Burning away the roses

I sold the breakup painting. Or rather, the head of the BWAC mafia sold it, as she majestically informed me, when I went to pick it up and couldn't find it. "I told the English lady, 'It will change your life,' and offered to carry it downstairs for her," she said, in her sonorous Russian accent. The people at BWAC are starting to be friendly toward me, at least the ones in with the mafia. The price of that painting was probably twenty percent of their gross for the closing weekend. I'm shocked that it sold; it wasn't a painting I'd ever hang in MY home, but then I was the one who painted it to a repeat loop of John Mayer singing "'All you need is love' is a LIE, cause WE HAD LOVE and we STILL said goodbye, now we're TIRED...battered FIGHTERS...". It also weighs about twenty pounds because it was painted on canvas stretched over a made-in-Mexico panel; the irregularities of the edges were one of the things that the head of the mafia had to explain away as 'feature, not flaw.' I'm so glad it is out of my life. It will also pay my rent this month.

I sold another little painting a couple of weeks ago, to a high-school friend I hadn't seen in 20 years. Then another friend looked at my website and wanted to buy the same one. This baffled me; it was my least favorite painting in the show by far, to the point where I almost didn't hang it. The second friend said she liked it because it was more optimistic than the rest of them. She also said that it was obvious, from looking at the work, that I've been depressed all year. So much for brave concealment of suffering under a stoically cheerful exterior.

It was wonderful to see my high-school friend. In high school we had the kind of friendship that is described by child psychologists as "parallel play." We attended the same ballet classes five or six times a week, and sat together at lunchtime and at football games in strained, awkward silences. We both had blonde hair and blue eyes, had good grades and no boyfriends, and people got us mixed up. I always figured that deep down, we probably had nothing in common.

Come to find out, we've practically got parallel souls. Once we finally started dating, we were both drawn to men who did their own repairs on their trailer-park cars, having acquired in high school a visceral repulsion for the ones whose parents gave them a Beamer on their sixteenth birthdays. She had either better instincts or better luck than I did, however--she's been married for thirteen years to a professional dancer who grew up in a trailer park. They have their own dance company Santa Barbara, a house in Sedona, and a six-year-old daughter with blonde hair and glasses. She spends a month every summer with her daughter in a different exotic location--last year, it was the next town over from Guanajuato. She says she loves my work because "it's so spiritual." I told her, "let's keep in better touch."

Before meeting my friend and her family for dinner, I had a crisis of confidence and bought a new outfit with a poufy skirt, anti-aging eye cream and toenail polish. I gave myself a pedicure, super-conditioned my hair, and put on eye makeup. Well, my friend is still a ballet dancer! And I've gained, like, thirty pounds since high school, I limp, I'm single, financially unstable and live with cats.

"We look almost the same as we used to," said my friend. And so we do.




I've been getting acupuncture. The first session seemed like a total waste of time. I got needles all up and down my problem meridian, from right scapula to left ankle; it hurt, it wasn't relaxing or fun, and it didn't do anything. The acupuncturist insisted that I return. We were swapping, so at least it didn't cost me anything. Codependently, I agreed.

The second session was astonishing, just like acupuncture is supposed to be; she stuck needles in my right arm, and my left ankle felt better. It didn't happen all at once--I could feel a steady stream of pulses running up the arm, through the shoulder, down my back and threading through my left hip, to bop down against the injury in the tendon at the ankle bone. "I think we've found it," said the acupuncturist. "These meridians aren't directly connected, but they're distantly related." The ankle tendon got better immediately and stayed better. Moreover, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream about telling off my bastard ex-boyfriend, with my right arm meridian in knots.

So it is as I suspected--this is about codependency. Codependency, I have discovered, is the ace of spades on my forehead. I did not know it. My best instincts have created my worst problems.

When one of my best friends stopped bathing in college, I continued to hang out with him. I sat through movies at his right elbow, trying desperately not to breathe. We even made out once or twice. I never said those magic little words, "R., please take a shower or I will not sit with you. You STINK." I thought this would be rude and unloving. Eventually I started avoiding him instead.

In nearly all of my relationships, especially sexual ones, I cut people slack. I cut them way, way too much slack, for all the wrong things and all the wrong reasons. Some part of me is always thinking, "they know they're being rude, vulgar, unreliable, mean, and treacherous. They know they're trampling my boundaries. They can't help it. It's not personal. To show I love them, to show I understand, I will not object. I will accept them the way they are, knowing they are perfect. And when my boundary gets blown to smithereens, I will adapt."

Also, I don't want to be a weenie. A spoiled princess, like that girl in "Free to Be, You and Me," who insisted, "Ladies first, ladies first! Untie me this instant, Mr. Tiger! My dress is getting mussed!" So they ate her. Recently I have realized that this was wishful-thinking propaganda. High-maintenance women, far from getting fed to the tigers, are status symbols in most human societies. Cool-ass workhorses like me are wives for poor people.

