Chris J. Rice

The world is full of stories, and from time to time they permit themselves to be told. Old Cherokee Saying

[chrisjrice]

Get a good reading chair. Yes. Good advice. Glad I took it. Grateful. Reading puts me in touch with the world as it is, not as I would like it to be. #reading https://www.instagram.com/p/CCoer69h9-9/?igshid=1ttrj5wu2agg1

[chrisjrice]

All those years on the road as a kid hunkered down in the backseat taking care of my siblings all of us often in dangerous situations. Strange how my childhood prepared me for this deadly season of crisis and confusion. I take nothing for granted. I know that a few years is not forever. Forever is when you are dead. #jettisonwhatyoudontneed #igrewupinacar #covid19 #fostergirls https://www.instagram.com/p/CCl7fSghJEa/?igshid=1f7pj4kjbrhc2

[chrisjrice]

Good morning. Continue to wear face coving outdoors. This is far from over. Day 64. #covid_19 https://www.instagram.com/p/CADaPb9FMAh/?igshid=18d6d0cbxrm0y

[chrisjrice]

She was only 26, ten years older than me, and newly married, when she and her husband Tom decided to become foster parents. “They really wanted a toddler,” my social worker told me, “but they decided they’d take you.” They saved my life. She is still a big part of who I am and always will be. Capable and strong. A life long high school English teacher. She helped me to catch up in school. I’d attended 17 from kindergarten to the day I met her. Despite that chaos Janice made it possible for me to attend college. Mirrored back the best in me when I saw myself as nothing but flawed and come from darkness . Unwanted. Unloved and alone. She taught me different. And I am forever grateful to her. #fostergirls #fostercare #familiesaremade #allkindsoffamiles #loveisadecision https://www.instagram.com/p/CAAxfv6l1W6/?igshid=ilf51e4c7qk5

[chrisjrice]

I live with what I love, surrounded by books and art, and supported by a kind partner. I have an extended community conscious of one another’s well being. Generous and kind. So, safer at home” is true for me. But that hasn’t always been the case. I know what it’s like to hide in a closet trembling with fear or the muscle twitch of racing out the back door of the house to climb a tree. To escape the anger of others. Today I acknowledge all those truly trapped at home. Children especially. Vulnerable and trusting and looking for protection. Not in school with teacher eyes upon them. Behind closed doors but perhaps not safe. Look for ways to encourage and support sequestered and over taxed parents. Give to local institutions set up to support children. Keep your eyes and ears and your minds and hearts open. #covid_19 #fostergirls #helpatriskyouth #survivorsknow. https://www.instagram.com/p/B_0I9T1lrKk/?igshid=1c75o44avdi0t

[chrisjrice]

Wooden plate, brown bread (Buckwheat Sweet Yeast Bread with Dried Apricot and Walnuts) orange marmalade homemade by my friend @reed4what. Hand Delivered to our front porch. I blew my friend a kiss as he drove off. From behind our living room window. Valiant, my friend. And generous. That marmalade is a gift and a treat. An extra. If you have extra give to someone. We give to Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. They are helping to feed thousands of people. A $100 donation will provide 400 meals. 97% of their revenues go directly to their programs providing food for children, struggling seniors and more. Lafoodbank.org has been dealing with food insecurity for decades. If you live in LA county and are in need dial 211 or visit their online pantry locator. I know what it’s like to not have food in the house. To go hungry for days. If you live in LA and are currently in that situation you may be eligible for CalFresh. Go to get cal fresh.org to see if you qualify. The average benefit is more than $300. per household. Money that you can use to buy groceries. Stay connected. Stay safe. We are in this together. #covid #losangelesfoodbank #calfresh #foodsecurity https://www.instagram.com/p/B-r2nyiBf_c/?igshid=1n9gwahjahark

[chrisjrice]

Funny memes and clever games, raucous songs of blistering rebuke, viral statistics, and our five year old granddaughter’s drawing of a colorful unicorn, her favorite animal, an animal which doesn’t even exist. Her drawing and caption come to us via a digital highway. This is the way our roads are traveled now. “The composition of each epoch depends upon the way the frequented roads are frequented,” wrote the remarkable Gertrude Stein. “People remain the same, the way the roads are frequented is what changes from one century to another and it is that that makes the composition that is before the eyes of every one of that generation and it is that that makes the composition that a creator creates.” That is a road metaphor that I can get behind. Especially as I do what I can day by day, waking up from a fitful night, drinking coffee with my love, writing some after I read digital newspapers, texting my loved ones, cooking our food, and then sobbing for a few minutes. Then, I get back to work on Driven, a memoir of aging out, of childhood abuse, foster care, the last century, and a lifetime. Whether or not the book will ever be published I do not know and right now I do not care. Still I work. As we have always done, for millions of years, before the wheel was even invented. When art was nothing other than a handprint on a cave wall. #covıd19 #stayhomestaysafe #createeveryday https://www.instagram.com/p/B-SYvO9BeyC/?igshid=yslggj1ezei9

[chrisjrice]

Balls. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Qkg40BK7N/?igshid=fvb86ltfy0sa

[chrisjrice]

