Three Free Flow

December 16, 2012

Dad came home at 2am and found me in the kitchen with the sink light on. Stripped down to white bra on brown skin, blue jeans buckling belly flap. Sharpie in hand looking down at my paper stub on the counter. I had circled a number on what looked like to me a page of mixed numbers. Code. “Is this what I make an hour?”, the rash orange sharpie blurted on the page. Cracked red wine lips, I cried. I’m too young for a paycheck.

March 14th, 2013

In the black hills of my mind I’ve got death and cum clouding my productivity. Who am I to the world to exist, to reside in this wooden floored apartment? I mop up dirt that I cannot see. It shines on lacquer and I feel better. 

He can call me a dirty slut and sing Britney spears before bed in the same night. I do it so I can know what my body is capable of so I am not only holding myself at night, so that I don’t have to wake up because he will. 

My face clears for different countries. In Greece the salt soaked up any restlessness that squirmed under my skin, I was content not having what I wanted because what I did have was so great. In Portland my hair is full and soft, berry blooded forager home within the forest. 

Between the buildings of New York that stand over me like parents I shuffle between responsibility and carelessness. Scurry around the streets like the rats in the underground, “I’ll never live in a place this nice”, I tell the glass displays in Soho. Some people want nice things, my secret is that I know that they don’t last, a meal is flushed down the toilet 24 hours later smelling the same no matter its price tag. 

My mom says we need the thinkers, the coffee drinkers, the erotic dreamers, pacing the room; I don’t do anything but remind myself of all the people I have loved. 

March 16, 2013

My face could fall in the pan I am staring at it so intently. Metal on teflon, I was spooning Ibarra chocolate with coconut oil and vanilla to make frosting. You have to keep stirring chocolate or else it burns. I know this. Lisa is standing next to me looking too. We are making gluten free cake; its Lisa’s first time making cake and her uncertainty taints the creative process. She is talking to me about gender roles. “Anna wants to talk about how women are portrayed in the media but I mean, there is not much you can argue about that”, “Yeah”, I say. Recently my dad told me the real reason why him and mom got divorced and it made me realize however much I want to rebel as a feminist I don’t want to live without men. I don’t want to be my mom. I think about diving into the pan. Why isn’t it thickening? 

Watch without sound:

Stamp Needed

I question all the time if I am a writer, it’s the thing I feel most insecure about. I have this friend, Sarah, we met in Costa Rica and became best friends. The woman’s a saint, really just a holy human. And when I here her poetry, that insecurity about my writing just creeps back up my curly spine and into my shoulders. I can’t shake it. I feel inspired by other writers I read but demolished when she shares hers and all I want to be is supportive to her.

I’ve been listening to Sherman Alexie’s War Dances on my ipod and I don’t want to ever stop listening to his voice. His stories are like a running sentence, voice traveling over Himalaya peeks and humbly climbing down on the page onto the insecure road and I’m on my bike and I’m on the spring water corridor listening, smiling at the pavement, at the insecure road in front of me. I want to be good at writing but I’m afraid to say that.

I am afraid at how good my brain is at protecting me from my own pain. Sometimes while doing yoga I will get flashes of memories, moments I haven’t thought about since they’ve happened.  Last Tuesday in yoga class we did the kind of twists that make you think your nose is running because the sweat squeezes out from the creases in your tensed forehead and takes a nosedive down your face splashing on to the matt below. I went from thinking about the internal heat that was conjured in my body to that 52-hour bus ride it took to get from Dehli to Katmandu. The only white person on the ‘tourist bus’, I was amused by the whole situation, giddy stupid for an adventure. I didn’t know any better. Besides I thought, I have books! The holy gospel of Arundhati Roy’s the God of Small Things. Books are only distractions though, especially the most sacred ones.

