my "special purpose"
this weekend is my family reunion. mormons, baptists, agnostics and methodists will unite under one roof to reconnect with each other (my bro's girlfriend will account for the one token catholic). there will be homosexuals, bastards, high-school drop-outs, vegans, oil men, and more than one photographer (three, thanks for asking). the prodigal sons will return (my estranged cousins, seen only by immediate family since grandpa's funeral in '96) and i will share a bed with my uncle's illegitimate child who noone has ever met (he just found out about her last year - she's 14). on the menu? barbeque of course, we are fucking texans. i'm sure there will be some weird tofu or wheat germ thing and plenty of breads and cookies made with vegan margarine and egg-replacer. there will even be a white elephant gift exchange. woo. (i'm bringing an "i had a ball" testicle festival coozy - should go over well with my baptist aunt.) one family will bring back the abel family quilt made by the mormon wife to pass on to someone else in the family at every reunion. if any of you have ever passed out on my couch or rug with a certain maroon and navy colored flannel quilt (mina, allison, adrienne) it's made by the very same mormon. if anything exciting happens i'll let y'all know. pray for my safe and unconverted return.
in other news, a certain guy has recently made an appearance in my life. no details here, but i will say that he's someone i've known for a while now, whose company i enjoy immensely and always have, but a couple of weeks ago, there was a certain (seemingly unremarkable) moment when i realized that he'd actually been listening to me, and it kind of opened my eyes. we kissed the other night and it was good. i hope it happens again soon. we'll see if he picks up the ball and asks me out again.
Labels: family
smoke
right now, i am drinking some wine that my cousin jordan got me for my birthday (a penfolds cabernet shiraz). i'm watching the lightning through my open window, and i'm watching "moonlight and valentino" - the only movie with jeremy sisto that i can stand. tonight turned out to be much like last night. i stayed home, didn't call people i could have, spent a lot of time resting and thinking. today, i drove by a cottage on the east side that i was thinking of renting, i made curried chicken salad with cranberries, i did yoga, and i got coffee with my brother at flightpath.
i remember that there is something that i left out of my update a couple of days ago. within a day or so of deciding not to go to nyu for grad school in april, i went with mary grace and her partner angela to polvo's for happy hour. we had a wonderful time, drank margaritas, and i do believe it stormed a bit. i was asking mary grace if she had any documentary story ideas and we ended up talking about indigenous cultures and the experiences that i had in maine. about why i admired the penobscots so much. she began telling me about a native american woman she knows who was basically considered an elder from birth. mary grace thought that she would be a wonderful subject and as a way of getting to know people in that circle, she invited me to participate in a sweat lodge near san antonio. now i do not consider myself religious, but i do have spiritual moments. these aren't very focused and i wouldn't say that i necessarily have faith in a higher power, but i have faith in people and i think that everything on earth has something to teach us. native spirituality is very in keeping with this - i think if everyone were able to appreciate things the way the penobscots and other indigenous cultures do, the world would be a much more peaceful and benign place.
alright i'm starting to feel like someone should be walking through a rainbow playing a lute so enough of that. the women involved in the sweat lodge were very real, and yet so different than me. they spoke to ghosts and really believed they were there. there are times when i feel that my grandfather is watching me but they interact with their ghosts and see them as almost corporeal. there is a certain confidence that i think many americans don't have, confidence in their place, in their bodies, in their world. i admire the faith that carmina's family has in God. you can go ahead and imagine a disclaimer with this next part as my own opinion, but: i admire the way black women don't seem to ever apologize for their existence, like so many white women i know. i admire how john, one of the penobscots i photographed, was content with his life, despite the fact that he lived in government housing in the place he was born, and had an autistic son that he rarely saw.
i realize that little of this has ended up being about the sweat lodge directly, but i did want to say i had done it, and i'm glad i did. it was like being in a sauna on the beach. it was hard to breathe, i was in a tiny hut with six women so close that our knees would touch, and i wore a "sweat dress" that one of the woman had brought as an extra. it was soft and crocheted. no one wore jewelry. the idea was to be as close to the way you were born as possible. it was a full moon, it was chilly outside, the steam was stifling, many women cried and prayed in spanish and i couldn't see anything except the very dim orange glow of the lava rocks when they were first pulled from the fire. my neck ached from not being able to sit up straight for three hours and i was muddy and damp and it smelled like sweetgrass and cedar smoke.
Labels: native
yellow
do you remember being fearless? really fearless in a way that kept you from ever averting your eyes or backing down? i just got off the bus and there was a girl on there, riding with her father and her grandfather, and she was probably about 9. my parents have told me that when i was young, i would go up to anyone and talk to them, would never worry about what i "should" do. most of you probably know a bit about bus etiquette. you don't normally look at anyone directly, unless it's by accident while you're shifting your gaze somewhere else. blank stares are encouraged. talking to people is acceptable only if a) you got on with the person, or b) you're insane. this girl was blonde, tan, had blue eyes, the men she was with looked very rugged and her grandfather was a veteran. a guy got on the bus and he had headphones on and she told him that she liked his shirt. he didn't hear because (of course) he wasn't looking at her and his volume was up. so she moved toward him and said more loudly that she liked his shirt. she would just look at people and not in that distracted kid way but directly as if she has just asked them a question and was waiting for an answer. now i will do some forward things, but it's never without fear, it's a conscious effort always to get past my reservations and live in spite of them. anyway, just a thought.
i've been away a while and started several posts that i never finished. here's a quick retrospective on the last two and a half months of my life:
1) i got accepted to nyu.
2) i cut the hell out of my hand while photographing out at the rhizome collective brownfield site. how? you ask. christening a boat. pictures to follow.
3) i went to new york to look around and sit in on a class. i saw adrienne, got lost on the subway a few times, walked a LOT and tried to get a feel for the city. i met some cool people and the class was amazing, but...
4) i decided not to go to nyu. just can't do it. i realized that i don't want to JUST be doing poetry, and i would prefer to do photography right now (which i've been wanting basically since i got back from maine).
5) i joined a photographer's group with my friend robyn and a bunch of people who work with GSD&M. i've already met some great photographers and may be doing a joint gallery show with them in a few months.
6) i started walking to work once or twice a week. that's from hyde park to south of the river. being in nyc made me realize i should get mobile.
7) i got a raise. i just may stay at my job a while longer.
8) i've been writing. like a crazy fool since i got back. turning down a creative writing mfa program got my creative writing juices flowing.
9) i've been learning guitar.
10) i've started lifting weights.
that's really about it. i've got a bunch of projects in the works and am hoping to really get started on them in the next month. gotta go apartment hunt...
Labels: future, photo, poetry
