i feel what is happening
inside of this body
i feel the heart wearing the mind's clothing and
driving
i feel the dropping scaffolds, how the convenient
architecture of being physical
and ecological
are unclenching.
it's nice to see my cells and grains hit the town.
we are these tiny big breaths
celebrating how it's spring time
in the house of me

how far does the analogy between body and house extend?

"For the spirit dies not; the soul is in the body, and without a soul it cannot live. The body, when the soul forsakes it, is not. For the body is the house of the soul; and the soul the house of the spirit." - justin martyr, 150-160a.d.

"This body is not a home but an inn, and that only briefly." -seneca

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body." -c.s. lewis

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
These rebel powers that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?"
- from sonnet 146 - shakespeare

"The body never lies." -martha graham

i like my house clean and my body dirty
i wander in and out of my house and stay firmly (mostly) in my body
my house is open to almost all, my body is...mine. sometimes yours if i say so.
i want a house with no walls and a body with strong fibers and
don't want my skin to be too thick but these days i'm careful about hyperstimulation cause i've sensitized myself carefully.
i want my house to be safe always and locked at night, and my body to be safe and capable of trusting itself to unsafeness, unlocking itself, trusting to someone else's control, able to be bruised and scratched and used and then to recover with aching grace.
i want my body to be well and i know my house will always have tensions and small problems. neither is a machine.
i want my house covered in art, life, stuff, my body to reflect my life but not to be as readable as what's on my bookshelf and my walls...i want my body to be able to feel naked and my house to never be too empty.
i want both to be built with care, fed with goodness, capable of housing many or few
i want to sometimes let the house of my body be quiet and still
i want fur on the couch but not in my cunt
i don't want couchsurfers in my body's spaces, but i want to be open to casual engagements
i want everyone who comes through to mark my house, for the smells to always change
but i want my body to be my smells, never too estranged from my own influence and control,
i want to push my senses' boundaries, open my hips as i stretch, walk and feel my legs stretching and walls bowing (bäoing?) and dissolving so that i can
communicate with my body and not just my words...
with spirit, across walls and bodies, and not just with words...
i exceed my body's dead boundedness and my body cannot be contained by my house.

"Every [person] is the builder of a temple, called [their] body, to the god [they] worship, after a style purely [their] own, nor can [they] get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones." - thoreau

my body in my house,
my house in my body,
maybe i'll get a bäohaus tattoo for our upcoming bodymod day.

"Don’t lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home." -j.winterson, in "gut symmetries"

Earth Day

this makes me sad and confused

and this just fucking angry

4/20 is really the only holiday that makes sense to celebrate, because you do it every day anyway. Earth Day.... inside a concrete jungle.... antinomythatisironythatisimpossibility.... impossible to feel honest today.

the briefest of interludes

found in summer travel journal, opened up to a random page, scrawled in blue blood:
"roly will name her first-born quentin."

other than that, i still have very little to say.

smokey the bear says: only YOU can prevent squirrel rape

Yesterday morning I awoke to squirrel sex. They were going at it on my porch with a kind of one-sided zeal that I have only seen among dogs humping chair legs.

Missionary position. The act was not consensual.

I was overcome with a desire to queer up the animal kingdom--figure out some way to introduce these furry, thrusting creatures to the world of consensual kink. Throughout my morning run along the Lakeshore path, I thought about making squirrel zines, but perhaps this is not the kind of revolution that can be self-published.

Thoughts?

WHAT

whattttt. i ACTUALLY just walked in on gabe and vlad fucking.
(amid considerations of deterritorialization and newagery and deep beats and bodyrhythms)
i saw--gabe was on top and vlad looking quietly thrilled and when i supportively shrieked "what!"
gabe ran away
leaving vlad's asshole a little lonely (sorry vlad)
and the room smelling of farts, cigarettes, and furry lovemaking

2:18a.m. moments at the bäo. priceless.
oh, gabe's here to talk about it. can cat tails wag? cause i think he's interested

eleven i think

Somehow it's easier to talk when it's so fucking cold--we let our mouths run dry to warm our tongues, clench words in windtunnel ears until we Hear All and Tell All. Eleven blocks of Confessions, of When I Was A Kid, of I Know You, I Think.

