need

.

.

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.



.

in you i taste god

.

.

while reading The Hour of the Star

seems i am always circling around some sort of Reckoning, some sort of Return.  these thing i chase.  the moments when i feel most alive, charged with electricity and love, full of fear and pleasure and ego.  or the moments in the middle of the night when i am convinced of my own ineptitude, my selfish stupidity.  those horribly cold moments when i wallow in all my worst thoughts of myself, when i focus on all i lack, all i have always lacked. 

chasing a Reckoning.  some sort of Shattering.  a tear in the seam.  a crack that will let a little light in.  or a little dark out.

and i open a book and i read the words and for a one warm moment i feel Known in a way that i've always needed, in a way that i so often crave. 

 

the words stare at me and i nod my head: "Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?"

there are so few moments of reprieve.  too few.  i look at my hands.  i put polish on the nails.  i look at my eyes.  i pull tar through the lashes.  i look at my mouth.  i cover the soft pink with the loudest red i can find.  these additions make me Real.  these flecks of color, these gestures toward Urge and Desire prove i am alive and healthy and humming with the ability to take part in an exchange with the world.  i am here and standing and capable but my little love-sick heart goes on wishing after so many ridiculous things.  

i want to be invincible and never made silent through shame or guilt.  i want to be the strongest thing in the world.  i want to not hurt.  i want to not long for things the way i do.  i want to feel contained and content and totally devoid of certain desires for the symbols of approval and appreciation.  

i suppose it's normal now for the questions to come.  it's been a week since buying the ticket and i am settling in to the knowledge that something i've dreamed of for so many long, lonely years is about to happen.  i make lists of what i need to take care of.  i need a backpack and flip-flops and a towel and a lock and a map.  i woke early this morning and kept my appointment at the post office to get an expedited passport.  when the moment came where i had to declare under penalty of perjury that i am who i claim to be i felt so giddy.  such a child-like happiness coursed through my entire body and i couldn't help but smile at the woman who asked for my oath.  in 2 weeks, my passport will arrive.  my birth certificate will come back to me under separate cover.  it's the first time in my entire life i've actually ever possessed the document.  it's always been in someone else's care. i'm an adult in such an official way.  i look around at the portfolios leaning against the bedroom wall, the guitar i haven't played in close to a decade, the books that will remain unread and all i can think is "just get rid of all this shit.  get rid of everything."

i war against my frailties.  i pull yarn through a loop with a cold hook.  i fashion a text of my own in red letters and i stitch them to poles on the street in the middle of the night when i walk home from the train station after waiting tables all evening.  i say this in plain language but it is a romantic moment.  no cars, no birds, no sound at all save for the soft scratch of my shoes against the sidewalk.  for however humble my life may be, it is also quite charmed.  i am not blind to the beauty that curls around me.  i am not oblivious to the goodness that swirls.  and so i am disappointed in myself when these frailties rear up and my little lonely heart beats against my ribs, begging for things i know don't matter and will only serve to hold me back. 

think of airplanes, little girl.

think of airplanes, woman.  

there is so much i do not know.

 

 

these inconsistencies (don't cry)

.

(Maybe it is true that I am an ugly girl.

An inconsistent, selfish woman.)

There is a mirror in the corner and it is watching.

There is a mirror in the corner

and it is a tape recorder.   Your step-father will know everything.

I look at my chin in the mirror and see it is too big.  Too big for you to love me.  Not big enough to keep you from fucking me but definitely too big to keep you from holding my hand on the street.  I am a simple and inconsistent woman and such an ugly girl to boot!  It’s true!  Don’t argue, it only makes you look stupid.  And every now and then stupid is worse than ugly.  Ask anybody.  My sister and I learned early that the best thing we could ever do is win the love of a man.  Our mother beat it in to us with her big curls and big lips.  Her big lips all done up in Yummy Plummy lipstick.  Don’t forget your push-up bra.  I was never beautiful when I was around her.  Who would have thought so?  Look at her.  Look at her lips and her hair and how tall and thin.  That isn’t me.  That was my mother.  I didn’t even come close.  And then she died.  It wrecked my eyes and my heart and all of my soft, aching insides.

