Henry Chinaski

Born

Detail
…None to dwell upon, Moving on…
Take a drink. Same Detail. Not dwelling,
Take a drink. Forget.
Moving.
Detail.
Take a drink. Same detail. Not dwelling,
Take a drink. Forget.
Moving.
Detail.
Moving,
Drink. Drink,
Swig. Dose.
Swallow. Dose.
-Purge-
…Fuck…
.Drink,
S l e e p.

.Repeat previous stanza.


Write
He can’t live without us

Repeat previous stanza

In-FAME
Die
FAME
Immortality

…Everybody dies,
who’s dwelling now?
Hm?

Clouds of doves that never shit?
Nope.

Every detail noted and not counted.
Each detail painfully reoccurs
in the same way
numb-to-pain,
blacked-out drunkard
burns himself with a cigarette
every night.
The pain never registers,
the wound may be
regarded, then, disregarded
with another easy distraction.
The body - a vessel;
soul nothing,
or at least, insignificant.
No other form symbolizing…
Sans satisfaction,
nothing worth doing.
To call this a philosophy!
would do it injustice.
Anti-philosophy?
Maybe. But I doubt it.
Thinking about it is probably unjust-
If I’d… care if I’d lose the irony?
The doves still aren’t shitting.
He wouldn’t give a shit.

Would he?
Hm.

Quarter life crisis

Move into the kitchen
It reeks like cigarettes, wine and cliche.
I'm 23 years old
The dull gray cat peeks around the corner.
Into the kitchen, she peers
at...

She always stares at what she wants.
Telepathically I do her bidding.
--Such a simple existence.
I am the peak of the food chain;
there is no one to hear my stares.
The domesticated cat -- a slave to the master.
I am her master.
Where is my master?

I am the muted lee of a tree.
The weathered side gleams,
shiny and old with beaten bark.
I am thick and untouched and growing moss.
One should know which side that is on,
But I've always needed a compass to figure it out
despite how obvious...

I am waiting.
I am waiting to be eaten.

This lust is as variable and intense as the seasons,
thus I've committed the highest treason.

Satisfying the id of ids
converts the ego of egos
into a cacophony of confusion
that falls around us all
like deciduous reason.

With a sensation like the whir of Cupid's
arrows
piercing my thigh!
...
He knows.

My senses awry!
...
Sigh.
Goodbye.

Hypnosis

"Feel your pores open to the light,"
he says
"Don't fight
relax
collapse
collapse
relax
3
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
it's done."

...

Now I see red everywhere.
Its lights dance from window to window;
It paints the train's signs, Morse, Jarvis;
It dyes the jersey of an autistic young Beau
keeping balance beside his beloved red-haired
Stranger,
Still,
Stand Clear of Door.

and Everytime I see red
I think,
"My life is better still."

Even when I see it on her lips.
"My life is better still."

It's stained on your neck.
"My life is better still."

It's burned the back of my eyelids.
"My life is better still."

I see red.

A reinterpretation of A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World Part ...

Here I am.
Here are my dreams.
My dance is mine
of control,
of my world.
All of you
are the cages of my depths
and you are my souls.
You occupy me.
I take you,
all of you,
and make you me.
Your problems are mine.
You control me.
The more I resist this,
the more I toil.

I have taken you on.
You create
the rhythm of my revolution...
What revolution?

You spin and you spin,
I've attached my very flesh to you,
and now you control me.

I scream.
I scare you.
I scare me.

I am revealed to be...
you.

and thus,
my skin is rotten,
my being is spoiled.
The sea is turning
with you in me.

Jaundiced.

The Orange

The orange’s skin resembles the scaly dinosaur exterior we’re all taught to believe actually existed during the age of the dinosaur reign, if that’s in fact what they did. This orange by default will dominate the memory of Dalia Merchant. She saw this orange for the first time in a vision. On a tree, backlit, protruding from a mountain side like a bonsai. Though it wasn’t a bonsai, it was an orange tree. A waterfall in the background, probably symbolizing her sexuality, since you know the human mind is quite typical in that way. As she daydreamed, her physical body stood facing a tall, standing boy. He stroked her hair and she pressed her cheek against his chest. A full moon that could not be seen. Standing together on a bridge over the Chicago river, the nighttime sky presented a blank, romantic canvas for love’s proclamations. Maybe not blank, the cloud cover above blanketed Earth from space and no star’s light poked through. He wanted to tell her “I love you, Dalia” but instead he said that “It is always there, and one day you wake up to it. Like a sleeping giant,” …and so love exists but must be discovered like Columbus did America, or something foolish like that, a debunked myth.

