Wednesday, November 30, 2016

=life, it seems is a great struggle to escape yourself=

Last night you came across a Juan Ramon Jimenez poem translated by Robert Bly:

I am not I. 
                   I am this one 
walking beside me whom I do not see, 
whom at times I manage to visit, 
and whom at other times I forget; 
who remains calm and silent while I talk, 
and forgives, gently, when I hate, 
who walks where I am not, 
who will remain standing when I die.

You feel like this, too. This person you see walking, talking, fucking up their way through life…you're as disappointed & exasperated with her as anyone else. But more often than not, you don't seem to be able to do anything about her behavior, leaving you to conclude: You are not that person. 

But who are you?

Last night, depressed, you were watching David Foster Wallace videos on Youtube. You can't remember what led you to him, probably something to do with the fact that he belongs to the Suicide Club, which you've long thought about joining. H was out to dinner with the guys, so you were alone. You washed your hair, painted your nails, sat on the bed, and watched David Foster Wallace being interviewed by Charlie Rose. It was an interview from 20 years ago, before David Foster Wallace decided to hang himself in his garage at the peak of his fame. 

He was asked about his depression, his drug abuse, his—at that time—unsuccessful suicide attempts. He said that he didn't like talking about that stuff. Not because he was embarrassed about  it, but because it was so normal, so average, & therefore so uninteresting. He said everyone had those feelings, everyone had their own private shitstorm to weather, their own feelings of insecurity, unworth, black despair. He's right, but still you wondered if he was right…just because we all have those feelings doesn't necessarily make it uninteresting so much as universal & isn't what's universal what a writer should be addressing? The very stuff we all share, but don't often talk about? But it seems to you that was part of David Foster Wallace's point. Everyone, these days, is talking and talking and writing and writing about their depression, their abuse, their addiction, their victimization….it's no longer a deep dark secret we share. It's already out in the open. Is it necessary to keep on disclosing these facts? Don't we all get it by now? Hasn't it become somewhat boring? Yes, he's right, you think. It's time to talk about something else. But what? 

He spoke about having achieved fame early and, in his view, somewhat undeservedly in life. How disillusioning his success turned out to be…how profoundly depressing. He'd grabbed the brass ring most of us continue chasing all through our lives, often without ever reaching, and found it didn't make him happy. In his twenties, he discovered what everyone else usually doesn't discover until their fifties…if at all. That achieving one's goals doesn't lead to happiness. What does lead to happiness then? David Foster Wallace hadn't an answer yet. Maybe, he implied, the person who never reaches his or her goal is luckier than the person who does.  Easy for him to say, right? But the person who never succeeds can continue to live under the illusion that something will make her happy. The person who succeeds lives with the bitter certainty that possibly nothing can. 

Later, I watched—or rather listened to—David Foster Wallace's now famous Kenyon College commencement address, "This is Water." Here he seemed to have an answer to the question he couldn't answer ten years earlier. He talked about what having an education really means. It's not about being smart or having all the facts at one's intellectual fingertips. It means learning how to think. And learning how to think means overriding what he calls our "default mode," which is basically "not thinking" at all, but simply riding along through life half-consciously by automatic pilot, i.e.. all our preconceived, unexamined notions of life, of people, what's right, what's wrong, etc. Part of this unconscious, unexamined way of living, he points out, is the self-evident sense that we are at the center of the universe ("I don't mind dying," Ayn Rand said in a documentary you saw the night before last, "because when I end the world ends, too), locked away in the inviolate citadel of our skulls. He noted that when people commit suicide by gun they almost always shoot themselves in the head (Van Gogh, for one, didn't, but shot himself in the chest, aiming perhaps for the heart) quite possibly because that's where they feel imprisoned. 

