under the overpass

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deathmarch poetry
oakland CA
angela simione, 2014

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persistence

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they keep taking it down and i keep putting it back up.

this is the third banner i've installed at this particular location.  if there needs to be a fourth, so be it.  when i was getting ready to stitch this piece in to place today, a woman walked by and thanked me for reinstalling it.  it made me feel good that the community here has noticed the work and saw it as a welcome addition to the neighborhood and was sad to see it go.  it made me even happier to be thanked for putting a new piece up.  pep in my step. :)

THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED

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DEATHMARCH

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never forget your big black marker at home. 

severed and encouraged

i don't know what i want to say.  something has shifted in me since going to europe.  i can't describe it.  i was so immediately calm once boarding the plane from london to berlin.  so indefinably calm, at ease in the most remarkable way.  natural.  i was never once afraid.  but now here i am, back in the U.S. and not knowing what exactly to do with myself...

i sign up for french classes and decide i need to know more about cheese and wine.  i'm sitting here with my second bottle of Gewurztraminer and a block of Parmesan Romano.  my roommates are helping.  we all feel spoiled.  we all feel special.  life is good.

but my heart aches.  it pulls toward those old bridges.  my broken german longs for a bit of completion.  that strange sadness finds me every couple days. travel sadness.  the need to be back in germany and walking across the Oberbaum Brucke, the need to race through berlin on the back of a blond's motorcycle, the need to sit quietly at a cafe and sip a latte while i scribble in my diary.  it all sounds so lofty and spoiled to american ears but maybe what i'm talking about is simply Living.  maybe what i'm describing are the simple pleasures that come from trusting a stranger simply because you receive an unnameable buzz while in their presence and decide to follow the white hot line of it.  maybe what i'm describing is the utter joy that floods one's being once deciding that Flatliners was right and today really is a good day to die...  so take a deep breath and embrace what you've got.  i'm trying to tell myself exactly that right now.  i'm attempting to play tourist every day and see california as a foreigner might.  it's a tall order but i'm having a great time trying to satisfy it.  still, loneliness finds me.  i just need to be in the wind.  i'm in that Searching phase of life.  i need no schedule and no expectations, just a map and a hunk of bread stuffed in my backpack.


...


while i was away, from time to time i worried about my yarnbombs. i worried whether they'd been taken down yet, snipped away by passersby who wanted a bay-area souvenir or an angsty teenager who felt akin to the sentiments.  i was relieved and ecstatic to find them all in place upon my return.  each and every banner from Aileen to 59th was still there.  AND!!! it seemed as if someone had even been tending to them- straightening them out as they slid down the stop sign poles and making sure the text was straight and discernible.  a week or so later, i noticed two had disappeared.  then, as i walked to the train station this weekend on my way to work i found two banners sliced off and cast to the ground:

 

the jaggedness of the cuts and the fact that these pieces were then thrown aside let me know that the person who cut them down didn't give a shit about this work and, in fact, was probably pissed off.  this is a wonder to me.  i've never actually ever seen a yarnbomb be so violently removed from public view.  but then again, i've not seen any pieces in the bay area that employ text.  maybe the message angered this person???  maybe they found it annoying and was tired of walking passed it on their way to the train???  whatever the reason, this person was obviously angry as evinced by the fact that not all the banners on telegraph have been cut down, only those on a particular block.  basically, i'm saying they weren't cut down by the authorities.  the authorities would have removed them ALL and wouldn't have cast them into the street.

i'm not at all hurt or offended.  if anything, i'm encouraged.  this type of response lets me know i'm on the right track and that i need to keep going.  i felt a sense of lost whenever a banner would disappear before i went on my trip.  so much so that i replaced the one at 58th and telegraph (whoever you are :)  ).  but something changed in me...  i feel more generous these days, more open to evolution and the pain of transformation.  i feel spurred on by your violence.  your anger gets me hot.  it leads to a deep sense of resolve.  i don't give a fuck.  laugh at me or ignore me.  whatever.  slice my work to pieces, just know i'm sitting at my kitchen table tonight eating Parmesan cheese and drinking a lovely bottle of Gewurztraminer:  my feelings are not hurt.  in fact, i like having these photographs of my fallen banners.  i like having them laying on the corner of my bed.  i plan to frame them.  they have a history now, a story i could never have provided that adds to their beauty and intelligence.  it's beyond description.  

i am thankful for the raggedness that my hands are incapable of dealing.  

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THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED

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Telegraph Ave @ 49th
Oakland, CA



sometimes a poem only needs one line.

everything is new

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20 hours of travel, a delayed flight, a diverted flight, sleeping on the floor of SFO as i waited for the first trains to begin running.  it was a long walk home that morning but i didn't mind.  it was the first time i'd put my earbuds in in a month.  i was the first time music had coursed through me in lock step with my fast-beating heart.  it was the first time in a month that i was able to lock in to myself, only myself, like masterbation, no one else, no distractions, no concerns, no muttering in the distance.  i had been outside myself for an entire month.  i had been in the wind, in the sun, within a language that floored me and made me its' servant.  gladly (gerne). i'd been so outside myself for an entire month that it seemed impossible to find myself walking along familiar roads.  a part of me was still in Berlin, crossing the Oberbaum Brucke, not crossing Shattuck Ave in Oakland, California.

as i came closer to my house, a dirty, discarded chair came in to view.  no cushions, abandonned on the side of the road.  "ahhh... a canvas..." i thought.  a canvas.  i didn't know how badly i needed one until i saw one.  i went inside and grabbed my big, black marker.  "yes.  perfection.  the first thing i will do upon arriving in oakland is write on the street", i told myself, "this is the only real beauty.  this is the only gesture i have."  i thought of my beloved bridge in Kreuzbeg and my heart ached something awful.  where had my endless waters gone?  i thought of David Wojnarowicz and his plea that we live life like it actually fucking matters.   i thought of his refrain.  i scrawled it quick in fat print:

yes i will.  i fucking promise.


it's so hard to believe a week has already gone by since i've been home.  there is so much to say...  it will come as it is able.

yesterday evening, i stood in my dark kitchen and watched a man cross the street to take a picture of the abandoned chair.  the sun obscured the image and he kicked the chair in a half circle there on the corner to get it out of the glare.   i watched him the entire time.  it was a moment of quiet happiness.  it was a moment of connection to another human being.  i have no idea what to label the work i do that happens in the street.  i very rarely think of it as ART.  or rather, ART isn't even the consideration.  i think of these things as Signs.  as a Cry.  it was wonderful to be able to witness my cry being heard.  not only heard, but echoed in the heart of another.  i felt unbelievably lucky.

i am happy to stretch out in my white room and see the reflection of my body flash in the armoir mirror.  i am happy to make coffee in my kitchen and spend the first 2 hours of the day scribbling in my diary.  i am happy to have a washer and drier at my disposal.  but i assure you, 3 weeks overseas was definitely not enough.  all my plans have changed. my ideas are totally shattered.  i have no answers and all of my goals have been flung far and wide. 

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and again

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telegraph ave, oakland ca


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BOOM AGAIN!

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walked down the way and dropped a bomb in front of Cakeland Gallery tonight in Oakland. crossed the street and picked up a bottle of vodka at Uptown Liquor afterward.  A very tall, beautiful woman walked in after me.  at the register she told me i was beautiful.  i had only just taken my tapestry needle out of my mouth and stuck it in my back pocket.  my smile was instant. 

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