N.O. Love (new orleans)

June has been movement and July is promising to be more of the same. From one end of the state to the other. to Georgia. I saw the Cure play in Atlanta last month and it was as good as ever. Crowded. But music is timeless and if it is good I can make the crowd disappear. Trance out to it.

Solstice. Now time for the heat. Nothing like New Orleans heat I swear to god. All the heat from all the summers before are stored in the concrete, the old wood walls and the brick. radiating outward in the thick damp and stagnant air. I moved to a house in the lower ninth ward that is better than the one I was living in and so the heat inside is more tolerable. I drive to work instead of walk now, though. And I still can't breathe. I am closer to the nearest refineries, but I can't smell them. I can almost see them. If new orleans is a bowl then the refineries line the upper edge of the bowl. Smoke stacks rising like burning stalks, machinery making irregular shapes out of the sky and smoke billowing up til it mixes with clouds and then you dont even know its poison. You may think how pretty. My eyes are swollen and burning every day. I think to myself that I need to move. Should move. The move to this other house was lateral, not upward and the dirt is lead and the sky is going to kill you.

Something is keeping me here though. There are a few more things i need to do. It is a complicated place. and not the violence and not the corruption nor collapsing infrastructure. The actual unspoken invisible social and historical outlines. Bc no one really belongs here but whoever has been here longest thinks that they do. And the new people keep coming and the deafening shouts of gentrification and poverty drown out any sense that could be made.  A couple years ago in this big art spectacle event that lasted months a well known and respected artist made a big light up signage and displayed it on the river that read something like "you belong here." Some weird reassurance or something but its not true.  No that it matters if it was true or not but we don't. Maybe some people belong here more than others. I don't, but its a port city and visitors are historically a big part of the population. the shifting foundation. The plantations didn't belong here and neither do the oil refineries that took their places. the prostitutes, the immigrants, the organ grinder, the dairy that was cited for health code violations and the street car rails that were laid down, pulled up and laid down again. That all came from the census. I used to read the 1880 -1940 censuses for work and stare wide eyed at the names and occupations and places of birth of hundreds of people that didn't belong here. Then came the artists and writers and poets and everyone said 'bohemian.' The housing projects and the police corruption and then the cop that massacred that family in the restaurant. and they just kept draining the swamps and spreading out and then an amusement park bc what could be more American that NONsustainability? They built a fucking tunnel. In a swamp. Still there -  though dilapidated and still cars zoom through it err' day. I feel like my job has given me a level of intimacy with this city that is reserved for lovers that stayed together so long they have turned to couples who have memorized each others vices and hardly recall the starry eyed heart flutters from the beginning. But you still know it must be there. or assume it is and move through the motions of life, confident the spark is there. the commitment may have obliterated it a little, but who cares. That is me and this god damn city.

 

 

shawna atkins acrylic on canvas 2016, crop

The house I live in belonged to lady who left for Katrina and never came back. I am aware of her displacement every day. It can't not define, at least partially, my place in this city.

Shadow Self

  "Shadow Self," mixed media on 4f tx 4ft canvas, 2015

How much of whats hidden down in the shadows is guiding this flesh ship? Waves from the unconscious sea lap tirelessly at our thoughts and actions. Tossing and slamming and churning below a barrier created by the only self you can truly know.

Written like a true 4 infp am i right?

embellished and unedited

In all the years I have maintained, or barely maintained, this blog, it has been a repository for unedited junk. I mean, more than that of course. Maybe I should say unedited guts. I hate to edit. It is like sifting through vomit, a mental regurgitation of the subconscious and bad grammar.

the thing about life, is that if you don't stop it, it just keeps going.  Really, time will fly and days and years and memories get distorted, but at times I just think, MY GOD IT IS STILL GOING. I am indeed still breathing and moving about. My best friends brother died ten months ago. My life with her now has the dividing line in it. the before and after the death.

If you stay alive, your life will become marked with deathstones. Markers. The first death I experienced, that I remember, was at age 6. The next at 12. The next at 14. The next at 20. then 26. The next at 32. Another at 32. These were close ones. We were not sheltered from death. I grew up in a very old rural community. People died all the time. They lived hard and loved hard and then when people die you put them in boxes in the ground. Down here the put them in houses above the ground. I like that. You live in a house with people and then as you die you are placed back in a smaller house-shaped structure to be together. forever. below the brick and mortar and then vines.

I feel as if I have lived too long. Stayed alive too long. Despite the misery and the intense despair I have endured and, well, let's be honest, embraced, I have had so much joy. so much intense overwhelming happiness and joy. Bliss. It is something I almost feel guilty about. The lives we fall into on this planet....hell, anything could happen. little circumstantial victims dancing around the planet, fighting and loving bloody murder. holy heartbeats. We are tacked to the earth like writhing roaches on pins, blooming petals and soft skin, flickering hope and cashed out. Its okay. We are more than skin but less than the humanity we envision, I imagine. We are embellished and unedited.

