Najy Is A Trip

2011/ Codependent No More

2012-01-04T16:04:00.002-05:00

I'll be honest. I was going to make one of those lists. Those accomplishments for the year. How I've been published, taught a a class, curated outrageous art events, been a featured performer, a grantee (twice), a panelist, a singer on stage (and in a studio), and approached to do a photo series for a fancy company.

I was going to write about all the conferences I attended, the important moments, my first creative consulting clients, the interfaith work, Occupy wall street sleepovers, collaborations, my first artist residency, my first films.

But here's the thing- 100% the biggest game changer for me was in September/Late August when I finally realized I was codependent. Not only me, but my mom, my grandmother, and many of my friends. This one truth has been hardest to grapple with and effects everything from my relationships with friends, to family, to lovers.

Going into 2012 it's all about ME. Taking personal responsibility, and finally asking the question

"What do I want?"

- not what do I think YOU want & not what SHOULD I want.

It's absolutely the most difficult thing. Codependency includes control issues, guilt issues, self-esteem issues, and it means changing every thought process. This shift means taking it easier on myself yet expecting more. It means asserting boundaries and sticking to them. It means respecting others inclinations. It means admitting that I am deserving.

So cheers. Cheers to healthier relationship patterns, to self-care, to asking for what I want, to following my bliss, and allowing you to follow yours.

By Lenora Jayne

"I wake alone- pretend that I am finally home."

2011-11-09T06:42:00.002-05:00

Good morning.
I'm up and it's just barely light out, the sky is yawning, the most ambitious birds sneaking in their first chirps. It doesn't feel real- this navy sky moment before the world breaks out into vivid song.

But here I am. I fly to las vegas today. I am going to a marketing meeting today. I am renting photo equipment today. I am taking a shower today. I am sending a lover something sweet in the mail today. I am going to smile today. I will look nicer than usual today. I will spend time with my dad today.

The title of this post is from one of my favorite old Cursive songs. The Recluse.
It's pretty heart-wrenching. More than I feel at the moment, but here's the thing- I've been traveling since June and it's hard to remember the definition of home. Is it where you sleep at night? Where your family is? Where you're paying rent? Where you reside? Where your things are? Where people know you? Where you helped paint the walls? A place where you feel safe?

Sometimes I think home is in the arms of another, but see- then a breakup renders you homeless.

I have paid mortgages and taken out loans for a home built of love. So many times over. Still I only have this plot of land inside my chest.

I am going to build a garden where my heart should be.

Medium Format Crush

2011-10-31T16:11:00.002-04:00

It costs so much to develop & scan, and you can only use a few of every roll, but damn- talk about gorgeous grain. Taken with Lomography Lubitel.

Vintage Beauty, North Carolina

2011-10-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

"All the words you say at the end of the day"

2011-09-30T12:50:00.002-04:00

Dark Dark Dark- Say the word

I can never forget the ceviche.

Every time I juice a lime, there's you in my kitchen that day.

Table set, meal prepared, tequila cocktail at the ready-

all that love squeezed into all that raw pink.

Me, work-weary & you, like silver, just polished.

Serving shine. I smiled so wide

a circus set up shop on my chin

and used my lips for trapeze.

A hologram of the nothing that once was something.

Fresh citrus sting from fingertip to heart-folder: open memory.

I am switching to the bottled kind to practice kitchen safety.

I do not wish to squeeze.

Dark Dark Dark- Bright Bright Bright

Fine Art Film Sneak Peek "Somewhere Elsewhere"

2011-09-21T13:05:00.002-04:00

Here you go: the first peek at my first still from my first short film series.

A day of firsts. First thing in the morning.

(styling, directing, shoot, makeup, all of it- by yrs truly.)

North Carolina: Asheville

2011-09-16T12:37:00.002-04:00

State of Dreams: North Carolina

2011-09-15T01:26:00.000-04:00

Hello world.

I have arrived Elsewhere after being all over this pretty north carolina.

I'll be spending the next month making art, pushing boundaries, exploring, learning, dreaming, coming true.

I'm heading in. Cover for me.

This Week: on set with Parazit & other random bits of joy

2011-08-27T19:49:00.005-04:00

------------------------------------
Over & Out,
Me

I AM JUST A PERSON

2011-08-06T15:02:00.001-04:00

A very lost person.

Let you put your hands on me in my skintight jeans.

2011-02-24T04:55:00.007-05:00

Happy belated valentines day
(c'mon, I'm a poet, I can enjoy sentiment).
These are a few lusty & lovely shots of my sweetie & I taken by Adot.

And on certain days, life IS a fairytale.
I've got the (faggy) price,
the (anarchist co-op) castle,
the (drag-queen) dresses,
the (artsy) life,
the (poly-communication) fairy godmother,
the (homobile) chariots,
the (dirty queer) ball-

I've got golden gate park as a front yard
and the presidio as a backyard.
Turkish coffee around the corner
and fresh picked oranges in the kitchen.
I've got a performer poet mentor and
cheap classes and endless access to knowledge
at my click-clack of any key.

I teach dreamy students about the craft of fiction
and we create characters
& close third person narratives till the bell rings.

Tell me, how to pretend that I'm not Cinderalla?
That writer doomed for sleeping in the soot
dying alone and miserable like Dorothy Parker or Poe?

C'est la vie.

When all else fails, there are beautiful girls to look at.
Here's one I shot recently.
<3

Welcome to 2011

2011-01-25T17:31:00.003-05:00

This year thus far I've had:

2 readings

1 kickstarter finish

2 attempts at singing on stage in public

1 art show

1 storybook romance

1 massive writing crush on Regie Cabico

2 excuses to wear a wedding dress

1 song written for me

1 EP recorded (Let Bloom)

8 days of voice rest

1 city traveled to that I'd never been to (NOLA)

endless, endless inspiration

My rooms in piles around me

somewhere inside those piles is my wallet

which is mostly empty

but still

Tonight I get to be a fancy Teacher's Assistant for the first time ever:

Hello, future? Will I be a College Professor? We await an answer with baited breath.

Next time on the fabulously confused life of the average poet.

Dancing in the streets of New Orleans

2011-01-22T06:33:00.002-05:00

Pauper's Cemetary, NOLA

Bywater, NOLA

A Farm, Outside of Houston

9th Ward, NOLA

Houston, TX

Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?

2010-12-19T22:21:00.003-05:00

I have.
---------

(The above photos are from a performance project called "inside outside/outside inside.")

I Need You! Kickstarter launched for "Let Bloom" EP

2010-12-15T03:08:00.005-05:00

Taken from my website:

Natti Vogel, my college friend & fantastic composer, and I launched a kickstarter site today to make an exquisite EP.

The songs are fun to listen to but lyrically & technically heavy. It will feature art by the dreamy illustrator Molly Crabapple (who has worked with Neil Gaiman & the Dresden Dolls) & a re-mix by notorious dance/balkan/gypsy DJ Joro Boro (who has spun with Bassnectar & Balkan Beat Box). Our goal is to get $3,000 in 33 days.

Natti & I first started working together 5 years ago, and we are finally asking for your support. Anything would be lovely, really, even a dollar.

There’s tons of fun perks- including a poem or a song written just for you! We already have 11 (oh look! Now it's 14!) backers, and we are super jazzed to have such sweet community.

If you wanted a fancy & important way to get involved with emerging artists, please check out our kickstarter now!

Apocalypse Vintage & Arizmendi

2010-11-30T03:33:00.003-05:00

Dears,

I just wanted to show you a beautiful tear sheet of christopher carroll photos from my last shoot with Apocalypse Vintage.

and also mention that I'm reading poems friday night as part of a super talented crew at the cutest co-op bakery around, Arizmendi.

Life is exciting! Ah! I'll tell you all about it when I'm not exhausted.

N.Sol

A WEBSITE! REALLY!

2010-11-23T04:31:00.001-05:00

NAJVASOL.WORDPRESS.COM

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky

2010-11-10T21:52:00.005-05:00

The Bus Stop House (my lovely co-op) took some christmas photos on some buses. And by that I mean, a combination of me, a broken tripod, and my camera took the photos.

We were pirates or (as the quote makes reference) perhaps highwaymen?

Here are the out-takes:

Najva Sol, Queer Iranian Artist

2010-11-07T01:01:00.002-04:00

Booyah, first page of google search.

People keep telling me they haven't met a queer persian before. I know there's a few of us out there...

My artist talk last night was nuts. I appreciated the questions, don't get me wrong, but I feel so inadequate, so under-informed to be the one telling a room full of people about the feminist context of the Qu'ran as a text or hijab in Turkey vs. Iran vs. Egypt etc etc.

Feels nice though, every time my worlds intersect.

Last Minute Show Announcement:

2010-11-02T13:09:00.005-04:00

Photo by Najva Sol

'UNVEILED - Women & Power In The Middle East'

'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East'
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – November 5 , 2010 – Femina Potens presents 'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East' visual art exhibit exploring the themes of identity, politics, violence, sexuality and feminism within eastern culture. Treasure and support three unbelievably talented artists who all have roots in the middle east and currently live in the west, as they powerfully address the intersection of power, politics and personal history through their unconditional respect and regard for feminist artwork within a complicated culture. Artists Cassell, Roxy Farhat, and Najva Sol address these prevalent and omnipotent issues through their work. Join us to pay tribute to the 'UNVEILED Women & Power In The Middle East' visual art exhibit Opening Reception and Artist Talk on November 5, 2010 at 7pm – 10pm. Enjoy delicious refreshments in the midst of acknowledging captivating and compelling stories from the artists themselves. Show runs November 5 through November 28, 2010.

Visual Art Exhibit + Events

November 5-28, 2010

Opening Reception Saturday, November 5th, 7-10pm

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market St @ Sanchez

San Francisco, CA 94110

Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon-6:00pm

www.feminapotens.org

Support cutting edge artwork - Become a member today!

All workshops are free to FP Members!

Find us on Facebook and Twitter !

On Crying

2010-10-20T04:40:00.004-04:00

It's those moments:

bare ass planted on cold porcelain thighs not tense mind drifting to rivers and niagara falls and
bubble gum bubble so big jaw sore you take one more breath and
caught glance across the room while that girl talks about the reading like a conspiracy of metaphors and it's funny and
stomach muscles tight and butt-cheeks doing the opposite of birth but then the car hits a curb you roll down the windows and
printer finally making smooth sounds the paper goes in and
under-water-longest contest and a forest fire in your tonsils, heading up and
glitter on the table forgot the lid and she speaks with her hands gestures, makes contact and

moments before explosion
before expelling

you need to cry, you walk all day in a haze of it- of all the almosts
anything can tip you over,
paper house on a gusty cliff
perhaps it'll be the tv show fight with the actors with too much makeup
or the whiskey ginger laughter that lasts too long till eyes tear anyway
or the self professed shaman from LA complimenting your purple aura
or the letter your mom sent with that yellow flower paper
or pictures of the oil spill or san quentin or the shelter or your text message about peter pan

any of these, even worse,
things like a brown feather or a rusty bike part
or a deep wrinkle

things I wont admit to

My eyeballs a red button
waiting to be pressed

let it out let it out let it out

and when you can't
like that orgasm
you spend hours searching for
post bike home drunk through the fog
and turn on your hitachi
pray your walls are thicker, just tonight
and buzz for 30 minutes before
catching head-droop and thinking pathetic

this stumbling towards but never finding
black underwear midnight contacts off
hand groping

I want this
I need this

all these almosts.
I carry almosts in my backpack and try to spin them into conversations
as though there is no statue of limitations for that which can be

in emergencies
I call you buy ben and jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough
wear grey sweatpants consume guilt and
all those movies that are like diuretics

we lean shoulders when we finally burst
I lick my tears they taste like relief

Daydreams

2010-10-04T16:13:00.002-04:00

Photo is a portrait of Noemi Castro, who took part in my Secret Pen Pal Project- Results & more info coming soon!

