Proximal To

also thinking about the body thinking about subject. physical proximity to other getting wrapped up in mental/emotional proximity to the self.

as it were.

i am thinking a lot about how we define things. that is, is it possible to define something in a vacuum? that is, not in relation to something else. no day without night pleasure without pain etc.

etc.

this is not a new idea. i just keep thinking about how we define ourselves in relation to other people, and how that varies dependant upon our actual physical proximity to those other people. are we more ourselves being close to the ones we love or being distant? are we more ourselves as a single point - one dimension - out on the grid or are we more ourselves as the confused somewhat compromised part of a line a cube a flesh and blood tree, if you will?

and the difficulty of putting thoughts about this into words. something about all of the semi-relevant terms we have: signifier, signified, referent, reference point, subject, object, place. something also about the way words are necessary in this process of defining and thus being even more trapped by relatives because you can only define words with other words. here are some pictures, then, too.

lizard popsicles

Aimee Bender has a website, and on that website she has writing games.

ta-da!

A small post

one page at a time
pdf. the printer churns
what i must read

I am thinking about the body JT. About what we do to our characters. I tend to tear out the emotional bodies of mine.

Shoot The Freak- Attack on the Body Part II

the body is the sponge and not the sponge. correction. a body is a sponge and not a sponge. thread things together-- writings & ideas flow through a body and come out the other end. the mouth is an asshole of sorts. AR was right when she told us that eating was like shitting backwards. she didn't say it like that but she could have.

somewhere between Piu Piu's Pollo Palace and a frozen pina colada stand, toward the end of the boardwalk on Coney Island, is Shoot the Freak, a game where passersby line up along a wall and take paint ball shots at a cigarette smoking 19 year-old wearing a face mask and torn up jeans. romantic. 3 bucks gets you 5 shots. 5 bucks gets you 15. a boy tells his dad as they part from the crowd, you got him in the head, dad! yea, dad says, and the groin. The Freak in this scenario is not freakish enough. or perhaps too freakish. too unrecognizable from the freaks I'm expecting. Immediately I want to write a book called "Shoot the Freak". The opening paragraph will describe in elaborate detail the colorings and images on the shoddy wooden shield the teen boy is holding as he, pathetically, scurries from wall to wall to avoid getting blasted in "the head" or "the groin". Come on, Freak! Run around! Whirling out from ekphrastic narration to the action at hand, this paragraph will reference, obscurely, the opening of The Illiad. I think.

Immediately, as I write this, I give up hope on the project. And in rivers the self-critique (See, JDH's post about --- writing).

This is how my body experiences the world. I see something I find interesting and my mouth wants to shit out a story, a poem.

[I'm the Freak]

[I'm the Freak]

[I'm the Freak]

next day...

Yes, I'm the Freak. Or, at least, I want to be.

musings on freak "shooting"

1. death-expose the vulnerability of a body (need to make distinction between freakish body and non-freakish body-- and i want to say something like... .... .... all written bodies are monstrous, freakish because they have no physical/tangible substance. they are not bodies but fragments of bodies. flattened out bodies, etc. yikes.)

2. power- and all the post-colonial thinkings on the body as the final (re)source of agency and authority.

3. esthetic- bodily gore can be beautiful. enchanting. grotesque. etc.

4. therapy.

5. ... 6....

written exercise- shoot up the freak to excess. make him fail. revolt.

I think we like animals because they are dumber than us. & we are dumb, dumb, dumber than we know & we smell things on accident not even on purpose. but sometimes we do something smart & have a good old pat about it & have a good old pat with our pet & our cow. probably, we use their spirits in our poetry like we wear outfits. it’s gay.

we went on a trip and I held the steering wheel while you lit your cigarette. it was 1982 & we both had boyfriends. run, run, run in the Mississippi sun. I wrote that silly song under the waterfall. I did not take off my clothes because I wasn’t wearing the good underwear & I didn’t want you to know. but I was right over the border with a broken heart & so wishing I had brought the beer. or a sandwich. or left my cellphone in the corvette. fuck it.

the next day I was in “Breaux Bridge” & everyone was thinking about divorce. I had no idea. but people are absolutely not places. just shut your eyes. because you can imagine, friend, when you & I are sitting on the couch with our backs to the street you are not divorced & I have never kissed a girl. when we are just there, on the couch, it’s real if you keep touching your face like an idiot & getting up to pour the perfect sazerac. but I felt like a domino standing next to other dominos. can you imagine? a whole planet. it was really stupid. but, seriously we only knew time was passing because every now & then I had to use the bathroom & you had to ignore your Aunt. I finally bought a butter dish. my answer is yes. to everything. I ate meat & lived but you were too much of a wuss to get a drive-thru daiquiri.

