A Girl Guerrilla

Dear Jill [Redacted],
You spoke to my artist heart, my athlete heart, to my academic heart. Your mind only worked at warp speed. When we were vibing there were sparks and also full-blown fires. We both struggled to recover from our weird white suburban upbringing - each of us with an overbearing dad with a WWII obsession. We were a scary pair, you and I. Pretty but not necessarily nice. When we held court, no topic was off-limits - from Vienna Beef to philosophy and Burberry plaid - we had opinions. You understood things about the link between colors, music, and numbers - things other people don’t know. You operated on another plane. And not just en plein air. Your talents were overwhelming, for you and for others too. You were impossible to stifle. Paintings and drawings poured out of you - color studies, construction sites, classic Chicago bungalows, and California canyons, but also prints, patterns, flowers, and plants. Capitalism crushed you, as it crushes all artists. It’s crushing me too.
We had a weed smoker’s bond. Find us in your purple minivan, Rue Vue, or that battered white suburban, spliff in one hand and a camera in the other.
Capturing and commentating.
Admiring.
Absorbing.
Being and becoming.
From Chicago to LA, I was always scared when you drove but you never crashed us. By the time I met you at SAIC in 1997 you had already spent time at Vanderbilt, in treatment, and been the sole female trader on the floor of Chicago’s notorious Board of Trade. You showed me what was possible when you were serious about art. Your example is one of the reasons that I was able to excel in grad school so many years later. Successful high school athletes, we were both forged in the sleeting Fall rain and hot humid summers of the Midwest. We knew how to take our bodies to the limit. Your body had a hard limit and you suffered for it. Your spine was fused with a titanium rod, the scar ran the full length of your perfect posture. You could not sit, lie or stand for too long and in those early days, I always gave you my only chair. One day you came across your X-ray and when you held it up to the light we both cried. But it didn’t hold you back. You taught and played tennis, keeping a “tennis camp” in the trunk of your car. You rollerbladed, ice-skated and become a formidable martial artist.
I looked up to you a lot and for that reason, I expected more from you. That wasn’t fair.
Of course, I took a million photographs of you, and thank the gods because I need them now to get me through this. But the image that I see in my heart I never captured on film.
In the late 90s, myself and other morning commuters in downtown Chicago might catch a glimpse of you. Blazing down Wabash Avenue, under the L. Rollerblading at lightning speed through rush hour, narrowly avoiding cars, pot holes, and pedestrians. Headphones on, you were pushing a cart full of oil paints, an easel, brushes and stretcher bars. A tai chi sword strapped to your back. Dirty blond tangles whipping in the wind behind you.
A woman warrior.
An aberration.
One could almost not believe their eyes to see you there.
An amalgamation of the future and the past, formidable but with all the trappings of someone more delicate. Impossible to place. By lunch, one would have convinced themselves that they had imagined that girl. But, I saw you. We were both there. "There she goes!" I thought and I caught your eye and you flashed me a quick peace sign.
My friend, the world is dimmer without you in it. But like all true supernovas, your light still reaches me and always will.

Until we meet again, friend.

 

A note on the photograph: 2006, Jill on a Westside Eisenhower overpass at dusk. Shot on film (645) with a hand held flash ©missyweimer

Related posts: Suburban Problems, Dear [Redacted], Frank