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September 2nd, Two Thousand Four: I confess, I've been engaging in an awful lot of simple pleasures
lately.
I've been spending quite a few nights up late with friends: the
sort of friends you've hung out with in groups or only spent a
little time with, so sitting up for hours talking is a new experience.
I watched The Girl sleep for a half hour the other night. She
was too tired to stay up with the rest of us, so by the time I
got to bed, she'd crashed in my bedroom. Her short hair was looped
over her forehead, her hands looked nearly posed, perfectly folded
under her chin. The plum jersey sheets were coiled over her hips
like sculpture, and her long torso was spiraled. She looked not
only so incredibly beautiful, but so peaceful. I rarely get to
see her looking at peace anymore: the anxiety and the depression
are really kicking her ass, all the more lately because they are
again trying to find her new depression medications following
the bout in the hospital. It's sad, really: I wish I could see
her more with a soft half-smile on her face, quiet and calm. Greeting
her when I can hear her breathing too fast, see the stress on
her face, her heart pounding from anxiety is just taking a toll.
I've been playing piano almost every day and night, the windows
and doors open to feel the breeze as I play, a glass of wine on
the shelf next to me. Last night's session involved improving
with Dylan's "Man in the Long Black Coat," Patty Griffin's "Florida,"
Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
For the record, I do often kick myself in the foot for disbelieving
my vocal coaches in my teens who told me smoking would destroy
my voice. It's not DOA, but I've easily cut an octave from what
once was a pretty impressive range. Drats. (I also have been terribly
addicted to Cat Power's covers record lately -- her versions of
"I Found a Reason" and "Sea of Love" are to die for, and I love
listening to female artists who also play things very sparely.
It makes me feel in good company.)
I've been working on some new poetry, more slowly than I usually
do; finding out how it works when I spend days putting a piece
together in small parts, rather than doing it in one breath and
then editing it for a while. I'm liking this today: My mother and father are/ Iceland to Borneo: half a sphere apart,
separate latitudes of my heart.
Context is such a strange thing. In working to finish the professional
portfolio, I'm a few steps further from all of my work than usual.
So much of it feels so bare and makes me feel so vulnerable when
I put it in a different place, give it a different presentation.
It all makes me feel so naked, in a very real way. I have so few
pieces, visually or textually, which are objective, which don't
give away some part of me, which make me merely a narrator or
reporter. That's not a bad thing: my inner teenager who swore
to herself that she'd never create anything less is one happy
camper with me, still. But I feel overexposed and raw. It's part
of why pulling this together is taking longer than I thought it
would. Maybe that feeling is why literally being naked in a lot
of it has never felt unnatural or awkward: it symbolizes how I
feel in most of my work, in much of my life, all too perfectly.
I also spent some time yesterday pricing out some studio equipment
I direly need: a backdrop stand, a couple small lighting booms,
a gel filter system, a reflector. The total isn't as bad as I'd
expected: I can do it for a few hundred dollars, but you know
how it is when a few hundred dollars is a lot when surplus just
isn't there. (This is some of why my updates have been so minimal
lately -- I just really need some new tools to do anything original
at this point, because I've essentially maxed out my use of what's
available as-is at this point.) I remember getting really good
scholarships for colleges in the eighties, and having to explain
to a couple schools that while, yes, a 50% scholarship was very
generous and I was pleased as punch that 50% of thousands and
thousands of dollars was only useful when you had the other half.
This was apparently news.
Wishes and affirmations are powerful, though. I told myself as
I was doing the pricing, having looked at numbers, that if I can
finish the portfolio and get even a few new clients scheduled
over the next few months, I could finagle this. And lo: mere hours
after saying that to myself, out loud, a friend called asking
if I'd consider a calendar gig at the end of the year, and a nonprofit
here emailed asking what my rates were for events. So, there you
go. Things just may look up in that regard soon.
I'm trying to accept my slower-than-usual pace right now, and
my reduced workaholism, the energy that usually lets me work all
day and night, nonstop, without even noticing I have. I'm trying
to acknowledge that I have more than my fair share of stressors
at the moment: the family stuff continues, The Girl's troubles
continue, the money issues are the money issues, I did get a good
deal of postpartum finishing the manuscript, and at the moment,
I do feel more than a little bit lost at sea. So, I've let myself
have my simple pleasure where I find them. I've used some strong
words with a few friends lately about what I can and cannot do:
what I do and do not have patience and energy for at the moment.
When I want exile and solace, I've been trying to take it (which
is also why my ICQ has mainly been off, for anyone I often talk
to there who's been wondering). My body and mind have felt so
tired lately, so I've let myself sleep in and be less active than
usual. My space here has been a big deal lately: I'm normally
such a slob that I'm hardly complaining about wanting to constantly
houseclean these days. I had to laugh at myself when I apologized
to friends about not tidying up before they'd come, since this
is about as tidy as it's ever bound to get around here. Had they
come to a place of mine a few years ago, they would have been
washing their hands every couple minutes.
Today is the last big day of work on the portfolio: after that,
it's just finessing, so I'm off to it as well as some other work.
Tomorrow The Girl and I were supposed to go back to the State
Fair, but I'm wondering if I can't talk her into a more mellow
day instead, maybe renting a canoe for a couple hours and just
floating through the lakes while I row with some snacks and a
bottle of wine: I think she could use a few simple pleasures of
her own. |
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August 30th, Two Thousand Four: This week, it's all about me and the grindstone. I have a friend
from Dykes Do Drag going back to school for dance in NYC coming
over for headshots late this afternoon, followed by a dinner so
we can catch up before she heads out. Ayesha's been here all summer,
but save time at Pride, we've not managed any time to hang out
until today. So, I need to prep a space for shooting, then spend
the middle of the day working more on the pro portfolio, which
will be a big part of the rest of the week as well, as I'm hoping
to get it finished and live by Friday.
Also packed into this week? A couple sample chapters for an on-spec
book packager, work on the intros and summaries for my book, a
photo update for this site wedged in there somewhere, a few emails
for some work possibilities, an evening checking out a new (and
closer to me than the last) sangha, bill-paying and a lot of laundry.
Learn from my silly example, kids: there is really no reason to
be a clotheshorse when you work at home unless you happen to like
doing laundry all of the time. Your pets and the people at the
coffeehouse don't give a damn what you wear. I suppose I should
pencil in the gathering up of bags for another naked lady party,
a lawn sale or goodwill in there, that said.
I had a real weekend this weekend, for the most part. Scott and
I spent the afternoon and early evening together Saturday after
he trimmed my hair for me, since I kept waking up with dreads.
