the disquieting muses

"It is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large flamboyant women."

Well I was at work the other day I was sitting at the computer helping a customer. When I stood up to hand him the paperwork he gave a small cry of despair. Apparently the reason for it was, that I stood a full foot taller than him. He tried to recompose himself and looked up at me and said casualy "it must be very hard for you to find a boyfriend here." I've heard pick up's along this line before, they happen a lot at this job, and I have to say I don't appreciate them.

Oh yes it's sooo hard to find a boyfriend living in a city full of men of all shapes and sizes. Men just run away from me in fear, like I'm Godzilla.

I laughed in his face. "No. it's not" I said.

I find it ridiculous that some men, intimidated by my height, try and act like the fact that they still desire me is something amazing. Oh wow! he still want's me in spite of my height. Give me a break, I have never met a man in my life who would refuse to date me because I was too tall.
I once had a guy chase me down the street just to tell me how much he liked tall women. I told him that most people did and kept walking. As if his being okay with the fact that I was tall, would suddenly make me okay with the fact that he was ugly.

I dislike men who try to blackmail women into dating them. And I am disgusted with the idea that it might work on some women. I am so glad that I realized early on how much I was worth.

I was at a party several months ago and was introduced to a girl.
and she said "oh you're the Katherine that tells stories"
I was brought up short because I didn't remembered telling stories
at any point during my time in this city.
I looked at the girl who introduced us.
"I told you stories?" I asked.
"Yes" she said "you were telling ghost stories"
I felt very surprised at myself, because I thought that I had stopped telling stories years ago.
and all this time the stories were leaking out of me without my realizing it.

when I was very little I used to tell stories. My friends would come up and ask me to tell them stories, especially when we went on long bus rides. I was full of stories because my mother read to me at night and since none of us could read anything on a higher level than "the cat sat on the mat" my verbal re-inaction's were something special. I remember lounging in the branches of a maple tree telling my friend, Krista, about the titanic. she was so excited about the story she almost fell out of the tree, she spent the next few months finding out everything she could about the titanic and years later when the movie came out she called me to tell me about it. I was impressed at how much that particular story had affected her. Another time I tried to tell her about Amillia Airheart, a story that I personally found more interesting, but when I got to the end of it, she asked me to tell the story about the Titanic again.

I learned that certain stories reverberate with certain people. There are stories close to my heart that I never get tired of. "How Fraya got her Necklace", "Jurate and the Fisherman", "John Henry" and of course "The Girl in the Lavender Dress"

I don't know if I have ever told The Girl in the Lavender Dress but the story is special to me.

When I was in 12th grade a storyteller came to do a performance for my theater class.
This was just after I had stopped telling stories. my last story was the only thing that saved me from failing 10th grade English, but it turns out it wasn't really my last story so it not important.

Back to the storyteller.He told all his story's in the first person as if he had been there making himself one of the characters. As he was telling the first story he spoke to everyone turning his head and gesturing but as the story went on I felt he looked at me more and more. When he started his second story it felt like he was talking only at me. the second story was The Girl in the Lavender Dress. and he looked strait into my eyes as he described the girl starring back at him in his rear view mirror, and I realized that it was me he was describing. He had put me into the story. I looked around at the rest of the class wondering if they realized that I had become The Girl in the Lavender Dress.

i blame my sloppy foot work on being terribly out of shape
and not eating that day. but otherwise a hell of a fun night.
can't wait for the pictures. :D

Merry Christmas!
Im back online. after months of no internet.
happy dancing.

my website however Katherinepiro.com is dead.
I got screwed out of it by godaddy and their
rule changing and back stabbing.
refusing to accept paypal payments anymore.
for some reason they wanted a credit card.
may they perish in flames!

otherwise life is ok. i couldn't go anywhere
this Christmas so i'm having a quiet dinner at home.
will visit friends and family when i get more funds.

oh and we're all planing to have a new years party at our house.
since we didn't have a house warming party,
and going out to bars on new years is not so much fun.

oh yeah and this is just awesome.



i want to see it.

my conversations with my creditors.

creditor- "you need to make a payment of this much, on this date"

me- "i can't i don't have any money"

creditor- "yes well you still have to pay us this much, on this date"

me- "you don't understand i still don't have any money"

creditor- "no you don't understand, you have to pay us this much, on this date."

