13.9 -- a hundred-dollar bill
12/7/2008 at 6:03 AM
Tonight you said, "Do you want a hundred-dollar bill?"
and I had to laugh.
OF COURSE I want a hundred-dollar bill.
But that's not what I really want,
when I could get so much more.
You talk about women who are like sleek, expensive house cats, lounging about on their man's tab
and honestly that sounds all right -- if some man wanted to buy me horses and let me lounge about with cigarettes I would do it, sure.
But how about this:
How about we put our best clothes on and drink champagne and cocktails until we're so fuckin' drunk the city spins, and then we walk home in the snow holding hands and falling on one another laughing catching ice crystals on our tongues?
How about we sneak into an evening arty movie matinee and hold hands under a blanket thrown over our laps?
How about we make a spectacle in public, on that ritsy street again but better this time, you can kiss my neck and I can grab your belt and the high-class ladies walking past will hate us with a passion?
How about you touch my knee under the table again and I run my instep up your leg?
How about we do all of these things, as often as we can, because life is only so short and if it's left up to me it's probably going to be even shorter, and you're almost leaving and I had better get to growing up one of these days anyway?
How about we catch a bus or a train and you get out of this town with me, we can go anywhere and we don't have to stay, but how about we just go?
A hundred-dollar bill? Why that's the easy way out
when we could run up a tab ten, one hundred times that.
and I had to laugh.
OF COURSE I want a hundred-dollar bill.
But that's not what I really want,
when I could get so much more.
You talk about women who are like sleek, expensive house cats, lounging about on their man's tab
and honestly that sounds all right -- if some man wanted to buy me horses and let me lounge about with cigarettes I would do it, sure.
But how about this:
How about we put our best clothes on and drink champagne and cocktails until we're so fuckin' drunk the city spins, and then we walk home in the snow holding hands and falling on one another laughing catching ice crystals on our tongues?
How about we sneak into an evening arty movie matinee and hold hands under a blanket thrown over our laps?
How about we make a spectacle in public, on that ritsy street again but better this time, you can kiss my neck and I can grab your belt and the high-class ladies walking past will hate us with a passion?
How about you touch my knee under the table again and I run my instep up your leg?
How about we do all of these things, as often as we can, because life is only so short and if it's left up to me it's probably going to be even shorter, and you're almost leaving and I had better get to growing up one of these days anyway?
How about we catch a bus or a train and you get out of this town with me, we can go anywhere and we don't have to stay, but how about we just go?
A hundred-dollar bill? Why that's the easy way out
when we could run up a tab ten, one hundred times that.
13.8 -- PTSD
11/26/2008 at 7:40 AM
you're not wicked. if you are, it's nothing on my account.
simple truth is, it's hard to make it with a girl who knows but doesn't trust her own motives
who isn't sure what thought, what action is her own and what's been planted into her mind against her agency
or even if any of us have the agency to have truly independent thoughts or actions.
(of course the answer is, we don't, the question then is, how deep does it run?)
it's hard to make it with a girl who has learned how to dissociate
and didn't even know she was doing it.
it's hard to make it with a girl who can be angry
but only because she's sad
and lonely
and frustrated and afraid --
it's hard, it's fucking hard, man.
but I still want you here
I still want your shoulder for my chin, your cheek for my lips, your hand for my hand, some times,
so there,
it's not going to be easy
but in the end, there is nothing really for either of us to know
so you ought to stay anyway.
simple truth is, it's hard to make it with a girl who knows but doesn't trust her own motives
who isn't sure what thought, what action is her own and what's been planted into her mind against her agency
or even if any of us have the agency to have truly independent thoughts or actions.
(of course the answer is, we don't, the question then is, how deep does it run?)
it's hard to make it with a girl who has learned how to dissociate
and didn't even know she was doing it.
it's hard to make it with a girl who can be angry
but only because she's sad
and lonely
and frustrated and afraid --
it's hard, it's fucking hard, man.
but I still want you here
I still want your shoulder for my chin, your cheek for my lips, your hand for my hand, some times,
so there,
it's not going to be easy
but in the end, there is nothing really for either of us to know
so you ought to stay anyway.
13.7 -- and you did.
11/17/2008 at 8:10 PM
And we did, on my porch.
And you bruised my lips and I hope I bruised yours.
Today I spent chasing snow, the fat fat flakes I caught in my mouth wide open, and I laughed like a child. Like I never laughed when I was a child.
It was much, much better this time.
And you bruised my lips and I hope I bruised yours.
Today I spent chasing snow, the fat fat flakes I caught in my mouth wide open, and I laughed like a child. Like I never laughed when I was a child.
It was much, much better this time.
13.6 -- the best hangover day
11/10/2008 at 2:12 AM
let's tent the living room floor again
propped up on pillows against the radiator, drinking in the warmth and the company,
smoking cigarettes and more, saying nothing
just listening to each other's laugh.
except next time let's hold hands in the dark.
propped up on pillows against the radiator, drinking in the warmth and the company,
smoking cigarettes and more, saying nothing
just listening to each other's laugh.
except next time let's hold hands in the dark.
13.5 -- yes I wore that dress
10/17/2008 at 6:24 AM
but I didn't know what it would do to you.
I think it was the full moon. It's always been the full moon for you and me.
Don't run away this time.
I think it was the full moon. It's always been the full moon for you and me.
Don't run away this time.
13.4
10/13/2008 at 7:14 AM
I am so lonely at night --
but at least I didn't get that tattoo just to please him.
I only wish I hadn't let myself enjoy it so much. I wish I didn't remember what it felt like to relax and be happy -- to stop suffering.
At least I didn't get that tattoo.
but at least I didn't get that tattoo just to please him.
I only wish I hadn't let myself enjoy it so much. I wish I didn't remember what it felt like to relax and be happy -- to stop suffering.
At least I didn't get that tattoo.
13.2 -- the only one
10/4/2008 at 4:04 AM
Yes. I am.
I smell like your cologne.
I don't want to hurt you.
Let's run away together.
I smell like your cologne.
I don't want to hurt you.
Let's run away together.
13.1
9/24/2008 at 3:16 AM
You still know me better than anyone. You don't know me as well as I do, but you tend to come to the same conclusions as I do, at almost the same time.
You know I'm afraid to be happy because I'm afraid it will end. You know I'm making excuses to talk myself out of it because I'm afraid to fail. You know I'm afraid to make mistakes.
You know I didn't lie, you know.
You know.
I'm glad we're apart for now, I needed to grow and to learn
but I wish I had never listened to those assholes when they told me lies about you
and I'm so glad you forgive me.
You know I'm afraid to be happy because I'm afraid it will end. You know I'm making excuses to talk myself out of it because I'm afraid to fail. You know I'm afraid to make mistakes.
You know I didn't lie, you know.
You know.
I'm glad we're apart for now, I needed to grow and to learn
but I wish I had never listened to those assholes when they told me lies about you
and I'm so glad you forgive me.
13.0
9/12/2008 at 10:06 PM
When I was with you, I lived always in the future
and now, with the travelling band and a man who likes me
I can live completely in the present.
So it wasn't all the way a waste.
and now, with the travelling band and a man who likes me
I can live completely in the present.
So it wasn't all the way a waste.
12.9
8/1/2008 at 8:54 PM
I'll tell you what happened:
we went to the warehouse, the Factory, which has been alone and abandoned for some twenty-five, maybe thirty-five years. From above, on the bridge, it looks a little slumpy, a bit forlorn, but down by the railroad tracks, through the bushes, by the busway, it is very much alive, very much its own entity, much like an old castle, dormant but alive, as much a part of the landscape as a tree or a hill.
There are streams of water running flat over what was once a parking lot but is now just cracked concrete covered with sediment from the streams. The first building looks like a grain elevator and I think has been burnt out. The second building is the warehouse, a big warehouse like the one where I had my first art show would have been if it had been unused for three decades.
Inside it, there is more water, and not just because it had rained hard earlier that day. There are streams, little riverlets, broad and shallow like creeks, eroding the concrete day by day to expose the big rocks and little pebbles inside. They have eaten the wooden hatches off of drain covers and doors in the floor to make waterfalls down into the sub-floor crawlspace. The sound of streams, cascading water, is all around me, the biggest is behind the wall, in the first building, and I would go to look at it if my travelling companions weren't afraid of the dark in there.
The roof is caving in, big sheets of rippled tin flowing down nearly to the floor, dangling beams of broken rotted wood. Tree branches and vines trickle in the largest hole, which is still attached , but hangs down probably fifteen feet, so that I can reach out and touch it.
Underfoot is pieces of glass, big thick pieces of broken glass in the same ripple texture, maybe an inch and a half thick, and it crinkles and tinkles but doesn't crack when I walk on it. The light catches it like chunks of ice or crystal or big fat uncut diamonds.
Outside we find an abandoned office building where I've been told a local graf artist named Meat had lived for several months. (We had found his fire pit.) There was a bin from a now-defunct refuse company hidden in the weeds.
From the hill above, the complex looked like a fortress. The guard shack was just a single small room with the door vanished off the hinges and glass from the panes as if it had never been there. An old car, a Lincoln, was hiding in the bushes and startled me.
The earth takes itself back. Just give it time.
we went to the warehouse, the Factory, which has been alone and abandoned for some twenty-five, maybe thirty-five years. From above, on the bridge, it looks a little slumpy, a bit forlorn, but down by the railroad tracks, through the bushes, by the busway, it is very much alive, very much its own entity, much like an old castle, dormant but alive, as much a part of the landscape as a tree or a hill.
There are streams of water running flat over what was once a parking lot but is now just cracked concrete covered with sediment from the streams. The first building looks like a grain elevator and I think has been burnt out. The second building is the warehouse, a big warehouse like the one where I had my first art show would have been if it had been unused for three decades.
Inside it, there is more water, and not just because it had rained hard earlier that day. There are streams, little riverlets, broad and shallow like creeks, eroding the concrete day by day to expose the big rocks and little pebbles inside. They have eaten the wooden hatches off of drain covers and doors in the floor to make waterfalls down into the sub-floor crawlspace. The sound of streams, cascading water, is all around me, the biggest is behind the wall, in the first building, and I would go to look at it if my travelling companions weren't afraid of the dark in there.
The roof is caving in, big sheets of rippled tin flowing down nearly to the floor, dangling beams of broken rotted wood. Tree branches and vines trickle in the largest hole, which is still attached , but hangs down probably fifteen feet, so that I can reach out and touch it.
Underfoot is pieces of glass, big thick pieces of broken glass in the same ripple texture, maybe an inch and a half thick, and it crinkles and tinkles but doesn't crack when I walk on it. The light catches it like chunks of ice or crystal or big fat uncut diamonds.
Outside we find an abandoned office building where I've been told a local graf artist named Meat had lived for several months. (We had found his fire pit.) There was a bin from a now-defunct refuse company hidden in the weeds.
From the hill above, the complex looked like a fortress. The guard shack was just a single small room with the door vanished off the hinges and glass from the panes as if it had never been there. An old car, a Lincoln, was hiding in the bushes and startled me.
The earth takes itself back. Just give it time.
12.8
7/31/2008 at 1:57 AM
Today I am introducing a small photojournal in my art section.
Read it! It is a juicy dangler, to be updated tomorrow. What is going to happen?!
Read it! It is a juicy dangler, to be updated tomorrow. What is going to happen?!
12.7
7/26/2008 at 6:50 PM
I'm selling off my things and preparing to go. Whatever I don't want to sell, I can give to Dixie, and the rest will be converted directly to currency.
On Monday I will find out if I need to get a job. Either way -- it won't be tomorrow but soon --
soon I'm hitting the trail, just that I don't know to where.
On Monday I will find out if I need to get a job. Either way -- it won't be tomorrow but soon --
soon I'm hitting the trail, just that I don't know to where.
12.6
7/22/2008 at 7:09 PM
Looking around at society makes me wish I was blind. I hate to see that this culture favors white, middle-to-upper-class heterosexual white men and so I hate to see all the ways that it tries to force heteronormality on non-white men, women, children, everything and everyone. I hate remembering that many women defend and even participate in pornography, just to seem more human to and therefore avoid violence from white men, and many black men want to get money and hurt women, just to seem more human to and therefore avoid violence from white men. I wish we could all be human in our own unique ways instead of trying to be human the way they tell us to.
Mostly I wish I hadn't been betrayed by my own lover, my own friends, and cast out by my own family. Mostly I wish I had never betrayed my own self by allowing my eyes to not see for so fucking long.
Mostly I wish I hadn't been betrayed by my own lover, my own friends, and cast out by my own family. Mostly I wish I had never betrayed my own self by allowing my eyes to not see for so fucking long.
12.5
7/9/2008 at 11:13 PM
It is really a drag to have an eating disorder again. Not to mention boring to read about.
It's been nice to not worry about not avoiding people today. It will be nicer when I can not worry about it all the time. Oh, and money. I don't want to worry about money any more either. Yes. That would be nice.
It's been nice to not worry about not avoiding people today. It will be nicer when I can not worry about it all the time. Oh, and money. I don't want to worry about money any more either. Yes. That would be nice.
12.4
6/30/2008 at 12:51 AM
I've lost all of my friends again, including Evan, but oddly none of that bothers me so much as the fact that I gained back the five pounds I had lost while walking around and semi-starving myself with Noel.
Sometimes I think that if I had not gone to college, I would
- not be so poor
- not have gained weight
- not have lost fitness
- not be insane
but then I realize I would not be a radical either
and I wonder if the trade-off was worth it.
Sometimes I think that if I had not gone to college, I would
- not be so poor
- not have gained weight
- not have lost fitness
- not be insane
but then I realize I would not be a radical either
and I wonder if the trade-off was worth it.
12.3
6/16/2008 at 2:53 AM
I chucked a beer can at a man following me on the street in Bloomfield tonight. I thought I was comfortable but now I need to get out. Where am I supposed to run when I have been almost everywhere before
and when what I am running from is myself?
and when what I am running from is myself?
12.2
6/13/2008 at 2:58 PM
rain through my windows, the smell of rain, too wet outside to go.
Is it better to have only one friend and feel less alone, or to keep all of them and be physically less alone?
and how do you talk to someone who doesn't want to listen?
Is it better to have only one friend and feel less alone, or to keep all of them and be physically less alone?
and how do you talk to someone who doesn't want to listen?
12.1
6/3/2008 at 8:47 PM
I've done little more than nothing since Friday night. A few things have become obvious in their absence --
like the lack of struggle for dominance with a man who says he wants me as his equal.
The absence of our struggle is refreshing. I don't think we can ever keep from struggling. I think I've realized that the problem doesn't even lie within me, and in a way that is a relief. In another way I don't really want to think about it.
like the lack of struggle for dominance with a man who says he wants me as his equal.
The absence of our struggle is refreshing. I don't think we can ever keep from struggling. I think I've realized that the problem doesn't even lie within me, and in a way that is a relief. In another way I don't really want to think about it.
12.0
5/31/2008 at 8:17 PM
Six or seven beers, naked hotboxing in the Crunt, I lost my eyebrow ring and found it again. No train for me this time, not sure where I am going to go.
11.11
5/27/2008 at 2:35 AM
We burned a flag on my porch tonight. Just at the time when I think life had dropped itself on me, life dropped something even better to fill the void. In a few weeks time I could be jumping on a train back to New York.
11.10
5/20/2008 at 10:12 PM
we're like icebergs, or bumper boats.
we keep drifting close but
then we chase each other away
and I wish just once
when we were at the same time at the same place
you would let me stay.
we keep drifting close but
then we chase each other away
and I wish just once
when we were at the same time at the same place
you would let me stay.
11.9
5/20/2008 at 6:27 AM
I swear I'm going to stop going crazy soon, it's just that right now I'm still
beating myself up for not being pretty enough
not having longer hair
having too little dick to be a guy-friend and
having too much brain to be a girl-friend and
knowing if I had a weave I would look a damn lot like your new girlfriend.
beating myself up for not being pretty enough
not having longer hair
having too little dick to be a guy-friend and
having too much brain to be a girl-friend and
knowing if I had a weave I would look a damn lot like your new girlfriend.
11.8
5/20/2008 at 1:00 AM
Yesterday on my bus trip back here from Erie the bus passed a gas station that had closed when prices were still 1.68 per gallon.
What would life be like if we hadn't fucked up so grandly? I often wonder.
Which I suppose is why I never get anything done.
I haven't written anything real in some time because I cannot bring myself to.
What would life be like if we hadn't fucked up so grandly? I often wonder.
Which I suppose is why I never get anything done.
I haven't written anything real in some time because I cannot bring myself to.
11.7 -- snake v. scorpion
5/7/2008 at 12:35 PM
My countrypeople are maniacs and lunatics. All of them. All of them.
When twice faced between electing an outright liar or a blatant idiot, we first chose the idiot and are now seeming to choose the liar. And the general election is still months away. I suppose then we will have to choose between the Suave Son of Satan and the Angry Warmongering Helldemon. Unless of course Hillary manages to win and then it's a head off between the snake and the scorpion.
Tell me again why the American public saw Dennis Kucinich as a poor candidate ... ? We elected Jimmy Carter once, remember?
Then try to explain to me why I should not be an anarchist. Thanks.
When twice faced between electing an outright liar or a blatant idiot, we first chose the idiot and are now seeming to choose the liar. And the general election is still months away. I suppose then we will have to choose between the Suave Son of Satan and the Angry Warmongering Helldemon. Unless of course Hillary manages to win and then it's a head off between the snake and the scorpion.
Tell me again why the American public saw Dennis Kucinich as a poor candidate ... ? We elected Jimmy Carter once, remember?
Then try to explain to me why I should not be an anarchist. Thanks.
11.6 - trans/gender
5/7/2008 at 12:57 AM
Talked to an intake counselor about transsexuality today. I'm sure she thought I was loony as fuck. Awesome, maybe I will get SSI.
What is "gender", really? I know what society says it is but I don't trust society. I would have sex with a woman who had a penis, but not with a man who didn't (size, however, does not matter). And I am not a "man" but reject the idea that having a vagina makes me a "woman" and therefore stupider and inferior to a "man." So what does that make me? Gay? Straight? Transgender? Fucking crazy?
So when you say you are gay -- does that mean you like to take it, or give it? Does it mean you like cock and not vagina? Or does it mean you just want a partner that you won't feel is your inferior, because you secretly feel that no woman can ever be as smart as you?
