Excerpts From My Journal

Library Lights

I can’t stand being in the library more than 2 hours. It truly is my limit. I get annoyed by the soft blanket of incessant chatter. The air is stale. The lighting is unnatural. And sitting in one place that long, I start to feel like a caged cat.

The Future is Inside Us

I just finished Paul Auster’s book, Oracle Night. I’m left with these two statements stinging my mind: “the future is inside us” and “everything human is real”.

Ideas:

I realized early on that built up extravagant events with someone don't make for special moments, rather it's the unexpected moments during the every day that do. 

Time is a way to manage people.

Money exists only when you use it.

Add wire to my paintings.

We should wear what we want like a little girl.

Perhaps creativity aims to reach the sublime-- that place where it's both familiar and completely foreign.

Odysseus is a great name.

What causes an itch?

What if I had a day when I never knew what time it was?

Quote from Invisible by Paul Auster:

“Real love is when you get as much pleasure from giving pleasure as you do from receiving it”

Play on words:

I grated great cheese but dropped some in the grate.

That kind of dog is kind of kind.

Who am I to you?

Who is Olivia to someone meeting me? What do they see? What do I show and give of myself in their eyes? I do not have a clear perception of how I am to other people. 

Deepak Chopra:

"Seeking is really just a way of winning yourself back"

Poem About a Poem

I went home straight away after finishing a poem

Read it to Lora and Kat

Both impressed

That I wrote such a thing

In two hours flat—

So dense and immense they had to

Hear parts back.

After editing I couldn’t resist

I re-copied it down,

Bit by bit.

I read it out loud,

Letter after letter,

Forming words—

      and meanings too!--

Making it better and better

For my ears and yours, I assume.

Together, with voice and hand typing all

I finished the poem growing in me

Nine months strong. 

New "Tidyings"

I've had a collection of miniature things on my desk for the past 2 months, waiting to find the perfect display case for them all. I've collected "miniatures"since I was young but recently I've put more thought into what I choose to hold onto. For example, I drank a mango juice from Bay State Bakery (delicious middle eastern food on Water St, Worcester) that came in a tiny, unusually shaped glass bottle. I knew I wanted to keep this bottle, but had no clue what I would use it for. So I tucked it into my bag, brought it home and on my desk it sat. Until one day, I was working in my studio on a new doll and considered using buttons I've collected from various garments that came with extras on my doll. Thats when it hit me: why not put all these buttons into the mango juice bottle?

This is the type of decision that has gone behind my collection, however my miniatures were consuming my desk. Though I've been looking in antique shops , yard sales and stuff left in front of houses for the perfect case, I hadn't checked my own house. Lo and behold, in my attic, balancing on the arm of an old chair and a filing cabinet was a beautiful display case--no doors-- with a mirror in the back. Perfect.

So today, I finally set up all my miniatures collected over the past year in the case. In the midst of accomplishing a task that's been hanging over my head, I decided it was time to finish another project.

Last winter I began a sculpture to hold incense. The concept was to sculpt a hippie leaning back smoking  but all I completed was the head. For the next few hours I designed the rest of him: his yellow and green tie-dyed T-shirt, blue cut off jeans, funky sneakers, and limbs.

I've posted images of both these new "tidyings", along with two old collage drawings I did around the time I started the smoking hippie.

The Start of Wire

I started working with wire a few years ago. My favorite pieces were three dolls, each with a primitive headdress. I hung the three wire men from my favorite tree at a park down the road and sat up the hill watching people pass. Some never noticed these wire men hanging from the tree but those who did examined them, not knowing the artist was just up the hill. I was curious to see how often people really see their surroundings. Here stands a tree with such thick beautiful energy and yet many barely notice it.

After my little experiment I stood the men up in brush on the side of the trail. Here is a hint at what it all looked like.

The Death of My Childhood

I had such a strong dream last night. I remember several parts. The one that sticks out most is the image of 7 yr old me standing in my front yard in the snow with red socks and a red dress. I asked her what she was doing out in the snow with socks on and she said that mom says its ok, which I knew wasn’t true but in the dream I accepted it. I looked at little me for a while, noticing my giddiness, my happiness, my childness. I saw my nose, so much smaller but the same nose as the one I have now—long with a little ball at the tip. And then I started crying and so did she. I held her—she was so small I realized—and I was even sadder by how sad she was. She crumbled in my arms, crying.  I felt her shaking as I looked down at her and I couldn’t believe I was holding a younger version of myself. How is this possible? I thought. But it was so real, so believable. I could feel the weight of her body in my arms so clearly. My childhood is dying I remember thinking. This is the ghost of my childhood and she is dead.

Later I was riding bikes with a friend of Zoya’s named Katie. She had a bike that fit her but mine was too small. She told me she had to move the seat up on hers so I tried doing that but it never stayed. The bike was just too small for me. I remember telling her that maybe we shouldn’t ride to Bread and Circus because of the hole in her heart (which she really has) but she insisted. I remember how hard it was for me, and not for her. The bike was so small and my legs were getting overworked. I was exhausted by the end of it.

At another point in my dream I was in my basement with Alex and maybe Marcel. I remember I wanted to look cool to them, impress them with the movies I had but all I could find was Flubber and other childish movies. I wouldn’t impress them with these, I thought to myself.

