Word fishing

I am trying to pin something down here...

Green--dark green
Fresh snapped fire; I mean branches. Birch branches.
But there's fire there, somewhere. Sharpsharpsharp
There is a beak in that tree, wedged between the dark sinews--dark brown. Sienna. Root brown. That's it--roots.
Rootsdarkcracksnap
The semicircle of a nail that is belly up, then belly down, then up again--I would call it the moon, but it is dark and green, too.
It is yellow at the edges, at the tips, in the folds of the grass sprigs that push up from behind the ears, ear, just the one ear.
I must clarify--it is not a dark green at all, but a very vivid, bright (but not light) green that has been shadowed. Shaded. The distance between the color and its shadow can be felt and tasted. This difference is noticed.
I cannot but curl my fingers to this color, this smell of a color, this roughsharproughburn texture of a smell that, still, is escaping words so easily but sits and lingers so definitively.
The brown is like that of a beer bottle--translucent, but still dark, still shadowed in its own way by the warmcoldwheaten contents of it's glass belly.

I am all out of words, but I have not even touched it yet, not with any of them. This is fascinating. This is alluring. This is half-maddening. I am closing my eyes.

Secrets

I really enjoyed my classes today. Even math. Which is weyurd. Though I wasn't in a very good head-place at the time for them. I've made a mess of my desk. But that's alright--pencil comes off that thing like nothing.

It is a secret because it cannot be said plainly; it sticks between my gums like sugar and seeds and resists. If I do say something plainly, it is not the same as the secret, as that-which-I-meant-to-say. A secret can be said. Said? Transferred; expressed. But it is such a careful business. Which isn't to say difficult--it is sometimes difficult, sometimes breathlessly easy. I am still trying to figure out why this disparity exists.

I will tell you a secret:

You remind me of Kevvos.

Why is this a secret? It is no terribly significant thing in itself. There are several unspoken things about it. Who am I speaking to? Who is Kevvos? I know who; I know who. What is it of you that reminds me of Kevvos? I know. What is the significance of your resemblance to Kevvos? That...that I'm not entirely sure of yet. But I know enough of it to know that it is significant, and in such a way that I should not say plainly who you are and who Kevvos is--what Kevvos is. I know this is a dangerous parallel to draw, and so I am careful about it. But I will, I must, and I do, because it is such a lovely one, too.


Now, that didn't get us very far. Let's try again with another secret:

I've begun closing my eyes in class.

Why is this a secret? I have left off a clause, or an entire sentence that, nonetheless, echoes after in my mind--the why. I know why. It is because-
But that is not something I can say. Why is that not something I can say? I know I want to say it, because that sentence has been trailing my thoughts every day. I think I even wrote it in my notebook. But at the same time, I am overprotective of them, of this secret--I want to keep it behind my teeth. I want to savor it. If I speak it, you will say something; you will taste it, judge it, and spit it into a bucket without swallowing, without taking it into you and getting a bit dizzy off it, as I do. It will not mean to you what it does to me; not when you ask so plainly as that. So I will preempt you, and tell you--but tell you on my own terms, as a secret. As a story. I will fuck with you, says the author, but only because I want you to see, as close as you can, how this fucks with me.

Why tell? Why retell? Because it is a means of reliving, to an extent. Of reminding. I am remembering through Kevvos, through closed eyes, and finally, through letting these small, concentrated sentences slip. And there is a way to get lost in remembering. But there is also a way to find one's way back through remembering--and by back, I mean anywhere. I mean movement. Moving. Too much, and you're spinning in your head, lost; but just enough, and the world is yours.



One more secret:

I am nervous.

I have

an extremely poor sense of object permanence.

It is a sort of buzzingfillingbuzzing
moving on to other things, but always filling each
still buzzing like a bullet in a bee's hide
cigarette butt to the ribs
it goes two steps before me and stays six after
I am drawing quick, dark shapes
also buzzing
filling pages
filling faces
buzzing quick and 'round my throat
hanging thick around my throat
pulling quick around m-

Skins

"She'll want to take the sun between her teeth and smother it under her tongue: there's more night to be had, and it's not time for morning; no, there's more night to be had, and she's determined to take every dark ounce of it before the sun burns her mouth and she'll at last sleep while the other wakes and walks with the sun on its head like a big bright bug" (Tilus, 168)

I will not say that I am two different people, because I am not; but I possess two different skins, or rather, I possess one skin, and if the far edges of each side were to be compared, one would find them quite different. And there is always so much slack between them that one side gets curled up and the pattern is hardly ever seen.

I am very much in love with shadows
That is to say, a part of me is.

