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Make a Motion

2011-10-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

I am a chronic procrastinator. Cleaning, schoolwork, difficult conversations, mundane phone calls--I cannot bring myself to do any of it without great difficulty. For a while now, I condemned it as laziness, as a moral failure on my part for which I was solely to blame.

Everyone procrastinates to some degree. Rare is the person who blithely confronts the world and all it requires of us. However, I think most people end up doing what needs to be done eventually, because at a certain point it becomes more painful to not do it. But the root of my procrastination seems to be fear of uncertainty. Or, more precisely, fear of disappointment, of failing or getting stuck and not being able to pull myself out. Some part of me believes if I ignore something long enough, it will work itself out, but this should not be confused with optimisim. I can tell myself I didn't even try so, really, I didn't fail. The problem with this belief is that I am rendered helpless, a passive bystander in my own life.

Rationally, I understand that acheivement of anything meaningful requires a great deal of work. We must venture forth into a formless future that does not guarantee success. Try, fail, learn, try again, fail again, learn again, and so on. This is what I would tell someone who is not me: This is the way it must be.

But I have much different expectations for myself. I should never stumble, never embarrass myself with rudimentary attempts at something. I should emerge fully formed and radiant in every situation. The stakes are pretty high. I admit I am of the distorted opinion that to be loved, one must be special. Capital S Special. Really, this is narcissim at its finest. If I am not the best, then I must be the worst--"the piece of shit at the center of the universe". In reality, specialness is so subjective that to try to pin it to any concrete criteria is absurd. And thinking you are just terrible at everything all the time only begets self-sabotage. So then you have the middle place, a place of just being ordinary. And this is where I get stuck.

Ordinary people are happy and sad and tired, they have clean houses and cluttered ones, they are good at knitting and bad at being on time, they write beautiful music and cheat on their spouses and drink too much coffee, they are quiet and loud and brush their teeth twice a day and love their kids and cut people off in traffic and feel jealousy. My point is that this middle place is full of contradictions. So I seek refuge in those cognitive absolutes (am I the best or the worst?), essentially placing myself in a vacuum and then wondering why I feel so disengaged. If I let nothing in, I am also letting nothing out.

I picture this state like standing on the edge of a diving board, hovering above the water completely dry. I cannot make a movement forward into the water. It's far and the pool is cold and there are people around watching me. I am safe as long as I stay on this board forever. I could climb back down the ladder, saying I didn't really want to jump anyway. But I really want to be in the water. All my friends are there, splashing and waving, and it will feel so good. All I have to do is make a motion. Not a perfect motion, not a well-executed swan dive. I just have to move one foot into the air over the pool and then the other one and fall straight down and I am in the water and that's enough.

From Safety to Where?

2010-10-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

There is a fine line between freedom and isolation, and freedom and chaos. We live in a country where abundance is freedom, abundance of food and merchandise and media. We hear FREEDOM and think of flags and democracy and 9/11 and inalienable rights while possibly ignoring the deeper, less tangible implications of this word.

I am thinking about the notion of "freedom" because I am reading that Jonathan Franzen book of the same name. I don't think Freedom was a title chosen casually because it sounded snappy and hopeful. The characters each have varying experiences of, or desires for, freedom--sexual freedom, artistic freedom, parental freedom, environmental freedom, economic freedom, etc. I'm not going to do a critical analysis of this work, but it's a good book and worth your time. Reading Freedom caused me to ask certain questions of myself on the notion of what freedom really is. To me, this is all I really want in a book, for it to prompt some kind of inner discourse.

Freedom, when you are young, is summer vacation. It's getting to go to the mall by yourself. It's getting your driver's license, or going off to college. Maybe it's moving out of your parents' house, or getting drunk for the first time. In this sense, freedom is POSSIBILITY and NEWNESS, or maybe the simple novelty of doing whatever the hell you want. But cars are kind of a hassle, and you actually have to do your homework in college, and you need a job to pay rent and sometimes you will drink too much and barf. Then what? Where is my POSSIBILITY? Where is my awesome life?

