Moving day today. I am beyond tired. Everything-but everything- is packed. I don't want to leave a thing there. There's actually less than I thought there would be. Maybe things look like les when they're packed in boxes, rather than put in trash bags or tied toether with string or whatever dumbass ways of packing I've had over the past year. I sincerely hope that hiring movers will make this my smoothest move this year. And soon it'll be over. Well, for a month or so.

I finished the limbo paper yesterday too, around midnight. I have a performance Thursday, but all in all I feel responsibilities slipping off of me like water. All I want is to get to the new place (which is small but whatevs), cook a big meat meal, eat and go to sleep. Not do anything else. Not hold anything together. I swear I'll deal with everything else later.

Marsa and I fought two days ago. It was awful- she uses exactly the type of communication style that presses all the wrong buttons for me. I start out trying to separate out what she's actually saying and what's dredging up bad memories but it's as though I'm participating in two fights at once, and I'm just exhausted by the end. It was just bad. I barely slept afterwords, I was so angry, and then I was angry because being angry is part of why I lose my hair and I just lay in bed churning and beating myself up for letting her get to me, and for letting myself be in this situation in the first place, for having to move in in the first place. There is more than enough pissed-offedness to go around.

I'm going to have to move out ASAP. I'm going to have to find a short term rental in which I will stay, all of my things in boxes, until Hill and I find a place. This is exactly the situation that I did not want to be in- I hate uncertainty, I hate temporary living situations. Of all the stressful situations I can think of, this is easily in the top five. And here I am, at the end of a year since I moved to Tel Aviv, and the entire year has been a temporary living situation, and waiting for it to be over. Little wonder my hair's been falling out. Little wonder I haven't been able to stop grinding my teeth.

I want to be angry at other people for this situation, and to a certain extent I think I'm justified in doing so. But yanno, it was me who allowed a lot of this stuff to happen. I took my sister in, instead of telling her to find a short-term gig. I moved out when the landlord started playing dirty, instead of putting my foot down and insisting she find her own place. I said that it was alright, that I would wait for Hill, even though his trip got put off by three months and I'm living with a pregnant lady. I put aside my frustrations with the way Marsa talks to me (and insists on the way that I live, as though I were her ward and not her boarder) again and again, because I told myself that her comfort zone (no matter how bizarre) was more important than mine. I have to take responsibility for that. I have to know when my boundaries are and be vigilant about not letting people walk all over them. Why is that so hard?

So I'm waffling back and forth between simmering-angry and wanting-to-cry upset, depending on who I'm blaming for my current situation. God help the next person who comes in the archive with some dumbass request.

So this is definitely final countdown time. Three weeks till Hill gets back from Texas. (He called and wanted to know if I would look up gay bars in Amarillo fricking Texas online for him. The boy is not overendowed with common sense.) Friends have been consulted about power tools, blogs have been perused (interior designing! organic roof gardening! make your own chandelier out of nothing but tin cans and dental floss!) and plans have been made and made and remade. I have at least two sculptures waiting to be made when we have eveything put together, so I won't lack for things to do.

I probably won't end up stenciling this wonderful ornate penis pattern onto my bedroom floor. But let a girl dream, won't you?

Scared wouldn't be the right word to describe how I'm feeling about this. I'm uneasy and a little worried- especially about whether Hill and I can live together as well as work together, and whether or not we'll actually build everything we said we would. I can easily see us sitting in a filthy living room, picking building materials out of our food and bickering about who's turn it is to change the cardboard that we've used to patch the roof leaks. I do not want this scenario to happen.

But I am ready for this. Lord, I am ready. It's gotten to the point where I need space for myself as much as I need food every day- I feel the lack of it like a chronic ache that you learn to live with but wouldn't it be nice if you could get out of bed without making sure that your spine is aligned just so? I need to have a table I can fuck up if I want to, a kitchen I can cook whatever I want to in it, a work space I can spread out in with impunity- and without flatmates (god bless their souls) who'll give me the stinkeye if I do.

Meanwhile I'll go look at clothes that I would totally make if I had a decent sewing table/cloth stores in my vicinity. This is a lovely site for that and also this one. There might just be some sort of self-indulgent fashion post in the future, who knows? Stay tuned!

