blog – ali w. santana

california like the bougainvillea in bloom, free sourpatch watermelon, + friends on the 22

so much green in switzerland

superior bus upholstery

hamburg, germany
one year later with these boys i found in spain
drinking fritz cola on the train
and peach rings from the vending machine

inspired by theadora walsh’s “the almond”

more almonds…
i soaked the almonds over night
i changed the water once.
the almonds are more plump now
i squeeze one between my thumb and
pointer finger
the skin, translucent and criss-crossed with veins
a stained glass window,
something holy
releases the naked flesh
in your palm.

chocolate covered
pureed, pastified
pulverized

i go to trader joe’s
again
life a loop of buying
almonds
in different forms:
butter, “mylk,” chocolate-dipped, protein bar
more almonds

do you know what i would add to this?
-pecans? walnuts? cashews? sesame seeds?
almonds.

the shape of you
the shape of us
holding each other
holding together

“The ‘kingdom of heaven’ is not something lying ‘above the earth’ or coming ‘after death’. It does not have a yesterday or a day after tomorrow, and it will not arrive in a ‘thousand years’. It is an experience of the heart. It is everywhere and it is nowhere.” – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

San Francisco, CA
i have lived in this home longer than i have lived in any single home since my childhood home at 10 years old. i think about circles a lot lately and loops and closed systems and knots, circles and cycles as a theme. coming back to my self again and again.

i wonder what it means to be an artist and expressing this part of my identity. i don’t feel very creative in my days, my life in san francisco isn’t art at the center. instead, it’s a tangent. i’m seeking balance. uninterrupted studio time reminds me how little it takes to get so many ideas out of my head and onto paper.
i reconsider what art i am making in this city, i spend a lot of time creating lived art with gatherings, my life in san francisco is very alive, it’s not in diorama form, it’s animated. it’s food, and music, and stories, and laughter, and even some tears, it’s warm and tastes like 10-spice chai sirup
i wonder about making an animation
i think about circles again

i’m starting where i’m ending where i’m beginning now again
it’s 11:54
i’m in my kitchen in my house in san francisco and i’m making a bagel.

everything got flipped on its head
with one craigslist ad, an interview on the couch
an email invitation
a walk
a concert
a couch again

honesty
recognizing
whispering
until the morning
the sun rises
over and over

thank you for the sunrises. the revolutions of time. no amount of art, no movie, or story could replace what it means to be in this body waking up over and over again. meeting myself, becoming myself

do we all kind of look related ? in a way? no? is that weird to say?

are things ok?
are you ok?
are you living fully
honestly
alive?
how is it?
inside your soul
are there little trinkets lining the sills?
is there a compost bin on the counter?
are there crumbs of love scattered
like glitter –
a ticket
a note
a sock
a hair tie
are there spots on the carpet where the rocking chair
rocks ?
are there photos on the wall
do you have a pen in your pocket?
is it overgrown in there? spewing life?
juicy fruits hanging sweet?
is it quiet in your soul?
can you hear your self there?

i cried and then i cried harder
the tears rushed over the rocks of me
i cried for all the ways i hurt
i cried for all the people i’ve hurt
i cried for anna
i cried for my ancestors and my unborn children
i cried for little al who wasn’t supposed to cry
i cried for all the people who love me
and all the people i’ve pushed away before they could
i cried for the fear of being seen
i cried for the person i could be
i wept and i watered the garden of my soul

this is the first series of art books printed by my imaginary card aboard! printing press
this style of book came out of experimenting with easy/inexpensive/fun ways to make nature journals with kids.

i like to stitch the binding, using the awl to make holes can be tedious

the books are filled with collage-like clippings from collected media, poems woven throughout, musings, and questions. some have themes

1. cereal OK
2. 4
3. WOAH
4. scaffold
5. bees ok
6. so little
7. this book is for your secrets
8. ode to mothers and vessels and things that hold things
9. nt up
10. inside the world of the Honeybee

bonus: circuitry

if i’m honest, my health has been less than top notch these days and my body is sore and i’m tired and stitching books and cutting things up and mixing up bits from different places feels really good.

