Perpetual Relationship Status: Complicated but I make it that way.

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."

-Dr. Seuss

I think you're like a squirrel, putting women away like nuts for cold winters.

Reasons to Survive November

Tony Hoagland


November like a train wreck –
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze –
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

I've printed out numerous pages of paper, i've edited and scraped and gathered and cut and pasted and torn and spilled ink on unimaginable amounts of letters and punctuation. My first short story is finally done, roughly. Mostly I cannot stop reading it over and over and tripping over my words and listening to my heart beat through the slow trains of sentences sounding their whistles in my brain while the impact heads deeply down to my stomach. I think im fastened to this place of tenderness and devotion and adoration and idolization and loyalty. Im stuck in a place with blurred lines and wonderment, where the possibilities are endless and more then anything really, you just want to hold hands. I assume too much, and I take too much to heart. I hurt easily and i've failed to build up the walls that so many around me have slowly constructed over each passing birthday party, each added year, each drunken night. Im thrown into full body nostalgia when this or that song comes on. Im cuddled up to movies, im sobbing in the piano room, im smiling at a letter, im driving in the car with my head on someones shoulder. Im lighting incense and laying on the floor watching shadows on the ceiling while the wind creeps through open windows crossing delicately across my arms. Im watching footage of young small animals, with fast pulses and hurried breath almost making me cry, because my pace is not slow and steady and thought out like it should be, like hers was, or his was, my pace has no direction or resolution, my pace is quick and going no where and crouching low and ready to pounce and at this pace, everything feels like something else.

From the Adult Drive-in

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

VI.

O dark barns who will move me now?

I am undone by the flickering screen

By all those girls thrown against the coal black

Night. We, all of us, go back to the field

Scene of a back that went on forever,

The closed eyes, the want that entered us

As we drove by and tried not to look.

How will I ever learn to tell the truth

After the places my hands have been?

It is darker here than other towns, leaves

Burn clear through December. After that

We light beasts of the field to keep ourselves

Warm. Everyone has weathered each other's want,

Familiar as the feed store's smell of grain.

Every time I leave my grandmother, she cries. I'm used to it by now, the consistency hasn't budged since I was just a young kid. I remember watching her in the driveway of the house in Colorado, smiling and waving and blowing kisses while heavy tears streaked down her face. Watching her fade away until she was just a small speck in the distance, standing and watching us go for as long as she could, as if nothing was as valuable as that last glance.

At 19 I have recently packed up my belongings, put my little studio amount of furniture and knick-knacks into storage and flown one way to Portland, Oregon. A big part of why I did this was because of my grandmothers beckoning, my grandfathers support of alternative pathways. I was driven into the large industrial landscape, the huge steel bridges and light rain on concrete and brick. I couldnt see beyond a couple miles, something that im not used too, coming from the desert where you can see as far out as you want from almost any point on the terrain. I felt like I was going to cry, my body fell into full anxiety mode. I realized I had no idea what I was doing there, I was going to be sleeping in my friends attic bedroom, no job, no school, no relationships, no nothing. I just had two suitcases full of vintage dresses, a ukulele, and my laptop. My first couple of weeks have been full of making friends, riding bikes, drinking tea and beer, going to house shows and old photo booths. They've also been full of obsessively calling home, spending hours on facebook longing for some word from my friends back in New Mexico, crying in the attic, and sleeping through full days.

My grandmother caught wind of this and promptly bought me a ticket to visit her again. Staying at a new house in Port Townsend, Washington. Nothing is as comforting to me as these visits, the security of her presence, as though anything I need can be taken care of. Watching her lovingly look out at the docks and the bay and the mist in the forest. She tells me that the northwest makes her feel at home, the gray skies a warm blanket to sit under day after day. She walks me by the lighthouse and brings me to her favorite cafe for salmon scrambles with yams. She tells me about her days of living on military bases, dropping out of society and woodstock while her hands shake out the swiss chard she's so excited about making for dinner. Her age is starting to show more, the usual qualities of growing older; forgetfulness, pains in her hips and back. Both of my grandparents are relatively younger, closer in age to some of my friends older parents then my mother is. It's the first time i've considered the prospect of their retirement, their moving out of the southwest to a place more familiar, their settlement in Washington. It's the first time the prospect of them not being around when im 30, 40, 50 has hit me.