---------------------
Lately,
I hand bind books about glitter
and talk fancy about the super powers of parsely.
I make to do lists
about the to do lists
I should make
and daydream about being
a poet rockstar.

Can you imagine PTV?
Poetry Television with a hot nerd babe host
who quotes lyrics and the romantics
in one sweet breath?

We would count the top ten of the week.
Voters could vote via cellphones--

the tech-savvy age of poetry.

Everyone will gossip about the poets
they want to bang the most
and the poets will be followed by paparazzi.
Poet x drinks 7 cups of coffee!
Poet z had sex with 3 people!
Poet r never left her house this week!

Quotes from the readings will be printed on posters
hawked so far and wide that men with faux leather jackets
will sell black-market versions on Canal Street.

Poems will be played over the speakers at starbucks.
People will buy tickets to poets weeks in advance.

Poets get paid while living.
Nobody ever lacks for the right words to say.

Nostalgia

2010-09-15T18:17:00.002-04:00

My old description for myself- came upon it. Thought I'd share.

i will judge you based on your musical taste.

i will have an idea of you it's hard to live up to.

i like laughing so hard i cannot breathe.

i have a game named after me that consists of kissing as many people as possible in one night.

i like the naked female body. more than the male one.

i like clove cigarettes.

i am trying to breaking your heart.

i will do anything sober, that i would do drunk, including you.

i like stargazing.

i am in love with love and lousy poetry.

i bought records but i don't own a record player.

Tell me about the room you slept in last night:

2010-09-14T02:42:00.004-04:00

I lie with my lover sitting on my breastbone.
Actually, she's two inches to my right. Inches like a Mason Dixon line.
Inches so far apart that cross-country texting seems closer.

Me, rigid in my thoughts. My un-enhanced eyes stare straight up at the ceiling- an out of focus darkness before a movie flickers on. There's too much focus on focus, and on laying aligned on your back.

There, with your arms by your side like the end of some yoga class, like the last repose inside a coffin. The symbols of the shapes we sleep in.

I turn to curl: that knee-crouch-blanket-hug of the fetus.

Every time we sleep-
birth or death.
Birth or death.

I sleep under you,
inside myself.

Poem and a Picture

2010-09-09T19:13:00.003-04:00

Poem for the unfinished

cliff hang her
cliff hanger

third grade reading lesson

not everything ends
sometimes we just don't see
what happens next

I was so angry
young soft fingers curled
in balls

and now you curled
young soft ball
from my nipple
to knee

our story is mid-sentence
I am writing it
every day
another sequel
What if one day
I wake up and

Portrait of my sweet friend Amylin Loglisci who makes the pretty art you can see in her background and pronounces things cutely.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

2010-08-26T02:50:00.005-04:00

[Title from a Mary Oliver Poem]

I took this photo at the Blue Mosque in Turkey, on the tourist side- my muslim past beneath my western garb, short skirt under my chaador. A mess of hidden contradictions and nostalgia for rituals I fought so hard against

This week, on the one miracle warm day, I went outside my lovers house with my morning glass of water to soak up sun as I hydrate. Only I didn't bother wearing pants. Your ass is hanging out, she says. I feel fine, I say. What if it makes others uncomfortable? That's their problem, not mine. Why is it always others?

Why not?

Please stay behind this line. Please respect the distance between us. Please give me space. Please assert your boundaries. Please forget what I told you. Please touch me there.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for not listening.

How many times do you post beware signs with your mouth, scream do not enter signs , wheatpaste whisper caution, proceed slowly posters when all along your body is saying closer, closer, closer?

Often enough.

I cherish my moments, when my spoken language matches my body language. I tell her on the foggy ride from wine country, I miss her like a soft sweater on a chilly night.

She responds from somewhere on a bart train or the back of some hardware store: I miss you like a table misses a chair. I miss you like a cold hand misses a mitten. like a snake misses his molten skin, like an oak tree misses its tire swing.

24 hours too long till we touch.
The silence is naked and arching her back suggestively.

Queer Couture! Come see my art!

2010-08-03T05:29:00.003-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Alicia Gonzales: feminapotenspress@gmail.com

VISUAL ART EXHIBIT 'QUEER COUTURE'

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – August 7 , 2010 – Femina Potens has gathered an impressive collection of artists for your discerning tastes this August. We're excited to be able to present to you this sexy, fashion-forward, Queerest of Haute-Queer shows! All month long we bring to you a stunningly off-center multimedia art show that combines the fashionably distinguished photography, couture designs, and textile installations by artists Najva Sol, Molly Crabapple, Mev Luna, Jesse Trepper, Corey Gunter Brown & Cassidy Wright. Come Dress Your Inner Couture with Your Outer Queer amongst these outrageous designs and explore what queer identity and alternative fashion are really about with those that know what Taking it Off and Putting it On really mean.

Femina Potens is known for taking risks and exploring your options with up-and-coming designers of fashion-as-art & art-as-fashion! We welcome you to the Opening Reception & Artist Talk at 7pm on the evening of Saturday, August 7th, 2010. Partake in artistic insight, refreshments and libations during the opening reception and introduce yourself to the Artistic Underbelly of our Underworld. And of course, join us all month long as we bring you an array of enticing workshops, performances and events. Show runs through August 28, 2010.

'Queer Couture'

Visual Art Exhibit + Events

August 7-28, 2010

Opening Reception Saturday, August 7th, 7-10pm

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market St @ Sanchez

San Francisco, CA 94110

Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon-6:00pm

415-864-1558

www.feminapotens.org

Support cutting edge artwork - Become a member today!

All workshops are free to FP Members!

Find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Youth and Beauty Brigade/California One

2010-07-13T06:03:00.008-04:00

I figured out the secret of San Francisco.
This is no New York.
Ok- you're thinking "duh" but it's not just different. It's opposite.

In New York the heat is a clingy lover and everyone comes into the city to visit for the weekend.
It is the when, where, & why.

In SF you gotta track down sunshine one-night stands like it's last call at a queer party.
You gotta leave, every chance you get and spend time away from SF's very on 2nd ozone layer.

As you drive away, the city and the wet fog that hangs like dew on all it's flower-folk becomes just an impenetrable mist.
You go to Oakland, Marin, Santa Cruz, Portland, Salem, LA, Las Vegas, Arizona.
You just go.
You shed layers.
You smile some.
You dance in the grass.
You throw some glitter on it.
You take the california one up to fancy cheeses and lots of wine and greens from a farm and homemade pies and secret swimming holes.

When you return, all but the bottom of the bridge is covered in gray.
Now you see it,
now you don't.

(Note: many of these photos are from a party at a wonderful queer land project in Marin called Raven's Crossing.)

Pride & Poetry

2010-06-27T07:11:00.003-04:00

Being in San Francisco for pride is akin to being at mecca for muslim holiday.

I have been keeping busy: overwhelmed by middle eastern queer dance parties with free hookahs (causing my 2 main cultural identities to merge for one night! woah!), nipples, rainbows, dancing in the streets, high fives, booty shorts, necking, bike rides, vodka redbull, wheatpasting prints from printmaking class, having a reception for my art show at the center, and fabulously quueer theatre.

What else could a little prince want?

And so, before I cuddle with my brand knew superdupersoft sheets, here is a poem to enrich your brain after all the drinking dulled yr cells.

What She Could Not Tell Him

I wanted
to know all the bones of your spine, all
the pores of your skin,
tendrils of body hair.
To let
all of my skin, my hands,
ankels, shoulders, breasts,
even my shadow,
be forever imprinted
with whatever of you
is forever unknown to me.
To cradle your sleep.

[Denise Levertov]

Other People's Words (Amy Hempel & Neil Gaiman)

2010-06-07T09:14:00.003-04:00

I'm off in a place far far away (Turkey, Antalya, near the beach park, at an internet cafe) and have been devouring books in between my sumptious meals.

Before I can share with you my own adventures + the photos of such, here's some delectable bits of other people's stories to chew on:

[Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman]

"In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again."

"Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue."

"Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created."

"There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts."

"You're a poem?' I repeated.

She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose whose world was swallowed by the sea.'

Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?'

What's your name?'

Enn.'

So you are Enn,' she said. 'And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time?"

___________________________________________________

[The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel]

" I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.
In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn.
Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.
And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief."

"I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself"

Mama Buzz Cafe. April 25th, 2010.

2010-05-10T14:32:00.005-04:00

A night of music that makes a person want to kiss the person next to them,
just to maybe hold on to something beautiful.

Kaylee Cole

Shenandoah Davis

Zoe Boekbinder

Albany Bulb

2010-04-27T03:09:00.002-04:00

The magic of this city is partially in leaving it.
Taking a train to a girl with a car-
and traveling to a shoreline with concrete graffiti beaches & salty air.

You are so far from the urban yet encased in the radical.
You sit on a log & let the sun discover freckles on your face.
You drink gluten-free beer and dream of shanty towns.

Watch the fog roll in and hide all the bridges back to your home.

Queer-tisement

2010-04-07T19:00:00.004-04:00

Check out #1 from my series, entitled NIKE:

I'm not the best at linocut (carving is HARD.) and I'm not the best artist ever, but I'm super into the non-gendered ass & commanding people in overtly sexual ways.

Gatorade & McDonalds still to come! Yay!

Love,

"And emptiness still leaves a space"

2010-04-05T21:37:00.002-04:00

I am single and all my life is turning topsy-turvy. In response, I have taken many long walks, spent too much time on facebook, made-out, listened to Au Revoir Simone + Kim Boekbinder + Rue Manouche + The Bodice Rippers, and bought a $1 zine at Modern Times.

The brilliant blathering author of said zine had one highly quotable quote:

"I write because sometimes I really want to cry and the tears won't come out and writing may or may not change that but it is a hell of a lot more interesting than sitting on my bed staring at the ceiling."

[Patrick Dundon]

I had to lose myself to love you better

2010-03-07T06:24:00.004-05:00

A relationship is a series of compromises.

