Cows and the Bridge of Wonder – Acrylic and Mixed Media Collage

Missionary Drag: Performance Art Experiment #1

This project was me tagging along on an assignment my sweetie had in his class with Guillermo Gomez Peña, aka La Pocha Nostra. The idea (insofar as I employed it): dressed as a subcultural archetype during the ordinary routines of your day, make note of how you are observed.

I opted to do this one on a Sunday, rather than scar myself for months to come by wearing it to work.

Buying slash actually putting the cross around my neck was a little much. I felt like that girl in the exorcist, only more exilic, afraid that exposure to the symbol was going cause my personal-ancestral history to dissolve on contact.

The tits were a little freaky too, to be totally honest.

Note 1: there is no relationship between the missionary and the tejano. They just happen to live together. Although one has to wonder who might be converting whom.

Note 2: This outfit resulted in the first smiles I have ever received at my neighborhood dollar tree. Many smiles. Many.

Note 3: I thought this was going to be the dry run for a larger and more perfectly executed performance occupation of daily life. But in retrospect, one day was really enough christianity for one lifetime, thx.

For more on Gomez-Peña, watch Segundo Duelo, an excellent and hilarious video. Subtitled in English for monolingual convenience.

“Machete as Verb and Noun”: new essay on Redlemona.de

Hey readers,

Sorry I have been quiet here. I promise that it is only because I have other interesting projects brewing. Check out some of my latest at Redlemona.de.

http://redlemona.de/red-lemonade/blog/iterations-of-identity-2-machete

Here’s a little excerpt:

Let me tell you a story…

I come from a family of liars, by which I mean travelers, by which I mean that in the absence of memory, we have learned to create memories. I come from a family of liars, by which I mean that we are the stories we tell—no more or less.

Now go check it out! Make me look popular!

Also….If you are a writer, you should check out the Red Lemonade site in general. It’s a pretty cool idea. Free writer idea exchange–people post works-in-progress and get comments from other writers. They also publish and promote grassroots literary projects directly from the press by the same name. I would love to see more critically-inclined queer-thinking types on there, but the structure is compelling…

A White Dog (further city poems)

[Found in a box--from last fall, i think.)

I lived in the city a long time
I had a small white dog I carried under one arm

which, on closer inspection,
was never a dog
& not quite white

nonetheless I carried it.

I had a key ring with only three keys.
Even in a city you don’t need more than this
if you are careful, limited
willing to wait.

You forget things,
living long enough.

I suppose I might have had a dog
or might have often walked behind
a man who did—
a little dog with stained fur
he carried
while I wished without reason for it to be a sweater.

Love is cheap in the city
but will cause you to
acquire, uncritically.

The woman in 1A
had a ring of keys heavy as bowling ball.
She used to have one of those, too.
She’d set it on the floor
while she flicked through the circle, looking.

Morning or night,
she stood her doorside vigil with furrowed brow
fingering the teeth, skipping those in colored bands.
It took so long.

Me?
I didn’t struggle to get home.

Only wondered what doors belonged to those keys,
how many of them she really needed to open.

Me?
I had just one.
Two, if you counted the gate that hung on its hinge
hadn’t closed right in years.

In fact, that gate was another version of the city.

The third key
was not a key
at all.

The third key could not be changed.
And still: could not be thrown away.

My New Gay Performance Art Crush, or: Why I Moved to California…

http://hickeysushi.blogspot.com/

His name is Philip Huang and he goes to anti-gay protests holding a sign that says, “NO FAGS ON THE MOON.” Must I say more?

Well, There’s Liminality and There’s Liminality: On the Marginalized Writer and the Cult of Outsider Status (with a few digs at J.D. Salinger)

Holden Caulfield is no one I’ve ever cared about.

For readers inhabiting multiple planes of marginalization and erasure, the idea of liminality or outsider status takes on a different tone than those who might see it as a side effect of their unique selfhood, their own rebellious nature.

For many of us, we did not rebel against society and the family. From the start, society/family rebelled against us. We were pushed to the margins or were driven there by the grief of being asked to subdivide and censor our beings.

The marginal writer (the targeted writer) is no Holden Caulfield, for we understand the preciousness of human society, we love and are invested. Unlike Caulfield—the icon of the normative, white, male artist—it is our very engagement that forces us to relentlessly observe, to criticize, to reflect society back to itself. Most importantly, we demand an unflinching ethic not only from society, but also from ourselves as artists and ourselves as individuals. What divides us here from the propaganda-distributionist or the evangelical minister is that we don’t presume a goal of purity or the achievement of an ideal world. Rather, we strive to see, to see more clearly and to act in accordance with that sight. Not a fixedness (that which has marginalized us in the first place), but a flexible, progressive envisioning, that works to encompass an increasing truth, holding each to the same standard of rigorous observation.

Caulfield could afford the adolescent irony which he used to disguise his own sadness from himself. The writer who has had liminality thrust upon her, must craft characters and plots, wield language, with deadly authenticity. If she can learn anything from arch, young Holden, it is how good a lie feels in the mouth, how much truth it can reveal. Unlike Holden, we have been watching a long time. We know (or teach ourselves to believe) that the stories that collect in our mouths are significantly more accurate than any possible recitation of facts.

a small break

…a long last (for now anyway) look at the morning light in the DF, Mex…

 

the uneven rhythm of this blog continues. i´ve been finishing college (whoa dude) and transitioning back to life in the States, looking for work, ETC.

BUT REALLY i have been writing lots of very dark little short stories for a manuscript i am working on.

i dont know when my next blog posts will be showing up, but the site is still alive. just hibernating.

if you want, you can sign up for an email subscription, and then you never have to check back because you´ll just know when something new goes up.

xoxo

l.d.