dog days

My life is music, martinis and the breeze. The city breeze, the sea, and the brisk tingle of life kissing my lips.  September seeps into me like herbs in hot water- I’m boiling , enthralled in the moment, so deeply I forget to speak.

sensitivity

Reckoning with the realization that I care. Death to nonchalant culture, death to apathy. I care. I care alot about a lot, but most selfishly about how people treat me, I am not an inanimate object. I am not a statue of a person, there is a fluid hollowness that I cradle in the term “womanhood”. A word I give breath to with the understanding of being contrived, restrained, and in some ways arrogant. I have this sensitivity to feeling alive at all times. This sensitivity can be found in my presence, I allow myself to be touched by invisible actions, the presumptions gifted by foresight. I’m unafraid of being wrong, and I hope most times to be wrong, but the fear of being right. The fear of being right is the shadowy doubt that cast itself over me and it can be mistaken for naivety. And in the quest to be proven wrong, surprised by life, delighted even- I'm forced to leave things to chance. Allowing chaos & passivity dominion . I find sustenance in instinct. It feels like passivity, but it is life, it is neuroplasticity . I’m wide open to life, where you may see a molehill- I understand the mountain. I’m not indifferent, indifference is a lack of awareness. Everything is special- I am forever transported, changed, rapidly, slowly, and all at once. Is this my socialized femininity? is this sensitivity itself? is this immaturity? is this my Darwin-theorized gift of perception? my dandyism? my birthday? the stars? a disorder? a mitochondrial relict? or is it in it’s barest simplicity- me?

My sensitivity shows me where I meet life, without question, pause, or concern. I honor it, I hone it , I fine tune it to arrive at a life that is not only bearable but sublime.

slip

With maturity comes surprise and in most cases humility. I feel a lot more confident in certain things and a lot less in other things, mostly my snap judgments or the parameters of “the way things are and will forever be” because it is simply not attainable to know how things will forever be, I don’t even know FOR SURE HOW anything will go. I've been working with clay and failing quite often in my personal life and in my work with clay. Things break and fumble and take time. I guess the surprise and the certainty is with time things take form, for better or for worst. Now with all this said and all this mentioned, I’ve severely in my life underestimate the weight of my collaboration with time. This is what I’ve learned through the medium of clay, you can’t skip steps! no shortcuts! and sometimes you gotta learn and you can’t avoid destruction. When scoring, you have to smooth over every crack because clay remembers, you have to mend separation and you have to return the clay to itself but differently. The poetry of the earth lies in ceramics, and it teaches. I don’t know if life is the clay or I am in the clay in this metaphor. I mold life as much as it molds me, as I change states from mendable to leather, to stiff- I remember my failures, rejections, and traumas. It lies in how well I smoothed the tears and joined the parts if I will allow myself to break. The most humbling thing about ceramics is- even with all the precautions shit still hits the floor. I was taking a bowl I threw on the wheel outside to stiffen it up so I could carve it, I tripped the bowl flopped down and flattened like a pancake, and really there was nothing I could do but scrap it up off the concrete and kneed it into something I could work with. I call that acceptance.

raining

Seeing light for the first time. A life, somewhere out there at odds with life somewhere in here , in-between ligaments, the real parts of  muscles and meat. Instincts gilded in emotion. I cannot stand the rain because it reminds of all storms , the possibility of being swept away, eroded. I remember all the times my blood stood still and limbs went white at the notice of a red blooded animal called fear and I couldn’t move. It hurt , that I couldnt be myself. That my body and my mind and my heart was so far away. That I was held captive by the future, and ransom by the past always. Saving my heart, preserving my life for a later date. It was all here , all at once, all the time. I just couldn’t see through the rain.

January

The cold tacts on you like stipple.

The more you battle these things

These feelings they grow inside you

These mutations of your desires

I’m telling the truth the best I know, when I know you’ll know

I know there exist thoughts that only exist in the cold

Janus sensuous outlines of a you that could exist past constrains

It’s the question?

Could I ever be one thing?

Refined , smoothed out and brand new

It’s the potential of a destruction of comfort

A disruptive force that may leave you shattered

May leave you grasping for understanding and protection.

Mother

My morning started with a green apple, I don't like green apples but I also don't like wasting food so I swallowed it. A elder in my family recently said “I swallowed all my pain from my mother because I didn’t want to hurt her” I told them I never wished to swallow any of my pain .I guess this is from where this painting sprang on me. I started this painting just as a practice, something to just experience, something to exercise. I saw a baby, then I saw a girl, then a woman of old age, and that made me think about the Hollow babies of Los Bocas near Teopantecuanitlan. Which have both features of elderly and babies. An essence of Janus-like features these dual interpretations of youth and age which were also a common motif during pre-colonial Mesoamerica and during the european middle ages. Janus being the word in which January is derived a nod to the Roman myth/god in which explored doorways, beginnings, transitions and endings. This exploration of duality of harboring both love and pain, naivety, and wisdom. Motherhood and childhood harbors new found understanding of the compromises of love- my mother comes to mind, her mother and her mother.

Mother? why do you only allow God to see you cry? I thought of the crying little girl that lives in most mothers- I thought about how often they swallow their tears and press them into silence, bitterness, rage, and most often wisdom. So then I painted this, or in better words played with this, and I hope in some way the acknowledgment of that little girl can be seen when I look at my mother, or her mother, or when I even think of the mothers I hadn’t been able to speak to in words. I hope this acknowledgment becomes a doorway so less women in my family and in my life won’t have to swallow anything but what brings them true contentment.

