WARMTH

I come here when I think I've figured something out.

I've deduced (decided) that my life lacks warmth. I think that is why everything's making me cry (poems, plays, glimmers of brick): no hugs, no sunlit rooms, no heart-to-hearts, no loud music, no pets, no plants, no singing in the shower, no vanilla extract. This is a list of very silly things but god do these things make me ache. I chose so many things but I feel trapped (in a small way). When I'm unhappy, when I feel trapped, I resent the wrong things (people). This weekend I will fill up on warmth and try again. Try to bring it here.

this is how we breathe

everything reminds me of everyone! pups and books and trees and hands and faces. which is how we know anything. and it all changes. what a thing. water glasses! imitations! god i love pretending things. the idea of things.

ideas and symbols and messages. i've talked to some people who underestimate the largeness of those and that's been a source of many of my frustrations lately. that, and knowing when someone else just isn't going to get it. or me. maybe there's no it. getting each other. i need to (like to) practice.

i really want to talk about god! but not theology. just everyone's fucked up ideas about spirits and decaying and cats and you and i.

...

rage, riot, rile, rrrrr

i'm not actually mad about anything right now, i just like getting revved up about stuff. rrrrs = action, seems like.

we're starting a girl band. we're going to call ourselves 'bag of hair.' when i told will i said it's a name kind of like feminist art and he brought up the exact adrian piper piece i was thinking about. what will become of me?

ghosts!! existentially, that is what i think. i will become (am) an idea in other peoples' minds, memories, consciousnesses (is there a better way to pluralize that?) and i'll ghost around, linger. until i don't. maybe i'll have a gravestone and some kid will run a crayon over some paper over my name and that will be me, a ghost ghost ghost.

i don't know entirely what we'll sound like, but i want our band to sound like a genre that doesn't exist: feathercore.
(i work for that company now, btb.)

one time for work i had to strap a male underwear model into a pair of black costume wings and while i did we talked about ghosts. so now we're kind of chummy. after the wings were placed correctly i moved away and bopped his shoulder in a chummy way, but then he wasn't wearing a shirt so it was skin-to-skin. that was kind of weird because i hardly ever knock people on the shoulder in a chummy way and i've never chummily punched a shirtless person. but i don't really want to be chummy with models. i just want to hear about spirits and radio noise and brownstones.

[ Fundación Rara Avis on flickr ]

There’s probably something annoying and redundant about some guy in 2009 talkin’ on a literature blog about how Ulysses changed his life, but here we are: after reading Ulysses, every trite minutiae of my days seemed veiled in an empathetic sheen, like, even though [my] life still sucked, at least it sucked while quivering in its own beauty — that we are empowered to edit our perception on things, and that our petty micro is philosophically macro. Joyce taught me (D.F. Wallace does this too) that the heart and mind can be friends, and just now and then, such good friends they are.

When I started reading these Ulysses excerpts I was getting pretty frustrated (bored). When Jimmy Chen wrote a bit about why he quoted those passages, though, they became so much more relevant. That's a lot of what I want in life--tell me why this is relevant; what will this do for us? what have I overlooked?

"...we are empowered to edit our perception on things...our petty micro is philosophically macro."

God, I dig that.

please return undamaged but not unchanged

i'm thinking about jumping ship.

wordpress or maybe even just tumblr from here on out.
i'm tired of everything! i resent everything!
ahahahaha, that is not true at all.

pastimes, summer drives, dams and dogs, enchanting hands, and long letters.
i resent none of these things.

i wish i would have thought about medium a lot more while i was in school.
there is still a lot of time. there are a few less possibilities, but there are many more, many other, possibilities.

oblique bellies

'Fill every beat with something'

oblique strategies twitter
(one of the few redeeming things about twitter)

**

Bellies are funny. Penguins can slide around on them. I think that's great.