Im waiting out my 4 and a half hour layover in Seattle, watching two girls that must be ballerinas from Cornish College of the Arts use all the strength in their flimsy frames to carry a single suitcase. Im returning to Portland with a job interview, familiar faces, my 100 pound bicycle, and a better sense of finding my way. Remembering my grandmother's teary smiling face dampening my cheek as she tightly hugged me goodbye. Observing her standing in the Safeway parking lot, watching the bus rumble down the road until the fog had completely come between the two of us. As if that last glance was the most important moment in her whole world.

Acknowledgment, 1964

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Could have gone west. Could have packed your things,
who cares that you weren’t old enough to drive.
Could have sold yourself to truckers
and highwaymen. Could have gone down
the dark road between home and somewhere
better, the whole world watching tv and not one thinking of you.
Could’ve got lost. Could have said, “I don’t know”
when the waitress asked, “Where you live at?”
You could have lied and said, “New Jersey”
or “Mobile.” Of course, that assumes
you’d get past Mason Dixon.

You could have seen battlefields:
Gettysburg, Fredericksburg even Chicago
if you waded deep enough into summer. Could have slept
with your head on the ground like your sister,
her ear to the transistor, listening,
listening to “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
You could have said, “Fuck the Beatles”
and left them behind, shooting the lights out
of every stadium, every coliseum.

You could have made girls scream because
you were the stranger under the bleachers, that ember
of the cigarette burning in the darkness just outside their
porch lights’ glow. You could have named them;
Helen, Rachelle, Ida May, and in Texas Irene Rosenberg
a girl just as lonely as you. Imagine,

your leaving before it ever got started. Where’s that
girl you married? You don’t know. You were half way
to Billings or Provo or Bend. You watched the cities
of the Midwest burn. You threw bottles and never
cut your hair. Remember the drum kit in Schlessinger’s
Instruments? How you crawled through the broken
window and banged away in the shards of that city.
If they could have seen you then! All muscle
and heart, sweating, sweating no more stupid melody
holding you back. Just the bass line, just the gas line
hissing and your foot on the pedal.

You could have gotten away. The country was different.
A boy could walk without getting beaten beyond an inch
of his life, without getting lashed to a fence
in God forsaken Wyoming. Why, God hadn’t forsaken
Wyoming or Birmingham yet. Chaney, Goodman,
and Schwerner safe in their beds. Perhaps you passed
by them. You could have passed me by and saved yourself
the whole mess. My mother doesn’t know you yet. She’s
on her back in the grass with some other man’s son.

Something I would really love to do is take a series of photographs of coupled exes. Ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, ex-wives with their ex-husbands, ex-high school sweethearts, ex-college lovers, ex-affairs, ex-long distance internet romances. I think its something we all do, as the years go by, we think back on the people we've known and the relationships we've encountered and gone "it seems so weird now that they/we were ever together". I want to document the changes and different directions that these two (perhaps more) people in a relationship have gone through. The two paths chosen, perhaps in spite of a once nurtured and cared for heartbeat in their hands. When people stay together, they grow together, grow with one another, they grow into one anothers lifestyle, personality, routine and aspirations. I want to document separation, two people growing apart.

Upon reflecting on my last post and having some conversations about my experience with good friends, im starting to see that these sort of radical queer circles are everywhere and they don't get any more inclusive or inviting.

I do identify as queer (specifically as queer), and its easier to identify as radical sometimes, rather then explaining all of my standing beliefs and politics behind certain notions concerning the LGBTQ community as well as elsewhere. It bothers me that instead of branching out and embracing one another, some queer folks are beginning to retreat into their very own cliques and rejecting others around them. It's beginning to seem that in rejecting the divisions within the mainstream gay and lesbian movement, the queer community is forming many divisions of its own. This is not, at least to me, what being queer identified and radical is all about.

Let me quickly put in my own two cents about being queer identified and radicalism, because I certainly think that the two go hand in hand. Something that the queer identity lends to many people is the ability to not be categorized into the sexual binaries provided for us by society, which in itself is radical, seeing as we live in a culture that primarily respects us when we adhere to certain labels and stereotypes. Queer for me, is also about alternative thinking, alternative politics, and alternative presentation. Part of the reason that I identify is queer is due to my upbringing which goes against many of the conceptions behind what growing up is in our culture. Also, the roads that I am choosing to take in my life and my reasoning behind that is considerably alternative to those complying with the paths awarded to them by society, this also makes me feel more connected with a queer identity. The queer identity within itself is purely one that goes against the grain. I feel that the original objectives behind the term "queer" is becoming lost to appropriation in the mainstream LGBTQ movement, along with other terms such as "butch" and "femme".

