and suddenly, your memory...

.

when he shaved your head in the kitchen, i could only watch the first pass of the clippers, mama.



afterward, you stood and walked to the bathroom...

i've told this story before...

you came out wearing dramatic, dark eye shadow and smiling.

you sat down next to me on the couch and i knew i should mimic you.

i was smiling too.

i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!"

i wanted to cry so bad.

in my head, she sang, "some things are better left unsaid, but they still turn me inside-out..."

like us smiling, mama, instead of crying

instead of yelling

because we both knew, right then, that you were dying

and i was putting on a brave face

just like you, mama.



just like you.




i get so mad at you sometimes for taking off and dying the way you did.

your little girl and i still need you.  us, and your boy too.

the men you chose have added up to nothing. neither one has been a father.  neither has been an umbrella.  neither has even been a friend.


i put on annie lennox and think of your big lips, mama.  i think of you smiling.

i wish you were here tonight to push my hair back from my forehead and tell me it's okay to feel afraid.

i'm getting ready to make some really big changes, some really big decisions.  i wish i could talk to you about them.  i wish i could hold your hand.

i wish you were here...

because maybe i wouldn't feel 14 years old at 34.  maybe i'd feel a bit more solid in this world and in this body.  maybe i wouldn't feel so thrown by glances and sighs...

i don't want to be as insecure as i am.

i don't want to be as insecure as you were.

i don't want to give up as easily as you did.

i want to love me more than you ever did, mama.

and that's the plain truth.



i want to love me more than you ever could and i want to love you as a woman, not as my mother.


i want to love you like i love me.



if you were here, i'd hug you so hard and we'd laugh so hard and i wouldn't be awake at midnight listening to annie lennox and writing things like this.

memory lane can be the road to the Present

.

spent the whole day behind the hook and am now enjoying an over-poured glass of Auslese.  this is the very definition of a wonderful day off.

and i've needed it.  the passed week or so has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.  a huge box arrived unexpectedly containing my mother's collection of family photos, more than 3 1/2 years after her death.  i opened the box only to be sure of what it was and then closed it again.  i wasn't in the mood for that type of upheaval and i wasn't prepared to slice open a cardboard box and be greeted by my mother's face and the dresses she saved that my sister and i wore as little girls in an Olen Mill's portrait so soooooo many years ago.  kelly must've been 4 or 5.  that would have made me 7 or 8.

a few days later, i reached back inside the box and pulled the dresses out.  i remember hating them as a little girl but, now, they look like art pieces.  something possibly akin to the Kiki Smith piece, Sisters, or the twins in The Shining.  ha!

i gazed at them in between rounds of digging through the 7 portfolios that are stored in my bedroom closet.  it was a strange walk down memory lane.  it's amazing what an accurate barometer of emotion art is.  looking at my work from just a few years ago, i relived the pain and confusion and longing i was entrenched in during those days.  and the sheer MASS of my personal collection is astounding! i've thrown away SO MUCH each time i've moved and i still have such an enormous stockpile of work! it was heartrending to go through it all but there were also moments when i smiled.  and smiled wide like a goofy child, at that.  in the middle of a portfolio that largely houses work i did during the last year i lived in Calistoga, i came across a self-portrait i drew when i was 21 years old.  it was made during one of the happiest times in my life DESPITE the fact that i had yet to leave my hated home town.

 

it was drawn during the time Jose and i lived together in my very first apartment.  we were inseparable and i loved being with him.  we smoked way too many cigarettes and drank blended frappaccinos way too often and squeezed our bellies  and called ourselves fat just like two silly teenagers would.  :)  thinking back on all that makes me so happy.  we listened to Bikini Kill and dreamed of New York together.  what's really special is that sometimes we still do.  it's not at all irregular for Jose and i to refer to each other as Rebel Girl more than 10 years later.  :)

all this made somehow brought me to the realization that for the last several years i needed a deep round of PLAY.  it's no secret that life is hard and it's no secret that my life has been hard.  looking at my own work, my own hand smearing charcoal and graphite, the words i'd scrawl sometimes in the margins or on the back of the paper...  i realized that in the span of 3 short years i lost all three parental figures and the person i considered to be the closest member of my immediate family, my partner for 7 years.  with the exception of my siblings, my entire immediate family basically collapsed.   and all the emotion of those days was right there.  right in my hands, in the black and white smears and screams of my drawings.

