Lacy J. Davis

My body and I get to be on the same team.

2011-09-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

My collarbone tastes like the breath of my lover, my fingers like salt and maple and peanut butter. My hair smells faintly of the left-behind shampoo of a resident long gone from my building and overtly of sweat and my efforts. My feet press forward up gigantic concrete hills that have stairs cut into their crests.

Today: Hours of quiet and contemplative wakefulness crescendo into crashes of physical entanglement with a counterpart I could barely have imagined in my most wild and prolific dreams. My early afternoon segues into the heat of utter exertion from push ups on my basement floor.

My physicality exists in a state that is wildly prepared to live. I never, ever, ever have to spar against my body again and I am grateful.

Food for thought

2011-09-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

great advice.

2011-07-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

New moon.

2011-07-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

I can tell that I lived in Portland, Oregon for five years, because when the new moon comes, I know its a great time to set some intentions. Those freakjob white people with dreadlocks and their practices soaked into the constitution of me and imbued me with urges that I formerly would have scoffed at, at best and outright scorned at worst. Despite the ego that I was born with, probably, I know its a perfect moment- a great time to look up and throw my hands to the sky. As I raise my face to the heavens I shall say "Hey universe! Lacy Davis here. Gimme whatcha got!" and it is only logical that the Universe will look back down and say "Sure, babe. Whatever you want can be yours".

With complete confidence I will press on: "For this moon and for every moon I fully intend to love my existence hugely every single second and to be open open open wide to possibility! I intend to listen to my gut! To touch and be touched! To take care, to suit up, to show up. I intend to continually make loud and joyous noise!"

The sky will then part and the magic eight ball in the sky will shake itself and thunder a simple "outlook good" in response. And with that, I nod in thanks. The time is nigh and the stratosphere has confirmed it. It is time for a whole new phase to began.

lock and key

2011-07-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

For five weeks and counting now, I have been placed in the prestigious and ever-so-slightly taxing position of "role model" for a gaggle of fifty summer-arts-program attending teenagers. I feel exposed- totally revealed as i see the ways in which I am energized by these young beings and also feel the points when i reach my limits. Some mornings I would rise and interaction with the students felt welcome and natural and others (seemingly without warning) it felt near impossible for me to wake and consider the gigantic group that would watch me stumble down into the kitchen in shorts that were way too fucking short for teen eyes and a desperate need for coffee. Most often I felt so irreversibly singular- so tight and tiny and strained in my routines. I get so caught up in the choreography of my solitary motions that I forget others even exist. It is like I can't even remember any other way to be.

It amazes me to recall times when I woke up to my family in my home, or room mates stuffed and shoved into every nook and cranny of the collective houses I've lived in. It confuses the shit out of me to consider how I have had partners that I spent nearly every night with. For the past three years I have locked up shop- fiercely guarded my space, declared every molecule I take up as my own and felt immediate advances like they were attacks, threats to my independence, something to fear and something to avoid. For years now interacting as soon as I rose with even those who are close to me has felt difficult. My first waking moments are the one's where I know I am most alive, the ones where my existence feels the most vital. To share them feels precious at best and exhausting at worst.

I want to be the kind of person who wakes up unguarded and is ready to love in any kind of way at all, even in a tiny capacity. Sure, it's reasonable to assume that I wont always be able to do this hugely and perfectly. But I'm open to the thought of just a tiny bit. And I'm really trying to unearth the key that keeps my shackles locked up tight. Life is opening up and allowing a lot of surprising light in. With it, perhaps my weirdo closed gates will open up too, to a little fucking camaraderie. Although I am still unsure I am sort of half keeping my fingers crossed.

These kids, they make me want to change. Because they say negative things about themselves, talk bad about their bodies or their personalities and I want to make billboards expounding upon the deep untruth of those utterances. Because they are mischievous in perfect ways. Because I catch them sneaking out of one another's rooms clad in not-nearly-enough and I can't really bring myself to be mad. Because the one kid none of the other staff could find compassion for had a mother riddled with cancer and a boyfriend who overdosed on drugs while she was here. These kids make me want to be better for them and also for me. Because to roll over and into someone or something as I rise I think could be worth the risk sometimes. Because feeling sad for the ones who struggled while they were here was sort of worth it in exchange for the time I had to get know them and the opportunity to see what they made.

live your life, love your life.

2011-07-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Friday nights used to be for wishing for others. I'd lie around on a mattress on the floor of my Portland apartment alone and feel the intensity of my solitude. Exhaustion shackled me, time passed and all I could focus on was my work, the creation of my thesis usurping the creation of my life. My moments were being stolen right out from under my nose.

I am in motion now, and its amazing to me how these days I am incredibly clear when I am alone. With a Walkman in hand, a perfect mix tape playing, and the San Francisco mist enveloping me...I feel absolutely nothing less then completely and totally whole, contented to fetter away my hours not doing much besides simply existing. I move up giant hills singing along and pushing my bike and my smile isn't just on my face, its all over my body. Undeniable.

Right now is filled with the tension of fear and promise. I have a discipline of refusing to rush, because it makes no sense to me to crash through my days trying to move on to the next part as quickly as possible. I want to savor time, relish the stability I have on my own and feel the depths of my self. I press through San Francisco's wide array of neighborhoods and I sigh. I love my time here and all I can think is "Lacy Davis, I wanna treat you right."

