drawing by Dylan Taylor

Sometimes I’m unreasonable. I don’t think it’s anything to apologize for, until I feel like an asshole and I didn’t mean it. I’m just existing in my universe and you in yours and they sometimes clash. Like when I buy you coffee that I’m going to drink half of and then I show up and you’re not there and I have to wait like, two whole minutes for you to get there. Don’t you know you’re ruining my whole day? And I’m so angelic I brought you coffee. And where were you? Getting coffee? Oh I see how it is. No, now you can’t have the coffee I brought you, even though it tastes more delicious and I’ll never be able to take these 4 espresso shots.

When I get like this I try to step back. Maybe it’s not as big a deal as I feel it should be.

Maybe I do this a lot and don’t even know it. Like everyday, almost every time I’m annoyed.

I hate waking up. I don’t think I was built for it. I was meant to snuggle in bed until the warm sun and a light breeze gently rouse me from consciousness and I jump out of bed singing and laughing. This hardly ever happens because I live in a basement, and so each morning I have to pry myself out of bed with the motivational fear that if I don’t get up right at this second, my world will collapse and I’ll be late and get fired and ugh I’m such a horrible lazy person and I’ll never hold down a job. Then I start making up excuses for why I was late… I was sick, it’s too much for me. How do people do this whole getting up and working thing? I’m really bad at it. Oh I’m such a lazy incompetent person, all I want to do is frolic all day and be independently wealthy (read: rich enough to not work and do whatever I want all the time).

It’s not a good way to start the morning.

When I was in high school I had to get up at 6:45am every day to go to school. Did I like it? Of course not. Would I have rather slept in? Hell yes. But I had to go to school, and I didn’t blame it on society or the way the world worked or the country I was unfortunate enough to live in; it was just the way it was and I had to get my ass out of bed, no matter how late I stayed up.

But now it turns into a mental tirade about how I’m just not cut out for this life and there must be another way, but oh I’m a lazy piece of shit and I’ll never amount to anything. Back and forth between self-righteousness and self-hatred. That’s where I seem to live.

To have expectations is to have disappointment. I always all into this trap. Can I be ambitious if my ambition is to be ambitionless? Am I the problem with kids these days? I can’t do anything but I could do anything, given the perfect circumstances. Are my constant existential crises a sign of my overwhelming intelligence and superiority over 90% of the normals, or just the stubborn spoiled sensibility of an over educated wannabe artist who isn’t ready do give up her dream of a perfect life where she can do whatever she wants all the time?

Why do we have to do stuff we don’t want to all the time? Why is it so hard to just survive?

Why do I argue myself out of every plan I make? Everything is impossible or not good enough. Am I alone in this thinking? Or are there others like me too? If you are like this, don’t tell me. I probably wouldn’t like you, and if we had a conversation I’d try to get you to see the error of your ways, convince you to be more optimistic and less whiny, work harder and stop being so wishy-washy, and then avoid your calls and emails because I don’t want to talk to you.

Life may be a whole lot better if I just sucked it all up and didn’t complain or turn everything into a basic question of existence. But then what kind of person would I be?

Cindy Crabb's desk

I don’t remember when I got my first issue of Doris zine. I was in high school, and had started going to punk shows at Gilman St. with my sister’s best friend from high school. There were ripped up couches and graffiti all over the walls and people yelling and dancing and smashing into each other. There were little booklets in the shop and my surrogate older sister gave me a bunch of zines, these magazines that real people like me wrote and glued together and photocopied late at night at Kinko’s. I started reading about all these people who did things differently with their lives. They didn’t grow up and buy a house and have kids in the suburbs. They traveled on cheap greyhound bus tickets, putting their fate in the hands of strangers, doing things you weren’t supposed to do like jumping trains and living in tree houses and reading books and planting gardens instead of working. I learned to dance like those kids in the clubs. I learned to yell my heart out and make out on the sidewalk. I learned to cut my own hair and I learned that I didn’t need anyone to tell me that I was good at something to do it. This is what I liked most about punks: they just did what they wanted and made art and music and culture themselves without waiting for permission or approval from anyone.

