.
i went to my little storage unit earlier today for the first time in 10 months. so many of the objects seemed like they didn't belong to me. or couldn't. but they did. they do. and i've been paying rent for them to be kept safely somewhere for the passed year.
it is a strange time-capsule. an odd window in to a different era, a different heart. after i turned my key in the padlock and swung the big, white door open i felt as if i was looking at someone else's belongings. in so many ways, i was. i am. i took one small carload of boxes and artwork back to my house. as i unpacked, i came across such a funny and weird assortment of shit from my past. numerous lives! it made me laugh joyfully to pull a two dollar bill (with red and black ink print) from the lowest drawer of my black Japanese jewelery box. i dumped the contents of the entire thing on to the floor, cleaned the drawers and hinges of a year's worth of dust, then rooted through the tarnished pieces.
i made a massive pile of trinkets i'm definitely not interested in wearing anymore, i'll say that much! ha! i looked at the glittering heap on the floor in front of me and felt next to no attachment to any of it. i'll keep the pieces of jewelery my mother gave me even though it's of a style i no longer wear. there is the necklace she gave me for my 16th birthday. here is the necklace she gave me when i graduated from High School. and here, the necklace she gave me when i graduated from college. when she died, i took a few of her necklaces. not because i wanted to wear them, i just wanted them near. like a Bible. amulets. talismans. and who knows? maybe the future will give me occasion to wear these necklaces again.
but i digress.
i didn't remember how much stuff i'd managed to cram inside such a tiny unit. i rented the smallest one available! my crap is really shoe-horned in, let me tell you. it's going to take a few more trips to get this all sorted out. most of which will be left on Oakland street corners or given to the Goodwill. i don't want it. i don't identify with it. i have no feeling for most of what i've saved. i want to be rid of it and have a clear, wide expanse in front of me upon which i may build a new life, a new future, a better, more honest Self. i don't want the anchors of The Past pulling at the corners of my eyes, the corners of my heart. i don't need the barbs and burrs. i don't need or want the attachments. it's truly just stuff. and mostly annoyances.
but my books. god, my books!!! i've missed them so much! i brought two boxes home with me today. i found the boxes that held my kiki smith and louise bourgeouis monographs and also my collection of jean genet's writings. i've been wanting to re-read The Theif's Journal since i embarked upon an idependant life a year ago. i need to have it around me, again, like a Bible. i need the reminder of his fearlessness, the illustrations of his philosophic bravery and poetic swagger.
right now, i am uploading my cd collection in to my laptop. soon, i'll be able to relish in the sounds of my brilliant music collection as i stomp back and forth across Oakland and San Francisco. i've been without Fugazi and Tori Amos and En Vouge and TOOL for a year! a fucking year! it's so good to have my music collection here in front of me. it is an ecstasy, truly.
.
the future grins from its dark corner. change is afoot. there is no reason to think his grin is sinister. he is merely chuckling at the surprises he knows are in store for us and of which we will be amazed and glad - these same things which we (i too) are afraid of now. the Unknown is a scary motherfucking thing, but i feel the fear and barrel forward anyway. like my friend said "get busy living or get busy dying".
it's easier now that i have music to do it to. ;)
let's live, kid.
Showing posts with label life is nuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life is nuts. Show all posts
Mar 10, 2013
Jan 24, 2013
execution
.
for the passed few days i've been hunched over projects, pulling things together that have sat, unattended, far too long and bringing them to completion. and hunched is exactly the right word. an old back injury has woken up as a result and i've spent the last several hours lying flat on my back in bed. i should be good as new by morning but it made today an utter pain in the ass. pun intended. still, i got out for a bit and took some lovely photographs of a broken mirror on the side of the road. the walking helped but i've been in a shitload of pain for the majority of the day. and actually, it's been kinda nice to just be in bed with a book. it's something i don't do enough these days. funny to think i used to curl up with a book nightly. was it really so long ago? a year. damn. a year...