And so it only makes sense that that part of me that likes shadows will follow them when they come out, right? And even if it is such a small thing that is attached to shadows--just a nail clipped on to the very edge of one side of the skin. if the nail reaches for the shadows, it pulls the rest of the skin with it, those patterns that are closest and most similar to it, but perhaps, if it is enticed enough, or must reach far enough, it will take some of the pattern from the other side as well--the patterns are not distinct, but from each end, gradually change ten times over before they push into each other quite perfectly. There is no line to be drawn between the one and the other.
Eitherwho, the point of this being--if there is something that is drawn to shadows, it will be drawn out by shadows. It does not replace, it does not clamp down or kill what was there before. It probably wouldn't even get so far if the other side weren't pleasantly tired, and thus inclined to hand the baton over and take a nap. When I am awake at night, a part of me is sleeping; when I am awake during the day, a part of me is still sleeping. Different part now, though; a different edge of my skin has turned. I am a turncoat. But there are shadows in the day and lights at night, always--and so there are always parts and corners of the sleeping pattern untucked and still awake. Again, the transition between the pattern is not a clear, clean one; if it was, the skin would not be able to hold itself together, and would hardly be useful in that form. But this way, this...this works lovely fine. I may wrap myself in one side more than another for a time, but I am both. I think I may even take more pleasure in one than the other; but still, I am both. It makes me love more; hate more; feel more; sleep more; stay awake moar. The two patterns trade stories and talk when they meet and switch off in the middle, somewhere at the nape of my neck--that is where stories meet; that is where, between nights and days, I am sewn up, right along the seams of my escaping shadow.

The atrocious pokemon

You remind me of a gyarados
with your eyes half closed and
your lips half curled.
I don't know why, but it makes me think of
black on blue, which makes me
think of gyarados, naturally.

Ok, so this connection makes no sense.
But I liek it.
So there.

Thbbt.

Unassisted Flight of Dogs

My head is fixed like a skipping track on the image of a mouth without words.
I should be doing math homework, or, at the very least, writing something half productive--but I have no words when I'm thinking of mouths without words. There is speaking, still; always speakingmumblingmoving. But there are no words; words as in units, words as things to be defined. I have escaped the sharp of definition, just this once, just for now, at least, and I will enjoy it to the ends of my fingertips. And I don't know how to do math homework when I can't even look my fingers in the eyes; they're thinking of wordless mouths, too.

I laugh after I lie--I'm very bad at lying.
I laugh when I am uncomfortable.
I laugh when I am too comfortable--when I realize I am running away with something.

I am a soaring dog; I don't know what is seen of me, but there is more; there are imperfections in my flight, ragged-tipped pinions and some other things and such--again, I'm terribly distracted from words tonight. But that does not alter or extinguish the fact that, for a moment, I may be very close to what is seen of me: a soaring dog with no tangible means of flight. No definition; I will not define. I often want to, but for some reason, that inclination is now pressing its belly low against the dirt. It is sleeping. It sleeps at night; I do not. I do not have to. I do not want to. I will not say that I am two different people at night and day--I do not think anyone is that cleanly divisible. But I am very fond of shadows, and the part of me that is fond of shadows is easily lured out by them--and the other, which has spent a whole day doing math homework and all such fussy business, is all to happy to sleep and let the other press against its wordless shadows.

Fern

I think I curled my fingers.
I didn't mean to curl my fingers.
I wanted to curl my fingers.
I liked curling my fingers.
I hope you didn't notice me curling my fingers.
I don't even know if I curled my fingers.

I am a fern at your back.

I have been carefully constructed for the purpose of suspense--sulfur lipped burning down to blackened fingertips--that is, I am made for it; not necessarily to survive it.


There is a sentence I cannot keep from replaying in my head. I do not know if it has a serious bone (word?) in its body, but it's fucking me up. Bad. I don't think it was supposed to have meaning out of context, but fuck, it does. Did you know it would? You couldn't. Nobody could. But I'll say it now: I've got a mean history with those words. I've written stories (well, almost written stories) about those words.
Fuckfuckfuck.
I can't even remember how it was said. I have a shitty memory, and I hate forgetting things like this. But I know it was said, because now I'm fucked, and that's the only explanation for it--it must have been said.

Hm.

I think something is off. But I can't put my finger on it, and I think I don't give a fuck. I have never been so comfortable. I have never found such pleasure in nearnesses.

I have never been this person before. That is to say, I have always been this person, but never in full. Only in potential; always in potential.

And yes, this is ending on a gush-about-loving-my-friends note. It just...it feels so comfortable. I can make faces. I can move. And I am moved against.

luff.

A History of Cats

Because I feel obliged to give one--a history, that is--if I'm soon to get one--a cat, that is.

