I will look after you.

You don’t come here because you expect something from me. You come because you want to.

I bailed because I started questioning myself & the purpose of the blog & I freaked myself out. I was at a show, watching a guy sing out these dark & serious & meaningful times from his life to strangers who were appropriating & mis-appropriating it & suddenly I couldn't handle the idea that once I let my thought go I have no control over it--whatever it meant was just for me, in me, & now everyone that has it does something else with it. That's strange, I know & I'm probably not saying it right. I just wasn't ready to be carefree about the way people interpreted the things I was thinking & feeling.

I also realized I was giving the people in my life who read this a lot more access to the inner me without requiring them to actually interact with me. And I certainly did not come here for less connection.

But I'm back. I'm not sure what comes next. Maybe just photos for a while. Maybe just little lines. But it turns out I'll still be here: other people enjoy this just as much as I do.

That's something.

I think I'm done talking for a while.

Why do my fingers smell like triangles?

That's what a woman said last night in my dream. It's brilliant & baffling & I say this because it's entirely separate from me, somehow, even though I technically somehow came up with it.

The rest of my dream was about writing, about having a mess of rough writing I was editing down. Maybe it's time to try writing more, writing big unruly chunks, instead of convincing myself it's ok to only write a sentence when I strangle each word so thoroughly I hardly get anything out at all.

Self, I'm listening.

Introverts & Italics

I've always considered myself to be an introvert. Sometimes I tell people this & they're surprised -- they point out evidence to the contrary, but I think to myself "That's an act, how I really feel is this." But last night I went out & succeeded at socializing & thought "Oh my God, I'm human. I have a personality," which I was apparently doubting without realizing it after 2 days straight in the house. Maybe I'm just socially awkward & that's somehow different from being introverted. Maybe what's stressful & draining about crowds & being on & meeting people is me doing it badly. Because when I do it well, I'm totally energized.

Oh: a vaguely positive tone.

You wouldn't like to be my sister.

Researchers...are trying to to convey what philosophers have long written: True happiness lies in the pursuit of deeply held goals, not in fleeting pleasures & possessions.

This is tacked up on my inspiration board, but I am having a hard time locating those deeply held goals. Even just long term goals would suffice for now.

I have been kind of worried lately about the vengeful, bitter, portentious, defeated & maybe a little murderous tone that nearly all my poems inhabit. As a binding agent for some loosely connected shit, it works well. As a reflection of my insides, it's cause for alarm. But what's terrifying to me is that I think I might not just be reflecting when I think like that, but creating in the worst sense. I think I might be populating my whole insides with that tone & I'll never get out.

I thought maybe I could make what I wanted instead. I thought maybe I could make a poem world where I wasn't just getting imaginary even for past hurts , but was happy or safe. Even my sexy poems are scary: someone gets hurt: What was not tender. Doing this actually baffles me. I have not managed it yet. I challenged myself to write a poem that was happy in tone & that seems a mystery as well.

Tonight I thought I'd try to journal about what being happy might look like for me, what it might contain, what things I'd like to have or be or do in an ideal happy life, and I'm totally blanking.

How is it possible: I don't know what I want.

The Generic Intimate

I keep turning over in my mind the importance of privacy & what that even means in this twittery texty flickry world where if everyone doesn't have a blog they at least have a narcissite devoted to themselves (pardon me. An online presence.). I know that there is such a thing as giving too much away. I think artists are always struggling with this place: we make out of ourselves & reveal sometimes much more than others are willing to, but we still need to retain a distinct & secret self in order to, well, believe we exist? Have something to offer as a prize to those that are actually in our lives? Feel human? Honor our fears? Maybe it's different for everyone.

Very few people read this, as far as I know, but it's still unabashedly available to the entire wondernet-havin' world, complete with, like, full name & photo (really?). But let's say that no one but my few little lovin' friends come here & check it out. Do they really need to know that on X Wed I was basing/blasting my current self worth on my inability to get somewhere & take a Polaroid of something I keep meaning to?

With abt 30 minutes of reading just any old person could have psychological insights into me that are probably painfully accurate (and scarily easy to exploit) that would otherwise take months of friendship to learn. Obviously I don't do this with that end in mind, but I do have to consider it.

I write here out of anger & frustration & sadness & reveal inward places of mine, but it is not private. It is public, a public journal of sorts. I have rules for myself, just like I imagine everyone does -- I never use anyone's name, I try not to reference group activities, I try to never just complain or bring up an issue without attempting to to think through it as best I can, I try not to reveal personal triggers while attempting to be as specific as possible & I try to keep my little crisis ('cause, fuck, that's what this is full of) at the level that I believe everyone shares. In other words, I try to get to the generic intimate -- that place of insecurity, weakness, confusion (eventually one day I hope also happiness) etc that is the human condition.

But the human condition only goes so far. I am essentially different from the people I know. I'm a rabid fan of reading my horoscope (well, when I find the paper for free somewhere): the point of horoscopes is to help you define you & respond best for you to the things that happening to you. I mean, that's why they have Jungian personality tests, right? To peg & highlight yr strengths & foibles & set you solidly apart from other people with different characteristics. So perhaps my problems are no one else's problems. That worries me, that this might be usless for anyone that comes here that isn't me (and then, really, if it's only for me it should be private, a true journal). I know my friends love me, but they can't be THAT interested in me.

Unless, you know, I'm pinging that voyeurism place everyone has.

Why do we do what we do?

Leo:

You may fall head over heels in love with someone inappropriate because you can look beneath the surface.

