The Met! The Met. The Met. I am using Deepseek to think out so much interpersonal stuff and psychological stuff using it as a lever for what is appropriate jsutice for personal or power dynamics in business mostly to do with betrayal. Betrayal is such a difficult thing. Hinging on perception not anchored in anything deep but inverting the surface as if it were the core.
I am filled dull of wrath when there are children involved and of course - my work - also - my children. So akward when one art world person pulls some cowardly move based on gossip and others with less power still rip it off your web site and get your stuff tattoeed on them for life. I have alays hated gossip it hits hard my fathers wives sole power was creating or reinforcing a fantasy world where he was king and the center of the universe to such a perverse extent only extemity would satisfy his blind rage filled head. And I dont want to give him too much space here. Let's just say it was awful. I have never been such a power clomber because always I understood and was wounded ? Humbled? By the levelling power of violence. Rich or poor violence does not discriminate and I was raised in air where this was always true, always reinforced, always in my face. Everything thrown at me - as not worthy -a utonomy - wealth - health - joy - well - I saw how those with very little enjoyed these things freely so the underdog and not the king - became my heros. Happy when the post man rejoiced at my work - wary when the Hollywood producer did the same. Knowing though - always that it is the best - I am the real deal - never doubting this internally - but betrayal of my child - as an adult- something about this - I couldnt handle. The cold fact that others - supposed allies and supports friends and blood - would happily let her die. I just couldnt handle this. And it is this that sowed doubt in me where never had I felt doubt before.
What beauty did I build? What extradinary things have I made that no other hand can muster. Much.

I just got followed back this Turkish artist Deniz Akta who draws and who is in the latest Vitamin D. I really like them. Most of all there are some architectural formations that clear were photographic orginally then mirrored digitially reprinted and drawn. So its essentially graphic design but its effective. Although every so often you always get an artist who does this: takes some phtographic image - projects it - and does a fairly forensic copy of it however their black and white methood (pencil/graphite.) Banks Violette did this and I found his drawings so anal retentive and annoying. In this guys case - it's a launching pad. They are good I like them. I also realized somehow but clicking through some people associated by him - how many years I have lost to narcissitic family members and my right NOT to run away from them and constantly manage their chaos/indifference to my life, my child's life. The horror - the emotional horror - and the physical manipulation is really barf-worthy to fuck with my life like this - for their own psychopathic reasons - is wrong. That's it. It's wrong. And my career, my safety, my creativity and my child should not at all be impacted by it. It's a big wow. I don't know why this AM everything clicked. But I realized - I never knew how much I was being used - I never knew that indifference to harm was not OK to be my normal. So I got some serious fixing to do but it's about returning to myself. My mother's cold dead hand trying to involve herself - via manipulation - and interference - was never OK.

I remember being somewhat obssessed with the idea for a project which constituted the use of a dead horse - and I spoke to Matthew Barney about finding one. I looked all over Texas - my one rare forway into the US - apart from Lovelady, TX. and that Maximum Security collaboration - thank you Marianne Boesky for the start and then the coup d'etat at the guillotine auctioning a really bad work with no specs and no frame - horrific - carnage - a literal "unceremoniously dumped" in the words of Alexandra Mir - using last names here so people know who the fuck these people are - we thought some intern had rummaged through the garbage by the quality of it - but then I remembered - in some short lived temporary studio before we parted ways she just rather randomly bought it off the wall - and then the wrath of Nathalie Obadia - well known for her vindictive, screeching ways - colluded to devalue my work with all her collectors - including Gabrielle Salomon who I really respected so much - what a fucking nightmare. My friend Juul Kriajer who once was intersted in showing with Nathalie - said - oh no - stay away...Huma Bhaba left her and so did Cameron Jaime who I helped get in to the gallery - and he wanted a spot there just so he could get his paper work sorted for his Paris residency - at the time. Then he left. I remember she was so obscenely kow towing to his narcissistic male arrogance. She had and has little respect for women. And for women without rich husbands or inheritances. Sorry world that I exist? And Solomon - I didnt get the news in time - it was very good drawing - worth a lot - the others- well -if you just lunch with your little cabal and talk shit about your artists - then you have nothing to do with art.She really hurt me, with such hatred. A woman with talent and no money. The perfect target for her idiotic rage. And what priveleged person she is.
For me it's really infuriating and at first, so sad, I was so sad. What do I know about my father, or have some kind of lineage connected to him other than the talent I was born with. He hated me too. He hated everyone. But especially chilren, and women whom he saw as easy game, soft targets. What a wound because I fought, literlly, so hard, to be seen

"And they called it morality - built from silence and stitched with fear."

Watching a child die. You see yourself. It's a sudden mirror. And you see all that was not there - that would not have saved you. This by itself - is terrifying. You feel the full field of orphan sstatus. The width and breadth the long horizon. Maybe it has none. It is you. On your own. So every slight, insult, betrayal, is not something you can pick up from, so easily. Friendships. You have nothing else but these. Works at auction - all of them - abject abandonment. How weird to go through some thing where you can link the auction room directly to a hospital room. I think it's seeing the innocence of a child - it's no different than the innocence of art. The purity - unquestioning - selfhood - under a real, physical attack. My art lifted me out of that. But the mortal reminder, also reminds, how, despite everything, you have searched hard in your heart for a family - and over give to get even some semblence of one - though in creativity - there is alignemnt. There is - synchronicity. But with messy human, kid of, below this space, you dont really know how to navigate it. So, you over attach. It let's you reach deeper, find resources, but in other cases you reach to deep, the wrong space - the wrong space for that - you don't speak the language - you are blind - you are literally harassed as a grown woman by that very blood family - oh very bad people - who only know exploitation and harm as they have never experienced any simple joy - or so it seems. So you shovel hard, into fallow earth, with hope only, not with real experience here, on the ground level, for sustenance. You exhaust yourself. That earthbound rockclimbing and river swimming goat that I am. Sea Satryess Since Seven. Yes since that age I misunderstood the story of Chloe and Daphnis I thought Chloe fell in love with a Satyr. These invisible cords, invisible evils, that blind your way make you love storms, love the wild eruptions of nature, becaue it power that never apologizes for its shape and form - it is ultra visible and it shakes the earth. With this blindness they convinced you that you were always on the precipice of death, because no one would help you. They gave you a shovel and fallow ground.

The Witch Wound

Pressuring someone of exceptional talent: to conform

Bourgeois comforts. I was told as a child that I don't deserve them. Good job. I also did not deserve doctors, films, magazines or books. I especially did not deserve anything, that I cherished. What a thing to carry.

I watched Nosferatu after having watched Logan's Run. In a vein on 1970's visions of the future - otherworlds - Herzog did it - and the soundtrack is great. Popol Vuh. Progressive Rock. Made me think of Bowie. Suffering from FOMO. Wondering if my stagnation has damaged my daughter. Underestimated the importance of my own self - that I must be in muscular optimal living breathing nuturing condition. But I have been a waif. I woke up thinking I'd write a letter to my Brother. My siblings they all sit like ghosts - watching - in silence. What happened to all though souls who died with the conviction that Hitler was a great man. That the 1000 year Reich would come. That their death was heroic. It's strange. I dont think many Russian soldiers think they fight for good. Some do. Some are reckless. It's not really for Russia, it's for the power they are granted or the abuse they can inflict. Who really believes. OK I believed that staying for the sake of my daughter's health was good, was right, was necessary. I believed that those to which she was charged, also cared. I was wrong.

