Life Outside NY Part 8: Ghosttownloverland

The first half of my winter was painted brilliant with the sting of salty waves and skies painted vivid shades of ombre sunset and star belly. I found myself, again, as a Sea Gypsy... the ocean spoke to me in a way she hasn't in many years. In that language that she speaks she reminded me of how small-yet powerful-I truly am when placed beside the threshold of her beautiful mass. I found a muse in her again.

The second half of the chapter that comprises this dark season is one that is filled with the most beautifully haunted ghosts I have ever known. Ghosts and heavy lucid dreams. I am materializing their voices into existence in a new collection of dresses. I have been spending time with them in my urban sanctuary of lost solitude often. Many nights you will find me on a bicycle prowling the streets of West Oakland, searching for them beneath the exquisitely emaciated decay of broken old factories, and the high whistling notes of crackheads crippled hustle. I am in love with them, these beautiful ghosted dreamers that no one else but me can seem to see. Sometimes they come inside of me, give me a little chill, but they are always delicate and kind.

I have been to many ghost towns this season. In my dreams and my waking life. Sometimes they pour themselves into my sleep, and lick my spine with their icy whispers, asphyxiating me in their vividly haunting stories-gorgeous and horrific all at once. Sometimes I crawl inside their cold and broken buildings, in search of something, but I'm not quite sure what... perhaps some new inspiration. Perhaps some alternate reality where I will find an obscured parallel of myself from the past. All I know is that the ghosts know things the rest of us don't. The beautiful abandoned spaces they occupy have stories that words will never, ever be capable of telling.

I guess through all of this brilliant suffocation of exploring the otherworlds, I've come to understand the phrase "life after death" in a new light-one which is shrouded in the most intoxicatingly beautiful opacity I've ever been lucky enough to drown in.