02-06-09

Isabella Street:

Sitting in the graveyard, I’ve caught the interest of a large, tawny doe. She walks towards me until she is no less than eight yards away from me

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Metaphorically Metaphorical

Warm breezes trick the mind into believing its late spring. Young October and the sun was hot. The lighting in the city gave everything a fake quality, moving images captured on a thin layer of celluloid that allowed everything to continue with an air of suped up contrast. The world was a banal photograph, a study of Urban Life in mid-afternoon. The world moved together as though it fell from the gallery wall and forgot to stop once it hit the floor, defying the laws of inertia.

The sounds of life wafted through the air, tumbling along in the breeze, the soft down of dandelion. In the distance I could hear Jazz music, sweet and intoxicating. Immediately my soul lifted into euphoric trance. I ventured down the street, the sound increasing with every step. The sheer volume of it, the immensity of it’s soul carried me closer. I had no worries, no thoughts on my mind a side from the desire for more. Crazy smile on my face, crazy smile from my eyes. Needed more, needed to feel more.

I came across it here, at this point. Strawberry Way, a small alleyway cutting  across a few streets in town, no bigger wide than to fit a car. Strawberry Way was a one way alley connecting The Boulevard with Fifth Avenue, but today in casual warmth, this Friday it was blocked from both ends by flower vendors, balloons, tables filled with people.

In the middle of all this sat the essence of soul itself, the life blood of this afternoon. A band of four black men played the most glorious jazz one could  ever hear. The pure sound itself was enough to either bring you to your knees or elevate you into the air in frenzied, ecstatic dance.

But the sight, the sight set it all in stone. The players were pure electricity: pure spirit, shapeless, formless, transcending the flesh that held them captive on this earth. The muses themselves played through them, Dionysus fueled the moment and the gods watched. The came down from their untouchable heights and stood right in the middle of those mortals and watched. These men, in their impromptu festival, were playing for the gods.

Notes: oh gag. I was so young and naive and briming over with utterly banal metaphor.

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Train Ride Exercise 1

The lights flicker off and on and off again. He sits beside me telling me stories of Portugal. He takes out his wallet, shows me three dried rose petals pressed between the plastic of a picture sleeve. The lights flicker again as he describes the wedding where he came across the roses. I wath the man infront of me practicing lines from a worn script, two middle aged men infront of him carry on a conversation in some language or another, the sound of the train drowns out any distinguishable syllables.

02-06-09

Isabella Street: Dear Matt

Dear Matt,
I don’t know what to say to you. I sit here, in the cafe’ of the bookstore down the road from my office. I’m exhausted and starving. I’ve survived the last week on a nauseous mixture of coffee and honey. I’ve barely slept. I’ve cried to you over the phone about becoming one of those people driven to great lengths to escape their thoughts, my mind hasn’t shut down for weeks. The alcohol leaves me wasted and nothing more. Their endless comments have yet to cease, not so much an energy I don’t have control of, but more of an addiction I can’t come off of. You are entirely too innocent and even though you are here I am still entirely too alone. And yet they won’t leave me alone.

Notes: I know some of these entries were not meant for anyone else to see, so it’s really hard to sit here and type them. This one seems especially…I don’t know, full of hyperbole? I was working on The Whore around then, so I am sure my muse was especially active during this time. I’m pretty sure it was also during this time that I was learning if she wanted something created, it had to be immediately or she would haunt you until it was finished. I dragged The Whore on, as I do with some of my more cherished works, miserably for six months.

Matt was the leprechaun, as he is known in retrospect, it was through dating him that I lost interest in high heels. He was short, into 3-d animation, screaming hybrids of hard rock and Christian music (as in singing…or screaming, not listening) and cannonball adderley, of which I still have a CD he burnt for me.He was full of Christianity and anger at his ex-girlfriend which ultimately made everything, complicated.

The office was in a triangular building at Liberty Avenue and Smithfield, the cafe was in the Barnes and Nobles up the way. Funny thing, I still have days where I live off of tea and honey. I’m cutting back in my old age.

This page is followed by another figure study for “The Red Coat” aka “The Whore”

02-05-09

Isabella Street: Approaching Wood Street

The Whore by ~myshelleyg on deviantART

Bus Stop.

It’s 11:10 at night, willing away the 2.5 glasses of chard and 1.5 shots of whiskey that didn’t ease away the pain. Cold night chills the sun. Could doubt chills my soul, brings tears to the eyes. Waiting patiently for the fucking train. Never comes.