So I woke up this morning and thought I'd write a letter to my Brother. When we were still speaking he implored not to send her to a German School. He begged. I couldn't understand why, and he didn't explain why. Now I know. What a horrible, horrible conclusion to come through the body of an innocent mind, innocent life. Still unknowiing - still defending. But I will tell you: when October 7 happened, and the world erupted in every obscene form of anti-semitism, she got into arguments with her friends, some older ones, from the Hague, her old school, and the Egyptian one vociferously sided with Hamas. And so to did my daughter take a middle ground, saying that both sides had integrity and you cannot simply see Israel as innocent. A year later, she has changed. She now talks about Israels need - the need for safety - for "a place to go" for anyone surviving the Holocaust as we read the first of three books of Boris Lurie's auto biography - he survived 4 concentration camps. Lived like a pauper, could only go out at night when he felt it was safe. He lived the war his whole life. And I wonder - what war am I living my whole life - and how has this really affected me - and my daughter? If only someone had grabbed me by the shoulder's and implored me not to have a child - for these things - these awful things - do not end! I thought about safety this morning. The safest place, is my creativity. And this cannot be denied. This cannot be denied. Cannot be denied. In her affliction, the horror that played out, her school denied. They simply became gargoyles in The Edifice, flying buttresses, supports and direct extensions -human ignorance - human twists - compromised monds - attached - to a virulent and mis-understood real life disease. And so - I am expected to find joy somewhere - where her existence is by them twisted - her very existence - her hope - her sense of self- most of all - protection - in this case - total lack of it - rather to be judged - harshly - for being sick - to the point of death - is insanity for an 11/12 year old. What evil lurks in the stupid banality of those paid whatever paltry sum - as teachers. They teach harm, evil, indiffrence, incompetence and cowardice. I have had to carry this alone. And so, the Jewish school calls. The female Rabbi he I thought about the head of the Heinrich Boll foundation that has his cottage set up as a redidency on a far away island on the West Coast of Ireland - the wild atlantic way. How he was described to me as bitter and cantankerous because he had a severely disabled child. I didnt understand this. I kept putting the residency off. I didnt really want to go as much as I love Ireland - I was back. and never really took to residencies. At some point I just dropped it - but now I get it. I get you - father of that child. I get how crushing it is to the core, how hard, how it tests sucess and failure the very concepts of which are forever altered or stained or reflect as some dark mirror back to your own soul. How innocence becomes not a source of joy and effervesence but rather, something destroyed. And you canot even name the monster who did it, it is God, or Mother Nature - these generalities you understand, describe nothing, nothing close to what you grappled with - for eaons...the wake rippling from that Thing, that seized your child. The female Rabbi here did not return my call though she did send a nice text. She is based in Lublin that acient heart of Judiasm.
I do love this country - but - no matter where - kitchens and domestic spaces - leave me cold. A morning ritual, involving a dishwasher, I never had one before, makes my flesh creep. Domestic space. I don't understand. So you have to wonder what kind of child I would have. I just know the studio. This idea of having a nice house - and this small fancy palace in which we have lived - a studio with a floor so fine it does not conjure up destruction or mess, my mind looks at it - and it thinks of an ice skating rink - or Gagosian - what artist ever made a creative act inside the walls of Gagosian. None. None ever did. I remember eating dinner with Cameron Jaime in Paris and he spoke about Mark Kelley's advice "Don't be used by the Gallery! Use the Gallery yourself!" And then he commits suicide. His last show was so strage, and so: not him. Icouldnt go to his birthday party in LA because I wa broke and embarassed. So lame. It as just 4 people. But always he was friendly to me and told me "I love your drawings".
It has been hard to work with these walls and floors, and as construction rages on all sides - to create more and more and more slick kitchens and walls and floors - it's not about creation. Where is my mess. My mountain. My gorgeous complex rock and snow and stone and wind. The product of milenna. The power of avalanche. That is me. Oh so dainty the fine bourgeois kitchen! Do we need a cappucino maker? Do we need a sprudel maker? A blender for smoothies - that can also make hot soup? My head filled with this does not function. Not well. I made a big mistake. It was not htat I did not listen to my Brother. I did not lsiten to myself. But, I can say, to the credit of what internal havoc, and psychic damage can wreak, here there are many fine doctors. And in my whole life, I never experienced good healthcare, until here. But I look in from the outside. I am able to swim in the fishbowl for a while, it is a taste. The bloodcord that drives it - is deeply driven into the earth - impressively so. I have nothing but respect for Poland and for Poles. It's just - you must be woven from the fabrice - to take part. Even catholicism is so riven. It goes alongside that existential track.

When staring into a garden is - in fact - staring into the void. No one should live in fear - or feel silenced. Injustice does that. Too much of it. Oh, that I was a welder - on ships - and I just didn't think about it. But - tbh - if I did think like this - I would be happy. Things are so complicated rn. They all must be simplified. And yet - I have this huge archive - that is me - and me - and me - and me. It can be delightful - but it's heavy. And the human part of me jumps back in horror - the horror of my life: to be born into a space of hatred and be trained not to see it. It is an existential betrayal of such enormity...to live in the landscape of someone else's psychosis - fighting every single day for your breath.
The entire family structure never ever existed - but still you have to bear the weight of it. The mothers, the fathers, the children, all around you out of synch with little you - your stick of charcoal - your piece paper. This is what you have. And it grows anad grew nd grows and grew into something formidable - but all the while - these things that society stabs into your chest - ignore - your existence. And you have to eat dinner with them - which means - be treated by them...and this is horror.
I don't think I will ever be on the side of the table where love takes precedence all that happened is to have a child - an enormous specter of guilt and instability formed - together - for the clarity I gained.

But now it faces eminent domain. My unhappiness can no longer be tolerated. It was not my forever home after all. I have to be there to anchor and to plan. I cannot be split into pieces by the motivations wishes desires whispers and manipulations of others. Sorry, if haviing a child extracted these things and really brought them to the surface. I wonder if I hadnt if I would be grounded, or utterly lost. At some point I would have snapped. As I did in a space that was quiet and safe and demanded nothing of me. I did read somewhere that you dont collapse in the fight - you collapse where it's safe. And this is precisely what happened. But I can't adapt to safety- no - it's not that - I can't adapt in space that is not my own - to shape to determine - to determine! To determine. Everything must fit together to support in each inch, decision, and familiarity - with my work. I would never pour a Gagosian floor. I have to make a mess of it. But when I see one - I can't. It's not mine. You can't even stand on the thing with hurting your bones. If this were the driving force - wouldnt I see it right away - and not lag 5 years of my life - pretending to be OK? I feel like I am still a chlid, constantly being tricked by those not innocent - not innocent at all. And it is around this trickery that I must create. This is not OK. Took me a minute to see this. But iff we hadnt been away would we be OK? Would my daughter be alive. Would I.

