01.05.07
Happy New Year!

I have tried to write this sentence, explaining all the ways that my life has changed in just 12 months, but finally I realized that there are no words for it. I went back and read posts from last January, and seems like I was spinning in circles, with no sense of what I could or should do. Now, I am entering this year with such a sense of purpose, such a sense of hope and excitement and passion...

Anyway, I haven't made any New Year's resolutions, because I never really do, but taken from a friend of mine, I have some goals. So, here they are. Some of them are small and shallow, and some of them are pretty intense and huge. I am writing them so that I can see what kind of progress I've made on the things I want and plan to do this year.

 

Move to a new apartment Start working on literary project, and come up with a viable page by page outline Vacation to Texas, Canada, Thailand, Montana, and/or Europe Entirely, 100%, completely quit smoking Start working out and/or running with some sort of schedule or routine Pay off at least 1/3 of my debt Try to see my friends at least once a month Start officially bartending Figure out grad school applications and get references from professors Finish writing Thesis and graduate Learn to cook steak Take vitamins every day without being reminded Get a real manicure/pedicure Get a real haircut every two months Paint enough paintings for a gallery show Clean out my closet of all the things I don't wear, including shoes Get rid of all the stuff that I don't need and don't use, and cut down on clutter Learn to sew from vintage patterns

I am so incredibly excited about this year. Though it started out a little bit rocky (It was New Years...you know what I mean) I know it's going to keep getting better. I know that the calendar dates are just arbitrary, really, but there's something so cleansing about a new calendar, a fresh year, and shutting the door on the past. It's like looking a fresh canvas, and knowing that what you create there is entirely up to you.

12.07.06
I haven't been updating much so I figured I would post some pictures and fill you in. I just had my last day of class yesterday, and I've got only two finals, so I'm almost done with school for the semester. I have been working a lot, doing graphic design stuff and waitressing at a place in Berkeley. I'm trying to get some projects finished, including two websites that have kind of been on hold since the summer.
I'm also trying to figure out what I want to do when I graduate this summer, which is a little overwhelming. I kind of just want to do nothing for a little while, and see how that feels. But, then again, with $10,000 of student loans, that's probably not the very best idea I can come up with.

Anyway, here are some pictures. I'm not going to bother to caption them, so I'll just tell you that they are from this summer, include pictures taken in Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay aquarium, and the Sacramento State Fair. There are a lot of jelly fish. I like jelly fish.

11.29.06
Recently, I installed Mozilla on my computer, because I had heard it was really good, had better security and better browsing features. Apparently, the other thing that it has is an inability to read my webpage the way I intended. This page looks entirely jacked, with huge spaces between the navigation icons that I didn't know about until I loaded it up in Mozilla. Since I do a lot of my code on Dreamweaver, I thought myabe there was something thrown in there that wasn't reading properly, but when I looked at the source code, I couldn't find anything. So, now I'm going to ask a favor.
Please, if you know anything about code, and you can figure out why my page looks jacked in Mozilla, let me know. If you have the answer, and you want me to, I will totally send you a tee shirt or something for your trouble.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
I hope you have a beautiful holiday season.
And I hope, most of all, that you are as excited about the coming year as I am. I feel like anything is possible, and that I am so close to figuring it out.

*edit* Never mind. I figured it out. For some reason, the table width wasn't large enough, so the second image was getting bumped into a new row. It showed up fine in Explorer, but not Mozilla. When I was re-assessing the code, I also discovered that one of my mouseovers was broken. Has been for a year. I guess I lose at life. Also, sorry I lied about the tee shirt.
Everything else in this post is true, though.

11.01.06
I am very glad that October is over.
I am also very glad.

That is all. Not glad about anything in particular. Just, you know...glad. I'm sitting at my computer, thinking about all the work I have to do, and all the bills I have to pay, and getting over being sick for the past couple of days (My halloween costume was, are you ready for it? Sleeping!!) thinking to myself "Hey, I kind of like this thing called life. It's pretty much a pretty cool thing. I'm glad to be doing it."

Now, I just need to get off my ass and call people, and tell them I'm still around, and see if they'll forgive me for disappearing. Again. But really, I have to say, life is pretty swell. How about that?

10.25.06
This month has been a difficult one, for so many reasons, but I'm trying to get it straight again. I haven't painted in a couple of months, haven't really written (outside of schoolwork, I mean), and didn't have time to go out and be social with my friends. There are people I haven't talked to in months, and I hope to God that it isn't because they don't care anymore.
What I have done, however, is gone to a lot of shows (it's the best part of my new job!), written papers, cooked a lot (yesterday I made lasagna for the first time in years), thought about getting a kitten, and did some serious figuring out of things. I decided to postpone applying for grad school for another 6 months until I know what it really is that I want to study, and where I want to do it. I also realized some patterns of behavior in myself that needed to change, and am actively working on chilling out.

When I was 15, I had my tarot cards read, and the guy who read them (who's eyes, by the way, focused in two entirely separate directions) told me that I worried too much. I spent the next several days thinking about it, and being anxious about it, and not thinking it was true, but then why would he have said it, and why did it bother me...until I realized I was worrying about whether I was a worrier. So, yes, I am. I get it.
And the thing is, it can cause problems. I have had several good friends tell me I am going to give myself an ulcer (well, actually, that has been proven to be a bacteria, so the whole idea of a stress ulcer is a myth, but you get the idea), and that I need to just fucking chill and stop thinking about things so much. I never really thought it was a big deal, but I'm kind of getting the idea that it is, in fact, a problem, and it's cutting down on my ability to actually live my life, because I'm so busy worrying about it.
So, okay.

How do you break a habit that you've had for a whole lifetime?

Not by thinking about it...

10.21.06
I am so grateful for the things I have, but it is difficult not to be disappointed when things don't go the way I hope they might. I need to remind myself that life is about a series of hoops and hurdles, and it's not always about where we are going, but how we are getting there.

