Commission work

I haven't posted much in a while because I've been busy working on commissions.

The ants go marching one-by-one...

The ants have invaded. It’s summer, technically spring. I hate killing ants. It is so underserved. They are innocent. Slaves to instinct. Sometimes I think there’s a freedom in that. I spray their line with bathroom cleaner and watch them all instantly wither up and hope that they somehow can’t feel it. Then I wonder if a millisecond of pain for an ant is like a year of pain for a human, since ants are so much smaller than us…which I know probably doesn’t make any scientific sense. When I told a guy I kinda dated for a week or so about this he asserted that they certainly did feel pain. He said it in a way that made me wonder if he wanted me to feel even worse, but I think he just stated things very matter-of-factly in general. I often confuse straight-forwardness with dick-ish-ness, I’m a sensitive gal. But I can get pretty preachy about the value of honesty, so I guess I shouldn’t get so wounded when people tell me the truth. The ants probably do feel it.

I have found one source of entry and exodus for the ants…a hole…a tunnel rather, leading too and fro the outside world, to the hill, to the queen. I like the idea of matriarchal societies, but as I watch the ants scurry about in highly organized lunacy, following the chaotic trails marked by previous braver, maybe more frightened ants, I can’t help but see the obvious parallels in human culture. The comparison has been made a time or two before…I’ve lost the part of my ego that believed I could ever say something original at this point in human history, in my own history, in the present.

I covered up their talc tunnel with a band-aid and watched as all the confused ants started piling up at the blockade. It began with two ants and quickly became 15 or more. They were moving about scared and baffled, still somewhat in a line formation, like the bank lines of 1929. I felt so awful. I considered removing the band-aid and granting them their still-indentured freedom, but instead I just sprayed them all. I felt like an executioner shooting off a murderous line of fire. I just annihilated them one after another. I started thinking about Arendt’s “banality of evil” yet I had real feelings on the matter, terrible feelings. Crippling guilt mixed with a weird sense of thrill, which didn’t sit well with my own hopes that maybe I’m an intrinsically good person. No, I’m good and bad, like everyone else. But I want to be good, as good as I can be.

Since then the ant population has declined with the aid of some sort of device my dad gave me as well as the band-aid. I know they’ll be back though. And the cycle of weird murderous excitement and subsequent terrible guilt will continue

Post-shattering the unswept floor.

I hold onto false ideas. Conceptions I have of the past that travel with me through time. Friendships with people I never communicate with…people who could die and I might not even find out. The comfort is there that comes from a lost intimacy I cling to, that’s dead. Holding me back from a tabula rasa, because I feel like I’ve already lived a lot of life. I guess that's kind of a paradox. And now I keep on truckin’ along like the little engine that plateaued. Memories foggy and intertwined and non-linear and non-sensical are losing their magic, losing their details, losing their gusto. And I wonder, what can I do to maintain that sense of wonder, that sense of self, in an existence that’s grown dull and unimagined. But my imagination is still there, killing me softly, good memories with past lovers who hurt me, people that I hurt too. Haunting me constantly, the good times, the comfort, the closeness, the love. It’s gone.

And I fail sometimes at strength. So often I feel weak. I text him and of course he doesn’t respond. I wonder how the fish I gave him died. Did he flush it down the toilet live, or did he just forget about it and starve the little guy to death? The beta fish. Carolina blue, that was his team. I asked him once if the fish was still alive and he said “no”. That didn’t give me a lot of closure. If he flushed it down the toilet alive, that would be a pretty good metaphor, a cheap metaphor, for everything that was and then wasn’t so quickly.

And I almost wasn’t and I want that person to feel like shit. But I don’t even think he cares.

And I say the Zoloft did it.

I say it was “medical mal-practice”.

My heart has been broken. I am so fucking broken. I want to think the pieces could make for a beautifully abstract mosaic, but really I still just feel like all the pieces are on a dirty floor some where in hell.

Maybe if I just let go of all the experiences that have lead to my sense of self, my sense of being, my identity…maybe if I just let it all go, I could live anew.  People I never speak to, they aren’t here. Their role in my life is dead and gone though they may live on.

I just wish I didn't have to dream about him. I wish I just could never sleep.

And it's not just one person. It's a collage of people. Beautiful moments that have left a bad taste in my mouth. And my body just feels icky, impure, and I know it's unfair. I shouldn't have to feel that way about myself. But I do. All of these naked phantoms leaving a sort of film on the entirety of me. Sticking around long after the person is gone, reminding me to hate myself. And I'm unable to hate the people that made me feel this way. Wishing they'd come back around and feeling stupid for feeling that way. No calls. No texts. No emails. No social media interaction. Dead. Nothing. 

