Ushering in a NEW YEAR, to surpass the last

As I mull over the spectacularly lengthy list of tasks I need to complete, I am overwhelmed. This usually leads to an activity not on the list, not particularly important, and not at all productive. I should be attending to my ridiculously messy room, doing one of thousands of loads of laundry to clean clothes I never wear anyway, not just because they've been dirty for months. I wrote myself a brief list of New Year's Resolutions, and I'm counting on the dropping of one big ball in major cities all over to indicate the end of me dropping "the ball" on every project I start but never finish. I am famous for this, though hardly renowned outside of my family for this awful ambitious, not manifesting head of mine. Will this new year be any different from the 22 I ushered in each year before? 

Living with ones' grandparents should be a ticket to spend more time focused on ones' self; time is fleeting and eventually you get old and don't have the energy to do the things you could when you were younger. However, I feel myself slow leaking as I am forced to wait things out. Apply to law school, wait. Work hard, wait to move. Save money? This is a concept I have yet to master- source of anxiety, distress, general unhappiness at times. I get used to at least a dull feeling of gloom that comes from too much work and not enough hours in the work day, so many lists transferred but not shortened, and money made equaling, if not surpassing money spent. Is this adulthood?

I had a wicked stomach flu this weekend that put me out of commision entirely, floored me to the bathroom tile. My head spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday shoved into a porcelain throne and tiny bathroom wastebasket. I couldn't remember feeling lower. And today I returned to work with a new resolve! Dilapidated, though I am, I sluggishly made my way through one of few days I was alloted to "get caught up." It's only a hypothetical concept, however, and the work hardly diminishes, though I work diligently filling a day with tasks, client phone calls, and translation. Are my efforts made in vain? Do I work for myself or solely for others?


Who will answer these questions I posit?

In my distraction, I wander to one of my favorite search engines: yahoo.com and discover an article about a 7-year old who "paints like an old master." He is not driven by any burdensome task of self-discovery. And he is not laboring over a canvas to pay FPL or keep his water running. He's just painting because he likes it. He doesn't feel guilty when he doesn't paint.

So on top of my generally discontent, half-sick, weary ushering in of yet another ephemeral Tuesday evening, I see this kid who admittedly makes me feel even worse. How do we peel back and experience that simplicity? Is it even possible?

I ask these questions of you, my probably non-existent readers, one of my three followers maybe, and of you, the Universe. Answer them in whatever form you see fit. I am open to signs; I will try to keep my eyes open and my senses alert for the answers to seek me as I have asked them of You.

These are two paintings by the 7-year old prodigy, Kieron Williamson:

 

Ushering in a year to surpass the last, I wish you well. And I wish you inspiration not just to write about it, but to be about it. I am closing my laptop to take my very own advice...

My moment/ your moment too.

I felt a moment of inspiration today- Which is remarkable, though it does not seem to be.  I'm holding on to that moment- squeezing it tightly, smothering it like I wish I could do to some people, without being suffocating.  I remembered again how ART warms my South Floridian heart even in the gloomy winter of Long Island.  Though I have yet to really locate the arts & culture scene out on this long, unfriendly island, I still attempt to make the most of my time here.

I am always so focused so much on my next steps I almost trip over the things directly in front of me.  Periodically, I commit to becoming more lucid and aware- sort of how Buddhists do.  But I'm still almost in exactly the same place every time I commit to this again.  And then I become inspired as I did today, hoping maybe this time I will hitch a ride on my fleeting idea- a project that never manifests, a list I transfer without crossing much off, an ideal- hoping it will fly me out of this stuck feeling, awkward phrasing, and raw, unrefined existence.

I used to enjoy this struggle more, but my formerly romantic ideas now only exhaust me.  The mundane squeezes the passion out of me, and instead of gasping for creative air, I pass out, wake up, repeat.  Yet, I am always pleasantly surprised when a poem sneaks up on me.  A painting manifests before I give it any conscious thought.  I sing a song in the shower that I wonder if I composed, or if I had just heard the melody somewhere.  And as ephemeral as that moment is, it is the best moment I've had all day.

