A Book...My country for a Book

What do you do if you know there's a book within you but you can't reach it?
Where do you go if you just can't feel it?

I have visited this part of my existence for more times than I care to remember or go through again. It is a hollow place where only darkness resides, mockingly jibing me in the dark shadows of the corners of my mind.
If I feel anything at all, lately, I feel empty. And self hate and, self loathing.
And, very much like a failure.

I just don't know where to go on from here, with my so called writing, my dream of being an artist, my fantasy of having a life of my own and completing my goal of having a creative life?
I just don't know where to go from here...

I failed at taking a shift at work today because I was so extremely tired, so tired in fact that I didn't remember even saying no.

After I woke up-much later- all I could think of was that, no other successful person would have said no. They would have found the strength to go to work and do a full shift. This is going to bring me down at work and it is all I can do to not break out of my house and run to nearest place that sells liquor/store.

I want to be better than this but, at my age, I'm ashamed to say that I don't know how...

What Do You Think of Your accomplishments?

So far in my life the only things I've succeeded in doing is pinning, liking, and commenting. Theses are my most successful attributes to date.
Woe be to me....

Sorry, I'm having that kind of day, a day where all I've done/nothing but is take stock of my accomplishments and compare them to my failures, only to find that my failures significantly out number any accomplishments that I've ever tried to , well, accomplish. Leaving me to wonder where has my life been, where is my life going? Is it too late to even attempt an endeavour/a go at a life? What have I been doing all this time. Looking back all I see is a vast waste land of...wastefulness. You wouldn't think that a life full of doing nothing would leave such a mess and/trail of debris in it's wake...but it did. An enormous quantity of useless knowledge, inarticulate comments, foolish answers, and times too many to count of me just being a fool and just plain acting 'too cool of school'.
And, look where that's got me.
Sometimes it feels like I've got one life to live and I'm spending it living a life that some else wanted for me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly grateful for the job that I have and am willong to stick it out with it but, my heart and passion is not where this job lies.

Speaking of passion...

...I haven't been able to feel any in the last few years.
Not for art, not for reading, and most definitely, not for life.

...Now, where does that leave me? What doe you do when you don't have any passion for anything anymore?
What happens if you don't have any hope anymore?

Speaking of hope...

...I don't have that, either.

...For anything.

And, I'm stumped as to where I have to go to get it.

Some days, I fear where this leaves me. With no option left, what is one to do?

And, how is one to go about doing it?

Most days I have trouble feeling good about myself. I waft from (between) self loathing to down right despair and all out hatred of/for myself. It's an awful job, as well as a full time job just to keep my head above water and find a good reason to like myself. I do this, go through this, on a daily basis. It's exhausting.
Some days I wonder how I find the will to get up in the morning.
Today...I'm having one of those days.
I'm finding it hard to breath, my chest feels like it has sucked up a ton of diesel fuel, black tar like substances that is now clogging up my airways, trying to choke what little life I may have left out of me.
Will it win?
...today, I don't know.

All of this morbid/maudlin thinking stems from the fact that I have achieved exactly nothing in my long, yet short life on this earth. I am forty-one years old, soon to be forty-two and I can count on one hand all of the things that I'm proud of doing, all of the things that I've actually accomplished, things that would make anyone proud, like in a job-like aspect, or a career-like function. In that respect I have accomplished exactly nothing.
Deep within this thinking, I feel, is the need, my need for others approval. Why this is so important to me I don't know. Or, am not quite ready to talk about yet...

I was raised under the cloak of negativity in my house, and around my people.
What I picked up from my loved ones was:
-Looking pretty is very important, as is being thin.
-nothing good ever happens.
-Always expect the worse, for it will always show up.
-There is no hope. Ever.
-Don't defend yourself, call someone else to do it for you. (This soon changed and morphed into me not knowing how to defend myself at all, in any situation. Which is probably why I feel like such a push over (sometimes I fell like this may not be entirely true...) sometimes).
Maybe, it's all a matter of perception. Maybe I didn't get the whole picture and am just picking and choosing the parts that I feel best puts me in a darker light or, may justify my means?
I hope not. I hope that I have at least some clarity in this area...
I also feel like I have family pressures on me but, again, is it perceived pressure or real pressure?

What do you love? - #1

It's taken me a great many years- probably, way too many- to tap into that feeling but, when i do I feel very deeply abut art, the very act of creating something out of the ether and making it or causing it to be my own, that is exhilarating, stimulating, even.
It's one of the few things in my world, this world that actually takes my breath away.
I mean, I can actually become breathless from the act itself-
Oh! And don't even get me started on conversing about art- specifically describing a particular painting that I may be looking at: here I get incredibly winded to the point of very nearly, needing oxygen.
Sometimes I think my chest can't take the excitement of what I'm looking at or being/standing near.
It can all be really overwhelming at time...
I consider art my river of life.
Like when you go swimming and, the water is everywhere, all around you, it gets up in your nose, it gets in your mouth, it even gets into you eyes, It's everywhere. It supports you, carries you for however long you want to be immersed in it's belly, it comforts you and gives you life.
This is what art is for me.
Life.
Without it, I am dead.

The other thing I love is the word.
Written or otherwise, I'll take them however I can get them.
I particularly love the ones put down into books.
Books.
They are some magical entity that opened me up to this world.
And, I hate to be a stone cold snob about this but, I mean books, not the other-worldly i-readers that have infiltrated my existence and curdled up my precious realm of the physical book in hand, the actual, tactile experience of reading a tome with ones eyes and skin.
Not these evil invaders for me.
I will always love the experience of reading a physical book, feeling it's binding, whether old and frayed or new and fresh, the feel of it's pages, the smell of it's history emanating from each finger pressed/greased page.

