Printmaking Class

When I told HL I was going to make this print

He said "That's ironic for you isn't it?"

And then he began to laugh

I turned the stencil backwards so that the print comes out the right way up when it goes through the printing press

Oh and by the way I finally managed to draw something out of frustration

Sorry it's really fuzzy... I took these pictures using my interim phone's crappy camera

Will post better pictures in a few minutes


Okay, here's a better picture:

I used this as my image reference

This is just for practice - I just made the girl Nigerian and added clothing so I don't claim ownership of the original girl and pose but I do claim ownership of everything else - the nigerianisation of the girl, the natural hair, the abada wrapper, the coral around her legs, the forehead piece, the akwete hair band, and the uli on her stomach.

It is Said...

“Before you can grow up, you must fall in love 3 times. Once you must fall in love with your best friend, ruining your friendship forever. This will teach you who your true friends are, and the fine line between friendship and more.

Once you must fall in love with someone you believe to be perfect. You will learn that no one is perfect, and that you should never be treated as any less than you deserve. And once you must fall in love with someone that is exactly like you. This will teach you about who you are, and who you want to be.And when you’re through with all that, you learn that the people who care about you the most are the ones that you hurt, and the ones that hurt you are the ones that you needed the most.

But most of all, you learn that love is only a concept and is not something that can be defined, it is different to each person that experiences it. And you will learn to respect each and every person on this earth, knowing that everyone only wants to be loved.”


— Unknown


Bakura is the person I believed to be perfect.

HL is the person who is exactly like me.

How am I supposed to endure this one more time....


Please my soul.............. be brave.

Work In Progress

So I signed up for an art class (^_^). I've been wanting to take an art class in uni forever so I finally signed up for a printmaking class since the only drawing class is a beginners class and I need to learn advanced techniques in drawing if anything.

I'm loving my printmaking class so far and it's really really interesting learning about all the different printmaking techniques but I've been in a bit of a rut lately since I haven't been able to draw anything useful. I honestly was afraid I was going to fail this class because I've only made one print so far but today I finally got an idea to draw something to make into a print ( and I'm probably going to make it into a Dinka t-shirt if it works out how I envision it).

There is  one little thing about my class though and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Some days I feel nervous about it and some days I feel good about it.


There are only two students in my class. 


HL is the other student. 


Here's my work in progress. I decided I wanted to convert traditional Nigerian (in this case Bini) sculpting and carving styles into a stylized drawing. If I finish tonight I'll post an update with the completed work:

Update:

Okay, all done!! Now I just have to cut out all the black bits in order to make the stencil for my print. I think I can go to sleep tonight feeling like I accomplished something ^_^

Yay Bini dude!!

40 Day Master Cleanse: Days 6 and 7

Good morning people. I just woke up and my weight for Day 6 is 233.5lbs (105.9kg). I'm off to take a shower and mix up the master cleanse juice for today. Then it's homework, homework, homework. So unfair.

Today is Day 7 btw but I won't have the weight figure for today until I weigh myself tomorrow.

Have a good week.

Monday sux

40 Day Master Cleanse: Day 5

I woke up about an hour ago so I don't really have much to report. I weighed myself this morning and I weigh 235.2lbs (106.68kg). From my starting weight of 245.4lbs, I've lost 10.2lbs (4.6kg) in the past 5 days. It's much more than I lost the last time I did the master cleanse but I'm guessing that this is because this time I'm using three bottles as opposed to the four that I used before.

 I found out that my two scales are giving me somewhat unreliable readings so I might have to buy a third scale.

So on a completely different note, something I've been wanting to blog about for a while is my hair. I was pretty depressed about my hair for most of this year because of a really stupid mistake I made at the beginning of the year.

In January I trimmed my hair and all hell broke loose. Basically, what had happened was.. I had never trimmed my hair before, but lots of people in the natural community online keep talking about how trimming your hair is important because of split ends and stuff, and I had noticed some split ends in my own hair so I decided to trim my hair too. I had seen a couple of videos where people straightened their hair first before trimming it. This is for practical reasons. Natural hair often looks much much shorter than it really is so it's very very easy to cut off much much more than you really intended. If you straighten your hair before trimming it, then you can see exactly what you're cutting off.

