Who is it Tell me His name

Oh these weeks have been mind AND body hogging. Constantly reading, devouring texts for my Colloquium. The day after I leave for San Francisco. Then I have about a week - if I pass my Colloquium - to finish all the other three research papers and portfolio. Ep. Everything works out in time. Although I am a mad lady in the mind. Not so sure whether I have been taking the Colloquium too seriously oooor not enough. Whatever it is, it happens. As for today I read St. Augustine's Confessions Book X Memory, Samuel Beckett's Not I, The Unnamable, Cascando (But the entire reader is damn good and I need to seriously get in on that). I also finished Molly Bloom's soliloquy the last interior-scope in the final pages of Ulysses by Joyce. Yesterday was Lacan. And tonight I need to try and get a move on Plato's Phaedrus. So many words, so many texts referring me to other texts, other words, other poems, other quotes I need now always to share. I watched a PHENOMENAL video from Philoctetes Center Multidisplinary Study of Imagination with a panel (Arina Abramovic, Paul Campos, Sander Gilman, Marcel Kinsbourne, and Sabine Wilhelm) on The Body and Its Image. These issues merged with the study of my Colloquium The Desire to be in The Other has made me more aware, most awake. It has all been just before my very eyes. I feel like I've been reduced to terms, like I've been in an analyst's hot seat for months - days that don't die - and now I get it. And soon I will have to see if I can articulate it, reveal what I've done and how, yes, the clues have been laid out for me all along. I feel good. But extremely worn out. Too much school work I fear I'll never finish, but regardless I will, crazed and insufficiently. The ol' group went to Miami for the weekend and I couldn't go. A first. Miss that sort of pleasure. Went out for a bottle of wine Thursday, she even said I talk differently, hold my body differently as I speak in Miami. It made her sad and that made me sad. But it all really shouldn't be a sad thing. It isn't. I've accomplished a lot here. But yes, I'm just trying to meet deadlines always. Manic exhaustion, I admit. Can't wait for kisses and all of that and that and this and such makes me feel immediately well again. I can't wait to feel good. I can't wait to begin living again. To be a yes girl and not a no. Which leads me right into Joyce's Ulysses. He believed "Yes" was the female's word. The final chapter is referred to as "Penelope", after Molly's mythical counterpart (OTHER). One major difference between Molly and Penelope is that while Penelope is eternally faithful, Molly is not, having an affair with Hugh 'Blazes' Boylan after ten years of her celibacy within the marriage. On that note, this soliloquy is the damn funniest thing I have ever read - erotic, crude, the whole nine yards - it is damn good. I will include some of the passages from all the works at someone time but for now:

After that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn't answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know.

I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

James Joyce, Ulysses: Molly Bloom

Sight Changes once Feelings Change.

Yesterday, the reality of myself seemed to change, or, at the very least, feel different.
Maybe I just finally let myself see things the way they are.

Q. Back to the mine? A. It's the only place I have to go.

When I met Chozo and the tea lady, for example, I took in everything they said without a peep - not a hint of my usual argumentative, self-assertive behavior. Of course, it would be reasonable to try to account for this by reference to the fact that I was starving at the time, but hunger was surely not the whole explanation. Any way you look at it, it's a contradiction. Here I go with the contradictions again. Never mind.

I have a habit of recalling the adventures I experienced back then whenever I have a few spare moments. It was the most colorful period of my life. Each time I bring back those images to savor, I wield my scalpel mercilessly (you can do this with old memories) in an attempt to chop up my own mental processes and examine every little piece. The results however are always the same: I don't understand them. Now, don't tell me I've just forgotten because it happened so long ago. I'll never have such an intense experience again in my lifetime. And especially don't tell me that the lines are tangled because those were the frantic acts of a confused adolescent. The acts themselves were confused and misguided, but the only way to understand the processes leading to those misguided acts is to examine them calmly with the brain I have today. It's precisely because I can now look at my trip to the mine as an old dream that I am able to describe it for some people with even this degree of clarity. I'm not just saying that I have the courage to write down everything that happened because the passions have faded; I could never have managed to put down even this much on paper if I didn't have the detachment to drag out the old me out to where the present me can see it and study every wart and pimple. Most people imagine that the most accurate account of an experience would be the one written at the time and place, but this is a mistake. Driven by the passions of the moment, a description of the immediate situation tends to convey preposterous misconceptions. If I had kept a diary, say, of my feelings just as they were at the moment, I'm sure the result would have been an infantile, affected thing full of lies - certainly nothing that I could have presented to people like this and asked them to read. -The Miner by Natsume Sōseki.

