Someone please give me something to do that does not involve convoluted theory. I think my lungs are really angry at me. I am sending good vibes to luyi and adam coates for mentioning me/my writing on their blogs: some required and internettle soup. Adam Coates also plays really good music, people should listen to it. Monday afternoons are always quite dismal. I spend hours reading theory with the tv on mute watching women give birth on baby shows. I like white noise. The genitals are always blurred. I think it is interesting and ironic that women's bodies are unerotic during the birthing process. It is the only context in which women are desexualized, or rather, lack eroticism. Birthing shows are really the only place on television where a woman's body is not portrayed as a 'sex object.' Breasts can be shown at 1:30 pm because they are just breasts, not erotic symbols shouting 'you should be aroused by a naked female body.' A vagina is just a vagina is just a vagina.
Distraction: FAIL. Back to Marx and Debord. Spectacle, what the fuck?

The past is full of grotesque animals.

I am so angry at Marx right now. Here are some people that I am not angry with. I have so much to do and so little motivation. I smell band-aids, old books and tangerines. My ribs are bruised. I am looking for ways to waste time.

(liam finn)

(thanksgiving)

(clark gable)

(wavves)

(kurt vile, my new favourite musician)

(girls)
(i want the shirt on the right)

(daniel johnston + emerson)

I treat men like objects and they treat me like an object.

My roommate broke up with her boyfriend last night so instead of reading Debord, Hutcheon and Benjamin I went to a drag show at our favourite Latin dance club. There's a good combo of straight gay bi trans and everyone is so alive and happy with everybody else and the night was so warm.

Cringe-worthy clichés spurted from the mouths of men

Why are you so sexy? (x4) (demure smiles) (money for 'drinks' slipped in my bra that I saved for cigarette money)
I'm so hard right now (x3) (uh, yeah, I can feel your small dick on my thigh, get your hands off my ass)
Your hair looks really good and it suits you really well (x1) (any comment from a drag queen is cherished)
You're an amazing dancer (x5) (I just like it, who cares) (so are you, shut your mouth)
You're so sexy, I'll give you all the cigarettes you want, want a light, too? (x4) (yes) (barf)
Can I come back to your place? (x3) (get the fuck away from me, I'm just dancing)
I want to massage you from your head to your toes (x3) (cringe) (my boyfriend doesn't dance)
I want your legs wrapped around my face (x2) (my boyfriend writes me songs and is 10x the man you are)
You sound like psychos or lesbians (x1) (the only one who got us right was the cab driver) (the former, not the latter)
What's your tattoo say? (x3) (I like Spinoza and staying in and reading)
You're a little crazy. (x2) (finally)

better to be/bigger than the other

I had a successful appointment with my psychiatrist today. She said 'good job for making such important changes in your life independently' 'thank you for being so articulate and open.' We talked about my abandonment issues and general distrust of women and how this has recently become a general distrust of men due to my last few dismal relationships. So, general distrust of everyone.

It is a really beautiful day so I walked home from the hospital and because I forgot my iPod I hummed Wilco to myself.

Then I went to the store. There was a man in line in front of me who kept repeating, very loudly

I guess I'm not good enough
I was too weak to hold the line
erotic love is limited
family ties break
family is not strong enough
there will always be someone stronger and better than you
I couldn't help my family
we are all nuts
I couldn't hold the line
I am so weak

Everybody either ignored him or looked at each other with smug knowing smiles as if to say 'haha we know how to maintain that slim divide between public and private, too bad for that fucker'

Why don't people listen to what other people say

There are important things being said all the time and no one cares to listen

All they see is a senile old man with wide eyes clutching a box of cookies

I wish we all walked around spewing our failures and fears

maybe then we would be more human

(instead we use computers or paper or instruments to mediate these thoughts, which is good too and sometimes the only way, but I often feel like I'm just talking to a screen, or myself, or some blank absent other, and no one really gives a shit and then I tell myself 'well, I don't give a shit either' but that's a lie.)

Un poème et quelques photos.

So terrific. Found via Kanye West's blog, via Fabrik.
Oh yeah, and it's by Gonzalo Benard and called "The Awakening of the Self."

Also, if you dig creepy drone/ambient music, listen to Preslav Literary School's album "Beautiful Was the Time." You can find it at ill-formed.