This is where freedom gets tricky. When you get a bit older, you figure out how to pay your bills, and you try not to get too terribly drunk anymore, and you graduate (or not), and you really kind of hate the mall now anyway. You've got those things basically figured out. But there are new things, things lurking around in the sludge of your psyche. Beneath the superficial markers of "adult maturity", there can be a hollowness, an insistent question of: What do I do with myself? The weight of all that freedom, and the responsibility to make something from it, can be overwhelming. How free are we really?

Every choice we make has a consequence, and a lot of times the outcome is not really up to us. We are constrained by our inability to know the future, and we learn to become risk-averse in the face of repeated disappointment and chaos. Gradually, freedom becomes synonymous with isolation. There are too many ways to fail, too many youthful expectations which never came to fruition, too many ways you could improve yourself but never do. In the wide open prairie of possibility, you are small and alone. (I am being coy here, and speaking in general collective terms, but these anxieties are all my own.)

I used to think freedom was being untethered to basic needs or wants--the need for food or love or help. If I could just forget I was hungry or lonely or lost, then I would really be free to live the fantastic life I thought I should be living, a life where I was lovely and brilliant and happy. But the burdensome effort it takes to not want those things is pretty much the opposite of freedom. So I am in a sort of existential limbo (bear with me here). I know that not eating doesn't make me interesting or special. I know that isolating myself doesn't make me a strong independent person. But I also don't know what does make me special, or strong, or interesting, or free. Maybe freedom is not vast or sprawling or limitless, but rather a meaningful cohesion of faults and conflicting desires. Maybe freedom is just being able to be quiet with yourself.

2010-06-09T07:31:00.001-07:00

My grandfather died a few days ago. It is a profound loss and it will take a long time to process. I have increasingly isolated myself from my friends over the past several months because I am depressed and my food issues are becoming more out of control. With the death of my grandpa, I realize how meaningless my goals were--to be perfect and to punish myself for not being perfect. This seems so self-indulgent and ridiculous now. Many of you (I don't even know if anyone reads this) probably don't know how much I struggle with these feelings or the self-destructive behaviors I engage in when I isolate myself, but it has to stop. I just want to make a good life for myself. I want to feel things fully. I want to cry when I am sad and risk disappointment when I step out of my comfort zones. I want to work with dedication on a task which is dear to me even if it does not make everyone love me, even if no one notices. I want to be a good person, and experience the joys of both community and of solitude. I had a dream once in which a voice whispered to me, "Stare into the void." The void is everything I am afraid of when I am trying to sleep at night, everything I can never be sure of, everything I have lost or will lose. But in this void is also possibility, mystery, curiosity, lightness and darkness, a deeper understanding of the things I have avoided. It is not a space to be filled with something else, which is what I have been trying to do. It just is.

XX

2010-03-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

Today is International Women's Day, so I got to thinking about Awesome Ladies. Some I know personally, others I just admire from afar, but they all possess certain qualities I would like to nurture more in myself--kindness, courage, creativity, humor, intelligence. So to honor the myriad representations of Awesome Lady-ness, here are some some women/organizations/other stuff I really love.

====================================
Girls Inc.
I went here for summer camp many moons ago and learned the fine arts of puff painting, dancing to 'Cold Hearted Snake', and how a 'getting a perm' can mean two different things. Thanks girls.
====================================
Sassy Magazine

Hey Blossom. I really loved this magazine, but got into it sort of late because it was bought out by Teen in 1994. My friend's sister had some older ones lying around and we would read it, amused and slightly horrified by the blunt and practical sex advice. But that's what made Sassy awesome. In addition to some pretty sound advice, it taught you how to do all kinds of DIY projects and kept you in the know about cool bands. Its content was USEFUL and POSITIVE, a difference I noticed when I read Teen and YM, which were mainly filled with ads and BS disguised to be pro-girl ("Get Him to Ask You Out Tonight!", "Get Bikini-Ready For Spring Break!!", "I Totally Got My Period All Over My White Pants!!!"). If any of you ladies remember Sassy, there's a book out about Sassy nostalgia.
====================================
Judy Blume
Speaking of periods...