But now that I know, I am working on it. It's a slow process. Last weekend I went to a party upstate, an overnight "bacchanal" with costumes and bonfire. I went as a bare-navel'd gypsy, and brought my body paint.

(Note: Sexy, for me, is not at all like sexy for Badger. Sexy for me is taking my hair down. "Hot" is wearing a 'tiny-fit' T-shirt with a pair of pants that aren't two sizes too big for me. So for me, letting down my hair, tying a scarf around my forehead, donning a sarong and an Indian top cropped just under my bra-less cleavage, then painting a curly gold sun around my belly button, was tantamount to declaring, 'I am a wanton woman. Let me paint your neck.')

Unfortunately, ninety percent of the men attending were married, gay, or wearing a satyr suit with no butt coverage. (Badger should have been there instead of me.) The married friend attending with me, with unerring instinct, seized the one single, overage male, who was happily engaged in welding a trellis, and dragged him over for a paint job. He was cute, in an earthy sort of way, and we got along. He's an organic farmer and artist's contract welder, and visits my neighborhood once a week to weld for a 'famous artist.'

To cut a short story short, the next day four of us girls got a tour of the organic farm. It was informative and charming, and we harvested strawberries and snap peas. Even in my new vigilance, I failed to dock him points for the fact that, although he'd slept in his own home and not in a field of four-foot grass the night before, he had failed to shave, bathe, or put on clean clothes that fit properly. Well, he's a farmer. Farmers work in the dirt. Don't be a weenie.

But I really, really needed to use the bathroom. The farmhouse wasn't on the tour, but I got a neighbor to show me the way. And on the way home, I wrote a new Rule: "Never date a man whose home is as clean as his barn."

Chickens. Chickens in the living room, and all that that implies. No books, either. This man does not need a wife. He needs a MOMMY. (Thanks, Beck-beck.)

I was pretty depressed about it--not the farmer, that was a quiet triumph of the New Boundaries--but about the fact that the way I see it now, most of my past has been a waste and a tragedy. Most of what I thought was "patience, love, forgiveness and understanding" was codependent behavior that did other people no good at all, and landed me in a yearlong depression and near-bankruptcy. I felt that maybe it's too late, I've lost my chance, and that since I don't know how to relate to people anyway, I'll only live with cats for the rest of my life.

But that was yesterday. This morning I woke up feeling that the past was, finally, past. I don't need to DO anything about it. I don't even need to write back to the ex-lover who invited me to visit him, and then wrote again to say that another girlfriend was visiting, but who knows when she'll leave? As soon as I figure out how to do it, I will delete the phone number of the investment banker from my cell phone, the one who committed to helping me fund my project, then announced that he was moving to Vermont to study Chinese. When I invited him to attend a members-only event at the Whitney last winter, he made another date for the same evening, and immediately after the opening he left me standing on the corner in a blizzard as he jumped into a cab. I figured that maybe he didn't KNOW this was rude.

And as for the future, well, it will be easier. I will no longer follow the Rule that it is rude to TELL someone when they're being rude. Miss Manners writes for a class with a clue, and unfortunately, I don't always socialize with those people. I'm practicing, in my head, phrases like, "Please don't whine. It bothers me." "No, it's not okay, thanks." "No, I'm not interested in a polyamorous relationship. It was nice meeting you. Goodbye."

Who knows what will happen then.

Out of the Closet

I have links, now. This is because I finally gave up on Internet Explorer and took the two hours to download and untangle Mozilla Firefox. You see, I'm not ACTUALLY a narcissistic asshole, I wasn't using links because the "link" icon didn't appear in my browser. That has been fixed, now, at great time and trouble.

beautiful, beautiful, beautiful

I didn't expect to feel so completely, utterly fulfilled and content once this show was hung. It's not as though there were much likelihood of its being a dramatic, public and unqualified success, á lá the opening night of "Once in a Lifetime," by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, which opened at the Music Box Theatre sometime in the thirties. The opening of my art show was not attended by thousands; in fact, it didn't even have a reception. It wasn't received by glowing reviews in all the major journals, hot off the presses soon after midnight, eagerly awaited at all-night diners by a throng of friends, family, cohorts and well-wishers. It didn't gross so many profits on the first evening that I could afford to leave my Brooklyn apartment forever, with only a few family photos, smashing everything behind me, and move immediately into a Manhattan hotel. I expected all these facts to bother me, sort of, a little bit. They didn't. I feel like I did what I set out to do, and I feel fine.

That Brooklyn-apartment-smashing episode is the crowning event of Hart's autobiography, 'Act One,' which Mrs. Wertz bestowed upon me in seventh grade, saying "I think you'll like this book." I have NO IDEA how she knew. I reread 'Act One' several times a decade. It's one of the reasons I felt instantly at home in New York, I think, despite the fact that things here have changed a tad since the nineteen-thirties. The last time I reread it I realized how deeply the story had sunk into my bones, and informed so many of my major decisions in life; I also realized that Hart's ironic, self-mocking and hilarious tone had seeped into my writing style, long before I even knew he was hilarious. In seventh grade I took him utterly seriously--his infatuation with the theatre, his determination to be a part of it against all odds; the thrift, the poverty, the graveside vows, the all-nighters, horrible jobs, humiliating rejections, sudden revelations and paradigm shifts, grueling and unremunerated work, refusal to quit, desperate appeals, brilliant eleventh-hour insights--and finally, his triumphant success, snatched from the jaws of failure. It's a fabulous book. I highly recommend it. You can find three or four copies for a dollar in most major used bookstores.

