ladyparts

Get a job!

That is what i tell the baby chicks. Mostly because it makes me think of my old boss/friend say­ing it to the puppy in our office. I am hope­lessly sentimental.

Hey guys! I think it’s time that we lighten things up around here and start get­ting to know each other again. I mean, I know that this is just some inter­net worm hole or what­ever where I write mostly emo stuff and you stop in because click­ing on a link is just as easy as not click­ing. Or maybe you want to set­tle a curios­ity if I am still alive because I am very, very, very bad at keep­ing in touch. Well! I am.

Now I feel weird.
Sorry for talk­ing about your motivations…

What I mean to say is, I wish I sent you those letters.

I want to tell you about the ruf­fled iris in bloom just out­side my win­dow. It is so pur­ple! And about the smell of stand­ing in the mid­dle of a warm net­tle patch. Pep­per. That I wish you were here, or I was there.
You just can’t beat the weight­less­ness of shar­ing things with your friends.
I think it would be nice if we could see all the tiny threads that keep us together. Like lit­tle cut­tings of wil­low branches grow­ing red roots so small you can hardly make them out in that glass of water.

We can make it. Stick us in the ground and we’ve got enough hor­mones to grow into a tree.

huh?

I miss the city. I want to go to a lecture.

Young peo­ple are scarce in these parts. We orbit around each other never really get­ting any closer, only weirder. All the soft­est and truest ges­tures cush­ion the space and our words are never quiet right. A bunch of swollen heavy blobs pound­ing around the streets.

It’s not even that we need more jokes.
I used to think that was it.

!

Heavy.
Bet­ter go read a book or something.

Car rides

“This song makes me think of Mex­ico.
Mex­i­can peo­ple are so happy!

Have you ever heard a sad Mex­i­can song?“
“Yes.“
laughs
“No you haven’t!”

With all that has been lost
It is not enough
Those faces.

You will feel it in your sleep
In each ges­ture offered
Falling
Not on hard ground–
not even falling at all

Oh no
But only
If
I think
They
Are sav­ing each piece in pock­ets
Jars
Warn­ing:
All you have seen can never match up.

It is not loss
Layer after layer
This feel­ing of dis­en­gage­ment
–the utter Inabil­ity to Hinge–

I know now.
It was that final glug of oil
That push and bub­ble,
A grad­ual cell wall breakdown

Shut you up real good until it’s time.

Jokes.

Chick­ens swal­low stones–trap ‘em in their giz­zard
Rub those grains and greens,
(con­tract­ing)
bugs

Peb­bles for mus­cles
Found right there in lots and backs.

It was bet­ter to extin­guish–
sort of.
No more want­ing, the griev­ing moved its heavy sacks
out to the car

That giz­zard.

Wakin’ up in fevered sweats
it begs

Round cir­cles tap tap­ing
smooth and bold
crack crack crack­ing
Heads.
…

Lets talk about the smell of apples–heartaches for chicky babies in the roost.
No more that want want want­ing.
Left us out
Dried and sad.
A slick­ered sour puss in boots.

Lessons in Survival

Pack­ing makes me think about all the places I have lived. About my mother in 1992. Pack­ing up our house alone, tucked in those cob­ble­stone streets. Three small chil­dren need­ing, my father fin­ish­ing his dis­ser­ta­tion; her hands puffed up–turned black and blue.

Sit­ting in my room before col­lege, Molly gave me a blan­ket like the one I loved to sleep with at her house. I’ve never used it. I’m get­ting bet­ter at not deem­ing the sacred unus­able. But, it’s a problem.

M and I went through all our boxes that were put on hold–the archives. They are mostly books and things that remind us that we used to make art. We mar­ried it all, even our port­fo­lios. I found all my Joni Albums. They never made it onto my com­puter. We lis­ten to them all.

It made me think of LMU, the song book they gave me, a mon­u­ment to our time together–or tak­ing show­ers our first semes­ter in Azusa Gar­dens. Play­ing Song to a Seag­ull and get­ting dressed in that mas­sive closet. All the morn­ings Vicki and I would get up and go to the APU “gym.” Alisha already on the tread­mill somehow.

I do belive in door­ways. There are sea­sons, phases of the moon, plan­ets. We are pro­vided with door­ways and rooms to enter. There are many things that are left undone.

