of death and shame

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i write about my mother a lot here.  i suppose it's one of the only places where i feel i can.  i don't feel guilty for bringing it up here, the subject of her death and death in general.  i don't feel ashamed of my big emotions here.  i can have them, loud and unruly behind the ineffectual whiteness of the screen.  no one knows if i am crying or not.  everyone can imagine whatever face they prefer for me to wear.  or they can look away.  many people have and i don't begrudge them for that.  it's been 4 years. eventually, people want to hear about something else. 

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i just re-read that paragraph and feel that it is a half-truth.  i often feel guilty about how much i write about my mother's death.  the last several posts here are specifically about that and i'm sure the majority of posts i've made during the last 4 years since her death are about it too or at least reference it in someway.  i look at my blog sometimes and back away from it because i don't want to be that girl who's droning on and on about her dead mama, about her broken heart, about the tragic twists of her life.  but why not?  why am i ashamed?  this shame is, perhaps, the thing that has made blogging so hard in recent years.  for awhile there i seemed to only manage the courage for it when i was drunk and disgusted with the world, drunk and disgusted with myself.  and for a moment, even i was afraid of those outbursts.  i started wondering if i'd fallen it to that weird literary alcoholism where one believes they can only write if they've had a few drinks.  i'd read back over my posts the next afternoon and feel the knife of shame in my gut but i wouldn't erase any of it.  i wanted to let it stand.  i wanted to be brave enough to endure my shame.  also (dangerously), i was attracted to being a bit of a mess, repulsive.  i was at odds with so many things and i wanted to force the issue of my pain, my disappointment, my revulsion.  i also thought the writing was simply that damn good.  i was willing to scare relatives and friends and the mothers of friends that i was in the midst of a total breakdown.  it wasn't the intention of the writing.  not at all.  but if it was the result, so be it.  i was trying to say something true.

and maybe i was unravelling a bit too.

of course i was.


2008, graduated from college.
2008, decided to end my relationship with my father.
2008, moved to Calistoga and absolutely hated it.
2008 - 2009, explored the possibility that maybe i was bipolar simply due to the fact that i could not get along in my new surroundings. this was encouraged by my partner at the time.
2009, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
2010, her cancer metastasized.
2011, my mother died.  i was 30 years old.
2011, left Calistoga and moved back to Oakland.
2012, left a 7 year relationship that had been sexless for the last 3.



there's a lot in there to fall apart about.  of all those things, my mother's death is the only thing i've really written about.  at first, her death just made everything else seem so small and irrelevant.  it was the biggest, most obvious horror.  maybe it was also the most acceptable thing to write about, despite the overwhelming public discomfort surrounding death.  no one really writes about the trauma of sexual neglect.  at least not in the first person.  not that i've seen.  and not from the female perspective of being denied touch and how wounding that is.  i'd be very interested in reading a text about that if anyone knows of something.  and i'm still afraid to write about certain things, despite just sharing that secret.  i'm afraid i'm going to make some sort of horrible, unforgivable transgression if i write about a past relationship, if i write about my father, if i tell the truth of what really happened, if i tell the whole truth about my mother, her marriages, our family, our undoing, our pain.  despite my bravery, i still sometimes feel stopped.  i censor myself.  i don't want to dump lemon juice on the wounds of others.  one of my biggest fears is hurting other people- a fear that has derailed the lives and selves of so many people.

thankfully, the only member of my family that reads here with any regularity is my sister.  at least that i'm aware of.  all my relatives on my mother's side, curious about my life as an artist, stopped reading here once the drunken 3am posts took over as the norm.  long gone are the days of beautiful paragraphs about running with my dog down highway 128, through orange and red leaves, squirrels lobbing acorns at us from the tall trees, the scent of the vineyard crush filling the air.  so idyllic.  at least if that's all anyone knows, and that was all anyone knew for a very long time about my daily life in calistoga.  i never let on about what a tortured, ignored, untouched "housewife" i'd become.  i was so ashamed of myself and the deterioration i'd allowed to happen to my own life, my own dreams.  i was ashamed of finding myself in a scenario that so horribly resembled my mother's 2nd marriage: man on the couch watching tv, woman reading a book in the other room.  i remember so clearly the night i drunkenly confessed the sin of my sexlessness to my friend, Anne, while puking in the toilet at a mutual friend's house after having gone out and had one too many greyhounds.  at that point, i'd been single about 7 months and no longer felt a responsibility to shield my ex from judgement.  the reality of what my previous life and relationship had been burned within me, an awful dirty secret.  in that moment, my shame burst forth along with all the booze i'd consumed and whatever i'd eaten that day.  unstoppable.  the next afternoon, hungover and dazed by the night's events, i felt embarrassed but also free.  someone knew.  someone knew my dirty secret and they didn't sneer at me.  she sympathized and rubbed my back.  i looked at the crust of vomit on my sequin jacket, called myself "a mess", and went home and wrote about it in my diary.

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there were more deaths than just my mother's.



there are more deaths than just the physical.


perhaps i did "act out".
perhaps i still act out.
i won't allow another death to occur where there should be only one.
i won't be another girl burning her papers on the back porch, afraid of their power to incriminate.