HEYDRICH

Michaelangelo Antoinioni's L'Eclisse. First time. I can't put into words how I connected to this film. Like Under the Skin. Instant indentification. So close to my skin. On this thought, I thought about touch sensitive car seat surfaces in BMWs and the like. They read your body temperature, humidity, whatever other factors - and respond accordingly. But recently I was on a LOT fight from NYC to Warszawa and it was ice cold. Like: we are on the official Corpse Plane. I sent Matthew a respnse to his latest REMAINS collab with Brandon my actual location - which actually I cant believe I managed to do - but did - and there I was on in a veld surrounded by the jagged edges of the Silesian peaks - literally - on gooogle maps my location was fucking ridiculous - and I zoned in on the dotted line separating Slovakia from Poland - very close - could walk to it. All covered in snow. I love snow.
I read a bit of something somewhere about n artist wanting to be seen - but also wanting to disappear. This is me. I imagine myself at peace, speaking to morning doves only, squirrels, foxes, my cats, going out before the sun with a bow and arrow - to get used to the plan - and practicing Bogenschutz - with the dream of someday hitting a deer - in the most humane way - the only way I would ever hunt - and want to. It's like: a conversation. It would bring me peace. Maybe because - there is blood involved. A pact made so often when blood is unclear, or a lie, or something to be exploited. You see how noxious mere ideas can be. But the spilling of blood is inexorable. Imagine if with my blood family we all had to make a native american blood pact. I think I saw that for the first time when I was like - 2 - The Lone Ranger. In black and white. The only TV we had. And I loved Tonto - his Indian Companian. Honestly as a 2/3 year old I thought - who is this lame Ranger guy? Tonto is the coolest! And I still think that to this day. So someday, plans were foiled - but someday - I want to take my daughter to a real Indian Pow Wow. And excuse if the term Indian is insulting. It likely somes very literally from a skin color association with the far away land of India - to which no dumb expansionist had ever been.
Which brings me to my white art world bro brothers. Why did I like them (him) so. Maybe because: power. But also: talent. So I also had: talent. But this level of: power was foreign. It was outside and connected to: others. Not just that but - those who rejected me - harshly. So doesnt it make sense that through talent I would try to form a bridge?
And here is where we all sit together. Not just me alone. The crossroads of power where for one - it is a given - and sought after - automatically - feverishly - stupidly - all these things - but for the rest they are put into boxes - like little coffins - occasionally gifted a blood transfusion from one to the next - because those who need no boxes and who just piss drunk in their pants across the entire topography (their pants are the topography - as posterity funds and affords) the dumbass bros/brahs neeeeeeed the blood of the boxed up. Because the boxes are an illusion, a fairly thin and fragile convention. And wow are those bros fragile.
Do you see?
At the end I thought of my one thing: myself and Hiroshima. Where the traces of life - disappear - in buidings and things made by human hands - but no longer filled by them. And later I sat in a cafe and a text invlving BOris Lurie my new fascination - by Paulina Olszewska - bless her - overheard an inteligent and long conversation about real estate and cities which wrapped as I left with "the soul can die - on the inside." Soul death is real. Floating without anchor or direction - coupling without connection - just being - without focus - lost in a blur a land of edges once so defined - I cant describe how physical heartbreak can be - what exile can do - and instead of googling suicides lilke Hemingway and Monroe - I now look to those who worked in spaces that alienated them, where they sat hapless and alone - but worked anyways. My soul is my work and my anchor to the world. What have I done or rather - like those buildings - they are prisons - what has society done to me - with the harness of its expectations - and some terribly warped and twisted glass through which love is viewed? It is this that has shaped my life - and my work - my art - actually was powerful enough to cut through it. But without it - I am really nothing. My awful identification with the dance of red shoes at the age of 7 - was terribly terribly true. I was as if - I was designed to be this way. When you dance on stage - it is incredible - you are alone - but you are not because - you are connecting to some huge and unknown - unknown ina any other way. And what harms me and beats me back is the domesticity of daily life - the job, the paycheck and most of all: the kitchen. The repulse me. I fear them. This is a language I do not speak and I am forever so uncomfortable with the domestic details of ordinary life - something I never had growing up - its true - and maybe this is really just a harm that penetrated me deeply - and too early on - they have the power to derail me. What is it to be safe, have doctors, pots and pans, cook food and have an oven - to bake without angst. Thats right, baking creates massivea nxiety - I never had an oven - and I dont want one. I havve been trapped now in a terrible prison for years and I wonder if to continue in this state is too much for me - and what is the world -without me - to return to what I think is familiar but has transformed into a fascist state? I get that little knownw artist who after fleeing Germany - could not work. It's not that she fled Germany, it's that she was forced out of her sanctuary: her lifebood, her sinews, her veins: her studio. I dont know how and artist can survive without their studio. Certainly I have been dying for a long time without concern or support from anywhere - and my work is enormous demanding, a great beast, a dragon, on a golden chain, tethered to my being, to my deepest heart.

This is the Anthem.
This is the Anthem.
This is the Anthem.

BODIES ARE RECORDED

I do not see a world of the living
Conquests without a king
Sad mouths
Empty their dark buildings
In which the son will derange his father
In which the daughter will derange...

It breaks off there.

Afraigid rig don cath
Kings arise to [meet] the battle
rucatair gruaide
Cheeks are seized
aisnethir rossa
Faces [honours] are declared
ronnatair feola,
Flesh is decimated,
fennátair enech,
Faces are flayed
ethátair catha -rruba
[incomplete word] ?? of battle are seized
segatar ratha
Ramparts are sought
radatar fleda Feasts are given
fechatar catha,
Battles are observed
canátair natha,
Poems are recited
noatair druith
Druids are celebrated
dénaitir cuaird
Circuits are made
cuimnitir arca
Bodies are recorded
alat(-) ide
Metals cut
sennat(-) deda
Teeth mark
tennat(-) braigit
Necks break
blathnuigh[i]t(-) [cét] tufer
[A hundred] cuts blossom
cluinethar eghme
Screams are heard
ailitir cuaird
Battallions are broken
cathitir lochtai
Hosts give battle
lúet(-)ethair
Ships are steered
snaat(-) arma
Weapons protect
scothaitir sronai.
Noses are severed
At_ci[ú] cach ro_genair
I see all who are born
ruad_cath derg_bandach
[in the] blood-zealous vigorous battle,
dremnad fiach_lergai fo_eburlai.
raging [on the] raven-battlefield [with] blade-scabbards.
Fri uabar rusmebat
They attempt our defeat
re_nar_már_srotaib sinne
over our own great torrents
fri fur fo_abad líni Fomoire
Against your attack on the full [compliment] of Fomoire
i margnaich incanaigh
In the mossy margins;
copraich aigid fiach
the helpful raven drives
dorar fri_ar_solga garuh
strife to our hardy hosts
dálaig for_m_desigter rodbadh
mustered, we prepare ourselves to destroy
samlaidh derg_bandaib dam
To me, the full-blooded exploits are like
aim_critaighid conn_aechta
shaking to-and-fro of hound-kills
sameth donn_curidh dibur fercurib fristongarar.
goodly decay of muddy war-bands, your violations are renounced.

