*small giggle* And.. why- why do I HAVE to have a blog to be an artist? Spent the other half of yesterday pouring through riciduliously cool magazines, on a Hastings floor, taking notes on their submissions processes, their topics, their photos, etc. I came to a few conclusions:

1) Everything costs money- yet somehow- all the time i make my art out of things I find in the street- why is showcasing my art more expensive than the actual creation process? This refuses to make sense to my brain.

2)I must have a blog. I must decide to be a blogger, to blog, and to keep my blog regular if I want anyone to take me seriously. (I do disagree with this- and this whole rant is more for the sake of frustrated, tired complaining, than true, true TRUE disgruntlement.) Blog wise- I have always had a blog. It’s just been in the background of Fin consciousness.

I blogged as a teenager. There are probably at least ten lost blogs of Fin Graves and her emo teenage poetry. So, this is what “Blog” says to me. Also- i can’t use glue on my computer. I can’t use thread, or tape, or any form of paste or adhesive, in order to get the pictures i want to get, onto the screen. This… this lack of hands on ablility to showcase my work, instead having to trade tape for htmp code- sucks.

As I am compulsed to be an artist- as i am born to create art- as i thrive thinking in art formates…  here I am. Blogging. Hi.

Fin out.

Cover1

Diana and the Faerys

Side View of Drawers

Full detail

 A refurbished Art book. By no means my first, but my first in which the primary tones were earthy. Made for a friend- boots. Mail art style, b/c mailed to her afterwards.

I am learning to keep a record of my art, b/c I just give it away.

 

Thursdays I lie to myself

I allow moments of cockiness

To slip between the filthy sheets

Where our cats have been sick from our leavings.

Mondays, I know my place

pathetic and semi-hung over

From a party I didn’t attend

Rummaging about for a left over bagel.

A weekday hang-over (of weed)after weed whacking.

Wednesdays, I feel the evenings with giggling and sex.

Watching your eyes as my fingers slide in, just right,

Inches from your resistance.

And I feel alive watching you move into me,

Close, flat, against your flesh.

Fridays are my salvation

From a week of hell which return each Monday.

Fridays are my return to electric.

Static and bubbles before the weekend

Leaves me weak from overuse.

But Thursdays?

Thursdays are the miserable days,

I find myself falling in love with.

The evenings enchant me and I remind myself

To keep lying, keep discounting the appeal.

Thursdays feel like skateboarding on ice.

Slick, cold concrete under unsteady wheels,

My shaky legs quivering under a sport I never learned.

Being to busy with tongue tastings,

And learning how to fuck.

Thursdays feel like smoking kisses after sex,

While we shiver and watch nicotine diffuse

into the cold winter air.

It feels like freeze frame memories

Tinged with cancer and ice.

Sunshine Shame

This morning I drank sunshine with honey

Against her breasts, her hands in my hair

Calling my name into my mouth

And I couldn’t have felt closer

-except for if I’d taken of my clothes.

My clothes came off with you last night

My bare limbs shivering under scrutiny

Knowing each one of my flaws stood upright

Exposed by the forest coving my legs,

No one writes poetry about shame.

Shame is mixed up with every woman I drink

Every tongue flick bringing you closer to coming

And I woke up this morning to sunshine

Away from you and back against her skin

Sunshine and delight- a bouncing energy ball

Giggling inside me, bursting into fists of fireworks.

She is to blame for my comfortable joy,

She is to blame for my almost caught-peacefully feeling

She is to blame for my heart being open to loving

Yet you are the one watching me fall.

I am letting go and dropping

The way my stomach sinks

An easy fallback from grace to shame.

Nothing is allowed to be simple for me

Not even the stuck on perma-grin of after orgasmic sex .

Each look or touch I offer you

Comes tinged with back story memories

Pink-carry-ons of places and people I once was

Still, I noticed you looking at me today

And I can’t help gazing back at you.

You make it easy on my eyes.

Waiting on you for Poetry

I don’t want to steal the words from your mouth

But I am not able to sit still long enough

Tapping my toes, popping my knuckles,

waiting on you

To write something.

You speak images into being

and I feel the backbeat

-The bass impacting the words,

 the words running, tripping for context.

A Do-It-Yourself drumming challenge.

Change the coffee shop-keep the smell of grinding beans

pick them from the red letters of a grocery store bag,

protect them in tinfoil,

hang them as ornaments around your neck

Dress them up- wear them out and show them off

to a World in which words matter.

