dark outside

it is raining. cold and heavy. and the sirens have started. someone has slid off the road. someone has run off the cliff. and it feels like someone walked back and forth across my face all night long. it feels like someone made me breathe a tin of pepper as i slept. this little virus will not be moved. and she is a ruthless tease.

i love this woman!

i was lucky enough to see this show in LA when it was up. it was one of the best shows i'd seen... and still is.

when you're in the room with these paintings and you can get up close, the whole story changes... the whole world even, maybe.

what a gorgeous artist. what a gorgeous person.

aaaaand another one

about an hour before bed last night, i got hungry for some more painting and started another portrait of 'The Good Daughter'. i got in bed on time but lay awake for hours feeling so excited about painting and possibility and tomorrow. and the very first thing on my mind when my sore and tired eyes opened this morning was painting and possibilities and endless endless endless opportunity to make and build and try.

i poured my coffee. i wrote in my notebook. i went back and finished the portrait.

the new week is off and running.



The Good Daughter (3)
30" x 22"
gouache on paper
angela simione, 2010

diary

i have circled back around to covering things in clouds. child-like and calming. this piece is a couple years old. i came across it while looking through my portfolio for something else. and what a happy surprise. it seems very much to be in the same vein as the recent alice drawings.

my weird, fevery education of yesterday-

Aase Berg With Deer
Rebecca Loudon Cadaver Dogs
Evelyn Hampton the lost body projected


watched this:



and listened to this:



and then this morning, i popped on over to see what maggie may was up to and was astounded.

i had a break-through on not one but two oil paintings today and it isn't even noon! it is the best feeling in the world.

my fever is gone and my throat is no longer so sore. i have a small, ignorable headache. my delight over-rides my discomfort.

back to work.

half way

in my sickness, i am making my way through Aase Berg's With Deer. it is either the worst time or the best time to read this book. it is infectious. or is it intoxicating? or does she cast such a net, such a spell as to make the reader intoxicated with the resulting infection?

i get a few poems in and have to stop. later, i write write write and the same fat maggots present themselves but their color has changed and maybe their shape... so then... not quite the same.

always crawl closer to the people, the writers, the artists you admire.

there is a Buddhist saying that goes like this: when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.

i'm no Buddhist but i know a smart cookie when i see one... and i know when a good teacher appears.

they are all around me these days. good teachers. everywhere and i am lost inside wonder and feeling completely undeserving.

yes, you.





level







i can only take her cells in doses. sharp acrid insistence. she scratches at my face and i wait for the "i'm sorry" but all i do is wait. i turn a page. i feed on the next cell. i install her breath in my swelling in my feigning eager mouth. red and pink and capped in silver. shame under the tongue and shame between the teeth and shame below the gum line and shame inside that great grey mass between the ears. a dog hung low. head on the floor. that sorrow. that beg. and i crouch now, i go low, level with the sad dog eye, pooling brown and spilling blue and sucking at the acrid breath. sucking at the cells and the pages and the lists of things that go on and on,

still,

without remorse.







angela simione, 2010

try

it is not delirium, it is "deep play".

whirl myself, spin. and i become a dervish. and in that play i come to know something sweet about my own core.

lovely lovely

i have a secret wish to just go ahead and get it over with and become the town freak. :)

i live in a small enough town that this could be accomplished quite literally overnight should i choose to give in to this desire...

or is it a need?

a need to just live as wide-open as possible...

a reclaiming of the self...
my self...
without any explanation or apology...
just me
little ol' me
(as fearless as i had been,
can i be that fearless now?)

my morning has been occupied by the strange pull of the flu and way too much coffee and back and forth between painting and writing, image and text, oil and graphite and ink, and poems poems POEMS, and feminist essays online- this is my rendition of wonderland, my underground. and i want to slip on my sequin shoes and my BIG black crow head necklace (yes, it IS as goth as you might imagine. ha!!!!) and go traipsing around in my glorious weirdness and smile at strangers and forget this damn flu and not attend to it at all but instead attend to these deep and good desires and needs. this necessary play-time. this necessity of self of exposure of honesty.

back and forth back and forth

this whirl.

good morning! feel happy! i am joyful. a breed of eager joy. i am smearing black oil and silver paint and smudging the graphite across the white and my ink flies and my notebook fills with drips and i write write write.

-

there is nothing to feel sorry for.

it is true i have a fever.

my eyes are red red red.

yay!

the inaugural issue of BigLucks is out and yours truly has an image in it! :) happy happy happy!

maybe i'll work on getting up the courage to submit some writing somewhere soon. i've been feeling the pull lately. we'll see. but for now, check it out!

sicken

.





thick orange juice mucus in me in my throat in every opening that speaks or begs or cries a little to get its way. the skin around these openings is hot and tense. a rope. a promise. an omen. sheets of disdain and waste curling down. a wall paper. rotten. past its' prime. out of date. like childhood. like the monsters under the bed. but they don't care either way. they keep coming back in spite of how unfashionable they've become. they tickle the skin around these openings. they pull the delicate hairs in fistfuls. they make sure the skin is taut and that every pore is shut tight. there is nothing to believe or disbelieve when it comes to pain. here it is. it will be back. cross your heart and fingers and legs. cross every T and hope to die.






angela simione, 2010