another reason i like doing these posts is to talk to people about art and media so whether you have read/watched these or not, if you have a thought i would love to hear about it! leave me a lil comment!

literature:

i’m very into you: correspondence, 1995-1996 ~ kathy acker & mackenzie wark

notes:

i ached for them as i read this. kathy acker and mackenzie wark’s two weeks of email correspondance after their brief fling when acker was in australia. despite the brief nature of their relationship, you still feel the possibility, the magic of the potential, within their conversations that oscillate between being awkward and direct, and that move through topics of art, media, theory, sexuality, and their relationship itself. i loved very much how the email format of communication allowed for a special type of freedom, directness, distraction, vulnerability, and more. something that is impossible/very different from phone calls or texts, and closest to letter writing except there is less waiting since it is not a physical mode of communication. it made me want to embrace email more as a form of long-distance /not-in-person communication, and that’s why i shared my email and asked people to email me. (btw i’ve been not on top of my email responses and i’m sorry and as soon as this month of august passes by and i don’t feel completely crushed by all the aspects of my life i hope to embrace it again.) i’ve already been obsessed with kathy acker which is why i picked up this book but i hadn’t known too much about mckenzie wark aside from her name and that she wrote a book called a hacker manifesto a while ago, but reading this got me super into her!!! i watched a few of her lectures on youtube and hope to read a book of her’s soon, once i have more money i think i’ll buy her “memoir”.

quotes:

“why am i telling you all this? partly ‘cause the whole queerness/identity thing for me stretches through everything, absolutely everything. slipping between straight/gay is child’s play compared to slipping between writer/teacher/influence-peddler whatever. i forget who i am. you remind me of who i prefer to be.”

“but now i imagine i can sense you hiding, a perpetual motion machine in my hands, between the lines. there are reaches of me that i can only put in language as feminine, and those reaches exposed themselves to you, felt comfortable next to you sometimes. that doesn’t happen very often.”

“motorcycles? my relation to motorcycles. well, i’m a girl. and there’ this big hot throbbing thing between my legs, whenever i want/him/her, and he/she’s mine and won’t reject me like humans have the habit of doing and. it is so cool. to be on/around this thing and there are trees and water all around you, flying through the country, something like freedom. that’s the decent side of the american nightmare. if you visit here, come riding. i’m an almost too-safe driver.”

“it’s very simple really: if i’m in SF, i want to see *you*, i want to sleep with *you*. i want a little more of that intimacy, and the *possibility* of sex. … i want to know you, i want to find a territory with you. i’m not sure what it is, but i want to find it. … i feel like i’m circling around you, trying to spiral in tighter, but not quite knowing what the coordinates are.”

~~~

the heart is a lonely hunter (1940) ~ carson mccullers

notes:

how do i explain my love for this novel?

we follow roughly five characters: a young tomboy-ish girl, a black man who is a doctor, a white man who is a drunk, the owner of the local 24-hour cafe, and the deaf man they all confide in. it’s the 1930’s in an unnamed town in georgia. every inhabitant, including the main characters, seems to be yearning towards something— to their own individual truth of the world, and the hopes and dreams that arise of it. many of these people are isolated from one another, possibly due to circumstance and societal norms, such as race, age, or gender. however, many of these people seem to be aching and yearning toward the same truths and ideas. this is a novel of being so, so close, and still barely, fatally, missing one another. the things that sometimes bring people together seem also to bring them apart, when not looked at close enough (or looked at too closely.) each person wallows in their misunderstoodness, without realizing that they have just unknowingly watched the one who could understand them, pass them right by. intead, they project their lives and feelings onto the deaf man, who never gives them a response, who in reality thinks only about his faraway deaf friend.

i’m amazed at how carson mccullers does not shy away from radical expressions of politics, and a represntation of america that includes exploitation, poverty, and injustice. frankly, i’m amazed at this novel in whole— i cannot believe mccullers was only 23 when this was published!! this is not a novel of happy endings. it’s a novel of reality. and yet: it has fulfilled my spirit nonetheless. the characters, and world of this 30’s georgian town, are written with such care; it is impossible to not find one’s heart aching right into every page, into every emotion, of fear, pain, discovery, small joys, drunken nights, and more.

quotes:

“how did it come? for a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. like a walk or march. like god strutting in the night. the outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart she could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. after a while the music came again, harder and loud. it didn’t have anything to do with god. this was her, mick kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. in the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. this music was her — the real plain her.”

“the things they have done to us! the truths they have turned into lies. the ideals they have fouled and made vile. take jesus. he was one of us. he knew. when he said that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god — he damn well meant just what he said. but look what the church has done to jesus during the last two thpusand years. what they have made of him. how they have turned every word he spoke for their own vile ends. jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. jesus would be one who really knows. me and jesus would sit across the table and i would look at him and he would look at me and we would both know that the other knew. me and jesus and karl marx all sit at a table and —”

“ the young chemist picks cotton. the young writer is unable to learn to read. the teacher is held in useless slavery at some ironing-board. we have no representatives in government. we have no vote. in all of this great country we are the most oppressed of all people. we cannot lift up our voice. our tongues rot in our mouths from lack of use. our hearts grow empty and lose strength for our lack of purpose.”

“the people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. and by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.”

“death. sometimes he could almost feel it in the room with him. he rocked to and fro in the chair. what did he understand? nothing. where was he headed? nowhere. what did he want? to know. what? a meaning. why? a riddle.”

