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I painted my keys and pocket contents for a local queer art show. I really love my new carabiner!

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i love my therapist but i hate being in therapy. 10 minutes before my appointment, i'm in a meeting with my boss - we discuss my artistic choices; my boss recommends i artistically choose less. 10 minutes after therapy, i wash my hair and think about everything that was said, and then i have to switch it off, like a lamp, and go back to work again.

i was on a walk the other day and someone had the perfect combination of his cologne and whatever-else. it was almost exactly his scent. i fucking hate that. after all these years, i remember that? i tell my therapist - i feel like a fucking wolf. try telling a middle-aged blonde lady. oh i scented him on the air. i'm 30, and i'm having a panic attack over something that would be a plotline in the omegaverse.

what they don't tell you about mental illness is that if you are lucky enough to survive it into adulthood; it becomes a weird slice of your life. because you do, eventually, have to build a life. i realized in a panic somewhere around 22 - oh. i don't know what i'm fucking doing, because i always assumed i'd just go ahead and die. i didn't die, and i'm grateful for that, and i'm very happy about that choice. but it does mean that i am an adult in an apartment, living with my conditions side-by-side like. oh, that's my roommate, adhd. ignore the glass, bytheway, that's ocd.

so you pick your stupid life up by the scruff of the neck and you're, like glad for it (so much laughter and light and friends you would have never thought possible, when you were in the worst of it). but it feels so strange to be dancing around these odd little microcosms, these patchwork moments of your symptoms. if you have a panic attack at night, you still need to wake up and walk the dog in the morning. if your depression is making everything boring, well, you don't have any sick days left, and a job's not really supposed to be that exciting anyway. your ocd tears out each individual leg hair, and then, an hour later, you sigh, patch up the bloody bits, and go get dinner with friends. and the life is kitten-quiet, mewling and pathetic, but it's also like - it's yours, so you're fond of it.

and it's like - you're real. so you still enjoy pushing the shopping cart really fast and then riding on the back of it down an empty aisle. and you're not, like, so sick anymore that when you accidentally drop a mug you burst into tears (except for the days you do that. which are bad). and no, you're not allowed around certain items anymore. oops! but you've learned to be good about brushing your teeth most days of the week. and you sometimes in the middle of the day you have a little freak-out about how fucking unfair it all is, how fucking hard, how other people can just do this without having to fucking hurt the whole time. and then you sigh and force yourself to sit down and fucking journal about it so you can tell the nice middle-aged blonde woman yeah i had a hard day but i practiced grounding. you still sometimes want to burst out of your own skin, but you force yourself to eat kind-of healthy and to take your vitamins. you let yourself chop off all your hair in the sink in a dramatic poetry of control and relief - and you also have developed good hobbies that help you move your body more frequently. you feel helplessly behind, lost in the shuffle - but you also practice gratitude, taking stock of what you have garnered. because you're trying. even if you're never gonna be normal, you have something... close enough.

and the little kitten of your life, this mangy, starlit tigercub, this thing you expected to rot so young: in your arms, it turns itself over, belly-up. exposing this new soft part, all the organs and guts. like it's saying i trust you now. you won't give me up.

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u should be able to just live on a train like is that too much to ask. im tired of pretending its not my dream. why do we torture ourselves only being on trains to get places i need her at all times

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when you die, you walk into the cold unknown hand in hand with a girl you met once when you were five in a hotel pool and her hand is warm.

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90s/y2k Klutz books (pt 2)

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concept: i stay snuggled in bed all morning and don’t feel guilty about it. it’s raining. everyone is safe. 

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Tell me a soft memory

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A. this is gorgeous and I would eat those sky reflections with a spoon if I could

B. it is truly so wild how shelter and vantage in a space, irl or depicted, can make it feel safe. Like, the anxious little rodent of my heart is so SOOTHED by this!!

Dmitri Cavander, Ferry, August 2017, Oil on canvas

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Bob Ross and Peapod the Pocket squirrel (1984)

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In the months since the fires, I've been living in various friends' guest rooms, a kindness for which I am endlessly grateful. But a few days ago I finally moved into a place of my own! So I'm buying furniture and lamps and saucepans, which rings as many little bells of grief as it does little bells of joy.

Every time I buy something large and haul it up the stairs to my little studio apartment, I think: would I grab this on my way out the door? If the world were to end again, would I put this table or this chair or this mattress on my back and carry it with me as I flee?

