(One)

One day at a time.

Must we?

(Still)

As I sink and dance my way to the bottom of the sea, I still want to write for you. I still want to write for you.

I still want to write your happy ending.

(Interrupted)

Men without chests are more likely interrupt a girl in mid-sentence, which is dangerous. You may miss something important if you don't let her finish.

It's hard, I know. Listening to women speak is annoying. I would much rather hear a man speak on a significant topic, too. But if you don't listen when a woman speaks, you're going to miss something.

Not at first, not really. It may take a while for you to realize that your words have become hollow and vitrified. And it may take you a while to realize that you hear nothing but the echo of your own voice. But when you do, oh sweet one, my sweet boyo, when you do, I weep for the pain you will feel on that day. The howling emptiness, the depth of shame, the anger at yourself, at her, at everything. It's hell. I've been there before; I know what it's like down there. You're going to feel it. You're going to feel so desperate that you will reach out - not for the bottle, or the quick-fix girl, or the meaningless work you drown yourself in - you will reach out to other human beings and ask them for help. You will let them see you in all your shame and glory, and you will let them touch you. And I don't know if I will be there. I don't know if I'll want to. I hate your fucking guts, which is confusing, because I also love you, too, and want to spend my lifeblood for your good, to care for you with the strength and agility of at least eleven metaphorical tigers.

Oh God, I don't understand anything anymore. I thought I had something going, but he interrupted me again, and now I've lost my train of thought.

{Fear}

You see, fear has to do with punishment.


I told you it wasn't that complicated.

[Year]

This was the day I knew.

This is the day I rue.

Not so much because things have changed so much as because they haven't. They say that the length of time it takes to break a curse is a year and a day.

I wonder what will happen tomorrow.

Arachne

“Nor could Arachne take such punishment:
She'd rather hang herself than bow her head.”

Becoming an arachnid is not a choice: becoming an arachnid is something that happens to you. You become an arachnid whenever the truth of who you are puts you in direct conflict with someone with power over you.

In later renditions of the myth about the girl from Colophon, Ovid, I think, tried to embroider some sort of moralizing nonsense about how Arachne depicted disrespectful and naughty scenes of various gods' infidelity and that this somehow justified her treatment at the hands of Pallas Athene. That's bullshit. Arachne did not merit punishment because she was rude. Arachne was punished because she was very good. But I would believe that Arachne wove those kinds of stories into her tapestry: I get pissed off too when I feel trapped in a lose-lose situation. If she won, she failed: her true self was unacceptable. If she failed, she failed: she didn't show her true self at all. And I bet Athena didn't give her the option to bow out of the competition. I mean, what choice did she have at that point? She had said she was a better weaver than Athena.

Because she was a better weaver than Athena.

I suppose that's boastful, but it's also true. Likewise, we become arachnids the first time we say something true, and we're punished for it. We may not even remember the first time this happened, though we may. As we grow, we learn that living in this world requires making compromises with others in order to survive. We also learn that if we don't play by the rules of the game, we will be punished; and that, conversely, if we play by the rules of the game, then we will be rewarded. These are two different lessons, but we often think they're the same thing. Conformity and compromise are actually distinct, but for some reason have become practically blurred. And yes, there's a conspiracy behind the mechanism that makes this so.

To be an arachnid is to reject conformity and embrace compromise. It is not only to participate in an evolving, contentious dialectic with the received truths of the world that deny our own, but also to maintain harmony and achieve balance with them. Arachne is a weaver still, though more microscopically, and her loom can no longer be destroyed: she is now her own loom and can set up shop anywhere three-dimensional. Likewise, there is no longer a need to fall on our swords or cut off the ears of messengers. We can say what we need to say and move on. If we hit a wall, we can walk around it or walk away from it, though limping.

"So you shall live to swing, to live now and forever,
Even to the last hanging creature of your kind."

[Revenge]

Revenge is the end of understanding.
Understanding is the end of revenge.

The sky continues not to fall,
and maybe God speaks after all.

Also, Arachne.

[Appeal]

Sexiness is a categorical imperative.

Epiphany

No idea is original. Ideas reflect the universal.

Without humility and faith, you become invested in the ideas that work best, and become identified by them. Why would you have more ideas? That sounds needlessly chaotic if they are your career.

The idea is more important than an identity. Or perhaps an identity must be located and nurtured alongside and separately from the capacity to generate new ways of looking at things.

Also, hyperlinking. The Holy Spirit.

Think about the alongside dictionary in, at least, Kindle. iPad, several versions down the line. What does this relate to in the original canon? Where is this going? Transformation of allusion. New medium.