~~~

films (shortlist1):

the flowers of st. francis (1950) ~ roberto rossellini

notes: i don’t know much about the lives of most saints but i have actually been to assisi (it was so beautiful, felt like a medieval disneyland in a good way, charming narrow streets, the pink stone, kittens wandering around) and also i quite love rossellini! i enjoyed the slow pacing of this and the cinematography.

the wicker man (1973) ~ robin hardy

notes: love some folk horror, the musical elements were surprisingly enjoyable. i’d say i enjoyed this mainly for its atmosphere. i’d choose this over midsommer any day i think.

touki bouki (1973) ~ djibril dip mambéty

notes: feels so fresh! the godard influence is noticeable and i loved this more than many of the godard films i’ve seen. humorous, vivid, gentle/empathetic at times, both politically sharp and a wonderful adventure. i had to download that song that plays at the end onto my ipod.

purple noon (1960) ~ rené clément

notes: stylistically and in terms of faithfulness to the original text i like this film the best compared to other adaptations (mainly compared to the talented mr. ripley- i did really like the show ripley with andrew scott). alain delon is one of the most beautiful men i’ve ever seen and i’m a lesbian. i do still wish that this was gayer.

eggshells (1971) ~ tobe hooper

notes: loved the trippy experimental film making in this

lucifer rising (1972) ~ kenneth anger

notes: kenneth anger changed my perception of film when i stumbled upon scorpio rising in high school (rip king) and i think this might be one of my favorite films of his that i’ve seen. i want the soundtrack infused into my blood, the colors were stunning, so raw yet majestic at the same time. film making as magic, as ritual, as cult, as invoking the old and evoking the new. alsoooo marianne faithful <3

cathedral (1971) ~ ronald chase

notes: queerness transcends. human and beautiful.

strangers on a train (1951) ~ alfred hitchcock

notes: sometimes i watch a hitchcock film and just remember that damn really nobody does it like him. he plays with me as a viewer endlessly and i loveeee it

india song (1975) ~ marguerite duras

notes: my favorite duras so far. utilizes its own form as a film in a way i have literally never seen. slow, and extremely ghostly, tender, empty, conflicting. humongously empty yet also claustrophobic. colonialism and the taking of more than what is needed and a deep boredom as an aftermath o such greed ad excessive ownership of things and sex as the only thing left for a human to do and sex devoid of desire. delphine seyrig is astonishing as always.

the birds (1963) ~ alfred hitchcock

notes: i live fifteen/twenty mins away from where this was filmed and i cannot believe it took me so long to watch this but yes hitchcock does it again

adoption (1975) ~ márta mészáros

notes: independence, womanhood in different stages, sometimes the bonds we need the most are the ones that seem strange or unconventional at first. beautiful visual attention to detail.

losing ground (1982) ~ kathleen collins

notes: another film that is boiling over with absolutely vivid colors— and performances! i’m stunned by seret scott and also happy to see bill gunn. another film about a woman and her independence and another film that is unlike anything i have ever seen before. i can’t stop thinking about this one.

pandora’s box (1929) ~ g.w. pabst

notes: LOUISE BROOKS!!!!!! drooling over the costumes in this. so classically dramatic. i’d like to check out the original (play?) that this was based on.

