week sixty three >> "invited"

We chose this spread of "Invited" to present in this celebration week, as it bears remnant reminisces from the hand of our brother Nate whom we honor and uplift in light as he enters the covenant of Marriage this week.  Blessings to you and your beloved sweet man - Love well and prosper!

A long time ago, in a land not so far away, two young women were working away through night and day, painting and drawing, creating and playing.  Energy was sparking and dawn was emerging when they found themselves drawn out of their studio cave into the fresh air and light of the middle of May.

Inspiration caught their scent and called to them to climb to the tallest tower.  Thus they found themselves scaling steep ladders toward the pinnacle of Harder stadiums observation peeks where views of the surrounding lands abounded.  To commemorate this wonderous occasion, when time and space had expanded and contracted within their experience, the two companions unwrapped a gift from another beloved soul friend, Father Hutch.  The green genie inside unleashed his powers of wish, bestowing unto the girls an unforgettable and magical celebration filled with dancing and singing and loving.

Forevermore will we commemorate this holy ignition, this flame of light set fire into all time, hee hee haa haah !! -J.

week sixty two >> "invited"

 July 2011:  HIGH ATE US

"invited"                                     click to view

We didn't announce our July sabbatical because it ultimately came as news to us as well :)  ...it pretty much announced itself: a time of rest for ZBOOK 4EVER ....as our attention was pulled fervently into travels and other creative work vital to the impending launch into a new year.  Jennifer has a new year opening up with the school year of her children and of her work at Waldorf ...and as my birthday approaches I am entering my new year ...as always restorative, regenerating thresholds are emerging, inviting me to renew and refine my vows, my course of action and availability for opportunities and growth.  We have been winding up like the high wind, harnessing our energy for the launching of so many ships.  This HIGH consumed our July, or you could say, ATE US.  (haha, we love words.  and boy are there a lot of words on Z page we pulled for this week, "invited")  We honor our time of hiatus as a needed ebb to fully activate the next flow of ourselves, our work, and ZBOOK 4EVER in this new year now igniting.  we are entering a season of invitations.  Calls to action from visions lit up by the summer sun.  Wonder (soul sister) twins ACTIVATE.

∞ ceci

6

week fifty six >> "friendship caught on fire" Happy May 16th!!!

In the spirit of anniversaries, cycles of seasons, and full circling thresholds, we go from the back inside cover spread, which we shared these past 2 weeks, and now turn to and open up to the front inside cover spread:

ZBOOK front inside cover          Click to see pretty & large

Of course this spread was made just as all the other pages, bit by intuitive bit, in layers of spontaneous whim and response, never first, never last, always in the state of becoming, touched upon in non-linear spirit, birthed throughout 14 years. It's fitting that the back cover should lead to the front as they neither indicate an ending OR beginning, but rather BOTH... as such threshold points truly are, like how every change is an end and simultaneously a start, how death is a close that in the same instance is a birth to new life.  How the end of one year begins another. 
Like today! Happy May 16th Hemphill!  This is our special day, the celebration of our "friendship caught on fire" as Bruce Lee described love to be (as quoted here on Z page by Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure :)  

"love is like friendship caught on fire" Bruce Lee
quoted by Chris the Morning, Norther Exposur

And as ZBOOK is also a tribute to our soul kinship and collaboration, it feels great to share this page with you on this day.  Up in the right corner it says "This is a Book of Lives"  In the bottom right corner is a photo sticker of us taken in a sticker machine on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in spring of 1999, seems to me that you were quite possibly observing a celebration for May 16th that day.  This page soon peculated into an homage of our synergy and gratitude for each other. 

The quote Jennifer wrote on on the left is perfect tone setter for our flip from back to front or end to start.... I would answer the question posed with a singular yet all encompassing YES.

love you Hemphill!

∞ ceci

6


PS(L):  love the echos of PSL on both inside covers,
            YES our posse is truly anchored in our hearts

week fifty four >> "made daily"

aka :  "WE CANNOT WALK ALONE"





As my household goes into upheaval this month, engaging in a move, I am uber grateful for the support of friends and family in so many ways.  Shout out to PSLr, Coach Brian, who hooked us up with smartbox galore - woop woop!! 

