i can walk barefoot, i can

hi friends, hi sneezing cat.

i have been spending a lot of time in my house, it is quiet quiet here. i awake to the sounds of quiet voices and coffee grinding and when i get up i can play loud music and dance around half-naked and there is no one home, or so i think--cats wandering around doing their cat business, books lying luxuriating waiting to be read, worlds and jars of beans sitting quiet.

i am not sure what i am doing here sometimes,

sometimes i am not sure

i watch the sun slink around

the moon's fingernails grow

last night i saw a dance show about love by hand2mouth

it was called "something's got ahold of my heart"

it had four parts--greatest hits, stories, dance, concert.

i did not see my kinds of love there.

there were lots of old songs, lots of dissonance and interruption,

people dancing to adele on their headphones while old love songs blared loudly

straining in opposite directions with their arms clasped around each other

very few kinds of unmediated moments.

i thought, i could do this or something i'd like better.

i'm not sure on days like today if it's still winter, it is so sunny and warmish outside. am i in california?! i'm pretty sure not

cause things aren't free

most things

except for bike rides

and because over and over i find myself surrounded by people

mumbling about fermentation and their sourdough culture and soaking grains

and their gardens and occupy

and buying eco-friendly cleaning products

and their cool co-op whatever

and their new diet where they're not eating any of the bad stuff

geez

portland

i have been in clownface more often than not.

sometimes it is a mask, sometimes it is to say

"yes i am here and i have interiority and you can feel strange sitting by me"

at new seasons the cashier giggled and averted her eyes

i imagined that it was because i am jesus christ

yesterday when i was in bed

masturbating

i imagined i was huge huge huge, sitting atop buildings

someone was getting me off with a wrecking ball

bouncing off my clit

i was talking to my mom yesterday about polyamory and said something like "i return often to something you said when we were kids--like 'why does it hurt you for that person to have that [crayon, experience, new toy, etc.]? it doesn't hurt you.' she laughed and said, 'eliot, people and hearts are different than boxes of crayons!'" but then she got it too. she is a good carrier of reminders to not be so hard on myself.

i want a break from taking a break

i am ready to work really fuckin hard

stop having my heart and mind be the source of all of my hardnesssss

i want to get my hands dirty

feel things growing slowly

stories that run with blood and hair

water the only thing that stagnates

gupshup gossip outta my head

after ade edmonson and rik mayall made "the young ones"
they made another sitcom named "bottom"
which they described as waiting for godot
but vulgar in the extreme
kd has had one sexual partner in the past year
when he was my sexual partner
i kind of wanted to die of embarrassment
and bf i totally know who you lost your virginity to and i didn't even ask
beyonce had a miscarriage
beyonce had a miscarriage and jay-z told everyone about it in a song
that nikki minaj song
that song is about lil kim
and like ade edmonson really doesn't have any hair anymore
and i really thought rik mayall was dead but turns out he's not
he just has crazy hair
like he collected all the wind of a thousand thrusts to thwop ade edmonson over the head with a foam frying pan
and stuffed them in his weird hair
beyonce is the happiest looking pop star of all the pop stars
maybe it's because she didn't go to boarding school like lana del rey
i think i know someone who writes for timeout london
i definitely know someone who writes for timeout london
man buns are really hot right now
chris's friend sam has had a man bun for at least a year
and demographically the students of sarah lawrence
are going to tend to be from new york or la
or like the one weird girl from their suburb
which constitutes a large portion when put together
because there are a lot of suburbs
america is made up of suburbs
which is not an overestimation like saying dominique strauss-kahn is still a socialist
he was a socialist
he's not anymore and his wife is running the huffington post in france
and france is not very close to here
and when he died in france, evariste galois said
"don't cry albert, it takes all my courage to die at twenty"
and he's buried near jim morrison and oscar wilde
but you wouldn't know it
it's a common grave
and the legend of his death is probably pretty outsize
and actually
my paycheck comes from the government not tuition
professors have to cover 60 percent of their costs through funding
the funding goes in a pot to the university (sort of)
my paycheck comes out of that
i know this because the system is the same down south as it is up north
and like
thwack thwack thwack
rik mayall totally has a consistent speech impediment throughout the 90s
there's an app
that let's you designate people to shut down your social networking
if you die
but they all have to be in agreement
that you're dead
and google thinks i'm female and 25-34 years old
which is not wrong
and i am into

