"Small flag with our hands" (poem, painting)

I love that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has so much of their collection online and that they have an "Artwork of the Day" feed. The link for that feed and the piece for today are here. (If you click on the image you can see it larger and even use a zooming tool to really see the details!!)

Also- I like the poem for today on The Writer's Almanac- the link for that is here.

Art therapy Wednesday, Lamy love, screws turning.

Poem.

A BARRED Owl

BY RICHARD WILBUR

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl's voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

"Who cooks for you?" and then "Who cooks for you?"

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,

Can also thus domesticate a fear,

And send a small child back to sleep at night

Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight

Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw

Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

different way

burn, burned, burning

Metaphor, nonlinear brain, therapy Monday.

My brain feels so all over the place that I feel like it is almost impossible to write anything here- but then I think this is the best time to try to write about how frustrating it is to live with and recover from dissociative identity disorder.

The photo is a picture of me when I was a year old. A part of me would like to print out 365 copies and mail one each day with an attached hate letter to my abusers. Not something I am really going to do... well, maybe just one. Or two.

I feel like I am making huge progress but it is not (not in any way) linear- so it is hard to view it as progress. I do one thing on the computer, then I draw one small thing, I come back to the computer, I go and start a list of something, I switch around and do something else. In one way it feels very nonproductive to work on 10 projects in one day and in another- it feels like the only way I can function. And I feel like I was so hurt in the past that (obviously) recovering from it and ever having to really think in a clear way about what happened (obviously) hurts like HELL.

I hate this post- the fact that I just wrote that I hate this post, the weird use of the word obviously in the above paragraph, the fact that it does not seem so weird to me really. I feel like my head is such a fucking mess and I have hated myself for so long- my body and my mind- it is hard to finally stop hating myself and realize that all of this hate has been a cover to not know about the past and the shame is something that my abusers should feel and not me. It is difficult to think "It was not my fault." when I can still hear in my head my father saying to me "Why are you making me do this to you?". My father used to rape me and ASK ME WHY I WAS MAKING HIM DO IT TO ME.

Dear Jenny,

I think it is super fantastic that you never killed yourself and a near miracle that you survived living with those people for 18 years! Write anything you want! Congratulations on being alive!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Jenny

myself together

This is the painting I made in my art therapy group on Friday.

Guts on the table.

Yesterday in art therapy I made a painting so painful I do not even want to post it here. And I keep thinking about it. The past couple of weeks my teeth have been hurting and then more and more. Today I went to the dentist and found out that it is from grinding and gnashing my teeth. I already knew I did this- but my teeth have really been hurting a lot and the dentist was talking about how my bite is messed up and it is probably related to the grinding and then pushing on my teeth with my tongue. And I left her office owing more money and feeling like: The body remembers. And there is a point when the body can't hold back what it remembers anymore and I feel past that point. In the last week or two I have been describing how I feel by talking a lot about my guts. If someone asks how I am feeling I will usually give an answer that involves something about feeling like my guts have been torn from my body and are being picked at with a pitch fork. Or on fire. I feel like my intestines have been ripped out of my body and they are burning. That is how I feel lately. I think this is the meshing together of the ways of being me that managed to not know about the abuse and the ways that had to take the abuse. And it is good- because it has to happen- but it sure does hurt a lot to feel.

Lloyd took this photo. He is handy with a camera. (And a poem.)

Wild Geese

by Charles Goodrich

I'm picking beans when the geese fly over, Blue Lake pole
beans I figure to blanch and freeze. Maybe pick some dilly beans.
And there will be more beans to give to the neighbors, forcibly if
necessary.
The geese come over so low I can hear their wings creak, can
see their tail feathers making fine adjustments. They slip-stream along
so gracefully, riding on each other's wind, surfing the sky. Maybe
after the harvest I'll head south. Somebody told me Puerto Vallarta is
nice. I'd be happy with a cheap room. Rice and beans at every meal.
Swim a little, lay on the beach.
Who are you kidding, Charles? You don't like to leave home
in the winter. Spring, fall, or summer either. True. But I do love to
watch those wild geese fly over, feel these impertinent desires glide
through me. Then get back to work.

"Wild Geese" by Charles Goodrich, from Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden.

No other way. (The past has already happened.)

OBVIOUSLY the past has already happened. But I really hate the past. I have therapy in less than two hours and I am feeling more than a little sick and anxious as I think about and try not to think about what is going to come out in my session today. I have worked myself to this good and yet EXCEPTIONALLY PAINFUL PLACE where the past is feeling real and I am remembering more of it and in a clear way. I know there is no through it but to go through it... but that has not deterred me from trying to think of alternative options this morning and afternoon. I started an email to my therapist and ended up looking at a fashion and gossip website.

I switch around faster than Toni Collette can do a wardrobe change and quicker than Diablo Cody can try to write about this mess. I hate having DID. I thought I hated because I hated myself- I MEAN- I HAVE SPENT 32 YEARS HATING MYSELF. I wish my abusers would _______ ___ _ _______ _____. And a in a vat of hot and burning oil.

I should not have ever been abused and I hate that on top of all of that abuse I have felt ashamed for it all as though it were my fault and for all of my life.

Original language. (Sketchbook pages and cover.)

I will try to start writing more here soon. Right now I am happy to be back to the blog even if it is mostly (for the moment) in images.

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you." Zora Neale Hurston

How to eat dinner. (Tuesday night drawing.)

Heart meat.

How I negotiated lunch today.

Pen and ink, marker, crayon and saliva on paper.

sketchbook image

"And though, despite her, I can redeem, in a pawnshop sense, almost any bad moment from my childhood..."

