We ate pigs trotters the other night.

Not my choice. Okay so, apparently (according to J) there’s a lot of really nice food I’m missing out on because I’m picky and I ‘eat with my eyes’ (great party trick of mine!). I don’t want this fussyness to be passed on to my child so I have agreed to try a few things so far. I’ve tried frogs legs in the past and loved them. The snails though, were a little hard to swallow. More recently I’ve tasted black pudding and prawn, and now pig’s foot. I hate them all. Yuck. I will try other things no doubt. Though I would have to draw the line at genitalia or grub, eel or still-beating snake heart! I’m eating more fish and other kinds of meat now – guinea fowl, grouse, poussin… little birds hacked in half and served up with the feet still attached. It’s when the meat/fish looks like it’s former self that I have a problem eating it. I hate having to pull bits of meat off the bone, and pick out fish bones from my teeth. With the trotter, I had to cut through the layer of skin and fat to get to the meat. Oh boy. At least J cut the toes off for me before he served it. That would have been too much. He has kept his own piggy foot bones, boiled them up, scraped the meat off, ready to glue it back together for a photograph. Ah, how I love his macabre charms!

Talking of trotters, my hands are so fucking itchy today. There’s been this normal pregnancy itchy belly thing for a while but today it’s my hands and wrists. I want to peel back the skin like gloves so I can get right to the meat inside. My nails are long but they need to be longer. I want claws or fangs or a beak. Something I can really use to dig with.

I have a LOT of xanga catching up to do!

So here is my new nephew, Archie, at 3 days old. I know babies aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I certainly find they taste better covered in chocolate sauce… I promise not to stay on the subject too long.

The weirdest thing is looking at this little baby in an incubator, whilst my own kicked and wriggled inside. Man, that’s some weird shit. You don’t need drugs in that kind of situation, dude!

So, my sister had a baby boy last night. It’s weird because she was a month ahead of me and we’ve constantly been in touch discussing our ongoing pregnancies… and last night she went and had a c-section 6 weeks premature. The boy doesn’t even have a name yet! He’s in ICU, on a ventilator which I guess is all normal for a baby born that early. Still, she’s kind of anxious and hasn’t been able to hold him yet. Her last 2 babes were both 4 weeks early. And all have been a good weight of around 6 lbs. I think she’s an anomaly. Her gestation period is shorter than most other women! I wonder, does that kind of thing run in families? Eeeek.

The cats are screaming outside. There is an ambulance screaming down the road. Even the wind is screaming tonight.

I find that I have lost track of time. Weeks go by and I realise I haven’t replied to that email, telephone call, letter. I have a lot to do right now. But also, I’ve slowed down, now I am in my seventh month of pregnancy. Everything takes longer, some things are just impossible. I finally got all but 2 copies of Sein und Werden sent out. Do buy a copy if you can. There’s some really wonderful writing and artwork in there. Don’t just take my word for it, check out these reviews:

http://abandonyourtimidnotion.blogspot.com/2009/02/sein-und-werden-philias-and-fetishes.html

http://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2009/02/sein-und-werden-paw-prints.html

http://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2009/01/sein-und-werden-curiouser-and-curiouser.html

And today I got this quote from a contributor: I got my copies of SEINUNWERDEN this week and the magazine looks great!  You’ve put a lot of hard work into this project and it shows.  I look forward to my year’s subscription.  Thanks again for not only publishing my story, but also for putting into such a beautiful format. The next part especially made me laugh, because his mental image ain’t odd at all. It’s exactly how it is, just me, slogging over a hot printer… Please tell me that you have other volunteers helping you assemble the magazines.  I have this odd mental image of you printing, gluing, tying, cutting alone late into the night under a soggy English moon.

One thing I miss recently is having the time to read. A while ago J picked up a biography of photographer, model and muse Lee Miller from a second hand book shop and I started reading it over Christmas. But I’ve not had chance to read it for a few weeks and I think it’s about time I got back into it.

I came across a picture of her a few years ago and thought she was quite beautiful:

But only later learned of her connections with Man Ray, Picasso etc. Here she is, around 1929, with Tanja Ramm in front of a wall hanging by Cocteau.

