I feel like I'm doing so many things but not really getting anything done.
I am writing a lot of poetry and editing a lot of old poems. I have about 500 poems on my computer, some no longer than a few lines, some pages long. I'm trying to sift through them and all the corresponding memories. I have been writing a lot of poems to my little sister. I wonder if she would like them if she ever read them. She doesn't like Kurt Vonnegut very much. She misses Japan a lot. She was rejected by her first boyfriend.
I'm getting wanderlust again. Someone move to the country with me. I want to throw paint on to walls, walk around with no pants on all the time, make delicious pies, roll around in grassy fields and listen to music at top volume. I want to live someplace that resembles here. Animal skeletons optional, but preferable.
I am so emotionally exhausted.

Shakespeare's sister is a bitch.

I'm feeling highly fucked-up and extremely poor. Job doesn't appear to have worked out for me. Too bad I had that one day of being happy and spent $40 on jewelery-making supplies that I could have used to eat food for an extra week. The situation is pretty dire when $40 is a major loss.

I feel pretty much excluded from all social situations. I realize this is because I have a very difficult time 'performing' without being self-conscious about it. As a result, I just back down and get sullen. When in groups of men, I feel excluded by their tension and obvious investment in performing gender, performing what it means to be a 'male.' I'm sure the same phenomena applies to women, but to be honest, the last time I was in a group of more than 3 women was probably 8 years ago (thanks to traumatic preteen experiences, of course). The construction of male social identity is so painfully obvious to me. Let's talk about girls with big tits and a phenomenal ass. Let's talk about how you picked her out of the crowd and pointed to declare 'I will possess that.' What position am I left in as a woman within this discussion? I am immediately given the choice to perform in several different ways, all of which position me as an outsider/observer with no voice.
I can:
1) laugh at your "casual misogyny" and pretend to be "one of the boys" who "gets it"
2) remain quiet
3) respond in a critical manner
Which of these is the best way to respond? None of these responses are effective or useful for a woman within that male discourse. I'm set up to fail within this discourse of male-male bonding. So a lot of dudes would say, "then stay out of it." But what kind of time are we living in? Apparently we're still down with alienating people of both genders. Anyone with a vagina is automatically 1) prompted to reject her identity as a woman in order to fit in and let the boys be boys 2) relegated to silence, given no voice or position to respond 3) demonized as an outsider "bitchy-feminist." A lot of people are not self-aware enough to recognize when things they say are translucent attempts to perform gender as it is 'supposed' to be performed. And most of the shit that comes out of peoples mouths is self-admittedly 'not the reality' of the situation. It's all just a fucking show, and when I question men about sexist comments they're like "oh, I'm just joking" or laugh it off as "natural" (!!) male posturing. Regardless, that doesn't magically make such comments neutral.

If only I didn't let anything bother me, if only I wasn't such a bitch, right? Too bad shit sticks with me and I have an opinion.

Sorry this post is so ranty and possibly unintelligible. I am heavily drugged post-panic attack. And the panic returns. I was huddled in a bathroom stall trying to control my breathing and someone wrote "this too shall pass" on the door.

Thanks.

"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."
-Donna Haraway

"If you don't understand, so much the better, that will give you the opportunity to explain."
-Jacques Lacan, XX The function of the written

I am feeling a little bit better these past few days. It's amazing what a day of wine, relaxation and shitty tv can do for a person's mental health. Plus, I think I forgot my meds for a good few days. I tend to forget things like that and then go crazy.

I am trying to reconcile myself with Lacan's belief that woman is 'not-whole,' that we cannot speak of woman in language so it is necessary to cross her out (literally, he crosses out the word woman a lot of the time). Woman is the empty signifier that structures the jouissance of the male. She is a signifier of nothing, there is no content, only a framework by which the signifier 'male' is constructed.

As such, the sexual relationship is impossible for Lacan. Men seek the 'object' of jouissance, but in the actual relation of love, of physical love, they are stopped short. Phallic jouissance necessitates fusion with the object but when this occurs, the woman 'castrates' the male (according to pyschoanalysis). So there is always that limit reached by the male, and really no place at all for female jouissance within a phallocentric, symbolic discourse whatsoever. The woman only has access to jouissance (which, according to Freud, is always masculine, because libidinal energy is always masculine) when mediated through the male, or through a child.

