Rose trees, said Alice

Cut Up Poems 4

2010-04-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

*Text From "My Mother: A Demonology" by Kathy Acker, "THe Powerbook" by Jeanette WInterson, "Ecstasia" by Francesca Lia Block, a dream dictionary,

Cut-Up Poems 3

2010-04-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

*Text from "Ironweed" by William Kennedy

Cut up Poems 2

2010-04-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

*Text from:
"My Mother: A Demonology" by Kathy Acker, "Ecstasia" by Francesca Lia Block, "The Powerbook" by Jeanette Winterson, and "In the Cut" by Susanna Moore

2010-04-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

I've been making cut-up poetry out of books I've read and am getting rid of/letting go of. I'm a little obsessed, I'll admit, taking the gorgeousness of other people words and rearranging them. It's creation out of the best sparks of inspiration-a good way to work around writers block.

*Text from "Ecstasia" by Francesca Lia Block, "Gut Symmetries"-Jeanette Winterson, "Sweet Taste of Lightning"-Sheri-D. Wilson, "Ironweed"- William Kennedy
-The words belong to them, the rearrangement of them are my work.

2009-10-12T01:06:00.000-07:00

Today

2009-10-07T22:33:00.001-07:00

I feel like there's this piece I'm missing, that I can't quite grasp onto that is at the centre of all of this healing stuff. Something floating through my subconscious, just out of reach that is some sort of key, something, something, but I don't know how or what or where. Just missing. Just absent. Voidy. And I just want somebody to help me figure it out, somebody to tell me what it is so I can just get over all of this and live my life.

I still feel like I'm reeling, like there are all these things around me, all these expectations, all these experiences I'm supposed to have and it's all spinning so fast and I don't know who to follow along with, who to listen to, what information to store, what to keep and what to let go of. There's just too much being thrown at me all the time, by so many people who mean well, by my own self who means well, and what part of what do I listen to. The part of me that is supposed to be able to be healthily discerning feels blocked, locked up, and I'm just big eyes nodding my head taking it all in a packaging it all up to be made sense of, somehow.

See, I don't know. ANd I know nobody really does, but I'm bored of watching everyone pretend like their navigating through this world with clear eyes and a clean compass glass, especially when their talking about how they're not pretending but they really still are, they just can't see it. I just can't see it. Everyone confuses me. I can't tell who's lying and who's real.

I don't know how to be around people but not be them as I'm around them. They tire me out. It is not a matter of taking steps, of desensitizing, of just being around people until they stop stepping into my skin. There are too many people around. There aren't meant to be so many people around all of the time.

I never feel like I'm in flow when I'm out in the world, I get sucked into everyone else's ideas of what life is, and time becomes all boxed up and contained, and there is no space to maneuver. Things crash into one another and it's all desperation, running around, pretending to be important, desperation trying to make itself into something that isn't desperation.

I still don't know how to be in the world, a part of it, without giving myself away at every moment, without losing all sense of who I am. When I'm around people, when i even dip my feet into the world as it exists right now, the structures that are in place, the way life is supposed to be played out, it's like I am completely sucked in, my skin disappears, my separation disappears and I am in an unknown, undesirable world.

My goal is not to be able to once again be of/in this world that has done nothing but beat me up and push me around. I do not want to be a part of society at large, of the world at large-it has nothing to offer me, and all I can offer it is a hollow shell of what once may have been a person. It will happily destroy me, as it will happily hurt anyone who is not able to easily give up idiosyncrasies and themselves.

My goal is to be a part of a different world, a different society completely. One that probably has yet to be created. To seek out, somehow, though I don't know how, people who are closer to where I am, who aren't stuck in the material morass of nothingness but can see beyond it. And do, and don't stay where they are out of fear.

I don't know what I want. I don't know what I can realistically expect-I don't even know if logic and reality exist, so why should I contain myself by them. I look outside my window and the only things i like are the trees and the mountains and the sky. Books and movies are better than so much of life, because at least they are attempting to create something of meaning, and allow the artisst and the reader/watcher to be transformed beyond the everyday.

I long for transformation that is green and lush and wildly flowing. I do not know what it is that I am becoming, but it is something other than what I was supposed to have been, in this bitter outside world. I don't even exist to the world at this point in time, because I make no sense to it.

April-September Book List

2009-09-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

I'll probably begin to write, soonish. But I'm floating through photo self portrait land at the moment, and it's strange and slippery and I'm not ready to bring words into the balance. So I'll just write what I've been reading....* are very enjoyable and worth reading, double ** are one I found particularly stunning...

*"A Home at the End of the World"-Michael Cunningham
"Changing Heaven"-Jane Urqhuart
**"Girls, Visions, and Everything"-Sarah Schulman
*"Slow River"-Nicola Griffiths
"Runaway American Dream"-Jimmy Gutterman
"The Camino"-Shirley McLaine
**"Divisadero"-Michael Ondaatje
**"Lust and Other Stories"-Susan Minot
"The Ihop Papers"-Alie Liebegott
*"Autobiography of Red"-Anne Carson
*"Veronica"-Mary Gaitskill
*"Rat Bohemia"-Sarah Schulman
"Valencia"-Michelle Tea (re-read)
**"The Host"-Stephenie Meyer
*"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"-JK Rowling
"City of Bones"-Cassandra Clare (I preferred the second book in the series)
*"City of Ashes"-Cassandra Clare ( but you have to read the first book first)
"A Northern Light"-Jennifer Donnelly
"Keeping you a Secret"- Julie Anne Peters
"Gossip Girl"-Cecily von Ziegesar
*"Uglies", "Pretties", and "Specials"-Scott Westerfeld (standalone ok, as a trilogy very good)
*"Marked"-P.C. Cast (interesting goddess based teenage vampire series-better than it sounds)
"Betrayed"-P.C. Cast

I'm starting to read "Lucky" by Alice Sebold, and "Rapture" by Susan Minot next.

week

2008-08-25T13:12:00.001-07:00

The house here is full now. Four of us, another week of chaos, which I can handle. It's the steadiness that I'm not prepared for.

One more week with the three of us with the A names, then miss F settles into her new room, again ( the end of the summer of musical bedrooms), and subletee miss A moves into the living room until she finds a new place.

This weekend is the Grand Cleanup of the house. Which is this big scary grey cloud over there. I haven't even unpacked my clothes from when I moved back in at the beginning of August. Living out of laundry baskets for nearly a month. Kind of feels like travelling.

And here I am, in my last free week, feeling it filling up, so little space left, so much to do. Counselling appointmet, IKEA visit, first gym visit.

And really, booking that first gym visit wasn't pleasant. Everyone I spoke to on the phone was very brusque. I don't like brusqueness, I want people to be nice to me, to be helpful, especially when I'm nervous. It's my first visit, I obviously don't know what I'm doing, I just want some information and an encouraging voice on the other end of the phone line. being treated coldly does not make me want to go to their gym and have to potentially deal with someone else who will treat me coldly in person for the entire duration of my gym orientation. This is why I've avoided aking for help at local rec centre gyms, and why I've avoided getting gym memberships in the past. The few times I've called and requested information, or gone in to talk to someone , it's always been a bad experience.

Now, I realize that I am more sensitive than other people to things like tone of voice and body language, but I've been in many social situations where I have felt welcomed and encouraged, so it's frustrating when I put myself out there and end up discouraged. Especially when other people seem to have positive experiences in places and situations that I have negative ones.

I think that I just have much higher interpersonal standards than most people. I tend to work quite hard at ensuring that other people are comfortable, and feel well taken care of, and welcomed. I care, significantly, even if the interaction is a small, supposedly meaningless one, I want the other person to experience the interaction as a significant occurrence/experience.

Which is what made me such a terrible retail/customer serivce worker. I've always known and recognized the bullshit relatioship of that whole interaction, and that the only important thing occurring is actually simple human connection. I hate selling people things they don't need, and don't really want. And so, I don't work in retail anymore. And it's why I'm going back to school.

But for right now, I'm going to sit in quiet, having finished my cup of peppermint tea, and then put on some sunscreen and go for a walk, do some errands. Pick up some twig tea, maybe, some nice shampoo from an organic store. Put on some lip balm and enjoy the sunny afternoon.

Three things, sort of.

2008-08-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about the purpose of this blog-expression, to be heard, thoughts, a necessary occupation in a difficult time.

A ll times are difficult. I am no more deficient of capability or communication than anybody else. I just function in, and experience the world in a very particluar way. More intensely, and with more sensitivity and awareness.

I have called myself many things: broken, delicate, forgotten, strange, odd, unfortunate, sensitive, fragmented, difficult, intense, incapable, weak, lonely, defective.

The words that I have not used, but should: sensitive, compassionate, kind, quirky, passionate, spontaneous, silly, intense, delicate, strong, bold, quiet, elemental.

If I keep living and writing from the first place, a place that I’ve needed to be, to spend time in, then I will become stuck there, I need to shift my perception, slightly.

I know how to place myself in a space of weakness, I understand what it means to be delicate and broken, I know what it feels like to be barely holding onto tiny fragments of myself and notice how quickly they seem to unravel.

And now I know that other people have seen this, have recognized this in me, not as a deficiency, but as a life lived.

So, this is a revamping of sorts, a twist of a mission statement, an offering of a less bloodied sort. I’ll love my grief, and respect my love. Not magically perfect, but perfectly natural.

Three things triggered this blatantly, but it’s been a work in progress for awhile:

1) A mix cd project that Adriana and I undertook, in which we each made a cd full of songs that could have been written about the other person.

2) Listening to Terami Hirsch, especially “Little Light”, “Waking the Dream”, “When It’s Dark”, and “Timberline” from her album Entropy 29.

3) Reading a chapter of Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart each night before I go to sleep.

I’ll be intricate, and ramble about each out of order, and probably entwined with each, but in another post.

Music has become a force in my life lately, stronger than it’s ever been. Always part of my life, always part of my identity, but lately, even more bone deep, life deep. Nourishing me, singing me to sleep and waking. Unearthing, digging up from the long buried ground images, symbols, articulated aspects that have been ignored and lost, now refound. Emotional archaeology, of the intentional, and rainwashed flooding accidental sort.

Recessional

2008-08-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Silver is still my favorite crayon
Treeful of Starling is still my favorite album ( today)
Alfed Stieglitz's portraits of Georgia O'Keefe and her hands are still some of my favorite photographs. ( I have three of them, postcard form, on the wall in front of my desk)
Weeping Willows are still my favorite trees (if I have to pick a favorite)

I talked to people today. Well, spoke to one on the telephone, long distance, all the way to the island, phone lines flickering and sparking words that will be passed through them in following months. Wrote to another, received a reply.

I'm sitting at the computer, listening to "You and the Candles", turning the silver crayon in my hands ( from Frances' box of 96 that I've claimed and now decorate my desk haphazardly), and periodically watching the leaves blown about by the wind outside the window. I'm lucky, I can see more trees that houses from this angle, and no road at all, if the curtain is placed well.

I found out that a friend of mine is having a gallery showing of a few of her paintings soon, and I'm actually in a couple of them. I've never been "officially" in a gallery before.

I spoke to another friend on the phone. She is blue today. I am too. Nothing new for me.

Productivity is low
sentences dense and unassuming
I covered myself with leaves but the wind still found me
glue unstuck and hinges pulled clear from their placements

tactile wishers
vicious listeners
tacking sticky tape behind our ears
to make the worst sounds cling
when we swallow our words unhindered
and spit up the balance our inner ears would supply

my bones are dry
the shape of a jaw with history imprinted
loosens its teeth to lose a story
and I leave my own fingernail marks on my skin
to remind myself that I'm here

a depth of breath
an impossibility of conveyance
put my right palm flat against my chest
to test for life
collapsible and longing for a clear exhalation
an exhortation of happiness forgiven

my passage long paid off
recessions envisioned and grown malleable, too slight
distance me from nerve to sensation
draw away and maybe I'll search for my features
in unknown rivers split by leaning stones

all ground has lost my traces
withdraw to begin again
heels first this time.

I really should spellcheck these entries before I post them.

2008-08-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

yeah. I really should. But, I probably won't. I'll forget, or something.

A Wednesday Morning Mix tape ( with words)

2008-08-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

First song of the day, Charlotte Martin’s “Days of the Week”. Non-invasive, non-abrupt switch from silence to sound, but not innocuous. Simplicity, not too much instrumentation, no really high pitched sounds first thing in the morning. Vienna Teng is usually a perfect for choice for first thing in the morning, last thing at night.

It’s as though I actually need to listen to something that doesn’t jolt my nervous system.

So second song of today, Vienna Teng’s “Blue Caravan”.I never thought I’d like Vienna teng’s music, much less be in absolute awe of her piano playing and find her voice to be of the least agitating tonal quality of almost every artist I listen to. Which doesn’t sound good, but I get headaches from listen to certain people sing. It doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate their work, it just means that I have trouble listening to thing for fun. For example, Rufus Wainwright always gives me a headache, and now, my brain has learned to recognize the musical intros to some of his songs, and gets a headache before he even starts singing. I still think he’s an amazing artist, making challenging and interesting work, I just can’t listen to it. But if there is one artist who is the least likely to give me a headache, it is Vienna Teng, which is actually why it took me awhile to appreciate her music. On the surface it sounds too poppy and simple. As I spoke of, though, in a previous entry, in her most staggering songs she has this deep sense of space and warmth in her playing and singing. Part of it is the warmth of the production, but most of it is that it just feels so organic and unforced, a whole, with her playing and her voice flowing together.

