exposure

i spent this grey day at home in my pajamas studying german vocabulary and listening to german music.  i am a bit under the weather today.  my throat is sore and so are my eyes.  the perils of airline travel.  trapped in that recirculated air for 6 hours isn't exactly the best shit to breath.  but it's worth it to have seen the atlantic again.  it's worth it to have seen that distant sky.  my flight in was diverted to Buffalo due to dense fog at JFK.  a gorgeous sunrise met us there.  me and so many strangers walked to the large window with our cups of airport coffee and stood there gazing together at that luscious, unexpected orange. 

and then to come home to 70 degree weather and bright skies.
and then to come home to such ease and warmth.
and then to come home.
in spite of this little chest cold, i feel lucky and light.  i've been to New York twice in 2 1/2 months.

i spent the first 2 hours of my day scribbling leisurely in my notebook, recounting kisses and attempting to identify my newest desires and latest dreams.  life has changed so much this year.  life has changed so much in the last 2 months.  and something has clicked in to place as a result of returning to the scene of certain crimes.  something has healed.  i no longer feel quite so dire as i did before.  i no longer feel like time is quickly running out.  i no longer feel that i need to be wild in order to feel that i have lived.  i enjoy wildness, it's true, but the past few days i've enjoyed a deep, warm sense of calm.  a stillness.  a readiness for something a bit more serious.

after ending a long term relationship at the beginning of this year, i think i needed to take advantage of a very high level of freedom.  i needed to stay out late and dance and drink and have fun.  i needed to be stupid and i needed to be dangerous.  i needed to stop caring about the clock for awhile; expectations and responsibilities and all the things i had allowed to take root in me that choked my ability to blossom and change.  i needed to cut away so many things.  i needed to turn my back on so many things i was taught.  those horrible falsities and all the beautiful lies we are sometimes so eager to believe.  for years i listened to my instincts screaming at me to leave but i was just so fucking afraid of so many things to know how to do it.  i had come to believe that being myself was a selfish thing.  i had been made to believe that every desire of mine was self-serving and, therefore, shameful.  i am finally taking a clean, deep breath.  all these months and years later am i finally able to look at what i tolerated and ask myself why?

when you've been taught from childhood to believe that everything you are is bad and wrong, you become unable to trust your own instincts.  you become unable to act in your own best interest.  you put other people's happiness well before your own because "that's what a good person does".  you tuck your tail and you smile.  you save your tears for the shower.  you become a master of silent crying.  you become a master of self-denial and self-deception.  you stay put because you've been taught so thoroughly to believe that you are somehow deficient.

deficient.
inadequate.
silly.
dirty.
dumb.
ridiculous.
selfish.
childish.
ugly.

and it is only when you are doing what you're told that maybe a bit of affection is thrown your way.  a crumb.  a scrap.  a pat on the head.

as my mother crept ever closer to her death, i began to see so glaringly that i had been chasing scraps of approval my entire life.  so had she.  she was strong in so many beautiful ways but also suffered from such tremendous guilt.  she too believed that everything about her was bad and wrong:  the legacy that is handed down.

shortly after she died i was able to say fuck it.  if i'm bad, i'm bad. so be it.  if i'm selfish, so be it.  shit can't get any goddamn worse.  i feel like dying too.  if this is what being Good gets me, let me test drive Bad.  my life depends on it.

i used to cry almost every day.  in the last 9 months maybe i've cried 9 times.  and i'm being generous in my estimate.  deciding to stop caring about whether or not other people will label me as selfish is the best decision i could have ever made.  my worst fear is hurting other people and that has led quickly to my own undoing, my own site of deep, atrocious pain.  i am so afraid of being a disappointment that i silence myself, i tie myself in knots, i wake up in a panic in the middle of the night afraid that i am the worst person alive and wondering how i can gain forgiveness for the fact of my horrible birth.  i have let other people do horrible things to me.  friends, family members, lovers.  i have tolerated extreme neglect.  i have tolerated viciousness and cruelty.  i have allowed myself to be convinced that i deserved these things.  this is the self-hatred that was instilled in me at the very beginning of my life.

a friend of mine recently passed on a saying to me: we recieve the love we think we deserve.

