It seems that you have inspired me another night

I will go brush my teeth now,
it's bed time.
The blade cut in too deeply
and dug into the bed.
There is a slit in the sheet
in which my toe gets caught,
every now and then.

Two weeks notice (2001-2009)

Once I fell asleep sitting against the wall
of the Borders on State Street.
I woke up to suits walking around me.
My hair was orange.

It took me three years to realize
I could never be blonde.
And two more to realize
I look good in black.

All the fire alarms destroyed,
the lamps pulled from the roots,
and the old lady's stolen shoes?
We were just belligerent.
Thought the world of pretty boys
with cigarettes and stained teeth.
We didn't even know what beauty was.

How the fuck
did we come out of that one alive?
The truth is, we barely did.

Statistically speaking
I rejected more than I accepted,
when you account for the ratio of
hours into days into months into the year,
etc.

I was young.
And just like that, you get it now.

The winter I blew a lot of money,
I couldn't get myself to lose control really.
But the rent was at least free.

To anyone getting seriously involved-
dissolved, is how I see it, cause
we all saw them less and less.

Rings and bookmarked jewelers on-line.
I haven't bothered taking them down.
I wonder what the big deal is
in getting into it or out of it.

I don't even have the guts to kiss you.
Where do I get off fancying you a good fuck?
It's those shoes you wear,
I'd like you to keep them on.

When I hear footsteps above me
I like to think it's the hot neighbor
coming and going.

Just so you know
I'm jumping years and skipping faces.

Two weeks notice.
I think I'll make some coffee now.

aunque mis labios no hablen te quiero devorar.

I don't remember anything that happens anymore
someone I used to give a fuck about
I've already forgotten
I remember I used to love her but it's nothing
compared to your back
up against the door
pressed against where your skin
meets the fabric of my shirt


siempre me quedará...

sticky

I'm going to write little notes, one liners on post-its and collect them in a shoebox.

Because...

Well...

why not?

And the dust the makes a Rubens out of you makes me a serpent

I have to admit that I've not been as productive, I work on drawings almost daily, but at times it's feeling forced. It's an expected cycle. Mentally and emotionally it's bound to happen regardless of how disciplined you are.

So I've recently turned to books. I find that it's so important to be proactive and stay stimulated always. If you're not feeling (visual) art then write. If you can't write, then read. So I've been reading, a bit.

I have to write an entry about finally picking up Nadja (by Breton) finishing it in one sitting and being astonished, but for me to give him and Nadja justice, it must wait for when my mind can form thoughts into paragraphs. Not today.

Frank O'Hara. I'm revisiting his book of collected poems. He's written so much, you won't love all of it (which I don't) but you'll love a lot of it (which I do.)

Here are few that in the past two days have really grabbed me (of course what poem, painting, film "grabs" you have as much to do with your personal emotional, state at the time as it does the quality of the piece...)




DEATH


1
If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermillion tears,

2
how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding, like a tree on fire!-
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical; it's just me.

3
And the other half
of me where I master the root
of my every idiosyncrasy
and fit my ribs like a glove,

4
is that me who accepts betrayal
in the abstract as if it were insight?
and draws its knuckles
across the much-lined eyes
in the most knowing manner of our time?

5
The wind that smiles through the wires
isn't vague enough for an assertion
of a personal nature, it's not for me,

6
I'm not dead. Nothing remains, let alone "to be said,"
except when I fall backwards
I am trying something new and shall succeed, as in the past.




Song


Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?
I was thinking of you
having a Coke in the heat it was your face
I saw on the movie magazine, no it was Fabian's
I was thinking of you
and down at the railroad tracks where the station
has mysteriously disappeared
I was thinking of you
as the bus pulled away in the twilight
I was thinking of you
and right now




A Hill


Yes, it's disgusting
when you lose
control, but my
wilderness is love

of a kind, no?
And the purity
of my confusion is
there, it's poetry

in love with you
along with me,
both of us love you
in the same "My!"

Yes, but don't be
scared; poetry
is intangible and
there's no purity

in me
outside of love,
which you can easily wreck
and I can lose.

Clouds pass in
my notorious eyes
but you, through
all, I see.




My Heart


I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

I have a dream... for future female Korean artists

Today an idea came to me and I hope that I can realize this.