VIOLENCE
I spoke to Kostek Szydlowski today. It was a good exchange. He said, "you are one of the few people who understand...violence." He meant in my work. We concurred that violence is a part of life - and that somehow this does come through. I joked about how it has happened more than once that someone has met me, and said, "wow you're such a nice person!" as if I should be some scary slobbering ghoul with missing teeth and a scythe, based on my work. I have contemplated and thought about violence very much, my entire life. And this, this is even separate to whatever is happening in the work - whatever transpires - freely - there is something real in it. It is not illustration.
I think, this is rare. I think it is hard to do. And I'm not trying to do anything. Which also, is why I have a respect and a connect to Erna Rosenstein. At least as I see it. It was that story, that terrible story, that is not a story, trying to understand, the incident, as much as I could where she was nearly murdered alongside her beheaded parents. And beheading. This is really violent. This takes a willing kind of desire, to watch and see the power one has not just to kill and rob, but to watch in real time, however slow or fast, to make someone suffer. It is sadism. And you wonder if her parents and this female companion and she - if the goal was just robbery - or - murder. Overkill. This is murder. And all these things we can only guess.
I have always wondered at the inability for humans to convey violence other than in the experience itself - and then - it's is known - by the receiver - but still - it cannot be translated. It is - untranslatable. And this makes it terrible and peculiar and still - a part of life. I remember a playground conversation with a woman in Berlin who was about to have her third - she said "birth is always terrifying, you have to stare death in the face." And I understood what she meant. It is scary - to be at the threshold - your whole body convulsing, a bloody door - for another one. This thing I said in the one song I ever composed - "see how the outer sun: hungers for the inner one." One can't get inside the other, it just, contemplates, or envies, or muses about...that other side. And the war that goes on, the violence. It's not about it being accidental, it's about someone wanting to kill you. A tree falling randomly on your head. The tree didn't want to kill you. And there is a difference. Or is there. Mother nature...is the violence of trees, in storms, the same as the violence of a killer? I did ask that haunting question which I now see answered in many internet memes as - "she chose the bear" when I first knew Matthew (Barney) and I was working for him. I asked what is more terrifying: to by attacked by a wild animal or a psychopath. MB: Wild animal. CP: Psychopath. I tried to explain, or argue, thats a psychopath is entirely unpredictable, and focused on killing, whereas an animal is following it's instincts - for survival. I understand now, that my opinion has not at all changed - but that the key difference is that the animal is simply not: malignant. The psychopath is. The psychopath will not be satisified until you are killed in some awful, willful way. Whereas the animal - could get scared or distracted or interrupted - and therefore run off. I hear if you get attacked by a shark you should punch it in the nose. Thar key element: willful, is what would make you fight for your life. Because the desire is to kill you. And you cannot undo desire.

wanting to disappear. standing tall without support. breathing easy in the company of giants. Perpetual snow. Wanting to stay forever in this space, that unfolds eternally, in mystery. Like me. Why do I want to deal with NYC corruption and building codes for a massive portion of my life when I could live as a hermit in peace. And my child, so harmed. Without love, concern and support from those closest to her, this real betrayal. With real consequences. No wonder I want to run, like a deer. From fat, obscene hunters, who throw their beer cans in the mountain stream. I know need my people. I know I need my tribe. But I have trouble with men. I dont trust them. Just as, I dont trust the hunter. I have to get past this. My daughter asks for my friends. She begins to remember, what was wholesome, what was native, what was real.

Uncle Vilnus, 1928

Fell out with my long time life long friend father figure to my daughter over art world BS taken as if it were truth

I was so hurt I do not know if I could look him in the face again. Since it seems my worth is a matter of lifestyle and money and I'm not a nepobaby (the most painful truth, having been disowned, cut off and cast aside like trash,) - standing next to him is a waste of his golden time. You can understand how walking around as a disowned and rejected daughter cuts deep for a lifetime. You really just want your dad, but the psychotic jealousy of both your mother your step mother and his own psychosis stnds in the way. You (firmer) French dealer laughs at you a tosses you out of her stable - she only bets on the Nepos. I did not realize that until the end. It's all a woman is worth. It would make any one suicidal, because I am worth so much more. It has never been easy - to walk branded like a medieval thief - from the moment I was born - only because of my shine - not because of anything bad. And that is why such things feels so wrong - because they are.

I am in Sopot. I was with people. I spent the last night alone and determined the whole time not to look at a screen. What a break for me. I am constantly paying bills, paying, paying, chasing after orders, scrolling texts, using apps to arranging above shit etc. etc. There is no peace.
OK.
This aside.
I woke of from a great sleep. I had: a great, or terrible dream.
Matthew picked me up in his white truck.
I was surrounded by wax casts of so many kinds of shrubs and greenery - all candles in little pots - very beautiful - and his dog Clover ran from the car. She was shy at first. I got down on the ground - at her level - I thought - and called her name. She ran to me - ran into my arms. Like a baby. There stoof Matt - smiling - and I held clover.
I woke up with such a feeling. Of joy, and happiness and comfort. I am so far from home. I thought about it. How...he is braided into my studio - he is part of the walls and the floor - a human - compass - of sorts - that extends to me. He did something in the dream that was very simple and never quite happened - and yet - the feeling was true - I can't think of all the combinations of Clover and his White Truck I've dealt with. Not all of them good, or fair, or kind. But I've driven that thing and been driven in it enough times.
No matter. The feeling was so precious when I woke. And yesterday at the oceans edge I thought: there is Scandanavia. As if these feelings I connect to - in places - like Poland - the northern, cool light and dark nights of Gdansk, Wawa- were also a person of whom I dreamed often, a premonition before i saw him, sometimes in the most accidental and stupidest ways. No accident like this will happen here.
Why does the mind play tricks like this? I must reunite with my heart, with my being and my soul. I cut myslef off from it in the most vicious and inane way - following - not leading - following - the fear of those who had a grip on me - in their hatred. Their hatred from day 1. This is a lot to contend with - for a lifetime.I deserve my friendships, I deserve not to be separated from those I love and to loe those I do. What is there for me in Europe but really great professional dialogue - no one understands that I am only braided of this placein my soul - without any material aspect or underpinnings to support me - and it has been confusing to be surrounded by people who assume, they assume, I do, when Im entirely on my own, and always have been, most of all without my tribe. What havoc parents and ticks and wreak on a life! A life without love without concern you will not find it in yourself - your being breeds on contempt from the psychopaths that surround you...so isolation is your respite - but it is also a prison, and a painful one. A reminder that what is rightfully yours, your birthright, your talent, you dont deserve. SOme idiot concerned with tv shows and gossip should override your great light. No. That is no longer going to happen.

LITVAK

LITWAK

And this is a lot to deal with. It's like - all along you were a leper. And you feel so exposed - or mistaken - for someone without sores.

I read this article that some would find extremely depressing and maybe it is. Or maybe it isn't. It's a commonality I think and this is the denominator of being a person - and let's not way woman - who has never experienced love or care. I have experienced white male entitlement - in such a way - that I was part of that dynamic - but I didn't understand it. It's gross, manipulative, self effacing, and wrong. I mean, it robs a person of their life energy and for what reason. To the advantage of another. There is no dialogue, no respect, no concern. I really have wished my whole life for - concern. Like, for someone to - make me a cup of coffee - or a tea - when I'm sick for example, or ask me how I am. I grew up in circumstances where no one ever asked me how I was doing - most of all - if I was OK - and I faced the most obscene violence in my own home - I won'y say "my own" because it was not a space for a child - and I never was given a key to. I was treated like a guest - an unwanted animal - a strange inconvenience - my whole life. As if the air I breathed was too expensive - I was an expense - that was annoying and also - a flashpoint for any form of rage or projection that blew up - randomly - out of someone else's neurosis, world view, convenience.