i've been turning it over and over inside my head.  i've aimed it right at my heart like a gun and i've rolled around in it like a child in tall grass.   i obviously thought i deserved very little;  that love was something i could only aspire to give but not necessarily receive.  during the last few months of my life, i've loved myself in a way i lacked for a very long time.  i decided to attend to my own needs and not leave it up to chance or benevolence.  i've had more fun that i can describe and i've written some of the best prose of my life as a result.  i've met so many interesting people and have had my faith in humanity restored by such seemingly simple things as dancing with strangers in dark clubs and watching the sunrise in a different time-zone.

i walked down market street in san francisco last night to meet a friend for drinks and as i crossed the street, i thought i stand entirely on my own...  god, this feels fantastic. 

hints and nods

i can't tell you how many times this year the phrase fuck it all has floated through my brain. i mean that in the funniest way possible. really, you should be laughing out loud, nodding your head, totally cracking up, and saying ME TOO, SISTER!

once again, i load my possessions in to boxes. once again, big changes find me. a whole new road, a whole new phase. in between houses.

i also started a new job today. i am back to waiting tables, the true job of the artist. :) you should be laughing out loud at that comment too, fyi.

there is a light way down deep.
it is crawling slowly toward my eyes from the inside.

i was once such a hopeful girl.
maybe i am on my way back to that place.
maybe there are old and new titles alike waiting somewhere for me off in the virgin future.

what is this place and who am i when i'm here?

shall i tip-toe back in to this room?

this quiet confessional, all text and light? beaming beaming.

throwing words. tears. longing. sorrow. my sad vomit. so sad i vomit. has that ever happened to you? have you been so sad that your body rebels against you?

my mother's death has sped life up in certain ways. slowed it down in others. the world is an entirely different place now.

i was driving in the dark winding roads back home from work one night and suddenly i said to my self, out loud, "her death is going to impact my life in ways i can't even begin to imagine and it is going to go on like that for years." this is a fact. this is one of the few truths i know and i'm not sad about it. i don't ever want this to stop hurting. i want it to hurt forever. i'll find a way to let it polish me.

there is too much to catalogue. all that has happened. all that is still happening. all that will continue to happen...

for months, i've been recoiling from using this space in certain ways. i needed it to become more artistic, more invested in blogging as a particular form of writing like fiction or poetry. roz thinks it could be Performance. i like that idea. but it remains that i have no clue what i need this space to be anymore. i have no clue about of a lot of things these days.

i'm taking german and pottery at my local community college. i spend a lot of time listening to Rammstein and Bauhaus and Patti Smith, deciding on some level to go ahead and let the goth-girl in me flourish for awhile. let her have her say. my dear friend sent me a tube of bright red lipstick. i've only had the guts to wear it outside once. i think i need to go blonde. and every chance i get, i read Anais Nin's Diary. i'm on volume 2. i see myself in her pages. i know that world. i know those longings. i know those struggles. i can catch a glimpse of the girl behind my reflection... the one who is trying to wake up, trying to talk, trying to Become... if only the outside expectations would stop choking her out. if only i were strong enough to bar them from my life and heart.

but it's safe to say that, with each day that passes, i give less and less of a fuck what people think of me or who they would like me to be... the performance they want, the image they prefer. Lea, Freya, and i talked about feminism while we installed the new show. Lea said "some stories need to continue to be told and i take it as a personal duty to tell them". this made my heart jump and shiver. it made me feel thankful.

this is post 971. i will get to 1000 before i make any decisions about this space. i will let this space twist up on itself, writhe around on the floor, fight to become whatever it is that it needs to become. or else i will kill it. we'll see what we see. but there are no more rules. there are no more requirements about how often i post or what i post. i believe words can work magic. i will be patient, for 30 more posts anyway, and see what finds me.

the facts

i've been a good girl since last october when the diagnosis came. resisted the urge to go online and freak myself out by reading the research available about pancreatic cancer.

but i've stopped being a good girl. it's a member of my immediate family. i am reading it. i know what the statistics are.

relatives have been calling, getting in touch through Facebook, reaching out to me and my siblings.

based on what i've read, surviving this since october is, itself, a miracle.

i am so grateful for that.

