strange and beautiful

i rescued all of my books from my storage unit today.  10 boxes.  i have not yet unpacked them.  i need to by a bookcase.  i open each one and peer in.  a time-capsule, each and every one.  i open the cardboard flaps and read the titles: my loves! here is "A Lover's Discourse", here is "Ariel", here is "With Deer".  i paw through and find the black ceramic cups i made 2 years ago in Santa Rosa.  odd to hold them... an artifact.  in some ways, it is like holding a different person's objects...  or how one feels when one picks up a relic from one's childhood.  Childhood!!!  i have the entire collection of The Munch Bunch books!  here!  now! they are currently in my kitchen!  does anyone else have these????  these books and my white teddy bear are the only relics of my childhood i have left.  it is strange to see them.. strange to hold them...  to hold them and wonder what might have been.  what might have been if our parents were ready to be parents...  what might have been if we'd ever really been considered...

but i am not sad and don't mean to usher in a somber tone.  not at all.  i am more in a state of Wonder than anything else.  days come and go.  i look at the sky.  i write.  i take pictures.  i look at my hands.  and now, i can turn books over in my hands, smell their spines and leaf through them as if each second were an hour, as if each second were a lifetime.  bibles, all of them. 

looking at these boxes i know that i can't cart all of this into my future.  i'll have to make the hard decision (soon) to sell most of these volumes.  there's simply to way to transport such a mass in to my next phase of life.  it's a LIBRARY!  and i have no clue where to begin. 

i left picture frames on the side of the road today and they were gone within the hour.

and then dinner with my beautiful friend Trish this evening.  when she dropped me back off at my house i told her that not a single member of my mother's family called me over the holidays.  not one.  this may or may not have something to do with the fact that i swear.  rumour has it that my dropping of an F-Bomb on my sister's Facebook page caused quite an upset.  and so:  silence.  me.  my mother's eldest and without any other parent.  orphan.  and despite all that, a grown ass woman. 

well now...

guess whose religion is glaring?  not mine. 

Trish hugged me and reminded me that we can make new families.  everywhere we go.  it comforted me to know that maybe the disappointment i've known is not the entire story.  maybe there are people in the world who are capable of a deeper love than what i've experienced.  maybe there are people who mean what they say.

in 2 1/2 weeks i'll be back in my beloved New York.  i'll bring a backpack and nothing else.  a change of jeans, two t shirts, socks.  i'll have 5 days to explore the museums and galleries i've yet to enter.  i'll have 5 days to eat at good restaurants and drink in wild bars.  i'll have 5 days reprieve from giving a fuck if anyone understands me or loves me.  i'll write and walk the High Line and meander through the beautiful Bowery.  and until then, i have my wealth of books to keep me company, the greatest of which being 4 years of volumes of my diary.  geez.  what a world made entirely of ink and commitment. 

required reading

i am making a shepard's pie and, after i stuff myself full of said deliciousness, i am going to lay down with my notebook and my beautiful Jean Genet. i am going to write and read and write and read until i fall asleep. and oh, what a perfect diamond this man is! i must get a copy of Wojnarowicz's autobiography as a follow up. these men, born in to tragedy, who led tragic lives but managed to create an avenue of transcendence, a way to take the shit of life and mold it in to such an uncommon Beauty. i'm grateful for them. i'm grateful for their sensitivity and tenacity and ferocity. i'm grateful for all the writers in my life. endlessly so. more and more and more.

packing...

would you like to know how neurotic i am?

i've gotten the majority of my packing done... or so i thought until it came time to choose books. there are certain books that follow a person around no matter where they go and no matter if they will actually read them. they are constant companions. they are part of a person's life. i am in the thick of stupidity and choice right now. who shall i bring along for the ride? it's only two weeks but it's TWO WEEKS! 'radish king' and 'cadaver dogs' by rebecca loudon are on board. also 'ariel' by sylvia plath. my collection of hans christian andersen and a big fat book of kiki smith's work. and 'alice's adventures in wonderland' and the collected short stories and fairy tales of angela carter. but then i saw sharon olds and grabbed 'satan says', 'the gold cell', and 'the dead and the living'. and then i saw molly gaudry's 'we take me apart'. and then i saw 'the baker's daughter' and my big collection of zines and chapbooks and started thinking about the clothes i could do without and that's when i realized i am so neurotic and romantic that i should just take a break and come back to it later. but there isn't all that much time to decide. i'm leaving at 6 in the morning tomorrow and, really, it's just two weeks but IT'S TWO WEEKS! arggggggggg. books.

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.

reading...

i have picked back up the joy of reading (much inspired by my dear sweet Radish King) and who would've guessed what a big beautiful difference that seemingly small act can make in one's life. i'm always reading poems and blogs and stuff but i finally got back to the novel. and it's a murder mystery of all things! ha! i haven't read one of those since i was 14! and geez that writing is good! and i've also been working on redaction poems almost constantly for the past 2 weeks, building a stack of the little beauties pretty much daily, and have begun to compile them in to strange little poetry books of my own. books, books, books everywhere and it really does build up quite a nice life. quite nice indeed.