I look at this man

his blond hair

and think    don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry

Such big, beautiful words falling

from his big, knowing hands.  Hands

that have turned so many

pages of the sacrosanct and

fell so gently upon

the nipples of so many

aching women.

How I ache!

How I ache!

Where are you?  Where are you now?

When there is nothing I’d love better than to waste away below the sweat of an angry hand. 

Let me shy away from your gaze.  I want to feel afraid of you. I want to be crass below your touch, say all the horrible words that embarrass me later in the day and cry your name out against your tangled sheets.  I want your fist in my hair.  I want your cock up my ass.  I want you to slap my face and smile against my hot cheek.  I see myself becoming a corpse and so I want to get fucked as hard and often as I can.  You seem like a man who might see the necessity of all this. 

It’s been so long since I’ve cried in front of anyone.

.

as always, critique is welcome.  angelasimione at gmail dot com

i want to be good at this.

give me one more medicated peaceful moment...

i don't want to feel this overwhelming hostility...

.

Mein Gesicht an dem Kissen

.


some sort of unknowable pull.
some sort of intoxicated desire.
some sort of gross need.

some sort of unnameable itch.
some sort of gasping breath.
some sort of gaping mouth.
some sort of begging bitch. 

what fire?
what spit?
what fuel
burning across this livid skin, this apologetic pink?

what name?
what prayer?
what immoral ache?

see me
as if eyes had never found my face.
see me as if i were new.

what of all this anxiety and demand?
shut your mouth until it's time to kiss.


your face in my telephone.
your torso rising in my bereft and lonely dreams.


some sort of answer.
some sort of opiate.
some sort of comfort.

some sort of eager whisper across the knees.
some sort of fever.
some sort of austere hope.
some sort of home.

what fire.  what spit.  what fuel.

your accent tonguing the tips of my syllables,
polishing my silent cowboy edges.
in your mouth,

my name
my history
my fearful disbelief
never had it so good.



some sort of mirror.

some sort of reckoning.


.

DAY 2

.



let me reiterate:  maybe it is true that i am less afraid of you than you are of me.  maybe i have far less to lose? 



as one who understands the total figment of security, i can afford an uncommon brashness when it comes to certain things.  i understand the reality that, daily, i must eat and that, in our culture, that means i must make money.  but that's where my concern for money ends.  i truly don't give a fuck about retirement plans and home-ownership.  the less cages i lock myself in to, the better.  i prefer the wild ache of artistry and philosophy.  i prefer the torture of thinking and living to scrimping and saving.  give me pardon if this apparently youthful outlook offends you.  i don't mean to attack or jibe.  it's only the case that i watched a certain someone plan for their retirement and then die 2 years in to that solitude.  i assure you, she would've much rather kept working and kept experiencing the world if she had known what was coming.  and so i expect an unexpected death as well.  i expect to work right up until that day, like ma mere, louise bourgeois, sculpting in her studio all day long and then dying in her sleep after a full day's work in the studio.  let that be me.  let that be my end.  how sublime.  how ecstatic.  how necessary!  let me move my pen right up til the end.  let me dribble one last blot of ink as i suck in that last, rattling breath.  i don't plan on letting up until that exact moment...  whenever it may find me. 

sometimes pleasure and beauty become the most important things.  i remember my mother saying in her sickness, "suck every last ounce of joy out of this experience you can, little girl" and i parrot her voice inside my heart every chance i get.

sometimes, i am thoughtless.  sometimes, i am no where near as diligent as i should be, as i am capable of being.  there was an era of such prolific artistic production in my life not too long ago and i miss it.  but today, i went running down Shattuck Ave in Oakland and it occurred to me that i was so prolific because my self-worth depended upon it.  the sad fact is that being stuck in a bad relationship has the effect of sapping one's idea of self-worth.  i made so much fucking art because i was actively warring against a life that told me i was next-to-nothing.  it had been that way for years.  and before that relationship too. 

