no family's safe when i sashay

.

this man inspires me so much.

total fucking artist.

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in my mind

.

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second skin

.

 

self-portraits made in drunken, desperate moments eager to fight or eager to love.  how may we come to speak to one another of the pain of living? about the pain which has become very much a second skin?  how regular it ends up being.  about the pain of the day?  such quiet pains.  such quiet hours.  this stillness.  all the hours of longing.  only my eyes in the mirror.  only me and my camera and no voice at the other end of the line.  

and all of this for you too.

. 

"i'll be so quiet for you..."

.

.

shift

.
 
it's strange to me that there have been so many days lately where i haven't wanted to write.  it's a big shift from my normal mode.  even when i don't write here, i'm scribbling away in my diary, hermitting in that crisp, blue-lined home of mine.  but there have been days lately when i just need to sit.  there are days when i run from the workings of my own mind, when i simply need the simplest of things- a movie on Netfix and a deep pillow...  things i very rarely allow myself.

i JUST saw Lost in Translation for the first time last week.  why it's taken me so long to make time for such a beautiful film, i can't say.  or i can.  it's that i have really fucked up notions of value when it comes to spending time in front of a screen.  or not fucked up, maybe, but issues nevertheless.  my ex stepfather spent the majority of his free time in front of the television and i was always so disgusted by that.  my mother would be outside working in her garden, enjoying the feeling of her hands in the dirt and the sun on her back, and he'd be inside yelling at the tv screen.  she hated the tv always being on.  always had.  growing up, she refused to let us spend a saturday simply laying in front of the television.  she was definitely the type of mom that yelled at us to get outside and be in the sunshine.  and good for her.  i've come to appreciate that about her so much.  and so it was so strange to me that she married someone whose favorite "hobby" was watching tv.  she and her husband got to a place where they didn't even eat dinner together at the table anymore (something my mother really valued).  she'd make dinner and bring it to him in front of the television set.  she'd sit next to him and watch Law & Order, a major concession and acquiescence that was hard to stomach. in my adolescence, i swore to myself that i'd never marry a man that watched tv all the time.  i needed passion and romance and someone to stay up late talking with.  i needed someone who read books every now and then.  i needed someone who preferred the stereo to the tv set 9 times out of 10.

though we were never married, i found myself in a relationship that shared this exact component of television love that i so disdained.  i fucking hated it. at 28 years old, i had the awful, humiliating, confusing, and painful experience of meeting a man at the front door in revealing lingerie just to be walked passed after a quick kiss on the forehead and a careless "you look nice, honey" to flop down in the armchair and turn on Sports Center.

fuck that.

and, yeah, i know it's not the tv's fault that i lived with an inept asshole...  but it's easier to be mad at an object than at another human being.  especially a human being you love.  one looks for a scapegoat, a storehouse for blame. 

and so i considered television a complete waste of time and found it absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable that it is the number 1 pass time of americans.  that's disgusting.  disgusting and ridiculous.  but my judgement about television extended to anything and everything that took place on a screen.  everything from music videos to film to art.  if it happened on a screen, i saw it as a waste of my time, a waste of my life.

that's harsh.  and i knew that, in some ways, i was missing out...


it was amazing to have such a simple, direct experience the other evening.  it helped that there was a gorgeous man in the room with me, laying half naked on my bed. :)  we laid there together, drinking vodka sodas and running our fingers along the curves of each other's legs, as Sophia Coppola's beautiful, poignant film played in the dark of my bedroom.  it's been so long since i've had such a soft, safe, close experience.  it's been a really long time since i've felt at home with a man.  i've not felt this comfortable with a man in a very long time and, at times, i am unnerved by it.  i'm used to being inside my own head.  i'm used to having the only say.  i'm used, now, to not being hurt and assuring my safety through remaining single.

but something is opening up in me.  my armor is melting away.  i look at this other human being and think he's got the best face on the entire planet.  i look at this other human being and feel so thankful for his humor and wit.  i look at this other human being and think, "maybe i'm not alone in this world after all...  "



and so there are days when i don't want to write.  i want to just lay and be.  i want to curl against his form and not think about all the heavy things.  i want to lay my cheek against his back as we snuggle in bed and i want to enjoy the rare instance of a quiet mind.    it was this soft moment of laying together in bed watching Lost in Translation that made me realize i'm truly ready to try my hand at this Love thing again.  it was so simple and so quiet but there was no other place i would've rather been. 

i felt entirely at home.