Which is why songs 3,4,5,6, 7 and 8 are Vienna Teng’s “Fields of Gold ( cover song)”, “Eric’s Song”, “Momentum”,”Gravity”, “Soon Love Soon”, and “Recessional”. “Recessional” still being one of my life altering songs. It’s because she sings these quiet and heartdropping lyrics, then gives you these following moments to relflect and let it sink in, before going on to the next perfect line. Not many songwriters can capture absence and sadness in such a strangely light yet profound way.

Then, at #9 comes Tori Amos’s “Bells for Her”. This song is almost a funeral to me. When I hear it I have to stop what I’m doing and just listen, it’s a funeral, the nearly numb, pretty much tranced out state of grievig, rather than the sharp and shaking tears part. In this case, though, it’s a quiet, and this song is quiet, with the piano filtered through soemthing called a Leslie cabinet, and mixed very low, almost whispering vocals. Searching through the ether for a heart gone missing, for a soul gone missing. Memorializing it’s existence. Like “Recessional”, very close thematically, actually, absence and loss. I’ve never listened to the two of them side by side before.

#10 is Tori Amos’ “Baker Baker”. I don’t think that I can underestimate the power of Tori Amos’s music in my life. It’s something that I never abandon for long, that I keep coming back to all the time. My first love will always be her third album, “Boys for Pele”, and it’s taken me quite a long time to truly pay attention to her second album “ Under the Pink”, but when my nerves are frayed and everything is overwhelming and I need to retreat into some safe place, it’s with the quieter songs off of “Under”, and it’s b-sides, one of which, “Black Swan”, is my #11 song for today. Very few people can manage both quirky and deep loss in the same song. “Sister Janet” is my #12 song, a song which always reminds me of Roseanna when I listen to it, because I heard it for the first time on her walkman, at school. To me, this song is the perfect example of the tying together of the otherworldly and archetypical and the concrete everyday that is Tori’s trademark. And that’s one of my primary difficulties, concerns, things that I’m preoccupied with: living in two worlds at once-the inner and the outer world. The world of the self, the inside the head world, and the external world of relationships and society. My inside has never coherently blended with the outside.

(song #13 is “Just Like Heaven”[cover of The Cure] by Charlotte Martin, which I adore because you can hear the low roudned sound of the piano pedals, and because I always just wanted to hear this song on piano, and she does a great version)

Song #14. “Blindness” by Hawksley Workman. Song #15 is the same. And an abandonment of writing in favor of staring off into the void, seeing and not seeing. Moments of the inside overwhelming the outside.Sometimes, I have absolutely no sense of how it’s even possible to exist in the external world (Song #16. “No beginning and No End”, Hawksley Workman), my inner life is that much different from what I see. I don’t mean that I’m living two lives simultaneously, that I have this whole parallel yet skewed imagination life, because I don’t. It’s more about image and depth and perception (Song #17-song 16 repeated). It’s as though everything coming at me from outside is bright and sharp and clear and jagged, while everything inside is gentle, and hazy, like a surrral yet lovely fairytale floating through the smoke at the coziest fireside ever. Inside of my mind feels curved and flowing, organic, deep, and symbolic. And often, it feels like the outside is constantly trying to maim and mutilate, painfully kill the sense of peace and wonder that is inherently a part of me.

(Song #18 “Oh, You Delicate Heart” by Hawksley Workman-it seemed appropriate). So must of the world’s energy is this aggressive, driving forward, thrust energy, and I am just so not that, and I experience that speed and force as a painful blow, as a constant attack. (Song #19 “Bones” by Charlotte Martin”). (Song #20, replay of the last). (Song #21, “Bones” again). One of the theories behind anxiety and sensitivity, put forward by Elaine Aron, is that a certain percentage of the human population actually has highly sensitive nervous systems, more so than the average percent. Hence the sense of being bombarded and overwhelmed by a world that most peole can shrug off and walk through.

(Song #22 “Clam, Crab,Cockle, Cowrie” by Joanna Newsom).However, I suppose that the concept that most people exist happily and easily in this world isn’t very true in any sense. The high quick development and high speed of industry and technology, while solving some problems has created such a huge amount of self inflicted/inflicting problems that most people do not live thriving, healthy, beautiful lives. (Song #23 Jennifer Terran-“The Painter”) We spend our time working jobs that mean nothing to us, just to house and feed ourselves, eating food that is processed poison, living vicarious and deadened lives through tv and movies. So few of us manage to break out of, or even have the possibility of breaking out of this treacherous way of living.

I’m just so sick of being considered sick and unmanageable, of being the problematic and unrealistic quantity, while it is actually the world itself, our society itself that is ill and completely damaged and cruel. (Song #24, Patrick Wolf “Teignmouth”). It makes complete sense to withdraw away from a world full of atrocities and biternesses, cruelty and constant pain and competition. Who would choose to stand in the middle of that? I guess some people are able to avoid seeing the world as a whole, don’t understand how intrinsically everything is connected, how close we are to each other, though separated by such seemingly strong walls. Withdrawl, whether it be anxiety, agoraphobia, depression, is one of the few responses that makes complete sense to me.

(Song #25 “Little Light”-Terami Hirsch). Yet. All of those things are considered disorders, are in need of being cured, are wrong, are a disease of the person, not a reaction to a dying world that pretends it is the pinnacle of thriving success. Evolution oe snot move as quickly as industry, so no wonder our biology is going haywire. (Song #26 “A Broke Machine”-Terami Hirsch{not intentional trying in with what I’m talking about, but subconsciously obviously. A broke machine indeed.}). So, one of my struggles, actually probably THE struggle of the last eight months or so, has been with coming to a place of understanding and acceptance that I am not in fact broken, no matter how much I refer to myself as such. Broken resonates with me, I feel broken in the face of the world, I feel that I have crumbled under the weight, under the strain, that yes, every pain of the world has made it’s way through my heart, through my mind, through my body. (Song #27-“A Broke Machine” again). And it has broken me, standing delicate and brave in the face of sharpness and cruelty has caused me to shatter. I held it together, cracks in the glass and all, for years, until I shattered, and I’m still shattering. There is so much more fragmentation that is happening, that needs to happening. But I’m managing to piece things back together, at the same time, now. Regluing, into another structure, another formation of self.

(Song # 28-“Timberline”-Terami Hirsch). “ I tiptoe softly to the edge of the timberline, where a part of me is waiting on the other side. Have I lost her? I feel a rushing from the underground, where part of me is blooming, where my silence is a sound”-Terami Hirsch

(Song #29 “Memory Picture”-Terami Hirsch) According to my Last.fm chart, I’ve listened to Terami Hirsch 800 times in the last two months. I’ve never been that dedicated to one artist before, in such a short period of time.

(Song #30 “When It’s Dark”-Terami Hirsch).”but I am still tender in the spring, with new grass pressed beneath me, with the darkness singing me to sleep as the stars are weeping”-Terami Hirsch

(Song #31 “A Hundred Flowers-Terami Hirsch).She’s just lyrically amazing. Comfortable, yet constantly surprising. I just get so caught up when I listen to her songs, especially on “Entropy 29” and “A Broke Machine”. “All Girl Band”, “Stickfigures” and “To the Bone” were beautiful and deep and personal, but her two most recent albums hit those imagistic and archetypical places that are so much stronger than emotional revelation on its own. It’s that Tori place. A very different place, but Terami’s got her own world, and is truly beginning to be able to express it potently.

“It's been a long timeSince we've seen beautyLet a hundred flowers bloomAfter a hundred days of rain(From the head through the mouth to the ground in the root to the heart in the vein, in the vein, in the vein)”-Terami Hirsch

It’s fitting that I began at Charlotte Martin, and ended up at Terami Hirsch, by way, mostly, of Tori Amos, Vienna Teng, and Hawksley Workman. I discovered Charlotte Martin about two months ago, around the same time that I rediscovered Terami Hirsch.

Muscial time line time ( purely for my own interest):

Bought “Boys for Pele” by Tori Amos when I was 13. Didn’t really listen to it until I was 15. Then bought “From the choirgirl Hotel”, and saw her in concert for the first time. I think I’ve been to four more. Best was probably the one here and in Seattle, for the “Scarlet’s Walk” tour. Have since acquired and passionately listened to all of her albums and b-sides over the last ten years, except her most recent one, which I haven’t been able to get into at all.

Found Terami Hirsch’s “All Girl Band” when I was 17, and listened to it non-stop. I happily received her “Stained ep” and “Stickfigures” cd in the mail for free, and the three songs on “Stained”(later on “To the Bone”) were pretty much the only thing I listened to for about a month in my first year of university. Then I ordered “To the Bone” when it came out (I loved receiving cd’s in the mail, it was such an exciting thing, nobody else I knew did that), and listened and loved it. But then her music sort of fell away from my life for about five years. She released a new album this year “A Broke Machine”, I kind of stumbled upon it, and it was so extraordinary, so different from yet similar to her older, work, that I instantly became fascinated, and just dove into all of her music again, discovering “Entropy 29”. If I ever get a worded tattoo, it just might be “From the head through the mouth to the ground in the root to the heart in the vein” from “A Hundred Flowers”.

I bought Hawksley Workman’s “Last Night We Were the Delicious Wolves” for $3.99 at a used cd store about four or five years ago, purely based upon the fact that he had produced Sarah Slean’s “Night Bugs” album, and I loved each and every thing about that album. I listened to it once, and didn’t like it, and didn’t play it again for a long, long time. Last summer, seemingly all of a sudden, almost everyone I knew adored Hawksley Workman. So, I felt out of the loop, and found a copy of “Treeful of Starling” at the library. I was right at the cusp of my total emotional breakdown. I was creating theatre, somewhat in a way I wanted, with project after project. I was relearning how to sing , I was playing the piano and singing in public, which had been my dream for as long as I can remember. And I was so unhappy, and alone. I listened to “Treeful” nonstop, everyday, in rotation with Joanna Newsom’s “Ys” and Arcade Fire’s “Neon Bible”. Every night on my walk home from the bus stop, after rehearsal, or a show, I would lay down in the grass outside my parents complex, and listen to “When these Mountains were the Seashore”, desperately hoping for soemthing in my life to break or change, because I just couldn’t handle it anymore. From there, I spent the next few months discovering his other albums, fell head over hells with all of them ( excepting “Lover/Fighter”, which I find kind of hollow and badly produced ,although “Autumn’s Here” is one of my favorite songs), and have been so ever since. Especially after the concert at St. Andrews-Wellesley sometime in May. Completely extraodinary, I can’t even begin to explain it. Ask Adriana, she’s better at explaining these kinds of things.

Charlotte Martin is one of those names that always comes up in conjunction with “ if you like Tori Amos, you’ll love…”, and I always dismissed her. I guess it’s a case, much like Hawksley Workman, where it’s all about finding the right song at the right time. In May I was sort of obsessively buying as much piano based singer-songwriter music that I could possibly find on CD BABY, amongst which was Jennifer Terran ( another artist whose work I’d found uninteresting on many other occasions), whose “Full Moon in Three” is another one of my life altering albums, and Charlotte Martin’s name just kept popping up everywhere. I loved the picture on the cover of her “Veins” ep, so I listened to the title track, and the second, “Bones”, and I was gone. Veins and bones, of course I loved it. Since then, I’ve managed to acquire almost all of her work, some of which I like much better than others ( I rarely listen to “Test-Drive Songs”, for example), and listen to her almost as much as Terami Hirsch-and on an interestign note, the two of the are actually friends.

Vienna Teng. Much of the same story as Charlotte Martin, except I’d had her most recent album, “Dreaming through the Noise” for about a year, and had never been able to listen to it, it was too sleepy, too slow for me. When I opened my Last.fm account, Vienna was one of those artists who kept showing up on every radio station I listened to, and it was about the tenth time I heard “gravity” that it suddenly clicked, and I was truly floored. As I mentioned earlier, it’s about warmth and space. She has such an intimate and inviting way of playing and singing. However, the reason I don’t listen to her quite as much, is that for every song of hers that I’m astounded by, there are a couple that I don’t really like. I’m sure that one day I will, but “Recessional” and “Momentum” on their own are worth hundreds of songs.

Fluctuations and depth, perception

2008-08-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

I’m home, living from laundry baskets, only half unpacked. I feel years older than when I left.

I’m kind of blog cheating with this entry, because it’s actually part of an e-mail conversation I had earlier today with Adriana. My ever attempts at untangling concept and actualities of friendships and other relationships….

It's hard to know how much weight to put on a friendship without scaring the other person off. Our primary relationships, our romantic relationships, are som consuming and important, that not having one, I tend to shift much of the emotional and intellectual weight onto my friends, and have very little concept of what is appropriate, and what is too much. I struggle with friendship, because I feel as though I'm supposed to be ashamed at having intense emotional relationships with people other than my romantic partner.