Miller went from model:

to muse (Electricity by Man Ray):

to fashion photographer for Vogue, to war correspondant. A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to catch an exhibition of her war photographs at the local gallery. I was amazed and awed and moved,

The Burgermeister’s daughter who committed suicide:

A Buchenwald Guard after being beaten:

It’s a brilliant book. Interesting and brilliant. Some biographies get a bit dull but not this one. Not so far. It’s quite intriguing. Her family life, her father who photographed her naked from a very young age (let me just clarify that she was naked, not he!!), the rape by a family friend when she was 7 that left her with gonorrhea. For this she had to have treatment for the rest of her life, and by her mother until she left home. But it didn’t stop her defying the rules of the 1920s, partying, fucking, living out the bohemian dream. She fucked with the boys as hard as she played with them. She was one of them. In a time when colleges offered women courses in domesticity, she was out following her dream. She’s one of those damn inspiring women I just love reading about!

My short story, Axis, has been translated into Polish on the minimalbooks web site. It’s so pretty pretty:

http://minimalbooks.blox.pl/2009/01/RACHEL-KENDALL-OS-AXIS.html

I’ve had my fill of severed things, of rotting hearts and prosthetic limbs. The stench of decay is a symptom of the singular dysfunction of man. Keep it to yourselves. I’ve worn your flesh for thousands of years, long enough to have your stretch marks and scars imprinted on my own. I have my exit, my route 666. There’s a kind of annihilation involved in the discarding of cardinal sins. The compunction of the infidel, God the saviour, woman the temple. No more sacrificial booty please. No more bloody foetuses. No more absolution. My two faces have become one and even the bitch in me refuses purity from time to time. Sick am I of smearing shit in the creases around your eyes as you eject into the whole of your mistress. Your concubine. Your whipped hide and broken feet. The syringes make for delicate digits around my hips when I swear you in, and the blood trickles with her bleed every month until the gut begins to swell. The tentacled beast does its thing but it has nothing to do with you. It’s barbaric, the things you expect of me. I am no savage. Just a little stained. Just a little old and worn. I’ve lived too long in the filth of you. I need a little me-time.

The above nonsense was inspired by Ixcuina. In Aztec mythology,  Ixcuina (also known as Tlazolteotl) is the Goddess of filth/sins and midwives and the patroness of adulterers. She eats the sins of men (but only if they are confessed to her), usually those of lust and infidelity, and is often represented wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim. She is identifiable by the soot stain on her nose and the cotton on her headdress. Known as the Mistress of Spinning and the Patroness of Sex. Often connected with the moon.

She is known to have had 4 phases – The first as a brilliant, delightful young moon; the second as a sensual young woman with a want for excitement; the third as a priestess, forgiving sins and giving blessings to married couples. And in the fourth she became a monster, destroying lovers and stealing fortune. Often seen as a representation of the changeability of women in general – 2 faces – that of filth/lust, but also that of purification and confession.

We ate lychees last night as we sat in front of the tv. What fantastic white pulp beneath the prickly skin. Like sweet, perfumed eyeballs with a smooth stone in the centre. I wonder if you bit into an eyeball would you enounter a stone? Or would it be full of seeds like a tomato? Or perhaps the pupil would burst like a yolk. I’d like a jar of peeled lychees. Like pickled eggs, like eyes. 

I just became a member of a site called Goodreads. It’s a great place to discuss/crit/promote books so I think everyone should join. Also, I’ve created an ISMs group for Sein und Werden where I hope to be able to post updates etc. Check it out: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1937270

Thanks to a friend for sending me a link to this artist’s work. Her paintings
are so dark and textured, like pieces of a Bosch: http://www.mayakulenovic.com/paintings.htm

From her website:
”..An artist’s technique often gives clues to how he thinks about his
subjects, life, beauty, and mortality. Maya Kulenovic’s esthetics lies in the
combination of vulnerability and strength of her subjects, and the same can be
seen in the way she handles her material. In her paintings there is a constant
dialog between spontaniety and control. Her technique comes from the tradition
of old masters, which she studied for many years. She uses heavy layers of
paint, thin glazes and dark palette to create chiaroscuro effects reminiscent of
Caravaggio and Rembrandt; yet, her work does not have the obsessive or
decorative quality of many contemporary paintings in ‘traditional realist ‘
style. Rather than that, Maya Kulenovic’s technique is expressive, direct,
fresh, and often surprising; and it invites the viewer to participate
emotionally in the work..”

26 weeks (fat biatch)