The first were two siamese cats. Not mine--my mum's friend's. She had a little dog, too, who was sweet. But these cats...they were just like the ones in Lady and the Tramp. Or at least they seemed that way. I got scratched and freaked out because I was young. Decided then and there that I was a dog person. Fuck cats.

A couple years ago, before I moved, a little apple faced siamese started coming to our door. She wasn't little, actually; she was well fed, groomed, and friendly, so we knew she was one of the neighbors'. But when we left the back door open she'd wander up the porch and sneak in, wander all around like a prospective buyer and then flop down like she owned the place. We fed her whatever meat we had in the fridge. She wandered over every day it didn't rain, took some food, slept and purred on my bed for awhile, and then would leave. She always knew when she had to go home. It was odd. I don't know where she got it in her head to start visiting a bunch of dog people. But then, we were dog people without a dog, and that space left behind is just enough for a cat to creep through.
Because cats don't have collar bones and that will never cease to fascinate me.
Eventually, we left. I hope she left, too. I hope she really did have a good place to go home to.


One (two?) years ago, almost exactly now, I started volunteering at an animal shelter. I spent most of my time in the cat room, because I couldn't handle the dogs--not literally, but mentally. I think I cried my first day. They were too familiar. Too sweet. So I hung out in the cat room, and what is there to do but play with cats, then? Cuts and bites everyday; had to keep band-aids in the car. If I don't have toxo yet, I never will. I remember the names of all my favorites; Remington, Sonny, Simba, Buck, and Popcorn; grey, tabby, lynx point, black, black. I got so close to taking them home with me. Sonny gave me a lovely gash up the arm when he jumped down from his cage and into my arms; Popcorn liked licking faces. Simba drooled. Remington was incredibly shy, especially in a cage of three other very outgoing cats. But you could tell he wanted something, so if you managed to get him away from the others, he was a quiet sweety.


My sister's name is long and arduous, so I've always called her Kat. I think I might be the only one who does now. When I go home, I become incredibly comfortable in my language; I'm a amazed by how little I can say and how much can still be understood from it. My sentences degenerate into crap. I overuse the word "thing," but still, the thing in mention is always understood. And eventually, I just start making cat noises. I'm not entirely sure when this started. Probably after I realized a cat will in fact talk back to you if you meow--and not the word 'meow'. Words are crap. Just the sound. So when I spend enough time back at home, I start lounging in rooms that aren't mine (namely my sister's) and making cat noises when I want some OJ. I'd stop if it didn't work, but...it does. Super cereal.


When I'm around a cat, I have two voices--my "hey I'm talking to you cat" voice, which is my normal talking voice, and...making cat noises. I've never used voices or personalities for my animals, but I can understand them, I guess. I dunno. From my experience, if you walk into a room of cats and make certain sounds instead of others, you've instantly got the attention of every cat. That, or if you bring wet food. Cats love wet food so much it makes me lololololol.

I am still a dog person; I am still a dog in the way I smile and the way I love and the way I defend. But I'm not in the right situation to get a dog, and I have too many things tied up in dogishness for now.
Cats are the same, but different. Unfamiliar--I still don't know the right way to pick one up, so I just hold them like a bunch of awkward laundry. There isn't that much difference between a cat and a dog, but there is just enough of one, I think, for me to feel comfortable with getting the former this summer. Mid June.

I feel like I've seen this cat picture somewhere before. ...And that's how you know you're part of a community that spams a shit-ton of cat pictures. Win.

I already have a name in mind. And I would like to say it, but it is terribly silly, and the only thing that will make it less silly will be its placement on an actual cat, I think. So I will keep mum on it until then.

Iko

This...? This is nothing to me.
This costs me nothing. I take everything from you, and so it costs me nothing.
And so I gain nothing.
Which is sometimes desirable--but not always. Hardly always.



I do not want to be this. I am not this.
I am when I bleed--no-not that sor-
When I touch soil with anything but shoes
When I jump and land badly and feel it up to my knees
I am toxo
I am pleasure because pain
I am not touching
And when I cannot touch I am still not talking
And when I cannot touch and do not talk I am mumbling
because even then I am touching
one lip to another
three fingers to a pencil and five against the skin
This is an admission of envy
of jealousy
of love
of hate
this is not in opposition to life--it is in envy of it

It is a desire to live
I don't have words for speaking
I have living
And envy of living
I'm not an artist
I'm not a writer

I 'm just a jealous living creature.

Circles and Grit

I am she-who-does-not-see-beyond-her-fingers. Who cuts and pulls and bends until there is blood filling the straights of her cuticles. But I do not want- I do not mean-- But birds tear out their feathers when there is nothing better to do; dogs run in circles when there is no other shape to make; and the smaller sharks at the zoo will go round and round, bumping their nose against the edge of the tank until there is a little red bloom at the tip and some girl above calls one "Rudolph" and thinks it is special and hers.


