everything is a secret room

are you entering? { sbfr 2 }

floors are getting redone. walls being painted. i move the perfectly organized (by size and subject) piles from the ground, where they live so i can see them — so i remember things— and put them into boxes. there are no boxes big enough for the art books so those i carry downstairs by hand and place them atop the five boxes i’ve packed already.

20 books remain in perfect piles on the ground because i might use them between now and june 10. yeah right. i will open three of them. maybe four. the others are just here for company i guess. usually all i need is to read the title to remember whatever it is i’ve forgotten.

unless someone asks me a question, i have no clue what i know. it’s all these books. all this information. my senses absorb everything. i don’t have to try. in school i never tried. never studied. never even read the books for projects but still aced them. looked up a summary and inferred the rest and wrote it exactly as it came through me.

sometimes i like to write on my phone in google docs where the font is too small for me to see well without my glasses - because it feels like whatever. i’m not trying. my fingers are moving and thoughts are moving and something will end up written.

i sit on the ground to take self portraits around noon. it’s raining. has been since midnight and it smells like damp leaves and it’s humid. i wear shorts and a sweater because apparently i can only wear dresses for a week before i need to release everything and be messy and not give a fuck and that is part my desire. to not give a fuck. actually no. it’s different. i want to not construct myself yet i do want to construct myself. what’s the right word though?

root. i’ve been saying that a lot. root in. feel in. reveal. reveal. so many words lose meaning though.

for years i thought i had to be feminine in an aesthetic sense so i dressed the part and it did soften me. but that’s not really what happens. the clothing is a reflection of the desire already present. a catalyst for its emergence. like the books. catalysts. nothing i don’t know already.

probably all i need is the i ching and a sketchbook and a camera and a fountain pen. it has to be a fountain pen because once you’ve experienced the filling of the well and the way it glides across the page there is no going back.

i used to force myself to get excited if i was going to take self portraits. in an over the top sort of way. sure i looked pretty but i wasn’t being honest. you wouldn’t be able to feel me.

today it’s grey and i’m grateful there’s less stuff on the floor and i’m ready to get a bookshelf and to have wood on the ground instead of carpet. to have this old stuff gone and space created. and i am grateful for learning how to rest. even though i am thinking — i want to take a 2 hour walk and it’s raining and i lost my rain boots. i am lying on the ground which will soon be new and feeling breath rise and fall in my belly and it is good down here. i like it. i think of the man who told me, i want to throw your legs over my shoulders and fuck you into the earth. then ruined it, assuming i wanted to call him daddy.

would i love to receive a flirtatious message at this very moment and feel the swirl of energy rise and feel my heart pulsing faster? yeah i would love that. but i'm fine. i’m good. really. just gonna sit here and take some pictures and eat those strawberries i put in a bowl and drink the tea that’s probably gone cold.

what i’m saying is all i care about is making art and expanding my perspective of and through art and that’s it. and getting fucked to god but that’s ya know. another story.

yep just a woman full of art and desire over here.

okay eros show me what you’ve got for me.

the thing about boredom is that it gets you to play. to look around and see things. feel things. interact. with life. your environment. maybe not for everyone. for some, curiosity trails off at a certain age or moment and instead becomes despair and stagnancy. but not for me.

a friend told me he thinks i have a higher concentration of dmt in my cerebrospinal fluid. i do experience life like i’m always on psilocybin. but what other way is there? the mundane IS magic. the grey sky which is also sometimes blue and purple and pink and orange? fucking magic. rain? magic. pearls of water falling from the sky? how can you not be inspired?

some people say they don’t use metaphors but i see the metaphor in everything. everything is a secret room.

self portraits, for example, show you who you don’t realize you’re being.

another friend told me about the work of martin heidegger and how he had this premise that instead of trying to mentally construct an idea of who you are, observe what you do. i like the way he put it:

Use the observation of what you do to construct a simple and potent and coherent life narrative. In other words use what you do to enlighten how you see yourself.

makes perfect sense to me. opens doors to worlds unseen.

and then? go in. feel around. sniff the books. eat the strawberries. drink the tea. gaze into the mirror and get lost in your own eyes or the way it feels to be in a deeper dimension. just my theory. i think there are infinite parallel dimensions you can go sideways into, but i like to deeper into the same one. maybe it has the same effect. things burn away or just become irrelevant when you get closer to the center of the earth. maybe tomorrow i’ll do this in the basement.

one more thing before you go.

breathe. put your hands on your body and breathe and feel and remember you are here. you are real. your experience is real. the mundane is magic. you don’t have to create a fantasy because when you settle into the center of you desire emerges and shows you exactly what you always wanted.

what do you feel?