excerpt:

.

I sit across from the thin mirror in the corner.  I am folded up like a blanket , all my limbs arched and turned inward toward my form, shielding the delicate tips of pink from all eyes.  Even mine.  I look at my face.  I see the red lines I’ve allowed to be drawn across my forehead.  Examples of humiliation and confusion. Proofs.  It’s all mathematics now.  I stand up and walk to the dresser.  I pull out the black sweater in the top drawer.  I watch myself in the mirror.   I count the seconds it takes.  I recite my age.  I am acquainted with enough years to make sense of all the spinning.  I turn the knob and step out in to the hall.  The mirror stares after me.  I am looking out the window now.  I can count the avenues and detours.  I pull the sweater over my cold self and keep walking.  Two sleeves and a hole for my head.  I can count until I find myself outside your radius.  I can count rather than repeat your name.  I can watch the clouds.  I can count.  I can hope.  A window.  A window.  A way out.  

.

notebook self-portrait 2012

here they are!  each and every one of my lovelies, in order from first to last:  the notebooks of 2012.

living the dream, baby!

it's been a wild week.  i'm full of stories and secrets, full of dreams and experiences, full of the knowledge that the best thing a person can accomplish in this life is Being Oneself.  i feel like Myself more and more.  i make less excuses and fewer apologies.  i simply smile and enjoy my time.  and in spite of my silence this passed week here, i've been writing like crazy.  my brother sent me a fantastic text message the other day telling me that he really enjoys my drunken writing here on the blog and that he thinks i should compile it and write a book.  it definitely warms me up in an indescribably way to know that people appreciate my work, but it is uniquely comforting to know my brother appreciates it and finds value in what i'm trying to say.  in some ways i'm trying to speak for all of us -  myself and my siblings - and to lay down a document of pain that may work as a cure.  i believe that the act itself of Telling can go beyond the therapeutic and bring about a reckoning.  i feel so transported sometimes, so changed by the act of writing.  i feel myself Becoming more and more who i know myself to be.  the core of me becomes more evident, more available, less shameful, less scary.  i learn, again, how to expose myself courageously. 

i've spent the morning drinking coffee, doing laundry, scribbling in my diary and thinking about what i need to pack for my return trip to New York.  i fly out tonight and land at JFK at 6am tomorrow morning.  i can't believe i'm already going back.  that came up quick!  it doesn't feel real and won't feel real until i'm staring at the lights of our most spectacular city from the cabin window of an airplane.  it'll be interesting to be there so soon after the hurricane.  i have no idea what to expect.  i know New Yorkers are on top of their shit and i'm sure the city isn't nearly as fucked up as it was last week but, i mean, it was a hurricane!  i think of Staten Island and my chest goes tight.  i hold my breath.  i'll see it for myself soon enough. 

and so i'll be off the grid for a week, off exploring and dancing and writing.  i'll pack as lightly as i can get away with and concentrate mainly on writing as much as i can make time for and taking a few more pictures than i did last time.  my friend annie is meeting me in Chelsea.  it's her first visit to NYC and i am so fucking excited to be there with her.  a fellow server at the restaurant, upon hearing that she and i would be in New York together, shook his head and said: you guys are gonna get arrested. ha!

i promise to not get arrested.  ;)

all my love,
angela

excerpt:

maybe...



(we breathed at each others mouths, panted at the open wish.  

we stared at each other, point blank,  blue eye to blue eye. 

he asked me if i was an atheist.

he had such a slow southern drawl.

he is the first man i ever watched masturbate.)



at a certain moment 
a certain level of detachment becomes necessary.

maybe one day i can be the thing that you can feel safe attaching your dreams to. 

maybe one day you can look at me and not feel abandoned.

maybe one day you can look at me and not feel like abandoning me.

maybe one day we can lay down, side by side, and just look at each other and talk easily, without any expectations about tomorrow.

maybe one day it'll be okay to think about tomorrow.

maybe one day thinking about tomorrow won't be so scary.

maybe one day you'll be able to brush my hair out of my eyes and fall in love with my smile.

maybe one day you'll be able to brush my hair out of my eyes and fall in love with me.

maybe one day we'll be able to tell the truth to each other and not get upset.

maybe one day i'll open myself to you in the way you've been wanting me to.

maybe one day i'll let you watch me.

maybe one day i'll be able to sleep below your warm body and resign myself to that lovely ache of hearts beating against one another, out of time, through so many layers of skin and sweat, belly button to belly button, my tits against your chest and my hair falling in to both our gasping mouths. 

maybe one day we won't be strange shapes in each others day.

maybe one day i won't drink so much.

maybe one day i won't stay up so late.

maybe one day we won't be strangers.



