some nights, a girl can't help but think: FUCK IT ALL.

God...  sometimes i hate your creation.  do i even believe in You?  sometimes i hate everyone.  what good comes of humanity?  at its most basic, is there anything to experience joyfully?

i guess i'm just pissed off.

who knows me?  no one knows me.  they think they do but they don't.  maybe my brother.  maybe my sister.  everyone else thinks they have an accurate read on my number but the card they hold is upside-down.  tell me, show me:  where is your dead mama and all the  prayers whispered in her name?  where is your absent father and his absent strength?  where is the lover who rejected you, totally?  where is the love you've always needed, just out of reach, so close you could feel the eyelashes and still denied?  so please. judge me to my face.  call me "bitch" and act like i'm some spoiled little girl who doesn't know how to pay her bills on time.

does the context really matter?  does the impetus?  because when it comes right down to it the fact is that i feel alone, destroyed and singular in the worst way.  there are nights when i feel so happy to go to bed alone...  and there are nights when i feel so enormously alone and come face to face with the realization that, in spite of appearances, i've been going to bed alone for years.  no one is going to be my rescuer.  there is no knight in shining armor to wait for.  it's all bullshit, i promise you.  the fairy tales that have infected me are criminal and i hate you all for spilling them across my flesh.  stop taunting me with your soft phrases.  stop irritating the soft corners of my heart with your romantic hope.  i am not encouraged, i feel devoid.  the lack i feel is enormous and indescribable.  i want nothing from you but your warm hand.  if you would deny me this, deny me all and go on your merry way.  find a girl less enthusiastic, less passionate, less likely to get her hair in a twist.  i care too much to be silent.  i care far too much to look at the flesh of another and not want to combat death to the inth.  i will wage such wars as you've never seen and i will wage them, gently, across your skin with my lips and breath.  i will make you feel alive and taut and tender.  i will understand you in a way you've yet to be understood.

i can be loyal...

if only you would raise a hand to my face and be loyal to me.





i honestly can't believe what i've been subjected to.  i can't believe what i've tolerated.  i look in the mirror at my budding crow's feet and wonder , "what the hell have you done to yourself?  what took you so long, girl, to stand up for yourself?"

it isn't often that i cry in my white room.   when this shit hits, it hits hard.

ignore me.

i am impatient and silly and i have a big bleeding heart.

anger

yesterday in the rain, a run-in with a stranger. an unhinged woman far older than i decided to verbally threaten me. i raised my voice in turn. she hustled off, lost in whatever fanaticism her mind resides in. i should've just shined her on and said "ookey dokey", made her feel like an asshole. or worse, stupid. but the fact a stranger decided it was okay to threaten me caused this amazing surge of violent anger to course through me instantly. instantly. i had been writing about my mom's death in my notebook when this poor soul decided to interrupt my poetics with her utter bullshit. and the fact that nothing came of it is completely beside the point. so i raised my voice at a stranger? and a jerky one at that. big deal. it's the surge of anger that has caught me off guard. i have never felt this particular breed of anger before. i actually envisioned myself grabbing this woman by her hair, yanking her head back, and screaming in her face I DON'T CARE ABOUT A FUCKING THING, YOU DUMB CUNT! MY MOTHER'S FUCKING DEAD! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE! which is not exactly the case but very close to it... i care about relatively little these days. i have been uncommonly stoic the passed few weeks ever since my mom made an appearance in one of my dreams. i ran to her and held her bony frame to me. i held on to her so tightly and she said "Angela, it's okay. I'm still here." and this huge fearful anger rose up inside of me. i didn't say anything but thought "they told me you were dead. they told me you were dead and i believed them. i am so mind-fucked, mama." and then the horror of waking and my first thought being, "no, mama, you aren't still here." ever since that dream i have been in a state of cold anger but not even a ripple of it has shown itself on the surface of my life until now. i have managed to keep it entirely still.

i care about art, words, friendship... nail polish and lipstick and that's really it. i don't care about success, failure, the rules, whatever. have it. take it. i don't give a shit. the state of shock that has insulated me up until now, allowing me to proceed gracefully through the day, giving no hint to the painful actuality of my inner world is melting away. a new form begins to show below this waxy shell. a new girl. i stay up late to listen to music and paint my fingernails silver. i stay up late scribbling and scribbling and scribbling and then wake up early to do it all over again. i don't want to waste any time. i go to class. i pay close attention. i work hard. it has never been so important to me to use every second to its full potential. i can't even tell you how i'm doing. i don't know. i'm not good. i'm not bad. i am in the middle of a race.

ahh

anytime someone says God has a plan it's never a plan anyone is very fond of.

in fact, that statement is in no way a comfort and i really wish people would just stop saying it to me. all it does is make the person on the receiving end feel completely alone, completely helpless... completely hopeless too.

i understand they're really only attempting to comfort themselves when they say that. and i can be sympathetic to that. and if it does work to calm the speaker of that horribly inept sentence, then they should just repeat it inside their own head, to themselves, where no one else has to hear it.

because we have plans too.

the same plans everyone has.

we have good, wholesome, beautiful plans.

simple plans. simple times. simple hopes.