Plan for performance (and as usual I figure out the last bit just a day before the event. I really really need to figure out how to work according to a plan.):

*Clothing: not sure yet. need to go through costumes. For sure I will need an apron.

1. Shoo everybody away, so that there is a big, circular space around me. The motions should be like you're shooing chickens. Flap your hands at people.

Materials needed: none.

2. Find someone in the audience and have them hold up empty "mirror". Take plastecine (red and white) out of pocket and mold it over face in the shape of nose. Take your time, knead it out and bang it against your palm. mold an oversized nose onto your face and tie it on with a strip of cloth. take a birthday candle out of your pocket and place it in the plastecine.

Materials needed: plastecine (red and white), "mirror" (cut out of cardboard and hung off a belt), strip of cloth, birthday candle already melted in to holder.

3. Collect people from the audience and hand them bags of flour, taken from pockets in apron. clip off the ends of the bags and shoo them away, out of the rogatka. Make clicking noises with your tongue. The purpose of this is to make white flour trails out the door.

Materials needed: bags of flour (4-5), scissors (hung off a belt).

4. Climb on top of someone (make sure they know you're going to do this beforehand). Get your nose (and the candle) as close to the ceiling as possible. Light other birthday candles one by one from the candle in nose and hand them to people in the audience. The performance is over when the candle in my nose burns out by itself.

Materials needed: birthday candles (a handful or so).

I keep going over and over in my head different plans for the future, for as soon as I finish working at the firm. I only have a few months left, after all, and I'm pretty worried about it. It's kind of funny to be so stressed about this when during this entire period I have been pretty much non-stop complaining about how I want it to end already, and when am I going to finally have a stuuuudio? And now that it's getting closer I'm getting a little scared. Which makes sense- this will be the first time that I dedicate myself entirely to making art, as opposed to the half-assed calling-the-balcony-a-studio attempts. What if I actually turn out to be full of shit?

I'm trying to do what is good for anxiety, at least in my case: making as many concrete preparations as I can at this stage, seeing if I've missed anything that I could be doing to make this transition as smooth as possible and reminding myself that I'm doing all I can and I can't control everything. It's helping.

I'm also reminding myself that the studio (despite the ridiculous amount of money we're going to put in it) is not going to be some magical solution for Becoming An Artist. It makes things easier, by proiding space, tools and hopefully a social atmosphere conducive to work, all of which are very important. But the art-making and the work ethic needed to go with it are up to me. I think that's what worries me the most (other than running out of money in the middle): that I will find myself in a fancy-schmancy studio and still not being doing the work that I want to be doing. That not having enough space etc. will turn out to have been an excuse.

I really hope that's not the case. I don't think it is. And there's really only one way to find out.

I also know that having a studio isn't the be-all and end-all of my practice. I might find that I work better in spaces I have to negotiate, as long as they're my own. I'm just..I guess I'm just trying not to get caught up in unrealistic expectations, which will only serve to foster anxiety, which will sabotage my work and make me miserable. Sometimes it works better than other times. Which, while a pretty bland statement, is sometimes all you can say about containing anxiety.

Yeller and I seem to have passed through the phase of being attracted to each other and moved directly into AwkwardLand. We keep making bad jokes in slightly-too-loud tones of voice at each other and are avoiding physical contact entirely. It's weird, but I'm pretty sure it'll pass. We're good friends, we'll figure it out.

I don't want to take money from my folks, but I will.

I mean, Dad lost his job. And I don't know where that leaves my parents, because they don't tell me how bad (if at all) their financial situation is. They spend money as though everything's fine- just got the garden area redone, Mom wants to buy new patio furniture- but that doesn't necesarily mean anything. The only answer I'll get from them is, "you don't have to worry about that, that's between your Father and I." Of course their financial matters are their business, but I worry. And I wish they would confide in me, the way adults do.

But I did have all these unforseen expenses, and I haven't been able to save the way I wanted to, during this period of employment. And it's not as though I've sought them out- they've offered to help. I also think it's completely awesome of them to be so supportive of my trying to get a foothold in the arts. I just feel odd and bad taking money from them at this point. I don't want to be part of the constellation of things they need to worry about funding.