09.30.06
I've been so busy updating and working on other people's sites, that I haven't even touched mine. How sad!

My life is a lot different than it was last year at this time, and that feels strange. I'm happy about what I'm doing with my life, but it's still a little scary.
I haven't been painting much in the past 2 months, but I've been working on other exciting things. I started a website for my friend's tattoo shop. I haven't had the chance to work on it in the last couple weeks, but I'm hoping ot get it done in the next two weeks. I have also taken over duties updating the website for a local promoter, and doing web graphics and ads for her. That's exciting, because I am now actually getting paid to do one of the things that I went to school for. So far, that's only the third of many, many courses I completed. I am certified in management and supervision, bartending, and multimedia design (jobs I've held), but I am also EMT certified, attended art school, culinary school, have studied Women's Studies and Sociology and...well that's all I can think of right now!

Frankly, I don't think education or learning is ever wasted, and if I had my way, I would take classes for the rest of my life. There's so freaking much to learn and explore in this world; it's really quite amazing!

Unfortunately, I've been so busy the past month or so, that I really haven't had a lot of time to go out and do a bunch of fun things. I went to Love Parade, in the city, which was unlike anything I'd ever been a part of, since I never really got into the rave/trance/electronic scene. I've started doing box office and event coordination for local shows, which lets me hear a lot of music and meet a ton of people. School is flying by, which scares me a little. It's already October, and I feel like I haven't even started school yet.
Actually, the only thing that worries me is my financial situation. Quitting my job was a real leap of faith, and I just hope it wasn't a misguided thing to do. I believe it was right, but belief alone won't feed me. Speaking of which, I totally want a sandwich. Hopefully, next month will be slightly less stressful, but still just as full of new and exciting experiences.

Just one final thought? Sometimes, life is really fucking amazing to watch unfold. It doesn't mean it is always good, or easy, or comfortable, but I try to remember to thank God for it every day. Even the bad days, but especially the good ones. Sometimes I can't believe how lucky I am to be a part of this world. It's fucked up, and crazy, and full of hurt and sorrow, and I am no stranger to tears...but, I dunno, somehow I still feel like I got in past the velvet rope to go to the coolest club.

08.10.06
I think I finished another painting today. This one is very different than the other paintings I've been working on, in that the code is very simple, and is only a very small part of the image. I'm not sure how well it works with the other paintings that are in this particular series, but I like it, and I am exploring some different techniques with it, too. I think this is one of the first finished paintings that I've posted here. I'm not sure what I'm going to do once I work all of these paintings out of me, because, quite frankly, they are taking over my apartment right now. I have 4 hanging in living room, 3 sitting in my kitchen, and another 3 hanging in my hallway. My hope has been that, by the time school starts at the end of the month, I will have done enough that I could actually put up a show, someplace. I don't know if that's a possibility, but it's been in the back of my head.
By the way, if you can't see the code, check out this detail, and see if you can figure it out.

Life is full of letdowns but it is also full of potential. You just have to leave yourself open to it. It can certainly be difficult not to get disillusioned by all that doesn't go as planned, and I have a pattern of closing myself off when I'm scared of disappointment. I have been trying to just go with it, and I have been finding that even those disappointments can brings some pretty amazing possibilities.

07.22.06
It's been so hot in my apartment that I haven't really been able to paint as much I would like to. Instead, I worked in building my friend's website, did some deep thinking about school, went through entrance counselling for the Dept. of Education and watched about 15 hours of Stargate. It's so hot, in fact, that I have broken out in hives. So hot that my car can't go more than about 10 miles without risk of overheating. So hot that, today, my friend called me and suggested we go see a movie, just for the air conditioning. It's not unbearable, but it sure is pretty miserable, and, inland (where I am) is about 10 to 15 degrees hotter than everywhere else that is getting nice sea breezes.

Anyway, whine whine bitch whine, right? If I was still working, I'd have air conditioning, so being hot is the price I pay for leisure, I guess. Also, I finally heard back from Berkeley, and it turns out I have been accepted into the honors Sociology program, which is rad, because they took only 27 students. Also, it's a damn good thing I already quit, because they changed the class meeting day from Wednesday to Tuesday, which means I will be going to school 3 days a week this semester.

Last, but not least, I have in fact been painting, just not as prolifically as I was last week. Here's what I have been working on for the last couple of days:

Here's what it looks like while I work:

I have no place big enough to paint on an easel, so I just spread out a shower curtain on the ground and paint there. That really sucks in the heat, because vinyl does not feel good on skin when your apartment is a hundred degrees. Also, all those sheets of paper? Those are the notes I reference for the code I use, and the images that I am drawing from (in so far as symbolism is concerned). My friend told me that I was making "nerd-art", and I guess she's right, but I'd like to think that the paintings stand alone even if you have no interest in the encryptions, or the meaning behind the images I'm using. Hopefully?

Anyway, a friend of mine suggested it was time to overhaul my website, suggesting that perhaps my priorities were no longer just "queers, comics and civil disobedience". I suppose he's right, since I haven't drawn a comic in nearly a year, since I very rarely commit acts of civil disobedience (at least, not where activism is concerned), and since my relationships with people rarely have much to do with their sexual orientation in the strictest sense. Given those things, it may be time to take a look at either A) re-doing this site completely, or 2) getting a new site.

Decisions, decisions. Luckily, I have too much to do right now to ponder this particular question. And now? I am going to the movies, where it is air conditioned.

07.15.06
With a nod of thanks to my brother, here's a half-finished painting that I started working on today, because I was having trouble working out the design for my friends' shop's website (what kind of awful grammar is that? That sentence hardly made sense!), and needed a distraction. It would be more done, but it's so hot that it takes forever for the paint to dry, because nothing can evaporate into this ridiculously humid air.

It's funny, yesterday I went to the communal baths at the Kabuki in Japantown. I paid $20 to sit around and sweat with a bunch of naked strangers, and I felt wonderful and invigorated when I left. Today, I am sitting around and sweating, for free, in my own hotbox of an apartment, and I'm all cranky about it. Tom Sawyer was so, so right.

07.13.06
I know you can hardly believe that I have updated twice in two days, and that, in addition, this post actually has some sort of content, but you're just going to have to get over it.

