memory/ musing

no.

2011-11-25T02:59:00.001-05:00

this isn't happiness™ (The memory of you)

2011-10-01T15:23:00.001-04:00

She

2011-09-27T02:19:00.008-04:00

She has folded like fine paper.

She has crept across my pillowcase like a mischievous spider.

She has fled from us as a rabbit from a hound and

the dirt has collected her spirit like a soft tissue gathering a tear.

retrospective on August

2011-08-31T14:01:00.002-04:00

Oranges by Richard Brautigan

Oh, how perfect death
computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps,

and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars.

Enough Already.

2011-07-18T02:45:00.007-04:00

She is becoming more mysterious to me.

Something stringent, determined, purist keeps me from conjuring her. I still sit here though,

always me sitting here,

touching a keyboard, attempting to recollect (collect?) the words she did and didn't say to me and form those sentences out of the loose materials of smoke and tears.

Clutching at the corners of my terrible memory as it tries to shake me off like some bug from a sheet on a Midwestern clothesline.

Almost three years and she sits stubbornly in shadows while old country western singers make dream appearances like my mind is the Grand Ole fuckin' Opry.

live on the moon. don't ask me how.

2011-06-02T01:09:00.000-04:00

Holding on dearly

2011-04-28T18:16:00.001-04:00

(artist unknown)

in memory of jeremy blake

2011-04-20T14:37:00.002-04:00

tide table

2011-04-19T23:50:00.001-04:00

still. dream friends.

2011-01-31T02:42:00.004-05:00

dream friends

(written by Alicia/ date unknown)

i was one of, a part

close to you

a mirror in the sky sent our images

so directly to places unknown of

until the stones of their lonely beaches

were glanced upon with absolute certainty

"hello, i see you now. i must have

been looking over you

for so long before i saw your light."

little stars, we are.

"i promise never to lose you."

but i always lose you, so when

we are apart i will know you in

everything unfamiliar.

The End.

ouch! goodbyes to Trish Keenan

2011-01-21T21:33:00.003-05:00

essay: "my other half"

2011-01-14T18:32:00.000-05:00

by: diana evans

http://www.dianaommoevans.com/dianaevans_journalism_myotherhalf.asp

all i'm saying.

2011-01-04T08:00:00.009-05:00

I am standing in the spare room at my grandmother's house. There are three dried Sunday palms folded into lanyards, tucked behind mirrors and picture frames. On the dresser there is a tiny copy of Millet's painting "The Angelus" depicting two farmers, a woman and man, with heads bent in prayer over the ground, a half filled basket and empty potato sacks evidencing their meager yield. Across the bed there are quilts that I have wrapped myself in since I was a little girl. I remember that there is a photograph of my sister and I sleeping here, covered by these quilts, after I crawled into bed with her one morning when we were children.

I sit on the bed and put my hair into two thick braids. My hair is longer then it has been in 10 years because I haven’t touched it since I cut it off (all of it) when my sister died. I’ve found it to be the most tangible way to measure my time without her. 2 years, 4 months. 16 inches, 2 braids. One friend contends that I am turning my body into a "living shrine" for my sister. Maybe. Maybe I'm just accentuating the fact that it already is.

Because it is one thing to say that "my sister died" but when I join it with the details, "she was my twin," "my identical twin," "she killed herself," "her body was missing for three days in an August heat," the truth transforms into something so terrible that peace becomes just a quaint and silly idea. Tears well up in the eyes of the unfortunate person who asks me if I have any siblings.
Today is Christmas and my sister is gone. When my family manages to talk about her, our words feel like dead air pumped into a very sad balloon that floats away on its solitary trail. Mostly we do not talk about her and I wonder if anyone else notices this omission. Then I think about the sad balloon and wonder if it matters.
The last real conversation I had about my sister was with an acquaintance. Actually, this is probably true for the last five conversations I've had about my sister. Why is this? How has she transformed from an interesting, beautiful human being into a discussion topic for casual conversation?
Nature protests. I have often been wakened by wind that is my sister's indiscernible whisper to me. Inside my mind I reply and scream her name but honestly I can barely say her name out loud when I am alone.

Just a few days ago I was leaving an overlook by Lake Michigan and thinking about prayer. Over the years, I have often thought about the significance of saying things out loud. Does it mean less if we are silent with our hands and eyes and wills folded over a barren ground like the solemn farmers in Millet's painting? As I walked down the dune, I was surprised to find an answer streamed into my mind: "Its okay to pray silently if what you have to say is quiet." I turned and spoke a soft "Goodbye" to Lake and continued my descent.

and this.

2010-12-07T09:01:00.001-05:00

please watch this

2010-12-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

a.m.

2010-11-30T11:31:00.009-05:00

writing with my roommate's new Dog Lover Magnetic Poetry is surprisingly inspiring to me this morning:

I am like a bone licked clean

come with me and walk the streets so here we chainly go our howlfull way

my love fur you

give us some water this hydrant will understand

open up everything is black

no use running outsider

man i am hungry/ devouring my buddy/ is it bad

let me know if you find a way out of here

sweet pee

what my anxious heart told me.

2010-11-17T23:46:00.008-05:00

I saved this poem by Ileana Mălăncioiu over 10 years ago:

My Sister, The Empress

My sister, the empress

became cross with us

she took her crowns and went away

but mother and father believe

that she'll come back some day.

She is sure to come back, says father

why, how could anyone

from one kingdom to another go

with only her slippers on.

But mother has a woman's heart

she says it wouldn't be right

for her daughter to wear a crown and slippers

out in broad daylight.

She'll come tonight, says mother

she'll come tomorrow, says father

I alone know that my sister is gone

forever.

I have seen the place where she has passed

strewn with the seven crowns

so her parents wouldn't be aware

and I tracked down her slippers

in that other kingdom there.

Today, as I was researching Mălăncioiu's poetry online, I found several translations of poetry from her book, "My Sister Beyond." It was written during the time her younger sister was dying of cancer. I'm posting everything I found because these poems are perfect.

It Was Then I Understood

It was then I understood you were all alone
in the dull gray earth,
I myself stood at your head as if
at the other end of the world.

The priest sang the usual mass
the cantors murmured their part too
I watched the earth fall on you in clods
and wondered why I wasn't dying myself.

Father was crying, but lived on,
mother's tears were all dry,
you children didn't know how to mourn yet
and the wind knew not over what it blew.

It swayed the wooden cross on which
it was written you were gone before you were 33
with the same peace it rocked
the grove of trees in bloom.

I remember it well, you were alone,
in the dull grey earth
I myself stood at your head as if
at the other end of the world.

You Sang Out of Tune

Audacious and ignoring the tune you sang
world, world, sister world
and every thing that passed your face
you called by name.

Friends came in turn
mother and father
the priest and a lighted candle
a hoe a shovel.

After this endless misery
from which there's no escape
someone asked our mother
how much pepper to add to the food.

We made pound cakes and cabbage rolls
filled with spiced meat and toasted
with wine your proper departure
and our forgetfulness.

