Posthumous Postings

The following are a few excerpts from among a collection that Chaya had printed out on small colored cards at her studio.  They are from writings published at various times but seemed to have been some of her favorites so I am posting them here in her stead as I think they are something she wanted to share.  They seem more poignant to me now.  Rest in peace Little Sister.

 

Caleb 

 

--

 

 

It's one of those things that I don't do

all of that aside I am absolutely in a fix 

transposing anxiety

for relocation

I find myself

again

knowing nothing

 

-I don't lie by CSL

 

 

--

 

 

It is not that long here anyhow, one way or another.  Unless they figure out a way of keeping my soul tied to this planet.  Which the devil may do if they have their will.  It's to me no bother.  Not a big one.

 

I lie.  It is the nightmare.  Imagining being stuck on this fucking rock with troglodytes who don't know how pristine their utopia is as they are hell bent for destroying it.

 

I've read a few books and seen some pictures.  I know what happens.  I remember how this story ends and you do too.

 

-Excerpt of Birds, or, perhaps crows? by CSL

 

 

--

 

 

How to explain the hot heat of a memory from another life.         I died that day.

That's what no one ever says about being reborn.         Death comes first.

Now that bit of trivial sophist in me wants to present an alternative: hot cicadas bursting through the heat.  I am transported to yet another dream.  I am on the Mediterranean, in linen.  Water on a balcony with lemons floating.  The pitcher and the breeze carry the weight of summer.  A car rumbles and a motorbike revs into a halt.  The spell is broken and I am carried by the sound as the bike accelerates into the horizon.  Carrying me in the waves of sound.

 

-Excerpt of The Otherwise by CSL

 

 

--

 

 

The last whole life has been a lie

All of it, and there are so few relative truths.  That 80 mph relative to concrete is an effect of gravitational forces seems more real than anything else I can hold.

I need to get the fuck out of here

Europe, Latin America, Mars:  incorporates into dark matter

I've thought about checking myself

into a hospital

or MMA ring

Instead I pray into my finger tips and the loose hold I keep on the throttle

I'm going home to paint in hot wax

Colors that have never been seen before

 

-Excerpt of Smaller Pieces by CSL

 

 

--

 

 

My skin is more satisfying now to live in than when I was a girl.  It feels home this skin.  That's the unshakable truth, that it took me forever to know the make of my being.

 

I am uncertain of my motives.  My attraction to life, to expression, to the evolution of possibility is unquestionable.  I hunger for experience, distilled panoramas, stargazing, and shotgun shells.

 

My love, always and all of it, to you.

 

-Excerpt of Silk Satin Pajamas and an Agenda by CSL

 

 

 

Far Flung and Parabolic Trajectories

Notes mostly to myselves

Is your heart going thump thump thump

Good you're not yet dead 

I am a bit chilled and I have all of these pieces in me. The edges are not what they used to be.

--

Looking across the table Morgan focused on the object, "for keeps?" They asked holding the small stone tight. 

"Everything is for keeps, Morgan." 

Replied the accountant over the thin glasses. "Learning is the only tool you have. You must lose in order to understand. Do you remember when Old Tuck stopped speaking for ten spans? You do?" Morgan nodded "Before that time Old Tuck was a craftsmen. He built with legs of lions and plumbs of light so brilliant that it was said all truths could be seen. The light was so clear that no shadow could be cast."

Morgan thought about this, their digit fingers inspecting the hard edges of the mineral. "Do you mean that I must disappear?"

"Quite the opposite." The accountant confronted Morgan's gaze levelly. "What happened when all of the shadows were castigated? Matter slowly began to disintegrate. There was nothing to perceive and losing petition all forms began merge. Exterior and interior no longer distinct, the boundary between truth and not truth became meaningless."

Morgan, with the customary analytical mind of a child, was nonplused because if he had to both lose something and be distinct that meant he would the very thing he would be losing was himself. 

"I am not sure if I understand how to have a edges." The object had become more solid as Morgan focused. It was the size of a mould sponge and it's pulsing sent grey waves through the gathering orb. The mass lumped and static pushed neon impulses into Morgan's grip. Sharp bright bites of light shot between the orb and Morgan. A hand began to form around the orb and Morgan perceived weight and light and felt the cold slap of being as the accountant bade them, "Old Tuck after having been silent for spans spoke of the forms without distinction- the Greys, Morgan, you must not let them be washed to bright."