And when you say that I make you question your sexuality, does it just mean that I make you question the ways you already narrowly think about boys and girls?
I'm just curious, dear. Let's start a discussion.
What is "gender", really? I know what society says it is but I don't trust society. I would have sex with a woman who had a penis, but not with a man who didn't (size, however, does not matter). And I am not a "man" but reject the idea that having a vagina makes me a "woman" and therefore stupider and inferior to a "man." So what does that make me? Gay? Straight? Transgender? Fucking crazy?
So when you say you are gay -- does that mean you like to take it, or give it? Does it mean you like cock and not vagina? Or does it mean you just want a partner that you won't feel is your inferior, because you secretly feel that no woman can ever be as smart as you?
And when you say that I make you question your sexuality, does it just mean that I make you question the ways you already narrowly think about boys and girls?
I'm just curious, dear. Let's start a discussion.
11.5 -- freedom
5/5/2008 at 10:57 PM
If I can work for 30 total days at the track, I can break even on my bills AND travel. DC in June, NYC in August. And from there
freedom.
freedom.
11.4 -- baby tell me the sound of the ocean
5/1/2008 at 9:41 PM
Dandelions are delicious.
Baby, I don't care what you "are" or what you like, I just want your time, I want your love, I want you with me. I'm there if you want me, when you want me. Take care of yourself
and tell me what the ocean sounds like, until I can hear it for myself.
Baby, I don't care what you "are" or what you like, I just want your time, I want your love, I want you with me. I'm there if you want me, when you want me. Take care of yourself
and tell me what the ocean sounds like, until I can hear it for myself.
11.3 -- warm weather turned cold
4/29/2008 at 11:44 PM
Walked out on my job on Saturday. Been wandering a lot for the past few weeks. Warm weather turned cold the past two days so I've been back inside for the first time in ages. Showering regularly for the first time in weeks. I've lost ten pounds between drinking purified water and walking a lot. Didn't even know I had ten pounds to lose, really.
Short term plans: - make two hundred bucks fronting stolen stuff - go to Erie for a week or a month to work on the track - file bankruptcy by the end of summer
Long term plans: - acid tripping in DC - re-exploring NYC - training Petey - Portland in the fall - changing the world - dying violently and beautifully for my cause.
There is a police state in New York City. With Connor's blessing I have designed an elaborate performance art piece that will end in our incarceration, his elevation to Hipster Jesus, and my probable deportation to Guantanamo Bay. Tee shirts go on sale as soon as I can make an adequate screen print.
I want a giant inflatable ball, and six piglets dressed in tiger suits. Mostly I want Evan to forgive me, so we can keep one another from being lonely when he comes home. But I like to keep my desires realistic.
Short term plans: - make two hundred bucks fronting stolen stuff - go to Erie for a week or a month to work on the track - file bankruptcy by the end of summer
Long term plans: - acid tripping in DC - re-exploring NYC - training Petey - Portland in the fall - changing the world - dying violently and beautifully for my cause.
There is a police state in New York City. With Connor's blessing I have designed an elaborate performance art piece that will end in our incarceration, his elevation to Hipster Jesus, and my probable deportation to Guantanamo Bay. Tee shirts go on sale as soon as I can make an adequate screen print.
I want a giant inflatable ball, and six piglets dressed in tiger suits. Mostly I want Evan to forgive me, so we can keep one another from being lonely when he comes home. But I like to keep my desires realistic.
11.2 -- teamsters for Obama, pineapple in the park
4/18/2008 at 12:03 AM
Weather hot as summer.
Shared half a pineapple in the park today, then talked politics with my psychologist and stole wifi from a snobby coffee house.
Got blood drawn to test me for diseases that keep me so tired sometimes.
Last night we crashed a "Teamsters for Obama" meeting that we heard was giving out free beer, and the ten of us drank six pitchers and ate two and a half pizzas with a bunch of construction workers and cops. The older people all gave me a standing ovation when, after fifteen minutes of double talk bullshit about the middle class, I drunkenly said, "Fuck the middle class! What are you people going to do for the poor like me?!"
Shared half a pineapple in the park today, then talked politics with my psychologist and stole wifi from a snobby coffee house.
Got blood drawn to test me for diseases that keep me so tired sometimes.
Last night we crashed a "Teamsters for Obama" meeting that we heard was giving out free beer, and the ten of us drank six pitchers and ate two and a half pizzas with a bunch of construction workers and cops. The older people all gave me a standing ovation when, after fifteen minutes of double talk bullshit about the middle class, I drunkenly said, "Fuck the middle class! What are you people going to do for the poor like me?!"
11.1 -- noel joy jacobs
4/12/2008 at 4:52 PM
I met another peaceful anarchist chick with an absent lover and a reputation for being difficult even though she's no more so than anyone else. It's nice to sometimes see my reflection in a positive way, it makes me feel less lonely even though I am still alone.
I just have to figure out how to get the potting soil out from underneath my radiator now.
I just have to figure out how to get the potting soil out from underneath my radiator now.
11.0 - secret pigeons
4/9/2008 at 8:47 PM
Ten minutes ago I played peek a boo with a pigeon through a broken window above an abandoned storefront. I wish I wasn't so lonely in this town, or I would stay.
10.9 -- the endings of things
4/8/2008 at 1:12 AM
I woke today from the fever that had shackled me to my bed and to crazy rambling thoughts and crying jags, but sometimes I worry that it's only ever a bad sleep or a tired day away.
10.8 -- a "real" job
4/5/2008 at 7:58 PM
Only one more week, four work days, of this job. And I can't wait to get out. My fucking supervisor is MY AGE, and I've been working here longer than she has.
I would love to get a "REAL" art job, if that's not an oxymoron. I have a good eye for color, I'm great at fashion and better at design and layout.
I never said I wasn't feminine. I'm just not very girly.
I would love to get a "REAL" art job, if that's not an oxymoron. I have a good eye for color, I'm great at fashion and better at design and layout.
I never said I wasn't feminine. I'm just not very girly.
10.7 -- addictions, hipster boys
4/2/2008 at 7:34 PM
I was addicted to cigarettes and a Maria Taylor song today. I spent the afternoon walking around the Pitt campus, smoking and listening, sucking down cigarette smoke and absorbing sunlight like a plant, lying on the grass staring at the sky, watching hipster boys and wishing I had one.
I had the worst longing, that kind that is sweet and sore at the same time, the kind that takes up my whole body and overflows the top, like water poured too fast into a glass. I'm so far off the map that no one else seeme to be where I am,
I've put up walls so that people think I'm a castle, or even a cliff. I've spent my entire adult life in love with a man who seems fixated on making himself into Jesus Christ, but I'm tired of pounding nails and I make a piss poor Mary Magdalene.
I'm tired of drinking poison and staying inside, ashamed of nyself, pretending I'm not a person. I'm especially tired of opening myself up just to shut myself down, and I know that if something doesn't change I'm on a fast track to a suicide in my dark apartment or the middle of the street.
I am so damned happy it hurts.
I had the worst longing, that kind that is sweet and sore at the same time, the kind that takes up my whole body and overflows the top, like water poured too fast into a glass. I'm so far off the map that no one else seeme to be where I am,
I've put up walls so that people think I'm a castle, or even a cliff. I've spent my entire adult life in love with a man who seems fixated on making himself into Jesus Christ, but I'm tired of pounding nails and I make a piss poor Mary Magdalene.
I'm tired of drinking poison and staying inside, ashamed of nyself, pretending I'm not a person. I'm especially tired of opening myself up just to shut myself down, and I know that if something doesn't change I'm on a fast track to a suicide in my dark apartment or the middle of the street.
I am so damned happy it hurts.
10.6 -- damage control, shouting down a well
4/1/2008 at 9:16 PM
I had a bad few days. Felt sick, am broke, got accused of stealing stuff from a store but I was actually going to buy it! Groceries no less! Oh well. Damage control now. Life feels like shouting down into a well and although I like the echo
I wish I could hear someone else's voice sometimes.
I wish I could hear someone else's voice sometimes.
10.5 -- the mirror
3/30/2008 at 3:30 AM
I'm damn depressed and lonely, I'm tired of feeling apologetic for the body I came in and knowing that if only I looked different ... if only. Baby the things you taught about me have stuck, and I don't know why you get so angry at me for them ... since you were, after all, the one who taught me them in the first place.
10.4
3/27/2008 at 1:35 AM
Doctor Magic's Hot-Gro is awesome. I am pouring all I have into writing this story that I will never post here. It's amazing, I wish I lived it. I will live it. Someday, I hope. If I wait long enough.
10.3 -- Easter candy
3/25/2008 at 10:46 PM
Back here in Pittsburgh I slept all day on Easter, despite my best planning and effort, and then stayed in for most of Monday too, riding off the high from the city.
Today I stole hair ties and Doctor Magic's Hot-Gro (which smells as amazing as I had anticipated). And Easter candy. Orange-flavored Cadbury Creme Eggs. I need to find some more of the regular ones too, since I didn't have one this year.
Peace March on Friday. As well as my payday. Apart from the money anxiety I feel like a balloon let go of its string.
Today I stole hair ties and Doctor Magic's Hot-Gro (which smells as amazing as I had anticipated). And Easter candy. Orange-flavored Cadbury Creme Eggs. I need to find some more of the regular ones too, since I didn't have one this year.
Peace March on Friday. As well as my payday. Apart from the money anxiety I feel like a balloon let go of its string.
10.2 -- so much hay
3/25/2008 at 5:15 PM
New York ended up as fantastical, I met
two great new people and
saw one great other person and
bought pants that actually fit and
started to feel better about myself.
The whole story:
After the semi-disaster of the underage girls, I felt quite strung out and a little on edge, but to my delight Danny and Audrey (the cutest and least annoying couple ever) came to rescue me with rum and coke and immediately validated my decision to stay an extra day.
We went to Williamsburg and no one regretted it. The place is full of cheap-guitar stores, authentic yerba-mate bars, hipsters who listen to bands that haven't even formed yet, a bunch of skinny bicycles, and the Buffalo Exchange ...
where I saw a very cute indie-rock boy sitting on a couch with a girl, then sitting on another couch clutching a crucifix and staring at me deadpan.
I was requested to stay and I realized that not everyone in a relationship is a pain in my ass. Now I need to find a nice indie-rock boy who will be sweet to me, and I am set.
Like Danny said about a needle in a haystack -- "So much fuckin' hay!"
two great new people and
saw one great other person and
bought pants that actually fit and
started to feel better about myself.
The whole story:
After the semi-disaster of the underage girls, I felt quite strung out and a little on edge, but to my delight Danny and Audrey (the cutest and least annoying couple ever) came to rescue me with rum and coke and immediately validated my decision to stay an extra day.
We went to Williamsburg and no one regretted it. The place is full of cheap-guitar stores, authentic yerba-mate bars, hipsters who listen to bands that haven't even formed yet, a bunch of skinny bicycles, and the Buffalo Exchange ...
where I saw a very cute indie-rock boy sitting on a couch with a girl, then sitting on another couch clutching a crucifix and staring at me deadpan.
I was requested to stay and I realized that not everyone in a relationship is a pain in my ass. Now I need to find a nice indie-rock boy who will be sweet to me, and I am set.
Like Danny said about a needle in a haystack -- "So much fuckin' hay!"
10.1 -- ny ny
3/21/2008 at 2:07 AM
I don't feel beautiful enough for this city. It makes my head spin and I feel quite helpless.
10.0 -- secondhand iPod
3/18/2008 at 10:39 PM
Secondhand iPod, functional bass-boost headphones, less money spent than the price of a new iPod with shitty headphones -- I can listen to music now.
New York tomorrow! I still have to do laundry .... pack ... and buy bread and a jar of peanut butter.
New York tomorrow! I still have to do laundry .... pack ... and buy bread and a jar of peanut butter.
9.9 -- grl pirate
3/17/2008 at 7:11 PM
Feeling better today. Ate a Quiet Storm quesadilla, pirated some tunes, going to pick up my new secondhand iPod soon. Weather's nice enough to bike, but traffic's not. Eagerly anticipating back-to-New York in countdown-48 hours.
I'm a girl, you know, even if the other girls don't like it.
I'm a girl, you know, even if the other girls don't like it.
9.8 -- gender binary
3/16/2008 at 6:45 PM
I'm a female, so why do I feel so much like a gay man?
Early in my life I was confronted with the gender binary and I chose to associate with the wrong side. I still think of myself as a girl, though, when you get right down to it, which brings me more problems rather than less.
Girls say to me, "If you want to think of yourself as a girl, you must ACT like a girl. You must wear your hair long, end all of your statements with a question mark, giggle a lot, look incredible in clothes, drink cosmopolitans, and act stupid. And if you do not, we will think you are a lesbian and hate, degrade, and mistrust you. Watch your back, bitch."
And guys say to me, "If you want to be a man, you have to ACT like a man, You must have buddies instead of friends, you must be tough and flip, you must drink hard and play hard, and you must not ever be nice or vulnerable. And if you ever act sweet or flirty to us, we will automatically assume you are a faggot and we will punish you with our big-breasted, air-headed girlfriends. Watch it, queer."
I'm sick of it. I wish I could just step outside of what I look like and interact with people as who I am.
Early in my life I was confronted with the gender binary and I chose to associate with the wrong side. I still think of myself as a girl, though, when you get right down to it, which brings me more problems rather than less.
Girls say to me, "If you want to think of yourself as a girl, you must ACT like a girl. You must wear your hair long, end all of your statements with a question mark, giggle a lot, look incredible in clothes, drink cosmopolitans, and act stupid. And if you do not, we will think you are a lesbian and hate, degrade, and mistrust you. Watch your back, bitch."
And guys say to me, "If you want to be a man, you have to ACT like a man, You must have buddies instead of friends, you must be tough and flip, you must drink hard and play hard, and you must not ever be nice or vulnerable. And if you ever act sweet or flirty to us, we will automatically assume you are a faggot and we will punish you with our big-breasted, air-headed girlfriends. Watch it, queer."
I'm sick of it. I wish I could just step outside of what I look like and interact with people as who I am.
9.7 -- the ballad of Bonnie Parker, 1932
3/15/2008 at 12:40 AM
I got shut down by at least one cute boy last night at a cupcake-and-cocktail party attended almost solely by thirtysomething wannabe-hip yuppies. Damn.
If I can ever find a fellow who doesn't mind a straight-up criminal with a soft side, then so be it, but until then I don't really care, I'm far too considerate to expect someone to actually want to be around me for anything more than casual encounters.
Sometimes I think the only people who can ever handle me are the larger-than-life kinds of people, the kinds with personality that won't quit. Sometimes I think I need a Clyde Barrow. Hell, I even bought a fedora to feel more like Bonnie Parker.
Sometimes I think I've already met my Clyde Barrow, and that he moved across the continent. Other times I think I haven't met my Clyde Barrow, and that he lives in New York.
Sometimes I just plain wish I was a different person.
If I can ever find a fellow who doesn't mind a straight-up criminal with a soft side, then so be it, but until then I don't really care, I'm far too considerate to expect someone to actually want to be around me for anything more than casual encounters.
Sometimes I think the only people who can ever handle me are the larger-than-life kinds of people, the kinds with personality that won't quit. Sometimes I think I need a Clyde Barrow. Hell, I even bought a fedora to feel more like Bonnie Parker.
Sometimes I think I've already met my Clyde Barrow, and that he moved across the continent. Other times I think I haven't met my Clyde Barrow, and that he lives in New York.
Sometimes I just plain wish I was a different person.
9.6 -- unscrewing. also, strangers on a bus.
3/10/2008 at 11:03 PM
I worked all day on unscrewing things in the worst building ever.
The building was awful, an ex-warehouse converted haphazardly into a now-abandoned skate park. Whoever did the duty did it slipshoddily, and far overbuilt. One quarter of the screws were stripped and another quarter was crooked. Nonetheless we dissembled an entire counter and multiple drain covers, out of which crawled a bunch of creatures. I also scraped up a bunch of floor tiles.
Evan: I bragged about you on a public bus to a black man who exhorted college and wanted to take me out. I opened my cell phone and showed him your picture, said I couldn't, that you were a film star and waiting for me in Phoenix. I know it's not true but he believed me and left me alone.
The building was awful, an ex-warehouse converted haphazardly into a now-abandoned skate park. Whoever did the duty did it slipshoddily, and far overbuilt. One quarter of the screws were stripped and another quarter was crooked. Nonetheless we dissembled an entire counter and multiple drain covers, out of which crawled a bunch of creatures. I also scraped up a bunch of floor tiles.
Evan: I bragged about you on a public bus to a black man who exhorted college and wanted to take me out. I opened my cell phone and showed him your picture, said I couldn't, that you were a film star and waiting for me in Phoenix. I know it's not true but he believed me and left me alone.
9.5 -- garter belts, rent money
3/9/2008 at 10:29 PM
I just bought a garter belt to go with my stockings. I need to get fifty dollars from Ariel and I need to sell the extra ticket I bought. I need to get my paycheck and have my mother pay me from the clothing receipts I want to submit. Money. God I hate money. I need rent.
Writing has sapped my energy lately for writing about real things. Also I haven't been feeling much. I'm either extremely happy or I feel like I am walking a tightrope all the time. More or less the same as usual. I can feel very cheerful. but I still haven't reached the level of feeling alive that I did in late November and early December.
I'm sort of a sap. I need to love.
Writing has sapped my energy lately for writing about real things. Also I haven't been feeling much. I'm either extremely happy or I feel like I am walking a tightrope all the time. More or less the same as usual. I can feel very cheerful. but I still haven't reached the level of feeling alive that I did in late November and early December.
I'm sort of a sap. I need to love.
9.4 -- I can't decide.
3/9/2008 at 4:24 AM
Writing feverishly, at odd hours.
I think my kidneys are going to leave soon, followed soon by my liver.
I'm trying to lose five pounds -- just five! -- and some days I feel great, others I wish I didn't have to look at myself any more.
New York soon. I don't know if I'm disillusioned or not.
I think my kidneys are going to leave soon, followed soon by my liver.
I'm trying to lose five pounds -- just five! -- and some days I feel great, others I wish I didn't have to look at myself any more.
