Curating like photography in that it carries a lot of baggage in terms of ethnography.

Curation mirrors a lot of Colonial practices. When you are done you are creating an environment for another person to move through.

Most peculiar face. Like a child supple lips and big eyes but large hands like an adult. Like a twelve year old child. Gray hairs framing the face roots showing rest dyed with henna. One hand w long false nails, red, a band aid covering the fourth fingernail.

Tee shirt w pink camo and a big false diamond costumey watch other hand nails kept impeccably well, not false.

Large bag typical of 80's fashion but looking brand new one hand (left) looked skinnier and much older, another one more like mine. Aged but still with a bit of fat

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hamilton book and face wax strips

electrolyte drinks deleuze widely armed citizenry

我吃你的脸。

(no subject)

Transcription

Haven’t done it in a while but on the phone I think I just used the Notes program that comes with Apple. It’s just like messages or email, when the keyboard comes up you press the microphone button and start talking. If you are on Macbook then you can set up dictation in system preferences > dictation and speech, and use it on Word or wherever, instead of typing.

CHASE BILL

Video Transfers

Color lab - expensive but good quality
Dijify not as good quality but deals on family video

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Cable management

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July 3

Three years ago in late April I fell ill with a mysterious illness that affected everything from my ability stand and walk, to my ability to think, speak, read and process language. What I thought to be my self...the fundamental structures of my everyday life, my identity, quickly fell apart. Important supports stayed. Namely the family and friends who kept me afloat, lifting my body (literally) and spirits, kept me fed and watered, clean. Basic things that allow you to feel safe, to feel human. People came out of the woodwork. Some relationships evaporated, others grew stronger, others emerged.

People say this thing that maybe I used to believe, but has always sort of frustrated me. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I now

Strongly beg to differ. What doesn't kill you might almost kill you. And it will usually change you. What almost killed me most certainly changed me, and often I wonder whether it was for the better.

Three years ago at some point during the illness I went to Pittsburgh to deal with my stuff, and to say good bye, perhaps forever. What many doctors thought would be a short virus (or depression, tell me, have you been feeling down?) dragged on and on. I needed to get ready to go to grad school. Not going was not an option. So me and my IV and refrigerated meds and wheelchair went to JFK and took a flight, alone. A nice man from Somalia helped me on the New York end. I hadn't remembered cash to tip, so I gave him my metro card hoping it wouldn't insult him.

People treat you nicely when you have a physical sign of disability that can be processed. Crutches, a wheelchair, an IV, old age, a cane -- they do a lot of talking for you, and because illness and disability is so heavily stigmatized in this country, nobody will ask you what happened. They just make niceties and say "get better soon!" It's when your disability turns invisible that you start having to deal with people who call you a bitch because

you can only cross the street so fast, and because, after all, every other signifier of your existence points to your privilege. Or when they say that you're imagining things, because, after all, you are a young woman.

The world is really different in a wheelchair. People don't make eye contact with you, they talk at you and not to you. They forget you are there. It's a funny series of distinctions, but it makes you feel definitively on another plane. My particular experience of illness was so oddly specific and varied that I had the happy opportunity to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes," and then emerge. Symptoms of my illness were likened to having a stroke, congestive heart failure and early-onset dimentia simultaneously. But unlike all of those conditions, most of my symptoms were alleviated through treatment. (I still deal with autonomic neuropathy, the only prolonged, residing condition from the injuries my brain sustained during the infection.) This is all to say that it is a bit unusual (lucky?) to be able to experience that level of disability and then emerge relatively unscathed. I have no idea what it feels like to spend your life in a wheelchair, to have dimentia, a stroke, or congestive heart failure, in actuality. But I had a very, very small taste of those worlds, and it was no walk in the park.

Waiting for the plane, I noticed another person on this level, my level, a woman, my age, maybe a bit older, also in a wheelchair. Hers was custom and fancier than mine. I felt stupid immediately because she was clearly in this for the long haul. I had decided, and would spend the subsequent years of my life living that decision, throwing myself at it, that I would not be confined to a chair or a bed.

