I work as a gardener. I'm an artist (mostly painting and drawing.) I'm kind of a rough and tumble type female. I grew up in redneck Northern California, so I think I will always have a strong affinity for big trucks, work boots, and beer. This part of me is invisible, so you'll just have to take my word that it's there. There's a lot more there, too, that you'll have to take my word on. I'm basically a gigantic collection of opposites sometimes in battle with each other and sometimes in harmony with each other. I'm in grad school for another year getting my MFA. I long for a simple life in the country. I am not a simple person.

Dismissing what insults my very soul

Making connections between opposite or unrelated concepts, seeing the big picture, understanding the whole system, dream interpretation, understanding people, making people laugh, figuring out how to fix things, hard physical labor, considering all the angles, questioning everything including my own ability to meaningfully question anything, games like Pictionary, charades, Cranium, doing impersonations of people I know, thinking, writing, drawing, caring, not caring, not taking myself too seriously even though I'm good at a lot of things.

My playful wit, my overly-expressive face, my unselfconscious dorkiness that I take for granted until people remind me of it and then I crack up that I just said in all seriousness something like, "But here's the rub," with my index finger pointed up in the air.

Dark, existential dramas (Dostoevsky, Kafka, Ingmar Bergman)-- nothing is too dark, sick or anti-social for me because of my highly developed sense of irony. Stupid slapstick or dumb stoner movies--nothing is too base and retarded for me again because of highly developed sense of irony. Charlie Kaufman, Happiness, Documentaries (Sick, In the Realms of the Unreal, the Lifestyle,) philosophical art writing like Gerhard Richter's The Daily Practice of Painting, theory narratives like Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, Torpor, Aliens and Anorexia, bits and pieces of theory from Baudrillard & the other miserable French threorists--those people can sometimes usher me into a dried up, overexposed state of burnt-out existential alienation in which case I turn to healing type books about shamanism, Jungian stuff, mystical stuff, comic books, Lynda Barry, Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl, Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Gun Club, Modest Mouse, Elliott Smith, David Bowie, Velvet Underground, Johnny Cash, Rolling Stones, PJ Harvey, The Pixies, The Kinks, Patti Smith, The Stooges, Iron and Wine, Big Star, lots more, pizza, veggies, dessert.

Friends, plants, music, colors, interchangeable myths, laughs.

I'm finished with thinking. I stare stupidly at things. I could be a mystic.

Watching a movie, eating popcorn for dinner, picking leaves out of my hair cuz I'm too tired to take a shower. Or going to life drawing. Or having a beer and a cigarette with my friend on the porch. Or on the porch with my friend.

I can become withdrawn for long periods of time and sometimes I just disappear.

you want to. If you need more encouragement than that, what about if you're an iconoclastic, outsider, creative genius who works in the trades? And who is really tough, but also kind of emotional and also unpretentiously intellectual? If you get dirty on your job and/or wear a tool belt and you read and maybe play music or have a wistful streak or a dark side and a good imagination and know what it's like to be completely happy for minutes at a time and know that being happy like that is not related to anything external but just comes along like grace or something like that and when it comes you know you could die right then and have lived a whole life, then you should definitely message me. If you're unconventional for real you should message me. Or if you feel like you don't really fit in anywhere, that's very promising too, but maybe it would be good to have someone not so much like me. Or if you know you have that spark that can light up your eyes but also turn destructive if not properly channeled, and you have a hard time finding other people who have it, too, then you should message me with gratitude.
If you are none of these things, you can still message me, because I don't know anything about what's good for me.