full of moxie and viscosity

AT LEAST I CAN BE WAYNE CAMPBELL FOR HALLOWEEN. IF NOTHING ELSE IN THIS WORLD IS SACRED, AT LEAST I CAN HOLD ONTO THIS. I AM WAYNE. PARTY ON, GARTH.

I'm wearing my new wig, the purple shoulder length one with bangs. I'm watching True Romance on the television and the fireplace is lit.

I am confused tonight, and a little scared. At least it's raining outside, and little parts of songs cushion my weary head.

I made a wonderful dinner. Filet mignon and prawns sauteed in butter with onions and a lemon garlic herb marinade. I ate only one of the steaks that I made. I've been feeling the scar tissue on my nose lately, where my piercing is. I wonder if I should let it close, or buy another post and open it up again.

(seconds when I'm shaking leave me shuddering for days)

I wish that I had a laptop, or a secretary to write for me. Or a machine hooked up to my brain so all I would have to do is think and it would become real.

Like this: I could hope for a sentence and it would be there, written, before I was even done thinking of it. I could just feel a little twinge of desire and it would be on a plate for me, ready to eat.
I
Could
Be
More
Concise
With
My
Words.

what a shame, words are all we have at this point
connections are only little lines, spaces, amalgams of fabricated representations
but they will do

the sky here in washington state dissolves into the earth
it drizzles down constantly
perhaps the way we all feel
the essence of something, higher, fatter, bigger
drizzling down into us
or we do the drizzling
i'd like to turn off my windshield wipers
watch from the inside as i'm filled up
with essence

i can sit and cry, if i want to
but it seems so trite, so dramatic, so womanly
as though being a woman is wrong
i suppose at this point i am allowed to deny myself
my femininity
scratch off the dastardly breasts
close off my legs
turn off the tears
seems that it might be nice to Be Good For Once

my nights are filled with pouring
rain and words and letters
onto the pages, the windows
(i once wrote, the novel is my laboratory)

my days are all the same, air conditioning
carpet and pens and papers and telephones

men are not worth it, but to be a woman is so much effort
i'm still deciding what to do about that.

sometimes i feel alone
which is not the wrong way to feel
alone is either perfection
or absence of emotion
or general happiness

my days are rainy but i'm tasting the essence--
the windshield wipers slow, things get heavier

wish i had more than words to give you now
but my heart is overflowing
and it needs draining
and it only speaks in words
and raindrops

I think that Radiohead heightens my awareness of the differences between colors. When I'm listening, all of a sudden the blue of my car is no longer just blue, but it's blue because the sky is grey and the road is black and the trees are green and the stop sign red and my hands pink.

Most of my epiphanies these days are about context. I either decide that context is all that matters, that I exist because the table exists and I know that I'm not the table (thank you to Nathan Gadd for the "this") or that what really matters is me, alone, not that I exist within a context but that I am completely me without anyone else. It translates into so many different arguments- the nature vs. nurture argument, deciding whether we are inherently the way that we are or if we are solely products of our environments. Or the subjectivity argument. Does anything really matter if it's outside our own perspective? I think I make art. But someone on the street might say that my art is nothing but false interpretations of sensory perceptions, which might be wrong anyway... in which case, we have to decide.

1. Am I capable of making art because I was born to make art or because my environment up until now has cultivated me in that way? If it's the former, have I ever had a choice? And if it's the latter, shouldn't I be able to stop?

2. If the theory of subjectivity is true, that everything is subjective, then isn't the theory of subjectivity itself inherently subjective, therefore making objectivity the real god? In that case, art can be judged, and most likely we're all doing it wrong. If it's not the case, then we shouldn't judge anything.

3. Do I exist completely separate of everything outside of me? Or do I exist within contexts? I have to say it's pretty impossible that I exist outside of any context. I'm only a daughter because I have a mom, and I'm only in pain because there is happiness. Regardless, I still think about it. Sometimes I exist only in my head. But that's just because there are other things to ignore, right?

I think I know the answer to one and three. Two kills me, though. Radiohead. Colors.

elliott smith died last night. situations get f%&#ed up.