I always feel as though, being the single one, I am invading other people's lives, taking over, demanding too much from the wrong sources. As though the only thing allowed to fill the relationship void, the community void, the emotional support void, is a romantic partner. Which I'm not actively seeking, because it's so hard to even let my friends get close to me, so how can I stand to have somebody see me, and be with me on such a potent state of vulnerability if I can't even let myself be there.

I've tended towards backing off, drawing away, removing any deep emotional attachment. I've never really had friends, Skirting around the circumferences of other's lives. Hollow heart, hollow eyes, hollow words, and wringing hands.

It's just so hard for me to feel, to see, that I have anything to offer to another person, so I am overwhelmed. Hard for me to accept that I am capable of connecting with another person. To accept that I even exist in a world that isn't empty, that isn't barren and flat grey, devoid grey, windy tear-swept burdened closed off grey.

I don't know. That's all I have to offer.

ok, I'll admit it. Sometimes, I use a thesaurus.

2008-08-01T12:38:00.001-07:00

I wrote a song a couple of days ago. Or a simple poem, if not quite a song. But writing to chord changes and glimpses of melodies causes me to write significantly differently than writing with just the sound of words. Simpler, and the sounds and rhythm just flow a little bit more.
This is one of my simple songs, the time limit, very little editing or second guessing.

Eb-Bb-Ab

Pretty soon she'll be a dove
and the records will play again
in the morning all those thoughts in the night
just flutter and lighten
thin ice and vapour coalesce
into a cup of tea
eyes readjust to the green and lush
all her brittle shiftings decay

in her bed she had nothing but sleep
limbs softly twisting only in dreams
Rothko, Chagall, Picasso on her walls
faces all turned and blending

Ab-Bb-Eb-Cm

her portait heightens her bones in yellow
the shirt she wore in it, was it her own
her features fumbled loosely in charcoal
hang in a third floor apartment in Montreal

Eb-Bb-Ab

she practices her handwriting
on words so full
they cause her hands to shake
and the ink to streak
illegible blue lines curving
and staining her wrists
where once finely washed edges
loosened their tips gently

Ab-B-Eb-Cm

and blood flows out faster than you think it might
she stops it with three fingers pushed against a pulse
the breadth of her heart she can't keep inside

Eb-Bb-Ab

all of her skin grown smooth again now
her repairs are subtle and strong
she can hold water in her palms
and let it drip through
her offerings so simple
but she has this day
and a bowl of soaking rose petals
is her method of keeping the darkness aside

Not a word to find

2008-07-29T01:01:00.001-07:00

I’ve written the fragments out until they’ve become no more whole than before.

I’m feeling lost and uncertain. I need time and space, but then I don’t know what to do with it when I have it.

Stagnation is closing in, and the walls are too thick for me to scrape a hole through with my fingernails and crawl out into the open.

I used to write poems about bloody rooms, girls scratching at their walls until their fingernails bleed, leaving streaks and imprints, dripping, red and caked caked brown. My image life full of blood, but not true violence. Not a lashing out, an intentional hurting and cruelty, but visceral and veins. Lips bitten torn and other unintentionally self inflicted wounds.

I’m writing about two kinds of miscarriages in “Evelyn and May” : one intentional, and ( one unintentional. Of blood pooling out from wombs, and flowing along inner thighs. Love and loss encapsulated in a function of the body. May induces her loss because she knows she cannot have what it is she wants, and Evelyn chooses one loss and has another occur (sympathy miscarriage?).

I am unhappy with their story, I don’t know where it’s going, I don’t know if I like what I’m writing, and I haven’t touched the play since I was in the Magdalen islands. Somethings’s hitting too close to the bone. A vicarious autobiography that is factually untrue, but emotionally and subconsciously true?

I don’t know how all of the pieces fit together. I don’t know what I’m really trying to reveal, and I feel as though I’m at a point of tipping over into revelation that will either f push this play forward, or kill it completely.
T
I am not a writer. Most times I’m not even a person, or a woman, or a thing, or a creature. I fall into times of non-existence. I’m self absorbed and unsatisfied. I’m lonely and uninvolved and bitter. I don’t love anyone and will not let them love me. I’m desperate, and hate my desperation.

But I don’t feel sorry for myself. I never have. It’s just that I don’t understand. I really, really don’t understand, and it feels like everyone else does.

I don’t feel like myself, outside.
Exteriority and terror conflated.

I compromise myself in everything that I do.

I don’t want to be any part of this world.

I’m confused and unhappy and sick.

I can’t create beautiful things because destructions abilities have so much more force behind them. Beauty is alone and torn at all of the important seams. My stitch ripper is effective, but my finely threaded needle shakes in my hands, and my stitches are not strong enough to stay planted where I sew them.

My offerings will never be enough, and my blessings are burdened.

Why is everything so sad? I don’t know how to experience the world without a double glazed filter of grief. Does it ever change? Will I ever smile truly, proud of the moment I find myself in? Shoulders back and delighted, laughter flowing past my heart?

I don’t know how to feel all of this. I don’t know why I’m expected to, why I have, why the struggle is full of so much struggle. Why life is such a fight, when I’m not meant to be a fighter.

I don’t know how to stop editing myself. My tongue is numb and I can’t say anything that reverberates beyond my hollow mouth. I am not an appropriate being. My sanity, my freedom. Whose life am I living?

How much grieving can be done in saying goodbye to the girl and young woman that I never was, and never will be able to be?

Why am I alone in the face of so much darkness and despair? I have no touch of reassurance. I’m troubled and unconsoled.
Why do I even try for words? Why do I even try to reach out, forcing my inky blueprint into the organized and delicate lives of others who have no need of inkstained fingers and lips. My hands are not enough to hold anything. My backbone is fine cartilage, flexible and unstable. My heart flutters wildly, as strange and untranslatable as the speech I’ve never learned to speak. I can’t even walk properly, my feet won’t touch the ground, I can’t feel myself on the ground, just skimming, slipping over. A drift with no commitment.
What am I even looking for?

...

2008-07-27T01:49:00.001-07:00

Yes. I am listening to Terami Hirsch's "Memory Picture" and crying into my cup of tea at 1:50 in the morning. Alone in my apartment.I only wanted a cup of tea, but all the boxes of chamomile and sleepytime and mint were empty, so I'm drinking decaf green tea peach, which I don't even like, but I needed to hold my favorite red mug full of warm herbal tea.My hair falls over my face as I lean over, curtaining the cup as my my nose nearly drips, and my eyes almost do too. This is who I am. i guess. This is me at my most basic. Bone achingly sad, in that almost indefinable grieving melancholy sort of way, with a clarity of life threaded through. I am not exciting. I am not energetic. i am delicate and broken and unknowing. beauty overwhelms me. The apartment is so quiet.

I feel disappeared. I feel as thin paper walls. Pages strewn with words, rubbed until the paper is clear, but all unread.

"But was this the face you loved?
Were these her hands?
Oh, I hardly recognize myself
I wanted this moment in my hand
I wanted to touch you
To feel you breathe
I wanted to hold you
So you wouldn't fall alone"
-Terami Hirsch, "Memory Picture"

Thoughts at a party

2008-07-27T00:39:00.001-07:00

I went to a party
and I was alone

parties make me cry
and nobody likes the girl who cries at parties

I'm not very good at karaoke
and I have emotional breakdowns when I can't do something perfectly

I lay on the trampoline all by myself
and looked up at the sky and the edges of the willow tree

I could hear everyone singing inside
and did not know who I was for a minute

The compost has brought in fruit flies
which hovered around the food, half drowning themselves in salad dressing

my home became not my home, my living room overtaken by strangers
who don't notice when i leave for an hour to read my book in the park

I only three sentences, all of which I had read before
since I was too busy thinking of my social ineptitude

the sky is difficult to live up to
and I feel as though I have to clear my blood

regenerate my entire body
each time I am surrounded by so many loud people I do not know

why am I so delicate
why are my limits so close to the bone compared to others

The city frightens me
there are so many people I'll never exist for

I lose myself in everyone else's mothertongue
my own being so untranslatable

I am told to make my own family
orphan in this world that I am

but my nerves stop at the tips of my fingers
and will not reach any further

out of myself
even out of this skin I am still inside sinews and muscles

bones structured to be upright
joins inflexible, unoffering

there is no perfection in what I am
and my imperfections are not beautiful

they are torn seams and ripped moments
askew and faltering along impeccably badly

I have been through so many deaths
and these ashes have so few sparks left

in these night all the birds have gone to sleep
in their unreachable nests, tending to tender eggs

all my skin is bruised
and no one bothers to bring me a new compress to reduce the swelling

no one sits by my side as I slip away feverishly
or sweat in broken dreams and splintered memories

sewing oneself back together is a solitary business
and the salt of the sea is always staining the hem of my skirt

my fingers are needled pricked with no callouses made
each stab is a new drop of my heart dripping into careless air

too much of my own caked blood on my wedding dress
I will never wear it by his side

All of the fabric piled around me
he will not sift through to find the simple gauze of my voice

my heart chambered and hollowed
spaces he doesn't want to fill

why was I chosen to be broken?

Two words.

2008-07-23T18:50:00.001-07:00

Tactile. Fragily. Fragily Tactile. Tactile and fragile. The tactility of fragility. I'm obsessed with palms and hands when I write. Holding, cradling, touching. The hands being the most obvious and seemingly first point of so many physical contacts. Which isn't true, of course, which is why seeming. Our feet, our mouths, all portions of our skin are constantly coming into contact with so many things. I am fascinated by the tactile, and I am fascinated by the fragile. So many people seem overcome with breaking the fragile, but I want to let it be and feel it bloom wise and bold. What is bold and fragile?

(Zoe Keating's "Sun Will Set" is, at this moment, the aural equivalent of these two words. Tactile and fragile.).

When put together, there is such a gentle strength to these words. My hands are alight with fragility. I am burdened and blessed with a lack of touch. It makes me sad.

Older photos

2008-07-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Time. Art.

2008-07-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

I find the ticking of clocks comforting. It means I'm still alive and following each second.Each moment of time is happening, and I'm there in it.

I am a vulnerability.

I do not value art over experience. Over existence. Art is a profound part of existence, but it is a part that arises from life. Art is life, but life is not just art.

I do not create to prove my existence, to situate it. My being is already proven, in steps and standstills, gestures, voices, and heartbeats. I create to live my life more fully. To sink deeply into and delineate my experiences. The experiential is where the passion and power lie. The heart and bones and blood and mind. The senses reaching out and drawing in, synapses snapping and pumping invitations of knowledge through and to the mind. Rational captures imagination, twists into something vibrant and strange.

I go back to pencil and paper, a sound of sliding rather than the clacking or clatter of keys. My hands forming the words themselves, appearing, to fill space and leave the mysterious of fervor and forever in imperfect spaces.

The craft, art, does not come before the heart. It is a manifestation of it, a tool, a medium of communication, of exultation and woe. A space to be safe in an otherworld home when this world is too bitter and vicious. A vessel to be held in, or to hold in palms up and cupped in offering to yourself, to your lover, your loved ones, to the word. Water pooling to be poured.

It is not good enough now to fit a form, to place yourself into the hands of established meaning and structure. Our bodies are not aligned in the same ways, and our thoughts, given space, are so much more than we have let them be. We don't need to deliver anything. We don't need to finish anything.

I have not but my hands, my feet, my body, my lungs, my voice, my mind, my breath, my tongu an unending list. I will not shift my forminto a preconceived (such a shell of a word, a cage, predetermined, too) immutable shape. I will work without the constraining luxury of empty rules.

In Diane Ackerman's Book " A natural history of the senses", she speaks of a composer ( Villa Lobos, I think, could be wrong), who would sketch the outlinrd of a mountain range, from a different vantage point each day. He would take this drawing of ups and downs, lines cy=urving and sharp, rising to blend, and sit at the piano, composing along with, against this image, music structured, following, this image. These lines.

I wish to live so organically, and create by what we live, what we see, and what we make of it. Not to have to tell a story by structure, upholding past visions of philosophy and struggle. It is not a brutal abandonment of form, but a restructuring through out deeply subjective selves.

"Soft gentle rebel, let the sun pierce the moments of spring"-Hawksley Workman.

I fight too hard, we fight forward too quickly and strongly, and misinterpret what it means to live our own worlds, to live outside the violent damands of this harsh and hardening society. Gentleness is not weakness, the sharp edges can be cooled and made smooth by rustling leaves. My body can heal if I let it breathe, and my emotions can thrive if I don't press too hard at them.

Trauma needs to be held gently and lovingly in our hands ( and we are all traumatized in this world). A kind touch that skin can settle into with a blessing.

ow. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

2008-07-20T02:15:00.000-07:00

Too much heartburn to write. As a 26th birthday gift, I would love to not have an ulcer. That would be lovely. The whole stomach is destroying itself from the inside thing is not so much fun. It's distracting. I can think of prettier things to suffer from. Ennui. Nobody says "Oh, I just suffer from the ennui" anymore ( so much classier if you add "the" in front of it). Although, i suppose that ennui is just inherently boring, given what it is, so maybe it's not prettier. Though, other than perhaps an attending sallowness, someone suffering from ennui would look prettier than someone suffering from an ulcer. Less of the whole doubled over in pain, shallow breathing aspects. Anyways. No writing due to pain.

