Unofficial new years' resolution #1:
Do not enter juryings that lever fees, at least in the months immediately preceding the holidays, when precious cash is better spent on gifts anyway. Or you might be checking your email on Christmas Eve, and open the one that says "Muckety-muck Biennial Shortlist" just as your beloved siblings are arriving at the front door, and be fruitlessly searching the list for your name as your favorite sister comes bursting in all full of joy and hugs, and you will feel hugged and slapped in the face simultaneously, and realize that you PAID some clueless curator to ruin your Christmas Eve, and it will Mar the Moment.
This was, of course, before the tsunami hit, and made such petty concerns seem rather worse than meaningless. But I moped anyway.
I saw the Andy Goldsworthy exhibit in Austin, though, and was restored. The important part of the exhibit was the 1 1/2 hour film about him, because most of his work doesn't translate to galleries, being in and of nature, and usually quite ephemeral. It surprises me how many people actually do know about Andy Goldsworthy, but in case you have not been in a bookstore that sells coffee-table art books during the last ten years--Andy Goldsworthy makes snow sculptures that melt, or leaf circles that blow away, or lines the tops of ancient, crumbling stone walls with sheep's wool, or suspends fragile webs of reeds and thorns from trees until they collapse in the wind. He does this most of the time. How he supported himself in the twenty or so years before the publication of his first coffee-table art book, I have no idea. But his work inspires, in me at least, a deep, wordless peace that reminds me why I make art in the first place. It's easy to forget, amid the frenetic ego-mayhem that is survival in New York.
Andy, talking about his work, does not irritate me in the way that, say, Jeff Koons does. He's not a glib fellow. His work he says, is about the struggle to understand the place he lives in. He wants to understand the way the river meets the sea, the way the sheep affect the land, the flow of the tides, the cycles of snow and sun. The forces that energize his work are the same forces that destroy it. It doesn't bother him when a sculpture that took hours of back-breaking frustration to create is carried out to sea with the tide, or melted by the sun, or taken by the wind; this is what connects him with the world, and makes the work larger than he ever could alone. "I know the world doesn't need me," he says.
This helped me articulate, once and for all, my frustration with my Basic Sculpture professor and that goddamned video about Spiral Jetty. One or two of my faithful readers will recall that during Basic Sculpture class, I was branded a reactionary for preferring Picasso's "Guernica" over Spiral Jetty, the famed Earthwork by Robert Smithson. The video about Spiral Jetty involved painfully long clips of dust blowing out behind a truck, and bulldozers pushing rocks into a lake, and endlessly twirling shots from a helicopter, coupled with overblown references to the ubiquitousness of Spirals in Nature. One of my more sensitive classmates referred to the work as "solipsistic;" I failed to appreciate the full, simple aptitude of this criticism until now.
For the meaning of "solipsistic" is "the notion that one is the only conscious being in the universe," and damn, wasn't that the case for Smithson. Spiral Jetty was about big, stupid ego and lack of understanding, ego perhaps greater than Picasso's. Yes, there are spirals in nature, duh; there are much more elegant and beautiful ways to convey a spiral, however, than bulldozing the shit out of a landscape selected for the cheap and uninhabited nature of its real estate. Smithson did not live for decades within the ecosystem of Spiral Jetty, as far as I know; he did not "watch the children lining up for school, and see them grow up and have children of their own" before he considered himself mature enough to comment upon it. Spiral Jetty tells us nothing about the movement of tides and seasons, the complex interrelationships of light and leaf and bedrock, the magic of frost and the cycles of living and dying. It's just about big, stupid men going apeshit with their big, stupid trucks and bulldozers and helicopters and video cameras.
I see it as no coincidence, now, that the professor who inflicted Spiral Jetty upon us was the same professor who utterly failed to comprehend why I wanted to "understand" my medium. In fact, I was feeling rather humble and abashed about my own klunky, literalistic paintings in the face of Andy Goldsworthy, until I realized that I, too, have embarked upon an adventure of understanding.
Because I really love to paint, not just in the ego-crashing-into-the-world manner of thousands of wannabe painters, who fling the pretty colors around at whim, thinking "look at me, I'm an Artist, I'm Painting, I Don't Understand Myself--I must be a Genius." In Williamsburg, I met about four of these a week. I was forced, by pressure of circumstance, to represent a few of them in my gallery. They're one of the major, major reasons I don't intend to open a gallery ever again. They can be ebullient, charming and fun, but they don't further the causes of peace or understanding, or anything at all but themselves.
No, for me, as I look back upon my obscure career, painting was always my wedge to create understanding--first of the human face and form and emotions, then of light, composition, color and texture, finally of energy and spirit, and the pursuit of the ineffable. I will say this for myself, that I pursue these things with more humility and singlemindedness of purpose than I have ever hounded hapless Williamsburg gallerists. And thus I don't need to feel like a total failure when Muckety-Muck Gallery leaves me off their Biennial shortlist. There will be other Biennials, as many as there are bi-years.
So, in case you care, amended resolutions:
1) Get up earlier (I will not tell you what time, lest you sneer, and anyway I'm so far failing on this one.)
2) Get into shape, meaning getting centered. On a visit to the Miracle Chiropractor of Fort Worth, Texas, Dr. David Estes, who is ALMOST as good as the Lord-High Shaman Chiropractor of San Francisco, CA, Dr. Dennis Millward, I discovered that the reason that I have been limping for the last several years, heavily favoring my left foot, is that I have an unstable sacro-iliac joint, and my whole left side has been progressively shriveling up on itself. There are infinite theories as to why this might be so, but the upshot of it is that I need to give up any hope of running marathons in this lifetime, but focus on Pilates and yoga, and work on balancing the energy in both halves of my body. This is a great relief, since the high-impact workouts I had come to expect of myself were getting too painful to continue with. Now I have the fun, hopefully attainable goal of stretching, breathing, balancing and not hurting so goddamn much.
3) Make each day a meditation, whether writing, making art, doing bodywork, or just cooking and watching movies. Continue to apply for grants and muckety-muck biennials, but make this a part of my OWN documentation process, an end in itself, and let go of so much attachment to outcome.
4) Nurture connections with people who love me back, and let the others go without rancor.
Really, I have noticed that there are two types of people in my life--the ones who disappear when I no longer have anything they want, like a gallery to show their art in, or a body they want to screw, or money or social status or ego-blandishment or WHATEVER. These are the ones that, say, don't even bother to RSVP my ingenuous Christmas party invitation, or return my phone calls when I'm valiantly striving to overcome personal catastrophe.
Then there are the ones who cat-sit and car-sit while I'm away, and call just to say hey, and send business my way, and show me their art even though I don't have a gallery anymore, and show up for my Christmas party with wine and gifts and cute little cards. These are the ones who deserve nurturing. I know this should be obvious, but I seem to have a messianic complex almost as big as Christina Ricci's. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go rent "Buffalo 66," "Pumpkin," and "Monster" in succession and tell me if I'm wrong.) I have this semi-articulated assumption that if people are mean, selfish and inconsiderate toward me, they must be tormented souls in need of healing, and thus I should track them down and go heal them.
Well, to hell with that. I tracked down an old sculpture professor last month, discovered she was living in Williamsburg, sent her a warm, ebullient note, and did not receive a response. I tracked down a guy I had a crush on in high school, sent him a funny, flirtatious note, and received an uncomprehending and incurious reply. This January 2 would have been, and in fact was, the two-year anniversary of the date that I invited my now-ex-boyfriend to dinner, after he'd been unconscionably rude and inconsiderate toward me, and not only forgave him but invited him with open arms into my home, my heart and my life. He did not fucking deserve that, and, more to the point, did not know how to handle it when it happened. From now on the Rule is--don't be mean, but don't cut these people any slack. They hurt my feelings and I can't afford it.
