Today's song was a little tougher. Instead of the hour or so I gave myself for the past couple of days, it's been about a four hour song. Today was big judgment, a tough one. I have to keep telling myself that I'm not trying to write good songs, that I need to reserve judgment and taste for later, once I can record them, compile them, listen, and start picking out sections that I like, chord changes I want to play with. It's definitely work, not that I didn't think it was before, but now that I have some ability to actually sit down and focus on something for more than five seconds, I am beginning to see how it's possible to work at something.
This is the point at which I really want to give up and say that I'm a crap songwriter and never touch a piano or pen again. And maybe some people are instant perfection ( why oh why aren't I instant perfection? Why do I have to live under this burden of needing to be instantly perfect), but maybe I'm one of those people who has to write a hundred crappy songs to even get close to one half decent one.
It's so hard for me to fail, and learning to scavenge out sections of the failure that could become some sort of success or possibility is such a painful idea for me to face. I'm so used to such intense failure that I wouldn't even be able to come face to face with success and see it, or understand what was happening.
All I know, is something is cracking and snapping a bit inside, shifting. Creating is a good passtime.
Song #3
G-Bm-F#m-G
There are no marigolds
on the rooftop
I climbed out the window
to watch the sunrise
after a night full of tears
D-C-Bm-A
A cut clear through the 15th
chamber of my heart
D-G-A-Bm
Don't you pretend to know me still
I'm not some quiet girl
waiting to forget herself
in the waves I've tasted salt
become so pure
G-Bm-F#m-G
In my bed I'd forgiven sleep
she stayed up long past
when I should've been dreaming
and she twists my thoughts
so I can't understand
the layers of breathing
D-C-Bm-A
A cut clear through the 15th
chamber of my heart
D-G-A-Bm
Don't you pretend to know me still
I'm not some quiet girl
waiting to forget herself
in the waves I've tasted salt
become so pure
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
What words have not been before, but will be soon.
A well made house. A word. A song.At a certain point I have to step back and ask myself why I write. Because I can’t speak quick answer.it’s gets everything out of my head. I don’t feel so alone. I don’t understand the world, and it helps me simplify things so I can begin to understand them. How I experience the world is very different than how other people do, and writing it down makes it more real and less fragile.
I become real when I write. if it’s all inside, the n no one can see what it is, what I am, and even if no one else reads what I am, then at least I have a written fragment of what I am, what I want to be, what I mean to be, what I could be.
I’ve spent most of my time writing how I am, and how I have been. The avoidance of years of making myself reality has been condensed into a period of intense writing about it now. Of wondering what could I have been.
Like many artists, like many girls, like many boys, I am still trying to break my way out of the silence that I imposed out of safety. Writing is a way to break out from behind that harsh grey wall that had become all I was and all I saw. This wall is still there, and it severs my tongue so much of the time. If my tongue won’t work, then maybe my hands will.
I was having a conversation with a friend last night, and she asked me “So, what have you been writing about in your blog?” And I was shocked and stumped and kind of insulted. Not because I expect her to spend the time reading what I had to say….actually, yes, I do expect someone who calls herself a very good friend of mine to read what I have to say. It’s not asking that much. I love reading my friend’s blogs, and the little poetic love letters we leave each other on facebook. I understand and respect the fact that we can say things in writing that we aren’t easily able to express in words. Conversation doesn’t usually tend to the instantly poetic, especially mine. So, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a friend to take five minutes a day to read the words that I am currently devoting myself to.
To be asked to speak in a reductionist, condensed way about what I’ve been writing about is such a brush off. It’s a sign that the person doesn’t understand, and most likely, doesn’t seem to care why I feel the need to write, and why I choose to express myself in ways other than conversation.
I am not a storyteller. I keep and thrive on images, and memories, sounds and sensations. Having a conversation about a colour, a particular shade of blue, and how it almost has a taste is not something that comes up often. How I experience the world, the language that I’m fascinated by can easily come out of the mouths of very few extraordinary speakers, those wise few who write with their tongues instead of fingers.
I don’t know how to get what I need from conversation. I’m not interested in people’s wild and crazy stories all the time. I want to know what their hearts are saying, and how the sound of loud traffic out the living room window affects them.
Sometimes writing is as difficult as speaking ,sometimes I don’t have anything to say, in any situation. Others, I have a mouth that will not be stopped, saying everything that is fleeting through my mind, the strangenesses and quirkinesses alike.
I like people who speak oddnesses, even if it is not at the depth to which they are capable of going. My two roommates, Jo and Amanda, are oddnesses, and although we don’t sit around philosophizing, we understand each other in a strangely fundamental sort of way. Our senses of humor match.We don’t judge the things that come out of each other’s mouths, because we appreciate the individuality that each of us contains, and that we are willing to put out in the open.
Each day, as I go on, my life gets further and further from the downtown of the city. I live within the city boundaries, but my cities is becoming different than the one I have always known and disliked.I refuse to go to clubs, and I do not want to go into bars. The noise, the closeness of people, so many lonely and strange, loud loud people is something I can’t even pretend to tolerate anymore. I’m 25, and while most people are out living their crazy twenty something years in a haze of glorious sex and way too much alcohol and an assortment of other party favors, I’m sitting at home ( well someone else’s home) on a Friday night writing about how bars aren’t my scene, but writing is.
What I can’t seem to get across to some people is that my dislike for intensive socializing doesn’t make me boring and predictable, doesn’t make me a waste of this youthful life, but it’s how I choose to live. I’d be much happier on a farm somewhere, with a piano and a garden, a couple of close, good friends nearby, and I coffee shop or two in town with live music most nights of the week.
I love people, and I love being around people that I click with, people that understand where I’m coming from, and don’t spend all of our time together looking perplexed and uncomfortable. I make people uncomfortable, I bore people. I’m not witty on command, my words come out all jumbled all the time, and if someone doesn’t have the heart and time to focus the beautiful mess that I am, then I don’t want to be around them.
I’ve spent so much time feeling inferior to people, and I have a couple people in my life that I always feel inferior to, people whose very presence instigates a judgment of myself. I feel no acceptance when I’m with them, just unfulfilled expectation that I’m not even interested in pursuing. But I’m o good at saying goodbye. I’m no god at hurting other people, at hurting myself.
Then I start to fear being alone my whole life, having nothing but my own words to come home to, to comfort me. Such a fright. A quick flight, a long bus ticket to god knows where to get myself away from myself. I forget that I’ve been alone all this time, and that it’s only been in those moments when I’ve felt guilty and strange about being alone that it’s been unhappy. That only when I live under the mysterious expectation of needing a man, a husband, a wife, a woman, a lover, that I’m unhappy.
I want all of these things, but I want them as myself, as my quiet and brave, fierce and bold self, not as some vapid bar star who can’t even find her own way home in her bikini wax and too high heels. I don’t want to change myself for fake love.
When I refused to go out to a bar, for the hundredth time, my friend called me predictable, which I put into the same category as boring, no fun, loser, has no life, socially unfortunate, lifeless, pity worth. I’ve seen myself as all of these things, but I don’t need my so called friends to use my vulnerabilities against me.
I’m looking for kindness, for a space in which I can sit with myself quietly, and feel as though my life is as full as it could get, while knowing there is so much more.
Sometimes I sound like a self help book. I’m often redundant. Nobody wants to hear about our traumas in conversation. It’s not polite to talk about our huge harsh feelings. So, either I talk out loud to myself all the time, which I do, while wondering up and down my fabulous pacing hallway, or I write it out, repetitively and both wistfully and cathartically.
I love to dance, but I like to choose the music I dance too. I don’t like most techno, dance music. I have a very particular taste in hip hop that doesn’t usually get played in clubs. I like being in place where people dance for joy, not to get noticed. I love to dance with a group of friends in my living room, impromptu dance sessions, or well articulated processions of oddly choreographed movements that speak out bright.
I like other quiet people who come alive in small spaces, who haven’t found their right places yet, who struggle, and live in the struggle. Alone, in my home, with my words and songs, I am strong, I am learning to dictate myself back to myself.
I’m just not ready to be in the world at large. I’m having my cloistered moment. I walk down the street and feel strange, feel like everyone is looking at me. Judging me, finding me strange and uncomfortable, ugly and stupid. Dorky and unflattering, the kind of person that nobody wants around.
This is why I write: at the end of the day, I want myself around, and have to find a way not to lose myself in it all, in all the sinking quicksand, the drowning pools of not good enough. The hipster lives shrugging off vulnerability, the business kids out to play with numbers they don’t even like for the sake of being normal. I want to keep my strangeness, I want to define my strangeness, my hope, all the things I shut away and let die. I’ve been dying for 25 years. On the porch of death, drooping daisies held upright, nearly. Every time I was in the word was a thick stab to my gut, a twist and watch me bleed until the bruises have swollen up each broken blood vessel unable to reduce again. I’m quite bright with scars. If you know how to see them.
I become real when I write. if it’s all inside, the n no one can see what it is, what I am, and even if no one else reads what I am, then at least I have a written fragment of what I am, what I want to be, what I mean to be, what I could be.
I’ve spent most of my time writing how I am, and how I have been. The avoidance of years of making myself reality has been condensed into a period of intense writing about it now. Of wondering what could I have been.
Like many artists, like many girls, like many boys, I am still trying to break my way out of the silence that I imposed out of safety. Writing is a way to break out from behind that harsh grey wall that had become all I was and all I saw. This wall is still there, and it severs my tongue so much of the time. If my tongue won’t work, then maybe my hands will.
I was having a conversation with a friend last night, and she asked me “So, what have you been writing about in your blog?” And I was shocked and stumped and kind of insulted. Not because I expect her to spend the time reading what I had to say….actually, yes, I do expect someone who calls herself a very good friend of mine to read what I have to say. It’s not asking that much. I love reading my friend’s blogs, and the little poetic love letters we leave each other on facebook. I understand and respect the fact that we can say things in writing that we aren’t easily able to express in words. Conversation doesn’t usually tend to the instantly poetic, especially mine. So, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a friend to take five minutes a day to read the words that I am currently devoting myself to.
To be asked to speak in a reductionist, condensed way about what I’ve been writing about is such a brush off. It’s a sign that the person doesn’t understand, and most likely, doesn’t seem to care why I feel the need to write, and why I choose to express myself in ways other than conversation.
I am not a storyteller. I keep and thrive on images, and memories, sounds and sensations. Having a conversation about a colour, a particular shade of blue, and how it almost has a taste is not something that comes up often. How I experience the world, the language that I’m fascinated by can easily come out of the mouths of very few extraordinary speakers, those wise few who write with their tongues instead of fingers.
I don’t know how to get what I need from conversation. I’m not interested in people’s wild and crazy stories all the time. I want to know what their hearts are saying, and how the sound of loud traffic out the living room window affects them.
Sometimes writing is as difficult as speaking ,sometimes I don’t have anything to say, in any situation. Others, I have a mouth that will not be stopped, saying everything that is fleeting through my mind, the strangenesses and quirkinesses alike.
I like people who speak oddnesses, even if it is not at the depth to which they are capable of going. My two roommates, Jo and Amanda, are oddnesses, and although we don’t sit around philosophizing, we understand each other in a strangely fundamental sort of way. Our senses of humor match.We don’t judge the things that come out of each other’s mouths, because we appreciate the individuality that each of us contains, and that we are willing to put out in the open.
Each day, as I go on, my life gets further and further from the downtown of the city. I live within the city boundaries, but my cities is becoming different than the one I have always known and disliked.I refuse to go to clubs, and I do not want to go into bars. The noise, the closeness of people, so many lonely and strange, loud loud people is something I can’t even pretend to tolerate anymore. I’m 25, and while most people are out living their crazy twenty something years in a haze of glorious sex and way too much alcohol and an assortment of other party favors, I’m sitting at home ( well someone else’s home) on a Friday night writing about how bars aren’t my scene, but writing is.
What I can’t seem to get across to some people is that my dislike for intensive socializing doesn’t make me boring and predictable, doesn’t make me a waste of this youthful life, but it’s how I choose to live. I’d be much happier on a farm somewhere, with a piano and a garden, a couple of close, good friends nearby, and I coffee shop or two in town with live music most nights of the week.
I love people, and I love being around people that I click with, people that understand where I’m coming from, and don’t spend all of our time together looking perplexed and uncomfortable. I make people uncomfortable, I bore people. I’m not witty on command, my words come out all jumbled all the time, and if someone doesn’t have the heart and time to focus the beautiful mess that I am, then I don’t want to be around them.
I’ve spent so much time feeling inferior to people, and I have a couple people in my life that I always feel inferior to, people whose very presence instigates a judgment of myself. I feel no acceptance when I’m with them, just unfulfilled expectation that I’m not even interested in pursuing. But I’m o good at saying goodbye. I’m no god at hurting other people, at hurting myself.
Then I start to fear being alone my whole life, having nothing but my own words to come home to, to comfort me. Such a fright. A quick flight, a long bus ticket to god knows where to get myself away from myself. I forget that I’ve been alone all this time, and that it’s only been in those moments when I’ve felt guilty and strange about being alone that it’s been unhappy. That only when I live under the mysterious expectation of needing a man, a husband, a wife, a woman, a lover, that I’m unhappy.
