Thoughts

A blog about the things I think.

[hannahwhise]

Two days ago I scrubbed my body with a pumice stone. Down my arms. Up my legs. I felt dirty. I wanted to peel my skin off, pull my bones out and stack them on the floor. Examine my skeleton that has never been touched.

Dig into my body until I find the gold. Chisel away at the hard exterior, the oil of the hands that have touched my skin, the bodies that have been inside mine welcomed or unwelcomed.

There’s gold inside me. My body that is mine and gods alone. I am a small part of something bigger. Something that is pure and bright no matter who tries to get inside.

[hannahwhise]

In honor of the recent Valentine’s Day, and the fact that I woke up at 5:30 am today... here is something I wrote for my therapy group about romantic relationships. Basically I’ve been having constant ocd and anxiety about relationships so it was suggested that I write about what it means to be “good” at relationships:

I’ve always thought people that are good at relationships are able to keep them going for a long time and I am not good at that. Good relationship people have lots of long term monogamous relationships. At my core or probably more my big fear is that people always leave me. I feel like there’s something about me and the way that I am that scares them away. If they’re not scared then I wonder what’s wrong with them.

I think people that are good at relationships are good at communicating. They’re good at accepting and giving love to other people (or their partner, more specifically). They are good at being vulnerable. They’re open and willing to risk rejection. They put themselves out there and can accept if it doesn’t work out. They’re honest. I think a good relationship is rooted in honesty and trust. And openness.

I think or I thought I was never good at relationships because I couldn’t be vulnerable enough. Or in an effort to be honest — I overcomminicate and confuse people. Romantic rejection is one of my biggest fears. I hate heartbreak. Who doesn’t. But I also fear that I always being dramatic if I say too much. I have a lot of pride. Too much pride. I don’t want to lead in romantic relationships. I want to feel safe. I’m scared of them and of tying people down or being tied down.

I also don’t like to not be good at things and relationships feel like something I’m not good at.

[hannahwhise]

[hannahwhise]

[hannahwhise]

All the same

Someone told me that they have this theory that there’s only 50 faces in the world. You could group us all into 50 categories and in each category people would look basically identical. 

I believe it. Sometimes I’m ashamed of what a stereotype I am. People always think they know me. Lots of people have my name, my face, my whole aesthetic. Which in retrospect is funny because I’ve spent majority of my life thinking that I didn’t fit in anywhere. 

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my queerness and how difficult it’s been for me to accept. I have this fear that it furthers the stereotypes... White girl in BK, artist, queer, loves plants. You know her. You know me. 

Amanda was drunk and told me about how her grandfather was the most important person in her life and how he died before she could tell him she was gay. Though, she wouldn’t say that directly. She said she couldn’t tell him she was in love with Erica. 

I thought to myself, it’s better that you never told him so you don’t have to have the memory of his reaction. 

Mom used to tell me I walked like a lesbian. She would laugh at me and impersonate the way I walked. I didn’t get it. When I learned what lesbian meant I thought it was a disease. I thought of all the boys I had crushes on and confirmed to myself that I didn’t have it. Lesbianism.  

When I moved to New York I started making lots of queer friends and she said, wow Hannah. All your friends are lesbians what’s that say about you? But truly, I didn’t know. I still don’t. 

I grew up all consumed with women. With women women women I just wanted to be near them all the time. I blamed it on my absent mom. But men felt like a weird puzzle that I didn’t want to solve. They usually made my skin crawl. I think I was genuinely afraid of them because I grew up feeling so scared of my dad. Who screamed and screamed and stomped around and threw things and screamed some more. 

I didn’t mean to tell Amanda my runaway story this morning. But I was thinking about money and I mentioned that as I kid I saved every cent anyone gave me mostly because I thought I’d need it in order to run away from home. By the time I was 14, I had like six or seven hundred dollars. Mom took it. So as soon as I could drive I got a summer jobs and started over. My runaway money. 

I didn’t end up using it until I was 23 and never left New York. It was truly the runaway story I always wanted. All my savings, my camera, and a backpack I visited New York and never left. My dad said I was stupid for doing it, but here I am safer than I’ve ever felt before. And it turns out I’m pretty gay too. So that’s cool. 

[hannahwhise]

Erotica

I burned my right wrist while making eggs a couple days ago. Pushed my wrist against the hot pan and seared it into my skin above the burn I have from the butt of a cigarette. Secretly I like the way it looks. 

Cigarettes. None of the successful people I know smoke them. Which honestly blows my mind, don’t they know it helps with stress?

Lately, all I can think about is whether I am hard to love or if it’s hard for me to let people love me. 

Sometimes I wish I was good at manipulating. I don’t know how I didn’t get those genes from mom. I’m like dad, I wear my emotions on my sleeve. If I see a nail I hammer it until there’s not an inch left. But I can’t make a single person do what I want.

