in progress

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i spent the majority of the day at home in bed with a cup of coffee and my crochet hook.  i listened to french phonetics and repeated the words as i stitched away and wondered about myself and the life i've been creating vs. the life i want to create...

the way you (i) need to be loved...


i rounded the corner in to my 33rd year on september 3rd and seemed to instantly smack right into a new realm of self-knowledge like a fucking brick wall.  i spent the day after my birthday mildly hungover, a bit forlorn, more than a bit worse for wear, and wearing the same dress i had worn the day before to one of my french classes.  i fared well, all things considered, and had a great time in class (maybe being a bit brain dead even helped me absorb all the new information and sounds contained in this new language) but felt the closing of an era shake within me...  or at least the need to bring an era to an end.

when i first became single a year and a half ago, i needed to live brashly.  i needed to embrace my new freedom in a fiery, even outlandish, way.  it was healing to do so and provided me with so many opportunities to see the world (and myself) in a new way, in a truer light, and without the bad habit of judgement and fear that so easily pollutes us all.  it helped me shake off the expectations and hurt left over from a long-term relationship.  that strange residue of pain, of unfulfillment and goals left to die.  sometimes the death of a dream is more painful that the actual death of a loved one.  it is hard to watch a fairytale fall in to disrepair.  it is hard to watch a fairytale turn to total shit.  it's even harder to not let the experience embitter you.  i needed to be a bit wild for a time in order to heal from the effects of drudgery and heartbreak.  i needed to reclaim something about myself that i'd given up along the way.  but now, it's beginning to feel like the things that once provided me with a sense of healing are now becoming damaging.  excessive in a way that does not lead to a greater sense of freedom and independence, but to a flippant attitude...  a callous form of casualness that i absolutely do not want to adopt.  i do not want to be Charles Bukowski, waking up to 300 hangovers a year, and wading through an endless barrage of damaged human beings and semi-meaningless experiences in an effort to combat the loneliness inherent to human existence. it is true that maybe my sense of loneliness is bigger than others, but i must learn how to bare it in a new way.  i need to return to the work of devotion and exploration.  i need to attempt to learn the difference between Bravery and Excess.  both have their values and nuances but one should not be mistaken for the other.  i have clung to beliefs and images of the world and life that perhaps i've outgrown.  i crave a new sense of balance, a new expression of freedom, a new way to achieve comfort.  i return to my hooks and books and the love i feel for bigger, better things than what i've allowed myself. 

how do i need to be loved?


if i can manage to focus on that question, 33 will be a great year.

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WORDS WORDS WORDS

my Talent of the Room finds me and every morning i spend a solid 2 hours writing in my diary at the kitchen table as i sip my coffee.  i look out the window onto my busy street.  i listen to the cars and people rambling by.  i feel the sun on my legs and the pen in my hand.  soft pleasures.  necessities.  i can't imagine ever being without this little waking ritual of mine.  i can't imagine ever giving this up.  these hours behind the pen, inside language, inside the inexplicable twists of dreams and memories.  there's nothing "little" about it.

i've fallen back in to a phase of self-investigation and exploration.  i doubt one's need for such things ever really goes away and that's probably a good thing.  as i gain insight and information, i recalibrate.  as i pick up moments of confusion and wonder - or even doubt and fear - i use them to look a bit closer at my own motives and desires.  everyday i seem to be learning more about myself.  i feel like i'm growing up in a totally new way.

i finished reading the second volume of my 2012 diary yesterday on my train to work.  going through these pages is an integral part of my current round of investigation.  i feel so lucky to have such a tool at my disposal.  i can't explain how amazingly valuable it is to be able to read exactly what i was thinking about and wrestling with on THIS DAY one year ago.  it's a fantastic was to measure change.  but also, i return to the idea that to keep a diary is more than simply recording one's thoughts and activities.  it is a life's work.  i've said so many times here that words make the world and i truly believe that.  language is a living, nebulous thing and our use of it impacts how we see ourselves and the world we inhabit.  it determines the world we create.  my attractions all have a root in Language.  from the look of a person's handwriting to the particularities and lilt of speech to the a person's command over poetics or even just the maintenance of a deep, strong vocabulary, my interest is ensnared.  i have deep attraction to people who have big vocabularies and can use them effortlessly, who don't sound pompous and puffed-up.  even the sound of someone's sigh is attractive to me and a good laugh is a very strong aphrodisiac.

all this to say- language, in all its forms, the very act of and desire to communicate with another human being is something i've always been attracted to and is a basic building block of my own personality.  as i look back and re-live certain experiences through the lens of my diary, i see how necessary certain types of connection are to me.  i need conversation, intellectual engagement, philosophic enterprise, and poetic experience.  simply put, i need passion.  i am not a simple person who can be satisfied by simple relationships.  i'm not difficult either but "difficult" is not the only opposite of "simple".  complexity is also an antonym.  i like complex people.  i like the mysteries they contain.  i like not knowing the next thing that might shoot out of a person's mouth and i appreciate people who know how to hold up their end of a conversation. 