but i'm not blaming anyone for my decisions or my mistakes.  at this point, i am glad to have walked this particular road.  it is the thing that makes me able to look at you and smile.  it is the thing that makes my gaze soften with understanding.  i look at you with such warmth, such light, such appreciation for every awkward moment, every fantastically beautiful gesture and movement.  i look at you and know that i will never have all the information.  there is an entire story, an entire life behind you, within you that i know nothing about.  there have been such beautiful moments and such horrors.  there has been poetry and atrocity all around you.  these things, whatever they are, have made you capable of certain actions.  these secrets have made you long for certain things.  i will not judge you:  the same thing is true about me. 



i come to realize that i am not a simple human being.  i am not difficult either, but i am complex.  as such, i gravitate toward complexity.  i like complex people.  i like complex art.  i like complex emotion.  i like complex thought.  why did i ever think a simple life would be the right life for me?  we are taught to pursue certain avenues.  it is after going far enough down the dictated path that i reached a primary truth about myself:  i don't want a simple life.  i never have.

girl, your voice breaks my heart...

.

the desperation is overwhelming.  i know it inside and out.  how many years?  even as a young girl?  how many silly evenings did i spend wishing on the first star for a way out?  and now, with no parents to run from, i still identify with this eagerness.  i spent too many years inside such hunger.

but now i live in a city. i know how to wait tables. there's nothing to run from these days.  i can write poems in the evenings and dream in my lonely hours of hands in my hair, a man that might understand me or, at least, a song like this.  i can read whatever terrible philosophy finds me.  i can curl up beneath a blanket i made with my own two hands.  just me and my crochet hook and a bit of yarn, just like my mama, just like my daddy.  where the fuck did those two go?  oh yeah, one died and the other decided it wasn't worth the trouble.  life.  and so i listen to this song and ache.  people i haven't seen in a decade leave messages on my phone and my eyes sting with tears.  but that was a different life.  i'm not that little girl anymore.  i'm not a little girl at all.  i'm 32 years old.  i'm grown.  i've been thrown against the wall and come face to face with some shit that was way before its' due.  and i'm not mad about it, just please attempt some understanding...  i can't be younger than i am.  i can't be 32 in certain ways.  in certain ways, i'm so much older than that.  how old were you when your mother died?   did you have a stable job?  did you have a spouse?  did you lose a spouse? did you have children?  were they grown?  were they in college?  see, when i was in college i was taking care of my dad.  he's a quadriplegic.  i would go to class and then race home to cook dinner, do the laundry and be a confidant.  on the weekends, sometimes, i'd paint pictures that were sold in a gallery in san francisco.  people only saw the paintings.  they didn't see what went on behind them.  i wasn't a good enough artist at that point.  i didn't know how to make it apparent.  i didn't want to.  i've spent alot of years feeling very alone and very ashamed.

but not anymore.  and no matter.  it's just that i love this song.  and while it plays i crave the same shit she sings of...  that goddamn ache, that reprieve.  just put your hands in my hair, kiss me hard and make me feel like none of this matters, that i am somewhere else...


....


at intervals, i feel like one big gaping wound....  

or one big block of ice. 

does it matter which?  i still need your mouth.  i still need your hands.  i am still a human being, equipped with all the tawdry longings and secrets that most possess, and i still want a strong arm around my shoulder.


i play the old tunes that our parents put on the stereo when we were children.  my heart aches something awful.  not for what might have been but for what is.  and in spite of how i feel tonight, i love us kids with such ferocity.  they don't see it but we have been made so much more beautiful because of what we've come through, dear brother and sister.  the task is for us to see it.  and then, to believe it. 

;)


.

the way it is

i could send you naked pictures of myself to your iphone and you still won't have the first hint of who i am.  or will you?  am i just a dumb, drunk whore?  am i just a pitiful, needy human?  aren't we all? fuck all the pompous parading of pride.  no one has any pride in the face of desire.  no one.  not one drop.  not one drip.