"Preslav Literary School is found sound, organic drones, tape noise and spoken word. Recording sonic experiments, poetry, birdsong and drones onto cassette tapes and dictaphones, Preslav Literary School then mixes these sources with vintage keyboards, Buddha machines and old transistors in engaging live performances to create layered, improvised soundscapes." -Last.fm blurb

---

Sublimation & Genesis


When were we trained to suck cock

Is this how Eve responded when the snake
Bit her in the garden?

On her knees sucking life from the animal
Implanted

Adam jerking himself off in the corner
Whining “she made me do it”

Joking with his sons
“See what I named”
“See what I fucked”

I own everything that has come to me
Seeking order
identity

All they want is to be full of something

I think I agree, yes, we are cyborgs.

I forget sometimes that you know how to move your fingers in beautiful ways that I do not understand, I always admired your hands, they are pianist's hands, you could do anything with those hands, especially with guitars and my body.
I sometimes forget that the words I write and the things I do and the people I experience will be good-for-nothing one day. This is liberating but also sad because it devalues experience in some way. Everything is set loose and I can scramble all I want to maintain some uniform, linear existence with everything beautifully tracked and recorded but certain moments will fall between the cracks. Like the beautiful spaces between your long, long fingers.
I feel bad for the books on the bottom shelves of libraries, they are prone to neglect. I took off my shoes and crawled on my knees along two aisles, call number PS, the pattern of cheap carpet imprinted on my red knees looking for forgotten poetry caressing colourful spines
I completed one somersault
then rolled on my back and giggled loudly
slicing the silence
libraries are not sacred, but we pretend they are
A girl looked at me from between two rows
like in some romantic comedy where the prey is watched by a shy predator
subtle, innocent voyeurism
she smiled at me quickly then looked away
I curled into a ball
smiled wide into my fists
muffled loud riotous laughter

I love when the world opens to me briefly and I can hear beautiful music pouring from its every orifice, from the torn up spines of joyful books

I am kind of really excited. I met with my favourite professor today and now he is going to be my supervisor for a directed readings course. This means I get to make my own class and my own reading list and even come up with a snappy name that will look good on a transcript. He has to agree with everything, but ultimately this shit is up to me. And the fact that this prof in particular is going to be working with me on an individual basis makes me so fucking happy. I think I will name the course "Sexuality and the Construction of Gender in Post-Modernity" or something. This summer will be epic. I am also happy because I went to library and got 6 books of poetry and 2 books of literary theory, post-Marxist and feminist. I can't wait to cuddle up in bed and read all this shit. I am a huge nerd. I feel really good about life today.

We Are Only Bodies. Maybe.

I have a poetry series published here, on Pangur Ban Party. I really like the name Pangur Ban Party. There are entertaining blurbs related to my poetry here, on DJ Berndt's most excellent blog, Self-Conscious. I am pleased with my poems. I am pleased with Sundays.

Gunshot glitter.

My roommate and I are essentially 40-year-old women stuck in the bodies of 20-something girls, discussing epic romances, dysfunctional families, neuroses, mothers and bodily functions. We spend our weekends drinking vodka watching sci-fi television and chick flicks from the 80's, eating enough food for four people at dingy Indian restaurants, savouring masala tea, laughing loud enough to disturb other diners and pedestrians, trying to link up histories and love affairs and departures with dates. We say 'thank you' way too many times and smoke way too many cigarettes.

I went to the museum today, it was lovely. There is one room designed like a greenhouse, high glass ceilings. The room is full of fake birds and dismembered mannequin bodies with giant birds heads stiched on where the human heads should be, with shards of mirror spraying outwards, out of necks and branches. There are stuffed animals and their bodies are penetrated by mirror shards that shoot out like light. There is a little room, big enough for two people, made of broken glass, and it is hard to tell what bodies are part of the installation and which are experiencing it. You catch glimpses of body parts in mirrors, severed legs, fragmented faces, arms touching, women murmuring, 'give me my space.' Children screaming and laughing and chasing each other and their parents scolding, quietly. Some places are sacred.

The installation felt very amateur. I became nostalgic. It was similar to something I would have done back when I was still doing installations. I really liked broken glass. I glued it to anything, I painted over and around it, I used glass in photography series', I planted it, I threw a huge mirror on the ground, wearing goggles, and planted the shards in a mannequin's head, I desecrated shitty sculpture, mutant heads and women's bodies, with glass and porcelain cups. I didn't do well with sculpture. One day I threw a paintbrush at a boy and the paint splattered all over the wall behind him. He had fast reflexes. Soon after he fucked me from behind with my face pressed against that wall, my mouth open, I could almost taste the wet mark, oil paint thick like semen.