sounds simple enough until i look deeper at the statements that i just put forth.  it is romantic to say that i want a passionate life.  but in accepting a passionate life, one also accepts the necessity of pain.  one must accept certain risks and that sometimes the gamble will be lost.  i won't always come out on top but, thankfully, i'm the type of person that can turn almost any negative in to a positive.  i'm not thankful that other people have mistreated me and i would probably never thank someone for their atrocious behavior regardless of the good that may have ended up flowing from it later on.  but i am thankful to be the kind of person that can take that hurt and allow it to polish me rather than become embittered against others.  it's not so much a point of forgiving others as it is a matter of forgiving myself.  i'm not exactly sure what that means or how to accomplish such a thing other than learning from my own mistakes and not allowing myself to slide back in to familiar, yet harmful, patterns. 

it's difficult to know, though, when i'm being smart or when i'm running scared.  certain emotions make me feel foolish now and i've noticed lately that i run from them.  i play it cool and not a single ripple of embarrassment or heartache will show on my surface if i can help it.  i have no problem showcasing pain in art or writing or even here on the blog but i do not put that shit on display in front of many other people.  there is a very small handful of people that i am close enough with to really lay my emotions out in front of and, within that group, still fewer that i would actually allow to see or hear me cry.  but i suppose that feeling foolish (or even actually being foolish from time to time) is going to be part of the ride.  necessarily so.  but i don't know how to uproot this idea that seems to have grown in me that others will find my emotions to be repulsive.  i don't know how to counteract my experience that people run away from the darkness a human being contains.  i don't know how to stop believing that most people are fair-weather friends.  somehow i must unlearn these things and manage to become brave enough to risk feeling foolish. it's the next step in becoming a better friend and a better artist.  risk is mandatory. especially for someone like me who wants to know about the world and establish meaning in life.  especially for someone who doesn't think before she writes and puts all this shit out on to the internet for anyone to read. ;)

to be alive...

the streets are wet and black.  a slow rain is coming down.  i am wearing one of the first sweaters i ever made.  how strange to think of where i was then, and how i spent my nights and days. even my body is a different size.  george michael sings in my ear (again and again) and a faithful Greyhound rests at my side.  i think this might be the first time its rained since i moved in to my white room. 

what can i give you tonight?  or any other night that might make up for my arrogant absences?  what can i give you that might mend the tear that i can't help but deal with my sad silences?  sometimes i need such a grand depth of space around me, such a deep, abiding stillness.  i slink low in to my warm bath of solitude and i do not surface until i have to.  i languish in it.  i luxuriate.  and then i go to work.  i look at the calendar and think of friends i haven't called and the skin i haven't touched in so long, the hair i haven't brushed and the glasses i haven't raised to the honor of such wonderful people in so long.  i hole up with my own projects and beverages.  and i suppose we all do it.  we all get lost in out own present tenses.

over dinner tonight with new friends i admitted that, now, a little more than 7 years after relocating to the Bay Area certain home-town friendships are finally starting to deteriorate.  it is sad because we've managed to hold on for so long.  we've managed to call each other on a regular enough basis and still say i love you but so much changed when i became single at the beginning of the year.  a renewal of sorts.  and so much changed after going to New York:  a birth that i knew would occur.  so many people have commented on how "alive" i seem since having gone.  so many people have commented on how much happier and stronger i seem.  and what they see is real.  i deal out a lot of my vulnerabilities here in this electric square and i willingly supply evidence of the existence of my own excitable, quavering heart; nevertheless, i have become quite brave this year.  it's an event that surprises the shit out of me.  i've wanted to be brave my entire life.  i've wanted to know the definition of courage for so long. it is totally different from what i assumed it would be.

i am finally myself.  i am finally allowing for change and experience.  i am finally allowing for pleasure, finally able to accept the pleasure of risk.  for the first time in years, i am enjoying my daily life.  i don't feel like crying as i walk closer and closer to my front door.  i don't feel like, with each step, i am telling lie after lie.  i look at the sky and think of my mother and wish she could see me now.  she would be so happy for me.  she would tell me how well i'm doing and how proud she is of me.  she would be envious of my trip to new york and we would talk for hours about it.  she would want to hear all about testing perfume at Lord & Taylor and how delicious the hotdogs are at the food carts all over manhattan.  she would want to hear all about walking through the lower east side at 4 am and the dead pigeon i accidentally kicked.  she would commend me for having found the courage to stake claim to my own life.  she would ask me to speak to her in german just so she could hear the language of her favorite land in the entire world, a place she always wanted to return to.  she had been stationed there when she was 19 years old and always longed to return.  "there's such magic there", she said, and in so many ways, that is where my family begins- our strange, careening story. we've all become so different. we share such similar stories but walk such distinct roads. 

november is coming and, with it, an election, a concert, and another trip to beautiful New York.  i am on pins and needles waiting for the first of the month to arrive.  a new adventure is breathing down my neck and i cannot wait to turn and collect its kiss. 

investigation

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from the ice queen series of photographs

angela simione 2012

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