This little blog I think is just for me.
(I've got to stop this habit of writing after midnight)
Maybe it's me re-capping so I don't feel like a total loser. That's probably happening because I've been laid up for a while and in transition for several months. If anybody is really bored and wants to read it, please, feel free to torture yourself…..

Right Now I Have To:
-Sell acre of land right below Lone Mountain I WAS building custom 1.5 million dollar 7000 square foot hacienda on that I designed, babied, brought to life, project managed, spent the last two years of my life nurturing through plans, architectural renderings, design trips to Los Angeles with my contacts there, antique tiles from an old hacienda in South America, don't get me started on the design and architectural detail I put into this, right up to building the pad, I even drove the damn loader the first day and moved dirt, then……well let's just say it became necessary to clear some negative stuff out of my life and now it's a whole new game……
-Sell house I live in now
-Sell rental property
-Look for new place to live
-Deal with legal issues that suck in a big way

So, the saving grace for me is, I am the master of my own destiny. My office is my laptop and my cell phone. I make my own hours. Decide when I work.

MY DOUBLE LIFE
Grew up in my sister's design company.
Anita Brooks.
As I got into performing and music I always had this other job in design that came and went as I needed it from the time I was 12 years old and went to the design studio everyday after school till I was 15 and started officially working there till my business card switched from designer to design consultant several years ago (what happens when you put the word "CONSULTANT" on your card? The actual job description is the same but your hourly rate doubles and you pretty much get to tell people WHEN you want to work----nice.)
Had the opportunity to work on really amazing projects for Anita.
All the Fertitta Family Homes/Station Casinos (I've done high end Tuscan Villas over and over and over and over…yes they're ITALIAN)
Green Valley Ranch
Beach Houses, Beach Houses….
Disney's Wild Animal Park in Florida
The Epstein Residence (Coast Resorts)
Mandalay Bay/Four Seasons
High End Suites at the Monte Carlo
The Kusumoto Residences (Atari) Sedona, New York, Las Vegas
French, Italian, Estancia, every style you can think of….
And so many more….
Can't even remember all the projects I worked on while I was with her firm right now…
I officially left her company to help my friend Charles start his own firm. Helped him get that off the ground 2002-2004. Designed and worked on some amazing projects with him.
The Sorrento Hotel in Seattle (In Architectural Digest)
The Icehouse (Las Vegas)
Renovation of Suites in the Four Seasons/Mandalay Bay
Radio Music Awards Gift room (turned it into this Balinese Zen Garden)
Gavin Maloof's Sacramento House (Palms)…
(that was the most fun project…cool mix of African, Asian, ethnic elements…loved shopping LA design district for that one…got to design his game room….the ultimate boy sports wet dream come true…a place for his team The Sacramento Kings to hang out in after the games)
I left him in 2004 and started my big custom home project, started my party rental company and my other private construction management account…All of which I run from my cell phone…
So, 2 weeks before my surgery I walked into Charles office and told him I could take projects on January 11th when I got back from Austin. Have laptop will travel.
I guess I'm just going stir crazy because I went from having active projects to packing all my plans in a box, losing a HELL of a lot of money, reclaiming myself, regrouping and figuring out what I'm doing next….
Have had too much time on my hands in limbo. But I am SO GLAD I took time to move my chess pieces around, pamper myself a little bit and breathe in. The ballsiest thing I've ever done was to make the life changes I made earlier this year. I have never been happier, but I'm getting antsy. Had surgery when I knew my slow season for my rental company would be. Letting my son run that business for me while I'm down. Can't have my workouts till February because of surgery (8 weeks total!!)
Pent up creative energy on all levels. The hardest thing for me is that my $40,000. digital recording studio doesn't live here anymore. Have to regroup on that one….

So here I am still leading this double life between the design world and my performing/professional music career. I've fought it for years, trying to go one way or the other. But now I think it's ok. I think they go hand in hand somehow. I'm not sure what's going to unfold for me this year but whatever it is I'm going to grab it by the reins and make it happen. The girl is on fire, reborn, resurrected….YES!

