in these times

at least i do still have my unpaid job.

Poet's Work (by Lorine Niedecker)

Grandfather
advised me:
Learn a trade

I learned
to sit at desk
and condense

No layoffs
from this
condensery

~

sidebrow anthology

several copies of the sidebrow anthology have arrived at my front door. interesting layout, encouraging/forcing an innovative way of reading.

despite my love of books/bound pages/ink on paper, i was surprised to find myself much preferring the presentation of my work on the site proper. won't go into the reasons here but if anyone's interested in them i'll be happy to oblige.

also personally curious why publishing an excerpt of a project ended up halting my work on the whole. haven't made much progress since. or be honest, my dear: any progress at all. i just felt like moving on. why? should i never share anything undone? and then again, is anything ever done? for me: no. i can't think of one thing. and with visual art i've certainly been known to muddy things up...also w/ creative writing, i over-edit to a dreadful, almost ocd extent. a short story has literally ended up as a 2 line experimental poem. maybe this is okay. or maybe like a child i need some sort of parent-figure (within myself, this time) to 'take the paper away.' or maybe i have a gift for slicing. or maybe i am proving my point by not even being able to end this paragraph right now, even though i'm late for a meeting! sigh.

idea for later: replicate via external image (sculpture? video?) that queasy feeling that comes from moments like the above. (why?) (b/c it could be interesting to find out more.)

well then, before i hit the button...too lazy to read the links? i am too. (they're just for archival purposes anyway, as is this whole blog). here's a text version of my piece:


---------------------------------


Excerpt from MEANWHILE (A Movement Missive Series)

Fairhazel Gardens,

I am under the chair. See half a monarch wing in the dustbin. Backyard vixen squalled all night to her cubs. No need to look outside, but I did. Red apple with a broken neck. Every word is an unnecessary stain. Take back your eyes. Remove an ant from your arm without snuff. I am under the phone book which is under the wheel. I’m in an earth, call-less.

Swift,
Dutch Flat

-

Creature,

This isn’t to be marked for errors. After last night, please. I think Kansas is a fresh deep misery and much more pretty than I once thought. There’s the severity, but. I enjoyed our travels. I’m buying you a book. Remember crossing Mad River? Wyoming? Nothing’s like with you.

Hither,
Yours

-

Lover,

The smallest slants keep happening today. All day. It’s the loosening of eye teeth. Tastes intrude like how the classical can weave it. The moment more real. Snap of your head when you thought you heard something move in the foyer. Here, drawing shutters, nearing midnight, simultaneously you’re there, the morning train towards sea, sitting backwards. Newsprint on your teacup.

Liver,
Even

-

Curiousier,

Caught in the Gunnersbury train. Stack yourself against the window. Your voice rides the length of me. Two eyes serve a movement. Would empty veins for. Greyish bruise above the pisiform. It’s not your memory, it’s you. Bloody coming up.

Halt

-

Meanwhile,

Here I am in domestic bliss and blister. Sleep spurs tangles. I took a pair of perfectly, but they were yours. She threatened suicide the evenings I did not. It’s already inside you, and submission. Collections I hope to keep discretely. This year’s little sense. Your commentary: A twinned sigh across the airshaft. Dry crackle the blues. Soft metal. Buckled love.

Mine


~

elation!

no need to say it, because this date, when i look back at this, will speak for itself.
now, but about the play i'm writing...(project w/ j)- too late/ too early to shift shape? how can i even capture hope, anyhow? do i want to? just like taking a break from the camera to look out with naked eye instead, maybe this barack obama moment is a time to just witness it and feel.

~

day of the dead

feeling inspired, awed, reverent.

tried my best to capture the energy of the night.

heartbreakingly sweet, a shrine for babies.

spinning baby toys hanging from the tree. here, a sippy cup a-twirl.

crossing paths with a skeleton.

scribing messages for the loved and lost.

still life, with pomegranate.

ghost on a cell phone.

color and light.

the webs we weave.

a little red ridinghood addendum, etc.

my favorite holiday, this masquerade & leaves. but there's a brief but unmistakable longing for my birthplace, new york, during autumn and especially on halloween. that chimney-smokey swirling wind and the blanketing of darkness, the narrowing days. sure it has its measure of dread (winter, cold, barren forests), but there's a beauty. duende. when i developed the syncope disorder 2 1/2 years ago i realized something about this time of year: it's like a fainting spell in slow motion. darkness closing in.

it's also my birth-season. and yet another year turns over. have to get used to this new number. not thrilled. oh, there's that sentiment i heard on NPR earlier this month (yes i actually paid attention this time despite the madcap driving to sell work at the indie fair)-- that it's strange we celebrate our birthdays, when really we should be mourning the loss of our passing life. each birthday means we're that much closer to death. dismal, but dry and i must admit i loved it. him. who was he? look that up.