Pandemous

The bilateral daughter of Zeus and Dione
reincorporated again at the time of Demacritus in form, atomic, distinct. Previously named by Aristarchus having detected Earth's heliocentricity

Passed quickly over during the symposium, spoken through Socrates. 

I sit here immemorial to no one not yet born

Neither bearing progeny

nor belabored circumstance

Amidst the cosmic background radiation 

Me here right on this chair the very edge of the void

existing between

here there then

oh oh oh how were we now

jungle consortium 

speaks for the free

let the damned be damned 

Drag in the take bakes and rush out into the night

Lipstick up and collars on

Wind is my mmmmmhhhhmmmm

Ledge of my skirt caught up above my knees

... as no one is watching

The otherwise

How to explain the hot heat of a memory from another life

I died that day

That's what no ever says about being reborn

Death comes first

Now that bit of trivial sophist in me wants to present an alternative: hot cicadas bursting through the heat I am transported to yet another dream. I am on the Mediterranean. In linen, water on a balcony with lemons floating, the pitcher the breeze carry the weight of summer. 

A car rumbles and a motorbike revs into a halt. The spell is broken and I am carried by the sound as the bike accelerates into the horizon. Carrying me in the waves of sound. 

Smaller Pieces

I'm here in Medford. I rode out to buy some Damar resin. Encaustic, I am going to paint tonight. 

I am flashes of feelings that swallow my entire being. I hold on to my handle bars. I blur at 80 mph relative to the road, pray every ounce, strength of will into my finger tips and out of my ears.

The last whole life has been a lie

All of it and there are so few relative truths that 80 mph is relative to concrete is an effect of gravitational forces seems more real than anything else I can hold.

I need to get the fuck out of here 

Europe, Latin America, Mars: incorporates into dark matter

I've thought about checking myself into a hospital 

Or a mma ring

Instead I pray into my finger tips and the loose hold I keep on the throttle

I'm going home to paint in hot wax

Colors that have never been seen before

I am gullible, a naive realist

On occasion, I must get a real sense of things
the belly,
the anus.

I am fast approaching unapproachable
It's terrifying to face the edge of all nothing
the roar of yesterday's tomorrow
on the horizon

It turns out
followers
cars
money

are comrades in arms

those pipe dreams are nonchalant

Fact and Fallacy

Our world is an overlap of half truths and shaved mysteries;
I leap across the lines and blur myself into grey
***

My drug of choice is sweat in my eyes as I crest a 2000' gain on a run, or two quick coffees coffees and a self-induced orgasm

I need a shower and a check for 10K

I need a lover who wants more than a tight form and an open mind

I need, myself, to show the fuck up

I am in bed and my coffee is gone, drank it up and I want another but don't want to leave this moment as I know today is going to run out of minutes before I am back here finally at two, or three am.

I need a coffee one more just in this one more moment, the fridge just clicked off and I am listening to the birds

*** step back*** one moment, I am making one more ***
***self-met needs***

i have to go i have so much to do so much to be
evidently no one is going to be able to do it
so i happily agree to captain oh captain my ship
sails on all waters

Badgers and Hedgerows

Badger and Straight Pine

Are medicine cousins 

****

Inhale four, five, almost six 

Exhale the same 

Climb the edge of my childhood mountain 

This terrain so familiar 

These boulders strewn across the madrone ridge could be the left over scatter shot of Artemis

I was here as a child last time 

Skinned knees and cheap cotton

Lungs equal parts soot and nickel 

-

I slept nestled in the belly of a granite boulder- hidden from view back from from the trail ***

I'd forgotten sometimes you have to go all the way to the top 

before the voices fade 

And the people who look for you give up aginst the twilight and mosquitos

--

Today I ran by

Surprised and remembering an almost forgotten 

Instant nearly thirty years ago when I crouched in the same rocks

Listening to the sounds of the quieting forest and ascending moon

-

The grey junkie haze as weeks of overlapping yesterday's tomorrow press against the window of forever and I can't quite see the peripherial margins as they grey out against my car payment and my ex wife's cantaloupe tits

-

Badgers and Straight Pine are medicine cousins

Penumbra'd Cliches

I step outside to time my dab pen and pretend like the silence of the predawn moments is not familiar.

