excuse me, just organizing my thoughts

reading an essay by david graeber. what i think he is saying is:
when we make a social contract, we need to base it (or its enforcement) on something outside of the contract itself (ie the formation of a constitution cannot be done by constitutional means).
the more alien to us the mechanism we choose in order to do this, the more alien the social contract (alien? outside? different? abstract?). or vice versa - the more abstract the social construct, the more abstract its mechanism of enforcement.

Stop slamming the fucking door (an exercise in resisting closure)

Setting:

three walls of transparent plastic covering brown bag insulation striped with red wood

one wall of massive sliding windows, taped blue x's for safety

digression: "Safety does not come first. Goodness, truth, and beauty come first" - the prime of miss jean brodie (1969)

digression-digression: 1969 was the year after 1968 the year in which cosmogonic myths of social disturbance were born. burn her inside her vehicle and remember to support small business.

Tapestry plywood floor, massage table, two beds, two chairs, one white dresser covered in cellophane

plastic sheeting over electrical wiring on raked wood ceiling.

Well, Gloria, ahem, excuse my forwardness but as I recall blue duct tape was featured in VOGUE of Fall Two Thousand Eight.....

Motherfathersisterpullouthergutsslidethemuphisanusworkitspitsomelubemotherbecarefulofmynipplesyeahharderharder

confessyouturnedonthegasinthechamberthepoorcurlyheadedjewishboysfloggingthensuckingimnotwetyet

Face up in a skeleton of potential luxury. My house is beautiful, it is a skeleton framed by sunshine lavender and white roses. Four vegan restaurants on the same street, and in the middle flows a river of carrot beet apple puree, the new golden-skinned generation sucks it through biodegradable straws right off the sidewalk and we only vomit on sundays.

FAITH THROUGH ALLITERATION

(fortune, fairy-tales)

like a dream but verifiable by other articulate beings

I had a slice of enlightenment handed to me just a night ago, and it was delicious. just one of those timeless spaces you enter where every thought presents itself with the light of day, hits the tongue and ripples off.

all of it with such ease and meaning. you are connected to everything living and vibrating in this universe, and although you've always known it with your rational and systematizing mind, you now feel it coursing through every fiber of your being. open system.

like a container, your body opens and begins to let in -- drinking the world in through large licorice pupils. like the 80% water that you are, you begin to resonate with the exact frequency of everyone and everything that encompasses you.

breath is full&deep, rhythmic, sweeps those cobwebs out of your chest.

you're probably taking in a higher dose than you normally do of the dear ones in your presence and the particles they're shedding into their chemical aura. they're probably breathing with the same depth and tempo and taking in from you too.

did you know that the literal meaning of "inspiration" is to breathe in?

food for thought

communication is flawless -- what isn't accomplished through a simple shared glance is given through a gentle hand and few small words. (!!!)

if that doesn't sound like close to perfect information retrieval, i don't know what is!

you're reminded of love.

love for the people who are not physically present but who linger in your mind exactly because you've been waiting and looking for some external inspiration to finally tell them -- tell them how you feel.

love for yourself and all these lovely people who perhaps at other times in other places can be monsters but who in this moment and underneath it all are beautiful children who just want to be held and told that they are good and have big hearts and that everything's going to be alright.

--rant to be continued and related to scifi, fear, e=mc^2, feedback loops, information processing, dance, the physical manifestation of harmony (it's structure and anatomy)--

hark, it is the dawning of the

brrrrr i c symphonic collusions on all sides
reminds of a waterfall in a nether world
rush & shush & rush & shush
suddenly BLAM! KERPLAM! (just kidding).

at the dinner table i am an elitist
[and? so? i've traveled galaxies, fought wars, raised monuments - i've lived for so long my beginnings are lost to memory - i love myself and i love you - so yes, i am a lelitist]

at the gay club i am a spectacle
[and what about the 35 year old lumberjack wearing a thong and tight leather pants pulled down under the thong, grinding on a metal bar - why are all the middle-aged guys watching chris and i? why did we bother with 21+ night?]

at night, wrapped in sweaty limbs, believe it or not, i am a star -
[i didn't see it coming - they and they and they didn't see it coming - but in the end, everybody is coming]

but only in pittsburgh.

Fanfare for Ms. E. F. C

Meine Dame Und Herren und everything in-between or beyond that spectrum,

I give you Em Le Fay
Erstwhile Englishwoman in the County of Fyfe (after the Thane thereof)
Scholar and Soon-to-be Asset Manager
Cross-Atlantic Nomad
All-Around Encyclopedia of Minutiae
Former Co-President of the Dramatic Society
Receiver of a Glass of White Wine
and
my friend, Former Citizen of My Heart

Quoth the Economics Student, "It's not like I'm going to be happy anyway, so I might as well do a job that makes me a good deal of money. Then I can retire and do what I like." Quoth the Follower of Dr. Johnson and Adam Smith, "It's hard to do a thing you love, why ruin it? Get out, while you can." Quoth she, "No one around me has got their head screwed on right."