I had never used a flat iron in my entire life before January but like the mumu I am, I ran out and bought one in my excitement to trim my hair for the first time ever. I flat ironed my hair, trimmed the ends and reveled in how long and beautiful my hair was... then I went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, a good portion of my hair stayed on the pillow when I got up. My hair has been falling out ever since. In August there was still some breaking off, and that's since January... 8 months! I've lost about seven inches of hair since January down from 14 inches of hair that I'm supposed to have. I stopped crying about it a long time ago (sometime around March) but it's still a bit sad though isn't it?

I was going to just shave my head but my aunt (who is also natural) told me to just braid my hair and let it grow out again instead so I decided to take her advice.

Either way, that's the story with my hair. I hope that when I take out the braids I have now, the breakage will have finally stopped and I can get on with taking care of my hair. Needless to say, I threw away the flat iron and I will NEVER straighten my hair with a flat iron again, and even then, I will probably only straighten it once every one or two years to trim (and next time I'll have someone who actually knows what they're doing do it, instead of trying to do it myself).

I updated a drawing

Cleaned up the Nigerian School Girl from this post. I made two versions. 

40 Day Master Cleanse: Days 3 and 4

Morning people,

Today is Day 5 of the Master Cleanse and I just weighed myself for completing Day 4 (yesterday). I  currently weigh 237.8 lbs (107.86kg) meaning that since the beginning of the Master Cleanse 4 days ago, I have lost 7.6 pounds. On average I have lost about 1.9lbs per day.

I went to my first therapy session yesterday. It was mostly outlining the problems I'm dealing with and talking about them and making a plan for exploring each issue and addressing it. It felt good to talk instead of keeping it bottled up inside and I ended up crying in the therapist's office but I left feeling somewhat relieved. I'm going to be attending weekly sessions.

Probably the worst thing about the master cleanse is undoubtedly the Salt Water Flush. It leaves me feeling drained and tired but I just grin and bear it.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping with my friend. She's from Indonesia and wanted to get ingredients for Indonesian food and asked me to come with her so I went. It was very very tempting. All the smells of food made my stomach rumble but I resisted and didn't buy any food. I did use the shopping trip as an opportunity to make note of vegetables, fruits, beans, and other natural organic healthy foods that I am going to transition to once I'm done with the Master cleanse. The plan is to transition to a high protein, high fibre diet with lots of exercise after the cleanse so that I can maintain the weight loss from the cleanse and continue to lose weight until I reach my target weight (125lbs - 56.7kg)

I know some people are going to say that 56kg is rather low for someone of my height (5ft 11inches) but from experience, people who lose weight often have problems with weight gain after they transition to a normal diet so I'm shooting to be about 5-10 lbs underweight when I finish dieting so that when I transition back to normative eating (and undoubtedly gain some weight as a result of that) when my weight settles it will fall into the normal healthy ideal range.

Update:


So Jeremy has some writing samples I did of Igbo words in the Ndebe script up on his blog.Check them out!

Dear Bethany Storro

Those of us who live in America may or may not have heard about a charming young lady named Bethany Storro.

In case you did not know, about a week ago, Bethany Storro was rushed to the hospital/burn centre/whatever with terrible acid burns on her face.

According to Bethany Storro, a BLACK woman came up to her with something in a cup and said "Hey PRETTY girl, do you want to drink this?" and then threw acid from the cup onto her face burning her and scarring her permanently.

Also according to this same Bethany Storro, this black woman had the look of JEALOUSY in her eyes when she attacked her with the acid. According to Bethany Storro, this black woman was JEALOUS of her (even though this Black woman had never met her in her life)

Observe:

This sparked a hunt for the evil black woman who had hurt poor innocent white Bethany and it unleashed a flood of racist and downright cruel Internet backlash against black women with thousands of people on Internet forums across America calling black women ugly, saying that we are jealous of white women, and that white women are better and prettier than us and that's why we are bitter and that it must have been this jealousy, bitterness, and anger about how beautiful white women are that drove the ugly, evil black woman to attack an innocent beautiful white girl.

Observe:

Watch as an innocent unknown Black Woman is reduced to less than a human being because of this stupid, narcissistic, amazingly daft white woman

See how the black woman has been made a "nigger bitch" while the white woman is a human female worthy of being defended and protected?

And of course they were praising her too... for her "bravery", "heroism", "courage", and for being "an inspiration"

What. The. Fuck. Ever.

