Being Born

Corinthians brought me this book, Being Born, and it has amazing pictures of fetal development. It's written as if to a baby, and it has this to say about how you got started.

"But the ovum needed something else
before it could grow into a baby.
It needed sperm before you could start growing.
Millions of sperm, much smaller than the ovum,
were in the testicles behind your father's penis.
When your mother and father felt very loving,
they kissed and cuddled each other.
Your father's penis became hard so that it could slide
into your mother's vagina,
the soft opening between her legs
which leads to her uterus.
As your mother and father held each other in their arms,
a liquid called semen
spurted out from his penis into her vagina." -Being Born, Sheila Kitzinger

Yes, I'm giggling like a five year old. Aren't you?

It's a Volcano

The wave has crested...
It's like every pore of yr soul has opened up and all the sadness in the world is poring into you, pouring through you on its way to where it was supposed to go. You feel hollow, empty and yet so full yr about to burst. Actually, sadness is the wrong word. It's an undifferentiated emotional state. It's so overwhelming it could be sadness, fear, happiness, maybe even anger. It's so much you can't tell anymore what you feel other than wholly emotional. It's so powerful you can't speak or look or talk or move or do anything. Hope to be alone or the tears will flow like ungrided molten oceans.
Banker's caught me a few times, but mostly I can shut everyone out when it's on me. Just lock the doors and curl up...if I feel it coming on quick enough. That's what depression is. Not the kind that comes from some awful experience or event, but the neurological kind. The kind that has no reason other than itself. Once you know what it is, it gets a little easier. After you've been through it enough times, you know instinctively just to ride the wave. Don't fight or encourage it in any way. Just let it happen for as long as it needs to. You learn that it will go away eventually, but be wary of it because you can come to love it. You will never at any other time in yr life feel so powerfully any other emotion. It verges on religious ecstasy so closely that you can yearn for it and will. Just know that the knife is double-edged and sharp as a razor.

enigmatic

I had a professor once who told me I was the most enigmatic student he had ever taught. Normally when an older man tells me things like this I tend to dismiss them because a lot of times it's just a ploy for sex, but Professor (let's call him that for everyone's sake) was one of the most intense teachers I ever had. Consequently, I wanted to believe him. Not that I don't think he wanted to have sex with me or I with him, but it was the way he said it that gave the moment so much weight. We were discussing a paper I was in the process of putting off, a comparative analysis of the role of intuition in A Theory of Justice by John Rawls and On Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and he just slipped it into the conversation very inoccently and moved on. Of course, I completely lost focus and begged off on the excuse that I was late for something. Here was this professor who I was totally enamored with telling me that he found me enigmatic. It would seem that this should have been exhilarating or something, but I was unsettled by it.
Firstly, it made me think about what it might mean to be enigmatic. Was that really a complement? I think he meant it in a more complicated way, as in he didn't get what made me tick or something, and I think that's the key to the concept. Essentially, I think we proscribe enigmaticism to people who's contradictions we are unable to reconcile or clearly see. In truth then it's not necessarily a complement but more of a complexity.

anemic pale 110lb. junkie ascetics of America

That junkey 'um' that follows any out-on-the-limb, statement, um, he-um, the self-indulgent baby sob inkept from exploding to the big bawl mawk crackfaced WAAA they feel from the junk regressing their systems to the crib.---Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans

Flung into the system and facing eternal destruction, damnable dissolution, and aptly named damnation, I have to wonder at myself sometimes. Can I just keep up the craggy existence, and be happy with that? I don't suppose there's any reason why not, except the BDA might just go Columbine on my ass one day if I resign myself to this life. We all need friends like that.

Banker and I had our ceremonial make-up sex where he's all sensous and gentle. That is not his usual way. Normally he's very rough, which I like. It is nice to be held once and a while though.

Frailish and fraughtful waiting

If there is undeniability in the understatements of existence, then I want them here to comfort me in my time of dying. If there's trouble to torment my dearly lost soul, then I take it on and stand amongst the ruined lies of long lost dreams to take hold of the pheonix of rising ashes. Can I stand to be alone in the mystic avenues of my brain for another minute of completion?

I can't begin to exculpate myself from the ruins of my lifelost life any longer.

Banker and I had a fight today. A big one. He's tired, and I'm tired. We're both just tired. I don't really care about the lie that is our life anymore, but he thinks I do. He blames himself for my problems, and then takes it out on me. I really don't blame him, but I won't let him ride on me for his own guilt all the time. I told him that, and he got pissy. It was unpleasant.

