fuck!

Like Totally likes hanging out with non-verbal individuals. They don't mind sharing time with her. Human communication is possible even without words, thinks Like Totally, who meanwhile becomes painfully aware that she, too, is locked inside her skin and cannot s-s-s-spit-t-t-t it, that which is brewing there, you know... Fuck! What is it?

being beautiful

In the mornings and afternoons the crossing guard outside her door greets her with cheerful smile.
You are a beautiful woman, he says!
Like Totally likes being beautiful. Today she feels different, though. A foul feeling creeps into her heart.
I want to be cheered not for what I am, she thinks, but for what I have become!

music

Like Totally listens to the music

it talks to her heart

it feels like home

she doesn't know where her home is

she keeps looking

weeding

 

A weed breaks through the blacktop of her driveway. 
That's right, thinks Like Totally, we notice only those who break through, the ones who perish under remain unseen.
And then her thought wonders back to the wild flowers.
Maybe it's true that god gives them glory, she thinks, but that's in the fields of nature, whereas we live in the human field, and our roads are paved with concrete; wild flowers don't belong here.
And she bends down and weeds out the weed.

wild flower

Like Totally is a wild flower. She blooms where no one sees.

other voices

In the morning she hears the mother's voice, get up: I will make you breakfast! Like Totally stumbles downstairs and cooks herself a breakfast.
In the evening she hears the child's voice saying, let's go play! Like Totally drops her car keys on the shelf and walks to the Cave, her art studio.
How easy life would be if there were only two voices! Totally cannot remember when there were so few!

priestess

Like Totally feels like touching base with the others. She fancies sharing food and drinks, words and glances. Preparing meal and setting the table makes her feel like a priestess. No need to sing Alleluia, they will be here tonight!

voices

Like Totally tends to her house. 

Wood is known for absorbing sounds. 

She bends over the hardwood floor and hears it oozing the soundtrack of the past:

her children's feet pound across the rooms, 

she listens to their voices. 

She answers in English, but makes a mistake.

She pauses to think and corrects her grammar, 

but they are already gone. 

nothing

Nothing approaches in solitude

and Like Totally touched by Nothing

-anything but a gentle touch-

becomes aware of Nothing

fleeing for salvation to a church 

Like Totally soon discovers

that an individual touched by Nothing

cannot be dissolved in communion

but leaves tormented by Nothing

style

Style is not a vanity, thinks Like Totally, style is a currency of human existence. Those who neglect style cannot enter the market and are condemned to life outside common place.

wild flower

Look at wild flowers, says the son of god!*

Like Totally looks at wild flowers. 

Poor things! Nobody's watching them grow, why bother blooming? 

Sympathetic to wild flowers, Like Totally picks one up. 

Everyone deserves attention, thinks Like Totally and sticks it into her pocket.

* Wild flowers know that there is no son of god. God is Nothing.

asylum

Like Totally belongs to asylum

she wonders around looking for love

but once she comes upon one

it feels like death

 she nears the edge

and seeing the depth

doesn't fall in
strong arm of the Lover shoves her away
and sends her back to her painting

 painting becomes her unhappened death

lustful and shared with no one

an open invitation

Like Totally likes her shape. It is an open invitation to interpretation, she believes.

life in-between

Like's life is in-between the unspecified of the public and the unidentified of the inspiration

cool cool

One cannot shake off the feeling that they know you here, thinks Like Totally. They look at you like you represent something important for a change, something like a new style, for instance. You walk around with plastic bags showing  through the tape and the only people who want to have anything to do with you at the beginning are the ones who are badly hurt, but then it changes abruptly because someone cool notices your style and now you are cool too all of a sudden. When you adopt a readymade style, thinks Like Totally, they dig it but do they dig you? If you, on the contrary, invent your own style, you may turn into a living legend, and be stuck with that.   

the past

Like Totally is not a victim of public stereotyping based on the common preconception of the past events. Her past doesn't exist.

undoing knots

Like doesn't like to use GPS or iPhone when she drives, or maybe she doesn't have an iPhone or GPS. Like everyone else, Like likes to orient herself around familiar places like schools, shopping malls, hospitals, previous addresses, etc. When she drives around she mentally maps her directions according to those places unaware of long detours and missed shortcuts, only because the knots on the roads her familiar locations represent are denser than the lace of the road itself. Learning to navigate has become for Like an education in undoing knots. And so it should be, thinks Like, so it should be in everything!