I have written posts before about how black women in the world (and especially America) are unfairly and unjustly portrayed as ugly, undesirable, bitter, and jealous, and how women of all other races are classed above us and white women are unfairly placed at the top of the pyramid of beauty and undeservedly venerated as the most beautiful women in the world.

This very idea is of course, the product of centuries of white racism and racist propaganda in which they flooded the world with this message so consistently that not only do they and other races believe it, but they have managed to damage the self esteem of black people collectively (resulting in behaviours such as relaxing hair and applying bleaching creams - but let's not even get into that)

What baffles and saddens me is that even though this idea is so obviously racist, so many people all over the world are all to happy to continue believing it and judging people according to it. When Bethany Storro claimed that a black woman had randomly attacked her with acid, hordes and HORDES of people came out to insult black women and praise white women without a thought. Yet I'm sure if you met any of those people in person they would quickly deny being racist, yet they willingly believe a woman's sketchy story and condemn a suspect not even proven guilty yet just because they have already stereotyped black women into a tiny little box with only a few descriptions - ugly, unfeminine, undesirable, bitter, jealous of white women , and they are more than happy to lap up a cock and bull story that fits nicely with their preconceived stereotype.

Yet so many Americans love to swear up and down that they are not racist, that they don't see race, that they are colour blind, that America is post racial, that Obama is president, blah, blah, blah.

Save me the bullshit. Just because Obama is president does not mean that racism magically evaporated from the hearts of Americans. Just because it is now unfashionable to be publicly called a racist does not mean that Americans don't joyfully indulge in private racism. What annoys me is that they can't even admit their bigotry. They hide it behind all sorts of complicated names and try to make it seem as if the hateful things they say are borne purely out of logic.

When Bethany Storro came out with her story all sorts of white people were running up and down desperate to call it a Hate Crime (i.e. saying that Bethany was targeted because she was white). Not only that but they equally tried to frame it as though Bethany was targeted because as a white woman she was therefore undoubtedly pretty/beautiful, in contrast to this nasty black woman who no doubt was ugly as well as jealous.

In other words, they used the story of Ms. Storro's attack to further support the racist agenda that white women are more beautiful than black women and black women are just jealous of white women.

What is annoying is that this sort of thinking helps people to simply ignore the fact that if black women are angry it is beyond justified. It is justified because as far as anything concerning women, femininity, beauty, sex appeal, desirability, etc is concerned, Black women are by far the most marginalised group of women ever... all to the benefit of white women. It is also hurtful because it brushes aside the fact that non-white people are regularly victims of racist attacks or foul play by whites. It brushes aside the pain of black women who have unfairly been typecast as inferior to white women by trying to write their very real suffering off as 'just jealousy'.

Now Bethany Storro has confessed that she made the whole thing up and SHE was the one who poured the acid on HERSELF.

See it on CNN:  http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/16/washington.acid.attack/index.html?hpt=T1

Are we surprised? Fuck no.

Maybe nobody died but how many black people (especially black women) chopped insult because of this stupid white woman?

I am so sick and tired of racist white women that try to manipulate everyone to have sympathy for them to the detriment of black women (and black people in general) all while denying their racism. If a white girl starts crying for no reason, watch and see how many people will rush to comfort her but if a black girl starts crying for no reason, she had better hope some of her friends are around because they will be the only people to come and ask her what the matter is.

And you know what? I am not surprised because this is not the first time it has happened. This has been happening in America over and over and over again. And who are the victims? Innocent black people. And when there is no actual black person to fall victim, then the reputation of ALL black people in America falls victim because there will be no end to the people that will just conclude that "black people are always committing crimes" or "black people are evil and dangerous" etc etc.

Are we surprised? Fuck as hell no.

April 2010 - A white woman kills her baby and falsely accuses a random black man of kidnapping the child

May 2009 - A white woman runs away to Disney Land with her daughter and falsely claims a black man kidnapped them

October 2008 - A white woman cut the letter B into her own face and then falsely claimed that a black man robbed her, beat her, and cut the B into her face to force her into supporting Barack Obama

December 2009 - A white woman who killed her roommate falsely accused a Congolese man of being the murderer

October 1994 - A white woman drowns her two children then claims that a black man carjacked her and killed her sons

October 1989 - A white man kills his pregnant wife in order to use her for insurance fraud. He then shoots himself and claims that a black man attacked him and his wife, killing her and shooting him.

