The Last Day

This morning I went to the subway and waited and only to find out that my entire line had been shut down, due to "police investigation" at Bedford Avenue. I went home and called into work. They said, "Hey, it's your last day--do you want to come in?" The bank account in me said,"Yes, I do." So they SENT A CAR to come get me. "It's your last day, after all." they said on the phone. Graham and I rode from Bushwick, Brooklyn, to Midtown, Manahttan. I saw the UN for the first time, and pointed out to Graham where Cary Grant walked up the steps in North By Northwest.

Do you ever notice how everything has some significance on your last day anywhere? I had my last bowl fo free cereal this morning in the staff dining room. I'm staring out at view from my temporary office for the last time. I'm typing in names on the screen, I may not again. I'm listening to This American Life, while typing these names, and sitting in this office. For the last time. Things have a sudden sense of context and framework. The picture is almost complete.

Of course, I'm a hopeless nostalgic.

I've noticed this when you get ready to move or do anything sort of life changing. Suddenly you enter this hyper real universe, where the cells of things are rapidly changing to make room for the new cells. Although this isn't a job I've had forever, or thought even I would have forever, it's my most significant station yet in New York. I was floating and aimless, and this job gave me a daily dose of normalcy. I'll miss it for that. I've also met some great people here. I met Mindy here, who I admitted, with my hands nearly covering my face from vulnerability, that she is my "New York Best friend." Which is another way of saying, you are dearly important to me. She said that I was the same for her. Then we hugged and drank down rootbear floats.

You just NEVER KNOW when you enter a door on THE FIRST DAY, what your life will be like on THE LAST DAY. And Monday will be another first day, and I'm a little nervous, but just writing this down, it makes me see that I've had hundreds of first days and last days and the beginning is always vague and the end is always very clear. It's like when we're babies and the world is blurry, but as we grow up and live and continue, the world is clearer.

I'll be posting when I can. See you soon, I hope!

In My Studio

Crazy Scheme

After tomorrow, I will be taking a blogging break. For one, I won't have easy access to the internet. And for two, I will be doing a TON OF OTHER THINGS--including, working on my annual Great Gals Calendar. Joan Didion, pictured above, is miss December. I am really looking forward to two weeks of doing art, listening to books on tape and NPR and walking the streets of New York.

October is my favorite month by far, and to experience it without a 9-5 job is going to be grand. Also, it's going to be JAM PACKED with visitors. Among them, my best friend Jenny Sue will be visiting her family and myself and be in the New York area for THREE WHOLE WEEKS! YIPPEE. Then my dad is coming! This is totally exciting because he hasn't been to New York since he was a kid AND he's an artist and appreciates great paintings and artists. I cannot wait for him to see The MoMA's collection, with all those famous famous paintings. I also can't wait to show him Central Park and just experience the wildness of seeing MY FATHER walk the streets of New York City.

My family has rarely come to visit me when I have lived on the East coast. They are just NOT THE TYPES to leave their home base. My dad is not a traveler for the most part. He traveled around when he was a kid, as a Navy brat, enough to make him practically have an allergic reaction to airplanes or packing. When he was old enough to live on his own, he immediately moved back to the one place he felt comfortable--California--and has rarely wanted to leave a 50 mile radius, much less the state, since. When we started talking about him coming out here, I thought we were hatching a GREAT SCHEME, as if it was somehow a plan to kidnap him, only HE WAS IN ON THE PLAN. It's one of those things that I never imagined in my life--walking in New York City with my father. When I made the plane reservations on his behalf, and we talked about taking the subway from the airport, I keep thinking THIS IS SO WILD. He asked, "Will we be taking the subway often?" I thought, "Father, YOU HAVE NO IDEA."

Since my dad reads this blog (hi DAD!), I can't mention some of the exciting plans I have brewing for us, because some of them are surprises, but I can tell you, that I'm looking forward to sharing this CRAZY SCHEME with him--a happy surprise for us both.

