Recall

She wasn't watching him now. She was looking at the backs of her hands, fingers stretched, looking and thinking, recalling moments with Rey, not moments exactly but times, or moments flowing into composite time, an erotic of see and touch, and she curled one hand over and into the other, missing him in her body and feeling sexually and abysmally alone and staring at the points where her knuckles shone bloodless from the pressure of her grip -The Body Artist by Don DeLillo p 49

Time and Time Again.

The worst time is time lost, when you thought you could be gaining. Spent a few hours writing a-could-be-story. In the back of my mind, considering the time that takes and all the enormous - unbearable - amounts of other work I also have to be doing. And then all of a sudden it goes from day to night and it's after 10pm, I break, somewhat proud of what has been written, go to a friends, come back, have the part read, and in my head - one beat, two beat, three, four, five - "Uh, Chelsea, no, no, none of this. I can't read it. No good." Just like that. As if it's so easy to place emotion on a page. Not even sections. Not even lines. Not even the chance to see the direction. Just, as always, "I know your work and this is too abstract." And I sit with my work in my lap and look at it like one can with time - abstractly, curious whether its been wasted and myself with it.

No one wants to feel dumb or defeated either. But at times the most resonating feeling is being unwanted, which also is the most unwanted feeling. And what do you do with that? Try to compose yourself time and time again.

Unfortunately, when I spend time articulating the self, the other, the memory the reader doesn't want me. I've taken this to heart and tried to change. Accounts were less of everything. I don't know, I suppose they touched people, but really? They seemed obvious, like everything was being given away. Unfortunately, many readers accepted me when I was feeding them.

Ah, hell, spooning is what I'm after. Feeding = fulfillment. Spooning = sensation, prospect, the lack. It's a tease, it's an involvement, pleasure is give and take. Why do people think writers already know everything? We write to discover knowledge, but when we begin we are empty.

I feel that more times than not.

A Place Adventured.

The following excerpts are extracted from Nausea by Sartre.

This dark body which grows lighter little by little makes an extraordinary impression on me: when it becomes entirely clear, entirely white, I shall stop just beside it and the adventure will begin.

It must be such an upheaval. If I were ever to go on a trip, I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving, so that when I returned I would be able to compare what I was and what I had become. I’ve read that there are travelers who have changed physically and morally to such an extent that even their closest relatives did not recognize them when they came back...To speak frankly, I would also like something unexpected to happen to me, something new, adventures. 35

I have never had adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn’t a question of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something to which I clung more than all the rest—without completely realizing it. It wasn’t love…It was…I had imagined that at certain times my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little precision…And naturally, everything they tell about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It is to this way of happening that I clung so tightly. The beginning would have had to be real beginnings. Alas! Now I see so clearly what I wanted…Suddenly you see that it is the beginning of a great shape whose outlines are lost in mist and you tell yourself, “Something is beginning.” Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable—and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated…All is going to end, I know it. Soon I shall leave for another country. I shall never rediscover this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.

I have reconsidered my thoughts of yesterday. I was completely dry: it made no difference to me whether there had been no adventures. I was only curious to know whether there could never be any. This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell. I led a funny sort of life. But I was in the middle of it, I didn’t think about it. 37-39

Binding Desire.

As ever, I have no knowledge of what this is, where it will be taken or why it began. It just starts, unknowingly, plotless and continues without plan. And that is how it happens. All my endings surprise me in their referencing to the opening - my unconscious desire to have a revelation. I only noticed that it seems like an authorial design when my professor wrote back saying how well I foreshadowed. I thought it bizarre - seeing how the story was autobiographical and his comment went to show how maybe, one - I - knows all along how time will turn out and/or needs all along for the future to mirror a subconscious fulfillment. Even more shocking (which isn't the right word) was his comment that the rape scene was touching, especially moving. Rape? I had never read my story that way. Did those reading my graduate application render the same reading? Was writing a way of prolonging denial, preserving a particular point of view? Lately, nothing I write seems unlike what I have written. But I think this will be the case until I write the better version to a story interacting with the same, single trope. As ambiguous as I make details, each character (in real life) sees the fiction as our account. Of course, this recognition probably prevents me from using my imagination more; a reluctance to have anyone believe I am purposefully falsifying or fabricating. I suppose what should be clear is anyone a fiction is influenced by, should perhaps prevent themselves from reading critically and find compliment in their being there, somewhere. Anyway, don't we all hope to be remembered?

Silence could be the most deafening song. It is possible, yes, just as silence is the most intimidating partner ever to be placed in the mind. When together we exist, I try to survive. Myself: be I and not become overpowered by speechlessness. I try to talk always to me. I always try speaking on behalf of myself. Swallowing words without time for memory—my moments—to be properly digested. This is all I fear.

Lying on that bed, he may have seen me finding pleasure in rest. Appreciating the softness of his sheets. Another skin against my body. Denying darkness the chance to disfigure subtle shadows shown by my nakedness, I made myself look comfortable, like I needed to be there. And maybe I did, perhaps I do. He stared, investing himself. Admiring the image of sleep. The image of belonging to him. During those hours. At a time never in time. He blushed, as I never believed he would.

And he’d never like to believe I wasn’t sleeping; behind veiled eyes I was awake, considering who I was to be there, what that said about you, and meant about us—then or sometime ever. Of course, yes, all states other than the one I am always in are concerns of my mind. The future. Will you matter? Would you be willing? He blushed. I know this not because I saw such change, but rather felt it. I did. Him too. The third time. Lying on that bed, I already knew I’d come to romanticize it; the place between ideal and actuality, not where one sleeps but where two try to touch their dreams—see if what is separately thought is mutually true. I have come, we are here, and I know our reason but not what I feel about it.

