i found it interesting that you were from texas and served in the military and had anger issues that i just had to “deal with”
because it meant that you were everything i didn’t like about people although i thought your dry sense of humor was amusing and maybe i was just lonely and out of practice but you made me have anger issues too, i threw my phone at the wall once because i didn’t like you at all and I still really don’t

but i showed you my writing. a lot of people have asked.
i don’t know if you get that,
but you got my writing and you still have it. i wish i could reach in and delete the file from your phone because you’re one of the only people to have it and it was such a mistake because the words were so good and

we stopped talking, but you can see me whenever you want.

cd. log 1

I have been sitting in a room all day trying to cry. I immediately regret writing this because I hear the voices of people telling me that writing that kind of feeling in a public place will have repercussions. Professional repercussions. When I exist in artist-land or theater-land, this vulnerability is rewarded and cultivated. I firmly believe that you do not have to suffer to make great art – but what about a existing in a space that allows for suffering to become something else? That’s what allows for great art, and maybe for you to be a healthier human. Maybe.

There is a pseudo-anonymity to this blog in that not many people I know, or just people, will read this. I have linked to it several times. I have told people about it. But, right now, I’m really betting on them having forgotten. I think that is a fair bet. So bring on the repercussions, I guess.

Anyways, trying to cry. I can’t. It’s almost there. I remember in an acting class, a tip that was given was “if you are trying to cry, you won’t. so try not to cry”.

Problem is, it’s very hard to try not to cry when aren’t even sure you can cry at all. That makes sense to me, not sure how it will translate. Feeling things is difficult at the moment. It has been a very twisty day.

I used to have the awful thought that anyone who could articulate their depression very well did not have depression.
Wow, what a disgusting thought for me to have. I suck.

I had this thought because whenever I saw someone be open about depression, post on social media,etc, it immediately felt commercialized and commodified to me. That the depression had become a part of what made the marketable as a “followable” person. It was a cute thing to post about.

But the bitterness that built with this kind of thinking was extremely counterproductive and turned out to be more of a defensive barrier of my own insecurities more than anything else. Easy to figure out that one.

So now I’m writing this on my psuedo-anonymous blog. Welcome to clinical depression log entry 1. I am my own worst enemy.

As I was trying to cry, I felt myself slowly becoming a ghost. Just little parts. Like my left toes, my back pressed into the chair.

I thought of Anne Sexton and her tendencies to fall in love with/obsess over her psychiatrists. And I remembered that I need a new psychiatrist. I have never, but her passion for psychiatrists is the complete opposite of my feelings towards them, so if her spirit could bless me with a small percentage of that desire to make an appointment with one, please Anne Sexton, hear my call. It’s worth a shot.

Confessional poets had it figured out. Their relationship with art/suffering and being white upper class New Englanders is a whole other thing, but man, their cape cod poems about seagull and lighthouses or the insides of a swank mental institution are pretty amazing.

I then thought of all the things I wasn’t doing. First, I wasn’t crying. Second, I wasn’t doing any of the work I had to do. I always do my work. Always. What if this is the time I don’t. What happens then. I don’t know.

I don’t know. I am tired and I want to cry. And I’m still in the room.

lets yearn for the end together

if the world vanishes in an instant

like a small tug towards another place

there will be nothing to endure or witness

all that has been accumulated. gone.

it will be a more violent act than apocalypse by fire or nuclear bomb

because the violence will be in the lack. the emptiness. space left like a heartache yearning for atomic friction again. for matter. clinging to the dark space. lacks and emptiness dancing with each other in the dark and in separate rooms.

and no one will be there to feel it but the organism of the universe, calmly rearranging her gravitational pulls, like rolling a bead to right side of a necklace,
before continuing her expansion.

