Order your Mandala Calendar

Calendars are being printed and shipped this week; they will be 9"x 9", on 100# paper with a glossy cover. The price of $18 includes tax and shipping. When you click the button you will be prompted to enter the number of calendars you want, and your shipping address.

The original drawings and watercolors will be available for sale as well; please contact Stephanie for prices. Happy holidays!

Rape and Parenthood

One of the top priorities on my parenthood to-do list, in addition to paying the rent next month, is to raise my daughter so that things like this don't happen to her. Forget all the horse/barn door advice; I'm going with Franklin's recommendation, and signing her up for kung fu classes as soon as she's walking steadily. Not only will some physical confidence stand her in good stead, but apparently, guys really dig kung fu chicks.

Because I don't want to raise my daughter to be afraid of men. I want to raise her with a little bit of common sense. And that includes giving her a few basic facts about life--for instance, "Guys are going to want to f*ck you."

Lord knows, my life would have been easier if someone had been willing to lay things out like that. I was raised by parents who believed that ignorance = innocence = virtue, and that they could protect me from all the bad things in life by sending me to the right schools. They implicitly believed that if you follow all the rules, you'll be okay, even if you have no idea why you're following them.

There are a number of flaws in this logic. One of them is that it's a terrible idea to teach people to be unquestioningly obedient to authority; that's how you get Guantanamo, the Holocaust and corporate America. Another is that however much you try to shelter someone, they're bound to meet people eventually who don't know the same rules.

So it was that I was sent out into the world by my clueless parents with this view of sex: Men would ask me out on dates. Any man who asked me on a date would 1) not be dating any other women, and 2) would want to be my boyfriend. After we'd been dating for several months, this boyfriend would try to talk me into having sex with him.

And I had my pretty, confident, non-judgmental little speech all ready for him.

Twenty-odd years of mayhem and miscommunication later, I don't know exactly what I'm going to tell my daughter when she's old enough to parse my sentences, but in some way it will include the information, "Guys are going to want to f*ck you. Some of them will be decent guys, and some of them will be predators. Many of them will assume you want to f*ck them, too, regardless of what you say about it.

"So it's a good idea to get to know guys pretty well before you go off into dark, secluded corners with any of them. Don't assume that a man believes everything you say, or that he's even listening; a dude in the grip of raging hormones is just watching your lips move while he maps the fastest route to your panties. Predatory men will get you drunk, tell lies, and use any kind of social or physical pressure they can think of in order to get laid. They'll also use all kinds of rationalizations to avoid the consequences of their actions, physical and emotional.

"That doesn't mean that all guys are jerks. It does mean that you have to keep your wits about you. And when you decide to go into a dark, secluded corner on purpose, with a decent guy, please take a condom with you."

Twelve Months of Meditation

As a first tiptoe into entrepreneurship, I am designing a 2010 mandala calendar. It is a 12" x 12" wall calendar, with high-resolution scans of mandalas that I've drawn from 2006 to 2009.

While working on the files I notice that the images do what they're intended to do--they calm me down. The fact that they're hand-drawn, and thus slightly imperfect, has a lot to do with it. Each line, each texture, is a record of an actual experience. They took a lot of time to draw, and you can spend time with them--a whole month, in fact--without, hopefully, getting bored.

The first print run will be small, and I'm hoping to keep the price down to around $20. I'll have a Paypal button for ordering, as soon as the proofs are proofed; if you would like to pre-order, please leave a note in the comments. If I get enough pre-orders I'll be able to do a larger print run. They will ship in time for Christmas.

UPDATE: It's going to be 9" x 9". Apparently, only Big Capitalists can print 12" x 12", because this requires an offset printer, and the upfront costs of offset printing are upwards of three grand. I have no illusions that my fan base is sufficient to purchase 500-1000 calendars, so a small digital run it is.