Classic Liz (Revised).

I always do this, especially after a transitional summer, which this certainly was. Oh fuck, jesus christ, oh this summer.
oh oh oh oh
I did it here, after the ridiculous circus that was summer 2006.

So here goes,
My favorite memories of summer 2009.
(rewritten because I just accidentally deleted my original post while doing some major cross blog restructuring, so apologies if I forgot anything this time around).

*(probably the BEST one) Tim randomly showing up in town & Tim & Rin & I making that incredible dinner out of the nothing in my fridge & taking that late night walk & laying in the street & me calling out of work the next morning & us three having breakfast at the Green Bean.
*DnDnD2k09, pretty much the whole freaking thing, especially all the laughing & silliness in the car, our first night in Asheville, singing the Magnetic Fields' "Washington DC" as we drove into guess where, the beautiful highway into New Orleans through the Gulf Coast, the shrimp boil at the R Bar in the Marigny, the Bourbon Mile, the second day driving through the mountains in Virginia & dying of beauty & Foamhenge & car sandwiches. & again, so much laughter & adventure.
*my moving day into 133, the whole thing, from the toasted coconut cream iced coffees to the sandwiches from State Street & Ballantines in my old back yard to the mussels & beer sampler trays at at the Noho Brewery & A Dead Hipster Or A Stove Boat.
*so very much excellent dancing, at the Basement, the 11's, & Bishop's, thanks to all Noho's awesome djs for all those great nights.
*of course all my very late night walks home from dancing, just me & my ipod & the sky & my cute dresses, even when it was raining, which it always was.
*the night in June I randomly met Mark at the 11's on the velvet couch & we had that great conversation.
*visiting with gramma in Brewster & margaritas & white wine & scallops at Clancy's then Job Lot & Marshall's & Curious by Britney Spears & fierce new sneakers.
*at the Spoke the night it was WAY to cold for August
*late night adventures involving rooftop views & 7-11 snacks & parks in the pouring rain.
*the night Karen & I saw rabbit rabbit at the Brass Cat & then drove to the Basement for Woolly Bully blasting Nas & arrived exactly at the door at 12:59.
*the last Amazing Love where I danced with Jono.
* all those DnD Thursdays at Hugo's & Sierra especially the going away party for the road trip where we actually had a big party of people out making art together in a bar.
*Cirque du Filet.
*the night Jed & I dragged the kitchen chairs onto the front lawn on King Street & the road trip was born & then we went on that late night adventure to amherst & the top of that hill & drove around listening to hip hop.
* the dinner party Karen & I had had 273 with the rose petals.
*fourth of july & chicken apple sausages & jalapeno chips at Melissa's party & then dancing at Danielle's & Lisette making my dress much much shorter with scissors & Jed & I falling asleep awkwardly on the floor.
* that day Jono randomly made me lunch & we sat on his porch all day & enjoyed the garden & the rare sunshine.
* that trip Melissa & I took to Cape Cod for swimming & laying in the sun & thriftstoring & good food.
*the times at work where Amy, Cait, Hillary, Thomas & Faye really made me laugh so hard I cried.
*rewatching Twin Peaks in my living room with my roommates.
*remembering how much I love cooking for my friends, & doing something about that.
* that day in early summer where Rin & I began planting the garden & drank the first iced tea of the season with lavender ice cubes
*Isaac's fabulous bacon party plus the night before when my bacon lasagna was born at Hugo's (where all good ideas are born).
*the first meal cooked at 133, dinner party with Melissa & Jed where Jed drew us unpacking my books in short skirts.
*the beginning of DnDnE dinners with Beth. (hopefully many more to come).
*learning how to draw & paint again. & remembering why I care to do so.
& I guess ending on my birthday, the first day of fall, beginning with a perfect night dancing at the Basement, a perfect day of smoked salmon bagels & thriftstoring with my lovely stylish friends, a delicious dinner party with people I love & an unexpected gift the next morning.