as if the cycle of the seasons weren't enough to get my ritualistic brain humming. the new year finds us and 12 days later it's the 2nd anniversary of my mother's death. a week later on the 19th, it's her birthday. all these personal holidays. all these snaps of the leash. these markers of time are serious. and so... i've been thinking about grad school again. wondering about it is more like it. should i? shouldn't i? is it necessary for my practice? is it necessary in order to have a career as an artist? what constitutes a "career" for an artist anyway? i'll go on making things and writing things until i go blind and my fingers fall off regardless. and i haven't looked to any system to supply value to my work in a very, very long time. i'd just as soon climb poles and wrap my crochet around them or write poems on abandoned mattresses. i return to dreaming of New York; the Bowery, the Lower East Side and how magnificently at home i felt there. lately, i look at myself in the mirror and ask "what the fuck is stopping you?"
the big news is that i'm traveling to Europe for the first time this summer and i must squirrel away alottttttt of pennies between now and then in order to make it happen. no bouncing off to NY until after i have bought a passport and a plane ticket to Frankfurt. after that, who knows? i have a storage unit where all my books and art will be safe until i can collect them. i can go wherever i want to go because the truth of the matter is that i can both make art and wait tables anywhere. this is a fact i've been thinking alot about lately. A LOT. a fact that simultaneously makes me feel exquisitely free and exquisitely lonely. freedom is a barbed thing. still, i'd rather have the scars of liberty than the pristine surface afforded by security. i'd rather run this body in to the ground through love and action and adventure than preserve it needlessly through neglect as an atrocious shrine to Safety and Obedience. the only obedience i feel is Moral is to be myself. it is the pinnacle of honesty and truly the only thing any of us really have to offer anyway.
but i'm getting away from myself. the point was my slipped disk and how it fucked up an entire day. while laying on my bedroom floor, i read the first two essays in Chris Kraus's 'Video Green'. i like reading her thoughts on contemporary art paired with her exploration of BDSM. seems an unlikely pair at first but it's something i feel intrigued and comforted by. her level of self-exposure in what is technically an article/essay is astounding. it widens my view on what "serious" writing can be. the body is given primacy. especially the female body and female desire. it makes me think about blogging in an entirely different way too. the level of self-exposure i've attained here in the blackland is nothing compared to what i want to achieve in my art practice (of which this blog is very much a part) but it is leaps and bounds beyond what it was just 2 years ago. i suppose the answer is to simply keep pushing. whether it be grad school or simply relocating, i need to push harder at the seams of my practice, at the seams of myself. it is a lonely endeavour sometimes. painfully lonely. but then i think of all the artists i admire and i leaf through their books. i think of my mother at her sewing machine. i think of my brother on his motorcycle and my sister taking care of animals on a farm. i think of you reading these words and how much i'd rather be sitting on the arm of your couch, cocktail in hand, a laugh ready to burst and saying all of this directly to you and waiting for the heated breath of your response to find my ear, my neck, my heart.
remember what Jack said: to be an artist is a privilege.
.
for the passed few days i've been hunched over projects, pulling things together that have sat, unattended, far too long and bringing them to completion. and hunched is exactly the right word. an old back injury has woken up as a result and i've spent the last several hours lying flat on my back in bed. i should be good as new by morning but it made today an utter pain in the ass. pun intended. still, i got out for a bit and took some lovely photographs of a broken mirror on the side of the road. the walking helped but i've been in a shitload of pain for the majority of the day. and actually, it's been kinda nice to just be in bed with a book. it's something i don't do enough these days. funny to think i used to curl up with a book nightly. was it really so long ago? a year. damn. a year...