Behind

I wonder how many times I'll grieve you. I never told you this, but the memories that hurt the most, the ones that I can barely stand to touch, are the ones in which you made me happy. I don't understand why you would do this to me. Why is it that this is the time you seem to have chosen to leave me? I remember when we used to talk everyday, and you would show me the most beautiful things, books and ideas and the absolution of cool grass beneath me at sunset. I told everyone about you. Anyone I thought would listen. Not just the outlines, "you did this, and are like this, and are planning to..." the self-conscious and flat resume we generally use to introduce you, but the personal stuff. The little miracles and joys of loving you. Each unexpected flash of sunshine or moment of clarity or feeling of comfort at the back of my head proof that you loved me too.

Now I find that I've gone beyond you. Beyond my memories of you. The world opens in this absolute space. An open stage, more than a stage, an infinite space in which everything I dismissed, everything I gave up to follow you, springs to life, whirligigging and spiraling in its quiddity, its undeniable vitality, and I can't go back. I want to say that I want to find you, but I don't think that's how this works. I think you're behind me. I don't like it.

Don't turn around.

{Asleep}

{Complicated}

First it was the dream about the dollhouse. He had been building it for my birthday. "Like 13 Going on 30?" she asked.

"Sure," I said hesitantly. Well, 13 Going on 30 if 13 Going on 30 were an avant-garde horror film.

Then the dream that I had stolen him from a friend of mine. I had walked straight up to him and given him his first kiss. He had been waiting so long; he was so happy. But then she came up to me, face crumpled and filled with passion under her dark hair. "It's not fair," she said, voice barely level. "It's not fair." Something twisted inside me, but I felt distant from it all, as if I were already drifting towards a different dream.

Then last night, the letter. We were all going to the Grotto, a popular bar, later that evening, but someone handed me a journal, like some well-known literary journal, and told me he wanted me to read it first. So I did. Inside, he had written me a letter, a very insightful letter in his spiky penmanship, alongside the journal's text. It was in a modernist, stream-of-consciousness style with various puns and riddles: more a puzzle box than a straightforward missive. I think he told me he liked me, but I didn't finish reading it, let alone making sense of it. I kept misplacing the journal. Oh good, we're together. That's a nice plot twist, a nice treat for me, I thought. But I couldn't go to meet him because I couldn't find his letter before I woke up.

"Reminds me of dreams I had in high school," she said. Yeah. Not so much me.

"The Theater of the Absurd is just good," he said. I like to think we exist, we're rare, and so are girls like you, you just need to find the right one, he replied ambiguously to my ambiguous question. Not disingenuous, ambiguous.

Boyo, it is really not that complicated. But I think I'm talking to myself again.

[Ink]

{Moderation}

A little spark, little flash of springtime plumage, oh me of little faith.

{([ Sometimes I miss you. ])}

(Miscarried)

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"I feel awful," I said. I felt awful.

"What does feeling awful feel like?"

"Numb. Nauseous. Blank. Like I've been kicked in the stomach. Empty."

"What's interesting to me," she said thoughtfully, "is that those are all neutral sorts of things. But you think they're awful."

I am cut loose, a frantic broken guitar string toy for a very determined cat, and I also feel as though something has been amputated. Gauged out. Like maybe eyes. Or a voice. Silenced. This is not intentionally melodramatic. There are no defined actors in this drama, no white or black hats, there's just the void. The empty stage and the howling maelstrom overhead or perhaps waiting outside the door of the theater. I realize that I was never alone. I also realize that I stole nothing. That the language of allusion not only belongs to everyone but that it also belongs to me. And that, in fact, my language, or, I suppose, my ability to conjure a certain sort of idiom, is something that cannot be taken from me or claimed as someone else's property. This is not a declaration. Merely an observation.

You're so vain, though, that you'd probably think this blog is about you.

Birds

{Sharks}

I had a dream about the end of the world, again. This time it had to do with expanding seas due to some sort of ecological disaster; ice melting, or something. The only part I remember is when my dreamwatcher-self flew into a grotto half full with water underneath a steep seacliff. In the middle of the grotto there was a rock that broke the surface, like a petrified iceberg. Seated on the rock was a Chinese shark goddess who looked as though she had been drawn in the style of a Japanese woodcut. I became the shark goddess, and I dove off the rock into the water, my red robes flowing and dragging me further and further down until I found myself in the middle of a school of sharks, so close together that they looked like a tessellated drawing of sharks. I dissolved into the sharks, a truly satisfying feeling, and we raced into open water, towards the midmorning sun.

I was disappointed the next day to discover that there's no such thing as Chinese shark goddesses.

{Illumination}

Submersion is an uncommon commonplace, and cautious use of your sea legs would be wise.

There are monsters in the deep.