“I wish—“
“I didn’t mean to wake—“
“You didn’t. I wish you’d tell me how I am to you.”
“Me too, but honest, you’re the writer.”
“Try.”
“I wish.”

Richard Brautigan

Hinged to forgetfulness
like a door,
she slowly closed out of
sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.
-Hinged To Forgetfulness Like A Door.

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.
-I've Never Had It Done So Gently Before.

to-to.

Of course, I've been thinking about everything, which isn't to say much of much at all. But in my falling tonight - falling, again or rather back, in love with Manhattan I listened/learned lives of others and wrote few words and said many more that meant much within my mind - all of which, I wait until tomorrow or the day after or the month after that to finally write or process, yes all I want is to stop and process these days, these months, these months that keep me breathing and yet make me breathless. How trite, yes, I agree. I hate the sentimentality. It makes me feel awkward, pathetic, artificial, naive, dumb. But I did begin writing this in a half-consciousness, strung out on the couch, watching interviews with respectable women who won't stop speaking about their weight, and the food, and how they control it, and how this and that and the other... AND OMG... ENOUGH ALREADY... yes, already, enough, and then I began looking through albums and it made me stop, here, right where I lay, before writing this, and think, think, acknowledge and admit, that finally, for the very first time, I have become someone, some female who I haven't been since 4th grade. I eat what I want. I can't remember the last time I had a salad or went to the gym... and though I want these things... I haven't rushed toward them and yes, I'd like to see it become otherwise, so I can be healthy and strong (exercise helps me escape interior repetition) I don't hate what has become of me. And I would never tell anyone, ever, that they should limit that which they indulged in as a child. I would never tell an audience nor write a "best-seller" exposing the "secrets" to becoming skinny. Very simple, eat steamed green vegetables, grapefruit and papaya morning until night. And be prepared not to live your life at all - well, you will live it but not in the company of anyone who lives sensibly nor who I respect (I may empathize, yes I hope I can) but such obsessions aren't admirable... and aren't we all, please, just looking for some other to teach us something and also, be that other who teaches some self how to truly be?

Tonight I discussed a novel - a story - that has been "brewing"...
Tonight were hours I felt.

The Guest of Cindy Sherman

One of the great rewards of living in Manhattan... Now showing at Cinema Village.

Quick! Let Yourself be [Out]spoken.

The instant is of an imminence that takes my breath away. At the same time that I live it, I hurl myself into its passage to another instant
-Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life.

And however breathless I was - you are - it is me, after the hurling, passing the void, pulled toward light that stares into time's face, asking amongst my only self: am I to fault or can I perpetuate denial, innocence and blame life? For what? (As if we have forgotten, and already?) The fault of framing instances, instead of allowing their flow, being involved in that intimacy, carried by this breathing.

Lying in wait, sun attaches to skin, overshadowing the self's shadow; the need to become copper, to be cleansed, to have lighter lashes - anything to accentuate transparency, I think.

It is superficial, despondency. But have eyes close and you'll feel otherwise, seeing how hope hides not outside the body but below it, which means more when worded "within your self", yes somewhere there. And like a mute, you speak with your self only. Discuss how different this is - you are - in silence. I wish you would have spoken up because I am the same. Looking for closure, as well, my eyes dismiss the sun, my body forgets how tightly it grabs, and I stay still - on the outside - picturing this. So unheard of and lesser known, the blackness; it's like a blockage of time that hasn't yet restored life. Because in the blackout latent elementals are only just developing. Self changes time. Time changes sight. Both, time and sight, changes in-sight. And I am only someone somewhere because of these conditions. Other/wise I am I. Alone and nowhere, truly?

And then traveling, closing in, some voice spoke: Chelsea. Open up. We've made it. Sea.

Or was it "see"? I'll never know; the difference being slight.

Stay high.

A conversation:

You back in the saddle (at least for a couple of weeks until San Fran and LA), I mean are you settled back in the routine?

The routine of lots of work. A mad rush to the end. Same old same old.

Never forget the best part is the journey.

The one outside the routine always is, but yes I know what you mean.

Life I guess is what goes on outside of the same old same. I have a couple ideas of books for you to write, but that is later.

Thanks Coach, can't wait until half-time.

What quarter? I'm in. Actually, I think you are finishing the first quarter. Night'

Yes, with a mad save at the final second. We've got em' beat.

Of course, that is why you are The Beezer!

-Always a try to raise my spirits; always others keeping me focused. Thank you.

Aspire to Inspire

Dear Chelsea:

On behalf of our entire community, congratulations once again on your acceptance to the Program in Writing at CalArts! We had a large and exceptionally talented applicant pool this year, so you have already distinguished yourself as a promising artist. I salute you and look forward to welcoming you personally. If you have not already received your decision letter, it should arrive in the next few days...

So put your East Coast winter behind you and join us.

No time to express what is deserved. Today I received this and a week ago my acceptance from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. So many sensations I want to write out (my way of seeing what I know, giving nerves a language). Over this last week, I feel reborn, revitalized. I am learning each moment. I am paying attention. I am listening. I am discovering what I felt I forgot: who I am. Today I am setting off to Bimini; a trip I never thought I'd take, a trip I was always too self-conscious, too controlling to go on. Now I am proud of myself, I must say, for acknowledging the need for a challenge, to excel within elements of the unknown, to be surprised. From the page to experience, one must be fearless to succeed and one must have confidence in order to become anything meaningful, someone more. Ultimately, risking the unspoken - displaying the self's secret spaces - was embraced and a staff accepts me for the stories that are mine and a character I haven't always felt proud of, an I who becomes something solid by voicing the imperfect mind. I knew my disorder made me who I am and now, by never denying it, I have the chance to make the superficial, the repetitions, the torment meaningful once and for all.

PS: LOADS OF PHOTOGRAPHS SOON.

