I'll disappoint you, too.

The doctor gives me a paper bag and demonstrates how to breathe with it, my hands are cupped over my mouth and I feel ridiculous and old and tired. I am disoriented. There are giraffes and rats and zoo animals arranged on the yellow walls and my vision blurs when I focus on the donkey holding a piñata next to the bear throwing confetti, parading next to a speculum and a list of abortion clinics pinned to the wall. What the fuck is going on. I look at the doctor suspiciously, wondering if she sees the animals too. She smiles at me and opens her mouth, trying to communicate something. I see her face move so I try to match mine with hers. Is this the way you want my mouth to move? For two months I only felt comfortable a) in bed b) sitting in a hospital waiting room c) with a man inside me.

I am an infant emerging into a hostile world too bright for new eyes. I don’t know how to breathe here anymore. Teach me to breathe, teach me how to take things into myself so that they do not destroy me, teach me protection, teach me to kill and construct my idols. I am an open capsule for you to slide your ideas into and my skin will stretch accordingly. My body is layered like an accordion, rip open one side and see how the layers collapse into one another when exposed to air, fine paper-thin divides strung and stitched to ribs, compressed. I will let you suck the meat off my bones if you play my body, joyfully, like an instrument I will open to you and let the air in, all my cavities are full of you and the wet snow and the music you make when I am absent.

Our story is biblical
lapses into silences
falls in and out of other histories
loops beneath
supporting, cradling
the grand narratives of strangers
conquering multitudes
murdering single
vulnerable
bodies
holding themselves out to you,
wanting something

I like clichés, sometimes. Like when you bite the back of my neck and tell me
You are a lioness only tamed through violence

Comedy, tragedy, tragi-comedy?

"If I was a dude I would never get laid."
"Me neither. Girls would hate us.
...never mind, I'd probably get lots of chicks."

...

"He was doing a Mr.Rogers thing tonight, I didn't like it."
"I normally love him. Tonight he annoyed me."
"I thought you liked what he was wearing."
"I did, I just didn't like what he said."
"I never like when he talks. He should keep his fucking mouth shut and just look pretty. That's what he's good for."

-Renu/me

...

"A good personality consists of a chick who has a little hard body and who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things and who will essentially keep her dumb fucking mouth shut."

-Bret Easton Ellis, dialogue from American Psycho

...

hhhmmm?

The first pleasant dream in months.

Remember those big swings at amusement parks that lift you up in a floating seat and you're twirled in a circular direction with a bunch of other little kids? I was in one of those seats, floating around a huge island, watching people do their shit below me. I rose higher and then descended closer to the ground. I controlled the altitude. I felt completely free. I felt the sun on my face and closed my eyes and ran my hands through the ocean as I skimmed above it.

Then I was masturbating on an old wooden roller coaster with this random dude and I came right when the car paused momentarily at the top of the highest drop.

I spent three days in a huge bathtub with a man, talking about music, listening to the Microphones, singing Neil Young, smoking weed, discussing the state of things, drinking a nice chianti, napping. I'm experiencing intimacy withdrawal. You forgot to handcuff me to the bed. You never sang me that new song.

I think if I ever have children I will tell them never to major in philosophy. It hurts.

Photos here, A Fotos @flickr.

The world is an old canvas painted over many times.

I watched American Psycho again. I feel really violent after watching it. Predictably, I think of Freud; the fine construct of the ego as an overlay that pushes down a surplus of aggression. Sex is essentially violent, just as violence is essentially an expression of love. And love is really just a construct of the libido that allows us to fulfill our drives in a socially acceptable way. Or is it? Freud thinks so. Who gives a shit, right? What the fuck do I think? Part of being a critical thinker is to wade through the bullshit and decide what is good or bad, valid or invalid. But these are just value judgements. This is an entirely subjective process. It comes down to: what is useful for me? Is this item of knowledge going to reinforce what I want to believe about myself and my relationships and everything outside of me or is it going to challenge my assumptions? Freud makes me want to throw myself in front of a subway car due to the meaninglessness of all existence. Not really. Sometimes.

