Monday, August 3, 2009

Fuck You, Fuck Me.

Coming off my night shift in that haze, I see my feet, my boots in a friends new profile picture, our boots pressed together in this way from the time we looked at each other in that way. I wonder what his intention is. It's all very hard to understand no matter which angle you look at it from. And I agree with Alisha, men and women are so very different, so pathetically and profoundly different all at once:” I draw hearts in the clay while they look for their next job." Alisha is saying something about the differences between men and women in relation to goal orientation and she may as well start with the sex organs to prove her point if you ask Cixous and me; I am talking about multiplicity and interconnectedness vs. linear and independent thinking.

I try not to get all caught up in this sort of thing, heartthrob and gross reason, but as it turns out I am a real live human woman, (thinking, feeling, desiring, demanding), and I can't be sorry for any of it.

Radical differences invoke crazy making. I mean that rather than finding some meeting point, some perspective as insight, the sexes remain in this cesspool of confusion and misunderstanding: "Fucking men." "Fucking women."

NO, Fucking You

Some possible differences:

Men and women tend to approach problems differently. While our ability to problem solve is equal, our approach and process tends to be different. For most women, sharing and discussing a problem presents an opportunity to explore, deepen or strengthen the relationship with the person they are talking with. Women are usually more concerned about how problems are solved than merely solving the problem itself. For women, solving a problem can profoundly impact whether they feel closer and less alone or whether they feel distant and less connected. The process of solving a problem can strengthen or weaken a relationship. Most men are less concerned and do not feel the same as women when solving a problem.

Men approach problems in a very different manner than women. For most men, solving a problem presents an opportunity to demonstrate their competence, their strength of resolve, and their commitment to a relationship. How the problem is solved is not nearly as important as solving it effectively and in the best possible manner. Men have a tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem solving process. They set aside their feelings provided the dominance hierarchy was agreed upon in advance and respected. They are often distracted and do not attend well to the quality of the relationship while solving problems.

While men and women can reach similar conclusions and make similar decisions, the process they use can be quite different and in some cases can lead to entirely different outcomes. In general, men and women consider and process information differently.

Women tend to be intuitive global thinkers. They consider multiple sources of information within a process that can be described as simultaneous, global in perspective and will view elements in the task in terms of their interconnectedness. Women come to understand and consider problems all at once. They take a broad or "collective" perspective, and they view elements in a task as interconnected and interdependent. Women are prone to become overwhelmed with complexities that "exist", or may exist, and may have difficulty separating their personal experience from problems.

Men tend to focus on one problem at a time or a limited number of problems at a time. They have an enhanced ability to separate themselves from problems and minimize the complexity that may exist. Men come to understand and consider problems one piece at a time. They take a linear or sequential perspective, and view elements in a task as less interconnected and more independent. Men are prone to minimize and fail to appreciate subtleties that can be crucial to successful solutions. A male may work through a problem repeatedly, talking about the same thing over and over, rather than trying to address the problem all at once.

Women have an enhanced ability to recall memories that have strong emotional components. They can also recall events or experiences that have similar emotions in common. Women are very adept at recalling information, events or experiences in which there is a common emotional theme. Men tend to recall events using strategies that rely on reconstructing the experience in terms of elements, tasks or activities that took place. Profound experiences that are associated with competition or physical activities are more easily recalled. There appears to be a structural and chemical basis for observed memory differences. For instance, the hippocampus, the area in the brain primarily responsible for memory, reacts differently to testosterone in men and it reacts differently to changing levels of estrogen and progesterone in women. Women tend to remember or be reminded of different "emotional memories" and content to some extent as part of their menstrual cycle.

But, the ‘root of the root, the bud of the bud,’ (the who of the what) is that whether you are man or woman (or trans-gendered of course!) it all boils down to the self, aside from any biological differences research begs.

So (please), Fuck the “Men, Women!” generalizations. Learn from your opposite sex to find both femininity and masculinity in the self, and then paint a collaborative non-fucking picture.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Kaly, is that you?

"A - -AAA lissssa........."

Kaly? Kaly? You're breaking up!

"I I I HAte........"

