Exploring the Infinite Abyss

Glittering in the dark night skies is one of my favorite constellations: Andromeda, a princess from Ethiopia. Andromeda got chained to the rocks to be eaten by a sea monster because her mother was a stuck-up queen. Instead of taking off to start her own little queendom or join the Israeli army, she decides to sacrifice everything and allow herself to be made into McDromeda Nuggets. The hero, Perseus, flies in on Pegasus and saves her, and they do the happily ever after bit. But why did she let herself get chained up in the first place. Sins of the father (or mother, in this case) seem like a poor reason to get chomped. She should have let her parents work out their own issues with the gods. And even once she was there, why did she give up and just wait to be rescued? Buffy the Vampire Slayer wouldn't have waited to be rescued. When the snake demon was coming up out of the frat house pit, she tugged on her chains, got herself loose, and kicked its ass. And last but not least, how come she's a princess from Ethiopia, in Africa, but she's always portrayed in art and literature as a lily-white girl, and Perseus is a Greek boy (also portrayed as pretty darned caucasian, if you ask me, like he picked up Pegasus from a farm in Nebraska). In truth, they would have been a pretty cute interracial couple. At least the stars are pretty, and the Andromeda Galaxy glows faintly from somewhere near her hip, like a really fuzzy, glowing purse.

I saw the title once on an advertisement that had been badly translated, and I thought it was funny. What do unforgiveable nights in paradise involve? Low thread-count sheets? Loud cabana neighbors? Obnoxious pool boys? Margaritas made with absinthe?

Life is good. My art show opens in a few weeks.

I heard that line somewhere, and it has stayed with me. I like the enduring myth of heaven, even if I don't define an afterlife in those terms. I do believe in something other than this existence, and I think of it as beautiful and filled with my family (human family, animal family, friend family, etc.). To see Murphy's green eyes again and brush against her soft calico fur - that would be my heaven. Most especially, to realize that the terrible loneliness and sadness when someone dies is somehow erased or turned into a cosmic joke - that would be my heaven.

I wish I knew who I want to be when I grow up. I've been thinking lately that maybe the reason I've never gotten married or had kids is because I've wanted and needed other things, not because I'm somehow deficient. What would our lives look like if we really accepted and embraced our choices?

In ancient Egypt, there is a creation myth that says humans were created as an 'accident
of emotion' - that tears of joy in the god Atum's eye and in the eyes of the divine child Ra created humanity.

Another Egyptian creation myth suggests that the god Khnum, the father of fathers and mother of mothers, created humanity on his potter's wheel. My friend Sharon mentioned the connection between the name for the first human, such as Adam, and the word for earth or dirt. In some languages they are the same, or very similar.

I love the idea that we were created from overwhelming emotion or from the fertile earth. That the slick gray clay on my hands could somehow be molded into an early, rough version of people, and could be molded by wind and rain and sun into the person I am today.

I've been reading about the earliest funerary rituals as part of my research for this exhibition I'm producing on ancient Egypt. There is evidence that the Neanderthals held the first funerary practices - burying a body or at least placing it out of the elements, deliberately acknowledging the passing with some kind of ritual or flowers, and leaving items with the person who died. These rituals started to develop when brain development led to abstract thinking. At some point, abstract thought was possible, and from this came the need to produce art, to question our existence, to think that maybe an afterlife was possible, and that our dead friend might need some food or his knife or her favorite blanket in that new world. At some point, the world was not enough, and maybe this is when we gave birth to god.

It's been suggested that most animals don't acknowledge the death of another of their tribe. After all, they don't think abstractly, creating art or condominiums or cell phones. When death occurs, they just ignore the body and move on with their lives. But bonobos have been observed not only touching the body, but once they realize their friend is dead, clearly getting upset - in essence, mourning the death. Elephants are said to grieve as well, and when my cat friend died, her daughter looked for her for weeks, and I believe we were both sad. I'm not sure we can truly understand how any species feels about death, or life.

I like the creation myth that we are all living on the back of a giant turtle. Stephen Hawking mentions this story about a scientist giving a lecture on astronomy and the universe. After the lecture, an elderly woman approaches the scientist and tells him he's wrong. She says "The world is really a flat plan supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist asks, "And what is the turtle standing on?" She replies, "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use - it's turtles all the way down." Wikipedia has this to say about it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

I think we each make our own creation myth. We can choose to believe a popular one - such as Adam and Eve - or we can piece one together from experiences and observations along our journey. As for me, I like the idea of riding along on the back of a giant cosmic turtle, even if it doesn't make any sense scientifically. So just in case it is turtles, thank you to all the turtles giving me this solid ground on which to stand, and live my life.