Songs

2008-07-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

I get stuck on certain songs. Sometimes, I can’t even listen to an artist’s whole album because I’m so absolutely in love with just one song. Today was a music day. I probably listened to about six hours of music. When I can't do anything else, I can still listen to music. It keeps me whole. Brings me back to earth, back to myself when I'm fearful and panicking.These are the songs that have enraptured and captured me today ( and mostly for the last few days.:

“Memory Picture”-Terami Hirsch

“I cut six inches off my hair so I won’t feel pretty, and I walk in public where I won’t drown. Make it stop”…she’s so lyrically simple yet defined in this song, accompanied by chord progressions that just catch in my chest. Such a sad sad song that feels like home to me. A punch to the gut kind of song, brutally gentle. I love emotionally confessional songs, intimate and hands held open, bare and vulnerable, a life explored and shared.

“Sweet Chariot”-Charlotte Martin

Ms Martin is my most recent musical true love. While I’ve been listening to Ms Hirsch for about 7 or 8 years, I just started listening to C.M. about a month or two ago. This song, again, is quite a simple chord progression, all piano and voice, uninterrupted, and close. Songs like this keep me sane, keep me feeling as though I am a human being. That emotions exists and flow through us, and that sadness and working through deep grief is such a part of life. The production is immaculate, sounds like being in a small room with a large wall window looking out onto a field or a forest, with a piano against one wall, with this song being played. Another very intimate sounding song. Present and alive, not just a recording. Living music.

“What we want”-Brittain Ashford

This one is just. This one is my heart. Short and sweet and sorrowful. Such a small song, “ and how were we to know we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to forget what made us who we are”, and such description, heartfelt cleverness. A love song that is an offering, again, another song that feels like palms stretched widely out, heart in hands, still beating vividly. “ I found you washing windows on some 32nd floor and I was pushing World Books door to door, and haven’t you ever wanted to know everything, and that’s exactly what it is I am offering you”-she writes such a story in three tiny verses, as though they are the most important musings ever. And this strong as warm voice over tinny, thin, and inviting instruments. So homemade and lovely. I can’t get over this song.

“Sea of Possibility”-Noe Venable

Dreams of the end, and new beginnings. “ With you I want to taste this freedom, with you remember life’s divinity, without you this love I take with me into the sea of possibility".Awake at night, the moon shining in. She makes clichéd poetic images completely new again with whistling and piano and marimba or something, and sort of beat boxing, into a sweet and slightly despondent but not too despairful and through to hopeful again. This song is the sea.

“Kimberly”-Patti Smith

An outside song, environment, storms and shatterings, kind of a companion piece to the imagery in the Noe Venable song. “the sea rushes up my knees like blame and I feel like just some misplaced Joan of Arc” is quite possibly one of my favorite lyrics ever. I’ve been listening to this song for about ten years, and I continuously forget what it is, that in the melodic and instrumental repetition are these stunning words, still so alive, more than thirty years after being recorded. Instants captured in art, and returned to life through the act of listening. A handing off of history, of experience, into a new form, someone else’s imaginative experience. Art is such an extraordinary and strange thing. Familiar and yet completely distant and unknown.

“Summer in the City”-Regina Spektor

It’s the first line, “Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage” that draws me in smiling, and the witticisms continue, but it’s also such a sad, sad song, and these two things working so brazenly with and against each other just creates magic. Quiet plinky piano and pauses, then full chords and her voice. Passionate and detached at once, little story and noticings bunched…”and it’s summer in the city and you’re long gone from this city, and I start to miss you baby sometimes”, the choir or something comes in. A perfect ending song to a perfect album, “Begin to Hope”. It kind of makes me want to puke it’s such an amazing song.

“Got a Suitcase Got Regrets”-Tom Mcrae

It’s the chorus. When the piano comes in, heavy and quiet. The whole arrangement to this song is stunning, different sounds meandering in and out, repeating, then disappearing. “But all I know is, I’m not ready yet, for the light to dim, got a suitcase, got regrets, but I’m hopeful yet, and I’ll raise this glass of wine and I’ll say your name”, piano, cello, not particularly the best lyrics ever, but they get to me. I get them. In fact, this isn’t a great song in any way, but sometimes, those are the best ones. Yeah, it’s the chorus. “So wake up pretty girl, see the hope in small things, disappointment can wear you thin…”.

“Recessional”-Vienna Teng

“It’s so beautiful here, she says. This moment now, this moment now…” starts the most heartstopping song. Literally, Vienna Teng is all about the spaces between notes, and the sweetness that lingers in and after each small moment of sound. Lyrically, I can’t even begin, so many images following each other, the separation of words echoing the music. Definitely a late at night, alone and longing song. She’s not afraid to play with single notes, not afraid to let suspension take over, then falling into water piano flows. Reflective and bittersweet. It’s almost a poetic novel. “who are you taking coffee no sugar, who are you echoing street signs, who are you the stranger in the shell of a lover, dark curtains drawn by the passage of time”. Lost and found.

“Another Song About the Darkness”-Lauren Hoffman

Another comfortable, recognizable home song. “And you’re almost dead, you’re almost dead…and I wish I could hang out up in the sky and be the light to shine you home, so I write another song about the darkness and how you’re not alone”. Nothing special electronics and synths, almost trip-hoppy but saved from that in simplicity. This is just a me song, something that I recognize myself in way too much, from both points of view in the song. It’s a warm blanket song. Like the green blanket at my apartment.

“Redeemed”-Charlotte Martin

“Every tree has got her root, every girl forbidden fruit and got her demons…one to three the flashback to get me on the one two four the threat of the memory. Where is the end for me to reach, where is the moral I’ll ever teach myself, in all the black in all the grief, I am redeemed”. I can’t really say anything about this song. It just perfectly encapsulates where I am, what I feel like most of the time, how I get through the day. Redeemed is such a big word, such a loaded word, and she somehow manages to bring it down to a bone deep level that makes sense. This song inhabits my days and mind. The drums and piano that come right after the chorus, and the piano all through the second verse. In and out of restraint and passion near the end, so amazing.

“Various Stages”-Great Lake Swimmers

“ I have seen you in various stages of dress. I have seen you through various states of madness”, all sung in a strong yet tremulous voice, with the most beautiful soft banjo playing. It’s a forest song, a field song all about outside, yet so close to the inside. My bones feel both heavier and lighter with this waltz. So beautiful, and quiet, and bold, gentle and reckless. I’ve been listening to so many pianos lately, and this was the song that brought stringed instruments back to me, balancing.

“Diagram of Love”-Terami Hirsch

My day doesn’t feel complete until I’ve listened to this song. Heartbeats and pianos. “This is not our failure. They speak in wordless tongues. Their hearts explore each void, looking for a diagram of love. This is not our failure, this is our compromise. The disintegration of hearts uncared for…”. This song is an encapsulation of all of Terami Hirsch’s music, how electronic music can sound organic and whole, mixing with a piano and voice. “There is no perfect formation, there has never been enough. There are only passing pleasures that we beautify to make a diagram of love”. I love the repetition an d reinvention, word like “formation” and “diagram”, making sciencely terms organic and down to earth, about the everyday.

“Human Remains”- Tom Mcrae

I lost my first copy of the album this is off of, “Just Like Blood”. I still have the case, just no cd. So I bought it again a few days ago, because I absolutely had to hear it. It was the only thing I wanted to listen to. “Our history is just in our blood, and history like love, is never enough”. The arrangement just manages to be complex yet intensely simple simultaneously. Much like his lyrics. “This is not enough for me, this is not enough for any of us to be.”.

“Streetlight”-Tom Mcrae

I may as well list the entire “Just Like blood" album.I haven’t really listened to Tom Mcrae in about two or three years, but his debut album is one of the most emotionally stunning works I’ve ever heard. It’s up there with Tori Amos’s “Boys for Pele”. Yet it’s also one of the most intimate singer-songwritery albums, which is what I love. The ability for an musician to make intense music and still have it sound and feel like you’re reading your favorite novel, or listening to someone across the table tell an impossibly philosophical and beautiful story. That’s how all of these songs tie together. They all have that feeling, that they are with you, not beyond and out of reach.

Love or a lack of.

2008-07-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

I don’t feel loved here in my parents’ home. I feel fragmented and harassed and under constant attack. Little attacks, but I’m always on edge, waiting to be told that I did something wrong, that I have to do something that I don’t want to do. My life is made up of little moments of dread. I expect the worst. Always. How can it be love, if I’m stifled and broken and failing and falling apart?

I don’t know how to give love other people, and I’m afraid to love other people, because I have such a skewed sense of what it means to love and be loved. Love seems to be an obligation, something I have to work desperately hard to earn, something that is always in the periphery, just out of my ability to see clearly or grasp adequately. Yes, love has always been something I’ve had to earn, not something I’ve been given freely. I had to do right, I had to be perfect, I had to make sure the other person was entirely happy, entirely pleased in every aspect of their life that I could affect before I could even think of being loved. And I think that by love I mean even the mere acknowledgement that I existed.

I just feel that everything I have is something I’m now in the process of paying back. For example, I feel as though I owe my parents thousands and thousands of dollars for all of the money they spent in raising me. I feel as though I am a bad person because I don’t have money to give them. At the same time, I have this acidic anger lodged in my stomach that just wants to lash out and scream at them for being horrible people and doing everything wrong in raising me. And this makes me feel even worst, because it all then becomes double guilt. Like I was a very expensive mistake who doesn’t deserve anything that she has, and never will.

These thoughts make my heart hurt. Literally, I get chest pains that ache up through my left chest, shoulder, and neck when I think about these things.

So, I’m 25, financially in debt about $5000, and believe that I owe my parents extraordinary amounts of money, so I’m emotionally in debt about $100,000, which I’ve been paying for the last 20-odd years in guilt, depression, existential crises, tears, headaches, stomach, and muscles pain.

And this is such a hard place to be, taking responsibility for myself, for my emotions and behaviours, without blaming. I feel like I’m blaming my parents for ruining my life, and then I feel guilty and sick about that , like I’m a horrible person for even considering that they could have had any kind of impact on the person that I grew into, which makes everything just topple over that much further.
The thing is, my parents have, unintentionally, made me into themselves, and neither of them can see this. Neither of them can recognize that all of my fears, pains, and breakdowns are pieces of themselves that I am showing to them. That I have picked up and grown into. They think that what I am, what I have become over the years has to do with me and my experiences solely. They are too afraid to see just how fucked up and unhappy they are.

I think that, from the moment I was born, I’ve been trying to make my parents happy. Desperately trying, and nothing, ever, nothing I could do took away the pain and suffering, the deep unhappiness that welled from inside of each of them and flowed and pooled, caking over all of our lives. And I internalized the fact that I couldn’t make them happy, which meant that I could never do anything right. I was in, and continue to be in, a completely no-win situation. My parents are not happy people, and it’s not my fault. But I believe that it is. Each of those times when I did something, who knows what, thousands of attempts at making them happy, or in other words, trying to get their love, I was fundamentally rejected. I experienced small trauma after small trauma, which embedded themselves in my emotional core, in my intellectual mind, in my survival instincts. I am a failure because I failed to be lovable. If my parents couldn’t even purely love me, than obviously there was something inherently wrong with me.

Their love was always tempered with sadness. Myself as child interpreted that as being my fault. I was always too aware, but didn’t know how to interpret what I was experiencing.

I’m listening to one of my favorite songs, “Streetlight” by Tom Mcrae, and the lyric that always hits me is “and every night I breathe her in, feel her sink into my skin, still I feel I am envious and obvious and desperate for your love, I am shattered by and criticized and still I crave your touch”. Which pretty much sums up my life. I scramble and struggle to fit pieces of myself back together, to hold delicate fragments together with any kind of glue or masking tape or blood that I can find, but that all of this work is completely undone by my need to be loved, and my inevitable failure at it.

So no wonder I feel this almost unidentifiable nausea/sadness/heartburn/utter exhaustion/failure when I think of love. That is what love is to me, that is what I’ve learned it to be. No wonder I have so much difficulty in being a friend, no wonder I find it impossible to be in a relationship. It hurts less to not let anything in rather than be faced with failure again. And the anxiety… infant fear of parents not caring enough to protect me, childhood experience of emotionally and physically being rejected by my parents.

Being shown that there is something wrong with you is a very different experience than having it implied. When I was 9, my exhausted parents decided that I was an unreasonable and emotionally uncontrollable child, and after seeking help from one ( one! Only one! My mother, who is the queen of third and forth medical opinions!) psychiatrist had me locked away on the psych ward of childrens hospital for 6 weeks. I was pathologized, rejected, medicalized, and treated cruelly and coldly by my parents and a number of health care workers who were supposed to be healing and helping emotionally damaged children. My parents abandoned me, and told me it was my own fault. That’s the love I know. Blame and abandonment, baked with a lovely sugary icing of guilt. Sure makes me want to go out and find more of it. At least my fear of abandonment is justified. I guess.

Untangling all of these things is such a process of repetition. Repetition has such a negative connotation, but sometimes, it is this act which brings a certain sense of clarity, especially emotional clarity, that is hard to discern elsewise ( elsewise being the non-existent replacement word, interchangeable word, for otherwise.). What else is writing, but finding different evocative ways of saying the same things over and over?