it was hard to leave the house that day.  i wanted to hide in bed.  i wanted to be dirty and dumb and lounge around in dingy pajamas.  i wanted to not give a fuck about anything and just spend the day drinking.  i wanted to raise a middle finger to the world and cry my eyes out.  sometimes i hear my voice inside my own head and it sounds so small.  so painfully small. so heartbreaking.  i think of my mother and i think of my father and i think of my siblings and what their pain must be and i whisper inside myself, "this isn't fair"...

but looking at the artwork i made during such a tumultuous era allowed me to see that i have, in fact, healed from a great many pains and that i long to return to a certain type of seriousness again, a particular breed of deep introspection and artistic investigation.  basically, it made me want to draw again.  :)

we'll see.  i sure enjoyed laying in bed all day with my crochet hook and black yarn today, that's for sure.



i'm confident the Future is an interesting place.  

.

i pretended to hold your hand

.

at the edge of the world with my jeans rolled to the knee, i thought of you as i walked along that cold, beautiful line of surf and sand.  i looked out across the expanse of the pacific to where the water meets the sky and thought of Germany, thought of you; your young, bright self bouncing across cobblestone and drinking beer.  i played the morrissey song "everyday is like sunday" over and over again as i walked from the pier to the cliffs.  i smiled against the wind and thought, "where'd you get off to, woman?  you should be here."

and then a week later, a box arrives at my front door.  i look at the return address and see its from my ex-stepfather.  i push the box against the wall in the kitchen and walk away.  i knew what the box contained...  something i've been waiting for for well over a year, something i cried over the last time i held it in my hands the day after you died:  the photo album of your high school graduation, mama, your days as a young GI in Hannover, and the early days of your marriage to my father.

i went to my room with a cup of coffee and wrote for awhile but the gravity of your arrival pulled me back to the kitchen.  i grabbed a knife out of the drawer and cut the packing tape in a clean, careful slice.  i needed to know if this treasure had truly arrived, if i'd finally received something i've been waiting for for so long.  i folded back the edge of the cardboard box and brushed away foam peanuts to find your painting and another small box.  i lifted the small box out, set it on the kitchen table, and looked inside.

i couldn't look for long before i felt the sting of tears in my eyes and throat.  i bore the pain dryly, just long enough to photograph my treasure and to pay honor to the arrival of such a beloved and long-awaited piece of my disheveled family history.

young and fresh and beautiful at 19 years old, that's my mama on the lower right.

such a beauty.

where'd you get off to, woman?  you should be here.



.

happy mother's day

.

Meine Mutter and ich. 

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. 

hard season

.

lebensecht

.



this morning in the sun as i woke slowly - that state of half-sleep - i imagined holding you.


i held you tight. i held you close to me.



.

red roses, information

tonight is the opening of Literati at Slingshot. it is our last show in the beautiful venue at 890 Valencia. yep. our time there is coming to a close but i can't tell you how lucky we are to have had it for the passed 3 months. if you've been inside the space, you know how lucky we are. it is that gorgeous. but if you've never been and you're in the area, i highly encourage you to come out tonight. music, wine, art, ME. hahahaha! if you need more reason than that, show up and i'll give you a few more. ;)

also, we decided to leave my installation Worry Roses (for my mother, for myself) up. freya said she wanted it to have more time, every moment possible, to be seen and considered. especially in such a beautiful space. as a result, i decided to be brave and go ahead and "show" the new piece for my mom. the red roses. i say "show" because it isn't completely finished yet. i will be constructing the piece on site. you will be able to watch this bed, this garden, this head stone, be built and shaped. it's important to me to get this piece made quickly. there is something deep down that calls for its existence. i must make it. i must make it for her. and it's a risk to put such a personal narrative in public, especially one that is so current, one that is still being lived through, but i feel it necessary to open the door to that discussions. i know i am not unique in this. this story is happening in other people's lives too. we need a place to be. so few places feel right. i will build this site for all who need it.

