i tm i

A Future, With Teeth

“Great men are not born great, they grow great.” – Don Vito Corleon

This is some crazy auspicious month this year with so many overlapping holiday observances– and an eclipse– With a sprinkling of social unrest in Mexico. I’m writing from Mexico. When they kind of do hits on cartel bosses it does kind of does ripple out to people who aren’t directly involved.

(Fun fact! I used to bank with Wachovia. Look them up. They were accused of money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. So… I have been involved.)

Taking it back down from a global scale, the month is dedicated self-love. And nothing says sexy good times more than dental work! We must keep a Cronenberg / Clive Barker perspective on sensuality, no?
Ok, if that is too much for you, then just think of it as self-care and maintenance.

I continue my healing journey with a discomfiting jaunt to the dentists chair to have cavities addressed, crowns replaced, and best / worst of all three posts inserted into my jaw. At a future date I will have three tooth shaped sculptures set in my mouth to fill the gaps that I have had for years.

I long for the day when this dental barbarism will be a thing of the past. I am aware there are labs working on a way to make life forms regrow their own teeth. Keep going, science people!

After walking away from Art Basel with access to a few coins, there are funds for this work. And I dare not put it off because the money could be used for something else. The money can always be used for something else.

I am trying out a muscle relaxant + anti-inflammatory controlled substance that was prescribed.. because it should give my back/ neck/ hips/ shoulders a break as well as help with the pain in my jaw. A double win? We will see.

You are advised to take pain medication as soon as the numbness starts to wear off, I didn’t do that. I wanted to feel the extent of the pain, the quality of it as it tumes and contracts. I’ve never had any of my bones drilled into before. I was curious.

Considering the trials I have already dealt with in my life, it didn’t surprise.
I’ve gone three weeks with an open 4cm hole in my chest without taking anything for that medical trauma. Then there were all those whole body inflammation responses to bacterial infections that were brutal and frightening in their randomness. Simple fevers having it out in my body give me as much ache in my legs. By now, I’m quite familiar with odd extreme pains and the dragging fatigue that comes with it.

Yeah, the pain is momentarily disruptive, but it’s not a problem. It’s not like I have an actual life for it to be a great interference. Such an odd advantage I have suddenly, no? I have the time to explore the nuances of physical suffering– For all the good that sort of luxury does a person.

I don’t ignore the momentary irritation and I don’t let myself mourn and worry about what all the pain means. I lathe my mind in sweet, sweet placebo. There is an end goal somewhere over there. I can vaguely envision about four months into the future when I will be able to chew food with both sides of my mouth again. Ah, divine thought!

I remind myself that although I am open to infections, I can hold them back, I am equipped to deal. I did wrestle with myself about taking the prescribed antibiotics. I knew the dentist wasn’t going to understand my reluctance, so I didn’t bring it up. Even if the person spoke English natively I don’t think they would fathom my reluctance to take more antibiotics. (See: previous post)

Self-love is weird. Sometimes it means having holes put into your bone and stitches in your gums, making yourself look like some kind of Don Godfather over here with a swollen lower jaw. Sometimes is means stripping the microbiome from your body like a droid getting it’s circuits wiped– again. It means giving up on the stim of crunchy food…

What does your weird self-care look like?

Dragons & Snakes; Horses Aflame

Welpy-welp.

I’ve officially arrived at the ass end of the snake year.

The boulevard outside my door was soaked in pooling sewer filth from the 27th of December to about January 20th.

The snake has incontinence in it’s old age. Or it is terrified of the coming hooves of the next year.