I wish I could leave things alone.  

I was re-reading an Audrey Lorde essay about the feminine erotic, and it made me think of India. I was so uncomfortable there. My friend sent me that essay and it made me feel powerful. I sent it to Mika who, of course, had already read it and then I wrote some shit about how my body was intimating. Fear me and my femininity!!! 

I wonder if I knew then that we had lost track of each other. Deep down I knew, but I didn’t know what to do with all that distance. Once constantly on the same page, constantly in contact, we grew apart and then, slowly, we became strangers. I still wake up crying about them. 

I have this fear that I will never be over that relationship. I think that about every relationship. I’m embarrassed to admit to people or to myself how much I miss them and how much pain I’m in. Feels stupid. 

Everyone said it seemed like I didn’t like them that much, but what people don’t know about me is that I have fake armour. Not strong armour. I cry in parks or bathrooms or the middle of the night with my blankets over my face where no one can see me. I got good at crying quietly at a young age.

Tips for getting rid of cry face: cold water. Lots of it. Wash your face, push ice cubes on your closed eyelids and drink it. A whole gallon if you can. Chug that shit the night before otherwise, you’ll look like you got punched in the face.

My therapist, Patricia, God bless her, says I go into ‘survival mode’. She always tells me to talk to my little girl self that is trying to survive and tell her she doesn’t need to struggle anymore. My adult self has got her and will keep her safe... Patricia will really be like ‘tell her, oh sweetie, I know it was hard but don’t worry you are safe now’. I think I gag every time she’s told me this.

I don’t believe I can really talk to my child self. It’s nice and all to think that I could go back in time and tell that kid she didn’t have to cry so quietly, but then I would have been her mom. And I don’t get to have one of those in this lifetime. Damnit, Patricia, don’t you know that by now? I just want to be normal.

I want to be a powerful, erotic, sexual woman who feels no shame or internalized homophobia or fear or powerlessness or physical withdrawals and can just fuck the shit out of whoever I want but especially the people I love. Just eat a ton of pussy and let people eat mine and not want to cry afterwards and not think about Mika and not be so hard to love and to make love to. Maybe I could cry but in a good and romantic way. Good romantic tears, only. Good romantic loud tears of eroticism and then drink a gallon of water and ice my eyes.

This is what I want. 

[hannahwhise]

People Missed

I liked to watch the light move through the windows of the train. I remember thinking it was beautiful — the repetitiveness of it’s movement felt comfortable and safe.

Many trains I’ve taken since, but this one was special. In Medellín, I stood with the Irish guy.

He told me that I had a good story except for the ending. The part where I admitted I didn’t know if my sister would ever be the same and whether or not I could learn to live without her.

Another above ground train, he pointed at my leg that wouldn’t stop shaking.

I didn’t even notice until I looked down. My left leg was poised to move up and down. It was impossible to stop. He asked if I was anxious.

My legs, her face inbetween them. I pulled on her hair and ran my hands all over her body. Her skin was softer than anyone’s I had touched before.

We came and I stared at the ceiling.

She studied my face and asked me where I went — where did you go?

To many places.

To Mika’s dreads that tickled my inner thighs and their furrowed brow before they kissed my head and held my face.

To the smell of coco butter lotion that makes me cry. I think often how strange it is that I’ll never see them again.

To his bleached blond hair that falls in his face and the chain around his neck that lays on my naked chest.

Mostly to his eyes that I could never get used to looking into.

How many times have I looked into them? I wished I could count.

Sometimes I try, but I think it’s an illusion. When things end we try to count the good moments and stain them into our brain.

The collection of images I have in my head of his eyes and his face and his pale skin and kissing his neck full of freckles. How vividly I remember kissing the back of it.

Now my neck, in the moment with her breathing down it — I realized I had never felt so tender than with his blue eyes looking into mine.

Where did you go? She asked

I apologized and went to the bathroom where I saw a reflection of myself that I recognized was in pain because I’m not good at being tender.

It was a good story, I think, except for the ending.

The part where we never know if things will get better and how we’re going to learn to live without someone we love.

[hannahwhise]

Love letters

Sometimes I feel like my life is one long love letter to my lost mother.

Will she ever be found?

When we find her it’s as if the time inbetween didn’t exist and when she leaves we wake up from the dream. We cling to the illusion that she could ever be found.

She said I’m not staying here this place is horrible. They haven’t given me any meds. We said you can’t leave. She yes I can. No you can’t. Buckle up and push through. She hung up the phone.

The fence fell down they say because it wasn’t nailed properly. Somehow we found the humor in it. We laughed. The fence fell down right after mom called and we wait for the stories.

Sometimes I think my life is one long love letter to my lost mother. Do I tell stories because she does? My mother.

Who taught me to be funny and pretty and to talk to strangers. Someone said I scared them with that. The way I talk to strangers. But I like to think I know danger because no one is as dangerous as mom.