Let me share with you my moment today:

I wish I could do graffiti art (though I have never actually tried- other than once on the streets of Vina del Mar, Chile while studying abroad).

I also wish I had been at Art Basel in Miami this last weekend, where these pictures were taken.

I wish a great many things.

Now I'd like to start planning.


Overly ambitious? Overly critical? Overly analytical?

Who will even read my rants, none the less appreciate them? An online blog is a strange concept...

Anyway, hope whoever does stumble upon these raw thoughts can add them to their toolbox, maybe refine them a bit... or let them shape you, even.

I live even for a moment's inspiration in my otherwise wholly uninspired day.

Hope this is your moment.

Still an ARTIST...

Is an Artist one who creates art? One who has creatED art? Or a lifestyle?

I see things differently because of the art education I have received. My aesthetic sense has been heightened, my eyes opened, and my heart expanded. My artistic well is not dry, but stagnant; my artistic palette whet with the experiences of everyday life. I accumulate tools with which to shape my work, to lead me to something meaningful. I love art. I live art.



I painted this one last week, and drew the picture of the sleeping old man last month.

I wonder as I wander...

Stick to it.
Stay focused.
Keep your head in the game.
Eyes on the prize.

Countless aphorisms direct us toward single-mindedness. This "goal oriented" or "task oriented" person we are supposed to be is pulled in a million and one different directions by the complexities of everyday life. If you can't multitask you might as well not procreate. Or step outside of your house. Because in the real world, we're forced to throw ourselves from one activity to the next hoping our body remembers to take big breaths, we remember to eat, and that we are above all BLESSED.

I've always felt torn. Torn between going to art school and an academic career (UM grad 2008). Torn between painting and poetry. Torn between practical decisions and idealism. We're supposed to suck it up and choose, right? A real man makes a decision and regardless of how terrible its outcome, sticks with it, takes accountability for his wrong-doings; counts his losses. Bullshit. These clever one-liner responses to complex situations only serve to keep you unhappy. Why would you stick with something that didn't completely fulfill you? Why are such ridiculous cliches perpetuated that back young, ambitious individuals like me into some imagined corner? Why should we accept the advice of others when anyone who's really lived has already admitted "they had to learn the hard way"?

So please, let me.
Let me divulge in activities that make me happy. I can paint and write. I shouldn't have to choose. Being an adult doesn't mean being bitter because of the poor choices you've made. It just means making your own (however) stupid choices. I am recently beginning to truly understand the headache money gives you- or rather, the headache of not having it; the headache of unpaid bills. No one is even pretending it gets better from here on out.

But if I change my mind a thousand times, let me.
If I only focus on one activity long enough until it leads me to the next, so what?
I understand that with adulthood there is no required declaration of laissez faire because at this point you answer to no one (only respectfully allowing others to know of the decisions, not to make them).
And I was told recently, by someone I deeply respect, that being a grown up is far better accomplished by not referring to (however milestone) activities as "grown up" ones.
In my art, and my life, I tend to be very process-oriented.
It is about the journey and not the destination.

No, I won't "stick to it." Adventure waits off the beaten path. Wander around a little, you might just find it. Another silly cliche goes:

Not all who wander are lost.

So maybe I'll just take some time to check out the scenery. Don't come looking for me.

Ode to my very own poetry!

Here are a few poems I figure are better shared that hoarded by my personal laptop. I hardly read these more than every once in a very long while! Mind you, these pieces are truly spoken word, so if your meter doesn't match mine, you might not find the rhyme... but that's okay. We should have more of an artistic community that extends into the community at large. Here is my start of many contributions to come...
----------------------------------------------
Like Woah

I drank her in like recklessness.
Like: I had my keys in hand, but could not drive the vehicle that is myself.
Don’t mix drinks or children.
She looked around with beady eyes. No surprise.
“I don’t want people to think I’m a racist,” she started,
She leaned in to begin her complaining.It’s always pouring when it is raining.
Her floodgate swung open,As she to the right (me: far left) began to kvetch.
“But I just don’t want to live with a Black person.”
And like woah she began.
But I was in no condition to drive-
This vehicle was not even mine.
Or so I had abandoned it.
Had somebody spiked my fruit punch?
The McDonalds lunch I ate tasted spoiled
And I sat arrested like I couldn’t move.
Why did she choose-To talk to me? At me. Doormat me.
Do I look like a Black people hater?
I would laugh about this later,
But I just sat as an Anglo-Saxon, passive to this massive mess I was in:
I heard her begin.

