Feeling Good in the Rain

It has been raining all day, and I've been trapped in doors. I almost drank a bug, which was traumatic, but fortunately I saw it's round body floating in the swirl of my hot chocolate, and I screamed just as it was grazing my lips. A close call.

I feel like things are working out well. I'm enjoying myself in general, and I'm having a good experience in Texas. I have an interview tomorrow, and I'm working on lots of different plans for the future. Hopefully, something will work out, but I'm taking it all as it comes.

Every where I turn, I see young professionals. Adulthood and responsibility, gray clothes and materialism confronting me. I can honestly live without the latter, but I'm prepared to accept the inevitable.

I straightened my apartment today and it looks so nice. Clutter gone, and I feel more put together. So much for the comfort of tangled nests.

okay i lied...

I'm not giving up...yet.

I like things to be a little messy. It's comforting. Like nesting in a pile of weeds and twigs, haphazardly thrown together. Living alone is lonely sometimes, but I can overcome the loneliness. Mental power is super power.

I was painting with gold leaf I found at my grandparents house, originating from the days when Grandpa made signs. I was making a mess, and I was frustrated because I don't have real paints or canvas, despite my resolution to only use found materials. Sometimes when I make art from garbage, the end result is garbage. But I always make garbage before I can produce something good. Sometimes I like the garbage best, but I typically end up overworking it and destroying it because in the back of my mind I think the rest of the world will hate it.

That shouldn't matter. The process of making something and destroying it is beautiful. I lose myself.













grandpa's black ink and gold leaf, cardboard, dad's pastels
and graph paper from childhood.

um...i think the end has come

I think it's time to end this blog. i'm feeling tired and ready for chapter 2

Uck

I'm in dad's office, and I've been on the computer for hours. I feel it wearing on me, and I need to get out of here soon.

Katharine's friend, the curator of the contemporary art museum in Houston, invited me to an artist lecture. Franklin Sirman will be speaking tomorrow at 6:30, and I will be attending. He has an awesome blog

From Florida to Texas (or Mexico?)

It took two days to drive from Florida to Houston. The drive went by fast thanks to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" on audio tape. Eleven hours of it. I found her words compelling, and her philosophy disturbing.

Dad took me around the city today, showed me my new apartment, which is adorable! I finally have space to roll around in. What will I do?! So many projects and ideas to distract me from finding a job.

After he showed me the apartment, we went to the farmer's market, which is a huge and feels like a flea market. It has Mexicans selling every type of exotic fruit and vegetable you can imagine. It's awesome.

"The farmer's market is a well-kept secret," my dad said. A gem in the middle of an ugly, polluted city, I thought. "Some of my friends are shocked that I come here."

"Really! why?"

"They don't like to mingle with the Mexicans." He explained the resentment. "Instead of assimilating to our culture, we're assimilating to theirs. It's becoming Mexico." He spoke loudly as if no one could hear.

"It's not right."

Don't take candy from strangers

Since arriving to Florida, running has been my form of escapism. It allows my mind to travel beyond Grandma's small house, out into the fresh air, untethered by Lysol spray and table stain. The best way to escape, I've found, is to start running without any sense of where I'm going, the object being to get completely lost. It's easy to do here, On Top of the World, where everything looks the same, and the "roads are winding, and the lights blinding", words floating from my ipod.

The other day, I found myself running through the middle of a golf course, with interesting tufts of grass coming out all around me, and the sun was at the perfect point in the sky when my shadow is long and every thing is beautiful. I felt like I was floating through a dream. I ran all the way to the next little town.

"You're a long way off," said a young guy when I asked for directions. It was getting dark.

I started back, retracing my steps (so much for that loopity-loop thing I was trying. It doesn't work when the roads are winding.) I made it as far as the station point, where the gatekeeper sits guarding the entrance. He was a fat guy, with big teeth and silver fillings. His smile was too wide for comfort, and he stared at me as though he wanted to eat me up. I used his phone to call my dad. The guard asked me if I'd like to get out of the wind, and I declined. He loitered in the doorway. I could feel his eyes on me, even though I had completely averted my body language and line of vision.

