Office Space.

I don't think I could feel more divided. At once utterly exhausted from staying up all night writing and full of frantic mental energy to get more done.

Sounds are scary.

Impetus

Ah yes. That's right. I forgot that there was a reason to stay on the sidelines, behind the camera. It's a straight shot of chagrin to be forced to realize that. You know why you stepped off the stage. It's a little worse to be immortalized in close-ups.

Too late now. Maybe you'll remember next time.


Probably not. The ego of hope is a lot stronger than logic. Why such a superficial thing is so dangerous I'll never understand.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Jean-Michel Basquiat and the chronology of an idiot-savant college student.

Well, that could have been more fun. There is something about leaving difficult work till the last minute that means I will look at the clock constantly, in agony, and memorize the time. Like so.

1:25 pm: maybe i should start that paper that's due tomorrow. What's my topic again?

2:10 pm: Mental breakdown number one.

3:00-6:00 pm: Two additional biographic possibilities thoroughly researched and dismissed. Exceedingly difficult thesis and its representative decided upon. Piles of articles found.

12:26 am: Research concluded. Boy very sick, made tea and wrapped in blanket with cats.

12:53 am: First words penned.

2:43 am: Inevitable loss of mind at end of second paragraph. Crawled into bed with Boy to nap for a short time.

3:20 am: Alarm goes off. Not having slept, lost glasses and began second Mental Breakdown of evening. Really more of a tantrum as am very sick.

5:00 am: Sleeping it off, dreaming of Basquiat, Haitian beaches, and a friend from high school. Paper writes itself in the surf.

8:00 am: Awake without transcript from dream. See Tired Boy off for work, feed cats. Coax Small Cat away from Queen of All Tigers' food and sit down to write again. Notes look like cuneform, or possibly Linear B.

9:38 am: Tapped out conclusion, deliberately leaving off a bibliography so as not to be late. Will claim to have forgotten to print that page. Rushed out door.

Time management is for people without severe emotional and organizational handicaps.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Trafelnuma

Not in the mood for people today. At least, not the choking, homogenous crowds that this school has to offer.

I want to return to the sense of safety and sanity that a few moments yesterday offered. I want to fast forward to directing today's first production before I get too scared to film. I want tonight and every other to last longer, without needing to sleep.




I wish I had a portable chyrsalis.

Post haste

Good afternoon,
Up till now, it may have escaped your notice that you are a very bad person. It is our duty to inform you that your judgmental rages, selfishness, and general emotional incompetence will no longer be suffered.

Stop taking for granted what you are lucky to have. Don't use your supposedly difficult upbringing as an excuse to be pathetic. Act like a human, not a socipathic, infantle rodent.

If you do not rectify the behaviors and grievances we have mentioned to you, we will be forced to take action against you, and we will enjoy it.

Sincerely,

CoGFGAaOGOF
(The Coalition of Gods, Fates, Guardian Angels, and Other Generalized Outside Forces)


Why don't we ever get bills like that in the mail?

Rain.

I skipped the same class three times in one week, which begs the question of whether it's really worth it to go back at all. Still, finally got that four hours of sleep i've been craving, and started my first decent painting since forever-ago.

It seems illogical that we have to sneak out of our lives to feel like real people.

At least the clouds look nice.

cliks

There have been so many days of late during which I suddenly and forcefully remember what that particular day felt like a year ago.

It's not a good or honorable reminiscence.


I can in all confidence say that I'm tired of the helplessness and the unfocused terror. I wish that time had the marked delineations of calendar years and chapters in novels. When a time is over, the next one is different, affording the possibility to let things carry over just a little bit less.

Also, I really hate it when people sing in crowded places in just such a way as to show off how good they are at singing. We get it, you're special and we're all very envious. Whatever happened to wearing talent with grace, to not constantly having to prove yourself?

End tangent, and on.

Does anyone follow the advice they give? Or is possessing human insight like being a muse- using it for others comes naturally, but poor Salma Hayek can't write a thing for herself?

The new experiment of the off-calendar year is to see if deciding a thing makes it believable, makes it real.

bemuse

it strikes me, as i struggle to tear open the packaged bag (with damaged perforation, just like every bag before it in this box) of tea that is supposed to help put me to sleep-- with its spearmint and chamomile and licorice and, oh yes, plenty of valerian root-- that almost everything is funny.

it might be that everything is funny, and if something isn't, you need to be kicked in the shins by a small child.




or something.