Anyway, as I said, my show didn't even have a reception. This was rather a slap in the face, since the Art World holds receptions for the opening of every envelope, practically. I've had receptions in bookstores, bars, waiting rooms, Internet cafes and bathrooms. But when I asked when the reception was scheduled, the manager told me "We're not planning on it," in a tone of voice that did not admit discussion or argument. It was embarrassing, but I contented myself with fantasies of showing up suddenly with fifteen friends in tow and some champagne, to cheerfully wreak my retaliation, four or five times over the course of the summer, and forged ahead.

I also had to do, and pay for, all my own promotion. I didn't even bother with a press release, since I have spent enough hours of my lifetime writing press releases that are roundly ignored by absolutely all press on the planet. But I did design and print a card, sending back the first proof, re-shooting the image so that the colors came out accurately, and harassed my entire mailing list both electronically and in person, and got my mom to harass her Christmas card list as well. I even skipped blithely into a few tony stores on the upper East Side and asked them to distribute my postcards. It's really hard to get rid of a thousand. And although I had no press release, I did send cards to all the fancy Art World people that my former friend the Famous Artist should have introduced me to last year, and didn't. Also to the curator of the Whitney Biennial. Hell, it's a very long shot, but the gallery IS just up the street from the Whitney. Maybe they'll stroll in on their lunch break, and gasp, 'eureka!'. Maybe.

The day before hanging, I spent shooting and re-shooting high-rez, color-controlled images of everything in the show, re-writing my bio, resume and statement, printing up a portfolio, burning CDs in case by some miracle the press did show up, and bubble-wrapping the actual work. I finished around midnight. As I lay, exhausted, on my disintegrating couch (it gets feathers all over the place when you sit down, now) the top two paintings in the pile glowed calmly at me through their bubble wrap. I noticed that they were doing it, the thing, what I painted them to do; they were creating a beautiful, beautiful energy in my space. They were speaking of warmth and light and depth and poetry.

The next day it drizzled, or threatened to rain until it did. I made about nine trips up and down three flights of stairs to load the truck unassisted. I kept in mind one of the keys to happiness that I'd heard on the radio, a few nights previously; say to yourself, "I GET to," not "I HAVE to." 'I GET to hang my first show in Manhattan, on this beautiful, soft, cool, rainy day in New York City.' Not, 'I HAVE to climb three flights of stairs nine times on my chronically sore ankle, to hang my underappreciated paintings in a furniture store, without promo or a reception.' It worked. When I got there the assistant showroom manager said, "Oh, it's you."

The assistant's assistant was really sweet, though, and guarded my car in the bus zone until I was unloaded. Then I took my time finding a free parking spot, and having a very greasy breakfast at the diner down the street. The short-order cook took a liking to me and gave me a free slice of turkey. I gave him a card. It was good turkey.

It made my ankle even sorer, taking off my shoes to climb all over the furniture while hanging the show. Also, there was a new, huge cabinet blocking one of the major walls that I'd counted on filling. I actually thought I'd painted too many paintings, and would have to take some of them home again. After some finagling, though, they all fit, and they looked GREAT. Even the assistant showroom manager thawed a bit. Then I spent the evening biking in the rain to one social engagement after another, with people who paid for my drinks and congratulated me, so I didn't have time to mope.

The rest of the weekend was even busier, if possible; breakfast at the Whitney, for a Member Preview of a show of really horrible paintings. Well, except for Julie Mehuretu, or however you spell it. Julie's were wonderful; I sat in her room and blissfully absorbed them. Most of the other rooms I could not even walk into. We are talking gigantic canvases of things that looked like psychedelic tumors engaged in flaming car wrecks. They didn't even follow any formal principles of decent painting; they were edge-aware, lacking a center of gravity, ignorant of color theory, overworked, far too busy, chaotic, ugly, and pointless. And whoever curates shows at the Whitney actually looks at Julie M.'s work alongside this crap and CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. I tell you, it scares me. So much for a Whitney curator wandering into my show and recognizing it for what it is.

Because IT IS. When I re-wrote my bio I took out all the ironic, self-mocking, defensive statements that were supposed to be humorous. I streamlined and purified my artist's statement, and put in the 'inclusive' résumé that runs to five pages. I tell everyone I meet, "Please go see my show. It's beautiful." I am so proud of myself; I did what I intended to to, despite heartbreak, depression, repression, abuse, and the World's Indifference. The paintings glow, they sing, they move, they murmur of peace through fire and grief. They call out to the street even from the second floor, at an angle. The showroom manager called that evening just to tell me, "We switched two of them around because we had to rearrange the room again. But really I called to say I love it, love it, love it!" Apparently her fear was that the paintings would turn out to look better in photos than they did in person, like their last few shows did. Ha! They look BETTER. Infinitely, hugely, deeply better, and they look damn good in the pictures.

