Those who know me know of what have been referred to as my, "Frida-esque," journals- pages of racing subway thoughts, scraps of newspaper, photocopies, and drawings. With the weight of so many of these notebooks carried under arm or on back, I am afraid. What happens to the pages? The record? How does this abstract on-line, who-the-fuck-reads-this-space change my relationship to the recording of my thoughts?
I have essentially spent years researching blogs- their aesthetic, their boundaries, their use toward career networking, their passive aggression. And I have asked myself a million marketing questions. Here are the fears:
Giving away my thoughts without the intention of specific receptors
Having some knowledge of who does or who may read this, how do I avoid the temptation to use this space to communicate things to individuals without owning up to the fact that I have them in mind?
That this will be a form of dissociating from my feelings and thoughts
Plagiary of my creative work
The list goes on and I came to the conclusion that there was only one way to find out. The more I wrote about it, the more I realized that this would naturally mold itself very differently from what I write in my journals and that if anything there will be some creative exchange between the two spaces. With some peace and willingness to take on this new medium, I was left to decide its purpose.
I recently finished my final project for a poetry class, (pictured below)- three sets of poems, one about me, one about another woman- a woman I did not know but somehow knew intimately; Baby Ruth- a famous fat lady, Aileen Wuornos- the subject of the film Monster, and Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow- a thirteen year old girl stoned to death last year. The idea was a way for me to connect to my guilt over how stories that don't belong to me so fiercely trigger my own self-destruction and unleash the injured power therein. It was a way to validate my inability to stop or even pause the synthesizing and cyclical connecting that makes for my system cataloging that which I learn and see and ingest.
My hope is that this blog will be a continuation of that validation both for myself and those who read it...
It is also a very scary attempt to relinquish some control over how the world sees and knows me. Lately I have been crippled- physically and emotionally sick- exhausting myself in my constant tactical maneuvering of the most flattering light. It is an attempt not to compartmentalize and contort myself, showing people convenient parts in convenient moments- like the fat girl who wears all black and then leaves her breasts as revealed as possible as though the rest of her body becomes negative, inconsequential space. It is a commitment to reveal my process of consciousness- to allow readers to see me stumble on my way to an understanding.
It is a space to be unapologetically female, fat, queer, femme, sexual, angry, creative, unsure, unresolved, a survivor of violence and abuse, a woman struggling with depression and self-destruction, a person struggling to survive and to connect.
This excerpt from a larger piece of mine, sums it up from here on out:
And sometimes
I say to a poem
" Yes. Please. Tie me up.
I have no safe word-
just let me catch my breath."
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