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.