Modern Cacophony, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 2014, Shawna Atkins

I wish i could find a blank cool silent room where i could be alone and rest for as long as it took to not feel this exhausted, this used up and this unforgiven

I Circle the Fish

fish swimming circles inside my skull, i am.
right, wrong
write wrong
words.
say them.

Distracted. Not liking myself very much. I want OUT of my SELF.

bad things are everywhere.

good things are everywhere, too right? promise me this.

No promise good enough to keep. How long til i get over losing you? 

yes you. all of you.

 Mistakes were made, fallen flowers landed incorrectly...near your stare.

stony stare- silent creaking stairs at midnight. Careful.

I dream about my grandmothers house so often. She died in July. The day before my 32nd birthday. I haven't been back to her house since that day. My heart is so heavy with generations of loss handed down to us so we would not forget but this is heavy how do i move? Carrying all of your hearts on my back, blood drips twirling in such cataclysmic patterns over my calves and thighs and spatters over the stars on my feet down to the earth. the dirt i want to be.

I did it all for love, but sometimes a horror down inside me suggests that I did it all for obsession. a bundle of sick chemicals. buzzing outward toward your brain circuits and empty chest.

I miss you like you are dead and since you aren't i feel as if i am cheating the beloved dead by the comparison of mourning rituals. I am not. I am not.

I miss my mother and my father and the tree outside the dirty window in the house i grew up in. I need more adjectives for my clumsy chunks of words falling like drunk fish and landing like those platform black shoes from the nineties that were so good for stomping down streets littered with paper and vomit and broken glass and the flyers from the show we drove 5 hours to see.
we were never disappointed.

I have this overwhelming desire to cry your eyes out. starve your heart out. splinters for my bone machine rusting away under waves of flesh ebbing and reaching up for the moon. something is going to change and one day it is going to be better than this.

Shake out the Ghosts

 i feel the keys beneath my fingertips....swirling.... words are senseless. I am at my parents house deep in the woods and when i am here i feel like I don't exist...like i have transferred to another realm. The only safe place on earth.
There are some things i have always suspected and one was that God didn't like me very much and the other one was that I was meant to be alone. Quite possibly, I made this up. Regardless, the adventure of The Self Fulfilling Prophecy can NOT be denied.

I have been writing stories in my head but they don't make it to paper. Or pixels. Stories about Stella and a chance meeting with an old friend at a cofeeshop downtown. In a town i have never been to. She criss-crosses an unsmoked clove cigarette between her forefingers in an effort not to smoke and has a sandwich in her purse in an effort not to eat. Over strong coffee she discussed the possibilities of a strange love that she has been denied. He leaves her alone with her sketchbook. In the story i can't decide if hot tears splash down her face, if a girlfriend texts her, or if she shrugs him off and sketches his stupid fading face.

So I just leave her there. Sitting at the table...with messy hair and a dark haired boy heading toward his car in the parking lot..after squeezing her shoulder on the way out. "Take Care, Stell" are the words he leaves her with.
Stella and her sister Gypsy Rose. Hanging out in my head reliving their childhood and their parents' death and the old pick up truck and the dusty road and countless fruitless love affairs...an overdose and  walks in the cemetery.

oh well. Sometimes i mash my fingers into my face to feel my cheekbones and jaw bones. My babyfat face has gone. Sometime in the past 4 years it flickered away. Sorry you didn't get to see it, she was a sweet girl. I feel my father in the bones in my face. My cheekbones match his. and I remind myself that i want to become Wise like him. and Just. and Fair.

In a few minutes, I am going with my mother. We are going to clean my grandmother's house. My grandmother is 90 years old and she is coming home from the hospital soon. My heart is heavy. I love her so much. She is 90 years old and she is tired and I know this.

Her father worked in the oilfield. and so did her husband. and her son. and so did my father. and my husband was supposed to, I'm sure, but i left without him. Left  the idea, i guess. It wasn't what I wanted, and hey, it's not my fault that he didn't exist. That times changed so fast and I wanted paint and poet and rock n roll. My future is so unknown. I want to go to New Mexico. The farthest thing i can imagine from a swamp. I have no idea what i am doing and i feel the past slipping away ..years, decades, a generation gone....the stories I forgot to gather have scattered away...i drip paint like tears down my face in an effort to remember what we have all lost.

I didn't fit the mold or follow the path. My heart pumps out love and hate like oil and water.

You mean nothing to no one but that is nobody's fault.

"I had a lengthy discussion about The Power of Myth / With a post-modern author who didn't exist
In this fictitious world all reality twists / I was a hopeless romantic, now I'm just turning tricks"

In our last conversation she mentioned the word "empowerment" as a way to get through life

i had heard it and read it in all this therapy/recovery stuff. empowerment. It's like sometimes you skim

the words that can't apply..(which is why i always have to re-read.) It is an Action word. something you have to DO.