She thought of this orange tree, always thinking. The image, a solid mountain and an overwhelming shape bursts forth this life that, under the right conditions, will grow and thrive, and die of course. Love is a life cycle. That should never be forgotten, she remembered. This orange tree grows, will bear more trees from the pit of its fruit, the leaves will shrivel and the fruit will ripen and sour. One can only hope that the waterfall never dries and the mountain only grows. These trees, this tree, exists and is necessary. Even though the mountain and the waterfall would exist just fine without it, that is not nature’s way. Who is to say what stays and goes? The tree is there, she did not decide it so, it is just there. Instead of wondering what would happen if it wasn’t there, wishing it wasn’t there, anticipate the mourning of its death, she will pick of its fruit and enjoy it. Maybe even tend to it so that she may be quenched by the vision again.

The boy heard her mutter a few words about the tree, but he could not understand. She whispered, “listen” and left him again for the depths of her mind. How magical that she could find the peace of love within her brain. The symbol for this elusive love she sought and fretted over was available at any moment she desired it. This place she found served as an organic museum of the ebb and flow of love imagined.

*painting by Joyce Frances Devlin

A thank-you note

I wanted to write today. The only thing that I could think about was who I wanted to write for. Which topic would intrigue who; what sort of discussion could I spark; how can I inspire my friends and family to think today?
Here it goes, from the beginning:


There are so many things to do.
Productivity, strives for achievement, self-improvement (consult Oprah or Forbes for reference).

And yet...

I am distracted insurmountably by engaging in activities that connect me to other people. Past and/or present, I've been playing around on facebook, following blogs, as well as dicking around with my own (e.g. this one). The media through which I attempt to communicate with others is electronic because I sit by myself in a windowless, florescent light flooded box of a room in front of a computer all day long. Which got me thinking...

Why must I work alone?

Being social is not just an activity utilized for just entertainment purposes. Why do I keep thinking that communicating with my friends and family is a "distraction." Distraction from what? Sociability, as I SHOULD know being a damn sociology major in college, is necessary to maintain simple sanity.

So if that's true, why must I believe that I work better alone? That I'm better alone? Even like I did as a kid (and I know other people though this way), I say, "Ugh, I hate group projects because I always end up doing everything." Truth of the matter is I didn't trust anyone enough to do the work well. Taking over the microscope, the sliced-up dead frog, the calculator, the textbook, the magnetic poetry pieces, the discussion even... I would get "us" A's. That kind of reinforcement only proved to me that my decision to dominate and exclude or ignore was perfectly justified. Letting someone else contribute would only compromise the possibility of marked success, right? Not only that, but I wanted my group members to think I was competent, impress them, let them know that I could provide them with something great. Additionally, and probably most importantly, I didn't used to trust that the end result would be what I imagined it to be.

But of COURSE it wouldn't end up being what I imagined. That's the nature of the group dynamic... as a unit, things are created that you couldn't possibly create with only YOUR mind.

Many times, the end result is better than you could've ever, ever, ever anticipated. This is something I believe to the core of my being.

I guess what I want to say is that I don't take any of my friends for granted. My longing to talk, chill, invite you to discuss stupid things like organ printing, have you join this book club, and party with you guys comes from the fact that WE enjoy EACH OTHER'S company... it's not just me looking for you or you looking for me.

Also, I've truly learned, and excuse me if I'm being really stupid-cliche, that even I am a product of a group project, so to speak. All of you have had a hand in creating me, as I have had a hand in creating you... even if it's been slight. I trust you. I'm glad you have contributed. I want you to contribute.

And that's something I am truly in awe of.

Thanks, guys.
:)

Obama, don't make me doubt you!

"Part of the key is also to isolate the extremists who have been wreaking havoc around the world."

Obama made this an important point in a calling-all-Muslims speech in Cairo on the 4th. The first thing I thought was:

Oh, God. (...Is that an ironic word to come to mind? heh.)

We all know what HE means, or at least implies, when he talks extremism. And what he means is clear when he elucidates, continuing, "We simply want to make sure that our common enemies, which are extremists who would kill innocent civilians, that that kind of activity is stopped..." This sounds really really logical and helpful, all in all, right?