.

remember

poem on the fly

i slip in and out of sorts, in and out of my own dark water, my own black bile, my own vat of nail parings and hair caught in the drain. all of me mixed up so stupidly with wind and words. all of me shining and spinning and needing to spit spit spit the seeds out. i can't think about anything else. the headache remains. the cold pool of anxiety i writhe in. the cold pool of anxiety that has over taken me. the cold pool of anxiety that sloshes inside my stomach, wells up to the top of my head, comes out as tears, and makes it so i can't see.

whatever you do, just don't hurt me unless you absolutely have to.
whatever you do, don't turn away from your own reflection in the mirror.
i can't save a fucking soul other than my own.
i can't tell anyone for sure if i've ever been able to see straight.

in reference to all that needs to be referenced

i am not interested in spelling anything out or defining a fucking thing.

the meaning i make is my own. the meaning you make is your own. if the meaning you make comes from the meaning i make then our meanings are siblings. sometimes they will love each other. sometimes they will pull each other's hair. sometimes they will grow to become sworn enemies. the cycle is the cycle and as i proceed i see that reason fails. reason fails but the effort toward it is noble, as is the effort toward passion.

these are observations.

the year is winding down.

today on the train i started reading my diary from a year ago. it is absolutely amazing and glaring how different i am today than i was a year ago. a parent burned to ash will do that to you.

so much has changed. so much has remained the same. so much needs to take root and so much needs to be rooted out.

you have no idea how badly i want to caress the side of your face. my cold hand aches to move gently against your warm cheek.

"cold hands, warm heart" becca reminds me.

perfect timing

all of a sudden, the light of evening shifts.

all of a sudden, so heartbroken and small.

we worry our hands and tap our feet.

or i do.

but my face is calm. i do not shiver or sneer.

you don't know a thing.

my lipstick is perfect.

writing and life and my writing-life

funny... now that i'm not tucked away in the countryside and spend most days at work in san francisco, i am a bit more aware of this space, this blog. i log in to my account and stare at the white rectangle where i am supposed to type, the space i've laid down so many words before, so much yearning and confusion, so many attempts at self-knowledge, and feel such a heavy ambivalence. key-stroke after key-stroke, in the hope of unearthing even the smallest clue as to what direction i should be moving in, some sort of clarity, some sort of assurance, and now this... this streak of days where i just stare stare stare at the white or, worse, fill it up with text and then log out without posting it when i like having the document of my struggle. i like that that's pretty much what this blog is all about now. it's just weird, i guess... by moving back to a more populated place where i run in to friends and acquaintances, both personal and professional, on a regular basis my blog actually comes up in conversation. it's sort of weird. like my alter-ego just had her "true" identity exposed. very much like looking under batman's mask (not that i'm performing any sort of heroism here), ripping away the warm black shield of relative anonymity. it's been interesting. i mentioned it to my friend freya (who reads my blog and we discuss it's contents sometimes and i feel really thankful for that and the massive presence of art/lit/meaning in our friendship) and told her that in some very deep , very serious ways i feel like the people who read my blog know me infinitely better than people who don't. there are people in my flesh-based reality who can't stand the blog. they do not read it. they've tried and it either makes them uncomfortable or sad or they simply don't want to see this side of me. i am reminded of another anais nin quote right now as i am typing this:

The truly faithless one is the one who makes love to only a fraction of you. And denies the rest.

i haven't made up my mind how i feel about that statement yet but something about it caught my attention in a very forceful way. maybe i feel that i am also guilty of this? maybe i feel there are people around me who are guilty of this and it hurts me? and also, getting to know someone in a meaningful way takes time... and sometimes i wonder if/fear that this blog might do a disservice to that meandering road of friendship; the nebulous curiosity and intrigue that is so much fun and integral to a relationship of substance. but then another Nin quote comes to mind:

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

in so many ways, this blog lays a lot of my cards out on the table. i've chosen to live that way. i've chosen to be this honest. but maybe providing "knowledge" only increases my "mystery", as it were?

i'm being a big fraidy cat, i know. and i'm letting my fear of saying too much or saying the wrong thing hold too much sway lately. i've been writing like crazy in my journal. every day, every day, every day. and i still magically find that inner zone of devilish trance-like fluidity where poetry becomes possible and i am able to bang out a few sentences, sometimes a few paragraphs, and write with the full comfort of no one standing over my shoulder.

i read this late last night (thanks for the link, rebecca!) and it calmed me so much. i read it and i thought: just work. fuck it.

if i end up embarrassing myself here it definitely won't be because i expressed myself badly. or suppose did? so what? i'd rather risk saying too much than never enough. "never enough" is not where art lives, not where meaning lives, not where passion lives and those 3 things are the 3 most important things in my current world-view. i'd rather be here and give you this crazy shit to read. you honor me by spending time with all these words. feel free to mention this blog when you run in to me if you feel like it. this world and the other are not separate. i'd like to see them gel.

