Musings

Cathedral

2011-11-09T08:35:00.001-08:00

She is slight, my sister,
with a dancer’s waist and shoulders.
Her back is a moon beneath her sweater.
Her friends embrace
and line up at the bar for class. There is
an observation window at the top of their white sanctuary.
The teacher speaks in one-two-three’s infused with French.
“As well as you can today,” she says.
“minute by minute.” The pianist is invisible.
My sister commands the vessel of her body
with raw, red heels and a mind like a knife.
Soon spectators group and look through the top of the studio.
I think of tourists visiting mosques and cathedrals,
hoping to take a portion of beauty away for themselves.

There is a beauty to every person.
Some however
are a light in the dark. They need no adornment.
The color and structure of their hair, teeth, skin
are all their own. They are
temple and art and music
and they give
so you do not have to take.

Mini-memoir

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

When I was seven lightning struck the brick road in front of my house. Yellow caution tape surrounded the hole and my mom told me not to go near. When I did, the bricks gave way under my feet. My arms caught the ground, suspending my body above the dark sewer system. Stunned, I pulled myself out and slipped into our house through the side door. I jumped, fully clothed, into the shower in my dad's half bathroom to clean the mud off my body before anyone saw.My dad's father had our house built when it was time for him to raise a family. He worked for Florida Power, and I've been told my block is the last to keep electricity in the event of a natural disaster. My grandma told me that no one really lived in St. Petersburg until air conditioning was invented. This made me feel like I had a heat resilience super power since my family's house didn't have central heat and air until I was ten. On summer nights my three siblings and I, all born a year apart, would put our pillows in the freezer. We stayed up wearing billowy shirts, jumping around on the trampoline bed in my parents' room, which became an oasis when when they turned on the a.c. unit in their window. That cold, along with the braid my mother would pleat down my hair after a bath, are some of the most poignant sensations of my childhood. I felt a certain ownership of summer because I was born in June. My family didn't have a pool, but we made use of those owned by friends or waterfront hotels. At night I would fall asleep in my bed still wearing my bathing suit so I could wake up and go right back to a pool or Upham beach. Two places I have been since my first week of life are church and Upham beach. The warm gulf water was as close to me as my skin and when I moved to Baltimore for college I looked for a place to swim for months. I didn't find one, but the ocean never left my sleep; it is the only reoccurring dream my subconscious has held on to.

Self Portrait

2011-05-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

I am
the golden month of June,
a girl called Blue,
stars burning in my belly,
two stepping to
a rap-tap staccato
of dog toenails
on sidewalk,
bags always packed
drifting between
home and where
I think I should be.
Scurrying,
image capturing,
painting and hoping
my muse will descend,
my life blood, my dopamine,
the mysterious elliptical fish
emerging.

Poems of Establishing Identity and Transitioning into Adulthood (Written January - April 2009)

2011-05-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," verse 22:
"sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
sea of breathing broad and convulsive breaths
...I am integral with you, I too am one phase
and of all phases."
_____________

I've made my home on the ocean floor.
I stitched up seaweed with my own nimble fingertips.
I pushed cupped hands against clay
until walls rose.
They softly pushed back
and instead formed me.
_____________

I had a dream I lived on an island.
Water pried open my eyes.
_____________

God is my neighbor.
He and I rocking chair-talk
on the back porch.
Boards squeak.
Breezes and mosquitos
come in
the tide
goes out.
_____________

My favorite part of the day is washing my brushes and
sprawling my throbbing body
across the mattress.
I thank God.
Singing flows through the pipes overhead.
My oil paintings come alive,
little gummy people, all of them me.
I recall the girl in my poetry class
with the crooked mouth
and how beautifully she speaks.
______________

Snow Day
When I prayed for the world to stop
just for one day
so
I could exhale,
I didn't think
it actually would.
___________

soft
one thing at a
time little one
_____________

Nobody likes the
concept of
surrender-
until they learn
that it means
rest. And
even then
it's hard to
grasp.

Matthew 11:28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
_____________

Each Friday
I harvest
A fresh crop
of paintings,
plucking them
from my studio wall.
_____________

I see an association between
living in nature and music
versus
living in the city and art.

One is truth, on is one step removed from the truth -
a reproduction of the thing, and not the thing itself.

When you play a note,
it only claims to be
that note - a song on that instrument, in that live time.

Apainting points to somewhere, something else.
It references. It is rarely self-referential in the way that music is.
Music can point elsewhere, of course,
but the sound it makes, in the air, in real time,
is nothing but itself.

Just like a primary color, like pure pigment. Like a tree.
It is the original, it cannot be reproduced or it will be less.
The city only references nature, God made structures...
a painting refrences a tree,
but it will never be the tree
the way that wood and bark and leaves are a tree, or
the vibrations of a C minor through the air are
a C minor.
______________

Seeing is much more abstract than looking.
Looking begins and ends with the tangible, the visual,
but seeing goes beyond to include
an understanding of the unseen, the intangible.
A portrait could be just
paint arranged on a canvas to look like a face,
or it could feel alive with the sitter's unseen qualities.
______________

Art has taught me secrets
that I want to whisper to you
wide eyed and huddled
under a glowing blanket.
You won't believe it, but,
everything tht's inside of you-
it's in me too.
______________

No one would say that all art is alike,
but I would defend that all art
from one creator
has essential sameness.
Yeats' poems,
Beethoven's symphonies,
Speilburg's films,
Valentino's dresses.
Mac's computers,
Michelangelo's figures,
Chicago's pizzas,
Ailey's choreography,
Bruce Mau's designs,
even my siblings and I-
What is essential in each of these bodies of work
is the same,
because they share a maker.
That is how I know you.
I just look at what is essential, inherent
to me
and it is similar in you
because we share a Maker.
______________

When I know myself
I know you
(and when you know yourself
you know me.)
How did I come to know
what I really am?
How do I know
what a piece of art truly is?
I ask the artist, the maker, the Creator.
______________

I know you worry about what comes next,
I do too.
I know you dream about
going back to December 5th or February 20th,
yeah,
I miss him too.
I know you have a hard time believing
that you are beautiful,
I do too.
______________

Sometimes you have to hear things
spoken
to believe them.
So I say to him
"You are beautiful."
______________

I have a God that loves me
and a boy that holds me.
My bed hugs me,
the three console me,
whispering, "beauty, beauty."
______________

I choose you
every morning I wake up
with sleep heavy on my eyelashes.
______________

Medieval woodcuts
describe gluttony
with a cup
and lust
with a kiss.
What is the serving size
for kisses?
______________

The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to my tongue
when I think about citrus.
______________

I want to get a hold of you
I want
to
get
a
hold
of
you
I want to
grab hold
of you
I
want
you.
______________

I am interested in language,
but only know English.
I am passionate about travel,
but I haven't been far...
______________

Being a good student
just means
that you go home
and do your homework
at night.
______________

Is knowledge something you drop into
when gravity kicks in
and takes away the slack
and you bounce heavy in your harness
at the end of a rope?
______________

In Baltimore, 60% is passing.
The standards are so low.
Young child of Baltimore
City Schools,
you chant "I rise,"
one classroom over,
but how?
______________

I am sorry professor
I couldn't finish the readings you assigned.
I had to play my ukulele
the way you have to go to
the funeral of a family member
or the dentist
or your best friend's wedding
and then I had to
write about it.
______________

I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I want to
say
something.

Stephanie's Daily Affirmations

2011-04-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

Scrawled this down after a recent conversation with Jon.
Put the scrap of paper on the back of my door.

They may particularly strike a chord with fellow college graduates trying to figure out how to do life now.

"Take it one step at a time.

Be here.

It is enough, so enjoy it.

Appreciate what you've done and what you are doing.

And never forget, the point of it all is to love people."

More daily affirmations

Returning

2010-12-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

Getting to South Africa took

many papers.

Today they are in the trash.

My bedroom has changed little since

leaving and

the house

is quiet.

I don't know how I like my tea anymore.

Where can I go to remember myself?

The church, the mall,

a book, a meal,

my studio, my music,

running down the road?

Instead of myself,

I find new life

sprouting from

return to old ritual:

pen to page,

paint to canvas,

knife to carrots and cucumbers,

the walk down the driveway in the morning

where Americans are

the most important

war casualties to be announced.

White

2010-10-25T01:34:00.000-07:00

I was born with skin shown in my country's history

I see it on the band-aids and faces of dollbabies

I see it on the runways, in glossy magazines

See-it on the CEOs and on celebrities

my skin wont make you question

my self-sufficiency

to almost all the world

my skin looks like money

almost never represents illiteracy

born into the skin of learnin capacity.

I dont speak for my race

when speakin just for me

but I like to think

about this one reality:

when walking down your road

on the bottom of my feet

my souls can turn into the hue

of all humanity.

Leaves

2010-10-25T01:33:00.001-07:00

Every night I run home crying

because I think the trees are dying.

Dad holds me close as he explains

how leaves must fall when seasons change.

But I am not yet one year old

and can't understand what I'm being told.

Summer

2010-05-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

Summer lives

in a peach colored house

with fishing poles

against the wall.

Summer bikes

with mosquito-bit legs,

plays scratch-off cards

and volleyball.

Summer's sister is

on a date.

her brother

works on his car.

Crickets whir and

twighlight comes

from the middle

of their yard.

Her mother tucks

the ocean in.

Her father turns

the soil.

Sweat shines

from her brother's brow.

He smells of salt

and motor oil.

An Allegory

2010-04-22T13:11:00.001-07:00

One day

you forget the locker combination

you've used for the last five years.

You try hundreds of numbers

and then give up

because you have forgotten

what you are looking for.

When you remember

you go back.

The locker doors swing open

and five years of drawings spill out.

The one you wanted

is the only one

not there.

