THE DEAD
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DIGGIN’
it was good to be home. it was grounding. i miss my family.
on my last night in batavia we drove real slow down elklick to watch the litte deer come out of the woods. a thick fog started to cover the road. it was almost nine pm and it was still light out. when we got home i took a walk out to the big barn. they built it just a couple of years ago. i put in the code wrong four times in a row. i took some pictures of the trucks, i don’t know if they’ll be there the next time i come back. the roach coach. i took a long walk through the barn. i grabbed a diet coke and two bags of grippos. when i got back up to the house there was a little bullfrog perched on the doorway staring straight at my grandfathers recliner on the porch.
we buried my grandfather on tuesday. i have a lot to say about that but i think i’ll keep it in my notebook for now.
some wounds stay fresh forever.
everything i know about work i learned from Dennis. my grandparents have taught me so much about unconditional love, grace, loyalty, work, and determination. i am so blessed to be close to them.
i think i’ll miss him forever
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and i don’t know what it means when my life changes forever and then i still have to take the bus home.
i feel like i’m holding an entre bloodline of grief in my small little fingers tonight.
i need to go back to cincinnati soon. all i want is to be on the riverbank.
i walked around in the rain for a long time today. i wore a raincoat i borrowed from my roommate. i checked flights out of boston probably forty thousand times. i was mean to my dad on the phone. now im doing my laundry and putting clothes back on to hangers. and i’m talking to god but i dont think he can hear me.
“know you are loved no matter where you are”
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things are still good. really good. my life is so different than it used to be. i am blessed beyond comprehension. i am changing every day. i’m feeling like a lotus flower growing thru mud.
the only thing dragging me down is not having a lot of time for myself.
i was teaching a class for high schoolers last week. that totally energized me. i’m ready to make and play and get messy. i wish i had more oppurtunities for teaching. i love my job at the college, and i love the communities i get to be a part of - but teaching is where my heart is happiest.
i feel like if you break teaching - at least teaching art - down to the basics it really is all about play and all about love. i think i’ll have more to say about that soon when my brain isn’t so fried.
im being pulled in twenty million different directons. i’m all over the place. my bedroom is a nightmare and i don’t even want to think about my backpack. there’s so much BULLSHIT in there. i carry so much BULLSHIT E V E R Y W H E R E .
anyway. . . im coming back with a major update to the rest of the site if i ever have time to slow down.
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when i was nineteen i wanted to kill myself but today im twenty three and im drinking wine on the back stairs of my apartment in my perfect neighborhood and i’m listening to the moody blues and bleaching my eyebrows and life feels so big and excitng.
every day is a #Gift. . .
and i just remembered i fucking love carrots. i bought a little bag of yellow and purple and orange ones at trader joes last week. i spend four dollars on the little bag and now i can’t even bite into them without getting scared.
my life is so stupid.
it rained all weekend. i almost stayed in my bed all weekend but i didn’t. i went out to a warehouse in everett and got a little locket tattooed on my arm. i lost my necklace a long time ago. it doesn’t feel like anything.
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away. . .
anyway.
i miss you a lot.
i’m trying really hard to keep my nose to this damn grindstone. life is nothing but work lately. work is good. work keeps me focused. i’ve never been afraid of the hard work. it’s just taking a lot out of me. im talked out and touched out and still so lonely when i get back to my bedroom and it’s just me.
me and the mice. . .
the mice are still terrorizing my apartment. they snuck into my pantry and ate all of my food. they are eating little holes through all of my underwear. im trying really hard to not take it personally.
someone stole my food stamps again. way to kick a guy when he’s down. i don’t even have the energy to be mad about it. i just hope whoever it was is eating good tonight.
i had a dream about a boy untangling knots from my hair the other night. two days later i saw him waiting on a train. i don’t know what it means.
i keep having to reminding myself every day is a blessing, even the hard days.
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a few days ago a friend sat across from me in my office at work and asked me about my writing process. then i remembered i haven’t written to you in weeks. i kind of forgot. my life has been a blur.
momma said life aint always sunshine and rainbows. right now it feels like it is.
i spend long days at the college. working my dayjob in the mornings and then trying to dig deeper into my studio practice at night. i hang around. i check on my lockers. i stare at the stacks of paper thinking i should really do something about the mess. i nail things to the wall. i hug everyone. i talk for hours. i take the bus home alone.
