hannah, yes, i think you are right (see comment box of post below). i read through what was available online at the amazon link you sent and i nodded and nodded and nodded. i came to that word - that horribly popular word - and thought yep, that's exactly where i am. the word is liminal.

in-between. that's how i've been living for so long it seems. in a mist or in a tantrum, it's hard to say. i swing back and forth between knowing, for sure, which road i need to take, and having absolutely no clue who i am or what i'm doing. lost.

there are days when i feel so angry. angry to the point of hatefulness. so angry i go cold.

i suppose a death will do that to you. i spoke with a friend this weekend and, of his father's death, he said for two years straight i was moving in ten different directions. such a sense of relief swept over me. a cool hand on a fevered forehead. see, i'm not crazy i thought. but maybe my problem is that i'm not crazy enough? that i am so afraid of Shame that i do not allow myself certain expressions, certain risks of emotion and behavior. i'm afraid of "being bad". i'm afraid of being a bad daughter. my horrible lessons are surfacing and the anger i feel, the sense of being cheated, is so strong that it is hard to feel any sense of security or stability. i need an environment of stability in order to work, in order to wrestle with all the chaos that births these images and words. i need a safe home so that i can be unsafe in another: my practice.

the past 5 months have been odd. especially the last three. living between towers of cardboard, all our books packed away and book cases broken down, knowing that an exit was on the horizon but not when. unsettled and afraid of so many things, i took to smaller modes of work. the diary and the sweaters. i made a few paintings and a few drawings but no where near the usual amount. it felt true, honest, to work on the sweaters and scribble in secret. it felt true to not worry about oil painting and that grand history of art. it felt honest to just look at the installations and sculpture of louise bourgeios and read anais nin's diary. it felt right to to work in these tiny loops: the loops of my cursive, the loops of yarn on my hook. black ink and black wool and the slip of graphite every now and then...

maybe my practice is changing? how could it not?

and now this change in location, a change i've wanted for so long. still, there is something hard about packing one's life and history (self) in to boxes. it is sad and sentimental and heartrending. handling the old objects and wondering why i even have them. they are here because they've always been here. i give them to The Goodwill. i must. there is such a tremendous need in me to crawl out from under the weight of my family, the weight of our Past, yet it is so hard for me to toss out certain scraps from that Past. of course, i save the photo albums and heirlooms... but the trash that has followed me must be let go of.

most of it is gone.

next to me there is a pile of old drawings that i need to go through today. j is washing the tops of the walls where i couldn't reach. there is the small pile of books i kept with me just so i could feel safe, feel like myself in the middle of this chaos, and my diary is almost filled. only a few pages from the end but, even if i don't fill them before we leave, i will buy a new notebook to begin the first morning i wake in the new place.

memorial day

there is a horrible sadness on me today... growing in my sleep the passed few days and during recent rounds of somnambulism too. i have been caught in that state of walking reverie and fantasy. that state where i am only half present, only half listening, standing with one foot only in the current physical reality and the other in my inner reality, far from the horrors and obligations of the later. the moments when physical reality calls me back to tend to it are so sorrowful and painful. the simplest chore becomes a lengthy exercise in tremendous self-control. an exercise in how to not scream, how to not crumble, how to hold one's self together and stand silently while rage and confusion clash like rams beneath one's skin. i can't tell you what it is. it's never just one thing. all this change, all this chaos gets to me sometimes. there are days when nothing is right and i have no clue what to do about it. there are days when i just want to run, days when i just want to cry.

the last time i did this - the big CLEAN - i was alone in the house for three days attempting to convince myself that as i lifted stains from the carpet i also rid myself of stain and corruption... that as i erased the traces of the family who lived there, maybe i could erase the traces of that family within me.

today, we wash the walls and put our odds and ends in the last boxes.

wear it, swear it.