If only I could somehow have helped
chopped greens or just
let myself be chopped
with that sharp chopping knife.

Often I Remember

Often I remember
that gray stone bench
where grandfather sat
where my hands dropped you
where we were children.

I couldn't tell anyone
I watched your head three days
it turned over
it seemed more flat
than other children's heads.

Nothing can hurt you now
you have a grownup head
on which they cut the hair to make it grow
thicker but it wouldn't, your eyes instead
grew into your forehead to see the way.

Your child's head grown large
haunts me from that old bench
of mill-stones.
God, why did you let me drop her
from my arms a second time?

My Sister Beyond

My sister beyond
keeps her head bent
near the horse shot dead
frail and bony
his saddle falls.

I can't stay longer
on that bony back ,
I fell
waving a dry branch
even before I crossed
the fatal boundary.

Let your soul stay
near me
like the saddle I mount
and then dismount in spring
when the grass
of the neglected garden greens.

Silently the horse collects
his scattered skeleton
leaving only his spirit
on the other shore
she mounts his saddle
in her velvet dress
he shows her how to hold her seat.

Night comes to the garden
full of strange horse-breathing
that struggles to continue
even when the sun shines.

I hear his hooves tramp
his nostrils snort
as they snorted in times past.
I find the trace
of his wet rolling
where the grass is greenest.

The grass springs back
the trace vanishes
my sister rides the horse
across the plain
and drinks the water of life.

Meekly I approach
the deserted fountain
a broken balance
this is the place
for the midnight struggle.

My sister is beyond
I see her leave
on her magic horse
that was shot one year ago.

I Watch It Rain

Through a cloudy window I watch it rain
a thousand tiny ripples in the roadside swamp
it doesn't stop, the earth swirls with water
oh, dear God, rain falls on my sister
she can’t escape.

She can’t escape? I hear a voice —
she has escaped for good
all bad and changing weather
don't be afraid, she's fine —
but meekly I pray for sun.

You know, she's very sensitive, I say
and watch uneasily the gray earth,
the rain’s patter on the swamp;
she’ll catch cold,
she always caught colds easily.

"Trouble.. you're eating my heart away, and there's nothing much left of me" C.S.

2010-10-28T15:19:00.004-04:00

Elena Callas

1982 - 2010

http://video.denver.cbslocal.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?clipId1=5347808&flvUri&partnerclipid&at1=News&vt1=v&h1=Family+Remembers+Victim+Killed+By+Suspected+Drunk+Driver&d1=142867&redirUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.denver.cbslocal.com&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv&rnd=10602475

For Paul

2010-10-20T06:36:00.002-04:00

7/15/84 - 10/14/10

painting by Arthur Dove

"tonight the mirror will forgive my face" S.A.

2010-10-09T00:01:00.005-04:00

i'd die for this country if only you'd come back and live in middle America with me. but i'll probably just end up hospitalized with a heart condition (among other things), the way its been skipping beats for you. and speaking of hospitals, i never got a chance to tell you about the old woman with sparkling eyes as i placed her pills upon her tongue as gently as the holy fucking communion. it was more comedy than reverence, but i felt like we were seeing each other very deeply. i wish i could have described that to you and listened to you laugh with me about my extraordinarily sweet moments at that difficult job.

any occasion is or is not cause for celebration for the terminally ill.

The Golden Banana

2010-10-03T17:44:00.010-04:00

Wait, was it there all along!? I thought it was on a different part of the building, or maybe there was more then one. But last week I walked barefoot up the dune after wading in September's Lake Michigan bath water and there it was. I couldn't find it for two years and I know I wasn't the only one who went searching for the Golden Banana with the same result.

Two and a half years ago she casually walked over to that building and told me to look . It was on the door I think, a splotch of paint in the center. I didn't know what I was looking at. She kept giving me a look, eyebrows arched with increasing intensity until finally madly gesturing at it, implying there was something wrong with me when I finally caught on- the last dope to see the hidden image in a Magic Eye picture.

Well shit, girl, that is the finest looking Golden Banana I have ever seen.

2010-09-18T20:29:00.007-04:00

Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost

on the bottom of a

top,

I'm haunted by all

the space that I

will live without

you.

By Richard Brautigan

final

2010-08-21T22:14:00.004-04:00

I saw her gazing into tall grass
off the highway.
It was dark/
I waited a very long time.

In the grass off the highway
her knees are bent
with feet kicked up and swaying
like two drunks trying to kiss.

The sky fades like an antique photograph/
she hums steady and soft
as a waterfall descending the side of a small mountain
or a large hill.

"burn all the maps to your body" r.b.

2010-07-02T19:11:00.003-04:00

i read brautigan's "an unfortunate woman: a journey" over the last couple days and today i learned that he shot himself in the head before this book was ever published. maybe this is disturbing to me because my sister killed herself or maybe because the book itself was about suicide, or more specifically, mentions the suicide of a woman he may have known. either way, it was terribly sad because i felt an immense fondness for him while reading his meandering thoughts and experiences. also, he was very funny- i laughed out loud several times while reading his book particularly at a point in the beginning where he digresses into a rambling about telling his fellow passengers on a train that it is his 47th birthday and them imagining a news headline such as, "train held hostage by man celebrating birthday." its all very hard to explain .. but somehow, i'll miss him.

i read the news today oh boy

2010-04-18T13:43:00.005-04:00

now i'm mournful like a coltrane ballad, shivering despite five blankets, wishing for sleep to knock me out because dreams make more sense to me.

the last conversation we had he laughed out loud because i asked in a secretive kind of way if he'd ever seen someone die.. but the thing was that he had and i had. and i can remember both of us trying to say more, fetching for old things buried in the ground. it was the haunted night at the old miami, the night of my graduation party- the last time a lot of people saw alicia.

evan, i'm writing and hoping it appears on some ancient tablet in the stars and you'll read this and know that i'm sorry.

inspired by the bathroom stalls of childhood

2010-04-14T16:57:00.008-04:00

(Artist: Robin Rhode)

cold blooded meal times

2010-04-05T02:11:00.016-04:00

You're different now.. the difference between ink and graphite, sand and glass. You're edible now, we'll eat you up .. out of desperation or courtesy, trying to take in your secrets with our gnashing teeth and golden eyes. We dine a biblical meal of you with the taste buds of the elderly not the sensitivity of the children we once were, we're hungry. We're sorry we're hungry. We're sorry. We heap salt upon you more by the day and four packets of sugar if we prefer you in the morning. Once we caught a strand of your hair, caught it in the back of our dry throats and maybe we would have died if we hadn't reached back with long fingers to clear the blockage all the while knowing your hair was like a spaghetti noodle that ended with a big kiss in that movie, the one with the dogs. We're starving. We'll lick our own blood off a knife.

2010-03-19T17:26:00.003-04:00

Oh child, lonely as a relic

Come sit upon my shelf and

collect dust sweetly

spilled upon the room.

Hands will hesitate over

paradise faintly

then move away again.