CRM group huddle and a freestyle

Corinthians thought it would be 'nice' if we had a meeting of the Cross Referenced Modulates Literary Group, and seeing as I'm not going to them, they were kind enough to come to me this past weekend. It was actually very nice. Alfred is a very intense guy but committed, the BDA is an oddball, and corinthians is just the awesome little peach that she always is. Unfortunately, her husband Jhazz is all up in some non-fiction bookwriting right now, so he's not really much with the whole wasting time talking about literature just now. He's a fabulous character when he's around, but mostly he's superbusy.
We made do without him by smoking a lot of weed (actually that was just me), and talking bookshop. It is officially decide that we're starting our group reviews with Black Boy. I can't say that would've been my first choice, but who the hell ever asks me what I think anyway. I've never read the fucker, but it sounds much too heavy for my taste. We'll see how that goes.
Corinthians did this freestyle rhyming exercise after the group huddle that I thought I would include because it's soo froody.

The talk begins and sometimes ends
within the bounds, between good friends
of all good things, and all good means
but finally comes to what you bring.
Realistically,
so closely found
within the hints
of what resounds
as innocence
that still contends
with intransigent
roaming malcontents
terorized by thoughts
of transgendered men.
Yet intelligence
is on the hunt for indigent
lost diligence.
One wonders when the sun shines in,
and we begin to enter in
to firm commends
to shun our sins, or do we sense that then they win.
Perhaps we must
stay aware of what
has passed before or will pass since,
or we'll be stuck to pass through then
those times again.
It's the way it goes my friends.
so hold on tight, the ride begins.

A totally freestyle spoken word/rap thing that I've tried to recreate the feel of here. Luckily, I keep a tape recorder around to record my thoughts. that way I'm not talking to myself. I'm talking to eternity's immortal friends with my trusty tape recorder, right?
Hey, I'm no Rilke myself, but shit, if I had a band I would kick some crazy enough poetry to top Morrison's lameass self, given half a chance, and corinthians and I could do some kind of Floetry thing. Yeah, well, all dreams are real while your asleep.

Atahualpa or Atabalipa

Degenerations rationed for the long run consumption; Attired in the fitfull fancy ballgown of a crown prince of thievery and packaged as corporatized misgivings; Abandoned in the wreckage of a blustery New England nighttime; Avenging the pernicious incising of the long forgotten Mountblanc huns on their last run at glory; Is there any empathy amongst the millions who cry foul at the slightest percieved slight?
I am rotting and gorging and foaming at the mouth for safe harbors from the shark infested waters of my mind. There are times when the wild things roam, and no amount of kharmic balance will appease the gods of fury that live in my belly. I ride the wingless donkey of abrasion's lost triumph to the mighty frost of winter's cold belying force.
Can it be any more pedantic and uninspiring? My head is numb with intrusions and proclamations of exculpation. I'd rather be sleeping.

Artificial Paradises

"Whoever has had a grief to appease, a memory to evoke, a sorrow to drown, a castle in Spain to build(??)-all have at one time invoked the mysterious god who lies concealed in the fibers of the grapevine. How radiant are those wine-induced visions, brilliantly illuminated by the inner sun!" -Charles Baudelaire, On Wine and Hashish

What prose and insight from the mind of madness gripped by opium addiction...the beauty and truth of the dignities of drink and its potential for destructiveness or transport.

Swing shift Leonard

Swing shift leonard and the omega fatty acids was the 'it' band of 1986 with their sizzling single, I want to make a danceparty in yr pants.
I don't remember writing that at all.
Swing shift leonard was a wannabe pimp who pulled for a place called Ernestine & Hazel's around the turn of the century. He is so named because of his constant attempts to turn out waitresses working the afternoon or early morning shifts. Apparently he would haunt coffee shops and seedy restuarants flashing money on the scene, and generally acting like, well, a pimp. We know all of this because he turned out bluesman C.C. Turner's girl, who went to work for the aforementioned E&H. Turner went nuts over the whole thing and stormed the place; shooting Leonard, the barman, and several of the other girls before stabbing his woman estelle and the man she was with some 57 times. Then he turned the gun on himself.
Somehow I think there's a lesson in all that.

Also!

