i might be booked for that

it was suggested that the first line of my book should read, "i make nine foot vaginas and i make a lot of them..." well for sure that is one way to start.

of late i've been contemplating a phd that merges making, writing, process, other, and begins weaving this altogether. though i'd probably jump on another mfa but in creative writing...it is a shorter process and well i have crossed into a certain age category. winding it down isn't an interest but neither is winding it up. i've never wanted to live as though i am a rock being thrown through my own life. i am a ponderer, a meanderer, i lean this way and that and have only just begun to understand which leanings are my own and which are habits of body and thought acquired in route from varying life giving tethers. yes making is a must, writing as well, all connected into something purposeful that is useful for other. but exactly what. as i've been hunting about for what is of interest, what inflames, i keep coming back to what is the role of writing for the visual artist. not in terms of writing the proscribed artist statement or the exhibition proposal, but what is writings function for the visual artist. the artists that have pounded and stroked out their makings for a lifetime, the ones we know of and hear their names tossed about, WRITE. they may journal, publish essays, books, write poetry, prose or even fiction, list out fragments, unpack their lives, but they write. is the writing specific to a personality type or a learning style? do only the life-longers write? what function does it play? does it sustain the making? it is the source for the making? does it run parallel or is it all together something else? well and i just don't care about only the why of it but how might that why be used to strengthen and equip other artists to be life-longers. so not just research the why, but embracing the process and pushing it, and then passing it along.

i write to right my life, hold it together, whole it up. i write to remember, to chase the inkling. i write to make it fit together, to give a sense that there is some kind of freaking logic to it. i write because i have to, i need to, it makes order. it lets me rethink, reedit my life. it lets me stand back and look in, look out. i find and follow the intent embedded and surfacing. though i still haven't figured out the nine foot vagina dilemma. i mean i do have some undisclosed thoughts on topic well no really undisclosed as many have leaked out in posts along the way.

"My hope was that if I did this (writing) honestly I would discover how to see myself from a perspective that would render myself whole in my own eyes." -- Anne Truitt, 1974

so i make nine foot vaginas and i make a lot of them. i've made room, come on in...

perhaps i will start there.