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(it says ‘eat me’ and wow, behind that mask and silliness i can see how messy i feel and how tired my body is-!)

I wrote some haiku’s while sitting in the hospital the other day. We were experimenting with short ways for my dad to express himself but he is far to out of it so I did some myself.

This is a new: Home

Hospital: A series of beeps-

Dad, don’t say sorry.

***

Morphine plays quietly

oxygen buzz, suction tune

Dad saying goodbye

***

Cover my face with

long hair, dying root to tip

we all fall out frail

***

A Conversation Snippet between my dad & my brother Noah:

Dad: ” I feel like iv been in a prison cell for weeks”

Noah: ” The only difference is we are allowed to be with you & you didn’t do anything wrong.

(pause)

But i’m still gonna violate you from behind.”

When I told Noah I was sitting & writing Haiku he whipped this one out:

Karl Marx write much books-

Hitler does kill much Jews-

George Bush run much ranch.

(I laughed pretty hard)

Noah by the window looking at dad: at least he has a nice window in the hospital….as opposed to the fucking ICU which had NONE!

I have no idea what the fuck I want to say.

It’s Christmas eve and normally that means nothing other then stores being closed and days off work. Usually my jew family would eat chinese food and go to the movies or generally just be together: and this year we are together but nothing is familiar or celebratory. My dad is dying. We are in the hospice phase and trying to get him home to be outside the fucking hospital and in the comfort of home to pass away. And here is where I will stop typing. As much as I want to tell you all the million intense thoughts in my mind just saying that my dad is dying is enough for now. I love my father with a love and intense friendship that few people can say they have with their dad. I don’t even know what else to say. It’s all just pain right now. There is nothing else. I can’t do anything but sit and think and cry and rub his feet and sleep. And pray …but I don’t know what I’m praying for anymore. I suppose I am praying that he doesn’t suffer but really I haven’t been doing much praying at all. It’s all been just trying to focus on tangible things we can see and feel and touch and tell ourselves about the impermanence of life and how to minimize human suffering for those we love.

So, I sit here in paralysis listening to Lady GaGa of all things on repeat for days. It’s simple and up beat. I watch things when I can that make me laugh but mostly I cry . The love & support of friends both in person and online has made a world of difference & to everyone who sends love to both me and my family just know how much it means.

When someone is experiencing death and suffering it’s easy to disappear from that persons life because you just don’t know the right thing to say. This leaves a lot of greving people in isolation when they need support the most. I DO NOT need you to tell me something brilliant or life changing. Just telling me your sending love and there if I need someone to listen to me talk and cry is the best gift possible.

My dad posted this poem  & explanation on his facebook page a few days ago:

2 time US poet laurate Robert Pinsky is one of my favorites. I guess decades of martial arts and related studies has made it personally meaningful to me.

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

As you probably know from having heard me bitch about it endlessly my laptop died and was out of my possession for close to two months. As much as it sucked I realize now more then ever that it was just what I fucking needed. To unplug. To step away. To remember what it was like before screens became the new faces. The typing of keys the new speech.  .

I spent so much time ignoring my body: finding  value in fingers more then toes. My eyes more then my nose. You can’t smell the internet but you sure as fuck can see what people are saying and reading: what emotions people are emoticon-ing.

Wait, shut up, this is not a rant about the de-humanization of internet culture or  the flip side equally  hyper humanization; it goes both ways. This is about Facebook. And the way that no other website has made me fall into depression. As a mentally ill bitch I often am percieved as being far far far over sensitive about things for the mere fact that I am far far far oversensitive about everything.  I’v been trying to figure out the trend of why I fall into a deep sadness and depression after visiting Facebook. Even if just for a minute.  For 10 years I was a Livejournal addict and any drama I had was never BECAUSE OF the website Livejournal but because of drama in the various zine communities I took part in that were very much about faults in the community and not in the site hosting the conversation. Instead it was a very intimate way to connect with people; reading about there lives and growing with them.

Facebook has done something else: it has created a never ending newsfeed of feeling out of the loop. A microblog update status, a new one every micro second, for the micro second culture we demand  that makes me feel hyper ignored and out of the loop. Aware of who my friends used to be and aren’t anymore. People from the past who held so much meaning and now have lives I am no longer part of other then clicking “lick” buttons and saying happy birthday when FB alerts me that it is the day this old friend of mine was born.  Facebook makes me feel so lonley when I look at friends pages and see them all talking and then feeling worthless and left out.  I am almost 29 years-old but when I go on FB  i feel like i’m back in high school. Who is talking shit passive agressivly about so and so and who is “liking” my other friends posts and not mine. It is a neurotics nightmare. An oversensitive persons hell.

