was going only slightly faster than what i call my retail wandering pace - the speed i walk when i am at large retail superstores like Target or IKEA. not exactly aerobic exercise.

i think i have resolved to do something today. as i was walking, i reflected on what a lump i have become over the last 7-8 years. true, i lost about 25 pounds last summer, but that was almost entirely erased by a year of graduate school. i’ve decided that i am going to run a half marathon the summer after i graduate with my MFA. that gives me about two years to get my sorry ass into shape.

this is scary considering i have never been good at running. i have never run in any meaningful way, ever. i was diagnosed with asthma when i was 12 or 13, and i handily used that as an excuse to not run, for any reason, except when i was tortured once a year by The Mile in gym class.

i still get shivers thinking about the one season of field hockey i played in seventh grade. the only reason i did it was because my friend Alexis was doing it, and once i realized i was miserable and unhappy, nay, tortured, by the idea of team sports, i tried to quit. my parents would not let me. so i stuck it out.

i like to think that this was when i began developing my authority problem. i know for a fact i made all my teammates and my coaches fucking miserable, but i was so unhappy i didn’t care. i mouthed off, i pouted, i flat out refused to do what they told me to. i hid out in the locker room and pretended to be sick. i hated running, i hated playing, i especially hated have to wear my uniform to school on game days (which, of course, consisted of a t-shirt and pleated blue and gray plaid skirt, sigh).

individual sports, i was marginally better. of course, at my father’s behest i fenced for two or three years before having a breakdown at a competition when i was 11 or 12. i have a dim memory of swimming badly. the only thing i really took to with any gusto was weight lifting when i was in high school. i couldn’t get enough of the machines at Y, at my peak i was going 3 or 4 times a week. i took great pleasure in marking my weight increases on the little manila sheet provided by the Y.

then i went to college and it all went downhill from there. my slothful habits calcified and i am left to chip at it, slowly but surely, in my attempt for redemption.

new studio space, originally uploaded by m. ravian.

on Sunday afternoon, i finished moving into my new studio space at school. it had been vacated by my friend Jenn. i had spent last year in an interior studio space without any windows, and the difference they make for me is just huge. nearly everyone who has the window spaces crowds the deep window sills with all sort of things, but i am planning on keeping them entirely empty, and building myself a window seat so i can look out onto downtown NB, the harbor and farther out, Buzzards Bay.

i took the greatest of pleasures putting everything away. it all fit perfectly. my storage issues this year are far more resolved than last, now instead of one enormous closet hulking like a behemoth in one corner, i have several smaller solutions, including the white bureau i bought from Alek in May (which you can see above). it has proved to be perfect for housing all the stupid small things that i have. now my ancient mini fridge sits on top of it, perfectly at eye level. next to the bureau in the above photo is an enormous mirror that i bought at the Artificial Marketplace (an antique/vintage store a block away from school) last spring. it is quite possibly the most insane thing i have ever owned - the mirror alone weighs fifty pounds and it measures at least 5 feet across.

i love my things. i love love love them. is that insane? i love all the things that i have. they make me feel better. they are, in some ways, far more reliable than people. they are always there, sending out their peculiar little energies and bouncing off mine. this isn’t a materialism thing at all; well, not materialism in the pejorative sense. i don’t accumulate things for the sake of accumulating them, i acquire them because they already fit with me and everything else i have. i am so acutely sensitive to these things. i have to be surrounded by the things i trust, or i’m very unhappy.

i have read multiple books on feng shui and space clearing. they reinforced all the things that i already knew intuitively, the way energy moves, the way it is completely stuck in some places and around some people. moving through our communal studio and peeking into the various private spaces, i can see and feel the people that own those spaces. it’s going to be interesting to see what the new members of the studio bring to the table and how it’ll shift everything around.

i have questions.

despite my qualms about your host country, thanks to my general unemployment and sloth, i have found myself watching you far, far more than i planned. because of the twelve hour time difference, the really good events are airing in what i call M. Ravian Prime Time: 10 pm to 3 am. and so i have had my fill of swimming and gymnastics, perhaps a little more than i should. i myself have always vastly preferred the winter Olympics (Lillehammer in 1994 remains my hands down favorite of all time).

but i digress. i have questions, Olympics. the first is about beach volleyball.

i think beach volleyball is kinda stupid to begin with, but then, i am not from California. but that’s not my question. my question is the attire of the athletes of both genders. this is what the women beach volleyball players wear:

(thanks for douchebag standing between them. that’s a nice touch)

and this is what the men wear:

please tell me, Olympics, why do you see fit to fully clothe the male athletes, while leaving the women in what is essentially a glorified bikini? you cannot use the excuse of freedom of movement. if this were the case, why are the men not in little tiny speedos? it couldn’t be some sort of furtive and completely lame bid to get ratings, could it? no way. i can’t believe that. this is an amateur sporting event, after all, not some sort of profit-making venture. this situation is no way indicative of the proliferation of the male gaze throughout the last century of western culture. no way. this is just women looking FUCKING HOT while they are playing in the sand. that’s all. nothing wrong with that, that’s what America’s about!

*COUGH* excuse me, i had to get that feminist theory hairball out of my throat. i feel better now.

the second question i have, Olympics, has to do with gymnastics. oh, what a goldmine of awfulness this sport is; a veritable cauldron seething with injuries, eating disorders, abusive coaches, and body-image issues, destroying so many girls along the way. it finally dawned on me to wonder this: why are the women (ahem, GIRLS) in the sport ages 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 (and if the Chinese gymnast rumors are to be believed, 12, 13 and 14)? and why are all the men, well, men? they are all in their twenties. the Chinese all around champion is 28. what gives?

oh, of course. the simple answer is physiology. men don’t reach their peak as gymnasts until well after puberty when their muscles fully develop. the female gymnasts are at their peak before they hit puberty. that means that their whole career, their competitions, everything - it is all a race against time. that’s because the things that happen with puberty - the breasts, the hips, the (OH MY GOD DON’T SAY IT) fat is deadly to a female gymnast. once puberty hits, their center of gravity shifts and they can no longer compete with those who are younger. the things that are demanded of them as athletes is not compatible with what their bodies naturally, and rightly, need to do.

let’s just take a minute to think about how really fucked up that is.

if this were happening in any other sport - and especially to men - there would be general outcry, and the rules would be changed. the very nature of the sport would have be changed, because it is messed up and wrong that these female gymnasts have a tiny window of a career - 2-3 years, tops - and after that they are washed up, old and “fat” at age 19 or 20.

women’s gymnastics doesn’t have to be like this. the men’s competition is proof of that. the men manage to create compelling television with their feats of grace and strength. yet there is something about these little tiny girls, defying gravity, bouncing and twirling in their little sparkley costumes and bouncy ponytails that the public is just endlessly and unhealthily fascinated with. i wish someone would end this awful, vicious cycle, by raising the minimum age and changing the skills required to emphasize the use of the body of a healthy, grown-ass woman. i for one would love to see a woman take on the rings, the parallel bars, the high bar. but from what i understand, the organization that runs the international gymnastics federation is as backwards and out of touch as a Soviet bureaucracy - which isn’t surprising, considering that’s where most of them are from.

and Olympics, a p.s: Michael Phelps is incredibly hot. so thanks for that.

i never got around to telling you the conclusion of my dental saga, did i? so many stories i have wanted to tell about What I Did On My Summer Vacation, or how i spent the summer unemployed on my parents’ couch and all i got was a fatter ass.

but i digress.

the first day i spent at Temple Dental School was brutal. since i was going in under emergency care, i had to get there crazy, crazy early. absurdly early. i listened to a phone menu that suggested i arrive by 6 am. i arrived at 5:20 and was not even the first one there. three hours and many queues later, i was seen by Frick and Frack, two gormless but strangely compelling second year dental students. one had a painfully formal bedside manner (if i had to hear “Miss Roosen” one more time i’m pretty sure i would’ve thrown something) and the other whose comportment reminded me of a slightly tipsy yet well meaning attendee of a frat party. from there i got x-rays, and from there handed off to the emergency Endo department where i was taken care by a third year student. i was hoping to get a cute dental student, and in him i got my wish.

i felt a bit of tenderness for all these students, coupled with a desperate need, of all the strange things, to help them out. to further their education by allowing them to look into my sad, broken, uninsured mouth, and to teach them how to properly drill out an abscessed root. i was complimented several times on how pretty my teeth were. i let my dental ego swell for a few hours before it dawned on me that they probably saw true horror cases at this clinic - teeth that hadn’t been touched in years, unlike my teeth, lavished with years of orthodontic love and twice-daily infusions of Tom’s of Maine peppermint toothpaste.