But then, ta-da, Lacan brings in this notion of an "extra" jouissance, only capable for women. There is always a limit, in which women refuse to participate in the game of phallocentric jouissance. A holding-back, so to speak, that prevents full submersion within the discourse. As a result, this jouissance cannot be articulated. It cannot be articulated in language, just as the woman has no place within language except as Other, and as such, doesn't exist, making "sexual relationship impossible."

But in order to cover his ass, Lacan relates this "extra" feminine jouissance to a notion of God. He can't just say that 'woman' doesn't exist without making up some bullshit theory that doesn't make him look like a complete ass. So, he mystifies it. Because apparently, if men can't understand female sexuality or find a place for it within their discourse (heaven forbid your reconstitute it or re-think its foundations), then there is no choice but to put female sexuality behind a "screen" of mysticism and divinity that pretends to relegate to women some privledged place close to God and somehow puts them 'above' language and the paltry discourses of tradition. Unfortunately, positioning women behind this screen (because men like Lacan, self-admittedly can't understand female sexuality) is just another way of idealizing femininity and placing female jouissance within the framework of some patriarchal male deity (literal or not, the 'Divine' is always masculine). It's basically like shoving woman behind a veil and then worshipping her from the other side as something unknowable. Ironically, Lacan shifts back and forth between glorifying this 'extra,' 'unknowable' jouissance and saying that it doesn't exist, and sometimes goes so far as to say that women are holding back, they are not "telling us everything." Fuck, yo. How the fuck can he blame women for 'not telling him everything' if, after all, according to him, there is no way to even communicate and speak female desire? Isn't this a fault of your discourse?

The annoying thing is, even Irigaray positions female sexuality somewhere within 'the divine.' She thinks women need to accept their corporeal nature and sexual difference, but also spouts off about how women must recognize the "divinity of their sexuality."

Even fucking Haraway talks about female sexuality as something "divine, close to God."

What the fuck are we doing here?
There is no place for female sexuality except as pure archaic, primitive body, or, as sexual beings somehow related to 'the divine'?
I don't want to be divine. There is nothing special or divine about female sexuality, any more than for men. Thinking of my sexual identity as something that brings me closer to 'the divine' makes me want to throw up, actually.

Come on, people.
I love you, but...come on.

(I'm pretty sure maybe 1 person will read this whole post. Thanks if you did.)

Also, the image above is by Leonardo daVinci. Need I explain and rant about its portrayal of sexuality? Jacqueline Rose already did this for me.

I feel like the city is not-so-quietly disintegrating!
Mel's Diner went bankrupt! This is the place I used to eat at almost every day, dirty as fuck but delicious greasy all-day breakfast on Bloor open 24/7 for the past 40 years and the most delicious montreal smoked meat.
Pages Bookstore is being shut down and replaced with a McDonald's! What the fuck? Pages is one of the best bookstores in Toronto. There are already a myriad of McDonald's dominating Queen street corners. There's one half a block away at Spadina.
Everything is closing.
Everyone is being a sketch-bag.
The streets are full of garbage.
News people are telling citizens to stay away from emergency garbage dump sites because they are now festering with disease and rodents.
Fruit flies are taking over.
I feel really lost.
I know I'm a wreck when all that centers me in my life is Lacan.
Everything that saves me also destroys me, eventually.

A few things.

Humble blogger that I am, I think you should all contact DJ Berndt to get a copy of the first Pangur Ban Party chapbook, "Doubts I Love". If you email him with your name and address he will send you a copy for free. Support some good writers, read some good work by talented people: Jillian Clark, Crispin Best, Chris East, Ryan Manning, David Fishkind, Adam Showalter, Glen Binger, Adam Coates, DJ Berndt and, of course, myself (no new material from me though, I was too swamped). For more info + contact, DJ's blog is here and PBP online is here.

I got a job today. Sadly the first thing I thought of post-interview cigarette was "well, I may not have a life but at least I can afford that bondage equipment and fancy dildo I was looking at, plus splurge on some over-priced critical theory texts for next year." I will no doubt become the over-sexed potty-mouthed girl who doesn't smile enough, the slot I usually slide into at any workplace.

