I come from a doctor's family. I've pretty much been taught to look at things empirically, scientifically. I see an MD psychiatrist. my brother is one too. I like to collect DATA and experiment with it. Not always very successfully. No sirree. My own son said to me the other day "mom you like to jump off a cliff where people have died and been splattered and see if you can "'make it work". Is that the artist side? I suspect scientists do this too, as they experiment and destroy on their way to discovering new antibiotics. But their journey is a controlled one with a goal and a grant. Mine's a bit more....chaotic. or as the kids would say "random"...as in "god, mom..that's random". they usually follow this up with "jeez, you are like SO bi-polar"....and ok, probably this proclivity toward destroying things reflects some lack of self esteem. again, as the kids might...DUH. but regardless...I just like to experiment and even fix things - which i did with the coffee maker yesterday, so there!) but i have a huuuuuugggggeeee (weird) desire to destroy things too. Like draw or paint the perfect nose, then add one little stroke that screws it up just to push the limit and just because i can and then see if i can draw it again. Analyze THAT.
anyway...per my recent inquiry into Jewish physiognomy vis a vis carnivorous behaviors....here's my mother. she never really had an aqualine nose to begin with. no bump or hook whatsoever. maybe just a tad longer than most to declare her eastern european roots. her nose was lovely. my mother was absolutely beautiful. and everyone told me so. they'd say "Your mother is so pretty. And you look just like your father." but my mother didn't FEEL pretty. and there was no photoshop in the 50s and 60s so there are tons of black and white photos of her gorgeous self where she's taken pencil and shortened her nose. and hollowed out her cheeks and redesigned her almond eyes. the graphite *almost* but not quite matches the greys of the old photos. but of course ultimately she was just doing it to see what she would tell the plastic surgeon. eventually she had her nose scooped out just a bit more and shortened just the way she thought she wanted it. it made me sad when she did this because i never thought there was anything wrong with her native nose. but this was very common in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s. i can spot a nose job on a jewish woman the way an eskimo can spot a snowball on a glacier. and when my downright aqualine nose was popping out of my teen face at a different pace then my undersized pin head and wide womanly hips and i looked nothing like my pretty mom who had exactly the opposite body and i'd say mom my nose is big and she'd say well, you can fix it and somehow that didn't quite make me feel better. then she'd sing to me: You've got the hips that sink the ships from London France and Peru...and if you're gonna tell me boy, she's my waterloo..." And i've tried to sing similar songs to my own children as i witness their painful lack of synchronicity - the sweet things are ugly and deformed one month and then beautiful and "synced up" the next, and then when the nose is finally proportioned to the face the pimples or the eczema flares up to ruin the canvas....) so back to the Carnivore study. here's bubbie. my darling mom in her sparkly pink-logoed Adidas tee shirt/uniform with the faded denim, elastic wasted Pant Suit. she's now missing a tooth but lately she's never smiled more. the facelift she had in her 50s has now given way to pillowy drapy cheeks. her sweet and hilarious and giving character seeps out of the keloid scars that mark her attempts to look more beautiful and smooth two decades ago. makes me think, of course as i begin the decline and/or desire to hide behind the curtains of aging skin. here she models for me her blue fake denim pant suit with faux mocassins from TJ Max and a real corned beef sandwich which she not only lovingly brought to me and my kids but with which she also "tipped" the cab driver. she opened up the rye bread from Juniors deli in the back of the cab (i can forensically back this up as this morning i discover the twisty for the Rye is in tact while a hole has been bored thru the back end of the Rye's plastic bag. like an evolved badger or a primitive mother, she clearly and urgently scratched the hole thru the the plastic bag of rye bread with her acrylic finger nails so that she could whip up a corned beef sandwich in the back seat of the cab for the dear driver who so kindly waited for her at Juniors Deli then brought her to her daughters house. Corned beef as currency. The Jewish Woman as Carnivore study continues. But this scientist notes (ok, shooting from the hip, not enough data yet but INTUITION (rapid cognition?) is everything, just read Malcolm Gladwell and the case of the phony artwork...and you'll see that this particular Judaic Carnivore is qualitatively different than the Producer painted a few blogs ago. this carnivore, my mother, serves meat to men. the other one makes meat out of men. my daughter eats meat of any gender. i will keep studying this until i figure out my place in this food chain.
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