Rereading the old post from 2006 to link to it, I'm kind of amazed & awed at the similarities.
I look forward to fall 2009. I really do.
I really think it's gonna be alright.
Some things broke this summer, but some things were fixed, too.

retracing my steps

I've had a strange week, where I've ended up revisiting, alone, a lot of places important to me in the past, the places that are the building blocks of my psychic memory of myself. I escaped from total chaos in northampton and finally gave in and took dustyrose and went to my mom's house on the cape. This is the longest I've spent in brewster since 1996, the summer between my freshman year at simon's rock and my first and sophomore year at risd, when I probably spent about a month here. Other than that, in the past ten years, I've been here for two nights at the most, maybe twice a year. And now I've been here eight days. 

And because until last november I've been in a serious monogamous relationship for most of my adult life, this is also among the handful of times I've been home (mom's house, funny how quickly I've started referring to this as 'home' since I haven't had one of my own lately) alone and not entertaining a significant other since I was a teenager. 

In this past week: all my favorite beaches and church thrift stores and ponds and woods and marshes and swamps and coffeeshops of the cape, the risd campus, my old apartment in providence, downtown new bedford and the walk between our apartment and the bookstore, the highway between northampton and new bedford and providence and brewster, a lot. 

New Bedford: where my idea of what things should look like came from. 

Brewster: the lake upon who's shores I grew up. 

Providence: my first apartment, my first love, first drink, first sushi. 

lots of driving, lots of ocean, lots of walking, lots of picking up shells, trips to drugstores buying makeup and other stuff like a teenager, loud music in my car, 

places I haven't seen since childhood, and have never seen through my own eyes as an adult (by which I mean, just looked at them, not showing them to someone else while retelling the story of myself). 

Wearing my boots and crazy vintage dresses all week, enjoying sleevelessness and my new since last summer arm tattoos, my badass boots on the sand of the beaches of the cape, big sunglasses and my ipod, guided by voices and pavement and the silver jews and modest mouse and bjork while I think think think, sound of waves in the background, the path around slough pond, the sidewalk of new bedford between orchard street and pleasant street that I've been walking alone since I was six, the brick sidewalks of benefit street in providence echoing my footsteps more then ten years ago when I first fell in love and I walked all night, when I first learned how to walk all night, 

dreaming of my friends, and of bridges, and of nail polish bottles lined up on a mantle. 

All this was unplanned, but the timing is seeming strangely fitting, as I have this weird feeling my life is about to change really soon really fast really majorly. 

maybe not. I don't know. I think I'm right and I think I'm wrong and I'm sure what I want and then I'm not and then I remember, it's not exactly about what I want, if it's going to happen then it is. 

This has been the week of revisiting, and of waiting. Past and future, edge of some sort of cliff. 

Art Project

I had a really, really nice weekend, but ended with a rather ambivalent sunday night. I got melancholy for a while, for no reason at all...just starting to come out of it. through art. weirdly.
Thank jesus for this collaborative art project with r. (more on the details of this later), I really do need more concrete things to do.
And I hadn't realized how much I miss just painting, with actual brushes and paint, etc.
I really like all the parts this project has...my regular journal/sketchbook, my new food journal, my food porn facebook album, my daily paintings of everything I eat, my facebook album of those pictures, my notes in my regular journal about the project, my official journal of the project, this blog of course I think there will be more,
I wish it was tomorrow so I can eat and draw more things.
I like carrying around all these various notebooks. I feel busy and important. And it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what I'm doing as long as it feels that way to me. I like having my bag full of pens and glue and words and images.
But I was not in a good mood at all. Just sitting around and staring at things and tormenting myself with my thoughts.
I was really kind of frozen into inactivity, but then r. called, and reminded me about the project, and a tiny part of my brain woke up.
I HAVE to do this one food painting everyday, so I did it, and I liked what I did, and now I'm not in such as bad place. Hmm.
In terms of things in my life I am grateful for, this is way up there.