I have a life of things on the horizon that make my heart feel like a balloon. My chest seems to be filling with helium as summer crescendos and as I grab on to the string tied to it, it is carrying me up and away, into an abyss full of questions I don't yet have answers to. I have no idea how things are going to unfold, everything is constantly changing around me and solids I thought I could count on are gone and in a way that feels liberating. I am pretty sure somehow, someway everything is going to be perfect even if it hurts, or is awkward, or I fumble.

Upon my arrival to my most current home, I relive my day. I scroll through my phone and I am greeted with communiques, messages from the outside world that flush my cheeks and my chest with the heat of anticipation and the rush of feeling seen and heard by a community I have painstakingly built. I am simply *excited* in a way that feels juvenile and naive and wonderful. I don't know how to explain the calm I have about it, except to say that it's been cultivated with time and experience and deciding that I am tired of doubt, totally bored with casting myself as an outsider. I'm a human amongst humans now, and I'm surprised to see that it's actually not so bad.

tomorrow and today

2011-07-13T23:58:00.000-07:00

Midnight, at last. Goodbye today. Goodbye stupid pain in my chest, see ya later self doubt.

Tomorrow is new, tomorrow is mine, tomorrow is the freedom of no more today. Tomorrow i have a plan, a scenario of an expanse to myself and space to breathe and the willingness to remember that I love my life, that I've worked hard for who I am and what I have. I don't have to be shaken with fear, or worry about vulnerability too much, or get too nervous about people coming closer to the tiny little particle of a heart I am actually able to share. Tomorrow I will try to show up just a little bit more. If not with abandon, at least with enthusiasm.

Things to do when there is nothing else to do:

2011-07-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

1. Think about unconventional relationships. Remember blind compassion for the underdog. Understand that sometimes things are not simply black and white.

this american life

2. Remember the velocity of childhood, the contrast of then and now.

(Go see many more incredibly beautiful images at dear photograph)

3. Fuck it, just watch Kesha videos and find it cute and quirky that she is repping some thrashed cowboy boots, wearing some shitty punk pyramid bracelet and blazing some supremely self confident lyrical style.

I have been sad, steeped in the business of constantly watching shift and change take place in my life, having a difficult time with the flow that occurs regardless of my approval. Every day I try to take some time to remind myself of the things that make life worth living and every single day I come to one conclusion:

I am one of the lucky ones to be in a long term relationship with art. Even when I get down on the environment of critique, even when I am wracked with anger at the process of the logistics of making one thing or another i am SURE. I will be with art forever. My pulse will constantly race as I make things. Art still gets me hot, after all these years.

And so, with great delight I find myself able to relish in the things that others create, whether it is categorized as fine art or pop culture. When there is nothing else, there is art. When I don't remember why I am here, I have reminders.

things that remind me that i am alive.

2011-07-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

Today, I finished a book.

I got fifteen pages from the end and I tore out of my apartment, cheeks burning with desire. To consume, no- to devour, the last moments of my three week long friend, to engorge myself with the knowledge of *what happens*....it all felt too sweet, too worth savoring to seek immediacy. i had to hold myself off in order to fully understand the implications of letting my eyes graze the last page. this was it. For now, this would be goodbye.

Upon returning to my apartment, I took my text laden friend to a public place where i could quell my desire to consume with coffee and foamed soy milk, where the intimacy of our exchange could be noticed by all who cared to glance my way. I dove in to my book and I languished in the language of the conclusion. I welled with emotion as the last scene crescendo'd. I (almost guiltily) dog eared a corner with a passage I felt should be embedded in my memory until the day that I die. I let tears cascade down the smoothness of my cheeks as I snapped the book shut. "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye" I thought. "I will miss you in my bed, under my pillow, as a tactile thing I can laze awake to in nothing but a t-shirt and under pants. I will miss crawling into you without reservation or hesitation. I will miss the comfort of your silence."

I returned the book to the library before I could write my special passage down. I cannot for the life of me remember even the jist of what those words said.

Tonight on my fire escape I stared into the fog and the city lights and I talked to a decade's old friend. "I am so closed off" I said. "It's like I swallowed concrete". It was huge, the silence that followed. Concrete. How does one experience life with a chest full of the thing that paved roads are made of? I didn't really realize I'd felt so heavy.

Sometimes I like to lay in the grass and stare at the sky. There's a reciprocity there that exists with neither me nor sky needing to do a thing. We simply stand parallel, mirroring. We can both be vast and infinitesimal all at once. The book, the sky- there is comfort in these things in my life that don't expect much for me. When I am not using some sort of calibration for my existence, when I lose myself in the fantasy of a world not my own, or the enormous nature of the above, I can forget my reservations. It feels good to be open. If not to people, at least to things.

The Fourth of July

2011-07-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

2009:

Curled in a tiny bodied ball on the plank wood floors of my Portland apartment- numb, tired, drained, dehydrated. I was trying to do yoga and I had collapsed, winded. It had been six days since I'd had a real meal. Instead of balanced nourishment, pineapple, water, and coffee had sustained me through the weirdness that was an amalgamation of days floating in and out of one another. The compounded acid accrued from this acrid diet had turned my belly hollow- Growling, churning, vile, inside out. I was alone in a way I couldn't totally grasp because I'd never quite had this experience before: wanting so badly to be near someone who simply didn't want to be near me.