Once of the goals that I had for my time off, as it were, was to make some freakin' art, already. I had some good ideas, but nothing that really moved me. Yesterday I was doing some research, and I hit upon something that I thought would be a lot of fun to play with. As I was driving around, picking up materials and having some wood cut to size, I got totally inspired by a second stage of my original idea.
So, I came home, and I started painting last night. I painted for about 3 hours last night, and 5 hours this morning, and this is where I am right now. It's not totally done, but it's pretty damn close. I might redo one of the paintings that I think is the weakest (the problem with a series is that you figure stuff out as you go along, and then you have to try to make everything match up. At least, that's my problem.) or at least try to fix it up a little.

Have I mentioned lately that I freaking love being unemployed?

07.12.06
I have been officially unemployed for five days, and it is the most amazing feeling. I feel as though a huge wait has been lifted off my shoulders, and that I will be able to achieve anything I decide to do. Being kind of a control freak, I didn't think this would be such a good thing, but quitting my job has been one of the best decisions I have made in the past couple of years. I think, for once, my timing was just right, and I am cautiously optimistic about the future. Neat!

I read about this new Sony ad for the PSP, in which they advertise the upcoming 'white' PSP, in contrast to the traditional 'balck' PSP, using images of a blonde, white woman grabbing the face of a black woman in an especially dominating way. There has been a lot of uproar about it on internet blogging sites, with some people claiming the ad is racist, others saying that it's just tacky, and still others asserting it is totally inoffensive, and shouldn't be charged with any particular meaning. Sony officials have defended it, and said it is only constrasting the colors of the new handheld.
I think it is irresponsible to use imagery such as was chosen without considering the racially charged content. At the very least, it plays on a kind of sexualized 'otherness' that the designers cannot possibly be naive enough to believe to be purely aesthetic. It has a very high fashion editorial feel, that doesn't really play to the audience for which a PSP would be intended, which is why I find the campaign so interesting.
You can read a review and some feedback on the ads here. And, no matter how they might defend it, the ad appears to have been removed from the Dutch site where they originally were shown, so it appears that they at least recognize the public response is overwhelmingly negative. I guess I'm just curious why, exactly, they chose this particular ad, but, honestly, I probably never would have known about the new PSP if it weren't for this, so perhaps it was, indeed, incredibly effective.

06.16.06
I have been waking in strange houses in the small hours, blink through bleary contacts and scramble for my keys. I seem not to be able to sleep in my own house anymore, choosing instead to submit to the worn couches of a chain of living rooms across the city.

I am akward when I sleep, kicking outwards, gasping because I have dreamed I am falling, or, more embarassing still, refusing to admit that I have been asleep at all. I pick up the middle of a conversation never actually began, and fool no one. I wonder if he remembers that I used to do that, early on? We would talk for hours, neither of us ever wanting to say goodbye first. Often it was me. I was the one who fell asleep; he said he would listen to me breathe, and I would wake, pretending I had been paying attention the entire time.

Ironic, really. I was always the last girl awake at middle school slumber parties, and the first to rise in the morning. In college, I used to lie with my arms around someone, my heart racing, and wonder how they could sleep when it was beating so loudly. And I always laid awake in our bed, listening to him snore, reading in the dim light from the street light outside.
For awhile, I slept soundly in the nest of my bed; 300 count sheets and down filled comforter. I was warm within the womb of my solitary home, and would often forego social plans for the sheer joy of going home to sleep.

I don't know what changed, but it is 4 am, and though my bed is calling to me, I am reluctant to answer.

05.27.06

I went to Calistoga over Memorial Day weekend, and these are the 92 pictures I brought home.They are probably kind of boring for everyone who wasn't there.

Sorry. To us, they are hilarious.

05.27.06
Tired. Happy. Proud of myself. Got two As and an A- after one of the most emotionally exhausting past 6 months of my life. One of my friends told me last night:

"There were a lot of people worried about you for awhile there. But you look good, now."

It kind of shocked me, actually. I really didn't realize how exhausted, burned out, and generally done I was. I spent the past 6 months feeling lonely, frustrated, uninspired, depressed and out of my element. Luckily, I have some good friends, who stayed with me and, occassionally, shook me to my core to try to get me back on track. I still feel a little out to sea where my future is concerned, but I feel pretty solid about today.

If I haven't mentioned it lately, to the people who really matter to me, thank you. I love you.

Also! I am going to try very hard to have a productive summer. Hopefully, there will be much to come. I am feeling inspired by life again.
I think sleeping helps.

05.20.06
Done again, again. Life reminds me of a kaleidescope; you can turn it over and over and over, and no matter how different things look, you're still, ultimately, just looking at the same stuff, refracted in new and interesting ways.

Or, as my UPS driver says, "Same shit, different day."

If you don't start making changes, you will feel stressed and nonproductive. Start with yourself followed by making your surroundings more comfortable and efficient. Alter your life to feel good about your future.

This is my horoscope for tomorrow. It's really kind of funny, because I had this exact same conversation with AndiLu about 2 hours before it arrived in my inbox. Lately, I've been kind of surprised just how accurate astrology has been in respect to my life (except in romance, where it keeps telling me I'm about to get hot and heavy with someone special). Last night, my friend Laurenn listened to all my troubles, and then told me that I'm just seriously going through my Saturn return.

Do I believe all this stuff? No, not really, but I figure if it helps me get a handle on all the craziness that is my life, where I feel permanantly out to sea at all moments, then how can it be bad?
Oh, also? My neighbor told me that I better hurry up and find someone to love me, because, at 27, I'm running out of time. He did, however, want to make sure I wasn't so frustrated that I might "switch to the other team". I told him that I had realized long ago that people are gonna be jerks regardless of their gender. I'm sure the conversation could have gotten stranger, but I'm not precisely sure how.

In other news, or, really, I suppose it is related news, now that I am done with school for the summer, I am trying to put my house in order (literally and metaphorically). I finally got around to hanging some of the art I bought at APE, which included a copy of this piece by Jamie Zollars, a print of this poster by Becky Cloonan, An amazing limited edition screen print from Aaron Thomas (who I can not find online) and an adorable print of a bunny at a urinal (sadly, I have no idea who the artist is). I also finally hung the vintage Barbarella poster I found at a garage sale for $2, as well as an etching I made in art school back in 1998. And, in one of the most adult-like actions I have made since I moved out on my own, I actually bought a vacuum cleaner.
The frightening adultness of this was mitigated by buying a 3 pound bag of Tootsie Rolls, which I have now consumed to the point of feeling slightly sick and tingly.

