i look to the right...

.


you fall asleep with your glasses on.

i turn off the movie you suggested.

i make a little film of myself dancing in the mirror:

black dress, swaying hips.

i send the film to jose because it's not out of the ordinary for him to be awake this late.

he sends me a film in return: 

girls dancing in short skirts and my art on his walls.



i should send him more.  what do i need all this art for? 



sometimes i wonder about who i am
vs.  what i was taught...



i think about that a lot lately.

maybe it has something to do with the time of year?  the slant of the sun?`  the yellow cast catches my eye- the way it drips from the leaves, the way it oozes through the blinds.  i think of home...  days when i'd come home from school to find my mother standing in the kitchen, days when i'd drag my body home so begrudgingly...  always feeling at odds, always feeling the pull toward something else, always unable to just get along...


i look at myself in the mirror and i can see that i'm older but i don't feel as old as i am.  really, i feel like i've just begun.  maybe i'm just a late bloomer?  i was simply getting ready all this time.  i was simply gathering wool.  i was only learning the vocabulary i'd need. 

.

i walked down shattuck ave in the late afternoon and it felt so much like the late afternoons i spent in my hometown.  i'll never hate oakland the way i hated redlands.  i could never hate oakland at all, it's just that i've been here too long.  i lust too hard after other sunrises.  i lust too hard after other winds echoing across other avenues.  i've drempt too hard for too long of far off places.  the residency sealed it.  i belong elsewhere.  i've known it for quite some time.  it feels good to have finally made the decision to click the BUY NOW button on a plane ticket and choose a new adventure.  i need to walk down streets i'm inspired by again.  i need to welcome the next phase.


i tried to throw away old art supplies today and couldn't do it.


there's so much to get rid of.

 i cleaned the toilet instead.

i want to give myself the gift of a fresh start but it is horrendously painful to part with certain things.  i'm leaving the contents of my bookcase until last.  it'll break my heart to have to part with certain books.  today, i looked at my copy of the collected novels of Jean Rhys and thought of Kate- those old days of writing back and forth to one another through email and the comment boxes of our blogs.  i read all of Jean Rhys' novels during the 8 days i had to wait before i could board my plane to tennessee to go watch my mother die.  then kate mailed me a copy of Roland Barthes' "Mourning Diary" after i returned home to california after the funeral.

i shouldn't have become so distant after all that (with everybody) but i honestly couldn't help it. 

i couldn't help it.

sometimes i still can't
but i'm glad to not need such a deep silence now. 


.


brian is curled up under my white quilt.

i love him and i'm glad he is here. 

tonight while we walked home from the bar, i looked at him and said, "hey, brian elder, you're my best friend!"

he looked at me and said, "oh yeah?  you're my best friend!"




i'm happy as fuck.  :)


.

a little piece of my heart

.

i spent the day drawing and making valentines.  i've missed making them the passed few years.  life, and the resulting emotions, got in the way.  i'd always remember at the last minute and then opt to go out drinking instead.  i was enjoying a different sort of reverie too much to way to stay home and make valentines.  i was, in several ways, anti-love for a couple years.  i just needed a break, i guess.  i needed to learn how to take care of myself unburdened by the expectation to take care of others.  i needed to be on my own.  i needed to focus on feeling my instincts again, my own pleasures again, my own needs again.  but i got so much joy out of making valentines.  i thought of it as a fun way to say thank you to friends and art lovers for being so supportive of me and my practice.  it gave me an excuse (as a painter thinking she needed an excuse) to delve back in to printmaking.  i remember the day one of my painting professors walked in to the clean room in the print lab and there i was signing and numbering an edition.  he saw me and said, "what are you doing in here, angela?  my painters paint" .  i smiled and shrugged.  he smiled and winked.  i've never been the kind of artist who does just one thing.  i don't expect i ever will be, nor do i want to be.  i love working in all these different modes.  i love that the biggest part of my visual practice is writing.  my diary is my world in that regard.  it is responsible for almost everything i do and make.  it is the biggest, bravest, best tool i have in creating the life and art i want for myself.  part of that life is making valentines.  i think it's wonderful to have a day where one is allowed to say I LOVE YOU over and over again.  i think it's great to have a day where one is free to show their appreciation for having wonderful people in their life.  it's not simply a day for chocolate and roses.  that's only one way of seeing valentine's day.  a pretty limited, prescribed way.  i prefer to personalize the occasion and harness it to let the people in my life know i value their care and friendship.  it also gives me an excuse to give away art, one of my favorite things. :)  so if you want to get in on the fun and exchange valentines with me, send me your address!  angelasimione at gmail dot com

love/sick

.


