I'm so happy but I don't know how to say it or show it or write it or do anything at all with it other than be it. All the reasons for my happiness are boring. Most of the things I do are boring. That's okay. I'm happy.

I haven't seen a newspaper in weeks or maybe months and I've left my own neighborhood all of two or three times since coming back to New York and I've not been checking my email or even my phone and I hear there are protests on wall street but what do I know, I've not been there. I feel cramped but I'm afraid to get out because everything everwhere is a shithole and I don't trust anyone. I'm wound up and consumed with, consumed as in eaten by, a job that I don't want but that I need if I plan on doing anything with myself. Here is what I plan: I plan on buying a new guitar and learning to play it so beautifully that people around fall to their knees and cry out. Failing that, I plan on being a marginally successful artist, and failing that, a teacher, and failing that, a corpse.

Tomorrow I'm leaving New York and I'm returning to the desert, but I'm doing so without a home there or any sort of clear plan of what I'm doing and I'm sick and sad and scared and I'm scrambling to get my affairs in order here and it's all so frustrating and terrifying that I feel as though I'm sleepwalking, because surely things haven't really become this way- how could they have- this is never where I pictured myself and this is never who I pictured myself to be and what am I doing oh what what what. As my grandpa says, though, when you're young you can somehow do whatever you want and money will never quite run out and you'll never quite lose hope and there will always be a lifeline, a new plan, a new place to go. I hope so much he's right because at present I have only 40$ to my name and a plane ticket to Phoenix.

It's been nearly a year. New York has been terrible and beautiful and transformative. I can't even tell you, I don't know how to put the words into sentences that make any sort of sense at all, I just feel like a hurricane has come through and hammered all of my ideas and emotions with five sorts of rains and winds, maybe more than five. Maybe ten or twenty. Maybe everything. It's finally over. Today I woke up with nothing at all to do and couldn't believe how sad I was about it.

Here's a story that I'd like to share: I fell madly in love with a boy, a nineteen-year-old musician, who lived next door to the man with whom I was supposed to be in love, and had a tempestuous three-week romance with him that brought all of my senses back to life after a year of having drowned them in zoloft. I saw my first firefly ever while sitting with this boy in a cafe and was so happy that I nearly cried.

He's gone now. He left yesterday. He decided to go to Iowa because there's harvesting work to be done there. He left his guitar with me. I am going to paint him a picture of fireflies and send it to him as soon as he finds himself a permanent address. I don't expect that to be soon.

I made it to New York! I've wanted to be here for so long and it is amazing, but I miss miss miss my best friend who left me this morning and is now on a plane back to Tucson. I love him. I miss him. I am not alone, though. My second-best friend- my little tabby cat- is stretched across my lap and yawning. She has come so far! She was born feral beneath creosote in arizona but now she is an apartment-dwelling new yorker with a pink bow on her collar.

I'm in Tucson again but in a week I'll be gone for good, I'll be out of this town, this surreal place that smells so strongly of creosote tonight as wind and rain rack the fences and lightning and lightning and lightning flashes all over the black and blue and rose sky. I'm in love with the Sonoran desert and its dusty-sweet scent and its atomic sunsets. I'm in love with my flock of doves and thrashers and cactus wrens. I'm in love. I'm heartbroken. In a week I'll be in New York while the only friends I've ever loved enough to die with or die for are half a world away.

Two nights ago, on an Oregon beach, a friend of mine collapsed into the sand with pale face and unsteady pulse. I stood on the road to wait for an ambulance and cried and imagined the waves rushing up to catch all of us and drown us and break us into little dull bits of bone.
Another time, only a few weeks earlier, I was in a completely different place with different people and as we drove along a twisting, treacherous ledge, I thought to myself, if we drive off the ledge and all die here, I'll still be happy. I'll be happy as we go down. I'll be happy that I'm with these people and that I won't have to die alone.

I want the everything of everything to fall in on itself in a big blue blurry

I've been up all nights. I've been painting and dancing and chain smoking and watching early-morning birds skitter-flitter through trees.