I want all of these things, but I want them as myself, as my quiet and brave, fierce and bold self, not as some vapid bar star who can’t even find her own way home in her bikini wax and too high heels. I don’t want to change myself for fake love.
When I refused to go out to a bar, for the hundredth time, my friend called me predictable, which I put into the same category as boring, no fun, loser, has no life, socially unfortunate, lifeless, pity worth. I’ve seen myself as all of these things, but I don’t need my so called friends to use my vulnerabilities against me.
I’m looking for kindness, for a space in which I can sit with myself quietly, and feel as though my life is as full as it could get, while knowing there is so much more.
Sometimes I sound like a self help book. I’m often redundant. Nobody wants to hear about our traumas in conversation. It’s not polite to talk about our huge harsh feelings. So, either I talk out loud to myself all the time, which I do, while wondering up and down my fabulous pacing hallway, or I write it out, repetitively and both wistfully and cathartically.
I love to dance, but I like to choose the music I dance too. I don’t like most techno, dance music. I have a very particular taste in hip hop that doesn’t usually get played in clubs. I like being in place where people dance for joy, not to get noticed. I love to dance with a group of friends in my living room, impromptu dance sessions, or well articulated processions of oddly choreographed movements that speak out bright.
I like other quiet people who come alive in small spaces, who haven’t found their right places yet, who struggle, and live in the struggle. Alone, in my home, with my words and songs, I am strong, I am learning to dictate myself back to myself.
I’m just not ready to be in the world at large. I’m having my cloistered moment. I walk down the street and feel strange, feel like everyone is looking at me. Judging me, finding me strange and uncomfortable, ugly and stupid. Dorky and unflattering, the kind of person that nobody wants around.
This is why I write: at the end of the day, I want myself around, and have to find a way not to lose myself in it all, in all the sinking quicksand, the drowning pools of not good enough. The hipster lives shrugging off vulnerability, the business kids out to play with numbers they don’t even like for the sake of being normal. I want to keep my strangeness, I want to define my strangeness, my hope, all the things I shut away and let die. I’ve been dying for 25 years. On the porch of death, drooping daisies held upright, nearly. Every time I was in the word was a thick stab to my gut, a twist and watch me bleed until the bruises have swollen up each broken blood vessel unable to reduce again. I’m quite bright with scars. If you know how to see them.
Little morning songs Two
Today's song ( i cheated a bit-I wrote it between 12:00 and 2:00, but took time away to write up yesterday's song on here, to make more tea, hang out with the cat. So it's still simple and quick, given to as little judgment as possible, very unedited).
I do have a very specific inspiration behind this mini project- Terami Hirsch's description of working on her latest album, " A Broke Machine"- http://www.thebreathing.com/words/abrokemachine-album.html
She uses the words "quickly and quietly", and spoke about the spectre of perfection and judgment.
Musically, a song from her previous album, "Memory Picture" inspired me when I saw the written out notes for the song, how simple, and the gorgeousness of such a simple song, which is quickly becoming one of my favorites of hers:
http://www.thebreathing.com/words/memorypicture.html
Actually, Terami Hirsch is probably my biggest musical/creative inspiration, as an independent artist making her own music her way. From her very lo-fi, home made sounding "All Girl Band" to, four album later, the still home made but intense and kind of crazy A Broke Machine", all of her work is extraordinary and well worth exploring.
http://www.terami.com/
Today's song:
(obvious waltz tempo)
C-Dm-Em-F
I turn on the stove
three quarters round the dial
fill the pot with cold cold water
and stare out the window for awhile
The cat's in the sunshine again
chewing on the leaves of her favorite plant
and I really really want a cup of coffee
but I'll settle for tea
I let my mind lean on perfection
but I'll never get there
and that leaves me near broken
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
So I drink drink my tea
waiting for the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for m
C-Dm-Em-F
Leaves are spinning from the trees
and I don't know where the woods went
cut down a century ago
what has each trunk become
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
A house, a table
a well worn bed
sheets unmade each morning
threadbare and slightly stained
C-Dm-Em-F
Three cups of green tea later
one cup of hot chocolate snuck in too
the cat is sitting in the closet
and Shakespeare by the door
is lifting his book to me
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
But i don't read his words anymore
my eyes just drift from the page
prone to distraction
So I do what i do best
Drink drink my tea
waiting fo the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for me
I do have a very specific inspiration behind this mini project- Terami Hirsch's description of working on her latest album, " A Broke Machine"- http://www.thebreathing.com/words/abrokemachine-album.html
She uses the words "quickly and quietly", and spoke about the spectre of perfection and judgment.
Musically, a song from her previous album, "Memory Picture" inspired me when I saw the written out notes for the song, how simple, and the gorgeousness of such a simple song, which is quickly becoming one of my favorites of hers:
http://www.thebreathing.com/words/memorypicture.html
Actually, Terami Hirsch is probably my biggest musical/creative inspiration, as an independent artist making her own music her way. From her very lo-fi, home made sounding "All Girl Band" to, four album later, the still home made but intense and kind of crazy A Broke Machine", all of her work is extraordinary and well worth exploring.
http://www.terami.com/
Today's song:
(obvious waltz tempo)
C-Dm-Em-F
I turn on the stove
three quarters round the dial
fill the pot with cold cold water
and stare out the window for awhile
The cat's in the sunshine again
chewing on the leaves of her favorite plant
and I really really want a cup of coffee
but I'll settle for tea
I let my mind lean on perfection
but I'll never get there
and that leaves me near broken
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
So I drink drink my tea
waiting for the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for m
C-Dm-Em-F
Leaves are spinning from the trees
and I don't know where the woods went
cut down a century ago
what has each trunk become
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
A house, a table
a well worn bed
sheets unmade each morning
threadbare and slightly stained
C-Dm-Em-F
Three cups of green tea later
one cup of hot chocolate snuck in too
the cat is sitting in the closet
and Shakespeare by the door
is lifting his book to me
G-Am
F-G-Am (C)
But i don't read his words anymore
my eyes just drift from the page
prone to distraction
So I do what i do best
Drink drink my tea
waiting fo the phone to ring
alone in this house
the mail is never for me
Little morning songs
I have this tendency to set very high expectations for myself. In my behaviour, in my relationships, in my art, in my academic life. My general philosophy around creating things is that if it's not going to be the most amazing and significant piece of art ever created, then there's no point in even beginning any act of creation. Which stops me from beginning anything. Or if I begin anything at all, I tend to judge it as unworthy and toss it out as being stupid and unnecessary.
A significant part of my problem comes from the fact that I appreciate and even revere the work of extraordinary, hard working writers, musicians, and artists. For example, my favorite songwriters are Tori Amos and Hawksley Workman, who are ridiculously hard working, well trained and disciplined composers and musicians. When I sit down at the piano to just play around and write a song for fun, which I do every so often, I can't do anything at all, because if I expect the first song I've written in five or more years to be up to the intricate quality of a Tori Amos song, then I'm automatically setting myself up for failure. I'm not going to be able to write some amazingly complex song right out of the blue, but I feel that if I'm not going to be extraordinary then I shoudn't even bother doing it. And so, I'm a failure before I even begin.
So, what I've decided to do is set up alittle project for myself. It's called " Little Morning Songs".
Every morning, or afternoon, really, depending on when I have time, I'm going to sit down at the keyboard and write a song, without judging, without striving for perfection. With as little editing as possible, keeping it simple. Not tryng to write a poetic masterpiece, but just words.
Writing each song in under an hour, and not obsessing.
Yesterday's song:
Dm-Am-F-G
I lost my voice when I was
three parts into this girl
standing chest cold
against an x-ray board
uncovered to glass and light
Dark room developed bright
photographs just chambers
inside
Am-Em
Growth not right
too slow too undefined
this is not the past
she gives me now
Dm-Am-F-G
And I've been in rooms
that could never be mine
no curtains, and windows
for everyone to see
and I learned that screaming
is just another way
to get locked in
My heart became severed
murmuring word to the walls
unheard
my roots pulled up
so many knots left my hands
calloused
Am-Em
This girl
this girl
cut clean (x 3)
Am-G-F
All through the day.
A significant part of my problem comes from the fact that I appreciate and even revere the work of extraordinary, hard working writers, musicians, and artists. For example, my favorite songwriters are Tori Amos and Hawksley Workman, who are ridiculously hard working, well trained and disciplined composers and musicians. When I sit down at the piano to just play around and write a song for fun, which I do every so often, I can't do anything at all, because if I expect the first song I've written in five or more years to be up to the intricate quality of a Tori Amos song, then I'm automatically setting myself up for failure. I'm not going to be able to write some amazingly complex song right out of the blue, but I feel that if I'm not going to be extraordinary then I shoudn't even bother doing it. And so, I'm a failure before I even begin.
So, what I've decided to do is set up alittle project for myself. It's called " Little Morning Songs".
Every morning, or afternoon, really, depending on when I have time, I'm going to sit down at the keyboard and write a song, without judging, without striving for perfection. With as little editing as possible, keeping it simple. Not tryng to write a poetic masterpiece, but just words.
Writing each song in under an hour, and not obsessing.
Yesterday's song:
Dm-Am-F-G
I lost my voice when I was
three parts into this girl
standing chest cold
against an x-ray board
uncovered to glass and light
Dark room developed bright
photographs just chambers
inside
Am-Em
Growth not right
too slow too undefined
this is not the past
she gives me now
Dm-Am-F-G
And I've been in rooms
that could never be mine
no curtains, and windows
for everyone to see
and I learned that screaming
is just another way
to get locked in
My heart became severed
murmuring word to the walls
unheard
my roots pulled up
so many knots left my hands
calloused
Am-Em
This girl
this girl
cut clean (x 3)
Am-G-F
All through the day.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Books..boring....books
I’m giving myself away. Elaborate and unfettered, but burdened nonetheless.
Cooped up and kept in, although I could go out for a walk. See the thrift shop down on Broadway, look at odd clothes, slightly ill fitting, and piles of books, dusty but wanted for the secrets of the world they may be hiding away between their covers. I like books, but sometimes I think that I like the physical reality of books more than the words and stories located and held within their pages. There is so much possibility in the idea of a book, carried in its first line or in a well written back cover description.
There is also so much disappointment in the discovery that a book is not perfect. I’m in someone else’s apartment surrounded by packed boxes, many of which are filled, I’m pretty certain, with elegantly stuffed piles of well read books. Books that look well read, but also books whose print has become faint from fingers tracing along their lines, and embedding the words in invisible ink all along each and every sight to image pathway in the brain.
I am not a good reader, I don’t remember what I read, and can’t regurgitate it. It’s a question of focus, a notion of speed and the directions my mind gets itself distracted while interpreting print. Individual words make themselves known to me, and sometimes even a complete sentence, but paragraph or page retained and transferred from hand held to eyes read to brain embedded is unlikely.
I enjoy what I read, I love language, but it tends to flow through me as the images contained within, as colours and sensations, rather than concepts and ideas. I’m not much of a concept person. This is probably why I can read books multiple times and still be surprised: I can never remember what happens within a book. The skeleton basics of a plotline, but not the intricacies or moments.
And then there’s the whole matter of what I read. I often find my brain all heavy and fogged up, and reading tends to give me more of a headache, so I often spend time listening to music instead of reading. Sometimes it’s the opposite, I get a terrible headache from almost any kind of music, and so I try to watch a quiet movie, or read a simple book. Which is why I have a significant history of reading books considered trashy or childish. Classic literature always tends to give me a headache. Although at one point I was actually pursuing an honours degree in English, the idea of having to read all of those thick, reason and intellect filled books gives me a headache. The very idea of it.
Now, short poetry I can handle. If it’s more than two pages long, I don’t even want to begin. I don’t have the patience. And I get too many headaches.
Cooped up and kept in, although I could go out for a walk. See the thrift shop down on Broadway, look at odd clothes, slightly ill fitting, and piles of books, dusty but wanted for the secrets of the world they may be hiding away between their covers. I like books, but sometimes I think that I like the physical reality of books more than the words and stories located and held within their pages. There is so much possibility in the idea of a book, carried in its first line or in a well written back cover description.
There is also so much disappointment in the discovery that a book is not perfect. I’m in someone else’s apartment surrounded by packed boxes, many of which are filled, I’m pretty certain, with elegantly stuffed piles of well read books. Books that look well read, but also books whose print has become faint from fingers tracing along their lines, and embedding the words in invisible ink all along each and every sight to image pathway in the brain.
I am not a good reader, I don’t remember what I read, and can’t regurgitate it. It’s a question of focus, a notion of speed and the directions my mind gets itself distracted while interpreting print. Individual words make themselves known to me, and sometimes even a complete sentence, but paragraph or page retained and transferred from hand held to eyes read to brain embedded is unlikely.
I enjoy what I read, I love language, but it tends to flow through me as the images contained within, as colours and sensations, rather than concepts and ideas. I’m not much of a concept person. This is probably why I can read books multiple times and still be surprised: I can never remember what happens within a book. The skeleton basics of a plotline, but not the intricacies or moments.