we lay silently under the string of lavender lights strung across the wall above the bed, pathetic and still.  we are both sick.  sick as dogs, angry and miserable inside out atoms.  we lay together and treat each others bodies with the gentleness we routinely refuse our own.  stroking hair and testing foreheads and cheeks for too much warmth.  i kiss his shoulder rather than his lips.  enough damage has already been done.  swaddled in deep grey blankets, we convalesce.  the timing is bad but not as bad as it might have been.  i should have known some wiley germ would eventually catch up to me.  i lucked out not getting sick while on my trip and i am thankful for that.  it would've been awful to spend time stuck in bed rather than drawing against the tall, white walls in my huge, beautiful studio or singing karaoke at the pizza parlor/bar.  still, this misery is miserable.  such a waste of life to be sick.  time slips and fails.  i guzzle more NyQuil and hope that tomorrow all will be well within my body again and that the impetuous rhythm of waiting tables and making art will resume with as much fury as (more fury than) it had before.

i roll over and his hand finds my back.  he rubs me gently as i lay with my eyes closed against the pressure in my sinuses despite his own discomfort.  i marvel at this.  his kindness.  a moment of total pleasure inside this stubborn illness.  i marvel at him.

his hand stops and i roll the other way.  i want to see his face. 



every night, his face is the last thing i see and i want it to go on being that way. 

.

i just love her. :)

always david

.

he is almost an instinct of mine.  in my alcohol-fueled lethargy, i began to quiz myself over the relevance of art...  what it means, what my art means and whether or not it even matters.  this is an aggravating little game artists play with themselves, it seems, but in the moment it really hurts.  it hurts to ask yourself, "is art meaningless?"  it's so close to asking whether or not life is meaningless.

and maybe it is.  maybe life is meaningless.  maybe art's role is to provide the meaning we're all searching for?  or at least an avenue to it.  i don't know.  i just suddenly found myself wondering this evening whether or not i'm defeated...  whether or not i still contain the requisite amount of FIGHT.  despite recent encouragements, i suddenly felt worn out.  

i got out of bed and went to my book case.  i needed another artist.  i needed a mentor.  i needed someone to tell me that everything is okay and to pull my shoulders back and fuck what the rest of the world thinks.  my eyes flowed across my collection of art books.  so many volumes of kiki smith's work, louise bourgeois, keith haring, andy warhol.  i paused at francesca woodman.  i paused again at terrence koh.  then i came across a book i forgot i had.  a book i hadn't even read yet.  i pulled it from the shelf.  david wojnarowicz's 7 MILES A SECOND. 

the moment i start reading his work i come face to face with the truth that art is a way of life.  i don't need to torture myself with the question of whether or not my work "matters".  what does that even mean?  i don't need to make myself cry about the accomplishments i've not yet made.  art is a path.  or better yet, art is a language.  it is how i speak.

i read his texts and i want to cry.  not only because of the sadness his work so often describes but because of his fearlessness in telling his story, his bravery in regard to confronting the twists of the heart and mind.  his love of humanity was so unapologetic, so humbling...  and so i want to cry when i am confronted with his work:  i am humbled.  i realize, in the face of david wojnarowicz's work, to ask, "does my art matter?" is a waste of time and effort.  just do the work.  just speak.  and even if it's just to speak about something as aggravating as my struggles with my own artistic temperament, that's alright.  i silence myself too quickly sometimes.  i mean, we all need to complain to each other every now and then.  it does us good to know we're not total freaks in this regard.  we all fear our work is total crap...  that how we are choosing to spend our lives is an act of  futility.  david's work reminds me that this is absolutely not the case.  the point is to care enough about the brevity of life to use what time you have to connect the way you want to connect with other human beings.  the point is to breathe as deeply as you can breathe, so deeply it hurts and then to tell the truth about yourself...  the truth that hurts.  the truth that nags and won't stop tossing and turning until you finally acknowledge it exists and needs a space in which to be seen, to be dealt with, to be wrestled with and contended with.