the bride wore black (1968) ~ françois truffaut

notes: since i watched a couple of hitchcock films this month i thought i’d finally watch truffaut’s ode to the filmmaker starring the always amazing jeanne moreau, who charmed me so so much in this. i have never seen kill bill and i don’t know if i ever need to when this film exists and it’s literally perfect?

thank you for reading! again, i always love having the ability to chat about film, literature, art, and more with people! would love to talk about any of this in the comments or elsewhere (still always feel free to send me an email, i promise once i get over some of my current personal stuff i’ll respond more actively again)

Leave a comment

time traumatizes me. obsessively i watch the clock.

in the mornings i get ready with an alarm that goes off every five minutes for i must keep myself paced. i must keep myself on edge. i must keep myself prepared. i must not lose myself. okay. sometimes if i have a few hours free before work i have alarms that ring every thirty minutes or so.

each hour is a value of its own. time is the true currency. like a singular dollar bill, just one “free” hour on its own is worthless, is essentially already wasted, due to its singularity. no, the only time of real value is the type that stretches out unnoticed, the type that can exist in such an abundance that one can be allowed to forget entirely of its existence.

my free time is only truly mine when my mind is my own. this is why work feels so difficult— i am not existing within my own mind— not only is my body a vessel for the work to get done but even more so is my mind. when i come home from work rarely do i have the time/space/comfort/solitude to exist peacefully within my own mind, despite having left work. when i finally have my time to myself i have forgotten how to exist within my own mind. i have forgotten how my mind feels. i am halfway washed away. this is where the sedation often comes in. i sedate myself out of discomfort / into my comfort. i sedate myself to block off the outside world. i sedate myself to lose my awareness of what i have lost, of what i now lack.

maybe if i could find a Time truly endless, the sedation could be unnecessary. is this endless time that is the true time i seek actually just a lack of time? i yearn for a lack of Time? Timelessness? what is the word for living without time? what is the word for a world without time? if i could find this world would i grow back into a whole being, again?

i think time can be real and it always will be, and it always should be, but sometimes the thing that is Change is what we call time. i am not asking for a world that is infinite. i am not asking for a world that does not change. things move forwards, things move backwards, things move in circles; what we call Time is actually the only thing that keeps us all constricted in place and yet if one were to imagine a world without our “time” they might initially picture a sort of anarchic nothingness. no, no.

2.

OCTAVIA BUTLER:

“ALL THAT YOU TOUCH YOU CHANGE.

ALL THAT YOU CHANGE CHANGES YOU.

THE ONLY LASTING TRUTH

IS CHANGE.

GOD

IS CHANGE.”

3.

i have an eye for beauty in the form of disruption. disruptions are the natural resisting the unnatural. disruptions are Change/God. reminding me that It is still there. even though the artificial layer atop everything thickens slightly with each day. even as i watch those around me greet the world that is just the Double of the world and then move on with their days.

Disruption. I’m Still Here. Disruption. I’m Still Here. Disruption=Interruption=Eruption=YESIAMALIVEANDIAMSTILLHERE.

my diary has become a record-book of the disruptions i bear witness to.

4.

i was wearing jeans
my eyes open and closed
i walked up and down, side to side
the city felt so wide
then this feeling really hit me
i guess it happens once in a while
that i want something huge to hit me
something out of time
and this thing is really pretty
i don’t know it, but it feels mine
i should not try to explain it
just know it doesn’t happen all the time
and while the world is spinning faster
i sometimes wonder how
this feeling that i’m after
is best kept alive

touch mе
touch me
touch me
touch me

~smerz, ‘street life’

5.

and i think it might not be a human’s touch that she sings of there but the touch of the world - the touch of the world - the greatest touch - the sweetest touch - the touch of life - the touch we have forgotten is there - the true touch we are looking for in the touches of others - the touch that (yes it does) it moves through the fingers of others - and that is okay but it is in other places as well - so many other places too - so let yourself be touched - i sound like a preacher - but you need to - you need to let yourself be touched

6.

THE EDGE OF TIME IS WHERE I BECOME AWAKE

.

.

.

