.
that scene in Gia where Angelina Jolie is freaking out, afraid of her surroundings, afraid of the world and all the assholes who inhabit it: "You can't just take someones knife when they need it!"
i pulled my Francesca Woodman book from the stack of books meant to ship to my sister's house later this week, a book i've slept with and needed near even if i wasn't looking at it. some sort of balm. some sort of knife.
objects go in to boxes. boxes cover the kitchen floor.
a maze of piles. piles and piles and piles. all the trappings and papers and matchsticks of a life. it isn't detritus, this build up. these objects have significance. i think of the shoes i must soon sell and i close my eyes. i don't want to think of it just yet. the other half of my book collection too, must be sold off. i put my diaries in a box. 8 years on paper. i couldn't bring myself to tape the lid shut yet. i pulled Aase Berg's poetry collection 'With Deer' from the stack destined for the used bookstore. "not this one", i whisper. a balm, a knife to keep at my side.
but let me be honest: i wasn't much help today. mostly, i pointed from my place in bed, laying on an icepack. i've been locked in bed the passed three days. today, at least i could stand. today, at least i could walk. slowly, but i could do it. another round of drama with my damn iffy disk and, can i just say, the timing is absolutely awful. the only thing that would've been worse is if this had happened the night before we head to the airport. still, it's far less than ideal. i missed my last three nights of work at my restaurant. not only are there the lost wages and tips i'm thinking of but, more importantly, i didn't get to say goodbye the way i wanted to. i tell myself that maybe it's better this way. no ooshy gushy, tear-laden au reviour. but i know i'm wrong. it's not better this way. there are people i want to hug. there are smiles i want to see. and for however selfish or paranoid it may be, i don't want to go out being thought of as fragile, as a victim. i hate the way pity feels. this moment, this entire event is supposed to be one of staunch focus and bravery. i hate that it is being tempered now with the inconvenient fragility of my body. i hate it.
let me sip this beer.
there are pleasures to keep. despite the pain of my particular ailment, i've enjoyed the very rare opportunity to just lay in bed and spend the day reading. it isn't a luxury that i have often these days. i finished Kate Zambreno's 'Heroines' and want to write a huge response to it here but i need to digest it a bit more first. i need to calm down a bit. i'm having such an emotional, nostalgic reaction to it. it brought me back to aspects of my life as it was 4 or 5 years ago, an era i choose not to dwell upon very often. an era i've chosen not to write in detail about here but her book has made me rethink that stance entirely. there are memories that should be set to paper. there are stories that should float in this electric ether. i keep thinking about my mother tossing her journal pages into a large aluminum coffee can on the back porch and setting them on fire. i saw her do it on several occasions there at the house on Frontier Avenue. there is no personal writing of hers left. none. i have a few cute notes she scribbled and that's it. a birthday card here and there, nothing else. that's the way she wanted it. that's the way it is.
but i'm not her and she's not me. despite her big Angelina Jolie lips, i've got a much bigger mouth than she had. i wake up talking and there's no one left to disown me anyway. having any fear of family retribution is ridiculous. it's simply not in the cards and there are stories within this family that deserve to be told. there are stories that have been denied a voice for far too long. there are stories that could be a balm for someone else, that could lay like a knife at their side.
part of this act of writing (of making art) is to build one another up, to lend each other a bit of steam. at least for me it is. the lineage we create, how we talk to each other across time and space. i lay in bed this morning looking up at my big drawings on the wall to my left of The Bell Jar's book covers. i looked at them and wondered: is there any way she could have known how affective her book would be that a girl would make huge drawings of its cover and tape them to her bedroom wall? there is no way she could've know that, let alone trusted it, but we must trust our lineage. we create it. anyone can be a member. anyone can add their voice to the chorus.
i think of all this as i point at this and that and say which box what goes in to. i think of all this as i secretly wrap my mama's old aprons around christmas ornaments and hide them in boxes labeled ART. :) i think of my nephew and the lineage i can open a window to if i just keep writing, if i refuse to choose silence. i think of him and want to be a sort of balm, a knife laying at his side...
.
Showing posts with label kate zambreno. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kate zambreno. Show all posts
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2014
in bed with kate and all my memories of When...
.
recovering today with kate. my back hurts. i am spending the day in bed.
it's good to finally be reading this book. i've been a bad friend in that regard... we artists are supposed to stick together. but i've been a bad artist lately too. i bounce in and out of enthusiasm, in and out of my once-unshakable integrity and devotion. maybe i've just needed a bit of a break? maybe i am, once more, in the wool-gathering time...
today, i return to a previous self. maybe the pain is good for me. as a result, i am caged (beautifully so) in my new grey sheets, in my new bed, in my new room at the front of the house. last week, i upgraded. i jumped from renting the smallest room in the house to the largest. private bathroom and all. this aspect alone makes it feel as if i suddenly live by myself save for the occasions when i hear a roommate drop a dish in the sink. it is beyond nice. i can stretch out again. i am no longer cramped. my books no longer crowd me, dominate the room. i enjoy the light that spills in to my room each morning from the window above my bed. i wake up feeling free. i wake up feeling grateful.
even today. despite this pain. a day in bed should rectify this ache. tomorrow will be better. tomorrow i should be back on my feet. but until then, let me languish in this strange variety of luxury. though i am in pain, it is fantastic to be able to spend the day in bed with a book. especially Kate's book. i think back to that weird, wonderful era when we communicated across the electric blue line of the internet in the comment boxes of each others' blogs. so many of us, us girls and women trying to say something about our lives and find a site of understanding... having to fashion our own nests out of words and sadness and the light of a computer screen... i lived for my blog in those days, and i lived for hers, and i lived for rebecca's. i was obsessed. pleasantly obsessed. i was so miserable in my daily physical reality, then: trapped in the deadening silence of little Calistoga, in the deadening silence of a dead relationship.
it's hard to even talk about it. not because it hurts but because it seems (and feels) like such an impossibility; a falsehood. it feels like it never happened. that wasn't me. i was never that girl... but i was. i lived it. and it feels just as much a lie now as it did then. jose reminds me: "but you made so much good art there". he's right. i did. but i have a hard time calling that a fair trade. i have a hard time looking at my work and saying, "yeah... that's a good consolation for what i went through".
i used to write everyday in this space.
i wrote everyday in this space because i wanted desperately to have someone to talk to. it is horrible to me that that was the impetus and i was in a relationship at the time.
on page 24: "I am realizing you become a wife, despite the mutual attempt at an egalitarian partnership, once you agree to move for him."
perhaps, i became a wife when i agreed to follow a man out to the California countryside, a place i had no desire to be, in order to feel some sense of safety... for so many reasons. so many hard, horrible reasons. the collapse of my biological family being central to that decision. and we were never officially married but everyone saw as as married anyway. toward the end, i resented that. as if my decision to remain unmarried didn't matter. there were good reasons for remaining unmarried and it upset me that they weren't acknowledged... and this Upset led me to look at myself and what i'd chosen to be a part of... i helped keep those good reasons a secret: the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell each other and the lies we build together. it's easy to allow oneself to become lost in the haze of desire. especially the desire to be Right... the desire to avoid the shame of being Wrong.
perhaps i became a wife when i chose Silence.
perhaps i became a wife when i chose to endure Silence.
it horrified me when i'd hear women far older than i complaining about how their husbands never talked with them and how deeply i related to that deep pain. the ignored wife.
years later, i lay in my own bed reading about the silencing of wives... the necessity of a wife's silence. i recall the years i offered up my own Silence as a benefit to the lives of the men around me. my lover and my father and my step father... all the things i never spoke of because, in telling on them, i told on myself (or so i believed). in telling the truth about my own circumstances, i somehow became a Judas. i somehow betrayed my mother. i somehow betrayed everyone by simply telling the truth about my own life and self. the knots of silence that keep a girl in place. the knots of shame that keep her poised and pretty and appreciated by everyone around her. the prize of her silence. the reward she receives is simply the absence of Shame.
perhaps that's why i put so many words out in to the street now.
perhaps it's why i am so slow to trust men and so slow to trust the idea of family. i need a new definition for these things... a new understanding of what relationships can be and what they are for. i am most comfortable and happiest in my independence. and so i paint my nails lavender and turn the pages of a book. i lay in bed, shopping on the internet, and choose to not feel guilty about any of it. if i am silly, let me be silly. let me be what i actually am: a non-wife and a non-daughter. i went down the other roads and it nearly destroyed me. i am making my way out of silence.
.
Oct 9, 2012
letter to a friend
dear KATE,
most of the time i'm not really sure what i'm doing. what The Work is and is not. it all feels like The Work to me. it all feels like a world i'm creating, like a world i'm mustering- me and my spills of ink.
language is a crazy thing. and writing. and poetry. i'm not even sure if poetry is what i write. what are these snippets that come out of me? these fragments of a life, of a human being, of wishes and dreams.
sometimes i feel like maybe i'm doing something wrong by giving away so much of my writing here on the BLOG. i worry that i'm going about all this the wrong way and that i should actively try for "real" publication, that i'm somehow selling myself short by not trying to be published. i'm just too impatient for all that at this point in my life. i like the instant connection. i like the rush of blood.
i kinda hate the word BLOG too. i definitely hate the word BLOGGER. i do not title myself as such. i tend not to think of this space in those terms. like you, i see it as a notebook. or better yet, as the white cube. i see it as a gallery space that is entirely open to hosting any performance, any image i want to display. in some ways, this is definitely where the real work is done. or, at least, begins. some of the best writing i've ever done is nestled here, in electric light, lost in the backward reaching scroll of the blog format. i don't know if i will ever go back and fish them out from the messy wad of text i've coughed up here. maybe one day i'll be strong enough for that. maybe one day i'll be Writer enough for that. i'm so impressed with you for being able to do it and i can't wait to read Heroines.
but for all my worry and ambivalence, i'm delighted by this little playground of mine. these games of identity. the shifting nature of the Self reinforced by the shifting nature of language. words make the world. we build our own images. we erect our own mirrors, our own temples, our own sloppy signs. not everything is accurate and maybe it doesn't need to be?
for a long time i was obsessed by the idea of accuracy. i wanted to be as accurate as possible. needed to be. otherwise, i felt like a liar. then one day, i noticed the difference between accuracy and honesty and i chose to move in the direction of honesty instead. sometimes fogginess, sloppiness, sketchiness is the most honest expression there is. the diary. there's something about it that is so barbed, so dangerous. the potential for danger, the potential for making a mess, the probability that a mess will be made is so attractive... the taboo of keeping secrets, the danger inherent to teaching females how to read and write. who knows what the bitch might say? i don't want to be calm. i don't want to be measured. at least not when it comes to writing and not when it comes to art and definitely not when it comes to my own life. sometimes i think my diary is the best work i have ever done. it is where everything begins. all my work starts there, on the cool blue lines of my private notebook. it is my life's work. daily, i reach for my pen and, daily, i tell the truth. it isn't an easy thing to do. to tell the truth, i mean. especially about myself. there are times when the mirror i create in the pages of my diary is quite brutal. i have felt such massive shame. but it is a necessary and good thing. i could only watch myself write the same words over and over for so long before i had to act, before i had to cry out against the life i had allowed to spring up all around me, before i had to cut it down. i cut it down with my pen. i cut it down with your books by my bedside.
anais nin's diary changed my life. it's still changing my life. we've talked about her so many times- her undeniable courage and dedication. i think of her when i get afraid. i think of her when i don't feel equal to the challenges in front of me. i think of her laying in bed with her diary, the same way i lay with mine, scribbling a world in to existence. a world she needed, a world she preferred. i think you're right that she would've kept a blog.