"Oh. Here I am. Me by myself- huh." I thought.

I could barely stand up, let alone notice the world around me.

Some voice inside of me said: "Lacy, get up. Put on a dress. Go see the fireworks."

I relented- put on my cutest dress, snapped my giant gold hoops shut, and made my hair big. I took deep breaths and went outside. My stomach gnawed at itself and I moved my bicycle's peddles faster.

Upon my arrival to a small grassy knoll overlooking train tracks and the Columbia River I realized I didn't really know how to be or where to sit. Even with the throngs of champagne swilling masculine ladies and effeminate gentlemen (a special Portland, Oregon breed of androgyny exists that just simply isn't as well done any other place probably on Earth) I could find no point on the hill that felt inviting, no place that felt reasonable in the haze of my broken heart or with the awkward new bagginess of my previously most fitting dress. I watched fireworks alone from the outskirts of my neighborhood's most popular outpost and went home resigned to the fact that I was simply now unable to feel anything at all. I slept the fitful sleep of the half dead and woke at 1:00, 3:00, 5:00 am. I had no relief from reality, not even with the promise of slumber.

2010:

I rise at four AM next to someone who tries to love me despite my generally closed off disposition and I put on my running shorts. My number is already pinned to the the one athletic shirt I wear day in and day out as I do useless calorie burning exercises that deplete me and serve no other purpose other then keeping me as inhumanly thin as possible. For months I had insisted I could not run: it hurt my knees, destroyed my ankles, I didn't have the physical strength to go as far as I wanted to. I had a lot of ideas about the things I could and could not do and running seemed so far away that I had figured I may as well not even try.

Despite all my public protests I'd started jogging just a little bit in secret. Furtively, only on a treadmill, and only after I completed the exercise that I deemed appropriate for my goals, I'd lace up my shoes and run after midnight. What I discovered was that running was more thrilling then any other way that I could think of to use my body. It filled my head with a rush of something almost akin to happiness, it made me feel strong, it took me outside of my brain. Each time a jogger passed on the street I'd sigh. To be a runner! It seemed an incredible dream.

I had signed up for a 5K on a tiny government owned island 30 miles from my doorstep and luckily I was partnered with a person who had a similarly insane penchant to push one's body to its maximum while generally having a disdain for all things vehicle related. We biked there, and then, simply, we ran. It blew my mind that I didn't have to stop to walk once in my 3.1 mile traversing of paved farmland road. I cried when i crossed the finish line and had a split second where I felt almost human. That night provided me with a sleep that was more satisfying then any I'd had in the entire previous year.

Again, fireworks exploded before me and I wondered when I'd have the privilege of feeling totally human. Each accomplishment I experienced merely reminded me of all I thought that I should be doing that I was not. The drill Sergeant in my head was sometimes temporarily appeased but the fear of tomorrow always gripped me. I never felt safe from myself.

2011:

I live in San Francisco now and it only seems appropriate to me that I should run on this day, a date that stands as a tenuous nod toward my own independence, as opposed to my country's. I ruminated in the decision making process and felt the struggle of the expectation in and of itself, as I have really been examining what the point of thinking I "should" do anything really is at all anyway. I languished through my morning oatmeal and apple, considered the possibilities as I flung thick red velvet curtains open to assess the world outside.

Opening my window to San Francisco consistently takes my breath away, day in and day out. I am amazed, astounded at what this city means to me, what it has always meant since I was a tiny kid. As a girl, I had one role model, one person to look to for solace, for love, for safety. This person was my grandmother. Each year she took me to San Francisco on my birthday and gave me the gift of time alone with her. She would tell me I was her favorite (I'm pretty sure she told all the grand kids this) and take me to the restaurant she had deemed most special. Le Central. I don't remember what the food was like, but I certainly remember basking in the glow of my grandmother. She made me feel like I really existed- like my life wasn't some cruel and sarcastic joke- and like I was worthwhile.

I pulled on the same shorts I donned on the previous fourth of July and made an agreement with myself that I would spend this beautiful bright and sunny summer morning running for the love of my city, my self, and my grandmother. I'd move a little for the joy of the trifecta of those three things and if I didn't like it, I'd simply turn back. I made myself a promise of a run not based on "shoulds" but experiences. I took off out the door half smiling, half wondering if I'd be climbing back through my buildings thresh hold within ten minutes.

Sometimes there is an element of running that reminds me of the inherent athletic ability children cull, how our first form of play is simply to exert and how society, calorie counting, comparison to others, and general cultural sickness has bastardized something pure and beautiful. On this day, when I ran I sang. I smiled and I said good morning to passers by. I acknowledged that I am actually a nicer person then usual when I am in the graces of the amazement I feel at my body's abilities. Running can be a blessing just as well as it can be a curse. When I run in the name of self flagellation I feel ripped apart. When I run in the name of love I feel alive.

As I tore down The Embarcadero, past tourists and over piers, I inhaled the scent of the bay. On my way back up market and toward the high rise where I reside I felt a pang of recognition, a scent of somatic memory enveloping me. I instinctively turned up a hill that was outside of the route I planned. I came to an area peppered with patio dining, red awnings, and signs written in French. I felt the pull of my runner's legs drawing me forward, on an inane wild goose chase that I did not understand. I turned a corner and felt a stab of feeling in my chest. Le Central. My grandmother's special place. Before my very eyes and seven blocks from my home.