While talking to my friend last night, she mentioned to me something that Andrea Smith said (author of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex and co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence) concerning radicalism in all forms. She said that being radical isnt about you and your friends and your beliefs and their beliefs, being radical is about you and your friends sharing those beliefs with others and including others in your beliefs. So why is it becoming more and more difficult for younger queer folks to gain access to their community?

This whole realization hits close to home for me, as I had a difficult time being accepted by my gay friends in high school after beginning to recognize my attraction to other women. Most of my friends had started coming to terms with their sexuality at young ages, my first friend coming out to me as bisexual in the 6th grade. Honestly, if it wasn't for my being surrounded by the community I was surrounded by, and being exposed to such discoveries at such a young age, im not sure that I would have unearthed my own sexuality at 16. I remember specifically sitting in the car with one friend, who had openly been attracted to other women since the 8th grade, and when I began telling her about my crush on a girl I had been spending time with, she reacted negatively. She told me the same things that many conservative parents may have told me, that it was unreal, it was a phase, that she refuses to take me seriously. After being considerably deligitimized and embarrassed, I felt as though I had somehow gone somewhere I was not invited, invaded her space and done wrong to the gay and lesbian community by "switching over". I automatically cut off communication with the girl I had feelings for, and fell into a full frontal sexual identity crisis, hooking up with the manliest males I knew at parties, and flirting endlessly with the boys in my grade, trying to somehow gain my "straightness" back. Eventually I ended my efforts, I had been rejected by the straight community and the gay community. I was unable to cross the threshold and this is when I started becoming familiar with the queer community, which embraced me with open arms.

The notion that the queer community is becoming more and more segregated and closed off scares me. Im 19, it has been only a mere two years since I finally began to feel confidant in my sexuality and find solidarity with others who were just as complex and different as I am. But as I move on to different places and new people, new social circles, it makes me nervous that I will be rejected by the queer community, that I will fail initiation, I will fail the test. Perhaps this is a insecurity of my own due to past experiences, but also has been my experience as of late, and apparently the experience of many others I know in their towns and cities.

I guess all I can do is beg the queer world to stay inviting, stay inclusive, and stay accessible, because god knows that I, and tons of other youngsters out there need it.

Last night I had a rattling experience at work. Towards the end of my 9 hour shift, I was up at the register with one of my coworkers tagging jewelery when I noticed a group of young attractive queer women walk into the store. I automatically recognized most of them, many of them have made names for themselves in Santa Fe through various showcases with a unique and popular drag burlesque troop and I looked up to many of their friends and collaborators during my high school years. As they shopped the store many of them laughed and joked with each other, there was such a sense of comradeship,understanding and recognition. My heart began to ache a little bit.

Ever since moving to Albuquerque, i've made many new friends, I hang with the bikers, the golden kids, the creators. We spend nights drinking beer on astroturf, sitting outside of shows with our bikes, because no one really has the money to afford gas anymore. We go to antique malls and make vegan cupcakes and play music and eat lightly salted edemame. I've filled my home with books and feathers and tapestries and candles and good music. We go to the hotsprings to watch the sunrise and eat cinnamon and sugar toast and work long hours bouncing around and making jokes. However, through this, through making a life for myself here, not really having much of another choice, I feel that i've lost much of the queer community and friends that I held so dear in Santa Fe.

There is something about Albuquerque that is so disjointed, kind of fragile. I've met queer folks, the ones like me, the token queer girl among all of her heterosexual friends. But we dont have a community, a meeting place, events. The people that I talk too about my issues with queer presentations, politics, marriage, the whole lot, are few, if not all currently living in other parts of the country. My ongoing insecurity about my own queer presentation has strengthened and thrives here. I've always been a feminine woman, wearing make up and keeping my hair longer, wearing dresses. Ever since moving to Albuquerque i've felt the need to validate my queerness, offhand let people know that I like women, whether its automatically talking about my past relationships or name dropping or discussing my stance on gay marriage. I dont want to be assumed as straight, I dont want to be hit on by guys at parties, I dont want the only queer girls I meet to look right past me assuming that im not interested. But there's no compromise, and im not going to change the way I dress, the way I cut my hair, the make up I wear for the sake of being recognized by the New Mexico queer community. It makes me feel a little bit sick that I do feel the need to wear pants and cut off all my hair in order to feel like I belong to something, that I belong to a community with which I identify.

