Le sigh...

     I leave for Texas soon to stay with my sweet heart. I miss him intensely. Rocky and I will UPS our belongings, mainly art supplies and clothes, then race the boxes south.  This will be good motivation for us to hustle because it would be  embarrassing to loose a race to a box.
     I am writing my life story.  So far I have 6 pages, single spaced. Not much, but a good start.  Writing about my past has  brought up a lot of memories. 


     Here are some thoughts associated with the writing and life in general: 


      I had an interaction with a good friend in New Orleans that made me think in depth about my history as an addict. We were talking about the lack of  control involved in addiction.  While we spoke it became clear to me that she was hurt and angry still from a recent break up. She took a man into her home knowing he was actively using. I could tell by her tone that she had loved him. Along with her affections she gave him the opportunity to get clean by letting him stay at her place and  supporting him for a month or so.  It became obvious during our conversation that she believed drug addicts really do have control, but fail to exercise it by choice because of a moral failing, some desire to be a miserable victim, or for attention. 
     This made me sad. I feel very connected to this woman and to hear her talk this way about something that has afflicted me for most of my life hurt me deeply. I  understand  there are many degrees of addictive personalities, some worse than others, but I tried to explain to her the helplessness involved with my experience. As silly as it sounds, it was like being possessed. I would drive around for weeks on end sleeping in the car, but only for hours at a time, waking up sick. I wouldn't  eat or drink water for days on end. My survival instincts abandoned me. I told her of the dangerous people I surrounded myself with. I told her the truth: that I look back on those memories and KNOW that I  truly could not stop.  It was like watching a movie projector of my life. 
    Mental obsessions are no joke. Many times I sat behind the wheel of my driver’s seat, key in the ignition, crying, desperately trying to will myself out of scoring.  I wanted to stop, but I didn't know how. I read every piece of literature, practiced the advice rehabs gave me,  went to NA meetings,  prayed  and  meditated. These things helped calm my nerves, but nothing really worked until I revisited my past with an open mind and a therapist.  Together we searched my past for resentments to heal with talk, art and writing.

      Most people don’t know what it’s like to habitually use narcotics and that is a very good thing.  People who have addict family members, friends, or lovers will tell you that the addict is like a tornado raging through the lives' of the people around them.  Relationships with addicts will often hit a wall where trust is impossible and with good reason. In active addiction I began to realize that I could not trust myself.  This feeling had a ripple effect in my life where the logical part of me started to rationalize with the addict half, pleading with it not to kill us. I was split in half; one  wanted me dead, the other was crying for it all to stop. At its worst, the experience could be described as an all-consuming, self-centered, black hole of misery. Contrary to popular belief, the intelligent addict is not having fun avoiding life, relationship and responsibility; they are in a state of agonizing mental obsession with no logical way out in sight.

     I had developed an inability to deal with life and my emotions. Rage would visit me every morning. I would wake in such a fit of anger that I would slam doors hard enough to break glass and  throw coffee cups trough windows. I would scream like a banshee,  terrifying the people and animals around me. This rage  masked  intense pain. It led me to use for long periods of time, cumulatively wasting years of my life. I needed to escape reality because my mind was a hostile place. I wanted to die before I figured out how to shed my compulsions by dealing with my pain. Something, be it my will to live, a Great Spirit, my Saturn Return, or whatever, gently nudged me to climb out of the wreckage and change the way I live and think. 

     In order to heal I had to dig up those old, painful memories to make sense of them. I needed to apply today’s wisdom to yesterday’s pain. I needed to find out what my inner child was frightened of and screaming over. I read that the process of revisiting past trauma actually changes the neurological pathways imprinted by behavior. I had to not just speak of the past either, but re-feel each trauma with an adult head space in order to overcome the effects of those repressed emotions and recover. 
     This topic always makes me think of the alcoholic monkeys from the Caribbean : )  This short and funny clip explains the genetic factors of alcoholism in moneys compared to humans (after some trippy lemur action that is):

Drunken Monkeys and smashed lemurs 

    I wonder if monkeys have their own therapists.