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hi. i didn’t mean to dissapear on you. i’ve been busy. busy is good. or at least that’s what i keep telling myself. i havent been eating well or regularly. i haven’t been sleeping enough either. i stay out too late. i drink too much. i keep falling asleep with my socks and my makeup still on. i stopped smoking weed. i wait until i run completely out of clean socks and underwear to do my laundry. i feel mostly fine.
my head is really fuzzy. i can’t keep up with how fast things are changing and i can’t make left from right. i almost never know whats going on.
i have another gallery show coming up. it’s in two weeks. i am terrified. in the good way i think. i have a lot to say about all of that, but i don’t want to jinx anything so i’ll just keep it in my little heart until everything falls into place . . .
i used to be a recluse. i spent every weekend in my bedroom. feeling parts of me turn soft and sour and start to rot. im better now. i go outside more. i set hard rules for myself. i try my best to follow them.
i’m trying really hard to get back to using my awesome website regularly. even if no one ever reads this. i like it here.
i have a lot more to tell you. write soon. i love you. bye.
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one of my wishes for the new year is to spend some time away from the computer. i have not done well so far. it’s been cold and windy in the city. i’ve barely left my bedroom. tomorrow im going downtown to meet a friend for coffee. i have a lot of catching up to do.
i’ve been listening to a lot of radiohead and it’s making me feel pathetic. i’ve been missing the summer after high school and that’s making me feel pretty pathetic too. i dont know. there were just a lot of really tender moments i wish i could have just stayed in a while longer.
anyway. i’ve been wasting so much time on the computer. and not even in a meaningful way. if i were doing anything other than melting my brain it would be fine. they weren’t joking when they said touch grass.
got some stuff in the backlog. coming soon.
on friday i took the train out to oak grove and bought a guitar from a pretty blonde girl on facebook marketplace. the train ride was long. it was the first time i’ve gone all the way on the orange line. i listened to almost all of on avery island. i’m excited about the guitar. it’s a beautiful baby pink stratocaster mini. it’s been a long time since i’ve had an electric. i still dont have an amp, but a friend is giving me one next time i go home. i try to practice every day even if its just for ten minutes. i suck at guitar.
i stayed in bed most of the weekend. eventually i forced myself out of the house and ended up at a house party on the other side of my neighborhood. it helped me feel a little bit better. i spent most of the night in the kitchen talking to pretty girls. one of them made me a gin and tonic. i’ve never had a gin and tonic before. i’m scared of girls. i don’t do well at parties either. i’ve been scared of girls since i was very small. i don’t really know what makes me that way.
on monday night i paid some kid on reddit way too much money for a ticket to a show. it feels insane to spend 60 dollars to see a band i once paid 17 dollars to see. i dont know. maybe i’m hating. anyway. my best friend and i haved loved this band for a long time. when i was fifteen i wrapped a sewing needle up in thread and tried to give myself a heart tattoo. it hurt bad and i chickened out. that same night i poked the letters J M into my finger. if you look close enough you can still see it. everyone thought it was the initials of my first boyfriend. as if i was insane enough to even do that. i hated him then anyway. i would never do that for any man. okay maybe one.
the show was fun. really fun. they played never hungover again in full. i forgot that i knew every word to those songs. i wore a really stupid outfit and red lipstick and i danced with drunk girls who abandoned their drunker boyfriends. after it was all over i walked ana back to the train station. we sat there for a while until she had to leave. i walked from tufts to back bay. it was warm out but it was raining. i probably looked like a crazy person. walking down side streets in my ridiculous outfit singing to myself the same songs over and over.
i don’t care! i’m never gonna!!!!!!!
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it was moving so fast all the time, down thousands of different paths. i wanted to understand everything and know everyone. i think i went kind of crazy. have you ever lived through a tornado? i have. when i was small a tornado crossed the river and tore up my grandmothers house. i spent a lot of time there the week after. the lttle town smelled like grass and wet cement and rotten milk. my life feels a lot like that right now.
i dont really know what i want this project to become. i like having this site as my secret place. i don’t really think anyone reads this. belongstothedead.com is like my online bedroom that i get to rot away in.
my stomach has been in knots a lot lately.
it’s my grandmothers birthday today. i called her when i was waiting for the bus home from work. it started to snow. i really miss living close to her. a couple of weekends ago i went back to cincinnati to go to her retirement party. it was a really good weekend at home. time always goes by too fast when i’m there.
anyway. i think i saw every person i’ve ever met in ohio at her party. she’s an important lady. i love her more than i’ve ever loved someone. i need to call her more often.
