ugly little angela

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tonight, the last thing i want is to be your goddamn pillar of strength.

take a deep breath and well up the courage to ask the question you already know the answer to.  i don't give a fuck about your preferences or respect.  my heart is too damn broken for that.

i know who my friends are by the way they walk; those who don't pretend to know what it's like for me and don't pretend our shoes fit the same.  my friends are those few sweet souls who don't say they understand.  they love me enough not to degrade my history with thin sentiments of faux camaraderie. do not deny me my obvious singularity.  do not deny me my status.  i am separate and i know it.  my best friends don't pretend to know the nuances of my pain-  the atrocity of a dead mother, demolished by cancer, looking like motherfucking Mussel-manner, like a decrepit 90 year old man, disintegrating at 55, right the fuck in front of my eyes, right in front of my baby sister.  i cannot for the life of me describe for you the total pain of witnessing the horror that seized my sister when she saw our mother ravaged by pancreatic cancer and deformed by tumors, looking to me for an explanation and mouthing the words oh my god and not being able to do a fucking thing to stop it or change it or ease it. 

i walk home through dark streets, wet with recent rain, hands in pockets and wondering if the people i pass can see it- the pain in me; the horrible crack in me that makes me incapable of believing in FOREVER but in such dire need to at least try.  the stupidity that results from abuse and abandonment.  and so i decide, instead, to be a disappointment.  i make myself another cocktail and attempt to nourish myself with my own disgust.  i climb in to the scorch of my shower and let my mascara run.  i drink my delicious poison and i think of my mother and i think of all the pages of her own poetry she lit on fire.  she left no record.  everything is burned, including her body and the thought alone makes me want to throw up all over myself.   it makes we want to vomit into my own hands and hold it up like a proof that is begging to be seen, a proof that must be reconciled, a fucking reckoning.  hold up my insides, my putridity, my horror, my total innocence and naivety and expectation for this nightmare to fucking end so that i can look at my sister and not see the vast horror that found her too soon.  too goddamn soon.

let me slip tonight, my love, back to being ugly little angela.  ugly little angela.  ugly little angela.  15 years old and failing tests on purpose because she was so fucking sick of being such a goodie goodie, all those fucking AP classes and bringing an apple for teacher.  for once, let me fail.  let me fail and love me anyway.  motherfucker, love me anyway!  show me you love me by saying you don't understand.

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wrestling with ideas...

surprisingly, Facebook CAN be good sometimes. i found this quote this morning and it fits so nicely with a lot of the ideas i've been exploring lately. i haven't read this book but i will quickly remedy that. this passage really struck me.

"But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. you don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away."

-Margaret Atwood, from the first page of Cat's Eye


especially the last sentence: Nothing goes away.

i've been thinking a lot about how memory brings The Past in to The Present moment... makes it alive again, lets it operate again... and that the operations of a memory can be just as inexplicable and confusing as the rest of human life and interaction. an overlapping of time. however, i must accept that The Past, even if it is awake in the present, cannot be changed. it cannot be erased or altered. it happened. it is final, in that sense, even if it is active.

and so... finding a way to walk with memories instead of letting them take the lead... finding a way to live with certain knowledges, certain insights, certain wounds, becomes the challenge. and not to scapegoat or become embittered. not to use The Past as a reason to run and hide or to become cruel, become malicious... not to trade places with The Monsters... not to join them.

as i study loss, grief, expressions and states of mourning, i see more and more clearly how sneaky and attractive and (possibly) a natural reaction for The Abused to long to become The Abuser. i see how slippery that particular slope can be. to hurt because you've been hurt...

but that isn't the only choice. no matter how victimized or traumatized a person may have become, it is still not license to become a monster. and i thinking specifically of murders and rapists here. specifically the people who tortured sylvia likens to death.

i watch that show 'Most Evil" a lot- the one where the psychologist explores killers' childhoods and examines the abuse these people generally suffered as a child in order to find a reason for why they became so violent later on in life.

it's very interesting and completely compelling and i think it's such an interesting practice, on the part of the doctor, to make a scientific argument for the existence of evil (a spiritually defined state). but he doesn't excuse it. there are many many many MORE people out there who have suffered in the same ways who do not turn around and react with such extreme violence and hatred toward others.

