Numbered Life.

God another week has flown by, funny how the time goes into the unknown so quickly. Spring is fast approching and I cant belive its been a year already. It seems like only a few days ago I was planning my escape from San Francisco to the other side of the world.

Now I'm back and submerged deeply in the city grind again. Walking my same red brick path to work everyday. Saying hello to the same over paid bums, lining the civic center sprawl-way. Watching the market street gentrification project in full swing, as one art store is closed to make room for the newer better version in the newly renovated next door.

Pondering the use-fullness of hipster culture ...is it even considered a culture if a subculture only lasts a few years and is centralized in one place on the globe? I suppose so the hippies did it now didn't they? The 80's were hilarious, and we all know the revolutionaries and summer of love were a riot to watch before that. So you could argue that sub cultures are in fact supported on the fact that they have a short shelf life.

Trying to find inspiration in the way sunlight transfers across the office floor each day. As a sunrise turns slowly, almost with out notice into another evening. The way leaves tumble past my feet with the last rays of the day on the red brick path home. Watching the ocean fog blow past the sky freakishly fast from the tenth floor. The moon peeking out during the day, as if to confirm that time has officially lost its grasp. Lost hawks circling the Hobart building small and so fragile looking against the towering brick and steel high-rise square pegs that make up downtown.

I am a number, a living breathing social security, tax id, background checked, certified number. Living in a city full of other numbers, all searching for relivant job and life placement. Experience relative to their number of years on earth, and a pay point to match. I watch them ...talking to themselves...or into the thin air. Blue tooths engauged....ties straightened, hair tied back in smart buns. Everyday...they pass by me these numbers, nothing breaks their self serving agendas. No smile, no signs of life, just numbers. Faceless scowling numbers....to busy to remember yelling into your blue tooth means everyone in a tri county area can hear your conversation. To oblivious to walk in a way that you shouldn't ram into every other person on the street. Assuming that everyone else is less than them....numbers I see you everyday. In a way you are inspiring...you make business life possible and you care about these mundane hampster wheel tasks that fuel the CEO's and CFO's of your world. Ill give you that... the blatent focus of mind it takes to block all else out is amazing.

I know its where the money is... and everyone needs a fall back. So Ill trudge on ...getting my life experience and job training to match my years of life. To look good on paper, and blend with the populus of rapidly growing consumed numbers. Holding my breathe for sunny weekends and Mondays off.

Gloomy Sundays

I awoke at 5am this morning, listening to the snake thrash around in its cage. Filled with stir crazy bordome. He wakes every night around 3am and thrashes untill 11am the next morning. Provided noone plays with him, which I try and do every morning for at least twenty minutes.

Laying there watching the clock tick, listening to the silence of my room and the stillness of a listless Sunday morning. The tickle noises coming from the small gap in the walls between condos informs me that it is in fact raining. I sigh reliefe. I know with the rain the photoshoot that is schedualed for the day will be canceled, and that there is now no reason to get up at the god aweful hour of 530am to start preping outfits and laying out the work space for hair and make up.

I roll back over and slip back into sleep. The easiest thing to do in the morning, is just sink back into your covers and enjoy the lagtastic pace of a quiet sunday morning. I awake a few more times still half dreaming of the photoshoot and giving myself mini heart attacks thinking I am late. Only to remember the rain has saved me and sink back into the pillow top abiss that is my mattress.

I putter around the studio entertaining the idea of sewing, but wondering exactly where it was I stopped on the projects before the pinical of my last creative binge, the lovesick fashion show. Staring into the calendar, scribbling the new deadlines for shoe lines and custom orders. Budgeting the money I have yet to make for the next few months.

I stare out into the rainy day ahead and watch the teardrop shaped drips collect on the leaves of my garden. They drop onto the ground and further saturate the dirt, my baby tears are thankfully coming back from the dead. I check the computer for any signs from you. There is nothingness staring back at me.

Looking for guidance, and some spirituality I play the buddah book turn page crap shoot and read a passage. Strangely in tune with what I am feeling, the buddah book bestows its pearls of wisdom into my brain. Living with nothing, appreciating people unto the last.

The studio still looms its disorganized head, I cant make heads or tails of my projects. Cant nail down a start today. I look to the calendar for an answer and it reads "photoshoot" back at me. I think about this shoe collection and how silly it may be, but what a concept Id like to create. The solution to my newly freed time becomes clear. The thrift store is calling.