I also grew up reading Judy Blume. I learned about menstruation, masturbation, scoliosis, and Judaism from her. As a writer whose books have been repeatedly challenged over the years, she has become an outspoken opponent of censorship. Go JB!
====================================
Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington

Both female Surrealist painters with similar styles.

Carrington once said:
"I didn't have time to be anyone's muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist."

Varo is hands down one of my favorite artists. When I was little, I would look through these illustrated books my mom had about fairies and wizards and unicorns, just sit there for hours looking at every detail. Her paintings are like that for me. Like they're these intricate puzzles of meaning to be understood only after staring at them for a really long time.

====================================
Elizabeth Cotten and Mabelle Carter

Each has a very distinct and self-developed guitar style. As someone with no musical ability whatsoever, anyone who can play an instrument with proficiency is amazing to me. But these women stand out as pioneers with a deep love for the music they create.

====================================
My Mom and Grandma

I LITERALLY wouldn't be here without them. Two awesome ladies!
====================================
And here's to all the ladies I know in real life:

you're awesome.
====================================

POSTSCRIPT

If you are in need of an easy laugh at the expense of someone else's arrogant ignorance go here. It's hilarious.

WWWTW/WRWTW #3

2010-01-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

What's Wrong

Small-Scale Models

Child and toddler beauty pageants are just really creepy. They don't even look like human children. Gross.

What's Right

Small-Scale Models

ART BY THOMAS DOYLE

MATTHEW ALBANESE

The Skin Encapsulated Ego

2010-01-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

Maybe i'll take a break from being sad

2009-06-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

So this blog has gotten pretty emo lately, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I feel emotional and it's confusing and vague and I'm not even sure what it's about. But it's too easy for me to slip into this really self-indulgent place where I elevate what is essentially existential boredom to this epic and overly morose level.

But not today!

Here's some stuff I've been doing/thinking about/thinking about doing/listening to/avoiding/searching for/laughing at/crying about/barfing over:

*************************************
I want to live here:

*************************************
I'm going to do laundry at the Washateria in a little bit. Here's my detergent:

Oh my god it smells like NEWBORN MARSHMALLOWS!!!
*************************************
I've been listening to a lot of very dance-y music lately. Probably stuff that has been around awhile, but that I am just now hearing. Passion Pit, Hot Chip, and stuff that PANDORA suggests to me. PANDORA really wants me to listen to Daft Punk. A lot. Seriously, every other song...

*************************************
Some guy on the street the other day told me he really liked my "big ol' legs" and also my big ass. WtheF? And I totally felt bad about myself the rest of the day. WTFx2. I wish I didn't let stuff like that bother me. It is not OK for strangers to just say whatever they want to you about your body.

*************************************
I am reading a really excellent collection of short stories called:

*************************************
I just watched "Stop Making Sense" again and I am crushin' hard on David Byrne.

*************************************
FINALLY...
These pictures are very beautiful. Soft and simple and familiar.

ERIN JANE NELSON
Maybe I need to let you go. Just a little.

xobye

Full of sound and fury/signifying nothing

2009-05-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

It is so hard to find your way back.

MAGIC
IMAGINATION
EMPATHY
ECSTASY

They paved over the Magic Circle, in the back alley asphalt cut-through, a straight shot home. I would spin around three times and my mother would ask "Do you feel it?". Now it is a parking lot for a useless restaurant where no one ever eats because there is too much food everywhere else.

This is a fact of life. There are breadcrumbs scattered everywhere. But they keep getting paved over, blown away, rationalized, and consumed. A bedtime song, a hiding place, a soft paw, a wet braid on my pillow after a bath. These things exist in a purer and lighter time. They are the stories of someone else.

I want a heart that lies again on the blameless side of sad songs.

NOTHING
MAKES
SENSE

2009-05-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

i lay down sorrow like a map
i lay it down to follow it back

2009-04-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

I NEED TO TAKE A BIG PSYCHIC SHIT

I AM CREATIVELY CONSTIPATED

THIS IS...

