i look to the right...

.


you fall asleep with your glasses on.

i turn off the movie you suggested.

i make a little film of myself dancing in the mirror:

black dress, swaying hips.

i send the film to jose because it's not out of the ordinary for him to be awake this late.

he sends me a film in return: 

girls dancing in short skirts and my art on his walls.



i should send him more.  what do i need all this art for? 



sometimes i wonder about who i am
vs.  what i was taught...



i think about that a lot lately.

maybe it has something to do with the time of year?  the slant of the sun?`  the yellow cast catches my eye- the way it drips from the leaves, the way it oozes through the blinds.  i think of home...  days when i'd come home from school to find my mother standing in the kitchen, days when i'd drag my body home so begrudgingly...  always feeling at odds, always feeling the pull toward something else, always unable to just get along...


i look at myself in the mirror and i can see that i'm older but i don't feel as old as i am.  really, i feel like i've just begun.  maybe i'm just a late bloomer?  i was simply getting ready all this time.  i was simply gathering wool.  i was only learning the vocabulary i'd need. 

.

i walked down shattuck ave in the late afternoon and it felt so much like the late afternoons i spent in my hometown.  i'll never hate oakland the way i hated redlands.  i could never hate oakland at all, it's just that i've been here too long.  i lust too hard after other sunrises.  i lust too hard after other winds echoing across other avenues.  i've drempt too hard for too long of far off places.  the residency sealed it.  i belong elsewhere.  i've known it for quite some time.  it feels good to have finally made the decision to click the BUY NOW button on a plane ticket and choose a new adventure.  i need to walk down streets i'm inspired by again.  i need to welcome the next phase.


i tried to throw away old art supplies today and couldn't do it.


there's so much to get rid of.

 i cleaned the toilet instead.

i want to give myself the gift of a fresh start but it is horrendously painful to part with certain things.  i'm leaving the contents of my bookcase until last.  it'll break my heart to have to part with certain books.  today, i looked at my copy of the collected novels of Jean Rhys and thought of Kate- those old days of writing back and forth to one another through email and the comment boxes of our blogs.  i read all of Jean Rhys' novels during the 8 days i had to wait before i could board my plane to tennessee to go watch my mother die.  then kate mailed me a copy of Roland Barthes' "Mourning Diary" after i returned home to california after the funeral.

i shouldn't have become so distant after all that (with everybody) but i honestly couldn't help it. 

i couldn't help it.

sometimes i still can't
but i'm glad to not need such a deep silence now. 


.


brian is curled up under my white quilt.

i love him and i'm glad he is here. 

tonight while we walked home from the bar, i looked at him and said, "hey, brian elder, you're my best friend!"

he looked at me and said, "oh yeah?  you're my best friend!"




i'm happy as fuck.  :)


.

reading Barthes, 3 month mark:

.













































*the text referenced here is Roland Barthes' Mourning Diary.

breath

we are losing day light. the season is robbing me of my beloved early mornings. i noticed today how dark it still was today at 6am. absolute black here at the forest's edge.

it's been freezing in the morning too. i will need to get a ski mask so that i can keep running in the winter.

running has become a ritual. breath and blood- pounding pounding, surging. a necessity. and my mind travels through time, through branches, through fog toward early light and shade while i leap across the two-lane highway, barrel down the lane along vineyards, orchards, tenements, and the wide, unkempt fields littered with rotting walnut husks.

stray dogs. squirrels. signs for who to vote for.

i am making a big cup of tea with honey in it. after i enjoy it, i will go vote. exercise my rights and then come home, dive back in to my black graphite, scratch scratch scratch the page, and sit in bed with my Mr. Wonderful- Roland Barthes. it is high on my To-Do List today to re-read Camera Lucida. it's been years. i don't remember a thing about it and that makes me feel too silly to not do anything about it. besides, as i go along, i seem to crave more and more time with Barthes' writing... believing, in a way akin to faith, that dealing with his work truly does make me a better artist. i am sure of this. and in becoming a better artist, also a better person.

i've been singing lately while i work. yesterday, i sang almost all day long while i sat on the living room floor working on a huge drawing. the day moved so quickly. and i felt such a deep stir of emotion while i worked. the swell and release that only the act of singing seems to bring. an exorcism of sorts, i suppose. a reckoning. and i felt like i accomplished something good and true just sitting here on the floor, singing and drawing, all day long.

rest.

my brain is mush. i spent pretty much all day writing yesterday and i am burned down to a stump as a result. lethargic in almost a cold way... and so i'm priming canvas. work work. and oddly enough it makes me miss my oils. the scent of them. maybe it isn't the material that i feel loathsome toward but the image itself? i know i was trying to force it in a direction it didn't want to go, and me with it.

the grunt work is cleansing though. the aching shoulder muscle. the pains of progress. ha! and possibly a nice long break from technology today. i need the outside air and commonplace objects and regularity today. the "regular" of the world outside.

of Images, my Roland says-

"In the amorous realm, the most painful wounds are inflicted more often by what one sees than by what one knows.


