I have nothing to say. My lips are rested. My vocal chords strong.
Milwaukee days seem to bring more words than the last. Their sounds come as whispers and blairing TVs. Their intentions prove heartfelt or mindless. Words recieved with laughter and consideration. Words heard or unheard.
These sounds swirl within my head all day long. From the moment I wake to the instant I fall asleep. They can even be heard in those moments between conciousness. Fading softly, slowly and unclearly.
So many words floating around my head. My ears are tired. They are tired from listening, from registering, from trying to avoid, from pretending. My ears are so tired I can't bare to give them any more - not even my own.
"Words are all I have to give to you." If Maja Ivarsson is right, I better start talking tomorrow.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
A phone call from Ma...
6:57PM
I sit on the brown leather couch tucked under the picture window. I don't know how many years of my life I have looked through this pane of glass. Watching nothing. Watching everything.
The living room opens into the dining room. The arched ceilings still hold an impressively done wallpaper job that is older than I am. My mother sits below the arch, quietly minding her own business around the dining room table that's dressed in Christmas Red.
Beyond the dining room, my sister sits in the kitchen on her laptop finishing the loose ends to another semester.
Distracted by football and unused to hearing my cell phone ring... instead I hear my sister's voice call "Mary, you're phone!".
I'm sure I followed with a confused, "What?" and spent a few minutes trying to quickly unwrap the burrito I have made myself into. I come to end of the throw and hop a few steps into the dining room into the kitchen and, finally, into my purse.
I made it before the last ring.
Caller ID - Parents
"What?", I think. "Hello?" is what I said, with my tone upturned.
I hear a voice of a woman. A woman who seems embarrassed by an accidental wrong number. It's the voice my mother uses when she's unsure of herself.
"Nevermind" I hear from a small voice in the next room, which then echoes into my receiver.
I start the laughter before she does.
I'm not sure it's clicked yet for her.
It surely didn't click when she searched the quick dial for my Aunt Mary.
Not quite when my sister's siren went off.
Still not as she watched me clumsily run to my phone.
My laughter flipped the switched. She laughs with me briefly. Within seconds she is back to hitting the call list, hard.
7:04PM
My phone rings again. It is my mother, "Just calling to check in."
I write this as my mom sits in her chair reading her newspaper. She tells me not to write about her and I tell her I love writing about her because I want to keep these moments.
I sit on the brown leather couch tucked under the picture window. I don't know how many years of my life I have looked through this pane of glass. Watching nothing. Watching everything.
The living room opens into the dining room. The arched ceilings still hold an impressively done wallpaper job that is older than I am. My mother sits below the arch, quietly minding her own business around the dining room table that's dressed in Christmas Red.
Beyond the dining room, my sister sits in the kitchen on her laptop finishing the loose ends to another semester.
Distracted by football and unused to hearing my cell phone ring... instead I hear my sister's voice call "Mary, you're phone!".
I'm sure I followed with a confused, "What?" and spent a few minutes trying to quickly unwrap the burrito I have made myself into. I come to end of the throw and hop a few steps into the dining room into the kitchen and, finally, into my purse.
I made it before the last ring.
Caller ID - Parents
"What?", I think. "Hello?" is what I said, with my tone upturned.
I hear a voice of a woman. A woman who seems embarrassed by an accidental wrong number. It's the voice my mother uses when she's unsure of herself.
"Nevermind" I hear from a small voice in the next room, which then echoes into my receiver.
I start the laughter before she does.
I'm not sure it's clicked yet for her.
It surely didn't click when she searched the quick dial for my Aunt Mary.
Not quite when my sister's siren went off.
Still not as she watched me clumsily run to my phone.
My laughter flipped the switched. She laughs with me briefly. Within seconds she is back to hitting the call list, hard.
7:04PM
My phone rings again. It is my mother, "Just calling to check in."
I write this as my mom sits in her chair reading her newspaper. She tells me not to write about her and I tell her I love writing about her because I want to keep these moments.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Eight Degrees
It’s eight degrees out of doors.