in the half-light of that recent (rather school-paper-ish) entry, i have been thinking today about that doll i had. an ugly little red riding hood doll, all knit, but though a soft doll it had a hardness to it, stuffed with something malleable but stiff. especially the face. definitely hand-made. pull Little Red's skirt over her head, and--gasp--- she was her grandmother. red replaced with navy blue and grey. old-lady hair the color of wire. it was eerie, that old woman being inside the girl. a sick twist on the actual tale. then, to top off the psychological insanity, if you pulled up the little puffy cap on the grandmother's head, there was a badly-formed wolf. were it not for the story, there's no way anyone would identify it as a wolf, but there is was. a deadish brownish lump with teeth atop her head. further evidence (as if i needed any, even as a kid) that i'd never want to wear fur.


~

a question re. little red riding hood

i was asked for some thoughts on dressing up as little red riding hood for halloween. perhaps because i am somewhat obsessed with children's literature and its subversions? i must admit, i do collect sources (a favorite book along with other alison lurie works). anyway, in my answer i explained my version of the costume from 2 years ago on all hallows. i wore the classic fare (red cape, plaid skirt, vintage kid's lacy shirt, knee socks) but with messy hair and subtle lines of blood coming down my leg. (it's likely many people actually thought it was my period, while others were aghast at the dark implication, but hey that was the risk i took). my boyfriend played the wolf, a man on the brink of night who was only just part-way to fully becoming the embodiment of something dangerous, yet still capable of such dangerous things. you might say he was suffering from his own socialization within the context of a violent society. he was covered in a bit of blood too, signs of battle because my preference is the depiction of little red as nothing like a passive victim. i always pictured her this way, even as a small child-- she fought her way to survival.

about the disturbing rape implication of the costume-- it was a choice that sprang from my understanding of the story's subtext: violation. the disturbing part of the costume was not the fake blood but the truth it referenced, and that truth wouldn't mean anything in a culture without rape. the story of little red ridinghood itself, too, whispers to us a side tale of childhood abuse, elder abuse, as well. these realities go back way before the story originated, and yet are still barely acknowledged (to the extent they should be) today. (by the way, i made sure i only went to adult parties so there were no children present. it's not exactly a night in which a child typically has an adult to supplement their undeveloped facilities to process such art. not that kids don't have much wisdom and instinct to understand the world, but i don't want to traumatize them. they get enough from the ghoulishness and gore that night already.)



but the adults! there was my own catharsis. and their transparent reactions, a palpable moment of internal wheels moving. depending on the person, it ranged from a quick looking away for some to questions and curiosity from others. short momentary responses of nervous laughter, kneejerk disgust, tacit glances (these meant the most to me), a strange delight, the camaraderie of audaciousness, or silence.


~

a new year autumn

heard from the curb today, bikes and strollers and so many footsteps passing by. her voice and the harmony too:

you're covered in roses, you're covered in ashes, covered in rain. you're covered in babies, covered in slashes, covered in wilderness, covered in stains. covered in ruin, covered in secrets, you're covered in treetops you're covered in birds who can sing a million songs without any words.

i asked a silent question to each passerby: how have you wronged yourself this year?

~

tx underworld

how can a converted farmhouse be so intimate. for me, echoes usually more tend to render alienation.

it's a long rectangular room with high ceilings and wooden floors, sunny and warm, first floor. i start speaking about attachment theory. dream speeds up. she guides me there. can't leave. clean.

~

otherworld pestilence

subconscious, please relent! dreams every single night for at least a fortnight, maybe more. some grotesque, some tiny, tiny, tiny-- couldn't catch them, and neither could my cats.

~

otherworld grandfather

feeble. his arm hurts. being ignored by everyone else. sharp pain of the loss and love for him, because i have a lucid knowing that he's dead already and it's only a dream. old decoration of living room in childhood: dark wood, rust-colored sofa. he is visiting our house. sitting on the corner square by the fireplace. i bring him some fruit. i say apple, plum, peach? he says all. i slice them up-- vivid. again that gutting hurt of knowing it's too late to show him my love. an urgent feeling then of knowing the dream is fleeting and wanting to see him one more time. he doesn't really see me, though. is wandering the house.

~

another dream, notes

throat excised by lion. my own siphonage of blood in watered down glasses, to keep him satiated; though he claims to be my friend and protector.

explore.

~

otherworld reflection

dream.

notes for later: walking through city/ then wooden path/ a lioness and family nearby / confrontation/ the rabbits/ getting dark / last scene: orphanage

~

testing...un deax trois

this is a test.