I remember once being at a picnic with my family on some bright New England day. I don’t know who spotted it, but we– us kids got excited about finding a snake nearby. I believe I was the quickest one and was able to catch the garter snake with my hands. I did not keep hold of it for very long. It was terrified of being snatched up out of the grass by a child and it wet me in defense. And it 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓃𝓀. I remember the talk turn immediately to best practices for nullifying strong animal odors, skunk smells especially. Tomato juice seemed to be top of the list. We did not have that available– and perhaps orange juice was used instead? I have trouble remembering if it was me who actually caught a wild animal with my own hands. I remember many hands: my siblings’ hands; my parents’ hands. I don’t remember any admiration directed at me for quickness of body, for swiftness, deftness. I remember skunks and tomato juice instead. But a snake had been caught then and admired for a moment.

Last year when the dragon transitioned to the snake, David Lynch was taken away in the momentum. That was something I felt deeply because he was on my mind in the days before he passed. This year, I get shit almost literally thrown on my doorstep. Not much better?

In spite of all the offal at home and abroad– (I see you Myanmar, DR Congo, Rwanda, Thailand, Cambodia, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine… ET FRIKKIN AL)– I have been able to carve out some moments to “appreciate” my health journey since being struck down with the elfshot. I’ve made a curation here of some consecutive Julys that show the goings of this journey:

In July 2021 I was trying to go about my day to day while in a massive continual brain fog state. I was three months out from taking my first antibiotics for Brucellosis. I was functional, but not at all. I was brought along to Mexico City for a music+art thing with Hugo Crosthwaite and The Color Forty Nine. Covid-19 was was taking thousands of people out of life daily. Wearing medical masks was politicized.

Flip forward a year to July 2022. I was in the middle of another antibiotics regimen to clear my system of Brucella and Bartonella. I was taking three kinds of antibiotics for two months straight. This was after taking shots of antibiotics in the ass in November 2021. My body was in so much pain and discomfort. I was begging for death.

No one told me antibiotics make you suicidal.

Flip forward a year to July 2023. I was sporting another major scar from having my uterus taken out in May for which I had to take more antibiotics. I was traveling to San Miguel Allende for the Guanajuato Film Festival: a working vacation. Somehow, I rode a horse.

Flip forward another year to July 2024. I was a stunned animal going out alone, for the time in years, to a strange part of the US (South Dakota)– a piece of driftwood from the Pacific dropped in the Badlands. I was attending a sci-fi / fantasy convention to catch the year in the form of a man. I caught a dragon… or perhaps was caught by a dragon. I met such beautiful humans there that I would keep them forever if I could. It pains me to think of how I was barely present in their presence.

Flip forward another year to July 2025. I was only just starting to truly come out of the brain fog I’d been in since 2021. One year to the day, my ~~“impressionable” little~~ HIGHLY SENSITIVE self dreamt about that sci-fi / fantasy convention.

I broke the July travel pattern by visiting Mexico City in May/June. It was to catch a snake– to catch the year in the form of a man at a sci-fi / fantasy convention– again! It’s not a simple thing to hold an international sex symbol when you understand what that means. Of course, I suffered for it more than when I got the stink of a garter snake on my hands. I lost weight (I do NOT need to lose weight) and my body thought it would be fun to have a pretend menses– something to do with my body continuing to mend from surgery. Harried over-stimulation, not adjusting to the oxygen levels… I was a walking disaster. But a disaster improved from the disaster that I was a year before; but in a different way.

Healing is not a straightforward going.

(Heh. Skål to the Mikkelsen brothers for being a part of my irregular processes. Also, sorry, boys.)

These days I continue to have twitching in my eyes to remind me of my distress. It’s a far cry from when I used to feel like my body was going to stop working if I exerted myself beyond casual usage. I could not lift or carry much more than my own body and even then I had to be mindful. My neuromuscular interconnection was so screwed that just stretching would trigger panic attacks; waking up in the morning triggered them. Doctors don’t tell you the nuances of what anemic “fatigue” is like. They have even less understanding of the gut-brain axis.

I’ve soldiered myself from the fragility of existence to working with weights. I can almost carelessly do jumping jacks. I have muscle tone again. My brain fog is cleared. This is not insignificant. You have no idea the number of times I have broken down crying because I could do something with my body again, and it didn’t hurt in a horrifically unexpected way, or I didn’t expect… repercussions for it.