Punk violins and dead pop heroes, two days past the new moon: I just want back in your head.

There have been several posts now that I have saved and not posted, so many things that have gone through my mind and been written but not shared. I’m mostly okay with that, but since I’m looking at the first night alone in weeks, I have some things to think about.

Mostly sad things. Ain’t that the way? There’s something about being alone in the hours of the night that are dark and quiet and in between warm and cool—especially when you’re pretty sure you won’t be able to fend off the insomnia for more than two nights in a row and you just had two nights of less-than natural sleep—something that brings out the parts of you that ask all the hard questions.

So I’m taking out my computer for the first time in weeks, completely aware of the fact that I don’t actually have Internet access on it, and though I’m tempted to search for the perfect Tom Waits song (which would express It to exactness, and I’m sure it must exist, but I don’t have it and looking will only frustrate me), I end up flipping through to find all of the songs that I used to listen to when I was sad, or to make me sad, and it makes me wonder.

I’m not sure I used to feel things as fully as I do now. I used to live inside my head (still do, mostly; only I don’t understand what’s in there), attaching myself to ideas of absent persons and using Shakespearean monologues to make myself feel something I could diagram.

There have been bad things that have happened. Bad things that I’ve done, combined with a streak of ill luck that isn’t even worth the whining. I have trouble, now, talking to people. In some ways, it’s because I don’t think they understand. There have been a lot of people with whom I used to be close that I’ve tried to tell things, and they either don’t react or they simply don’t understand. I cause them discomfort. But the bigger truth is, I don’t understand. I don’t really know if I’ve grown or changed at all, if I’ve gotten anything from these experiences, or if I’m just reproducing every tired facsimile I can remember.

It’s been about a year since I can trace it.

I wish that I knew of ways in which I’d grown. If I could find something of which I would be proud, something bigger than getting the best grades thus far in college despite the mono—something real—maybe the past wouldn’t bother me so much.

It really does. Which makes me wonder: Do I live in it? Am I as foolish as the ancient peoples my mind has collected, the ones who live in ruins and will never believe that the present or future could be as good as the past?

Can one really change if one can’t see the truth of a state of being?

Do I really drift along on the edges of things, unable to jump into a definition of self, unable to accept things like hope, too much in my head to know, or feel, or experience?

Maybe I really am living in the past, because I paused after asking the white screen that question, and listened more closely to one of those old songs, and it gave me an answer of sorts. (I wonder if that prophetic dolphin still lives in the Walker.)

It’s funny that I’m looking to songs I used to listen to a lot, especially since I haven’t really listened to much music in general of late. Not for months. I’ve even purchased music in this time, played it maybe once, and put it away.

I sort of hate the idea of tapping all this out and putting it somewhere people could see it, as I always do, but especially because this kind of truthful, questioning mood is not something I want people to witness. But to be honest, I feel myself rising in a nondramatic crescendo, approaching an unseen precipice, and I have to follow it to its end.

I hope that people remember Michael Jackson for the incredible talent he had and brought to innumerable observers, not for being damaged or for whatever allegations have been brought against him. If I could find that beautiful passage Margaret Cho wrote about listening to his records so much as an ugly, sad child that she had to buy them multiple times, I’d copy it.

It’s sad, isn’t it? Where do we lose it, that bright, confident thing he had at first? Was it a performance, or did the things that happened to him eventually outweigh whatever he had inside him? Is that how it happens? Or does it happen the way it happens to my brother and(or?) sister, how I’m scared it’s happening to me; that they can’t see themselves, and so can’t control what they’re becoming?

Why can it be that our perceptions are so volatile, so skewed, so completely unstable that even a truth told right to our faces is impossible to believe?

… And now I’m babbling. If this particular careening vehicle of thought was supposed to arrive at a conclusion, it missed.

“I.” “I.” “i.” It doesn’t seem to write well, does it? The third person is more effective when using one’s self to access other people, but I can never seem to keep my tenses straight.

virgin

As I was waiting for the bus just now, two women turned to me, sort of boxing me in. One of them held out her arms and said that she loved me. I thought perhaps she was a little drunk, but I hugged her lightly and thanked her.

The other woman told me that Jesus loved me, and so did she. I said that was nice. She asked if I had accepted him as my savior or whatever it is they say. I said no, that it wasn't my belief. I started to say, "thank you for your-". But I didn't know what I was thanking them for, so I trailed off and got on the bus.