We had a long lunch, then did a little shopping, then finished
with a cocktail and a dessert at Chino Latino after having a veritable
"who's got more attitude" face-off with the hostess. Both of us
refused to be taken down by any woman whose black roots made her
appear to be the even lower-rent twin of Ann Coulter. Before we
headed into Penzey's Spices (a heaven for me), he told me he heard
they were a Mormon company. So, what does a responsible ethical
shopper do? They go in and ask first before shopping there. What
did I do? I figured if I could never shop there again, I'd better
stock up on a few spices first, because damn if I was going to
let the Mormons make me eat bland food. Thankfully, we were told,
when I asked AFTER my purchases, that he was grossly mistaken,
so my transgression was slight.
The Girl and I spent late Saturday night and Sunday together,
some at the State Fair. I didn't take as many photos as I usually
do, but that's because we only went for a little bit to meet her
parents, and I'll go again with The Girl and Becca some night
this week. It's always such a good thing there are so few things
I can eat there, because it never fails that in one day of watching
a million people overloaded with really scary food en masse, I
completely lose my appetite. Lest you get the idea I'm merely
being a food snob, envision, if you will, a person with one hand
full of teriyaki ostrich on a stick and another with a deep-fried
candy bar. Or, if you prefer, one hand with a double-battered
potato deep-fried then covered in melted cheese, and the other
with a hot dog in a deep-fried pancake, a bag of mini-donuts in
the lap. Then, of course, there are the people sitting in front
of the swine barn eating ham sandwiches, or the live rabbits labeled
"fryers." This was made extra special yesterday by the fact that
it sounded very much like in a bathroom stall next to me was either
someone who had eaten way to many things-on-a-stick and wasn't
feeling so well or a bulimic, post fair-food binge. Yuck. (And,
veering slightly off-topic, if you're looking for lesbians in
more rural communities, they apparently are all involved in dressage.
Go figure.)
I did, however, come up last night with a damn fine recipe for
Tandoori Mock Duck, which I'll share so other happy vegans and
those not eating their livestock on sticks can enjoy it too:
- - 1 package chicken-style seitan
- - 1 small yellow onion, chopped finely
- - 5 cloves garlic, minced
- - 1 golden bell pepper, chopped
- - 1 bunch spinach, sliced
- - 1/2 cup tofu sour cream (this adds a nice tang) or soy yogurt
- - juice of one lemon
- - 1 tsp. orange zest
- - 3 tbsp. tandoori spice (if you don't have a mix, it's: coriander,
cumin, paprika, garlic, ginger, cardamom and saffron, to taste.
If you use the chicken seitan, it usually already comes in a marinade
with a good deal of ginger in it, so you may want to go lighter
on that to compensate)
- - fresh chopped cilantro to taste
Add 1 tbsp. of the tandoori mix and half the lemon juice to the
existing marinade in the seitan and let stand for a couple hours.
Mix the remaining tandoori spices into the tofu sour cream or
yogurt to make a sauce. Saute the garlic, yellow onion and orange
zest until the onions are transluscent. Add the golden pepper
and the seitan and brown the seitan slightly. Add a little of
the marinade, the spinach and cover, simmering for about 10 minutes.
Remove the cover, turn up the heat and brown again, slowly adding
the tandoori sauce, remaining lemon juice, and extra paprika and
saffron for color until it's all hot, colorful and tasty. Serve
on saffron or coconut rice, garnishing with the cilantro. You
could also do a nice sandwich with it with a flatbread.
It's seriously yummy. My carnivorous girlfriend slurped it right
up, even after eating an ("about a") foot long hot dog and a bucket
of fries at the fair. I finished dinner off with a few olive-oil
fried plaintains I dusted with cinnamon and vanilla sugar. Apparently,
I didn't escape the fried food wave as well as I'd thought. |
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August 28th, Two Thousand Four: Boxing sucked. AGAIN. We had a substitute, a woman who really
couldn't have cared less about teaching jack this morning, who
isn't even a kickboxer, and who, with great effort, managed to
come up with a total of five drills to fill a whole hour. To top
it all off, the last sub who was big trouble, the guy who kept
stealing my partner and goofing off, sauntered in halfway through.
Not only did he allow the sub to have even more reason to pay
zero attention to the class, he walked between me and my partner
and starting training AGAIN.
I let it happen once, and then said something to the sub. She
said, "Yeah, that's annoying." Insert eyeroll on my part here.
Helpful, that. Go, leadership, go! It happened again. She merely
sighed, so I walked up, inserted myself between said guy and my
partner and said, "Stop coming in here and usurping my training
and taking my partners." To which he smiled at me, tossed a punch
at my shoulder and replied, "I'm just picking out your next girlfriend
and preparing her for you."
To which I replied, "She's sweaty, warm, half-dressed, is waiting
for me to come over and we're both beyond ready for you to bloody
well leave. Since you couldn't even imagine how to prepare her
for me in any other way, I think your work is done here."
He didn't interrupt again. Fancy that. Time to talk to the head
of the studio, who will be utterly clueless as to what I'm even
complaining about. |
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August 25th, Two Thousand Four: I turn into bleeding Helen Keller when I move things. What happens
when things get rearranged in my house is akin to what happens
when you do so in a blind person's house. Even when rearranging
and cleaning meant LESS clutter.
I am totally discombobulated. Did a little photo work today, but
even without the renegade cats, insane humidity, cramps, bloating,
hand cramps from the damn wasp sting, the necklace my hair kept
eating and spaciness it would have only been moderately fruitful,
because I kept trying to figure out how I was lying on my desk
in the dining room. And why it looked so much like the futon in
the sunroom.
Since moving the office, I have set things in my kitchen on fire
twice, when in the year and a half I have lived here, I had never
done it even once before ( #1, emptying an ash tray with a lit
fag in it, #2, spacing out that pan of pine nuts I slid into the
broiler for just a couple seconds to toast, remembering only a
few minutes later when flames were coming out of said broiler).
I have bruises all over my feet and shins from walking into things.
I woke up and screamed at the person standing in my other sunroom
in the middle of the night...who even more suspiciously was wearing
my clothes and a feather boa (I forgot I'd moved the dressing
rack). I hear there's a rash of rogue drag queen break-ins all
over the city, really. I have knocked over, in the last two days:
two plants, a cup of coffee, two pans, a standing fan, a music
stand, and a glass of wine... right into my keyboard. I have fallen
on my face, tripping over some pesky thin air, twice.
There are still people who run full house, 24/7 cams. Thank the
powers that be I don't. Everyone would just keep wondering where
the hell the other three Marx Brothers were. |
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August 24th, Two Thousand Four: The last week, I had a terrible time being at all productive.
I'd do a day of work and then take two off. I'd do a few hours
on something, then the rest of the day be completely unmotivated.
That is completely unlike me.
