(Why bother? I think about this now, when I really shouldn't, and I will probably delete this entry when I am not so tipsy and so angry anymore. I have a show in a week and I'm thinking about what my brother would think, if he knew. He would probably say that I'm imitating him.

It is because he is so vain, my brother. My brother is so vain that when I linked him a year or so ago, he e-mailed me, with some lawyer's attachment, to cease and desist because I was obviously riding on the coattails of, gag, his fame. As if I care a fig that he has designed tshirts that are sold through a "hip" nationwide clothing chain, the same chain that peddles graffiti manuals to middle-class kids from the suburbs looking for e-z street cred. Yeah, keep it real, bro.

I will never be good enough. I am always riding on someone else's coattails. These are not my stories to tell. The language I use is always suspect.

And I will always remember my mother telling me not to write about the family or anything personal, to only write about birds or flowers. The harmless things.

And I will always remember what my brother told me when he had used photos of mine, sans permission, in his paintings. He called them found photos. Because it is the photo that matters, not the photographer.

Thinking of my past, those who have disowned me despite our past, my mother, my father, my brother, I don't want to know anyone sometimes. Cuz when will someone else tell me that I did not belong to them in the way that I thought I did? That my words or my ideas or my photos did not belong to me? That I'm trying to ride on some illusions, when I already damn well know what is illusion and what is not in this family of mine?

Why bother, indeed. Why bother with their expectations, their illusions of me? I have no family, remember? I've got no one, except for Jimmy, my friends, and my memories. If I should fail, I should fail miserably, brilliantly, at being that woman who sticks to her allotted place in the universe.)






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