I found a dead puppy in the woods. It was lying on a plastic bag and just its head was buried in the ground. I was high at the time, which I think made the discovery more horrifying than it normally would have been. The creepiness of finding a dead puppy was compounded by the grossness of nearby used condoms and clothing. The moral of this story is: um, I guess there is no moral. Now excuse me while I go throw up.

So just as things are beginning to work out, I'm leaving. I've lived in this city for most of three years and for most of those most of three years things were really horrid. Everyone dying or going insane, drugs drugs and more drugs, attempted murders and actual murders and rape and robberies and abuse and skeezy motherfuckers everywhere. I made the worst decisions and the worst friends. I did everything wrong in every way. I'm scarred now, angry now, afraid now, tougher now, prettier now, ... what was I saying?

Everyone has to grow into themselves and their lives. My old friends have all become so beautiful and I'm proud of them. The three years we've all been away from our hometown have made us into new people and I'm new too but I wish so much that the growing up process wouldn't have been so turbulent. All that's happened will never leave me. I wish it would leave me. I wish I could start over. I will start over. When I'm gone from here I will be newer than ever and I will do everything the way I should've done it from the start.

I solemnly swear:

To never own a car
To never live in the suburbs
To never purposefully hurt an animal
To never give up on everything

oh difficult difficult everything

There are so many things, art-wise, that I am having trouble learning myself. Drawing perspective correctly, for instance, baffles me. I am wonderful at copying details of a single item or two, but the mathematical spacial whatfuckingever components of placing several items in perspective in a room have got my mind going in circles. This has got to change! What will I do with myself? Explode, probably.

For the first time in months, I feel good. I feel great. I'm painting again. I'm writing poems and I'm singing and I'm playing my guitar and I'm going jogging every morning at 6 am. I haven't showered in days and it's awesome; I love being disgusting and covered in paint because strange men don't pester me when I walk around outside wearing only a bikini top and running shorts.

This morning, a young homeless guy asked me if I'd like to buy a poem for 50 cents. I told him I had no money on me (the truth). He gave me a poem anyway. It was a decent poem, short, written on a bit of scrap paper. I like that. I like him. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find him again and if I do I'll give him a whole jar of change.

I did it. I walked out on my job. I had to. Irresponsible? Maybe. Ethical? I think so. Why? Because I was becoming a terrible person. I had only worked at that club for two months and it was turning me into a manipulative, lying bitch. I was learning how to sell myself just as much as I was learning how to sell drinks and as it turns out I am a hot product. The problem is that I do not want to be a product and I especially do not want my ass to be a product. I am not kidding; men would drop money on the floor so that I they could see up my skirt while I bent over to pick it up. I took their ass-cash willingly because I kind of like money. I'm really not ok with that and I had nearly fooled myself into believing that I WAS ok with that but in a moment of clarity (or panic) I said to myself "I have to get out of here" and so I did, mid-shift, and never came back.

I celebrated by having a shitshow giganto at my house. It was such a good party. The best party. I defiantly wore a frilly old dress (inherited from my grandma) because I've had it with miniskirts and bustiers. I still had boys clinging to me like flies but at least they were not clinging to my ass because frilly old dresses don't allow asses to make appearances (and I'm quite ok with that.)

I am a doll. I am painted and poised and pointed and posed and posied and praised. My manager has a crush on me. My customers stare at me and smile at me and wink at me and give me too much money for nothing more than being beautiful. The other girls know it too. Dancer Joelle says "you look prettier every day I see you." I love it and I hate it all at once.

Shit's getting me down.

I'm cold turkeying cigarettes, caffeine, and booze and replacing them all with zoloft. So far I feel dizzy

I finally have a day off from work and although I ought to be off painting a mural (it is a mural that will likely never get finished), I am at home. I collected orange blossoms from a nearby grove and am pulling off all the petals, rinsing them, and pulverizing them to make orange water with. I'm also watching house finches swooping around my birdfeeder.

I have a piece of metal in my face. It's a flat, small, holey thing. My skin will end up growing through the holes, making it a permanent fixture. I can see its faint silhouette beneath my skin but I can't feel it when I press my fingers to my cheekbone. It's strange to think about it being there. Sub-dermal jewelry. Weird.