soft and greasy
trying not to be too needy
try to stay calm
say truths
not escalate emotional fears
into reality

i am changing
i hardly recognize myself
i distract myself because
the growing pains make me
dizzy with existential grief

who i am and what i want
and how i express myself
and how and where i want to be seen
and what is important to me
it's evolving

i can't operate on automatic anymore
all previously presumed YES's
must be re-evaluated
by the new regime
it's still me, yes / but different

this could be a grand evolution
a great re-invention
shrink not in fear, dear self
grow with abandonment from your past selves
look ahead, squint and scream
call for your future and 
run to it, arms open

bigger in some ways
smaller in others
and most of all
warm in heart
full in purpose
loud in laughter
determined, tenacious and forgiving
in the path

build it, dear
trust the new you
unfolding
let go of the old you
and all her withholdings

i was sick
it started in my heart
and my head and spirit
and then became physically manifested
and spread throughout my body
with high temps and heavy coughs
and a pain so severe i could not be 
stirred for 10 whole days

i sat on the side of my bed and
passed my days staring at the doors
of my closet; in the background
a tv tale beat on i'd heard a million
times before and could use as white noise

in this respite i could focus only 
on my physical well being
and my two great loves came and visited me
brought flowers for my heart and spirit
brought medicine for my body
touched my body and spoke words
into the caverns of my ears
let it be known they cared for me
and i let it nourish me

and i rested
and i had to be patient
and i waited
and i recovered

this sickness and pain was not the end of me
and life has gone on
as ever--until it doesn't
and i am grateful
for the next wave
to be on it

​

how difficult, yes

to be tender, bare

pry open the heart

just to get torched over

and then dare

to love again

ever hopeful as timid

ever brave as embittered

​worth it, each time

What is love if not all encompassing?
Is love true--is it real--if it does not
take up all of the space in your brain?
Am I loving in a healthier way?
Is that a real thing?
To love and still retain yourself wholly?
I didn't consider it to be possible--
and yet--
but still--it's early now, with her.
Time may sway away my conscious control
as I fall deeper.
Or, have I built up enough fail-safes and built them
strongly enough now that I cannot fall
in love the way I used to,
so whole-heartedly and absent-mindedly.
Also, perhaps it is also that this love,
like my last,
did not start with unrequited longing
(well, okay, it did, but so briefly and then
with the realization it was not unrequited at all
but rather quite returned)
and so the fantasy became reality without
much effort.
I have doubts, I have fears.
The only relationships (so, so few) that I have had
have come with those.
Truth be told, even the unrequited ones had them
but because they were in fantasy, it was easier to not focus on them
and so, it seems, unlike movies (go figure)
relationships are such work and not at all
purely good feelings and swelling music
and spinning kisses.
Well, we carrying on,
one foot in front of the next,
see what each day brings.
Better when you can do this all without 
losing your sense of whole self.
Let's see how this one fares,
this relationship.
How long will this bloom?
How tender of care and
​how much presence of self
can I offer it?
What sweet buds may I taste in it?

why don't you look at me
with longing, your eyes lingering
a second or twelve longer
with each spell?

my conclusion to this inquiry
is that you do not find me 
c a p t i v a t i n g

you are not aroused
by my presence

do you flirt with me
in person--if so
am i missing it?

what is the problem
here

she asks me,
"what's wrong?"

i say, 
"i'll think about it."

the problem
i suppose is
that i do not feel desired
by her

i feel like i'm a comfortable
blanket she likes to wrap
herself in because it
soothes her

which i do not mind
in a platonic relationship
--that could sustain

but we are calling this
romance

as we antiseptically peck
and hand hold
and hug

and it's not about 
the physical act
or lack there-of

it's that i don't 
see how we will
ever evolve
to physical acts
because i do not feel
her loins burning
towards me

and if the desire is not there
the act will never come
and neither will we

further, she is one foot out the door
and confuses me when she speaks
of wanting out and yet wanting to
explore "us"

what is "us"
i do not know it well enough
i feel a bit like i'm in a relationship
with a stranger
who does not know me either

has she deep-dived me?
does she long to know me, truly?
does she know and appreciate and respect my art?

