pronoun ambiguity. shotglasses and derailed trains.

thoughts. little thoughts, wandering. wandering off the road.
nowhere is the best place but it's so hard to be found -

no one can find me anywhere.

my headphones broke the other day and i was so upset! everything goes wrong at the same time. like a smell i give off. objects know but people are too busy to pay attention; they are too busy paying attention to objects so they'll know. stupid; pay attention to me. the wires have shorted out. i am too hard. it's only been three months! i hold everything up to an unattainable standard and then they break. inevitable. (?)

correction: i ask of things what i ask of myself. i don't break, i'm here! i'm just fine, thanks. stronger than wires, than plastic, than shoe bottoms, than socks, than love. then love.

my new shoes come in the mail on monday. hooray! the only pair of shoes i will have without holes in them. my old ones (which i am wearing now, still, unthinkably) reached a pleasant equilibrium with their decay. first, they troubled me because the holes meant that rocks kept getting in them. [central park west is full of rubble.] now, they are so full of holes that the stones pass in as quickly as they pass out. [adaptation.] funny how the future takes care of itself? (so many roads to choose it can keep you from walking... but when you get there, there's only one. always. [kierkegaard.])

i got a random text from you last night. interesting. you're upset i think. i like that you choose me to want to confide in, the way you can see me for five minutes on a subway platform and tell by the cut of my eyes above my super-well-performed smile that i'm upset. but we've never actually confided in each other. i hope we see each other this weekend, although i'm more than a little scared and more than a little nervous. attractive people make me nervous. being myself makes me nervous. losing control makes me nervous. being in control makes me feel like a hot evil bitch and then it makes me nervous. we want to see each other, so we don't. simple as that. why is it so embarrassing to submit to pleasure? (because pleasure is uncomfortable. pleasure defines the self in a way we really can't control. even freud says that!)

i had a dream about you a couple of weeks ago. you were in costume which i liked better i think. we met at a mini-mall frequented by rich white bitches down by the half-built housing complex. (the dirt pads of my childhood, mountain bikes and mudpuddles, the end of the world, rattlesnakes.) i was at my friend's new house and i was supposed to leave before her clients got there but i didn't, i was too busy telling her everything looked fine, making her feel better about it all. [always fucks me in the end.] they enter and i think to myself, "shit, they'll all just think i'm her lesbian lover again." that feeling where you can feel, taste, palpably, what everyone else in the room is thinking about you. (other people feel this, yes?) what does this mean, how does it work? [wittgenstein? i'm looking at you.] you kept me laughing even when the rich bitches kept telling me you were no good for me. we kissed in a darkened hallway but as i've never kissed you it didn't feel like anything except a shadow of a promise. i felt myself pulling away from my lips as i kissed you back. i do this all the time, too easily, for so many reasons.

[half-built houses, i'm surrounded by half-built houses and i am not particularly invested enough to see any of them through. i live a flower-like life, i bruise easily, i decay quietly under the surface of the water, blooming all the while. but when you touch me, i fall apart. ]

we chatted and it was only slightly awkward which is pretty good, i guess, as we were both completely sober and haven't seen each other in some time. you still look so tired, your eyes can't lie (at least not to me.) you don't look well although i can tell you are trying hard and everyone else is probably falling for it. it's curious to me; maybe i see people in a conversation not as dancers so much as swimmers, moving forward and backward through something unseen and heavy.

i hate how i can tell when i'm really saying something good, something meaningful, in my element (silver) by sensing people backing up, metaphysically, from me. i feel the distance. i see the faintest faintest faint hesitation in speaking, eye contact. you are thinking "she. look at her. i wish, i wish... she. shit." the hardest lesson these last months have taught me is that the way to know i have really made an excellent point is to see if it is met with silence. silence means brilliance. if people have something to say back, it's to say [mostly in kindly ways] that they think it's shit. misguided shit. but pretty things hang in silence until they fall to the ground. and then, stupid stupid darling that i am, i step on them, or quietly kick them out of the way while blushing. i sidestep over myself and out the door. i exit the conversation, even though i am still talking. you did it, i saw you (felt you). i was talking about my thesis. can i help that the story it tells, written in between the lines, is the story of my life? de-siiiiiiiurrrrh leahves-uh traaaaaaa-accce. true-ey true truuuuuuu-eww. singy singy-sing song. a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down....