This spread, our back inside cover makes me smile because it feels like it is smiling back at me - in a way it gives me a summer time feel too - like the gang is hanging out.  I'm reflective of both myself and my children, with our circle of buddies in surround all around.  Hallie took off this week for a two night campout with her third grade class.  They're working on a biodynamic farm and bonding over smores and campfire songs - too fun!  After kissing her goodbye, I worked at Jack's school, digging up the ground in preparation for some chickens who are going to move in... little ones played and worked alongside me in the hot sun, digging, climbing, imagining, laughing, struggling, lifting... so beautiful to be in the midst of kids in dirt.  Now, I'm at work, prepping a letter for parents of 4th - 8th graders so that we can get wet with water games in the coming weeks during our PE classes - water balloon tosses - oh yeah!
Keep Cool and sane and keep your possy in your heart. - J. G.

week fifty three >> "access points" ZBOOK4EVER CELEBRATES ONE YEAR !

"access points"      click to view LARGE

A year ago today we launched ZBOOK4EVER, this here interweb site and blog, celebrating and sharing Z pages created in traveling collaboration during the first 14 years of our friendship and creative correspondence, which birthed ZBOOK!  Z page this week, "access points," is the last spread in ZBOOK before turning to the back inside cover spread, yet as one feels close to exit, this page speaks of entering, and the questions that surface when stepping into the unknown beyond the threshold, or rabbit hole as it so often feels.  The making of ZBOOK came to a close in 2010, yet in that very moment the sharing of it via ZBOOK4EVER began.  A fresh access point was born, this time for all the world to enter our world which only Jennifer and I had shared through ZBOOK for all these years since we entered our friendship and creative mayhem together back in school. And also for us, to explore our own exploration, to commune with our own stories and mythologies, to connect what we have created with what we are creating today.

Today we enter a new year as we continue to share Z pages of ZBOOK, the development of our other books such as Xbook, Ybook, and the traveling S.BOOK as it exhibits all over the U.S, and engage in collaboration with YOU via Z.POSTCARDS, a project we are officially launching this summer.   

Thank you for being a part of ZBOOK4EVER!  We are grateful for this extended forum with which to share with you our ever growiing creative rhythms... and we are ever grateful for your loving attention and support.  We would LOVE to hear from you, please feel FREE to leave your comments or email us.

see bottom right of Z page:  "input expression... re(garding): our reception of the calling to let go & begin crystallization of zee book" at right ----->
written, I'm guessing, year 2000

Happy New Year!




∞ ceci
6


PS(L): happy Apirl 20 to our PSL family! we love you dearly.

grateful still

"still"    click to view

click to view large

During the thanksgiving of 1996, I traveled to Sedona Arizona with my mom and PSL brother Hutch.  ZBOOK was barely a month old.  This was two weeks before our first collaboration show Indulge, for which much of the first writing in ZBOOK was brainstormed with.  On thanksgiving day my mama, Hutch, and I packed up a thanksgiving feast and hiked up the river bed up to Cathedral Rock at sunset.  It was stunning.  The watercolor sky seeping into the richest, deepest electric blue of twilight.  We got up close to the base, created a space for feasting, made a fire, and beheld both vistas... of the Cathedral formations to the west, illuminated by the last lingering light, and the expanded valley of stony wilderness below to the east, with the diamond moon rising over the arrival of night's sky embedded with it's blanket of stars.  We were quiet and still.... breathing and grateful.  At fireside, feeling Jennifer very much, I began to speak to her in the wind... so I pulled out ZBOOK and let the words fall on Z page... this one that ultimately became "still."           [click image on right]

sketch of Cathedral Rock from where we sat

Happy thanksgiving Hemphill, my dear friend, my sister in soul and partner in muse.  It is a delight to be in correspondence with you, flowing and circulating Still, 4ever. 