.

born to die

.

over and over and over


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work and repose

.

 

nothing like a little semi-nude photography to get the evening started with a bang.  :)  

i had the day off and i spent it almost entirely in bed crocheting.  it's been wonderful.  no make-up, no schedule, no other agenda other than art-making.  days like this remind me of the goodness of my life and to be thankful for the wide-open freedom it contains.  this type of devotion - the slow progress of hand-made textiles - is a luxury.  it requires an expanse of time most people seem not to have or to not allow themselves even if they do.  there are lawns to be mowed and cars to be washed and another trip to the grocery store.  there is always something that must be tended to.  weekends lose their glamour easily.  and then there's that awful fatigue that finds us all from time to time...  that feeling that the effort simply isn't worth it, that what we have to say is stupid and that our loves (and lives) are somehow Lesser Than.  but not today.  today i was able to relish this moment of calm methodology.  i twisted the yarn around the hook and lost myself in the rhythm of the pattern.  i let my mind wander.  i let myself dream.  i let myself enjoy this quietude.  i've needed it.  there's so much to process.  especially since the trip.  

in less than 2 weeks i'll be 33.  my jesus birthday is here.  it's so strange to think of my age.  i feel like no age really fits.  what does it mean to feel a certain age?  no number seems to hold some sort of unnameable secret, nor does it belie any type of truth about an individual.  still, it does seem to ring true that the 30s are an era in which an individual truly does come in to their own.  at least it has been for me thus far.  the loop of time gets me thinking about my life and where i want to take this next year of my existence.  it's the ritual of growth, i suppose: another season opens, another season closes.  i re-read certain entries in the diary.  i leaf through the record of this wild, unimaginably good year and marvel at how different my life is; there is hardly any resemblance between my life now and what it was 2 years ago. for my birthday last year, i took myself to new york for the very first time.  that trip set in motion an entire wealth of changes, an entirely new outlook on life and a desire to live it as fully as possible, as true to myself as possible.  in the year that has elapsed since, i've been to new york four times and managed to take myself to europe.  it doesn't seem possible!  it seems like someone else's life i'm talking about here!  it amazes me that I got to do these things and pursue this path!  i'm still processing the effects and meaning of Travel.  i'm not even sure how to write about it yet...  it instantly changes a person.  i'm trying to settle back in to my life here in california but i don't want to somehow obscure the changes that have taken place within me.  rather, i'm trying to find a site of stillness, some sort of silence that will allow these changes to rise to the surface of my being and blossom. 

while i was gone, i thought of the next blanket i would make.  i'm glad to be working on it now.  

settling in

i'm sitting in bed under my white quilt with all my clothes on, even my socks.  it is a cold night.  my bra is digging in to me but i don't care about getting undressed.  i don't care about getting comfortable. there is a cocktail on the nightstand to the left of my bed.

when i was in Europe my phone didn't work.  no voice and no text.  i could connect to the internet and use it as a mini computer if there was wifi available but it was freeing to know that it wouldn't ring or buzz.  i no longer spent precious time worrying if so-and-so would text.  i was on my own in so many ways and, for the first time in a very long time, free to stop worrying about Time.  the only actual responsibilities i had was feeding and cleaning myself.  there were no other obligations to satisfy and no duties to respond to.  the only Duty i had was to myself: to live as forthrightly and bravely as possible and to open my notebook whenever i could manage.