Out beyond the sound of I-5 I hear the first rooster, pQkkl.

Now, it's a few nights later and I continue to ride that push and its pull is stronger than electricity. I fall into all of it the abyss, open armed and familiar, welcomes me back. I hear the pull of sweet hot metal and feel the longing of the incomplete inside curve of brands on my right arm.

I wonder at times what I have begun, unthinking, only how many cycles must I suffer until Hegel, appeased, relinquishes his cold fingered throat hold on the perpetual up down of binary assimilation.

The big piece, perhaps the biggest, is the one missing from my heart. It might be horses, it might be jesus; it could be cocaine or a fuck in the park like a sunday afternoon. These lips they long for honey from the comb

 I fall into the abyss of my own awareness and it is half-mad on a sheer butte of pent genius. Molten veins and the thought that perhaps someday this heart will explode into tens of millions of pieces as our star is engulfed in the fury of its own demise and I sit here, now, and pretend to give a fuck.

That there, somewhere, is meaning-- I am to find in some arms or some distant embrace that pulls nothing but skin from the form of flesh. I am heartbroken to know who it is that I am truly, to have that singular and utmost private conversation, know my own embrace. It sounds destitute and scarce, I mean it not to. It is just this heart of mine, always longing ever for home and I am here, so alien and lonely.

I am with so few words of any meaning. All, thankfully has been lost thanks to Saussure in an independent search for meaning separate.

No matter, this slays

I tire; I refuse to accept lack of meaning

Lack of meaning is limp dick in my mouth.

Perception vs Intended Meaning

I want to start s comic book called inception vs perception 

That's not even the right word. Everywhere now is the pressure of reflected identity. Am I self identifying appropriately, is my branding on point, are my eyebrows of fleek?

All of the space between perception and projection is a haze of misinterpretation. This smog of doubt- is it on the ears or the mouth, this confusion. 

***

I am smashed these days between myself identity and my identifiable self. I smear the lines and shift through shadows. It's tranquil and I am training myself to be strong in body as in mind because birches I can. This unapologetic selfhood is birthright and I'd rather shit in public than pretend to be concerned over coddling your perception of what I am, than being who I am.

It's not on me that I am your red hot dream; that I bring out your daddy urge to tell me to be safe out there. It's not on me that you've never touched a bike a bike as big as mine, ol boy you have no idea how big my bike real is. 

It's not on me that I do pull ups and run in eight pound boots. You can state that I look like an athlete despite the tats the short hair the red lips the black stilettos. I can see that. I can also see you seeing me thinking, hoping, believing that in not as smart as you. 

I get up each day and make choices. It's alright because peace comes to the warrior through the dance of the grouse.

What you see is not what you think you see. You see what you think you see. I see both. 

Passed my Knees

The
Oh sing of love

Heartbreak and longing

***

I rode down to 95448 this weekend. I closed the bar Friday and made it back to the studio by 4, was asleep nearing half six, moving by into the day by ten.

It was a have to trip, a reclaiming, a test of my determination. I stopped in Corning for fuel at this chevron that used to sell espresso coconut water (which is delicious if you ever come across it but a case, it's hard to find). Fueled up, took a piss, pounded a snack bar and a Starbucks protein coffee, tried to start the new bike.

***

Nothing. More nothing. Still fucking nothing. The bike clicks at me and the onboard computer spits out a code "EWS"

***

Panic sets in before my brain turns on. Phone google the owners manual is an online PDF

I should save this into my 128 gig iPhone.  Christ the bike is two weeks new; we're still courting and the bike is testing me, not giving up their name, playing pranks on the sides of the highway, refusing to start in Corning.

A lipstick candy apple red BMW is a real attention grabber and at 800 hp no fucking joke. Being broke down on Saturday just after five with a BMW is also no joke. There is an unspoken rule that all Beamer shops shutter at 5 on Saturday and don't reopen until 8 Tuesday. That's not until tomorrow morning.