 

sci-fi won’t let you down, only it will

 

the white male time traveler may be the worst character archetype of all time.

at least, that’s what I’m really feeling at the moment as I am reckoning with my decision to do a deep-dive into classic sci-fi for my “summer reading project”. the previous summer I borrowed Ulysses from the library and read the first chapter 15 times. that was decent. as i’ve shouted on various social media platforms over the past few months (now you know why), classic sci-fi is THE WORST if you are like me and think women are people. all of the books on all the top lists are bad bad bad. i read Ringworld. no one should ever read that book again. a book in which the protagonist is a freaking ancient ancient slimeball who preys creepily on young women that remind him of daughters he could have had the entire book.

so anyways, the white male time traveler.

remastering a past he already mastered, or imagining a future in which his mastering of it is all but guaranteed.

a rare few pop culture phenomenons go against this grain, but it is a large stack of hay and microscopic needle when looking for that stuff. (A Wrinkle in Time….)

the most egregious example of male invented male conquered future/past/time travel is the largely beloved, and continuing cult classic, Doctor Who.

sexless-genderless alien my ass. he is the most gendered, surrounded by phallus symbolism (even wielding a sonic-screwdriver that “opens everything”). and any attempts the show makes to embrace the so called un-human like gender functioning of the doctors society ends up just facilitating the further sexualization of women. the doctor’s genderlessness is a quirk, not a model that subverts anything.

so there have been decades (a half of a century?) of these dudes running around time with (mostly) chicks as side-kicks. all of whom fall slightly in love with him and he can never really reciprocate because he is “different”.  the women are strung along in this reallyyyy elongated slow burn longing asexual love in which a mysterious man on his pedestal of the all powerful manipulator of dimensions and space repeatedly screws up the space time continuum in a quirky way. but faces few consequences. very male. very patriarchal.

will a female doctor change anything if the model is still the same but the gender of the doctor has changed? or will it just be the same same patriarchal time lord nonsense? I don’t know.

what’s the yonic version of the screwdriver??

I just remembered that Star Trek is great. I love Star Trek… but that sht is problematic too.

but all your faves are (don’t you forget).

 

 

 

 

sometimes depression is a thing you can internet joke about and meme or whatnot

but it took me 12 hours to write this post so

not today

new

I spent a long time staring at moss
so in love with its microorganisms

it must have been someone else who made it
or that it was just there waiting to be made

a quiet little romanticreational thought
minuscule myth-making
smaller and more intimate
and more of an artist thought to have
(looking closely at things)

ascending descending microbial deities
who write tiny books
and scream at feet or starers like me

well I walked to the corner shop and bought myself
a whole new look
and unmade me in only an hour
with shallow roots

a poem that I kind of got lazy with towards the end

hanging halfway out
I could sort of upside down see
the way the tracks were laid to support the car
absurdist railroad

and the thin black net cradling plastic bracelets
hats and blackberries

my torso crunching against the safety bar
at such high speeds
all contents of the stomach swimming up
on my way to becoming an inside out person

I was almost tossed completely off when
my therapist made this annoying metaphor
that my life was a rollercoaster
and I was hanging halfway out of the car.

I blinked.

Apparently, I should sit down and just take it
(life)
or something.

Vomit.

 

the Quaker van to DC

At the intersection of La La Land and Moonlight, I found myself in a van full of Quakers driving back from the Women’s March in DC. We didn’t plan to ride with this group, but there was a mix up with our Rally bus and we were stranded until someone hooked us up with a friend of a friend. A very kind woman extended an invitation to us and we squeezed onto their vans. Everyone was so kind to us considering they didn’t know who we were.  It was a very comfortable trip that was equally uncomfortable. I slept most of the ride there and most of the ride back, but at the rally/march itself, I couldn’t help to feel unsettled by the way we were carted into the Mall and back like it was a trip to a museum.

Halfway home, I was feeling antsy and for some unknown (probably liberal arts me) reason,felt an obligation to share with the kind Quaker strangers my anxiety about how we engaged in the protest. I whispered  “this feels wrong” to my mother, and she shot me a “don’t you dare say anything” look that had me biting my lip. She had been elbowing me to “network” the whole day. All of the people in the van were white, like me, and uber wealthy, not like me.