I am trying to make sense of this and make sense of things like beetles and--but--
wet feet. Wet and scratchy feet. I think I'd be ok if they were smooth, but the ruddy, one way feet that are so good for grabbing and pu--
I do not mean to interrupt myself so much. It is certainly not something I do often. But it is the only way I can seem to keep myself from saying things. But what isn't written on paper is still written on brain, and there isn't room for fresh ink up there, not with all the scribbling I do.

You think it is when you do not write that it is called reality, she whispers, barks, or bites. But it is only that another is writing about you then.

Have I begun, then? Shit. I hope not. I must try to keep my brain behind the edge of my fingernails and learn only through scraping and scratching. But-
Goodness--so many holes. I cannot bear to leave them empty, but I cannot possibly fill them.
What is at the forefront of my mind will always be infected (contaminated? but pleasantly contaminated) by what I hold in the back of my mind. Don't keep raw meat above vegetables; don't keep bloody thoughts above fresh ones.

I am losing.
I am writing and I am drawing and this is how I am beginning to suspect I am losing.
It is not that I am so much as what I am [writing and drawing.] I am beginning to-
I looked over an edge today. You w-
I could not when I was asked. Now I can do nothing but. How wretched and silly of me.
I was hungry most of this morning. I think I was hungry. I'm going to say I was hungry. And I mean what I don-
SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArs.

I hate losing.
I love losing. I've gotten some good drawings out of losing. But it isn't enough; it's excess. It's waste. It's steam.
I've never lost like this before. When I lose, I lose in fire--I burn up. Leave my legs out on the porch when I go to bed. Shed my skin six times between the sheets and let the eye caps fill up with ashes before I peel those off, too.
But this is-
At least-
. .. ..... written upon.

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. Roland Barthes, "Talking," A Lover's Discourse (1977, trans. 1978)


I cannot tell you how much I love seeing your face for perfectly no reason at all.

Dossier of Unsent Letters

Or unreceiving recipients, rather. All before and after are the letters themselves; these, here, are the names on the unstamped, unaddressed, unsealed envelopes. I have no business sealing up what still flows freely.
This is meant as a clarification of sorts, because it was asked of me. And by clarification, of course, I mean a different sort of dust. The following are the most persistently written. I think.

You--are a brown haired, one horned boy. The most prevalent and infectious. Your image has been drawn from several places and has taken over several others. You are everywhere now, even in the way I write--my z's are half you, half another. So infectious. You are not greater than the game; but you have been quite the player, whether you were aware of it or not. I am absolutely tortured by the question of whether you were aware of it or not. You couldn't--how preposterous. How ridiculous. How obscene. But the way you touch grass--God, I felt lewd just watching it. And I'm not using grass as a metaphor for anything. When I say grass, I mean grass.

You--are brown-haired but unhorned. You resist that attachment, and are perpetually estranged to me for it. You are three times more monstrous than anything I could create. You are so contradictorily composed. And that phrase is too familiar to me. I have used it before. You are my worst enemy, because a part of you is quite like me. And I am vain; so that is a compliment. And I am self critical; so that is an insult.

You--are a long armed goat man, brown and orange. You are washed in regret--mine, not yours, and not very thick at that. A wash is never thick when painting. You are one of the liveliest and loveliest of persons I have ever had the pleasure to know. Know? I know very little about you, really. Sometimes, I believe you were my vain side.

You--are Julia.

You--are an endless transformation of skin. Frustration in the corner of my eye. Of your eye? I want to know more; I want to yell. I wouldn't mind if you did either of these things as well. But you don't--you don't appear to do anything at all. But I am so certain that you do that it is infuriating. I become very aware of how narcissistic I am around (but are you ever around?) you. I feel like throwing chunks of paper at you. I want to make you move, live live live, but the problem is that you already do--outside of this. And that makes me fussy.

You--are split-tongued and largely unwritten about. Which isn't to say you will not be written about. But I suspect you will not be, not for a time, at least. I couldn't say. Even tonight, I couldn't say. I am so eager to write you, and you do not resist--you elude. I do not know what to make of you. I do not want to make anything of you. In fact, I .... ... .. .... ......... .. ..--please.

You--are black-lipped and grinning and have never died and will never die because I will save you I will write you I will keep you grinning forever and feed your troubles to the birds--let those twittering spits bear the weight. I can do this much for you, at least. I will do this much for you.