Community thrift on the corner of Valencia and 17th, is the new Goodwill of the city. The dumping ground for mission estate sales, and hipster trustafarian kids with too many pairs of designer shoes and jackets. The perfect combination of cheap spandex and vintage polyester. Its usually not busy, and since I had already scoped it out a few days before I knew or hoped it would still be ripe for the picking.

The smell of old closets and dusty wardrobes overtakes you as you walk in the door and I am greeted by two men fighting over who is going to buy a bent fender six string. After sifting through stains and faux snakeskin boots, I settle on three pairs of shoes for my collection, some random vintage jacket find and a shirt I can turn into a spring dress for resale and book it out.

I walk in the rain, paper bag disinegrating slowly under the misting rain. Nervous about another job starting tomorrow and listening intently to my headphones. Blasting out music I try and think of something other than how far away it is you have gone, and how quickly it all took place. Wishing you were here next to me, my walnut face.

What are we now? When will I know? Do you already know? Why does life have to always throw curve balls when you don't even feel like playing a game.

The all emcompassing feeling

Well this blog is offically completely updated. All my entries from live journal hidden away are now up. Everything from 24 on, an entire few years on paper is a completely interesting thing to fall appon at another date.

Why love must be such an all encompassing feeling I will never understand. It starts with such an overwhelming sickness. Invading your thoughts, your mind, your body, your spirit with joy and hapiness. The adventure of learning a new person and sharing yourself with them.

Slowly they become everyday living, you get used to their snoring, and bodily functions. Thier habits and hatreds. Needs and wants become issues and a realationship is borne.
Feelings will be hurt and tears will be shed. Yelling will ensue at times, and I will find what my father has always told me about holding my temper a lesson I am still struggling to learn.

When its over, this love emotion, or even when for reasons of the outside world pushing in it must be taken and pushed to the back behind our everyday lives. The level of all encompassing pain is amazing. It comes up like a wave overtaking your mind again, and your emotions this time are the horrible ones. The tear enducing, deep sob creating heart wretching emotions we all hide from. The complete loss of rational thought ensues, and actions like eating and talking become so difficult. The sense of being alone takes over and you for an instant forget who you are. Left there to rebuild...alone. Yourself.

There is no way to block it out. It over comes. There is no way to run away...it finds you in the darkest night when you least expect it.
Somewhere in there and here in SF is lost the magic I so desperately love. The sense of adventure and wanderlust. San Francisco, once my inspiration now drains me of happy thoughts and leaves money grubbing social conscience ones in it their place.

So now I sit, with a love so far away. Encompassed by the sense of freedom that I do not want, and the long road ahead to rebuilding. Rebuilding something from afar that in person needs to work. A theory of love, that in practice sometimes strains the soul.

What then...is this love... like a disease. It affects us all.

Backtracking Updates from afar: Little Bit in Love

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
3:21 pm
Little Bit in Love
"I try to do art every day."

being an artist is hardly easy, as you get older pressures begin to take over, work, sexlife, dating, even simple things like cleaning and eating seem to take so much time. The tasks never stop coming and the time to do them never seems to catch up.

Traveling the world a concept I had always dreamed of became a reality for me this year. Bangkok once just an unknown universe somewhere in the great beyond is now a second home city. India, once a place I barely dared to think about is now a familiar terrirory complete with expeierences and cultural divides. Phillipines, once a dream location is now a page in my photo album, as well as Thailand and Nepal. After being home a month the dreams are already begining to fade. The bright colors of the sunsets and the feeling of the sand in my toes is already a faint distant greying line in my mind.
In a city where its hard for me to dicipher the jumbled lines that make up my thoughts, the past become irrelivent so quickly.

Backtracking Updates from afar: start

Friday, April 11th, 2008
11:14 pm
start
Heres to another sunset and a long walk into forever watching the shadows dance along the wall outside your window and the wind bat your blinds around.

Nested inside your apartment, under the window,listening to your teenage neighbor play out a angst filled drama on theough her cell phone above us on the firescape.
I spent many a day here with you from 25 to just before my 27th birthday. Bike rides,and garden talk ruled the day. Deep blue eyes and shimmering blonde hair captured my interest like nothing else could. For a while like with everything at first I was happy. Being the inpatient,instant gratification live now think later thrill seeker I am, I eventually forgot who I was there staring into your eyes. Under that window, peaceful, growing older by the day and more and more pissed off at the prospect of marring semi young and cooking dinners and doing laundry for the rest of my life. So obseessed with the complacent tone my life had taken we drank, you got sick and I got tired. I stared no longer at your eyes but at your mouth, forever spewing words I couldnt stand to hear. So angry with the loud sounds that I blocked out thier meaning. Not listening, not feeling, I stumbled through our realationship looking for something. Something to do, something to say, something to make you happy something to make me happy, always something that wasnt there.