Arts & Entertainment - Performing Arts - Acting & Theater Arts & Entertainment - Visual Art & Design People & Society - Family & Relationships People & Society - Social Sciences - Psychology

like he collected all the wind of a thousand thrusts to thwop ade edmonson over the head with a foam frying pan
like she could actually smile with all her teeth
and smiling with your teeth is totally a scare tactic and everyone should be afraid of other people smiling at them
if one lung pops there's a good chance the other other one will, but after that it's unlikely it will happen to either
it just happens
these things totally just happen
and bubblers exist as scientific pieces of equipment which leads me to think that people have been getting high via a technique invented by a bored chemistry grad student

there's more than one of all the types of people you know
ugh
ugh
ugh
the devil is in the details
none of which i strictly need to know

The Smudge

I want to start a band called The Smudge. It makes a good movie title too, but I don't like art house flicks as much as some people. I think The Smudge has a good ring to it. I can see it now - it's a foursome of mixups who just barely get along. One has spiky hair, one has a minor facial tic, they would all be pretty pretty if they'd just smile more. Their armory includes a 7-string bass, assorted horns, jazz drums, theremin, lots of kazoos. They play a mix between klezmer-punk and downbeat post-club (heavy on the bass effects there), with the occasional third-wave ska break throne in for shiggles. They're so different, an early critic writes:

It isn't the manic energy that makes The Smudge stand out; not the way they tip closer and closer to disaster and then pull back with a grin; it isn't the moment they switch out of a long, banging, bowel-shaking paean to some ancient devil and into a rapid-fire celebratory horn solo that makes you wonder where you've been all this time, although that's closer - it's that they're just having too much fun, and they know that you know that we're all right there with them.

I'm ready to get this show on the road. In my fantasies The Smudge starts in the basement of the doxy lounge, practicing once or twice a month. It starts to take off when friends of the smudgelings keep coming to practice uninvited. leli p monster quits his day job and ditches his farming plans in favor of equipment, publicity, a van. These semi-humble beginning become part of the The Smudge's origin myth, later to become a rock-group biopic (think Stone). Reviews on the movie are mixed.

Eventually the group breaks up, moves on. They never sign a major record deal - they don't need to. Rather than rely on 10% of the profits off of millions of people, they run everything themselves, living off of shows and handmade merch and cds sold to thousands of trufans across the country. Later they sign with two different indie labels and tour Europe, but the ethic remains. About their strange brand of success one critic writes:

They were never a household name. Then again, the naughts and tens were the end of the era of household names. Sure, they had their adoring masses, but I'd say the best way to measure the success of The Smudge is in their influence. One out of every three people who saw The Smudge in those early days ended up a free thinker and a fool, in the best sense of the word.

I've been thinking about fools a lot, ever since a great conversation with teemz in the doxy kitchen. I hope that when I get invited to speak at some (hopefully worthwhile) event because of Smudge-related fame, I stand up and talk about what it means to be a fool in the modern age. Tmo said: "The fool stares into the void and laughs".

Friendship is religion

What is heard through the din of doubt?
cult of boxes is overturned.
the voice of a friend burns back the fog
Which seemed gentle at the start but actually hisses and singes before it departs.
It is the tear that burns and marks
at last
a return.
So here I speak with what I have
Friend your words remind me of something that still lives inside
and is glad. A light cuts through the deepest tomb of the self.
Now i am reminded and emerged. Thank you.

I am admitting how i tried so hard not to see
Not to lose a single thing
because losing something has damaged me.
But so does insisting on never having and never being had.
Hence my weird grief.

This is the heart of my journey and the journey of my heart
This is the dance
This is the edge I walk
The teeth of all my talk and the distance through which
I see the tree bearing its fruit

We can pick all the fruit on the tree and most of it overflows our arms to the ground
or we can take a bite of each round but never finish a single one.
I pick the fruit off the branch but toss it before tasting of its sweetness
and so I am missing the whole point.