I had hoped that going forward with my life would be easy and fun. I know the whole "move across the country with cats" thing wouldn't be barrels of laughs, but I'd like to believe that once I reached my destination, I could relax and feel cared for, relax and enjoy life. But suddenly it looks like I don't have a place to live, if I take this job. And that makes everything harder. I thought about just giving up and staying here. I might still do that. But a part of me wants to just go anyway, and just steer around whatever isn't going to help me.

I want a lot of things in life. I want a good and stable future. I want money, a good job, good friends, to fall in love, to have a child, to have my own house with an art studio. I want my own art shows, to surprise myself, to feel more and more confident, to take a vacation and see Italy, Greece and Spain. I want to watch a million more sunsets and meteor showers and see the desert when it's quiet and the shadows get long. I want to howl with coyotes and talk to bears. I want to write in a cafe with Natalie Goldberg and take a walk with Terry Tempest Williams. I want to dance down the moon and celebrate the solstice. I want to remember every day that I'm connected to this planet, these people. And I want to always have at least one gay best friend. I want to be honest, and to always tell my sister that I love her when we talk, because I think she's an amazing person, and I'm so glad we're family.

I want to not let my fear control my choices. I want to be audacious and loud and not be afraid of what people are thinking of me. I want to accept myself as I am, and to remind myself every day that I'm good enough. I want to stop being attracted to people who reject me or don't get me. I want to get off of the emotional train ride to hell and walk through a meadow filled with daisies instead and look for a cloud dragon overhead.

I got offered a job, far away from family, friends and my current life. There are compelling reasons to take it, yet equally compelling ones not to. How do you decide whether or not to start your life anew? The question I asked Mark tonight was "what does your gut tell you? Excited or terrified?" He said both. I guess I'm the same. On the one hand, I feel like a racehorse who's been in the gate too long. I've been waiting and waiting, ready to take off down the track, and until now, no one has clanged the bell and opened the gate. Finally, finally, finally, I can let go, run full out and feel the wind in my hair. It's like the last scene of Six Feet Under, when Claire heads to New York, She's going there with no idea what will happen when she gets there. There's no guarantees. But she takes the risk. I have no idea whether this is a good or a bad risk. I do know I'll have some deep regrets, especially with work. If I walk away from this now, I have to reconcile myself to the fact that this sort of opportunity may never happen again. Everything else will be small, compared to this. I'm leading a huge project, and I'm so proud of that. And yet I also feel like I'm limping along much of the time, with little support and a million problems buzzing in my head. So maybe it's time to hand that over to someone else. I don't know what to do. I'm very grateful to be offered this chance, though. To start over, somewhere new. And to work for a company I really respect. I'm scared, but I have to remind myself that this is the best part. This is going down the rapids, hanging on and trying not to fall in. This is life, full of twists and turns and a million unexpected gifts.

A friend of mine told me about her dream, in which someone told her "You don't speak lies and you don't speak truth." That's me. I skirt around the real issues, not wanting to admit what's really wrong. I don't lie, exactly, but I avoid. I want to speak truth. And I want to not be afraid of what's true.

I feel like I can't move forward. Certain aspects of my life are stuck in the spin cycle - they go around and around, but they never progress. I'm tired of standing still. I keep waiting for someone else to help move things forward. But that won't work. If I'm not happy with a situation, I know it's up to me to change it. I want a better life than this.

I wish I knew how to make sense of all the craziness - man shooting Amish girls, little girl dying of cancer, my friend being diagnosed with diabetes and 1,000 other senseless things. Yesterday a huge thunderstorm hit around 6pm, with vicious winds, lightning that lit up the blackened sky and hail that pelted my car like bullets. It hit so hard I was afraid the windshield would shatter. I tried to find a place to stop, to get under some trees or shelter, but there was nowhere. So I kept heading towards home, hoping I'd get there. I did, just in time to hear the tornado sirens blaring. I ran into the house with the chinese food I'd picked up before I realized the storm was hitting, getting smacked in the head by golfball-sized hail the whole time, and tried to figure out if I should be pulling out the ruby slippers. It all turned out okay, except for the dents in my car and my head. So I guess I'll wait until another time to meet the Lollipop Guild. Too bad. I wanted to play them some hip-hop, sort of modernize the whole "follow the yellow brick road" shtick.

