Story - Abu Ghraib

When I first heard about the atrocities that took place in Abu Ghraib, my first response was not surprise. I’d recently been exposed to some of the more profound pictures that were produced from the Vietnam War, some truly disturbing exhibits of humanity, and had already become somewhat desensitized to the darker side of this ruthless game of life. War brings out the worst of everyone involved, regardless of their ability to cope with their current situation. The people that were handling the prison were not in any way designed or trained for the responsibilities that were bestowed upon them, so it’s not that surprising they turned to methods of torture.

To really understand why the soldiers, those who are fighting for a concept of freedom, could loose touch with humanity to an extent where they took pleasure in torturing people, one must really understand what they are fighting for-The American idea of freedom. To examine this idea one should look at what it was founded on. America has been bigoted society since its birth. Most people don’t really stop and think about the fact that our culture was founded on genocide and slavery. I think this is a pretty profound fact when you stop and look at it fully. The founders of this culture destroyed an entire way of life in pursuit of their own. That way of life was then built on the backs and graves of others. Genocide and slavery are the American backbone; it’s what birthed the American idea of freedom.

So, with this is mind, we should now look at how this mentality has evolved since the laws state that genocide is illegal along with slavery. With no one to do the dirty work and no one left to oppress our way of life on our own soil, it’s very easy to look beyond the shoreline to find a new type of oppressor, especially when that oppressor brings their conflict onto American soil. The rage that America was founded on, the mentality that people need to move out of our way for our way of life, had a vibrant focal point after 9/11. The government and pop culture encouraged this rage by pointing the way with the American flag, the national anthem, while holding up a fearless leader that the everyday all-American-Joe can relate to on most levels. The American people were given a focused aggression.

A common American mentality is based on extreme arrogance, to the point of not being able to recognize it. This country is separated in such a unique way from the rest of the world. America covers an entire stretch of land from one ocean to another with only a quiet, peaceful country above it, and a laidback, substance providing country below it, that separates the United Stated from any real war, extreme poverty, and brutal living conditions that arise in Central America and South America. It’s easy to sit in this country, completely isolated, not just geographically from any real form of widespread suffering, but also technologically, as the America media tends to only perpetuate the us v/s them mentality. If a child was only allowed to see books that had red covers their entire upbringing, while being told directly and indirectly that books with blue covers were an inferior type of literature, it’s easy to imagine what would happen when that child grew up and came into contact with a book with a blue cover. They would shun it in anyway that their upbringing and morals allowed them to deem acceptable.

Now to look at the Iraqi people who are living in a completely different type of government. They don’t have the abundant electricity, high speed internet, suburbs and condos, and definitely not the same religion as a great deal of Americans pampers themselves in each day. Because of all these vast difference, it’s easy to separate us from them. Iraq before 9/11 was simply a casualty of the gulf war, barely recognizable in the news, and not really a focal point for any collective aggression. However, after that day, and after the media and the government helped to focus the attention away from a man named Bin Laden, who no one really knew before, and onto a country governed by Saddam Hussein, a man whose name the people had already been instructed to despise, it was easy to grasp that Iraq was filled with people to hate. So, with this new conditioned awareness, America did what it has done in the past with those who differ and who pose a threat to their way of life. They kill them and they enslave them.

Looking at the soldiers’ lives before they preformed the horrendous torturing it can be assessed that they were unprepared for the shock of having that much control over so many people’s lives they did not respect. They had no real background in managing such a place with a preset negative atmosphere. The soldiers did not see the people they were assigned to as people at all, but rather forms of entertainment; animals performing tricks. They had been trained by the government to protect a way of life that they believed the prisoners of Abu Ghraib threatened. Being put into a situation where they had little to no fear of punishment and free rang to carry out their idea of discipline and punishment, it’s not hard to grasp that they would no longer see the captives as people, at least not believe they were people deserving of basic human rights.

