paintsperiment

Hopes and Expectations

So I used to do a lot of these when I lived in Ohio --hybrid digital collage / paintings which I simply refer to as paintings. This morning was the first time I felt like doing one after having moved back to Pittsburgh, and I've been back here seven years. 

That can't be true. I must have done one before then... anyway, I haven't done one in a long time and I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I'm kind of rusty. But I'm half-convinced that ppl are sick of my grieving posts and have stopped reading... which is fine actually. I feel less self-conscious playing to an audience of myself.

Eschatology has been on my mind of late.

And "why this and why not that."

I had to do the painting to stop the crying.

*

After awhile Mike got up and made a randomly revolted sound. I asked what was that about. He said the morning. I said did you look out the window b/c that would do it. He said the salt from yesterday afternoon seems to have kept the snow off the walks. And then he said, Eeyore Voice: It could be worse. It could always be worse.

20 things : boxes, again

1. Last night I had a nightmare. We were in a plane going somewhere exotic like Morocco.
2. There was no cockpit door and I was right in the front so I could see and hear the pilot.
3. He had no co-pilot. He kept taxiing the plane down the runway at very high speeds, almost taking off, and then not.
4. He kept saying "if I don't do this right, we're gonna crash." It kept happening and happening.
5. All the passengers wanted off the plane but he wouldn't let us off.
6. Finally they / we sort of staged a coup and overpowered him and open the front cabin door and all piled out in a mad stampede.
7. Then we were stuck in an airport in the country of Approximately Nowhere.
8. Last night I said definitively that I was going to write an email saying, Dear Uncle ___, I'm sorry I haven't been in touch "in person," until now. It has been a rough few months, and I am only beginning to join the land of the living, so to speak. I was just writing you regarding the 12 boxes of my mom's stuff. Because we are making so many trips this spring and summer, I regret that I will not be able to come to ___ , to ____'s house and look through the boxes as I had originally said. I was wondering if it would be possible for you and ___ to please look through the boxes when she comes to visit you, pull out my mother's sketchbooks and send them to me. Love, Jill
9. Now this morning I don't know what I will do if a) he says no or b) he says he'll ship the boxes to me.
10. I want all the boxes.
11. I don't want any of the boxes.
12. They're all I have of her.
13. I don't need any more of her.
14. I really don't want to deal with this before AWP happens because my anxiety's already cranked about the conference.
15. I really do want to deal with this before AWP happens because my anxiety's already cranked about the conference.
16. I want to come and visit you immediately, Uncle ___.
17. I don't know when I want to see you again.
18. I wish we could talk honestly and be open with our emotions.
19. Talking honestly and being open with our emotions scares the crap out of me because our family has never really done it before, and so it would be a supernova shitstorm of bad.
20. I cry about her every day. I wonder if anyone else is crying too.

Boxes, Again

And

[click to enlarge]

Interjection

I'm halfway sad today but there was a reason for it. This morning I finally canceled Ravi's pet insurance. I left the microchip registration open. The end.

[collage]

[click to enlarge]

Dialogue

I'm a little bit happier today.

20things : motivation routine waking sleeping

1. At 6:35, my brain turns on. This is the absolute latest it has turned itself on in months. This is how late I sleep, and I have no reason to get up this early. This is off-time, healing time. I don't have to go to work.
2. Telepathically, Rus knows I'm awake and so comes over and yowls for breakfast.
3. I don't want to wake Mike up so I get up.
4. The moment my feet hit the floor I'm like fuck, another day. Weren't we just here yesterday?

A flower I clipped from the long-lasting Valentines bouquet to cheer myself.