Cezanne's Doubt from Joel Tomar Levin on Vimeo.
By Joel Tomar Levin - a beautiful mind. He filmed this in Paris and I was lucky enough to be the other face. 

I wouldn't be surprised if our letters were bound. The man knows how to communicate.

Survivor

Always she moves through pain,
memory, and memories –
what she can’t remember yet
and what can’t be forgotten still.

The mere surviving sweat
and blood and lust as though
that was the hard part, as though
it were easy to wake up
each and every morning.

Those salty taste on her tongue
and screams and sweat and semen
rising from her gagging throat.

As if the easy part were
to fall in love or trust or give a shit
and the hard part were
walking away – breathing –
smiling at the rest of the family
when obliged.

As if, when it was all done,
when she finally got far away,
the air stopped being
choked by every night’s sleep –
every hand on her thigh –

And so she moves through memory –
blocking out what she is still unready for –
and mourns her memories each and every morning
as the screams and sweat stay
and some other fool reminds her:
she survives.

-JC LEE

Beyond Mid-Night

If the unique question of [an encounter], divine to be sure, brings about such a change, such a healing in you that, given this one gift, you cast weariness aside - then if the dance is yours, oh higher men, or the dance of the ass, what does it matter!

And if for you pleasure is the return of the same, and if everything returns "one more time," that is to say "for ever and ever." And if nothing is thus lost of either the highest dream or the sharpest pain. If you insist on love and hate remaining caught up in one another so that one never occurs without the other. If your pleasure can never untangle itself from suffering, and the most extreme advance of your genius is to go deep into the deepest depths of the flesh, since that bite stirs your vigilance at the hour of mid-night, then, indeed, let me go out of your shadow.

For night, to me, is not that. And there is no need for you to perfect your day by dragging me from slumber. For sleep, to me, is no disappearance. And for each hour, its own fortune suffices. And it pleases me not that the hours should repeat themselves and fade one into the other according to the orb of your single sun - that your will should always be at least twice times one, and the same again. So that this way everything happens and happens to be what you are. That, for your eternity, everything should always turn in a circle, and that within that ring I should remain - your booty.

For every hour, in its firstness, its uniqueness, pleases me.

And when everything starts again, already (I) am gone elsewhere. Whole (I) shall be at every moment, and every whole moment. And he who repeats so that time will come back has already separated himself from time.

But to each second you say: I've got you. And already (that second/elle) is gone while you were watching. And you with it. When your last hour tolls, it will still find you holding back the first from running away. And none of them will you have lived, since you never stayed in its element.

Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche by Luce Irigaray
(extracts from the chapter Speaking of Immemorial Waters)

ship him off.

At dinner three couples danced to Bobby Vinton. Two by two, “blue on blue” had them leaving heel marks slain across the dining hall’s squared dance floor. Lines of laughter took the attention away from the wrinkles weathered around their jaws and foreheads. At their age faces were like tree stumps, but then again I looked more enervated than all these geriatrics. Rich histories made me jealous. I pictured the family portraits hung in the hallway, a family of four playing cards pass midnight and the collection of Christmas cards covering the piano table. I had no such memory. Did each life cater to a purpose? Curiosity affected me. The game of “what could have been” never ended. I played it and sometimes it amused me during fits of boredom. I thought of all the things I needed. I already had a serious imagination. What I didn’t know outweighed all I experienced. The meagerness of my existence was confirmed by my fragmentary life. If a biographer exaggerated me, I might be a product of a page. This depressed the shit out me, so I kept quiet. I once read there was an element of mystery in the unsaid. I can’t remember who wrote that, but I thought it sounded like something wise, something a father might say if he wanted to teach his child a thing or two. My father didn’t teach me anything. He just showed me how not to be. Watching the couples, I felt a simple pleasure being there, as if I could steal the experience and consider it my own. Smiling, while other shipmates applauded the dancers, I wondered if the woman danced, whether she would attend to the spotlight. As the couples took their seats, I kept my smile, curious if the woman would have a partner. I wanted to indulge.

*

All six nights, groups traveling together were mixed with different couples and single sailors, like myself. While aboard the ship, one was to have their horizon expand, or rather, that was the Windstar’s mantra. So I sat tall—conscious not to have my shoulders hang downward—and taking advantage of my frame and 6’2 height, saw that my posture did not convey a shortage of self-esteem or my gestures an over articulation of right from wrong behavior. It had taken four years of compulsive correcting, but recently I had become confident that my exterior laid no claim of my interior discomfort. When my twin sister died after turning twenty-three, I experienced a change unlike any other. It was impossible to be prepared for it. And yet, my adjustment was expected. I couldn’t make sense of it. When I was thinking that I wasn’t thinking about now versus then, I was. I wanted to remember how it felt the instant before I opened my eyes and found out I was now an only child. I missed what died in the darkness.

*

Five sat at each table, but so far I was amongst only two. Both men: tall, dark and handsome—the type is well known. Their attire was more trendy than practical, less waterproof than proof of their paycheck. Not the outdoor type per se, but those that went where money could take them. It was a sort of animal instinct—men were hunters, women the gathers—seeking out luxury as if it were bait for their yuppie mouths. With combed back hair, they spoke with their noses in the air, laughed like a finger was up their asses and swallowed down all that was offered. To lend an adjective to the behavior, they were drunk, lubricated, uncontrollable. Or maybe they were just on vacation. I made no judgments, not outwardly, just watched with assumed admiration in a mockery of approval and joined in as if encouraged by celebration. Hand-me-down Rolexes counted down their pulses, and with Blackberries safeguarded under their napkins, it was obvious they were never disconnected from here and there, living and working. We weren’t men of the same mind. Our mothers had bred us differently. Small talk between each swig of Scotch made it effortless to have their dirty briefs aired out and on display. They were younger than I by four years, give or take, Hollywood go-getters, smoking spliffs the entire drive down the Hills, pitching screenplays, blowing lines and here to get away from their “lalaladiiiies”. But as I listened in, laughing along with their humor—those things you do to be one of the boys—I couldn’t help but see myself during that age of invincibility: when you think your shit doesn’t stink, that nothing will kill you and you live by one motto, “ignorance is bliss”. As I swallowed down the Scotch, I couldn’t avoid closing my eyes to listen with my other ear: who would wake first Hollywood or them, was it possible to stay forever dreaming? And there she was dressed in gold.

