LOVER

What Are We Doing To Pigs?

Eating in moderation would be healthier for us but wouldn't it be easier to just rearrange an animal's cellular structure? Well that's what scientists are doing right this very minute! Raising pigs who have had their cellular structure rearranged so that their meat will contain less of the fatty acids that are hard on our hearts! Scientists are CRAZY and science is WACK! (Thanks Jon Stewart! xox)

I just want to take a moment to pay respects to two of my heroes that died recently: Mr. (Jesse) Donald Knotts and the one and only Mr. Buck Owens. Thanks, gentlemen, for all that.

Bisou

"So now, Dear Eli, although I hear you every night, there is still a place for you to write me from the world you are in (dead or alive, who cares? ...) and killing me will be like a greeting - "
My "Good Morning!" Friend

I could not sleep last night not until 4 a.m. what did I do all that time? I read sarcastic gossip about movie stars. Movie stars.

And now it's been thunder raining for hours and the mourning doves that fill this city have been echoing calls to eachother about how happy they are. There was a man in my bed in my dream and my bed was in my studio and he was drawing on the white sheet, drawing with an eraserless pencil, the kind you get at bowling alleys, an outline of my exhibition in the hall, which he loves by the way. He's tall and big and warm and loves the meaning of my strange installation, which includes a contraption I've built that looks something like a birdhouse or an archaic telephone system but painted white and other various things that relate to it on the walls. "It's about being engulfed, about watching that water pour in and not being able to protect anything," I told him and yes yes, he understands and we look at maps of where the horses will lead me through fields and electronic devices in order to show me my new home.

Dispensation

.

I want to write and I want to not be the one who slips and falls into the lukewarm hot-tub. I also want to be the one who does not have nightmares about hair falling out which lead to even more horrible nightmarish things that even the thought of writing about makes my skin crawl. I am the one who you see when you least expect it, at the coffee shop or bookstore maybe, and it makes your heart pound, I am so real it makes you sweat. That is the story I'm going to write when I can do what I want and write what I want and do not have nightmares anymore.

Saw Pig Destroyer and Wolf Eyes last week. Pig Destroyer played first, with sound/noise artist Jessica Rylan and another female noise musician, though I don’t know her name. The most interesting thing about watching them play was the sort of masculine poses they formed over their boxes and amps. Her partner, especially, was on her knees, curled over an amp, running a mic over its surface and pushing against it to manipulate its sound. It was so dominant and tough. The second most interesting thing was watching longhairs try to mosh while taking digital photos for their blogs. What’s happened to metal?

and this just in: Warner Bros. sets a July 21st start date for Ocean's 13 (George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh can now start salivating over what crazy, artistic thing they're going to do with their dirty Hollywood money), with celebrity choking victim Ellen Barkin joining the cast as an urban cougar whose designs on lesser gang members Scott Caan and Casey Affleck (he's tinier than Ben and cuter!?!) will result in several loosely plotted double- and triple-crosses necessitating that one of the young thieves has to dance through a matrix of laser beams. I can't think of any better way to spend $20 million dollars, can you?

Me Too!

"Observer foresees ongoing white majority
He says black citizens are less likely to return
Saturday, March 25, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Times Picayune Staff writer

A specialist in historical African-American migration patterns who previously taught at Louisiana State University, Falk said Friday at a New Orleans conference that he believes displaced black New Orleanians are far less likely than white residents to come back in coming years, even if they miss the city.

Falk based that assessment on media reports and polls showing that black people displaced by the killer storm were more likely than white residents to have found a temporary refuge a great distance from New Orleans, suffered property damage at greater rates and have fewer financial resources to devote to returning. Many of the same African-American storm evacuees have found a "land of promise" away from New Orleans, said Falk, 61, now a sociology department chairman at the University of Maryland.

"We cannot imagine a majority-black city for a long time to come, barring some miraculous turnaround," he said during a Katrina-themed session at the Southern Sociological Society meeting at the Monteleone Hotel. Economic conditions were tough for many black New Orleanians long before the hurricane, he said."