Once Again, Late to the Party But So Frickn' Glad I Came

I gave Graham an ipod Nano for his birthday this past June. I felt all proud of myself for getting hin something I knew he would like and use and that he wasn't expecting. He was excited and surprised when he got it, set it up, and then used it for about 6 weeks and then just never had any interest in it again. I hate to say this, but I was TOTALLY DISAPPOINTED. As someone who suffers from gift giving anxiety (GGA), I thought FOR SURE I had SCORED. I asked him about it and he said, "Well, it turns out, I like being IN New York." The he offered to give it to me. I made a big stink--well, a medium stink about it--because I was totally BUMMED that it wasn't a great gift after all, but mostly it just felt BAD to take something I had bought for him and use it for myself. This weekend, after seeing it sit there unused for ANOTHER week, I finally asked him about it, he offered it again, and then guiltily, I accepted. I picked it up, held it for a moment and then raced over to my computer and IMMEDIATELY erased his library and filled it with mine. This morning, I finally used it for the first time.

OH. MY. GOODNESS. iPod Nano, where have you been ALL MY LIFE??????

I used to walk a lot with headphones when I lived in Boston. It was probably one of my favorite things to do: slip in a mixed tape, or a tape of a CD I just got, and the world WAS ALIVE. Eventually I moved on to a portable CD player, but after breaking one too many, I gave up on the walking with music. This morning, it was like rediscovering a lost love, only the lost love got HOTTER, KINDER, and MORE FUN TO BE WITH. I got off of the subway early and thought I'd walk to the next subway line, with it on shuffle. When I got to Liz Phair's song "Fuck and Run" I was a TOTAL GONER. It was all I could do, not to start running through the streets of the village and Gramercy Park, like I was in the best movie EVER MADE. I skipped the subway entirely, called work to say I was running late, and GROOVED OUT the whole rest of the way.

It has been my dream to walk along the streets of New York and listen to Lou Reed and Patti Smith and be drenched in the landscape these songs were created from. When "Sweet Jane" came on, followed by Smith's "Gloria" I felt like the most powerful person in the world!

I can't believe I went this long without walking with music. It was inspiring. It was colorful. The world broke open to me! Once again, I know I am probably the LAST PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH to get an ipod, but HOLYCRAP, people! These things should be handed out freely so that everyone can walk in this world and be dazzled by the movie they live in, with a soundtrack that makes them MOVE.

Work Wanted

The temp job that came to me out of divine intervention in January and was supposed to end in May and then in June and then in September is finally really coming to an end on Friday. At first, I was all zen about it, thinking well, I've earned enough hours at my temp agency that I can get a week off, and then I had some money come my way, which could eek me by another week, so I know everything will be fine and the waves come in and the waves go out and all that. It's Tuesday and I've discovered that my temp agency is well, a temp agency, which is synonymous with WE WILL MILK YOU, and it turns out that after 9 months of full time working, I've only earned THREE DAYS of pay. If I work another 600 hours, then I'll get the full week off. This started the ball rolling for that BAD SINKING FEELING that I'm at the end of something comfortable and back in that SCARY UNKNOWN. It also made me angry that I'm doing what I'm doing and again, I'm at the place of NOW WHAT?

I want a real job. No temp stuff. I want a part time real job with benefits and a place for me to go and know that I can stay indefinitely. I work REALLY WELL with defined schedules, deadlines, and most importantly, RITUAL. I used to think: LET ME BE FREE--as in free to the wind, as in no schedule, do what I want, when I want, screw the masses! But left to my own devices full time, I get edgy and lonely and depressed. I also don't get as much work done. I want more time for my art, but when you're unemployed, it's hard to FOCUS on your art.

If anyone knows anything in New York for someone who has excellent people skills, can do office work, take care of children, bake a mean pie, draw, paint, write, read, play music, inspire the masses, aims to please, and comes with excellent references will you please drop me a line? I'm looking for a surprise here, people. Something I hadn't thought of. I want to look outside that crazy four sided thing called the box.

Banned Books Week

Saturday marked the beginning of Banned Books Week. It's amazing to me that books are still being banned. This is nuts. Doesn't any society know that once you say that something exists, but YOU CAN'T HAVE IT, becuase it's SO SCANDELOUS and CRAZY, it just QUADRUPLES the demand? Any DIETER knows this! The best thing is to let it exist and LIE LOW about it. But alas, such threatening works as Captain Underpants are among the most highly contested.

One of my favorite books of all time, a book which began the journey of WANTING TO WRITE for more people than I can count, Cathcer in the Rye, is STILL thought of as TOO dangerous to let certain people read. I guess they don't like people to read catchy prose that infects one with ideas of their own, so that they want to maybe write a book or think of their lives or maybe wonder where the ducks go when the pond freezes over. Same with such SEXY books as Tom Sawyer. I can remember all the evil just pouring through me when I was in the seventh grade and gripped with the drama of Tom and Becky Thatcher trapped in the cave. I mean, would they kiss or wouldn't they? It was a romance, right?

