Been down so long...

Video stills from "Imitation of a Sound"

It's now 2007 and I'm looking at my last post from the mid-section of 2006. My life is about 180 degrees different now, I am a midwesterner, or atleast I spend most of my weeks in the belly of the states. I am a student again, so I work late at night, I quell my mind with bad TV, and sleep in past the 9-5ers. I am in a relationship which conveniently began in New York a month or so before I moved. So I long and pine.

I'm in San Francisco with my boyfriend before my second semester starts. I've had five weeks off, which is approximately equivalent to the vacation I had in New York the last four years. I often wake up and begin to feel on edge that I have nothing concrete to accomplish during the next 24 hour period and then I begin to relax with some coffee and a slow breakfast. I've picked up some freelance jobs here and there and have begun mapping out a plan to try to put my art into the world. It's a slow process.

Yesterday I took the train to Berkeley to meet my childhood friend, John, for lunch. We were friends when we were twelve and thirteen and then we lived in different places until we were friends again in New York, almost a decade later. Sometimes continuity is amazing medicine. As a former East-Coasters and former members of the New York work force we have more in common at this point in our lives than I realized. I began to hear myself, my worries and stresses and melodramatic thoughts in John as we talked about navigating through the gates of academia in unfamiliar stretches of the country. I guess we had a lot to complain about—the overwhelming exhaust of car culture, how long it takes to get a cup of coffee, trying to make new friends years after high school lunch table politics, shopping in stripmalls, trying not to scoff at idealistic undergrads, getting out of bed. But it wasn't really complaining, it was rich conversation, and in the end I think we both admitted some form of "I know I'm in the right place."

Now that it's a new year and I am settled into my new life in Chicago, though still unsure which states border on either side, I realize how much I miss writing. I am planning to get back to it, and revisit this blog once a week now. I hope some one might still be around to read.

The In-Between

In this city I often think about the hundreds of thousands of people tucked away in their jobs—in cubicles or construction sites or underground. I think to myself, "Who was assigned the job of stuffing the men's waist-down underwear mannequins in the window around the corner?" or "What poor soul is going to clean up the mess that led my entire subway car to file to the front end this morning?" or "How did that woman become a sea-lion trainer in the middle of Prospect Park?" All these thoughts have crossed my mind this week in the middle of my own work. Some points in time feel definitively liminal and this has been one for me.

The school where I work is between semesters. There are no students in the building and no art being made. Instead we are expanding our print shop across the hall to fill up the entire floor. Walls are coming down left and right. The men punch a row of hammer-holes in the sheet rock and then reach in and pull body-sized pieces down to reveal pink insulation and hollow metal framework. The walls come down in less than ten minutes each, and then they spend a day or so building a new wall in a new place.

I still need a paycheck so I'm here finding once-a-decade-jobs with my coworkers. Last week, my coworker and I pushed a cart with two hundred, seventy-six pounds of copper, aluminum, and zinc to a recycling center between tenth and eleventh. The entry to the center was sqeezed in between a white-walled gallery and a walled-up recording studio. Just inside the garage door a view opened up to a massive lot with piles of metal, stories high, and men driving bulldozers to build the piles higher. I don't think a woman had entered the facilities in a couple of years, so all the workers wandered over to help us. And everyone asked why on earth we wanted to recycle the beautiful drawings on the plates—self portraits with eyes set mid-forehead and landscapes with butterflies. We made one hundred, twenty-six dollars on our trashed metals and got cupcakes on the way back to work.

In the middle of this literal tear-down I continually lapse into thoughts about my upcoming move to the midwest. The thought of my new city is very abstract and I am nervous. It has been my experience that I do not enjoy living with the anticipation of change, but it is mostly the anticipation which shakes me up. Once transplated I am calm and adaptable and enjoy the newness of everything. I've moved a lot in my life with and without my family, so the anxiety is familiar, but the knowledge of the energy of a new phase still isn't quite enough to teach me to be optimistic. I'm still enjoying living in my current life and moving in the same circles I've known for several years. But things are changing here too.