***

I tell my panic to fuck off

***

Hawaii, I think suddenly, maybe Hawaii is open. Google call Hawaii BMW; they're out surfing; eff you Hawaii

***

Think brain

***

Google says every shop from SF to LA is closed. Fuck fuck fix this I can't be here not til Tuesday fuck

***

Out of the threads of my mind: Las Vegas

***

Ten minutes to spare and I get the mechanic on the line

***

EWS is an antenna, he says, it just fails sometimes, it's a safety thing so no one can steal your bike (electronic chip of linking the bike to the key or some BS). It's a DEATH WARRANT according to all the specs I'd read in the previous hour and I knew he wasn't being a dick.

****

Fuck that, I said, there has to be something I can do to override this system. Disconnect the battery or the computer, otherwise I am so fucked. (The Taco Bell across the street is starting to seem like a positive life choice and having stopped smoking cigs a I'm thinking Taco Bell and cigarettes in a hotel room: my kind of stray cat Saturday). 

****

His voice breaks into my mind, there is a chance your battery could be toast. If you can get to an auto parts shop and your hands on a multimeter you could test it. It should be at 12.1.

***

Looming behind the Taco Bell is an Autozone sign spinning lazy in the snagged out sunset. I hang up as he's trying to tell me about the next thing it could be if blah Blah blah battery failed because 

***

I strip the bikes skirt and test her box. She's reading at 10.4. My battery is dead. I buy a new one, pop it in, Martine starts up purring.

 

Dare Big & Dream Accordingly

I am simplifying. I square up the corners of life. Meaning two or more points converge to form a point. Examining the exterior, formal, edge of an object leads to an understanding of its physical nature. The interior represents the essence, the atomic, the unobservable potential expression. 

For art to be good it must inspire others to good action and demonstrate continued exploration of the social context in which art is created and exhibited.

The call to action is similar to Platos urgency that all true love ultimately leads to wisdom because it is a progressive and willing exploration of shared symbols. Semiotic introspection is galvanized when the formalized symbols which represent our conception of social identity fail to accurately disseminate our empirical observations. 

**--**

I've been sitting on secrets, holding slightly more back these days. I am calming my nerves with exercise and focused breathing; I stopped smoking.

I gave myself that for my birthday, having finally decided I appreciate my time on this planet to want to be here long enough to really fall in love

Bridge the Waters

I have to be very firm and clear. I need my space to be and form and self-direct. I live by continuous course correction and modification.  I balance myself function as an autonomous being first

My desire to see you stable is also one hundred fold.

I understand what necessary means for me. My space is sufficient for my contemplations.

I stand beside you in solidarity as a lighthouse. 

I am a lighthouse, not an anchor darling. I shine bright and perhaps warn of treacherous waters. I am the lighthouse keeper, a signal, a beacon; I watch the waters. 

On calm days the waters are glass. The surf banking into the cove and up the beach. In calm the surf is playful. A boat in the cove floats, waiting for a break in the current to re enter the sea, waiting for the signal that the tide has shifted and safe passage is possible.

This can take many many days. Off shore multiple currents converge and the sea roils. The cove in high weather drains the tides rush out being pulled by the vacuum of the fleeing current. Some boats get stuck on the rocks as the waves pull, others those nearest the sea some of those get sucked back in the eddies, others turned to harpoons and splinters; some fleet ships watch the lighthouse because they know the lighthouse's role is to shine a light in times of trouble so that safe passage may prevail. 

Soft calls the night

Yesterday, at the museum, you were the most important. 

It's been two years since the ticket was purchased. I was in the eye of the storm. Two years since his fingers closed around my throat and cut off my oxygen supply. I thought you liked it, he said the next day as he watched me shower.

I picked up the loose beads from the necklace he'd torn off me and thrown at the wall. Two of the rubies had broken into glinting splinters. I folded them into a tissue so he could repair the necklace he'd given me over the holidays.

Two years since he left me in an abandoned parking lot at one am in a small mountain town. Thank every god I had my wallet.

Two years it took me to understand why I let myself love one such devil.