don't tie my hands behind my back so i can't hold those dreams anymore. why can't i just be allowed to hold them just a little while longer? don't take my hope from me. i'm someones daughter. i'm someones child. just let me hold on to the remainders of my daughterhood. just a little while longer. the good remainders. the ones i want to keep. the ones that are long hugs and back scratches. the ones that let me feel like i belong somewhere. the ones that make me feel like i do have a place to call home. is there any place in the world that feels more like home than when your parent hugs you? is there really a person on the planet that doesn't long for that feeling to claim them again? that feeling when you were little and you were held up high. held up and laughing. held up and protected and warm.

i'm just so angry. everyone who is going through this is angry. but i'm not angry at god. i'm not angry at anyone. i'm angry about the threat of time, the loss of time, and all the things that i haven't gotten to yet... as if a parent even needs a very big reason to feel proud of their child.

it's such a slow, horrible fear.

such a dawdling anguish. the spin of sorrow and regret and not knowing what to do.

there are so many days where i have no clue what to do with myself. i try to write it out and plug this in to the work... but i just end up feeling as inept and ridiculous as that damn statement.

fucking cancer.



the only sentence that feels at all close to the reality of all this is i just want my mama.


most days i just feel like begging.




.



i'll probably end up deleting this.

untitled as of yet...

this monster is about 5 feet tall and actually backs you up when you want to look at it... very much like a snarling dog, like a pissed off mama. i am happy and full of fire.

the rampage continues.


untitled
58" x 50"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2010


p.s. Richard Longo's influence shining through! :D

hmmmmmmmm.

i think a lot about sylvia plath...

her work and how it is routinely overshadowed and discredited by her suicide. nullified.

it's a normal thing to judge her sanity based on the fact she took her own life... and then, i suppose, it's not a very far leap to wanting to rule out her writing as an expression of insanity as well. but it's an angry instinct. a very childish instinct, actually.

have we done the same thing to nietzsche? no, he didn't kill himself, he died of syphilis... which means he hit the crazy stage of the disease long before it took his life. he lost his mind. and yet we still look to him as an authority. we view his thoughts with reverence and respect whether we agree with his thoughts or not. we continue to respect his work and give credit where credit is due in spite of the very logical assumption that his later writings were born inside an insane mind. and he was writing philosophy- the thing people use to govern their lives! codes of conduct based on deep introspection and thought. ideas encouraged to become action.

and poetry does all these things too but doesn't stop there. it doesn't have to deal with rationality and deduction and specifics.

if we can except insanity in philosophy... why not poetry?

why do we not accord sylvia plath with the same respect? why is it that this nullification of her work persists in spite of the fact that a very large quantity of contemporary poets, writers, and visual artists site her work as a major influence? why is enjoying her work still viewed as juvenile, ridiculously teenage, stupidly goth, blah blah blah all because she killed herself. what does that have to do with THE WORK?

the fact that so many people respond so forcefully, so emotionally to her poetry and novel and journals is a testament to her skill AS A WRITER. the impact of her work, the deep level of intimacy, the courage it took to expose such fragility, to speak about levels of love, anger, confusion, rage, and resentment took guts. let's not forget the era in which this work was written. let's not forget what society was like for women at that time. it is minimizing and brutal to do so. give credit where credit is due. reducing her work to an act of hysteria is a slap in the face to the female gender. have we already forgotten how many women were strapped down to hospital beds because they were angry about being beaten or raped? the history of women (well... the history that's been recorded anyhow) isn't a fun one. it isn't nice and i get pissed all over again each time i notice that the degree to which the female gender is marginalized and discredited is still pretty effing deep. and that not even a dead woman who made powerful, exceptional, poignant work is offered due course.

diane arbus gets discredited too. so does anne sexton. maybe not to such a deep degree as sylvia plath, but nevertheless, yes.

shall we now begin the game of discrediting kurt cobain's contribution to music? he killed himself too. why is it that we are able to view his death with so much more compassion? why is it that we all agree what a huge tragedy his death is. none of us rob him of his work, his talent, his skill by reducing it to the ravings of a crazy person. but, as a culture, we allow this to be done to sylvia plath. there is a very discompassionate double standard in effect and it makes me sick. fathers are just as important as mothers. it is no more horrific for a mother to take her own life than it is for a father to leave behind small children. the tragedy of these events is a perfect equal. the value judgements we have made based on gender are disgusting, idiotic, and hateful... to put it mildly. would kurt cobain's child say she suffers less because the gender of the parent who killed them self was male? no, i don't think she would.

whether or not the artist who makes advancements within their field is a bad parent should not enter in to a discussion of said contributions. what does it have to do with THE WORK? what does it have to do with the innumerable lives they saved through the art they made? my life has been made better because of her work. in fact, for however trite and dramatic it sounds, i'll go ahead and make the statement that her work has saved my life in the same manner that music or painting has. art saves lives.

the tragedy is that the art these people made didn't save their own lives.

sylvia plath suffered from an unchecked and undiagnosed illness. same thing with nietzsche. undiagnosed. and illness is illness and shouldn't have a value judgement placed on it either.


i'm getting fed up with the persistant perception that sylvia plath was a mad-woman whom we can't take seriously.


kinda deep thoughts so early in the morning! ha! it's just been on my mind a lot. what are your thoughts?