I was a boy who used to collect souvenirs of every happy or felt moment
to remember that something so nearly impossible happened.
I was deluded! by the crime of my american childhood. Joy is not elusive.
Still this doesn't mean I understand the word happy. It feels inappropriate
and turn my back on it.

I cant stand to lose because I never had much
But somehow in that I have become rich and held
which caused light to be born into my eye
and eclipsed the dead child that just wouldn't die.

I need to be more careful or heart-wise.
We are circumstantial flowers of the desert..
Blooming spontaneously but with such precision.

I weep at my lost selves
the ones that fail to be honest or satisfied
I weep and say single file
Haunt me in a more organized way

I weep but smile
under what we're making
despite the world.
Your words pinch together a torn seam called
clarity to see what is there but unseen.

whenever your eyes lose a bit of their glint
your lips a touch of their sparkle
the cheshire smile begins to drip
and your diamonds turn to charcoal,,

remember that you are the divine muse of the
hiphophoorahing universe
sent back to the land of the living
to reawaken the dead

you are the silly, unwitting chalice of all knowing
you are ancient air in a brandspanking new booty
you are sly
you are tricky
you are shocking
you are much bigger than you

if you forget your mission at times, that's ok
you've come far from the start
and forgetting and playing is half the fun

just remember the mystery
remember the riddle thou art

and back come the cherries,
back come the roses,
back comes the bloody orgasm of your cheeks

back comes the fire,
back comes the wild
back comes the magic that you leak

before there was fucking
we were fucking the rules

more new york pulses

at night i take my eyes out
so that the grey taste in the back of my mouth
goes away.
the heart can be a small soft rose. that is what i want.

come morning i cast a shape of myself into the world, a large bright shape
but realize i cant actually fill it out
and i am too dark
i shouldnt have to be bigger than i am,
or smaller.

thinking of rose on the titanic smoking a cigarette being bored as fuck
being exactly where she and everyone else thought she should be.
how many of us have felt like running in the fancy gown of our life
toward death.
i see everything this dramatically.
even in such proximity to the end there are a million and more
moments between you and it
something will happen.

a series of hello's

oh hi portland! hi friends! hi potential! hi world-building! hi snow! hi trees! hi faraway close things & ones! hi internet (bye!)! hi projects abandoned for some moments! hi new housemates! hi strangers! hi sidewalks! hi body! hi death! hi cup of cup of cup of coffee! hi sweat! hi grayness! hi ephemera! hi to the small things at the bottom of my bag! hi to new structures within which to play and organize and put clothes and bump around! hi cats! hi plans! hi abandoned and foreclosed houses! hi lovers and could-be lovers and once lovers and maybe-lovers! hi january!

I think I can be honest now.

Where to begin? I feel so distant (?), far away (?), separate (?) from you all, but desirous of your company and missing you (what we were? what we may have meant?) (more on this later), so I feel I should say. Oh, I know know, ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:

Resolving the new year.
1. Do one thing at once.
2. Do not speak the words "I am tired" aloud.
3. Speak and write simply. Try not be honest, but guileless.

I feel like I am finding an even keel. This is not happiness, this is a becalmed sea. Sure it is slightly ruined by the snow that splays out my hips as I walk down the streets and makes me ache through the day. It scares me how easy it is to shatter, but also so how easy it is to get back. So, I worry that I am becoming cold again (once I moved through the world so lightly no one could touch me, but it meant I missed all the good things). And then I worry that I am only worried because people do not think it is good to be cold. People don't aim to die alone. It's not what they do. But as I say to William as he has a nervous breakdown in the Golden Apple diner, "Who are these other people?"

Griffin asks, "Do you want to be different? What does your heart say, your stomach say, your head say?" "They all say stay the same, but I want to want to be different." Griffin doesn't have an answer even though he usually always has something to say. "Now that's an interesting problem," he says and kisses me.



My life has gotten small. Or circumscribed. The boundaries between things are no longer fuzzy. My relationship to events, to books, to food only occurs when I am in them. My time is taken up. I like this. Sleep looks for me actively for maybe the first time ever in my life.

