Last night I dreamt that it was the apocalypse and the world was flooding for a second time, contrary to 'god's' promise in Genesis, and the oceans overflowed and covered the mountains and swept people up. I was swimming through streets, watching the waves come at me, watching peoples responses. There was a woman standing in a glass enclosure, a cube full of smaller cubes filled with glass sculptures. She was very calm, locked the door, and stood behind a desk while the glass cages steadily collapsed with the pressure. She looked down at her feet as the water raised, soaking her legs. I was sucked under water into a subway tunnel telling my family to get out. I started to drown. I was watching myself drown and other people drown in slow motion under water. I wonder if death happens in slow motion. I feel fucked that my perceptions of death are obviously manipulated by the way death is portrayed in film. My dreams and death are cinematic. I stepped outside the dream and watched it happen, telling myself "this is just a dream, this is just a dream, this is just a beautiful sad dream"

I woke up in a panic and fell back asleep almost immediately. It was this brief conscious interval that took me back in time within the dream space. I was now in the subway tunnel again, pre-death, trying to push people out, warning them of their impending doom, but they didn't listen. I escaped though. My boyfriend rescued me with a canoe. What a ridiculous and incongruent finale. I don't like happy endings, even if they do imply good things about my relationship. Heroism, meh.

My afternoon was pleasant. Apple wine and cold cold beer, Foucault and Marcuse, sun bathing in boxer shorts and bikini, cool breeze nice enough to take off the edge, mango salad and ribs, Casablanca and Marvin Gaye, laughing with my sister and long naps, passive lectures from my mother concerning my 'sailor's mouth' and 'smokers cough,' leisurely cigarettes and a cold in relapse, just enough to induce mild fatigue and justify physical laziness.

Tomorrow I am going to wake up early and take the dog for a jog along the lake, watch the world wake up and get some writing done. The novella is fucked. I finally have some time to work on it. My body is sore from insufficient post-workout stretching and vigorous shower sex. Cheers, darlings.

the city opens its sutures
lets you feel the sticky wet veins of its
hot pavement cooling under your bare feet

we slip out of machines
like water dripping from eaves troughs
to emerge from catacombs
resurrected

the city wants your body;
blinds you when you walk indoors

the city wants to be inside you
trembling when it enters

I see things happen all the time in 'real' life that seem like perfect illustrations of various theories. Like when Brandon Scott Gorrell said "the person doesn't matter" in his video explanation/whatever for keeping Sarah Schneider's name attached to that story. Then I think, "wow, that really corresponds to Barthes and Derrida." Then I write a little fucking essay in my head and feel like a dumb ass. What is real life. The video is not real life. Online story contests are not real life. Blogs are not real life.

Whatever, what the fuck is real life, who cares. I read too much.

This afternoon was lovely. I was sitting at my desk studying and drinking double spice chai tea with oatmeal cookies and burning lemongrass incense with my cats curled up on the window sill and the man across the street was playing his saxophone which mingled with the sun and the sound of traffic and the Veve Seashore and sirens and people laughing and smoking weed on the sidewalk and cats purring.

I feel like this blog is a high-maintenence mistress that I have to call every night and drive around and buy expensive ugly bags for in exchange for mediocre sex.

I finished my exams a few hours ago. I did really really good this year. I start summer classes in a week. I am trying to plan my future or something. I don't know where to go for grad school. I started going back to the gym on a regular basis. I like the way my body feels when its moving and active. I like the physicality, its a sweet sweet feeling for someone so often trapped in the mind.

Right now the wind is picking up and the leaves of the trees are making lovely woooshing noises that sound vaguely ominous. The city is full of white noise that permeates side streets and is only noticeable in the dark. I can't wait to have sex tomorrow and be beside a naked male body.

