venerdì 27 dicembre 2013

love, Lexington.

we are growing up together
we are creating one another
we are every abandoned building
circle splash streetlight
naive dream


we lie in the road together
horse fields surround
downtown at the horizon
we hold hands and laugh red into night sky


we share dearest friends
lovers
ex-lovers
apartments
space and time
beds and saliva


we walk dogs in pairs to the park
in fresh snow
to leave our angels in white shadow 
backlit naked trees


we fight with passion
call it off
pack up and move away


no matter, no mind
the Vortex brings us home


we find heartchips in the eyes of old dear friends
we sway to our rhythmic same same hearts


we strip and run screaming into backyard summer monsoon
the moon lights our eyes
we are light as feathers
we are free as birds


we knock on doors late, late, late
we are welcomed 
our vices at hand


we fly high holding onto eachother's dreams 
we collaborate to create
dreams alive
we get it


together
we are 
we are a cycle
a spiral of outward growing healing


we are
never answering our phones
we are
found in the streets we are
never really at goodbye


we are family.


forever gratitude, Lexington.


i am you
you are me
we are one.

martedì 23 aprile 2013

summer 2005.


i had totaled my car and i needed a ride home from the drawing class i worked as a model for. you were the professor. you offered to take me home. i said yes. you offered to take me to pazzo's pizza before taking me home, and i agreed. you ordered a pitcher of beer. i thought that was cool because i'd never had beer in a restaurant before. i was 19.
you said you felt it your job to protect the models from 'looky-loo's,' men who tried to sneak peeks of the naked girls when they weren't even in the class. i felt safe with you. you were funny too. you offered to burn me a CD of music from a band whose song i'd played during a class you were monitoring for. i said ok, and you took me to your shitty university-provided apartment, to burn it for me.

you offered me a beer from your fridge. i was sitting on your couch in this tiny one room apartment. the couch also functioned as your bed. i see the CD on the table with your messy handwriting on it. i see your big white computer monitor across the room on a table.


then i black out.

then i woke up. you were on top of me, you were kissing me. then i realized your fingers were inside of me.

i was panicked. like WTF. i was never attracted to you. not even a little. i just wanted to get a ride home. you were nice and bought me beer. you had music i liked so that was cool. and wtf why am i asleep and why are you inside me.

those thoughts raced through, next second i am running with my cell phone out of your apartment down the block to the end of the complex. i hide behind a dumpster and dial all of my friends to come get me. nobody will answer. i am waiting out there for hours. finally an acquaintance whose number i had comes to get me. once he arrives i feel safe enough to run inside and grab my guitar - my most prized possession, and leave.

you called me several times after that. i was too mortified to speak. even when i finally answered, and you asked 'what did i do?'

i was too mortified to speak.



when i told ross zirkle, the head of drawing classes, that i could no longer model for any session you would be in, he understood. he said you would never again be in the same room as me while i was modeling nude.

i couldn't stand the thought of you
A) being in the same room as me and
B) having the privilege of seeing my naked body.


i didn't tell him what happened. i was too mortified to speak.

a year later ross got sick with cancer. he'd been teaching a woodblock printing class i was taking in the summer. i heard you were going to be the substitute for the rest of the year. the hell if i would be in your class. be in the same room as you. your disgusting demented drawings depicting yourself in portrait, the twisted garish features, with beautiful busty young women, had haunted me all summer already.

i went to ben withers, chair of the art department. i told him i could never be in the same room as you. i don't remember what i said, but i know i didn't make anything up to cover the truth. i didn't tell him what you did to me. i was too mortified to speak the truth.


it stayed under my conscious like a cancer for eight years. for a short time after it happened, it bobbed its nasty head when i would see you around the building. i was terrified of you. eventually i told a few friends what you did to me. i said you tried. to rape me. in my mind that was all it was. an attempted rape. if i hadn't woken up of course you'dve gotten your dick in me. i woke up just in the nick of time. what the hell were you doing trying to get with me while i was asleep anyhow... and why the hell was i asleep?