 

∞ ceci

6

week thirty two >> "still"

Where did we meet? In stillness, at one another's feet? Or was it in sleep?
Wherever , Whenever , our tendrils whirl in beat to strings in golden sheath, from time wherein.
-J.G.
11/24/10 Bbk, CA

There are so many stories to share in ones lifetime, yours, mine, ours and others... let's hear and speak them, honor the existence of each voices tales. I am so thankful for the many moments in colorful places shared and alone; times when holy spirit has flown through pulsing veins, interweaving life and friendship and understanding.
The title of this weeks, spread, 'still' comes from center page at right... - underlined, a piece of sentence from Cec's sharing of a Thanksgiving trip to Sedona, AZ :,
" its power swallows me still"


Happy Thanksgiving near and far - Peace and Goodwill to all,
-Jennifer

Jump!

postcards a flurry click to view

Today is an exciting day for ZBOOK! Today we speak at UC Santa Barbara, accepting the invitation from our former Professor Kip Fulbeck to speak at his Personal Narrative class, which we took 14 years ago, the same year that both our friendship and ZBOOK was birthed. In preparation for our presentation/performance I have been going through our mass collection of postcards which we've sent each other since that year of 1996. All of our stories could be told just with these postcards alone, they are rich with history gleaned from the date, place of origin, destination address, particular stamps, adorning details such as stickers and drawings, image on card itself, and of course the words written therein.

alice postacard -C to J- 6 July 1999

I came across this Alice postcard and smiled, as Jennifer brought the Alice from Z page this week, "All and Everything," to light in her last post. It's fascinating to re-discover a postcard you've written... it's as if seeing it for the first time! For truly we write 'em and mail 'em and only the recipient gets to truly become familiar with 'em. This postcard was written on July 6, 1998 from Boulder, Colorado by me to Jennifer who was living her summer in Santa Cruz and received my postcards via our PSL buddies Hutch, Coach, and Millar's house in the Redwood Estates mountains of Los Gatos, CA. Vinh and I were on a road trip at the time which what brought us passing through Boulder. The words speak of how Vinh and I had slept in our "capsule" van parked at a public park which we hucked disc at by moonlight the night before and how we were now waking up to a crowd of people just outside our tinted windows going to the near by church on sunday morning. And to that I wrote, "Many a night, especially when we don't have an exact place to sleep, I think about you & your travels. I think about you sleeping in the sand," referring to stories from Jennifer's travels around the globe after her grad from UCSB the year before.

"All and Everything" click to view

Travel, the unknown splendor of it all. Travel is the never ending rabbit hole. As is life. So fun to be a couple of Alices together in our creative mayhem Hemphill. Today... we jump!

∞ ceci

6

11/11/10 - parallels

It seems only appropriate that we are running this 'Run in Parallel' spread as we cross the date of 11/11.  Ceci left a phone message for me earlier, suggesting that today held great potential as a gateway date.  I have been holding our recent conversations to my heart and actions; expressing my excitement with zbook to my colleagues and family. We are in final countdown/preparation mode for a presentation of our collaborative zbook work at our "origin" point of UCSB.  Before faculty and students, we will be sharing story and images and creating an experience of our personal and collaborative narratives, spreading the inspirational impulses of zbook.  It's a seed pod bursting opportunity we've been taking steps toward for some time now.  In many ways, it feels like a jumping board, like a springing platform into a pool of something still as yet unknown.  We both agree that the manifestation of this symposium opportunity in the fall is completely in line with our mutual electricity in this season of wind and shift from light outside to light inside.  Looking at the image of "parallel", this emerging internal light is reflected magically in the luminoscity of this spread...it is infused with some serious incandescence.  What's amazing to me is how this spread transformed from something quiet and flowing to something pulsing and rushing.  As we were entering zbook in the last couple of years to bring closure and breadth of crystallization, we most often played in watercolor to cohese each spread.  On this spread however, our brushes stroked into life with these shimmery acrylic paints we both have had on hand in our painting quests, and the outcome shocked this piece with dynamite.  We should search our archives to see if we have an image of this spread pre white and purple and bronze, to view it in its quiet, browner stage, when it was mostly running words.

