just to be asked...

sitting in my kitchen, annie lennox on the little boombox we keep on the counter by the window.  everyone else is asleep.  and my mind turns to a few nights ago when a man sat in the chair next to where i'm sitting now and asked me about my mother.  this song was playing and i relayed the story of when i visited my mother for the first time in Tennessee. it was just after her 55th birthday and the chemo had really started to kick in.  one evening, my stepfather made good on their deal to buzz her head once the drugs made her hair begin to fall out.  they walked into the kitchen together and he sat her down on a stool, wrapped a white sheet around her thin shoulders just like a barber, and turned on his clippers.  i walked away.  i hid in the guest room.  i told myself that, as an artist at least, i should witness this.  i told myself that, as a woman, i should witness this pain, know this horror and keep the record.  i walked down the hallway and crossed the living room.  i stood for a few long, horrible seconds in the entry way to the kitchen.  i saw my mother's head bent over like a school boy's, head shorn and bowed obediently.  i can't tell you what happened in my heart then.  i can't tell you.  english doesn't have the words...

when she came out of the kitchen, she went straight to her bedroom and put on a men's white button-down shirt.  then she went to the bathroom and put on dramatic eye make-up and lipstick.  Yummy Plummy by maybelliene.  her favorite.  when she walked in to the living room and sat next to me on the couch and sighed, i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!"  she smiled wide and i wanted to cry but i smiled wide right back.  i smiled wide and wanted her to just go on feeling beautiful and bold.  i didn't want any standard to dissuade her-  she WAS beautiful and for once in her life i wanted her to not argue with it.  not even in the hands of cancer and the horror that it offers.

i told this story to a man in my kitchen the other evening and he might actually be the only man i've ever known to sit and listen to these things.  this is an important happening.  it flips my ideas all around.  so few people have let me speak to them about my mother's death.  even fewer have initiated that discussion.  how can i explain how necessary it is to speak about this horror?  i can't shake a person's shoulders hard enough.  i can't cry loud enough.  i can't scream and kick and beg enough.  there is no language for it.  there is only the moment that sweeps in so unexpectedly...  an annie lennox song playing in the background, wine in the glass, an open ear, an open heart, a willingness to let another human being know they aren't sitting at the table alone, and that there are enough scars between the two of us to be able to look at each other squarely when she sings, "this kind of trouble's only just begun."

and then a breath...

and then she sings...

"i tell myself too many times 'why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?'"...

and my entire being shakes.
goddamn...  the secrets i keep.
i feel so embarrassed sometimes.  and so often, i wonder if i've said something wrong...  done something wrong...  maybe was just BORN wrong...  inefficient or defective...  made for a different world...

and i know none of that's true.  it's the old training kicking in.  the training which has me rushing to smile wide and proud and warm in those difficult moments...  in those moments when i KNOW that's what the Other needs to see...


to be asked about her...
just to be asked is a tremendous thing.

and when she sings, "i don't think you know what i feel.  i don't think you know what i feel.  i don't think you know what i fear.  you don't know what i fear."

i'm tired of having so many opportunities to say the same thing.


to be asked is a tremendous thing.

.

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.

anti-solace

let me crawl back under my rock now.  let me crawl back to where i came from.  my coils of black wool and ink, graphite dust stuck to my feet, smudged across my face, empty bleeding heart dragging its ugly shape and shame across the page.  the inches are horrible.  each scratch of the pen, an agony.  each inch of wool twisted into knots, a horror.  but it is the only repair that has ever worked.  it is the only repair i trust, the only truth i know.  i bring my two hands back to myself.  at least for a time.  at least until i can see straight.  no longer interested in reaching toward the world, toward unknown doors.  at least not until it is time to pack a bag.  i see now that what i've been accused of is true.  i talk too good a game.  i take pictures of myself wearing a cap that says SLUT across the front and everyone automatically believes it.  they see my red lips and how seldom i become upset.  they see how independent i am and somehow, inexplicably to me, confuse me with being cold. i am not cold.  nowhere close.  my brashness is a moral responsibility to my own life...  to live as fully and as wholly as i can manage.  but i am not callous and i am not flagrant and i am not without compass or standard.


but fuck it.  what do i know?  i don't know a damn thing.  it's why i want to live.  in order to find out.  something.  anything. and it could quite easily be that it's my mirror that shines askew.

 

what is it about me that makes people seem to believe that i have no feelings?

i've cried three times this week.  everyday, for 3 days running, a small horror found me.  and even in the moment i told myself to feel blessed and lucky because i haven't had a bad run of luck or days of pain in so long it seems.  everything has been going pretty well.  no major complaints.  but i could feel it all along brewing in the background, simmering below my naive feet.  i've expected it for quite some time now that my brashness, my good game would lead directly to the wind being knocked out of me.  i've been going against my better judgement in certain ways because i just became so damn tired of loneliness.  i became so tired, painfully tired, of not allowing myself to know the world and to know other humans.  but i knew it was coming.  i knew i would wake up, humiliated and stupefied, and feel the urge to run away from the life i have here in Oakland.  and  maybe it's necessary?  maybe it's the kick i need?  i have wondered while crying if i should try to feel thankful for this pain...  it untethers me, afterall.  there is no longer any reason to drag my feet.  there are no anvils around my neck.  there are no gentle hands to lay me down and smooth my hair back across my forehead. 

i wake up this morning and a Great Goodness finds me...

baby's first passport arrived in today's mail.  i kissed it and kissed it and wanted to cry.  it is sitting next to me on my bed right this minute.  it is a gem.  it is my most sacred, most valued, most loved possession.  today, it trumps every piece of art i own.  everything pales in comparison to this little book: a testament to faith and struggle and belief.

in 4 weeks i'll be back in my beloved NYC for a few days before hoping on a plane and heading to europe for the very first time.  my very first trip over seas.  i am beside myself.  i can't find the words.  i'll find them in europe, i suppose! ha!  Becca and i stop in London for a night and then the next evening, on the 4th of July, our Independence day (and the 1 year anniversary of when i had my passport photo taken), we fly into Berlin.   a few days later, we will take a train from Berlin to Paris to see our beloved Rammstein play in Nancy, France.  after that?  hahahaaa!  there is absolutely no way to know!  but when (if?) i return, i fly back to new york for a few days before heading back to Oakland.  i'm sure i'll spend the first few days back crying, forlorn and lonely and in total anguish, in my bed before having to tie the apron around my waist once more, put on my bright lipstick, and tell jokes table-side.

i am lucky in that i will have a job to return to.  i am lucky in that i like my job.  i enjoy being around people and i am very good at creating an atmosphere of warmth and ease.  i'm good at being a waiter and, come July, it is a profession that will take me around the world.  well, at least half way.  :)  but i'm telling you, these next 4 weeks cannot go by fast enough.  the passed two days i have been crawling out of my skin.  i have never wanted to hop on a plane so badly in my entire life.

i am not afraid of knowing the world.  i am afraid of NOT knowing it.  i am not afraid of people, not even if i know i will suffer as a result.  i am more afraid of dying without ever having known what real love is.  i can tell you, right now, that i do not believe i have ever experienced it.  not on the receiving end anyway.  not a healthy love.  it seems definitions for love run the gamut and i am a dunce trying to figure out what the fuck i'm supposed to be doing and saying in the midst of it.


i'm supposed to be making art in the midst of it.
i'm supposed to be writing.


at very least, i know what my life is for.

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.