A car drove by with a woman inside who waved, and he flashed her a big grin, but the moment she past him, his smile turned upside down, like day and night. Don't be fooled. A wolf in grandma's clothes.

"That woman's a back-stabber. She tried to get me fired, and I said 'just go ahead, lady, and try."

I wondered why.

"I hate it here," he continued. "But I came here because of my wife."

"Why?"

"Everybody here is out for money. And people act like they're better than you."

For a moment, I thought I had judged him too harshly. Maybe he was a sympathizer, fed up with the manufactured, bougie facade, living the good life at the the club, in the sun, golf carts whipping by, nothing to disturb the equilibrium. Floridian Paradise. Snore.

"I know what you mean!" I was cursing the deluded engineers who conceived of this place.

"Ever been to Miami?"

"Once." I said.

"What did you think?"

"I didn't like it." Too cheesy and fake.

"There are all of these groups of Latinos, and black people, and...." He rattled off the different ethnic groups. "They're outnumbering the whites! Too many of them," he said, acid and resentful.

He smiled at me. A moment later my dad arrived, and I quickly got into his car, relieved.

The gatekeeper let us through, his fat pudge waving us on.

toast and apples

Almost finished. Dad's gone to pick up Grandma from the hospital, leaving me to deal with the mess in the kitchen. There's nothing to eat here but toast and apples, which is plenty of sustenance. I have to remember I'm in route to an unknown destination, and there will be challenges I must face, one at a time with focus and determination to keep moving.

I feel like I'm suspended in mid air, shooting out signals in all directions, but the altitude is too high and no one can hear me. Two days to go. And then what?

The rodeo, maybe?

The Mayflower

A big truck, called the Mayflower, arrived to take everything away today. It came with three movers I'm calling Raspy, Hula Girl, and Big Black Teddy Bear. Raspy was the guy in charge, it was his cab taking everything to Houston. He had crazy, bulging eyes and a scratchy voice that says, "I smoke," and not much more. He seemed to like antiques and was into my grandma's Syracuse china, "Wow, look at that."

The other two guys weren't interested. "What do you do in your free time?" I asked Hula Girl. He was a tall guy with a knee brace and a lovely lady tattooed onto his leg. He had been everywhere, driven past Mount Rushmore at least a dozen times but had never stopped.

"I'm boring," he replied. "The job's so exhausting, I just flip on the TV at the end of the day and do nothing."

Big Black Teddy Bear was the most sensitive of the three. He was originally from North Dakota, lived here in Florida. He was a big guy with a green du-rag and a gentle face. He asked me for some hand lotion to mend his cracking hands.

To Big Black Teddy Bear, Hula Girl said, "There ain't nothing in North Dakota. Just wide plains, violent wind, and a lot of adult places, surprisingly." I was taking a break from packing and listening to their conversation.I laughed at his remark, and he looked up surprised and pleased that he could be entertaining.

It was a beautiful day, thank god, and I had been outside most of the time working. I liked having the movers around, fresh blood, new energy. After being here a week, interacting with only my dad and grandma, I needed to be around other people. I felt like I was a part of the crew, working my but off to make sure all of the china and fragile items were safely nestled into their new cardboard houses. Who knew when any of this stuff would see the light of day again. It was all going to storage, precious artifacts placed in a rented mausoleum.

Strangers rekindling

healing wounds

Going through their stuff, I understand my grandparents so much better now.

High Modernism

I think I like Grandma's house better empty. I must be a minimalist.

So sleepy but pushing onward

It wasn't long before they let us see grandma. She was lying in a bed, very still, and she didn't know where she was or who we were. But after a few moments, she started to come around. It was amazing. All of a sudden her brain was switching back on, and I almost thought she looked younger lying in that bed. Maybe it was because all of the worry had left her face while she was temporarily out of place. She furrows her eyes a lot, but right then the lines in her face were smooth.

Dad tried to stimulate her with questions. Who am I? Where are you?

