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nexhqs · 4 years

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INTRODUCING HAYDEN GARCIA …

NICKNAMES : N/A

GENDER : Cis woman, she/her

OCCUPATION : High school student

DATE OF BIRTH : 01/25/02

SPECIES : Human

FACE CLAIM : Isabela Merced

❝ I sometimes wonder if things only get better for them to get worse again. ❞

PERSONALITY

AESTHETIC — Polaroid pictures, newspaper clippings, cutting fences with wirecutters, tearstained pillow, dark skies over stormy seas, disdain for suburbia, television static, vintage movie posters, big sweaters, denim jackets, wearing headphones all the time, a frozen lake in the middle of winter, birds on a telephone wire, scribbled notes at 2am, soda in glass bottles, flannel shirts, Halloween, classic film, the crunch of dead autumn leaves, sitting on your roof and watching the sky.

LIKES: Horror movies, conspiracy theories, writing, taking photographs, crisp fall mornings, rock music, Shakespeare, polaroids, pepperoni pizza, writing in leather bound journals, New York City, the library, the silence of nighttime, bowling.

DISLIKES: Bubblegum flavored anything, math class, summer, being around other people, school, mushrooms, orange soda, her parents, looking for the silver lining in anything, Eden, chick-flicks, mismatched socks, football.

BIOGRAPHY –

content warnings for suicide.

It wasn’t the biggest house, but it was the one at the end loop of the cul-de-sac, and that mattered.

Her life was painted over with the pretty brush of the privilege of suburbia, but the coat of color and sheen was always thin enough that it wasn’t quite as bright as other people’s. Hayden never minded — God forbid they have vacations every summer instead of over spring breaks too, and only the second most recent phone model rested in the pocket of the second most expensive jacket. Her mother’s side had resided in Eden since the founding of the town, name printed carefully in town charters. Her father was the opposite; never setting foot in South Carolina until college, New England born and bred to second generation immigrants. They were both smart, and hardworking, and they both landed good jobs and bought that house on the end of the cul-de-sac in her mother’s hometown. I used to want that house, her mother said, pointing to the blue one next door. But it wasn’t for sale, and theirs was, so there they were. Good but never good enough: that seemed to be the family motto.

Hayden fit it well. Kacey, six years her senior and infinitely more like her parents in terms of ambition, never did. Hayden fit her parents less than she knew. Less than her father even knew: maternal lineage, found in Kasey and her mother, dating back decades upon decades. They were witches. Secret was kept from Hayden when she never showed any signs of the power being passed through her, but her sister was powerful: she started young, and her mother coached her into keeping the blood that ran through them silent and spells well known. It wasn’t unheard of for the genes to skip someone, there had been rogue sisters and cousins over the years that were not witches and died without knowing of their lack of powers. Kasey wasn’t just special, wasn’t just a witch: she was smart and she was funny — she was wild, and difficult for them to reign in, but on good days it didn’t matter.

There weren’t very many good days near the end.

Hayden would sit at the top of the stairs, listening to fights between their parents of Kasey being too angry, too loud, too depressed, too quiet. She retreated, she was cruel to family, she spent all her time in her room with the door locked or out without telling them where she was.

And then Hayden found her, dead on the bathroom floor. An empty pill bottle next to her rolling around on tile, hair floating in a pool of vomit and foam at the mouth. Hayden screamed and cried for twenty minutes outside the door until her mother came home and witnessed the scene, calling 911 and launching an investigation into the death of Kasey Garcia.

The police report: suicide, formed by a severe depression her parents ignored.

The reality: suicide, because of a dabbling in dark magic: increased recklessness, spells mumbled that had long been forbidden. It brought a cloud over Kasey, and she killed herself in a very human way.

After that, things changed for Hayden. She quit her middle school track team, and didn’t show up for weeks to school. Rumors spread around the halls, and they didn’t stop when she came back. In high school, maybe your sister killing herself would garner sympathy, in elementary school, no one would know aside from a teary eyed PG explanation from parents. But it painted an invisible target on Hayden’s back: are you gonna do that too? Why’d she do it? My sister told me your sister was a freak anyway, so I think …

Once the target faded, Hayden painted it herself. She retreated from people, ignored her friends until she had none. Her grades didn’t suffer, and her curiosity was piqued more. How could she not have know about what happened with her sister? Photographs snapped of things that didn’t belong to her, sneaking into places she wasn’t allowed. In the absence of human connection, a connection to the unknown formed. Placement in mandatory therapy didn’t phase her anyway — she read her own file anyway, it was easy to pick the file cabinet. She found out things she didn’t want to know, not really: her father’s infidelity, what exactly her parents and therapist thought was wrong with her.

