Animal Stains

When I was younger, I did everything but punch.
It's happening again--I'm getting cuts on my hands and bruises on my knees. I was quite certain I'd left this behind. But then, I have a habit of living in circles--perhaps this was just one of the larger wheels, just now making it's second turn.
In this leg of the cycle, I am not a very good reader of books. It is this one that pushes out the next:
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
But I can never get dry.

D:

Job hunting sucks.
That is all.




No, that's not all--if I can't even take job hunting, I don't know how I expect to have feet in the rejection flurry that is the writing biz. Fuck that. Fuck this. This sucks. :\

Mrarghadsk;lfa;;hdfsk.

Dreaming up Flavrs

"I'll be there/by your side" I have this snippet of lyric/tune stuck in my head, but I don't know what it's from. It is choral with orchestration; unfortunately, that's a fair sized chunk of what I've heard lately. The lines are nothing in themselves, but they are sung in such a y a w n i n g manner that I cannot seem to shake them from my head.

I write that because I do not know what else to write here; I am terrified of what I might write here. This place has become so strange. It has made me strange.

It takes me ten minutes, tops, usually, to fall asleep in my dorm on a regular school night. I'm there, I'm thinking about stuff, then I'm out. But here, the air is so cold--it keeps me awake. The silence, somehow, keeps me awake. It's too dark--the sun rises but the curtains don't know. I stay awake hours extra because I have to be drop dead tired by the time I roll into bed or the places my thoughts will wander to in the meantime will scare me awake.

The dreams I have been dreaming alone in my dorm room--I'll get a house, I'll get a cat, I'll get a job, I'll travel--have existed in a vacuum. My whole thought process up there exists in a very selfish vacuum. And I am doubly embarrassed--first for these dreams, and again when, even after they've been put in context, I still find myself pining for them.

I don't know what to do; to confront is to admit and (to a degree) to settle--to be productive. But to ignore is selfish and cruel. Unforgivably so.
And this is all sounding very much like games, but I do not at all mean it to. There are some places I do not want games to go. This is one of them.
So let me give them another place to play:

I hate that you are different every time I close my eyes--not because I do not like the change, but because it is such a cruel thing to do when you know I must wake up to something quite fearfully static.

Returns

I feel terribly contrived sometimes, and I wonder if it is because I cannot be bothered with thinking more on certain things--I am too tired, too pleased, or else too displeased; either way, I am too much of something, and to try earnestly to write that away seems so silly. So the most I can do is offer up a bit of contrivance, an over used (and perhaps a bit roughed up for it) symbol; this is somehow, sometimes better than trying give a tired thing a paper ceremony, for it needs none--the ache, that fine pulled pleasure, is itself the ceremony to the pleasure or displeasure that preceded it, that caused it.

There is a distinct line between being tired and being jaded, and the former always pleases me on some level.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of waking up, and I am still not sure if this is something the parasite has to (or wants to) do. Or must do, rather.


It is not Isaac's intention to lie--it is not explicitly part of the rules of his game. But that is what the parasite must do when annexed, pushed out into the open, into a spot of discomfort. Lie. Make a sound to cover, to excuse away your presence. It does not mean to lie; it means only to make enough noise to allow it to creep back into the woodwork. It is not saying "go away," only "turn the lamp off, I can't see so good with all that musty light."

I am the English major of my family, and in my family, that reads deviant. Which I suspect is not so far from the truth, but it is that they make the truth seem so far (miles away, really), so Other, that miffs me a bit. My sister took one look at the book I was reading when she came home and pshaw'd--"that's such an English-y title," she said. And it was kinda true, akshully.
The first ten minutes of the drive home were spent arguing (and by arguing, I mean in the dissolving-into-lols-but-still-trying-to-be-12%-serious sort of way) over the definition of philosophy with my mum. I'd like her to know that not all philosophers are arrogant dick heads; I'd like her to know that not all college kids are shit faced crazy; I'd like it to be known that I am a bit arrogant, and a bit crazy. But more than this, I want her to be happy, and grow pretty plants, because she deserves this more than anything.
I have been all three (two?) of the cards I made for my TE at some point; but I have been known to linger in that first position.
So when I come home, I become my own secret; I slip into the screenname, the karma I've saved here.

