about The Branch or how i create little messes to get myself out of when the realness of my life gets too real.

So about being patriarchal-minded, which i used to call boy-crazy when i was 13, 14.

The Branch is a fellow i noticed on the subway 2 weeks ago. i saw his sketchbook as i passed and recognized the comic/animation style. he was quietly drawing people in the subway. i sat down , conflicted. should i talk to him, should i not. why would i? my life is a catastrophe- and yet Taz are you crazy ? he's a black artist and he's very goodlooking.
so i got up and went over and said i bet people are always asking to see his sketchbook and that to make it fair that i would trade him sketchbook for sketchbook and i offered him mine to look at. he was good, i sat beside him and we talked art animation and graphic novels.
already i had recruited him in my mind as someone to collaborate with when i was going to do my graphic novel. it was a decent chat, he had a fine upstanding young man vibe about him, which i recognize more so now that i'm understanding myself as middleclassed and raised to present conservative.. he gave me his email and said to check out his blog.

that evening while writing to Azania i emailed him. turns out he was going to be up all night too. and the next night and i think the night after that. we emailed each other every few hours with a hey are you still up and little updates about how our work was coming along. it was nice to feel i had company. particularily male company who didn't know anything about my ways. i felt fully anonymous. read non accountable.

so the last message he sent i hadn't been on internet when he sent it and hadn't responded because i dreaded having to fully be like. okay this is a fleshed out picture of who i am. now do you you want to send casual e-mails. of course not. my social fluff girl is supposed to be all sparkle and creativity and receive positive male attention. so now that i'm actually choosing to be truthful with myself within Azania and now outside of Azania what will the outcome be? I think i know.

your note, mr. Branch:

Hey ,I dropped a pebble down a cliff to see if themountains would echo back.lol.

Photoshop is making my brain melt.:/


and my response:

go Haikus!

i heard a stone lightly fall

i entered the web

to answer its call


i still dont have any photos for ya(no scanner).

whatcha workin on now Photoshopwise?
do you use Illustrator at all?

i'm home sick. no work today.
but lots of writing to do still.

the computer at home is my housemates, and i have had a habit of energetically tampering with other peoples' computers, so that they're slightly off when i'm done, or have mysteriously shut down and i've lost all my work and started a panic that i may have broken it for good this time. That being the case, i'm not on this home computer as long as on as on the internet cafe computers.

thus the tumbleweeds after you've sent me a message.

but whats mostly at play is
i'm back at home. i'm back to my home reality of dealing with the fact that i've abandoned and neglected a number of important relationships (six to be exact) and through a year's worth of non-participation, blocking movement, stalling, taking but not giving i've managed to destabilize and damage the very community i said i wanted to build



more immediately i did it in the week i was chatting with you:
i still havent sent the writing is was doing at the internet cafe which was supposed to be my reflections on what i had done and honestly taking stock of what i wanted to do after a years worth of mostly silence from me.
but i did talk to you, who have been asking the easy questions like : are you up?
and making easy requests like send photos.

i stayed up all night, not sending the writings, not communicating to anyone about what i was doing or what they could expect at the end of it, but did offer them my missing work three days out of the week because i was so tired. it would be good to say here that i lived 8 months rent free with these folxs because i wasn't feeling the j-o-b, thing being an artist and all. oh wait- a light-skinned princess of an artist.

i've identified you as a
*handsome
*black
*man
*artist
*whose dedicated in his work
*who isn't going to be asking me any hard questions anytime soon.
all signs i look for when i'm taking the easy way out of relating with depth and texture. so i'm creating this moment as a fork in the road. one way is us saying hey! it's been a moment! see ya later! or the other is us saying hey! who are you? who are your peeps? who's your family? whatcha doing?tell me more.

so there you go.
pop! that's the ball in your court.
Taz