Like One of your French Girls

Backwards baseball caps are making a rise this season. Something I never thought I'd see after my fourteenth birthday...That has nothing to do with anything. Really, I don't follow much for fashion, but while modeling for an art class, you kind of run out of conversation topics with yourself and I found this to be one of them.
 Baking under show lights so a group of ne'rdo well painters can focus on that ever so slight crook in your nose that got busted up while playing basketball in fifth grade, I'll guarantee you'll get bored, and sore, and start to slightly hallucinate.

Trying to sit still for three hours straight is a lot like trying to hold your arms over your head for three hours straight. Sounds plausible, but go ahead and try.

"Oh, you big baby!" You'll say. "I commute to Chicago and back everyday and that's six hours in a car! I do just fine."
"Pansy"

Trust me, I considered this fact. But let's also consider all of the motions you go through in a minute while driving. Hands are constantly supporting the steering wheel, feet are moving slightly to accelerate or brake, your head and neck get to crane to check your mirror for blind spots or raging drivers, and if you're me, you are jamming out full-blast to whatever song may come on the radio.

All of those glorious movements that are stripped from a model. I plopped down in the seat--fully-clothed, mind you. All of my relatives may now exhale deeply in unison--and found a comfortable position. Or so I thought! *Ominous background music* The director continued to badger me, make sure you can hold that position. Focus on a spot on the floor to look at. The lights will blind you, you might want to look away from them. I was chuckling at her concern. Getting paid ten bucks an hour to literally sit on my butt. Please. I've got this.

As we began, my eyes began to well with tears because the five hundred watt bulb was still in my peripheral vision. The spot on the floor I started to focus on was suddenly moving and changing colors. Soon my back, which I hadn't noticed was slightly twisted to one side, began to ache with the pain of a thousand needle pricks. And for the love of all things holy, my NOSE ITCHED.

I chanced a quick flick of my eyes to the clock.

Ten minutes.

And I was scolded for moving my eyeballs.

I started to talk with myself. Realized that I am incredibly boring to the point where I started trying to remember lyrics to songs. I realized I was much more of a fan of Macklemore than I recalled being and could make it fairly far through Thrift Shop. Impressive.

At the end of the session, I was applauded for my cheek bones. They gave everyone a challenge, I was informed. Not quite sure how to take that one, but I'll file it under compliments.

I wish I could post the pictures that were done. Some were incredible and make the sit of death worth it, but alas, I do not own a magical device that can take a still image and transfer it to the mass of interwebs.

Perhaps my modelling career will explode and you'll get to see some in the near future. Or maybe I'll file down to a church basement again and this time, I'll bring my camera.

Sculpture Park

Driving to Minneapolis we had a GPS system in the car so there was no chance of getting lost on the way. Kind of took the adventure out of the road trip in the nostalgic sense, but we found ways to keep up the daring discovery without it.

The greatest thing about Minneapolis, in my opinion, is their bike rental. Every evening we'd snag a few bikes and trek out to explore and by far the most note worthy place we stumbled upon was this:

My spoon's too big...

Yep. That is a gigantic spoon. With a cherry on top. Which doubles as a water fountain in the middle of a park. ...

As giant art installations go, this had by far the most wonderment. We biked there in the night and my first thought was, "My goodness. What I would give to play kick the can here."

(For those of you who didn't grow up in rural Michigan, let Wikipeida be your guide to my childhood)

Though the grounds look fantastic in the daylight, I'm sure, at night it lent itself as a surreal playground.

 

We rode our bikes around the paths, through the instillation, weaving in and out, going off on our own and shouting to each other as we found more bizarre aspects of the lot. 

 Huge sculptures looked like some god's discarded plaything. 

  Literally thousands of wind chimes were strung up in grove a trees, tinkling so faintly that I didn't believe they were there until I stood under them myself. Trying to count them was like trying to count the stars, as soon as you focused on another part of the next tree more and more would come into focus.

Just a few feet away the chimes dissipated into the other noises of the night. I stood there, for a while, in the night air and taking in the peaceful moment. What I would do to practice some yoga under those trees.

One installation, though unsettling, spoke directly to me. I don't know what it was called or who made it, but it was a series of granite benches in a huge patio square, all with some observation about life carved into them. This one...

"Affluent college-bound students face the real prospect of downward mobility. Feelings of entitlement clash with the awareness of imminent scarcity. There is resentment at growing up at the end of an era of plenty coupled with reassessment of conventional measures of success."

I had two immense moments in the park. There was an ache to be a kid again, just wanting to play in the night outside with my siblings, setting up shop lights to play baseball after dark and a congruent twinge of guilt at having to grow up and being excited about it.

I ran around and played on a giant wrought-iron swing at the same time that I was puzzling over the aesthetic and intentional underpinnings of a statue of a woman in a fetal position. Is there any intention? Maybe the most I can do is sit under the shadow of some trees and enjoy that moment.