i don't know how to hold things out at arm's length, other then to get a better look at them. (my eyes are ruined after years of reading in the dark. no, really. i have reading glasses. and they're only for one eye; only one of my eyes is bad enough to warrant corrective lenses. this is my life. )i truly worship the asymmetrical; i wonder what i would do if i didn't. one breast larger than the other. one foot more crooked than the other. one pinky straighter than the other. one lip bigger than the other. one shoulder higher than the other. one leg veinier than the other. i am ambidextrous; i masturbate with my left hand.

i love italics. they signify in a text what must be emphasized, what is of the utmost importance. my tattoo: times new roman, 37 point, italics. (you really thought i didn't think about all of that? ah, how little, little you know me.....)

i dreamt about you the other night. you shot yourself in the head in front of me, five times. each cartridge landed neatly in your lap. i flew off the bed and ran to you, kneeled before you crying, after the first shot. the gun kept going off but you were still alive and you kept shooting... bang.... bang....bang.... until the gun was out of ammo. even though i was on the ground in front of you.

and even i knew it was hopeless, hopeless to beg.


it was the coldest walk i ever took but still i didn't cry. not until the man on the street called to me:

"hey, ma'am... you're beautiful.... beautiful....."


it was the ma'am that killed me; when a guy on the street tries to treat you with respect even as he's catcalling you, that means something. it means.... it means....

you have to like getting into a little bit of trouble. if life doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right.

song with no tune

[i wrote this on the 31st and disliked it so i shelved it. today i feel much more kindly disposed to it so i'm posting it after all. hmph.]

maybe

?

just a sapling, i'll admit

i bend but never break


tasting the wind
feeling the sun
looking

'til i'm blind

all new

i bend with each caress

the wind
it plays on my hair
a strange tune


little white lies
i tell each day

keeping it burning


building my dreams in
thin paper

lets the light in
moves so freely
cuts so easily
stings


throw it into the fire


you're the first thing i think of in the morning
and the last at night

never never never


you're a seed

who knows what rainbow dreams
slumber within you
just a seed


the hope i feed myself
is starving me

i'm hungry


i am a sapling

i need the light
i grow towards the light

you're just a seed

just a seed.


i am a sapling.

dreams are not realities, or why i don't listen to the dresden dolls

once upon a time i was a sweet, sensitive goth with perfect grades that were only surpassed by a more perfect reputation. it's funny but it is completely true - i looked like bloody death but i acted like an absolute angel; it wasnt until college that i did anything even remotely morally reprehensible in the slightest (well, wait - does anal sex count?)

this combination of scholastic ability and respectability earned me the unique privilege of attending the summer session of harvard university. i confess that to this day i am stil not completely sure that i understand why my parents let me go - they were the type that were overprotective to a fault, and overprotection is not really something you associate with letting a sixteen-year-old live in a dorm 3,000 miles away from home with a bit of money and a wardrobe inspired equally by aubrey beardsley, jane eyre and twiggy ramirez.

(you think i'm kidding? i loved this picture.)

but they let me go, and the experience was a definitive one for more than a few reasons. it was the summer in which, left to manage myself entirely, i did exactly as i pleased and was young enough to not feel any shame about it. i read in the cemetery and befriended the bums who congregated outside of it. it was the golden age of my life as a modern dancer, in which i had the rare opportunity to have a dance choreographed on me. it was the summer in which i became almost entirely nocturnal, and it also went down as the summer in which i spent all the money my parents had entrusted to me so solemnly on records, flowers, vintage clothes, sweets and comic books. (they were not pleased.)