You-- are a red fish, one that bothers and agitates my mirror, because you will not reflect, you will not reflect. You are peculiar. You think because you are on the other side of the mirror, you can play with whatever you choose--but then, why can things not play with you? Whether you allow it or not, sweet fish, I will play with you; you are allowed your games, and I am allowed mine. Don't worry--I don't mean anything in earnest. You may, but I don't. I hope you don't hate me for it, because I still love you by it. I say these things only because I am comfortable with and quite fond of you.

You--are all mixed together in my head. All of you: all yous. I am always comparing you. Not in degrees or numbers, not in some gladiator ring or collector's box. I compare because it is how best I may come to know you, know what I know of you, know myself through you. What does one do that the other doesn't? And why? And where do the roots of these strange snarling things push up from? Why, when two are similar, am I comfortable around one, angry around another, and mythologizing a third? It is like discerning the parts and particles to a foreign language. Why does this go here and here but not there? I am always wondering about you.

And this, too, is like an unsent letter; there is no address, no name, no envelope at all. It is a book; a record. But I have left it in such a place that, without sending it, it may be received. These letters, they are much further from those they are intended for. Here, they are out of the searching scope of those who they are addressed to; they are even more unsent than this dossier. But they are here; they do exist. And so they may be found, like that one book in The Library that holds everything you desire, and not a single typo to boot. And so I will call these unsent letters, because I will not send a single one of them--but that does not mean I am entirely opposed to them being found.

Moar Odradek

I am just now remembering that an_author likened that spindly little creature to an artistic creation; to writing. To literature. And then there is that pang of wretchedness--

"He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful." (Kafka 429)

Let me take a skin that is not mine here and say I am the maker--that family man may not have known where Odradek came from, but I do. I have made it. And even worse, I have made it just enough in his image for him to recognize something in it as familiar--I leave some curtains half pulled back, some skin unpainted; just enough for familiarity. Never enough for recognizability. He does not know what it is, but he sees it. He is charmed by it. Aren't we all charmed by our reflections? How nice of them to reflect us. But this one will survive him--I have tailored it just so. What began as a gift has become a curse, an act of cruelty. The creator Odradek, that is, myself, meant only to make something pretty, something loved, something for you. But what is this? I cause you only suffering in the end. I should not have made this lovely wretch. I should not have made it at all.

I cannot decide if the creator of Odradek is someone else or the family man. Is the family man an author, or a reader? Does it matter? Odradek will survive us both, and I think we feel a similar fond despair when we imagine our lives snuffing out before this creature. But perhaps for different reasons? I am never done with this creature--I am always changing its name, its features, its footwork around that man's house. But when I should die, there will be no one to change it. It will still exist, but in such a static fashion that the family man (should he outlive me as well) will finally be able to say, "Ah, yes! This thing is not sentient--it is a creation. It is matter, and its maker is dead now. Yes, now I can see how it operates." And so a sort of death is mourned.

The family man gets very close to Odradek one time, perhaps. "Please, do not leave," he says. Is he speaking to Odradek or through Odradek? Is he speaking to me, the author, the creator, and asking me to keep changing the little fellow, keep the light show up, keep the music going 'cuz he just wants to dance?
Or if he is the author, is he speaking to Odradek, or, again, through it, to those things from which he has made Odradek? String from a grandmother, perhaps, the star shape from way an old girlfriend's dimpled smile looked, one eye from from a mentor, pursed lips from a dog.

Is this not what authorship is (or can be)--filling yourself up with so much of something that you've gotta have a place for the surplus? But even then, you wanna keep it. So you put it in paper. Paper's good for that kinda stuff.

The last three times I wrote about you, or that-which-I-have-made-of-you (for the things I put in paper are never the same as they were/are in life), I cried. The whole time. All three times. I will write about you again, but not any time soon. I need a break.

Sometimes it is too close. And the writing that is closest is a eulogy. I do not want this. This terrifies me. I do not ever want to catch myself writing a eulogy. It means you are dead. I don't want you to die. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't.

So fuck yes it hurts to know that this thing will survive me, because to survive me it must not have lived at all--and beside this, in my own writing, it often has the habit of stealing the breath from those much loved things it takes after.

It's not my blood, it's yours. And that's what's so fucked up about it.

Symp-to-matic

Au-to-matic
E-lec-tronic
clockwork toes and
dominoes, oh, how she
hates loves knows
all the sys-te-matic
ticks in the hardware
will show.



So you were all liek hm,

So I'm all liek: Here. Because I can't postpone this any further.

123go.