Oh, also? An hour ago my street was filled with fire trucks and police cars, because apparently someone had lit a woman's trailer on fire as some sort of revenge.

Having days off is very, very strange.

05.09.06
Another sleepless night. When most people say they never made it to bed, it's because they were doing something fun, but for me this is one of many nights in the past month where I've stayed up almost all night attempting to finish school work. Working and going to school full time is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I feel like I've lost so much; my friends, my social life, my relationship, because I gave so much to my job and my studies. I feel like I sacrificed my performance in school in order to be able to work, and to advance at work. I haven't made art, I haven't contributed to my community, I haven't been able to be a very good friend.

It's almost over, now. I have some big ideas about what I may be able to do in the future, and I just really hope that this will all be worthwhile. I am so tired right now, it is difficult to feel proud of anything I've done, because all I can really see are the things I haven't done. I worry that, by the time this is over, it will be too late to salvage all the things I've let slip. I miss my family, and my friends, and there are some things I will never be able to get back. I try to believe that anything I have lost was not that important to begin with, but it is difficult to let go.

I told a friend the other day, "The people who love you will understand that you are giving them all that you can, right now." I said that people who cannot understand one's situation are not truly friends. There's some trith in that, but how much is a person supposed to accept before they feel that their relationship is only one-sided? Telling a friend that you love them seems so shallow when you haven't been there to support them through a break-up, or a move, or illness, loss of employment, depression etc, etc, etc.
I keep making promises to myself that I will try harder at the things that matter the most to me, but, unfortunately, interpersonl relationships take so much effort, so much energy, and, in the short-term, seem so flexible. It's no big deal not to see your friend for a couple weeks, right? But when you realize it's been 6 months since you've seen each other, and 2 months since you called...I can't blame people for not making the effort as much anymore. I try always to be there for people, when they tell me that they need me, but who tells you that when they haven't seen or heard anything from you in months?

Anyway, I am truly sorry for all the ways I have let you down. I would say that I will try to do better, but I don't think that's even a promise I can make right now. I have the summer ahead of me, and I am hoping to rectify some of this. The thing is, friendships, relationships in general, are not supposed to be about convenience. I don't fully expect that saying "Okay, now I have time to be your friend!" is really gonna cut it. The worst part is, really, even if I went back in time, I don't think there's much I could do to change it.
The other day I saw someone I hadn't talked to in years. I thought we'd just lost touch, which upset me, but I realized it happens sometimes. I had tried to look her up a couple times, but her e-mail address didn't work anymore, and a Google search turned up nothing. When I saw her, I was so excited to get the chance to reconnect, until she made it clear that she didn't want to. Turns out, she knew exactly where I was, and had known for as long as she'd been living in the city. Probably, a lot of what I'm saying is a result of recognizing that I hadn't even known we weren't friends anymore. How do you not know something like that? How clueless can a person be, how absent a friend am I?

In a year, this will be done. I will have my life back, whatever is left of it.

04.27.06
The other day, I was heading home late at night. The stars were out, and I was taking the drive I've taken hundreds of times in my life, from Pleasanton, past the bridge towards Berkeley, and you can see the lights across the Bay bouncing across the ocean waves. I wondered how many times I could take this drive, and still be awed by the beauty of the lights flashing across the water.

That, in turn, made me wonder how much longer I'm going to be living in this area, what I'm doing here, and what I want to be doing. It's been in the back of my head for the past couple of months, knowing that I'm not doing what I feel like I should be doing, but not quite sure how to get there.
Wait....let me backtrack for a minute.

I think a lot. Some people tell me I think too much, and worry that, if I don't knock it off and relax for a minute and a half, that I will drive myself absolutely crazy. Partially, I believe this is just who I am, that I analyze like crazy, and will never ever be wholly satisfied. I think, rethink, wonder and retrace, because, though I believe we learn who we are from making mistakes, I never want to make the same one twice. So. So, yeah, I think a lot. That's where I was going with that.
But sometimes, once in a blue moon, I don't really think. I just know.

And then I act.

And it doesn't matter how crazy it may seem, how unlikely, how ridiculous or over the top, or ill advised. I will commit to it, and I will make it happen. Something like that, I think, is about to happen. I have torn my life apart in the past 6 months, and there is little left of what I used to know, or do, left around me. And I think, if everything goes as I am considering, that it is about to get so much more extreme.
In preparation for all these things, I am trying to simplify my life a little bit. In the near future, I will probably be getting rid of a whole lot of stuff. I am seriously really prepared to give pretty much my whole life away. What I would really like to do is have the opposite of a housewarming party, where people just come over and take stuff away from my house. Somehow, I think most people would not feel comfortable with that, so I'll have to come up with something that feels less socially awkward.

Anyway. Expect more news soon. And by soon, I mean whenever I get around to it.

04.12.06

"I wish I could have seen you when you were young," he says with a smile. "I bet you were really something, then."

I'm already drinking from my bottle of beer, something micro-brewed, wheaty and over-priced. I cut a look at him from the corner of my eye, peering across the colorful label. It always struck me that the labels of these beers must have been designed my a well-meaning friend or lover who was incredibly artistic in high school, but lacked any formal training in marketing or design. Someone who said something along the lines of "People like birds. I like birds. They're so hopeful, and isn't that what you want people to think of when they think of your beer?"
It's dark, so I don't know if he can see how I'm raising my eyebrows at him. I can feel my forehead furrow in the way that makes me realize why movie stars start getting Botox in their mid-twenties. I wonder what kind of person thinks it's a compliment to get lecherous about my teenaged past.

"Trust me," I say, slamming the empty bottle down as I rise from the table, "I'm far more interesting now."

I've been trying to write out everything that is welling up inside me, but it has no place to go. Nothing is changing fast enough for me. I keep having this vision, standing on a tiny island, as the waves rise closer and closer, until they begin to cover my toes. What do you do, then? Do you keep still, and hope the tide goes down? Do you jump in, and hope you reach land before you get too tired to keep swimming? I really don't know.

