tradition

my birthday is on friday; i will become 26 years of age. things are a-changing, i can feel this in my bones. unsettled, uncertain, hopeful. im having a big party, less of a birthday party in my eyes, more of a celebration, an annual excuse if you will, of getting all the random people i love into one big tangled mess of merry making. it'll be a mess, this is for sure. organized chaos, and i would have it no other way. no blood or citations though, please.

there will be a japanese theme throughout the festivities. there will be nagashi somen (a bamboo noodle slide). I've been tinkering and hammering, sanding bamboo poles for a few days now. this was something i did in japan back in 2003 with my friend miyuki and her college friends. mount fuji was in the background, i remember it clear as day....it was very rustic, very of the earth, the water, and the freshly cut wood. (nagashi somen is very old-world japan...it represents saying goodbye. I'm saying goodbye to being 25, i figure.)

also there will be some silly things like sake bombs and whatnot...

i'm very proud of being japanese, i know this. i don't want to lose my roots. i would like to teach some of the things i know, pass on a few of the cultural aspects that i really enjoy.

the person i love most wont be here though. it's our tradition at this point.

saying gooodbye....

our dear friends monica and angela are leaving us in 4 days for the virgin islands. they have packed up all of their belongings and are saying goodbye...why? because they are crazy and in love and want to get away from us lesser human beings.....it'll only be for a year but it's always sad...i feel like a lot of my friends up and leave. i guess it's part of growing up but it will never become easier.....in the photograph above beloved monica is there to my left and steadfast angela to my right. (erin, by the way, the girl to the far left is my roommate, whom the previous blog entry was devoted to....whom decided last minute to not move out after all. way to go, turd.)

we have had many a fun night at the depot...i think monica is tired in this photo. she is tired at any point after 8 pm. she is a granny if i ever met one. a hot cool ass granny.

here we are at my home on new years...singing kareoke...BAD kareoke......this was moments before some of us went streaking pant less down the street....t'was chilly to say the least.

erin has crabs. dirty erin.

we will miss you...we will miss you so much. angela and mo, see you very soon, a virgin islands christmas!!! aruba? jamaica? banana by the bunch?

you are both very, very important to me. i love you. now fuck off already before i start to cry.

an ode to erin

this great pup, proud young radclyffe, (named after the famous lesbian writer radclyffe hall), is leaving me in a month. sob!he will run down the midnight streets after his harry potter-looking mama erin. (she is in the green jacket...)

she is my roomate and is leaving me because none of my shoes fit her big white girl feet.

plus we have way too many nights like this and she will be going to school full time soon.

look at her in all her blinding glory....one month and counting...erin, i will miss you very much...kinda, in some ways.

p.s. look-it those pale gams....and im glad that big ol bow is there.

living the dream...

<----------my drafting table, how i love thee!!!!!-------

since i was a wee little girl i have loved to draw. my father would bring home scratch paper from the office for me. i would sit for hours, filling the pages with adventures, great and small.

my dad told me recently that i still have what he called and still calls my "forever-ever" box in his garage--a HUGE cardboard box stuffed with thousands of my scribbles from childhood. i think it's really tender and sweet that he never threw that shit out.

i've always been figurative with my art, drawing adult people in particular...i cant draw a dog worth shit, and even my human babies end up looking like creepy 50 year old men who are two feet tall....and speaking of men, i would ONLY draw men, up until high school. i would draw men camping, and fighting, and super heroes, gladiators, aviators, circus conductors, prison wardens....

i never drew women when i was young. i tried once or twice but i hated it. they looked like freaks of nature. it was men that i loved, men that i loved to draw. i believe now there was something psychologically fucked up about it...or very natural.

i finally began drawing females when i reached high school....and now, most all of my drawings, even when i draw men---they either look like women or are super androgynous.

needless to say, as a child it was one of my dreams to someday be a young adult, living in a loft, sketching at a drafting table above a busy street, sipping some java or vino with edith piaf or some sort of heart breaking operatic score playing in the background. (either that or buried in books piled 15 high at a desk of mahogany with one of those little green lamps, puffing on a pipe sherlock holmes style)

there are few things more romantic to me, than an artist crouched over said table doing said craft of some sort.

i realized recently that these days, these very days, i am already living this particular dream.

what the fuck. gawd damn im already here and i didn't even know it.

now to draw MORE...DO more, and maybe get some gigs.

what dreams are you currently living out?...you tell me.

upon leaving this treehouse? barcelona or bust?

my roommate is moving out in a month...i've been debating between finding a new person to move into this insane one-of-a-kind-circus-called-home with all of my colorful housemates.....or leaving this creaky old victorian which i've grown to love over the past 4 years...and finding a place of my own where i can have privacy for the first time in my life.