The average shot length in a contemporary film is 5.6 seconds. The average time between blinks is 2.8 seconds. How does this inundation of images change the way we watch a film, or engage with everything? Benjamin talks about how we learn to see through the apparatus, that our relationship to art is now mediated by technology that conditions us to 'see' in a particular way. In order to keep up with this apparatus we have to evolve, but this approach to art changes our approach to everything, the two realms are liquidated and blend into one another. The images that inundate our brains are becoming increasingly empty. They lack content. The 5.6 seconds of an average shot consists mainly of special effects, the images are not beautiful, do not capture anything new or exciting. We are not even looking at mediated reality, we are looking at mediated hyperreality. I realized recently that my attention span has drastically decreased to almost nothing. I can barely watch a contemporary film without stopping it or getting bored. I can barely sit in bed with a book without stopping every 10 minutes to do something stupid and irrelevant on the internet. In the (little) spare time I've had recently I've been watching old movies, good movies, movies with prolonged shots and good dialogue and little cutting and minimal sets. My attention span is getting a little bit better. I can pay attention to good art. My plan is to slowly cut out or minimize all forms of media that manipulate the way I see. I don't want my eyes and brain function in tandem with the appartus that presents the material. I guess its an illusory and short-lived victory, because in adapting my mind to 'good' art, there is little or no autonomy here either, just another adaptation to different standards of presentation and a different appartus with different values.

Lately I've been feeling animosity directed towards everything outside of myself, except for the best friend, the boyfriend, the cats. I seem to approach everything and everyone with a degree of suspicion and ennui. I have no energy to perfom in front of people anymore and I feel comfortable in my own body. And then other days I flip and feel uncertain and vaguely self-conscious in front of a world that I care about and feel self-loathing and anxious and a weird sticky discomfort with my own body. Both conditions are a reflections of the other; which is the reality? Am I projecting or introjecting? I guess these are two sides of the same fucking coin.

In general though, I feel good. I am attracted to tragic characters and realize that my life possesses little to no tradgedy. I love the feeling of my body under a dress, when my legs and muscles are tight and toned. I love the sprinkler on the front lawn of my apartment building, I like standing underneath it. I love touching bodies accidentally on the street and eating ice cream on hot pavement, bare foot. I like coming across friendly strangers who smile authentically during mundane transactions. Here is your prescription, here are your drugs, here is your tea, here are your books, here are your movies.

Unfortunately exam time sucks all creative energy out of me. All I can do is collect images and characters and record them but I can't figure out structure or form right now. Does form even matter anymore? The progress seems to have been...modernism - content/individual, concerns with form on the margins...post-modernism - no original content, all is form...now - lets reclaim content, simplify form, and be happy with the realization that nothing is new but individual experiences can still be beautiful and contribute to a collective attitude and moment. I like where poetry is moving. Everyone is incredibly self-deprecating in 'public' because they don't want people to think that they take themselves too seriously. Taking things too seriously is not good. But everyone secretly does take themselves very seriously. How can we not, what the fuck else do we have. The result is lovely to me.

I feel really scattered today.
I'm writing an essay that feels like a gang rape against Fanon. I've got Debord, Laclau, Guitarri and Marcuse all up against him flashing phallic symbols. Maybe a little unfair. The sad thing is, I really like Fanon. He's a cool dude. Terrorist violence, sure. But its incredibly easy to argue against him. I feel very stressed about this paper. And who will read it? Who gives a fuck? Maybe 3 people at most will ever read this piece of shit.
My roommate and her friend were sitting on the front porch holding a copy of a Fanon text and this douchebag frat boy walked by and said 'oh cool Franz Ferdinand.' Barf. This city erupts in the spring time with horny 20 year-old boys pleasantly equipped with daddy's money and nothing better to do but strut around like they have huge cocks. Where do they all come from? Its like they spring up from the depths of hell to torture women everywhere. No one wants to be shouted at. No one wants to be whistled at. No one wants cars to slow down and follow them down the street while the group inside yell sexual innuendos. What the fuck do you want me to do? Jump the fuck in and suck your dick?
I chose to quit smoking yesterday. Again. Yes. I generally choose days to quit when I'm too lazy to walk to the store (which is literally right outside my apartment building by the way). Probably a bad strategy. I am okay with being an addict if I actually enjoy what I'm addicted to. But I don't enjoy smoking anymore. So I must end my love affair. My strategy is to buy large quantities of junk food and whenever I get a craving for nicotine, eat candy in 30 second intervals for approximately 8 minutes at a time. We'll see how that goes.
When my cats go for more than 2 hours without food they start doing ridiculous things. Like chase each other around the apartment, throw up in front of my bedroom door, spill water all over the kitchen, jump in the bath tub while I'm taking a shower, open the fridge with their paws and smell around for meat, sit on the books I happen to be reading, climb ridiculous things and propel their bodies to the floor, stare at me with sad eyes like I am depriving them of all joy in life, etc. I think its time to go to the store.
I am bitter.

