the habit of being

I wear a shirt pink and loose without sleeves. I like it for being too large and showing my clavicles and almost my breasts. The straps slide off my shoulders without warning. I don’t worry about my arms anymore. There is trimming that ostentatiously mimics lace. I wear also my St. Jude necklace because I am a hopeless case. It was blessed by the pope or so says the red circle. My hair falls in my face and I think it looks better that way. It is plainly short and I do miss my curls. I still have my pre-Raphaelite hands. Maybe not a Renaissance girl now, I could still at least lead a black and white photo life.. and sepia tinted no less. I’ve always been limp enough.

He said some lovely thing about a woman’s hips being the most wonderful thing, and I agree.

I made salads with two lettuces, green pepper, broccoli, three cheeses, celery, and garlic salt. Two on plates and one in a bowl. It took a long time to tear up all that lettuce. My mother said salad could be my forte.

All I do is peacock feathers. Peacock feathers of india ink and pastel and watercolor and acrylic. Lust girl from the deadly sins project will sit on the foot of the bed, nude, looking at the floor, holding a peacock feather in one hand. Peacock feathers are about decadence. The rest of the project I don’t know yet. I want the end to be art and the research to take weeks or months. Maybe a piece for each sin or maybe a series for each. Maybe only lust, because I can think of the most images to fit it.

I want to be able to write like the waves again. I have no pencil to hold onto now and it hinders my ability to keep my focus off of the internal editor always smirking at me. Never let the point disengage. I don’t remember the name of Melissa’s writing manual now, but I’d like to read it again. I felt to privileged that she let me borrow it. She let me play her Cowboy Junkies CDs as well, and told me I used loaded phrases. I have a picture of her hidden away somewhere. Files and files of lovely things. The way she said “Bible” impressed me. I had her phone number written on my hand at one point and felt like a queen.

My fingernails are never free from little bits of paint. Now my hands have ink stains as well. the stains touch also my sheets, the library of universal knowledge, and various sheets of paper. I never could be neat about art. I’d come out of drawing classes looking like a coal miner. Between the charcoal and the fixer from the darkroom at work, I’ll die of poisoning soon enough. What does it mean to be killed by the media?

I need eyeliner.