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forward...



or backward, you wouldn't believe the looks one gets for wearing this to the grocery store. hahahaha!

body as billboard. sweater as art form. fashion = announcement, pronouncement, provocation, an embrace of the filthy word. this sweater robs those jerks of the ability to shame a girl in to silence by throwing this little slur out. so common. so horribly common. fuck that. crazy like my mother? you have no idea.

forward

i woke up and wrote for an hour, drinking irish breakfast tea all the while, and then began filling a box full of our dishes wrapped up in my clothes to keep my beloved blue willow intact while they are transported from the country to the city.

i can't tell you how anxious and joyful i am. how ready. how absolutely ready i am to move. i keep wondering about the images i will make once this is all over. once i'm out of this place and back to something that feels more like myself, my life. i'm eager to find the shadows i will roll up in next.

i took my German final yesterday and worked my last shift at my retail gig. my life here is winding down quickly. we moved the majority of our stuff to the new digs this passed weekend and now there's just the strangler possessions to deal with and the obligatory deep-cleaning to muscle through. i want to be done. i want to be moved. i want to wake up in a new room, in a new square of sunlight, with a new life budding all around me.

hope

we took a truck-load of books over to the new place yesterday. easily a thousand pounds of paper weight. GEEZ! hahahaha! and this morning i loaded as many paintings as i could in to the truck and j will cart them all over later this afternoon while i get in some study time in preparation for my German final and go to my second-to-last shift at my retail gig. the end of things... the slowing of the old cycle yet still racing to the finish. there are things that i must finalize and be responsible to for just a little bit longer. walking outside yesterday evening in the beautiful yellow light in oakland and having a new set of keys in my hand woke up a firey hope. it was hard to drive away and come back up here to the cabin. and looking at j across the restaurant table yesterday as we celebrated with philly cheesesteaks, i realized that nothing is broken and that we are completely beautiful, wiser than we were at the beginning of this little detour out to the country, and stronger for having gone down this road. i stayed up late drinking mint tea and finished Just Kids. i'm not going to spoil it for you, just read it. especially if you're an artist. especially if you need a dose of courage and an art-related pep talk. i think it's required reading for all artists or anyone caught in a struggle. it's a very encouraging, inspiring document. patti smith's honesty in this memoir is so generous, so beautiful. the book, in so many ways, functions as a guide and a warm hug. it was definitely the right thing for me to read as my life here winds down and a new one springs up in the east bay, right next door to my beloved san francisco.





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studying and casting spells

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tomorrow night we get the keys

i stumble across collections of words, phrases, and fall in to them like a tar pit, screaming THAT'S WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY! and loving the feeling of being stuck (so crazily, inexplicably comfortably stuck!) in someone else's writing.

i have been thinking about (fearing) homelessness for months as we searched and searched fruitlessly for new digs, always coming up empty handed, making phone calls that were never returned, making appointments that the other person always forgot, running face first in to rules that i could not wrap around my life, could not endure the strangulation, could not abide by just to end up being stuck in place i wasn't all that happy about being anyway. we began planning to put all our boxed possessions in storage and living in cars, surfing couches, buying a gym membership just to be able to take showers. i'm serious. and i thought of Genet and i thought i have no real home anyway and i thought no, wait, my real home is my notebook, my real home is this Blackland, these images i create.

these thoughts have been present and potent. they originated when my mom leaned in to death and the threat of homelessness surfaced the moment i returned home from her funeral. too much at once. and it has been too-much-at-once for months now. it was so impossibly hard to find a new apartment in santa rosa that i really did start thinking maybe God doesn't want me to live in the north bay? the fates really have seemed pretty opposed to the idea. and so we start looking in our beloved east bay again, in good ol' Oakland, and the very first place we submit an application to becomes ours. we pick up the keys tomorrow evening. we will load our boxes of books in to the truck tonight.

the reception at Project One last night was beautiful and felt like a homecoming, like a longing satisfied, like a return. art on the walls, my Worry Roses for my mom installed, friends all around, happy to hear that we are moving back after three long years out here in the countryside. three years... it doesn't seem real. it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long. a long, strange dream... not a Home.

and i needed the connection. i needed the tall white walls and people milling around with wine glasses in their hand. i needed the air, the space, the breath of these things.

i'm reading Just Kids by patti smith right now and it's the most perfect thing i could be reading. my friends freya and doug read it, one right after the other, a week or so ago and lent it to me the second they finished reading it. it's the perfect follow-up to volume 2 of anais nin's diary and the perfect preface to our move back to oakland. my fear about homelessness lifted instantly and i thought well, patti smith slept on a stoop in new york... i could sleep in my car in san francisco. what's the big deal? and then of course, the very next day, we get an apartment. God approved. hahaha!

