January 29th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
who knows if the moon’s
by ee cummings
who knows if the moon’s
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky–filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,where
always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves
January 29th, 2010 at 11:53 am
I got my head, but my head is unraveling
I feel really silly for doing this, but I made a collage of some sort. It’s amusing how I’ll look at things I used to feel comfortable liking, dismiss and insult them, only to return to them again. Such is the fault of my ~identity~. Also, I like squares. (Read more…)
January 27th, 2010 at 12:16 am
Learned Helplessness
I’m sitting in my psychology section–the one that feels like high school without the collared shirts–and I’m revisiting recent experiences, specifically the ants invading my windowsill and my lack of groceries (my stomach likes to remind me). My TA, with her adorable dimples and fashion faux pas, is talking about anxiety orders as part of a “mini lecture” and cautions against self-diagnosing. I try my best to ignore the fact that her outlining symptoms of a panic attack may induce a panic attack. Dizziness. Increased heart rate. Feeling of being choked.
So I think of you: the irrelevant you. Who the fuck are you? Whom am I speaking to? I’m not supposed to talk to you. You, whom I pass judgement on. You, whom I delineate from them for the sole reason of persuading myself that I’m not self-harming, that the choice to speak to you is not one completely under my control. You, you, you. It’s silly though, thoughts of avoiding a panic attack turn into thoughts of you, thoughts of involuntary reactions that fooled me into thinking we’re close. I sneeze.
These narratives have significance after the fact because of the magic of exaggerated elaboration.
Ineludible stressors? I’m not even sure if i was looking for stasis anymore. After all, stagnation is what I escaped and refused to continue.
Maybe I’m being cryptic because it’s easier to allude to things that probably aren’t there rather than risk unfounded assertions.
It’s late, and I should sleep. I dreamt of comfortable exposure and Laura Harring last night. I jumped into imperfect maps of the United States and I talked to characters with shadows across their faces. I walked through a familiar ally with barn like entrances. It fell apart when I was confronted with a version of myself that I tried to push away, but I guess I should be thankful that I have an opportunity to tackle that in an artificial arena.
January 25th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Give me your lies
I’m retreating to last year and I’m bringing yesterday’s friends with me. I’m celebrating this nonsense, I’m saying things without immediately gauging the other’s reactions.
Act like an asshole and you’ve swept them all away!
That pointlessness? That ever increasing feeling of being small, of being inconsequential, of not having any thing to say that’s mildly interesting, I’ll still have time to wallow in it after everything is said and done.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:58 am
Hit Me
Everything is so pointless pointless pointless. The mundane details of my Friday night will be ones I will soon forget, I’m sure. Especially since I jot things down in my journal only when something particularly dramatic happens–although I feel like I’m constantly reassessing people, writing down my ‘final judgments’ of them, only to cross out and edit the next day. I could make an effort to be more objective but I feel that I’d be losing that ever so important experience of persuading oneself.
And I can’t fucking finish that book because it reminds me of you, Troy. Kiki’s perfect ears. You often told me I had nice ears but I think it’s only because they were small. I never thought much about ears, only that they looked obscene, that they looked like parts that should be covered. I imagined the unveiling of one’s ears to be an exceptionally intimate act. Kyle MacLachlan’s severed ear. “I used to know a kid who lived there, he had the biggest tongue in the world.” Now my ears are always visible, they are not hidden under locks of mermaid hair (“perpetually underwater?”). I could correlate this with my present state of vulnerability, but I’ll save you the bullshit. Maybe I’ll power through those last pages.
I think about last year and about how happy I remember myself being. College was giving me the opportunity to reestablish myself as someone I was completely comfortable with. I am again given this opportunity, faced with the option to bring new experiences into being… that is, if I allow it. I should allow it. Those insecurities, that nagging tendency to find conflict in everything I involve myself in, those fucking people, I can ignore them just as I can ignore impending anxiety attacks. I reject the the notion that it is perfectly healthy to mull over everything that is bothering oneself. I was never a fan of advice from women’s magazines anyway.