I didn't make eye contact with the woman, but she obviously noticed me too. We were wheeled onto the plane first, wheeled off last, and sat next to each other in a special seat. She was so good at maneuvering her chair. She could do it one-handed, back up, parallel park, the works. I felt so clumsy in comparison.

Since we were next to each other in the empty plane, we introduced ourselves. She was really pretty, chestnut skin and long, wavy hair; smiled a lot. We got to talking and eventually we got to the old jailhouse jabber, "so...how'd you end up here?" I answered, told her actually how hard I had to think just to understand her. And how slowly I was speaking wasn't how I usually spoke. "But I'm gonna get better," I said for myself as much as her. "How about you?" I asked, feeling now that I had revealed an adequate amount of personal details of my own to venture the question. "I got shot," she said matter-of-factly. She smiled and shrugged. "Oh." I nodded, trying hard to maintain a neutral facial expression so as not to reflect my shock and the idiocy I felt for having f*#!ing pried, then added, matching her matter-of-factness, "What was that like?" Shut up shut up shut uuuuuup.

She was on a date, maybe a first or second date. She and this guy hardly knew and she were at an old-fashioned diner on swivel stools at the counter. It was daytime. She swiveled her legs towards him as they spoke. They say the position of people's legs show how they are inclined towards somebody. Towards is a good thing. Then a man drove by in a car and fired through the diner window. Because she was higher, and facing sideways, a bullet, intended for another, hit her near her waist, traveling through both of her kidneys, her liver, her stomach and her spine. Had she not liked the guy so well, had she been trying to get the waitress's attention, had she

gone to the restroom a bit later, she might have been missed, or at least just lost a kidney. "Classic wrong-place-wrong-time scenario," she offered, as I was now certainly giving her the face that made me cringe when other people gave it to me. The face that says, "holy sh*t that is so f*#!ed, that's the worst thing I have ever heard ever, I feel awful. I can't imagine [how messed up your life is]."

I was silent for a while. I was done asking stuff, also I was tired of thinking (that happened a lot). Finally, I said, "And you lived." She smiled and nodded, "While I was lying on my back on the floor, bleeding out, I realized I couldn't feel my legs. I realized that I could die if I wanted to. It was the strangest feeling. Then I thought about the things that I loved doing. I loved dancing to music, seeing my family, eating and going out with my friends. I realized I could do all of those things without my legs. So I decided to live."

I understood this feeling, this act of refusal is a real thing, choosing to keep on is a choice. I told her they didn't know if I'd ever fully recover, if I'd ever be functional again, get my memory back, learn the same way. She gave me the face I gave her five minutes before. "I can deal with this paralysis stuff, but I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't read or think straight." I shrugged and smiled, "It's not that bad when you're in it, I guess. You just have to deal with it, and make a choice that you're not gonna be the sad story."

A friend who'd broken his back in an accident had been told he'd never walk again. In the hospital for over a year, he decided that he had more to do, and decided that he would walk again. And he did. He admitted to me once that he was in more pain than most people would ever know or be able to tolerate, but that he got used to it. And that he had made a choice to keep going, to stay positive and win.

He told me, as did the woman on the plane, that sometimes our minds can make the difference when the slightest push in either direction could have very different consequences. I believe this so deeply. If we let it, love and life can win. If we let it, fear and sadness and death can win.

I kept this in mind as I dipped into and out of my illness for months and then years. The psychological negotiation often was as much of a contender as my physical symptoms.

Three years ago today I was released from the ICU. I wasn't able to walk, had an IV hooked up to my arm, had difficulty doing pretty much everything. I remember it was late evening on July 3rd, and in retrospect there was some poetry on being released on the cusp of Independence Day. My brother and his boyfriend went into the front yard and kit some fireworks. I watched through the window. Home was starkly quieter than the ICU. For days a patient across the hall had been screaming "Help me, help me, help me" nonstop. They'd brought me earplugs. My heart went out to this person. And I wondered whether they could know that I was trying to love them, as best I could, from across the hall.