And then there’s the whole matter of what I read. I often find my brain all heavy and fogged up, and reading tends to give me more of a headache, so I often spend time listening to music instead of reading. Sometimes it’s the opposite, I get a terrible headache from almost any kind of music, and so I try to watch a quiet movie, or read a simple book. Which is why I have a significant history of reading books considered trashy or childish. Classic literature always tends to give me a headache. Although at one point I was actually pursuing an honours degree in English, the idea of having to read all of those thick, reason and intellect filled books gives me a headache. The very idea of it.
Now, short poetry I can handle. If it’s more than two pages long, I don’t even want to begin. I don’t have the patience. And I get too many headaches.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Stomach Aches and
So, a couple of days ago, Sunday to be exact, I woke up early in the morning with a truly awful stomach ache. Which tends to happen when I spend most of the previous day drinking wine. And what do I do when I can sleep and am in pain-I turn on the computer, where of course I find nerve wracking news stories, or jerkish racist/misogynistic/classist blog entries masquerading as hip and funny cultural criticism. Both of which make me angry and/or sad, and make my stomach hurt even more.
I’ll preface whatever the hell it is that I’m going to say with a mild re-iteration of the girl guilt things that I spend a significant portion of my time stumbling around. I have unresolved girlie issues. The whole “ I never feel like I’m good enough, just because I’m a girl”. Or, as I told my dad yesterday, I sometimes still feel as though I’m not entirely human. Like I’m 75% human, and 25% girl, but that 25% seems to define me much more significantly than the much larger human portion of the equation.
think that a large amount of this feeling comes from the fact that I am not an aggressive, pushy, power hungry dominating sort of person, in a world that values all of these things. I tend to lean towards the kindness,empathy, compassionate, peace seeking and loving side of the spectrum, the areas of emotion and existence that have traditionally been ascribed as “feminine” attributes. Attributes that in our continuously war torn and violence filled world are looked down upon, still, as either useless optimism or weakness.
I realize that I’m not saying anything new, that I’m just repeating most of the basic women’s/gender studies rhetoric that’s taught in every 100 level gender course, but it just feels so applicable. That no matter how much, on the surface, there appears to be a growing sense of equality in the workplace, in the media, in romantic partnerships, in legal rights, there is still this underlying system of beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, that affect how we live in and experience the world.
We are completely embroiled in an entirely fucked up gender system, and have very little idea of how to go about changing things.
There is so much fear about blurring the lines, about exploring other ways of being. We keep each other in line, punish each other through taunts and violence when someone steps out of line. Men are still not supposed to exhibit “feminine” characteristics, and women are not supposed to exhibit “masculine” characteristics. And that whole wonderfully undefined space of gender blurring and androgyny doesn’t even exist for most people.
All of this is still held together by stitches of threat. Questioning and challenging the current white male power structure isn’t an attack on each and every man individually, as so many people seem to feel when the word Feminism is brought up. It’s a criticism of the structure we are forced to live inside, which keeps both women and men in their defined places, afraid to attempt to create positive and thriving alternate ways of living.
The advocacy of peace, kindness, and gentleness is a scary concept to those people in power/business who make their copious livings ensuring that all is not well in the world.
I understand that change, and even the possibility of change, are threatening ideas, not only to one’s sense of self, but to one’s existence. And one’s wallet.
Stepping outside of the system is a scary thing. And pretty much impossible, because even if you’re chossing to live a life that is in direct opposition to the ones that we are seemingly handed, you’re still in relationship to all the choices that people make everyday that keep them constrained.
If it feels tough to be a sensitive and compassionate person in this world it’s because it is. I don’t want to toughen up and get used to it, I don’t want to be aggressive and competitive, but it feels like I have to in order to survive. I’ve spent years living the belief that I had to be everything, that in order to be a living, recognized person, an existing human being, that I had to embody all possible characteristics, all “masculine” and “feminine” at the same time. ( I use these words only in quotation marks because I don’t believe that these attributes are gendered at all, just social structure and conditioning). Which makes for a very confusing relationship to myself, and a gaping disparity between my actual beliefs and knowledge, and the life I’ve been trying to live. I had to be a great dancer and athlete. I had to love poetry and video games. I had to be aggressive and kind. I had to be sensitive and tough. I had to be compassionate and uncaring. I had to be monogomous and promiscuous. I had to be everything, all at once.
No wonder crazy came out. No wonder I’ve been overwhelmed and unsure and scared. The world is overwhelmed and unsure and scared.
So, angry hungover Sunday morning I stumbled upon this “letter to Hollywood”, about the problem with contemporary mainstream filmmaking. Which had a lot of good things to say, that I , as an independent artist, and gal who likes good movies, enjoyed reading: http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2008/06/a_letter_to_my.html. However, there was a certain point, near the bottom, that made me cranky. ( Cranky is a good word. I use it too much. Tetchy is also a good word. I don’t use it enough.).
The point was that they should just stop trying to make movies with FEMALE SUPERHEROES, because they always suck, and it’s a “lost cause”. Now, I tend to not like a lot of superhero/action movies in general, because they’re usually boring and badly written, with too many repetitive action scenes, and way too much violence. Actually, this is the case with most movies I see, superhero based or otherwise. What this means, is that it’s the director/producer/ whoever’s fault if a movie with a male lead sucks, but it’s the actresses fault if a movie with a female lead is awfulness. The point is, it’s not the fact that the movies are about a heroine that makes them bad, but that Hollywood film and tv writers tend to write stupid and insipid roles for women.
A while ago Warner Bros. vaguely issued a statement saying that they wouldn’t be producing films with women in the lead roles anymore (http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/warners-robinoff-gets-in-catfight-with-girls/), because people don’t pay to go see movies like that. So, to all of the fabulous, hardworking, extraordinary women actors out there, too bad, you’ve just been relegated to playing the love interest or the evil big breasted villainess for the rest of your working life. Although I’m sure they probably retracted the statement, trying to cover their asses, it still shows how prevalent this whole “ women don’t matter, and nobody wants to see them” bullshit idea is.
In general, the writing for tv and film is awful, whether the characters are male or female. There are so many ridiculous and insulting male characters out there as well, just reiterating the fact that Hollywood apparently thinks we’re all brainless jerks, and relegating hardworking actors to boring typecasting.
Which is why I think I’m still whole heartedly devoted to Buffy. I never really got over that one. Jo and I have been (re)watching a bunch of episodes lately, and they’re amazing. They really are. Not to say that they are beyond the realm of needing critques-no work is perfect. But in terms of popular culture that hits both the head and the heart, nothing else really seems to.
What made the show great was it’s writing, witty and intelligent and emotionally engaging ( a rarity), and the fact that all of the actors were fantastic. Male and female, across the board great casting. And it was about outsider girls. And boys. And the only tv show that I love almost as much as Buffy is Firefly, whose cast is nearly equal gender wise, and has some of my favorite female characters as well. However, I do kind of lump the two together because they’re both created and helmed by the same person. Who made has an awesome speech about writing female characters which always makes me feel a little bit better about the world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs
All that said, I still don’t feel welcome in the world, as a girl. I don’t feel invited in. Definitely not part of the club. But then, who really is that didn’t manage to buy or bully their way in.
And music…well, I have much, much more to say about that. Another time.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Guilt
I'm just tired, and planning. A little bit overwhelmed, somehow, in the midst of time on my hands, I've found myself with responsibilities, and right now, it's not good for me to be responsible for things that are happening in other people's lives. Sounds kind of bitter and uncaring, I know, but I have such an overblown sense of guilt that I will take anything and everything on. I feel like I owe people things, and feel like I'll never be finished paying them back, and I hate being in this place, because it just stresses me out.
Saying no is tough, because I'm just one of those gals who wants to do everything for everyone, and make sure that everyone is happy, all of the time. At the expense of myself, of course. Guilt makes me stressed out, and stress makes me sick.
A friend asked me to work with her on her show, to sort of stage manage/second outside eye. Now, I can't even drag myself to see a show at a theatre, and the idea of actually working on a show, having to show up somewhere, at a certain time is just too much. The thought of it makes me tired, and makes my whole body hurt, which gives me a headache, cause my shoulders tense, and I clench my jaw. I couldn’t even act or direct right now, I have no desire to none. I want time to myself, to work on whatever I want or need to work on. I know I would be miserable the whole time, and so I’d be cranky, and be completely unmotivated and uncreative.
And yet, I feel as though I have to say yes, that its my responsibility, that I am a horrible person if I say no. I feel guilty. Total complete guilt. But in my heart I’ve already said no, that’s why I’m having such a visceral and emotional reaction to having to make this decision.
It’s also a bad time cause I’m a little it overwhelmed with having to house sit for five days, then having to pack and move, then having to house sit again for ten days, and not knowing how I’m going to p ay my student loan at the end of the month, and whether I’m moving back to my apartment in August or September.
And then there’s the fact that I’m going back to school full time in the fall, and I have to make sure I’m taking all the right classes, and that I can write papers and take tests without being too stressed out. Which is an entirely different post. I’m just finding myself really overwhelmed today, and I don’t like that feeling. I’d kind of forgotten it for at least a week. Must remember not to let myself get to this place. Much deep breathing and letting go of guilt.
Saying no is tough, because I'm just one of those gals who wants to do everything for everyone, and make sure that everyone is happy, all of the time. At the expense of myself, of course. Guilt makes me stressed out, and stress makes me sick.
A friend asked me to work with her on her show, to sort of stage manage/second outside eye. Now, I can't even drag myself to see a show at a theatre, and the idea of actually working on a show, having to show up somewhere, at a certain time is just too much. The thought of it makes me tired, and makes my whole body hurt, which gives me a headache, cause my shoulders tense, and I clench my jaw. I couldn’t even act or direct right now, I have no desire to none. I want time to myself, to work on whatever I want or need to work on. I know I would be miserable the whole time, and so I’d be cranky, and be completely unmotivated and uncreative.
And yet, I feel as though I have to say yes, that its my responsibility, that I am a horrible person if I say no. I feel guilty. Total complete guilt. But in my heart I’ve already said no, that’s why I’m having such a visceral and emotional reaction to having to make this decision.
It’s also a bad time cause I’m a little it overwhelmed with having to house sit for five days, then having to pack and move, then having to house sit again for ten days, and not knowing how I’m going to p ay my student loan at the end of the month, and whether I’m moving back to my apartment in August or September.
And then there’s the fact that I’m going back to school full time in the fall, and I have to make sure I’m taking all the right classes, and that I can write papers and take tests without being too stressed out. Which is an entirely different post. I’m just finding myself really overwhelmed today, and I don’t like that feeling. I’d kind of forgotten it for at least a week. Must remember not to let myself get to this place. Much deep breathing and letting go of guilt.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Frida on Fire
I have a matchbox that leans against the crayon box on my desk, to the left of the computer monitor. Just a usual small matchbox, full of many small brick red tipped matches, waiting to be lit for a cigarette, or a stove, or a campire. Definitely not for garbage can arson, or self-immolation, because this is a Frida Kahlo matchbook. Someone took the time to glue gold glitter on one side, and silver glitter on the other, then pasted two small Kahlo paintings on either side, and I wonder whose hands made them, where they sat, and how long it took. Jo brought it back from her trip to Mexico for me, bought in a tourist store probably along a beach.
I wonder if the artist become an artist merely as a way to make some money to get through the day, or whether s/he supports their other art with these small tokens. I wonder if the artist even likes Kahlo’s paintings, or if they’re just such a tourist sell that s/he uses them anyways, getting sicker each day of having to stare at these potent images.
I wonder if the artist become an artist merely as a way to make some money to get through the day, or whether s/he supports their other art with these small tokens. I wonder if the artist even likes Kahlo’s paintings, or if they’re just such a tourist sell that s/he uses them anyways, getting sicker each day of having to stare at these potent images.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
What I would say to the sea
I had an unexpected bout of loveliness today. In keeping to myself, so often, I forget what it’s like to spend time elsewhere, and with people other than my roommates and my family.My tolerance level for socializing has been so low lately, that it was so nice to find myself at a friend’s house, happily chatting away for about 6 hours. Drinking wine. And then, being taken out for a wonderful dinner. Sometimes, life is nice to me when I least expect it.
I’m not sure how my body will feel tomorrow, though, since I haven’t had any alcohol since my play reading in march, and I get so dehydrated that I just might be ridiculously hung over tomorrow. I’m just not good with the whole processing of any kind of drug thing. I’m delicate, what can I say.
Tomorrow is more peopleness, as far as I know, Claire is bringing her dogs over and we’re going to wander around Trout Lake for awhile. I haven’t been to Trout Lake since this time last year, or possibly before, the one time that Ann and James and I went and read love poems out to the lake from the dock, and danced around barefoot with our eyes closed, and wrote and sang songs to the trees.
I don’t read enough poetry to bodies of water. Lakes, seas, ponds or puddles. The world would be a significantly brighter place if we all had numerous poems memorized for the occasion of coming into contact with a drop or more of water. Poems for all occasions, whether making eye contact with our lovely reflections in a thin layer of oily rainbow puddle, or staring out at unending waves. Reciting away and into the wind, or back into droplet echoes again. Six or seven poems would be enough, depending on how much you enjoy memorizing. I already have one mostly memorized, one that I could use for nearly every rainy day grey moment. One day I would like to be able to comfortably sit around in the shady sunshine of a park with a lake, well entertained with loved ones, unafraid of being out in the open air. Well protected within my own skin.