Just to say

2008-07-14T23:34:00.000-07:00

That I am blessed to be surrounded by astounding and extraordinary people. Artists. Friends. Who write, and read, and talk about writing and reading what we write. And cry. And dance. And drink. And console me when my body malfunctions and my brain stops working. If you're reading this, you probably know who you are. Because you read this a lot. And I mention you a lot. And I love you a lot.

Ps. Everytime someone says " I love you" to me it's a struggle not to burst into tears. Knowledge. Is this sad? I don't mean pathetic. It just happens. It's overwhelming, and part of me doesn't believe it, and part of me believes it too much, and I think we categorize love too much, and have become so enamoured and obsessed with the one true love thing that we can't experience the romance and love of everyday things and all relationships, not just "romantic ones" ( which are also ridiculously important in their own right).

Poem for miss j

2008-07-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

Joann asked me to write a song about/for her. I can't remember which. Always turns into both, anyways. So I sat down at the piano and wrote a song. Hopefully it will cheer her up, not make her feel sad. It's not really a sad song. But maybe it's more of a poem. Who knows...

There's no need to stutter again
or hide what you've been looking for

on the edge, ribbons and dresses,
a vixen, a wisher, a planet

stones crumble up against your feet
hear the contours turn on your tongue

seven leaves slip through the tea
a future of blooms and words undone

Leave your corset untied and
let the laces drag on the ground
behind you

followed by birds
magpies toughen the hem of your skirt

it's fine to be in tatters
leaves spaces for a heart to mend it's edges

photograph a figure not slighted
your toes turn away from the lens
in the distance

into the night
you gather the embers
and throw them to the trees

Burning up
the roots you were granted
holding the ashes aloud
you clear yourself of him
and begin

you keep the moon
in the planes of your bones

listen hard.

Just a poem

2008-07-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

Distance is in our blood tonight
Capture three drops and squeeze it
Between thin glass slides
To see the spaces
Past microscopic
And into the trails of seashore
Ribbons again

Not an emptiness of time
Vacated and hollowed of air
Palm prints on all the sugar canisters
Lines nearly followable, just
A second too fine for proof

Don’t worry
I’ll deny that I know more
Than one taste
My sweetness isn’t coveted
Until I select the granules
To be distributed through
Ancient wires
Back from their rusting days
Of use
And selected with a clean breath

Alleviating perfect
Until she rises to the top
Of the allocated pile
Her tongue twists to the left,
Unsure of how to form unfinished words
Her mouth follows pace by pace

I open my palms to read their etchings,
Cool bowls of drinking water cup open
To the floor
Splashing on fading tiles
Diagrams of lifeless love
Bleeding their inkiness into the foldings
Between.

Particles find their way in.

Rub the back of my right hand along my mouth
Leaving a lipstick story to be read
By bold passerby
Who stop to stare
And take themselves holy
With a streak of red
Dyed in now to
Flaming
Lips run aimlessly bright

Sea wed
Wreathes from her arms
An underwater marriage
Floats lightly to stream
And hands with cluttered skin
Can be entwined with fine weeds
Bones to dry
Are left behind
To shiver themselves
Into sand.

*point of interest-as I was writing the last stanza I had completely forgotten I'd used sea imagery earlier. Nice subconscious circling back. I love it when that happens....*

breathe. again, please.

2008-07-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

The only part of studio work that I miss, this moment now, is the breathing. Any number of us, lying around the room, breathing, eyes closed, giving over to the breath. Doing nothing but breathing. Not working hard to meditate, not trying to be anything, other than a room full of people breathing. Breathing alone is so different, there isn’t that deep sense of importance and connection that occurs when a significant group of people are breathing with themselves with others.

Such a space in a room, the blur of energy and life slowing and widened. It becomes as if even our bones are full of air.

I don’t want to back into the studio to create, to produce something, I want to go and find a quietness with others that I can’t find on my own since my silences are different, and become a new, brightly skewered thing in presence. The grace and importance of one simple gesture repeated, focused on, becoming nothing more than what it is, yet infinitely becoming more than what it is.I want that level of focus, that point of respect for the body, in its space, in its time, coming down to the point of truly listening to the mumbling and burbling thoughts that sprint through veins and push them selves skyward through skin.

There is also the sanctity of a studio space, of a space reserve for time out of time, other realities and could bes. I just want my arms to be arms again, recognized as such, as much as they could be. No more distance from my body because I can’t be bothered to breathe and fall into the motions.

I do miss being in creative spaces with other creative people, in the stages of pre-creating, or rather, within the stages of self-reflection, of aware and unaware kinaesthetic awareness. The point at which kinaesthetic awareness truly becomes about responding to the energy, to the movements, to the lifeblood of all the other people in the room, being in a momentous and complete relationship with someone you wouldn’t otherwise have any words to share with, just by breathing and listening with your body. And responding. Accepting and responding. I miss that.

I don’t miss the pressure to be creative, to have creatively driven away from me by the rules of learning, by the rules of the theatre, by other people’s rules cry out so loud that I couldn’t determine my own rules anymore.

But I such miss the company. That underlying thread of connection that webs through the room, unnoticed but a part of everything. That is what I miss. The depts. Of connection that occur in exploratory creative times and moments. Not the creating of things. What we make ourselves, of ourselves is what is beautiful.

Empathy

2008-07-11T22:44:00.001-07:00

I read a book. It was called “Empathy”. It was written by Sarah Schulman. “You are suffering from empathy” one character says to the other at one point. The disease of caring. More than one meaning. Empathy isn’t valued as highly as it should be, the encouragement to become thick skinned narcissists is a strong draw. To function adequately in a world where the best ideas and minds are primarily used in situations and actions that create mass amounts of pain for mass amounts of people, to have empathy is in fact to suffer. To give yourself over, pass yourself along to others, hands open, palms wide, is asking for pain. But offering kindness shouldn’t be viewed as a request for pain.

You suffer from an illness, it afflicts you and affects your body, your perception of the world. Empathy, caring for others, becomes something bad, something to avoid, something that only brings wrongness. The act of empathizing is often solely associated with being with someone in their pain. As if you can’t be with someone in their joy, calm, contentment.

At many glances, through windows, heart, life is, and can be suffering, so much. If the word is suffering, is painful and awful, then to empathize at all, with anything, with anyone, with any situation, is necessarily suffering.

But I have to hopefully disagree, and say that there is empathy beyond sadness.We just don’t recognize that shared beauty is an experience of empathy. Yes, some might view my ongoing bouts of empathy as unfortunate and unnecessary. I say they keep me sane and whole, while boundaries and barriers of ice are shocks that don’t need to be so sharp.
Anyways, “Empathy” by Sarah Schulman was a great book to read, a surprise book, because I didn’t actually think I’d be able able to make it through it-I’ve been having trouble with the book reading lately. Headaches and can’t focus, no interest. So, to find a book that is poetic and realistic, more than a little gut wrenching, and yet inherently easily readable is an astounding thing. It’s a novel, but not. It’s a love story, and a lost story. It’s important and lovely. And there are some good essays and prefaces in it, too.

time

2008-07-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

It is very difficult to slow down time. To increase the counts between heartbeats. So many seem to constantly be seeking ways to quicken the pace, to get life to open up under the strain of the pressure of speed. I just want to be able to sit and listen to a whole piece of music, instead of listening to half a song haphazardly and unfocused before moving on to a new song. I can’t hold on to anything. Not in a grabby way, but things seem to slip through before I even have an impulse to reach for them.I want to be able to see time stream by like finely breezed fog ribbons.

I feel like I’m jumping from point to point, rather than taking steps. I walk toe to heel, not heel to toe. I make more of an imprint when I walk heel to toe, and the sound of my footsteps are louder. Which I always thought was embarrassing and inconspicuous. Keeping myself off balance was safer.

Now, I want the patience to recognize a full foot on the ground. I want my mind to be clear for one minute, for the headache fog to lift and allow me just a thought that is clarity.
This requires me to slow down time. It’s possible. Put the clock away and turn off the alarm. An extension of minutes. It’s all about breathing.

Sometimes, I just don't like making eye contact. And a piano.

2008-07-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

I sit down at the piano. I’ve never been one much good at lessons, at the learning of things, at giving myself time to learn things. If my eyes to my brain to my hands can’t immediately interpret and do whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing, then I won’t do it. The lazy approach, maybe, the distracted way, the inability to fully concentrate aspect.

When I sit down at the piano, it’s almost too much. At least ten things could be happening at once. That’s too much, too much is expected from the piano, from piano music, the history of the instrument, and those who have played it before me.

The first instrument we all learn is our voices, and it’s also the first to frighten us away from using it.

I took recorder lessons when I was five. On a one note instrument, expectations are different. Simpler, which doesn’t mean less, but there is almost a purer sense of focus, it’s more direct and less splintered out into portions.

I played the flute, an extension of recorder woodwind thing.

I played the violin, and was awful at it. Should’ve played the cello.

Tried the guitar. I can’t play bar chords. My hands are too small, and my wrists won’t reach quite that way. Never really made sense to me, either.

Took piano lessons, loosely termed, for about five years. Serious and not serious. I like to play, I just don’t like to read music and practice practice play. I’m not so good at the repitition. I tend to zone out and lose track of what I’m doing. And I’m a perfectionist, so it’s stressful to try to play something perfectly.

The piano is an instrument with way too much history and magnificence surrounding it. The symphonies and concertos and whatever pieces that have been written on and for them. Ten notes at once. Ten! That’s a lot of harmonizing.

I should start writing songs on the glockenspiel or something. Would it let me be ok with the fact that I will never be a glockenspiel virtuoso, or when I sit down, little glockenspiel mallet in hand, will I wither at my complete lack of originality and inability to be the best and most respected glockenspiel player in the world. Who is also the most amazing piano virtuoso ever. Who is also the most amazing singer ever. Who is also the most extraordinary accordion player ever.

Why is it never enough? I don’t even want to be a virtuoso. I don’t want to dedicate the time, and I know I don’t have it in me, I just want the words. I just want the recognition of being good at something, instead of being half-hearted at way too many things. I am not actually full of this drive, I want to be happy just sitting there a glockenspiel in front of me, little mallet in hand, happily making up three note songs about trees and the shapes of leaves and our lips of imperfection. Yeah. Lips of imperfection, no idea where that one came from, but it demanded to be said.

It’s interesting though, because when I imagine myself having achieved this astounding level of success, the daydream isn’t about the creation and presentation of something extraordinary. And it’s not just about hollow recognition, either. It’s about existing in this state of meaningful beingness, and knowing I can do something. And it’s about the people I am surrounded by, and talk to, and have relationships with. I daydream about the people I could meet, these amorphous, foggy shapes that I can’t fill in, not knowing who they are or what they do or what they have to say. Only that they do something important. And I do something important. And we are all important together. Not overimportant, or full of ourselves, though. Just doing things that do something. Something.

I just can’t stand face to face, and look eye to eye, because I feel like I’m not doing good enough. Not not being good enough, but not doing good enough. This world of drive, of ambition, of accomplishment, of product, these are the only things that can be actively, or rather, easily, shared in a minute of fast and disinterested conversation. You can’t pass along the essence of a moment of silence, or introspection, or distilled happiness from stillness in a few moments of bar chatter or party talk.

And I’m all about the introspection and the essences. That’s why I’m an introvert. It even says that I like “introspection and the essences of things” in various breakdowns of my personality type. I’m an introvert. I love talking to people, but not too many. It’s difficult for me to meet new people-not the act, but the experience. I can’t sum myself up in simple gestures and speech. I always feel like I have nothing to sell in the shopping mall of being well-socialized.

Socializing is a little bit like playing the piano, I guess. When it’s kept simple and without unreasonable expectations, it’s fun and interesting and lovely. When it’s trying to be all fancy harmonics and witty conversationalist, just so much yuck. So much yuck. I like to be the girl at the party who tags along with all her nifty friends, and can kind of hide, until something not too scary or overwhelming interests her. Or better yet, just bring a small party to my house, and make sure I know at least half of the people who are there. So, if ten people show up, and I know 5 of them, chances are that, by the end of the night, I may have actually spoken to at least 2 new people. And probably only if they speak to me first. Shyness and introversion cross over into each other’s court, unknown queen. They’re different, but I have both.

I just don’t like feeling defective about my temperament and behaviour. Which I do, when I compare myself to my extroverted and well spoken friends. Which is almost everyone I know. I’ve managed to surround myself with the most outgoing, well socialized, amiable people ever. How did I manage this? A case of I attract what I want to be? Which is fine. As long as you don’t tell me I’m boring, or predictable, or uninteresting, or unsuccessful, or ridiculous, or cumbersome, or anything else that falls into any of those categories because I don’t behave the same way you do, and say no to going out places, and don’t want to live a chatty, wild, adventurous life of more of everything. That’s just not me. It’s not boring to me. I just hate that snarky, judgmental, glassy look that people give me when I don’t live up to their expectations of funness and excitement. The dismissal. I don’t need to be dismissed by anyone, I already started ignoring myself a long, long time ago. I really don’t need help.