What happens when you forget who you might be if you were alone?

Where does we end and you begin?

Oh the glory of being a we fades fast in unknown cities. The I and the you have so similar an agenda. The folly.

AH, and not to forget the mild mild winter of a place that's never quite cold enough to warrant staying in, never quite warm enough to spend the night out-

It's that hovering that slows you down, one foot on either side of the doorway, procrastinating decisions till spring, when new things are born. Maybe decisions will bloom clearly and without apology like the seeds you're going to plant in the morning.

My winter:

All I Want is a Room Somewhere...

2010-02-05T02:37:00.006-05:00

Far away from the cold Frisco air, with one well-lit wall, oh- wouldn't it be lovely?

Ah, I've moved from a house with a sniveling selfish anger-ridden roommate in the sunny Mission to a coop full of queer, radical, and cheerful kids in the foggy Inner Richmond- right next to haight ashbury & golden gate park. It's been a crazy few days- we had to repaint our room the moment we moved in to fight the mold! 3 days of straight painting, on top of the three huge art art art happenings makes this week a serious challenge.

What three things, you might ask?

1. My photo/illustration collaboration with the beautiful + fantastically talented Molly Crabapple is LIVE on F/lthy Gorgeous Th/ngs.

2. My self-portrait was picked to be in a LIFE SIZE GAME OF "GUESS WHO?"- how amazing. The girls making this show are both incredibly talented and super sweet!

3. On behalf of Lowbrow Society, I'm curating my first west-coast art show! Urban Ho-Down! This Saturday night, complete with 10 artists and bicycle hay rides.

My life is pretty magically busy-
If only it would stop raining!

A kiss about apple pie a la mode

2010-01-27T02:12:00.002-05:00

A truth: I really want my life to be a movie, an epic story, an album.

It's not that I have some crazy ego, it's just that media is in someways a deeper connection than reality. If there's no magic or chaos, I'm not interested.

And some days, you have to say: a real life is not enough.

You have to buy a book called " A Great and Terrible Beauty." You have to bake a chicken pot pie and draw hearts on the steamy windows. You have you kiss your person too many times while they wait to a shower. You have to make muffins with those old bananas so perfect butter aches to melt on 'em. You make a zine with your two best friends. You dream of a city you used to live in that moved as fast as you run when you miss the bus. You feel softer, slower, sweeter, and you cozy with green tea and a stray cat. You make organic juices for soon-to-be mothers with rosy cheeks. You dream up the end of the week-long monsoon.

You have to come home. Have to write about it. Have to make it more than just the motions you go through.

I was born into reality, a rawness. I will bake myself into enchantment. I know just the recipe.

Fairview House: Vegan Pancake Brunch

2010-01-26T03:35:00.001-05:00

All you can eat lovelies. Or- all you can eat, lovelies...

Oh how I love thee punctuation.

Queer Rave Irony

2010-01-19T05:21:00.002-05:00

East Bay queers do it with glowsticks.

A list:

2009-12-20T02:38:00.007-05:00

1. Elderberry tea is good for colds

Two. Giving Up by Ingrid Michealson is a stunning song.

thr33. I have been editing beautiful photos for a special new series and you get a sneak peak.

4our: This christmas is red bows tied around palm trees.

According to Best American Erotica

2009-12-09T16:27:00.001-05:00

Full

is me with an ache and you with a rod
is her with a cunt and him with a cock
is him with whimpering ass and her with solid strap-on

A word is defined by the world it exists in.
Full is spite inside respite.
Full is carey inside precarious.
Forgive me if that’s not a good example its just

Carey, I love you and here you are
drooling on an amtrak pillow-
a ball on the broken chair
I read erotic stories and lick your ear

make me full. No,
you sleep like streetlights in a power outage.
There is no turning you on.

Out the window, Salt Lake City is lit up.
Are those young mormon girls with untouched breasts
and urgent swellings staring out,
like me, aching to feel something inside?

Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy they pray

This is my prayer
I have ten fingers toes a nice soft mouth
Two eyeballs one pair of glasses enough food for three
Sandwiches a bottle of wine two parents one grandma who loves me
A way with words and lots of luck and I am thank god not

From a god-fearing family who hates that I lick pussy
Or who filled me up with dirty things before I even knew
I had a space inside
Or missing any limbs

I have so many limbs in fact that I want to jump up and kiss
All these sleeping strangers, the girl drinking water, the old man moaning,
The baby who finally stopped crying,

I don’t.
I run my fingers through your travel-greasy Mohawk, wondering if you have wet dreams. Wondering if this need is shallow.

Wondering if all that I have that isn’t you hard in my hole
Is enough to be the whole.

Full is hole inside whole.

steampunk coveting:

2009-11-26T21:04:00.004-05:00

And I'm absolutely excited about the prospect of this SF based Dickens Festival:

roasted chestnuts,
victorian attire,
scrooge and fagin,
hot toddies,
meat pies,
vintage printing presses

WIN.

2009-11-17T14:20:00.003-05:00

last night, i traveled to france

under my eyelids. It was green

all those rich shades of it

that makes cities seem poor

and there was a pool

with swim lanes

separated by mini-pirate ships

I wanted to go anywhere. I jumped

and realized I was naked. AH!

These are part of me-

(like my runny nose ands eyeballs)

shame, self-consciousness,

forgetting what's expected of me,

and wanting to shed everything and jump

headfirst into a beauty

that doesn't exist.

Two things

you made two things

a mess

and broccoli leek soup

you can't afford art supplies

so you use food stamps

you can't write poems

so you make monster creations

and cook them up

you fingers want to type so they chop

you eyes want to frame a picture

so they watch the pot.

Follow recipes like the rules of a sonnet

pinch syllable or two.

You shove your free verse

pecan biscuits at me:

you don't say

"eat my art"

but it would be true.

Romance is on a diet

no longer the large belly full of private dinners

tipsy from the cocktails

heavy makeup to impress

and flesh full of lovebites

She eats a salad at work

washes your dishes

picks up your pens and paper

holds you, nude, for the few moments

before your eyes clothes

Every now and then,

she looks at old pictures of herself,

letters and gifts you'd given

before she can tear up

(romance shouldn't snivel,

she should weep gloriously-

or not at all)

she lights a candle

dims the lights

and waits.

She dreams of

gorging on you

till her heart explodes

but she can't find her appetite.

and besides

there's no time.

We rode our bikes

you me dad mom

to a festival for honey

who knew there were so many hills

in iowa, your dad

laughed at me

when the fresh honey poured out

of that big black machine

i was tempted to stick my face in it

so i stuck my finger

the sweet taste in your mouth

is always your secret

I kissed you with tongue to get

courage to take a picture

really really close

of the man with bees

on his face, totally covered

and there were bees crawling on me

but I was so far from my mom, the east coast,

your home, and that bad sting in 7th grade

I didn't run or scream

and you laughed at me

and I thought, fuck it

and laughed too.

Optical Illusion: Hitler/Lesbian

2009-11-10T01:17:00.001-05:00

img004edited
Originally uploaded by Iamsurrealism

You better believe it was a workout getting this gem of a shot.

MFA Degree Vs. Fantasy

2009-10-29T13:09:00.003-04:00

Some may argue that's just the same:

an MFA in poetry is a fantasy degree made of legitimizing an art form so that with lots of money and school you are a "Master"- but you can't teach talent. (PS. MFA is a terminal degree, there's no PHD in creative writing)

It's true. But regardless, that isn't my dilemma.

Going to an MFA program is probably the most solid option I've got for a "future".

I'd have to get a pretty substantial scholarship to afford this socially approved institution- the odds of getting into well-funded program are, well... it's more difficult than Harvard Law.

Worst of all,

My super-secret dream goal that's not so secret and maybe not a dream

is to rent a storefront, live in it (*ahem* nap in it), and create a community art space.

Sometimes

when I hear my smart friends talk about genetics and the body

or my business friends talk about their $26 dollar an hour internships

(with free transportation)

And I'm burping in front of a film camera for petty cash

while working on penny-stipends at non-profits

I wonder if maybe I shoulda done something practical with my life.

Do you ever think that way?

It's No Oregon Trail

2009-10-27T12:50:00.005-04:00

But here are some pictures from the journey west:

Chicago, IL [Photo by A. Fries]

Iowa City, Iowa

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Highway 80, Iowa

John Wayne's Birthplace, Iowa

Earlham, Iowa

Grand Junction, Colorado

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

(Bridges of) Madison County, Iowa

Understanding.

2009-10-25T03:46:00.002-04:00

I recently (joined with my partner in crime) started a candida cleanse which means no:
1. sugar
2.starchy veggies
3.hydrogenated oils
4.yeast (so no bread, carbs, etc)
5. perservaties
6. and more

This means I've taken to cooking lots of fresh meals like:
1. fried eggplant w/ almond flour + kale chips
2. chicken fajita, sans taco
3. quinoa with lentil and salad (homemade dressing)
4. Kabob (coming soon)

In this mindset, I volunteered time for fresh veggie juice at the farmer's market.
Lo and behold, I found myself cleaning cilantro for an hour.

In Iran, women would always spend hours cleaning herbs when they came back from shopping.
My grandma still does.

I always watched, fascinated and confused by this process, this woman's work, this task I snubbed my nose at.

And here I am, seeking a life where I do it daily.

Birthday Suit

2009-10-12T19:47:00.007-04:00

Happy Birthday to me from San Fransicko!

Sorry for the lack of Iowa/San Fran updates. I'm running around trying to get a home/job/life started here.

More later!

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind.

2009-09-15T04:55:00.003-04:00

Or, better yet- actually take the photographs and post them up!

A treat due to an abundance of time in the midwest.

My (semblance of a legitimate) Portfolio!

Move. Moving. Traveling Blues.

2009-09-11T14:29:00.007-04:00

Move:

Moving:
Distance as a form of hunger.
On the road you see things-
EAR PWR (Baltimore)
Lockeroom Talk (Chicago)
Neo-Futurists (All Over)

You feed the empty spaces of lost cities and absent lovers
with new plays and dance music.

It is so beautiful to miss something.
It reminds you of your desires.
It reminds you of how to be alive.

Traveling Blues:
Healthcare Reform
Iranian Protests
State- the united ones (in general)
State- of my wallet (in particular)

. I helped print patches for artist's right to free speech in Chicago.
There is only so much space for conversation.
Is this one?

Riis Beach. Newtown, CT. Roosevelt Island. Queer adventures.

2009-08-19T20:33:00.008-04:00

"There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies."

"'I think therefore I am,' does that mean, 'I feel therefore I'm not?'"

Art and Lies [Jeanette Winterson]

How long does goodbye last?
Does it begin the moment you are aware you are leaving?
Then around 12 years old, when our brains begin to give fruit-
we are waking up saying hello, goodbye

Biology teachers are fond of saying
"you are all dying"
because it's always always always true

My entire life has been a series of goodbye cups of coffee
goodbye fucks
goodbye travels
for-the-heck-of-it-I'm-almost-out drinks
this-is-it days of cut class

Remember that dress?
Wasn't it a what-if-I-die-tomorrow purchase?