Present & Experienced.

Extracts from Being and Nothingness by Sartre.
All of these are sentences from the text that I have linked together.
And not the complete or actual passages themselves.
Although they advance as the text does itself.
Enjoy!

Language: by revealing to us abstractly the principal structures of our body-for-others (even though the existed body is ineffable) impels us to place our alleged mission wholly in the hands of the Other. We resign ourselves to seeing ourselves through the Other’s eyes → we attempt to learn our being through the revelations of language. Therefore it is language which teaches me my body’s structures for the Other. But it follows that even in reflection I assume the Other’s point of view on my body; I try to apprehend it as if I were the Other in relation to it. It is evident that the categories which I then apply constitute an emptiness or rather, a dimension which escapes me.

I am language. By the sole fact that whatever I may do, my acts freely conceived and executed, my projects launched toward my possibilities have outside of them a meaning which escapes me and which I experience. Seduction is the complete realization of language. In other words it can be our primitive expression. Thus I do not know my language any more than I know my body for the Other. I can not hear myself speak nor see myself smile. The problem of language is exactly parallel to the problem of bodies, and the description which is valid in one case is valid in the other. Seduction will perhaps determine me to risk much to conquer the Other-as-object, but this desire to appropriate an object in the midst of the world should not be confused with love. Love therefore can be born in the beloved only from the proof which he makes of his alienation and his flight toward the Other.

Cornered.

We sat in the corner as we had times before. It wasn’t habit, just a preference that never needed a voice. I felt bad, immediately; my noticeable nature, I was there but nowhere to be found. She looked into my eyes and I let myself pass further into the distance. I’ve become someone less. Engaged, she saw me for the first time and I laughed.

I wanted to ask her whether I looked sad or blank. But what would I have done with the answer? I didn’t know. I didn’t really care. For months, I’ve been looking forward to gaining my esteem soon. But I’m not certain it will happen. And if it doesn’t, I wonder how I’ll be, if I’ll excuse myself or just keep waiting.

She left for water. Hurt her back looking at photography on exhibit. Swallowing a pill for pain. Closed my eyes. Envious. “I have something, a small surprise.” Flowers. I hadn’t seen that amount of color in a long time. I was silent. “I’m so proud. You’ve made it happen.” I was silent. “Chelsea…" "It's just you didn’t have to do this. Wherever I am going, whatever becomes of it, and everything that’s already been written is because of you. I don’t deserve these." It’s impossible to decide whether words are the consequence of yourself or the other. But a writer lives for the touch, works toward the story that will say it all; doesn’t move until affected although a writer races and waits, races and erases. "Thank you for caring."

“I’ve been missing you and you’re not gone. You’re here and I’ve already.”
“Things haven’t been the same.”
“I’ve noticed. You’re scattered, exhausted from trying to do too much.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“That isn’t the case.”
“It has to change. I have to change.”
“Things already are.”
“California.”
“You’re suited for San Francisco. It had to happen.”
“So not LA?”
“It’s not a question. You know my first husband and I’s relationship ended because Los Angeles would never be me. You’re the same way.”
“This is certainly true.”

We talked about San Francisco. Neighborhoods. Where I’d live. Your’s, Mine and Ours. Ferlinghetti. The scale of intensity. Manhattan: 10. Berkley: 2. San Francisco: 6. Big Sur. Wine. Romance. Intoxication. We talked about Manhattan and if she’d ever get me back.

“I feel like I’ve lost myself.”
“How does that happen? People find themselves here.”
“Exactly. I did. I thought. In the beginning. But now I can’t remember anything. I have the worst memory you know.”
“All you need is summer.”
“But it became spring yesterday. It’s everyone’s favourite season.”
“You’re doubting yourself.”
“Exactly.”
“What’s happened?”
“I don’t like myself here. At this time I don’t. I’m that type of New Yorker giving the city a bad reputation. I walk in and out of lives. Meet you then I’m gone. And I don’t like doing it, but I do. Out of laziness? Maybe. People say I have priorities but that’s no excuse. People should be the priority. All my friends complain about dating here and I’m worse than men. They follow me home and once we’ve both been had, I ask them to please not try to reach me. They say they want to and somehow, somewhere inside of me, I find it okay to respond that this isn’t about them, it’s about me. I seem complex but it’s all rather simple. It’s Manhattan and I don’t have time.”
“Your honesty will always be admirable.”
“But I don’t think this is how I feel. And if it is, I don’t believe this is how I come close to feeling.”