I know it's an illusion to feel like I have control in my life, but it's one of my favorite illusions. I think that's why I like my job - I get to make decisions and do things that make me feel like I'm controlling what happens and how it happens. I get to steer the boat, and I'm good at it, making instant course corrections and checking the stars to see which direction I'm going. I wish I felt that way in my personal life. I think fear is steering the boat in my personal life. I've been hiding for so long I can't remember what it's like not to. My compass doesn't seem to work with my personal life, or else maybe I've just tossed the thing overboard, not remembering to trust my instincts. It's hard to trust your instincts when they tell you to do things that feel counter-intuitive. Head away from something that hurts you - that makes sense. But what if heading away from something that hurts you means you have to head into something else that also causes pain? These aren't good choices. Where's Jack Sparrow when I need him?

I think that leaving home and moving away to college works when you're 18 or 19 because, while you're very attached to your family (presumably), you're also at that stage of development where you're breaking away and becoming your own person. But now, at 42, it seem infinitely harder. I'm scared of making mistakes, especially big mistakes. How do you know when to say "I do" and when to say "I don't?"

It's been a perfect day - cool, breezy, with that intense blue sky you only see in the autumn. The leaves have just started changing, so they're gilded at the tips with yellow, orange and red. I feel like the world makes more sense on a day like this - when I'm outside and happy.

Christi Thomas died today. I'm so sad. Little girls shouldn't be able to get cancer, to hurt, to die. We should live in a world where that just can't happen.

It's becoming autumn, a little more each day. The air is getting crisp and cool at night. I still hear the crickets and the cars and the people sitting on their porches. It feels different here than in San Francisco. In SF, time seems to stand still. Maybe it's the light. Or the weather, which always seems similar, no matter when I'm there.

I feel like I went off track some time back. I'm not even sure how far back that was. But when I look at my life, I'm surprised and bewildered, like my life is a wildebeest that wondered into my living room, and is just standing there, snuffling the lampshade and stamping its hooves on my rug.

I read some stuff by Irshad Manji tonight, and felt hopeful about the world for the first time in a very long time.

I'm trying to come up with good ways to make life-altering decisions, like moving, changing jobs or careers, starting or ending relationships. Thinking about this keeps taking me back to this idea I have for a painting/collage series of representing my relationships with people as maps. I love the idea that, when we face the tough choices, somebody could stand beside us with one of those AAA maps and say, "Well, ya see, if ya take 71, ya'll end up at yer destination, but it's a pretty bumpy ride. But if ya take 23 north and keep going, it's all blue skies, trees and river runnin' alongside ya. It'll take ya longer, but it'll be worth it." Just point me towards the trees and sky.

I've been thinking of writing a book about this project I'm working on. It's a traveling exhibition on ancient Egypt and the rituals of mummification. I think I needed to work on this project, so close to death and death rituals, since I'm so unresolved about death in my own life.

It feels to me like my life story reads like the Titanic passenger list: one loss after another. It's not that bad, really, but I've lost my mom, my dad, my stepbrother and friends, many of them in the past few years. I don't know how to make sense of this.

One of the things I've done for this project is research how different cultures handle death and dying, and there are certain things that feel true for me. Somebody said "There's no U-Haul following the hearse." I like that: the stuff doesn't matter. And I like the idea of enlightenment. Or maybe I just like the idea of Toto pulling back the curtain so I can see the Great and Powerful Oz.

The thing I'm most unresolved about right now is Christi Thomas, a beautiful little girl with cancer, who loves to visit the museum where I work - http://www.christithomas.com/. She's amazing, and her parents are keeping a blog of what they're going through. I read it often, and send good thoughts and wishes for her healing. It's not fair that she's going through this. Sometimes the world seems so cruel. I'm so worried about her. She's having a really rough time lately. I want the world to make more sense than this. She deserves to be a happy, healthy little girl, so why can't one of us wave a wand and make that happen?

A friend of mine sent me an ad that reads:

The Unknown
You can duck down and hope nothing hits you
or stand tall as you can, show it your teeth
and say

Dish it up baby, and don't be stingy with the jalapenos.