dear kate

originally a comment left here.




i wrote of you the other day on my blog. like rebecca, i read here every day too. i miss you on days you don't post. like a junkie. entirely selfish for my fix. that is the way i miss your writing.

but i am blasted apart lately. shrapnel in the air. that is what i am. that is why it is so hard for me to leave comments on other people's blogs for the passed few months. that is why it is so hard for me to fall in to a rhythm here on my own blog. i am shrapnel. or space junk. colliding. not falling. nothing has fallen back down to earth yet. everything is suspended and staring and sharp-edged. i don't know what this means for me except massive change. i know the change, eventually, will be Good. i know you know this road.

so many things seem unreal. in the Baudrillard sense of the word. the fucking Matrix. all a farce.

real things: nail polish (i'm sort of sorry i keep talking about the stuff but not really. there is something life-affirming, not to mention Girl-Affirming, about it and i need that right now.), wild hair, art, books, cool shoes, music, poems, diaries. and the need to be alone long enough to stake some sort of claim to myself. that's been big on the list lately. i've been spending so much time off on my own, involved in my notebook and studying and making things... it is a hunt for identity maybe. or a way to find the new dings and cracks. or a way to establish a new identity. this new self. this status of Non-Daughter. or is it Anti-Daughter? i have an entire rant about this in my notebook which might end up in public soon.

sometimes i worry about what i share here. sometimes i am embarrassed and worry myself sick that i have said too much.

i've had those same humiliating discussions about jobs and money. they are so horrible and so damaging. they have reduced me to a tearful mess on so many occasions. so few family members will ever understand the sacrifice of Life Style for the chance to be an artist. keep writing as much as you can. and i love the image i have of you writing and reading in those "train wreck" dresses. that sentence of yours: I've decided lately I want to have the personal aesthetic of a train wreck. ah, i know this and i love it and it made me smile so damn wide when i read it. it made me feel proud of you. there is bravery in it. bravery is always worth more than fearlessness. so much more. and always will be.

i've been working on dressing like a gothy patti smith. patti smith back in the days of being a kid with mappelthorpe and Fuck The Clock and all that bit. white t-shirt, black pants, cool dirty shoes. but i'm also working on being brave enough to wear insanely bright red lipstick. i'm trying to become the sort of girl who can do that and not feel self-conscious. i'm trying to go from a naked mouth to a painfully red one. it's pretty jarring. i wear it around the house and my sweetie does a double-take and says "that's really bright". i respond "that means it's cool" and leave the conversation there.

i have a valentine for you. i am horribly late this year, i know. but it is here in an envelope and i promise to get it to the post-office today. i'm such a fucking jerk sometimes. sometimes it's hard to get much done. sometimes the simplest task - going to the post-office - presents itself as such a huge, daunting, unbelievably high hurdle. it's ridiculous. this is sadness and the related selfishness, i guess. i hate it.

my fingernails are silver. gold at your tips makes me smile and feel close to you. i keep buying books you've recommended so that i can be a smarter, better, more connected, more sensitive artist... a better human being.

the other day as i was walking across campus i saw the huge banner stretched across the library that read WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH! i thought... do we still need a month dedicated to us like this? and then i looked at the swarms of 19 and 20 year old boys i was trying to make my way through, a sea of boners, and sadly realized that yes, we still do.

when you're doing readings for Green Girl i hope you can come to san francisco. i want to see you in your dresses and go to the SFMOMA with you.

and then you said this:

I am also realizing in terms of my communication of the self here, and in private, in public and in private, all in an attempt to have a community, I do not really articulate the nature of my depression, my apartness, my solitude, and I still even though I have formed friendships of a sort through this do not understand the texture of anyone else's suffering. Because when we see each other or write each other we always speak around it. So how do I really reveal myself at all? I have one friend who I write my depression to, and she writes hers back to me. Like sliding notes underneath the door.

tis a call to action that i take very seriously. i'm trying to do better. to be more willing to risk everything in order to reveal the texture, as you say. i want to be able to do it. and i need to.

to echo rebecca again... i learn so much from you.

<3