Early memories, OR why I am afraid, OR eros/thanatos

I spent every afternoon with my best friend who lived behind a white link fence that separated our backyards. We were both six. He had a shock of blond hair and we played cars and made up a new language and visited the neighbour across the street who had a sun room full of birds. Maybe that is a dream. I don't remember the boy's face. We were holding hands between the bars because we couldn't reach high enough to un-lock the gate. Then he told me that if I didn't take off my clothes and swim in the pool while he watched, he wouldn't talk to me anymore. I went inside and curled up in my closet with my new cat and felt uncomfortable. That night, I told my mom what the boy said. I never saw him again.

I was climbing the tree in my front yard. All childhood pictures of me involve mud, sand, or food. I liked to climb or dig or consume. I watched a dalmatian cross the road and get hit by a truck. I had never seen the dog before. I jumped down, stood on the sidewalk and watched the dog die. I didn't know what to do.

I woke up one night when I was a kid in pitch darkness. My night light went out while I was asleep. I still sleep with a light on. I woke up to the sound of doves cooing outside my window in the predawn. I was terrified. I didn't know what the sound was. I tried to keep as much of my body under the blanket as possible. I thought the creature outside my window would attack me if any skin was exposed.

I was camping and and woke up to hideous screeching sounds. I crawled over my little sister in her sleeping bag, got out of my tent and walked over to the door of my dad's tent, curled up on the grass, wet with dew, and cried very quietly. I felt ashamed and didn't want to wake him. I fell asleep from exhaustion on the forest floor in front of the tent and woke up with swollen mosquito bites like patterns on my legs. The screeches surrounded me but it was only owls. The only place I am not afraid of the dark is in the woods.

These situations remind me of the first time I heard my Mother having sex. I woke up and walked into the hallway and tearfully called for her, explaining that there were strange noises. She yelled at me to go back to bed from behind her door. I cried myself to sleep on the floor of the hallway. This was the first time I remember feeling abandoned and alienated and aware of something profound.

Memories are ridiculous and absurd and I can laugh at my ignorance but still feel unsettled.
I feel that I don't care about people judging me or feeling uncomfortable because of things I say or write.
I see my memories play out like youtube clips or music videos, pastiche that curls in on itself and neutralizes history, fear, relationships. Benjamin shakes his head. My memories are mechanically reproduced and serve fascism.
A friend once told me that of all the senses, we cannot turn away from sounds. Sound is very formative. We cannot control noise. Noise is nostalgia and terror. The sublime implies both terror and elation in the confrontation of something unknown. Something natural and powerful.
I have been thinking a lot about the past and the future. Mainly because the present is overwhelming and I feel myself curling inwards again.
I would like to partake in an orgy with Fanon, Guitarri, Bataille and Laclau and see who gives the most intense orgasms. My bet's on Bataille.