I pressed the saltiness of my over exerted face to the panes of the window and let the memories flood me. The slow and distinctly European service, the creamy sauces, the wink of my grandma swilling from a tumbler with rose colored liquid, the clink of our forks. I felt the corners of my mouth turn upward in a grateful smile as tears flowed from my eyes. My grandmother loved me when no other adult in my family really did. Now because of intuition, because of circumstance, because of solitude, because of spontaneity, I had the opportunity to feel the depth of that love. Just my luck, I got to feel the ways in which the universe has held me thoroughly.

(A three year long lesson: Even in a body that couldn't hold itself up, with an unending perfectionism, with doubt, with spiritual death, with deep rooted self destruction- i have continued to exist in a really profound and uncanny manner that reeks of persistence. Whether I know it or not, I have always been totally, joyously, insanely alive and capable of emotional depth. Sometimes it just takes the right circumstance to bring it out.)

Inside and outside

2011-06-27T18:39:00.001-07:00

Its perplexing, the time I spend in the studio vs. the time I spend outside of it.

Outside, time passes slowly and categorically. It slips by with purpose and intention and structure. Moments slowly march forward as I drum impatient fingers on the slick veneer desk at my work or as i lull and laze in the verdant green of the great outdoors. I hear the clock tick and watch slivers of my life slip away. Tick, Tick, Tick. Goodbye time! So long! I've enjoyed you immensely!

Even when I'm mobile- running on the Embarcadero or weaving my way through traffic on a bike- I feel like I can pin down moments passed and call them my own. I've timed my commutes perfectly. On a walk, a mile will take me precisely seventeen minutes. If I'm running it will be more like nine. On bike I'd say we're nearing on six minute miles, and by car-well who the fuck knows, because I hate to drive and avoid it in the city like the bubonic plague. My body is my messenger, the vehicle that delivers me, almost without fail, right in the nic of time. In the day-to-day, time is partnered with this body vehicle of mine and we work as a team. In tandem, and with constant awareness of one another, we make it through.

In the studio, a whole new shiny and amorphous beast appears and sucks me right outside of myself. My structure, my perfect execution, my unwillingness to bend, all billow out of me and I am left with the ghosts of it, the silent "huh." I hear myself exhale as I notice that the tight rope walking has slipped away. Upon my arrival, I tuck the black curtain closed. I take off my orthopedic nurse shoes first, and eventually the tights follow. Minutes in, my skirt slips down and pools at my ankles. The requisite pair of short shorts kept on hand is steadily pulled up to my waist and I work. It is not a scenario of structure, or a place where things are weighed and measured. Hip becomes torso becomes arm becomes drill becomes wood. Here we all are, my body, my tool, my work, my space. United as one inside a vortex of a black hole.

The charred smell of freshly penetrated wood fills the air and the screeches of a novice bestowed with power tools ensues. The crash and clatter of wood boards colliding echos in the stuffy warehouse space and as glass jars crash and shatter on the concrete floor I hear my suite mates whisper:

"........she must be at it again."

I pause only to consider putting my shoes back on and press on. Time doesn't really exist in this space I call my studio, and really final products are practically a moot point. The goal is the journey I guess, and there is nothing more important than the process of engaging in the task.

thinkin' bout nothin', thinkin' bout everything.

2011-06-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, the space of a wide open blank white box. Ground to conquer, area to cover. A little tiny space designated for me and my brain.

It is a wonder that I cannot get myself to use this tool often, as it sits before me day in and day out, waiting for insights to be digitally transposed through my fingers and into the universe. Each day rambles in and flows out and I do not write. This is not because I'm not overjoyed with the nuance that I discover each moment as I walk around. Its not because my brain isn't rattling with stories to tell or because I do not consider myself a writer. Perhaps it is that i am *too* much of a writer. Maybe there is so much to say that all the words get bottlenecked when i find space to commit them to screen. Maybe all the things I have to say are like commuters at rush hour, sausaging together trying to get out the train doors before the glide closed. Too many things, too few windows of opportunity to get them all out. And so, there is silence. But certainly there is not nothing! Tons of things exist in here, I promise you that.

Last night throngs and surges of people combed and thrashed the streets of San Francisco and as the walls of prideful queers closed in closer and closer I knew I simply needed to leave the bustle of the city. "No more acquaintances!" I bellowed. "No more bare rainbow painted bouncing breasts or lurid alcohol hazed winks!" Last night was a night for a traversing of the bay via BART, it was a night for Dana- a super solid friend, scavenged red vines and a movie theater. Last night was a night to have my own sort of gay pride: one where I celebrated my relatively bland brand of queerness that involves simple pleasure and going to bed early so that I may wake with the sun. It is a relief to ease through the years of my life with less resistance to the general quiet joy that serves me best. It is best not to fight fate, or so I hear.

This summer I have a regimen of relaxation. Does this make sense? I force myself to sleep enough, and take pains to make sure I don't grind my teeth. I swallow Valerian root before slipping into short shorts and knee socks and as I lay to rest I smile into the darkness. I count the good stuff as my eyes grow heavy, remember speaking broken French with a tourist looking for a grocery store (who knew I still remembered that?!), recall how the steep hills felt like mini stretches for my calves as I ascended them. I remember the ways the teenagers I work with fill me with the exhilaration of being a role model. I remember them saying negative things about their bodies and see how much I believe my immediate response: "Hey ya'll maybe your just taught to feel that way. Love the shit outta that body, its the only one you've got".