it is brave work you do. your example has helped me become capable of my own bravery. and not just bravery on the page either. if it has been your Work this year, i am thankful to have had access to it. the world you are building encourages my faith. i read your words and gather strength.
all my love,
angela
most of the time i'm not really sure what i'm doing. what The Work is and is not. it all feels like The Work to me. it all feels like a world i'm creating, like a world i'm mustering- me and my spills of ink.
language is a crazy thing. and writing. and poetry. i'm not even sure if poetry is what i write. what are these snippets that come out of me? these fragments of a life, of a human being, of wishes and dreams.
sometimes i feel like maybe i'm doing something wrong by giving away so much of my writing here on the BLOG. i worry that i'm going about all this the wrong way and that i should actively try for "real" publication, that i'm somehow selling myself short by not trying to be published. i'm just too impatient for all that at this point in my life. i like the instant connection. i like the rush of blood.
i kinda hate the word BLOG too. i definitely hate the word BLOGGER. i do not title myself as such. i tend not to think of this space in those terms. like you, i see it as a notebook. or better yet, as the white cube. i see it as a gallery space that is entirely open to hosting any performance, any image i want to display. in some ways, this is definitely where the real work is done. or, at least, begins. some of the best writing i've ever done is nestled here, in electric light, lost in the backward reaching scroll of the blog format. i don't know if i will ever go back and fish them out from the messy wad of text i've coughed up here. maybe one day i'll be strong enough for that. maybe one day i'll be Writer enough for that. i'm so impressed with you for being able to do it and i can't wait to read Heroines.
but for all my worry and ambivalence, i'm delighted by this little playground of mine. these games of identity. the shifting nature of the Self reinforced by the shifting nature of language. words make the world. we build our own images. we erect our own mirrors, our own temples, our own sloppy signs. not everything is accurate and maybe it doesn't need to be?
for a long time i was obsessed by the idea of accuracy. i wanted to be as accurate as possible. needed to be. otherwise, i felt like a liar. then one day, i noticed the difference between accuracy and honesty and i chose to move in the direction of honesty instead. sometimes fogginess, sloppiness, sketchiness is the most honest expression there is. the diary. there's something about it that is so barbed, so dangerous. the potential for danger, the potential for making a mess, the probability that a mess will be made is so attractive... the taboo of keeping secrets, the danger inherent to teaching females how to read and write. who knows what the bitch might say? i don't want to be calm. i don't want to be measured. at least not when it comes to writing and not when it comes to art and definitely not when it comes to my own life. sometimes i think my diary is the best work i have ever done. it is where everything begins. all my work starts there, on the cool blue lines of my private notebook. it is my life's work. daily, i reach for my pen and, daily, i tell the truth. it isn't an easy thing to do. to tell the truth, i mean. especially about myself. there are times when the mirror i create in the pages of my diary is quite brutal. i have felt such massive shame. but it is a necessary and good thing. i could only watch myself write the same words over and over for so long before i had to act, before i had to cry out against the life i had allowed to spring up all around me, before i had to cut it down. i cut it down with my pen. i cut it down with your books by my bedside.
anais nin's diary changed my life. it's still changing my life. we've talked about her so many times- her undeniable courage and dedication. i think of her when i get afraid. i think of her when i don't feel equal to the challenges in front of me. i think of her laying in bed with her diary, the same way i lay with mine, scribbling a world in to existence. a world she needed, a world she preferred. i think you're right that she would've kept a blog.
it is brave work you do. your example has helped me become capable of my own bravery. and not just bravery on the page either. if it has been your Work this year, i am thankful to have had access to it. the world you are building encourages my faith. i read your words and gather strength.
all my love,
angela
Sep 23, 2011
sick girl
1. this is day 2 stuck at home. yesterday i was so exhausted i didn't do anything really but sleep and blow my nose. seriously. even walking down the hall to the bathroom exhausted me entirely. today, i have a bit more strength and am really hoping i'm over the worst of this, whatever this is. i have promised myself and others that i will show up for work tomorrow. my sinuses are so congested that i can't concentrate on reading or get any studying done. also, i am eating Popsicles like crazy. it is one of the few comforts i've found. that and looking at pictures of Katharina Fritsch's artwork. i want to runaway to germany and study under her. i'm serious. and maybe one day that could be a possibility. another year of german and i should be fluent enough to at least be able to find myself a meal and a roof. this grad school thing might need to happen sooner than later. i begin to feel the itch for serious critique and heavy theory and being immersed in art in a way that you just don't get many places outside of school. i want to hang out with other artists everyday and talk about art nerd stuff. i want to have all those conversations that other people roll their eyes over when eavesdropping. but before that, travel has become imperative. i've actually started putting money in my savings account.
2. repat says they all wanted to talk about death and i am no different. no different at all. last night i watched Little Women with winona ryder and susan sarandon and claire danes. and when the part came when beth (claire danes) was dying and she said "why does everyone always want to go away? i love being home. but i don't like being left behind... and now it is i who is going ahead", her eyes so full of tears in spite of her smile and she said "i can be brave too." i absolutely lost it. in my mind i saw my mom's face. the way she looked when i walked in to her room and the morphine was so heavy on her small frame. all i could she was her face and in my ear was this voice saying "now it is i who is going ahead".
i cried for a long time.
3. i found out my sweaters were accepted in to a show! yay!!! more about that in a few weeks when everything is official official but, for now, i'm happy to just ride high on this tide of support. that the sweaters are seen as ART by more people than just me and my friends is a wonderfully deep and meaningful encouragement. especially today as i feel so ill and defenseless, deflated, and weak. in so many ways it is an encouragement of who i am becoming... who i need to become and have been trying to become for awhile now. it is hard work following one's heart.
4.i read kate's blog and feel less alone.
2. repat says they all wanted to talk about death and i am no different. no different at all. last night i watched Little Women with winona ryder and susan sarandon and claire danes. and when the part came when beth (claire danes) was dying and she said "why does everyone always want to go away? i love being home. but i don't like being left behind... and now it is i who is going ahead", her eyes so full of tears in spite of her smile and she said "i can be brave too." i absolutely lost it. in my mind i saw my mom's face. the way she looked when i walked in to her room and the morphine was so heavy on her small frame. all i could she was her face and in my ear was this voice saying "now it is i who is going ahead".
i cried for a long time.
3. i found out my sweaters were accepted in to a show! yay!!! more about that in a few weeks when everything is official official but, for now, i'm happy to just ride high on this tide of support. that the sweaters are seen as ART by more people than just me and my friends is a wonderfully deep and meaningful encouragement. especially today as i feel so ill and defenseless, deflated, and weak. in so many ways it is an encouragement of who i am becoming... who i need to become and have been trying to become for awhile now. it is hard work following one's heart.
4.i read kate's blog and feel less alone.
Jun 30, 2011
greenery
the light this morning is beautiful.
i stumble around, undressed, enjoying the simple fact of where i am: the hard wood floor under my feet and the empty stretcher bars leaning against the wall, a huge drawing in its infancy laying on the living room floor. the only furniture we have are two huge bookcases - one in the living room and one in the bedroom - and the chest of drawers and hope chest i inherited from my mom a few years ago when she was first thinning out her possessions in preparation for her move to tennessee. other than our massive collection of books and all the art and art supplies that follow me around, it is pretty spare here. i must say i rather enjoy it. i like having less.
yesterday, i ran a round The Lake again. 3+ miles of sweat and hard breath, hopscotching around and over huge piles of goose shit. i had no idea canada geese were so filthy but they are. canine sized shits only green from all the horrible algae they slurp up. and EVERYWHERE. my god. nevertheless, a beautiful place and an amazing run. it is the perfect distance. it is just a bit longer than what my endurance likes and that's a good thing. i have to push myself to finish and i feel happy as i make my way back around to my starting place. i feel happy as i run, lost in all my daydreams and plans, turning over each thought like a stone. i will run again this afternoon. this morning is for crocheting roses and drinking lady grey tea.
i sit here with kate's postcard from scandinavia next to me. the smooth design of the postage stamps make me yearn for an adventure of my own. new languages in my ear and new fruit in my stomach, dusty museums to wander through, words i can't understand and a train ticket in my hand. ahhhh... one day soon, i hope. i am so horribly un-traveled. this must be remedied.
it is the last day of june. we have lived through, miraculously, the first 6 months of this year. we have 6 more to go. i found my notebook from last december and looked at my list of new year's resolutions. i've accomplished a good number of them but most no longer fit who i've become. rather than scratch them off the list, i'll make a new one. a new list for the second half of the year. it'll help me know where i am, where i've come from, where i need to go.
i read kate's book and see myself tucked in the corners of so many words. maybe not as green, but green nonetheless. i'm not ashamed, just surprised. how could it be that i am still a bit naive? still wondering who i am and who i should be? still trying to darken my own outline and distinguish myself from what i was taught to be.
last night i sat and read her book in public when i probably should've been making eye contact and smiling and being approachable. it might've been rather rude of me to sit there with my nose stuck in a book but how does one tear oneself away when they are reading the curve of their own story?
i bounce back and forth between it and volume 3 of anais nin's diary. my lineage flowers in front of my eyes and it is a gorgeous, angry, swirling thing. magical and fantastic, romantic, inspired, and just so damn smart!
where are you, now, 6 months in? are you a list maker too? what do you want to do?
i stumble around, undressed, enjoying the simple fact of where i am: the hard wood floor under my feet and the empty stretcher bars leaning against the wall, a huge drawing in its infancy laying on the living room floor. the only furniture we have are two huge bookcases - one in the living room and one in the bedroom - and the chest of drawers and hope chest i inherited from my mom a few years ago when she was first thinning out her possessions in preparation for her move to tennessee. other than our massive collection of books and all the art and art supplies that follow me around, it is pretty spare here. i must say i rather enjoy it. i like having less.
yesterday, i ran a round The Lake again. 3+ miles of sweat and hard breath, hopscotching around and over huge piles of goose shit. i had no idea canada geese were so filthy but they are. canine sized shits only green from all the horrible algae they slurp up. and EVERYWHERE. my god. nevertheless, a beautiful place and an amazing run. it is the perfect distance. it is just a bit longer than what my endurance likes and that's a good thing. i have to push myself to finish and i feel happy as i make my way back around to my starting place. i feel happy as i run, lost in all my daydreams and plans, turning over each thought like a stone. i will run again this afternoon. this morning is for crocheting roses and drinking lady grey tea.
i sit here with kate's postcard from scandinavia next to me. the smooth design of the postage stamps make me yearn for an adventure of my own. new languages in my ear and new fruit in my stomach, dusty museums to wander through, words i can't understand and a train ticket in my hand. ahhhh... one day soon, i hope. i am so horribly un-traveled. this must be remedied.
it is the last day of june. we have lived through, miraculously, the first 6 months of this year. we have 6 more to go. i found my notebook from last december and looked at my list of new year's resolutions. i've accomplished a good number of them but most no longer fit who i've become. rather than scratch them off the list, i'll make a new one. a new list for the second half of the year. it'll help me know where i am, where i've come from, where i need to go.
i read kate's book and see myself tucked in the corners of so many words. maybe not as green, but green nonetheless. i'm not ashamed, just surprised. how could it be that i am still a bit naive? still wondering who i am and who i should be? still trying to darken my own outline and distinguish myself from what i was taught to be.
last night i sat and read her book in public when i probably should've been making eye contact and smiling and being approachable. it might've been rather rude of me to sit there with my nose stuck in a book but how does one tear oneself away when they are reading the curve of their own story?
i bounce back and forth between it and volume 3 of anais nin's diary. my lineage flowers in front of my eyes and it is a gorgeous, angry, swirling thing. magical and fantastic, romantic, inspired, and just so damn smart!
where are you, now, 6 months in? are you a list maker too? what do you want to do?