The thing about using such vague terms (e.g. extremists, enemies, activity) is that perpetrators can be defined based on whim... or all sorts of weird or corrupt ideological motivations, depending on who's doing the prosecuting. Also, the actions to be taken against "them" are used so loosely (e.g. want to make sure, stopped) that it's impossible to know what tactics will be used to off the behavior.

I also know this is a speech meant for laymen and moral boosting. There are just so many stories of a government pegging one group of people dangerous to society. I'm thinking specifically of the kind of rhetoric that allows for human rights violations under oppressive governments, though. Lines and definitions blur so profoundly. I highly highly highly doubt that Obama or his administration intends on whacking anybody just because they'd be politically inconvenient or anything like that... but it's the language of his speech that *really* made me raise an eyebrow.

I hope I'm being irrational!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/22/obama.pakistan/index.html

Letterman v Palin OR Semantics v Literality

So, a friend of mine (THANKS, NICK!) asked my opinion of the recent Palin/Letterman spat.

For those of you not necessarily acquainted with the happenings, here's a recap. Letterman made a stupid joke about Palin's daughter during one of his shows. He said, "one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the 7th inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

HAHAHA!

Ok, so we get the joke, right? RIGHT?
Palin's a conservative, morality toting, religious nut whose young daughter gets pregnant by a stranger at an all-American sporting event. In the atmosphere of apple pie, the negation of the option of contraception/abortion makes the abstinence policies that Palin's type promotes look completely ridiculous. And to think... that baseball player would've f*cked daughter right in front of the mommy who advocates for the failed policies that make the joke! Wow, Letterman, that's a good one! Dumb, but we get it. The shock value of suggesting public erotics right in front of mommy, if anything, makes it even more laughable (not more funny, but we laugh harder out of a little anxiety at that because it was a close-to-taboo joke he just made!).

This is Letterman. I don't particularly watch The Late Show, but from what I understand, jokes like this are par for the course. He has an audience he caters to. Because of the type of humor he typically uses, this shouldn't be of much surprise to anyone. Not only that, but... come on. What's all the hubbub? It's just a joke.

Just a joke...

That's where things get messy. There are advocates for the dismissal, that's right, downright termination of Letterman's employment with CBS. Why? Because when it comes to suggesting statutory rape in ANY context, especially in the case of a "joke," people get upset. I think this is understandable. Not only that, but there are a lot of people calling the joke

IN BAD TASTE.

Now, what exactly is that supposed to mean? "In bad taste." Well, to many, "taste" represents a certain by-law of codes we live by to subsist peacefully in the social realm of regular communication. Their a set of moral standards that go rather unquestioned in the popular consciousness. These are called mores (pronounced moor-ays, for those of you unfamiliar with the term). Something the feminist movement had attempted to do was to normalize the aversion to sexual exploitation of anyone, particularly women. Even if Letterman hadn't particularly suggested violence, which he didn't, the act of sex between that baseball player and the young Bristol would definitely constitute statutory rape. That falls under the jurisdiction of sexual exploitation, for sure. In any case, the point here is that he failed to demonstrate what we like to call "professionalism" in his choice to joke about Palin's daughter. The joke, of course!, was not aimed at the daughter, no. It was intended to make fun of the religious conservatives. Nonetheless, though, he did in fact **directly** make a seriously inappropriate joke about a young girl.

I said this to Nick, and I'll say it again,
I'm glad he apologized. I don't think he should lose his job for that comment. BUT, his job is a public one. Not that he must pander to EVERYBODY since that's absolutely impossible. The joke's semantic intention has been outshined by the literal interpretation of it, sure. But if he's going to keep his job, it's been made clear that he should probably save those KIND of jokes for the cigar lounge.

LOVE: The Disorder

Trapped in her brain;
it tramples the cerebellum grey.
Anxious red and paranoid black
comfort her by pacing, pacing back
and unfree like OCD.

Trapped like a battered wife;
In a meeting of her post-life
and his predominance, intact,
they've signed a pact
to traumatize she like PTSD.

Conduct your psychosurgery!
Electroconvulsive therapy!
Through each capillary,
She craves his electricity.

Again, she feels it come,
and welcomes the numb...

Organ Printer or Fountain of Wealth, I mean Youth?

Organ Printing.