i haven't looked back at those pages yet.  i want to but instead i flip through the photos i took and enjoy the sweet fermentation of memory that has already begun.  the images of bridges and building in my mind are more romantic tonight than they have ever been.  Berlin is a city of fairy tales.  while i was there, i marveled at the great luck that had found me.  there was a moment when i found myself half asleep on the small deck of a rowboat and thought to myself is this really fucking happening right now??? to me???  it was all so inexplicable and yet somehow easy.  i felt at ease the second i got on my flight to new york.  i felt even more at ease when i landed in Berlin a week later.  i felt so secure and safe inside the world.  i wasn't afraid of anything.  not once.  it felt honest and good to simply walk along old cobblestone roads and take pictures of the fresh graffiti that cropped up overnight in Kreuzberg.  it felt honest and good to share my beer with strangers and follow them to a bonfire on the west bank of the Spree.  it felt honest and good to sit at a cafe for hours and just move my pen...  all my lofty thoughts and the rhythm of my heart inside this new place, this old world.
 
it's hard to believe that i'm already back home, already back to work, already learning a new menu and new wines.  it's hard to believe that another semester of german awaits and that it is already august.  3 weeks in europe was not long enough.  not nearly.  not for this soft and eager heart.  i fell in to the tempo of the place so quickly and felt at home so instantly that my life took on a feeling of timelessness.  then suddenly, i was back at the airport trying not to think of the fact that i was already leaving.  i'm glad i had a few days in new york before coming back home to california.  it was a buffer of sorts.  i could still pretend i was entirely free and that no timelines existed for me.  i saw the Ellen Gallagher show at the New Museum my first day back.  it was strange to walk through the large rooms and gaze at the work of an art heavy weight and think i'd just been at the Martin Kippenburger retrospective in Berlin 2 days before.  and in the rear room of that museum, i saw the large lead airplane Anselm Kieffer constructed flanked by two of his huge paintings.  it felt important and special to view his work IN germany.  so laden with guilt and history and horror.  it felt important and special to see Joseph Beuys' felt suit and violin case.  it felt important and special to view this work with a german friend.  and this all a few days after having visited the Anne Frank Haus in Amsterdam.  such a heavy moment.  such a heavy memory.  those empty rooms...  so small.  i felt honored, especially as a diarist, to walk through the rooms where she lived and wrote.  i felt honored to see the pages of her diary on display.  the pages, so thin and so fragile that the room must be kept very dimly lit in order to slow the rate of their degradation.  a man behind me started crying.  i wanted to cry too but i didn't because i don't think she allowed herself to cry in those rooms either. 

everything felt important and special.  everything. 

i have so much to say but it's all out of order.  it's all mixed up and crisscrossed.  maybe chronology doesn't really matter.

i thought when i got back i'd instantly start saving money in order to move to new york by the end of the year but now i can't think of anything more important than getting back out in the world and doing it all again.  and next time for much, much longer than 3 weeks.

everything is new

.

20 hours of travel, a delayed flight, a diverted flight, sleeping on the floor of SFO as i waited for the first trains to begin running.  it was a long walk home that morning but i didn't mind.  it was the first time i'd put my earbuds in in a month.  i was the first time music had coursed through me in lock step with my fast-beating heart.  it was the first time in a month that i was able to lock in to myself, only myself, like masterbation, no one else, no distractions, no concerns, no muttering in the distance.  i had been outside myself for an entire month.  i had been in the wind, in the sun, within a language that floored me and made me its' servant.  gladly (gerne). i'd been so outside myself for an entire month that it seemed impossible to find myself walking along familiar roads.  a part of me was still in Berlin, crossing the Oberbaum Brucke, not crossing Shattuck Ave in Oakland, California.

as i came closer to my house, a dirty, discarded chair came in to view.  no cushions, abandonned on the side of the road.  "ahhh... a canvas..." i thought.  a canvas.  i didn't know how badly i needed one until i saw one.  i went inside and grabbed my big, black marker.  "yes.  perfection.  the first thing i will do upon arriving in oakland is write on the street", i told myself, "this is the only real beauty.  this is the only gesture i have."  i thought of my beloved bridge in Kreuzbeg and my heart ached something awful.  where had my endless waters gone?  i thought of David Wojnarowicz and his plea that we live life like it actually fucking matters.   i thought of his refrain.  i scrawled it quick in fat print:

yes i will.  i fucking promise.


