Connie asked me if I could sit for

Her son Nicholas

He was 8

::

I knew about his Dad

I listened to Nicholas tell stories about his Dad

He said his Dad's favorite chair

Was the chair that I was sitting in

A white chair

Nicholas said his Dad was cleaning his gun

In the garage

The whole neighborhood knew

::

Connie went on a date

She had birth control in the kitchen cabinet

::

I watched SNL

The Sugarcubes Birthday was on

I liked Bjork’s hair

Alot

::

There was a sound coming from the garage

There was a sound coming from the garage

I stopped breathing

I stopped breathing

I went to look

I saw a cat

There was a cat door

On the door going into the garage

::

Connie came home

She asked me if I wanted her eye shadow

It was purple and turquoise

It was Chanel

I had it for years

::

When I went to the mall

A girl followed me and said

Under the Big Ben

She said I reminded her of Bjork

::

Nicholas

Connie walked me home

Up the street

Dolls taught me how to play.

By their listening, kindness and collaboration.

I felt very lucky.

In that sense.

To grow up with dolls.

It was important to my mom for me to grow up surrounded by dolls.

Now that I think back…

They were like protectors

To stand by me

When she did not know how…

I don't have to explain.

How cotton, wool, silk, glass eyes, rooted hair, stitches and stuffed limbs put together fashionably

Still brings me

This unspoken ease.

A couple years after Mervyn's opened a store

In Carrollton, Texas

My mom said she wanted to work there

My dad didn't want her to

He already had a 2nd job working in the evenings

Me and my older sister were already working after school

My dad said someone would have to be around at night

I said I would sit for my younger siblings

So mom could work

::

Which meant that I would

Leave my part-time job

At Burger King

Which was not a difficult decision

::

She went to the store

Filled out an application, interviewed

And got the job

She was hired to work in the children's department

::

For the last 35+ years now

My mom has worked retail

She worked at Mervyn's til the store shut down

For many years, she had a second job at Kohl's

And for the last many years, she has worked full-time at Bed Bath and Beyond

She is known to customers

She loves the schedule, people, and procedures

She talks about this

::

I have come to understand

My mom has a retail calling

Retail jobs often serve as an entrance into the job market, or as an interim job

For some, like my mom, it is a career

That took me time to understand

::

On a recent phone conversation

She shared her plan to retire

And immediately, without a pause, said

She would still work some hours

If they needed someone to fill in..

She waited for my approval

I said

I support your decision

This is a personal decision

Retirement should look how you want

She said

I just love my job

I said

I know

Saturday night Orinda.

White van.

Valet keys.

Fire under moose.

Hair like wind.

Dog on lamp.

Hostess moves slow.

Honey covered biscuit.

His name was Shane.

Crispy fried chicken.

21 milar.

Atchley date night.

Peppermill sound.

Pixies run Peet's.

Car wash. Ice cream and candy. Casa. Movie theater. Burger Garden. Sweet Dreams. 5pm.

We're going back to Orinda.

For Sunday creature.

what if you stayed in that Texas town.

where 7-eleven didn't always have coke slurpee.

where the best cigarettes were capri.

where you threw toilet paper soaked in water on the ceiling.

where bands came through ONCE.

where you played johnny mathis LOUD.

in the car...

A FOREVER

DRIVING

PIANO BAR

ON WHEELS

I began making dolls shortly after designing  a couple of lanterns. For one lantern, I created a shade from mulberry paper. I then tied knots in 5 to 8 strands of thick cotton cord and spun string around the knots. I hung the knotted and wrapped strands over the shade. For another, it already had a paper shade so I hung a single piece of knotted cotton rope and then wrapped string around the knots.

I got the inspiration for the string after untwisting many feet of thinner cotton cord with my fingers. Each time I untwisted the cord, it wanted to twist back up, so I kept untwisting it until it stopped twisting back. I pulled the cord apart to separate the strands into individual strings. Then I held the strings together and brushed them with a hairbrush and a metal comb. Doing this made them fluffy. By that point, I had a large stock of string and started wondering how the knotted cotton cord would look if I spun them with string.

That’s when I started remembering "silkworm season" which for a couple of years, while I was growing up, was an annual event for my family. The ”mulberry” paper may have been what originally sparked it though the memories started really coming after I began spinning the string around the knots, and it felt like something was pulsing from inside.

