On Birthday Magic

I am a huge believer in birthdays and "birthday magic" as a force in the universe. While this is the first birthday I have spent away from everyone I know (with cell phones as the way to connect with those I love), good things happened because of it. I have found temporary employment in the field I hope to continue my career in, what luck. I was able to fill up most of my car's tank, regardless of credit card theft. And I received some free lipstick just for having been born. 

Perhaps the luck/birthday magic was able to come because I spent last Wednesday cleaning the apartment out. I was able to welcome good news instead of harvesting bad feelings—and even though I have yet to know what November may bring, it won't be a concern for a few weeks. For a few weeks, I no longer have to surf forums for jobs and write several cover letters a day.

For a few weeks, I will be finally able to meet others and add to my presence in this city's community. 

Keep/Up

This heat is exhausting and relentless. I've resorted to freezing pans of water and placing them in front of the fan, a sort of air conditioning. The air lacks so much water here that everything dries within a couple hours, unlike in Kansas City where silkscreen filler was always an overnight deal. 

School has such a force on society, the energy in the city has become charged and more eager. I am grateful because more opportunities have begun opening up for me (I do dread Mercury's retrograde in a couple weeks...). 

A couple days ago the heat swelled into heightened anger, and I drove us to the beach. A rock chipped my windshield on the way, but I recieved two phone calls I was awaiting. Strange that this pace of life also demands interlude. 

Long Lost

Some strange goodies this way this week: a desk from the dumpster snuggled underneath the front window, a magazine rack side table, a pot for a plant yet bought. I can now draw without clean up and watch planes land every few minutes. 

I also finally uncovered the Destiny's Child remix I have been hunting for. I am listening to Florence and the Machine's album every late afternoon while I draw in front of the airplane landings. Her lyrics are just as potent as they were in Lungs. 

Surviving this city in the form of groceries and a beach visit weekly, catching gallery receptions and activities on the sly. I am meeting more people and falling in love. 

After the scare with my car not turning over, I have dreams nightly about busted tires or a stolen engine. I'm hoping this apprehension will pass soon.

Remix

So much time has passed and many things have happened. I am moved into my new apartment in Los Angeles, I am back from my residency stay at Mildred's Lane, and I am very much ready to begin work again.

It is hard to dream when I circle into worry about income, but I have many books waiting for me to organize. I am halfway through Toni Morrison's Jazz. It is a lovely thing. I am knitting a scarf and nearly finished embroidering my second city map of the summer. 

I am missing the fellows I met a couple weeks ago, and the moments we shared together. It was a fairytale, what we lived in. I was lost in Brooklyn and found in Narrowsburg. I met more mountains I do not know the names of, collectively the Catskills, and I sat very still. I learned to cut away my negative and jailing thoughts. I loved so many humans, many bugs, many things. 

So here is to bringing Mildred's Lane back to "reality," back to earth. That I can live a daydream and still pay taxes.

Starved

I am addicted to re-reorganizing the boxes of things I own. It is hard enough to stay hydrated in the sudden heat, let alone finding the headspace to take a break. I am high, I am low, I am just about ready to burst waiting to listen to Florence + the Machine's new album. And waiting for the Los Angeles journey plans to solidify.

I have a plane ticket for the end of June, a prayer for a place to live in July, a feeling that I will have some kind of work to sustain. 

Forget the days that have passed without my studio work in mind. Forget that I haven't picked up a book, sadly, in months. And yet to color-correct the images from my recent exhibition...

So Soon

A lot has happened this past month, and yet nothing has changed because I am drinking the same coffee from the same maker in the same sitting position. I live in boxes now. The smell will kill me.

And yet what right do I have to complain, with a fresh BFA degree in my pocket and some new addresses spitting my way. Soon to make my way to Mildred's Lane later this summer, soon to move a little more permanently west.

I'm not sure when the ground will stop spinning, but I hope to God it will be soon

Leave

This imminence is almost unbearable. Everything is in bloom and waiting for me to move. Less than three weeks until everything will be released, and my eye has subsided to half-hearted reminders I am stressed. 

One more critique and one more research paper left in my undergraduate career. Several other things due soon, but enough in due time. I am more than ready to tackle my reading this summer, helping others and hopefully moving east for the first time in years. For now, I will work on learning to stay present. But this future has so much weighting potential—

Of The

And after two weeks of complete sprint, I find myself staring and waiting more often than naught.  An internal image of being caught between heaven and hell, and my horoscope explicitly tells me how this is all a choice (like the stars know anything, anyway). Like my worries are decided lightyears away.

All this time feels the same. Two days feels like four weeks feels like a few hours from now, and it is all I can do to stop twitching, let alone fall back into psychosis. This wind that keeps pelting me with debris from a leftover thunderstorm doesn't help.

This cycle of manic high, anxiety-induced movement to absolute withdrawal is unfair. I constantly feel a pull of deja vu, this vibrating of two selves colliding against each other. Is this the critic-artist I keep blaming my identity on? Is this the left and right hemisphere of my brain? Is this just me, fighting to stay present, when everything else begs to stand perfectly still?

Water

Hard labor toward Three Days of Moonyman this past weekend; three days devoted, she reigns.

I collapsed last Friday. I woke Saturday—this prayer to be put to death and raised again. It doesn't help my limbs have taken life of their own. First an eye twitch, then a corner of my mouth, then a spot next to my nose, my fingers, my knees, my tongue... I thought my eye was only begging tears. I see now that there is anxiety beyond my control, that I can feel my nerves shift when I sleep. So what happens when the subconscious is hiding from itself? That I can't even intuitively sense this stress?

I think that is what scares me. That my body is reacting to something I am not receptive to.

proto-coffee muse

More than enough to do these days, so expecting silence will be normal. 

Trying to reverse-engineer crumpled paper arranged on a wall is proving difficult. I've a mind to stiffen it all with a toothbrush sized paintbrush (said, without any commitment in the least).

I've lost my formal work days to other strange assignments—making cords for the double majors graduating, drawing lines in a field for boys to discover. I have just mapped out the next four weeks of school, bringing another panic attack to the fore. How to have time to finalize four more pieces for the exhibition in May, pray tell?

Is there really such a thing as "taking more on than I can handle"? We will soon find out.