LOVER

Dearest

I just got out of the shower & put makeup on so I could, for the first time in 2 days, go outside into the world of commerce - pick up my new biz cards, get laundry detg, get pet supplies - and now that makeup is wet from crying. Fine. My people hardly seem to remember that I'm out here, afloat/moored, and then there's the 2300 kids who have disappeared since the hurricane - who remembers them? They haunt me they haunt me all day and all night.

And every moment is a strange stringy webby quiet arid cave. I miss my home and city and job and people and ways deeply, hotly, constantly. It's the constant constant ache I had after Arun died. My bones are crying. But my eyes, they rarely cry. Usually I can't cry unless someone outside of me recognizes my loss. The real estate woman who got me my apt - Jody - she cried when I told her how amazing it will be to have a home again. So I cried a little. But it felt brassy. Now I am crying and it barely slicks the iron I have had to shore myself up with just to get this far. A scaffolding of wet shiny rusty iron. And I've hardly gotten anywhere at all.

I have no job! I have a studio which I'll begin paying for in January. I have an apt which I'll begin paying for in January. And I don't have a job & know that finding a job right now before the holidays is ludicrous. I sold some art & that'll go toward my studio. But look, I don't want a job! I don't want to interact with strangers! I want to make coffee for Herman and put together exhibitions and work on his book. I am resisting this change hardest of all. Like how I keep wanting the year back that I lost when I was being systematically raped. At 42, I still want that year back. Kicking and screaming! And it's gone. So much is gone, is here. And I can hardly wrap my brain around that much less pick a direction to move in and go after a job.

I picked Austin like a fucking blind beggar. And yes, in many ways it's the exact right choice & Austin wants me and I can do alot here. I'm already here and I'm not even here yet. I live in New Orleans in Austin Texas and they're writing about me in the papers and they're talking about me in the living rooms, I know - they've told me. Yahoo. There are so many things, I see them, I'm not that blind really, that are beautiful here. And I'll make it, I'll make it make sense. But my heart is BROKEN. I'm not some broken winged bird I'm a screaming crow. And it's broken.

So I'm moving into an APARTMENT COMPLEX. I'm stunned, really. It's an honest-to-goodness one bedroom apartment. No extra pockets or windows or attic entrys to discover. No back yard. No patio even. No more double shotgunning it, no more hovel-living, no more mysterious shadows or lights or fogs. It's clean & clear & straight. Like an arrow. And for what it is, oh it's good. As usual, I got what I need, what will work best for me here, what is most suitable for me here. Wood floors, gas range. But it's AN APARTMENT in an APARTMENT COMPLEX. I just can't, I just wonder at how I'm going to breathe? How will I not suffocate? Parts of me that have been able to just ... shy away are going to be asked to muscle up. I'll do it but I don't know if I want to and for christ's sake: it's hard to be alone all the time. It's hard to not be in New Orleans. It's hard to keep my cat from getting depressed. It's hard to watch my dog slowly eek towards death. It's hard to stay aimed forward.

So. I am still in the liminal - between there and here. And I'm not fighting it. I'm letting myself just sit in it. I'm active within it but I'll tell ya, this past week I've just let myself STOP. I've been sleeping & doing the tons of pwork that the hurricane evacuee has to do & sleeping & watching cable & walking Annie in our big Dell field. I've been quiet and the shower I just took? It's my first in like, 3 days. Because I'm sick. My lungs, they're full of bacteria. I'm taking antibiotics. Me, antibiotics. !!??! . I'm napping and not even reading a fucking book. I don't have to do anything else right now and I'm making my ambition, my desire to MAKE, take a fucking nap. Because I need to rest. And it's lonely and it's savage and it's dead quiet. I play cd's. I eat crabcakes from the Joe's Crab Shack (!?!) right behind my hotel. I get them to-go. I feel like a war victim, I feel like nothing at all.

I know I just made all that art & stunned even myself & all that but I feel like nothing at all. And that's what that new work is about, the THE that is nothing, that is homelessness, that is flood.