I’m not sure how my body will feel tomorrow, though, since I haven’t had any alcohol since my play reading in march, and I get so dehydrated that I just might be ridiculously hung over tomorrow. I’m just not good with the whole processing of any kind of drug thing. I’m delicate, what can I say.
Tomorrow is more peopleness, as far as I know, Claire is bringing her dogs over and we’re going to wander around Trout Lake for awhile. I haven’t been to Trout Lake since this time last year, or possibly before, the one time that Ann and James and I went and read love poems out to the lake from the dock, and danced around barefoot with our eyes closed, and wrote and sang songs to the trees.
I don’t read enough poetry to bodies of water. Lakes, seas, ponds or puddles. The world would be a significantly brighter place if we all had numerous poems memorized for the occasion of coming into contact with a drop or more of water. Poems for all occasions, whether making eye contact with our lovely reflections in a thin layer of oily rainbow puddle, or staring out at unending waves. Reciting away and into the wind, or back into droplet echoes again. Six or seven poems would be enough, depending on how much you enjoy memorizing. I already have one mostly memorized, one that I could use for nearly every rainy day grey moment. One day I would like to be able to comfortably sit around in the shady sunshine of a park with a lake, well entertained with loved ones, unafraid of being out in the open air. Well protected within my own skin.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Well, that was intense.
How do other people experience and process emotions? I was once told by someone that I needed to heal my emotional body, to realize that I am not my emotions. Or rather, that my emotions are not all that I am. But I do feel as though I am primarily my emotions, and that to ignore any part of my emotional life, to deny my emotional life is to deny my reason for existence. I’m well aware that there are many different ways of thinking about life, whether there is meaning, or no meaning, whether the search for meaning is useful at at.
Meaning is such an encompassing and potentially vague term-from the pre-determined meaning of fate or destiny, or god-led importance, to concepts of re-incarnation and karma, to little things, the value of every day life and that the mere fact/act of existence signifies meaning in and of itself.
I tend to fall into some amorphouse space between faith and science, not willing to wholly commit to, or wholly deny, either. By denying science, I don’t mean not believing in scientific practice and fact, but merely questioning a wholly rational/logical based way of perceiving the world. I believe in the intangible, in gut feelings and intuitive, in the ability to transcend purely hand held truths.
It’s comparable to how I believe in modern medicine and its technological and deep knowledge facets, but how I don’t believe in the current way healing is presented and handled. How the cost of treating someone is more important than being able to explore all potential ways of healing. How there is not enough of space for the emotional and spiritual healing to take place, in addition to the physical. How hospitals are not calm and comfortable, and serene, filled with loving energy. How we would rather pour massive amounts of random drugs through our systems than use massage therapy, couselling, chiropractic, yoga, things which yes, have been proven to have incredible preventative healing properties.
Why are we not allotted all of the comforting and nurturing that we require? Why are we lonely and in pain all alone? Why do we have to go to see counsellors and massage therapists? Why don’t we have people in our lives, in our communities that are skilled in certain areas, are sensitive, are accessible to anyone who needs them, as often as someone needs them? Why does it have to be about money, and those of us who don’t have it are relegated to a sickness of absence.
Health is not a luxury. We treat it as if it is, we treat health the same way that we treat our own time. Health is time-it is time to ourselves, it is having enough time to nurture ourselves and relax, love and be loved.
We should all have places in society which support and nurture each of our own skill sets and sensitivities. Places of actual community, where we are not forced to do things just for the money, not forced to waste our lives in pain and unneccesary suffering.
Pain is a part of life, I recognize this, and I’ve learned to value it, as much of my strength as come from deep moments of pain. Days when the world just seems so huge and overwhelming, when waking up and looking out the windows is too much for these heavy limbs and heart. It’s the kind of pain that can’t be explained, that is deep and empty, nostalgia, longing, sorrow, and loneliness all bunched up together, made into a fabulous but nearly unpalatable meal. “Kinda horrible and kinda heaven”, to quote Josette quoting me.
The struggle is in knowing how to deal with it, in knowing that yes, the darkness passes. But having an awareness of the darknesses of the world makes it harder to cope with personal darknesses. Because, even if you manage to come out of the other side of this, to see the sun and grass tomorrow morning, there’s always war and murder and violence and torture and rape and the end of the world to deal with. Even if they are not immediately present, there is always the looming possibility, in the guise of fear, bone shattering and heart clawing fear that ropes throuigh my veins and tricking my mind.
The cycle of anxiety is a bitter and sharp one. Being stuck in this annoying Beckett land of “nothing to be done” ( I’m probably even misquoting “Godot”). Just as one fear is dealt with, another one comes along, broader and more vicious than the last one, bright needle in delicate muscle.
This pain, these demons, this suffering, this darkness, all cliched terms, all wholly undescribable, whatever I call them, are so vast, are so deep. It feels like I’m trying to sleep my skin, like my emotions are so much bigger than this body I am in, that they almost have a life of their own.
Most of us don’t have coping mechanisms to deal with this vastness, this overwhelmingness, as it has been so pushed out of the everyday experience. Suffering is not extraordinary, except that we define it as such. Everything can be extraordinary. Our lives are regulated so that we don’t have the opportunities to feel and express our emotions when we have them, so we repress then, and get sick. So we are overwhelmed by them, until we’re completely shutdown, or have a nervous breakdown, mid-life crisis, whatever it manifests itself as.
Depression, anxiety, alienation, isolation.
I’m not saying that everyone has these experiences. There are truly amazing individuals who have had wonderful support and nurturing in their lives, and are fully able to experience emotions as they come, and have unique ways of working and living with them. They are integrated within themselves, for whatever reason. This doesn’t mean they’re necessarily “well-adjusted” or “successful” in the common notions of these terms, but within themselves and their lives, they are at peace. They know their way, and they know how to follow their path.
This is what I aspire to. To hear and understand my calling, to live beneath the trappings, to thrive in this life that I have, to know myself beneath the fear and judgment. To look eye to eye with another person and know that she is seeing me, and I am seeing her. I want to be bare boned and vulnerable, able to offer myself wholly and gracefully to those who offer themselves to me.
I will not live on a surface level, I will no longer pretend not to see what’s underneath.
This is about love, and it isn’t. This is real romance, not the watered down, evaporated concept of an expensive valentine’s day love. If I lost everything else, right now, as long as I still had my heart, my body, and my mind, then I would be whole and in love. Love is not frivolous, it’s not old fashioned, it’s not difficult, and it’s not easy. It’s not all marriage and happily ever after. It’s intimacy and desperation, and lonelinees, and comfort, and joy, and grace, and so many blessings. It has so many forms and permutations that there is no way to define it. Hollywood romantic love doesn’t conquer all, but real, changeable, lifeblood heartbeat body breathing love puts us back together, and keeps us there.
And so, we go from darkness and back into light, and our truer selves are not located in either space, but in the crossing between, in the liminal, in all of it together, taken as a whole. Compartmentable, but not separate.
And oh, life overwhelms me, and I spend so many hours bent over, head in my hands, rocking softly, breathing deeply to help it all pass through me. When it’s all so indefinable and everything tastes so broken and jagged. These are the times I can’t leave the house, these are the times when small talk becomes impossible, when life is forcing itself through my veins, and demanding that I take notice of it, scream it, feel it, listen to it. Other people can’t deal with seeing me this way, they don’t know what to do. It’s just the scary girl going crazy, curled up on the floor in the dark, listening to music and crying.
I always could wail.
It’s not comfortable to come face to face with that. It’s not comfortable to come face to face with me as I am, as I feel, as I exist. When you see me vulnerable and in pain, you see what you don’t want to experience, what you can’t understand. It isn’t that my pain feeds me, that my suffering proves that I’m alive, but it means that I am willing to sit up and face all of my life, that I can look at the things that frighten me and grow from them, learn how to live with them, learn how to welcome them.
That is why there is so much sorrowful, angry, and difficult art-it is one very powerful way of facing and dealing with our demons, of transforming them into something else, letting them flow out of our bodies and hearts, and into a container, a form for them to live.
We tend to avoid our pain and search for our joy. Joy is acceptable, joy is desired, therefore, we know how to process and transform joy through laughter, dancing, sex, celebration. We do not celebrate our pain, we do not honour our darkness, and so we have forgotten what to do with it, how it helps us, the gifts it brings us.
The gifts we bring ourselves.Repetition and originality, or a sense of home
I could be writing. Writing important, sensical, emotionally charged and evidential environmental things. But I’m listening to music and avoiding doing laundry instead.
Jo’s trying to gather up everything bridesmaidy for her friends wedding tomorrow.
Jo got her brown bridesmaid dress on the same day that other rommate Amanda got her red one piece vintage Christian Dior bathing suit, the one she bought from the “hot hippie cowboy”, as she calls him. They put on their wonderful newnesses, and I put on my sassy red dress, and we had an impromptu midnight dance party to Paul Simon. That’s what I love about living with roommates-there’s always something fun and slightly crazy going on.
This apartment is really starting to feel like home. My home. I spend so much time here, that it really should. I sleep in my wonderful bed that Ann left me ( thank you miss annie, you have furnished my apartment for me, and I think about you all the time because the structure of my life, the foundations upon which many parts of me rest are the ones that were once yours, that you gave to me.). My room used to be where Adriana lived, where Jo lived before she moved into the big room, and I still have the odd yet wonderful white dresser she lent me. Although Frances is away and travelling, her green dress hangs in the right hand corner of my closet, waiting for a wedding. In a way, I’m always surrounded by some form, some essence or remembrance of four of the people I love dearly.
I love the corner of the living room that is my workspace. As I sit here during the day, waiting for the phone to ring, answering e-mails, proofreading, just listening to music and writing this blog ( which I consider to be my primary work, artistic or otherwise, at the moment), I feel as though I have a pretty good job. That I am beginning to have meaningful ways to spend my days, while still making enough money to pay the rent and eat. I’m not sacrificing my sparse and useful time to companies whose models of business I hate, that I’m not wasting my time having to make small talk and sandwiches, or folding clothes.
Instead, my words and I are together. Still, I struggle daily with the immediacy and necessity of writing, of stringing words together on paper, or re-spoken in a memorized and saturated fashion. I see so many books, so much writing that falls by the wayside, that is just there, seemingly having no impact on the world, on peoples lives. Then, I suppose I have to go back to the simples form of importance, to a place of smallness- that of the reader, of the one audience member being enough. That having an effect on even one person is an extraordinary achievement. That in the potent face of extreme fame and the potential of audience numbers in the millions, the individual, the intimate interpersonal relationship is still of primary importance.
Which is one of the reasons why I decided to start writing in this almost ridiculously autobiographical ( I just judged myself there) and public manner. I think we hide things from each other too much, and I want to be a part of coming to a point of true, with myself, and with the world. I don’t want to hide what’s truly going on with me because it’s deemed socially innapropriate to express certain experiences.
A couple of days ago I was watching an interview with Charlotte Martin on youtube, and the last question asked was soemthing like “why will people listen to your music?”, and her answer was “ because I’m true”. She said it with such simplicity and sincerity that it really was a punch to the gut, and a bit of a headspin of “yes! Of Course!”. And that, simply put, is what I want. I want to be true, to the deepest possible level. No posing, no posturing, no more intentional masks constructed of fear and glued together with attempts at unreachable perfection. I do realize that I am constantly re-iterating and re-speaking the same ideas here, oer and over again. I’m just trying to discover different ways of expressing something, giving in to the fact that the first attempt does not need to be perfect, that I can do and re-do as often as I please, until all of the parts tangle together to become an ever changing whole, instead of just one version that is the definitive version.
I actually really love the idea of different versions of ostensibly the same thing. In artistic terms, the novels of Jean Rhys are an excellent example. When reading her work, I almost feel as though she is writing the same story over and over again, trying to find the deepest, truest version of it. Or looked at in another way, not looking for the perfection of it, but experiencing and notating those experiences in slightly different ways. Her work has always been about the difficulty in conveying certain emotions, less about what happens, but what the internal life of the character is as life occurs.
We have a tendency to criticize artist’s work when they are not “original” enough, or not creating enough new material, but I think that working on one piece continuously, and creating and recreating it is just as valid as coming up with something new and unique each and every time. One of my most valuable and wonderful projects was having the chance to direct the same play twice with different casts, in very different contexts. I was much happier with the second version, as I learned so much about myself and my process during the first version that I could apply to the second. Namely, that when I try to create work that fits into the mold of “traditional”, or “acceptable” theatre, when I follow the instructions ( kind hearted and well intentioned as they may be) of others at the expense of my own desires and impulses, then I am not happy with what I create.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Art and something, I'm sure
I’ve gotten lazy with my dishes.
Right at this moment I am completely, absolutely broke. I have a little over a dollar in my bank account. Five dollars left on my credit card. Two dollars in my pocket.