When growing up my younger sisters, Barbara and Marie, stored a small plastic vial filled with silkworm eggs in the refrigerator. My mom’s friend, Nina, instigated this “You know silkworms love mulberry leaves. You have a mulberry tree in your backyard. I have some silkworm eggs. All you need to do is store them in your refrigerator til Spring” The seed was planted for my sisters - SILKWORMS! Nina gave them a small plastic vial full of silkworm eggs to place in the refrigerator to store there - which grossed me and my siblings out! Barbara and Marie were now wild with anticipation about what would be their first “silkworm season” and Nina prepared them for just what to do.

Take out the small plastic vial from the refrigerator. Place the silkworm eggs in a shoe box filled with mulberry leaves. Be patient. It will happen.

Some did hatch into silkworms. Usually 3-5. When they hatched, all they did was lie around, eat mulberry leaves and poop. They were albino, looked like spaceship shuttles and I think they were blind. My sisters would go nuts when they’d start spinning up their cocoons to prepare for their transformation. The silkworms all seemed to spin their cocoons at the same time. Then we would all wait patiently and one day it happened. The silkworm, now a moth, rips open the cocoon, with its mouth and wings crawling out of it with one goal: find another silkworm to mate with. We’d hear the fluttering of moth wings when they partnered to mate with another one in the shoebox. The cycle would start up again: eating mulberry leaves and pooping. Except this time they would ooze gooey stuff, lay eggs and die. We waited all year FOR THIS.  Sometimes afterwards my sisters would take one of the cocoons as a keepsake - I think there was one year that I may have kept one too. We would say to each other “you know those cocoons are made from real silk." After it was all over, Barbara and Marie carefully placed the new silkworm eggs inside the small plastic vial that Nina gave them, and off it went back into the refrigerator, much to my disgust, to be stored for another year,  til the next "silkworm season."

Now in my life, when I'm spinning strings around the knots and the memories come back so vividly...I realize just how influential silkworm season really was for me and how it continues to...

Dolls with playing

Matters

The starting point

You're here

There's there

I'm where?

Ka ching a ching

Oui

I have been wanting to write about my childhood for a long time. But there is stuff I don't want to relive or talk about anymore because I’ve just hashed it out too many times. I started writing down visual details of rooms & things that I had not given much thought to at the time. This became a new lens to which to look at things and a different way for me to approach my memories.

What I found was like, with the white rock, I'd remember three things. And then I'd remember another three things. Like, the Nerf grape soda. I remember when my dad brought it home from the grocery store and the bottles fell out of the bag and they broke and the purple fizz was all of a sudden running down, rolling down the driveway. He wasn’t happy about it though I found it to be funny at the time.

I started to remember all of this stuff and started to enjoy getting lost in it. Soon though, I felt like there wasn't a story in it. It felt so different to me. Like, what is this about? Is this just an exercise? Then I started to notice that this was also my story, and this process was a story in itself.

This text was transcribed from an audio recording that I made by playing with the original paragraph, which I wrote to jog my memories (I twisted around phrases like Nerf soda grape, and there are others, to serve as visual markers). I was playing a slow-changing drone on my keyboard while speaking and remembering. Each time I spoke the original paragraph subtle details would emerge and I went with it. Each time I read the text out loud, I let my visual memories fill it out more, as if I have always been telling this story..

Original paragraph: One day there was a girl who played with dolls, bears, imagined drawings and art. After seeing puppets and people and playing house. There was a white rock and Nerf soda grape. Avon "Sweet Honesty" perfume and yellow dresses. I saw the people playing from my bedroom window which had a hi-fi record player and “Free To Be You and Me” playing on the speakers or in the basement reel to reel recordings of people and animals of all types and speaking so many ways I had not imagined.

First reading out loud of the original paragraph: One day there was a girl that was me. Who played with dolls, bears and who imagined drawings, and art, after seeing puppets and people and playing house in the gazebo in the backyard. There was a white rock in front of the house, my family house, and Nerf grape soda. Too many bottles of Avon “Sweet Honesty” perfume. Yellow dresses, particularly a yellow terry cloth dress.

I see kids playing outside from my bedroom window on the second story of a two story house. My bedroom had a hi-fi record player, and "Free To Be You and Me" playing through the speakers. I loved that album.

When my dad got home from work, we would all go down to the basement, where he would play reel to reel recordings of people or stuff that he recorded during the day. We would listen at night or on the weekends. These recordings were very expressive of people and animals of all types speaking in so many ways I would never even dream of. Getting lost in those sounds, listening, dancing...

