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"