When the group of queer women came up to the register, I started to feel judged. I thought to myself "Can they not read me? Should I say something?", when one of them asked me how to get to Old Town.
"Oh I dont really know, im from Santa Fe" I said.
I did know how to get to Old Town.
"Yeah, um that's where we're coming from" said another.
They all stared at me, I felt the need to do something, say something. I wanted so desperately to be recognized, to be validated. This longing is something i've never felt, it dawned upon me that there really is something missing here in my life. Something I need to change.
"So, how do you guys pick your charities?" one of them asked, refering to our charity token program.
"Oh, um, well you have to bring in proof that you're a organization or nonprofit or whatever, and um, every nine months we all vote on which ones to post..." I said, realizing that this may be my chance to chime in, "I've tried getting some up there before from Santa Fe, like The Mountain Center and like, EQNM...".
They all looked at me blankly, the one in front rolled her eyes and asked who she could actually talk to about it. I felt young and meek and idiotic and also hurt. Could they not see that I was trying to tell them something? That I was desperate for them to ask me how I knew about those places? That im from Santa Fe, I grew up there, I know the people they know, im a part of them?

They left the store and I felt angry at myself. I felt that I had tried too hard to infiltrate their space, at least that's how they made me feel. I have a lot here, I have a plentiful amount of good friends, fun people, lots to do. But I am missing something, and its something that i've failed to fully recognize until now.

Where I am right now:

On the way to Colorado I stopped at an old church and graveyard just outside of Ojo Caliente. I'd been there once before, long ago with a friend, but never went inside of the church. The building is a run down light shade of pink adobe, with a turquoise doorway and a cracking hand painted mural of Our Lady of Guadeloupe displayed on the side. After taking some pictures I noticed an old chevy parked in a small dirt lot a couple of footsteps behind the church. I walked in and saw an older woman kneeling in prayer with a knockoff prada purse at her side. I tried to stay out of her way and take some pictures from the back without flash, hoping she wouldnt notice me. She walked over to me and started telling me the story of how her husband died, I stood and listened as long as I could before explaining to her that I was on my way out of the state and really had to be on my way. She thanked me for my ear and patted my shoulder.

Upon arriving at the Creede house, I was greeted with open arms and the warmth of a place that has always been my retreat. I made lemon shrimp pasta with my grandfather and lit candles while talking about divisions within feminism and performative politics with my grandmother over dinner. I played ukulele by the fireplace and baked brownies as the sun started to set. We're nestled in the mountains and fields and the rio grande is literally down the street. The clouds fall close to the ground, its almost as if I could touch them. This morning I woke up saw three elk in the backyard lapping at the small patches of snow on the ground before our dog chased them off. Soon I will be heading out for a hike and into town for some groceries and coffee.

Im realizing more and more how important mobility is to me, how much I need that in my life. Having the freedom to drive anywhere, be anywhere, having the time to do so. Its standard of living that i've always been kind of afraid of, but im realzing more and more how rewarding it will be to suck it up and brave it out. I've never felt so close to my family and its feeling really good right about now.

When we first moved to New Mexico, we found shelter with my grandparents. They lived in La Cienega, a small suburb near the edge of Santa Fe county. It was the house I spent almost every christmas at and that my mother grew up in. Everyone always told me that my grandfather built that house, and I always assumed he did it with his bare hands. It was a two story adobe building, with a red flagstone patio that radiated heat, a brick floor kitchen, and a green garden with a huge wooden bear statue surrounded by basil, mint and marigolds. On the same property was my grandparents practice, they were both therapists and below the practice was a cement block with my baby feet softly imprinted at the base. Just beyond the house was a field that wound along a creek bed which would run freely in the summer and turn to mud in the winter.