Continuation on a theme

I realize the out of sync feeling I have carries over into other parts of my life as well. Right now, I'm doing things. I do things of the self, I do social things. I stay in, I go out. A lot of these entries are spent talking about what things I think I should be doing or am doing or want to do. But in the end, they're just things. I mean, even when they're the things that are supposed to be the life-thing I do, they're just things. They're hollow.

What I can't tell is if the art life I thought I was doing all this work for isn't what I really wanted after all (like, Holy Crap am I not a writer?) or if I'm performing with ceremony this regular thing that I should be doing almost thoughtlessly & then staring at it wondering why I don't feel fulfilled (like, I ate an apple yesterday, why do I still feel hunger ever?).

Maybe I'm missing the key inside ingredient -- as in, the writing or picture taking should be indicative of something that happens inside me, a drive or desire; the things I make or take are supposed to be the outward expression of something inward, but I'm afraid there's very little inside me right now. I mean, there's a mess of stuff, but none of it's coalescing into a whole self. So I'm just going through the motions of what I think I should be doing.

Maybe I need to stop. Maybe I need to stay very still & wait for the next thing to come out in its own time.

Also, I just got my first bee-sting ever, an upskirt job at Crema that's got my stocking'd thigh feeling like I stabbed glass in it.

See right through them to myself

I've always lived a little out of sync with myself. Part of this is intrinsic & part of this is self-imposed. The intrinsic part is, as far as I can tell, half defense mechanism (as if your mind thinks that if you wait until the moment has passed to analyze what the moment was you'll somehow be better equipped to deal with it, while your emotions barrel forward, making your word-actions & feeling-actions not match up very well) & half the human condition (it is easier to analyze the situation once it's past & static & x action led to x outcome). I've been trying really hard the last couple of years to shrink down the distance of the felt moment & the "recognized" moment.

I'm working but I keep failing. I keep not being able to take the current thing seriously & wanting to go back to the last place. What's really miserably sad (for/to me) is that even if the last moment was a beautiful happy one & it comes back to me, even if in my sad rawness I can reason & beg & hope & succeed in bringing it back I will begin rejecting it because, actually, it's a new moment & my head immediately telescopes away & responds that I'm kind of disappointed/still confused/please see last state of mind because that's the comfortable one now.

Why, if I'm already sickly failing to erase the built in distances would I want to manufacture a distance? Because there is one time when the emotional takes over the words: when I get angry. I don't think I'm alone in this. Angry people say crazy things. When I get angry, I will probably respond the wrong way. Wrong meaning viciously & totally from the animal self & not the way I'll wish I'd have responded after some time has passed.

My old tactic was to go dead-cold silent for as long as I needed. Sometimes I needed an unreasonable amount of time. But in the last few years I have been really actively working to shorten that time into something reasonable: a few minutes or a night or just a tiny number of days, depending. (Not all of this time between things confusion is my fault: let's face it, in the immediacy of current communications, [the ability to & seeming expectation that you will mobile-y update yr facebook status while blogging about the experience & twittering to let everyone know whether they care or not that you've taken down all so-&-so's pictures off yr flickr or whatever] even just sleeping on it seems like too much time to take.)

So actually I am working to both keep the distance & shrink the distance. Or rather, ideally, to insert a nearly imperceptible distance into my emotions, so that I can respond almost immediately the way I would, in the long term, prefer to respond: out of the rational & caring & whole self rather than the immediate & wounded one.

Why am I having so much more luck with this distance than the other? Why can't I accept a time/thing for just what it is just when it is exactly as it is?

Charmed/French Cinema

People watch tv or movies for all manner of things. When they are sad, maybe especially, they watch some things that light & move. I think the reasoning goes that most people watch this as a kind of mind-numbing escape -- they watch to avoid thinking. But for me when I'm watching a thing, I look for something specific: very sad & very beautiful women. Beautiful women to whom terrible things happen. That is incredibly soothing to me. Watching a man clearly in love with a beautiful woman lie to her; watching a beautiful woman drive the man she loves off a cliff leaving the man who loves her & her son behind; watching beautiful women turn to prostitution & have someone shoot their husband or get shot themselves. This is relieving to me in a way I can't even begin to explain.

Treating everyone every day like it's their birthday

Yesterday was my mom's birthday & I decided as part of my present to her I'd be as sweet & cheerful as possible. If I felt grumpy or spaced out I was going to get present & smile. I wasn't going to point out anything she did that was annoying or wrong or just not how I'd do it so she could feel happy & relaxed the whole day & not criticized in the least (I can be critical. I can be critical without even noticing).

Actually, I felt better. Just smiling & shrugging it off left me less stressed. So I'm going to try to treat all the people I love like it's their birthday every day.

I want to think a thing

but all my words are working out wrong.

This should be a good thing for the writing but there is no writing right now. Just journaling & the same weird easy parables I always revert to when I have no idea what I'm making in a poem & some chopped up horoscopes.

Poet padding.

FutureTense

Sometimes one very dearly needs a break from the inside-weather report, which I am decent at doing here (and in my writing, of which I'm not), but not very good at doing in my own head (which, let's face it, is what REALLY needs the break). It's impossible for me to come to some sort of decision, or put a thing to rest decisively -- I am just good at thinking about it a lot. Lots. No, really, like endlessly. Whatever I've got to think about I'm going to think about until something else to think about comes & replaces it by force. If thoughts could be touched mine would be smooth, would be rocks in the tumbler. But not a thing that could go in a ring.

What I'd wanted to say is I've been out doing things that I want to talk about, but they're not interesting, or at least I'm not at the point where I can say interesting things about them. I just want to report "I did this, I did this," because there's so much doing going on. This kind of doing is better with photos, but I don't have any photos of it yet.

There will be photos. There will be thoughts on things I did.