New York soon. I don't know if I'm disillusioned or not.
9.3 -- work slow, writing a lot.
3/7/2008 at 11:18 PM
Work was slow. Writing a lot. Ready to leave this town, at least for a short time. I have an extra ticket, does anyone want to pay me to depart Pittsburgh on March 19th and Greyhound bus to New York?
9.2 - Dr. Magic's Hot-Gro
3/6/2008 at 1:33 PM
New York in two weeks! I'm excited, yet disillusioned at the same time.
It has been warm here, then cold again. I have not yet received my paperwork for health-sustaining medication and so might lose my insurance, therefore denying me access to health-sustaining medication. I should have seen my doctor today but I didn't,
we went to Wal-Mart instead with the intent of returning things we hadn't bought there and using the store credit to buy things, but they wouldn't take the items back and didn't have what we wanted anyway.
(I was going to buy an expensive shower head with the money they gave me for free.)
I did, however, see, Dr. Magic's Hair-Gro Balm and actually might go back to buy it ... with my bag. For free.
Tomorrow I NEED to call the DPW.
It has been warm here, then cold again. I have not yet received my paperwork for health-sustaining medication and so might lose my insurance, therefore denying me access to health-sustaining medication. I should have seen my doctor today but I didn't,
we went to Wal-Mart instead with the intent of returning things we hadn't bought there and using the store credit to buy things, but they wouldn't take the items back and didn't have what we wanted anyway.
(I was going to buy an expensive shower head with the money they gave me for free.)
I did, however, see, Dr. Magic's Hair-Gro Balm and actually might go back to buy it ... with my bag. For free.
Tomorrow I NEED to call the DPW.
9.1 -- top priorities
3/5/2008 at 4:25 PM
To do today:
- reconcile myself to my lack of parental support
- stop worrying
- do laundry.
Ellie wants me to write a story about her, and I am going to post it here. Once I write it. But first I really ought to work on my apartment -- finishing that chair seat and hanging my curtains are priorities. I also need to read that email from my father, but first things first.
- reconcile myself to my lack of parental support
- stop worrying
- do laundry.
Ellie wants me to write a story about her, and I am going to post it here. Once I write it. But first I really ought to work on my apartment -- finishing that chair seat and hanging my curtains are priorities. I also need to read that email from my father, but first things first.
8.9 -- stolen pillowcases, a walk through Bloomfield
3/4/2008 at 1:14 AM
I slept through the twee pop. Two weeks from today I will go.
Today it was downright balmy here, sixty-some degrees. I stole fabric and pillowcases such as to completely pimp out my apartment, and even in the preliminary phases it already looks incredible.
Last night, walking home through Bloomfield, I had a sudden wish for Evan that hasn't really gone away. That is all right, though. I am making an orange cheesecake with a boy and in time I will forget.
Like fun.
Today it was downright balmy here, sixty-some degrees. I stole fabric and pillowcases such as to completely pimp out my apartment, and even in the preliminary phases it already looks incredible.
Last night, walking home through Bloomfield, I had a sudden wish for Evan that hasn't really gone away. That is all right, though. I am making an orange cheesecake with a boy and in time I will forget.
Like fun.
8.8 -- purse beer, rockabilly dance parties, human circuses (my exciting life)
3/3/2008 at 12:03 AM
Last night after work I drank a beer out of a girl's purse and went to a rockabilly DJ Zombo dance party where The Weinerdog Polka was played. Then I had the opportunity to play in the space where the Zany Umbrella Circus keeps its supplies and practices its tricks. One of the interns, our host, rode the unicycle and walked atop an enormous fiberglass ball, which I also balanced upon (although on my seat, not my feet).
I feel that if Colin Meloy and his Decemberists want to show me that they are serious about both their music and their absurdity, they need to not only launch a zeppelin at their show, but also ride onstage on unicycles and giant fiberglass balls WHILE PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS. Oh yes, in costume. And if a trapeze can be involved, they would get bonus points. Use of the giant papier-mache whale is just a given.
Tomorrow I get to co-host a Carnegia Mellon radio show, a twee-pop extravaganza. I really don't know what technically constitutes either rockabilly or twee-pop, but I'm game to dive into the scene. Maybe if I go to Manhattan I will be prepared.
Yesterday a stroke of luck granted me the bike frame of my Free Ride dreams (which are necessarily limited to availability and claim status) and may have seduced a beautiful boy I work with into watching the Bob Dylan movie with me. In April I may host a German girl who is making her way across the United States. Once I rid myself of this strange spare tire sitting low on my hips I am going to be unbelievable in every way, and people are someday going to be very glad they know me. Sorry to all y'all who have given up.
I feel that if Colin Meloy and his Decemberists want to show me that they are serious about both their music and their absurdity, they need to not only launch a zeppelin at their show, but also ride onstage on unicycles and giant fiberglass balls WHILE PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS. Oh yes, in costume. And if a trapeze can be involved, they would get bonus points. Use of the giant papier-mache whale is just a given.
Tomorrow I get to co-host a Carnegia Mellon radio show, a twee-pop extravaganza. I really don't know what technically constitutes either rockabilly or twee-pop, but I'm game to dive into the scene. Maybe if I go to Manhattan I will be prepared.
Yesterday a stroke of luck granted me the bike frame of my Free Ride dreams (which are necessarily limited to availability and claim status) and may have seduced a beautiful boy I work with into watching the Bob Dylan movie with me. In April I may host a German girl who is making her way across the United States. Once I rid myself of this strange spare tire sitting low on my hips I am going to be unbelievable in every way, and people are someday going to be very glad they know me. Sorry to all y'all who have given up.
8.7 -- snow like Christmas, social security
3/1/2008 at 2:37 AM
It snowed today, like Christmas! Huge wet flakes.
Work stresses me out. I want to apply for Social Security because of my permanent anxiety. That would be awesome.
But that doesn't mean I don't want to WORK. I want to be a burlesque dancer. I met some today. Now all I have to do is lose ten pounds, and that sure isn't going to happen as long as I work at a place that supplies me with constant food.
I'm out of money and my Greyhound reward expired. I don't want to go to New York anyway, and set myself up for disappointment.
Work stresses me out. I want to apply for Social Security because of my permanent anxiety. That would be awesome.
But that doesn't mean I don't want to WORK. I want to be a burlesque dancer. I met some today. Now all I have to do is lose ten pounds, and that sure isn't going to happen as long as I work at a place that supplies me with constant food.
I'm out of money and my Greyhound reward expired. I don't want to go to New York anyway, and set myself up for disappointment.
8.6 -- RUBBISH
2/26/2008 at 4:12 AM
my mind sometimes is RUBBISH
I nearly was arrested, I'm afraid of cops, I'm terrified that they are going to hurt me and that there will be nothing I can do.
I was practically waterboarded at a hospital, I'm terrified of doctors, I'm afraid that they could do anything to me and there would be nothing I could do.
I am afraid of most men, I'm terrified that ... oh, well now I am repeating myself.
The bruises are fading, the gash has healed over, the Thorazine has come out of my system but the bitterness
oh, the bitterness is still there.
I sometimes scare myself.
Life feels like walking on a high wire and when it's just me
what a rush!
but when others are involved
I'm afraid of where I might fall,
and how.
ps: Some motherfucker did steal my iPod. But I got my computer back!
I nearly was arrested, I'm afraid of cops, I'm terrified that they are going to hurt me and that there will be nothing I can do.
I was practically waterboarded at a hospital, I'm terrified of doctors, I'm afraid that they could do anything to me and there would be nothing I could do.
I am afraid of most men, I'm terrified that ... oh, well now I am repeating myself.
The bruises are fading, the gash has healed over, the Thorazine has come out of my system but the bitterness
oh, the bitterness is still there.
I sometimes scare myself.
Life feels like walking on a high wire and when it's just me
what a rush!
but when others are involved
I'm afraid of where I might fall,
and how.
ps: Some motherfucker did steal my iPod. But I got my computer back!
8.5 -- ps to Evan
2/22/2008 at 2:40 PM
I found out that it wasn't just anyone's touch that I wanted, that was important
it was yours.
I hope that's okay. It's okay with me.
it was yours.
I hope that's okay. It's okay with me.
8.4 -- alcoholism versus anxiety
2/22/2008 at 1:45 PM
So it's true, alcohol reverses if not eliminates my anxiety. It's not even noon this morning and I've already been hitting the tequila, not to mention still being drunk from last night, and although it is freezing rain and slippery outside, the creditors have been calling me constantly, and I think some hipster stole my darling iPod, I'm not anxious at all. In fact I feel great. Flippin' great.
If the price of eliminating my anxiety is alcoholism, well, for this I am opening my wallet.
I just hope I find that fuckin' iPod. I couldn't pay for the one I had, I definitely don't want to buy another one.
If the price of eliminating my anxiety is alcoholism, well, for this I am opening my wallet.
I just hope I find that fuckin' iPod. I couldn't pay for the one I had, I definitely don't want to buy another one.
8.3 -- the entry for Evan
2/21/2008 at 9:49 PM
This seems so much more awkward in practice than in theory.
But, I want you to know I never stopped caring, it just got twisted. I assumed automatically that as soon as you got to Phoenix and saw how beautiful the desert was, as soon as you got your incredible editing job and cracked open the first of your endless bottles of wine that you would become automatically much 'better' than I,
and I also assumed that you would already have another lover who would have a better body and a weaker mind than I (which seems to be what you like) (don't feel offended)
so I automatically assumed that I had automatically, already lost all relevance to you.
From that point on it was all a coping mechanism on my part.
And I've finally begun to cope quite well!
I still care about you. I still want you to be okay. I know a part of me still actually has love for me but I'm afraid to face that part. I thought about you the other night, when I was so drunk I could not stand, and I know I cried in my sleep even though I was beside another man. I know I woke up on the morning of my birthday and wanted to cry for how miserably I missed being happy around you.
But I also know that
reading your birthday message made me so much happier
and even if we leave it at this I still think about you sometimes, and I don't really want to lose your number.
But, I want you to know I never stopped caring, it just got twisted. I assumed automatically that as soon as you got to Phoenix and saw how beautiful the desert was, as soon as you got your incredible editing job and cracked open the first of your endless bottles of wine that you would become automatically much 'better' than I,
and I also assumed that you would already have another lover who would have a better body and a weaker mind than I (which seems to be what you like) (don't feel offended)
so I automatically assumed that I had automatically, already lost all relevance to you.
From that point on it was all a coping mechanism on my part.
And I've finally begun to cope quite well!
I still care about you. I still want you to be okay. I know a part of me still actually has love for me but I'm afraid to face that part. I thought about you the other night, when I was so drunk I could not stand, and I know I cried in my sleep even though I was beside another man. I know I woke up on the morning of my birthday and wanted to cry for how miserably I missed being happy around you.
But I also know that
reading your birthday message made me so much happier
and even if we leave it at this I still think about you sometimes, and I don't really want to lose your number.
8.2 -- 21.2
2/20/2008 at 1:02 PM
Against all predictions and any indications, my birthday was incredible.
At midnight or shortly thereafter I drank beer that tasted like and had the consistency of honey, then passed out at my "boss's" house. When I eventually awoke it was because he had brought me a pierogie planted with a sparkler as my "birthday cake." The day involved amphetamines, a large sum of very welcome money, coffee, cigarettes, a cupcake, a case of Twisted Teas, and overpriced drinks at the brillobox before retirement again to the apartment where I screened the Bob Dylan film for a pair of engineers who dug it hardcore. I met a boy who is normal about sex and so far it has been fun. I hold out some hope for my continued survival in the future.
Evan : I lied. Or rather, I was wrong. It didn't go away. It just changed.
I want you to be okay.
At midnight or shortly thereafter I drank beer that tasted like and had the consistency of honey, then passed out at my "boss's" house. When I eventually awoke it was because he had brought me a pierogie planted with a sparkler as my "birthday cake." The day involved amphetamines, a large sum of very welcome money, coffee, cigarettes, a cupcake, a case of Twisted Teas, and overpriced drinks at the brillobox before retirement again to the apartment where I screened the Bob Dylan film for a pair of engineers who dug it hardcore. I met a boy who is normal about sex and so far it has been fun. I hold out some hope for my continued survival in the future.
Evan : I lied. Or rather, I was wrong. It didn't go away. It just changed.
I want you to be okay.
8.1 -- 21
2/19/2008 at 1:46 AM
I don't know how I feel about suddenly realizing that
the strongest love I've ever had for a person in my life is suddenly
abruptly gone and now I get
less of an emotional response when I look at
a photo of him than when I look at the photo of a horse who
turned nine years old today
and now I am turning twenty-one as if we had never
known each other, as if I had
meant nothing.
Goodbye Evan. I hope I don't drunk dial you today but I probably will.
the strongest love I've ever had for a person in my life is suddenly
abruptly gone and now I get
less of an emotional response when I look at
a photo of him than when I look at the photo of a horse who
turned nine years old today
and now I am turning twenty-one as if we had never
known each other, as if I had
meant nothing.
Goodbye Evan. I hope I don't drunk dial you today but I probably will.
8.0 -- pay day
2/17/2008 at 4:10 AM
I got my paycheck, and although it won't go a long way toward making life incredibly easy at least I won't bounce my rent check! Which is all I really want.
I only have to wake up two more times before my birthday. I'm not sure how I feel about that, or even if I do.
I only have to wake up two more times before my birthday. I'm not sure how I feel about that, or even if I do.
7.9 -- arbitrary medication
2/15/2008 at 7:02 PM
After finding myself almost punching strangers on a bus and then pounding my head over and over into a telephone pole, I called my former psychiatrist and set up an appointment. I know he won't arbitrarily medicate me for what I consider my creativity, but I might get a scrip for some antianxiety something and that would be pretty rad.
I'm still broke as shit and might bounce my rent check; when I went to get money from Pitt research studies today, no one was around who knew what I was talking about. So I'm left just surviving day to day and waiting for the money to run out. I wish I wasn't so stupid about money.
I've tried applying for jobs, but my recent track record has me slightly depressed about my prospects. Ideally in practical terms -- cashier. Ideally in terms that are NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN: editor and proofreader. Something that I can do easily and not want to cry every day. Oh, and I need to get paid.
DAMN IT. At least the random hookups have been fun.
I'm still broke as shit and might bounce my rent check; when I went to get money from Pitt research studies today, no one was around who knew what I was talking about. So I'm left just surviving day to day and waiting for the money to run out. I wish I wasn't so stupid about money.
I've tried applying for jobs, but my recent track record has me slightly depressed about my prospects. Ideally in practical terms -- cashier. Ideally in terms that are NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN: editor and proofreader. Something that I can do easily and not want to cry every day. Oh, and I need to get paid.
DAMN IT. At least the random hookups have been fun.
7.8 -- valentine's day
2/14/2008 at 11:50 PM
I didn't write that story because of Valentine's Day, actually. I wrote it because of the lyrics of a Bruce Springsteen song, covered by a country band called Hem, entitled Valentine's Day.
it isn't the sound of the leaves
left blown by the wayside
that's got me out here on this old highway tonight
it isn't the cry of the river
or the moonlight shining through --
that ain't what scares me baby
what scares me is
losing you.
Love is always finite. But that scares me
and valentine's day is still my favorite story to date.
it isn't the sound of the leaves
left blown by the wayside
that's got me out here on this old highway tonight
it isn't the cry of the river
or the moonlight shining through --
that ain't what scares me baby
what scares me is
losing you.
Love is always finite. But that scares me
and valentine's day is still my favorite story to date.
7.7 -- falling apart at this volume
2/11/2008 at 10:44 PM
It's cold here, so cold it makes the top of my head ache.
I did my laundry today, trauma free, although not all of it dried all the way.
Last night I fell on the ice cold sidewalk and skinned my knees, popped a button off my sleeve, hit myself in the back of the head with my laptop bag and sent my wallet flying into the street, I lay there sobbing so loud someone stopped their car and someone else came out of their house. I was a mess. I didn't even want to get up at first. But props for Levi Strauss, at least I didn't rip my jeans.
I think I would take medication for anxiety. It serves me no purpose.
God, I wish I had not messed things up.
I did my laundry today, trauma free, although not all of it dried all the way.
Last night I fell on the ice cold sidewalk and skinned my knees, popped a button off my sleeve, hit myself in the back of the head with my laptop bag and sent my wallet flying into the street, I lay there sobbing so loud someone stopped their car and someone else came out of their house. I was a mess. I didn't even want to get up at first. But props for Levi Strauss, at least I didn't rip my jeans.
I think I would take medication for anxiety. It serves me no purpose.
God, I wish I had not messed things up.
7.6 -- fine white powder
2/10/2008 at 5:10 PM
I spent the day painting the wall of the Turkish coffee house where I work. It's cold outside, with driving winds and snow. Walking down the Main Street hill between Penn and Butler, my entire body became coated with a fine dusting of white powder, and not THAT kind of powder either.
I've angered a person who never really did anything wrong to me, and possibly insulted two people I really liked (not to mention someone I thought I loved), but at least I've decided not to pay back my student loans. Eff that. : )
I've angered a person who never really did anything wrong to me, and possibly insulted two people I really liked (not to mention someone I thought I loved), but at least I've decided not to pay back my student loans. Eff that. : )
7.5 -- why try?
2/10/2008 at 1:53 AM
I have panic attacks and met a lovely boy I won't follow through on because I don't think I'm good enough.
Right now he's sitting across the room from me speaking Spanish with a girl who has a little child's voice and a grown woman's body. Why do I even try?
Also, why do men like women to act completely fake to them? Doesn't that indicate a complete lack of personality and a low level of intelligence? I know how to flirt but .. it's wit, not blind devotion. It seems the only kinds of guys who like that shit are the kinds of guys who have never met a woman before. Damn it.
Right now he's sitting across the room from me speaking Spanish with a girl who has a little child's voice and a grown woman's body. Why do I even try?
Also, why do men like women to act completely fake to them? Doesn't that indicate a complete lack of personality and a low level of intelligence? I know how to flirt but .. it's wit, not blind devotion. It seems the only kinds of guys who like that shit are the kinds of guys who have never met a woman before. Damn it.