2010-03-19T17:16:00.004-04:00

"As of a dream,

the curiosity of old crowds and idle luxuries

will collect around you.

Your memory and senses

will be nourishment for your creativity.

What will become of the world when you leave?

No matter what happened,

no trace of now will remain."

-Arthur Rimbaud-

2010-02-09T13:42:00.007-05:00

"When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not." -Haruki Murakami

18 months like 18 years.

She can be a memory that startles you with big sad eyes.

Will they find you less and less?

Or is it what makes your heart fill and empty, over and over again?

story telling

2010-01-31T20:11:00.005-05:00

" Ты всегда рядом " - " You're always close "

spot the sun doggie

2010-01-12T13:36:00.004-05:00

on the highway from GR to Holland- my sorry attempt to photograph a halo around the sun

African proverb

2010-01-10T13:45:00.005-05:00

(Creeping Fig leaf at Belle Isle Conservatory, Detroit)

"the world is a beehive, we all come through the same door and live in different cells"

2009-12-15T23:51:00.002-05:00

You, snowflake

melting upon my face a million times

symmetry going going gone

Trying to keep a memory to forget

and you on the telephone line

I'm in a hospital, hallways, mountains, roadside

never there

and never leaving

Melting there

and here, evaporating

2009-12-09T18:51:00.007-05:00

Thinking of you.

(Okeeffe)

vespers

2009-11-24T14:29:00.009-05:00

i saw this last winter on PBS and it reminded me so much of alicia. she was such an amazing dancer, more than ballet- improv, choreography, whatever. i miss her dancing.

stillness is the move

2009-11-20T17:36:00.000-05:00

we sold poppies in remembrance

2009-11-15T20:51:00.002-05:00

Because these are buried in the comments from last February, I wanted to re-post them...

alaina said...

i love how she would do anything with me at any time, and would act crazy with me in ways that no one else would or could. i've never had so much fun.
i also can't believe that the word verification on this page is "peeshi." because that's really close to what i used to call her.

February 20, 2009 12:42 AM

janet said...

There is so much I loved about Alicia. One of the main things I think about her was that she was a sweetheart. When I talked with her she listened and she gave you the feeling that she wanted to know what you thought. It was such a wonderful characteristic. She was curious enough about the world that she would take an interest that was genuine in just about anything you wanted to talk about. I miss that. My time with her was much too brief. I miss her.

February 21, 2009 4:38 PM

Michael said...

I've written this piece numerous times in my head. I was trying to think why it's taken me a while to get it down on paper. I'm feeling like it's hard to capture and contain memories of Alicia, because it seems like when you can say one thing about her, you can also say the opposite about her. For instance, I was looking at some photos of her yesterday, and you can say that she had a delicate beauty, and that and her breathless and melodic voice lent her a fragile quality, yet she was strong and determined and challenged you to be honest in your dealings with her. And this summer, when she came with us to meet extended family (there were 14 of us in all), she was a part of everything--running in the traditional 4th of July road race (you have to get up EARLY to participate), sitting on the curb downtown at 2:00 in the afternoon to watch the pretty lame parade, and showing an ease in being with people, the majority of whom were strangers to her. Yet, even in her ability to connect with people, she carried with her an abiding loneliness that makes me tear up when I think of it.

There's a song that has rumbled around in my head almost since the moment I found out that Alicia had died, and as Anna and Dan and I were driving back from her funeral, the sun was setting over the beautiful countryside of northern Michigan, and I finally put it in the CD player. It was written by Jackson Browne (I'm showing my age here) after his first wife had committed suicide. It is a bittersweet comfort....."For a Dancer":
Keep a fire burning in your eye, pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down.
I don't remember losing track of you, you were always dancing in and out of view,
I must have thought you'd always be around, always keeping things real by playing the clown;
Now you're nowhere to be found.
I don't know what happens when people die,
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as i try.
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear that I can't sing, I can't help listening.
And I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round, crying as they ease you down,
'Cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing, dancing our sorrow away, no matter what fate chooses to play.
Just do the steps that you've been shown by everyone you've ever known until the dance becomes your very own.
In the end there is one dance you'll do alone.
Keep a fire for the human race,
Let your prayers go drifting into space,
You never know what will be coming down.
Perhaps a better world is drawing near,
Just as easily it could all disappear, along with whatever meaning you might have found.
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around.
Go on and make a joyful sound.
Into a dancer you have grown from a seed somebody else has thrown.
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own.
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go,
May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know.

Alicia threw in our direction her seeds of creativity and love and intelligence and the mystery of it all, and we must dance those seeds into bloom....But--I still miss her, and always will.

My love always,
Kathy

February 23, 2009 7:58 PM

Bronwyn said...

I wrote this a day after I heard of Alicia's death. It's all true.

She once told me that cigarettes would be there for me when no one else would. I only remembered this after I smoked cigarette after cigarette trying to numb myself from the tragedy, and I am not a smoker. I close my eyes and I see her swinging. She once told me that Andy Warhol emptied an entire bottle of wine onto a table because he was so entranced by the pouring liquid. Of it’s beauty. It’s fluidity. A metaphor for her life. Her life is liquid, washing over those surrounding her. She entrances us, until she’s all gone. Empty. Swinging.
Alicia liked to graffiti. She painted a golden banana on a bathroom near a beach. When I heard of her death I got in a car and drove to that bathroom. It wasn’t there. I drove to another beach, another bathroom, and another, and another. I was a crazy person circling bathrooms searching for her golden banana. As I arrived at the last beach I could think of the sun was setting. I ran down to the surf and lit up, wondering if she could see me. I sat and watched the sun disappear. Saddened by the fact that she would never see a new day, and angry that she choose it to be that way. Every puff of smoke I put into my lungs I wanted to scream out. I let myself. I screamed. I felt reckless, like I wanted to jump from high places, or drive fast, and get high, and get drunk, and pour, and be entranced by her again.
The last night I spent with her she gave me one of her paintings. On it is a golden banana. It had just been sitting on my desk, forgotten. When I got home and was all alone I paced and cried. I threw things. And then I saw the banana. I did find it after all, just not on a bathroom. I picked up the little painting and turned it over, wishing to see her name written in her hand, instead I found the title, “I forgot to mail Bono my birth certificate.” That was Alicia. She was funny. I couldn’t sit in my empty home any longer. I took the painting and got into my car and drove to Meijer. It was one in the morning. I walked through the empty aisles under the fluorescents lights with dark circles under my eyes. My image on the outside was an understatement of how I felt on the inside. I found picture frames. I found golden spray paint. I found the check out. A woman looked at me and said, “Isn’t it a little late to be shopping?”
“Can’t sleep.” I replied and walked out. I wanted to be with someone. I felt alone. And yet I wanted to be. I wanted my loneliness and sadness to cover me. It felt right. Any other emotion would just be wrong. When I arrived home I tore off the plastic casing around the frame, hurting my hands as I bent back the metal pieces that kept the backing tight against the glass. I brought the back piece into my garage and spray painted it gold, getting it on my hands in the process. My recklessness humored me and I had the sudden urge to spray paint my car gold. I suppressed it. When the paint dried I placed her art the middle of the golden background and reassembled the frame. It is my tribute to her. The frame faces me now as I type. The only other way I can think of to her honor her life is to live, and I will. Everyday.

