Infinitely Improbable

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-12-30T22:27:00

2005-12-31T03:27:23Z

I'm working on a series of pieces revolving around the word "hineini" (here I am), using Hebrew and English, mostly from the Bible. I would be ETERNALLY grateful if someone would help me out by translating this poem I wrote into Hebrew - I know a little modern Hebrew, but my written Hebrew sucks. If there's anything I can help someone out with in return, I'd be more than happy to do so. Thanks again!!

I have seen the look in my grandmother’s eyes
when she talks about her parents
the children she fought for,
those whose tangible absence
has resided in me since before my birth.
Like Adam I have known
that I must eventually fall
under the weight of that knowledge.
Here I am.

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-04-27T22:42:00

2005-04-28T02:43:25Z

Bitter, bitter girl. Copy of a letter emailed to the senior class re: my food.
Its such a very bad idea to piss of a PMSing jew during passover.

Some silly person made the grave mistake of coming between a hungry Jewish kid during passover and her passover-friendly food, by removing it from senior kitchen's fridge. My team of private investigators will be in in the next few days to dust for fingerprints - But seriously. PLEASE don't take food that doesn't belong to you, especially because you never know when it belongs to some bitter, temporarily unstable from carb deprivation, HUNGRY individual who will hunt you down. And dammit, if I find out who took my food, you'd better sleep with one eye open.

B'Shalom,
Bekka

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-03-30T23:00:00

2005-03-31T04:07:47Z

So I think I might have an individual show next week in the Olin gallery, which would be cool but completely crazy to get ready for... The last yearbook deadline is FINALLY being sent out tomorrow, thank god - after this, I just have to figure out who to tap for editor-in-chief next year and its officially no longer my problem. Amen. Things are very complicated with a certain someone right now... actually things themselves aren't all that complicated at all, but people around me are making the complication factor skyrocket, as evidenced by the fact that I have to refer to him as a certain someone even in a journal that I don't think anyone who knows me even reads. Slight paranoia.

Revisit day for SMFA on the 10th... *sigh* I want to go there so badly, we just have to figure out financial stuff. And I'm a little stressed about the whole idea, college in general and art school specifically, not that I don't spend ALL MY TIME doing art here anyway... I'm just not as confident with that as I'd like to be. I'm also feeling girly and insecure about my appearance, which I hate because I'm so very much not that type of girl, at ALL... so yeah.

I made a bracelet today with coins and pieces of bills from a bunch of different countries - shekels, dollars, and pesos this time because thats all that was easily available, but hopefully more next time, I'm enjoying it. I'm having (artist's block?) with my computer graphics stuff right now though, which is frustrating... I don't usually suffer from lack of inspiration, I just can't make anything that feels right right now. Streessssssss.

Thats enough stress venting for one day.

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-03-23T15:11:00

2005-03-23T20:11:01Z

You scored as One Intelectual Individual. You're a thinker. You see things from a very different prospective than the rest of the world, and probably find release and self-expression in music, painting, scalpting, or any other form of art. People see you as a deep person, full of knowledge that they don't understand. People are attracted to that, but there's a good chance you don't care.

One Intelectual Individual

88%

Earth-Child

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-03-21T16:29:00

2005-03-21T22:40:59Z

I GOT INTO SMFA!!! Thank god :) I just got back last night (well, 2:30 this morning) from puerto vallarta, mexico... It was incredible, SO beautiful. I got so inspired by the whole trip... I got shells for jewelry pieces, and I designed a few pieces with coins and money, and a silver box with "inquisitive" under glass... took pictures for a few computer graphics pieces I want to do... I wrote a few poems about the girl I went with... a good friend of mine but my total opposite in every way, filthy rich, spoiled beyond belief, a sweetheart in some ways but with a social conscience the size of a peanut...

She comes up for air
to the room from the pool
filled with (precious) tidbits,
the (currency) of the resort;
stories of husbands cheating for five years
and wives with no idea,
who bought land (cheap) in Cuba,
which waiters would (trade) drinks for
kisses. Kisses are (cheap) here.

I try to (steal) minutes
to listen to my hypnosis tapes,
and I sleep curled up
earplugs in.
She can’t sleep without the TV on,
soap operas and (ads) insinuating themselves
into her dreams
my nightmares
Only (500 pesos) apiece
and if you call in the next five minutes
we’ll throw in a second (free).

