Harvest Half Moon (Spring 2011)

(I'm not sure why I am posting after so long. I just woke up reciting this poem out of my dream and want to share it... In my head it sounds like a rhyme, like a rap, like a poem meant to be heard. So read it out loud and say it with some swag.)

It's a harvest half moon and I'm at it again,
wondering what it takes to be friends.
I keep returning for more, but I'm risking it all.
When I look in your eyes, I get the shivers. I fall.
I crash down to the bottom of a tunnel of maybes,
and there's nobody there that can save me.
Not you.
Not you and all those kisses we once shared,
and not those other boys, no they never did care.

It's just me and the road. I keep driving and shifting,
attempt to refrain from wishing
that your hand is on mine
moving from second to third
until the minutes get blurred.
And I'd not have to wonder if you're thinking of me,
cause there we'd both be.
With the stars sprinkled high and a low sunk moon,
curled together in a comforting spoon.

In my dreams I'd hum an Old Cracked Tune
and dance joys on the edge of the road, in the sand.
And with moves unplanned
I'd travel. Across the dessert
and towards the sea.
And in the surf I'd be free.
From the moon, from your eyes,
from unpredictable highs.
From my own heart, constantly breaking.

Quote (Mary Oliver)

(This is one of Mommy's favorites, and I can't stop thinking about how much I love her)

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Paris Tat *3rd installation* (Spring 2010)

(Here we go from the beginning...)

Olivier began in purple, a color that hints of metal, but a fantasy none the less. I’d chosen this color for the first structure being needled onto my rib cage, an iron tower that symbolizes the very city I was visiting. Paris, they say, is the city of love. An appropriate description, given the veil of romance that spreads over unevenly paved streets and huge wooden doorways and their palaces and train stations filled with art. It is a city ruled by beautiful things, and I was drunk with it even as I was lovesick for my home-island. The Eiffel Tower was an easy choice, the quintessential visual for this city spread across the Seine. The tower dates back to the 1889 World’s Fair, where it served as the entrance arch. Gustav Eiffel engineered this wonder, and built it to resist the wind, with its broad open spaces and artistic curved legs. He also contributed his name to it, the tallest building in the world (until the Chrysler in 1930, another marvel named after a man.) City dwellers were appalled, called it an eyesore, and indeed had every intention of taking it down as soon as the city took over ownership after twenty years. But! It’s 1,063 foot height proved functional for broadcasting, and during World War II it became a symbol of war heroics, and eventually of the city itself.

My first sighting of le Tour happened in the cab ride from the airport to my new home, on the second day of a snowstorm. Its romance is undeniable. Indeed, it seems to bestow the whole city with an aura of cinema worthy kisses and tearful goodbyes. As we drove over the snow-blanketed streets I was awestruck and silent, exhausted and nervous. I never thought I’d study abroad, and even a five-week winter session seemed like a long time away. I was crashing a University of Delaware Women’s Studies/Art History trip, so I knew no one. I also stuck out like a sore thumb, as my mother would say. I was very anxious about how this adventure would unfold. I couldn’t fall asleep that first night, and around 2am I crept out into the living room to stare at the snow falling onto the street below. Everything around me felt so unfamiliar, I was more homesick than I’d ever been. The next morning things looked less alien in the daylight, and later that day I looked up the address and directions to the tattoo shop. The journey there was my first independent outing, and my roommate Sarah and I got lost. It was only my first week in this new place, and I was slowly re-learning the language without harsh halts, and getting oriented on the un-gridded streets. Getting lost was usually acceptable barring time constraints. In fact, it was a welcome exploration. After all, it would take years to explore every narrow winding alley, to see all of the small museums and lovely facades and whimsical shops. Getting lost was a mini-adventure, and one more way to get a look at as many beautiful things as possible. Of course, like any city, there are borders to this overwhelming beauty.

Paris is a city with a rich interior and under-privileged exterior. The banlieus, or suburbs, are the neighborhoods surrounding the center city. These outskirts include urban housing developments, originally built in the 1970s as a place to live while you worked towards owning your own home. It was, indeed, an optimistic endeavor. They were supposed to be stepping-stones to upward mobility. Racial and ethnic tensions run high here, where residents feel abandoned and ostracized, even though many of the youth were born in country and are legal French citizens. These places are sites of high unemployment and violence, where each generation attempts to be heard by the government, and to be recognized as French instead of shooed away as immigrants. Riots have been breaking out here since the 1980s, and as recently as 2007 the media and government both seemed shocked that this sort of outburst was occurring, again. These latest riots were more organized than the car burning and rock throwing of the past, and this time bombs and guns were utilized to attack police. Close to 100 officers were wounded, retaliation for the death of a teenager they claim was involved in a police chase. Some estimate the injured count was much higher, not to mention citizens who were hurt or killed. The cause of this unrest has remained largely intact. The Arab and North African populations want to be treated like citizens, and to be given the opportunity to learn, succeed, and become French. There is an immense strain between them and the ‘other’ Parisians, whose whiteness is a privilege. The truth of this racial tension is deeply imbedded in a colonial history. Particularly in the country of Algeria, whose fight for independence included acts of violence with Paris’s city limits, France was not except from the European trend of colonization. This merging of cultures started out violently, and has continued to be complex and difficult. These darker citizens, kept on the outskirts of the city, have a conception of Americans that is largely un-friendly. When my roommate and I got off the number 11 train at the Pyrenees stop (about a 45 minute ride from the Louvre with multiple train transfers), we began to wander in the wrong direction, across the traffic circle from our destination. I had a large backpack, a laptop, an expensive winter coat, and a racial profile and overall demeanor that screamed, “I’m American and I’m lost.” Not smart. Not safe. Of course being from New York I was used to wandering around ghettos, and felt this was no different. I knew something was off, but I had no idea how afraid we should have been, how close in time and space we were to widespread public violence.

