sweetheart redux

My mother and I were women together.  Well, okay, I was only her girl child for some of those years, but I quite easily grasped one evening when I heard the plentiful and ebullient family next door having a barbecue that lasted roughly from noon until midnight the summer of my eleventh year the disquieting contrast between those noises and smells and the quiet dusk of our own kitchen. “I’m lonely. I want more,” my sullen gaze telegraphed itself into her awareness. “I understand, one hundred percent,” the squeeze she gave my hand – two short squeezes and a long one that felt particularly sincere and protective – transmitted. So – this was womanhood, was our own version of womanhood anyway – a cloud of dissatisfaction palpable as a self-separate entity, a runty bunny rabbit, white with those gruesome red eyes. originally published 6/4/18

September 29, 1990 the  faulty inspiration of alcohol. like a movie set, it appears to be real, but is not.

(I found one of my mom's old notebooks from the eighties.  her handwriting is atrocious but I'm transcribing her poetry) ************ Pinched and twisted In the dead of L.A. – Lost and more lost, she wanders, Not one word exchanged or offered- Bury and buy Again + again He exits Dripping gold Silent and dripping indifference Peripheral vision Revealed him Not to her.   Sheer wonder in Compromise . He’s glowing rays Of hate, death. Could his meaning have been Tender curiousity? The air is cool The sky is late The sidewalks are covered in Pages from desk calendars You (we) tread over days and days Of last year In which something happened – something – Lived and died – Putting me in a bleak park – Another lost day and dead years And dear but dead l.a. December 28 1989

The Nostalgic principle of Time Travel on this the Anniversary of the Murder of John Lennon Firstly, would Darby Crash be a household name instead of just the homophobic homo nihilist punk who killed himself to be famous but had the sad luck to do it the night before we found out about John Lennon? It wasn't much of a splash he made, his suicide, and now he haunts this old roachy hot dog stand in Hollywood where he spent some happy -- for a nihilist -- nights with his fans and friends.  His old ghost bones give him pains. Secondly, and more importantly,  if John Lennon hadn't,'a been murdered when he was would mom have visited dad more in the hospital instead of drooling glued to the tv for all the details of her mania-man, that effortlessly cool guy, John Lennon? Dad was in the hospital recovering from heart surgery and oh gee wiz, if John Lennon wouldn't have been shot like that when he was, would they have stayed together, at lea...

The texts in black are Mom and the pink ones are Me. The last one is from her pastor when he was trying to reach me to tell me she'd passed away earlier that morning. The pictures are of some of her favorite things.

I already borrowed from this old art project of mine (something from my early twenties) once, in a 2014 post about self portraiture -- it's just a bunch of self-portraits ("selfies," now) that I took when I was crying, which was something I did for years starting in my teens, mixed in with self-portraits my mom sent me of herself being sad, and captioned with lines from Dorothy Parker stories, in the vein of sad girl chic I'm always so fond of.   Here are 6 of my favorites, on this the week before the first anniversary of her death.  

IN keeping with the more than usual focus on my mom, who passed away almost a year ago now,  here is a book she made me for my 14th birthday.