What is this? He pointed to his rubbery nose and plucked it like a wire so that it vibrated for a moment. The Owens's are famous for having rubbery noses.

She thought for a moment. Trick Question? "You're nose." She finally said.

A good sign. I knew she was going to be okay. Earlier, dad was sure she was going to die. I had never seen him so upset. But I had seen my other relatives much worse off, and Grandma would be okay.

I've never seen death

The moment of death. She didn't die, she was stroking and I could feel a peculiar wall of energy when I walked into the room and saw what was happening. It was palpable. So real. The ambulance took her away, and I trailed behind with Dad in the car, in and out of shock, sadness, me numb and quiet.

The clouds parted, and a golden plane of light blazed down, as though onto my grandma's ambulance. I wondered, is this like the scene in ghost when god takes Patrick Swayze away? Grandma would never go without a fight.

I felt glad I was there with my dad. That he wasn't all alone. I also felt selfish. My perception of this entire ordeal was revolving around me, how did this make me feel? Worry for my grandma competing with selfish thoughts. Ego. It makes me sick.

We were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, dad and me. There was a little boy sitting across the way with big cowboy boots. He was very skinny, and was flexing his bicep at me, with a big grin across his face. I appreciated the comic relief.

An empty shell

When I was little, I had a very old conk shell that my dad gave to me. If I put it to my hear, I could hear an echo that sounded like wind. Dad told me you could hear the ocean.

One day, I was cleaning my room, and I threw the shell out. "I don't need this."

On Top of the World is a shell of a world, in the shape of invented normalcy, kdyllic conception. Old folk by drive in their golf carts, free from unwanted disturbances in this exclusive gated community, safe-gaurded from outside influences, flux, unwanted change. The identical houses press upon me like the walls of a coffin as I jog through the streets, disoriented by the uniform view in every direction. Their is no life hear. Just people waiting to die, bored out of their minds from lack of invention, and lingering spirits.

But then again...

In the front closet of my grandmother's house are old boxes filled with remnants from long ago, antique clutches, 1920s journals, original aspirin pills, ancient Charles Dicken's books, old letters crumbling in the original envelopes, a used teddy bear--all signs of life, objects impressed with past energy, waiting to be opened up, inspired with new life, appreciation, and understanding. History. Hidden inside a delusion.

My eyes feel like lead.

Coffee is my feeding tube.

Jolting sips of energy.

Zap me, leave me limp and wilted.

Violet

Violet sits in a faded pink dress, almost the color of flesh, with delicate lace cuffs and lace trim. She wears a matching pink bow in her blond hair, neatly tied back from her demure face with a pearl string. Her eyes are blue and cavernous, filled with sweet thoughts and day dreams. She has plump, rosy cheeks, a subtle smile, and soft, pearly teeth. It seems as though she is waiting for something or someone, like an obedient child expectant of a treat for good behavior. Her chair is old and wooden, with little flowers painted on it, high enough so that her feet in white socks and pink Mary Janes do not touch the ground.

My grandmother has known Violet since she was three years old, and up until today, Violet quietly sat in my grandmother's bedroom next to her green arm chair, smiling and waiting. Before my grandmother knew Violet, she belonged to me Great Great grandmother, and likely sat in her bedroom for almost a century, too. Now she is in a brown box, wrapped in gray paper, in a much awaited somber until someone resurrects her.

"He's a poet and he doesn't even know it."

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Time Collapse

I'm in an interesting place right now--no where I need to be and no where desperate to go, it makes the present moment ever more important. Of course I have lots of things to do, packing, part-time job, and applying for summer jobs, but the point is I'm not worried about the future. I'm not planning every single future step, mapping my entire life, which is what I had been doing, and the effort was driving me mad!!!

Just chilling until the next thing. A block (of time) in TX followed by a block (of time) somewhere else.

I feel like I'm discovering equilibrium.

Dad said to me last night, "Start saving," as in start saving for retirement. Probably a smart idea, but honestly I don't want to think that far ahead just yet. Give me another year or two, and then I'll get 'real.'

"And now it's beginning not to look like home."