I think it is significant that Patrick Bateman’s character is defined as a “lack.”

Humans are like eggs. Our insides covered by protective, translucent shells. These shells are prone to cracking under pressure. Often very little pressure is required to instigate a break. The surface splits open and the yolk drips out. The yolk is unfertilized, suspended in fluid. Unrealized potential. Identities leak out of shells, exposed, vulnerable against hot pavement. Frying like eggs in a pan. Individuals as breakfast.

We are only fit for consumption. We are commodities bred of psycho-analysis, post-modern fragmentation, post-structuralism, post-, post-, post-. I identify with John Lennon when he sings “everybody’s talking about this-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism” and the fucking fatigue all this shit produces. I feel so heavy and infected by all this theory, turning me into a pretentious intellectual fuck. At what point does knowledge become completely destructive rather than productive? Universities are telling us to become unique, original thinkers but we’re all learning the same shit, we’re all products of the same intellectual movements, we’re all just unoriginal, pretentious fucks. I try really hard not to be self-deprecating or pretentious. I’m failing on both accounts.

Does somebody want to move to the country with me and start a farm? This is a fantasy of mine.


I like when things like this happen, like a chain:

First of all there was a third sex, the androgynous, combining the two, with four arms and legs, and the rest to match. Men had become very strong, and troublesome to the Olympian gods, yet they could not afford to annihilate them; so Zeus resolved to cut them in half to humble them. He declared that they shall walk upright on two legs, but each forever desiring his other half, so they will come together, and throwing their arms about one another, be entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. Each of us when separated is always looking for his other half.

-Plato, “Symposium”

It seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

-Yeats, “Among School Children”

Somewhat disturbing is the sound of birds singing
when you know you don't deserve it
You’re not here today
and I feel just like an empty eggshell,
My yoke is heavy.

-Daniel Johnston, “My Yoke is Heavy”




Be happy, y’all.
xo

I am going away for 5 days. I am excited about this development. My chest and my head hurt.

I'm sorry, I don't know, I want to be alone.

Um, hello. These are fucking gorgeous.

I think I am in love with this person and his magnificent photos. You can find him here and here. Strangely enough, I discovered that the pic I use for my header actually belongs to this guy, despite the fact that I got it from another location and didn't have the info to credit anyone. So there we go.

I don't want to go to school today, so I probably won't. Once I get it in my mind that I don't want to go, it's virtually impossible to change my mind. I feel guilty about not going and stress about how this might alter my future and potential for grad school recommendations, which is somewhat ridiculous. The guilt and the self-loathing never change the choice I make. I feel like shit today.

Yesterday I painted my room. The colour is called "Rapture." It's red. Predictably, I got paint everywhere. The ceiling, all over my legs and the floor, in my hair, on my shelves, my bed, my clothes, the radiator. I even got paint on my face. I liked it and I didn't wash it off. It looked like someone sliced open my cheek.

Current music: Loren MazzaCane Connors & Jim O'Rourke, Two Nice Catholic Boys. So terrific.

ps. Why the fuck do we always make these horrible decisions, you and I? You said that I instigated the doubt, but that is not true, it's always there and I just verbalized it. I wish I could cut us both open and rip out the parts that don't function properly together so that we could not aggravate each other and just be happy together, in friendly and erotic ways. I wish I was strong enough to just follow through with what I know has to happen, eventually. I feel like any time I try to say anything to you, you back away and curl up into a ball and find me intimidating. So maybe we should just start communicating via writing. Maybe there would be more to say. Why am I so attracted to air signs?

Let's run away together.

Today, I:
planned a fantasy camping trip
attempted Bollywood dance moves
flirted with the 17-year-old boyshier of my local wine store
drank a bottle of wine
listened to the neighbouring tenants fight and then fuck
had three epic tantrums of the adolescent-aries variety
drove to four different paint stores
smoked half a pack of cigarettes
cried during two different movies
watched John Cusack bleed to death
enjoyed two mediocre orgasms
scowled at well-dressed couples on the streets

I have been bitter, lustful, jealous, insecure and self-loathing all day. Tempered with a sick, almost manic enthusiasm.
How much blood can a person consume before they get sick?