Bronwyn

February 24, 2009 12:34 PM

love is forever... said...

I am riding in a car with a friend yesterday when I say aloud what I feel inside a thousand times a day, "I miss Alicia." That simple statement funnels all the chaos of my emotions into one concise statement of simple complexity.... I MISS ALICIA. She is the first and last thought of every day and fills the space with her presence anytime there is a pause in my day. Sometimes it feels like I put my thoughts and feelings of Alicia in a package on a shelf of my heart so that I can function.... breathe in , breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. But even the effort of pushing her away keeps her even more present. Alicia is the background for all my thoughts. My memories of her infuse into all my work with parents of young children. My hopes and dreams for the future have adjusted to now accomodate the thought of "What would Alicia do... or think... or say?" Because she always had alot to do, and think, and say..... and much of it was meaningful, and insightful and oh, so very brilliant.

There is a very large hole in my heart that no amount of giving, caring, helping, or loving will ever fill. But because of her and in honor of her, I will try. And if in the effort I find some of the hope and love and peace that so eluded Alicia, I will have carried her gifts, her very being into a better world....

February 26, 2009 9:55 PM

MOCAD said...

Didn't really know each other ... I know you and I know the effect she had on you. I was always in awe. I was so intimidated to meet her that when it happened it didn't go so well. She encouraged you to be friends which, when you told me, really touched me. It was sweet and our short conversation the night we hung out made me laugh warmly ... and, I think, she was laughing with me too ... or perhaps just at me. Either way I felt like I had arrived in some way. I was OK because she seemed to be giving me her OK.

That was nice and it has always stuck with me, as did the power of her words in her letter to you ... the heartbreak I felt for you, the weight of her sadness was too much for me.

I understood her part in your life as much as I ever could right then

March 8, 2009 1:37 PM

LocaWetta said...

A L I C I AAAAIIII... ALICIA!!!! Amazing Love Intensely Covered In Awe

Though my personal contact was brief, I saw her love in action when you brught her with you to Takin' It To The Streets. It was a love I had seen in you many times before... Today Alicia lives on in the hearts, minds and souls of all whose life she touched... be it a moment or a lifetime. The expressions shared here tell of the woman who lives on in spirit and in truth for she has left her indelible mark that no amount of time will erase! It is her greatest work of art on the canvas of the soul.

March 9, 2009 4:07 AM

alaina said...

In early Augusta of 2008, I traveled to Maryland to attend the wedding of my favorite cousin. The wedding was a blast, so low key, friendly, and cool. It was great. James couldn’t come because he had just started a new job and couldn’t get the time off, but other than that it was perfect.

Not long after I got back, only a few days after, my mom called me and told me they had found alicia’s car, running at a rest stop but they couldn’t find her. This news was alarming, yes, but we didn’t immediately panic. A few days later, james and I were sitting on the couch on our laptops as usual, when his phone rang. After a few seconds, he handed me the phone and told me to go in the bedroom and talk to my mom.
I will never forget my mom weakly choking out the words “they found alicia’s body…”

I remember as a kid, the plots to extend our visits so we wouldn’t have to part. I remember faking tears and praying for tornados. I remember flashlight tag, making forts in the forest, camping trips, splashing in hotel pools, rustic cabin stays, and countless other happy childhood memories. I remember the indescribable “searching for uncle bob.” when we finally found him, I wished we hadn’t.
I remember when she moved in with my family. At the time, I was in a relationship with james long distance while living with my parents and going to Hope college. She moved into to the tiny house with only two bedrooms, so I offered to let her stay with me. as in, in my room with me. As in, in my bed with me. but it was alicia, so i was totally ok with it. and though the living situation turned out to have it’s share of challenges, it was awesome. oh the things we would do together. Like going to get dessert at denny’s at odd hours of the night. Or blasting the theme from 2001: a space odyssey while halving a watermelon and eating it with spoons. Or starting a white female rapping duo known as will’b and co-pay. Or watching ER and sex and the city DVDs for hours on end. Or buying soy nog from Meijer's and chugging it in the parked car. At one point she even started running with me, and it turned out she really liked it. she said it was the one time she felt like she was doing something good just for herself. We also did this silly bellydance workout DVD, called dolphina’s goddess workout.
The next summer, though, my life was slated to change. I loved james, and I wanted to be done with the whole long distance thing. I wanted to move down south and transfer schools to be closer to him. He had moved up there for a year, and now I was going to move down there. So in may, he drove up there and stayed for about a month. This living arrangement was very cramped, and james and Alicia weren’t exactly two peas in a pod. They can both be very opinionated and touchy, so sometimes they didn’t get along. After that month, james and I packed up my stuff and moved to Georgia. I cannot say that I regret this choice, but I also cannot deny that things with me and Alicia were never quite the same after I left. We were still close, but there was nothing like those few precious months when we lived together. It was like something perfect that can never be duplicated. Is it too cheesy to say that I will treasure it always, now that she’s gone? Either way, I will. Other than my few visits back to Michigan, we largely lost contact.

My world was shattered by that phone call, and the news that she was dead. I flew to Detroit for the funeral. It was torture. I felt and still feel so awful that I did not value my time with her more, and that I let us drift apart after I moved out. Yes, james is absolutely important to my life, but did I have to put that before her, so blatantly? We always talked about doing dolphina’s goddess workout again, and we never did. Now we never will.
Her death broke my heart in a big way. I thought temporarily breaking up with james and losing my dog hurt, and they did. I don’t want to minimize the pain of those events, because I think that pain was very valid. But this was of another caliber. I don’t know how else to say it.
Like so many people in her life, I was deeply affected by her death. I was not in denial. No, quite the opposite: it felt all too real. I wished it were a dream but I knew it was not. I think alicia’s death is a big part of why I stopped writing. This is the first time I have written at length about the experience. It has been some seven moths since she died, and even now this is very hard for me write, and I’m crying as I type this and forcing the words out. It’s like the pain in my heart was too suffocating for me to put it to words. But i suppose there comes a time for facing it.

March 17, 2009 2:43 AM

I screama

2009-11-12T19:14:00.002-05:00

2009-11-07T13:27:00.005-05:00

"There is no death of anything, save in appearance. That which passes over from essence to nature seems to be birth, and what passes over from nature to essence seems to be death. Nothing really is originated, and nothing ever perishes, but only now comes into sight and now vanishes." Apolonius of Tyano, 1st Century AD

When did she tell me about bird nests? It must have been autumn. When leaves depart trees and show what has been hiding in the limbs since spring. She loved the idea of unveiling, yet was one of the few people I've known that could see what was 'underneath' without needing it revealed. Another quote comes to mind from Lies My Teacher Told Me, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." There are so many true things that are invisible and I think that she is one of them.

