blah blah blah

Today I stopped by Fiesta to pick up a few necessities and to check out my new necklace: 14k gold cut to say "Texas." It looks perfect, cute but ghetto. I'll pay for it and pick it up tomorrow. I didn't have the cash today.

I think about what I'll miss about Houston:

The paleteros with their tricycle ice cream carts, gliding slowly to a chorus of bells. Many wear crisp, pale cowboy hats. Every time I see one I am tempted to flag him down and relieve him of a coconut paleta.

The parts of town that could be mistaken for a Mexican barrio.

Stuffing myself on the buffet at Bombay Sweets.

Third Ward. Grills. Slabs.

My typical Cali Sandwich meal: a tofu sandwich, an avocado smoothie, a mung bean ball. It costs less than five dollars.

Suffocating, sensual heat.

Texas thunderstorms.

Walls of jasmine.

Magnolias.

Azaleas.

Gregarious strangers.

Friends.


But seriously, what I won't miss:

Car culture.

Strip malls.

Aesthetically repugnant architecture.

Buildings air-conditioned to sweater temperatures.

Conservatism.

That people think you're crazy if you're a pedestrian or a cyclist.

The feeling that I'm missing something by being here.




Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. I've invested in a lap steel guitar. Watching Bob Wills clips on youtube makes me think I should actually learn to play it. I've been meaning to get another harmonica as well. I had it in my head that that would be a good instrument for an itinerate girl. However, the one I had didn't stay in my possession for more than a month. It escaped my bag in Croatia.

nightmare

I dreamed that I had a tumor, a kernel of poison, in my throat, the result of too many years of youthful carefree smoking. I craved a cigarette, but couldn't partake because I was obviously very susceptible to the negative side effects.

Later in the dream, it migrated to my brain. The doctors said it would have to be removed, but that its removal would have some positive effects. For one thing, my hormones would balance out and my breasts would deflate to a more normal size. They could operate today. Oh, but there's a chance you might be partially paralyzed by the surgery. This information leaked out as an aside, a reference to a future limp. Then she mentioned that my hands might shrivel up into talons. I began sobbing, asked what the chances were that this would happen. She said that it wasn't that big a deal. Lots of people got by with claw hands. I inferred that the chances were good that, after all was said and done, I would be left in this condition. I thought of the Minamata mercury poisonings, the famous photo of a mother bathing her daughter in black water, the daughter's hands twisted as roots.



I pleaded with her. I wouldn't be able to draw, to type, or to cycle. But perhaps I could still sing. I imagined a thin stream of a melody unraveling from my still, twisted form. I could dictate my novel, a novel all the richer for my predicament, saturated with my misfortune. I'd be like Flannery O'Connor, standing on the porch of her estate, leaning heavily on her braces. I wondered if I would be able to find lovers. The lookers I'd been in the habit of dating would certainly be off-limits.



I pleaded again. She didn't understand. I wouldn't be able to draw anymore, and I drew beautifully. Beautifully? She raised an eyebrow. Yes, beautifully. I walked weeping from the hospital, away from the unsympathetic doctor and my baffled mother, to call my father. To tell him what they were asking me to sacrifice. And as I waited for him to answer, I made a decision. I would live my short, heavy-breasted life unaltered by the surgeon's knife. I would let the cancer blossom over my cerebellum. I would draw and ride my bike and take handsome lovers until I died.

palimpsestic portraiture

I will select a portraitee.

I will select several photographs from their life, including one from the first month of life and one taken upon selection time. The current photograph will be a straitforward, centered polaroid on a blank background: anonymizing. I will arrange the photographs in chronological order.

I will paint the first in the chronological series. This painting will be executed realistically, in oils, on a square, hand-stretched canvas. When this is finished, I will take a single, clear, straightforward polariod photograph. I will then paint the next image in the series over the first painting. I will continue the process of documentation and painting over until I reach the most current image.

This piece will be hung with the process polaroids alongside.

This project creates a palimpsistic portrait. Each representation of self is swallowed by the newer representation. I create a painting with an invisible history. All paintings have invisible histories, but the raison d'etre of this paiting will be its invisible history. It holds its former selves within, much as a human being does. The polaroids serve as souvenirs. They are analogous to all the sentimental detritus that we accumulate to keep ourselves from getting cut adrift, from getting temporal vertigo. We have our history in our hands. We feel grounded, safe. We feel sure that things have happened to us, that our life has contained discrete conditions and events.

I will make a series of portraits in this manner, the final image in each will be a straight, centered shot on a blank background. They will be the same size. Perhaps I will extend this project to include place. A city is a palimpsest, after all. Ruins serve as a foundation for future ruins.

I have thought that I may do a self portrait with 24 layers. I would then continue to create a new layer each year for the rest of my life. If a person bought it, they would have to be willing to lend it to me one month out of the year so that I could add a new layer. I would draw up a contract. The last layer would be my last portrait before death. Hopefully I would die while in the process of painting this layer. That would be the most interesting possibility.

If you steal this idea, I will personally hunt you down. I will scramble your brains in with my morning eggs.

happiness by nationality

According to a recent survey, the world's happiest countries are:

Nigeria
Mexico
Venezuela
El Salvador
Puerto Rico

The least happy countries are:

Russia
Armenia
Romania

Why is it that I've recently become fixated on what are supposedly the world's most unhappy countries as well as the second happiest country?