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moving and packing and unpacking and showing

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i keep telling myself that i should be packing but i don't even know for sure what that means or how to begin doing such a thing, let alone WHERE to begin, and i've done this so many times before but this is so much different.  this move is an entirely different experience. 

i secured a little Airbnb studio this evening for our first three weeks in Brooklyn.  that's not long but it's an address.  we have a launch pad and the tickets are bought.  this is happening.  i should be packing.  but what?  what should i be packing???  there are still 3 weeks to go. 

thankfully, i managed to get some art out in to the world so i have far fewer worries in that regard than i did before.  i really didn't want to cart a ton of artwork with me to the other side of the country.  i want to see what new images emerge.  or what old images return.  i want to see what i'll write and what i'll think and what i'll be drawn to, what i'll want to read.  i want to see what types of images and vocabularies i gravitate toward once i set down all these possessions, all these histories and ghosts.  but it's such hard work to make this type of room.  i have to touch everything.  i have to hold these objects in my hands.  i put on old necklaces and look in the mirror.  i try on sweaters i haven't worn in 2 years and consider my reflection.  even the mirror will need a new home.  everything must go.  almost.

there are things that i can't part with, most of which will be shipped to my sister's house in southern california during the next several weeks.  things that belong more to the family than they do to me.  the pictures in the previous post are, by and large, of things my mother owned.  i took these objects from her home when she died.  i filled a cardboard suitcase with things which seemed to bare witness to who see was, things which articulated the indescribable corners of her heart, things that would someday comfort me, someday make me smile.

it's nice that that "someday"  has finally arrived.  i've only looked in the suitcase once before since packing it 4 years ago.  right before i moved here, in to my beloved white room where the reformulation and re-imagining of my life has taken place, i looked inside. i cried.  the sight of these objects carried too much weight.  it broke my heart to look at them.  i couldn't deal with touching them.  it was a happy moment the other evening to come across a picture of my mother as a young woman, to look at her image and smile back at her big grin.  I didn't look at her photo at all for the first 2 years following her death. it derailed me entirely to see her.  i'm thankful that is no longer the case.  i've wanted to be able to look at her for so long.  i've wanted to have her hair and her eyes and her style in my life.  i've wanted to look at her and see the features of my face that AREN'T hers.  i look in the mirror and see so much of her face in mine.  too much.  sometimes i hate looking in the mirror because of it.  i want to see where she ends and i begin.  being able to look at her photograph again is part of that road.  packing and unpacking and coordinating these objects is part of that road.  the exhibition of the "sweaters of death" are part of that road too.

i was very proud last night at the reception to see them hanging together in one place.  i looked at them and decided that they are a single work-  a sculpture.  i do not intend to let the collection be splintered.  i don't want to parse them out.  it is symbolic of a particular era.  it is an act of healing as well as an artwork.  the texts of the individual pieces are too beautiful spinning together in a room, gaining too much poignancy and sensitivity to be splintered.  the collection needs to remain in tact.  it is a diary...  writing that i am proud and privileged to share.

 

i felt incredibly appreciated and loved last night.  so many friends came out to support my work, to support ME, and to give me a hug while we're still in the same region.  i feel so lucky to be able to share this work as i prepare for a new phase of life.  a chapter is closing.  the people who came to the show last night were present in my life through some of my darkest days.  many of them have seen me cry on the anniversary of my mother's death.  many have gone out dancing and drinking with me when all i wanted and needed in the whole world was a friend to have a bit of fun with.  many have read this blog in the middle of the night when i published hard to read (sometimes scary) drunken rants about my anguish and longing.  for however sad the work itself might be, i am happy it exists.  i am happy to be able to display it so publicly.  and i am happy that it is done.  i'm sure i'll make more sweaters in the future but the subject of that work will be very different.  this "work of mourning" has been carried through.  every stitch is dedicated to my mother and siblings, to my mother's siblings, my grandparents, and to anyone who might draw a bit of comfort from the existence of these black twists of yarn.

this is one way to pack and unpack, i suppose.  :)

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I LONG FOR YOU WITHOUT END, the collected "SWEATERS OF DEATH" at ATA

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I LONG FOR YOU WITHOUT END

textile art by Angela Simione on view at Artist Television Access Window Gallery, San Francisco CA March 2015

artist reception Wednesday, March 11th, 7-9pm

Statement:

She got sick when I was 29.  When I was thirty, she died.  It was January.  Cold.  I curled up with my crochet hook and I kept my hands busy.

Looking back, I see it as an attempt at repair; each stitch, an act of healing.  A simultaneous meditation and distraction.

In the weeks following her death, I would wake up crying;  a mess of sadness.  I hid myself.  I didn’t want anyone to see me cry but my confused despair was impossible to hide.  I was ashamed of my red eyes.  For as sympathetic as people were, they were equally uncomfortable.  I was deep within the landscape of my mother’s death (and the early confrontation with my own mortality) and I was in it alone.

There are no spaces for these conversations in our culture.  No one wants to talk about death over morning coffee.  Or afternoon coffee.  Or after-dinner drinks.  And after a few weeks, there is a collective pressure for one to bounce back, for the grieving to subside, for a smile to flicker and pull at the corners of one’s cheeks again.  The pressure to resume one’s previous dance, to return to business as usual is torturous.  I couldn’t stand it.  Still, I wore dark sunglasses and waterproof mascara.  I tried hard to contain the mess of my sadness.  I tried to control my tears.  Sometimes, I would suddenly start crying on the street.  Never wailing or sobbing, no bunched up red face, just tears silently running from my eyes.  The dark glasses and waterproof mascara were my preventative maintenance.  They helped me prevent myself from making other people uncomfortable.  They helped me prevent my mother’s death from spilling on to their lives, such an unwelcome topic, such an inconvenient contagion.  They prevented me from embarrassing myself.  Nevertheless, the tears came.  An overflow.  A mode of expression that wouldn’t be denied.  A supplemental voice.

Eventually, I got angry about the silence but I didn’t know where to go to say the things I needed to say.  I didn’t know where to go to find people who were interested in talking about death and its aftermath.  Behind my dark glasses, I was stoic.  Straight-faced.  I marched across this city silently, clad in black and smile-less.  I noticed that no matter what I wore or how I looked, someone was bound to notice me.  It was then that I discovered the power of my body to speak for me, to create an area for discussion and exchange of ideas.   My personal billboard.  My own private gallery wall.  My mobile wailing wall.  