for the lack of

I'm sure someone said life's story would be written differently if
one let oneself go, if
one's interior is seen, fluctuating freely.
Whoever said that made a difference.
I'm rumored to be open, but
my quivering mouth evaded
feeling, mind.
Through my eyes privacy slips.
Would anyone understand
when crying I promised the truth,
It's only that I am
happy, and now there's everything
to fear, most to lose.
And if this was accepted,
does that mean he, also, is okay
entering without expectation,
staring down at a face that can
easily be either void of mood or
severely dissimilar.

JB.

His tall body leaned in. Obvious. As if taking the mouth closer to the ear protected the secret. Illogical. The friend turned his face, silently telling me he was beginning to understand. There was nothing gradual about it. Impossible to lessen curiosity - what story does another assign to you, tell me, what story did he choose? I had no option other than to become it. Watching, I didn't have it in me to do anything but stand, showing my guilt in a dress he zippered down then. Say it, was it me or our sex. No question, the answer is one I'll wait for. Flaunting, and yet there isn't anything forward about us. We've spoken and between lines said nothing. Yet enough to follow me for, but I only know this as I turn. And he pulls. Each finger. And I feel. So I have to say, Sorry I really have to get away. On the outside we were wrong. On the inside something reacted. That mattered. And why? Do bodies linger on hope. I aim to discover finally what he tries to say. Is that all this is? I hope I don't mean that little. Maybe inside the spaces I can find something. Raise the volume, and what?, silence still. No we can't be this: bare, already nothing. Sorry, touching, I really, eluded to the past, have to, our bedded illusion, get away. He whispered to the friend how we spent that weekend. He told him.


Last night, many dreams, and in one you said you've been writing and I said you mean to tell me you are a writer...My dream!...Pulling my leg...

Some Way

Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free -Sartre, Nausea p 65.

On my way to the airport...

Turning toward Spring, as if for the first time you see trees. Their leaves snatched. Stealing color from season. It would be too easy to say their frail arms and upturned nails make them hideous. But they do. Behind, at a distance, is sky. Impossible to touch this steamed window reminds me of the image from the other side that crawls over eyes before the final death. You could stare for some time without realizing what it is, why you’ve become calmed. He said sensation is sensation is pure, pure fiction. Not that you heard, sleeping away from him finally forever.

Psychosex.

April 16, 2000

By LISA JENNIFER SELZMAN

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SEX Stories of the Intimate Relationship Between Therapist and Patient. By Susie Orbach. Scribner, $24.

ver wonder what your therapist is really thinking? In ''The Impossibility of Sex,'' the London psychotherapist Susie Orbach describes the impressions that go through her mind during treatment sessions; she gives a human face to the stereotyped portrait of the distant, passive analyst by showing that, on the contrary, she is deeply affected by her patients. She details the therapeutic process through seven composite patients drawn from her 20 years of practice, among them a seductive male chef, a self-mutilating businesswoman and a lesbian couple. She dissects these clinical ''stories'' to let the reader in on her thoughts at significant points along the way, admitting with impressive candor to feelings of sexual attraction, arrogance, favoritism and even failure. Orbach believes that patterns of interaction between therapist and client often recapitulate aspects of the client's early painful experiences and are thus the key to healing. Her physical and emotional responses to those who come to her for help supply information that propels the clinical process forward. Orbach, the author of ''Fat Is a Feminist Issue,'' has a knack for making psychological material accessible and engrossing. The fact that the patients and their circumstances are fictionalized -- albeit for reasons of confidentiality -- dilutes somewhat the power of these ''case studies,'' and the titillating and misleading title cheapens Orbach's intent. The prevailing theme of this artful book is not the impossibility of sex, but rather the possibility of transcending violation and loneliness.

Eye Sea

I partake in the visible; I see and I am being seen. But I cannot see the medium which brings this reversible relation about. The vision of the self is a fold or cavity. That is, I can see the world around me, but I cannot see the point from which I am looking. I can only be aware of myself as seeing through the visibility of things around me. They meet my eyes in such a way that they, in a manner of speaking, look upon me. Vision, therefore, is always inhabited by a fundamental narcissism. The thickness of the flesh is constituted as a narcissistic moment. The flesh is the necessary depth which makes meaning possible. It is the weight partaking of our daily practices - the way we socialize, feel and live - the density which makes us engaged in poetry, music, art, and each other. The world around us is illuminated by a light in which we ourselves can see and be seen. But the "flesh" itself cannot be seen. The way we perceive the world, therefore, presumes the suppression of an invisible other, a radical form of alterity making its imprint on our corporeal rootedness.

Elemental Passions by Luce Irigaray and the article Crossing Lovers: Luce Irigaray's Elemental Passions.

How we get here.

