The Kindness of Strangers

We've been having such a hard time. Ned's father is in the hospital, his immune system is down to zero (starting at 10,000 white cells count and now, less then 1,000) which is to be expected, but still it's sad and hard. We've been going to the hospital every couple of days, still trying to take care of work and business, but actually doing very little and spend a lot of time just doing nothing and being sad.


Ned's father asked him yesterday not to post anymore photos of him online until he get out of the hospital, which we can understand, but still, the picture taking, both for him and of him, were a part of how we dealt with the difficulties of this situation and having to stop parts of it, makes us feel a lot more alone with dealing with all those feelings.

Ned and I were talking about this while having dinner at taco-chulo, I tried to understand what was so hard in not being able to post those picture, I realized that the whole notion of publicity changed a lot between Ned's dad generation to ours, and also, that the notion of being a part of a community or having friends is very different. To me, being able to be week around people is a big part of what community and friendship means, I have no problem in telling a waitress in a restaurant that i had a shitty day or to tell my friends why, I think that letting other knows about my faults and feelings is the greatest gift I can give them - my honesty and openness. I think that to Ned's father, friends and community are about being strong for others and others being strong for you, without anyone ever showing any weakness at all. The idea of exposing his illness seem inappropriate or undignified, while for me, not exposing it means i get to be lonely with my feeling and get no support from my community.

As I was thinking of this, 3 things happened in the course of one evening that made me so happy to be a part of the community and have the connections I have!

The first was those 2 awesome portraits, done by the super cool Molly Peck especially for me and Ned! how amazing are those! and the timing was so so perfect. I'm really impressed with both likeness and how she captured our spirit and character and, strangely enough, the type of light our apartment have in a sunny morning.

The second was a total stranger coming over to our table as we were talking about Ned's dad and introducing herself as Claire, turns out she works on Etsy and recognized us from the video interview we did last year, it was so wonderful to have someone coming over ot say hi in the middle of this strange conversation about generation and support and the internat! Thanks os much Claire! you totally made our evening and reminded me thar i'm not alone in the world!



The last cool thing (though actually it's only last cause I took care of writing back to her last in that strange and long evening) is this super cool e-mail from Tessa, a cool etsy seller who bought this bear art kit a few weeks ago, and send me the result of her work! how amazing is this! I'm so glad to see that this art kit is actually being used and not just sitting in someone's drawer. And I really love Tessa's cool art (check out her shop, it's really awesome!)

SAD in the Bathroom

I'm so sick and tired of feeling so anxious every single morning. It doesn't matter when I'm opening my eyes, it feels like those days I just wake up so fucking fragile, as if every drift of wind or any type of any emotional exertion would just make me fall into pieces.

So I numb my brain with reading the news, with listening to an audio book, building a brier of words between me and my own feelings.

Or I drink a lot of coffee, or I have a small Whiskey and water before I even brush my teeth, or I get dressed really fast, or I sit around naked and look through a million photos on Flickr just to swamp my mind with anything except my own feelings. Or I read the same page in a book over and over again without really letting the words in.

It's snowing out today, it looks beautiful, but it doesn't even pile on the ground.

It just feels like nothing good will happened before spring, and it just feel like spring will never get here and that I'm never going to feel warm again.

I broke my hairbrush today, it fall on the floor of the bathroom. I never even liked it so much, but it was one of the things I brought from Israel with me. It feels like I'm loosing my place over there, like I'm being forgotten, like I'm forgetting.

My cousin wrote me last week, she had a new baby, she send me photos, I didn't even know she was pregnant, I've been so out of communication with everyone over there. It's all just too hard and too painful.

Every e-mail seem to be hard to write, beyond possible even, even the short ones that are just "your package will be send tomorrow" or "I'm too tired to write right now I'll write you a proper e-mail next week".

Last month I only made one phone call, I think I only answer one as well, the more time passes the hardest communication become.

When I was a kid I wanted to be like Greta Garbo or Salinger, I wanted to live in a castle somewhere remote, and never go out, only make drawings and read books and not see or talk to people.
I wonder if I already became that person.
I'm not famous, but I'm probably one of the hardest people I know to reach.

Nothing seem real, everything seem too real.

Sadness

A couple of days ago, Ned answered the phone, it was his father, telling him that he just got back from another scan and that the cancer is back. Since the doctor basically tried everything else by now, the next stage in treatment is stem cell transplant, which seem to be this holy grail of cancer treatment.

Unlike the past couple of times, I wasn't shocked by the news, I guess by now I already know that cancer is more of a chronic condition then a dramatic one treatment and it's gone sort of a thing.