5. Get up make coffee cat meds cat food human food computer facebook email blog surf internet until my conscience says I can't possibly procrastinate anymore shower start day.
6. From within my metaphorical nautilus, last night, I wrote down a list of things to do in the morning before I have to leave the house.
7. I put cardamom and ginger in the coffee this morning. Also to cheer myself.
8. It's sort of working.
9. Today I have to leave at 12:30 and I won't get back until 9:30.
10. Nine hours is a long time to be out for someone with fibro, okay, for ME with fibro and attendant visual difficulties that make me so tired. Nine hours is a long time to be up w/o a nap.
11. Okay now you know one (another?) of my embarrassing secrets.
12. On a normal day, I can't go more than nine hours w/o sleeping.
13. Today I will have woken up at 6:30 {math math math} I think that's 15 hours.
14. Most people go w/o sleeping for at least 15 hours.
15. Right now at this very moment I can hear a little voice going there's nothing wrong with you; you're just lazy.
16. But shit, there's a DBT skill for that. It's called "non-judgmental stance." It's like "be aware of when you're judging and stop that."
17. Easy, right?

Luna stole my flower.

18. I'm excited about my impending haircut.

19. Anybody wanna go with me to a reading at the Sphinx tonight? That place is designed to kill me, with its dim light, cramped space, and many overlapping floor rugs that stick to my feet, causing me to wobble.

20. Except it also has the atmosphere of an opium den, which is very relaxing, which is what I want my whole house / apartment to look like. The end.

Well it's finally Monday evening

Yay <-- insert sarcasm, "the ineffective form of communication," here, big opposite action day for me. I did the thing I said I was going to do and went to Té Cafe to do HW. I didn't do as much as I would have liked. The article was disjointed and harder to get through than I thought it would be. I did run into Jenn there though so it was all good. I did not read any poems yet. Dammit.

But things that hurt this morning are still hurting. My thoughts are.... [....][[....]][[[....]]]

The urge to burrow until at least tomorrow. Is unavoidable.

Nautilus

Punch to the gut

So I was juuuuust getting ready to head out the door when I realized I had to open my email to print out  the actual assignment I'm doing the homework for. And I received a rejection for a press prize that I was really really hoping to at least be a semi-finalist for. Everyone who knew my work was like "did you try ____ Press?" And the judge was the editor of the press. And I sent it out way before the deadline. So I felt like my work would get a good read.

It's not like this is the first time. Maybe that's the problem.

I think the worst part about these rejections is I never know how far I got or what was missing in the MS. In retrospect I think that maybe my work was too risky for this particular press. That's the absolute best interpretation of the situation. But how can I know for sure? Maybe the MS is horrible. I've gotten enough feedback on it to know that's not true though. But maybe it's.... subtly *wrong*.

I write intense, high-stakes poetry. And I don't know where to put it. Or there's something intrinsically bad.... ugh, I have to stop the negative self-talk, because I've had enough success to know that I can succeed, if that makes sense.

I should maybe delete this post because it's rambly. But I'm not going to. This is difficult work.

I used to have a lot of confidence. The confidence got sucked away since August. But I'm trying to keep on anyway.

I just see... the career that I pictured myself having falling out of reach. And I wasn't deluding myself. At one point, it was within my reach. I received credible encouragement. No one ever said, hey, you're not good enough; find a different niche.

Four out of the six poets in my MFA graduating class have now published full-length collections. I graduated in 2005. It sucks being on the bottom.

My alma mater doesn't even count chaps as legit publications on the "graduates who have published" page. I looked.

Poets whose work I admire, poets who I wanted to emulate, have, by this point in their career, by the age that I am, published loads more.

It's not like I've dedicated my life to something else, like law school or marketing or psychology or technical writing or raising babies or organic farming in Montana and the poetry thing is an "also."

I wanted. I  w a n t e d. I wanted a different life.

I want.

Oh, and btw, I'm not even sure I can work full-time with all the different disability shit, and this morning I am not proud, I feel like it is shit, going on. I feel like the scraps of my life are just falling through my open hands.

Thought: I have so much to give. I just don't know who will receive.

Other thought: when poets whose opinion I respected, poets who I wanted to emulate, told that I was really good, it just meant I had further to fall / fail.

I'm not giving up; that's not in my nature. It's just... I had a vision of who I was going to be, and
I've not become that person, and it makes me weep. I'm going to have to be someone else, and I don't know who the fuck she is.

DBT says I need to go out there and do the homework anyway, like I had planned. But the anxiety. And the sadness. They hurt so fucking badly. My head is spinning, spinning, spinning.