As we sickle over our phones, scrolling for the latest great tragedy, new lists of victims of bullets and bomb blasts...it feels easy to feed into feelings of hate and helplessness and despair. "The world is falling apart," etc. But -- I do feel like we have a choice in all of this. I think our current political moment is emblematic of this choice. There are people out there who want us to go deeper into our fears, who profit from it, who obtain power through it. An important person in my life once said to me, "Lies come in on wings, the truth on crutches. But truth does come."

As a person who is still learning about this country's fraught histories, I'm somewhat ambivalent about Independence Day. In the wake of so much violence, I am also trying to learn more about my own nationalism and the role it plays in my understanding of the world and my own identity. However, I do think this day offers us an opportunity for reflection.

What are the forces that colonize our lives, our minds, and how can we declare our own independence? How, if at all, can we find the structures that last (friends, family, beauty, love, grace)? We can choose love in this world. Find it. Divine it from the air. We can choose to live a full life no matter what is thrown our way, to make each day beautiful, even when it is consumingly ugly. Love is waiting for us if we choose it. It's there, everywhere, though it may not seem obvious. But, wherever it is (even on crutches), it is very, very strong, so true. And I'm not saying it's easy, I still sometimes find myself crouching towards cynicism. Because it's so, so easy...

Last word: who gets it in an email? Also this

Art-aids-america review

June 3

June 7 way worse in morning ended up leaving work early had trouble staying up in my chair 2:30 pm took car home and basically slept

June 9 hard time understanding people when speaking too tired to process language v dizzy

Hate crimes are acts of terrorism. All crimes are hate crimes. If we could view them all as such... Without fomenting further aggressions towards [group of choice].

We do have an international terrorism problem. ISIS is a problem. We have a national terrorism problem. We do have an anti-Immigration problem. We do have a gun control problem. We do have a homophobia problem. We do have an islamophobia problem. Racism/fear of other undercurrent through all

That they see this first as a radical islamist terrorist attack means that homos are less the villain now?

Talk notes uniondocs steve warwick

Clubs site of unprotected sex - AIDS - infection mimetic - pure and tainted ICE - oil - alien parasite - part of mythology arc

shoes maybe

today

read

BILL

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drone ex

to do studio

Matilda

Unite

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Condition of exile - opinions change about you instantly. 60 million refugees in the world 16-17 years -

We have to know it. We cannot not know it we are part of the crime. Obligation to speak up.

Art is not problem less- creating problems. Creating new language about a new condition

Ethos of Warhol - democratizing images art - take on language or democratizing information, followers

To show your existence - presence - to function as normal. Bring common beauty in the life. Not become a radical.

diversity group blurb

The goal of this conversation is to continue and expand the discussion surrounding the recent events at Yale. We ask that you come prepared having read the email from Erika Christakis, the open letter response, and the Next Yale demands. Additionally, we are providing supplementary material to help guide the conversation. This reading group is open to everyone.

interactions make their mark

"Each and every one of us is a living assemblage of every embrace, every conversation, every argument, every meal shared, every laugh had. Every interaction with a person, a place, an animal, or any being. And each of us leaves a trace on others. Keep this in your mind – we make and remake the social world with our every interaction. Try to be present in the fact that although no minute will ever come again, never in all the world, that perhaps that minute becomes us and we are a living memorial to it." -Paige West

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revelation

Essex Hemphill

Red X

Lights for space poly rope

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possible 4 spring

rose day 1

Roach poem from facebook

on falling

residencies

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Annie's Dessert

I'm a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing, specifically made from Georgetown cupcakes. The cake itself is small. It is sweet and moist and leaves you craving some more. It's not too sweet that you can't fathom finishing it. It's just a perfect balance of a sweeter cake and a more bitter chocolate icing filling. The icing is smooth and cuts the sweetness of the cake. It's made from peanuts so it's not even that unhealthy. It's not too flashy. Nothing extravagant on the top just a small garnish that depends on the holiday.

Francine Conley

Adrienne

Here's one of my favorite poems in the world. I saw her read this a long time ago and, as the words left her mouth, they stitched themselves into my soul and became forever a part of me.

Thank you for living, for being so angry, so fearless, so inspirational, for diving into the wreck of your life, and ours.