Adulthood is this weird thing. Things are seriously so much better every day, but its still sad and complicated and confusing often and half the time I still don't know what to do or how to feel. As Dana and I stared into our sticky paper cups and hashed it out I heard myself say perhaps the most truthful utterance of the day: "It seems I get so caught up in CONFUSION. Do I do this or that? What's the most right thing? What if I fuck everything up entirely?"

The truth is, maybe sometimes it isn't ABOUT right or wrong. Sometimes *whatever* will actually be just fine, you just gotta make a decision about what might be the most exciting thing and go at it full throttle. We can't ACTUALLY fuck up our lives, can we? Barring totally extreme scenarios (such as, let's say, smoking crack) isn't it all just fair game? Isn't life ours to just kind of rip apart and start over with over and over again until we find satisfaction? So long as we know that satisfaction shifts and sometimes good will be bad in the end and vice versa isn't it sort of required that we just give it all a shot? As I force myself to SIT, to write, to relax, to sleep more, to see the positive, I'm watching the anxiety I thought was making me succeed slip away. I make decisions sometimes without all the information. I take risk. I do what I want. and still, I'm alive! I succeed! Who would have guessed.

These days it kind of blows my mind when I stay up past midnight. On my train ride home the music I loved when I was sixteen crashed and clammored as a new day ushered in and once again I remembered: I am exactly the person I've always wanted to be. I live my dreams on a daily basis. Its okay to not be so nuts with fear all the time. All the risk panned out. As I padded up the stairs to my building I high fived passing floor mates and realized that tomorrow I'd have another opportunity to practice this new thing I got going on called loving my life. Can't wait.

collaboration station

2010-10-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

LA

2010-08-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

I have been watching the moon grow each night as my time in Los Angeles extends. Last Monday when I arrived it was a tiny sliver of a hang nail glowing in the sky and yesterday evening as I brushed my teeth in preparation for my retirement i noticed that it had grown fatter and wider. The moon appears to be taking in nourishment each day as the sun shines low and bright in the Southern California sky and as night falls we see the results.

It takes some amount of effort for me to allow myself the graceless reality of being a human amongst humans. I fumble often; it is a stretch for me to peruse rows of fruit and vegetables at a farmer's market, to feel the give of the flesh of an avocado beneath the pads of my fingers as I test it's ripeness. A fundamental flaw of my existence is the MEANING that I tend to load onto my actions and interactions. I worry as I take in a taste of the offered samples, imagine the patrons around me seeing this unnecessary consumption and furrowing their brows. I fear the consequences of each taste on my body, wonder about the overall overarching EFFECTS. It is a struggle to think these bites and licks just don't matter. It is a struggle to believe most people just don't care, aren't really paying me much attention.

(I am a part of a society-not the core. Not the periphery either. Just one of many.)

Some time ago I made a decision: I simply would not publicly taste. I would buy the things I knew I liked or take risks and purchase blindly but I would not allow the insecurity of the question of whether or not other people were noticing that I eat. I set up this boundary as a safety net. If I abstained I could not question. If I could not question I could not obsess.

Yesterday was the first really hot day here since my arrival and as the throngs of an unfamiliar and exotic market rolled out before me I made a new decision: to put the effort of allowing myself some semblance of humanity. To do what I wanted without infusing meaning into it or worrying that other people will see. I want to ENJOY my life- to exist, its the crux of all my work lately anyway.

As the summer heat warmed the straw poked through my baby coconut (YES, southern California, you really do it up right) a farmer behind a stand offered me a tiny spoonful of a local honey walnut butter and with no hesitation, I accepted. As I pulled the sustenance to my mouth a man came from the woodwork to comment: as he pulled his own nourishment inward he pointed to my stomach between mouthfuls:

"Maybe if you put some ice on that the swelling would go down" he said smugly.

It is funny to try to become an objective observer of my self in the world. What am I like? How do i function? As this man essentially demonstrated my worst nightmares of how humanity might perceive me I felt myself shrink to a sixth of my normal size energetically and nestled deep into my body. I walked away. I could not speak.

As tears streamed down my face I felt the breadth of his comment: a man took it upon himself to publicly shame a woman for eating. How disgusting. How humiliating.

This morning I think of the hours I spent hurting over these calculatedly destructive words and I wish I could have culled up my politics in response. Wouldn't it have been nice to have felt the rage instilled in me by feminism to rip him apart as publicly as he had tried to tear me down? In this instance I can't help but think that anger would have been much more productive then self pity and sadness. Just for the sake of society at large it would have been nice to be able to report that I told this oppressor what was up. But no, instead I cried.

---

Each situation presents opportunities. I spoke with my friend Meg about how difficult it often is for me to unleash. I moved to San Francisco and it is lonely and hard. Do I cry? No. My father is actively dying as I type. Do tears come? Of course not. Someone insinuates that my body has grown too large for their tastes and Bingo. Here come the tears. They pour out and despite my best efforts, they do not stop.

