When i am old and ragged there will be love in my bones, wrapped and tied there with ribbons of sadness splattered with joy. I haven't lost anything by opening my heart even though all the words tumbled out and were away like wisps I held the blood in and I held all of you in til we were faded digital dreams on broken screens 💚🌙🕸
3.31.2016
2.24.2016
Speaking in Tongues ( love your life to death)
i speak to myself in my head and i suppose we all do
in this culture, anyway. but to exist entirely inside your
head must make some of them go mad
if you were to watch humans moving and see them
only as balls of energy bumping around in a pinball world of light
trees and buildings
the ones burning red and the ones burning green
or blue or purple
if you could see that ....
i dont know. that is how it all looks to me sometimes
i am elevated and apart - watching it all move. from afar. witched.
I went to the west coast in the fall and then again in the new year
The first time I visited i was 16 and I think all of me did not come back
When i went back it was as though I may retrieve the part of me I left but
instead i brought back a part of the west coast inside my skull. I cant shake it out.
I visited the east coast in the summer and i loved it but not as much as the west coast
the redwoods can erase all the vile humanity from my mind and make me forget i
have a body or veins or that other people scuttle around admiring themselves incessantly
or beautifully even. touching. breathing. loving. filling the atmosphere with emotions and shit.
i have an amazing life. I did everything i wanted. I arrived and left when i meant to and nothing was ever so tragic.
But still there is. The nihil. a visitation or a vigil. for the unspeakable truth, the ever present death.
My blood sisters bound to me with time and sickness and large shady trees in the backyard. We ebbed. flowed away and returned. When times goes by you get to see how your memories will age. will they fade? or vibrate or blend ? or become so vivid it is blinding to visit them.
My blonde baby girl Aphrodite was chosen by the devil to carry the darkness in her mind. She nearly died til they electro-shocked him out. She was cured. It was real. I saw her change and then change back.
I texted my ex for a long time before I fell asleep. He wanted advice. I am a sage in a Misfits t shirt on a stack of pillows drenched in moisturizer and splattered paint from a failed art experiment. Okay, I will tell you who you are again - but I ve been telling you for years. I know you better than you know yourself. But you can't know me. But you know I can help you. and that is good for now.
i dreamed by cousin called. she died in 1997. in the dream, on the dream phone, she sounded like she always sounded. It was her voice. I thought that I had forgotten what she sounded like. But no. it is still there.
I moved to a new house in the beginning of December. Happily it is still close to the river. I have to, have to live near the river. The house was built around 1890 I think. I hope to god it is haunted.
in this culture, anyway. but to exist entirely inside your
head must make some of them go mad
if you were to watch humans moving and see them
only as balls of energy bumping around in a pinball world of light
trees and buildings
the ones burning red and the ones burning green
or blue or purple
if you could see that ....
i dont know. that is how it all looks to me sometimes
i am elevated and apart - watching it all move. from afar. witched.
I went to the west coast in the fall and then again in the new year
The first time I visited i was 16 and I think all of me did not come back
When i went back it was as though I may retrieve the part of me I left but
instead i brought back a part of the west coast inside my skull. I cant shake it out.
I visited the east coast in the summer and i loved it but not as much as the west coast
the redwoods can erase all the vile humanity from my mind and make me forget i
have a body or veins or that other people scuttle around admiring themselves incessantly
or beautifully even. touching. breathing. loving. filling the atmosphere with emotions and shit.
i have an amazing life. I did everything i wanted. I arrived and left when i meant to and nothing was ever so tragic.
But still there is. The nihil. a visitation or a vigil. for the unspeakable truth, the ever present death.
My blood sisters bound to me with time and sickness and large shady trees in the backyard. We ebbed. flowed away and returned. When times goes by you get to see how your memories will age. will they fade? or vibrate or blend ? or become so vivid it is blinding to visit them.
My blonde baby girl Aphrodite was chosen by the devil to carry the darkness in her mind. She nearly died til they electro-shocked him out. She was cured. It was real. I saw her change and then change back.