i don't know what turns her on
what make her feel special
and incredible
and how much of that she needs

she doesn't know this of me
i can't stop comparing this 
to the last one
which was the opposite of this

yet what remains is my
hesitance
my doubt
my fear
my need for reassurance

this does not feel 
like a love story
yet

i am looking 
for ways
to go deeper

but feel walls
at every turn
mine own
and hers

the search for approval
for acceptance
for popularity
for love
for purchase
for reward of efforts
has exhausted me 
and i am done

i shall create in a 
chasm 
deeply inward and for
inner reward
i'll strive toward my own
acceptance
through expelling that
which demands expression
in whatever form
it takes

truth
i shall speak and 
move in my 
truth

i will paint
and not sell
i will ruin
and not whine
i will build
and shelter
protect and serve
love and grow old

and not ask
for more

i am of a body
whose heart races
faster than the paces
of her flat-footed step

COCOONING
April 18, 2016

a weekend spent cocooning 
for no known reason
hiding out in twisted sheets
a metaphor for my twisted needs
loneliness visiting, but no desire
to reach out to cease it slapping me
comfort food and tv
sleeping more than i knew i could
from an exhaustion that just snuck up
out of no where to tackle me
bad feelings turn worse in this
tupperware of comfort
the morsels of guilty bacteria
turning to full blown mold
that spread across the articles
of cells that reach from skin down to
soul; speechless and dried out
i rode it out and come monday
morning's alarm, fought off every
excuse not to rise, to make it in to
work on time
10 buckets of caffeine and some peppermint
for sniffing...
ill be back up on the horse again

**************

COCOON
January 9, 2018

i was about to use the metaphor
about the caterpillar and the cocoon
the butterfly emerging

but i don't feel like a butterfly emerging
so perhaps i'm just starting to build
the cocoon

i know who i was
but i don't yet know
​who i am to become

*************

it seems i've been here before

when my parents announced their separation
it came as a shock

in the subsequent afternoons, driving home from school
my mind drifted to the oft heard statistic

50% of marriages end in divorce

ours was a religious home
a family that prayed together, stayed together

until we didn't
and then many of us prayed harder

and my father bought and blew a shofar
--got really into the old testament

my mother moved into an apartment across town

my brother was off at college

it was just me and my dad
and his shofar

until it wasn't

until it was a night here and there
that he didn't come home

and it was just me praying
and it was God I thought I heard speaking
telling me to go to Italy

and so, I went
and when I came back home

my dad's shofar was replaced
with a blonde, new wife and mother of three

and my stuff was in boxes

it was out with the old
and in with the new

and there was an awkward
really painful year

and at the end of that year
a new statistic came true

1 in 3 don't have a Dad
in their lives

and that 1 was me

When I lived in LA, I tried to play the game. This was before social media was as dominant as it is now. I didn't have an instagram or twitter yet. I had a Myspace for the first few years and a barely used Facebook. The game was different then. We were still figuring out what mattered and how much. What mattered was IMDB ratings. It was who you knew in person, rather than online. It was how you looked in person, rather than online. I tried to look the part. Thin. I worked at that. Lived solely on some Nutri-System or another for a year. Eating terrible, dry, pre-packaged...cancer, probably. I ran and hiked and once, boxed at a Korean gym. I did one of those women-centric gyms and then had to pretend to move out of the country to get out of my contract when I didn't have the money to pay it. 

I did agent showcases. I mailed pictures of my face. I acted every chance I got--in student films (high school and college), in plays, in scenes, in rooms, in front of my own camera and friends cameras. I drove all over the place and smiled kindly at the most ridiculous requests. I mimed navigating a space ship. I auditioned for a puppet who cruelly condescended me. I hawked magic cloths and mister sticky's in live in-store infomercial performances at every store in a 60 mile radius of Los Angeles. I studied my craft. I shelled out money by the fistfuls. I played the game. 

But I guess, even then, at my most earnest attempts, even then, there was a rebel in me who rebuffed the rules and held a middle finger to the expectations of me as a player. I shaved my head. That couldn't have helped. Tall, thin, white, lady buzz-head isn't exactly a marketable "type." I'm still glad I did it though--it was a great lesson in self-discovery...letting go of hair, letting go of how much others care about your hair. My hair grew back. I kept at it. Auditions, showcases, mailings. Money out, money out, money out--LOOK AT ME! LET ME IN THE BIG ROOMS! Classes, workshops, internships. Money out, money out, look at me... Nevertheless, I "lost" the game. Had to bow out. Deeply in debt, unable to pay my rent or put gas in my car. A couple years of big tax bills I couldn't pay. I listed everything I owned for sale, measuring their dimensions using my 8x10 headshots. 

