simple

.

today, i bought myself flowers.  big, red daisies.  i don't know their actual name.  i cut their stems and put them in a mason jar.  i put the mason jar on the dresser by the bed.  i listen to patti smith.  i twist thin, soft, black yarn around my crochet hook and sink into a revery about how life once was.  not all my reveries are sad but i allow myself even those that are -  the freedom to mourn, the freedom to be upset, the freedom to feel lonely and singular.  the light was beautiful today and the food i'd bought for myself tasted good.  i walked in the sun, bought myself a new notebook, let my deep scars shine inside of me.  i tried to listen to them.  today, they want to cry.  sometimes, the old aches wake up.  sometimes, the best thing to do is to let them...  to give them their due, to allow for a reckoning, to give them their say.  and so i twist yarn around a hook and listen to car alarms, listen to my laundry tumbling in the dryer, listen to patti smith.  i pour myself a glass of Dr. Loosen Riesling and salivate all over a tiny hunk of Saint Auger blue cheese. i allow myself these pleasures, these luxuries, so distant incongruous to the life i once lived.  i allow myself this moment.  i allow myself to be silent, to stop the performance of so many things, to free myself from the cage of constant smiling.  i lay on my bed in front of the small electric fan and twirl my hair.  today, i am grateful for it all, everything that has happened even though my spirit lowers its feathers to hide its diamonds. despite the anvil of memory, today was new.  and tomorrow so shall be.  

.

my mama (what do they know about this love anyway?)

i get home, i take my shoes off, i pour myself a drink,  i take my drink to bed.  it sits on the night stand and i think: "maybe i should write?"  i have nothing important to say, it's true.  and maybe i never have.  maybe i just like to talk.  in fact, i wake up wanting to talk.  that's why i'm a diarist.  i've learned how to channel my waking need for conversation into a literary habit.  i remember walking into my mother's bedroom when i was 18 or 19 years old and instantly gabbing at her about the dreams i had or whatever i had planned for the day.  she'd be there, lazy eyed with her coffee, rubbing her feet together, one over the other, and she'd say, "Angela, i am not awake enough for this yet.  go away. "  hahaha!  and it would hurt my feelings so bad!!!!  but then i met other people who are like that too.  i no longer take offense.  how can i when i have a diary?  a page is always open to what i have to say no matter how boring or insignificant.

but god...  my mama.  damn, i miss that woman sometimes. she had a funny way about her.  a goofiness tempered with the allure of her height and thinness and full lips that was so endearing.  she could be so silly in such a brilliant, life-affirming way.  she really did love the world...  all the little secret, forgotten things that no one pays any mind to.  if you ever wanted to go thrifting or poking through flea markets, she was the woman to follow.  she had such a big love for the forgotten things in the world; the things other people considered to be junk or thrash.  she would take those things and arrange them, just so, on a mantle or on a window sill and it would be such a beautiful thing.  high design.  she should have been an interior decorator or just a straight up artist.  she should have never listened to the crap her husbands told her or the rest of the world either.  she should have listened to me.  really, she should have.  she should have just painted and written poetry and played her guitar and sang.  she should have been as wild as her curls.  as wild, but just as soft.  she was such a sensitive woman.  beautiful.  aggravating sometimes, but nevertheless charming.  i had the health of her spirit in mind every step of the way.  i loved her and i wanted the best for her.  i wanted her to find the strength to tell everyone to Fuck Off. i wanted her to be herself.  and damn right!  i wanted her to ENJOY being a curly-headed mess, rambling around in yummy plummy lipstick, melissa etheridge on the radio as she bumbled down the highway in her bouncy Wrangler.  i wanted her to flip people off and smile as her huge gold hoop earrings dangled against her cheek, her huge smile flashing and that damn cigarette pinched confidently between her fingers of her left hand.

how did i get on this subject?

oh, yeah, i wanted to talk.

i'm telling ya, i am the worst girl in the world to bring home or attempt to seduce.  my chatterbox ass just won't shut the fuck up. before you know it, it's 4am and i've barely taken my shoes off  :)

i know what my mother looks like driving a jeep through the southern california sun down the 10 freeway singing this song.  i know how the light catches her curls.  i know how the light catches her lips.  and i know how she sounds when she sings, "i'm coming home!"  i know how beautiful we both were in that windy, bumpy moment...  all the times we drove through the rich neighborhoods looking at big houses and dreaming together, smoking marlboro reds, and trying to hold tight to the small ache inside of each of us that told us we weren't nothing...  that we weren't born wrong...  that it isn't a sin to want something better, or at least something fitting... 

that it isn't a sin to want love not to hurt.

quiet and happy

the sky is white and grey. it feels very close.
down low. close to the ground.
like a shamed dog.