I want to project porn videos on two giant walls, 6 giant floor-to-ceiling screens, and play sad music, like the Microphones, or Deaf Center, or Olafur Arnalds. Girls being tag-teamed to 'Headless Horsemen." Gay threesome to "the Dead Flag Blues." Context is everything. I love you, is that okay?

Rambling and shit.

I really dislike a lot of words, they leave a bad taste in my mouth, or mind, or whatever.

God Feminist Postmodern Modernity Woman Man Poem Lover Friend Addiction Love Sex

All the big ones, really. I would like to throw out language so that I can create new words or sounds for these things, and maybe redeem them.

Wittgenstein talks about logical propositions, or assumptions, that underlie discourses. These logical propositions are constructions of language, if we start to doubt them, we would be undermining rationality, and undermining language. These foundations are like the river bed, discourse flows on top of this foundation, and the river bed slowly changes over time. The riverbed - language and the way it constructs meaning - changes over time due to the pressure of the water, but it is a slow process. And as the river bed changes, the direction and nature of our thought changes.

For Lacan, language is the only way we become social subjects, language enables the transition from the imaginary into the symbolic. The articulation of the 'I' is a social movement, and hence a linguistic movement. So if we throw out language, which is social because of its universability, then we can never really become a true 'Subject.' And the fucked up shit is that language is the only way to live with others and articulate the self as subject but it is also what alienates us from others and our own desires.

Dismissing language altogether is solipsistic. But restructuring it is daunting. In the words of my favourite prof, we can try to restructure language but we're really just moving around the same furniture in the same room. Does the meaning really change? I guess I would say yes, that the shift in emphasis from content to form results in new meaning. But...not really? I'm not sure. And how does language, its subjectivity or lack thereof, relate to intersubjectivity between individuals, and on a grander scale, between cultures that use different languages? Translation is hard enough between two people speaking the same language, never mind different languages.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that language is so necessary and lovely at times but it also turns around and fucks you in the ass when you least expect it. He's my prison guard and I give him free blow jobs all the time. Because language is definitely a man.

All of this is motivated by my reading of Luce Irigaray. She brings gender into the equation. Interesting shit. I still need to wrap my mind around it.

On a lighter note, things that have made my day a happy one:

great sex
little italy and college street on a sunny weekday morning
marvelous italian bakery full of bitter, dignified old women
strawberry custard tarts and fresh chocolate croissants
shooting zombies (left 4 dead...video game splendour)
margaret christakos (top 5 poets)
of montreal (sunlandic twins)

quote of the day:
"we made love like a pair of black wizards, you freed me from the past, you fucked the suburbs out of me"
-Kevin Barnes

When I saw this photo on somerequired I started to cry. Fuck, it's a delicate morning. I love this photo so much.

I like bleak things.

I am so happy it is not sunny today. I think I would stay home if it was.

I fell asleep last night at 10. I was experiencing moderate - severe anxiety at school yesterday, for no apparent reason, so I was full of drugs. By the time I got home my body felt so exhausted.

People exhaust me. I am consistently disappointed. Whine blah blah. It's strange to see someone you once loved in a totally different light. I overestimate people a lot of the time.

My main goal over the past four years at my university has been to locate the most isolated areas. Yesterday I discovered floor five of the library. Sounds obvious, but I generally avoid the library because it is usually full of stupid people. I discovered that I can sit in the middle of an aisle for two hours surrounded by early 20th century French critical theory and see no one except a couple kissing 2 aisles down.

I am reading some Georges Bataille "essays" or selected writings at the moment.

One of the texts is called "The Solar Anus" and it is probably one of the best things I have read recently. Mind orgasm extraordinaire. I found an online version here, I recommend it. It's a short read, basically a poem. Bataille is one of my favourite writers, he is a combination of everything I love...heavily sexual (he also writes pornography), morbid, surrealist, borderline existentialist but rejected by the existentialists because he's too macabre and doesn't subscribe to the Icarian Complex, post-Marxist theorist...generally...awesome. And he loves the Marquis deSade and Nietzsche but is critical of their work. *Sigh of satisfaction*

I am contemplating skipping class again today because I feel really depressed.

"A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others.
In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the body he touches.
Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.
They can very well try to find each other; they will never find anything but parodic images, and they will fall asleep as empty as mirrors."