So far, she hasn’t found the only secret she’s chasing: is what happened with Kasey all she’s told it is?

CONNECTIONS –

DYLAN DAYE – Kasey’s ex-girlfriend, and up until recently, Hayden hadn’t seen her since the funeral. Wide eyed at twelve, Hayden desperately wanted to be Dylan’s friend and hang out with the much cooler girlfriend of her already pretty cool older sister. She wasn’t necessarily shut out… until Dylan fled anything having to do with the Garcia’s post funeral. Hayden has plenty of built up resentment for the both of them, and now that she’s older, she’s planning on getting to the bottom of who exactly Dylan Daye is.

ABIGAIL SHABAT – Hayden strongly dislikes Abbie, and Abbie, well, probably doesn’t think about her at all. The popular, friendly and ambitious cheerleader is the absolute antithesis to everything Hayden is and, well, stands for. But Abbie is also partly who Hayden wishes she was. Pretty, cool, plenty of friends. That, and the object of her crush’s affections.

SUSANNA TURNER – A new friend, and to be honest, one of the first Hayden has had in years. Though they’re different, and Susie is far more outgoing with her choice of extracurriculars (theatre!), Hayden likes her enough. The real reason she started hanging out with Susie was Hayden’s crush on the former’s best friend, but … that doesn’t matter now that Hayden actually enjoys her company, right?

PENNED BY MEREDITH.

#hayden garcia.#by meredith.

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shellcollection · 5 years

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the dig: puka shells

Recently I uncovered a stack of my old diaries from grade school through high school, and came upon the following entry:

May 14, 2002 That puka shell necklace is definitely not lucky. Why, you ask? Okay, today was my chorus concert. I never mentioned I was in chorus, bu I am. It's much better than band or strings (most of my friends disagree), and you have to take one of the electives in school. Anyway, so I was at the chorus concert, onstage with my classs, the 7th grade girls. It wasn't too bad, and as soon as we finished I was relieved. As we were walking offstage into the audience, I congratulated myself silently on not drawing attention to myself in some dumb, embarrassing way.

Of course, right as I thought that, I tripped on the person in front of me's shoes and fell flat on my face in front of HALF THE SCHOOL and their parents.

I laughed it off to make it seem like I didn't care, but boy, did I care. I mean everyone started laughing. Everyone. I am not even kidding. I have never actually wanted to die, but right then I did. God, could I be any more of a klutz? I just know tomorrow people will talk about it. My life is over. Maybe I should ask my mom if we can relocate in the Witness Protection Program. I'll ask her tomorrow.

Ah, I'd almost forgotten my lucky puka shell necklace.

I don’t usually wear clothes or accessories ironically, but since I do still have and wear a lot of my old clothes from high school, including my slightly linty white North Face fleece (I remember buying it in defiance to the black fleece that all the girls seemed to be wearing). That’s not to say I wear puma shells ironically, but for me, they definitely come served with a strong dose of nostalgia. Along with the obvious “hang loose” surfer bro vibe that a puka shell necklace conjurs for me, an identity I have never sadly never myself possessed, I remember this 90’s trend also related to well-off kids coming back to school from their Bahamas vacations sporting enviable tans, their hair in cornrows, and a fresh string of puka shells around their necks, no doubt acquired from a quaint little tourist shop on their recent trip, an experience my childhood, to my chagrin, never afforded. For that reason and more, I definitely longed to be a surfer girl in my teenage years - I subscribed to Swell catalog and watched Blue Crush religiously. When I lived in Brooklyn in my early twenties, of all places (not even in LA, where I later lived, and I learned the beach was about a 40 minute drive from my apartment), I finally became a full-fledged “surfer girl” - as much my urban east coast lifestyle could allow, that is - when a guy took me on a surfing lesson in the Rockaways for our first date, and we went surfing a few times that summer and I even bought a foam board with a unicorn on it when I moved back to NY from LA. Gnar, gnar.

Besides the obvious nostalgia of my aforementioned puka shell necklace being “lucky”, I also currently enjoy wearing a puka shell necklace as a little mood-booster in the midst of winter blandness - since I am basically moping around the house, avoiding the outdoors and wearing the same thing every day (black cotton leggings, long sleeved tee, cotton or cashmere socks, and a black vest - additionally a cashmere sweater around my shoulders or waist, on days when even my fortified concrete walls can't keep the cold from creeping in). Shelle is after all, all about chasing the "eternal summer" - Indeed, as a girl hailing from the midwest, my lifelong fantasy of escaping to the beaches and riding the waves all day long, chasing the dream life full of fantastical outfits, neoprene wetsuits, and glam apres-surf apparel in a rainbow of pastels, is indeed the dreamy nature that imbues that all the shell collection and all that “shelle” ( the term I’ve coined to represent the female persona that embodies the shell collection) is.