Fabienne: I was looking at myself in the mirror.
Butch: Uh-huh?
Fabienne: I wish I had a pot.
Butch: You were lookin' in the mirror and you wish you had some pot?
Fabienne: A pot. A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy.
Butch: Well you should be happy, 'cause you do.
Fabienne: Shut up, Fatso! I don't have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did "Lucky Star," it's not the same thing.
Butch: I didn't realize there was a difference between a tummy and a pot belly.
Fabienne: The difference is huge.
Butch: You want me to have a pot?
Fabienne: No. Pot bellies make a man look either oafish, or like a gorilla. But on a woman, a pot belly is very sexy. The rest of you is normal. Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but with a big, perfectly round pot belly. If I had one, I'd wear a tee-shirt two sizes too small to accentuate it.
Butch: You think guys would find that attractive?
Fabienne: I don't give a damn what men find attractive. It's unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.

**

One of the best things about having friends is that they boost you up. Agreeing to boost each other up, that's a big deal.

restless

less rest less rest

Lately I have been sleeping very poorly. I am trying to self-diagnose but I don't know how useful that is because I just change small physical things haphazardly and can't tell if anything's helping.

I think I still get jazzed about some things but lately I feel weary. I wish I could tell people when I think they are lousing things up and I wish I could be honest more often. I've been trying in small doses and mostly it goes over alright. Sometimes I think I think too much but most of the time I think I don't think enough at all. Not in the right ways, anyhow.

I wish that things could surprise me. I don't know if anything has for a long time. People are horrible and that's not surprising and people are kindhearted and that's not too surprising. Life is disappointing and I can't be surprised by that because I'm always preparing myself for life to be disappointing. And sometimes life sparkles and that's not surprising because I expect that, too. I read once that parents should quit telling their kids they are special. I'm wondering if my sort of constantly unfazed state is the culmination of years of being told/thinking I'm the shit while simultaneously hating myself a lot. Over the last couple years I have worked hard on letting things blow over, on calming down and appreciating everything. So I freaked out a lot and didn't expect it or know what to do and now I freak out a lot less and nothing is surprising. I sit around for lengthy periods of time, wander, flounder, think about feelings, laugh with people, cry at commercials, and I face more of the same for years and years. And that is not surprising. Self-diagnosis.

I could do anything.
I could do nothing.
That is not surprising.
That is not surprising.



When we go north to visit my family I sleep on a twin bed in a room with twin twin beds. My twin aunts slept on these mattresses thirty years ago. The beds sink with any pressure, but they are permanently curved, worn into a curve, anyways. The sheets are seventies and the blankets are seventies and everything is a little faded and a little soft.

clawhammer

sexy

i have this grouping of friends, who aren't all friends with each other, but a group. in my mind, a group. they are people who i admire a lot but don't really know all that well, assembled over a few years and more important than the might seem, given our various kinds of distance. maybe the not knowing helps. with them i don't keep in touch very often but when we catch up it is a big deal. for me at least. sometimes it is just a punchy sentence. sometimes we have big conversations, the kind that have to end only because it's been hours and legs are asleep and meals have been missed. last week i had coffee with one of my old friends from high school and it was five hour coffee. with some people i think i admire them in secret and that they don't know. but i think viv and i admire each other equally and that is so nice. we think about things in somewhat different ways, the head-tilting kind, but also get it. she is the only person i know who can call things like design 'sexy' without me thinking it's really smarmy.

heart

Does love exist?
Yes.

Does romantic love exist?
I don't know.

What do you think?
[this is for you]

Is it relevant?
[for you]

trophy

"Chester Chops" -chipmunk trophy, originally uploaded by EllenJo.

and more pieces (like a puzzle)

"The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning."
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

*

We are happy in our way of life.
It doesn’t make much sense to others. We sit about,
Read, and are restless. Occasionally it becomes time
To lower the dark shade over it all.
Our entity pivots on a self-induced trance
Like sleep. Noiseless our living stops
And one strays as in a dream
Into those respectable purlieus where life is motionless and alive
To utter the few words one knows [...]