I've been going back and forth about trying to get into the honors program at my school. I've decided that much of it will depend on what happens in my life in the next three months. Changes in my work and home life have meant that I am no longer committed to this area in the way that I used to be, which, though it leaves me feeling sad and uncertain much of the itme, allows me a lot more freedom to make choices about my future.
I need to make some big decisions in the very near future. If you have suggestions for me, please, feel free to tell me. Otherwise, there is a very good chance I will not be in the Bay Area at this time next year. But you never do know. As the say, Life is what happens...yeah. You know the rest.

03.31.06
This, too, shall pass.

Right?

03.28.06
There are several things that I really like about being an adult, and these are the only reasons I will ever admit to being one:

• I can eat icecream for dinner if I want to.
• There is no one to chide me for staying out until 3 am on a school night.
• I still get ID'd for things, but my ID is totally not fake (anymore).
• Ha! Just kidding Mom! I never had a fake ID. Really.
• Seriously. Why would I lie to you? Are you gonna ground me?
• That's right. Cus you can't. Cus I'm an adult.
• But no, really, I never had a fake ID.
• Mostly because I'm from Ohio, and we had drive-thru liquor sales.
• These aren't really reasons that I'm okay with being an adult. They're just funny.
• I'm 27 and I still think it's funny to swear when I talk to my parents.
• Fuckin' funny.
• And what are they gonna do about it?
• Send me to bed without dessert?
• No problem. I had icecream for dinner.

For real, though? The one thing I value the most in moving away from my home, packing up and setting out for parts unknown, 2800 miles away from everything I'd ever known, ever trusted...Man, I learned what was important. I learned what family is, what it really means.
I just talked to my Dad for over an hour, and talked to my Mom for almost an hour and a half on Thursday. Looking back at the surly, angsty, uncommunicative girl I used to be, in torn fishnets and black lipstick, that girl who locked herself in her bedroom to write bad poetry and listen to Bauhaus, who hid cartons of cigarettes in her underwear drawer and sat in stony silence during hour long car rides, it is amazing to me that I have the relationship I have with my parents. I don't know what I would do without them, anymore.

I used to get homesick all the time, and think about quitting this coast forever. I used to think I would never be able to belong here, that it was a mistake to have come, that it would never feel like it was mine. It could never compare to sitting in the thick branches of the apple tree in my front yard, or of pulling up daffodils in the spring time, that no turbulant ocean could ever compare to the quiet drama of Lake Erie, that no house would ever truly be home.
And those things are no less true today, but I have recently recognized exactly what home means to me. I am incredibly grateful to my folks for helping me realize it, and for giving me the example so perfect that I thought there was only one place to find it. I would admit that you guys were probably right all along, but I'm not enough of an adult to go that far.

Fuck this sentimental crap. I'm gonna go eat icecream for dinner.

03.27.06
Here I am again, standing dizzy on the edge, with my eyes closed. This world of mine is spinning so fast I feel like I might be thrown off at any minute.

I've written hundreds of words already, but none of them were sufficient. Have I said yet, admitted yet, that I am scared? Not just worried, or anxious, but literally and physically scared? I don't know where I'm going, or what it should look like when I get there. I'm travelling on faith, but she's a new ride, and I don't know how long she'll hold out.

So I hang on, but I brace myself for the fall.

03.17.06
There is a dog barking next door, or maybe two houses down? It is plaintive and desperate, crying into the night and waiting for someone to come home. I wonder if it is hungry, scared, or just lonely. I wonder what would make it stop. I wonder if they're raising it to be mean, like the dog that snarled and tried to crash through the chain link fence that I pass when I walk to the train. I wonder if it will always be mean, or if, sometimes he rests his head in someone's lap, and feels like a puppy again.

Is it dangerous, this romanticizing? Do I really believe I can keep putting my hand out, without being bitten? The answer is probably no, but that won't stop me from trying.

03.13.06

I have written a sheaf of letters I will never send. I could paper my walls with the words I have been too shy, too shamed, too guarded to let loose to the world. I have unburdened myself on the faint blue lines of college ruled notebooks, like a lovelorn teen penning sonnets to the popular, pretty one at the front of the class. I find them torn out and folded into the spines of books, shoved under couch cushions, crumpled in the bottom of my bag. There are never names, but there are histories, and I am cautious with them. I keep my heart close, a hand of cards I might have to bluff.

There are wings caught in my chest, trying to expand. They knock against my ribs, flutter against my sternum. They have attached themselves to my heart, and are trying to lift it out. They accuse me of being a warden, holding myself hostage, placing my words in quarantine, sequestering my heart in solitary confinement. I want to defend myself, but I find I have no arguement.

My windows are rattling now, battered by the wind, and I am curled inside the golden light that slips between the slats in my blinds. I imagine where you are now, what you are doing. The radius that a heart can travel is not bound by distance, and you are in every room I've known. I see you alone at your kitchen table, late at the office, napping on a couch in front of the blue light of a television. You are in front of a canvas, paint on your hands. You are drinking at a dimly lit bar. You are hunched over a keyboard, empty dishes stacked on the corner of your desk. You are leaning against a cinderblock wall, cupping your hands around a cigarette to keep the flame from blowing out. You are asleep. You are waking. You are reaching out. You are anywhere, everywhere.

I have written you a letter, and addressed it to this memory.

03.08.06
I haven't done a photo log in quite some time, so here's a big one. I went to Vegas for my birthday, and didn't take nearly enough pictures of things like, say, Tom Jones, but instead managed to capture a plethora of photographs of oddly colored alcohol.

And, now, so that you don't think my life revolves around brightly colored, dry ice-filled beverages, here are some pictures of what I have hanging on my walls. There are more, but I got tired of doing image prep.

03.08.06
7 years ago today I was 20 years old, and I packed up everything I owned, put it in a moving truck and drove to Virginia. I had never visited the town where I was moving, and I knew only one person there. I had $3 in change, and I maxed out my credit card to rent the truck. I lied about having insurance, and they never bothered to check. My punk friends came over, drank 40's and helped my boyfriend move my furniture out of the house. They dropped the wardrobe I had been given and broke the mirror. I assumed that was foreboding. Halfway to Virginia I realized I didn't have enough money to pay the tolls, and I pulled over to the side of the road and cried about everything I left behind.