    Off topic entirely,  I am learning how to draw in Adobe Photoshop. Here is a trial composition.  I think I am getting the hang of it.  I downloaded a bunch of fun brushes and am in the process of getting interested enough in digital art to make my own brushes. I am by no means comfortable with the Wacom tablet yet, but I am learning and having fun.  I  only play with it when I know that I have six hours to devote because it is highly addictive. It is essentially painting with light, not like traditional painting at all. I must navigate through this alternate universe.  I am hoping I'll get the hang of it.

   

Vermont

   

   It's cold here in Vermont.  The trip to the south was filled with bitter-sweet adventure.  It lasted two months, but I'm sure now that it wasn't long enough. 
    I guess that I am officially sick of winter. I have all this art to sell, but walking downtown with it to sling isn't an option in this frigid climate.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking winter completely for-granted, it served its purpose.  Winter gave me introspection when I had none and relieved some of my compulsive behavior,  but I just want to be warm now. I feel like I've payed my penance.  The plan is to be out by May and head west.

    I am trying to raise money still and have a lot of paintings, so I was thinking about having an art show. If anybody likes something please send me a message. I will go way down on the price.




    This one is small: 12x12in.

   This one is pretty big: 3.5 ft. x  58 in.

   24in. x18in

 

    9in x 12in

    9 in. x 12in.

This one's big 30in. x 30in

   
     I finished this one when I got home a couple days ago, while recovering from food poisoning.

And these were started in the last couple days..

 


    I am excited by my fear. What else can I do with feelings of uncertainty? Fear fuels me to burn brighter and walk with my head high so I don’t give off the scent of prey, so I don’t take on the role of a victim.

    I don’t let others’ irrelevant histories live in my heart. I renounce my bias because it does not belong to me. It’s time to move forward and away from these prisons. The angels that guide me are ballads of humility and intuition obscured by wanting. With each revelation I find new joy. It’s irrelevant how many times I repeat my mistakes. It’s irrelevant how long it takes.

    Conquering the dark side is a continual process.  My compulsions are satiated by the recognition of the angels at my side. I am testing my boundaries for weakness. I am speechless, repetitious in my mistakes, but in constant check of my intention. My heart is in the right place; steady is my step away from oblivion.

Life...

Rocky is recovering nicely from his stomach surgery. To read about dog bloat, click here.     Here is Rocky sleeping off the pain meds.                                             Rocky's bad-ass scar.                        There have been rumors in the matriarch that a trip to New Orleans is in the making for Poppa Neutrino's funeral. Poppa Neutrino died at 77.   Click here to read about Poppa Neutrino. He was a philosopher, adventurer, sailor, musician and father to some amazing children.          Despite all the traveling I've done, I haven't visited New Orleans. I've many friends there, but I've always been a bit fearful of the neighborhoods from the stories I was told of 15 year boys mugging drunks at gun point and one too many of my female acquaintances getting brutally beaten and raped.       So if my home girls decide to go, I will venture bravely for the first time into New Orleans. It will be good to face my fears around the place, see my friends, and honor the loss of a great man with a New Orleans style funeral. Then I can ride back to Vermont with the matriarch.        The last couple weeks, four themes have been on my mind: love, the violin and art, the stress money brings, and happiness via sense of self.  I have discovered through my thinking binge that these themes are all related. When I finally find what I love to do and who I love to do I would naturally expect the world to comply with my path by paying me. It doesn't work that way though. Reality is a bitch, but to make up for it, life is both frightening and enchanting.  The enchanting part is what makes it all worth it.         It still astonishes me how money has the power to make me feel like I was punched in the gut.   My entire life has been a struggle; I don't know why I still expect things to be easy. I must still pay rent and bills in Vermont while continuing to support myself here in Austin. Luckily, I got my tax return for rent and some donations to the Rocky relief fund for Rocky's surgery, but then there are bills that I am still responsible for. On top of all this, I have to figure out how to get back to Vermont without getting too terribly cold.         While all this reality is churning, my artistic mind frame continues to change and grow. I ask myself why I bother to continue to play the violin when mediocre  status is all I will ever attain. The answer lies in the benefits I gain from playing for myself, the meditative trance that music allows for. It is that moment I try to attain when my mind shuts off. It is the same with painting and pottery. Meditation is what I seek in art. There the problem is again with getting paid.       Now you'd think the trick to happiness would be to align myself with what I love to do, who I love to do, where I love to live, with a paycheck and then the happiness would come. You'd think, right? WRONG!! Ha. The conclusion I came to and will come to over and over again is that I could die tomorrow! I could die today! And then what? The trick is to be happy with where you're at, no matter where that might be.        Here is a picture of Austin.                 Some cloud shots.