me- "uhhh....okay..."


a week passes. didn't have any money so i could't pay.


bad cop- "you need to give us the money you owe us in two days."

me- "i still have no money."

bad cop- "if you haven't made a payment by monday we'll brake your knees!"

me- "uhhhh....okay.."


so i waited around after monday for the knee breakers.
they didn't come.
instead.


good cop- "hello it seems you owe us a bit of money"

me- "yeah i was told somebody was going to come and break my knees so i'm waiting for them"

good cop- "oh no that's not a good thing to do. you should really just pay us"

me- "i don't have any money right now, but i can pay you this much, on this date"

good cop- "i'm sorry but thats still not good enough. can you pay us twice that, the day before?"

me- ".....i think i can do that."

good cop- "thats great! you do that, and no more breaking promises or else we will have to break your knees. have a good day"

me- "uhhh...okay"


the next day


bad cop- "YOU DIDN'T PAY ON MONDAY!"

me- "i didn't have any money on monday but i talked to someone else abou-"

bad cop- "WE'RE GOING TO BREAK YOUR KNEES!"

me- "oh great. fine."

the other night i was racked with insomnia.
my depression made it impossible for me to read or play on the computer everything irritated me and my brain raced in circles at terrific speeds.

when the present is unbearable and the future hopeless there is only one escape. the past.

when i was young i had a room like a crows nest filled to the brim with strange and sparkly things and mirrors everywhere so everything was twice. i had a friend visit once she stood in my room for a second looking all around and then ran out of my room in fear. i caught up with her shaking in the hallway, when i asked her what was wrong she said "that room is horrible its full of eyes staring at me!" so we played outside instead.
my little cousin came to visit a couple years later and the room was fuller and stranger still, but every time she could, she ran away from the family and up to my room to sit on the floor and stare about her, she loved it. i couldn't get her to leave, she thought it was the room of a fairytale princess.
that room has been gone for over almost a decade. it was impossible to get the sequins out of the carpet when we moved. now there are only glittery fragments of the room scattered about my parents house, when i moved to Toronto i didn't take any of it with me. but that night when i couldn't sleep i wanted to be in that room under the patchwork quilt my grandmother made from pieces of my mothers and aunts party dresses. i remember it was so heave i could barely lift it when i tried to make the bed and i fell over a lot.

i looked around my present day room and no eyes looked back at me, except for my sad brown eyes reflected in the one lonely mirror. then i found my jewelry box. a small scrap of the past.
all my recent jewelry hangs off the single horned cow scull that is the one ornament hanging on the bare walls of my room. i opened up the jewelry box and let my past spill out.
every piece has a memory, a story to go with it. and i held each piece until i remembered. i put them on one at a time and peered into the mirror looking for the little girl i was. Brett woke up and caught me staring fixedly into the mirror, he laughed then rolled over and went back to sleep.

my jewelry box is put together like crows collect their treasure. they grab anything that catches their eye, from a diamond lost in the grass to a piece of tinfoil blowing in the wind. monetary value is forgotten and ultimately unimportant when it comes to memories. a plastic pink pig i swiped from a board game sits proudly next to a string of freshwater pearls from my aunt. there is a little wooden mouse with rhinestone eyes, antique charms, and sparkly trinkets from Claire's, my grandmothers watch next to a watch i found on the street. my grandfathers playing cards. a silver fish made for me by my friend Beth at summer school of the arts, who pressed the sheet of silver with lace to make the pattern of the scales. there are moon charms i found inside of a pyramid candle one of my cousins got me for Christmas, every time i lit it the wax would melt down relieving a new treasure, i melted it strait through and wax pored out the bottom leaving the sides of the pyramid. i carved the biggest of these wax chunks into a griffin. i set two black beads in it as his eyes and put him on top of the tv in the living room. i don't know what happened to him after we moved. he was probably thrown away.