Apparently, by means of the technology utilized in your average household laser-jet printer and some medical magic, human FLESH (currently tissues) can be engineered. That's what they're calling the process, really. Bio-engineering. So ultimately, the medical community would love to be able to fabricate whole human organs. Now, here's the real genius of this: each organ would carry your own perfectly tailored blue-prints! This is because doctors would take you-samples and use the appropriate stem cells in order to construct custom-made kidneys, livers, hearts, you name it.

WHAT?!

On the plus side, if you need an organ for whatever reason, you'd have less time to wait. Since you could have someone grow a spare organ for you, you wouldn't really have to wait on a list for a compatible organ someone else donated. Many donated organs, even if they are compatible with your body, are rejected by your immune system. They are treated as foreign intruders. Using your very own (albeit Frankenstein-ian) back-up would minimize the number of rejected organs.

It is also a plain enough fact that the ratio of people who need organ transplants and the number of available organs is incredibly high. A clinician quoted in the Impact Lab article below states, “I just had to watch them die... Clinical doctors can’t give them treatment that isn’t in textbooks. I clung to the hope that medicine will make progress and save more lives in the future.”

Here's the flip side...

(*Note: This might make me sound incredibly insensitive. Granted, I am not a doctor; I have never had to stand there and watch when someone close to me could be saved by future medical advances but died anyway... besides my grandma Gerri, but we all accepted that. I've never needed an organ. I've never faced vaguely certain death because the wait list was too damn long for a kidney.)

I almost wonder if this is something we just shouldn't dabble in. The world population is such that we can't take care of everyone. One could argue that we just WON'T take care of each other. However, in all honesty, I highly doubt that the powerful, the politicians, the war mongers and the wealthy (or one of all of the above), are going to want to slacken their hold on those they could be construed as being responsible for: their fellow (hu)man(ity). Given our undeniable construction of worldwide hierarchies of resource distribution, the number of people on the the planet is unsustainable.

Not only that, but who is to afford such a procedure? I would wish it not so, but yet another means of stratifying life's resources would be set in place. The wealthy could literally be read, fed, and stitched back together til the world's end...

Additionally (and this is more of a Western (at LEAST) cultural issue) I think that the focus on youth as more highly valued than old-age is causing issues like this. Old age doesn't necessarily stand for wisdom and experience... it speaks upon the out-of-touch, the traditional (which should be castrated to make room for "progress"), and the senile. If I may speak as (some) women here, aging can be considered shameful. Our most desirable features are related to our physical youthfulness. Here's what I'm getting at here. Our all too credulous search for the "fountain of youth" as it were, that age-old (ironically) chase after never-ending life, is exemplified in the rigor of the development of organ printing.

What it comes down to is this: at this moment in history, too many of us are haunted by the unwillingness to accept death as a natural part of life.


http://organprint.missouri.edu/talks.php
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/11/09/emerging-field-of-organ-printing/
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1603783&page=1

On Giving a Shit.

Looseleaf paper. So much better to write on than a computer (ha.), better than a notebook. So easy to throw out. If you carry it on the street, it's much more liable to fly from your lax grip and into a scuzzy sidewalk puddle. Ruined.

Actually, not. Not at all.

Carrying around looseleaf paper with important words on it seems like asking for tragedy.

Key point:

If you care. Now, that means caring about the preservation of the physical integrity of what you've written down. Minding that, do you think that simple nuance or bias of your thinking ultimately affects your writing?

Why insist on ensuring your words be safe from the malice of destruction? (Is destruction malicious? Another bias! Full of it...) It's as if this extension of you - like a limb or your offspring (to use perfectly typical metaphors) - is in danger of being completely eliminated.

But if you ditch the pretense that what you say, what you think, what you write down, has any meaning or matters to anyone, even yourself, then who knows what actions will emerge to exist? If only for a short time. Such as...

• Stretching out a toothy grin that mimics that of the man on the moon you finally see for the first time.
• Adding a marker moustache to an actress' airbrushed upper lip on a movie poster for yet another of this season's "it" romantic comedies.
• Snatching up the last of the hors d'oeuvres at a gallery opening.
• Making eyes at the bartender.
• Spilling salt and NOT throwing a few grains over your left shoulder. (FORGIVE ME, UNIVERSE!)
• Adding cream and sugar to your coffee.
• Painting your room (provided you have your own room) your favorite color - even if it's pepto bismol pink or electric blue.
• Smelling a crayon.
• Admitting your bourgeois tendencies.
• Relying slightly on MS Word's spell check.
• Not pronouncing the "t" in "often."
• Singing off key with everything you have in the middle of the forest where that tree falls that noone's around to hear.
• Utilizing cliches to the fullest!