Almost 6 years ago I quit Virginia, and sped across the country in 3 days. I stopped to rest only once, and to drop off my friend in Vegas. We took turns driving, and gassed up in towns like Abeline, Kansas, where there was a telephone museum, and some of the best tacos I've ever tasted. I wore my grandfather's pants and drove with my feet out the window. I smoked a million cigarettes and dreamed about LA. There was nothing good playing on the radio, so I drove in silence for hundreds of miles, staring at the stars and hoping.

When I vacated Virginia, I left almost everything I owned to my roommate. I took my futon, my desk, my iguana, my computer and all my books. I left the wardrobe that had been given to me by a man who maybe loved me. I left the couch and the table I had acquired from a girl who kissed me at a club. I stopped in Ohio and picked up my grandfather's kitchen table and television, leftover pieces of his life that had kept him company while he waited to join his wife.

The iguana died several months after I got to LA. I woke one morning to find him cold and stiff. We hosed down the clay in our backyard, dug a baby sized hole and buried him in it. I think I gave the desk to Goodwill. It was one of those heavy school issues, with metal legs and built in shelves and a laminate top that was covered in paint and ink. The futon I must have left in a garage off La Cienaga, because all I could find were the arms, which we chopped up and used for firewood. I sent my computer to Portland to an ex-girlfriend. My grandfather's kitchen table got too water damaged, but I still have the chairs and his television. His pants, too, though I don't wear them anymore.

I have been shedding my past as I go. Every seven years our cells have completely regenerated, and we are technically no longer the same people we were. At least, not in a physical sense.
I have seen my best friend die, lost a parent, given up my lover. I have made friends with my mother, become an aunt, seen my brother marry, gone back to school. I have hurt, and been hurt. I wonder if I would recognize myself if I crossed my own path, 7 years ago. I wonder, sometimes, what other directions I might have gone, where else I might have found myself. I am not the same girl. I have given that world away, left it in living rooms and on sidewalks, passed it from hand to hand, packed it with styrofoam and sent it away.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

I don't know where this road leads, but I'm not looking back, because nothing is left there to see.

03.06.06
My birthday has come and gone, and a good friend suggested that birthdays can be seen as new years, an opportunity to start with a clean slate. I agree with this, although, on a larger scale, every single day that we wake up can be seen this way. Every day we get out of bed is a chance for us to change our lives, fulfill our goals, find our dreams.

So. Have you ever wanted something so much that it invades every corner of your mind, wraps around your synapses at night while you sleep, comes upon you unaware when you are trying to concentrate on other things? There is a life I want, there is something I need, and desire for it permeates everything I do, taking some of the color from each morning.

I don't know how to get there, and I'm not sure if I can, but I will hold on to this hope, and if it is meant to be, it will be. The life we eventually live is never only about us, after all. It is a culmination of every person we have known, every place we have gone, all the lives, moments, people, things that have touched us.

In other news, my downstairs neighbor really likes music with tubas in it. And he likes to play it so loudly that it shakes my floor. I'm tired of complaining, so I think I'll just go someplace and read Foucault where the floors don't vibrate.

03.02.06
A summer when I was 8 or 9, and had probably just finished watching a John Hughes movie, I turned to my Mom and I said "I hope to have a letter jacket some day." I remember I was reading a magazine, and there was an ad with some clean-faced teenager, hugging her (boyfriend's) letter jacket, and somehow trying to advertise for perfume. I remember the perfume, but not the name. It was colored powder pink and sold almost exclusively to 14 year old girls. I loved the toughness of letter jackets, and the way they always seemed a little bit too big, which to me seemed to suggest the possibility of growing into, rather than enveloping. So, "I hope to have a letter jacket some day."

My mother seemed enthusiastic. "Really? What do you want to letter in?"

I was perplexed, and said curiously, "Boyfriend?"

Because I thought, I really and truly thought, that that was the only way that girls got letter jackets. I had no idea they could be earned any other way. I did in fact letter, in gymnastics, when I was a freshman, though it was more because there was only one gymnastics team, and not because I was any good at it. In fact, I was rather unapologetically bad, but I loved the feeling of swinging in heady circles around the uneven parallel bars, chalking my hands and slipping on the white leather strips that never really protected my palms from the deep callouses that eventually blistered and ripped off, leaving raw strips of exposed skin like a badge of honor.
The fact is, until that moment I hadn't known I had any other option. I remember this conversation, this moment. I wonder if it is a turning point, a mile marker where I changed the direction of my path, however slightly, tacking to the left and surveying the horizon for a new destination.

I love my leather jacket, slightly too big and bulky, faded black and worn on the elbows. It is not the stylishly cut, slim motercycle variety, but rather the kind that has secret pockets and its familiar weight feels like a protective arm across my shoulders. The same moment I knew that I could earn my own letter, I never had any mind to wear someone else's accomplishments. I will make my own.

It is time, I think, to scan the horizon again. When I used to sail, skimming across Lake Erie, low and fast with water spraying into my face, I never had any mind for my destination. I changed course to follow the wind, catching it in the triangle of the sail, letting loose the mainsheet, feeling the burn as it snaked through my fingers and across my calloused palms. I would dig my toes in, lean back against the fiberglass deck, and ride diagonal against the waves.
And often, I would cut the rudder to cross the wind, pull hard against the ropes, hold them tight against my body until pressure caught the sails and I felt the whole boat go over. Do you see? I had nowhere I needed to go, and there was no failure in being bested. Plunging headlong into the cold water, laughing, catching the daggerboard as it slid from the belly of the boat, the whole point was to start over again. The whole point was that I knew I could. All that ever happened was that I got very wet.

Who can tell if there are sharks in these waters? I feel I already know them, their smiles are bright with so many teeth. Who can tell what may be over the gentle blue curve of the horizon? I feel it reaching for me, or maybe I am heading towards it. It is all relative, isn't it? It is impossible to stay in one place. Impossible to be at rest. Maybe we are all sharks, then, unable to cease our constant movement, necessary as breathing.

02.28.06
Have you ever woke in the weak morning light, slowly, blinking heavily, and not known where you were, not recognized your own walls, or your own fingers as they lay against your skin?

