Conversations Among the Ruins

I am playing a game
of survivor - lost in the
island of my own

head.

I'm in a prizem
of constant comparison
of the person

I should be
and the person
I actually am.

Sitting in this
art studio,
breathing in

spray paint
air.

I eat ice cream for
motivation at
living.

Running on empty
with a full
expensive

tank.

What have I been
writing?

Nothing.

What am I painting?

A pregnant
shadow queen and

her light
counter part.

Just as I
think to myself
in regards

to my core
being I sigh

and stare
like a maniac
at the canvas - at the

blank screen where
the only reflection

is the version of
myself that I
arranged all up for

show
on a shelf too
high to bother with
dusting

"Please just
really. Turn into

something."

I get so lost in the end
product that I waste
the time

to produce
anything. Deeper and
deeper and

deeper I surrender
nothing.

I layered color for
days and hours.

Poured glitter.
Layered it again.
Two weeks ago

I stood on the patio.
Just me, a sledgehammer,
and a glass portrait -

some nineties ripoff
monet sort of country
river scenic
painting underneath.

No matter

how hard I hit that
glass
it wouldn't
break.

So I gave up and
let the Nevada sky
open up and rain

all over it
for a few days.

I spent six hours
today on a stool,
wearing headphones,

just staring into
the layers.

I outlined sixteen
angels within
the smeared color

flipped it upside down
and painted a silver
window.

Stared for another
hour into that window.

It isn't often that
people watch me
in this process.

But they sat on the
couch as I sat
motionless

terrified of what
if at all I were
to do next.

They leave, the house
is empty as it used
to be. Just me, my paint,

my ghosts, my
hope. I picked up
the black paint

and two seconds
later she sat
before me -

a replica
of Olivia. Anime
style like a

precious moment.
For the rest
of the day I

tried to understand
how that happened.

It's funny the way
what lies within
puts itself out.

I am stunned. I
can't paint faces,
or peoples

characteristics.
But there it is.

I wonder when
I will find myself
worthy

of myself. I feel as if
at times I'm wasting
away.

And other times,
I consider
that I"m doing

just exactly as
I need to be
doing. How exactly

does one balance
such a thing?

Keep walking I
guess until
the blisters

pop.

Every painting
I have, every word
I write

is so that I can
take the thoughts,
feelings, and what

it causes me to see
to a form of
media.

When I started
writing I did it
to sort.

Sort out what I
felt, feel my
thoughts,

and most importantly,
not ever
forget.

Years later,
it is as if

I create
media in order
to get it out.

To concentrate,
and when I'm done,
get up

and walk away.
It's a wonder
I had to be

drunk, high,
or obsessed
with something

most of the time.

Often lately I think
about what I would
be like

if all of the things
I have lived and
made

weren't placed
into something else

in order for me
to leave on a wall,
in a file. If it was

all just stagnate
in my own
brain.

Who would I be?

Confused, I guess.

I hope
that when I die

what it meant to
me to live here

to me, in this time,
as this person

will be something
people will want to
feel and be

reminded of.
For now I just keep
my constant of

change - and keep
my ability
to write it down

or hang it up with
gratitude
for the "It"

that makes it all
real .

The word "Eye" has many meanings from an organ that detects light to the symbolic eye with its many metaphors that link to conscious awareness. Reality is a consciousness hologram virtually experienced through the eye of time. The physical eye has a pupil symbolizing we are pupils/students in a university of universe.

Anyway.

I've been painting keys because I have four hundred keys. That's a long story. But I'm happy to have them. I've also been laying on the floor. This place is a fucking disaster. A disaster of all of these paintings, paint, cups, brushes, spray cans, discarded shoes, every piece of clothing I've worn in four days on the floor, somewhere. Pulled out dog eared books everywhere. Empty cigarette packs, full ash trays, empty lighters, and random tupperwear to hold all of the random little things I've taken to collecting. Pots of glitter, plastic cards, I have a pair of ice skates I want to stick into the head of a sculpture I make. Someday far from today. Tile and mirror pieces. Don't even get me started on the bathroom. All this shit and I wander around aimlessly searching for a hair tie. I've been absently telling myself for days I should pick all this up but I don't. I don't know why either, and I don't care why. As prior discussed "why" is a stupid question because that question would make me so. "Why" isn't progress.

I got a ton of work done and bids signed today and blah blah blah. My aduit is almost finally done. I've decided to just prioritize and be responsible about the priorities I have chosen, because there are questions about why certain things aren't done at my work and I can't exactly put out an inter memo about how I spend an hour on the phone every day discussing if the windows should be cleaned or not when I have fifty checks to cut and bills to document every day, two hundred invoices to create and mail out, and of course running my mouth with the obscure family I call the people that visit me at work. Mickey brought me seafood soup and I told him a story, of sitting in Barstow, on my death bed, with half the ocean in a bowl and you smiling in front of me. He looked at me funny. Just stared at me before he said

"You are a mystery. Just some locked book with a story but no key. You get far away."

Micky saw my paintings the other day when he brought FX a bloody mary when she was here. Every time he says I have talent I flinch and thank him. Anybody really. I am further into Antoinette's book and her life is something books are written for. I don't bring it up to her. She published it a long time ago and I can see in the far off gaze she has lately that she wonders if it was the best thing. I wonder if I'll be like that someday, but that would constitute the ability to actually create a novel right now.

Digging for diamonds in a hurricane and getting frustrated. Imagine that.

"I have been to Ted's a few times, and the colors, plastic, stones, and the art amaze me. It is a different world in there."

I feel sick and sane and alone. Alone, like I always have to be, because most people give me anxiety. The phone, fine. Computer, alright. My most brilliant decision this week was to check out of life within my job. This is working.

But I get home and it's a dark mess and I just layer more and more and more paint because

Color is a wavelength composition of all light. Might as well use the hurricane to my advantage.

I wish

a lot of things. I wish I was a kid that had sandwiches. Always have. Always will.

The everlasting bruise
is this painting

I started
as I start them
all

lately. Where I'm

doing something
else and use the
empty canvas
as a

drop cloth
and make
something else

out of every
marking.

It fills some
part of me, the

part where I can
just check out
with color.

I mean it's like
I'm having my
own

constant
decompress
party.

Only this
isn't a
party. It's my

life.

There is a
validity
to that

statement
that is

empowering
on some days
sad on a lot.

You know
when you die,

all of your
energy spreads

to the ones
you love. Before
that,

it has to all
gather. Your
entire conscious
existence of

your own
pure energy

gathers into
one space. One

light. Every pixel
of light and
color you

have ever seen/

that bounced
off and
refracted into

what makes up
your memories

becomes you,

and you
have the choice
to either

come back
as the same
light

and let it
refract
differently

or get the fuck
out

all together.

Sometimes
everything my
light has

bounced off
and created

flashes
through me.
I see
everything

in under
a second.

Making something
else
out of each

original
marking. The

discarded
ruins

nobody would
dare think
they'd ever

remember.
But I
remember.

More
with each
color.