Migrate to Electronics Movement

Dear blog,

I migrated you to http://stickypsyche.wordpress.com/ because Googs doesn't let you own your own posts and Wordpress is easier to edit with.

Love,
M

Some Point

The last part of half waking I was exploring space, as space, and as I went deeper into it I saw that between smaller and smaller increments of space was more space.

Before that I had been avoiding the disease in the closet, where many others were crammed and sure to die. I lived with four others in a desk. It was the holocaust and we were hiding.

Dad made me an almond milk latte, saving one of the shots for a macchiato, which is how I enjoy my coffee in the morning. I was looking for my sunglasses and dad said he had made me room on the sunglasses-rack over some hours of endless tasks.

“All the tasks will be done at some point.” “They will be when I’m dead.”

I wore my back-up-glove-box-shades and as I drove I worked on relaxing my jaw. The mid-back of my head was leaking its invisible golden fluid into my perception.  

#1 Great Uncle

One time when I was 12 or something my great uncle Paul described to me how he was the Cowardly Lion. Something about his words had so much resonance that it made me go to my room to cry. 

Recently I came home from a camping misadventure to a heaviness in the room and mom told me he had died. I felt like a real shit-head for not visiting him on his death bed. A bright blue sadness enveloped us.

He had stage 4 lung cancer so we knew he was not much longer for earth. In Breaking Bad reference I said: "At least he can stop selling meth." My mom said: "Oh he stopped doing that years ago." 

Some iconic memories with Uncle Paul took place in the exchange of gifts. He once gave Noah a Hastings gift card with the inscription: "Question everything and trust no one" done in his quintessential scrawl. 

Some years ago he sent us a holiday greeting with him standing in front of a forest of marijuana with "Hi, Merry X-Mas" written below. 

Last year we bought him a hoodie with a marijuana leaf on it, and Hawaiian seeds in the pocket. 

When I started college Uncle Paul handed me a $20 and told me I had to use it on pizza and beer. He told me beer is actually very good on cornflakes if there was any leftover. 

Uncle Paul stayed with us sometimes when he would visit. He always left before anyone woke up, explaining that he preferred an Eskimo Goodbye, without a lot of dilly-dallying. When I was younger I would wake up early to say goodbye to him. He always gave a side-hug and said: "Love ya' darlin.'"

There are always some things you can't really get across about a person when describing them. Uncle Paul was a real badass and a curmudgeon in the sweetest way possible. His eyes were super blue, clear, and vivid. 

My brother and I made Uncle Paul a cup once that said: "#1 Great Uncle." That's still how we feel about him. 

Dessert

Will went to his friend's wedding and told us about his time as he, Hirshey, and I drank tequila on the recently dampened mountain.

I have been dreaming about pools as much as normal.

Will and I were lying on in the yard during a storm. I thought about being made of the same atoms as everything, feeling like I was the trees, wind, and lightning, but also feeling separate from everything. Will told me he had had a fun year hanging out with me and was sorry for the tragedy I had gone through. He told me he intended to mourn my death and not the other way around. How sweet and hard to think about. I don't want to die. I looked at the grass and cried, thinking that this moment in my life is precious and defining, and that it will eventually be completely forgotten.

After it started pouring rain we had overly-sweet "Soy Creamy" with some awful sour red wine poured on top, and bitter cocoa powder. It was a perfect flavor combination.

R.A.F.T

Lately some of my dreams are abstract/3D fields of color and feeling. One stood out because it was so blue, left, and aware. The edges were cool sunshine.

I have also had recurring dreams about nachos, which then trigger lucidity because I realize the cheese is too good to be vegan.

…

I Spent the last couple weeks swishing oil around in my mouth, giving Cole rides, DJing Currents and Winter’s summer solstice party, attending Meow Wolf meetings,  making a toga-inspired gown for Noah /my music video, and getting an additional job at Brad Smith Gallery.

Brad Smith’s oil paintings explore the cutting edge subjects of women and flowers.

…

On father’s day dad and I were early to Keiko’s Gastronomical Society. Eileen came in and asked how I’ve been, I said sad and depressed, she asked why, and I said because my friend died.

The sushi was as good as ever, I especially liked the bright yellow gourd and green chile. Eileen made bomb-ass-dank-ass smoked tofu and we got to try a Tibetan chili that made for a waterfall of endorphins.

Keiko was getting rid of records her grandfather had given her. I got some jazz and Korean folk songs, Dad picked out a lot of Nat King Cole.

…

Crocket, Sandra, Chris and I participated in the first RAFT residency, which takes place on a raft (Resident Artists Floating Together). The first part of the residency involved shot-gunning a beer and taking turns using the one oar to get partially across the lake. The experience concluded with making a sail out of a wet-towel, climbing a mountain/exploring the juxtaposition of "the raft riding the residents," and eating lunch.

 

Dream-Hoax

Hoku and I were in a big open space with a dirt floor. We were preparing to play push-hands. After testing our sway and resistance by gently pushing one another’s wrists his energy became so powerful it overcame me in a gold/green wave through my body, cleansing my heart. 