Though I still have my lucky puka shell necklace in all its chunky, teal seaglass-adorned glory, the puka necklace I wear on the daily is much more minimal affair, a string of small, dainty round white and black puka beads with a tiny gold shark tooth dangling from the center.

As I clearly figured out, being a mature young woman and all, necklaces can’t be “lucky” - although I do currently have a lucky money ring, which is actually totally legit - a tiny ring that sits above my knuckle, plucked from my mother’s jewelry collection that’s engraved with mother-of-pearl etched in the shape of an angel or a hebrew letter, which exactly I’m not really sure - but every time I wore it last month I made money or received a new fiscal opportunity that day. And this month, after not landing a gig for weeks I fell asleep in my lucky ring, and when I woke up I had two texts with job offers for that day - which I unfortunately slept through, but still, you catch my drift. The opportunity was there, clearly due to the my lucky ring working its mysterious money magic as I slept. So you see, some things never change - and I still have dreams of reclaiming my bona fide surfer babe status the next chance I get.

Stay tuned for some puka shell necklaces for sale in the shell collection soon, guaranteed to help you fight off the late-winter blues in the form of a daily dose of nostalgia guaranteed to rekindle the aspirational little 90’s surfer girl inside us all.

#pukashells shellstory shelle

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dcnativegal · 7 years

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Maybe I am an artist

Zora Neale Hurston once said, “I love myself when I am laughing, and again when I’m looking mean and impressive.” I could safely say, “I love myself when I am playing with yarn, and again when I’ve finished a project and taken a picture of it to post on Facebook.”

Moving to the Oregon Outback, and Valerie’s adorable loft house, has loosed whatever constraints I’d had in DC on yarn binging. Or am I stocking up for my new career as a fiber artist? Perhaps my yarn buying behavior is yet another one of my compulsions. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines compulsion as a very strong feeling of wanting to do something repeatedly that is difficult to control. So why control it? I see an ad for yarn, I get an email from Webs.com, I get a notification that someone has posted “a yarn for sale” picture in Yarn Hoarders Anonymous on Facebook. If its bulky yarn, or very reasonably priced… I’ve hit up paypal before I know it. Or I do know it and I do it anyway.

But is it a bad thing? Why must I pathologize my yarn buying? I love my yarn. It gives me great joy to order it, anticipate it coming, then open the package (that Paisley’s patient and kind postmistress has hauled to her counter). I deeply enjoy planning what I’ll make with it. Occasionally I’ll open it and go, bleh, not what I had hoped for, but that stuff will find a place and a purpose, too. Yarnbombing with many strands of yarn at once will reduce my supply…

I dream of projects. When I want to stop obsessing about a client, or about my most recent blood sugar, or whatever really stupid thing I said that day (Open mouth, Insert foot), then I plan a project as I drift off to sleep. Something in purple, the color I have the most of. What kind of baby blanket will I make for the Holy Brother’s daughter’s love child? What kind of stitch will best cover the irrigation half wheel that Valerie salvaged? I plan to make a half sun full of oranges, yellows, and white, with a little purple and green thrown in. It will be 3 feet in diameter, and hung from the fence. It will be my second outdoor decoration, after the July 4th crocheted flag I tacked to a folding rectangular trellis and hung on the side of the house.

Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Brenda Ueland

Perhaps I am subconsciously planning for my next career, although I learning and growing in my current one. This ‘behavioral therapist’ business is hard work. Lake County is the redheaded stepchild of Klamath County, which is supposed to share resources with its sister county to the east. It’s also the mostly ignored second cousin of Deschutes County which is just to the north and full of resources, people, stores… it’s where most north Lake County residents go for banking, pharmacy and grocery shopping. Anyway, the impoverishment of Lake County is only one of the reasons this old social worker finds the work challenging. I think most therapists struggle with at least some cases. The multiple early traumas that my clients had to cope with, on top of the challenges of modern life and the dearth of jobs and housing, combine to lay waste the most resilient psyche. Not to mention the recidivism of “substance use disorder”, the newest official term for what was once called addiction. I do get a surge of joy when one of the clients graduates from their 12 weeks of sobriety and I can report to the probation officer that they are CLEAN. They were clean before I knew them, however; I take no credit.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Goethe

I have no business plan for my next career as a fiber artist. I had an Etsy store once, and spent a lot of money on photography equipment (a huge white sheet and nice lights with umbrellas attached) to take pictures of my accomplishments. Didn’t really work. Maybe I didn’t promote it? I thought my prices were reasonable. I sold more by just mentioning something on facebook than I ever did on Etsy.

