Blue Gold

the next world war will be over water....

Hair Obsessions

Many people don't know this but like most black women I am Obsessed with my hair. I am always trying to find new ways to style it and help it along in growth.Currently my hair is about shoulder length but I can't wait till it gets to be even longer cause I plan to rock the worlds biggest fro.

I actually use to relax my hair. in fact my hair has been relaxed since I was a weee little girly girl with pig tails.

and it grew but it was always very thin and when I finally got to an age where I could do my own hair I hated it cause it seemed like every ones hair was thicker than mine.

Anyway when I turned 26 I moved away and went to school and I stopped getting a perm on my hair. This is when the real education began. it took me about a 2 years to muster up the balls to actually trim off all the damaged hair.During that time I did a few things. One thing I always wanted was to die my hair so I did. On top of my perm and natural mixed fro and man did it look bad.

then one day i got this idea to get on the internet and learn how to style a fro.I wanted more than afro puffs and I was tired of the mickey mouse ears. I was really to old to be doing nothing but wearing afro puffs. I didn't know how to style short hair though. and it wasn't long enough for one ponytail.

Long story short I found lots of other young women with beautiful natural hair and they were giving tutorials on how to take care of it. Like for example. not combing it when it is dry and not using mineral oil because it makes your hair brittle. I was a victim of brittle hair. Oh and not using sulfate shampoo. I buy organic now.

Recently I have been doing research on how to stop single strand knots. They are all over my head and they caused me to form a nasty habit where I rip them out cause they make me so angry and they can't be removed unless i get out the shears and clip individual knots of individual strands. Some call this dusting and it is a fruitless effort cause they come back in a matter of a few hours!!! GRRR!!!

So I would just clip my ends and well that didn't help either cause I clip the ends of damaged hair and they return and I clip more and more and my hair gets shorter and shorter which is defeating the purpose of having long hair in the first place!!

But I think I found the solution. I tried rolling my hair. and this works, but takes hours and the hair reverts in a few days and then I found a site called http://curlynikki.com .

She shows how to do the curly fro where by curling the ends you can stretch them and eliminate single strand knots. Not to mention it is really cute and a nice style for every day wear. I thought I was resigned to ugly braids or 2 strand twists but I don't like them in my hair so this I hope will be my saving grace.

Anyway I found some videos and thought I would share. This girl has great hair! Oh and I also learned that a fro is a great accessory to your clothes.



God Bless
~Arie

To Hollywood or not to Hollywood.

Sorry I haven't been posting guys. it has been a very rough month. I figured that it was probably best I focus as much energy on commissions as possible but they are still not getting completed as fast as I would like.

I know I haven't spoken here much about it but I have a mentor and I spoke to him the other day. when I am able to animate he looks at my work and critiques things for me. I always feel revitalized when I get to speak with him. He told me anytime I am ready to start getting work He would help me out by putting in a good word for me.

God Bless him and his wife. They are such good people. He told me that he was kinda unsatisfied with the industry for so long, but meeting young people with a fire for animation has helped him feel so much happier and excited about what they can bring to animation in the future.

Knowing he that someone has that kind of faith in your work is so uplifting. It makes me feel like I can do anything no matter how hard. I still hesitate to move to Cali and try yo find work. It hasn't been long since I returned to Missouri and enjoy being able to be around all my old friends and reestablishing those old relationships.

Not to mention I think my mom would be heart broken if I were to move so far away again. I had such rough times when I was in New Jersey. It was so frustrating and lets not talk about Ohio. I question myself if a move to Hollywood for work would be a good choice or not, but at the same time it has been something I have worked so hard for all these years. I mean it could be completely different for me than all the other times.

I am just kinda tired of my life frantically being up and down so much. the chaos is unbearable sometimes.all I can really do is pray about all these things. At the same time I think man if i were on my feet and doing well. Just how much more I could bring to the lives of others around me.

I wonder if other artists have had to make a decision like this. I know moving there wouldn't be forever but no one is getting any younger around here. Especially my parents. It seems like a big sacrifice.

Never Imagined

I ended up having to drop some of the projects. It was just to much. It honestly made me feel very frustrated. You get that feeling of “Oh my God I am a failure cause I can't handle everything,” but at the same time it is a big relief. It means for one that it will be much easier to plan out my work without loosing sleep over how many things I can do at once.

I think with the convention and all the work I needed to do to get ready on top of all the money I ended up loosing in order to go I found myself between a rock and a hard place. All my finances for a month went to going to Baltimore Comic Con and that just wasn’t a very smart decision to make. In fact the entire time I was at the Con in the back of my head I did nothing but stress about how much I needed to get done at home and how I should have been working at that moment. Then with a hope and a prayer I was desperately wanting to make back the money I was spending to go and at the off chance that that might not happen I took on more work than I could handle hoping to make up for it after the convention was over.