once you become a monster, you give up the right to the compassion we extend to victims. once you turn the corner and become The Abuser, you no longer get to expect the care and concern we offer to The Abused. because The Abused are the reality of these crimes. they are the mark, the proof, the evidence of another person's malice, hatred, and callousness. they are the people who bear this, who can speak as a witness... and so we must look at them, we must listen to them. or i must. i must because if i only look at the killer, the torturer, the abuser, and i examine their life solely, i will end up finding out that they were too, once, a child who was hurt... and that fact will wake up sympathies and confusions and torments in me that can be used distract me from the fact that they are not that scared child any longer.

they too became adults and made choices. and just as i am not allowed to sit here and blame the realities of my life on other people, and scapegoat my responsibilities on the actions of others, neither are they. if the past is awake in the present, i can have compassion for who these people were as a child, but also indignation and disgust for who they are as adults in the HERE and NOW.

and it could be that ignoring a victim's pain, refusing to hear their story, is a clear path to waking malice inside them. and so all the more reason to look at The Victim. all the more reason to try to understand them, where they are, their feelings, their insights, their knowledge. and i don't mean that as a preventative measure solely, but allowing art, science, and philosophy a set of ethics. all this learning and exploring doesn't matter worth a shit if it isn't beneficial inside daily life... at least at some point. there is absolutely no worth to examining why someone tortured another human being if we are unable to use that knowledge to either stop that cycle or to provide care to those who were made to suffer. i study atrocity in order to develop a deep sense of empathy... in order to be able to listen with my whole being... in order to move beyond fascination. fascination is step 1 in my practice. and not just my art practice but my way of living.

fascination must not be allowed to go so unchecked that we end up rationalizing horror. psychology can explain these horrors but it will never be able to explain them away. it will never erase what was done. it will never make it okay. it will never heal the wounds that we must learn to walk alongside of. it will never undo the pain of atrocity. the past is a FACT that can operate in the present but that isn't a license to do such grievous harm to others. it does not render a person's malice harmless. since when does understanding something turn it in to a positive? or even a neutral? understanding how someone became abusive does not change the fact that they are abusive.

and since we cannot change the past, we must deal with who these people ARE right now this minute. being beat up as a kid can't be used 30 years later to get you off the hook for becoming a monster. think of Hitler. he was once innocent too. he was once a scared and hurt child too. but that doesn't excuse The Holocaust and it definitely doesn't undo the trauma that so many others were subjected to as a result- sheer horror, complete degradations, entirely brutal malice. understanding what made hitler Hitler, doesn't change what happened. it doesn't undo what he did. it doesn't make charlotte delbo any less a victim or any less a survivor.

understanding HOW a person becomes monstrous certainly won't lessen the reality of the amazing state of pain sylvia likens died in.

and it doesn't alter the ripple that is sent out.

i think of the police officers and the detectives and the coroner who had to handle her case. they are traumatized too. and the ripple goes and goes and the story of her life lands in front of my eyes. i feel traumatized by these facts too. it isn't nearly the same degree as the coroner who had to write this stuff down, but it still exists.





i'm worn out now. i get long-winded when i get excited or when i'm trying to figure something out and see where i stand on an issue. more later.

this is what i've been thinking about for 2 years straight. i do not have many answers and maybe i'm just too senstive but i can't get around it...

we know the names of serial killers-

their violence is so inexplicable, so callous, that (as a culture) our stunned reaction to them is one of fascination. just like our fascination with rouge elephants or anything that seems to be so far outside the realm of normal, expected behavior. and it is fascinating. all anomalies are. anything out of the ordinary will draw attention. of course it will. we want to know why and how these things occur.

and i think of the Holocaust. i think of Charlotte Delbo's play "Who Will Carry the Word?" and that this play is also a very literal question. who will carry it? who will be The Witness? who will let the others know what really happened? who will keep the names alive of those who have suffered inexplicably?

the Holocaust will never be forgotten as an historical event... what i mean is... what are all the names involved? not just the names of the perpetrators. not just them.

i think of Sylvia Likens and i think of the 48 (known) victims of the green river killer. why don't we know their names? why aren't their names alive first inside our collected memory? why do we keep the names of those who have caused such suffering but not the names of those who suffered under their hand? it is the spectacle at work. the train-wreck. the twisted metal. the night-stalker smiling in the courtroom at his groupies. but as inexplicable as these horrors are, the way in which the victims die is just as inexplicable. most of us will not die under the hand of a serial killer. most of us will not know what it is to be tortured to death. most of us will not know what it is to be degraded so completely. this is a good thing. my point is, these sensational events extend further than the murderer. there are the people they killed. that circumstance is outside the bounds of the norm too.