We need the tether
Of entering each other’s lives, eyes wide apart, crying.

- "Parergon" by John Ashbery

*

"When we apprehend the auditor’s mediating role, we have to reconnect the speaker’s main point (ergon) with what is beside the point (parergon), but the poem itself never confirms that our framing is accurate."
- Joseph A. Dupras on Browning's "My Last Duchess"

*

Collapsing, tethering, framing.
Beside the point.
(In both ways)

digifriends

Sarah linked to this CGI ad on her tumblr and I wondered if someday kids will like CGI caterpillars better than real ones. Different kinds of astonishment, I guess.

Also wondering about "The Last Question," one of Timo's favorite short stories. I suppose you might not want to read this before you read the story. One wondering thing: would we ever actually want to leave our bodies behind, even for the ease of connecting minds directly? What about art and music and braids and texture? What about dancing? What about high-fives? But also, what about violence? What about waste? It is hard to know what is disposable. Another wondering thing: does the Last Question become the first? Or do we think of it continually? I don't know that that works--there would be no last. Maybe outside of time?

At first I didn't care for the story much because of the build-up to a revelation (I dislike that about many short stories; it feels formulaic) but I suppose that sort of revelation also brings about a decent amount of contemplation and reflection so perhaps it's useful. In any case I liked "The Last Question," I think.

panic

santa sangre

the scene where alma puts her hands over fenix's eagle tattoo, making flight, is something i think about when i wish i felt light. less burdened.
i can carry that with me but i can't find a photo or the clip.

oh no

crushing realization of today: i am no longer eligible for the college edition of wheel of fortune. i have not been eligible for teen editions for a rather long time. now i've just got regular best friends, mother-daughter (my dad would be an acceptable silent prop i guess), or i can hope to miraculously end up with dolly parton as my partner for country week. i need to start watching sports; they love pairing up tall athletes and weird fans.

nightstands

[ radiospike's flickr ]

Books and lamps and glasses (both kinds).
Nightstands get the best friends.

[ tnatsni's flickr ]

writing, art

"Writing is considered a profession, and I don't think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy."

A Vocation of Unhappiness, Georges Simenon (1903-1985)

I like the idea of an imperative to write and create. I think that need is true, because I think that need is a need to express and make connections. But why the unhappiness? Art is always a bit imperfect, a bit short in communicating what the artist wants to convey. But that drives the art, right? Always moving towards ideals (and failing)? With art maybe that ideal is something like significant form (I disagree with him and the Bloomsberries a lot but holla atcha Clive Bell, significant form is kind of cool) but I don't see why we don't live our whole lives trying for impossible things, knowing they are impossible. If I can live my life knowing that it will always be imperfect but that I am working towards figuring things out (and never will), doing good things (and also lousing things up a lot), then that still feels very happy to me. If attempts to connect are even slightly successful, that is a big deal. I think that feels very happy to me.

free time

Now that I am graduated and unemployed I have a lot of time to think about things that maybe do not deserve too much thought. I have already contemplated writing essays on female community in "Practical Magic," and the sincerity at work in blogs like Sexy People.

I would really like to choose a home and settle in so that I can discuss these things with friends instead of with a non-existent internet audience.

*

even if she had the time, to save her moments
in words, the way she kept buttons in a box,
and was assured of the support to write them all down.

— “The Famous Jewish-Russian Poet Termanovsky” by Philip Terman

thanks for this

Short film by George Wu, inspired by Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes.


*

I want to sit in sunny rooms and read about books all the time.
I want to sit in sunny rooms and think about hands and creating and texture and evident paint and connections.

rest

originally uploaded by chocolee.

photos of beds really hit something right right now.

patches

-hui+.