Dad

2010-04-17T19:28:00.001-07:00

When I was a baby, my mom tells me

it was him who walked my small sobbing body around

the house at two am.

He's always done the dishes at night and

he coached my p.e. class in pre-school. He doesn't talk much, but

last winter when I came home the house was warm and

glowing, and very clean, which is not usually the case.

He was there waiting for me, in the threadbare grey shirt

he's always worn to bed.

He gave me a kiss on the cheek,

kind of discreet, and he smelled like soap.

Interior monologue from 2008

2010-02-20T07:50:00.002-08:00

You know what's important? Living with passion - that's what's important. If I died tonight, I'd want people to know that I feel strongly about this matter - I feel like I have no other option but to suck the marrow out of life - every single day. Painting like you don't need to sleep - that's important. Singing loud- being moved by a song - that's important. Feeling. I mean really feeling - have you ever really... felt? Do you know what it's like? I do. It's like being invincible. It's like the whole world and its rules are walls around you and they collapse. Petals on a flower, opening up until they're splayed out flat. And it's a welling inside your chest, and you're really excited for some reason, and you're pretty sure that that reason is just the fact that you're alive - and i mean really alive. And can I tell you something? Something kind of candid? ...It's God is what it is. It can't be words, or paint or music or singing because it's essentially God. It's that thing that everyone always expresses as "unable to describe with words," and I gotta say - it's really spiritual, man. To me, it's just God welling inside my chest sometimes.
Sometimes I just gotta say stuff, so if I die tomorrow, it's out...and that's scary, but no matter how many hours I'm alive, my whole life will ultimately be a drop in the ocean. Whether my life is eighteen or eighty years, it's still small. Therefore, waking up and living a day - I mean being able to be alive - is definitely not something to be timid about. It's not something to be taken lightly. It's all you really have.

Bits from a freshman year notebook:

2010-02-20T07:45:00.001-08:00

-"Be clear minded and self controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."

-Here's what I like: Grahm crackers. Here's what else I like: cold, cold water and sun warmth.

-"How can something not have meaning? Everything has meaning. Even lying in bed, putting the blinds down, sleeping in, and not talking to anyone has meaning."

-I kind of like mess ups.

-If a piece of art doesn't respect the audience's mind, I won't give it the time of day.

-Abstract concepts seem obscene as we pass alongside places we've destroyed in war.

-Here we are in our ivory tower, learning about art...

-Religion has become domesticated. Marx called it the opiate of the masses. It just feels good.

-communication isn't always easy.

-Oh how complicated
we've made it all out to be,
truth, religion,
spirituality...

-This is the first morning in months where I've had nothing to do. It's like something I knew long ago...

-Is geometry idealistic?

-Color is the lifeblood of painting.

-Prayer is moving the hand of God. Prayer is where ministry happens (cause we, as humans, sure don't do it.)

-To look is superficial. To see is to perceive.

-"Don't compartmentalize - divisions don't always serve you. Why say 'this is my work' and 'this isn't'?"

- I heard the saddest thing today -
"I don't like the sun."
"Why?"
"It burns."
How can you live life that way?
(There's something about the sun that tells me today is good.)

-"He looked at her like she might may be magic."

-People should never be treated as a means; they are always an end.

-Half asleep and half awake makes for a very painful day...

-It's healthy to have conversations with different kinds of people and thinkers.

-We tend to break things down into binaries. There is more than binaries. There is complexity.

-At art school we challenge and then change culture. We always think critically as artists. Is this something I want to spend the rest of my life doing? It is important to analyze myself and why I make decisions.

-You know what's crazy? Some people spend their whole life never figuring out who they are.

-Art is no less then philosophy - they dally with the same questions.

-"I've been tryin for years to grow up."
"Don't do it."
"I won't."
"Good."

-Light is the most significant thing to ever happen.

-Can the piece of art answer the questions it raises about itself? You are in charge of the way your work exists in the world and is interpreted by people.

-Calculation. Let go. Let the poet, the dreamer in you take hold it it.

- We are performers. We are communicators. Our job is to communicate. To leave the impression of our soul on the viewer.

- Make a list of ten things that you like. Your art should have at least 3-5 of this in it, or else, why do it?

-Do or do not. There is no try.

Travel

2010-02-10T09:06:00.001-08:00

Trees sprint back, back and back

us three barrel forward

our time capsule compact

music ricochets

off of the glass

Shakespeare's words

rest in my lap

Arrows in bows

tightly pulled back

Now, in a minute

turns into past.

Schwing!

Bound Home

2010-02-10T09:05:00.001-08:00

Salt water falls

on unfamiliar

windowpanes.

Swells of

green wallpaper waves

surround

and drown.

Artist Statement

2010-02-09T11:44:00.001-08:00

As a community artist in inner city Baltimore, my work seeks to surface and discuss issues revolving around urban social and racial divides, both physical and perceived. I work both collaboratively and independently.

My collaborative work consists of portraiture, video, and public murals, most often painted in Baltimore City schools. I work collaboratively because I believe that the city’s residents hold the creative solutions to Baltimore’s social problems. I work collaboratively because I believe art and culture are as important to a society as any physical need. I work collaboratively because it fosters ethnic diversity and multiculturalism by building an environment of tolerance and respect.

My independent work moves fluidly between drawing, painting and poetry. The technique of my charcoal drawings is inspired by Seurat’s drawings. They depict people holding each other and are about relationships of dependency. My oil paintings are often introspective self-portraits, painted from life with a limited palette of white, burnt umber, yellow ochre and ultramarine blue. Reoccurring images in my paintings are glasses of water, circles, compositions of colored paper, and dramatic lighting.

My community and independent work could not exist without my writing. I continuously express my relationship with Baltimore through a series of poems about the city. My writing includes just as much of my community and myself as the images I make.

"It is Overwhelming to Behold"

2010-02-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

Music and male voice by Christian McKee.

Female Voice, Poem, and Video by Stephanie McKee.

For Artists

2010-01-27T07:50:00.001-08:00

Artists are in the business of the Beautiful. What is Beauty?

The Beautiful relies on and cannot be separated from Truth.

Figuring out what is true is requires self-autopsy. It requires many questions we’d rather not ask, digging further towards our core than we feel comfortable digging, in attempt to become painfully honest.

To be honest is to be extremely vulnerable.

To be vulnerable, one must be brave.

Art requires bravery because one must break the pattern by which we live our lives:

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m fine.”

I’m Stephanie. You’re John.

One must take a mallet to the thick sheet of ice that lies on the surface, which is all anyone sees of us. One must figure out how they actually feel about their parent’s divorce, what they really think about black people, white people, about law, about God, about death, about ourselves.

This is terrifying because (a) we are often unsure of a lot more than we’d like to admit, and (b) because our image is at stake when we slop our messy gut-findings onto the table in plain view. We risk being judged, or worse, being ostracized, discriminated against because of how we really feel, what we really think. We risk being labeled abnormal, even ugly.

In a sense, when we decide to make something beautiful, we, in turn, may become uglier.

To decide to be an artist is no light matter. It requires someone with great courage. We must be willing to put our entire identity on the line for the sake of what is beautiful, for the sake of proclaiming what we have found in ourselves to be true.

Why make this sacrifice? Surely no one requires it of us. Most, in fact, live and die perfectly comfortable within the status quo, never sticking their pinky toe into this messy stuff.

Why do we choose this path? Because telling our truth, something that comes uniquely, solely and beautifully from each of ourselves, is the single most valuable thing we can think to contribute to this world while we’re in it.

Continue on, artists. The truth is worth whatever the cost.

2010-01-19T16:08:00.001-08:00

I fell in love tonight

with the reflection of the bus driver

floating over glowing living rooms.

It Is Overwhelming To Behold

2010-01-09T17:29:00.001-08:00

Baltimore through airplane windows,

night-covered and glittering.

The woman in a onyx gown,

her glowing white skin made of

paint placed just so.

The flame of sunlight on the

teal cotton bedspread,

the rolling silk wave

of my sister's hair on the breeze,

and

the water glass on the counter.

Sometimes it is so much at once,

that I wish to stop looking,

for fear that my chest will burst!

Maybe it is because of this wish

that I have been dealt the absence

of the most

beautiful one

I've ever known.

This empty image,

this bitter privilege,

is what tears my soul in two.

Night Shuttle

2009-12-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

On the night shuttle home

every street lamp is suddenly a painting.

The houses and buildings I pass

fade into charcoal, and

my scales slowly fall off

like leaves separating from a tree.

Urgency, responsibility

dissolve,

and into my quietest rooms

the porch lights shine with conviction.

2009-10-11T19:19:00.001-07:00

Pastor Roger asked me to share a bit of what God's done in my life at church today....

___________

My story here began two years ago, during my freshman orientation at MICA.

Two members of the Light core group were there to tell students about this new church that would have it's very first Sunday service that week. They invited me to come, and I came.

What I remember the most about that first Sunday was the way that God moved these people. Like, literally, they were moving. During worship, a few of them made art, and some danced and smiled. Later, when I heard their stories about how God had transformed their lives, I understood why.

I wanted a dramatic, life changing encounter with God too. But in my mind, this didn't seem possible, I felt like didn't have much of a story to tell. I was lucky enough to be born and raised in a Christian family, going to church and learning about God all throughout my childhood. When I was seven I believed that Jesus was who he said he was - God's son - and that my only way to heaven was through Him. So I decided to be baptized, and God did begin a steady, lifelong transformation process in me.

Although I was captivated by God even in elementary school, I was also captivated by my own achievements and good reputation.

I remember, in the fifth grade, being really confident that I had won the affections of my long time crush, Joshua Love, by becoming student council president, a safety patrol, and an anchor on our school's makeshift morning news show.