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i am very afriad of him but i think i love him anyway.
when i was a sopohmore in college i lived in an old brick building my school rented from another school. i lived in three different rooms in that dorm building. i spent most of my time in the basement. doing laundry, making phone calls, pacing back and forth under the window waiting for some other sign of life. this was about six months after the pandemic started. my world was really empty then. my roommate would go home a lot. on the weekends when campus was very very quiet i would lie down on the floor and listen to souvlaki on repeat. sometimes a little mouse would run across the old hardwood floors. i learned which songs he liked and didn’t like. son of sheba. i think about that time often.
there’s been a lot i’ve been afraid to write about. i never let that stop me before. i dont know what changed. my life has gotten really far from what i wanted it to be. i was once very close to having everything i ever wanted. i dont remember what happened.
i’ll let you know if find out.
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i keep having dreams that i’m alone at your parents house and the snow outside piles up so high it covers all the windows.
i keep having dreams where you and me are wild dogs running down a dirt road that goes on forever.
im wondering if i am going insane inside my bedroom.
over the weekend i went all the way out to cambridge to catch a show at the elks lodge with maxi. i dont think i’ve been there since i was sixteen. we ended up getting kicked out because we were acting stupid. i really didn’t mind too much. it meant we got to sit on the stairs together and wait for the boys to come back outside. i liked that better. eventually the show ended and they all had to go back to worcester. i walked with them to the parking lot. i dont know when i’ll see her again but i hope its soon.
after that i got on a bus goin’ nowhere. i ended up at south station. i dont even know how. i stumbled around in the cold for a while until i found an open train station and then stumbled around some more.
i met my friends from middle school for a midnite screening of mulholland drive. i don’t really have anything to say about that. it was a really beautiful movie but sometimes i feel like i’m too stupid to understand whats going on. i dont know. being a girl is a living nightmare every day.
what ever.
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16:11
i dont mean to keep dissapearing.
i feel like i’m losing control. in the bad way this time.
there’s not a lot going on. things are mostly quiet. i wake up. i wash my hair. i go to work. i stare at the computer for a while. it doesn’t make me feel anything. i take the bus home. i stare at the celing for a while. i fall alseep. i wake up.
i miss home a lot. sometimes i’m not sure why i stay in the city. i dont know if there has ever been anything for me here. last weekend i went home and spent some time with my friends from seventh grade. there’s something really tender about friendships that seem to last forever. i embarass myself in front of them over and over and over again and they choose to love me anyway. i’m really lucky. i can’t get all sappy about it around them or they’ll call me a bitch. i dont mind.
one night in the summer we got in the car and took our guitars to the beach. we screamed for a while at the pitch black nothing atlantic ocean. then we got back in the car and screamed some more. it reminded me of the time we drove to philadelphia and pushed all the beds together so no one had to sleep on the floor. sometimes i worry that my life will never be like it was then.
all i ever want to do is play guitars and drink beers with them.
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23:33
sometimes it feels like this life is some kind of joke im not in on.
i walked around coolidge corner until i got too cold. i sat on a swingset for a while. that made me feel a little bit better. eventually i got on the train going downtown and ended up at a bar i used to go to with V before she moved to brooklyn. the bartender was playing some awful record and the men sitting beside me were talking a little too loud. i pretended i didn’t notice. it’s alright. i spent the next hour or two writing in my notebook and thinking about things that happened seven years ago.
18:47
i was really sick three weeks ago. i dialed my moms phone number about forty times but only called her once. she said there might be some coupons on her cvs account so i could get myself some sudafed. then she had to get back to work.
i stayed in bed for four days straight listening to radio transmission about hurricanes and floods. and i cried my eyes out for the mountain folk. i said a prayer for my brother down on the southern coast of florida.
winter is getting closer and i would be lying if i said i wasn’t scared.
i feel like im afraid all the time now. i haven’t been sleeping a lot but i been taking a lottttt of benadryl. i haven’t made anything that means anything. i spend all of my time staring at the celing trying to bring things back from the dead.
i had a dream a couple of weeks ago we were taking the bus together
you snapped at me and went cold. i stayed on the bus longer than i should have and i followed you all the way home.
i don’t always know what my dreams are trying to tell me, or if they’re trying to tell me anything at all.