Jun 28, 2011
rainy day
tap tap tap on the roof and windows, i pace back and forth. i crochet black roses and pray the sky will clear. i want to get out and run around the lake. i want to sweat and breathe hard and feel my feet pounding against the dirt. i go through my german flashcards (yes, i am totally so nerdy as to have flashcards), and listen to the angles of this beautiful language. the tones and foreign lilts coming out of my own mouth. it adds a new breed of romance to my life. a new shape and desire. and kate's book is here next to me. it came in the mail the other day and i am loving every second of it, every page. all her writing reaches into me and pulls out so many hidden things. her writing makes me write. her work makes me want my own even more than i already do. the work of others has always amplified and accelerated my drive. i go back and forth between reading and writing, turning her pages and turning out my own. tap tap tap on the keys and the rain on the windows.
Mar 15, 2011
i am something that i cannot describe. my heart is Chicken Little.
es regnet.
der himmel ist grau und ich bin sehr traurig.
my phone rang last night at 8:30 and the screen of my cell-phone had my step-father's name lit across it. i thought of the time difference between california and tennessee. i answered the call. my voice went small. i've recently stumbled in to a string of bad days. i hit the 2 month mark of life without my mother a few days ago. the 12th. and viewing shitty apartments drenched in cat piss has not been much of a help.
he asked how i was doing and i said "okay" just like a little kid. so small, voice quavering. "you don't sound like you're okay" he said and that's all it took to break my ridiculous dam. FLOOD WATERS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS. i cried and yelled and hit the wall. these actions are completely out of character for me but having a dead mother is pretty out of character for me too so...
i cried hard and woke today with swollen eyes, feeling slightly embarrassed about having exposed the particulars, the details, the swing and shift of my life that boggles my mind sometimes... everything is so up in the air. i have no clue what to do. i have no idea what i'm doing. when i said "i just don't know what i'm doing anymore", he said "yes you do. yes you do." and when it comes to this, this pounding out of words, this creation of images, this land where i writhe in the grass, not roll - writhe! - yes, i know what i am doing... it is everything else that is such a huge and horrible question mark. such a looming fearful confusion. it's normal, the data says. the stages of grief and all that. but in a way, it is so much more. i am mourning so many things at once.
this morning, i ignored my alarm clock and finally woke up at 11am. as soon as i saw the time, i thought "yep... i'm depressed."
of course i am. i think that makes me absolutely normal.
kate zambreno let loose a small portion of her work book of mutter on her blog this morning. what a gift to receive after a night like last night. i needed to feel this kind of connection and the permission it extends.
i have spent the majority of my life feeling so alone but nothing like this. the depth of this aloneness is astounding. it shocks even me. i was once a baby. i was once inside her body, growing there, warm, safe, in the right place. that was a long time ago. it's been a very long time since i have felt those things and i feel so far from the possibility of feeling those things again. but i know they exist and that i must somehow manage to be tough, to be practical, to put one foot in front of the other and make the hard calls, the uncomfortable choices.
i've missed one day of school this semester. one day. not bad. and i haven't missed a day of work other than going to say good-bye and be present for the funeral. i have not called off. i have not spent an entire day in bed. i've stayed committed to exercise and am still a non-smoker. it's been 5 months now since i quit. i am not in a dangerous place, i'm just on the horrible roller coaster, i guess.
reading kate's excerpt lets me know that i am not as alone as i feel. not nearly. this strange club we find ourselves in... girls and women without mothers. writers and artists without mothers. children who lost their mother way too early. it is a strange club indeed but i'm glad it exists. this lineage we build, the lines we draw back and forth to one another, the words that make the bridge, the words that burn the bridge, the words that re-make (re-mark) the Self, the words that define a person and a family and a world... we make a new site for ourselves in text. we find each other there. here. in paragraphs and pages and diaries and novels and even computer screens.
i am absolutely grateful for this. i am so grateful to have a place to be. writing/art has saved my life so many times. so so so many times. it will not fail me this time either. it is my mode. it is how i live.
kate writes, "i cannot mute my violence." this is a pain beyond compare and the fuel that moves the pen.
i dream lately of becoming a creature akin to jean genet. i dream of getting rid of all my possessions save for books and notebooks and art. i dream of moving in to my car and being a haphazard vagabond. i go to class and i learn a new language and the rest of the hours of the day feel like half-truths. on campus and in my notebook are the only places i feel like i am being myself.
chicken little...
the sky is falling.
yes it did.
yes it is.
yes it is.
yes it is.
der himmel ist grau und ich bin sehr traurig.
my phone rang last night at 8:30 and the screen of my cell-phone had my step-father's name lit across it. i thought of the time difference between california and tennessee. i answered the call. my voice went small. i've recently stumbled in to a string of bad days. i hit the 2 month mark of life without my mother a few days ago. the 12th. and viewing shitty apartments drenched in cat piss has not been much of a help.
he asked how i was doing and i said "okay" just like a little kid. so small, voice quavering. "you don't sound like you're okay" he said and that's all it took to break my ridiculous dam. FLOOD WATERS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS. i cried and yelled and hit the wall. these actions are completely out of character for me but having a dead mother is pretty out of character for me too so...
i cried hard and woke today with swollen eyes, feeling slightly embarrassed about having exposed the particulars, the details, the swing and shift of my life that boggles my mind sometimes... everything is so up in the air. i have no clue what to do. i have no idea what i'm doing. when i said "i just don't know what i'm doing anymore", he said "yes you do. yes you do." and when it comes to this, this pounding out of words, this creation of images, this land where i writhe in the grass, not roll - writhe! - yes, i know what i am doing... it is everything else that is such a huge and horrible question mark. such a looming fearful confusion. it's normal, the data says. the stages of grief and all that. but in a way, it is so much more. i am mourning so many things at once.
this morning, i ignored my alarm clock and finally woke up at 11am. as soon as i saw the time, i thought "yep... i'm depressed."
of course i am. i think that makes me absolutely normal.
kate zambreno let loose a small portion of her work book of mutter on her blog this morning. what a gift to receive after a night like last night. i needed to feel this kind of connection and the permission it extends.
i have spent the majority of my life feeling so alone but nothing like this. the depth of this aloneness is astounding. it shocks even me. i was once a baby. i was once inside her body, growing there, warm, safe, in the right place. that was a long time ago. it's been a very long time since i have felt those things and i feel so far from the possibility of feeling those things again. but i know they exist and that i must somehow manage to be tough, to be practical, to put one foot in front of the other and make the hard calls, the uncomfortable choices.
i've missed one day of school this semester. one day. not bad. and i haven't missed a day of work other than going to say good-bye and be present for the funeral. i have not called off. i have not spent an entire day in bed. i've stayed committed to exercise and am still a non-smoker. it's been 5 months now since i quit. i am not in a dangerous place, i'm just on the horrible roller coaster, i guess.
reading kate's excerpt lets me know that i am not as alone as i feel. not nearly. this strange club we find ourselves in... girls and women without mothers. writers and artists without mothers. children who lost their mother way too early. it is a strange club indeed but i'm glad it exists. this lineage we build, the lines we draw back and forth to one another, the words that make the bridge, the words that burn the bridge, the words that re-make (re-mark) the Self, the words that define a person and a family and a world... we make a new site for ourselves in text. we find each other there. here. in paragraphs and pages and diaries and novels and even computer screens.
i am absolutely grateful for this. i am so grateful to have a place to be. writing/art has saved my life so many times. so so so many times. it will not fail me this time either. it is my mode. it is how i live.
kate writes, "i cannot mute my violence." this is a pain beyond compare and the fuel that moves the pen.
i dream lately of becoming a creature akin to jean genet. i dream of getting rid of all my possessions save for books and notebooks and art. i dream of moving in to my car and being a haphazard vagabond. i go to class and i learn a new language and the rest of the hours of the day feel like half-truths. on campus and in my notebook are the only places i feel like i am being myself.
chicken little...
the sky is falling.
yes it did.
yes it is.
yes it is.
yes it is.
Mar 1, 2011
dear kate
originally a comment left here.
i wrote of you the other day on my blog. like rebecca, i read here every day too. i miss you on days you don't post. like a junkie. entirely selfish for my fix. that is the way i miss your writing.
but i am blasted apart lately. shrapnel in the air. that is what i am. that is why it is so hard for me to leave comments on other people's blogs for the passed few months. that is why it is so hard for me to fall in to a rhythm here on my own blog. i am shrapnel. or space junk. colliding. not falling. nothing has fallen back down to earth yet. everything is suspended and staring and sharp-edged. i don't know what this means for me except massive change. i know the change, eventually, will be Good. i know you know this road.
so many things seem unreal. in the Baudrillard sense of the word. the fucking Matrix. all a farce.
real things: nail polish (i'm sort of sorry i keep talking about the stuff but not really. there is something life-affirming, not to mention Girl-Affirming, about it and i need that right now.), wild hair, art, books, cool shoes, music, poems, diaries. and the need to be alone long enough to stake some sort of claim to myself. that's been big on the list lately. i've been spending so much time off on my own, involved in my notebook and studying and making things... it is a hunt for identity maybe. or a way to find the new dings and cracks. or a way to establish a new identity. this new self. this status of Non-Daughter. or is it Anti-Daughter? i have an entire rant about this in my notebook which might end up in public soon.
sometimes i worry about what i share here. sometimes i am embarrassed and worry myself sick that i have said too much.
i've had those same humiliating discussions about jobs and money. they are so horrible and so damaging. they have reduced me to a tearful mess on so many occasions. so few family members will ever understand the sacrifice of Life Style for the chance to be an artist. keep writing as much as you can. and i love the image i have of you writing and reading in those "train wreck" dresses. that sentence of yours: I've decided lately I want to have the personal aesthetic of a train wreck. ah, i know this and i love it and it made me smile so damn wide when i read it. it made me feel proud of you. there is bravery in it. bravery is always worth more than fearlessness. so much more. and always will be.
i've been working on dressing like a gothy patti smith. patti smith back in the days of being a kid with mappelthorpe and Fuck The Clock and all that bit. white t-shirt, black pants, cool dirty shoes. but i'm also working on being brave enough to wear insanely bright red lipstick. i'm trying to become the sort of girl who can do that and not feel self-conscious. i'm trying to go from a naked mouth to a painfully red one. it's pretty jarring. i wear it around the house and my sweetie does a double-take and says "that's really bright". i respond "that means it's cool" and leave the conversation there.
i have a valentine for you. i am horribly late this year, i know. but it is here in an envelope and i promise to get it to the post-office today. i'm such a fucking jerk sometimes. sometimes it's hard to get much done. sometimes the simplest task - going to the post-office - presents itself as such a huge, daunting, unbelievably high hurdle. it's ridiculous. this is sadness and the related selfishness, i guess. i hate it.
my fingernails are silver. gold at your tips makes me smile and feel close to you. i keep buying books you've recommended so that i can be a smarter, better, more connected, more sensitive artist... a better human being.
the other day as i was walking across campus i saw the huge banner stretched across the library that read WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH! i thought... do we still need a month dedicated to us like this? and then i looked at the swarms of 19 and 20 year old boys i was trying to make my way through, a sea of boners, and sadly realized that yes, we still do.
when you're doing readings for Green Girl i hope you can come to san francisco. i want to see you in your dresses and go to the SFMOMA with you.
and then you said this:
I am also realizing in terms of my communication of the self here, and in private, in public and in private, all in an attempt to have a community, I do not really articulate the nature of my depression, my apartness, my solitude, and I still even though I have formed friendships of a sort through this do not understand the texture of anyone else's suffering. Because when we see each other or write each other we always speak around it. So how do I really reveal myself at all? I have one friend who I write my depression to, and she writes hers back to me. Like sliding notes underneath the door.
tis a call to action that i take very seriously. i'm trying to do better. to be more willing to risk everything in order to reveal the texture, as you say. i want to be able to do it. and i need to.
to echo rebecca again... i learn so much from you.