Some of that, I think, is just post-book-itis. It was such a huge
project, that finishing the bulk of it made me feel like everything
in the whole wide world was finished. I felt finished. Some of it was getting home after being away:
I tend not to travel all that well, in that my own pad is where
I most enjoy being. So, when I get back home from being away,
I crave a lot of time in it just enjoying my space, my neighborhood,
my community. Some of it was dealing with emotional stuff from
the trip. In the aftermath, my mother and I exchanged a difficult
series of emails: each one required hours of processing on my
end. Lastly, I'm just having a tricky tie of feeling out what
to do now, what schedule to create, what work to try and cultivate
now that it isn't all-book-all-the-time.
So, yesterday, feeling the few days before that a change would
help, I had The Girl help e move the whole office into one of
the two sunrooms in my apartment (this one: pity the floor doesn't look so shiny and perfect anymore). I
had originally left it open for shooting, but I've shot so much
in it by now, there was really no need for that anymore. It's
much brighter than the dining room, so having my coffee in here
this morning, and sitting down to work has been much easier. With
windows and open space all the way around me, it's a bit like
working in a treehouse, which feels very nice. It also allows
me, in this room, to need no lights on during the day, which is
a boon. I've always preferred to have my work patterns and schedule
follow the light and real pattern of the day. Today, I'll likely
spend a couple more hours sprucing up the order of things in here,
then dealing with some odds and ends, like card-cataloging my
past and current photography clients and models (dates of the
shoot, descriptions, when CDs or prints were made or delivered)
before I finish up some older orders so I can be fully up-to-date
(Ashley, Joan, Teresa: expect packages from me by next week. Jennifer:
if you could email me with any prints you want from your last
session, that'd rock).
Despite the bizarre weather this summer, I got some good rides
in last week. For whatever reason, I didn't feel like boxing over
the last week and a half, so since the saturday before last, it's
been biking, biking, biking. I found this funky offshoot of the
Kenilworth trail here, just west of the basilica, where you go
under the expressway with barely a seven foot clearance, so while
on your bike, you can, at a certain angle, sit with your hands
under it and feel the cars driving on top of you. It's creepy.
Off the same trail, there's also an off-road biking hill I played
on for a little while. I also spent some time saturday in Loring
Park with a homeless man who filled me in on all the places people
tend to stay here, so I have to figure out what to do with that
information. A photo project may be in order, just not sure what.
I'm also wondering if anyone teaches any self-defense classes
for the homeless up here through any of the community centers
or shelters -- heck, even in the parks -- and may have to do some
digging in that vein. It'd be a good way to refresh my skills
in that area: I haven't done any of that training in a good 15
years.
What else? Spent an afternoon and evening with Elise a few days back. I kept having this inexplicable urge to have
my throat and chest covered with something protective since I
got back home, and I tend to pay attention to that sort of thing.
So, I allowed myself a very rare and unusual treat of commissioning
a couple jewelry pieces from her. For the most part, the jewelry
I wear is firmly implanted on my ears and face and like the one
silver band on my hand, just doesn't come off. I don't tend to
like a lot of extra stuff on me like that, but my body was asking
for something. And lo, picking out beads and shell, most everything
that called to me was blue or green: clearly mt heart and throat
chakras were screaming for some care. Elise's aesthetic tends
to be very ornate and decorative, mine very simple, so we challenged
each other and made some compromises. I left with a couple simple
pieces on waxed linen cord, as well as the one that's rarely left
my neck (looks like this one, which she made after I left, but mine was made more simply,
without the extra piece dangling from the abalone). I also couldn't
stop her from making this intense choker, which will need to get some photo airplay at
some point. I was actually planning to shoot today, but I've been
whacked with a case of cramps, so that's going to have to wait.
It was a good afternoon, save that I learned that going from her
neighborhood in Powderhorn to mine in Uptown late at night means
cycling several completely blackened streets in a pretty shitty
area, so I won't be doing that again. Doing a half-hour ride in
ten minutes is just none too pleasant.
Becca is losing her old car, and has offered to sell it to me
for a very cheap price. I sold my van before I moved here, and
when my Illinois drivers license went missing, I just let it go,
without ever getting a new one here. I've really enjoyed being
carless for the most part. In winter, however, it can pose some
problems, and it's becoming clear it does keep me from some work
I could otherwise finagle. so I'm considering trying to come up
with a way to buy it from her, but I feel torn. I like being a
carless person. But a means to get more work is good. The ability
to run out and get a prop or groceries when I need them without
having to ask someone else for a lift is good. And hell if avoiding
the DMV hasn't been swell.
Money hasn't been The Big Scary over the last week, because a
small private grant I get every year for Scarleteen from a very
generous person came in. That given, I can not worry about how
to pay all the bandwidth for a while, and can not worry about
running out of food for a while. Just having that buffer makes
me feel a lot better, and makes looking for ways to cultivate
income easier, since I can do so outside a context of sheer panic.
Still finishing up the professional portfolio, which is about
halfway done now. I've decided to up my rates a bit: photographing
other people is the most lucrative thing I do by far. If I can
regularly get even just a few sessions a month, I can pay my bills
and have a lot of time left over to do all of my other work, so.
It's a bonus to be able to work on things like a page for people
coming to sit for me, to make my own preferences clear. The idea
that I may never have to tell someone when they come in coated
in foundation to wash their face off is nice. being able to clarify
what I can and cannot do is helpful. Even making the rates very
clear so people who I discount can understand exactly how generous
I'm being when I do that is groovy. I've had more than one discounted
client over the years ride my ass for not delivering things quick
enough, or asking me to redo things without understanding what
they're asking, so that might help matters.
It's hard to cap up a week in one sitting. Ummm.... the St. Croix
River is cold at 5:00. I found that out Sunday when Heather, Carissa
and I headed out there on a jaunt to swim. After feeling my thighs
begin to feel like they did in the compression stocking they put
me in when I had internal surgery years back, I opted out. I also
am apparently not as allergic to wasps as I was as a kid. However,
I have learned that saying you want to find out might not be the
best thing to say, since just a few hours after I did -- after
not having been stung since I was 10 -- I got stung. But I didn't
pass out or get wheezy or turn bright red. My right hand isn't
happy, it keeps swelling up and getting stiff, but it's sporadic.
I'd been playing a lot of piano the last week: looks like the
swollen hand put an end to that for a while. I've started to teach
myself to be more observant with The Girl's anxiety and depression,
to recognize things (like carb-crashing, like a lack of activity
on a given day) that tend to make the stuff flare up. Apparently,
my observations are paying off: yesterday when she looked low,
I asked what was wrong because she seemed upset about something
actual, rather than just having a chemical shift, and I was spot-on.