An hour or so before, you'd been thinking, not for the first time, that if you walked into a room and saw a loaded gun lying on a table and no one around, there is a good chance you might, on impulse, because the impulse to do away with yourself is always there, pick it up, place the barrel in your mouth, and pull the trigger. (But, for the first time in your life, you also thought you wouldn't commit suicide, not without warning, because you couldn't bear to hurt H that way…and you realized this is the first time you felt a responsibility to others vis-a-vis suicide, which you always considered—and still do—an individual's absolute right, because H is the first person you've ever felt really loved you. This is how you know you are loved. You can imagine that your suicide would truly hurt someone else. It's somewhat shocking to realize this is the first time you've felt that way…rather, it should be shocking, and sad, too, if you weren't so inured to shock, and sadness, by now, having understood that you'd never really been loved by anyone before. David Foster Wallace concluded that the goal of life—if life could have a goal—was to live consciously, to examine preconceptions, to step out of the bone enclave of one's own skull and enter the world, a world outside yourself, full of other people struggling, suffering, and often trapped inside their own skulls, thinking they, too, are the center of the universe. 

"This is water," he said. 


"This is water," you said, touching the tears that came to your eyes. 

Monday, November 28, 2016

=To You, My Child Never Born=


Those first two marriages, boy, let me tell you, that was a cold country to be traveling. The bed a pitiless tundra you could see no end of. Shadows of wolves on the wall. I could never sleep more than winks for weeks at a time. No difference between day and nightmare. Many were the times I had to eat my own foot, whichever foot still remained, simply to survive. I exaggerate you not.

Eventually I escaped the madman in the castle, but I was still bound and blindfolded. I needed to run into a wise hermit, a magic fish, a talking tree—something like that. The fairytales all told me so. Nothing doing. It was all a package deal of lies. What a doofus I felt like believing in such tripe as that. Kick in the pants it was but I deserved it.

So I disguised myself as a boy and joined the circus as a juggler. Naturally I lied about my experience. Are you with me so far? No? Well keep on stumbling and bumbling after me a while longer in the dark; the light will come, it done for me, sorta.

Meanwhile, I was fired from the circus. I could juggle well enough, I found, but only with one ball, and what good was that? Well, plenty, as it turned out. I fell in love with that ball and soon I was pregnant, although not in the usual way; mind you, nothing with me was ever in the usual way.

Because I would never give birth, not to a baby, anyway. Just as well, except who do you suppose I’m talking to now? I’m talking to you, my little bird of prey. You fly over forests and fields and whatnot. You see what I can’t see and tell me all about it, but in a language I don’t understand, as if that should be any big surprise.

This is where things get less complicated. I am my own magic, you see, but it wasn’t the way they described it in the books and songs, which is what made it so hard to recognize. The thing itself, without the amplification of metaphor, it’s so ordinary, like a salt-shaker, except not like that, because it shakes no salt. Get it? No? Pretend you do, just for a few sentences more. Go on. Do it. Amuse me. Hooded, you bob your head, following the shadow of my finger, just as instinct demands you do.


Yes, you do get it, after all.

=suicide note #1=


In my heart of hearts, what I really always wanted to be was one of a pair of slightly incestuous Japanese sisters, who also occasionally slept with men.  So you can understand how being born  white, a boy & in New Jersey I never had a chance at happiness. From my very inception, I was doomed to be irreconcilably dissatisfied with life.   

=The egg-layer=


Wednesday, November 23, 2016



There will always be haters. They shot Gandhi, didn’t they? They crucified Jesus. Jesus, for crissakes, who made the blind see & the lame walk!! So what ever made you think you could get everyone to like you? If those guys couldn’t do it, you haven’t got a prayer. So just live your life, be who you are. Some people will love you, others will hate you, & most won’t give a damn either way. There’s nothing you can do about it. If you can truly adopt that attitude, you will have gone a long way to achieving peace of mind.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

=The quiet its screaming=

What sits there so quiet
at head of the table
its back up
its thumb up at twelve o'clock high
on its plate its meat cowers
obligingly bleeding
it want someone talking
it watching it waiting
its eyes searching faces
who will it be?

This is the family
that's happy 
that's normal
this is the family
as what meant it should be
why are they button-eyed
slumped down
their lips stitched together
why don't they speak
what secrets they keep?

Here is no stump-leg
no fistfights
no bottle-smash
no blackout in vomit
no teeth on the floor
here is no lamb's head
staring up from the platter
no cow-gut
no pig's ass
no quiver on anyone's fork
here food is normal
pre-packaged it clean-cut
it supermarket
it grade-A
saran-wrapped as meant it to be
so why aren't they eating
just chewing & chewing
why aren't they talking
pretending to swallow
it poison to be?