Taking phrases from my personal diary, lines from deeply loved songs, and scattered bits of my own poetry, I began to speak of my mother’s death.  I embedded my longing for her in the clothing I wore.  I broadcast my anguish, my confusion, my loss, my unbelievable anger, and my longing for a reckoning.   I emblazoned my feelings across handmade sweaters, each stitch bearing witness to my silent suffering.  They spoke the words that I couldn’t say without completely falling apart.

Now, 4 years later, the repair that I was attempting feels as if it has largely taken place.  Presented at ATA in their entirely are my “sweaters of death”, a fragmented poem of sorts, my “work of mourning”. 

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and suddenly, your memory...

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when he shaved your head in the kitchen, i could only watch the first pass of the clippers, mama.



afterward, you stood and walked to the bathroom...

i've told this story before...

you came out wearing dramatic, dark eye shadow and smiling.

you sat down next to me on the couch and i knew i should mimic you.

i was smiling too.

i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!"

i wanted to cry so bad.

in my head, she sang, "some things are better left unsaid, but they still turn me inside-out..."

like us smiling, mama, instead of crying

instead of yelling

because we both knew, right then, that you were dying

and i was putting on a brave face

just like you, mama.



just like you.




i get so mad at you sometimes for taking off and dying the way you did.

your little girl and i still need you.  us, and your boy too.

the men you chose have added up to nothing. neither one has been a father.  neither has been an umbrella.  neither has even been a friend.


i put on annie lennox and think of your big lips, mama.  i think of you smiling.

i wish you were here tonight to push my hair back from my forehead and tell me it's okay to feel afraid.

i'm getting ready to make some really big changes, some really big decisions.  i wish i could talk to you about them.  i wish i could hold your hand.

i wish you were here...

because maybe i wouldn't feel 14 years old at 34.  maybe i'd feel a bit more solid in this world and in this body.  maybe i wouldn't feel so thrown by glances and sighs...

i don't want to be as insecure as i am.

i don't want to be as insecure as you were.

i don't want to give up as easily as you did.

i want to love me more than you ever did, mama.

and that's the plain truth.



i want to love me more than you ever could and i want to love you as a woman, not as my mother.


i want to love you like i love me.



if you were here, i'd hug you so hard and we'd laugh so hard and i wouldn't be awake at midnight listening to annie lennox and writing things like this.

4 years ago today

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languidly waking this morning next to Brian, i rolled over and looked at his sleeping face and thought, "my mom would've really liked you."  i smiled and rubbed his head and closed my eyes.  it wasn't until another several hours had passed that i realized what day it is.  it is the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. 

i was shocked that it wasn't the first thing i thought of today.  perhaps it's a sign that my life is no longer dominated by her death.  i think she'd be happy about that.  i think she'd be relieved that i am not walking around crying behind my sunglasses the way i used to, a calm demeanor presented to the world but wanting to be just as dead as she is in the aftermath of her loss.  my entire physicality felt like one big gaping wound.  sometimes, it still does.  i don't think i'll ever reach a day when her death doesn't cause pain.  i miss her incredibly and the world is a drastically different place without her in it.   her absence is so palpable some days, so pronounced...  how unfair it all is, how awful.  there's no way around it.  it directly effects the decisions i make.  her early death brought me face to face with the reality of my own mortality and it's impossible for me to take it lightly.

i wrote in my diary like i do every morning then went for a run.  i wanted to feel my body move.  i wanted to breathe heavy and feel blood coursing fast throughout my body.  i wanted to feel my legs getting tired and yet push myself to meet the challenge i'd set for myself.  i wanted to feel young and alive and beautiful.  i wanted to appreciate being in the world.

afterward, i bought myself a new tube of lipstick.  hot pink.  a celebration of life and vitality; an honoring of our shared brevity and a recognition of the fact that life is too short to not live boldly. that's what lipstick symbolizes for me.  when my mother was feeling sad, she'd go to the drugstore and buy herself a new tube of lipstick. 


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i wish she were here.

i wish she could see me.

i wish she could see what i've accomplished in the last four years and how far i've come.

i wish she could see the portrait i drew of her.

i wish she could meet Brian and hear him sing.

i wish i could talk to her.



i wish i could just talk to her.


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i feel very alone in this big world sometimes.  it makes me want to run from people i love because i'm afraid of losing them too.  i didn't realize that i have this fear until recently...  that i would rather push people away and keep them at a distance than get close and deal with losing them.  there is a part of me that somehow believes that everyone i love is going to go away.  i know that isn't true but it's my little girl voice speaking.  it's the little girl in me that still believes i'll never be good enough...  that somehow i'm unlovable and i'll never belong anywhere...  and i don't have a mama to run to to scratch my back and tell me otherwise.


but i have a lover who loves me.
i have friends that love me.
i have a brother and a sister who love me and know exactly what i'm talking about when i say the things that make other people too sad or too scared or too uncomfortable to keep listening. brian too.  he has cried with me and it is such a comfort to me.  it means i wasn't wrong or crazy for wanting to cry about the bad things that have happened.  it means things really were that bad and i perceived it all correctly.  it means i should've never been made to feel ashamed in the moments when i did cry.

and i have Vermont and the awakening that happened there:

my sister pointed out to me how pronounced it was that i quit drawing after our mother's death.  instantly.  i dove headlong into my crochet practice.  it was such a powerful thing to stand alone in my huge studio that night in Johnson, VT and draw her portrait.  our portrait.  it unlocked the floodgates and drawing after drawing spilled out of me after that.  a big part of myself healed.

today, i made a small linocut of an iceberg.  i stamped it out 20 times.  the iceberg is a strange sort of metaphor for me, a self-portrait of mine.  the iceberg is the middle child. 

there are still so many secrets
but i am finding ways to tell them. 
i am finding roads out of silence.
i am finding roads toward courage.
i am more myself than i have ever been and, despite the brutality of her loss, my mother's death worked to teach me how absolutely imperative it is that i BE MYSELF, that i live honestly and bravely, that i keep putting one foot in front of the other, that i must will myself to be undaunted and to build the life i want for myself.  her death taught me that there isn't always going to be another Tomorrow.  if there is something one NEEDS to do, it's best to do it now. 


