Beginning...

Strange to be laying here like this, staring at the ceiling, hardly able to move, and thinking of the plane I am supposed to get on the day after tomorrow. I didn't think I'd pushed myself too hard but I guess I did. I'm trying to not let my disappointment get the better of me... The cancelled dinner plans, the people I am unable to go see, the hours I must spend in bed.  I'm trying to just breath, just relax, just feel gratitude for this day, despite pain, and recognize my great luck in this world. For however rough the start, the adventure has begun. It is here.

Freya dropped off a huge suitcase on wheels to me this morning. Annie is on her way to fold my remaining clothes in to it.  Brian shipped boxes of my art to my sister this afternoon.  The bathroom still needs to be cleaned and a box of odds and ends needs to be set out on the curb, but the bulk of the work is done.  I must find a way to relax. I must let go of disappointment and tell my body that I love it. I must care for it. I must stop the chorus in my head that goes on and on about how horrible this is. I must be bright. The future is wide open.

If I was in a better physical state right now I'd be feeling quite sentimental.  I'd want to take pictures of the sky. I'd want to write dreamily in my diary of all my hopes and wishes for the road ahead. I'd write about watching clouds being cut by an airplane's wing and hearing sad trumpets weep in New Orleans. I'd spent a bit of time tearing down my large sheets of Rives BFK and wondering what I might draw during this great voyage across the United States...

I can wonder and I can be excited for the adventure ahead. Though I must be gentle with myself, I can still experience my absolute exhilaration about embarking on a path I've yearned for for so long. I can be strong in other ways today.

"on a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in?"

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ohhhhh... i'd say about 7. 

 

feeling a bit like Frida today.  and not in a good way.  i spent the majority of yesterday laying on ice in bed, hoping to stop the pain roller-coaster before it really got moving...  but atlas.  my iffy disk is a cruel sadist.  i'll definitely need to go to the doctor later today.  or the ER.  whichever entity will see me and give me muscle relaxers.  then, i'm going  to spend the next several days laying flat on my back, stuck like a turtle, and trying to maintain a positive outlook on this shit.  i'll watch the movie Frida and be reminded that, for however big my pain is, it is nothing compared to hers.  i don't need to be wrapped in a cast or held in traction.  this time around, i was standing on one foot in my bedroom, pulling a shoe off my foot.  a fucking lightening bolt of pain ran through my body and literally brought me to my knees.  i stayed there on the floor for several minutes, shocked by the level of pain that i'd just experienced, shocked that such an innocent act had brought it on, and silently begging Fate not to put me in bed for a month.  currently, i can hardly walk but that's not really an accurate barometer of how badly i;m hurt.  i could be back to normal in just a few days so long as i go to the doctor.  i've learned now just to go.  don't be proud, take the drugs, and stay in bed.  it sucks.  i don't want to be that person.  i don't want to be seen as fragile. i'm not fucking fragile and i don't need to be handled with extreme care.  this shit rears up from time to time and it takes me out of the game for a week or two but i am not some fragile girl who needs to tip toe around.  i'm not going to ever be that girl.  i'm not going to be someone who lives in fear of tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.  today, something as simple as that could in fact take me out in a major way.  that's the truth.  i can hardly move right now.  but i'm not going to live in fear of it.  i need to get to the bottom of this and find a long-term solution.  the idea of surgery scares the shit out of me.  my father is a quadriplegic and the idea of someone cutting open my back and scooting my spinal column to the side so they can clip the end of my sciatic nerve is a horribly scary idea.  i'm not even sure i'm a candidate for it.  i need to have an MRI and find out what's really going on inside my body.  

things change in an instant, guys.  these moments always remind me of the fact that if there's something you really want to do in life, better find a way to do it.  i was pulling my fucking shoe off.  i wasn't being a daredevil to any degree.  you can be going along just fine, feeling invincible and like you've got all the time in the world to waste on bullshit...  then a tiny little thing sweeps in and changes the score entirely.  in these moments, i'm so thankful that i created opportunities for travel in my life.  i'm thankful that i have this laptop so i can write and reach out.  i'm thankful for every moment of friendship, every opportunity i've taken to dance and laugh.  

 

the above image is of me last march finishing the Blanket of DOOM when i slipped a disk and was locked in bed for a solid month. 

even these moments are good teachers.
even these moments have led to beauty.
these moments, more than others, lead me straight to art.

i'll try to remind myself of all this later when i'm crying to myself about how unfair this shit is.


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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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please put on this gown...