I caught myself dreaming when she visited me. I wish sometimes she hadn’t. She made the place so warm. She said it was peaceful.

Today I walked by the eyelash extension salon and I thought of how we trekked around my neighborhood to get her extensions redone.

She was only here two days and instead of sight seeing we were looking for lashes.

And then she’s gone again. And everything is back to normal. The lack of chaos feels uncomfortable to me.

I puked on the street and walked past the lashes today. I ran so hard it made me sick. I just wanted to quiet my mind.

To quiet the thoughts of mental wards and the way my sister sounded over the phone. I imagine the way my mother sounds now and I wonder why it’s only the women in my family who end up there.

[hannahwhise]

Fragility

I washed my face and watched the mascara run down my cheeks. I thought of how mom once taught me that lotion works as makeup remover, and how I learn from the men who want to fuck me. 

How much I’ve grown -- my young self worried often what men thought of her but now I read their minds. They wear their thoughts on their sleeves. Two quick glances, and I know what they want. I know what has flashed through their simple minds.

Because I can keep up. They didn’t expect me to be so smart. Though none of my intelligence, quick wit, big words, and stern voices can stop their desires. None of it will make them think of anything except what is hidden under my clothes. 

Yet I am really the one who is in control. They will not offer me a job or listen to my ideas, but I am controlling their minds with a shift in my seat and confident stare and they are teaching me more than they realize. 

On a good day this makes me feel powerful because sometimes I think it will result in artwork, in expression and connection and life lessons to people like me. 

To femme bodies which are so threatening yet constantly threatened. 

I stare at myself in the mirror, and I am grateful to the matriarchs of my family who did life differently but taught me the power of makeup and lotion and tight black dresses. Who taught me that masculinity is often weak because it is so simple. And we control it.

We can control it with a shift in our seat and a smile. 

[hannahwhise]

Goodbyes are always hard

I held your face in the bathroom where you would always find me. Sometimes I was hiding.

My grandma had just died. I was pretty broken. I lost my confidence on the back of a motorcycle and I never went home again. I didn’t know where home was then.

But you were really care free. The crowd favorite. You listened so intently and you thought so hard and you stared at me for hours. I liked it but it made my head spin every time I caught you. Unlike anyone I’d known before you never looked away. You never looked embarrassed you just smiled with a sexy confidence I didn’t know how to handle.

I’d hide in my studio and you’d find me there. Working between kissing you was my favorite thing to do.

I was jealous of every woman who talked to you and they were jealous of me. We became enemies over the top dyke, but I always felt special knowing you would crawl into my bed that night.

We’d sleep till everyone left and lay in bed all morning. The beach outside our window, I remember talking to you there for hours. You fascinated me. Your laugh, your soft skin, your tongue ring I loved it all. And we were in this queer space, I could be queer, I could be queer and feel like I always have been.

I didn’t do much art. I spent most days thinking of you. Walking around trying to find you and to hide from you, hug you and kiss you. Sneaking through the halls, drinking, kissing, pissing in the woods. We were the hoodlems and that didn’t bother you one bit. You can’t be bothered.

[hannahwhise]

It’s a silly thing but I do it anyway

Get caught touching yourself

Tracing the lines in your skin which makes you cry

Your breasts which are shrinking and your freckles that are darker on one side 

Your skin is uneven 

Your thick tan lines

The side protected by the sun 

You were too young to masterbate he said

You’re very young 

Young is good 

And you never saw Shosheela again but you made sure to say goodbye

With her long-haired little boy she held him in the night with the green flashing lights and the crowd that never stops starring you could tell he longed for her more than any husband

But she drives the rickshaws and pays for their school though they don’t like to visit her place is so small

And she doesn’t smile often at first she covers her face she has red chipped nail polish and sad eyes and long black hair and sometimes she looks as young as you but her body has birthed three children 

You look at your freckles and your tan lines and your shrinking breasts because you don’t know how to love them 

And you wonder if she’s glad she can’t have kids anymore but you know she must be 

Her removed uterus and her shrine to the gods and the wind that danced in her clothes as we followed her across the dried up riverbed against the setting sun

You cry because, like her, your body is sacred and you feel tired of carrying all that weight

Your body, like hers, which is sacred and pure has always felt it belonged to someone else

[hannahwhise]

love notes from Mia 

[hannahwhise]

Learn Unlearn Relearn

You’re not defective although sometimes it seems that the people around you have a key to some secret that you can’t uncover and that they’re so many steps ahead. You will never catch up to them. 

You think of what you at one point thought was important may not be so and you wonder why you clung to it so often how you wasted so many hours thinking that it was. 

You forget that your voice, your desire to create, your vision is worthwhile. You are a part of the earth of the universe and there is a plan for you that you can’t always imagine that you can’t possibly put a name on. 