But no, I'm not hand-writing much in my journal and I'm not eating pumpkin anything or smashing anything. I'm just napping and walking and doing the least bit I have to do to get by. I have MAJOR panic attacks when I think about my financial security, my future, my health, my old-age. I am terrified, how will I take care of myself? I jump at shadows, I catch my breath at flashes of light in my peripheral vision. There's so much to decide and I just miss my house. I miss feeling like a grown woman in a grown house moving toward a goal that was uncompromising. What now? I've been shot out of a cannon, someone here said. What's the name of the performer who gets shot out of the cannon? Please tell me my name?!!! I'm out here, you know? I didn't want to be out here but I am. Can somebody at least just tell me my name?"

GUERO

I got an apartment today. An apartment in an apartment complex, that's the way here, in East Austin. Cherrywood, they call it, the neighborhood. Lots of restaurants and the oldest pub in the city, ballfields, empowered Hispanics & African Americans, galleries, karoke pub, taquerias.

I signed the lease on an apartment, one bedroom, wood floors, gas range, in an apartment complex that's 2 stories high, painted Boston Baked Bean I call it, with an over-large swimming pool, picnic tables, laundry. My rent includes water/gas/trash/and high speed internet and it's the same as I was paying in New Orleans. It's, mmm, a 15 minute bike ride from my studio. A hop, skip, & jump to Ana & Zack's.

It's an apartment in an apartment complex that has a very good soulful feeling. I will live in it with a tub and ceiling fans, in Cherrywood East Austin. I live here now I guess. It won't feel real till I turn the key, make the bed, and do that repeatedly for about oh 7 months. I can't move in until Jan 1st but I'm fine w/that. I mean, who could beat that symbolism? And really, who wouldn't want to spend Christmas Eve in the Round Rock Hampton Inn?

Manor And Poquito

Like an ordinary person, I dream, I wake. This morning, again, my cat Sif was alive. And I was back in that French/Irish cloister with the water that kept growing. There were snakes and bystanders, a horse and a man. Oh her patience is wearing thin. Let's pull out the maps and strike up a plan.

- Cinnamon/ylang ylang
- Thumper pyjamas
- "You had big plans for us," said the weasly fella, his short-term memory making it possible for him to blank out his role in the whole deal as well.
- Jody Foster likes me
- Antibiotics
- Curry
- The coffee I'm going to drink this morning is going to change everything
- You're it
- Beethoven's 9th, the darker wilder version
- It wasn't her it was him
- Joaquin Phoenix?

I'm Not Throwin

I had no idea that there would be a place put my experiences with N'Orlns men up on high. I mean really. I had no idea how good it was or why. And I still don't. All's I know is men, y'all a mystery to me. And N'Orlns men, I know you at least. You take some risks, you don't go hysterical, always up for a good adventure. And Austin men? Well well well. I just can't say. Seem's they're ... ninnys. I mean, seems men here in Austin? Really really not ready for me. And you know? It's not just "Austin men", it's men, still. Not ready for me. It's not that men in N'Orlns are so advanced or anything, just their way of dealing with me, it got familiar. But let's get right down to it: I scare them all, I don't understand any of 'em. So it's me. It's a N'Orlns woman. It's me, a N'Orlns woman, here, there, everywhere, just ... freaks them the shit out. Ok. Alright. Ok.

Thank god for Dewalt drills, apartment finders, telephones, aeroplanes, cigarettes, keys, jacuzzis, my driving skills, and most of all: thank god for my thick skin and delusions of grandeur. Otherwise. I'd just be another broke bird, now wouldn't I be.

