Journal entry, 3/6/92, art opening, Women Depicting Women

 3/6/92, I went to my  art opening, Women Depicting Women, at the Tweets gallery, on Mendocino Avenue, in Santa Rosa,  and it was jampacked, I couldn’t move, let alone see any of the work. My Volcano Goddess Erotica: Madame Pele was very visible above another photo. But I was disturbed by all the people. The women’s community really turned out for the event. That’s a euphemism for lesbians who are all checking out all the other women. It’s a pick-up scene. A meat market. I guess I’m disturbed by the deliberate separatism of the sexes, I don’t want to be identified by the women’s community, or the goddess community for that matter.

Anyway, I come home very depressed. I am missing Valera, and I am listening to the Leningrad Rok Opera, Juno and Avos, I’m thinking in Russian and in Spanish, bypassing English completely, wondering what language to think in, mixing them all up.

I rented two movies, Christy Brown’s My Left Foot, and Nicholas and Alexandra. I drink a glass of red wine for my cramps, I’m in the bleeder’s hut. I remember my grandmother telling me about Christy Brown, showing me his paintings all done with his left foot. Irish and Russian. It always comes back to that. Mining the past. Does it really take five Hail Marys to set the souls free? King of the bonfire. Wickerman still burns. Christy’s first word, Mother, and I am crying for I don’t know what. My grandmother had me picking up marbles with my toes to strengthen them, she said. I learned dexterity with my toes drawing, painting, picking up buttons, preparing for the future.