My friend J is going to become a mother in a few weeks. I've watched her belly grow for over nine months yet it is still a very foreign idea that she will have a daughter or son in a matter of days—she'll be a parent. At the same time, one of my oldest friends has just separated from her husband. I met her outside her new apartment on Monday. She was locked out and looked small sitting in the hallway waiting for a locksmith. I sat down next to her new mattress pad and shower curtain and we talked for a while about the usual things even though everything about the situation was unusual, her new door just to our left.

With things changing in every room, it's comforting to realize that even if I am going far from what I know the people close to me are taking leaps as well—that makes it seem not so far at all. For now though I have odd jobs to keep busy and people that I care about to find good conversation with—more than enough.

Coincidence is another word for

I am moving to Chicago in August. How strange to put those letters together. I am moving to Chicago to start an MFA program, to make art full-time for 21 months.

Last fall I applied to a number of schools aiming, like the rest of the visual art-inclined 20-something spectrum, at a range of 3 or 4 institutions. At the time I was optimistic, I had worked hard. I put things in a row— jobs, references, images lined up like dominos in a slide carousel that I spent two days tracking down from photo store to photo store. Then the skinny transluscent envelopes began to arrive seeming to tell me that I had been insane to think that I was ever cut out for becoming an artist. I had a moment where all I could think was that I spent the last 3 years making an hourly wage roughly equivalent to my high school lifeguarding paycheck, with inflation. And now I am a 28 year-old adult with credit card debt, callused palms, and a phenomenal child care and Xerox maintenance resume.

The Art Institute of Chicago sent a big envelope but I was still sour on rejection. I wanted to shake myself into optimism but the printed reality of school loans and leaving home left me foggy. I kept thinking of the Groucho Marx quote at the beginning of Annie Hall—I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. I knew I needed to see things in a different light but I was having trouble getting there.

I took a plane a few weeks ago to try to envision a new life at the Art Institute and in the streets and buses and trains of the grid. One of my closest friends, Caroline, lives in Chicago, so it was a warm visit. She took me in, drove me from neighborhood to neighborhood to try to get my bearings. I walked over to a train stop which was an elevated wooden platform. It felt like a boardwalk, but it was windy and grey and caught up between streets. I took the train downtown to the tall buildings and tried to imagine myself spending days on these platforms instead of underground. I visited the printshop which was expansive, there were huge windows circling the presses, looking out at the lake. An undergraduate critique was in progress and the work looked pretty spread out on large wood tables. I met several professors and some graduate students. I began to feel more at home.

Caroline, my friend of 14 years, works in the music industry. On Saturday night we went to see a band in her management list. I had never heard of the band and directly on entrance I realized the mean age of the audience was fourteen or fifteen. I was given a backstage sticker for my jacket and we climbed up to a pocket of seats on stage right. Below us a blanket of teens swayed a little waiting for the show to start. The lights were on and I felt mesmerized overlooking the crowd of heads, people pushing slightly to edge to the front. Then the band hit its first note and there was screaming that filled up the entire theatre. I wanted ear plugs. The band came out wearing black, with hair standing up. The keyboardist spasmed behind his keyboard stand. The teens screamed and jumped and then began crowd surfing. I watched girls in belly-baring shirts being sent forward over dozens of hands toward the stage. At the front, a row of bouncers picked off the surfers one by one in WWF grips. Then the surfers would run around to the back of the theatre to try to squeeze up again.

The next day Caroline and I went to brunch in another neighborhood. We were walking into the restaurant and someone said my name, but I kept talking to Caroline assuming my anonymity in this new city. He said my name again and I looked up to recognize one of the professors from the print department at the Art Institute. He was kind and seemed honestly happy to run into me. I thought of some graffiti I spotted in Berlin which said Coincidence is another word for synchronicity. Then I wondered if my thought patterns were beginning to be shaped like a hippie granola mom.

