Mixed Meme

[qos]

Via _storyteller_. . . mostly because I'm very interested in the recommendations this group will throw at me.

A) First, recommend to me:
1. A movie:
2. A book:
3. A musical artist, song, or album:

B) Next, Everyone who reads this ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want.
1.
2.
3.

C) Then, go to your journal and copy and paste this, allowing your friends to ask you anything.

Comments

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendations! I've heard of John Sayles and Nanci Griffith (of course!) but I'm not familiar with the works you cite.

What was I like as a kid?
Well, if you know the song "Belle" from the beginning of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, that was me: always reading, never part of any crowd, and other people thought I was a bit strange -- but nice. (I wasn't a "beauty," however.) And I was always dreaming of far away adventure.

I was a Good Christian Girl (tm), and the non-denominational church my family attended was my second home. I was in choir, played handbells, was active in the youth group.

I almost always followed the rules, and when I did break them I made sure I did so very quietly and discreetly.

I was aware of myself as a Good Girl, and most of me wanted to be a Good Girl -- but there was always a secret part of myself that knew the wilder, unruly, secret parts of myself that I never dared to even own, much less express. That had to come much later.

My most prized possession?
Probably this painting, which is a "soul portrait" of myself, with my daughter.

There's a long story behind it, having to do with my difficulties adjusting to becoming a mother. It started out as a desire for a painting of myself as a young Native American woman with a papoose on my back running in the forest with wolves, and it was to be called "Mommies Who Run with the Wolves." But after Guleanne (the artist) and I worked together for more than a year, this is what came out. Virtually every detail of the image has symbolic meaning, either derived directly from our conversations and the charged items that I shared with her, her own psychic impressions, and her conscious decisions (like the rocks that make up the edge of the portal behind me).
The painting is called "Sacred Journey" and it really captures the essence of the woman I'm becoming -- eight years after it was painted.

One story to describe myself. . .
That's hard because I've gone through so many changes in the last few months I don't really have a good story to describe me now. I guess the cloest I could come is to tell the story of those past few months: of the upheaval as all the archetypes and "greater story" references I used to define myself died, a period of intense pain and confusion. . . and what is coming into being is still not fully mature. I'm in an emerging-from-the-chrysalis time, and my wings are still too crumpled and damp yet to describe fully.

Sorry I can't do better than that at the moment! Usually I am a storyteller, but this topic is more than I can do justice to at the moment.