The Runaway Game:

I would go around and around my little bedroom that I shared with my sister and I would pick out the things that could not be left behind. I had a cardboard suitcase with tiny flowers printed all over it. I would open it up in the middle of the room and fold my underwear and socks in to it. My Bible for Children lay beneath the small, white garments. I packed my favorite stuffed animal and a coloring book and a box of used up crayons. Back and forth, back and forth, picking up every item in my little room, weighing the consequences of leaving each thing behind: Would this doll’s feelings be hurt? Would this teddy bear survive without me? Who would love them for me when I was gone?

Sorrowful. Round and round. Each horrible choice. But the suitcase needed to be ready. This game could go on for hours.

the way it is

ever read your own work and think "what a fucking psychopath"? ha! yeah... one of those days. or weeks. still, it feels good to be writing. moving the pen and hitting the keys. i was up so late last night bouncing between Word Documents, adding and subtracting sentences, sometimes spilling entire paragraphs, and i think 2 pieces might actually be the same piece... might need to be combined. i think of anais nin writing the hard stuff first, the passages that were bound to take the most out of her, and then sewing them together later. so much of writing seem to be about building bridges, about making patchworks. i've been cutting up pages and pages of printed prose lately and taping them back together in different arrangements. it's been good to work that way.

i found louise bourgeios' Destruction of the Father at the CCA library the other day and sat down in one of the big leather chairs and read for a few hours.

on page 49:

...You can stand anything if you write it down. You must do it to get hold of yourself.




yes.

dream sequence:

.





There was a knock at the door. I opened it and she was standing on the other side, tall and thin and smiling under her long wild pile of frizz and curls. She held out a yellow bottle of mustard and, giggling, said “I just thought I’d better return this”. I leaped right out of the house, laughing wildly, and hugged her with such hunger. We swung back and forth, laughing and hugging. We fell over in our joy and hugged and giggled on the floor of the wooden porch. We laughed and held on to each other so tightly. So much love. I was deep in happiness in spite of knowing in the dream that she was dead and none of this was real. I didn’t care. I kept laughing and hugging her. Just one more minute. Just one more minute. I didn’t care that this moment was imaginary, I needed it. One more minute. We were both wearing a dark pink lipstick. I looked at our feet and we were both wearing dark pink high heels to match. I laughed even harder at the sight of this and hugged her tighter, tighter, tighter. My aunt stepped into the doorway from inside the dark of the house and with a straight-laced seriousness said, “Angela, no. You need to stop right now. That is not your mother, that is a demon”. My head tilted back and my arms went slack with annoyance. Her words and my despair pulled me from my dream. My mother’s body went limp below my embrace and I was so fucking pissed that my moment of joy was stolen from me. I knew none of it was real and yet here she came with her religious nonsense. That malicious conspiracy of hoogabooga bullshit.




.

i am smiling at you.

work work work work work. and with it, a return to my true self. an embrace of a previous piece. something i lost or was stolen or slipped away without my notice or was just plain ol' beat the fuck out of me during the passed few rough years. because haven't the passed few years been exceptionally rough for all of us? it sure seems like it. and there was some damage to acquire and then some damage to repair... and now, such a deep, soothing sigh in my day. and elation! i wake up and make myself a super hot english breakfast tea and head back to bed with my notebook. i wake up early just to luxuriate in the divinity of The Long Morning. i write and write and write.

there, on the page, is where i catch myself. it is where i create myself. those crisp blue lines have held me for years. ever since i learned to write. and even before that! as a very small child i use to scribble loops across the lines of my father's yellow legal pads. i'd pretend i was writing a magnificent novel. i'd daydream of waterfalls and falling stars and all those romantic things children daydream about as i scribbled my way across line after line, page after page.

paper is my birth place. it is my origin. and so i minimize the role The Long Morning plays by calling it a luxury. it is, in fact, a necessity. i need it and appreciate in ways i cannot even begin to describe. it is one of the few things i can simply not go without at this point in my life. and now, this season of busy labor and steep activity finds me, but i have not lost the pleasure/necessity of The Long Morning. i make time for it. always. i wake up as early as i need to. and that's where i am on days when i have nothing to say publicly here. on days when i put up a photo or video, know that i am still smiling at you and that these images are themselves an extension of my exploration. this Return i am experiencing... this Renewal (?????) is full of unknown corners and foreign sounds, songs, images, whispers, echos. my fingers are flying across pages and strings of yarn and sticks of graphite. i feel like i am in love with so many things. ecstatic and curious and unapologetic. it feels so damn good- this high level of freedom inside my practice. scribbling my way toward something better than what i've had. maybe... better than what i've allowed myself?


busy is good. i find a piece of myself that i haven't had in years. like a hug from an old friend, i rush toward this Return, this girl, this life. this! this! this!

