Support INDY Art

The Spring Standards

Po'Girl

I was overhearing a convo at the counter at the coffee shop last night and of course had to butt in.

K Records? I asked the dude. You know about K Records?

His eyes lit up and he's like yea I'm a total music nerd I nerd out to stuff like that. Of course now we are talking about 80's indy and riot grrrl music Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy. That all shaped my sensibility, like pointed me to who I am at such an important time I say to him and all the twinkly lights are on inside me the way only the twinkly lights come on when I talk about indy art and riot grl and loud stuff and power to the ppl hand to hand doing it ourself.
I am blogging while we're talking so the convo gos on in bits and pieces. He asks me who I like now I say Dude. I was out of the scene a long time. But the last year, year and a half I am totally into obscure stuff, stuff that I find on the internet. Unsigned. I mean I like a ton of music that's popular but you know, myspace art. That's definitely what I care the most about.

Two weeks ago I saw Po'Girl at Night Cat and in the break talked to one of the members, Awna, for a while. We were both jazzed: their new album was produced entirely by advance sales from their mailing list. The band offered handmade covers for the first 200 sold, and that is how they made the money for the new release they were touring behind. They were signed before, they chose to leave their label, to go indy. Last night The Spring Standard happily announced that they did the same thing with the album they are about to release--presales paid for the full production. It was clear how proud they were to be doing it themselves. I hooped and yahood from the front row I was the only one clapping at first, but whatev most the crowd was middleaged meaning only that perhaps they're a bit set in their ways? I am so amped about this real and legitimate movement in art right now--it too extends in to writing and the lit arts, to poetry and of course self-produced zines and chapbooks. In general, social media is empowering us for the first time ever to successfully and effectively reach audiences in ways we've never been able before. And as anyone who understands culture, sociology, tribe shamanism or magic will tell you--what happens on the periphery edge, what happens on the outside, is actually the first indicator and direction of the tide from within. In other words, the edge of things in art or any ppl-based movement is the true direction.

YES!

Right now I am laughing, I got my eyes worked over at my doctor who is the most competent peeper peeker I know, but she lives in Elkton, which is like so far east of Baltimore it's kinda considered the Eastern Shore and so far north of Kent County it's considered "over there", as in the other side=the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. Ppl on the shore talk of the other side with pariah grimacing. My eye doctor dilated me and then sent me off driving down 95 in the grey wall of mistrain and my trippy no short term vision softeyes. Now I am all the way all the way from there in Annapolis, where I drove literally to buy my cousin some pie from the Amish Market and it's funny to me bc visual reality is still a little teeny bendy from the dilation. Despite my tripeyes and the rain, this is the first time I've been "over here" since I quit my job last Friday--since I told them the only thing keeping me there on the shore, the only thing is my job and for two years I tried to make that enough, but it's not--and I am so, so happy! Needless to say end of summer after a moneymaking quikie down the beach I am hella hyped to move back "over here."

Support the indy art movement people!! and uhhh, btw?

I AM STOKED.

Letter to Mike, from the Detention Center, for the last time

I haven't been here since 2004.

Wow & now I remember how it used to be so easy to talk to you from in here. I miss you so much--the most out of all the ones I said good bye to--your freckles and white play dough skin. The time you insisted on walking in Kittyhawk, along the strip, in the 80 degree sun, til Mandy & I found you drenched--your jeans even wet w sweat, on a concrete slab outside 7-11. There is no room, no time in here to dream, I didn't know enough back then, 25, 26, to bring hope in.

I barely had my own.

I guess I did tho. One of my boys got his diploma when he got out--another learned all about Ghandi, X & King. Other success? They learned metaphors, wrote stories for me of their lives. One guy we started on his multiplication tables I was so gentle when I talked to him and he softened and was even shy--tho I bet they teased him about fucking me when they got back to their cells. I was proud of them, sent post cards when I went on the road. There's a health care debate in the US right now--that there can even be debate about basic human rights : health care--tells you, proves, just what we're all still about. If health care isn't available bc it's not affordable rights aren't equal, that is just a common sense equivalent, a fact. So it goes. A white grl private school kid gets locked-up for drugs what happens? Another addict punished for crime bc of her disease. Yes. She gets out tho, makes good. She dreams well & she blvs she can chnge the wrld. Black man almst done hghschl, poor fifty-seven yr old white woman frst chld by 9th grade. They get out, what's her path to make good? What's his? What will they blv?

