The Chapter for this Blog is Closed.

Part I: The Parting

Farewell to a six year archive that has been many things:

-parking lot for rambling

-placeholder for written life trajectory (when I was broke and on assistance, when all I did was write, when I spent everyday picking up glass and deflated balloons on the beach with the girls…raising them…feeding their bellies and minds, when I edited and wrote with my cohort, when I committed to one person or another, when I lifted off and formally became an educator…)

-place you could buy my books/zines

-place to show my 35mm work.

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Part II: The Tits

These are all things that make me happy, but haven’t been my true life since 2015. In 2015 I radically departed from the thumbscrew and opened myself up stitch by stitch to let every lost tooth into my jaws again. For me, this meant transformation of routines, shedding of limits, and the selfish, necessary improvement of mental stamina. It meant truly embracing EVERY SINGLE THING I LOVE. From the mundane to the perverted. From the crust of morning to the rust of dusk.

Several actions helped me gain momentum.

-I addressed my chronic illness (still here! hello invisible disability no one knows how to talk to me about!) and mental fatigue with the help of natural medicines and body work procured from healers and those who do roots work.

-I channeled my new, lighter energy into my students, investing my love and time into their needs/learning with no veil.

-I traveled to Senegal to meet new friends. I traveled the states to meet old friends just for hugs.

-I listen to music all the fucking time, thrash the fuck out, sing a ton, go to shows, and have sacred shower sessions. Those dark years without listening to what I love and generally being exposed to GARBAGE took their toll. I am passionate (25 cent tax word, so sorry Chang) about how music makes me feel and who I share it with.

-I wrote a new zine after not having produced one for four years. It was small and fun. And in color. It was a labor of love.

-I have surrendered to/ am in complete agreement with nature. I’ve lost three people I loved in this year of re-birth. I’ve loved so hard and felt the part and wake deeply.

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Part III: Find me.

My career and personal life are at odds. The things I practice privately (or with friends, or with lovers) and how I spend my days publicly don’t really sync. I don’t have the urge to write about my main work because it is 12 hours of all consuming heartwork day in and day out. Every evening my skin is electric with the sensitivities of tears and smiles. Every night I begin to peel and shed that weight/ shift back into my original form to confront the next day’s challenges. I don’t lose as much sleep anymore. I love so much better.

I feel that publicly I want to provide less shape-shifting free-verse and more formalized, radical servitude.

I won’t post a location here, but the new work will find you.

Part IV: Gratitude.

Thank you

• if you held me down both in spirit or in body and you are featured by name or word trace in this virtual place.
• if you shared your home/family/pets/time
• if you let me love you/ dug with me/ went lucid with me.
• adventure/ all participants

 

See you in the reflection of the bone folder for the next ‘zine. xo

RR

“if you have ghosts, you have everything”

i don’t want my fangs too long.

tell me who you are.

Brief 35mm encapsulation of summer. No owed dpi. All of these things are my favorite things.

three friends.

beacon’s burning.

❤

climbing tree.

bovine shortstop.

chastity belt.

alex at coney.

drying flowers in Royal Oaks.

❤

team.

Caley’s bread.

Janey.

Sabrina.

Manu in front.

Countdown to Earth Bound.

lavender in our pits in the pits of our neck
in fingerprints on the third eyes of children
when they pry open all of the trapdoors on
our skulls on an average school day. HOW!?

calm/calm… calm. calm like we’re salt lamp orange
glowing around them and flickering in front of them
once skill and now weeping willow. HOW!?
we’ve licked the salt lamp before turning it off.

avocado pit is a female adam’s apple. HOW!?

eve’s peach sits on her rolling chair…
scoots towards the

19 days… 19 days… 19 days. 18 days…

slough off musty carpet hurt, bed bug dirt, small voice,
big voice, big arms, and stomping feet that escalate from
walking feet. HOW!?
rub our heads on slate

post-shed big arms will hold one frame only
then grip the bed frame bucking a stretch from crown to toe?
HOW!? lavender in the bite and lavender/lavender… lavender.
lavender is how to grow amythest teeth.

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zines are gone///new zine projects in works. This year was the most rewarding teaching year of my life.

Sitting at bluestockings/chocolate in my teeth/David Bowie/ Reign in tits

I’ve earned these tits
they didn’t breakthrough my glass chest one day
they fatted up with my thoughts and before I could complete
the thought about the man in the jacket smoking a cigar
my hands were full of them

Sitting at Bluestockings
chocolate in my teeth
chest on the floor
I feel my head on your shoulder
this is winter chest. We are surrounded by metal
this is the ____.

Chest at eye level means mother
and so often I get called “mom” that I figure at some point
I must have given birth to something that speaks
and I no longer have two cups of spit,
but I’m a superwoman
with a chest underneath breasts
is like mechanical armor
but I don’t want to scare myself.

I was going to tell you all about Africa
and the sun on my front and the perfume on my collar
and the dirt that collected down my sternum
but David Bowie died today and hugging his records
to my chest and thoughts about
coming into my tits in an age of
once upon an ace bandage and
handover the pushup bra
made me clam
made me feel like I was breathing through his chest.

I walked around in heels today with myself in only one order
and I pressed a chest at the end of the night.

Ana Mendieta.

I last ruminated about Ana Mendieta’s life when I wrote about her work for the Center for Book Arts archive project years ago.

Yesterday I came face to face with this six frame morph of her face and it jump started my admiration and connection to her work again.

– Cuban American

-murdered by husband (?)

– connected to the earth. Her representations through performance, sculpture, and multimedia…make my heart pump faster and the minerals under my tongue swim to my head.

This comes at a time when I really need the strength of women artists around me. Lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of artists protesting art movements. The emotive and vibrant… actively writing letters and boycotting galleries that promote minimalism and movements like dada or Bauhaus. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about releasing artifacts of self upon topographical maps that only document the geography of one’s travel from point a to b (as set by artist). On one hand I want to engage in mapmaking as art because maps are faulty and inaccurate simply by escaping scale. On the other hand I wonder if my map has too many surfaces for me to handle right now.

Thanks Mendieta,

R.R.

wood top/ marbled hands

ice cream blood flow brings out the blue blood.

a world dependent on light.

from 35mm – toycam (toys r us kids point and shoot with a helluva light leak)

2014 sums:

plants with roots getting used to new soil- new pots. bigger pots to give the stems backbones. bigger pots so more branches, more leaves.

new living situation. t&t hold hands towards the same fridge, touch backs, shoulders, and foreheads at night. plug in the christmas lights. drink from the same glasses and breathe in modified BQE air. hail northern brooklyn, a safe hail of headlights through the night panes. my paintings on our walls. friends drawings framed and present. new colors that control mornings. gray and orange, spackled and papered.

drowning in the arms of career. career, careen, carousel. there is a feeling of drowning when an 8 year old is in my arms. there is a feeling of lifting myself up at the end of the day. conversations about racial injustice, the creation of safe communities. these kids are telling me that they are in love with the coco, that shmurda was locked up, that their bunnies and kittens are soft at home. nothing for me is soft at home, but i’m safe at home at that’s embroidered on my diploma, the edge of my flannel collar, the shaved back of my head.

in the summer i put a circle around me. bare feet and whole bodies. we were in a lake, we were under the map of stars. we were drunk on words and buzzed on light. someone held my hand. we watched the moths swarm.

glad to know this, glad to bury myself in the buzz of light.

 

welcome to the eyeball salon

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