The cracks are where the light gets in. 

Two to the Left

marked at birth
The grip on my free fall spins real lies across the surface of my trajectory standing close and closer to the light I move in and out of transparency. I push my heart and it has broken, my war paint complete I cross the threshold and emerge fully formed, Pallas Athena, into the world of men and dogs. I take a few minutes to appreciate my pursuit of expression and my drive to get a grip on theory, falsification, justification.

I understand art through philosophy and philosophy through science, I am a closed system

I Let Go

For a moment the guiding principals of production

I thrive and manage and read and reread all of the materials

I am for a moment without a rudder I am unbound and plied

My tears are hot and hot

--

I feel my pulls
those urges
And oh oh oh I can be unabashedly
Cocky

It is the massive amount of testosterone I was subject to envitro  g ft f f 

X
G f
F
G

G ft
 
   
 
 
G

I'd Kick Rocks, but Math

I want to pause

for three days

-

to wake with the sun

and warm skin, sweet with sweat

the glancing 

graze of loves hand across

the edge of slumber

****

Instead I am pent up exhaustion and borderline madness. I feel the creeping edge of the limit of my exertion, hoping that I have a fuck left to give. Part of it may be that I haven't had a half-competent lover in a year. I haven't really dated beyond physical informality in two.

-

I could be sick when I consider the chapters of text to work through this evening: environmental science which may be due in an hour, I must check; a few chapters of Ladyman; write a draft of my thesis; read the entire quarter's worth of art history articles; prepare my bibliography for artech and biomedia.

***

I want to pause

three more minutes

-

inhale sharply and imagine my

waist secured, nearly encircled

in a firm ten fingered grasp

**

I am chilled, my skin pulling close under my tights demands a portion of my attention. I know I would be more comfortable if I would simply stand, retrieve the items I came here for, and return to my task at hand.

-

Until a moment can be stolen from time, wrestled from the narrow pass between untouched lips, the same that pulls breath from chest, firm press of knee to knee, I come undone

*

I Eat Soil

I: remember reading about the soil eaters-- women, somewhere who compulsively consume red earth. Though I do not eat dirt,  I understand compulsion. It stems from multiple channels of input layering into a single stream. I seek to separate them long enough to have an idea separate from its thought.


II: My skin pimples against the cold as I remove my outer layers of clothing. It takes a moment to adjust to the new ambient atmosphere. Looking into the dish of crystalizing salts, the resinous mass seems to be supportive. The experiment in natural design is a simple experiment based on the flaws of radionics. In seeking to simplify the durability of the definition of life, living matter became matter animated. I am seeking to animate nonliving temporal matter using the building blocks of method and misappropriated theory.

III: The pounds have been dissolving into my bloodstream. Designer denim was build for my current frame. Hints of curves join planar surfaces. I am half way through the modification on my right arm. The brand will be a circlet of neighboring points. I have nine or ten dots beginning above the elbow of my right arm, they march toward my forearm. These small burns heal in sync with the date of their induction onto my flesh from still pierced purple to near white and slightly raised from my previous casing. They adorn my beautiful arm.

IV: e been at such a loss for touch as well as a loss for sleep. The many projects that I maintain, love, and nourish are costly. We never know the cost until we are asked to pay.

Into the Mist

It is chill this morning and I recovered from two hard days of consumption. It catches up quickly for me these days: the accumulation and following release of pressure. In the good: I am officially the Bar Manager of the best bar between SF and PDX. I am the boss. It has to do with systems, approach, and a disdain for mediocrity.  I am also the shop manager and a TA. I am an artist and I am unraveling, slightly, the complex territory of my self-limiting belief systems.

Kicking into overdrive beast mode all I have left is the desire to be fucked good and hard against a wall. I am surrounded by flaccid dick. That's the thing about being an incorporated two legged human who inhabits more grey than black or white. I am terrifying to encounter on a human level.

I am learning that I don't feel as easily or well as many other people. Feelings are put into the unsafe zone-- from a cognitive behavior standpoint it's logical. Managing my emotions is a constant agreement with myself to be safe, secure, stable.

I love you, know that I am touching the resin of my being to build a starburst constellation