Yes/No. Circle your selection.

My friend Cory refers to Valentine's Day as "single awareness day." I have decided I don't want to be in a relationship, for at least a year. My last few bad experiences have turned me off to the whole idea of romantic intimacy. If that sounds like a sad, regrettable statement, it's not. I'm pleased about this development. I haven't been single for longer than 2 weeks since I was 15.

2 more secrets:

I love musicals.
I love the Sound of Music.

I went to see Sound of Music on broadway yesterday.

I am not ashamed to say that I loved it. Nausea-inducing romance and happiness via singing/dancing routines are good for the soul. Occasionally.

I almost had a panic attack because the old lady next to me was blocking my exit and she kept glancing over at me suspiciously.

So I took some drugs.

Today I am going to Little India to buy Bollywood movies. I absolutely love Bollywood movies.

My roommates boyfriend sent her edible roses from Jersey that I am going to eat for breakfast.

I am excited to be alive today, for now.

My shitty brain leaking shitty thoughts.

I am the perpetual melancholiac
mourning prematurely severed object cathexes
and lack of sleep
hungry cats on windowsills
watching the rain
devour nothing like
humans do

I walk through glass
holding a bright room together
convening words
stab my face
bouncing around boxes
like the screen-saver
of a paused life

I escape
pounded by the heaviness
of a thick foggy night
ripped apart
by orange street lights
and subway trains.
the city is colonized by light sources.

I blame the buses:
give me back my darkness!

aureoles surround your stoned faces
under fluorescent lights.
there is light in your hands
that denies
the empty imago.
Your face is a Gestalt.

I'll be the Innenwelt,
if you be the Umwelt
I'll show you mine
if you show me yours
wink wink

Sometimes I think my body is a lie.

These pictures remind me of my old bachelor apartment. Perpetually full of smoke and sunlight. Hello Hands owns these photos.

I wrote in a notebook years ago that when an intimate relationship ends, we must formulate a new self not defined in relation to that person who is now absent. All of these selves are stacked against one another, each one linked to a particular person, a particular relationship. The result is a compound of selves, some in conflict, all of which form a discordant unity that is defined by the sum of its parts.

Then I read Lacan: “The ego is constructed like an onion, one could peel it, and discover the successive identifications which have constituted it.” Every time the Subject projects its desire into the Other, every time the Subject seeks to define himself in relation to the Other, that Other is taken in to the Self via an identification. But in the process, the Other loses its potency and becomes an empty signifier. This dialectic is not a choice, according to these dead rich white dudes.

So, the Self is formulated in relation to a lack. No objects can ever fulfill us, there is no way all the libidinal energy of the id can be exhausted in the symbolic realm, because this essentially violent energy is filtered into socially acceptable ‘wants.’ The result is a mistranslation of desire that can never be satisfied. The result is that we seek to fill this lack and each identification results in the construction of the ego. The ego is built through relationship with the Other, through this attempt to seek out what we lack, this attempt to locate ourselves in something external to us. But it’s a power struggle that is at once a negation and an affirmation…sublation.

And then Freud says that when a loved one is removed from us, we descend into melancholia, which is a process of introjecting the loved object, so that they are preserved within us. We take the lost object inside of us. And as such, our Self is formed through loss, through these introjections and identifications. The ego becomes empty when we lose someone, due to the dialectic of Self-Other, and so in order to persist as Self we bring the Other inside of us and carry on this dialectic internally. This conflict takes place unconsciously and only appears symptomatically as melancholia.

So what about the people we pass every day and project our desires onto? The ‘objects’ we covet/fuck/reject/love/hate, those people we talk to or don't but connect with on some fucked up level? Do they become a part of us, too? When I dismiss the man on the subway but feel a loss at having not talked to him, do I take in this lost object, does he become a part of me? Freud would say no, these projections and identifications are not significant enough. But what if they are?

Then I am a mess of identities swimming inside my head. Everyone I have ever looked at is still a part of me. The immensity of this gives me vertigo. Nothing and everything is insignificant.