Some folks have a knack. They see vulnerability, open cavities of insecurity, and they needle in. Maybe this man was one of those people or maybe he was just talking to hear himself talk. Feminine consumption is a reality that is widely held in contempt and perhaps he was just a cog in that wheel: spouting off mindless commentary because he has never taken a moment to explore how hateful the culture those comments create is. Despite my best efforts, I cannot understand the personal intention those words held for him but I do see the universal impact it had on me.

Universe says: "Lacy Davis, you need to cry. It's too hard to cry about your move or your dad or how scary it is to be alive. Instead I will offer you a conduit. You will let loose over the mortification that you cannot starve. You will not be able to stop because the grief of the real shit will sink in."

In response I can only humbly thank the cosmos. Today my sinuses are stuffed with the impact of the profound release but all in all, I feel lighter. I slept later then I have been able to in probably two years. I am sitting on the floor listening to the whir of the fan. For once, I do not feel the need to disappear.

When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up.

2010-08-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

This morning I lazed awake, sloughed through sunrise with half glazed over eyes. 7:33AM, my cell phone said when I finally let my vision focus. These days I sleep in: 7:33AM is at least an hour from my most recent usual rising time.

My best friend is my first love and also a Buddhist monk it turns out. It took the disaster of his depression at age sixteen to encourage me to purchase Thich Nhat Hahn's Being Peace for him. I asked the clerk at Waldenbooks (a bookstore chain that was long ago replaced by bigger stronger bookstore chains) what may calm a restless and sad mind. She suggested this slim and succinct novel and somehow for him it planted an unrelenting seed of monasticism. I did not necessarily mean to hand the gift of a life work's worth of focus to my ailing love then, as I'm sure he did not mean to hand the same gift back to me a decade later when I could find no pleasure in my own life.

Did you know that Buddhist monks have the opportunity to Facebook chat? In the depths of the deep wood of the monestary life, between teacher studies, silent sesshin, and sitting zazen, one may use the dial-up internet connection to connect to humanity and larger popular culture. As my oldest friend logged on and made himself available to the world in which I live I shared the tale of the overcoming of my own personal years-long disaster.

I bought my own copy of Being Peace just a few months ago and despite my propensity to relish in the process of WORK I understand the point of sleeping in a bit, sitting and doing nothing. Sometimes nothingness is the quickest way to heal what hurts. A lot of the unrest is from too much expectation and attachment to somethingness. I've experienced this first hand

In the closing moments of our conversation my friend forwarded me a list of Lojong slogans; words to live by, words that help. They are as follows:

First, train in the preliminaries.
Treat everything you perceive as a dream.
Find the consciousness you had before you were born.
Let even the remedy itself drop away naturally.
Stay in the primeval consciousness, the basis of everything.
Between meditations, treat everything as an illusion.
As you breathe in, take in and accept all the sadness, pain, and
negativity of the whole world, including yourself, and absorb it into
your heart. As you breathe out, pour out all your joy and bliss; bless
the whole of existence.
Understand your attachments, your aversions, and your indifference,
and love them all.
Apply these proverbs in everything you do.
When practicing unconditional acceptance, start with yourself.
When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up.
Take all the blame yourself.
Be grateful to everyone.
Don't worry – there's nothing real about your confusion.
When something unexpected happens, in that very moment, treat it as a meditation

Work with the Five Forces. The Five Forces are:
1.Be intense, be committed.
2.Familiarization – get used to doing and being what you want to do and to be.
3.Cultivate the white seeds, not the black ones.
4.Turn totally away from all your ego trips.
5.Dedicate all the merits of what you do for the benefit of others.

Practice these Five Forces and you are ready for death at any moment.

All teachings have the same goal.
Follow the inner witness rather than the outer ones.
Always have the support of a joyful mind.
Practicing even when distracted is good training.
Always observe these three points:
1.Regularity of practice.
2.Not wasting time on the inessential.
3.Not rationalizing our mistakes.
Change your attitude, but stay natural.
Do not discuss defects.
Don't worry about other people.
Work on your greatest imperfection first.
Abandon all hope of results.
Give up poisonous food.
Don't be consistent.
Don't indulge in malicious gossip.
Don't wait in ambush.
Don't strike at the heart.
Don't put the yak's load on the cow.
Remember – this is not a competition.
Don't be sneaky.
Don't abuse your divine power for selfish reasons.
Don't expect to profit from other people's misfortune.
In all your activities, have a single purpose.
Solve all problems by accepting the bad energy and sending out the good.
Renew your commitment when you get up and before you go to sleep.
Accept good and bad fortune with an equal mind.
Keep your vows even at the risk of your life.
Recognize your neurotic tendencies, overcome them, then transcend them.
Find a teacher, tame the roving mind, choose a lifestyle that allows
you to practice.
Love your teacher, enjoy your practice, keep your vows.
Focus your body, mind, and spirit on the path.
Exclude nothing from your acceptance practice: train with a whole heart.
Always meditate on whatever you resent.
Don't depend on how the rest of the world is.
In this life, concentrate on achieving what is most meaningful.
Don't let your emotions distract you, but bring them to your practice.
Don't let your practice become irregular.
Train wholeheartedly.
Free yourself by first watching, then analyzing.
Don't feel sorry for yourself.
Don't be jealous.
Stay focused.
Don't expect any applause.

---

In other news, when one looks at an on-line thesaurus for synonyms for happiness they will find that "Can't Complain!" is offered as a viable replacement. I wonder if the paper version offers the same alternative?

movement.