...be my reminder here that i am not alone...

this road

i ran out of my delicious hazelnut and walked down to the market to buy more. on the way, i saw a hand painted sign in the window of a boarded up (papered up? sheets of white butcher paper on the inside of the windows) storefront that read closed for renovations in quite a lovely, humble, careful script. the letters were a dusty red on a flat white background. it looked like whoever painted it really took their time- no drips, no sloppy edges with the brush. and it reminded me of margaret kilgallen's work- her fascination with the signs people make for their small business, hand-made cultures, the beauty that follows actions of necessity. and i stopped to look at the sign again on my way back home. it's very simple but something in it spoke very loudly to me about my own life and struggle and pursuits at the moment.

closed for renovation.

i guess that's how i feel right now.

especially about oil painting. as a mode, it just seems so final, so serious, so declarative. and i'm not trying to make any declarations whatsoever in my work right now. i'm searching, hunting, excavating, mapping. and these modes are curious, exploratory. definitely not FINAL. not ABSOLUTE. and oil painting feels like that to me right now. maybe it's the history of oil painting flooding over? maybe it's the grand authority of oil? a confrontation with expectation? maybe maybe maybe...

but pencil, paper... their common attributes. humble, easy to access, the materials of map making. these things call me. they encourage me. i reach for these materials and it feels right. it feels authentic and honest. the right tool for the job.

i'm at a new beginning in life in a whole lot of ways.

i am on my own right now in a whole lot of ways.

simultaneously scary and exciting.

but freedom isn't an easy thing and it doesn't quickly line up with "happiness". there is struggle in those fiesty veins. and more and more i think that the work we make decides for us what type of artists we are, what type of life, what type of "career", what type of happiness we come to. my only choice in the matter is to hold on to the things i value and to stand with my ethics when the world breathes its confusion in my face. the only choice i have is to not crumble, to keep digging, to keep running, one day at a time, 15 minutes at a time, further and further down the harrowing highway.

i worry too much about things that are totally out of my control. a common human frailty, for sure. and i'm really trying to release myself from that shit right now. i'm trying very hard to trust The Work, trust The Process, trust The Materials, trust The Impulse. i've been carrying around one of my many Kiki Smith books again for days and days. again and again, i turn to her because she trusts her own work. she doesn't second guess the impulse. she just goes. and i have paired that book with Sylvia Plath's Ariel. they are laying together right now on the floor next to me. two bibles. two hymnals. two treasures. two books of hope and persistence. gems.

i see the mortality that surrounds us. how short, how small a day is.

i want my outsides to mirror my insides. i do not want to "live one way and pray another". i want my expressions to be as honest as possible. i want to whittle away at whatever hypocrisy exists in me.

and so i excavate. i writhe. i push the dirt aside.

i am trying to ignore fear.

i trust the pencil's scratch so completely. i trust it like i trust poetry. i trust it like a mother. i climb in to bed with my papers and all my blankets smell like graphite dust. they smell beautiful. my intimate "renovations".

maybe i'll make my own hand-painted sign? hang it on the wall in the living room. or maybe in the big window.

need

still thinking of Kusama- her "Art Medicine". art as cure. art as protection. art as health. art as talisman, amulet, proof of life, act of sadness, act of sanity, a savior, a quest, a means of survival, a means of investigation, of knowing, of coming to terms, a reckoning, a decision, a question.

art as breath. a voice. a call. a need.

food. shelter. water.

art as a basic necessity.

humans make meaning because they need it.

food. shelter. water.

beauty? clarity? direction?

something honest. something basic. something irrefutable.






today i am making wreaths. an ouroborus made of moths. a way of making a prayer. an attempt toward understanding. maybe protection. maybe just an act of simple honesty.

humans make meaning (art) because they need it.

philosophies

such a quiet.

and a moment of stillness.

and i am less and less concerned with right and wrong.