Tonight I was remembering how my Uncle Ron taught me how to throw a punch. A real punch, Golden Gloves boxer he was. By the side of the house between ours & the Berents. Took me out there after one Thanksgiving, said, "Girl. You're gonna need to know how to throw a proper punch." And showed me. I loved my Uncle Ron. He used to save mama kittys pregnant and welfare mamas too. I loved him painfully. All you could ever do to thank him was bake a batch of honest to good chocolate chip cookies, put them in an empty Maxwell House coffee can, leave them on his porch. That man. Thumb on the outside, otherwise it could break. And duck. Duck. The ducking's what throw's your opponent off. So I'm ducking to this day. Maybe if I'd let them connect, leave a bruise, enjoy the sensation of their fist upon my face you know? Maybe then they'd calm the fuck down. But what can I say? I am my Uncle Ron's girl.

holiday shopping

Erie Church, this is for you. Rhoden, for obvious reasons, this is for you. I got this for you, Dar. Meesh, I've got them lined up to pen "It Stinks, I'm Depressed, It's Home" for you. D. Shit, et vous. And the rest, well, gimme time.

Thanksgiving

1. Christine and I cooked a turkey together once
2. The ceiling fan Bob put in my bedroom
3. The passion-flower vines I resurrected in my backyard, how every night at some odd inbetween time like 7:16 they would excrete their fragrance at top volume but you had to be there lying in the dense damp grass breathing it in just then in order to get hit with the full power of it all, the tin shed, the moon always somewhere, seagulls high high high in the sky.
4. Gentilly Christmas light driving with David Rhoden
5. Champagne
6. When Lee gets really really sarcastic/drinking tea & eating Snickerdoodles with Lee at my lovely white wooden kitchen table
7. Dancing loa with Sallie Ann
8. New Year's Eve bonfire in Mid-City with Wendy
9. Christmas morning snow on my way to Michelle's! None of her pictures came out! We had a cocktail at The Columns and exchanged gifts. Christmas morning with Michelle.
10. The Black Bonnets show Dec 20th at Circle Bar, singing those Christmas carols especially that Everly Brothers one that was so grim.
11. Rehearsing said songs at Brothers Three & slaughtering them cuz they paid us in whisky
12. Mirabeau
13. Getting Herman's new website done
14. Dorignac's
15. My lakefront walks with Annie at 7 a.m. all year round
16. Being able to be with my cat Sif when she died
17. "Natural Disaster" exhibiton at ACME
18. The Reigning Sound
19. Dancing in my living room with Andrew, David, or whoever
20. Photoshop
21. That borscht I make
22. That one pumpkin bread I made for Herman that one time that was so perfect
23. Fishnets
24. Jenny Bagert on Mardi Gras day
25. Allie on Mardi Gras day
26. Jane on Mardi Gras day
27. Dancing with Herman to the Klezmer's at d.b.a. Mardi Gras night
28. Prison tats
29. The jukebox at the Saint
30. The jukebox at Circle Bar
31. Thoth!
32. The one month or so when Hil & John's Zenith phonograph was mine
33. The night Andy came over w/all his vinyl in the trunk of his car & we had a wild all-night memory lane record listening wine party

34. Cold drip iced coffee toddys
35. Votive candles
36. Sandalwood incense
37. My sense of direction
38. The animals we did save
39. My 1990 Mazda 323 w/no a/c & driver's side window stuck up
40. Eyeglasses
41. Cell phones
42. MACs
43. Keeping romance alive
45. Working for Herman for 3 years
46. Cucumbers in rice wine vinegar w/thinly sliced vidalias, black pepper, a dash of salt
47. Vincent D'Onofrio
48. The World Wide Web
49. LUSH "Big" shampoo, LUSH "Flying Fox" body wash
50. Aeroplanes
51. Music makin instruments
52. Film
53. Rusty things, wire, rope, twine, nests
54. Bunnies
55. Flowers
56. Trees
57. Birds
58. Horses
59. Cats
60. Dogs
61. Pinenuts, walnuts, pecans
62. Sex/kissing
63. I'm thankful for Jon Stewart
64. Surprises
65. Being able to read & write
66. Being able to cry once in awhile
67. Being an artist
68. My brother
69. Dill

70. Bicycles
71. Paperclips
72. My instinct
73. Books
74. Cameras
75. Porch sittin
76. Holding hands
77. Louisiana festivals
78. Louisiana
79. New Orleans