Realizations in this the new year -
1. I like structure.
2. I don't want to punish myself because it doesn't mean anything. I want you to punish me.
3. I do not do things for myself.

Well, abstractly, of course, I do. I am a member of a one woman death cult. Death is the all-flattener, everthing-eater, illogical, undefeatable because you can only defeat something that has a will. Death is hungry. Death's strength and (ultimately fairness) deserves my respect. So I do things because I want to feed Death. If Death were a restaurant critic, she would rate me fives stars. I realize why there are no people in my dreams really. I dream of landscapes buckling, stretching, sinking. Because I am reaching out to death, saying "When you're ready for me, I'll be here, shimmering in hot oil waiting to be eaten."

This seems a callous abstraction when a man is shot outside our apartment. Eight harsh cracks, presumably in the chest. I wasn't scared for more than a second and I think I understood my privilege better than ever before. There are no bullets for me.

This is beside the point. I have a will of my own of course, but it might be that my only desire is to burrow into the folds of other people's lives. Because, my blood sings and my bones lean forward when Chris and Griffin both crawl in my bed and grip me on either side, asking for my hands on their faces. When Elle cries into my chest and thanks me for being the only one to know that she just needed to be encircled by arms. When Bonnie and Rebecca can't keep the schedule they set themselves and I have to keep it for them. When I say words for Jess that she wrote but can't speak. I do not mean to say I love tragedy or hurt, but that I am there to lessen it. A human shock absorber.

We all know that the monarch exists in a dual state. This is how I feel most days. Everybody gets my body/Nobody gets my body. I try to be so gentle with them. This seems a grandiose abstraction in the face of the million mouse clicks and swooshing emails and boring Excel spreadsheets.

But I do think about my "we" and my "us" more than anything else (when we were the baohaus, the 24 hour gaze, UT, those kids). I try every day to understand what I mean to other people. Why are people always smiling at me in the street or talking to me on the train? Why does this not happen to other people all the time? What is my kind of love? Will one person come along one day and demand that I love only them? Will I be able to tell them that is entirely unreasonable for someone like me? Will we strike up some sort of treaty? Why do I need so many rules enforced by other people?

And also, I think I am ready to say that I feel very different to all of you and I think I always have. But, I feel so grateful to have known you though and the way you live your lives is beautiful and when I push myself I do it because I know, through you, that much more is possible. Thank you for letting me dig into the cracks of your lives and try to play inside your rules.

I think this is mostly a thank you and a hello. You're all so good.

swagger lagger
tip top ship shop
beers brewed from home
portland is the place to make your own things happen
got some ideas? tired of creating someone else's idea?
come play
there's all the clay you want
just don't slip on the mud
or let the goose fly out of the pen
or get run over by a car
or let all the ideas tic tock all your time
cuz when everything's moving real fast,
it may as well not b moving at all
and when things get real slow
oh ho
that's when the real fun begins
ha, look at the stillness explode
see those lips twitch
and that potted plant snitch
potted plant, i have my eye on you

transcendental hee haw
make yourself an anchor so you can steer real far
linger in the drops,
i know the music is tempting but resist
it's much more thrilling to create your own rhythm

winter winter
here or there?
inside or outside? what's the difference?
i go in, to go out
i contract to be so big
i give up, oh my god do i give up
and then i am awash in yum

gabba gabba i love the woods and they love me
the world is good, and there they'll be
we write love letters, and that is nice,
to lust, to trust, to visit something in your sleep

finger fist arm
squeeze your head in
break through and keep pushing
be seduced by myths and apocaplyse
the need to act and
the fast epic heroic of today
butbutbut
don't lose sight of the savage pause

here's a little piece of crap i wrote on a piece of paper when i was in a car a couple weeks ago.............
driving through Santa Barbara oh my gosh
so much yucky California
whiteness sunshiney pueblos palms,
the sunshine here poisons,
it rots, spoils the heart
with entitlement
and self-satisfaction
fermenting

I'm not bitter,
I'm pissed.
that all these motherfucking white people
look at this land and see paradise--
sun, salt, surf, tanlines, SUVs,
colonial walks,