This degree keeps people wrapped in blankets on their sofas. Warm drink in one hand and remote in the other. Generally, there are two groups of people willing to brave this Fahrenheit at night. The first have dependencies on nicotine. The remaining are pet owners. Both of which are being brought out into this cold by a force outside of themselves.
It’s eight degrees and instead of staying in, I am running out.
The sun has already set here. It may be closing out on California by now. I can’t count on the sun’s rays to warm the tip of my nose - the only exposed skin that the sun may have warmed.
I head just far enough out of the cities for the sky to open up to the stars. The cold is beautiful.
My Petzl lights the way. Swaying back and forth with the rhythm of my stride. Bobbing in and out of the weight of my jacket’s hood. My warm exhale turns instantly to smoke before me. The beam of light catches the swirls as it leaves my body.
The combination of fog and light show convinces me KISS will spring from the next snow bank. I have the spectacle, most live performances lack, unfolding naturally before me. Moving strobe lights and fog machines. I considered dropping the red night-vision lens down for added affect, but decide that is a little too heavy metal for my mood.
It made for a dramatic hike. Could have also been an amazing horror film, but I didn't say that… since I know my mother will check her e-mail in twenty days and reply with a motherly voice of concern telling me all the things that could happen to me hiking alone at night. DANGER! DANGER!
A few have been here before me. Sparse tracks scatter over last night’s snow fall. Out of love for all the skiers in the world I avoid the nicely packed double lanes and stick to the fresh powder. The resistance feels good against my legs after a month under physical restrictions (I’m not breaking the rules; I’m sticking to the lower half!).
My breath gets heavy.
My heart gets fast.
My chest grows so warm that I can no longer feel the eight degrees.
My iPod remains in my pocket with the ear buds coiled neatly around the frame. Music follows my everyday. My career, my home, my car are rarely without. Naturally, I always reach for the mobile music when setting out for a hike, but I have never brought it out. From the very first crunch of my pink NorthFace boots, I know I will not be plugging my ears with the Swell Season or the Shostakovich that defines my everyday.
I love these sounds.
My breath.
My weight.
My pulse.
My existence within the sounds of the river’s current not yet frozen over, within the noises of the remaining winter wildlife, even within the faint sounds of civilization.
It’s eight degrees outside and I remember why I am willing to brave the weather and hike in solitude. It is my meditation. Here, my brain silences my everyday. All I notice is my body and my being.
And... maybe the occasional KISS concert...
A few have been here before me. Sparse tracks scatter over last night’s snow fall. Out of love for all the skiers in the world I avoid the nicely packed double lanes and stick to the fresh powder. The resistance feels good against my legs after a month under physical restrictions (I’m not breaking the rules; I’m sticking to the lower half!).
My breath gets heavy.
My heart gets fast.
My chest grows so warm that I can no longer feel the eight degrees.
My iPod remains in my pocket with the ear buds coiled neatly around the frame. Music follows my everyday. My career, my home, my car are rarely without. Naturally, I always reach for the mobile music when setting out for a hike, but I have never brought it out. From the very first crunch of my pink NorthFace boots, I know I will not be plugging my ears with the Swell Season or the Shostakovich that defines my everyday.
I love these sounds.
My breath.
My weight.
My pulse.
My existence within the sounds of the river’s current not yet frozen over, within the noises of the remaining winter wildlife, even within the faint sounds of civilization.
It’s eight degrees outside and I remember why I am willing to brave the weather and hike in solitude. It is my meditation. Here, my brain silences my everyday. All I notice is my body and my being.
And... maybe the occasional KISS concert...
Friday, December 11, 2009
Next Blog>>
I feel like I am waiting for the day when Facebook becomes interesting. Checking it throughout the day and hoping that this time it will be different. This time it will make me laugh. But most of the day I am looking at the same non-activity. Sadly, it has become a habit. An item within the checklist of activities that follows the motion of flipping open this computer.