How is anyone meant to survive that. Where violenceis so normalized, you are supposed to find love - get married? Marriage is a matter of terror for me - always has been. Parntership - a danger. A front - for a violent space - development, enablement, no child is safe there. What horror, that someone is meant to grow through this only to be thrown out into the world - and place nice.

I'm surrounded by paper dolls.
But gain sustenance, only, from the salt of the earth.
Ireland you live and breathe through me - with graves to the sky.
I lost my virginity in the shadow of Ben Bulben (true)
I returned, again and again, like the woman in the stone house that Becket describes - only to climb the stones - and gae at the sea. Again and again. Again and again.

Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.
In places of the earth: I am unchained. Blood flows there. Not as a spectre, apparition, desperate shade, but as a rooted cord - that I cannot deny. I did not run from myself - but rather - the spectre of those who sought to rob my soul. Oh what evil people can do! What evil people can do - to make a deer bolt and break its legs.

What is like to live a whole life never feeling safe. So many decisions - in the quest - for safety. So many awful, horrible decisions. Just to feel safe - not knowing - what the fuck that feels like. It's a dark forest out there - and all around. What's outside - becomes your insides. The threat - of the threat - lives in you - and controls you - has love ever been more powerful than fear?

What would Pete Steele say.
He's in that line with Duerer and HBG.
I looked him up and realized I saw one of his last concerts: I was pregnant. He was so fucked up. So drunk he couldnt find the mic. I just saw a clip of him where he talks about music being his job - and how much he respects the working class, how they get up in the morning and take pride in their work.
This is all I ever cared about - or at least - related to - as much as I could see my own version of life, I could see - into life - in my own way - with a strength I never doubted was my own - like a sword - you weild - that is part of you - you will be buried with it. So when working class people with no background in art, with no education, with no primer, or push or whisper - about whatever the fuck they should look at - what they should like - stood - and stared - and stopped - and gasped - and proclaimed with joy - WOW - at what they saw - there was no analysis - no - always a gut reaction. Without a gut reaction any anaylsis will not be good and a gut reaction - its a connection - not a disconnection. They did this - the postman - and my grandpa - who became a greeting card salesman after being an egg salesman and a camera sales - supporting a family of 6 at age 12 when his father died - he dropped out of 8th grade and had to start somewhere - all this out of their normal routine - regular life - only then had I felt that I had done it - I achieved - what `I was meant to achieve - which is to connect two powerful things, what lies - under the surface - unseen - unwritten - the invisible - under the earth, behind the skin, behind, what's behind, me...always in an intuitive with my hand - the hand I was born with.
The language is intuitive
Even architects, to make anything must first draw, without thinking, even if it's the largest comission on earth.
So the postman gets it - where a super collector might just - get nervous.They can become conflicted sometimes. They see great work, but are ego driven and are obssessed with status and rumor - and do you really want those people at your table? Some artists do. Like Geroge Condo - he just goes to parties, celebrity parties, then acts naive, and says he had never heard of Kanye West. Also Matthew Barnet, former fashion model. That will do it. That's really what he and Bjork had in common. We always had this sort of spar - over projects - he wanted to get certain high profile models involved, or celebrities, in his pieces - and I would say: why. How do you know they will fit the role. He just wanted the visiblity they brought, and I rejected that. But that is in some ways, with some, not all, all they brought. Because models, and model types, are projection screens, they are in fact, empty on the inside, that's their job. To be so neutral and passive, so as to form and conform to the shape desired - they are only there as hat stands, however the designer has cleaved their vision to hang fancy hats.
My friend Paul saw a work I SAVED from Sotheby's (post mortem great collector - slash and burn) from my first ever solo with Marianne Boesky - let that be known since Sotheby's called around 7 times questioning that fact - it was idiotic - severely - please fire all of them because they re-write facts with glib PR material pulled out of their stressed over educated clueless assess - I had to deal with Gabe Catone - the art advisor - telling me in confidence that "Marianne only dropped you from her gallery because Rachel Feinstein said she refused to show there if you were there" Rachel - the great Copycat - talentless model wife of a famous blah blah painter (sorry John you are a good painter but you absolutely cannot draw - it is not your passion) - no offense to John or Gagosian - I call this out because none of these people can take it all for free simply out of jealousy - but that was the driving currency in their little hearts...You can see how stupid it is at the start - and why - intuition is the real substance that binds truth together - into a force that sits there beofore on a wall, in a space, like a great peak. Paul Brainard, he saw that drawing - and he knows my career - and he said - wow - Jeanne (Greenbeg) bought from that show? I'm suprised it wasnt too - you know - edgy for her. Jeanne is smart, and has impeccable taste. Sometimes, taste, for the postman and the not good but great collector - is absolutely one and the same - becaise in real art - so it is good art - appreciating it is a very simply the recognition of truth. It gives back to the viewer, click - the viewer sees it - in it - and in a moment can see it in no other way. And that's it. THAT'S ALL. So is art then, just the stripping away of all the babble to get to the unadulterated light? Oh it's hard to be here and listen to Pete Steele rising back up out of my being ---- I forgot - it's such a strange feeling to forget a core part of your own self as if he were a friend, like...Duerer. Montaigne. Rabelais. But they did not sing in my time like Pete did. And suddenly I feel:

NOSTALGIC
A concept I always hated. Like hippies. Will always. And the modern new age Bouge "Boho" Yoga version is horrid.
There a lot of them these days. Crossed with corporate interest. What am I doing here. Wow did my parents not give a flying fuck about any part of my life. I was right when I was 15. And I tried to make that fact wrong for the rest of my adult life...until now - when I see it all clearly again. As if I am 15. Hello 15.Youa re with me forever.

Wake up
It's Christmas morn
Those loved. Have long since gone
Six feet
Beneath me sleep
Black lights
Hang from the tree
Accents
Of dead holly
Red water
Red water
Red water chase them away

I cant
lose
you

Saw a clip of PS talking about how he better look good on stage - in shape - not fat and flabby with "tits hanging out" but he could hardly perform - and the band carried on like absolutely nothing was wrong, nothing happening. He died not soon after of sepsis. No idea how. He was 49. And he drifted away - into nothing....but had been so important to my studio and was from Brooklyn. Had been a trash guy. Became a rock star. Was so fucking talented. And people come to my studio...and want early works. I made it that far? Where I could die of sepsis - or am I dead already of sepsis - the infiltration of a dowbward arc - superimposed and perceived - like a net to catch me - stop me - arrest me - burn me - pre-maturely. Confidence is key. I had no idea Type O Negative was so close in friendship to Pantera and Phil, died before Pete Steele, also pre-mature. He became fat and fucked up from drugs. I loved Pantera.
I always joked to my friends (Matt Barney, Ryle, their whole crew, Vinny Castiglia, what other sundry metalheads) that we'd end up in an old folks home - listening to Pantera - so - are we there already? When I saw Matt in Vienna - the ONE fucking time he extended himself publicly in my direction - having taken so much - or maybe - that's someone's self centred concept of "exchange" - lopsided - he spoke in detail about the Beyler foundation - how all his works will be left there and custoded - that uber powerful collector and he having arranged this - some years ago - high maintenance indeed - and I'm sitting in this thermal bath - Oberlaa - thinking only of the water and me, my body, the piece I will do - what I cannot plan, cannot expect and I'm awed at the level of support he has...what it takes to keep alive - Total Excellence - something I have - but I'm a shadow in the room - cutting corners - confused as to what support really means, never having really had it - hardly with any sort of lense that could recognize it - it seemed - the only alternative was to be a viscious self interested creature with no talent at all....
But this is what I wanted to say

