The first time I drank Jack Daniels it hit my tongue with biting force then mellowed with a sweetness like honey. I’ve never been to Tennessee however that is how I like to imagine that place, a harsh bite of the horrible south but a sweetness that keeps the place alive.
As I hold my heavy glass slightly filled with Jack Daniels and look around my grandmothers living room to see people crying and laughing I am angry. I am filled with regret. One of my aunts is talking to toast my grandfather but I leave. It is winter. The air is that cold that hurts your face and I climb on top of my white corolla and hold the cold glass in my hand. I look up to the white sky and tears begin their decent to land in my glass and on my hands. I’ve got a fist sized knot in my stomach that keeps trying to punch its way out through my throat so I swallow hard but don’t drink from the cold liquor that I am holding. The air is quiet, my town just had a storm that wiped out the power, and the big evergreen tree in the yard. Its broken sharp edges feel a lot like how my heart feels, and the cold that comes with the loss of power feels a lot like my grandfathers cold body laying in the living room feels. He is dead. He took the towns power with him. He took all the light and warmth with him when he died.
Days later I am toasting again, fist in throat, holding a plastic shot glass up in the air in a church basement. My relatives are taking shots and getting shit faced, grieving how we only know how. I sit with my grandmother and hold her hand resting on a plastic table cloth. I tell her she didn’t take her shot of Jack, and she offers me the plastic shot glasses lined up in front of her. I knock back a couple more shots of Jack and the fist in my throat grabs at the liquor and threatens me with them, a sharp bite and punch to the back of my throat. I am again angry, this is not how I will choose to pay tribute to this mans life.
We as a people do not know how to grieve in a healthy way. We drink the dead’s favorite booze, we put them in boxes and bury them. We forget. Sometimes we even get some ink to remember our loved ones, changing the outside skin but never the inside. My grandfather was a great man. He had stamina to become a legend in my small town, something that my generation has no idea how to do. We all focus on what never lasts and more importantly what is not important. We drink, we do drugs and we do not care anymore. We have no conviction to accomplish. We do not know how to sacrifice because our parents have so we would not have to.
John Goulart built a boat in his yard. One that was as big as his house that sat beside it. That boat sat in his yard for years before he donated it to the boating museum in Newport Rhode Island. John was Portuguese, but I never herd him speak a word of it. Dying in the hospital a week before he passed I sat on his bed, held his hand and smiled at him. Papa looked at me with stars in his eyes and softly said to me, “Andar na sombra”. I don’t speak any Portuguese. Taken back by my grandfather speaking to me for the very first time in his native language I ask what it means. He smiles wider and whispers to me, “Walk in the shade.”
I do not know very much about my grandfather, I wish I had asked him more. He was a wise man, he owned our towns only liquor store. He drank Jack Daniels every day and told me once that it kept the pipes clean. Papa only had half a thumb on one hand that looked more like a big toe. I think he cut it off with a tractor blade. I could be wrong. I used to go visit him and my grandmother in Florida, where they spent their winters. He would wake me up at 5:30 for morning mass with him every day. I am not religious. But I would go and sit with him and he would smile and show me off to his friends. I wish I had dressed better for church but I was in college and most of what I owned was tie dyed. When it came time for communion he would take my arm and lead me out of the pew. He would put his hand on my back and push me up the isle to the priest. I am not religious but on my way up I would silently say to myself , “sorry Jesus”, because I knew it was not considered right to receive communion if you were not catholic and I guess I wanted to apologize just in case I ever have to explain myself if god is real.
I will probably get a tattoo about my grandfather even though he would not approve or appreciate the sentiment. My grandfather was one of my favorite people, but eventually everyone you love dies. My grandfather told us all he was dying, he told us all he loved us. John sat on his bed one morning after breakfast and said out loud, “I’m dying”, then slumped over and died. My grandfather left behind a heavy legacy for all of us on how to lead an honorable life with conviction and purpose. He taught us by example how to be a good person that people could count on, what more do you want out of life then to be remembered fondly and admired for your convictions?
The most important idea that my grandfather left for us, for me, was how to die. Something that is not taught enough to people anymore. Not in a hospital, not hanging on to life in the most pathetic and terrified way, but how to leave the people you love prepared to grieve you. He taught me that to die well is to have lived well.
A veil for a wedding.
I am finally finished with this painting. The title : A Veil for a Wedding.
OldieButGoodie
From my Senior thesis show. Masked friends.
Working
I’ve been painting the same canvas for weeks. This is in transition but it’s getting to the place I want it to be in..
finally
I painted a painting today without planning on it. I was paying some bills online and was thinking about yesterday’s beautiful sunset. I got up and went to my “studio” and painted over a piece i had been unsuccessfully working on for weeks. This painting is the first piece that i have done that feels like “me”. In other words, the piece feels like a true successful expression of myself as an artist. I am pleased. I guess it only takes around two years of post grad soul searching to begin again with your own voice. 