I was on the phone with my Black boyfriend who- that day-
I had been dating for exactly a year and a
Half of me was sitting there listening-
Taking the girl like medicine-“They’re loud… they’re unclean…
Well you know what I mean.”
“They” who? Me? You? No- we do not relate.
My skin color does not equal hate.
She told me about some girl’s “hair shellac.”
She is obviously not Black.
And I said “oh.” Not “yes” or “no”-
My boyfriend hung up and I wished he was hearing this.

She said her roommate watches “Black TV.”
BET?
“I’m not interested in watching that.”
And, “her phone has this beat- not a ring or a beep-
With someone singing. I can’t understand what it’s saying-
Black people music.”
I was numb. Dumbfounded. Shell-shocked. And quiet.
Her insight was free and I still would not buy it.
Appalling. Confusing.To my morals-
Abusing she was to my beliefs-I was on a bad trip.
She is a good thief.
Who took my voice.
Stole my indignation.
Everyone knows my boyfriend’s Haitian.
Her tunnel vision saw only the color of the skin I was in.
She wasn’t really seeing.
I wasn’t really sitting there misbelieving that this girl was my punishment for being White.
I am tired of fighting the good fight that is not my own.
I was all alone. At a table. Without my Black friends.

Belligerent. But tricked into being an attentive listener.
Fooled into being the bag she threw up in.
These are not the conditions I grew up in.
Ignorant.
But so was I for ignoring myself- Letting her put me on a shelf-
On the Anglo-Saxon’s closed mind.
Hammered.
Plastered.
Wasted: of time and open ears.
What could I say to reverse so many misguided years?
How could I tell her she is drunk and not making sense?
The words she was speaking could cause a great deal of offense.
I must have been drunk too: sitting there saying, “oh.”
When I realized this I decided to go.

I stood up.
And it hit me.
Like a ton of heavy bricks. Now I was sick.
So I staggered away.
Should I have stayed to let her know?
No. Like woah.
------------------------------------------------

STRUGGLE for Peace

I'm not settling, I'm STRUGGLING-
To find peace. For those who proclaim
It is within one's reach-
Have go-go-gadget arms.

I try to repress the reflux affects of "crazy girl"
A syndrome to which no girl is immune.
No, there's no full moon, this shit is daily.
It's bubbling-
Juuust below the surface of cool, calm, and collected till you didn't call her back and it's ME, Beast.
Fight it, swallow it, bite it back-
Cause he has just had it up to *here* with craaaazy girls.

I'm STRUGGLING to MAKE peace,Where there is none.
To- string together piece meal,
To- gobble up that piece meal of reasonable advice, unsolicited, and to regurgitate that mess into some semblance of order that I can be PROUD of.
Panic attacks classify my everysooften,
though I force them from frequent to few, too-
Tiring to keep up with, mellow me out: marijuana to my speed, crymyeyesout exhausted to my choking tears.
Please cry alone.
Please call friends first, him much later.
Please don't act silly,
since silly is never taken seriously and SERIOUSLY-
you can't risk not feeling validated.

I am not settling, I'm sitting for a minute.
Just to catch my breath.
I'mma go till there aint nothin left.
I always thought my crazy was the most of my appeal,
So he could feel I wasn't cookie-cutter anything,
but sugary sweet-Sometimes.
Mostly, beast.
Without sex my release I pray only for sleep.
For calm.
For reason.
For understanding.
For patience.
For peace.
For those who proclaim it is within one's reach..
Go Go Gadget- arms! (PEACE)
-------------------------------------------------

Micro-cosmos, universe at small

When I wish upon the end of the day’s stars,
Stuck high up in a canopy of faux ceiling-
Remnants of the last occupants’ appreciation of the infinite
I think of how things went wrong-
3 years strong, infinitely weak
And then I think of the water babies
With swollen bellies; the term “hungry” understating their uncomfort,
Unlikely that they will eat today at all; Why didn’t he call?
When I wished upon the solar-conserved star that dimmed
When I would not clap my hands and did not believe in true love-
Tink was the jealous type too, these plastic stars adhered so tight-
ly to the faux ceiling- so disguised you can only truly see them at night-
Hidden from light,
I think of plastic you.