Everybody wants to be my friend...How does the rest of that song go? I can't remember. Maybe I'll ask Amy Winehouse's crack smokin' ass. How in the hell do you get caught smoking crack? If I were a crackhead, I would keep that shit on the downlow except with my other crack smoking buddies. Do you really want to end up on you-tube in the cracksmoke showcase, because that's how it's gonna go.
I don't have anything against crack really. It just seems like the barrel scraping bottom, kind of nasty, like shooting crank. I met these kids once many years ago who used to shoot crank, and man were they some off the wall fuckin' freaks. They were some country boys from down South who were just bored and that's how it ended up. A lesson to all you parents out there, activities for kids might just save them from a lifelong habit of junking up their veins with the nastiest drug on the planet.
Actually, I heard about this drug a couple of years ago called cat, not ketamine mind you, that's K. It was some wierd designer drug that this dude from a drug company cooked up and tested on himself somehow. Apparently the stuff was off the charts addictive, and the guy and his friends just totally lost their shit. Some of them ended up dead overdosed, others in jail, and the lucky ones just ended up in rehab climbing the walls. They had some before and after pictures of the main guy who invented the shit. Wow, he went from nerd-o chemist to major league cracked out junkie in just two or three months. It was some scary shit. I may on occasion abuse various substances, but I know enough to stay away from that designer shit. Well, most of the time.
One time, this girl who was dating a friend of mine had a bottle of this clear liquid. Somehow I ended up with the shit and a couple of us just went at it taking swigs of the stuff until her boyfriend saw us and freaked. Apparently she had been selling the stuff and would measure it out in milliliters with a little mouth syringe, and we were just drinking the stuff like it was water. Let me tell you that was an intense next few days.

Ha, it's the lif...where's the

Where's the money when I hit the floor? Trace the image in the pancake batter of breakfast cereal for two dimes and a hot cup 'a joe. What does it all mean?
I spent the last several hours cleaning the underside of my kitchen cabinets with meticulous and mindnumbing intensity, and without the expected help of speed, meth, or anything except my own mania. Who does this kind of shit? Really, if yr out there I would love to know. Maybe not you exactly, but about you. There's never been a time in my life when I didn't crave the kind of order and certainty that this world gaurantees that you'll never get. I remember being a small child. Wow did that suck! I'm losing myself down a k-hole right now. You'll have to forgive me or curse me to the dimlit of eternity. I know voodoo too.

Today...

I get the feeling sometimes that I'm an also ran. Like one of those people in one of the spin off network TV shows like One Tree Hill, except not as pretty. I feel like the script of my life is B grade material at best, and it makes me want to cry sometimes. It is really liberating to just let it all the fuck out like it's not embarassing that I'm completely afraid of leaving my apartment or that I get so depressed sometimes I don't move or eat or do anything for days on end.
Banker is understanding about it, but he worries about me a lot, which is sweet. It helps that someone gives a shit. The BDA does too. He even tried to get me to go out a couple of months ago. I had a complete panic attack before we even got to the first floor. I was in the stairway hyperventilating in a total spazzout, and he had to fireman carry me back to the apartment. That was the last time I tried to go out.
Maybe that's what I feel like I'm missing. All that's outside, but it just scares the shit out of me. All those strange people. I don't really know what it is, but I just can't even imagine going out there. Mostly I don't have any reason too. Everything I need I can get brought to me, so why go to them. Drugs, food, even people have to come to me. It's empowering in a wierd way. I know I shouldn't embrace this off the wall living, but I like it. It's who I am.

Why am I still living?

I've thought about killing myself. And not just in the kind of oh-wo-is-me-I-wish-I-were-dead kind of way either. I mean the real thing. Turning off the phone, locking the door, and taking the whole bottle of pills kind of suicidal ideation. Not the small cutting bullshit. I don't know why I don't.
I guess it's cause of Banker. He's like my priest in some ways. He protects me from the world, but also helps enable me to not have to really deal with any of my shit. I guess he loves me, and I guess I might love him if I could or knew how or wanted to know how. Emotionally I'm pretty tone deaf to anything but my own megalomaniacal parabolic arcs. Maybe if he didn't keep me hidden away in this little brownstone apartment, I wouldn't be so glib about it, but he does, so I am.
You see Banker is a very rich and very powerful man, and he fears more than anything in the world that people in his world will discover the truth. The horrible closet inducing truth; that banker is gay.
Come on, right? It's the twenty-first century already. That's what I used to tell him when we first met, but I gave up after he started paying all my bills. I felt like I owed him, oh I don't know, a little comfort, even if it was a false and withering comfort.
Why am I telling you all this? I don't really know. My friend, The Brown Dog Affair, is all about this blogging stuff, and he's been trying really hard to get me to reengage a little bit, so I joined his little literary criticism blog, and now here I am. I really do kinda' like the blatant exhibitionism. I actually miss that in my totally agoraphobic life. Well, enough on this for now.