There was a girl, and she spent a long time invested in someone hopeless. (I was having a sweet fix/ of a daydream of a boy/ whose reality I knew/ was a hopeless to be had) Things hurt. He told her she could stay, and then turned his back (you fondle my trigger/ then you blame my gun). It took her a long time, but eventually she realized that it wasn't that HE was hopeless, it was that THEY were hopeless. So she tried to ignore it. The warmth, that is. (I want your warm/ but it will only make me colder/ when it's over) But the warmth followed the girl all the way to Vancouver, Washington, at which time she realized that the warmth was different from what she first thought. This warmth isn't love, she realized. She wrote, and read (hail to the pages turning).

And then he calls her, he does, to tell her that he is still the same person he was before, with a new hat on. She loves the new hat, she tells him that the hat is just right for him. This hat, she whispers to pictures she took of herself as a child, is something he never told me he wanted. He asks her questions and the answers are the overflow, so she answers the best she can (whatcha looking at me for/ I'm no good at math).

And in this moment, she thinks of him, perhaps in the way she will continue to think of him in days to come. His subtle plea, the sound of consideration inside his voice, his hands when they were tender and soft, his eyes dewed with longing for something beautiful. The feeling of his warmth. Regardless of how long it took for her to discover it, the feeling of his warmth. Not the warmth she requires from a lover, nor the warmth from a father. The warmth she requires from him. Only him. This is the July of their experience together. Break down the barriers of pain and suffering, because they have made it beyond. She is ready to help (so be it, I'm your crowbar/ if that's what I am so far). She can't cradle this warmth between her arms when she needs a friend, or hold onto it between her legs when she's feeling lonely. She can't even hold it in her brain as "the way it was." It's just the way it is.

This brings the girl something she's been needing. The overflow doesn't leave her the way she thought it would. It's not converted, she doesn't think. It's not gone, either. How to describe where this overflow has gone is something she does not know how to do. She thinks that it is UP. The overflow did not fall, or spill off her, or turn into bread. It perhaps became steam, off her head in a cold morning, or out the sides of her lidded pot (I wished on the lidded blue flames/ and I wished for you) and turned from a wish into a (strand to climb/ a little hope). For herself, you see? Dear reader, for herself, hope for her own heart-hat.




(many thanks to Fiona Apple for the lyrics included in this blog)

I'm getting a feeling right now that I used to get when I was little a lot more: the feeling that there is something bigger than us, something stronger and larger and farther away. In my brain, I see where I am, and then the camera backs up, like those shots from movies when the camera starts on one person and ends up at the universe, the zoom out. It happens in my brain and the farther away from Earth I get, the more scared I am. Why am I one of these little units of energy? What do I mean? Is someone watching, and does it matter if they are? I get really scared thinking this way, really unsettled and shaken up. I'm making myself do it today because I need a little shaking up, a little stimulation. My Stimulate Me Blog did well, but I have a feeling that the stimulation I need has to come from within, and all you gutter brains knock it off-- I'm serious. I think the reason I require the stimulation I require is different- it has something to do with my current dissociative state of mind, my lack of ability to distinguish between fantasy and my current goals, between pain and healing, especially in regards to past relationships.

I can't escape these past romances. They are a part of me- a scar, as I like to say- and always will be. They will call me, I will talk to them, I will long for them, they will long for me (maybe), I will recall to my mind their lovely presence in my life, the touch of their hair on the inside of my elbow and the little words they turned into snacks for my hungry insides... but moreso, I have to remember the emptiness, the drag, the flatness. I have to remind myself sometimes of that, because it's too easy to say, "those were the good times. Ain't it sad that they're gone?" I am solely proportioned to love. I wrote to Tye today, sometimes my heart is overflowing and needs draining. Today is the day. The stimulation perhaps is not stimulation but the need for catharsis.

Vicki's blog talked about conversion. I thought it was interesting and well said, but I was having difficulty understanding its relation to my life. I think I just figured it out. (www.vickiforman.com)

Fear?

I got so much done today. I feel really productive. Oh, and I applied to work at Starbuck's today. Talk about funny stuff. I really need the extra money, and since I don't have any friends, or boyfriends (ahem), I might as well work 80 hours a week and just make oodles of money and pay off my student loans and work off every debt I have and ya know. Make lots of money. As soon as I pay off all of my debts I'm going to live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and start making my own clothes and growing food and stuff. Money sucks so hard, but I really need it right now. Actually, when I think about it, I like money, I mean, I like having it, but it's only because stuff I want costs money. I don't like the idea of having a lot of money lying around. I like the idea of being able to have stuff. Or being able to buy people stuff. Cause, I like people, and they like stuff, so I want to buy stuff for them.