I just saw a movie with my sister; afterwards, we talked about what we liked and what we didn't. Her overall opinion was positive; thumbs up, if she were Ebert. I did enjoy it, but there were several things that made me very...uncomfortable?
Namely the main dichotomy, and how it ceased to exist by the end. Well, I suppose it did still exist--but nullified. Neutralized. Dracula's teeth filed down to little nubs; Spartans with cake swords.
Also, it made entirely too much sense. And that was startling. And nude. And therefore, uninteresting.

Fiction, though sometimes nonsensical, does not erase what existed before it, in the same way that clothes do not erase the body below them. To leave a story so scantly clothed is to say, "I do not trust you to know where the shoulders, hips and bum are, so I will show them to you plainly now."
And the same with lies; that is, if you wear a barrel, it may hide the fact that you are wearing nothing underneath, or that you are wearing a nice pair of jeans. But it does not keep what is already there, skin or skin and jeans, from existing. It does not denature; it cannot denature, not at that level, but it can at the point of my tongue, and that is why that movie made me uncomfortable.
Movies have become very strange for me recently; I feel as if I am intentionally pulling myself out of the experience sometimes, which is not at all what I go there for.

~

I don't like the dreams I dream here. And I am aware that I'm dreaming different dreams. Stale dreams--more difficult to remember than the ones I've had squeezed in my little dorm room. I am aware of those ones being shorter, brighter...warmer? Can I say that? Does that make sense? The difference is one of room temperature, but it gets into the dream itself, too. There, I will call them dreams; here, I have...thoughts-while-I-sleep. I suspect they are more difficult to remember because I am not interested in remembering them.

I miss missing sleep.
Two days into my break, and yes--I miss town. I miss people.
I miss drawing--I've become artistically lazy to the max since I got here. I still owe Thunderwood a picture. I still owe several characters forms. I want to draw Unlikely Shapes. I--I think I'm gonna go to bed. Like Birdie. So much mud before the dawn--but that does not keep it from coming.

Saturday Night sketch spam

Much love to Sarah for letting me scan stuff for like, an hour. >_> I cleaned up the lines of some of the ones that got all sooted up, but that's mostly it. I draw faster when I'm...not all there. They're in chronological order, and you can kinda tell. Well, I can kinda tell, at least. Click on the picture for a less crap-sized version.

Rabbits and Jaw Bones

Beginning of the night, but after a few drinks or I wouldn'tve been drawing, I think.

Octoman

I think someone brought up octopuses. That, or you were all talking about sexy-type things. Sex and octopuses are pretty close in my head.

Frogs and Trees

I've been drawing mohawks lately; they please me. The thing on the right is pretty close to one third of what I drew for my Thought Experiment. The mysterious blank spots are where the Nothing ate away at that world.

Miggity Diggity Monster

The first of several things to not get real hands this night. I enjoy drawing thighs. I have no idea why I wrote "miggity diggity doo" in the upper left hand corner. But at least I remember doing it.

Muthafuckin playlist

The playlist was being changed on the laptop, I think. I like drawing the declivity between shoulder blades. Yes, the words "crawl" and "muthafuckin playlist"are there, and again, I'm not all that sure why. But still, I remembered writing these and going "wow--my handwriting's crap."

No Collar Bones

This was about when the movie turned on. She got bug arms 'cuz I said so. At the time, I was thinking of the ridiculous outfits they were wearing and the fact that cats don't have collar bones. Also David Bowie, I think. David Bowie and cats are pretty close in my head, too.

The Gut Returns

This is when the movie started to bother me and I started feeling nauseous. Not a good combination.

Djinn

Movie was still on. I think I was feeling less nauseous, but I was still rather displeased with what was happening on the telly. My way of getting back at things that displease me is drawing them. If parts of this picture seems familiar, yes, it is that character.

Up?

Oh, chatroulette adventures. :) This made me so happy I had to draw it. Also, as I was cropping this, I realized the word "up" is written upside down on the arm. This is very distantly familiar, but I cannot for the life of me actually remember doing this. It weirds me out.


All in all, that was some fun stuff, and I look forward to doing it (and drawing it) again sometime. You all are quite rad.

Furthermore,
Fuck yeeeeeaaaah.

203 sketch spam

OHEI.
I told myself I'd post all (or some, at least) of the stuff I drew during class (before I started bringing my larptap) at the end of the quarter--even if the lighting was bad, even if my webcam was crappy, which are both the case. I drew nice things in my other classes, but..not so much in 203. So sit back and enjoy the short spam.

