Soulcollaging: The Colorful Playful Free Spirit

This one was fun to make and rather fiddly, cutting out the images and then layering them one on top of the other. I also took advantage of the technique I was using: by using actual paper images that I had cut out, I was able to overlap them in ways that breaks the rules of perspective (characters are both behind AND in front of other characters, rather like an Escher print). This would not be possible, I don't think (?), if I were assembling purely digital images.

( The Colorful Playful Free Spirit - Committee suit )

The world's first pregnant man about to give birth.

Here is a fascinating article about Thomas Beatie, a transgender married man living in Oregon. He had not removed his reproductive organs when his gender was reassigned about a decade ago, and he and his wife decided that he would carry their (artificially inseminated) child, because his wife had previously had a hysterectomy. He has faced stiff resistance from many, including doctors who have refused to treat him, but he and his wife have gone ahead, and he is due in about six weeks. It was apparently a shock to his neighbors and his wife's family, who were not even aware that he was transgender.

The comments on the article are fascinating as well; some supportive and some refusing to recognize Mr. Beatie is a man and railing against his "unnatural" condition.

Good luck to you and your wife, Mr. Beatie, and I wish the best to you and your baby girl.

And it's awfully fun to see a picture of a pregnant man (with a beard).

Here's another article, too, with more pictures.

Council Suit - The Fool

This one feels like I'm simply cheating.

I found just this one image, exactly the right size. I have added nothing to it whatsoever, simply glued it down to the card. It is so perfect that I strongly suspect it was entirely deliberate on the part of the photographer. Yep, there's the bag. The dog at the heels. The wide-eyed innocence. And (considering the ridiculous shoes she is wearing in the entirely inappropriate setting) it is entirely obvious that this Fool is about to have a fall, just like the oblivious Fool in the Rider-Waite card who is about to step off a cliff.

It was the shoes, oddly enough, that clinched the decision to use this image for me. When I was young and foolish (in my late teens and twenties) I wore stupid shoes. Too tight, too much heel, pointed toes. Because they looked nice.

I paid for it. I developed painful bone spurs on the fourth toe of each foot and finally, after years of trouble, had the fourth toe on each toe surgically shortened. I've rarely worn shoes like that again, and every time I see a woman staggering around in them I inevitably think (as I did just yesterday when a woman wearing a pair like that got into the elevator of my building), "How stupid to wear shoes like that. Thank heavens I'm not foolish enough to do that anymore."

( The Fool - Council Suit )