Thursday was Vibrant

This is a colored pencil sketch I did a few days ago. The first drawing in the new  house. I like this new place and I like this neighborhood a lOT. It feels better than the old one. I am still tired and getting settled and adjusted which for some reason for me always is a longer process than seems necessary but whatever, right.

There is a corner store around the block that i can walk too - this morning i got a potato, an orange, 3 boiled eggs and a tomato and the guy gave me a free cup of coffee. This is all new to me, having lived in places that were not easy to navigate on foot. Then I walked to work and saw this on the way:

spray painted on a wall. The street art down here is cool, bc this is a relatively small place and there is not a TON of graffiti, so the art is like little gems scattered about...when you see its a nice surprise...amidst the ruin, crumbling walls, closed parks, cracked up streets and abandoned houses.....oleandars, magnolias, jasmine .....and vibrant shutters over the windows of rehabbed houses.

My sister's tattoo

 

So it feels a little inappropriate to feel 'proud' of someone for getting a tattoo but the thing is, I  know that it means something important. I know bits and pieces of what all she has been through ...and i know a lot of her struggles have been similar to mine. 

And I know also that most of them have been very secret.  

A phoenix is an appropriate symbol for what we do. 

what so many of us do.

xoxox

I guess, right?

Yall. i saw this new therapist. okay i suck. whatever, it helps. Maybe. the idea of paying a stranger to care does not bother me like it bothers most people. it feesl Appropriate. For some reason. Anyway she, does visual stuff which works SO WELL for me. Like, i i used to make my grocery lists (back when i made lists) with little drawings of what i was going to buy, not words. so maybe she can help. Look, whatever -  i just want the pain to stop, okay. forgive me for indulging in THERAPY. Mental illness is like, the LUXURY of the new age, instead of worrying if my refugee camp is going to be attacked and I Will be raped, I worry about counting dumb things and panic attacks and concrete and steel and the stock market. I can't help it, I am american in 2011. i don't know. I don't know how to be anything else but alive and feeling. and trying to make sense, ya know?

So yeah, like i want to be okay, i inherited a set of bad chemicals for coping but instead of giving into it I am (still) trying to become a person who is strong enough to help another, to make  a difference in the bullshit of capitalism and the global economy. It is hard to find your place in this world. Amongst cnn and the unemployment line, your own horomones and Cold 45. the news, the earthquakes, the tsunami and your bank statement.  whatever, im trying to live. and Love, too. i guess. Right?

 

Reaching for something that isn't there

 

I wrote your name on the side of my shoe

to fade out as I walked near

you as near as

i feared.

the reality of waking old ghosts

this aging face of mine

shouldn't look back

fearless hearts.
mirror images
broken vase and ruined plan
the only thing that comforts me more than music is silence

it has such a sweet embrace

and that bitter truth of emptiness

like a sky full of stars you

cant 

touch

Oh, well

 

This is from the puppetry museum in Atlanta

Sometimes the more people I am around the more isolated I feel. I saw this new doctor today. Nothing ever feels as good as that old comfortable poison, the one they swore would kill me. Oh, well.