Somewhere along this path I found Doris zine at the anarchist bookstore by my school. I’d read it on the bus, and it was like I had a new secret best friend. Cindy, who started writing Doris in the early 90s spoke about her adventures. Traveling, running away, reading and trying to teach herself how to do things. She built boats that sank and danced in the rain and bailed water from her flooded tents. She taught me about things I never thought or knew about before, like herbal abortion, learning about your body, questioning society, living outside of meritocracy, anarchism, learning on your own, and doing things for for the sake of doing them instead of waiting or working for praise. Her writing reaches directly from her heart to mine, as she works through all the things good and bad and heartbreaking that happen when you live. She is my greatest role model. I want to be like her, making things with my own two hands, trying to learn even when I think it’s impossible, have courage against any fear to create and make things grow and learn about truth and community and being yourself and healing yourself and understanding other people. Cindy sees the world I see and her writings are a window into this universe I’m always trying to find.

By now, I’ve been reading this zine for 10 years and she has managed still to write in a way that’s so close to my heart I sometimes mistake her for myself.

“I used to worry about – what does it mean to be a real writer? Was I one? Was it good or did it suck? What if I didn’t spend enough time writing? Was I a fake? What if I was stuck? What was the point? I thought there had to be an answer, a key. I read books about writing and books about creating a writer’s life … and I couldn’t figure out, was I real. Was I a real writer or just a fake. Eventually I figured out that the whole question was bullshit. The question “was I a real writer” was part of the competative system I wanted to destroy, where everyone is suppose to strive to do something brand new that’s never been done, to make a mark on history, to be better than everyone else. I didn’t want that shit, so why was I looking to those models for legitimacy. I had to ask questions like – why did I write. and then hold myself accountable to my own reasons and standards.” excerpt from Doris #27 “Writing”

Her words have had such unknowable impact on my growing brain. I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t found her zine. You should read it to, it may change you’re life. Get Doris zines and Anthology here. Buy some for your friends too. And she makes cute skirts you can buy too. And read her blog. She is amazing and has tons of awesome stuff she does.

dance on down

Song of the Day: The Blow – True Affection

When I was younger, while going to school and having afterschool classes, and sleepovers, and dates, and going to punk shows, I’d make a lot of stuff. My surrogate older sister Gillian taught me the ways of a good riotgrrl. I made zines with my friends. I’d go to CCA to hang out and make paper. We’d sit in silent on opposite ends of the room cutting and pasting and creating without a thought of the purpose behind what we were doing, or even really what we were making. We’d make care packages, and mix tapes,  and sent letters all over the world. I’d  make little books and we’d send them to each other, adding pages until it was filled and beautiful. We bought photocopied zines for a dollar, and traded them. We worked in the darkroom that was set up in the bathroom, spend nights cutting each other’s hair, getting silly, and making our own entertainment.

When I got to college, I struggled to keep this culture close to me. I’d take my typewriter outside and write letters in the courtyard under streetlights. My friends sent me art to put on my walls to make me feel more at home. I bought a bike and biked all over the town, looking for interesting places and interesting things. I’d bike in the snow to go to shows at this quiet clubhouse 30 minutes away. When everyone was freaking out about tests and grades, I couldn’t relate. I rebelled. I became an art major. I planned lesbian paint parties in my studio and took lunch to the guys who ran the university’s greenhouses every Friday. But somewhere in this mix of activities, something was happening. This elitist place, with it’s art theory and strictly academic way of thinking of projects began to seep under my skin. Art projects were supposed to be researched, theoretical, ambitious, perfect, surprising yet critical, beautiful yet meaningful, original, yet influenced by the entire art historical narrative.