Happiness/Comfort: When I am comfortable, I feel very loose; loose muscled, loose minded. I am less finicky about touching people and being touched; I enjoy it very much, akshully. I usually take up as much room as possible; I wind into shapes because that feels good too. Sometimes, when I am very comfortable, I fidget or shake my leg or move my fingers, because it keeps me awake, which keeps me conscious of my comfort. Or something like that.
Happiness is something else--it has a more social connotation for me. It happens more in my head. When I'm happy, I smile--even if it's at a plurk, which sometimes, it is. I am not always comfortable when I am happy, but I often am. I bruised my knee and skinned my elbow awhile back, and I think it should have hurt like a bitch, but I was really happy at the time, so I didn't really notice it. And I think a part of me even liked it. I've noticed that when I'm very happy, I tend to want things like fruit (usually berries) or vegetables. Or Nutella.

Sadness/depression: This is a very tiring emotion. It is usually the only time I get headaches, and very localized headaches at that. I feel as if there are too many thoughts clamoring about. When I exhale, I exhale deeper--a hollow kind of deeper. Crying usually helps. Crying makes my face too warm and my heart beat a bit faster. I don't like eating when I'm sad, but I often find myself hungry then.

Nervousness/Anxiety: I blush really bad when I get on-the-spot nervous, like in a job interview. I speak too fast, and my voice comes out a bit weird because I think I hold my throat taut. Anxiety is the one that fucks up my heart and stomach--when I have time to think about all the ways something can go wrong. The stomach constricts; I sweat. My heart isn't that much faster, but it beats much harder, and if it goes on for very long, my chest gets tired of all that fuss and aches very badly. I run my teeth over my bottom lip.

Anger/frustration: I shift in my seat when I am frustrated. Sometimes, when someone says something that bothers me, I stiffen and bend my neck, but I try to not do this because it is much more noticeable. When I am angry, I am most aware of my arms, and wanting to do things with them--anything. I catch myself gritting my teeth a lot.

Arousal: The first thing I am aware of is an alertness. I feel very awake, very quick, almost caffeinated, sans the jitters. There must be something particular, something short and swift that incites it--a sentence, a picture, a gesture, a texture. My heart beats once in largely the same way it does for anxiety--a thick, hurt-ish way-- except it does it only once, and is followed by a weird (I cannot quite say pleasant, but I will not say unpleasant) curling sensation in my stomach. My cheeks may flush, but only rarely. This is a first stage of sorts; in the second, I arch my back a lot and become fond of touching textures in much the same way as when I am just very comfortable. And I will not go further than this for the sake of my blog's modesty.

Embarrassment/Shame: After the incident, I usually bite the inside of my mouth or make wonky expressions. I might blush for embarrassment; shame is more extreme, and comes with the same symptoms as anxiety, sans sweating. I cannot keep myself from replaying the cause of shame in my mind, and every time I do, a word will catch and my chest will ache once (like arousal, except less fun). It is a heavy feeling, and it doesn't dissipate as quickly as its counterpart for arousal. I take up rigid, uncomfortable positions; I busy myself with either writing or organizing or just moving.

Hunger: I'm actually a bit nommish right now. :\ it feels like a dull bead is dragging down my throat, and it stops and sits at about the level of my collar bone. When I sit, my stomach feels like a large but hollowed out shape; when I stretch out on my back, it feels luxurious and comfortable, but makes me moar hungry.



I've taken too long to write this, and now I've forgotten some of the things I had recognized in the moment. So this is by no means all encompassing--there are many emotions that exist between them, and the symptoms may change and blend depending on the stimuli (I have a bad habit of mixing things together to make thinks like fear-surprise-arousal and anxiety-hunger). A stimuli is never all this or all that, and so the response will never be all this or all that. Some of the mixtures are quite pleasing; others are very uncomfortable. They can sometimes be consciously constructed, but only if it is done with a certain swift thoughtlessness.
Example: I was fumbling with a pen and almost dropped it. In lurching forward to catch it, my heart jolted in surprise-fear, which is the same way as nervousness. But it didn't drop, and so I imagined something else to carry on that feeling--an individual's pleasing gait, as it were. And because those two emotions are so close in symptoms anywho, it worked. Like a clean and fluid organ transplant, the meaning (the emotion?) can sometimes be displaced.

But these are things that I forget so quickly that it is difficult to know anything about them, really. So I will nap instead.

Mm.

An Animal That is Not a Cat

What a strange circle. Circle? I am calling three points a circle, but I shouldn't. I don't know how many points it takes to make a circle. I only think I have made a circle because I think I have reached that first point again--but this is unlikely.

You are like that riddle from the Sphinx--four legs, two legs, three legs.
In the morning you were an animal. Four legs four paws four claws. Older than I'd known. Ran in dog years, maybe.
In the afternoon you were one of us. Human, that is. And that's something I can admire.
In the evening you were a mess. One leg shy of one of them, on leg over one of us. It is another sort of thrill to remember footpads and faux pas. But only dogs that forget they are dogs try to be dogs again.