Hello ween

2009-10-31T00:00:00.002-04:00

[edward gorey]

above the treeline

2009-10-24T22:11:00.011-04:00

In the North,

when fingers touch between links on a fence

wildflowers spread across the tundra.

The land, your open palm.

An uncontrolled space,

the cavity beside ruins of a house fills with debris.

Tall grass blows from a wind that has no trees to capture it.

(Dedicated to Ada Blackjack Johnson)

warpaint

2009-10-24T02:04:00.001-04:00

Fall

2009-10-13T12:31:00.005-04:00

(Alicia in Fall 2006/ Picasso crow)

more ArtPrize (at UICA)

2009-10-07T21:40:00.015-04:00

Information about this digital installation (last 3 pictures) is somewhere around HERE

ArtPrize (Grand Rapids)

2009-10-03T17:40:00.013-04:00

*thanks to Alaina G.H.P.K. for the pictures

temple of love

2009-09-25T02:10:00.004-04:00

new mexico/ winter 2008

michigan/ spring 2008

michigan/ summer 2009

(Nat'l Geo picture)

detroit/ winter 2008

live in this

2009-09-18T01:26:00.003-04:00

Idaho sprinklers in 2008

An Afterthought: fuck august.

2009-09-09T23:39:00.004-04:00

So here is an essay by the man known for introducing Bob Dylan to The Beatles and as the original manager of The Velvet Underground (among other things)... it should be especially noted, he died on August 1st, 2005. Endless gratitude to the words that help us understand.

August Blues
By Al Aronowitz

August is the month when wars start. It’s when the water dries up and the spirit begins to wither. Insomniacs pull down their shades and lock themselves in their rooms in August. Lifelong friends have fist fights. People feel like they’re going to burst. Sometimes they do.

World War I started in August, or just about. The Austro-Hungarian Army began bombarding Belgrade on July 29, 1914, not quite August, but then August sometimes begins early. World War II didn’t quite start in August either. A German pocket battleship anchored alongside the harbor fortifications while on a good will call to the Polish port of Gdynia let loose with a broadside at dawn of Sept. 1, 1939, but then August sometimes lasts for weeks after you’ve ripped it off the calendar. It drags on and on like some kind of insanity that can only be snapped away by the first crisp shock of autumn.

The sailing ships used to get becalmed in August. August is when dogs go mad. American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated by one of his own subordinates in August. This is the month when the sale of tranquilizers goes up. Corporate executives get their heads chopped off. Groups break up. Organizations fizzle out. August is when you start seeing things. The stars fall in August. You wake to days with the feeling you’ve already lived through them. People pass out in the street and on airplanes. The moon talks to you. August is the month of visions.

My father died in August. It was years ago. We were all standing around him when he gasped his last breath, emaciated on a bed of cancer. My three sisters and I each kissed him on the face and cried. I do not mean to say that August has cornered the market on tragedy. You can have fun in August; people die all year round. Shall I tell you about the other night in Central Park, the sky lit by a sliver of a moon, the weather air-conditioned by the first cool, abortive breath of the fall? August may end early this year.

On the park drive, bikers stood around in knots, talking about good times, holding onto their handlebars like nannies gossiping while little kids tugged at their hands. It was a better place to meet than at some bar. Outside the Schaefer Music Festival at the Wollman Rink, couples were stretched out on the grass, some on blankets. Others walked hand-in-hand. Bootleggers hawked albums like dealers selling drugs at some pop festival. There were pretzel pushcarts and ices pushcarts and a quiet carnival feeling of the kind of romance you see in pictures of some park in Paris on a gay, colorful night.

Inside the rink, the dusk darkened slowly while Carly Simon sang her hits in the skyscraper voice, as big and strong as her New York City. Backstage, promoter Ron Delsener was all dressed up for a Friar’s Club meeting. Ron had been hit early August. The last week in July, one of his security men had been stabbed to death at Ron’s Who concert at Forest Hills. A day or so later, one of the backstage crew at Madison Square Garden had fallen to his death while hanging rigging for Ron’s Steve Stills show. Ron himself had fallen sick the night of the show, put to bed by an inner-ear infection. August is when unexplainable fevers come. Nagging aches and mysterious pains visit your body. August has to be suffered.

The night was gentle. There was no strain. I laughed out loud when David Steinberg told about how God put a fly in Jezebel’s head to buzz as a punishment every time she lusted after a man. Jezebel liked the buzzing. The first girl I ever made it with was born in August. We used to break up just in time for her birthday every year. August is when the ocean dizzies you. August is when you find yourself drowning in your own head.

I went broke and lost my house in August some five years ago. It was almost August when Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas tower and shot down forty-nine people, killing seventeen, sniping at random through the ramparts. August is when Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August. August is when Congress first passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Women turn into witches in August. I remember once I refused to buy a flower from an old lady selling them in the Nite Owl on Third Street. I was managing a group called the Myddle Class then, and they were onstage. The old lady gave me a dirty look and our sound system immediately went dead.

I suppose it has to do with the sun and the heat and the planets and the stars. Brian Epstein died in August. So did Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, although their August stretched through an Indian summer. It’s no accident the Jewish New Year begins then. August sometimes lasts until the sound of the ram’s horn. People move in September. School starts. Somehow the pulse revives. People begin to think about lighting fires for winter. Finally, August lets go like the leaves from the trees. And the weirdness ends.

(The Blacklisted Journalist)

food chain gangs

2009-09-06T19:07:00.010-04:00

pic from- http://lphotodesigns.com/photoblog/

greed ate abundance.

someone told me that

in Haiti they're coming up with new words

to name how hungry they are.

you are

the object of a great hunt.

carry on.

i think i'll stay hungry.

savin lives

2009-08-31T02:31:00.002-04:00

[http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808435938/photo/490186]

want not

2009-08-27T18:43:00.013-04:00

these lovelies by: Egon Schiele

What can a person really want after accepting that whatever it is, it's a far cry from what they actually want but is impossible to have? Is it raining out there?

howl at the moon

2009-08-17T14:53:00.006-04:00

I Like America and America Likes Me 1974

"Joseph Beuys’s most famous Action took place in May 1974, when he spent three days in a room with a coyote. After flying into New York, he was swathed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery where the Action took place, without having once touched American soil. As Beuys later explained: ‘I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.’ The title of the work is filled with irony. Beuys opposed American military actions in Vietnam, and his work as an artist was a challenge to the hegemony of American art.

Beuys’s felt blankets, walking stick and gloves became sculptural props throughout the Action. In addition, fifty new copies of the Wall Street Journal were introduced each day, which the coyote acknowledged by urinating on them. Beuys regularly performed the same series of actions with his eyes continuously fixed on the coyote. At other times he would rest or gather the felt around him to suggest the figure of a shepherd with his crook. The coyote’s behaviour shifted throughout the three days, becoming cautious, detached, aggressive and sometimes companionable. At the end of the Action, Beuys was again wrapped in felt and returned to the airport.