This is how I've been feeling, every day, for the past weeks. I look around me, and I'm not sure where I am, or how I got here. I heard my voice, and it was not my own, saw my face in the mirror and hardly recognized myself. I would make faces at myself in the mirror, just to see if I could move faster, catch that smile in a lie. No dice, though. It is hopelessly, irrevocably my own.
And when I came to accept that, I started to acclimate myself to this new life, slowly and cautiously. It really is mine, all the mess, the heartbreak, all the things I'm missing and any of the things I've gained. Fell asleep on the couch last night, curled on top of a stack of folded laundry, because I could, because there was no one to tell me to go to bed. Today my neck hurt from sleeping curled against the futon frame.

I've been writing love letters to the world, lately, telling it how I'm always watching from a distance, but I'd like to be closer. Like a nervous teenage boy, I watch it flit by, but I'm afraid to ask it to dance. I write these letters in the margins of my school-notes, in sketchbooks and on bar napkins, and then come across them unexpectedly at all the wrong times. It makes me blush, to see my sprawling cursive dashing across the page, passionately extolling the virtues of turning your face toward the rain.
I'm afraid to scare the world away, though, afraid my passion, my hunger, my desire will be frightening. I want to devour it, laugh through my tears, eat icecream in my bed at midnight, share lunch with the fat squirrels in Berkeley parks, stay up all night and sleep all day. I want to embrace it. I want to never let it go. I have made so many mistakes, but I have been writing a catechism, etching the words onto my skin and into my memory and it is all questions, so many questions and no answers.

And I am hungry and I am tired, but I will cook a feast so that I can invite the world to the table and offer it my bed to sleep in. My arms are full and I overflow with words, though none of them are the right ones.

02.21.06
How long can I hold on
With these arms?

Spending time with people, even over the phone, connected over thousands of miles, or reconnected after weeks, months, years with people you haven't seen, it gives you a step back from your life. You rewind, trying to fill in the gaps. What's happened since we talked last, you think, where have I been?
Sometimes I don't know the answer to that question. Where have I been? What have I done?

What have I done?

An accusation, of course, when you know full well, can't face up to the reality. Earlier, talking about God, mentioned that I have to believe, have to have faith, that even the mistakes that I have made, continue to make, will always make every day that I still draw breath, are going to take me someplace. Somewhere, somehow. Turn them into art, weave them into stories, let it be the paint that fills your palette, and then give that to the world. I would rather be a fool every day, blinking against my own tears, than numb to the world around me and hard within my shell. I conspire to allow myself to be hurt, I suppose, because it seems like the best possible alternative.
I wake every day in a bed that had grown cold during the night. I wake up every day to varying degrees of grey light trying to squeeze its way in through my blinds. Slog down the stairs with apprehension, wondering what will wait for me when I get onto the dingy street? Will there be the crazy man talking to himself on his porch, the tricked out van that squeals by, throwing empty 40's out the window? Will my car be there? Will someone be sleeping inside it, now that it has been broken into once?

Anything is possible this morning. But remember...
Anything is possible. Today might be the day. The day that things turn around, the day a smile makes your breath catch, the day everything makes sense, the day you stop doubting, the day you believe, the day you see proof, the day a door opens. Today might be the day you understand.

But how long do I wait?

How long can I wait?

02.17.06
When I was 10, 11, 12 I used to have such headaches that I sometimes couldn't see straight. I would close my eyes and push against them with my fingertips until I saw dark pools like oil slicks, radiating across the front of my thoughts. It wasn't a matter of if, but how much. Discomfort is funny like that, ongoing, pervasive. .ou do not recognize how much you hurt until you wake up one day to find the hurt has gone.

Will I wake up soon?

I can't feel it now. Perhaps it is metaphorical, then, that I have a habit of smashing myself into walls, corners, fixtures, pieces of furniture with what seems to be reckless abandon but is really just clumsiness. I am in a constant state of hurry, you see, so that I do understand the nature of the obstacles in my way until I bounce off of them. I hardly notice, do not notice in fact, until later, much later, days, weeks, years I suppose in cases, I find bruises, scratches, scars, but have no idea how or why or when they came to be.

"How did this happen?"
"I haven't the foggiest."

Better, I suppose, than to say I slipped on the stairs. No abuse here, perhaps neglect, then.

It is not this deep pain I feel. Sitting for hours under a tattoo machine and I laugh and tell stories and feel to myself This should hurt. Something should hurt me. It is when the pain is over, rinsing my skin with the watery soap solution that I begin to feel the sting. Only then, after it is over.
Everything is a simile to me, everything is like something else. Even when everything is new, it is all echoes of something else, why I can love someone I have never met, hate food I have never eaten, laugh at a joke before it has been finished.

I am waiting for the hurt to stop, so that I know how deep it has gone.

02.14.06
I have a midterm due in 21 hours, and I have to clock in to work in 15 hours, and would like to sleep at some point between now and then. I'm having a slight issue, however, with the actual writing of this particular midterm, uninspired, as I am, to say anything further about Karl Marx, communism, the division of labor, the role of the state, solidarity or any of these dusty, mustly theoretical issues that seem to have as much relevence with the life I see outside my window as snowscrapers have to do with L.A.

I'm tired. I'm worn out. I'm in love with life, but it doesn't love me back, and as Frank Sinatra sang, "Unrequited love's a bore, but I've got it pretty bad." It's starting to be spring time, starting to be lovely, and I feel it in my toes, the desire to skip through the sunshine and bury my face in apple blossoms. I can smell spring on the wind, and taste it when I breathe deep enough.
I want to paint it, want to touch it, want to write fucking love poems to it, but I haven't got time, haven't got energy, haven't the words that are enough to express it anyway. Can you be in love with a season? Can you be in love with anything other than a person? Hell, can you be in love with a person, drowning, insatiable, unable to breathe for it?

I've always hated Valentine's Day, so I find it fitting that I'm spending it writing loveless essays to the memory of Emile Durkheim, optimist though he was, who believed that through specialization and the most pure form of division of labor, we might find redemption as a race, as a generation, as a species, might find justice and hope and brotherly love and compassion. Through work, mind you, because we would recognize, spontaneously, how absolutely interdependent we were, how necessary to each other. We would discover this through finding our true function in work, and then do this work joyously, happily, recognizing that we were all brothers and sisters and society would be healed from this.

