LOVER

A discreet curtsey, a dainty plate

Forgive me but this is gonna be great! Maybe you'll buy a copy. Maybe I'll grow a pink tail.

Wet Nap

I am not:
Spanish
A carpenter
Flush
Blind
Swimming
Sure
Hungry
Wearing all white
An MIT grad
Living large
Unshaken
Pierced
Gooey
A wolf in sheep's clothing
A little lamb
Anything fur-covered
A white picket fence
Dense
Unamused
Latent

I am:
Tender
Tough
Sing-songy
A fantastic kisser
Wearing fishnets
Sweatin' bullets
A daydream believer
Blessed
A bit rascally
Opinionated
Forgiving
In love with my little fetishes
Easily distracted
Tidy
Pretty much wide open
Pretty much clammed up
A bawdy vaudevillian shuckster
Camera ready
Here to go

Too loud, too fast

the piano player here at this coffee shop is. He's unaware of how his tempo increases and how he plays harder/louder as he gets stuck. So by the end of his half hour he's pounding away and what were so-so Longhair jams have become messy syrupy exercises in speed. That's ok! I've got hot coffee and oj that's fresh squeezed.

I've been painting this tree pink this week, the experience is transcendental. It's a dead oak up by train tracks in Gentilly, not but 15 blocks from my old house. The n'hood is thrilled (lots of seniors living in trailers) and I spend 5/6 hours a day clearing brush & bark & branches, climbing up ladders, living in the tree. It's a much bigger job than I anticipated but I am more than fine with that. A train passed yesterday with a whole car covered with this bunny graffitti painting saying, "You are loved. Thank you for everything."

Crows pass over and big mack trucks barrel down the road that used to be paved but is now a pitchy dirt lane. Mosquitos, nettles, every day I find something new, pvc tubing, a piece of someone's roof, fire ants. Yesterday there was a blue jay and a falcon. A falcon! Who is nesting in one of the dead pecan trees a few hundred feet away. A falcon nesting in the dead pecan tree.

I've been going through a lot of emotion connected to this particular piece as well: confronting my own "floodlines" (ie: how high up I paint, the deliniation between the bark and the pink), and the color's virtually the same pink my dead sister Milissa & I painted our bedroom years ago as young girls (I picked it "unconsciously"). The sheer magnitude of my vision is a bit overwhelming sometimes - every morning as I'm dragging the ladders out I feel numb and cold and think, "I can't do this. What am I doing? This is stupid."

But then Mr. Rooney comes over to visit and says laughing, "S'a lotta work, right? That's what makes it art!" and Mr. Arther comes over and tells me about his ongoing saga with FEMA and insurance companies and Miss Viola who died in her house right there and says what I'm doing is, "Noble and good," and I think of people who have gutted & renovated their houses, old people with aches & pains who bit by bit have built their lives up again, and still smile & laugh & cook red beans. And I keep painting. It's absurd, futile, hopeful, playful, a very bizarre way to spend the day. And it's why I'm here.

Drawering!

I know as much
about the past and future
as a man on a dark street corner
holding a blade
but just outside the city
scratching my head
I'm a fish lying on its back
beside a clear stream
how easily contentment
comes to a single leaf
whose appearance
was once always
only outwardly green

"New Orleans was a provincial French and Spanish city already a century old before it became a part of the United States. Set in a lush tropical wilderness near the mouth of the Mississippi, a city of contrasts, it was both elegant and brutal. Operas and lavish balls were given, and there was a fine choice of wines; but men were being tortured under Spanish law, and pirates and smugglers made neighboring waters unsafe for the traveler. Riots were frequent. Each residence was built like a fort."

ArtInAction's begun! My first visiting artist has come and gone and we constructed 3 sites, started a fourth, and discovered many beautifully excruciatingly honest things about our selves and our city. Photos and text to follow (I'm creating a separate online journal for it, will post the link here shortly). I've got 3 other artists on board to get work up within the next week. And it feels good. It feels good to be this me.

Busy Bee

Sometimes at night it smells like cornbread and peaches. Then piss and dead fish. Then boys and mint. And the moon comes through the bamboo to holler down into the trailer where I am listening to AirAmerica on the transistor radio, and I make red tea, and my mouth tastes beer. You come here and I'll show you some real America and we'll drink rum with soda, a splash of bitters and a lime until the sun comes up as frothy as the nothing that I miss so much.

Shadow Self

Buster Keaton meets Emiliano Zapata! Oh what a time was had.