deadline

I'm giving myself until spring to get over this, then I need to move on. And by "spring" I mean the official spring solstice, in many ways the holiest day of the year, and by "this" I mean I need to let go of a whole lot of anger and resentment and regret and everything to do with the whole foods saga.
I was suspended just days after the winter solstice, and fired the day before new years eve, so if this ends on the first day of spring, this will have been one complete season of my life.
And winter is traditionally the season of death and rebirth...which is what this winter has been for me, absolutely.
So it will be quite fitting if this period in my life takes exactly one season.
And my relationship with emerson fitted neatly into one season, fall, so that works too.
Fall has always been my favorite season, and so many parts of that relationship were pure pleasure, even though it ended badly. And I started dating him just days before my 30th birthday, and my birthday is always an important day for me.
And 30 should have ended my saturn return, I believe.
But spring. Spring will be something new.
I've really been working on myself this winter, seeing myself through something very dark born out of my own heart.
Come spring, I'm going to be ready for gardens, for sunshine, for dancing, for art, and for trust again, maybe.
Winter 2008-2009 I think I will always remember as the time I really got to know myself. Was always alone with myself. And it was scary and I cried a lot and always woke up in a panic, but look, now I sleep through the night again. I've accepted a lot of things. I've learned how to be grateful, that none of this is by any means the end of the world. That I am so so so thankful that this is the worst I've had to deal with, really I'm very lucky.
I've lost a lot of friends, but the ones I still have, are amazing. awe-inspiring. my family is amazing and awe-inspiring.
Spring is going to bring a lot more art work.
I still wake up thinking about him every single fucking day. Three more weeks, then that has to stop.
I think on the first day of spring I need to perform some sort of ritual. I don't know what yet, but I either need to set a bunch of things on fire or throw things off a cliff into the ocean.
When I got divorced almost three years ago a lot of people told me I needed to take the time to deal with it, even if it was hard, and I didn't.
I'm doing it now.
And I'm going to be at least a reasonably functional version of liz again, soon.

((tiny related thoughts))

I thought for a split second in the exhibit tonight that what I should be doing is being an eating disorder counselor for teenaged girls. I think I could do that.
Very well.
And maybe even help someone who might otherwise die. Like I almost did.
How do I even go about doing that?
(plus all this train of thought has huge relevance to my visual artwork that I can't even begin to deal with right now...but I'm aware of the connections...
...body image, celebrities, porn, britney, food, yeah I get it...or am trying too)

