The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

YES-- clothes. . .etherealWEAR. I'm getting to it. But I have to tell you something.
Stay with me. . .



I go to bed @11pm


2am I wake up to the noise upstairs: voices, stomping, music, movie, some form of merriment. Actually, it sounded like Tomb Raider 2, if it were also a raucous comedy.

4am--ish-- After finding something familiar and slightly ambient to loop (Roxy Music’s Avalon) I finally fall asleep.

5:17am I wake up to the sound of my upstairs neighbor MOVING FURNITURE or bowling with it, in her bedroom, which is right above mine.

5:17am I go upstairs to tell her to please stop doing that.

5:34am I am furiously writing while she pretends to be asleep.

5:37am It took me 3 minutes to write that sentence because I am BLIND with fury. This is the 3rd or 4th time this week she has kept me awake, or got me get up, I can't remember.

8am (FUTURE TIME)-- I will be staggering around trying to pull the shade of the night back down, while my neighbor sleeps. She will seem chipper and rested at noon. I will look OLDER and pissed but, and I will pretend to be normal. I am not feeling normal.

It's just not fair to live like the mother of a new born without the baby. And in fact, I was having a delightful tryst with a shirtless man named Konrad-- yes he was Russian WHEN MY NEIGHBOR DRAGS ME FROM DREAMLAND, AGAIN.

I hear birds chirping and the sun literally standing up, peering over the brick wall, which normally thrills me, but I feel like a werewolf who can't change back into a girl. . .


5:59 am

I go outside to garden to work, like an f-ing farmer. I move stones twice the size of me, I'm drenched in New England fog, plop a piece of sod on the end of a bamboo pole that looks like a severed head-- spoils of war. I dig, cut, slap, and beat the earth until it starts to rain. So, now I’m gardening in the rain. Then a flash of lightning. Marya 0 Mother Nature 1.

6:40 I’m so delirious. You know what I can’t get out of my head? My ridiculous theory that Albrecht Durer and Rick James share the same soul. Sometimes I wake up with this thought. Don’t ask me to produce the paperwork to support my claim-- I can’t. It’s just a feeling.





I mean, how much trouble can a 15th Century man have in Nuremberg? Look at those amazingly violently manic etchings he made-- come on, that man was in need of some F-You-Fun. Wouldn’t you be wicked pissed if at the age of 23, you returned from a too short grand tour only to find that you’ve been promised to the daughter of the local brass maker? BRASS? The Durers were goldsmiths and door makers. Marry the Brass girl? Well, he had to-- couldn’t start his own atelier unless his was a married man. It seems the marriage was loveless and childless, the evidence of the former being the portraits of his wife who appears more frigid than a winter frost. If I were Albrecht, I would definitely start making woodcuts of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, hoping to join their bloodless crew, as soon as possible.





Check out that coat with the fur collar. That’s pretty sexy. I swear he’s wearing an American Apparel T-shirt under there. His face, relaxed and boneless, possibly drunk, a layer of passion buried under misery, asymmetrical eyes devouring you across the aeons of time, throwing his, “I’m great with my hands,” gang sign, or is this the split fingers of some Nuremberg Guild of bad boys? Is that a jheri curl? Oh Lord, I do think so.

But honestly, I have had a hot/cold crush on Albrecht since I was in high school. If I had the chance to meet him, when he was a young man, galavanting around The Netherlands, I would ride my bike (time travel makes bike riding possible) all over town, looking for him. I know exactly what I would be wearing.

Hierapparel




I am so smitten with the organic powers of Hierapparel-- check out the etsy store. Based in Philadelphia, Hierapparel’s, art pieces, quite frankly, seem to come with history, as if each item lived with an ancient, magical human, having been preserved just for you-- the rightful descendant to carry on the line. And yet, these clothes don’t just exist on a higher plane-- they aren’t costumes-- worn by extras in an off-off broadway, tribal version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No. But these tunics, dresses and tribal adornments do seem to encourage the wearer to be ethereal, with emphasis on being REAL, earthy, and very much alive. Hierapparel uses felt, linen, bamboo, leather, canvas, and many other natural fibers to create one-of-a-kind clothing, constructed solidly, but pushing the boundaries of the enveloped body. Being encased in Hierapparel is probably the closest you’ll get to the ease, vulnerability and comfort of being naked. . . while wearing in clothes.






This is what I’m wearing after Albrecht marches up steep hill, breathless, and sees me working in the garden, like a crazy woman, at dawn. He grabs my. . . wait. . .maybe Albrecht likes humans of the male persuasion. . . I hadn’t thought of that. But, I’m so pretty like this, dirty, and beautifully dressed, your cotton-frocked Venus. . .


That’s it.
I need to take a nap.