4. What wounds me are the forms of the relations, it's images; or rather, what others call form I experience as force. The image - as the example for the obsessive - is the thing itself. The lover is thus an artist; and his world is in fact a world reversed, since in it each image is its own end (nothing beyond the image)."


perhaps i need a little break from all the images today?

thanking my lucky stars

"A Lover's Discourse" by Roland Barthes (my forever mr. wonderful) is the best possible thing i could be reading right now. it pulls together, in such sensuous ways, all the things i've been reading, all the things i've been thinking, all the ideas, each splinter. and his eloquence is breath-taking. hard edged and shining. it is just like reading a book of poetry. it IS a work of poetry. and resistance. VIVA! he charts the site where all logic crumbles. logic falls away, unusable. reason becomes a frail thing in this land.

a fear.

an exaltation.

gorgeous. and every word, a true a word.


i have tried to pick a favorite passage to share here. i fail. there is no favorite if favorite means 'only one'. every word is necessary.

good morning, Roland!

sometimes a bad day leads to good things. a funny plurality. and a comforting one.

yesterday, i spent the majority of the day feeling bogged down and out of sorts- suddenly a bit angry and confused by life. my life. and, off and on, i thought "go bury yourself in a book. get out of yourself and in to something else". and, of course, i waited until evening to listen to my own fine suggestion. i am stubborn that way. and of course, once i obeyed the call to read, i felt endlessly better. the benefits of reading have been widely praised by everyone starting with our kindergarten teachers. and it's all true too. i don't really know why, culturally, reading has fallen out of favor in terms of "for fun" activities, or why i have gone down that same road since graduation... but it is something i have felt uneasy about this entire past year and a half. i have felt out of sorts and without a good guide.

lately, i've been day-dreaming my own memories back in to the present. the Big One being my final year in school when i would read every morning on the train - a 45 minute ride to campus - and then again on the train back home. and of course there was all the reading i had to do at school, for homework, reading as research for papers, theory to explore, philosophy, poetry, supreme Texts, and Text-based Art as well. reading, looking back, was king. the most dominant and influential activity in my life. more and more, i have missed this way of living and have wanted to go back to that practice for a very long time... pretty much since the moment i set it down. i have resolved to add reading to my waking rituals from here on out- after my morning 'coffee and notebook' time, and before The Almighty Jog- right at the start of the day. i will get back on my beloved and horribly missed, longed after 'train'.

and so, this morning as i stirred in bed as i woke, i remembered something i'd read yesterday on a poetry website that said "Serious writers are serious readers"... and i thought about our dear sweet Radish King's constant assertion (and healthy affirmation) that reading is just another form of writing... so i got out my readers from class. they are here in a big stack- the ones i felt closest to my senior year and the ones that feel significant and relevant to my life at present, to my practice, as it is, today, and i jumped right in:

i read 'The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text" by Roland Barthes. HA! big stuff to begin the day with and, magically, is about everything i was just speaking about. :) especially the fact that, historically, reading and writing were viewed by society as a single act in spite of it's plural nature- much like how a musician practices: she is both playing and listening at the same time. the separation between reading and writing is a fairly recent social change. dividing these things isn't good and, for me, has been fairly detrimental to all sorts of things. i am a person that likes ideas. LOVES ideas. and by cutting myself off from an entire side of language (reading), no wonder i haven't felt necessarily good. no wonder, i have felt that my writing, as a practice, has suffered. no wonder i feel less able to answer Art's call in a lot of ways. no wonder my stamina has slipped.

the two essays deal with much more than what i'm reacting to right now- lots of heavy shit that i will take in pieces and most likely re-read again and again. but it is the focus on being plural that struck me so deeply today and offered such a wonderful comfort.

because it is true that 'what you put in is what you get out'... and if i put big ideas in myself, those big ideas will work themselves back out on to my canvas and across the blue lines of my notebook... my practice becomes more whole... deeper... a way of living. in this sense, it is life imitating art, not the other way around... and that's the way it should be. if not life imitating art, than what are the lessons of art for? this isn't to say that artists are nothing more than copyists, spewing out the lessons they've taken in. that is not what i am saying. i am saying that artists must digest ideas, live with them, process them, roll around in bed with them... and whatever transpires while you are rolling around, whatever change or mutation or inspiration has taken place, will find its' way back out on to the canvas, inside a poem, in the stitches of whatever it is one builds.

all this to say, reading is God. or it needs to be. language, study, wrestling with meaning, making meaning plural, deciding against the mandate that a person reduce herself to a singular entity: mother ONLY. daughter ONLY. soldier ONLY. writer ONLY. no. that is not the way to live. that is not the definition of 'human'. to be human is to be a collection of things- ideas, outlooks, 'titles', cares, concerns, activities, and approaches. this multiplicity is essential... even if only in reference to a person's own sanity and happiness. you cannot cut yourself away from your shadow... no more than reading should be separated from writing... because what is the point of writing if no one reads. writing goes beyond its' action... when it is experienced by another (the reader... even if 'the reader' is just yourself) it is activated, it thrives, it is constantly in the NOW, the present. it breathes. the work goes and continues and survives. and so too humans should survive- constantly plural, irreducibly plural. a multitude.

i won't worry myself anymore over choosing a single title for myself. or at least i will fight that worry when it finds me. i will read and create a deeper life- a more inclusive, benevolent life... a life that strives to practice the lessons that ART teaches.

and this is me when i read big things first thing in the morning, hopped up on coffee. :)