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my mother used to wear a lipstick named Yummy Plummy.  i stole it from the bathroom the day she died.  it's in my makeup bag.  i never wore lipstick before she died.  now, i twist the hot pink bar of my new lipstick and paint my mouth and allow myself to languish for a moment in the pleasure of being alive.


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oh father

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returning/reconsidering

outside the big window, it is snowing.  it's the first time in years i've seen snowfall and i don't ever remember having seen it during daylight hours.  a part of me somehow believed, like a child,  it was impossible for the world to make snow at any other time but night.  :)

i'm in Johnson, Vermont as an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center.  i've been here for two weeks already and, prior to coming here, i thought i'd be back to blogging every day the way i used to, the way i did the last time i lived in a forest.  i planned to, actually, and was really looking forward to some time behind the keys, but i haven't had a studio in 6 years and i've never had a studio as large as what i was given here.  not nearly.  it's enormous.  the sound of my fingers clicking across the black keys send a loud echo bouncing back from the high ceiling overhead.  a moment ago, it was the sound of my pencil scratching against paper that reverberated against the walls - such a sweet sound.  a sound i have long missed.

i didn't realize i missed drawing so much.  i thought i would spend my entire stay here working on lace curtains but i've been drawing almost non-stop.  it's all i want to do.  the idea to write a blog post has found me every few days but evaporates as soon as i realize that would require me turning on my computer. it's been wonderful to check out from the digital realm for a bit, to be totally logged off.  it's been wonderful to think only about my work, the scratch of the pencil and the paper below my hand.

the work i've been doing is largely just me clearing my throat, remembering how to wield a pencil again, remembering how to speak this language.  and of all the signs and symbols that might have found me, my beloved fences are what came flooding back.  i worked with the image of the fence for a few years and i felt as if i'd reached the end of that road about 4 years ago when i stopped making the Territories series.  but here it is, suddenly scratching at my heart.  this time, the meaning is totally changed, much more overtly autobiographical, much more of an obvious telling of my fears and dreams.  the first time around, i was using the fence to try to stake some sort of claim- to my Self, to my life, to my dreams and goals, and to the life i wanted to build for myself.  this time around, the fences are very much in reference to what i feel barred from, exiled from, the expanse i cannot cross, the territory i feel ejected from.

the first drawing i made here was a cameo of my mother holding me as a small child. the fence motif across the bottom of the paper was printed about 5 or so years ago when i was first working with this image.  i came across this piece of paper shortly before leaving oakland and decided to bring it along.

i've been playing with the idea of drawing a picture of my mother for awhile now but, honestly, it's not the most attractive proposition.  i think it helped that i had had a bit to drink the night her image found me here.  still, i had to stop drawing every 2 or 3 minutes.  staring at the old photograph of her as a young mother was a lot to take.   at one point, i had to walk away from the drawing entirely.  i was on the verge of tears and i didn't want to cry.

it isn't only my mother's death that is so painful but the death of an ideal-  my entire perception and notion of what a family is (or could be) was obliterated when she died.  i felt such a deep lonliness...  a spiritual kind of homelessness.  when she died, i stopped believing in God, i stoped believing in Family.  i thought it was all a cruel, sick joke.  i thought it was an unforgivable lie.

it's normal to feel this way, i suppose.  it's normal to see oneself as so painfully singular when you wake up one day and realize you haven't (for one reason or another) got any parents.  it's scary to stare at the world and know you've only got yourself to rely on.  it's hard to look toward the future and accept the fact that you've got to build a life for yourself BY YOURSELF.  it's hard to turn the blankets down at the end of a long day and believe that someone should be there with you once you finally get used to these ideas.  it's hard to not percieve the facts as cold and malicious.   the picture is not only of my mother, it's a picture of the type of life i feel barred from.  it's a picture of the safety i no longer have and feel i may never have.  it's a picture of my belief that i am without family, alone in the world, isolated, as island.  it's a picture of a land that i once inhabited and can never walk across again...  i can only make pictures from the other side of the fence.



but maybe it's being in love again.  maybe it's the beautiful occasion of sleeping next to someone, of  knowing and feeling that this other person trusts me to be careful with their body and their heart.  maybe it's the beautiful occasion of finally beginning to trust someone else.  it's not an easy thing for me to do. 

i'm trying to come to terms with the fact that i am wrong about the notions i've held in regard to Family.  it's normal, i think, to have felt so alone in light of all that's happened and it's normal to feel afraid about becoming close to people again... but it's scarier to think that i might end up robbing myself of the opportunity to truly know another human being, and to be known as well.  and not just romantically.  i think of my sweetheart constantly since leaving oakland but i've also been thinking of my grandmother.  i want to be near her.  i think of her sweet southern drawl and it makes me smile.  maybe she would like to have this drawing.  maybe it would only make her sad.  but it's definitely a piece that should stay in the family.