(this is where the journey begins)

(stay tuned for more)

Subscribe now

i showered and drank a couple glasses of wine and felt that pang of need for a cigarette, knowing however that it would completely ruin my cleanliness. outside with my small vice rolled up tight and smoking softly, i can tell that the moment is passing by with speed. i can’t linger in the night like this. linger without time. not now. not yet. i glance carelessly at the stars. i listen; what i initially think to be the chatter of a neighbor’s television is, i think, their real conversation. it sounds intense, too dramatic for this hour of the night that should just be for the easing into rest. i’m aware of my thoughts stirring quickly back and forth. i go inside to grab the first piece of paper and working pen that i can find and, in doing so, i lose those thoughts. better to keep them in my mind in their entirety, or lose them halfway in the process of attempting to save them, record them, preserve them? i tend to choose the latter, trusting my skills to expand on the fragments once i reach the editing room, although in that part of the process they inevitably merge into fiction. i don’t mind necessarily. but there is purity in the initial thoughts that is impossible to catch.

as i stubbornly finish my rolled cigarette i am wearing one of my most prized possessions from ireland, a sweatshirt, rewarded after bearing three months of the coastal irish summer cold, and the cursed undercurrents that bubbled through the world of the small town and it’s people. for a moment, i am brought back to that place. i miss it, still. how the air felt.

Subscribe now

i’m now copy-and-pasting it below:

1.

a woman is sitting on the rocky shore of the creek with her feet dangling timidly in the water. the water is ice cold and has turned her ankles a raw salmon color. she is smoking a cigarette and hating the taste. she continues to smoke it. compulsively. the smoke glides across her cheeks, into her hair. It’s smell will linger but she won’t notice. the wind is blowing her hair across her face and she makes no movements to readjust it out of her eyes. she takes another puff of the cigarette. and another.

~~~

2.

the woman walks through town. she is hoping to catch an eye. any eye. she wants a sudden submission of eye contact. she wants to fall into someone so as to fall out of herself. or to fall into someone so that she falls so deeply into herself so that she can finally discover the part of herself that she has been looking for.

the clicks of her heels on the sidewalk seem to be the only concrete proof of her existence. she is waiting for recognition from a passerby; for affirmation. with each approaching figure, she desperately Hopes; she anticipates that he will be the one, that she will be the one, that he will be the one (and so forth, and so on). as their paths are about to meet her eyes are locked onto the arriving person with intensity– but she finds herself missed again. she finds herself a ghost. the sun is searing her shoulders but she ignores it; she continues to walk. click, click, click.

~~~

3.

the woman is faintly illuminated under the orange string lights roughly hung along the walls of the bar. it’s glow is pressing against her, giving her skin a sweet softness and luminosity. she is watching the ice melt in her drink. if a passerby were to slow their step and peak through the window, they would find the woman sitting across from a man, the man eagerly talking, the woman deep in thought at his invigorating words. the passerby would think to themself: how sweet a scene of love— new love, definitely— love just blooming; the two lovers thriving in their fresh emotions. yes, a love so pure, infantile; a love yet to be tainted in any way; it’s newness creates a fluidity… a complete lack of clarity in it’s being that begins as the appeal and morphs into the curse.

the woman watches the last small pebble of ice melt into her drink.

high school. i copied an emily dickinson poem into my composition notebook and i annotated it thoroughly and when the teacher collected the notebooks for grading i prayed that she would see it, no, i was sure she would see it but i prayed that she would honor me with a response or a recognition. i do not recall receiving such a thing. i was so silly. i was such a child. it was a silly imaginative optimistic and frankly pitiful thing for me to do and i remember like yesterday how terrified i was to do it and yet how i almost had no choice in the matter for i knew it was something that had to be done. i’m sure she saw it, noticed it, briefly. i wonder what she thought. i wonder if she knew that i had placed myself there in that annotated poem1 just for her.

the woman laid on the balcony. the woman took off her clothes and laid on the balcony. she shivered with anticipation, with anxiety, with a knowledge that this was the first time in her life she had acted with truth. she shivered with purity, she shivered with the warmth of the sun’s rays on her bare skin, she shivered with the feeling of time inching by as she awaited the certain presence of the eyes that would befall her body. she shivered with a vulnerability that contained an almost unimaginable sweetness. impossible to savor. she shivered for a quick moment. she shivered for a century. she shivered. she waited. her clothes sat balled up beside her. she threw them off the balcony. they landed in the grass. she shivered and smiled like a saint and a tear fell softly from the corner of her right eye for now it was all irredeemable, and she shivered for her freedom. she had acted before understanding and with that she had redeemed herself; she had submitted herself and at last empowered herself. it was as if she had been born again. she lay there, naked, completely naked, absolutely naked and newborn and free, and she waited, the sun melting into her skin, her skin pressed into the wood of the balcony, she was free but still fearful, and footsteps moved casually up the stairs, and she shivered for she was almost there and it didn’t matter if she was ready, and finally, finally, finally