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Smoking

Saturday/Sunday afternoons (mostly in bathroom.

Monday, Feb 29, 6 -8 pm

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Can Architects Come Up With a Better Border?:
http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/03/can-architects-design-a-better-border-wall/473895/

The Fine Art of Gentrification

[empty]

Mostly I want to be letters

http://vinylpoetryandprose.com/2016/03/kaveh-akbar/

"Mostly I want to be letters—not

their sounds, but their shapes

on a page. It must be exhilarating

to be a symbol for everything at once:

the bone caught in a child’s windpipe,

the venom hiding in a snake’s jaw." Kaveh Akbar

toddler balancing on ledge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88dAiinZZKk&list=PLbhFrMvcYkP4t7yk_IV6JRKc0EOQcRxdD

Poems

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 10.24.56 PM.png

Homeostasis - Andrea Witzke Slot

Homeostasis

_______________________

Regulate me,

stabilize me,

give me the hailing path

rising toward horizon’s storm.

After all,

we do not draw

back our axes in isolation,

for, if we do,

death is the only certainty—

and not

the kind of death you think I mean:

not a woman tripping into

the car-filled street, a man murdered by a liver

punch he didn’t see

coming, a boy falling into a well.

Heraclitus

hypothesized that a static, unchanged state

was not a natural human condition,

a condition in which we could live communally,

die communally.

(The ability to undergo constant change is intrinsic

to all things, in all things.)

And Empedocles? All matter

is divined of elements

that are in dynamic alliance

or opposition to one another.

The or is essential to your understanding.

And so it is for ships

to sail, bicycles to move,

birds to fly, people to breathe or walk

or love or live. Just a physiological

phenomenon that leads

to the rare: the moment in which we are alone and not, moving and still,

where we settle into the storm’s eye,

that place where worries and cellphones are silenced and tucked away into pockets:

a train window by which we sit and watch the world and all its loved ones rush pass—

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Dear Lizzy,

This is you. At 2:57 pm and counting on Friday, February 26, 2016. You are frustrated. And sad (still) about this girl who for no apparent reason just totally ditched you. The funny thing was that she kind of led you to believe otherwise, all while you were having really great conversations about a whole range of things.

In a few days, you will feel better, in a few months, it will seem so distant, and in a few years you may have already forgotten about this whole thing. But right now it really sucks.

It mostly sucks because you had sort of convinced yourself that it was impossible to have the kind of intellectual intimacy with somebody that you had with XXXXXXXXX. Although you had for several months tried at being friends, XXXXXXXXX expressed her feelings for you a few weeks ago, and threw you off kilter again when she said she'd never talk with you again, and then of course texted the next day. This spurred what I think was an incredibly smart and brave thing to do, which was to tell her that you couldn't speak with her again. Of course, with this, the inevitable loneliness. You struggled for weeks with your work, trying to find the right words for it, and honing in on the images as friends tried to help but often floundered and confused your efforts. That was really hard.

And then, just two weeks before the show opened, you sort of accidentally got on Tinder and hit it off almost immediately with a girl who said - also pretty quickly - that she only wanted to only date you, that you were "really great," and that she felt like you were kindred spirits. She showed you something really important, which was that yes, you could find somebody who could be on par with you intellectually and like the kooky creative side too, and contribute to that, and be open to your insights. Her research and work was so interesting. It felt like it could really turn into love, and it might have already done so for you, you tend to make up your mind fast on matters of the heart. It felt special, pretty rare, even though she was an example of the possibility of finding somebody like her.

I don't know if you went wrong, if at all, or where. I'm not sure you did. You were yourself, messy, silly, generous, smart and stupid sometimes both. What was it that scared her away? You are thinking things like, "was it because i was too tall, or put on some weight" - that's residue from XXXXXXXXX who said he broke up with me because i was fat, and from frenemy XXXXXXXXX in high school who said nobody wanted to date you because you were too tall "an oaf" was how she put it. or was it because she didn't see how smart i was (an insecurity you recently realized was adopted from XXXXXXXXX who say "this might sound stupid" pretty much all the time), or maybe i moved too fast (society), or maybe my friends said something stupid at the opening (insecurities, also real possibility).