And I only describe you as a dog because it is the first animal I can think of that is not a cat. It may perhaps be better to call you a bird, but that animal has already been taken in my mind, several times, and I do not have room for an aviary in there, you know. Better to say dog and mean an animal that is not a cat.
Though to be clear, dogs can be quite catish as well. And that is why I mean only an animal that is not a cat, and not a dog.

~

I'm glad to see your eyes around, even if I don't know what to do with them.

~
A thing, some things, many things. But never all. There is this strange clutter that follows you, this collecting. As if you must prove that everything else in the world exists. But everything else in the world already knows it--you needn't say it as if you're breathing them, ex nihilo, into existence. You needn't collect; you needn't trouble yourself with the lives of these things at all--they will outlive you. Odradek will keep winding itself past the halls of your house.

~

Have you ever been killed by the guards to the doors of your Law? That shit's fucked up. But it happens. It is a smothering. It is a drowning--perhaps by one's own collections. One's own hysteria. I don't know. But it happens. And it's dreadful. And dreadfully beautiful. And don't you say that shit can't happen because it ain't real--it's real enough. It's head real--that's real enough. And don't you say that shit's all fun and games, because it's not. They may be your guards, but they've been ordered to fuck you up. They'll beat you into a world of bent limbs and the backs of eyelids--as close as you can get to the Law. To nothing.

When the collection, collecting, borrowing, extracting, takes every last ounce from you, it leaves you in debt.

~

Lips

I want to hold your head over water, over a bridge
I want to feel the bunching at the back of your bent neck; and then draw it.
I want a good climbing tree
Two sandwiches
Three Tang
And some Mike's
I want this scar to stay on my hand for a good while, because it looks cool
I want to wake you up
That is, I want you to sleep
I want it to be known that a scream isn't always a bad thing
I do what I want--that is, not what I please, but what I want and have not received.
I want to schmooze with a dog and listen to Imogen Heap all day
When I write in second person, I always talk to more than one "you"
I want to be laced up
I have never tasted . . . . but I want to
I like leaving ambiguous gaps in things
I love touching people I am comfortable with; I hate being touched by people I am not
I grind my teeth when I sleep
I can eat a whole jar of kimchi without rice, and recently, I've been wanting to
I often dream of being shot or chased
I want to write a cyberpunk comic about a cyborg prostitute and a robot of the same profession
I prefer Chococat
I miss frogs
I have math homework
Kkeut.

Also I wanna learn how to make awesome bentoz this summer.

On doors

I do not go through doors that I do not know well; doors that I have not leaned against, cried against, or even ran my hands up.

The doors at my house are always opening and closing. There are two doors into my sister's room--one from the hall, and another from the bathroom. So if one is blocked, and you're fast, you can get to the other before its locked. Or if you hang out under the door frame with the light off, you can freak someone out. Or if you leave the door open, it'll make the room cold, and you can wake someone up without getting punched in the arm. My house was one of tricks and yelling and laughing. The doors bit; they were in on it, too.

But there are many doors I am not comfortable with. Doors that are not mine. Some that I would like to touch, but can't. Doors that never become mine, because they remain everyone else's, institutional and vague, for the entire quarter (year?). What happens behind these doors is not always mine. But those rooms that have become mine? I am greedy. I am jealous. The space behind these doors will always be mine, and I enter and go as I please to reaffirm this, to keep it mine. Because doors will revert if you leave them. We forget them; they forget us.

I knock quietly on most doors. I have been known to take the longest route to other doors, to put off that dreadful moment. But what of doors left open? This is not an invitation (not always, at least). It is a trap. Trust me--I consult the admiral on this stuff.


And then the door closes behind you. And it becomes an interview for a job you need really fucking bad. Or a cramped up class where nobody gives a rip about anything except collecting the sound of their own voice.

I don't want to do shit like this. Not really. I'd much rather walk out of a class I love, which I've done before, because I know I'll come back; I'll want to come back. When you leave a class you don't like, it feels good for awhile. But then you either have to go back too soon, or not at all--you start skipping. Which fucks up your grade, wouldn't you know it.


All my doors can be reopened by me; which isn't to say they will lead me to the same room.
All my doors, my contexts, my rooms, will die with me.

But I take things from these rooms; I am a thief. I am a horder. I am a lover of things through other things. I run with my arms full of temporal things from temporal places. Wine and two words that got through a language barrier--that's what I got away with last night. When I get home, I spill my pockets and push them into safe places--paper, mostly. They do not last long outside of their places. The things I draw and am reluctant to show people, these are the things that I have stolen from temporal places. They are rarely beautiful, rarely colored, and almost never finished. And that's alright. I'm not making art. I'm making breadcrumbs.

nom nom nom.

