THE OPPOSITE CAN SOMETIMES BE THE BEST PLACE TO START - DONNA DEITCH
nina said it well….. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times…
termite frass has been a constant companion in my two main environs. a fresh pile every morning on the left side of my desk in Gardena. a constant half dollar dome in my Hyperion Ave apartment hallway. i got the courage to text my landlord about the evidence of infestation and soon learned she is preoccupied, mourning another young pedestrian/car death. on Friday nights we go to the art show to support matt’s gorgeous work (his website is a thorough archive i encourage you to dig) and while standing on the curb outside the gallery our phones buzz with curfew alerts. the opening ends earlier than originally planned. it feels like January all over again but this time we can be together, outside and the threats are not wildfire but instead the state. i see military humvees on the way to work, a 40-unit cop car motorcade on the way home. i protested and the best part was the people on the clock in work vehicles honking as they passed by, our subsequent swell of cheers for them. i explained what a flashbang was to my friend when she asked. the streets are generally quiet, traffic on the freeway less. i am told much of the brown/Latino population is hiding indoors, i hear of the detainments of citizens, i see awful scenes of abductions on tiktok. i haven’t seen Refugio and his car washing crew since June 6th. the news keeps being unbearable. the conditions repeatable, these fear and control tactics throughout. i read up on white empire and the middle east for hours on a Saturday night, watch documentaries and read excerpts from the Quaran. the courage to change the things i can also looks like nesting, making time to visit with the hummingbirds. i am very busy about my home, scrubbing walls, getting high, drawing erotic scenes from the joy of lesbian sex (happy pride). i am in the habit of playing a constant stream of films and hbo documentaries about cults …. silence is currently a very challenging sensory place to land in. so i don’t do it alone, i go to my meetings. they tell me there are no good or bad feelings, the feelings are just information. i am trying to practice this when i’m in discomfort, another binary to escape. 31 days till top surgery. can’t believe i will soon carry myself with more open arms, being free of the constant crossed armed chest covering and layers of clothes. I am leveraging my 6 week recovery to keep me from another occurrence of self-abandonment when projects for the billionaires and corporations stack up encouraging me to try to do the work of any entire team. my best friend of nearly 20 yrs (!) is coming out to care for me for a week pre/during/post op, i am so thrilled to once again bring people i love into a bodily autonomy procedure. July 28th, already my tenderest day of the year, gets new life breathed into it. say a prayer! the visions are always the same - i am working full time with a nice salary so i can soon explore what life is like somewhere else. i have a new daydream of farmhouse renovation with my bud Moriah in her ancestral town of Cassino, Italia. between Napoli and Roma, two of the greatest cities ! i have made a plan to ferry to the kelp forest with my dear Emory and sit beside the ocean in malibu with the dolphins at play in the shorebreak. it always comes back to the water. my faith is ready to expand/ i crave actually feeling rested/i get up early anyway / the paintbrushes are clean and at the ready. all the evidence shows me my life is full whether i like it or not.