just effective and ineffective, warranted and unwarranted, what works for me and what doesn't work for me. a stoic philosophy- knowing myself and then living in accordance with what that is/means.

behavior that lines up with belief.

and i acknowledge that this harmony may not always be pleasant or appear beautiful. "beauty" is as subjective as "right". morality is relative. ethics are individual. and i mean that in terms of application. i mean to say that my ethics are for me to apply to myself. that's who they exist for. it is my code, my way, my walking stick.

the big WHY.

these pictures are a document of that wrestling: a catalogue of my attempt to make meaning. accuracy is important. it takes courage and patience. but accuracy about what? my life and what it has meant. it may mean something different in a year, in a month, tomorrow. and so... some sort of exorcism. some sort of reckoning.

self-portrait after self-portrait.

aren't we all just talking about ourselves? giving light to our loves, hates, losses, and concerns.

i don't think a person can make ART about shit they don't care about. captivation is mandatory. the subject must be relevant to the artist dealing with it. it has to be. and it IS if it is any good at all.

when i am captivated i can work all day. when i find the right form, the right image, when everything is married and conjoined and aligned in a way that makes sense to me, that is true to the mess of things or the beauty of things, i will work until my hand locks up in a huge, painful cramp. i do not abandon it. i stay and stay and stay because something honest is going on. and that site of honesty, for however idiosyncratic it may be, is where the reckoning occurs. it is where ART is made.

i can be honest about my own impulses toward blame or self-pity if i dig deep enough to actually see where they come from, if i find the hidden kernel that gives rise to those feelings. but merely to offer an expression of blame, an expression of self-pity, adds nothing to the conversation. it shuts conversation down. all it is is lashing out. it is not courageous. the results are not ART.

but that doesn't mean an artist can't be angry or ugly. you can be. is it warranted? and if it is- don't excuse yourself, don't blame anyone else, keep the responsibility and guilt of it for yourself, let it be ugly and don't try to cover it up or run from the aftermath. stand there. own up. that might be ART: to not run. to not make excuses.

to make a statement and stand by it even if the statement is ugly or offensive is an act of courage that has the capability of causing a reckoning, a fracture, a tear, a split in the seam. "ugly" is relative too. and sometimes, it is warranted. sometimes an ugly expression causes us to notice an overlooked beauty- a situational contingency or symbiosis that supplies knowledge and an avenue to compassion... and those things are rewards.

rewards are not always shiny and warm.

behavior that lines up with belief.

i am changing my attitudes about certain things. effective, ineffective. acceptable, unacceptable. necessary, unnecessary. and only as they apply to me, my practice, my life, my ins and outs and daily grind.

and so this catalogue is only a catalogue. it is not an argument for why i might be right and another person is wrong. it is not a case i am building against anyone or anything. and if i have indited anyone, it is myself. it is either effective or it isn't. and if i can get to that site of honesty where the reckoning occurs than i can steadfastly believe in what i'm doing because i have achieved an amount of courage, i have achieved an amount of clarity, i have done something relevant for my own life. and of course i want the looker to be effected. of course i want to catch their eye and keep it. but i can't dictate that. my tastes, my desires, my needs are my own to satisfy. just as i walk passed paintings, others will walk passed mine. it is no strike against me. the other person has an entire life inside them that i know nothing about. we are not all cut from the same cloth and we do not all share the same beliefs or have the same needs. especially not when it comes to art. i'm more than okay with this and am not beaten down by it. and increasingly, i am thankful for those who do stop to look. who stay a minute and look at the lines and shadows and (hopefully) see a bit of their own biography in the shape and twist.

go watch! it will make you feel better! elated even!

super timely, i'd say. especially based on the post below. isn't this what it comes down to?

this is your poem for the day.