I wondered if maybe I was alone but I decided to google it and found I am SO SO SO far from being alone in feeling this way. You might laugh but just like many of us were  made to feel horrible in the school playground facebook has become a swingset right in the middle of our new social cyber playground and like me, those people who have oversensitivity might not always be able to deal.

some random quotes I found online about anxiety, depression, and facebook:

• “Basically, I am getting into quite a state about Facebook. It doesn’t make sense why it’s getting to me so much. But it’s pressing buttons in me that haven’t been pressed since I left school and that was a very very long time ago. I was never very popular at school – too weird, too geeky, too different. But since I left school, everything’s more or less been okay. I’m popular enough, have friends, a nice life, a lovely boyfriend. But Facebook has really got to me! It’s fostering a deep-seated sense of inadequacy I guess was always there, waiting to pop up and bite me again. I’m back in the playground, watching everyone else having a much better time than me and I’m trying really hard not to cry because it’s so embarrassing to care so much.”
  
• “I t’s true, facebook really does make me depressed. It affects my life to the point that it scares me. I see all of those photo albums people upload of their nights out, see them tagged in hundreds of pictures and it makes me feel pathetic because none of my friends take pictures of our nights out”
• “… I see all my old friends on there who have got on with their lives. They are in relationships, they basically have a great life, look happy. My life is just nothing and it makes me sad. I try to break out but it just ends up failing. I mean I AM content with my life … as long as it doesn’t get complicated. But deep down I want so much more. I feel like im stuck and I wanna get out, what to do?”

I don’t want to hurt anyones feelings by deleting them so I click “hide” next to there status update so it won’t show up on my news feed anymore.  The projects they accomplish are wonderful but remind me of my own inadequacies and slowness. Then I leave sad and feel full of suck. No website has ever left me feeling more inadequate. Trivial? No. Because it has become part of our daily lives. And there is nothing trivial about the way humans communicate today. This is just the tip of the shit burg on this subject, I might one day expand on it but in the meantime I just wanted to get this out there because I can’t be the only one…… right? And if you are someone who can’t relate at all to this post then consider yourself lucky, baby [silly emoticon here].

In case you didn’t know my mother is an incredible metal/jewelry  artist. She has an etsy shop that needs some love. She spends all her time in the studio making her awesome work and so I am here to help promote the incredible-ness that she produces. it would be so awesome if you helped spread the word about her work and even got some for yourself or as gifts for those you love. Aww.  Her work is all hand crafted and original designs. Why buy buy shit from chain stores when you can support real artists who do it all with hands and love and no big production machines.

her shop has loads of stuff and she even takes custom orders: http://www.etsy.com/shop/judiforman

Don’t wear jewelry? She sells awesome bookmarks too! Also, maybe of friend of yours loves this stuff that you could pass the link on to?

My mom puts so much love into her work and I really want to share it with all my friends so check it out and spread the word for those seeking great gifts for the holidays and beyond

xxoxoxoxo

oh, and since she is my mom you know she will do custom orders involving any sort of horror you could request. Shes making me a one of a kind hearts & butcher knives bracelet right now! yay! it even has blood drops and skulls.

bracelets, earrings, pendants, chains, necklaces, bookmarks, custom orders, etc! Check out and order at: Judi Forman Designs in Metal & Polymer Clay

I first discovered my darling Sage Adderley back in 2003.  Almost 8 fucking years ago. I want to say I got her zine from Gluestick Distro.

(FYI: Gluestick Distro was the first distro to ever carry one of my zines/ it was the original issue of Ax Wound! I had the choice to be paid in cash or

with zines. Of course I chose fucking zines and I am pretty sure that is how HARD KNOX and TATTOOED MEMOIRS by Sage came my way…..)

This girl is seriously one of the strongest, creative, SWEETEST take no shit kinda girls you will ever meet.  I feel so honored that over the years we have remained friends, collaborated on episodes of zinecore radio… and that we are currently planning new projects together. Never once did I feel any drama or bullshit with Sage. Never ever. That is so rare to find.  Sage is always true to herself and her friends. I love this girl! Oh, and duh, Sage runs the fucking incredible SWEET CANDY DISTRO! <3 <3

After all these years of reading zines, posts, and talking with Sage I was so excited when she posted this interview she did with her mom. I have to share it with everyone here too. In this piece Sage talks to her mom about being a woman in the tattoo industry. It is a wonderful interview and even though my period is part to blame I DID tear up! Sage, the part that got me all emotional was reading about your moms experiences and how they related to yours. It was so fun and wonderful getting to know the woman who brought you into the world. You always wrote about your tattoos and how they affected your life and getting to hear your moms stories was so fucking cool. You should turn the interview into a new Tattooed Memoirs!!

So !check out Sage’s Interview with her mom:

Debi “The Illustrator”: Female Tattooist Since 1977

hearts & butcher knives,

hannah

http://womeninhorrormonth.com/2009/11/15/planning-events-for-wih-month/

Please read, comment, and REPOST!

xo

FYI:
Just a quick note to let you know my laptop is still broken. I have sent it in to MAC and will hopefully have it back in less then 10 days.

In the meantime Ax Wound is wrapping up. It was supposed to be out on Halloween but with the computer problem I have had to redo and re-edit a lot of pieces. I can tell you the issue is by far the largest and most ambitious creative undertaking of my life. Before you know it the issue will be in your hands.

I’m very excited! Even though my hands are perminently covered in ink and glue =) This has been an artistic experience like no other in my life. Seriously. So much love in this zine, its insane.

Please check back here for updates!

More soon!

Hearts & Butcher Knives,
Hannah