• Writing out a list of things that mean nothing to anyone you could imagine outside the person in action.

What I'm finding hilarious is that, as I finally start ACTUALLY thinking about drawing up a list like this, my mind blanks. I'm spacing out facing a black wiry coat rack. There's a metal cow plate hung on the wall welcoming the 20-something tattooed and sweat-shirt-ed, wire rimmed glasses and internet-based anecdotes to the cafe. The girls speak with a low, sophisticated waver that somehow phrases every comment like a question. The boys bobble their heads and string coherent sentences together, surely, that're spotted with mod lisps and goofy laughs. The high-chairs collect dust near the kitchen. I write and twirl my long wavy hair. It's blonde. I know. The waitress is just as indeterminably kitchy as the table at which I'm sitting. She sports rectangular black bangs; the table, cartoon pictures of vegetables. I'm covering the table with my loose leaf paper and... (thank god...) meaningless words.

Am I alone?
My cell phone is still on.
Now it's not.
Ha. I lied.
Guess what?
That doesn't matter, does it?

The music in the cafe changed for the better. Tom Waits has the greatest growl. It would have been a shame if he wasted it on heavy metal. I'm glad he didn't. The hoarseness of his voice lends itself to the melancholy of his music. I would be sad too if my voice deteriorated. I wonder how he feels about it?


Dear Tom (or Mr. Waits, whichever you prefer you can pretend I addressed you as),

How does your voice affect you? Your music? Or is it one of those things that doesn't make a difference?

Love & Curiosity,
Sara

Brought to you by the letter “El”

The scenario


I stood in a glass box. Heat lamps buzzed overhead. There were 8 people under them, including me. We stood at a half-arm’s length of each other, lined up like dominoes superglued to the wooden platform. (Please, for the sake of it, let’s just pretend that superglue successfully bonds plastic to damp wood, k?) The Chicagoan winter temperature warranted more of a crowd in that box. So, enter lady # 9. Why would that girl with the frostbitten nose and wet hair stand outside of that glorious heat radius? The man with only-a-moustache huddling at a half-arm’s length next to me probably scared her off…

Another scenario

On the Santiago Metro, I remember, regular human contact was normal. Completely. This is due to the high concentration of people in one place, unparalleled to Chicago. It was understood that no one should act inappropriately, accordingly. By inappropriately I mean with sexual, disgusting or violent intent. There are probably other adjectives I’m forgetting. Fill in the blanks where you will. Isn’t that what life’s about?
Moving on…
Granted, a few people copped a feel or two at my expense while I was just minding my business among the sedated-cow crowd. I was trying to read the paper on my caffeinated-with-only-fucking-instant-coffee morning train ride to work. Eh, I don’t blame ‘em. I was a foreigner breaking up the monotony of the Chilean commuter landscape. No really. I’m taller than the lot of them, VERY white.
And maybe cute… who knows? In my experience, that last characterization doesn’t always mean very much when profane behavior is incited. Keep reading…

The “exotic”, in the history of human interaction, has always been sexually appealing to many, despite (and/or because of) what some tried to tell themselves about the proverbial “others”. In this regard,
think historical conquests of all shades,
think contemporary sex-trade,
think mail-order brides,
think sex “tourism,”
think… curiosity. IT doesn’t always kill the cat. Though on many occasions, it does. Sometimes, you’ll find a purr-factory…In addition, I’d say because of the unfounded restrictions some societies will’ve installed on inter-racial/cultural relations, the interaction became all the more desirable. We’re just so damn rebellious when it comes to our patterned behavior. What? Oh, people. C’mon now, get with the program already. We’re all hot.
But in these instances, here’s what may be considered erotic: the symbolic “space” between cultures that is incongruent with the physical closeness of intimacy. That tug-o’-war between what one should and shouldn’t pursue can be quite sexy, indeed. There is much passion found in conflict.

In Wine, Truth…

Now, here’s something fun! Consider the situation if everyone was drunk. WHEEEE!
I’ve never quite thought about that before. But I’m taking wild stab and imagining it would be an entertaining pastime if I had. I wonder if lewdness would ultimately prevail? A question like that could plague a person for life.