GOALS 2007
-New design consulting projects with Charles
-My friend Kerri buying French Chateau/Hotel in Paris I will probably help renovate/design
(YES!!! I will have a permanent (and free) place to run to in Europe)
-Finish recording that DAMN CD and start performing more regularly again
-Finish moving my damn assets around and hope the market bounces around in my favor
-More trips to LA to see friends
-Time for my kids and grown-up play time for me
-More trips to Texas for music/recording and family

I guess really and truly I'm feeling angst because this will be the first Christmas in 16 years I will not be spending with my children. Haven't even decorated because I've been down from surgery. And I'm just not feeling that Christmas Spirit thing and that kind of sucks. In my convalescence I came across pictures from the Teddy Bear Suite on my laptop we did in 2002 at the Four Seasons as a special thing for Christmas. Talk about childhood fantasy. Walked into FAO Schwartz (FORUM) picked out anything we wanted and went crazy in The Presidential Suite. SO much fun. I guess this is as close to Christmas decorations as I'm going to get this year: writing this really long thing no one but me is going to read and posting these pictures of a really fun Christmas past.
But you know what? I'm going to re-read it before I post it and I'm going to feel a hell of a lot better. Sometimes you just have to re-cap to look forward.
Now, I've got to practice for Austin.
Need to get busy so I don't suck horribly when I get there!!!
I'm not going to say "enjoy" at this point because half of you are asleep or haven't gotten this far.
It's all good.
(Why do I feel like Stuart Smalley from SNL???)

The Bathtub My Favorite….Me, all business designer vibe…

Listening to GIPSY KINGS, Best Of
(makes me want to make some Pico De Gallo and homeade Enchiladas)

Woke up with MIGRAINE.
Nausea.
Got dressed.
Jeans
Chocolate Brown Doo-Rag
Army Green sweater
Yoda Jedi Master Ringer T
Doc Marten's Boots
Long Fuzzy Red Sox
Popped Excedrin Migraine to take the edge off.
Started up my Black Dodge Ram 1500 (I love that truck).
Put in Vinx's CD, Rooms In My Fatha's House.
Love THE CAPTAIN'S SONG and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS
Perfect cloudy day music.
Bought White Chocolate Mocha.
Filled Relpax Prescription.
$30. a pill but only thing that gets rid of migraine for me.
(another reason to hate migraines...they're EXPENSIVE!!)
Kept Driving up Flamingo, 215 to Charleston, through Red Rock and back home.
Overcast
A few Snow Flakes on Window,
Peaceful.....
Beautiful.
Vinx's Haunting Voice.
Perfect.
Headache gone.
But still nauseated.
Couldn't practice.
Suddenly dizzy
and
Tired.
Slept.
Woke at 6.
Stir crazy from being stuck here from surgery.
Went to Tracy's.
Christmas Lights,
Orange Juice,
Sugar Cookies
and
Girl Talk.
Nice.
Watched Clerks II again.
Jay kills me with that chapstick and The Silence Of The Lambs thing.
Needed to see humans again and laugh.......
Ready to practice and sleep.
Tomorrow is Monday.
Got to take care of bidness'.
(yes that's my head)

If you've ever had one you'll relate:

MIGRAINE

Little man stands.....
wields
GIANT SPIKED
HAMMER;
smashes
The Temple Walls
Of my
ScREAminG BraiN.
Light SHRIEKS bullets;
Piercing..........Penetrating
Clutched tight wet eyelids;
stone tablets scraping my pupils-
Agony in the box that is my HEAD.........This Gethsemane.
The twist in the eyes to the wringing spine;
a
Journey of PAIN......
Washing machine stomach; a strange nauseated sea.
I dig my fists into my eyes......the way
my father did*.....crush a plastic ice-bag to
MY flesh-bag neck and
WAIT.....
For
Resurrection.............

August 1994
*he gets them too
© copyright 1995 heather rogers

Just back from the movies...

Something sensual I wrote over the summer when the roses were blooming in my backyard on a moonlit night as I sat on my balcony porch breathing in the night air and more old school darkroom portraits I did of friends...

Rose
red
white
pink
flesh
blood
soft
her totem
her sign
deep and sweet
the thorn with his pain
the petal with her scent
stem joins life and breath
delicate
the balance
they share
what they must
in the night silence she sits
alone
stones
beneath her feet
knees
tucked within arms
a parallel line she curves
upward to her tongue
bites her lower lip
the
way
he
said
he
wanted
pulls the sky close with her silent eyes
slowly she measures her breath
in
and
out
into
the
gathering
soft velvet
of his
dream

hr 8:09 pm
7/19/06

More portraits of friends....