Yesterday I enrolled new mom's from the early childhood program in to english class. One from Guatamala, one from Mexico. When it was done I drove to my office & inside one of the guys from Workforce grabbed me and said you have a student she just walked in. She was pregnant. Another mom from another early childhood program this one meant to help with her GED. I been trying to track you down you're hard to get a hold of she said, then out of the blue at lunch today It said to go so I said to my mom, I gotta go now I gotta go see the lady from the college now.

& Why? Why does It talk to some of us but others never know? Why do only some of us listen, or believe?

After you died I dscvrd diPrima. Even called her one day on my own. It didn't take long then for my words. After you left & the jail & the family center broke me & then I went to Oregon to cry. How did I get here? How?

One thing I never talk about is how I called you the day you shot yourslf. You never called me back. You were looking at pictures of us when they found the blood chunks of your head.

After all that I went on the road again it took me back to Chestertown, it was April 05 we were fighting in our little seafront apt Lincoln Beach when I knew he needed to go home.

Did he? Or was it I? I talked to Patty & Brenda it'd been a long time since we talked heart to heart & I alwys scrtly felt bad when it came to them like maybe they thought I'd done smthng wrong when I left Brandon. But they hugged me & loved me & it was just like when I was young--like before--when my heart broke ovr our students again & again & they just kept teaching me the ropes & saying let god fill your heart when you've got nothing left. They were like moms to me when it came to Adult Ed back then. But when there's nothing left in there what do you follow how do you know in what direction to go?

When I turned 30, that was the spring I learned or started to be willing to learn to be true. I was studying Gandhi then, again--Gandhi who started his adult life in London dancing fox trots & eating 4 star meals dressed in the finest hand-tailored suits. That nagging that ache that heart that said I was on the wrong path doing all the wrong thing. I told Patty then--whtvr it is I will go inside & I will listen & I will end up going where I need to be. That was when I turned 30. First thing that happened is Brandon said he would never move. I was back there Truslow Road under the pines trees it was about to be spring. & second thing--the poetry came back to me--it was Josh this time--I hadn't had words since you, Mike, since I stopped finally talking to you. & this time it was to Josh & when I stopped fighting the words just came & came, they just flew...

It's all different now--I've done my best to listen to & follow me & it has been hard & led me here all these yrs later. I used to think or be convinced but now I know--there is nothing or no one to blame. It takes a whole life to make good. It takes a long, long while.

I miss you but I am glad you went on & never ended up in here. Detention centers are one thing--prison totally something else. So much worse. Mayvbe it is better to un*see. To pretend you cant, or choose to not. I dont know? It is sad, so sad here. Basic human rights. It'll be different some day? Basic rights to what? Human rights. Food. Clothes. Shelter. Health.

Pursuit of happiness?

Been a long time coming. Can one be an activist & blv in both? The opportunity & the "right" to choose? Life daunts you, no? And love breaks your dreams. Are words contraband? Are visions, song, illegal as dreams? I dont care Mike. Even after all that's been done. All the places I've gone all that I've seen. Pursuit of happiness=vision of what could be. I used to tell my students in here QUESTION EVERYTHING. Dig a little deeper--dont just believe. But sometimes you've got to--in order to know what to choose. To know you have the right. I still will, I still will believe, I will choose hope.

A Place Of My Own

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my apartment?

When I first moved in here all I did was sit around in wonder, with a pure-eyed peace-feeling stare. I loved the lines of the walls, the smoothness, the light. I used to open up the great tall window in front of my writing table and smoke cigarettes sitting on the ledge with my feet on the roof and my heart in the tree. I would talk to the moon, or just listen in a satiated way to the traffic going by.

We moved out of the suburbsprawl that had tangled its way down route 2 from Baltimore and in to a house in the woods when I was a pre-teen. We went from a neighborhood full of kids with rat tails and kickball games and swingsets and snowball stands and dancing under the street lights in driveways purple boomboxes pumping to no one, just Sean and me, and the woods. And Lindsey and Darby who lived across the street in this big old farmhouse that had secret cellar tunnels cemented off but that you could access through trap doors in the field. My dad left three months after that he moved to New York. Manhattan always terrified me and repelled me after that. I started smoking cigarettes then and stealing from the liquor cabinet they kept downstairs with the heavy-hinged door. I put a sign on the door to my room, it was a manilla envelope with a fake address and it said Kelly's place on it and I think maybe that is when it started, my need and ache to always have a room or place of my own.