When the news broke, the basic reaction of the American people was absolute shock and disgust. It was horrifying for people to imagine that such atrocities could be preformed by soldiers of the United States military; soldiers that were representing and fighting for the freedom that so many people tend to not only take for granted, but ignore how it was achieved. However, the general attitude was that these soldiers had gone insane. Most people pointed out how wonderful they were before they went to Iraq-good law abiding Americans. Because of this, it was easy to isolate the soldiers from the military as a fluke of nature. Their mentality was not a common one; in fact, it was merely one that was triggered by the harsh reality of war and the already present conditions at Abu Ghraib. The United States military could not be held accountable for the actions of a few solders.

Because their was so much pity involved for the prisoners of Abu Ghraib, and this conflicted with so much hate for the insurgents and the terrorists that Americans believed were flooding the lands of Iraq, the prisons were also segregated from the populace. They were treated unjustly on such a scale that most people accepted that these acts preformed on them were truly inhuman and therefore the prisoners must now be recognized as human. Americans still had a great deal of fixed hate in their minds toward the people of Iraq, and so the prisoners of Abu Ghraib because just as separate from the country as the solders who tortured them were from the military. This mental separation allows everyday Americans to still admire and support the military’s daily slaughter of the Iraq people, while still maintaining some type of personal sense of integrity towards human life.

Interestingly enough, if people would stop and look at the actions of these terrorists against the American military, they would notice amazing similarities between their methods of protecting their way of life against us, and the way America protected their way of life against the British. However, the mentality of us v/s them would first have to be eradicated. For that to take place people will have to start looking at the entire picture, instead of just what they want to see.

Drawing: Past 3 Classes

Draw w/o picking up pencil:


Skeleton Study:




Naked lady:

Fine Arts Studio: Crazy Random Wood Block Painting

Random:


Random/Nature/Bored:


Nature:


Nature:

2D Design: Tinfoil Project

The actual piece:


The practice/doodle:


The final product:

3D design: Found Lines

Assignment: Observe and record line as an element in landscape.

[images resized|quality affected]

#1


#2


#3


#4




#5

3D design: Line Installations

Poem: Downer

Tart mountain jasmine, just cooling,
Rolls from greyed porcelain onto my tongue,
Cleaved midair by the force
Of a forgotten friend's greeting.
"I coulda swore that was you
From out there in the street!"
Something small thuds against crumbling bricks
On past afternoons
Like kicking a dusty Pandora's box
Long resigned to the attic of rememory.
He nurses two Buds after a spell,
And I see how hard his needled wife
And three boys and girls work for one of his smiles.
Oh his job is "good enough," he dribbles.
The lukewarm tartness envelops me,
Dragging back a forlorn tapestry
Of his nostalgic, languishing dreams;
A barricaded Korea greets me.
Nodding, I passively acknowledge his bitterness -
Of course his boss is a hardass, of course his wife
Is dull, of course the dreariness of middle
Age gnaws at his paper yachts -
Wondering just what stole his
Imagination, once stockpiled by Furies, as
The faintness of my tea dissolves finally into
A dearth of soul like losing both legs
In the war.

Prose: Never get to heaven

As a little girl, I would have been far too frightened to come to a cemetery at sunset. Or anywhere near sunset. Actually... let's cut that sentence after "cemetery." But I'm a big girl now, visiting the grave of a little boy who thought he was bigger than he was, and bringing flowers like a good friend would.
The sky is striped with the magenta clouds of early July as I kneel down, careful not to let my nice black silk stockings touch the wet grass. The pink reflects off the clean, white marble, but I manage not to look at it for too long. The glare covers up his name, which is a good thing, I guess. Last time I did this... I want to say I cried. But I didn't cry. I don't remember actually crying over this in particular. Thinking about the general air of "oh my god we're teenage fucking clichés" and such, I did cry, but except for that. No.
It's been five months and change. Longer than any romance I've ever maintained. It's probably ridiculously selfish to think like that, but I see it differently from most of his other friends: There is absolutely no point in my centering my own life around his death. I was talking to Cristine about this, after someone started passing around this huge, completely inappropriate card to be put on his tombstone. She called me up, asking why I didn't sign it. I let the phone go dead for a minute before explaining how I deal with it. She returned my silence, then her voice went cold. "You're such a bitch. You don't even care." And then she hung up.