For Native Americans, the coyote had been a powerful god, with the power to move between the physical and the spiritual world. After the coming of European settlers, it was seen merely as a pest, to be exterminated. Beuys saw the debasement of the coyote as a symbol of the damage done by white men to the American continent and its native cultures. His action was an attempt to heal some of those wounds. ‘You could say that a reckoning has to be made with the coyote, and only then can this trauma be lifted’, he said."

Quoted from: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room4.shtm

Waiting for Her

2009-08-14T16:10:00.005-04:00

A friend shared this poem she wrote:

Waiting for Her
August 4, 2009

I watched your first steps, first words, first days
Always so much more than someone else to me
When rains came and wind
Too much for you to hold all together
Almost dead in a crack house
Your heart beating again while a fist hits hard
Breathe god damn it. Breathe.
Returning on the freeway
Exits whist by
“I don’t know where I am” you’d say
“I fucked up…again”
The high daze still in your voice
“Just come home baby” I whisper
Into the airwaves between us
“Just keep driving, find your way back here”
A prayer, my voice a line to hold
You did. You always did.
And I would fold you into bed
Next to you, I’d say your name, touch your hair
While sleep dragged you down for days
Black with lights out I’d wait
For you to return to me
You did. You always did
How can you have slipped away?
Just like that. One day, and gone.
“They found her body”
Her body
Her body
Words I never want to hear.
That echo forever, ever, ever
“Just come home baby” I whisper
To nothing
No one
And you don’t
Not this time
Not ever
Again
What did I fail to say?

circle garden

2009-08-04T12:35:00.006-04:00

This is a circle garden with the northwest corner dedicated to Alicia. The bone tree is driftwood from Lake Michigan. Appropriately a work in progress and very, very beautiful.

august

2009-08-01T01:23:00.005-04:00

august is the hellmouth of summer. i'm sorry. It is Awful. it hurts. let the season reach its boiling pitch in 9 days and then i'll consider letting it slip into innocuous heat.

2009-07-24T05:22:00.006-04:00

The Earth in Its arcane wisdom

offers no explanations.

Only wind,

the plainclothes seraphs

to fall leaves upon our graves.

And rain

to revive those ancient scents,

indecipherable.

Finally, there is fire to eat what remains.

The fierce and lovely savage

to replenish what grew us.

Oh, the Earth.

Its expansive silence is the only thing

that can absorb every sorrow.

(Dedicated to J.)

in other words

2009-07-22T01:39:00.014-04:00

Farewell Reel by Patti Smith:

Its been a hard time

And when it rains

It rains on me

The sky just opens

And when it rains

It pours

I walk alone

Assaulted it seems

By tears of heaven

And darling I can't help

Thinking those tears are yours

Our wild love came from above

And wilder still

Is the wind that howls

Like a voice that knows its gone

'Cause darling you died

And well I cried

But I'll get by

Salute our love

And send you a smile

And move on

So darling farewell
all will be well
and then all will be fine
the children will rise
strong and happy be sure
cause your love flows
and the corn still grows
and God only knows
we're only given
as much as the heart can endure

But I don't know why
but when it rains
it rains on me
the sky just opens
and when it rains
it pours

But I look up
and a rainbow appears
like a smile from heaven
and darling I can't
help thinking that smile
is yours

*Click here to listen*

(look in the upper right corner to play)

PS: I need to say this- I really hate the line "God only knows we're only given as much as the heart can endure".. it seems so contrary to Alicia's death. Obviously, suicide is a response to a person being given more than the heart can endure. However, I was inspired to edit the post to include the lyrics in full, particularly because of the last verse.

-08/17/09

DAydreams of a final resting place

2009-06-17T01:45:00.019-04:00

Summertime.

The swirling wishes and daydreams of a final resting place. Like traveling towards heaven and later discovering I'd ended in purgatory.

Nighttime.

The dreams that will wake us and keep us lying motionless, necks cramped, as reeling images are seared into memory.

A controlled burn.

Memories of memories. Imitations of memories. Visions opening like the liner notes of an old familiar record. And there as the centerfold, a picture of Her. Intimate, just of her face. Lovely, faded into a grayish-blue with a fuzzy Polaroid quality.

If this picture actually existed and I’d seen it a year ago I would not have realized how sad it was. But now I can see that her head is resting against the bed and weighted with thoughts too heavy to lift, just like mine is now. Pillows soaked in the invisible bleeding messes of yearning, obsessive thinking. Faint smell of our singed wisps of hair.

oh, sister

2009-05-28T18:12:00.001-04:00

witness to Purity.

2009-05-28T17:59:00.006-04:00

it was Purity. the energy of a drunk who insists on dipping her glass into street puddles for their oily rainbows. She picked up cats from the dotted yellow line in darkness and traffic to protect them from a pounding death. poured tears onto their limp and hissing bodies until they started to forget the debt owed to them. I'm not making this up. but its only believable as much as you believe your ancestors were ever children and you can see them and imagine what they felt exactly.

ha.

2009-05-19T03:34:00.005-04:00

THe other day my friend told me that she had a dream and in the dream Alicia was laughing. The laugh was so clear, so distinct, that it woke her up. Its something I've thought of many times since Alicia died...her laugh. Though people often mistook our voices over the phone or noted their similarity, no one ever told me we had the same laugh. I loved Alicia's laugh. It was a slow rumbling under a sly grin. So she was sad but it didn't stop her from laughing. Her sense of humor was pretty incredible- it could shred you (though usually more self-deprecating) yet it was kind. The rare sort that comes from intelligence that shakes off its vanity.

spring

2009-05-10T22:53:00.007-04:00

"The wonder of the world,

the beauty, and the power,

the shapes of things,

their colors, lights and shades,

these I saw.

Look ye also, while life lasts."

-Anonymous, from an English gravestone

Saturday, May 9th, 2009- 9 months and yet another Full Moon. The predictability of spring can't kill its wonder.

We dedicated a trail in her name at the Michigan Nature Association's Timberland Swamp sanctuary in northern Oakland County.

In the evening, I went to see Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theatre. A little late, we walked in just as he started singing "Oh, like a bird on the wire, Like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free..."

The whole night was like a collective prayer as he knelt upon the stage and sang to us.

"Didn't Ask to Be Born"

2009-04-01T08:07:00.012-04:00

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1288 : (sisters, running away, drugs, freedom, generational disonnect, suicide, worst case scenarios.. eerie similarities.)

bodyish harm

2009-03-22T09:12:00.026-04:00

Body is the word i remember. Body signifies the initiation of death. i have heard of a belief in which the death of a person is a process- first, her physical death and later, with the death of the last person who knew her. the memory must also die and then death is complete. this is stillness.
there is a body we inhabit, be it prison or paradise, under laws of origin, genetics, growth, disease, abuse.
there are the bodies we touch. and the ones we don't.
there is frailty, anomaly, corpse.
( the body stripped and bound to tubes and monitors, encircled by white coats muttering cavalierly, fumbling around this perverted ritual of death. a body to bathe and heave into a white bag carefully concealed by white linen.
plasticized Chinese bodies. stretched and distorted. or carefully arranged, a lady with a handbag and high heels, whose abdomen just happens to be gaping open. )
there is an end to bodies. crushed, eaten, burned, rotting into dirt. even ice melts one day.
And there is the abstract body of alicia. beginning as the same sparks and cells as me. ending as an ashy residue thrown into the lake.