The achievements continued. In middle and high school my relationship with God grew close, and while He played a big role in my identity, I had Him share the stage with my successes in gymnastics, art and school. I developed a rank and an image to live up to, always itching for more gold stars to feel good about, always stepping outside of myself to make sure I was doing the "right" thing, looking the "right" way. I looked up to people who went to big name colleges, people with impressive resumes.

Then I met the people at the Light.

Not to say that these people weren't impressive - they very much are - but for different reasons.

Here were people who didn't let the world's gold stars identify them.

Here were people who wanted to give up prestige, artistic fame, medical careers, and all former ways of life to follow after Christ.

Here was a church where reputation is thrown to the wind, and people dance, make art, and become spellbound by a father who has transformed their lives.

They were eccentric, not so much weird, though most of them are, but ex- centric, ex-centered, living out of a center beyond themselves.

They seem to be sustained from beyond, energized from outside, their attentions orbiting not around themselves, but around God and other people, like me.

They brought fresh baked bread to my studio late at night during finals, they responded with "I'm on my way" when I called from a bus stop at midnight asking for a ride home, they spent their saturday helping me move, and then would pay for my dinner.

In this church I've found people who I now share my life with, like a faimly. God has used them to show me his true character.

He is grace, He gives these gifts that are far beyond what I'm able to earn with my good deeds.

He is my dad, and loves me so much that not a single pleasing thing I do will make him love me more.

This fact has given me an extreme amount of rest lately. I've found that when I invest in prayer and time with Him, I suddenly have more time to paint, and I feel less pressure to please other people by "doing it all."

Basing my identity on the sole fact that I am a child of God is still a constant struggle though - I still want everyone to like me, I still want to be politically correct, and I still put ungodly people up on pedestals. The enemy still tells me that letting go of some of the "good" things I do will mean failure. But these are all lies. I've found that even what's good should be sacrificed for what's best. And the best thing I can do with my life is develop a relationship with my heavenly Father, who is hopelessly in love with me not because I'm a safety patrol or on the morning news show, but because he made me, and I'm His.

Unity of the Unlike

2009-10-10T17:01:00.001-07:00

A friend suggested recently that every artist has a folder on their computer full of random images that are aesthetically beautiful and inspirational to them. True.

When I was going through mine, I began to see surprisingly similar color palettes in very different kinds of images.

I have been thinking and writing a lot about "unity of the unlike" lately.

Here is a bit about how it can happen musically.

And here is a bit of it happening visually, first in color palette then in movement and subject matter:

Ndebele wall painting, South Africa

Gaugain's "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"

An Omega Nebula image from the Hubble Space Telescope

__________________________________________

From "Vogue" magazine

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

__________________________________________

From a current blog

1920's photograph

Modern adaption of a 1940's hairstyle

Rita

2009-10-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

Long ago, father gave Rita Crawford the spark of life.

On cold winter mornings he woke her with a warm crackling fireplace and the sweet smell of bacon.

On hot summer days, he brought her cold glasses of water.

Every night he sat in his arm chair and held her while she drifted to sleep.

Most nights Rita and her father would dance.

Across their living room rug they twirled close together and laughed as one being. Her small feet balanced atop his massive brown shoes. Her chubby hands wrapped around his one finger.

Then, one day, she was gone.

She walked into the woods in the bright sunshine and never came back.

Rita had found a small door on the face of a tree trunk. Creaking it open, a glint of sunlight caught the edge of a mountain of toys that seemed to stretch endlessly down into the earth. And although it was dark down there, she stayed.

On cold winter mornings her father cried.

On hot summer days he sobbed.

Every night her father lamented over the loss of his little child.

Then one day, father glimpsed a familiar hand pushing through the folliage at the edge of the woods.

Rita was back!

A pale, fragile girl emerged, and her father darted towards her at the edge of the wood, scooping her into his arms once again.

the word

2009-10-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

the word

"time"

as in

"some things

just take time"

hummed

like a cello

over our heads

when her sentence

trailed...

no more was said

Donald Lives in Middle East Baltimore

2009-09-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

Donald lives in Middle East Baltimore.

Middle East Baltimore is being erased.

My class met Donald outside of an old Catholic school. A room on the top floor acts as the headquarters of the Save Middle East Action Committee. The committee was created nine years ago by neighborhood residents who learned about the East Baltimore Development Initiative from the newspapers. EBDI is a fourteen year plan to revitalize the entire East side, turning it into an internationally prestigious Hopkins research park and diverse residential neighborhood. To do this they are evicting current residents, promising replacement housing, and bulldozing their homes.

Donald was warm and welcoming. "I want my home to be your home today", he said with a gracious smile, revealing plaque covered teeth.

His deep accent sounded Nigerian, and I wondered if he was from Lagos, but as we walked down the road we passed the house he grew up in, and I realized it was just an East Baltimore accent - ebonics or black english vernacular as some call it.

Our group of students wandered past mountains of swelled black trash bags, torn and spilling out chicken bones and whiskey bottles. We listened to Donald talk about the pain, uncertainty and anxiety of being displaced from his home. He talked about the community's fight for fair housing rights when EBDI left promises unfulfilled.

I snapped a picture of an eviction notice stapled to the wood of a boarded up door.

How could I help but recall another Baltimore? At the turn of the 20th century, this city was the first to bring about segregation and a sentiment of racialized urban reform.

A cool breeze comes down the street, and our group passes expanses of empty lots, like a bomb went off, where row-homes once stood. We see signs:

"Building a Better Baltimore!"

"A New East Side"

"Progress Ahead!"

with pictures of white people doing yoga, and a black and blonde girl smiling cheek to cheek.

How could I help but recall the promises of urban renewal, growth, and "serving the greater good" that surrounded slum clearance in 1911?

Hopkins Hospital stands above us on a hill, a beautiful ivory tower. Donald says he was born there, and now they are treating him like a second class citizen.

How can I help but recall past Hopkins doctors like William Welchm, who lectured on the "negro problem", stating that blacks were more prone to poverty, immorality, and disease, especially tuberculosis. Whites believed they would bring their problems wherever they moved, like a contagion. Something had to be done. Baltimore legalized residential segregation in 1910, setting the model for the rest of the country.

EBDI's project is a model for the rest of the world. This is how you do urban revitalization.

As our group walks further into the neighborhood, I linger in front of yet another abandoned home. Two black and white photos are stapled to the plywood where a window once was. One depicts a riot in the 1960's, when the Jim Crow laws were overturned. The other is of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to a crowd.

A few blocks away, layers of brick and cement peel off a building, like flesh falling off a leper. A spray paint tag on a neighboring wall cries out "I wonder if heaven got a ghetto!"

We returned to the old catholic school where we began to talk more with Donald in the classroom on the top floor. Sneakered feet trudged up the steps, past old sunday school signs saying "Love one another", past a picture of a black Jesus and a black Last Supper.

A plastic statue of the Virgin Mary stands next to a dirty window, palms pressed together at her breast. Rows and rows and rows of red brick homes stretch into the sunlight below, but her eyes are averted, staring at heaven, or maybe nothing at all, in the middle of some some quiet, anxious plea.

Ariel

2009-09-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden, I was bound in a big, childlike hug. I strained my neck backwards to see Arielle, although I couldn’t remember her name at the time, and Im pretty sure she didn’t remember mine either. Where did I know her from? Obviously it didn’t matter; she seemed excited to catch me leaning against the rod iron fence outside. I was reading Freud while I waited for the evening shuttle home. 

The girl released the hug and I saw she was wearing one of those horizontally striped tshirts you find in the little boys section of WalMart. On top of her dyed-red hair sat a cap with a purple muppet face on the front. His white circle eyes stared at me and the hat’s flat brim was his gaping mouth. Arielle’s own eyes are kind of spacey, and you can tell she’s not fully with it, but you find a lot of that at art school. 

She excitedly showed me a square paperback book, perfect bound with smooth, guillotine-cut edges. Apparently her mom (but not really her mom, a woman her dad dated and is the closest she has to a mother figure), suggested the book to her. She said everyone was reading it in the seventies. It's about God and yoga and being in the "here and now". The middle is full of really intricate line drawings that look like something you'd see on a punk rock poster. The cream colored pages have lavender type and photos of old gurus.  

We were talking about theories of where to find happiness when my shuttle arrived. I told her she should come visit me in the Student Activities office some time. 
I was working late the next night and sure enough, she strolled in with the same purple monster staring at me from atop her head. I'm pretty sure she was wearing the same shirt too, and definitely the same quirky smile.  

"Can I get your opinion on something" she asked, holding up a cardboard portfolio. 
"Yeah!" I said, gliding away from the computer in my rolley chair.  
Three large pieces of paper with torn edges emerged. One drawing spanned across them all. 
"It's my take on the Garden of Earthly Delights," she said as she laid them next to each other on the carpet.  

A highlighter pink woman floated sideways in a sky painted maroon-purple. She was covered in intricate line drawings that reminded me of the guru book. Wrinkled cigarettes, Marlborough boxes with gold centers, and clusters of pills colored with a light green watercolor wash crowded the pages. There were little cartoon -like figures, some that looked like naked people, others that looked like strange animals. Neon vibrated everywhere.  

"My teacher said I use too much color" Arielle noted, which made me sad because I found the chaotic hues very appropriate.  

Tonight she was making a second version of the drawing in the form of a wheel. We talked through the technicalities of constructing it, and I gave her a large piece of foam core to mount it on. She began measuring and I got back to my computer, listening to her talk about her weekend, saying, “I’m so tired! I gotta stop doing some of this stuff.” We both couldn’t help but laugh a little. “It’s too expensive and too much of a hassel to get anyway.” We agreed that there’s better things to focus on.

I was on my cell phone when she took a break from her work and snuck up behind me just as she had the night before. But her surprises are only loving, and she began to smooth her hands through my hair, sending goosebumps down my legs. I love that feeling. I momentarily tuned out the voice coming from the phone at my ear to crane my head back and give her a smile of approval, not that she needed one.