(i HATE it that people are sticking advertisements in front of videos!)

life and theory and excuse and reason and, in the end, just say 'fuck it!'

being part of any lineage does not make you a copy-cat. it does not demand resignation either. is a child, though the product of her parents union and DNA, still not new? still not a package of potential? and as she grows, a unique collection of experiences and influences and fragments of beauty and torment and song and prayer? is this "collection" somehow false? i don't see how that could be possible. and being the next in a lineage of one's own choosing is a gorgeous thing. it feels right and that feeling needs to be clung too with everything you've got.

no theory will ever account for that original impulse you felt as a child to just simply play. to scoot around the paint and scribble on the wall and make yourself sick with too many cartwheels.

there is a value to theory. it gives us new lenses with which to view the world and i appreciate having them. but as i study, i come to see that asking for a reason, an explanation, an argument for why it's okay for me to spend my time making art is basically the same thing as asking me to supply an argument for why it's okay for me to attend to any of my needs.

do you mean it or not? art is not merely a picture on the wall. art is not merely letters on a page. it is an entire way of seeing. a mode of being. a way to LIVE. what works for me, what feels right to me isn't going to work for everyone and i'm getting to the point where i can finally except that. and so the proper breed of anger rises up- either except me for who i am or leave me alone. i promise to do the same for you.

i am an artist. it is who i am. i cannot stop being an artist any more than i can stop myself from taking this next breath. and this one. and this one. this is how it is and there is no explanation i owe. none. does a cat apologise for cleaning itself? does a dog apologize for kissing? why should i apologize for painting?

the fact some people feel the need to construct historical arguments for why it is OKAY to be an artist in this time and place and moment within history is not my burden. if it works for you, it works! if it leads you to deeper levels within your practice then it's good! i read the theory and i participate in the discussion but at the end of the day, for however thankful i am for my new lens, i wake up the next day and paint because it is how i live. asking me to stop is asking me to be someone else. if i stopped making art i would cease completely. i would become something other than what i am. this person who is here, now, would go away.

and adorno said "There is no poetry after Auschwitz"...

really? what about paul celan? what about charlotte delbo? fuck you adorno, you hater of humanity. you jaded freak. how dare you quantify horror. how dare you critique this witnessing. how dare you belittle the very true compassion that exists inside humanity to make sense of our station. do not trivialize it and claim that we are only capable of atrocity. i think adorno is a sad, scared, hateful child who looked for a reason to NOT engage with the world... to say that life is pointless and ugly and valueless. and honestly, that sort of pessimism is so easy to come by. it is a childish response to loss and confusion and it is common in the worst sense of the word.

i prefer charlotte delbo. i prefer her work, her poems and plays and her request, her poignant longing and despairing question "who will carry the word?" to survive the camps and then to be taken by cancer... goddamn my tears cannot come fast enough. i cry as i type because they, sometimes, are one in the same. and paul celan survived the camps and was so guilt ridden that he survived something that so many others did not. inexplicably survived. and this confusion, this weight, this tremendous guilt and suffering caused him to write and write and write and in the end when he could not come up with some satisfactory explanation for why it was okay that he survived, why it was okay that he made poetry, he threw himself in a river and left.

it is okay to make poems.

it is okay to survive.

sometimes, they are one in the same.

you can choose to go about your life in a way that feels right for you.

theory and knowledge and education are meant (in my opinion) to be used as tools to strengthen this resolve, this beautiful and flawless inborn logic. they are not meant to undo it. knowledge of the world should not be used to abandon compassion. opening your eyes to the pain of the world does not mean you must close your heart. it means the exact opposite.

theory gets me there sometimes. barthes and sontag... but also the philosphy of andy warhol and the journals of sylvia plath and the angry lyricism of patti smith and the deep regret of beethoven. alice's adventures underground and the beauty marc jacobs creates and even my dog snoring in her sleep. the smiles that come at the exact right time. the tears that well up, be it anger or despair, let them come! sensitivity is necessary to know where you are! at least it is for me. and i refuse to be jaded, to be pleasureless, to feel like i must make an argument for my needs, to become arrogant and divisive.

our differences are important but it is our common thread that will allow us to unravel the tangle set before us. it is the thing that will allow us to accept difference and to see it as the shining beauty it is.


(this might just be PART 1)