We stopped at the border steps distance; India to Nepal. It still looked and smelled like India. Dry arid land, golden flashing sunbeams made the dust particles from bicycle rickshaws and horses shimmer in the street. Out the window I see the dust twisting around each other finally resting on overly packed storefronts merchandise. We parked on the road before the towering rock archway that said in Hindi and English, “Indian border ends”. An Indian policeman with a mustache and a black club came to take money, look at passports, and glare. The group of three men in the back of the bus near me hid their money wads. I knew they had had conversations about my bare feet that became exposed in the aisle when I had tried to sleep vertical on top of my backpack. The bus driver wasn’t drunk yet but was smiling at me like he was. He pointed toward a cement house on the other side of the arch. I had to get my visa still. The process wasn’t long and soon my passport was stamped and stickered; I was calm and patient because…because I was in Nepal I guess. I smiled at the guard with his machine gun at his side as I was leaving and he gestured at my nose ring giving me his sign of satisfaction. The only sincere complement I have ever gotten about it.

Ben, at this moment I knew I would like Nepal.

I hope you do too.

Litany Letter

This is a letter to my friend to take with her before she leaves for Nicaragua. I like to write letters because there is more opportunity to be confessional, sincere. I am constantly trying to reconcile within myself the shock of change. I have a feeling of great loss when i leave a place and its people and writing letters helps me to deal with that. We reunite next year 2013 in NYC.

 

 

meanwhile...

 

Paralyzing Phear

Sometimes I have this paralyzing fear when I think about myself in the future. Fear that I won’t live up to my own standards, fear that I will have wasted time, fear that I will have missed out on opportunities. When I do this, my mind freezes, I can feel my heart beat in my throat, my knees tighten. It’s not that I don’t think I will be happy wherever I end up; it just freaks me out to imagine myself there.

Recently my family has been hinting at their age; a brother with a bruised knee, the oldest player on the alumni basketball team, my mum thinking she is losing her memory because she forgot an appointment and a sister gone, not around to fall asleep next to. I am reminiscing because it’s the New Year, 2012, it makes me remember where I was last year around this time. So sick and tired in Nepal that I wanted to quit, and might have. It was the only time in my life when I actually wanted to go through with it.

Permaculture farm i stayed on after New Years outside of Kathmandu

Taken from the roof of my host families house, Kathmandu

              

I think fear is a very raw emotion that drives people. I am happy to live with this kind of fear in my life so that I can overcome it. I listened to a TED talk about the emotion of regret and decided to take on the last message of the talk that, “regret doesn’t remind us of what we did badly, it reminds us what we can do better”. The processes of these emotions are valuable; so here’s to another year of fear and regrets, bring it on!!!

I have been reading about a Korean feminist poet in this article: http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/3358/williams_kim_1_1_12/   And loving everything that she says:

Kim Hyesoon "We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become “the paper made of human meat,” we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play. It is not possible to explain women’s poetry until you sympathize with how women painfully go through the experience of having these tattoos carved on their bodies. At this point, women’s language is the butcher’s language who sells his or her body. It is grotesque and miserable. Female poets can finally step into the world of language after crossing this river of the grotesque; the words cannot gush out of their mouths until they cross the river of screams where you witness death like everyday affairs.”

Moving onto another year in another country (Greece), a new diet (Paleo), and different classes (Native Americans of the NW + Advanced Poetry + Vagina Monologues).

These days my bike is a ghost and I sleep like a mummy

Listing my life:

What work looks like

On good days work looks like this

 and

.

      List for Padeen (naturopath doctor)

-       Where to get another Netti pot

-       IUD (no hormones?)

-       HPV Vaccine?

-       Acne medicine

-       Ask about irregular bleeding

-    Do leaky gut test

List of what I couldn’t eat on my FOUR week cleanse

Sugars (yes, this meant no chocolate even high fructose corn sugar and agave!)

High Glycemic Fruits (don't ask)

Grains (this proved to be the hardest thing about the cleanse because my body is so used to being full from starch that it took me a while to actually be satisfied after eating the food that i did)

Gluten Containing Compounds (no soy sauce to go with the rice that i can't eat)

Dairy (mooo wasn't hard, except no EGGS! what the heck?!)

Soy

Alcohol (super bummer)

Lectins (what no nuts, beans, potatoes, tomatoes)

* oh and no coffee, processed food, canned foods.

NEW DIET 

is called the Gaps diet http://gapsdiet.com/Home_Page.html

....you don't want to know

List of classes I'm take at PCC

Second year German

Creative Writing (Poetry)

Printmaking

Humanities & Technology: Exploring Origins

German things

Schnurrbart - mustache

Die Hexe - Witch

Die Spinne - Spider

Heute trank ich ein Tasse Kaffe mit Frühstück. (practicing imperativ tense!)