Then two tequila smiles. Lime and salt and travel stories. A hallway.

And by morning we don't forget. I Know You, I Think, over coffee and eggs and I Have To Go but an hour passes. Because I Know You, I Think. I Just Want To Be Sure.

I can't remember the last time I was giddy for tomorrow.

And until tomorrow I will let books swallow me up, contemplate the one sixteenth of me that history erased and feel a little excited and self-enthralled because I Can't Help It.

So much happens Up Here now. I Would Know, I Think.

creme corporel de la resistance

My best friend from high school MAX has reached the degree of fame where overweight middle schoolers post self-made youtube covers of his songs.

The above statement contains:

a. Irony

b. Critique

c. Bullshit

d. Hope

or

e. Cyborgs

Inhale, arms up, exhale, bend over, inhale, halfway up, exhale, jump your feet back, inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale

A maelstrom of yellow reflections (don't flush):

Chicano buddhism, can one be new age ironically? can one be authentic ironically? maybe i'll go on the internet and find someone to piss on me, my chakras are dislocated today, try googling 'is philosophy useless', observe the tribe, one end of the scale is enthusiasm the other precision, why don't I feel like I'm learning anymore?

Let's go skinny-dipping! Who's down? let's freeze let's feel for real forever whatever together it's better this fetter together together

here we are

what labor we committed to in order to find each other

what searches for wheres and whens,

what riddles of this corner or the next,

this stranger's bed or that.

how we got to know one another through the voices of others

and the conversations with chance that assured us of our path.

how we danced around one another,

our lines grazing and flirting,

so close to touching but no not yet,

memorizing shared places and things,

learning of the other only through footsteps and echoes.

the way we patiently prepared to lock eyes one mere day and know

that we'd been here before

and it has the warm smell of home

you can lick my face anytime

here's my soupy soup
i thought about sending this in an email but for now i'm putting it here until i decide that it's okay to press the send button (these things can mean a lot and for some it might be toooooo much)

wow wow wow
i have warm burbles of love for all of you
i'm on the edge of tears - IN A NICE WAY, i must say
such that my eyes are always a little warm
and the edges of my vision blurred and soft so our world is a little dreamy
and my skin a little prickly
i feel fizzles between us
and though i am ZONKED, i like it and i like you
yes YOU, i'm looking at you
pretty mess-maker, joy-dancer, toe-wiggler, happy glowworm
at YOU life-good-maker, family-friend-lover
to whom i am grafted

i would briefly like to thank the universe
and its chaos
for coalescing to bring us-me-you here
THANKS ENTROPY (or rather let's measure ourselves on the spectrum thereof)!
you are a treat
you smell goodbad
you are nastytasty-tastynasty

aw shucks
i wanna hide in my hair
but i totally want you to get underneath it too
and we can live in a little tent
of my SAMSONITE hair
because i am so proud of you, to be with you and near you
because you are strong and beautiful and enticing and so so smart
so there you go

soupy-sappy-lovelove
you can lick my face anytime

a moment before.

readying
sweeping cleaning washing moving stacking chewing
transforming
the living room, once close and warm, is now echoy and the floors are aching for moving feet.
wondering, too,
and missing and loving
and aching and sneezing
and building and painting
making nests as we clear out hollows

"[the bride] walks to her husband's home, never looks back or she'll turn to stone."
i mean,
fuck some patriarchal short-sighted family-breaking family-defining bullshit,
but i think there's something about not looking back
after all, our history is in our skin and our skin is dead until we begin to dance.

tonight i will be gray with lust and love,
spirit-filled stone,
concrete and fantastical.
and we will dance and dance and if you doubt for a moment and turn, you will join my ranks.

b brought up a good point--
to be in nature is quite a thing,
hard to believe that it was always there and will be there whenever we want it,
or perhaps pause to wander with our eyes and hearts,
and in the mean time the city holds for us so much, something like tonight,
something like multitudinous explosions,
social experiments,
a different souvenier to take into the woods.

and like wide-eyed rabbits, strong branches, sharp thorns, tufts of grass, furry humans,
we can love many a stranger if only for a moment

If I ever find forever, I will share it with you.