I’m no longer putting my work on a pedestal. I’m cleaning and cooking and walking our sweet dog. Who hears my sobs from the wilds of the backyard and comes running in to lick my face and arms and hands. I say the serenity prayer as I wash my hands though I am not religious. Perspective is my higher power. Literally and figuratively. There is a point of witness for this crisis. Far above us all. An all seeing eye which takes in the before and the now and the after and is able to put time and consequences all in their rightful place. I don’t have that kind of wisdom. And neither do you. Only a god can intend and be at the same time. We are human. Able to make meaning. To make music and art and love. To take care of the weakest among us. May we do so one and all. #covıd19 #takecare https://www.instagram.com/p/B-KlAj4hf03/?igshid=i631r66uub7a

[chrisjrice]

If you say “ouch”, and they say, “that hurts my feelings,” that is how you know it’s time to leave. To get the hell out. #driven #childhoodtrauma #writersofinstagram #publicserviceannouncement #fostergirls https://www.instagram.com/p/B9KN4L9BNh9/?igshid=ei42l5dnykyb

[chrisjrice]

Love is a sack of Jack n’ the Box tacos passed through a take out window and thrown to the kids in the backseat of a car. Love is not having to cut the engine. Love is greasy pellets of maybe meat swallowed down on the run. Love is driven and Love is lonely and love is where you find it. #valentines #fostergirls #istilllovetacos #driven https://www.instagram.com/p/B8jb6jZhBtH/?igshid=dnz0ff3gy7r7

[chrisjrice]

This place. Red dirt country. I love it here. #santafenewmexico https://www.instagram.com/p/B8b9V8bBIJz/?igshid=11ufck16z56a6

[chrisjrice]

I’m a lifelong daydreamer. Staring into space. Dissociation can be daydreaming detachment a way to get away from the original trauma when things get too scary. I think you have epilepsy my first husband would say to me. You zone out all the time. I did. I slid into another reality all the time and I didn’t even realize what I was doing while I was doing it. Full body escape. Frozen. Coping as best I could with a body and mind still racked by childhood trauma. Any distraction could be a door into another space away from impending pain. Any place might be point of departure in the physical world—a knot of wood within a wall of paneling, melting Icicles dripping monotonous throughout the day. Escape. Back to when my body left my captive brain behind and I took off running away from Mama. Legs pumping. Heart flying out of my chest. Nothing to hold on to for a long time save the power I felt in my own body in the moment of leaving. #fostergirls #daughterofnoone #driven #imaginationsavedme #internallife #pushthroughthegiveup #writersofinstagram Sent from my iPad https://www.instagram.com/p/B8b1PG2htID/?igshid=1lqlbxd154rdl

[chrisjrice]

“You look beautiful and politically incorrect.” I know. I tried on a rich lady’s fur coat in a resale shop. Like trying on another life, a fiction of who I might have been if only. Ten years old in a tan wool coat with a mouton collar. Snow flurries. Fur around my face on the walk to school. Gift from the father I had only just met. In Joplin, Missouri. Wild woman’s child. Bruised. Scratched. Pounded into near submission. In yet another new school. Kids who’d known one another from the moment they slid from between their privileged mother’s thighs. “That is not your coat,” one of them said when I walked in all proud. “Where did you get that?” This is Not a poor me story. This is A throw back story of where I came from. I haven’t been poor for a very long time. A pissed off reminder about blind ignorance about class in America. It’s real. #driven #fostergirls #staynoisy #raisedonrobbery #mamawasagrifter #tbt https://www.instagram.com/p/B8RZWsLBVKd/?igshid=y6cxn1jjekpz

[chrisjrice]

This is a page from a sketchbook I kept in the early 1980’s. I’d just read “The Poetics of Space” by Bachelard and was obsessed with a person’s psychic space. Outward geometric Manifestation of an internal state. Wrong? I wrote under the self portrait. Don’t know what you’re doing. My fear. Not a whole painting. Comment from others. I questioned myself but kept going. Ten years transitioned out of foster care. My childhood experience stored in my body: emotive and disruptive and often fragmented. When my son saw the finished work he covered his eyes and ran from the room. #driven #selfportraits #notebooks #fostergirls #ittakesalifetime #pushthroughthegiveup #iusedtobeanartist https://www.instagram.com/p/B72hMYPBnAE/?igshid=ksgbvvc8bc4g

[chrisjrice]

Mood. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7r3H9QBe41/?igshid=db17x3ngng0k

[chrisjrice]

​When I went into the foster care system I left the women of my family behind. My maternal grandmother and her three daughters. I ran away from them and stayed away. From Mama on the left, her mother who I called Bom Bom in the middle, my tall aunt, and my scary aunt. I ran away from my family of origin. I wanted to graduate high school and go to college. I wanted to live in one place for more than a year. I wanted quiet to read and time to think. I wanted to be heard. To be touched with kindness. To shake off the shame of ignorance and poverty. With all my being I wanted to make art but I didn’t know how or where to begin. I’d never read my story between the covers of a book, or seen what I knew to be true on the walls of a museum for all to see. Art and literature as a refusal of shame: not a love story, or a ghost story, a lesson about time and truth and trauma. I’d always imagined that happiness was at its most basic level a feeling of safety and security: letting your defenses down, making yourself fully at home in your life, as opposed to taking up a defensive stance. But I didn’t know what that looked like. #keepingupwiththekardashians #fostergirls #whereicamefrom #driven #ittakesalifetime https://www.instagram.com/p/B7qrnQiBB8O/?igshid=1gwbrze5o4vxm