There are others, but these are pretty much the gist. And a Happy New Year to you, too.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Armies of friends
The first thing I thought of when I saw the tsunami headline was, "I hope Neneng-girl's friends are all right." They are not my friends yet because I have never been to Indonesia, but I feel as if I know them. Turns out that when she called to find out if everybody was okay, they didn't even clue in as to why she was calling. "Oh, that was miles away from us," they said. "We're really busy with this art festival." Neneng-girl thanked me for asking. She said that it didn't even occur to most of her other friends.
I suppose I had better attend the $20 yoga class to benefit tsunami victims this Sunday. I do not have much money but I have more than just about everybody in Indonesia.
I suppose I had better attend the $20 yoga class to benefit tsunami victims this Sunday. I do not have much money but I have more than just about everybody in Indonesia.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The wisdom of the Unconscious
Whoa, nelly. I'd just like to put it on record that upon falling asleep after writing the last post, the one where I tearfully confessed to desiring a real old-fashioned proposal of matrimony, I dreamed the following dream:
The ex-boyfriend and I were going on a trip. He had set up a very crafty plan wherein he doused the truck we were driving in thoroughly with gasoline, and set up some wires so that when the truck started moving, it would explode in an enormous fireball, killing everybody nearby. The plan was that after this apocalypse, we would miraculously be thrown into a raging river, full of dangerous currents, large flesh-eating animals, and industrial waste, with no vehicle, no clothing, and no sunscreen. We would emerge unscathed, far down the river, having fooled everybody.
So we set off in the truck; I wasn't entirely sure how we were to survive the flaming explosion, but trusted him completely. Many people were walking around in the parking garage where we were, and the ex was pleased that they would all shortly die in a fireball. As we moved the wheels caught fire, but unfortunately for the ex, the car didn't explode.
Suddenly we had switched to MY truck, which wasn't booby-trapped; this was a bad thing, we must get rid of it immediately. Fortunately a crazy man came running up and tried to steal it from us. This suited the ex quite well; he drove the truck into a convenient obstacle in the path, threw us out of it, and cleverly let the crazy man drive off with it.
Now came time to throw ourselves into the raging torrent. A huge, fiery-eyed wolf riding a gigantic boar came floating up and glared at us. I was glad that I was too brave and experienced to be scared; I knew we'd come out okay in the end, but I kind of wished that my truck wasn't gone. I was all set to jump into the undertow, despite the large jagged chunks of industrial debris being flung around like guillotines, but suddenly remembered that I hadn't put on any sunscreen before jumping out of the truck. All this and sunburn too? I woke up with the skin on the back of my neck prickling.
This would seem too straightforward to require much Jungian analysis. Thank you, subconscious. The spell hath been broken. My ex is, simply, a raging lunatic and I am well shot of him.
The ex-boyfriend and I were going on a trip. He had set up a very crafty plan wherein he doused the truck we were driving in thoroughly with gasoline, and set up some wires so that when the truck started moving, it would explode in an enormous fireball, killing everybody nearby. The plan was that after this apocalypse, we would miraculously be thrown into a raging river, full of dangerous currents, large flesh-eating animals, and industrial waste, with no vehicle, no clothing, and no sunscreen. We would emerge unscathed, far down the river, having fooled everybody.
So we set off in the truck; I wasn't entirely sure how we were to survive the flaming explosion, but trusted him completely. Many people were walking around in the parking garage where we were, and the ex was pleased that they would all shortly die in a fireball. As we moved the wheels caught fire, but unfortunately for the ex, the car didn't explode.
Suddenly we had switched to MY truck, which wasn't booby-trapped; this was a bad thing, we must get rid of it immediately. Fortunately a crazy man came running up and tried to steal it from us. This suited the ex quite well; he drove the truck into a convenient obstacle in the path, threw us out of it, and cleverly let the crazy man drive off with it.
Now came time to throw ourselves into the raging torrent. A huge, fiery-eyed wolf riding a gigantic boar came floating up and glared at us. I was glad that I was too brave and experienced to be scared; I knew we'd come out okay in the end, but I kind of wished that my truck wasn't gone. I was all set to jump into the undertow, despite the large jagged chunks of industrial debris being flung around like guillotines, but suddenly remembered that I hadn't put on any sunscreen before jumping out of the truck. All this and sunburn too? I woke up with the skin on the back of my neck prickling.
This would seem too straightforward to require much Jungian analysis. Thank you, subconscious. The spell hath been broken. My ex is, simply, a raging lunatic and I am well shot of him.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Flowers
Caroline brought me a big bunch of flowers. Her students gave her about a barnful of them for a Christmas present. I'm literally carrying mine from room to room with me as I work around the house, so as to spend as much time with them as possible--the two red roses and one pink one, the pink and orange lilies, the Gerber daisies and assorted exotic waxy-stemmed things. This may sound silly, but I have been CRAVING flowers ever since I brought my beautiful vase home from my dead gallery two months ago; I scrubbed the vase very carefully with a toothbrush and set it in the window, where the light catches it, and wished for flowers every day at breakfast, but could not justify the expense. I'm afraid Caroline thought my reaction was a bit over the top.
Last week I think I hit the Holiday Nadir. At least, I hope it doesn't get any worse than that. It's sort of frightening, how closely my mood is now allied with my work; if my painting is going well, I answer the phone with a delighted trill, and wish the telemarketer a happy holiday, and am not interested in movies. If my painting is stalled and bleak and bland and I can't see my way out of the pit, I start thinking about the Man That Done Me Wrong, and cry a whole lot, and sleep even more, and the world dwindles down to haunting guilt feelings over owning two healthy ficus plants when I very well may be out on the street in another few months.
I have never been one of those people who hates holidays, a priori. Among my group of friends I consider myself radical, original and wildly creative for actually doing Christmas. "You're so *traditional*," sneered Sarah-from-Hell, my (thankfully) ex-roommate, when I came home with a tree one year and commenced stringing lights, mulling cider, and baking cookies. Traditional? Me? How so? *Traditional* Christmas activities, at least among my segment of Generation X, involve sinking into profound states of angst, carping about wage slavery, refusing to buy gifts on principle, going bowling, making arch comments involving 'happy winter solstice holiday,' and escaping from oppressive familial atmosphere to somewhere one can get laid with sleazy strangers. My habits of playing Anglican choir music, drinking eggnog, and reading Dickens can only be seen as charmingly retro, bizarre but basically harmless. Or at least, that's what I used to think.
But last year really took it out of me. I have never yet written down the story of What Happened Last Year; I'm not sure I'm capable of it, truthfully. Each little bit sounds so trivial, petty even. "This friend came to stay with me. She whined. She took all of her money out of her bank account and forced it on me, leaving me no choice but to pay her train fares, museum entrances, dinner tab and cab to the airport. She complained that there wasn't any sugar, she didn't like honey, the soap made her face break out, the cat was staring at her and she couldn't sleep. She didn't like my toothpaste, she had to go buy some Crest RIGHT NOW. She was afraid to take the train alone, even though she had no problem with walking up to a stranger in a yarmulke and saying, 'what's that little hat called? We don't HAVE Jewish people where I come from.' She wanted to do whatever I wanted, only whatever we did, she was loudly miserable about doing it."
And after weeks of preparation, of apartment-cleaning, wreath-hanging, light-stringing, grocery-shopping, menu-planning, laundry-washing, not to mention running a double business single-handed during my first commercial holiday season, I could not handle it. On the sixth whine of Christmas, my houseguest moved in with Caroline. "Serena yelled at me because I had cramps," whimpered the houseguest. "Serena just snapped," said lovely, patient, understanding Caroline.
It's not like I have an agenda, not really. I just figure that well, peace, love and understanding, and lots of wine and cookies, what's not to like? It baffled me and brought me to my knees, having someone in my home who evidently believed that Courtesy=Martyrdom. Loud, 'extroverted' martyrdom. And then there was the boyfriend, Scrooge Junior--it made me laugh, with tragic irony, when I later remembered that I'd invited the houseguest in the first place because I'd thought that her sunny, bawdy, spiritual nature would offset his determined negativity. Ha. At least, when I showed up on his doorstep two days after Christmas, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he condescended to snuggle me a bit.
