*This romp known as life

I awoke splayed like an amoeba, twisted in my bedsheets, my first thoughts of writing. Is it a normal hour yet? Can I get up and write now? I forgot to turn off my nightlight. My night light being a Buddhist prayer rice paper lantern thingy whos reflected shadows spin to the heat made by tiny resilient bulb tucked in the center.
I’ve lost it. What to write. I went to bathroom I thought of Chinese food I shed a layer of clothing. I thought of boys and asking several out and had conversations in my head. Thought about a particular one a lot. Suddenly realized I had God boxed this particular boy just hours before and envisioned his name on a small piece of paper (like the fortune cookie paper) floating in air and following path of dotted lines into box. God box. It’s this box (full of notes usually) that I put my problems and worries and obsessions in when I can’t do it alone anymore. I write down a name or a heated paragraph or a sugary sweet plea and I fold it up and say a quick prayer and toss it in.

I imagined what a great screen print that it would make, and proceeded to think out the process that that would entail and pondered whether or not I should just get on up and screen print a couple, WHEN suddenly- the thought occurred, as they usually do,(sudden and unmoving once having arrived)
“My god box might be stolen”
As in my sacred, sacred, almighty and powerful God box was thieved. Swiped. Attained inappropraitly, ill gained. Stolen stolen stolen. My follow up thought to that was “no” haha which is probably the most common response to any of my inner truths. No. No. NOPE. Nah-uh go away. SHH! Nonono. go away. F_CK! Ok. I guess you can stay. Your just gonna sit there in the middle of the room with that elephant guy everyone always talks about. You know the one. The pink one? Anyways, take your coat off then..go on. Go on I said! Hi, let me introduce myself. My name is Emily and I balk at You.
Psh. Truth. You and your silly capital letter, pro-nouned ass.

Once I got over the fact of how unoriginal I am in that I am a beginner writer and thus I am going write blatanly of/about myself mostly, I sprang to my feet and ski socked it to my computer, two feet away from my bed. And now I sit. Typing and checking email, sucked into the vortex that is the computer. My loved pet monster. That owns me. Or rather “pones” me as my brother would say. I am so poned, man, by my ‘puter and the internet. Totally puter-poned.
I feel super thirsty due to the mountain of Chinese food I ate at dinner tonight, which was totally f-in awesome, by the wiz-ay. A little slang for ya there. Little Southern youth sli-zang. It‘s a language started by rappers. No, not rapports, RAPPERS. Those fast talking folk with weird vocabulary and who whoop n’ holler and tend to repeat themselves a lot. And shout redundancies. No more on that. Moving on.

I was sitting at a round table (which after using such a phrase I immediately try to conjur up metaphors to King Arthur. None coming forth. So nevermind) with my family in Korea Town Shopping Plaza on Bu-fad Highwaaay. My writer, rock-climbing, every-sport-‘cept-football, musician brother to my left; next to him my fashion designing oil painting jewelery making little cousin; next to her my producer uncle, her father, from England; next to him my Key Grip, film-industry, computer tech dad; next to him my financial advisor, executive producer aunt; next to her, her friend, theater director and actress visiting from London; next to her my hybrid painter writer all around altruist mother. Then me. Artist writer model, imperfect beautiful goof.

Brilliant and exciting conversation sprang forth. I was deeply inwoven in the beings around the table. I have taken my close and extended family for granted for many a year and am here to report no more! I have a feeling about my family today much like the feeling I use to get when I would long to be someone else. To be in someone else’s life and in someone else’s skin and how it would be better somehow. Except I am that someone else now and I have that family today! I’ve been surrounded by both all along But only in the past couple have I come to love know and embrace the two with a full and openly grateful heart. They haven't changed so much as I have. I mean they change and stuff, but what I mean is I have had dramatic and upheaving change occur within me in the past couple. And its rad man.
Which brings us to the meat and potatoes: I don’t want to be anyone else but me today.
Though I don’t always accept myself, and I often dislike where I’m at emotionally and spiritually, yet I still yearn to be just me. My phone display has been “be yourself” for the better part of this year. If we must dice it into better parts and whatnot. Some of my year of parts included death and pubescent lusting. Fear, faith, laurels, pain. A well loved friend died, my gramma died, I started to “date” (snigger). I expanded my inner circle outer. Now I can say I have social scene like a well-balanced belly button. Something of both sides; me in the middle bouncing. Like lent. Though personally, my belly button lent does not bounce, it just sorta collects into itself and nestles. If yours bounces, please start a short documentary film and let me be art director.

Last summer, I fell in love with the girl i had become. Feet steeping in cowboy boots and neck toggled with wooden beads; laying in the middle of an abandoned parking lot cradled between highway underpass and furniture store. Wondering whether or not I had “abandoned myself to God” and stuff. Laughing upwards into swelling night sky, nails gritted into pavement, body rolling with a joy electric. Resting head on chest of a brother. Jason dear. Another night, same parking lot, dancing in the chemistry before the storm with three sisters. The air alive in an intensity I remember today like cobalt. Rain finally bursting forth like the flesh of an over ripened fruit. Product of the land, left in sky, exploding downwards once again. Heaving ourselves into growing puddles and laughing untethered.; the warm asphalt muck contrasting with the sharp chill of the seeded rain fruit. Clothes sagging heavy and clinging cold. Soaked to the bone and moccasined, I ran into myself and was enthralled. I fell in love. With art, with life, with a power unknown, with my family, with my friends, with our mortality, our humanness, with moments.

This summer and through the winter, with cutout in one hand and a can in the other, pencil stabbed into tresses, face squinched into rubber mask, I found more life. Looking like war and feeling like a child, I painted and sketched my way into some beautiful places. Art became a deeper and more urgent form of my higher power, of life. (Three of the saaaaaaaaame) Arms bracleted with rolls of blue tape I pounced into projects. Sweaty bandana strapped and sap happy I crouched and I painted. I measured and I taped. With gristled fingerless gloves I aimed. Backyard driveway turning colors one splatter at a time. This fall microns, sharpies, and paint pens reigned my nights. Knives and boxes birthed secret worlds and people out of delerium and procrastination. Keyboard keys clucked and screen purred, as I discovered the joy of words and stories written in truth. Gallery hopper extrodinaire (haha), I was to be seen on the scene, found inside galleries all over the city. Soaking in the sweet, strange juices of the art world in Atlanta. Always trying to find an accomplice to join in on the fever. (Rue..:)) that’s what happens to a smiley face in a parenthesis. It gets fat and has double chin syndrome.
I dig this romp called life and I am glad to have been a part for yet another day.

And by the way, I have a new Godbox. The old is going to Goodwill. Maybe I'll leave a note in it (tehe:))) triple chin

Mo’ lata yo.