I want to start putting away between $1000-2000 when I am 30 in an account every year (whatever is best for money that won't be taken out for 30 years.) And when I turn 60 I want to develop a foundation with this money (between $30000-$60000+ interest) and every year give away $2500 to a Korean female art student/artist (fine art, no fashion, no design, no architecture) between the ages of 18 and 25 to be used for an abroad trip with the intent of artistic inspiration. At the end of the trip, within a set time after the trip the they will be asked to create something to share the experience and its influences. Photos, video, sketches, any medium of their choice and an essay/paper. They pick where they want to go, how long they want to stay, what they do there, the $2500 can cover the airfare, whatever for the trip (in most cases it won't cover the whole trip but will be a nice supplement.) For example, for me just sitting in a cafe in Paris had an even more profound affect on my art then walking through the Dalí museum. So they don't have to take an art class with the money, spend it on art museums tickets, sketchbooks or a portable easel or other supplies. They can spend all $2500 on pain au chocolat if they want (and if these don't inspire you, there is no hope!)

More and more I'm realizing what traveling has done and does for me, as an artist, as someone with the artist soul. Also I'm recognizing more and more how being Korean, and female, affects being an artist. Put it all together and it can at times make for a very uncertain, scary and depressing place. One trip I've experienced can silence all that. You don't come back and all of sudden everything is okay, your parents don't worry less, you don't make more money, but something happens. I want to give this to Korean girls. I am them, they are me.

And god knows how much Korean parents like to brag about their kids getting anything "prestigious" especially money/scholarships. It's hard to brag about a crazy artist daughter to their friends with lawyer sons and doctor daughters. But, this would be something. My mom never knew what the Yale residency really did for me. It had nothing to do with Ivy League. But that's what she knows it as. We both love the residency, for different reasons but for once, we were both happy I chose art. I want a Korean daughter and Korean mom to be happy at the same time for Art. (This, means a lot to the Korean daughter. TRUST ME.)

This doesn't seem too impossible. I just have to make couple more grand a year in my 30s. This will happen. Right? Yes.

At the end of the day, I don't want these girls to have to eat ramen every day to go to Paris for 8 days. I'll do that so they won't have to.



(artist budgeting 101: ramen, milk crate for dining table, walls for drawing board = one more day in Paris)

you didn't need me to know your name.

Neda 1991, imagined

but we all do...

I spent the last two hours doing something I thought was good. But now I'm not too sure.

You know, I miss a lot of things,
beginning with-
curious I actually wasn't.
Awkward, strangely, it wasn't.

A drink or two
must've spilled.
There was a glossy sheen to the floor
when the lights flickered at 2:30 a.m.

The radio turned on
when the car started.
There were voices,
not singing,
just talking.
I'm becoming my father,
even though it's my mother
I desperately want to be.

Or any mother,
if I could just convince myself
and somebody else too.

You wouldn't know anything about this,
cause I can tell "you're not that kind."
Being the asshole in the right context
is doing the right thing.

You did the right thing,
I can accept that.

I'm starting to think
I wouldn't mind a working relationship,
not in the sense that it "works,"
cause that's so subjective.
But working like evolving,
like water.

Something just bit me, finally.
It's summer
and hot as fuck.

How could I explain this?
A phenomenon of sleepy eyes
and home made curtains
with uneven edges
dragging on the floor.
It's a beautiful color
but the fabric could be better.

I spent the last two hours
doing something I thought was good.
But now I'm not too sure.

we are all children, we are ALL the future

boy shirtless, Iran, 6/20/2009

The funniest thing

The drive wasn't so pleasant
but not the worst.
The torrential rain pour
swallowing city skyscrapers,
there's some charm in that.

There's nothing to wait for
I wasn't waiting
or standing still.
It didn't pass me buy
or slip right through my fingers.

There's no rhetorical question
or metaphorical musing.

The sky's the strangest color tonight.
The puddle, always on the left side,
I climb through, right foot first.
The gravel wet turns a shade darker
like coming home an hour too late.

The blanket reminded me of another time,
there was nothing to dream that night.
There was no point in turning around
so I faced the wall all night.
But come on,
we've known this all along.

You probably don't know the part
where he says exactly the thing I would say.
But it's so charming, I hope you catch it.

It was the funniest thing,
the crooked streets and no one else to see it.


