February 2002

Feb. 21 / 2002

Tonight I'm thinking about terms. Each of us signs an unwritten contract when we are born. That contract states that we have been given a life that will be full of hard work, perseverance, internal and external stuggle, time of great pain and time of great joy. In that lifetime we will both succeed and fail, learn and forget, dream, love, trust, and be crushed. We will also die. Death being the only real guarenteed cost of living.

So by default tonight I'm thinking of Daniel Pearl with his throat slit in Pakistan. I'm thinking of his life blood spilling out. Death was the price of wanting to tell a story. I'm thinking of his wife and unborn baby and what those words are going to sound like to the child as it grows up. I'm thinking of all this with a great sadness, we are a race set on destroying ourselves because of something something as frightfully stupid as self-imposed labels. Perhaps we must label something so that we know whether we should love, hate, or fear it. Why can't we just communicate - talk to each other, learn about our differences instead of trying to destroy them. We live in the kind of world where a man dies for trying to do just that - tell someone's story. We live in a world where governments do not negotiate for the lives of their citizens, where every single one of their actions remind us daily just how disposible we are. The so-called democracy will continue even in the absense of lay citizens, sort of like post-nuclear cockroaches. We live in a world where foreigners' suspicions of our actions, our motives, cause them to call our journalist's "spies" and execute them as one would execute "spies." I am sick of east and west, north and south, all of it. This is one goddamn planet, one orb rotating around a star we call the sun. We either learn how to live with each other or we spell our collective deaths and die together, somewhat fitting. The "axis of evil" is not something that lies on the other side of the ocean, it's right here in our backyards, in the propaganda we ingest willingly each day instead of seeing the wrongs of the west. Terrorism is a reaction. The question needs to be "what is it a reaction to and how can we work to fix (not just bomb & imprison) the situations that cause such hate?" America is very good at looking innocent. I say "fuck that", that's the reaction you get when you keep sticking your fingers in other people's cookie jars.

The so-called 'War On Terrorism' is not making things better. We are not getting better, not as a collective and maybe not even as individuals. We are not healing this planet nor the rifts between countries, religions and belief systems - with each death, with each carelessly thrown word in press conferences and State of the Union addresses we are we are opening the rift further, feeding the hate on both sides.

I don't know why as a 25-year-old girl, I understand this and the people who lead us do not. I don't know how someone like myself can make a difference, spread a message, anything, so I write here. I am not a protestor or activist like J. I am not a letter-writer either. I am too much of a realist to think that I, alone, am capable of creating a paradigm shift for the entire western world. At this point, truthfully I don't know whether I am capable of surviving the next decade.

You see, like the world around me, my own body betrays me. Painlessly swelling and revolting against this soul of mine that only wants to live. Now I count lumps nightly, compare to the previous night's size and the size of the night before that. I look for change. Unlike if the politics of the planet changed, change in this case would be a bad thing. I count lumps. I'm no physician but I do my best because I have to. And everyday I wait wondering what new challenge this shell of mine has devised.

And I wonder what will happen to all these words and photographs when I go. I wonder how I will be remembered, certainly not by the whole world or this nation even but maybe by a few. I didn't sign this contract to die young. Zang's right though, the uncertainty haunts me. I persevere through it because life is in the struggle, perhaps that's the only thing we need to remember - that and history, so we can learn to stop making the same mistakes over and over.

March 2002

Mar. 6th, 2002

Lately there has not been enough time for art. But there has been more than enough for inspiration though. I've got inspiration blue balls, unable to release this creativity that is welling up swelling up, growing hard within me. I have too much responsibility: too many bills, obligations, work, and homework. Too much, always too much, and not enough time for the good stuff. Never enough hours in the day to wank our artist's implements and spurt poetry, imagery, photography, musical landscapes, whatever...

all the whatever that insists that lifetime artists like myself must be kept in our place, must be starving

STARVED for years until we give out, give up or sell out

trading one type of perpetual whoredom for another corporate kind of the same.

I should not long to be heard
or successful.
I should only long to be respected.

I said, not so long ago during an interview, that the success I desire is that of a cult following.

Maybe someday we'll find a way to balance responsibility and creation. We'll find a way to bubble, rumble, volcanic blast our way out from the underground. Maybe we'll have all acts of creation on our terms someday.

And when we fuck for the first time, when I fuck anyone for the first time from here on out, it will be our flesh joining like the complimentary chords of a symphony. We will make love and art simultaneously.

We will create art between us, fluidly,

like we were born with paintbrushes for hands, harps for lips, and canvas for skin

but... BUT... our skins are indeed canvases and someday with water soluable marker, I will write these words on your flesh.

I will confess love.
I will promise futures that I know better than to promise
but... BUT... I will promise futures still

because hope too is art. Not all poets "kill their inspiration, then sing about their grief." Not all poets die lonely, slaves to their words. Not all poets die bitter and drunken. When you get beyond needing to be understood, when you learn to accept that you (you, the eternal artist) will always be misunderstood then and only then can you love...

love a lover, love mother earth, love of fragile brothers and sisters in humanity.

But who has time to get beyond themselves, above their consciousness, to climb truly within their souls???

no one.

not even me.

not the body that lies beside me at night.

not any of you.

BECAUSE that would be DANGEROUS.

It would be dangerous to allow art to eclipse the pursuit of wealth.
It would be dangerous to allow art to bleed through and stain corporate offices.
It would be dangerous to learn to breathe entirely through words and paintings.
And to make love entirely through the same.

YET... I dream of doing just that... BEING DANGEROUS... wanking my words in public. Being dangerous, because foreplay can not last forever. The climax is coming - the moan, the scream, the inhale, the final shuddering hesitation before the inevitable thrust, thrust, thrust...

my thrust, thrust, thrust before I indulge in that glorious moment and let the rhythm, combined with the hard cock of my inspiration release itself in the mightiest motherfucking orgasm

the establishment has ever seen.

yes, kids, change is a cummin'. And we should all hope to be caught exposed with our pants down.