Kaly, is it who I think??

"Yes. Margot."

I know Kaly, she is a real Pedi these days...But you're not a puppy anymore. You can stop the abuse now.

"She is s s sc sca scary, especially since Pizza.....Pizza Hut"

I know Kaly, I know. She has gained weight. But just say no; No means no Kaly.

"I love you Alissa, I love you more than God loves everything and everyone."

I love you too Kaly, I love you too.
ok, I smoked and ate icecream, but it's just because I wasn't ready for the change and I panicked. I'm still off the E. Feeling better now that one of my besties came to visit. Hi Alisha! I hope the apartments cozy for you and Kaly.

Day 2.

Scariest part of a roller coaster ride is the slow ascent to the top, when you hover its dive for about 5 seconds, and anticipate your grave plunge.

Now I am suspended; I have more than 5 seconds before I take my official plunge, but my ride will be for about 2 weeks rather than 2 minutes.

So, here I will make a promise entirely for my own benefit. I will write everyday for the next two weeks, with no structure or expectation in mind except complete honesty.

Day 2:

No: Cigarettes, Caffeine, E.


Let the hallucinations begin.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Do you have the Need for Speed?
Be consistent, like Obama.
Consequences exist.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Don't Kill Me, Love Me.

Naked obscurity is aiding me in self-discovery. I am learning about my needs and desires, a good place to begin. Winnie embraces me without any motive necessarily, and Kate is willing to share even in the midst of my raw intimidation; simple gifts are keeping me afloat when it feels like, whether justified or not, I have a broken heart.

I am a good person am I, being in community supporting those with disabilities? I don't know where I would be without those who I apparently support. I need these friends, and I need their communion.

I used to laugh at this sort of thing in adolescence, as if broken hearts were drama and pain without a cause. Humans are complex, contradictory, and it seems like there IS truth with a capital T, but it is plural rather than singular, Many rather than One. This is not an argument for relativity; it is a statement about truth being a conglomeration of difference. I think unity can be achieved this way.

Until the end of time I will ask questions, confident that there are no answers for me (little me) to attain. Is it possible that the questions are the answers? And that questioning IS the process that deepens our humanity until ultimately details are more sensible and visible, and further, the ability to be present becomes a natural condition for humans to live meaningfully?

I keep getting caught in the gaze of core members, asking me to be with them NOW. A gaze is a request or a demand; immediately the stranger speaks with their eyes, "Don't kill me. Love me." I don't touch the stranger, unless I have one of my public transit encounters...sharing happens there, hugging and crying and gratitude too.

…But when the One follows that gaze, fingers your vulnerabilities, asks for your assurance beyond immediate and necessary encounters in otherness, here your emotional safety walks the plank.

I once read that intimacy by kiss is dangerous…you risk a bite.

I don't know who has done the biting this time.

Monday, April 27, 2009

My Puzzle Piece

A faculty of lack implicates me,
declaring itself the 'isness' of now.
Empty Visions lead me astray
as the ideas that were forced to percolate
are sheeted like old furniture protected, gone unused.
Now without authority, my identity as lacking
hovers like sunbirds eating from tobacco tree flowers;
not stimulating my freedom, but imprisoning it.

I am mid home,
but my absence is close.
I am not singular; I hinge upon you for who.
I am rooted in my image, alienated from the real.
Know that you can take me, and that you will.
You won't stop because I am a function,
Your Function, the what of the who for you.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

about accuracy.

i'm busy now. don't tell me I am not. i am making progress, my heels are clicking. i simply cannot understand people. sorry sorry. I can hear a collective lost house for you to buy. society is clashing with the bass. back bake. don't stop organizing yourself, take the parts, deconstruct before the reconstruct, for you are something that the whole world is sadly deceived by; our real life. shhh shhh...no better than a culture for timber, history for relationship. if you sew one finger to the other, nothing more will be completed. fable, for me. close your eyes not because it will balk like a mean chicken, but because the stranger was thrilled, thrilled at the way she moved her hips, her tight braids. easter basket and easter bunny and basket and dyed straw that talked when it wanted to and bowl stood a while in thought about wooden spoon used for balance and repetition. i'm being accurate.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Internal Angst of Being Human

1. Death. A tension between our awareness of our pending death and our wish for continued consciousness.

2. Freedom. A clash between our desire for objective and external guidance in the choices of life and our awareness that ultimately we have to make choices on less than rational grounds.