It's subtle with her to some degree, so it takes some keen attention,
but i figure I'm a quick enough study that if I keep my mind to
it, I should have a good learning curve.
I think that's about that. Time for me to start on that office
work, looks like. I also wanted to spend some time today with
prints I have here, so I can have sort of a fire sale soon: I
have a backlog of prints here that are just cluttering up my already-cluttered
space, so be on the lookout for that if you're a print fan. When
the professional site is finished, I'll also be adding a print
club, something I've meant to set up for two years now, where
patrons pay a reasonable yearly amount and then get to pick one
print of three or four every season. Looks like this is a week
for clearing and making space, which sounds really quite nice. |
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August 17th, Two Thousand Four: I’ve written a lot of different versions of this, and I seem
to be unable to finish any of them. They’re all very eloquent,
fluid and lovely and exactly none of them say what I want or need
to.
So, I’ll try just to cut to the chase without thinking too much
about the eloquent and the delicate.
My father is homeless. Just saying that out loud, in a public
venue carries with it all the things making statements like “I
am a poor person,” “I am queer,” “I had an abortion,” “I am a
survivor of sexual violence,” do. After a while, one gets a bit
tired of voicing everything from a position of marginalization,
of the effort it takes to do that, of the consequences often involved.
It’s tiresome because you know that others understanding is often
limited: sometimes by lack of experience, sometimes because of
the profound desire not to understand. You know that what you’re
saying can mean a million things to someone else that none of
it means at all. You know pity may be invoked. You know that what’s
normal to you isn’t to others, and will likely not be treated
as normal. That isn’t to say it’s okay the really tough stuff
is normal. It isn’t okay with me that my father is homeless, because
he really shouldn’t be, like a lot of people who are. But this
IS my normal. This is the situation we’ve been in now for almost
15 years, and it’s only getting worse.
In even addressing how that is, why it is, how it happens, you
invoke something else much of the time: guilt. Often you care
a whole lot about not making others feel guilty, especially when
they’re not directly responsible. After a while, you just don’t,
can’t give a shit anymore about someone else’s guilt who isn’t
in that position. After a while, it becomes hard to talk about
it. Tiptoeing around this stuff sure doesn’t feel good, but it’s
often easier. Saying, “My father is homeless in part because people
want their big houses in the suburbs, their SUVs, their fancy
diets and permission not to give a shit,” feels a lot better,
but it’s hard as hell to say, and saying it often carries a cost.
It carries an even greater cost on a personal level when you know
some of those folks are right in your own family. My mother and
my sister’s relative wealth stands in sharp relief to my own financial
state, but are devastating in their disparity to where my father
is at. My father makes me look well-off, which is outrageous.
That guilt or pity can manifest in funny ways. It tends to isolate
you from other people. People feel angry with you, just for voicing
your own situation, just for being visible. For a lot of people,
happiness in their own lives means or requires a certain amount
of denial or apathy towards the unhappiness of others, and so
when you bring that to light they feel upset, angry or defensive.
You bust your butt to avoid that, but then you resent the hell
out of them because they’ve no right to put their shit on you.
No one should ever have to hide their misfortune or suffering
from others to assure someone else’s happiness -- especially when
they aren’t directly involved with them in any way or aren’t asking
for assistance -- and yet we do it all the time. And surprise:
we feel resentful when we do.
I saw my father for two days in Chicago, which is why save Michael
and my mother’s family, I didn’t see anyone else. The first day
I saw him it took everything I had not to throw him in the car
and tell the Girl to drive as fast as she could up here, no matter
what my father wanted. Between the new bruises and scars from
being beaten on the street yet again, the glasses with both lenses
cracked through the middle, the clothing full of dirt and dust,
his losing everything he owned save a bag of clothes, an old computer
and some photographs, his painful thinness and how much of his
spirit is just clearly gone, it took everything I had not to burst
into tears around him.
He’s living in an SRO, a transient hotel, by virtue of some charity
aid. It means that for the next couple months, he not only has
a place to sleep in, he has a phone number I can reach him at.
Those two things are nothing less than gold to me. Just being
able to find out he was okay, to sit and talk with him for hours
and to hold his hand as he walked down the street left me, that
first evening, in a literal state of shock because of the profound
relief I felt after carrying the burden of not knowing where he
is, not being able to contact him, around. How do you explain
that to someone else? I just don’t know. You can, I suppose, but
it’s a given that no one else who hasn’t been there themselves
is going to really get it. I don’t like that: having others not
know, not get it, feels lonely and it feels callous, even when
it isn’t.
One of the other tough things about being around someone you love
in the position my father is in is entirely selfish. It brings
you to a keen awareness -- especially when you grew up poor, still
are poor, and have been in a similar place before -- of how close
you are to ending up right where they are now. You know that the
more involved you stay, the more at risk you are. I supported
my father in my early twenties for a couple of years, and I know
that made my economic situation far worse: when he saved my life
and my psyche in my teens, I know that played a part in where
he is now.
That’s my mother’s fear, now that she’s back in my life, and it
has been for a while now: that my father will drag me down even
further. Moving up here from there was one of the hardest things
I’ve done, because it meant leaving him there. It was some of
the impetus for me to move: I just couldn’t do it anymore. I ran
out of money and I ran out of energy. The energy I ran out of
wasn’t just from worrying about him or caring for him, either.
It was from constantly and incessantly having to defend caring
for my father, despite the fact that no one questioned he was
a wonderful person who had been as good a friend and father to
me as he was capable of. I was tired of having a tenuous grasp
with other people in my life because being with me also meant
being with my father in some respects. I got tired of my love
for my father equaling some sort of choice of allegiance to my
mother, and tired of being shoved in the middle all the time,
or told I was being played when I knew full well I was not. My
relationships with everyone else in my family often exist in a
ridiculously delicate balance that is immediately toppled if any
aspect of my relationship with my father comes into the picture:
when I was little, no one in my mother’s family would let me forget
I was my father’s child. Now that I am older, everyone seems to
sincerely wish I would forget I am.
When I came back to my mother’s after seeing him that first day
-- and shit, was dragging myself away from him hard -- I made
a point of not bringing the stuff with him up. My parents haven’t
been together for about 30 years now, but for whatever reason,
my mother just isn’t able to let it go. Again, also normal at
this point. But she brought it up. I tried to say I didn’t want
to discuss it, but she pushed, so I gave her some cursory information.
She asked if now I was going to feel I should help him, and I
was incredulous, to the point where I could feel my hands shaking
with aggressive energy.
