novembre
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career means acronyms
I don't mind not having money; I mind not being happy. I explained my theory to Cameron as I trained him at the public library: every so often a person is faced with the blank whiteness of his or her job, and they must move forward.
We were by the elevators
he liked it much more than just shifting.
I also told him, "I keep having to make art about everything, and it slows me down considerably."
"I mean this as a good thing," I clarified.
He spent most of Monday impersonating Nick Nolte as Han Solo.
I need to talk to my bosses
I am putting this off
I hope library science is still in there, but
I'm going to study art and the book first and foremost.
Nobody cares about this but me. I find it interesting, though. I always find my jobs fascinating. The autistic kids were the best, and I can look back at my time with them with an almost cinematic quality. It's starting to fade, a little, perhaps get a little grainier in playback. Kids are melting into one another, and only snippets of memory stand out: when Lee threw his tennis shoe off the Golden Gate Bridge, when Ricky beaned me with a Snapple bottle, when Donita would imitate Michael Jackson while dancing an orbit around the swings at the playground (any playground we were at that day).
slow day in the sun
thanks to my job, i now know where almost every single park or playground is located in the greater east bay area.
the student i had today kept eating eucalyptus leaves. i'd push him on the swings until he'd suddenly stand up
walk around in a circle
pick up a leaf
insert it into his mouth
sit back down again
and i'd pull the leaf out
resume pushing.
he is eleven. he doesn't talk but knows how to imitate fat albert.
12:19 am - 07.25.02
But her name was not Donita. "Donita" is my memory's mashed potatoes of two names: Donna (singing Nelly's "Thong Song" at the top of her lungs while staring deadfaced into my eyes, we were waiting to pay at Costco. After I got her to stop singing, we ate hot dogs.) and the real name of the girl who loved Michael so much.
And this was ten years ago; Michael Jackson was decidedly Not Dead. He was also, at that time, Not Very Popular.
What was that girl's name?
Even there we had acronyms.
The name of the school was an acronym of an inspiring phrase, and the nonprofit foundation that supported it was an acronym. And then the nonprofit government program that protected the telecommunications rights of the deaf and disabled, that was an acronym. As was that foundation, contracted to do the work of the government program. I worked there, and my job title was an acronym. And now the libraries, the museums, known by their initials. And I've been spending the past six years learning classification systems, and my hands look salty and beaten like an old seaman's.
We have things that stand for meaning that stand for meaning, and that is professionalism. That remove.
I am soaking about five pounds of pulp right now. This is what I do in my free time. What? Everybody has something. I want my something to gain initial status. Making a new batch of paper this weekend for printing in the future. It's shards of old library books, and one of my old artists books thrown in. Last night I found a job posting for a Storyteller. The storyteller would get to interview inhabitants and photograph them, and write about them. My heart swooned. The job description said, "Must be willing to see herself or himself become aligned with our cause. Must be comfortable around issues of homelessness."
I spent today thinking about that: if I apply for that job and really go for it, and if by chance I get it, is that the path I want to take?
I'd be giving up making art to make art.
Yesterday I set up an installation in the exhibition cases in front of the library at the museum. It's entirely from the drawers in the back of the library (this is a real location code in our library's database: Drawer.)
a book that was laser-cut into a handgun, a picture fan (a drag queen in fake boobs lounging),
a linocut print book about thumb wrestling, an off-set litho printed image-heavy book that appears to be about having promiscuous sex on vacation,
a tiny accordion-folded poem popping out of a book made from three flat squares.
On the right side, Baldessari's plus-sign fable, and circling it
many small accordion books, including one about a hairball.
It's pretty much there to entertain the coworkers who are waiting for the elevator opposite the display windows. I hope they like the drag queen.
The Drawer exhibit. I want to call it something like "DIGGING IN OUR DRAWERS" but have to make sure the title passes the mustard with the top brass first.
Today at work I fiddled with signage and the security guards kept telling me what pieces they liked, and I was happy, and I knew they were thinking about each individual piece. One man poked his head through the double glass doors at me while I was sitting at the circ desk: his eyes were twinkling, and he looked at me not as a white woman but as someone, like it was a given and that barrier was simply removed, and he said, "I like that piece with the quote about a man who is sold into slavery (here he noticed my whiteness and his eyes darkened, but after a pause he moved on)
"And when he is asked by the pirates if he has any serviceable skills, he says he can govern men." Our eyes smile at each other. I picked that page spread for that exact reason, and there it shines in the mishmash of The Drawer, a tiny little gem.
I used to have flip flops thrown at me.
Now I have acronyms.
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7:33 pm - 11.01.11
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