Move. Act. Change. Being really avoidant,...well its a problem. I'd almost rather be terrified, frozen, prepared and

ready to fight this imaginary THING. You can't see it and i almost always can't see it but I know it is there and I have to obsess and do all these THINGS to like starve, for instance, and count and place things and cover them (ocd what have you)

suddenly you drop all that and go join an Animal Rescue Program. And you are thinking that you neglecting a small dark world that

is SCREAMING and begging for you to return but you say NO. I am putting on normal clothes and brushing my teeth and going

to pay a bill. or sign up for a class. or join an acting troupe. or actually make a friend and hang out with them and drink tea and NOT

become codependent and twisty and obsessed with their past and present and soul and brain. I am being normal. this is normal. great. now i am obsessing about being normal.

So, you know, what better way to be empowered that to be an activist for this thing you are recovered FROM?

Well, you know what? It is really hard to be an activist for a condition that no one believes you have. or had.

it is really hard to be surrounded by people who say they love you but when you form words your mouth is just

numb bc you cant make words that covey the slightest accurate portrait of what is inside you.

so you draw it and you paint it and your parents can't bear too look bc the painting are painful and 

most of the time i don't even think my therapist believes me. Anxiety. i have anxiety and i have fear.

Oh. Sorry. I thought it was God. (i really did)

i don't understand how anyone can love me if they don't know me. and i don't feel known.

i don't want to die unknown, but then in another way i kinda do. just crawl up and disappear. go away as if i never was.

that kinda sounds okay sometimes. That last love, he said, "you cant leave me bc no one knows you but me"

and it sounds like some controlling bs but the thing is, he was right. It was true. So sometimes he called me crazy but sometimes he

said My god there is nothing wrong with you. he said it so much. i got angry. i stopped taking my medicine. i stopped all of it. i didn't tell anyone. after a few months my skull was a living torture chamber for my brain. I tried to tell him what was going on.

"ohmygod see this is the shit you don't need to say. to anyone. this is the shit that is gonna get you back in the hospital.and you need to stop it bc there is nothing wrong with you. i'm going to call your parents... do they know how you are"  

i got back on my meds eventually but, like, i think everyone just kinda thought i was lame for doing so. So after that i just you know shut most people out except for my few obsessions. and he moved on and all which is great bc he was an amazing human being even though the was, of course, not equipped  with the skills to handle what the hell ever ever was wrong with  me. (NOTHING)

i "recovered" i eat. i got a job. it has been years now, since i recovered from nothing.

 i look an my paintings and  cry. i am numb and no one knows who i am.

The Ruined City

So this is a new painting called The Ruined City. Yes, I am painting the end of the world. WELL.
Okay, It's not the end, really, just the way a really crowded crumbley city feels to me. And this is Louisiana and we know about crumbling cities.

I worked the hell out of the surface to get the cracklies in there and I am pretty happy with them.

Once a prof said to me, Ghost Girl, if no one buys your paintings it is because no one wants to be reminded that they are going to die. Bwahahhaha! Really? I think about it all the time, i always have. Not on purpose, either. I finally stopped obsessing but....i mean i still think about it. But it is only bc i LOVE BEING ALIVE (er usually) NOW. and Life tastes like strawberries and sticky sunshine kisses. But you can't just forget the cold death chill. Besides, i have seen some death and I wont forget it - it would be a dis-service to all living things to ignore it....as it would be to put death above LIVING. So love your life to death, says I. And move forward carrying your battle scarred heart. and sing a song of re-membrance and re-growth. Bc out of the ruins, we will rise.

Maladaptive Universe. congrats on yr starving!?!

Will power is continuing to paint when you know you suck

Continuing to write when you know you are not a writer

And continuing to eat when you think you are big enough

But you know there are people counting on you to keep going.

So yeah, I am working on this watercolor. Practice.

Non stop practice, it feels like.

So yeah, Im like, this is stupid. And pointless.

Buti keep going, I am still in that mode.

My moods, they don’t come and flash and go

They come and they settle and stay a while.

And I drink. And I smoke. And I paint.

Its bad, yeah. I know.

But the thing about addiction… is THIS. Don’t congratulate yourself

For your willpower when it comes to E.D.  – AN specifically.

Don't congratulate yourself for starving..when you LIKE it. when you are addicted to it.

Does anyone congratulate a drug addict for snorting all THOSE LINES???

or an alcoholic for drinking THAT MUCH??? no. NO. But it is the same thing.

resisting food is not -

NOT about having a strong personality..when it is something you are addicted to.

jesus. Does this society's love affair with thin NEVER end? really though.

I LIKED IT.

just like i like struggling to be a good painter..when

 i know...there are only a handful of good ones.

oh well.

its the struggle, right? the struggle for balance and for health.

"No Struggle.

No Progress "- (frederick douglass quote.)

hmm this painting is just a copy from a magazine. i do that sometimes for practice. but it kept looking more and more like me as a confused kid than as a fashion model in  NYLON. so i let it go and be that. ugly dress and all. then i made a butterfly with mis matched wings out of a different kind of paper and sewed that on. MALadaPTIve uNIVersE.