excerpt

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fact #34

you have to MAKE for yourself a reason to live

fact #33

other people are the fucking BEST!

other people are the fucking WORST!!

i can't stop wondering:

imagine being one of the astronauts- way out there, living at the space station, waking up in zero gravity, checking in with NASA and being told about a lethal virus sweeping the entire world. what must that be like to be way out there, unimaginably far from home, and learn something like that?  what do you think they might be saying about it? i'd love to know what they think of this mess.

dennis/rainer

 

fact #32

it is incredibly frightening sometimes to allow things to be meaningful. 

to be frightened isn't necessarily a bad thing to be. 

to be brave, for example, does not mean to be unafraid. 

working through...

i don't feel much like writing.  tonight, i just want dreamless sleep. for the past several nights my dreams have been fueled by nervous energy and fear.  tonight, i don't want to dream or think about a thing.

it's hard to even lose myself to a book.  i suppose that's normal.  after all, there's a lot to worry about and my brain has hit its threshold for accepting new info.  the new info must cycle through.  my mind and body are doing what they can to acclimate to this surreality.  maybe in a few days i'll have some sort of insight to share but tonight all i've got to offer is camaraderie.

it's hard to know what to do.  it's hard not to be afraid.  somehow, being asked to stay home is simultaneously the simplest and most difficult request to fulfill.  morbid fantasies about the unknown future we are all stepping into can take hold quickly once the sun goes down.  i'll say this much: i'm so fucking grateful i set down the drink before a world-wide pandemic struck.  i imagine myself trying to contend with this insanity with a hangover and a completely drained bank account and feel a massive sweep of gratitude to have changed my ways early enough ahead of this unforeseen circumstance to be able to weather it with a bit of calm decorum.  and with hope.  that's actually probably the most important thing i've gained since last fall when i finally decided to truly clean up my act: hope for the future and for myself.

strange to think that it was a week ago - friday evening last week - that i worked what ended up being my last shift at The Finch, the restaurant i've been a part of for the past 2 1/2 years. that's actually the longest stretch of time i've worked for any restaurant.  somewhere around the year and a half mark, waiters and bartenders get a bit restless and nearly any change of scenery will do. the steps of service themselves don't really change.  once you know the dance, you know the dance.  but i never got to that recurring and familiar point of irritation and agitation that generally propels one to look for employment elsewhere.  i mean, waiting tables isn't easy.  engaging energetically and hospitably with the public - all those unknowable, unexpected personalities and needs that walk through the door on a nightly basis - can take a lot from a person. just think about the worst people in your family or at your job for a minute. but The Finch tended to attract a more easy-going, respectful, and appreciative clientele than most other restaurants i'd worked for in New York City.  people seemed to genuinely love being there.  in addition to reveling in the food and drink, they seemed to truly like US.  and we absolutely, undeniably, without a shred of hesitation or self-consciousness, liked each other.  i was planted.  there was no reason to look for a different NYC family.  i'd found mine.

not that i intended to go on waiting tables forever.  i didn't and don't.  though that last point is mute.  the entire restaurant industry in New York, as well as the nation, has collapsed.  each and every last one has been shuttered and i have a hard time thinking that two weeks from now restaurants across the city will re-open.  we're in for a bit longer of a break than any of us has publicly mentioned.

and so i look myself in the mirror and ask "now what?"

what was it i envisioned i'd eventually leave the restaurant industry to do?

who did i want to become?

what is the goal and the dream?

how does this surreal moment change or aid the dream?

one thing i've learned this week is that we currently inhabit a moment where setting up plans for the future feels a bit like a fool's errand.  every day we skip further and further away from what was very recently considered normal human existence and interaction.  my daily life - and the daily lives of millions of people - has profoundly shifted in the last 7 days. the next 7 are sure to bring even more unfathomable change. it is no longer at all dramatic to begin asking oneself the big questions:

what do i want to do with my life?

what matters most to me?