I end up on facebook because I suck at the internet. I admit it. I’m a poor virtual surfer. I don’t know where to go to find mindless entertainment on this thing. Not to mention, my internet speed denies the possibility of video, audio and sometimes image streaming. So I am mostly left to reading.
As an avid reader, you would think I would be swimming in news coverage, blogs, published online literature but somehow I just wade in this material. Only willing to get in as far as my rolled up pants allow. Reading is much preferred with the weight of paper and ink in my hands.
Yesterday was another story. Yesterday I surfed the big kahuna. A reference to all those that grew up watching Back to the Beach. When the Bird was the Word.
The top of this blog has a tool bar. I’m sure you have ventured there when I get raunchy and consider reporting my abuse of this site and the English language. Next to the Report Abuse button, and ‘next to’ seems much too close I might add, is the Next Blog>> button.
I ODed on Next Blog last night. It’s a random sampling of the public worlds here on blogspot. What I read….
I spent a minimal amount of time on the Austrailian Romance Readers Association’s blog.
I found a Literature teacher that gives Tarot inspired writing assignments. Those cards did lead him to saying “All you need to do is place one word after the other...and trust...” - Mark David Gerson. Something I am taking to heart right now, because I wanted to write but had no vision, hope or direction for my words.
I ended up bothered by the cynicism of a clergy woman and scared by outright propaganda.
I learned everyone is a writer, everyone is a critic and everyone is famous.
I walked through family memories. Birthdays, vacations and childhood quotes. I am beginning to accept the fact that blogging is modern day history. It has become a record keeper for all the moments people want shared or remembered. Sad, blogspot doesn’t have that tangible aspect that I crave out of literature. It doesn’t quite capture the nostalgia of grandma’s scrapbooking and the anticipation of turning the delicate page to the next memory that waits there.
I laughed at reviews of fast-food restaurants whose coffee was deemed decent “considering the loose stool that passes for java in some fast food restaurants”- Aaron C. from That Bootleg Guy.
I was bored to tears by people’s views on everyday life and their need to show me how to live.
I discovered an English woman set out to boycott “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Klauss” because of the implied infidelity. She claimed trauma to the childhood thought of her Mommy kissing another man. Side note to this one – The word ‘infidelity’ temporily escaped me when writing this, so I was trying to google search my way to it and kept circling back to sodomy. I guess I can’t stay away from the asshole.
Mostly, there are hobbyists and journalists and sports casters and critics. In the hours that I spent hitting Next Blog>> I didn’t find anything quite like my blog. So maybe I ought to do it justice. My words weren’t anywhere else. Not even a faint echo of their sound. And yet, I always come home to the ego we all must have to keep writing, assuming people give a damn about what we have to say or ... maybe it's just how we say it...
I end up on facebook because I suck at the internet. I admit it. I’m a poor virtual surfer. I don’t know where to go to find mindless entertainment on this thing. Not to mention, my internet speed denies the possibility of video, audio and sometimes image streaming. So I am mostly left to reading.
As an avid reader, you would think I would be swimming in news coverage, blogs, published online literature but somehow I just wade in this material. Only willing to get in as far as my rolled up pants allow. Reading is much preferred with the weight of paper and ink in my hands.
Yesterday was another story. Yesterday I surfed the big kahuna. A reference to all those that grew up watching Back to the Beach. When the Bird was the Word.
The top of this blog has a tool bar. I’m sure you have ventured there when I get raunchy and consider reporting my abuse of this site and the English language. Next to the Report Abuse button, and ‘next to’ seems much too close I might add, is the Next Blog>> button.
I ODed on Next Blog last night. It’s a random sampling of the public worlds here on blogspot. What I read….
I spent a minimal amount of time on the Austrailian Romance Readers Association’s blog.
I found a Literature teacher that gives Tarot inspired writing assignments. Those cards did lead him to saying “All you need to do is place one word after the other...and trust...” - Mark David Gerson. Something I am taking to heart right now, because I wanted to write but had no vision, hope or direction for my words.