What did I spend my last thirty dollars on? Music. It’s nourishment. It’s survival. I’m in debt, I can’t afford to buy music, I can barely pay the rent, I can only buy one coffee out a week, and yet, I’ll scrape together enough to by that Terami Hirsch cd, or, today, that Charlotte Martin cd. And as soon as I get my paycheck in my bank account, as soon as I put money on my credit cards, I have even more music picked out, all waiting for me to click “buy mp3” and enter those magic numbers.
Sure, I should have a job that brings in more income, so I can easily and guiltlessly buy as much music as I could want. But, if I’m working 8 hours a day in a job that doesn’t involve sitting in front of my computer and listening to music, then when am I going to be able to actually listen and love this music that I worked so hard to buy? A conundrum, yes, and one that is both easy to solve, and ridiculously difficult. I was blessed and cursed to have grown up in a house where both parents worried obsessively about money, but where one saved and one spent frivolously. Therefore, it means that my frivolous isn’t that frivolous, but I still have that impulsive streak. That craving for meaning through acquisition.
In my case, the meaning is found in the form of music, books, and movies. I do have a bit of a problem buying these things. I’m looking for that artwork of perfection that completely explains to me who I am, that shows me my experience of the workld back to me in a perfect mirror. Yes, I look for the truth of myself through the eyes of another. Which means that I will constantly be dissatisfied, since I’m guessing that there probably isn’t an exact reflection of my experience out there in the world.
I’ve been going about all of this the wrong way all these years. I’ve been looking for comfort and nurturing from the outside. I’m not talking about comfort as complacency, but comfort in the recognition of similarity, in the feeling of having friends and family and allies.
Music has been my closest relationship, my most intimate friend for about ten years. Listening to music was the only place that I felt as though I was experiencing reality, experiencing a level of truthfulness not found in my interpersonal relationship. I’m sure that art is the reason I didn’t completely wither and die during the very dry yet drowning season of the first 24 years of my life. Art as coping mechanism, art as my only means of survival. I saw reflections of better things, possibilities that were happening to other people.
Still, the major thing I was looking for in all of the books and music was an inability to function as a social creature. Isolation and alienation have been, and continue to be, major themes in art, but I never found complete examples of how I felt. Since our culture is nearly completely based on love stories, I couldn’t find anything that I could identify with about the total absence of love and intimacy.
I’m 25, and I still feel as though I’ve had very, very few moments of actual intimacy, whether they are emotional, spiritual, or physical. Intimacy involves vulnerability, and I’ve always been so vulnerabilty, yet walled in vulnerable, so I haven’t been able to let anyone close. I spent years getting angry at other people for not being interested in me, at myself for being so boring and wholly unlovable. If people didn’t want to be near me, then the obvious answer was that there was nothing about me worthwhile to offer to other people.
I still have no idea what I have to offer others. I’m essentially a broken, emotional wreck of a girl who has become completely undone in a very unfashionable and unpopular sort of way. I learned at a very early age that it was wrong to express my emotional life. Well, actually, I was verbally told that it was good to talk about and express emotions in an appropriate manner, but whenever I expressed them in a less than “reasonable” manner, such as crying or yelling, I was emotionally pubished and made to feel bad and guilty about expressing them. So, I continued to have my huge, massive emotions, I just kept silent about them ( good morning repression!).
I think that I actually came to believe that there was something deeply wrong with me if I had emotional reactions to things. People would tease me, goad me, do somewhat cruel or unaware things, and then when I’d react to them, they’d either get mad at me ( as in the case of my mother), or they’d tease and goad me even more. And so I’d keep it all inside until I’d finally freak out and have unbearable temper tantrums or I’d wake up in desperate fear screaming in the middle of the night.
Because of these explosions, I was deemed an unruly child, and told that my parents couldn’t deal with me. I was abnormal and horrible. I was wrong and broken and my own parents couldn’t even love me. I was a bad person because I kept my parents up at night since I was too scared too fall asleep on my own, completely unaware of what I was afraid of.
I was afraid that I would be alone, that I would be completely abandoned, because I already had been. I don’t know exactly when it happened. There are gestational theories about how the hormonal environment a child is gestated in reflects upon how the child experiences and perceives the world from birth. My mother was incredibly fearful and overwhelmed and stressed out when she was pregnant with me. So, it makes sense that I would be irrationally fearful and overwhelmed from birth, since I came into this world expecting it to be fearful and overwhelming, just like how my mother felt.
I can’t trace it all out, I can’t pull all of the knots out one by one, there are too many, and so many are attached to each other that I don’t know which is which.There is no way to untangle this mess and get to the complete root of it, to find the magical core, but I need to be in it right now, I need to come to a point where I truly come to believe that I don’t need to feel guilty for existing, that I’m not a useless person, that I’m not a failure, that I’m not completely incompetent.
Right at this moment I am completely, absolutely broke. I have a little over a dollar in my bank account. Five dollars left on my credit card. Two dollars in my pocket.
What did I spend my last thirty dollars on? Music. It’s nourishment. It’s survival. I’m in debt, I can’t afford to buy music, I can barely pay the rent, I can only buy one coffee out a week, and yet, I’ll scrape together enough to by that Terami Hirsch cd, or, today, that Charlotte Martin cd. And as soon as I get my paycheck in my bank account, as soon as I put money on my credit cards, I have even more music picked out, all waiting for me to click “buy mp3” and enter those magic numbers.
Sure, I should have a job that brings in more income, so I can easily and guiltlessly buy as much music as I could want. But, if I’m working 8 hours a day in a job that doesn’t involve sitting in front of my computer and listening to music, then when am I going to be able to actually listen and love this music that I worked so hard to buy? A conundrum, yes, and one that is both easy to solve, and ridiculously difficult. I was blessed and cursed to have grown up in a house where both parents worried obsessively about money, but where one saved and one spent frivolously. Therefore, it means that my frivolous isn’t that frivolous, but I still have that impulsive streak. That craving for meaning through acquisition.
In my case, the meaning is found in the form of music, books, and movies. I do have a bit of a problem buying these things. I’m looking for that artwork of perfection that completely explains to me who I am, that shows me my experience of the workld back to me in a perfect mirror. Yes, I look for the truth of myself through the eyes of another. Which means that I will constantly be dissatisfied, since I’m guessing that there probably isn’t an exact reflection of my experience out there in the world.
I’ve been going about all of this the wrong way all these years. I’ve been looking for comfort and nurturing from the outside. I’m not talking about comfort as complacency, but comfort in the recognition of similarity, in the feeling of having friends and family and allies.
Music has been my closest relationship, my most intimate friend for about ten years. Listening to music was the only place that I felt as though I was experiencing reality, experiencing a level of truthfulness not found in my interpersonal relationship. I’m sure that art is the reason I didn’t completely wither and die during the very dry yet drowning season of the first 24 years of my life. Art as coping mechanism, art as my only means of survival. I saw reflections of better things, possibilities that were happening to other people.
Still, the major thing I was looking for in all of the books and music was an inability to function as a social creature. Isolation and alienation have been, and continue to be, major themes in art, but I never found complete examples of how I felt. Since our culture is nearly completely based on love stories, I couldn’t find anything that I could identify with about the total absence of love and intimacy.
I’m 25, and I still feel as though I’ve had very, very few moments of actual intimacy, whether they are emotional, spiritual, or physical. Intimacy involves vulnerability, and I’ve always been so vulnerabilty, yet walled in vulnerable, so I haven’t been able to let anyone close. I spent years getting angry at other people for not being interested in me, at myself for being so boring and wholly unlovable. If people didn’t want to be near me, then the obvious answer was that there was nothing about me worthwhile to offer to other people.
I still have no idea what I have to offer others. I’m essentially a broken, emotional wreck of a girl who has become completely undone in a very unfashionable and unpopular sort of way. I learned at a very early age that it was wrong to express my emotional life. Well, actually, I was verbally told that it was good to talk about and express emotions in an appropriate manner, but whenever I expressed them in a less than “reasonable” manner, such as crying or yelling, I was emotionally pubished and made to feel bad and guilty about expressing them. So, I continued to have my huge, massive emotions, I just kept silent about them ( good morning repression!).
I think that I actually came to believe that there was something deeply wrong with me if I had emotional reactions to things. People would tease me, goad me, do somewhat cruel or unaware things, and then when I’d react to them, they’d either get mad at me ( as in the case of my mother), or they’d tease and goad me even more. And so I’d keep it all inside until I’d finally freak out and have unbearable temper tantrums or I’d wake up in desperate fear screaming in the middle of the night.
Because of these explosions, I was deemed an unruly child, and told that my parents couldn’t deal with me. I was abnormal and horrible. I was wrong and broken and my own parents couldn’t even love me. I was a bad person because I kept my parents up at night since I was too scared too fall asleep on my own, completely unaware of what I was afraid of.
I was afraid that I would be alone, that I would be completely abandoned, because I already had been. I don’t know exactly when it happened. There are gestational theories about how the hormonal environment a child is gestated in reflects upon how the child experiences and perceives the world from birth. My mother was incredibly fearful and overwhelmed and stressed out when she was pregnant with me. So, it makes sense that I would be irrationally fearful and overwhelmed from birth, since I came into this world expecting it to be fearful and overwhelming, just like how my mother felt.
I can’t trace it all out, I can’t pull all of the knots out one by one, there are too many, and so many are attached to each other that I don’t know which is which.There is no way to untangle this mess and get to the complete root of it, to find the magical core, but I need to be in it right now, I need to come to a point where I truly come to believe that I don’t need to feel guilty for existing, that I’m not a useless person, that I’m not a failure, that I’m not completely incompetent.
On birds, of a sort
A crow smashed into the living room window yesterday morning. Sitting on the couch, talking on the phone with Corina, I was watching the crow, as they usually swoop uo to land on the roof. This one just slammed belly first into the glash, amking the whole window shake, and shocking me. I screamed, the crow seemed to fall, but must’ve flown away because by the time I got to the window and looked down it was gone.
It reminded me of all of the crow images in Adriana’s “Prometheus” play. I really liked those crows. Adriana, maybe you should create a piece about crows, well not just about crows, but drawn from and tying in and out of crow imagery. Yes, I know you were in a play with raven imagery, and maybe you’re done with crows because you associate them with “Prometheus”. But that was some awesome crow work, and I hate to see it closed in a file on your computer or pressed between pages in a notebook.
In some animal lore, crows are shape shifters, and are both in knowable reality and the supernatural world. A strange balance, outside of time. In other, they are just dirty scavengers.
I remember there being a lot of crows around when I was a kind, 5-7 or so, and then they disappeared for about five years. I also remember that absence, and noticed when they returned.
It reminded me of all of the crow images in Adriana’s “Prometheus” play. I really liked those crows. Adriana, maybe you should create a piece about crows, well not just about crows, but drawn from and tying in and out of crow imagery. Yes, I know you were in a play with raven imagery, and maybe you’re done with crows because you associate them with “Prometheus”. But that was some awesome crow work, and I hate to see it closed in a file on your computer or pressed between pages in a notebook.
In some animal lore, crows are shape shifters, and are both in knowable reality and the supernatural world. A strange balance, outside of time. In other, they are just dirty scavengers.
I remember there being a lot of crows around when I was a kind, 5-7 or so, and then they disappeared for about five years. I also remember that absence, and noticed when they returned.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Twig Tea and Poetry
Usually I make two cups of tea in the morning, but today I’ve been a little wicked and made three. I’m an underemployed artist who values her time to create and stare into space more than luxury goods, so I can only afford to buy a certain amount of the fancy teas that I drink. Therefore, I make two cups of tea from one tea bag. And I hate the thought of the tea all drying up and sitting vulnerably on a plate in the open dusty air of the kitchen, so I make both cups of tea one after the other and then put a plate over the second cup. However, I have a tendency to forget about the tea that I’m steeping, and today, for example, I was happily listening to Bjork and forgot to switch the tea from one cup to the next, and so, it being Ban Cha and bitter when oversteeped, I had to make another cup of tea with a new tea bag. And somehow ended up with three cups of tea, but I’m kind of distracted, and don’t feel like going into all of the details.
Brain’s a little bit cluttered and wispy this morning, so I’m not even sure how much sense I make. Maybe if I listen to enough Joanna Newson it’ll get clearer- Milk Eyed Mender, though, not YS, YS is just to intense and complicated for this morning. Although I love it dearly, it’s just a little bit overwhelming at the moment, since I’m feeling quite delicate and thin skinned.
The Safeway near my parents house didn’t have Twig tea, so I had to settle for Ban Cha, which I also love, but I feel the caffeine effects more. With twig, I can drink it all day, whenever I want because the caffeine level is negligible, but Ban Cha I can only drink first thing in the morning, otherwise I’m mildly jittery.
Twig tea has been my favorite tea, hands down heart full for awhile. I don’t like fruit teas. I like the earthy taste. Tea that almost tastes like dirt, it grounds me, helps me find me feet rooted down. So I loved it when I stumbled upon a reference to “ a picnic of bee pollen and twig tea” (p 27, Hawksley Burns for Isadora) in a Hawksley Workman poem.
