i am feeling independent today � me and my 767 shooting through the atmosphere, skimming on the clouds. there is something empowering about going on a trip by yourself, yes. i will stay in a hotel and rent a car, i will spend the next 5 days in a walMerde. ack. at least i am not the whole day there, just a few hours in the am and pm, the rest is for me, and the 1,400 year old oak, and for wobeastman�s two day visit. she�s leaving the husband and +3 spawn at home. screaming little nieces and nephew, yes, home with my brother-in-law and my sister and i at a quaint little south carolina bar.

anyone out there know anyone cool in charleston? i have saturday night free and some drinkin loot to spend.

� your spanish eyes are deep, i fall in love
the night is perfect, take off your dress
and get up, and dance around the room, a little more
get up and dance around the room, you know �

i see you smile and turn your head -
you lift your arms and grab the bed
i don�t know what you�re thinking now,
i just hope youre feeling how � much love i have for you �

never got around to the rest of last weekend until now � i have been so high-strung busy due to aikido and dance dance practice (dance dance evolution? i am new to this modern buto dancing business, gimmie a break for attempting wit.) we have a show three days after i return from my business trip � three solid days of practice after work. needless to say, last saturday was spent in practice from 9am till 3 (and this weekend from 5:45 until 9:30 pm.) in our dance recital as sither calls it, we will be painted white� we are a pack of prom queens after a good anal session with the football team, we are queen whores and shall be wearing tiaras to prove it. our dance personas are some type of goddesses of humanity � i actually like my dress (thank you $10/lb. !) flow-y mauve floor length with an open back, it drapes off of me in quite the Romanesque fashion � especially as we are to have the shoulder straps fallen off our shoulders (as if we were caught in the back seat by the police and just did not have time to put ourselves back together.) note to self: take out rings and extend white paint to nips, as they will peek out, yes. it will be an interesting experience in any case � the main reasoning behind my class is to tone the me, and work me it does.

my body is having a hard time changing � and i am unsure it is ready for such activities as aikido and dance (and yoga again, coming soon to a lunch hour near me.) i am damaged, yes, sprained and tweaked in wrong ways. my left knee is wrapped as i type, as well as my right wrist (which hurt before all of this gallivanting anyhoo, but i baby it i do,) my big toe on the right side is still taped to the others and my right shoulder is still a bit creaky. i am taking breaks, seeing a chiro, working with the evilimp on my injuries � no worries there. this week is all about healing. i am not even hurting myself with spectacular high falls or complex dance moves , mind� i hurt my toe walking (i should be wearing a tiara now as queen of the klutzes, dork queen extraordinaire,) i hurt my knee rolling on the floor (knees just do not bend sideways, let alone take weight that way,) i hurt my wrist pushing 500lb library carts back in 1997 (back in my day�), but my shoulder is an undeniable aikido injury, although nothing exciting - rolling forward and backward, similar to somersaulting actually, from a kneeling position. this was a just-starting thing, and inexperience thing and is mostly gone/done with. i am learning the language of healing tendons, how not to offend, use the correct tense, and my proper sentence structure. oh the wit, i astound you.

jesus, i forgot until just now that i have itunes as the puter is on � fuck you plane music channels, and plane music channel commercials, i have my own agenda. ooh, and turbulence! *shake*shake* makes me happy i wore a good bra today, yes�m.

anyhoo, back to the meat�

two weekends ago was also the exhibit invite from kreague, the universe within exhibit. step right up folks and gawk at the wonders of plastination! yes ladies and gents, these are real people, naturally deceased of course, pumped up with a specialized solution so as to preserve them indefinitely � you are looking right at the afterlife, the eternal sleep, the rest in pieces� fascinating really. this plastination (replacing a corpse�s water with plastic for purpose of artistic or scientific display � my hackneyed explanation) exhibit was of all chinese subjects, the bodies seeming small and almost dismissible as models, dolls. almost. here is the skeletal system, here is a brain with a stroke, here is a spinal column with its nerves fanning like a horse tail, a flail, here is your tiny left lung embracing and almost totally enveloping you heart � anatomy class in the flesh. so interesting to see the circulatory system webbing apart from the muscle and bone � one of my favorite parts, assured. another favorite of mine was the running man with his muscles fanned out like feathers � woah. � there is a picture of that one on the website if you click around a bit.

the bodies were posed to show muscle movement, one throwing a baseball, on a bike, etc. the artist was a bit whack, as one of the skinless models was holding up his own skin on a hanger. they had a tendency to leave little bits of skin on here and there as well� like the skin with the eyebrow hair attached, pubic hair on the sex organs, eyelashes. you were to look close, to see high detail, to be fascinated by the human body cut up horizontally in inches and spread out with an inch in-between, perfect for bone/organ/muscle cross section work � urbanite, you truly should go if there is ever an exhibit in your reach.

the exhibit was a bit unsettling, however, my panic levels raised immediately upon viewing the first rotating display. this is real - this � is � real. i am surrounded by death, albeit bodies preserved as plastic, but bodies none the less. it is a true scene from a horror film, and i cannot express how grateful i am that they are not yet to the point of animating the figures instead of having them static (one would think they could rubberize them to show true muscle movement?) i stayed through the whole exhibit, and examined/studied structure � i have been working on bone/muscle movement with evilimp for two years now, �that and my recent visits to the chiro have given me a new familiarity and curiosity for how my body works/runs.

it upset me that some people (and their small children ??) were reaching out and touching the bodies, actually breaking little pieces of capillaries and nerves off with their monkey hands. most of the exhibits were out in the open air and not behind glass. open air is not an invitation to grope, disgusting people. i had to almost hold back kneague when i told him of this, it was so insulting. the open air part of it was a bit odd, yes, especially as they really did not seem to go out of their way to discourage people taking home souvenirs, so to say. i would have left immediately if there was any smell associated with the exhibit � that would have been just too much. fortunately, all i smelled was my own anxiety/fear.

how is that for making up for a week of silence?

� when dogs make love
they don�t look at themselves
checking out each other
by the way that they smell �