I ended up bothered by the cynicism of a clergy woman and scared by outright propaganda.
I learned everyone is a writer, everyone is a critic and everyone is famous.
I walked through family memories. Birthdays, vacations and childhood quotes. I am beginning to accept the fact that blogging is modern day history. It has become a record keeper for all the moments people want shared or remembered. Sad, blogspot doesn’t have that tangible aspect that I crave out of literature. It doesn’t quite capture the nostalgia of grandma’s scrapbooking and the anticipation of turning the delicate page to the next memory that waits there.
I laughed at reviews of fast-food restaurants whose coffee was deemed decent “considering the loose stool that passes for java in some fast food restaurants”- Aaron C. from That Bootleg Guy.
I was bored to tears by people’s views on everyday life and their need to show me how to live.
I discovered an English woman set out to boycott “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Klauss” because of the implied infidelity. She claimed trauma to the childhood thought of her Mommy kissing another man. Side note to this one – The word ‘infidelity’ temporily escaped me when writing this, so I was trying to google search my way to it and kept circling back to sodomy. I guess I can’t stay away from the asshole.
Mostly, there are hobbyists and journalists and sports casters and critics. In the hours that I spent hitting Next Blog>> I didn’t find anything quite like my blog. So maybe I ought to do it justice. My words weren’t anywhere else. Not even a faint echo of their sound. And yet, I always come home to the ego we all must have to keep writing, assuming people give a damn about what we have to say or ... maybe it's just how we say it...
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Artistic Thievery
Let's call this an exploratory essay. Shall we?
A hypothetical investigation of the best way to steal my own art.
My first year in the Twin Cities, I found myself shacked up with three strange ladies. Platonically shacked, that is. Each room of our 4 bedroom flat painted a vibrant hue different from the room proceeding it. One green, one purple, one red, and one blue.
The house was mostly established when I came on board. Wrong verb, I should say inhabitated, not established. The curb furniture was aplenty but the walls were barren.
A blank wall is my canvas.
With the help of the aging, crusty wall paint. I made four corresponding paintings. One in each bedroom tone. The joke was that they had to be random objects with no significance or reference to one another. We wanted visitors to wonder what the hell these paintings meant.
The strategy was effective. New comers and unobservant frequent travelers often asked what a red mousetrap, a blue fudgsicle, a green bowling pin and a purple bunny had in common.
Cue=>Laughter.
The ladies split up, the paintings scattered. The red canvas went to the red-room live-in. The bunny somehow ended in unrelated hands - just a friend that liked it. The green one went ignored in my possessions for years. The Fudgsicle to another friend who frequented frozen chocolaty conversation.
My dusty bowling pin didn't interest me in it's solitude, I forked it over to the bunny adopter.
Now we are at - 2 for friend A. 1 for Original red-room occupancy, & 1 for Friend B.
The red mousetrap lives in oblivion in Madison, WI. Likely stacked in neglected belongings that didn't make the cut to New York, New York.
The blue fudgsicle lays somewhere unseen in Friend B's long time home.
The green bowling pin and the purple bunny have led happier lives. They have been hung and displayed proudly since their acceptance. In fact, Friend A moved to New York by plane under luggage restrictions. There were a meager amount of belongings that traveled across the United States. My paintings were two of those things.
Through wildly entertaining, sincerely endearing and slovenly drunken texts - I am asked to track down the other two neglected images.
Moral art dilemma.
There are people that pretend to appreciate art and there are people that appreciate art. Just as there are people that appreciate the effort someone puts into something and there are some that pretend to appreciate the effort someone puts into something.
My point is... the love factor can either lead a person to displaying your work proudly or letting it lay is closets and uninhabited cities.
This is not a diss on either of those owners. They both have other works of mine out for the public eye. (I just realized that brings my total to 5 of my paintings in New York City, I'm claiming serious territory!). But for some reason, maybe it doesn't 'match' or 'fit' or they have no room to hang it... those sit neglected.
So how do I steal my own art back and put it to a loving home?
