People said it to me many times back home- ¨Parisians are ass holes and they're very rude. They won't give a shit about you.¨
Thank goodness.
I am so ready and very excited for it. There is a passive aggressiveness that has evolved into something so thick in San Francisco that it was literally driving me insane, amongst various other factors of course . Not that I wasn't overly an ass hole this year, definitely drunk and owing many apologies I felt lazy towards eventually. Still I haven't figured out a way to properly apologize for being psychotic without seeming trite and as if I'm trying to dismiss full responsibility.
At the very least, aside from being an embarrassment to myself, I left the city semi-content and with a printed, published magazine feature for amazing BelleSF, a pending magazine release for Lump Sum, and several hundred dollars.
C'est la vie or whatever the fuck.
Also, I found five euros at SFO during the TSA violations and I drank a lot of wine in first class.
So far in one day the city has been only good to me and I have all ready tried five different kinds of wine. Something to say of people who speak french is they all seem to have the most beautiful lips. The buildings here are old with intricate french framework. You can most certainly tell which buildings were founded recently but they at least take inspiration from a very classic look.
It's raining hard and I have a friendly girls date at some punk bar in the 11th at six'o'clock.
For some reason also, I have been very nervous. Not about the friend date, just about my position in general.
I start a lot of things I can't finish. Comics, paintings, silly business ideas, fights, proposed articles, all of it. Namely because I start new things everyday and I have the attention span of a three-year-old. That I've maintained a room at the 5shop for three years now, only once coming close to burning it down, is an absolute shock to me, as is any complete piece of writing or illustration. This year I had every intention to write out three articles and completing, sharing, and perhaps even publishing one. I started them all, the one about the police brutality case no one wanted to talk about that occured at City College of San Francisco in which several students were injured by SFPD, one about the discrimination case that may or may not have occured at a restaurant on 25th and Bryant that some people talked about, and one about how my mother is the strongest person I know having saved an immigrant from coyote bandits on a last minute emergency trip to LA and a very seedy hotel in Las Palmas- but never finished. The story I would like published is that of my mother's. I noted most of the détails mentally as she told me about what had happened the weekend before in LA while on a trip to northern california; when she rented a car and offered to give me a ride to a valley i won't disclose the name for. That happened in 2011. I'm waiting to interview her again so I can record it. I named the article ¨The Trail of Skulls¨.
My great aunt Maria is wonderful. This is her story of coming to France.
It was 1975 and everyone was making the dash to the states from then and also now politicqlly tulmultous and civally dangerous Guatemala, mostly through illegal coyote routes through the mountains. Coyotes are people who are paid to bring immigrants to the states from central america. The practice is illicit and dangerous. Many people die along the trails or are kidnapped and held for ransom. My grandmother and my aunt's friends had either made it to the states or were well on their way but Maria was very afraid. She had heard of the terrible conditions like going through whole miles of dark tunnels filled with shit and cat sized rats and having to sleep in them. Women were often violated or sold off. Despite the increasing turmoil and political unrest in Guatemala, Maria struggled to come to grips with what the journey to the US would entail. She finalized her decision to seek other means after one of her girlfriends phoned her to let her know that she had made it, but not before being raped by four men, kidnapped, had everything stolen, being brought back to Mexico, and having to find the means to again pay for another coyote to help her in again. After that call my aunt picked up a newspaper and began to look through the classified. That evening she read a wanted ad for a cook for the Guatemalan ambassador in Paris. Although it was five in the evening and the paper was let out at six in the morning, she went to the office to try to see if no one had applied yet. When she arrived the applications list was three pages long. Although discourged for the day, she sat in the office looking through the paper for more ads. While reading a manager walked out and asked her to step Inside and fufill the application anyway. While applying my aunt told me she made a joke and made the manager bust up laughing. The joke isn't coming to me now but the manager was so pleased by it that she ripped up her applications list and told my aunt that she seemed very sweet and likable. She gave her the job on the spot. The only problem was that my aunt could not bring her 13 year old daughter with her. My aunt insisted on the position, put her daughter, my cousin, Ariselli in boarding school for the next four years and was flown to Paris the following month. Her daughter later joined her in Paris. My aunt worked closely with the ambassador for many years but later took a job cooking for a french princess after the ambassador moved to back to Guatemala. She stayed friends with the ambassador until her death and is still in touch with her family. Of the whole experience she says she is most glad that she had hope that day and ever since she has not had to ask help of anyone for anything.
She now happily maintains a studio four blocks from the Eiffel Tower, where I am living currently, and has a two year old terrier named Elliot.
She drinks damned good wine, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWdhSccWd3A
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Sleep by Haruki Murakami
"I am both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake."
http://www.mylostwords.blogspot.com/2009/01/haruki-murakami-sleep.html?m=1
http://www.mylostwords.blogspot.com/2009/01/haruki-murakami-sleep.html?m=1
Friday, May 23, 2014
Back in the food industry
And i cant smoke enough hash to forget it
And the slob techies i had to pick up after the past two days.
Im mad at their moms.
Also im not doing the blood numbing technique to my body anymore so i cant pretend i dont hate things
And float around the venue spaces
In these weird cotton candy-
Bubble bath-
In god's-
Or the warm winds-
Arms wrapped a round-
The little hands that wear sunglasses-
And snap to old sound-
Trying to claw out of my throat-
All the god damned time-
-Visions.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
The ones of my ketchup grenade
Exploding all over these
Nano fanged
Whatever you call'em
Shitty faces.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
This hippie guy with mismatched dirty patched
parachute pants that helps take care of diamond dave
Listens to him
Exalts him
Humors his still babbling mouth spirit
gave me a handmade pipe to smoke out of
It looks neat.