"at your earliest convenience"

form
ality

costumes

these shoes are in love. these shoes are busted.

since i am trying to find a job and since that job will probably require toning down my outward appearance i have been thinking i should try to appreciate and utilize my freedom here a bit more. i am not sure if wearing a flowered housecoat outdoors is too much. it has snaps instead of buttons. it has really great sleeves.

who am i kidding?

ends

is this how it ends
with a whimper in the place of a bang


*


i have a horrible memory for album titles and song names (and geography, history, facts in general). i would have made such a horrible 80s sweetheart.
easily impressed, though.

real things

- hopefuldoubtful

how do you go about making someone a friend who talks to you about real things?
maybe i already have as many real things friends as i'm supposed to have
but circling around real things is hard, too.
someone has to just start?

snatches

-hui+

Click here to recover the last item you were working on



the letter M that two people holding hands make

pieces

Upon the sand - hopefuldoubtful

i have loved while thinking only of the cost



as quickly as practical



your lives are going to be in rhythm



enjoy your worries you may never have them again

hairy armed women liberationists

having a pretty life does not make your life pretty.


i got a big envelope from financial aid. most of it was a generic packet so that was a relief. then there was one sheet with huge numbers on it and that was scary. i kind of don't imagine i will be alive to have to deal with that--i don't have the self-continuity or the foresight to imagine big numbers ever mattering to me.


in addition to all of the weird things i wonder if i should start pursuing a less beautiful life. i think i have a two-year cycle for running away. keep moving south? keep moving east?


little joy is a good phrase, a good name.


feeling disappointed with people is awful when i want to spend my time appreciating everyone before we are scattered (physically). (that is the problem. we are scattered, just not physically (yet). but i don't want to admit that. i only like pretending about some things.)


i do think that nuances matter. that details matter. reading the world from too many directions and with a magnifying glass. working out orders of operations and then stretching the parentheses and admiring it all askew instead of summing it up.

far away

Usually I really like storms but tonight I was home alone and it got dark and rain and hail pelted my window and I got scared. I wanted company but everyone was far away. I flossed and spent a long time tidying up in the bathroom because pretending to be in a safe space feels less scary than going to a safe space on purpose, even if you know you're pretending the whole time. I called home and it calmed down while I talked to my dad. I called home and there was a lot of lightning while I talked to my friend. I was warned about the horrors of knee surgery and then we had to hang up. They say you should face your fears so I put on shoes and went outside. I tripped and almost fell down the stairs on the way. I worried about knee surgery. Then I went outside and listened to old voicemails. I felt like I needed something to do. It was warmer than I expected. I thought about how my life is beautiful and I should not be sad. Nobody else was outside and I liked that. It is funny how being by yourself is really nice but really lonely. So now I am going to put the sheets on my bed. They are crumpled and they will be wrinkled because I waited too long but I guess it doesn't matter, it's kind of nice.

moving

everyone great is from alabama:

hank williams
harper lee
al green
emmylou harris

maybe i shouldn't be moving to new york?

bare things

spring, blossoms

summer, lakes

i read messages that i know i'm going to delete because the unread messages count in my deleted items folder is '123' and i don't want it to change.

double meanings

i spend a great deal of time learning how to read things many ways. i'm not sure what that means for life.

the ways in which words reveal and conceal emotions

long blinks

nothing can be uncharacteristic because everything is characteristic because we are all sorts of things (anything?) and that is so exciting! don't hold back!

why do i want to cry instead of learning about things i care about? don't hold back?

god i am a mess.

the way the world looks from under the covers

it is really hard to have secrets. and to know who will understand those secrets. or try to understand? it is terrifying to think someone might get it and not care.

i think mostly i am able to be a pretty optimistic person because i like to do what i want and i like to think hardly anything is impossible and because unexpected things can be so important. and i think that some other people must think similarly and that is a very hopeful thing. it is a very scary thing to think that i could be mistaken about other people thinking similarly. or any of it.

is this familiar

warmer weather is nice because birds chirp and ears are warm and headphones don't seem so necessary.

