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.

Jun 24, 2010

the sun is up

yesterday, after i wrote that big beast of a post below, i got lost in a word document for the rest of the day. what began as a letter, morphed in to an odd twisty curly memoir-ish sort of thing that just kept rolling and rolling and rolling. i'd write for awhile and then stand up and walk around the house and go outside with my dog for a minute and then come back in and get another cup of coffee and look at my paintings for a minute and then the next line would pop in my head so i'd sit right back down in front of the glowing rectangle and write some more. back and forth like that over and over again. and before i knew it, my sweetheart was walking back in the door from work and the sun was beginning to drop and 4,000 words were sitting in front of me. 4,000 words is not a ton but all inside a single day it sort of is and its been happening like that more and more frequently lately. the last few months, my stamina for The Work in general has steadily increased and i find myself coming up on the end of the day so quickly lately. and i find myself worn out when i get in to bed. and excited to go to bed so that i can wake up early and get back to it the next morning.

maybe it's because the sun comes up so much earlier now? maybe it's because i have to obey The Almighty Jog so much earlier now that summer is here? maybe it's because i have finally learned how to obey a Bed Time? maybe it's all the books i'm reading? maybe it's learning how to just fucking relax a bit and not worry so much about what all this might add up to or what it means? maybe it's because i type out all this weird self-exploration here on a public blog where anybody who wants to see it can?

whatever it is, a surge had resulted. and this letter i started writing is to a person i don't even know. it's in response to something they wrote, something that touched a bad memory and i saw something of myself, some of my regrets and fears in their work, i wanted to tell somebody i suppose about the time i feel i've lost...

and so this letter curves all around, runs in 4 directions at once, goes wild and sad and strange. and i realize while i write it that i haven't lost any time at all. that everything that came before leads up to Right Now and Right Now is full of excitement and enthusiasm and commitment. Right Now i have a story to tell. and so it's a letter that will never be "sent" because it's no longer a letter. it's this whole other thing and my mind and heart are wrapped up in it and there's some huge wind of honest exposure and acceptance that flows out of it already- the undoing of secrecy, the unraveling of expectation. and my long-windedness unleashed a bright wind of hope yesterday. rambling, stuttering, striving. a search taking place. a map being made. bad teeth being removed. the ugly bed being made. yesterday was a good day.

and so The Almighty Jog awaits. and the letter. and the curling road. and oil on the wall and graphite on the palm and dog's ears to scratch and hope to have and coffee coffee coffee and word words words. the bang of keys and the scratch of things and today i think i'll spend a little time singing.

how are you?

7 comments:

Hannah Stephenson said...

A surge, huh? Me too. All green lights, gas pedal down!!

Want to know something weird? In 2006, I was planning to move to San Fran, and had enrolled in the Creative Writing MFA program at CCA. Our move fell through, so I never attended...but I just noticed you studied there. :)

Is that how I found your blog in the first place? I can't remember! But I do get a kick out of imagining us taking a class together.

angela simione said...

hannah, yay!!! feels good, huh! i'm so glad you're working like crazy too! go go go!!!

that would've been so much fun! i started at CCA in the fall of 2005. the really crappy thing was (and i hope they amended it by now) was that you could NOT double major in painting and writing. weird huh? you could double in painting and printmaking. or painting and sculpture. or painting and photography. but not painting and writing. and that sorta broke my heart. it really did. because i tend to think of them as being pretty much the exact same thing, they just look different. but you could still take classes in other departments but, for some strange reason, that particular pairing when it came to a double major was a NO NO. i have no clue why.

in spite of that, CCA is awesome. it really is. it's such a wonderful school, full of awesome teachers, and i had a fucking blast. it ended too soon! yes, we would have had an AMAZING time together!!! :D

Marylinn Kelly said...

We are able know from the ingredients what a recipe will produce. With words, the fact that this and this and this, when combined, become something yet to be determined...it is one of the things that keeps me coming back.

Anonymous said...

http://issuu.com/susanamartinez


have a look tomy mag THESTOLENPOEM.

lots of love!
y.

jackiemorvic@yahoo.es

angela simione said...

oh marylinn... yes yes yes. i love how you've said it here. the surprise that results from this and this and that. unknown lands. it is alluring and infectious and such a CALL. and such a freeing thing to realize, at least every now and then, that there is no real destination. it curves and twists, always. thank you. :)

angela simione said...

yolanda!!!! wonderful!!!! i LOVE diary stuff! LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!! the embrace of every-day life and every-day struggles... so personal and brave. i love the bit that says "when i was a whore and the museum a barometer of inner pressures". GORGEOUS!!! i will go back and spend more time with it! congratulations, brave one! thank you for sending the link! :)

Anonymous said...

thank you, my dear one!!

i would love you were a part of it too, with your writing or paintings...

love
y.