home world

Me and a few other people, most of which I don't know in reality, are playing a card game.

The cards have both a drawing and a written explanation on them, and each card also have it's value in money printed on.

Each card have an object or an animal or a person or a plant on it, the purpose of the game is to swap cards with the other opponents and get 4 cards that are the closest topic wise (like 4 "animals" cards, or 4 "fishes" cards) while also trying to get the higher value cards in the series you build. The game is both a game and a divination, the texts and images on the cards and the series the player are supposed to say something about the players and lives them advice about the future.

I have landed into the game from a different part of the dream, and both me and another character (Ned maybe) have to get into it even though we don't understand the rules and don't even know what cards we are holding. I'm starting to look at my cards and to my surprise, they are, even though I have yet to start swapping, really good, I have 2 dog cards (one of them is a sharpay) and one bird card (I think it was an owl). As far as the game goes, I can maybe cash out on the "Animals" series, or go on playing and try to rank higher with the "Dogs" series, it all depend on what my last card is. When I reach for it, I realize it's not a card at all, but a folded letter that was folded into a card size.

I know, in the dream, that I got the letter over 2 years ago, but never read it, I open it to discover a lot of photos of this one girl who I've never met before. When I read the letter, this girl who wrote it is sharing with me the fact that she just discovered she was adopted and decided to seek her biological parents. She found them and was amazed to see the physical similarities and now she lives with her biological family trying to catch up on a whole life of not knowing one another. I remember that the reason why I did not respond or read the letter was that I though it was vain to include so many photos, but finally reading it, I realize that the photos are half of her and half of her mom when she was young and that the mass of photos wasn't about vanity, but about showing me the family similarity. I try to think if there's a way I can still answer it but I know it's just too late.

I love A5 magazine, I've been intending to submit artwork for it since it's very first issue, but somehow the whole experience was so daunting and intimidating that I never did, well, never till 2 issues ago when I submitted 3 pen and watercolor paintings and one of them was accepted and published! The topic was sex and so I needed very little adaptations or thought to make just what I wanted. It was really a wonderful experience, I mean, any publication is awesome, but one in a magazine you are already a big fan of is at least double as wonderful! Not only that, but the pieces I made for the magazine inspired me to draw more artwork in the same series and eventually, became the body of work to my solo show in Chicago. So then, the next topic was published, it was "Childhood" and though I had every intention in the world to submit again, I never got around to it, I had a lot of ideas, but eventually, I think mostly out of fear of rejection, I never did. After the deadline was over, I felt like such a pussy - I totally let myself miss on a good opportunity not only to get published, but also, to be inspired and to make something cool.

I decided that whatever happens, I'm going to submit for the next issue, but then, when the topic came up, I was sort of disappointing, the topic was "Hero" which was very hard for me to relate to. I don't believe in hero, a couple of years ago, I was in someone's birthday, and some guy who was doing inspirational lecture for a living, asked us, to prove some point or another, who are our heroes, I said that my grandparents were, but actually it wasn't true. I don't think there are or were any heroes in my life. I don't believe in salvation or being saved. I think that though I were in life threatening situations in my life, the largest difficulties I've experiences, were just dealing with everyday life. It's been a couple of difficult weeks around here. Ned's in a bad mood, he's trying to crack some big emotional riddle and spend a lot of time doing nothing, it's hard to see him be so hard on himself and so sad and heavy for so many hours everyday. I'm working on some freelance design projects after not doing it for a while, I'm actually making some money which is nice, but dealing with client, putting boundaries and asking to be paid is really hard, and I think that also the tension between me being so work busy while Ned being in this non-busy state adds a lot of tension. I decided to do the Hero project about me and how I had to deal with a lot of confrontational situations lately and tried not to hide and wait till it goes away but actually stand up for myself.

One of the things I like a lot about shooting fashion nudes is being exposed for a day or so to a totally new person, who I would, in most cases, never get a chance to hang out with otherwise. A while ago, we shot a 39 year old flight attended from France, it was really cool to get to know her and learn about her work environment, the difference between different countries' photographer and what drew her into wanting to model.

This is especially true for young models, Ned and I work with a couple of new faces departments in different modeling agencies and I can't really imagine any other situation in my life that will get me to spend half a day with a 15 or 16 year old.

Part of me is really enjoying it, part of me feels very old to hear about a person's experiences in high school as something that's going on now, and not as a long forgotten memory.

What's really nice is to realize that though age, as a number is a definite, maturity and adulthood is mostly a matter of choice and life situations, in the past year I met a 16 year old who had such a practical and focused attitude to life it left me jealous at her maturity, a 27 year old who was acting as a rebellious and totally irresponsible teen and a 40 year old who's as warm and fun and trusting as a 10 year old - and probably just about everything in between.