Hard to know, definitely not worth spending more time thinking about. You've spent a lot of time thinking about this, but now you realize that's because wrapped up in this is every doubt and insecurity that has ever been dished out to you...

You're not going to find a partner today. Today and yesterday you spent an obsessive amount of time on both tinder and match.com respectively, even spent money you didn't have on a subscription to match, why, who knows. You clearly have tasted blood and want more (ha). Just -- listen -- don't get into a feeding frenzy. Take your friends' advice, take it slow, keep in touch. Not everything needs to happen now, even though from the bottom of your heart you want it to be over, and to start the real work, of maintaining a lasting relationship in time. But that's good work, feels less futile and exhausting.

You will get there, it is your job to surprise people, to singularly defy expectations. It's one of the things you do best. You have staged comeback after comeback. And it is your job to be stronger and better. Or at least try, always, to do your very best and to conquer your fears.

It's now 3:23 pm, and you've taken a long break to swipe about a million times on tinder. Maybe take a break? At least for a day. Maybe take a break from everything. Be XXXXXXXXX for a day. What would XXXXXXXXX say about this?

Just...pretend til it's ok again. And it will be, I promise. XXXXXXXXX happened in a matter of minutes, XXXXXXXXX happened at the turn of a corner, XXXXXXXXX happened over a winter break. People come into your life all the time, in so many different ways. That's such a cool thing. It's always when you least expect it that things like this come up. You've put yourself out there, put stuff out in the universe, lots and lots of good stuff. And... so try to be patient. Know that you are the type of person that will always work hard to get what they need, and seek it out in the most uncommon ways.

Let yourself have this week of yes, until you don't need it anymore. And allow yourself to just keep on keeping on. I believe in you.

xoxo Lizzy

conf#

0043HC

This evening in Studio

- Write a check for Xxxxxxxxxxx

- Create a download link for Xxxxxxxxxxx's Piece

- Order from Echod Graphics - CAN mount on glass, so works.

- Finish Sound of nail video, create duplicate sequence. Start color correction.

- Maybe a little bit of yoga!

Music listening look up

heavy flowers blaudzun

j mascis wide awake

phoria emanate

(no subject)

http://m.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/expert-neighbors-smoking-pot-article-1.1074379

http://www.maskmagazine.com/not-again/struggle/sick-woman-theory

(no subject)

Email andrew about tech requirements

knees

(no subject)

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/12/10/the-displaced-person/

Emergency Blankets

http://www.amazon.com/Emergency-Thermal-Blankets-Sliver-Golden/dp/B00JGMSCIU/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1451335741&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=gold+emergency+blanket

(no subject)

(no subject)

hamilton book and face wax strips

electrolyte drinks deleuze widely armed citizenry

我吃你的脸。

(no subject)

Transcription

CHASE BILL

Video Transfers

(no subject)

Cable management

(no subject)

July 3

Last word: who gets it in an email? Also this

Art-aids-america review

June 3

Talk notes uniondocs steve warwick

shoes maybe

today

read

BILL

(no subject)

drone ex

to do studio

Matilda

Unite

(no subject)

(no subject)

diversity group blurb

interactions make their mark

(no subject)

(no subject)

revelation

Essex Hemphill

Red X

Lights for space poly rope

(no subject)

possible 4 spring

rose day 1

Roach poem from facebook

on falling

residencies

(no subject)

(no subject)

Annie's Dessert

Francine Conley

Adrienne

(no subject)

Smoking

(no subject)

The Fine Art of Gentrification

Mostly I want to be letters

toddler balancing on ledge

Poems

Homeostasis - Andrea Witzke Slot

Homeostasis

(no subject)

conf#

This evening in Studio

Music listening look up

(no subject)

(no subject)

knees

(no subject)

Emergency Blankets

Univers

(no subject)

Advice

(no subject)

you will look at this and say i had black hair once

notes from Dan meeting

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(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

advice

Possible dates

(no subject)

reading light

(no subject)