7.4 -- consumerism
2/8/2008 at 2:01 AM
I went to the mall today with Alden and it seriously, honestly frightened me. Shopping scares me. I don't mind going to Urban Outfitters or Goodwill, or browsing Modcloth online, but OH MY GOD. Stores?! WHY?! All the stuff they sell is cheap, mass-produced, and ugly. It's not a nice experience. I would rather go to the Salvation Army in Manhattan every day than to the mall at all.
Speaking of Manhattan ... I hope I have half the stones I hope I do, because I REALLY want to go. Even if I have to spend a month on relative strangers' couches.
Otherwise ... I met a fellow online who is an unassuming hipster and whose name is ELI. I hope he's at least not ugly, because I kind of want to get on top of this situation.
Speaking of Manhattan ... I hope I have half the stones I hope I do, because I REALLY want to go. Even if I have to spend a month on relative strangers' couches.
Otherwise ... I met a fellow online who is an unassuming hipster and whose name is ELI. I hope he's at least not ugly, because I kind of want to get on top of this situation.
7.3 -- absuurd.
2/6/2008 at 11:09 PM
So I found this great new singer, his name is BOB DYLAN.
No joke. I just started listening to him because I'm now into absurdist music and, come on, you would have to try very hard to find a musician more absurd than Bob Dylan who DIDN'T TRY to be absurd but DIDN'T CARE that he was.
Which makes him the all around coolest dude ever. But damned if his good songs aren't hard as hell to download.
Speaking of absurdity, there is a German shepherd sitting in the Crazy Mocha. He is attached to a hipsterish metal looking dude and the two of them just exchanged such a human glance it almost makes me wish I had a dog.
I'm re-stretching my right ear, the one that has finally healed. Yeah. When I wrote before that my ears would either stretch and be beautiful, or get gangrene ... they got gangrene. (Actually just an infection, but gangrene sounds more beat.) The ear I had stretched less, my left ear, is actually the one that got the worst infection, which makes me sad because it was my only normal piercing hole and now it's swollen and I can't stick anything into it without much aching and bleeding..
I also bought a loaf of bakery-made bread that has huge chocolate pieces inside of it. I hope either we get a great socialist system in place real soon or the current government stays at least slightly functional, because I hope to be on food stamps for the rest of my life.
No joke. I just started listening to him because I'm now into absurdist music and, come on, you would have to try very hard to find a musician more absurd than Bob Dylan who DIDN'T TRY to be absurd but DIDN'T CARE that he was.
Which makes him the all around coolest dude ever. But damned if his good songs aren't hard as hell to download.
Speaking of absurdity, there is a German shepherd sitting in the Crazy Mocha. He is attached to a hipsterish metal looking dude and the two of them just exchanged such a human glance it almost makes me wish I had a dog.
I'm re-stretching my right ear, the one that has finally healed. Yeah. When I wrote before that my ears would either stretch and be beautiful, or get gangrene ... they got gangrene. (Actually just an infection, but gangrene sounds more beat.) The ear I had stretched less, my left ear, is actually the one that got the worst infection, which makes me sad because it was my only normal piercing hole and now it's swollen and I can't stick anything into it without much aching and bleeding..
I also bought a loaf of bakery-made bread that has huge chocolate pieces inside of it. I hope either we get a great socialist system in place real soon or the current government stays at least slightly functional, because I hope to be on food stamps for the rest of my life.
7.2 -- shock.
2/6/2008 at 1:17 AM
My heart broke so bad last night my ribs splintered like toothpicks and my chest filled with blood. I woke with it full and warm but not the way it felt when I was safe; the shock wore off and I was surprised to find I wanted to get up and do things, which I did. I only had chest spasms once and only cried three times.
Walking here was like taking a bath, it's raining, warm rain and lots of it. My hair stuck straight up.
I love it here in Pittsburgh, I like to pretend it is New York.
Walking here was like taking a bath, it's raining, warm rain and lots of it. My hair stuck straight up.
I love it here in Pittsburgh, I like to pretend it is New York.
7.1 -- my self, a wave
2/1/2008 at 11:12 PM
I'm just hanging out at the place where I work, even though I don't have to work after all. I don't think many people actually want to do that at places where they work, so as poor as I may be and as little as I get paid ... I feel really lucky, like maybe in this little way I've beat the Man.
My self came back into my body today, I watched it like I would a wave from the shore, and worried I might drown, but I didn't. I felt weird for a little while but the water is warm and it might going to be okay.
I'm writing a story in my notebook, the extended story of valentine's day. By writing it I've figured out that what I would really like is a nice indie boy to lounge around with me and kind of let me take care of him while he kind of accidentally takes care of me, but I'm picky about it so it might take a while, and I can compromise.
My self came back into my body today, I watched it like I would a wave from the shore, and worried I might drown, but I didn't. I felt weird for a little while but the water is warm and it might going to be okay.
I'm writing a story in my notebook, the extended story of valentine's day. By writing it I've figured out that what I would really like is a nice indie boy to lounge around with me and kind of let me take care of him while he kind of accidentally takes care of me, but I'm picky about it so it might take a while, and I can compromise.
7.0 -- coping skills
1/31/2008 at 5:40 PM
Honest mania! A good mood for no real reason. I can't get over how attractive some people are, I mean really. and random things are making me feel really happy.
Writing longhand in my notebook. I still miss you, don't think I don't, but I'm dealing with it so well now that I'm well, that I hardly notice unless I stop to think about it.
Writing longhand in my notebook. I still miss you, don't think I don't, but I'm dealing with it so well now that I'm well, that I hardly notice unless I stop to think about it.
6.8 -- WIllie Nelson and unicorn tears
1/29/2008 at 9:07 PM
My fever broke last night, after I had spent two days shaking, squirming, crying, and dreaming about Wilie Nelson and cups of unicorn tears (although thankfully not in the same context).
For a few days I had felt like my self had exited my body and been hanging around me like a hologram that I could not feel and that felt nothing. It is back, but I still can't tell what I think of it.
The doctor says I weigh 134 pounds. 134 pounds?! I CANNOT weigh 134 pounds. That is disgusting and reprehensible. My stomach hurts so bad.
For a few days I had felt like my self had exited my body and been hanging around me like a hologram that I could not feel and that felt nothing. It is back, but I still can't tell what I think of it.
The doctor says I weigh 134 pounds. 134 pounds?! I CANNOT weigh 134 pounds. That is disgusting and reprehensible. My stomach hurts so bad.
6.7 -- fever dreams
1/26/2008 at 10:07 PM
I think I've completely lost my grip. I spent the day daydreaming in bed and now I kind of feel like I want to faint. Might need to take a day or two off of the writing. I know I'm fighting a cold, but there is a feeling completely unrelated, like someone is slowly sawing pieces out of my ribcage and pulling them out, carefully, one by one.
[edit] I spent a few hours in the Crazy Mocha listening to a bunch of older rich people talking about how liberal they are and how Barack Obama is the only hope for America and I cried and cried and cried until I thought my heart would break. Is there truly no hope for anarchists after the age of about thirty? Is that the ceiling of liberalism in any place other than a radical community? And if there are any radical communities, where are they and how can I get there?
[edit] I spent a few hours in the Crazy Mocha listening to a bunch of older rich people talking about how liberal they are and how Barack Obama is the only hope for America and I cried and cried and cried until I thought my heart would break. Is there truly no hope for anarchists after the age of about thirty? Is that the ceiling of liberalism in any place other than a radical community? And if there are any radical communities, where are they and how can I get there?
6.6 -- color scheme
1/25/2008 at 5:34 PM
I'm moving all of my Word albums around to create a better color scheme. I'm sorry if I'm flooding the net-waves or anything, I swear I'll be done soon. : )
Also -- with the exception of [rogues gallery] make sure to read my poems in the context of entire albums! Otherwise they will probably not make sense.
Also -- with the exception of [rogues gallery] make sure to read my poems in the context of entire albums! Otherwise they will probably not make sense.
6.5 -- it is done.
1/24/2008 at 5:57 PM
All of my plans for the day are on hold because :
five thirty this morning
five thousand words
five maybe ten hours after I started
(just counting today)
I finished "bird, his mother"
at home.
Now I can't remember why I was so excited
and I can remember why I could never be a professional writer
(it was like labor, it took about twenty hours, made my stomach hurt and my head spin
it made me scream and cry and sweat and laugh and then
it was over and I felt a huge empty hole in my insides).
and I think I've quit trying
but it doesn't bother me.
five thirty this morning
five thousand words
five maybe ten hours after I started
(just counting today)
I finished "bird, his mother"
at home.
Now I can't remember why I was so excited
and I can remember why I could never be a professional writer
(it was like labor, it took about twenty hours, made my stomach hurt and my head spin
it made me scream and cry and sweat and laugh and then
it was over and I felt a huge empty hole in my insides).
and I think I've quit trying
but it doesn't bother me.
6.4 -- 'bird, his mother' is owning my life.
1/23/2008 at 10:58 PM
I spend all my free time thinking about it, living it in my mind. Read it and give me feedback.
In other offhand news:
I bought a pair of high heels today, my first actual pair that I bought for the fun of it and not because I had to. They are a size too big so I will have to stuff the toe end, but my actual size felt too tight. They make me look an inch taller and act five years older.
Tomorrow I am going to the North Side to try to get a job. ("You know what the North Side is good for? Getting mugged.") Even if I don't (get a job OR get mugged), it will be an adventure -- break up the monotony and maybe find some new places to waste my time.
In other offhand news:
I bought a pair of high heels today, my first actual pair that I bought for the fun of it and not because I had to. They are a size too big so I will have to stuff the toe end, but my actual size felt too tight. They make me look an inch taller and act five years older.
Tomorrow I am going to the North Side to try to get a job. ("You know what the North Side is good for? Getting mugged.") Even if I don't (get a job OR get mugged), it will be an adventure -- break up the monotony and maybe find some new places to waste my time.
6.3 -- please help me ! edit
1/23/2008 at 12:25 AM
I finished the suicide story earlier. "'this is art'". I'm working on the hippie-mother story now, "bird his mother". Read it, tell me how to edit it, and maybe I will.
p.S.: My screen name is edjuvreason, if you use online chat-y protocols and I am online, please drop a line if you wish! I'll appreciate the feedback and possibly offer some in return.
But tonight I'm going to get groceries and go home. I can't churn out another poem right now.
p.S.: My screen name is edjuvreason, if you use online chat-y protocols and I am online, please drop a line if you wish! I'll appreciate the feedback and possibly offer some in return.
But tonight I'm going to get groceries and go home. I can't churn out another poem right now.
6.2 -- TV, the best way to control the populace
1/22/2008 at 10:36 PM
I spent two hours watching TV with Matthew and it fried my brain cells. I am shocked every time I watch it, how perfect the tool of mass stupidity has become. There were commercials for cars, commercials for stupid television shows, commercials for sexism and a commercial boasting that coal provides more energy than any other source of power. I know that most people believe what they see on TV and that frightens me.
What also frightens me, more saddens than frightens, is that things are never going to be the way I want them to be with him, either. We don't speak except online. I don't know why this matters to me, or why it honestly bothers me that Dennis Kucinich is never going to win the presidency or that Heath Ledger died just when he was becoming a good actor. The world is simply never going to be the way I want it to be.
(I think Ledger's death bugs me less because I often take a lot of sleeping pills and more because it parallels the dream I had where Conor died in that dive bar, the long one that had once been a train car, and I sat with his body for hours trying to keep people from destroying his dignity. Heath was 28. Conor is 27. Matthew is 25. Evan is 21 and his brother Ethan is 17. We could all die at any time. Mortality is not picky.)
I'm considering a trip to Fairfield, Iowa. It's right near Omaha, and everyone there can experience peace.
What also frightens me, more saddens than frightens, is that things are never going to be the way I want them to be with him, either. We don't speak except online. I don't know why this matters to me, or why it honestly bothers me that Dennis Kucinich is never going to win the presidency or that Heath Ledger died just when he was becoming a good actor. The world is simply never going to be the way I want it to be.
(I think Ledger's death bugs me less because I often take a lot of sleeping pills and more because it parallels the dream I had where Conor died in that dive bar, the long one that had once been a train car, and I sat with his body for hours trying to keep people from destroying his dignity. Heath was 28. Conor is 27. Matthew is 25. Evan is 21 and his brother Ethan is 17. We could all die at any time. Mortality is not picky.)
I'm considering a trip to Fairfield, Iowa. It's right near Omaha, and everyone there can experience peace.
6.1 -- BPD, and the eye of a hurricane
1/22/2008 at 5:10 PM
I succeeded in driving myself back into my own mind, and tapped a huge vein of creativity, I'm just feeling a little shy about publishing it. I've been leaving these half-written stories lying around, like partially eaten pieces of pizza after a late-night party, not to mention those weeks when I was living solely in the practical world bitter and terrified, and I think people have kind of lost interest in me.
I go in these waves, between living solely in my head (usually when I'm manic) and solely in my body (when I get depressed). The odd thing is, the core of my being is almost always completely calm (except when I get REALLY depressed and begin operating on sheer terror). My best times are when I can live in both my mind and my body, and then everything goes calm like a flash of white light that lasts indefinitely. Regretfully I can't seem to do that without some help from my friend Evan, and a huge part of me knows that's a terrible thing to want.
I go in these waves, between living solely in my head (usually when I'm manic) and solely in my body (when I get depressed). The odd thing is, the core of my being is almost always completely calm (except when I get REALLY depressed and begin operating on sheer terror). My best times are when I can live in both my mind and my body, and then everything goes calm like a flash of white light that lasts indefinitely. Regretfully I can't seem to do that without some help from my friend Evan, and a huge part of me knows that's a terrible thing to want.
6.0 -- Attraction
1/22/2008 at 12:41 AM
What will I have to do, to be beautiful? What can I say --
I apologize for the way the crowns of my ears stick out from my head
and the way the lobes curl a little at the bottom.
I apologize for the little chunk of hair that always grows in front of my ears like sideburns
and for the flat place at the back of my head
and for the cowlick at the crown of my skull.
I'm sorry that my eyebrows sit so high and that my forehead curves like it does.
I'm sorry for the deviation in the line of my nose, and
that slight pink birthmark on the end.
I'm sorry for the narrowness of my jaw compared to my cheekbones
and for the stubbornness of my chin.
I'm sorry for the lines alongside my mouth
and for the width of my limbs or
any body hair or scars or other marks you might not like.
I'm sorry I cut my hair off trying to be outrageous and not minding if I were ugly. Would growing it out really make me prettier in your eyes? Would I frighten you less if it were long and I shaped my eyebrows with a tweezer and worked out and lost five more pounds or even ten? I will still have small breasts and wide shoulders and big calves and that little roundness on my belly. And even if I stop speaking I will still be the same person inside. Can't you just close your eyes and pretend?
I apologize for the way the crowns of my ears stick out from my head
and the way the lobes curl a little at the bottom.
I apologize for the little chunk of hair that always grows in front of my ears like sideburns
and for the flat place at the back of my head
and for the cowlick at the crown of my skull.
I'm sorry that my eyebrows sit so high and that my forehead curves like it does.
I'm sorry for the deviation in the line of my nose, and
that slight pink birthmark on the end.
I'm sorry for the narrowness of my jaw compared to my cheekbones
and for the stubbornness of my chin.
I'm sorry for the lines alongside my mouth
and for the width of my limbs or
any body hair or scars or other marks you might not like.
I'm sorry I cut my hair off trying to be outrageous and not minding if I were ugly. Would growing it out really make me prettier in your eyes? Would I frighten you less if it were long and I shaped my eyebrows with a tweezer and worked out and lost five more pounds or even ten? I will still have small breasts and wide shoulders and big calves and that little roundness on my belly. And even if I stop speaking I will still be the same person inside. Can't you just close your eyes and pretend?
5.9 -- I have a Dream, every day and every night.
1/21/2008 at 9:55 PM
I've been trying to upload pictures onto this site for some time, but Firefox keeps freezing. I think it's my OS.
(I love dropping terms like "OS", which delightfully mean something very simple, such as "operating system" when I assume they mean something far more complicated, such as "overarching-overlord superfantasticallycomplicatedsupersomethingorother.")
I also keep putting up barely-edited first-thought free-verse stories and I hope they don't suck too terribly.
Happy MLK Day! It's too bad we are all still too afraid of communism to actually make any progress within our country.
(I love dropping terms like "OS", which delightfully mean something very simple, such as "operating system" when I assume they mean something far more complicated, such as "overarching-overlord superfantasticallycomplicatedsupersomethingorother.")
I also keep putting up barely-edited first-thought free-verse stories and I hope they don't suck too terribly.
Happy MLK Day! It's too bad we are all still too afraid of communism to actually make any progress within our country.
5.8 -- the sound of a voice
1/21/2008 at 12:38 AM
Does it say something sad about my life that
the sound of your voice
can make me much calmer than any maha mantra?
Or that
I want to be with you,
just near you
more than I want to eat food or
sleep at night?
the sound of your voice
can make me much calmer than any maha mantra?
Or that
I want to be with you,
just near you
more than I want to eat food or
sleep at night?
5.7 -- The Maha Mantra
1/20/2008 at 10:30 PM
I'm not naive enough to say that I've found God, or that God has found me, but George Harrison was right. Saying the Maha Mantra really will make you feel happy, guaranteed.
New Vrindaban was different than I remember, I wish I had stayed the first time and perhaps gained a better story to tell.
I went there this time to escape the pressures of society, but this time felt more pressure to conform to THEIR society ... and I'm simply not a devotee, I'm definitely not a brahmacharini.
I'm not attached to the material world and don't even like getting 'stuff' (see my previous post for proof of how uncomfortable that makes me feel), but I feel it is my job, my duty to observe people and tell their stories as well as my own, not just renounce everything and live in a temple and chant Hare Krsna, Hare Hare -- even if it does make me feel better.
I am, however, intensely spiritual, although not even slightly religious. I had forgotten that. But I am, emotional and spiritual as well as cerebral, and I don't think it makes me any less intelligent.
It's not as though I believe an invisible man sits in the sky and watches my every move, then plans ways to hurt me and make me fail at my endeavors. I just feel as though something out there loves me, appreciates me, and I appreciate that in return.
Maybe I just like the way it feels to worry the japa beads between my fingers. And as I said, saying the Maha Mantra makes me at ease.
New Vrindaban was different than I remember, I wish I had stayed the first time and perhaps gained a better story to tell.