2010-08-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

This morning my running shoes hit the pavement of Santa Monica Boulevard in rhythm to Lady Gaga- I am here, Los Angeles. I have arrived.

Yesterday I woke in Oakland on an air mattress which had provided me with a kind of sleep I could have never possibly imagined just a few months ago. During my thesis I fell into R.E.M. frowning each night, grinding my teeth and counting the hours until I could wake and work. It felt extremely taxing and inconvenient to need this thing called sleep in between days, like a waste of my time. Rest became something to abhor and also something I could never get enough of. Running on fumes I constantly produced.

For the past few months I have taken a pretty active stance against productivity, and still wonderful things happen and wonderful things get done.

Yesterday after I rose and went through the motions of my daily exercise I got into a vehicle. I did not brush my teeth or put on underwear as I peeled out of the Bay Area and when I crossed LA's threshhold my lover smiled and said: "You smell different".

(I pretended to wonder why).

2010-08-07T14:11:00.001-07:00

Also, today it occurs to me that my own loving has suddenly become effortless.

love and death.

2010-08-07T11:26:00.001-07:00

It is 11:38AM. I sit spent, completely nude on the bed that i am borrowing and it occurs to me: my dad will not die now. I do not know how I know this but I do. Call it intuition.

Each morning I rise with the purpose I have risen with for over two years now: I will go exercise. It does not matter who is beside me, it does not matter what my day after the exercise will look like. I will move, I will sweat, I will take this time to physically process my emotions in my own way. It will be a blessing and a curse.

It's confusing to understand the function of this in my every day life. How it both helps and hurts: how I can keep the sanity of a routine and also the insanity of goals that can never possibly be met. I can never work hard enough, can never be thin enough, can never deal with my feelings concisely enough. I will run and run and run and try but the carrot always dangles, just a foot or two away.

As I ran today I thought of my father, the good stuff. The way he used to buy me a dozen chocolate donuts upon my arrival to his cigarette smoke infested home and stored them in sweaty zip lock baggies so that I would never be without. Within a day or two the donuts would be melted into disgusting stale oblivion and he would buy me fresh ones, even though he was poor and even though ten or so of the first batch would end up in the trash. He was good like that, care took in his own fuck up alcoholic way.

I cried for a moment remembering those moments of my life with him and then I threw the rest away. Like the donuts, the feeling only remains fresh enough to indulge for a moment and then it feels disgusting to entertain the notion of partaking in it.

This morning the class I took at the gym was taught by a queer who looked just like the wonderful doctor who baby-stepped me through my eating disorder recovery. With just the same tone of voice my doctor used to urge me to eat the instructor bellowed "HARDER!" into her headset microphone.

The irony was not lost, and as I'd been ruminating on what it is like to have people care about me (what is like to receive the tangible actions of love) the real break came through: people love in the best ways they know how. They love only with the verocity with which they think they deserve love. For my father, it was fresh donuts. Nothing more, nothing less. With my doctor it was the agony of participating in my weigh-in each week, the directness to demand that I be kind to her, and the gift of consistency. Through-and-Through.

One love is not better than the other, it just is what it is. Either way, its given to me, wrapped in a package and delivered direct.

With this realization, my father lives. For now. For today. I can rise from the foot of this foreign bed and shower in warm water and the depth of that reality. No one related to me would ever really go without a fight.

mom and dad

2010-08-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

It is 8:06 AM and i am ruminating on death and dying. My mom is asking her dog, with a tone of indignance:

"SOPHIE, how many cookies are you going to eat?! Are you stealing cookies?!"

She then turns to me and with a tone of unbridled seriousness says:

"I think she's stealing cookies."

I wake here and it is simple: I participate in my mother's routine because it is her only day off and "things" must be done. I go through her motions easily enough, I recognize the rigidity of this sort of routine well. It is inherited; My workaholic addict behavior lineage.

It's funny how when we are young we believe addiction is real but only in this very precise and focused way: Do not drink, you may become addicted. Do not smoke, you may become addicted. Do not do drugs, you may become addicted.

No one mentions that maybe we will become addicted to our schedules, our stresses, our companions, our emotions. While I have been lucky enough to be generally too safe to play with these more obvious substances I cannot escape routine, stress, friends, lovers, and feelings. These are the things that can sometimes enrich my days and sometimes destroy them, depending on my willingness to listen, be present, and relinquish control. I am aware that all the things that need to get done always do, but it is when I cram them into the rigor of an unreasonable timeline that my world begins to crumble. I see this play itself out every time I visit my mother and hamster wheel beside her.I notice and I say nothing. We let behaviors go when we are ready- I am painfully aware of that fact. In the meantime I am happy to be near her.

While my mother and I contend with these insidious addictions to routine my father contends with the more obvious ones. This morning he is hooked to a machine as a direct or indirect result of his addictions(I know very little and so the details I cannot say) and this machine pushes his chest up and down, fills his lungs with oxygen so that he may breathe. As I eat my oatmeal with apples, bananas, and almonds stirred in I wonder if I should see him. I wonder what might possibly help. I wish I did not have to eat to stay alive because it is troubeling to consume while doing all this considering. I finish my food anyway.