Josh

2009-09-07T08:52:00.001-07:00

Bending over,
I place the knives of mirror carefully on top of my palm.
"I probably would have been the one to smash that
ten years ago," Josh says.
Josh lives on the second floor.
We are sharing our porch stoop this morning,
me being a Sunday laundry person,
him being a cigarette person.
He looks like a young McJagger with a lisp and curled up eyelashes,
his chest swelling beneath a wife beater.
You would never guess he's thirty-three.
"So you were a rebel without a cause, huh?" I say.
"Yeah" he smiles.
"And now?"
"Just tryin to find one." he says.
He's been chasing a BFA for over ten years,
and says, with nicotine teeth,
"I've been messin around for a long time."
I look up and say his slow pace is refreshing.
"Well, only a few more poems to write", he says
"then I'll probably just be working in some coffee shop."

With all the broken mirror pieces in my hand,
I rise
and tell him how I've been trying to write a
big philosophical poem
for the past month.
Then we decide that universals
are best when boiled down
to small real life happenings.

During the mirror's funeral procession to the trash
on Charles and Eager,
I am suddenly holding the sky in my hand.

And when i toss the mirror into
the dark metal bin
with Dorito bags and coffee cups,
it turns into shards of red brick rowhomes
that cut through the sour smell.

I walked away with a bowed head,
in mourning for the mirror,
and for the city,
and then
for the sparrow
who abruptly appeared,
dead at my feet.
Her stick legs jutted out beneath her,
with talons gripping a branch that wasn't there.
Her black eyes were paused in a squint,
like she was looking into something beyond
the hard brick sidewalk
beneath her head.
Her swollen breast shone pure yellow,
as if reflecting the sun.

The Salon

2009-08-03T07:44:00.001-07:00

In a town by the sea, there was a girl with golden hair. Her name was Coree and she attended a one room dance academy under the instruction of Miss P. Miss P spoke with a soft, sweet voice that became sharp when it needed to. Every day a wreath of small fabric flowers adorned her bun of red hair that somehow never faded to grey. The years of ballet training Miss P received in Russia were poured into Coree until she transformed into an elegant, long limbed young woman. Coree could command an audience's attention gently, her movement like a willow tree, her dance like a living prayer. She even entranced instructors from the top ballet school in the land, and upon her acceptance, was destined to become a great in the world of dance.

Her first year away was a raging success, and Coree returned to her town by the sea, welcomed with admiration and praise. Everyone felt honored to know the girl with golden hair who could mesmerize with her dance.

One day Coree walked down the road to get a haircut. She chose a very plain salon with walls that needed a new coat of paint. It was a place where old women got perms and Debra Frankendollar, a beautician with a crooked lip, had worked her whole life.

Coree's willowy limbs rested gracefully on the black and metal chair. None of the white-haired ladies in the room knew of her great fame and talent. In fact, they had only seen mediocre dance in their lives, never anything like the girl in the swivel chair across from theirs.

Debra performed one of the twelve haircuts she would give that day, and Coree smiled into her crooked face.

Today, the women in the salon still talk about how the dingy linoleum floor seemed to come alive with a school of golden fish, glowing below Debra's black and metal chair.

Restless

2009-07-21T07:59:00.003-07:00

Some nights, not often, but now at least, my bed is too soft and I can not lie still. I walk through the dark room and snatch my glasses from the dresser, leaving my roomate dreaming and muttering. Forget dreaming. Instead, my bare feet press to cold linoleum, my cotton shirt drapes across my torso, and my middle is contained by the taut waistband of slick basketball shorts. Tight skin covers all of me. I push a stray rope of hair away from my face, open the fridge, drink water, anything but lie still. When my breath is this loud, or rather, the room this soft, my humanness becomes palpable. I am such a restless creature.

God, what will this life be when I'm gone? Will it ever result to more than this pen to paper, a feeble attempt at catching and preserving these slippery fish that churn in my belly? Sometimes I feel the only artists who have caught them are the ones who write about their uncatchable-ness.

God, I can tell that you have made a spirit that becomes restless in a physical body. In the middle of the night, I realize that I am nothing more than a container for something eternal. Life is just a borrowing of bones, to be taken very seriously and very lightly.

I swear I hear music, whispers of piano and strings, inside the whir of the AC unit next to me.

Bits from a notebook II

2009-07-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

-Truth. Knowledge. Neither is withheld if we seek.

-To create is to worship.

To be human is to create.

-Christians and artists give answers to questions that people don't realize they're asking.

God speaks.

-How do we "lay ourselves down" in service while creating something that is uniquely from ourselves? Maybe that IS what "laying ourselves down" is - giving an outpouring of what we have specifically inside of us. Giving God a gift that can only come from me - my intellect, my reasoning, my imagination and creativity.

-What constitutes "the good life"?

-Observe. Interpret. Apply.

What? So what? Now what?

-I don't have all the answers

-As an artist, I record my world daily. However, the most profound moments I have experienced by myself, with no pen in hand. They are beyond word or image, incappable of reproduction. I can tell you though, that they have always involved sunlight, wind, breath and a movement of the spirit.

- 1. Ask questions

2. Listen

3. Try to understand

-Everybody sees things a little bit differently

-On an airplane, it's good to meet your neighbors

Other's Words:

-"in this net it's not just the strings that count

but also the air that escapes through the meshes" -Neruda

-"the truth that is truth is often paradox" -Tao Te Ching

-"If I forget you God, may my hands forget their skill." -psalms 137:1

-"Don't doubt in the dark what you have seen in the light." -student at Salt conference

-"I've been thirsty my whole life. Never really known why." -Big Fish

-"Artists use lies to tell the truth." -V for Vendetta

-"There are no words to explain, no tongue, how when that player touches the strings, it is me playing and being played." -Rumi

The Fourth of July in Baltimore

2009-07-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

Rippling above skyscrapers,

whistles erupt into pops, helicopters

overhead whir like

lawnmowers, the dead

bird on the basketball court is

still.

Clap!

Machines boom and purr,

gun-pops burst, ambulances

wail

like alley cats

in windowsills.

My last poem written as a teenager

2009-07-03T19:19:00.001-07:00

I'm at a point

where I can choose the literature I read:

useless magazines, scholarly textbooks,

thoughts from any place on the globe.

I'm at a point

where I can choose what I believe

concerning a higher power.

My moral code,

and my clothes

are my choice

and I could literally eat a

gallon of ice cream if I wanted.

Every day

I could destroy someone's life,

or show them love.

Im at a point

where I must figure out

who I want to be.

In the past,

my class, education,

family trade, husband,

would all be determined from birth.

But now,

every aspect of life

is a decision

placed in my

floundering teenage arms.

Flying Above Baltimore

2009-05-19T06:24:00.001-07:00

I open my eyes

and you appear, bustling,

glowing below. I grin - I am

not cold now.

Orange horizon,

streets winding. You

fascinate me.

It is unusual for a plant to

grow towards darkness,

yet my heartstrings stretch

towards you,

seeking your flickering

pockets of light -

homes, churches,

grocery stores,

nestled cozy in black velvet.

Ships sit delicate

on flat sheets of indigo,

silent,

and still.

Bits from a notebook

2009-04-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

-Maybe thinking isn't necessarily in the form of words or a language.

-The truth of things never lies on the surface

-My cell phone's predictive text assumes "pain" before "rain". How sad.

-Sometimes you have to hear things spoken out-loud to believe they're true. So I tell Jon that he's beautiful, and myself that I don't need that cookie.

-We must be taught to look for what we can't see.

-I'm beginning to see how alike we all really are.

-"Oh no! I think I am becoming better friends with words than with paint! Or maybe words are more like my best girl friends, and paint is more...my beloved."

-Tonight,

words are so

bloated

and heavy

that i can barely use them

-I love when the train out my window

harmonizes with Mozart's piano concerto in D major.

I hate when my alarm

blends with ambulance sirens in the morning.

-All I want to do

is walk across this room

and cross through every box

on that calendar til June.

I'll open up a window

and pray that the wind will

sweep every paper off my cork-board,

and every deadline off of April.

-When I finally get to sprawl

across my mattress,

the day exhausted,

body throbbing,

I thank God.

On the orange wall across the room

little gummy people made of oil paint

creep off their canvases,

and singing voices flow through the pipes overhead.

Words I've been thinking about

-essence, essential

-broken, restore, healing

-fundamentals: drawing, ballet, diction, scales

-create, creator, creation, creative, creativity

-student/servant

-counterintuitive

Unsettled

2009-04-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

I feel like every time I snap

a puzzle piece in its place,

I notice one more is missing,

and if I didn't know there was a God

holding this world together,

I'd swear the box is a few short.

I feel like too many people in this city

pawn their mom's wedding ring

to buy more heroine.

I've seen

the needles

in the alleys

and I hear those ambulances wail

every night.

Turning the corner,

I might stumble upon

the metal carcass

of an abandoned streetcar

rotting in a field

a cozy little cafe called On the Hill,

not like Inn on the Hill,

not the run down prostitute motel on a very flat

34th street,

but like a green hill

in a storybook

where everyone's parents work

and actually love their kids.

I feel like love

is the most distorted word

in our language.

I feel like the bell

ringing from a clock tower right now

is saying "Move,"

and I think about how

the steeple a few streets over

stopped ringing a long time ago.

Subject

2009-04-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

I believe

a poem

is more than words,

I believe

you and me

have got souls,

yeah i believe,

we aren't just cells,

cause i believe

that love exists,

and I believe

God does too,

I bet He wants

to get to know us,

and God I'd love

to know you.

