project outline

alone here in the home
sore eyes tender
a layer has been shed
I wake up early everyday at 6am for crying
my bed says only horizontal feelings
tear ear
stop thinking and go back to sewing
sew a thing pull it together stranger

I cant make it outside, so I open the door and allow the world sounds in
Buses whizz by, black crows cawing, air, music from rolled down windows, kids walking home, jogger feet, trees moving, sun happening
this opening
this is progress.

I wake up everyday and trace over the outline backwards and forwards
using every pen I can find in the kitchen drawers, in my purses, under the couch, in jars and left on the porch.
Every mark smells different. charcoal, fat candy markers, fine point sharpie, a freshly sharpened pencil.
the image is so familiar it unrecognizable
I am investigating
my face and hands come and go

in this state I am invisible land

horizontal still

anatomy of loss

Vines cover this house in shades of transparent green.

Alive with air and small bugs and tiny suction cups- holding the crawly earth to the wooden box, hugging it, death grip tendrils woven around the windows like Kleenex box cozies.

When you are always cold you forget skin has the ability to relax, smooth across the driftwood bones like melted frosting.

They say lungs are associated with loss.

Breathing

the involuntary oxygen action

Loss

the involuntary suffering state

we never wanna lose a thing

even when we try and deny the feelings or affect

it's still gone, the thing that was lost that we no longer have

Lungs and Loss

why did my breathing stop

?

This house is a block tied up in the toe of green fishnets

inside here I am inside outside

I crank the heat all winter, spring and into summer in Seattle

I refuse to be homeless in my home

My lungs stopped working

when I lost my home

my mom

my self

my loss left me empty of air

for 13 years I have been trying to calm them, the spasming, heaving, aching, tight and terrible lungs.




When I lost it all I lost my oxygen,

they say it's the trauma

the organ

the actions

caused the

organ

to malfunction




I do much better in the heat

when the skin pulled across my chest radiates with heat

a heart inside a vine house gets hotter

lungs release and open

everything opens and one million tears pour out of the houses upstairs windows

the hot rain traces the vines cross hatching the home

when everything is open the furniture inside takes shape

one can begin to make out the color and patterns

it's all soaking and salty

but sturdy under that hot water

a few receipts and wrappers flow out the windows

and lodge themselves like paper flowers in the vine maze along the walls.

She looks like a lady in a dress.

People see it that way, beautiful, decorated, floral.




when it's hot the house breathes

the velvet cushions hold water year round

the floor is warped in a crimped hair kinda way

when it's hot my vine house gets hotter

there is water and furniture lodged in the lungs

the loss left them twitching

a salt water fish left heaving on the dock
flipping flipping then just
heaving

 her lungs were loss

at home here

home.
From the perspective of the house, I can see it would be confusing, the beaten up wheels of the luggage always banging down the back stairs, the doors always slammed and locked.
Slammed and Locked.
leaving.
She talks so much about it, embroidered into her aprons and socks and coat tags. Hidden in love notes pressed between the pages like a butterfly preserved, corpse bookmark
It's always the topic she returns to.
A globe spinning, the little finger always seems to stop it in the same place, a little mark, like tracks on the yoga mat, worn out.
home
always the same spinning and stopping. a Smudge.

Homelessness can't be so terrible?? there are always trash bags and takeout boxes to be had- rain gear! dinner! what else do yo need?!  Shoes with laces or without, and even CD players can be found just sitting around on street corners, by a bus stop, maybe an EZ-Boy...

I get why it could seem crazy even,
all the going.
You see the trim, the floor the spreads out like an ocean, the curves of the lady furniture, a white counter, a red glowing dot on the stereo.
It looks like a house. Solid.
Windows painted shut. The hum of a fridge.

She looks like a person.

Just grab that doll and stick her in the nursery, on the top floor, put her in the yellow crib and turn off the miniature lights.
She's in the house. It's a house and she's a person. Turn off the lights or I'm going to give you something to cry about.

Being inside is nothing.
floating
locks on doors that look like the necks of birds, beaks, painted and chipped, spotted birds.
horizontal
bare footed,
just leave her in the snow, on the boat with the sharks, just turn on the t.v. for them.
sell her lady furniture
put on another sweater if your that cold.
weave your hair into a basket, we all need to do our part around here.

home
she looks like
a home
I mean a person

There is such a nice view from this window. You are so lucky yo live here.
Everyone must be so jealous, you can see everything from here.

flying to the West

last day in Thailand...I don't want to go home, I want to sweat forever here with dirty bare feet, matted curly hair and freckles connecting.
What was I looking for?
Why was is terrible?