.

"i'll be so quiet for you..."

.

.

you

.


there's some place in me,
untapped,
that i thought only i could get to

but i go searching for your picture
in the middle of the night...

i want to be wrong.



it's not enough to lay at your side.
it's not enough
to be the patient girl
who stops talking when your business line rings.
it's not enough anymore
to be your weekend fun.
 
when you spoke of god
with your cock in me
i wanted so badly
to be a believer again.

how many beautiful choruses i would sing
if you'd leaf through the tears in my heart
like a hymnal

as eagerly as you did my genitals.



i want you to know me and not look away.




.


 

shift

.
 
it's strange to me that there have been so many days lately where i haven't wanted to write.  it's a big shift from my normal mode.  even when i don't write here, i'm scribbling away in my diary, hermitting in that crisp, blue-lined home of mine.  but there have been days lately when i just need to sit.  there are days when i run from the workings of my own mind, when i simply need the simplest of things- a movie on Netfix and a deep pillow...  things i very rarely allow myself.

i JUST saw Lost in Translation for the first time last week.  why it's taken me so long to make time for such a beautiful film, i can't say.  or i can.  it's that i have really fucked up notions of value when it comes to spending time in front of a screen.  or not fucked up, maybe, but issues nevertheless.  my ex stepfather spent the majority of his free time in front of the television and i was always so disgusted by that.  my mother would be outside working in her garden, enjoying the feeling of her hands in the dirt and the sun on her back, and he'd be inside yelling at the tv screen.  she hated the tv always being on.  always had.  growing up, she refused to let us spend a saturday simply laying in front of the television.  she was definitely the type of mom that yelled at us to get outside and be in the sunshine.  and good for her.  i've come to appreciate that about her so much.  and so it was so strange to me that she married someone whose favorite "hobby" was watching tv.  she and her husband got to a place where they didn't even eat dinner together at the table anymore (something my mother really valued).  she'd make dinner and bring it to him in front of the television set.  she'd sit next to him and watch Law & Order, a major concession and acquiescence that was hard to stomach. in my adolescence, i swore to myself that i'd never marry a man that watched tv all the time.  i needed passion and romance and someone to stay up late talking with.  i needed someone who read books every now and then.  i needed someone who preferred the stereo to the tv set 9 times out of 10.

though we were never married, i found myself in a relationship that shared this exact component of television love that i so disdained.  i fucking hated it. at 28 years old, i had the awful, humiliating, confusing, and painful experience of meeting a man at the front door in revealing lingerie just to be walked passed after a quick kiss on the forehead and a careless "you look nice, honey" to flop down in the armchair and turn on Sports Center.

fuck that.

and, yeah, i know it's not the tv's fault that i lived with an inept asshole...  but it's easier to be mad at an object than at another human being.  especially a human being you love.  one looks for a scapegoat, a storehouse for blame. 

and so i considered television a complete waste of time and found it absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable that it is the number 1 pass time of americans.  that's disgusting.  disgusting and ridiculous.  but my judgement about television extended to anything and everything that took place on a screen.  everything from music videos to film to art.  if it happened on a screen, i saw it as a waste of my time, a waste of my life.

that's harsh.  and i knew that, in some ways, i was missing out...


it was amazing to have such a simple, direct experience the other evening.  it helped that there was a gorgeous man in the room with me, laying half naked on my bed. :)  we laid there together, drinking vodka sodas and running our fingers along the curves of each other's legs, as Sophia Coppola's beautiful, poignant film played in the dark of my bedroom.  it's been so long since i've had such a soft, safe, close experience.  it's been a really long time since i've felt at home with a man.  i've not felt this comfortable with a man in a very long time and, at times, i am unnerved by it.  i'm used to being inside my own head.  i'm used to having the only say.  i'm used, now, to not being hurt and assuring my safety through remaining single.

but something is opening up in me.  my armor is melting away.  i look at this other human being and think he's got the best face on the entire planet.  i look at this other human being and feel so thankful for his humor and wit.  i look at this other human being and think, "maybe i'm not alone in this world after all...  "



and so there are days when i don't want to write.  i want to just lay and be.  i want to curl against his form and not think about all the heavy things.  i want to lay my cheek against his back as we snuggle in bed and i want to enjoy the rare instance of a quiet mind.    it was this soft moment of laying together in bed watching Lost in Translation that made me realize i'm truly ready to try my hand at this Love thing again.  it was so simple and so quiet but there was no other place i would've rather been. 

i felt entirely at home.