I don’t know how to explain it to her, I don’t know how to explain
it to most people. of course i want to help him. Right now, he
may just finally get the disability he’s been fighting for, and
is bloody entitled to, for so long. If he can get that set up,
then yes, I’d like to try and move him here. I’m guessing I maybe
have 10 or 15 years left with him, and I do not want to spend
them worrying or this far apart from him. yes, that might mean
living with my father, even though I don’t like to live with anyone
(though actually, he’s been the only person I ever have lived
harmoniously with in my life, probably because he feels the same
way about living alone). Yes, that may well put me in a position
of more risk, and inhibit some of the things I do, even my close
relationships. I care about that when I’m sitting here. It’s very
hard to care about that stuff when I’m looking at my father’s
face through bruises and cracked glass.
There’s no good, benign way to tell one parent how much you love
the other when they don’t, or when that is a threat to them. I
know full well my mother still deals with a lot of residual guilt
from all the awful crap that went down in my teens, and my father
being my rescue there really, really doesn’t help in that regard.
My father being the kind of person to me that he never was for
her or for my sister stings. I can’t even say, “If it were you,
Mom, ” even given the grave difference in our relationships, “
I’d feel the exact same way,” because in my mother’s mind, it
couldn’t happen to her. And she’s probably right, it likely won’t.
She has a good job that’s unlikely to go obsolete. She has a huge
family and a large support system. She has valuable property.
She doesn’t have a disability. None of these things are the case
with my father. Neither of my parents have had an easy life by
any stretch, but in my father’s case, when you pair manic depression
and suicidal issues with things like having the whole of your
family die in an awful car wreck in your twenties, the your great-grandmother
raped and murdered only a couple years later, being raised with
a stepparent whose idea of casual punishment was tossing his stepkids
out of second story windows, TWO different girlfriends who died
(one in a drive-by, one in an incredibly tragic suicide), and
a life with the highest hopes and ideals smashed to total shit,
well you know, you can only expect so much. I know he’s done as
well as he could, I know this in my bones. I’ve tried to explain
to my mother that while I’ll obviously admit to a bias with my
father because he is my father, the big difference between her
knowledge of him and mine is that I have actually known him and
been involved with him for over 30 years, which she very much
has not. Again, not easy stuff to say, and seemingly impossible
to understand.
I’m all he’s got, pretty literally at this point, and I don’t
know that there has ever been or will ever be anyone in my life
I love more than I love that man. I can’t explain in depth why
it is outside of the obvious stuff (we’re very similar in nature,
he’s funny, smart and loving, he’s my Dad, for crissakes), but
my father and I have had a very special relationship from day
one. I don’t have words for it, because from what I have seen,
known and read of other folks relationships with their parents,
it’s very rare, what we have going on. There is literally nothing
I could not tell my father, and very, very little I’d even be
reticent to. I have not met anyone else in my life, ever, who
accepted me just as I am the way he does, even if with that acceptance
sometimes came constructive criticism. My father, unlike every
other member of my family, has never judged, belittled or talked
shit about me or to me. He’s never once made me feel like shit
about myself. he is always proud of me, even if he will admit
to wanting me to do something else in a given situation. My father
loves me unconditionally and I just don’t have words for what
that feels like: it’s an amazing thing. It’s so rare.
When I was pretty little, at some point he said, “Call me Dave.”
I asked why, and he explained that he’d rather I see him as an
equal and a friend, not as a father or some authority figure.
I was little, so this shit didn’t make any sense to me, and I
grilled him about my actual paternity then, because I was totally
confused. We finally agreed that I could call him both Dave and
Dad, whichever I wanted, and that there shouldn’t be a difference
between a friend and a dad anyway and that the world was just
stupid. We’ve agreed on that last part a lot over the years.
I’m aware I just defended the hell out of him for a bunch of paragraphs
now, but that’s token of how I’m feeling and why it’s been so
difficult to write since I got home. It’s why, while my mother
really didn’t do anything wrong, I haven’t talked to her since
I got home, either (though we have been emailing back and forth
the last couple of days, in an incredibly difficult discussion:
both my mother and my sister prefer avoidance to address when
it comes to the really tough stuff). All of this stuff brings
up so many tricky issues in my life, especially the bits where
I have to defend people I love with my last breath while the shitty
people around me get excused from everything. (Some of this is
probably sounding a bit mysterious at this point, but that’s just
the way it goes, because my family history as a whole is to big
and too private to get into.) I do sincerely wish my mother didn’t
dislike my father so much, or that I could point out to her how
many things she likes and finds valuable in me -- my directness,
my activism and idealism, my strength, my sense of humor -- were
gifts from my Dad. I do sincerely wish that to some degree, at
34, I didn’t sometimes still feel like a child torn between two
countries at war, even when one has long since surrendered. I
wish it could be okay for me to care for everyone, however different
those feelings might be.
Of course, I wish my Dad had a better life, the life I think he
is deserving of. While in many respects, being raised poor most
of the time, being poor most of the time did give me some things
I’d not exchange for the world, I still wish we didn’t have to
be, that any of us could have come from a place of privilege enough
that my father wasn’t homeless and I wasn’t struggling so much.
Now and then, I play a little what-if in my head, imagining that
if I didn’t have t o pay for rent, food and tuition in high school,
for everything in college, if I hadn’t supported a parent so young
when I had a thriving business, if there was something any of
us might have inherited from any of our dirt-poor families, how
different things might be. I keep a few old food stamps in a box
here, to remind myself of little steps above, but also know that
I could use them now, and might someday have need to use them
again. I imagine life with health insurance and vacations, with
a car or a house, or where I could support my Dad without much
thought at all. Then I just go tune back into my usual program,
deal and try and do some work, have a life of value, enjoy the
happiness I’ve got.
I also imagine being able to talk about a lot of this stuff out
loud without hesitation or tears. I think that it’d be amazing
to be able to do that, to talk about personal issues that are
in some ways tough political issues without knowing full well
that there are people out there who have read me for a long time
but who wish I wouldn’t bring this stuff up sometimes, or who
feel sorry for me, or who don’t know it on a personal level, and
so think it’s all easy to fix, that breaking that whole chain
is as simple as one person getting a good job for a while or having
the right degree. Way back when, I had this idea that I could
do memberships at Scarlet Letters on an honor system: where people
who just couldn’t afford it could get a membership for free. So,
there was a form for that, with a line explaining why $5 a month
(the minimum at the time), wasn’t affordable. Not only was that
the worst idea ever, reading those forms was one of the most belittling
things ever for me. Because here I’d be, reading lines from people
making clear they were unbelievably better off than I was, asking
ME for charity, and for charity in entertainment, no less, not
anything vital. The entitlement, the attitude in a whole lot of
them with this “you owe me” stuff because they just got their
first house, because they were currently only on unemployment
(my kingdom for unemployment, man), because they had gone back
to school, even in some cases because “I don’t want to spend my
money on this, I want to spend it on more valuable things.” Ugh.