and also, for as hard and painful and scary as this whole thing is, i'm grateful for being forced to look at mortality close-up, in a new way- a way that is biological, not theoretical. it's easy to expound upon the horrors of the world from a safe distance. theories show their holes when you get up-close and personal. the importance of love and hope starts to shimmer. the shimmer builds in to a beautiful shine. we begin to twinkle in our moments together. we begin to feel thankful. certain histories finally find a resting place.

other histories don't. beasts i thought had been conquered, or at least put in to a deep, unbreakable hibernation, have come slinking out of their caves. the beasts awaken. writhe. scream. blood in their mouths and caked to the claw.

i feel lost some days. i spend a lot of time feeling afraid of the world but, somehow, still loving it. somehow, still wanting to help. somehow, not sarcastic. still... this weighty fear. fear that i will make the wrong decision, the wrong turn, waste my time, waste the time of others, and staring with my gaping O of a mouth at how horribly short Time is.

all i can think some days is hurry hurry, get the paintings out so she can see them. so she can see i accomplished something. so she can be proud of me.

there are lots of mornings when i want to ignore the alarm clock. i hear it and think what's the fucking point? plenty of mornings where i wake up feeling so stunted and small, just like a little girl. floundering and frail and just so bent up by fear. the dark. no night-light. no angels. no open door. there are mornings i wake up crying.

i reach for my notebook. i reach for my pencils. i make drawings.

the amazing/odd thing about it, is that i'm doing the best work i've ever done. at least that's the way it looks to my eye. somehow this fear has armed me with an unexpected drive to push the work further, go deeper, take chances, be brave in a way i hadn't yet learned to do.

there is a lot of anger in it. there is a lot of sadness. but i think there's also a lot of hope.

it's the hope that lives in these pieces that are the most important part. it is the portion of the work that i am most proud of. it is the site i try to lay down in. i live so far away from her.

since the beginning it seems, our little family has been a magnet for tragedy. i know we're not exceptional in that. tragedy is not as rare as people like to believe it is. nevertheless, the division and splintering and unfixable things that have resulted are really hard to look at some days.

the divorce. the swimming accident. my father. ambulances. hospitals. halo bolted to skull. poverty. ugliness. abuses. falling in with a bad crowd. bad mean boyfriend. scary situations. and then the work of repairing one's mind, one's broken heart, one's dream of life. and now cancer. now chemo.

these are the things i'm writing about in The Letter- the 9,000 words that have been typed out and are morphing in to something else. i have no clue what yet but it just keeps on pouring pouring pouring on days when i'm strong enough to be a vehicle for it.

this is the well that all the new work is rising from.

and the new work brings me closer to the kind of artist i want to be. the kind of human i want to be. to find a way to create some sort of beneficial, hopeful thing out of all this. but it also leads me away from certain ideas, certain places. it has to. it's unavoidable. the lineage has become clearer.

it's time to take certain risks.

it's scary and sad and overwhelming, but it's also a very positive action. ask any baby bird about the terror of the free fall when they are first urged out of the nest. that's the stage i'm in. it is a necessary stage.

because if i say i mean it and i say i believe in the power and worth of art and i say art saves lives, then i am charged to follow a particular road. a road that has all sorts of barricades across it and all sorts of pitfalls and potholes, a road that has no caution signs, a road that will be dark and lonely at times. but i must follow it. i must. i have to try to be brave. and so i cut away my safety net, in spite of all the things that are going on within my family... or maybe because of them. maybe it is because i see how short and uncertain a single life is. how full of opportunity, how full of chance, how full of the inexplicable...

i've asked to be released from my contract. the gallery agrees it is time. it is sad for both of us even though it is best for both of us. we've been building toward this moment for a year. it's time for this baby bird to jump. it's good to have support in this. it's good to find myself in the position to take a good hard look at my work and the kind of artist i am. this is an opportunity for me to get very specific about my goals as an artist, to work and struggle as hard as i can. i'm lucky to have so much encouragement from the people in my life. i'm lucky for the open door that remains. i'm lucky to have the friendship and support i've received. i'm very lucky.

and mostly, lucky to have art in my life. this outlet. this desire to make maps out of all these things. maps and poems and portraits. documents of hope. documents of desire. documents of my passage through this world. i am not joking when i say ART SAVES LIVES. it does. it has saved mine, over and over again, since the very beginning. and i am blessed.

i am very very very blessed.