6/16/2009

Having is illusory, my dear. Whatever we have is determined by others. Because of this, I offer a dream. I’ll be what you want me to be: man or woman

One of my dearest friends shared this poem with me. She said it reminded her of me, of us. Ah, I could read it over and over and be filled with this energy, excitement, a sense of purpose and understanding. I love how every world is connected. I can see Robin in Nightwood roaming the street late night, and I catching a glimpse of her steps behind as I too walk the streets, and the same night Djuna has locked herself in her house and Anais is dancing drenched in music in Harlem. Temporal drag, isn't it a wonder, and a bitch! And how I love the ones, the few, that are here with me now. Thank you.


Saturday Night

In the solitary dawn
through drifting secondhand smoke
and sidewalks sticky with spit
I go out walking
to escape the nocturnal silence of my own room
seeking bright lights
oh, those neon friends who always ward off
my internal wolves
my hungry demons
(my Vallejo ancestors).
I go in search of something
losing myself in the narrow streets round the harbor
looking for company,
oh, the sweet drugs that since Baudelaire
have run along the gutters of cities at nighttime
--London, Paris, New York, Madrid—
oh, the unknown flesh that stirs, aroused by a look.
Finally I find it: some sleazy joint that’s still open
a prison cell of solitary pleasures
a peep show hidden between the trees:
a bookstore open all night
where I can wallow among the books
luxuriate in other people’s verses
and finally reach orgasm
with one of Allen Ginsberg’s self-destructive poems.

--Cristina Peri Rossi
(translated by Tatiana de la Tierra)


A great interview with Rossi from BOMB Magazine (where this poem was featured) here.

All I want with my life is to die a house wife...

Double III

12" x 18"

colored pencil, graphite on paper


Randomly came across this animation video on youtube. Just wonderful. "By Your Side" is one of my favorite songs by CocoRosie, it in fact was the very song I was introduced to them with (thank you Sylvie.)

It's such a sad song. It's such a sad video. But I understand it so well. And even want it. Isn't it strange? I blame it on Midsommarfest. Too many families, too many kids. It turns me into absolute mush.

Exit Strategies-

Exit Strategy I

18" x 24"

colored pencil, graphite on paper





Exit Strategy II (slightly crooked, bad scan)

18" x 24"

colored pencil, graphite on paper


For bigger sizes go here and click on thumbnails.

"For the werewolf, somebody like you and me."

Another excerpt from Henry Miller's The Books In My Life

(Miller quoting Sherwood Anderson) "If there has been a betrayal in America," he goes on to say, "I think it is our betrayal of each other. I do not believe that we- and by the word 'we' I mean artists, writers, singers, etc.- have really stood by each other." ...He speaks of our loneliness for one another. He says that it might help for all of us "to return to the old habit of letter-writing between man and man that has at certain periods existed in the world."


On a similar note, I thought this song accompanies quite well this idea of loneliness in being an artist. Being a creative person, at least for me, is like being the man who turns into a werewolf. I am not the same when I am creating as I am simply living as a girl. There's a complete change. Unstoppable and uncontrollable. The full moon rises so often (a blessing because it allows us to be so powerful and wild) but at times it is scary, and yes lonely, and I miss the girl and wonder when the moon will fall, if ever. And naturally, more people understand the girl than, the werewolf.



Oh the werewolf, oh the werewolf
Comes stepping along
He don't even break the branches where he's gone
Once I saw him in the moonlight, when the bats were a flying
I saw the werewolf, and the werewolf was crying

Cryin' nobody knows, nobody knows, body knows
How I loved the man, as I teared off his clothes
Cryin' nobody know, nobody knows my pain
When I see that it's risen; that full moon again

For the werewolf, for the werewolf has sympathy
For the werewolf, somebody like you and me.
And only he goes to me, man this little flute I play
All through the night, until the light of day, and we are doomed to play

For the werewolf, for the werewolf, has sympathy
For the werewolf, somebody like you and me

if it be your will (I shall abide until I am spoken for)

"lot of those songs are just the response to what struck me as Beauty whatever that curious emanation from a being, or an object, or a situation, or a landscape, that had a very powerful affect on me as it does on everyone and I pray to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me and they were alive."

-Leonard Cohen

And is that not also my wish? I pray, I pray that I respond to Beauty when She shows herself (may I be so blessed.)



Exit Strategy II


(Another amazing version of "If It Be Your Will" is Antony's, of Antony and the Johnson's. Embedding of this version is disabled but you must, must watch, listen, here- Antony singing "If It Be Your Will")