Again, worst idea ever, and boy oh boy did some of that make me
feel like crap, but it was a real eye-opener and a good object
lesson.
Thing is, no one wants to be where my Dad is. I don’t, I’m sure
you don’t either. Jaysis, who would? And most people know that
it IS a possibility, especially in this culture and so they will
fight tooth and nail to both accumulate and guard their pennies
AND to avoid any real contact with or understanding of life on
the other side, as it were. To feel pity or guilt rather than
to try and understand, to see outside oneself, to be compassionate,
perhaps even ask oneself “Do I contribute to this? What might
I do not to? How much of my approach to this is actually just
about me?”
People do it all the time, whether it’s about homelessness or
poverty or abortion or abuse or being queer or being female or
black or Palestinian.
And in many ways, you can’t really blame them.
One of the toughest things to deal with, though, is that in many
ways -- whether the ‘them” is someone else or yourself -- you
really can. |
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| August 13th, Two Thousand Four: (Sorry to be so slow on the uptake. I am back home, and much
of the trip was okay. The special bonus is I found my father and
while I wouldn't say he's fine, he's still hanging in there, albeit
barely. It was such a complicated and emotional trip, I've still
only written about it in stops and starts, so it's going to be
a couple more days. As well, my current plan of attack on the
job front is both to redevelop my resume and get it out a million
places and to -- finally -- develop a professional site to highlight
all of my work in an attempt to cultivate more freelance work.
Yesterday I was up at 6 and working on this all day, and I expect
to spend the next few days much in the same way: I've done an
awful lot of work, and cataloging it and making clear all that
I can do is a bit on the intensive side.) |
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August 6th, Two Thousand Four: So, my mother calls last night to inform me that apparently all
of my otherwise cool uncles have apparently had brain transplants
and turned into seething Republican conservatives, whose big,
big beef right now is... gay marriage.
How happy am I that NOW is the time I decide, for the first time
ever, to bring a girlfriend to a family gathering? To, mind you,
an Irish Catholic wedding full of said lobotomized specimens?
Oh yeah. It's a'gonna be SOME big fun. I'm so totally excited,
I can hardly sleep. That's helped all the more by my mother telling
me that they "need to be shaken up," reminding me that being the
shaker is my duty in life, whether I bloody well like it or not.
(Of course, can I say at a wedding that to some regard I could
give a shit about the stink over gay marriage because in my mind,
marriage by people of any orientation should be something which
has no relationship to law and state whatsoever? And that before
I see gay marriage legalized, I'd rather see ALL marriage totally
privatized? Probably not. Do I maybe not have to worry about any
of this because every single aspect of my being scares the holy
bloody hell out of my mother's family and half the time, they
don't speak to me because they're terrified about what will come
out of my mouth if they do? Probably.)
Feh. In any event, I do get to see Michael and his brand new baby
while I'm in town, I get to see my mother and Renee, hopefully
track down my Dad, the Girl and I get some time off and outta
town, and for once, traveling doesn't mean leaving one pug behind.
It does mean attending a wedding with a pug on my lap, but what
the hell, they all need to be shaken up sometimes, and that's
what Sofia's for.
(Back Tuesday, kids. Later.) |
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August 4th, Two Thousand Four: Thank you.
Truly: thanks so much to everyone who commented or emailed yesterday.
The Girl came over last night so we could talk about this stuff,
and we had a great, wonderful talk. I set the limits and requirements
that I feel I need right now (to be able to ask for a couple days
now and then without even phone calls if I need to, for her to
expand her support network a little, for her to go back into regular
therapy for counseling, not just medication adjustment now and
then), and she was down with them. I voiced a lot of my fears:
that even talking about this or asking for things would make her
feel worse or more afraid, that I'm being an asshole when I just
don't want to deal with this, that when things get really bad
with this I'll have a hard time avoiding resentment or being able
to see all the good stuff we have going on, that I'll feel more
like a mother than a friend and a lover. She understood why I'd
be worried about all of those things.
I suggested some things that had been suggested here, though in
a very limited list. She's been dealing with this now for well
over 14 years, to degrees of incredible severity at times (sometimes
for stretch of months on end), so she has heard that exercise
helps before, for instance. Per her reports, I'm the first person
in her life who hasn't spent undue time trying to fix her, or
suggest umpteen things for her to fix herself with. Save very
new things or developments, or alternate therapies I know for
a fact she hasn't tried, I tend not to make too many suggestions
there.
I let her know, before, during and after the talk that while I
was never going to make any promises that I'd be here as I am
for ever and ever, or that I'd stick around no matter what, I
do not want to let her illness push me away or be the cause of
the downfall of our relationship. That I love her to bits, that
the relationship we have is one of the best I have ever had, and
that I think she's fantastic, because I do. That I want to figure
out how to deal with this the best I can, and learn sound ways
of helping.
One of the things she pointed out last night is that it's often
hard not to utilize me as a counselor or therapist because she
sees so many of our friends doing it all of the time: just last
week, we spent the evening with a friend in crisis who was working
things through with me over dinner for hours. It's not unusual
for me to be the confessor of many people who know who tend not
to do that with anyone else. She's got a valid point there, though
we agreed that the difference was I was less close to some of
those folks than I was to her, and I had more of a chance to opt
in or opt out of those scenarios with others than I do with her.
of course, we also agreed that I get tired or worn from doing
that for everyone as well.
Some of this stuff is tricky for me, in the vein that a lot of
my relationships have been tricky, because I am often so intensely
independent. I really don't need much, and I really don't want
much. I tend to ask for very little. The fact that fairly early
on in our relationship I let her care for me when I was sick is
really nothing short of miraculous. The older I get, the more
low-maintenence I become, and that can be tough on my partners
(though less so with my female partners than it ever was with
my male partners -- for whatever reasons, whether it was just
me or in general, most of the men in my life affixed a big, awful
lot to needing to be needed), especially at times when they need
or want a lot from me, because it feels so imbalanced to them:
sometimes it feels imbalanced to me as well, even though I'm aware
that some of the imbalance lies not in them needing more, but
in my needing less.
(Just for the record, I don't tend to beat myself up about much
of anything. Now and then, someone in comments alludes to my doing
so, and I honestly don't get where that comes from at all. I also
don't have issues of "being a bad Buddhist," or not getting it
right. Good/bad and wrong/right are actually concepts that don't
come into play very often in my head, I tend to find them pretty
darn useless. This is also is very much not new to me, as I think
I mentioned. I grew up with a manic depressive, and in at least
half my relationships, depression has been an issue. What's new,
actually, is just that the person I'm with now DOES really own
her own issues, does work to try and manage this and all my usual
coping skills tend to be based in far greater crises like this
and in full-time scenarios, rather than with someone I don't live
with or aren't caring for 24/7. Generally, too, in the past when
this has been an issue it by far was NOT the only issue on the
table, or I was or became depressed myself shouldering this sort
of thing.)