Dann ich ging ins Bett und schlafen gut, Gute Nacht!

Poetry things (more whining)

Waking Up Is Putting On Your Shoes (1st draft, revision due next class..)

I wake up to a cold September morning and start on my ten-minute walk to the bus stop

56 minutes before this moment

I lay vertical, face down, in a queen size bed, mouthing my dreams out to the empty room

I dream about places I wish I were, the people I left behind

My heart torn from every time I’ve said goodbye, a patchwork of those moments

Even in this condition it’s forced to be worn around all day

It is still dark outside

An arm outstretches to turn off the alarm at 6:25

Usually not right away

I don’t want to wake up, so I don’t

Two feet land on the stale carpet

The rest of the body has no choice but to follow, sitting upright

Hands rub still closed eyes

In the bathroom face and teeth get clean

The mirror is ignored

Feet follow each other up 16 steps away from the bed 

To the kitchen, tools like blenders and saucepans make the breakfast

Once the body is fed clothes are draped over the torso and hips

Pack is packed

Lastly I put on my shoes

They are red

Made of canvas

Dipping into them the backs cup my heels tightly

The edges of the soles are torn

These shoes look worn

I call them my heartache shoes

As if it were a choice whether or not to put them on everyday

These shoes sometimes hurt my feet

I am reminded with every step the pain of trying to fit something too big

Like a heart into a chest

Or a shoe  

And wear it around all day

           To Do List

-       Send Letter to India

-       Do laundry

-    Mach mein Hausaufgabe

-       Buy new Netti Pot and Long shower brush

-    make soup

-    put away clothes

-       Finish reading book/s (yeah right)

-    Find new job

-    Find out who I am now (as an artist, as an American, as a girlfriend, as a sister/daughter, as a consumer, as a voter, as a commuter.

-       Call PCC about Financial Aid (a month later i got it! geez i thought my other school was unorganized throw 10,000 more students on top of that...)

      Movie List

-    Sherlock holmes

-    Slamnation

-    Monte carlo

-    Milk

Things that I have been disgusted with

-       Ben Brandis licking a slug at recess in the 3^rd grade

-       How much US dollars goes to Military and Nuclear funding

-       Bush being elected for President of the USA

-       Bush being re-elected to President of the USA

-    Baby poop

-    cigarette butts in nature

-       The fact that I have managed to lose every water bottles I have ever owned. I went through 4 water bottles in India in the past 7 months; the last two were in Portland while bussing and babysitting.

           Things I miss

-       Indian Chai, fresh coconut, Pipa (Central American and South Asian), Set Dosa, Idly, Gallo Pinto, Papusa’s, fresh mango, gelato, clos, mojitos, sangria, nepali tangerines, papaya, yuka

-       Sarah Kaplan Gould

-       Having my own apartment

-       Shabat

-       Pretending to be an adult

For my boo:

Things I have learned about living in Portland

     Even though I am “home”, I am still never home

      Education is expensive

     Bach flower remedies are awesome

   I lose my belongings no matter where I am 

The universe eats up silence with silver utensils

I fell asleep the other night with my headphones jammed in my warm ears listening to KBOO. I had stayed up until midnight just to listen to someone who before I met I knew I was in love with and always would be. It’s hard to be certain of things sometimes love is so frightening…I think lately I have feared the future, I feel somewhat like I am part of an orchestra but put on mute. Or just someone’s tapping foot keeping time, I’m nothing really, just a tool. India is different then where I am now, and I feel like it’s slipping away from me, only tangible through my memories. I saw a National Geographic that showed a train trip through Udaipur, India in 1984 and it looked so familiar. The monkeys, the different colored street food being passed through windows, the two-leveled bunks filled with people, the people.

In my reminiscing I wrote this:

There are so many other places I’d rather be right now

 Sitting at the edge of the farm in the forest, nakedly 16 years old, looking out from my sit spot. Not knowing the world and finally declaring I belonged on it. It was a fresh and heartfelt age.

 Standing on that bridge, a river never reached beneath, and the tropical haze - a foggy paradise. Hearing my brain say that jumping would be suicide and deciding to follow my feet anyway. Most of my better decisions have been made this way.