<3
i wrote of you the other day on my blog. like rebecca, i read here every day too. i miss you on days you don't post. like a junkie. entirely selfish for my fix. that is the way i miss your writing.
but i am blasted apart lately. shrapnel in the air. that is what i am. that is why it is so hard for me to leave comments on other people's blogs for the passed few months. that is why it is so hard for me to fall in to a rhythm here on my own blog. i am shrapnel. or space junk. colliding. not falling. nothing has fallen back down to earth yet. everything is suspended and staring and sharp-edged. i don't know what this means for me except massive change. i know the change, eventually, will be Good. i know you know this road.
so many things seem unreal. in the Baudrillard sense of the word. the fucking Matrix. all a farce.
real things: nail polish (i'm sort of sorry i keep talking about the stuff but not really. there is something life-affirming, not to mention Girl-Affirming, about it and i need that right now.), wild hair, art, books, cool shoes, music, poems, diaries. and the need to be alone long enough to stake some sort of claim to myself. that's been big on the list lately. i've been spending so much time off on my own, involved in my notebook and studying and making things... it is a hunt for identity maybe. or a way to find the new dings and cracks. or a way to establish a new identity. this new self. this status of Non-Daughter. or is it Anti-Daughter? i have an entire rant about this in my notebook which might end up in public soon.
sometimes i worry about what i share here. sometimes i am embarrassed and worry myself sick that i have said too much.
i've had those same humiliating discussions about jobs and money. they are so horrible and so damaging. they have reduced me to a tearful mess on so many occasions. so few family members will ever understand the sacrifice of Life Style for the chance to be an artist. keep writing as much as you can. and i love the image i have of you writing and reading in those "train wreck" dresses. that sentence of yours: I've decided lately I want to have the personal aesthetic of a train wreck. ah, i know this and i love it and it made me smile so damn wide when i read it. it made me feel proud of you. there is bravery in it. bravery is always worth more than fearlessness. so much more. and always will be.
i've been working on dressing like a gothy patti smith. patti smith back in the days of being a kid with mappelthorpe and Fuck The Clock and all that bit. white t-shirt, black pants, cool dirty shoes. but i'm also working on being brave enough to wear insanely bright red lipstick. i'm trying to become the sort of girl who can do that and not feel self-conscious. i'm trying to go from a naked mouth to a painfully red one. it's pretty jarring. i wear it around the house and my sweetie does a double-take and says "that's really bright". i respond "that means it's cool" and leave the conversation there.
i have a valentine for you. i am horribly late this year, i know. but it is here in an envelope and i promise to get it to the post-office today. i'm such a fucking jerk sometimes. sometimes it's hard to get much done. sometimes the simplest task - going to the post-office - presents itself as such a huge, daunting, unbelievably high hurdle. it's ridiculous. this is sadness and the related selfishness, i guess. i hate it.
my fingernails are silver. gold at your tips makes me smile and feel close to you. i keep buying books you've recommended so that i can be a smarter, better, more connected, more sensitive artist... a better human being.
the other day as i was walking across campus i saw the huge banner stretched across the library that read WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH! i thought... do we still need a month dedicated to us like this? and then i looked at the swarms of 19 and 20 year old boys i was trying to make my way through, a sea of boners, and sadly realized that yes, we still do.
when you're doing readings for Green Girl i hope you can come to san francisco. i want to see you in your dresses and go to the SFMOMA with you.
and then you said this:
I am also realizing in terms of my communication of the self here, and in private, in public and in private, all in an attempt to have a community, I do not really articulate the nature of my depression, my apartness, my solitude, and I still even though I have formed friendships of a sort through this do not understand the texture of anyone else's suffering. Because when we see each other or write each other we always speak around it. So how do I really reveal myself at all? I have one friend who I write my depression to, and she writes hers back to me. Like sliding notes underneath the door.
tis a call to action that i take very seriously. i'm trying to do better. to be more willing to risk everything in order to reveal the texture, as you say. i want to be able to do it. and i need to.
to echo rebecca again... i learn so much from you.
<3
Aug 23, 2010
secrets and Kate Zambreno and DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR DAUGHTERS ARE? part 2
you can read my first response to her book here.
preface:
books =
mirrors and sledgehammers.
when i read Barthes for the first time, The Death of the Author, my mind went angry, flopped out of my body, phished around on the ground, spiked by rocks and nails, until i read it again and understood the romance of it. the relief of it. the permission-slip. the courage and freedom given to artists and writers in that essay: we are not gods and do not have to impale ourselves on false notions of "genius" and "originality", creating suns to spin around... that this act of writing/drawing/mapping/making is a human act, a way of tracing our lineage, a mode of connecting, building, and understanding.
---
i received Kate Zambreno's book O Fallen Angel and Dodie Bellamy's chapbook Barf Manifesto in the same week. i read them back to back. a pairing that drastically (and thankfully) changed how i perceive the act of writing, the action of reading, and as a result, how i actively perceive the world.
and so i put the coffee on and i go to the page to write.
i try to put the events of my life in a line... as IF order is even possible. as IF finding an order will supply relief. as IF forcing my ideas in to some sort of easily managed whole will set this upside-down world right again.
nope.
life is too multi-faceted for that.
a single human being is too multi-faceted for that.
all the splinters a person collects. splinters and scars and treasures and junk. why can't i decide to see that chaotic multitude as Beautiful? the rich warmth and wealth of a single life, caught in the corners of the carpet, the innards of a young woman's notebook, the photos at the bottom of the box, the hair in her eyes and the smell of her blankets, graphite dust coating every inch of her home.
her vacuum cleaner is broken.
the dust stays.
this could be a beautiful thing.
these books become the well-spring of courage. it is where i go to draw faith and steam when my own seems to be running out, stuttering, sighing, exhausted. my keepsakes. my treasures. my Encouragements! my lineage!
this strange and painful coming-of-age.
---
the following is an "essay" in the Barf Manifesto sense of the word. a form that is very much a conjoined twin. individual meats breathing under the same skin. a deformity that shouldn't occur if you really do believe in Jesus. a grotesque tragedy that shouldn't find any good Christian.
or so it is believed in America.
as it is personified in Kate's book.
ranting essay:
AND GOD CREATED THE GODLESS WHORE:
(morals pillaged from under the bell jar of a suburban strip club on the way to art school-
one daughter's dutiful response to Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel)
O Fallen Angel, is that me?
am i Maggie?
lost in the spin of an upside-down world, reaching out for something real to hold on to amid the swirl of trendy desires, this eat eat eat and suck and swallow consumerism: our Pop-Religiosity.
Maggie won't wear the flowered dress because the flowered dress feels wrong on her skin. the hand of a creepy uncle. a kinder, gentler molestation.
it goes unnoticed. what's the big deal?
---
daughters who do not smile, daughters who are sad, daughters who are lost and don't hide it, are ugly.
Maggie is ugly.
i am Maggie.
i am ugly.
simple math.
the flowered dress feels wrong to me too.
and i know my sadness hurts my mother.
---
Maggie and i make the awkward jerk toward short-lived moments of feeling understood, of feeling safe, of feeling some sense of belonging. frenzied hands pushing through wild hair, hoping for an armature, an armor, that fits this body. the BAD DAUGHTER body: sadness on the surface, sadness in the eyes, sadness made evident.
they call this look Haunted.
my mother said it's like the light has gone out in you.
---
to not smile is the thorn.
sadness is offensive. it is an accusation. an indication that something is wrong.
sadness is an Indictment.
i think of Sylvia Plath agreeing to publish The Bell Jar under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, spare Mommy some embarrassment, just like the Mommy in her book, just like the Mommy is Kate's book- the daughter's sadness seen as an attack on what a wonderful mommy she really is. i was so good to you! how can you behave like this? you are so selfish!
a daughter's dissatisfaction with the ways of the world, the modes of the home, the call to docile silence and acceptance is seen as an attack, seen as ego, seen as a snobby up-turned spoiled-rotten nose, seen as ungrateful, seen as UGLY. our inability to slide in comfortably to the 50s, the 50s that are alive and well, is offensive. it is UGLY. you are UGLY. i am UGLY. i am UGLY Maggie.
and in addition to UGLY, we are CRAZY too.
just as i see myself peering out from behind the lines of The Bell Jar as Esther Greenwood, i see myself writhing in the sticky sheets Maggie cries in.
---
like Maggie, i know my status as Other.
like Maggie, i know my sadness is repulsive.
i know my discontent is an Abomination.
but am incapable of hiding it.
like Maggie, i went to the doctor to get a referral to a psychiatrist and the doctor said oh! you're sad? you don't need a psychiatrist for that! i can give you pills! want 'em?
and Maggie and i go to the doctor because suburbia is a Brave New World, full of soma, a place where sadness is unacceptable, one small step away from being criminal.
and i was afraid, had been afraid for a very long time, afraid that my sadness was symptomatic of insanity. the insanity of WOMAN that we hear so much about. the female mind that snaps and twists. you can see it! just look at her! she isn't SMILING! she must be CRAZY! sadness as Hysteria. to be dissatisfied by the expectations of the Status Quo, to express that dissatisfaction, to not hide discontent is a SYMPTOM OF INSANITY and has always been labeled as such.
unless you are male. then your discontent is REVOLUTIONARY.
there is the duty, still, to be pretty and pink. to smile. to say please. to keep your voice low. even and calm. watch your tone. can't you smile just a little? just a little? and give us just a little more leg, a little more cleavage while you're at it.
we must keep up appearances.
---
Maggie is an After School Special.
i am an After School Special too.
and the thing about After School Specials: they aren't supposed to come true. they are stories of Prevention.
don't be like this BAD GIRL!
don't be like this BAD DAUGHTER!
OR ELSE!
girls dressed up in the red whore robes of The Cautionary Tale. their stories are Preventative Measures:
---
i am Maggie: looking for something to love and be loved by.
i am Maggie: wondering if the doctors and the Mommies are right.
i am Maggie: twisting in blankets for a solid year, innumerable days spent in the same greasy pajamas, remote control in hand, chain smoking, not working, not holding down a job, art is not a job, writing is not a job, where's your big pay check? show us the green so we can know what you do has meaning!
i am Maggie: alone and afraid and lost, wishing i were dead, wishing i could fit in and be happy, wishing there really was a magic pill that could set my mind and heart at ease, ease me in to the swampy malaise of shopping sprees and idiot TV.
i am Maggie: wearing all black and saving up the pills, wanting to live and not knowing how to do that or what Living even is.