Later, after I graduated college mom was selling the house. I stayed on in Chestertown where I got my degree and got clean, it was 2002, for what was meant to be only the summer. I was working three jobs, two in town and one two hours away at the beach. My dad's best friend died and my dad was suddenly back--just like that, 12 years later. I was an adult now or supposed to be so I made decisions like an adult should. He was depressed and didn't get off the couch at my grandparents and aunt and uncles little wood house at the beach. I worked there at the beach it was beautiful fall and pulled doubles at a seafood house uptown three days a week and tried to feed dad peanut butter and jelly but my father, who loves food second only to gin and golf, wouldn't even eat. Then I drove to Chestertown to be a coffee shop barista in the days and wear a button down tux top at a white linen the other nights of the week. At the coffee shop I fell in love with a quiet boy who had soft brown eyes.

He was from Chestertown and so it was that I stayed.

By December of that year they offered me a job teaching night classes ESL. I didn't want to I had no background for it but she kept pressuring so I agreed. The first night I was coming up one hall there were students coming towards me from another, I closed my eyes and took a breath and relaxed so I could feel my heart open then just said a prayer in my head: Direct my thoughts and actions. Help me to love. Hola! I shouted to the little Mexicans with strong bright eyes and they smiled so warm and that was it, eight years ago, I was done.

In November, last year 2009, I moved here to this place finally for the first time in my life, my little tiny place all of my own. I love to be here and revel in how much I've I enjoy my own quiet home. It took me a long time. On Friday last week I stepped down from my job. That two nights a week gig teaching ESL eventually led to full-time at a Community College, where I worked hours on end with three other people to establish the community english and high-school diploma program. I poured every last bone breath and blood in to that job since they took it from the public schools in 08. It carried me through one of the most difficult transitions of my life, but now I am through, through the change of being my own woman, being single, being strong, being alone. May 14 is my last day and then soon I will leave the Eastern Shore.

It's been a long, long time coming. Who knew all along I just needed a little tiny place of my own?

Whole-er now

It was one of the longest weeks I can remember.

Years ago, in the Nez Perce wilderness in Idaho on the river, I had my period and laid long for days on the rocks in the sun. The butterflies were nesting and we hadn't seen them on the return trip until then, not like how they showed up every day after day two on the road when they marked four corners next to truck, the blue sky morning after the protection ritual I did around the tent in Vermont that first night. In the Nez Perce it was a full moon and I cried for days, I cried deep, meaty throttling choking tears, we'd been on the road for 16, 17 months, for well over a year, I knew I was crying the river, and for the moon. For the great, deep, the retched Mama wound. In the tent on my back the mama staring at me her wide white eye I knew for sure in that airless clear way that when my heart broke the first time all the way back over a year before in the Black Hills, when Crow came to me and then the natives in the dream and then I was too scared to do the Sundance we encountered on the Res the next day(it all would have been different then, had I, this I know) that this, this in the Nez Perce, butterflies nesting there, full moon tears and me, was a continuation of what had been. God wasn't breaking my heart god was finishing that night, finishing making it whole. The breakdown that paves the way for breakthrough. Turkeys came, fat ones, big wild turkeys through the woods turkey the give away bird--you will give it away, your whole new heart grl, for the world.

Ten days ago I looked at houses in Baltimore to buy and start my boarding house. I was so syked and none of it came thru. Nine days ago the tears came in the wordless way. They fell for no reason and wouldn't stop and then my heart closed, and then I knew: it is happening again, not the breaking of the heart but the making of it whole. It hurts so bad when the thread and bandages go through. It chokes me and feels like sucking dust and I still haven't learned how not to shut down. But I am learning how to fight to re-open because if you dont do nothing well then months pass, you are deadened, grey inside, it's become you this new state of numb. Sooner and sooner each time after I close now, sooner and sooner I am able to re-open. I saw two concerts, two plays, and took myself by myself to the ballet. In these ten days with all that community and indy art I still lost my faith. I went through the motions tho, fed the vegetable body with all the food I know. On Thursday, the day before I signed my fate, Justin Sirois' book came by mail from Baltimore, and Erika's book she keeps telling me about a memoir she wants me to read that she didn't tell me she was buying me came, too. I kept trusting, I kept trusting that these were little pieces of me, of the river, of the eye of the moon. I kept breathing even tho I couldn't feel it or when I did it felt so hard. Even though I dont have anything to tie my lot to, to go forward, to catch me or latch on to when I fall. Or leap, I should say. Now that I've lept and can't see where I'm going. I kept going will keep going all the same.