Who is who? The sober one or the drunken one? Well I could imagine that at least in the lives of, for example, Russians and Canadians, vodka and ale respectively could steal away the bite from the cold. Their behavior, on the other hand? Think of the potentially violent tempers they are reputed for having. I know that’s very one-dimensional of me to say, but reputations are very real, regardless of their connectivity to reality. So maybe I shouldn’t have used that as a unit of analysis.
I did.
What are you going to do about it?
Who’s even reading this anyway? Ha!
Moving on…

Space v. closeness in the realm of drunkards in the cold (and not). All of the following scenarios include groups of people, 2 or more. Understanding the dynamics between just two people and two-hundred people would differ immensely, I’m oversimplifying for fun. I find this part rather funny. Or sad. (Care to tell me which?) Bear with me…

1. It’s freezing. Instead of huddling with another person, take a drink. That’ll take the edge off.

2. Drinking in and of itself will take the edge off of the more superficial social mores that keep the (symbolic & physical) space between us stronger than usual. ‘Under the influence’** as it were, people are more likely to castrate each other or copulate. In either case, (physical & symbolic) closeness is a necessity.

**In my opinion, the real influence we live under is our own law.

3. “In wine, truth.” A good saying.
(…Does this apply to everyone? You know, I’ve only asked one other person seriously about the effect alcohol has on her. So we share our experiences with it. She tells me I’m crazy. Could be. I digress...)


4. Every person is a combination of his/her inner person and outer person. Basically, to define the inner and outer person, we’ll start by asking ourselves the following (relatively) dichotomous questions:

-What do you do when no one’s watching? versus What do you do in a crowd?
-What do you do when the lights go out? versus What do you do under the pressure of the lime light? Florescent lights?

If you say, “nothing differently, OF COURSE! ☺” then, Congratu-fucking-lations, shit-grin!
In the U.S. at least, under a Western cultural value system, we respect the TOTAL negotiation between the inner and outer in both private and in public. This is not the case everywhere. Keep that in mind you totally-at-peace-with-yourself Unitedstatesian. …And maybe take a closer look.

The Inner v. Outer

Inner, or The soul

**Note: this term, if you please, is up for interpretation. You may insert whatever word you wish there, just so long as the integrity of the concept remains AND it makes sense to you!)

Outer, or The actor

Sometimes those two aspects of a person work together, sometimes they work against each other. Unless a person is inhumanly in control of this, the two are never mutually exclusive. In any case, is closeness only defined by extent of the exposition, or sharing, of the soul to another?

For many, the instantaneous baring of the soul is more likely to occur while drunk.
A brief interlude during a conversation I had recently reminded me of this (paraphrased):
“Do you have any secrets?”
“Well, Yes.”
“Well?”
*awkward pause, laugh*
“I’d need a drink or two first to even know what they are, let alone tell you.”

For these purposes, the subconscious and the soul could be more or less synonymous. Depending on whether or not one is cognizant of the goings-on of the subconscious is another fucking essay all together.

Trust\

Strangers never trust each other. And why would they? I’m no exception to the rule. Gullible, sure! I used to think that gullibility was an extension of trust. I have yet to prove myself entirely wrong.

In my opinion (for now), centuries ago, closeness may have come inherently with proximity, regardless of what anyone wanted. People who lived near by each other needed one another to survive. See, trust had to be worked out. If you couldn't trust your neighbor, who could you trust? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that closeness and trust are the same concept whatsoever. What I am saying is that the two ideas eventually play each other out in practice. They are ideas that negotiate with one another.

Now that we can obtain our goods and services through the chain of command, there’s no need for any kind of proximal team efforts. Even in the workplace, where this type of reliance may be necessary to get shit done, closeness of any un-condoned sort within that glass box is frowned upon. See: company manual.

Vulnerability v. Strength

In a song by Regina Spektor, “Apres Moi”, there’s a lyric that goes:
“You can’t break that which isn’t yours.”
Self-preservation.
Oh, god, how cliché! How over-done! That topic has been charred to a crisp. What am I writing about that for? Can’t anyone get away from that topic when discussing human nature? I wish!!! But…
Is that what we’re all in it for? (Here we go, yet AGAIN.)

The extent to which one tolerates a certain amount of space or closeness to another/others might have virtually everything to do with how comfortable one is sharing. Sharing personal
space, resources, ideas, insecurities…
The way I see it, people construe sharing as either a source of:

a) vulnerability
b) strength

Western cultures tend to find “a)” to be truer, whereas Eastern cultures find “b)” more truthful. This is OF COURSE another generalization, and god, am I good at that, but please, let me explain…


Compartmentalization of closeness

Closeness of all kinds has become compartmentalized. Boxed up and wrapped in color coded ribbon for all of our convenience. Everything must be labeled accordingly.

