unattainable x-mas wish-list.

Vintage typewriter. This is Hemingway's old Royal.

Bergman.

Babuskha dolls.

Schiele prints.

New Zizek.


This broad's cigarette holder/life.

Think think think think.

Still wet around the edges, you enter the subway station. Pavement saturated-blue. The day is still heavy with moisture. Recesses are not the same as alcoves. Mirrors are not the same as windows. Street chaos is accompanied by loud music. One strand of your hair tucked into the folds of my scarf. Most parts of your body are long and angular. Loose threads against my face startle. Text messages rolled back and forth. "Again and again there comes a time in history when a man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four." (That is Camus, it is important to cite your sources, that way you know I am well-read and form connections, that way, you can say: "yes") I am ashamed.
The exhalation when we braced ourselves for the waves. The sour gulp inward, the sting at the back of the throat. Panicked re-emergence. The sand gathered in the crotch of your fluorescent bathing suit. Dead seagulls with their eyes picked out, half buried. Cold nipples at dusk. Fish skeletons draped against driftwood delicate like nail clippings. Back and forth. Can I enjoy poetry without exegesis. Can I enjoy your body with my eyes closed. Can I lick your inner thighs?
The man in a well-tailored tweed suit lowers his paper looks up and licks his left thumb. People's reflections are looking at your reflection in the black train windows. Back and forth.
I can't resist syllogisms, I can resist. Back and forth.

sleep and sleep and sleep.

yikes. whiskey drunk. angry at new people. new gossip, the same old patterns of my past repeated in other faces equally forgettable. language poets. silliman. bits of Whitman. conflict-resolution. not wanting to relinquish the signified. the fascination with the signifier reflects historical materialism, which, as a metaphor, is a contradiction. existentialism overview. ayer intercepting tyson via naomi watts. blisters on three fingers from burns on different days. imagining professors sleeping, shaving, feeding children, straightening ties; the face softens or hardens in routine. early morning subway ennui. needing your body when i least expect it. I intercepting objectivity, intercepting the fatigue of the signifier. a warm plate of onion rings balanced on my thighs. broken glass in four places. the grand inquisitor. stale glasses of lukewarm water to dip fingers into. leaving pill bottles untouched. periphery. circumference. social anxiety disorder. waning flirtations. would you name your child fyodor. defamiliarization is the birth of love. stray hairs on water-stained wine glasses. social interaction as self-discipline. loss of blood flow in bent legs. catching your eyes on her. dream machine. dylan's face is in his hands. tom waits is on the subway. language is a performance. i want your brain to explode all over me.

Love this. Burroughs and his cats.

sorry in advance.

November does good/bad things for me. Something shifts and my perspective is re-oriented. Consistently over the past five years my motivation to do school completely diminishes at this time. I have zero motivation to read philosophy or wrestle with issues in papers right now. And I don't really care about it either. Bad timing, though. Keeping things in perspective is good. Sometimes I realize that regardless of what I do to fuck up my life, even if I went on hiatus for a month or so, nothing would be ruined in the slightest, any damage due to dismissed papers, missed classes, forgotten phone calls can be undone pretty quickly. Recognizing the great insignificance of my life and problems is very liberating.
New lovers are so fun, everything dims except that. Just when I think I'm getting too jaded about people I meet someone who is easy to get along with, comfortable as fuck, and generally on my wavelength. So fucking refreshing. My inability to concentrate is probably a result of good vibe endorphins that make me feel like dancing or fucking at all times. I pretty much want sex all the time but the dancing is a new development. Its more like a pent up physical energy that usually expresses itself in one of those two outlets.
I really like this photographer, found via Garance. His site is here. His photos incite wanderlust and that wonderful feeling in the pit of my stomach in response to beautiful things found on screens, through headphones, behind windows or in my hands. I really like the latest post at Ani Smith's blog, I really like Ani Smith in general, I really like this photo of Alain Delon, I really like the new the Big Pink album. Here is a poem at read some words that I wrote a long time ago, I like it, although I think it is very simple, which is not necessarily a bad thing but I feel self-conscious.