My lover asks me what may make me feel better, and I have no answer. Does it feel best to hold memories of him and I in the model T he sold a decade ago? Cruising down Alvarado Street with wind whipping through my curly ponytail while he blasts an obnoxious airhorn at pedestrians? Is it best to remember him thin but straight backed, dark haired instead of grey, and possessing most of his teeth? What will I lose if he dies now? What will cease to exist that didnt dissapear ten years ago when he stopped attempting to pretend to give a shit about me? What is it like to see a parent encapsulated in a frail body, a tired body, a pickled body, a body that is dying?

I have no answers, I have no answers, I have no answers. Today, as with most days, I wade through a sea of options.

oakland.

2010-08-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

when i was twenty one i moved to portland, oregon because i wasn't ready to be back in california, to be back home, to settle old scores, to take the bait of the ocean and nestle myself in the abyss between the sea and the mountains. today i ride down oakland's streets and i think: "i live here". not anywhere in particular yet, just here. it is a tremendous feeling. tremendously wonderful and tremendously lonely.

i rise in the bed of a friend each morning. this friend is away and has given me the gift of her home for the week and here i am alone and i am setteling. i fall asleep sometimes feeling accomplished, like im one-foot-in-front-of-the-othering just enough to be making a life for myself. i am tremendously grateful for both perspective and privacy. i am in love with my life and the people in it like never before. i am generally disquieted by the upheaval of my existence and it is beautiful.

i highly reccommend relocating if you wonder if perhaps you have become to comfortable. i think of portland's perfectly smooth paved roads, the bike lanes (doubled to accomodate quick cyclists who want to pass the slower lot), the ease of communication between myself and the community i saw daily. my grocery clerks, my baristas, the people who sold me 15 pink lady apples each week at the farmers market. in california i am uncomfortable, like a newborn. ripped from the womb of my safety net i shakily navigate my new geography with a wonder only surpassed by a fear that is surprising considering this is the place i call my home.

every hour or so i choke on the reality of how much i do not know and i can only think: breathe. hold still for a moment. then keep going. today is new. tomorrow is new. every day for the rest of your life will be brand new. hold on. it only gets more surprising from here.

artifacts of a life.

2010-05-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

carrot quinn.

2010-03-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

My friend Carrot Quinn is a beautiful writer. She says it best:

"And really, isn’t that the point? That no-one asks us to live and yet we do it anyway, that we wake each morning, determined, in spite of our stark solitude in this cold and endless universe, that we work towards some uncertain future, and we do it without thanks or encouragement. Making art, in particular, setting aside a month of time to just make art, seems to make one feel this way. You must come to terms, each day, when the stars pale and the sun rises, with the fact that you are small, so infinitesimally small as to be insignificant, and yet it is enormously important that you continue to exist. And it is the great joke of the universe that no-one can tell you why."

(my comment: and still we press on! how priceless! how beautiful! how foolish!)

carrotquinn.wordpress.com

thesis still.

2010-03-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

california tomorrow, thank you universe.

2010-02-26T17:06:00.001-08:00

a thought.

2010-02-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

I have recently had the good fortune to wake up early enough so that I have time to do some morning relaxation yoga and meditation after my work out. As many of you may know I am not super awesome at "relaxing" (a type A artist is a rare and beautiful thing!) but in these moments I find myself quiet, on my back, palms up, and the same sentence always comes to me:

Let yourself be small, let the world be vast.

a kernal of knowledge. from my subconcious or my heart or some other part of me, one that is much wiser than my brain.

making a thesis

2010-02-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

Did you, dear reader that I have so surreptitiously abandoned, know that I am making some thesis work about transcendence?

Yesterday, as I sat in the commons of my school, grasping at human straws, I unloaded a deep fear into the abyss: what if this fails? What if the work I am throwing myself into so wholeheartedly does not work the way I'd like, is not completed in time? Is laughable, stupid?

I went home to an anxious cat and dinner and collected my energies. after much contemplation i returned to the studios.

These days I wake up at six AM, ready to act. My body vibrates with energy in my bed, I want to jump up, run until exhaustion, MAKE. It is okay to be afraid during some moments but for now I need to be fearless.

I am making this work as an extension of the life I have lead in the past two years. A life peppered with contraction, sorrow, and a huge miracle: THINGS GOT A LOT FUCKING BETTER. Thanks for that, universe.

As I make work about things getting better all the time I need to remember that the purpose of this construction is only to maintain momentum. No other reason exists for the making of my thesis other than to keep reminding myself that things are better, things are more mind blowingly gigantic every moment.

Its heavy to grasp, the ever expanding beauty in the world.

There is just a little bit of magic there. We are human beings. insignificant and gigantic. all of this is real, and its ours!

so now im gonna go make some shit.

at least october and november feel better this year than last.

2009-11-04T09:57:00.001-08:00

the darkness of the time change has enveloped me. i am in a cocoon of productivity that falls in a heap, dead as soon as the sun goes down. is the meaning of life to connect or is it to be productive? i can't seem to do both...

the loves of my life.

2009-10-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

189 days: the rise and fall of a love relationship

2009-10-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

september 30, 2008

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september 29, 2008

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september 28, 2008

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september 27, 2008

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september 2, 2008

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september 1, 2008

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august 31, 2008

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august 29, 2008

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august 28, 2008

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august 27, 2008

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august 26, 2008

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august 14, 2008

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august 1, 2008

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july 31, 2008

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july 29, 2008

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july 28, 2009

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july 27, 2008

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