i bought a bag of frozen blueberries and also Jiffy blueberry muffin mix. i saw the box and it reminded me of my mother- my mother when i was 5 or 6 years old, giving me the mixing spoon to lick, and me always dreaming so many dreams every single day.

i am reading Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal and, though i am only on page 42, i have already fallen in love with this man. something in his tempo... his temperament, the pacing of his words, his choices, carries an echo back to me. an echo i can't yet place. remnants of old dreams or memories or some kind of low, sad wish that has followed me in the decades since i was the sweet 5 or 6 years old girl. i did in fact wait for the first star every night. i made so many wishes. when i die, it will be interesting to go to wherever they are written down and learn them all again.

all these years later: blueberry muffins baking in my oven. i lick the mixing spoon clean. and the mixing bowl too. i can smell my little yellow darlings rising.


the day drizzles.


did you know tomorrow, we install the show? :) i am deeply myself in this moment, waiting to hang paintings on white walls.

in dreams

this morning, i woke up because i spoke in my dream.

i was on the phone with someone who was yelling horrible things at me about someone i love. i kept trying to hang up the phone but each time i tried to turn it off, the voice on the other end got louder and louder. i resigned myself to listening to things i knew would hurt me. and the very first sentence that flew in to my ears was one of such malice that my courage flared up and i yelled back. my yelling, in the dream, woke me up.

after i got my coffee and sat down to write this morning, i realized that i don't talk in my dreams. if i do, it isn't often, and generally seems to be more along the line of telekinesis. but in this dream, not only did i speak, i yelled. and it startled me awake.

i've had a calm, slightly eerie but nevertheless good, feeling on me all day. maybe something else has been startled awake too?

i started reading some Carl Jung (work i think contemporary art theory should take a dip in) and learned about The Archetypes. especially the Animus. and how dreams factor in to our ideas about the world... all those low-lying, hidden systems of belief and accepted expectations...

generally, i'm not very interested in dream interpretation. most of the time it seems like a horoscope- stretch it enough and you can make it fit. but there's just something about this dream, this speaking, that has held my attention today.

i've also been experiencing an accelerated recall on memories lately. all sorts of things that i haven't thought about in years. and all so clear. i've been writing them down. and the more i write them down, the more i remember. the more details i find. it's both interesting and disquieting. there's a strangeness in it... an over-lapping of time: that i can be here, now, who i am in this present moment, and then a memory sweeps through and i remember exactly who i was and how it felt to be that person... and experience these two states at the same time because i'm writing it down.

anybody else ever experience this as a result of writing or making anything? a surge in memory or a drastic shift in dream environment/behavior? or have i only outed myself as the freak of the week?

wrestling with ideas...

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

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

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


especially the last sentence: Nothing goes away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

and so it goes...

by late afternoon yesterday, i found myself in a fragile mood. a fragile place. and i grabbed the keys to go lose myself in the throng for a little while. i lost myself looking at clothes at macy's for awhile (didn't buy any but tried a whole bunch of stuff on) and then went and looked at curtains and bedroom stuff at Target. Target traps me and i ended up staying there almost until closing time. i left with a curtain rod and 2 pairs of funky socks. funky socks have always made me happy. especially striped ones. and always knee highs. but on the drive home, i found myself getting tearful and feeling like a scared child. these things creep up unexpectedly sometimes... but they are inevitable. for all of us.

it's just the weight of the past, i suppose.

the weight of the past.

there will always be the big WHY. always the mourning for things that never were or things that left too soon or things that should have never been.

the death of an ideal.

the death of an ideal is a grievous thing. the grief is massive and can span years.

but we (i) can create new dreams to take their places. better dreams, better hopes. most of the time, i think i have an idea of how to set about accomplishing that. some days... not so much. yesterday ended up being that kind of day. but this morning i woke feeling so much better. not scared, not so unsure, not so tangled. i am drinking good coffee and i put up the new curtain rod and curtains. a deep plum. maybe eggplant. a deep, dark, dusty color that is warm and gorgeous.

it's nice to know that things can be deep and dark and be warm and gorgeous as well.

mr. beckett

i couldn't find this piece all in one shot on youtube that wasn't cut short or started late.

this piece is sometimes hard to watch... the exaggeration of the expressions of the mouth. looking away might become necessary every now and then.

part 1




part 2

2 things

1. i've been getting so many sweet emails about that print! yay!!!! no fear, we will do it again soon. the more i think about it and what it means and how i'd like the piece to function in the world, i've come to the conclusion that it should always be free. and i mean, completely free: postage paid by me. that being said, whenever i've got cash to burn i will offer it up for consumption. print as needed as i am able.

and to all of you who responded so enthusiastically on round 1, your packages have been shipped! thank you so much!!!

