satisfaction is a wonderful feeling

.

romance.


and last night while walking in the cold, cold wind in san francisco, i realized no one has ever provided for me as well as i provide for myself.  i must somehow allow myself at least a short moment to feel proud of myself and the life i am creating.  these dreams once seemed so far out of reach...  impossible to believe ever coming true.  here i am with a passport and plane tickets with my name on them.  BIG MIDDLE FINGER TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SAID MY GOALS WERE STUPID AND UNREALISTIC. 

smiling so big right now.  :D 


hahahahaaa!  and i cannot help but giggle to myself.  i know i still have 3 1/2 weeks to wait until i board my plane to New York but it's going to fly by and my excitement is building building building.  Becca and i will rendezvous at her favorite restaurant in the village 2 days before we get on another plane to Heathrow Airport.  i'm trying not to get misty eyed just thinking of it now.  i'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself.  i have absolutely no idea what to expect but i can't wait to grab my bag and let this adventure begin.  yesterday, i played tourist in SF and bought the bag i will live out of for a month.  bright yellow in honor of my long lost Bumble Bug.  i loved that little car so much but the life that awaits is one in which owning a car is totally unnecessary.  it's unnecessary now.  i love that i live in such a way that allows me to enjoy the romance of riding trains daily.  and aside from which, me and my converse get around just fine.   ;) 

artist life.

HOLY SHIT!

sigh...

the house is warm and the left-overs are tucked away safely in the fridge. i had ham and mashed potatoes once already today and plan to have another plate of said deliciousness once more before bed. it is the third ham i've ever made and this time i got it perfectly right. it is just the right level of saltiness. so yummy. i love salty foods. and we also have a brand new bag of pistachios which will be chomped on at some point this evening as well.

we did leave the house for a while today, in spite of it being Black Friday, to go to the book store. i hate Black Friday and i do not participate. i do not find it to be exciting or exhilarating in the slightest. i don't think it's funny to be mean to people and i don't like it when i'm put in the position to be mean back just to maintain my own personal safety. there is no deal so sweet that i am bribed in to venturing out at 3am to go shopping. none. besides, seeing grandmothers fight over sweaters and grown men fight over computer screens is not joyous for me. i find it all sadly silly, to say the least, and morally abhorrent, to say it best. fuck Black Friday and all it stands for.

but the book store was pretty much as empty as it always is. sad... but at least one safe haven, one room of peace and silence, one bastion of intelligence and beauty and goodness for me to duck in to. i picked up another copy of Catcher in the Rye because some friend (i have no clue which one) stole my last copy of it. this has happened twice now. i can't make sense of it. the other thing friends, or shall i say "friends", steal from me is Hole's "Live Through This". i've had to re-buy that album more times than i can remember. it is no longer lent out to anyone. ANYONE. it's MINE MINE MINE and NO YOU CAN'T BORROW IT, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT IT!

but back to books- i also got angela carter's "The Bloody Chamber" and Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland". can you believe i've never read it? AHHHHHHHHHHH! shameful, i know! but i will rectify this most grievous trespass shortly. i promise. there's really no excuse for this except maybe that was the year i had a bad teacher or something. i really don't know. at any rate, i've got my very own copy now and will read it this winter. it seemed like the perfect book to lay in bed all day with.

and as the cashier rang me up, i noticed what a spooky little girl my purchases made me look like. it made me smile. the guy behind the counter smiled back, not creeped out in the slightest. good man.

from germany with love...

not entirely out of nowhere, but nevertheless sudden and unexpected, i've been seized by anything and everything GERMAN for the last 48 hours of my life... i mean, to the point of not really getting things done. that is how hard and hot and huge my fascination has been. it has me running back and forth between Anselm Kiefer paintings and Rammstein videos, from weird Nina Hagen operas to the poems of Paul Celan. i've even been listening to Falco (i miss you) even though he's Viennese, not German, but sang in German so i've allowed him in to my hot-tub too. and this fever shows no signs of breaking any time soon. i must learn this language so i can stop emailing the one person i know who speaks german, asking him for translations of songs and what not. i must get to Berlin and drink beer and chain-smoke and eat whatever the hell is put in front of me.



this is my favorite painting by mr. kiefer and i was lucky enough to see it in person at his retrospective at SFMOMA a couple years ago. there's just something about the led window drilled on top of this painting that holds me- a little grid that tries to establish order over chaos. and of course, touring through his massive, building-sized paintings and books, i had all sorts of inappropriate thoughts about a man who lists "semen" as one of his painting materials.



and a word of warning about this video- very artistic, but equally disturbing. written about a gruesome act of cannibalism/murder, "Mien Tiel" means "my part" and deals with the completely horrific fulfillment of Armin Meiwes personal ad.

brutal, fascinating, fearless, and completely compelling... i need to see Germany. i need to smell it and wander in its forests.

memory-lane...

today, i picked up a collection of poems i haven't leafed through in close to ten years. it had been my constant companion during those shy and awkward days of big dreams when i was 17. i had dog-eared 1/3rd of the pages... poems that had struck my heart apparently... and so i give you one of those and to myself aswell. i think i'll curl up again with this collection after dinner and wine at the neighbor's house.