11:11

Bargaining. If it doesn’t come by 11:15 I go back up the stairs to mainstreet and hit the local pub. Marriage or pub, marriage or pub. Which will it be?

11:12

Darkness down the line bings no hope. A high ball of Jack and Coke before a lousy 6 hours of sleepand lonleyness throughout or

11:14

Do I meet him at the station? Sit down on the cold, steel bench and make amends

11:15

You are not the one. I needed you so badly to be the one. A train passes in the opposite direction. I could waste 40 minutes waiting fo it’s return journey, catch it on the inbound. Could waste 6 months on nothing.

11:16

A train comes inbound, one minute short of true happiness, one minute short of faith. I jump on and head downtown. Towards you, waiting ten minutes too late for me and my dunken stupor. Ten minutes too late for me and my idiotic tendencies.

19 stops to you. “Approaching Potomac.” 18. 18 stops to you. Your icy, glass eyes. 10 minutes late but you, you are 15. 15 minutes late.

I imagine we will kiss on the bridge, much like the night before. $100 on my ring, $100 on yours. I’ll buy the crazy dress from the shop on the way to the station. We will celebrate on my grandfather’s farm, long since state property and the home to hundreds of weddings.

“Approaching Coast.” 12 stops. 12 stops till I meet you in the dark, icy “T” station and hand you back your sweatshirt. 12 stops until I jump the train back home, outbound.

“Approaching Fallowfield.” 11 stops. Halfway between fairytale and losing a friend. I blame this on you. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have hung honey off of my tongue. Wouldn’t have started this madness that has left me exhausted and numb, heading in bound on a trip destined for failure before it was ever conceived.

An old man sits down in front of me. The smell of old cigarettes wafts across the ways. He gets off as quickly as he enters, a figment of my drunken disillusions.

“Approaching Station Square.” Four stops to you. My drunkeness giving way to slow, mind consuming exhaustion. I die to taste your lips upon mine once more, feel your body lifting through your clothes and pressing against mine.

First Avenue and two. Steel Plaza and one. The driver bids good night to the patron exiting, dressed in black. The city is lit in the backdrop, lights pooling across the top of the water. We dissapear underground and all is lost to me.

“Approaching Wood Street.”

Notes: I’m not entirely sure who this was written about, it’s followed by a rough match stick figure study for what I was calling “The Red Coat” at the time. This was later renamed “The Whore” Which is above. I’ll try to get these scanned and posted. Looking further ahead in the journal, it may be from my relationship with a leprechaun.

02-05-09

Isabella Street: Boy Owner

I stood int eh bookstore today biting my lip. I staired at the shelf in front of me, shifting my weight from on leg to the other. My eyes rolled along the vertical titles under the brown sign that read “Relationships.” I stared through squinted eyes, anxiety building, looking for the illusive guide on how to care for a boy. They had guides for dog owners, cat owners, and fish owners. How to water, feed and groom. I figured someone, somewhere had to have one on boys. Extremely skittish, I turned on my heel and headed towards the man of my life, of the hour, Kerouac–an isle which made me extremely less nauseated.

02-05-09

Isabella Street: An Introduction

I have been digging through my stacks of brown leather journals for fodder for a potential chapbook or two and decided to transcribe them digitally and share with you. The first one I gabbed, but certainly not the first in the series is one with the words “Isabella Street” which I think is the avenue behind the Alcoa Building in Pittsburgh. It also has a few notes including: “December 18th: Bing Food, Last Day,” “Moms Birthday”, “Paul: December 3″ (his birthday) and the card numbers to an old Visa of mine expiring in 08/06. This makes me think it was from around late fall and winter of 2003/2004. Also scribbled: a friend of mine’s address and the AIM screen name of another.

It starts with a quote:

“The world does everything wrong on purpose–then why ever give it further considerations” Kerouac, Some of the Dharma)

Some of it might offend, if so I apologize for exposing you to it, but not for writing it. Some of it might be written about you, if so I hope you bring away something more than you went in with. Anytime I refer to the “voices” I mean the muse and ideas that bombarded me during that time and not the kind of voices schizophrenics have tea with.

Most of it revolves around the trolley, the city and many, many wonderful people of whom I am still very, very, very much in love with today.

06-12-07

What do I want to be when I grow up?