i stumbled into the clinic at 5:20 and stumbled out at 2 pm. my poor parents had accompanied me (not knowing what kind of drugs i would be dealt), i think under some sort of hope that we would be able to do something fun in the city once i was finished. pain and serious lack of sleep on all our parts made that an impossibility. we all got home around 4 and completely collapsed.

the second day at Temple Dental School occurred two weeks and two days later. Cute Dental Student had kindly made time for me in his schedule on very short notice, and so i showed up at 8:30 that day (with only father in tow this time), did an exam, did x-rays, and then commenced torture.

such terrible, blinding, awful nerve pain i have never known. at one point i felt it shoot up into my eyeball. apparently novacaine (or whatever equivalent they use now) lasts an incredibly short time on me. less than an hour, by my estimation. so, three and a half hours of root canal plus one hour of numbness equals pain to the tenth power divided by approximately twelve shots of novacaine.

this is why i was not a math major.

this pain was coupled with the fact that i had somehow managed to pull a muscle in my neck the night before. i had always scoffed when people expounded on the agony of muscle spasms. how could anything hurt that bad, i wondered. on Sunday afternoon, i bent down to cuff a pant leg, and suddenly someone was driving a knife into my clavicle and twisting it, repeatedly. i started crying involuntarily at the pain and dropped the f-bomb half a dozen times without even realizing it. in front of my GRANDMOTHER.

i fucking rock.

but i digress. the point is, not only were they drilling in my mouth with an insufficient amount of drugs, i was also nearly blind with pain on the left side of my neck. this was not a happy day for M. Ravian.

at about 4:30, Cute Dental Student began finishing up. well, we didn’t get it all, he said.

….huh…? i replied.

can you come back tomorrow at 1 pm? he asked.

thus commenced Temple Dental School, day three.

Cute Dental Student enlisted the help of some big guns in the graduate Endo department, in order to speed along the process (which, when all was said and done, amounted to SIX HOURS OF A ROOT CANAL). Efficient Graduate Dental Student was just that, efficient as hell, and armed with a large microscope that made sticking those little tiny pins of metal into my delicate fleshy tooth roots much easier (also a cool bonus: when the microscope was angled just right, i could see my tooth and everything he was doing to it: and damn, did they drill down far). Efficient Graduate Dental Student, assisted by Cute Dental Student, made quick work of that abcessed root, stuffed me up with a temporary filling, and sent me on my way. i bought a bag of soft pretzels, went over the Malc’s house, got some Wooder Ice, and then watched a couple hours of Enterprise before heading home.

and now, only three weeks away from my dental insurance going into effect, i have made an appointment with a real live dentist, one who will look at my mouth and probably run away screaming.

***

a sidenote: a few days ago i finally got around to watching Michael Moore’s Sicko. i put this off for as long as possible, because his films are not exactly pick-me-ups (a blurb on the cover described the film as “Hilarious!” to which i say: LOL) and generally make me want to run for the border of the nearest socialist-leaning country. but i digress. as i watched the truly awful situations of the people in the movie, all i could think was, THANK GOD this has never happened to me.

…and then it dawned on me. it kind’ve had.

over christmas vacation, i had the offending tooth looked at by my childhood dentist, Dr. Albert (who, by the way, is The Best Dentist In The World, case you were wondering). he warned me if i didn’t get it taken care of soon, it would abscess and a root canal would have to be done. at the time, i did not have the $150-200 to get the cavity filled. so i put it off, and it abscessed. and then i had to shell out about $500, all told, to get it fixed. which isn’t a lot for a root canal (or so i’m told), but it is the main reason that i am completely and totally broke right now, and any available monetary cushion that once existed has vanished. granted, this is but a small gripe in the scope of Moore’s film - i am not bankrupt, i didn’t lose my house or job, and i am not disabled. but still. it shouldn’t have happened. in some small way, i am a victim of our stupid, stupid, STUPID system of privatized, free-market, profit-driven medicine. god bless america, i guess.

i got back to Mass on Saturday. my parents have been here since then, so we have been doing the tourist thing - driving all over New Beige, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, up to the Berkshires to see Mass MoCA, back from Berkshires, scaling the hairpin turns!, up to Stoughton and Brockton where we knelt at the altar of IKEA and then to the Fuller Craft Museum. in between the little home improvement projects - installing lights, sewing curtains, making lasagna.