That was two weeks ago, and I've been at least by the cemetery every day. Still haven't seen the card. I haven't seen any of the kids there, actually, since the second month.
But I've seen him there. He sits on the corner of his stone, staring out at the kids from my school as they walk down the hill past the cemetery he lives in, past the one thing left of himself. They all promised to see him, said they'd never forget him in letters pinned to his locker, quotes thrown at reporters in hopes of landing a mention in the paper.
He started showing up around the third month after he died, when almost everybody seemed to have forgotten him. I have no idea whether or not he's appeared to anyone else. All I'm aware of is that one day, as I dropped off some Queen Anne's lace picked from the lawn outside school, I distinctly heard him say 'thank you' to my retreating backside. Thinking I was caught up in make-believe, I turned around to take a last look at the stone and he was there, dressed in his favorite jeans and shirt, almost solid. As if he were himself, but reflected in a concave mirror and projected onto a piece of paper.

Today, he looks the same, still hovering between reality and the other side of the veil. He's behind the stone now, and he watches me as I drop the bundle of roses. I haven't come here for two weeks, and I feel guilty that I haven't at least come inside the gates. He only comes out once I'm inside the place, feet on the grass. I also feel guilty because he explained to me that the only reason he came back is because everyone already forgot him. He felt like he was still a part of this world for the months that people held him in their hearts, but once people started to forget the color of his eyes, the smell of his deodorant, he was shocked back into returning.
It sounded a bit like the kind of guilt trip my mother would pull on me, but he was dead. He had been one of those well-known kids, and all of a sudden he's no longer in the spotlight-- or any light at all, since he only stands far away from sunlight, something he never explained, but which I assume is some ghost thing. He never asks me to come back, but I see him in my dreams when I don't come for a while.
As I stand up, I see him behind his own grave, translucent fingers gripping the stone. He knows that I usually wait for him to speak; this time is no different. He asks if anyone's talked about him, thought about him. The usual debate goes through my head: tell him no and have to see his despondency, or lie and say yes, knowing that he knows it's a lie, because why else would he be here? I always side with the lie.
"No."
He looks at me funny, as if he knows I should keep my part of the bargain and say what he wants to believe. I tell him I've brought flowers, the roses bought in penance. His face holds the same bewildered expression, one messy eyebrow burrowing into the other. The silence holds for five minutes, ten. I finally stretch my arms and bid him a good night, walking out of the cemetery faster than I ever have, faster than I did at age six, visiting my grandmother with both of my parents but still so scared, so scared.

I dream the same scene over, what would have happened if he had opened his mouth instead of keeping it in that line of confusion. He tells me he's scared, that he'll really be nothing once nobody remembers him. He says that's why he walks circles around his tombstone all the time, hoping that somebody besides me will see him. Nobody ever does. In the dream, I pick up my roses and hold them right under his face, or its image. I ask him if he can smell them. He looks like he's breathing in the most beautiful scent, something no laboratory could ever mix. And then he says he can't smell them.
His skin becomes clearer, like paper with grease on it as opposed to the stubborn thickness of wax paper.
A few petals fall off the roses, which I'm still holding as if he can sense them, so I let them fall. I tell him to go home. That I'll still be here, still remember him, still drop by with flowers and my respects.
His hair, once sandy blonde, looks as if it's been bleached out of the picture completely. His eyes are all that's at all solid of him anymore, and I can see bits of him ripping off in the breeze, dissipating like smoke rings.

The alarm clock rings at the most inopportune time, and I close my eyes and wish myself back to sleep, back to the cemetery. It doesn't work. The buzzer's still going and I finally turn it off, then get up and go to the bathroom, shedding clothes on the way to the shower. Under the stream of water, my own skin seems suddenly much heavier than I ever remembered.
At school, I drop my books at my locker and look at the school bulletin board. A very small, handmade collage is pinned to the corner, with a pictures of a group of friends, a couple, a track meet. The golden boy, now dead, pops out from the very center of every one. His initials are carefully calligraphed under the montage in silver Sharpie. I smile without meaning to and know that I won't be going to the cemetery today.