So then we went to see Barry McGee's show at Deitch Projects, and, my God. I'm worried about Barry. I don't know whether he's still grieving for Margaret, or whether he's been co-opted, corrupted and destroyed by the Big Art World Dealers, or whether the deeps of his soul really ARE full of nihilism, chaos, graceless ignorance and a Graffiti Theme Park by Disney, but it was AWFUL. I must write a screed and send it to the Brooklyn Rail, as if. Poor Barry. There are worse things than showing in a furniture store.

After that it was more social madness, shoe-shopping (march me all around Manhattan in a pair of old shoes and then pass a sale at Timberland and you have a guaranteed buyer, no matter how poor I am), an opening at which I got cornered by a drunken, socially clueless anti-war activist who still believes that people will Come Together and live in harmony if only he describes face-melting weaponry with enough gory accuracy to the hapless citizenry, and a late-night video of "Henry Fool." Sunday was co-op shift, Site Osmosis brainstorming and an impromptu dinner party, because Caroline was in town. It was all better than any reception.

One thing which has contributed to my feelings of inner peace and well-being is the understanding that I could not have accomplished this if I were still with my former boyfriend. I used to think I could absorb or deflect any amount of attempted sabotage by damaged people and still succeed. While I was with my boyfriend I didn't count the sunk costs of resistance. There was not ever a really big chance that he would convince me to rent an apartment in Staten Island with strangers and get a job stocking groceries to pay the bills. He didn't succeed in forcing me to do chair massage in bars, nor to take a full-time, underpaid job as 'gallery assistant' and personal slave to a ninety-year-old, third-rate art dealer on the upper East Side. I continued to make judicious use of low-interest credit for career advancement, rather than hosting utterly unpublicized events, walking barefoot on my damaged ankle or painting on scraps out of dumpsters. But he never stopped trying to cripple me, as though my agreeing to any of these unacceptable solutions would save our relationship. He got very, very angry with me for my failure to acquiesce in all his plans, 'as if his salvation depended upon it.'

All of this subtle, ceaselessly negative spiritual pounding took its toll. It's not as if I wasn't up-front about my intentions, but too many people are so accustomed to pipe-dreamers and windbags that they don't take me seriously until they've known me for a couple of years. The first few times we spoke I told him, "I'm real. I'm good at what I do, and I mean it." After awhile he could see that this was true, but he never stopped trying to derail my intention into some dead-end alley of his own paranoid devising. And then, at the end, he said he wanted to "maintain the friendship" and that he "wanted me to be happy." Hello? What friendship? Happy, how? Am I to imagine that, having done his best to annihilate happiness, understanding, communication and respect between the two of us, that he would then become a friend worth having?

Finally it is clear to me that I could not afford that. Yes, I did love him, which was why I put up with him; yes, on some level I still do, and probably always will. But I won't sacrifice my happiness for anyone, least of all for someone who doesn't value it.

So the reason I know my show has succeeded, even if nothing sells, even if I have to get a temp job next week, is that I held true to my own internal compass. Happiness is not possible if this is not the case.

diagnosis

Eureka. After yesterday's four-hour bike ride I felt good. Really good. Good in a way that, I now recall, used to feel normal. As the evening progressed the notion dawned upon me--I've been DEPRESSED. For, like, a YEAR. Symptoms of low-level, chronic depression have been:

*sleeping too much, even for my slothlike bioprogramming, ten or eleven hours a night;

*overeating, particularly things like bagels and pasta;

*drinking too much tea, a large, very stout pot per day, to the point where I get ghastly caffeine withdrawal headaches when I try to do a Mastercleanse fast;

*reading too much, while overeating and drinking too much tea, because the spot by my kitchen window is perfectly set up for it, what with the bookstand and the plants and the sunlight and the comfortable chair and the teapot;

*sluggishness, lack of motivation, fatigue, feelings of hopelessness and despair;

*hampered creativity;

*renting too many videos and not leaving the apartment often enough.

What astonishes me is that I managed to conceal this depression from everybody, including myself. People tell me I look good, like a weight has been lifted, that I seem fine. I thought I *was* fine, kind of. A little chubby, but basically fine.

In addition to this, despite the depression, sluggishness, apathy, and despair, I have still managed to produce enough kick-ass new works to fill a one-person show in Manhattan, as well as spares for BWAC, apply for ten or twelve grant/residency/exhibition opportunities, run a healing practice and come up with a new business plan. Just think what I will be doing now that I've realized that biking to Coney Island=serotonin boost=increased energy, wakefulness and creativity. I hope I get ANOTHER show really soon; to this end I have further abused my credit card and ordered another roll of linen from Jerry's, plus three more stretcher bars. If, by some insane chance, Mary Boone stumbles into T. Moser over the summer and calls me up, wanting to make a studio visit, I Will Be Ready.