so another school year is beginning really soon, and with it the realization that (thank god) it will be nothing like last year. i have been thinking about my work almost constantly this summer, and i’ve finally concluded that i am really excited about what i want to do. i am not excited about coming back to the studio; as is my fashion, i’ve burnt bridges badly and know that it will come back to bite me in the ass, one way or another. i went in there on Monday and almost had an anxiety attack, so frightened was i of running into people i did not want to see. this is the funny thing about grad school: the work is fine. the work is beautiful, transcendent, amazing and making it makes me so, so happy. i wish to god i could do nothing but that. i am scared about the interpersonal crap i have to deal with, the personalities, the making nice, the compromising, the kissing ass. i’m really not sure i will survive that. thank god that life is not grad school.

well, hell has officially frozen over, because i am about to give mad props to, believe it or not, Paris Hilton:

in one fell swoop, Paris Hilton has gone from a general waste of space to earning my grudging respect, a respect along the lines of Pam Anderson and Dolly Parton (i.e., fully aware of how ridiculous they are, doesn’t care, and moreover, embraces the ridiculousness).

more proof that this presidential campaign is truly like none other.

Rotwang and his robot, originally uploaded by m. ravian.

i can’t believe i’m writing this, i never thought this would happen, but they found the rest of Metropolis. in ARGENTINA.

i fell in love with the film last year while i was writing a paper about it (Gender issues and technology - such an incredible amount of fun stuff to be had there!). i now count it as my favorite film ever, and considering my film nerdom, that is no small feat. it is the seminal film for so many science fiction fans, influencing everything that came after it in print and film, from Blade Runner to Star Trek.

but loving Metropolis comes with a certain sadness: almost a quarter of the film is missing, a victim of the film industry in Germany in 1927, bad editing and even worse archiving. there are key scenes that are simply gone, and the spaces are filled in with intertitles. having watched the restored version over and over and over again, i could only wonder what the missing parts looked like.

now i no longer have to wonder: next year the DVD with the full print will be available, and i will probably die of happiness.

the German magazine Die Zeit broke the story, you can read it here (fortunately, in English).

from that winter in harlem, originally uploaded by m. ravian.

let this serve as notification to any party who decides to pursue a significant relationship with me - i cannot sleep with anyone.

right now i have relegated myself to the living room couch (which, i should say, is not a terrible thing, as it is a huge, deep, wonderful couch that i sincerely covet) because i spent an hour tossing and turning, flipping, adjusting and generally trying not to disturb Charcoal, who was sleeping soundly and oh so adorably at my feet. i came down here to sleep alone because i couldn’t bear to wake him, to lift his warm, furry, cushy little body from the bed and banish him to the floor. i knew he wouldn’t make a sound of protest (he seems to know when people are sleeping, he simply doesn’t meow after a certain hour each night), but still, i couldn’t do it. he is a lovely boy, possibly the best ever.

i have never spent any significant amount of time in a bed with someone else. i have never lived with a significant other. this is something i normally feel slightly bothered by (most everyone i know at age 27 has one or more cohabitations under their belt), until i stop to consider that i would have to give up real estate on my queen futon. to which i say, no fucking way.

i marvel at people that lay down in one place on a bed and fall asleep, and are in the same position when they wake up. i’m fairly sure that, if a camera was trained on me throughout the night (an idea i have toyed with off and on, just for curiosity’s sake), it would find me thrashing, tossing, turning, tangling the sheets, fists and jaw clenching and unclenching. no wonder i wake up exhausted.

i have a well worn dent smack in the middle of my futon that i find myself wedged in each night, despite my best efforts to roll to the cooler ends of my bed. this dent leaves no room for anyone. if it is one consistent complaint that i have gotten from the people i have shared a bed with, it’s that i am an unrepentant hog of sheets, covers and bed real estate, even in sleep fighting aggressively for my territory. a queen is doable through not ideal, a double a disaster, a twin means floor.

the first person i ever shared a bed with resolutely and firmly turned his back on me every night despite my best and naive efforts to spoon and cuddle (i was a cuddler when i was 18, ten years of relationships has soundly beaten that out of me). i was pissed and hurt at the time, but i get it now. i am not one to fall asleep in another person’s arms these days, the claustrophobia that i’ve always had in some capacity has only increased the older i get. i am very protective of my space in general, my sleeping space in particular.