Chicago is a foreign city to me. It spreads out because there are no boundaries. Restaurants give space between tables, bars sink back into buildings football-field deep, room after room. The houses aren't connected, they just brush up close to eachother. The ocean isn't in view.

When I think about leaving New York I am scared and I want to cry and crawl back into my life here. I know I am going to miss so many tiny things, and the bigger shape and sound of the city. But I've made the decision to hand myself over to this new place and find my niche, and see where I find myself at the other end.

Seventy-two Hours

I recently acquired health insurance after a two and a half year hiatus. During the uninsured years I didn't often think about my inability to see a doctor. I am healthy, I take care of myself, and though I can be a little bit of klutz, the most drastic result is usually a pint spilled in a friend's lap.

I didn't often think about it until a year ago at work, when I pushed an industrial paper-cutter blade down on my left thumb. I had somehow circumvented the safety guard in an attempt to reduce the number of fingers on my left hand. It was such a deep cut that I didn't initially feel any pain. A few gasps from students in the room and my first response was "I don't have health insurance." Followed by—at a higher octave—"Will they be able to sew it back on?"

At the St. Vincent's emergency room they removed the majority of my nail, which I had cut through, and drilled holes in the remaining nail sliver to reattach my thumb tip in only five stitches. I left looking like a cartoon version of myself with an enormous white bandage wrapped around and around and ballooning from my left hand. My boss gave me the afternoon off.

Eventually, after a number of months, sensation returned to my thumb and I sorted through the workman's compensation papers. In the end this is a lucky story of studio stupidity. I did not have to eulogize a piece of myself and I was able to renew respect for the motto Safety First.

Since I was reinvited to the health insurance party I've tried to make the most of my stay. I am paying a bit out of pocket for the priveledge, so I've got to make it worthwhile and I'm not sure how long I'll be able to stay. Last week, I went to the eye doctor for the first time in five years. My vision is fine but I've been wearing hard lenses for over a decade and after losing my glasses two summers ago, placing molded plastic in my eyes for 16 hours a day has become a bit painful. Not to mention the pricetag of $50 per lens, which in the recent past has caused me to demand my brother to deconstruct his bathroom sink at 2 a.m., the night before a grad school interview in search of a quarter inch clear disc. I decided to check in on the scientific advances in eyewear and was informed that yes! I may wear soft disposable lenses.

My eye doctor then explained that hard lenses change the shape of your cornea, so before she could give me an accurate prescription I would have to abstain from wearing them for atleast 72 hours. Without glasses, my waiting period introduced a new blurred version of my day-to-day. I immediately noticed that eavesdropping on the subway was more interesting. Without the ability to size up my fellow New Yorkers due to their fashion sense or book titles, my mind ran wild with the relevance of overheard conversations. I went into work and was able to tune out—or legitimately ignore—the general chaos of the studio. Even when I saw a blurred version of a friend from the length of the hallway I was usually able to ascertain their identity due to the way their shape moved. It's amazing how our minds record posture and step.

On Sunday night of my unfocused quarantine I went to "see" Jenny Lewis at Irving Plaza. From what I could make out, the opening band was a group of long haired seated men who wanted to their spoken word style to work. When Jenny came on stage I asked Matt to describe her outfit, which he did eloquently and then because it wasn't a rowdy rock-and-roll show the quietness of her songs became so comfortable and full of space. I felt calm and happy.

I returned to my eye doctor and she checked my newly shaped corneas. She handed me two tiny foil-wrapped packets with my new sight enclosed. I walked out of the office with the cool comfort of bendable lenses floating above my irises. Everything was in focus again, but I had been reaquainted with an introspective blurry existence. It made me think that like a meditation routine, maybe I'll retreat to it more often.