"Maggie is currently low-functioning"
isn't it more than just breathing? it has to be! isn't it more than work work work for a new dress, marry a man who ignores you, marry a man who goes to the strip club because it's just entertainment, you shouldn't be offended! all men do it. what's the big deal?
but i worked as a cocktail waitress in a strip club when i was 22, locked in "suburbia", afraid to crawl back home, afraid to admit failure to my step-father, the man who told me i was "property" until i turned 18 and therefore he was entitled to read my diary. the man who told me that even if he received a signed statement from GOD that i would go on to become a rich and famous artist, there was NO WAY IN HELL he'd help me go to art school. i could not crawl back to that. i could not bring myself to say you're right, i'm a failure. i'll do what you tell me to do and i won't talk back. my pride. my resolve. my short life, so filled with abuse and dominion and struggle and compromise. my short life.
but i had an apartment of my own where i could hang pictures of things i loved and stay up late if i wanted to and leave my clothes on the floor if i wanted to and there were no rules about how much milk i was allowed to drink and no time limits on how long i could stay in the shower and no one to explain myself to or fight with or be called names by...
unless you consider my dick-head boyfriend at the time who liked to wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me all the reasons why he couldn't marry me, all the things that were wrong with me, all the things i must correct in order to make it possible for him to continue loving me.
and then he told me he "didn't like bills" and left.
ran home to Mommy 2 months after taking the apartment.
there was no way i could crawl back. i was a line cook at Pizza Hut and going to school part-time at the local community college. there was no way to pay the rent with that. i was Maggie. and so i went to the man in town that knows how to make a pretty girl some money quick. i sold my morality in order to protect myself from the ethics of a southern-born step-father and a mother who was too lost herself at the time to stand up for me. there was no Help to ask for.
and so i waited tables in a strip club.
i know what the fuck goes down there.
i know what the fuck you go there for.
and NO not all men are broken down, hateful, sniveling, whining, conspiring scum.
the only men i saw in that place that had even a semblance of a right to be there were amputees and elderly widowers. even the dancing girls thought so. even the dancing girls said YOU GUYS ARE SCUM! and they laughed in your face and you sat there, stupid as Adam, taking it, forking over the grocery money to a woman you don't know and who will never let you touch her. and you know it and you don't care because all you want is to get your dick up and Wifey doesn't cut it anymore. ever since she became Mommy, you've gotten bored.
and so they took your money and i took your money. i accepted the bills laid on my tray to keep me there, pinned in the smoking room, just to listen to your sad-sac existence. for a while i pitied you. for a while i felt sad and motherly. for awhile i thought that maybe The Women were to blame. the wives and mothers that you went home to. that maybe if they shook their asses in your face, maybe if they crawled like a cat, maybe if they donned the attire of The Godless Whore every now and then, you'd be happy. not so broken down. not so low. for a while i blamed The Women too. for a while.
until my ass had been pinched one time too many. and that man tried to slide his hand between my legs. went right for the gravy, there in the center of the club with all his friends around. that chuckle head who thought that, simply because i was there, in a place like that, that i was there to be fondled and touched and compromised. simply by my being there i was asking for it.
and i have relatives who would agree.
this "agreeing" that women deserve violence has infected me. it has effectively kept me quiet, kept me in the house, kept me zippered and buttoned and flailing in silence. it has made me Maggie. Maggie, who slices her own skin. Maggie, who looks in the mirror and only sees UGLY.
---
Preventative Measures Must Be Taken.
We Must Keep Up Appearances.
The Image.
The Image.
IT MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS.
---
in the strip club, the black-light erased the stretch-marks. the black-light erased the scars of the cutter. black-light foists the white, makes it glow, makes an Ugly Girl beautiful for the length of a song or two. and the strange thing is i can't tell you how many times i was asked what's a good girl like you doing in a place like this? and i can't tell you how many times the regulars said i'd rather watch you walk back and forth carrying drinks than look at the stage and i'd better never walk in here and see YOU up there!
they were not diluted about what went down there either.
they were not unaware of the milieu we were creating. everyday. all day. and all night. with a free lunch too if you came in before 2pm.
it is one of the saddest places i've ever been.
in a town classified as a suburb.
---
where is "suburbia"?
California is quickly becoming one litter-filled out-door mall.
suburb to what? where?
San Francisco? LA?
shall we say that only locations with respected names count? that only in these locales does crime arise? big fat NO. almost every female i know has been molested or raped or hit in the face in a place called a suburb.
and then the mothers, the mothers, who say Oh, chin up! it isn't that bad! the mothers, the mothers, who just like the women on Wife-Swap, beat in the Agenda of Beauty, that landing a husband is STILL Priority Number 1, that dressing up in pink and smelling pretty and making sure every inch of skin is hairless and supple and enticing is All Important and will make Jesus love you, that when you rip your unseemly hair out the angel sing.
in Walnut Creek, California, i saw a man walking down the street holding the hand of his tiny daughter. blonde and sweet, maybe only 2 years old, wearing those damn "jogging" pants, rhinestones stretched across her diapered bottom. JUICY on the ass of an infant.
and i am "crazy" for saying THAT is immoral. THAT is unacceptable.
the Trend Chorus sings: oh, you take things way too seriously!
this is the Banality of Evil that Kate Zambreno puts on center stage to pole dance for us.
---
in a strip club, the expectations are on the surface. the tatters of Jesus' robe aren't thrown on top in there. for all the fantasy involved, there is no cloak that covers The Real there. in the strip club, there are no minced words. no minced oaths. no hidden agendas. no hidden contempt. the contempt is on the surface:
"jokes" i heard in the strip club-
what's the best thing about showering with an 18 year old?
with her hair slicked back, she looks 15.
what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?
nothing. you already told her twice.
why would you never buy a woman a watch?
there's a clock on the stove.
how is a woman like dog shit?
the older they are, the easier they are to pick up.
i really can't see any difference between these jokes and the lessons i learned growing up in a somewhat Christian home. one is said crudely, the other has the glitter of the gospel on top. just like the sprinkles on one of Mommy's cupcakes: made with LOVE.
---
you know that Baudrillard essay, the one The Matrix movie is inspired by, the one that says the world we see is false, imagined, made up, a figment of our collective desires, an illusion, an apparition? when i read it in school, i felt really fucking angry about it. i thought:
fuck you, dude! i dreamt up my father's broken neck? i imagined the crack against the floor of that black bottomed pool? i imagined the halo bolted to his skull? and all this on Father's Day when i was a nine year old girl. i imagined the destruction of my family? the complete separation. the division. the splintering. our blood dissolving in the pool. my father's body floating limp. crushed hands holding on at the rim. the gasp for breath. the gasp for forgiveness. the instant wish for time to move backward. just a second. just a second. and all my pain is "made up"? everything i've cried for, struggled against, been tortured by, is a figment of my own imagination? these sidewalks and school yards where i was teased for being Ugly and teased for being Poor and teased for having Divorced Parent aren't real? fuck you! think the dean will buy it if i tell him "hey guess what, the world is imagined therefore my tuition isn't real and i don't have to pay it" ? think my father would be pleased if i came to him and said, "good news, old man! the world is imagined therefore your injury is not real! stand up and walk, Ye Are Healed!"
i took it pretty personally.
---
when i'm painting outside, sometimes a person will come by and ask about whatever it is i'm working on. lately i've been working on a portrait of Elsie Paroubek.
i tell them her name.
i tell them about Henry Darger
and how Elsie was murdered in Chicago
and her killer was never caught.
i tell them and they walk away.
fast.
but not before giving me The Look.
The Look that lets me know painting pictures of little dead girls whose killers were never brought to justice is BAD and WRONG and WEIRD.
and seeing my father come toward you in his wheelchair down an aisle in Wal-Mart makes people feel WEIRD and BAD too. makes people look at the ceiling, look at the floor, look anywhere other than The Display of Pain that is his body. Pain, Injury, Breakage that can't be hidden. his body, a signifier of Loss. his body, a cage.
as a culture, we like our sad stories locked away, glowing inside the rectangle of the television. my father's body, our destroyed family, the Reality of our history makes dominant culture "feel bad"... even our extended family looked away.
and so my dad stopped going out in public.
but shows like Wife-Swap are totally alright and not weird at all- trading one's wife for another, severing her from her children, placing her children in the care of some other psychopath who thinks prostituting the life and well-being of her own family is A-OKAY cuz LOOK HON! I'M ON TV!!!!! YAY ME!!!!
(side-note: i really hope the children who have appeared on this show become writers and artists one day)
and so i look at the TV and i look at the sprawl and i remember the disintegration of my own family, a disintegration that was not scripted or edited or cut for the most effect and i think:
is this real?
is this what we value?
this is what the world is?
it is our collective love of excess and contempt for ideas, for learning, for art, that makes "Real Tragedy" WRONG and WEIRD and BAD. it is our decaying ethics, decaying in service of entertainment, that relegates personal tragedy to the realm of Shame and Secrecy.
we must keep up appearances.
---
the art collector joke goes: you want Van Gogh hanging on your wall, not sitting on your couch.
" ...Mommy is in a way secretly glad that Maggie doesn't call anymore, because all Maggie does is bring up unpleasant things like war and drugs and the painfilled past, and Mommy feels like she wants to wash her brain out afterwards, because Maggie stirs up such unpleasant unnecessary things."
Tragedy offends. it isn't supposed to happen here. not in America. that's stuff for the Third World to deal with. and so Sadness, home-grown, right here in the back-yards of the good ol' U S of A, is hidden. especially when that Sadness sits on the face of the female. throw a tarp over it (powder and gloss) and forget all about that ugly mess (your ethical dilemmas) and let's get back to the BBQ.
sadness puts you Outside.
---
i am Outside.
---
i am Maggie: floundering and stretching and realizing that trusting the hands of the status quo has only done me deep harm. that i have swallowed and swallowed the call for Silence. here are your pills, miss. because still it is ugly for a woman to speak up and it is still ugly for a woman to cry out. it is ugly for a female to express discontent. it is ugly for a female to be anything other than happy. Kathleen Hannah: because no one likes a girl with a red face.
---
i twist away from The Mommy. The Mommy who would so readily go to a casting-call for Wife-Swap. the mommy who would see it as a Divine Call, an opportunity to teach that other BAD MOMMY how to be a GOOD MOMMY just like her. The Mommy who rejects her own child, the daughter, the daughter who is not dutiful (happy). duty laid out like a dress on the bed. The Mommy-Hand that stretches to feed-shove the ideals of middle-class malaise: drive a new car that the neighbors will sigh over, get a mani-pedi, swindle that poor sap in to marriage, shop at Wal-Mart it's good to save money, don't talk back, sit your ass on the couch and swallow swallow swallow! why aren't you smiling? you're so much prettier when you smile!
and so...
---
Our Fallen Angel shows more than just a little leg. she is The Godless Whore, smoking cigarettes and gaining weight anyway, cast in black, disowned by her mother. she can no longer read and no longer think, just like Esther Greenwood. she reaches for the stored up pills, just like Esther Greenwood. she lays down after the big swallow, just like Esther Greenwood. she closes herself, absorbs The Real, falls to the deep red and
lands in a hospital bed. her Mommy is offended. her Mommy thinks how could this have HAPPENED! i am such a GOOD MOTHER! this can't be REAL!
---
Maggie (i) doesn't fit in to the landscape. the sprawl. the concrete boxes with names written on them. the Ruscha pictorials that we call REAL.
this inability to slide seamlessly in to the landscape makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental ingrate". this makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental fuck". this names Maggie (me) HEATHEN. BAD DAUGHTER. GODLESS WHORE.
---
in a car, on the freeway, i gaze at the deep landscape of Forever 21s. i think of the song by Ladytron: they only want you when you're seventeen. when you're 21, you're no fun.
i notice bums outside the Taco Bells. the bums notice all the young girls. i pass the SUVs, Mommies behind the wheel with stickers of their cartoon family pasted to the back window, and remember the footage of all that oil erupting from the pipeline under the sea. under the sea... another song. a Disney reality. Ariel walking on knives just to get the guy. just to get the perfect wedding. just to get the Happily Ever After. i notice all the young girls too- smiling bright and pretty in all that pink, walking on knives between Edwards Cinemas and RV storage parks just to get the guys.
and...
the mother bought her daughter a boob job as a wedding present.
self-esteem with which to go to the alter, the union, the promise, the covenant.
big titties with which to kneel at the feet of Christ.
big titties to carry with you in to the role of Good Wife.