We sit across the table from each other
in the five star restaurant
talking about the state of the world
and (wholesale) slaughter
and she looks at me through her (expensive) sunglasses
with something like pity
and a sad little half-smile
and says
Well, but that’s not my problem.

Anyway. All exciting. I'm psyched for college!!! I'll post the other poems and the pictures and such when I'm done with them :)

Another political commentary jewelry piece.

2005-03-05T16:51:19Z

In the same vein as an earlier posting, here is an image of a piece I made using text from an article about child abuse. Any critiques greatly appreciated. The two earlier ones in the same series are behind the cut. Images of more of my jewelry and computer graphics pieces can be found at http://photobucket.com/albums/v283/Bekkarr/

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-03-02T19:53:00

2005-03-03T01:06:33Z

I made another of the glass pieces today... this one has visible text that says "her mother... one of her daughters that... ished her dead, a police..." with the phrase "rock a bye" in silver wire above it, two amethyst stones, a large square and a smaller one on the top and side, and a silver chain sort of hammock beneath it... I can't get pictures right now, I'm in the dorm...

I let my mom see one of my poems today, which was weird... she gets excited about me writing again but a lot of my stuff is really personal and its hard for me to share with her.

When Grandma was seventeen,
her house was boarded up
her parents gone.
The constant low murmuring of my childhood
story after story whispered in my ear
an IV drip of history
too much for any five year old to take.
And I knew things no five year old should know
and I felt things no five year old should feel,
and it changed me.
And now I am seventeen.
This is my heritage,
grown up around me like my own
personal
barbed wire prison.
Wrapping, twisting around me like a vine
teaching me things no seventeen year old should know.
And looking out from behind my eyes
not just me
but a multitude, and I am only one among them.
I am possessed
by the eyes I can’t look away from
in pictures in museums.
I have parents’ grief for their children
long before my time.
And I know
that despite the confusion and pain and doubt
and the knowing
my children
and theirs
and theirs
will have the same.
As it should be.

I've got a meeting with the spawn of Satan, aka our head of diversity, tomorrow... She's so incredibly unhelpful and unpleasant... I've been doing massive amounts of work to set up and prepare for my grandmother's presentation about her experiences in the Holocaust (she grew up w/ Anne Frank and her parents were taken away when she was 17, she spent the rest of the war smuggling children across borders and such heroic things.) And all this evil woman can do is make things harder... anyway. Frustrating.

I find out from SMFA over spring break, about march 13th... I'll be in Mexico w/ Chelsea (more about that later) so my parents will open the letter and read it to me I guess. It means SO MUCH to me, I want to go there so badly... and its hard because I have no way to gauge my chances. I know my work is good, but I dont know if its up to their standards or if its what they're looking for... its very untraditional, most people have at least one painting or something in their portfolio and I don't... I mean my grades and test scores always made me feel so much better about applying to other schools, but here I don't even know that those are going to be all that much help. I just don't like feeling like its out of my hands... I want it so badly.

So I leave for Mexico w/ Chelsea on the 10th... She still hasnt given me details about a lot of stuff, I'm kind of scared... and I should go shopping at some point. Its going to be fun, I think? We'll see.

Enough for now.

Made today

2005-03-02T01:47:24Z

Today I was playing around with glass and text and made these two... I've got several more glass/text blocks ready to work with... one that says "unorthodox," one that says "disappear... Its not permanent," one that says "suicide bomber...killed..." and one about child abuse. Please let me know what you think. The pictures are really crummy and for that I apologize. The first is a pendant on a heavy silver neckwire with a spiral catch at the end, and the second is a pin. Thanks for any feedback/critique!

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-02-28T19:24:00

2005-03-01T00:35:13Z

A few computer graphics pieces I've done in Photoshop... part of a series of images made of pictures I took at Auschwitz and historical images. A portfolio of 8 of these pieces won regional awards in the Scholastic Art Awards, and are going on to nationals currently.

Entitled "The Long Road," the base image is of the road in the camp between the train station and the gas chambers, and so the only point of the camp that hundreds of thousands of people ever saw - in particular, almost every single child who ever entered the camp. The closed eyes are meant to symbolize either the rest of the world or the childrens' mothers.

Self portrait

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-02-28T09:44:00

2005-02-28T14:44:44Z

My holocaust jewelry piece and writing with it - won a gold key in the regional Scholastic Art Awards, is going on to the Nationals. Comments? criticisms?