i’ve also enjoyed teaching my friends how to make their own amalgamated books and that has been fun for me too.

let me teach you how to make a book !

stitching with felt? why not!

bonus points for the way this craft brings friends together

the best day of my life is a long way away
Like a long long way away

I’m one hundred and three years old
I wake up when the Sun rises
Birds singing
I move slowly and intentionally
slip on my house shoes, descend the wooden stairs built into the corner

Papery skin, spotted with age

motes of dust dance in beams of light

At the door I sit on a little wooden bench that I built
I switch my shoes to the right ones for the morning dew

Sun rises and I walk between the Apricot trees, Peaches, Plums, the Air is so sweet
Rooster crows,
The land is ripe
The Earth is ripe
Everything is perfect
Nothing hurts

I feel the first warm rays
I return to step into the pool.
I bathe
I hear laughing

so many people rising
stretching
gathering
hugs , kisses

We collect eggs from the Chickens
fry and soft boil them
toast bread, homemade
fresh Peaches, so juicy, mature, nearly jam

This is how the best day of my life begins.

How do you think your best day would begin?

where heaven touches earth. i can close my eyes and smell the humid summer greenness, warm grass, tomato plants, crickets chirping. there was nothing wrong with me at papa’s. love was unconditional there, i could trade a backscratch for an ice cream sandwich and play with the bunnies in the chicken coop all day. a place where i could just be. forever searching for something, someone, somewhere that feels so much like home

love where i am

free sha vaca do for you
a weird time down by the bay
i wish u’d stay

and you know that if they said it
you wouldn’t believe them
but you still want to hear them say it
anyway
so we play this game
we say things and
believe
each other
until we no longer mean it
or no longer believe it
until we stop lying and
pretending
slowly and then all at once
we stop dancing

let our love be made up of the moments only we witness side by side your eyes are mine

In the Twin Peaks universe garmonbozia symbolizes pain and suffering.
It’s creamed corn.
In the non-twin-peaks universe it’s oatmeal.
Its characterless morbid banality the texture of depression.
I’m not sure which precedes the other. Do sad people eat oatmeal or are they sad because they eat lifeless bowls of mush for breakfast? Spooning up their slop. Masticating their cud.

I poured my quarter cup of oats into my bowl each morning. Half a serving for half a life.

Some people will tell you they like oatmeal.
They’re lying. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe only liars suspect liars.
I used to tell my nutritionist that apples were my favorite food. Apples.

I sat in my professor’s office eating my second meal of the day, the half of my apple remaining after cooking the other in my oatmeal that morning.
“Apples are good for you, but make sure you’re eating other things too” she said with a knowingness that hung heavy in the air.
We discussed my final paper on food accessibility on college campuses.
I was cold, hungry, and grey.

My dog is dying.
She is starving. She eats and pukes, then eats her puke. She’s crying.

I’m eating oatmeal.

lately my identity feels more like a “how” than a “what”
less like something that i can buy at the store
and more like the way i enter a room
not a sticker,
not a label,
fluid,
being,
sacred, movement,
dancing,
singing,

joy

we stumble through london at night
smoke cigarettes, take wrong turns, and stop in our tracks bent over with laughter
in search of contact solution
thank you to the man at the gas station
the little boy i used to make believe with playmobil
laying on the carpet with an atlas
studying flags
imagining the world beyond our four walls
a real life dream

young love
geckos
playing cards and wine
waterfalls and coconuts
when we’re bored we play in the woods
ukuleles
home

hitch-hiking
pete special
mosquito bites
coqui coqui
sticky lips
freckled skin
life alive
freedom

i’m on my bike in the dark morning hours
the October air chills my nose

i ride by the construction site
the men lace up their boots

in the light of the full moon i remember where i come from

unconditional
persistent

i ride hard
foot pushing pedal
moving forward

warm morning smells from the cozy houses
freshly fried doughnuts from the shop on the corner

“chocolate with sprinkles!”
“glazed twist!”
we yelled as she pulled out of the driveway the night before

“see you in the morning, my little monkeys!” she waved

i remember who i come from

I find myself dancing alone on my little borrowed balcony at sunset.

It’s a November sunset. What felt like the middle of the afternoon just a couple months ago is somehow now the tipping point into night.