To Do List

2009-04-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of things I'd like to do. I often think of things I want to do and then promptly forget most of them, unless they involve eating or sleeping, or avoiding some sort of immediate conflict or danger.

In no order:

Re-learn photography
Move to a different city
Learn to sew useful and/or pretty things
Work deliberately on writing
Read a book a week
Finish school
Pay off my credit card
Ride my bike more often
Sprout some sprouts
Write a letter to someone
Explore some abandoned buildings
Grow a garden
Have a party
Get my record player fixed
Take out my contacts before I fall asleep
Buy some produce at Soulard Market
Learn to play something on the ukelele
Do some laundry
Buy a couch
Go for a hike
Get a haircut eventually
Hang out with people not at a bar
Eat some mushrooms
Drink some tea that blooms into a flower
Wear a dress
Do my homework
Ride a rollercoaster
Swim some laps
Hand-make a book
Stop smoking cigarettes
Make a collage
Get a turtle, name it Jolene
Take a family portrait with my kitties
Use my passport
Shoot a gun at an indoor shooting range
Find the recipe for Black Bear Bakery's Vegan Chocolate Chip PB Cookies
Make a lot of those cookies
Write some thank you cards
Watch an old movie

There's probably more things I'll add at some later time.

2009-04-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

THINGS ARE GOING THROUGH YOU ALL THE TIME

2009-04-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry for neglecting you, BLOG. some things you just can't speak about. especially not to a computer.

WWWTW/WRWTW #2

2009-03-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

What's Wrong

Selfishly Plush Toilet Paper

CARBON ASS-PRINT

What's Right

The Photographs of Miranda Lehman

wonder and awe

2009-01-31T09:10:00.000-08:00

WWWTW/WRWTW #1

2009-01-23T21:45:00.001-08:00

I am starting a semi-frequent series entitled "What's Wrong With the World/ What's Right With the World". I find a lot of things wrong with the world. So to balance this decidedly negative and persistent viewpoint, I am countering the Wrongs with some Rights. Here you go.

WHAT'S WRONG

People in LA and elsewhere hip places love fake black-rimmed glasses. (See THE COBRASNAKE for examples.) I understand they look really cute and quirky if you are already a model, but it's like having a gap surgically put in between your front teeth to give you an air of off-kilter-yet-totally-approachable adorable-sexiness. It's contrived. It's WRONG.

WHAT'S RIGHT

Stephen Merchant. His glasses are real.

Adaptation

2009-01-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

"There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size."

It's comforting to see someone talented struggle with the thing they are good at.

I love Lists

2009-01-09T01:41:00.000-08:00

really.

Endless Restless

2008-12-29T17:46:00.000-08:00

Nowhere is the right where. In out here there with you without you. Tonight I want to go out. I want the world to crash bang boom around me to drown out the sound of nothing. I want to drink and dance and make merry. I want to be noticed, greeted, loved, missed.

Apologies to the better parts of me. The ego wins this one. Fear and loneliness are tied for second.

I want to feel alive like at the end of a really amazing film. When everything is possible. I want to be in a fast car going somewhere, moving moving moving. Sitting still feels like eating cotton. Like heavy wet snow in the middle of the night.

Flow Chart

2008-12-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

I am trying to map out a very brief series of thought associations I just had.

This is a song I listened to last night. It's about nature reclaiming its space from man-made environments.

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong
.
.
.
.
.

This is a series of paintings about the trajectory of an empire.

.
.
.
.
.
This is an idea about how people move around a city. I don't really understand it yet.

.
.
.
.
.

This is a film about a woman walking around Paris.

.
.
.
.
.

I saw that film for the first time here at the Glasgow Film Theatre.

I felt sorry to leave the city the next day.
.

Ars Gratis Artis

2008-12-17T15:32:00.000-08:00

I love my friends. I know so many truly creative and talented people.