And here I am New York-
I'm leaving.

I've Biked 37 miles in one day to your gay topless beach.
It was my goodbye-brooklyn ride.

I had a Because-I-may-never-get-the-chance-again orgy.
I cried about The Pain, the one that seems like The End.

I watched the one last free summer movie on the island
that isn't Manhattan
but part of it. Sat at the tip, body wanting
to jump in the East River- brain knowing better.

goodbye grand central,
ended up needing one last metro north train ride.
one last jaunt into into a state
I'd never visited before.

Goodbye gay Connecticut
with all your mango vodka smoothies, mansions,
and chain smoking. Goodbye backwoods with no sidewalks. Goodbye
lake I swam in even though the sign said not to.

Goodbye room without light. Goodbye Ikea shelves.
Goodbye 24 hour mexican bakery.
Goodbye no gathering on the sidewalk without a permit.

I'm leaving all the rats and sulfur and subway rides

New York, you're the Mount Everest of homes.

Your air is thinner
but the ground
is hardly ever as exciting.

It's time for me to breathe.
I'm dying too fast up here.
------------------------------------------------

Pictures are proof:

Lowbrow Art.

2009-08-03T23:24:00.005-04:00

More specifically, my lowbrow art. From the lowbrow show.

Here's a piece called "Photos I took and wish I had taken"

I paper-clipped my Polaroids to a window screen, and carey drew scenes I described to her on ones that had accidentally gone off in my bag.

This piece is called "Vanity"

PS. Us Lowbrow denizens have some rather fancy plans up our sleeves. Stay tuned.

PEX. Philadelphia Experiment Summer Festival.

2009-07-28T04:03:00.008-04:00

Hell, if it's an apocalypse, I'm killing myself right now she said. I believed her.

Maybe it was the mushrooms or that it was the fourth of july but it seemed possible. It must have been the apocalypse. Or a firecracker gone awry.

But it wasn't. It was magic. I mean, isn't every comet like god's small magic trick. All oohs and ahhhs? When he was 5 years old he'd seen a comet, tail fizzing out and sky all lit up. Every shooting star since was a letdown.

Here we are, three misfits in glitter and neon. In the middle of the woods. Running towards a pool and away from the fire spinners and this beauty comes out and we catch it.

I felt like the karate kid catching the goddamn fly with the chopsticks on the first try. Beginners luck. If you only live once, it's a good thing to have.
------------------------------

Fourth of July outfits and eyes that aren't properly focused.

Sometimes, you and the DJ (Nigel Richards) feel like dance partners that don't touch.

You know you are beautiful when your face matches the dawn.

There are some pictures that have no explanation.
*See above.

The person who blew bubbles on the dance floor while the sun was rising deserves to have some sort of authority in this country.

This little girl is a far more serious music junkie than you can ever aspire to be.

If I don't hold onto it I might lose it.

If this isn't wierdo love, I don't know what is.

Friday. Lowbrow Society for the Arts presents: MASHUP!

2009-07-14T02:09:00.004-04:00

The Lowbrow Society for the Arts presents:

MASHUP!

A super-fun multimedia art-party celebrating everything remixed, remade, repurposed, collaborated, and collaged.

Come early for the genre-bending art show, featuring works by: DAZE — a graffiti legend famous for painting subways in the cult film "Wildstyle", Sinead McCarthy — a porn blogger and naughty photographer, Nate "Igor" Smith — the guy who captures your drunken moments on DrivenByBoredom.com, Gwynn Galitzer — who uses My Little Pony as social commentary, Lenora Jayne, Evan Rosen, Carey Baldwin, Najva Sol, Anoush Dekhordi, Helen Buyniski, and Ari Goldstein. Be prepared for neon-glitter apocalypses, subverted woodblock prints, handcrafted curiousities, and Photoshop wizardry.

In typical Lowbrow Society fashion, we believe that all good art is a reason to party. Rock out to live music by Rosetta Stoned - an indie hip-hop outfit that recently opened for Peaches, Spiral Beach- "electro art fusion pop/trash/dance punk", and Cloud — a J-dilla-esque MPC beatmaker.

Late night Mashup/Electro/Remix/Dirty Dub DJing by: DJ Tommy D, Action Alex, and 12 Inch Endowment. Be prepared for tag-team turntablism and dancing your pants off.

SUPER CHEAP DRINKS. Performance by Inbred Hybrid Collective. Interactive exquisite corpse drawings. Short film by Irina Sarnetskaya. Face/body painting. Puppetry performance. Superhero armor fashion show by Dr. Adventure. 8-bit music.

Feel free to come dressed in your most remixed and ridiculous finery.

Strip naked all the expectations around "art" and get dirty with the unconventional.

Art show: 7-11

Bands/performances: 10:30-1ish

DJ's: 1ish- late-ish

$5 suggested donation before 11:30

$5 mandatory after 11:30

265 McKibbin St. Unit 210

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100428369050

http://www.myspace.com/lowbrowsocietyforthearts

Lowbrowsociety@gmail.com

Ida-Hoes

2009-07-08T11:08:00.008-04:00

Carey: My adorable partner-in-crime looking dashing as she casually leans back and drapes her calf over a bycicle *cough*

Ray's been hopping trains all over the country for ages.

Carey gave her a bowl cut. I thought she was cute.

Ruby Ruby Rose was not only a great band, but the lead singer also fucked a random volunteer from the crowd with a strap-on.

Magpie draws sweet comics for earthfirst and is the glitteriest, gothest, sweetest anarchist I've ever met.

Tom writes beautiful things and was the first person to officially hit on both me AND carey.

This rope drew blood.

Willow is stunning. They shaved their hair just that day and went from 70's gayboy to 2009 babe. Willow was the one who suggested smoking pot out of a day lily.

This is a ghost. I bet you can't guess who.

Jesus was tied up and kept yelling for a blowjob and a cocktail.

Sully and Israel were two of the first people I met. Sully has hawk feathers on his glasses, and scary amounts of energy. Israel likes to talk about sex work and adventure.

This girl wore rad threads and could do flips. Aren't there rules about being too awesome? There should be.

Think 70's softcore gay porn. Love the sleaze.

Devin was wearing a 25 cent wedding dress the night I met him. About 50 fags and Fag-ettes went roller skating at a nearby rink for his birthday and possibly gave the locals quite a shock.

Little Bunny Kai Kai just left the army in May and re-outed himself. He used to be married to a woman. Now he's wondering around the back of freight trains somewhere. His memory is amazing, he can remember every word to any song he's heard more than three times.

Bea and Piper giving a safe sex fisting demo. Piper was literally one of the most jovial people I've ever met, and has a rack that dreams are made of.

Melissa looks like a girl from another era about to hit the town. We gardened together and not only is she an absolute doll, she isn't afraid to wear a neon mumu.

The end. (Israel's end to be exact. It was his greatest Ass-et.)

Idapalooza

2009-06-29T14:41:00.009-04:00

Welcome to planet ida. Where the girls wear mustaches and the men wear dresses. Where you pick your eggs and blackberries. Where the shitter is either a cute cottage or a rocket. Where you can get ticks while doing naked stretching and drink more whiskey than ever before.

Nothing can prepare you for your first visit to radical queer Tennessee (and there's probably more going on than you'd expect).

Carey and I came early, ready to build and garden till the music and shenanigans began.

To begin with: It's gorgeous out here. Once you get over the bees, chiggers, snakes, spiders,ticks, poison ivy, mosquitoes, etc- you can begin to enjoy the stars, waterfall, and all the green as far as the eye can see.

The people aren't immediately friendly the way the faeries (fabulous gay men, mostly) are at the sanctuary a few miles away- but that doesn't mean anything. It's New York (ida) VS. San Fran (short mountain). There are plenty of friends and connections and hookups to be had. Blowjobs in the bushes all during lunch. A kiddie playground transformed to an S&M playground, complete with glory hole.

Things you can do at Ida [a partial list]
-cry
-weed the garden naked
-learn to use a jig saw

-shit next to a massive spider
-discover your hay allergy
-do arial silks poorly
-meet someone named fetish
-play spin the bottle with 4 bottles and 50+ kissers
-miss your bed
-have safe gloved sex
-join the FAG (fabulous ass gawkers) dance team

-offend people
-see the kids from school you were never quite cool enough to befriend
-listen to Hurray for the Riff Raff
-smoke weed out of a day lily
-give Dave End a hug
-accidentally wear the same outfit as a burly boy

-wake up sweaty
-drink homemade plum wine
-get jealous
-call everyone they and be constantly grammatically incorrect
-play boggle for the first time
-hear accordian versions of coin-operated boy
-wonder if anyone likes you
-get secret crush mail that proves at least one person does
-hear a chorus of moans at 3 AM
-be one of them

No one's ever died of awkward.

2009-06-04T00:21:00.003-04:00

Tonight I read a few poems at bluestockings, a super-adorable queer filled independent bookstore/coffee shop on the LES.

The event was called "Speaking of Femme II" by Femme Family and it was bangin' if I do say so myself. Honestly, I always freak out when I have to read and for the first time I wasn't SUPER nervous.
My hand barely shook and I only screwed up a few times.

The title of the post refers to a quote by the emcee encouraging hittin' on someone. I second the notion.

Also, for your enjoyment, a few more instant moments.

Meanwhile, Goodbye New York City. I'm headed to Ida in TN for idapalooza/organic farming/ queer shenanigans.

Maybe I'll see a star or two out of my tent and think of you.

LES NYC: Art/Life

2009-06-02T11:36:00.006-04:00

I have officially dated this adorable creature for 6 months. Yes, the one on the left.

Teamwork: I took this photo and Carey (my live-in partner-in-crime) edited it.

Birthday Party

2009-05-29T14:37:00.004-04:00

First we suprised the birthday girl with a long lost best friend and a decadent chocolate cake.

Then we got fancy and went to Amy Fries's Senior photo show. We drank too much wine and ate cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and some of us wore dresses.

The rest of us wore buttons and drooled over the models. There was an awkward bathroom more-than-makeout session and lots of overly excited parents. Kind of like a wedding.

Amy's roommate wore the cutest outfit and carried around a dragon pillow as an accessory.

I put makeup and one of amy's designs on an unsuspecting model and made a picture that looks like someone who matters took it.

The End.

Instant

2009-05-18T15:30:00.005-04:00

Philthadelphia: OUT and about

2009-05-18T14:27:00.008-04:00

Considering it's only a 2 hour/12 dollar chinabus ride away, it seems odd that more of us fancy shmancy new yorkers don't skip out of town to Philly more often.

I have been in LOVE with philly since my first south street cheesesteak on the way to TLA to see Regina Spektor.