Frankly, I don't even like the paintings themselves. I liked the concept for the one year it hung in that four bedroom flat, but after that house split - so did my interest.
Can I ask for it back?
Do I have that right as an artist?
Do we get a say in our own art's destiny?
Can I intervene?
Would a bait and switch work here? Offer up a new work.
What is less offensive?
Is there really a way to tell someone they aren't doing your art justice and you want it back?
Is having them read this on a blog somewhere worse than just asking the stupid question? Ha.
Normally, I wouldn't care. Go ahead and rot, they already have for this long. But now I have someone knocking at my door. Begging me for the orphaned paintings.
Hmmm...
It just makes me consider this thing called art. I've always done it for me. Me only. I accumulate too much and gift it away to people that I feel would appreciate it. Maybe it's a silly thing to assume, that anyone would want these things. Artistic tastes vary through every one's mouth. How arrogant to assume I would taste good.
Hmmm...
It's too bad I'm broke again during the holiday season and have a million prints to give away. You will all love my work! You must!
I tried to find photo's of said paintings... but that was before my digital age. Apparently, the green bowling pin did make a breif appearence in my uptown studio. Don't follow my grandiose jesture... instead follow the ponytail to the upper left. All paintings where in that same style. Static objects.
A hypothetical investigation of the best way to steal my own art.
My first year in the Twin Cities, I found myself shacked up with three strange ladies. Platonically shacked, that is. Each room of our 4 bedroom flat painted a vibrant hue different from the room proceeding it. One green, one purple, one red, and one blue.
The house was mostly established when I came on board. Wrong verb, I should say inhabitated, not established. The curb furniture was aplenty but the walls were barren.
A blank wall is my canvas.
With the help of the aging, crusty wall paint. I made four corresponding paintings. One in each bedroom tone. The joke was that they had to be random objects with no significance or reference to one another. We wanted visitors to wonder what the hell these paintings meant.
The strategy was effective. New comers and unobservant frequent travelers often asked what a red mousetrap, a blue fudgsicle, a green bowling pin and a purple bunny had in common.
Cue=>Laughter.
The ladies split up, the paintings scattered. The red canvas went to the red-room live-in. The bunny somehow ended in unrelated hands - just a friend that liked it. The green one went ignored in my possessions for years. The Fudgsicle to another friend who frequented frozen chocolaty conversation.
My dusty bowling pin didn't interest me in it's solitude, I forked it over to the bunny adopter.
Now we are at - 2 for friend A. 1 for Original red-room occupancy, & 1 for Friend B.
The red mousetrap lives in oblivion in Madison, WI. Likely stacked in neglected belongings that didn't make the cut to New York, New York.
The blue fudgsicle lays somewhere unseen in Friend B's long time home.
The green bowling pin and the purple bunny have led happier lives. They have been hung and displayed proudly since their acceptance. In fact, Friend A moved to New York by plane under luggage restrictions. There were a meager amount of belongings that traveled across the United States. My paintings were two of those things.
Through wildly entertaining, sincerely endearing and slovenly drunken texts - I am asked to track down the other two neglected images.
Moral art dilemma.
There are people that pretend to appreciate art and there are people that appreciate art. Just as there are people that appreciate the effort someone puts into something and there are some that pretend to appreciate the effort someone puts into something.
My point is... the love factor can either lead a person to displaying your work proudly or letting it lay is closets and uninhabited cities.
This is not a diss on either of those owners. They both have other works of mine out for the public eye. (I just realized that brings my total to 5 of my paintings in New York City, I'm claiming serious territory!). But for some reason, maybe it doesn't 'match' or 'fit' or they have no room to hang it... those sit neglected.
So how do I steal my own art back and put it to a loving home?
Frankly, I don't even like the paintings themselves. I liked the concept for the one year it hung in that four bedroom flat, but after that house split - so did my interest.
Can I ask for it back?
Do I have that right as an artist?
Do we get a say in our own art's destiny?
Can I intervene?
Would a bait and switch work here? Offer up a new work.
What is less offensive?
