"Texas"

It's Easter. It feels good to observe Jesus's resurrection lying in my bed in a camo snuggie. I've been working on "establishing a daily meditation practice." I think it works yall. It's hard to just sit and focus on focusing, but I can feel myself getting better.

I've been trying to work toward visualizing things with my eyes closed. It's hard! I can usually evoke some sort of feeling but never a particularly clear image. The book I'm reading recommends picturing different aspects of the Buddha. Those don't have any particular resonance for me, so I've been trying to come up with a different set of things to envision.

I realized I had already kind of discovered this practice for myself to help me counter some of my anxiety. I would take deep breaths and remember the serene galleries at the Yves Klein retrospective I saw at the Hirshhorn Museum. It makes sense; stabilizing meditations focus on emptiness and Klein saw Ultramarine as the color of the void.







I've begun to make a list of memorable and compelling places I could visualize to meditate on different moods. I already have too many. It's a good feeling to feel; I realize most of my thinking goes into solving my anxieties, and I need to set time aside to focus on the beauty I've been able to experience. Here's a list of some of the things.

The first thing I thought of was a Georgia O'Keeffe show my aunt took me to see at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Half of these dream places are in San Francisco; I really want to go back. Maybe forever. Anyway, we saw this painting and we both just wept at how beautiful it was. Ever since I am the kind of person who cries by myself in art museums.



I guess I'll run through the other San Francisco ones quickly. My aunt worked on a funeral boat so I got to ride along out past the bridge while we scattered people's ashes into the bay. So, that feeling. When I was 13 and a budding homosexual my aunt took me to see a movie at the Castro theater. I remember feeling terrified being in the city and seeing beautiful men kissing on street corners and wearing leather, but I'm grateful to her knowing what it would mean to show me one the gayest places in the world. It was an unspoken "it gets better" conversation.



Another more fleeting memory is the time I went to the aviary at the National Zoo. I love parrots, and my favorite parrot of all/spirit animal is the Eclectus parrot. They are big weird fruit eating parrots from some islands north of Australia. Their feathers are really fine, almost like hair. The males are green while the females are red and blue. They are also one of 3 species of parrots that are almost guaranteed to learn to talk in captivity. Anyway, I knew one was somewhere in the aviary and finally I found her sitting on a branch just above one of the walkways, warbling sounds that I realized were the repeated whispery conversations of zoo-goers. It was like an encounter with a superintelligent alien. Or an angel.



Look, they love contemporary christian music! Things have come full circle, Happy Easter!

I can't seem to upload any more photos, so I guess this will have to be part 1 in a series. ~TTYL YALL~

Hey yall

Well, what is there to say at this point?



I met Kate Bornstein IRL today. I cried about it, as I am wont to do. She told me to stay alive. <3



I guess I never talked about Elizabeth Taylor's passing. I had rented Butterfield 8 and watched it the night before (and HATED it) but then I read that she also hated it, even though she won an Oscar for it. Anyway, I felt guilty, but I don't anymore. <3



oh and

Nikki Giovanni “Dreams”

i used to dream militant dreams
of taking over america
to show these white folks how it should be done
i used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away
with my perceptive powers of correct analysis
i even used to think
id be the one to stop the riot and negotiate the peace
then i awoke and dug
that if i dreamed natural dreams
of being a natural woman
doing what a woman does
when shes natural
i would have a revolution

Well here I am in Austin. The move was really hard, but only because I am just spectacularly lazy and addicted to the Internet. And, I did it. Now I am here in this place where I know many relatives and a few potential friends, but really don't know what to do with myself at all.

Today I will hopefully get my sad, broken laptop back from the laptop store. I really want to see the complete reel of Metropolis, which is here for 3 more days. I was down in the dumps about not having a friend to come along, until I remembered that the majority of my friends from home wouldn't have gone to see a 145 minute silent film with me either. My mom says she is going with me, even though she hasn't seen a movie in a theater for years (not hyperbole, she just doesn't). Moral of this story: moms are great and important even when you are 24 and think that you're an adult.

Yeah, I miss my friends so much. This city has a lot of really exciting things to do and I am doing a lot of them, by myself. I'm excited, but it's all new and overwhelming. It's ok, we got this.

For you: a post with words!

I have made so much art this summer! There is so much to say. I have fallen in love with a styrofoam head. It's just like Mannequin except we are both dudes. Maybe I will post pictures of the things I have made! (yawn, later)

I am moving to Austin this month. Eek! (I'm excited, also)

Happy Birthday Stevie Nicks! Well, it's a few hours late now, but oh well.



I can't stop watching this. I love how effortlessly beautiful she is, and the way she becomes caught up in the song and sings it directly into the face of her hapless make-up artist. I'm not surprised that Stevie Nicks is a Gemini; it's that time of the year, when every crazy person you know has a birthday.

I am moving out of my house. It's a hard thing to do. I have so many great things, but right now all of my friends are traveling light and scattering to the corners of the world. So I have to pack up some of it, dump some of it, and try to find homes for the rest. Ack. I filled my garbage bin yesterday, and then stealthily snuck a bunch more of my trash into my neighbor's bins under the cover of darkness.