Missed connections don’t frighten me as much as the loss of connections. Sitting beside people and looking into the eyes of men who once loved me like we’ve never hit one another, like we never touched each others bodies, like we didn’t share things, like I don’t know exactly what your body looks like naked. I want to rip open people’s brains. Let’s tell secrets all the time. I want to be wrapped up in strangers bodies.

I'm afraid of the dark unless I'm in a forest.
I'm afraid of the noises televisions make on mute in dark empty rooms.
I faked an orgasm only once. I felt inadequate and I didn't want to make you feel that way, too.
I bought a pumpkin for Halloween that is now rotting on my kitchen table. It's hard for me to throw out colourful things. I love observing decay. I have started to document the process with pictures.
I may be going on a mini road trip in a few weeks. I must fix my SLR so that I can finally take good photos again.

I'm going back to sleep.



"Life is a process of taking away"

*

Kissing the stomach
kissing your scarred
skin boat. History
is what you've travelled on
and take with you

We've each had our stomachs
kissed by strangers
to the other

and as for me
I bless everyone
who kissed you here

-Ondaatje

Tuesdays are my long days. I left my house at 8.30 and got home at 7. One presentation, 2 papers complete. 2 more papers to edit before I fall asleep on Thursday night. I am so content and satisfied with everything right now. I guess happiness is not exciting. This post is boring, but a nice break after having finished editing and sifting through a shitload of theory and my own convoluted thoughts.

When I was fucking you, earlier, I scraped my knee on the window sill when you grabbed my body and brought me closer. The skin scraped off and I now have a large bruise decorated with torn skin. My body is a collection of bruises.
When I dug my fingernails into your back the nail on my left thumb ripped off, right where the nail hits the skin. I bled on my sheets.

Both of these events excited and aroused me.

What would Freud say about that? I know, but I won't say. I am sick of writing about Freud and Lacan. I love Derrida. There is no center!!

There is also absolutely nothing to be afraid of.



xo

ps. this blog got me in trouble. Fun shit.

Photos by Lina Scheynius, who is amazing, found via somerequired.

Sunny apocalypse.

This photo reminds me of a Monty Python sketch or Beatles movie:


I have started listening to Brazilian tropicalia and industrial, two musical genres I know little to nothing about. So I start with the basics. Industrial reminds me that I am dying. Tropicalia reminds me that I have at least 50 summers to enjoy (give or take) before I am actually dead. Encouraging thoughts. Thank god I don`t take myself too seriously. If any one knows much about either, drop me some suggestions. I dig Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse with Wound, Einstürzende Neubauten, Os Mutantes and Caetano Veloso. My interest with industrial is a natural progression, considering how much the genre influenced drone, noise, dark ambient, minimalist-electronica, post-rock. All of which I love. I hate genres.

Today is beautiful. I am going to the park to read Lacan and Freud.

DRUNK. Early, lame, angsty drunk.

Blurred neon lights
drunk couples kissing on streets
mild February evenings
navigating fluorescent parking garages
laughing with 30-something couples
feeling completely at ease
standing on street corners with my eyes closed, looking upwards
my feet are torn up by red shoes
I barely acknowledge the homeless man on the corner
this city is so hostile and beautiful
the moon is swimming in my head

I am so angry at you.
You think I am too heavy. You and I are too heavy.
Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the people we love.
This hurts like the silence of empty elevator music.
I know you are somewhere in this city being touched by other people.
All I want is your hair spread on my fucking pillow.

I can't listen to Animal Collective anymore!

You are light and easy, cultivating your angst and identity across city blocks.
I want to call you, but you don't give a fucking shit.

"When somebody leaves you, that's it, it's done, you can't call them."

Everyone seems to romanticize this.
"oh what a noble way for him to leave you"
"he's a good man"
"this is the best scenario"
What the fuck?! you're the only person who is willing to admit
"I'm sorry, I'm an asshole."
And that's all you have to say.
That's not good enough.
I want everyone else to give me reasons to hate your fucking guts.
I want to hear you say:
I'm worth it
You want me
I'm good enough
Even though I know I'm not worth shit. I am mediocre like the rest of them. You never knew how to say anything.