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yep.  pushed myself a little too hard a little too soon by walking to the store the other day.  yesterday, i tried to make the same walk for a second time and failed miserably.  i had to turn around after getting only a block away from my house.  i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening laying on an ice pack and feeling sorry for myself.  i felt SO sorry for myself, in fact, that i didn't write at all yesterday.  i curled up in to my own sadness and i stayed there.  i couldn't stop myself from thinking: i'm supposed to be in New York right now.  

at 11 o'clock, i sent my sweet friend Jose a text that i was sad and trying very hard not to get lost in self-pity.  he called me and talked me up for a solid hour.  he reminded me that new york isn't going anywhere and this is truly just a minor setback, a short delay in the plan which may even prove to be a valuable event.  it makes me hungrier for my goals and dreams, that's for sure.

but the real issue was that i was back to hobbling around as if no progress had been made.  and when it comes to me and my life right now, progress needs to be made.  i woke up early and went to Urgent Care.  the doctor complimented me on having diagnosed myself correctly as well as having prescribed myself the correct treatment.  "Just keep doing more of the same," he said, "but here's some Vicodin too.  If your not better in a week, we may have to explore other options but I'm hopeful that since you went so many years without re-injury, you'll heal just fine."  i hope so too and the way he said these things gave me confidence that maybe, if i just relax and stop focusing on the many negatives of this situation and attempt to see this as a learning opportunity, that i will be back to normal in no time flat.

my beautiful friend Trish came by after work today and took me to the store to pick up fish and vegetables to eat for the next few days.  i plan to pretty much keep myself incapacitated with painkillers so that i move as little as possible.  i may or may not get any blogging done after posting this.  maybe i'll just let myself be a netflix-addicted mess for the next 3 days and see how that aids my recovery?  i need to get back to work.  i need to get back in to the swing and hum of existence.  i need to feel undaunted and assured and trust that, now, it really is only a matter of time before i can step confidently back in to the rhythm of my life.  

the upside is that i've actually managed to get some reading done.  i read Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" again.  it's been no less than 5 years since i last read it and it happened to be laying at the top of one of the boxes i brought home from my storage unit.  in addition to that, several essays in Kris Kraus's "Video Green".  i think her book is quickly becoming one of my favorite volumes of collected essays of all time.  where else can one find such a beautiful stew of art theory, LA living, and personal reflections upon one's exploration of S/m?  it's amazing! i think i'll actually enjoy one more essay and a cocktail before getting zonked out on meds and movies and crochet.

hello AGAIN!

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HOLY SHIT!!! HELLO!!!!

first ever video blog!!!  i'm kinda nervous!  and it shows in how much i fuck with my hair and smack my lips!  but maybe that's just the vodka having its way with me.  :)

hi.


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once able

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it is beautiful to be able to sit naked on a sunday night with a cocktail and a favorite book.  i haven't read poetry in so long it seems.  it is a life-blood that returns to me.  i flipped open Ariana Reines's THE COW and read the first poem that my eyes happened to find.  of course, it is the perfect fit:

 

that last line, the refrain, is such a brutal chime.  an ache that rings through me in a language i understand...  a need i understand.

to be fully oneself.  to be honest.  to be unafraid of the ugly.  to be unafraid of becoming ugly.  to be afraid but to move forward anyway.  to be lost and uncertain and choose to see it as Freedom.  to be able to create a well of courage and move, finally, like a king.

it has been a week of sleeping on ice packs and trying my hardest not to let negativity take hold.  finally, this afternoon i was able to pace slowly back and forth down my hallway without appearing feeble and deformed.  my disk in finally slipping back in to place.  i haven't taken pain meds in days and am finally on the mend.  and i promise you, recovery cannot come speedily enough.  cabin fever is a motherfucker.  i loathe laying around in general and this week of being confined to bed nearly made me cry.  i love solitude but only after exercising my love for being out in the world, in the surge and throng, in the heat of work and play and exploration.  even boredom is better outdoors than when locked away in the room at the back of the house.  it has been total agony in more ways than one. it's one thing to lay around out of sheer laziness or exhaustion; it's an entirely different thing to be confined to bed due to such severe physical pain.  the pain itself makes one depressed.  the fact that it seems unending.  the fact that one can look back over the course of a week and still not be healed.  the fact that one must sit and deal with the fact of the fragility of their own body...  how easily it can be broken...  how easily it can become a cage.  

still, there is always a value.  i've made a pile of yarn bombs to drop the second i can get out of the house and resume my artistic adventures.  i long for the wide open expanse of dark city streets in the middle of the night.  i long for the glow of street lamps and the headlights of cars cruising slowly by.  it has been such a practice of patience and endurance to withstand this stillness, this degree of physical inability.  it breeds compassion, that's for sure, as well as providing one with the somewhat uncomfortable opportunity to perform a deeper self-investigation than one might have undertaken otherwise.  i haven't been able to run my fears away or burn my sadness down with work and excersize.  i've been forced to sit here with them.  i've been forced to sit and look at my ghosts.  i've had no choice but to recognize when my feelings were dramatic and unwarranted, based purely in the pain of my situation, and when they were a normal, natural outcropping of a hurtful event.  i have filled so many pages in my diary and am coming face to face with the core of my needs, the remainder of my naivety, the necessity to emerge from this site of safe repose (once able) and rush again toward the life that is waiting for me in the ecstatic hustle of art.  i am newly aware of a bevy of mistakes i've made and i aim to repeat not a one.

i think of Simone Weil.  i try to obey her.  i try to not struggle against my suffering but to endure it passively, to let in polish me, to allow it to create a new beauty within me.  it is a hard task.  an exercise in endurance and  the ability to tolerate anguish without becoming bitter.  

i need to discover a new definition of the word LOVE. 

i need to make room for the creation of a new face for GOD.