3. Disaffection. There is a collision between the collectivist demands for conformity and the everyday reality of social rituals used to cover up selfishness and deep down lack of concern for others.

4. Isolation. There is a mismatch between our awareness of solitariness and our human desire for contact and protection (we want to avoid loneliness and be a part of the bigger whole).

5. There is a conflict between our desire for unique self-assertion and control, and a need for human love and friendships.

6. Self-deception. There is disparity between our imaginative and self serving self-concept and the more detached and accurate reports of others (prompts us to patch up apparent flaws and inconsistencies with a network of excuses and fabrications).

7. Meaninglessness. Along with a growing scientific understanding of cosmology, there comes a dilemma in our meaning seeking; an awakening in the middle of nowhere in a universe that has no apparent purpose or meaning that we know.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Desire often arises at the most inaccessible moments.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Squirrel Attack, people.

I will stop walking to watch squirrels closely. This is a habit. I have a habit. I like looking them in the eyes, asking them "how do you do?" Usually, squirrels who catch the likes of my eye are sporadic, unusually indecisive even for a squirrel. As I'm watching though, I grow more and more frightened by the idea that squirrel will attack me, and this is always how my instance with squirrel moves along:

a) I see a squirrel. It is behaving oddly.
b) How do you do, squirrel? We have a time, a moment.
c) I become especially fond of squirrel because he behaves oddly.
d) Squirrel hops towards me a little, tells me "I'm going to attack you."
d) Fear (what the heck is with this talking squirrel?)
e) I envision the squirrel biting off my face, I'm unable to tear it away! Or it bites a part of my clothing and I try and try to shake it off, but i can't and I can feel squirrel biting and scratching my skin and I'm really scared.
f) I run away, I run away real fast.

www.illwillpress.com/SS6622.html

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Dearest lover,
I'm short on change. Please give me some, or else I'll die.
Yours.

Dear banjo, you are the ultimate tool for nostalgia.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Not Back

Dear friends,

I Live.
I am alive in reality for the first time.
The world is profoundly unfamiliar, a real fresh.
Some people call this 'born again' and
I am.

Yours,
Truly.

Something I know is that the mystery is that we don't know what?

the time is a time that the Time is a Time, that
Something is happening is happening no.
Nay, na, lest discuss i cry.
the mind has a mind of a Mind of its own,
i'll be breath no so
words is Word in countless world.
With your eyes closed close your eyes no close
subtle Details sew,
in reality it's never beauty false shown from with me home.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