Calm Under Fire
for Ted

We die in different directions
At the same pace we die
As the virtue of structure and grace

As a challenge to distance
We die, you and I, with our hands
Outreached, by chance, one night each
Toward the other. In a corner
In a cellar. With jars and webs,
A continent apart, we die

As submission to an unfinished heart.


-Jim Carroll
from Fear of Dreaming

yay!

friday night i stayed up super late, completely engrossed by The Magic Toyshop and ended up finishing it somewhere around 2:30 in the morning. i just couldn't put it down. it caught me by my eyelashes and locked me in to its pages until i read the very last word. i actually felt a bit sad to have finished it. this is a story i'd actually love to see translated to film. though the the book always wins when it comes to that sort of thing, i think this particular story would make for a wonderful movie. wonderful, wonderful book. recommended.

so last night i picked up The Pollen Room by zoe jenny. i read it when i was 17 and an aspiring writer and the only thing i remember about it is thinking it was boring. well, comfortable with the fact that i didn't know shit about shit at 17, i decided to give it another whirl. 20 pages in and it is absolutely (so far) beautiful. i'm glad i decided to ignore the judgements of my 17 year old self and revisit this book with older, more thoughtful eyes.

i'm getting better about spending some time reading everyday. it's a hard habit for me to ingrain... which is sort of strange to me. maybe i'm still on homework hiatus since graduation? at any rate, it's something i think is really important. now that i begin everyday writing in my notebook, i'd like to end everyday reading the work of others... gain some perspective and insight, i suppose... get away from my own thoughts and hang-ups and obsessions for awhile and see the world through someone else's spilt ink.

simple pleasures...

finally home from a long, but good, days' work. my feet hurt and eyes are tired but i've got a big bowl of italian wedding soup in front on me (YUM!) and the rest of the night free to do with as i please.

i started a BIG embroidered territory last night and am eager to get a little bit done everyday. it is going to take a long time. really long. but it'll be gorgeous once it's done and i enjoy working on it regardless.

i've also got The Magic Toyshop to curl back up with tonight in bed. it is so good - exactly the kind of strange, gothic fairytale i was craving and amazingly well written. the first chapter - the imagery of Melanie wandering the night in her mother's wedding dress, too big for her 15 year old self, with cut up feet from the stones and thorns - was simply beautiful and spooky and charming. i feel instantly in love with this story from the first page. i'll write a book report for you guys once i finish. :) maybe.

i've got the next two days off from work so i'll have plenty of time to indulge my quaint desires as well as catch up on some long forgotten laundry and bumming around a few galleries. tonight though, i'm going to make myself a pot of coffee, wake back up, and get to work for the next few hours. maybe i'll do the days dishes. ah, probably not.

bookish and hopeful...

heather left a few hours ago. she came up for a quick little holiday. we had our coffee fueled slumber party and talked about poetry. i read her one of the poems i've been working on for the last few weeks and i was so happy she liked it. she also helped me identify that i'm getting really ahead of myself by even wondering what "the public" would think of them. i shouldn't be thinking about that end of things at all, at least not at the stage i'm at.

all i need to be concerned with at this point is doing the work itself, learning this craft, and trying my hardest to give the poems the patience and time they require. so that's what i'm gonna do. i'm so interested in poetry and in utilizing it somehow in my larger art practice that i really do need to just calm down and do the work. it's such a wonderful art form and i'd love to be good at it. sometimes, my impatience runs away with me because i want to be good at it RIGHT NOW; but then i remember the long years i spent making paintings i could hardly stand to look at and i realize that it's gonna take time and it's gonna take a diligent, focused, concern on my part to get the work to a place that i can feel proud of. i only started making paintings that i actually liked about 3 years ago. until that point, i honestly couldn't stand my own work. but you guys have already heard that story. anyway, the point is i need to relax and just enjoy the learning process and, to an extent, be a romantic about it: write for myself alone. and i like that idea.

heather helped a lot and i so enjoy our visits together. she's the only friend i've got that has a larger than average appreciation for poetry and it's wonderful to have someone to talk with about poetry-related concerns. plus, she writes too and our visits have a definite workshop component that is so helpful to both of us. it's good to have this with another person.

we also went on a drive to explore the city and found a new used bookstore. i spend way more money than i intended to but i got some great stuff. the book i'm most excited about diving in to is Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop. i've been in the mood for something more macabre these days and haven't been able to find a book that satisfies that desire. heather said this book should do the trick and smiled wide: a very good sign. :)

she also spent more money than she wanted to but at least it went to books. it's always been pretty hard for me to feel bad about spending money on them (sorry sweetie). i've long since outgrown my two huge bookcases and don't have the space right now for a third. i have small piles of books cropping up around my bed and in my studio but i can't say that i really mind. just being around books make me one happy girl. i was born with a hopelessly romantic fascination with books and words and records and writing. i can't help it. i love all things literary. not the worst attraction one could have, right?

and in art news, tomorrow is 'reception night' in San Francisco. i will definitely be making the rounds, looking at all the new work and drinking wine. my buddy eddie is my date so i'm sure once we get to our second glass, we'll be fluent in art speak and snobbing it up for all the eavesdroppers. i'll apologize now for all the jargon you may in fact be subjected too if you stumble across us. ha! but i hope everyone will be making the rounds tomorrow night as well. it's just such an important and thoughtful thing to do to show some support for your local art community... and we artists really appreciate it too.