the eyes2

this is how i desire. i wait to be seen. i need a risk. the risk never matters. i choose carefully. when i act in this way it is very rare but it is very true. when it feels like it is time, there is no telling what i might do. i slip open a secret piece of myself and i leave it there and i hope that my subject decides to take it. a great honor. but understand: more invigorating than if/when the subject touches or takes myself-as-an-object, is the act of selecting a piece of myself to make the object, and then the act of placing it there, and then the act, oh god, of walking away, of leaving myself up to fate. the ecstatic vulnerability of the unknown, fatefully temporary.

desire isn’t always about such petty and simple things such as sex and love. it is about seeing and being seen. that is all that desire is.

some people have told me that they have felt seen by me. like i’ve had some ability to see them in an instinctual way, and open them up. i don’t know. yes. maybe. sometimes, yes, certainly. other times i think i just tell them the truths that they have trouble seeing for themselves but that are right smack there.

anyway. desire as seeing and being seen. i feel seen by those close to me. in some ways. in the ways that are important- basically in the ways that allow me to trust. it’s good. but i think i have this fantasy… about being seen in a way that i cannot yet even know. it’s a complete dream. i love to believe at times that this dream may be nearing possibility through the vehicle of a new person i have happened to cross paths with but no, i’m still waiting. am i foolish? but is this not the absolute purpose of it all?

i would prefer that we all stop hiding so much. maybe it is not about myself at all but a movement that i am trying to begin.

to be seen so as to experience a confirmation of oneself?

or

to be seen so as to be freed from the bounds of oneself?

“departed to the judgement,
a mighty afternoon;
great clouds like ushers leaning,
creation looking on.

the flesh surrendered, cancelled, 
the bodiless begun;
two worlds, like audiences, disperse
and leave the soul alone."

the summer air never settles but floats above the ground, swirling in its own sickening heat. the days go by in hazes. they end before they begin, before i have the moment to greet myself upon waking. if i’m lucky and if i isolate myself for the evening, i can greet myself and bid myself farewell in one swift mental action before passing away into the dreamworld. it’s funny because whilst i’m stuck in this time loop i am still very aware of it, and i do keep trying to crack it but nothing seems to work, and the only way i am able to keep moving through it without a negative existential attitude is by reminding myself that in quite literally exactly three months from tomorrow i will be abandoning It All, and if that doesn’t shake me out of my fog then i don’t know what will; in fact i’d rather not even think about that outcome because i’d start to feel completely doomed, but anyway it doesn’t matter because i am fully convinced that it will fix me; i will be completely reborn; it sounds cliché but it’s the truth; beginning a new chapter is always an act of birthing oneself again; and there is nothing more that i want right now, than to be new, and refreshed, and free.

6/4/26 // pt. 2

oh god the dogs won’t stop barking tonight. my cat sits purring in my lap. i’ve opened my second bottle of wine. no matter how vulnerable you are they will choose to not care or to not do anything until it is too late. i know i would probably never get to the point where it’s too late (too late for who?) but a part of me wishes that i would just so that they would feel guilty for not caring before, when i had tried, when i had really opened myself up to them and asked for help. they ignored it because they thought it was probably nothing but isn’t there a part of you that feels itself rotting as you ignore because you know that it isn’t actually nothing? you know that there is a human being standing there naked arms open trying to repent ready to do anything and all you have to do is the smallest thing, a thing that you can afford, and you still choose not too— how? the dogs are still barking. all night they have not stopped barking and i wonder what goes on in their minds that makes them yell, incessantly. i wonder who keeps choosing to ignore them, uninterested in fixing the source of the issue, hoping they will just magically stop. we are all babies helplessly crying, aren’t we.

i’m worried that none of this sounds very fair. you have to understand that it has been over a decade of me coping with this. i’ve done very very very well. i’ve spent most of this past decade outside of my house. i’ve reframed and reframed and reframed the world outside of my house so that i could find a sense of enjoyment out of it; i’ve reframed it time and time again even when i thought i’d found everything i could possibly find from it. i’m doing it again right now and although i desperately wish it could be the last time i’d have to do it, i know it probably won’t be.