i came eventually to my box of amber which is separate from the rest because it is more precious to me. the only piece of heritage i have is my love of amber. i have no language i have no country i have only the gifts sent to a child that would never be part of anything. the bracelets and necklaces i had played dress up with as a child, which were more valuable then i had realized. i wore them to school all the time, and only when Jurassic park came out did the other kids suddenly realize i had something covetable. when some of them were stolen from me i became more careful with them and only wore them on days i would have to take them off. i remember when i was a teenager i tried to by a string of amber beads and was shocked that i couldn't afford it.
i turned the bracelets inside out running my fingers over the skin of the amber like the sugar shell of a crème brûlée. the skin is left on the back of the piece to show that it has been cut from a single stone and not melted together from lots of little ones.

i sat all night with memories branching off one another building a spiders web of the past that filled up my empty room. when the light began pouring through the window the web melted and i went to sleep. the next afternoon when i woke up i was not quite as unhappy and hopeless as i had been.

So I go into this cool little flower shop near my house,
and ask if I can drop of a resume, the girl asks if I have
experience working in a flower shop and yes I have.
yay! so far so good, she looks slightly interested.
then she asks what other experience do you have?
and my mind goes blank.
duh....
I'm a bit all over the place I say.
I know the instant it's out of my mouth that i'm a dumbass
and the girl knows it to.
why couldn't I say oh I'm an artist and maybe continue the conversation.
being and artist is not a bad thing.
in fact when you're applying for a job that needs creative skills
it's a very. good. thing. you fucking dumbass!
so I ended up slinking out of there with my tail between my legs.
sigh. I hate not having social skils.
my creditors are going to eat me alive.

every once in a wile i get a pang of self loathing. when my depression reaches crisis points. and in those moment i wish i was not me.
i have been job hunting, barely, but i have started looking. and at every job i come to where i think that maybe i could handle, that a voice in the back of my head tells me that yes, maybe i could handle it but i wouldn't be any good at it, and there are hundreds of people in the city that would do the job much better. then i curl up in a ball under the table and get nothing done.
when i am contacted about a job in the arts i am crazy with happiness because i can look them in the face and tell them that there is no one better for this job. and i believe it. but that doesn't happen often.
the rest of the time i am like i am now. i can devote hours of my day and night to drawings an sculptures that will bring me nothing. not because i want to but because i have to. i am a tool and images pour out of me. i am a very skilled tool. but i am a completely useless person. the rest of me is atrophied.
some days i wish i could be an accountant, a nurse, a plumber, anything that was useful, someone that there was no question of need for.
i am jealous right now of the artists that have left there gift behind and function in society with ease. i can not leave my gift behind i can not even keep it as a hobby. it is all i am. everything. there is nothing else. there is not even enough of a person behind it to seek out the place for my work in the world. i am adrift. i cling to my art like a raft and once i finish a piece it sinks into the depths and no one morns it not even me. all i can see is the next piece i'm working on.

1.Sherlock Holmes
2.Spock
3.Batman
4.Hermes
5.Huckleberry Fin
6.Data
7.King Arthur
8.Loki
9.Nicholas D.Wolfwood
10.Rorschach

for the past week or two, i have not been able to go to bed until dawn. i've been drawing mostly. tonight however i was vegging. i was watching old star trek. i loved that show when i was very little and i still love it now. i decided to turn it off and try and go to bed early at about three. i checked facebook to reply to a message i'd received earlier in the afternoon and by chance i noticed someone had posted an event. a meteor shower. i love meteor showers, when i was little my father would wake me up and drive me out into the country we would lay on camping mats in a farmers field and watch the meteor showers. i think i get my love of sci-fi from my dad. books, movies, tv shows, and even more; lunar eclipses, meteor showers, comets, solar eclipses, and the northern lights. after reading the event i turned out my lights and ran to the back window. as my eyes adjusted to the dark and the first few stars were just becoming visible a bright meteorite flashed before my eyes. i was a little kid again. i ran outside and stared up into infinity. soon i was lost i forgot how old i was i forgot my name i forgot i was even human. all that existed was the sky and it's tiny beautiful lights. i gasped at every shooting star i saw the pale ones you almost miss and the tiny far off ones that seen to drift slowly by. but most of all the bright intense flashes that leave an imprint on you eyes. my neck and jaw began to ache brining me back to half consciousness i found my voice enough to beg "one more just one more and then i'll go in" but after my plea was granted i would still be standing there my neck getting stiffer "please just one more, one more bright one" and i realized that for the first time in a long time i was completely happy. finally when i began to start to faint i went back inside. but i still wanted more i went to the back window and stared out. just one more and just one more, finally i got up and started turn away, then i looked back hopefully "just one more bright one" and it flashed down through the center of the sky. "thank you" i whispered to whatever unnameable thing i was praying to. and i woke up out of my joyful sate and started acting normally. it's good, every once and a wile, to give myself up and become a non entity for a bit.