.


ever a new name






if i had been Perfect at birth, i don't remember it.
soap
in my slithering eyes.
or:
soap in my slither-eye.

how opposite of Beautiful.


i have eaten cotton candy
and made my Red-Work angry.
i have been afraid of your desires.
(because they are not like mine)
i have been afraid of my own desires.


don't tell me anything.

don't tell me there is a spider on my earlobe.


capitulating,
faltering grace.
the severity of my body.
and the potential.

poor baby, poor baby.
don't tell me anything.
finding safe hiding places is hard enough. and
a steady black. black cloud of starling. spite
the wintertime. the little lamb's
delicate eye.

i am cupped in her full blue skirt.
the unexpected
walked-through spiderweb.

FUCKING BITCH I HATE YOU
EVERYBODY HATES YOU
and i always believe it
at least a little bit
when someone says something like that.

if i had been Perfect at my birth.

cracked actress. poor baby.
a knot of opposite interests. the ghosts
of so many school girls. heavier now, carrying such hearts.

the sadness and the smells. i lumber
under a vocabulary culled
from dragging silence.

my remembering happened much later.

and what i have done.

draft #2

.



it wasn't good enough.

or maybe it was just forgotten.

the white that folds down.

the envelope. the ceiling.
the wide eyelet curtains.



.



degrees accumulate.
sometimes rescind
like a promise.

sand in the sheets.



.



she lays under the big windows. there are two of them.
two windows in the same wall. a diptych. perpendicular
to the south sky. the light is good. the light falls
down. open mouths. warm as breath. and soft. she lays
on the floor. the curtains do not sway- she trembles,
lights a cigarette, and quietly closes the door.



.



i know sea glass was once nothing more than regular glass.
still, i want to be polished just the same.



.



on the other side of the windows are stars.
blue marks in the sky big as fists.

she stands close to the door.
she listens for feet.



.



we've hated each other for as long as i can remember.



.

HUG

yesterday i spent my time crinkling up large sheets of white paper and dunking them scrunching them in a big yellow jug full of warm water with a squirt of silver paint in it. i made shimmering wrinkly paper, a new background to play upon, we'll see, we'll see. and when i was done i knocked the yellow jug over and its top and handle broke cleanly off. this is the yellow jug my mother gave me. i didn't throw it away. i plan on buying super glue or some kind of epoxy to put it back together again. i will keep the jug and let it have its history, let its cracks show, put the fracture on display. shall i do the same with myself? am i already? the thought of it makes me smile- waving scars, eager pink flags, a call to gaze at the broken places, girls who fall down but not apart. and i stumble across you, one by one, and i say your books and poems and pictures are FORTS. i will jump on your bed with you and hide underneath with you too. i will write love letters, fold them up like an airplane, sail them down the hall to your hands. it is a long practice of mine. i did this for my mother. GO TO YOUR ROOM for doing something stupid and i would sit in the doorway of my bedroom and write her a love letter, fold it up, make an airplane of it, sail it in to the living room, and wait to be called out to collect my new hug. she still has a few saved inside her big trunk.

this is the metaphor maybe that hugs all my work.

*

sweet as anything





-the panic first welled up in a train tunnel. i drew a heart-shape on my hand and didn't look at anyone-


when we were little, mama gave us the carrot shaver and we peeled the paper off our crayons in soft, undamaged lengths. we set our nimble papers on the table. we took the naked wax outside.

the curls of their bodies dropped in ribbons, fell sweet as snow as children on a sheet of wax paper held down by our feet. we shaved them down until their thinness made them snap.



-i saw the photograph of her ligature by accident-


-in the photograph, there were bruises everywhere-



periwinkle was my favorite then. burned down to dust-wax clumps on my fingers and dolls. i learned to save it for last. the pointed edge. wished upon waited upon. a star, still possessed of its steeple.