Extra Extra

Finally checked out some clips from Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and though it isn't in your face, you can actually see me. Especially 2:30, I walk in front of them and turn. It was a long rooftop night, and my fur was drenched. But it was an interesting experience and the money was damn good. I should have/be doing more of these things.

Relieved of the Obligation to Love.

"Don't you sometimes feel that, in times like these, to separate is normal and to meet is the miracle...that, when you think of it, even our being able to meet and talk together like this for a time is probably quiet a miraculous thing?..."

"Yes, I also..." She started speaking with some hesitation. Then she went on with an earnest but agreeable serenity. "But here when I was thinking we'd just begun meeting already we're to be separated..." I could not make a causal reply. The pain I felt in my heart was so piercing that it surprised even me. The feeling of ease I felt with Sonoko had given me an illusion, a belief that all our days would be spent together and that everything would remain just as it was now. In a deeper sense it was a twofold illusion: the words with which she passed the sentence of separation upon us proclaimed the meaninglessness of our present meeting and revealed that my present feeling was only a passing happiness, and at the same time as they destroyed the childish illusion of believing this would last forever, they also opened my eyes to the fact that, even if there were no parting, no relationship between a boy and girl could ever remain just as it was.
It was a painful awakening. Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty? At least there was no doubt that I was alone in regarding the duty as a heavy burden.

At last I spoke: "So, you're leaving...But of course even if you were here, I myself would have to be going away before long..."

-Confessions of a Mask by Mishima p165-166.

Oh Boy.

That day, the instant I looked upon the picture, my entire being trembled with some pagan joy. My blood soared up; my loins swelled as though in wrath. The monstrous part of me that was on the point of bursting awaited my use of it with unprecedented ardor, upbraiding me for my ignorance, panting indignantly. My hands, completely unconsciously, began a motion they had never been taught. I felt a secret, radiant something rise swift-footed to the attack from inside me. Suddenly it burst forth, bringing with it a blinding intoxication...

Some time passed, and then, with miserable feelings, I looked around the desk I was facing. A maple tree at the window was casting a bright reflection over everything - over the ink bottle, my schoolbooks and notes, the dictionary, the picture of St. Sebastian. There were cloudy-white splashes about - on the gold-imprinted title of a textbook, on a shoulder of the ink bottle, on one corner of the dictionary. Some objects were dripping lazily, leadenly, and others gleamed dully, like the eyes of a dead fish. Fortunately, a reflex motion of my hand to protect the picture had saved the book from being soiled.

-Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima.

In the Eyes of Another

She framed his face in her hands, looking into him straight-on. What did it mean, the first time a thinking creature looked deeply into another’s eyes? Did it take a hundred thousand years before this happened or was it the first thing they did, transcendingly, the thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls.

She said, “Why do I think I’m standing closer to you than you are to me?”

She wasn’t trying to be funny. It was true, a paradox of the spectral sort. Then she tried to be funny using sweet talk and pet names, but soon felt foolish and stopped.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo p 85.

The Moment After

Unclothed I curl into a shape similar to a seashell: spiraling curves, careful to keep music—my breathing—inward. Closer, his artless hands reach, trying to touch me, but I can’t be felt, won’t admit consolation. Imprisoning poetry. Can’t be released. We are our words. My tongue is stroking, gently calming me. I try to talk always to me. My body is caressing the inside of itself. I always try speaking on behalf of myself. Doesn’t he know he changed us? “You’re the writer,” as if those words were a novelty, as if they touched me most, as if I didn’t know before, and haven’t already felt the pressure. He doesn’t understand. This, nebulous, female; my fetal position. Reborn in his bed. He can’t see. The child only wants to know she means something. Something special to those she looks up to, that is, whomever I’ve chosen to see.

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.