I love twig tea more, but “hawksley burns for isadora” is stunning and well worth the read. I discovered it at the same time that I started reading Anne Michaels’ (author of “Fugitive Pieces) poetry, and the two authors are now permantely entwined in my mind, and I love that. I have high poetic standards, and only have a few poets that I keep on my bookshelves and close to my heart. Stephanie Bolster was my first favorite poet, especially her series written from the paintings of Jean Paul Lemieux in “Two Bowls of Milk”. I used “L’orpheline” as my poetic text in second year voice class, and to this day it’s probably the only piece of text I actually have memorized. “White Stone: The Alice Poems” and “Pavilion” are also extraordinary books, with a visceral yet gentle tone to them.
Although I don’t enjoy a large portion of his work, and am more than slightly uncomfortable with his supposed anti-semitic views ( much like Ezra Pound, who wrote a couple of short stunenrs) which definitely reflects on how I perceive his work, I am enamored of some TS Eliot poems. His preludes are potent. Too bad “Cats” stole some of the more gorgeous lines from these short momentous and emotionally vigorous words.
Also, one of my favorite songs ever is Sarah Slean’s “Eliot”. I remember the first time I heard it, and fell in instant love. I was in the car on the Upper Levels Highway in North van, listening to CBC radio, and it was played, and I was in love. I love to sing it, play it on the piano and sing along, listen to the version on “Blue Parade”, listen to the fabulous revamped version on “Night Bugs”.
And then there’s Emily. Miss Dickinson, who has to be put in a category all of her own, because I relate to her work very differently than my other favorites. One of my goals in life is to read fully and deeply each one of her poems by the end of my life.
I wish I had more profound things to say about the artists whose work I love, but it’s all abouit the experience, and the translation of experience into words is such an arduous and loving process. It’s a lifetime’s worth of work.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Another note on art
I think that I would be completely different if I had beautiful hair. Long, but not too long hair that can easily be mussed, and pinned up haphazardly with the intentionally messy artistic look. I just don’t have the great hair thing going on.
I put up my hair, put on make-up, and wore a red dress to go food shopping this evening. Often, the trip to the supermarket is the big outing of my day, and sometimes even the week.
The heaviness lifts a bit around sunset, pre-twilight, when the clouds are pooling themselves into finely colored waves and shapes. How can I not feel glorious for at least five minutes when the sky is such brights pinks and purples, and so many blues? And orange…always the orange that I forget, but that adds that final little touch. It’s almost impossible to write about sunsets without sounding completely trite and overused. Some things really don’t need to be directly translated into words.
I’ve had to begin separating creation from creativity. Creation implies that something is, or is being created, whereas creativity is a focus of energy, a flow of the possibility of breing things into existence, drawing them down or in or through the ether and into something tangible, whether it is physical, or emotional, or anything. Creativity is possibility, unproven. Such a vague word, but vagueness can sometimes be helpful when the ongoing attempt at reaching some concrete knowledge or question is unsuitable or too confusing or demanding.
I’ve yet to be able to understand how it is possible to hold both utter hopeful wonder and complete despairing grief in the same body at the same time. With fluctuations and moments of one overtaking the other, but intense emotions, even the positive ones can be paralyzing.
I am all over the place tonight. Restless and distracted, that searching sense turned up high, all shaky and just this side of kind of desperate. I’m circling around something, but I’m not sure what.
I’m thinking about tortured/tormented artist archetypes, and the modern conception of teenage angst, and where indivuals’ experiences of emotional and mental anguish actually fit. No matter how many lectures I get on “respecting the craft, respecting art”, I still believe that art and creativity are emotional outlets, are contained spaces in which to reveal and explore our pains and sufferings, our joys and hopes. The person must come before the art, as the art is only there to present or explain something about the world, and those of us in it. To submerge the emotional and intellectual and transcendent qualities of good ro even great art is to relegate it to complete uselessness. And I have no time nor desire to be useless.
Do we create at the expense of living? Isn’t giving in to creative impules and desires a deep form of living? Isn’t engaging with a project a form of relationship, a form of deepening one’s relationship to oneself and exploring one’s place in the world? Yes we need to consider audience when we’re working, but if we put ourselves too much into the hands of other’s expectations, then we are no longer creating something true, but creating to appease those who are expecting certain things. If playwrights continue to follow Aristotle’s theories of playwriting, then they are not following their own impulses, they are not creating work that is imperative and necessary to the world that we live in. A world on the brink of something, but who knows what because we’re all stuck in our little boxes and containers, so afraid to actually make anything that says something true about ourselves.
Because I deeply believe that if we are able to tap into something that feels fundamentally, deeply, right and NECESSARY in its creation, then other people will respond to that. We don’t need audiences of millions to say something. We don’t have to say anything unique, we just have to say it true and clearly, and it can take so many years, and so much glorious and painful work to get there. There is no finished project, there is no perfection, because everything is just a continuous building on the previous project, on the previous experience.
Maybe I’m not writing my play right now, maybe I’m not even convinced that it is a play, but I am writing what I need to write. This writing is not done to get through to some more important point, to hone my skills, to make me into a fiercer writer, although that happens along the way. I don’t want to take classes to teach me to be better at something, to teach me how I should be writing, what I should be making, and exactly how I should be going about it. I want to take classes to learn from the wisdom of others, to take part in their expansive and extraordinary creative energy, in their trueness. To learn how to be truer to myself and be able to find my gifts.
The artist in me has always been at odds with the teachers I’ve had, that, even in their kindest and most expansive moments, they were trying to shape me into an already predefined and predetermined role of artist. I have no idea what it means to be an artist. All I know is that my fingers twitch, and ache to be involved in some act of creativity when I see or hear the word artist. Not the word art-art seems to stagnant and stable, ad I think of cool white galleries, with all the paintings hanging just right, no jumple, no hope all askew and blissful.
I am askew, naturally. Just a little off, undetermined and off balance. Never quite getting my footing, even when I sink lightly in mud.
And since I’m being honest and forthright, I hate pretension. Experimental art is not intrinsically pretentious-it is the manner of the artist who created the art that is pretentious, or the manner of the audience receiving the art that is creating the atmosphere of pretension. Exclusivity causes pretension. Pretending that people don’t understand what’s going on is pretension.People understand unless they choose not to, and most of us have chosen not to even reach for understanding before we even understand what the word art means.
Simplicity in art does not mean making redundant and cliched work. It means straying close to the bone and tearing through that metaphorical skin to make it all a little bit clearer and brighter. I’m not talking about ripping ourselves apart, although some good introspective revamping is good for anybody. Most of the time, we aren’t even consciously aware of our biases, of what our minds and emotions are bringing into a room to meet something, whether it is a work of art, or another person.
I find this whole social act of ignoring and covering up what we’re really thinking and feeling to be the most destructive thing we do to ourselves, and to our creativity. Each and every person is an artist at heart, the human spirit, the animal spirit, plant spirit, every cell, every ounce of air or airless space is creativity, and needs to be let alone to become what it will become. But we’re too busy shaping and being shaped by each other to let things grow in time.
Two poems.
1.
Capturing light
is an event
still unmechanized
but the flash of broken shutters
lets in too much wind
an element vision
contained to projection
we've turned our limits upside down
and the last wall
has only the smallest cracks
but my fingers aren't as nimble
as they are small.
2.
When the roots went upwards
let our boots fill with water
slipping along slick clay surfaces
this is not a pond or a lake
only a creek that ends
with rust
though this pool is still brave enough
to collect itself
here
Capturing light
is an event
still unmechanized
but the flash of broken shutters
lets in too much wind
an element vision
contained to projection
we've turned our limits upside down
and the last wall
has only the smallest cracks
but my fingers aren't as nimble
as they are small.
2.
When the roots went upwards
let our boots fill with water
slipping along slick clay surfaces
this is not a pond or a lake
only a creek that ends
with rust
though this pool is still brave enough
to collect itself
here
brazen wings
I painted a picture last night. A real live picture, at least it was during the time that I was painting it. Well, not so much a picture as colorful swirly greens of any variety possible, but definitely not all the imaginable greens. To be able to put all of the imaginable greens into one small painting on a small piece of printer paper would take years and an intense amount of very satisfying effort. An effort I don’t think I have the energy for at the moment. But it’s a thought.
If you’ve seen my “wall of art” beside my very messy, crayon, paper and dead flowers in a vase “office” ( also known as the left hand corner of the living room if you happen to be facing the window), you’ll understand what I mean when I say painting. Concept stretched from crayon top crayon and ink to watercolor and ink.
It’s 11:42 am and I’m at work. Waiting for the phone to ring. I’m always on edge when I wait for the phone to ring. I can’t relax if something might be about to happen. Sometimes nobody calls during the day, but I still have at least a mildly stressful day, just waiting for the phone to ring, knowing that I could be interrupted from my emotional reverie/ breakdown at any time. And I hate being interrupted while I’m doing anything. Unless it’s a happy interruption, the definition of which escapes me right now.
The left side of my face is kind of numb/ twitchy. I ate strange tasting sweet pickles last night, so maybe I have botulism. Either that, or I’m just having zoloft withdrawl symptoms. I’m hoping for the latter, really, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry that something horrible is currently happening inside of my body.When you can’t deal with trauma and too much in the outside world, you might internalize, and feel that even your own body is attacking and failing you. At least, that’s how I tend to deal with my problems.
I’m also quite tired in a weighty sort of way, and considering the way my abdomen and lower back seem to have constant aching, I’m most likely in a lovely bout of PMS. Which I still find an odd thing, as my period have had a tendency to get worse as I get older. When I was younger, cramps were almost unnoticeable, and back aches, exhaustion, and lack of appetite weren’t any kind of issue. Now, for about the last six or seven years, my cramps have sometimes been so bad that I’ve had to leave work doubled over, seeing stars spin because I was in so much pain. As stress and doubt have increased, so have physical responses to brain crazy. Of course. Which all makes sense.
I stole some of my roommate’s cheerios this morning. I should tell her, but I hate confrontation, so I may not tell her. One day.
Other rommmate just woke up as I was chasing a fly through the apartment, trying to get it to go back outside. We seem to have way too many flies and moths…what are they trying to tell us in their quiet rustling messages fluttered through brazen wings?
If you’ve seen my “wall of art” beside my very messy, crayon, paper and dead flowers in a vase “office” ( also known as the left hand corner of the living room if you happen to be facing the window), you’ll understand what I mean when I say painting. Concept stretched from crayon top crayon and ink to watercolor and ink.
It’s 11:42 am and I’m at work. Waiting for the phone to ring. I’m always on edge when I wait for the phone to ring. I can’t relax if something might be about to happen. Sometimes nobody calls during the day, but I still have at least a mildly stressful day, just waiting for the phone to ring, knowing that I could be interrupted from my emotional reverie/ breakdown at any time. And I hate being interrupted while I’m doing anything. Unless it’s a happy interruption, the definition of which escapes me right now.
The left side of my face is kind of numb/ twitchy. I ate strange tasting sweet pickles last night, so maybe I have botulism. Either that, or I’m just having zoloft withdrawl symptoms. I’m hoping for the latter, really, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry that something horrible is currently happening inside of my body.When you can’t deal with trauma and too much in the outside world, you might internalize, and feel that even your own body is attacking and failing you. At least, that’s how I tend to deal with my problems.
I’m also quite tired in a weighty sort of way, and considering the way my abdomen and lower back seem to have constant aching, I’m most likely in a lovely bout of PMS. Which I still find an odd thing, as my period have had a tendency to get worse as I get older. When I was younger, cramps were almost unnoticeable, and back aches, exhaustion, and lack of appetite weren’t any kind of issue. Now, for about the last six or seven years, my cramps have sometimes been so bad that I’ve had to leave work doubled over, seeing stars spin because I was in so much pain. As stress and doubt have increased, so have physical responses to brain crazy. Of course. Which all makes sense.
I stole some of my roommate’s cheerios this morning. I should tell her, but I hate confrontation, so I may not tell her. One day.
Other rommmate just woke up as I was chasing a fly through the apartment, trying to get it to go back outside. We seem to have way too many flies and moths…what are they trying to tell us in their quiet rustling messages fluttered through brazen wings?
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Dictionaries, or I don't believe in art for art's sake.
You know, I don't have a lot of practice in the writing of love letters, especially to inanimate objects. Definitely not up to the level of Hawksley Workman's ode to paper "Claire Fontaine", which is a great song made even greater by the fact that it's about paper, but really not, you know how these things work. And anyways, I'm definitely not the gal to write love letters about paper, because paper and I have a rather long and unfortunate history of being at odds with one another. As in, I stare at blank paper and wait for something to happen, but it rarely does.
As well, I'm terrible at drawing, the point of translation between what I see in my head and what I put down on paper is missing at least three volumes of its dictionary. That doesn't mean I don't have the impetus to draw, though I tend to stick to crayons and swirly lines.
I've been thinking about pottery lately. Something to keep my hands busy that has numerous different stages. Or making clay and paper mache masks/ random art pieces again. I like the action of forming with my hands, then paper mache-ing, and then taking out the clay, and then painting. Not big artistic dreams fueled by distinctively intelligent conceptual ideas, but just letting go of making a product for someone else, and just enjoying spending time creating something, not worry about making the most meaningful and well received piece of art ever.