Un-Apparitions

I think I hear ghosts

And then I realize

It’s just this or that

Nonliving, animate objects

Clanking about

Or Screeching

Like convicts

In solitary confinement

Scarecorws

Unrealizing the fear

They give me

In the night

The heater, the floors

The wind

I’m easily spooked

And even more easily

Nauseated.

I thought it all started

After that attempt I made

To not exist

In the world I know.

But now I think it began before.

Dry heaving into trashcans,

Spitting out my empty attempts

To release the  bad unfeelings

Manifestations of emptiness

There wasn’t anything there

To purge

Just an invisible sadness

Broken glass

Phantom Vomit

Ghosts of people

Out there in the world

Moving about,

Living their lives.

I’m scared of everything.

I hide behind the sofa

In my dead grandmother’s house

Sold long ago

To Strangers

I hide there in hopes that

I’ll never have to hear of pain

Or see road kill

Or learn about more atrocities.

I guard myself from such things

Always knowing,

With so much nausea,

That security is a silly word

Manufactured improperly

At a bullet proofing factory

That shut down centuries back

Due to various issues

And I find myself forgetting to breath

In the most physically trying of my experiences

Like climbing to the third floor of my apartment building

Once a dormitory for nuns

Who worked as nurses in a hospital that burnt down

The same year as the Asylum did

Where Zelda Fitzgerald was kept

From the world

I hold my breath every time I ascend

The stairway to my little habitat

And as I enter,

I take in giant gasps of air

Like a drowning person resurrected

Winded with thoughts of death and dying

I shouldn’t think about the simplicity of death,

Or the torture of it all

The toil of living

The toil of dying

Every time I walk up those stairs

I should probably just try to remember to breath,

I unintentionally mock the ghosts

When I take those first giant breaths
Upon entering my home.

Scorsese Moon Landing

Xx: Have you ever been to the moon?

Xy: Nope, can’t say that I have, have you?

Xx: Nope.

Xy: What kind of a question is that anyway?

Xx.: I guess it’s the kind of question that asks someone if they’ve been to a place.

Xy: You know what I mean.

Xx: Well I went to this stand-up show recently and the guy was talking about how stupid the expression “shoot for the moon is” because only twelve people have ever walked on it. But I thought hmmm maybe Mark could’ve been one of those people. There’s a chance right?

Xy: Well I took a statistics class once and there can be a probability for anything’s chance of happening

Xx: why did you tell me you took a statistics class?...that was kind of unnecessary support for what you said.

Xy: Well why the fuck did you ask me if I’d ever been to the moon?

Xx: I was just curious

Xy: You’ve known me for 2 years, Sadie.

Xx: Yeah well, you could’ve withheld that information…maybe it was a traumatic experience for you

Xy: I think you just want people to think you’re weird, so you feel this need to be absurd all the time

Xx: well that doesn’t make any sense.

Xy: yes it does.

Xx: nothing that is absurd is rational, and acting absurd to keep the facade up that I’m weirder than I actually am is pretty rational

Xy:  First of all, absurdity is often highly rational...and GOOD GOD You’re like Zooey Deschanel, you’re so damn quirky that it’s just not cute anymore, it’s a caricature, it’s just annoying

Xx: Bluh, fuck you, are you in love with me? let’s go eat some fried quail egg and horse radish sandwiches from that really sketchy food truck that always makes me shit my pants.

Xy:  Alright, Buzz Aldrin.

Xx: Of course you’d choose that guy over Neil. You’re super original.

Save the Worms

My neighbor and I went running in the cold rain at the high school track recently. I couldn't run very long, I’m pretty out of shape. But damn it felt nice to run in the rain. It was a couple of days subsequent to my release from the psych ward after a suicide attempt. I did a ton of aerobics and air boxing in that prison of a place to pass the time, I really felt like I was getting in better shape, but there’s a good chance it takes more than a couple of weeks to be a workout rockstar.

