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