i no longer want to write about my fantasy living situation because i don’t even want much and i don’t even want anything specific; there are so many things i would take; i just need something that’s not This.

isn’t it great though? i’ve learned to survive off of reframing the same thing over and over again to a, frankly, insane extent. it’s a great skill to have. it’s great in the first place to be able to make something out of nothing but it’s even greater to be able to make another thing out of it when the first thing runs out, and do that over and over again. and i know i’ll keep doing it for as long as i have to, because i don’t have any other choice. i’d just like to take this skill with me to somewhere else. i’ve started to pray to god in my dreams.

(i’ve started to pray to god in my dreams.)

but hey— see here now? (i’m always talking to myself but i am especially here.) look at this. look at yourself. look at myself. i’ve taken this shitty tuesday night and reframed it with my writing. taken it out of my mind and feelings and into these collections of symbols we call language and i’ve reread it and i’ve felt a little guilty for the things i’ve said about my family or how some of this could come off as privileged but in rereading it i’ve also felt a little charmed, i’ll admit, by my ability to organize words in the way that i have. i never write as much as i used to because i take photos now and my natural state of perceiving has become, unwillingly, that of a visual language and translation. but god, every time i write, i remember how well it saves me, even if just for a moment. if only i could have more time and energy to spend on writing, if it wasn’t all spent on finding places outside of my house to catch a short breath before moving forward again. soon. soon soon soon. soon soon soon soon soon.

i got in a lot of trouble. i can’t remember if my dad had built that bedframe, or just painted it white, and whether he’d painted it at the beginning– or, not until later, not until after, as a way to attempt covering up the little girl Bite of little girl anger. but one reason i got in a lot of trouble was because Daddy Worked So Hard And Now It’s Ruined. i can’t remember if he built it but even if he didn’t build it with his hands he still built it with his money which of course little girl me could never understand.

i’m writing about this now because i think it’s the first memory i have of being angry– really angry, of course– the kind of anger that only little girls have. i’m sure i was angry before then but it’s the earliest memory that has been able to stick through the years. i was probably somewhere between four and eight. and the memory of all this is so vague that i barely feel able to believe it. i think i remember the moment of anger– being a little girl with her little girl limbs inside of her little girl pajamas and being forced into her little girl floral-printed pink bedsheets and being so stuck being so goddamn fucking stuck that all she could do was take the strongest part of her little girl body and dig it as deep into her little girl prison as she could. i think i remember that. the anger and the little girl Bite. the feeling of wooden resistance against my little girl teeth and pushing pushing pushing as the only sort of freedom i could create for myself. but maybe i just remember how angry They were, Mommy and Daddy, when they heard me screaming and groaning and moaning into the post of the bed frame, and the door clicked open and the light from the hallway, the light from the Adult World Of Nighttime, shone too brightly right onto me– how angry they were when they saw me with my little girl anger Right Fucking There. but maybe i actually just remember the months afterward, the months turning into years, the slow years of growing older in cute little small town El Segundo in Los Angeles county right underneath LAX, the years of growing older and the Bite still being there. every time i walked past it, every time i went to bed, as a reminder of that little girl anger. the shadows of the Bite still showing through the layers of Daddy’s Pure White Paint. the years of my mother re-noticing it once in a while and saying off handedly but with a slight passive aggression:

My Little Girl Do You Remember When You BIT YOUR BEDFRAME. HOW CRAZY IS THAT. YOU WERE SO CRAZY FOR NO REASON. NEVER FORGET HOW CRAZY YOU WERE. because. you will never be crazy like that again. i mean. my darling. frankly you were pushing it before but the older you get the less and less acceptable it will be. haha. it’s okay darling. you were just a little girl. but just. don’t. forget.