I texted my ex for a long time before I fell asleep. He wanted advice. I am a sage in a Misfits t shirt on a stack of pillows drenched in moisturizer and splattered paint from a failed art experiment. Okay, I will tell you who you are again - but I ve been telling you for years. I know you better than you know yourself. But you can't know me. But you know I can help you. and that is good for now.
i dreamed by cousin called. she died in 1997. in the dream, on the dream phone, she sounded like she always sounded. It was her voice. I thought that I had forgotten what she sounded like. But no. it is still there.
I moved to a new house in the beginning of December. Happily it is still close to the river. I have to, have to live near the river. The house was built around 1890 I think. I hope to god it is haunted.
 |
| Love your Life (Lie) to Death. 1.5 inches by 2 inches |
12.22.2015
The journey's Interior
Quite a while back ago, I completed a series of works on paper that illustrate, literally, the way the incessant and unnameable pain feels in my body. My doctor, who suggested I have an auto immune disease that hasn't been identified yet (wtf), asked to see my art. He said he was interested in the creative ways patients cope with chronic pain.
He regularly compliments me for being thin. It is really bizarre. I'm not that thin: I am average, normal, adequate, and whatever. I think maybe he sees a lot of people with complications that are related to obesity and my body presents a contrast to that which he has grown accustomed. I hope for his patients' sake that he doesn't disregard their issues due to their body shape and size. He can't know most of my issues stem, in fact, from being too thin for too long. or Probably So. Medical doctors sort of blow my mind sometimes. I have noticed that most of them add, 'this does not mean your pain is not real' after delivering test results. Like they all went to a seminar and were told to state that phrase... in order to be 'sensitive' or something....REMINDER: Do Not Invalidate Your Patient. It has happened with several different ones... men and women in lab coats, strangers you entrust with the secrets of the body..
The thing was, I could not make the pain take the shape of words. As if I may look straight at this doctor of science and say, "it feels as if the vines have wrapped tightly around clavicles, wound down around my vertebrae and now the thorns are sinking into the marrow. reaching up toward the shoulder socket." I gave up on the words on the form. Words like 'shooting, stretching, aching, pulling, burning' bc they did not do justice to the accompanying visions and colors that lit up behind my eyes in accordance with the internal pain path. So, I gave into those sights and spent some months of 2015 scrawling them out and filling them in, sitting crooked and hunched over paper amidst my old anatomy books and "Native Wildflowers of Louisiana"... "Insects of the World"...etc
I wanted to spend some time with this idea - these visionary coping mechanisms - and then let them go. like beaten butterflies. To carefully caution myself against dwelling too long in psychic hot places that ensnare me. Imaginary palaces that allow mental comfort with a constant portrayal of physical discomfort. I was to explore only - not to BECOME these images.
I learned a lot doing them. Just good practice. And I messed around with different materials so... also caught some lessons on how much graphite can be layered on top of watercolor and vice versa and at what point it REFUSES. So yeah, there are things that bother me - things that I could go back and fix. Or hit another series later down the road. One thing that rings loudly is how important it is (pour moi) to feel more than one dimension. I need so much to hold a rib....in order to do this series correctly. I have cow ribs. and I had a human skeleton (plastic) to visit but - it wasn't the same. It was just a miniature model at the PT office. I am not eager to hang out with human remains or anything but even an accurate replica or something would help. I shall add that to the To Do Scroll, I suppose.
It is those long dark December days so gray and heavy and then the longest night. good god sweet solstice. Flare up my Mind. hiding in closets, minding the darkest. I send a reverberation to anyone in chronic invisible insatiable pain for whatever reason only bc i know how it feels. communion over having flesh simply, if nothing else. disjointed mind body and words is all i have to write this night, and thoughts of some redeeming light. for both body and bone! xo
 |
| Thermo Mandibular Joint Dysfunction by Shawna Atkins |
He regularly compliments me for being thin. It is really bizarre. I'm not that thin: I am average, normal, adequate, and whatever. I think maybe he sees a lot of people with complications that are related to obesity and my body presents a contrast to that which he has grown accustomed. I hope for his patients' sake that he doesn't disregard their issues due to their body shape and size. He can't know most of my issues stem, in fact, from being too thin for too long. or Probably So. Medical doctors sort of blow my mind sometimes. I have noticed that most of them add, 'this does not mean your pain is not real' after delivering test results. Like they all went to a seminar and were told to state that phrase... in order to be 'sensitive' or something....REMINDER: Do Not Invalidate Your Patient. It has happened with several different ones... men and women in lab coats, strangers you entrust with the secrets of the body..