The Road to...Somewhere

I spent a night last week driving up-and-over inside the lines of New York State for a grad school interview. After a long day of work I made my way to Hertz and met the disappointment of "fine print" from my online quote. My car was going to cost twice as much as expected but it was too late to do much about it. Someone pulled up in a white compact and I got in, light-headed and cloudy-eyed. I began to work my way through the one-ways.

Eventually the George Washington Bridge was in view and I could see the long road ahead, reeling out of the city. I spent the five-hour drive singing, singing, and singing some more, wavering between lanes as I flipped through my CD case. There weren't many cars on the road and I used my bright-lights often, though everything still seemed so dark. It occured to me on my third album that I rarely, almost never, spend time in a space alone. I've adapted my life to the city and I am constantly surrounded by strangers, friends, aquaintances and students. In fact the only time I'm actually alone is in my room with the door shut, heading to bed. Even then my roommate, Mimia, is usually pecking on her sewing machine outside my door or watching Japanese cartoons.

I've also not driven a car for longer than fifteen minutes, save a Niagra Falls wedding excursion with a car full of friends last summer, for the last five years. My body remembered the motions from college years of road trips and long distance relationships. It wasn't until I finally stopped for a snack and nearly backed into a McDonalds that I noticed I was driving a bright new Mustang featuring curves of years past. The entire experience had the makings of another life— the Mustang, the McDonalds, the crumbled and greasy road map.

I'm not sure exactly what will happen with that particular quest for higher education. My interview happened. I felt exhausted and somewhat outside of my own body. But the trip certainly allowed me to some space to think. The last few weekends I've had disparate fun in my hometown. Three weekends ago I was unexpectedly transported back to 1985 by the Pyramid Club's near perfect 80's night, dancing with an old coworker until 3 a.m. Last weekend I went to the Russian and Turkish baths on 10th Street. I hunkered down in the 150 degree "Ambient Heat" room watching people being beaten with soapy oak leaves and stepping out every half hour for a dip in the 50 degree plunge pool. The bath crowd was one part Eastern European, one part hippie, and one part where the fuck am I?

Then last night I went to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Bowery Ballroom. Karen O wore what I think was a rejected gold encrusted figure skating costume from the Nagano Olympics. During the second song she pulled some long feathers out of her bodice and began chewing on one. She spent the rest of the night picking feather pieces out of her teeth. During the encore Karen dedicated a song muttering into the mic—This is a love song and it's for all you motherfuckers....and It's for you too, Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad waved from upstairs.

I'm not saying that my entire life is rock'n roll and girls gone wild in Russian spas. In fact, tonight I have a date with a bottle of wine, my futon and some knitting needles. Somedays just seem entirely too foggy. I guess we all have the tendency to hatch escape routes, to imagine running far and fast away from our lives when things feel difficult, mismatched, and half-empty. I like surrounding myself with people, and seeing different scenes and hearing different sounds. We are social animals after all, not designed to live in the interior of a Ford or a parking garage or closed office. I guess in part I'm relieved that I realize I have the ability to change things from the inside out. I can thank the Mustang's smooth ride for that temporary piece of clarity.

When I Grow Up

I received my first grad school form-rejection letter yesterday. Three or four people most likely sat in metal folding chairs and watched light projected behind a reproduction of my drawings. If one blinked, she might have missed the image. Then they moved on.

It's amazing how this minor nod makes one feel so completely unsettled. It's as if my brain isn't connected to the motions my hands make, and the ideas that pass in and out are foreign to others. If I tried to speak to the panel, it would sound like Swedish, or a metaphor from high school creative writing class. Then again, I've been told I'm too sensitive.

I'm thinking that if this whole starving artist thing doesn't work out, I might give competitive eating a try. Did you hear that a 100-pound woman ate 26 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes last week? She was thereby declared winner of the World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship. Atleast that career move would solve the whole hunger issue.

