night storm

I wake up with a start- who is next to me?
exhale
No one,
I move the covers to check,        no one
strange. Who was I expecting?
No One.
The porch curtains are flapping wildly outside my window, it feels like someone is out there rustling around.
My skin on my face is raw from the scrubbing, dented from sleeping, my hair is plastered in an aqua net pillow mohawk, the NKOTB sleeping bag zipper is touching my skin, I hate that touch.

It's still dark out, as I creep along the house, dressing and washing.
Several times I peek out the windows to see if someone is there, thick fabric drenched with rain is lifted and snapping in the winter air, the spray paint cans are all rearranged, like a robber jostled the paint table on his way out.

The storm is thrashing around the old house, it sounds like a box of junk being kicked.
It feels violent, broken things.
I find socks, I zip my boots.
I am surprised at my concern, the noise of the rain and wind is unsettling and my heart just jumps into  pounding

It's not frozen ice mornings any longer,
but the noise is heavy and new
it reminds me of early morning earthquakes in California, being caught in a storm at sea
cops coming to the house, kicking a box of red and blue lights and sirens.

This type of weather
 I think provokes freak accidents and crime, as I ride fast over the melted ice puddles I do a little mantra in my head, I make a bubble of safety around me and my bike. I haven't felt this sort of fear since Baltimore.
Heart racing and eyes darting was an everyday day
pot holes big as bathtubs, forties, plastic bag trees, and hubcaps in the road, tin garbage cans knocked over by rats as big as purse dogs.


I am safe here.

melted puddles, clean wet black streets
I always look in the same windows- the red room traced with Christmas lights, the kitchen window seal old bottles all lined up. It's like getting tucked into bed, I see these every morning,
 and I am calmer. Safer.
I breath hard when I finally get to the top of the hill, I forgot my inhaler- in my show bag from last night- that always happens, it's right in the gold bag,  mixed with the glittery make up.


I drink and drink and drink coffee. I try to let my chest relax and open,
I don't move or talk, I listen, I pray,
I try and become stillness

I try to begin again.

New year newness

I woke up full of dreams.
After being fed and fed coffee and coffee and hot chocolate too
I am back to sleep
this time on the curvy love seat, a cat nap spot at the foot of the bed.

I dream hard.
I am with her, walking into Central Park holding hands. Its a fall day, I think we skip some, or there is wind and we are happy.
Soon there are koi ponds all around, pathways and ditches, bridges and smooth rocks
we both watch the koi swirl and swirl under the glassy surface. We bounce over the ponds wildly,  like luck moves in, like giggling.
At one pond she picks me up and walks into it, her tail coats floating behind her like fins. She is holding me sideways, I am curled, my hair dangling, my high heel boots jutting out like daggers. Dry and sharp.
A Huge ancient koi whips around below. We are both surprised at him, massive gills moving inside the tiny pools.
The older women lounging in the water laugh and tell us all about the secrets there. It's not warm but they are very old and happy, spread out as if the sun cooed them into spreading out pancakes on a griddle.
I love the women and love being there with Johanna. We hold hands like a key inside a lock. It is creaky and engraved  and precious and simple. A piece that fits like a smooth stone sinking. slow. clean. soft.

I run into Lindsay from MICA. She is beautiful and is still with the same man she was dating seven years ago, they are holding hands. I hug her in that sophisticated white coat, I tell her I am so happy to see her, that I am happy for her move to Baltimore, happy happy.

In my waking life I am bundled on the love seat. I feel hungover, achey, saddish.

Not all my dreams feel so free. In my waking body I need.
My waking self sees snow falling, wears impossibly high glitter heels, spends all day exhaling, trying to feel a feeling, hoping to make a life that feels like jumping, that feels like gasping at the giant fish swirling.

thaw

light the candles
focus on one thing

a light moving on the dresser.

washed hands
get into the bed again.

the fingernail polish is shiny still, glittering.
the birds are chittering in the other room, all day long they act happy.
large sweaters hold you, under the covers you hold three white
 stuffed kittens
a bed full of stuffed critters and a cage of birds
like bumper bowling, keeping me out of the gutter balls
the sucking down

the all aloneness of everyday

one long braid and dark eyes closed
i imagine my skin soil breathing
i become seeds and grow and feel air and water and am a season
outside a human body all day long is right now

color instead

I forget how much I love painting
until that moment when it's mixed just right, the canvas is already thick enough to handle it
so much has already been said then deleted
the shapes are clearer and the hand is smarter and less spastic
then the stroke comes, that defines the space that was floating.
one dot makes her face believable.


