Friday, November 21, 2008

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.

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