Ned and I were sitting in blackbird parlor even though we were already late for a meeting in the city, to eat something and relax from the shock. My brain was felt like it's got this big rock in the middle of it that it's trying to ignore, my mind kept slipping to other aspect of the situation, like who's going to take care of the dog while Ned's dad is in the hospital and how this is actually a good thing and all sort of other angles of this.

I'm still doing it, my mind doesn't want to think of certain words now. Sad words like "death", "cancer", "mortality rate", "quality of life" and so on. I keep referring to the cancer as "that" or "it". I want to cry but can't bring myself to, because that would be admitting that this thing (see?!) is going to happened. My head hurts from thinking in circle around this big rock.

It just seem so unfair that a person who had the kindness to welcome me into his family in such a wonderful way wouldn't win all the karma points that will allow him to live in perfect health forever and ever.

As usual he's being super positive and amazing about confronting this scary situation, as usual it's hard on all of us to not be able to hear any emotional reaction from him about having cancer or having to go through scary treatments.

I wish that he'll get a call from the doctor tomorrow telling him it was someone else's test result and he's just fine, I know it won't happened.

Me and Ned just wonder around the apartment, between the bed and the couch and the computer. I'm trying to get some work done, I start things but don't finish them, I'm tired and restless. I feel so helpless.

A letter to flickr

Hello flickr help,

My account was deleted today without any type of warning or even an e-mail to let me know. I actually found out by trying to check my activity and not being able to log in, then got a worried and very emotional call from my best friend, who, by the way, I met through your site.

I know there were some violations on my page, I also know I have, over the past 3 or 4 years drove over a million people into my photo stream, got at least a 100 people to flickr most of which probably got pro accounts, I've gotten numerous amount of e-mails telling me my art and photography is inspiring and that it encourage them to take picture, or make art or express themselves in other means.

I'm not writing this to beg you to give me my account back, I know I bended yahoo rules or whatever more then once, by following what I consider proper flagging and probably not what yahoo think is proper tagging, I'm very aware of flickr being a privet site and that you don't really owe me anything. I'm mostly writing this in hope that somehow this e-mail make it past one of you probably-part-time-flickr-worker-part-time-student or whoever work in there in the deleting account department, or maybe I just write to get this off my chest.

In the past few years of my life flickr played a major role in my life. I met my husband on my blog in in the year we spend apart, me in Israel and him in NY, flickr was one of our main arenas of communication as wall as a way for use to express our love publicly and share things. I've met a lot of my current friends on flickr and got involved in a couple of art shows through it. more then the practicality of keeping in touch and sharing art, it became my community, I'm very socially anxious and being able to take part in people's life and sharing my own life with them really gave me a window into the world. I now, because of flickr take interest in the lives of people I never even met, and people who never met me take interest in mine.

For me, having my account deleted and especially in the way that it happened - with no warning or even an e-mail telling me about it, feels very much like coming home to realize that my keys has been changed and not only I'm not allowed in my own home, I've never even lived there. I have a history that has just been erased, a million comments, interactions, people, images, feeling, thoughts, and emotions, that were documented this afternoon and are now gone for good. I feel like my home burnt down and I'm left with nothing.

Your site gave so much and by my account being deleted, took so much from me.

I'm thinking back on my photo stream and remembering so many important moments of my life, which the documentations and interactions of are now gone and all is left in my own memory.

I'm angry, and sad, and I want to never go on flickr again, and at the same time open a new account now.

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be more careful about flagging and nudity and paintings and whatever, maybe I'll just have an easier time next time I get deleted.

Flickr - you used to rock and now you suck. I know it's probably not the fault of whoever is reading this e-mail, but still, that's what I feel.

I had an opening of an art show I was in today, I took my camera and took some photos, it really hurts me not to have my way of sharing it with the supportive flickr community who's been following and encouraging me through my artistic career, I feel a great sense of loss, not so much as if someone in my life died, but as if I died, and am now buried and isolated from my world of the living. It's really a horrible feeing.

I know that my best case scenario now is getting some stupid form answer and my worst case scenario is not getting any answer. I don't really think this will help anyone, I guess i just wanted to have the final word or whatever, a closure of a sort.
It's really sad to me how a site and an organization that was so much about community and self expression became so much about restriction and obedience to the rules. I'm really sad about the loss of the people I've had on flickr and my own personal documented history. I feel like I just got deported from one of the only countries I actually felt at home in.

Aya Rosen \ Lilly1975