what do i do on a saturday night?
http://katherinepiro.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-saturday-night.html

sooo...it's been almost a year. but i finally got around
to updating the dr sketchy's blog for our Twin peaks
night from Halloween. where yours truly was the model
along with Ken Hall the amazing man from another place.



http://drsketchy-toronto.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

i am slowly (very slowly) but surely going through the
Dr sketchy photo's and updating our blog... wow. we're
really really behind on the blog... this could take a wile.

i'm still planing to model again this october. providing i
get all my costumes done.

i am currently arguing with myself about the topic of suicide.
half of me has thrown itself whole heartedly against it.
and yet another half has recently surfaced out of no where,
a half that not only agrees with it but keeps it in consideration for the future.
lets look at the points where my two sides agree.

i, like over half the human population, lead a completely useless existence.

i mean lets face it almost everyone in the world could die except for the people i know and i would be fine with it, the only reason to live is because there are people that love you. if you have absolutely no loved ones you really don't have an excuse for existing.

i find it strange that part of why we are kept alive because someone wants us to be alive. living is a duty that we owe to our loved ones.

i had to ask myself if everyone i loved disappeared would i still want to live? i would still be a useless human being, and no one would want me around anymore..yet i have to confess, i would go on living, for the simple fact that above all else i'm curious.

but what about when the time comes that i can no longer take care of myself? will i submit myself to the kindness of others? when the end draws near. in this civilization whose "care" for the elderly is heartless, sadistic, and cruel. will i still be curious? or will i feast on the golden blossoms of the laburnum?

i used to be filled with horror at sudden, unexpected deaths. now i know what to fear. i do not want a long romance with death. bound to his bed, to have his scent stain my sheets and linger on my skin. no. let him come quickly. in a glorious one night stand.

when doesn't mater if the day after doesn't exist.

i am a minor celebrity to the toronto burlesque scene.
yay! i'm even more amazing than i thought.

So it looks like i'm am going to New York city this weekend for the mermaid parade. :D
But I haven't found anyone to go with me...so i'm going alone. :(

...I haven't even thought of an outfit to where! oh no!
I've been too busy drawing this week to pay attention to my costumes..or my poor garden..thank god for thunderstorms otherwise my plants would have turned to dust buy now.


Oh and if you would like to see the drawings i've been working on check out my art blog.
http://katherinepiro.blogspot.com/

it takes so much effort to post pictures on livejournal...and i am s you all know supreamly lazy.
...well i thought supreamly was a word...damn you spell check!

i'm tired. i'm starting to see those crazy bugs. i sleep.

sooo...i'm horribly depressed.
yeah. that's about all i got right now.

..oh yeah!

who's in IMDb? I'm in IMDb.
dance around.
dance around.

...still depressed.

but i'm dancing :D

in the next couple months;

- make a ton of art for the outdoor show in the hopes that I've been accepted.
- lose 20lbs
- make some masks and costumes for Sketchy's

in the next week;

- clean.
- pack.
- through out mass amounts of junk and old clothes.
- find a place to live.
- move there.


sometimes i fear that i'm becoming a yuppy.
then i realize that i'm way too much of a bum.
...and i don't drink coffee.

Christian Zombie Vampires.



My friend Kat O'shaughnessy invited me to be her model/make-up artist for her new clothing line in [FAT] Toronto Alternative Fashion Week.



I was the last to walk down the runway, in my Zombie Bride outfit. It was the most twitchy performance, and everyone seemed to love it, even though I got stuck with the worst loop in the music.

there is a video too but i don't have access to it yet.

If anyone remembers brett and i were working on this film.
and now it's finally done!
check it out

http://flickerflicker.com/flash/index.html

and come and see it when it's released!