I danced all night last night. All night long. I let the vegetable body transmute it all through song. I dont know what's coming, but I'm a little better today. I saw crocus' two houses down from me yesterday and more important my medicine most true, the first dandelion. I will keep going, I dont know where, but I'm for sure whole, or wholer now, and must trust in that. Must trust that I'm on my way must trust in all that I know. Must trust that all will be, or actually, that all is well.

Poem. The men, from when I was wild.

I woke up from a dream this morning that ever-familiar distant ache of longing and loss too present and I'd been dreaming...about? O yea & then it all comes back, and I am on my knees then & I am praying, but not really praying, but doing that deep silent witness thing that I do that is most meditation but also praying bc I am letting it go, all the waves of thoughts and emotions that are scary or wavery or confuse me or make it hard I watch and feel as they move up and out and I let them go. It is a prayer bc I beseeched the Mystery to please, please be w me now. It was the recurring dream space of basement with all the additional rooms that spread out and out and on and on in the underground and there was a party, and all the guys, all of them, all of them were there all the men from when I was wild. And it left me feeling so weird, and confused. We were having fun, in the first place it started in a pool and me asking these old womyn please to show me, cuz no one ever taught me to swim. Then I am out of the pool and kickin it, smiling, so happy to be w all the boys.

After the prayer I am curling my hair and taking my time getting ready bc it's a fake it til you make it kinda day. And then it hits, the words, and the vision, & holy hell it all comes together. This next part of my memoir. Woooohoooo wooohooooo WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

It all sorta hinged on what was in that dream. So anyway, cuz it's connected in a way that at least I understand and bc it's one of the recent styles that the formatting can be copied as is w/out any probs on to my blog, here is part of a poem that came out wayyyyy late the other nite.

Def having to do w the men, from when I was wild.


the city
I
i’m driving w walsh we’re coming down
new york ave right aftr
it turns from hiwy to city,
ol rt 50. nothin on the radio
i start rappin method man:
you’re all that i need i’ll be there for you
keep it real w me
i’ll keep it real w you
lovin your whole skee i’ll be in there boo
on top a that you got the good, power you
& now I’m looking at Checkers
the black & yllw flags & dark yellw
hang lites the crner right there soon as you come in to dwntwn.
i am rmmbrn phil, all you fools, shaeffer & my baby mudd
who seemed bynd it all or skeeved but who cld tell all
yall boys used to front so hard then. you fuckin fools
in the back a brad’s Cherokee toothless blowjobs for 20 bucks.
& we grew up in the brbs.

now, whn i thnk a you
it’s too bad yer gone.
my hearts a bone yrd but
i aint done in thr yet, not
building or done scowling,
i miss you but it’s not
so weird & hard now,
most times i laugh
& rmmbr thse
wld wndrful eyes it makes
me happy jst to be able to
do that

II
rmmbr
that frst nite you wr gone
your grave site.
i rolled arnd like a virgin
shannon moaned. i thnk i
mghtve been w the drnk
bfr i’d quit for good.
the special brew, tht
fruity juice. hold me
close.
r.kelly.
i lied, o god i lied i do
miss you.
the way you used to hold me
in bed. you’re like a bear
a big blck smky smellin
bear. you were my frnd i
lvd you so mch. i cnt blve
ur gone, even
aftr all this time.

IV
circles & tides
my first memory of lew reed is wild side &
i am in 7th grade. there are lollipops on the boards
for sale so large they take up two of my hands &
the spit down the side of my fist. we lick them
up the center that’s what we grls do.

i was smoking cigarettes, had em in my purse.
we stayed downtown in the belmont-hearne it was
the first time i ever stayed in town jess’ mom single
mine too & jess’ curfew way more late than mine

jamie and fran held hands across the driver &
passenger’s seat in the front. jamie the little sister
of jess. i think about jamie a lot more than i do
jess. it’s funny what gone makes you do.

ltr, this becomes a story. it is called peir one.
kevin is in it he is not dead yet but at the end
of the story he cld die. who knows?

the kids in the lit house get angry it’s not neitzche
it’s not even tom robbins. i don’t want trouble
it’s just, look dumbasses. what dya want from me
it’s all that i know.