I was too young to gauge the dramatic change in space, or atmosphere, after we moved. We found a small two bedroom apartment in Rancho Viejo complex, off of Sawmill Rd. in Santa Fe. I continued to spend much time with my grandparents on the mesa. Before my parents got divorced, they fought incessantly. We had dinners, candlelight meals with Nana and Nonno, Dean, Cynthia, family friends, and my father would talk the most. Everyone laughed at his jokes, he was the charmer. Sometimes he would pick up napkins and blow on them and make knives appear, I would fall out of my seat laughing while my grandparents did not look impressed. I always noticed their politeness, their barely sincere smiles. It wasn't until I was 12 that I would learn about the times my father locked my mother outside of the house in the snow after she had gotten out of the shower, with nothing but a towel, about his drug issues, about his passion for manipulation. It wasn't until later I would face my own demons with the man that smiled and laughed and got everyone on his side, no matter what.

It was after we moved that I had my first panic attack. It was past my bedtime and I had been allowed to stay awake for the finale of Old Yeller. I sat on the golden shag carpet and watched our small thrifted television in terror as the dog was shot and killed. An unfamiliar sadness washed over me, our dim lighting buzzed in my eyes, I had never felt so scared, or so aware of death in my entire life. Hot tears streamed out of my eyes while I failed to make a sound, failed to breathe. I suddenly clenched my throat, realizing the air cascading through me had ceased, and suddenly forgot how to breathe all together. My chest was tight as I fell to the ground in utter anxiety. At seven years old, all I could think about was that first recognition of death that I had just experienced and felt from Old Yeller. I thought that I was going to die myself. My pulse rose higher and I struggled to scream out for my parents. I cried to take me to the hospital, that I was dying. My mother was trying to explain to me that I couldn't go to the hospital, that we couldn't afford the hospital, she carried me to bed where she gently talked me through my breathing, gave me water and rescue remedy. After I had calmed down, I called my grandmother who asked me questions about what I was feeling, what triggered the attack, all I could say was "Im afraid Daddy is going to disappear".

This was before the divorce, my grandparents decision to sell the house and move out of New Mexico, my mother's depression and chain smoking between men, breakfast for dinner nights, free brown bag sandwiches instead of the lunch line at school. My panic attacks continued for years to come.

My father was nowhere to be seen that night.

Archived Exhaustion: pt. 3

Interview #1, contributer Jazzmine Freedom

This is an interview I conducted at around 12am on a Wednesday night with my friend Jazzmine Freedom. My room is mildly chilly and messy, Cathy Davey is softly playing from my laptop.

Me: Jazzmine!

Jazzmine: Ari!

Me: Okay, are you ready?

Jazzmine: Um, i'm thinking about taking a shot. Should I not do that?

Me: No I think that's a great idea, by the way, I just watched tonights premire of LOST.

Jazzmine: Ah! I can't wait till I catch up, we're going to watch them on itunes.

Me: Yeah me neither, its going to be really great.

Jazzmine: Let me go get that shot.

Me: Do watch you need to do. Okay, first question, how do you sleep at night?

Jazzmine: In order to sleep at night, I need music or tv or a good phone conversation or someone next to me. Or else I can't sleep. I also have to spoon my pillow if I'm not at Cody's.

Me: What music would you listen too?

Jazzmine: Slow, familiar stuff. Last night it was Damien Rice. Sometimes it's Azure Ray or The Cardigan's "Long Gone Before Daylight" album.

Me: What's your favorite childhood movie?

Jazzmine: The Last Unicorn! I'm in love with Schmendrick the Magician. He's awkward and adorable and he's got this big nose and this hipster haircut and pretty much I want him. Once I woodburned his image onto a small wooden plank. I was in seventh grade. My dad used to woodburn everything. He even made a spear

Me: Do you feel, right at this moment, that you could use a fresh start?

Jazzmine: Absolutely. More than anything. Im reading On The Road and it's killing me.

Me: Why's that?

Jazzmine: They were just so free. They could go to any town and just get a job and make money and meet girls and then leave, and go to another town. Things don't really seem like that anymore.

Me: Why not?

Jazzmine: I don't know. It might just be me. I just feel like it's harder to get jobs, and that makes it harder to move and easier to get stuck. It might just be me though.

Me: No, I feel that way too. I think you and I both come from similar upbringings though. Where mobility was really difficult and expensive

Jazzmine: Yeah, definitely.

Me: It kind of carries through

Jazzmine: It does. I'm so afraid of just being like... poor and stuck in one place all the time.

Me: I hear you. Okay moving on, If you could play one song over and over for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Jazzmine: Oh man. I don't know -- "Red Right Ankle" by the Decemberists. Laughing How hip and lame.

Me: Why that song?