So, I'm going to work at Starbuck's. Maybe I'll meet some new friends there. Wait, I won't have time to hang out with them. I'll be too busy working. GOOD. That's how I like it.

Something else for all of you to think about: if there's a chance you might make it into the novel, start thinking about what you want your fake name to be. And if you think you might want to read the section with you in it, contact me. We can discuss. Not that it's ever going to get published, but once I finish it I'm going to let people read it, so, you know.

ONE LAST THING
I would really like to sit down and try to count all of the people I've kissed in my life. I think it would be a pretty small list. Some really funny entries. REALLY funny.

I want more patience. I want it now.

I was feeling really low today. Several reasons. Funny how a blog is, you can't exactly post absolutely everything you want to post. Kind of like the novel. I have to clip out certain things because they'll be hurtful or because they're unnecessary enough to exclude for the sake of ease. Anyway, feeling low today because of a person.

I went through old emails. Copy-pasted a bunch of them. I'm looking to piece them together into a new segment for the book. I can't tell you how great it felt. And then I posted all of my "completed" stories onto a new webpage that is called www.angelfire.com/fang/wong which is basically the best name for a website EVER, in the entire world. I got a lot of responses to my Stimulate Me blog and my Stimulate Me bulletin board post on Friendster (if you aren't on Friendster get on it. You're seriously missing out.) I feel stimulated. I feel loved. I feel happy that it's raining.

I want to go to Philadelphia and take mind drugs like Micah gives me. Weird drugs, like, thoughts instead of pills. Sentences instead of pipes. I want to go there and see Micah and have him tell me about how his skin is on strings coming out from the walls and that his desk is a world. He's completely right, you know. Skin and masks and worlds. Everything's sliding around today. Low to high, used to user, played to player, hypnotized to hypnotist, fighter to lover. Slipslipslipslip.

I miss my trains of thought. I feel like I don't pay them any attention anymore. I need something to stimulate me. Where is stimulation? Hey, someone, stimulate me.

So is it linear or like a big mountain range? I would love to believe the mountain range theory. What happens to me now has happened to me in the past and will happen to me in the future. What is now is also then and also future. In some ways I know it's true: the things I do now obviously affect me now. They affect the past because they change my perception of the past and therefore, the facts in the past change.

(This brings to mind a conversation I had with Mark about fact and truth versus perspective. I would like to argue that fact is simply collective perspective, but Mark argued that fact was the essence of what happened- what "really" happened. Who can say what "really" happened? Matrix style debate: it's all verified by our senses, and they've fooled us before, right? It gets tricky with all these semantics. For this particular entry I will use the following definitions for my terminology:
truth: essence, level one- the highest tier. the essence of the chair (anyone notice where I'm getting this yet?)
fact: collective perspective- it's only fact because many people say it's so (we all say, there's the chair)
perspective: one view (I say, the chair is to my left))

Secondly, since the facts of the past change, then the present changes, because as we all know, the present is a product of our past. So. The future is the past is the present, or is at least affected by all of those things. Okay, so if the things I do now are important to my life, should I not be able to plan them better? Or conversely, enjoy them better? Why is it a constant struggle with the plan versus the moment? The present versus the future? I'm going to start living in the past instead, it's warm and I already know the pain involved. I'll just reside there.

But the mountain range theory is wrong, anyway. If we aren't linear then we make no sense. I'm a big fan of learning from my past, taking what I know and trying to mold it, shape it, pancake it into some type of record for my soundtrack. If I couldn't cement that in some way, my soundtrack would be... warped? No, that's not right either. I can replay one night in my head thirteen times a day and get a different song for it each time. The mountain range has to be right.


HA! I didn't use the definitions at all. That's great.

Dear Rachel,

Thank you for your fiction.
It is not quite right for (stupid journal that I don't want my story in anyway).

Sincerely,

(woman who probably didn't even read my story and took four months to get back to me)