As a creative, who was fortunate to be born into a country, which was founded on freedom of speech (that country being California), I've lived the luxury of reading what I wanted to read and had my life changed forever. I can't imagine where I would be if I hadn't read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee--two books that profoundly shaped my world and what I thought possible, and are listed as two of the most contested books of from 1990-2000. Actually, I probably owe a lot of my sanity throughout early adolescence to S.E. Hinton.

The American Library Association has a site dedictaed to Banned Books Week with lots of great info, including what one can do to fight censorship and keep books available in local libraries. As my friend Kathryn, who sent me the link says: "These are not your grandmother’s librarians. They are tough and they are serious about intellectual freedoms." Amen to that! Thank goodness for tough librarians!

Sunday Scribblings: Instructions

How to Be a Product of Hippies: The first 21 years.

1. If you aren’t born at home, be brought home to a shack, preferably one remodeled from a chicken coop or a barn. If possible, neither parents should be gainfully employed. They should be “living on love” otherwise known as “living by their wits” or more accurately, through odd jobs and state assistance. Make sure your father either has hair the same length as your mother, and/or give her a run for her money, with overflowing facial hair. Have him listen to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on the way home from the hospital. It will make him think of you.

2. Be named after the following: seasons, weather, Biblical characters, Greek mythology, misheard names from movies, moods, or deities.

3. Spend early parts of your childhood either completely naked, or slightly adorned by beads, a pair of sandals or moccasins.

4. If your parents don’t stay together, plan to spend weekends at your dad’s makeshift home, surrounded by metal sculptures, Southwestern rugs, and tie-dye t-shirts, listening to the Doobie Brothers, and watching dad roll his “cigarettes” and drinking beer. Mom will start sporting tinted sunglasses, and wear scarves in her hair, while finding out the price of a goat, you will keep in the back yard, along with the Chinese ducks and apricot trees.

5. Be warned: when someone offers you carob, it is not the same thing as chocolate. Not even close. Be baffled at adults’ insistance that it is better for you. Also, when you are served spaghetti, it will be thick, green, flat noodles, tough as rope. This will be better for you, as it is made from spinach. Get used to the vitamin scent of healthfood stores and goat’s milk instead of regular old milk. Learn that tofu, that incredibly thick and bland thing that shows up in your spaghetti comes from a bathtub, in someone’s house.

6. Learn that President Reagan is the anti-christ. Curse his wrinkled, rosy cheeked face, like your stepdad, when he comes on the TV. Write letters against nuclear war to him. Be upset that nothing happens. Be outraged when the Republicans continue to win. Feel that the government is not to be trusted. You are twelve.

7. Be totally embarrassed that your parents love to party. Lay in bed, listening to them howl and cackle with their friends in the living room. Listen to a story being told by your stepmom’s friend, about when she wasn’t with your dad, and how they threw hash in some omelettes one morning, only to have her parents show up unannounced. Laugh to yourself when you imagine your stepmom’s stuffy mother declaring that the coffee was making her “dizzy.”

8. Go to high school and get ridiculed for your name. Think it makes you deep. Believe in things strongly. Continue the thought that all Republicans and people with money are morally corrupt. Everywhere you look, people are MORALLY CORRUPT. Believe that you will find yourself once you go to college, which won’t be just any college, but a small liberal arts school that no one has heard of. Think it makes you deep.

9. When you are away at college, discover feminism, discover outrage. Believe that the commune you lived on as a half naked babe was a toxic environment and that your parents were selfish to bring you there. Date another biblically named hippie child. Love his sensitive, but politically minded soul. Together, you discover all the meanings behind what it was to be brought up this way, this way being a hippie child.

10. Over Christmas break get in fights with your parents over your “upbringing.” Tell them how wrong they were. They in turn will tell you how corrupt your “generation” is. How your generation doesn’t “get” what it really means to be radical and on the front lines and filled with wisdom.

11. Vote in your first election. Feel excited. Call your parents. They voted for him too. Celebrate. For he first time ever, you feel that the "good guys have won."

12. Graduate from college with a BA in the arts. Your thesis will be a documentary of your soul, or 25 views of the Male Psyche, or an entire semester of self-portraits. Believe your work is important even revolutionary. Then get a job as a waitress.