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memory lane can be the road to the Present

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spent the whole day behind the hook and am now enjoying an over-poured glass of Auslese.  this is the very definition of a wonderful day off.

and i've needed it.  the passed week or so has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.  a huge box arrived unexpectedly containing my mother's collection of family photos, more than 3 1/2 years after her death.  i opened the box only to be sure of what it was and then closed it again.  i wasn't in the mood for that type of upheaval and i wasn't prepared to slice open a cardboard box and be greeted by my mother's face and the dresses she saved that my sister and i wore as little girls in an Olen Mill's portrait so soooooo many years ago.  kelly must've been 4 or 5.  that would have made me 7 or 8.

a few days later, i reached back inside the box and pulled the dresses out.  i remember hating them as a little girl but, now, they look like art pieces.  something possibly akin to the Kiki Smith piece, Sisters, or the twins in The Shining.  ha!

i gazed at them in between rounds of digging through the 7 portfolios that are stored in my bedroom closet.  it was a strange walk down memory lane.  it's amazing what an accurate barometer of emotion art is.  looking at my work from just a few years ago, i relived the pain and confusion and longing i was entrenched in during those days.  and the sheer MASS of my personal collection is astounding! i've thrown away SO MUCH each time i've moved and i still have such an enormous stockpile of work! it was heartrending to go through it all but there were also moments when i smiled.  and smiled wide like a goofy child, at that.  in the middle of a portfolio that largely houses work i did during the last year i lived in Calistoga, i came across a self-portrait i drew when i was 21 years old.  it was made during one of the happiest times in my life DESPITE the fact that i had yet to leave my hated home town.

 

it was drawn during the time Jose and i lived together in my very first apartment.  we were inseparable and i loved being with him.  we smoked way too many cigarettes and drank blended frappaccinos way too often and squeezed our bellies  and called ourselves fat just like two silly teenagers would.  :)  thinking back on all that makes me so happy.  we listened to Bikini Kill and dreamed of New York together.  what's really special is that sometimes we still do.  it's not at all irregular for Jose and i to refer to each other as Rebel Girl more than 10 years later.  :)

all this made somehow brought me to the realization that for the last several years i needed a deep round of PLAY.  it's no secret that life is hard and it's no secret that my life has been hard.  looking at my own work, my own hand smearing charcoal and graphite, the words i'd scrawl sometimes in the margins or on the back of the paper...  i realized that in the span of 3 short years i lost all three parental figures and the person i considered to be the closest member of my immediate family, my partner for 7 years.  with the exception of my siblings, my entire immediate family basically collapsed.   and all the emotion of those days was right there.  right in my hands, in the black and white smears and screams of my drawings.

it was hard to leave the house that day.  i wanted to hide in bed.  i wanted to be dirty and dumb and lounge around in dingy pajamas.  i wanted to not give a fuck about anything and just spend the day drinking.  i wanted to raise a middle finger to the world and cry my eyes out.  sometimes i hear my voice inside my own head and it sounds so small.  so painfully small. so heartbreaking.  i think of my mother and i think of my father and i think of my siblings and what their pain must be and i whisper inside myself, "this isn't fair"...

but looking at the artwork i made during such a tumultuous era allowed me to see that i have, in fact, healed from a great many pains and that i long to return to a certain type of seriousness again, a particular breed of deep introspection and artistic investigation.  basically, it made me want to draw again.  :)

we'll see.  i sure enjoyed laying in bed all day with my crochet hook and black yarn today, that's for sure.



i'm confident the Future is an interesting place.  

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just to be asked...

sitting in my kitchen, annie lennox on the little boombox we keep on the counter by the window.  everyone else is asleep.  and my mind turns to a few nights ago when a man sat in the chair next to where i'm sitting now and asked me about my mother.  this song was playing and i relayed the story of when i visited my mother for the first time in Tennessee. it was just after her 55th birthday and the chemo had really started to kick in.  one evening, my stepfather made good on their deal to buzz her head once the drugs made her hair begin to fall out.  they walked into the kitchen together and he sat her down on a stool, wrapped a white sheet around her thin shoulders just like a barber, and turned on his clippers.  i walked away.  i hid in the guest room.  i told myself that, as an artist at least, i should witness this.  i told myself that, as a woman, i should witness this pain, know this horror and keep the record.  i walked down the hallway and crossed the living room.  i stood for a few long, horrible seconds in the entry way to the kitchen.  i saw my mother's head bent over like a school boy's, head shorn and bowed obediently.  i can't tell you what happened in my heart then.  i can't tell you.  english doesn't have the words...

when she came out of the kitchen, she went straight to her bedroom and put on a men's white button-down shirt.  then she went to the bathroom and put on dramatic eye make-up and lipstick.  Yummy Plummy by maybelliene.  her favorite.  when she walked in to the living room and sat next to me on the couch and sighed, i said, "mama, you look like annie lennox!"  she smiled wide and i wanted to cry but i smiled wide right back.  i smiled wide and wanted her to just go on feeling beautiful and bold.  i didn't want any standard to dissuade her-  she WAS beautiful and for once in her life i wanted her to not argue with it.  not even in the hands of cancer and the horror that it offers.

i told this story to a man in my kitchen the other evening and he might actually be the only man i've ever known to sit and listen to these things.  this is an important happening.  it flips my ideas all around.  so few people have let me speak to them about my mother's death.  even fewer have initiated that discussion.  how can i explain how necessary it is to speak about this horror?  i can't shake a person's shoulders hard enough.  i can't cry loud enough.  i can't scream and kick and beg enough.  there is no language for it.  there is only the moment that sweeps in so unexpectedly...  an annie lennox song playing in the background, wine in the glass, an open ear, an open heart, a willingness to let another human being know they aren't sitting at the table alone, and that there are enough scars between the two of us to be able to look at each other squarely when she sings, "this kind of trouble's only just begun."

and then a breath...

and then she sings...

"i tell myself too many times 'why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?'"...

and my entire being shakes.
goddamn...  the secrets i keep.
i feel so embarrassed sometimes.  and so often, i wonder if i've said something wrong...  done something wrong...  maybe was just BORN wrong...  inefficient or defective...  made for a different world...

and i know none of that's true.  it's the old training kicking in.  the training which has me rushing to smile wide and proud and warm in those difficult moments...  in those moments when i KNOW that's what the Other needs to see...


to be asked about her...
just to be asked is a tremendous thing.

and when she sings, "i don't think you know what i feel.  i don't think you know what i feel.  i don't think you know what i fear.  you don't know what i fear."

i'm tired of having so many opportunities to say the same thing.


to be asked is a tremendous thing.