i have a twelve-disc hank williams cd set. that is a lot to work through. i wonder about it sometimes, but i have a beautiful little life. i am going to move my beautiful little life to new york soon and i hope it will be a beautiful life there, too.

i like talking about things and pretending about things more than i like a lot of actual things. spending impossible lengths of time in booths and on sidewalks and voices wear out. i've worn a lot of holes into socks and tights this year. that has never happened to me before. i have a lot of things to mend.

four beds within one week and my shoulders are knotty. i thought about working on preparing some future things before tucking in for the night but i am feeling heavy eyelids so soon.

oh good. my sweet hearted friend from home called with all sorts of happy things to tell me.

pieces of the internet

slowing down heartbeats

wauw

...and find the scratches on our thighs from adventures through tall grass and sleep soundly at night.

our splendid failure to do the impossible

what if you loved everything you've ever put in brackets?
(in any sense/in every sense)

would you object?

words that were not mine (even this)

What are friends for, my mother asks.
A duty undone, visit missed,
casserole unbaked for sick Jane.
Someone has just made her bitter.

Nothing. They are for nothing, friends,
I think. All they do in the end-
they touch you. They fill you like music.

Rosellen Brown

*

The River

The river I have under my tongue
Unimaginable water, my little boat,
And curtains lowered, let's speak.

Paul Eluard

*

The Garden

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.

She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.

Ezra Pound

improvise, hang loose, stay cool

I like the word "jubilee."

I called my auntie a day late to wish her a happy birthday but she didn't mind.

Delhi time and Daylight Savings time got me kind of confused.

Plus I just didn't remember in time.

Still, having a landline and the time to call is so nice.

So is cruising around with the windows down and Salt n Pepa slinging bad rhymes.

violence

My day today is full of Frantz Fanon arguing for a violent anti-colonial revolution and Robert Hemenway arguing that "Brer Rabbit exhibits the revolutionary consciousness necessary to survive in an oppressive system. He suggests that no order can be depended on for very long, that there are no certainties, that goodness may win this week but power the next. What is certain is the need to improvise, to hang loose, stay cool, avoid sticky situations, shun rigid interpretations of events. Brer Rabbit shows that anarchy undermines all systems which mask reality. His lessons inculcate a revolutionary consciousness because they teach that one never has to accept limitations on the self, that one can never be denied the radical possibilities of being human."


The Wretched of the Earth + Brer Rabbit stories.
I am in love with this.

seriously, yeah

i had a realization!

i am fed up with a lot of things in my life.
some of these things are my fault.
some of these things are things i let get out of hand.
some of these things just need perspective and i will try to love them again soon.

*

this is the thing:

The World says

"You don't get to know anything"

and I think that is true so I say

"Ok, you too."


.
.
.
except i think The World was lying and now look where i am. i was lying, too.


what to do what to do?




what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for what are we waiting for

logoff

ghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghostsghosts

i think i would have an easier time being open if i weren't always afraid that i won't make any sense to anyone else.
i think being misunderstood is a pretty legitimate fear, but maybe one i shouldn't allow to be so influential.

except that's not true. maybe not not true at all, but still not true. i think people say so much if you pay attention. misunderstanding isn't the fear, the fear is the lack of understanding. of the attempt to understand. the things that are provided. that i provide. i think.

i'm tired. i just want to hold my hands on my ribcage.

pathetic fallacy

I have to remind myself every now and then that being happy for other people is one of my favorite things. The other side of that, though, is that being sad for (with) other people is kind of devastating. I'm not sure if these balance.



Today it is raining.
All of the sidewalks will probably freeze and living outside my fake livingroom will be dangerous.

time

It is strange to think that people have been staying up late for hundreds of years.

12 credit final semester is a great set up. Every once in a while I think I should add another class and then I remember that that would stress me out.

I feel really old. I am excited for our futures.

old things, new things

sleeping in too late

eating cake with hands

confidants

148 hours

voice cracks

impressions

pool locker rooms

musty boots, musky hair

collecting light

* * *

happy 2009