I don’t really care, although I suppose I should, whether I make money from my creations. It would be nice to recoup some of the expense of the yarn, which is really pricey, even when I buy from other yarn hoarders. (Maybe I should have sheep in the side yard, sheer them, prepare their wool, spin it, dye it… yeah? No.) I enjoy seeing my work wrapped around a friend’s shoulders in winter. I missed seeing the smile of delight when Valerie’s niece opened up the box and saw two, washable, gorgeous if I do say so myself, baby blankets at her twin baby debut. That delight is my payment. I did get a nice thank you note.

What I really love is making the stuff. I love selecting the yarns, picking the hook or needle size, and going at it. I don’t follow patterns, although I do learn stitches from youtube. I make shit up. I know how to fit a hat, and even fit a sweater, without a pattern, although mostly I make scarves and afghans. People don’t wear nice handmade sweaters anymore. They are too hot indoors, and too much of a pain to take on and off. Hats and scarves make more sense, and in winter, a beautiful lap blanket totally helps when the fire is beginning to go out. I think so anyway. My family members, and Valerie’s, get knit stuff for Christmas and so far, no one has taken me aside and said, Jane, “We have enough hats to last the rest of our lives… maybe a gift card??” I think they are too polite to tell me; I just hope they’ve passed the hat along to another cold noggin.

When I ask myself, what do I have to do each day? One answer is I must crochet or knit. My hands itch to be making something, to follow a rhythm with a piece of wood and soft fur of sheep, rabbit, llama. Or the product of silk worm and bamboo. I’ve discovered to my delight a substance called Upscale Acrylic. I sit having a conversation with anyone, and if I am not also crocheting, a part of my brain is aching. I have two projects I’m knitting[jl1] at work which I labor to finish during staff meetings, which are an odd affair, taking place over a large screen where most of the staff is sitting around a table 2 hours’ drive away and three of us in Christmas Valley are straining to hear. It is an exercise in frustration, but perhaps it is practice for when I’m hard of hearing and I miss most of the content and a whole lot of nonverbal verbal cues. I’ll be knitting then, too.

I have projects that are perfect for church, or for a movie, since I can knit in the round without looking. I get a lot done, especially during the sermon, or the previews, when I’m just not really engaged. If you are preaching, just know that you knocked it out of the park if I stopped knitting.

In a college seminar, we sat in a circle and talked and listened. I knit and talked and listened. One day, everyone turned to me and I asked why everyone was looking at me? One of the students said, because you put your knitting down. I always put it down when I had something to say. Ah.

My biggest projects are in the house, in large piles or baskets or boxes, and they require a lot of lap, and a cooperative cat. I’m working on a rug that will be something like 6 by 4 feet. I also have a number of lap blankets that are in process. I have two small purses half finished: purses the size of smart phones sold really well at the Paisley Bazaar last November. Sometimes I stare at my yarn and I get a flash of inspiration and I just up and start something entirely new. So what if I have 12 projects in various stages of completion. I finish my projects. Then I put them in a plastic trunk for gift/bazaar/me for later. And keep going. Yarn is joy.

It is also taking over the guest bedroom and the living room. You can’t see the surface of my desk for the piles of yarn. It’s rather like kudzu in the Southern states, hanging over everything and creeping around. Rather like a fungus. Rather like the clutter in a teenage boy’s room, there is a debris tide. I neaten and organize, and more yarn comes into the mix.

I think this is where the compulsion comes in. I do not need more yarn. I have a ‘stash beyond life expectancy.’ But new yarn, new colors and textures, they call to me.

Like wine calls to the alcoholic. Like meth calls to the meth user. Like chocolate calls to me. Like Blue Bunny chocolate covered ice cream bars call to me all the way from the Summer Lake gas station store. The one that says ‘Ice! You need Ice!’ on its big sign. The owner is the cranky pumper of gas who hales me when he sees me: So! What treason have you committed lately, you pinko? (Pinkos of the world, unite.)

I can’t afford the yarn, any more yarn ever, until I am out of debt. I asked Valerie if she minded the slow creep of yarn, and she said she will mind it come winter when she’s living in the house most of the time. With her peripatetic work schedule, she gets to stay a bunch of different places, none of which are as cluttered as our Paisley home. Cluttered with yarn.