I really really want to live in that house. Serious. When I was a kid I used to write super long stories and epic naive love stories about people living in abandoned houses on misty cliffs against water. I like reading those stories, I nod in agreement and approval of my former self. I drew portraits of the characters to go along with the narrative, and, later, I drew floorplans and detailed interiors of the houses I described. There are certain themes and images that still hit me in the same ways. Which makes me feel a sense of continuity of self, a uniformity- recognizing similarities between my 10-year-old self and now. I wonder why certain images stick with certain people. As in, what is the root of that influence, the tugging that happens when different people see different images with a particular vibe. I wonder if its connected to dreams at all. I wonder if its genetic . If I asked my sister, 'do you feel this way when you look at this' I wonder if she would understand at all. I know she wouldn't.

I love love love the texture and the colours in this photograph. Sometimes I save photos to my computer not because of content or composition but just because of the colour combinations.

Halloween nostalgia.

These are my favourite Halloween pictures. The first is classic and pretty much tells you everything you need to know about me and my brother. My brother is currently politically-conservative quasi-religious and in the army. I'm the crazy one consistently in disarray. Of course for the yearly Halloween parade I was wearing a skin-coloured top underneath my flashy purple shells. I can still - I kid you not - recite the lyrics from every song in the Little Mermaid. The second is epic on all levels. Strangely, my sister dressed like a princess that year (highly uncharacteristic of her, she was a menace). My brother is a fighter pilot. I am...so awesome. Pretty much every other year I dressed up as Princess Leia; unfortunately, I couldn't find any pictures.

xo

So I'm back in suburbia again. It is raining really hard, permanently overcast, chilly and damp, but the entire back yard is covered in bright yellow leaves and the ivy against the butter-coloured brick has turned golden orange. I would rather spend this weekend drinking beer with my brother than in Toronto watching half-clothed drunk people do stupid things that make them feel interesting and 'alt.' I'm going to hand out candy to rich suburban kids. Any excuse to indulge in nostalgia is taken. I'm not in a very good place mentally. I feel like something is rotting in my chest (and no, not my lungs, thanks) and like my brain is floating around in my skull, untethered. Such is anxiety. Most of my anxiety stems from changes that have to happen in the next month. The antipation of realizing this and the fear of having to make such changes happen. Anticipatory anxiety results in heavy and paralyzing inertia, which is why I've been sleeping 16 hours a day and loading up on carbs and tea. Fear is paralyzing and the paradox is that if I just moved, if I just got shit done, I'd feel a lot less anxious. I need someone to push me out of this space, I don't feel very strong. Then again, my moods change so often and in such extreme directions, I may feel amazing tomorrow.
On the agenda for today - -
blueberries and pineapple cashew chicken
Kant, metaphysics of morals
some Parfit essays
hot chocolate and home-made carrot cake
musical accompianment by Girls Real Estate Flaming Lips Zola Jesus
Silence of the Lambs @ 9
bubble bath with Brothers K.
good things :)

Some shaky first drafts.

grimy first moves, bones drawn to bone
friction against skin shedding itself

cocoon bodies pushed out of their private darkness,
corrupting forms too material for
sighs that sway up into the overhead light
singed on bulbs like moths crowded in the dusty glass
lacking legs and single wings:
torn up asymmetrical shadows of sounds and failing bodies.