Not only have I had "Like A Virgin" in my head all morning, but I have spent a good part of the past week studying a film by Su Friedrich in which she uses Catholic nuns as a vehicle to explore repressed sexual desire.

All I wish is that I knew all the lyrics....

tomato

My dad, today, when I told him I was making tomato soup: You wanna know what goes really well with tomato soup?

I said, "Yes. Yes I do. What?"

"A million dollars."

Since I'm scrambling to work on a three-person project alone (it is due tomorrow), it made me really happy.

"Aren't you glad you didn't just settle for the grilled cheese?"

the mysterious circumstances of beverly kenney

Today, someone asked if it was five dollars to get me to go home with him.

He laughed.

I haven't felt right since, and I hate him for affecting me like that, for taking power from me. I hate myself for letting him.

Days like this, you wish you either had a mean right hook or a perfect singing voice.

Mostly the punching, though.

vodka sadie Hawkins

I can't fucking wait for the new P.O.S. Album. I love Doomtree most because of the poetic intensity they bring to a genre that seems to be growing deader and more false by the minute.


A few of my friends, I have discovered, like me because I'm "spastic." some because they're hyper and insane, some because it simply amuses them. While I'm awfully glad I can be of service, if ever I exhibit that much outgoing energy, it's a lie. You must be a good liar if people appreciate the lie that much. Monika's birthday was lovely, but bars are weird and the vehemence of strangers more so.


I think sometimes people look for themselves in those they encounter, and those of us who perform as better mirrors will make them go all mothlike. A reflection of a thing isn't the thing itself, though, and I think the mirror people just want to see truth.


Today was beautiful. The air held such warmth and storm, and the wind was more forceful and energetic than anything I've felt in months.

A freak day.


The fun thing about copious amounts of alcohol in my presence is that I can be more honest. It doesn't loosen my dry tongue; it makes wet ears more receptive. So when someone asked me if it was whorish to find a random boy to make out with, I smiled and told her it wasn't at all. Just a little trampy, and she said she could deal with that.


Actually I quite liked her.

urgh.

premise 1. sometimes, i presume. which, in case you've never noticed or never actually done it, is never a good thing to do. whether it's a fact or a position of stability, you will always, always end up looking stupid.

premise 2. i think i have stopped reading novels altogether. just nonfiction, poetry, and penny-dreadfuls that i return when i'm finished in two days anyway. which, i realize, is rather dishonest. lately, i have been. but does this mean that i have no creativity left? i don't make anything anymore, don't do anything. at all.....

premise 3. i know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that i have been too wrapped up in myself for months upon months to be a good friend.

premise 4. i do things like this. instead of trying to do something good, something positive, i swap between encouraging d. to a good first day back at school and writing about what a wretched person i am.

and so, it remains to be concluded that i need a swift kick in the ass, for i am becoming quite the fuckhead.

q.e.d.

really, woman, the least you could do is get up and make yourself feel a little better. or finish alphabetizing your books. ass.

The wild-eyed boy from Freecloud

Today is David Bowie's birthday.

I woke up feeling the beginnings of a panic attack. The last strings of a dream were carrying over, and I felt like it was going to happen, or that it had already begun... like it was a portend, like I had no choice but to watch it come true.

doug and i had separated for some reason, some decision that i'd made had led us to be "friends" for a while. he was seeing someone else to keep himself from loneliness, and said he still loved me. i watched from the back of his basement as he and a dark-haired girl with glasses-- whom my pouting brain told me wasn't pretty at all, merely cute-- played and laughed. bennett walked away and ignored the whole thing, maybe depressed, maybe involved, maybe not caring. i was left alone, as though invisible, watching him fall in love with someone else. no one cared that i was there. i've never, ever felt that kind of pain, and it didn't stop when i woke up.

He told me over and over that it would never happen, that all of this was impossible, that my brain was just punishing me the way it always does. He even tried to re-interpret the dream by saying that the dark-haired girl was me, a person that I could be if I tried. It took about an hour, but eventually I started breathing normally again and remembered what was real.

It feels a little stupid to be so upset by this, but everything was so... exact. I wandered away the way I wander when I'm so upset I can't think, and while it was clearly unrealistic that I walked in on a guest lecture being delivered by Norah Jones, I still feel that terror of the beginning of the end. I remember how much it hurt.

I stil hurt, and all I want to do is hide.