My neighbor does CrossFit so she was kicking ass. Not my ass in particular; I decided pretty early on that it wasn't a competition. I’m a sore loser anyhow. She was running up and down the bleachers after sprinting a couple of miles around the track with incredibly sexy endurance. My neighbor is one of those people whose lifestyle choices are all about good health and longevity. She’s gluten free, soy-free, dairy-free, alcohol-free, tasty deliciousness free. But she’s almost always depressed. Funny how that works out. But I mean no judgment behind that (who am I kidding? I’m obviously being judgy)..all I mean to say is that goddamn it is hard to find a happy place and stay there.  At least she does things in hopes of living a long, healthy life. I am a bit more destructive than that. 

I would run for 30 seconds at a time…stop…power walk for 15 seconds…followed by some lunges just to catch my breath but still look like I was doing something.

While bending my front knee down into a lunge, I noticed an earthworm on the track…I picked it up with a bit of a wiggly jiggly struggle and gently tossed it into the field of grass. Then I started walking around with my head down, looking to see if there were more of these ill-fated, against-their-will sun baskers. There were. A lot. Not a creepy apocalyptic plague amount…just enough to make me feel sad for the sun to come out. I began obsessively picking them up and throwing them into the grass and I couldn't stop. I felt that I should save all the worms because I just tried to kill myself.  I wanted to make sure nothing less atrocious than my own demons should be murdered by the trap of man made material. So I went around bending down and pinching up these innocent little wiggly limbless creatures. 

Earthworms are good, They are like cells of our bodies healing us and keeping us well. They are the guardians and aides to the priceless soil.  They do it because that’s what they do, it is there occupation, their purpose, what they were designed to do, and to do well. Wouldn’t it be nice if humans did beneficial duties with complete blindness to the outcome…an ego-less life long career of earthly betterment. Laura came down from the bleachers and asked me what I was going. In a moment of utter mania I yelled “I HAVE TO SAVE THE WORMS, ALL OF THE WORMS! THEY MUST LIVE!”. She’s used to me and my energized mood swings and oddness, so she just laughed gently, said “okey dokey” and continued running.

When she lapped around again to the part of the track that I was de-worming, I asked her “so are you going to tell Ben about this?” Ben is her quiet, somewhat jack ass-ish husband who’s approval as a fellow intelligent human I will never outright receive. Still somehow, I think he likes me from a far, or is at least mildly amused by me. I wanted him to know about the worms. He thinks Laura’s crossfit dedication is whacky and cultish , so I thought the juxtaposition of her running and my resting heartbeat “save the worms” mission would be funny to him. And I always want people to think I’m funny.

[She later told me his response to my action was “well exercise is really boring anyway”. True that.]

After she passed by me again and I got back into personal reflection mode as I searched for more worms, I realized a part of me was performing this gesture so that I could tell people about it, so that I could have something to write about. I had an underyling motive that was not all pure. Sometimes I do strange things for the sake of having something to draw about or write about. I don’t like that I do that. Living in the moment is something all these people keep telling me to do…

-Appreciate each day!

-Carpe Diem! Life is beautiful!

-Life is a gift!

-You’re a Gift!

-Don’t leave us. Don’t do that again. You are loved.

-You have meaning, purpose.

^The funny thing is that I’m realizing this is all true.

In my second attempt, not too long after my worm search, my dad, like my roommate earlier, found me in a bath of my own blood, totally fucked up from an overdose. I threw up a bunch, we wrapped up my arms, neck and ankles, I ate some activated charcoal, drank salt water and went to bed. And here I am. In the words stiched on my favorite pair of socks: Carpe the fuck out of that Diem.  

I want to be alive. I stopped taking all the anti-psychotic crap they forced on me and for the first time in nearly 2 years I want to live, and I feel that I have something to live for.

Suicide, unlike worm search, was not at all an impure action. I wanted to die. I wanted to have peace. I didn’t want something to write about, I didn’t want to write anymore, I didn’t want to paint anymore, I didn’t want to exist anymore.

At this point, I must go on. I want to go on. I want to keep making art.

And does it matter that I wanted to write about the worms?  I did just that and it felt damn good.

Let's get digital, digital.

Grandmother Clock

Fading Youth

Young faces look strange to me now. Like babies; infantile, inexperienced and innocent. I want to just shake the bearer of a youthful visage and shout "you have so much to learn! So much fearfulness to swallow, so much cynicism to develop...why not just inherit it all from this shake instead of having to bear it yourself? All the rawness, the grotesque side of all other humans, the atrociousness within yourself..."

I want to just high-five these young girls as a means to jolt them forward into "maturity" so that the coming years can be managed free of naivety and full of good reason and wisdom. But no, they too must go through it all to learn that life is hard, that life is beautiful.