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.

Sep 19, 2013

look again

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during my breaks in french class, i have a habit of going to the bathroom just to take pictures of myself in the long, dirty mirror.  i don't have a full length mirror at home so i rarely see my entire self all at once.  i am always broken up in to bits and pieces;  a fractured image, shattered glances.  or maybe i'm just fucking vain.  ;)

i'll admit i like looking at myself.  i like seeing which parts of my face i inherited from my mother.  though my lips aren't quite as full as hers were, i have her mouth.  i glance at my posture and can see my father standing there.  i have his calves and shoulders.  i have my mother's eyes (all her children do) crowned by my father's evil-arch eyebrows.  i have his pale skin and her freckles. 

but i return to the mirror expecting to see something different.  i'm not exactly sure what or why.  maybe i've never learned to trust my own image.  there's something the mirror lies about or simply can't reflect-  the changeability of my face.  my sister has this quality too.  we look like totally different people in different slants of light or even simply from different angles.  each side of the face is totally different from the other.  despite my absolute love for it, i have an absolute lack of symmetry.

but that isn't really it.  it's the desire for my outsides to match my insides and i'm not sure that they do.  for however open i might seem here, there is so much i keep quite and safe from the light.  there is so much i do not share.  not with anyone.  it all lands in the diary and then slowly is reworked in to drawings or poems or blog-posts or blankets.  this morning, becca and i texted back and forth about autumn's slow arrival and the call to spend long evenings in bed knitting(her) and crocheting (me).   we talked about the urge to return to sweater-making, the ritual of black wool twisted around a hook, and the knots that work together to comprise a solitary work...  a piece of clothing which one cannot buy, but only make for oneself.  there is a comfort and a loneliness contained in such an act, in such a display of patience.  the ache is belied.  and though i may wear all my secrets emblazoned on the tshirts and sweaters i make for myself, when i cry it is for an audience of One.  i have the only seat.

it's an image of me i no longer offer face to face.  i will be silent and still.  no flutter of heartache, no betrayal of need or fear.

i like the blurry photograph in the middle the best.




2 comments:

Radish King said...

I love all of the photos and I love you your wild mind the ocean storming up in it and the eddies and the constant amazing art that streams from you. I value your presence in my life in a way that you will never know but it is real and tangible and I wake up every single morning and look at your drawings your art and you are with me and I love you with my entire heart as a friend as a mother as a peer. Don't worry about the as a mother part I can't help it.
love,
Rebecca

angela simione said...

i like the mother part. :)

thank you, love. your sweetness and warmth and consistent encouragement of me is an indescribable gold... something that i need but would never ask for. my pride is too big. maybe that's what i've been butting up against lately??? pride???

after i wrote this last night, i tacked a huge piece of paper to my bedroom wall to the right of my bed and started a new drawing. i listened to the lady gaga song in the post above on repeat and danced on my bed as i drew, a cocktail in one hand and a pencil in the other. i felt like myself and happy in the swell of that moment. i am endlessly joyful to know that a few of my drawings have made their way to your house. they are better off there. they found their true home and my heart floods with gratitude when i think of it. my heart floods with gratitude when i think of you. my heart floods with gratitude everytime i read your poems and you blog and even just your FB updates. :) i love you, beautiful friend.