In the city of brotherly love you can bike from west to east on the same bike trail. You can stay in a queer house full of activists and cook breakfast made solely of backyard chicken coop eggs and farmer's market finds. You can walk around big houses that cost very little full of people you'd like to talk to.

You can stop by america's 1st penitentary (started by the quakers to help people repent) and take a tour about great escapes. You can visit the crazy mosaics in south philly or pick up vintage photos in the bottom of a random used book shop.

You can learn about MUM and drink cheap draft beer from a spout that looks like a pencil. You can make out on every street corner and drool over stripper shoes.

You can buy fresh juice from the stands and drink mugs of mixed drinks at the bikestop.

You can run quickly, very quickly, out of the trolley and onto your bus and all the way back to the gritty city in the same time it takes to make a round trip to coney island.

Bed-Stuy Nights

2009-05-15T12:41:00.002-04:00

See the light.

2009-05-14T03:06:00.002-04:00

digital age

2009-05-08T04:29:00.006-04:00

I've been using pens, needles, thread, wrenches, film, salt, pepper, paper.

In this digital age we forget we cannot eat and breathe our fantasies. That sometimes, this mess of hardwires and harddrives and softwares is nothing more than a virtual filing system.

My computer crashed and everything ceases to exist. But the things I wrote on my typewriter still look dandy.

And all the facebook comments in the world can't beat staying up late with mischief and southern music, getting boozy with the dandies, and kissing faces.

Soon I'll post photos.

Photos of love and cherry blossoms, travels and tricks.

As soon as I get my scanner back to working.

Meanwhile, enjoy this:

from the green bike photobooth at 3rd ward.
I had bike-power made, scotch-spiked, ginger lemonade and ambled about listening to music and staring at bushwick folk.

Oh! and I almost forgot.
I'm dancing at objectify sunday night. Tara (3rd earth designs) is showing her awesome outfits, and dj shakey will keep us movin'.

check it out:

Guest Producer /// Sam Black
Main Gallery DJs /// DJ Shakey /// Greything
DJs in The Rubber Room /// Xris SMack! /// DJ Stalagmike
Interactive Electronic Music by /// Treasure Chest
a partner project of Loud Objects
Live printing by Peripheral Media Projects
Bring your own clothing or buy a blank tee.
$5 per print! Designed to inspire!
Fashion Presentations by /// The Baroness /// Third Earth Designs
Go-Go Illusionists /// Sequinette /// Machine Sex /// Najy Glitteratti
Visual Video Stimulation by /// Jez
Greeting you at the door /// Mistress Crimson
Devious Equipment /// Master Virage
And celebrate EditrixAbby’s Birthday!
ISO Cake Wrangler!
Pertinent Details:
The Delancey /// 168 Delancey (Clinton & Attorney) /// MAP
Doors at 9pm - PartYcipate til 4am
$20 for the Uninformed /// $10 for the Fabulous
FREE for Artists who bring 2D/3D art, offer a performance or otherwise partYcipate!
Dress: Explorers, Inventors & Scientists–All Centuries, Pharmaceutical Phashion & Capsule Couture, Mommy Homages, Expectant Mothers, Adult Babies, Embryos, OB/GYN/Delivery Room Drag, All Interpretations of Birth Control. Make. An. Effort.

AuH20: Recycled Clothing

2009-05-01T19:26:00.003-04:00

I modeled for AuH20
(my good friend Kate's store in the east village)
and here's the video!

Eco-friendly and cute?
It's all the rage...

Build Rome in a DAY

2009-04-08T02:13:00.003-04:00

The impossible is possible.

Last night, my partner-in-crime and I woke up, rolled out of bed, and went to the New Museum to be part of the rebuild rome project.

2:30 AM is perfect museum-visiting time.
5 AM, hot glue gun in hand, cardboard temple in my lap, wine by my foot.

Talked with the other crazies, one of the guys from parts and labor, and the artist.
Collaborative art. Art about process. Art with a story.

Art with a point to make.
Let's get drunk, and make the impossible possible. Let's set your mini statue on fire on new york city sidewalks. please pass the grapes. What year is it now?

6:30 AM, bike ride home. New york was just opening its eyes. Sunlight rather unsure of itself. Me, giggling and giddy.

Just like when I was the door girl at a greenpoint rave this weekend, arms by my side. superhero pose. "show me your shit!" I screamed with glee. "flash me!" I mean your stamp of course. There is so much power in being less fucked up than the next person.
I can see your twitching jaws, glassy eyes, stumbling dance moves.

The rave was an afterparty for the pillowfight held earlier that day on wall st. You know, the type of shindig where you snuggle up close and swing a pillow around to a few hundred of yr closest strangers.

My laptop is turning purple from my new hair dye. I spend too much time in front of the computer, but what am I supposed to do? It's my job.

Generally when I'm not on the computer, I am being vomit-inducingly cute.

Example (taken at Niagara photobooth right after visiting the Antagonist Art Movement show):

And scene.

Because I am a shitty writer

2009-04-05T04:34:00.003-04:00

everything I write gets deleted
(I don't know why this is written in a passive tense
as though the words disappear randomly
like I am not the god of my paper kindgdom)
this line has been written a multitude of times.

I own these words, I own nothing. Here, take them.
Take love, take salty skin, take fairy tale.

Take all the concepts I can't convey without wanting to mildly vomit.
things like the warmth of your body against mine,
things like how you actually get excited about ugly christmas sweaters and petting kittens
but still wouldn't mind being tied up and face fucked by my strap on.

I wish I could make the description of this bruise,
this blossom colored in by the purple hue of my burst veins,
something magical and original
like every one of your moans.

there is nothing to say about me,
I am just the tongue, the fingers, the thrusting

this is life and I am fucking it

life is a body and I am a lover and you are the smell of ocean
or feeling of sand in between toes

who are you? am I thinking of someone specific or
all lovers or
just anyone who reads these words?

I want to have tea with you, if you like tea.
green.
with honey.

and try to remember what reality becomes when you are no good at creating
just consuming
and destorying
and complimenting.

Sometimes when I think I am a bad writer
I say a sweet thing to the closest person

and I say: look, look what words can do.

Love is a place

2009-04-01T02:39:00.007-04:00

walls of skin and letters. Sighs as adhesive, carpeted by tangled clothes.

Dear you,
I am a new resident.
Please send a welcoming committee.

what is the fiber of life? latex is a slick second skin, bruises as self-expression. you should know this about me by now. write me something good. spin the straw of living into the gold of story.
there are so many lifetimes that have only been lived.

there is not enough space (but there is breathing room in the silences)

she fucked me and I bled. fingers sticky and brown and my insides BURNED. I want to fuck you. to get in uncomfortably close uncomfortably wet.

recording is a thankless job. Join the ranks of the hunched over the armies of the weak eyes and swollen fingers: the starter log to the bonfire of your vanities.

push your shoulders back and stand up straight or better yet, let me. let me take your arms and move them up, slip your pants down and kiss history lessons from your collerbone to your... space. to the space.
let me in to the space your space my space give me space I need space.

to be consumed by the living or the lives of others.

I want a solo show for the art of my being.
Dear sir, please represent me at the contract signing, do you mind mister business?
Dear art handler, here are the instructions on curation and presentation:
give everyone a camera on the way in, place random naked people in odd positins throughout the room. keep the tea and cupcakes stocked. have photos of me collage a wall, just one. on the others collage my writing, photos, random jewlery. one wall of just mirrors. vintage dresses, boas, and glitter all over the floor. I will do the finishing touches myself- writing anthems in lipstick on the wall. also, there will be a massive set of bean chairs resembling tits and penises. some days we can leave out fake drugs and fake money, or half eaten food.

I am going to make lots of money.
THIS IS A COMMERCIAL PIECE.
this is the place of my spaces.
I am selling my self to the highest bidder. we will have tequila at the opening. men will come from afar and buy it all.

I want you in my bed. maybe that too, is just a performance.

Dear you,
how much is a ticket? front row?
I want to stake out prime real estate in your love.

Thank You,
....

MEET THE COYOTE NOVA

2009-03-23T18:22:00.005-04:00

and come see his film saturday.

The Facebook Event Page
His Website
Official Trailer

-----------------------
“The craziest thing I could think of doing was going to Burning Man, so I went,” says 22 years old Max Coyote Nova, to explain his attendance at a notorious weeklong desert rave over the summer. Sitting with his Where The Wild Things Are T-shirt and tousled brown hair, he continues, “I want to party a lot, and listen to electronic music.” To the untrained eye, Nova may sound like simply a party-boy, but what is better than a filmmaker who is not afraid of insanity and having a good time?
Max’s original attraction to film stems from this same desire for adventure. When he was 11 yrs old, Nova attended theatre camp in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado. While shooting a rooftop sniper scene, a confused passerby thought the stickup was the real deal. After an ensuing $60,000 police operation- little Max Nova was hooked. In his mind, movie- making equaled chaos, therefore it must continue.
Years (and many student films) later Nova, who graduated in ’08 from NYU’s prestigious film school, still believes in fun… and integrity. As such, Max is determined to create art that is both entertaining and true to his beliefs. The task, though daunting, isn’t impossible- “it just takes more effort.” He is frustrated with indie movies that have abandoned the idea of entertainment because of some artistic ideology.
Nova has high hopes for his newest short film, The Shaman’s Apprentice. His intention is to make something “cool, scary, badass, exciting… and fun to watch.” Shot in the scenic mountains of Colorado, the movie follows a skeptical shamanism teacher who gets tangled up in a cursed duel between a shaman and a witch. Nova wants to convey his passion for the subject of Shamanism with his audience. He avoided being preachy, fantastical, or dryly informative by focusing on “the interaction between a more spiritual belief system and that which studies that belief system.”
Part of the magic of the film lies in its beauty. The sprawling landscapes, the stunning details, and the vivid colors add a great deal of appeal to The Shaman’s Apprentice. These high-definition aesthetics are only possible with a generous budget, which is rare for someone so young. Luckily, NYU recognizes Nova’s talent and upon graduation he was awarded the $10,000 George Heinemann Production Award to make this film. With a few more generous believers in his vision- including executive producer Kipton Cronkite, and a special effects producer who worked in kind- Max is able to create a masterpiece.
Even more impressively, Max Nova can make a masterpiece without hurting the environment. Growing up in a hippie town and named after a vision in a native American sweatlodge- Nova says he has always been earthy. To him, the careless attitude of film crew- disposing of hundreds of bottles, throwing away entire sets for days on end- is not acceptable. He recounts how on his set, only one bag of trash was created in 12 days, people carpooled, and everything was generally eco-friendly. Max has created pamphlets sharing his green filmmaking philosophy and offers his services as a consultant for green movies.
When not making his own films and coming up with ways to revolutionize filmmaking- Max stays busy. Always the artist, he wants to make a living without having to be contstrained to a desk. He is a part of Dawn Of Man Productions, a company he started with 4 of his good friends. Sometimes he displays his photos, music, and films in various venues or VJ’s the many parties he attends. Nova recently contributed to a highly successful group show (which included Dawn of Man Productions) entitled Mediums, at the now-defunct Print Factory in Chelsea. The Shaman’s Apprentice is set to screen at NYU’s First Run Film Festival on
March 28th at 1:00 P.M. Max is thankful for all the different ways to express himself, because he knows that it’s not hard to make art- what’s hard is “express[ing] yourself in a way that makes someone want to listen.” At the moment, Max Coyote Nova has a captive audience.