I went there this time to escape the pressures of society, but this time felt more pressure to conform to THEIR society ... and I'm simply not a devotee, I'm definitely not a brahmacharini.
I'm not attached to the material world and don't even like getting 'stuff' (see my previous post for proof of how uncomfortable that makes me feel), but I feel it is my job, my duty to observe people and tell their stories as well as my own, not just renounce everything and live in a temple and chant Hare Krsna, Hare Hare -- even if it does make me feel better.
I am, however, intensely spiritual, although not even slightly religious. I had forgotten that. But I am, emotional and spiritual as well as cerebral, and I don't think it makes me any less intelligent.
It's not as though I believe an invisible man sits in the sky and watches my every move, then plans ways to hurt me and make me fail at my endeavors. I just feel as though something out there loves me, appreciates me, and I appreciate that in return.
Maybe I just like the way it feels to worry the japa beads between my fingers. And as I said, saying the Maha Mantra makes me at ease.
5.6 -- American Express
1/15/2008 at 10:53 PM
I don't understand why my father sends me a $250 American Express gift card every year. It's not even as if I'm a capitalist, not everywhere accepts American Express, and I can't use it to order things online. So what is the point? If he were to just send me $250, I could pay rent and/or buy Greyhound tickets. As it is, I just end up with $250 worth of stuff that I don't really need.
Money doesn't make me happy, beyond buying for me the necessities of living (aka rent, the ability to travel within reason, etc). I don't know why some people think it makes them happy. What makes me happy is being with my friends, and that is generally free.
Why do I feel so ungrateful?
Money doesn't make me happy, beyond buying for me the necessities of living (aka rent, the ability to travel within reason, etc). I don't know why some people think it makes them happy. What makes me happy is being with my friends, and that is generally free.
Why do I feel so ungrateful?
5.5 -- Todd Haynes
1/15/2008 at 7:53 PM
The Bob Dylan movie to me is soothing, hypnotic, unlike any other film I have ever seen it distracts me from my actual life and I LOVE IT. In my opinion that is what the cinematic medium was created to do and yet it has never before worked for me. Todd Haynes is a goddess, maybe we are crazy in the same way.
I wonder why everyone gets so angry about abortion. I sort of see it as a human service, the best possible thing someone can do for their fetus -- preventing it from experiencing life, which in my experience is incredibly painful and disappointing. I wish MY mother had loved me that much.
I wonder why everyone gets so angry about abortion. I sort of see it as a human service, the best possible thing someone can do for their fetus -- preventing it from experiencing life, which in my experience is incredibly painful and disappointing. I wish MY mother had loved me that much.
5.4 -- the hippest girl
1/15/2008 at 1:04 AM
From the bus window today I saw
the absolute hippest girl, she was wearing
black and white leg warmers and
ballet flats and
a wool peacoat and
one of those hats that used to be
for hippies but now
all the trendy girls wear them.
She also had a weird haircut
and it was dyed an unnatural color.
I wished so bad I could be her.
(I would smash my face in with a brick to be more attractive. I guess I will settle for plucking my eyebrows and getting a professional haircut and hope that cuts it.)
the absolute hippest girl, she was wearing
black and white leg warmers and
ballet flats and
a wool peacoat and
one of those hats that used to be
for hippies but now
all the trendy girls wear them.
She also had a weird haircut
and it was dyed an unnatural color.
I wished so bad I could be her.
(I would smash my face in with a brick to be more attractive. I guess I will settle for plucking my eyebrows and getting a professional haircut and hope that cuts it.)
5.3 -- Neck Tattoos
1/14/2008 at 9:44 PM
I really feel I am not Hard Core enough. I mean, I kind of am, compared to most of society but ... I worry that people can't really see my pain, so I should get a tattoo of a snake crawling around my neck and down my arm. Eventually my entire back will be the Garden of Eden and my body will be social commentary.
But I can't afford that shit so I'm probably just going to get an argyle flower inked onto my calf for now.
But I can't afford that shit so I'm probably just going to get an argyle flower inked onto my calf for now.
5.2 -- Grass desert, a package in the mail
1/14/2008 at 9:38 PM
Ohio is really just a grass desert, a whole lot of flat. But Cincinnati is lovely in the sunlight even though everything was closed on a Saturday afternoon.
Everything except the Arby's, where I bought a sandwich for a genuine homeless person named Mel, who practically cried when I brought it to him. If the homeless people in Pittsburgh were that gracious I would feed more of them.
I slept from 1 am to 7 pm on Sunday, then 2 am to noon on Monday. I rearranged my apartment furniture, got library books, and drank hot cocoa, and now I'm ready to sleep again.
Waiting for Evan's decision is like waiting to receive a package in the mail, all I can think of is, "What if it's the wrong size?! What if I don't like it?! What if it comes too late?!" whereas if he would just spring it on me some time in the future I would react as I do to a surprise package: like it regardless of whether it's the right size of even something I really don't want.
Everything except the Arby's, where I bought a sandwich for a genuine homeless person named Mel, who practically cried when I brought it to him. If the homeless people in Pittsburgh were that gracious I would feed more of them.
I slept from 1 am to 7 pm on Sunday, then 2 am to noon on Monday. I rearranged my apartment furniture, got library books, and drank hot cocoa, and now I'm ready to sleep again.
Waiting for Evan's decision is like waiting to receive a package in the mail, all I can think of is, "What if it's the wrong size?! What if I don't like it?! What if it comes too late?!" whereas if he would just spring it on me some time in the future I would react as I do to a surprise package: like it regardless of whether it's the right size of even something I really don't want.
5.1 -- Regina Spektor
1/12/2008 at 12:24 AM
I listened to a lot of Regina Spektor just now and unlike when I listened to a lot of Spoon I did not get an overload.
I noticed one thing about ALL HER ALBUMS -- they start out really great, I mean smashingly great, so great I laugh, and then they start to descend into mediocrity, suck, and annoy me. Just like any relationship I have with a man.
(Soviet Kitsch started out poorly and didn't get any better.)
I noticed one thing about ALL HER ALBUMS -- they start out really great, I mean smashingly great, so great I laugh, and then they start to descend into mediocrity, suck, and annoy me. Just like any relationship I have with a man.
(Soviet Kitsch started out poorly and didn't get any better.)
5.0 -- Plath and Hughes; passing time
1/10/2008 at 7:33 PM
I had thought for a few days that I ought to publicly sink into oblivion, to prove that I don't think too highly of myself ("I can't reward that") and that I accept my inability to express myself.
So much for that. Words are like loose teeth in my head, I have to get them out, it's a fixation, regardless of my gender and whether or not I'm still supposed to be genuflecting and flagellating. We aren't Plath and Hughes (thank God), you don't HAVE to rig the race so that I lose, I'm not even running.
I read that book, Sylvia and Ted -- it's not very good, I could have written better, don't bother with it -- and although it wasn't as good as I had hoped it was at least fascinating. Please never tell me again that men have no problem with women writing, with women expressing. Did we not watch the Bob Dylan movie -- "women can't be poets," all they do is ramble like children, and their painting, well, we give more credence to Michael the gorilla?
I'm really not very womanly. I like dressing up and coordinating my outfits (today I wore a red t-shirt and a black jacket with my black-and-red plaid flats and felt very extremely matched) and I like wearing earrings and coloring my hair, but I really don't identify with women and what they do or how they think.
I'm not playing a game, Evan, I'm just passing the time until I die. You're not what I had wanted, you're not what I had imagined and you're not my ideal, but I like you anyway. I would like to pass some of that time with you, but not if you can't trust me or believe anything I say.
How about this: whenever I do something that you think has some kind of malignant subconscious motive, assume that it doesn't. And there we go. South Side at night, all the time. Wouldn't it be but grand?
So much for that. Words are like loose teeth in my head, I have to get them out, it's a fixation, regardless of my gender and whether or not I'm still supposed to be genuflecting and flagellating. We aren't Plath and Hughes (thank God), you don't HAVE to rig the race so that I lose, I'm not even running.
I read that book, Sylvia and Ted -- it's not very good, I could have written better, don't bother with it -- and although it wasn't as good as I had hoped it was at least fascinating. Please never tell me again that men have no problem with women writing, with women expressing. Did we not watch the Bob Dylan movie -- "women can't be poets," all they do is ramble like children, and their painting, well, we give more credence to Michael the gorilla?
I'm really not very womanly. I like dressing up and coordinating my outfits (today I wore a red t-shirt and a black jacket with my black-and-red plaid flats and felt very extremely matched) and I like wearing earrings and coloring my hair, but I really don't identify with women and what they do or how they think.
I'm not playing a game, Evan, I'm just passing the time until I die. You're not what I had wanted, you're not what I had imagined and you're not my ideal, but I like you anyway. I would like to pass some of that time with you, but not if you can't trust me or believe anything I say.
How about this: whenever I do something that you think has some kind of malignant subconscious motive, assume that it doesn't. And there we go. South Side at night, all the time. Wouldn't it be but grand?
4.9 -- Mortality
1/9/2008 at 10:48 PM
I got hit by a bus the other night. I was being careless, in a dream world, it was going about five miles an hour so it just tapped me, knocked me back, startled me, but I walked around with those adrenaline-wide eyes for a long time and called Evan from a bus stop just to tell his answering machine about mortality.
I don't have a lot of ambition. If I got hit by a bus going more than five miles an hour, or slid in a car off a snow-slick road, or fell off a building, or died of sleeping pills or starvation, it honestly wouldn't bother me, I wouldn't feel as though I had left anything un-accomplished. I only worry that my mother would never know where my body was, or that by the time someone found me I would be a nasty puddle that would mean an expensive cleanup for my landlord, or that I would die without letting everyone know how much I love them.
I don't have a lot of ambition. If I got hit by a bus going more than five miles an hour, or slid in a car off a snow-slick road, or fell off a building, or died of sleeping pills or starvation, it honestly wouldn't bother me, I wouldn't feel as though I had left anything un-accomplished. I only worry that my mother would never know where my body was, or that by the time someone found me I would be a nasty puddle that would mean an expensive cleanup for my landlord, or that I would die without letting everyone know how much I love them.
4.8 -- Note to Self
1/7/2008 at 12:15 AM
What am I to do when her best man friend on his last night in town invites over his former girl friend who hates me, resents me, feels I persuaded him to leave her for me?
Apparently, not what I actually did. Note to self for later.
Apparently, not what I actually did. Note to self for later.
4.7 -- Mexicans and Hippies
1/5/2008 at 10:48 PM
My mother tells me I will never succeed at a job, particularly the racetrack, because I am Too Lazy. She is right, I hate to work. But damn, I can buck it up for a year! Twenty dollars an hour, six or so hours a day, six or so days a week -- at that rate I can be out of debt in five months and filthy fucking rich (as in, the possessor of fifteen thousand dollars) in a year. So much better than working a nowhere coffee shop job for minimum wage, And then I can retire to herding goats, or something far less labor intensive, for the rest of my life. It's not as though I would mind living on a commune of Mexicans and hippies, although of course my parents would probably rather suck an exhaust pipe than admit their genius child had settled on a mescaline ranch with a bunch of visionaries and illegals.
The trouble, of course, is what I am going to do in the meanwhile. And whether or not I am going to do it at all. Because the only person in the world who actually supports me and believes in what I am doing, is moving across the continent, and if I go with him my mother decrees I must forfeit my horse.
Who knew it would ever really come down to a contest between a boy and a horse? I always thought the horse would win.
The trouble, of course, is what I am going to do in the meanwhile. And whether or not I am going to do it at all. Because the only person in the world who actually supports me and believes in what I am doing, is moving across the continent, and if I go with him my mother decrees I must forfeit my horse.
Who knew it would ever really come down to a contest between a boy and a horse? I always thought the horse would win.
4.6 -- "A Woman Thing."
1/2/2008 at 1:27 AM
I take touch very seriously. It's not just a Woman Thing -- Matthew likes touch, values it above sex, and I know Matt is pretty gay but really I think apart from his issues about sex he's pretty much the perfect man, more like a human being -- a HUMAN BEING -- than like either a woman or a man. So am I, so is Danny, so is Alden, so is Mandy, and we all like touch. So if the majority of androgynous human beings, both male and female, like touch, why do men assume it's a woman thing?
(And what is wrong with A Woman Thing anyway? "If there weren't women present we wouldn't be here," says Conor, who I admit is pretty much a complete queen but is also pretty much a Dude too.)
The theory is that women like cuddling and men just like sex. I blame society, not actual biology. Because I like sex, but society told me that a woman can't like sex, it's dirty, so I've learned to repress my sexual pleasure, hate my sexuality, merely tolerate it except as a way to give pleasure to my partner. And men are conditioned to disdain touch because it's a woman thing, and men who like touch are womanly and therefore gay. No one in this society wants to be called gay, and we all know that. So they stop liking touch, except when it is directed at giving them sexual pleasure.
But when we are all infants, we all like to be touched. What does a mother's touch mean? That we are safe, that we have not been rejected to starve to death or freeze or be eaten by wolves. We are loved. Someone loves us.
I sincerely doubt that ever goes away. It can morph and twist and decay and turn into a monster but it never really goes away. That IS biology, regardless of whether you wear a dick between your legs or breasts on your chest.
(And what is wrong with A Woman Thing anyway? "If there weren't women present we wouldn't be here," says Conor, who I admit is pretty much a complete queen but is also pretty much a Dude too.)
The theory is that women like cuddling and men just like sex. I blame society, not actual biology. Because I like sex, but society told me that a woman can't like sex, it's dirty, so I've learned to repress my sexual pleasure, hate my sexuality, merely tolerate it except as a way to give pleasure to my partner. And men are conditioned to disdain touch because it's a woman thing, and men who like touch are womanly and therefore gay. No one in this society wants to be called gay, and we all know that. So they stop liking touch, except when it is directed at giving them sexual pleasure.
But when we are all infants, we all like to be touched. What does a mother's touch mean? That we are safe, that we have not been rejected to starve to death or freeze or be eaten by wolves. We are loved. Someone loves us.
I sincerely doubt that ever goes away. It can morph and twist and decay and turn into a monster but it never really goes away. That IS biology, regardless of whether you wear a dick between your legs or breasts on your chest.
4.5 -- Saving my Life Late at Night
1/1/2008 at 6:48 AM
We went drinking at the Kinzua Dam and smoked a cigar. I had to go save Evan's little brother Ethan from a drunk party and on the snow-slick whiteout ride home he saved my life several times.
As it so happens I have made gross misunderstandings and my future as I currently see it may involve the Del Mar racetrack and a whole, whole lot of neon lit bars and drunken Mexicans late late at night. At least I can hope anyway.
As it so happens I have made gross misunderstandings and my future as I currently see it may involve the Del Mar racetrack and a whole, whole lot of neon lit bars and drunken Mexicans late late at night. At least I can hope anyway.
4.4 -- Just Sleeping
12/30/2007 at 8:50 PM
We got caught together in bed, and even though we were just sleeping and had been doing nothing wrong I feel so guilty I could vomit.
He stole some bowling shoes, and a cup from Tim Hortons. I pent up my emotions through three games of bowling and a few YouTube videos before I broke down in tears and at some point threw one of my boots at him. His mother thought we were making it but I just want to be around him before he goes.
I do not want to miss this boy for the rest of my life. But yet ... kind of I do, because everything else would seem traitorous.
He stole some bowling shoes, and a cup from Tim Hortons. I pent up my emotions through three games of bowling and a few YouTube videos before I broke down in tears and at some point threw one of my boots at him. His mother thought we were making it but I just want to be around him before he goes.
I do not want to miss this boy for the rest of my life. But yet ... kind of I do, because everything else would seem traitorous.
4.3 -- Different this time.
12/28/2007 at 11:12 AM
Nine o'clock in the morning, no sleep last night, my stomach hurts. Late-night and early-morning crying, why do I feel so rejected? When I lie down my brain burns and my muscles tighten, fight. Baby, don't shut me out, if you do I will be patient but I don't understand why you would. The new Iron and Wine album bores me, the Bob Dylan movie is mesmerizing. Why did I think it would be different this time?
4.2 -- Repression, Expression [1]
12/27/2007 at 2:37 PM
I dyed my hair red, bright red, like my horse's mane, and my mother actually liked it.
She doesn't really like anything I do, she thinks I was happy when I pretended to fit in. Eighteen years of pretending to be a Republican and this is all the thanks I get? I would never have bothered if I had known it would come to this.
I even went to church for a while. I actually thought I believed in God for a while, but only for a while. I was only remotely conservative between the ages of about nine and thirteen, when I actually thought abortion sucked a living, feeling child out of the womb with a vacuum cleaner (thanks, Christian-school health class, way to make a child fear her sexuality before she even hits puberty). And for a time I thought that women who had sex (or wore makeup, or dressed in women's clothes) really WERE sluts, and that people who asked for governmental help WERE lazy (we got all of our meals from the soup kitchen, but since we volunteered there too my mother said it wasn't charity).
I don't remember why I thought it was a good idea to repress everything I thought, everything I felt, everything I was. I don't know why I still sometimes do, because it hurts a whole lot, physically. But I did, to the point of repressing my desire to feel, to exist outside of my mind, to eat. I controlled and micromanaged everything down to my movements, my physical movements. My mother thinks I was happy, but I jsut didn't know the difference.
It's true, now I am unhappy. But at least it is because I know the difference, and because I know other people will hate me for making this choice. Before, I used to wake up every day wondering if everything I was doing was wrong. At least now I wake up every day tormented by the knowledge that everything I am doing is right, at least for me, and there is no going back and nothing I can do about it.
She doesn't really like anything I do, she thinks I was happy when I pretended to fit in. Eighteen years of pretending to be a Republican and this is all the thanks I get? I would never have bothered if I had known it would come to this.
I even went to church for a while. I actually thought I believed in God for a while, but only for a while. I was only remotely conservative between the ages of about nine and thirteen, when I actually thought abortion sucked a living, feeling child out of the womb with a vacuum cleaner (thanks, Christian-school health class, way to make a child fear her sexuality before she even hits puberty). And for a time I thought that women who had sex (or wore makeup, or dressed in women's clothes) really WERE sluts, and that people who asked for governmental help WERE lazy (we got all of our meals from the soup kitchen, but since we volunteered there too my mother said it wasn't charity).