A.L.I.C.Iiiiii.Alicia.

2009-02-17T19:31:00.023-05:00

Say it like you're saying Gloria. like Patti Smith. Alicia.
you're in my heart. you're in my dreams. you're in my soul.
You are a strong wind
and I am a tree.
blown by you, bent by you
(the birds won't sit in my branches)
Alone you are silent, but everything you touch sounds your call.
What do you say?
I heard a scream.
there is also a whisper to the lovely sky.

The Moon

2009-02-07T14:43:00.017-05:00

[I took this picture last June in the field across from Alicia's old apartment. There were storms passing north and south of Holland.. the sky was ominous, magnificent. I made her come and watch the clouds with me. ]

February 9th is 6 months since Alicia died. It will be a full moon. I wanted to post something that would honor the day. Alicia wrote this for a class last spring. Its perfect- a poignant expression of her thoughts on death through interpretation of Cat Power's song, The Moon.

The Moon by Cat Power, from The Greatest:

The moon is not only beautiful

It is so far away

The moon is not only ice cold

It is here to stay

When I lay me down

Will you still be around

When they put me six feet underground

Will the big bad beautiful you be around

Everyone says they know you

Better than you know who

Everyone says they own you

More than you do

When I lay me down

Will you still be around

When they put you six feet underground

Will the big bad beautiful moon be around

Cuz the moon is not only beautiful

It is so far away

The moon is not only ice cold

It is here to stay

Everyone says they know you

Better than you know who

Everyone says they own you

More than you do

Poetry and music can act as immediate expressions of the ineffable parts of our lives, heir open-endedness allowing one’s true thoughts and feelings to surface. When I die, I want people to know how I felt about dying, that I accepted death and tried to give myself to it as humbly as possible. “The Moon” could be my epitaph because it is a simple, beautiful song that uses the moon as symbol of death by invoking its mystery and distance. I share her sentiment that death is emotional, yet ambiguous and undefined.
In this song, the moon Cat Power sings about is not the moon visited by astronauts, but the moon all of us here on earth look up at on a clear night. It is the mythical moon that holds hidden shelves of our unfulfilled dreams. It is familiar because it is always above us, hanging in the sky. It is not invasive, does not interfere with our lives here on earth, yet the very sight of it is a comfort and we revel in its beauty. Orbiting the earth in its own constant cycle, the moon abides by the earth’s laws, but remains far away. Even as the moon is indifferent to our human lives, it watches over us, waits for us. Many songs have been written about the moon. It is associated with the feminine side of existence, darkness, the occult, and emotions. Like a person only has one death, the earth only has one moon.
When Cat Power sings “The Moon”, she invokes all of its history and metaphors. I believe she uses the moon to sing about death. Her description of the moon as distant and cold recalls the mystery of death. What she chooses to not say about the moon is equally powerful. She does not refer to death through the moon as a friend or neighbor, a warm and heavenly place where our friends and loved ones who have passed away wait for us. The moon is far away; it evades us. How can we know its landscape? Cat Power tells us the moon is here to stay, describing it as something infinite. It gives us perspective on our human existence, that maybe we are not as important as we like to think. However, it is also comforting to know that there is something large and mysterious that will embrace us one day, take each of us back into itself. This reminds me of the Hours when Virginia Wolfe says to her little niece that when we die, we go back to the place from which we came. I have always loved an idea that brushes against the infinite while appealing to reason. Before death and after death are places beyond imagination; it makes sense to think of them as one in the same, life just a brief moment of consciousness until we slip back into oblivion. It is such a beautiful nightmare we are dreaming together.
Cat Power sings to the moon, questioning if it will be there after she is in the ground. In this moment, she reveals that for her, the moon, like death is not a destination. Rather, it is something that happens to all living things, and therefore has a life of its own. The most direct reference Cat Power makes to death is when she calls the moon big and bad. Death scares us. Fear of death is a fundamental sorrow of human existence. However, death can also be a comfort or a strike of pity for a wretched life. It can be beautiful, triumphant. It is fair because it always allows for new life. In a forest of ash, wildflowers will grow. An empty house can become the home for a new family.
Cat Power asks if the moon will be around after she is in the ground because she wants to know that life will go on without her. It is a selfless desire. She will miss the world, in spite of all its absurdity. When she talks about everyone who says they know who the Moon is and says they own it, this seems to be a comment on how many people act as if they know what death is and what to expect in the afterlife. She calls out this arrogance and attempts to give the power back to the moon, back to death. When I die, I want to leave the world with this kind of grace. I want to humbly place myself in the hands of death and accept whatever comes next.
One of the most interesting parts of this song is when Cat Power sings about the moon’s death: “When they put you six feet underground / will the big, bad beautiful you (moon) be around?” The moon is outliving its own death, and in a poetic kind of way, this expresses the idea that death itself will die one day. At the same time, she sees death as an infinite force that outlasts everything, even its own end. Death is inescapable. Death owns us and it owns itself, and in the end everything must give in to it. There is an undercurrent of Christianity, a reference to Revelations and the end of the earth. This theme of death’s end is also reminiscent of John Donne’s sonnets. However, Cat Power frames this idea as a question, expressing her own uncertainty about the nature of death.
The beauty of this song is in its simplicity and I hope this would be comforting to those I left behind in this worldly existence. My view on death can often be bleaker than the poetry of this song, but in death I think we must be selfless. We must give the last remnants of our lives to those who outlive us. This is part of the cycle of life, a cycle that is reflected in the moon as it rises and sets in the sky.

The end.

in some u-nee-verses [flat blackness]

2009-02-06T20:05:00.013-05:00

The last books I read before Alicia died were Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, which begins with The Golden Compass. A central aspect of people in Lyra’s world [the main character and heroine] is that they have daemons [Lyra’s daemon is named Pantalaimon]. A daemon is the constant companion of his or her corresponding human. They are animal shape-shifters until the transition between childhood and adolescence when they take on their final form- a creature that portrays the truest and deepest nature of a person. Usually a daemon is the opposite sex, of a similar demeanor, fiercely protective, and acts as an amalgamation of intuition and conscience. Humans are bonded so closely with their daemons that there is a limit on the distance that can separate them, lest they both die. The only beings that can separate from their daemons are witches who possess special magic.
When I was reading the series I identified a strong similarity in the intimacy of a human-daemon relationship and a twin relationship. What drew my attention was the act of separation of a human from her daemon. When Pullman described the horror of this separation, a crime forbidden and taboo, I immediately understood. In the first novel, Lyra finds a town haunted by a boy wandering about without his daemon and rescues him, though he soon dies. The appearance of any person without their daemon is as awful as if they were physically damaged beyond recognition. Humans without daemons are considered as frightful as zombies; they are beings without true will, identity, or soul. Later in the book Lyra is put into a machine intended to slice apart her and Pantalaimon’s connection. Though they escape, the panic and torment experienced by each of them made me think, “This is what it must be like to lose a twin." Still, trying to imagine something so terrible usually just leads to flat blackness- impenetrable, mysterious.