2. thinking of seances and acts of mourning... witnesses, ghosts, memory... collecting the fragments... evidence, ritual, rite.


untitled
40" x 26
gouache on paper
angela simione, 2010

5...

the countdown begins...

and me, still sick and heavy with the sadness sickness brings... or is it the holidays? this time of year seems to have an adverse effect on most people. it breaks the stride of happiness and productivity and thankfulness, contrary to what the holidays are supposed to mean. still sniffly and stuffy and aggravated but somehow excited to see the new year arrive. i'm glad to see 2009 shove off and a new opening, a portal, spread wide-open in front of me. there are too many hopes for me to list. my head is too deep in the fog of congestion. the fog is not burning off. but the hopes are here, alive and thumping despite lethargy and distraction. hope always, shining bright as a child, shining like a new tooth, a golden door knob, an open, lucky window, a promise ring, a charm bracelet, a poem. shining shining.

the shining is what needs to be clung to.

this year so many things changed. it was all flux and chaos and desire. it was lost to despair sometimes. it was swimming in bliss sometimes. it was a bundle of love and hate and hurt and pleasure. it was angry and mean. it was gentle and soft. time fell out of step. the fog layed down. the fog refused to burn off. and then suddenly... the brightness. shining hope and unexpected kindness and inexplicable resilience. and there are still 5 days to go.

most days, i am thankful for all of it. even the hard stuff. even the stuff that hurt so bad and broke my heart. even the things that made me want to scrap the whole shibang and start all over again. all of it. because through the hard stuff came such beauty, polished and gleaming and unexpected. in that barren space, words sprung up and twisted themselves around in to odd little poems and i learned that the rules no longer matter. and it's a nice place to be... to have gotten far along enough to know that the rules no longer apply. and that is what 2009 has been. the shattering of ALL RULE.

pink...

i spent all day digging and pulling and looking, rooting through my heavy portfolios, making piles and systems and rituals. my back hurts. damn iffy disk. but progress has been made, even if just a little. and it was sort of romantic... sitting outside in the cool sun with all my portfolios laying open. i remember the day each drawing was made. every single one. they all, no matter how sloppy or misguided, made me smile. wide and warm and full of thanks... like when you watch children playing.

just a small collection of work found in the depths of the art pile...








all works-
angela simione, 2007

cleaning...

i finally opened the box i didn't want to open- the one that houses my dairies. there's stuff in there dating back to when i was 14 years old, hopelessly romantic, and full of adolescent sorrow and anger.

i did the hard deed and threw the majority of them in the recycle bin. i didn't even ruffle through them the way i have in the past, looking for the little golden bits of writing that bounce out from the blue lines. i only checked the dates. i know what was going on in my life by just checking that and whether or not the "good" writing had started yet. i saved a stack of them and scrapped the rest. i don't need the document. i have the memory. and words follow a person around whether or not they are ever even read.

there are things, i suppose, we all hold on to, are afraid to let go of... or maybe just afraid to name the current situation: that person isn't me anymore. it feels horribly false to pretend otherwise. and in the spirit of clearing out relics from the past and making room for new memories and hopes and even hurts, the diaries had to go. that girl isn't here anymore. the hand writing looks the same but the words aren't. the dreams aren't. and i'm done with that old sorrow. some stuff is better off abandoned, forgotten, forgiven if possible.

all this sorting and weeding through has brought around uncomfortable and weird dreams. some of the dreams are memories. some are fears. precious few are welcome. when i'm done with this, they will go away and my normal good dreams will return. it is merely process. a 'working through' of long put off brain shit and heart shit. nevertheless, it is good work. it makes me good.

arg! lost papers!

when i was in high school, i wrote a short story about a girl who fell down a well. to keep herself company, she scratched portraits in to the rock walls and those were her friends. i've been looking everywhere for the story and i can't find it anywhere. i'm sure my memory of it is a lot better than what it actually is... in fact, i KNOW my memory has cast it in that bright light of divine perfection, convincing me i've misplaced a work of genius. ha! right! the stuff i wrote at 17 was so damn melodramatic that it's pretty embarrassing to go back and read it now. there isn't much i've kept from those days... but i swore i held on to that story. i want it because, in a way, isn't that what i'm doing? making friends on all these canvasses. the story is probably long gone and yeah i could always rewrite it but i wanted the naive, idealistic story... the story i wrote when i had no idea about "bad writing" and was just in love with the action. there's something IN work like that... our young work when we weren't concerned about anything other than saying something... even if what we said was stupid.

maybe one of these days i'll force myself to rewrite it... i was looking at my walls, covered in my faceless portraits and thought it'd make for a super cool artist statement. the roses of my memory making me long for every page my hand ever touched. :)

memory...