       Here a a sweet little fox whose picture I did not take. I decided to copy him in pencil and then possibly paint.

A raven whose story is similar to the fox.

December 1931, Anais wrote the following passage shortly after meeting June for the first time.

A startingly white face, burning eyes. June Mansfield, Henry's wife. As she came towards me from the darkness of my garden into the light of the doorway I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth.
Years ago, when I tried to imagine a pure beauty, I had created an image in my mind of just that woman. I had even imagined she would be Jewish. I knew long ago the color of her skin, her profile, her teeth.
Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything she asked of me. Henry faded, She was color, brilliance, strangeness.
Her role in life alone preoccupies her. I knew the reason: her beauty brings dramas and events to her. Ideas mean little. I saw in her a caricature of the theatrical and dramatic personage. Costume, attitudes, talk. She is a superb actress. No more. I could not grasp her core. Everything Henry had said about her was true.
By the end of the evening I was like a man, terribly in love with her face and body, which promised so much, and I hated the self created in her by others. Others feel because of her; and because of her, others write poetry; because of her, others hate; others, like Henry, love her in spite of themselves.
June. At night I dreamed of her, as if she were very small, very frail, and I loved her. I loved a smallness which had appeared to me in her talk: the disproportionate pride, a hurt pride. She lacks the core of sureness, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on reflections of herself in others' eyes. She does not dare to be herself. There is no June Mansfield. She knows it. The more she is loved, the more she knows it. She knows there is a very beautiful woman who took her cue last night from my inexperience and tried to lose her depth of knowledge.
A startingly white face retreating into the darkness of the garden. She poses for me as she leaves. I want to run out and kiss her fantastic beauty, kiss it and say, "You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you, I wished for your existance. You will always be part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we have shared at some time the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage." 
(HJ pp.14-15)

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
— Anaïs Nin

  Loving in men and women not their strength but their softness, not their fullness but their hunger, not their plenitude but their needs." Anais Nin

 "We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations." 
— Anaïs Nin

        "From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life." 
— Anaïs Nin

Adventure in Florida...

      After this blog entry I will not be disclosing my location because my evil skin head stalker has expressed his interest in stalking me once again.  I do not feel flattered to say the least.  So if you are reading this (you know who you are, you angry, sad little man) find someone else to stalk cause you are ruining my travel mojo and I am not above finding someone to put a voodoo curse on you.

      That said, this is route 206 outside of Saint, Augustine. We were dropped off by a semi truck at 6:30am.  The driver of the semi is in the National Guards where he de-activates bombs in Iraq.  He had many awful stories to fill up the two day long ride to Florida.  There will be more on him at a later date.

     Rocky and I walked a very long time on this road before we were picked up by a yacht driver named Walter in a blue, mint condition, 1966 Chevy El Camino. I did not take a picture of the car because I was too busy running to it.

      Here is one of the many many cars that passed us.  I eventually got so frustrated with the situation that it became funny.  I started  joking with Rocky to ease the tension:

• "Whatever McDonald's worker, have fun living in fear!" 
• " Hey Rocky, did you see that lady? She wanted to pick us up, but Jesus told her not to." 
• "No, It's cool.  No we're fine. We don't need a ride." 
• "I love the way my hair looks blowing in the wind as you drive by really fast without stopping!"