I don't have time to ramble much more today, but again, I mainly
just wanted to say thank you. I let The Girl know I wrote what
I did yesterday asking for some help, support and input and she
was very happy I did that (see what I mean about how great this
is with her?). I am, too. Just hearing from so many other people
who deal with this daily on either side of the fence was such
a comfort and a help. Even the stuff said or sent which I know
I've already covered was helpful, in that I could verify that
yes, we, she or I had done this thing or were working on that
one. So, thanks, right from the bottom of my independent, reticent
to ask for help and often even worse at accepting it heart. |
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August 3rd, Two Thousand Four: Riddle me this: how do you find the balance between caretaking and... okay, see, I can't even ask this question. Because the salient
question would be how do you find the balance between caretaking
and being taken care of? But in my case, I don't particularly
want to be taken care of, I rarely do: I'm looking for the balance
of caretaking and not caretaking.
Here's the deal: the Girl is largely unhappy with her job. Intensely.
That's not unusual. In eight months or so we've been dating, she's
always been unhappy with her various jobs. I think some of that
is because at 27, she still essentially has yet to really find
the lifework things she wants to do, that feel like home, that
may be hard, hard work, but are emotionally rewarding. She's also
a Taurus sun with a chart chock-full of more Taurus, so financial
security is a WAY big deal for her. That given, a job that isn't
a viable day job, with decent pay and benefits, is pretty much
a no-go. And that's tricky, to find something that offers ALL
of that, tricky even for people who know very specifically what
they do want to do, what they like to do. All the more so when
you have depression to curb your motivation.
This particular job has her unhappier than most. For the most
part, it seems like a combination of many things: a brand new
store with all the craziness of a brand new store thousands of
people LITERALLY camped outside for on opening day. Pissy people,
especially in the stage of the process where she works. I also
think other factors are an issue now that weren't before. The
hospital billed her for her time there. Her bill is $27,000. No,
I'm not kidding. Plus, she still really has no alternative treatment
for her depression after they took her off her meds in there,
worried the AGEP was due to one or all of those meds.
But I'm getting tired. I feel terribly, horribly guilty about
that. In voicing some of that, she's given me no reason to feel
guilty, but I still feel that way all the same. I LOVE that I
am with someone who can say out loud that she needs me without
reservation. I love that she doesn't try and mask her tough feelings
and her upset around me. But I'm starting to feel... I don't know,
like I can't breathe sometimes. Not in terms of time for myself,
I have plenty of that. But in terms of time with her that's just
joyous and I am not waiting for the other shoe to drop a lot of
the time, in terms of a wave of depression knocking over the little,
happy ripples.
Dealing with a partner with depression is so hard. It isn't as
if I haven't done it before, I've done it, in fact, much of the
time, in my close relationships and in my family. I've nursed
my father through severe depression and suicidal mishegoss more
times than I can count. It's not as if I don't understand it personally,
either, because I very much do. I was very seriously depressed
during a lot of my teens and early twenties, I was severely suicidal
in my teens, even, in the real way. I had a bout of depression
again a couple years back. But. I think most of my depression
has been situational, not chemical. And the situations that spurred
it on were very intense: abuse and assault, violent death, dire
poverty, a crumbling marriage and friendship, et cetera. Getting
through that just meant a combination of acceptance, healing and
change, with a lot of just getting from one hour to the next.
... the worst part is, when I'm really honest with myself, I don't
want to deal with depression in others anymore. I just really
don't. But I'm not about to toss out the people I care for in
my life because of that, because that isn't all they are. (And
I know they feel the exact same way I do: they don't want to deal
with it anymore, either.) I also don't think I'm exceptionally
good at dealing with depression. I have mixed feelings about medications,
I have mixed feelings about the balance between trying to remedy
things and simple acceptance, and the Buddhist in me -- and the
survivor in me -- just keeps saying that depression is, in many
ways, the body and mind saying that there is a rhythm, a state
that just needs to be accepted, experienced, felt and faced. That
battling it or trying to make it go away is a bad answer: that
you have to just sit in the dark with all the demons and live
with them until they learn to live with you.
I get resentful with things like this, because I look back at
my life and see all the horrible, awful stuff I worked my way
through, some of which I still work through, and I feel entitled
to a certain level of peace, joy and solace. I feel entitled to
some predictability of mood in others. I want to be able to say
"I want to have a good day today, where everyone around me is
happy and upbeat, for real." That may or may not be especially
fair or reasonable, but it's what I want all the same. I just
feel that sometimes because I've dealt with my stuff, because
I fought through and am okay, it's expected that I not only can,
but should, carry others, and that doesn't feel fair at all, especially
when I do it so much in so many parts of my life. I know I put
myself in that spot plenty, but I don't know how you live as a
compassionate person without doing so.
(I'll give you, this week, I've had a couple Scarleteen users
call me a bitch, ungenerous and mean for giving them answers they
don't want to hear, and that sort of thing tends to compound these
feelings of resentment.)
I don't know the answers here at this point, and suffice it to
say, I don't want to get into too many specifics because that'd
be a profound invasion of privacy and trust. But I do know that
not only am I becoming unable to handle calls before I'm even
awake in the morning where my girl is crying on the other end,
I don't want her to be waking up in the morning that way anymore,
either, whether she calls me with it or not. I don't want her
to have to keep feeling bad everytime we try to have a nice day
and she ends up in a meltdown. I don't want her to have to worry
about losing me on top of everything else, and I absolutely do
not want her depression to kill an otherwise intensely lovely
relationship or my own sense of well-being and balance. I don't
want to keep feeling like I have to put my own current stresses
-- heck, I don't have a job right now, still, can't seem to find
one, I'm broke, I'm tired, I'm in flux, I have some tough family
issues on the table, etc. -- away 24/7, either.
If anyone could just chat about dealing with this in the comments
or email right now, I'd be unduly grateful. I'm not looking for
miracles here, I know there aren't any. But if you've got practical
tools for dealing with a partner who has had lifelong and severe
depression that's pretty constant, I'd love to hear about them.
Even if you just want to say, "I know," or "I have no idea how
you find the balance with this stuff," that's good too. Primal
screaming is also both allowed and encouraged. And hey, if you've
got a miracle, by all means, I'm in the market. |
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August 2nd, Two Thousand Four: Getting back into the groove of shooting again after a two month
break isn't easy. What's interesting in these shots is that I
can see the trepidation on my face in the first half of them.