Hey Bacchus
She hates me
Hey Bacchus.....
She hates me
She said
Well burn
Forever
Well burn
Together

I listen to this, and feel he is so alive. It sucks. I'm struggling with bizarre weight gain, lack of motivtion and a split soul. So much cruelty to contend with in truth and clarity at a later age...If you die young, you never have to face these things, you are just terrified - and man up - then die - never knowing?

The horror: of insecurity - and wisdom. These two things put together create some greek condition not but not yet described by the ancients - homer, socrates, euripides, aristotle, thyuddices, didordorus scisculus, and plato - Sothebys rhymes with some of these, and this is the horror I face - at the cruel hands of petty, mean jealous, hysterical and mistaken - me - for a bourgeois object of inheritance - I cannot express how cruel it is to warp my identity based on the most brute and shallow prejudices- me for being female - me - for being beautiful - me for being the spawn of an assumption that in truth was a monster - this turns all these presumptions - the monied assumptions - into horrific stabbing and mutilating swords...trashing my identity - devaluing my work - my life-energy - i am dissolved in a cloak of self doubt and despair - that my being has been broken by more and more hands who never cared - but who pretended - and who assumed - i would be the objecto of a legacy - and lineage - one that in truth never existed and was only ever abusve. This is heart breaking at a soul level - I look and my work and it seems almost foreign to me - as if i - my exisstence had no import - no worth- not even substance - not even - the beauty of something ephermeral - it makes me feel like a lie - when I knowI am in fact - the strongest of truths.

and here in this place where i faced death - a kind of elysium - also fleeting - of a different life - once where i gaze form the outside - my identity shattered - no one to hold and to love me to prop me up for what i really am - waht i carry wherever i go - i cannot climb that ladder - that power - i cannot bind to the big money in any way that i understand - as iwas so exploited and abused by all those around me - those who pretended - in spurts to be the ones who cared. My heart broken, cannot create - the beauty that I am. I feel consumed by the gaping jaws of misogyny - it was all posturing - all fake - that someone would fixate on destroying me, again and again and again, at a certain point - a person must lose their will to live, and they become like an empty box, silent, their voice - lost - out of any dilogue - in desperate need of exchange - with the truths that sustained them. Voices lost - scattered, shattered - and my own, i cannot find my bearings, my coordinates, a ship in the fog - where when you call out - you hear nothing - the fog has no dimension and consumes you like a sponge. Isolation. It's a killer. A place where you cannot thrive, or create. Impossible space. I think I am describing a landscape from a Beksinski, or Soutine, they are similar, but I am in it. Lost.

The horror of Hamas. Day one, I cannot express in words - my understanding.
For the record- my former French dealer unleashed her deepest rage - on me - for calling her - justifiably - an anti-semite. I have zero tolerance for self hating Jews. Who betray their own - and me - for not conforming to whatever bizarre image she had built - based - on my looks? And non Jewish parentage (father's side.) Zero, zero tolerance. "I could never take you to Dubai." That rang continuously in my head. That this difficult person, always cutting a little extra off, here and there, whining about - fair and complex production costs - but over paying on everything unnecessary (stupidity) - screeching - etc. psycho gallerist behavior - basic - was called out for exactly what she is.
I have zero regrets. It is just interesting to see - how blindly others follow - and the Jewishness of my work - ignored - never spoken of - for - fear - of reprisal - no seat at the table for a Jew, eh?
Happy Pesach to all. My daughter is a teenager. I think of the hostages. I know what psychotic people are like. I know what Hitler is like. I grew up with it, was raised by it, and was hated for who I am.
Never mess with me on this point. Look at what happens now, thanks to all those self-hating Jews trying to ingratiate themselves into what they perceive to be a "more desirable" non Jewish world. Go eat with the scum of Russia, and the funders of Hamas and Hezbollah. None of them have any respect for you. What you sell is a parking spot for their money. Might as well be watches. So you waste your breath denying your birth for a momentary glance, while their real energy is put into huge, nefarious projections, aims and goals, that would anyways destroy you.

It's not a good investment.