and as a member of this culture, i am enraptured by these anomalies as well. i know the names of murderers but not the names of their victims. i too am captivated by the senselessness of atrocity. it isn't necessarily wrong or bad. but after the news break, after acceptance of these hard and sickening events has come, the work should not end. and it should extend beyond trying to figure out how a murderer is born. it should go further than attempting to understanding the inner workings of a psychopath. it should go in the direction of the victim as well. the life that was brought to an inexplicable, unthinkable stop. the real life redaction and dismissal of a human being. the massive, hateful swell of tragedy and pain that extinguished an individual life.

in a strange way, we do a sick honor to the "work" of a serial killer by keeping their name and not those of their victims.

i want to change this about myself. i want to change this about my life and the way i live it, the way i proceed. i want to choose to remember the LaBiancas instead and to think of them FIRST.

who will carry the word? who will remember? who will be a witness? and who will listen to the witness?

i would like to listen.

there are stories in the world that ask nothing of us, except simply to be heard. an end to shame and secrecy and humiliation and the intolerable pain of being made to suffer alone and in silence.

i will never know, from personal experience, what Sylvia Likens went through. i will never know, i hope, what the last moments of JonBenet Ramsey's life was like. i will never know the things that Elsie saw and felt. i hope, beyond all words i hope, to not die in a state of such terror, humiliation, and pain. i do hope to remember the names of those who have.

drawing Sylvia Likens' portrait has brought about a disruption, a shaking down of previous ideas and fears about art and life and hope and what i can do. i can choose to remember the victims and to give their names back to them. if all it is is an utterance, then i will take the time and opportunity to utter, to whisper, and if need be, cry out. i want to return them to their real names, not just whose victim they were.

it is true that the identities of the murderer and their victim are linked. inseparable inside the moment when death was caused. but there was a different identity prior to that moment. the act or moment of death is not the absolute identity of a human.

some ghosts just want to be acknowledged. some pain just wants to be noticed. some wounds will never heal and some horrors are so great that they defy explanation. and these horrors that defy explanation are also, sadly, unpreventable. the people that fell under such atrocity need to be remembered too.

we need to carry the word for them. i do. and maybe that's the shift. maybe that's the turn my practice has taken and has been taking for a long, long time... a way to prepare myself, to become able to carry such a word? whatever it is... i will try my best to find a way to become strong enough to draw their portraits and give their names back to them, no matter how long it takes.

book reveiw... (not for the faint of heart)

this morning,
already,
i read The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick...
my heart in pieces at the very beginning today but, like i said before, sadness is no reason to run and hide.
not from Art...

and The Holocaust must be remembered...


this little short story and the following novella is one of the most beautiful and painful things i've ever read, ever held in my hands. ever. like a baby almost. like a secret. it smothers and then it softens. the words fly out and stick in you. i tucked a little letter pressed print of a mother holding her infant child into the flap of the front cover. a mother whose face is turned away. her features hidden... and just like in this story, her features aren't the point. they aren't important. her motherhood is what is important. her desire to protect her child, to have her child kept safe... a child that is gone... to watch her daughter learn to dance and maybe paint, maybe write, commit poems to memory, to wear a blue dress with shining black buttons, to butterfly through youth and smile. smile.

it is a tall order when confronted with the past. this past. camps and electrified fences and boiling water and all the horrors devised to save on bullets. and rape.

but we have to listen. we have to remember. we have to at least try to understand. try to see what went on there. try to give rise to a new language that can actually hold these stories... find a new line that is finally strong enough to draw out the map of these grim and gross and horrible things. mussel manner. that's what's left if we don't find the right words. if we ignore the ache to find them. mussel manner. the dead walking around on the sticks of human legs. mussel manner. and all that's required of us, the ones who weren't there and who don't know, is to listen. just listen. not with pity. pity doesn't cut it.

and neither does sympathy.

it has to be deeper than that. sympathy, in the face of this, is laughable. it's a shame. there's no way to do it. you must let your heart break, wide open, be filled with black birds, and prove that you're human. give them honor. sacrifice your happy life, even just for the few hours it takes to read this work, to listen. just listen. listening is where hope grows. it's what we can do to become better than what we are.

make your life deeper.
buy this book.