I don't remember why I thought it was a good idea to repress everything I thought, everything I felt, everything I was. I don't know why I still sometimes do, because it hurts a whole lot, physically. But I did, to the point of repressing my desire to feel, to exist outside of my mind, to eat. I controlled and micromanaged everything down to my movements, my physical movements. My mother thinks I was happy, but I jsut didn't know the difference.
It's true, now I am unhappy. But at least it is because I know the difference, and because I know other people will hate me for making this choice. Before, I used to wake up every day wondering if everything I was doing was wrong. At least now I wake up every day tormented by the knowledge that everything I am doing is right, at least for me, and there is no going back and nothing I can do about it.
4.1 -- Release of Pressure
12/27/2007 at 12:38 AM
I used to polish my riding equipment every week
the brass clincher, the silver bit, the leather keepers and crown pieces and cantle pommel panels flaps
in the event that I might someday really use it
but at some point I stopped bothering.
My bridle is dusty and someone has switched the irons and leathers on my saddle. The cat sleeps in a circle of cream colored hair on my dark blue saddle pad. Mold had started to grow on the boots I bought at Rolex, until I took a bleached brush to them. There was a time when I kept all of that obsessively clean, scrubbed my bucket every day and brushed my horse until he shone.
He rolled in the mud two days ago, coated himself from forelock to fetlock and I just brushed it off today.
As it so happened, he'd rolled in the snow and made himself clean. I knocked the rest of the dust off with my brush and picked the dirt out of his hooves (they are so smooth and clean and even) and pulled the tangles out of his mane (it is shaggy and his halter path had grown out). Then I stood back and stared at him and he stared at me. He had hair in his face and a hopeful look in his eyes and I realized I had given him an indie rock haircut and made him look like Bright Eyes. I held out my arms and he put his head against my body, shuttering his eyelids and letting the lashes lay long on his cheek. I hope he's happy with all the pressure off, because I am, I'm so much happier now that I have nothing to prove.
the brass clincher, the silver bit, the leather keepers and crown pieces and cantle pommel panels flaps
in the event that I might someday really use it
but at some point I stopped bothering.
My bridle is dusty and someone has switched the irons and leathers on my saddle. The cat sleeps in a circle of cream colored hair on my dark blue saddle pad. Mold had started to grow on the boots I bought at Rolex, until I took a bleached brush to them. There was a time when I kept all of that obsessively clean, scrubbed my bucket every day and brushed my horse until he shone.
He rolled in the mud two days ago, coated himself from forelock to fetlock and I just brushed it off today.
As it so happened, he'd rolled in the snow and made himself clean. I knocked the rest of the dust off with my brush and picked the dirt out of his hooves (they are so smooth and clean and even) and pulled the tangles out of his mane (it is shaggy and his halter path had grown out). Then I stood back and stared at him and he stared at me. He had hair in his face and a hopeful look in his eyes and I realized I had given him an indie rock haircut and made him look like Bright Eyes. I held out my arms and he put his head against my body, shuttering his eyelids and letting the lashes lay long on his cheek. I hope he's happy with all the pressure off, because I am, I'm so much happier now that I have nothing to prove.
4.0 -- Image
12/25/2007 at 11:37 AM
I sometimes like living out in the country. I spent the past two days in my pajamas and earlier had to sprinkle salt from a salt shaker onto the front walk. If I had a car, this would be ideal.
Since I was stuck here on the farm, I made about four dozen cookies of multiple different flavors yesterday. including a holiday message to all of my friends (pictured above). My compensation for the eating disorder has always been to feed others, which usually successfully distracts people from the fact that I don't really eat.
Except ... I do eat. I'm either always hungry or not at all. Today I am always hungry, despite the fact that I ate. Most people wouldn't care, much less devote an entire blog entry to it, but most people don't have a preoccupation with their bodies like I do.
Oh wait. I hope you caught the irony there. I think as far as people today are concerned, I'm LESS concerned with my appearance than most. I'm never going to get Botox, I don't care about manicures, and spending a hundred dollars to get my hair cut or work out in a gym seems ridiculous to me. Except ... of COURSE I care about the way other people see me, and it comes out in the form of hipsterism and anorexia, both of which are extreme in their own regards.
What can I say about being hip? I genuinely like odd and slightly ugly clothes. Unlike a lot of kids who buy ugly things for the sake of ugliness, I honestly think things like my enormously oversized plaid coat are beautiful. I lack money so I buy things that other people are selling for cheap, but I think I would buy them anyway. I like the knowledge that even among people who are all trying to be Different, when I walk into a room I will always be the most honestly different person there.
As far as the disordered eating ... well, I could say a lot about that. I don't like to say I have an eating disorder, that implies that something is wrong with ME. I like to say that I have disordered eating, which implies correctly that something is wrong with my food consumption patterns.
It used to be anorexia, but since I now weigh 123 pounds (up from 105), and actually consume food without religiously counting its contents, I don't think that label can adequately apply any more. Instead I worry obsessively about what I have eaten, the quantity and quality -- in terms of how it makes me feel (I've been known to forego actual nutrition in favor of gas-station coffees and local-grocery-store muffins, since they make me feel better). I think deeply about any little changes in my body and generally avoid mirrors except if I already know what I'm going to see.
For me, it's another form of body modification. People pierce their faces and gauge their ears because they feel it looks beautiful; I know that's why I did it. But at least for me, the motivation was also in the fact that it would HURT like a MOTHERFUCKER ... and that other people would recognize the amount of pain I had endured when they saw the finished product. Face it -- no one looks at those guys with earlobes like lace curtains and bodies decorated with more graffiti than an old-time New York subway car without thinking, "Damn I bet that hurt like hell ... he must be one tough sonofabitch." Admiration, you see, is key.
When I was painfully thin, and I mean painfuily, it hurt to ride my horse, wear clothing, sit down, and walk, people admired me. I'm not kidding, I wasn't skeletal, I wasn't disgusting, so no one was repelled -- they, men and women alike, would stand back from me as I passed and watch after me as I walked away. I think they all envied my determination -- and determination it was, obsessively counting calories, restricting portions, eliminating food groups, working out for six hours or 1,000 calories a day -- they envied my capability for self denial.
I can't do that any more. Like trying to get straight A's for ten years, it was too much work, so I got bored and quit. But, I had to take out my ear gaugings, they got infected because I rushed them, so I can't yet use my ears as a metaphor. And I don't quite have the cash to get that back plate of the first verse of Four Winds in picture form yet. Therefore I will have to turn my whole body, my entire physical self, into a billboard to advertise my quest for transcendence, my ability to conquer physical want and even need, to become this strange and unholy thing, completely pure.
Sometimes I scare the absolute hell out of myself.
Since I was stuck here on the farm, I made about four dozen cookies of multiple different flavors yesterday. including a holiday message to all of my friends (pictured above). My compensation for the eating disorder has always been to feed others, which usually successfully distracts people from the fact that I don't really eat.
Except ... I do eat. I'm either always hungry or not at all. Today I am always hungry, despite the fact that I ate. Most people wouldn't care, much less devote an entire blog entry to it, but most people don't have a preoccupation with their bodies like I do.
Oh wait. I hope you caught the irony there. I think as far as people today are concerned, I'm LESS concerned with my appearance than most. I'm never going to get Botox, I don't care about manicures, and spending a hundred dollars to get my hair cut or work out in a gym seems ridiculous to me. Except ... of COURSE I care about the way other people see me, and it comes out in the form of hipsterism and anorexia, both of which are extreme in their own regards.
What can I say about being hip? I genuinely like odd and slightly ugly clothes. Unlike a lot of kids who buy ugly things for the sake of ugliness, I honestly think things like my enormously oversized plaid coat are beautiful. I lack money so I buy things that other people are selling for cheap, but I think I would buy them anyway. I like the knowledge that even among people who are all trying to be Different, when I walk into a room I will always be the most honestly different person there.
As far as the disordered eating ... well, I could say a lot about that. I don't like to say I have an eating disorder, that implies that something is wrong with ME. I like to say that I have disordered eating, which implies correctly that something is wrong with my food consumption patterns.
It used to be anorexia, but since I now weigh 123 pounds (up from 105), and actually consume food without religiously counting its contents, I don't think that label can adequately apply any more. Instead I worry obsessively about what I have eaten, the quantity and quality -- in terms of how it makes me feel (I've been known to forego actual nutrition in favor of gas-station coffees and local-grocery-store muffins, since they make me feel better). I think deeply about any little changes in my body and generally avoid mirrors except if I already know what I'm going to see.
For me, it's another form of body modification. People pierce their faces and gauge their ears because they feel it looks beautiful; I know that's why I did it. But at least for me, the motivation was also in the fact that it would HURT like a MOTHERFUCKER ... and that other people would recognize the amount of pain I had endured when they saw the finished product. Face it -- no one looks at those guys with earlobes like lace curtains and bodies decorated with more graffiti than an old-time New York subway car without thinking, "Damn I bet that hurt like hell ... he must be one tough sonofabitch." Admiration, you see, is key.
When I was painfully thin, and I mean painfuily, it hurt to ride my horse, wear clothing, sit down, and walk, people admired me. I'm not kidding, I wasn't skeletal, I wasn't disgusting, so no one was repelled -- they, men and women alike, would stand back from me as I passed and watch after me as I walked away. I think they all envied my determination -- and determination it was, obsessively counting calories, restricting portions, eliminating food groups, working out for six hours or 1,000 calories a day -- they envied my capability for self denial.
I can't do that any more. Like trying to get straight A's for ten years, it was too much work, so I got bored and quit. But, I had to take out my ear gaugings, they got infected because I rushed them, so I can't yet use my ears as a metaphor. And I don't quite have the cash to get that back plate of the first verse of Four Winds in picture form yet. Therefore I will have to turn my whole body, my entire physical self, into a billboard to advertise my quest for transcendence, my ability to conquer physical want and even need, to become this strange and unholy thing, completely pure.
Sometimes I scare the absolute hell out of myself.
3.9 -- Modern Medicine
12/23/2007 at 1:39 AM
The man I love but don't want to be with is moving to California, and the man I don't love but want to be with is working eleven-hour days in another town. I am twenty five thousand dollars in debt and I have a beautiful eight year old horse that I cannot ride. But today I did with a combination of herbs what would have taken at best a steroid shot and an eight hour wait in an emergency room, and at worst five hundred bucks and a layover of weeks if not months in the hell of moral uncertainty.
I wonder when the pharmaceutical companies decided to distance us from our bodies. I wonder if it began with good intentions, to save us "civilized" people from the messy, unpredictable ins and outs of our corporeal selves and elevate us to a higher plane of solely cerebral existence -- or if it was entirely based on greed and avarice.
I wonder who we can trust, who I can trust, if even my self. But I can do for my self things that I didn't think I could, I have a level of power over my body, my mind, and feasibly even society, so now where am I? Where are we, all? And why are we not there together?
I wonder when the pharmaceutical companies decided to distance us from our bodies. I wonder if it began with good intentions, to save us "civilized" people from the messy, unpredictable ins and outs of our corporeal selves and elevate us to a higher plane of solely cerebral existence -- or if it was entirely based on greed and avarice.
I wonder who we can trust, who I can trust, if even my self. But I can do for my self things that I didn't think I could, I have a level of power over my body, my mind, and feasibly even society, so now where am I? Where are we, all? And why are we not there together?
3.8 -- Theology
12/22/2007 at 1:26 AM
I realized that each of us creates our own form of God to worship, and thus we are all god but God does not exist.
I suppose I had better edit thia for the sake of clarity and the avoidance of outright heresy -- there is no One True God. But we knew that already, at least the smart ones did. I suppose the point that I am making is -- we as a species were intelligent and creative enough to invent the idea of a higher power, but then religion stepped in and conviced us we were all stupid and uncreative, that what we had imagined had really been there all along. And we bought it. So I'm not sure if we're really that intelligent at all.
I wonder if now I should worship myself as a deity. I'm not going to worship others, that seems a bit too overwhelming, so I guess not.
I suppose I had better edit thia for the sake of clarity and the avoidance of outright heresy -- there is no One True God. But we knew that already, at least the smart ones did. I suppose the point that I am making is -- we as a species were intelligent and creative enough to invent the idea of a higher power, but then religion stepped in and conviced us we were all stupid and uncreative, that what we had imagined had really been there all along. And we bought it. So I'm not sure if we're really that intelligent at all.
I wonder if now I should worship myself as a deity. I'm not going to worship others, that seems a bit too overwhelming, so I guess not.
3.7 -- Revolution, Education
12/21/2007 at 1:58 AM
THE REVOLUTION HAS NOT BEEN BLOGGIFIED, at least here. I don't write about my Revolutionary Ideas here, because a.) until recently I didn't realize anyone else actually read this, and b.) I assumed everyone who would read this, would already know what I was talking about.
Today I went back to my high school and oh! the euphoria that comes with knowing the administration had lost control of me the moment I graduated. (Or actually, in my case, technically months and months before even that.)
But oh, the sadness of realizing that I HAD COMPROMISED FOR SO LONG. Eighteen years, I played the part of a model citizen even though I never actually believed the lies I had been told. For eight of those years I busted my fucking hump trying to get good grades and get into a good college -- even though I did not want to, because I knew it would ultimately make no difference if I went to Harvard or became a blacksmith, so long as I was happy in the end. I knew I was different from everyone else, but yet not different in the way kids were different just to be trendy, and so in the effort of getting along I tried to hide it. And now for what, twenty grand of debt and the feeling I have completely failed myself and my own ideals? Thanks, society.
Seeing my former classmates was like walking into Night of the Living Dead. Each one is STILL LIVING THE LIE. In fact, for most of them I don't even think it IS a lie. And when lies become the truth, something has gone desperately fast and screaming down the pipe to Hell.
College used to be something special, a ticket to a better life, but for my generation it's become a way of weeding out the rich from the poor, and for those who stay in the strainer it turns into one big brainwashing contest. I know a few people who are going to college and will probably still have their own interesting lives, but they are not the ones who are "successful at college" -- one keeps skipping semesters, one has dropped out several times, and none of them are getting very good grades. It seems to me that "success at college" depends on fooling oneself into becoming the biggest tool humanly possible.
Some people are very good at it and bully for them. we all have our own kinds of dreams. But hearing nineteen year olds talking about their premed careers at mini-Ivies was fucking DEPRESSING.
These are the people who should be living their lives, gaining experience and finding out who they are instead of what society has told them they ought to be. These are the kinds of people who were at finals week during Woodstock '69. I feel that if I ever want to have any relevance to other people, to the history that is being made every day. that I should really be experiencing it, right now, before I get too old to do it but too young to retire. And if that makes me a Failure, then Collegiate Academy can sit on it and spin. After all, it is the place that educated me well but taught me nothing.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with a good pasta. I personally love whole-wheat squash- or cheese-filled ravioli with a nice thick sauce, preferably the kind with big tomato chunks and pieces of mushroom and spinach in it. Some day I would love to roll into a town just to get a nice dinner and chill back for a while. I can't keep up the bohemian-on-the-edge lifestyle for ever. But even so, I will never be one of the robotic servants the education system likes to churn out. I am so glad I woke up. I am so glad I stopped compromising. Please don't ever let me go back, it would break my little rebel heart.
Today I went back to my high school and oh! the euphoria that comes with knowing the administration had lost control of me the moment I graduated. (Or actually, in my case, technically months and months before even that.)
But oh, the sadness of realizing that I HAD COMPROMISED FOR SO LONG. Eighteen years, I played the part of a model citizen even though I never actually believed the lies I had been told. For eight of those years I busted my fucking hump trying to get good grades and get into a good college -- even though I did not want to, because I knew it would ultimately make no difference if I went to Harvard or became a blacksmith, so long as I was happy in the end. I knew I was different from everyone else, but yet not different in the way kids were different just to be trendy, and so in the effort of getting along I tried to hide it. And now for what, twenty grand of debt and the feeling I have completely failed myself and my own ideals? Thanks, society.
Seeing my former classmates was like walking into Night of the Living Dead. Each one is STILL LIVING THE LIE. In fact, for most of them I don't even think it IS a lie. And when lies become the truth, something has gone desperately fast and screaming down the pipe to Hell.
College used to be something special, a ticket to a better life, but for my generation it's become a way of weeding out the rich from the poor, and for those who stay in the strainer it turns into one big brainwashing contest. I know a few people who are going to college and will probably still have their own interesting lives, but they are not the ones who are "successful at college" -- one keeps skipping semesters, one has dropped out several times, and none of them are getting very good grades. It seems to me that "success at college" depends on fooling oneself into becoming the biggest tool humanly possible.
Some people are very good at it and bully for them. we all have our own kinds of dreams. But hearing nineteen year olds talking about their premed careers at mini-Ivies was fucking DEPRESSING.
These are the people who should be living their lives, gaining experience and finding out who they are instead of what society has told them they ought to be. These are the kinds of people who were at finals week during Woodstock '69. I feel that if I ever want to have any relevance to other people, to the history that is being made every day. that I should really be experiencing it, right now, before I get too old to do it but too young to retire. And if that makes me a Failure, then Collegiate Academy can sit on it and spin. After all, it is the place that educated me well but taught me nothing.
For the record, there is nothing wrong with a good pasta. I personally love whole-wheat squash- or cheese-filled ravioli with a nice thick sauce, preferably the kind with big tomato chunks and pieces of mushroom and spinach in it. Some day I would love to roll into a town just to get a nice dinner and chill back for a while. I can't keep up the bohemian-on-the-edge lifestyle for ever. But even so, I will never be one of the robotic servants the education system likes to churn out. I am so glad I woke up. I am so glad I stopped compromising. Please don't ever let me go back, it would break my little rebel heart.
3.6 -- The Revolution (for Bischoff)
12/21/2007 at 1:16 AM
Of course revolutionaries worry about the weather. We still have to go outside. And sometimes we get bored and that is all we have to write about. Or we are drunk and just start typing random existential things. Sometiomes both of the above, at once.
For example: on my way to Erie, all of the streams we crossed had gorged themselves on snow and were fat and happy. The marshes, though, were low and frozen and sported stumps and brush like a five o'clock shadow. In one place the current had opened a ribbon of dark water, the color of indigo, right through the thin translucent layer of ice dusted white with perfect gentle snow.