August, Los Angeles, Lullaby

by Carol Muske

The pure amnesia of her face,

newborn. I looked so far

into her that, for a while,

the visual held no memory.

Little by little, I returned

to myself, waking to nurse

those first nights in that

familiar room where all

the objects had been altered

imperceptibly: the gardenia

blooming in the dark

in the scarred water glass,

near the phone my handwriting

illegible, the patterned lamp-

shade angled downward and away

from the long mirror where

I stood and looked at

the woman holding her child.

Her face kept dissolving

into expressions resembling

my own, but the child's was pure

figurative, resembling no one.

We floated together in the space

a lullaby makes, head to head,

half-sleeping. Save it,

my mother would say, meaning

just the opposite. She didn't

want to hear my evidence

against her terrible optimism

for me. And though, despite her,

I can redeem, in a pawnshop

sense, almost any bad moment

from my childhood, I see now

what she must have intended

for me. I felt it for her,

watching her as she slept,

watching her suck as she

dreamed of sucking, lightheaded

with thirst as my blood flowed

suddenly into tissue that

changed it to milk. No matter

that we were alone, there's a

texture that moves between me

and whatever might have injured

us then. Like the curtain's sheer

opacity, it remains drawn

over what view we have of dawn

here in this one time desert,

now green and replenished,

its perfect climate

unthreatened in memory-

though outside, as usual,

the wind blew, the bough bent,

under the eaves, the hummingbird

touched once the blood colored hourglass,

the feeder, then was gone.

From the trip to see Jessieh...

After the show.

Dinosaur pretending to sleep.

Jessieh with her roommate.

My brain on a Saturday.

Friday night I watched all 12 episodes of the first season of "United States of Tara". Saturday morning I woke up with my period. Saturday night I watched the first two episodes from the second season of that show online. For anyone living without DID let me just explain that my reaction to all of this was something like the equivalent of having 20 of your closest friends over to your one room apartment and snorting coke and shooting off fireworks while trying to listen to Chopin on low volume and tap dancing. While bleeding. A little messy. And complicated. But kind of... liberating. Lol. Oops. DID overload. But it was also kind of a good learning experience. About how my own brain works, I mean. And my favorite part of all of the United States of Tara stuff was the one scene where John Corbett wake s up in the middle of the night when Tara's parents are visiting and she is not in bed. So he goes to look for her and she is squatting over her father as he sleeps and pissing on his dick. Oh DID... I loves you so.

Today I am going to an art exhibit. About Buddhist art. Balance. Lol.

More soon.

xoxox

JENNY INC!

Dinosaur roar.

1. Jessieh's play was amazing. It was painful and traumatic- but great. The trip to go and see her was wonderful and I have a lot of good photos of her and I will post some more of them soon.

2. I am going to start doing more of the 'drawing on jeans'. If you are interested in having me draw on a pair of yours you can email me at artconstellation at gmail.com.

3. I hate having DID. I hate hurting from past shit that happened to me that never should have happened. I hate that abusers get away with abuse because abuse makes the abused person feel and act like they are going crazy and then the abuser can just point and say, "See, that person is crazy.".

4. I AM NOT CRAZY. But the abuse sure as hell made me feel that way. I fucking hate both of my abusers and I hope that at least some kind of karma bites them very hard in the place it could hurt most.

5. I am going to resume blogging now. Or try to anyway. The real reason I have not been writing (although I have come up with many good excuses) is because I simply have not wanted to have my own thoughts. It is not really simple. It is painful and complicated.

6. I am glad DID saved my life but the mess and pain of having to recover later is a horrific mess and pain.

7. I am drawing everyday now.

Back to the _______ board.

With Jessieh.

Seeing Jessieh.

I am off to see Jessieh for a couple of days... A PLAY THAT SHE WROTE IS BEING PERFORMED AT HER COLLEGE AND I AM VERY PROUD AND EXCITED!!! When I get back I need to think about why I have been scared to write here... has it been because I am worried what other people will think about what I write- or do I not want to see it myself? I really want to 'return' to this blog.

I love you Jessieh! You are wonderful! See you tomorrow!

Oh... And a note about the above image... It is a poster I saw and I took a picture of it. It makes me happy and sad. I know it is a good message but I am just so fucking mad that any person who has ever been raped has to ever WORK to known it was NOT THEIR FAULT.

BTW Jessieh, I am sending a gift up with Jenny. If she comes without the cash please just ask her to write you a check. Love, Lloyd

Dear Jessieh, Jenny will not let me come to see you this weekend. I wish I had my own car. I hope the play is a smash. xo Love, Lloyd

THIS BLOG NEEDS MORE LLOYD.

I am going to start trying to write more here too. :-) But more Lloyd... always more Lloyd. And here is a poem I love:

Adventures Of Isabel Isabel met an enormous bear, Isabel, Isabel, didn't care; The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous, The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous. The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you, How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you! Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry. Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up, Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up. Once in a night as black as pitch Isabel met a wicked old witch. the witch's face was cross and wrinkled, The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled. Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed, I'll turn you into an ugly toad! Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry, Isabel didn't scream or scurry, She showed no rage and she showed no rancor, But she turned the witch into milk and drank her. Isabel met a hideous giant, Isabel continued self reliant. The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid, He had one eye in the middle of his forhead. Good morning, Isabel, the giant said, I'll grind your bones to make my bread. Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry, Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She nibled the zwieback that she always fed off, And when it was gone, she cut the giant's head off. Isabel met a troublesome doctor, He punched and he poked till he really shocked her. The doctor's talk was of coughs and chills And the doctor's satchel bulged with pills. The doctor said unto Isabel, Swallow this, it will make you well. Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry, Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She took those pills from the pill concocter, And Isabel calmly cured the doctor. by Ogden Nash