May 2010 - A white POLICE OFFICER shoots himself and then claims that it was a random black man that shot him

And there are hundreds of other cases like this. These ones are just those that received major press attention.

Racism in America is bullshit. Racism anywhere is shocking, but if you grew up in a place like Nigeria where the colour of your skin was the last thing on your mind, it's especially disgusting and mind boggling.

So, Dear Bethany Storro,

Clap for yourself.

Shegiya. Waka. Amadioha kugbuo gi anu ofia.


To,

Madalla.

I made the appointment

It's for tomorrow at one-thirty p.m.

I've also somewhat stopped stalking him on Facebook and Twitter

I still take a deep breath when I walk past his door

but maybe this is progress

I finally drew something

Unfortunately, it's rather telling.

40 Day Master Cleanse: Days 1 and 2

I honestly don't feel like writing right now. I don't feel like doing anything more than lying in bed (the couch) and staring at the ceiling all day. Last night I went to him to ask what I did wrong (yet again). He says I get on his nerves and he's beginning to hate me so before that happens I'm just going to go away.

Last night I laid out all the pills on the table and arranged them in groups of three. I counted them, and then I counted them again, and tried to breathe. Nineteen pills in all. I counted and counted and counted until the tears came. And then I cried until I passed out.

It feels as though no matter what I do, I will never be good enough for him. I will never be what he wants. He will never look at me and see me as I see him. He says there is a huge difference between his standards and mine. I get yelled at for everything now. For commenting on his Facebook statuses, for "interrupting" him when he's talking with his friends, for giving him "strange looks" when he's talking to other girls ... I don't mean to. I suppose my face just betrays my sadness. For talking too much.. for talking too little, for saying unnecessary things, for making unnecessary gestures which are really born out of my inability to express how I feel when I'm with him.

Maybe the look on my face is funny because I'm jealous. Incredibly jealous and incredibly sad. I have to see him and then when I do, I feel like the walking dead.

I don't argue... I just nod my head when he lists my faults and promise to do better. I apologise over and over again because I'm terrified that he will say he won't see me anymore... and then what will I do? Go back to my old life of crushing loneliness? Go back to gorging myself in the middle of the night or playing Age of Empires till the sun's first rays peek through my window because I am once again unable to sleep? Go back to living vicariously through the family I control on the Sims 3... a world in which he is happy with me.

I can't. He doesn't understand why I continuously show up at his door. Because he is asking me to re-descend into darkness and I can't because he already showed me that I can live in the light. I have always tried hard to respect his wishes. Hard has not been good enough up till now so from now on, I will try harder. I will keep away... for days.. for weeks.. for months... maybe forever. I will go out into the world and smile brilliantly even though inside my heart is breaking. When he hugs and kisses other women I will smile and force my eyes to sparkle. When I see him pass I will look away. I will forget because I must. We live in the same house so I must forget as soon as possible. I choose to forget because if I don't, then maybe the next time he kisses her or helps her carry something because she's too tiny and pale and delicate to do it on her own I might just swallow all those little groups of three and call it a day.

My mother came to see me... the first thing she said to me was "You are so fat. Look how wide your face is. You are so ugly."

I can only speak for myself. I have no idea what my image is in his eyes. I wish I could see from his eyes and feel his feelings and understand. I know I have many shortcomings.. all of which I am working hard to fix. I don't know what else to do, but I can't shake the feeling that I wish I were short and tiny and Japanese and then maybe that would help somehow.

I can never be short.

I can never be petite.

I can never be cute.

I can never be Japanese.

And I can't be white either.

In other words... I probably can never be what he wants...

And I guess that's okay.



I apologise.

This was supposed to be about the Master Cleanse wasn't it?  Today is Day 2. Yesterday I weighed 245 pounds (about  111.4 KG). Today I weigh 241.4 pounds (109.7 KG). Health/hunger wise... I feel fine. Nothing much to report. Of course there are no visible physical changes yet. I'm sorry again.


Update:


I know that I've been told to get help, but I think I should clarify something. The reason I'm afraid to go back to the therapist is because they keep suggesting medication and I don't want to take any drugs. I'm really scared of antidepressants because I'm afraid I won't be myself anymore.

Audio Blog: Detoxing

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I just had a shower

For the first time since the last time we were together.. I feel clean.