The Joy of Doing Things

I am wondering today what the point of doing anything unless you enjoy it in some way. Why do it at all?

Things that are reminding me of the joy of doing things:

Martha Rich's art ALWAYS makes me want to get messy and enjoy life.

Camilla Engman is the only blog that I'll look through the archives and re-read her entries. I can't explain why this blog is so good. It's very little writing, mostly links, and many pictures. I like the life she depicts.

This photo of my brother with my dad's Andy Goldsworthy-esque sculpture.

Hugh Janus is my latest flickr discovery and his work is so vibrant and mouth watering. He and Martha Rich both do art with tighty-wighties! How can you beat that?

If I had enough money I'd give Jeffrey Yamaguchi's book, 52 Projects, away as a favor at my wedding. I'm not kidding. It's so great and inspiring and it's for EVERYBODY--not just artists and would-be artists, but for your uncle or your co-worker. It's truly about making every day life interesting.

The reconnection of an old friend: Jennifer McMahon and I used to be in a writing group ever so long ago. She was my writing idol in college and NOW She has a book coming out. There is JUSTICE IN THE WORLD.

More Than a Feeling

I could WRITE A FRIGGN' BOOK on telling my life story through boyfriends. Boyfrieds have shaped my life profoundly. I was what you'd call a serial monogomist, peppered in with a few short-lived robounds, for about 15 years. Then by sheer grace I was single for two years and had to LEARN to be alone--EGADS! For someone who had depended on boys to define a good part of my identity, this was like going through REHAB. It totally sucked, then eventually got better, sucked again, and then soon offered benefits I hadn't anticipated. For one, I discovered (shocker of shockers)that I liked being alone. It was good to be my own person, to have quiet mornings to myself, to develop deep friendships.

As you can imagine, it was a time of DEEP SOUL SEARCHING. I sat through Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind SIX TIMES in the theater because I found it deeply profound. Relationships shape us, for better or for worse.

This morning thinking about my first ever boyfriend, I discovered that nearly twenty years later, he still makes me cringe. He was your average white suburban-bread boy, who drove his dad's cars and thought singing the Rollingstone's "Let's Spend The Night Together" in your ear was romantic. I wasn't his first girlfriend. When he asked me out, he had a girlfriend that lived in Canada or Buffalo or Lake Taho--someplace with snow. He told me he "took care of it" in a phonecall over a weekend. I couldn't imagine the equation of that conversation that "took care of it." He took me to my first spring formal. My dress was too big and kept sliding down to reveal my brand new white straples bra. He wore so much aftershave on dates that my eyes would tear up. After we broke up, I found out he told all his friends that I was a prude. Then when I started dating someone else, I found out he told his friends I was LOOSE. Yes, we were all so AWARE in high school weren't we? So much HEALTHY expression of FEELINGS!

He went on to other girls. He played guitar for the senior class assembly, and sang Guns N' Roses' "Patience" with another classmate. It was RIVETING. I hear he's gone on to try his hand at country music. Wherever you are, first boyfriend o' mine, I tip my ten gallon hat to you.

Coming Soon

I am putting together a book of my 30 days of stories. Soon they will be available for sale, so just in case you had any desires to get your grubby little hands on them! Yipee! I did a mock-up a few days ago, and I can't help it, but I love seeing them all together. They make me very happy indeed.

I haven't stopped making the flyers at all. I still make them every day. Today I did one on "teachers," where I got to write about one of my hated teachers, Mrs. Scott from the 4th grade. It was the only time I went to public school in elementay school, when I briefly lived far away from where I usually lived and went to school. I hated it and I hated her. She was MEAN and COLD and probably a tad overwhelmed. For my part, I was a FREAKED OUT kid, who was for the first time completely CUT OFF from all my safe guards. I was living alone with my mom, who wasn't home much herself. I started feigning illnesses and cutting school. Anything but to have to face Mrs. Scott with her large icy blue eyes and her perm that made her look like a microphone. I used to have fantasies of the school burning down so I wouldn't have to go. All the things that a little word on a 3"x5" card can evoke! Sheesh!

The Uncle Pat in Me Talking

This morning I was crushed in with 50 strangers on my morning commute, when I was hit with the most obnoxious case of headphone spray I'd yet experienced. I felt like my grumpy uncle Pat, who looked at me during the summer of 1986, holding my Sony Walkman, which was nearly the size of a cigar box, and weighed at least five pounds, blasting Wham! into my blue foamed headphones, that COVERED my ears. He looked at me and said, "You kids are going to GO DEAF with those contraptions in your ears." He was the ULTIMATE grumpy old man and he was in his thirties to forties. Still is. Grumpy, that is. I remember nearly rolling my eyes at his SHEER IGNORANCE. Those OLD FOGIES. GET WITH THE TIMES.