It fist on the knife 
it tightens it tightens
the room growing smaller
with nobody speaking
why aren't they speaking
even louder than then

say something goddammit
the quiet its screaming
it singles it out
each throat with its lump
this isn't the family
it raises its arm
its knuckles it whitens
the dishes are ringing
this isn't the family
the salt tower shaking
the shadows are fleeing
leaving bodies behind

this isn't the family
it leaps from the table
knocking over the chair
this isn't the family
this monster they're making
conspiracies whispering
inside of the walls
it flees from the table
where the meat still lies bleeding
its knife in its hand
it ranting it raving
the mirrors it breaking
it madness their horror & fear it is making
this monster
this madman
this isn't the way
it supposed it would be
this myth they're all making
this father
not he
\

=just 2 regular guys talking=


=homage to Diane Arbus or someone=


Tuesday, November 15, 2016

=on becoming a better person=


It's not easy. The worst part is that you might succeed. Then you inevitably end up looking back on your previous life with horror and regret. How could you have said and done the things you've said and done? How could you have been so inconsiderate, so smug, so self-righteous and so selfish? What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? In most cases, the damage done is done for good. There's no way to correct it. Many of the people you've hurt are no longer in your life. You don't even know where they've gone and even if you did, what is crooked can never truly be made straight, what was said cannot be unsaid. Some debts just can never be repaid. Now all the pain is yours and often it is more pain than  you think you can bear. 

Maybe it's preferable to remain an asshole your entire life, to be a bastard right to the grave, without a moment of self-reflection or a second thought. It would be so much easier, so much less uncomfortable. I've known people like that. They've assholed their way from start to finish, never doubting they were 100% right. Of course, I wasn't always at their side when they woke up at 3am wondering what they'd done with their lives. I wasn't present at their private Gethsemanes, if they had any. But from every indication, if they did have such moments of doubt and pain, it never altered their public persona or behavior one iota. 

How does one get to be so strong and self-assured? It's beyond me. I've walked across my life as if on thin ice, ready to drown in the freezing water of regret and self-loathing with every step. If only I could have been a real asshole, confident and brazen, never looking back. I might have really made something of myself! Instead I was a timid, half-hearted asshole, a fake asshole, a phony, a pretender. How much more bearable, how much more enjoyable, how much better my life might have been if I'd never become a better person! 

Sunday, November 13, 2016

=my hello kitty coloring book=


=Lucky 14=

The assistant bank manager was dressed in camouflage; it’s no surprise, they all are nowadays. He was, he said, sorry to inform me that my loan application had been denied. He didn’t look sorry, though. He looked like my father looked when he told me I was dead to him.

Luckily, I had learned to equip myself for precisely these kinds of devastating moments. I go deep inside myself, into the desert, and like in any desert, it’s not long before there’s a man on horseback, who gallops up to save the day.

“It’s a magic coin,” he explains, reaching down from the saddle to hand me what looks like a burnt potato chip. “Take it to any casino in the land. You can’t lose. You’re sure to make your fortune.”

I take the chip, thank the crusader, and watch him gallop away in search of the Holy Grail. This being the desert, there’s always a casino close by. Fountains, palm trees, gold-plated lions—it's everything you'd expect.

I step inside like I own the place, the only way to step inside anyplace. The air is Arctic—so bracing! I walk right up to the roulette table and put my coin down on lucky 14. The ball falls into the slot marked 25. I lose everything.

Now with no loan and no lucky coin there is no way I could ever be—well, what was it I wanted to be, anyway? Rich and famous? That’s a laugh.


The assistant bank manager and my father were right to turn away from me like I was dead to them. I turn away like I’m dead to me, too. I feel like Lazarus stepping from the tomb, no longer Lazarus anymore.

Friday, November 11, 2016

=sissyangel (with red cow)=



It’s not about me. If anything
I’m a conduit.
Who’d you con with it?
With what?
I mean, what comes through me,
that’s the thing.
Whatever comes out of me
I don’t want to see.
I like the sea, especially in the fall,
when the beaches are lonely.
Only?
Only what?
I can’t remember the last time
I had baloney. 