"Hello, darling," she says and looks me straight in the face. I blink.

"You look different," I say. "My nails are longer and your hair looks more mussed than it should be and your cadence flows sweetly where my voice sounds like a zipper being opened and closed. You're wearing that dress I don't want to wear and I'm wearing the one you won't wear ever. You're in the circle and I'm standing in front of the crowd. You've been rubbing your temples and I've been twirling my hair. But we're both wearing sunglasses. I'm lost. I'm confused - what exactly is going on here?"

Today I run smack dab into myself and we recognize each other immediately. We exchange bows, baos, and to-do lists. "Oh" we both murmur "that's you then" and can think of nothing more to say. We both saddle up for our days. A parting shot, "I like your necklace" or "Nice tights." We can't be best friends but we can learn to live with each other. We will pass each other in hallways, on the CTA, in cafes and we will nod to each other every time. There's no ignoring one another.

Culture of excellence, culture of hugs, culture of the upside down, culture of fog and wandering, culture of specificity, culture of no no no no thank you, culture of apology, culture of mourning, culture of why don't you call anymore, culture of leading to follow, culture of following to lead, culture of living in your head imagining your body doesn't exist, culture of living in your body imagining your head doesn't exist, culture of needing people, culture of lists, culture of winging it, culture of washing our hair, culture of playing the same three albums for three months, culture of knowing about persona.

Hi, me. Do you know when it's time to take over?

the spell of the sensuous

(lots of good stuff in this book--thanks j. here's a piece.)

"...the current commodification of 'nature' by civilization tells us little or nothing of the perceptual shift that made possible this reduction of the animal (and the earth) to an object, little of the process whereby our senses first relinquished the power of the Other, the vision that for so long had motivated our most sacred rituals, our dances, and our prayers."


"but can we even hope to catch a glimpse of this process, which has given rise to so many of the habits and linguistic prejudices that now structure our very thinking?"


"certainly not if we gaze toward that origin from within the midst of the very civilization it engendered."


"but perhaps we may make our stand along the edge of the civilization, like a magician, or like a person who, having lived among another tribe, can no longer wholly return to his own.



"he lingers half within and half outside of his community, open as well, then, to the shifting voices and flapping forms that crawl and hover beyond the mirrored walls of the city."


"and even there, moving along those walls, he may hope to find the precise clues to the mystery of how those walls were erected, and how a simple boundary became a barrier, only if the moment is timely--only, that is, if the margin he frequents is a temporal as well as a spatial edge, and the temporal structure that it bounds is about to dissolve, or metamorphose, into something else."

if it's heads it's love, tails is trauma

fluorescent light bulbs are weird, I mean I know they are going to solve the environmental apocalypse (smirk giggle fart), but their light riles me up, stops my heart when I notice, draws attention towards stark red imperfections. It is artificial, nasty, ubiquitous, I I I refuse to adopt them as beacons of sustainability dammit I'd rather this room be soft and if we can't see each other by candlelight then... forget the eyes. I'd rather taste your elbows any day.

In the living room of the bao, my mind categorically refusing to shed more light (automatized metaphors, harumph) on totalitarianismmythsofimaginedcommunitiesthestatusofbeliefdrybodilyfluidsemptinessnowait imeankenosis

I want the fluorescent lightbulbs to turn into the sun, and not just any sun but the sun rising over the waterfall in serra velha perfectly, randomly timed to my sun salutes... and then, yeah, my mind will expel the speed, coffee, and command to IDENTIFY PROBLEMS, CHARACTERIZE ANTI-MEANING, FOCUS focus billions of lenses that are all, after all, metaphorical. No real camera, no real rocks to observe over centuries (who will be there to click the shutter?), rocks that catch the sunlight and paint fuzziness over the edges of my brain. Did I leave those behind in Brazil?