if i were given a year to live, how would i choose to live it?


be honest.

little bird

shift

i keep feeling this incredible urge to rush, to get things done, to go faster, to be better, to read all the most heady and difficult books i've tucked away down there on the bookcase's lowest shelf.  out of sight, out of mind.  but then i hear a voice whisper through a smile - i can HEAR the smile - "that's just your habits kicking for comfort. there's nothing to rush around about anymore."

slowly, we clean the studio.  i file away old drawings and recent photographs. we line our instruments up against the wall.  the keyboard is laid out across Brian's desk.  the guitars are out of their cases.  even my little harmonica lays, ready and eager as ever, as anyone longing to be touched, to feel a mouth's passage over its angles and openings.

there is still a bit more to do, a bit more to be wrangled, but i know the voice and its smile are correct.  there is no need to get the entire job done tonight.  and especially not RIGHT NOW.  the clock no longer means much in this house. the day before yesterday we both lost our jobs.  an entire industry has collapsed and we are no longer Waitress and Bartender. we return, however strangely, possibly benevolently, certainly and suddenly to being full-time artists.

for the past 3 nights, i've twisted yarn around a hook.  i make a flower. i make another.  a little garden spreads out across the floor off my side of the bed.  my only plan is to see how big this garden might get.  i make a flower.  i make another.  my eyes slide to the stack of sweaters i made last week, intended for the goodwill or the curb, and see their new potential.  the yearning to be coaxed and caressed and given a new form.

flowers all around.

the clock's hands have fallen out.

fact #31

the heart's vibrational pull is absolutely real. 

fifty-fifty clown

the sweep of possibility - a lather of excitement and potential -  is my favorite intoxicant.

"luscious" becomes a favorite word. 

it waits right next to "yes."

i stand on the platform waiting for my train and look up at the sky. bright white astro bursts from plane engines mark the paths of comings and goings, transport across this wide, cloudless blue on this first undisputably warm day of the year. i wear my blue converse and listen to a song i've never heard before and feel like i can go anywhere, do anything, fall in love with the world again. 

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fact #30

it's okay to circle back to things.

it's okay to let things circle back to you. 

1st page (diary entry)

23. january

Another new notebook begins already! And this morning my piece "The ground shook, they said" was published at Entropy.  And last night, with only 3 minutes remaining before the midnight deadline, i submitted a poetry manuscript to NYFA after getting a solidly bad (but nevertheless solid) practice in at Red Note all by myself. And all of this after having gone to an AA meeting and then out to lunch with Lacey and then coming clean about it to Brian the second i walked in the door. So, I mean, the last 24 hours have been pretty full is what I'm getting at and, though stressful at points, it feels good to be industriously pursuing the life I now what for myself, the outline of which gets clearer everyday. Lacey did me the good turn yesterday of reminding me what a wild state of transition I am in right now and that, though normal to want to start throwing everything out the window, it's important to move through this transition slowly and thoughtfully. Part of what I'm dealing with is breaking a habit of chaos, of treating everything as if it is an emergency. The truth is my house is not on fire. I am uncomfortable. Calm is unsettling. I'm looking for action because TAKING ACTION and having something to fix or deal with RIGHT NOW is how i was raised and how i achieved any sense of worthiness whatsoever. and NOT because i wanted it that way. This is the fall-out of being placed in the role of care-taker way too early in life.  This is the fall-out of a parent's alcoholism and the tragedy of injury and the pain of poverty and divorce.  The is the fall-out of so much atrocious loss too soon. And this is what I am now choosing to confront soberly and through the daily action of opening a notebook, sitting with a cup of coffee and an ink pen, and letting myself spill out. All the things that me me a messy drunk can still have their say, they're just going to say it here. These blue lines, not a barstool, not cocaine on a house-key. Here: this space. This expanse.  This is where I'm going to figure out who the fuck I actually am, and it starts with dealing with all the childhood shit I no longer want to think about.

