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