I mean, hey, it’s not like I was/am an art model and butoh performer. It’s not like I’m not going to be devastated at the loss of what little physical prowess I had, or anything.

The wood burns. The Horse runs swift.

I am here to witness it. I am here.

Be proud for me. I am not dead.

Art Basel Miami – COME TO THE FAIR!

At the top of this month I went to Art Basel Miami.
Not the whole Miami art week extra satellite show whateverness, but the Art Basel Miami fair itself.

There were over 280 booths full of eye candy to match that vase you have or that vice you have.

Oh, OK, it wasn’t all vacuous. I remember seeing a large circular wall hanging that caught my attention because it was made out of hammered bullet casings arranged to look like scales on a shield– the offensive killing thing made into a beautiful defensive thing. I liked that.

I needed to carry that beautiful defense with me to block out the dog and donkey shows in the “new media” section though. I am sure you can guess the dog reference. It was all over the new outlets stealing undeserved attention. Unfortunately, there was another exhibit that was even more… ‘adding to the problem.’

Just imagine being too poor to live in your own country, and this artless cryptobrosephus billionaire is standing next to you begging for money– with money– at an art fair. And that is supposed to be The Art. No cute robots. People just line up, pay money at a machine, and walk away with a receipt in a baggy.

Thousands willingly played the ass to a ‘trickster’ scheme. Hee-haw-haw-haw. And what is that ‘trickster’ going to do with the money he’s rolling in? More rolling? What a lark. But then, hey, you have to go home to cockroaches, mildew and the vague threat of narcoviolencia– and you have no idea how good your safety net will be when you do have a massive crisis.

I very much enjoy the Trickster archetype, but eh– my soul was clawing at me like it was suffocating. Every time I walked through that section, it was a quick march with blinders on. Which is a shame. There were some interesting pieces that I just could not spend more time with.

artists: ?, Catherine Ross, ?, Frank Walter, Kathy Butterly, Robert Coutelas, Cossette ZENO, Ken Price, ?

Honestly, I couldn’t spend time with much of anything. The way people clumped and crowded, I felt I needed to keep moving to keep some sort of safe distance. I didn’t what to give the booth-minders any hope that I was a buyer either. It’s not like looking at work in a museum. The pressure you feel isn’t to make sure you aren’t standing closer than six inches to a piece, it’s pressure to lure the green out of your pockets.

Sales are to be made in this place. Serious amounts of money flow here. I could feel there was so much pressure for this to happen on the first day that I was nervous to goof around. I held back until the last day. That was sort of like a free for all for the plebes. It was then that I took photos of my Thrawn action figure posing with random pieces of art while the gallerists started to let themselves unwind.

Of the many thousands of people who have gone through Art Basel Miami, how many have taken a Thrawn action figure with them?

My eleven year old artist self got to safely experience a very grown-up part of the art world, hand in hand with a genius tactician alien who can analyze the hell out of the art and with that explain how to demolish any of these people…

artists: Robert Colescott, Alex Jackson, Andrew Sim

Since I was little, I’ve wanted to be close to the arts, to be a an artist, to support other artists… but my road’s been rough and quite dark. It was nice to have Thrawn there to show my child self that in spite of the shit, I am right up there with these elites. I am not just sick and stuck in a hole in Baja. I am doing the thing. It’s not as nice as I need it to be, but I am doing the thing. Somehow.

It would be ungracious of me to not mention that it was LDJ LA Gallery who gave me a pass to this other world where art and money merge. I’m grateful to have seen the fashion show of it all. And, yeah, there were tears in my eyes when I witnessed a couple make that one purchase, and blunt need’s edge for a while longer. I didn’t leave Miami feeling less than.

the Mystery Science Theater 3000 that was in my head the whole time