So if everything was so lacking why didnt I just leave? After forgetting how to hear you and watching you flail about everyday I missed my own laughter, and my crooked smile. Wishing for the sunshine and free range running within a mile. Living for myself, not worried about my to and fro I found I was so angry and I thought I wanted to go. I stoped looking at all for anything and became so fucking tired. To tired to use my own brain to think and be inspired. Stagnating in my own skin so afraid of any change, wishing for a natural disaster to break through to me again. I missed my funny noises,the way I wear my hair, my favorite dresses and a brand new pair of shoes. All the things that make me who I am where missing for some time lost within our day to day make ups drama and usual bickering. I found our time together straining and it began to take on the tone of a dramatical play/hollywood thriller.

The funny thing is that once I walked away, I took a trip to the japanese bath to sit in the warm watter and steam away my pain. To forget all of the nights I d spent and the days Id wept and remember who I was. I found myself I laughed a little I went home and found again a girl who played and laughed and liked to wiggle. Water trickled down our plants as I srayed them down after the first warm day of summer. All I wanted was you there to tell me which plant to water and which one to mist. To stomp through my kitchen with buckets and kneepads and watering jugs. To eat in my workspace and change my music when I wasnt looking.
I sat in my studio fabric in hand draping and cutting and pinning together. and I thought about how much I wanted to show you what I had created today. As soon as I see myself I want so much to share me, but at the frst signs of judgement or harsh eyes I curl up and shrink away. What a terrible predicament like none Ive ever seen. Something only your heart could dream up and drag you blindly into only to break halfway in and leave your body to fend for itself on the way out. A massive communication breakdown between my heart my mind and my personality they might as well all been running in different directions all at one time.

I heard her voice on your answering machine a few days later, and that is when I knew it was really over. I had been so stupidly preoccupied with everything that was wrong I forgot to stop and take another look at what was really going on. Life is one damn shady road with lessons at every turn and once you think youve got it mastered another ugly slap in the face makes itself relivant. I shouldve just taken what we had at face value and never tried to change, gone about my business and kept revisiting my sanity everynow and then. It was to easy to become consumed by your fits, and energy your endless rants and raves. All the while never wanted to engauge. I realize now because I felt to juded at everyturn I never really became comfortable with you, or let you in at all. I found you untrustworthy and scary and I kept things that way. I hid inside confused and troubled and amazed at the sizable situations I had gotten in. With my heart peices ratteling inside me wishing for all this change I find myself again alone in the night wondering why in the hell is hindsight always 20/20? You caught me at an impressionable time however, your mid twenties can sometimes prove to be a huge disapointment.

I remember my 25th birthday realizing I had reached my expiration date. Dressed in my burlesque costume parading around the huge warehouse in the industrial district of San Francisco. Yelling and waving my arms above my head and dealing with every problem you could imaging that goes right along with throwing a huge rave for yourself on your birthday. Staring blankly into faces all night wishing I was somewhere else. Listening to the music rattle off the brick walls and out the heavy metal doors. Watching everyone I knew come,stand,talk about each other, make thier way to the bathroom to add white rings to the bottoms of thier nasal cavities and then come out and do it all over again for hours. This is the basic anatomy of a party in San Francisco.

Wishing all night Olliver would stopp playing 80;s music and lay off popping muscle realaxers for his broken sternem and contaning Jason who had ODed on the floor before the party even began. Watching my date show up with another woman and realizing that it was all over. The party was about to die, and I was about to launch into real life without a parachute.

My burlesque troupe was a high point, spanning my early twenties with performace, and dance. Gold lamay and a reputation for sex on wheels. We toured and shimmed our way into many high paying gigs. Glittered myself up and fake tanned away any imperfections and strode onto the stage with my happy face on through many a hung over evening. We were the talk of the underground. I was a mess. No one belives how much of a mess I had truely become because on the surface I had perfected the art of entertaining. Hosting parties at my house and being seen at all of the best events in town. Which in San Francisco is a full time job in itself.

