it’s been a moment since i’ve written something more full & expansive & put together. i don’t know that i'll be able to continue doing that, regularly at least, but i think that’s okay! this post in particular is being cross-posted to my substack, as i imagine a lot of the posts that get on this 'blog' page will be. if you'd like, i'd really appreciate it if you subscribed there so posts like these will make it to your email inbox & you can be sure to enjoy them :]
anyway, i have a lot of random thoughts that have been piling up over the course of weeks, so here those are
today has been a pretty nice day. a friend invited me to visit an art gallery with him, but postponed until friday because he forget he’d planned something else. that’s more than okay, but now i’ve prepped myself mentally for a gallery visit and have no gallery to go to! so i’m turning to exploring art on my own
in art histoy today, we spent some time looking at robert mapplethorpe, who i am absolutely enamored with. his photography is so striking— especially his collection of lisa lyon and his documentation of people (mostly friends) in the underground leather/sadomasochist NYC scene at the time, and i’m really enjoying them
i made some of my own art today, too. we had an assignment in ceramics to create something oriented around a mask, so i made what turned into i made a little monk. he’s sort of conical in shape, with a ‘mask’ that has no eyes or mouth. my girlfriend suggested he’d taken a vow of blindness, which totally inspired me. what a painful & powerful vow to take! anyway, i admire the monk deeply. i think i’ll write a poem about him soon, but i’ll have to let it marinate first
i think that’s most of the art-related stuff that’s gone on recently. i finally finished a longer review/poetry zine i’d been working on, which i’m very proud of. you can find that here if you want to take a look
i’ve been largely inspired by other people, recently. to name a few…
- etel adnan’s novella sitt marie-rose
- robert mapplethorpe’s photography, as i already said
- suheir hammad’s jabaliya (which i’ve added below-- hover for info)
- matthew barney’s DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 (see above paranthetical)
not everyone that inspires me is necessarily an artist themself, though. yesterday, i went to trader joe’s and the cashier told me he dug my hair, and that it was sort of cyberpunk to him. told me, too, about how his grandma decided to get him a mohawk when he was 8, so he had one back then, and that he wants to do weird things with his hair again because he’s getting tired of the ‘mop’ he has right now. shave it all off & dye it orange or something. i encouraged him, of course. anyway, the interaction made me think about how much talking to others everyday changes our lives— my life, i guess. conversations like that always change (& better) my day, and it made me want to be more creative. i imagine it’s because it simply filled me with life!
some other odd things… well, i’ve been seeing a lot of roadkill this past year, so ideas of life cycles and what’s natural vs. what isn’t have also been really infesting my mental space & my writing. i saw a short video recently, where a woman carried a coyote from the highway to the woods so she could return to nature and be scavenged– making her body useful, and making certain that more animals don’t die trying to get to her. it was really beautiful to me, though sad. i’ve been wanting to write a piece compiling the images i still have in my mind of all the roadkill i’ve seen (a raccoon curled up in the middle of the road, a coyote curled up as well, squirrels completely decimated with fur matted & bloody & black, skunks splayed sadly, discarded near the gutter)
weirdly, though, the other day i saw a pillow in the road. it stayed there overnight, too— stuffing getting torn out of its ripped open case with each car that passed over it. i honestly wonder who put it there; it seemed like a pretty nice throw pillow
this sort of bleeds into exploring dilapidation & renewal as a theme, which i think has come through in some of my writing (namely one that i’m trying to get published called ‘what is a house without its children?’) and i’m enjoying quite a bit. i feel like i’ve been really ‘productive’ writing-wise this year. i hate using that word, though. i guess it’s more that i’ve been flourishing? thriving? i’m trying to think of words that associate them with a place flush with life– a lush jungle or something. abundance, i guess. i’ve been writing more than i ever do at a time, and it’s wonderful but tiring! i missed it, honestly. i love writing so much, and it’s so hard to have consistent inspiration. not that i expect it to last, but it’s nice while i have it
anyway, it’s time for random things, now. some favorites (hover for more info)!
- heaven looks like us: palestinian poetry edited by george abraham & noor hindi
- brook revisited by adam melchor (a song i loved a while ago & am revisiting)
- revolution dreams by sister wife sex strike