 |
| Metamorph by Shawna Atkins |
 |
| Thoracic Spine Pain by Shawna Atkins |
I learned a lot doing them. Just good practice. And I messed around with different materials so... also caught some lessons on how much graphite can be layered on top of watercolor and vice versa and at what point it REFUSES. So yeah, there are things that bother me - things that I could go back and fix. Or hit another series later down the road. One thing that rings loudly is how important it is (pour moi) to feel more than one dimension. I need so much to hold a rib....in order to do this series correctly. I have cow ribs. and I had a human skeleton (plastic) to visit but - it wasn't the same. It was just a miniature model at the PT office. I am not eager to hang out with human remains or anything but even an accurate replica or something would help. I shall add that to the To Do Scroll, I suppose.
It is those long dark December days so gray and heavy and then the longest night. good god sweet solstice. Flare up my Mind. hiding in closets, minding the darkest. I send a reverberation to anyone in chronic invisible insatiable pain for whatever reason only bc i know how it feels. communion over having flesh simply, if nothing else. disjointed mind body and words is all i have to write this night, and thoughts of some redeeming light. for both body and bone! xo
 |
| Ulnar Neuropathy (keep painting) Shawna Atkins |
11.23.2014
9.21.2014
Seraphina Sleeping
i was writing and painting and i stopped writing and kept painting. Then working and painting and then i was just working so i started painting again. But work never goes away bc we are trapped into it. Made into it. Breaking out and Breaking a Sweat. Sitting. Writing.
My sacrum is a concrete block. I'm stretching toward my toes and my upper body, all bendy like willow branches in the wind, is cast in a block of concrete. Planted. Roots. Chakras. Pain. They measured my legs and said good luck. Listen, itisnotthatbad, on paper you look great. I look great on paper for things I don't care about. In reality it all goes willy nilly and I just go home. Up a tree or under a rock. Somewhere quiet, away from the lot of you. No offense. To contort into yoga poses..incorrectly.
I watched Snow Piercer last night. Americas Economy on a train going straight to hell. It was good. Really good. Accurate enough to make me feel sickly. Not totally new, same story. different setting. A Good One.
The days i hate the city blur into the days that i love it. The days i paint or run blur into the days that i don't. i sleep too much and get drunk off my dreams. Bleary and swollen stumbling stretching.Wake up.
The thing no one tells about loving yourself is that when you figure it out and finally do it - you can't end up loving yourself too much to leave who are. Because you will keep changing. and you will leave yourself..the selves that you hate and even the selves that you love. You have to be brave because you can't stay.
.
My sacrum is a concrete block. I'm stretching toward my toes and my upper body, all bendy like willow branches in the wind, is cast in a block of concrete. Planted. Roots. Chakras. Pain. They measured my legs and said good luck. Listen, itisnotthatbad, on paper you look great. I look great on paper for things I don't care about. In reality it all goes willy nilly and I just go home. Up a tree or under a rock. Somewhere quiet, away from the lot of you. No offense. To contort into yoga poses..incorrectly.
I watched Snow Piercer last night. Americas Economy on a train going straight to hell. It was good. Really good. Accurate enough to make me feel sickly. Not totally new, same story. different setting. A Good One.
The days i hate the city blur into the days that i love it. The days i paint or run blur into the days that i don't. i sleep too much and get drunk off my dreams. Bleary and swollen stumbling stretching.Wake up.
