now

i have learned too early maybe how short life is. i am afraid of the brevity. i want to be an old woman in my bed. i do not want to be cut short. i am afraid of being cut short. i want the death (and life) of Louise Bourgeois- 98 years old, warm in my bed after a day of work in the studio, spitting images and loves at the world all the way up to the end. i want to work with that fire. i want to be a slave for decades to it.

everything is memento mori to me now. i am making myself a sweater with a skull on it. i never really cared for skulls as an image much before but now i am strangely attracted to them. i think of vanitas, our eye-blink existence, and want to claim every single shred of joy and sweetness i can. especially those bits found inside the swivel of sorrow. they are the most nourishing, the most poignant and necessary.



my sweater doesn't look like this but maybe i will attempt to make something along these lines as well. i love it.

come see me at slingshot today if you're around and we'll talk about art. or we can crochet together. i'll be sitting in the huge window at 890 valencia in san francisco.

"we are already ghosts"

her last post, very much a memento mori, bring shivers and shakes and that familiar, sad pull of helplessness. the hum in the back of your throat, the unanswerable why? i found out from rebecca yesterday that poet cami park has died. the news made my hands shake. i valued her and her work and her presence her in blogland. she and i had corresponded a few times and i sent her one of my prints and she had blogged about my work... i really, truly, deeply liked her. i wanted to know her better...

rebecca wrote a shivering post about cami's death. and then this morning, another post reminding us that the connections we make here in this strange world of text and light are just as real as the connections we make in the physical realm. maybe even more real, more true sometimes.

all these reminders recently of mortality, the shortness of time, the quickness, the rush, the spin. and illness. the tragedies that find us all, unbeckoned and unapologetic. my heart tears to pieces for her daughter. for her friends and family. for anyone who knew her and respected her. this, as winter rolls in. colder now because of her loss.

time is short. too short not to make as much art as you can and as many poems as you can and to fling these loves and fears and questions in to the world. too short to give too much of a fuck what others might say. do your best and GO.

i carry the sweet girl's name and words with me today, tonight, and on and on.

making moths...

valentines as memento mori on this grey day. :)