It made me nervous. I spent weeks thinking and overthinking and analysing ideas before I could even make anything. It made me mad that I couldn’t just play and create. I began to look to everyone else to give me ideas on what to make. I began thinking I wasn’t good enough. I thought everyone must be smarter than me. I worried about whether I belonged there or not. I worried about being able to graduate. I began researching how all these artists attained fame and success. My advisor told me I needed to think more about craft, about making things perfect. I needed to be more ambitious. I had to stop thinking about my mother, my family, where I come from. I tried to fill her in. I tried to explain that this wasn’t the point. I was taught how to trick the art world into buying, instead of how to make things that you really cared about.

Then I graduated and became extremely depressed. I had big ideas, but it seemed like it was impractical and impossible for me to follow them. I got crappy jobs to give me time to do my art, but all I really did was freak out about never being able to make a living at it. I lost my friends, the ones who I had created with for so long. I lost those long nights cutting and pasting and painting and listening to music. I became isolated and alone and every moment I felt more and more like a failure.

I don’t know what to tell people when they ask me what I make. I make paintings, I make drawings, but really, I love to make situations most of all. I want to find ways of breaking the rules of society. I want to create new ways for people to interact. I want to find ways to create community without all the inhibition that comes from thinking we’re so different from each other, or that we’re better or worse, or that we’re strangers and we shouldn’t talk.

I’m trying to get over this thinking in my own head. I’m trying to find a way to break free and reconnect with people in a way that is real. I’m not interested in talking small talk to be pleasant and pass the time. I want to know what you think and how you live and what is important and why you think that. I want to challenge perceptions about the world and our lifestyles. I want to show you and me why it’s okay to choose different ways of living. I want to teach people how to fish, so they can feed themselves forever.

I want to encourage people to move away from this “I got mine” mentality. When we only look out for ourselves, we are thinking too small. I want to help build communities that treat each other like friends, even if they have never met before. I want to get people to sing and dance , and use our cooperation to make big things happen.

I’m not sure how to do this, but I’m feeling out a way. And I don’t want to stop, because every time I stop I forget and think my life has to be boring, broke, and isolated. I turn on the TV, and I turn off my hopes and dreams for the future. Even though I don’t know exactly what it is I want, or how to get it, I have to believe it is out there and accessible, because I don’t want to live a life of 60 hours weeks and no time. I want good food, and laughter, and music, and dancing and love, not snobs.

asleep

This morning, in those achy hours between asleep and awake, I had a dream. I dreamt that a band of religion enthusiasts were visiting my family and my house. I was taking a nap in my bed, and awoke to find them coming in without a word to me, and rifling through all my stuff. I got angry. Not only were they very religious, faraway illogical missionary crazies, but they were rude. They did not say hello, or introduce themselves, and what made them think they could touch those things that were rightfully mine. I could have got out my shotgun, I was so mad. And to make matters worse, their leader and father figure came in wearing a sport coat and put his boot-clad feet up on my bed. I was angry. I started cursing them out. One of their brood was a young woman, presumably around my age, centered in a calm assurance of her beliefs that made me crazy. No matter how wrong I thought she was, she would not shed the air of superiority.

And to make matters worse, she was successful in making me feel shitty about my anger. To her, everything was fine.She insisted on accompanying me through the environment of my dream. We were in a kind of Mexican tourist town, were old ladies spent all day in the open air margarita factory, rimming margarita glasses with salt. There were stalls full of blow up palm trees and midway games, empty dance floors and hot sunshine making the shade dark.

As I spent more time with this religious invader-woman, I felt my anger slip away from me. I started to accept her for her as a person, and see past her religious perspective. But as I felt this anger slip away, a new anger came. This was anger with myself, for letting my shields down around her, and for accepting someone like her. I felt like I was betraying myself, befriending the enemy, and in doing so weakening my stance on the side of good, true, uncompromised, independent logic.But I couldn’t help it. The more time I spent, the less I wanted to hate her.

I woke up feeling as though my dream was trying to tell me something. That anger towards someone who seems to stand for something is less powerful than acceptance of the other. Acceptance and openness  turns any animosity aimed at that subject against its originator. This internal process is more powerful than anything that could come from someone who is an enemy. Anger is owned by the angry, and doesn’t have to be poison to anyone but the angry. I suppose somehow I will need to know this in the coming days.