The Slaughter of the Jews by the Franks

2009-04-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

Community even in death,
their blood flows as one tide,
the elder’s mixing with the young’s,
the bridegroom’s with the bride’s.

Killed like oxen,
slaughtered sheep,
dragged through the marketplace.
Trails of blood
stain dirt streets,
while heaven hides her face.

Day of darkness
and of gloom
Oh day of densest clouds
hidden are the sun and moon
the stars are wrapped in shrouds.

Hark! The Angels cry aloud!
By God’s name
men kill.
Their haunting battle cries resound
“God’s will! It is God’s will!”

Seeing (From Tree)

2009-04-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

I tried looking away but
her stare surrounded me
like a net catching fish.
Sapphire irises
circled
my trunk,
smooth blue sea glass
caressed
each leaf,
a slow lead pencil brought
each branch
to her lap,
and those clay-stained tennis shoes
stayed,
as long-limbed dust clouds
passed.

Draw What You See

2009-04-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

The first thing I ever saw in this world was a tree.
I don't remember what kind of tree,
but Mr. Nelson assigned the drawing,
and I was in the 5th grade.
Before then,
I never knew how leaves connect to a branch,
or how a trunk connects to the earth.
Sitting in the dirt kickball field, paper in lap,
through neurons and synapses
my eyes connected to my brain and
down into my graphite pencil.
Slowly,
it traced
the skinny
contour
of the trunk
in front of me.
My mind replayed Mr. Nelson's words,
"Class, I don't understand why
I'm getting drawings of tulips
when there are no tulips
in the field. "

Matthew 11:28 - 30

2009-04-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

"Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me,
for I am gentle
and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

How Could I Ever Diminish Your Words?

2009-04-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

your words lack nothing.
they are the sun,
and spring's
green gifts to
the frozen ground.
they are down-filled,
covering me
when I sleep.
they become
gulf waters
smoothing over my feet
when I miss home,
and a guitar's
steady strum,
i'm sorry I called them
anything other than
enough.

Family Bond

2009-03-26T10:36:00.001-07:00

Through metal frames
he skimmed the
"Money and Finance" section.
With clean hair,
the children quarreled over
arithmetic problems.
With a brick
book perched on her knee
she sat upright -
"The Big Rich"
letterpressed in gold
down the spine.

This Is Just To Tell You That You Are Beautiful

2009-03-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

If you were
a field of wheat,
I would stand in your golden center,
hypnotized by your swaying with the wind
until I too swayed.
I wouldn't even breathe.

If you were
the ocean at night,
I would dip my toes
into your black waters
that blend into sky
until I too blended.
My chest would
rise and fall
in time with your waves.

If you were
the blessed piece of marble
shaped by Michelangelo
into the Pieta,
my eyes would slowly graze every flawless inch
of your stone surface,
until they welled with tears
at the master work
of divine hands.

Ode to Flight

2009-03-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

From the time man is born
until he dies
steel cables shoot from
his chest to
the clouds,
barreling upwards,
latching into blue,
positioning his gaze
towards heaven,
coaxing his feet
from the earth.

A desire
he alone could not fulfill.

But then came
the aeroplane, and I,
I was born
with clouds whistling past my cheek,
filling my eye's corners with tears,
filling my chest with beating wings.
I was born grazing shoulders with
man's deep set feathered dream,
born bound to no firmament.

What have I ever done
to deserve this fulfillment?

Frivolous Spending

2009-03-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

I want to stay safe
in this house of books
while my friends release hours
like dollar bills
to the wind.
I want to
spend my money
intelligently.

Jenelle

2009-03-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

Jenelle,

When we were younger, you wrote haikus. I did too. We put them in a book, and drew colored pencil pictures of alligators and aliens, and all the other characters in our stories.

I thought, “This is good writing – two sets of poems, together in one place.”

When we were teenagers, you wrote a college admissions essay about your accident. I loved the beginning, when you described yourself as a goldfish, but you cut that part, and got right to Friday, September 13, 2002; right to you soaring 20 feet into the air.

I thought, “This is good writing – bold, edited, refined.”

When we were young women, you wrote a poem about yourself and a boy. It was in your journal - I’m sorry, I read it. Your words were ripe with allusions to Shakespeare, Greek mythology. You were a Siren with teal painted fingernails, luring a foolish sailor in to crash on the rocks.

I thought, “This is good writing – mature, honest, self aware.”

When we were younger, you wrote a story about a firebird. You only finished the first half. It was severed at the middle, just as there was trouble in the forest, leaving me painfully curious about what happened next.

I thought, “This is good writing – I wonder what the rest will be.”

Artist's Statement

2009-03-10T20:21:00.001-07:00

I sharpen pencils.
I write poems.
I don't want to read.
I want to
say
something.

"For Heart" Revised (three poems)

2009-03-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

Pulsing
against
chest wall.

Meaty
flesh layers
muffle
buried rhythm.

Refusing
rest.

Thank you.

-----------

I'm so sorry Professor.
I tried to read the texts you assigned,
but my heart beat.
You must understand how
distracting it can be for organs to
announce themselves
through layers of meaty flesh
with fox-skin drums
pounding out onto an arm
tucked between chest and floor.
How can anyone read like that?

______________

Never take for granted
life's most important rhythm.

The Giving Tree

2009-03-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

Jenelle gives me
Gingerberry Kombucha and
shopping tips.
Coree gives me
poems and
bright little paintings.
Christian brings me
a laughing mouth and
aching heart.

Taste, Touch

2009-03-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

The same thing happens to
my body
when I think about you
that happens to
my tongue
when I think about citrus.

Rae

2009-03-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

Rae quickens her step.
Almost home!
She thinks proudly of her little purchases:
boxes of cereals,
pieces of fruit
swaying in a three cent white plastic bag.

Rae wonders if the boy with long, girly hair
walking in front of her
smokes just because
he likes the smell of
campfires.

She passes by a park table
where some men
huddle around
white pieces of paper
with pencils in their hands
and wonders what they're
talking about.

Distance

2009-03-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

There is a boy that lives in sunshine

and I am so far from him,

buried in machine and brick.

Homework loads,

heavy food,

thick coats

pin my shoulders to the floor.

Where are you summer?

Where are you citrus?

Where are you sunshine?

2009-02-26T21:02:00.000-08:00

Play Poem

2009-02-19T15:33:00.001-08:00

Playing with words is so clean -
they don't get under your finger

nails,
they don't stain your close,
and you don't even have to
wash your hands afterwords!

1939

2009-02-19T15:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my darling babe
disappeared beneath the waves.
Shards of saltwater
like bears attacking,
shred sputtering lungs,
young limbs
thrashing.

For Heart

2009-02-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

Pulsing
against
wall
of chest
muffled
through layers
of
meaty
flesh
rhythm
buried
below
small breast
little
alive
refusing
rest.

Thank you.

During Class

2009-02-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

Black hands
Flicker in
Front of
Projected
Blue lights.
Blue lights!
Flash!
A man
Lies flat
on the corner of
North and Eutaw
Bleeding from
His left temple.

The Artist

2009-02-19T15:02:00.000-08:00

I send my little ship off to sea.

Where will it end up?

I don't know...

but

I have made sure that it is

a thing of beauty.

Beautiful enough to

change someone's life.

Or maybe even

history.

after the shower

2009-02-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

pathetic little creature,
hair grown long
skin turned gold
aged a whole
nineteen years old,
quivering at the faintest touch
of the northern
winter's cold!

This Morning I Rose From My Blue-Grey Rest

2009-02-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

This morning I rose from my blue-grey rest 
and said,"Sun,
 I am thirsty and cold!"
 And Sun,
 with motherly tenderness,
 filled my outstretched bowl.

  She made her sweetest honey tea,
 that licked curved walls as she poured 
golden waves into
clay bowl of blue
until it overflowed!   -

onto my face
spilling down my cheeks,
and across the bridge of my nose. Seeping
under my skin, 
she warmed me for weeks,
flowing through my
porcelain bones.

For Jon

2009-02-19T10:38:00.001-08:00

I want to paint
I grab a pen.
I want control
I binge.
My blood's so hot.
My feet are cold.
Alarm screams,
I sleep in.

I want morning.
I want night.
I must run.
I need rest.
I could be wrong.
I think I'm right.
I'm joyful and
depressed.

I need to travel.
I long for home.
I'm quiet and
I speak.
I need to hug
and be alone.
I question.
I believe.

I make, I touch
I rush, I hum,
I chew, I sing,
I dress.
I write, I laugh,
I play, I strum,
I talk, I think,
I rest.

I say I will,
but then I won't.
I'm honest
but that's not true.
There's just one thing
that I'm sure of -
I am in love with you.

Johns Hopkins University (Revised)

2009-02-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

If it were Spring
I would sit outside
on a park bench in the quad,
but this place is icy -

fiercely intellectual,

no misplaced left mittens,
no hair salons,
no barber shops
for miles and miles.

I search for warmth
in the security guard's smile
and the lower level of the library.

Here, grids of wooden cubicles stretch
far as the Sahara.
Layers upon layers of information
are filed into limitless halls
and infinity pages.
People file themselves away,
quiet,
like books.

I watch
words rise
from the seams of open pages,
streaming into
nodded foreheads,
becoming
caged songbirds
that wait anxiously
for Spring.

Coree

2009-02-15T20:09:00.000-08:00

young girl of tan
white and brown
the warm flat wall
a stark background
sun with yellow tint
bursts light through the space
wide mouth of a smile
bursts light through the face.

For Baltimore

2009-02-15T20:07:00.000-08:00

An Adaption of Pablo Neruda's "The Mountain and the River," for Baltimore
By Stephanie McKee

In my city there is a schoolhouse.
In my city there is a sidewalk.

Come with me.

Failure wanders through the schoolhouse.
Violence goes down the sidewalk.

Come with me.

