painting is pretty much the only thing letting me keep it together lately.

Everything in the last post is true, and I suppose that none of it has changed. But looking at it doesn't help. So, new entry time. I've been doing figure drawing sessions again for the last few weeks. Here are some selected sketches from that.

This is spoilered, because it's super image heavy.

No more emo shit for a while, promise.

It's been so long since I've posted, that I'm not even sure what to say anymore.

Life has felt like it's a continual test of resilience for more than a year. All of the layers of my accepted self have been peeled away, until I've been left with... I don't know.

December before last, things ended with someone I cared about more than, well, anyone. Ever. And to have that gone was something that at times I've not been sure I could bear. I dealt with it as best I could, sometimes looking in where I couldn't be seen, sometimes venturing warily into the thick of her, feeling exposed. Then she disappeared, and I thought that might be the end. And then in August, she started slipping back into my life, until finally it seemed clear that there might be a reconciliation. We spoke every day, she said things to me that no one has ever said, and I believed her. Then we spent a weekend together, like we were together, and then she pulled away. Nothing had changed. We were other halves, but that wasn't enough. It never will be.

I wonder if something broke that day, if it's something I'm going to be able to fix, if it's something I deserve to have restored. So much of all of it unfolded because of decisions I made:a decision to become involved when I knew it was a bad idea; a decision to become serious when I knew it would end badly; a decision to ignore the distance that would materialize out of nowhere; and finally, a decision to let her back in after so much hurt, and so much drama, and so many previous chances. And I wonder if that says more or less of me.

These were decisions I made, and I'm being punished or tested by them. And this year has begun with more tests. A month into the year and I've become another statistic of the crumbling economy. And here I am, late at night, alone in an empty apartment writing in a journal that I don't think anyone reads anymore. Maybe I just needed to get it all out somehow. I'm tired of being the one to keep secrets I guess.

I don't feel like I'm connection anyone. I feel distant from everyone. And I'm trying to figure out if I'm up to the tests I see in front of me. Meanwhile, I'm trying to find release in art, which has always been there, even if I forget it, like a poor friend. Maybe I'll write here more often. But I've never been very good about it.

Breathe in. Exhale. Repeat.

I have to admit. I feel a bit aged.

I want to sketch. I want to paint. I want to write a novel. I want to fuck everyone in the world, etc. So many different, conflicting, energy-demanding desires, and so little time. It's a constant battle with myself to crawl out of my hole. Or, at least. to crawl out the part of my hole that takes the least effort to reside in, and to crawl into the part that leaves me exposed but expressive and productive. Routine is probably what's going to save me right now. And I never would have thought I'd say that. At least it's not the routine of monotony.

Sometimes it feels like the world is giving me a sign that I might be on the right track at least. I went to the art supply store on Friday, to pick up some foam brushes for gesso-ing (since all of mine seemed to have vanished), a new paint brush, and a canvas, because really. You can never have too much canvas. You can, however, spend too much on canvas. So I picked a 24 by 36, which was marked as 30 dollars, and took everything to the counter. The total was 15 dollars, which made the canvas... 10. 10 dollars for a thirty dollar canvas. I should have bought more. But I suppose for now, I should try to fill up the canvas I have. Any volunteers for subjects?

Just more drawings.

I don't know that I have anything I feel like I can or should say. But, new painting in progress:



Also, I've been meaning to ask: when did this place become myspace, exactly?

I said I would try to post. I never said it would be pleasant.

I was sitting at work on Wednesday morning. It was 11:30 or so, and I really didn't want to be there. This is not an unusual occurrence. But at least it wasn't Tuesday. Work has been slow lately for whatever reason, and this is something of a surprise to everyone. But that doesn't matter here. What matters is that I was sitting at work, and trying to be productive, and not being especially successful. And then my phone rang.

No one who I generally care to take a call from calls me during the day, because I, like they for the most part, work. Or go to class. I don't mind when they do, they just usually don't. Especially since things ended with my most recent girlfriend. I don't especially want to talk about that either.

The only people that call during the day are bill collectors who generally have the wrong number, or who are calling for things I've already paid. This is usually not a problem, as I don't answer the phone when they call. I looked at my phone, and it wasn't a bill collector. It was my mother.

When my mother calls, I generally expect something to be wrong. At this point, I would go so far as to say that I might even not be terribly surprised for her to tell me someone, specifically my youngest sister, might be dead. I think this whenever she calls, whether it be during the afternoon, evening, morning, or non-descript time of day. However, for her to call during the day adds a modicum of urgency to whatever she's calling about. So my stomach tightened up, I got up from my desk, and I walked toward the hallway where I could take the call. Then I answered.

Hello?