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she's a mess

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a major round of Sciatica brought me to the ER on monday.  i spent two days laying in bed before making the call to go to the hospital and i've been laying in bed ever since.  luckily, it's not as bad this time around.  i am able to walk, albeit slowly.  i am able to sleep, albeit with the aid of Vicodin and muscle relaxers.  i am able to work on projects from my bed, though i wish i was out in the world, making money and friends, and taking pictures.  it's hard for me to lay around like this.  it truly is.

the first time i dealt with back problems was during my last year in art school.  crocheting was the only art-making method i could utilize while laying flat on my back and not moving for hours upon hours at a time.  i suppose it's no wonder that i view the skill as one of mending, of catharsis, of process, of healing.

yesterday, in my warm opiate surrender, i started making a new text piece that i'm not sure will be a yarnbomb or a scarf.  perhaps it will be both.  perhaps i'll wear it for as long as the cold weather calls for it and then transform it by stitching it to a pole somewhere.

i like that idea.

i like this notion of giving away my history.  or better said: gifting away my history.

this work has so much to do with the conflation of the public and private self.  i take texts from my diary or lyrics from songs i like (in this case, the lyric comes from the Lady Gaga song 'Dance in the Dark') or bits of my personal autobiography and stitch them in to sweaters, scarves, and blankets.  i take the text of my fear and desire and twist them in to some sort of signage... my story being told one yarnbomb at a time on city streets.

it's a game of exposure, of exploration, where the photographic image also plays a very heavy part.  which image of me is real?  which image is the most honest?  the image you've met in person?  or the image i make in my diary?  what does it mean to sit naked in front of a mirror, taking pictures of one's own reflection wrapped in the lyrics of a favorite song?  especially when the chosen text is "she's a mess. she's a mess. she's a mess".  especially when the naked body in the mirror's reflection is a body in pain.

maybe i was a mess this month in more ways than one.  currently, i am a physical mess but there was also the fact of my mother's birthday and death anniversary to contend with.  those events are exactly a week apart: january 12th and 19th.   and amid all this, i'm trying to learn my own curves of conscience, the twists within my personality and sensibility.  i'm learning about myself through these moments of exposure. i'm learning what i'm capable of and who i want to be.

i felt lonely today being cooped up like this.  i made a choice just to bare it.  i reached for my crochet hook and let the soothing tingle of medications wash over me.

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in the middle of the night

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"And in the end, we were all just humans...  Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald



help me uproot this sickness, mama.  help me get it up and out.  stick out your hand and i'll spit it out like a piece of stolen candy.  i'll tip my head back, mama, and i'll open wide.  you can reach in with both hands and a bar of soap and wash all the badness out.  lean over me, hold me back by my hair and spill your prayers of healing all over my face, pour them down my throat, find any antiseptic at all that will bubble and burn and dissolve the horrible lesson, the horrible, horrible lesson that the love of another can save or fix a fucking thing.

it is no solid gold you taught your daughters and son to chase, mama.  it is no bronze or unbreakable steel.  the insidious craving you cultivated in your children eats us from the inside out. 

the definition of love we were taught is absolutely fucked.


you first husband didn't even call his children when he learned of your death.  didn't even send an email. and so that door will remain forever closed.

your second husband, not even three years later, is remarried (again) to his fourth wife and refuses to have anything to do with your children whom he helped raise for 15 years.  the awful joke of the situation is that, if you weren't already dead, mama, this shit would kill you.

even the man you encouraged me to marry didn't go to your funeral.  and when i came home, spirit ripped in half after seeing you whittled down to your skeleton by cancer, burned to dust and plugged in to a small silver heart on a chain and put in to my hand...  i looked at the man who claimed to love me, who said i was the most beautiful girl in the world, mama, the man who said i was his perfect fit...  i looked at him and i told him that i hurt so bad, felt like i was dying too.  i tried to explain to him how it felt to see your own mother's dead body wheeled out of the house through the kitchen on a gurney and my grandfather, your daddy, shouting in your ear, "We love you Nisey! We love you Nisey!", a minister who believes the soul escapes the body and ascends to heaven the very second of death...  i tried to explain what it felt like to watch this, a father shouting in to his own child's dead ear that he loves her, despite and against his own beliefs, in the horror-driven hope that she could hear him...  that she was still in there somewhere.  that you were still in there somewhere, mama.  behind sunken eyes and a hollow face.  the only word i could find that even came close to describing how i felt was Homeless...  i felt robbed and thrown aside and refused.  my only real home, my other body, the womb in which i grew, the soft pink which gave me warmth and root was gone...  and in that moment of total devastation and confused horror, all i wanted was to be fucked.  i wanted to be fucked as hard as possible.  i needed to feel something other than this immense horror,  this total spiritual murder.  i wanted to be thrown down and made aware of my body, to be rooted in Life, to feel the opposite of death; your death, mama, that was crawling all over me...

and he sat there and he listened to me say these things and with sad, down cast eyes, he nodded his head...  and i sat on the living-room floor in front of him and i waited.  i wanted so badly to feel the squeeze of his hand on my knee.  i wanted so badly for him to slide his hand across my cheek, fingers reaching into the nest of curls above my neck, pulled close and kissed hard; responded to and dealt with and loved.  i wanted so badly to be loved, in that moment more than any other moment of my life, i wanted to be loved and, in that moment, in my deep horror, love could have been anything that would have given me a reprieve, no matter how fleeting or inconsistent, from the atrocity i'd just witnessed.  the minutes passed.  and days.  and weeks.  and months.  and he never did reach out to me, not even as another human being.  he never touched me.  he left me alone in that horror, mama.  he left me sitting on the living-room floor, staring in horror, alone.