Books and Still-to-do's

There is a book I want for my library that I am tentative to put in my library because I know it is in yours.
And for some reason, this duplication bothers me. I want to read this book again--all of it, this time, instead of all-of-two-chapters. But I cannot quite bring myself to buy it.

There is a picture (theme?) I draw over and over again--not every page in my sketchbook, not even every other other page. I have drawn things repeatedly before, but usually this stops when I have drawn it's best form (champion form--like it's a digimon or something), or when I'm pulled into another style or idea. But this thing...I must keep drawing. Even when the picture is a good one, passable, acceptable, it is never what it should be--it is good enough in some other category. I is a bird or a robot or a hound or a horse, but never what it should be. It is so far what it should have been now that I don't know that I will ever draw what I initially intended; those first sketches on lined paper, in older notebooks (I've saved them)--they are not the best looking, but they are closer to what I was looking for. Or at.


~

Now, what to do?
Beastly-huge portfolio has to be done for tomorrow; 5-page introduction, 10 more glossary entries, table of contents. And I have to track and return those poems for punk-ass-kid-who-will-not-be-named. Also need two more lines of iambic pentameter by conference time. Also need to contact my Logic prof. and get help before the final murders me next week.

For Friday, just the 2-page preface for the other portfolio. A nap would be nice, too. Finishing the first third or two thirds of my thought experiment would also be great; I would love to just have the marrow alone to work on over the weekend.

Then, finals time. And there isn't really much I can do then. Look at some apartments, maybe, if I have time. Take out the staggering amount of recycling/trash that's piled up over the last week. Get out of my regimen of Monsters (I'm working up a colorful little collection of their tabs). Walk. Nap. Pack. Go.

And the Beet(le) goes on

And then nobody wanted to talk about anything; and so then nobody talked about anything. And the town became one of sand, and a beetle crawled over it, leaving little footprints in them all.

Tee hee hee.

I should probably stop feeling so good about my next thought experiment; this is a sure sign that it will melt in the sun and ker-ploosh into the ocean. I've been drifting away from parasites; I'm not sure that my last TE will have anything to do with parasites, aside from perhaps borrowing the words of some people in the class of the same name or spawning off questions I would not have been asked if I had not taken it. But these quotes and questions have nothing directly related to parasites.
But isn't that ok? This class fulfilled it's purpose--it facilitated a connection; transmission.

Parasites has nothing to do with sweet potato curry; but I would not have had this happy (tasty) moment if this class and it's subject were not there to pass things along, to keep my social blood from clotting up.

If even it isn't seen, the parasite is there, as evidenced by the movement it causes. No poking, pinching, freaking out necessary; there is movement. It is there. Gtfoverit.
I am eating chunks of sweet potato and regular-type potato; it is there.
I am writing about art, and making it; this has nothing to do with parasites. But it doesn't matter--it is there. Or it has been. Something of sorts.

I am saying this because I need to convince myself; because I really am trying to go by what I wrote on my plurk profile, and give less of a fuck about certain things, and more of a fuck about certain other things.
If this were any other class, I would be nervous about what I plan to turn in. But I find I cannot be--not as much as I should be, at least. And it was the same with my last thought experiment. I felt I said very few things when I should have been pulling handfuls of academic rubies out of my pockets. I would have liked to have rubies to give; there is something delicious and sharp about having rubies to give, something beautiful, whole, and cut.
But I brought bread. No, that's a lie--I don't know how to make bread. I can't cook worth shit. But I have made:
That's right, bitches--strawberry daifuku'z, red bean and all. Ok, mine never looked nearly this pretty, and some of them (half of them) split open and leaked. But they tasted amazing, no matter how awful (pretty awful) they looked. I learned how to make them for the Japanese food presentation part of my Japanese 101 class, and I skipped a History class so I would have time to make them fresh. And my hands were red and hurt by the end of it, because it's hard to work with hot dough. And the kitchen was a mess. And I was almost late to class. And they really did look quite miserable. But my class loved it, and they loved that I'd made them. And after a nervous presentation on an empty stomach, I couldn't have been happier.

Rubies are all well and good to look at, but they do not taste very good.
I don't think my final thought experiment will look very good. I didn't even get the color right--it's brighter than it should be. I should have left the ochre out. Always leave the ochre out. But even still, I think it will taste better than eight pages of writing; it will be worth less, I feel. But it will taste better. And I have become quite fond of food lately.