as if the cycle of the seasons weren't enough to get my ritualistic brain humming. the new year finds us and 12 days later it's the 2nd anniversary of my mother's death. a week later on the 19th, it's her birthday. all these personal holidays. all these snaps of the leash. these markers of time are serious. and so... i've been thinking about grad school again. wondering about it is more like it. should i? shouldn't i? is it necessary for my practice? is it necessary in order to have a career as an artist? what constitutes a "career" for an artist anyway? i'll go on making things and writing things until i go blind and my fingers fall off regardless. and i haven't looked to any system to supply value to my work in a very, very long time. i'd just as soon climb poles and wrap my crochet around them or write poems on abandoned mattresses. i return to dreaming of New York; the Bowery, the Lower East Side and how magnificently at home i felt there. lately, i look at myself in the mirror and ask "what the fuck is stopping you?"
the big news is that i'm traveling to Europe for the first time this summer and i must squirrel away alottttttt of pennies between now and then in order to make it happen. no bouncing off to NY until after i have bought a passport and a plane ticket to Frankfurt. after that, who knows? i have a storage unit where all my books and art will be safe until i can collect them. i can go wherever i want to go because the truth of the matter is that i can both make art and wait tables anywhere. this is a fact i've been thinking alot about lately. A LOT. a fact that simultaneously makes me feel exquisitely free and exquisitely lonely. freedom is a barbed thing. still, i'd rather have the scars of liberty than the pristine surface afforded by security. i'd rather run this body in to the ground through love and action and adventure than preserve it needlessly through neglect as an atrocious shrine to Safety and Obedience. the only obedience i feel is Moral is to be myself. it is the pinnacle of honesty and truly the only thing any of us really have to offer anyway.
but i'm getting away from myself. the point was my slipped disk and how it fucked up an entire day. while laying on my bedroom floor, i read the first two essays in Chris Kraus's 'Video Green'. i like reading her thoughts on contemporary art paired with her exploration of BDSM. seems an unlikely pair at first but it's something i feel intrigued and comforted by. her level of self-exposure in what is technically an article/essay is astounding. it widens my view on what "serious" writing can be. the body is given primacy. especially the female body and female desire. it makes me think about blogging in an entirely different way too. the level of self-exposure i've attained here in the blackland is nothing compared to what i want to achieve in my art practice (of which this blog is very much a part) but it is leaps and bounds beyond what it was just 2 years ago. i suppose the answer is to simply keep pushing. whether it be grad school or simply relocating, i need to push harder at the seams of my practice, at the seams of myself. it is a lonely endeavour sometimes. painfully lonely. but then i think of all the artists i admire and i leaf through their books. i think of my mother at her sewing machine. i think of my brother on his motorcycle and my sister taking care of animals on a farm. i think of you reading these words and how much i'd rather be sitting on the arm of your couch, cocktail in hand, a laugh ready to burst and saying all of this directly to you and waiting for the heated breath of your response to find my ear, my neck, my heart.
remember what Jack said: to be an artist is a privilege.
.
Jun 13, 2011
the luck of the thing
strangeness twined inside this light. suddenly she comes in her robes and curls, lip-sticked and smiling, that image that i've always had of her: full and bright and tall.
one of my aunts, one of my mother's sisters, had a heart attack and, though she is okay, it shakes us all so violently and the recent death we've all just seen comes flying up to face us again. we all become the mirror of it. we all walk around, mirrors on legs, shining the horror of it, the quickness and inexplicability of this damn life. too motherfucking short. should i be thankful to have learned this so early in life? or waste even more time than i already have on feeling cheated?
i make the sweaters. i work them like diaries. twist twist knot and turn. you will all at least have these peculiar objects to snuggle in and warm yourselves with when my day finally comes and i am gone. the sweaters and every image and every word i can muster. everything.
one of my aunts, one of my mother's sisters, had a heart attack and, though she is okay, it shakes us all so violently and the recent death we've all just seen comes flying up to face us again. we all become the mirror of it. we all walk around, mirrors on legs, shining the horror of it, the quickness and inexplicability of this damn life. too motherfucking short. should i be thankful to have learned this so early in life? or waste even more time than i already have on feeling cheated?
i make the sweaters. i work them like diaries. twist twist knot and turn. you will all at least have these peculiar objects to snuggle in and warm yourselves with when my day finally comes and i am gone. the sweaters and every image and every word i can muster. everything.