sometimes an offense against one's own humanity is so great that love simply dries up.  i don't love these men at all and i don't miss them.  not even when times are hard. not even when i need help.

my disappointment soars, mama.  i really hope you wouldn't make excuses for this shit.  i really hope you wouldn't but i think you might.

i think you might.




i'm not mad.  a bit disgusted at times but not mad.  and mostly, i'm disgusted with myself; the fact that i still crave another human being the way i do.  when the night turns cold and my bed feels so big after walking passed all these christmas lights through wet, empty streets, mama.  you planted an evil seed and you made sure to water it well.  the roots of this nauseating weakness run deep.  in fact, these traumas have perhaps exacerbated the issue.  i look at my face in the bathroom mirror and i look at the shape of my lips and eyes and i wonder, "when's someone gonna love me?"  because i know enough to know that what i've been shown thus far has not been love. i go to bed with thoughts of hands in my hair and beautiful word whispered in my ear and a strong hand sliding across my cheek, fingers reaching in to the nest of curls above my neck, pulling me forward for a hard, hungry kiss, so hard and so longed for it brings tears to my eyes.



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ugly little angela

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tonight, the last thing i want is to be your goddamn pillar of strength.

take a deep breath and well up the courage to ask the question you already know the answer to.  i don't give a fuck about your preferences or respect.  my heart is too damn broken for that.

i know who my friends are by the way they walk; those who don't pretend to know what it's like for me and don't pretend our shoes fit the same.  my friends are those few sweet souls who don't say they understand.  they love me enough not to degrade my history with thin sentiments of faux camaraderie. do not deny me my obvious singularity.  do not deny me my status.  i am separate and i know it.  my best friends don't pretend to know the nuances of my pain-  the atrocity of a dead mother, demolished by cancer, looking like motherfucking Mussel-manner, like a decrepit 90 year old man, disintegrating at 55, right the fuck in front of my eyes, right in front of my baby sister.  i cannot for the life of me describe for you the total pain of witnessing the horror that seized my sister when she saw our mother ravaged by pancreatic cancer and deformed by tumors, looking to me for an explanation and mouthing the words oh my god and not being able to do a fucking thing to stop it or change it or ease it. 

i walk home through dark streets, wet with recent rain, hands in pockets and wondering if the people i pass can see it- the pain in me; the horrible crack in me that makes me incapable of believing in FOREVER but in such dire need to at least try.  the stupidity that results from abuse and abandonment.  and so i decide, instead, to be a disappointment.  i make myself another cocktail and attempt to nourish myself with my own disgust.  i climb in to the scorch of my shower and let my mascara run.  i drink my delicious poison and i think of my mother and i think of all the pages of her own poetry she lit on fire.  she left no record.  everything is burned, including her body and the thought alone makes me want to throw up all over myself.   it makes we want to vomit into my own hands and hold it up like a proof that is begging to be seen, a proof that must be reconciled, a fucking reckoning.  hold up my insides, my putridity, my horror, my total innocence and naivety and expectation for this nightmare to fucking end so that i can look at my sister and not see the vast horror that found her too soon.  too goddamn soon.

let me slip tonight, my love, back to being ugly little angela.  ugly little angela.  ugly little angela.  15 years old and failing tests on purpose because she was so fucking sick of being such a goodie goodie, all those fucking AP classes and bringing an apple for teacher.  for once, let me fail.  let me fail and love me anyway.  motherfucker, love me anyway!  show me you love me by saying you don't understand.

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i pretended to hold your hand

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at the edge of the world with my jeans rolled to the knee, i thought of you as i walked along that cold, beautiful line of surf and sand.  i looked out across the expanse of the pacific to where the water meets the sky and thought of Germany, thought of you; your young, bright self bouncing across cobblestone and drinking beer.  i played the morrissey song "everyday is like sunday" over and over again as i walked from the pier to the cliffs.  i smiled against the wind and thought, "where'd you get off to, woman?  you should be here."

and then a week later, a box arrives at my front door.  i look at the return address and see its from my ex-stepfather.  i push the box against the wall in the kitchen and walk away.  i knew what the box contained...  something i've been waiting for for well over a year, something i cried over the last time i held it in my hands the day after you died:  the photo album of your high school graduation, mama, your days as a young GI in Hannover, and the early days of your marriage to my father.

i went to my room with a cup of coffee and wrote for awhile but the gravity of your arrival pulled me back to the kitchen.  i grabbed a knife out of the drawer and cut the packing tape in a clean, careful slice.  i needed to know if this treasure had truly arrived, if i'd finally received something i've been waiting for for so long.  i folded back the edge of the cardboard box and brushed away foam peanuts to find your painting and another small box.  i lifted the small box out, set it on the kitchen table, and looked inside.

i couldn't look for long before i felt the sting of tears in my eyes and throat.  i bore the pain dryly, just long enough to photograph my treasure and to pay honor to the arrival of such a beloved and long-awaited piece of my disheveled family history.

young and fresh and beautiful at 19 years old, that's my mama on the lower right.

such a beauty.

where'd you get off to, woman?  you should be here.