Artificial flame draws me into that rain-soaked space
between a rock and a hard place.
steady suction lubricated fingers slippery and
unsuccessful
mouth moves like an angry epileptic body open against
ambiguous mattress-stains and smoke-smell pillows
eyes roll back into skin pockets
flushed milky white, sheathed in moisture.
dirty flecks of yesterday's mascara
float like insects in the corners of your
sealed eyes.

tequila-skin and another man's sweat
darken your profile

thick full lips stained october-cloud-purple
sloppy wine mouth stains chin blood red
mop your face playfully, too self-conscious
the glass delicate and water-stained:
I'm fingering the stem and licking my lips.

shrink-wrapped body contained to
save energy, keep the freshness in and
tongue pieces fluorescent
like that space behind your ear,
each touch a more intense
invitation to infection

strange strong hands have a pulse
that echoes in organs, I can see the outline of your body
and its place in a sprawling soupy city
impervious to rain

---

The final act is an awkward look-away
dress rehearsal for the big
anti climax, poorly lit. And I can barely hear your voice on the phone.
the amputation swift, one fell swoop before the crash and
no one hears the tree fall in the forest, either.

Each lover a bandage placed over the scar left from the last
scab ripped off with the wrapping,
negligence sting-proof tingling wound that grows,
self-contained

Wiping your semen from my browned belly,
eyes sway with guilt like you've stabbed, not loved.
"you can't leave like that, sudden"
removal a shock too loud
the lid of a sealed jar popped open with force
a seal peeled off a closed envelope,
my contents exposed for consumption.
cover me.
panic pulls shame out of me
(but i need love, i need this)

before retreat you stuck it out,
Appease-her
curled back between swollen breasts
now wet with fluids that
smear and suck into belly buttons,
into the curved skin boat
of upper thigh.

you are hard and seamless
you never leak when held up to light.
turn me upside down,
test my contours.
taste me, I am leaking quietly.

Oh and 2 things.
I got rid of comments, it makes me feel less self-conscious about writing whatever I want. I still want to talk to you if you have anything to say, so email me.
I like the way my skin smells when I wake up after a night in a club. Perfume mixed with my skin, my pheromones, other peoples pheromones (and by that I mean sweat) tequila, the city. Gross, I know, but I feel really great in my body after a night out meeting and talking and dancing.

Antichrist

Here’s another essay on film that no one will read.
This will spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it and want to in the future. Some things are best left as surprises.

