Bleach Blotch

Y'know how when you have leftover paint on your palette and you can't bear to wash it down the sink so you just quickly slap it onto an old canvas or a piece of cardboard to use later for some mail art and how sometimes that turns out to be the best thing you did all day? Yeah, me too. Years ago, I used to use Sally Hansen's facial hair bleach and there was always some left over so I would just paint it onto a chunk of my head hair, thereby creating what I fondly referred to as my "bleach blossom." A couple years ago I switched over to this cute little glittery pink girly facial shaver but I decided I didn't like how the hair grew back in kind of stubbly. I think I would rather have blonde fur than dark stubble. So I went back to Sally's, the same box design (except now it has aloe vera!) with its little white tub of bleach and it's little white vial of "activator" and it's little white spatula and its little  white mixing tray. I followed the instructions carefully- 2 parts bleach to 1 part activator, slathered it on my upper lip and set my phone for 8 minutes. Meanwhile, there was a whole glistening blob of bleach waiting unused. Man, I was so tempted to paint it on my head again. But things are different now. Maybe you can't tell in this picture but half my hairs are silver, so to add blonde streaks would make me look like our old calico cat Patches, with her teeth falling out. I know, blonde streaks have nothing to do with falling out teeth, but somehow the association is there.

Point is, this is the kind of weird shit I do when I'm approaching a performance. I was watching the video the other day from "Triscuit Love Nest," and yep, I was cutting my own hair every day, rather than rehearse. A girl's gotta do SOMEthing with her anxiety. The front looked ok, but the back... well, that's what professionals are for.

Why am I even worried about facial hair though at a time like this?
I live in a town that reveres the 'stache.

Do teenagers still care about their "reputations?"

I'm trying to only write once a day but I have something exciting to report. And you know I'm not very good at holding myself back. Reading my teen diaries and looking for the story has got me thinking about my old friends: The one I abandoned after junior high because I decided she was too weird, even though she was kind enough (& weird enough) to befriend me when all my elementary school friends dropped me on the first day for wearing the wrong outfit. But after two years of conspicuous weirdness, I was going to try and be normal so I could improve my reputation in high school.  And then there's the friend  who, in 9th grade,  took me under her smart, funny, and adventurous wing, to help me wreck my reputation in a whole new way.  I've had no contact with my junior high friend in 40 years, and haven't talked to my high school friend for more than a decade! I just found them both on facebook and am filled with a flutter of feelings. I haven't pushed the friend request button yet though. I wanted to tell you first.

the Rusty Bucket

I dream "The Rusty Bucket" and it's such a great name I look it up (dream google) to see if anyone else is using it. I find pages of notebook paper with a davinci-esque sketch in brown ink of a rusty bucket and my name, very small, and there is Brett Palm's name, too, the ideal boy of my childhood, who was often beside me, thanks to alphabetical order. The rusty latch of my childhood diary, the rusty bucket lowered into the dream well, tingly taste of cold metal,  brick-orange flakes, and rippling reflection in black water... so this is where they keep the poetry.

Is it mean to my 14 year old self to read out of her diary to strangers, who will laugh?

I just know that when I did this before, to a small bunch at The Whistle Stop in South Park, that it was very satisfying, especially when I read, "why am I talking to a book like it was a person? oh well, it's almost like talking to someone." Then to look up to a room full of real people, smiling and listening.

I asked Susan if anyone has shame attacks after they perform and she said no, they're euphoric.

Worded Out

I need a break today from my teen "hypergraphia." I saw that term in a book I just picked up, "The Midnight Disease" about compulsive writing, and also the agonizing inability to write, as in, writer's block. It was weird to see one of my behaviors described as a symptom. For many years I carefully filled the page margin to margin and didn't use paragraph indents. Couldn't stand to leave any white space on the page. Even then I noted that writing didn't seem to be a choice.

Several years ago I saw the "graphomania" exhibit on the top floor of the Art Brut museum in Lausanne. So great. But those people were crazy!

Susan found my story thread last night, for the junior high years. It seems obvious now but I didn't see it before. She also said that people often don't know what's funny about their own stuff. I read her an unsent letter that I find horrifyingly embarrassingly way-too-serious but she laughed and said, "oh that's great, they'll love it."

On Hope

Mortified's motto is "Preserving your childhood. One bad memory at a time."  True, one of my entries from 1974 begins, "I'm trying to figure out why I have so many bad memories." I just hope I'm not making a whole new one by being on this show.

It Shouldn't Be This Hard

That's not what she said. I just spent four hours trying to figure out how to fit text onto my header image so I could start this blog. Finally gave up and did it in photoshop, which is a small miracle in itself. You'd think I'd be a blogger by now, huh, the woman who made five issues of DonnaZine, each of which featured a diary story. But that was the nineties and when computers arrived I saw how laborious were my tools of scissors, glue and enlargement/reduction wheel so intended to make the switch. Little did I know how laborious it would be to do the simplest thing on the computer. And now I live in a town (Portland) where people are still doing it, proudly, with scissors, glue and reduction/enlargement wheels.


What I really want to say is that in exactly a month I'll be reading out of my junior high diary to a couple hundred folks at the Mission Theater. Since I don't seem to be able to live life without recording it, I thought this would be a good time to start this story. Ever since 5th grade, I've turned to my diary for comfort and companionship. Now that I'm all grown-up, I know that real people are good for that too. So maybe you'll hold my hand on the way to the show? It's not only teens who get angsty, right? And we might have a laugh or two.


Tonight I meet with Susan from Mortified, to sort through my "pathetic crap" in search of story.