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

…..the goddamn struggle it is to keep people from stepping all over you, to keep your place in line among the sharp elbows, to shout as loud or louder than everyone around you just to make yourself heard—i'm so tired of it, sick to my bones of it all, this is what it means to be a human being, this is what it means to live a human life, christ, fuck, you can keep it, here, i'll open a vein and you can have it right back, give me the right bottle of pills and i'll give you my life in exchange, i never wanted it, you can have it, you can shove it up your ass, what's that, no?, you won't do it, you won't take it back, it's a precious gift you say, you bastards, you bullshit artists, you malevolent fascist propagandists, this isn't life it's a life sentence, this is a Potemkin Village and i'm not a village idiot, i'm no true believer, you know as well as i do why you won't take it back, suicide is a crime against the state, a sin against the status quo, it's a revolutionary act, it's an act of terror, it's the one existential freedom the individual has left, the only one you can't effectively take away, it's the ultimate right of refusal, the right to say no, this right to self-immolation, the suicide is more than a revolutionary, more than a terrorist and freedom fighter, the suicide is a saint. 

—Kathy Acker

=sissygirl illustrated #8=




=handjob=


Saturday, November 5, 2016

=my book of revelation=

Our Lady of the Desert Fish
I'm mute, i tell myself, mute & can say nothing even if i wanted to, it's the only way to deal with the situation, to make no mistakes, or the least of all possible mistakes, because the world will judge you for not saying anything too, you can't say your truth and you can't remain silent, you must speak & what you must say is WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR you must lie against your own nature, you must betray yourself that is what living in the world costs you & i say kill me, just go ahead & kill me i don't want to belong to this world i don't belong to it never did never will i want out of it never wanted in it in the first place KILL ME no they won't do that either but they will let you die they'll let you die in the street & shrug & wash their hands of you & tell each other it was your choice that's what they'll do it was your decision not to play along, not to belong (as if it were you decision as if you could change what you were) they will kill you but only by passive aggression & go on pretending that their hands are clean of your blood but what these hypocrites won't do is let you be yourself, no, that's the greatest crime you can perpetrate against society: being yourself.  

—Kathy Acker

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

=masked & anonymous=

Daddy

=pieces=


=sissy diary=

i want to be a sissybaby from now on. 

No more self-assertion for me. A kind of pink fluff around everything i do and say. A wide-eyed empty gaze. When i talk, i want to say nothing. Or next to nothing. Vague. Spacey. No memory. Simple direct desires. Sensual. Easily amused. Emotional, but in an inarticulate way. No ambition, except immediate comfort and gratification. 

No will. 

No opinions. 

Why do i pretend to be anything different than i am? 
Which, when you come right down to it, is a defenseless, dependent sissy who is utterly incompetent to deal with the world. 
That's how i've always been. 
Anything else has been a charade. 
Faking it. i need to be taken care of. i need to be told what to do. 

i have no job anymore; i wouldn't even know how to go about getting one at this point. i don't even have a driver's license. i can't go anywhere or do anything without Daddy. i can't imagine what i would do without Daddy.

i want to suck my thumb in public.
i want to talk babytalk when anyone asks me anything.
People will stop talking to me then, at least they will stop expecting anything of "sense" from me.
They will stop expecting me to be an "adult"—something
i've never been equipped to be. 
There will be no pressure on me anymore. 
i want men to know they can do anything to me.
i'm defenseless. 
They can molest me at will. i'll never say anything.
They can slip their hand into my panties, stick their cocks inside me, or have me suck them off.
i won't object.

At parties, when asked what i "do," i've been saying "i'm a freelance writer." i've been saying i"used to be in publishing." Because i want to sound like a somebody, someone of some importance. Because it seems embarrassing to say that i do nothing, that i have no profession, no career. 

 But why should i be embarrassed? 

i'm a baby. i wear a diaper. i wet myself. Nothing can be more embarrassing than that and i'm not embarrassed anymore about that…or soon won't be. What i want to say from now on, when people ask me what i "do," is i want to stare back vacuously at my questioner and say "Ummmm. Nothing, i guess. i do nothing" and at the same time feel the warmth spreading across the front of my diaper as i helplessly wet myself.

Very Warholian. 
Very true.