80. Bendy straws
81. Quesa
82. Suzi's Chinese Kitchen
83. Nathan Fillion
84. Tequila
85. That Ana & Zack live in Austin now too
86. The acoustic guitar they gave to me
87. Singing
88. A good ink pen
89. Separating the wheat from the chaff
90. Tall men
91. Tall smart men
92. Tall smart sexy men
93. Zappo's
94. Post-it's
95. My dog & my cat
96. The Hampton Inn
97. Benné Rockett
98. LaLa Land
99. Kids
100. My Ugly Doll
101. SBA
102. Dreams
103. Black slips
104. My boobs
105. My eyebrows
106. My lips
107. Cupcakes
108. Social smoking
109. Getting lost
110. Water you can drink and swim in
111. Magnolia trees
112. Gardenias
113. Banana trees
114. Lipstick
115. Friendship
116. Newspaper hats
117. Orangina
118. Hershey's chocolate
119. A good bowl of cereal w/a banana in it & soymilk
120. The meals I am going to cook in my new kitchen when I get one. In new pans. And a new cast iron pan.
121. The amazing bed with the amazingly beautiful linens I'll be buying for myself right after I sign the lease on my new apartment when I find it.
122. Just because I don't have a job yet doesn't mean I'm terrified.
123. Bats
124. The question & answer game
125. The sky, the clouds in it, the moon
126. Baths
127. Homemade soup
128. The old black steel glider that was on my porch at 4765 Western Street
129. Bridges
130. Libraries
131. Geraniums, hibiscus, angel's trumpets
132. Walking around the French Quarter at night for no particular reason and feeling like an amazing adventure is happening
133. Barq's rootbeer
134. K-Jean oyster po-boy
135. Cypress trees
136. Pelicans, egrets, grey heron
137. Air
138. Krewe de Vieux
139. Mother-In-Law Lounge
140. Secret Society of St. Ann/The Storyville Stompers, way down on Clouet street
141. St. Roch's cathedral
142. Rooftops, balconys, hidden backyards of New Orleans
143. Louis Armstrong's Hot 5 & Hot 8 recordings
144. Louis & Ella "Together Again"
145. Elysian Fields, top to bottom

146. Rotary Downs gigs at d.b.a.
147. Rotary Downs photo shoots, especially the one at the abandoned tennis court
148. Dentyne Ice peppermint gum
149. Fresh herbs
150. Spices
151. Bubble-wrap
152. Darts
153. Air hockey
154. Guiness
155. Buttons
156. Being able to evacuate
157. Black eyeliner
158. Floating all day that one day in the dingy with Wendy & Christine
159. Sparklers but mostly things that explode, fireworks, blowing things up
160. Wine
161. The Mississippi River
162. Detroit
163. Live oaks
164. Weeping willows
165. Birch trees
166. Rock salt & Morton's Kosher salt
167. Acupuncture
168. Modern medicine
169. Pedicures
170. Naps
171. Hardwood floors & clawfoot tubs
172. The Christmas eve bonfires in Lutcher
173. Kermit's 4th of July bbq at Vaughn's
174. Ian Rankin
175. Aimee Bender
176. Fyodor Dostoyevski
177. Sojurner Truth
178. The Mermaid Lounge
179. The Matador
180. My pretty black bra
181. Garlic & ginger
182. Motor oil
183. Lamar Avenue top to bottom
184. Scarves & hoop earrings
185. Building campfires, lighting them, lying on a blanket next to them and kissing
186. Typography
187. Nip/Tuck
188. Fog, rain, snow, twilight
189. Graphic novels
190. I-35
191. The idea of Hawaii
192. Loretta Lynn & Tammy Wynette & Kitty Wells

193. Taxis
194. Graphite pencils
195. LED lights
196. Bread w/olive oil & balsamic vinegar
197. Salad w/artichoke hearts & hearts of palm
198. Olives & onions
199. Watermelon
200. Sidewalks
201. Pinball
202. Dick & Jenny's
203. The Breadfactory
204. IDEA studios
205. Dewalt power tools
206. Local honey
207. Safety pins
208. Herman Leonard
209. New Orleans