To make matters worse, when I returned the next day for my appointment, I ended up being tattooed completely alone. I assumed my 5pm appointment would give me plenty of time to make dinner by 7pm. However, the Parisian mindset is not one of efficiency. We did not start on time (he was eating), and I was on the table for three hours. When we hadn’t started by 5:45, my roommate raced home so as to be on time for dinner. It is very, very rude in France to be late and/or absent to meals without letting the host know. She went to represent both of us, to beg my forgiveness and try to excuse me. Silly me, I thought I’d be able to fit it all in. (I was over two hours late to dinner.)

Those three hours I spent on the table are crystal clear in my mind, the way some of the other day trips and paintings and wine bottles are not. I stood behind a screen and undressed, bra and shirt carelessly discarded on a folding chair. When he placed the stencil I panicked for just a moment. It looked big. It spanned from about 4 fingers below my armpit to just above level with my belly button, behind the curve of my breast but never quite reaching the flat part of my back. I was shocked at myself, standing alone and naked in this unfamiliar space, willing to remake my body this way. I took a deep breath with my eyes clenched shut and said, “Ok. It’s perfect.”

Paris Tat *2nd installation* (Spring 2010)

(More of this epic-ness. If you follow me then you recognize that the poem was my first poem ever, included here as primary evidence of my emotional experience. This is a lot in scene, which is some of my favorite stuff to write on. Scenes are key to making the reader feel like you are really including them. Again, if you wanna see the tat, just ask...)

That winter in Paris I fell in love with the night. That was when I felt the most at home, when New York felt close, when the city felt familiar. I wrote only one poem there, a verse for the city I missed.

I can't quite adjust
to streets that I can't map out on grid paper,
and this city without liquid borders.
The streets zig zag and curve
in an unfamiliar sprawl
as I walk with my headphones to steady my pace.
Sometimes when I'm just setting foot on the sidewalk,
a breeze seems to brush my cheek, & through the music I can hear
my city, and feel my own streets underfoot as I set out into the dusk.
Like all breezes & moments that matter
this feeling is fleeting, and as I cross the street
I remember that this place doesn't sing to me.
We can't even speak except in halting sentences
fraught with disconnects & lost in translations.
At night though, if I un-focus my eyes, the lights seem familiar.
And if I listen, underneath the rhythm of a language not my own
I can hear the lap of the East River.
And with one focusing breath
I can trace the skyline onto my forearm
where it'll stay for me the whole night.

That space between rivers,
my island of abbreviations
& stumbles & imagined constellations,
is more patient that I.
I wrote the skyline a post card.
It said: Thanks for waiting

But this is just a part of the story. Because my enchantment with Paris was undeniable. I loved having wine with lunch and being surrounded by things that were ancient. I loved the Seine, and the walkway at its banks. I loved the language, the challenge of communicating. I loved the lingerie, the beautiful women, the stick shift taxicabs. And I loved collecting souvenirs, post cards to be sent (and kept), and shoes, and shot glasses. And of course my own piece of Parisian art: the tattoo.

His work was steady and light. He paced himself in the Parisian way. Maybe because they are surrounded by art, eternal and lasting art, they see no reason to rush their own for such a silly thing as schedules or dinnertime. It seems ingrained in them, this aversion to rushing. I used my breath, gathering the pain of each touch of the needle with an inhale, and breathing it out as he paused or re-inked. Every once in awhile another artist would step behind the screen to see his progress. They all forgot I spoke French, and so I eavesdropped on these conversations amusedly. They talked about getting take-out, about the absurdity of an all color tattoo. They talked about how American girls are usually screamers, about various clients that they’d serviced that past week. They talked about my breasts, about sharing wine with me, about how shocked they were that I was taking this all so quietly, so strongly. I smiled through this secret knowledge, too focused on controlling my breath to think about what it meant to be alone and foreign and exposed in this way. After all, these guys were professionals. My breasts were unremarkable, my body just another canvas. Possibly. Or maybe I was exotic and tempting. Maybe he took his time because he enjoyed touching my skin this way, this intimate act of creating me. It was absolutely intimate, sharing this cramped space of pain and creation and color, for no less than three hours.