So here's a list of things I want to learn how to cook once my roommate and I get an apartment (and cat):

Sweet potato curry (gonna need Ace's help on this one)

I've absolutely fallen in love with the couscous stuffed bell peppers they serve in the dining halls. I don't know why. I'm not terribly fond of bell peppers.

Fuck yeah kimchi pancakes.

'Nuff said.

In the process of figuring out how to get sweet rice dough to not be a betch, I tried my hand at these. The dough ended up being too soft, too much, and I don't think I cooked them enough. And even still, the sauce made them taste good. So I'd like to actually make these someday.

I < 3 rice pudding. The interwebs tells me I can make it with my rice cooker, which sounds enticingly (and perhaps deceptively) simple.




I've heard some horror stories of this cake not turning out right, but I don't know where to get them up here, so I might as well try to make one. Also, the first time I had one, I didn't realize they put paper on the bottom. So I ate the paper. And my mum and sister lol'd at me for a good five minutes. Not cool.





This will be my last legit, semi-class related post. Everything afterward will be personal, or related to future classes, or, this summer, related to the apartment-getting experience (Chelsea's idea).

So...good eatinz to you all, I hope.

Tea 3

You are involved.
But this game has nothing to do with you, Isaac.
And that is why it is a cruel one.
You really are included and excluded.
You are a field, a board of points upon which we (I) play.

~~

And he is wondering where that angel is with that knife.
And he is feeling a sharp angle at the back of his neck.
And he is wondering why he is suddenly wondering--
What is my name? What is my name? Abraham, Isaac, Adam, Le--no, no no not that. I am one of the others. But which? God, when did it get so hard to remember? I must be getting old. Or maybe I'm too young. Where is my face? I must see my face--then I will know. Yes, then I will remember; then I will be able to see myself and the angel and my son and my father and the knife and--
what his name is.


~~
There is no such thing as sex.
That is to say, this thing that we fear and love and make look mad--it is not at all the five minute toss in the bag that is actuality.
The thing that is all these things has nothing to do with sex--unless one so chooses; it is everything, and so it can be anything. It can be wine or chairs or sound or sex. Sex is not dangerous; this thing that can be(come) sex is.

~~

This...this is better and worse. This is safer and more dangerous than what that other fool does by his own rules. He, he is arrogant--he thinks his rules are better, just like that other him. But I believe this one--I think his rules really are better. He does not lie; it is not part of his game. So I like this boy better. And to the already established, he has added a rule I secretly love: the rule of regret. It is a human rule. It is the rule of time. He knows he will make mistakes, even by his own rules, and so he makes this provision. He will regret. And in return, time will love him--time will forget. He will hurt and ache and spin himself green but time will let him play again. It is not a restart--things do not disappear; they are compiled. Cached. Collected. And a year from now, if he happens to remember, he will still regret. And time, again, will forgive, and this will go on until he cannot remember and time cannot forgive a wrinkle that has been smoothed.
I like this boy's game. Even if he doesn't win. The other one wins--thinks he wins. But he is like some rambling monster, on and on, his thoughts sharp and bent like a piece of scrap metal.
This boy, poor boy, sweet boy--what's his name? Don't know his name--he is always dying. Regretting. Making wry smiles and cursing. And there is a moment of silence, of stillness, between one motion and the next, between one life and the next, between one move and the next--

"that's wizard's chess."

and it is in this moment that I hear him breathing.
Hard and uneven, like he's hit the ground hard.
Did I push him? Did I put him there, bent over with something sharp at the back of my neck--I don't think I should go any further, now. Not until I remember my name.

~~

I sent a message last night, and got one back this morning. It was nothing of significance. But it did make me happy. And I want to share it and show it off, because it is such a perfect crystallization of a smiling moment. But I cannot, because you will see it, read it, maybe smile, maybe not, and then be done with it; and I will know, because these are the things a moth knows like the dust on its wings. This is one of those things that is valuable through silence. This is something I will hide in a book--and then, if it is found, it is found.

Spiders Suck.

[Yeah, you heard me. They totally do.]

A response and reorganization of things that will spill into TEa3.

See how easy it is to make sentences here? I am a terrible, comfortable creature--Storni's cozy, writing bug from "I Am Useless":

But tied to the seductive dream world
Of my instincts, I returned to my dark hole
where, like a lazy and greedy insect
I was born for love (23)

It is not an accident that I do not catch eyes; if I am given the opportunity, I will avoid them at every turn, like a patch of nettles. It is not an accident that I was memorizing the fuzzy shapes and colors of a bookshelf over the tops of my glasses.