Who are those who suffer?
I do not know, but they are my brothers.

Come with me.

I do not know, but they call to me
and they say to me: "We suffer."

Come with me.

And they say to me: "Your brothers,
your luckless brothers
between the schoolhouse and the sidewalk
with failure and violence,
they do not want to struggle alone.
They are waiting for you, friend."

Oh you, the people I love,
family of warm concrete
and red brick,
the struggle will be hard,
life will be hard,
but many will come with me
and we will all
walk together.

Machinery of Leisure

2009-02-14T06:06:00.000-08:00

A shrill buzz grinds

its way through

deep green waves

and into my ears,

stealing white sands,

to dump on shore,

delighting the tourist

who's never swam before.

The Dredge

2009-01-28T17:23:00.002-08:00

The Dredge

To me,

the shrill buzz

that grinds its way through

deep green waves daily,

is the big rude dredge

that rapes my home

of its whitest sand

to deposit on shore

for the pleasure of people

foreign

to me.

Johns Hopkins

2009-01-28T17:11:00.001-08:00

Johns Hopkins

This is a fake city, no different than Disneyland.
How can they tell red brick from red brick?
Is everyone here really a fierce intellectual?
Even the boy fresh from high school,
with the baby blue binder?
Doesn't anyone here ever loose their left glove?

If it were Spring I would sit outside
on a park bench with my reading,
but this place is icy.
I must find warmth
in the security guard's smile
and the bottom level of the library,
where grids of cubicles stretch like
the Sahara,
devoid of even an eraser shaving.
People file themselves away like books,
quiet.
Layers upon layers of information in
limitless halls and infinity pages.

Who will read them all?
What do they even offer to us?
Ideas and Information
to file into our minds.
But books alone can never make
that flood of knowledge
come pouring out
into
the streets
of this city.

Untitled

2008-12-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

This morning was thick with white fog.
Pale sand shifted beneath my feet,
blank clouds surrounding.
I ran along the Ocean's edge
into formlessness and emptiness.
The Spirit of the Creator
hovered over the waters of the deep.
I ran through the soft shadows
of Seurat’s hazy conte drawings.
Mysterious and luminous, without a single line.
I ran through the gentle woozy melodies of a
Sigur Ros song. A slow paced voice,
undulating Latin tones.

When I got tired I stopped running,
and faced my friend the Sea.
I shed my outer layer of clothing,
and waded out, with the fog swirling at my back.
I washed the charcoal from beneath my fingernails
and thought about the beginning of time:
how the formless void of the deep
was divided into heaven and earth.
Now, the fog at my torso blurs that divide.
Water and sky and heaven intermingle at my fingertips.
I stand still in the middle of the Ocean.

It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

This belongs in a graduation speech...

2008-12-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

We are artists because we can't help it.
I'll never forget the first week of school here.
I discovered that everyone doodled on their notes in class.
That the bathroom graffiti was often a deep, witty dialogue, accompanied by...creative... illustrations.
Around campus, the student-made flyers advertising yard sales, shows and school events were so beautiful that people would steal them to use as wall decorations.
I'll never forget the first time I turned down an alley and stood dumbfounded in front of a gorgeous linoleum print, pasted on the side of a dumpster.

We can't help but make art.

That first week of school, I knew I was home. I was surrounded by right-brained thinkers and visually minded people; people who got me, even if they spoke another language then me. I was no longer the weird one in my group of friends. Here, when you gush over a Helvetica font on a road-sign, people gush with you. When you lament over a ruined painting or a lost sketchbook, people understand the pain, and mourn with you. When you notice a striking shade of yellow in particular leaf, people will stop and admire it too, and maybe even lend you their camera.

I'll never forget the sense of community I felt here from the beginning.

I wonder how many times we've all looked out our classroom windows and drawn the catholic church on campus. I wonder what our total sum of all nighters has been so far. I wonder if every single one of us has looked at our peers work and wished we had that kind of talent, even though we do.

And yeah, I wonder if we'll all be able to have "jobs" that have to do with art in the future. But one thing I don't wonder about at all is if we'll end up as artists.
We just can't help that.

Sophomore Painting - DONE.

2008-12-17T20:54:00.000-08:00

My goal this semester has been to make work that is about a communal identity rather then my own.

To find imagery representative of my community, collaboration was imperative. Using text messaging, facebook, and a lesson taught at an after school center, I asked a wide range of people one question: "What is most important to you?"

Text messaging and facebook allowed me to obtain perspectives from outside of my immediate geography. After logging answers from my friends and family, I had a hierarchal list of the most important things in people's lives. I found symbols that represented each of these words and created a group of abstract acrylic paintings on various sizes of canvas and masonite.

After these nonrepresentational paintings, I executed a local mural. I originally wanted to work at a place of high esteem, but the possibility of renovation and revitalization in my community was too strong. Mount Royal Elementary-Middle, a local "arts integration" school, wanted a mural in their theater. Because of their focus on the arts, I painted mentors teaching children dance, music, theater and visual arts.

Next I decided to implement my big question at the Police Athletic League's after-school center in my neighborhood. I asked the students to write a list of things that are important to them. They chose their best idea from the list and drew a symbol of it. I incorporated these symbols into abstract circular watercolor paintings, as well as a mural designed for the main room at the PAL center. At least forty kids from about ten different Baltimore schools looked on as "The Things That Are Important To Us" went up on their wall.

I had finally achieved my goal of visually unifying the identity of my community (both abstractly and representationally) while beautifying public spaces. However I was not content. Ironically enough, I was left with a longing to express my own identity.

When I looked back at all of the answers to my big question, I finally realized that I'm interested in making the personal universal. The most frequent answers given were friends and family. Personal, tangible relationships. So that is what I painted. My final piece, titled "Holding Painting," is all that man has ever really made art about - the personal, the relational, and ultimately the universal.

I found this in one of my many notebooks today.

2008-12-13T10:55:00.001-08:00

I am where I am.
I am where I should be,
where I need to be.
I am creating.
That means I'm alive.

I will not put my creation up
next to yours right now
And please do not put yours up next to mine.
Yours is so lovely.
But comparing is NOT
what making is all about.
It is about what is innate.

I create.
It means I'm alive.
Some people are living, but they're standing still,
growing lukewarm and moldy.
Sometimes they walk backwards.
But I can't do that.
I must walk forward.
I must swim far from shore.

To me, this has to do with being human.
The Creator has made us creators too.
He has put this ability in my mind
and in my hands.
It is how I am made.
It is how I reflect Him,
who has also created the ocean and clam shells and the sun.

The ocean can't restrain it's tides.
The clam shell can't stop producing pearls.
The sun can't stop expelling warmth.
I can not grow stagnant.
I revel in being alive and creating.

How to convey a thought?

2008-12-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

Words are pointless if they're mine.
Meaning comes from the divine.

"Teenagers should never write about love..."

2008-12-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

I wish
for a lot.

It's a bad habit.

My mind projects from past to future and back again, as I go from day to day.

I push an old metal and glass door away from my body, it's bells ring overhead. I leave Carmelita's mexican restaraunt after making a reservation for later this evening, and walk down the strip mall sidewalk towards my parent's van. My fingers wrap around the car key and the soft plastic keychain. The sun is low. Before the warm orange twilight even reaches my skin, my mind plays it's usual game, and I loose the present to the past; to the flights of my imagination.

He would be walking next to me, maybe following on the gravel parking lot, the two of us exchanging common words. I can picture him clearly. He's so beautiful - an arresting smile, adorable hair, an effortless body. I smile with every glance of him. My face is lit up by the strong goldenrod sun and purple shadows are cast on my neck. A balmy breeze pushes though my hair. I know he would stare and smile too.

He's never kept his captivation secret. For years now, no matter where we go, he'll find a moment to slip a few perfect grinning words into my ear.... how he's never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life....how I deserve fame and a million dollars for looking like that....he says that I don't even understand how much he loves me.

Once, in a field of mud, we spent almost an hour freeing a four wheeler that I drove into a hole. While his friend slammed the gas, throwing mud all over our faces and sweaters, he looked at me and said that he's never been more attracted to me then he was at that moment. We both laughed at how absurd and true it was.

Once when we were counselors at a summer camp, he walked next to me while we escorted a flock of 11 year olds to the lake. Making no eye contact, he carried on in very plain speak about how he had a crush on a certain camp counselor, and how he was dying to let her know, but couldn't, because there were rules against public displays of affection. While kids swam around us like sharks in the green lake, jumping on our backs trying to pull us under, he cooly suggested different ways we could escape from the sweet dears for a quick minute.

The metal clap of the passenger door returns my focus to the dashboard in front of me. I slouch lower into the driver's seat. Sitting in the parking lot, the steering wheel, the grey velour seats, the whole car is so still; I can feel the sun moving, sinking quickly outside. I don't know how I got so lucky, and so unlucky to be where I am now: with him, and without him.

I wish for a lot...

Biography!

2008-12-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Stephanie McKee was born and raised in St. Petersburg, FL, where she studied visual arts in middle and high school. She is currently a sophomore painting major at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she first discovered the field of community arts. As a freshman, Stephanie helped establish the community arts project "A Neighborhood Called Baltimore," which lead to her involvement in Artblocks Inc. Ms. McKee maintains an active role in her community by interning at local art centers and after school programs, working as assistant to the Arts Integration Coordinator at Mt. Royal Elementary Middle School, and coordinating service and volunteerism programs at Maryland Institute.

As of late, Stephanie has been establishing herself as a muralist in both St. Petersburg and Baltimore, completing numerous public and private murals since 2004. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her friends and family, as well as creative writing, dance, theology, talking to strangers, and of course, painting.

Collaboration

2008-11-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

I think I have a new word around which everything I do revolves.

Collaboration.

More later....

