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.

Apr 10, 2013

strange and beautiful

i rescued all of my books from my storage unit today.  10 boxes.  i have not yet unpacked them.  i need to by a bookcase.  i open each one and peer in.  a time-capsule, each and every one.  i open the cardboard flaps and read the titles: my loves! here is "A Lover's Discourse", here is "Ariel", here is "With Deer".  i paw through and find the black ceramic cups i made 2 years ago in Santa Rosa.  odd to hold them... an artifact.  in some ways, it is like holding a different person's objects...  or how one feels when one picks up a relic from one's childhood.  Childhood!!!  i have the entire collection of The Munch Bunch books!  here!  now! they are currently in my kitchen!  does anyone else have these????  these books and my white teddy bear are the only relics of my childhood i have left.  it is strange to see them.. strange to hold them...  to hold them and wonder what might have been.  what might have been if our parents were ready to be parents...  what might have been if we'd ever really been considered...

but i am not sad and don't mean to usher in a somber tone.  not at all.  i am more in a state of Wonder than anything else.  days come and go.  i look at the sky.  i write.  i take pictures.  i look at my hands.  and now, i can turn books over in my hands, smell their spines and leaf through them as if each second were an hour, as if each second were a lifetime.  bibles, all of them. 

looking at these boxes i know that i can't cart all of this into my future.  i'll have to make the hard decision (soon) to sell most of these volumes.  there's simply to way to transport such a mass in to my next phase of life.  it's a LIBRARY!  and i have no clue where to begin. 

i left picture frames on the side of the road today and they were gone within the hour.

and then dinner with my beautiful friend Trish this evening.  when she dropped me back off at my house i told her that not a single member of my mother's family called me over the holidays.  not one.  this may or may not have something to do with the fact that i swear.  rumour has it that my dropping of an F-Bomb on my sister's Facebook page caused quite an upset.  and so:  silence.  me.  my mother's eldest and without any other parent.  orphan.  and despite all that, a grown ass woman. 

well now...

guess whose religion is glaring?  not mine. 

Trish hugged me and reminded me that we can make new families.  everywhere we go.  it comforted me to know that maybe the disappointment i've known is not the entire story.  maybe there are people in the world who are capable of a deeper love than what i've experienced.  maybe there are people who mean what they say.

in 2 1/2 weeks i'll be back in my beloved New York.  i'll bring a backpack and nothing else.  a change of jeans, two t shirts, socks.  i'll have 5 days to explore the museums and galleries i've yet to enter.  i'll have 5 days to eat at good restaurants and drink in wild bars.  i'll have 5 days reprieve from giving a fuck if anyone understands me or loves me.  i'll write and walk the High Line and meander through the beautiful Bowery.  and until then, i have my wealth of books to keep me company, the greatest of which being 4 years of volumes of my diary.  geez.  what a world made entirely of ink and commitment. 

7 comments:

Radish King said...

Let's you and I meet in New York on April 1, 2014. I mean it. I am dead serious. Want to?
love,
Rebecca

angela simione said...

YES I WANT TO!!!! dead serious as well. i'll be living there at that point so it'll be an easy thing to swing. and if i get held up in some way and not living in NYC by then, i'm basically always looking for an excuse to visit that fair city as it is. a rendezvous with you is a perfect excuse to buy a plane ticket, dear friend. ;)

XOXOXO

Radish King said...

So Page and I were discussing this. He wants to come of course as he's never been to NY. Airline tix are not too expensive now. We'll buy our tix as soon as possible. I'm thinking arrive in NY late Friday March 28th or early Saturday morning the 29th stay a week and come home April 5th. Enough time to sight see check out some museums walk around and be crazy and if I can (once I buy the tix) arrange a reading at some point. What do you think of my plan? Page is adamant about wanting to meet you and the city. If you don't have room for us I'll save up for hotel room + money for taxis meals etc.

let me know what you think. Then I'll plan on getting the tix when I can and go from there.
xoxoxox

angela simione said...

get the tickets!!!! yay!!!! it'll all work out no matter what. :D amazing!!!!!

Anonymous said...

you do have another parent

angela simione said...

i guess that depends largely how one defines "parent", anonymous. and even if i do, what's it matter? i'm talking about my own life and my own experiences in this space.

Kelly Simione said...

Dear Anonymous,
No. We do not have another parent.