This morning, with a young man behind me, with the music pulsating out of his earphones, so that I could DECIPHER the LYRICS, those VERY WORDS came to my mind. I felt very grumpy and old indeed. It's happening, I thought. I'm at that deviding line.

I am 34. People who are older than me will say that I am still a youngn'. People who are younger than me will think I'm over the hill. It's that particular place on the age scope. Still considered "young enough", but dangerously close, if not off the cliff already, to being "out of touch." I have been consciously fighting this. Thinking: DON'T JUDGE. Don't be like those people who get angry because time is passing them by and what's new and hip not only doesn't apply to them, but they don't UNDERSTAND it. Just GO WITH IT. But it's happening. I don't watch TV and that already throws me out of the spectrum of what is generally known and discussed. Graham and I went to an event a couple of weeks ago where Jon Stewart appeared (to near Beatles fanatic screaming, I might add) and proceeded to make a number of jokes about TV commercials and other references. They were lost on me. It was weird.

Then there's the ever increasing technology. Usually when you say the word technology, my eyes glaze over almost immediately. Although I am using a computer at this very second and I am "plugged in" through the internet and on line newspapers and magazines, I don't get into discussing matters of "bandwith" or "wysiwyg." I have a friend who almost soley communicates through text messaging on her cellphone. I've responded to her, but not without serious effort, where I've erased the message by accident, or created even MORE creative spelling errors than usual, all with intermittant cursing. There hasn't been a moment when I wished I had just pushed the ONE BUTTON it takes to CALL her and just TALKED. It would have saved SO MUCH TIME.

Even by writing this very blog entry, I am sounding like an OLD CRONE. It's TRUE. I am here to out myself. I don't own an iPod (though I will admit to wanting one). I don't believe that e-mail is the same thing as a phonecall. I miss handwritten letters. I LIKE albums and even CDs. I still make mix tapes on occasion! I hate Myspace. Seriously. I have a profile, but the junkmail is TOO MUCH. And I do wish, when I have bodies cramped against me on either side, that whoever is listening to his iPod at TOP VOLUME, they'd turn it down. I know that's the UNCLE PAT in me talkn', but he was bound to come out at some point. That's the beauty of being REALLY YOUNG, you can't imagine that the old man raising his cane at you in righteous indignation is just a sample of what lays in wait for you, twenty, thirty years down the line.

Sunday Scribblings: Google Magic!

For Sunday Scribblings! Information is 95% Google, 5% A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.

30 Days! 30 Days!

I'd like to thank the Academy! I like seeing them all together. They'd make kind of a cool quilt I think.

Almost there...

One more coming later!

Context

Well, I am posting the last of them two at a time so that the whole thing will end tomorrow. I pulled the last card this morning. 30 days. This is it! I made it! Tomorrow you'll see the last two. It's been grand. Seriously, what a great thing to do--a something, an anything for 30 days straight. I highly recommend doing the your own something an anything for 30 days. You'll be surprised by what comes up when you have a distinct context.

For example, I've started cooking again with gusto. It's probably the weather, but I also liken it to my life opening up again, as I've consciously been living it for at least 15 minutes every single day. May sound dumb and trite, but seriously, how often do we sit and really purposely LIVE on continuous effort? I think that's what ritual creates for us. As a result, I've started to do the things that nurture my life in other areas. I used to cook a great deal, but moving to New York and moving in with someone put a wrench in the works. I started to look for easier outlets--cheap restaurants or easy foods. When you're new in a town, you have to find your new rituals, your new places to go. New York is its own character--often it's MORE work to do normal things like doing laundry or grocery shopping or how about just going to work? By the time you get home, it's late, I'm tired and who wants to do more WORK?

But I love cooking. That's the part that I forgot. I love exploring. The book I supposedly have been working on is about COOKS for pete's sake. So my new thing to do is to do a new recipe every week. I work best in contexts, in clear forms. A page a day from a word a day, no matter what, works for me. Calendars with a clear end date, 12 months of the year, work for me. Recipes with their measurements and clear ingredients work for me. There's A LOT of creativity and spontaneity that happens when I have guidelines. So often I feel cut loose into the wilderness, but when I can gather myself and feel just ONE rule in my day, a lot can unfold.

