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.

Jul 12, 2014

brooding

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honest to god, i look at my old art and i don't even know who created it.

i look at the work and i remember so clearly each stroke of the brush, the temper of the day, the way the light fell across the oil and lit up the green pollen that fell from the Evergreens above and endeared itself to the liquin on my canvas...  i remember how annoying it was.  J coming home from work covered in grease and kissing me on the forehead, looking approvingly at the progress i'd made since he'd last seen the canvas while our dog cowered with excitement at his feet, waiting to be scratched on the head and told "good girl!'.   i was waiting for the same phrase...

because it was me who spread that black across sheets of white.  it was me who went running down highway 128 each morning with a rotweiller at my side, cigarette in hand and a cup of coffee waiting at the finish line each morning.  it was me who blogged every day and slid my paint around and tried to read philosophy but got too caught up in dreaming about far away places instead.  i did those things.  i have the memories; no matter how hard i try to block them out.

it's been so easy to look away.

i don't want to remember the Past.  i like to think of it in huge swatches of time.  eras, rather than specifics.  i don't let myself think about how broken my heart actually is...  how sensitive i am...  how easily hurt, how easily turned off...  how easy it is for me to give up.

all it takes is one harsh word.

maybe that's unfair but that's the way it is.  i just can't stomach it anymore.  i've had too much of the yelling and the fighting and the name calling.  i just can't do it anymore.  and i'm okay if that makes me a freak.  i walk along listening to pop music with tears in my eyes and thinking of my mother's hand on my cheek.  i walk along thinking of a child i'll never bare running up and grabbing my pinky and saying "mama!"  i walk along and thing of the close family warmth that other people know and trust.  and i am separate.  i am individual.  and that's okay.

maybe after all that's happened i'm incapable of actually having the type of life other people seem to hold so dear?  i think of my dead mother and i can hear her screaming at me, "just be yourself!  do whatever makes you happy, little girl!"

and i do.  i try to.  i'm happiest when i can wrangle a plane ticket and some time off, alone with my diary, ink flowing and no clock to punch.  it's just that the lines get crossed so easily when it comes to other people.  my heart is so full of hope that it pains me to endure anything less that what we are capable of.  perhaps i am a perfectionist after all.  and, let me tell you,



it is hell.

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1 comment:

Kelly Simione said...

I am amazed sometimes how we took very different paths in life, yet ended up with such similar scars. I guess it shouldn't surprise me the way it does, we are sisters afterall.
We were raised to seek approval from others and put their needs and wants before our own. We were raised to keep quiet and look down, to apologize for someone else's faults. We were raised to want that picket fence life, the fairy tale ending, somehow believing against every reality we'd witnessed that 'happily ever after' could indeed be something we could find.
We both spent years of our lives being tortured by unhealthy relationships with men entirely too much like our father who ridiculed our dreams.
I hate it. I hate that you had to experience those things too, that my own experiences couldn't somehow save you from that pain.
Here's my theory: after spending so many years being taught to lessen our wants and dreams, and growing up to realize that many of those ideals we were taught are horrifically wrong, and after years of staying silent about our pain, and rationalizing the painful actions of others we've come to a point of zero tolerance.
I have no tolerance for being mistreated, for bullshit, and lies, and excuses. I have no tolerance for empty apologies either.
After all of the years of pain there is a lot I refuse to accept. I don't see that as a bad thing.
However it can, indeed, be a very lonely life.
I won't accept certain behaviors by other people because I can see where accepting leads, and am unwilling to let myself return there.