these texts are an archive of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area from march 2007 - march 2015. it stands as a record of close to a decade of my life, charting the struggles i faced as an artist, daughter, and lover. messy and chaotic at times, eloquent and poetic at others, these texts are an index i am proud of. it was here in this electric box that i learned how to be honest about my experiences and the person i needed to become. it was here that i first learned the truism that words make the world and how to trust such a beautiful, rife, hard fact.

thank you for meeting me here in such tall grass.


my artist website is here.

Mar 14, 2010

yes. you.

lately our ideas have been sprawled in the same field. or turning cartwheels. or screaming for attention. or screaming in to a pillow. or kicking our feet, ill-behaved children throwing a temper tantrum, trying trying trying to find a way to say what we're all thinking, what we're all after, and from a thousand different vantage points, a thousand different diamond shards circling our heads and landing in each other's eyes. and sometimes it hurts and sometimes it is beautiful. and so i followed your lead and i went to the used book store yesterday and got my very own copy of The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras. i was up til midnight. i read the entire thing all in one hot, addicted shot. and instantly i felt such a strange and bonded lineage. i saw the contours of it. i saw that it exists even if i can't name it. maybe the name doesn't matter. and i immediately thought of The Bell Jar and The Piano Teacher. they are sitting side by side in my book case and this book will be slid in next to them. and yes- the easy corollary of insanity- but rather... fragility. how a person is damaged. how deep damage can be. that fragility, that search for the one right word that would explain our damage, make it okay, make it understood. that right word that would erase the shame that follows fragility.

thank you all for referencing these books on your blogs and for bringing Duras to my attention.

2 comments:

Kate Zimmerman said...

"that right word that erase the shae that follows fragility."

so beautiful. yes all three books - are gathered around - some wound. and the wound is somehow in public.

angela simione said...

thank you, kate!

yes. very public. and it's uncanny that it should be that way. something that "we" tend to think of as below the surface, something we believe is unseen or that we've done a marvelous job hiding, is on display. The Bell Jar is different in terms of language but contain the same REACH, the same longing for SOMETHING... and i'm reminded of that scene in The Secretary when maggie gyllenhal is sitting for days and days at james spader's big desk and her father comes to her, a newly recovered alcoholic, and reads a religious passage that gives her permission to regard her body in a way that feels right for her. her tearful "thanks daddy". that sweeling, grateful relief. the one word that allieviates this shame, this confusion.

i covered 100 pages in The Bell Jar last night. i just finished the scene where she goes to the prision beach and is considering killing herself there somehow. and a child says "mama, that girl is still sitting there!" she is noticed. and noticed as different. as odd. the wound shows.