אנוכי (Selfish)

2008-10-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

We do not want to be told what to do.
We do not like limits.
We want people telling us that it's okay, we're okay.
We have our own motives in mind:
What would benefit me?
What fits into my agenda?

I don't want to waste time cooking
or sitting down with my family to eat,
so we'll drive through McDonalds.
I don't want to study,
so I'll cheat during the test.
I don't want to get an education or job,
so I'll live on welfare.
I don't want to be involved in my child's education,
so I'll send them to a public school
and never ask as much as their teacher's name.
I don't want to work on my marriage,
so I'll get a divorce.
I don't want to save enough money for that luxury house,
so I'll just take out a huge mortgage.
I don' want fate to determine who I fall in love with,
so I'll let a computer pick my match.
I don't want to stop eating this ice cream,
so I'll get a second helping.
I don't want to rely on anyone but myself,
so I'll quote Emerson.
I don't want to feel a shred of guilt over any of my decisions,
so I'll say they only concern me.
I'll say
"I'm in charge of my own moral code."
I'll say
"God just isn't for me."
I'll say
"Sin? That's such a harsh term..."
I'll say
"I'm a good person."

We'll convince ourselves
we're okay.
We'll convince ourselves
that our lives are about
fulfilling our own motives
and getting what we want.

Seamless

2008-10-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

I find the cocooning state of America disheartening.

People move seamlessly from homes to cars, to offices, schools, malls and entertainment centers,
minimizing our contact with the natural environment.

We stare at laptops, cell phones, ipods, and blackberrys,
minimizing our contact with each other.

We rely on philosophy, yoga, science, business, politics, and ourself,
minimizing our reliance on our Christ.

Thoughts while walking through a mica gallery

2008-10-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

- When I choose other things over my art, I sacrifice the opportunity to know myself better.

- Art requires time and stillness - two things I rarely allow it.

- An artists isn't good when he tries to fit a standard, even if he achieves that standard to perfection. He is only a success when he nurses and coddles his own passions.

- People can tell when you do halfway art. I really don't want that to be my identity as an artist, although that is often the work I make. I want refinement.

- I think I want to be remembered for:
*My relationships and interactions with people
*The things I do, especially for others
*The things I make

Sunday

2008-10-04T11:58:00.001-07:00

The wren's morning whistles were the choir's song,
their flapping wings, the band;
the melting dew, it sang along;
a harmony devoid of man.

This City II

2008-10-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm finally looking at this city critically.
It is only after I've learned about it's structure,
it's history,
why it got this way,
and how it got this way
that I'm able to question if this is the best way,
if this is the only way.
Is there the potential of a city that functions better for everyone, and not just some?

Today I realize that I live in luxury, I am the minority, I am the other.

This City

2008-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

I am in love with Baltimore, but I am not happy with her.
Her divisions are too sharp, her walls too high.
Her blocks are too segregated and there is too little cross-over.
Her people are too unaware, and too comfortable.
She is letting big business and the elite have their way with her.
She doesn't know how beautiful she really is.
No one tells her.
She is hiding her true face beneath a veil that is too easy to lift
for us to have not done so yet.
All we have to do is walk far on her streets,
wander deep into her clusters of buildings and people.
Her veil, her high walls, her mystery and ugly mask
are all gone
as soon as you believe they are,
and act like they are.

New Project

2008-09-29T11:58:00.001-07:00

Proposed Sophomore Painting Project:

1. I will create a catalog of visual symbols, representing identities on the following levels:
-Universal
-National (American)
-Local
-Personal

Universal
Visual Art, Dance, Theater, Music, Literature, Labor (male and female), the Sciences, Family, Friendships, Romantic relationships, Faith (cross, jewish star, Om symbol)

National (American)

American Flag, Bald Eagle, Statue of Liberty,

Local (Baltimore)

Lord Baltimore portrait, crabs, ships, fruit cart, rowhome

Personal

dredlocks, business suit, hoop earrings,

2. I will go all around Baltimore asking a variety of people to choose the three images that best describe them.

3. I will log all of the data and use it to make a mural painting that includes these pieces of identity from the people of Baltimore.

*more to come as i further resolve my idea!*

Direction

2008-09-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

The kind of artist that i want to be does not sit in a studio and make paintings.
I want to do work that is about people.
I want to do work that is of concern to people.
I want to do work that involves people.

I am a visually minded person, but i am also a socially minded person.
To be more specific, I have recently been concerned with the development, structure, and functioning of human society.
I think on the macro level - I often think in universals.

As I've seen from other artists, this work takes the form of projects more often then paintings.
These projects will require my skills as a fine artist, because they will require a level of quality, expertise, and background knowledge of art-making and the art world.

Museums today realize that they have a tradition of disconnect with majority of the population. The work that matters today breaks tradition in that it is no longer solely aesthetic. Art must respond to people.

A picture plane has two dimensions.
A sculpture has three dimensions.
A time-based piece has four dimensions.
I contend that the social sphere is the new fifth dimension of art.

I owe this inspiration and freshly acute sense of direction to Allan McCollum, and the lecture he just gave here at MICA.

Should I be a muralist?

2008-09-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

When I paint for myself, I can do anything I want.

I could juxtapose any type of figure in
any type of clothing,
doing any kind of action
during any point in history,
and it wouldn't have to be accurate or make sense.

If I paint for the public,
should my decisions be made according to
what is clear
and what others want?
Is granting others what they want necessarily a virtue in art?

Night

2008-09-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

Behind us she stretches far into the past,
man's history a trinket that rests in her lap.
Look now, man proves his superiority,
by carving florescent pockets
through her deep black body.
But who is man?
His machine's fleeting flames
have burned out in an instant
while the night remains.

I have a thing for sunshine...

2008-09-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Sun!
He slides over the curve of my spine,
rising from it's base
slowly up to the bare skin on my neck.
His warmness seeps through my clothes and muscles,
through the back of my ribcage,
reaching my innermost insides.
The city is thawed out of my core.
It is replaced by what is essential to live.
What is essential to live was not created by man:
school, money, religion, or fluorescent lights.
What is essential to live can be obtained by anyone who seeks it:
education, contentment, God, and the Sun.

we look.

2008-04-02T21:09:00.001-07:00

Today my abstract painting class visited Timothy App’s studio.

-"What’s with the rocks?"

-"Aren’t they wonderful? I just like their color, their shape; how they form a circular shape together.
They’re river rocks.
Aren’t they just great, sitting there in the sunlight?"

-"How long have they been there?"

-"A long time"

-"How long?"

-"I’d say about... six years. I just love the way they look.
(later)...Ya know, that’s what we do.
We look.
We see."

Too Much Thinking

2008-03-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

I can’t think of a single thing that I encounter that isn’t an iceberg.

What my mind already knows about everything in my world is like the iceberg’s visible tip. Let’s say, my bathroom rug, for instance. I see it every day. I know it well. It is green, a rectangle, feels like carpet, and although thin, is able to hold a massive amount of water for weeks on end, so it is always annoyingly sodden. But what I know about this object is limited to my experience with it. I know nothing of its background; like, what materials was it manufactured out of that make it retain water for so long? Where was it even manufactured? How did they make it green? Who came up with this inefficient design for a bath rug? Who even came up with the idea of bath rugs in the first place?
Okay, so maybe this is a silly example. But almost everything in existence has a part to it that we just don’t know about - the gargantuan base of the iceberg that is submerged underwater, invisible to our above-the-surface view. Most of the time, what we see of the iceberg doesn’t even give us an idea of what the thing looks like in its entirety. We often have no idea how much there really is to it.
Think of how this applies to a person. What we know about most people we encounter in life is only the tip of an massive iceberg. We can’t even begin to see the parts that make up who they are unless we dive beneath the surface.
Think of how this applies to everything we know about God. I’m convinced that what i’ve seen of Him is proportionate to about a millimeter of ice sticking out above the water. Underneath is a mass that plunges hundreds of miles down into the depths of the ocean, so deep that we aren’t even humanly capable of reaching the whole thing.

When it comes to making art, I’ve heard it said that illustrators and graphic designers give answers, but painters ask questions. I never thought that this applied to me - I felt like my images presented resolved thoughts. But as I look around the room, thinking of how everything I see is like an iceberg, I realize that I actually do have an inquisitive nature. I question. I will not settle for seeing only the tip of the iceberg. I want to spring from my dry, complacent diving board, and with a flip and a spin, plunge into the depths of the midnight ocean. I want to perceive deeply.

Maybe I am a painter after all.

old, yet applicable

2008-02-29T05:35:00.000-08:00

Creation

2008-02-25T22:23:00.000-08:00

When I think of God as "Creator of the earth", I think of the God I felt one night while sitting on the surface of a calm ocean.
It's heart-beat pulsed, pushing up rhythmic hills of water that just barely rocked my board, submerged in the gulf beneath me. I stared out at the space around me - I dare not call it sky, because it touched my skin. It was saturated with orange. Yellow was there too, but it wasn't yellow - it was a warm gold light that must have slipped out of heaven on accident. And I, bobbing in the warm saltwater, was the sole witness of God's heaven spilling out onto earth that evening.

My best friend actually took this when I was coming back to shore that night. Can't do justice, but still:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/babygirrrl/747976804/

"Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,

when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,

when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt'?

Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.

What is the way to the abode of light?
And where does darkness reside?

Can you take them to their places?
Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

-Job 38:8-11, 16, 18 - 20

From a small sketchbook

2008-02-24T22:46:00.000-08:00

...I think that as we become comfortable with everything technological, we have less concern for what goes on on earth. I have a strange feeling that, in 70 years, if you ask an adult what a lily looks like, they won’t have the faintest idea.

Does our education system instill a mind-frame in us that says you must have only one path in life? I like a lot of things. I can do a lot of things. I can be an artist throughout all of them.