I don't mind that, in fact, I like it. I've noticed in my life
that so often, by people who don't know me as well as by those
who do, I'm seen as so confident or accomplished that it's often
assumed I have zero uncertainty, about anything. That's about
as far from the truth as is possible. I'm uncertain about much
of what I do, in work and in living. I'm often unsure if I have
the right answer to much, but since I am certain that there are
few things there are really right answers for, that's a bit of
a wash.
Over the last couple years, I find that Audre Lorde's simple words
say much: the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. I try and keep them in my mind when I'm doing most things, especially
when I'm doing work with women's sexuality, with photographing
the nude and the erotic; photographing women, myself and others.
That's a tricky thing to do, really. Certain poses or approaches
hearken to very prototypical porny stuff, of work done of women,
but by and/or for men solely or primarily, even when it isn't
obvious. And yet, some of those poses or approaches feel, physically
or intellectually, natural. It's as natural for me when enjoying
my body, when lazing about, to stretch out the length of my body
as it is for me to curl it up into a ball and to document both.
I like the physical feeling of twisting my torso and I also like
the visual lines which it makes. I don't look completely apart
from classical or some standard beauty ideals, but there isn't
a whole lot I can do about that: I look how I look. Any of those
simple things are also included in material that I think supports,
rather than upsets the status quo, which objectifies rather than
illuminates. Of course, the same could be said about the female
body as a whole. But hell if I'm going to let anyone take the
beauty and the wonder of my own body away from me, or avoid working
with it when it's such great material, so creatively compelling
to me and when I do think it can be approached in a different
way -- however subtle it may be at times -- than it often has
been before.
That's been a long, long learning process for me. Once upon a
time, for instance, I'd make a point when shooting nudes of making
sure I included all the planes and angles of my body: were there
a few shots of my ass? My back? Not because both can be visually
interesting, but because some people wanted them. Unlearning that
was tricky, but essential to me. In many ways, when I'm doing
self-portraits, I'm in a sort of conversation, an active relationship
with the camera, with a reflection of my own eye. I tend not to
turn my back on anyone during conversation, and when I do, it's
either because I'm being careless, because at that moment I have
a hard time looking at them, because I'm doing something else.
If I turn my back on the camera, to do my work with an authenticity
that feels right to me, it can't be for the wrong reasons. I'm
still unlearning things I'm fairly certain arise from material
and places which I want to counter or reclaim, rather than encourage
or support. I'm less confident in how well I do that than I used
to be: I question it more, which I think is a good thing, however
the more difficult it makes creating.
All of this gets even trickier when you throw genitalia or active
sex into the mix. I don't often put those things into my work
for a few reasons. Primarily, because unless it feels natural
at the time -- in other words, if I am compelled to give my genitals
and sex attention at the moment, for reasons other than because
someone else might like to see it or because it feels necessary
to include it -- I don't want to do it, same as with almost anything
else I do creatively. If it's more constructed or construed than
it is organic, I don't want to include it, again, same as the
way I approach other aspects of my work. I'm not a performer.
I've never liked performance, because it's so important to me
to be doing and making, not performing: whether we're talking
music, art, writing, what have you, I want to be being, not performing.
Saturday afternoon my bedroom was really clean. Pack-ratty as
usual, but insanely clean. I gunked up my eyes like I often do
going out at night, and I took a quick shower beforehand, but
that was the whole of my shooting prep, save some lip balm because
my pucker was chapped and squooshing up some of my hair into a
ball on my head. The less effort I go to to shoot, the more enjoyable
shooting tends to be: I feel more like myself that way. Shooting
was taking a while: I'd been out of the loop long enough because
of such intense focus on the book that I wasn't finding it easy.
I got mad at myself a few times for setting up compositions that
seemed tired, empty or that I'd already done before. At a certain
point, I snapped out and snapped back in: the sunlight changed
and started giving me some interesting shadows. I was able to
see some new things. I got into it.
...and at a certain point, I simply felt like whacking off. I
actually think it's because my room was clean, an incredibly boring
motivation, sure, but clear, fresh space turns me on.
(In an apartment back when in Chicago, I was once able to have
a white room with nothing in it but a floor pillow and a vase
of flowers. I cannot describe how wonderful it was to have that
room. I wish I had extra space to have something similar again.)
Given I felt that way and the camera was present, I ran with it.
And I like what I got a lot: many alternating shots of my hands
and my cunt and then just my face, and I think they're exceptionally
beautiful, intense, tender and real. But again, it's tricky. I
don't think it's enough, to reclaim something, to have it be different
than mainstream porn by say, being a certain age, size or shape.
By not shaving or having a "natural" looking vulva. By shooting
in black and white, or even working with an eye towards fine art,
composition and an ungendered eye, rather than profit and one
gender's arousal. Something else has to be there, something I
don't really have language for, but in essence, I need to be using
something other than the master's tools, not just in taking photographs,
but in what I'm doing and feeling in them; in the why and how
of them. It's nothing close to effortless, it's something which
requires profound effort and constant question. And there's that
uncertainty again, because it's incredibly hard to know if one
has that, is doing that.
I don't think a viewer can tell you if you've done it. I say that,
because over the years, I've had so many viewers see things in
work of mine that just wasn't there, and miss obvious things which
were present. I'm all about any form of art being a collaboration
between artist and viewer, so I actually often enjoy the diversity
of interpretation: it's fascinating to me. But I need to feel,
all by myself, that I achieve my aims in my work. Even knowing
full well I'm often my harshest critic, I think my own feelings
and assessments of the work are more reliable than what I glean
from viewers, from colleagues, from fellow artists. (Though to
be honest, if I had more people of any of those groups saying
"I think you missed it here, because..." I might change my tune on that.)
Tricky, tricky, tricky. But good that it is: that trickiness,
all that questioning, even my frustration with my own skills mean
I still have a lot of different places to go to, a lot still left
to work with.
Sometimes, I do feel like a hothouse flower: I need the warmth,
the heat, the humidity. While I don't feel especially delicate,
the balance of everything I do feels so fragile so much of the
time. I need -- I want -- to live, emotionally and intellectually,
in an environment seriously conducive to incredible growth. So,
uncertainty and lots of questions? Good stuff.
(A little off-topic, this is one of my favorite pictures of me, ever. I tend not to think
of most of the self-portrait work in terms of shots I like or
don't like "of me," because the work isn't really about what I
look like. But every now and then, I get one of those shots where
I know no one I know wouldn't be able to recognize the subject
as me in an instant, because of the "me-ness" it's filled with.
It's really nice when it's very candid and a little quirky. And
in my case, when it's really capturing me, more than a little
disheveled.) |
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