You realize that the world will not fix itself, but you cannot fix the world either and sometimes life feels like sand being washed away by rough and calm waves. You can’t fight it and you can’t beat it, but you can become one. You are the beach. Together you need one another and that’s okay. That’s good. Because without it you are a rock you are a stone strong and impermeable and sharp and rigid and you cut at the world with your edges. 

You learn to unlearn and relearn and to not learn anything but to feel sad and lost and know that you will also at times feel found. And you cry and that helps and your tears become the ocean waves that turn you to sand and you become one and you accept that you will never know it and that you don’t have to but you can learn what you can and unlearn it and relearn it over. 

[hannahwhise]

Memories when you find old photos

You remember that life is crazy and you’ve had a lot of crazy experiences like riding on the back of a motorcycle to Canada and going straight to Niagra Falls and never wanting to be on an escalator again because you stood backwards on one once while kissing someone goodbye and the next time you saw them they were someone else.

You remember that you fell in love in Canada twice to two totally different people who both live in different countries and the second one you told and she’s still around and maybe she loves you more than you thought you loved him but it’s okay because she’s so much more special and she makes you feel special too.

You remember the bathroom where she always caught you on the way out where you kissed her after she told you she loved you but you said it first and you think about your mom and how she always said you were a lesbian but she told you in the pool that summer she got out of jail that you were in love with the man whose motorcycle you rode but you didn’t want to be. 

You remember how you drove to the beach in the middle of the night to watch the sunrise with a woman who accidentally dropped your keys into the ocean but it was still beautiful and the rain stopped just in time to see it and the cops thought you were a couple who had a fight and that she threw them into the ocean on purpose and you thought maybe you kind of wanted to be with her but you didn’t think you were gay or you didn’t want to be but now you miss Mia and her soft sweet lips and her tongue ring and the way it feels when you put your head on her shoulder.

You remember how you felt attached to the idea that you were a vagabond, that you were independent, that you liked being alone, that you were an artist, that you were loyal, that you were the okay one, that you should always be okay even when no one else is and you realize that you’re not those things so much as you want to be or you’ve been told you must be and you fear to be anything otherwise.

You remember the young girl who had a baby and her tiny arms that struggled to hold the child but how she looked at it with an overwhelming sense of love and you wonder what the rest of her life will be like and whether her kid will be okay and if she will be okay too and you see how women's struggles are not the same everywhere and you’re only just learning to unlearn so many things.

You remember mothers day in Haiti and the old woman with the ribbons by the kids in uniforms who kissed your cheeks and played with your camera and danced around and the little boys who walked like the fathers you saw passing the cars on the street by burning trash and pigs that can’t be touched pretending to fight and shoot one another with their tiny shoulders puffed up and you think that the world is small and big and vastly different although so much the same.

You think sometimes you wish you could unsee it all even though you’re grateful that you had the experience but you’re not sure why this happens to you and you wonder if that motorcycle ride was what changed your life forever and if you’ll ever ride an escalator without thinking about that kiss goodbye.

[hannahwhise]

Insta poetry I wrote at work.

[hannahwhise]

Journal Jan. 14th, 2018

Cosy up in my red sweater and exist alone. 

Cry when I feel sad and laugh when things are funny. Sweat when I’m nervous. Agree to disagree. Be a third wheel and a second and sometimes a unicycle. Write it. Play with the page. Put it into words. Leave it on the page and leave the page in the journal.  

Strange to think of the things I used to be. The ideas that I clung to and the identity I constructed. To Picasso and his young muse whom he painted naked and his bread fingers, he tap tap tapped on the table. His bull head and his clown face and my 18-year-old self who had never travelled alone and got so sick I had to go to the hospital. 

Who fell into a secret love with her thirty-year-old host brother who came back to visit and skyped me for years after. To trying to speak Spanish and feeling my head might explode. To listening to Hot Dreams in the woods high on mushrooms watching the sky change colors and telling Guillaume how beautiful his hands are. 

To trying not to step on cracks and keeping my head down and then up and then examining the sky and thinking how there aren’t any birds in it. 

[hannahwhise]

Chantal Akerman - News From Home (1976)

Transit. Transitional. Movement. Each space filled with someone and something in a circular motion. The city moves in circles. We move in circles. One thing constantly replaces another and so on. We move in and out of space. And people stare. And repeat. And her mother says the same things in the same places at different times. 

The camera moves in circles as the city does as we do and finds a frame just the same as it started with one. We’re lost in it sometimes. We move the cars move and together we make circles and mom says the same things in different ways and we transform and we’re transitioning. We take transit. Trains, cars, ferries. And underground you really don’t know what time it is and birds fly above the water in the ferry and there are twin towers and smog and the wind blows and we take the train and we move in circles and we’re in transit. We’re transitioning. News From Home. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwUW49pa8ec