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Es geht.

it's hard to lay in bed like this and not end up feeling a little fragile.  fragile in more ways than one, not simply physically...  though maybe it is the fact of my current physical fragility that has me thinking such sad and flowery thoughts today?  i am all romance and strife on the inside.  i am Unrequited This and Unrequited That.  i twist the yarn around my hook and sigh.  sigh sigh sigh.

thank god for the trusty greyhound by my side.  :)

my friend alex came by today with some groceries for me.  coffee, cream, vodka.  the basics.  she hung out with me all afternoon and made me laugh even though it hurts.  she's such a wonderful person and friend.  she lives a good 6 or 7 cities away and yet she still made the drive out to oakland to show me some love and care.  it cheered me up somethin wonderful, is what.  it's easy to start feeling isolated and alone when it comes to this type of injury.  the cure is brutal: stay in bed, don't move, don't sneeze.  that's all that can be done about this.  and i'm following the rules because a big part of me is holding out hope that i won't have to cancel my trip.  the eternal optimist.  it's unlikely that i'll still be able to go to NY.  i need to be able to walk around (for MILES AND MILES), dance, drink and be dumb, not to mention sit in an airplane for 6 hours.  there's no way i could do it in my current condition.  the plane ride itself would make me want to die.  sheer torture.  i can't even sit at my own kitchen table right now.  i can stand and i can lay.  that's it.

ready for the dramatics?

so of course i've rolled around to thinking about my life at this point and what the fuck i'm doing with it.  i'm objective...  i see the goodness of studying a different language, going to work, making art, writing and taking pictures...  but somehow i feel like i'm not doing enough.  i have this 22 page poemy-ish thing that needs to be edited and i haven't touched it in weeks.  i basically have no clue where to begin so i ignore it.  i focus on things i DO know how to conquer-  drawing and crochet, whining on my blog.  i'm beating around the bush.  what i really want in this moment of pain is for someone to take care of me.  i want my mother to sweep in, in all her curls and lipstick, and make me soup.  i want a knowing hand to brush my hair away from my forehead.  i want to be given permission to be weak, to be in need, and to have it not feel shameful and embarrassing.

that's what was so nice about alex's visit today.  she just took care of these little things for me and didn't seem to mind at all.  she wouldn't even take any money from me.  somewhere along the line, i got very accustomed to relying only upon myself that i no longer know how to respond to certain forms of kindness.  i'm good at extending those forms of care but have no clue how to feel or behave when i'm on the receiving end.  it just doesn't happen that much.  but maybe i don't allow it??? i very rarely ask for help.  i feel ashamed when i need it.  i feel like i should be able to handle anything and everything that comes my way, at each and every turn.  i'm tough. 

but i'm only tough because i've had to be.  and to be honest, sometimes it really sucks.  sometimes, it's a very lonely road.  still, i don't know how to shake my false belief that to ask for help is an embarrassment.   i don't know how to rely on another person.  i don't trust that another person is strong enough to carry my heavy heart and not drop it... but nor should a person be expected to be.  isn't my heart MY responsibility?  isn't my life MY responsibility? 

it isn't that i don't trust people, it's that i feel very unsafe being dependent upon another human being.  for anything. 

FML?

sometimes life decides for you that you need to slow down, stay in bed, and make some art.  under other circumstances, i'd be completely content to do just that but geez... now just isn't the right time.  a man lifted me up the other day and, as chance would have it, he happened to grab me right at the sight of an old injury: my iffy disk.  i've been locked in bed for the last 3 days.  i haven't been able to really walk let alone go to class or work.  and worst of all, i may have to cancel my trip to NY.  i'm trying not to get depressed about it.  getting depressed will only draw this whole thing out.  besides, i'm in enough pain as it is.  bulging disks are absolute agony.  thankfully, i'm in much better shape this time around than i was the first time this happened 6 years ago.  in fact, this injury is what turned me toward crochet as a way to make art.  i couldn't sit or stand.  all i could do was lie flat on my back.  that's not exactly a position from which one might draw or paint and, there i was, heading in to my last year of art school.  so much was on the line.  i had to find a way to keep making art.  crochet, it was!  it saved my degree and my practice.  it saved my spirit.  

and it'll save my spirit this time too.  i'm looking on the bright side and just trying to feel thankful for having the unplanned luxury of staying in bed all week and making art.  The Blanket of DOOM sure has benefited.  Almost done!!!!  a year in the making.  this project is an ERA unto itself!  :D

king size!!!!  and all rendered patiently in single stitch crochet.  good lord.

keeping me nice and warm as i convalesce. :)  can't wait to see and photograph the finished piece.