I just returned from the most fucked up surprise.
Baba Jaga.
My Dinner with Andre. Her name is Dorota. My name is Chloe. My Dinner with Dorota.
Poland is – deep - never shy. Never superficial. If anything - afraid of saying the wrong thing - lest it be superficial. It can be jealous, petty. But never superficial. It wants to win. Really win. No matter how much it has lost. No matter what has been said - if ill seen, ill said, there may be anger, a bit supressed. Some jealousy then. OK. Jealousy that has deepr machinations.
The blood in the ground - boils back up. In rage - in eyes. Questioning, always asking, eyes that ask. Besseching eyes - rather - not - rather penetrating and wanting to know.
I'm about to digress: forgive me. Forgive me. I did not know how hurt. How trapped. How scared. What courage it took for you to step through my door. My idiot of a former assistant had absolutely no right to be there in our presence. None, none, whatsoever. So I swear - I swear onthe blood in my veins - that something so sacred to me - will never be shown, revealed, said, in the presence of someone so unfuckingworthy.
How carefully you prepared.
You had to get stoned.
How you wanted me.
This thing i saw - suddenly - you saw me as such a prize - so special - so outside - your every dream...
when all the while - I saw - in the extreme - as something.....I recognized - while you - were in awe. This is the terrible mistake. The terrible gap. The terrible leap you had to take, to cross the threshhold. How you prepared. And I did not honor: this fragility. Because I didnt see it. Because there is so much of it in myself. And so it is true - that I saw you in me - that we are the same - but not for you. FOr you I was a prize. And you sandwiched it all in the AM as if this was all the space and time you had to hold your breath to be in that magic space - of mermaids and fishes.
If only I was the dumb manipulative kind. A real gold digger. Aren't we both lambs, in our terrible shyness. Only that raw desire cut through - it shot through me like fire - your gaze suddenly changed - right into me - from one thing - to the other - and I ran. I ran like you, like a baby lamb. So that's all we were doing all that time, trading off - being each other. You, a scoundrel, me, The Other. The Sea Creature, The Alien. Are you really fit for a golem? No, it's something effervescent, and then hot. A state change - so fast - once you were in a door opened and I did not expect it - my walls so thick and guarded - all steel and iron - what welding torth does it take to cut through the doors and to my heart - you had it - and I ran.
Poland. Nothing is taken for granted. Not money, not stories. Not food. Go further east and you will not waste the flesh - of that apple. Everything is eaten. Every last bit on that core.
Baba Jaga aka Dorota. She said: someone's female line is cursed. This pronouncement of a curse. Who? What? Why? Where did it come from?
My line of "strong women" are in fact a bunch of paraplegics wrecked by men. Or themselves. Broken and stupid, like cogs in some dumb machine. Fueled by self hatred - from what. Blockades to good fortune, connection: real relationships. The glue that creates strong bonds - that builds forward - that is fruitful - that creates. They are dark empty houses - howling wind tunnels - they have woken up everyday to their Misery as their bed companion and shrieking lonliness as childish tantrums and bane. What role models. Role-models. The mannequins that surround me. The crowd of ghosts in the closet. Prohibiting joy - at every level - no strong hands - nothing to lift me - see me - laugh with me - no strenth. Just - a cracked, fanged, drain, to suck the life blood from my very heart.
And then me. All of a sudden - the focus turmed totally to: me. What...?I was confronted by my good husband. The husband I am worthy of. She said "this is possible for you now". Having spent a lifetime avoiding weddings, crying, feeling so existentially lost and uncomfortable at the prospect of such a thing. And I walked into this room a stranger! I was late! I came in silently! Muttered a polite:Dzien dobry. How could she touch this nerve? This horrific undeserving. This seismic, gaping hole that makes everything on the surface - fragile.
I faced him. A woman played him. Unbelievable - to feel and see this - in front of me. Some feeling I have never felt before. Can I stay there lingering in that space - forever? I woke up sweating last night - back to my usual tryst - with anxiety - soaking wet. I took all my clothes off. Worried, worried, worried, about things some people never fucking think about. Ever.
This ended the 7 hour session of all of it - I - a stranger. But, I also had to hold hands with an actual dude who she said raped my mother. This was strange. As a young child - not knowing what rape was - but I suppose - I must have - this moment concerns me to this day - I asked my mother how it was possible that she could grow up and not be raped. Jesus any sane mother would have hit the roof at this question. She acted like I was asking about the weather.
So, to this dude, who in this situation - and say - thank you for creating me - even in violence. Even in war. I had trouble doing this. I held his hands so tight like maybe he would hold me up, I was terrified, just, unable to bear his stare and allow anything to transmit - because I could not actually forgive that. Uneasy is not the word. Terror - yes - terror. How do you thank someone for creating you in violence. I suppose I must not feel defined by that violence. But I do...My eyes wandered around the funny room with the crack in the paint - one crack. I imagined blood seeping out, a wound in the wall. With this group circling around - orbiting - like the drunks in that constellation by Bela Tar - all one organism - of Time -a time creature - shaped a flattened and curved by violence. One terrible proclamation was made, it rang so unbelievably true: "success is a product of shame." My worst suspicion was actually bleated out in a clear sentence - by this stranger I call Baba Jaga but her name is Dorota - how witchy and powerful she was. And my "mother" just couldn’t and wouldn’t get over the rape - I stood by her - she clung to me - clung - to my haunches - hanging on me - and I supported her… I support you. I support YOU. Creepy. How could I want to spend time with my biological father - who was a rapist - I thought only of how unsafe this is - the concept here of forgiveness - fundamentally - dangerous - forgive what? it is not a person; it is not a father- it is a force - a creature - a thing - that infects time - time is bent by this thing. I gripped his hands - unconsciously - as if I would fall - so scared - knowing he was only playing a role - but maybe the real him would save me from the role him - because his gaze was hard - it was so hard to look into his eyes. They were like a wall - the wall the role built. If you were to see into each other - you would fall. Oof to hug him, I did, he tried, but I almost choked. It was so hard. To run, to run! I ran, I ran. I run, I run. I run; I am so afraid of what could happen. When do you stop running. For my daughter, she should not run. Oh, but she needs someone there - both the role - and the real one. And this thing I wrote - a dialogue (song) between myself and a courting devil came to me - and does:
"see how the outer sun: hungers for the inner one."
I have much work to do. My terrible suspicion - shame makes success is so true - it's like - a form of flight - to touch the stars - to know they are there for you more than piece of bloody pulp fronting as a guardian on the ground. In the back of my father’s car - trapped - at night - begging some god to save me. Praying to the sky. It's all I could see in the frame of the window a child lying back there, looking up - the black night, and the stars. I begged. I remember, begging in my mind so hard- to make something happen - that would free me.

I look at exhibitions now, and shows in galleries, and most seem terribly weak. Like, decor at some store. A kind if piddling, fading, bloodless group of crumbs. "Will this work?" I cannot tell you how much it hurt me that my own ally and lifelong friend trashed a work at auction - in a rage - against what I don't know - against - a collapsing world - what hung with Beuys, what hung with Cecily Brown and Laura Owens. Oblivious to the importance and the power, now as then. Unaware of what a drawing even means. Scared, just scared - and all of this hysteria started - because I called a dealer - no longer mine - an anti-semite. I confided this fact, and paid for it - in spades. I could have omitted that information. I could have lied. I could have made a bunch of shit up. But then again, the importance of showing in places like the Albertina, the Leopold museum, is unseen. With Sara Lucas, Louside Burgeois my "show buddy" - just a fixation on this dealer. Hysteria. It makes dealers to be like a disease. And really genuinely disgusts me. What in the actua; fuck are you doing for me - as opposed to doing TO me? Indifference, incoherence, lack of communication, lack of effort, lack of understanding. I am sick and tired, of being the punching bag of angry, jealous, mediocre forces who try for a lifetime to be relevant - like an artist. I cannot tolerate jealousy in any form. But there it is - everywhere. "You were born to suffer." Who in the fuck says that to a person, to a child, the one with the bright light, the one with the talent. Not a word of encouragement. And so you grow, and see, more of same, vultures, to pick at you, eat and dine with you, and offer, no words, ever, of encouragement. Your individuality - is secondary - to their fear.

When I was in graduate school I imagined 12 potential husbands. Later I read "Ill Seen Ill Said" by Beckett. I thought it uncanny that the little peeks - sharp and clear - a lace cuff - way to a home made of stone - I realized later - was it a neolithic tomb? They all have a sea view - like hers - on the high rocky mounts - open to the stars, at the atlantic edge - she too had 12 - or 8? Suitors. As many as there are planets - she is the moon. I was thrilled - to understand this. Beckett never says it - describes it. Those tombs - always cast in moonlight. I have a good photo of myself - naked by a fire - the night was full of a gigantic, bloated sphere - unbelievably huge, as it rose - I took off all my clothes - and with to friends - I got photographed by our favorite burial mound - the one we call "The King". The one I always return to. I thought - if Heidegger expanded - there would be a condition of being-with. And if that is true - how would he describe that condition. Being-With. Because, his book is Being * And * Time. Sein UND Zeit. Does he ever really address - the And. The And as a stte of being, and a state of Time. In Beckett - it is All Time. The return - of the king. A perpetual motion, in all 12 of those men - in the distance - they approach - then recede - every night she goes, and sees, and waits, for something that never arrives. Like the ghost-woman in Sinéad's song: for Jackie. So she roams the sand - waiting - for her Jackie O. O, Of Some Father. O, aphostraphe. And when Sinéad died I cried in the shower as I sang the entire length of the Lion and the Cobra blasting it so loud, the entire album inscribed in my heart it gave me so much strength as a lost and lonely teenager, alone. The suitors never step to the shore. They belong the the boundary of the ocean and not the land.