This Is How It Goes

Overcast morning and I have a migraine. Oh JOY.

Excuse me while I get a little CHICK LIT on you:

I was in a pretty good mood yesterday. I'd had a productive morning, I'd gotten some things done at work, and the weather was fine. I thought, this just might be a good time to walk down the street after work and try on the red delicious skirt in the J Crew window that I've been dreaming about since passing it a few days ago.

This isn't exactly for pleasure, per se. I need to go clothes shopping so badly it isn't even funny. Okay, it is a little funny, because even I am embarassed at the state of my wears. I hate shopping tremendously. Nothing says FREAKOUT like trying on clothes that feel too expensive and show off the delightful part of my body that I spend a good deal of time being in DENIAL OF. Here's a good combo, being a poverty addict AND having body issues. Now go shop! But I was in a good mood. I had gotten excersize earlier in the day. I've been saving money lately for the purpose of buying my yearly bout of clothes. So I go to J Crew. I march right in and pick up the red delicious skirt. It's a bit pricey for me, but so is a $1.50 cup of coffee. I nearly run to the fitting rooms, because I'm afraid the voices will start kicking in. The voices that say: EVERYONE IS STARING AT YOUR SHABBINESS. The voices that say: THIS IS TOO EXPENSIVE FOR A LOVECHILD (never meant to be!) LIKE YOU.

There is a line. There are a slew of fabulous midtown New York women waiting behind me. It's when I catch myself believing that they must have INCREDIBLE LIVES because they LOOK SO GOOD and have ARMFULS of clothes, that I know the worms have started makig their way into my brain. I'm done for.

When I am lead to the men's dressingroom, across the store, I already know I won't get the skirt. I didn't make it in time. I'm having fits. I try on the skirt and it's very pretty, but I'm not sure I look pretty in it. There's that pesky view of my hips and calves and I think in a perfect world, I would have a trim body with svelt legs and I wouln't be convinced that I am the world's poor cousin. I also would be able to buy a skirt and not have it be a monumental event in my life. It would be pleasurable. But the world is not perfect. So instead, I listen to the girl in the changing room call her best friend and ask, "Do you think I should get this dress at J Crew? Yes I am here right now. It's brown and has white dots. I know, it sounds HIDEOUS, but it's not." She laughs sweetly, in that way you talk to your best friend.

I think: I need to get out more.

So all that was good in the day was gone in the evening. I came home believing that I was SCREWED. I told Graham that I was screwed and he smiled and said, "You are good." I wonder if in 50 years I'll still be flopping on the couch in a huff and he will be smiling at me saying "You're good." Dear god, I hope not. No skirt is worth it.

Inspired Time

I'm not lagging on the 30 days on purpose. Actually, I am not lagging at all, but I decided instead of posting the weekend and Monday's all at once, like I've been doing, I'd stretch out the last 5. So here's Saturday's. Look forward to such exciting words as MOUTH, MAGAZINE and OBSESSION!

I am reading my first Bill Bryson book, A Walk in the Woods, and I am TOTALLY enthralled by Bryson's venture out on the Appalaichan Trail, with his fumbling sidekick, Katz. I began reading it yesterday, and now every single chance I get, I am at its pages and immersed in Bryson's funny and smart writing. This morning Graham got up at 5:30 to go teach a class in Queens. I faked him out, by staying in bed until i thought he was gone. Then we surprised eachother by me coming into the kitchen and him being there. "Oh, I didn't think you'd get up this early." He said. I all but hugged him and kissed him out the door, then I poured myself some coffee, and while the sun rose up, I read in bed with both cats snoozing around me. It was HEAVEN.

As someone who takes art sometimes, shall we say, A LITTLE TOO PERSONALLY, Bryson's book is like a BREATH OF FRESH AIR. It has NOTHING to do with my life, or where it's going, or where I want it to go. It's just a plain, good read, and it's taking me somewhere I've never been and that's what good reading is all about.

I got ready for work after prying myself away from the bed and the book, only to discover I was COMPLETELY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. I was a good half hour ahead of schedule. I'm not used to being mobile at 5:45 in the morning. So I got on the subway and instead of changing trains I walked from the village to midtown--a good 38 blocks. I haven't had such a productive morning in ages!