You always hear these stories about big stars who moved to the city with $20 in their pocket, lived in their car, sold and bought back their furniture, but then hit their "big break." You start to think that's all it takes. Hanging in, come hell or high water, until that inevitable "big break," but you never stop to think about all the millions of stories you don't hear about all the millions of people throughout the years who moved to LA whose "big break" never came, who wound up genuinely homeless, who had to go back to the mid-west, who got "real jobs" or simply, literally died trying without ever getting there. Those people don't get book deals, don't go on late night talk shows and tell their stories. But they're out there, by the truck loads, those stories. More common than not. Not that it would have mattered if I'd considered it beforehand, considered I might not "make it," I would have had to do it all anyway...because you never know what luck might shine on you if you only try, if you just show up. So, I showed up, I tried, and I failed. I couldn't make them notice me. I could never get in the rooms where it happens.

I drove out of the smog-filled traffic of the city of angels, over the mountains, into the desert and half-way across the country with my tail between my legs and scuttled into my Mother's house in Springfield, MO. The dawn of the social media age was upon us. Twitter, instagram, facebook, snapchat, youtube, blogs, vlogs...a whole new world where your follower count alone could get you in the rooms where it happens. A world where you could photoshop and filter your appearance into oblivion and get free cloths and earn lots of money from a digitally edited version of your appearance. The word "influencer" would rise to stand side by side with "celebrity." There was a way now to play the game no matter where you lived. 

But now... it was like when I came back from Italy--where I'd gone on my Joan of Arc mission, assigned by God, or so I thought, to witness to people, only to come home utterly broken of my Bible-belt shell and trying to figure out what I really believed about the world with the new information and life experiences I had gained....and I came home and went back to Church and suddenly felt sick to my stomach, struck by the hypocrisy, the arrogance and ignorance of it all. It was like that now with the game. I couldn't play it sincerely anymore. Chasing money and success and validation and opportunity... I couldn't believe in the higher power of it all anymore. I couldn't have hope in there being "more"--it just wasn't out there. All there is is now, is this, is what you've got and what you choose to do with it. So I could spend the rest of my life chasing yes's...or I could just give myself one big YES to do and make whatever I want whenever I want and be okay with the possibility that the audience never shows up for me and my art, that I create in oblivion and never receive recognition...but at least this way, I create. And that is the necessary thing for me, to live, I must create. So I create. 

And when people talk of how I'll "make it"...how I'll win awards one day...I put on that old familiar smile that is for their benefit, and inside I shave that expectation down to a buzz cut. It doesn't matter if I ever do..."make it," win awards... am I still creating? That's the only question there is. Am I being challenged and stimulated? Am I loved for me, aside from my creations? Am I creating in new exciting ways? Am I learning? Am I growing as an artist? Am I having honest conversations about the human experience? Am I articulating feelings? Am I contributing something of some kind of value? Am I full? Am I energized by it all still? That's all.

I can't care about followers. I'm not Jesus. I don't need disciples. I don't need or want fame. I don't invite that level of scrutiny into my life. I don't need to climb some ladder of perceived success. I don't need trinkets that say I'm the best--I don't believe there is such a think in art as "the best." I DO want money to create, but I feel no motivation beyond waking up and doing day jobs to get the minimum amount of it I need to scrape by. I'm too high on creative ideas to be grounded in the reality of finances. I'm easily distracted by my ideas and fulfilling them. If I could really get it together...I would learn how grants work, I would go that route perhaps. Really...I just don't want to beg anyone to let me do what I've figured out I'm going to do anyway. I'll create, no matter what. And that's enough. That's enough because it's all there really, really is. Big house, no house, big crowd, no crowd, big money, no money...it's all the same at the root, and the big stuff, the success stuff is just a different noise, a different distraction than the noises and distractions of no stuff. 

How I go forward from here: Fuck the noise...just create. Head down. Create. Come, don't come. I'm doing this thing. It's how I choose to live my life. I am owner and audience. And you don't have to get it. We all just have to live to the fullest truths of our heart.