I photographed my dancer friend George from Cuba in 1995

My friend Jason I photographed in 1993, friends since Junior High school..these are only 2 of a series of 6 large pieces done on BFK paper with a brushed on Liquid Photo Emulsion. It's a cool process because when you develop the paper you get these unpredictable brush strokes and the effect can be very painterly. Because the emulsion was used on heavy duty drawing paper I was able to go into the prints with watercolour on top of the image. Pretty cool process but a LONG TIME in the darkroom...Photoshop is so much faster just not as visceral....
The second one is a standard black and white silver print of the same negative so you can see the difference...
ENJOY!
Heather

Spies By Coldplay playing right now…1:30 am, practiced guitar for a while and now can't sleep…
thinking about friends that inspire me…

I recently was in LA visiting Kerri my lifelong friend of 27 years. I was at the threshold of something new creatively and was trying to clear the creative waters that had become muddied over the past couple of years. Needed the insight one can only get from a friend that has known you for that long. Someone that remembers who you are even if you don't and will snap you back into focus. We lit candles, had drinks, played guitar, sat up all night, solved the world's problems and fell asleep still talking at 2 am with her 2-year old little boy between us. Next day I noticed some of the black and white portraits I had done of her years ago hanging on the wall. I hadn't pulled out a lot of that old school darkroom stuff for years (digital girl now) and she encouraged me to get back to those roots. So I went home and opened some drawers and started scanning all the old school silver prints.

During the last photo shoot I did of her, I wanted a picture of her hands. Hands are so expressive and reflective of a person in a very powerful and almost mystical way. She is a physical therapist and a very talented and intuitive healer and her hands are the instrument of her livelihood. We tried a few shots of just her hands and I wasn't feeling it, so we did a few more with her face in the shot but that took too much focus away from her hands so, kind of as a joke she ruffled her hair up to hide her face and I snapped a shot. Of course that turned out to be the shot.
Hope you enjoy these……
Peace. Heather

Descent into Crystal Cave
Tuesday August 8, 2006

Water
Air
Earth
Fire

All these I knew today
WATER
Tears from the waking dream
As the sun brought morning
Waterfall along the path
Into the belly of the Mother
AIR
That breathed to me from her mouth
Cool Moist Welcome
EARTH
Through the keyhole passage
I moved
Down into the womb
Down into the earth
Saw snake carved
In stone wall
Animus and Feminine
In harmony
It's long flickering tongue
The flame in my evening fire
A place where stone flows like water
Her message she breathes in silence as I move
Liquid as the blue veined marble in the stream
Moving slowly through time
The water kissed my face
Earth's own teardrops
Falling from the stone above
As my dream gave me mine
I emerged into the approaching night
Saw the snake on the path
Animal spirit
Sliding away on the slope
Serpentine on face of mountain
FIRE
Twilight as the Pipstrelles dance
Lit by a full moon's gaze
I watch them carve the night sky
One in her spinning comes to me
I feel her wing on my cheek
Only a moment in time
Smile for the blessing
Keep moving she said
Flow like water
Move the mountain

-heather rodriguez/tuesday august 8th, 2006 Sequoia National Park

FALL
UNDER A TREE LYING
ON THE GRASS WATCHING
A PLANE IN THE CLOUDS

Silver arrow pierces
a white trail sliver
across the blue sky
I close my eyes
and
hear the rustling of leaves
like a child's soft approaching footfalls
branches quaking
like an old woman's fingers
lighting a midnight mass candle
I close my eyes
feel the kiss of September breeze
brushing my face and
smile
inside

-heather rogers 1995

Answering my friend's question.....
What's my ethnic cocktail?
Blogging it so I won't have to write it again.

There are never enough ethnic categories for me...
I'm one of those that refuses to just "check one" on those ethnicity forms...
Won't just "check one" on my kids school forms either...(i'm such a rebel)
I refuse to be categorized as one thing or another.
So there.

MEXICAN
(Grandparents came from Guadelajara to Houston, Texas at the turn of the century-family still there)
ITALIAN
(Vietri di Potenza, Savoia di Lucania...Basilicata....Southern Italy...Great Grandparents came to Chicago-1800's)
SPANISH
(dad did the family tree back to the 1500's when all these hottie Spanish dudes sailed to Mexico and started marrying the cute local indian peasant chicks....lots of x's in their AZTEC..HUASTECA unpronouncable names)
GERMAN/FRENCH
(Martineaux--all these peeps were from the Prussia/Bavaria area 1800's and kept changing their name back and forth from Martin to Martineaux)
POLISH
(just a drop...one of my great great great grandmothers was some duchess or some nobility, disowned by her family for falling in love with someone NOT of noble blood so she eloped to America with him..very romantic)

Props to the ancestors....
Been Going thru old family fotos for my mom and scanning them...
So here's my Italian Grandpa..one of heroes...
out on an adventure in South America...
Very Hemingway-esque
1913