As I look closer at this spread, I see homage paid to a few striking moments in time.  In the following image, there is a note of the PSL family in the LA House.   The picture which arises for me in relation to that note is an oscillating scene, like a sticker with two images which flash through movement of  hand or head... one is a golden glowing room with a long table and a bronze lighted chandelier around which a dozen feasters are holding hands as a gray haired uncle offers prayers of Thanksgiving for the communion of family and friends; the shifted image is a blue black hue with jacuzzi drifters and moonlight sifters, overlooking a twinkling valley of lights.

I simply love how words and color wrap around each other.  The quote enveloped in pearlescent copper at right here looks like my lettering, though I have no recollection of its utterance context... most likely, it came from the jacuzzi!... "GUARANTEED"

On another note, it sure is strange how children bring challenges to streams of working time; they are so invested in every moment of the present, they cannot often be deferred to a future time when all other work is complete...isn't that an amazing gift to all of humankind, continuously renewed in each birth ... little bundles of the here and now - see me - help me - love me - leave me to myself - a constant cycle of learning and letting go for a parent.

So, I take my advice, post script to "Run in Parallel'..."walk in tennis shoes"!  Good advice!

-Be well and take care, -J. G.

Northern crack ups

So fun to discover yet another quote from our beloved Northern Exposure in Z page this week:

"cohesion" click to view

NE quote click to view

"that's the movies

Ed, try reality"

-Fleischman

"no thanks" -Ed

Speaking of Northerns and this here page "Cohesion" and how it is so much about the collision within cohesion and the cohesion that is collision, this couldn't be more exemplified than by Northern Exposure's Joel Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell, who collided in the moment they met, always an upheaval and battle between them, always the friction of verbal attacks and passive aggressive antagonism storming between them..... and always a tension that begged to be quenched with a surrender to a festering passion. Their dance of query is a fun display of how collision is cohesion in disguise and how resisting cohesion only heats up the friction in collison making the threat of cohesion ever more sweeter.

Case in Point (as Fleischman always says) is this clip of the first moment when Fleischman and O'Connell at last reach a peek of frustration that peeks their cohesion. From the 2nd season, the PSL deemed "epic" episode called "Spring Break" (which hey! I wrote about in my 8/14 post which speaks of the NE quote on Z page "hidden" from this very episode!) when everyone's on edge due to the tension of the last days before the winter's ice finally breaks and releases into spring. Enjoy this cohesion of collision! Northern Style :)



PS(L): I must have seen this literally 200 times and still, that image of Chris dancing in the luau party background CRACKS me UP :)!


∞ ceci
6

week twenty three >> "veins"

"veins" click to view

Welcome Fall, welcome harvest, welcome ripeness and fulfillment and the falling away of all out-moded developments to clear the way for the next season of growth and unfoldment.

We celebrate the Autumn Equinox this week with Z page: "Veins"

words from Autumn in Richmond

It was upon reading the words atop the right, "leaves fall like organic glitter... all around, all around me... puddles of leaves up to my knees" that I remembered that this leaf came from the Church Hill streets of Richmond Virginia, where I lived for some 4 months once upon a time in 1999. It was my first east coast Fall and I lavished in the succulent colors of the season that had always shaken me to my core with renewal and utter aliveness. Perhaps because I was born around this time, at the gateway of the harvest season, when cycles complete into fruitful plenitude of life's abundance... and begin again. For me the Autumn has always been my spring; I am invigorated, ready for action, ripe, prime, and most alive.

leaf from Richmond 1999 click to view

So imagine me in Richmond where my bedroom became succulent orange from the sun lighting up the tree outside my window, or walking down my street sailing through piles of yellow and crimson. Crisp air and even crisper sunlight, like experiencing life through a crystal. I could hardly contain myself. This leaf used to be deep orange, picked up from the walkway in front of the porch of the turn of the 20th century Victorian house I shared with friends, notably our dear friend, and PSL founding father, Hutch. I feel it was Jennifer who gave it the blood red aura that now sets it off. Perhaps with her scented ink?