i didn't even think these questions until years later. years and years and years later they came to focus under a microscope that had been building in my brain through eight more summers, eight winters, eight springs and eight falls.

then jerielle sat at my kitchen table. lamenting that she saw you out at a gallery hop. 'he disgusts me,' she said.

and i remembered then. i remembered why you disgust me, too.

because you are disgusting. you are a fucking creep. you god damn fucking raped me. i'm old enough now to know better. rape is any kind of unwanted sexual contact. just because you didn't get your dick in me (i woke up too fucking soon) does not mean you're not a rapist.

you are a fucking rapist.
you are a fucking rapist.
you're a fucking rapist and i'm taking your ass down.


you better thank your stars i'm not a violent person. i'd have to slowly macerate you, chop you bit by bit and keep you alive as long as i could.
just to show you what you've done to me. just to demonstrate the monstrosity.

because you're walking around this earth like you're just fine. like it doesn't matter, like it was my fault, like i fucking WANTED IT YOU TOLD THE POLICE you fucking liar. you fucking liar.

i may have been blacked out. completely. but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this beautiful young ambitious apparently-too-polite girl who should have never given you to the time of the god damn day, would never EVER get down with a boy like you. you were too ugly. i'm not sorry. that's the god damned truth. you were too ugly and too old for me, but mostly just too ugly.

and now you're a fucking rapist. too. god what a winner. your girlfriend, your former student? fuck i wish she could know. when i'm done with this, she will. everyone will know. you're a fucking rapist and you raped me. it was not my fault. what the fuck did you do to me anyway? you HAD to have used a drug in that drink. there was no knot on my head the next day, no signs of battery.


you MUST have put something in that drink.

sabato 20 aprile 2013

dead man walking.

mother fucker you better watch your back. mother fucker i am taking you down. i am taking you out. it's the end for you.

enjoy these last days of freedom. dead man fucking walking.


they will know the truth. you are a fucking rapist. you are a fucking sicko. you are a fucking creep and you are going down.

lunedì 18 febbraio 2013

plastics make it possible. 9.15.2010.


Plastics make it possible.
My art. My camera, the plastic film reel, the chemical coated plastic film, the cancer creating chemicals I use in the darkroom, the CD I have my photos burned to for upload onto internet from a plastic computer, the notebook I write in with plastic pen on recycled paper with plastic coated cover, tape I have put over it to keep it from falling apart. The handle of my paintbrush. The container of my watercolors. My digitized documented art files. A premature baby’s heart monitor. My refrigerator. My grandmother’s heart. The heater for my home. My cell phone, my iPod, my toilet, my shower. The sticky back of my pantyliner. The wrapping on my tampon. The packaging of my medicine. The cap on the bottles of essential oil I occasionally use for deodorant.
The 1000 to one ratio of plastic pieces to plankton floating in the ocean. Women who cannot have a successful pregnancy, but continually miscarry. Countless diseases striking those in Honolulu. A plastic island floating in the Pacific twice the size of Texas,  8 times larger than Italy.

Last night I answered my phone in the middle of my meditation, my sea soaking my rain pouring singing crying sobbing into the sea. It started pouring even harder and I decided I had to leave, let alone get off the telephone which was getting soaked. I shook off my notebook with its tape-covered edges, put there to protect it from damage, and my favorite pen I’d clipped to it flew into the sea. I lit up the flashlight on my cell phone and tried to search for it in the pouring rain, on slime covered craters, to no avail. I littered in the sea without even trying. Simply because my materials are harmful and I am occasionally not all of mind.