Words to me shine brighter than Christmas lights

Molded into balls, handing from around-the-block trees,

Glittering against the lamp light of “a well established

Portland neighborhood. ”

And right now?

To my senses, you alternate between switched on-summer sunshine

And switched off- hidden in the noir themes of perpetual tragedy.

What does perpetual tragedy even mean?

It means, you are afraid of feeling words

Afraid of the poetry- Which already comes

 bouncing off the tip of your  pierced-tongue

Into msn conversations I save,

text messages I lock and occasionally flyer my journal with

in the lavender and turquoise of tiny Post-Its.

The poetry is blocked by fear, and it slips out

when you’re that much closer to coming.

I may just be self-involved and projecting my insecurities

Onto the pads of your hesitant fingertips, but I see you

Being afraid of feeling -

 The words reverberating inside of you.

Afraid of the poetry which comes from opening up

And I do not begrudge you for your fears, for

You’ve been burned, scarred recently,

Under the scalpel and reconstructed by skin stitches

But for the love of your scars,

And my fetish desires,

I cannot hold back the influx of longing

Which comes from looking at you across a couch from me,

Though a blank webcam which doesn’t flicker pictures,

Or a photograph of the ghost of your kitten.

You make my muses return, and I see

a flowing highway of fireflies,

Lighting the ring of fairy mushrooms appearing at my feet

melting two feet of snow in order that

I may remember-All Things are magick

and magick is caught, contained, directed-

In(by) words

So I must write.

The two of us deal with tragedy so differently.

You hide under your bed sheets displaced by dreams

- you’re bent on not remembering.

You slip under the radar for depression by holding physical symptoms, close

Closer to your still healing heart and breasts.

This keeps you sicker, but not impure, not toxic,

While I expose every detail,

Open my wounds to light, Digging out the shrapnel

With my just washed, chewed-down fingernails,

Which leaves my palms full of gunk and blood and

The end result of bullets rolling around my fingertips,

Track marks of how many times I almost died,

But didn’t.

Actually,

-I meant to say,

I write.

Just walking into the Co-op felt like therapy, or a warm bubble bath— filled with Epson salts and lavender. I bought cheesecloth to make a spice bag, baggette and blue cheese, and goat brie to delight Nora and I, and vanilla macaroon granola mostly for myself. *purrs and remembers the smells of the Co-op*

Amazon and I left, wandered our way to Ross @ the Palouse Mall, and she discovered pretty black, lacy lingerie. *grins* It was cute to see her try it on. I found a strainer for Cinnamon Coffee, a bamboo cutting board and matching knife set for Nora(our anniversary is tomorrow) and we both looked at journals for Turtle. Our last place was Waldenbooks, where we kept nixing journal ideas, to girly, too frilly, to busy, to nice, until Amazon slid around the corner to me, as I was drooling over a wooden, gold-leaf journal, a black based journal with colored robots all over it. Perfect. And we got 20% off on it, so it only cost the both of us $7 a piece. It was a nice find, and shopping is very therapeutic.

We both went home, and I discovered Nora in our parking lot, just getting home from babysitting Thursdays. *breathes happily* Turtle dropped by with R and J, to pick up the journal I’d been holding for her, we all chatted for a bit and then they left.

I shuffled my tarot cards between my hands, back and forth, dashing cards between cards every once in awhile, dropping the deck, picking it up, shuffling conventionally, getting to know my cards. When I felt ready, to do a reading for myself, I went into the bedroom, cleared off and made the bed, rearranged Cooter, Jenny and Jr. into comfortable spots behind me on the pillows. I laid out my candle circle on the top of the dresser, re-working the circle a few times till I laid down a red lid, poured sand from near Vantage, WA onto it and squared the candles out to 8 with the 9^th off centered in the middle. I laid my wand, my sword and my spector across the sand, zig-zaged beneath it, and placed my bone-goddess pendant on top in a place which felt right. I lit the candles starting at the head, clockwise and ending back at the head. I used both matches and a lighter, as the lighter began to spark. The alter glowed. White, vanilla candles glowing with warm, yellow flames flicking on top and within. My spector-wand laid out, with my sign inscribed visibly below it, and the goddess pendant seeming to move in the flicker-dance of the flames.