Beautiful Equinox to you all... happy Fall.



∞ ceci
6

pieces

Yesterday, Saturday, I travelled to Corona Del Mar, with Hallie in tow to attend Bonnie Hesse's final church services. It was me, and I was also representing a weight of friends who were and would be holding a prayer and an open door for PSL founding-father Doug - Cec and Hutch particularly, no doubt.

pieces from '5:40 a.m.'

I cannot recall the family's words, just their gestures; perhaps Doug will find spaces to share his offering - his thoughts were beautiful and touching and truthful and humble, and funny.  It felt good to hug him and share this moments sorrow, and to see his family, and relate to my own.  From there, Hallie and I traversed back to Canyon Country for her Back to School Party - my nearly nine year old. It was a special opportunity to spend this expansive and delving day together. T. was home with stuffy nosed Jack, hangin' in the garden.

This week, I've been listening to Tori Amos in small spurts - though I can't find the 5:40 image album. Also, I'm in an ingesting period with Northerns (which happens), where I just turn on a disc or vid and let watching come in and out through chores and duties...I also pulled out two Northerns music compilations cd's and had been infused with the moose one in particular, which starts with 'an Ojibway love song, sung to a non-Indian square dance', and ends with one of my personal soundtrack songs (You know, the collection of songs which perhaps define you) - like KCRW's guest DJ project, which is an intriguing idea in action - Melora Harding is a parent in Hallie's class, she's done a session, she told me - movie star!.  Anyways, disappointingly, that album is cracked in half now, and yet I'm keeping the pieces around - strange!

Tonight, I prepare for the coming preparation work week - faculty meetings, CPR, Councils, sweeping, pumping balls and planning blocks, etc., etc., etc.. 
These weeks, I dedicate 15 min. per day to instilling shafts of color into our, Cec and My, newly erupted Sketchbook Project participation - which I have an enticing nomen awareness regarding - Our story book, our S BOOK!  See Cec's 8/26 post for more info!

And finally, from tonights Northerns, a story from Marilyn to Ed, we can all live by:
My uncle told me a story about a warrior who had a fine stallion. One day, the stallion ran off. The people said, it was unlucky. "MAYBE," the Warrior said. Then, the stallion returned with a string of fine horses, and The People said it was very lucky. "Maybe," the Warrior said. The Warriors son went riding on one of the horses and was thrown off and broke his leg. The People said it was very unlucky. "Maybe," the Warrior said. The next week, the Chief led a war party and many young men were lost in battle, but the Warriors son was left behind and so was spared.

renegations

click these to view!

"caution"   click to view

In the upper left of "caution" we see a snag of caution tape from a renegade mission accomplished by Jennifer in february 1999, in which she traversed the construction zone of the new UCSB art museum.  We have long fancied such impromptu expeditions, as upon our many walkabouts we encounter such zones of construction or the unseen that beckon our exploration.  Z page this week got us reminiscing about our renegations from the last 14 years, via "chat"

ceci (10:49 AM):  hi! I was vaccuming    hemphill (10:47 AM):  Me too!!!     ceci (10:49 AM):  lol   

hemphill (10:49 AM):  wow, - what does that mean?... about us both sucking up dust and bugs and other particles, before coming to this session... interesting, especially for me because of the dust factor, dirt, which comes with going into a construction zone. You don't go in new, clean clothes, ya know.

ceci (10:52 AM):  right!    ceci (10:52 AM):  renegades often are in camouflage of their terrain     

hemphill (10:53 AM):  yes, color blending...my favorite memory

ceci (10:54 AM):  so let's see... we would be on adventures at night on campus... off hours...no man's land ...ours for the taking

hemphill (10:54 AM):  ...remember when we went ontop of the new humanities building - and scaled the thin disk, record like escapements?

