parking

spinning

2004

is there a reducible self, apart from the context of a person/place/thing? is it arrogant to imagine so? a subject, divorced from an object, divorced from an other? do we project our own privilege in posing this quest-ion? & is essentialiing a righteous goal? becoming absolute? is this true to reality? ("reality," "identity"; subjectivity).. what relationship exists between this endeavor, & that of "people-pleasing"? are they related? what purpose do they serve to self-hood? & how do we place a value-judgment on this? how do truth and portrayal negotiate roles in identity? and how do they exist together - in opposition? in alignment? in necessary 'balance', or congruence? what scale can 'self-improvement' be founded on with these musings? what beliefs do we have about 'self' that inform the choices we make to live?

unemployed

July 15th, 2004

i imagine she is brown, older, very, very kind. and happy now. smiling. employed.
employed.

i don't know how to experience rejection; i construct myself at the interview, childlike. terribly vague and naive. they can't wait to go. they're wanting to roll their eyes, as i speak about my experience. my young life.
i don't know enough.
the wrong people were rooting for me.
i believed too much in myself.
underinvested.
they were mean, and controlling, and immediately contradicting.

(none of this is true.)

what went wrong? the verdict is not in my favor. the variables are jumbled and distorted. i have no insights about my past.

and how do i confront my own unknowing? i pretend drastic choices. i won't sleep. i'll have no food. i'll take up smoking. throw up a lot. snap pictures of everything. write about everyone who lost something, mostly me. i'll leave the car parked, forever. i'll wear my disillusionment, and guard myself from my life. candid, unrelenting life.
i had too much faith in possibility.


i was sitting with coffee, and karen. she was sensitive, curious, cautiously concerned. she was not sure what i needed. (i resented us both, lacking direction, having distance.) a small gray bird hopped to our table for food. i felt special, and watched it closely. karen tipped an empty cup, and it flew to the next table, startled. the women there did not see that it wanted to be noticed. it did not notice that i wanted to be seen. our encounters are random, self-motivated, unimpressionable. i hate that selfish bird. gray bird. (i loved it until it took me for granted.)

we drive to go car shopping. make plans for the garden. there are fleeting sentences and fused colors in my head; i want to go home. i have no memory of myself. i don't know where i am. (they make me cry.)

and you remind me in a letter i received today of my car payments.
economics is a cultural trap. i fucking hate money.

and i understand hopelessness in one petrifying moment. (i am standing sunburned with a sign at the end of a highway exit. people pass, with varying degrees of sympathy: "can't get work. anything helps. god bless.")

.

joyful tandem

July 15th, 2004

joyful tandem, i have received your scribbles with a letter from another of my past (figures, preceding me). they were opened solidly, in the mood that made them (i presume), a piece of your self's, selves, drawing into me darkly. there is something about distance in this. we are tied together, and alwys away from what we believe to know.
i should know,
not to read your mail in a storm, in a state of perfectly composed Day.
i weigh your differences on my brow, and note (as they say) a coincidence. a collective thought. the face of some existential musing, infusing.
this place is immediate.

.

a level voice

i want to blog about everything. things that are still, things that grow, advertising, grocery stores, what the dog did, how to kill time, startling colors and surfaces and breaths of air, pieces of passing conversations, small adventures, thoughts upon waking, what the earth would say, tiny lies, image and city, the myth of aging, the labor of history, acts of compassion, the light the light the light, the shadows, one stranger, two strangers talking, making breakfast, eating bread, relics of memory, love of course, everywhere there is tension, symbolism, noise, collections to have, questions to voyage, what matters or doesn’t, how to understand.

and on.

and then i realize that i would rather simply write about these things.

there must be one thousand ways to express oneself and one million ways to share. what does it mean to choose blogging? if i were to blog about my life, its details and images and prying amusements, it seems i would be equally suited to shout my reflections to a crowd of strangers, pulsing the end of my speeches with “anyone..?”. people would smile, or shrug, and one may rarely raise a hand, shadowing all my intentions. and everyone would soon disperse, having not stayed long at all, and shuffling, and my body would feel so strange from the toil of everything unmet.
displaced.
mis-fit.

blogging blends anonymity with the impression of celebrity, and some parody of dialogue. is it novel? is it triumphant? is it awkward? is it purely flawed? i wonder between the format and the motive:
? if i write to hear myself think, i may try keeping a diary, and
? if i write to share my meanderings with others, i could draft an email, and
? if i write to illicit feedback, i ought to have a conversation into someone else’s eyes.
blogging may work to represent the voice of a cause, to organize efforts, to unite minds across distance. but as a personal, solitary enterprise, there must be some combination of an author who is otherwise unoccupied, self-regarding, timid, or spectacular, and a reader who is suspiciously available, indulging, or exceedingly devoted.

there are other explanations, of course.
but i wouldn’t buy any of them.

i am not a private person. i don’t keep secrets or fear light or hold fragile keepsakes against my chest. but i keep a level voice, and it matters who i speak to. i don’t distribute mass email updates, and i’m not inclined to send along forwards, and i have never mailed out year-end greeting cards with my summarized life across the reverse side of a photo of my dog. i don’t take three-way phone calls. and i don’t accumulate my poetry for open mic night. and i don’t sing in front of crowds.
and i don’t blog.

but i will write, in this electric journal, in this glaring, pixeled light. that is called a blog. i will paint a space and rest here and nurture it. and i suppose it will be good to imagine that others may be listening, sometime, but there are no fanfares.

and i mean that as a relief.

.

sugar cookies and private kisses.

windows and cages