Home for the ....

(photo by Desi)



(photo by Desi)
(photo by Desi)



















(photo by Desi)


(Alice Cooper painting by Denise)

(donna's tattoo)



The house is full of sounds – cooking hisses and clangs, cell phones, gossip, groans of impatience, TV chatter, power tools grinding in the basement , babies crying or cooing… My sister and Desi have moved back in. Daneal visits with her gentle baby Abel. Chris twitches from room to room, throwing foul-mouthed jokes at my mother who pretends to be shocked. From upstairs Isaiah can be heard singing gospel songs… The house hasn’t been this crowded for as long as I can remember. Money and privacy are scarce – daily clashes inevitable. The sad fact is that the tension between everyone comes from the same qualities that make each one of them so special to me – my mom’s constant tending of her children; my father’s silence, so heavy with knowledge; my sister’s bitch queen strength and bar fighting habits; Daneal’s unending search for herself, Chris’s crazy-body physical comedy and sad, hard eyes; and of course, Desi’s ferocious awareness, anger, and the brilliant, dissatisfied wit she launches at all and everything in her path. They all carry their own conflicting weather pattern within them. On a minute to minute basis they come together, storm violently, come together again, storm again… The year has been free of the dramas that took place in the film, so petty ones have set in. They make me crazy but I love all the electricity they put in the air. As always they manage a good laugh at their own expense, give a sigh that shows their weariness with it all, and keep rolling on.