paradox

Like Totally wonders who she is and why she is here. She guesses that she is shaped after her creator, artist Elena Drozdova, ED. Sometimes it occurs to her that she turns heads and so, her shape must be significant, but then it becomes obvious that appearance is nothing compare to the inner self. And so she looks inwards. There she finds nothing but used plastic bags. Inside she is like totally disposable yet indecomposable. Forgotten and broken after a lifetime, she still will be around for millennia, whole or in scattered pieces, for as we know, plastic resists decay.  This is the paradox of Like's existence.

the truce

 On one of her plane of thoughts Like Totally thinks that human reality is a stream of consciousness. It swells flooding the banks threatening to suck in the outside reality.  On another plane of thoughts she thinks that the universe is a turbulent marriage of opposite principles.  She picks her brushes and paints the Truce.    

justification

Like Totally can not justify her existence by serving the others so she tries aesthetics

the capacity for intrapsychic molding of the mechanism for dealing with the external world

Her autoplasticity comes with disposable nature

from and to

Like Totally knows that a womb is a place where everyone is coming /from/ and returning /to/

compensation

Like Totally erected a phallus in the place of a womb to compensate fallacy

question

Like Totally may doubt her letters, her words, and her sentences, but NEVER does she doubt her paintings! And so she questions the convention of artist statements /the bunch of words every artist has to submit for every art show/ is art not its own statement?

goals and experiences

  Goals are for those who don't get experiences.  

the taste of words

English is not Like's original tongue and so when she speaks it it doesn't feel the words. When Like speaks English the meaning is there but the taste is gone.

disfunctionalism

Like Totally has spilled Cabernet Sauvignon Blank on her laptop keyboard. The keys to the right from U, J, and M got numb from the spill. ’So what? ’ Thinks Like Totally, ’ I will copy/paste! ’ Being disabled is true to her nature. If there were a name for the school of thought she belongs to it would be disfunctionalism. Productivity according to her is creating obstacles for the uninterrupted flow, and art is that interruption if, again, there were a way to say what art is.    

artiste's dream

LikeTotally painted her dream

In her dream LikeTotally ejaculated her creativity into the world and was totally liked

the surplus of energy

 

When a long time ago Like immigrated to America she lost her old distractions and the new ones didn't distract her enough. This created the surplus of energy.

short hair

Like’s hair is short. Hair is a sort of thing that folks like independent thinkers and functioning quitters allow growing short. That’s rite!

plane thoughts

Like Totally’s thoughts are plane like layers of endless planes with holes in unforeseen places, which, once she has fallen threw, take her to another endless plane with more holes to plunge in and so on. There are ladders to climb up but they never lead back to the plane she has just plummeted.

the unconditional like

Like’s situation at work has not been ideal. She used to fulfill caregiver’s responsibilities three days a week, the time she totally devoted to thinking art, and run workshops on remaining days, the hectic art activities that resulted in tons of raw material awaiting realization. Like has been keen to accomplish art in-between. Late to work, leaving mess in the undesignated areas like, say, paintbrushes in the kitchen sinks, she has become a nuisance to everyone. Neither bosses nor caregivers have understood her art and aspirations. A year ago she has been promoted, nevertheless. She is assigned now to do art five days a week. Like Totally observes that everyone likes her now calling her the heart of our program. She also realizes that her earnings have shrunk compare to those of a caregiver, but she does not underestimate the unconditional like.

The Love of Like

 

 

Like is in love with the world. She wants to have the multiple orgasmic relationships with her lover, but needs reciprocity. That’s where her suffering begins.

Like Totally is Naked

Like Totally is naked in this world and, simultaneously, invisible.

Making Like Totally

Making Like Totally is not a big deal

Modeling her out of wire, plastic bags, and tape takes a couple evenings.

She should look Like me, if I succeed.

She should be able to recognize the palm of her hand with the fate (or destiny) written on.

The first doubt is the mark of becoming.

She thinks, therefore she exists.

Making Like Totally, you see, is easy. Living Like Totally is the project.