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21:00
i’m feeling old and jaded.
i’m sitting on the curb under a full moon waiting for a friend.
time is moving slower now.
i almost don’t know what to do with all it.
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17:39pm
i’ll try to check in more often. i have a lot i want to tell you.
0804202400:08
it’s past midnight and we’re half naked
i think its twelve hundred degrees in my bedroom.
i am crying and you are covered in blood.
a winged creature circles above us
coming out of thin air
terrified and delirious
he makes himself small and crawls under the crack in my doorway.
he hangs above my old roommates door.
then he nosedives down the stairs and into the kitchen
there are so many times he almost leaves but doesn’t
every time he’s almost out the door he comes right back.
i put up the hood of my sweatshirt and pull the strings as tight as i can.
not today winged beast.
i cower in fear as a shirtless boy dances around the hallway, filthy kitchen rag in hand
trying to capture the creature in the most gentle way he knows how
vampirebatvampirebat
iloveyouiloveyou
tonight we are young and ugly and our teeth are almost falling out of our mouths
and it’s our last night before you leave the state
once it was the last night before you left the city
that was a long time ago
i was torn up then too.
hi. sorry it’s been a while.
summer is going by too fast. it’s all heat and flash. i think the good part is almost over. it was cold today. mostly i feel fine. i started teaching again. i started writing songs again too. about tigers. and about someones shoes. and about guns. i’ve been going on really long walks after i get out of work. it helps me stay away from rotting away in my bedroom. on my walks i talk to myself and i talk to god and i talk to you too. something awful is going to happen soon. we were talking and sitting close to each other for the first time in months. and we were laughing at something but now i can’t remember. and then we weren’t laughing and i was about to throw up.
the other day i took a walk to the grocery store. i bought a bottle of lime juice, two big ugly tomatoes, and a container of pasta salad. it was hot out and i was dizzy. i sat on the curb and listened to a drug deal. a father trying to talk down the price of an eigth while his daughter spits away into a recorder. mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.
sometime it feels like i’m the only living girl in this city.
sometimes it feels like nothing at all.
write soon.
S T A R T I N G // O V E R
the city is a living creature on it’s own. it eats and eats until it’s fat and ugly and there’s almost always too much noise.
but tonight it’s quiet. i am sitting on the floor in my filthy bedroom. surrounded by piles of laundry and dishes. it smells like patchouli and rotten apples. im sitting on the floor trying to crack every bone i can remember. and i’m thinking about cutting my hair.
the city is like a creature and the town i grew up in is like a ghost.
i won't say anything more about that.
all the college students have gone home to their parents houses to sleep in their old bedrooms.
i’m still around. i never really leave. sometimes i feel like a ghost too.
it gets really lonely here sometimes. it’s alright. i take the bus to work and i stare at the computer for a couple of hours. sometimes i take a walk over to lisa’s office for candy. she keeps tiny bars of chocolate in the back of a mini fridge. i walk back to my desk and i stare at the computer screen again. i try to find meaning in all of this. i take the bus home. i listen to songs you showed me in february. i try to find meaning in this. i get home and i lock myself up in my bedroom.
two weeks ago v and her boyfriend came up from brooklyn and slept in my bed. sitting next to her in the car makes me feel like i’m seventeen again. i got really sick after they left. i was delirious and fever dreaming. i called out of work.
i spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling
thinking about love
and about god
and about what it means to be a human on this earth.
it’s all simple to me.
i used to be an angry person. i used to hate everything.
but somewhere between then and now i learned that everything is about surrendering.
it’s about losing control in the good way.
did you know you could do that?
love is all about lessons.
love can only be true if you take people as they are.
its wrong to put expectations on people.
i think god is all about lessons too.
that it’s wrong to ask for anything.
i thought about god for a long time while i was staring at the ceiling.
i thought about science class in grade school when we learned that matter can’t be created. or destroyed. it just is. until it becomes something else.
and that everything is just a reconfiguration of something that used to be. it twists itself around in a way i don't think anyone can really understand. and i thought about how extraordinary it really is that everything in the universe could come together in perfect order to make those big brown eyes sunk into your face and to put you close to me.
i am young but my body feels very, very old.