I’m the type of person convinced the exterior determines my interior. To be clear, my environment greatly influences how I feel, and what I feel controls the moment I imagine is my reality. It’s probably the reason I become consumed by my present situation; why I can’t accept it as temporary and become comforted and content that it too will pass. Because I know better. I can’t trick myself into thinking I will change—that all of a sudden, I can be the sort of person who is involved, engaged in the environment and then leaves unaffected, with no impression. When I am consumed by a time I can’t get enough of, then well, I don’t want to accept that fate either—that I will have fulfilling feelings, yet their source will be temporary and I will be left to pretend I am stronger than I am. I know this sort of attitude affects my relationships with others—I come and go. I forget nothing, but I am only present when I want to be. It’s selfish and maybe I wish I could be more available, but time consumes me and I can’t be everywhere because when I go, I want to stay until I am affected. Maybe it’s true that I have my idea of who, what, where will bring about meaning to me and off this judgment, I seek out what will impact me. I’m not good with small stuff. I fear the things I want to say are never small. But it is my insecurity that I can’t be casual from the start. It’s just what I’ve been conditioned to—the past. I always assumed everyone spoke candidly, but this year others have made me see my situations differently. Somehow others feel I allow them to say what they have thought they shouldn’t. Be it confusion, addiction, the story when it’s not decorated, filtered. I embrace this. And I don’t know what to say other than these interactions are where I see we have purpose. Whenever someone speaks, I feel as though they are letting themselves think around me. It’s all I’ve ever known or received from others. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so bad at casuality—wasn’t “so serious”. I’m sure I would do more. And like the people outside my window, I would scream, have my voice be music to the entire city. Am I too composed? Too conscious? As much as I hate to admit because I fear dependency, all I can reason is the other brings sides of your self forth and due to the other, you can surprise yourself with your many faces. Everyone I maintain contact with affects me more than they think. They make me live in ways I wouldn’t on my own.

The messages were silly that I received. That I am distant. Have a life of my own. Too popular, and hard to reach. Does one never think of the possibilities? That silence may be the result of trying to find something of comparable value to say. That an intimidating presence was the veil protecting the self from being fully realized? That distance was not caused by the body being with some other, but actually being so very far away?

Aside from sheer procrastination, what even led into any of this rambling? My books. Right. If I were to look to the right of my environment… my bedroom…there must be three hundred books…I don’t know whether they stir sensuality within me or anxiety…reminders to always be at work, consuming lines…but whatever, to my right, a pile of books: Sartre—Being and Nothingness, Bataille—Inner Experience, Bachelard—Poetics of Reverie, Maso—Ava, Laing—Politics of Experience, Foucault—Politics of Truth, Collobert—Notebooks 1956-1978, Brown—Love’s Body, Lispector—Stream of Life, Thomas—Thinking About Memoir, Hoffman—Beyond Silence, Hamsun—Hunger, Blais—Angel of Solitude, Agualusa—The Book of Chameleons, Cartarescu—Nostalgia, Le Clezio—The Interrogation, Barthes—The Pleasure of the Text, Tabucchi—It’s Getting Later All the Time. And that is only a single pile, but still does it say something about me? What I am bringing in, what is coding my mind, what I want to be effected by? Could it be why I lack imagination? I slept with a guy, woke to him acting like we had been a couple for a year, took me by complete surprise, he left for work, I dreamt like nothing had happened, woke with a missed call from him, messages during the day, very taken aback, phone call after work, he said he had read my writing, where? how? what!, in your bedroom, framed by the door, oh no that was terribly depressing highschool dramatics, no it wasn’t but then I went on the internet and saw you had a blog…very interesting…I’ve never been one to read, but that shouldn’t matter.

The line really put me on pause. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Maybe what I did didn’t matter, but still if it was so much of what my daily life revolved around, shouldn’t we somehow even share a liking for words? It ended up being an interesting string of events. My sister met him, unintentionally, and proceeded to tell my mom her judgments and say she wouldn’t take my word on any of my relations. But I thought she was missing the point—their purpose. Two people don’t have to end up in a serious relationship to qualify the time as worthy, substantial. But, of course, this doesn’t make much sense to someone who wasn't wanting or hoping for something from sex, other than the sex and/or a continuous series of phone calls after. For me what is important is discovering something within the moment. Taking something from the time—it prevents me from regretting anything either. Maybe I was always trying to write a story based on someone, around us. The guy I am referring to isn’t my match, but was that even what I was looking for? My desire for him forced me to be more aggressive, upfront. He showed me how simple a night could be—ice cream and a movie. Something I haven’t let myself indulge in…together. When I saw he had put all 20 sticks into the perfume oil, he confirmed that foolishness really can be charming. Sure maybe our conversations weren’t intimate or “deep”, but then again, I’ve never slept closer to another body in my life. Maybe he’ll never tell me about this “relationship” he is in, but maybe we all are entitled to our weaknesses. Like when we were separating on the street, and I said something about his Levis, and he said he wanted to skip work because he thought knowing his jeans meant I was beginning to know him. And he liked that, and I only liked to watch someone get dressed, and well, that’s when I saw he wore Levis. I think some people aren’t satisfied unless they receive everything. They can’t frame the fragments. I might not be getting into Graduate School, so maybe I’ve fallen short of my dream, and sure I haven’t been able to write in months, but I still have what I’ve written. And what I’ve written is not a result of a dream, but the people I know…references to them dropped in places to fill stories with color, so the fragments mean something beyond themselves. My sister may have felt otherwise about him, but maybe even twins look to others to fulfill different places, of they do. And for me, his memory can be traced through at least four pieces. Pieces that maybe didn’t get me into Graduate School, but got me closer to my dream.

I wonder whether any situation will ever leave me feeling light?

Canopied Purity

With head risen
Tongue traces meaning loosely
Dangling above masculinity.

Somehow you
Follow my feminine gesture
Wipe my lips and say,

“I feel tired, too.”

Try to fall away from each other
And can’t.

Instead hopelessly bring our selves
Closer to coming into darkness.

Curling toes
In hand,
Your grasp makes me
Too wounded to move.

Skin smothering skin
I hope to give
Weight to this lightness
Breath, a calamitous cushion.