Robby: a very patient boyfriend, musician, good writer(read his blog)
Matt P.: multi-instrument musician, Ph.D, also good with the words (read his blog)
Matt A.: a good friend, a better writer
Matt F.: very smart and funny, going to be a lawyer (not the asshole kind, the kind who helps people, (read his blog)
Joe: poet extraordinaire, started Get Born with Matt A., (check it out!)
Camilla: highly intelligent, cool all around, expert doodler(see her doodles)
Brien: gifted musician and writer(read his blog)(actually don't, because it's not there)
Tim: maker of beautiful words and sounds (read his blog)

Those are just a few friends off the top of my head. There are so many others I run into occasionally or know peripherally who always seem to have something interesting to say or some project in the works. I guess I'm drawn to creative people, possibly because they have something I lack. They are DOING. Whereas I can only think and think and worry and ruminate. DOING is special. DOING is something. I love these people so much because I see so much inherent value in their lives. They are DOING and MAKING. Not so someone will tell them how good and special they are, but because they are good at what they do, and they love what they do for the sake of art itself.

I am so afraid of failure. I am so afraid of trying something I might not be good at. So I stay safe, and I let any creative spark I once had dwindle to nearly nothing. I am a perfectionist. I will never be the absolute BEST painter, the BEST photographer, the BEST musician. I can accept that. But within the past year or so I have also given up on writing. Something I have always loved to do since childhood, I am slowly letting it go. When I was little I didn't write so people would love me. I didn't write with an imaginary audience behind my back looking over my shoulder, shaking their heads. I just wrote. Stories, poems, anything. And I read. I read like crazy. I read for a world beyond the small one I knew.

What am I so afraid of? That someone won't like what I write? That someone will say, "What right does she have to put that incomplete, poorly phrased thought onto paper?" I guess I don't feel that I've proven myself in any way. I've been alive for 24 years and what have I really done for anyone? What new worlds have I created? When I read something really good (and what "good" means, I can't objectively say, I just feel it), the things I write seem like desperate caricatures of life.

I am struggling to find some sort of purpose or value in myself, like that value I see in all those people I love so much. I feel vague and tired, untethered and unfamiliar to myself. I just wish I could figure out what I'm good at so I can start doing it.

this thing

2008-12-09T17:06:00.000-08:00

today i tried to do something.
normally i do this thing with no problem.
today was a problem.

i can feel this problem sitting on top of my body.
clinging to me around my middle.

this is what it feels like:

waiting for this feeling to go away is almost unbearable.
i feel euphoric when i do this thing.
this terrible wonderful sick thing.

but not today.
today there was a problem.

All four feet leave the ground

2008-12-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

Can you be homesick for a place which is not your home? Maybe I am timesick. I want to go back to places I have travelled and pick up where I left off. Sometimes, though, you can't really return. You have changed as a person, and maybe this new person does not know those secret places.

i wrote this some time ago about my second trip to glasgow in 2006.

i thought 'why is this city so strange to me. i've been here. i walked these streets and stood in this museum. i found frustration at train stations and joyful heartbreak on the banks of this very same river when i was really only a girl. i had dreams of this countryside from a bicycle and scraped my ankle on this sidewalk.' but i was alone that first time and that second time i was, but i wasn't. i let you sleep in because you were jet-lagged and walked to the grocery store in the morning. i bought breakfast and on the way back to the room i stopped to stare down at the river under the bridge and thought this is where i would want to be when i died. in this place. i could just stay behind. start a new life here and end it here and it would be so pleasant. but the thought of you asleep in that room was so inchoate and human. if only. if only we could drop all trappings of our former selves and stand facing this river and say 'this is who we are now. we belong here. let's never leave.' it was a nice thought before breakfast. after breakfast, the day has already begun and reality seeps in around edges where you aren't paying attention.

Stare into the void

2008-12-02T17:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a dream in a long time.

Morrissey said that. But I say it too. Because it is a true thing about me. I do not dream anymore.

I used to have the most vivid dreams. I loved my dreams, even when they were frightening. They felt important, the great mystery of my unconscious.

I used to have night terrors when I was little, from about four to eight years old. My dreams typically had the same premise: I was alone, small, in some vast expanse like a parking lot, a field, or space...nothingness. Sometimes I would feel like something was very wrong, like I couldn't breathe, but there were never any monsters or anyone chasing me. The danger was hidden, even in dreams. Also during this time, I started sleeping with my eyes open. I am not making this up or saying it metaphorically. It is real and it is creepy (so I hear).