This state, and all it promises,
a sick joke,
only made more disturbing
by its reality
---------------------------=============+++-

back in oregon now and indeed my California Cough is gone... plagued me for weeks.!
im here in portland feeling as uninspired the likes of which i have not felt in months,
wtf? why am i here?
i am bleeding,
bleeding as of last night,
i find that my emotional template during these weeks (these irregular, when are you where are you i need you blood when when, weeks) shifts to joylessness
ugh
i dont even know what i stand on
i have not danced because it is winter, because people like to dance at night and i like to sleep with the sun
that is my excuse
this life does not work,
the life of living in a kitchen and listening to music, dancing singing,
getting on the computer to look for homes,
and getting sad
nope nope nope
when i see wy'east (mt hood)
or the moon moon
look at me from over there i say
hey
what?
oh
fuck





can i please be grounded enough to speak to this person from my gut
to be here with my heart
and say hi

and can i also be crazy fucked up enough
to glue feathers to my ass
strap on my heels
and burrow into the soil?

New York

So big news surprise unsurprised
I'm letting my jet set ticket slide by today
I will not be coming back to Portland just yet.
I'm on this crazy beautiful limb and want to follow it to the end
Might fall might not
I've been xxxworking and that has been going fine fine
Complicated for sure but mostly just whatever fine
I might have enough to get a brief space soon
I've swung into a strange group of queer performing arty tarts here
Some of them are famous in the world
Weird ok new York, right this is what new York is about
Had a performance last night at a freak tranny queen dance hall
And I gotta say I killed it it killed me. While I performed
I kept new York in my mind and all that it stands for and told it 
You have not seen anything like me yet, which says nothing about me
But tells the city to stop acting bored and unmystified
And so my child got to dance and revenge itself onto this world
Had a few people approach me and ask to talk about project making
Whoa, I feel the precipice of my own particular potential, and of course 
I have to avoid mirrors
They are at every turn.
I'm not giving up on Portland or the simmering dream of us
But my intuition tells me I need to be here now
It longs to kick out some old ghosts of mine
Ghosts that say art is bad ego and selfish, city new York is nothing good, the world is dying! Urgency! Urgency!
to be honest being here has been good for me
I realize that even without a constant flow of tinctures, fermented foods 
Even without a pure post McDonald's lifestyle I feel good and do well
My body lives. I ride my new bike friend and walk
This place is really some wicked tight rope
We are all walking it alone yes
But together
The big human experiment
How long can we go 
On like this in this city
Hovering over the earth
Taking taking because we are so aware that this almost didn't happen
We almost didn't happen like this.
It's not that people don't get that this is fucked up
But this is the world and we want to feel good and find other hands to hold
Some here want to see how far this joke can go
And who is still all laughing
We want to laugh in drunken piles
Hair and scalps to sniff
Butts and cunts to lick
Lips to tear at, we want to
Push our beauty into stranger and strange molds 
Smile or cry about what comes out.
We can't all divorce our own stories and hang liminally in their absence
Tear out your heart and act like the blood doesn't flood and throb into the hole
The nerves screaming
I'm sorry for ever expecting all the world to do this
Or to do as I do.
Keep your hearts folks whatever they are.
This doesnt mean I embrace
Brooklyn or the kingdom of vanity
I don't hug the rapists. I see them. I understand. Ive fantasized about being raped before
am i the monster or the monstered?
Circles of undertanding, appreciating how a circle looks
How one thing leads to another
Still
I keep an eye on the balanced individual, the one who can exist in any world
And remember to return to the honesty of the self.
honesty mocks new York. it is what has been lost. The city stands as a glitzed placeholder of what has died.
New yorkers replace radical honesty with radical sarcasm , acerbic blah blah and bitter wisdom. Which is a kind of realness and honesty for sure. But the honesty I hold above is to love, to the body to the eyes. To the sky, cat friends and goats and mountains.
The honesty that occurs in the crisis of a room of an apartment cry screaming. I am lost I am lost. Be brave enough to admit the deepest grade of yourself.
if I find myself growing dishonest I will leave.