the week i didn't write here i was dealing with all these things and a long-time friend of the family who has known me since i was about 7 years old or so that we lost track of a few years back tracked me down on facebook. still thinking of us as family, still thinking of my mother as her best friend, still thinking of my mother as her sister, she sent me an excited message asking about my mom and how to get a hold of her, she called me mija just like always, and then in her happy hunt for connection she stumbled across my blog. she read, here, about my mother's death. her best friend, her sister. and another message was sent. she left her phone number and i called her the second i got in the door from work. hearing her stunned horror was painful. hearing her voice, a voice i've heard all my life since i was just a little girl, felt like Home. she looked at my work online and felt proud of me.

and a few days ago i read this post at repat blues' blog.

"There is no such thing as home. Home becomes art, the creation of art. Turning to art, working the wound. Stew's play. Passing Strange. I've always been passing strange. I'd rather be bad at this (writing, acting, fucking) than good at X (Selling air conditioners. Public relations. Saying Good Morning. Making eye contact)."

these are the words that i am happily stuck in. all of it. each word, a bell ringing. a knock on the head reminding me of what i must do. i got out of class yesterday (my last day of instruction before two rounds of finals next week) and immediately got in the truck and got on the freeway and went to san francisco. i left this life behind and picked up another 70 miles away in a beautiful room in a beautiful city. i hugged friends and i met strangers and i had champagne.

freya brought me roses and her children painted me a little picture of a rainbow which will go on the refrigerator in our new kitchen tomorrow evening. i turned in my almost-two-week notice at my retail gig and will be back on a crazy, meandering job-hunt in no time. i think of Genet and patti smith and repat blues and my friends. i think of the struggle and i think it's so completely fucking worth it when i think of what an artist's life is. if it ever comes down to it, the roof of a car is still a roof and i can totally live there because my Home is in my notebook and the graphite on the page, the paintings on the wall, and the words that women write.

portrait

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Lamb
42" x 35"
oil on canvas, 2010


i finished this painting late last year. it is leaning against the wall in the living room. i've been sitting next to it a lot lately. while i read or scribble in my notebook in the evenings after my sweetie has gone off to bed, i sit by sylvia's portrait. there is something about her smile that comforts me. she is a rare beauty indeed and i feel protective of her image, her memory. when i look at her smile, i smile. this will be the first painting i take to the new place.

the apartment hunt is finally over and so many hopeful things have arrived

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this day and every day:

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bedroom wall

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note to self/world on a computer printout of a work by barbara kruger hung on my bedroom wall directly opposite my bed.

anais nin and judas and the world a diary makes:

i just read this passage in volume 2 of her diary a few days ago and copied so many of these sentences into my own notebook. what a gift to stumble across this reading. a gift to hear her voice, to hear her read and giggle.





and there's something about this, most obviously that last bit, that pairs so well with lady gaga's new video JUDAS that was released today. listening to anais read her ideas about women's creations needing to be made with their own blood, nourished by their own milk, but with the acknowledgement that she did not come to this act of creation alone (a very post-modern notion, nicht wahr?) and is not turned away from Creating by this fact, is important to hold on to when engaging with today's art, no matter what form the art takes. i think gaga is a grand example of this. she is helping to create a language which embraces the feminine, the bloodiness of being female, of Becoming a woman, Becoming a human, Becoming an artist. it is a bloody job. i listen and i look and i see that her mirror is familiar to me. there is something in this that calls to something very basic within my construction as Female. her words! confession. the honest onslaught of hidden desire, the secrets that must be kept, the truth that must be squelched... these are things a diary would contain. could a pop song be a diary entry? could it be an extension of that mode of private practice, an outcropping of a totally private world? yes. and her make-up! and when my mother died all i wanted was bright red lipstick and luscious perfumes. i wanted beauty around me. i wanted the reverie of gorgeous smells. we are called Whore for wanting such things. we are called Whore for having Wants. i watch and i listen. her luxurious references! her fake fingernails pointing, pointing, pointing! the weaponry of them, bejewelled skewers. she is a golden thesaurus! she becomes her own judas, betraying her king, betraying herself, but not shying from the work of Creation... not shying from the language that women must create for themselves. still. the awful silence will be born again tomorrow. we must scratch and scribble every day.