Or. Per­haps it is not that things are undone, but rather, there are times we must except that space has Given You It’s Best–

Do you dare to ask for more?

In west LA, we’re blooming lilacs

When I was in sixth grade I used to play a game with time. I spent nearly every wak­ing hour with my best friend Danielle. And if it was her par­ents’ turn to drive, I endured those tor­tur­ous I-don’t-have-to-be-bored-at-home-without-my-best-friend-but-I-still-am min­utes by trac­ing the route from her house to mine in my mind. There were no cell phones back then. The few times that I nailed it, the door­bell ring­ing in per­fect syn­chronic­ity with the one in my head, what a thrill.

There is an inti­macy in the maps we make. It is kindof like touch­ing the face of some­one you love while they are heavy in sleep. You share noth­ing. It is your secret. A secret that makes you a bet­ter person.

I love to retrace my old route to and from work. I think about the pro­gres­sion of feel­ing exud­ing from each part of the streets. The cross­ing guards at the three ele­men­tary schools. The change of speed get­ting onto Santa Mon­ica. Each hill. Each change in the sky and my lungs. Each choice.

I couldn’t sleep at all. I just kept think­ing about our apart­ment, an island–a relic of the Ice Age still and soft beneath its roots.

The ringing phone, an ocean

“Though the seas threaten, they are mer­ci­ful,” says Ferdinand, “I have cursed them with­out cause.” *

Insom­nia. Some­times I have it. I used to have it more. 

The point is that not hav­ing it has kept me from some­thing maybe you are able to do with­out it: sort. arrange. decode. unearth. etc. 

It is easy to for­get how to sep­a­rate fear and love, like Fer­di­nand. It is easy to remem­ber. It is another to sort. 

The wells inside you, glisten.

There are many seas, but there is also the scent of jas­mine. There are many seas, but there are also many secrets. I wake, I wan­der, I hold a place in my hand to get through the day.

When all else fails us…

We turn to words, corralling.

// few

Now is the time for gravity.

the weight of space (glowing.)

Time

rolling it’s long and slen­der tongue;

Watch it.

.

It must have been the smells of dinners

mile after  mile

one after another

cush­ion­ing all-the-anger-that-could-have-been.

.

The impos­si­ble smallness

–enor­mity–

of office gestures,

point­ing to boards

.

we wit­ness.

Awkward convos

This morn­ing on my way to work I was stopped at a light (Santa Mon­ica and West­wood) with another cyclist and the fol­low­ing exchange ensued:

- Nice that it’s warm­ing up again.

Not hear­ing the first part of this sen­tence cor­rectly, I gravely replied:

- Yeah.

Then it hit me… He was beaming.

- Wait, you’re happy about it?

- Yes,  I’m happy.

And then the light turned green.

It was weird.

When the Santa Ana winds come the smog hangs in the air and every breath burns and tastes like hell. There are no cool spills of clean(er) air pour­ing forth on the stretch near the golf course. There is only thick exhaust. HOW CAN HE BE SMILING?! WE ARE SUFFOCATING.

I keep think­ing about recy­cling clay and the process of pour­ing the dry clay and sand into the soopy mass inside the mixer. My insides hard­en­ing, lungs heavy with mat­ter… Also, the heavy cakes of black that cover all of the sur­faces in our apart­ment min­utes after we clean them. Not cool.

How much can our frag­ile skin really pro­tect us from? I shud­der to think of it.

Which brings me to my next point! My new favorite phrase: “refried ass­hat.” (As in: “I watched a clip of myself read­ing copy for an ad this morn­ing and I looked like a refried asshat.”)

How’s your Friday?

Blame it on those Ad Men

There is some­thing that we need to talk about. Let’s start by read­ing this excerpt from Riana:

Through­out human his­tory, chil­dren have spent the major­ity of their lives with both par­ents every sin­gle day. This con­tin­ued up through the tran­si­tion to agri­cul­ture and really ended only in the mod­ern era. Though it is an eco­log­i­cally and envi­ron­men­tally sound form of fam­ily life and that it, ulti­mately, leads to greater psy­cho­log­i­cal happiness.