.

breathing

.


there's a man asking questions of me.

he wants to know if i still believe in fairy tales.

i can tell he wants me to.

he pours a glass of wine and smiles and says, "you're guarded".

and he's absolutely right. 



tonight at work, i looked out the window and thought i saw X sitting across the street, yelling and ranting, and the core of me turned to ice.  i peered at his form through the window, careful not to get too close to the front of the restaurant, afraid to be seen, afraid to be noticed, afraid to provoke...  the deepest fear one can feel...  that old hook rusted into my heart since childhood...

can i give it a name?

can i write a person's name rather than an X?

not yet.

it wasn't him.  when i realized my eyes had deceived me, the most wonderfully warm sense of relief flooded my entire being and i could be myself again.  i no longer had to hide.

and then there are the emails i've ignored.  the letters from ex-boyfriends that will always flap in the wind like an inadequate, threadbare flag.  i remain silent because the tiniest squeak will be misinterpreted.  i do not want certain people to ever think of me in any other way than absolutely cold.  i am frozen through.  at least when it comes to you, you, and you.

i look up and am stunned that it's already May.  the new job is keeping me busy.  the new job and these new questions from a new man.  i scratch my head and i twirl my hair.  i buy shoes.  i paint my nails.  i fall into a rhythm of self-pleasure and contemplation.  i've never known such a wide-open, hot and hopeful pleasure as this; my ability to spend money without explanation, without guilt, no boyfriend or father to make explanations to, nobody sneering at me and rolling their eyes.  these days i go to work and get high-fives from the other girls in regard to the new boots on my feet.  and can i say, it feels fucking good.  it feels fucking good to be entirely self sufficient and free.  it feels good to revel in this independence.  to know that every penny in my pocket is a penny i earned.  to know i have a right to spend it however i choose and that i owe nothing to anyone.  no debt of sniveling gratitude.  i am beholden to no one.

and so i guard it.

i guard it because i prize it.  this freedom, this life devoid of expectation and obligation, all the horrors i inflicted upon myself trying to make others proud, trying to make others satisfied. i pour myself a glass of wine.

but i don't know where the line is between being independent and being an island.

see, it's a double-edged thing learning that a broken heart won't kill you.  it's a double-edged thing learning how to live without love, in general.   i have no father and i have no mother.  i know how to stand on my own.  i know that i will not crumble.  i know how to take the next breath.  and the next.  and the next. 



still, i find myself smiling at the budding of that old schoolgirl hope.

inexplicable.


inborn?


.

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.

.

in the wee hours of christmas eve...

.

one slow stitch at a time.


.

in the middle of the night

.

"And in the end, we were all just humans...  Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald



help me uproot this sickness, mama.  help me get it up and out.  stick out your hand and i'll spit it out like a piece of stolen candy.  i'll tip my head back, mama, and i'll open wide.  you can reach in with both hands and a bar of soap and wash all the badness out.  lean over me, hold me back by my hair and spill your prayers of healing all over my face, pour them down my throat, find any antiseptic at all that will bubble and burn and dissolve the horrible lesson, the horrible, horrible lesson that the love of another can save or fix a fucking thing.

it is no solid gold you taught your daughters and son to chase, mama.  it is no bronze or unbreakable steel.  the insidious craving you cultivated in your children eats us from the inside out. 

the definition of love we were taught is absolutely fucked.


you first husband didn't even call his children when he learned of your death.  didn't even send an email. and so that door will remain forever closed.

your second husband, not even three years later, is remarried (again) to his fourth wife and refuses to have anything to do with your children whom he helped raise for 15 years.  the awful joke of the situation is that, if you weren't already dead, mama, this shit would kill you.

