TATI LUBOVISKI-ACOSTA
“Everyone Thinks I’m White, Except White People”
Opening Reception: DECEMBER 15, 8pm – MIDNIGHT
“…after i touched god and had an imperfect notion of his being, i wanted to prostrate myself, my forehead and my heart, in the dust and never get up again.”
-concepción cabrera de armida, mexican mystic
there is a violence to my devotion. i’ve walked on my knees, beaten my breasts, cut my hair in offering, and set myself on fire: casually, accidentally, drunkenly.
there will be a lot of imagery from my childhood, a scary time for me: lace curtains, fake flowers, religious candles, a chicken. fire. an explosion at a duplex my grandmother owned killed a little girl my own age twenty years ago, and all that was left was her hand. i think this might have been what i imagine doing to my own body-tearing myself apart and self-immolating, then imagining my skeleton wrapping itself in the ashes of my flesh and then swimming.
swimming is an important mourning and cleansing practice. i wish i did it more. i’d really like to live by the ocean/sea one day and swim every morning instead of taking a shower-just have one long cry in the waves and imagine my snot and tears mixing with salt and everyone else’s piss and the essence of everything dead and alive from the bottom to the within. one of the stipulations of my will states that part of my ashes are to be scattered in the los angeles river and the other part over the golden gate bridge on the bay side-close to those rocks that look like witchy, rotten fingernails and the water is still and tri-colored, like some sort of easter tundra (i think it’s like that because it’s where the bay and the ocean meet, just like how there are heron where the ocean and the river meet). both of those are illegal, but my other option-to be buried in a shroud in the chaparral somewhere-is even more illegal. something having to do with ground water, i think.
i used to imagine my best friend-a girl with whom i highly suspect i may actually be in love with, but i think more in the victorian letter writing sense-dying, and the thought alone would devastate me. i’d then continue to imagine myself asking her parents for time with her body, and i’d surround her body with sliced onions, so i could weep as i wailed. i’d bathe her with those tears. i’d then cut off all of my hair and my clothing and burn them, and just wrap myself in those ashes. after, i’d lie down next to her for maybe twenty-four hours, and just hold her hand.
often, i can’t be able to sleep for a few days after thinking this up.