And actu­ally wash­ing dishes is fun. We don’t have to be pros­per­ous and find excite­ment from each task that we do, but it’s not hard labor and I enjoy my full days at home. I’m very lucky that i can be at home all day to play with amaya and let her learn from me: cook­ing, sewing, wash­ing, clean­ing, read­ing, gar­den­ing, fix­ing, writ­ing, draw­ing, craft­ing. woman’s work? per­haps. but i think its bet­ter than lin­ing the pock­ets of some­one else, work­ing for basi­cally noth­ing (for what end or pur­pose), prob­a­bly harm­ing the earth more (we have 30 less envi­ron­ment impact by me not work­ing). this work i do at home ben­e­fits us, not some unknown corp exec and doesnt pol­lute the earth.

We have made the choice to live off of one salary (and my hus­band works only four days a week) and that means that we will always be poor. one car, less “stuff”, noth­ing new for years, but much more hap­pier. that means we get to see and be part of her mile­stones, hear each new word uttered and each new task mastered.

She learns how to live, truly live: for­age and hunt for food and pre­pare it from scratch, reuse and reclaim and col­lect water, build a shel­ter and this means hap­pi­ness and avoid­ing mis­ery. Learn­ing to be clean is part of being human. Chores, scrub­bing the toi­lets, wash­ing clothes is not drudgery, but some­thing to be enjoyed, part of clean­ing up after our­selves. it leads to sat­is­fac­tion and being good stew­ards of our earth.

It seems that many of us kids in our 20’s and 30’s are des­per­ately try­ing to hone in on the per­fect expres­sion of grat­i­tude to the many lives that have been sac­ri­ficed for our right to self, a face–occupation. Let’s all take a minute to remem­ber that what we do is a vehi­cle for who we are. We are fight­ing for honor and respect and oppor­tu­nity. Is there a more hon­or­able, respectable, and free per­son than the arti­san? In my heart I do not believe so.

The day I found out that my job would be com­ing to an end after our project closes out I was walk­ing home in the rain. I con­tem­plated how to deal with these next few months–do I dis­en­gage myself from all of my work or do I con­tinue to throw myself into it? Then it came to me: WHERE ALL YOUR STARS OUT? WHERE YOU BUSY WRITING YOUR HEART OUT? Dear god, let us see that we are our own child. We are teach­ing our­self to live. Be an arti­san of what­ever you want. Peo­ple have died for you to do so. They didn’t die for you to fill some­one else’s pock­ets. Be a peas­ant. Use your parts to heal the world.

An equiv­a­lent of the D.A. is form­ing. Young peo­ple are leav­ing (or being asked to leave ) their cor­po­rate jobs and demand­ing bet­ter ways to live. Pretty awesome.

More on this later. Tater. ox.

WHY?!=EMx+b

You know when you’re hav­ing one of those days when the inter­net is serv­ing you up deli­cious con­tent by the post­ful? I mean, you are really in the thick of it–reading all your feeds, gig­gling or maybe cry­ing. And then it hap­pens… Your inter­net goes out.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

You panic.
You keep hit­ting refresh.
You ask your roommate/co-worker/neighbor/pet/self if they are “get­ting the inter­net.“
You try and stay calm.
(It’s not work­ing.)
You are start­ing to sweat.

And it’s not like this has never hap­pened before, in fact, it hap­pens more often that you’d care to admit. BUT STILL! … and then you feel like a jerk for car­ing so much about a thing like hav­ing or not hav­ing an inter­net con­nec­tion right now.

At this point you have a few choices. You can do one or all of the fol­low­ing: a) sit there and wait for it to come back b) go unplug the modem to see if you can get it to restart c) get on the phone with your provider and get them to fix it or d) do some­thing else for a while.

The most impor­tant thing is to remem­ber is that it’s not the inter­net itself that is cre­at­ing the absence. It is what you were reading/viewing on the inter­net that is caus­ing that ter­ri­ble ache. You haven’t really lost anything.

YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.

You could go for a walk. You could read a really great book. You could go to the library.  You could have an adven­ture. You could draw a map. You could bake a cake. You could teach your­self how to do some­thing cool. Or you could even do a cartwheel.

The inter­net was one of the many tools you use to achieve the same goal: hap­pi­ness. Maybe you could pick up a new tool for a lit­tle while.

And the best part is, even if you do some­thing else for a while it doesn’t mean that you can’t come back to the inter­net later. In fact, you might even have more fun and be bet­ter at using the inter­net then you were before the whole “los­ing the Inter­net (again)” fiasco.

Well… get­ting laid off is kindof like that.