I decided to just give up on fixing the weird paper-thin particle board walls upstairs that my birds and I so handily destroyed. Goodbye, deposit. That's cool though.

Steph and I had a great trip to the beach.





Everything is going well. I keep coming through on things I don't expect myself to accomplish. Oh right, also I finished college finally. That felt good.

I love all yall.

Return of the Ankh

I am just going to pretend that I've been writing in this blog all along. I have a cold. I probably got it while I was busy destroying Austin last week, during the citywide open bar known as SXSW. People keep asking me what bands I saw and I don't really know. That's not true, I saw about a million bands. Highlights were the Carolina Chocolate Drops (swoon), Hunx and the Punkettes, our friend's band Harlem, and a bunch of gay electronic music my friend B_ likes. The best show I saw was Major Lazer, where I got taken by the spirit and as a result danced myself free of my wallet, phone, and debit card. I got 2/3 back, and that ain't bad. I also went to this amazing Sissy Bounce show at a house, which was pretty sweet to see in person.



I love Austin because you can eat so many cheap foods that combine avocados and cheese out of trucks, and then get a cupcake from a truck for dessert. SXSW yall, it's a great thing. I got to see Joanna Newsom in NC on Thursday, and that was also ridiculously beautiful. Is this real life? I often wonder.

I was going to review the new Badu album, but it isn't out yet and I realized that even though I listened to it seven times since yesterday I still don't know exactly what I have to say about it. If you like her, you'll like the album. If you don't follow her, I have to say she is my favorite artist currently making music and I recommend everything she has ever recorded. In the video for Window Seat she takes off all of her clothes. Um, Erykah, haven't we talked about this?

ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS OF MY MOST IMPORTANT DIVAS

Why? Because this will be a really useful reference for me. All signs are represented, but the most diva of the divas seem to be Aries and Leos. Surprise! Judy Garland was a Gemini, Liza an Aries, Barbra and Cher were Taureans. Madonna was a Leo. I don't care about any of them, but they are important divas I guess.

Always in my heart-
Sylvester - September 6, 1947 - Virgo

Aaliyah - January 16, 1979 - Capricorn
Amii Stewart - January 29, 1956 - Aquarius
Ann-Margret - April 28, 1941 - Taurus
Ann Peebles - April 27, 1947 - Taurus
Aretha Franklin - March 25, 1942 - Aries
Beyoncé - September 4, 1981 - Virgo
Betty Davis - July 26, 1945 - Cancer
Betty Wright - December 21, 1953 - Sagittarius/Capricorn cusp
Billie Holiday - April 7, 1915 - Aries
Candi Staton - March 13, 1943 - Pisces
Chaka Khan - March 23, 1953 - Aries
Cheryl Lynn - March 11, 1957 - Pisces
Darlene Love - July 26, 1941 - Cancer
Dee Dee Warwick - September 25, 1945 - Libra
Diana Ross - March 26, 1944 - Aries
Dolly Parton - January 19, 1946 - Capricorn/Aquarius cusp
Donna Summer - December 31, 1948 - Capricorn
Dusty Springfield - April 16, 1939 - Aries
Erykah Badu - February 26, 1971 - Pisces
Gloria Gaynor - September 7, 1949 - Virgo
Grace Jones - May 19, 1948 - Taurus
Joni Mitchell - November 7, 1943 - Scorpio
Kate Bush - 30 July 1958 - Leo
Kelis - August 21, 1979 - Leo/Virgo cusp
Lady Gaga - March 28, 1986 - Aries
Laura Nyro - October 18, 1947 - Libra
Loretta Lynn - April 14, 1932 - Aries
Mariah Carey - March 27, 1970 - Aries
Martha Reeves - July 18, 1941 - Cancer
Millie Jackson - July 15, 1944 - Cancer
Nina Hagen - March 11, 1955 - Pisces
Nina Simone - February 21, 1933 - Aquarius/Pisces cusp
Nona Hendryx - October 9, 1944 - Libra
Patrice Rushen - September 30, 1954 - Libra
Patsy Cline - September 8, 1932 - Virgo
Patti Labelle - May 24, 1944 - Taurus/Gemini cusp
Ronnie Spector - August 10, 1943 - Leo
Shirley Bassey - January 8, 1937 - Capricorn
Tina Turner - November 26, 1939 - Sagittarius
Whitney Houston - August 9, 1963 - Leo
Yoko Ono - February 18, 1933 - Aquarius

HAPPY HOLIDAZE

If any of my dedicated readers were wondering after my last post, I DID IT. I have one more semester of undergrad left. This is an important thing.

I always forget that I hate Christmas until I am in the midst of it. It's easier to believe that once exams are done I will have a vacation. This is never true. This year I am thankful that at least I am not working in a shopping mall. No, I am in a snowdrift with my entire extended family and a dog. SOMEBODY GIVE ME A PRESENT AND I WILL BE QUIET.

I am working on an end of year post but it won't be anywhere near as good as last year's mediocre one. I'll mostly be discussing Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, because I don't really talk about much else anyway. I am sick of this post because I realized that I am not actually going to write about any of the things I thought I was going to write about. TTYL BLOG.