I give you Em Le Fay
Wearer of Sensible Winter Coats and Good Jeans
Attendant of Assessment Pools
(which I gather are rather like group auditions)
Applicant to the Financial Giant J.P. Morgan Stanley
Half of Matt and Emma
Recaller of the Tiny Details of the Political Machinations of the Alma Mater
(and Extensive Recounter thereof)
Drinker of Blue Drinks
Giver of Earfuls
Former Partner-In-Crime

I can't really remember half the people she mentions in conversation. My mind is going is my excuse. That time I puked so hard vessels burst in my eyes cleared away most of 2004-2005. Don't mind me, I'm listening.

She says, "You know, [insert favorite teacher here] once told me that she was worried about you. Sort of unsure of where you would end up. Of who you'd be." I open my mouth to speak as this is news to me, but these days it's hard to get a word in edgewise. The last time we saw each other, she was but two days out of the removal of her wisdom teeth and still talked my ear off for nigh on seven turnings of the hour. I think, "We're not all that different, you and me, scrabbling for happiness on this unhappy plain."

I think, "Remember the evening when we were at school late and no one was around and it was pouring (like it is tonight) and we ran out onto the field made of ASTROTURF and dumped cans of Coke onto their precious and expensive lacrosse/field hockey pitch in an act of nascent radical violence? Before we knew those words? And how we howled in the night and ran giggling back inside to the stares of our less-bedraggled classmates and winked at each other for the offense we had committed? Do you remember? Well, do you?"

Exit Em Le Fay
Helena to my Hermia
Shylock to my Bassanio
One Half of a Pair of Strange Little Girls
Citizen of My Heart

BAO!

nothing happens Here or There

back.

back to a bedroom with walls striped of posters, of song lyrics carved into doorframes, windows meant to be “picturesque”—catch a glimpse of a frozen retention pond, a plastic snowglobe deflating on someone’s lawn.  catch a glimpse of the neighbors who make people nervous because they Drink (the husband sits in his garage all night, calls out to me sometimes, used to be lewd until i cut my hair), the neighbors who make people nervous because the husband is Black and the wife is Puerto Rican but they are Very Successful Doctors so it must be some kind of mistake—they’re White like everyone else. 

back to drawers stocked with forgotten clothes, shelves stacked with books read before i really “got it”—before all of the genderfucking, the fucking, the privilege-examining, the late nights spent talking, talking, talking about what it all meant, before i positioned myself in a context where Before was something that Never Actually Happened.

 

back to where they first started staring, started asking that broken record of a question: are you a Boy or a Girl?

answer: Sometimes.

i am writing this blog in the closest thing to a Local Café.  i am writing this blog at Panera.

two soccer moms are loudly pondering which bathroom “It” will use when “It” looks as though It might be heading in that direction, towards the pair of gendered doors where It might reveal Itself.  Boy or Girl.  A or B.  (in high school I was notorious for overanalyzing multiple choice tests; talked my way into writing papers instead).  they are sorely disappointed.  “It” just wanted a glass of water.

back.

back to filling up days with documentaries, unnecessary tasks on To Do lists, five hundred pages into fiction.  escape escape escape.  wake up breathing hard because It was dreaming about fucking again but It couldn’t figure out how It was doing It.  body thrown into uncertainty worse than before because now It has two and It brought the Wrong one back Here, the Here where That Shit Is Fucked Up.  always.

Chicago in five days—back to too many phonecalls and connections.  organize, organize do the “good work” because someone has to, because It is selfish enough to want things for Itself that must be granted by Others.

escape escape escape bodies and politics in theory, in costumes, in play.  how?

i am stuck in places the way songs stick in my head.

to be read aloud in one or many funny accents

Left alone in the tumbling mass,
Up smoke and hopeful hate,
Ahead is not the past,
Tomorrow was my fate.

Ahem:
There is a dream where
hyenas rain in catfish dance
in pitter-patter lockstep gears,
twitching, clutching -
and sniffing tells the inescapable truth
of the tornado
which is just a hyena catfish,
after all.

Alas-
In inter-strung webs I weep.
What it means is up to the lantern,
but as of now straight laters toss up angled, noble heads
and open gnarled, able mouths
and unleash the call of honest complaint,
but it's hidden - drowned! out
by a mile,
out by the shush-a-rush and that old thing, the frown,
old and solid like a smell in the dark
until next time when it'll be just the same but you know -
I'm here and I write what I hear.

Clearly there are tunnels with
purpling wispy fingers and
other stalks which extend,
in boom and bloom,
and then heave up from out the ground.
And when they heave out, unbeknownst to them,
they also heave in,
for all is tunnels, and all tunnels look alike.

Ahem.
You have a cushion
I have a cushion
Your voice is orange-green crystal tubes
and full pitchers of sangria seaglass
My voice is ash.
If you squint and tilt your head just a little,
like this,
you'll see that my name is Gerard,
my nose is courageous,
my hair is wispy and fair,
my glasses askew,
and I come bearing baguettes.