Your lame excuses, those empty cliches, mean nothing to me.
I hope you know that.
I just want you back in my bed.
"You always seemed to lose the spark when I was only half undressed"
I already feel that you are unfamiliar. when the fuck did you separate yourself from me?
You can replace me with any other mediocre bitch you want. You have charisma that works.

I hope you know that you're the first person I desire not because I feel the need to be with someone, anyone, arbitrarily, but because I want you for who you are.
That is irrelevant. You don't give a shit about that.
Karma?

I want to lick tears off your face.
I want to be fucked so hard that I don't feel anything
except the ache of my empty body

Everything is a fucking joke for you.
I am too heavy.
Have fun.

(I promise I won't delete this post, but you probably won't read it. And if you do, you'll just laugh at me. I can sulk if I want, bitches. Fuuuuuuuck.)

I will not contain you.

When I forget to take my meds I wake up feeling like my chest/heart/whatever the fuck/it doesn't matter has been pounded by a large hammer. I can't tell the difference between emotional and physical pain. Why am I awake at this time?

"I want to go back across that sea
with my hands out
and I will rise from the water
though I'm cold and wet I will be clean
I want come back from this robbery
with my hands up
and lie down and be handcuffed
take me I'll be yours
dripping wet
just try and hold me
I am dripping wet and limp"

-Mount Eerie "With My Hands Out"

Exploding Head Movie.

I feel uncomfortable associating people with things and sounds. And things with people. I think it's unfair to the people, and unfair to the objects.

My favourite prof, sexy Loebel, was comparing Descartes' and Hegel's versions of the Self in relation to Other. He described Hegel's Self as a cubed prison; portions of the Other, of alterity, are embedded in the walls. The construct of the Self cannot exist without the Other encased within it as an essential component of its form. Yet we try to pretend that the Other does not exist within us. And occasionally, we hear the Other screaming at us, hidden from sight within the walls.

He said that this is the root of paranoia and anxiety, when we hear these noises and are forced to confront the fact that the Other is a part of us. We are not safe and self-contained within this prison of Self, although our whole existence is occupied with perpetuating this illusion. The Self is a prison of our own construction that simultaneously limits and preserves us. He said the entire pharmaceutical industry is based on this collective desire to keep the Other at bay, separate from the Self we construct. He also said that paranoia is pure consciousness, not limited by self-consciousness. Everything comes at us, and we are unable to filter what is harmful to the construct of Self. Self-consciousness is awareness of consciousness. Consciousness is purely receptive, not reflexive. When we are reflexive, this is when the editing occurs, we start to monitor. We can choose what to believe or what not to believe about ourselves and other people, we can start forming an identity. But this identity is a fiction. We attempt uniformity of self, when in reality we are a multiplicity. We contain multitudes. Who said that? Walt Whitman. Is there any reason to feel afraid?

Anyways. This image has been floating in my head since yesterday's lecture. And I dreamed that I was trapped in a cube with a former lover. The walls were covered in little drawers. The cube would rotate and we were forced to adjust our bodies accordingly. The drawers would all slide open as the sides moved and the objects they contained fell on us. There were so many different things, covering our bodies, filling the cube. In one drawer there were tiny pieces of glass that got stuck on the top of my feet, and I picked each one out and ate it. The cuts made a pattern that I found beautiful. I eventually escaped. I cried because I knew the man never would.

This dream is a combination of that Hegel analogy and this ridiculously awesome but poorly-acted pseudo philosophical movie called The Cube. My psyche works in ridiculously obvious ways. At least I'm not dreaming about luggage that is too heavy for me to carry alone anymore. That went on for three months. Ha.

My dreams are the only thing that hinder happiness. It always takes me a few hours to recover, and usually they set the tone of my day. Anyone who has ever slept/napped with me knows this.

"And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed
before a million universes."

"This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."

Bon soir, lovers.

xo

I am craving a canoe and a heavily wooded area.