Truly, I've been back & I have seen: the people who can live there now did not suffer material loss to the degree that "I/we" did and they have the $ to afford being back. (What does it mean, sociologically/psychologically/spiritually, that the majority of "those people" are white? That's a whole 'nother journal right there.) Broken down like that, it doesn't feel fair. It's not fair. Life's not fair.

That said, it can't feel good, being back under those circumstances. Everyone who lived there deserves to live where they want and I am fully aware (I've been back & I have seen) of how being in that city is taking a toll, how much it requires, how hard it is. Underlying all of that there must be something akin to guilt, knowing that random luck and money are the only things that separate "us" from "them". At the very least, that can't feel too safe. It's not fair. Life's not fair. Mmm hmmm.

I Can Do This

Within the past week, I've had 3 encounters with 3 different people who are disappointed in me. Who have withdrawn from my life, or just not come into it, over the past 6 months because I haven't been able to give to them in what they feel is an "equal" fashion. (There are, of course, 3 others who aren't just disappointed but are downright enraged and unforgiving (I've apologized) won't speak to me at all (a true apology doesn't come with a guaranteed outcome). But right now I'm writing about the 3 that are merely disappointed.) And I wonder, gosh, when I wrote this a short while back, here, on my public journal, for everyone to read, a missive, a mission statement if you will, or maybe just a general public apology:

"People the world over, intimates and not, might say "I understand. I can't imagine how overwhelmed you must feel. I can't conceive, it must be terrible". Yes, they might say that.

And yet a person, one person, some person who is surviving, who is suffering all of that overwhelming unimaginable-ness is still expected to "behave right". Proper, clean, inoffensively. Why would people expect that? Why wouldn't a person who has lost home, job, streets, stores, identity, city, money, love, friends, food, fragrance, joy, comfort, familiarity, walls, clothes, bicycle, normalcy, plus sister, plus best friend/dog, be allowed to be a god-awful mess? To ask too much, to ask nothing, to demand attention, to hide, to make mistakes, to be an idiot, to run a red light, to hurt a best friend's feelings? To be inappropriate, to speak the unspeakable? To give voice to what it is that is so fucking horrendous that it can't even be imagined? Or to not be able to talk at all?

I am not better and I cannot behave right. I can't write back when you write, I can't stop wanting, I can't feel better overnight. I'm saying things wrong and not doing things right, I can't pick up the phone, can't stop crying, can't figure out where my people have gone, can't own up, can't get a job, can't save my dog, can't not be angry, can't find meaning, cannot shake the feeling that something irreplacable's been forever lost, I'm sorry I am terribly sorry. Smoke 'em while you got 'em, nobody loves you when you're down & out."

it didn't matter, did it? I hoped it would make a difference but I can't say it did. Such arrogance! I saw this hilarious bumpersticker "Nobody cares about your blog!" and I guess that sums it up. I mean, some people, they care enough to read and anonymously insultingly comment. Some people care enough to read and anonymously supportively comment. I know there's folks who read and don't comment at all. But the deep gist of these words, it's not that important, is it? This is just a website to visit, like Craig's List, like Comedy Central, or maybe like NOLA.com. We look, we surf, we skate right over. Nobody puts their hand in and comes out with the warmth of a good hug that resonates for hours. I like to fantasize that's possible, cuz I'm a great big dreamer lost in a great big world.

I'm slowly getting better, most invalids will if they've got a certain love of pain that translates into passion, and on the other side I'll maybe be able to make repairs to the damage the damage to me has done. Maybe I won't. I do know that no matter how sincere my intentions, my sincere acts won't result in much if I'm alone in trusting them. I'm sure it'll be unpredictable and idiosyncratic, the process of coming back out. Some folks will remain, some will not, others will be new, others will not. In the meantime, I literally keep thinking and feeling with my body that it's November, that winter's coming & I can bake bread, that time has slowed down to the pace of my pain. Aha! Fooled again!