      Rocky has started to show his age.  He gets tired a lot faster these days.  So I ended up carrying his saddle bags shortly after this shot and I have not had the heart to make him carry them again.  He does look good in red though.

       Here is a bridge thingy in the town of Palatka which lies between Saint Augustine and  Gainesville.  There are lots of Pentecostal churches here.  I got three rides through the town of Palatka. One was from a gross old pervert who immediately asked me if I wanted to give him head for 20 dollars. Are you fucking kidding me? 20 dollars? Maybe in your day (or in Palatka) this is an acceptable offer, but I was quite offended. I declined and told the man, that was old enough to be my grandfather, he could drop me off  at the next block.  He let me out of the car without an argument and told me I was a good girl for saying no.  Ha! Thanks Gramps!

      I arrived in Gainesville sometime around 11am. I have not been to Gainesville in 6 years because I have been terrified that I would use drugs again. Now that I have been clean from narcotics for 3 years, I felt that it was time to prove to myself that I could visit without the disease of addiction taking over my mind.
     When I used to live here, I would often stop to admire this beautiful, giant oak tree.  I was glad to see it still there.  Many memories, mostly bad, began to surface as walked into town.  These memories came as no surprise to me. I was expecting them. I was more than ready (eager even) to process them.  After all, this was the place where I almost lost my soul to drugs and misery.

    Rocky and I decided to make camp underneath this oak tree for the day while we waited for our Gainesville friends to call. Rocky chewed on sticks while I read "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant. The book is about a character from the Bible named Dinah who is the sister of Joseph and the daughter of Jacob.  Call me naive, but I did not realize that "The Red Tent" refers to a period tent until I started to read it.

       While we were lounging we were visited by many interesting people, including this punk rock gentleman named A.J. He has awesome brass ear plugs and told me about a group of travelers that he had just met.

   


         Aside from A.J., while I was reading, I was visited by at least three drug addict homeless people with different requests. "Can you buy my man a forty ounce? They won't let him in the store," an exhausted, wide eyed woman asked me.
   
       "No, I am sorry," I said.

       "You straight?" another asked.

       "As an arrow," I replied.

       "You gotta cigarette?" yet another asked.

      It was at that point that I decided I was not going to get any reading done if I did not take drastic measures. So I decided to read "The Red Tent" out loud to make it clear that I was busy.  As I was rambling like a crazy person, my dear friend Lars Din arrived.  We talked about  surviving the past and how life was going presently for each of since our last encounter. It was cathartic to say the least.

                                                            

       Lars and I talked until my brother came to scoop me up and bring me to Sarasota in his sweet yellow 79 Chevy Nova. My brother is so tall. 6ft 4in to be specific. It's awesome. I haven't seen him since he came to visit me in Vermont a couple years ago.  The only thing shitty about him coming to get me is that his awesome car, whose engine was just rebuilt, started making fucked up noises on the way back.  I feel like a jinx kinda, but I'm glad the engine started messing up now instead of after his warranty expired.

      Here is Rocky basking in the sunlight at my Mom's place.

       My Mother and I have been hanging out, walking dogs, talking, crying, looking at old photos, and reminiscing about the past.

       Here is Ginger, my Mom's cat, right before she turned into a Ninja on Rocky.

      It was scary.  Someone set off a fire work which made rocky panic.  He, in turn, tried to crash through Mom's screen door and this put Ginger the cat on defense.  She was a fucking ninja, seriously. She flew through the air like a tornado made of calico fur and sharp nails and teeth.

                                                                            
    

       Poor Rocky. He always gets the shit end of the stick. No pun intended.

                                                                        
  
      Here are some shots of Sarasota's Amish town.  I had originally planned to photograph the ghetto and the historic areas of Sarasota, but I decided that this might be pushing my luck as far as staying away from drugs.  So I have decided to photograph less intimidating subjects, like Amish people and birds.