Failure

I am in danger of failing a class

It is only the beginning of the term

There have only been seven days of classes

I am in danger of failing my art class

I have not drawn anything in close to a month

I try every day

But nothing comes

The paper mocks me

Nothing comes

He hates me

I keep destroying the precious peace I fight tooth and nail to forge with him

A few moments of peace and then I blow it all away

He hates me

I woke him up at three in the morning

The look in his eyes said everything he didn't

He hates me

He doesn't want to see me

He won't speak to me

Once again

He hates me

He's not alone

I hate me too

Tonight

is the first night that I will sleep in my room .. in my bed .. in two weeks.

I am Tired

So tired of feeling sorry for myself... and I'm very good at it. I'm tired of losing, and failing, and being defeated. I'm tired of curling up into a ball and crying my heart and being unable to find the will to live. I want to live. I want to fucking live and breathe and be so alive I can taste the air. Right now I'm not alive... I merely exist and my friends, my family, my enemies, my lovers, the people who read my blog, and the Internet have been my life support until this moment, but everyone hits rock bottom at some point. I've been falling for such a long, long, long time, and maybe I forgot and thought that I was falling in a bottomless pit but I finally broke for the final time.

I'm selfish; that much I'll admit. I might love him but I also love him selfishly because I depend on him for happiness and so I need him... constantly... whether he wants to sleep or not. Whether he's sick of seeing me or not. Whether he won't fuck me anymore or not. He said I act like a sixteen year old even though I'm twenty-one. He's wrong. I don't act like a sixteen year old, I act like a seventeen year old.

You hear that?

It's not sixteen! It's seventeen. It's seventeen because I can't move forward and my mind is trapped in my seventeen year old self - a self that can't get past a time when I was nothing more than an afterthought to the first person I really gave my heart and myself to. A self that can't get past using sex as a master drug to burn through the things I didn't want to think about or remember. A self that's still trapped in a world with no light and no way out. A self that is constantly afraid and constantly anxious. A person with zero self esteem or even self respect.

I didn't care that Bakura didn't love me... it was better to be needed. I was useful to him and so he kept me... So maybe it's the same with HL..... I was content to be his pet and it frightened the shit out of him that I was fine with it. But then I went and blanketed his life in darkness.

I'm sick of sucking everyone around me into a black hole. I feel empty inside and that's why I eat and beg HL to do unspeakable things to me... because nothing can seal it shut. If HL beat me I would kneel there and relish the pain anyway. Nosa says I can't even have sex like a normal person. Nosa is very very right. I absolutely hate the person I am inside. I'm still seventeen on the inside. I'm still scared, still anxious, still constantly hungry, still hoping for something I can't describe, I still feel an inexorable urge to run.

I cannot explain this in a way that makes sense. Even now I'm rambling and I can't make it right. I can't forget the things that happened. I can't forgive the people that did them... and that includes me. Everything still haunts me and it's preventing me from moving forward. I know I have to let everything go but it's almost impossible to forget and I do not have the courage to stand on the edge of my existence and throw myself off with the hope that somehow my wings will come in.

I feel like I've been waiting all my life to go from being an ugly duckling to a swan, and I'm still an ugly duckling waiting for my life to bloom and everything is slipping by me and more and more each day I am less able to face the person who stares back at me in the mirror because it is a person I want desperately to forget.

I am filled with self-loathing but I'm also tired. I'm tired of running away from all the bad things that I've been putting off dealing with. I want to stop substituting. I need to stop using food and secret trips to HL's bed to numb the pain. A long time ago I was seventeen and I made every wrong decision in the book and then some... I survived it.. I'm still here. I'm broken in many places but aren't I still here?

HL is mad at me. I practically molest him with how often I come to him in the dead of the night...wanting to forget. He has every right to be raging mad. He knows I'm unable to sleep... but that's as much as I can choke out before I ask for things that he is increasingly wary of giving ... especially as I still have not learned how to stop.

I have to be a different person. I will no longer be weak. I will face pain without trying to numb it. I will admit I have been wrong so many times. I will admit I have made close to terrible mistakes but I have to forgive myself and everyone and leave it all firmly in the past.

I admit I am toxic to everyone around me. Being my friend is often difficult, and the friends that I do have have the patience of the Buddha.


I am so sorry

Please forgive me.

Tonight

I want to cut until it doesn't hurt anymore..want to say goodbye forever...want to hold his hand one last time and then disappear for eternity