Is there really a way to tell someone they aren't doing your art justice and you want it back?
Is having them read this on a blog somewhere worse than just asking the stupid question? Ha.
Normally, I wouldn't care. Go ahead and rot, they already have for this long. But now I have someone knocking at my door. Begging me for the orphaned paintings.
Hmmm...
It just makes me consider this thing called art. I've always done it for me. Me only. I accumulate too much and gift it away to people that I feel would appreciate it. Maybe it's a silly thing to assume, that anyone would want these things. Artistic tastes vary through every one's mouth. How arrogant to assume I would taste good.
Hmmm...
It's too bad I'm broke again during the holiday season and have a million prints to give away. You will all love my work! You must!
I tried to find photo's of said paintings... but that was before my digital age. Apparently, the green bowling pin did make a breif appearence in my uptown studio. Don't follow my grandiose jesture... instead follow the ponytail to the upper left. All paintings where in that same style. Static objects.
Friday, December 4, 2009
How Dickensonian of me...
I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there
To see if it was there
-Emily Dickenson
Since I am such a good self-dater, I treated myself to the Louvre exhibit last night. I spent the hours of the night wandering the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. A museum I need to take better advantage of. The perfect museum for unassuming scrabble games.
The Dickenson stanza above weaved in and out of a shadowed figure within the museum's permanent collection. The poem was scribed on a woman, in all her nude and bearing glory, with her palms to the sky. The lyric caught my attention and I vowed I would remember it (like so many other things throughout the day I pretend to make note of). Most quickly fade. That was one reason I loved writing on this blog everyday. I held so tight to those moments in life. Promised myself never to forget.
Somehow, yesterday's discovery was only partly lost to me. I cannot recall the contemporary artists who sketched those words into skin. Google has failed me on that one. Perhaps a call to MIA is in order.
I held onto those words though. I won't let it go. It can't fly away.
So today I sit during my lunch hour putting this in writing before it is lost again.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Acting Out
Today I am hating maturity.
Every second of my work day I wanted to respond with a whinny girl tantrom. I hate those reactions to life though... so I kept my mouth shut. Shut tight. I was a woman of few words today. But my inner dialogue was that of a bratty, overly independent 6 year old who isn't gettting her way.
Everytime I watched someone else lift something for me ... that whinny girl was singing in my head how 'she can do this herself'. The tantrom kept circling 'how stupid this is'.
They are watching me. Everytime I leave eyeshot and hear "where are you going?", the little girl inside of me wails "shut up". The girl inside of me knows they are nagging her for what she set out to do. She wants to push that rack of chairs for herself. She wants to break the rules.
These rules were put on my body to protect me. Protect me from myself. And oh man... my egomaniac, macho-independence is not making this easy.
My body and my ego are wrestling. Two weeks of work restrictions. I am hoping that my feeling of uselessness will give way to willfull laziness. I can only hope that when a man lifts something for me over the next two weeks, I can silence the sexism and happily accept the fact that someone is doing my work for me.
Every second of my work day I wanted to respond with a whinny girl tantrom. I hate those reactions to life though... so I kept my mouth shut. Shut tight. I was a woman of few words today. But my inner dialogue was that of a bratty, overly independent 6 year old who isn't gettting her way.
Everytime I watched someone else lift something for me ... that whinny girl was singing in my head how 'she can do this herself'. The tantrom kept circling 'how stupid this is'.
They are watching me. Everytime I leave eyeshot and hear "where are you going?", the little girl inside of me wails "shut up". The girl inside of me knows they are nagging her for what she set out to do. She wants to push that rack of chairs for herself. She wants to break the rules.
These rules were put on my body to protect me. Protect me from myself. And oh man... my egomaniac, macho-independence is not making this easy.
My body and my ego are wrestling. Two weeks of work restrictions. I am hoping that my feeling of uselessness will give way to willfull laziness. I can only hope that when a man lifts something for me over the next two weeks, I can silence the sexism and happily accept the fact that someone is doing my work for me.
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