May 19, 2011
tomorrow night we get the keys
i stumble across collections of words, phrases, and fall in to them like a tar pit, screaming THAT'S WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY! and loving the feeling of being stuck (so crazily, inexplicably comfortably stuck!) in someone else's writing.
i have been thinking about (fearing) homelessness for months as we searched and searched fruitlessly for new digs, always coming up empty handed, making phone calls that were never returned, making appointments that the other person always forgot, running face first in to rules that i could not wrap around my life, could not endure the strangulation, could not abide by just to end up being stuck in place i wasn't all that happy about being anyway. we began planning to put all our boxed possessions in storage and living in cars, surfing couches, buying a gym membership just to be able to take showers. i'm serious. and i thought of Genet and i thought i have no real home anyway and i thought no, wait, my real home is my notebook, my real home is this Blackland, these images i create.
these thoughts have been present and potent. they originated when my mom leaned in to death and the threat of homelessness surfaced the moment i returned home from her funeral. too much at once. and it has been too-much-at-once for months now. it was so impossibly hard to find a new apartment in santa rosa that i really did start thinking maybe God doesn't want me to live in the north bay? the fates really have seemed pretty opposed to the idea. and so we start looking in our beloved east bay again, in good ol' Oakland, and the very first place we submit an application to becomes ours. we pick up the keys tomorrow evening. we will load our boxes of books in to the truck tonight.
the reception at Project One last night was beautiful and felt like a homecoming, like a longing satisfied, like a return. art on the walls, my Worry Roses for my mom installed, friends all around, happy to hear that we are moving back after three long years out here in the countryside. three years... it doesn't seem real. it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long. a long, strange dream... not a Home.
and i needed the connection. i needed the tall white walls and people milling around with wine glasses in their hand. i needed the air, the space, the breath of these things.
i'm reading Just Kids by patti smith right now and it's the most perfect thing i could be reading. my friends freya and doug read it, one right after the other, a week or so ago and lent it to me the second they finished reading it. it's the perfect follow-up to volume 2 of anais nin's diary and the perfect preface to our move back to oakland. my fear about homelessness lifted instantly and i thought well, patti smith slept on a stoop in new york... i could sleep in my car in san francisco. what's the big deal? and then of course, the very next day, we get an apartment. God approved. hahaha!
the week i didn't write here i was dealing with all these things and a long-time friend of the family who has known me since i was about 7 years old or so that we lost track of a few years back tracked me down on facebook. still thinking of us as family, still thinking of my mother as her best friend, still thinking of my mother as her sister, she sent me an excited message asking about my mom and how to get a hold of her, she called me mija just like always, and then in her happy hunt for connection she stumbled across my blog. she read, here, about my mother's death. her best friend, her sister. and another message was sent. she left her phone number and i called her the second i got in the door from work. hearing her stunned horror was painful. hearing her voice, a voice i've heard all my life since i was just a little girl, felt like Home. she looked at my work online and felt proud of me.
and a few days ago i read this post at repat blues' blog.
"There is no such thing as home. Home becomes art, the creation of art. Turning to art, working the wound. Stew's play. Passing Strange. I've always been passing strange. I'd rather be bad at this (writing, acting, fucking) than good at X (Selling air conditioners. Public relations. Saying Good Morning. Making eye contact)."
these are the words that i am happily stuck in. all of it. each word, a bell ringing. a knock on the head reminding me of what i must do. i got out of class yesterday (my last day of instruction before two rounds of finals next week) and immediately got in the truck and got on the freeway and went to san francisco. i left this life behind and picked up another 70 miles away in a beautiful room in a beautiful city. i hugged friends and i met strangers and i had champagne.