Second reading out loud of the original paragraph: One day there was a girl, that’s me. Who played with dolls, bears and imagined drawings and art, after seeing puppets and people and playing house in the backyard in the gazebo or inside of the house. There was a white rock, a white painted rock in the front yard, and Nerf grape soda. Too many bottles of Avon "Sweet Honesty" perfume, and one of the bottles actually had a yellow dress, it was like this yellow figure, it had this puffy yellow skirt, that had pink flowers? Yellow dresses, like halter dresses.

I see kids playing outside from my bedroom window on the second story. We lived on a dead end and there would be people playing baseball out there. I remember the hi-fi record player and “Free To Be You and Me” playing through the speakers. I loved that album, I don't even remember it.

In the basement, when my dad got home from work, we would all go downstairs to listen to the reel to reel recordings that he recorded during the day. He was an audio engineer. He had a large collection of recordings of spoken word, people and animals, in very expressive and imaginative sound settings. Speaking in so many ways I had not imagined. It was so much fun listening, dancing, getting lost in it, spinning...

Back when I worked at SFMOMA

They commissioned Brian Eno

To create an installation

For an exhibition...

It was spring of 2001

::

Staff looked forward

To Brian Eno being around…

And wondered what his installation

Would turn out to be…

::

What none of us anticipated

Was that Brian Eno’s handler…

Would be telling the staff

Not to talk to Mr Eno

Under any circumstance…

When word got out about this…

People started grumbling

Especially since most of the staff

Were artists themselves…

::

Staff also were running errands

To the drugstore around the corner or wherever

Picking up stuff for his installation

With little direction, if at all…

Purchasing holiday lights, plastic blow-up palm trees, anything…

When they dropped stuff off

People saw what was going on

Then more gossipping…

::

It isn’t going well up there…

Brian Eno’s installation sucks…

He doesn't know what he's doing…

::

That was back when I organized

Music shows

And would often stay late

To use the printer and copier

And that was back when the offices

Were located inside the museum

::

One evening after leaving the office

I forgot something

And had to run back

When I got in the elevator

I heard a man

Shouting hold the door hold the door

I pressed close door, multiple times

The doors started to close

I was relieved, I was in a hurry

Then the man put his hand in the door

And the doors reopened

It was Brian Eno

::

He asked if I heard him shouting

I said no, I heard nothing

He may have mentioned there were no other sounds

Except for him shouting...

I said I heard it isn’t going well up there

He placed his hands on his head

And asked if I was referring to his baldness

I said no

I meant your installation, upstairs

I know who you are...

I heard it isn't going well up there…

Then the elevator stopped at my floor

And I ran out...

::

When I turned 21

I celebrated

By going to UC Theater

With a bunch of friends

To watch the movie Obscured By Clouds

The one with the Pink Floyd soundtrack

About the woman who went to New Guinea

For the exotic feathers

And then gets inspired

By this tribe

And her world opened...

::

That was the night

The fear that I'd be sent

Back to Texas

Came to an end

:::

I moved here from Texas

When I was 18

I had met a guy on the internet

Who said come live out here

You like the music here

I got a one way ticket

To San Francisco

:::

Here

I had friends

Who were older than me

Who were into music

Just as much as I was

:::

The guy I lived with

Had a fear

That the authorities

Would ship me back to Texas

Because we were doing drugs

And I was under 21

Just the thought of that

Made me paranoid

Listening to music

Made it fade

:::

When I turned  21

My friend Gretnoid bought a tit cake

From the X-Rated Cake Shop

I wore an evening gown

Then we went to the movies

And my world opened...

When I would sit for DeeDee

She would pick me up in a camaro

She had sun-in colored brown hair

She had two daughters

Her husband was a truck driver

He drove 16-wheelers

He was away a lot

She called for a sitter

When she needed to party with friends

:::

Her daughters had dirty blonde hair

They showed me the switch

That DeeDee would use

They thought everyone had one

I just listened to their stories

They didn't have cable

:::

Whenever DeeDee talked

She always had a toothpick

In her mouth

She would bite down on it

When she talked

Which sometimes made it hard

To understand her

My sister also sat for her daughters

And we would talk about how DeeDee

Always had the toothpick

In her mouth

And do impressions

Of how she talked

How she said things like yeah a lot

And imagined she would say things like

How much she loved the switch

And then we would start laughing

Because it was so weird

:::

Never met the husband

He was always driving

16-wheelers

Except one time when

When my sister was sitting there

The husband came home and asked

Where DeeDee was