The faces stare up at me, Robi and Gyuri Vadasz, 3 and 5 when they were murdered in Auschwitz. Plaintive gazes, remember me, I see them in the eyes of the children I babysit, I see them in my sleep. This piece is not a project, its an obsession, a quest. I sketch designs in my notebooks, on my desks, run through every detail until I feel sure every millimeter is meaningful, necessary, important. I take out the beautiful, smooth virgin silver, only for something this important could I mar the surface without some guilt. Dull red glowing heat, flame dancing over the surface, kissing it and darting away, and OH! Too far. And I’m back to the beginning. I could keep going but no, I want everything to be perfect, I need everything to be perfect, I need to honor the reality, the inhumanity, I need to take it in and process it and make something beautiful. I need other people to see their faces, remember their names, so long after they are gone. I don’t know my own great grandparents’ names, but these two are for some reason etched on my heart. I feel I owe them, for not doing enough, for not being able to face enough, for not being strong enough. For not being dead. So I twist, and I bend, and I pound and pierce and melt the metal into a cage for those feelings, for that inadequacy. If I can only make something beautiful, something perfect… One barbed wire star of David, one Israeli flag, six stones six million, thirty six barbs, twice eighteen, two lives. Two lives that I can’t save, two wrongs that I can’t undo, but two people that I can remember. The metal at this point moves through my hands with me just watching, a passenger, waiting to see they will take me. If I can just make it perfect… And yet I don’t want it to be perfect. I want the rough surface, the darkened silver, the barbs that make it impossible to wear. Because it is impossible. It is impossible to remember, to understand, to know, to encompass the brutality and the hatred and not go crazy. But it is equally impossible for me to ignore those eyes, to distance myself. I can’t and I won’t. Now the piece stares up at me, complete, this piece which has absorbed everything I’ve thrown into it, all the emotions and the pain, and multiplied and reflected them back at me, this piece which has taken on a life of its own. These two lives that stare out from behind the barbed wire, two lives that I need you to remember. Robi and Gyuri Vadsasz, 3 and 5 when they were murdered in Auschwitz.

Mmmm poetry

2005-02-28T14:39:00Z

Some poetry I was playing with... its been years since I wrote anything like this. I could really use some critiques... The first is sort of dual - partly about someone in my life, partly about the way another person in my life described me. The second and fourth are about Jerusalem, and the third is about religion in general.

1) Sometimes I see the shadows flit across your features
and I desperately want to push them away
to reach inside you, follow the threads of sadness
find the source and gently, gently uproot it
to see you shine once more.
And sometimes the storm clouds gather
so fast, blink and you’ll miss it
and you’re so angry
and I know those wounds are too deep for me to touch
and its time to go inside
and wait for the rain to pass.
Hearing your voice,
holding you in my arms
knowing that no matter how close we are
I will never be able to divine
your weather patterns.

2) With all the hills of Jerusalem,
anything you come across seems to rise up
out of nowhere. I place my hand,
then my lips on the cool rock,
feeling through it the pulse and the heartbeat of generations.
Standing at the wall, a single link
in an unbroken chain that stretches back thousands of years.
The last rays of sun set the Kotel
and the Dome of the Rock on fire.
My own mother stood in this spot,
and her mother,
and hers,
feeling the pull of the earth and the wall.
I saw the other women,
some crying from joy and some from pain,
some just standing silently.
My shadow mingling and melding
into the shadows of those around me,
my heart beating in sync with theirs.
Am Yisrael Chai.

3) Religion
in its purest form
serves as a lens, a way
to look at the world and oneself.
The graphite shards thrown on paper
to reveal the indents of symbols,
the squiggles on paper that, to some,
can guide them to turn crashing on a piano
into a symphony.
I want to know
what pair of rose colored glasses
other people put on
to twist and mold and shape
the world into a place where
they can find the motivation to do good.
To be.
I want to hear everyone’s story.
Tell me yours.

4) I was there,
soaking up the light reflected
off the Western Wall,
imbibing the evening air spiced
with vendor’s shouts
and thick with murmurs of Arabic and Hebrew,
whispering its secrets into my ear.
My heart, my heart skipped beats
as the light bounced off the Dome of the Rock
and into my eyes.

b_is_for_bekka @ 2005-02-27T23:15:00

2005-02-28T04:15:59Z

Fresh journal, fresh start... mostly focused on (assorted) art forms.