even the man you encouraged me to marry didn't go to your funeral.  and when i came home, spirit ripped in half after seeing you whittled down to your skeleton by cancer, burned to dust and plugged in to a small silver heart on a chain and put in to my hand...  i looked at the man who claimed to love me, who said i was the most beautiful girl in the world, mama, the man who said i was his perfect fit...  i looked at him and i told him that i hurt so bad, felt like i was dying too.  i tried to explain to him how it felt to see your own mother's dead body wheeled out of the house through the kitchen on a gurney and my grandfather, your daddy, shouting in your ear, "We love you Nisey! We love you Nisey!", a minister who believes the soul escapes the body and ascends to heaven the very second of death...  i tried to explain what it felt like to watch this, a father shouting in to his own child's dead ear that he loves her, despite and against his own beliefs, in the horror-driven hope that she could hear him...  that she was still in there somewhere.  that you were still in there somewhere, mama.  behind sunken eyes and a hollow face.  the only word i could find that even came close to describing how i felt was Homeless...  i felt robbed and thrown aside and refused.  my only real home, my other body, the womb in which i grew, the soft pink which gave me warmth and root was gone...  and in that moment of total devastation and confused horror, all i wanted was to be fucked.  i wanted to be fucked as hard as possible.  i needed to feel something other than this immense horror,  this total spiritual murder.  i wanted to be thrown down and made aware of my body, to be rooted in Life, to feel the opposite of death; your death, mama, that was crawling all over me...

and he sat there and he listened to me say these things and with sad, down cast eyes, he nodded his head...  and i sat on the living-room floor in front of him and i waited.  i wanted so badly to feel the squeeze of his hand on my knee.  i wanted so badly for him to slide his hand across my cheek, fingers reaching into the nest of curls above my neck, pulled close and kissed hard; responded to and dealt with and loved.  i wanted so badly to be loved, in that moment more than any other moment of my life, i wanted to be loved and, in that moment, in my deep horror, love could have been anything that would have given me a reprieve, no matter how fleeting or inconsistent, from the atrocity i'd just witnessed.  the minutes passed.  and days.  and weeks.  and months.  and he never did reach out to me, not even as another human being.  he never touched me.  he left me alone in that horror, mama.  he left me sitting on the living-room floor, staring in horror, alone.

sometimes an offense against one's own humanity is so great that love simply dries up.  i don't love these men at all and i don't miss them.  not even when times are hard. not even when i need help.

my disappointment soars, mama.  i really hope you wouldn't make excuses for this shit.  i really hope you wouldn't but i think you might.

i think you might.




i'm not mad.  a bit disgusted at times but not mad.  and mostly, i'm disgusted with myself; the fact that i still crave another human being the way i do.  when the night turns cold and my bed feels so big after walking passed all these christmas lights through wet, empty streets, mama.  you planted an evil seed and you made sure to water it well.  the roots of this nauseating weakness run deep.  in fact, these traumas have perhaps exacerbated the issue.  i look at my face in the bathroom mirror and i look at the shape of my lips and eyes and i wonder, "when's someone gonna love me?"  because i know enough to know that what i've been shown thus far has not been love. i go to bed with thoughts of hands in my hair and beautiful word whispered in my ear and a strong hand sliding across my cheek, fingers reaching in to the nest of curls above my neck, pulling me forward for a hard, hungry kiss, so hard and so longed for it brings tears to my eyes.



.

a new target

.

 

it's just that time of year, i suppose.  i want to cut my hair.  i want to throw all my clothes out.  i want to turn the corner and see your face.  or i want to click the Buy Now button on a new plane ride.

i'm unsatisfied.

listening to cyndi lauper, dancing in the mirror, one of those fine, fluid evenings when i stand and stare myself down in the mirror, tear after tear, so tearfully, because the lyrics are so perfect, so sharp; pierce my heart, make my eyes drop their salt, and when i look at my face in the mirror all i see is how damn ugly it is compared to yours...

is that love?


there are the moments, sad and long, when we, in the dark, scramble against feeling so separate; we scramble to be understood; so fervently, we 'll fall in love with anything or anyone...  and maybe you found me at the exact right moment.  or maybe you're just that damn fine.  or maybe this is something that all my instinct cry for.  maybe i need a new pain?  hasn't it always been that way?