The potlucks on tuesday at my house were always full in attendance and rich with the young and highly pretentious. Doing blow off of each other in the bathroom and spilling wine all over my kitchen floor on a tuesday night till 3am. These were the wonder years, were everyday was a new one and working as a barmanager and entertainer went seamlessly together to form one amazing alter ego persona. You lack the ability to look past next week in your early twenties and live in a blissfull bubble of happy party times and sudden jolts of terror when someone speaks of getting old. Even though you dont yet understand what getting old could mean at all. Changes come and go and everyone seems to roll right along with them. Midnight motorcyle rides from bar to bar end in sinny dipping at any apartment complex you can enter with the delivery food guy. Working is just something I did at the bar anyway and slowly I began to feel like once again something. That something was missing. What the hell am I looking for all the time. In perfectly clear and easy situations I find myself searching for an out, or a ladder to the roof.

All of the party people started to loose thier glitter, bags under eyes showed more than not and finding myself on the street at 8am on a monday dressed in a floor lenghth gown and a fur stole was commonplace. My sunglasses hid my eyes as my crew abided by a set of rules made available to only the priveleged few. Always be headed to a hide out by 430 am. Hideouts were houses,flats,lofts,places with hottubs and soft sleeping areas. Never a warehouse,or another party. No decent socailite would be seen at a party in public after 430 am. This was silly, everyone starts to look bad after hours of drinking and dancing around on cement floors. Often we took victims from parties with us for sexual needs when leaving venues. Sometimes two or three girls at a time. Those times called for bigger places such as the Anton Levay house, or someones three story loft with rooftop hottub. There were never a shortage of parties and never a shortage of shady bastards waiting for the opportunity to have me and my ontourage use thier home as a landing strip.

We always got at least some sleep, absoulutely no cocaine at this time even though it had at one point been a huge factor in my energy past 8am everyday. Massive ingestion of booze was mandatory and ofter excessive. Drugs were always around, but often used as a tool to entertain one of us. You could become the focus of jokes if you couldnt handle your high so everyone was wary of doing drugs with one and other. It was on the surface every young girls dream. Free entry to any club free drinks and dancing when ever we wanted, girls boys and any place in the city at the snap of a finger or the drop of a hat.

Backtracking Updates from afar: Summer Stories

Sunday, July 8th, 2007
11:39 am
Summer Stories
Summer again with the sunshine and intermitten cloudy windy fog ridden nights that make you wonder what is this place San Francisco. A place so bizare even the weather patterns are queer...devoid of traditional seasons its hard to get a tan and wearing a scarf in july is commonplace. My wool mini shorts and legwarmers make me warm and yet in a wierd way still dressed in summer esk garb.
I watch the pavement fade away underneath my bike wheels these days. Long silent rides across the city watching the traffic and the hills come and go. Listening to the gears click and the chains mash around my body from one intersection to another to the end of the city and the beach to the end of the trail and to the parking lot. Inhaling the exhausted reminants of the speedy cars and passing the bus on its melodramatic public transit routine. Every once in a while Im joined by other bike riders with squinty eyes and silent stares passing each other in the network of bike lanes and after work commutes. But I am a rouge. Just a rider not a fanatic. I dont have toe clips, trendy jeans,a bike lock hanging out of the back of my pants or a key around my neck. I dont drink at the bike bars and I dont have a memership. So they pass by we dont recognize each other and we never will.

I interact with people but have lost my ability to fake it. I cant hold your attention any more and wait anxiously for the moment when I can sit behind my sewing machine alone listening to the whir of the engine, mesuring fabric and cut lines. These things are boring to the general populus and my stories of bar shinnanigans have been replaced with techinical terms and threads hanging from my jeans in the oddest of places. I cant remember some of the "good times" so well anymore. Lately Ive noticed that I barely remember at all the list of things I used to do and places I went.

Backtracking Updates from afar: Call the Fire Department

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
1:45 pm
Call the Fire Department
What to do when your down to your last 100 bucks your boyfriend has a girlfriend and your christmas tree has been laying in the street for going on a week?
I suggest going to a loud rock show with your last fiver and promptly getting wasted with your friends till the bar closes....then making your way home to take out your aggression on the unsuspecting Christmas leftovers sitting on the street near your home.
That's right get a compadre and a few beers and light that fucker up....its the best entertainment you can't buy anywhere. Proceed inside and commence blasting loud 80's hits and fucking until you sleep through your alarm and whamo you've got yourself one great morning coming. The pics are priceless Ill tell you.
Only bad thing is.... How can you go through with your planned break up with someone when they wield the lighter and take charming photos of you standing in front of your fiery masterpiece.