((almost as if maybe her Little Girl still lived inside her with the Need to Bite.))

i think i’m realizing that when LittleGirlHood is forced onto a person then that Little Girl Anger never really leaves them. it lives inside them, my little girl burning up all hot in my belly all the time. angry because she never chose this. angry because she didn’t even ever choose to exist, she was just created by the Adults who decided that the Little Girl should be there. who decided that That’s Who She Is. A Girl. and as much as i hate it and as much as i want to scrape it all out of me– as much as i want to scrape Her out of me– i know that i never can. They created her and i hate that but at the same time i’m stuck with her forever as a part of me. i’m stuck keeping her forever. it’s just not possible to throw Her away. and also. if anything. maybe her Little Girl Anger burns a little brighter and harder than the Thing that They had intended to create. and maybe, just maybe, She deserves for me to at least Let Her Burn. Burning For Herself End No One Else. Freedom.

i’m not sure if i’ve ever written anything that has led me to cry whilst typing. but this did. so i think that that might be worth saying. it also might be worth saying that i’m three-fourths of a bottle deep into a fancy french rose. because, this bottle and bottles like these are sometimes the only way i can numb myself away from the outside poking into me. and after writing this i’m wondering if this feeling of the outside poking into me is the feeling of a stick poking into my little girl fire. maybe. it’s possible. anyways i’d also like to say also that i was inspired to write this after reading a short chapter in Lidia Yuknavitch’s “The Chronology of Water” titled “A Burning” where she writes about her own sort of little girl fire. and right now i’m too tipsy to really tell if this is any good or makes any sort of sense. but i think that it felt really good to get out of me especially because i think i had no idea that it was something within me in the first place.

thanks for reading this if you did. i know i’m really inconsistent when it comes to posting things on here but i’m starting to realize that creating things like for example the words on this silly little blog that no one reads— are literally the most important things in my life and the things that i need to try hardest to preserve. or else, somehow, i don’t feel like myself. so, i’m trying. really hard. so, hopefully, you’ll continue to see a little more of me.

from now on i won’t be able to afford to run off on little escapes every few weeks. they tend to be my way of pretending i am not in the situation that i’m in. but i was fooling myself to think that i was ready for the full-forced-exile— not yet, not quite yet. as large as the contempt i have for This is, i’m not ready until i can make something out of it; because if i can’t make Something out of This, then i won’t be able to make the life i want out of something else. i like to fantasize and one of the things i like to fantasize about is the idea that creating the life i want will come much easier within a different situation. but it won’t. there will always be something in the way. i don’t know anyone who gets as bad FOMO from literally everything as i do. but i’m starting to realize that whether i like it or not i will always be missing out on something. so the best thing i can do— the only thing i can do— is choose and spend my cards wisely. which starts with tearing everything apart and rebuilding it with only the bare essentials. it starts with giving myself room to breathe.