Jazzmine: Just right now, I feel like it makes enough sense to listen to it over and over for the rest of my life. "This is the story of the boys who love you, who loved you then and love you now..."

Me: Long nails or short nails?

Jazzmine: Longer than short. I hate it when people have bitten down stubby nails. But I don't like when they have cat claws that they can't use for anything but hair-flips either. I like nails to be. Longish but still practical.

Me: My thumb nails always end up really long and the rest really short for some reason.

Jazzmine: Laughing that happens to me, too. I think it's because thumb nails are stronger and break less.

Me: Do you have any creative projects that you want to do? Or are doing?

Jazzmine: I've been trying to write a damn story since October. I have this idea for it but it's so hard to write. Wanna hear the idea?

Me: Yes

Jazzmine: So it's about this girl who starts seeing the ghost of the boy she loves. But the thing about seeing his ghost is that. He isn't dead. He's just not around. She gets as attached to the ghost as she was to the boy. But the same complications arise, and even more because it starts to affect her relationships with the real people in her life. So eventually she and the ghost have to part ways. And at the end of the story, she meets up with the boy and he's nothing like his ghost, because his ghost was who he was and he has changed. I don't know. It's supposed to be about letting go. And about how you can't keep carrying ghosts around with you forever.

Me: Writers block?

Jazzmine: I guess so. I mean. I think I've got the whole plot down. It's just really hard for me to write things that don't sound super cheesy.

Me: I had this conversation with Meredith one night when we were playing our music for one another and our songs are so different. Because all of my lyrics are sort of complicated and wordy and evasive I guess in some regards. While hers are just really truthful and simple and relatable. But at one point she called her lyrics cheesy, and I think that people sometimes confuse simplicity and something that is easy to relate too as being cheesy.

Jazzmine: I think you're right.

Me: I have a few more questions, what makes you nervous?

Jazzmine: Everything. Ever. I get really nervous when people break rules, unless they are stupid or ridiculous rules. Like if I walk into blockbuster with someone and they're carrying a drink and there's a sign on the door that says no food or drink I get super fucking nervous. Which, on a bigger scale, is another reason I feel stuck. Because im so afraid to break "rules", so even though I don't really want to be here, or in school, I am, because those are the rules.

Me: Do you ever feel like you're from a place you've never been?

Jazzmine: Sort of. I kind of feel like im from the Midwest a lot. Like I always used to romanticize the Midwest, which is just plain crazy, and then when I saw it for the first time (and i've only ever really driven through it) I was like, "this is perfect!" everything seems so simple and green and almost. Just. Quiet.

Me: What is your most common complaint?

Jazzmine: Right now, it's that I don't have a car. Most of all the rest of the time, it's been that I want to get out of New Mexico. I think I'm obsessed with the idea of freedom.

Me: Probably because it's your last name.

Jazzmine: Probably. My dad instilled something inside of me when he gave me that last name.

Me: Last question - New England or New Orleans?

Jazzmine: New England. I like stuffy, quaint things. But I do think about New Orleans quite a bit. What a unique place.

Jazzmine Freedom is a freshman at UNM, majoring in English. She met me on the way to a Julie Doiron show and we soon found many similarities we share, such as our creepy - awkward interactions with most people we encounter. She's from Las Vegas, New Mexico, works at the Frontier where she wears a bandana and gives people sticky buns, she also really loves dinosuars and misses the year 2008.

Some people might think that blogs are the not right place for this. Some people might think that facebook is, or myspace or livejournal. For the record, I will say now, that this blog is for my output and interest only. I may have interviews, I may post music, I may post my thoughts on queer performance and infiltration of space and the importance that it has on the standards upheld by mainstream hetero and homonormative society. I may post pictures of me and my friends with a 12 pack of Modelo, a pound of brisket, frilly pink things and discussions about Dean Moriarty and our awkward childhoods. Generally, this is a rant blog from the perspective of a queer 19 year old post-opera major who is living and surviving day by day in New Mexico. A place that looks like the moon late at night.