The thing no one tells about loving yourself is that when you figure it out and finally do it - you can't end up loving yourself too much to leave who are. Because you will keep changing. and you will leave yourself..the selves that you hate and even the selves that you love. You have to be brave because you can't stay.
 |
| July 22, 2014. My 36th Birthday. Bank of the Mississippi River |
.
2.06.2014
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.
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 |
10.17.2013
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.
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.
9.30.2013
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.
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.
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| the way home |
8.14.2013
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.
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.
7.09.2013
6.25.2013
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.
3.13.2013
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
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.
1.16.2013
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/tha
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/whoeve
bear with me. I've never been 34 before.
12.18.2012
december in a gray box
One day the December guy is going to seriously kill me. No, the December SKY. The fucking sky.
just going to SMOTHTER me.
The world is a bloodbath. I will say that living in one of the most violent and polluted cities in the US for two years has taken a toll on me and makes me even more incapable of dealing with the everyday reports of massacre that are heralded by death angels just by checking email. Or is it making me stronger? Is it showing me something? i am being hard on myself? This a revelation. A damn revelation.
right now. in space and time.
I water my houseplants. I have accumulated quite a few and i just push other shit out on the street to make room. it is always gone in a few hours. i switched to decaf but i still shake and at my desk there is ripe orange that grew in my friends yard and riverwolves play in my ear and i type away clicking clicking clicking clicking covering the inescapable pounding and longing of my bizarre heart. It is an murmur. It has a murmur, the doctor said your heartbeat is irregular. My heartbeast. my beast heart.
there is not enough sunlight. we need more of it, its like soilent green in here. i water houseplants. that kid just went to war with everyone and killed every last one of them. He just murdered and murdered and murdered. and he did it last week. and the week before. and they'll do it again. In Detroit and in San Fransisco and on my street. But not like that. That kid hit the big time. He fucked us all up. He fucked up the president. I wonder what would happen if he knew. I wonder if he can feel sad. I wonder if he ever felt anything. I hate that i think about him. i do.. i see his fucking face when i close my eyes. Gaunt. gaunt. gaunt. death death death. America America America
we grew up and we got jobs or we didn't get jobs and moved out to the streets. we went to rehab and counseling and got divorced. no one was ever happy in the way a jack in the box can make you happy ever again.
just going to SMOTHTER me.
The world is a bloodbath. I will say that living in one of the most violent and polluted cities in the US for two years has taken a toll on me and makes me even more incapable of dealing with the everyday reports of massacre that are heralded by death angels just by checking email. Or is it making me stronger? Is it showing me something? i am being hard on myself? This a revelation. A damn revelation.
right now. in space and time.
I water my houseplants. I have accumulated quite a few and i just push other shit out on the street to make room. it is always gone in a few hours. i switched to decaf but i still shake and at my desk there is ripe orange that grew in my friends yard and riverwolves play in my ear and i type away clicking clicking clicking clicking covering the inescapable pounding and longing of my bizarre heart. It is an murmur. It has a murmur, the doctor said your heartbeat is irregular. My heartbeast. my beast heart.
there is not enough sunlight. we need more of it, its like soilent green in here. i water houseplants. that kid just went to war with everyone and killed every last one of them. He just murdered and murdered and murdered. and he did it last week. and the week before. and they'll do it again. In Detroit and in San Fransisco and on my street. But not like that. That kid hit the big time. He fucked us all up. He fucked up the president. I wonder what would happen if he knew. I wonder if he can feel sad. I wonder if he ever felt anything. I hate that i think about him. i do.. i see his fucking face when i close my eyes. Gaunt. gaunt. gaunt. death death death. America America America
we grew up and we got jobs or we didn't get jobs and moved out to the streets. we went to rehab and counseling and got divorced. no one was ever happy in the way a jack in the box can make you happy ever again.
12.11.2012
sometimes nothing makes me prouder than being not pretty
Sometime nothing makes me prouder to be me than being "not pretty." These delicate lovely girls are trained in the trendy art of being trendy and denying it, "oh, this old thing?" and loosing weight to gain some ammunition in the girl war attention beast fist fest. I am lonely and I am often alone. I am most always alone but not always lonely. I am grateful for solitude and the absence of this mad female estrogen art girl competition flush race that seeps into my life via facebook and the occasional social outing. Pretty is a commodity and they are taught to rebel against this idea of pretty but to also, by they way, look pretty doing this rebelling.
