Hot Lips (Journal Entry on Today's Posted Pages)

Journal on the Hot Lips pages:

Toni the Tiptoer, around her own thoughts. Really got serious today on this blog about arting, yet again, for an audience. Like I'll prep journal pages so I have something to post, rather than write a real entry, or attempt a creative writing focus. The blog is for ME. Not for "clap-clap." Greg's comment, 'rant' -- why rant? ERG! I asked, but he didn't respond. Because it was a charged entry? I guess. And he 'fell' for the same stereotype most usually fall for ... 'I was going to say you must have gotten your creative flow back, given your output.' Output is no sign of content coming from me, but I'm much more intimately familiar with my own neurotic knots than Greg.

Today I told two people the truth when they asked the daily, 'How are you?' I said, "I'm sad." One of them made a joke. I forced the other to hear the 'why'. But the truth is, nobody really wants to know. Toni, a 'sad' Toni, is not Toni being 'herself' -- that is, the self the other most favors. People don't want to let other people escape from their 'usual' definitions. No being real, thank you very much -- real being messy & all over the map such as it is. "Consistency, please, with the 'pretty personality picture'" [Miss Congeniality strikes again] is ever the priority. My blog behavior is me buying into that 100%.

God DAMMIT! Let me OUT! And be open enough not to label it a rant. It's a discovery! A real moment! A glimpse into my hidden depths! Cowboy up, and take it. Handle it. Look it over. Consider it as part of my range, NOT a flaw in some mental picture of me. Cut me loose from all preconceived bindings & let me breathe through frustration, rage, disappointment, impotence, disillusion -- THE UNDERTONES! THE SHADINGS!!! --

No, no! These are what everyone is in denial of, starting especially with themselves. And anyone (like me) who is willing to 'go there', to display these tonalities, reminds them of their own dark side. [Lions & tigers & bears, oh my!]

But these are my hunters; they find & bring to me the raw meat, the visceral & oozing truth. It CAN'T sustain the pretty picture but nonetheless I have to feed in order to grow, to go, to hone my instincts, my truths, my support systems. I don't want to accept the fear I see in almost everyone else -- it's safe but it's crippling & costly!! I don't want to be "safe" (caged), smaller than I will be if I embrace the fear, the ugly, the visceral, the misshapen, the soul carrion.

Where are the brave others who can help me identify & digest & assimilate my COMPLETE self? Those who can do this for/with me because they also effect it for & with themselves? Mom says people can be afraid of/embarrassed by that intimacy. So I'm surrounded by other people's fear and it keeps me columned in -- but I only LOOK like I'm standing erect. Who said I always have to be strong? I want to shoot that individual poste haste, & eliminate that impediment forever.

But it's internalized by now. And I can't just go & shoot myself, now can I? How RUDE! But I have come to some conclusions, solutions for now -- which are that I'm finishing these visual journals I've already started, and the Miss V canvas, and probably that troublesome-but-fascinating travel doll of mine. But I'm also starting a strictly-written journal & returning to my internal basics. And making the 9 millionth effort to be brutally honest. Nobody voluntarily looks at anything I do anyway -- it's not as if I have to be concerned about anyone trying to READ the pages.

// God I feel defensive. //

& here's what ELSE I have to say today: do NOT bloody ask me a personal question if you have no intention whatsoever of waiting to hear the response.

Hmm. Very little danger of that in my crowd, actually, being that my function [& part of my Miss Congeniality duties] is ever to lend the listening ear -- to be seen but not heard. What a flat, non-dimensional caricature my daily interactions make of me. Appalling, too, that none of these people require or desire more! Gawd! To be content with flatness, with superficiality, sameness, status-fucking-quo. I want to be shaken AND stirred, constantly awake, challenged. [I work in the wrong place for THAT, obviously, insofar as either exchanges OR duties.] Upstart little intellectual beotch that I am.

ENGAGE! CONNECT!! MAINLINE IT!!! Geez, this is life, THE ONLY ONE! I don't want to spend all mine on vapor & vacuousness. Enrich me equally. Give BACK. Open your lazy eyes and try, for a change, some V I S I O N. [Change is a dirty word in nearly all circles. Something I have truly tried but failed to memorize about humanity-at-large over my 46 years of life.]

ASIDE: Of course you DO understand that for me to be 'ranting' like this can only mean one thing: Miss Congeniality MUST be on her period. (This was suggested to me twice today, I kid you not.)

== I ran out of room (pretty pages with no writing space, remember?) so I had to switch to my other journal, a page lifted straight off my inspiration board. ==

This inspiration board -- another show-off mechanism? Allows for pretty blog postings, no doubt. So I'll opt to use it for myself, not share -- because it IS useful to me; it gives me such pleasure to move stuff around on it, & to push the pins into the spongey give of that cork. I don't have to share everything.

I don't have to share ANYTHING. This is contrary to Toddler Rule 101, right? BAD BAD TONI DOESN'T WANT TO SHARE. Tough shite. Bad bad Toni is 46, not 2, & not terrible, just trying to purge my terrible need for approval & attention. It someday MUST be enough if I'm proud of myself, but that day hasn't arrived for me yet. But at least I'm fighting for it, trying like hell to get it on my calendar and IN MY FOOD CHAIN. And I AM proud of me for that.