Antichrist is a very powerful movie. Trier is trying to tackle and critique issues of misogyny and gynocide but he does so in a way that is…misogynistic. This puts me on edge and I’m not sure if these tensions can be reconciled - but that’s part of the strange beauty and insanity of the film. On one hand, Trier is criticizing the ways that women have been historically and ideologically damaged by patriarchy, particularly through male conceptualizations of women over time. Ironically though, the female character is portrayed as each and every one of these archetypes of femininity – she is pure corporeal body, catalyst for sin, irrational, instinctual, primal, hysterical – and Trier chooses to enforce these constructed visions of Woman rather than develop an alternative vision of femininity that could in some way, emancipate ‘Eve’ from this pigeon-holed male vision. She is active but only in a destructive way. Lier admits, yes, women have been wronged. But the response of this female character is to engage with her victimhood, to revel in it, to choose an active role only in a destructive capacity. And the act of self-mutilation is not an affirmation of powerful femininity – it is emancipatory, but its not emancipation from the cycle of victimization – it’s a sad acceptance (on the part of the character) that she is indeed only what ‘Man’ has told her she is, that she is indeed evil – and the act of self-mutilation is an attempt to free herself of femininity in all its forms, but particularly, that one component of femininity not capable of appropriation within phallocentric discourses – the woman as capable of pleasure, of choice. Strangely, she never castrates her husband, but she does castrate herself. This is a strange reversal that puts ‘Woman’ in an active role only so that she can deny any opportunity for active and autonomous femininity. It is also interesting that the mutilation does not prevent her fertility; she is still capable of sex and pregnancy and birth; only her capacity for orgasm, only her capacity for sexual pleasure is removed, by choice. So in this sense, without a clitoris, she better conforms to the idealized, stereotype of Woman as a vessel for male desire, without any opportunity for jouissance, except through the male phallus. The self-castration is a symbolic removal of that element of Woman that slides between pleasure-for-self and pleasure-for-Him (as an object for birth and male pleasure). In many ways, the film engages with these issues, but it does so in a way that consistently draws our attention back to the woman as the harbinger of evil.
At the beginning of her violent rage, she rushes into the room and accuses her husband of wanting to leave her, etc, and starts to fuck him. Again, the rage is a response to her need for the man – her violence is reactionary (regardless of whether or not it is founded in anything ‘real’) and reinforces the image of the woman as dependent on the man, not only in the obvious ways, but as a catalyst for her own activity and rage.
The film is obviously critical of psychiatry and therapy as a symbol of patriarchal ratiocination. Of course, the male is conceived as the ‘voice of reason’ who must teach (ie indoctrinate) his wife on how to control her body (in this sense, her physiological anxiety symptoms, her sexual desire and her violence, in that order). The result is that rather than becoming less of an animal, she becomes increasingly less [outwardly] rational by the conclusion of the film. The irony though is that if indeed Trier is trying to criticize psychiatry, by the conclusion we realize that *ta-da* she was nuts all along. Because of this, it is difficult to sustain that critique. Her psychosis wasn’t a result of the ‘manipulative’ and ‘repressive’ pressure of psychiatry, because she was crazy beforehand. The therapy is apparently one of many factors that brought her insanity into a more public space, but it wasn’t responsible for its onset. And by the conclusion, she’s not strong (?) enough to finish the job she started. She still needs him. He must destroy her, and he does, and this is acceptable because the crazy bitch must be put in her place. This is also a symbol of the ‘Man’ ‘killing’ the ‘feminine’ component of his identity in order to sustain that rational exterior. The dichotomy of male/female must be maintained. Trier never really plays with this. The boundaries are set up really quickly and each character never really passes out of their predetermined gender space.
There is a lot to say and write about the film, but one image in particular is insane – a two-part image. The first takes place when she runs out during sex and starts to masturbate under the tree (symbolically, the tree of knowledge, of course). She gets him to hit her and only then does she take him back inside her, etc. Pan out and we see (dead) female bodies entwined within the roots of the tree, surrounding them. This is insane on many levels:
1) ‘Eve’ invites and tempts ‘Adam’ into sin (the violence)
2) He can’t resist her ‘power’ which is purely sexual and tied to her body
3) She cannot achieve pleasure on her own, she requires the phallus for any degree of jouissance (which also probably relates to her self-mutilation later, the inadequacy of the autonomous female to achieve pleasure on her own except through the male)
4) Knowledge necessitates violence and destruction – the Fall is both a fall into knowledge and suffering, the two are intertwined and involve a dialectic explored in the passive/active interplay between the male and the female – he overpowers her because she wants and asks him to overpower her (ie. who is the active/passive agent in this situation, really?).
5) The ‘fall’ – this whole patriarchal, Christian discourse is founded on the sin and the suppression of the feminine (the bodies are the ‘sacrifices’ required to support and sustain this discourse, biblically and in relation to ‘gynocide’ of the 16th century, etc). The bodies of the women are entwined within the roots of the tree of knowledge to symbolize their role as the sacrifices necessary to sustain ‘maleness.’
The female character is sacrificed for the same purpose, later. I think the final image of the hoards of women entering the forest could symbolize a bunch of different things. They are the women ‘released’ from their position in the roots of the tree/as the foundation of Christian discourse/maleness. How this emancipation makes sense in the context of the films narrative, I’m not sure, although it might be related to the killing of the original ‘Eve’ figure as a means to emancipate all women from the ‘shit Eve started.’ This would be fucked up. The fact that the hoards of women walking in the forest are clothed and walking (aka not dead) also implies that they are women liberated from their ‘sin,’ from the flesh – they are covered and ‘imaginary’ women, suggesting that women can only ever really escape their essentially evil and destructive nature by retreating into Lacan’s imaginary realm again, as idealized concepts but not real, fleshy, active Subjects. Woman as Subject is problematic for Man.

But goddamn, Willem Defoe is super hot in this film.