I was too sick and too sad and too rejected to take part in this bizzare girl-land in my teens and twenties. Now I usually feel like an old man. Brewing over paintings or chain smoking over my computer drinking coffee and watching birds. its better than watching women on facebook fall in love the newly projected image of themselves repeatedly and wondering how a digitally existence can affect your soul, if you have one. Which I doubt.
Being cool is being callous, being mean is irony and always fight for attention in the most happening outfit known to humanity. Or these are my observations from a bar stool. Except I am not on a barstool because I cant drink anymore. Not one drop. Not one sip. Another addition to list of reasons I feel like a senior citizen at 34. Not that I ever actually felt any sort of connection with any of my peers anyway, but being sick every damn day adds to my fundamental disconnect.
I have been sick for about 6 months of this year. A burning black hole of acid despair so deep in my stomach yet flourishes up to singe my esophagus. I can't eat. I eat anyway. I get sick. I can't drink. I drink anyway. I get sick. They do a gazillion tests and give me some medicine that doesn't work. And suggest that since i obviously have some issues - my chart says i take antidepressants - possibly this pain is in my head or....something. I walk home from the doctor's office and toss the prescription....it already didnt work.
the pain leads to isolation which leads to depression usually but not so much this time. I am certainly not happy by any means, I just am not sure who I am. I know who I am NOT and who I do not want to be which is on of THEM. those. those frenemy attention women ...popular in this highschool of adulthood that comes with city lights and barstools and happy hours and men with jobs and hobbies and shit. Art, that is it. They all do art. "Oh, i am a photographer and i m working on this project". I m sure you are. I miss the woods. I miss nature. I need to shove my own face in dirt. Have a nice day.
I miss my old friends, who were all way older than me and didnt care about the coolest, no how. Maybe the dissipation of vanity in relation to aging is what I am experiencing and my intolerance for the extended immature soul of our collective society is raging and waging. Her death was like lilies pinned in your hair. The tragedy just high-lighting your natural beauty. Meanwhile we don't hear clocks ticking anymore and if you can capture your image in enough self portraits with your phone camera then its like you don't exist and you don't have to feel reality and we can just post ourselves into oblivion. ill be here. alone. longing for a chunky old typewriter and 1976.
I was too sick and too sad and too rejected to take part in this bizzare girl-land in my teens and twenties. Now I usually feel like an old man. Brewing over paintings or chain smoking over my computer drinking coffee and watching birds. its better than watching women on facebook fall in love the newly projected image of themselves repeatedly and wondering how a digitally existence can affect your soul, if you have one. Which I doubt.
Being cool is being callous, being mean is irony and always fight for attention in the most happening outfit known to humanity. Or these are my observations from a bar stool. Except I am not on a barstool because I cant drink anymore. Not one drop. Not one sip. Another addition to list of reasons I feel like a senior citizen at 34. Not that I ever actually felt any sort of connection with any of my peers anyway, but being sick every damn day adds to my fundamental disconnect.
I have been sick for about 6 months of this year. A burning black hole of acid despair so deep in my stomach yet flourishes up to singe my esophagus. I can't eat. I eat anyway. I get sick. I can't drink. I drink anyway. I get sick. They do a gazillion tests and give me some medicine that doesn't work. And suggest that since i obviously have some issues - my chart says i take antidepressants - possibly this pain is in my head or....something. I walk home from the doctor's office and toss the prescription....it already didnt work.
the pain leads to isolation which leads to depression usually but not so much this time. I am certainly not happy by any means, I just am not sure who I am. I know who I am NOT and who I do not want to be which is on of THEM. those. those frenemy attention women ...popular in this highschool of adulthood that comes with city lights and barstools and happy hours and men with jobs and hobbies and shit. Art, that is it. They all do art. "Oh, i am a photographer and i m working on this project". I m sure you are. I miss the woods. I miss nature. I need to shove my own face in dirt. Have a nice day.