12:12

The stag can be a symbol used for one who is unwilling to assail enemies rashly, who would rather stand his own ground than harm another wrongfully, and one who will not fight unless provoked. Harmony, polity, and peace are particularly associated with the female deer, called a hind or a doe. Antlers represent strength and fortitude. The stag or hart is also an emblem of purity and fleetness. The stag was associated with healing, for he knew which medicinal plants to take in order to shake off the hunter's arrow. The person bearing this symbol was considered impervious to weapons. To Christians, the white stag came to symbolize Christ. It is also associated with the sun. The deer, finally, was a source of life, an important resource for early man. Ultimately, the stag is not only a creature of the gods but is a god himself, symbolizing the creative life-force of the universe - sex, life, and also death.

It's cold here and a pair of red-tailed hawks have taken up residence on the state's Capital Building, here in Austin. Sometimes they perch on the star that the goddess is holding up in her hand - or so they said on the t.v. news. That made me go out and try to spot them, squinting real hard, and I did. She was at the nest and he came to her. I didn't see them sit on the star but they're up there, that's for sure. And that can only bode well for me, and for Austin, and I guess Texas too (begrudgingly).

Like A Knife

A dear dear friend, an exiled New Orleanian like myself, wrote tonight, "I want to go home. And I have no idea how." This just says it all, if you ask me.

Coming home to this apartment, it feels like such a joke. On me. My dog's not here to come home to. My cat is and that's wonderful because my cat is wonderful as any dog. But my dog's not here. "I want to go home. And I have no idea how."

If I didn't have the ability to make art I would just up and die. I'm not trying to be maudlin; it's just the truth, that's all. In that act, I am home, fearless, oh how strange. In that act I find a way to be myself always, to be home, it's the only way. And these settlements, these masses I'm drawing like labyrinths, trying to make a path exist, trying to draw and paint my way out of this. Or at least there will be crumbs behind me so I can find my way back to ...

"I sometimes think that if I just run away, back to the bayou, to the swamp to the hot dead air, to the river, I will feel whole again. I want to go home. And I have no idea how."

l'ara sul rostro

- It rained Wuthering Heights all night on my roof and water ran down the wall.
- Tim Hawkinson
- Weird politics of unspoken agendas
- Cody McGrody
- Choubi Choubi!
- I only cry when I write letters.
- and dragged the body away.

The Rest

O helpless few in my country,
O remnant enslaved!

Artists broken against her,
A-stray, lost in the villages,
Mistrusted, spoken-against,

Lovers of beauty, starved,
Thwarted with systems,
Helpless against control;

You who can not wear yourselves out
By persisting on successes,
You who can only speak,
Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration;

You of the finer sense,
Broken against false knowledge,
You who can know at first hand,
Hated, shut in, mistrusted:

Take thought:
I have weathered the storm,
I have beaten out my exile.

- Ezra Pound

Put That Cocoa Down

Agonizing dreams putting me through my own agonizing needs. I'm back in New Orleans. I need to be back in New Orleans. I wake up crying. My dog isn't lying next to me anymore. The absence of her weight against my calf is as painful as the absence of my self to my self. How did I wind up here? How is it I can't go back? Why am I not going back? It's a foreign language, and anaesthisized, my voice in my mouth is swollen and fleshy, just try to talk just try.

I'm drawing schematics of Palestinian settlements; I'm drawing stags with mouths open blaring blood. I'm pouring layers of wax over them and scraping parts away. Nothing gets to me, where every single thing grazes my skin, scrapes deep, and shoots by. Every thing I ever wanted is drying on a line between brick tenements in the stupid sun. My king-sized bed, the water that flows clean, twilight light, flowers falling from my mouth, his eyes kissing mine, the blade went on in. I don't remember anything about anything anymore.

Re/dux

Today someone said to me, "You like living on the edge!" in context: I was talking about how I can't stomach a job if it's not in my field of training & expertise. Her implication was that I live a dangerous life because I want to re/build the life I want. I crossed my arms.

I didn't plan to lose the life I had, you know, the one that was solid and steady and real. That wasn't some grand design to keep my life risky. I liked my life, it was tailor-made, and now I've just not got it anymore. It's just not where it used to be. I look, it's not there. And it's funny how in the process of putting pieces together to make a thing that is here in this new place people can be so quick to judge & to forget what so many of us have been going through. She is pregnant, after all. I didn't say much. But I did cross my arms.

And then I came home to amuse myself. Somebody's gotta do it!