A dream

Margot and I are in a house at the top of the hill, the one surrounded by sharp black gates, and on the corner. While we are in the washroom getting ready for a party, I notice a device on the upper wall by the heater, a recorder of sorts. I watch Margot staring at herself endlessly, doing nothing different than that. Hedley is waiting to drive us to the party, but it’s like we can never be ready enough... We’re now at the party. Her and I are walking with a group of people. It’s dark and we’re passing many different trees that should not live together like this. Nothing is familiar. I don’t know where we are. A man puts his arm around my waste, and I think it is weird... Now I’m in a pet store with Margot and the man. A red button-vested employee is carrying a little black rabbit. I ask her if I can hold it. She immediately extends the rabbit for me to take. I hold it for a long time, petting it, feeling like I can’t pet it enough... I can’t find Margot or the man. I am searching the store frantically. Rabbit is pressed up against my chest. I’m petting it and petting it even as I run. I’m scared. We’re supposed to be at the party. I suspect plans have changed again. Like that, I see her walk through the automatic doors. She is wearing something different from before. It’s a blue dress over jeans.... No one will take the rabbit. I keep trying to give it back. Both employees and customers are telling me that they can’t take rabbit because there are to many different cages and they forget which one he belongs to. Finally I set rabbit onto the linoleum floor, and it runs to the stores back wall. I’m worried. I run after rabbit. Rabbit went down a hole, and ran through a tunnel under the wall. There are smaller holes punched into the floor and I can see him passing through. I keep trying to grab rabbit, but my hand is too big. I give up on rabbit. I leave the pet store.... I’m searching for Margot’s car, but I can’t find it. I open a car door. The man is inside. He doesn’t notice me. He drives away seconds later with his car door still open. Finally I see the back of her car. I get in. I say to her “plans have changed haven’t they?” Her eyes glow dangerously. “We’re going to the cham dance now.” I say, “Fuck.” She laughs, telling me she knew that I would be mad. I feel annoyed that she doesn’t feel the same way.... We see the highway from the parking spot. There is a deep ditch on either side of the highway. We are supposed to go around to get on our way, but instead she pushes her foot to the pedal accelerating fast in an attempt to jump the ditch. We are high in the air. It feels real, this horror is actually happening. My body is really dropping, the same sensation as in a broken elevator. Turning my head to her I say, “I love you.” She says back, “I know”, or “I love you too,” I’m not sure which.... She is at ease, like nothing bad is happening. We land and the car crunches on all of its sides and we are still okay. Our faces are practically touching and what we are doing is staring at each other as we become more entrapped on each roll. Margot and I stop rolling, but continue to slide. The car is upside down. We know that the world is moving as usual. I finally see her face change. She says, “I don’t understand why this isn’t ending, when is it going to stop? I’m scared now. I think I’m really hurt too.”

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Don't Know no Witness Until Now.

The coffee maker sputters thick black slower than a dripping IV. The sink and tub drains are stubborn too. Toothpaste spit floats closely to my face or filthy water blankets my feet. All is displaced, grimy, intolerably maddening.

We stagger into the garage taking hold of vinegar. Our kitty pool (printed by kitty's and umbrellas) is overflowing with jug-like containers. We hoard these containers rudely and embarrassingly because desperation is this way. I once pushed a farming man from a bridge since he possessed what I wanted.

We unscrew the caps, give a whiff, make the face and douse ourselves in the solution. Rather than unclogging what surrounds us, we drench our bodies. It's like playing with the hose in the summertime. He keeps pouring it in my eyes and they are burning from my face. I note his glass cut hands and I decontaminate them. This isn't a game of dare, rather it is how we are who.

We laugh instead of admitting the acidulous agony. I am powerfully delirious. I have been living from vinegar, and I am accustomed to this sensation, but no one has ever engaged in this sort of behaviour with me.

"I was in a curious mood that night, weary yet restless, eager yet impotent to seize the object of my search, and full of haunting images that would not stay to be reproduced...I slowly became aware of a disturbing influence whose power invaded my isolation, and soon took shape in the uncomfortable conviction that someone was looking at me."
Salt shaker salt shaker, shake yourself empty. I will refill you, this is its remedy.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Notes from God.

I bought a button today. Signed underneath its note was:

-God

I love the idea of God writing me notes and then signing his name.

Oh, I just got one...

(From God to Alissa)
Dearest Alissa, I love you so much that sometimes other people are actually alone because I am busy being with you.
Love from God

blink, BLANK.

BadGoodBadGoodBadGoodBadGood
is how I reconcile myself now. I am not either/or, but a strict combination.

Living in Bad/Good extremes has been both horrifying and necessary for me. Attraction and repulsion rattled around in my mind and body and the experience became what I describe as good art, limitless (at least in the mortals sense of limit). These extremes perpetuated the suffering, which continuously invoked that violent internal movement. Our Bad Good call seduced one another into little discretion, and forced us to question if this sort of strength in our oneness was just too much.

In retrospect, I know I was cursed with a spell. You know who did it, don't you? Who cast the good/bad spell I mean? It was that witch, the one who hides on the insides of wine bottles in place of the message. The witch stole my message haven and after, well just ask him how many different people he met that summer inside my one body.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Inspired by a Utube Video

Feelin' Strong,
Not so Wrong.
Yea,
For Real.
Gurl.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Danger is at the Top

My best friend Margot claims that it is both scary and hard to be as Good as she is. She tells me that being so Good comes with a price. The price is the agonizing fear that she will slip from her superiority because from her view, the only direction that she can go now is downward. Perfection is a hard thing.