there's a preciousness and a longing... an intimacy and a gentleness and a strange nostalgia... because i don't long to see the days of the apron return, not at all. but there's a call in these little drawings... a child's call... when we were little and we all thought our mamas were angels. there's a sad calm that pours out, a tiredness... but also something simple and beautiful...



mama
6" x 6"
water-soluble graphite and acrylic on raw canvas
angela simione, 2009

i'm partial to the drawings on paper but this experiment of drawing on unprimed canvas turned out quite sweetly. i think i'll keep playing with this approach and see where it takes me.

the light...

i woke up with an odd feeling on my shoulders...

it's hot here today. and old dreams, old memories start to stir in weather like this.

it feels like southern california, and so i feel like i did when i lived there... uncomfortable and unsure, scared of something that i've never been able to name. very much like when a person begins to fear they're crazy or stupid or good for nothing. that softer breed of depression that seeps in rather than crashes down. the nag of regret... wishing you'd been able to say what needed to be said... beating yourself up for not being smarter, for trusting the wrong people, for not being able to see what was really going on... guilt over not being strong enough or big enough to be taken seriously or at least act as a shield... guilt over not knowing how to help...

i can't tell myself i was just a kid and feel forgiven.

there's something about the light- the way it casts or when it goes all hot and yellow that is trying to remind me of something i can't remember... a bad dream or some unexplainable thing... people i no longer know... and thankful for it... thankful to be hundreds of miles away.

this is where that indignation of mine comes from... that deep, irrefutable well of clear morals. i've never been that good at standing up for myself. i've only recently learned how to do it, what it is, and when speak up. it's been hard. it is a tough, uncomfortable thing... but i'm quite good at standing up for others. i always have been. i've got a loud mouth... i can take a hit... all i need is a cause. and you're it. those of you who have a hard time standing up for yourselves too- i'll stand up for you. i am impossible to argue with. my logic is flawless. i've never been defeated. never. not when it comes to defending you.

in fog...

i put on my grey dress and we walked through the vineyard fog. the poppies still sleeping, but strange, wakeful birds clicked in the tall trees. i brought the fog home with me, cloaked these daughters in it, and remembered my long lost sunday dresses...

my sister and i posed together
in simple frocks our mother made-
up all night at her sewing machine,
without our father
and brother,
without without without...

but we make progress here...


sunday 3 (sheep in fog)- in progress shot
30" x 40"
oil on canvas


number three in this strange series. these two sisters appearing on there own... unexpected. in my work, two girls have always signals me and my sister, and this painting in particular makes me miss her company more than i usually do- that strange tie that keeps us, makes us. we are very different girls but not separate in the least, standing close to keep the secrets from spilling out, to keep from feeling afraid, and the only time in my life i was not afraid of the dark was when we were young and small and shared a room, sleeping safe in bunk beds...

and now these weird years when a person begins to look back, picking through memories and wondering if those times were real or dreamed, and the last line of a plath poems flashes in the brush and the canvas finds its name before it finds its finish...



SHEEP IN FOG


The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells-
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.





-Sylvia Plath
from Ariel

memory-lane...

today, i picked up a collection of poems i haven't leafed through in close to ten years. it had been my constant companion during those shy and awkward days of big dreams when i was 17. i had dog-eared 1/3rd of the pages... poems that had struck my heart apparently... and so i give you one of those and to myself aswell. i think i'll curl up again with this collection after dinner and wine at the neighbor's house.


Calm Under Fire
for Ted

We die in different directions
At the same pace we die
As the virtue of structure and grace

As a challenge to distance
We die, you and I, with our hands
Outreached, by chance, one night each
Toward the other. In a corner
In a cellar. With jars and webs,
A continent apart, we die

As submission to an unfinished heart.


-Jim Carroll
from Fear of Dreaming

winding down...

2008:

graduating from my dream school, CCA, with High Distinction no less!
marking my first year anniversary being represented by HANG
Monster Drawing Rally
A bunch of exhibitions
inclusion in The Counterfeit Crochet Project
moving... yet again :(
getting a poem published for the very first time
opening the shop
final visit to my "childhood" home
applications for grants and residencies
rejection letters
losing a member of my family
getting in contact with an old friend again
starting over
putting things to rest
began writing again
writing everyday
started jogging again
back to work at the frame shop
first white hair
first panic attack
fell in love all over again
learned things the hard way
got rid of half of my possessions
some more rejection
keeping up the blog
making tons of new work
made my first set of curtains
read ALOT!
lost my mind for awhile
found it a little while later
voted
celebrated
recovered

... and after all of that, i am increasingly hopeful. for as much bad as there has been this year, there's also been a substantial amount of good.

on new year's eve, i'll be hiding from all the madness in my little studio. i can't think of a better way to celebrate.