January 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Come Out Tonight
Forecast in chrome and plastic. Tyrants breathing alloy of slavery, planet hunger, versions of Jackie O. Sherry, Sherry baby, won’t you come out tonight? And the stars whisper like old blood at the edges of the body of night. She stood with one hand on the phone for four hours, poised as though only a few seconds had passed. I watched her through the crack between the shade and the sill. She waited for a forecast in human trembling, together with other important women. Come, come, come out tonight. The world suffers for her: The clock hurries like a terrified animal, then stops, dribbling saliva. She has eaten chicken pie and bubblegum. For a month the Luftwaffe lived on raisins. Same with the French, after the war. Jackie O. received fresh oranges from John Kennedy. Silly girl. She cannot put down the telephone receiver. She is waiting to receive my body of work. She wants to take it in her ear. A mottled flush builds under her cheeks. She eats Xmas candy while she waits. The telephone rings and rings. I am not at home. I am with Jackie O. We are eating oranges from the President. We are alone on the roof of a Park Avenue penthouse. Picture of Marilyn Monroe in my back pocket molded by heat and sweat to the shape of my buttocks. You are gripping the phone smiling, eating candy, crying. I am with the important women, now. I am secretly an important man. Hang up the phone. I can’t dance with you, anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie O. She will be taking it in her ear, the body of my work. In the Planetarium. You will receive a forecast. I will always be more important than you. You will never be important enough. You will never be on the whip-hand of slavery, never be the one to wield hunger against humanity. Heaven will never be an extension of your body. Your body will always belong to someone else. The picture of Marilyn Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me. Shaped like my ass. The sky is filled with oranges during the war. We eat them. The president is alone in a room. He is unimportant. As we eat his oranges the sky grows blacker. The moon ripens and turns red. It rots and is swallowed by the darkness. You are still by the phone. It is ringing and ringing, dead. Sherry, Sherry baby, won’t you come out tonight. It is completely dark. The earth freezes. You put down the receiver and go to the window. Come, come, come out tonight.
- Steven J. Bernstein
January 20th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Björkgasm
January 18th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Word
I like that ‘understandable’ is an acceptable word. It differs from ‘comprehensible’ in that it connotes empathy and saves me time by giving me one term that means “hey man, I totally get it, and I don’t think you’re weird–your feelings are to be expected.”
Other words I like:
For their meaning:
defenestrate, abrogate, propinquity, perendinate, asperity
For their sound:
sui generis, mellifluous, palaver, aquarium, inevitable
Words I use too much:
In academia:
essentially, ultimately, nevertheless, juxtapose, albeit
In conversation:
dude, like, comparable, relative, dude, dude, dude, dude, like, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude
January 16th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
In which I admit my love for ‘Tao Lin’
I’m glad I kept my old Livejournal account and didn’t let it go the way of all other things I became embarrassed about–I go through a lot of phases of trying to erase my Web 2.0 existence and starting new. (To be fair, this ‘new beginning’ is normally characterized by initial feelings of loss and self-deprecation.)
Closing my blog off to the general public, I think, made it easier to publish my ‘real feelings’ and shamelessly revel in my ‘mental masturbation.’ I try to bring that over here, but creativity is stunted by an increasing fear of IRL folks immediately changing their opinion of me upon reading what should be in an astute 13 year old’s Xanga. (On second thought, I suppose that description might be giving me too much credit.)
Butttt whatever, here I am, trying again. I’ve decided that I am *~more than what other people believe of me~*. (And at the risk of sounding like a tool, I’ll explain that I use tildes and asterisks to connote sarcasm in the form of a hand swish and/or air quotes.)
A Livejournal excerpt:
May 11th, 2009
[My ex-boyfriend] broke up with me last night. He said he felt like I never trusted him, I don’t support his ambition to be a writer, blahblahblahblah.
We probably should have officially ended it then, rather than a week ago. It’s weird though, severing all contact with him has allowed me to completely detach myself. It might have been because it really was time to end things, but I don’t think I can fully comprehend why it’s extremely easy thus far.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
lolvaginas
