when the smaller picture's the same as the bigger picture, you know that you're fucked.

i feel like i was looking so hard for the bigger picture-- but only in one corner of the smaller picture. which makes no sense.

today was my ciocia marie's funeral.

my grandmother was there, i haven't seen her since i was probably 12 or 13. my grandfather's death, and her ridiculous behaviour has a lot to do with why i am the way i am, i guess. when all of that happened, i went from being the kid i am in the pictures on the refrigerator, to being very gothic and suicidal. i'm not very much like that anymore, but i still feel like my life has a lot of disturbingly dark aspects that i don't really ever talk about.

but i got to see my cousins.

when ree lived in tennessee for a short time as a child, she moved there from pennsylvania. in pennsylvania, there was no segregation on buses, but in tennessee of course, prior to the civil rights movement, there was. now in pennsylvania, little five-year-old ree loved to sit in the back of the bus. but in tennessee, that was where the black people sat. of course, she didn't know that, and when they tried to get her to move, she wouldn't move to the front of the bus.
it was the reverse rosa parks.
she and her mother had to go to jail.

then her and her mother (my ciocia marie) were going to go live in north africa, where her father was stationed, so they packed up all of their belongings and had them shipped there. but war broke out just as they were to move, and the plane with all of their possessions was shot out of the sky.
needless to say, they never ended up in africa.

somehow, they ended up in new york, living with zippy, an ex-space-monkey who drank beer every night, and going to rockaway beach in the height of it's popularity with john glenn, the astronaut.

the rockaway beach apartment is still there, even though marie is dead, so i was going to try to get some people together and go to new york for the weekend, and stay in the apartment.

but they're all going to be on the trip to florida, which i can't afford, because i'm paying for my ticket to asia this summer. sigh.

this post is so long, but a lot happened.

it was like a novel, massively huge confrontations, all while i'm looking exceptionally striking at 6'2" in heels, wearing a black mini-dress by jonathan saunders. fabulous.

but i feel so much better. i was getting really down on myself, but i've just been caught in the smaller picture. i'm starting to see the bigger picture again.

i wrote this all in the bathtub.