 Under the blankets in Vipassana, my body prickling with sensations, where I was conscious of even a drop of water sliding down my leg. I was miserable, I felt hopeless, lonely, lost, lusting for home. But little did I know I was being trained to be and have the kind of love that fills you and bloats you till it seeps out of you there’s too much of it to be able to hold it all in.

 Under the blankets of the fort Sadie and I built on Flanders Street.

 Wrapped up in love. That moment staring into his eyes so intently that reality shatters around us.

 In the arms of every man I’ve let hold me because no matter how much of a feminist I am, I still feel the safest in this place.

 In my dream last night where I jumped off of a roof and landed up, I was flying, out of necessity.

 In the first tree I ever climbed, I got high enough that I got too scared to go down.

 At that waterfall in Rishikesh where we made up fairy names, grown teens, wet with nature’s natural pleasure and quenched with its freedom.

 On the stage, with a microphone in hand, the black dress on that showed my shoulders, after I sang the song Black Coffee.

 On the stage sitting next to the other cello players, with the lights off and only our bows that had glow in the dark stickers visible.

 On those stages in front of all those strangers.

Not here, right where I am, walking underneath this umbrella that keeps out those dribblings and droplets of positive encouragements in life. Its pouring outside this umbrella, it rains college loan debt, buckets of wet soaked fear of unsuccess, lethargic lightning bolts that induce depression, and a wind whistling that’s risking the normal healthy balance of things.

Mad about Mad Men

Now that two miles has become an easy feat for my small lungs and heavy thighs to carry out, that and being in a familiar place where I am no longer a guest and am allowed to do the dishes, I find myself settling. Settling in with old friends (my bike), finding odd jobs, and trying out all of my sister’s new clothes (like her black acid wash skinny jeans and I know, I know, acid wash really but I dig on them). I have been busying my time by watching episode after episode of MAD MEN. You know when you get obsessed with something and you know your obsessed because you keep relating to it in real life conversations...its a little embarrassing.

Yesterday after sleeping almost 12 hours I went to pick up my film that I was having developed. Looking through the photos I rested my eyes on one particular shot, it’s the one with all my girls from India center at the Idly place one morning. That place is so romanticized in my memories, the standing tables, messy haired-dirty toothed owner who would guess our order every time we came in and ask, “tea madam?” at the end of our meal. We would all nod our heads yes in the middle of discussing the nights before adventure, or a homework assignment. I never minded the flies and liked washing my hands after eating, being able to self-serve water, and the view of livestock as I ate. I miss India, more then I missed Costa Rica, and I am impatient with the readjustment period.

But in spite of missing it today is Tuesday June 7^th, I just finished watching the Bansky film Exit Through the Gift Shop. I tried to see it in theaters last summer before leaving for India but had too much to do and so I never did. I thought this movie would be more about capturing Bansky and how he did his street art while remaining so anonymous. But it ended on a sour note with a bunch of famous street artists who felt like the initial documentary maker Thierry Guetta sold out as he became pretty famous only after his first art show. I could see how much he liked the attention and money he was getting for doing fairly easily produced art. Maybe his success in LA was because he was a sort of knock-off Bansky, more collectible and accessible then Bansky is but lacking in sincerity. I saw all the other street artist’s disappointment in him including Bansky for turning the way he did, but I also got a new perspective on street art.

The venture is a somewhat egocentric one, you spread your signature name or message repeatedly all over the city, a semi uncontrolled space where everyone has to see it. It’s a way of being recognized on your own. The reason why I value what Bansky does so much is that what he does is art, something that really takes skill and is beautiful. His message is political, it makes you think, and it is not mainstream. As an artist he chooses to remain completely anonymous, even after he became famous, giving more value to his message. At the end of the film Bansky is interviewed about Thierry’s success and leaves us with a sad sentiment saying, “maybe Thierry was a genius all along, maybe he got a bit lucky, maybe it means art is a bit of a joke”, or maybe it shows the true meaning of what some of the street artists message to the people are, to wake up and think for yourself.

Before watching this movie I saw something that I think is really cool and interesting. I get excited whenever I see or read or talk about anything quantum. The concept is so fascinating to me. Here it is, get excited instead of down about art, and humanities inability to form valuable opinions about things.