I hold out my hand and I touch love, I never knew there was so much love, keeping me warm night and day

The love of hate! Hating Texas drivers with their bossy Texas grills and bullshit traffic jams over nothing, hating those roadside signs shoving their positive optimism down my throat "Be Thankful!", and especially hating having to deal with CVC stock-boys sussing me up ("You married? Got a boyfriend?" "Well, actually, no! Why don't you come back with me to the Hampton Inn where I'll teach you all of the sexual secrets that I hold within my vagina like uncut diamonds! Come on!!! Everybody!!! Why not?") while I fill up a cart (fill up a cart at the CVC pharmacy. Surely you understand the sheer insanity of that?) with a bunch of shit I don't know why I'm buying cuz I have all this stuff at home already and it's dumb stuff anyhow but wait. I forgot again, silly rabbit, I don't have a home! Oh yeah! Now there's something to be thankful for! No collection of amazing vintage dishes to serve up a delicious savory home-cooked meal the likes of last year's on, jeesh I'm so relieved. No grocery lists, no last minute dashes to Ferrara's for one more slab of butter, no coordinating everything so that we could go to the track & eyeball the ponies to drink a bloody mary & get home to eat just as the bird was ready for carving. Two kinds of dressings, scalloped potatoes, rrrrr green beans and homemade cranberry sauce and everything steamy & golden. That was such a hassle. Now all I have to do is pop that "bowl" of "soup" in the microwave & eat it with crackers in the bed that I don't even get to have torrid hotel sex on. Or I could go to a dingy bar & eat their Thanksgiving buffet while rocking out to AC/DC, looking at all the old-timey friends, and feel awkward and over-large. Or I could just get a boat and sail off into the sunset straight for Amsterdam where I'll set up shop as a book-binder and dress my dog & cat in tiny outfits made of leather, tricking them out for bun money. Hot buns in Amsterdam! Sounds like the very exact life of my dreams.

Now while you're pondering that with your cute head tilted to one side like a puppy's, go ahead and peruse this article about New Orleans artists in Austin because you really just want to know and see more about this crazy pirate life of mine mine mine.

LEO SAYER

Years years years of singing under my belt & Leo Sayer's "When I Need You" takes me down?

Well I'm alright with that. You know why? I'll tell you, thanks for asking. Ana, Zack, Pat, and Ren over to the right at our glass-laden table hooting and hollering me on.

I. Will. Do. Anything. For. My. Friends.

(I must share, though, that "Suffragette City" brought the house down. Hi, have we met? I grew up in Detroit and lived in New Orleans for 12 years!)

Happy Thanksgiving!
xox
Queen Pillowtop

gobs

Claire's Four Stitches

I made a wish today on a dandelion I found, ridiculous, in the dry November Texas grass. And this is how the mornings go:

Foul. I wake up, just shaking, you know it's like I am so furious about what happened to my city and my life, my people, my city. It's not a pretty story, it's a sick vile story, it's noxious, it is heartbreaking. I wake up and I just think, "I'm not gonna make it. I really don't think I can make it." It hits you: I don't even have a job! Or even a house to live in! It hits you: all of my dearest friends, we will always be apart now. One way or another, we will never be together like that again. And I shake. And I really seriously doubt my capacity to keep moving, I really do not have the ability to carry on.

But the phone rings & it's Laticia telling me the FEMA people need to see me. So I put on some clothes, dirty clothes, wrinkled clothes that I spray w/cinnamon water & iron to try & fake some sort of fresh womanly-ness, and go down the elevator to sit in the lobby and answer their questions. They're nice, they're firefighters, one of 'em actually spent 2 months in the city and we can see it, when he tells me, cuz I ask, "Have you been there?" we can see that 1,000 mile stare in eachothers' eyes and I actually think he's going to come upstairs with me and lay on the bed while we don't say a word but just hold hands & stare at the ceiling, blank, devastated. But he doesn't and I don't, I don't lay on the bed with anyone, it's just me and I'm coughing and coughing and I really don't think I can do this one more day, at all, it's that bad.