Coney Island, ho!

Just biked out to Coney Island and back, finally. I've been meaning to do this since getting the bike. The whole trip took five hours, with one hour for beach-sitting; if I'm going to do this regularly, I need to start getting up at 5 AM--well, let's be realistic, maybe 7 AM, or even 8:30.

On the way out to Coney Island there were, first, huge warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront, between about 30th and 60th streets, which I wound among and examined with a predatory eye. There was one gabled brick building with no roof, and the date "1832" or maybe "1892" over the door. That one would take, oh, wild guess, four million dollars to convert into, say, a covered market with performance spaces, studios, bookstores, maybe an indoor garden. I thought of taking a huge building, bashing out the center of it and putting a garden in the middle, with maybe a retractable, transparent cover over the top for winter. Then the upper stories could have windows and terraces looking onto the garden, and the ground floor could have stores and restaurants and cafes with tables around it, or even inside it. That way it would not matter how industrial and bleak and wintry and Brooklyn the streets were around it; inside it would be restorative and joyful.

Then, thank goodness, around 68th street there is a bike path, sandwiched in between the Belt Parkway and the water, which gives you peace from being potentially mangled by traffic, and a view of boats and bridge and water, and allows you to breathe deeply of mingled fresh sea breezes and car exhaust. I tried to calculate the percentage of car exhaust to pure Atlantic air, given the wind velocity (strong) and the traffic (heavy, in fact I wanted to stick out my tongue at the SUVs on the Belt Parkway and say 'nyah, nyah, I'm going faster than YOU.') But such calculations are inscrutable until I come down with black lung disease and get biopsied.

After the Verrazano bridge (where, on return, there was a cheerful, welcome delay, as the fire and police department had cordoned off the path because of a stranded boat, and were slowly and inefficiently ferrying the people off of it, little kids first. There must have been a good reason why they weren't simply towing it to a harbor and having a look at the engine, but I didn't find out what it was) there is a hairy stretch where the bike path abruptly terminates in a Toys R Us parking lot. I decided that my guiding principle would be "follow the Latino boys on low-slung bicycles," because they must know where the fun is, and this proved to be a sound decision. We took a sidewalk past a strange little children's amusement park, threaded between the freeway and some deserted athletic fields, and fetched up in a Home Depot parking lot. I had a moment of discouragement; I had my heart set on the beach, and I was stranded instead in a series of suburban strip malls.

Eventually, though, after more determined meandering through increasingly interesting real estate (think 'second-floor terrace.' think 'barbeque.' think 'ocean view,' or at least 'ocean breeze,' then think 'probably, still, really cheap.' Hmmmmm) I found the Beach. Oh, glorious beach. I saved the garish amusement park rides, and Nathan's, for another day. By then I was in that state of blood sugar where only a steak burrito and a Coke, to go, in the backpack, to be eaten on beach, was acceptable. This I found, after detouring through a wonderful place where everybody was speaking Russian, and the signs were in Russian, and the sunlight shone through the grating of the elevated train tracks overhead, onto the variety of brightly-colored stuff for sale, clothing and diamonds and flowers, and a strangely bent old man admonished me to wear sunglasses when biking. I told him, "that's a great idea, thank you. Yes, I'm wearing sunscreen," and gave him the thumbs-up.

I realized then that this was the Coney Island, and Russian-mafia Brighton Beach, that my ex-boyfriend had in his mind, that he wanted to show me on that dark and deserted night when we drove out and around there and back again. The magic was largely missing on that occasion, though I gave him points for concept.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Neneng-girl is speaking to me again. She decided to "let bygones be bygones" just in time for her birthday party. I had deeply ambivalent feelings about going--on the one hand, Neneng-girl's birthday parties are legendary, and I have never had a lousy time at one, no matter what sort of psychotic episodes have been enacted in the weeks leading up to them. On the other hand, it's wildly annoying when somebody 'forgives' you for the heinous fault you committed when you maintained a necessary boundary under intense duress, and, furthermore, fails to apologize for subjecting you to said duress, or the following two-month ostracism. But whatever. I dragged my heels about getting ready, and then got hugely lost, and when I got there nobody answered the doorbell or the cell phone. I left a message saying "I came to your party but nobody is letting me in, so I'm going home; happy birthday." Ten minutes later my cell phone rang; "Please come back!"

So I had another wonderful time. Neneng-girl's friends are all great people, and if they're not really My People, that's okay. I can accept the fact that although New Yorkers get too busy to return your phone calls or respond to your emails for, like, eight months, they're generally glad to see you when you're standing in front of them, nicely dressed and with no agenda. R. kept looking earnestly into my eyes and declaring that she's been "super busy," and I kept looking earnestly back and saying "I know." What does she expect me to say? "You bitch, I hate you for not calling me back, ever?" "That's okay, it's fine that you don't call me back, ever?" No, the best recipe for harmony is No Expectations Whatsoever.