It's not a great painting, but it's good enough for now. It keeps me working and 
lets the sadness strain through me. 
The working opens up the pores of the creature basin- and sweat pours out, like running the mile,
drenched
the toxins turn 
to deep grey, 
light pink,
a bright yellow, 
her purple-ish flesh.


Days like this I am restless.
The same song on repeat all day.
The candle flickers manic-ley on the green dresser.


I think about being under water with my gills breathing, and the type of tough skin, 
shark skin- try cutting through that with a knife, it's dense 
salt water is like air to me.
Under here I prefer the darker places, schools of fish are passing like conversations in the city
Here I can be alone
non verbal
hair like this is harder to cut too, try ripping seaweed with your bare hands


Submerged.
Cover me with the weight of the sea today
salt like air
no language just the heavy echo
inside a huge full womb


schools pass by and I hear nothing, I see only color:
deep grey, light pink, bright yellow, her purple-ish flesh.


Days like this I'm better off just thinking in color.
Just focus on the light and shadow.
I have water creature hands, they touch my wet face
tears are all around me this far down.

"suck my left one"

I woke up and could still feel it.
A tugging.
Like a long thick braid down your back, the weight of a ponytail swinging.
The baby I was nursing on my left breast was just like that, a ponytail piece of me.
It was faceless, nameless, sexless- just a part of myself nursing.

It wasn't
"my baby" as much as it was me with me.
In waking life I thought it odd that I was not terrified of it, of accidentally killing it.
But in the dream it was natural,  a thing to do, getting my nails done,  unlocking the front door, nursing a baby.
I held it with one arm while other dream activities happened around my head outside of me,
it nursed and once I fixed it back on when its kitten like mouth face unhooked from my nipple, like a bike pump "pfffffft" -ing off the skinny tire


I was not terrified
I was just a human acting like a human in a dream

If I could in real live life be guaranteed to have a kitten baby I would do it in a second.
A pink fluffy kitten without dander or poison claws or fleas.
Curled up in a circle, on my circle belly, a sleeping circle
sleeping.

quiet shapes and colors I can manage.

I can still feel the sleeping circle attached, my left arm shaped like a "U", my breast loaded with milk, a ghost weight hanging there.

traveling, upstate New York late summer 2010

naps and terrible coffee

I have been cranked out as a Seattle-ite at last,
I notice it most when I travel
it always takes getting away to see where you are
I see myself all the time now
call times and show times and opening nights and radio shows and new acts are nice, important,
exhale
it's just the more I do this life, live this life
I know I want more
that there is so much more, and the stress I have carried like a grey cartoon scribble above my head is useless

breathing plane air, ordering terrible 10 dollar room service coffee, having a busted pedicure, loosing my laminate, not knowing what town or hotel room I am in, tucking myself into a new bed of strait-jacket sheets every night, daytime wake-up calls to get my drag on.


Pregnant ladies in summer sandals at the airport in the south.
A full airplane applauding for the soldiers on board just home from war.
Children wearing matching shirts, a religious summer camp logo.
Grandparents standing as close as they can, watching their grandchildren go through security, they keep waving, the babies just learning to wave, they stand there forever.

Looking for gay people, lots of places I travel to I feel very alone.
People stare at me, its the pink hair, the pink tattoos, everyone assumes I am about 18 years old.

When I was a kid waitresses always asked if I wanted a kids menu, a booster seat, like my 2 younger sisters, 5  & 7 years younger than me. I would be pissed, almost 13, almost 15 years old and given three waxey crayons and a paper menu.

I see families in the airports, on the New Jersey shore, dining in Casino Buffets and it feels so out of reach.
It's usually a ginormous turn off, copious amounts of consumerism, small town America deep fried in it's own sloth and ignorance, usually I shudder and pray for the arty ones, the little queer kids and hope they are safe and find community and a place to breathe.
Other times I am jealous, of families.
How I feel unable and cut off from that life: gays over here. straights over there.
outcasts alone forever in bars, online dating and pride parades,
and the main stream- they are down in the books with legit lives and legit laws, they make babies and have showers- with stupid games and get pastel crap, have weddings and toast with engraved champagne glasses. Buy homes, train for marathons, go to the cabin for holiday, keep a spare key in a frog by the door.