Absence

I found out one of my great uncles had been missing for 30 years. For some odd reason it felt like reality got a bit dimmer. We found out that he had given his sister one address in Oakland California. I looked up the street at 1111 Webster Street ,Oakland California- there was a hotel. I wonder if he had stayed there,I wonder if I had lived there for a time? Did he fall in love? was he happy? Did he keep on keeping on, I wondered how he found himself so far from home. Now I grieve a great uncle I never met.

We found out a couple days after he died, presumably alone, in a nursing home. I don't know if knowing that helped. His sister called my mom and she called the coroner, thats how we found out. Perhaps it helped his Sisters and Brothers tie up loose ends of grief, some sort of finality in their brother’s story. I wonder if he could feel their love and my dormant love for him. I wonder if he could feel himself slip into our consciousness every now and then, his nieces and nephews and their children's passing thoughts of him, I wonder if he knew, even in his solitariness, that he was loved and not forgotten.

When we found out, we told my Grandpa. He said "oh" and looked off, in that “oh” I wonder if he remembered his brother as he was and I wonder if his brother could feel that. Life is strange and unusual, grief is strange and unusual.

I think its important love dearly and deeply.

Independence

I’m a monster of a woman and I seek to devour my destiny. I seek not to identify with what has once brought me suffering.

Pardon the dramatics, but what if I became that truly uncanny thing, self-possessed? My likes and dislikes are not in tandem or opposed to anything. Polished or grotesque refreshingly selfish, self-contained, encompassing. With each breath I take place. I’ve never cared for myself so much, and that is why I’m alone. There are so many things I could internalize but why take anything personally?

Cry about it definitely- because that’s important but let it simmer in me, no. In all actuality- nothing has that power anymore to sway me from feeling rooted in myself. Life is entirely too open and too short to implode and indulge in senseless suffering.

I say this as if I’m inventing slice bread as if I’m defining self-respect and regard but in some respects, I am. It must be made from one's self- it must be developed , tended to , and understood by one's internal communion.

Decisions

Everything is a decision, “I can’t” is fathomable. I don’t want to be honest. I don’t want to, I’m afraid to, I do not want to make that sacrifice. 

That is what is so clear to me now- I do not want to make certain sacrifices. I make cheap ones that only hurt once they are compounded and it is known the true cost. A penny, a nickel, a dime, a bus ride into the city, sleeping on a friend's couch with the flavor of tequila still abiding on the tongue. A morning walk out of North Hollywood to the purple train and then the blue and Gold. 2 dollar fare multiplied by the Lyft ride to home or to a party or to see someone you haven’t quite decided on. I’m growing up against my will.

I’ll do it tomorrow, tomorrow’s tomorrow may as well be I’ll never do it. I’ll do it when it hurts most to do it when I’m forced to by my discomfort. Do I sacrifice tomorrow for today or today for tomorrow or will I be seduced by Friday or my own thoughts of thoughts, the thoughts of others, their ideas of right and wrong burrowing into me and eating away at me. To be convinced is a sacrifice to not is also, staying still is a practice run of death but it also a return to oneself, or to myself.

Myself, saying myself as an exhale. M y s e l f, where do I find her if not in sacrifice? If not in the pieces that are cut away by the experience, the loss of baby fat one may say, the suppleness of inexperience the integration of all those stories, the forewarnings at the feet of my grandmothers which bring a certain radiance to myself. She greased my scalp with wisdom, braided pieces of herself into me, and told me how to live in a way I didn’t get bruised. The roots though, tended by endurance, principle, deception, and sometimes bondage. That strange history twisted into me turned over and over and over. The grappling from exile can I buy back my freedom by getting bruised? Or is the bruising a return to bondage?

Tenderness

I find it funny - ironic even that tenderness can be an affliction or comfort depending on the context. To be tender or easily bruised, sensitive, compassionate in shared pain sometimes prolonged pain. I find it biting.

“I lost a lot of people,” I said, she said “to death”, but not just death to life.

Honestly to both, I lost friends that I was no longer useful.

I lost family, my Dad called and told me my brother's mom had passed and he was unaware of the inexplicable reasoning of sadness in my brother when he came home from school quieter than usual- just to find a week later that she was gone. In the park- I received another call saying an aunt and aunt's sister were gone. So many people have just gone.

I stopped watching the news, I couldn’t stand to hear about people dying. I became secretly romantic, I became curious about religions and philosophy. I picked up every holy book I could find, I meddled in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. I looked to the stars, to the ocean, to the cloud and trees. To myself, to cigarettes (to which I let go), to live music, art, and literature. I stopped painting and started again, I became fond of words, I realized I say “I” too much, and sometimes I don’t pry because I’m afraid to hear something sad and not be able to bare it, because of this I’ve lost friends or can assume.

Friends I lost to life- I lost them to grad school, accountability, distance, and anxiety. In all honesty, I don’t even know the reasons why I lost some of my friends- the details of those losses don’t matter. I won’t beat myself up over anything. I’m tender in return, and it is a gift as much as it’s an affliction because I have a keen awareness of how delicate relationships are. I pause more I’m quieter, reserved, and observant- I wanna take it all in. I’ve lost so many people- I’ve even lost some of the people I thought I was.

Does this tenderness stand as an affliction or gift? this newfound vulnerability? It makes me want to feverishly cling to people while keeping everyone 10 feet away. The anticipation of grief has microwaved me, leaving bits of me scorching and other bits frigid.

Sweat