* * * * *

I needed a break between colors, so while he cleaned the blue from his needle I slipped off the table and walked back into a narrow hallway towards the bathroom. As I peed I tried not to notice how tender my skin had become, or my slightly lightheaded feeling. I knew enough about tattoos to know that my body was in defensive mode, and I was cruising on adrenaline. I also knew we were halfway done, maybe more. So I hurried, eager to ride out that high till the end. By this point in my tattooing history, I had begun to understand my body differently. It was a place that I could change, recreate in a new way. This high I was feeling was a reaction to pain, the pain you have to go through to make something permanent. Tattoos were never just pretty things to me, though I think they are beautiful. They are statements and stories, and for me they are an assertion that I am a storyteller, and that I will make you hear my voice. Tattoos should be sexy, adding secrets and color to the naked body. Revealing secrets in this way makes me vulnerable and powerful at the same time, a balance women must deal with on a daily basis. They are both a reveal and a command. My tattoos assert my control over my body and my stories. They declare that both are valuable, that both are worthy and beautiful.

When I walked back out into the main room I had to squint, let my eyes readjust to the bright light, and when they had I saw that Olivier was smiling at me. I must have been a sight, squinting and naked to the waist, my ribcage stained and red with irritation. “Ready?” he asked. “Oui, je suis prêt.” I said. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. When I lay back on the table he was ready with the last and final color: red. I took a deep breath and listened for the buzz of the needle. ‘Home stretch’ became my mantra. This color, bright like lipstick and ladybugs, was not for a famous landmark, or any building for that matter. It was for a bird.

To A Skylark (Shelly)

(We just watched Becoming Jane so I thought a little romantic piece would be in order. I like how this floats and soars, like the bird. These dudes got it, and women were just starting to be able to take a crack at it, and now I get to write. Romantic poetry is super lyrical, romantic *DUH* and pretty. Don't discount it...)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now

Paris Tat (Spring 2010)

(So this has been a huge project, I've been working on it since the winter. The whole piece is about getting tattooed in Paris, and about my Grandmother and her life in NYC in the 40's. There is a power point that goes with it, and I'll probably post some more sections of this. It inspired the ideas for my thesis, so thats cool. Basically I'm gonna amend traditional histories with women's stories, making it more true and more complete. So this is some of my memories, and what I can piece together of Elizabeth Ann's. The whole thing is very available upon request. I very wanna go back to Paris, and I very wanna get another tattoo. This is the first calendar year since 2005 that I won't get inked. Weird...)

Olivier maintained a steady if not frantic pace, and when le Tour was complete he rinsed the needle and dipped into a new color: blue. A blue close to that of a midday cloudless sky, a color that did not realistically represent the structure he began to needle onto my skin. This next image was just that; another structure, another landmark, although this one stood overlooking a city I was on more intimate terms with. Over the west side of Central Park, two pointed towers jut above the tops of the trees. Some mistake this for the site of John Lennon’s murder, but that was two blocks south on 72rd Street, at the Dakota. This building is called the San Remo, and it’s your average pre-war luxury apartment building. Asking prices range from 3-25 mill., and your neighbors could include Bono, Steven Spielberg, or Dustin Hoffman. It first entered in my city visuals archive on walks around the Jackie O reservoir, usually taken on slow afternoons with a partner to catch up, gossip, console and laugh with. It is a significant mark of the skyline, less flashy than Empire or Chrysler, endearing in its oft-mistaken old school identity. I began looking forward to seeing it swaddled in the multi-colored setting sunlight.

How it made its way into the fold of images designed to color my ribcage is slightly more complex than a pretty silhouette against uptown summer days. The West Side is my unfamiliar side of town, a whole north to south span that I’ve explored remarkably less in my Manhattan lifetime than the east side. The west side, slowly, became the mythical land of “her”, a woman I’d known all my life but never really seen. When I sat in my childhood church at her funeral, I realized how strange it was that I knew almost nothing of her life before the years I existed. She was my mother’s mother, taller than average and not prone to long speeches. I remember her in slippers and curlers, tending to the compost or doing the Sunday crossword. We never had heart to hearts in the kitchen. She never deigned to pass on sage wisdoms. She came back to New York only once when I lived here, in a dorm on 55th street. She told me then she’d lived on the west side, and that the subway had cost a nickel. I didn’t occur to me to ask her how it felt to leave rural Pennsylvania for the big apple. How it must have been hard being a beautiful single woman in a new urban environment. How she fell in love here. Why she left after four kids. None of this seemed relevant until she was gone, and I realized that her and I had shared this place I loved and I had wasted the benefit of learning from her lived experience. When she was gone she left behind a large mystery and a lot of money, and it was this fund my parents dipped into so I could have my Parisian adventure. So for this, my ninth tattoo, a small testament to two beautiful cities and a woman I loved but never truly knew, this west side landmark became the symbol of her New York, the New York we’d failed to share.

Howl Pt III (Ginsberg)

(Finish it out. Tomorrow, some prose...)

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of
the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night