Remember: yoga is an excellent replacement for sex. And maybe the breathing exercises of Wilhelm Reich awaken that same serpent to rise up through our centers and fill us with satisfying, shaky inner warmth like gin like coitus like return to a person that you love. I....love to love and to affirm love, and it's ok if you can't say the same thing back in words, but just don't call it painful, don't insist that it's obscene.

Remember: breath, body, banana trees.

Dismember: truth

remember: meaning and seeds and (az, don't judge) smiles

sensitivity training 101 - on casinos and their food courts

tonight i walked into a casino
looking for the "food court"
and found myself somewhere between the cracks--
it's 2 am and people are lounging in their businesswear and fuck
i'm white but dirty-scruffy, people stare but don't question, and i'm
friendly-fullofaffinity towards the people sweeping, cleaning, mopping, serving
(i asked, "do you like working here?"
and one woman said, "it's okay." and smiled strangely)
or maybe i was the strange one--
oversized dad-coat and bleachedpants, suspenders, my anarchy-democracy sneakers,
hood up,
i closed my eyes to walk through the lines and lines of moneygames,
people sitting like watching TV but playing for high stakes,
what a different kind of "limits" than the spheres
i usually like to touch.

anyway,
i bumped into people and things,
trying to avoid visual overstimulation,
and cause i was white they let me go everywhere, the manager
doublechecked the miso drypowder to see if it was veg
and apologized about the fish stock
and i apologized back to the chinese woman working there
because i felt out of place, guilty, kind of haunted.
"sorry" when my habits of forming chains of association mean that
oh wait i can't eat ANYTHING here and now i'm just picky and you're sorry
so let's cut it all short and i'm sorry.
it's not an apology, i'm just sick of you working here and me eating this shit and the world spinning a speed set by the clanking of change (into the casino owner's pocket at the end of the day, not that fisherman whose fish became dry stock became a little powdered packetbag but don't worry "it's japanese" you just haven't heard of it)

the feeling stuck with me on the bus back to white rock,
just sad,
not enough consumer,
not quite autonomous,
not american, not canadian, and yeah i'm thrilled with my nomadic mentality except it's hard to always be thrilled with being an outsider when most people are still eating up the global-capitalist-nationalist lies we're all told to swallow for our own good,
so i'm left as nothing but a sketch kid in his dad's big jacket
(perfect for liberation, i thought! but who knows about these canadian liquor depots...)

generally, before that,
my night was okay,
a fabulous rendezvous with cecile at a bar called "lolita's" on davie (gay) street,
warm family times.
but my life, built to be better and better for me and the world,
makes me so sensitive to all this BULLshit and oily inorganic faux-"mediterranean" pizza and miso soup from a dried package and fish stock and plastic spoons and styrofoam and teriyaki-who-knows-what and somethings masquerading as vegetables
and i just want to cook for myself, just want some autonomy, just wanna know
where everything comes from and feel good about everything in my body
but at 2 a.m. in vancouver stuck at the bridgeport skytrain-station-slash-casino,
life sometimes gets complicated
+ watearfalls (not cachoeiras, this is a different breed i tell you)
+ demographically oriented marketing
+ dreams of a better life but you know, i think you're not gonna find it here
and i'm pretty sure i'm heading in the right direction for me but sometimes it makes life a little hard to take.

finally back here,
after the taxi driver who rescued me offered me red-white-blue wine and asked
"you don't like girls? you don't like boys? who are you?"
with his arm creeping round my shoulder onto my thigh and oh oh oh please just get me to marine street)

missing the 24 hour plays, buddies, festivities, celebration,
queer love,
hugs,
karma,
spontanaeity,
lentils,
fabrications of autonomy,
fabric of reality,
lots of things lacking&surfeiting tonight. looking forward to coming home tomorrow.

and casinos suck for reasons! now you know!

Police State Surprise

when welfare means murder