valentines eve & other weird painful shit: Part #2: Shame

Tonight I was confronted with a lot of weird painfully deeply difficult to process things that take me back to my deepest darkest parts, the stuff that keeps me up at night. All night.
So I saw emerson tonight. That happened.
Earlier, I met b. at the Smith Art Museum, because it was Northampton Arts Night Out, and when the Smith Museum is free (as it should always be, of course) and Lauren Greenfield's Thin & Girl Culture was at the Smith Museum
That was really good, but weird and hard for me, because it was a lot of photos of women with eating disorders, and eating disorder stuff is still oh so indescribably hard for me to deal with, and I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to write about it tonight. Still the hardest thing for me to talk about/deal with/acknowledge in anyway/think about.
Even though the year when I regularly weighed under 100 pounds was when I was 14, so 16 years ago now.
I've been living pretty much as normal and appearing normal for 16 years. weird.
To be clear, I can talk about it, in a very specific way, a way that I've created, a language I've created, where I can mention certain controlled truths, and act like I'm dealing with it, but that actually never really even scratches the surface. Of what I've done. Of what I've felt. Of how I still live.
I certainly don't talk about it in the present tense. It's 10:50pm and all I've eaten all day is a single yogurt. I'm fighting with myself with what I'll eat next. Since I've been fired, I can at least on some level see that I'm exercising compulsively (now 205 situps a day plus all this other stuff) but I can't stop. I love when people buy me dinner, because then I'm allowed to eat whatever I want without following my rules.
I eat plenty, and I maintain a normal weight, mostly, but the amount of rules, involved, I know it's not normal, whatever that is, because I can't find the words to talk about. I would never, ever tell anyone what I really think when it comes to eating.
I eroticize it, I play games, I deny myself things...I think this why I want to just go live on a farm because I figure if I was really in touch with food and the sources of my food than all this nonsense my intellectual mind knows is silly and ridiculous would go away.
Gardening helps. That's why I do it. Inpatient eating disorder units should have gardens. And animals. Really.
The show we saw tonight had all these photos of girls being forced to eat cookies, but what if they had to raise chickens and then kill and eat them? Or just gather eggs? That seems like something that would have shaken me out of my self obsession as a teenager. In a good way. And eating disorders are always a self obsession. not that you can stop it just because you know this.
Send all anorexics to sustainable farms and see what happens. seriously.
Food I create myself has less guilt. Food I cook myself does too.
Something about labor, hands, work, touch....
So seeing those photographs...I was almost in tears by the time I left that exhibit. I was choking in my throat.
Not in a bad way. I was really glad I saw it. But it wasn't easy. I think a lot of the point of my own work is that I'm trying so hard to conceive of a language in which to talk about these things.
I need to talk about them. It's part of why I am an artist.
Someone should. And that show tonight, that all from an observer's perspective, because most of those girls photographed are too fucked up to make their own art.
I want to be the voice from the inside, the one who was just that bad, but survived anyway. And I will survive what is happening to me now.
So it was an intense evening in my soul already...
And then I was walking alone down main street in the cold back to my car and standing at the light at the main intersection waiting to cross, and I look over my shoulder behind me for some reason I still can't figure out (ali says I was looking for him) and I see first one member of his band, then the next, and I knew what was coming but it happened so fast, then him, come around the corner, and I didn't know what to do, so I looked away, but I'm pretty sure he saw me, and looked away too, and walked past me.
And then I felt like crying again and I still do.
Both of these are things I'm ashamed of.
That I've treated and still treat my body this way. That I loved him and trusted him and that he treated me this way.
Shame.
That ties this whole night together.
And a lot of my recent life.
In the recent past I've been on my knees in front of one person while someone who likes me sincerely called me on the phone to make plans with me. And have been at the computer at 1am eating leftover homemade curry and dirty instant messaging two different people with the same first same name at the same time.
Shame.
What's going on here?
Starving myself/loving the wrong people. A lot to think about.
And it's almost valentines day...and I take holidays, even stupid ones seriously, because I love ceremony.
It's gonna be a long night.
Thanks sweet jesus that K. made me a 21 love songs mix for valentines day that arrived unexpectedly in the mail this morning, along with this month's cosmo (An Orgasm Almost Killed Her: we are not kidding)(actual headline).
and I'm gonna listened to that truly excellent mix and write my heart out and drink cheap white wine and eat a chicken sandwich from the food the guy who doesn't eat much left behind.
good for me. I am embracing having an appetite. I think I'll make curried chicken salad.
Fuck shame. So what I loved him and I was wrong. He should be ashamed, and he is, cause he can't even look me in the face. Fuck that.
I've got a lot more to write on this subject, I think. Stay tuned.

(valentines)(food)(the inbetween bit)

(one other thing: my ideal valentines date, and which I've had with various partners for at least most of the last eleven years, is to cook a really special gorgeous romantic dinner at home with my love...I think the guy tomorrow wouldn't understand the food/sex/love/touch thing that matters to me so much...that's part of the problem...when I cooked him dinner for the first time this week, he didn't finish his plate and I was the only one eating butter...that sort of thing doesn't make me want to fuck you)
(I don't want to go to a restaurant, I want my valentines date to lick butter off my fingers and fuck me up against the kitchen wall while we are still cooking, pots and pans all on the stove and knives and cutting boards everywhere, everything smelling delicious)
(at least I know this)
(Iwrote this about myself the other day)
(You should message me if:
If you are open to adventure.
If you are by nature a sensual person, and the way life tastes, sounds, smells, sounds, and feels matters to you.
If you think food is incredibly sexy, and you agree that cooking an elaborate, messy, and indulgent meal is an excellent form of foreplay. And if you like to eat, because I like to cook, and I like people who truly appreciate food.
If you like dancing and getting sweaty.
If you want to go a dive bar for a bunch of hours and play the jukebox and act ridiculous.
If you smell and taste good, because I always notice that about a person.
If doing whiskey shots and eating cake in bed sounds like fun to you.
and you should like music, doesn't matter what kind because I like a lot.)
(of course, I know who all things are true about)

