PROCESS IS DISGUSTING

I went to the social security office today to get a new card. I was thinking for some reason I was thinking this can't possibly take too long I mean really how many people have this problem I mean I'll just run in and get it done.

I did not bring a book.

I had stack of papers explaining what I needed to do to get my replacement card, my wallet, my passport, my phone and a pen.

Cell phones must be turned off: XXX

I stared at the screen telling me how to get my social security benefits. I listened to some other people. I thought about a dream I had where I am always mad at you because you ignore me and then when I get upset you don't get upset and sometimes I hit your arms and this one time you got on your bike and rode away even though I ran after you screaming your name. I think I said please, too, but I don't remember very well. Only that I was sad and you were on a blue bike wearing a red sweater.

I looked at the numbers: still 2 til me.

I looked at my lap.

I realized I had a pen and paper but nothing hard to write on.

not subject but object

EXTRANEOUS MOVEMENTS MAKE YOU LOOK NERVOUS***

YOU ARE A MAN. YOU ARE ALIVE. THIS IS YOUR SPACE. (Spread your keys cigarettes wallet across your space. This says, I am here. This is my space).

DID SHE GIVE YOU THE ANCIENT LOOK DOWN RITUAL

the hierarchy of body:

1. spirit (as in our spirits never broken)

2. heart (as in she's got heart)

3. (two) feet (as in he's going to land on his feet)

4. gut (as in go with your gut feeling)

5. leg (as in he's got a leg up on the competition)

6. spine (as in you're spine-less)

7. head (as in she's got a good head on her shoulder)

8. shoulder (as in he can shoulder the pain)

9. testicles (as in you've got some balls)

Sounds Of

Help.

I can’t stop going to interact with people

I hardly know in a superficial way.

I used to do it in real life

and now I do it on the computer.

I mean, I used to on

the computer, and now I do in real life.

The computer in real life. People. In there.

Me with them. That’s where I’ve been.

Yes, I was drunk.

No, I didn’t hook up with anyone.

Squirrels on the roof. The crunch

of someone wrapping presents. The tapping

of someone like me typing. Someone like me.

always staring

at the darkness and large holes.

BLAKE WHIRLWIND OF LOVERS RE: PROCESS OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION THE STUDY OF DESIRE

belly speakeasy

I am thinking about animus. voice coiled tight in belly.

the compartment containing the steering apparatus. i know its a problem that I care about penny, dust and freckle almost equally. if i could care less about everything I'd be a much lighter person.

my new ritual is to watch an online morning news show to help anchor my day. at night my insides hurt in the gastrointestinal way and i'm sleepless. I try recalling bicycle rides down Alaska Street, a half attempt at sleep-meditation. instead it makes me melancholy: encounters with ghosts and scribbling poems on furniture. this is not the kind of writing i want to be doing.

instead--the bellyspeak meets an old-timey pen-- a "variation" on my misreading of VENTRAKL, a book I've been meaning to read. what animates. what turns the switch. for me this is body. body and body again. my journal diagrams a new project on body violence: animal puppetry.

(not be confused with my watching project on residual energy).

but today, a body can't be loud enough. maybe because the world doesn't care for a body. named or unnamed. bodies refusing to leave cells. body turned swan. body stitched shut. the body is having less and less affect/effect (on me). when body became territory it became like everything else.

where are my bones.

I’m in the difficult stages of getting-over

straddling lighting and trying to be a good human

If I was as cursed as a dog I’d have an excuse

for not being able to talk properly

my marrows sucked &

I’ve stuck my poetic bones in the oven.

I know I have a leg up on the competition

straddled & hooked around a meaning

I’m using my whole body

to figure this one out.

Come on come on come one inspiration

I can’t just show up to work like this

I am making a book with pages for feathers

The process of getting it together

involves an impossible sort of string like a elf’s beard

I can’t write this poem so I’m going

to braid my hairs.

AT THE HAIR BRAIDING STATION

I’m unable to perform

this right either

Although I am at the brimming part of my thinking

Where I combust at the thought of you.

No poof. No poof.

NEXT DAY

Most of the dead were young women

Says the radio

Crumpled to death in stamped.

violence

KATE DURBIN where have you been all my life.

OR

i'm trying to be violent. but writing is weak. this is a writer's crisis. and one that i don't want to shrug off with the whole power-of-the-imagination imagination. as in the words must come alive. the imagery must be vivid. writing is a corpse. words are weak. and the image is dangerous & toxic. these are not my sayings, i know.

I'm trying to be violent with my squirrel puppet & i'm getting no where. either she's holding a knife or she's holding a "knife."

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.