The body spliced by parentheses
Your limbs, slivers
sliced by the sharp arch of that question

mark:
(your places)
(your possessions)

the Other disintegrates against the tyranny of language
People like fetuses enclosed in the womb of syntax
we are all premature

The period pulls you into mourning
decapitation by punctuation
a miscarriage takes place
between those lines.

You shove me between parentheses
or add a comma separating now from then,
soon, later.

Future selves convene and fold the other into boxes
rejoicing in proper nouns
slinging quotation marks like bullets

*

February is being good to me.

C., thank you. You have no idea how much I needed that.

What the fuck am I doing.

I am pleased and happy.

Headless horseman.

When I was crying on the subway an attractive man touched my arm and asked me if he could help. I could have said yes. Instead I just smiled and laughed in his face. He smiled back, but he looked sad. There are too many people that I will never know. So many potential lovers, friends, collaborators. Sometimes I feel scared of missing something immense.

What if I had said yes, or touched him back. What I really want is to be curled up in bed with a warm body. I should have hugged that man on the subway. I want to be angry, it's so much easier. I can't escape anything.

Oh, you pretty things.

Spring Nostalgia Playlist.

Saturday Night We Went Swimming and There Was Light In the Water - Atlas Sound
What We Are - I Create Soundscapes
Black Lake - Real Estate
Love is Strange - Sic Alps
I Will - The Beatles
The Purple Bottle - Animal Collective
This Aching Deal - Shocking Pinks
Beach Point Pleasant - Ducktails
In the Flowers - Animal Collective
In Teen Dreams - Ancient Crux
Say You Miss Me - Wilco
(I Wanna Be A) Dumbcharger - Guided By Voices
Try to Remember - The Apples in Stereo
Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games - Of Montreal
Jeepster - T.Rex
Motion Suggests - Pavement
Muzzle of Bees - Wilco
Playground Love - Air
Suburban Beverage - Real Estate
The Warm Current's Pull - Blind Man's Colour
Flesh Canoe - Animal Collective

"It is the nostalgia which produces the desire to fragment, the impossible yearning for the lost (imaginary) object of desire which issues in the frustrated and atavistic smashing of the ideal object...one sees the possibility of humanist affirmation destroyed by an insistent and excessive nostalgic sense of loss of pure Being whose impossible realization produces the urge to destroy altogether what can be. If things are fragmenting, let's fragment them utterly."

-Patricia Waugh

Photos belong to A Fötos at flickr.

Too busy to be creative.

Yesterday was delightful.

I am back to school for the first time since the strike ended. Back to reading Derrida, Auster, Lacan, Freud, Barthes, Eliot, Waugh, Ishiguro, Ellis, Lovecraft, Acker.

I survived, heavily medicated, practically floating around campus.

I also modeled for the salon yesterday. Wardrobe was skinny jeans with suspenders, bare feet and a nude lingerie top with huge, ridiculous amounts of fabric swirling around our bodies and attached in strangely creative ways. Makeup was heavily pink and girly. So I was dancing around the salon with a huge fabric bow pinned to my boobs, covered in [moderately subtle] body glitter, eating as much free food as possible, sneaking out for cigarettes and trying to explain my tattoo to the other girls. It was surprisingly fun. And I was familiar with the photographer so I felt comfortable. The runway was covered with daisies and floating candles. The theme was spring. I don't do girly well. But I do miss spring.

I'm kind of obsessed with the film Breakfast at Tiffany's right now. I've watched it several times over the past week. I really dig the final scene. I'm a sucker for romance.

This quote is super dope (cheesy, yes.):

"You're chicken. You're afraid to say, 'Okay, life's a fact.' People do fall in love. People do belong to each other. Because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, yet you're terrified that somebody's gonna put you in a cage. Well, you're already in a cage and you built it yourself. It's everywhere you go. Because no matter where you run, you're always going to end up running into yourself."

-Sexy dude who falls in love with Holly right before he jumps out the cab to look for her cat and then she runs after him and they kiss in the rain. I think there is much truth to this. Sometimes cliches are good. Good for the soul.