Where do the words go?

2009-02-23T21:55:00.005-05:00

"I love that we are the same" said vanity to vanity.

When the clock strikes home, I disintegrate if you're not there.

My only complaint is that I have no complaints.

I love you, too.

Valentines Day.

2009-02-19T02:22:00.002-05:00

I'm going to make it through this year, if it kills me.

2009-02-09T17:52:00.004-05:00

I never made the requisite New Years goals and yadda yadda post for a reason.
I find them mundane and I don’t want to rush to make all these inane goals only to break them before the 31st of the same goddamn month.

But here is a truth:

I made one goal this year. It’s to learn to follow through. And I only mention it because little by little it’s happening.

Yes, I make big plans and do them- but the small things slip away.
How many to do lists discarded?
How many stories unwritten and unfinished?
How many dates made and canceled?
How many books started and left behind?

Hence, I can make it to Europe but not to an interview.

And this is my year. My year where I finish what I start
Cue- elliot smith “nobody broke your heart. You broke your own because you can’t finish what you start…”

I am a mess of music and musings.
Always a mess.

But this mess made it through a 10 day silent meditation despite losing it- castaway style- on the 3rd day and playing silently with sock puppets.

This mess didn’t eat meat till the end of January, and somehow still got enough protein.

This mess put on her first business casual Annie Hall outfit, wore pearl earrings, taught a faux class for her NY Teaching Fellows interview, and didn’t throw up.

This mess skied the impossible un-groomed back of a Colorado mountain, wiped out, and got back up.

And mostly, this mess likes a girl who she won’t drop for something newer and fancier -mostly because there is nothing fancier- but also because it’s time to give something real a chance.

Enough: early abortions. early withdrawals. early terminations.
We stop things before we do them. It’s a fear of failure. Laziness. Procastination. Distraction. Facebook.

I want to grow, full bloom.

I can feel growth in my bones.

This mess is going to do things and tell about them.

I am doing things.

2009-02-06T21:51:00.003-05:00

An article my darling friend Bianca interviewed me for (photo credit to Sinead).
Read all of it here.

Plus, Lenora and I (reppin' the lowbrow society for the arts) are doing installations for this:

Excitement is in the air.

Vagabond

2009-02-06T01:33:00.004-05:00

I've been all over.
Boston.
Providence.
Silent Meditation in the outskirts of Mass.
Back in Brooklyn.
In a bed in Manhattan.
Home to DC.
and currently: just arrived in Colorado, ready to ski for three days.

I hop towns, living in cars + buses+ bikes.
Crossing state lines + bridges during sunset.
I hold on to my luggage, my sense of self, a girl's hand, your sanity, a drink.

So much is happening and soon.
A valentine's rave. A partner in crime. An article. A conference.

Try to remember this:
Anitcha. Impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. Live, now.

Natural Light

2009-01-07T01:58:00.003-05:00

Lazy mornings in providence.

I wrote a letter in a vintage shop and cooked a meal in an 80's prom dress. Danced drunkenly to noise music with three girls, socks, and a hardwood floor. Watched happy movies and kissed pretty people and took lots of pictures.

I wake up to the sun every day and go to sleep with a cat purring.

I miss someone and I told them and I feel good about it.

Look:

New Years Eve, 1929

2009-01-04T04:08:00.005-05:00

Dear 2009, remember this:
The unlived life is not worth examining.

A non-triumphant return

2008-12-29T02:42:00.003-05:00

to the blogosphere.

HI.
SORRY I DIDN'T CALL.

I've been busy. Wait, that's a lie (and trust me, that line usually is).

So about thanksgiving-ish I found out my parents have been reading this thing (and the livejournal before that, and the xanga before that)- which means I've had lots on my plate. Writing knowing they are reading changes the dynamic. But I don't want it to.
I guess now I've officially come out. Genderqueer + here, FTW.

Let me give you a brief update so we can return to our regularly scheduled programming!

-My hair is now delirium colored. like this:

-My best friend cat came to visit for the holidays.

-I grew a rather sizeable crush on a girl who likes cutting and pasting and films and cuddling and dirty texting.
-I am having an existential crisis about life/love/the pursuit of happiness/NYC/no direction home/ being lost/being found/motivation/size/weight/art & the lack thereof/etc
-I am tentatively thinking of becoming a sex therapist/counselor
-Found myself obsessed with the Metric "Grow up and Blow Away" album
-Took pictures like this:

-Took a whirlwind 24 hour trip to Iowa at 4 am with friends. Didn't make it to Iowa (snowstorm) but did get to have an eternal sunshine-esque moment at lake eerie.
-Tried eggnog

Happy merry everything. Here's to us all.

Thing I Jock

2008-11-30T18:48:00.004-05:00

I wrote this for the last meanred productions newsletter (remember them? they throw Korrupt) and just wanted to share!

Words we like to hear: Underground. Hip Hop. Brooklyn. Geek...? If you haven't noticed yet, Hip hop is being taken over by the nerds. Following in the (rather massive) footsteps of J. Dilla- is Cloud, the new kid on the MPC block. Instead of chains, he's got glasses. Instead of a video full of oiled-up girls,its just him sitting in his BK apartment making brilliant beats out of golden oldies- and rocking out. Gives a whole new meaning to playing with yourself…

The track in this video has been stuck in our heads all week. Somtimes though LIVE fancy computer fiddling is even cooler than You Tube- so we're stopping by Glasslands Dec. 1st to check his set. As long as he does the nerdy glasses adjustment every few beats, we're sold.

Jock #3 brought to you by Najy

the fall of my memories

2008-11-27T18:50:00.003-05:00

I remember.
Somewhere, in the midst of a summer- I met a girl with purple pants that matched mine. I walked through dawn with her and brought her back to my purple room.

This was before I took that plane ride to lonely epiphanies in foreign accents. This was after I had started dating my unfinished business.

She never meant to meet me. I stripped her bare in public and got stuck on her skin.
Maybe I wished to becomelike her- more solid, darker- and went in search of beaches and consistency in the chaos of backpacks and train-rides.

This was the summer, the summer of love.
It lasted one week. The incubation period. The birth of a slogan: dare to feel.

dare to move in. to let in. to fall. to leave.

truth or dare? When I walked there was truth in my eyes. too much truth and sunlight, so I closed them. I opened them again in the dark. clothed, her clothed, us clothed. Why clothed?

Because we have sticky skin, molasses skin, burnt sugar under pecan pie skin, and you don't want your sheets wet. Your pink room. Your mother's house. Your island, the long one.

We are girls and not girls. We are pink and purple but mostly black and blue.

There are chances, you get them- life steals her metro card and lets you steal her from the world.
There are no plans, no huge meetings, no phone calls. You have the right lens for her photoshoot, she has the right lips for your mouth.

There are chances and there are decisions and you get them and you make them. I said I had to go. I called it creating the future.

Over dinner tonight, I was talking about what I want to do and a woman said "there is only now. there is no future, it doesn't exist." I knew it was smart and I'd heard it before but it still felt like a piece of ice down my shirt. And while I can handle it in summer, it is not summer.

Today it is the fall. The fall of my memories, the future of my past present. Time confuses me, and I let good things slip like ladybugs out of the cracks of my clasped hands.

Where are my wishes? Where is rusted bottle to polish?

Open sesame, open garlic, open everything bagel. these are the new york absurdisms. I wish to be in a cave of treasures. dens of thieves.

I stole her and time took me prisoner. When you shoplift you still return the item, and pay a fee.
You pay twice instead of once and are left with nothing.

once upon a time, life blinked and I got lucky and I stuttered and life caught me red-handed at the cookie jar and she sent me to bed without dinner.

That was not tonight. Tonight I ate my thank you's and pleases. but even with a full stomach of cranberries and pumpkins.even with entire farms under my skin- I still carry the memory of empty.

Sometimes, I see her in a new girl I meet, the spooky practical joke of lowlit bars and a few beers.

I once met a girl with purple pants and she wore purple pants and I took her to my purple room but then she had to change out of them and I decided the black looked nicer and moved out of my house and now I'm wearing pinstripes and my mom's friend is wearing pinstripes and my bedroom is black and silver and I'm pretty sure it's not that big of deal.

because not everything is meant to be
even when it feels like it is.

When you gonna love you as much as I do

2008-11-26T01:19:00.003-05:00

(Title from Tori Amos- Winter)

On Loving Yourself: Addendum 1

2008-11-25T02:53:00.004-05:00

"We have never met a person who suffers from low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm."

[The Ethical Slut]

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

2008-11-25T01:31:00.005-05:00

[Douglas Adams]

So instead of stopping into Philly, I came straight to DC with an overnight pitstop in Washington Heights (which is almost like philly, in that its eons from me). Mostly, up at the tippy top of manhattan: I watched snatch, got brutalized by a kitten, cuddled, and ate grapefruit.

This sounds boring, but it's immensely satisfying. I also took some pictures, to come later.

I then hopped a bus to MD. I did some good deeds and racked up some karma points.

Smoked up in the car that picked me up from the subway and Maryland said welcome with chipotle burritoes and time to read. Tea was on the stove when I suprised my mother.

Today I read an entire book and did bikram yoga (which I have an unlimited week of). It's sweaty and long, but you leave it feeling like a gummy candy- sweet and limber.

And to look forward to?

*DORK ALERT*

I'm dying my hair, much inspired by the only other person I have ever heard of who has my specific haircut... Delirium from the endless in Neil Gaiman's Sandman Chronicles comic book.

Delirium and I, we're meant to be- down to the overly ripped fishnets.

And just as a goodnight:

Delirium My Little Pony fan-art. Truth: There are bigger nerds in the world. *phew*

I'm not me. Neither are you.

2008-11-22T07:30:00.004-05:00

As a model, I spent a large amount of time pretending to be someone else.
But I didn't realize how much of every day, everyone is acting.

You pretend to not sleep with girls in the conservative office, you pretend to have a boyfriend when the boys bother you, you pretend you are someone else, somewhere else, something else.

we have drama clubs, acting classes, drag queens, trannies.
we are not ourselves. we are more ourselves that we'd care to admit.

The other day, I began to wax nostalgic for playing pretend as a kid- but I play dress up + imagination games more now than I ever did then. but now I stay in same world.

I'm not some orphan living alone in the woods (think boxcar children), or a fairy princess with magical powers.

When I go to the hipster club, gay club, burning man party, poetry reading, work- I put on a persona. I dress it up, I act the part (just like anyone).