How does Mexico stay so happy? I run through a list of cliches. Is it the close-knit families? The complex way they embrace death? The hearts on the line and the singing in the pulquerias? What answers does Mexico hold? According to Octavio Paz, the Mexican is a brand of stoic, costuming his loneliness with the colors of the fiesta. I need answers, Mexico. How, with all your scabbed street children, dispossessed indios, and one-armed beggars, did you find your way to happiness? Is it that simple Catholic acceptance of suffering as essential and cathartic? Perhaps it is this. Perhaps only by welcoming suffering into our lives may we find a kind of rest.



Armenia is obvious. Transcaucasia, along with former Yugoslavia and Israel/Palestine, seems to love to obsess over how their magnificent national destiny has been foiled in some way. They don't have what they're owed. This kind of preoccupation can only breed discontent. Why Russia? Because its major project, communism, has failed? Because the satellites have split, rejected them like teenagers seeking self-agency? I've heard that Russians prize a sense of suffering? Does this mean that they're actually quite content?

But why Romania? Is it their forlorn, heart-ravaging landscape? Is it the wake of Ceauşescu's surreal tyranny? Bucharest transformed to a crumbling waste of concrete right angles? I remember going on a mini-tour through Maramureş, Romania. As we passed through yet another wooden town populated with old people in traditional dress, my guide told me that this particular town had a reputation for melancholy. Why, he could not tell me, but they were known as the most miserable in all of Maramureş. I looked at the wood-slat roofs shining like fish scales, at spoiled, elderly faces of the residents, the unruly green of the flora. I couldn't see anything to distinguish it from any of the other area towns. Its name is lost to me now. Its wretchedness remains a mystery. I wonder, then, if that village would be considered the most unhappy place in the world. And still it looked charming. Still the spotted hens scratched after worms and tended their lovely spring chicks.



Where is this data from? How was this study conducted? How do we chart our emotions?

And why are so many of our recent heroes so stricken? We love the charismatic dispossessed. It is symptomatic.

At the end, I am left with more questions than answers. Beyond this survey, more generally speaking, as I move through life I continue to accrue questions. The answers I find are few and far between and almost always stumbled upon by accident or folly. And these answers, they will soon become obsolete. I know this and still I continue with my question-posing, still craving my temporary answers. Anything to orient me for a few days.

rock 'n' roll

Yesterday evening, the KTRU Outdoor Show was held indoors due to inclement weather, a.k.a. nearly-freezing rain. Despite the freakish weather, there was still an impressive turnout. Rice University's Grand Hall was thick with kids sporting skinny jeans and shaggy haircuts, as well the odd athlete and a fair number of nerds. I crowd surfed twice, once while 120 Days, a dancey group from Norway, was playing, and once during Ratatat's set. The second time, I got from the stage to more than halfway through the crowd. I probably in the air for the better part of a song. Aside from the rush, I love the feeling of unity that comes from being supported by a crowd, and then later reciprocating that support. Unfortunately, this feeling of unity was tainted by the fact that two different people tried to steal my shoes and many people were incredibly bitchy about letting me get up to the stage. One girl actually shoved me twice, which would've been grounds for a cat-fight if my temper were worse. I would've tried to crowd surf more than twice if certain people hadn't been so hostile.

But it's all good. My ex-boyfriend's best friend was on tour as well, rapping with Ratatat. I got to chat with him a fair bit and he gave my friends and me a tour of his tour bus. It had a kitchen, something like nine bunks, each with a little television, and a kind of rec room with a large tv and a game system. I asked them if they felt like sailors at sea and they responded that they did. They'd bought several pellet guns at a Wal-Mart and all had red welts on their bodies and faces. I hope that Ben will go in on some pellet guns and goggles with me so that we can battle.

Ben and Sarah and I threw PLEASE PRAY FOR MY EYE fliers into the crowd and I distributed a number by hand as well. I've made over 700 now. It doesn't hurt that I have hook-ups at a copy shop. One of the copy-shop workers and I have been covertly stapling them up around town and leaving them under windshield wipers.

Just a couple of days ago was the 13th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. I've been watching lots of Nirvana videos on youtube.com.

dreaming/waking

I dreamed a dream of New York last night. Attractive young men in the subway station, their eyes buried in bangs. One smiled at me and escaped down the steaming stairwell. All of us were waiting, seated on the steps, and a grizzled old man said something about the burden of being blind. From behind me, a boy with a black mop and a lisp asked him to tell us a little story from his blind life. Then I woke up.

Soon after waking, I remembered how my New York friends always tell me how difficult it is to meet somebody in the City. And I wish I could shake these fears. I wish I could stop caring about such things, live my life unfettered by romantic concerns. Life is still beautiful without a love interest. I will write it on my mirror.

New York is six weeks away.

itch

I feel a desperate need to leave. These are some of the places I want to go.

Uzbekistan:


Romania:


Mongolia:


Croatia:

gripe/gratitude

I'm sick of:

-being so broke that a six-dollar meal is a splurge, so broke that I nearly have an anxiety attack when I open the electricity bill.
-inconsiderate drivers.
-being single and feeling like I'll never meet anybody that measures up to all my standards.
-living in a slum-ass apartment that leaks and has roaches and noisy drug dealer neighbors and a lawn that hasn't been mowed in months.
-my shitty procrastination/stress approach to school.
-my time being spoken for by schoolwork.
-waiting for Houston to end.


I'm grateful:

-that everything is temporary.
-that I have parents that help me out financially.
-for my creative gifts.
-for the Williams Prize.
-for everything I've learned the hard way.
-for my five years.
-for NYC and its buffet of men.
-for my travels, past and future.
-for my gorgeous, wonderful, generous friends.