My train to Warsaw was stopped by a suicide, in the pitch black of night. Really dark. I was amazed they announced they had hit a person. A chatty ticket lady gave us cookies, said it had been a woman. It was so strange to be sitting in the thing that had killed her. Technically, we had all killed her, together. There is never a chance, I was told, for a train to stop. And the driver and crew must get out to see what they hit. Confirm, and then bring in the whatever team who must investigate. We had to jump to a train on paralell tracks. So spooky as I'm writing about Szaposzcznikow and Beksinski - just sent this strange photo image Beksinski made of a woman lying on reailroad tracks with her mouth open. And I have this odd book published of drawings made by a railway worker who maintained the tracks near Madanjek. People would jump and one drawing, which stays in my mind, is what of a hand. A severed hand. He drew on scraps of newspaper and anything he could find - to bear witness, to the truth. And somehow they were preserved and published into this obscure thing that I found, and own.

I am struggling now - under pressure - to publish a serious book with zero backers - at the moment - it feels very wrong as so many people are asking for a new damn book. And those who don't understand the profit the energy and the public desire - bury their heads in their myopia. This is not a space for bitching, but that is what is happening today. I won't lie that lack of visibility and jealousy and a difficult life, make their mark on one's confidence - even when you know, that you were bron to create. So, the Golem, is and will always be, a good friend of mine.

I'll tell you what felled me. Not that I did the impossible, not that I became an epidemologist, not that I saved something marked for death with no known means to lure it back - in the middle of growth, and development - when it should be brimming with life and joy - all this aside - I will say - that in these horrible years - which I did not understand - I did not feel anything. It was only in the aftermath. Somehow I was affected - somehow - the impression it made went so deep - that it was the reflection - in this awful mirror - not of me - but of others - that no person ever asked: are you OK. No one. Not a soul. Defintely no family. But the process was ongoing. The recovery - long. Careful. Delicate. Unchartered terrain. Against the warnings and the terror of the words of the best doctors who understood the brain and this thing best - I will never say them. I will never tell them. I will only carry them. Because they still resound in the possibility of the future and no one should ever, ever have to hear such things. Like walking on glass, so carefully, so gingerly. with the shame and fear and the pressure of the expectation to rejoin the living - as if - nothing had ever happened. I wont forget that swim coach who literally threw her into the deep end of a swimming pool because she had heard she had swum in the Netherlands. These were traumatic things. A little girl who had rode alongside trucks to school who now was winded after pedalling for 10 minutes. It. Took. Years. As if I could have written this - in this field in inexplicable terror and indifference. In the words of my exceptionally gifted friend, who has won so many emmy awards; had it been some other mother - she'd be dead. He said that recently. And only recently could I accept - that he was right. I'm not scared of that, I'm not in awe. I'm only in awe - at the indifference and blidness of a world who could not utter these three magic thins: Are. You. Okay. I had to take her to Venice. I had to take her to openings. She was in a state of shock, and recovery - both - as we walked the canals - she walked alone. The thing that Beowulf had the courage to dive into - only she saw - she experienced - Grendel. Only one collector - offered a cup of tea. It was magical and fabulous - and noble in her bearing - always she is this. I only now understand the akwardness of emerging from a black cocoon with wet wings. And it i not my akwardness but the akwardnes of those - who have never faced death. And I would fall, I would stumble, I would break my wings. With things like Instagram and Facebook blaring the details of faux processes, studios and a lot of paint. Drawing is always this timelapse thing of an illustration taking shape. I have yet to see anyone do a real drawing on instagram. My studio being my most private sector, I spoke about other things. Foreign affairs. Stupidity. Life. Not everyone is PT Barnum and those platforms sell the lie - the illusion - that you are there with the artist as they create marvels and wonders. The Man Behind The Curtain. Oz in his laboratory. The Alchemist at Work. I would rather watch a silent movie. The Golem: 1921. I remember some critic named Max who I never really got to know - he came to the studio. I didnt understand why he was there. Did he want a tour? I was in the middle of working. He just stood there. Didnt ask questions. It's like, cut yourself and let me see whats under that skin flap. I can't do that. I won't. I have never been a fashion model who can talk for hours about nothing, and themselves, whatever they have borrowed from others. Heidegger isn't their thing. But their skin has always been - a surface to look at. And they make it so easy. They show, and show and show and show - they show off, because there isn't much there. Pfouf. That Rachel Feinstein and I were best friends all of college, I was laughing when recently Gagosian was blabbering about her Northern Renaissance influences - actually she was modelling with Clique agency and that was my major!I thought: did she take this from some internet press release - of mine? I'm naive. I don't see jalousy when it's standing there green in my face. I suppose - I don'y give AF as I don't see color. But when I do I'm always angry at myself - for not seeing it. Should I? Be more strategic - make paintings of birds. Joke. Nah. I stick with the Chabad - thanks. They are the ones who deserve credit for literally bringing the dead back to life in the most historic of Synagogues - was it by chance or destiny that we were in Lublin? That first meal. In that historic Yeshiva. Completed in 1924 with the photos of the Rabbis of Poland and Ukraine all around. They brought us back into the world of the living. After beating the odds. Lieder des Ghetto von Morris Rosenfeld. Illustrations by EM Lilien - my unsung hero!

We are both orphans. In truth. In that moment - we were not. But I bolted. And so did you.

Celine, Genet, Homer, Nietszche. I saw the grave of Proust at Pierre Lachaise. A memorial for "All The Poles Who Died for France." My friend laguhed. He joked, "Do you think Poland has a memorial for the French who died for Poland?" Of course not. We talked about Petain and the Vichy government. As we walked the streets I said to my daughter, "See all this beauty? Imagine if it was bombed, like Warsaw." Of course, all the finery and food of Paris, Germans can't cook for shit. A crude assessment, but, they would have wantonly wreck Paris - they wanted it as is. And Petain was this little sheep-poodle. Hitler had some kind of fixation on Poland. A place to build camps. A place to extend territory that was already mixed - liek the city of Gdansk - it was ruled under a German Polish cooperation - so it's not like you has German speaking areas in France. There is a strange push back, lined with a bit of terror at the mention of Poland. Some mix of - fear and something else. Are they still afraid of the Russians who seized it - from whom they had to run? I know a handful of Germans who say: "oh yes, my Grandmother/Grandfather was from an area there (now Polish) I shoud visit." But they don't. It's like - this forbidden zone. Well the camps are there. How many Germans are visiting them? None that I know. That would be an intersting mandatory field trip. Survivors sometimes visit camps. They come full circle. But interestingly, I never met a German who willfully has done this, and openly discusses it. It's as if the border contains the pain, and it's Polands issue. Poland does actively work on it. The Jewish comunity is involved with rememberance and digs that continue, where they find mass graves. They have them in Germany too. But they are not digging them up. Intersting how the Russian destruction of that great dam in Ukraine revealed the skeletons of German soldiers, mouths open, they looked so expressive, like they were screaming, with their helmets strapped tight, to their heads.
My friend just described a fun wedding. I go to no weddings. I have a ways to go.