Fingers insane on my skin
Become mad in the middle.

I am too dreamless to be here.

But

“We need each other now.”

Your lips pushing apart mine
Keep me from going
Make me watch downward.

Before taking your body from mine
You press deeper
Deceiving skin’s opacity
Obscuring shallowness.

Will we be thought pure
If we seem
Intimate at eye level,
I think this is the hope.

I've got my mind made up.

If you're interested in d/ling the song, check out the Breakbot Remix.

Love?

If Zizek has to be the one to say it, than by all means, say it so others will live like so.

Zizek

ZzZ

The Fragile Absolute, Zizek

So where, precisely, did Marx go wrong with regard to surplus-value? One is tempted to search for an answer in the key Lacanian distinction between the object of desire and surplus-enjoyment as its cause. Henry Krips evokes the lovely example of the chaperone in seduction: the chaperone is an ugly elderly lady who is officially the obstacle to the direct goal– object (the woman the suitor is courting); but precisely as such, she is the key intermediary moment that effectively makes the beloved woman desirable– without her the whole economy of seduction would collapse. Or, take another example from a different level: the lock of curly blond hair, that fatal detail of Madeleine in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. When, in the love scene in the barn towards the end of the film, Scottie passionately embraces Judy refashioned into the dead Madeleine, during their famous 360-degree kiss, he stops kissing her and withdraws just long enough to steal a look at her newly blonde hair, as if to reassure himself that the particular feature which transforms her into the object of desire is still there… Crucial here is the opposition between the vortex that threatens to engulf Scottie (the ‘vertigo’ of the film’s title, the deadly Thing) and the blonde curl that imitates the vertigo of the Thing, but in a miniaturized, gentrified form.

This curl is the objet petit a which condenses the impossible-deadly Thing, serving as its stand-in and thus enabling us to entertain a livable relationship with it, wihtout being swallowed up by it. As Jewish children put it when they play gently aggressive games: ‘Please, bite me, but not too hard…’ [? I must be Jewish as I enjoy these games]. This is the difference between ‘normal’ sexual repression and fetishism: in ‘normal’ sexuality, we think that the detail-feature that serves as the cause of desire is just a secondary obstacle that prevents our direct access to the Thing– that is, we overlook its key role; while in fetishism we simply make the cause of desire directly into our object of desire: a fetishist in Vertigo would not care about Madeleine, but simply focus his desire directly on the lock of hair; a fetishist suitor would engage directly with the chaperone and forget about the lady herself, the official goal of his endeavours.

So there is always a gap between the object of desire itself and its cause, the mediating feature or element that makes this object desirable. What happens in melancholy is that we get the object of desire deprived of its cause. For the melancholic, the object is there but what is missing is the specific intermediary feature that makes it desirable. For that reason there is always at least a trace of melancholy in every true love: in love, the object is not deprived of its cause; it is, rather, that the very distance between object and cause collapses. This, precisely, is what distinguishes love from desire: in desire, as we have just seen, cause is distinct from object; while in love, the two inexplicably coincide– I magically love the beloved one for itself, finding in it the very point from which I find it worthy of love. (20-21)

The Opacity of Desire

When the analysand speaks in a psychoanalytic session, Lacan suggests that it is necessary to bracket the subject who seems to speak and to ask, "'Who is speaking?' when it is the voice of the unconscious that is at issue. For this reply cannot come from the subject if he does not know what he is saying, or even if he is speaking, as the entire experience of analysis has taught us" (Écrits 299). -Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in 20th-Century France by Judith Butler.

This actually got me to laugh. It's genius. It's obvious. All throughout reading Freud, I've never quite understood this unconscious speaker. If one is speaking is he not doing so on behalf of consciousness? Anyway, I'm meeting a professor in thirty, and have been trying to delve into my rationale finally: The Desire to be within The Other. I am way behind, and this is half the cause of my anxiety, but I think if I can allow myself to achieve a healthier state of mind, than I can become fascinated and immersed within my study. I SHOULD BE enjoying this, since after all it's engaging with my obsession, this question I will never able to resolve. Just as I let myself fall into a troubled mind, I need to let myself get healthy. As for fiction, the only work I should be reading (personally and professionally) is Woolf and Faulkner. However it goes without saying that I buy loads of literature weekly, knowingly having no time to delve in; buuuut, I am absolutely impressed with this novel I just bought by Antonio Tabucchi.

Awake My Soul - Mumford & Sons

04-20-2006

It's hard knowing how much I was lying then as a result of denial or had I always believed in myself and therefore, expected the best? I say it's hard knowing because after this entry I went from 115 to 84. I do remember the times I refer to well though. I remember when I said for the first time aloud I had been taking pills off and on for years. I was at dinner with Stephen, my mom and dad at The Setai in Miami. After completely altering the menu's ingredients to my liking and many glasses of red wine, I reached over to tell my mother. I remember looking over and seeing how engaged my father and Stephen were, how special the night felt, like we were one family and I remember believing everything would be okay, would only become better. I remember that day I woke up in Boston, how bright that small room of mine was and how I didn't reach over to swallow anything. I remember promising it would be the last time I allowed myself to diet. I remember thinking everything would be better, believing I would be healthy and that would be okay.