We cannot heal ourselves, though, and we don't know where we belong. At least, it seems, most of us don't. Durkheim would probably say that we were simply in a transition, responding to the advance of technology and global culture that has led to different forces of production, and therefore a new division of labor, and we simply haven't caught up yet, but we will, we will, it's necessary, irrevocable, absolute, for the good of humanity, it cannot remain in this tenuous condition, this abnormal stage forever!

Forever is a long time, I know, but my life is much shorter than forever, and I'm really not content to wait for the division of labor to catch up so that I may be happy in my work, sure of my place in society. What should I do while I'm waiting Emile? Where do I go while I wait?

01.28.06
I'm a fucking yoyo of emotions today.

After three days I finally got past the 1st CD in the three CD album 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. It may be that I'm fighting off illness, but really all I want to do is rush home and lie on my living room floor listening to it. I played the first CD about 15 times before I finally moved on to the second one.

"a song of you and me and what and why
for time is all I have to keep
between these walls
and half asleep
the days go by
a million little nights and days go by"
- "Parades Go By, The Magnetic Fields

My District Manager told me that she worries about me when I am done with school, because I won't know what to do with myself. I told her she could assign me another project to work on, and she suggested maybe I should pencil in "world peace". This was all in response to my telling her I am going to start volunteering at a local radio station for a couple of hours a week. I told her that since I wasn't commuting anymore (or, not really commuting, since my drive only takes about 25 minutes now), that I had an extra 3-4 hours a week, and I didn't know what to do with it. The fact is, when I haven't got too much to do, I am not usually motivated to do much of anything at all.

I decided not to exhibit at the Alternative Press Expo this year. Comics aren't really where my art is headed right now. In fact, I can't really tell you where my art is headed. I'm kind of letting it do its own thing, and seeing where it goes. I have realized that the more I try to control things, the more fucked up they get. Being kind of a control freak, that's really hard for me. I mean, I'm the one who, in group projects, says "You know what, I'll do that," because I don't trust anyone else to do it right. It's something I've had to let go of at work, because if I had to do it all myself, nothing would ever get done, but goddamn it's hard to realize that you're not necessary to make things function. In fact, not only might other people be able to do things, they might do them even better than you do. Amazing!

And how does this have any real-world relevence?
In regards to the rather annoyingly long post below, I think we try to control ourselves a lot, in one way or another. I often try to over-rationalize things, because if something is rational, I can control the situation, my response, and the likely consequence of any action I make. I have a tendency, I have been told, to be irritatingly un-emotional in arguments, refusing to engage. I often justify but saying that it's because I have anger-management issues, but it is also because I can feel in control if I over intellectualize and analyze a situation.
The down-side? I miss out on a lot because I feel it it's too unreliable for me to fully invest in.

Every now and again I get out of that, like when I loaded up my whole life and moved to Virginia, site-unseen. Or Los Angeles. Or, really, San Francisco.
Apparently, I have trouble with small things, so I pack all my sponteneity into large, life-altering packages. Like, well, now, I guess.

When it's too big for me even to guess at, too big for me to wrap my mind around, apparently it doesn't bother me. I don't wonder about what might have happened if I hadn't done it, because, well, I could never have imagined what it would be like if I had. I was always the kid who jumped into the water all at once, rather than stepping down the rungs of the ladder, a little at a time.

"There's an hour of sunshine
for a million years of rain
but somehow that always seems to be enough"
- Sweet Lovin' Man, The Magnetic Fields

01.27.06
Child psychologists, teachers, and even most parents will tell us that early childhood and adolescence are the formative years of a person's life, the time when we discover who we will be, and how we fit into the world around us.
I have an alternate philosophy. While I absolutely believe that those years are important, helping us learn skills to negotiate our way through the world, giving us the chance to figure out what kind of things we might enjoy doing, honing our communication, and gathering resources with which we will eventually assert our place in the wider world, I also believe that we don't actually become who we are until we have to be completely responsible for ourselves. As youth, we have our parents to provide discipline and guidelines to our lives, we have school that constrains us, and we are not legally able to make many decisions about what we will do, and who we will do it with. I mean, hell! It's illegal to take a minor across state lines!

So, once we are responsible, once we are living on our own, paying the bills, and once there is no one to watch over our actions, I believe that is when we learn who we truly are.
And I will be quite honest with you; who I was, who I have been, has not always been the best of people. Shocking, I know! Because weren't you just the picture of purity and virtue when you first moved out of the house? But here's the thing; from that time when we first begin to make these decisions, there are warring factions within us. It is not just the war between what is right and wrong, good and bad, but also the war between the different parts of ourselves that want opposing things. One part wants comfort and security, another part wants excitement and passion, and often those two desires seem mutually exclusive. One side wants spontaneity, another part wants reliabity. It is reconciling the tensions between these differing sides of ourselves that I believe makes us who we are.

And, I believe, if we are quite honest, we test ourselves sometimes, to see what it is like to do the wrong thing. Not just morally wrong, or ethically unsound, but really wrong for ourselves, like going on a date with someone you're not attracted to, whether or not it had anything to do with the prospect of an expense-paid dinner. I think sometimes we like to push at our own boundaries, and see how we respond. It's like poking at a bruise to see if it still hurts, because how else would you know?
I believe that we all have a darker side, and that we sometimes let it out to see what it would be like if we really listened to that impulse. Most people I know have shop-lifted sometime in their life, and it was never really because they needed or even wanted what they took, but because they wanted to see what it felt like to do it.

I think sometimes we also play with that ridiculously pure side of ourselves, the selfless and giving side, who sacrifices almost to the point of pain. I once watched my lover give away his last $10 to a man who's car had broken down, knowing that he wouldn't have any money to eat again until he got paid. I wanted to yell at him to stop, that the man was probably lying, that he wouldn't have money for food for a couple of days. I wanted to chase the man down and get his money back. But, we all do these things, to some extent or another. I used to spend my one day off volunteering at an AIDS clinic.

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where this weird alien ch