#uncoffeed...

Kalamazoo now has traffic circles. why does pain so familiar feel so good?  I play the same song over & over opening the same vein over & over recounting the crossroads where the path could have been different mighta been coulda been shoulda been woulda been never matters anyway It's not regret I'm feeling, no I'm playing Physical Graffiti to remember a particular permutation of me. The me who helped break a puppy out of dog jail. ...the one who once took a bunch of the blinky traffic signs and put them in someone's yard like their front door was blocked off...and then another day did the same thing but blocking off Douglas, one of the main streets in Kalamazoo. THERE WASN'T ANYTHING ELSE TO DO. We were kids who didn't want to go home. I was "raised" by old hippies. I'd given up on traditional life entirely, skipped school, and went downtown to hang in basements on the North Side with musicians who had weed and philosophy. They talked to m...

Last year was a crazy-productive one for me and also one of my all-time lows. I found inspiration in the words of Peter Kidd when he sent them to me priority mail .  "See what happens," he said.  A lot happened. And I kept going. I started a series of sunflower paintings , and started a series of crows. I mailed art to an exhibit at Woman Made Gallery (both the exhibit and mailing art were firsts for me) and had a solo exhibit at Beanetics Coffee Roasters near my home-base . At the same time as all this awesomeness, and perhaps exacerbated by it, I smashed head-on into a couple of my strongest demons - accepting too much workload from others and bullying - and gained assistance from my doctor instead of self-medicating. We put me on SSRIs for a few months. "See what happens," she said, not verbatim. I stopped taking the meds when my bloodwork showed stress on my liver, and I've kept working. I compiled two chapbooks of poetry and submitt...

Any sensation can trigger memory: a smell, a sound, a song. Tonight it's a specific temperature and humidity combined with sodium lighting and just the right curve of a very flat road under a full moon between green trees and black sky. I turn off the radio so I can try to remember what was playing then. I remember being happy. I don't know where I was the first time - I think Texas or Oklahoma. I was carefree, cruising in someone else's car, nothing left to lose. Unencumbered. It was nice to transport back there for a moment, to know I'd felt this way before like I feel it now. That means I can feel it again in the future; it's not specific to a time or space. I own this happiness and this beautiful night. The sky is amazing and the moon looks so proud . The freedom of fetters loosened comes after hardship and pain, like a mermaid losing her tail and gaining legs. Awkward, bumpy, gashes on the sole. I can do what I want without upsetting someone else's s...