Because that's one of my major struggles with art and the action and motions of creating: I always feel as though I have to be making art to change the world, art that has so much meaning that it can barely be contained within the form that it is presented in. Otherwise, I see no point in making art. I'm not interested in making art for art's sake. I don't believe in devotion to " the craft", whatever form it takes, just to forward that form of art. If it doesn't have human repercussions, emotional and intellectual, tangible repercussions ( and I consider spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health to be included in the tangible repercussion category) then I'm not interested. It seems impossible for something to be stunningly beautiful, but vapid at the same time.
Interesting, because I've had my work critiqued as being " beautiful but meaningless" before. Which, if someone is looking to really stab me in the not so hard heart, "meaningless" is about the best insult to strike me with. It's up there with heartless, cruel, uncaring, and selfish. Meaningless.
I struggle every moment of every day with meaning, and my need for meaning. If people have seen my work or even myself as meaningless, it's because I've spent so long attempting to fulfill someone else's idea of meaning, and so my attempt at meaning reads as relatively hollow, because it doesn't resonate truly.
I need to resonate within myself, with everything I think or do. Not be a perfect something else.
I am not vapid. Crazy and overwhelming maybe, but not vapid.
And I'm not a philosopher. Just because I can figure out something in my head, or make it make logical, rational sense on paper ( which I can rarely do anyways), doesn't mean I'm satisfied. In fact, if I can't put thought into action then I often feel as if it is pointless to even spend too much time with that particular length of thought. I can easily out think myself, until my brain is running in fearful circles, convinced of every horrible potential that could ever occur.
Which is supposed to be solved by more thinking, by outsmarting my own brain into disproving all of my negative beliefs. I know, a vast reduction of CBT, but that's how I think of it. Thing is, every negative thing, every fearful thing I can think of could potentially happen...this is where I get all tripped up-how is it possible to look at the world, and not be afraid.
How is it possible to even wake up in the morning and mot just roll over and go back to sleep because there's nothing to get up for when everything horrible just seems to be beating against your skin, barely held out by thinly, single paned window glass. When anytime a person moves it seems as though all she does is create excess waste that can't be disposed of, can't eat breakfast without destroying half the world, can't go to work and earn a living without causing something or someone somewhere to be in some kind of agony. How is it possible to exist when it seems as though your existence is predicated upon someone else's pain.
And yes, I know it's not entirely my fault, and I'm not responsible for changing everything, not is it possible for me to. I didn't create the system, but I do choose whether or not to continue it. Though I've spent my entire life knowing, deep in my gut, how wrong so much of what we do is, not taking part has always been to scary to fully commit myself to. Being even more of a social pariah than I've already been. A person is so much more vulnerable when they find themselves on the outside of a community, particularly a massive, emotionally and intellectually brainwashed one.
I have to believe that other people are driven by the same fears, and act out of the same seeminly impotent vulnerability, because that's the only way the world makes sense. I can handle the fact that people are scared and confused, and that their thought and behaviours stem from this, whereas I can't handle the though that people live their lives unhappily, and make other people unhappy on purpose.
If people weren't scared and fearful and vulnerable, why would they spend their entire lives devoting themselves to meaningless action that they loathe?
As well, I'm terrible at drawing, the point of translation between what I see in my head and what I put down on paper is missing at least three volumes of its dictionary. That doesn't mean I don't have the impetus to draw, though I tend to stick to crayons and swirly lines.
I've been thinking about pottery lately. Something to keep my hands busy that has numerous different stages. Or making clay and paper mache masks/ random art pieces again. I like the action of forming with my hands, then paper mache-ing, and then taking out the clay, and then painting. Not big artistic dreams fueled by distinctively intelligent conceptual ideas, but just letting go of making a product for someone else, and just enjoying spending time creating something, not worry about making the most meaningful and well received piece of art ever.
Because that's one of my major struggles with art and the action and motions of creating: I always feel as though I have to be making art to change the world, art that has so much meaning that it can barely be contained within the form that it is presented in. Otherwise, I see no point in making art. I'm not interested in making art for art's sake. I don't believe in devotion to " the craft", whatever form it takes, just to forward that form of art. If it doesn't have human repercussions, emotional and intellectual, tangible repercussions ( and I consider spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health to be included in the tangible repercussion category) then I'm not interested. It seems impossible for something to be stunningly beautiful, but vapid at the same time.
Interesting, because I've had my work critiqued as being " beautiful but meaningless" before. Which, if someone is looking to really stab me in the not so hard heart, "meaningless" is about the best insult to strike me with. It's up there with heartless, cruel, uncaring, and selfish. Meaningless.
I struggle every moment of every day with meaning, and my need for meaning. If people have seen my work or even myself as meaningless, it's because I've spent so long attempting to fulfill someone else's idea of meaning, and so my attempt at meaning reads as relatively hollow, because it doesn't resonate truly.
I need to resonate within myself, with everything I think or do. Not be a perfect something else.
I am not vapid. Crazy and overwhelming maybe, but not vapid.
And I'm not a philosopher. Just because I can figure out something in my head, or make it make logical, rational sense on paper ( which I can rarely do anyways), doesn't mean I'm satisfied. In fact, if I can't put thought into action then I often feel as if it is pointless to even spend too much time with that particular length of thought. I can easily out think myself, until my brain is running in fearful circles, convinced of every horrible potential that could ever occur.
Which is supposed to be solved by more thinking, by outsmarting my own brain into disproving all of my negative beliefs. I know, a vast reduction of CBT, but that's how I think of it. Thing is, every negative thing, every fearful thing I can think of could potentially happen...this is where I get all tripped up-how is it possible to look at the world, and not be afraid.
How is it possible to even wake up in the morning and mot just roll over and go back to sleep because there's nothing to get up for when everything horrible just seems to be beating against your skin, barely held out by thinly, single paned window glass. When anytime a person moves it seems as though all she does is create excess waste that can't be disposed of, can't eat breakfast without destroying half the world, can't go to work and earn a living without causing something or someone somewhere to be in some kind of agony. How is it possible to exist when it seems as though your existence is predicated upon someone else's pain.
And yes, I know it's not entirely my fault, and I'm not responsible for changing everything, not is it possible for me to. I didn't create the system, but I do choose whether or not to continue it. Though I've spent my entire life knowing, deep in my gut, how wrong so much of what we do is, not taking part has always been to scary to fully commit myself to. Being even more of a social pariah than I've already been. A person is so much more vulnerable when they find themselves on the outside of a community, particularly a massive, emotionally and intellectually brainwashed one.
I have to believe that other people are driven by the same fears, and act out of the same seeminly impotent vulnerability, because that's the only way the world makes sense. I can handle the fact that people are scared and confused, and that their thought and behaviours stem from this, whereas I can't handle the though that people live their lives unhappily, and make other people unhappy on purpose.
If people weren't scared and fearful and vulnerable, why would they spend their entire lives devoting themselves to meaningless action that they loathe?
Saturday, June 14, 2008
A love poem to my ipod.
I got an ipod shuffle. I'm in love, it's true love this time.I lie in bed late at night, in the dark, earphones curled in my ears and the odd blue machine so full of sounds and hopes curled into my palm. Vienna Teng's "Recessional" delicately swirls into my head and passes through my body as the new words strung together pass along the nerve lines between my lips and my mind. Calm and safe in bed for once.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Things I know and remember about myself:
I like music with pianos as the main instrument.
I especially like independent female piano players/singers who write obscure, symbolic and earthy watery poem painty lyrics such as:
Tori Amos (ok, not independent artist, but in spirit)
Jennifer Terran
Terami Hirsch
Charlotte Martin
Molly Zenobia
I have a delicate heart in a very strong ribcage ( sinews bones and muscles keep me close and upright).
I like Chagall’s paintings, especially the ones with lost of blue.
I absolutely love my queen sized bed with the torn and immaculate red satin and gold patterned quilt ( thank you Ann, for giving them to me).
I just let my tea steep for way too long, and it may be too bitter to drink-I got preoccuppied, which I often do.
If I get emotionally upset, my stomach gets really upset, and my shoulders tense up and give me bad headaches, and then I just want to stay in bed all day listening to calming music.
I’m actually a brunette, but I feel like a redhead.
I believe that everyone in the world deserves to get paid for doing things they love.
I used to write songs, but I didn’t think they were good enough, so I stopped.
I hate playing and, generally, watching team sports. I get really upset, because somebody always has to lose, and nobody deserves to lose. And nobody deserves to win.
I think that if everybody was entitled to massage therapy and therapeutic/creative councelling in the same way that we are allotted basic health services and presciption drugs, then we’d all have gorgeously loved and healthy bodies and minds, thinking prettier thoughts, and we’d figure out how to solve problems without mass destruction of each other and the environment in the process.
If I do anything that I don’t want to do, specifically jobs and the like, I get physically ill.
I especially like independent female piano players/singers who write obscure, symbolic and earthy watery poem painty lyrics such as:
Tori Amos (ok, not independent artist, but in spirit)
Jennifer Terran
Terami Hirsch
Charlotte Martin
Molly Zenobia
I have a delicate heart in a very strong ribcage ( sinews bones and muscles keep me close and upright).
I like Chagall’s paintings, especially the ones with lost of blue.
I absolutely love my queen sized bed with the torn and immaculate red satin and gold patterned quilt ( thank you Ann, for giving them to me).
I just let my tea steep for way too long, and it may be too bitter to drink-I got preoccuppied, which I often do.
If I get emotionally upset, my stomach gets really upset, and my shoulders tense up and give me bad headaches, and then I just want to stay in bed all day listening to calming music.
I’m actually a brunette, but I feel like a redhead.
I believe that everyone in the world deserves to get paid for doing things they love.
I used to write songs, but I didn’t think they were good enough, so I stopped.
I hate playing and, generally, watching team sports. I get really upset, because somebody always has to lose, and nobody deserves to lose. And nobody deserves to win.
I think that if everybody was entitled to massage therapy and therapeutic/creative councelling in the same way that we are allotted basic health services and presciption drugs, then we’d all have gorgeously loved and healthy bodies and minds, thinking prettier thoughts, and we’d figure out how to solve problems without mass destruction of each other and the environment in the process.
If I do anything that I don’t want to do, specifically jobs and the like, I get physically ill.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Pixies and Posies Part Two
I’ve spent years being convinced that I was dying of some disease. Unsure of which, exactly, but certain that it was inside of me, working working, somehow.
It’s as though no one cared enough to pay attention to who I was, who I am, and instead just shoved me into every corner that everybody else was in. No wonder and raved and raged.
I feel deeply uncared for. unrespected. Parent, friends, teachers, relatives never cultivated what they saw in me. They never saw me, they saw the figure of what I should be, not what I was. Nobody cared who I was, and so I couldn’t care who I was. I’ve never know who I’ve been. All along I’ve been lost and flailing inside my own skin, inside my head no anchors to keep me in some kind of place of self recognition.
I lost any spark of life, the seed of wonder and possibility gone dormant so quickly. Exhausted and beyond, I began to die, right from the beginning.
I’ve been on the threshold of death for many years, time on the edge barely balancing. Fading away before I had the chance of solidity. My body became turmoil, unable to deal with the constant sensation of falling, falling apart, of pushing everything I’d ever felt down and down again, swallowing my words and my tears, brutalizing my heart and having all of my silenced pain embodied.
I feel sick all of the time. I don’t know what it feels like to Not be tired. My body has tried so hard to help me survive, to keep it all contained so I could go on living in the world, so I could look people in the eye and walk out of my room, sit in badly ventilated rooms full of manipulative and pained children. My body did what it could to protect me.
We all have so many smaller deaths that steal pieces of our hearts/souls whatever you consider the core part of your wise and strong self to be. Mine just piled up so much that my mind and body started to believe it. Disease seemed ever present and inevitable. I was just waiting to die. If a disease didn’t get me, then I’d be murdered, or there’d be a war and I’d be tortured horribly until I died the most painful death imaginable, or some strange end of the world apocalyptic happening would occur. ( It’s completely embarrassing to admit that I was, and still am to an extent, obsessed with these thoughts, this implicit knowledge, because it sounds ridiculous). But all I knew and understood was death, since I’ve spent my whole life barely existing.
When I quit my job in October, I knew I was dying. I knew it in my deepest heart. Preparing for death is frightening and simple. If I was going to die, why bother having a job, I wouldn’t need money. I went to sleep each night knowing that I probably wouldn’t wake up, and each morning when I did I was shocked and began the waiting over again. I walked throuigh my days with death wrapped kindly around me, her hands in my hair and her breath softly purring along my neck. I didn’t have relationships with people, I drank tea or gin with a spectre. I couldn’t do anything with my time, because it all seemed too pointless, if I was going to be gone at any time.
Barely alive. I’ve been. Silenced and still. So of course I became an actor, wanted to be a singer, onstage, seen. Prove my existence and worth. I somehow maintained a thread of fervor through it all, a sense of something pulling me along under the waves, a drifting. To be heard To be heard. I don’t know how to talk anymore, my tongue is so thick and heavy from disuse.
Tidiness has never been me. I live for some sense of chaos, threads of slight organization thrown in just so I know that I can find my way out of the labyrinth. I think I’m done talking about death for at least an hour or two.