When you are displaced, you think a lot about what you can carry, about what is important enough to take up space your snail-shell. And this week I am learning that as you become un-displaced, owning more than you can carry feels both luxurious and dangerous. Depending on objects and comforts that would not be easily packed feels is honestly a bit scary.

Because what if I buy a couch and I sit on it as the sun sets through the window and I love it? What if the couch starts to feel like home? What if my heart lives just outside my body? A couch is fiber and wood and fluff. It can be gone just like that.

Before the fires it was the easiest thing in the world for me to love an object and put it in a place and call that "home." But now it takes work. This week at least, I feel a little bit exposed.

Source details and larger version.

Crawling along is my collection of vintage snail imagery.

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Home Office Life (2001)

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I'm so interested in subtly disengaging from imagined pressures to be productive, especially in the body where the smallest movements can put you in an activated "on-call" state. We learned orthopedic techniques for thoracic outlet syndrome in last night's class and I realized how many of us across all lifestyles have our arms in front of us most of the time, even though our arms have the strongest structural integrity when they are at our sides. The shoulder joint cavity is actually quite shallow, and the head of the humerus is less likely to dislocate when the arm isn't reaching in front of you. And while my teacher was talking, I realized that my arms were in front of me, as if prepared to do work, but there wasn't work to be done, and the subtle shift of putting my hands at my side is like clocking out

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Pod jedną gwiazdką/Under One Small Star

Przepraszam przypadek, że nazywam go koniecznością. Przepraszam koniecznośc, jeśli jednak się mylę. Niech się nie gniewa szczęście, że biorę je jak swoje. Niech mi zapomną umarli, że ledwie tlą się w pamięci. Przepraszam czas za mnogość przeoczonego świata na sekundę. Przepraszam dawną miłość, że nową uważam za pierwszą. Wybaczcie mi, daleki wojny, że noszę kwiaty do domu. Wybaczcie, otwarte rany, że kłuję się w palec. Przepraszam wołających z otchłani za płytę z menuetem. Przepraszam ludzi na dworcach za sen o piatej rano. Daruj, szczuta nadziejo, że śmieję się czasem. Darujcie mi, pustynie, że z łyżką wody nie biegnę. I ty, jastrzębiu, od lat ten sam, w tej samej klatce, zapatrzony bez ruchu zawsze w ten sam punkt, odpuść mi, nawet gdybyś był ptakiem wypchanym. Przepraszam ścięte drzewo za cztery nogi stołowe. Przepraszam wielkie pytania za małe odpowiedzi. Prawdo, nie zwracaj na mnie zbyt bacznej uwagi. Powago, okaż mi wspaniałomyślność. Ścierp, tajemnico bytu, że nie mogę być wszędzie. Przepraszam wszystkich, że nie mogę być każdym i każdą. Wiem, że póki żyję, nic mnie nie usprawiedliwia, ponieważ sama sobie stoję na przeszkodzie. Nie miej mi za złe, mowo, że pożyczam patetycznych słów, a potem trudu dokładam, żeby wydały się lekkie. My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all. Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first. Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home. Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger. I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths. I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m. Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time. Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water. And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage, your gaze always fixed on the same point in space, forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed. My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers. Truth, please don't pay me much attention. Dignity, please be magnanimous. Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train. Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then. My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once. My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man. I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

Wisława Szymborska Map: Collected and Last Poems, 2015 trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh (original Polish)

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Ocean Vuong, “NPR” (via @ coolcatkylie - Pinterest) // Linda Pastan, “Five Stages of Grief” (via @ Amandagnagy - Pinterest) // Sarah Kane, “Crave” (via @ shesalady1984 - Pinterest) // via @ revnardent - Pinterest // via @ dissociativecollective - Tumblr // Notes from an exhibition by Patrick Gale, page 36 (via @ chelseajayne01 - Pinterest) // Ada Limón, “After the Fire” (via @ havingapoemwithyou - Tumblr) // Jamie Anderson (via @ emmagarcia868 - Pinterest) // “Aristos: The Musical” (via @ mahiii24 - Pinterest) // Heidi Priebe, “As Long As There Is Love, There Will Be Grief” (via @ deadpoetswilde - Instagram)

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Carved this small gallery after filling the shell with resin first, to try and make smaller windows (so it won't break).

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Yes, yep, exactly.

instagram | prints

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