I’ve spent the last few months (years?) trying to figure out what I want to do for a living…I’ve decided my own company would be the best route considering the fact I’d love to see my hard work and effort go towards my own baby and not someone else’s. I know it’s pointless to attempt to make ends meet with traditional graphic design, I don’t have the heart to open my own subsidy publishing company considering it’s ripping people off…if your book isn’t being picked up by publishers you need to either polish your angle or your writing. Painting, sewing, other crafts take too much time…not worth the ROI. I need something I can market from home instead of networking considering I can’t get out to meetings because of our family’s schedule, can’t open the artisan retreat b/c the overhead is too high, can’t sit around b/c of bills and retirement funds and college savings and health care and… arg!!!!

So what’s there to do? Get creative.

05-31-07

Free Consultation!

Why do businesses offer FREE consultations in order to find out anything about them? They waste their money on pages full of fluffy…these are the organizations I belong to, this is stuff I do, here is a picture of me smiling-aren’t I pretty and pretending to look friendly, this is how I fit in with everybody else…but in order to find out the meat of what makes or breaks a business-specifically price, businesses get skeevish. Why? I have no idea. When a company doesn’t want to share their rates with me I am left to question what they are hiding. Are you ashamed of your rates? Do you have something so important to convey to me that it is impossible to do it through words and pictures on the net or in your materials? Let’s get to the bottom line, if you aren’t secure enough in your prices that you can’t openly distribute them to your clientele, maybe your pricing isn’t up to par.

Here’s the raw deal… if I have to go through an exchange of a dozen emails before I can even get to a notion of a price with you and you still refuse to tell me what it’s going to cost without meeting in person we have a situation. You are putting a strain on our relationship as client and business and wasting my time. If I have to call you are wasting my minutes and if I have to get in the car, take out a loan to pay for gas ($12 roundtrip) to get across town to your “free” consultation, lose three hours of valuable work time I could be making money ($150), we’re no longer looking at a free consultation. I don’t give a fuck about your personality, if I don’t like you after the first appointment I won’t be back, I don’t need an introductory consultation…what do you have to consult me on…how you are different from other dentists? Can’t be that different. How to sit in the chair and say ahh? Been there, done that. Give me your price, give me your benefits, I’ll figure out the ROI between you and your competitors and make my decision from there. Chances are if you are dealing with something as vital as my smile or the life of my unborn child I’m not going to just choose you b/c you are the cheapest. If I won’t even take the lowest bid on a printer for my business cards why would I do it on dentists and midwives? This is the age of technology, lay it out on the line or atleast give me a range. When have prices become trade secrets, what are you protecting? This kind of queer sinister behavior doesn’t make sense, if you can’t trust me to know what you charge for an appointment/hour/whatever, why would I trust you with your head between my legs poking around at my baby-to-be? We know what’s going to happen at a dental cleaning, spit, say ah, x-rays, you’re done, just give me a price. It’s like companies who put “negotiable” for their salary but list in detail responsibilites, education and experience requirements. If you know what you want and how much you want to pay…list it. Why would I trust you with my livelyhood and my family’s financial well being (not to mention my sanity) if you can’t be honest up-front, even a range is good… minimum experienc/requirements: $25,000, maximum experience/requirements: $45,000. How much more honest would the business be if we stopped being shady.

05-29-07

Lovely Houston…

What the hell am I doing here still? I should have left ages ago. Its cold, silent wind blows through the trees and lands in my head with a loud thud. This is expectation. I expected myself to change the world, have the perfect family life, be strong enough to take it all on and whined up on top. So here I am at the bottom, I left a good paying job, a fabulous house and the sun for this shit. And for what? So he could pursue his sailing dreams…go after the ideal job then FUCK IT ALL UP and get fired for talking on the phone to his fucking pothead friends while he should have been working. I’m trying to think of where else I haven’t looked for change yet. I’m still a few dollars short and the baby needs milk. She’s freaking out at me, cabin fevered by this small apartment we moved into. She wants outside but there’s no place to play. I have clients calling me about photographs they want me to fix a certain way but don’t want to pay me for the work, I have others who want me to save their business but don’t want to change their current ways…and to do it for cheap. I spent a quarter tank of gas to dropping off a cd since my internet is fucked up. I’ve been screamed at all day by the baby and while I’m here eating leftovers a few days too old to be eating, he’s having blackend catfish and dirty rice at a four star. He, who won’t official marry me and shoved cake in another girls face at our psuedo-wedding. I don’t know if change is even worth it anymore…should I pack up and move back north? Go somewhere noone knows me and disappear? The baby dumped orange kool-aid on the carpet, the top of the highchair and all over herself. I could clean it up but it won’t matter. She’s like her father, everything else will become a mess so why bother anymore.

Cardeo Minimal WordPress Theme by Matt Lambert | cardeo.ca