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Please give a short bio of yourself for our readers. This is the hardest question! The hard part is the "short" part! :D Born in Mount Kisco, NY, 1978. Virgo, Pisces Rising. French Canadian, Irish, Polish, Czech, Native American mad. I mean, dad. German, Austrian, French, English, Native American mom. Dysfunctional family! Promptly escaped to literature. A life characterized by MOVEMENT. Moved many times in childhood. Three brothers in between. Tap dance. Piano. Got called a lesbo freak in High School. Singing got the anger out. Went to college at Bard college, known freak school. Piano. Singing. Poetry. Literature. Modern dance. Art. Moved to England for 6 months. Promptly escaped to art. Moved to my grandmother's house after graduation (2000). Internship with Planned Parenthood. Started working at a magazine/website. An exercise in cutting out bullshit. Took manuscript development class (at PoetryProject.com) with Larry Fagin. Learned to write, started to learn buddhism and how to be patient. Took an illustration class at the School of the Visual Arts. Realized i liked painting. Moved to the Bronx. Loved it. Realized I could not heal with art alone. Realized I had to get OUT and learn kiatsuho (energy healing). Decided to go live in Portland, Oregon. Moved back in with my grandparents. Moving to Portland mid-November. Why did you choose this username? I always had issues with my name. It was my dad's exgirlfriend's name and my mom didn't know this until after they named me! I always wanted a new name. I tried different versions of Melissa.. melee, mermaid, mel, meli, Mel T, etc. My friends and relatives started calling me MALISS. UGH. So I decided to rename myself Mei, which means Strength in Chinese. Then nobody called me that either! haha.. So I had the idea that if people have to call me melissa they can make it through the entire word. So melisander was interesting, a sort of chameleon salamander/me. I don't feel like melissa represents me. Yet in some way, it really does. Melisander is my compromise. Why do you keep a diary online? I wanted to challenge myself and I wanted to be heard, even in my small way. Simon- and I were discussing this. Keeping an online diary makes me feel important, like my words are worth hearing. I always wanted to put together a zine but saw how many zines were out there already and knew mine would get lost in the shuffle. So I decided that a webdiary would be my compromise. That way, i could write the most intensely personal things, it wouldn't cost me anything, and if people read it, so much the better! I don't really mind if people pry at my personal life. I challenge myself all of the time so i don't think they have anything to really find out about me. It's all out there. How important do you think a layout is for a web-based diary? Would you also comment on yours? Wow. Good question. I think of layout back in the day, (1995!) when people thought the more pictures they had, the cooler their layout was. Then I saw layout being dominated by slicker and slicker designs, especially with the advent of photoshop, flash, etc. Now I see more of a minimalist design becoming popular again and frankly I'm glad. We're becoming more impatient as a generation and so lots of pictures and lots of java and flash aren't as important as SPEED. However I think this trend will again be reversed as we get back to more SLOW living. Not to say that technology will die. It will not die. But it will change, take more organic structures into account. I think the year 2000 was the advent of that, the world didn't blow up, but people started to WAKE UP. Now people are getting out of irony and sarcasm all of the time and taking time to take stock of what they want and who we want. Being able to speak plainly is a great gift. The same holds true with design, no matter what era you're in. My design reflects this. I am a very visual person and non-graphical designs are slightly boring to me. So i wanted the design to reflect ME. I am beautiful goddammit! :p(Shameless self promotion!) The thing that has always bothered me about design was that only the rich people could afford it, afford to take the time to do it, afford to have the inclination towards the internet in that way. You say, "But I'm not rich! Believe me, you are. I went to Peru and I saw poor people. I see poor people in NYC every day. I lived with them in the Bronx. I do think that the internet is elitist and that there is an even greater divide every day between the rich and poor. So I wanted to have a design that reflected that. I do want to honor both sides of my family and not pretend that I know everything or have just sprung full fleshed from nowhere. Nothing is sillier to me than arrogance. I know where I came from and I know where I am going. Kind of a passive way to show it but that's how I am sometimes. I am going to ask a question that you didn't ask. What is something you've never written in your diary? I have never written that I have a tremendous ambition. HUGE. I really am going to succeed in Poetry and Art. I have a tremendous fear of doing this as well. I can always see how it would end up if I got too famous. But I don't really care because I have to trust the universe with this. I know how talented I am. I am really ready to go prove it to everyone and not just myself. I am also a very difficult person to get along with. I don't really let people in my life see how angry I am yet I will constantly challenge everyone around me and myself. I am as deeply angry as I am deeply happy. This is the fire in my belly that drives me forward. So yeah. I'm arrogant too, but i need to be to survive as an artist. Tell me about your view on spirituality? Good for you. Take your vitamins! Seriously? Spirituality is important. To know how you connect to everything else is one of the most important things you can ever find out for yourself. Whether or not you call that spirituality or philosophy is a matter of semantics. It's not about ideology/dogma. That's religion. It's not about calling someone else wrong when you think you have the answer. It's about keeping an open mind and being a witness to your life. Noticing why you make the choices you do. In my mind, spirituality means treating people like human beings no matter who they are. The greatest challenge is to treat everyone the same, not like your mom or your lover or your uncle. You have a lot more patience that way and you're a lot more patient with yourself. It's not really about beating yourself up when you get angry or happy or whatever you feel you shouldn't be feeling. It's about NOTICING what you're feeling and feeling it and understanding and moving on. It's not about letting people/situations beat you up. It's about owning your power by knowing yourself. This means recognizing that you can choose your reaction to a situation and tweak it. This means recognizing how much you take people and situations for granted and remembering that they choose to react to you too. Anyone want more explanation? Email me! We can talk! In your diary Larry says you are like Cinderella, and you agreed. Why do you think you are like Cinderella? I have lived with my grandparents and aunt and uncle for a year and a half. I commute into NYC every day. I went to work on September 12 and every day after. I am at my relatives' mercy as far as when i can go home, who can call the house when, who I call. I am 23 years old, trying to save money. My room is the communal room, people get in my stuff, do not give me mail. I have no privacy and they make me work, degenerate my art and general personality and pretty much everything I do. Nothing I do is good enough. My grandmother and my aunt are the worst though. My grandmother even yells at me when i make too much noise when i mastrubate! Nothing is sacred! I don't write about this because it is boring and repetitive to hear about people's pain. I don't like reading about it or reminding myself of it. So i try to make it funny when i do write about it. I try to be strong every day. I try to project my image into my diary, i try to be strong there because if i can create a new reality with my words, I can create a new reality with these difficult people. It works, you don't really have to feel bad because your grandmother heard you mastrubate! hee hee hee. The point is, my magic godmother is me. My prince is me. I'm moving to a castle with waterfalls in Oregon. As was said in The Last Unicorn, "There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." What in your eyes defines beauty to you? An open mind. That is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen. Every time I encounter one I just want to dance and sing. Okay you are psychic, what can you tell me about myself that no one else knows? :) I see you in a sequined dress with a bald midget. What are you doing with that eggbeater? (Trinity's note -- I am so not saying about the egg beater! *wink*) Interviewed by Trinity63
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