It's All in the Details

This week I spent a morning in postal hell. I work during evening classes on Tuesdays so I usually make a long list of things-to-do for my morning and then end up snoozing 17 or 19 times until I finally drag myself out from under the comforter for some eggs and email before work. Tuesday morning however, I woke at 7.30 a.m. to pack up and arrive at the Atlantic Avenue USPS as they unlocked their doors. I had a bag with about 10 pounds of mail including—my last three grad school applications, an application for a summer residency, 40 handmade invitations for my cousin's wedding in Poland, and a thank you gift for a recent weekend getaway.

I've spent approximately 6 hours of my life over the last month in post office lines waiting for that all-important postmark date stamp, and delivery confirmation slip on each and every application packet. Some days as I rushed to the line, I noticed others fingering through slide sheets and wrapping carousels ahead of me. Maybe there really is a large concentration of artists in Brooklyn, or maybe I'm shit out of luck because 10% of the entire population is applying to the same programs I aim for.

As I arrived upon opening on Tuesday there were somehow already five people in line ahead of me. I waited for ten minutes until one of the two postal worker's light went off. I approached her with a smile and then noticed a NO DEBIT CARDS AT THIS REGISTER hand scrawled sign. I was sent back to the line. On my second turn I asked for the postal worker to weigh my slide carousel so I could estimate postage for the return envelope. I requested delivery confirmation for all my applications. I hadn't filled out the international contents form ahead of time. I asked to see his selection of stamps for my pretty wedding invitations. He became less and less accommodating and began to slam the bullet-proof glass door on his side of the counter. Then he lost it and began screaming at me for "not being prepared for posting."

I talked back. It went something like this "I am prepared, it seems that you aren't willing to do your job, I have several things to mail but as far as I know that isn't a crime." He began mumbling something behind the bullet-proof plexi and promptly tossed my slide carousel which hit the edge of the big mail laundry cart and toppled in. This felt like seeing my baby thrown across the room and landing head first in a pile of sharp edges. Something switched in me and I asked to see his manager. The manager came out with his fly down and I began to explain the situation. His eyes glazed over and he mumbled something about his employee following instructions. A growing line of people stared at me watching as my face became red, hovering somewhere between anger and tears, as I sweat in January heat. It was humiliating. The icing on the Atlantic Avenue USPS cake was that their void of LOVE stamps or anything beyond some leftover Disney Christmas stamps for the wedding invitations. I re-wrapped my wedding invites in their tissue paper and huffed my way out to a subway.

I still had a few hours before work began so I decided to visit another post office in Chelsea in search of the LOVE stamps. After another half hour line I arrived to the window to find they had only American flag or Stop Family Violence stamps to offer. The Stop Family Violence stamps had a picture drawn by a child of a stick figure crying; I decided this would not be the best omen for the wedding invitations. The post man directed me to the mothership of all New York post offices at 42nd Street. On the subway I scowled to myself wondering if I would ever find the goddamn LOVE stamps and if anyone receiving the invitations would even notice. I often find myself at the bottom of an avalanche of life-altering details only to realize that it is my own tunnel vision and mild OCD that has put me there.

The 42nd Street post office was like a futuristic machine with 100 windows for service, automated post-machines, an enormous spread of stamp designs; yet only two people were working at the front of the wind-around line. I waited for another 45 minutes, salivating over the prize— yellow stamps with two blue birds nuzzling each other so that the negative space between their necks made a heart. After my arduous wait I bought the "True Blue" bird LOVE stamps, caressed them for a minute and then pasted each envelope with a stamp at the perfect right angle a few millimeters from the corners' edge. I posted each envelope in a big swinging mailbox and left empty handed but satisfied.

My cousin's wedding is in one month in Poland, it will take a seven hour flight, navigating Polish roads in a rented car, purchasing another bridesmaid dress with money I don't have, and most likely having my hair formed to an unbecoming shape with a bottle of hairspray. All this seems par for the course, but the True Blue stamp expedition— if that is not LOVE then I don't know what is.