And I realize that this is not most people I know personally, and am close to. It’s more of a grand social scheme to make me, and every other shy person in the world, feel bad about ourselves, and insignificant. And I don’t like that. At all.

Hmmm….that was all a bit angry and ranting-like. Good.

Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1

2008-07-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

I’m talking myself around. In circles. Not around to any one particular place or point of voice. I’m restless and unproductive. Not that I’m necessarily a big fan of productivity, but I like to be able to write at least at little bit each day, at least a blog entry or something. But here, even though my brain knows I’m not right back where I was, sitting here, at this computer, in this house, everything just lodges, and gets stuck in a stupor of blah. The only word I want to type, the only word I even want to say is blah. It’s not even malaise or ennui, it’s just pure blah.

Numb blah. I sound like a really exciting person with a really exciting life when I say that.

I’m just having this pull towards wanting to create/not wanting to great. All of my energies all tangled up into expectation again, with this whole school thing. Yes, the school thing. What am I doing?

I feel like I’m making a huge mistake, I feel like I’m not doing enough, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Which I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m so afraid to be in debt.

I’m listening to Charlotte Martin’s “Veins”.

So, the debt thing. My brain makes this connection, seriously, this is how I think: school=debt=no money=having to work a crappy job=not able to work crappy job=being unemployed=not having anywhere to live/having to live back at my parents house=being sick all the time…and actually, I’m not entirely sure about the logical thought pattern continued, but somehow, it ends up with me either dying of some horrible disease, the end of the world, being violently murdered in my sleep, or being singed and painfully disintegrated by nuclear weapons in an apocalyptic third world war. Not to mention plain old heartbreak.

Negative thought patterns?Hmmm…

Seriously, does everybody think like this? It’s pretty unconducive to living a day to day life, so I have to assume that I’m of a relatively small minority of those with constant crazy brain.

And school. The only kind of school or material that I feel I should be studying is basic survivalist methods. The “how to live in the woods with only a knife and a well memorized encyclopedia of all of the non-poisonous edible plants of North America” kind of survival. Oh yeah, and maybe some self defense too. I can’t justify being a scholar, being a teacher, being a lawyer, I can sort of justify being a nurse, or a midwife, or a doctor, because those things have an immediate, emergency related impact. But anything else. Useless waste of time that I should be using to get prepared.

Crazy brain, I know. It’s embarrassing.

Who else wakes up in the morning and wonders if they should dress for wilderness survival, just in case. Who has this fear based sense of living where getting and being prepared for, literally, the worst that could possibly happen, is the only possible way to be.

I get that other people have anxiety. But it seems to be contained within the mundane. Not that the fear is any less, not that the feeling are any less, whether it’s worry about a paper, or a date, but answering each possibility with “ well, it doesn’t matter if I do that anyways because the world is just going to end horribly”, is just a little dramatic. Gets a little bit annoying.

Makes me sound really crazy. So I wrote a poem. Because it’s ok to be crazy if you’re a poet. It’s all in the name of art. I can be a winely lush then, too, and it’s all ok. Except for the liver. My poor over used, prescription chemically abused liver. Come on, liver, regenerate!

Sort of Apocalyptic poem #1

Caught by the wing
Pulled from the tree
To my nesting spot
Upended roots
Can I kill this bird
With a rock
Though the air
To the ground
And over the fire
No matches, no matches
My hands burning thin

Wearing my clothes
For seventeen days
Jeans dirt thick
Shoes speaking endeavored steps
Mouth to the ground
Listening for shoots

What’s ruined is left behind
Shoulders tensed to the wind
Bring ashes, bringing ashes swinging

No trees
To run to now
Rocks dropped on bones
Smashed the stones to dust
And the only repairs will be
Volcanic ones

A moment with my hands
Deep in the dirt
No breathing
No stillness in the sun
We only drink from the rain

And left all thoughts of mercy
In the pockets we sewed up
And left in shifting closets
A simple folding door
Unhinged

All veins have been suspended
And pipelines burst
As we have spread ourselves along
A wonder,
Which ground you are in
And whether you’re solid still

I’m barely here, for long.

9 years on and a song that's not about that big term...

2008-07-07T17:53:00.001-07:00

So, this one is a song that I've revisited after about 9 or 10 years. I recorded an earlier version on a cd I made at home when I was 17 ( it's the second to last track on the cd, those of you who want a melody and sound reference point. Adriana-you may be the only person who has this cd.). I think I may have also performed it at the grade 12 fashion show at my high school.... I wore a pretty dress and a fluffy pink sweater, and had a real live piano, no crappy keyboard. But, actually, I may have played another song.

Anyways. I was writing this morning, inspired by one of Adriana's blog posts ( isn't it nice to have points of artistic inspiration that come from a known source, rather than a merely distant one?), a poem called "Redeemed". Now, I'll take a wild guess, and say this is attached, emotionally and thematically to Charlotte Martin's "Redeemed", which I too have been listening to obsessively and devotedly for the past while.

You'd never know that this one concept, this word is what triggered a re-write after ten years, additions of complexities and switches in meanings. I'm fascinated by the word "redeemed", in the non sin related, non consumer related sense, but I've always had trouble coming to grips with, and finding my way about the term and act of redemption. It's interesting how to forms of the same meaning, the same themes affect me so differently.

I think it's that I associated redemption with being a big scary biblical term, whereas redeemed seems smaller and has possibilities outside of Judeo-christian thought patterns and processes. It feels more organic. I don't know, really, I don't.

However, none of this is actually noticeable in the song.

So, here's quick and quiet song #5

Cm-A flat

The sense she depended upon
but knew would never come
as she pasted petals into her book
and closed the shelves

The sound of some clearer voice
she waited for nine years to hear
and time and time and time
waits up

To put it in fierce terms
she would stand rigth straight for hours
moving only her joints
but her bones wouldn't follow

E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm

Standing in that green dress
she roots down into a tree
and is left ( calm?) ( stranded?) (unknown word...)

Cm-A flat

Isabella light sleeper
all our gifts run dry
who'dve though we'd be sitting here
no hillsides and no distillations
in our palm lines

they hold themselves
so strangely in my body
the placement of words
along limbs and exhalation

E flat-Cm-Fm-A flat-Cm

Transitions between form and tense
lie different on more places
than the tongue

E flat-A flat

I can't bring her back
I won't bring her back

Cm-A flat-E flat -Cm-A flat

To this failure
of broken and stuttering time
without.

tv? Really? Hmmm...maybe a book will make me sound smart.

2008-07-06T23:02:00.001-07:00

I have tendencies of being prolific and then being quiet. Break the spell and I'm even unproductive. That's not new. So instead of writing, I'm watching episodes of Wonderfalls. Great procrastination fodder. Truly. I was going to write about an extraordinary book I just read, "Empathy" by Sarah Schulman, which is about, yeah who would've guessed, empathy or the lack of. But, I'm not in the mood to get all essay-ee I'm still too tired. Vaguely blurry and almost hallucinatory. That's right, I'm not hallucinating, I'm being hallucinated. That's how all weirdy exhausted I am. And twitchy eye is still there too. Less, but still making itself known. I need tylenol.

sleep

2008-07-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

I am so tired. So so tired. That's really all I can say. So tired that my left eye is twitching, and my equilibrium is off. I feel like I'm falling over whenever I'm standing up, and my brain is in a complete fog. Sleeping not so well lately. Too much waking up all through the night, alarms in the morning, schedules and stress...insomnia is not good for me...wrecks my body...so I'll sleep all day tomorrow and hope all is better

The "how come every melody I write sounds the same" song

2008-07-02T19:00:00.001-07:00

I have problems with melody. It's such a scary thing, trying to write a meolody, and I think the music part of my brains shuts down when I attempt to write melody, because I put so much expectation on it to be catchy and interesting, and melodic. And like everything else, when I get to that stressed ou tplace of unreasonable expectation, the creativity shuts down.

So I just write, and sing, and write some more, and sit at the piano, and write and sing. And if it's crap, it's crap. And if it sounds exactly the same as the last song I wrote, then I need to find some small change to make it sound at least a little different. And if it sounds like some song that's already been written, well, every melody possible has probably almost been written, so the pressure of extreme originality needs to be placed to the side. I make myself sit there until I have something, even if it is a rough poem and a couple of chord changes that I like.

My word starting point came from an e-mail I received this morning from Lucia, and an astounding blog entry that Adriana wrote today. So, I'm in this song, and they are too. Conclusion I've come to: people don't write enough songs involving relationships other than their primary relationship ones, and there is so much possibility in every kind of relationship, and in every person. Although, that is just a sweeping comment based on popular music, more than anything else...all sorts of writers write about all sorts of things...

D-F#m-G-D

She wrote a letter
all typed out lightly
grainy print from the memories
that we ache to lose

Bm-A-G-D

Swept from her bed
a wild pool of spring
spitting up roses
full out to form

F#m-A-C-A

Follow me a swallow
willow tree burns by the hill
paling structures intertwine

F#m-Bm-D-C

referenced by fear

D-F#m-G-D

Bring her back
from her closed islands
our strength twists
smoother to the joint

Bm-A-G-D

We've become
no further than this
our hands quite thin
our wrists imprinted

F#-A-C-A

and wading into water's
been true
our stories call to themselves

Bm-D-C-G

from the spinnings of shore

A list, a first try at compilation of musical memory thoughts

2008-07-01T16:48:00.001-07:00

I wrote this for my Last.fm journal, but it's worth a cross post, I think.

A list for myself, I have tendencies towards forgetfullness. I imagine that if something I listens to stays around long enough, then it becomes something to me. No explanations, just notations back to the brain and heart. No order but the one I remembered in. Importants. If I had to summarize my life in music. With many memory blockages and mishaps, probably.
Over the Rhine-Drunkard's Prayer
Tori Amos-Boys for Pele
Noe Venable-The World is Bound by Secret Knots
Charlotte Martin-Veins/Stromata/On Your Shore
Terami Hirsch-A Broke Machine/To the Bone/Entropy 29
Tom McRae-Tom Mcrae
Hawksley Workman-Treeful of Starling/Last Night we Were/Between the Beautifuls/My Little Toothless Beauties
The Dresden Dolls-Dresen dolls/Yes, Virginia
Queen Adreena-Taxidermy/The Butcher and the Butterfly
David Gray-A Century Ends
Joanna Newsom-Ys/Milk-Eyed Mender
The Chameleons-Script of the Bridge/Strange Times
Jennifer Terran-Full Moon in Three/The Musician
Me'Shell NdegéOcello-Bitter
Lhasa de Sela -THe Living Road/La Llorona
Regina Spektor-Begin to Hope
PJ Harvey-White Chalk/Uh Huh Her/To Bring you my Love/Rid of Me
Sigur Rós-Takk
Veda Hille-Spine
Hem-Rabbit Songs
Beirut-Flying Club Cup
Zoë Keating-One Cello x 16: Natoma
Kate Bush-Hounds of Love
Nick Cave-The Boatman's Call
Sarah Slean-Night Bugs/Day One
Arcade Fire-FUneral/Neon Bible
Nina Simone
Bruce Springsteen-Born to Run

Hopefulness, of a slightly estranged sort

2008-07-01T00:47:00.001-07:00

I am a little lost to the sensation of balanced ground right now. I just moved back in with my parents for a month, after house sitting, and in two days I house sit again, with a lovely garden, but many many plants to water. And a cat to be fed.

One day with my parents and I am already just barely tip toeing the sanity and healthy existence line. So much anger, so much unhappiness, so little awareness of each other’s space, of what each of us could be possibly feeling. I’m not much in the mood for being trampled upon these days, this previously quick withering spine of mine seems to be steeling itself quite brazenly. So, being within physical proximity of the people responsible for so many of my traumas, albeit of the less blustery emotional kind, and unnoticeable to those who don’t know what to look for, it’s just too much.

I’ve had two days of no writing. I’m listening to Sigur Ros to repair the damage. If I had to pick one band/musician that epitomizes damage repair, or maybe even things like the delicate repair of the spines of old books, whether with fancy tools, or a bit of a scotch tape salvage operation, it’s Sigur Ros. I’ve never been a very hopeful person, but their music is a beginning lesson in hopefulness, and it makes me kind of pukey. In a good “I don’t really understand what I’m feeling, but I’m just happy to be feeling anything at all” kind of sea sickness way.

I listen to Terami Hirsch to be comforted and less lonely, to Charlotte Martin when I need to feel sad or full of strength, to PJ Harvey when I need to be angry and righteous, to Sigur Ros when I need to learn how to be hopeful.

Is hope the opposite of fear? When I’m afraid I ‘m in a place that is distinctly grey and walled in, fear to me is the absence of future, and hope is future based. Most of my moods are sullen and shaken ones, moments before I fall asleep when I worry if this will be the last time I every get to sleep peacefully, if the world will be ruined and I will be shattered when I wake up. I fear going to sleep because I fear what will be when I wake up. I fear boredom because it means I am wasting my life. I fear speaking because I am afraid of looking silly and foolish, unintelligent and uninformed. I fear starting anything because I will never be able to finish it. I fear pain. I fear being a useless human being. I fear meaninglessness. I fear intimacy because I fear rejection. I fear making the wrong choices. I fear being alone for the rest of my life. I fear isolation. I fear war and violence and torture. I fear that I and the people I love will never be happy. I fear confrontation. I fear making eye contact with people. I fear speaking my true thoughts aloud. I fear letting myself be beautiful because if I’m beautiful, then people will no longer reject me for being ugly, and will instead reject me for who I am. I fear disappointing people. I fear being loved because I’m not sure if I know how to love in return. I fear feeling things. I fear being numb, because I have been.