<3

3 days

yesterday morning, before leaving to go watch the gallery, i bought my plane ticket. i have 3 days to wait. 3 days to get as much work finished as i can before going to tennessee to see my mom. it is down to that. this is not a freak-out. it's time. and i can't tell you how bad and sick my heart feels. it's hard to do anything. but i feel so much lighter since buying the ticket and making a plan. in 3 days i can hold her. 3 days. 3 days.

i'll be gone about a week and will spend as much time hugging her and looking at her as i can.

i have buried myself in books and crochet. i am making red roses this time. blood roses maybe. i don't know what they are or what to call them just yet... only that they save me. they hold me together. red roses twisted between my fingers and the novels of Jean Rhys digested one after the other. i'm on 'Quartet' now.

a boy came in the gallery yesterday and spent a long time staring at the Worry Roses. he was maybe 20 or 21. i didn't interrupt him. he pulled a small notepad out of his bag and copied down the information about the piece from the tag on the wall. after awhile, i asked him if he had any questions and he came and sat by me in the enormous window at the front of the gallery. he started talking about the roses and choked on his words when he said: that piece... standing in front of it, i just got so sad. could you tell me about it? his eyes seemed wet and i was so struck by his emotion. a total stranger. what a huge gift that was for me. tremendous.

we sat in the window and talked for about 10 minutes and then he was on his way. we shook hands and smiled at each other. it was a very lucky moment.




Worry Roses (for my mother, for myself)
dimensions variable
300 crochet units
2010


detail


it's weird... the piece doesn't photograph well. it looks so small in these pictures but in real life it's huge. it's enveloping. a big embrace.

pain

that feeling in your stomach, in your throat- the awful, the fear, the indescribable, unbelievable, unthinkable. my heart crystallizes. the mad hand flings in to the floor like a plate. smash smash smash smash, over and over again, stuck on repeat, a scratch in the seam, my heart dashed to pieces over and over again.

simone weil says we should suffer passively... accept our suffering, let our pain wash over us, that we must not resist it, that we must accept it. she says that in this way we become aware of our humanity, our nearness to God. that it is in such a state that we can at least see the veil that separates ourselves from our Maker. that in this state we do not add to the evil in the world. it is running from pain, resisting the fact of pain, doing whatever we can to stop our pain, that cultivates cruelty.

and in moments of lucidity, of calm, of intellectual poise, i agree. when i have achieved that cool distance, i look back at the pain of life and i agree. i look ahead at all the imaginary hurts that the future contains and i agree. i write let it polish me, oh Lord...

but in the present-tense, in the moment of it, my Ethics and Philosophies come face to face with my human frailty. my human frailty kicks up, rises to the surface, overcomes me... and where i once said i agree, i beg why? it rises up, screaming, NOT YET! NOT YET!

it is the Horror of watching the advance of terminal illness. the Horror of being able to see mortality, to know death is coming. we know it and we can't stop it. every day, every day. and here i am, so far from her. every day, every day, reading while i wait for the dreadful phone call. and just like a child, tempted to turn off my phone so that the call can never come.

i hate this so much.

this morning, i watched the sky change from out my bedroom window. as the it struggles toward dawn, it finds the most lovely shade of cornflower blue. deep and cool. it is a color that has always comforted me. it was the color crayon i used as a child to fill in all our eyes. all of us with the same eyes. all of us with her eyes. our pretty mama. we all match.

time is out of order. all the numbers are mixed up. it isn't supposed to go like this. we should have another 40 years.