there was a drunk dude I didn’t know asleep on my porch so we honked the horn twice & drove around the block once & when he was still there I totally freaked out. you’re a really good friend & already I have said too much. I heard him dry heaving outside my window. I took you to the river but I didn’t tell you anything about myself. I said I was a good good girl & shouldn’t we get going? it’s great. I have a recycling bin. there were 300 boxes on my front porch & the whole neighborhood descended on me with box cutters & said let us help you! one man had his hand in his pocket & was touching his weiner while we talked. that totally freaked me out but he brought me a bunch of peppers later to make up for it. & I thought of you, JT & my body is so clean because I showered a bunch & a body is all we have sometimes. like really, just shut your eyes. remember when you told me to dental dam my heart outside that gay bar under the overpass? I was being an asshole & I said, what flavor? when I think of bodies I can’t stop thinking about how sick E.T looks in that bathtub scene. gross. the body makes great movies. I really never write about it that much for how much I think about them all & didn’t do my homework when L.M told me to sit in front of a video camera & watch my face go. I figured that’s someone else’s problem.

Here)(There

I don't have anything very smart to say but if I don't say anything I won't.

I wrote a poem once now twice with a line and then a title that goes: stop drinking stop drinking or you won't

now:

<>

Also there are zombies in the poem.

All that said, there is something worth mentioning about place and moving places and places that move. We're all in the process of this. The having moved and the settling. I went for a bike ride today into the Marigny to check out a coffee shop that might be hiring. On the way there the roads were all in my favor, but on the way back they were one way the wrong way. This seems important. Like: you can't go back. Even short distances. Or you can, but you risk being mowed down by white pick-ups turning left. And also: never retrace your steps. I had a friend in China with this policy and we took many circuitous adventures. It is long and often dusty that way but makes for more of everything.

1. You can't go back

2. Never retrace your steps

And in the meantime it is nice to be in New Orleans now. I look around and I wonder how I'll ever leave this place. But it is one of the moving places and might leave me*. Still, it's nice to think about building a relationship with a place rather than a person. I'm tempted to say it's less dangerous, but see * above.

Hold Tight, Friends

Unfortunately this will not be about us entirely but it does seem familiar. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9276.html

attack on the body- Part 1

My current employers are really concerned with my insides. And my outsides. Mostly, they want to make sure I'm not one big sack of germs that will infect their precious kids. I don't totally blame them since the world has always (to some extent or another) been concerned with cleanliness or the appearance there of. But I exaggerate. I know they are really concerned with general health and well-being.

But really, I'm talking about HIV and Tuberculosis and Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas-- which if you haven't read, you should. particularly JD and LTW whose own work on bodies is related to Butler's.

Yesterday, while waiting for the results of my TB test, I finished reading Scorch Atlas. And it's hard not to have a visceral reaction to Butler's collection of shorts- all of which depict "the end" of times. His world is fantastic and creepy, filled with gnats the size of fists and eye sockets gone sour from too much sun. It's disgusting and nightmarish. On the level of craft, even the "topography" of the sentences is disorienting. Words are wrenched from their meanings and often turned into awkward verb-like things. All very uncomfortable. Hard to read. Almost in-human.

After all the depiction of sickness and infection in the novel, it was a sudden and odd relief to be told I don't have Tuberculosis. (Side note: the nurse shot me an eye-roll when I inanely emitted a 'woo hoo! to the results) My body was safe. My body was clean. No odd bumps or discolorations in my intestines. No swollen glands. Crooked bones. No milky nostrils. No bristly skin patches. Or soggy gums. My body was clean. My body was safe. Amongst the patients waiting for their results--the clinic serves (mostly) under served, impoverished individuals who are at high risk for infectious diseases--I could think only of the cleanliness of my own body. I couldn't even bring myself to pick up and read the free magazines for people living with HIV, lest someone think I have HIV. Yes, totally & utterly shameful. Despicable. I was inexplicably hyperphobic about disease.

And now, my a la Mel question: Why are we as writers and artists so interested in putting our bodies in positions of disease and violence?

In my own work, I have sewn into my face, my body and those of my characters. Butler's most haunting image, for me, is that of a woman (a mother) holding a hammer to her belly, her blood-eyes piercing her on-lookers. The violence against bodies is so common in our work. Our characters are beaten, raped, abused, tortured, disfigured, etc. And these are just the physical tortures. In a world where disease and sickness is everywhere and the pressure to keep the body clean is pervasive is writing about the ill body a form of resistance? a form of escape? what is it with the attack on the body whether as metaphor or aesthetic?