Things that have made me happy recently:
Universal Studios Florida (music)
The Grüne Zitadelle by Hundertwasser (architecture)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (film) (I might possibly write a huge paper on this one, using theories from Haraway, Foucault and Irigaray)

Happiness is a warm warm gun.

oh, and I really love this. The most recent post especially.
http://unroughundone.blogspot.com/

College Street.

The sky is so anxious and floats like a bloated body over a city that lies huddled below, looking for warmth in shadow. Of all the coffee shops in this city, this one speaks to me and makes my mind dull so that the sharp corners of bitter and big thoughts bounce away, diffused temporarily. Things to worry about later, after this little bit of sunlight stops burning through this big window, filtered, gray, tired like the rest of us. David Byrne is shrieking like a mad man through the speakers and I like the way my body moves involuntarily, drifts upwards to meet him, bobs without trajectory against corners like a dying moth against a window or a balloon slowly deflating, caught in phone wires. The streets are filled with garbage because of the strike. I feel apocalypse looming. I feel this most when public services are suspended. Certain things, unspoken, unnoticed tasks, have a large part in defining what order means. A group of men yell 'what are you' when I pass them. Not who, what. Like this is a simple question. I have no energy, I am mentally exhausted. In China town at Spadina there is a dark store with old clocks behind the yellow panes of dusty windows. The door is permanently propped open and when you look inside there is an old man seated in the dark, surrounded by clutter, napping with his head tucked in one shoulder. Two children are bouncing on a dirty matress in an alley, reaching out to touch the grafitti on the wall, their hands caressing, learning the contours of a striking, painted face. Black paint has fallen into creases on the mans noir profile and the children are whispering together, indifferent, stroking every part absent-mindedly except the eyes.

I have taken to neglecting doses of medication and enjoy the first hour of my body’s disorientation. The mind reels, the heart palpitates, my vision is blurred and I feel my body stretched between two ropes that dig into my flesh; that is the tension, the balance, the plateau of anticipation that I now approach with a degree of measured self-containment. I used to feel very afraid of these moments and avoid them at all costs. Now I want it to happen so that I can test my limits and breathe deeply. I dare my body to revolt and but my mind stays very calm, bemused even, watching a rebellious child squirm under pressure. When I am on the verge of panic, my eyesight blurs much like it does the moment before orgasm. My strategy in terms of coping with panic has developed in tandem with my recent sexual exploits. I suspend both the panic and the orgasm, allow myself to linger at that point just before I fall deep into it, before the body’s chemicals collapse inwards and send me out of myself so that I can’t recognize the difference between euphoria and death. This is the closest I get to meditation. When I was younger my first lover and I used to meditate together in the dark and then slowly reach out and touch each other’s bodies, our minds blank and dark, disembodied subjects but with hands that pulled organs and fluids out of each other. My mind is back in that place, often, suspended on that plateau, the fine balance between chaos and presence. I think a lot about Bataille’s belief that humans are blessed with wealth, with a wealth of excess energy that must be spent luxuriously in order to continue this cycle of energy. Luxury for Bataille is sex, death and food. Fuck people because this is the closest we can get to death, for those too afraid to die. I imagine Bataille cringing at the liberalist new age sounds of those words written down, strung together, stolen syllables stuffed with inherited signifiers. We can only decorate the prison words inhabit, never open the door. I think of Bataille pondering the flow of energy in the cosmos while he is being sucked off, when he feeds his semen to a lover. When I am naked I feel clothed, I want someone to reach under the skin, find that little tear like a loose thread and pull my body out of its skin enclosure, to be open and purified; I am never naked enough, I feel that my nudity is insufficient. I feel closed and want to be open again.

Forget the gaze of a man, the gaze of the city is most intrusive. Virginia Woolf says that women are like mirrors that "possess the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size." But the city wants to see itself in its people, it wants to be told, "you are beautiful, you are worshipped, take my body and make me your conquest, I will be a reflection of you and you will see what you want in me."

Click to view + read...hilarious if it didn't incite cringes from me for at least 2 reasons.

Though she was a tiger lady, he didn't have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr.Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her.

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