ceci (10:54 AM):  that was the BEST, way high   up like treading on a saturn ring ...way beyond imaginings    

hemphill (10:55 AM):  I think Hesse or McLaughlin were with us on that one?    

ceci (10:55 AM):  Hesse for sure    hemphill (10:55 AM):  I thought so   ceci (10:55 AM):  after us breaking into a classroom!

ceci (10:59 AM):  so the first I remember, is the new admin building being built in like spring of 1996 I guess, yeah, 'cause when I got back to school the next year it was finished and in use by then... it was night, of course, we were walking by and we both looked at each other like.. we just knew what was next

ceci (11:03 AM):  in that moment I was remembering that back in high school Vinh and I snuk into construction zones of new homes being built and had romantic evenings in the wooden skeletons of homes to be, complete with candle lit dinner.

ceci (11:04 AM):  and I think you also shared with me at the time some memories of your past construction zone fun too...   what did we do, climb the fence, or find a gap to enter through?

hemphill (11:06 AM):  I'm pretty sure, we wiggled through something - a gap or whatnot... we may have needed to climb fence to get out.

ceci (11:06 AM):  I think a dumpster was involved... for helping boost us... and we went to the structure's upper levels, right?

hemphill (11:07 AM):  quick sideflash - the first time I ever climbed a fence, was with my dad, after we broke into my moms school and office to decorate her room for her 40th birthday, I think I was - um, 12?    

ceci (11:08 AM):  that is RAD.... another school!.... afterhours baby

hemphill (11:08 AM):  Ok, a dumpster, I do not recall that... ha ha ha....  And, if we went to the second floor, you may be thinking of another entry besides what i'm thinking of, though I don't think you are... I remember very skeletal - and lots of holes, and cement.

hemphill (11:10 AM):  That was the first I remember too though - and it was awesome! it was a possibly a greater turning point in our friendship... like, no turning back, ever!

hemphill (11:11 AM):  do you think that was pre- zbook? i'd guess pre for sure.

hemphill (11:12 AM):  I was so bummed by that whole new stretch of buildings and reconstructions, which that admin building seemed to be the first... because of the loss of z perfect tunnel.

hemphill (11:12 AM):  where else?    hemphill (11:13 AM):  I remember a disc hucking session on a big construction zone in Vegas - like a parking lot in construction - do you have that memory?

ceci (11:14 AM):  yes, in the back lot of the Venician, 1999...may...  we somehow, only Hemphill and cec, got out a random backdoor...

hemphill (11:15 AM):  p.s.l. that's the first time I've heard about yours and Vinh's exploits into off- limits - coolio - nice picture

ceci (11:15 AM):  .....and ended up where no one ever goes, total behind the scenes..... behind the sets....   where the garbage and dirty golf carts live....

hemphill (11:16 AM):  yes, that was a great trip too - minus the loss of the genie - somewhere out there, on the road to Vegas!

ceci (11:16 AM):  alleys and dumpsters and nthing painted pretty...   

ceci (11:16 AM):  O yeah!  sacrafice to the gods    hemphill (11:16 AM):  oooh, I didn't recall dirty golf carts.    ceci (11:17 AM):  ...yeah, just so not "Vegas"....  ...but what makes it all run you know...

hemphill (11:17 AM):  what do you remember about sacrificing to the gods? - I must have been imbibing something.

ceci (11:17 AM):  ...leave it to us to discover the real deal...   ceci (11:17 AM):  the genie    hemphill (11:18 AM):  I'd be paranoid to day, I've seen to many CSI episodes.

ceci (11:18 AM):  DUDE and it's VEGAS, where there is a cmaera in every crack and cranny!... although we were doing nothing wrong at all, just tooling around and hucking disc

hemphill (11:19 AM):  yeah, but still, Vegas seems, run by people...who don't play frisbee!

and, O yes, and let it be known that we adore hucking disc, or tossing the frisbee as it is commonly known, and play as we walk and travel as we huck, the disc always leading us to new terrains to trespass...