Foggy sunrise and a tattoo too
Had to share this photo I took around 7am this morning on my way home from work. The fog was just lifting and the sun was rising. I stopped by a neighbors yard on my street and fought this photo with my phone. Isn’t it beautiful?
Also, Erik and I got matching anchor tats on our middle fingers over the weekend. Spur of the moment, now when I flip people off its way more fun.
For inspiration, the need to pee.
I have noticed that I usually think about writing for a few days before i write anything. Its strange but i need to age the idea, the imagery, as if i was brewing beer the pressure build up contributes to the final piece being tasty like a fall lager.
Every writer has a technique to find inspiration and today i think i figure mine out. Whenever i write it is always after a drive. I will be in my car driving and usually hear a song that spurs inspiration. Today it was florence and the machine’s song “are you hurting the one you love”. The core emotions of the song resonated with a lot of my feelings as i approach the on year anniversary of my cross country mind fuck. So anyway i was driving through tiverton and suddenly pulled off into a grassy field as if the want to write was as immanent as the need to pee. The work was going to come out of me weather i wanted to or not, and prolonging this need would only lead to frustration and incontinence later on when im old…or something like that. So pulling into the grassy field i look around to find any scrap of paper i can find in my car. Anyone who knows me knows that there is guaranteed to be paper of some form in my car because its a human land fill. But i’m sure that for me this hunt is just as important to my writing process as a pen or my brain. Searching for something to write on brings a sense of urgency, of importance. Also, the paper that i do find always has something else on it giving it a history. No matter how many journals i buy it will never replace the process i need to start writing.
Not all writing is good after i write it all down. Sometimes its sloppy and childish, full of desire and demands made in my corolla to the sky. Today…im not sure what i wrote was good or not, i don’t think it matters. It just needed to come out, much like the need to pee.
A mattress with no sheets.
The clouds lay heavy in the sky like water logged cotton clothing.
Heavy and dark on the bottom and a blinding shining sun in my eyes.
I had dreams of wearing wedding dresses creamy satin white but when i woke up i found my body alone on a mattress without any sheets.
What a life i have crafted for myself. I lye flat and feel empty all morning.
Sorrow soaked clouds tell me to drive all day and watch the colored trees pass through my vision. just passing through. Just here for the night. I keep telling myself just sleep, just drink. Everything fades and turns around me to rich golden harvest for themselves and i cover myself in mud and trace my outline on my bare mattress, hoping to not feel like the last person to feel the fall breeze. These moments are beautiful desperation to join with the universe and have me wearing rusty purple every day.
Soon there will be snow in my heart for peace of mind that the harvest blew all the broken parts away.
End of the summer
So it’s the end of the summer. I got hired for one over night manual labor job by these guys and have an interview for the ICA on Wednesday. I have yet to find a place of my own but am sure I will find something for myself. As the farm internship winds down, I’m pretty proud of all that I’ve done this summer as far as working and ‘starting over’. So much more work to be done, but at least I’ve got the right attitude and time on my hands. And also, I’m pretty in shape which is nice, here’s a photo of my ‘Girly start six pack’. I plan on going to the gym regularly to keep this up and improve myself 🙂 I’ll post more farm pictures and tell more about the elderly painting class I’ve been teaching all through October.
TTFN
Back in old places old faces to see
My computer has been acting funny for months so the only posts I make are on my phone which can be tedious and annoying. I’ve been doing a lot of farming and a little bit of art. A little bit of writing. Here are some shots of the farm and a poem i wrote with a lot of farm imagery. Hopefully I’ll post something longer soon. So many photos. So much writing. So much farming…
Harrow the Heart.
The heat lightning in the darkest part of the night broke the fever clouding my mind. The heavy rain in the early afternoon broke the humidity and a cool early fall breeze brought the news that love was possible once more. My heart bled and my body ached with the knowledge that love is short and always fleeting.
The big clouds rolled in and hid the sun so I could rest my eyes in the field. The dirt clung to my wet body and whispered to me to eat flesh and be born again. Wide eyed I stare down rows of secrets from my hands and seeds of sorrow did germinate and grow a life unplanned and unrestricted. What curious lives we have led that burn up in the wake of the storm and you wake up in the night to the blue dark and another naked body laying next to you.
The days pass and and I do not want for money nor power nor fame but rest muscle and peace.
The ice always melts in my glass too fast and I’m left with the warmth of the sun on my tongue. I don’t mind. Not anymore I can’t afford to be stricken with grief bad thoughts and a weary mind. It does not make the seeds sow it makes the wind in your soul blow much too hard and rip from your mental ground any chance of growth.
I used to grow dandelions in my mind but lately it’s the loss that has me harrow my heart and regrow something of worth inside my soul.
farmgirlartgirl 