At the end of the evening there occurred one of those momentous 'there but for the grace of God' episodes, which remind me that there are worse things than getting dumped and having my heart stomped to smithereens. I got dragged into it when J., who is twenty-four, petite, and has a newborn baby with M., who is forty, 6'3", and angry, grabbed me distraughtly and exclaimed, "M. just hit me and twisted my arm, and I hit him in the eye, and he says he can't see out of the eye and now I can't find him, and I need to get a car service so that I can pay the babysitter and he has the cell phone and the money."

"He WHAT?!!!" I said, surprised into being momentarily reflexive. Then I got a grip, drove her home, and stood in the hallway listening to them scream at each other. I wouldn't have interfered except that it started sounding like he might hit her again; I walked into the living room. M. ordered me out of his house. I stood there. They screamed. The neighbor screamed. I realized that if I left and violence happened, the neighbor would summon the police; this was a reassuring thought. M. stormed out of the living room; I hugged J. and told her she could bring the baby and stay with me, or stay there, but that I should go. She said she'd be okay; I made her look me in the eye and repeat this. She said she'd be okay. I hugged both her and M., said I loved them both, and left.

J. called the next day, and talked without drawing breath for twenty minutes. M. has anger problems, childhood, violence, therapy, baggage, issues, etc., etc. She's a smart girl and I'm not too worried. Her parents saw this coming last year and set up a Leaving M. Trust Fund. I mainly listened and refrained from offering any Interfering Female Friend Advice, such as "leave the bastard THIS INSTANT" or "Men are like that, stand by him for the Baby's Sake." I doubt I will hear from either of them for several months, and then nothing will surprise me--not that she's gone to Canada with the baby and is never coming back, nor that they're in couples counselling and couldn't be happier.

At any rate I am not in a relationship like that, nor like H.'s, whose wedding we attended a year and a half ago. I ran into her at BWAC. "That was a wonderful wedding," I told her. "It was the high point," she said. "I'm giving him till June and then I'm leaving." He sits in front of the TV and gets stoned seven nights a week, while she goes to her studio and makes angst-ridden art. He's opposed both to babies and counselling, and has no idea that she's this close to leaving.

These are all my ex's friends. Birds of a feather, etc. I see that probably why he dumped me is that I didn't play according to the script; when he got abusive, I didn't hit back, I didn't scream, I just stood there and looked at him, wondering when he'd come to his senses. Now, of course, I wish that I'd reacted in some way--told him to get out of the car, told him I was leaving and meant it. But at least I was healthy enough to get him to dump me. People hate it when you don't follow their scripts.

I can't dance anymore

or at least I can, and did, but today I'm paying the price. What I have is chronic tendonitis in the tendon attached to my left malleolus. If I don't walk too much, and ice it three times a day, and see the chiropractor, and sleep on my back with a pillow under my knees, and wear my orthotics, and use a Theraband for five minutes before standing up in the mornings, and rub arnica on it periodically, it's almost functional. BUT if I don't do these things, and then I go dancing for, like, hours, in what used to be the engine room of a large metal boat, on an unsprung steel floor, the next morning I'M FUCKING CRIPPLED. FUCK. This is very annoying and I want it to go away. I have been attending only the gentlest of gentle yoga classes and it still gets worse. This week I had my first acupuncture treatment ever and it didn't help at all. Fuck. I'm too young for this.

Things are almost ready for my show. My bank account is correspondingly empty. My open studio was mildly encouraging; some old white guy came while I was out, and asked for prices, and hung around until I got back, and didn't blink when I told him what the prices were. All my friends were like, "did you hear from that guy? Did he buy the painting?"

Well, no, of course not, that's not how it happens. People who buy my work always have to think about it, sometimes for years, until they come to a boil at the most unexpected moment and blurt out, "I want to BUY THAT PAINTING." The fact that a total stranger walked in and started to simmer, now that my prices are between $2-$3K, is very, very encouraging. Then the BWAC mafia came in and curated me into the summer Earth show, right off the bat. BWAC is supposed to be an egalitarian community organization, totally un-curated, but the mafia has decided that you hit a critical ceiling that way. They're right, and I'm glad to be on the good side of a mafia, for once. Everyone from BWAC who visited said, "you painted that thistle painting? I LOVE that painting. I'm so honored to meet you." This made me happy, because the thistle painting was the one I dropped off at BWAC last summer, came to visit it, someone had put a HOLE through the center of it, I pitched a fit, took it home, fixed it, returned it, and picked it up again six weeks later. I felt the whole process was futile. But People Noticed It. Energy Builds. It Will Be Okay.