Now it's a year later, and it's not as cold as last year, but plenty cold enough, and dark, and rainy. I am no longer a Christmas Holiday Merchant, which makes me glad, but I no longer have an income, which causes me to wake in the middle of the night with my heart thumping wildly. I get up in the morning and I can either work in the studio or not work in the studio; if I do go to work, I still have no income, only maybe possibly, if I don't totally screw up this very expensive piece of linen, someone might pay for it, a few years from now, maybe.
And every now and then I have this stupid memory of once, sort of hoping, I mean I just kind of imagined in a wild flight of retro fantasy, that, like, I don't know, someone might, well, you know, ask me to marry him. You know, fireplace, little antique platinum ring with, you know, sapphires, something unique, nothing boring and conventional. I can't believe I was so stupid and it makes my stomach shrivel up just thinking. Not that I am a total asshole who believes that men should support women financially, not at all. It just seemed like a romantic adventure to fall in love and actually work things out together, as partners, for better and worse and everything in between.
But anyway I've been kind of slow in getting the decorations out of the box at the bottom of the armoire, this year. Over the weekend I got out the Anglican choir CD, listened to five seconds, shut it down and tuned to WNYC instead. The painting is going better. Caroline liked it. Maybe by next weekend I will have perked up and made the cookies.
Last week I think I hit the Holiday Nadir. At least, I hope it doesn't get any worse than that. It's sort of frightening, how closely my mood is now allied with my work; if my painting is going well, I answer the phone with a delighted trill, and wish the telemarketer a happy holiday, and am not interested in movies. If my painting is stalled and bleak and bland and I can't see my way out of the pit, I start thinking about the Man That Done Me Wrong, and cry a whole lot, and sleep even more, and the world dwindles down to haunting guilt feelings over owning two healthy ficus plants when I very well may be out on the street in another few months.
I have never been one of those people who hates holidays, a priori. Among my group of friends I consider myself radical, original and wildly creative for actually doing Christmas. "You're so *traditional*," sneered Sarah-from-Hell, my (thankfully) ex-roommate, when I came home with a tree one year and commenced stringing lights, mulling cider, and baking cookies. Traditional? Me? How so? *Traditional* Christmas activities, at least among my segment of Generation X, involve sinking into profound states of angst, carping about wage slavery, refusing to buy gifts on principle, going bowling, making arch comments involving 'happy winter solstice holiday,' and escaping from oppressive familial atmosphere to somewhere one can get laid with sleazy strangers. My habits of playing Anglican choir music, drinking eggnog, and reading Dickens can only be seen as charmingly retro, bizarre but basically harmless. Or at least, that's what I used to think.
But last year really took it out of me. I have never yet written down the story of What Happened Last Year; I'm not sure I'm capable of it, truthfully. Each little bit sounds so trivial, petty even. "This friend came to stay with me. She whined. She took all of her money out of her bank account and forced it on me, leaving me no choice but to pay her train fares, museum entrances, dinner tab and cab to the airport. She complained that there wasn't any sugar, she didn't like honey, the soap made her face break out, the cat was staring at her and she couldn't sleep. She didn't like my toothpaste, she had to go buy some Crest RIGHT NOW. She was afraid to take the train alone, even though she had no problem with walking up to a stranger in a yarmulke and saying, 'what's that little hat called? We don't HAVE Jewish people where I come from.' She wanted to do whatever I wanted, only whatever we did, she was loudly miserable about doing it."
And after weeks of preparation, of apartment-cleaning, wreath-hanging, light-stringing, grocery-shopping, menu-planning, laundry-washing, not to mention running a double business single-handed during my first commercial holiday season, I could not handle it. On the sixth whine of Christmas, my houseguest moved in with Caroline. "Serena yelled at me because I had cramps," whimpered the houseguest. "Serena just snapped," said lovely, patient, understanding Caroline.
It's not like I have an agenda, not really. I just figure that well, peace, love and understanding, and lots of wine and cookies, what's not to like? It baffled me and brought me to my knees, having someone in my home who evidently believed that Courtesy=Martyrdom. Loud, 'extroverted' martyrdom. And then there was the boyfriend, Scrooge Junior--it made me laugh, with tragic irony, when I later remembered that I'd invited the houseguest in the first place because I'd thought that her sunny, bawdy, spiritual nature would offset his determined negativity. Ha. At least, when I showed up on his doorstep two days after Christmas, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he condescended to snuggle me a bit.
Now it's a year later, and it's not as cold as last year, but plenty cold enough, and dark, and rainy. I am no longer a Christmas Holiday Merchant, which makes me glad, but I no longer have an income, which causes me to wake in the middle of the night with my heart thumping wildly. I get up in the morning and I can either work in the studio or not work in the studio; if I do go to work, I still have no income, only maybe possibly, if I don't totally screw up this very expensive piece of linen, someone might pay for it, a few years from now, maybe.
And every now and then I have this stupid memory of once, sort of hoping, I mean I just kind of imagined in a wild flight of retro fantasy, that, like, I don't know, someone might, well, you know, ask me to marry him. You know, fireplace, little antique platinum ring with, you know, sapphires, something unique, nothing boring and conventional. I can't believe I was so stupid and it makes my stomach shrivel up just thinking. Not that I am a total asshole who believes that men should support women financially, not at all. It just seemed like a romantic adventure to fall in love and actually work things out together, as partners, for better and worse and everything in between.
But anyway I've been kind of slow in getting the decorations out of the box at the bottom of the armoire, this year. Over the weekend I got out the Anglican choir CD, listened to five seconds, shut it down and tuned to WNYC instead. The painting is going better. Caroline liked it. Maybe by next weekend I will have perked up and made the cookies.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Beetle
I found a ladybug in the arugula. It must have been in the fridge for at least three days. It was an amazingly stalwart little beetle--as soon as I put it on the china doll, it commenced munching away upon the infestation of prehistoric-looking mites that has plagued my household in recent months. That was three evenings ago, and it is now basking on the underside of a leaf, replete and toasty. I can't tell you what satisfaction this gives me.
PMS has struck with a vengeance. Last night I hit the wall with the painting I have been working on all week; the joy went out of the process like someone had turned on a great spiritual vacuum cleaner. I chewed my nails and blundered around for the whole duration of "Prairie Home Companion," searching for the precise shade of blue-gray to interpolate between the barium-orange sun and the deep purple shadows, and when I finally found it, I didn't even care. I slapped it on in an uninspired manner for another hour and a half, but finally concluded that if *I'm* not feeling the joy while painting, the viewer will not feel it while viewing. So I made corn bread and watched "Muriel's Wedding" instead.
As further proof of the PMS diagnosis, I offer this list of movie moments that have induced actual tears, during the last week:
1) "Music from another room," where Jennifer Tilly, as the blind sister, tells Anna, "Danny's love for you is SO ENORMOUS that it spilled over onto the rest of us," and I had a flashback to my now-ex-boyfriend telling me, "You are scattering sunshine all over everyone," and yet a year later he was so unbelieveably horrible to me that it does not bear belaboring.
2) "Laws of Attraction," despite the fact that the script was every bit as lame as the critics said it was; where Pierce Brosnan, as Daniel Rafferty says, "I'll give you a divorce, because I happen to believe that when you care deeply for someone, you give them what they want." I really enjoyed the fact that the male character was the decent, stable one, and that Julianne Moore was psycho and committment-phobic. Come to think of it, though, Bridget Jones was like this too. Maybe it's Republican backlash propaganda--"Look, WE MEN are noble and decent, and love women even though they are scatty and foolish and deluded about the idea that they need careers." But I don't think I'll pursue that. People who rant about the dangerous social implications of Really Good Stories irritate me. Good stories are always relevant; it's when people put the moral before the story that it all falls to pieces.