it's so hard to believe a week has already gone by since i've been home.  there is so much to say...  it will come as it is able.

yesterday evening, i stood in my dark kitchen and watched a man cross the street to take a picture of the abandoned chair.  the sun obscured the image and he kicked the chair in a half circle there on the corner to get it out of the glare.   i watched him the entire time.  it was a moment of quiet happiness.  it was a moment of connection to another human being.  i have no idea what to label the work i do that happens in the street.  i very rarely think of it as ART.  or rather, ART isn't even the consideration.  i think of these things as Signs.  as a Cry.  it was wonderful to be able to witness my cry being heard.  not only heard, but echoed in the heart of another.  i felt unbelievably lucky.

i am happy to stretch out in my white room and see the reflection of my body flash in the armoir mirror.  i am happy to make coffee in my kitchen and spend the first 2 hours of the day scribbling in my diary.  i am happy to have a washer and drier at my disposal.  but i assure you, 3 weeks overseas was definitely not enough.  all my plans have changed. my ideas are totally shattered.  i have no answers and all of my goals have been flung far and wide. 

.

in you i taste god

.

.

"...this machine will not communicate these thoughts and the strain i am under..."

.

the tightening in my chest.  the ache that finds my angles, all my spectacular corners, so pink, so unexpectedly soft.  in my private moments i like to give these spaces a name and i name them Ugly.  i name them Inept.  i name them Not Good Enough.

my friend wants to slap my face for speaking this way and so i cough up all my vain confessions.  i pour the vodka in to the empty pocket where my heartache has bored a hole.   i look at my face in the mirror and try to see yours.

i look at my face and wish i was looking at yours.



and maybe i'm not trying to build anything lasting, after all?  maybe it's just all this hunger we've been taught to hold, taught to cultivate, when really my exaltation is as dependent upon my destruction as it is these rare moments of pleasure in which my spirit soars, in which my spirit is reborn...

in so much spit!  in so much sweat!  and the man screams "immerse your soul in love!"  if this is not religion, i do not know what is.  if this is not religion, let all religions fall.



.
 

tug of war

.

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we ain't goin' to the town. we're going to the city.

.

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work work work

.

in bed with my hook and mirror.  The Blanket of DOOM.  coming soon...

this love

when i think of what came before

nothing seems real.


i stretch my legs in front of me
and i try to see my legs as a i once did:
my appendages as Infant, as child-like
rather than womanly

i stretch my legs in front of me and think of my childhood
my Child-Self.
i try to identify.



i feel a kinship but not a symbiosis.



my Self is not mirrored back.



i think of my child-self and know that i have grown
i think of your eyes
how they reach
how they exceed.

they exceed the best of me.



i will never be as beautiful as you.
i will never be
as smart.





look in to me.
watch me stretch my legs.
put your hands on me
like a willing tithe
like a seashell
the rolling ocean, welcoming
all we cannot utter.
bang your conscience against me
like an otter does
the captured shell against the rock
and speak to me as a prophet might


if my legs were stretched wide enough.



.

Mein Gesicht an dem Kissen

.


some sort of unknowable pull.
some sort of intoxicated desire.
some sort of gross need.

some sort of unnameable itch.
some sort of gasping breath.
some sort of gaping mouth.
some sort of begging bitch. 

what fire?
what spit?
what fuel
burning across this livid skin, this apologetic pink?

what name?
what prayer?
what immoral ache?

see me
as if eyes had never found my face.
see me as if i were new.

what of all this anxiety and demand?
shut your mouth until it's time to kiss.


your face in my telephone.
your torso rising in my bereft and lonely dreams.


some sort of answer.
some sort of opiate.
some sort of comfort.

some sort of eager whisper across the knees.
some sort of fever.
some sort of austere hope.
some sort of home.

what fire.  what spit.  what fuel.

your accent tonguing the tips of my syllables,
polishing my silent cowboy edges.
in your mouth,

my name
my history
my fearful disbelief
never had it so good.



some sort of mirror.

some sort of reckoning.