On things Left unsaid

And unwritten, even.

There is a reason I do not give the name of the author when I quote this book. If you know them, then you will recognize the quote--or at least, the manner of the quote. If you do not, then I will wait until you find it.
I have no business fussing up your memory; that is yours. And this, alluding to things that I want you to find, or perhaps not find, is mine.

~

You're so chatty. Not literally; but you seem the embodiment of the idea of talking sometimes. And I wonder at that eagerness to speak. To capture (click). To just sit still, there, don't move until I get this little pin through you--there. Got it.

And do not mistake this for an act of killing--the specimen is already dead, courtesy of a killing jar.
This is a collection of dead differences.

I have read that this is supposed to be the paralyzed state, that of collection. It is sameness; it is differences when they no longer matter. Dead things don't play.
But look, it is there still--even amongst the dead things, the collecting, there are things one is not allowed to collect; even amidst what is already (socially?) unacceptable, there is something that pushes it's fingers out into taboo.

These are the things we do not do, you say.
Pics or I ain't doin' shit, I say.

Ten thousand bugs on pins behind glass--that's impressive. Maybe weird, but impressive. But this? What is this? Why is it so taboo? But it isn't, really--so why do I like thinking of it this way?

I am not killing or collecting or caging. I am not catching or releasing--I am not touching at all. I am watching. I am lurking. I am creeping up against the wall. I am collecting the ellipses you leave behind when you speak.

What happens when you do not collect the non living? Throw out the stamps; clear out the dead bodies. What do you have left? Nothing. But the collector always has something, and always wants moar.

The collector of debts wants more. Not your money, but your debts. The holes in your pockets, the ones in your socks, every last one is wanted. You will get all that you need, because this collector will never want to be payed back--this collector is as fond of your debts as others are of the money you keep bringing them. And so the debts grow. You don't try to tell yourself to stop--you're in word debt, too. You are being robbed blind by being provided so comfortably for.
And by the end of it, you won't know a thing, nor have proof of any crime--you'll be alive, flesh and blood, while the collector of debts has glutted on your debts and nixed out of existence.

Where does all that sweet nothing go, sucked out like a spider does? And what are you left with? I wonder if it is this type of collector that makes the other--a void with a bowler cap that prods one other into wanting...everything: that is, something through everything. No movement in the objects of the collector, perhaps, but maybe there is some between collectors.

Everything as you like, from here on out.

"You just try to buy me into giving you something." She said he never gave her anything worth having. "I want your everything as long as its free."
And then she left.
And then he broke things, because it was the next best thing to breaking himself, which wasn't a thing he had learned how to do.
Because it isn't a thing you learn how to do alone.
Is it? Hm. I misspoke. I misspeak. All the time.

"All of you who are speaking right now...are failing. So those of you who've remained silent...should fail more."
But there is more than one way to speak; to purge; to reverse. But then, I suspect I am only saying this to defend myself. But then, I am defending reluctance, only, not silence altogether.


"The collector is possessive....beyond all else he is collecting himself." (122)
And this is what Cane does--to his money, to artifacts, and to the people around him. And in those pretty mirrors behind him.
To collect is to say "I do not want this to be lost." But to collect is also to say "this can be lost." And if it can be, it likely will be; if not in the whole wide world, then in the ever growing collection of the collector; if not by silence, then by noise.

But if not by noise, then by silence: one night, a painter has a magnificent dream. Firebird and foxes and all that lovely shit. At 4am, before the sun has come up, he wakes with these images fresh in his mind, throws himself out of bed to crouch over his easel like a big, bald bird. He mixes colors until noon, striking oranges through reds--because that is the color of a firebird, yes?--he mumbles anxiously to himself. But the red isn't right; it is never right. At half past noon, he has gone through an entire tube of crimson. Perhaps sometime that evening, he holds a loaded brush before the canvas--but throws it away. That night, he throws all of his paints away. He will not paint, because he know he cannot paint what he dreamt as he dreamt it. He has more dreams, amazing and brilliant and beautiful. A couple times, he tries to paint them; but he never does. He never paints again--just sits in his bed after he wakes, tongue fidgeting between parted lips as he keeps his eyes shut as long as he can.
Twelve years later, the painter would like to remember the color of his firebird. But he cannot. Frustrated, he picks up his paintbrush and tries to paint it--but to his horror, his skill has left him--his firebird looks like a child's scribbling. He falls to his knees and weeps, for he now has neither the memory nor the means to retrieve it.

I do not have answers; I do not even have questions. I just....I want to mumble, and be mumbled against.




...Ok, one more picture (and a dashing one at that) of Mr. Welles.





















8D