---
in a car, on the freeway, i notice the sprawl. i look at the landscape and think of Maggie, think of Mommy, watch the spectacle unfold unnoticed, and the Baudrillard essay begins to make sense.
---
Maggie twists in her sheets, alone, because she can't figure out how to make herself fall in line. she can't figure out how to put on the flowered dress and like it, she doesn't know how to be the pretty pink daughter her Mommy always wanted.
the unhappy daughter is Contrary.
a Girls Gone Wild commercial frolics in the background as we bow our heads at the table and pray to Jesus to bless the hands that prepared this meal.
---
i see how often i have kept myself silent.
and Why.
preface:
books =
mirrors and sledgehammers.
when i read Barthes for the first time, The Death of the Author, my mind went angry, flopped out of my body, phished around on the ground, spiked by rocks and nails, until i read it again and understood the romance of it. the relief of it. the permission-slip. the courage and freedom given to artists and writers in that essay: we are not gods and do not have to impale ourselves on false notions of "genius" and "originality", creating suns to spin around... that this act of writing/drawing/mapping/making is a human act, a way of tracing our lineage, a mode of connecting, building, and understanding.
---
i received Kate Zambreno's book O Fallen Angel and Dodie Bellamy's chapbook Barf Manifesto in the same week. i read them back to back. a pairing that drastically (and thankfully) changed how i perceive the act of writing, the action of reading, and as a result, how i actively perceive the world.
and so i put the coffee on and i go to the page to write.
i try to put the events of my life in a line... as IF order is even possible. as IF finding an order will supply relief. as IF forcing my ideas in to some sort of easily managed whole will set this upside-down world right again.
nope.
life is too multi-faceted for that.
a single human being is too multi-faceted for that.
all the splinters a person collects. splinters and scars and treasures and junk. why can't i decide to see that chaotic multitude as Beautiful? the rich warmth and wealth of a single life, caught in the corners of the carpet, the innards of a young woman's notebook, the photos at the bottom of the box, the hair in her eyes and the smell of her blankets, graphite dust coating every inch of her home.
her vacuum cleaner is broken.
the dust stays.
this could be a beautiful thing.
these books become the well-spring of courage. it is where i go to draw faith and steam when my own seems to be running out, stuttering, sighing, exhausted. my keepsakes. my treasures. my Encouragements! my lineage!
this strange and painful coming-of-age.
---
the following is an "essay" in the Barf Manifesto sense of the word. a form that is very much a conjoined twin. individual meats breathing under the same skin. a deformity that shouldn't occur if you really do believe in Jesus. a grotesque tragedy that shouldn't find any good Christian.
or so it is believed in America.
as it is personified in Kate's book.
ranting essay:
AND GOD CREATED THE GODLESS WHORE:
(morals pillaged from under the bell jar of a suburban strip club on the way to art school-
one daughter's dutiful response to Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel)
O Fallen Angel, is that me?
am i Maggie?
lost in the spin of an upside-down world, reaching out for something real to hold on to amid the swirl of trendy desires, this eat eat eat and suck and swallow consumerism: our Pop-Religiosity.
Maggie won't wear the flowered dress because the flowered dress feels wrong on her skin. the hand of a creepy uncle. a kinder, gentler molestation.
it goes unnoticed. what's the big deal?
---
daughters who do not smile, daughters who are sad, daughters who are lost and don't hide it, are ugly.
Maggie is ugly.
i am Maggie.
i am ugly.
simple math.
the flowered dress feels wrong to me too.
and i know my sadness hurts my mother.
---
Maggie and i make the awkward jerk toward short-lived moments of feeling understood, of feeling safe, of feeling some sense of belonging. frenzied hands pushing through wild hair, hoping for an armature, an armor, that fits this body. the BAD DAUGHTER body: sadness on the surface, sadness in the eyes, sadness made evident.
they call this look Haunted.
my mother said it's like the light has gone out in you.
---
to not smile is the thorn.
sadness is offensive. it is an accusation. an indication that something is wrong.
sadness is an Indictment.
i think of Sylvia Plath agreeing to publish The Bell Jar under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, spare Mommy some embarrassment, just like the Mommy in her book, just like the Mommy is Kate's book- the daughter's sadness seen as an attack on what a wonderful mommy she really is. i was so good to you! how can you behave like this? you are so selfish!
a daughter's dissatisfaction with the ways of the world, the modes of the home, the call to docile silence and acceptance is seen as an attack, seen as ego, seen as a snobby up-turned spoiled-rotten nose, seen as ungrateful, seen as UGLY. our inability to slide in comfortably to the 50s, the 50s that are alive and well, is offensive. it is UGLY. you are UGLY. i am UGLY. i am UGLY Maggie.
and in addition to UGLY, we are CRAZY too.
just as i see myself peering out from behind the lines of The Bell Jar as Esther Greenwood, i see myself writhing in the sticky sheets Maggie cries in.
---
like Maggie, i know my status as Other.
like Maggie, i know my sadness is repulsive.
i know my discontent is an Abomination.
but am incapable of hiding it.
like Maggie, i went to the doctor to get a referral to a psychiatrist and the doctor said oh! you're sad? you don't need a psychiatrist for that! i can give you pills! want 'em?
and Maggie and i go to the doctor because suburbia is a Brave New World, full of soma, a place where sadness is unacceptable, one small step away from being criminal.
and i was afraid, had been afraid for a very long time, afraid that my sadness was symptomatic of insanity. the insanity of WOMAN that we hear so much about. the female mind that snaps and twists. you can see it! just look at her! she isn't SMILING! she must be CRAZY! sadness as Hysteria. to be dissatisfied by the expectations of the Status Quo, to express that dissatisfaction, to not hide discontent is a SYMPTOM OF INSANITY and has always been labeled as such.
unless you are male. then your discontent is REVOLUTIONARY.
there is the duty, still, to be pretty and pink. to smile. to say please. to keep your voice low. even and calm. watch your tone. can't you smile just a little? just a little? and give us just a little more leg, a little more cleavage while you're at it.
we must keep up appearances.
---
Maggie is an After School Special.
i am an After School Special too.
and the thing about After School Specials: they aren't supposed to come true. they are stories of Prevention.
don't be like this BAD GIRL!
don't be like this BAD DAUGHTER!
OR ELSE!
girls dressed up in the red whore robes of The Cautionary Tale. their stories are Preventative Measures:
---
i am Maggie: looking for something to love and be loved by.
i am Maggie: wondering if the doctors and the Mommies are right.
i am Maggie: twisting in blankets for a solid year, innumerable days spent in the same greasy pajamas, remote control in hand, chain smoking, not working, not holding down a job, art is not a job, writing is not a job, where's your big pay check? show us the green so we can know what you do has meaning!
i am Maggie: alone and afraid and lost, wishing i were dead, wishing i could fit in and be happy, wishing there really was a magic pill that could set my mind and heart at ease, ease me in to the swampy malaise of shopping sprees and idiot TV.
i am Maggie: wearing all black and saving up the pills, wanting to live and not knowing how to do that or what Living even is.
"Maggie is currently low-functioning"
isn't it more than just breathing? it has to be! isn't it more than work work work for a new dress, marry a man who ignores you, marry a man who goes to the strip club because it's just entertainment, you shouldn't be offended! all men do it. what's the big deal?
but i worked as a cocktail waitress in a strip club when i was 22, locked in "suburbia", afraid to crawl back home, afraid to admit failure to my step-father, the man who told me i was "property" until i turned 18 and therefore he was entitled to read my diary. the man who told me that even if he received a signed statement from GOD that i would go on to become a rich and famous artist, there was NO WAY IN HELL he'd help me go to art school. i could not crawl back to that. i could not bring myself to say you're right, i'm a failure. i'll do what you tell me to do and i won't talk back. my pride. my resolve. my short life, so filled with abuse and dominion and struggle and compromise. my short life.
but i had an apartment of my own where i could hang pictures of things i loved and stay up late if i wanted to and leave my clothes on the floor if i wanted to and there were no rules about how much milk i was allowed to drink and no time limits on how long i could stay in the shower and no one to explain myself to or fight with or be called names by...
unless you consider my dick-head boyfriend at the time who liked to wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me all the reasons why he couldn't marry me, all the things that were wrong with me, all the things i must correct in order to make it possible for him to continue loving me.
and then he told me he "didn't like bills" and left.
ran home to Mommy 2 months after taking the apartment.
there was no way i could crawl back. i was a line cook at Pizza Hut and going to school part-time at the local community college. there was no way to pay the rent with that. i was Maggie. and so i went to the man in town that knows how to make a pretty girl some money quick. i sold my morality in order to protect myself from the ethics of a southern-born step-father and a mother who was too lost herself at the time to stand up for me. there was no Help to ask for.
and so i waited tables in a strip club.
i know what the fuck goes down there.
i know what the fuck you go there for.
and NO not all men are broken down, hateful, sniveling, whining, conspiring scum.
the only men i saw in that place that had even a semblance of a right to be there were amputees and elderly widowers. even the dancing girls thought so. even the dancing girls said YOU GUYS ARE SCUM! and they laughed in your face and you sat there, stupid as Adam, taking it, forking over the grocery money to a woman you don't know and who will never let you touch her. and you know it and you don't care because all you want is to get your dick up and Wifey doesn't cut it anymore. ever since she became Mommy, you've gotten bored.
and so they took your money and i took your money. i accepted the bills laid on my tray to keep me there, pinned in the smoking room, just to listen to your sad-sac existence. for a while i pitied you. for a while i felt sad and motherly. for awhile i thought that maybe The Women were to blame. the wives and mothers that you went home to. that maybe if they shook their asses in your face, maybe if they crawled like a cat, maybe if they donned the attire of The Godless Whore every now and then, you'd be happy. not so broken down. not so low. for a while i blamed The Women too. for a while.
until my ass had been pinched one time too many. and that man tried to slide his hand between my legs. went right for the gravy, there in the center of the club with all his friends around. that chuckle head who thought that, simply because i was there, in a place like that, that i was there to be fondled and touched and compromised. simply by my being there i was asking for it.
and i have relatives who would agree.
this "agreeing" that women deserve violence has infected me. it has effectively kept me quiet, kept me in the house, kept me zippered and buttoned and flailing in silence. it has made me Maggie. Maggie, who slices her own skin. Maggie, who looks in the mirror and only sees UGLY.
---
Preventative Measures Must Be Taken.
We Must Keep Up Appearances.
The Image.
The Image.
IT MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS.
---
in the strip club, the black-light erased the stretch-marks. the black-light erased the scars of the cutter. black-light foists the white, makes it glow, makes an Ugly Girl beautiful for the length of a song or two. and the strange thing is i can't tell you how many times i was asked what's a good girl like you doing in a place like this? and i can't tell you how many times the regulars said i'd rather watch you walk back and forth carrying drinks than look at the stage and i'd better never walk in here and see YOU up there!
they were not diluted about what went down there either.
they were not unaware of the milieu we were creating. everyday. all day. and all night. with a free lunch too if you came in before 2pm.
it is one of the saddest places i've ever been.
in a town classified as a suburb.
---
where is "suburbia"?
California is quickly becoming one litter-filled out-door mall.
suburb to what? where?