And right now it just so happens
My honesty is most potent as a pair of legs descending a
staircase, to the darkness holding my queer brothers and sisters. 
They are sipping until very drunk, adorned to extreme but without a follow through
Never a revealed soul.
I will tear this dullness apart, I will
I do, I did it again last night.
Sweat, whiplash, pulse. Fearless unseaming
Making meaning from emptiness
Inventing myself
Along the dudgeon
On behalf of my story
Our story
Of oppressed bodies.

I will be body. I am body.
Bodied fuck me I am sex. This is my body.
My fucked up beautiful fat bones. Hair stubble cum slut butter.I am not ashamed that
It moves like this I will hug you, move myself between your yous. slap you. Beat myself on the floor
Thrash until the muscles burn.
I am bodied.
Body rage. Body calm.
Flesh yes.

home sweet home

1. beautiful chicago-based artists' collective : http://conclusionarypractices.wordpress.com/

2. i'm in pittsburgh and warm and i have a bed and gee it's so good to be out of new york city!

3. also i keep retracing this route on my skin and head that my body has travelled over the past month: portland -> oakland -> chicago -> pittsburgh -> stamford, connecticut -> providence, rhode island -> stamford -> new york city -> great barrington, MA -> northampton, MA -> great barrington -> new york city -> pittsburgh. ridiculous! geez oh geez something in me is tired.

4. also, on NYC: no time for breath you can be invisible if you want! but you can't stop for too long--and if you paint your face people will know that they can smile back at you because you are nothing-in-particular rather than something-unknown-and-suspect. i liked the subways. i liked the sunshine in the barren brooklyn botanic gardens and the moments i celebrated in finding warm inside spaces for free. i liked that everyone looked different and full of quiet stories etched in their skin as they carefully did not look at each other on the subway. i wanted to scream more often, LOOK AT ME. WHERE DO YOU SEE BEAUTY? CAN YOU SHOW ME? i dug through trash and made my lips bigger and bigger, counted glares, befriended people who had just had accidents they thought were unwitnessed--spilled cups of coffee, dropped loaves of bread, missing tickets, awkward small things. there is not a lot of room for awkwardness when things are moving so continuously and so it happens a lot as small quiet private public secrets. someone at a fancy grocery store told me straight up--"this is a very extravagant place. we have lots of exotic things. they're expensive." the vague nonparticular pointedness--money and class circumscribed all of my movements so i was either ostentatious or sneaking most everywhere. do i belong here do i belong here do i belong here--

triumpantly no

now i'm out free done for the moment with being around people who are black holes of magical optimism, done with rushing. grateful for things that are free. and i will scrape my tongue and brush my teeth and draw a picture of a boy.

i'm in portland!!! and i have a bed! and it's really nice :)

have you noticed the world that exists within you? how in a single
moment you travel so far and are flung by so many feelings, and
twist over so many tandems, that a day alone is a well-traveled
lifetime.
Oh how i'd like to mix oceans with you and swim in waters
together.
listen to the waves of your sound
that sometimes shoot lightning quick
and sometimes roll like a small roar
like a slow outreached paw
like a lullaby
and our skin never looks as alive as when its wet
and we never dance as well as when we're in water

***

travel to your past, cradle you as a child
soothe old nightmares
and laugh old prank calls

be there that one time that you needed a friend
remember?

because maybe if we sing, shhh
we can escape
the hurt of your dad's thunder
scary as it nears from his room
one step, two step
replace the hurt with some hope
our voices some small glory

we'll run, you'll see
this pain will ease
and this fear will fade
please, you'll see
the screams will go
and the songs will stay
cuz this house can't hide our story

***

the girl inside me must be crackling like a crystal
and silver as a cloud
because she lives so much faster than this one
she is constantly sailing small ships for new shores
and abandoning starboard to dive deep for sunken horrors
as i stand here, a shell of a pearl, exhausted
she cries more than i can blink
wants more than i can handle
and loves more than i can stomach
for now

look! here comes thunder!
come quick on board to see
the sky is black and velvet
and there's a storm between you and me

when will we put down our forks
and acknowledge what we know inside?
these fortresses of wisdom,
that venture the earth and whisper the new news in our ears
hey
it's getting dark
come here

well we finally ran away from home, didn't we?
can we stop running now?