I miss my old friends, who were all way older than me and didnt care about the coolest, no how. Maybe the dissipation of vanity in relation to aging is what I am experiencing and my intolerance for the extended immature soul of our collective society is raging and waging. Her death was like lilies pinned in your hair. The tragedy just high-lighting your natural beauty. Meanwhile we don't hear clocks ticking anymore and if you can capture your image in enough self portraits with your phone camera then its like you don't exist and you don't have to feel reality and we can just post ourselves into oblivion. ill be here. alone. longing for a chunky old typewriter and 1976.
9.11.2012
8.25.2012
better never than late
I am sick. I've been sick for a long time and everyone, I imagine, is sick of hearing about it. My stomach my stomach my stomach. I'm going to a specialist next month. They will do a scope, which means a tiny camera will go down my throat to my stomach and inspect it. WTF? 16 years. Really I've had stomach ache for sixteen years. This is not a romantic ailment. You know, how some people get those and become the tragedy girl for life. I'm not her. Maybe i envy her? To have these problems be something that people, you know, gather round and pet you and and make time for you and worry and care and cater..Those sick women that get a pass because they are mentally emotionally or physically ill and all tragic and lovely and then the martyred ghost of everyone's past. No, no, nothing like that. I just have an incessant never ending stomach ache. I can't eat, I can't drink I am sick of being sick. I think this house is making me sick. It is a classic New Orleans house complete with 1910 floors no insulation, no ac, and 100 years of dust settled in so deep no Dyson sucking power vacuum machine can touch it. Oh and 100 years of roaches... and gaps and cracks that can never be sealed bc the house settles and shifts with the humidity and rain and heat. It's fine. It's tiring but its okay. Least i got a house...and The ceilings are high enough for hope to rise and the transom sheds light on my silvery existence. and pain. That is physical and not physical. If there is even a such thing as "not physical pain" bc i feel ever heartbreak and soul ache in my guts. Which, is possibly...part of the problem.I was in rural North LA for a week and a half for work. I didn't miss the city not one bit, not one drop until the last 2 or 3 days. Then I come back and its just...reminders on every street of shit I thought was going to happen but didn't. I should move on, but god, i keep doing a GREAT JOB at this job I only like half the time. Really, I accidentally did such good work up in N. LA that i get to go back. And do more work. Its good, i suppose, and I am only slightly being sarcastic and I should be happy that my boss is happy but in reality i sort of don't want a boss, a job or a car or a body, even. Some very old sick part of me that rejected being alive is in there still. Kicking around. Kicking my in stomach, up the esophagus, caught in my throat. Words stuck.
I have a good life. In the sense of AMERICA and the world and history and humanity and the gadzillion pounds of human suffering that pervades us all ...I got a good deal.
I sort of roll my eyes at it though. Like, whatever, I just worked hard and got lucky.
Don't squander this...
My parents are going to die. I think that sometimes, like at a red light or at times when i am supposed to be paying attention and Then I am just like Well Fuck Everything then. Jesus. Humans have it sooooo great, we are all self aware and shit. When people tell me to be glad things happened, not sad they are over and its better to love and lose then never love at all, I want to spit. No, it ISN'T.
One time my little sister, (who is my hero and a very unlikely one seeing as how her mental issues have been misunderstood by everyone and she got slapped with the label BRAT before we even knew that she didn't have, like, ANY SEROTONIN) she said, people will tell you that time heals all wounds. They will tell you that, but don't believe them. Time doesn't heal anything you just get used to the pain. I wonder if its true. I guess it doesn't matter. I mean how do you even tell the difference?One time, after this particularly tragic heartbreak (aren't they all sooooo tragic?) I went back home for a couple weeks. I was stunned, I think, that a break up could leave me reeling like that. Confused and shocked and feeling so like, like i didn't know who i even WAS. My dad told me that most wounds eventually heal themselves if you leave them be. That is quite different that saying that time heals the wound. But i have a NEED to not leave it be. a physical sore, a mental one or whatever - i peel it back off. I poke around, i get in. and under. I want to UNDERSTAND. I run my fingers over the ridges left by old scars and stars and i have rusty kit of old hurts with sharp points. I can open them back up. This is self defeating. This is selfish. This a pain junkie.
