dark night doth do stuff something something receipt

no experience out-weirds the experience of going through this repressed memory thing.

there are some metaphors that are more than metaphors, because they're exact, and carry truth--like, the experience of listening to one's heartbeat is a metaphor, provided one doesn't have a stethoscope, because there's no actual sound, but at the same time it's not a metaphor, because one is hearing the sensation, in a really weird way--the elision of sound and touch, in that example, is kind of like the way that "iron" is both a one- and two-syllable word. sort of.

and with this memory stuff, it's like my brain is throwing up. really. it's like, i shake violently, i usually end up saying "no" a lot, my mind focuses on some more-than-image, the image-plus gets examined/shaken until its message becomes manageable, spit-up-able, vomitable, and then i sit there with the resulting feeling for what feels like the same amount of time as it takes to recover from throwing up, and then i go back to being me. the curtain descends; everything ends. for the moment. so weird.

today, apparently, it was necessary that i acknowledge that a certain chair is my chair. what the hell that means i pretty much don't know, but i do feel better.

except my body is freaking haywire. i have prickles in my arms and legs, and what feels like a low fever, except it isn't making me feel anything more than just hot-ish. what i figure is that maybe the memory thing is putting stress on my system, and my system, which is prone to blood sugar issues, is responding to that stress with weird diabetic symptoms. i haven't slept at night in over a month...that is, i've slept at night, but not before 3 in the morning, and usually after 4...

it might just be diabetes, of course.

"my chair." sure, memory, whatever you think is best. i'm probably not dealing with this correctly. it's just that up until this last little darkest-night-memorying-up-its-receipt moment, i was still pretty on the fence about whether or not it was actually happening to me--so much fun to feel like maybe my imagination is capable of making up what i've been remembering. the weirdest of all weirds is that my whole self-person-object all snaps back into place when the remembering's over...which is why i think the memory waited until now to manifest itself--my sense of who i was wasn't strong enough to withstand this before.

something about the nature of patterns.

i remember with fondness the days when this used to be a poetry blog.

said it all before

i think i may have met the most beautiful woman in the world. i saw her once, thought i'd never see her again, and then she showed up where i was today, and she'll be where i am for the next month at least...

what it mainly means is either that i've got to stop doing this, or start accepting it. i expect myself to control my longings because i don't have the courage to act on them...because longings contain danger, the danger of acting like an idiot, or hurting someone else...and i always felt that courting danger was self-indulgence. and self-indulgence means getting away from the source--the source of information, inspiration, etc. you can only find out what you already know from an event you create. this is why i'm willing to try everything that's been ordered at a table when dining out, but don't want to order myself. in some ways the demands i make on experience are really incredible: i do expect to find eternity in a grain of sand, if i keep my mind open and focus my attention to the degree possible. and that's why i feel like i've lived so fully, even though i've never done anything at all--i've been paying attention. compulsively.

but then she, or someone like her, comes along, and of course i don't know what to do. i don't know how to involve anyone else in my life, which is so private and so filled with my own observations. i'm so chock-full of myself that there's no room for anyone else. i want to fall in love--i want to openly, honestly, and hopefully, admire the most beautiful woman in the world, but i can't--i can't hope; it would be wrong. i can't want; that would also be wrong. it's not a question of self-control for self-control's sake; it's a question of self-control in the absence of any other viable alternative.

that's the crux of my attitude, isn't it: to hold on, until something better comes along. thus far it's worked, kind of. i always have to hold on for a long time, but when the something better does come, it's always wonderful, and i'm always alive to it, which is important.

oh god, the blah blah.

addendum to previous

i realize that when i say i don't believe in fighting for what one wants, i mean that in a pretty specific manner. it's a personal thing, and wholly dependent on the fact that i already have almost everything i want--and i so much more than have everything i need. the line between acting shakespeare and singing opera probably looks pretty thin to someone worrying about their next meal or their physical safety.

i mean, i've never had to fight for anything. society is designed to help pretty white girls with their problems. bizarre as it sounds, i actually have some limited, lame-ass, but possibly applicable quasi-firsthand perspective on this because of the experience with the d.u.i. the way the system treats you is not a joke. at times it can be almost intolerable. and i'm just talking about my stupid first offense d.u.i.--i mean, the d.u.i. wasn't a joke, but my sentence was light, the whole thing was probably about the easiest experience i could have had, all things considered, and still i got a feeling at times that i was being, like, ground down. either you do it their way, or you get further punished. and when their way is gross and petty and tyrannical, when their way is concerned with making you do things the way they say to rather than accomplishing anything remotely rational, you start thinking, okay, what purpose is this serving? and the answer is, it's turning you into what they want. and again, i'm talking only about my one, reasonably light brush with the law. what it's like if you actually get in deep trouble i can't imagine.

so i know, from being, however gently, on the wrong side of this, and from feeling how that feels, and then comparing it with my more usual experience, that i get treated better than i deserve. i don't have to fight for what i want; i just have to decide what it is, and about a million people are there to help me to do it, to tell me i can do it, to encourage me. strangers do not view me with suspicion or distrust--they go out of their way to help me--and it's because i'm white, middle class, and a girl. it's so damn unfair.

anyway, that's what i mean by not going for what one wants. the option of navigating the flow as it comes*, as i'm talking about doing so, at least, is a product of situation. i should never try to generalize. it just makes me sound like an idiot. ha ha, "never generalize."

and me having a temper tantrum about dealing with bureaucracy is kind of indicative of the fact that i am in this privileged position. at the first sign of things not being custom-fit to my circumstances, i get all blah blah and whatnot. of course, i have reasons. i do have reasons. within my circumstances, being condemned to take this class could have startlingly negative repercussions. and being me, i have to think that that's not unimportant. and as a universal application of some principle of cause and effect, there may be a lesson or something to learn here. but. the example itself, and the method of dealing with it, is oh so very circumstantial. i should have acknowledged that while writing it down previously.