A good painting or a bad painting may be the same painting, seen by different people. To me, my paintings are good.

“Being a ‘dyed in the wool’ painter happens when the two things that seem seperate - like the color and wool - have actually become one.” -Timothy App

Painting can be whatever you want it to be.

Jennifer Stockholder Lecture (Paraphrased quotes):
-Art is a way of making sense of things
-A big piece of us in unavailable to us through words.
-Sometimes, being expressive is seen as a joke - you have to be intellectual, analytical, intelligent. Expressiveness and the subconscious are often seen as stupid.
-Art is most exciting when it challenges ways of thinking and seeing

Impossible

2008-02-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday at the Light we sang a song written for a city in Ireland that was in the middle of a revolution (which I completely forgot all the details about. oops). Here's the chorus:

"Greater things are yet to come
Greater things are still to be done
in this city."

This made me think of "My Impossible Prayer": for God to take away the drug and gang violence in Baltimore. Hey, even the tiniest bit of faith can move a mountain. Sounds impossible, but I believe that God can seriously do anything, and I believe that He can use me and others to do it! (Um, Community Arts anyone?)

This leads me to a very relevant prayer by a guy in the old testament named Habakkuk:

Habakkuk's Complaint

How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, "Violence!"
but you do not save?

Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

The Lord 's Answer

"Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.

Jesus was so not "conservative"

2008-02-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Lyrics to a song Pastor Bill played in church the other week, reminding us who God loves, who we should love, and who we should be reaching out to:

"Politicians, morticians, Philistines, homophobes 
Skinheads, Dead heads, tax evaders, street kids 
Alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dim wits
 Blue collars, white collars, war mongers, peace nicks  

Breathe deep
 Breathe deep the Breath of God
 Breathe deep 
Breathe deep the Breath of God  

Suicidals, rock idols, shut-ins, drop outs
 Friendless, homeless, penniless and depressed
 Presidents, residents, foreigners and aliens 
Dissidents, feminists, xenophobes and chauvinists  

Evolutionists, creationists, perverts, slum lords 
Dead-beats, athletes, Protestants and Catholics
 Housewives, neophytes, pro-choice, pro-life 
Misogynists, monogamists, philanthropists, blacks and whites

  Police, obese, lawyers, and government
 Sex offenders, tax collectors, war vets, rejects 
Atheists, Scientists, racists, sadists 
Photographers, biographers, artists, pornographers

  Gays and lesbians, demagogues and thespians
 The disabled, preachers, doctors and teachers 
Meat eaters, wife beaters, judges and juries 
Long hair, no hair, everybody everywhere!"

I love O'Keffe's words..

2008-02-18T10:52:00.002-08:00

“A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower - lean forward to smell it - maybe touch it with your lips without thinking - or give it to someone to please them. Still - in a way - nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small - we haven’t the time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
“So I said to myself - I’ll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
“Well - I made you take time to look at what I saw and then you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don’t.
“Then when I paint a red hill, because a red hill has no particular association for like the flower has, you say it is too bad that I don’t always paint flowers. A flower touches almost everyone’s heart. A red hill doesn’t touch everyone’s heart as it touches mine and I suppose there is no reason why it should. The red hill is a piece of the badlands where even the grass is gone. Badlands roll away outside my door - hill after hill - red hills of apparently the same sort of earth that you mix with oil to make paint. All the earth colors of the painter’s palette are out there in the many miles of badlands. The light Naples yellow through the ochres - orange and red and purple earth - even the soft earth greens. You have no associations with those hills - our waste land - I think our most beautiful country. You must not have seen it, so you want me always to paint flowers...”

-Georgia O’Keeffe
Exhibition catalogue, An American Place, 1939

Expression!

2008-02-18T10:52:00.001-08:00

Today my friend came into the piano room as i practiced the very first scale i was taught at my very first music lesson that morning. He was having a bad week and needed a piano. The music he made was full of emotion. He told me he didn’t know the name of the notes he played, but he knew it was what he needed. He knew that if his fingers pressed these keys, and then these, the sound that came out would match what was inside of him. And then it was out. And it was better. It was beautiful. I was glad that no one had ever told him that he had to play any other way; that he only played the notes he needed, and the rhythms that made him feel right. He even banged his fists on the keys, and it hurt my ears, but he let out a loud “AHH!” and said “Sometimes even that feels good.”
When he left, I thanked God for giving humans something inside, and I thanked him for giving us so many different ways to get it out.
I was then presented with a problem. A person could consume their entire life in trying to figure out ways to get what’s inside of them out. A whole lifetime! For one way! Each one has so many caverns and depths to explore.
For some people, paint is able to get out what’s inside of them. For another person, its the sounds that a violin’s strings make when they move a bow across in different ways. For some people, it’s dancing that allows what’s inside to come out. Hip hop dancing, crump dancing, break dancing, modern dancing, ballet dancing, ballroom dancing. Some people can get it out through clothing - making it and wearing it. Putting together different colors, fabrics, stitches, prints, head-dresses, jewelry, shoes - wearing what’s inside of them right on their body. For some people, running can do it. Or rowing, playing soccer, football, tennis, or swimming, yoga, meditation. Some people release what’s inside when they pray and serve God. Focusing on Him is all they need. To some, writing. words are their paint, their movement, the notes they need. To some, its different languages. Some people can only get what’s inside by cooking. Dreaming up combinations of dough, berries, sauces, fruits, cheeses or crusts. When they combine ingredients, flavors, to finally achieve the taste, the feel and the look, they wanted, they’ve gotten it out. Some people use math. When they twist and push their mind to figure out a problem that’s important to them, they are able to get it out. Some people use their voices
What results is a sense of urgency in me. There’s absolutely no time to waste! How will we ever get it all out in one lifetime!? There’s so many chords, so many sounds, so many songs. There’s enough combinations of colors and shapes and materials to tell about what’s of me for thousands of years. Why waste one minute of your life? Why waste time forgetting about that fire in you, or ignoring it? Or even worse, letting other people douse it? Or letting it go out because of routine, or monotony, or laziness, or worry? None of those things can help that fire grow. What a waste of a candle when it forgets that its meant to hold a flame! What a waste of soil when it forgets that it is able to produce a garden of flowers, colorful and alive!

Painting

2008-02-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

My roommate is learning how to paint this semester. Last night she asked me how I paint. I couldn’t think of a more difficult question. I didn’t know what to say - “Well, I dip my brush in my brain and soul and paint everything I’ve ever come to know.”?
I pointed to a group of 5 diverse abstract paintings I’ve recently done that were lying on a table. “I paint like that. And that. And that. It’s always changing - there’s no formula.”
We went on to talk about the technicalities of making a painting, but i felt like there was a brick in my mouth.
Maybe i could take some time and write enough about how I paint to create a clear definition...

Greet the Day

2008-02-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

New Years Thoughts

2008-02-18T10:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve realized something about myself. I don’t want much. I don’t want my future to be complicated or chaotic. I just want a small house with a few things - not riddled with five different kinds on face cleansers, toners and moisturizers in the bathroom; 30 different kinds of shoes in the closet. I don’t want a huge house when I’m older, and I don’t want a lot of stuff. I don’t want a lot of friends that are only mediocre - i want a few friends who know me and i know them and we enjoy just spending time together. I want friends with morals, and I want morals of concrete. I don’t want alcohol and I don’t want drugs, because they make things difficult and complicated. I don’t want a partying lifestyle, because that is meaningless. When I’m older, I want a good man, one who will pray with me instead of pressure me. One who will constantly guide me in my walk with Christ. I want art, and design, and to have made an impact in the world through them. And I want paint. I definitely want to paint.
Bare feet will do. Staying in some nights will be just fine with me. I’ll be happy with a blank book and a pencil, some clothes, a lot of warm sunshine, and good nights of rest - thats all I really need. I don’t need diamonds in my ears, on my neck, or around my wrist. Just a little gold necklace with a small sphere of turquoise at the end is enough of a treat. I would like to continue to be a muse, and continue to take good care of my body. I would like to have time for people. Time to really care for people.

Coming Home in December

2008-02-18T10:40:00.000-08:00

I live in paradise.
No, not palm trees, beaches and sunshine; get that image out of your head.
Paradise is returning to ultimate comfort. It’s leaving the chaos of college and big cities, and returning home. Home - that word carries so much to so many different people.
To me, its trading freezing cold weather and icy strangers for the familiar press of the sun against my skin, and warm, laid back personalities. It’s leaving the buttery sun of Baltimore for the citrus sky of St. Pete.
The paradise of home is seeing my brother’s slow evolution into a handsome young man. Hearing him play classical guitar for the first time, and reminding me all too much of my boyfriend.
Seeing my gorgeous sister asleep in a bed fit for a queen, surrounded by an open textbook and a bible, with dance competition forms lying on the floor. Hearing her gentle and happy personality; realizing that it is maturing constantly.
Paradise is pumpkin bread, baked by mom, bagged and bountiful. Too much food in the fridge. Any kind of food I want. Water from a fridge spout. A warm, familiar kitchen. A kiss on the cheek from dad, who just took a shower and smells like soap, who was probably waiting up for me before he went to bed.
My paradise has a round, ornate christmas tree warmly lighting the windows, and colorful lights lining the roof to match. It has shiny presents bursting from the tree’s base, and a pile of boxes and wrapping paper on the couch. It has a bedroom with more clothes, soft blankets, jewelry, and shoes then any girl needs. It has golden dim lights glowing throughout a dark house. My paradise is one of luxury. There’s comfy furniture everywhere, and a fish tank that fills the house with the faint sound of churning water at night.
But mostly, there’s love. Christmas cards on the table, friends coming over, lots of hugs. Interest in each other’s lives, pride in what my siblings are accomplishing. Gifts bought for each other, and a feeling of comfort and belonging when we’re finally together again.