freya brought me roses and her children painted me a little picture of a rainbow which will go on the refrigerator in our new kitchen tomorrow evening. i turned in my almost-two-week notice at my retail gig and will be back on a crazy, meandering job-hunt in no time. i think of Genet and patti smith and repat blues and my friends. i think of the struggle and i think it's so completely fucking worth it when i think of what an artist's life is. if it ever comes down to it, the roof of a car is still a roof and i can totally live there because my Home is in my notebook and the graphite on the page, the paintings on the wall, and the words that women write.
i have been thinking about (fearing) homelessness for months as we searched and searched fruitlessly for new digs, always coming up empty handed, making phone calls that were never returned, making appointments that the other person always forgot, running face first in to rules that i could not wrap around my life, could not endure the strangulation, could not abide by just to end up being stuck in place i wasn't all that happy about being anyway. we began planning to put all our boxed possessions in storage and living in cars, surfing couches, buying a gym membership just to be able to take showers. i'm serious. and i thought of Genet and i thought i have no real home anyway and i thought no, wait, my real home is my notebook, my real home is this Blackland, these images i create.
these thoughts have been present and potent. they originated when my mom leaned in to death and the threat of homelessness surfaced the moment i returned home from her funeral. too much at once. and it has been too-much-at-once for months now. it was so impossibly hard to find a new apartment in santa rosa that i really did start thinking maybe God doesn't want me to live in the north bay? the fates really have seemed pretty opposed to the idea. and so we start looking in our beloved east bay again, in good ol' Oakland, and the very first place we submit an application to becomes ours. we pick up the keys tomorrow evening. we will load our boxes of books in to the truck tonight.
the reception at Project One last night was beautiful and felt like a homecoming, like a longing satisfied, like a return. art on the walls, my Worry Roses for my mom installed, friends all around, happy to hear that we are moving back after three long years out here in the countryside. three years... it doesn't seem real. it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long. a long, strange dream... not a Home.
and i needed the connection. i needed the tall white walls and people milling around with wine glasses in their hand. i needed the air, the space, the breath of these things.
i'm reading Just Kids by patti smith right now and it's the most perfect thing i could be reading. my friends freya and doug read it, one right after the other, a week or so ago and lent it to me the second they finished reading it. it's the perfect follow-up to volume 2 of anais nin's diary and the perfect preface to our move back to oakland. my fear about homelessness lifted instantly and i thought well, patti smith slept on a stoop in new york... i could sleep in my car in san francisco. what's the big deal? and then of course, the very next day, we get an apartment. God approved. hahaha!
the week i didn't write here i was dealing with all these things and a long-time friend of the family who has known me since i was about 7 years old or so that we lost track of a few years back tracked me down on facebook. still thinking of us as family, still thinking of my mother as her best friend, still thinking of my mother as her sister, she sent me an excited message asking about my mom and how to get a hold of her, she called me mija just like always, and then in her happy hunt for connection she stumbled across my blog. she read, here, about my mother's death. her best friend, her sister. and another message was sent. she left her phone number and i called her the second i got in the door from work. hearing her stunned horror was painful. hearing her voice, a voice i've heard all my life since i was just a little girl, felt like Home. she looked at my work online and felt proud of me.
and a few days ago i read this post at repat blues' blog.
"There is no such thing as home. Home becomes art, the creation of art. Turning to art, working the wound. Stew's play. Passing Strange. I've always been passing strange. I'd rather be bad at this (writing, acting, fucking) than good at X (Selling air conditioners. Public relations. Saying Good Morning. Making eye contact)."
these are the words that i am happily stuck in. all of it. each word, a bell ringing. a knock on the head reminding me of what i must do. i got out of class yesterday (my last day of instruction before two rounds of finals next week) and immediately got in the truck and got on the freeway and went to san francisco. i left this life behind and picked up another 70 miles away in a beautiful room in a beautiful city. i hugged friends and i met strangers and i had champagne.
freya brought me roses and her children painted me a little picture of a rainbow which will go on the refrigerator in our new kitchen tomorrow evening. i turned in my almost-two-week notice at my retail gig and will be back on a crazy, meandering job-hunt in no time. i think of Genet and patti smith and repat blues and my friends. i think of the struggle and i think it's so completely fucking worth it when i think of what an artist's life is. if it ever comes down to it, the roof of a car is still a roof and i can totally live there because my Home is in my notebook and the graphite on the page, the paintings on the wall, and the words that women write.