"The sea continuously jerks off.
Solid elements, contained and brewed in water animated by erotic movement, shoot out in the form of flying fish.
The erection and the sun scandalize, in the same way as the cadaver and the darkness of cellars."

-Bataille

My new favourite way to spend Sunday's...get really stoned and watch silent films from the 20's.

90% of people prove to be full of bullshit. It's okay though, I don't hold grudges
Actually that's pretty much a lie
I think human beings delude themselves about pretty much everything

When I first read about post-structuralism and the notion that 'individuality' is a crock of bullshit perpetuated by modernist ideologies, the desperation I experienced was akin to the confusion I felt realizing that god was not even dead, but a complete fiction. The two most formative periods of my life are quintessential negations, so typical of my generation. The corresponding self-delusion...belief that these 'formative experiences' are unique or original in any way. This is laughable...or confusing, or frustrating. Don't we all want to believe it, though? Nothing we experience is really that important, our suffering is not new nor does it spring from new places or lead in new directions

Nothing I say is original
but that is okay

existentialist anti-heroes try too hard
I always identified with the dude from 'notes from underground'
his anxiety is extreme and pathetic and awkward but charming
I just wanted to make him a picnic lunch or something and sing songs in the park with no shoes on
we could eat popsicles and stuff

fuck 'men of action'

My weekend so far.

German expressionism.

Faulkner, Light In August.

Whiskey & wine.

Cute boys.

Demetri Martin, PERSON.
So clever, that boy. *sigh*

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Night Man/Day Man = epic.

Battlestar Galactica

Man On Wire...

...is poetry. Watch it, yo.

Rhymeku.

Vincent Gallo is releasing another album, is starring in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro" and producing/directing/starring in another film. This makes me superbly happy. Je t'aime, my darling.

Omelette with goat's cheese, cheddar, red pepper & banana chocolate smoothie.

Boys smoking pot and playing guitar on their front porch.

Two cats grooming each other on a bright blue chest of drawers in someone's front yard.

Couple smoking and fighting in t-shirts on a park bench.

Portuguese men smoking cigars and whistling at me on the street.

How could I not cave and buy a pack of small regular smokes? I'm sure my lungs will forgive me my trespasses.

Happy spring.

Soundtrack of the morning:
Albatross -Fleetwood Mac
Some Velvet Morning - Slowdive
Muzzle of Bees - Wilco

It is snowing and -6 degrees. I don't want to leave my bed.

I dreamed I was beating someone. He/she will remain nameless. I hit them harder and harder and little pieces of their face were breaking off and they were laughing at me and their body was regenerating very rapidly; bits of skull would fall off and the wounds were quickly covered by a thin translucent layer of skin. All of a sudden I was beating one of my cats, and I broke her jaw open and she started crying and biting herself. I woke up absolutely horrified and weeping with my cat curled around my head, purring, licking my hair.

Question, or challenge.

Name some movies that have more than one central female character who share face-to-face conversation that is not primarily about men.

This question was asked in one my classes. I found it interesting. Let me know.

Projections of insecurity.

Are there men out there who actually like outspoken, blunt women? Initially, men like that I have a fire-y personality, which turns to passive, seething resentment when they realize I'm not some fucking character in an indie movie whose only purpose is to stir on their existential crisis and 'bring spontaneity into their life' or spur on some creative revolution as 'muse.' Barf. Yeah, I can be abrasive. Yeah, I can be brutally honest (oh, sorry, I mean a "FUCKING BITCH"). Fuck, I'm not a super person. I try really hard to be 'nice.' That's what people want, right? Sweet and nurturing, coming right the fuck up.

It doesn't help that I am incredibly awkward during the whole 'let's meet each others friends in an exciting social environment to further determine whether or not we are compatible' and accidentally get labeled a 'cold, snobby bitch.' Um, it's called social anxiety disorder/panic disorder, asshole. Notice the panic attacks. Aren't relationships about sex and not social performance? Why do all these lame social elements have to enter into the equation? The purpose of relationships is to fuck and provide 'love', but most relationships seem to provide little of either. I want more sex and more love.

I am not making generalizations about men. I love men. I have my issues with female relationships, too. But I've been ranting about women my whole life and making horrible, fear-based generalizations about them too.

I think I should start walking around with a demure smile pasted on my face and check the tone of my voice constantly so that I do not unintentionally intimidate someone. I'm not sure how to move my face when I confront strangers. What is street etiquette? Do you look down, to the side, zone out looking forward or make brief, potentially awkward eye contact? Do you make your face smile, and to what degree? Most of the time the faces I make feel entirely unnatural. I am incredibly self-conscious in public. Everyone is a stranger. I feel like a massive fucking fragile disappointment.