Love without form.

I fell down and leaned into him, our noses touching slightly. We stared into each others eyes and I noticed what looked like a contact lens in his left eye. I started crying and told him that he was dead, that this was a dream. “It doesn’t matter” he said “I’ll always be with you.”

Hoku

Hoku always ate the whole apple, even the core.

Nearly a decade ago I called him stellar buns. One phrase from a language of inside jokes. 

The first time I realized I wanted Hoku for a best friend he had shaved his head and pasted a few long black strands of his dad's hair. He painted his body with ash, and was wearing a loin cloth, crawling around for the entire day as Gollum. He even ate a whole fish in the parking lot. 

Hoku was my first love and my first kiss. 

A few years later he ended up living with me, becoming part of my family. We had so much fun, going to dance class/Anarchist Freedom Choir and sitting in hottubs with my dad, making a lot of pizza and playing Dr. Robotnix Mean Bean Machine, doing everything ironically, like the rule that we had to wear coats and blast the heater when driving on Fridays during summer, and sharing every detail of our lives with each other under the stars on the trampoline. We were teenagers in love and we hoped it would last.

Of course it didn't, Hoku got over me but was still living with me. He became cold and apathetic toward me and one evening I punched him. He is the only person I've displayed physical violence toward. 

That was a long time ago. Hoku and I had continued to be dear friends for years - hanging out occasionally when in the same country. We still spoke the same language. 

When Isaiah died Hoku said that every person has the right to decide whether or not they should go on living on any given day.

Any number of times I have heard Hoku say "I am content, I could die right now." He was that kind of person. 

Hoku was never well known for being careful. 

Regardless, it was a huge shock to find out he had died falling out of a building in Chicago.

Grief is alive in every cell. A sweep through the gut and sternum,  each time I look at it it goes higher into my heart, I wonder why it is white, I stumble, I almost throw up, I lie down and sob. Heart has broken poisonous. 

Kristen called me to tell me the news. I wept in the street and a neighbor near my work carried me into her house. Her dog licked my face and she poured me a glass of vodka and tropical juice. She and her roommate had also both recently lost close friends. 

Kristen dropped her phone "more like threw my phone" when drunk so now people can only hear her when she turns on speakerphone. She wound up with the responsibility of telling people and heard them weep through speakers.

I pound the table till my hands are bruised. 

At first I couldn't sleep. Hoku was slightly transparent and I couldn't understand what he was saying. Two snakes escaped, one green and one purple. They wound around each other and moved as a unit. 

Will texts me a picture of intertwined snakes, brings me gin, and four Daifuku cakes. I can't tell if I am drunk or sleep deprived or just sad. Suddenly, I am able to perform the type of clerical task that I am usually incapable of, writing long-standing emails and going to the post-office. 

On the way to the post office Vince sends me a sweet text, as do Amelia and Megan. Their kindness, and the reminder that Hoku is dead, erupt in a pure light-explosion of crying that my conscious mind barely apprehends. I become aware that Will is holding my hand and wondering what to do. I give him directions to the place on Otero where the real estate catalogue is hidden. 

It is still there.

"How stupid that this 2005 Real Estate Catalogue is here and Hoku isn't." I say. "This doesn't matter at all."

"It does matter" says Will. "Mementos matter to people." 

In highschool, with my first group of best friends, we used to all write each other letters. We liked to collect free real estate catalogues around town and draw hearts around the realtors faces, discussing how we would prank call them (also rubbing out their newsprint crotches with wet fingertips while exclaiming "Oh yeah!") We wrote letters to one another with markers, passing a single catalogue back and forth until it formed a book of correspondence. This is how some of our most serious discussions went. I ended up with a box of many of these communications, as well as letters, art, and poetry Hoku made me. I don't know when I'll feel ready to look in that box again. 

Throughout this trajectory, we invented performance art, conceptual art, and polyamory. Alex and I walked each other home across town, sometimes turning around to walk the other home once one of us had reached our destination. Hoku and Kristen broke up in the wilderness outside Monte del Sol - a mutual epiphany of crying as I was told.  Hoku's dad led us in talking circles. We all played sardines and sang the whole time. 

We also invented irony. We sang Spice Girls and Aqua and did literal dances. We drove everyone crazy by coming up to them and demanding: "Is that seven flowers on your shirt? 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" We read "The Hot Flash Club" in installments whenever it was raining. It helped with the changes we were going through. 

Hoku and I hid one of the 2005 real estate catalogues with the pink flowers on the cover into a small tube on a fauxdobe bench outside of someone's house on Otero. We said that as long as the catalogue was there we would love each other. 

For the first time in a very long time our old group of friends got together. There was a period of several years where we were one person. We're different people now and it was poignant for loss and nostalgia to commingle. We laid in a big pile like we used to and sang the songs we used to sing. Once Hoku told me that his favorite song was: "Find the Cost of Freedom" by Crosby Stills and Nash. We cried as we sang that song. 

When sitting with Mark Mikow, the most influential teacher at our high school, he mentioned that Hoku once stated that it is pointless to be sad when someone dies because the person who dies can no longer feel anything, or something to that effect. 