come out to a few of the closest people about this "huge concern" in respect to my sudden extreme weight loss. stares immediately began & startled voices sounded in my ears. i knew i wouldn't really be able to play it off. if no one thought i had a problem before, there was no way they wouldn't think there was a problem now. so ultimately, how would i go out for meals and not have anyone believing i was doing drugs or throwing up? the last night i was home, after a few drinks in me, i finally said it. for the first time -- to anyone. for the last five years i've had a terrible problem. i never thought i had an eating disorder, but i openly said i had an image perception disorder which i believed to be far worse than anorexia or bulimia. i wouldn't allow myself to sink to such levels of that. i thought they were weak - awfully & truthfully weak displays of an individual. it's all been a battle, but i know that if it wasn't for the last dreadful years, i wouldn't be who i am. i would be a free spirit without a care in the world; perhaps with no depth. when i gained all the weight 5 years ago, i felt out of control. and for five years i have been fixated on who i was then. the absolute center of attention. a complete free spirit. never aware of the perceptions others had on me. i was strong, i was confident, i was everything i wanted to be -- there were no limits. i was climbing the latter in the modeling industry & yet, i ate my heart out & i didn't understand why anyone could ever worry about their image. i remember it so well. and then, then it was all taken from me. the life was sucked out of me & for the first time in my life, i felt out of control. i realized that some how your image does define you somehow, some way in the eyes of others. i began hearing the betrayal in (even) friends voices about my new look. my chubby cheeks, the way my stomach rolled. it pained me. i had to leave the agency & leave a dream behind. soon enough, i decided i had to cut out junk food. start off small & results were made.. but nothing really. one day, i stumbled upon pills. i saw someone else taking them & saw what a difference they made & that how when she gave them up, she went back to her old way. i began smuggling the pills & they worked. every time i ate, i didn't feel that bad.. because i was taking these miracle pills. i took them religiously & at times not so much because of how expensive they were, the guilt, & my own natural worry for my health. so for five years, i was off & on with them. i hid them & if i was ever confronted (which some how managed to only be twice) i would find them in the trash bin & take as many as i could before anyone saw me. but after five years, my body wasn't responding to them. i was terribly depressed about it. i thought about my weight every other minute, i swear you, every other minute. i wanted to shatter the glass that let me see myself. i knew i was capable of all my dreams, mentally, but physically i couldn't believe in myself & so i let dreams decay with time. but the pills gave me hope. when i came to boston my happiness was so momentary. i felt the most out of control of myself than ever. i couldn't control my environment & i felt like if i wasn't growing intellectually & insightfully, then i mine as well work from the outside in. and so i began experimenting by taking three different pills at the same time. everyone always made comments about how healthy i ate.. condescending remarks & all i could think was, I AM EATING give me that credit because if i wasn't i'd look the way i wanted & then i'd feel the way i did & then i could be who i had been planned to be. i fell asleep starving, i'd work out everyday, i'd have to drink myself to sleep to not think about the hunger all the pills were causing me, & i'd wake up & race out to breakfast - take down bowls & bowls of oatmeal. it was a cycle of thought, addiction, and guilt. spring break it hit me that i had to stop this addiction. i couldn't go on living like this. i'd kill my heart & there was no results as much as i'd like to hope for. i don't know how i've done it, but somehow five years later (almost 6) i woke up & didn't allow myself to reach for a bottle. i knew what i was risking.. what every pill popper worries; that without the pills i'd gain pound after pound & just swell up. well, somehow it has been just the opposite. people think i'm disengrating right in front of their eyes & yes, maybe it has been a bit shocking, i don't know. it's hard to explain it, but after years of pills - my body going up & down - my metabolism racing & telling me how badly i needed food - well now my appetite is very, very small. the smallest meal satisifies all my senses. fruits... vegetables... spices. i just love it, but with that comes questioning. i wish people wouldn't worry though. i'm finally off pills & now i'm just taking the consequences of them. but i've never been happier. it is almost like a spiritual clensing. i'm in control now, not a pill. and i feel like i may be able to do just what i had to leave off. having to come clean about these things is no fun. admitting that i was so weak behind everyone's back doesn' feel good, naturally. everyone feels dumb when i was clearly the child. but now everyone's watching me, forcing food down my throat when my body tells me i'm fine with what i have eaten. my mom wants me to get blood work done & everyone wants weight put back on. but i just want everyone to not worry. for the first time i'm happy, alive, and unreliant. i believe in myself. & at the same time, it needs to be understood that putting on the weight that i was unhappy with won't solve anything. why try & make me do pills again? as long as i am not depriving my body & am eating. as long as i feel good & as long as i am not depriving myself of life then i can breathe.. for the first time.

i want everyone to know the dangers you potentially face by relying so heavily on something & someone. my mouth bled terribly, i lost no weight, worked out like mad, & thought about weight every other minute. i urge you all to love yourself. i've always be envious. believe in who you are & never let yourself depend on anyone but the mind, if at all.

If I don't retire my pen, I hope to say more.

My dear friend! Shall I give you an analogy? It is the same with love. A young man's heart is entirely attached to a girl; he spent every hour of the day with her, wastes all his strength, all his fortune, in order to prove to her at every moment that he is wholly devoted to her. Should a philistine then enter the picture, a man of some responsible position, and say to him:

"My dear young man, it is natural to love, but you must love only in a sensible way. Organize your day; some hours for work and some - the hours of relaxation - for your sweetheart. Calculate your means; and it is perfectly permissible to use whatever is left over and beyond your personal needs to use whatever is left over to buy her a present of some sort, only not too frequently - perhaps for her birthday or a similar occasion."

- Should the young man follow this advice, he will certainly turn into a useful member of society, and I should advise any prince to take him into his Cabinet; but his love is done with, and if he is an artist, his art as well. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.