Then, I've been performing. Last night I performed in O's event at the boat, which was downright surreal, and a hell of a lot of fun. O. is phenomenal and I'm so glad to be working with her. She organized a performance event that included art installations, videos, comedy, music, literature, improvisation and clowns, with lighting cues and tech cues and programs and printed material, and it all happened on time and nobody got bored and people jumped up right on cue and rocked all night long. But I feel OLD. I only had two beers, but today I slept as much as if I'd had four margaritas and wrecked my reputation.

Some guy seemed to be watching me dance, and he must have approved, because he kept going over to his friends and talking to them and pointing at me. I wasn't imagining this because after the band finally stopped he came over and tried to initiate a conversation. Unfortunately he was drunk and dumb as rocks, and probably from New Jersey. He had that Jersey haircut and the nose that sort of joins the forehead without a noticeable indentation. I realize that the reason I've never been good at the bar/club scene is that I demand too much from even the most random attempted pickup--mesomorphic AND darkly attractive AND wittily intelligent AND a decent person. In other words, I never, ever get picked up. At least now that I'm older I feel sorry for the guys, having to try so hard to get shot down over and over, and now that I'm over 35 and mildly crippled I even feel sort of grateful that they try. Which is why I'm bothering to blog about it.

Over the weekend I did another performance, this one completely spontaneous, which surprised even me. I went to the opening of the Brooklyn Artist's Gym. I thought it was a great idea, but I didn't know anybody and the art was highly amateurish, so after scarfing up a free meal and a couple of glasses of wine, as though I were still a starving art student, which I actually am, I decided to leave. Only it was thunderstorming and I'd ridden my bike. While I was waiting it out, they started to auction off the amateur art.

But what people do not understand, many of them, when they plan a fundraising art auction, is that you can't sell art by standing in front of it and saying, "who wants to bid on this piece?" Which is what they did. Ouch. Ooooh. Painful. Silence. Ouch. Oooh. Things were headed nowhere fast, and there was a lot of art to dispose of. I didn't have any vested interest in this enterprise. I didn't especially care if the whole thing descended into a humiliating debacle for all concerned. But I'd had quite a bit of wine, and I was bored and stuck.

Suddenly I found myself standing in front of the bad art, bullshitting like a pro. "Note the vivid use of color, contrasting with the delicate superimposed line work, juxtaposed with small elements of collage," I declared. "Who wants to start the bidding at $25? Do I hear thirty? Do I hear thirty-five?"

"You're a genius," whispered the deposed former auctioneer. I sold the entire show. I had a blast. Everybody had a blast, even the people who actually bid on the art. I really didn't think they would; I just thought to provide some comic entertainment by describing it in pseudo-ArtForum language. But evidently this language DOES sell stuff. After the auction was over I thought I'd just disappear, nursing my sore vocal chords and hoping my bicycle seat wasn't too uncomfortably soaked.

But everybody wanted to talk to me. A girl stuck a tape recorder in my face and said, "I'm from the Brooklyn Rail. Who are you and what do you think?" I've been trying to get the Brooklyn Rail to acknowledge my existence for three years. I plugged my show, I plugged S1Te Osm0sis, I got her email address. The next day, I had an email from the deposed auctioneer. "You're an angel," he wrote. "I've been telling everybody."

Wow. Angel. Me. On Sunday my SHOULDER actually felt better, from all the freed-up kundalini energy flowing through my back. My bullshit-art-auctioneer personality self is one that I have been sitting violently on top of for, oh, about ten years now, ever since my Saturn return, when I realized that witty wry attention-getting personalities can get you BEATEN UP. For ten years I have been demure and polite and sweet, and for the most part have avoided microphones, and dancing really sexily in clubs, and saying things at parties that get quoted for the rest of the week. It's not good to be like this all of the time; other people need their moment to shine.

But there are those moments when lack of charisma is fatal, and you just have to pull it out of the hat. And oh, those moments are sweet.

for Caroline, gazing on infinity

Just did a painting in two hours. Pisses me off. The last one took four weeks. I think this one is better. But perhaps I had to get to this one THROUGH the four weeks of troweling and scraping and reconfiguring and color-considering, and turning it upside-down and glowering in despair, and rolling around on the floor to "The Sea and the Bells," hoping that the surging rocking sea energy would transfer to the canvas by osmosis.

And maybe I will hate this new one in the morning. I hope not, because it is my 'sample work' for the Park Slope Studio Tour opening, which has to be delivered on Tuesday. I painted it at the last minute because I didn't have any recent paintings under 2'x 3' that I was willing to show, particularly as a representative sample. You'd think that with three months to prepare for my show, I'd be readier, you'd think, but you'd be wrong.

It's been a rocky month. My little cat almost died, and that is not melodrama. He had an undiagnosed illness which could have been, and probably was, distemper. He came down from the ceiling one morning drooling, and vomiting copious amounts of green slime. I rushed him to the emergency room, where they charged me a lot of money to do nothing in particular. His regular vet charged me even more money for blood tests, and after he had been drooling and vomiting nonstop for three days, the vet called me in a panic, saying that his white blood cell count was dangerously low, a red flag for distemper. "That's not the kitty flu, that's the kitty PLAGUE," she said. I prepared emotionally to bid my kitty good-bye.