valentines eve & other weird painful shit: Part #1

So valentines eve 2009. First valentines day since 1998 when I was 19 that I haven't been in a committed long term relationship with someone I was in love with on valentines day. That's eleven years, people.
So there's that. Not that I'll be alone at all, I have a date, a really nice date planned to go to see "Coraline" and eat sushi at osaka, with someone I like ok, who is handsome and smart and funny and seems to really like me and the way I think and who pays attention to my art, etc. perfect on paper, but on the other hand , as ali and jocelyn and I were just joking, I'm just not that into him? Get it? I could let him know that by suggesting we see, "He's Just Not That Into You" instead of "Coraline." But he planned this date, and it's a great date, it's all stuff I love to do, so what is my problem? That it feels like we are really "dating" now and one thing I do know is that I don't want that. Not with one person. My poor little heart can't handle it yet.
I'm turning into one of those boys I've dated who's terrified of the word "Girlfriend." I just don't want to be anybody's girlfriend, except maybe one person's and that's the wrong person.
And valentines day is of course complicated because ever since I broke up with emerson, well I guess not since we broke up, we broke up in november, and I thought for while we'd certainly get back together haha now we'll never even speak again, I guess since he got me fired at christmas, I 've been on a dating spree that I can't entirely understand or explain to myself or anyone else. Mostly people from the internet, a few from real life. Right now I am currently have a specifically nondating sex/friendship thing with three people, and dating two other people, making plans to meet at least two new people next week, plus two people I've met in person I'm avoiding, plus a handful of people I only email. Hmmm.
Very emotionally confusing, especially considering I've never really dated casually before, only ever gone from one serious relationship to the next.
And the only person who moves me at all is the one most specifically nonromantic. But maybe that's exactly the reason I'm moved, because that situation is safe. It's definitely the only situation where I'm having sex because I really want to, which is sad I guess.
I had a good conversation with a & k about what this means about what I really want, and whether or not it's ok for me to want the things I seem to want.
Am I a slut, a whore, am I really messed up emotionally, am I really sexually confused, am I normal?
When I describe it to myself, I just say that all I want is to feel something. And that I can't. That's here is an empty space in my chest and I'm just trying to fill it with something.
That the only reason that I can handle all this is that emerson left me so emotionally removed from myself and everything else that I can just jump from one person to the next and not feel a real connection.
I feel guilty about my date tomorrow, I feel like he wants something different and I'm not being honest.
I'm confused, because the me I used to be would have been so happy about this situation and the me I am right now feels nothing.
I mostly want to be alone these days, that's when I usually feel the best with a few exception.
I guess emerson gave me that, an appreciation of my own company that I didn't have when I was clinging to him for everything.
Although I never am alone, this week I had exactly one night to spend alone in my apartment.
But then why am I dating all these people?
I think I really really really need the attention, I'm craving it so much, just tell me I'm beautiful, sexy, special, that you want me, that I'm not the worthless creature that he threw away and wrecked and didn't even bother turn around to look back at.
I saw him tonight of course. For the first time since the morning after that fateful store party, back on december 17th. Then I was suspended on the 23rd and I never saw him again, I saw the back of his head the one time I went back to the store to get the stuff from my locker, but this time I saw his face and I believe he saw me.
That's part #2. But of course it happened tonight. Valentines Eve. In a parallel universe of course, we end up not destroying each other and I wake up in his arms tomorrow.