Today for the first time I set out to clean up the sea, alone. In telling a friend about it I got teary eyed again… thinking of the night before and my plastic mascara covered tears falling into the sea. I only had one plastic bag as I have used the rest for garbage bags, and don’t go shopping often, but it was a very large grocery bag and I knew I would find more on the way.
I stopped at the closest place on my way back across the island, the beach, near the fountain with fresh spring water and ducks and rats floating in it. I thought I was going to have to hop a fence, as the seaside was busted up exposing pipelines  running under the sand and sidewalk, but I found a hole cut into it by locals who want to swim in their own shit and trash and the oil of the boats in the bay.  At first I thought wow it’s not so bad here, as I picked up countless cigarette packages and the Styrofoam containers fishermen use for bait. I was nearly blinded, had an eye only for the garbage until my gloved finger squished into something smelly. I noticed another creepy man watching me from the fence. I gave him a ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ look and continued my work. After a few minutes I noticed he was still casually leaning against the fence just staring at me. I yelled in Italian ‘Are you going to help me or watch?’ and he came to help. I handed him a glove, the plastic ones they offer customers at the grocery store for picking up their vegetables to place in plastic bags, tie up and then place in plastic grocery bags (ridiculous) and we talked a bit while I picked up trash and he stood there, occasionally picking up a plastic bottle and placing it in my bag. He said ‘You’re not Italian are you? Because the Italians would never do this.’ He was Tunisian and had come here for work.  I told him in Italian about the plastic island. He couldn’t imagine it. I don’t blame him, as I can't really either.  I can’t imagine something the size of Ortigia made of plastic, let alone Sicilia, let alone Italy… let alone eight times that big.
We finished at the beach, filling the plastic bag full in only ten minutes.  I dumped the contents into a nearby dumpster and got ready to reuse the bag.
I told him I had to cleanup elsewhere, and he said he’d accompany me. I said it was a pity I didn’t have another bag for him but was sure we would find one. On the walk to the other side of the island, we did, stuck into a fence right above the sea by a fisherman who had used it for bread thrown to attract the fishes. We arrived at the scala, ladder, where I have climbed down the 40 foot wall of the island and swum until recent days, when the water is too disgusting, lined with garbage and a train of scum floating in and out with the waves.  I dropped my bag on the sidewalk, half full again with trash found on the walk here, raised my skirt and climbed over the railing.  Once on the other side,  I told him to hand me my bag. He did, and then stood there incredulous, watching me hanging off a ladder meters above rocks and sea. He said I thought you were crazy when I first saw you picking up trash but now I know that you are. I said Certo, io sono pazza ed anche tu. E se non vuoi ad aiutarmi, dammi la busta. Ciao. Sure, I’m crazy and so are you.  And if you don’t want to help me, give me your bag. Bye.


The night before on the rocks I had seen three crates, two I knew were made of Styrofoam, because I watched them floating on the waves. One stayed stuck in between the rock barrier and the wall of the island, and the other I watched float out onto the horizon. The last was sitting on the rocks, and I vowed to get it the next day, thinking it was another wooden crate from the market. It wasn’t. it was Styrofoam as well and thank god, still intact. Unfortunately there were many other Styrofoam crates here at one point and now they were millions of tiny Styrofoam bubbles floating around trapped in the crater rocks, little rivers flowing away back to the sea, waiting for a big wave to wash them back out again. They are left here by the fisherman who buy their bait in Styrofoam containers and leave the plastic wrapping and everything, right where it lay. Killing their own catch.
I stood incredulous this time, with my hands disgustingly dirty, my glove full of salt, seawater and sweat, my fingers encrusted with dirt and trash juice all over my arms, and tried to readjust my sunglasses and keep them from falling into the sea.  I was holding a bag overflowing with Styrofoam pieces and they kept sticking to my fingers and falling out of the bag, and I wanted to cry. I felt helpless. I looked up to see a man watching me from the bridge. He waved and gave me a thumbs up sign while talking on his cell phone. Aiutami! I cried. Vieni! Help me! Come! And he waved that he couldn’t hear me, and he had to go eat. After a while he got off the phone and came to speak to me, and said ‘Il mare ha portato la spazzatura.’ The sea has brought all the trash here. And I said ‘No, siamo tu ed io che l’abbiamo portato. Non è del mare, è di noi.’  You and I have brought it. It does not come from the sea. It is from us. He said ‘Yes, and everyone else.’ I told him I would be here every day. He said he would return.