I am a half-lit light bulb; the other half is missing entirely. In space. In a cake. In a neural web. Somewhere. Someday, maybe.


And I must rephrase something that came out garbled: I do not feel like I am killing someone when I write. That would be weird--though I admittedly went through a PKing stage in my writinz. But I do feel as if I am killing something. I am killing a connection; burning a bridge; squishing a flea. I can face the source after I have written--bitten?--them. But it can be rather uncomfortable. My mind is hazy--the process of extrapolation and then writing is not clear cut. I am first thinking about someone, then thinking along dangerous lines, then, the tipping point: I give them a story, and they are safely pressed into fiction, safely fitted to a context again.

But if I should meet them again, it is a most uncanny meeting--for the character is not in the page, but in the mind of the author. And it is not so easy pulling those things apart. The flea on my arm, the toxo in my gut, the character in my head--it changes the way I see the source of inspiration, whatever it may be, for that, too, though tangibly real, has its spot in my head.

If you are smart, you will make friends with me before I make friends with the image of you. The bloodletting has begun--how many days do you have before Mina goes past the point of no return, as Lucy did? You must catch the vampire and stem the flow, stop the anemia--keep that life in it's original owner, always more desirable than the immortal container.

I am trying very hard to believe this, but sometimes, to my horror, I find I do not.


Also, proof that I had a nicer version of that stupid flower thing, with legit notes and everything:


Well...not that much nicer. And the subject is actually slightly different. I guess I should redraw it.

~

The opium eater wants to quit when he's sober; but he wants nothing more than what he has when he is in a moment of thrall. He wants both to be cured and to be left alone with his sickness. The situation of the writer (or, at least, those Kreisler-ish types of writers described by Schopenhauer) is not very different. But perhaps I am going too far to call writing a sickness--but I'm not talking about pen and paper; this is what happens before anything is physically written. This is the altering, the editing.


To have one foot in either world--yes, that would be ideal. But the right foot is on a muddy hill; one footstep is all that is needed to begin a very dangerous descent. One begins losing their footing from the very first.

I have gotten carried away before; I have given entire nights to trying to find a face or a color. I have saved songs like sacrifices for this process.
There is no line of mediation for those with bad balance; every step is one too far.
I have suspended hunger and sleep; I have suspended the time of day; I have suspended priorities and obligations for these moments when--when--hrmph--you know when you get the gold star in Mario that makes you shittastically invincible? It's that. And to use that moment for anything but smashin' through turtles and baddies is--well, that's just crazy.

Remind me to learn how to felt one of these. It would be rad.

~

I wonder if I feel cruel because I want to feel cruel--I want to eat the moon. But it is only a reflection on the water; the moon is a million miles away in the other direction. I harm nothing by throwing rocks at its reflection. I cannot. And this is, perhaps, a sad thing for the fox to realize. So perhaps it chooses not to. Perhaps it kicks a few rocks in spite.

But I wonder--does the moon watch the fox's devilish play? Does it see, does it feel, even if no part of it is touched? The fox will always want to know. I think the fox may throw rocks in the hopes that the moon will be angered; incited; moved. I wander if the fox indulges in this destructive divertimento because it knows it cannot reach the moon, and it thinks it has found a way of luring the moon down to its place.

But if something comes, it will not be the moon; it will be something terrible in form, I suspect, as a result of the fox's teasing.


~




I don't want to be Shimamura. Shimamura was a crapface. Ok, lets be proper about it: he was an introvert and a largely unsympathetic character (read: crapface). He stole sidelong glances of pale face over green mountains; in the windows of my train, I am stealing glances of dark faces over horned landscapes. I will not scorn red faces. I will not scorn red sleepers. I will not be Shimamura.


But I am afraid I cannot tell the difference between a mask, a reflection, and a painted face at this point. Maybe there isn't one. But I think I've been told before that there is one, so I am trying to find it--that line between This cat, That cat, and Fuzz cat.



The example I couldn't give plainly is in my thought experiment; that's as plain as it'll get until the last thought experiment, I suspect. The next best example I can give is from a book by Kij Johnson, which I will give, if asked; but I won't put it here, because this is already quite long, and I'm sleepy.

Furthermore,

I was looking for a picture of an awkward turtle, but found this instead.
Not what tortoises are for.