What’s interesting to me is the confusion this type of behavior can bring, which leads me to believe it is NOT necessarily in line with the way we should be relating to one another. I’m not one to place my flesh and blood in line with the crowd who believes in nature OVER nurture… and that’s partially because we’ve always behaved in ways which convolute us. And we were trying to organize ourselves to make sense of us… HM!

Silly humans! We amuse me.

Read Between the Lines

“Please, sir, plague me with your presence; I’ll be in that first train car,” chanted Dalia to herself as she reapplied her mauve lipstick. The woman in the seat across from her watched her with a smile. Dalia shot the woman a fleeting look, her eyelids recoiled and relaxed in a half second’s time and stood up. She walked to the sliding door as the train slowed, jerked, one hand reaching for the back seat handle.

“How many times have I told myself not to look?!” Dalia chastised herself, her darting glances dancing as awkwardly as she tried (& tottered,) balancing on her 2 inch heels. Briskly smoothing her perfectly pressed pantsuit, she straightened her posture and readjusted her purse so that it settled on her shoulder just as comfortably as a moment before. She took one conscious breath. Now, calmly and decisively, she focused her eyes on a crack in the outdated wooden platform. Slipping her fingers into her slender jacket pockets, she felt the plastic wrapping of a fortune cookie. Despite how sensitive she tried to be of her surroundings, she somehow overlooked this giant bulge in her front pocket for hours. The train jerked to a halt; “damn those new drivers;” ripping her hands out of her pockets, her jaw clenched and bicep tensed gripping the seat yet again in preparation for a stumble.

Stepping with a purposeful stride out of the car, she turned left and realized she needed to turn right; “just like every day, damn it!” Her eyebrows furrowed in support of her eyes searching quickly for any witnesses to her aloofness. Dalia followed a few yards behind the sparse crowd that regularly gets off at this stop at this time.

“5:45pm.”

Her steps less important than before, she reached back into her pocket for that fortune cookie. “Tell me something I don’t already know. I dare you.” She actually murmured this aloud, but one could tell by her demeanor that she had no idea she did so. The plastic packaging, ornery as all others, wouldn’t open until she used her teeth. The fortune cookie snapped in irregular patterns that were instantly demolished by her teeth too. She leered at the fortune she kept wedged between her thumb and forefinger…

“You are headed in the right direction. Trust your instincts.”

…She imagined its author laughing maniacally over The Primordial Typewriter and a cookie batter cauldron with utterly spiteful delight – laughing at each letter – cackling even more mightily at the spaces between the words. Those blank spaces. Uninterruptible. un-interpretable. They cemented that damned phrase into intelligible pieces on that small life-corrupting piece of paper....

More to come, maybe.

**A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World, part 4

4. Inside the apocalypse

In a room with only windows, you reached into your mouth and
uncovered a hard swelling lump in the back of your gums,
on the lower jaw.
Pushing up slowly, difficulty
with ease like a birth,
the molar did not break the skin but rather
unhinged the flap
that normally kept it from its currently unusual exit.
A pleasantly interrupted light,
like the glowing television
snow piercing through a dense fog,
lit only a diagonal prism in the room outlined by the
measures of the window.
The rest of the space was left
opaque and dark where you had knelt.
“What have you done?”
You only picked up this voice
like a radio transmission,
vague and cotton-spun
like the light that entered the room.
Strangely your ear acutely measured the sound’s solid outline,
its cell wall, permeating a very
large
singular
pore
in the dark.
The question emerged to find
not you, per se,
but a place to nest.

The pink flesh of your mouth
pulsed at the mass pushing itself out of
your way, more questions.
Aching for a mere moment more,
you reached in your mouth,
grappled with all fingers at its porcelain.
It came out before you could pull it out,
understanding I agitated the molar earlier.
A memory:
chomping down on it too hard,
with and without meaning to,
flickered on the neurotransmitters of your brain.

This is not what you told the voice in the room.
Something that dwells within the
continuum of truth and lie
lived for but a brief moment,
lingered in its submission.
“It came out all on its own,”
you heard my voice anxiously assert.
You were only quietly ashamed, and
my curiosity to see what had surfaced
from you
easily subdued that feeling.