I love to hear words. I love the art/act of conversation. Sometimes I feel that there are so many words left unsaid in this world and that they will never be said, that I feel for them, that they should not have a place at our conversational table, that they may not, nor ever be heard.
For this my heart and soul weeps.

Who are you? - #1

I suppose I should introduce myself.
Okay, let's start with the basics. I'm an over-twenty-year old woman (don't question me!) who has been an art loving, creative junkie, since birth. In fact, let's start there.
let's take my birth for starters: there be no other greater lie or creative untruth than the time of my birth. According to my mother- whom I seriously suspect of being heavily under the influence (if she knew what was good for her) of a massive dose of an epidural- I arrived precisely on time- as the clock in the town square struck noon on a Monday afternoon in Kingston, Jamaica.
And, for anyone who knows me: I am early for nothing.
To be fair, I was supposed to arrive on the previous Friday- but that's a blog for another time.
So, apparently, my first act as an artist, and deeply, creative individual, was to manufacture my birth-of sort- as a piece of performance art.
Well, we all had to start somewhere, why not the beginning?

As I've mentioned, I have a mother, I also have a father, and a brother, who's a good twelve years older than me. I know, twelve years! I shudder to think what kind of child he could have been to warrant such a long wait for the next one, namely, me, to arrive. She didn't have me until she was well into her mid-thirties, which made growing up a unique experience. There were more than one occasions where the phrase 'no, she's not my Grandmother', became permanently fused into my daily lexicon. It put me on the defensive for most of my young years.Very exhaustive upbringing.

I also have an aunt, my mother's sister, and her husband (sadly, he recently passed away).
My mother and her sister are polar opposites, verily, the very picture of oil and water.
My mother is the more gregarious of the two, whereas my aunt is more the quiet one. My mom, more losey-goosey with her things (placement of furniture and such- to a certain extent), my aunt, more neat and tidy.

My brother and I are a bit of a conundrum, of sorts, as well.
Growing up we had very little to talk about. The twelve-year age gap made that a little hard. But, that's not to say that we didn't have any fun. Some of the best times I remember between us are when he would smile at me.
My brother has the best smile. It's wide and, glorious and, shines through both ends of his jaw. It's a multitude of big, bright and, very white teeth, just enough so as not to overtake his mouth. Everything is proportional, everything is perfect, in fact.
When my brother smiles, the world comes into order. It's a happy smile.
So, when it goes away from time to time, I have to force myself to remember that no matter what, my brother loves me.


Growing up, our connection may have been askew, from time to time but, it was always there.

As for my father, he was missing in action. Plain and simple. there is no use in me gussying it up with platitudes of father worshiping ideals and or ideas. He wasn't there. Whether or not he wanted to be there is something, another query, some deep part of my soul still has to reckon with.
I usually saw him on holidays in the summer in Jamaica. For most of my childhood I would fool myself into thinking I was daddy's little girl but, the truth was that he was barely a daddy of a little girl. I had a father in name only, I felt sometimes. Yet, I still loved him and, on our many visits, I could feel that he loved me, too.
MAybe, there are different ways that a father can love his child, maybe he doesn't always have to be there, maybe it's possible to feel his love from far, far, away and still know that that is your family?
Life is complicated. I suspect that I didn't get the full meaning of family and how we love each other when I was growing up. I feel that in this, my answer to this question, I'm simplifying things too much to fit my childhood addled mind of what actually happened back then.
Maybe he really loved me enough to stay back there, maybe he couldn't afford to come with us, maybe he just couldn't stand the cold of a strong Montreal winter and just the thought of it did something awful to his knees and respiratory system.
Maybe, it's more than he just didn't want to be with us.
Next question, please.

Do You Want To Be Famous?

I'm not quite sure what being famous is but, I'm sure everyone out there has their own opinion about what it means to them. To me, it means a plentitude of flashbulbs (do we still use flashbulbs) exploding in your face, never having any real privacy or a moment's peace to yourself, thereby forcing you to hire private security to shelter you from one place to another just so you can shop for groceries or try on a pair of shoes.
That is not the kind of fame that I want.
My kind of fame is a little more subtle. The kind that the people of the MTV show Teen Wolf have (except at ComiCon and other such expos- man those fans go crazy!), the kind that makes it easy for the likes of Blair Underwood and Matt Damon to walk their kids to school. The kind that allows me to get through my day trying to have a life and still do the things that make me happy. I want to have people know who I am but not at the expense of limiting my mobility in this world.
Selfish? Maybe.
Listen, I understand that with being in the public eye there comes some compromises but at which state do you draw the line.
For me, I would like that line drawn right there, in the sand where my freedom exist and the darker side looks on from the other side. So, to answer the question, yes, I would like to be famous- but, within reason.
If there is such a thing...

Welcome!

Hi! Welcome to my blog of questions, arbitrary questions, at that, about just about anything that comes up in my mind. They will run the gamut from 'what is my favourite color?' to 'what would I like to eat as my last meal?'. These are basically questions that I think I would be asked if I was famous or on The Actor's Studio. Things I hope will happen but, if they don't then, that would be okay, too but, in the meantime, a girl can dream can't she? (The answer to this to be posted later). So, shall we get started?