and so i take these pictures of myself and i'd like to think it's art.  i'd like to think it's more than just a shit show. all i know is the absolute SHIT being good got me.  why not piss against the wind and wear my filth as if it were silk?

it's just that time of year.

i love looking at myself when i'm a mess: a wreck of tangled hair and smeared eyeliner, lipstick on my chin and sweaty skin.  i touch my reflection in the mirror and smile.  i give myself a kiss and dance to the next love song alone.  i slip my hand into my polka dot panties and pretend my hand is yours.  i watch myself in the mirror and pretend the eyes on me, on my skin, on my shuddering, my quivering body belong to you.  i mouth the words i would say to you if it was your hand  in my hair.  i mouth the words and i gasp.  i gasp and i crawl and i writhe as if the night were endless, as if the album had no end, as if the love we knew weren't flawed, as if i could be the cure your heart longs for, as if my eyes could build a home for you in their soft blue reservoir, as if my voice could offer something aside from the cool note i play...

all my infinite lies: my collected stare.



i need a haircut and a new jacket.

i want to leave all i own on the curb.

it's just that time of year.



.

imagine me. i'm imagining you.

.

 

"The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real.  There is no contradiction in what is imaginary.  Contradiction is the test of necessity."

Simone Weil

Gravity & Grace, p. 151

imagine me.  i'm imagining you.

(self portrait)

4" x 6"

35 mm color half-frame photography

angela simione, 2013

a rambling, eagar voice in the dark. a possible artist statement.

.


in a way, everything i do, everything i make, every drawing, every poem, every photograph, every sweater, everything, is a love letter.  every next breath.  and the next.  and the next.  it radiates through me and i can't keep the reigns on it, this quaking, unsteady love.  i don't know how to shoulder the weight of it.  i don't know how to call it by name.  my gentleness unfolds below its scorched anvil but my gentleness is only for you, not for me.  i squirm and shift and ache.  i pry my eyes open every morning and force them shut every night when all i want to do is curl up against you and breathe you in, tracing a slow line up the back of your neck with my nose.

when i do that, i feel the rhythm of your breathing change.

when i do that, can't you hear the small, scared voice of my heart saying, "now it's your turn"?



i looked at all the people's faces on the train today when i went to work.  they all looked tired.  they all seemed closed down.  i thought, "i wonder if, somehow, we all hate each other...  that we don't believe the things we hear...  that we don't believe each person is fighting their own, private war?  do we only want sympathy from one another without extending it ourselves?  or worse, do we really just want a bit of pretty pity?  do we want to be told we're right and that everyone else is wrong, everyone else is the asshole, everyone else is stupid and mean and tacky?  do we see human beings when we look at each other?  and what does that require anyway?"

we are owed nothing.

still, my gentleness extends.  i can't help it.  i am incurable.  my kindness wounds me.  it does me such damage some days but i cannot contain it.  i cannot cover it up, put a lock on the lid, and stow it away.

i've been thinking a lot about love lately.  it's facets and forms. maybe because i've been having dreams of my mother again.  it's the time of year...  my heart curls into itself and tries to nurse that impossible wound.  i go to bed with a cocktail and crochet hook and meditate on my little question, my little statement, my little anthem:  THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED.


i've been thinking about desire and lust.  i've been thinking of security and comfort.  i've been thinking about acceptance and forgiveness.  i've been thinking about the game.  the chase.  the intrigue.  i've been thinking about all the wonderfully nuanced levels of romance and friendship that so many seem to be blind to...  the way your lips look in the evening verses the morning.  that shadow that catches on your chin.  or the beautiful way light cuts through the iris of a stranger sitting at the bar midday.  or a child on a swing.

i don't want to be cynical and i don't want to be afraid.


in a way, everything i do is a love letter; an honoring of the way your forehead wrinkles when you shrug your shoulders...  how badly you drive on the freeway...  how beautiful you sound singing in the shower...  the photographs of you as a child...  the dreams you have...  the dreams you had...  the scent you wear and the laces in your shoes.


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love:

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"To love a stranger as oneself implies the reverse: to love oneself as the stranger."


- Simione Weil, Gravity & Grace, p. 111

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Marc...