Do we actually want our world to be perfect? That would produce two alternatives: remaining forever the same, or worsening. Presumably no one wants the latter; but the former to leaves a lot to be desired. There is the problem of unrelenting boredom, which makes perfection itself look suspiciously like worsening. At the least, as Lovejoy observes "It is not obvious that remaining forever unchanged should be regarded as excellence." Perhaps the best possible world then is one where there is "a force always at work to make the best better and the worst good."

Climb down a little, Margot. Give yourself, at least, the illusion that you have something more to attain, and perhaps you will feel less fearful of the downfall.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

pst pst psttt

This apartment on Dundas is one of school girl play. We really intend to do our reading and writing, but instead we pass notes under the noses of our invisible academic onlookers. We drink wine, and smoke joints, and sporadically grab from the book shelf sharing any authors obvious speculation on our lives. We know that Kierkegaard was thinking of us, specifically, when he wrote (at random flip) When you read God's Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, ''It is talking to me, and about me.'' This quote reads as a double effect, how delightful! This flip to Kierkegaard was no more intentional than the other times, yet this instance shows exactly as I was trying to describe. The universe wants you to know these things as you're ready, and what matters is whether you are listening to its hidden calls, or not.

Oh the night grows nearer to morn' and we know it is time. We shuffle into the backroom, one with two beds, and I sleep in whichever bed I did not the night before. The problem is, this room we associate now with more play. We lie in bed, whispering to each other's close faces perversity's like "Kaly told me she's gonna get wit you" from, "it's a secret." And we laugh and laugh, saying the same fucking things over and over again, and eventually the third of us feels left out not being directly in on it and crawls into the opposite bed. All three of us are sleeping together now, I think feeling the same degree of distance from this and our more conventional lives.

Our adage remains, "we only have this day once." Oh the choices that repeatedly follow under this logic are always excessive. We're very good at being excessive. We perpetually justify our radical behaviour this way. It was only this past New Years that Alisha yelled to me in the party store, "You only have New Years once!" and that's when I realized that we had not been thoughtful for months, living entirely by our passions. Beautiful isn't it, until we can't pay rent.

Only weeks ago did our utopia turn for madness. We had a visitor. For most of the weekend, our time together was good, but every relationship has a story and any aspect of any story can be triggered and then energy mutates and it's all very physical when this happens. It was our last night together and we decided to go to a bar, one that we never usually play at, Joe Kools. We began with rounds of tequila for happiness. The shot is a shock to any presence, and that's what we wanted, to shock ourselves at the beginning for a shocking end. Our end experience was not our intention and how often is this the case?

Well time is a funny thing. Togetherness is a funny things too. Perspective is even funnier. And perception, it actually cuts one world into several. Kaly's ears are back (that's what she does when she knows she is doing something bad). I am feeding her, french fry after french fry. She eats them one by one. She is looking at me wildly, anticipating the next fry and I keep feeding her because I am being so fed by her ravenous, peculiar behaviour. It's all very compulsive. Well Margot's laughing, and this is always the story between her and I. This is why I thought I was funny for so many years, and then cruelly and bluntly, discovered that I was not.

Screaming from the other room is the next blip in my head. I only have fragments of this nights events, as all of us do. Kaly's gone running, and she eats more. One full falafel is ingested and she's licking her lips when I enter the bedroom to one of our four being throttled violently. It all seems in jest, but then sort of not and I'm trying in my state to make sense of something, anything really.

Lord of the Flies--it is like that sheer disorder. I look to my right, up against the wall is one of us, gripping an open jar of peanut butter, her eyes bestial and savage. Another one of us assumes a helping role, but is instead interpreted as warring. I can't see her eyes. Another one of us is the victim, there's always a victim. The look of terror in her eyes has burned itself into my memory. And the last one, she's the instigator, the fuse to all of this muddling and unnerving madness. I think hours went by. Screaming and violence, and hurting and none of us remember how to communicate.

