Crooked Growth

twisty spine like vine. Growing like you lean, move, walk. You are the operater? or the operated? I start physical therapy next week. The hip has not improved. I have put it off for six months but now I am like, okay, this needs to happen because I can't make it stop on my own.

I imagine my bones, but not as much as I used to. I am just not obsessed with them anymore, strangely. I would imagine them crooked and causing pain and now, I may still picture it, but the picture floats away and is replaced. Predictably, Flesh has become very enjoyable to paint. The stick souls still show up in my art, but painting layers of flesh has taken on a new life. a spark. We are a continuum, I reckon. Mind Body Brain Hand Canvas Soul. Sleep.

My dog is curled at my feet, a little piece of night sky, black and sweet.

I just imagine all thes butterflies fluttering around my head. While the wars wage and my work and bills pile up. It will all just be fine. Sometimes you have to make your own magic.

A timeless sleep

To have an obsessive personality is just one way to live. I acknowledge this and keep going, a slow walk, a jog. Sleeping for days. I am stunned by the sky. Pure awe. Again. The leaves aren't really changing here. It feels like high summer. Thick and hot and green and lush. A slightly different coolness in the rare breeze is the only natural indication that it is almost October.

Sometimes all the people look like zombies to me. All wretched and gone, lurching through their routine..bus stop, dollar store, school bus. But other days they are all so beautiful, all the people. They captivate. Like cracks in the sidewalk. Cracks in the facade.

There is so much power in vulnerability. It is all backwards. The weak are the strong and I am an animal. I am with them. on their side. I study the buildings, but I don't feel like they belong to me. Not the way the trees do. Not the way the earthworms do. Darkness is a sweet blanket for a long night. A timeless sleep.

the way home

August Again

There is a delight in writing that only comes after banging ones head against a wall for weeks prior.  Refusal to just do it while that grey lump of brain insists...do it. The same with painting. you can resist but eventually you give in. And you drink. And you smoke because it is all tangled up together.

The therapist suggests I make lists. So that I can survive in real life and, like, know what day it is and do my job and pay bills. I forget things. Some sort of anxious mania takes over. buzzing and moving about. I should set up a schedule she says. But the thing is...i like the energy. Bc i get it so rarely and when i do, it just feels so good to be alive.

I've started walking. Jogging. My hip is bad. No doctor can tell me why, it just hurts. I suppose f'ed it up when I was not eating and running a million miles a day. I dont know. Take it easy take it slow. It is just five pounds, but it is five pounds that need to go.

I am painting the city. I didn't mean too. At first I painted the live oaks. But now it is the city and the bridge and that weird tragic dome. All patched up with the light show and all.  I need to sell these paintings. My bank account has dwindled to nothing. I dont even know why, its so frusterating to keep up with money. Numbers floating around, they come and go. Not as pretty as insects or leaves. Seasons and dollars measuring it all.

I am older. You will be too. You think you know honesty but when you become invisible is when you know the truth. and when it knows you.

" I might be a mess, but I sure can survive...'

I am tired of being well.  I am not sure this trade-off was worth it since my body feels horrible despite my best efforts at HEALTH. The world is poisoned, I have little faith in diet and exercise and all that jazz. All that jazz, all that jazzmine, gardenia, wysteria and hydrangea.  That is what I need, a sea of scents and soft light to carry me away. That is mostly what I think about lately...I am plotting an escape. Not sure how or what from or where to but I am. Something has to change. In a way that does not involve giving up.

Criterion

So I had this art show at a restaurant and it turned out pretty well. I sold things cheaper than I should have,but i needed to make room for more. Needed to clear some out. And all the people that go where I go are usually poor. Most of the people that I want to own my work are probably poor. Ha. Anyway i had to quickly finish some stuff and got kind of manic and crazy and it was great.

I'm drawing at work now. Little sticky note canvas. I see paintings in the woodgrain and the streaked windows. I stare and hings turn and morph into drippy paint. It is pretty fabulous. I neglected my precious pretend brain for so long it went to bed. That is how this city is. you have to pay attention to it. to the real world. In the small forest towns I  lived in before you can walk around in a dream world, half imagining you are something else all the time. Its not like that anymore. It is not like that here. It takes guts to live here. Like literally, the city may take your guts, or whatever it is about yourself that you love.

Things change. I do things the hard way. I learn things the hard way. It's okay. I am going to see my parents this weekend, to see Spring and the new puppies and the new calves and all the blooming things. And my lovely parents and their twinkling eyes and now wrinkling skin.  The extra hour of daylight plus longer days is just food for my spirit. Well, that and the Floradix Iron Supplement. Today is actually a good day, one of those days where i actually hope they do not explode the planet just yet.

The Criterion, 2012, acrylic on canvas

 

dreambaby

i think that if you can see someone in a really vulnerable state..even a reuplsive state and still love them or respect them even, then i think that is meaningful. i think it means something.

not sure what.

It may just mean you are dumb. It may not mean that i just am not sure what it means but i think it is indeed, important

They say ..you know,  they say love is blind and all. but obsession is a blind thing too.

and a fool in love is a fool indeed

so it may be obsession it may be naive it may be true love. dopamine.

i dunno. or it may be laziness. sometimes it easier to love someone than to not.

When i think of the past and people i loved...i don't know... sometimes I want to find them. dig them back up.

but..i dont know. when i am feeling reflective i want to ....write the story of myself i guess. tell myself the story of myself and how i got to wear I am so that i can reanalyze the present. make sure its real. or make sure that i quesiton the reality of it. and the people i knew, the people i loved...they were part of it. big, big part. I love hard.

and things that are important...events. They can not always be understood while they are happening.

And, well, even just the passage of time...adds wisdom. You become seperate from the person you used to be, you know. i am not the 24 yr old me - but now i feel like I understand the 24 year old me better and i want...i don't know what I want.. I want to apologize, i think..... or say thank you. or something. acknowledge it

But are you wanting to acknowledge/thank/apologize the person from then or the person now?

 

Well, both I suppose. Because to me, they are static. I mean,  if I dont know them anymore then they are still in my head how they were in the past.  So i suppose I would like to say it to whatever/whoever he/she is now. hmmmm..but maybe that is selfish of me? to bring up things to people from my distant past just to emotionally satisfy myself? like bringing something to someone..... give them something they don't even want. Who knows. Just realizing that staying alive means aging and aging means memories and dealing with the fact that these memories may drift up unexpectedly and they may shift and your understanding of who you were and who you are will/may shift slightly as well but in a way that solidifies, not loosens. the disintegration and fluidity makes it stronger. not weaker.

bear with me. I've never been 34 before.