I lit the last, three wicked, vanilla, house candle and almost prayed, I chanted. I questioned the cards, “How do I heal, How do I heal, How Do I heal?” questioning on my in-breath and “relax”ing on my out-breath. I saw green light, the green of the candle marked healing at the Co-op, flowing around my hands, around the cards, and in and out of my breath. Then when the question made it into the cards, I charged the cards, turning them from the side, to face down. As I charged the cards, I visualized an orange-red or warmth, a warm yellow, flowing into the cards, giving them power and giving me power to look into my subconscious with the cards as my guide. Then I released the power and it dissolved, warm, dry mist into the air, into the comforting smell of my bedroom.

The cards told me of my own nostalgia, with the 5 of cups, about the possibility of a previous love returning into my life, or of dwelling on memories right now, the place where I’m at. My crossing card was the Queen of Cups, and as she gazes, I am ambivalent, not uncaring, but torn between two directions, which muddle my clarity. My crowning card I don’t remember, but the Base of the Matter turned over the Knight of Cups, reminding me of a deep seated desire for romance, and a belief in the ideal of love, telling me to remember and see my own need for romantic, or courtly love. The card of Past Influences made me laugh, b/c it told me summer is over, it’s time to put away the desire for fresh fruits and veggies, and sun dancing, and begin to think about the sensual, fall aspects of myself, b/c summer is over. I laughed b/c yesterday was the first below 30 degree day we’ve had this year. Obviously summer is over. Still, I hear, indulge my sensuality, and I fear my sensuality lately. The card in the 6^th position was the Page of Wands, atop the golden fleece, telling me of my own restlessness and creativity beginning to stir around and bubble in my mind and fingertips. The card reminded me, that while not all creative ideas are good, to not discount them, often the beginning ideas, are the spices, stirring into the pot, which begin the delicious process of cooking. The card telling me where I am right now showed a place of celebration, 6 or 7 wands. A place to take a minute, celebrate and reflect and get ready for the next assault. My 8^th card, how my Family and Friends see me, was a remarkable position of power, The Queen of Pentacles. She holds aloft a golden pentacle, and a bounty of grapes in her other hand. It’s a place of power and visibility, often of sexuality. A revered position. What to take away from this? That while I feel like I’m drowning(though less so after my reading and calming), others see me as succeeding, as pushing through, capable of making it out alive and better, whole. My 9^th card in the spread, Hopes and Fears was expected. It was Zeus, arrayed in purple, the Ace of Wands, telling me again of my restless creative energy and warning me of my fear of success. I hope to succeed artistically, and I also fear any success. It told me unless I trust in myself and the decisions I make, I will easily fall. By my own hand, not by the hand of others, as most failures occur in my mind. (I recalled this entire spread from memory, and know I missed one card, but I don’t know where.) My last card, my answer to “How do I heal” was “You must be torn to bits, because you keep helping others and can’t seem to help yourself, so your limbs will be torn from your body, your memories ripped out, and you will experience a death of sorts. Then, then only, when you are broken down, may you heal. So welcome the pain as it comes, but do not revel in it. Feel it and let it go.”

I thanked the cards, wrapped them carefully in their cloth, and blew out the candles widdershins before calling Nora to bed.

The reading and the breathing and the candles helped me. I glowed for most of the evening, and I woke up this morning at 7am, ready to write about it. Now, I will curl up, savor my tea and gaze out into the grey morning. What an English way to start it all.  

I feel like cutting up glue, pasting pictures over words, words over pictures, stealing other people’s artwork and making my own. Did you know if you change someone’s art work by a little over 10% it counts as yours? What a number. Art is not protected. Though I have made the decision to not protect my own art, both on deviantart.com, on my blogs, and in life.

I have such a problem selling my pieces, not for lack of interest, people are always interested in fucked up shit, but for lack of a willingness to give pieces of me away like that. Right now, on my wall in the apartment, I have all my favorites up. The living room wall is full of color, of body panting pieces, of drawings, sketches, little pictures I doodles of waitresses in Lucca, Italy. Bit by bit, moments of me.

I added on my art major this year, which adds up to three majors and Nora graduated from WSU in May 2009. I’ll still be here, doing things, learning. I added on the last major b/c I couldn’t go any further by myself. I have these pictures in my head, these paintings, which I can’t replicate because my painting skills aren’t as good as the paintings I have in my mind.

Heidi is going to teach me, this semester or next, how to build my own canvases. I have these large scale painting in my head, my size or bigger. I need all this room to get things on the canvas, and there’s no room on the small ones.

Still, I’ll be drawing after I shave my legs today, one more uncommon than the other. I’ll be cutting. I’ll be pulling out all the poetry and fiting it onto to page. Or i won’t. because my poetry falls flat. falls down and feels hopeless. Not everyday, just now.