#freedom fighter
I’m painting a 4 x 8′ commissioned acrylic on wood for an East Point business owner of the hottest new salon and spa this side of the West Side Green Belt. I’m not satisfied with it. In fact, I’m not sure if I even like the current large work. Here’s (2 panels beneath the “Northampton Barn” (2015) and “Bug” (2013):
When my mother was dying from cancer in 2008, my dad told me that there were 22 others living on Trailwood Avenue who were positive for some type of cancer concurrently. “There’s a lawsuit,” I told my dad. We were driving and it was warm outside and the air smells like Central California does in the Fall. Fog, basically. There is no mystery that most probably embedded land subdivisions were watered by wells driven by the local growers and irrigation seepage will occur. Their water is screwed, no less. Now more than ever with the heat that will not stop and wells are drying. People are stealing their neighbor’s water in California.
My mother died in ’08 and my only sibling died from cancer at 53 years old in ’12 (also in November).
And so at my age, I have superseded the mortality for both, my biofamily and that of the <25 year early morbidity for people living with an SPMI who have received continuous US Community Public Mental Health services for at least 25 -30 years.
Which is worse? Cancer or the US Public Community Mental Health System? I’m laughing because I’m really not joking.
This writing’s intent is to at least touch upon the notion of how disease, chronic illnesses and malhealth – when not self-managed or self-cared for – will manifest physically and you will die sooner than later, probably.
Things to practice then:
There always has been a strange cultural divide with certain kind of women my entire life. There was the case of Kelly, a tall-leggy just flat out hot blonde whose goal was to make $26,000 a year and she figured she had it all planned. That may have been 1985, as far as I can recall.
And artists. Artists are wild. They are individualistic typically. Highly intelligent. Very introverted usually. Autonomous. Not great communicators. Theirs and their alone “family” networks of others like themselves borders on the hip, chic, exclusive and well, not very open to the rest of us. Women artists I have known were largely bisexual and fucked up about it. We were young.
The woman I know now, is acclaimed and well known, on exhibit throughout the Southern US region and doubly famous, respected for her work. She’s a tough cookie and hard to follow with any other woman and I regret at the soul level having run out of her already, or maybe it was the other way around. I adore her loveliness and her body makes me dream of the forevers I was told were there and had never before ever laid palms and hands and fingers and mouth on.
The one who got away is embedded in my memory and painful to allow out and to float down the river and into white water, famously wild and divergent maybe of all intention, all wants, all needs, any expectation, any Love that there may have been.
Long, langorous hot Atlanta Fall nights (Indian Summer and Yellow Moons) met for long, deep slow kissing during any film festival spent in her bed forgetting time and all memories other than this one now. She was lovely and my lousy picker picked her winding legs, small ass, long lean muscled arms and with all tangly limbs in the night, mouths and throats howling, howling.
As impossible as it may seem, to move forward and mindful prayer and loving intentions may help the blessed alone. Bless me, bless me. God bless this bruised heart.
1, 2, 3, 4 Clearing out the old for the New.
Clearing out the old for what.
Noche no te vayas.
It is what it is.
I missed my trauma therapy appointment for the 3rd week in a row today and it’s showing through the cracks of my face, my hands, my mouth, my eyes, my voice… is cracking.
My primary diagnosis nowadays is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and so I wondered that my experienced childhood trauma has been exceeded by the adult trauma experienced living in the US as an out Gender Queer, polarized and profiled resistant, non risk averse woman of color raised on Queer Nation, ACT UP and fuck you bitch, stand beside me or step the fuck aside in yo face since my 20s.
Systemic White Privileged oppression, abuses, discrimination and hatefulness toward eradicating otherness based on race, culture, gender identity and/or presentation, color of skin and reversed discrimination of fair skinned people in a predominantly Black region (Atlanta, Georgia) pisses me off. It pisses me the fuck off, actually.
I often tell people that No, I do not believe in the premise and inherently false US Community Public Mental Health System, nor will I admit Mental Illness exists. The disease versus pussy recovery oriented system of care is the very basis of my work around behavioral health integration, mental diversity, substance use, isolationist first responder mobile crisis intervention (MH/SA) and finally, how I categorically espouse for US Peer Workforce.
The hate I feel towards me when I walk into a predominantly white or BLACK environment in Atlanta is so thick, I can cut it with a brand new X-Acto Blade and leave marks, cuts of blood so deep it won’t bleed.
I listen to “Penthouse Floor” a lot and will rebel yell Resist, Fight, Fuck You in your face with my co-horts but to be reversed discriminated against because of my Queerness and because I’m not Black puts me into a position of being hated, feared, dismissed. My education, class, verbal upper class White Yankee, nay, Surfer Dude confuses, I admit.
We either work together against the real scourge of hate in 2017 or we don’t.
You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, either.
I dare you to walk your talk. Be transparent. Authentic. Speak your truth.
It’s now or never.
Step up or step aside.