3) "A Cinderella Story," the ball scene, in general. I suppose the fact that I'm even watching these movies at all is a dead giveaway.
"Muriel's Wedding" didn't make me cry too terribly much, though I did cackle and whoop during the Abba lip-synching scene. Living alone is NOT making me strange, I have always been this easily manipulated.
Yesterday I biked into Manhattan for breakfast at the Lotus Cafe, which was a disappointment. The whole point of biking across bridges for breakfast is the cozy, tingling feeling you get after braving traffic and freezing temperatures so that you can snuggle down in the window seat with a cup of coffee, bagel and good book; the experience falls to the ground when you cannot ever get warm. Evidently the Lotus Cafe does not make enough money to heat itself properly, or even to serve decent coffee, if it comes to that. After forty-five minutes of still not being able to feel my feet, I re-boarded my steed and raced home to a hot shower and a nap on the couch. This may sound like sloth, but you cannot be too careful during flu season. I stick to the Tea Lounge until spring.
I have been struggling, lately, to articulate my notions about envy. It's nonsense that there are no taboo subjects in our modern, liberated society. Shame is the biggest, and envy is not far behind. I have gotten hate mail for even attempting the subject. The painful and dangerous conclusion I have come to, lately, is that 1) people, close friends even, have gotten envious of me; and 2) this can cause, has caused, serious problems in my life.
It has taken years to arrive at these conclusions. I have had periodic, painful fallings-out with intimate friends at intervals over the last twenty years, and these have always been accompanied by a great deal of soul-searching, minute examination of my own character, as to what fatal flaw might be there that I could correct. It is only after writing reams of exhaustive speculation as to what horrible thing I could possibly have done, what thoughtlessness on my part, what blind spot in my character, motivated this dear person to seduce my lover, befriend my ex's new girlfriend and invite her everywhere, stop returning my phone calls when I've been beaten up in the street and am homeless, forget to introduce me to her art dealer, leave my manuscript unread on the coffee table for a year and a half--that the awful possibility begins to dawn on me. It seems a terrible thing to think of anyone--that they would be JEALOUS? Of ME? WHY? And that they would act with malice and passive-aggressive spite because of this? Surely this could never be. Surely I am an evil person for daring to think so.
And yet, this seems perfectly natural to a large segment of society. I remember back in art school, explaining in shocked bewilderment to my tutorial advisor, how my closest friend had suddenly gone berserk, hauling out every vicious personal insult in the broom closet of her brain, knocking me down and literally clawing my throat, when all I did was mention that some guy had called me up and offered to curate a show for me and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. She replied blandly, "Oh, she's just jealous," as though this excused everything. In later years this particular advisor became "a second mother" in promoting my ex-friend's career, while pointedly avoiding me when I dropped in to say hello.
In fact, even mentioning the topic can be seen as bragging. In theatre circles, "I hate you" is a compliment. All this, and envy too! The icing on the cake! How dare you complain?
THIS IS HORRIBLE. It is horrible when your friends rejoice in your failures and mope at your successes. I actually confronted someone about this, once; about how, when I called to let her know that my boyfriend was cheating, I got evicted from my apartment, or my work had been turned down for the fifth time in a month, a note of unmistakable glee would creep into her cries of commiseration. Whereas when I had some positive news to impart, I had to be careful how I broke it to her, and cringe at the wail of misery it usually provoked. It got so that I was exaggerating my problems and concealing my joys when talking to her, as though I had no right to be happy until every one of my friends was married to Prince Charming and living in a castle in Spain. When I finally brought up the subject, she burst into tears, hung up and did not call again, which was, by then, a great relief.
So I just don't see it. For me, envy is fundamentally an error in perception. I do not believe that life is in any way a competition, or I might have begun this story like this:
"I found a live beetle in the lettuce. I screamed, made my boyfriend come kill it, and threw the lettuce out. I won't be shopping at THAT co-op again! Ugh. There are mites on the houseplants, too. Living in Brooklyn is just so gross. Better get some insecticide at Home Depot this weekend."
Dear reader, of course I know that if you hung out with Valley Girls, you wouldn't be my friend. But it is surprising how not-obvious it is that all facts are relative to the perceiver, not to one another.
After, as I mentioned, a great deal of soul-searching and discussion of the issue with my wise and infinitely trusted sister, we concluded that the only way to cope with envious people is simply to avoid them. Living a life of habitual gratitude helps to ward them off. There are a lot of people, posing as politically correct progressives, who think that if you dared to have a happy childhood, a loving family, and enough money to live on, that you owe them your boyfriend, your apartment, your car, your career and your peace of mind. Can I just point out that this attitude is unloving, illiberal, irrational, and bad karma? Life is not a zero-sum equation. When you dim your light so that another may shine, the whole world gets darker. And so on.
PMS has struck with a vengeance. Last night I hit the wall with the painting I have been working on all week; the joy went out of the process like someone had turned on a great spiritual vacuum cleaner. I chewed my nails and blundered around for the whole duration of "Prairie Home Companion," searching for the precise shade of blue-gray to interpolate between the barium-orange sun and the deep purple shadows, and when I finally found it, I didn't even care. I slapped it on in an uninspired manner for another hour and a half, but finally concluded that if *I'm* not feeling the joy while painting, the viewer will not feel it while viewing. So I made corn bread and watched "Muriel's Wedding" instead.
As further proof of the PMS diagnosis, I offer this list of movie moments that have induced actual tears, during the last week:
1) "Music from another room," where Jennifer Tilly, as the blind sister, tells Anna, "Danny's love for you is SO ENORMOUS that it spilled over onto the rest of us," and I had a flashback to my now-ex-boyfriend telling me, "You are scattering sunshine all over everyone," and yet a year later he was so unbelieveably horrible to me that it does not bear belaboring.
2) "Laws of Attraction," despite the fact that the script was every bit as lame as the critics said it was; where Pierce Brosnan, as Daniel Rafferty says, "I'll give you a divorce, because I happen to believe that when you care deeply for someone, you give them what they want." I really enjoyed the fact that the male character was the decent, stable one, and that Julianne Moore was psycho and committment-phobic. Come to think of it, though, Bridget Jones was like this too. Maybe it's Republican backlash propaganda--"Look, WE MEN are noble and decent, and love women even though they are scatty and foolish and deluded about the idea that they need careers." But I don't think I'll pursue that. People who rant about the dangerous social implications of Really Good Stories irritate me. Good stories are always relevant; it's when people put the moral before the story that it all falls to pieces.
3) "A Cinderella Story," the ball scene, in general. I suppose the fact that I'm even watching these movies at all is a dead giveaway.
"Muriel's Wedding" didn't make me cry too terribly much, though I did cackle and whoop during the Abba lip-synching scene. Living alone is NOT making me strange, I have always been this easily manipulated.
Yesterday I biked into Manhattan for breakfast at the Lotus Cafe, which was a disappointment. The whole point of biking across bridges for breakfast is the cozy, tingling feeling you get after braving traffic and freezing temperatures so that you can snuggle down in the window seat with a cup of coffee, bagel and good book; the experience falls to the ground when you cannot ever get warm. Evidently the Lotus Cafe does not make enough money to heat itself properly, or even to serve decent coffee, if it comes to that. After forty-five minutes of still not being able to feel my feet, I re-boarded my steed and raced home to a hot shower and a nap on the couch. This may sound like sloth, but you cannot be too careful during flu season. I stick to the Tea Lounge until spring.
I have been struggling, lately, to articulate my notions about envy. It's nonsense that there are no taboo subjects in our modern, liberated society. Shame is the biggest, and envy is not far behind. I have gotten hate mail for even attempting the subject. The painful and dangerous conclusion I have come to, lately, is that 1) people, close friends even, have gotten envious of me; and 2) this can cause, has caused, serious problems in my life.