∞ ceci

6

Fleischman & O'Connell

Throughout ZBOOK you will find a number of quotes gleaned from Northern Exposure, a television show from the 1990's (1990-1995) that has 4ever captured our hearts and inspiration ever since we both discovered the show individually just months before meeting in 1996 (thanks PSL). Jennifer first mentioned our adoration for the show in Clicking Away.  Well, amongst the wonderful ensemble of characters are our main flames: Dr. Joel Fleischman, the New York doctor who we follow into Cicely Alaska in his doomed/blessed 5 year obligation as the town's physician, and Maggie O'Connell, Gross Point (Michigan) beauty turned Alaskan bush pilot.  From their first encounter these two are at each other's throats AND ironically also share an intense underlying desire to devour each other, you know, in the best way.  Either way, this friction creates HEAT.

"You're either lovers, or you're wanting to be lovers, or you're trying not to be lovers so you can be friends, anyway you look at it sex is always looming in the picture like a shadow, like an undertow."
Maggie O'Connell (circus comes to Cicely episode)

"What I really want is to lick her naked body from head to foot like a postage stamp."
Joel Fleischman (the 2 Fleischmans episode)

And so,  Z page this week, "hot," is a reveling in friction and tension and anticipation and... sweet release.  The stories written on this page by our own hands feel like quotes from our psyches, from hot moments, from in or out of time?  Like the page says across the very bottom... 

"               a  fantasy               ...........                a  memory               ...........               both               ...........              "

"hot"   click to view Large

∞ ceci

6

stickers!

unicorn metallic sticker from Jennifer's own childhood collection,
now living in ZBOOK.(& see above that for piece of orange glitter
 sticker sheet, as mentioned in last post)  >>click for larger view

Jennifer and I were hanging out in her room at the apartment she had just moved into in 1996, in Isla Vista, CA.  (Was that Trigo St, Hemphill?)  Still fresh in the first season of our friendship, we were reminiscing over stories about when we were kids... and we both started to remember how much we had loved stickers!  All the different kinds... such as metallics, iridescents, oilies, fuzzies, scratch n' sniffs, etc... and Jennifer said she still had her collection at home (! which she retrieved and presented to me a week or 2 later).  I had let my affection for stickers go dormant since the 6th grade, having shed my devotion to them in an attempt to"grow up", I suppose.  Suddenly, here in this room, at the age of 21, my love for stickers busted wide open once again.  This was the moment I gave myself permission to adore stickers again, have fun with stickers again, and simply have FUN again. This marked the moment I got PLAY back into my creative and life experience.  Thanks to this inspiring reflection, this I'm-possible connection with a long found friend, I made the great return to a vital part of myself that I had denied for 10 years. Stickers were simply the catalyst.  

As I write this I am realizing that it was indeed middle school when I began to turn away from my art (and thus my heart) in which I had been fervently active since birth it seemed, and began to buy into all the voices of fear delivered by my parents and teachers.  Voices that said that art would deny me a future, that I needed to get "serious" and calm down, that I can't let a "hobby" get in the way of my "real" future career.  I was in an emotionally vulnerable state at that time and maybe that's why I did so choose to buy into these notions and proceed to sacrifice my (he)art for the pursuit of getting "serious."  When Jennifer and I met, at age 21, I had just months before finally emerged from this abyss, no longer being able to deny myself of myself, and had decided to stay a 5th year at UCSB to add Art Studio to my degree (English).  

click for larger view

And thus Jennifer & cec did meet, and our friendship made it possible for so much further awakening.  Not only did I get back to stickers, I got back to PLAY.  And then ZBOOK gave us a place to play, a place to collect and create with our beloved stickers and our every whim of inspiration, a place to truly BE creative.

PLAY, I have come to rediscover, as most kids well know, is the liberation of pure creativity.  Through what the hands make and the ideas the mind innovates.  Thank you Hemphill, thank you ZBOOK, and thank you cec, for playing.  :)

∞ ceci

6

PS(L): happy Bday today to our dear PSL brother Millar, a man devoted to play in notably athletic and musical ways....!