My brain stem is in constant hyperdrive, and I know it’s survival mechanisms based upon a seemingly irrational fear of imminent death that drives these thoughts. I know what is chemically happening in my body to make me feel afraid, and how this muscle tension and panic causes me to form such wild and frustrating thoughts, which in turn create more bodily anxiety. I understand the science of it, even though I explain it badly. But it’s frustrating that I can’t pinpoint the exact reasons why I react so strongly in ways that other people don’t. Why fear has taken so much root, why my tree is a massive mess of twistiness and strange pain.

Even though I have not experienced what most people classify to be major traumatic events, my body and brain react to almost every experience as life-threatening and logical brain shutdown worthy. It’s not that I’m not capable of logic and reason, it’s just that when I’m expected to perform, or prove that I’m fully capable, I go into survival mode, and the entirely logical part of my brain tunes out, leaving me a babbling mess of foggy feeling attacked. Any kind of criticism, even potential, leaves me shaking, as though I’m having my ego and true self pulled apart into unrecognizable and unworthy fragments right in front of me. So, it’s easier to believe that I’m stupid than to subject myself to such intense seeming scrutiny, even if that’s not what’s actually happening.

At points in my life I’ve seriously considered that being alone in a small house in the far off woods would be the best thing possible for me, the only way for me to go on living. Sometimes I think that that’s the only way I could cope, to shut myself off from any kind of interaction other than with art or music or books. Every conversation I have with anyone is strewn with unintended verbal insults or minute physical rejections. I read body language, facial expressions, and vocal intonations too well, and I take everything as rejection or criticism. What happened to me? I know that everyone doesn’t go through life experiencing being dragged apart and bones picked clean and cracked by everyone she looks in the eye, or shares a word with. Intimacy is agony because it doesn’t exist for me. A horrible statement, I know, and one that isn’t completely true, but in my bitter and weakened places it’s where I go. I don’t trust anybody not to hurt me, and I don’t like feeling so alone and defensive. I hate that I can’t let people in, and that I keep a relatively thick piece of sheet metal between myself and even my closest of friends.

I hate that I feel as though I don’t have the right to speak. I hate being so melodramatic. I hate that other people aren’t so melodramatic, because we should all be able to let go and let it out all together, and then it wouldn’t be such a vulnerable and scary thing. I hate being vulnerable, and I hate that I work so hard not to be vulnerable, because I respect and cherish vulnerability so much. I hate being a doormat. I hate that I don’t understand myself. Sometimes I hate my parents for failing to be strong enough to accept that they had a part in how fearful and fucked up and broken I am. Sometimes I hate my friends for not wanting to listen to me scream and cry and babble and lash out at the world. Sometimes I hate myself for not speaking up when I have the chance. I hate the world for not wanting to hear those of us who are in pain, and how emotional pain is belittled and pushed aside.

I hate being broken and fragmented and poetic and so thin skinned with such a barren multi-chambered heart.

And I hate feeling guilty. For living, breathing, existing, speaking, taking up space, for feeling hateful. For being brought up to believe that I ruined my parents life, beliefs given to me underneath sweet word of affection. I wasn’t born feeling unworthy, somewhere along the way I picked it up.

Now I’m angry and vicious, with a belly full of burning loathing that I just want to forgive and forget. I just feel so guilty harboring so much anger towards my mother, when I can see how much pain she’s in. How upset I get when she talks about the cruel ways her own mother treated her that she doesn’t realize she’s actually inflicting upon her own daughter. How she can’t see her own cruelty because she sees herself as such a victim, such a wonderful, loving, kind person, when she really is constantly lashing out at everyone around her, and overwhelming me, pushing all of her ideas and fears on me.

So little of this is my own. I learned how to hate myself from keen experts who have no idea of how negatively powerful they are. Now, it’s so hard to separate these webs of harshnessess from my own strong and kind self. And I feel like a truly horrible person for even perceiving and articulating these long aching joints of cruelty passed generationally. So, how do I become myself without causing them pain?

I separate.

Morning song #3 ( the crappy and difficult one)

2008-06-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

What words have not been before, but will be soon.

2008-06-27T22:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Little morning songs Two

2008-06-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

Little morning songs

2008-06-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Books..boring....books

2008-06-26T16:02:00.001-07:00

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.

Stomach Aches and

2008-06-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Guilt

2008-06-23T20:45:00.001-07:00

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.

Frida on Fire

2008-06-22T19:37:00.001-07:00

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.

What I would say to the sea

2008-06-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

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.

Well, that was intense.

2008-06-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Art and something, I'm sure

2008-06-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

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.

On birds, of a sort

2008-06-18T10:12:00.001-07:00

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.

Twig Tea and Poetry

2008-06-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

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.

And I’m writing all this because it’s calming. It brings me back to myself in this moment of anxiety and separation. I think the Zoloft withdrawl sympton hit big time yesterday, and this morning I’m all full of muscle spasms, unahppy gastrointestinal system, unfocussed- I feel like I have a terrible flu, and it’s really hard to do anything. So I’ll focus on small things that I love, like poems and songs. My body really, really doesn’t like pharmaceuticals.

Another note on art

2008-06-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

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

brazen wings

2008-06-16T13:01:00.001-07:00

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?

Dictionaries, or I don't believe in art for art's sake.

2008-06-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

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?

A love poem to my ipod.

2008-06-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Yes.

2008-06-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've ever listened to as much music as I have this week.

Things I know and remember about myself:

2008-06-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Pixies and Posies Part Two

2008-06-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Ignoring gut feeling, Part One

2008-06-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Not a thing too much

2008-06-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Late night nothing for two days. Sleep now, and forget days of stuttered creativity, blinded down and forgotten.

Another morning musing

2008-06-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

This morning I’m being rebellious, and drinking twig tea from a beautiful bowl. A bowl so I can hold my hands curved around it, palms like an offering, overlapping when I take a sip. Small small simple ways of adding meaning through ritual to the everyday. I like being able to see the silted remnants that snuck out of the fine mesh and into the water, a little bit of earth making its way through my system.

Another morning begun watching the gorgeous music video of “Grand Canyon” by Jennifer Terran. http://www.myspace.com/jenniferterran. If I made a film, it would probably resemble something like this. A moody portrait photographer’s delicious colors and frames. I miss taking pictures.

When I was in the Magdalens I had this vague notion of finding the perfect handmade ceramic/pottery tea mug or bowl. I love the idea of having tea each morning with an artist, vicariously, from one set of hands lovingly into mine. The richness of handmade art

Big windows, lots of fine rain. As in, the droplets are small but copious.

Late night, almost sleep dream post

2008-06-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Intricate plotting isn’t my style. Vast and evasive is closer to the bone.

How fast and far we’ve come from peace, only to find it here again.

Rootswept Magdalena, fly, such an airborne girl, tied vivid into the ground, still. Listen there, she’s enveloping words with her tongue to spit out soon like a saturated postage stamp. Rootswoven. It’s too much to bear. How can anyone bear living, to feel the worl pass through the heart and body, it’s extraordinary and spinning. Why are we not drunk and dancing all the time with this blood and water in smooth flows and shocklets running through us? My lips mumble between the silences that I fill with breath.

The house smells like kimchee, and it’s almost sweet and home-like when it’s slightly faded.

of spelling and starts, of sorts

2008-06-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

All of these words are just stuttering starts, attempts at writing things I haven’t figured out how to spell. Nothing perfect.

\I made a comment a couple of weeks ago, that it would be great if I could get paid to read books. I should have been more specific about this wish. Today I realized that I do, essentially, make a living by reading; but it’s by proofreading online training courses for grammatical and formatting errors. Not exactly scintillating material. So now, if I could just get paid to read really good novels…

I have these thoughts swirling around that I’m somehow a lesser person doing a lesser job because I got my job through my family, and didn’t really earn it. That, even though I do work, it’s not real work because I don’t have to go into an office every day and suffer through dealing with annoying customers and shitty bosses ( which has pretty much been every job I’ve ever had before).

I’ve been through so many jobs: Jewellery quality control, book shelver at the library, Starbucks. I once spent three weeks taking every single item off the shelves in a pharmacy, dusting the shelves and then putting all the items back on. I worked at Cobs bread, I quit my PNE job as a bingo girl after 2 hours of training, I worked at a clothing store for 4 hours, Safeway, sorted article at interlibrary loans at sfu(by far the best), cashier/usher at a theatre, framed and sold pictures, and probably more I’m forgetting. The common thread? All of these jobs sucked: they were horrible, boring, and I got treated like crap even though I worked my ass off. I’m really good at being a doormat, apparently.

And what did I learn from all of this? Well, part of my brain says “ Anna, you’re a failure, you can’t even keep a mediocre, minimum wage job, what’s wrong with you, everybody else can do it, so you should be able to, too?”. Then, the other part of my brain says, “ That’s completely ridiculous. No one should have to spend their days doing unimportant and meaningless hard work that they don’t even get paid a living wage to do. It’s the job and all the societal expectations wrapped up around that are the problem”. So, I basically have crazy brain most of the time, arguing with myself, stumbling between failure and defiance.

I recognize the illness of a work world, a daily life where people have to spend their worthy time doing tasks that are unworthy of them. Along the way, I somehow bought into the myth that work has to be hard and unsatisfying. That if nobody’s yelling at me, I’m not working hard enough.

I will never be well adjusted. It’s just not in my nature, and I only barely conceal this through my surface quietness. I was always the nice girl ( which is better than being the mean girl, really) who was quiet and unassuming. I don’t always feel the need to talk, true, but unassuming means predictable and boring, and I hate being thought of as predictable and boring. Although I often worry that I am. I would rather stay in and have a Saturday night of knitting and listening to music than go out to a noisy and crowded dance club that plays music I’m not that interested in , and where I have to get exceptionally drunk just to deal with all the competition and random groping. I’m not a big fan of using alcohol as a social coping mechanism anymore. The days of me sitting alone in the corner at a party drinking from my bottle of wine are somewhat over.

Although I never quite fit properly, generic rebellion has never been my thing, either.

I just don’t want to walk through life with a pain in my chest, pretending not to care. I don’t want to keep pushing people away and then blaming them for my loneliness. I don’t want to have to keep this rocky shell around my thin skin, so worried about what parts of me will seep out if I don’t keep them contained and stashed away.

How is it that fullness and emptiness can feel the same? When you’re full of the wrong things, I guess…Façade is a beautiful word, and whenever I say it my palms feels as though they are tracing the edges of the outside of the most extraordinary and lovely building.

Morning thoughts and rantings.

2008-06-04T11:09:00.001-07:00

Grey morning, sitting down to my first cup of tea, Twig today since my stomach was so upset yesterday. Not quite coffee, in any way, and I’m craving the warmth and comfort of a really good cup of coffee all full of cream and sugar. The buzz of this loud computer, and the traffic going by. Cellphone constantly within reach in case someone calls, at least it’s a nice shade of red.

Listening to Jennifer Terran’s “Grand Canyon”, waiting for the cds of hers that I ordered to arrive in the mail. Nearly the only music I can tolerate day in and out, so much sounds grating and just so much going on within it, and I just feel bombarded with sound. I have definitely fluctuating tolerance levels for sound and noises- and when I’m feeling aurally sensitive, I get naueseous and increased headaches when confronted with unappealing sounds.

Woke up today tired, a deadened/leadened feeling in my chest. Heartburn tangled up with heartache. So much grief so close to the surface, but I’m so used to pushing it all down and putting on a dull placid face that I can’t process the emotions when I have them, so instead I feel sick, and get heartburn and nausea instead. Pounding headaches because somewhere along the way I learned it was better for me to feel physical pain than to show my emotions and be humiliated through rejection.

It’s entirely traceable, although particulars and exactnesses aren’t stored up in my memory. As a girl, I cried when sad, ridiculed, angry. People laughed at this, told me I was stupid and overemotional. So I stopped crying. Simple as sky or so.

Except now I have this huge mess/mass of blah and god know’s what chewing it’s way through my stomach lining and making me fearful of every little thing. Most times, my brain is not a pretty place to be. It’s worse if I read the newspaper or watch tv.

How do I daily face a world that seems to be coming apart and bursting violence, pain, and fear through all of its already rough hewn seams? What’s the point in even getting out of bed if we’re all going to die horrible painful deaths at the hands of greedy, angry, bitter deathmongerers? Such lovely thoughts to have first thing in the morning, I know.

When confronted minute by minute with an intensity of nihilism and pain, how does one have a successful existential crisis? Success being determined as being able to get out of bed everyday with a sense of purpose and possibilty, rather than crawling back under the covers to think sad and horrible thoughts.