It took three trips up the ladder to carry everything and I had to be strategic about it because there was a tire from a vespa which was heavy and awkward and the Styrofoam crate was large and I had to put it on the rungs above me and then climb with my two hands free.  The other side of the rocks had no garbage because the waves kept washing it back into the sea. This was worse. A rock wall empty of garbage, knowing it is all at the bottom of the sea and floating around in the bellies of the fish.
The waves rhythmically lashed against the tiny sidewalk there, a foot above sealevel, and threatened to carry me out with them, I was a little afraid every time, after the night I was here with Ciccio and we almost got washed out  to sea when the wave came over our heads to crash against the wall of the island, and pulled my shoes off my feet.


and someday

we will all meet our death

if we're lucky it won't be racked with violence.
if we're lucky.
if we're lucky we won't suffer long. it won't be at the hands of another. it won't be tragic, trauma, sudden, crash bang powerful bleeding painful screams.

if we're lucky it will be in our sleep. or at our own hands. if we're lucky.

domenica 20 gennaio 2013

1/10/13

white seagull ankle tattoo. twinzy tattoos with my baby sister and niece.



yesterday elise said 'I want Pop to take me in a helicopter and a jet and a ____ (some airplane I don't know). I want him to take me on both those.'
Katie said well, you'll have to wait a bit because Pop can't fly right now. Not until he's well again. You have to be in tip-top shape before they'll let you fly and Pop's kind of sick right now.'

Elise thinks for a minute.
'Well, I promise I'm going to drink alot of water and eat all the healthy foods, and when I grow up I promise, I PROMISE, Pop, I won't be sick and then I'll take him flying.'


(on peeing in the ocean) - 'are you sure about this, Mommy?'

(points to our seagull burial of the day before) 'Hawah, do you think that's a sandcastle?'
Me - 'No.'
Elise - 'Yeah, cause it's the birdy under there that we buried. And you said, Hawah, that it was going up to healthy but it's still there.'
Me - 'Healthy? You mean heaven?'
She nods.
I explain to her that the bird is not really there anymore even though its body is. It has gone up to heaven, which really means that it is now part of everything. She said so when I die I will be part of everything too? I say yes.


'Mommy, come here and sit down. We need to have a talk. Why are you always yellin' at me?'


'My heart is boken cause we're not at the beach. It's baking, my heart is baking. We have to go back to the beach.'

(on the phone yesterday, she pauses for a bit and I hear some sounds far off ) 'I can't see you Hawah.'

'That's because I'm at my house and you're at your house and they're far apart.'

'I miss you Hawah.'
'I miss you too. But I'll see you soon.'
'Really?'

high in florida.

1/7?/13 . Sunday night in FL w/Katie and Elise.

Katie paying my way to Florida cause it's the only way she could get me to go with her.

The ocean and the sea are so very different - nothing alike.

Underwater with the light on in the hot pool I can see scars decades old - on my shin where I tried to be superwoman with my sister and her friend Corin McCray in the creek and I dropped the huge slab of slate from over me 48 pound 8 year old head onto my shin and just knicked it - pouring blood into the cold bubbling creek as sister and friend splashed away at the wound. an attempt to thwart a trip with a sobbing baby sister back to the house, where mother would be waiting.

the ocean storm breeze rattles palm fronds and they skitter and squeak like a vibraphone or a xylophone.

a black rounded mountain monster slowly rises into the sky, sweeping over blacking out the ribbons of grey silk frozen there in mid-ruffle.

the storm moves ever gently on. i am warm outside and i am nearly nude. and wet.

the sky's enveloped in misty charcoal soup.


not a soul on the beach as i break my gaze from the black horizon and burst into sprint across the shore. the drum beats steady to my right and in my chest, my fists are pumping and i'm going for distance. i'll never tire at this rate. i could sprint right down the coast, around the tip and stop only when my nude toes froze in the tundra of Iceland.