This rant is inspired by failed attempts to flirt with a girl when I wasn't dressed the part. Inspired by my fake name at photoshoots. Inspired by the girl who said reading this is like reading about "najy" who intimidates her, because she knows and loves "najva".

This rant is inspired by my one friend who is too girly for girls, for kids playing on the playground and making it a pirate ship or quicksand, for the girl who is just insane enough to compliment someone's eyeballs because it's really the first compliment she thought of and not because it sounds interesting.

I want to know if it's possible to be yourself every minute of the day. If pretending is a necessity. I have this hair-brained notion that inside all my facades, there is what is essentially me (visually, it'd be a glowing gold nugget of truth). And sometimes I consciously deny it, or ignore it, or I show bits and pieces of it...

But what if I didn't give a fuck and did what it said all day? ignoring the fact that dressing would be impossible (which outfit is really me? that's a good question to ask if you never want to leave the house)- what would happen?

no fake names, no fake answers for the harassers on the street, no lying, no faux-flirting, no games, no biting my cursing tongue in front of the kids, no wigs, no drag.

I'd lose a lot. a whole lot.

Thankfully, I love my multiple personalities- and they (except for the depressed, self- loathing one) love me right back.
--------------------------------------------

I am tired, speedy, full.
It is morning, though you can't tell in my batcave-room.
I went on a spender drinker thinker bender tonight.

So when I got home, I watched "castle in the sky" and wrote this.
It is 8:18 AM and I am tired of New York City.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life and I am trying not to think about it. My ex used to have a rule (which we never really followed) that says not to dwell on deep topics after 2 AM.

So I'll empty my mind here, then try to sleep.

THOUGHT VOMIT:

-what grad school? MFA poetry? MA English/Journalism/Sociology? Business classes? Lawyer?
-Why did L have so much girl drama?
-Why are people attracted to people who look just like them? (i.e. not me. lame)
-What a waste of mascara.
-Crookers kid cudi remix pretty much owns my soul.
-Though I'm not always having sex, my bed is rarely empty.
-Tomorrow night/ sunday AM I leave for philly.
-We need more smutty artists.
-I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat. I'm fat.
-does having sex on the bathroom floor with someone 30 minutes after I meet them make them less attractive to me? does that make me a bad person if it does?
-I should get HIV tested.
-I'm tired.

Goodnight. morning. whatever the fuck.

Zelda Fitgerald. The Flapper.

2008-11-20T15:56:00.003-05:00

This is my favorite quote to describe myself, ever.
I wish Zelda and I could get champagne drunk one day.

"The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure... she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart."

Zelda Fitzgerald

Open mic. Facebook. Douglas Adams. Creepy.

2008-11-18T02:41:00.004-05:00

I read THIS poem tonight and didn't vomit all over bar 13.
In fact, I may go do workshops with them.

But I woke up knowing I was going to read, and had that pit in my stomach all day.
I was hyperventilating when my eyebrows were being threaded, shaky making sandwiches and drinking coffee, knocked over a table and shattered three glasses while drinking wine.

I did read "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe" by Douglas Adams all morning. ignored my phone, made myself granola and yogurt, and read the whole goddamn thing cover to cover.

Fave part? When the cow offers himself up as dinner.

Incidentally, all this was possible because the girl I stayed with last night had to be at work by 9. Which meant I was home by 8:45. It's been a while since I saw the sun. You tend to forget, when you become nocturnal, how much happier life could be if you just managed to sit outside while the sunshine is doing it's full-on-rays. Vitamins, do your thing.

Ok, before I go any further let it be known- I AM A CREEP.
Pretty much, I have fabulous research skills that I utilize in stalking my person of the moment- be it someone from my past- or some hopeful future liason.
Facebook, myspace, google, twitter- these are all guilty pleasures.
It's like movies and stories, but with people you peripherally know. Reality TV streaming live out of my laptop.

So- to add to that, today I made my first fake facebook profile. It started as a joke in a bar. But I was succesfully able to make a profile claiming to be another existing person, upload various pictures, do minimal research... it's too easy. Unsettlingly easy. Granted, I have interaction limits due to my small amount of knowledge- but imagine if I knew them better.

Or imagine if I didn't know them at all.
A perfect stranger could make a site pretending to be me, and it's entirely possible.

*shivers*

I have three jobs tomorrow ( 12:30 photoshoot, 4:00 Artists model, 10:00 Go Go @ Snapshot)
I best get to sleeping.

The Itch.

2008-11-16T14:21:00.003-05:00

I MISS BEING ON THE ROAD.

I MISS EUROPE.

I MISS SUNSHINE.

Words to live by

2008-11-15T22:42:00.004-05:00

Over dinner I said this to a friend as a sudden conversational epiphany, and it's everything to me, pretty much. She teared up and we hugged, then made plans for me to tattoo a circle into my wrist. girls. le sigh.

"I am constantly searching for two things: Love and Truth. But I am not willing to compromise either because one is nothing without the other."

You know exactly what I mean.

Busy.

2008-11-15T22:22:00.000-05:00

I'm busy.
You're busy. We love being busy, we hate being busy.
I can schedule you in next week, next month, tomorrow between 4:30 and 6.

Some people are busy because they can't decide what they want and try to do everything. Others are over dedicated to one subject. some are working 5 jobs to pay off taxes they never put aside. some use it to forget. some use it to distract themselves from themselves. some are THIS close to getting their dreams, if they just work harder.

I'm busy.
And I love looking at my schedule seeing the number of dollars I'm making each day. each week. Seeing all my winter/spring jetsetting plans. I love using every minute of every day. I love writing (hermit) in my schedule and x-ing the whole day out for coffee and anime movies and ice cream.

I loathe working 7 days a week. I loathe knowing what I'm doing IN ADVANCE for 2 weeks. Spontaneity= foreign language.

Thursday, for example.
I woke up, ran errands. dressed. went to a photoshoot in the basement of Lit. Met up with a friend for drinks and dinner with a whole face of glitter. went glitzy and drunken to yoga. went home, changed, hopped over to bushwick. danced to the wildstyle 25th anniversary party lineup. made more plans.

rinse, repeat.

friday, staten island for a gig with my friend cherry. then over to her friends house, a dominatrix who she has class with. then rush back, dinner, gogo, crew breakfast.
home at 8 am.

These are examples of a schedule without breathing room.

I am trying to live as many lives as possible. I recognize the importance of balance (today my day was lazy, but that was scheduled too).

here are future plans, the big ones:

Philly next week
home for thanksgiving
home for the holidays
New Years somewhere special (TBA)
10 day silent retreat in boston mid january
skiing in colorado early feb
Winter Music Conference miami late march
New orleans/houston mid-april

Summer...San Francisco? Barcelona? Istanbul? Morocco?

Ah, world.

Things I need:
money
time
a book that inspires me NOT to put it down (I miss my reading addiction)
to not eat ice cream and drink coffee with too much sugar in it

I am not that interesting.
but I try.

Now I'm off to host a party. sell jello shots and pass out toy money. bring in friends.
do what I love doing,
showing others a goddamn good time.

shower time.

SMUT in the Village Voice

2008-11-12T01:31:00.005-05:00

Check us out.
we done good.

Slideshow of SMUT! in The Village Voice
And it's official!
There will be another SMUT! In december.

Ready? Get Excited.

Love,
The Lowbrow Society for the Arts
[Najy + Lenora Jayne]

To hold your antics over till then...

Disintegration

2008-11-10T18:35:00.005-05:00

My favorite motorcycle jacket’s sleeves are falling off and the rotten stuffing is visible. The soles of my boots are worn. There are holes in my black purse.
Exterior is giving way to Interior:
the aging process of the things I love.
Love is a verb and like any, it means action. My things have been there- rubbing against other studded punk jackets, infused with skinhead sweat, dropped on bathroom floors to mingle with toilet paper and day-old gayboy cum. They have danced on platforms while my legs are running double time on some powder or another.
New things tell no tales.
My mother, every time I go home, looks at my ripped fishnets, dirty backpack, and duct tape shoes and asks me- don’t I love my belongings?
Of course. If I didn’t, they’d be stainless, whole, still sitting in a closet somewhere next to my graduation robes and the orange scarf she bought me in Turkey last summer.
You should respect your things, she says. She pronounces respect like a slap.
Respect leaves her lips fully capitalized, some word to pray to. Her vision of respect is not biking miles in the clothes, not doing minor construction in the clothes, not staying out days in the clothes, not doing drugs in the clothes, not having sex against the bathroom wall in the clothes.
But not me.
I promise, if I love you- I will wear you out. Take you on trips till dawn and sometimes you’ll have mysterious marks on your skin even if I don’t leave the house with you.
If I love you, you’ll disintegrate.
Exterior giving way to interior- till you’re inside out and we both can see what you’re made of: The Chinese girl you first said those three words to, who died that Halloween. All your exes, including the one you might get back together with. The pain from your tattoo and hood piercing. The pleasure. The exact synapses fired the first time I made you come. Your capoiera muscle, what’s left of it. Your tumor. You and your sisters secrets. That disappointed look reserved for friends who forget to be friends. The night after the club you don’t remember. And the morning after, naked, with him. Your mis-wired nerve endings which let you have orgasms from my massages. The piece of dinner you didn’t throw up when you were trying to make your last series of paintings.
All this will fall out of your seams.
I can’t be careful, I don’t know how.
When my mother tried to teach me, I stuck my fingers firmly in my ears and sang Green Day just loud enough to hear nothing.
I learned only this:
If I love you, you will disintegrate, exterior giving way to interior.
If you are a jacket or shoes or a purse- I will spend money to repair you. Take you to to a store that smells of polish, drop you off with a man behind a sewing machine.
If you are made of skin and bones, if you are human, I will not stop.
I will pull out your stuffing with glee, place it on the bed, treat it like a library. A museum. A sandbox. I will get lost in the stories of your insides, place your insides on a pedestal and charge others to visit, throw your insides in the air and get some in my eye. I will build castles from your insides.
If I love you, you will disintegrate.
If I love you, you will disintegrate.
Exterior giving way to interior until you’re inside out.

YES WE DID.

2008-11-08T03:09:00.003-05:00

And I'm not talking about the president.

The SMUT! art party was FIERCE. I mean, we made it by a hair.
The gogo girl called in sick an hour before, there was a bushwick trash can scavenger hunt for some art work, and I showed up about 30 minutes late.

But we packed out the bar. over capacity and everyone beautiful and talented. the music was dope, the pictures scandalous, the last minute (sent by an angel) replacement gogo was hot, and I was mostly running around like a 5th grader snorting pixie sticks.

Watch for it. The Lowbrow Society for the Arts is here to stay.
We have a vision:

non-pretentious art in odd settings. chelsea is sterile. lets have fun around art. lets set a mood. lets make friends. art is for the masses. for the people. there is no reason you should be able to spend 2 hours gallery hopping and not see one goddamn good piece of work. Lenora and I literally stand behind each and every piece in the show.

the lollipops, cookies, nudity, gummyporn, electro music, drink specials, squishy boob-balls, late night makeout sessions? That's what makes you stay. But the focus is the pieces. that's the draw.

and now that we have a good reputation, we might make it a monthly. more on that soon...