For example: on my way to Erie, all of the streams we crossed had gorged themselves on snow and were fat and happy. The marshes, though, were low and frozen and sported stumps and brush like a five o'clock shadow. In one place the current had opened a ribbon of dark water, the color of indigo, right through the thin translucent layer of ice dusted white with perfect gentle snow.
3.5 -- Lost Dollars, Spin Cycles, Coin Op Laundries
12/18/2007 at 10:22 PM
The end of my laundry saga: tried to use a friend's dryer but it ate my dollar and made a dull hum but did not get hot or tumble. I brought it to another friend's house but the spin cycle malfunctioned and left my sheets wringing wet. I ended up drying them -- mostly -- at the Butler Street Coin-Op.
3.4 -- Freezing Cold, Frozen Laundry, Fifty Cents, and Alden Orion Davidson
12/16/2007 at 8:31 PM
I waited two hours today for a bus that never came. My feet hurt so bad I cried, and my bag of damp laundry froze into a solid block. By the end I was wailing and almost on my knees, and only two people bothered to ever ask if I were okay. Someone even tried to beg money off me, someone else tried to hit me with their car, and yet another person forced me to move aside so he could walk through instead of going two feet out of his way.
It was stupid, I should have just paid the extra fifty cents to dry my clothes.
Last night I spent almost all night talking to a girl who is a boy inside yet dresses like a girl and sleeps with boys. Even with my fashionable rain boots and skinny pants and chic coat I seemed downright dykish next to her. It was amazing, like talking to a mirror except she talked back. I wonder if it's good to have a friend who is exactly like me, or if I ought to be friends with more people who are nothing like me.
She has an eating disorder too, I took her a bottle of kombucha and a jar of kimchee, wrapped in pretty paper, today. I don't know if it will make her life any better but I can at least try.
It was stupid, I should have just paid the extra fifty cents to dry my clothes.
Last night I spent almost all night talking to a girl who is a boy inside yet dresses like a girl and sleeps with boys. Even with my fashionable rain boots and skinny pants and chic coat I seemed downright dykish next to her. It was amazing, like talking to a mirror except she talked back. I wonder if it's good to have a friend who is exactly like me, or if I ought to be friends with more people who are nothing like me.
She has an eating disorder too, I took her a bottle of kombucha and a jar of kimchee, wrapped in pretty paper, today. I don't know if it will make her life any better but I can at least try.
3.3 -- Sleeping, Shooting Pool, Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania
12/13/2007 at 10:48 PM
I woke up at five o clock this afternoon and then went back to sleep until seven.
Last night I re-remembered to shoot pool. It was a fabulous experience. Now I want to go to Mardi Gras for my birthday.
Tomorrow I have to get up early, go to DMV and Planned Parenthood and hope they give it out for free like I do.
Last night I re-remembered to shoot pool. It was a fabulous experience. Now I want to go to Mardi Gras for my birthday.
Tomorrow I have to get up early, go to DMV and Planned Parenthood and hope they give it out for free like I do.
3.2 -- Ear Birth, Ben and Jerry's
12/12/2007 at 7:26 PM
I'm beginning to think I'm really going to survive this.
My right ear is gauged to a 6 now, it felt like giving birth except I wasn't sure the little tunnel was actually going to pop out or not. I screamed, and I swore, and I bled, and it finally slid through and I felt so damn proud and accomplished to have faced the pain and gone through it and come out on the other side.
Today it is swollen and red and weeping but I know it will heal in a few days, a week at most. Or else my earlobe will get gangrene and fall off. Either way, the result will be beautiful to me.
I've decided that once my pint of Ben and Jerry's frozen Cookie Dough yogurt is gone, that I'm going to live for a week on just coffee, kombucha, and maybe cookies. Mmm, kombucha ... fizzy fermented tea with bits in it. Makes me so happy.
My right ear is gauged to a 6 now, it felt like giving birth except I wasn't sure the little tunnel was actually going to pop out or not. I screamed, and I swore, and I bled, and it finally slid through and I felt so damn proud and accomplished to have faced the pain and gone through it and come out on the other side.
Today it is swollen and red and weeping but I know it will heal in a few days, a week at most. Or else my earlobe will get gangrene and fall off. Either way, the result will be beautiful to me.
I've decided that once my pint of Ben and Jerry's frozen Cookie Dough yogurt is gone, that I'm going to live for a week on just coffee, kombucha, and maybe cookies. Mmm, kombucha ... fizzy fermented tea with bits in it. Makes me so happy.
3.1 -- Hibernation, Congratulation, a Gay Streetcorner Mime
12/11/2007 at 9:58 PM
There was a gay streetcorner mime in suspenders but no shirt, breaking out some mad moves at Liberty and Wood. The black men at the bus stop opposite cheered and whooped him; he outdanced a big man in Tims and oversized black clothes.
Today I woke up for the final time at ten minutes until three o'clock in the afternoon and it was warm, as warm as springtime outside, two weeks away from Christmas and the weather felt like mid May. All of my muscles unclenched, my fists unwound, I relaxed as if my body was congratulating itself for making it through one more winter, although winter has hardly even begun.
It will all be over before I even know it. And despite what I might sometimes think, it will hardly be as hard as I expect.
I don't know if that knowledge makes me happy or sad.
Today I woke up for the final time at ten minutes until three o'clock in the afternoon and it was warm, as warm as springtime outside, two weeks away from Christmas and the weather felt like mid May. All of my muscles unclenched, my fists unwound, I relaxed as if my body was congratulating itself for making it through one more winter, although winter has hardly even begun.
It will all be over before I even know it. And despite what I might sometimes think, it will hardly be as hard as I expect.
I don't know if that knowledge makes me happy or sad.
3.0 -- Mutual Exclusion, and All I Want.
12/10/2007 at 8:05 PM
I'm going broke again and too scared to get another job. I don't want to be trapped here.
I have a need to do something, but I also have a need to pay a shit tonne of money, The two seem to be mutually exclusive.
All I want is to tell a damn good story, and to never sell out.
I have a need to do something, but I also have a need to pay a shit tonne of money, The two seem to be mutually exclusive.
All I want is to tell a damn good story, and to never sell out.
2.9 -- Survival, Sadness, and the Most Beautiful Thing
12/9/2007 at 7:30 PM
I know I am going to make it through this, and that is what frightens me so much.
Sometimes I feel like the most I can do, the best thing I could do with my life is to end it, in a beautiful and shocking way. This is a cheerful thought for me.
But then I have an odd lucid dream, riding on a bus in the rain, of waking up from a drunk in the passenger seat of Conor Oberst's truck, while he plays staticky music on the stereo and pounds the steering wheel with his fists and forearms and screams wordless sorrow and frustration at the windshield, and that will make such a good story that staying alive will have been worth my while.
A friend I haven't seen for a while will be coming back to Pittsburgh at the same time my other friends, my closest friend, will be leaving. I have to make it until then. I just have to make it one day at a time, like an alcoholic. One day at a time, and not think of all the days as a whole, spreading out in front of me like the biggest wall I will ever have to climb.
God, feeling joy always makes me so sad. I wish I could sing, I would devote my life to touring as a country musician. I guess being a roadie is the next best thing.
Sometimes I feel like the most I can do, the best thing I could do with my life is to end it, in a beautiful and shocking way. This is a cheerful thought for me.
But then I have an odd lucid dream, riding on a bus in the rain, of waking up from a drunk in the passenger seat of Conor Oberst's truck, while he plays staticky music on the stereo and pounds the steering wheel with his fists and forearms and screams wordless sorrow and frustration at the windshield, and that will make such a good story that staying alive will have been worth my while.
A friend I haven't seen for a while will be coming back to Pittsburgh at the same time my other friends, my closest friend, will be leaving. I have to make it until then. I just have to make it one day at a time, like an alcoholic. One day at a time, and not think of all the days as a whole, spreading out in front of me like the biggest wall I will ever have to climb.
God, feeling joy always makes me so sad. I wish I could sing, I would devote my life to touring as a country musician. I guess being a roadie is the next best thing.
2.8 -- Toothless Men, a Bus Ride
12/8/2007 at 12:25 AM
I saw a toothless man on the bus and now I'm thankful for my teeth.
The Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh to Erie has always been my favorite. The bus passes over the same river, which is technically a creek, at least four times, and the water below was dark, waiting. Trees on the bank had leaned over to dip their branches, and were covered in ice for their effort. The marsh had frozen except for kidney-shaped patches of hopeful open water.
The sun was bright and the sky blue, and the trunks of the young trees were completely white. I fell asleep with the arms of my sweater wound casually around my shoulders like an embrace.
The Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh to Erie has always been my favorite. The bus passes over the same river, which is technically a creek, at least four times, and the water below was dark, waiting. Trees on the bank had leaned over to dip their branches, and were covered in ice for their effort. The marsh had frozen except for kidney-shaped patches of hopeful open water.
The sun was bright and the sky blue, and the trunks of the young trees were completely white. I fell asleep with the arms of my sweater wound casually around my shoulders like an embrace.
2.7 -- Fashion
12/6/2007 at 5:12 PM
I tried to defeat my cowlicks with a razor but the razor won. Now the top of my hair is a little too awkwardly short. But as long as I can keep it lying flat, it's not too odd.
I bought a pair of those rubber rain boots, the kind that a lot of other girls wear. Except mine are black with white polka dots. They are warm and were immediately comfortable. I hope they are waterproof.
Part of me keeps fighting the suspicion that I'm a secret fop. But I don't know why I bother.
I bought a pair of those rubber rain boots, the kind that a lot of other girls wear. Except mine are black with white polka dots. They are warm and were immediately comfortable. I hope they are waterproof.
Part of me keeps fighting the suspicion that I'm a secret fop. But I don't know why I bother.
2.6 -- Domesticity
12/3/2007 at 5:46 PM
I am a complete failure at domestic chores, but hopefully that is neither a surprise or a disappointment.
In high school I decided, in emulation of my amazing English teacher, to be The Dynamic Female, a feminist who could bake mean cookies and embroider by hand. And I achieved it. But then I reached college and gave up. As it so happens, there is no point in impressing anyone.
I wonder if Miss Holmes is still teaching. I hope she never retires. She was a real hippie in college, a long haired flower child, and she cut her hair but she never grew out of it.
I got fired from my job because I called in sick. I can't imagine keeping a job ... except maybe at the racetrack.
In high school I decided, in emulation of my amazing English teacher, to be The Dynamic Female, a feminist who could bake mean cookies and embroider by hand. And I achieved it. But then I reached college and gave up. As it so happens, there is no point in impressing anyone.
I wonder if Miss Holmes is still teaching. I hope she never retires. She was a real hippie in college, a long haired flower child, and she cut her hair but she never grew out of it.
I got fired from my job because I called in sick. I can't imagine keeping a job ... except maybe at the racetrack.
2.5 -- Snow, Cold, a Soft Skid on a Country Road
12/2/2007 at 6:13 PM
Snow on the ground. Lots of cold.
I had a cold for almost an entire week. It's gone now, except from my vocal cords, I growl a little and sometimes my voice skips like a record, and except for the times when I open my mouth and can produce no sound it's pretty out of sight. Especially when I whisper.
For a few days I was flat out on my back snorting and sniffling, my head feeling like a ton of rock, vice grip on my cheekbones, passing myself off as normal and acting quite cheerful. My face chapped and my voice came out thick like my coughs. I battled it hard, with the ethic that what I ignore is not really there, and came out on the other side as good as new. Maybe better.
All kinds of cold outside, the kind that numbs my fingers and toes. Snow that smacks my face, softly, and crunches under my feet.
Last night on the road a car pulled out ahead of us, about thirty yards, and skidded into our lane. We hit a soft skid of our own, no panic, just softly falling snow and a slow twirl like an ice skater and a gently revolving panorama outside the windows and Mitch's voice saying softy and easily, "I'm sorry guys ..." and we missed a tree to come to rest in someone's yard.
When we had come to a stop we looked at one another, the four of us, and our faces broke into giddy grins because we knew we had once more escaped death -- that we were not invincible, not by a long shot, but that rather we were lucky.
I had a cold for almost an entire week. It's gone now, except from my vocal cords, I growl a little and sometimes my voice skips like a record, and except for the times when I open my mouth and can produce no sound it's pretty out of sight. Especially when I whisper.
For a few days I was flat out on my back snorting and sniffling, my head feeling like a ton of rock, vice grip on my cheekbones, passing myself off as normal and acting quite cheerful. My face chapped and my voice came out thick like my coughs. I battled it hard, with the ethic that what I ignore is not really there, and came out on the other side as good as new. Maybe better.
All kinds of cold outside, the kind that numbs my fingers and toes. Snow that smacks my face, softly, and crunches under my feet.
Last night on the road a car pulled out ahead of us, about thirty yards, and skidded into our lane. We hit a soft skid of our own, no panic, just softly falling snow and a slow twirl like an ice skater and a gently revolving panorama outside the windows and Mitch's voice saying softy and easily, "I'm sorry guys ..." and we missed a tree to come to rest in someone's yard.
When we had come to a stop we looked at one another, the four of us, and our faces broke into giddy grins because we knew we had once more escaped death -- that we were not invincible, not by a long shot, but that rather we were lucky.
2.4 -- My Father's Face, a Sense of Purpose
11/25/2007 at 12:01 AM
I look just like my father when I cut my hair.
The line of my jaw, the set of my eyes. By the way -- his are turning green now, like I see in the mirror, instead of translucent blue, like I remember.
Everyone who looks at me here, his family, says they see him all over my face. When I tell them about my self, what I think, what I want to do, they say
"oh Gene did that too when he was your age"
with the unspoken addition "and then he grew out of it"
except that I don't think he did do this
at least not the way that I'm doing it
and almost certainly not for the same reasons
and not with the same purpose.
Purpose, purpose, he wants me to serve some kind of purpose
and I do, have a sense of purpose --
he wants me to serve a purpose to others
and I don't think he knows
that is all that I do.
It's not my profession and god knows I don't get paid
but it's what I do, the only thing that I do.
Maybe he grew out of it
and maybe I will too
but I don't think I will.
I don't know how much I am like or will be like my father but
I look just like my father when I cut my hair.
The line of my jaw, the set of my eyes. By the way -- his are turning green now, like I see in the mirror, instead of translucent blue, like I remember.
Everyone who looks at me here, his family, says they see him all over my face. When I tell them about my self, what I think, what I want to do, they say
"oh Gene did that too when he was your age"
with the unspoken addition "and then he grew out of it"
except that I don't think he did do this
at least not the way that I'm doing it
and almost certainly not for the same reasons
and not with the same purpose.
Purpose, purpose, he wants me to serve some kind of purpose
and I do, have a sense of purpose --
he wants me to serve a purpose to others
and I don't think he knows
that is all that I do.
It's not my profession and god knows I don't get paid
but it's what I do, the only thing that I do.
Maybe he grew out of it
and maybe I will too
but I don't think I will.
I don't know how much I am like or will be like my father but
I look just like my father when I cut my hair.
2.3.1 -- What I really mean.
11/23/2007 at 5:56 AM
Baby when I say
I love you it means,
not that I'm crazy with adoration over you, that I can't see your faults but that
I'm not, and that I can, and yet I still do
care about and respect you and I still would
follow you to anywhere you needed for me to go and go
anywhere you asked me for me to.
When you say
you are leaving and I say
"take me with you" it doesn't mean
that I'd be nothing without you, or that you are everything to me, it means
that if you weren't around the anything I have would not mean as much because
there is no one else who would appreciate my sharing it.
It doesn't mean that without you I would be alone, it means
that without you I would be alone with people who
don't care, don't listen, don't want to hear it to begin with.
It doesn't mean
that I can't live without you, it means
that I don't want to have to.
I love you it means,
not that I'm crazy with adoration over you, that I can't see your faults but that
I'm not, and that I can, and yet I still do
care about and respect you and I still would
follow you to anywhere you needed for me to go and go
anywhere you asked me for me to.
When you say
you are leaving and I say
"take me with you" it doesn't mean
that I'd be nothing without you, or that you are everything to me, it means
that if you weren't around the anything I have would not mean as much because
there is no one else who would appreciate my sharing it.
It doesn't mean that without you I would be alone, it means
that without you I would be alone with people who
don't care, don't listen, don't want to hear it to begin with.
It doesn't mean
that I can't live without you, it means
that I don't want to have to.
2.3 -- Lesbians and Coffee Shops
11/22/2007 at 9:03 PM
A lesbian hit on me the other day in the coffee shop. She wasn't an obvious lesbian, the kind who advertises, but I could tell, right away. I flirted with her, subtly, in my own fashion -- being nice, talking, letting her know that I was doing small things that I would not do for someone I found less interesting. And at first I thought she might think I was silly --
but I made her hot chocolate with half coffee, as she asked,
(and didn't charge extra)
and topped it with whipped cream
and when I put it in her hand she winked at me, tugged her hatbrim, and left.
I felt giddy and silly and lightheaded for a whole ten minutes.
but I made her hot chocolate with half coffee, as she asked,
(and didn't charge extra)
and topped it with whipped cream
and when I put it in her hand she winked at me, tugged her hatbrim, and left.
I felt giddy and silly and lightheaded for a whole ten minutes.
2.2 -- Rain in New England, the space of a second
11/20/2007 at 5:18 PM
Every time I have been to New England it has been raining. In my mind I have come to believe that it is always raining in New England.
In fact there had been a steady drizzle from late-night Philadelphia onward. Although it ceased within the borders of Manhattan, a city which has always reminded me of an enormous Lego set, and Harlem and picked up again off the island.
Outside of New Haven a tree in the middle of the highway had sprouted a bunch of slightly faded but still very buoyant latex balloons, one for each color of the rainbow.
Across the Connecticut state line, snow on the ground, leaves on the trees. An African cabbie picked me up at the Boston airport and my father's directions got us lost in Newton. He was an amiable man so dark-skinned as to look almost purple, spoke with a musical almost French accent and stopped the meter at thirty-five seventy-five. I tipped him twenty five bucks for so cheerfully putting up with bullshit.
I may be the only person who might actually get THINNER over Thanksgiving.