but the most delicious gift that that summer gave to me was one that i still play with passionately today - a taste for the heady thrills of flaneurism. late at night, depressed and alone, i would wander wander wander around the streets of the deserted city, up to the store 24, down to the bus depot, through the yard, over to radcliffe, over to the gym, anywhere. i'm not sure what first inspired these late-night jaunts, and that's part of what makes them so charming to me. i simply decided to begin, perhaps fueled by the innate curiosity to witness and to know that governs nearly all of my pursuits. at any rate, i discovered quickly that walking was an excellent palliative measure against existential sadness, and i developed an immense taste for it.

it was on one of these innumerable nighttime ramblings that i first saw amanda palmer in harvard square. on friday nights there were always all sorts of people milling around there; between the T stop and the ABP it was the sort of place people chilled at just to be seen. this was the era in which she was doing her act as the eight-foot bride and i was immediately transfixed.

(amanda palmer, as she would have appeared at the time)

oh my god!!!! i remember thinking. she has black hair too! and she's also wearing a vintage wedding gown! and holding flowers! AHHHH! clearly, clearly we are meant to meet. and be best friends. (keep in mind i was but sixteen, and unused to the harsh realities of the world.) it was almost too pat. i believe at the time she had a card in front of her with a snippet of emily dickinson on it, something about silence.

so what did i do, this sweet, sensitive young scholar? well, i did what any poet philosopher would do when confronted with a similar situation.

lately i've been thinking about the word "insecure." i use it at times to describe myself but more and more often it is feeling stale and falling flat as far as capturing exactly what i mean when i try to use it. i am an anxious person, sure. i am a trepidatious person, sure, given to fantastical flights of the imagination and hesitation in the midst of ambiguous and troubling scenes. but when confronted with scenes of extreme meaning and beauty i don't doubt for an instant - i go forward blindly with perfect vision and balls of steel.

i am certain that i dressed with particular care, although i do not remember exactly what it is that i wore. i can hazard a guess, however, that it was my favourite dress, a cream wedding gown in raw silk from 1860. i wrote my favourite emily dickinson poem on a dollar bill, rolled it up, tied it with a sprig of evergreen, dropped it into her urn, and waited.

eventually she stepped off her box, and i was there. hesitant but full of strange love, i timidly complimented her on her dress.

"it's not mine." she answered, awkwardly, coldly, turning away, freezing me out.

really now, can you believe such a thing? freezing out an adorable, raw, silly girl in a precious dress with a sad little face? incomprehensible. (but then again, i'm slightly prejudiced.)

almost nothing, really, but to me, what a something it was. i was so upset i ran away to the edge of the yard and hid in the dark against the wrought iron fence. here i had a foolish little cry, knowing just how foolish i was, and completed the foolishness of the scene by writing a foolish little poem about it all.

because i am "like that" in that i still have all of my journals, i have that exact poem here in front of me. i hesitate to reprint it because it is terrible, just terrible, but i feel like it would be false to not include it. (besides, it is slightly hysterical.)


"I.

and i wonder as i sit
i still see your face clearly
your hair was pulled back
and you stepped off your box
to talk to those outside your realm.

you opened your mouth and things fell
out, not exactly the colour i expected.
hiking up your dress,
"it's not mine" and a falling tone.
how strange for me the irony sits.
it's musty but still a foundling to me.
how strange.
live up to your poetry after all,
and the distended layers would match,
and i wouldn't feel so empty.

when you suppose that you scare all the pieces you thought were yourself strewn about
then it is time to go home
when you suppose that it is time to go home
then it is time to scare yourself

and then will perhaps leaping
make me thinner,
make you truthful-er,
make my hair blacker?