.

excerpt:

.

I sit across from the thin mirror in the corner.  I am folded up like a blanket , all my limbs arched and turned inward toward my form, shielding the delicate tips of pink from all eyes.  Even mine.  I look at my face.  I see the red lines I’ve allowed to be drawn across my forehead.  Examples of humiliation and confusion. Proofs.  It’s all mathematics now.  I stand up and walk to the dresser.  I pull out the black sweater in the top drawer.  I watch myself in the mirror.   I count the seconds it takes.  I recite my age.  I am acquainted with enough years to make sense of all the spinning.  I turn the knob and step out in to the hall.  The mirror stares after me.  I am looking out the window now.  I can count the avenues and detours.  I pull the sweater over my cold self and keep walking.  Two sleeves and a hole for my head.  I can count until I find myself outside your radius.  I can count rather than repeat your name.  I can watch the clouds.  I can count.  I can hope.  A window.  A window.  A way out.  

.

Die Frauen sind sehr lieblich.

i've been listening to this song for days and days...

Meine gute Freundin Freya schickt das Leid zu mir.  Ich liebe das so veil.  Mein Hertz brecht.  Wenn ich das Leid hore, schuttet meinen Hertz das Traurigkeit aus.

i feel so thankful for her friendship.  when she sent it to me, i felt seen...  the hidden parts of me, known.  my eyes and heart tremble.  i feel full of both longing and hope.  i pull my sweater over my head and walk in the cold.  the dark of these streets become such a comfort.  i look at the lonely lights hanging high above my head and the fast flash of cars speeding by.  i wish for so many unnameable things...

unnameable only because i don't yet have the courage to bang out the letters on a public stage.  the names are well known in the pages of my diary and in the ears of friends.

i wore the black dress to the art opening and had an amazing time.  my sweet san francisco girls came and hugged me and i felt so honored.  i haven't seen their sweet faces in over 7 months.  i've been off building this little life of mine and they've been entirely patient, entirely supportive.  i have a bad habit of cloistering myself and going silent when there's work that needs to be done.  i burrow down in to the task at hand and i hold my breath and go go go.  but i feel they must know my heart.  they must know i was busy with the strange work of repairing my Self and my ability to fight and to believe in the existence of something better than what i've had.  a better life grows ever greener and bolder these days and i hope they know how integral they have been to the birth of my independence.  if not for your belief in me, friends, i could've have pulled the trigger.

and so i hugged everyone as much as i could and laughed and smiled and caught up on as much as we could in the short time we had.  my skulls stared down from the tall white walls and kept safe watch over our exploits.  i didn't realize how short my dress was until my friend monika put a few pictures on facebook.  i'm pretty sure that when i wrapped my arms around the necks of friends i inadvertently flashed my ass at whomever was standing behind me.  you're welcome.  :)

 the show is up for a month so make a plan to go see it.  you'll love everything you see.  especially the treasures in kate's cases. GO.

friday night bullshit

listening to The Smiths and enjoying a spectacularly poured greyhound here in my white room (zum wohl!) with a burning shoulder from spending the last several hours hunched over a painting.  these text pieces look so simple but a tremendous amount of labor actually goes in to them.  all my work seems to be that way.  my friend Lea once said "your work is so devotional".  her comment has stuck with me.