Also, I sold my first photo:

In the meanwhile, my room is still a mess. I have a slight whooping cough. I'm not healthy enough. I don't eat enough raw vegetables. I think too many processed sugary foods make me sick. I really like kissing this one girl, but I like that I can kiss everyone and still kiss her too. I feel like I made something real, and I'm proud of myself. I don't have a real job. I have three gogo gigs and two (non-paid) hosting gigs in the next 2 weeks. I'm modeling for a nerve.com spread. I want to use the artist for the next party we do.

I can't seem to sleep on time or enough, ever. I just want to stop, sometimes. If I ramble on my blog, is it lame? Sometimes I dream up burlesque shows with candle wax and fake blood.

Now if I could only feel enough emotions in my icebox heart to make art again, I'd be dandy. Am I thawing? The last girl I was falling in love with was a mess. I'm so tired of messes.

And it's not even about a boy or a girl, it's about the world. Slap my sissy face, but I used to be elliot smith's dream girl: "I'm in love with the world through the eyes of a girl..." lame. but it's about time to clean my act up. starting with my room.

Sunday, I'm becoming a hermit.

Halloween. Art Show. Criminal.

2008-11-06T03:28:00.002-05:00

I got my first real ticket today for letting a friend in with me through the subway turnstile.
I also got my first photos ever REALLY printed today for an art show. MY art show hosted by the group my friend and I started: The Lowbrow Society for the Arts...

halloween was beautiful glittery chaos. things like 9 am brunch and yoga sessions before bed and glitter gangs slashing faces with silver.

I cried when obama won.

Picture Post: Burning Man NY Decompression

2008-10-28T17:32:00.009-04:00

[Word On the Street Series]
Recently found a picture from a late drunken night in Spain...

There are 3 things to do in this town: Watch TV, Become a genius, You.

Choices. and saying yes to the world.

2008-10-25T05:24:00.005-04:00

New york has this way of catching you when you least expect it.
More than anywhere else in the world you are highly aware of your paralell universes,
your other possibilities of how to spend each moment. Relaxing is not calm but more a denial of options, a choice to not do anything beyond breathing and unwinding.

and going out at night? It's a garden of forking paths. each time you choose, you know of 7 other paths you could be walking down.

Showing up to see a band play, the same band that did this music video sent to you one year ago by one of your favorite boys:

Your friend is throwing the party.
You waltz in, know people, dance to techno reggaton mixes- then decide to leave where the world takes you. Escorted in a car, free, to a party in brooklyn at studio B with a notorious house DJ (Mark Farina) and your own goddamn bottle of vodka. for what? for saying yes to the ways of the world.

You learn that as long as you are doing amazing things, you are never wondering about the other possibilities you could have lived. You are satisfied and busy.

And then sometimes crazy nights lead you to crazy instances where you meet the Drum and Bass MC you thought was cute on the boat with Dara and christian Bruna over a year ago, the b-boy with the backpack. He says something heartbreaking about your cornea and asks you on a date to a museum while talking about freestyling to dubstep.

there is that triple threat: intelligent, attractive, ability to dance. and more, you've met him before while he was onstage at a weekly Drum and Bass party in your old haunt, the east village.

years ago you had turned to your boyfriend and said "that boy is cute" to which he responded with his ever jealous sneer.

now it is now and you lean in to kiss him and he says DAMN
it's been 10 years since a girl's taken the initiative.

But you can't hate a girl who looks good dancing.

2008-10-24T20:33:00.004-04:00

Picture this: Faux naomi campell with a drink in her hand pushing through a dance floor.

When she gets to my friends and I she shoots up dirty looks and demands for up to let her through as her drink is in danger of spilling.

"I'm trying to walk here!" screams naomi.

"THERE'S A REASON IT'S CALLED A DANCE FLOOR" I shout back.

Fiesty, I'm always ready to throw a punch at girls like her. They are my pet peeve. Granted- I was at a fancypants club that really didn't want to let me in (they had to, I was on the list) but drinks on the dance floor and psuedo shufflers who throw dirty looks at the ones who are really getting down- UGH.

Moby did spin a fantastic set. And with 3 pretty girls and some pizza to go we jet-setted to the party where crystal castles was DJing. We may have taught a few hipsters something about raving. completely sober too. Yup.

Can I please mention how much I love new music (esp brazillian)? Listen to this episode of One Bad Apple, a podcast my friend ruby hosts.

There's a halloween shitshow going down, and I am part of it. I'm the head of the glitterati and candy army, which is exactly the type of contribution I should be making. Lets just put it this way: STREET PARTY to SUBWAY PARTY to LOFT PARTY to SECRET AFTERPARTY. you're jealous. come to new york, and you won't be.

The next night I'm go-go/lapdancing here:

and doing burlesque that sunday at sexybitch, flyer to come.

(busy weekend,hm?)

Planning last night. Biked to my friends bushwick loft eating sushi and fresh corn, drinking wine, discussing how to make halloween magical with a crew of nightlife magicians.

After a stop by a neighborhood bar, took (finally) took home a girl I've been flirting with here and there. Over the past few days we have done the following:

walked the williamsburg bridge
pretended it's my birthday at a deli for free chocolate
kissed
gotten in a water fight
gave a guy a kiss on the cheek and subsequently got 3 month passes to the guggenheim
found fun records on the street for her collection
drank too many beers
watched religulous
tied each other up
got stoned
giggled for 20 minutes in the middle of sex
dubbed my room the batcave

As with everything else, I have no expectations. but she can mimic the lesbian dance perfectly, has nice legs, loves fags, and seems sincere.

I really think too much of my life is pre-occupied with other people. but at least I cleaned my room today! and (less sarcastically) I got a callback for a scholarship I applied for!

That's all folks.

Commentary. Trancendance. SMUT.

2008-10-21T18:43:00.003-04:00

Yesterday doing yoga I had one of those moments where pain turns to pleasure and a body is just a body, and maybe you're aroused by the physicality of that place in your mind.

That sentence almost makes sense.

Less vague:
I'm seeing a ladyboy who called herself partially strong girl, partially shy 15 yr old boy. Which is funny, as those could be considered my two types. she makes espresso and thinks her cats are puppies and likes her earlobes and leather and bleeds too much and sometimes sends really sweet text messages that make me smile more than I'd like to admit.

"she's very poly [amorous]."
that's the word on the street about me. I mean, I never stopped to think about it. But hey, if it's obvious to a stranger then I suppose I am. Though I'm not sure what my limits are. I suppose I'll find out when I hit them.

Isn't that the way to go? Blindly into living? Jumping headfirst, arms outstretched?

I'm curating an art show not knowing how to curate an art show.
But it's going well.

This piece will be in it, I think:

and here is why when I go online some days, I just can't stop giggling:

Hi world,
Lets be friends.

KORRUPT + CO.

2008-10-19T14:09:00.003-04:00

Korrupt last night was brilliant. Gaslamp Killer went from dubstep to NIN to hip hop and I think I fell in love- with him. We came as a glitter ARMY in the limo, to bottles of champagne and goodie bags (filled to the brim with condoms, rubber gloves, underwear...)

Gave out cum shots at the party (which are suprisingly potent) out of my faux penis, did some shadow dancing, mostly loved how fucking beautiful my friends are.

Here are some of my favorite shots of the night.
More to come, super soon.

models are to be seen and not heard. and then sometimes I like to rant.

2008-10-18T04:20:00.004-04:00

And sometimes at 4 am on a saturday morning when i decide to forego dancing all night because I'm cold and tired and leaving the house sounds unappealing I decide to watch shitty TV and there's that scene where 2 people kiss in the rain where it's so intense the camera circles around them and everything becomes a blur and water is in their face and probably up thier nose and maybe they are shivering a little too but they are full body kissing hands under shirts and in hair-

times like these I miss you. I see us in my head and my life is better than this stupid show. that week with the rainstorms so epic it took me two hours to drive 15 minutes and I watched you raft down what used to be a creek and I ran after you to save you because I thought you died when you didn't show up on the other side of those trees and I knew then I loved you because I would have jumped into that muddy water for you without thinking twice.

and I've never felt more alive than when I thought I was dying I mean really I guess that's fucked up to say but that fight we had where I cried so hard I puked a little? that was living and feeling with every pore of my body but I don't do that anymore because I know better. I practice safe sex not the kind I learned about in school no im not talking about condoms and spermicide I mean before I take my clothes off I hide my heart in something hard and cool and I know the rules about never cuddling too much never getting comfortable never letting yourself wake up in a pool of someone else's sweat

because if you don't get close you won't get stuck or at least it will take longer and everyone's down to play the distance game. I live in new york city, we are the masters of the casual encounter even if we are dating for 7 months I will never know if my body fits yours but I knew with him the first time we spent the night together and I knew so much I couldn't speak for 2 hours after and he was the only thing that existed in the rain and later the only thing by the fireplace and the only shoulder as safe as my parents

but shoulders are lies and rain is a lie and hey maybe the kiss is a lie and in search of honesty I've just preffered to keep my reality sterile. you keep your shoulders and spooning and romantic moments. romance is just a word I tattoo behind my ear so it's a part of me even when it isn't I hid it somewhere I can't see for a reason

I miss real things but I've grown complacent with complacent and that's sad for someone like me always chasing the ski jumps and 6 am dancing sad because I didn't go out and I sat at home and shivered and accidentally ended up missing you when what I really miss is nothing because I feel nothing and what we had was nothing or you made it nothing by never speaking to me again and sleeping with other people and I don't miss you I guess just the moment when someone touches you and everything else melts away and it's ok to let go and say fuck it and take the goddamn condom off your emotions and let your heart get rubbed so raw it's sore in the morning and you have trouble closing it for a few days after the fact.

The moments that make it worth it.

2008-10-17T01:15:00.002-04:00

Najva:

I gave up on a real job.

I'm just teaching tae kwon do and nude modeling and dancing.

Alanna:

HAAHAHA

that is SUCH a najva answer.

Nice. like, if i said do you like the color blue? You'd be like well i guess, once i go go danced 'underwater' in a tub of blue jello on acid, it was fun.

Love it.

Secrets for the day

2008-10-16T12:35:00.003-04:00

my lotion has a mild self tanner in it.

Teaching Tae Kwon Do to little kids is more satisfying than reading a book, sometimes.

I like people who remind me of me, and that's vain. and I don't mind.

digging my heel into your chest makes me hot.

I am always afraid of liking you too much. the you in this equation changes often.

The shocker isn't shocking, it's pleasant.

I have no idea how to set up a gallery show, but I'm doing my tip-top best.

My parents think I don't love them enough because I don't call back. I just keep shitty hours. But I feel bad for calling so few and far between.

I think my brother is the better child.