-the skin of her neck, an odd tin blue-



mama laid another sheet of wax paper on top and carried off our anthills to the ironing board.

the iron was ready. you could smell it.

she pressed our curls flat
mottled bleeding blobs, orange flooding green, red
stretching across everything.



-red, stretching across everything-



we couldn't touch them right away. my excitement stippled my pink. burns all over baby fingers. eager as anything.

our curls, ironed out, the wax went hard. we cut out heart shapes. one for you and one for me. these are our pretty things. and mama got out the string.

we put them in the window. mama said kaleidoscope. the shadows centered on our beds. heart shapes scurried from wall to wall to forehead. we held out our hands and grabbed the shadows like butterflies.



-the coroner's report said there was a heart-shape drawn in red ink on the palm of her little hand. she had put it there herself. right in the middle of her left-






-boxes of periwinkle shoved under the bed-







.

the sun is up

yesterday, after i wrote that big beast of a post below, i got lost in a word document for the rest of the day. what began as a letter, morphed in to an odd twisty curly memoir-ish sort of thing that just kept rolling and rolling and rolling. i'd write for awhile and then stand up and walk around the house and go outside with my dog for a minute and then come back in and get another cup of coffee and look at my paintings for a minute and then the next line would pop in my head so i'd sit right back down in front of the glowing rectangle and write some more. back and forth like that over and over again. and before i knew it, my sweetheart was walking back in the door from work and the sun was beginning to drop and 4,000 words were sitting in front of me. 4,000 words is not a ton but all inside a single day it sort of is and its been happening like that more and more frequently lately. the last few months, my stamina for The Work in general has steadily increased and i find myself coming up on the end of the day so quickly lately. and i find myself worn out when i get in to bed. and excited to go to bed so that i can wake up early and get back to it the next morning.

maybe it's because the sun comes up so much earlier now? maybe it's because i have to obey The Almighty Jog so much earlier now that summer is here? maybe it's because i have finally learned how to obey a Bed Time? maybe it's all the books i'm reading? maybe it's learning how to just fucking relax a bit and not worry so much about what all this might add up to or what it means? maybe it's because i type out all this weird self-exploration here on a public blog where anybody who wants to see it can?

whatever it is, a surge had resulted. and this letter i started writing is to a person i don't even know. it's in response to something they wrote, something that touched a bad memory and i saw something of myself, some of my regrets and fears in their work, i wanted to tell somebody i suppose about the time i feel i've lost...

and so this letter curves all around, runs in 4 directions at once, goes wild and sad and strange. and i realize while i write it that i haven't lost any time at all. that everything that came before leads up to Right Now and Right Now is full of excitement and enthusiasm and commitment. Right Now i have a story to tell. and so it's a letter that will never be "sent" because it's no longer a letter. it's this whole other thing and my mind and heart are wrapped up in it and there's some huge wind of honest exposure and acceptance that flows out of it already- the undoing of secrecy, the unraveling of expectation. and my long-windedness unleashed a bright wind of hope yesterday. rambling, stuttering, striving. a search taking place. a map being made. bad teeth being removed. the ugly bed being made. yesterday was a good day.

and so The Almighty Jog awaits. and the letter. and the curling road. and oil on the wall and graphite on the palm and dog's ears to scratch and hope to have and coffee coffee coffee and word words words. the bang of keys and the scratch of things and today i think i'll spend a little time singing.

how are you?

such sugar

i have put the eggs on to boil for sunday dinner with the neighbors. there will be a massive pile of deviled eggs and i want to let them chill for a few hours before hand. they are better that way. and country fried chicken and i'm not sure what else but it will be country-style too and very delicious. country cooking is one of my most beloved. comfort food in the truest sense.

and yesterday, my sweetheart surprised me with a sudden change of course and we ended up in Bodega Bay, eating spicy clam chowder and fish & chips. huge seagulls sitting on top of the crab shack and a small boy running toward the pier, father chasing close behind, scooping him up where the guard rail ended.

and then the long, beautiful drive back through Jenner and Guernville, watching the shore lands morph to wine lands, loud music in the car and laughing laughing laughing and remembering our weekend in San Luis Obispo, the sulfur springs, perfuming the water with rosy oil and black night all around.

and this morning i talked his ear off about writing, about art, about practice, about letting go of worry and expectation and just letting it all swirl and breathe. this is a good morning to pay attention to our fair leige, our much loved, deeply loved Radish King.

stamina for the struggle. and she is right: if anyone ever tells you it will be easy, they're lying. at very least, i have never been lied to about that. i've known from the very start that this was going to be terrifying and hard and that every inch gained was going to be hard won.

but it is an amazing course of life.

go.