*what is this, an entry about kidney stones?

GRRAUGH

okay, there are times when you decide to be a woman, not a child--to not resent something you can't change, to rise above the situation and make an effort to realize that the world is not always designed for your convenience and begging it to conform itself to your needs is beneath your dignity.

and then there are times when you pout, and you fucking cut off your nose to spite your own fucking face. the situation isn't going to be any more what i want it to be if i don't take the high road, here, but at least i'll have the satisfaction of not doing what i don't want to.

i'm just so mad. and it's about something stupid and petty, but it's also about something that's going to make next semester hell for me, and i don't deserve to be put through hell again. i've been in a working definition of hell since last november, and although it's been the most wonderful time of my life in some ways, it's also been, well, hellish, and if i didn't have a method of managing pain that most people would not understand the mechanics of, i'd have broken--i'd be breaking now--and nobody gets it, and i'm okay with that because some types of strength are a matter of loneliness, but if i could, i'd demand to be treated the way i ought to be treated by this fucking bureaucratic ridiculousness. this is the response to any situation: "we don't care, and we really don't want to get involved. please see the handbook re: why."

but that's deceptive, because when you read the handbook, the words "we're too chickenshit to handle you" are nowhere in the explanatory paragraphs.

so the solution is to just take the class, and not let it get to me. not let myself get worked up, not let myself care, not let myself engage. i already know how to do what it's going to ask of me, and i do it to my own satisfaction, and my standards are high. so this useless, stress-inducing class will be a time in which i can practice sleeping with my eyes open. which will be a useful skill to acquire.

i guess i don't believe in fighting for what one wants. i think that kind of thing sort of dulls creativity. you take what you have, and either turn it into what you want, or see what in it is what you actually want. i started singing because i considered myself too tall to act shakespeare--and singing has turned into more than i'd ever imagined; it's turned me into a better actress than i'd thought myself capable of being; it's allowed me to find things in myself, to interface with the world, to...know the reason i have to make myself heard.

and i haven't sung more than a few hours since school ended, because stupid hell-existence has at this point taken away my knowledge of my connection to sound. i know it's just reformulating, and the fear will go back to a manageable point, and my voice will turn itself into a sound again, but...ARGH. i blame in part a similar class that i had to take last year, for the anxiety and the agony that this summer thus far has to some degree put me through. i mean, i'm blogging at 4 in the morning. i'm not well, here. after the weeks of being afraid of the dark, it's mostly just habit by this point...

but i have reasons to not want to take this class. and there's no room for reason in any handbook i've ever read.

when are you going to learn, sra, that school isn't there to teach you what you need to know, but rather what it wants you to know? well, apparently never.

9

i wept in a dream

"i want to put my mouth

to the comet's trail

and dye my hands

in fire," she said,

and i cannot do so without you.

and i cannot do so without you.

her insistence on my presence

is why i twine my hands with hers,

though her skin chills

and her mouth glitters

with something

that looks like blood.

there are comets

in the early morning

for her to mouth

and she brings me with her

and she plunges me into fire.

everywhere my skin touches, i feel you.

every place my blood beats, you are there.

at least you are there.

8

zinc metaphor

(deep in the caverns

of my heart

there is a coin.

it has two faces

unchanging

and the metal

in the center

writhes

between them,

turned liquid

under pressure.)

turn away,

turn away life

and refold me

in the cypress' gentle arms

and come aground,

the stopped heart,

come aground

and bear me

in your crucible

of unbreathing blood.

deep between

the walls of two visions

creams

a plane beyond time

weaving itself

of motion and desire:

spill me there,

white heart,

away from the bone depth

of your drought--

spill me out

beyond sight's sapped and disparate apocrypha,

splitting

with wetted lemon sound,

self-enfolding.

7

veronica

but no one thought

and no one guessed

what the cloth caught

when it took his impress.

and no one heard

and no one saw

what the cloth learned

when it touched to his jaw.

my lord i begged

to be thrown away

but i received your dregs

and so i was saved.

my lord i cried

to be left unannealed

but away i was prized

and so i was pealed.

my lord, it was dark

in the place where i lay

until you lifted me up

into the light of your day

and blinded me to all but your way.

and bound me, bound me, bound me to your way.

6

ich grolle nicht

strange

this search

for a word--

the word

of

looking

gilt

in its face,

or that

of fashioning

guilt

into some sort of

mirror.

i've cracked

in a space

delimned

by waiting

and shards

have fallen

to a pavement,

they refract

light, like

sun on lips,

and the light

shines up over

my face--

almost as if

i can feel

its glimmer,

the image

of

guilt

is my image

and my image

silvers

gilt's

visage.

also, coupling is europe's way of proving that english t.v. is better than ours. i'm not arguing, i'm just saying. yeah, sure, sra, why not waste a bottle or two of beringer proving that?