Evan fell from a roof, and survived. I can't get over that idea, that the second hand of the clock could have switched over and he might have suddenly ceased to exist. It's like the time that a wheel flew off the Greyhound bus I was riding to Erie -- the driver pulled to the side of the road as if nothing had happened and I looked up from my headphones and saw the mangled heap of rubber and realized that under slightly different circumstances in that space of a second life could have turned out extremely different. Such as, for me, it might have ended, while for everyone else it would have rolled on as-is. It's a strange and oddly giddy feeling.
In fact there had been a steady drizzle from late-night Philadelphia onward. Although it ceased within the borders of Manhattan, a city which has always reminded me of an enormous Lego set, and Harlem and picked up again off the island.
Outside of New Haven a tree in the middle of the highway had sprouted a bunch of slightly faded but still very buoyant latex balloons, one for each color of the rainbow.
Across the Connecticut state line, snow on the ground, leaves on the trees. An African cabbie picked me up at the Boston airport and my father's directions got us lost in Newton. He was an amiable man so dark-skinned as to look almost purple, spoke with a musical almost French accent and stopped the meter at thirty-five seventy-five. I tipped him twenty five bucks for so cheerfully putting up with bullshit.
I may be the only person who might actually get THINNER over Thanksgiving.
Evan fell from a roof, and survived. I can't get over that idea, that the second hand of the clock could have switched over and he might have suddenly ceased to exist. It's like the time that a wheel flew off the Greyhound bus I was riding to Erie -- the driver pulled to the side of the road as if nothing had happened and I looked up from my headphones and saw the mangled heap of rubber and realized that under slightly different circumstances in that space of a second life could have turned out extremely different. Such as, for me, it might have ended, while for everyone else it would have rolled on as-is. It's a strange and oddly giddy feeling.
2.1 -- Jesus Vanity Plates
11/18/2007 at 7:34 PM
Only black ladies are allowed to put JESUS vanity plates on their cars. I won't tolerate it from anyone else.
Today an older man, probably in his fifties, selling flowers at Penn and 45th near the new Children's Hospital, hit on me creepily while I was waiting for a bus, telling me to "watch out for the blacks" who "have guns" and would want to rape me. How he felt himself and his motives to be superior I don't know. Nor do I know where he found the nerve -- a man with a cane and bad eyesight, feeling more capable than a solid, healthy lady with gauged ears and badass bicycle gloves?
Is it just because I am a girl? Does having a vagina automatically make me a target, of patronization if not outright violence, in other people's eyes, regardless of what else I may do?
Evidently.
Today an older man, probably in his fifties, selling flowers at Penn and 45th near the new Children's Hospital, hit on me creepily while I was waiting for a bus, telling me to "watch out for the blacks" who "have guns" and would want to rape me. How he felt himself and his motives to be superior I don't know. Nor do I know where he found the nerve -- a man with a cane and bad eyesight, feeling more capable than a solid, healthy lady with gauged ears and badass bicycle gloves?
Is it just because I am a girl? Does having a vagina automatically make me a target, of patronization if not outright violence, in other people's eyes, regardless of what else I may do?
Evidently.
2.0 -- Deliciousness, Death, and Delight
11/14/2007 at 12:18 AM
I reread my last entry, I'm not a poet or a writer, I just play one in real life.
News of they day: I have a huge shopping bag full of chocolate cupcakes. Pity they aren't all that very tasty. And I hope I left my eyebrow ring in the pocket of my other pants.
Evan: I saw two men on the 61C tonight who both looked dead, and no one batted an eye, maybe our experiment wouldn't even matter. But then again, those men 'woke up' at their stops and walked away, and neither had a companion to drag them away or speak softly to their pretend corpses.
Also, that neatly-dressed older woman who was watching us on the 71C, came into the coffee shop a few minutes after I started shift. She was very excited and made a point to tell me she thought we seemed like delightful young people -- she thought we had come from the Art Institute and said something about Juilliard material -- she was so pleased to see us enjoying one another's company and having such a good time. I smiled widely at her and realized she had not heard you talking about being thrown out of a strip club. Or maybe she did, and I'm just not giving her enough credit.
News of they day: I have a huge shopping bag full of chocolate cupcakes. Pity they aren't all that very tasty. And I hope I left my eyebrow ring in the pocket of my other pants.
Evan: I saw two men on the 61C tonight who both looked dead, and no one batted an eye, maybe our experiment wouldn't even matter. But then again, those men 'woke up' at their stops and walked away, and neither had a companion to drag them away or speak softly to their pretend corpses.
Also, that neatly-dressed older woman who was watching us on the 71C, came into the coffee shop a few minutes after I started shift. She was very excited and made a point to tell me she thought we seemed like delightful young people -- she thought we had come from the Art Institute and said something about Juilliard material -- she was so pleased to see us enjoying one another's company and having such a good time. I smiled widely at her and realized she had not heard you talking about being thrown out of a strip club. Or maybe she did, and I'm just not giving her enough credit.
1.9 -- Sickness, Sassiness, Cincinatti
11/13/2007 at 3:46 AM
Lots and lots of smoking last night, and drinking of Long Island Iced Teas. Eating of soup and passing out in bathrooms and back rooms today at work. Fleeing down alleyways, falling to my knees outside of coffee shops. Crouching on rainy cement steps stealing WiFi at night, gas station cappuccino, a dull and persistent stomachache. Meeting a friend, walking the train tracks, listening to stoned music while stone cold sober.
Last night at the bar we met a pair of men from the hood, one with a beer in each hand crying sad foul because his baby mamma had filed a PFA keeping him from his five-year-old son. He informs us that for the boy's birfday he will take the boy shooting the big guns, BIG GUNS! But he don't ever hit that kid, no, not Khalil. I hope he's honest.
He asks about my boots, I tell him they are for ass-kicking and kneecap-breaking, general badassery. He thinks I'm being coy. He asks if Tom will get those boots in the air that night. I say not in the way I think he thinks. His half-white Bahamian friend backs away with his hands held up in a gesture of pacification. They have a woman, medium dark skin, fine bones from some long-ago Nigerian ancestor, very very thin, twirling her pool cue between her hands and watching it with downcast eyes. She smiles at me, sadly, as we pass by.
I want to come home from Boston via Philly, Cincinatti, and Columbus. I still can't seem to spell Cincinatti.
Last night at the bar we met a pair of men from the hood, one with a beer in each hand crying sad foul because his baby mamma had filed a PFA keeping him from his five-year-old son. He informs us that for the boy's birfday he will take the boy shooting the big guns, BIG GUNS! But he don't ever hit that kid, no, not Khalil. I hope he's honest.
He asks about my boots, I tell him they are for ass-kicking and kneecap-breaking, general badassery. He thinks I'm being coy. He asks if Tom will get those boots in the air that night. I say not in the way I think he thinks. His half-white Bahamian friend backs away with his hands held up in a gesture of pacification. They have a woman, medium dark skin, fine bones from some long-ago Nigerian ancestor, very very thin, twirling her pool cue between her hands and watching it with downcast eyes. She smiles at me, sadly, as we pass by.
I want to come home from Boston via Philly, Cincinatti, and Columbus. I still can't seem to spell Cincinatti.
1.8 -- Food Service
11/9/2007 at 9:44 PM
I got a job at a restaurant and ate and ate and ate and ate. I ate even when I wasn't hungry, just because I couldn't believe how it felt, and because for this day only the food was free.
I am still eating. In fact I am sitting here surrounded by two lukewarm partial coffee beverages, with two half-sandwiches and three delicious partially dessicated cookies in my brown paper sack. This will probably last me into tomorrow, because I simply cannot fit any more food into me any more, at this point.
I had intense anxiety about starting this job. Idiotically, every time I am required to wake up early in the morning, I stay up idiotically late the night before, worrying that I won't be able to wake up in time.
But I did. I got up in time, and I arrived only two minutes late, and I was intensely afraid of making a bad impression until about 2 in the afternoon when I felt like I'd been working there for years.
Tomorrow I will go back to being hungry, because I like to keep my body guessing. But every now and then it deserves a break, a reward for putting up with me.
I am still eating. In fact I am sitting here surrounded by two lukewarm partial coffee beverages, with two half-sandwiches and three delicious partially dessicated cookies in my brown paper sack. This will probably last me into tomorrow, because I simply cannot fit any more food into me any more, at this point.
I had intense anxiety about starting this job. Idiotically, every time I am required to wake up early in the morning, I stay up idiotically late the night before, worrying that I won't be able to wake up in time.
But I did. I got up in time, and I arrived only two minutes late, and I was intensely afraid of making a bad impression until about 2 in the afternoon when I felt like I'd been working there for years.
Tomorrow I will go back to being hungry, because I like to keep my body guessing. But every now and then it deserves a break, a reward for putting up with me.
1.7 -- Rednecks, Hippies, and Really Living
11/7/2007 at 9:24 PM
Caffeine twitch. Jazz overload. Didn't get out of bed at all yesterday, and I mean at ALL. Only piss-poor convenience store coffee and a bit of semen in my stomach (am I making that last part up? maybe, it has a nice beat and a great shock value). I feel fucking AMAZING. And I mean AMAZING.
Sixty dollars to get Internets at my house. Shit, I would rather spend six dollars and every night in a coffee shop. At least that way I also get fed. And am forced to spend time around people. Right now I am sitting at a table in the French maid's dress that Matthew made fun of earlier (I do have to alter it a little, the neckline is too high) and forcing everyone else around me to take my presence seriously. I think I might be high on being hungry. Whatever it is, it is the best high I've had. As long as I can keep from passing out.
It is fucking COLD in this town. I can't feel my feet. I long for Kentucky, I could handle the rednecks right now, or West Virginia with the goddamned hippies. I can't wait for two weeks from now, fifteen hours on the road to Boston and my bourgeoisie family. I might even regauge my ears for the occasion. What is money but for to spend it, and what is family but for to offend them? Shit, this feels like I am really living. I am glad that I grew up practically Amish, so I can tell the difference.
Sixty dollars to get Internets at my house. Shit, I would rather spend six dollars and every night in a coffee shop. At least that way I also get fed. And am forced to spend time around people. Right now I am sitting at a table in the French maid's dress that Matthew made fun of earlier (I do have to alter it a little, the neckline is too high) and forcing everyone else around me to take my presence seriously. I think I might be high on being hungry. Whatever it is, it is the best high I've had. As long as I can keep from passing out.
It is fucking COLD in this town. I can't feel my feet. I long for Kentucky, I could handle the rednecks right now, or West Virginia with the goddamned hippies. I can't wait for two weeks from now, fifteen hours on the road to Boston and my bourgeoisie family. I might even regauge my ears for the occasion. What is money but for to spend it, and what is family but for to offend them? Shit, this feels like I am really living. I am glad that I grew up practically Amish, so I can tell the difference.
1.6 -- Boredom, Blacksmiths, Country Music
11/4/2007 at 9:22 PM
I AM BORED OF EVERYTHING.
This is what I call writing. Someday this is going to be my book. I am going to publish it as one of those quirky little memoirs of mental illness that everyone seems to like so well. Maybe someday someone will make a movie of it and Christina Ricci can star in it. Oh wait, they already made one like that. Except the heroine was less interesting.
I AM BORED OF EVERYTHING. But at least I finally sobered up, and my mind doesn't feel like a huge lump of cotton.
I realized today that it takes a triumvirate of people to make me happy: one that I care about, one that I fuck, and one that cares about me. Some would advocate consolidating at least two, or maybe all three, but in my experience that has been ultimately an all-around bad idea.
So I want to seduce my blacksmith's son. I've known him for six years, since he was sixteen, and have rarely heard him speak. Only a month ago did he speak to me, and it was one word: "Maybe," when my mother asked if he remembered who I was. But damn, he is extremely good at handling horses.
If I could sing, I would become a country music singer.
This is what I call writing. Someday this is going to be my book. I am going to publish it as one of those quirky little memoirs of mental illness that everyone seems to like so well. Maybe someday someone will make a movie of it and Christina Ricci can star in it. Oh wait, they already made one like that. Except the heroine was less interesting.
I AM BORED OF EVERYTHING. But at least I finally sobered up, and my mind doesn't feel like a huge lump of cotton.
I realized today that it takes a triumvirate of people to make me happy: one that I care about, one that I fuck, and one that cares about me. Some would advocate consolidating at least two, or maybe all three, but in my experience that has been ultimately an all-around bad idea.
So I want to seduce my blacksmith's son. I've known him for six years, since he was sixteen, and have rarely heard him speak. Only a month ago did he speak to me, and it was one word: "Maybe," when my mother asked if he remembered who I was. But damn, he is extremely good at handling horses.
If I could sing, I would become a country music singer.
1.5 -- Hardship
11/3/2007 at 9:33 PM
The hardships of living the most extremely hardcore life I possibly can have finally caught up with me. I'm drained. Exhausted. Almost broke. Shackled with a sense of incompetence, dogged with a vague sense of emptiness and a fear of eminent collapse.
Not because I'm weak, mind you, or because I'm not hardcore -- it's because I am ALL ALONE OUT HERE. Other hardcore people have no empathy -- it's a cultivated ethic -- and I can't run on fumes forever.
I am going to have to stop caring.
Not because I'm weak, mind you, or because I'm not hardcore -- it's because I am ALL ALONE OUT HERE. Other hardcore people have no empathy -- it's a cultivated ethic -- and I can't run on fumes forever.
I am going to have to stop caring.
1.4 -- Reflection
11/2/2007 at 11:55 PM
I broke a table while incredibly wasted at a Halloween party at my best friend's house. Not because I'm heavy -- it was a shitty table. But I still shouldn't have climbed on it, no matter how wasted I was.
It seems every time I genuinely have a good time, something gets broken or ruined. Not as a direct result of my having a good time -- just as a by-product. I'm not so sure it's worth the trade-off.
The government still has not given me more money to buy food. So I am still living on scrambled eggs, baked apples, and gas-station coffee, sometimes coffee-shop coffee if I feel like splurging.
Speaking of which, tomorrow I think I am going to buy an iPod with the credit card I don't intend on paying back. I hope buying an iPod doesn't make me a sellout. I hate Steve Jobs but I think I love music more.
It seems every time I genuinely have a good time, something gets broken or ruined. Not as a direct result of my having a good time -- just as a by-product. I'm not so sure it's worth the trade-off.
The government still has not given me more money to buy food. So I am still living on scrambled eggs, baked apples, and gas-station coffee, sometimes coffee-shop coffee if I feel like splurging.
Speaking of which, tomorrow I think I am going to buy an iPod with the credit card I don't intend on paying back. I hope buying an iPod doesn't make me a sellout. I hate Steve Jobs but I think I love music more.
1.3 -- Incredulity
10/30/2007 at 4:34 PM
At eight o'clock this morning my mother and I got wasted in a bar full of young gay men and middle-aged single women, a population apparently representative of third shift at the casino where Ma works. At one point I was smoking two clove cigarettes that I had placed filter-by-filter between my fingers like the letter V, and at least once I danced on the pool table. Then my best friend started puking and I had to drive her home, after waiting for her to sober enough to present to HER mother.
As a result, I missed my bus back to Pittsburgh, and ended out here in front of my computer, realizing that I have an entire shit-tonne of stories to tell but that nobody will probably believe them.
As a result, I missed my bus back to Pittsburgh, and ended out here in front of my computer, realizing that I have an entire shit-tonne of stories to tell but that nobody will probably believe them.
1.2 -- Humility
10/29/2007 at 8:12 PM
There is something completely ironic about the name of this website. If any of us were humble, it would stand to reason that we would not join a site dedicated to self-promotion. I would call this website, "LOOK AT MY ART MOTHAF*CKAS" but maybe that loses some of its ring.
1.1 -- Depression
10/28/2007 at 2:17 AM
I did something very silly last week. I downloaded the entire discography of Bright Eyes and listened to it chronologically backward. By the time I reached Fevers and Mirrors I found myself begging the computer screen, "Don't kill yourself yet! Cassadaga will be your best album!" and then I felt like an idiot.
Yesterday, Saturday, I woke up deciding that commiserating with Conor Oberst said something sad about my life, so I did something productive. I decided to download Brokeback Mountain. I make the most amazing decisions sometimes.
In a few hours, in the morning or maybe afternoon, I am going to go back to Erie, pick up my new pair of glasses, visit my old friends,and fight with my mother. Hopefully on Tuesday there will be an open bar. It sure is pretty up there this time of year.
Yesterday, Saturday, I woke up deciding that commiserating with Conor Oberst said something sad about my life, so I did something productive. I decided to download Brokeback Mountain. I make the most amazing decisions sometimes.
In a few hours, in the morning or maybe afternoon, I am going to go back to Erie, pick up my new pair of glasses, visit my old friends,and fight with my mother. Hopefully on Tuesday there will be an open bar. It sure is pretty up there this time of year.
1.0 -- Introduction, Observation
10/28/2007 at 12:37 AM
I'm doing this as an experiment. Evan, it's on.
* I bought a garter belt and a pair of backseam stockings last week, and unwrapped them today. On the piece of cardboard inside, there was printed the slogan: "Mix'n Match Accessories -- Build your on set!" and below that, the line "Sassy - Sexy - 24/7!"
24/7? Really? I would get REALLY TIRED of being "Sassy - Sexy", 24/7. Although ... maybe it's inherent.
I could get really into a discussion of what this ad implies about women, and about its products, but I think just typing this is enough.
* I think it's very interesting that individuals are REQUIRED to enter their genders while registering for this site. It strikes me as odd. I wonder if the computer is secretly matching us all to one another, or doing tests or making psychological profiles.
* Last night on the 86B, an old man in a long coat and a straw hat was doing the hump dance, very happily and enthusiastically. It made me laugh and cry at the same time.
* I bought a garter belt and a pair of backseam stockings last week, and unwrapped them today. On the piece of cardboard inside, there was printed the slogan: "Mix'n Match Accessories -- Build your on set!" and below that, the line "Sassy - Sexy - 24/7!"
24/7? Really? I would get REALLY TIRED of being "Sassy - Sexy", 24/7. Although ... maybe it's inherent.
I could get really into a discussion of what this ad implies about women, and about its products, but I think just typing this is enough.
* I think it's very interesting that individuals are REQUIRED to enter their genders while registering for this site. It strikes me as odd. I wonder if the computer is secretly matching us all to one another, or doing tests or making psychological profiles.
* Last night on the 86B, an old man in a long coat and a straw hat was doing the hump dance, very happily and enthusiastically. It made me laugh and cry at the same time.
