Alive and...

Bleed Me

Explanation on a different skin.

(pink paper napkin wrapped in tape, drawn on with pen and ink and wrapped again in tape, approx. 5" x 5", July 28, 2007)

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust. -Rumi

Any time I would cry my father would ask me this question: "Do you want me to give you something to REALLY cry about?"

Horse with planet, eye and bloody, aborted fetus head.

(mixed media on paper, 14" x 11", 2005)

NO MORE.

Art onto paper; not onto flesh. This needs to be a photo from the very last time.

Minus one.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070725.BUZZ25-2/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Television/

April, 2007 (for j.d.)

(pen and ink on paper, 7.25" x 5.5", April 2007)

A break from the bad.

This is not actually a "good-bye" video. It is more of a "we have been to hell and back and we still know how to be ridiculous and happy" video. And I need to remind myself of this today. (I love you Jessieh.) j.

burn alive

(mixed media on paper, 12" x 9", May 2007)

A woman poured gasoline over her entire body and burned herself to death in her parent's front yard. People said she must have really been crazy.

Hell.

(pen and ink with marker on paper, 14" x 17", 2007)

Cut away. (The photo in this collage was taken in 1997.)

(mixed media on paper, 13" x 11", 2004)

Come and get me. (I am begging you now.)

(July 2007 sketchbook page)

miss you (24)

(marker on cardboard with tape, 6" x 42", 2007)

(CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR A LARGER VIEW)

In the (her/our) literal sense(s).

When I walked out of therapy this morning I felt like my head was literally going to roll off my shoulders. (This is how I felt for most of the session as well). I hate this sick feeling of passing back and forth between knowing and trying to get back to a place of not knowing about the past. And there is just SO MUCH of the bloody (literal) past. There are so many horrible things that it does seem like a bottomless fucking (literal) pit. But that is just a feeling and not reality- right Dr.? Today we took a much needed rest from the seemingly endless discussions about being raped by "The Father" and instead shared a pleasant and sunny Monday morning discussing the bitter bloodbath/near death experiences that frequently occurred after a violent physical beating by that charming child-fucker (literal). Hard to figure out what to do with the rest of the day after something like that... everything looks up-hill from where I am standing.

hospital, 2006

(marker on tissue paper, 13" x 17", 2006)

Strange conjunctions.

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

-by Adrienne Rich

"you are going to want to die"

(marker with pen and ink, June 2007 sketchbook pages)

(CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW)

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

-by Sharon Olds

I have survived my move (thanks to my great moving assistant; pictured in the above photograph) and I am back where the German coffee flows like wine and the animal fur is always flying. It is good to be back. I have been drawing everyday and I will begin regularly updating my blog again. Thanks. jls

The pain of translation.

I am going to be moving in the next couple of days and I might not be able to update my blog for a while. I hope I will be able to resume posting within a week or so. Take care. jls


One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-by Elizabeth Bishop

There were no accidents.

(mixed media on paper, 14" x 17", 2007)

This is disgusting. This is true.

(marker on paper, 4" x 6", July 1, 2007)