S P A C E | BABY

The title Winter's Bone refers to the relentless cold of the Ozark Mountain region, the chilled skeletons in the closet of a family who are as stretched and hardened as the economic landscape.  It took me a few chapters to realize this was a contemporary story, meant to be present day and not the depression era like it seemed.  The book is easy to read and devoid of frill and poetic flourishes.  In a way similar to the main character, Ree Dolly who is curt, hardened and devoid of any flourish yet who is not dark or devoid of desire.  " Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again." She is strong-willed, responsible and puts her desires on hold, or at least until she can join the army, and teaches her younger  brothers how to fend for themselves, cook and shoot squirrels and take care of their mother who's mind has gone long

At the heart of this memoir there is a fateful connection of two people who meet as lazily as they coexisted. It is a wonder if Patti would've ended up wandering the streets of New York City with the guy from Venus is he hadn't disappeared one day leaving her alone to find another fellow wanderer.  Patti seems to float along becoming a pregnant teenager who unceremoniously gives it up for adoption.  She is convinced (like most of us) New York City is Valhalla where some friends have already made their way.  By the time she is ensconced in the city atmosphere her original friends are an afterthought in the coming wave that took her over.  Robert Mapplethorpe.  She, a transient meets him who seems to be in constant repose.  as I am writing this I have no idea what his birthday is, but I'm guessing Taurus or Taurus rising or maybe he's just someone with a birthday like mine who looks like a lazy bum when they are at their most creatively attuned and ready to pounce.  He

Finally I have read Kim Gordon: Girl In A Band, which swirls like a majestic haze that is somehow pastel, glittering and grungy.  As a fan of Kim Gordon, maybe more so than the band Sonic Youth (but oh, I love sonic youth), since I heard Bull In The Heather in the early 90s, and like a true nonconformist bought Daydream Nation instead of 'Experimental, Jet-Set, Trash and No Star' like everyone else who'd seen it on MTV. I read her memoir as being another chronicle of one's creative journey that flourished in New York city.   Though her journey began decades before mine, the story feels the same.  I came to the city before and somehow felt connected to it, or a spark.  Looking back that is probably what most feel, but I vowed to live there one day and live the fast life: eat, breath and spit creation nonstop.  And maybe I would've met my Thurston and might have married him too - but I didn't.  Instead I tried to commit to my Self, to do art or some thing  that wa

Being an introvert is probably underrated.  When I first heard of the term, it seemed to describe antisocial loners incapable of intimacy on most levels.  There may be levels of 'introvercy' which I learned by being both a party girl and a brooding writer, or sometimes a quiet, fly-on-the-wall photographer.  To be still is to know.  In other words, the Bartender knows everything, which an old friend brought to light in such a way, as he talked to me from behind the bar.  A habit of writing formed with a tiny diary, then swelled into obsessive poetry only a moon-in-Scorpio virgin could write shuttered away in my room for hours with only the sound of music, and begat the kindling for creative fires.  Through teen angst, shared dorms, roommates and such, the shuttering had to become more aggressively insular with sunglasses that tell anyone near to not bother me; to beautifully crafted moats of gigantic eternity scarves and hoodies that covered my markedly Other, conversation-star

Staring, drawn out of the confines of her retail bean fields into the sparkly realm of her mind, she doesn't realize she has also caught the eye of Shiri Appleby, whose name sounds as sweet and tart as her girl-next-door image is saccharine, and who now has the look of someone unsure if the girl staring is fan or foe. Staring as she does at old photos, examining every line and fleck of light as if transported by the minute details of the memory back into time where the memory was born, she realizes it is not a picture and it is not her imagination - that tiny, plain girl - no - woman, is in fact Shiri. Saved by the ringtone of her mobile, Shiri answers, "Hey babe..." Liz Parker would never say that to Max , but, yes - that is in fact, Liz Parker's voice, the slightly squeezed consonants, a soft scruffy baby woman voice. She stares also out of disbelief at the lucky synchronicity she's been gifted: See, for two weeks she has watched episodes of Roswell on her c

An artist is able to take whatever is in their life experience and synthesize it into something else. Whatever the message is, that is hopefully what people get out of it; when an audience gets something different from what you intended or anticipated, the art takes on a life of it's own, it grows branches and plants seeds in places you never imagined.