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my mama (what do they know about this love anyway?)

i get home, i take my shoes off, i pour myself a drink,  i take my drink to bed.  it sits on the night stand and i think: "maybe i should write?"  i have nothing important to say, it's true.  and maybe i never have.  maybe i just like to talk.  in fact, i wake up wanting to talk.  that's why i'm a diarist.  i've learned how to channel my waking need for conversation into a literary habit.  i remember walking into my mother's bedroom when i was 18 or 19 years old and instantly gabbing at her about the dreams i had or whatever i had planned for the day.  she'd be there, lazy eyed with her coffee, rubbing her feet together, one over the other, and she'd say, "Angela, i am not awake enough for this yet.  go away. "  hahaha!  and it would hurt my feelings so bad!!!!  but then i met other people who are like that too.  i no longer take offense.  how can i when i have a diary?  a page is always open to what i have to say no matter how boring or insignificant.

but god...  my mama.  damn, i miss that woman sometimes. she had a funny way about her.  a goofiness tempered with the allure of her height and thinness and full lips that was so endearing.  she could be so silly in such a brilliant, life-affirming way.  she really did love the world...  all the little secret, forgotten things that no one pays any mind to.  if you ever wanted to go thrifting or poking through flea markets, she was the woman to follow.  she had such a big love for the forgotten things in the world; the things other people considered to be junk or thrash.  she would take those things and arrange them, just so, on a mantle or on a window sill and it would be such a beautiful thing.  high design.  she should have been an interior decorator or just a straight up artist.  she should have never listened to the crap her husbands told her or the rest of the world either.  she should have listened to me.  really, she should have.  she should have just painted and written poetry and played her guitar and sang.  she should have been as wild as her curls.  as wild, but just as soft.  she was such a sensitive woman.  beautiful.  aggravating sometimes, but nevertheless charming.  i had the health of her spirit in mind every step of the way.  i loved her and i wanted the best for her.  i wanted her to find the strength to tell everyone to Fuck Off. i wanted her to be herself.  and damn right!  i wanted her to ENJOY being a curly-headed mess, rambling around in yummy plummy lipstick, melissa etheridge on the radio as she bumbled down the highway in her bouncy Wrangler.  i wanted her to flip people off and smile as her huge gold hoop earrings dangled against her cheek, her huge smile flashing and that damn cigarette pinched confidently between her fingers of her left hand.

how did i get on this subject?

oh, yeah, i wanted to talk.

i'm telling ya, i am the worst girl in the world to bring home or attempt to seduce.  my chatterbox ass just won't shut the fuck up. before you know it, it's 4am and i've barely taken my shoes off  :)

i know what my mother looks like driving a jeep through the southern california sun down the 10 freeway singing this song.  i know how the light catches her curls.  i know how the light catches her lips.  and i know how she sounds when she sings, "i'm coming home!"  i know how beautiful we both were in that windy, bumpy moment...  all the times we drove through the rich neighborhoods looking at big houses and dreaming together, smoking marlboro reds, and trying to hold tight to the small ache inside of each of us that told us we weren't nothing...  that we weren't born wrong...  that it isn't a sin to want something better, or at least something fitting... 

that it isn't a sin to want love not to hurt.

impotent dick

okay, okay...  so i have a bit of a habit.  me and my big black marker possess quite an affinity for abandoned furniture.  i just can't help it.  :)

in honor of David Wojnarowicz
58th Street Oakland, CA
August 15th, 2013


the flash blew out the black lines of the text but whatever.  this isn't an art that cares about being pretty.  in fact, prettiness is the least of its concerns.  the uglier the better, actually.  as human beings, we spend substantially more time discussing, dissecting, analysing, and assessing the "ugly" than we do the "beautiful".  that's an observation i can use as a tool and my aching heart simply won't let me walk passed an opportunity to get a little ink out in the world.

i actually walked passed this loveseat and made it all the way to the next block before the hook got in, whipped me around, and lured me back.  it's impossible to resist such a big, open canvas when i've got my Sharpie Magnum in my bag.  :)  especially after having sucked down a Corona after work and walked a mile from the train after waiting tables for 6 hours and all i can think of are the hands that aren't on my tits and the tongue that isn't in my mouth, my empty bed and my dead mother and how totally fucking angry me and my siblings are, how totally angry me and everyone else is. at least half the time.  because at least half the time we all feel like we're caught in some sorta crazy shit that is spinning well beyond our control and IF we're not allowed to have control then let's get a little out of fucking control. why not?  just once.  just for a minute.  let's see what it's like.  let's see if it feels good.  let's see if the house really burns down.  let's call bullshit on the threats.  let's see if the rules really exist or if its just impotent dick.  because i learned the hard way what being "good"  gets me.  scraps just like any other begging dog and no closer to claiming a seat in any supposed heaven.


it isn't bitterness.


and so i sat down on the edge of this loveseat abandoned on the street and i searched and searched and searched for my big black marker in the crazy abyss of my big black bag.  it took a while to root it out but i wasn't in a hurry.  one of my favorite things about being a Grown Up is the fact that i'm allowed to be out at night.  i love walking around my beloved oakland after midnight when everything is slow and dark and romantic.  i love the way streetlamps make everything beautiful; lonely in that way that makes the tears sting...  that unnamable heartache that lives within us all...


it isn't bitterness, it's heartache.


i take out my marker and i think of my mother.  i think of all the things she wanted to do.  i remember David Wojnarowicz and how adamant he was, how dedicated and in love with Art, how totally convinced he was that humanity matters and that we all have a right to live, not just march toward our End.  i think of what a minimal effort it takes to simply REACH IN YOUR BAG AND GET YOUR PEN, GIRL and i write the words.

i write the words because words make the world.  and i want to be in control of the world that i'm making for myself.  i want to see myself sitting securely below the lamplight on a dark street after midnight writing the mantra of a dead artist on a dead loveseat.  i want to see myself alive and moving, passionate and reaching toward the world.  fuck it if i make a mistake.  fuck it if the rules are real after all.  i can't stand the thought of dying before i've actually managed to say something.



it isn't bitterness, it's heartache.  it's the heartache born of realizing our time is too short and a day will never be longer than it is and later this week the loveseat will be hauled away to the dump where it will be hacked in to pieces by a man with a big bad axe.  and that's exactly the point.  one day, that's gonna be me too.  and you. 


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