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.

Nov 3, 2013

nothing in particular

.

let me begin.  for however unsure i am, let me begin.  i've been aching to write here, to feel the pleasing click of these keys beneath my fingers but then i clam up.  there's some really strange shit happening in my private life.  or, to say it better, some really disgusting shit...  and i don't know how to keep it from bleeding out here.  i don't know if speaking about certain things related to my family and our past should be spoken of here.  i still war with the urge to keep the humiliating things secret, with whether or not my feelings even matter...  just like a child.

my sister and i speak often these days of our childhood and formative years.  we trade memories and see how our perception and recollections square up.  it's interesting to be an adult now and to look back, to actually be successful at seeing things from her point of view, to be able to listen more as a sister rather than a Big Sister.  we're only 3 years apart.  at this point, we're really just the same age- 30 and 33.  it feels so strange to think of my baby sister that way... weirder still to realize that our brother is now the same age our father was when he dove into that swimming pool and broke his neck.  35.

35 has never seemed so achingly young.

i come home and stick my tips in my mama's black and white striped teapot.  i dream of germany in the summertime.  i dream of france, of standing below the Eiffel Tower in june.  i'll hardly be able to communicate in french by then but that's not going to stand in the way of the explorations i must make.  more and more, i see the luck of my life and try to stop thinking of my age.  i try to focus on this great romance i'm living, so far from the life that came before, the life which surrounded me just a year and half ago...  a life i was not meant for and how inadequate the world felt as a result.  now, i open my eyes to Hope.  i open my eyes to Beauty in spite of the horrors we confide in each other about.

tonight, Amanda said "i'm sorry" when i mentioned that the holiday season makes me sad.  i saw it in her eyes that she was thinking of my dead mother and absent father, the fact that i work every holiday because that's exactly where i prefer to be.  my siblings each live no less than a 8 hour drive away.  there is no one's home to skip off to on thanksgiving.  not that i'd even really want one after all that's happened.  i don't.  i'm finally learning how to walk passed smiling families and not bat an eye.  i'm finally becoming okay with all the normal things normal families have and do.  little by little, we heal.  little by little, i catch sight of myself standing tall regardless.  fucking regardless.  :)

this isn't a pity party.  i don't feel sorry for myself.  i feel a bit horrified at times and very confused, but never sorry.  i laughed all night with my coworkers and friends and the guests to our restaurant.  i walked, one foot in front of the other, with total assurance and power through the darkened Oakland streets, to my humble little home.  i have a roof over my head tonight and a white russian on the bedside table.  i'm wearing the matching Marc Jacobs rings Annie and i bought in late july in new york.  i am snug below my white quilt.  i look up at the postcards Becca sent me tucked in the corner of the armoire mirror and the ones i sent myself from Berlin. more often than not, i feel so impatient with myself and think i should be doing more than waiting tables and making yarnbombs and drawings.  but lately i've somehow managed to feel privileged-  it is a privileged to be an artist and it is a privilege to be learning other languages.  lately, the sweetness of my life wells up before me and it becomes hard for me to complain.  i sit back and try to relax.  i tell myself "you're good enough, little girl.  you're doing just fine."  more than fine.

on Halloween, i danced all night long with my beautiful friends.  i drank hard and shook my sequins even harder.  i felt alive and beautiful and happy in a way that is sometimes hard for us orphans to feel-  i felt normal.



the thing i like most about restaurant life is that it gives me a place where i can feel like i belong.

.