my memories live in my bedsheets 
sticky and heavy and warm in the mornings 
i don’t feel proud of it 
i don’t wash my sheets frequently enough 
i sleep nude 
i wake up ashamed when i remember that there are other rooms beyond my walls 
and 
that 
there always will be

~~~

if you would like to know, 
a delicate grey spider sits perched by day 
in my bedroom ceiling corner 
with frozen eyes of a statue. waiting 
for night to emerge, so that she may continue Her Work:
of My Entanglement.
if you would like to know,  
this Entanglement is of the kind (you may be familiar) 
that pulses with a glow in Every darkness. it is
the fate that remains bound with the waxing and waning of the moon. it is 
my Web of Echoes, mocking me,
unrelentlessly like the sea's (eternal) heaving swells 
and 
yet 
each evening, i lather myself in perfumes and oils in preparation for 
(once again this time) 
a meeting; for
(once again this time)
a kiss of indignity.

because, you see, 
despite it all i still always choose to disrobe before my slumber. 

(have you noticed yet that you feel most alive only when you are Exposed?)

i am trying to remind myself that no Life has a peak, 
just slow changes, like the midnight shiftings of sand.

it's not that i don't know what i want it's that, Well, i want exactly what i do not know.

i have made up my mind to spend the next year saving up enough Money to Chase It Down.

i wander through the edges and alleyways of small towns,
(sunken eyes of a stray cat glowing like the fading moon)
(red brick worn soft like old skin)
wondering if the people who died young
(though don't we all die young?)
felt that they had held (at least for a moment) (at least just a small piece)
that "eternal truth" of life,
...if their death was Okay because they 
at least
Touched It
(Nothing is more Real than Touch)
and ...if i would be Okay if i died today even though i'm not sure i have Touched It,
and how i know i wouldn't (be Okay)
and how that's how i know that It doesn't even exist probably unless maybe in the ways i'm not able to know right now. 
do you know what i mean.
(how silly i am to be twenty-one and certain about everything except for this one thing, this one Hope i have-- i am almost just humoring myself at this point.) (how silly i am to be twenty-one and acting like i know a thing about death-- 
--i knew more about it at age fifteen.)

It might be nothing except feeling truly in control of myself, which might be nothing except shedding all of these things that have constructed to mean "life".
Finding oneself Lost, etc, etc

i can't help but anticipate my future as if it has already become a Memory

i am a fetus chained onto my dusty deathbed

i'm leaving you now, i'll say to the sea
for you're too elusive
you tangle my mind into my salty hair
i've lost track of myself in your deathless romance of abyss

i just need my black leather boots and my black leather jacket
to hit the road in search of some better suited language
the language whispered by the swaying of the tall grass
the language that floats along the soft edge of the horizon

all cool like a beatnik,
smoking my way through the dry, flat roads of the west,
there will be no more shadows
under which for me to hide

God is a burning silver eye is the hot texas sun
which melts my skin tight to my flesh
forcing me back in contact with that thing i inescapably am
except this time, i'll find the damn word for it

and a fat old rattlesnake will follow me close behind
sauntering with a know-it-all charm
to keep me moving until i've got it--
a new name, on a wrinkled napkin, in my pocket.

at least i have somehow managed to find new ways of being inspired where i live. i continue to discover bits of charm in the same old places; they open up to me more— especially as within these next couple of months i approach the time where i will be able to explore all of the charmingly odd dive bars. i think i am surrounded by a lot of people who are opening up to the world in new ways and allowing the world to open up to them, and so it makes it a lot easier for me. in the past i had a difficult time understanding how people could stand to live in a place that doesn’t have things to explore in the same way a city does, how they could stand the idea of the same old thing for their entire foreseeable futures; but i’m starting to see that although it’s small i still somehow haven’t seen it all… and that nothing ever really stays the same anyway.

as for my dreams, they are now just that; just dreams. so separate from me, from my reality, from my physical state. i try to ignore them as they fade away so that i don’t feel the pain of the space left behind. i’m still not convinced they won’t come true; i think it just might be in different ways than i’ve wanted or anticipated. but it might be enough, maybe. i’ll have to see. i’m twenty and shouldn’t get ahead of myself. my worst fear is that i won’t end up being able to see either way how things turn out. but that’s my worst fear and it sits very deep and dark within myself and so for the moment i ignore it too.

friends, tell me a book i should start reading that will break through the fog in my mind and keep me engaged. something cheesy and entirely plot-heavy with bad prose unfortunately won’t do the trick, i know myself well enough to know that, but i’m also unsure if at the moment i’ll be able to handle something completely dense and philosophical, if my eyes won’t just skim above the words instead of sinking within them. some middle ground maybe?

the quickest way forward is the path that lies prefixed before me, and that which ceases to exist behind me as soon as i turn around in search of it. it has disappeared. and yet i had been so sure. in certain situations one must not turn around.

again and again i return to her sweet beautiful abyss and today she is so peaceful, more peaceful than i’ve seen her in a very long time. peaceful enough to almost make me feel that i have been saved. as if everything has been right to end, and everything will be right to begin in serenity.

i don’t like to walk this close to the edge and yet here i am again doing it. i have done it, and i most likely will continue to. in fact, there is no world in which i would not continue it. and so along this edge i walk.

and as i along this edge walk, i look down, down to the rocky shores, and see how the waves culminate. throwing themselves against the edge, again, and again, and again. how do they maintain their energy, their power, their anger? how have they done it for all of time itself, and gladly commit to continue for their own eternity? i had thought i was looking out towards pure peace and yet now i see what had been hidden from me.

and yet again, as i look down i see also a couple standing on the dark jagged rocks, sheltered by the cliffs, being watched only by the sea. a couple, in an embrace; and how tiny they stand, in their timeless embracement. i have invaded them, accidentally, and also i cannot look away.

i am reminded of my solitude. it stings for a small moment. here now, i have returned to my solitude, and i have returned to myself. but i know— what a blessing it is to return to one’s self after so much time away.

i leave, of course, before darkness falls. i have fled. back to the real world. although i partially feel that the real world is what i am now leaving. what is it i leave to return to, then?

happy new year, friends. many blessings to you all.