"nostalgia is the alarming and pathological symptom of a society that has become incapable of dealing with time and history"

"Cultural production has been driven back inside the mind, within the monadic subject: it can no longer look directly out of its eyes at the real world for referent but must, as in Plato's cave, trace its mental image of the world on its confining walls. If there is any realism here, it is a 'realism' which springs from the shock of grasping that confinement and of realizing that, for whatever particular reasons, we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about the past, which itself remains forever out of reach"

-Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society

Photo source: glass orthodoxy @ livejournal

Poem published on cookiebomb.

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'cookiebomb' should be a verb.
"cookiebomb it, yo."
say cookiebomb 10 times fast until it becomes a lovely weird sound rolling around in your mouth.

"Everyone is disappointing. The more you know someone...this whole romantic love thing, its just a projection anyway, right."

"-The end is built into the beginning.
-God, you're just perfect.
-I'm a mess, but we fit.
-Yeah."

-Synecdoche New York

"I fucking hate people." -me.

Simple things are making me happy and sad today.
I am at my mother's house for mother's day.
She is depressed and keeps telling me that her life has no meaning and then crying. She refuses to eat anything. I don't really know how to respond except give her some of my meds so she can sleep for more than a few hours and make jokes about little things.
My little sister is severely anxious. I don't know how to make her feel better. I spent one hour on the porch in the sun with her in my arms while she cried about my mom and being a teenager and having to deal with the shit-storm that is life and I didn't know what to say. I don't know how to take care of the people I love.
Yesterday I argued with my Dad about things on his way to drop me off at my mom's house. It is really really tough to talk to non-academic conservative family members about what I want to do with my life and why I am so in love with theory. I don't want to justify anything I do to anybody. He said "do you doubt your faith" and I said "I'm not going to talk to you about religion" and we both got quiet. He said "I'm a do-er, not a thinker" like that gives him some sort of virtuous upper hand on us lazy writers. I said "it's not that simple." He doesn't know that I am atheist and this would probably make him cry and then I would feel embarrassed.
Laclau just fucked me sideways.
Right beside the chair that I smoke in on the back deck there is a nest in a flower pot with 2 baby birds and 1 egg in it. 2 robins guard the nest. I like looking at the babies, their skin is blue-white and translucent. They are covered in down that reminds me of hair on an old man's head.
I am drinking coffee with 6 sugars.
I am writing 3 papers.
I am smoking many cigarettes.
Last night I woke up terrified to the first thunder storm of the year and went downstairs and stood in the middle of the yard in the rain.
Everything is very very delicate.

When you slip out of me
I feel how empty my body is
and realize I am a shitty feminist
instead of you between my legs or lips
I will grip a cigarette between my fingers
and curl up naked in front of the window
to watch construction men
drill metal into wood

I yield too quick

I procrastinate, therefore, I am.

Check out these sexy folks. I love old cigarette ads.

When I was in grade 10 I used to spend my first period class at the mall doing laps and drinking coffee with the old people who used the empty space (before the stores opened) as a a gym/community breakfast spot. Because I was a weird loner hippie who would rather talk to old people about old movies than suffer in the company of people my own age. Or...I would write lists to distract myself from the useless math shit coming out of my teachers mouth (in French, no less). I would always write 2 lists, 'Things that are good about today' and 'Things that suck about today' to put my angst in proper perspective.

Things that suck about today

I have 20 dollars left in my bank account
I must quit smoking after this pack is done
I have to get up early tomorrow
I have to look for jobs on Monday
The weather is shit
I have to write a seminar presentation tomorrow

Things that are good about today

I am in close proximity to a sexy, intelligent man not wearing pants
I have some Fassbinder, Lynch and Cronenberg to watch
Salmon for dinner
Orange sherbet in a sugar cone previously consumed
Friends who will help me out in my state of being poor
Half-drunk bottles of wine yet to be consumed
3 well-deserved orgasms
The giant cat thing with evil eyes in the video game 'Castle Crashers'

I am lame, I know, its cool, yo.