It started with a “Did you see La La Land?” three rows ahead of me. And then the ripple of praise for the film went through the van.Hey, I saw La La Land. It had a strong emotional impact on me. I’m an artist trying to find my path and that ending montage is amazing. I also see the flaws in La La Land and that, while a great film, in its dedication to the way films were made in a past, it is white-washing and devoid of relevancy to anything other than “going for it” . I offered my comments about really feeling emotional watching the film and added at the end, “but I’ve never been more impacted by a movie than by Moonlight.” Silence. “Oh. I haven’t seen that.”

I mean, I guess a lot of people don’t go to the movies all the time. BUT these people all saw Manchester by the Sea, Jackie, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Silence, Lion… I know this because after  mentioning Moonlight everyone in the van proceeded to talk about any other movie. One woman in front of me eventually turned around and said, “What’s Moonlight about?” A that’s all I needed. After not saying a word for the whole ride down there and most of the ride back, I performed  the most unnecessary monologue in defense of the beauty that is the film Moonlight. I mean. It’s an amazing movie, but that I felt like 11pm after 8hrs of walking was the best time to do this…. ehhhh.

Anyways, my main point was that, unlike La La Land, Moonlight is a film that felt important to exist in 2017. It is not about white straight people. It is performed by a cast of people of color. The acting is superb. The cinematography is stunning and felt new. And then I got even more heated… like amped up in a confined space heated. I asked people why they hadn’t seen it? Silence. I asked again.

No response again. I finally receded, put in my headphones and fell asleep.

And, worst of all, was how I felt as I cuddled back up into my coat pillow. Little self-righteous and “socially aware white girl” me thought that this was justice somehow. That if they saw this movie or  even my description about it,their white privilege (and my own) would somehow make the way in which we engaged in this rally OK.  OR that me just telling them about it was doing something. I don’t know…

As rallies and protests are becoming more and more what people “do” on the weekends, I know I need to examine how I show up and what I show up with. Whether that be privilege, my feminism (which is intersectional-in-training), my beliefs, my womanhood, my whiteness, etc. A tired and uncomfortable white person proselytizing to a van full of other white people on the importance of films that tell the stories of people who aren’t white is example of that. Maybe that’s an ok thing to do, maybe it was just rude.. but it’s just a small part of how privilege should be recognized and used to help those without it. And it shouldn’t be something that I feel “good” or “proud” of myself about. That’s for sure.

 

being honest

I only did two things today.

BUT it’s 2 more things than I did yesterday. AND it’s only 3:06pm.

la specola (a draft)

When we started we were too soft and too small.
We were slow, with no way to choose a certain path or direction.

One day, one of us, a certain soft and small thing, decided it wanted to touch another soft and small thing floating there, just within sight. It took the soft and small thing nearly a month of willing its nervous body towards the other. And when their bodies finally touched, their surfaces were so similar they slid off each other with no feeling or friction.

The soft small thing felt empty. It wanted edges. It wanted a way to steer. It wanted to contrast.

So it aimed to become harder, shelled, roughed, leather, crocodile. It did.
No more spineless days, ashamed of a soft small past.
It stomped. It crackled. It spiked. Friction.

Although the contrast was there, it still felt lacking and ached for satisfying contact.
After all that time and pain growing thick skin, it realized that contrast was just lost again. Just tough against tougher.

And so, after great consideration and debate, it decided to move backwards.
It longed to be soft and small again. Soft all over like the cool skin stretched over its scaled underbelly. The weak spot.

It willed it and it happened. I can’t explain how, but it definitely involved time.

It became a soft small thing again, but this time with edges on the inside. Bones, teeth, spines. It could now feel and edge, with nails to grip into other soft small things.

It feels ok like this for now, a balance. But it knows it can’t last much longer before the contrast is gone again.

 

inspired by a walk through Museo Zoologico La Specola.