i am a devotee, to be sure, but devoted to what?  the rules change quicker than i can name them.  it's gotten to the point where i no longer care about rules at all.  this damn inner compass of mine gives me enough trouble.  i've made a point of ignoring it lately and just leaving myself open to the strange throes of exploration.  how else will i know what i'm made of?  how else will i know anything?  how else will make art?  risk, as such, is a definite necessity.  i've felt so scared of so much for so long.  i've felt afraid of being myself.  but i'm at the point now where feeling afraid of something actually becomes the reason to explore that particular something or do that particular something or cultivate an environment where i have to somehow explore the fear.  fear becomes the reason for a lot of things these days but never not to do something.

funny enough, the result is that one begins to be afraid of very little.  maybe i am devoted to the questions?  maybe i am devoted to the attempt?  to understand anything.  to understand one's self.

am i getting too philosophic?  is it too late for that?  wait, it's friday night/saturday morning.  it's not too late for anything!  and aside from that, it's never too late for philosophy!  philosophy is a necessity.  it's right up there with food and air.  so let's get philosophic.  tell me your secrets and what the fuck you expect out of this life.  the clock is ticking, friend.  get on it.  fear is a reason to DO IT.  i look at this body of mine and i watch it dying.  people think i'm so much younger than i am.  in some ways, they're right.  in some ways i am much younger than i actually am.  but i am watching this body age, for however imperceptible that may be to others, and it is a huge motivating force in my life.  i look at myself and i see my mama somewhere under this skin.  her genetics, her softness, her absolute kindness...

fuck.

talking about her makes me want to cry and marry the first person who will ask me.  our fairy tales are hard at work in me too, i promise, i've just decided to ignore that shit and hold out for the best.  or atleast the most honest expression of self i can manage.

but my mother...  she's dead. and i feel her beauty everyday.  it is such a deep pain.  i try to think of my life along the same lines of hers.  i ask myself "what if you die at 55, kid?"

and so: i bought a ticket back to new york.  7 weeks to go, friends.  7 weeks.  and this time i plan to go all alone.  i will walk and walk and walk and see as much art as i can.  i will write in the bars and cafes.  i'll do things that i am afraid of doing.  it matters.   i plan to move there in the spring.  i have 6 months to save as much money as i can but, regardless, i'm going.  even if i end up arriving penniless, i'm going.  this next trip back is more about exploring what daily life would be like rather than being on vacation.  i re-read my NY diary tonight over sushi at my favorite oaktown sushi bar and recalled how instantly at home i felt in that city.  god, it overtook me.  i loved it the second i saw it.  i loved it the entire time i was there.  i was heartbroken at the thought of leaving.  my last day in NY was a rough one.  i really didn't want to leave.  it took all i had not to cancel my flight.  it really did.  i have to go back and let her have her way with me.  i have to follow my own trembling, romantic, boisterous heart.  our time is too short.

but let's not get too serious.  the brevity of our moment is also a reason to participate in exquisite simplicities and sensual pleasures.  i'd like to offer a very loud and public THANK YOU to Lady Gaga for making my life infinitely better by making me smell this fucking fantastic!  her perfume is amazing.  seriously.  i test drove it at Lord & Taylor in manhattan but waited til i got home to buy it.  i've already spritzed an inch of the stuff and i've only had it a week.  good thing i bought the big bottle.

and speaking of Lady Gaga, there's this really special thing i keep resisting making mention of here:  jack halberstam's new book GAGA FEMINISM.  oh looky, looky! whose image is that on the cover?  awwww shit!!!  yep, you guessed it!  yours truly!  and i am absolutely honored!  SO HONORED to have been asked by such a thoughtful and exciting theorist as Jack to use one of my drawings on the cover of this book! and also SO HONORED to participate in the feminist/queer discussions of our age.  it's a major feather in my cap that jack liked this drawing.  period.  and i am absolutely honored to, by proxy, engage with Gaga's discussion of identity.  i am a lucky bitch, to say the least.

and if you are at all wavering on whether or not to buy this book, don't!  it is spectacularly written!  i'm only about half way through and i am IN LOVE!  GET IT! GET IT! GET IT!!!!!  you definitely won't regret it.

and now back to painting and drinking greyhounds.

all my love,
angela.


.

that's right