It has taken years to arrive at these conclusions. I have had periodic, painful fallings-out with intimate friends at intervals over the last twenty years, and these have always been accompanied by a great deal of soul-searching, minute examination of my own character, as to what fatal flaw might be there that I could correct. It is only after writing reams of exhaustive speculation as to what horrible thing I could possibly have done, what thoughtlessness on my part, what blind spot in my character, motivated this dear person to seduce my lover, befriend my ex's new girlfriend and invite her everywhere, stop returning my phone calls when I've been beaten up in the street and am homeless, forget to introduce me to her art dealer, leave my manuscript unread on the coffee table for a year and a half--that the awful possibility begins to dawn on me. It seems a terrible thing to think of anyone--that they would be JEALOUS? Of ME? WHY? And that they would act with malice and passive-aggressive spite because of this? Surely this could never be. Surely I am an evil person for daring to think so.
And yet, this seems perfectly natural to a large segment of society. I remember back in art school, explaining in shocked bewilderment to my tutorial advisor, how my closest friend had suddenly gone berserk, hauling out every vicious personal insult in the broom closet of her brain, knocking me down and literally clawing my throat, when all I did was mention that some guy had called me up and offered to curate a show for me and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. She replied blandly, "Oh, she's just jealous," as though this excused everything. In later years this particular advisor became "a second mother" in promoting my ex-friend's career, while pointedly avoiding me when I dropped in to say hello.
In fact, even mentioning the topic can be seen as bragging. In theatre circles, "I hate you" is a compliment. All this, and envy too! The icing on the cake! How dare you complain?
THIS IS HORRIBLE. It is horrible when your friends rejoice in your failures and mope at your successes. I actually confronted someone about this, once; about how, when I called to let her know that my boyfriend was cheating, I got evicted from my apartment, or my work had been turned down for the fifth time in a month, a note of unmistakable glee would creep into her cries of commiseration. Whereas when I had some positive news to impart, I had to be careful how I broke it to her, and cringe at the wail of misery it usually provoked. It got so that I was exaggerating my problems and concealing my joys when talking to her, as though I had no right to be happy until every one of my friends was married to Prince Charming and living in a castle in Spain. When I finally brought up the subject, she burst into tears, hung up and did not call again, which was, by then, a great relief.
So I just don't see it. For me, envy is fundamentally an error in perception. I do not believe that life is in any way a competition, or I might have begun this story like this:
"I found a live beetle in the lettuce. I screamed, made my boyfriend come kill it, and threw the lettuce out. I won't be shopping at THAT co-op again! Ugh. There are mites on the houseplants, too. Living in Brooklyn is just so gross. Better get some insecticide at Home Depot this weekend."
Dear reader, of course I know that if you hung out with Valley Girls, you wouldn't be my friend. But it is surprising how not-obvious it is that all facts are relative to the perceiver, not to one another.
After, as I mentioned, a great deal of soul-searching and discussion of the issue with my wise and infinitely trusted sister, we concluded that the only way to cope with envious people is simply to avoid them. Living a life of habitual gratitude helps to ward them off. There are a lot of people, posing as politically correct progressives, who think that if you dared to have a happy childhood, a loving family, and enough money to live on, that you owe them your boyfriend, your apartment, your car, your career and your peace of mind. Can I just point out that this attitude is unloving, illiberal, irrational, and bad karma? Life is not a zero-sum equation. When you dim your light so that another may shine, the whole world gets darker. And so on.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
High style
Just returned from attending a free screening of the 1925 silent film classic, "Lady Windermere's Fan," accompanied by live accordion improvisation, at Barbes. Incidental expenses included one glass of Rioja, tips for bartender and accordion player; total outlay less than feature film at cinema, and the people sitting behind me smelled like lavender and entered into jovial conversation. I asked the girl what her perfume was--she does it herself, lavender oil with a bit of mint and shea butter.
It occurred to me that I could start wearing perfume again, even make one for myself, now that I'm not dating Mister Whiny Hyper-Sensitivity To Nearly Everything Nice, who broke out in hives at the scent of lavender or rose or patchouli, or 'J'adore,' or cats, or spicy food or bacon or goat cheese, or most of life's simple pleasures. In fact, it occurred to me this weekend that I could be sexy, now. Now that I'm not dating Mister 'The Only Sexy Women Are Psychotic Alcoholic Schizophrenic Nymphomanics And Certainly Not You,' which is kind of bad for a person's self-image and psycho-spiritual libido, I can wear clothes that make me feel like a Woman, in my own odd and inimitable way, and nobody is around to contradict me. Or to yell, "You look like an old Polish grandmother with cow-hoofs for feet," even.
In fact I was inspired by Badger, who made a flying visit over the holiday. I was able to give her six hours' in-law respite, and we did fascinating fun things like drive back and forth in traffic in the rain, and wrap paintings in bubble wrap, and deliver them to a bare apartment in Crown Heights, and it is a testament to the brilliance of Badger's mind that this was not boring for one single second. We discussed Art and Sex and Jealousy, and the search for expression of the ineffable, and a lot of other things that shall not be repeated. She said one thing that I knew, of course, but had to re-remember just how true it is; "Most people don't realize that art is happening Now." We had been bemoaning the fact that, respectively, people who go to galleries don't know how to look, and people who go to poetry readings don't know how to listen. Even the big-ass art dealers, most of them, would not know a great painting if it reached out of the wall and throttled them. Evidently the poetry scene is not much better. I think that it shakes down in the end, usually, but meanwhile the great artists and poets of today are eating a lot of rice and beans, and a lot of con artists are living in lofts to die for.
(In fact, I no longer trust any artist who lives in Manhattan. Either they have a trust fund, are married to a stockbroker, or spend more time schmoozing than they do in the studio. Brooklyn is where it is at, now.)
Anyway, I digress. Badger inspired me with her arm warmers. I'd read about them on her blog, but they made much more sense in person--striped children's tube socks, cut and sewn so that a loop hooks over your hand between thumb and forefinger, sort of an extended fingerless glove. Eureka! Fashion Innovation of the Year! When, on Sunday, Caroline called and wanted to go shopping, of all radical enterprises, I grabbed a couple of pairs of designer socks for the chopping block. Unfortunately, I forgot they needed to be TUBE socks; two pairs of socks with heels yielded three pairs of creatively stitched wrist warmers, after extensive clipping and patching.
Caroline and I ended up at Old Navy, where I became aware of the bizarre and somewhat offensive, to me, commercial innovation of mass-producing tee-shirts that are replicas of random samples from the Salvation Army twenty-five cent bin, complete with holes and faded, cryptic slogans, and charging $16.50 for them. Now I understand why Salvation Army has suddenly become unaffordable. But even though it was Caroline's idea to shop in the first place, I was the one who got sucked in. I found a 'tiny-fit' purple tee-shirt that makes me look, actually, HOT, plus two pairs of pants that make me look bodaciously curvular instead of merely stalwart. Upon returning home I ransacked my closet and divided the contents into "sexy" and "not-sexy", and vowed to prioritize the former pile in future.
Such trivial vanities, you say, why is she boring us with this shit? Where are the deep, pithy insights we have come to expect? Oh, I'll get to those.
Not that you are, probably, interested in the fact that I think I'm starting to become myself. I don't know how to put it any better than that. Badger's comment about "living in the Now," as much as this has been repeated by all the vaguely Buddhist-related books I've read for years and years, and tried to practice through Zen and yoga and running up big tall hills, somehow hit a deeper place, the way a Zen master will nudge a student into enlightenment by whispering, "See those stars? There you are!" at precisely the right moment. Whoa! Yeah, you're RIGHT, Badger.