Okay so I should stop buying yarn.

I was always a spendthrift, but my then-husband’s monthly explosion in response to the credit card bill was a bit of a deterrent. When we divorced, I blew through some serious money that came out of my retirement, and oh, I bought a house. Which I then had to sell toot suite when I took a severance package to get out of a very well paying but crazy-making workplace. (In 4 years, I lived through 3 bosses and 3 reorganizations. By the buyout, I was working so far away from my skill set that I would sit in my office and cry.)

Living in small spaces or other people’s spaces after the divorce kept a slight lid on my yarn obsession. And now in the lovely loft house, when I’ve down sized my furniture to the amount I could move cross country, I have lots of room. Oops. Yarn explosion. The generous tax refund this spring did not help.

What’s this about being an artist? Delusions of grandeur, probably.

Once upon a time, I took an environmental sculpture class at Oberlin. By my junior year, as a religion major and women’s studies minor I was writing a bazillion papers every semester. I wished to escape another paper and branched out to take folk dancing, print making and drawing, and even horseback riding, which, for this city kid, was really fun. A friend of mine, Monica, talked me into this class on Environmental Sculpture.

Our assignment was to plan a sculpture, and take care of all of the steps necessary to get permission to make it and install it. Finally, you build it. I wandered around the Oberlin neighborhood we lived in and found several shells of houses that had burned down. One shell had all four corners intact, and everything else was a stinky mass of melted plastic and trash. I had my site. I don’t recall getting permission from anyone to build a sculpture there. So it was a squatter site. I do remember finding an old wooden fireplace mantel, a bunch of wooden chair legs, some pallets. Pretty soon, I had the outline of a little hut. About 8 feet by 8 feet. I looked up Shinto Shrines, and back then there was no google. A shrine could be a home to a spirit who lived in that place. A living thing was needed, and a philodendron did the job. My classmates helped me raise the roof, which was a wooden shed structure just perfect for the top. I had my sculpture and I loved it very much. I still have the photos taken by another Obie, Bernice. Looking at them, I recall what a magical process this was.

To this day, I collect found objects and plan to make more sculptures. I might just be able to do that in Paisley. I have the space, and live in a town with a complete lack of judgment for saving odd things that look like junk. (Have you seen our side yard???) (Have you seen our neighbor to the immediate south???)

Why can’t I be an artist?

Why can’t art flow out of me and be manifested in some form, and then be shown to the public?

What is art? I have a broad definition. Anything made from my hands that is not food, is art. It does not have to be a job, but instead, a way of being in the world. A way of seeing something that does not exist yet and bringing it into this reality, rather like the sculptor who sees a large block of stone and envisions a human figure hidden inside. Chip away the stone and the human emerges. I see a physical space, or a blank fence wall, and I envision something there. Mobiles made of found objects, including cow bones, are taking up residence in my imagination. The afore-mentioned setting sun, made of half of an irrigation wheel and a whole lot of yarn. There are a lot of weathered pieces of wood, including twisting branches, that I’d love to build into something…

Creativity is seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God. Michele Shea

As I settle into life in Lake County, I anticipated I’d have more free time to do things like volunteer, and make art. I’m beginning to make some art, as my fourth of July American flag takes its place on the side of the house. It has many other colors besides red white and blue, which I’d hoped would make a point about multi-cultural diversity, but they are too subtle. You have to go right up to the thing to see the greens, golds and purples. That’s okay. It was a first effort. It is a reassuringly familiar American Flag for the conservative county I live in. It was Valerie’s idea. She said, you know what the cowboys would love? A crocheted American flag. And so it is.

The sun will be multi-colored.

The outside of the house will begin to look like the inside: colorful and full of art.

I am an artist.

I recently stayed in a house that had a small wooden sign in it that said: I can be anything, but I can’t do everything.

I will be an artist. And a therapist. I will be a volunteer in small ways, like when I go to Lakeview or Bend, I can tell my neighbors that I’m there, so I can pick up a prescription or a rotisserie chicken, or hair dye. I will try to treat my pancreas better, and maybe ride my tricycle around town.

I will try to buy less yarn. Hmf. I call bullshit. Yoda said, there is no try, there is only do. So, I guess that means, I will stop buying yarn. Until… the kudzu has been trimmed and the native plants can breathe. Um, or maybe until we can walk through the living room without tripping over a bag or basket of yarn. That’s a fair goal. The more specific the goal, the easier to reach, right?

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life. M.C.Richards

[jl1]

#knitting crochet art artist

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