I continued to have very vivid dreams into young adulthood. Most of the time in my dreams, I am in a house or building of some kind with many staircases and doors. I understand this is very typical scenery in dreams. Sometimes I am alone in the house, sometimes there are people with me.

Here is a dream that I have always remembered:

I am in a basement. It is spacious and not damp at all. It is dimly lit but there is dusty sunlight coming from windows near the ceiling. These windows are at ground level if you are standing outside. You know, basement windows. There are a lot of people seated around the room, some on sofas and chairs, some around a large table. I sit down at the table next to a girl and begin yanking her arm, trying to pull it off. I am upset with her for something she had done. Another girl is sitting, palms flat on the table staring straight ahead at nothing.

A young girl with dark hair is banging on the basement window from outside. She is begging to use the phone. I sense danger, not from her, but something outside the house. I can't open the window or the danger will come inside. I refuse to let her use the phone. She begs more, but I turn away from the window.

I go over to a man seated on a low couch. I stand over him and look down. He looks up at me, terrified. His eye sockets are filled with silver liquid, like mercury and he is trembling. I stare at him, unable to look away, unsure at this point if he is in my dream and I am frightened of him, or if I am a sinister presence in his dream. A voice whispers in my ear "stare into the void." We remain locked in a gaze for what seems like forever. The eyes of the man on the couch burst into blue flames and his mouth gapes in soundless terror.

I turn to the window again and look outside. The dark-haired girl is lying on the lawn next to the window, dead. The world beyond her is nothing. It looks like the moon.

But I can't remember the last time I had a dream. I feel like I have lost something. Something I can't get back. I wonder if there is a part of me that has given up on the greater mysteries and just accepts that life is nothing but toil and frustration so what's the point of dreaming. I don't want to be like that. I want to have my dreams back, even the frightening or painful ones. I feel like I have lost a part of myself.

I Hate School

2008-12-01T07:58:00.000-08:00

I hate it so much.

Curry Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, I was studying abroad in Canterbury, England. Thanksgiving in England is just a regular Thursday, but Thursdays were special then. Thursdays were curry night. There was a pub in town where 3.99 got you curry, rice, poppadum, and chutney...and a beer!

I called my family and they put me on speakerphone so everyone could say hello all at once. It was nice. Standing in one of those red quintessentially British phonebooths speaking to my family who were so far away, they wished me the best and said they'd see me soon.

That time feels so long ago. I feel like maybe it happened to someone else, one of the people i could have been. Being on my own for the first time was new. I travelled by myself to places I had never been. I navigated, I didn't just hide from experiences.

Who could I have been if I had not immediately fallen back into old habits upon my return? What could I have done if I was not always so afraid?

Thinking about that time makes me sad now, because it seemed so full of possibility. Listening to my family express such pride and love for me in a phonebooth on just another Thursday in England outside a pub where you can get a hell of a lot of curry for 3.99, I thought "This is just the beginning..."

But like so many things that are new and unformed and fragile, this hope, this view of my life's direction has failed to gestate and grow into being. An aborted dream.

I am not what I could have been.

2008-11-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

I have a hard time not worrying about everything. I am constantly anxious about even the smallest things: what I ate today, something I said to someone (or didn't say), my lack of creative ambition, a school assignment, whether or not I am pretty enough (for what/whom?), forgetting my reusable grocery bag, being in someone's way on the sidewalk, having to sit next to someone on the bus. I can't stand living this way.

My life seems so limited, I feel closed off from people and experiences. In an effort to avoid pain and disappointment, I constantly try to plan the absolute best way to do things. I make so many lists: how many calories are in the foods I eat, safe food to buy at the store, to-do lists, a list of ways I could improve myself. I try to anticipate how people feel so I can be one step ahead and act presciently. But this relentless perfectionism paralyzes me, so I can do nothing. I have a hard time living in the present moment. My mind is never quiet.

pruitt-igoe

2008-11-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

i can't get over how sad and beautiful this is.