Why, I have always dated men that I had to push against in order to stand upright, and the tension thus created was a dark cloud over my perceptions. This evening, walking to and from Barbes, I saw a hundred things I'd never seen before. I even found a whole bar that I didn't know existed, with a wondrously elaborate tin wall pattern, and sailor's chairs, and little glowing lamps. I looked into people's windows without wanting to own their houses. When I came home, my apartment smelled like orange oil and patchouli.
Rhapsodizing over orange oil and patchouli does not pay the rent, of course. I wonder sometimes why I'm not in a greater state of panic. Over the weekend I found a journal written about six years ago, and could not believe it was six whole years--"frantically worried about money," I wrote, working three jobs and going to school and working out and building an MT practice, and desperately scraping out a few hours per week to paint. Oh, yeah. I wore myself to dust trying to earn a living and make art; I didn't make the living OR the art. So now I'm making the art and trusting God for the living.
Had a minor crisis last week, when I discovered that my mail carrier had been returning my mail to sender for the last month, for no good reason and without informing me. Pitched an enormous fit at the post office which did nobody any good. Remembered just how many potentially important pieces of mail with life-or-death news in them might have been lost forever; pictured a $10,000 check from the Segal Foundation winging its way back to source, bearing an "undeliverable, addressee unknown" label--wondered if my unconscious mind somehow created this to block success, again and still. Realized I would have to make some uncomfortable phone calls, come Monday. Actually they weren't so horrible. The person who answers the phone at the Pollock-Krasner foundation is not a scary mean person who sneers at you for DARING to ask for twenty thousand dollars to support your crappy art--who do you think you ARE? She is a nice, competent young person who checks the file and confirms that yes, your application is here, and yes, it's still pending.
Not that I'm actually counting on getting twenty thousand dollars from Pollock-Krasner this year, and indeed I don't know how I am to survive, but I am painting every day, on linen canvas, no less. Linen is extraordinary. Linen with one coat of gesso has, already, more energy to it than cotton duck with ten hand-applied layers. Linen looks like a Degas. In fact I started pulling all my art books off the shelf, to see if I could figure out how many coats of gesso to put on, and fully apprehended what I had been lacking, not painting on linen. It scarcely needs gesso at all. The remainder of the roll of cotton duck in my studio has now been demoted to the status of spare drop cloth.
This was unbearably intimidating at first, but I'll get over it. I am planning out a painting, one among many, called "Rain," which I will seriously enter in the Onassis Competition next spring, and seriously avoid showing it until 2006, just in case I actually win. First prize is something like a hundred thousand euros, which is ridiculous for one painting, and how DARE I even think of winning? But I think the thing is, I'm no longer afraid of NOT winning. I'll just do my best, and try again. Now is now.
It occurred to me that I could start wearing perfume again, even make one for myself, now that I'm not dating Mister Whiny Hyper-Sensitivity To Nearly Everything Nice, who broke out in hives at the scent of lavender or rose or patchouli, or 'J'adore,' or cats, or spicy food or bacon or goat cheese, or most of life's simple pleasures. In fact, it occurred to me this weekend that I could be sexy, now. Now that I'm not dating Mister 'The Only Sexy Women Are Psychotic Alcoholic Schizophrenic Nymphomanics And Certainly Not You,' which is kind of bad for a person's self-image and psycho-spiritual libido, I can wear clothes that make me feel like a Woman, in my own odd and inimitable way, and nobody is around to contradict me. Or to yell, "You look like an old Polish grandmother with cow-hoofs for feet," even.
In fact I was inspired by Badger, who made a flying visit over the holiday. I was able to give her six hours' in-law respite, and we did fascinating fun things like drive back and forth in traffic in the rain, and wrap paintings in bubble wrap, and deliver them to a bare apartment in Crown Heights, and it is a testament to the brilliance of Badger's mind that this was not boring for one single second. We discussed Art and Sex and Jealousy, and the search for expression of the ineffable, and a lot of other things that shall not be repeated. She said one thing that I knew, of course, but had to re-remember just how true it is; "Most people don't realize that art is happening Now." We had been bemoaning the fact that, respectively, people who go to galleries don't know how to look, and people who go to poetry readings don't know how to listen. Even the big-ass art dealers, most of them, would not know a great painting if it reached out of the wall and throttled them. Evidently the poetry scene is not much better. I think that it shakes down in the end, usually, but meanwhile the great artists and poets of today are eating a lot of rice and beans, and a lot of con artists are living in lofts to die for.
(In fact, I no longer trust any artist who lives in Manhattan. Either they have a trust fund, are married to a stockbroker, or spend more time schmoozing than they do in the studio. Brooklyn is where it is at, now.)
Anyway, I digress. Badger inspired me with her arm warmers. I'd read about them on her blog, but they made much more sense in person--striped children's tube socks, cut and sewn so that a loop hooks over your hand between thumb and forefinger, sort of an extended fingerless glove. Eureka! Fashion Innovation of the Year! When, on Sunday, Caroline called and wanted to go shopping, of all radical enterprises, I grabbed a couple of pairs of designer socks for the chopping block. Unfortunately, I forgot they needed to be TUBE socks; two pairs of socks with heels yielded three pairs of creatively stitched wrist warmers, after extensive clipping and patching.
Caroline and I ended up at Old Navy, where I became aware of the bizarre and somewhat offensive, to me, commercial innovation of mass-producing tee-shirts that are replicas of random samples from the Salvation Army twenty-five cent bin, complete with holes and faded, cryptic slogans, and charging $16.50 for them. Now I understand why Salvation Army has suddenly become unaffordable. But even though it was Caroline's idea to shop in the first place, I was the one who got sucked in. I found a 'tiny-fit' purple tee-shirt that makes me look, actually, HOT, plus two pairs of pants that make me look bodaciously curvular instead of merely stalwart. Upon returning home I ransacked my closet and divided the contents into "sexy" and "not-sexy", and vowed to prioritize the former pile in future.
Such trivial vanities, you say, why is she boring us with this shit? Where are the deep, pithy insights we have come to expect? Oh, I'll get to those.
Not that you are, probably, interested in the fact that I think I'm starting to become myself. I don't know how to put it any better than that. Badger's comment about "living in the Now," as much as this has been repeated by all the vaguely Buddhist-related books I've read for years and years, and tried to practice through Zen and yoga and running up big tall hills, somehow hit a deeper place, the way a Zen master will nudge a student into enlightenment by whispering, "See those stars? There you are!" at precisely the right moment. Whoa! Yeah, you're RIGHT, Badger.
Why, I have always dated men that I had to push against in order to stand upright, and the tension thus created was a dark cloud over my perceptions. This evening, walking to and from Barbes, I saw a hundred things I'd never seen before. I even found a whole bar that I didn't know existed, with a wondrously elaborate tin wall pattern, and sailor's chairs, and little glowing lamps. I looked into people's windows without wanting to own their houses. When I came home, my apartment smelled like orange oil and patchouli.
Rhapsodizing over orange oil and patchouli does not pay the rent, of course. I wonder sometimes why I'm not in a greater state of panic. Over the weekend I found a journal written about six years ago, and could not believe it was six whole years--"frantically worried about money," I wrote, working three jobs and going to school and working out and building an MT practice, and desperately scraping out a few hours per week to paint. Oh, yeah. I wore myself to dust trying to earn a living and make art; I didn't make the living OR the art. So now I'm making the art and trusting God for the living.
Had a minor crisis last week, when I discovered that my mail carrier had been returning my mail to sender for the last month, for no good reason and without informing me. Pitched an enormous fit at the post office which did nobody any good. Remembered just how many potentially important pieces of mail with life-or-death news in them might have been lost forever; pictured a $10,000 check from the Segal Foundation winging its way back to source, bearing an "undeliverable, addressee unknown" label--wondered if my unconscious mind somehow created this to block success, again and still. Realized I would have to make some uncomfortable phone calls, come Monday. Actually they weren't so horrible. The person who answers the phone at the Pollock-Krasner foundation is not a scary mean person who sneers at you for DARING to ask for twenty thousand dollars to support your crappy art--who do you think you ARE? She is a nice, competent young person who checks the file and confirms that yes, your application is here, and yes, it's still pending.