Then I take the elevator up and meet Maria in the hall and yes, today, today, clean towels, vacuum, today. I put on Lou Barlow and dance some goofy sentimental waltzy swingy dance with my cat purring in my arms, we dance to Lou Barlow's ditty "Daykitty". I dance with my cat while Annie stares up at us because my animals with their animal eyes look to me for joy or gloom. They get their direction from me. And they're animals, they're my pets; I'm not gonna give them gloom, you don't lay gloom on your dog & cat who have accompanied you all these years through everything and now this.

So I sway with Cody draped around my neck singing "Where'd the kitty come from? Where did the kitty go? Kitty had to ramble. Where did the kitty go?" & I give Annie some Milkbones and Maria comes, we clean together, please please let me help you clean. I eat a banana and the phone starts ringing and you forget. You forget that you have lost everything and that you don't believe in anything anymore, and when you forget you remember that you have everything and that you believe in everything that ever ever was or will be or is or has gone.

Smoke Our Faces Off

"I will bring nothing but darkness and trouble upon your souls!" Elizabeth, shaking, 10 a.m. Sunday, having just arrived at the IDEA studios.

"Bring it on," Benné, orange sweater over pale lemon blouse sitting on the pile of old sets the theatre had stacked out in the parking lot, crisp blue sky, putting out one cig lighting another.

So it worked: the installation performed itself. And me within it, worked. And the audience, ridiculously complexly refreshingly engaged, worked. From toddlers to old Texas farmers. From tall lean couples who met & fell in love at The Showdown to the feathery hippie woman with a parrot on her arm. Two full days of about, mmm, 1500 people moving through my room - hearing and seeing and speaking of New Orleans, yes, of New Orleans.

There's the construction of the piece to write of, the performance of the piece, the experience of the audience experiencing me & vise versa, there's the work of the other artists at IDEA to write of, there's the future, my agenda as a working artist at the best stage of her career, my agenda as a citizen of New Orleans, the boundary between work & prostitution, the dynamic of my storytelling, what I did and what I want to do next, who I want to help and how.

But really, I have to find an apartment. And today I slept for many drifty easy hours, an animal on my bed with my animals, took care of business, took a nap. What great and sweet luxury is available to even the hotel-dweller! I dreamt of a baby polar bear. Upon waking, memories of the past week, the weekend, just singing in my head. Oh, the campfire, the Bollywood party, the homemade tostadas and those bamboo chairs on Kat's porch, the one cocktail w/Allie at Continental Club, turning to my left, "Brent?!" And in my studio, looking to my right, "Zack?!!! Ana!!!" Coffee, salt, champagne, rum, the stories, the stories I can tell now, god, holding hands! People in my lap, sitting by my side, in the parking lot at twilight, on the concrete floor at 4 a.m, listening, lighting up, lighting me right up. And then there's the breakdown or breakthrough or whatever you want to call it that I had Sunday morning. But holding hands.

To have educated, articulate, solidly-producing, respected, mature, brilliant, unique, hilarious women tell me back to myself - to have them as mirrors, to have them as peers - lord. "This is what you did," she told me, boom boom booom, as she walked me through my own exhibition, "and you did it in 6 days." What's more important to me than that even, though, is what they tell me of themselves. And this heliumish feeling, this crisp Autumnal feeling of just being right where I am right now just right now being.

I'm on some Monday night circular loop this entry is so "blog" I feel like a boring narcissist and I have to drink another tub of water and get my head together to get hustling again - so so much more to do, to want to do, to feel and be. This weekend, yes, great, flow, exposed, connected. Now the work's gotta move into a gallery so it can do its job & I can keep doing mine. I hope I dream of that baby polar bear tonight. It made me feel like Ed Norton's character in Fight Club (how the F could I forget his name??? And actually, it was that film that got me "banned" from Video Alternatives ...) when he went to his "special place" and the penguin was just sliding around. On the brink of something brand new, on the cusp of a good icy desire.

- Chopin "Preludes"
- Lou Barlow "EMOH"
- Steve Zissou soundtrack