He made it.
its awful really.
but his intentions
are other wise
much like his soul
and that of those in
the same shock as me
everyday
that this city is seeping
something unlike ketchup
Everything right now is
Except for me.
It looks like it was made from a chair leg.
He gave me two really
But they are one clever idea he had
That has now given me a sore throat.
Eerything right now is
Except for me.
I threw books across the hallway last night screaming at my roommate about how i know he took the basketball hoop off our front door and that the kids from the projects down fruity parking lot need a place to play. I had just been laughing very loudly not one minute before i saw an opportunity for rage. He accepted my apology and they all blamed it on the moon. I haven't been like this in years.
I tell
My self.
I'm sorry.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
And i cant smoke enough hash to forget it
And the slob techies i had to pick up after the past two days.
Im mad at their moms.
Also im not doing the blood numbing technique to my body anymore so i cant pretend i dont hate things
And float around the venue spaces
In these weird cotton candy-
Bubble bath-
In god's-
Or the warm winds-
Arms wrapped a round-
The little hands that wear sunglasses-
And snap to old sound-
Trying to claw out of my throat-
All the god damned time-
-Visions.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
The ones of my ketchup grenade
Exploding all over these
Nano fanged
Whatever you call'em
Shitty faces.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
This hippie guy with mismatched dirty patched
parachute pants that helps take care of diamond dave
Listens to him
Exalts him
Humors his still babbling mouth spirit
gave me a handmade pipe to smoke out of
It looks neat.
He made it.
its awful really.
but his intentions
are other wise
much like his soul
and that of those in
the same shock as me
everyday
that this city is seeping
something unlike ketchup
Everything right now is
Except for me.
It looks like it was made from a chair leg.
He gave me two really
But they are one clever idea he had
That has now given me a sore throat.
Eerything right now is
Except for me.
I threw books across the hallway last night screaming at my roommate about how i know he took the basketball hoop off our front door and that the kids from the projects down fruity parking lot need a place to play. I had just been laughing very loudly not one minute before i saw an opportunity for rage. He accepted my apology and they all blamed it on the moon. I haven't been like this in years.
I tell
My self.
I'm sorry.
Everything right now is
Except for me.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
last fall and running into iphones with legs
Looking around
They all seem
disconnected from them selves
They bump into me
and an old man walking
on the sidewalk
no apologies
needed
never
when you've got
things to like
no apologies
needed
never
when you've got
things to like
on 24th
never looking up
talking
looking down
at rectangle versions
of themselves
of themselves
of their friends
and family
and there is a wife lying
and like
and like
many girls standing still
looking as though
they're not alone
behind that box
and many boys
and their new sneakers
i try to pretend
that they're all reading
about the ocean
while they throw away
their body parts
and maybe
their shame
and butts
on the ground
grey by grey
sidewalk squares
they have no time to look at
but who thinks about the ocean
on the ground
grey by grey
sidewalk squares
they have no time to look at
but who thinks about the ocean
unless you're an ecologist
that's on
some lame shit
nobody can get with
nobody can get with
or maybe
i'm not the only one
who thought
they'd rather be walking
into crashing waves
this grey morning
to be rid of all
the beeping sounds.
instead
find gold
find brown
find
in thoughts
that are incomplete
and muted.
i want to mute the beeping.
find gold
find brown
find
in thoughts
that are incomplete and muted.
that are incomplete and muted.
i want to mute the beeping.
find gold
find brown
find
in thoughts
that are incomplete and muted.
that are incomplete and muted.
how can you
blame me?
diagnosis
This man had his dick out in his hand yelling towards the west side of market street, pissing freely, maybe not so freely and in dismay, but either way free enough, when I saw my now ex-lawyer passing by me look just as Mr. Magoo-ish as ever. I shook his hand and he told me he dropped my case because it's dragging on to long and, simply, a waste of his time, which I agreed to immediately. He said, "What's going on with you?" and I said, "Sometimes my shoes come untied too quickly, and it makes me taste the way milk does after a bowl of lucky charms." And he said, "Well I'm sorry, too, and you have got a warrant for your arrest." and I replied, "I'm sorry, what was that? I have a hornet for an artist?"
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
Some people
they call me a liar
because i don't take as many pictures
as the person in front
of the window shop
becoming a display herself
i wonder maybe
what picture means to them
the ones that call me a liar.
when strings leave my eyes
and puzzle pieces begin to fit
from blood
and stars from my mouth
begin to explode
and i get a little sweaty
and everything gets quiet
no body
exists
that's when i take
pictures.
Friday, May 31, 2013
old prose goes and goes
From spring 2011
About to see Emerald calculating the best way to tell her that i know she's been selling herself for drugs. I'm sitting on the floor of the greyhound buss station excited yet mourning the innocence in falling in love in yet another misguided friendship i had with her. Can't invest again, like her men and unlike them because actually do love her, that foolish dirty olive skinned jewel.
Emerald keep your smile wide and your sanity as loose as it was with me, but in this free yourself of obstructing nature and what it gave you unless you're fooling everyone and you really love what you've done.
Some people feel
Nothing at all.
Some people feel
With things more like sea tentacles.
Some people feel
That feelings are just one big fucking joke
Like all the coke we did last night
And the million times we had to stop
So you could check your pockets
And make sure
That anything you might say on accident
Was buried with the change you got
From the corner store bottle
shelf price sticker
That said
2.25
Out the door,
Looking all
Distracted.
Some people feel
That I’m a whore
Some people feel
That they’re not even different
Some people feel
That their parents are to blame
That everything is ordinary
That ordinary is everything.
Everything ordinary
Is ok with me.
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