It's fall. The air has a little nip to it, and it's the best weather for long, brisk walks and reading in bed. I am SO HAPPY this season is at last upon us. It's my most productive and inspired time. Time to make pies, write books, or read them.

Untitled

Five years ago today, I was moving into my new home of Newmarket, New Hampshire. I was listening to poetry on a tape and setting up my new studio. The morning was beautiful and clear. Not a cloud in the sky. I was anxious, because I knew already what would come in another nine months: that I wouldn’t stay in this house, that I wouldn’t marry the sweet, understated boy who loved country music and bowling. But I was trying to convince myself I would.

We had just returned from California the day before, where my family had taken in my doomed engagement at face value. It had been a patchy visit, but what family visit isn’t?

I reached through the boxes and brought out all my favorite things. My art supplies, my collection of favorite postcards. Then I heard the phone ringing downstairs and I raced to get it.

“We’re being attacked.” I think those were his words. Actually, he made a joke, referencing a mutual joke, but neither of us got it really. I went upstairs and turned on the radio. That’s when I got it. Peter Jennings was breathless. Around him was a swarm of voices and clatter, like you hear when a telemarketer calls, and you hang up. He was listening, and so his reporting was slightly delayed. Then something horrible happened—-you could hear Jennings bracing himself. There were screams. “The towers are falling.”

It was like listening to the War of the Worlds. Listening to chaos and terror is its own kind of horror. You mind grasps and fumbles to make up its own images, because all you have are haunting sounds. Something terrible is happening, something huge and enormous and filling you with fear, but you can’t see it coming. You can only sit there, frozen on the brown carpet, breathless, listening.

It was later in the afternoon that I went to the theater where my fiancé was at work. They had CNN playing on the smaller screen, which was the size of a picture window. That’s when I saw what I had listened to earlier and my body went white and I couldn’t help myself, I cried out, “oh my god!”

It was worse than I had imagined it.

This morning it seemed like an even more crowded day in New York City. The subway was packed. A woman collapsed. There were cops in many of the stops. My mind was filled with the past. I thought about those moments before it happened, while I was still in my pajamas, the windows open. Then I thought about the man I saw running on that large screen, later in the afternoon, his green tie flailing behind him as he ran, while the timber came rolling down. For a moment, it was the end of so many things, we couldn’t begin to know. Then, inevitably, time makes us stand up again, feel again, if differently, and take in what remains.

When I came out of the subway, I looked up at the pure, blue sky and the beautiful buildings. I tell you, it was dazzling.

Comics & Comix

This is a shoutout to all those homies that felt compelled to put art and pictures together and who changed my life:

Herge
Los Bros Hernandez
Wendy & Richard Pini
All the people behind Archie
The Pander Bros
All the people behind Grendel
All the people behind Elementals
Lynda Barry


and who follwed suit:
Adrian Tomine
Jessica Abel
Daniel Clowes

I say thank you for your GREAT EFFORT!

Peace!

Burning Down the House

The sun is pouring in as I type. I had insomnia last night, but I'm not LOSING IT yet, which is a blessing. Also, I managed to have a dream among all that wakefulness. I had a dream that I watched what was my house in the dream, burn down. I kept asking myself if there was anything in there that couldn't be replaced. I listed all my objects in my mind and then I remembered: my novel! Could I live without it? Should I start over? I thought about the opening paragraph and thought I could probably remember some of it and then it would be okay. But then just as I told myself it was okay that the novel was burned up, a voice in me started yelling: NO! NO! NO! And I began to panic--my novel! There MUST BE another copy of it SOMEWHERE!

I know it's TOTALLY ANNOYING to read about other people's dreams, but I just can't get this one out of my mind. There's a message here, I just know it.

My critic is HUGE this last week. I know why, I think. It's because My Something, an Anything for 30 days has sparked some interesting things outside of just DOING IT. It's becoming SOMETHING and my ego is cackling its little devlish head off, thinking it's WON something. These flyers are a practice I enjoy, but I watched today, yesterday, and the day before's speak back to me in that awful way: This sucks, not as good as others, blah, blah, blah. DANG IT! I need to release the inevitable judgement that comes and remember that it's just PLAY.

I'm in the home stretch. Only 6 more to go in the official 30 days, though I want to continue this practice beyond the end date. As I've said before, I like discovering what's waiting to be discovered. I like to see the pages build up. I like the little life they are depicting. I have a bigger, annual project I am also full steam ahead in: The 2007 Great Gals Calendar. I also am going into the studio at the end of the month to demo my new collection of songs. Stuff is HAPPENING. But this little 15 minute excersize has GOT ME.