Between your fingers,
the molar felt so still,
almost
tranquil, with life.
You did not find it hard to grasp.
When you raised it to the light,
all your other senses held themselves back as you looked.
It was a crystal organism.
Its outlines clearly defined themselves,
an imperfect form formed perfectly;
veins piercing through its interior resembled
great purple fault lines,
lying dormant for centuries without even a threat of stirring.
The light from the window did not shine through the molar,
nor did the molar mute its passing.
It did not glow nor sparkle.
How it was, you will never know for sure,
but this tooth encased the light from the window in a way.
Its clear platinum membrane wall
simply could not let out any single bit of the light it absorbed,
if indeed that is how the molar came to obtain it.
If only you knew.
Another half-lie.
“ ,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
“ ”
I’m sorry, you proclaim
“
I’m sorry
”
you heaved a sigh, without any intention, really,
no motivation to be found.
Emptying yourself felt good, though.
You did not know whether or not you were telling the truth,
the socially desired side of a
dichotomous concept of real and make believe
where, it seems,
only you are vaguely familiar with
the map of its overlaps.

A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World, part 3

3. Impending apocalypse

She spins gracefully over the melted sea storms.

Massive fresh whirlpools of
violent white and black hair.
Pupils contract to
the size of neurons
Giant sickly green irises absorb the Sky,
emitting a dull yellow shadow cast
over the ocean surrounding her.

Cages rise from the sea like
cargo ships bursting from the depths,
as if they encaged themselves for centuries
climbing to the surface
gasping for decreased pressure.

Rusted metal friction
echoes for miles upon miles

as she dances about them,
flailing her arms with the most indecisive directions
averting the lightning striking each cage.

The cages shed their rust as
fireworks spill from their bars,
at every strike,
her voice like the sound of a Himalayan avalanche –

it pounds the waves as
they struggle
for calm, but cannot stop.

Even still her dance provokes them.

As the waves stretch the material of her dress
as the whirls overtake a wider space, they catch
on the small specks of spiked rust on the cages,
still revolving unanimously
in painful unison with her dance.

She is pinned but does not stop as her dress shreds and rips away,
revealing millions –
souls who found new bodies.
She occupies them.

Her hair knots around the oxidizing metal bars
forcing her head into

the rhythm of their revolution

until she jolts herself hard,
her hair then attached to the bars like
ribbons floating gracefully in the wind.

As their motion is manipulated by a tired ocean,
her head splotched with open lesions.

The ocean tattoos her with
its insensitive temperatures
piercing into each pore,
so sensitive to the ocean salt,
but dances more rigorously, but
now to desperately keep warm.

The ocean rises around her,
covering her body with its
antigravity anguish,
and she flails her arms
tries to push away the storm
but only serves to strengthen it.

She screams like the raven
making the cages shatter and
fall into the waves.

The pieces circle her,
her
arms
legs
chest
face
back

jaundicing the sea.

A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World, part 2

2. It(')s time

And ‘til the day he dies
he proclaims antipathy at the world
in its darkest hour,
according to him.
His eyes were closed,
his world was coming to a close.
At his bed, the smell of
sulphur,
iron,
sea salt,
and pigment, pigment like pink fuzz,
but he seemed to like it, smiling
gracefully,
at the world’s darkest hour.
The clock, denoting his time,
the only occasion he ever really
paid attention to that chime;
it was always so necessary,
a nuisance before.
This dusty old grandfather clock passed down
from generation to generation
of darkest hours
chiming at those times,
every time,
ceaselessly until the fuzz whitens
and withers away.
Yellows,
like petals of un-watered flowers
or scrunched up straw wrappers,
wetted by unmannered children at the dinner table
with dirt under their finger nails,
making them look like thin white
worms slimy and slithering,
born of imagining them emerging from the Earth.

A Psychoanalysis of the End of the World, Part 1

The state of the world

Guilt hangs low in the soul –
a woman barely sixty
but ready to go somewhere outside the house –
a little fresh air,
but wait!
the home insulates cleanliness,
white.
outside is worse than…
worse than …? is what she wants to know,
but hasn’t had a basis of comparison in centuries
of ….

and lip surgeries.
She has bitten, again, through her stitches
gnawing at a possibility of something else
something more,
something
yellowed,
a chance
for her alone.
For herself
she would live
gracefully.