Inside this spiral of though is the grain of answer as to why I find it so hard to be around people, to relate to people. To even feel as though I’m living in the same world as everyone else. I can’t deal with small talk, video games and celebrity gossip when my mind is perpetually concerned with the state of the world and our places in it.

My therapist has accurately described this sensation as my necessity for the real. I can’t function healthily on the bullshit level, though I’ve been trying to fit into it for so long that I’m in this uncomfortable liminal space of knowing I don’t fit into a certain space, but not knowing how to create or find a real space.

It sounds all teenage angst, to judge it, and that’s a problem, to pigeonhole experience in such a way. It denies the reality that so many people suffering from depression and anxiety, and that this is a social problem, not just a hush hush problem to be medicated and ignored. Trying to fit everyone into this social model of well adjusted, driven, high achievers just causes so much physical, mental, and emotional illness. I’m not putting all of the blame on the external world, but I do in fact believe that much of my so-called “adjustment problems” and “mental illnesses” are truly social illnesses that derive from growing up and living within an unhealthy and stifling social system that pretends to be wide open and full of possibilities.

I know all this, and yet, I still feel like a loser and a failure on an hourly basis. I feel like everywhere I go people see me and notice, whisper about that “dorky girl who just can’t keep a job, who can’t pull her own weight, who’s just lazy and whiney, spoiled, insignificant, stupid, and boring”. Yeah. I know. I’m neurotic. At least I find my thinking patterns kind of funny. In a way. But not really.

(weird formatting thing, can't figure out why the last paragraph is in a different font, and I can't get it to change. Oh well...I'll remain computer illiterate.)

Ramshackle Attempt #1

2008-06-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

So, I’m going to start simply. Expurgated vs unexpurgated-my own editing process far underway before I even begin to write, of course. If I can’t say it to myself, then I can’t say it to myself in writing. So simply. Today I’m nauseous. And cold and shaky. Problem is, I can’t tell whether my symptoms are psychosomatic due to my anxiety, or if they are side effects of the upped dosages of the medications I take to deal with the anxiety. Medical wonders and worries. Sitting in bed, pillows propped up, curled under my favorite red sparkly blanket, waiting for the phone to ring because I’m a receptionist now. Could I have a better job than being able to lie in bed and answering my cell phone and telling somebody I’ll get someone else to call them? Not really. And yet, I still hate every moment of it. I get panicky and fearful at the thought of the phone ringing. I don’t want to have to talk to anyone, what if I tell them the wrong thing, what if I don’t do it right, what if I don’t get everything perfect?

Being semi-unemployed is glorious and boring. Not so glamorous, because I don’t blow dry my hair or put in contact lenses, it’s all jeans and t-shirts or tea and pajamas. Getting all prettied up is too much of an effort these days. I don’t know if I even know how to make myself look pretty anymore. Don’t know if I ever did.

I guess today isn’t a particularly good day.

Blog theory:

As an explication of why I feel the need to write ( because I feel the need to explain myself here, and moderately well).

I’m terrible at communicating, and I have tendencies that vaguely aim towards hibernations. I tend to keep secrets, and fear telling people things because I believe that they will negatively judge me. I’m sure this includes myself. So, I tend to stay away from people and conversations and public places. I’m no good in a crowd.

So, half of this is just a way for me to sort my thoughts out, and the other half is to let my friends know ( if they are interested) what I’m actually up to in those times when it seems as though I’m ignoring them.

Not so much stories, or action by action dictations of my day and what I did, but more ramblings, sorted through or not.

I want more than just getting by, and right now it feels like I’m barely doing that.

Good thing that happened: I found a pair of fluffy white wings in the backseat of Josette’s car, and they’re going to become part of the apartment’s “pilot” outfit. Which is basically just the silly pilot hat Jo got from dressew while trying to make 19th century mountaineer costumes, which I then decided was my fabulous sassy hat. And now I have wings to match. So, I can put on music and dance around the apartment in a pretty dress, with angel wings and a cheap pilot hat while the roommates cook dinner.

I’m just feeling out of it today, dizzy, headachy, my eyes are strained, and my limbs feel both heavy, and light and shaky. Nausea and heartburn, bad enough that I had to get Jo to drive me to the store to buy a bottle of chalky berry antacid stuff. Went to he bank to pay rent, wandered around in Supervalu for awhile, and went to Safeway to buy cookies and stomach stuff. And the left turn signal on Jo’s car doesn’t work, so we had to try to do all of this without having to make left turns, and if we did have to make a left turn, she’d have to stick her arm out the window into the pouring rain and make the left turn signal. At least this made potentially menial activities entertaining.

2008-05-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

Unposted things for two years, I have time resembling a whole lot of open space to worry, so this whole writing thing woven by the idea that it might be read, at some point, is sounding like somewhat of an idea. I even had to go to the effort of actually getting a gmail account just to access this blog again. And the question, do I treat it as journal, or musings? What do I want to tell and how, but has being secretive(which I am, oh I am) has never helped me out any, but only given me heartburn of the sharpest kind. In all of its forms.

So, a trial, an attempt, we'll see what happens.

Start again, perhaps

2006-07-29T23:32:00.000-07:00

I'm thinkinking, perhaps, a try, once more, at this writing thing, just to do it....of course there's no one to read it, but...oh well...

Alice #4

2004-12-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

So I'm working on this writing project of not adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" but something about her, using her character as a jumping off point for something...this is the most recent fragment, using place...you won't really be able to see the Alice in here at the moment, eventually it will all hopefully come together, crossing my fingers for some illustrations:

Nothing like the half desert here with mountains rocky and a creek by the way by the side of half shrub trees. Trains at night lights bright white on the rockside that climbs a kilometer above my feet. Echo at the rattlesnakes that don’t or won’t make an appearance in the crunchy gold grass. Drive into town five closed restaurants and a diner small town life in this hot dry place. Still.
It’s true about tire dust flying up into the open windows in my mouth my hair my eyes, gritty scrapings with blinks. The taste of this place like the lack of a smell here. Put my boots down on gravel for a minute, scrape around push around small rocks that get close to my toes through holes in the rubber in the leather. My shins sweat under jeans and laces dusty up to the knees. Maybe 2 3 people in center town. They look at me my car brush hair off their foreheads and go somewhere. This could be a place for a fall but not mine. At the diner I order toast with marmalade take a bite and leave it for coffee. To go two cups for the road, back in my car and I’m gone.

stuff I've been writing, not edited, kind of streamy

2004-12-03T13:35:00.001-08:00

the streets are rain-marked
unlike the barrennes I've coome from
Along one road
everyday another
partial end to true one
I remember waiting
though I never did
as the fractured memory of memories
replaces knowledge
the cut off point
when hollow stomachs
and dry eyes loosen themselves
wet with salt
I am in this moment
torn with the moment
five steps from the house
across the street
in Portage wind
orange sweater
watching the cross of streets
deciding I would leave soon
it isn't love but a discontent
sewing with my fingers raw
I can't seem to make anything
hold
hand defies my attempt to bring
lives together
places dictate my meaning
and a room of my own is not this one
train light on the
deserted mountain side
curled and mangled in
the backseat
every noise a shock
three hours sleep, heat
to burn so much skin
exposed
through clear windows

I want a best friend

2004-11-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend about the need for a best friend last night. All through high school, my greatest desire was for a best friend. Someone to spend all of my time with, who had almost everything in common with me, where it was kind of the two of us against the world. I saw this in friendships around me, and so much in my head. I was just so lost and alone, always searching for this elusive ideal, I suppose the other half to myself. I put this ideal onto others, and whenever I met someone that I clicked with, this hopeful image overshadowed their actual personality. This image has been with me forever, and it’s always centered around myself as the outcast reveling in not being alone in my quirkiness. That I’d never met someone like myself, so everything about me felt wrong. I could never accept myself unless I was mirrored back to myself. Books, art, movies, music, I could never enjoy it for what it was because nothing was me in any of it. Aspects, yes, but not the whole parts combined of me. And I never really understood that this was teenage angst, that this was the search for self, that for most people this manifests itself as the intense search for their soul mate.
And really, I have been searching for my soul mate, in different forms than I guess most people do. But what about the possibility that different aspects of different people combine as a whole to create completion. This steadfast rule of just one other person seems almost ridiculous. And I impede myself in this search, as I have these pre-formed ideas of what said person should be like. So much so, that when an opportunity presents itself that I don’t recognize, I don’t let it develop into anything. I build up these crazy walls so that I both don’t recognize amazing people, and then won’t let them in when I do recognize them.
And I’ve had so many, it’s painful to look back(which I do often) and name them. In the act of naming is a recognition. Of what I’ve done to myself in the name of finding a place where I fit. Most of you probably don’t even know who you are , and are still a very important part of my life. I’m sorry that I’ve been so lost to myself that I’ve only recognized your beauty when it doesn’t directly relate to mine. That I’ve literally left some of you behind as I go from place to place aimlessly. Exile and outside is all that I understand. Leaving and loss is what I dream of because I always thought that there would be nothing else but that for me...to make an impression as I walk out the door, on a plane, in a car. And I hate this, I want it to be gone, I want to relate, to love, to experience full joy. To tell everyone that I’m so afraid of being rejected that I can’t open myself enough to let someone offer me something. And even if they do break down the shell enough, I still can’t accept any of it. Oh, what a silly conundrum I am. I am in love with so many people( in the sense that they amaze and wow me constantly) but but but.....Just know, even if you never read this, that I am in love with you(and I mean all of you), completely wholeheartedly.

2004-11-29T18:26:00.000-08:00

Soundtrack-"Left and Leaving"-The Weakerthans
Open this door, leave me to nowhere, and I’ll find something someday. In this moment of love and blood I have nothing left to put into this quarter slot, to pay for my entertainment and joy. No joy in the morning, my coffee’s cold, never hot enough until I heat it at least three times before every sip. Letters too many letters I have mailed that mean nothing to the receiver. Weaker than I was before, but stronger of heart ( you’ll never know what I mean by this) I’ve chosen a new type of taste today. The one of never leaving the house, but not being able to be comfortable where I am. Progress isn’t here today, she’s gone on a little trip to Victoria. The ferry ride always gives her chills.
Benevolence is not the motivation for any of my so-called action. For action in my head is merely passivity, and if I drink myself to genius tonight, I will accomplish only the success of illusion. Maya does not treat me quite right, I have no illustrious visions to keep me occupied . Only blanks and floors so beautiful I spread my blanket out and try to sleep. Bones sore even though flesh pillows itself after nights on the floor. I slept in the doorway, blanket only covering my hips, the rest of my body sprawled out into any space possible. Dizzy for two days afterwards, unsure of what had crept into my system, I read beautiful comics all day while Adriana took a bath, listening to Teresa Stratas singing Kurt Weill.
The road song is singing in my blood again. Two weeks seems to be all that I can stand in any place, no matter how much or little I know it. Snow the first time tonight, taking out the garbage after I cleaned out, not up, the bathroom in the basement. I want to be back in Winnipeg, not for the place or school, but the space. The imaginary memories and what ifs I could have created. More like this fictitious desire I have to be alone in some city as barren as that place. It’s too lush to be lonely in Vancouver. But I lie when I say that this sense is loneliness, because truly it is more like a combination of wistfulness, nostalgia, and general grayness. It has nothing to do with being alone, and everything with just being.
So just give in to sensation and this ever possessing loss of nothing you ever had anyways.
"Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty"-weakerthans

art #1 of who knows how many

2004-11-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

I am obsessed with art. With pretending to look, create, and interact with art. Some need to put down everything in timelessness, perhaps? Or just get it out of me. I think that's what it is, this mumble, jumbled whispers of voices in the back of my head-not true voices, just ideas. Could-be's and maybe's not fully formed anything. In fact, the formation from sense to actuality is painful, stressful, and wholly undesirable. yet I try, and begin, over and over.
I don't want to make anything, really. I don't want to feel as if it is necessary for me to attempt again and again to make something, anything. The pressure of creation, when others tell me that I am a creative person, but I just don't know. I don't really feel like an anything person, honestly. I suppose that I can do things, but I never have the desire to begin. I'm just pretending to be an artist, which really means that I shouldn't be one, because if I really were one than I wouldn't be having this constant argument with myself over whether I am or not. I would be doing things, writing, making things, creating.

Such a push to invent, to be spontaneous and NEW all of the time. Newness, the stench of plastic and chemicals, bright color soon to fade. So much pressure on everything.

shortness

2004-11-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

I don't want to leave the house. Before, I was so anxious to never be at home, at least three places a day to visit were necessary.

first of first of something, I suppose

2004-11-26T01:29:00.000-08:00

I accidentally erased my first post. I tend to erase a lot of things. My internal editor is always at work. Too bad my writing one never comes out to play. Stream of consciousness it too rigid a word for how I write- and at the same time, too lose. I do select, but I never go back to the same piece again. It seems so gone once something is out of me. The repitition of theater non-workable in my writing life. I feel as though I'm supposed to introduce myself, talking to nobody as I am I see no point. What is my point in starting this up? To write with the sensation that it is being read, whether or not htis is the case? To try and remove myself from the everyday isolation of being unemployed, not in school, and living with my parents again? More like to revel in this nothing-to-do-ness. I will not edit here. Journal, work-posting, whatever I feel like at the moment. Sleep for now, though.