San Francisco? LA?
shall we say that only locations with respected names count? that only in these locales does crime arise? big fat NO. almost every female i know has been molested or raped or hit in the face in a place called a suburb.
and then the mothers, the mothers, who say Oh, chin up! it isn't that bad! the mothers, the mothers, who just like the women on Wife-Swap, beat in the Agenda of Beauty, that landing a husband is STILL Priority Number 1, that dressing up in pink and smelling pretty and making sure every inch of skin is hairless and supple and enticing is All Important and will make Jesus love you, that when you rip your unseemly hair out the angel sing.
in Walnut Creek, California, i saw a man walking down the street holding the hand of his tiny daughter. blonde and sweet, maybe only 2 years old, wearing those damn "jogging" pants, rhinestones stretched across her diapered bottom. JUICY on the ass of an infant.
and i am "crazy" for saying THAT is immoral. THAT is unacceptable.
the Trend Chorus sings: oh, you take things way too seriously!
this is the Banality of Evil that Kate Zambreno puts on center stage to pole dance for us.
---
in a strip club, the expectations are on the surface. the tatters of Jesus' robe aren't thrown on top in there. for all the fantasy involved, there is no cloak that covers The Real there. in the strip club, there are no minced words. no minced oaths. no hidden agendas. no hidden contempt. the contempt is on the surface:
"jokes" i heard in the strip club-
what's the best thing about showering with an 18 year old?
with her hair slicked back, she looks 15.
what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?
nothing. you already told her twice.
why would you never buy a woman a watch?
there's a clock on the stove.
how is a woman like dog shit?
the older they are, the easier they are to pick up.
i really can't see any difference between these jokes and the lessons i learned growing up in a somewhat Christian home. one is said crudely, the other has the glitter of the gospel on top. just like the sprinkles on one of Mommy's cupcakes: made with LOVE.
---
you know that Baudrillard essay, the one The Matrix movie is inspired by, the one that says the world we see is false, imagined, made up, a figment of our collective desires, an illusion, an apparition? when i read it in school, i felt really fucking angry about it. i thought:
fuck you, dude! i dreamt up my father's broken neck? i imagined the crack against the floor of that black bottomed pool? i imagined the halo bolted to his skull? and all this on Father's Day when i was a nine year old girl. i imagined the destruction of my family? the complete separation. the division. the splintering. our blood dissolving in the pool. my father's body floating limp. crushed hands holding on at the rim. the gasp for breath. the gasp for forgiveness. the instant wish for time to move backward. just a second. just a second. and all my pain is "made up"? everything i've cried for, struggled against, been tortured by, is a figment of my own imagination? these sidewalks and school yards where i was teased for being Ugly and teased for being Poor and teased for having Divorced Parent aren't real? fuck you! think the dean will buy it if i tell him "hey guess what, the world is imagined therefore my tuition isn't real and i don't have to pay it" ? think my father would be pleased if i came to him and said, "good news, old man! the world is imagined therefore your injury is not real! stand up and walk, Ye Are Healed!"
i took it pretty personally.
---
when i'm painting outside, sometimes a person will come by and ask about whatever it is i'm working on. lately i've been working on a portrait of Elsie Paroubek.
i tell them her name.
i tell them about Henry Darger
and how Elsie was murdered in Chicago
and her killer was never caught.
i tell them and they walk away.
fast.
but not before giving me The Look.
The Look that lets me know painting pictures of little dead girls whose killers were never brought to justice is BAD and WRONG and WEIRD.
and seeing my father come toward you in his wheelchair down an aisle in Wal-Mart makes people feel WEIRD and BAD too. makes people look at the ceiling, look at the floor, look anywhere other than The Display of Pain that is his body. Pain, Injury, Breakage that can't be hidden. his body, a signifier of Loss. his body, a cage.
as a culture, we like our sad stories locked away, glowing inside the rectangle of the television. my father's body, our destroyed family, the Reality of our history makes dominant culture "feel bad"... even our extended family looked away.
and so my dad stopped going out in public.
but shows like Wife-Swap are totally alright and not weird at all- trading one's wife for another, severing her from her children, placing her children in the care of some other psychopath who thinks prostituting the life and well-being of her own family is A-OKAY cuz LOOK HON! I'M ON TV!!!!! YAY ME!!!!
(side-note: i really hope the children who have appeared on this show become writers and artists one day)
and so i look at the TV and i look at the sprawl and i remember the disintegration of my own family, a disintegration that was not scripted or edited or cut for the most effect and i think:
is this real?
is this what we value?
this is what the world is?
it is our collective love of excess and contempt for ideas, for learning, for art, that makes "Real Tragedy" WRONG and WEIRD and BAD. it is our decaying ethics, decaying in service of entertainment, that relegates personal tragedy to the realm of Shame and Secrecy.
we must keep up appearances.
---
the art collector joke goes: you want Van Gogh hanging on your wall, not sitting on your couch.
" ...Mommy is in a way secretly glad that Maggie doesn't call anymore, because all Maggie does is bring up unpleasant things like war and drugs and the painfilled past, and Mommy feels like she wants to wash her brain out afterwards, because Maggie stirs up such unpleasant unnecessary things."
Tragedy offends. it isn't supposed to happen here. not in America. that's stuff for the Third World to deal with. and so Sadness, home-grown, right here in the back-yards of the good ol' U S of A, is hidden. especially when that Sadness sits on the face of the female. throw a tarp over it (powder and gloss) and forget all about that ugly mess (your ethical dilemmas) and let's get back to the BBQ.
sadness puts you Outside.
---
i am Outside.
---
i am Maggie: floundering and stretching and realizing that trusting the hands of the status quo has only done me deep harm. that i have swallowed and swallowed the call for Silence. here are your pills, miss. because still it is ugly for a woman to speak up and it is still ugly for a woman to cry out. it is ugly for a female to express discontent. it is ugly for a female to be anything other than happy. Kathleen Hannah: because no one likes a girl with a red face.
---
i twist away from The Mommy. The Mommy who would so readily go to a casting-call for Wife-Swap. the mommy who would see it as a Divine Call, an opportunity to teach that other BAD MOMMY how to be a GOOD MOMMY just like her. The Mommy who rejects her own child, the daughter, the daughter who is not dutiful (happy). duty laid out like a dress on the bed. The Mommy-Hand that stretches to feed-shove the ideals of middle-class malaise: drive a new car that the neighbors will sigh over, get a mani-pedi, swindle that poor sap in to marriage, shop at Wal-Mart it's good to save money, don't talk back, sit your ass on the couch and swallow swallow swallow! why aren't you smiling? you're so much prettier when you smile!
and so...
---
Our Fallen Angel shows more than just a little leg. she is The Godless Whore, smoking cigarettes and gaining weight anyway, cast in black, disowned by her mother. she can no longer read and no longer think, just like Esther Greenwood. she reaches for the stored up pills, just like Esther Greenwood. she lays down after the big swallow, just like Esther Greenwood. she closes herself, absorbs The Real, falls to the deep red and
lands in a hospital bed. her Mommy is offended. her Mommy thinks how could this have HAPPENED! i am such a GOOD MOTHER! this can't be REAL!
---
Maggie (i) doesn't fit in to the landscape. the sprawl. the concrete boxes with names written on them. the Ruscha pictorials that we call REAL.
this inability to slide seamlessly in to the landscape makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental ingrate". this makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental fuck". this names Maggie (me) HEATHEN. BAD DAUGHTER. GODLESS WHORE.
---
in a car, on the freeway, i gaze at the deep landscape of Forever 21s. i think of the song by Ladytron: they only want you when you're seventeen. when you're 21, you're no fun.
i notice bums outside the Taco Bells. the bums notice all the young girls. i pass the SUVs, Mommies behind the wheel with stickers of their cartoon family pasted to the back window, and remember the footage of all that oil erupting from the pipeline under the sea. under the sea... another song. a Disney reality. Ariel walking on knives just to get the guy. just to get the perfect wedding. just to get the Happily Ever After. i notice all the young girls too- smiling bright and pretty in all that pink, walking on knives between Edwards Cinemas and RV storage parks just to get the guys.
and...
the mother bought her daughter a boob job as a wedding present.
self-esteem with which to go to the alter, the union, the promise, the covenant.
big titties with which to kneel at the feet of Christ.
big titties to carry with you in to the role of Good Wife.
---
in a car, on the freeway, i notice the sprawl. i look at the landscape and think of Maggie, think of Mommy, watch the spectacle unfold unnoticed, and the Baudrillard essay begins to make sense.
---
Maggie twists in her sheets, alone, because she can't figure out how to make herself fall in line. she can't figure out how to put on the flowered dress and like it, she doesn't know how to be the pretty pink daughter her Mommy always wanted.
the unhappy daughter is Contrary.
a Girls Gone Wild commercial frolics in the background as we bow our heads at the table and pray to Jesus to bless the hands that prepared this meal.
---
i see how often i have kept myself silent.
and Why.
Jun 27, 2010
secrets and Kate Zambreno and DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR DAUGHTERS ARE?
i have now read Kate Zambreno's book O Fallen Angel twice. both times, in one hot shot all the way through. both times out loud. and i'm going to tell you how wonderful it is very soon but i'm still letting it run through me, digest it and see the connections: Wal-mart and Wife Swap and Baudelaire. yes, Baudelaire! because your book finally slung that in to place, it now makes sense, the imaginary land we traverse. yes. "the banality of evil". these pervasive horrors. horrors with a little h. it's like trying to see the air. it's all around you, it's in you. how do you stop gulping it down?
but for now... the best thing i can give you, Kate, by way of endorsement and appreciation, by way of showcasing gratitude is to show you what you've inspired. because isn't that the best testament of how wonderful your work is? that you made me think and you made me feel and you made me laugh and you made me read your book TWICE IN ONE DAMN WEEK and you made me write write write. because it's important to let you know that i know that Mommy too. i've met a lot of Mommies. and i know the horrors that twist through the suburbs, the creeping gross things that are ignored, minimized, squelched, the OH, GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF! IT'S NOT THAT BAD! and all the deceptions that smear a person's face. all the tragedies that get swept away, filed away, because the community's standards of decency will not tolerate such words. because THIS IS THE SUBURBS! NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS HERE!
as pervasive as air.
this is an excerpt from The Letter i'm writing... part of what i wrote today. still raw, still running in so many directions at once, but it is a purge. the broken dam. i'm sure you'll see your touch on it. it is my tribute to your ideas and fearlessness. it is a huge, huge THANK YOU!
buy her book.
excerpt:
and they'd say L.A. IS JUST A SHINIER VERSION OF EVERYWHERE ELSE and WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO TO SEATTLE? SEATTLE IS A DIRTY HIPPIE MESS! and THERE'S NOTHING TO SEE IN NEW YORK BUT BUMS DYING ON THE SIDEWALK and SAN FRANCISCO IS WHERE ALL THE FAGS ARE! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO THERE? ARE YOU A FAG TOO? FAGS ROT IN HELL!