Not that I'm actually counting on getting twenty thousand dollars from Pollock-Krasner this year, and indeed I don't know how I am to survive, but I am painting every day, on linen canvas, no less. Linen is extraordinary. Linen with one coat of gesso has, already, more energy to it than cotton duck with ten hand-applied layers. Linen looks like a Degas. In fact I started pulling all my art books off the shelf, to see if I could figure out how many coats of gesso to put on, and fully apprehended what I had been lacking, not painting on linen. It scarcely needs gesso at all. The remainder of the roll of cotton duck in my studio has now been demoted to the status of spare drop cloth.
This was unbearably intimidating at first, but I'll get over it. I am planning out a painting, one among many, called "Rain," which I will seriously enter in the Onassis Competition next spring, and seriously avoid showing it until 2006, just in case I actually win. First prize is something like a hundred thousand euros, which is ridiculous for one painting, and how DARE I even think of winning? But I think the thing is, I'm no longer afraid of NOT winning. I'll just do my best, and try again. Now is now.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
They're here!
The new stretcher bars came! The ones I ordered from Jerry's Art-a-rama! Along with 10 yards of real Polish linen! Oh my God, they're SO BEAUTIFUL! I've just been putting them together. You match the slots up, tap them with a hammer, and the corners are all smooth and square; you put some glue on the corner keys and slide them in and they stay, all square like that; you notch the cross braces and put them down and they fit exactly, you add a little glue and nail them down with a couple of brads and they're done, like frozen pie crust. They're drying in my studio now. The front edges are all gloriously and perfectly beveled, and sanded, and mitred. I petted them.
Of course, this all cost a jillion dollars on my credit card, but I DON'T CARE. I tried to be thrifty, I was resourceful, clever and daring. I put a note on Craigslist for any carpenter in the Brooklyn area who was willing to build stretcher bars in exchange for free massage, I emailed my entire client list with the same offer, I canvassed friends and friends of friends, and the guys in the woodshop next to Galapagos. You would think that any decent carpenter would be just dying for bodywork, in return for such an easy job as building stretcher bars, but you would be wrong. I did get a call from a guy who owns a frame shop up in Westchester, who checked out my website and was remarkably persistent--so when these beautiful paintings on these beautiful stretcher bars are finally complete and in an exhibition, they will have FRAMES TOO. It's all too much.
For the last week I think I have been suffering from post-election flu. I know I'm among sympathetic people here, so I am not afraid to admit that I became completely hysterical while ill-advisedly watching Shrub's acceptance speech. The country really is in the grip of a right-wing backlash, no shit no joke. Election day I woke up so happy. "I'm going to go VOTE!" I sang to the cats. I bicycled up and down the avenues, carolling "I'm going to VOTE for KERRY, have you VOTED today?" I really thought he'd win, and the nightmare would be over, and we'd all go back to loving one another, like the police state and suicide bombs and director of CARE International getting kidnapped and brutally murdered on video had never, would never happen. I VOTED, then I went home to PAINT, happy day, leaving my bicycle chained to the fence downstairs, since I was planning on taking it out again to watch the returns at Barbés.
When I came down, someone had stolen the rear wheel of my bicycle. A bad omen, almost a really bad metaphor. I walked to Barbés. The gathered crowd welcomed me like a neighbor, which is what I am, unlike the pretentious twits at Galapagos, which is where I didn't go, because I figured that there was a 99% chance that the ex would be there. He never wanders far from his rathole, sorry, home. Anyway, a very nice, handsome guy at Barbés immediately transferred his full and complete attention from the election returns to me, which was mildly gratifying, particularly as he didn't try to get me to go home with him right then. He just remarked calmly, at various intervals, that I was beautiful, and smart, and calm, and grounded, and a good listener. And beautiful. He wanted to see me again; I said maybe, I'm not dating just now, but thanks. Really, I mean it, thanks.
The day after the election I didn't get much done. I put a bicycle wheel on my credit card, and wandered around aimlessly, feeling sort of swollen. The next morning I was still in an unmotivated funk when the phone rang. "This is Mike at Jerry's Art-a-rama. Sorry to bother you agin, but how do you want these cross braces notched?...so the long ones on the bottom and the short ones on the top, thank yew, that's all Ah needed to know." This made my entire day, I kid you not. Too many employees of mail-order art supply stores would have just notched the cross braces all wrong, or not at all, and slammed them uncaringly into the box, leaving me to perhaps weeks of fury, phone calls, returns and adjusted bills.
We mortified Kerry supporters must be strong. There is a great spiritual challenge ahead of us. We must reach out to the backward fascist right-wing morons with compassion, tolerance and understanding. We must try to get inside their tiny little minds and communicate, we must not give up to alienation and separation, we must not all flee the country at once, or the world will only continue to get darker. This would have been easier if the wise, compassionate, informed and open-minded candidate had won, instead of the fanatical, aggressive, bigoted moron. But it warms my heart in a small way to imagine that perhaps Mike, of Jerry's Art-a-rama, voted Republican. Don't laugh. Leave me my hope that even Republicans are human.
Last week I saw one of my regular clients, an oddly buttoned-up and frighteningly driven woman who used to work for W magazine, and who now owns a clothing store that sells $100 T-shirts that people actually buy. She looked searchingly at me and said, "You look really good. You look better than I've ever seen you. You look like a burden has come off of you." Coming from someone in the New York fashion industry, that was a real compliment. I am still not sure that I agree with her--when I look in the mirror, too often I look older to myself, the sadder-but-wiser girl, the girl for nobody. But my APARTMENT looks really good, that I'm sure of. I have fully disemboweled, cleaned and re-organized nearly every space in it, now--the studio, the space-under-the-loft which is now my office, the inside hallway, the landing, the closet, the living room, even the bathroom. And today I stopped off at Lowe's to pick up some nails, spackle and odorless paint thinner, and came home instead with a matching incandescent torchiere and buffet lamp, which means that I never have to turn on the overhead fluorescent lights in the kitchen or bathroom ever again. This may not seem like such a big deal to you non-kinesthetic, non-energy-healer folks out there, but to me it feels like I have finally claimed my own home.
It is ironic, in fact, that I'm now on better terms with Phil the Neanderthal than with the former love of my life. Phil came over yesterday to install a carbon monoxide detector, said nothing about the fact that my landing is almost completely blocked with paintings, bicycle and massage table, and promised me a new dishwasher. It goes to show you that the surest way to inner peace and good relationships is to have no expectations of people whatsoever.
Do you know what? I am no longer going to be abashed about my spiritual stuff. I am doing Course in Miracles exercises daily, and they are saving my heart and my sanity, SO THERE. I have had it UP TO HERE with idiot boyfriends who scream and rant that I am headed for a CULT, that they WORRY about me, as though I were like, STUPID or something for believing in this shit, which obviously only exists for manipulating morons into going into the army and dying for oil interests. I say to these idiot boyfriends, not GO TO HELL, but that YOU ARE IN HELL ALREADY, and hell is your own mind and your own choice, and you can stay there without me, thank you very much. So maybe I will choose to write a weekly treatise on whatever Course in Miracles exercise I am working on, and YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT.
That last paragraph was very un-Course in Miracles, I'll have you know. According to the Course, there is no separation among minds, in reality; all this stuff with bodies and wars and Republicans is just a delusion of the ego. Which is a great relief. In reality, all is peace and bliss and eternal love in the Mind of God, which may sound like the most mind-bogglingly, took-way-too-much-acid-before-I-was-ten sort of shit, real want-to-slap-you-in-the-face denial, but which, in its essence, corresponds closely with what Buddhists, shamans and assorted mystics have been telling us for thousands of years. And everybody knows that Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are really, really politically correct, and not cults at all. So give me a break already.
