I’m really resisting the urge to just suck it up and do a bullet point post. I promised myself that when I started this new shindig over here that I’d write actual paragraphs, all the time, since I consider myself a writer and writers should take what they want to say and expand a bit, instead of just throwing it down and running away. But you know what, sometimes real life gets in the way and we’re going to compromise since there are just not enough hours in the day.

#1: My sister had a birthday. It was her 23rd, which is odd because I still can’t believe that she’s of legal age to drink a glass of wine and sometimes I still can’t believe that she’s still not four years old and playing with her gazillion dolls. Luckily I was able to swing it that I could go down to UNC and visit her. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to hang with those in the under 25 bracket and that I’d be calling it a night long before they were ready to turn in for the night, but her friends were amazing and fun and intelligent and classy and I had a blast. Plus, there’s nothing like curling up, semi-hungover, and watching Amelie and eating popcorn in bed with your favorite sister that you hardly ever get to see. I wish there was a way that could hang out more, but I don’t think that’s in the cards anytime soon, unfortunately.

#2: I went to a small presses conference at my old school where I listened to a bunch of authors talk about their process with their agents and editors, literary magazines talk about why you should submit to them, and other industry folks generally discussing over and over again how the system is fucked and no one can figure out how to fix it and that no one is making money. It was about as uplifting as it sounds. The good news is that I realized that despite the fact that for many many years I’ve wanted to be published by Penguin, I know know that I want a small press to publish me. It’s ridiculously important to me that I get to have say in things like fonts and papers and book jacket designs. Because my novel is about women, I know that the cover will be some torsos without heads or pastel or some other such nonsense and that will make me never want to publish again. Also, fun fact, most big publishers will always have the book come out in hardback first despite the fact that hardbacks are a tough sell for a first time author, and if they don’t sell, then they just turn the books into pulp and don’t publish you again. I’d much rather have a small press just do a few thousand paperbacks and then not turn my hard work into pulp. I’m not big on hardbacks, I generally think they’re difficult to read and hold and carrying them around with me all day is not fun. Bring on the paperbacks.

#3: We celebrated our 6 month anniversary. We celebrated by making dinner then falling into bed. I was in bed for twelve straight hours and when I had to get up to go to work the next day the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed. I’ll leave it to your imagination how we passed that time. Then Thanksgiving was a quiet, intimate affair. It was just the two of us, and he was my sous-chef so that I could whip up a great dinner in about an hour. I’m really enjoying spending a lot of quality time with him before things like other jobs and kids and travel and life get in the way. Not that any of those things are close to happening, but I like our us time now.

Maybe in December I’ll do a better job keeping track of my life. Maybe not.

Have I ever told you that when I watch you speak to me through bytes and ram, I imagine your voice, whispering into my ear?

Have I ever told you that I wait out each day in anticipation, wanting only an hour or so, just a second in space and time, to feel close to you?

Have I ever told you that there has been times when I’ve ached for you, ached for you so badly, that the emotions overwhelmed me.. and so I sat and cried?

Have I ever told you that sometimes, I will reach out, touching your name on this cold screen before me, wishing I could reach in and pull you to me?

Have I ever told you that I would give everything up, just for one night to be able to lay near you, to feel your chest rise and fall with each breath you take?

Have I ever told you that I dream of you often, I dream of you reaching out and touching my hand, simply to let me know that you are there, and everything is okay?

Have I ever told you how much I love you?

♥

I just want you to know I really dislike this experience, the often unsettling unpredictability of time and space. We spend a lot of our days and night waiting as time shifts between the zones. We have moments together, but they’re always painfully fleeting. It will be so nice - thirty days from now - to have you in my time zone, my arms, my bed. Very nice indeed.
 
I love YOU.