as i read anais nin's diaries i wonder if men read them too? do they respond to the language that is made. the caress contained within each turn of phrase, the glory and horror and beauty of exposure.

i wonder if the diaries have, again, become dangerous books? silence is thick these days and i am guilty at times of it as well. i'm trying to become less guilty. with everything i've got and it is hard, i am trying to Become less silent. i scratch and scribble and maybe i am making a world too. notebook as tool.

what if???

a few nights ago i watched Coco Avant Chanel and i've been thinking of it ever since. this orphan girl and her sister, both making their ways through the world, equal turns of generosity and brutality... the steep ups and downs that always seem to follow people with a creative mind. i found myself wondering as i went through my long day of school and work yesterday... is it harder for us? artists, i mean. is life harder for us? is it somehow more brutal? more affecting? i guess it is. i suppose it must to be. it must be and we must let it be if we expect to be able to do this Work. we have to be sensitive and open. we have to roll on the ground and expect to get splinters. we have to allow affliction, maybe even infection. there's no way around it. and, when i think about it, i'd want it no other way. if i turn my back and drop my eyes, i am no longer really living. i no longer have anything to say. yes, it sounds so dramatic and obnoxious and romantic, i know, but i think in this climate of strange silence and strangulation of ideas, suffocation of education, and the rampant acts of Stifling i see it becomes even more important for artists to NOT RUN. i have to risk being called "dramatic". i have to risk being called "romantic" and "obnoxious" if i am to get over the threshold, if i am to stumble in to a territory that is honest and brave. as i turned on to the freeway yesterday to head to work, i thought of my mom and i wondered if she knew it was coming so soon. death. i wondered what that would feel like to know in 3 weeks i'll be dead. would i be panicked? or would i be assured of what was right for me to to do? would i know exactly how to spend those final 21 days doing? i asked myself: what would i do if i knew i only had 3 weeks to live. i'd write and i'd draw with every fucking thing i've got.

so i guess i've got my compass.

i've been drawing since 8am and only stopped to eat a bowl of oatmeal and write this. i am in the drawing today. in love. when i've got a show on the horizon, my fire and hope really start to blaze.

3 weeks to go. BURN! BURN! BURN!

monday, and i am glad for the solace a busy week provides. it is hard to get too stressed out by looking too far down the road when you've got a lot to do. Und ich habe viel zu tun. still, i'd love to be able to stay home and paint today. i spent my entire sunday with the work. i got lost in a big graphite piece and a big oil painting for most of the day and spend a few hours reading anais nin's diary (volume 2). i drank tea and practiced my german and then went back to the canvas. on may 16th, we install "May Fairs" at Project One in San Francisco. me, megan woolfe (YAY!!!! hi megan!), charmaine olivia, and chelsea brown have teamed up to bring you one brilliant and beautiful collection of work, that's for sure. the show opens wednesday, may 18th, and i definitely want to see you. do come by and give me hugs. i get to install my Worry Roses (for my mother, for myself) again and I am OVERJOYED that so many people like the peice. i am absolutely honored to get a new wall to show it on. the more air-time this piece gets, the better. huh, mama? :)

and then june 2nd... another group show in huntington beach. GO! GO! GO! and i'm praying that, between these two shows, much of the work will find their new and perfect homes. there's a wide, dark threshold i need to cross inside The Work and i want to make sure as many of my babies are in safe hands and working their magic out in the world as possible before i cross it. but i guess that's not really something i can do much about. all i can do is put the work up on a wall. all i can do is trust it. all i can do is keep going, keep pushing, and keep sliding the graphite across the page.

for as much fun as i'm having being back in school and learning new things and having a more concrete daily schedule, i'm really looking forward to summer when i can spend entire days reading and writing again, drawing and crocheting, no homework to worry over, just the freedom of Practice. 3 weeks to go. but honestly, it is a pleasure to have this much art to care for and think about and worry over. a pleasure and an honor. absolutely.

and now- back to back school and work.

have a wonderful day!