I know that no one ever "gets it"
you do it till you die

try try
try
harder

a million bright lights and faces staring at me
 watching me hit with stage lights, inside music and behind the third wall

sweat running down my back, lips stuck to my teeth in an open smile shape

making culture I tell myself

I have millions of ideas to give birth to, that's what I began saying as a teenager
too much work to do in this life

This morning in the other hotel I watched some reality thing about a girl who didn't know she was pregnant till she was giving birth and saw the babies head and ear.

I am 27 now, there is a bunch of this world I have not yet explored.
I tend to feel super alone when I travel, but perhaps this is the state that is most realistic for my generation, my culture, demographic.
The modern way.  

Sometimes I see strangers and I want to just love them, I want to crawl inside their lives
 I want to roll around in it, I want my hair to smell like them.
I feel like there are millions of people living inside me, sleeping still,
I could start over and create a new life, scrap this project

get a new sketch book

try again

become a baby
learning how to wave.

Houston, Texas

ACCOMMODATIONS: 

Our  hotel is smooth cool concrete carefully cut with expensive paint and light fixtures. Tall corridors of sleek, the smell of art.

Outside it is Texas, covered in concrete that is burning like a stove set on high, the cinnamon bun swirl blazing neon orange.

Step out the whooshing glass doors and it is thick hot air that holds you, gets into your bones and pulls the sweat out, beads pumped out- machine sweat.

Everyone says "yall"  here, which is so sweet and human sounding. 

My ears change as I travel and listen to so many voices, every accent slipping a little note under my door- surprising me, reminding me.

THE VENUE:  

It's a million degrees outside still, I walk into the huge fright elevator with my costume bag and Richard with his, it is a bit cooler. It's here that my eyes shoot open and narrow in, on to this elevator person who is taking us up... 

It happens to my whole body. 

Not Many People Have 

This Affect On Me. 

It's not a situation I have cognitive control over: The universe of chakras align, hormones buzz, mind jumps out the window.  Aura glows- spreads out like  pancake batter on the greased pan, expanding, creeping closer, solidifying.

Becoming.

This forming is serious, becomes tactile, it will need to be attended to- first watched, then carefully flipped. 

It now has a life of it's own. Wanting sets in like fire, give it oxygen and it's off. Whoosh, ablaze.

She is breathing and lives in and over me.  A cobra hood reaching around my human sized head, directing my motions. She makes me breathe hotter, she is the one that has this power, running inside my veins moving me closer. Sizzling my skin to the edge of the square pan. A new shape. A mission.

I am in the freight elevator, feet in heels standing on the industrial silver metal flooring. Huge doors open up and down like a monster mouth. In all this ridiculous make up and sprayed-put-fake and real hair, l feel like a popped off carnival head, dropped down the gutter, now bobbing inside the monster belly.

Where am I?  In Texas somewhere. Elevator. Hotel. Plane. Bus. Hotel. Green Room. Stage. Green Room. Hotel. Bus plane stage hotelbus stage greenroomplanebusstagebushotel... In this particular freight elevator everything stops for me.

THE ELEVATOR:

The cobra is booming and focused. My body is buzzing, my teeth, buzzing close to the ledge jumping brain. 

He is thin in the corner, huge glasses, leaning on the road case, eyes, deer eyes, staring at the mouth doors. 

He is ice cream sandwich beautiful, skinny, serious unicorn person. Seeing him is like that- you don't believe it's real

make-believe stubbornly before you, eyes blink blink.

No sound will leave your mouth, just a buzzing body.

There is a tiger staring at me on his bending and straightening elbow. Up and down on the elevator I see him, he is magic shaped as a human.

Over and over he moves big things and I stare, inside me every chakara is spinning wildly, I am levitating.

I remind myself to breathe, I am terribly aware of every corner of the room, the backstage area where my quick change is set up. 

The back of my head is watching, waiting for him to pass by. The room is all black and I am laying out my costumes, one piece at a time, black and blue fabric with little sparkles. I count all the pieces and keep my behind eyes open. 

Waiting,  like a hunter in the dark- He is Full Color. Glowing Sandwich. My mouth is salivating, rehab heart relapsing, clicking and clacking around in my heels. 

I am terrified to speak to him, I am mute as a clown, a bobble head with four eyes watching, floating.

Unable to speak to the elevator ice cream sandwich boy.

It was just an elevator, inside another blurry venue

but inside this one,  

was

this 

boy 

with an elbow 

and these deer eyes , huge bulky glasses, 

skinny sweaty tiny magic of a human with a hidden trap door  

I fell down it, the moment I stepped in that elevator

I got lost 

in him.