♥

As part of the Tate Modern Museum’s April 2003 symposium on Live Art – on the work of performance artists like Guillermo Gomez-Peña, La Ribot, Ron Athey, and Marina Abromavic — Franko B staged “I Miss You!” in the London museum’s cavernous Turbine Hall. In this piece, naked, covered in white body paint, Franko walks down a long canvas aisle. He is lit up on either side from the floor by florescent tubes, and bleeds from calendulas in his arms that hold his veins open as he slowly and ceremoniously walks the length of the canvas towards a bank of photographers at its base. Blood pools at his feet at each end of the “catwalk,” where he stands before turning around and beginning his march again. The performance is structured to resemble a fashion show, and the blood splattered canvas Franko leaves in his wake is used to make unwearable, or at least, un-marketable haute-couture, to mummify household objects, and to make pocket-sized souvenir paintings. [Exerpt from Jennifer Doyle in: Critical Tears: Franko B’s “I Miss You”]

Franko B was born in Milan and has lived in London since 1979. He has been creating work across video, photography, performance, painting, installation, sculpture and mixed media since 1990. He has performed at the Tate Modern, ICA, South London Gallery and Beaconsfield.

This is what is disturbing about Franko B’s performance – not that he bleeds, but that in doing so he crosses a boundary, and carries us with him as he does so. He shifts questions about art and emotion to the audience, moving away from the self-reflexive representation of the artist’s emotional state, to the production of feelings themselves – a risky move if ever there was one, if only because he asks us directly if, and how, we plan to love him back.

By Jennifer Doyle in: Critical Tears: Franko B’s “I Miss You”

The distance may be great and all we have is the phone. Sometimes we stay up extremely late, like last night. Hearing your voice makes my sleepiness the next morning worth it. Emails, texting and talking will just have to make-do.
 
I’ll keep dreaming of us, until we can see each other again. (Christmas isn’t that far away) Being with you is all I think about. I get butterflies in my stomach, just at the mere thought of you. Did you know, you left me awestruck that weekend in November?

Distance may be great but I’ll always love you forever, I promise. 

♥

I have accepted you for who you are. Not what you can be.
All of you.
And I have and will love you none the less.

♥

Yet another video that I have been postponing; that stops here and now. Anyway, here is my long overdue “Secrets” vid, and after watching it I realized that they are not so much secrets per se, but moreso “feelings” which is just as great and compelling.

Enjoy!!

We contemplate sometimes, how life would be so different if we’d found each other twenty years ago. We spent so many years apart. Was that time wasted, or was it simply a requirement that we walk those long but merging paths first? Who knows. Maybe I didn’t have you back then but I have you now and I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

♥

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay

♥

That…

Perhaps I miss you.

You and your beautiful smile
Those smiles and amazing blue eyes

That I maybe.

Will you come and remind me?

Ich vermisse dich!

At this moment, there are 6,781,800,189 people in the world. 33,592,700 of them live in Canada. Six billion plus people in the world, six billion plus souls. And sometimes… all you need is one.

♥

I loved this rhyme when I was little.

“Starlight, Starbright - First star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might, Have the wish I wish tonight.”

My simple wishes back then were for things like a new doll or a sleepover with a friend…

Now my heart wishes for bigger things like… Wishing you were here. Wishing I was there. Wishing it was different.

Wishing wishes came true.

♥

♥

My love, I cannot stand this. It is just too hard to be away from you. I am usually okay, but at times like this (especially tonight) it just becomes too much to bear. I cannot sleep tonight from thinking of you.

Each day that passes makes our love for each other grow stronger. Although I know it’s hard for us to be apart, distance means so little when you love someone so much. I know there is nothing that can keep us apart forever. Our desires will continue to stretch across any distance, over every mountain between us. 

♥

It still hurts

You still haunt my dreams

I still want to see you

I still long to hear your voice

I would still kill to feel you next to me

The memory of your kiss still sends tears streaming down my face

I still can’t see an end to my torture

I still can’t stop thinking about you

I still hold onto every memory we share

The tears still haven’t stopped pouring for you

I still miss you

…I still love you