Those children they put on TV, so meek and helpless you get up just
To swat the screen and try to shoo the flies from their eyelids,
Little kids, small sick babies-
Ladies birthing so many since the survival rate is low and
Death pesters the weak like flies,
Until that little baby imminently dies-
Send your money in and for just ten cents a day a child can be squared away-
Or, turn and look the other way.
It’s so easy to say: I love you,
But show you care not at all.
Like disease-stricken babies, hope dims, and stars fall from a plastic sky of
Don’t ask why’s
Because apathy is not a good enough excuse.

For 3 years I suffered your abuse, contentedly
But last night I wished upon a neon green starry night and
Like a firefly trapped in a bell jar, something in me died.
You lent your ear in an envelope marked “return to sender,”
I’m tempted to render you completely useless now to fill my head or my poems.
As I stare at dorm room ceiling stars, not knowing where you are,
I’m tempted to lend my tears to babies with empty-vessel tummies, that cry over justified fears instead;
To babies who learn to count on supernova stars numbered much higher than the number of years they’ll exist before meeting their destiny head on-
I think about these bodies so weakened but still so strong,
And wonder why you can’t think of anyone but your plastic self.



The first and third poems I wrote about two or three years ago. The "Struggle for Peace" poem was written a couple of months ago about how I was beginning to feel "maturity" meant holding everything inside, biting your tongue and swallowing your pride. Which to me, meant imminent implosion and simultaneous explosion, were I not extremely careful. Nay, extremely mature.
(No, thanks.)

To art!

Old Habits (sloughed) to New Beginnings

New beginnings are sometimes the result of a shift in thought away from our same old, bad habits. And sometimes they are thrust upon us before we can even manage to process- before we can get a cognition in edge-wise. And as we depart from our former self to transcend into this new being, our old self is sloughed, sloughed over, and left behind.

I used to be the kind of girl that wriggled back into the shed encasement, brought it high up around my shoulders, coiled it around me and stewed. And just when I’d feel I was ready to slink out from under my heavy lead overcoat, I ask myself for "five more minutes," and allow myself at least a few more months. It’s like hanging out submerged in your dirty, lukewarm bath water, pruney fingers and toes, before toweling off. It is a comfortable pity party. As long as you’re the only guest in attendance, "pathetic" is un-termed and "pride" is malleable. Then, someone lures you out from under the weight of the familiar: You remember how light and easy it is to laugh; that all is not lost.

Getting our brains to re-route their usual neuron firing pattern involves that onerous change we hide from. I had been so committed to some ideas, held so steadfastly that I almost considered change to be synonymous with defeat. I never want to consider my time wasted on skin that is going to slough off anyway. But nothing is really waste. At one point, I decided that a real man/woman was someone who made a decision and stuck with it, no matter what. That definition, as well as have I, evolved. Changing my mind didn’t mean completely discarding old ideas, but rather incorporating new ones.

I had loved someone so loyally, that when he was finally as cruel as I’d never known him to be capable of, only then did I really get it. He wasn’t going to change and I wasn’t going to try and make him. Ironically, when we arrived at the end to our 7-year saga, I gaped- watery-eyed- at a man it seemed had changed so remarkably from the man I fell in love with. But alas, I was the one who had changed, evolved so far past him that three tears were all I allowed to fill my murky bath water before getting up and toweling off. I had sloughed off my idealism to pragmatism. I had taken a hit, brushed myself off, and got right back up again.

I consider myself not Satan incarnated as the serpent that offered the forbidden fruit of infidelity to he whose mouth so watered for it, but likened myself more to an impassioned member of the garden itself. I am no femme fatale. Still, I really had no idea that people could be so cruel, but I’m glad that he was. It makes it that much easier to walk away from the dead weight of my former obsession. With not a scintilla of remorse, I have cast-off a die hard old habit for a promising new beginning.