both aspects have huge pros and cons. god, i'd miss my bedroom. look at it, so tranquil.

one of the pros to staying put is the cheap price on my current rent. i'd be able to afford returning to spain with the girls in october. (see the silly above video...it might not have uploaded correctly though...we were staying with an adorable clothing designer named blanca in barcelona, and in the video we were at a very small but chic bar named 'vinilo' which projected old movies on the walls and served absinthe by the barrelful---hence the intoxicated singing...)

one of the cons to staying is that i'd have to break-in yet another new potential roomie into this very different sort of living situation. this place is not for everyone, that's for sure---but that's why we love it, i guess. nonetheless, it's a fucking pain in the ass, getting used to living with a complete stranger.

one of the pros to leaving would be that i could take the opportunity to purge myself of all the things i no longer need. i would have a fresh start in a new location and it would be so freeing to have space to call my very own.

but i would be hurting financially and there would be no return trip to spain---and portugal, france and berlin!

sheeeet.

we are the upper class

sitting at the cafe, a group of 5 young mothers approached with their children, ranging from babies in strollers to kids that were about 2 years old.

the women were well dressed, very mainstream, sort of banana republic meets some overpriced boutique in Lohman's plaza...very "the real housewives of greater sacramento"--if there was such a show---and there isn't, thank the lord. it was clear they were having a "girls afternoon out."

my initial thought process was that it was cool, the mothers going to have some coffee together downtown with the kids...the entire thing was quaint. let's make a day trip to downtown, fix up our hair, put on our heels, bring the kids....i always consider it a good thing to see hetero women spending time together away from their men.

fast forward to when they were exiting the cafe (i was sitting outside)...i picked up on the fact that they must've been letting their younguns run all about the place, because evidently they had been told to keep them in check.

clearly they did not like being told what to do, because from that point, i silently sat, listening to every horrible thing that they had to say, pouring like french manicure diarrhea out of their christian dior glossed lips....

"that white trash cashier told ME to watch MY boy?? how dare he???" (who else is supposed to watch your child but you?)

"they are all beatniks anyhow, sitting all hunched over their books, they think they are all european but they sure aren't!" (as if beatniks still exist in great numbers, and what the hell does any of it have to do with europe?)

"i make more money than ALL of them combined!!" (that's good, now go back to granite bay)

the trash talking kept on for awhile, and it was really bad. it was embarassing. i didn't know adults talked like this on a regular basis. call me bright-eyed and stupid but hearing their words really weirded me out. fuck artists this, everybody is so ugly, all of you broke losers, at least i dont work at a CAFE, go listen to your snobby 'cool' music that (i actually thought that one was funny because it's true) it was complete racism (they were all white)/class ism on a financial status level....prejudice obviously, really low shit. great. and to think of all the clientele i have to serve on a nightly basis......i always feel like i know what they are thinking, but until now ive never actually heard it.

it was really tragic, because most all of their insults had to do with how much money they make and how much they assume "people like us" do not. wealth....what has been said is true--you really can't take it with you when you die....so why dont you spend a little less time belittling people less wealthy than you. we dont want your ugly coach purse. we dont. but we are happy that you are happy with it before you rot away into a pile of bones in the earth, slimy and smelly.

the highlight of all the insults came when the obvious leader of the pack said:


"well, whatever. WE are the UPPER class and WE are off on a WEEKDAY AFTERNOON!!!!"

may god have mercy on your soul, and just for the record, i never, EVER have to work during the afternoon, and i'm not rearing a child that is sure to grow up and be a chauvanistic, sheltered menace to society.

good luck....

the darkest hour is just before dawn

<----------(self portrait)-- last night my treehouse home was surrounded by a magestic lightning storm. as the thunder crashed and the entire sky was engulfed holy and bright i was almost certain a huge fireball was going to swallow my bedroom. the storm was INTENSE. i pictured the other thousands upon thousands of people in this here city lying awake in their beds listening to the rain. in my mind's eye i envisioned from an arial perspective, people small as ants, with the rooftops of their homes ripped off, with covers pulled up to their chins, blinking into the black which then would strobe with white as the lightning struck again and again, relentless and spectacular!! we were all in this together.

at some point my entire body broke out into some sort of hive-like situation, perhaps from the electricity in the air (more likely from a food allergy...?) it was very bizzare. very alien.

today my 3rd floor neighbor said last night during the peak of it all she had made her way to the patio at 4 am to wait for me. i didn't know; i never arrived.......and tonight it is i whom is sitting here alone, the weather is still. i am listening to the silence.