I pulled a photograph of myself when i was 14 years old from my shoebox of family photos that lives under the bed. I came across it while looking for a photo of my mom the other day and felt a call to rescue this young, sweet girl from the chaos of images she was weighted down by. In the photo, I am sitting on the living-room floor against the jamb of the side door. I am wearing the boots Steve Finley bullied me over. My knees are drawn up to my chest and my elbows are jammed into my lap. My hands cover my face.  My head bowed into my hands, believing myself to be ugly and painfully un-photogenic, I was attempting to thwart my mother's request to capture me on film.


"But you look so beautiful right now..." she coaxed.

"God, Mom, NO!"

I don't think she realized i was trying not to cry. I was not only hiding my face, but its display of unwanted emotion; the undeniable expression of my own wild insecurity.

I look at this photo and remember the moment so well, remember freezing into position and stubbornly waiting my mother out.  I remember the horrible silence of her waiting and wanting, then the thin, spare click of her camera's shutter when she finally gave up. I peeked out through the tiny slivers of light that pressed through my fingers - a child during the a scary part of a movie - as I felt the soft tremble of the living-room floor as she stood from where she'd been kneeling a few feet in front of me. I remember the sweep of my deep insecurity and my desire to be loved... the belong somewhere, with someone... to be beautiful and not hurt.

Many of those hard teenage frailties are alive in me still. I understand the girl in the photograph so well.

My mother's much loved drawing of a young boy and girl - a brother and a sister - the one my grandfather ached to see again, hangs above me in the photograph. Her. Me.

I am keeping the photograph near me this week. I am giving that girl some air and much needed soft attention. She felt (feels) such an incredible degree of shame and just wants to be able to be herself.  She wants so badly to be loved for being who she is but has so little idea of who that might be.  She hides so much of the time. Always a fire, always an emergency, always someone else's needs to put first.

I've set her photograph next to The Animal archetype card. I'm gonna let these two hang out together for a bit... see what happens.  It was around the time this photo was taken that some serious magic seemed to be following me around.  I wanted desperately to be a singer but was too shy with too frail an ego to share this desire with anyone else.  I sang in secret. And I hid my secret well.  I couldn't bear the thought of being compared to my mother and judged against her undeniable ability.  She was the singer of the family.  And so I hid my call.  And I hid myself in notebooks.  And I hid those notebooks under my bed, shoved deep below the mess that was also hidden there.  I lay awake at night dreaming of singing my heart out on a stage - reckoning with and expressing my pain and loneliness, my unmet need to be loved, need to be understood, and using my voice to achieve a sense of connection and belonging I utterly lacked. Rather than sing, I wrote, save for when I was remarkably alone and without threat of anyone coming home. I tucked myself away into notebooks, scribbling my own adolescent poetry, crying when no one was looking.


We have band practice tonight at 9pm.  I have 2 guitars of my own. I have a little harmonica in my tote-bag and a notebook under my hand.  What can I offer that young girl today? What can I say to her?  What gift can I give?


One day you'll get out of that awful fucking town, Angela. One day you'll roll out of the top bunk in a Berlin hostel and spend the entire morning and afternoon and evening scribbling in your notebook on a picnic bench that's been hauled onto the roof of a boat. One day you'll roll out of bed in your own New York City flat, stumble into the kitchen to make coffee, and then stumble into your own studio to sit down at your own desk to scribble in your notebook for as long as you need or please. One day you'll be far away from the pain that plagues you now. One day you'll feel so appreciated and respected by other artists and writers. One day you'll sing on stage at Lady Stardust at A2 in the Lower East Side and, afterward, a woman you don't know will come up to you and say, "You have an amazing voice." One day it won't be so scary to trust others with your heart or your talents and you won't have to hide them anymore. One day you will feel safe displaying your real self.  You are not ugly, sweet girl.  Not nearly.  You are so incredibly pretty. Sweet and endearing and absolutely lovable. There is no reason for you to be ashamed.