I like to think my house is haunted sometimes. When I moved in, my landlady told me that she had purchased it for her father when he was sick. She wanted to keep an eye on him from next door. She then told me that he died while in the house, merely months after she had bought it. I imagine the constant state of worry she must have been in, having her dying father next door. I imagine her long nights after the kids had gone to sleep, her husband snoring at her side, laying awake, glancing at the pale gray ceiling, wondering if he's still alive. He was only steps away, yet light years in the middle of the night. It seemed almost easier to know that someone could be gone at any point from across the country, there's nothing you can do. I imagine her checking on him carefully and periodically throughout the day, eating dinner with him in the evening. But there was nothing to do at night, except to gesture the children to their rooms, clean up the dishes, and perhaps stop by for a quick goodnight before begging for a good nights sleep yourself.

Shortly after I moved in, I noticed her husband was home less and less. I noticed the kids being picked up and gone for nights at a time. Sometimes, with my window open, I could hear her from the kitchen window, talking about sleeping on the couch, difficulties. She called me a month later and politely asked me to begin making my rent checks out in her name only. I wonder sometimes if it was the hardship of her fathers death, the perseverance she exhibited to take care of him, that damaged their marriage. I wonder if the guilt, anger and sadness haunts this house.

I wonder if the hope, love and determination looms here also. If its the rattling noise my heater makes after I turn off all of the lights.

Archived Exhaustion: pt. 2

I didn't grow up dirt poor, no. We always had barely enough, just enough. My mother always managed to put food on the table, regardless of what it was or what she had to do to do it. Some nights we were eating couscous with pork and roasted veggies, some nights we were eating dollar menu McDonalds. By the time my father left, I had lived in 10 different houses, and four different cities. Some of these houses were nice, some of them were the tiniest apartments i've ever seen, some of them were the houses of family members or people that could manage to give us shelter for a while. I never had to squat, sleep in the car, or go to a shelter.

When we moved to Santa Fe from Chicago, I began going to a primarily white, upper-middle class, public elementary school close to the downtown area, showcasing galleries and a general array of expensive restaurants and cafes. I didn't understand why I had to get dropped off in a truck that looked and sounded like the collapse of the world's industrial complex, or why certain parents told their daughters not to come to my birthday party, or why I couldn't have goat cheese and perrier and roast beef sandwiches for lunch -- why almost everyday I had the same thing: peanut butter with honey on white bread and a juicy juice pack. My mom always had different boyfriends, there was Rowan, a high school sweetheart that visited once every while, with his 8 year old daughter Ruby Rose, from Hawaii. There was Hanus, a handsome young german man with shoulder length curly hair who didn't talk much with me and complained when my mom brought me out with them. There was Adam, who was a kind young mountain man, with no home, drove a cab, but he stimulated her philosophical side and also emptied our wallets, plus I was in constant competition with him for mom's affection.

My mother was never a bad mother. She was a very young mother, a single mother, she was a distracted mother, she was a hard-working mother, she was a high-school dropout, she was a mother who fought for me when things got rough with my father, she hired therapists and lawyers and anything she could get her hands on to gain custody of me and keep me healthy and happy. She wasnt a drug addict, an alcoholic, or abusive. She always loved, cared for and worried about me. She was open minded, opinionated, intelligent, liberal, political, and beautiful. She had issues with depression, eating disorders, and security. She was either my best friend or my worst enemy. I grew up with the LGBTQ community, with artists, with anarchists, with people my mom told me "choose" to be homeless -- they called me sweetheart and gave me silver charms with angels and would sleep on our couch sometimes, their larger then life backpacks sitting humbly at their sides.

After 6th grade, I received admission into a small, successful charter school. The student body was generally the same white, middle upper class girls and boys I had graduated with. My grade consisted of a fluctuating number between 50-60 students. I started to assume privilege through my friends, who would take me to their well kept, well sized houses. Their parents would pay for dinner, take us to movies, take us shopping, drive us everywhere, buy us whatever we felt we needed, there was no limit. My resentment towards my household and mother grew. I did whatever I could to avoid being home, whether it was spending night after night at a friends house, or sneaking out of my own late at night.