I dreamed the other night, actually, that this guy I met at a Course in Miracles meeting called up to ask me out, only he didn't leave his phone number. I tried to dial *69 to call him back, but I couldn't because this old friend of mine whose contact information I had accidentally-on-purpose lost, because she complained more than 80% of the time in casual conversation, had called after he did, and in fact had shown up unexpectedly, uninvited, for the weekend. She was explaining to me how I was easy to track down, she'd just called my friend in Canada, and meanwhile I was frantically trying to email the guy from Course in Miracles, saying I'm so sorry, I'd really like to see you, and the keyboard wouldn't work, and I woke up still trying to type. The guy from Course in Miracles really is great except that he's, like, probably, seven years younger than me, and I can't, can't, can't go there. But why in the world would that be represented by a whiny girlfriend? Any ideas?
Of course, this all cost a jillion dollars on my credit card, but I DON'T CARE. I tried to be thrifty, I was resourceful, clever and daring. I put a note on Craigslist for any carpenter in the Brooklyn area who was willing to build stretcher bars in exchange for free massage, I emailed my entire client list with the same offer, I canvassed friends and friends of friends, and the guys in the woodshop next to Galapagos. You would think that any decent carpenter would be just dying for bodywork, in return for such an easy job as building stretcher bars, but you would be wrong. I did get a call from a guy who owns a frame shop up in Westchester, who checked out my website and was remarkably persistent--so when these beautiful paintings on these beautiful stretcher bars are finally complete and in an exhibition, they will have FRAMES TOO. It's all too much.
For the last week I think I have been suffering from post-election flu. I know I'm among sympathetic people here, so I am not afraid to admit that I became completely hysterical while ill-advisedly watching Shrub's acceptance speech. The country really is in the grip of a right-wing backlash, no shit no joke. Election day I woke up so happy. "I'm going to go VOTE!" I sang to the cats. I bicycled up and down the avenues, carolling "I'm going to VOTE for KERRY, have you VOTED today?" I really thought he'd win, and the nightmare would be over, and we'd all go back to loving one another, like the police state and suicide bombs and director of CARE International getting kidnapped and brutally murdered on video had never, would never happen. I VOTED, then I went home to PAINT, happy day, leaving my bicycle chained to the fence downstairs, since I was planning on taking it out again to watch the returns at Barbés.
When I came down, someone had stolen the rear wheel of my bicycle. A bad omen, almost a really bad metaphor. I walked to Barbés. The gathered crowd welcomed me like a neighbor, which is what I am, unlike the pretentious twits at Galapagos, which is where I didn't go, because I figured that there was a 99% chance that the ex would be there. He never wanders far from his rathole, sorry, home. Anyway, a very nice, handsome guy at Barbés immediately transferred his full and complete attention from the election returns to me, which was mildly gratifying, particularly as he didn't try to get me to go home with him right then. He just remarked calmly, at various intervals, that I was beautiful, and smart, and calm, and grounded, and a good listener. And beautiful. He wanted to see me again; I said maybe, I'm not dating just now, but thanks. Really, I mean it, thanks.
The day after the election I didn't get much done. I put a bicycle wheel on my credit card, and wandered around aimlessly, feeling sort of swollen. The next morning I was still in an unmotivated funk when the phone rang. "This is Mike at Jerry's Art-a-rama. Sorry to bother you agin, but how do you want these cross braces notched?...so the long ones on the bottom and the short ones on the top, thank yew, that's all Ah needed to know." This made my entire day, I kid you not. Too many employees of mail-order art supply stores would have just notched the cross braces all wrong, or not at all, and slammed them uncaringly into the box, leaving me to perhaps weeks of fury, phone calls, returns and adjusted bills.
We mortified Kerry supporters must be strong. There is a great spiritual challenge ahead of us. We must reach out to the backward fascist right-wing morons with compassion, tolerance and understanding. We must try to get inside their tiny little minds and communicate, we must not give up to alienation and separation, we must not all flee the country at once, or the world will only continue to get darker. This would have been easier if the wise, compassionate, informed and open-minded candidate had won, instead of the fanatical, aggressive, bigoted moron. But it warms my heart in a small way to imagine that perhaps Mike, of Jerry's Art-a-rama, voted Republican. Don't laugh. Leave me my hope that even Republicans are human.
Last week I saw one of my regular clients, an oddly buttoned-up and frighteningly driven woman who used to work for W magazine, and who now owns a clothing store that sells $100 T-shirts that people actually buy. She looked searchingly at me and said, "You look really good. You look better than I've ever seen you. You look like a burden has come off of you." Coming from someone in the New York fashion industry, that was a real compliment. I am still not sure that I agree with her--when I look in the mirror, too often I look older to myself, the sadder-but-wiser girl, the girl for nobody. But my APARTMENT looks really good, that I'm sure of. I have fully disemboweled, cleaned and re-organized nearly every space in it, now--the studio, the space-under-the-loft which is now my office, the inside hallway, the landing, the closet, the living room, even the bathroom. And today I stopped off at Lowe's to pick up some nails, spackle and odorless paint thinner, and came home instead with a matching incandescent torchiere and buffet lamp, which means that I never have to turn on the overhead fluorescent lights in the kitchen or bathroom ever again. This may not seem like such a big deal to you non-kinesthetic, non-energy-healer folks out there, but to me it feels like I have finally claimed my own home.
It is ironic, in fact, that I'm now on better terms with Phil the Neanderthal than with the former love of my life. Phil came over yesterday to install a carbon monoxide detector, said nothing about the fact that my landing is almost completely blocked with paintings, bicycle and massage table, and promised me a new dishwasher. It goes to show you that the surest way to inner peace and good relationships is to have no expectations of people whatsoever.
Do you know what? I am no longer going to be abashed about my spiritual stuff. I am doing Course in Miracles exercises daily, and they are saving my heart and my sanity, SO THERE. I have had it UP TO HERE with idiot boyfriends who scream and rant that I am headed for a CULT, that they WORRY about me, as though I were like, STUPID or something for believing in this shit, which obviously only exists for manipulating morons into going into the army and dying for oil interests. I say to these idiot boyfriends, not GO TO HELL, but that YOU ARE IN HELL ALREADY, and hell is your own mind and your own choice, and you can stay there without me, thank you very much. So maybe I will choose to write a weekly treatise on whatever Course in Miracles exercise I am working on, and YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT.
That last paragraph was very un-Course in Miracles, I'll have you know. According to the Course, there is no separation among minds, in reality; all this stuff with bodies and wars and Republicans is just a delusion of the ego. Which is a great relief. In reality, all is peace and bliss and eternal love in the Mind of God, which may sound like the most mind-bogglingly, took-way-too-much-acid-before-I-was-ten sort of shit, real want-to-slap-you-in-the-face denial, but which, in its essence, corresponds closely with what Buddhists, shamans and assorted mystics have been telling us for thousands of years. And everybody knows that Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are really, really politically correct, and not cults at all. So give me a break already.
I dreamed the other night, actually, that this guy I met at a Course in Miracles meeting called up to ask me out, only he didn't leave his phone number. I tried to dial *69 to call him back, but I couldn't because this old friend of mine whose contact information I had accidentally-on-purpose lost, because she complained more than 80% of the time in casual conversation, had called after he did, and in fact had shown up unexpectedly, uninvited, for the weekend. She was explaining to me how I was easy to track down, she'd just called my friend in Canada, and meanwhile I was frantically trying to email the guy from Course in Miracles, saying I'm so sorry, I'd really like to see you, and the keyboard wouldn't work, and I woke up still trying to type. The guy from Course in Miracles really is great except that he's, like, probably, seven years younger than me, and I can't, can't, can't go there. But why in the world would that be represented by a whiny girlfriend? Any ideas?
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