romantic gestures series, broken shoes left in NYC, photo Katya Grokhovsky, 2010San Francisco? Windy and cold, heely and ....sightly bent, ultra -extra-unsure and exciting...I'm so cold, I have no clothes. I have no more feet. SFMOMA, hello Bubbles and Micheal, Bay area. It's very expensive to live here, apparently. Wattis, Tino Sehgal, do you like his work? yes, this is critique, Tino Sehgal, 2008. You got me, Tino. SFAI, opening, what a view. I've been here before, city lights, stinking rose and that bar...the heels make me nauseous.That curvy street, laughing hysteria, pull me up, it is almost parallel to my face, hugging trees, I am reminded of Melbourne, Adelaide, Odessa, Sydney, it reminds me of some streets in every city I know... Blueberries and Santina's pasta with cherry tomatoes, guilty chocolate cake. wow...shrimp in curry...too much liquid...blue bottle coffee...good. Berkley and Oakland, pleasant, the story of California, Californian, what is it? I walk uphill, running in my sleep all over the vastness of travel. sensing Australia. closer.
Onwards.
The planes don't fly out of San Francisco sometimes, this is the day. You see that fog, miss? Australia from LA : nearly missed, last to board, I am bumped up to premium economy class. It exists? yes.the food, the great sleep, the big leather soft chairs...movies, single man, education, amelia..sleep. I am here. parents' house. My right leg hurts badly and is swollen, I limp. we'll fix it all. I am wounded, coming home from a battle. self-inflicted wounds. breathe. one more time.I lie in bed smothered and pampered: foot on a pillow cushioned by mum and dad. Breakfast of Illy coffee and sirnki: mum's ricotta- pan- fried- little pan- cakes with cherry jam. Pickled tomatoes, russian style pickled mushrooms....mum's salted fresh salmon, potatoes with dill and butter, buckwheat and mushroom sauce, bullion, the chicken soup for my battered soul, Cognac with coffee and cake alenushka. mum at home. that feeling of mother nearby, food, care. blankets pillows, soft clean fresh. how much I crave this, how much I cannot be here. not long at all. areas of suburbia stretch in a lonely solitude...here, in Australia, the distance between people is one meter..did you know that? no idea. In Europe its 20 cm. I think in USA it's 6o...60 is perfect: not too far not too close.
Something is very tired in me. why me? what a strange question to your mother. maybe I won't make any art anymore. just immaterial , just this. thought and writing. I look lovingly through my library, those found painted shelves, splashes of bright paint, red, yellow with black and blue. that little studio in Melbourne, sharing it with him..fashion, tears and conservative ladies as clients. Roses from botanic gardens thrown onto your bed at night, crawling out. what love. to say an awful goodbye in Paris, that city you were supposed to love, at 25, to hate it so much: to never really claim it again for yourself. leave me alone. you are like a bull, you fear nothing, it might appear so, I fear lots. most of all? maybe death, perhaps. I shudder in sadness for all our future, for we share it, death. how curious. have you ever had that feeling, as a child you lay wide awake in bed and imagine yourself being dead, that nothing will ever be again...nothing. not this, not that, not tomorrow, not sleep, not food, not toilet, not mother not father not friends, no sounds no light. it is a loop of thought.killing you softly. nothing will ever again exist. nothing for you nothing of you.....fascinating.
I have seen dead people in open caskets in Ukraine as a child, carried through the courtyards, with a funeral orchestra behind and crowds of people following, some crying some jumping up to see the dead one...who is it and from which apartment? I closed windows, the march of death parading, celebrating, reminding. Always very old people in their Sunday best with lots of fresh flowers around their bodies...never pick up funeral flowers. And it's bad luck to see dead person, but how curious to see dead person. maybe I'll live to a 100? no. or maybe strong as a bull I'll last forever?
Waking up to a sudden change of Australian prime-minister. Witness to history? A first ever female PM. "Single, barren woman", oh boy....not chosen by the country...who will choose a woman? ...herself. ........three months before the election. The glass ceilings..the equal pay..the first FEMALE PM. There we go again and again and again..and again...and again...renew your wows of feminism to each other and stop right there. Reading newspapers. Is it 1982? still there still getting less pay still fighting still there still at it...stop right there....still ??????.