We fly to Phuket from Chiang Mai, to Korea, to Seattle.

My heart is hotter here, in the East.
my fingers look different now.
My eyes are wider and the asthma has melted away
my bones are calm, I am going home

a pink girl in Thailand

Pink must be a color that attracts and targets little girls world wide.
Shopping in the upper level of a stuffy department / swap meet type store today in Trang I had a trail of little girls following me around.

Everyone seems very excited by my pink tattoos. They move their hand up and down making the poking motion with wide eyes, asking me "is it a tattoo?"
I nod yes and rub my skin real hard showing that it does not rub off and make a face in pain answering "yes, it is a tattoo, it hurt".
I bought a pink splatter paint shirt at that store for a friend, but as soon as I returned to the cozy B and B type hotel we are staying at I instantly put it on, it felt so good having my over exposed shoulders covered.

In Seattle my body never sees the sun. It sees lots of stage lights and photographers flashes but sun, no way. My Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Spanish, German & Canadian skin is pastie-olive, with a thin film of freckles and only one colorless mole, right above my lip like a cartoon character beauty mark.
My skin collects more freckles with the sun and I collect tattoos, pink, purple, maroon and red ones, usually when I travel, places I have lived.
I have seen beautiful all black tattoos on the dark naked backs of Thai men here. Their skin is like melted chocolate toffee swirl. The women are thin and powerful, the children are so beautiful I want to take them home in woven baskets and feed them peeps and attach pastel bows to them. So cute like baby animals on Easter, waaaaaay cuter than Jesus, so much cuter than chicks.

I smile at everyone and they all smile back. I love the people here, the town we are in is small and we are the only Americans. Today on top of a mountain we walked slowly around the Chinese Temple. Inside the air was thick with incense, waxy amber walls seemed to drip in the heat, and statues loaded up with garlands and beads filled the Temple that architecturally looked like a warehouse meets a commissary.  Quin Yin and other Goddesses I did not know posed grandly next to large silver industrial sized sinks and huge floor drains. The children inside the sweaty Temple fallowed me around.
Outside a few men "asked" to take pictures of me. I "said" yes and posed with them. When the tuk-tuk putted off they kissed their hands and blew kisses at me.

Later at a little basket shop we bought drinking water. A big monsoon type downpour began as we left the Buddhist Temple. By the time the three of us pulled up soaking wet we were dying of thirst still, covered in rain and sweat now. The women who worked at the shop where very interested in me, despite my soggy appearance. Two girls introduced themselves to me, they were both 18 years old and dressed like professional airline attendants.
I seemed so much younger than them in my drippy pink hair, see-though pink baby-doll dress and pink flip flops. 
I feel very young here. I feel so old here.

Thailand, Trang, night time.

feeling the body with this much sweat
like sitting in a hot pool, perfectly still you cannot feel the water
not dry not wet
 a liquid body made up of liquid and heat
on the bus from Puket to trang I looked at my hands for a long time
imagining how lifeless hands look
like a strangers once the soul leaves
it seems your soul fills out the shape you are
your hand acts like you.

Outside this internet cafe the waterfall drips over the stone carving of a naked goddess. 

my body moves thorugh this city like a white lady, my hips sway too much, my hair grows too long, my skin is very white.

My pink dress is soaked through, lizards are crawling franticly all over the ceiling, iced coffee is turning my heart into a crazy bird in a small cage.
It is Sunday and a lesbain was spotted in the shoe store.

Thailand: take my sandpaper feelings

It is spring in seattle and my skin is crawling, I am always freezing all over.
Tomorrow I leave for Thailand.
I am going to bury myself in the sand and stay there.
I am going to stare at the sun and cry.
What to do with this body? It carries heavy sandbags of sadness inside it, I try and untie them and drop them off the side of the bridge
I wanna hear them splash and sink into the water below.

fish can eat those things.

It always goes like this-
 from EVERYTHINGeverything Everything
to
just me,
 with all these ridiculously heavy bags
6 months is a long time like this
one year is a long time
27 years is a long time
being in a body
am I still fresh? Will I get tastier or spoil?
It's strange that this flesh is alive, it wont just rot, it's living and existing on its own, regardless of my thoughts about humanness, being inside a body, feeling more like a terrible dream with three million confusing characters,  made up of stories, none having bodies...
it will still grow, age, be a body in all sorts of body like ways

and inside I can feel like a sheet of paper
crumbled and blowing along a fence

just wind and dust paper sounds.

I will bury my body in the sand
I will close my eyes and turn to paper