Unofficial Autobiography

She was born with a blue and white sticker on her forehead proclaiming: Future Artist. When she was one or two, she inhaled paint thinner and slept in the airtent overnight at the Corning Hospital. When she was three or four, a stranger stopped her parents and her as they were walking home to ask if he could take a Polaroid of the family. He handed her father a slowly developing print of her grinning little self and her parents' calves and feet.

When she was five or six, she sang singsongingly almost nonstop and wore skirts with motorcycles and rainbows on them. When she was seven or eight, she began taking modern dance lessons and played the role of Peck-A-Bit in a play called, The Little Red Hen. When she was nine or ten, she went Girlscout camping in the rain and made grotesque faces in flashlight beams by flipping around her bionator in her mouth.

When she was eleven or twelve, she laughed hysterically for hours on end over seemingly nothing at all. When she was thirteen or fourteen, her eyes were suddenly huge when her glasses were no longer needed as she petted the royal goat and chatted with South Africans in the Tube. When she was fifteen or sixteen, she sported a shrill cockney accent and plaid orange and black polyester suit. When she was seventeen or eighteen, she spent much of the day in one room with her watercolor palette, favorite watercolor brush, and mix tape after mix tape.

When she was nineteen or twenty, she grappled with the college question and the saga of art vs. making a living began. When she was twenty-one or twenty-two, she devoted her days to heartbreak and resiliency. When she was twenty-three, she toured the countryside and various landscapes of her heart. When she was twenty-four, she moved to Portland. When she was twenty-five, she lit a fire on the carpet of her brain and finally started cooking.