By high school, my grades had declined considerably, my work ethic went with it, while my lack of understanding grew and consumed me. I didn't understand how my friends got their homework done, I didn't understand why I was progressively gaining weight due to the poor diet being provided by whats accessible to working class families in a wealthy retirement city like Santa Fe, I started to not understand the feelings I had for one of my best girl friends, why I couldn't afford to attend summer camp at Interlochen Arts Academy like some of my choir friends were doing. I was embarrassed to bring friends over, because of the food they would be fed, or not be fed, because we could hear my mom and whoever else may be at my house through the walls of my bedroom, because I wasn't like the other girls, because our historic desktop computer sat on a stack of cheap mis-matched pillows in the living room and my home wasn't like the other homes. My mom became pregnant and as we went on food stamps, I went out and drank more, as we moved into a smaller home, I was home less and less. I worked with the school GSA, I got a job, I became involved with Earthcare International, I interned and worked with a experimental non-profit arts collective, I saved up and bought a car, I apprenticed with a professional choir, I took every opportunity to stay far from home and school. I read books by Dorothy Allison and Bell Hooks instead of my history books. I rehearsed for hours on end for my High Mayhem performance instead of staying after school for math tutoring. I expanded my relationships with different mentors and adults in my life and I started to embrace where I came from, and my relationship with my mother blossomed.

As I sneaked by with graduating high school, my life came to a fork in the road. I hadn't been accepted to any colleges, I had to leave home as my mom told me that she couldn't afford me anymore, I lost my medicaid health insurance, I lost my old room, I was losing my first relationship of over a year, losing friends that were happily moving away to new places, small liberal arts schools, other countries. I agreed to write a special admissions letter to the University of New Mexico and study opera, for my mom.

When I was thirteen I started to study singing. I could never afford private voice lessons, or piano lessons. I joined numerous choirs, my grandparents agreed to pay for some singing summer camps, I attempted to teach myself arias and watched all the best female performers on the internet. I would sing for hours, my all-state pieces, my favorite art songs. Mahler, Elgar, Schubert, Liszt, Handel, Purcell, Offenbach. I didn't dream of singing at the Met, I dreamed of singing, whether it be in my room, for my friends, at weddings, in a park, in a theater, on an island. I just dreamed of singing.

My first semester was hard and rewarding. I felt that I was accomplishing something, that I was able to start new and start again on my own. I was on my own, I took out loans to pay for classes and rent, I got a wonderful job to pay for bills and food. I declared my two majors in women's studies and vocal performance. I joined an amazing women's chorus, with which I had the opportunity to go to New York City to sing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spend time at Julliard and The Manhatten School of Music. I was well balanced, taken care of and healthy.

This semester has been an entirely different story. I began studying with the head of the opera department. A 80+ year old woman who has sung under the baton Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic and is the general director of The International Opera Academy in Rome. She has treated me with utter disrespect, has shown old fashioned traits of classism and sexism, and leaves me in tears almost every time I leave my lesson. My past was catching up with me as I was slowly running low on loan money and realizing that I had nothing to fall back on except for the little money my mom struggles to sometimes send me monthly. My hours at work were being drastically cut to twice a week due to their own need to watch spending. The competition in the music department was breaking me down and I found that I was unable to be the best I can be whilst being pushed to be better then everyone else. Reality of costs and financial obligations were setting in and I was seeing my inability to sustain myself whilst both in school and working full time on the horizon. The stress consumed me and my health declined. I've been feverish, exhausted, negative, sore throat, unable to sing, and oversleeping for a month now. It could be mono, it could be a plethora of concentrated frustration, but its costing me the ability to finish this semester.

In talking to my family and my friends im finding that some time off is probably what I need and what is best right now. I cant afford to pay for school if I cant take advantage of it, and I cant afford to be in school if the stress is going to cost me my health and ability to work and survive. This terrifies my mother, who has struggled her whole life to make ends meet, and wants to see me stable and successful and not living paycheck to paycheck. Im questioning my desire to study music. I know that I want to sing, its something I will do forever, but the pressure of being a part of a competitive and conservative community in order to accomplish that is more disheartening every day. We all have different standards of living. For right now, mine are to have a roof over my head, food on the table and the freedom to be creative, mobile, healthy and figure out what I want to pursue, in and out of school. I'm 19, im queer, im on my own, and I want to be more involved in community and culture at this point, in the real world. I want to rest up, spend days at antique malls, decorate, make things, work, spend time with the people I care about, ride my bike, live my life day by day and moment by moment. For now I will do these things, I will follow my bliss, and I will be alright.

Archived Exhaustion: pt. 1

Ugly sweater party! Even the dog had an ugly sweater! Im learning a lot about change right now and im thinking of it in a very positive way, at least more so then I ever have. Spring is arriving here in New Mexico and its smelling a lot like juniper, lavender and smokey campfires. Those are the smells I am happy to fall asleep with tonight, and am happy to leave on my pillow in the bright warm morning.