But I took him to the vet one last time, and told them we didn't want any more tests, but to give him subcutaneous fluids for dehydration, and vitamins, since he couldn't ingest a drop of water without vomiting. (I tried to feed him with an eyedropper and was sorry.) I had a solemn talk with him, telling him that I was grateful for the time we'd spent together, and it was his decision whether he wanted to stay or go. I gave him Reiki for an hour at a time, and got a fluid bag and a handful of needles to inject him myself.

Evidently he has decided to stay. He's not completely up to speed, but after a couple of weeks he stopped drooling and took a mild interest in nourishment. Oddly, he has become more affectionate than he's ever been; he used to sleep at the foot of my bed, and disdain being petted, but now I wake to find him snuggled under the covers, his head pillowed on my hip. He follows me around all day and tries to climb into my lap, seeming to prefer affection to food or water. Last night I told him, sternly, 'you can't LIVE on Reiki.' It's like having an anorexic teen-ager. I am terribly grateful that he's still here, even with the nine hundred dollars in vet bills; life without him would have been bleak. He's still one of the only reasons I get up in the morning.

Getting ready for my show is, of course, bringing up Issues. The self-promotion Issue, the financial Issue, the laziness Issue, the am-I-just-kidding-myself Issue. I alternate between periods of working so much that the whole apartment smells stiflingly of asphyxiating solvents, and periods of severe procrastination, depression, denial, and percolation. It doesn't help that the 'gallery' isn't helping me promote AT ALL, to the point where they could not manage to email me a JPEG of their logo after a week and a half of phone calls and emails requesting it. Finally I faked the logo and sent it to the printers, already too late to have the cards ready for the BWAC opening. This entire episode was worth two and a half days of Issue-processing instead of working. Am I pathetic or what? Do all other artists have these problems?

O., however, is a magically wondrous new friend, having essentially replaced Neneng-girl in a surprise switcharoo. Last week during the non-promotion crisis, I was carping to the Powers that Be as I did my grocery shopping, daring them to provide me with some, I don't know, nurturing or something. Upon returning home there was a message from O.; "I have an early class in your neighborhood tomorrow morning, and wondered if I could come by afterward and give you a massage." Glory glory hallelujah. This week it was her turn; she came over after work and I gave HER a massage, plus a nutritious dinner, and she brought me some Dead Sea bath salts and healing chile compress for my tendonitis. I have a deep-seated need to mother people, but it's awfully nice when they reciprocate.

I finally broke down and went to the doctor about my ankle. He grabbed it, flexed it, said 'it's jammed,' and I screamed and burst into tears. It wasn't so much that it hurt horribly, it was more a reaction to the cumulative stress of trudging around for months and months and months with the pain getting slightly worse every day. He taped it up and sent me off for an X-ray, which established that there are no stress fractures, it's just chronic tendonitis. I'm supposed to 'stay off of it,' which is making me cranky. I put an ice pack on it three times a day, massage it with arnica before bed, sleep with a pillow under my knees to maintain proper alignment, and spend ten minutes with the Theraband before I attempt to stand upright in the mornings. It has improved to the extent that I can walk with most of the sole of my foot on the floor. I have high hopes of being able to return to yoga in a week or so.

And then our fiscal sponsorship application was turned down. Damn and blast. I biked around the park a couple of times, went for a pot of tea and a ginger plum scone at the Tea Lounge, and thought dark thoughts. Then I called them. "We'd like some feedback on what mistakes we made, so that we can correct them," I said. Tactful, huh?

So we will do it again. I am deeply grateful to have an indomitable team of philosophical non-quitters in my corner; nobody even considered giving up. Nobody threw any tantrums or called the cultural council nasty names, either, not even me. We shall prevail, oh yes we shall.

Three times in the last two days, I've been the recipient of surprise hugs. I ran into a 'friend' of my ex's at an art opening, and instead of failing entirely to recognize me, as I almost thought she would, she said "we miss you" and buried her face in my shoulder. Then I dropped by the Young Designer's Market to visit O.; as I spotted her from a distance she looked all busy and aloof and not-wanting-to-be-bothered, but when I wandered over to shop at her table she gasped with joy and launched herself at my cheekbone. This morning at the co-op I spied a grouchy-looking Marion wearing a purple hat with a pom-pom. I said "I'm going to pull your pom-pom, Marion" and she hugged me, too. How about that? I don't know why I think people will get sick of me if I continue to exist.

Caroline is gone, gone, gone. I was in denial until twenty-four hours after her plane took off, then I dissolved into miserable tears. Caroline has been my rock in NYC for the last three years, my link with the past, my spiritual sister. She's not a city person and I didn't expect her to stay half so long, so I am grateful. But it's lonely here without her. Ergo the title of today's painting, "for Caroline, gazing on infinity." It's the first serious abstract painting I've ever created, and the abstraction was an accident. It frightens me, as though I'm cutting my tether.