Then I remember it was a holiday and I was disappointed that we weren’t going to be eating any of the roast beef (that I picked up at Bread and Circus with Katie?); that the whole holiday was called off. I don’t remember why anymore. But I remember feeling especially disappointed— really let down that my family didn’t go through with the holiday. I had been looking forward to it all day and now it wasn’t happening.

When I woke up I was overwhelmed, particularly by the experience with the 7 year old me. I couldn’t believe I saw my childhood self so clearly. It was so truly real and yet, here I am in bed with no little Olivia in red socks laying in my arms. What do all these things mean? 

I have been thinking throughout today about what I dreamt. I’ve decided that this is my subconscious telling me that childhood is over. I’m grown now. I no longer am the little girl who disobeys my parents by wearing red socks in the snow—I make my own choices now. And my bike, my way of moving around my world, is too small for me. It’s time for a new bike, a new approach. And no longer does it matter who I impress with surface ideals. Whether I watch Flubber or not is insignificant. It is not what defines me.

After all of this, my dream ends with feeling that my family let me down. But nothing is as it seams in a dream. Rather, I interpret this as signifying my need to break out of the comfort of my family. I can’t always depend on family tradition; I need to make my own way. I relate this to my desire to move out. It is too easy to fall back on the comforts of the familiar. I yearn for something new, something separate and clearly my own. It’s not to say I wish to abandon family holidays but I think it is time to make my own life. This is my life and my childhood has ended. 

A View Into My World

Family Encouragement

My grampa is one of the last highly skilled metal workers left in America. He owned a company called Sturdy Lantern. He designed and made all the lanterns the company sold. Many lights on the streets of Boston are his creation, commissioned by the city to make them. He can make anything out of metal. Since retiring after working several years at Gillette making razors he has built a copper violin, repaired metal things for my family, and most recently a copper box for me.

Within the last year I have found a passion for jewelry making. Using copper and brass wire I build pendants, rings, and bracelets. This is the first art form that I have maintained an interest in. I've tried drawing, painting, other forms of sculpture (I say other because my jewelry takes on a sculptural form), and even book making. None of these have interested me long enough for me to want to master them. My sudden discovery of my passion to make jewelry has given my art drive rejuvenation. 

My grampa saw this. And so for two months he worked on making me a box to display my jewelry in. From one sheet of copper and some brass, he made me the most beautiful box I have ever seen. When he presented me with it, I was overwhelmed. This was the biggest gesture any one has shown in support of my jewelry making, believing in my skills enough to build me a box to present them in. It meant so much that I had his encouragement. 

I love my box and I love my grampa. Last night I made him a card to thank him for the strength he gave me in making my creations.

Center Park

Center Park

So many lives overlap

At once they are unified

Only to separate upon the child’s restless gaze

And commitments yet arranged.

Children play sometimes grouping in 3’s and 9’s

Games that teach skills discovered

Through battles of swords made of sticks and silly woes.

And then the junior high buzz wisps by

Cotton candy perfume delights my nose

And schemes of social hierarchy

Shifting from cons to prose.

Boys chorus in with those sweet new voices,

Cracking sly witty teases

To the girls all whispering.

And again my eye catches

Young games at the playground.

Two girls are twirling

One falls on the ground, softly,

The other giggles with hands for help up.

Then huffs of a chase taking place on the bridge,

Connecting one look out tower look-a-like

To a pole for sliding down.

Five boys all in jeans, no older than six

Running from another claiming to be

Captain of Thordor,

Ten feet tall, two cars wide.

And so sit the parents looking up at their kids,

Or down at the one helped up from the ground,

And so they think blankly

Still eyes on their kids,

Catching time to be empty--

For a moment to breathe.

Passing now is a family

Dad with his boy and dog not much shorter

Then ten paces back, mother and daughter together walk

All matching with hair dark as hemlock

I notice the stride of the dad so foreign

Steps distinct and deliberate

With knees that kick back.

Each person in this family of exotic blood walks

In a stride just like this:

Digital and harsh.

At the tennis courts—

Unofficially for men only

No women allowed—

Some sit chatting on benches

About matches of Federer and Nadal

Or just days gone by since last they each passed.

Others in all white

Whack rackets against balls—

Neon green with white stripes—

Over a net three feet tall.

They yell out in anger:

“Shit” and grunts of air.

Behind me to the left

Is the “hut” I know well.

Summers of tie-dye messes and

Balls falling down the hill,

Spent all with this hut

Constant and set,

Trees lining its perimeter

And overlooking the brook.

Back at camp held here you see,

There was a time I would be

A counselors pet times three.

I’d follow them around,

Get a ride on their backs,

And words told so nicely

Like that I was cute and sweet

And the best at basketball.

All this for a fee so small:

Just fetch them water every now and again

And scratch their backs—

I would get the best summer

If I just did that!

Along the way while being their chum,

I’d meet other kids and play

Games like the ones I’m seeing today.

I come here to remember

Days passed and forgotten,

Brought alive by the youth

I sit here a far watching. 

Memories

Today I woke up at 5:20 am, before the town was awake. I walked to the lake in my yellow Tibetan jacket and sat on the stone edge. Looking over the water, memories of childhood passed though my mind's eye. I saw myself in the third person, watching the child with long hair and giddy strides from a far. I realized that my memories were nothing more than an impression of what once was my world, like Monet's paintings of passing scenes. My memories were dominated by moods, not visual details. It's just a mood that builds a memory.