I have never believed that to secure love, one must follow rules. All the more, immersed in love, I have never found myself able to even consider rules. I know it doesn't often come around, that is, the insatiable curiosity for another, the disregard for the outside reality. And maybe that's why those on the outside so often say s/he seems changed. There's no logic to love; that's the single secret worth sharing. I can't rationalize why I fell in or what made me fall out. Nothing makes you, which is why being in love is intoxicating, inexpressible, ethereal. If someone else influences a difference in you, if s/he refines time, than against all sense say something, anything. Love can never last too long, I promise. And it also is indefinable because it defies expectations. But I would like, at some future time, to try to be more honest and most candid because I do believe the sense that can be made of love through language is evanescent, and therefore would be valuable to write down and make more permanent. For now, I can say, when I am in love I believe living life is simple and therefore my thoughts are sensible. While I am otherwise devoted to a more solitary lifestyle, I become selfless and more comfortable with another presence, more eager. When I smile, my teeth can actually be seen, and if I catch sight of myself, the only thing I can recognize is a child - my naturalness, the very moment, the face when having no fear. It's strange, this contradiction, that when I am in love I don't want nor feel the compulsion to try to make sense of anything. And perhaps, that is what I am in love with.


But what were these but all the obvious answers defining the inexpressible, denying expression. My ambiguity could very well be an artful act to conceal uncertainty. Claudelean Musee the Screened Woman. It's posts like this that, in the back of my throat, make me feel fraudulent, protected, naive, not resourceful, boring. Reading me, I notice the lack.

The Light Shouldn't Keep You

I, especially, was waiting to be touched; wanted to enjoy the hand,
not his who I loved, but the man I hadn’t, not yet.

Fanfarlo

Fanfarlo - Harold T. Wilkins by Stachemou from Stachemou on Vimeo.

Fictionality in Freud

I'll probably have to discard all of this but eh:
*Okay, definitely discarded and definitely, yes, definitely Freud has given my head a sharp spreading pain.

The novelist and the psychoanalyst may as well be twins. Their difference is evident, only, in their opposing trajectories for achieving clarity and presenting meaning to an audience. The novelist is allowed to be less of a presence amongst his subjects. He may inconspicuously observe, within his own reality, the scene of characters in order to structure a perspective that makes present, not an apparent awareness, but a meditated meaning often overlooked in the immediate visual reality and illuminated in the literary. The way an author fashions a character’s story—whether invented or actual—is not determined by a coherent reality, but is decided prior by authorial intention.

On the other hand, to develop meaning the psychoanalyst must be visibly and physically engaged with the individual, whom the material is dependent upon. Therefore, the other confirms one’s existence to proceed with discovering a meaningful story and the illumination that transpires depends upon the relationship between two memories and two perspectives. Truth is not an independent aim as it is for the novelist, but an effort of two minds whose achievement relies on the analyst and the analyzed relationship, their independent intentions and their narrative transparency.

Ultimately, the stories are presented for an audience within the same medium. Language is how the translator and the reader begin to understand the intangible. However, while the author is responsible for the truth that the final presentation retains, the psychoanalyst can claim the story is not from his mind but the patient’s. Therefore, the psychoanalyst is able to transfer any resulting implausibility toward the reality of the case or inadequacy of memory onto the patient—the other. This flee from responsibility is a denial of the psychoanalyst’s critical role in instigating a framework for narration and a platform to perceive event and emotion. To enter the realm of the real one must accept the unreliability of an absolute truth, fantasy and narrative. Freud, just like the author, selected material from memory to confirm and strengthen his theory on the individual. By structuring his cases, Freud was able to control his patient’s narration and manipulate a patient’s truth for his theory on truth. My intention is not to discredit Freud’s discoveries, but rather prove the narrator’s intention makes an absolute truth impossible to communicate. Ultimately, language provides one with the ability to present meaning made possible by narrating to the other an existence shaded by truth and fantasy, neither entirely real or unreal either.

To engage with meaning, one cannot begin without committing himself to memory. The analyst, patient and writer cannot avoid what they know. While memory is inexhaustible, it is nevertheless subject to change. Not only does this change happen in regards to time, but on lucidity and association. However, one element of memory does not change—it is always fragmented. In Freud’s course of psychoanalyst treatment, he dealt with fragmentary recollections remaining in the patient’s memory and also those he had to help bring to consciousness. Whether initially accessible or not, the memories used to structure a patient’s genuine being were pieces of experiential time and patterns of phantasy. Due to the patient’s neurosis, it was Freud’s role to determine which were pieces and not patterns, actuality and not imagination. Any mistake would disturb the analysis and therefore, one’s phantasy could not be exchanged with one’s experience.

However, because of the patient’s memory and it’s relation to age Freud faced many problematics. On one hand, Freud’s psychoanalytical theory was man becomes who is because of childhood experiences. Therefore, Freud’s intention was to direct the patient’s memory backward toward an obscure event experienced during initial stages of development and thus, most fragmented, incomplete and confused with consciousness and unconsciousness. The very communication of childhood elucidated the inexplicable difference between a child’s mind and an adult’s. Freud believed the traces of childhood were permanent scars in the adult mind. Therefore, by pointing to the place of origin one can discover the impressions that are destined to influence one to the end of their life. On the basis of this theory, a narration would be underwhelming if communicated in linear time and would be likely to show no extraordinary change in the individual. The purpose of the story is best communicated if narrated backwards. Freud was determined to prove the primal scene controlled a character’s life. Whether the child in life or simply in his imagination experienced this event did not prevent Freud from validating it as a possibility to valorize his theory and conclude the patient’s past and future cause of neurosis. Freud’s acceptance of an assumption means he believed fiction was interchangeable with fact. Because he thought it was impossible to confirm a child’s memory, he believed fantasy-formations were intended as symbolic representation of real wishes and interests—a reality the patient wants to have experienced. Therefore, whether the fragments of narrative were absolutely experienced in exterior life does not matter since the psychoanalysts’ intention is to free the patient of his interests, obsessions and anxieties in the present moment. Once the meaning of these symbols were determined, Freud was then able to direct his analysis toward the tasks of the present day—a lived time no longer weighted by the anxiety of an obscured past or rather, untranslated dream.