All of a sudden, she's on the bed, pointing this small device, threatening us. We stop instantly, defensively, but still neglecting to take her entirely seriously. She spritzes at two of us, and we're coughing and running for air and I still don't really know what is happening. I am confused, trying to understand why everyone is coughing so intensely.

Margot's on her computer googling "when you've been pepper sprayed" or "effects of pepper spray." She is hollering out to us that we will only suffer for about 45 more minutes. Our skin is on fire, we're hanging out the apartment window with rags over our faces, trying to breath. Our noses are running and we're coughing until sickness. The fourth is gone now. She's taken the puppy too, which was a power struggle since Kaly couldn't decide between owner and an old sucker. She ate the sucker, then went.

We tried to sleep near open windows, frigid air attacking our bodies in rest. The fourth came back, and I went to her immediately, forcing her to let me. The three Dundas party girls ended in bed together, holding each other to unconsciousness.

Friday, January 30, 2009

wondering and wandering

How do you know which passions are necessarily for your end?

...

Corruptibility is always a function of Matter.

Love is in Union.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

I really hate to do this, but as I hung up the phone just now, I felt a twisting and nauseating pain in my stomach that is lasting. It is no longer the violent bug that poisoned every orifice of my body for a weeks length, but its source is emotionally invoked. It's a 'used to be love' ladies and gentlemen, which is so contaminated and cancerous now, it is hard to imagine that it ever was.

A turn to Rilke for hope:

How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
it does not touch yours? How shall I lift
it gently up over you on to other things?
I would so very much like to tuck it away
among long lost objects in the dark
in some quiet unknown place, somewhere
which remains motionless when your depths resound.
And yet everything which touches us, you and me,
takes us together like a single bow,
drawing out from two strings but one voice.
On which instrument are we strung?
And which violinist holds us in the hand?
O sweetest of songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke
New Poems: c. 1907

Lubricate Your Mind

I can see the mind becoming physically enclosed by a sort of lubrication like when you drink cups of wine, just enough to speak freely, maybe even interestingly. This state is a sort of displacement from the normal way that we might think about things. Is it a state that allows entry into the sublime? How do we access the deeper structures that animate the art that we love? How do we animate ourselves to create that which inspires the sublime state?

A true genius breaks the rules, breaks the systems to create. To be captivating is to push the limits and push the limits and then push them more until what you've created is so mind crushing that you can hardly look at it without having to love and revolt all at once.

What sort of passion is it that makes one incapable of experiencing the sublime? A Greek Philosopher Longinus says that it is when we are driven by the new, that being the latest craze or fashion, we have an ignoble soul. It is by this source of movement that we are incapable of entering the sublime.

Great limits exist, but we are the source of those limits that deceivingly enclose our worlds. The true limits, being the universal limits are beautifully mysterious and are far beyond what we can grasp. Transcend your limits by lubricating your mind. Coat your world anew by intoxicating confinement to invisibility so that you can both love what is to be loved, and shatter what is to be shattered in the realm of apathy.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Peeing in the tub is good for you.

In the bath tonight, I peed. To feel the warmness coming from inside and then for it to be on the outside was understandably soothing. Now it is hard for me to say this, more like make this confession as such, but I can't help knowing that this is only a normal thing to do. Somehow I know that sitting in your own urine, it can be good for you. And what is dirty about urine anyway? My body is so well hydrated that my pee nearly never has colour, nor odour.

I think that on a biological level, there are many acts in which we try to feel connected in the world. More interestingy though is how we try to grasp disconnection, like death. Keleman connected sex and death through the common force of excitement. For him, dying is also associated with unformedness, unconnectedness, and unknowingness. He related these issue's to the surrender of orgasm, "la petit mort"-the little death. "The orgiastic state produces feelings of dying , raises fears of dying..." He proposed that sexual intercourse provides practice for dying-the orgasm stimulating the letting go of life with its comitant intensity and exhileration. Well, fuck me.

Since my intentional pursuit towards death, I find it nearly impossible to be unrelative to death. Oh this makes enormous sense though, doesn't it? Do you think this is morbid? No no no, it is the furthest from morbid, but it is instead an intensely life-giving framework to live in; for what is living without then dying?