"Hi Eric. It's mom. How are you?" My mom calls me Eric. Everyone I know in southern California calls me Eric.

"I'm at work. What's going on Mom?" This is where I expect her to tell me that someone is dead. I hope it isn't my sister. What's worse, I bear the simple hope that it isn't anyone I know especially well. This makes me a bad person.

"Eric, I'm um. I don't have any money, and if I don't pay my rent by next week, they're going to evict me." It is at this point that I realize two things: 1) no one is dead, and 2) my mother is actually crying a bit on the phone.
"I don't understand. What happened?"

"I just, I haven't been working, and I don't have any money, and they're going to kick us out if we don't pay it by next week. Can you help?"

My stomach tightens in a slightly different direction from previously.

"Um, I'll look at my account and see what I can do. I'll call you back when I know."

She's crying a little more pronouncedly by now. "OK Eric. Thank you."

I hang up the phone, and I think.

If she's calling me, she's fairly desperate. She'd ask the oldest of my three younger sisters first. She's the one that ordinarily is financially responsible enough to have money to lend, and I've lost count of how many times I've heard her say "Mom borrowed some money again." Unfortunately for my mother, she tapped out my sister a little too often, and now her bank account and her patience are short of required funds to lend.

I am not the financially responsible sibling. I am not even the sibling in contact with the family. I am the prodigal son, with no intention of returning. I've never been known to have money. The problem now is, I do have some money. The problem in my heart is that this is a problem.

I decide that I need to talk to my sister, as she's in constant enough contact with my mother to have a better idea of the situation than I feel comfortable getting from her.

My sister tells me that she didn't realize that my mother was in danger of being evicted, but she isn't surprised. She fills me in on the situation over the last few months, covering the things I know and the things I don't. She tells me my mother hasn't been working (which I know already), and that her unemployment ran out before she expected it to. She had previously borrowed 180.00 dollars from my sister so that their gas and electric wouldn't be shut off. This happened more than once when I was younger and still living with her. I learned to take showers by candlelight.

My sister is unmoved by the situation, as I suppose is somewhat understandable. We've watched my mother's life spiral into squalor, me in sporadic bursts on the off occasions that I've returned to southern California, and my sister more closely, as she's never managed to pull herself away from the decaying orbit of our immediate family. I hope that doesn't haunt her as much as it haunts me. She says that she doesn't have money to give her, due to the aforementioned electric bill and other recent loan requests, which have not and likely will not be paid back. She says even if she had money to give her, she wouldn't, because it's only delaying the inevitable.

This is hard for me to hear, because the part of me that is selfish, and cold, wants to say no. This is justification to do so. I've been trying to save up for a while now, because I'm a staffed employee, or, if you would like to be uncharitable, a temp. This means I could be unemployed with little notice. I've been trying to build a cushion in the event this occurs. There's also, of course, the stupid, consumerist or artistic toys that I want because as I've been told by the media, I am a child. This is because I am unmarried and uninterested in becoming so, apparently.

Maybe they're right though, honestly. I've been meaning to start saving for that cushion for months now. It wasn't until I saw that Wacom had release an entry level Cintiq that I managed to save an extra thousand dollars in a month. Because I don't really want to curb my spending and buying things and trying to distract myself from myself in order to be responsible. I do it because there's something I want. And in the process, I've entered a sort of monetary hibernation state. I don't want to spend money. My anus tightens at the thought of it. I'll be looking at something I could buy and comfortably afford, and as my finger hovers over the mouse button (and that this is online is especially sad), suddenly, there goes the anus tightening. You can imagine my bowel's reaction to the phone call.

You might not want to, of course.

So I've now heard something that allows me to be justifiably selfish. Unfortunately, this doesn't help me feel any less guilty. Why am I even considering this? Why don't I just fall all over myself to send money, as much as I have, to make sure she doesn't get evicted?

I think it's because as much as I'm supposed to love my mother, I also hate her a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit. I hate her because she stopped caring, I hate her because drugs allowed our home to turn to garbage, I hate her for choosing a life of shit and drugs and forgetting, and I hate her because… I hate myself for hating her.

This isn't something I say to her. This isn't something I've told her. This is expressed in the mild to pronounced discomfort I feel in speaking with her on the phone, or in moments when I think about her. It's discomfort with myself, at that feeling inside. As I've gotten older, that hate sort of transforms into sadness.

This all sounds very trite. But you can fuck yourself, because you're reading it, aren't you.

I don't feel like an especially great human being right now.

New profile picture. I figure I should change them more than every 18 months, but unfortunately, I don't photograph well.



I'm going to try to write more. We'll see how that works out. And for some reason, I'm surprisingly saddened to hear about Heath Ledger. Maybe the idea of suicide hits too close.

And no, really, that wasn't a cry for help.