Biologically there is a reason. Like loving your own bullshit, you can get addicted to your own chemicals. Serotonin or epinephrine or wtf ever. The pain feels good. The pain lets you back close to that one person that you can't have. or whatever else it was you lost. innocence or heroin or starvation. It's like, I can't do that THING but i can get back close to the pain that caused me to do that THING and that will suffice when you are a fiend for it.
Sometimes I feel like this abandoned farmhouse. Everyone left or died or forgot to stay. I am all full of their remnants, reminders, just slowly turning to dust. No one is coming back.
8.12.2012
8.08.2012
Of everything good
I walked briskly down the street and the smell of jasmine and sweet olive is so thick in the humid air its suffocating. No lie, when they write about New Orleans they always say something like, the "flowery essence of the still air was intoxicating" and that is one thing they say about this city that is not a lie. or even an exaggeration. The bad thing is the smell of vomit, beer, and piss can be equally as strong on a Saturday morning near a bar. and you are always near a bar in this city. Always.
It's not just jasmine, either. There are other ones but I don't know them by name. Crepe myrtles shaking down little tuffs of flower ...like cotton candy sticking in your hair. Some other big droopy bell shaped flower that smells like a sugar blossom should. It is everywhere and it smell so fragrant and rich and good it almost makes me sick.
It stormed today. A big gully washer they call them. Just rolled in off the gulf, big hard sharp thunder, lighting, dumped a couple inches of water and broke up. Blue skies by the evening.
I went for a walk then. Everyone lives in a shotgun house. A shotgun house is a house without privacy, they say. No joke. I can't even hide from myself in this house. I can't go on hiatus from my own life, like other people can. People just take a hiatus from you and your invisible crisis. To tend their own crisis like a withered garden.
I thought i could handle it but i can't. I am getting healthy anyway but the farther I reach out the more some hard little interior just collapses within itself. A dense little marble made of lead instead of glass. getting heavier and heavier as the months flow.
I watch forensic shows while i draw. The true story ones with cheezey dramatization and factual science. I like it bc they always get the bad guy. Always. A piece of skin, a stray hair, a partial fingerprint, zoom in and pick the invisible apart...Make it mean something. those tiny things...
someone else's tragedy becomes not real. But it is real. we are all real, just stuck here for now, waiting to see what happens next. We are always entertained by someone else's tragedy because it is all we have got and then soon it becomes your own.
It's not just jasmine, either. There are other ones but I don't know them by name. Crepe myrtles shaking down little tuffs of flower ...like cotton candy sticking in your hair. Some other big droopy bell shaped flower that smells like a sugar blossom should. It is everywhere and it smell so fragrant and rich and good it almost makes me sick.
It stormed today. A big gully washer they call them. Just rolled in off the gulf, big hard sharp thunder, lighting, dumped a couple inches of water and broke up. Blue skies by the evening.
I went for a walk then. Everyone lives in a shotgun house. A shotgun house is a house without privacy, they say. No joke. I can't even hide from myself in this house. I can't go on hiatus from my own life, like other people can. People just take a hiatus from you and your invisible crisis. To tend their own crisis like a withered garden.
I thought i could handle it but i can't. I am getting healthy anyway but the farther I reach out the more some hard little interior just collapses within itself. A dense little marble made of lead instead of glass. getting heavier and heavier as the months flow.
I watch forensic shows while i draw. The true story ones with cheezey dramatization and factual science. I like it bc they always get the bad guy. Always. A piece of skin, a stray hair, a partial fingerprint, zoom in and pick the invisible apart...Make it mean something. those tiny things...
someone else's tragedy becomes not real. But it is real. we are all real, just stuck here for now, waiting to see what happens next. We are always entertained by someone else's tragedy because it is all we have got and then soon it becomes your own.
7.23.2012
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