and so in San Francisco, i saw the films of Sadie Benning. and i wasn't at all impressed. not one bit. none of this was News to me. because i was poor and i already knew all of this. i had already SAID all of this. i had notebooks full of it. and i was poor and in a class that wasn't really built to hold that particular wealth of knowledge, and i knew all the hate all the anger all the injustice all the everything Sadie Benning was talking about. i already knew what it was to be Outside- because poor people burn in hell too, just like a pack of FAGS. especially in high school. HA! HA! HA! YOU'RE WEARING THE WRONG SHOES! HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT ANGELA'S SHOES! SHE'S GOT FAKE DOC MARTENS! DID YOU GET THOSE FROM PAY-LESS? HA! HA! HA! and OH MY GOD! IS YOUR SHIRT HOME-MADE? HA! HA! HA! but i looked around the classroom. i looked around at the faces of the other students and the face of the teacher and i saw how taken aback they were that a young girl would say such things, such unpleasant things, so full of spite and resentment and refusal. i saw the sweep of astonishment spread across their faces and their mouths drop down in long O's when she said YEAH, I AM GONNA DITCH SCHOOL AGAIN TOMORROW. WHO'S GONNA STOP ME? and the Horror! the Amazement! and they said there is eloquence and honesty here. and all i could think was but but but. because i had said these same words. i had made identical statements. over and over again. and i assure you, my mother did not think it "eloquent and honest" no. and even though i wasn't lesbian, i sure was accused of it a lot. baggy clothes and combat boots and NO MAKE-UP and NO BOYFRIEND. and they threw food at Jose during lunch time because he was A FUCKING FAGGOT and none of the teachers ever put a stop to it because he was A FUCKING FAGGOT and because he was A FUCKING MEXICAN and this was all going down in a lily-white republican suburb in California. and WHY ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH HIM? ARE YOU A FAGGOT TOO? ARE YOU A NIGGER LOVER? HE'S A FUCKING SAND NIGGER. ANGELA IS A NIGGER LOVER! ANGELA IS A NIGGER LOVER! HA! HA! HA! and in the suburbs: friends getting fucked by their daddies, friends getting raped by their daddies and their mommies ignoring it, friends getting ignored by their mommies, their mommies deserving a little F-U-N, young girls sleeping with full grown men for small bags of speed, friends stealing other friends TVs for small bags of speed, 15 year old girls getting pregnant and losing their babies at the 8th month because their parents were doing speed too. and the poor girl (god bless and keep you, Jackie) couldn't quit with her parents snorting lines right in front of her scared, sweet face. couldn't quit with those lines those lines those lines stacked up so nicely on a dirty tabloid magazine on the dirty coffee table:
i heard the ambulance coming and it turned up the road and it stopped in front of Jackie's house.
Jackie and i had met in the 6th grade. both new kids. both poor kids. both unbearably shy and sweet and never ever talking back. and then the day came when all the little children had to line up and get their head checked by the school nurse. LICE OUTBREAK! and one by one, the little children filed out. and one by one, they came back. unless they had been INFESTED WITH LICE! the dirty person's disease! you knew who had it because they didn't come back to class. and Jackie did not come back to class that day. and i wanted to cry. i kept watching the door, hoping to see her, hoping hoping hoping no no no. and she never came back and the refrain began: ANGELA, WHERE'S YOUR FRIEND? HA! HA! HA! ANGELA IS FRIENDS WITH THE DIRTY GIRL! ANGELA IS FRIENDS WITH THE DIRTY GIRL! ANGELA'S DIRTY TOO! POOR GIRL! POOR GIRL! POOR GIRLS GET LICE! SHOW US YOUR LICE, ANGELA! HA! HA! HA! and it was worse for Jackie on Monday when Jackie came back to class. we played together until Christmas break, way out at the far edge of the play ground, by ourselves. Jackie didn't come back to school after Christmas.
i met her again when we were 15 and i was so happy! her smile was just the same. we were 15 and both still so poor, both still so sweet. we were 15 and out came Jackie on a stretcher, oxygen mask over her face. flat on her back. huge pregnant belly. still as a corpse.
no one said a word.
weeks had passed. i saw Jackie on the street. stomach flat. no baby. i waved at her. she waved back and kept walking. she was wearing a blue sun dress with little white flowers on it. no baby. she was heading back home. no baby. no one said a word.
and so- in the suburbs: 15 year old girls getting pregnant and being sent to continuation school. yanked out of regular school because they weren't allowed to be there in their "delicate condition". there was a Clause at the normal High School. WE MUST PROTECT THE IMAGE! WE HAVE PRIDE IN OUR COMMUNITY! WE HAVE PRIDE IN OURSELVES! and so the careless girls were sent to continuation school, yanked out of their classes with their friends and the teachers grown to love and trust. yanked out and hidden, sent to the BAD KIDS SCHOOL, for deciding against abortion. because ABORTION SENDS YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL! but your swollen belly offends! your swollen belly will not be tolerated! your swollen belly is an attack on our good, lily-white, Christian values! and so we will hide you until you look Normal again, until you LOOK All-American again, until you can PASS for being one of US.
and so i was a 16 year old scrunch-face with no one to talk to- talking to my notebook the way Sadie Benning talked to her video camera. only i wasn't tough like Sadie Benning, i only looked like it because of my scrunch-face. i was shy and afraid and i kept to myself, one blue eye risked toward the world, i kept to myself and i planned to go on keeping to myself until the day came where i could finally get the fuck out of this fucking place.
but for now... the best thing i can give you, Kate, by way of endorsement and appreciation, by way of showcasing gratitude is to show you what you've inspired. because isn't that the best testament of how wonderful your work is? that you made me think and you made me feel and you made me laugh and you made me read your book TWICE IN ONE DAMN WEEK and you made me write write write. because it's important to let you know that i know that Mommy too. i've met a lot of Mommies. and i know the horrors that twist through the suburbs, the creeping gross things that are ignored, minimized, squelched, the OH, GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF! IT'S NOT THAT BAD! and all the deceptions that smear a person's face. all the tragedies that get swept away, filed away, because the community's standards of decency will not tolerate such words. because THIS IS THE SUBURBS! NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS HERE!
as pervasive as air.
this is an excerpt from The Letter i'm writing... part of what i wrote today. still raw, still running in so many directions at once, but it is a purge. the broken dam. i'm sure you'll see your touch on it. it is my tribute to your ideas and fearlessness. it is a huge, huge THANK YOU!
buy her book.
excerpt:
and they'd say L.A. IS JUST A SHINIER VERSION OF EVERYWHERE ELSE and WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO TO SEATTLE? SEATTLE IS A DIRTY HIPPIE MESS! and THERE'S NOTHING TO SEE IN NEW YORK BUT BUMS DYING ON THE SIDEWALK and SAN FRANCISCO IS WHERE ALL THE FAGS ARE! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO GO THERE? ARE YOU A FAG TOO? FAGS ROT IN HELL!
and so in San Francisco, i saw the films of Sadie Benning. and i wasn't at all impressed. not one bit. none of this was News to me. because i was poor and i already knew all of this. i had already SAID all of this. i had notebooks full of it. and i was poor and in a class that wasn't really built to hold that particular wealth of knowledge, and i knew all the hate all the anger all the injustice all the everything Sadie Benning was talking about. i already knew what it was to be Outside- because poor people burn in hell too, just like a pack of FAGS. especially in high school. HA! HA! HA! YOU'RE WEARING THE WRONG SHOES! HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT ANGELA'S SHOES! SHE'S GOT FAKE DOC MARTENS! DID YOU GET THOSE FROM PAY-LESS? HA! HA! HA! and OH MY GOD! IS YOUR SHIRT HOME-MADE? HA! HA! HA! but i looked around the classroom. i looked around at the faces of the other students and the face of the teacher and i saw how taken aback they were that a young girl would say such things, such unpleasant things, so full of spite and resentment and refusal. i saw the sweep of astonishment spread across their faces and their mouths drop down in long O's when she said YEAH, I AM GONNA DITCH SCHOOL AGAIN TOMORROW. WHO'S GONNA STOP ME? and the Horror! the Amazement! and they said there is eloquence and honesty here. and all i could think was but but but. because i had said these same words. i had made identical statements. over and over again. and i assure you, my mother did not think it "eloquent and honest" no. and even though i wasn't lesbian, i sure was accused of it a lot. baggy clothes and combat boots and NO MAKE-UP and NO BOYFRIEND. and they threw food at Jose during lunch time because he was A FUCKING FAGGOT and none of the teachers ever put a stop to it because he was A FUCKING FAGGOT and because he was A FUCKING MEXICAN and this was all going down in a lily-white republican suburb in California. and WHY ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH HIM? ARE YOU A FAGGOT TOO? ARE YOU A NIGGER LOVER? HE'S A FUCKING SAND NIGGER. ANGELA IS A NIGGER LOVER! ANGELA IS A NIGGER LOVER! HA! HA! HA! and in the suburbs: friends getting fucked by their daddies, friends getting raped by their daddies and their mommies ignoring it, friends getting ignored by their mommies, their mommies deserving a little F-U-N, young girls sleeping with full grown men for small bags of speed, friends stealing other friends TVs for small bags of speed, 15 year old girls getting pregnant and losing their babies at the 8th month because their parents were doing speed too. and the poor girl (god bless and keep you, Jackie) couldn't quit with her parents snorting lines right in front of her scared, sweet face. couldn't quit with those lines those lines those lines stacked up so nicely on a dirty tabloid magazine on the dirty coffee table:
i heard the ambulance coming and it turned up the road and it stopped in front of Jackie's house.
Jackie and i had met in the 6th grade. both new kids. both poor kids. both unbearably shy and sweet and never ever talking back. and then the day came when all the little children had to line up and get their head checked by the school nurse. LICE OUTBREAK! and one by one, the little children filed out. and one by one, they came back. unless they had been INFESTED WITH LICE! the dirty person's disease! you knew who had it because they didn't come back to class. and Jackie did not come back to class that day. and i wanted to cry. i kept watching the door, hoping to see her, hoping hoping hoping no no no. and she never came back and the refrain began: ANGELA, WHERE'S YOUR FRIEND? HA! HA! HA! ANGELA IS FRIENDS WITH THE DIRTY GIRL! ANGELA IS FRIENDS WITH THE DIRTY GIRL! ANGELA'S DIRTY TOO! POOR GIRL! POOR GIRL! POOR GIRLS GET LICE! SHOW US YOUR LICE, ANGELA! HA! HA! HA! and it was worse for Jackie on Monday when Jackie came back to class. we played together until Christmas break, way out at the far edge of the play ground, by ourselves. Jackie didn't come back to school after Christmas.
i met her again when we were 15 and i was so happy! her smile was just the same. we were 15 and both still so poor, both still so sweet. we were 15 and out came Jackie on a stretcher, oxygen mask over her face. flat on her back. huge pregnant belly. still as a corpse.
no one said a word.
weeks had passed. i saw Jackie on the street. stomach flat. no baby. i waved at her. she waved back and kept walking. she was wearing a blue sun dress with little white flowers on it. no baby. she was heading back home. no baby. no one said a word.
and so- in the suburbs: 15 year old girls getting pregnant and being sent to continuation school. yanked out of regular school because they weren't allowed to be there in their "delicate condition". there was a Clause at the normal High School. WE MUST PROTECT THE IMAGE! WE HAVE PRIDE IN OUR COMMUNITY! WE HAVE PRIDE IN OURSELVES! and so the careless girls were sent to continuation school, yanked out of their classes with their friends and the teachers grown to love and trust. yanked out and hidden, sent to the BAD KIDS SCHOOL, for deciding against abortion. because ABORTION SENDS YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL! but your swollen belly offends! your swollen belly will not be tolerated! your swollen belly is an attack on our good, lily-white, Christian values! and so we will hide you until you look Normal again, until you LOOK All-American again, until you can PASS for being one of US.
and so i was a 16 year old scrunch-face with no one to talk to- talking to my notebook the way Sadie Benning talked to her video camera. only i wasn't tough like Sadie Benning, i only looked like it because of my scrunch-face. i was shy and afraid and i kept to myself, one blue eye risked toward the world, i kept to myself and i planned to go on keeping to myself until the day came where i could finally get the fuck out of this fucking place.
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