(i'm guessing that this is around where it starts becoming about my boyfriend and not about amanda.)

why did my persistence die
with our first kiss?

it's encroaching
it's so close now
i can feel it feel it feel it
and however far i run
it's not like i will forget

time may be kind,
but it's just trying to make up
for what's coming next."


i never connected my experience to the dresden dolls until they started becoming more popular. their first website was part of jon whitney's brainwashed, which i frequented pretty religiously in those days. (a brief sidenote: jon whitney was, for a space of time in my life, a hero of mine, and when i had the opportunity to meet him he was more than pleasant. sidesidenote: if you really want a laugh, click on the feb 2004 interview with jon whitney from afterimage. holy shit that made my night.)

pretty soon even my dad, in his inimitable manner, was telling me: "hey suz! i heard this song and thought of you. it's about a boy! who runs on coins! you should check it out!" so check it out i did. and as soon as i read that amanda palmer had been a street performer in cambridge, i stiffened. that bitch. and i refused to listen to more than a few moments.

and i wonder now, especially as it is quite a timely notion for me to ponder on: when the iron enters my soul, what should i do?

of course, there is no answer. i am almost at the point where i can laugh at such a thing, and happily find the dresden dolls torrent and live a life full of bliss. but i am not at that point yet. and it is, as i elaborate on at length in my thesis, it is that "almost" that makes all of the difference my dears.

when the iron has entered my soul it is a type of permanence and yet it is not permanent. how could it be? i could simply say, "i am a foucauldian" and let that stand in for any further elaboration but instead i shall elaborate. i am sure if i had amanda palmer here in her own defense she would mutter something about being insecure, or annoyed, or busy on that particular summer evening. and there is a way she could say it that would melt that frozen part of me. this is a given. (this notion is part of why it is so damnably hard to determine a real prescriptive philosophics.)

but until that cold, hidden part is kissed by the sun, iron it remains. and i stick to that right, and continue to not listen to the dresden dolls. dreams are not realities; dreams need to have someone home for them to come true. so right now i am turning to the dreams that are "at home," so to speak. i know it is the right thing to do.

overheard in chelsea

1. so, how's your dating life? seeing anyone or anything?
2. (snort) dating life? what dating life? ha. what about you, you seeing anybody?
1. HA! (cackles.) me seeing anybody? my heart was firebombed like dresden, son. right now i'm just looking for porcelain in the ashes.
2. oooooooookay. wow. that bad, huh?

obligatory happy obama post

right now i'm listening to people whoop and hoot and honk it up on the streets below me.

earlier tonight i cast my vote on the shittiest, most ancient voting machine ever in the multi-purpose room of the only "true" housing project in bushwick.

and now i have to go back to writing my thesis on pleasure against nihilism AND there is homemade cake in the fridge.

[the short verison is: things are okay!]

only two regrets (oh, isn't there always):

1. that i was too tired to make it to babeland for my free silver bullet for voting (!)
2. that i didnt vote absentee for CA... i mean, what the fuck? you'll vote obama but no on prop 8? keep your fingers (and toes) crossed....

ADDENDUM: you can still make it to babeland for your free silver bullet! until the 11th!! be off, i say!!!!

ten questions

1. is wearing red glitter platforms and enduring exquisite agony worth the pleasure of having someone stop you to photograph you in them?
2. how strange is it to think of all the people who are thinking of you but are too scared to speak up?
3. why do i keep dreaming about alison goldfrapp?
4. why i am so terrified to finish my thesis?
5. how cool is it that fall leaves look like graphs of chaotic functions?




6. what is it about rainbow chip frosting that makes it so fucking delectable?
7. would foucault really consider his notion of subjectivity to be "nihilistic" in a critchley-ian fashion?
8. what is it about language that fascinates me so?
9. how can i best protect a wheatpaste from the elements?
10. is it love or is it an addiction?

sharing is caring

song of the day:

Boomp3.com

Daniel Victor Snaith (born 1978) is a mathematician and electronic musician recording under the stage name Caribou.

"I'm not the type of person who takes physical things apart and plays around with them, but I like taking mental ideas apart and playing around with them. That's what appeals to me about what I've spent my life doing."

"andorra" was the winner of the 2008 polaris music prize.

enjoy.

xoxo