I look out on all the houses that surround me, a typical Dutch scene, brick houses with little porch gardens, a set of dumbells on one, and a butternut squash on another. Sincerely lacking any need for privacy, the Dutch all leave their windows uncovered and I can see right into the living spaces. Dinners being prepped in early evening lamplight, families gathering, days coming to an end.

The music flows through me and I feel free, anyone can see me and I love that.

I dance, “home is where I want to be, pick me up and turn me ‘round”

The song is older than I am.

The song is older than I once thought I would ever be.

As a kid, I always longed to be home. Even when I was there.

I longed to be somewhere where chairs weren’t flying, where there was no hiding, lying or cheating.

Eventually my home became a backpack, and suitcase that moved with me every friday night between 2 small yellow houses.

My body was the only thing that stuck with me. It was the one thing that stayed the same from place to place but that started to change too. Then it started breaking down. I felt betrayed. I hated everything for falling apart and being so inconsistent. I wanted there to be some stability. I wanted a pillar in my mind that was mine that wasn’t going to crumble. I envied everyone else with their one home and one mom and one dad.

I gradually became obsessed with this illusion that I had in my mind of what order was. Over the years I meticulously kept track of all my things. I packed everything a certain way, made my life as compact and portable as possible. I was a swiss army knife, practical and small, theoretically ready for anything but not really capable of much more than trimming a loose thread.

I limited everything about myself, the space I took up, the thoughts I had, and the dreams I allowed myself. Everything felt finite. If it didn’t fit in my pack I wouldn’t take it.

So I did what I knew how to do best, I packed my things and I moved. And I learned. I learned that home was not a college dorm where I could keep all my things together for more than a week. It was not a boy’s bed or a girl’s. It was not at the bottom of a pipe or a bottle. It was not at the gym or in a swimming pool.

I just kept packing up and moving my things. Then there was 1 move. I had all my things packed but I didn’t know where I was going to go. I slept on my friend’s couch. I didn’t have a home. I had nowhere to go and I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to destroy the conduit for this pain and loneliness. If I burned down the house it wouldn’t need an address.

I laced up my boots in the dark tiny hours of January 13th, 2015 and started walking through the snow. My next memory is shivering on a bed in the hallway of an emergency room. The fluorescent lights hummed cold and blue. A thousand heated blankets could not melt the frozen thing inside me. But I did have a place to go now. My new home was a room on the east wing of the psychiatric unit. A shared room with a lady who stood over me in her sleep-walking state. I wasn’t allowed to shower or use the bathroom alone, I couldn’t use a knife, or go outside.

Home was a place I was trying to find until I gave up.

The only home I had to fall back on was the one that was there all along. I had fought it, lied to it and denied it for years but it was there waiting for me to return. My body taught me unconditional love. Despite it all, my body was ready to carry me away, to take me to new places, to let me hug my mom again and walk my dog.

Seasons came and went and my body shed death like trees in the fall.

My body brought me to all the things in the world I could have missed seeing, people I could have missed meeting, and food I could have missed eating.

My heart overflowed with love. The joy rose up inside and poured out of me like a river bursting down a dam. My hands began creating rather than destroying. I sculpted art and shared it with the world. I made people smile. My feet took me everywhere I needed to go. I moved to new houses, a purple house, a red house and a house with 100 bikes but anywhere I went, I was home.

My body took me to a new continent where I can be part of the home I always longed for. Parents are home in the morning to have breakfast with their kids before school, they’re there in the evenings for dinner, they’re there to hold each other when they cry. They play and they dance, they make a mess, and make mistakes, and it’s all OK.

I’m not perfect, I can’t always keep up and sometimes the love is a little overwhelming. But I’m learning. I’m learning how to show up and be here everyday. I still feel weird sometimes when I get to the “permanent address” section of a form. I don’t have one. Because I’m not a permanent address. I’m not static, I’m a dynamic being in constant motion. My dreams are as boundless as this ever-expanding universe. I am grateful for every move, every change in direction, and unexpected obstacle, because it’s all helped me to learn,

“Home is where I want to be,

But I guess I’m already there.”