Now that Alicia is dead I often try to imagine what is was like before and find myself reaching out into the same flat blackness.

2009-01-28T00:03:00.003-05:00

i miss alicia

#9

2009-01-25T23:28:00.016-05:00

It was once a home and it holds as anything that once contained life would cling to its form.

The ceiling’s caved in, peeling exteriors lean into the center, holding the collective weight until... well, we know that end. The ward is full of these makeshift graves.

Front steps remain as little monuments. Forgotten soldiers. Grandmothers.

A silent place, no bouquet of synthetic flowers to lighten the vastness of this destruction.

You stand still to feel the history of this place, it’s sadness. The ground is grey and boggy, below there’s an aquifer of water and blood. You are touching the origins of your own body.

How could this have happened?

And you realize that though it isn’t right or good, it follows the order that nothing can stand up forever.

[photos- New Orleans, May 2007]

alicia's paintings [old. haunts.]

2009-01-24T20:21:00.019-05:00

pictures [impermanence]

2009-01-18T16:40:00.028-05:00

To be deconstructed...

2009-01-13T17:37:00.005-05:00

time to finish the job. let us smooth the withered body into its small stone center.

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood" -Nietzsche

no return

2009-01-07T23:32:00.011-05:00

alicia. she was here just a moment ago. the loss persists. it is like time traveling- sometimes its as if the present is the future and the past is the present.. a stream of time. it carries us, but our minds drift regardless of the current.
in the post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later, a woman talks about her thoughts of never reading a book that wasn't already written, seeing a film that wasn't already made.. it is something like this with alicia. everything between us, between her and the world, is written, shot, done.
i can talk, write, think about her all day forever but its not her. shes not coming back.

a woman. a vapor.

2009-01-06T14:38:00.004-05:00

"...open and secret, which we understand only by love and touch only by virtue. And when we attempt to describe such a woman she disappears like a vapor." K.G.

cat faces

2009-01-05T20:29:00.008-05:00

they ran out of lemonade.

(alicia and little girl/ street vendor in june 2008)

Air lifts, Water softens

2008-12-29T20:24:00.005-05:00

I see seals melting into Pacific waves
They are silky &black,
with eyes large and pleading.

The water is deep &dark
We will look for you there,
in the darkness of the waves.

All along the beach
trash &shells and fish &weeds.

The salty air lifts us,
the water softens.

the way it isn't

2008-12-24T03:57:00.005-05:00

sometimes i feel like the one who died. and alicia is alive. somewhere.

another Day to feed the Grieving Monster

2008-12-18T01:39:00.008-05:00

December 18th, 6 months from the last day I saw my sister. the day I ended up in Madison and rode bikes all night with the local "fuckin' bike club." She thought that was so funny. I thought I would be sleeping in my car.
June 18th, a Full MOon, I woke up and she was already at work- I cleaned her kitchen, got music for the road, then went to see her.
She was working across the street from Uncommon Grounds, at a small jewelry store. I went to work with her a few days while I was staying there- she would put on Bobby Dylan and I would sit behind the counter with her, get us breakfast and coffee from across the street. I can't explain what we were Together, something dear, sisterly, and more... I cherish these moments. more than I can express. I remember how charming and lovely she was selling turquoise to tourists. I thought, I could never do this... what seemed indulgent to me, she would make it nice.
so I stopped in, got her coffee and soup, hugged her tight and left. neither one of us wanted to part. but it wasn't too long until we would be together in Albuquerque.
A block away I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses, circled the block, and honked- she ran out to me Smiling, "I can't believe you remembered." and that is the last day I saw her, held her.
I think I am more tormented by the sweetness.

dream 12/13

2008-12-13T12:07:00.003-05:00

i’m on the beach of Lake Michigan with my close friends who live near there… the sky is darker than overcast but not night.
we have a fire burning but gigantic waves keep crashing onto the shore, threatening to put it out.
we continue to move up the dune but it feels like a constant struggle to maintain our fire against the wind and waves.

cute (this word means more than you think)

2008-12-02T08:51:00.009-05:00

the chats

P.M.

& Moon Belly

waking Up

2008-12-01T17:42:00.008-05:00

I had this dream when I was a teenager. I often recorded my dreams, but this one always stuck with me as feeling more real.

I am in the country and there is an unnatural haze above the cornfield in which I am walking. I am searching for something close to my heart, lost within the field. I come across my father and mother, separated and also wandering. I continue on. Then I find her; a tiny faun, still weak upon its legs. I love her, yet there is no joy because I sense wolves circling us hungrily. I grasp the faun and hold it tightly in my arms, if only I could hold her forever. Time passes, I step back. The faun moves forward into the stalks until I can no longer see her. A dark silence fills my ears. I look up into a gray sky, it starts to spin…

Perhaps.

2008-11-28T13:46:00.004-05:00

“Suddenly, worms, made famous in a certain novel, spread before me. Worms arranging themselves in a rigid order into rows according to color and type to consume a corpse, stripping flesh off bone in a few minutes. Just one raid. Two raids, and nothing’s left except the skeleton. Worms that come from nowhere, from the earth, from the corpse itself. The corpse consumes itself by means of a well-organized army rising from within it in moments. Surely, it’s a picture that empties a man of heroism and flesh, thrusting him into the nakedness of absurd destiny, into total nothingness; a picture that peels the song from the praise of death and from the escape into flight. Was it to overcome the ugliness of this fact that the human imagination- the inhabitant of the corpse- opened a space to save the spirit from this nothingness? Is this the solution proposed by religion and poetry? Perhaps. Perhaps.”
–Mahmoud Darwish, from Memory for Forgetfulness

Mahmoud Darwish died on the same day as my sister. They were one state away from each other. Him in Texas, her in Oklahoma. I like to think of their spirits meeting each other. (like proximity has anything to do with it?)
I can’t believe in the idea of instantaneous peace as the gift that death delivers, especially with such an exit…
but still, I like to think that he protected her somehow. that his life’s experience with war and persecution allowed him to find another damaged spirit..

acrostic

2008-11-24T01:44:00.005-05:00

A lonely inkling crept into arms
A love inside crypts in Antarctica
Ashes left, I cry, I'm alone
Alive like ice, cold in air
Ache leaves indents 'cross it's apex

Azure loved Ivory, colors imbue atmosphere
Alluring inside, catlike in appeal
After light, interstellar creations in air
Alicia lives inside crazy imaginations always

Later Earlier Since Long Instant End

thank you C S Lewis

2008-11-22T07:14:00.001-05:00

drink deep from A Grief Observed:

“I once read the sentence, ‘I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.’ That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

“Her absence is no more emphatic in those places [where we had been happy] than anywhere else. Its not local at all… The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can’t avoid. I mean my own body.”