I saw Watchmen yesterday and thought it was mediocre. The movie version is unnecessary and adds nothing to the experience, except dumbing down shit for the portion of the audience with no patience to actually read the fucking thing. I think Alan Moore's curse worked.

I really want to get another cat and name him/her Bubastis (aka the name of Oxymandias' genetically-engineered super lynx!! Blue-coloured!!)

I really enjoy Adam Coates' music.

I really like Zachary German's face.

Spring has arrived, with rainy days, my favourite. I've been making jewelery, scouring Kensington market for vintage clothes, writing this useless post, editing old and new poems, fighting with ex-boyfriends...anything except writing the last paper on my list. I must work my ass off today so that I can attend the open participation poetry/music jam tonight. I want to be drunk and wet.

I quit smoking.

What do you want?

I want to...

spoon with Ian Curtis in bed and make him breakfast.
drink whiskey with Tom Waits in an empty bar.
dance with Elliott Smith in an empty parking lot.
nap peacefully with Nick Drake in a sunny field of grass.
swim with Jeff Buckley in a river and sing Led Zeppelin songs together.
have coffee with Leonard Cohen and take walks through deserted parks.

Whenever I am sad I read Beautiful Losers and listen to my favourite men.

I will be listening to this mix tonight. "Descent into Madness?"

!

hello, darling.

"What we call happiness arises from the fairly sudden satisfaction of pent-up needs. By its very nature it can be no more than an episodic phenomenon. Any prolongation of a situation desired by the pleasure principle produces only a feeling of lukewarm comfort; we are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself. Hence, our prospects of happiness are already restricted by our constitution"

"Yes, we shall not fall out of the world. We are in it once and for all."

I feel pathetic and lonely.

I miss a lot of people right now, even the ones who treated me badly.

Pat, it would be nice to talk to you. But I am too afraid to pick up my phone because you act like a completely different person. It scares me.

It is hard to fall out of love with people you dream about every night.

Spring, please.

It is so cold here that I am literally unwilling to get out of bed. I can't find my slippers and my feet and hands are always cold. I need to eat breakfast.

I have very little motivation to do anything. I am writing two take-home exams, (1) 2000-word essay, 1 seminar presentation and reading 3 books for school. I am lying in bed surrounded by sleeping cats and thick blankets.

I am thinking:
my relationship with this city has lasted longer than that with any man
it has been equally tumultuous.
my lover and all of his closest friends don't use their real names, only nicknames, I find this highly symbolic and relevant.
Coraline is no longer being screened in 3-D because the Jonas Brothers 3-D concert experience is now screening. This makes me want to kill someone, specifically, one of the Jonas Brothers, or Dane Cook. Coraline is a really super good movie. I had a huge smile plastered on my face the whole time.
I want to read more Neil Gaiman.
after reading a 4-page sex scene on the subway I felt aroused and found this utterly hilarious.
everyone is de-sexualized on the subway except for me in my little corner, staring at people and laughing at their ignorance like a lunatic
citrus toothpaste mixed with blood tastes like strawberry kool-aid, daiquiris;
something equally girly.
I would like to touch a body tonight
preferably yours.

Movies I have seen in the past week, ordered from most to least enjoyable.

Coraline
(an unpleasant, beautiful mushroom trip)
Changeling
(I was screaming at the screen the whole time, so infuriated)
Two Lovers
(I really want to fuck Joaquin Phoenix)
Leaving Las Vegas
(the most depressing movie I have seen in a long time)
The Big Sleep
(one of my favourites, caused me to fall in love with Bogart, Bacall and Hawks)
The Restless Moment
Revolutionary Road
Milk
The Reader
Body and Soul

New music that I have enjoyed this past week.

Alela Diane - To Be Still
(we are driving at dusk through forests and you stop the car, suddenly, so that we can take a nap)
Vetiver - Tight Knit
(I will go skinny-dipping with you in quiet rivers and we will make love in a canoe and have picnics and drink warm, summery wines on the shores of lakes and our bodies will be sore and light by the end of it)
Lotus Plaza - Floodlight Collective
(cities are hostile and damp and sweaty and we brush shoulders of boys on pavement who linger against skin seeking proximity and movement)
Wrugs - Braided Grass
(fuck me really hard for 8.5 minutes)