A few months ago I asked Facebook how matter becomes conscious and Hoku responded with a book recommendation, which he later rescinded stating that neurophysics is dense as shit (or maybe dense as the matter it's comprised of). I had already bought the book however and was looking forward to discussing it.

"Matter coming together UNconsciously to create CONSCIOUS beings, which technically is what happens, is SOOOOOOO much fucking more miraculous than Consciousness steering Matter to become Conscious. And why would it even need to, if it was already Consciousness itself? There wouldn't be a need for matter." - Hoku

The above quote formed an impulse to assemble this grief song: 

Nothing matters 

but we're matter 

every atom - me

What space are you now? 

*Burn backward, ash to ash

Burn backward, ash to ash

Nothing matters 

no longer matter

… free?

* Line appropriated from Real Estate catalogue and/or Myspace poetry by Alex Mcd.

In a correspondence with Grannia Hoku said: " …I got this amazing sense where I vanished and didn't exist for a little bit and realized that the state of not-experiencing is blissful as hell. And though I've never grokked being scared of death so much it reminded me that there really is no need to be cuz it's blissful, and it also made me grok how I completely have been responsible for every ounce of pain and suffering or joy and ecstasy I've ever felt, no matter how much I blamed the external influences. I grokked all this before, right, but this gave me a reminding jolt in my bones and not just my head."

I've been practicing not thinking and being still. This seems like a good way to honor Hoku. 

My thoughts oscillate however, waves amplified by emotions. "I'm working on this new art project called grief, I'm actually really into it." I say to someone who asks what I'm up to at a memorial. "I'd just like to tell you that whatever you're feeling is incorrect, the way you are grieving is wrong." I say to a group of friends. "Hoku hated beer" I say as more friends bring beer. My sarcasm has reached new heights. Grannia said her last words to Hoku were: "Have a nice trip." I replied: "See you next fall"  - this joke hurts my feelings, but I think Hoku would have appreciated it. 

At the memorial I led the circle of 97 people in a "Hoku choir" which was the last hilarious thing Hoku taught me. I was in the middle of pulling a long joke on Hoku last time I saw him and I could barely look at him because I knew he'd see through it, but now I wish I'd let him know the punchline. Alex also quoted Hoku at the memorial, with something Hoku often said: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" and buried his face in the dirt. The image of Hoku's mom, Sadhana, with ashes covering half her face will always be emblazoned in my mind, but you can't take pictures in a dream (or when your phone is out of battery).The most raw and inspired finish to the ceremony was Sadhana, who threw Hoku's ashes in everyone's faces. 

...

A few days after the memorial I went sunburnt to Megan Burn's going away party. My friend Jaymin asked how I was and I answered honestly, as has been the trend lately. He didn't know that Hoku and I had been friends but told me about a dream he had recently where Hoku and I were dancing by swinging around each other, and that he knew we were the two getting married. Then I was gone and only Hoku remained. 

Jewels of memories with Hoku keep appearing: how we made my dad an ironic expressionist art film for father's day, or when Hoku made a movie for me before he left to travel, and hid it amongst DVDs he was loaning me - the time we went to the mini-field outside my house, lay in the illuminated purple grass, and laughed hysterically for eternity.

...

I am attached to memory. Dementia and death scare me equally and for the same reasons. Memory is the force behind the construction of a self in time, in spite of memory being fundamentally reconstructive. It is odd to think I am the only one who remembers my first kiss now, or any other number of moments that Hoku and I created. 

One June 12th in 2005 Hoku and I were waiting for our friends to get out of their respective jobs and went to hang out at the Rose Park. We climbed the tallest tree and sat in the highest branches. We talked about our histories with the wonder of discovery. We had both enjoyed Animorphs and wanted to finish the series now that we had outgrown it. Hoku had lived all over the world and told me about his time in Australia, floating across a lake perfumed by eucalyptus. I  associated the green and gold freckles in his eyes with the scenes he described. Over the course of 3 hours our faces got closer together, our eyes moved more quickly, and our noses touched. By the time I was experiencing the softness of my first kiss I no longer had a concept of time. 

Such Great Heights.

Sarah, the person who invited me to her house as I sobbed in the middle of the street, asked me what my favorite thing about Hoku was. My first thought was that how Hoku was not afraid to show exactly who he was and what he felt through his eyes. 

One night when I was 15 or 16, but I imagine I was 16 because maybe Hoku was wearing the "Moon Princess" skirt, we were spending hours staring into each other's eyes as we so often did. In a moment something shifted. Hoku said the gray wall he had built around his essence had cracked and we had witnessed what he refered to as the "small pink blob" within. 

The past several days every time I sleep a hundred years go by. Nothing ever made sense, then it made less sense and I felt more than ever that life is a process of loss. Now I feel like I have to change the way I view the world. I don't know what life or death are, or what I am, but I know what love is.

Tan Tan

Will and I made a video for Tanmaya. We were earth (moon)-heads, editing about it. Video: https://vimeo.com/66866752