Pixies and Posies, Part One
Song of the day: Charlotte Martin “Bones”
So, I have this thing that I tend to do. Since I was 16 and started having panic attacks ( which directly coincided with my first job-interesting, isn’t it) I tend to have a complete emotional and mental breakdown, quit my job or barely scrape by in school, and go on some kind of anti-depressant medication. Then, in a couple of months, when all of my problems and temperamental difficulties don’t magically go away, I stop taking my medication out of disillusionment. And in a couple of month, I crash again and start the cycle over. This has happened at least five times-I’m counting different medications, here. I’ve pumped my body through of almost every SSRI anti-depressant available, and never found that magic pill to make me a normal, functioning human being girl thing.
Out of this, I’ve come to two conclusions. One is that I’m never going to be a normal, functioning human being girl thing. I’m really not. Okay. Two is that if I seem to be non-responsive, or just get a little agitated and manic on, all of these different drugs, maybe it isn’t a problem to be solved with drugs.
What I’m really trying to say is maybe I don’t need to be fixed. This is not a failure. I’ve been trying to change myself into something I’m not, someone I’m not since I was born. And I’ve been nothing but encouraged to fit in, to fix myself, by those closest to me, molding me out of shape, smooth clay roughened weak and distorted by time and false frames. Children are less malleable than they seem-it’s all a surface affectation created in the search for love and survival.
And me, I’ve been a worse case than most, I’m not even good at pretending, at playing along. I’ve tried. So hard. Did everything I was supposed to, half-heartedly, without any joy. I’ve never been good enough at anything. I’ve always been wrong, in the wrong place, having the wrong words, not thin enough, not tall enough, not brave enough, not happy enough, not self destructive enough to warrant attention. To exist.
No wonder I’ve felt like a ghost hovering on the fringes of life, as though I’ve been living in a different wrold than anyone else. As though my bones and skin have dissipated, leaving a gentle shadow to meander lostly through the world. I’ve given up so much of myself in the process of just trying to survive and exist that I have nearly forced myself into oblivion. I’ve been cut in portions, each section cordoned off by thick ropes and guards who yell at me in voices that are not my own.
Yelling is the only way I’ve ever been able to make my voice heard. My parents yelled at each other, and argued, and still, never heard each other. When I yell, everyone hates me, but they almost listen. My words aren’t enough, my words have hidden themselves in my chest, in my gut, closed off, knowing that they’re unwanted. How does a girl get to this place? It’s not as though I woke up one morning with this new feeling that I was useless and insignificant, unwanted and undeserving of existence. My parents hovered and smothered, proclaimed their love loudly and seemed to encourage me to grow and flourish. Tendrilling so deeply underneath was years of fear and their own abandoned dreams of wholeness and creativity. What they said was not what they did, and what they taught me.
From them I learned to ignore my intuition, to struggle towards goals and attachments that didn’t resonate, towards things I could never do, and was not meants to do. Somehow I learned and deeply soaked up the belief system that I have nothing of worth to offer the world, and that I am a fragile and silent creature. Broken bird wings from the start.
I honor and love that fragility, it is a part of me, my thin skin and sensitivity, the joy of gentleness and soft voices are thoroughly embedded in some of my chambers. My weakness is a blessing that I hold dearly. At heart I am guileless, and have no need for jealousies or competitions. Underneath I have this strangely connected system, a skeleton held tightly together with pieces of wool and disparate lengths of silk.
But all of this is invisible to the outside, and serves no purpose in the modern marketplace of the world. I am not economically sound, and therefore no one wants to bother investing in my. I have nothing to offer capitalism but empty hands and a desire to create without unhealthy destruction( more on healthy/unhealthy destruction later I’m sure). Doing things that are frustrating and meaningless literally kills me.
So, I have this thing that I tend to do. Since I was 16 and started having panic attacks ( which directly coincided with my first job-interesting, isn’t it) I tend to have a complete emotional and mental breakdown, quit my job or barely scrape by in school, and go on some kind of anti-depressant medication. Then, in a couple of months, when all of my problems and temperamental difficulties don’t magically go away, I stop taking my medication out of disillusionment. And in a couple of month, I crash again and start the cycle over. This has happened at least five times-I’m counting different medications, here. I’ve pumped my body through of almost every SSRI anti-depressant available, and never found that magic pill to make me a normal, functioning human being girl thing.
Out of this, I’ve come to two conclusions. One is that I’m never going to be a normal, functioning human being girl thing. I’m really not. Okay. Two is that if I seem to be non-responsive, or just get a little agitated and manic on, all of these different drugs, maybe it isn’t a problem to be solved with drugs.
What I’m really trying to say is maybe I don’t need to be fixed. This is not a failure. I’ve been trying to change myself into something I’m not, someone I’m not since I was born. And I’ve been nothing but encouraged to fit in, to fix myself, by those closest to me, molding me out of shape, smooth clay roughened weak and distorted by time and false frames. Children are less malleable than they seem-it’s all a surface affectation created in the search for love and survival.
And me, I’ve been a worse case than most, I’m not even good at pretending, at playing along. I’ve tried. So hard. Did everything I was supposed to, half-heartedly, without any joy. I’ve never been good enough at anything. I’ve always been wrong, in the wrong place, having the wrong words, not thin enough, not tall enough, not brave enough, not happy enough, not self destructive enough to warrant attention. To exist.
No wonder I’ve felt like a ghost hovering on the fringes of life, as though I’ve been living in a different wrold than anyone else. As though my bones and skin have dissipated, leaving a gentle shadow to meander lostly through the world. I’ve given up so much of myself in the process of just trying to survive and exist that I have nearly forced myself into oblivion. I’ve been cut in portions, each section cordoned off by thick ropes and guards who yell at me in voices that are not my own.
Yelling is the only way I’ve ever been able to make my voice heard. My parents yelled at each other, and argued, and still, never heard each other. When I yell, everyone hates me, but they almost listen. My words aren’t enough, my words have hidden themselves in my chest, in my gut, closed off, knowing that they’re unwanted. How does a girl get to this place? It’s not as though I woke up one morning with this new feeling that I was useless and insignificant, unwanted and undeserving of existence. My parents hovered and smothered, proclaimed their love loudly and seemed to encourage me to grow and flourish. Tendrilling so deeply underneath was years of fear and their own abandoned dreams of wholeness and creativity. What they said was not what they did, and what they taught me.
From them I learned to ignore my intuition, to struggle towards goals and attachments that didn’t resonate, towards things I could never do, and was not meants to do. Somehow I learned and deeply soaked up the belief system that I have nothing of worth to offer the world, and that I am a fragile and silent creature. Broken bird wings from the start.
I honor and love that fragility, it is a part of me, my thin skin and sensitivity, the joy of gentleness and soft voices are thoroughly embedded in some of my chambers. My weakness is a blessing that I hold dearly. At heart I am guileless, and have no need for jealousies or competitions. Underneath I have this strangely connected system, a skeleton held tightly together with pieces of wool and disparate lengths of silk.
But all of this is invisible to the outside, and serves no purpose in the modern marketplace of the world. I am not economically sound, and therefore no one wants to bother investing in my. I have nothing to offer capitalism but empty hands and a desire to create without unhealthy destruction( more on healthy/unhealthy destruction later I’m sure). Doing things that are frustrating and meaningless literally kills me.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Ignoring gut feeling, Part One
It's impossible for me to write on the computer at my parents house without someone reading over my shoulder, or at least being in the room. No privacy. Which is why I had to move out, besides it being complete time. There is no emotional space for creativity at their house, and someone is always hovering.This concept of presence is interesting to me, particularly relating to a conversation I had yesterday, with the always lovely Miss B, who took me out for lunch ( for which I will always be grateful, and I completely have a bottle of wine with your name on it on my dresser. Which is where I keep wine, apparently). She referred to me as an orphan, a concept which I'd never considered, considering that my parents are alive and relatively well, and still very much involved in my life.
Generally, one assumes that an orphan is someone who has lost their parents, or who never knew their parents, who has been rejected by their parents. Well, I just defined that one right there for myself.
I have to do laundry, and it just doesn’t want to get done. Everything I own is strewn around on the floor of my room, waiting to be clean. The doing of anythign is kind of eliding me this afternoon. It’s so much better to just stare into my mug of tea, wishing I had coffee, listening to Jennifer Terran music in the background. My muscles don’t want to move, and my heart is heavy. With sleep, with dreams, with waking and being.
Although my mood could swing and sway away at any time, today seems to be a dull one. Sluggishness and some sort of apprehension.
When did I stop listening to Sinead O’Connor and Patti Smith? Such awe-someness.
When the guilt set in. The guilt of being a girl and listening to music made by other gals. It’s a dangerous place to play, within the guilt of gender. Never healthy. Distance and thought around it, the whys and hows and maybes, but never the guilt.
If I feel guilty about being a girl, it means that I’m completely buying into the belief systems that girls are not good enough, and that yes, there will always be something lacking, to go back far beyond Freud and his presumed enviousnesses. No wonder I feel like shit if I wake up every morning believing, in the back of my mind and soul, that I’m not good enough, not enough because of my gender and so-called gender-isms.That my “girliness” is a hindrance to others, and that what I spend my day doing and believing in is not good enough.
Part of this is no doubt brought up by multiple conversations I had yesterday (with Adriana and Jo) about sports and dance/music classes. I spent most of my elementary school years ( age 5-12){That’s 7 years, a really really long time to a kid} trying desperately to play any and all team sports. I played soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball. I even tried curling. Tried to learn how to skate. Tried to run track and field. Tried gymnastics, even. Essentially, I spent 7 years fiercly trying to do something I hated. Because I wanted to fit in. because everyone played sports, and in order to be anybody or anything, you not only had to play team sports, you had to be good at them. And I never was.
I loathed each and every practice, would scream and cry before every soccer game, and yet, I kept on, determined. There was no other way that I saw, no other potential way to exist and be seen and be a part of school, of community, of life.
I was supposed to toughen up, to get used to the rough and tumble way of sports. I even hated having to go outside and play on the playground at lunchtime, or daycare. I wanted to stay inside and read Nancy Drew or color or make jewellery.
Well, I never toughend up. I am not your typical tough girl, thick skinned and bittersweet. I am these thigns, but it’s in my bones. Deep marrow, the bones that hold me up, but are covered in veins, sinews, muscles and skin. Delicate skin that tears easily and bears all the scars I’ve ever pretended not to notice.
I was discouraged. My courage lost in a full barrel rolled off a rocky cliff somewhere off a distant coast. Disenheartened, fierce heart.
Generally, one assumes that an orphan is someone who has lost their parents, or who never knew their parents, who has been rejected by their parents. Well, I just defined that one right there for myself.
I have to do laundry, and it just doesn’t want to get done. Everything I own is strewn around on the floor of my room, waiting to be clean. The doing of anythign is kind of eliding me this afternoon. It’s so much better to just stare into my mug of tea, wishing I had coffee, listening to Jennifer Terran music in the background. My muscles don’t want to move, and my heart is heavy. With sleep, with dreams, with waking and being.
Although my mood could swing and sway away at any time, today seems to be a dull one. Sluggishness and some sort of apprehension.
When did I stop listening to Sinead O’Connor and Patti Smith? Such awe-someness.
When the guilt set in. The guilt of being a girl and listening to music made by other gals. It’s a dangerous place to play, within the guilt of gender. Never healthy. Distance and thought around it, the whys and hows and maybes, but never the guilt.
If I feel guilty about being a girl, it means that I’m completely buying into the belief systems that girls are not good enough, and that yes, there will always be something lacking, to go back far beyond Freud and his presumed enviousnesses. No wonder I feel like shit if I wake up every morning believing, in the back of my mind and soul, that I’m not good enough, not enough because of my gender and so-called gender-isms.That my “girliness” is a hindrance to others, and that what I spend my day doing and believing in is not good enough.
Part of this is no doubt brought up by multiple conversations I had yesterday (with Adriana and Jo) about sports and dance/music classes. I spent most of my elementary school years ( age 5-12){That’s 7 years, a really really long time to a kid} trying desperately to play any and all team sports. I played soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball. I even tried curling. Tried to learn how to skate. Tried to run track and field. Tried gymnastics, even. Essentially, I spent 7 years fiercly trying to do something I hated. Because I wanted to fit in. because everyone played sports, and in order to be anybody or anything, you not only had to play team sports, you had to be good at them. And I never was.
I loathed each and every practice, would scream and cry before every soccer game, and yet, I kept on, determined. There was no other way that I saw, no other potential way to exist and be seen and be a part of school, of community, of life.
I was supposed to toughen up, to get used to the rough and tumble way of sports. I even hated having to go outside and play on the playground at lunchtime, or daycare. I wanted to stay inside and read Nancy Drew or color or make jewellery.
Well, I never toughend up. I am not your typical tough girl, thick skinned and bittersweet. I am these thigns, but it’s in my bones. Deep marrow, the bones that hold me up, but are covered in veins, sinews, muscles and skin. Delicate skin that tears easily and bears all the scars I’ve ever pretended not to notice.
I was discouraged. My courage lost in a full barrel rolled off a rocky cliff somewhere off a distant coast. Disenheartened, fierce heart.
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