If anybody has any nouns they want to shoot my way, I'd be much obliged. I have a stack of index cards I am working on, but I am afraid of when I run out or get too familiar with them! Shoot some subjects in a noun form, my way willya? They just might show up on a flyer!

Slowly, Poorly, Hardly

One of my favorite quotes is by Annie Dillard: "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." I feel like this is a quick reminder to me to DO SOMETHING THAT MATTERS TO ME everyday. Of course, this doesn't always come easily. I go through weeks where an amnesia comes over me and I get bored and LAZY about what matters to me.

It hit me this weekend, after I spent a day alone doing art, baking, listening to the radio, that I had just mastered a day that was near perfection. I thought, if this is life, I'll FRIGGN' take it! Mostly, it was a day that was good because I had stepped over the screaming critic and done what I most enjoy: CREATE. It made me realize something about myself. Probably one of my biggest curses as a creative type is that at some point I did something well enough to feel like I was GOOD AT IT. This is a good feeling, but the minute I didn't feel "good at it," I became blocked. I changed mediums and it would go well and then happened all over again.

This last year has been entirely about undoing that part of me that says "is this good?" It's been a year of asking myself, how do I want spend my life? Do I want to spend my life dreaming of writing, drawing, and playing music? It's an enticing activity, because I can DREAM UP all kinds of scnerios and fame and belief systems as to whether or not I could do it as well as the person who is succeeding, and in the meantime, NOT HAVE TO LIFT A FINGER. OR do I want to spend my life actually DOING these things and risking not being "good" or the standard that my fantasies have set up for me? I think growing up for me as an artist has been about discovering that the honeymoon period of anything that works and feels good will wane--especially in a creative life, if you are to keep going. This last year has been about that discovering my days and to do what matters to me, even when I am out of the groove or not cool, or think everything sucks--I try to do it anyway. This is a question all of us face.

It's hard to remember, because your mind is an EXPERT in deceit, but if you sit down to DO whatever it is you want to do, even for a moment, it's the best cure. As Anne Lamott says, This is how we make progress: slowly, poorly, hardly. Then a miracle happens and what a relief!

The Weekend

It's hard to believe it, but this is the last official week of doing a Something An Anything for 30 days. Can it be true???

Last night the whole apartment went to sleep, but I lay there realizing that I hadn't done my flyer for the day. I had pulled the card, but hadn't done it. I kept thinking of all the pairs of glasses I had known in my life. If I could tell my life story by listing pairs of glasses. My mother's wine colored sunglasses, my uncle Tim's circle shaped pair, the yellow plastic ones that Mr. Potato wore in my Nursery School class...Then I remembered one of the first impressions I had of Graham, before I knew he was *GRAHAM*, before I knew that I was going to be OKAY, before EVERYTHING in my life that I know now happened. The narrative started scrolling in my mind and I thought, I better get up and do this! So I snuck off to the studio and made the picture with one lamp burning.

It's good feeling to be kept awake by a thing you want to get down. How often have I complained about blocks and boredom and DOLDRUMS? Now, the images are pushing me out of bed, turning on the lamp, and setting me to the page. If any of you have an inkling to do a creative act every day for 30 days, I HIGHLY recommend it.

It's almost National Novel Writing Month, you know...

Neighbors

Memory is odd. Can you draw a memory? I can put it somehow into words, but to put it down in a visual picture is harder. I'm not sure what happens when it is sifted through my mind and down into my hand, but it's a different language.

The artist I speak of in this flyer has paintings all over her home based on domestic scenes she tried to create from memory. Some of them are impressive, considering the number of objects. She seemed to intimate that your memory isn't that good, that in truth, when you go to paint it, put it down in a visual sense, it's pretty flawed. I wouldn't say that it is flawed, but that it is selective. I can draw from photographs, and often do, but drawing from memory is like making pencil rubbings. My subject emerges through a dark sive. The drawing I've done of Recee here isn't her photograph, but an emotional imprint. It isn't exactly as I remember her, but it's an idea of what I remember.

This process of images is facinating to me. I never know what my mind will come up with next. Just when I thought I knew all my stories and all my old tricks about the world, I try to draw a picture of a girl I knew when I was 8, and I'm taken by surprise. The world is new again.

I will post again on Tuesday. Have a great weekend everyone.