CHARLIE

my aunt and mother and sat around a round table. mama talked about my great grandfather charlie, who smoked 3 packs a day, used his hand as an ashtray as he walked about smoking, ate and balony and cheese sandwich every day and lived to be 96. my memories of him were this: when i visited his house he hid pennies for me to find. i wandered in search to a an alluring cactus with a beautiful flower and by impulse picked it. my hands were full of more cactus than pennies. but i was otherwise good at finding pennies. 

Here's a photo a took on a walk this week, a homeless man's cart:

Heritage

my grandfather is here in the american not-so south from the very south of france. he gives me his business card, with his trade listed as metaphysical philosopher.  he tells me he will find the right angel for me to pray to, and with a wooden pendulum hovers over words and anatomical picturings to determine where specifically my imbalances lie.  over a feast of olives and cheese and wine, fresh bread.  life can't be bad when you eat like this.  when my grandparents lived stateside they owned a bakery situated on the street level of a hotel on the ilse palm beach.  every year they saved the pennies from their business in empty vats of tuna fish and so that i might relinquish summer days rolling the pennies in paper to cash for paper money at the bank down the block.  we made a sport of hunting for a penny cast from each year. i sat in the hotel's outdoor poolside terrace rolling and rolling, swimming and swimming, eating croissants and brioche and drinking raspberry gingerale.  if only i had known the heaven on earth i was living.

if only i had the sense to collect coin. 

More Conversations with Strangers

Stranger: You smoke?
Lucy: Sorry not in the mood for conversation.
Stranger: Oh, well smoking doesn't put me in the mood for conversation.
Lucy: ...
Stranger: I've seen you twice now.
Lucy: I'm really not in the mood to talk to strangers right now.
Stranger: Okay, okay. Flashes peace sign and walks away, wearing a silver peace sign charm around his neck.

(4 minutes later)

Stranger: Hello, again.
Lucy: Sorry, I was rude.
Stranger: Are you an actress?
Lucy: No.
Stranger: Well you look great. How old are you? Are you a college student?
Lucy: College dropout.
Stranger: Oh, you're never a college dropout.
Lucy: I am, college is a scam.
Stranger: Do you know Miami Vice?
Lucy: Yes.
Stranger: You don't know Miami Vice, you're a teenager.
Lucy: I'm 26.
Stranger: You're a teenager!
Stranger: I worked on Miami Vice. I'm 58 years old.
Lucy: Miami Vice is in syndication.
Stranger: Are you an actress? You look great. I'm 58 years old... Do you know if that cop is a man or a woman?
Lucy: Well the way he holds his spoon in his mouth while texting, I can't really tell.
Stranger: laughing. I worked on Miami Vice. I'm 58 years old. I worked on...(searches brain).
Lucy: I'm not an actress.
Stranger: You look like an actress. You look harmless.
Lucy: I'm not harmless.
Stranger: tells me his home address. You look great. Everyday, you look like Christmas morning.
Lucy: walks away.

3rd stranger to ask me if I'm actress in one month. I don't even live in LA. Considering investing in burka.

back of While You Were Away. i cut up the scraps into confetti until my hands seized.

PEACE WAS TOO QUIET.
A quilt in progress. collected personal paper matter spanning 8+ years against Joe's completed crossword puzzles.
ongoing / in progress.

the back:


the front:

3 Works in Progress

Obsessive interest in right and unwrite minds since January 2012, I work on these mainly with the intent of using materials at a fast (and reckless?) pace for the purpose of doing away with them. So they take up less space and don't perish from lack of use (as paint and markers do) They are also quite a pain(t) in the ass to transport whilst I 'hither and tither'.

The middle pictured is a fruit sticker accumulation.


MIND IN MARK. (in progress) began January 2012. The intent is to use my entire stock of markers in single or series of drawings - dry them up - feel lighter when they're gone.

details:












ACRYLIC MAGMA. Acrylic globs on rescued folk art mirror with no mirror. Wood frame was decoupaged with faces. You will recognize many if not most. Began March 2012.

find me again ogden

cousin told me once that on the the evening end of 9/11 he was walking in hell's kitchen and saw a woman, strewn across a car, that almost certainly wasn't hers, masturbating ecstatically.

it hovers in my thoughts, how easily tragedy and panic can lead one to seek nihilistic pleasure. with disregard for social behavioral norms. with disregard for consequences. with disregard for regards in general. just do and doing, what comes natural. real freedom, as any proper american can attest, is the offspring of destruction.

the last thing i remember doing in the final days before i left new york was smashing an (empty) bottle of old monk rum against a wall on kent avenue in waterside williamsburg. my oldest friend in the world was standing at my side in permissible airs. at the exact corner that i met joe- sitting on a fire hydrant -the exact place he later said was the most happening corner in brooklyn (sitting on the sidewalk, probably in broken glass) (it was).

i met a poet on the street this week. he recited three poems to me. one, about the futility of life. one, about how his gift to his unborn children was that they remain so unborn. and one, about new york city. the final line of the city poem suggested that that if they were going to shut down every last of his favorite 'hole in the wall' eateries (the spartan being the camel busting straw), they might as well close the down the whole damn town. he asked me out to dinner. his name is ogden: his mother's maiden, he explained. he relished my appreciation of his dark poetry, though stoically. he paused in his excellent phonetical weavings of prose for the roar of passing trucks. my cigarette ended, i leaned in closer. i fought tears of empathy. i told him my name, for the second time, we had met before once, he will write a poem for me. he was inexplicably frightening, stranger danger. he was in a motorized wheelchair with the pricetag still on it: $30. still, unexplained fear won't keep me from dark poetry, not if a moon insists on puncturing the night sky.