Poem: Like Cacti

Tonight,
the skies are cloud free and the wind sleeps
to a 95 degree baked earth.
She waits
in a faded paisley bikini – once
fire hydrant red – next to a man
who can never lay still.
She says,
you never know when it may rain.
Out here in the desert,
the cacti wait.
I’d like very much to have their patience.

And she stays with him.

Poem: Nothing

i still think about you
on random sunday nights,
over early morning cups of coffee,
and late night movie marathons.
you were the breath i lost that June.
you were the tears i would have cried,
if i understood how.
you were everything,
and then,
you were nothing.

Fine Arts Studio: Naked Dude

10 second drawings:






30 second drawings:




1 minute drawings:






5 minute drawings:

Drawing: Skelton Study

First: Negative space. I kicked ass.



Second: Draw w/o looking at the paper



Thirdly: Skelaton Study
(i have it on the wrong size paper, so ive gotta do it over again)



so i drew everything in the background cause i was bored. but im still convinced i kick ass.

2D Design: Banana

Assignment: present 6 ways for apple, banana, or pear.

thats it. very open project, which means, very harsh critics.

Poem: Umbrellas

I.

There is a boy puttering
in the hotel corridor, leashed
by a single thread of duty--
it is wound
twice around the doorknob,
and pulls taut at his wrist.

Back through the keyhole,
his keepers are weary,
sprawled like dead
leaves on bedspreads,
and fading
into sleep.

II.

A girl wails,
her anguished pitch escalating
by years.

In the rented night,
her last cry strangles,
undone by hands
on wrists.

III.

A forty-foot red curtain separates us
from the amphibious stage.

At the cirque du soleil
(i am squinting to see the sun),
clowns chase leaks
with patchy umbrellas.

i do not know my father's age--
in rows of rivets, well-dressed,
we leak simultaneously.
Chuckling at clowns,
we caulk.

They all wear flower-
scented perfume.

i am nothing
like flowers:

i will invest
in an umbrella
to grow up.

Poem: Tunnel Vision

you had no clearance,
but then again no sign
overhead stating the limits.

no court of love or law
could ever find you guilty.

and you, hitting upon the
perfect crime, took no time
to think about what could
possibly go wrong.

Poem: O.

Bright with caffeine and conversation,
your eyes, blue and grey gates, stopped
parsing the ugly structure of the world,
quit pointing out the lack of syntax
and began to see beauty once more.

You say you can always find the
hate where you need it,
a desperate offence against apathy.
Don't you know that detatchment
has to be better than the constant
whittling red iron of anger,
I want to tell you, holding on
to your shoulders and watching
the words drift down.

Is your erratic laughter a sign
of happiness once more, are
your smiles only side effects
of stimulants?

You tell me you're a nicer person
when you're fucked up, seeing the
world free from your usual dull perspective.

You try to find the right combination
of uppers and downers to even out
your moods, to enable you to finish
all that you've meant to start.

The random events you always notice
have to happen for a reason;
all that's left to you is to figure out for what.

Tattoos: Future Designs

ok, i know these are digital, but they came from traditional sketches and will end as traditional ink, so theyre staying in this gallery. theyre going in the order that im getting them. PLEASE DO NOT GET MY DESIGNS TATTOOED ON YOUR BODY WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, ill most likely rip your skin off.


for my birthday:
either on my other hip or lower back left side.



first one that ill actually pay for:
on my neck, right under the hairline



this one is tiny tiny:
id most likely get it on my inner thigh or foot



i dont know if ill actually ever get this done. its too cliche and im not into the tribal stuff, theyre just easy to design. if i were to do it, id get it where every other girl gets it done.



i just designed this for the hell of it. again, ill prolly never get it on me. its hella-ugly and im too busy to fix it. ask me if you want it.