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in the early morning hours of saturday, september 21st, one of my greatest and most loved mentors died in southern california.  my sweet, sweet Marc.  he was 71 years old.  i had no idea he was even sick.  no one really did.

400+ miles away, i'm sitting in bed with a cocktail, finally free to cry after battling through a night of waiting tables where i wanted to cry every 20 minutes. i only went to work today in the hopes of getting out of my own head.  i only went to work today to make Marc proud.

god, i loved that man.  i really did.  i do still.  it doesn't matter how many years it's been since i last set foot in my home town, i still love the people i love and Marc was an enormous influence.  i adored him from the second i heard him speak.  i took my first class from him at the age of 18 and studied under him for 7 consecutive years.  he taught me how to make a mark.  a REAL mark.  "make a bold mark early in a drawing," he said.  "It doesn't matter if it ends up in the wrong place and needs to be erased; you've given yourself something to respond to and that's what art is all about." and as i write those words, i see it's a lesson that can be (needs to be) translated into all areas of life...  especially now when everything feels so raw and so dire and so fucking lonely.  i can't help but lend my voice to that tired refrain but it is absolutely true: when mike called and told me Marc had died, i felt like a light had gone out in the world.  

i hung on that man's every word.  i loved listening to him speak.  he had such a great voice.  so full of sensuality and humor and generosity.  after i'd been taking classes from him for a few years, i caught myself one day thinking, "... if only he were 15 years younger". hahaha!  and i fucking meant it too! his love of humanity and beauty was evident in the way he talked.  the lilt of his speech betrayed what a lover he was and i loved him for it.  in fact, i adored him to the point of anxiety.  i don't know that i ever completely relaxed around him.  i was so enamored of him and so impressed with him that it was hard for me to be entirely myself...  i wanted him to like me too much.  i wanted him to be pleased with me.  i wanted to make him proud. 

i was at fucking Forever 21 when my beloved friend Mike called and gave me the news.  at first, it felt like a joke.  there was no way this was real.  after about 20 minutes had passed, i tasted tears in my throat and knew i needed to find a bit of privacy.  i hung the clothes i was holding back on a rack and went outside.  it was pouring rain.  i ducked in to the alcove of a broken elevator and curled my self against the corner where two walls met, my back to the street, my face hidden from view.  there, i cried as i listened to Mike tell me about his last moments with Marc.  i pushed myself as far into the corner as i could go and covered my face with my hands.  

i want to call everyone i know and tell them i love them.

i'm going to stay up late drawing tonight.  it's the best thing i can do and the best way to honor Marc.  i can make a bold mark once more and give myself something to respond to...  a place to put the agony of my loneliness, the emptiness that charges forward with such brutality and callousness.  i can carve out a space for beauty and resilience and love somewhere in between these tortures and roll around in the tall, black grass of his grace...  a sliver of the generosity such a deeply affective mentor and friend bestowed to me.

i miss you, Marc.  it really fucking sucks that i didn't get to hug and kiss you one last time and listen to your stories.  god, i've missed your voice.  i've missed it for so long and now i will go on missing it.




i lit a Yahrzeit candle for him last night.  the flame was so tall.  it stayed that way all night, lighting up my room the way i would light up whenever i was in the same room with him.  it made me happy to see such a tall flame on his candle.  it suits him.  it suits how i feel for him.  what a bright light that man was.  absolutely brilliant.


i love you.

the adventure is here

anne is taking me to the airport in a half hour. 

holy shit.


HOLY SHIT.





see you on the other side of this wild dream.

i love you. 

angela

ghost love

i love being around people's mothers.

i love looking at pictures of people's mothers.

it's the closest i can come to looking at pictures of my own.

still, ma mere, the caught image of you sends me running.

i've learned how to keep a dry eye:

don't look at beautiful things
that pull the old heart strings
and which you'll never see again.



and so i bask in the smile of other people's mamas and feel absolutely real joy.  i keep my own mother's image in my heart.  especially when i look at the sky.  i think of her when she was 19, walking cobblestone pathways in Germany, wearing her forest green velvet blazer.  i can finally fit in to it.  i wore it on thursday and thursday was the best day in the whole fucking world.  :)

in you i taste god

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