Long story short, I got some big battle wounds as a result of my decisions over the last 3 months since finally getting back to drawing. But I know one thing this did was to seriously test my mental and physical limits in terms of what I just can and can’t do as an artist as well as how NOT to run a business no matter how much you want to succeed.

I am rethinking my approach to freelancing and recognizing a person just can not fill up every hour of there day. There are to many variables where things can go wrong. Not to mention having the time to eat and sleep and get sunshine on occasion. God bless the remained of my project with the home they go smoothly.

~Arie

Yoga and Self Realization

About to years ago I read a book called Autobiography of a yogi. The book was about the life of Paramhansa Yogananda, and Indian yogi that came to the US to bring the teachings of ancient wisdom of India and self realization through Christianity. He has written many books about living like Christ and being of Christ conscience, as well as, analyzing the teachings of Jesus and how they relate to model day lives of man.

My interest in the practice of Yoga began around 5 years ago now when I took a yoga class with some friends. The teacher was actually from Russia I believe and the class was very hard. At the end of the class there is a posture where you lay down on the floor after about an hour of intense work and the teacher walks around the room and he presses your shoulders down and lifts your head into alignment. Some teaches will even anoint your head with oil.

I remember the touch of this teacher. I had never been touched by such soft hands. And in an instant it felt like I was literally floating off the ground like I was not within myself. I had studied a few books on Tao and Yoga before this and read about yogis who float in the air and all these other strange things when I was in high school. All that stuff seemed so surreal.

But at this moment I don’t ever think I had felt so close to God. It was really an amazing spiritual experience. After the class ended and I came back to my senses I suddenly vowed that I would always practice yoga.

The next week I started attending Maya Yoga in downtown Kansas city. I remember be surrounded by vegans and vegetarians and I was on the Atkins diet. I had a few other spiritual experience but non like the first. My body was slowly be sculpted though in to the very agile body. After a while I ran into some financial problems I couldn’t go anymore but I bought books and practiced at home and them soon after that I went away to school.

Then while I was away in NJ and working at Mada Design I started occasionally getting audio books and listening to them. I was going not only through financial problems at the time but also through a purification process of some sort. It was so not voluntary lol. I found myself being tortured by my former experiences, many of them bad. These past memories suddenly flooded my life and I was having daily mental warfare with myself. Not to mention my external battles and coming to terms with the behaviors of others around me. Often I found myself near tears as I walked daily to and from work. I felt like I was under the greatest attack of my entire life. And then I found the audio book Autobiography of a Yogi.

This book helped me through one of the biggest mental hurdles I had gone through since high school. Like most teens high school was like the dark ages to me. I remember at one point asking my boyfriend if Satan really existed because I honestly felt like I was being attacked. (Satan has always been a little obscure to me cause I never really understood who or what Satan was but I do know what demons are.)

Anyway, I really enjoyed the Autobiography cause it was inspirational beyond belief. Because Yagananda lived between the 1920’s and like the 1960’s here in the US it was even more surreal. Actually there was a point when he came to Kansas City Missouri and he had a devotee here that he trained in Kriya Yoga and this man founded a church here that is called Self Realization fellowship http://kcmeditation.com/. I am thinking about attending a service to see what it is like.

I think it was one of the second branches founded here in the US; the first was founded by Yogananga on the west coast.

Some of the miracles described in the book are really otherworldly; especially his stories about meeting other modern day saints. It felt like a story that could only be told during biblical times. Even in my studies on Gandhi I find it strange to know that this man lived in my life time as well as martin Luther King.

The thing that brings all these thoughts of the eternal and human spirit was yesterday while working I was watching this video about a model day Buddha, Ram Bahadur Bomjan. He is saint from Nepal that is practicing something that I had heard about in the Autobiography. He plans to meditate for 10 years without eating or drinking. Him body is fueled purely by the spirit of god.

Before reading this book I was very skeptical of the idea that a man can live without polluting the body with food or drink. Then when I saw this I was really inspired cause I thought maybe these were things that did not happen in today’s time. He started meditating when he was I believe 11 and his goal is to meditate on the salvation of the world that we do not plunge into an even more desperate time of war and hatred. That man kind can ascend from the daily chaos and troubles of the world that we create and manifest from our own mind. To stop killing and eating meat so we can live on the fruits that God readily provides us.

This past summer I grew some of my own food and it was the most spiritual experience I had had in a long time. I remember feeling that is was nothing short of a miracle that anything could thrive on water and sun alone and I blessed and thanked my tomatoes as they grew and still grow in abundance. What a miracle it is to watch a small seedling grow into the monster that dominates my front porch and provides me with nourishment so I can live.

Anyway today is a blessed day. Give thanks for all things in your life whether good or bad even if only for the lessons they can teach.

God Bless,
~Arie