Apr 30, 2011
dang!
oh, crazy life, crazy morning, crazy mourning, crazy minutes speeding by so fast! 3 weeks until finals. 3 weeks and then it is summer vacation. this first semester back on a college campus sped by at an unbelievably quick pace. between studying and working and working and looking for an apartment (still! though i think we may have finally found something this passed thursday. fingers crossed!) my head is reeling. i begin to stretch out the length of my long mornings on days i am able. days like today. the man is out and about and i am here, still in my polka dot pajamas, still sipping tea, still jumping back in bed with my notebook and pen, over and over again, refusing to let this part of the day come to a close, refusing to think about going to my retail gig this evening, keeping anais nin's diary within easy reach.
for as bad of a blogger as i've been, i've been an excellent writer in private. every morning i wake hungry for my notebook. every morning i move my pen along. and every night i've been curling up with anais' diary, turning page after page, copying entire passages in to my notebook to ingest, digest, roll around with as i sleep and dream and wake, as i become whatever it is i'm becoming. this Next, this Now.
there is a threshold waiting, breathing against my cheek, a crossing of sorts that needs to be made... and i have no clue how to do it or where this crossing even is. all i can think is that i must read as if my life depended on it. i must turn pages pages pages and be the best disciple i can be. all i can think is that i must become smarter, i must learn more, engage with words and textures and the wind on the other side of my window. i must be brazen and learn to stop caring so much about certain things- certain pleasantries, niceties, polite blah blah blahs that just get in the way, hurdles made of fear of abandonment, fear of hurting someone else, fear of being a disappointment, all the fears i was taught to have. i think of it more and more and it sickens me: the fears that get plugged in to children. but it is from this place of repulsion that i must jump forward in The Work. somehow i must catapult myself to the next level with The Work. all i can think is READ READ READ.
and in a little under 3 weeks i'll be installing a bit of work in a group show at Project One in the city. more on that in a few days but i'm super excited about it! i'm telling ya, life is nuts right now!
ich muss zeihnen! ich muss schrieben! Und ich muss den ganzen Tag studieren! ich habe ein Prufung am Mittwoch und ich habe veil zu tun! es ist verruckt!
for as bad of a blogger as i've been, i've been an excellent writer in private. every morning i wake hungry for my notebook. every morning i move my pen along. and every night i've been curling up with anais' diary, turning page after page, copying entire passages in to my notebook to ingest, digest, roll around with as i sleep and dream and wake, as i become whatever it is i'm becoming. this Next, this Now.
there is a threshold waiting, breathing against my cheek, a crossing of sorts that needs to be made... and i have no clue how to do it or where this crossing even is. all i can think is that i must read as if my life depended on it. i must turn pages pages pages and be the best disciple i can be. all i can think is that i must become smarter, i must learn more, engage with words and textures and the wind on the other side of my window. i must be brazen and learn to stop caring so much about certain things- certain pleasantries, niceties, polite blah blah blahs that just get in the way, hurdles made of fear of abandonment, fear of hurting someone else, fear of being a disappointment, all the fears i was taught to have. i think of it more and more and it sickens me: the fears that get plugged in to children. but it is from this place of repulsion that i must jump forward in The Work. somehow i must catapult myself to the next level with The Work. all i can think is READ READ READ.
and in a little under 3 weeks i'll be installing a bit of work in a group show at Project One in the city. more on that in a few days but i'm super excited about it! i'm telling ya, life is nuts right now!
ich muss zeihnen! ich muss schrieben! Und ich muss den ganzen Tag studieren! ich habe ein Prufung am Mittwoch und ich habe veil zu tun! es ist verruckt!
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