urgle grue pt. 2 or so

i'm realizing that this story i'm currently working on (with reluctance--it's not an easy write, i think in part because it's been so long since i've written a first draft that i can't quite stop expecting more than is happening from myself) is, like, weird to try and pull together.

the early parts of a story seem to be mostly babble, for me (again, this is the first draft experience--it's interesting as such). i mean, i have a core idea, but of course, being me, i don't know what it is. it manifests itself as a symbol, or a...what's a word i can borrow from some other discourse, for kicks? a moment--a singularity. something that stays deeply meaningless. when i've hit the right singularity, then everything in me can draw up to the thing--like the jar up to which the hill came--and bits of myself start getting thrown at it, changed in the spectrum of the light that refracts from it, but still entirely identifiable.

the fact that i actually at this point know enough to SAY this, to put a process to the action of writing a story i've never written before, maybe means that this book will be better than the last. i doubt it, though. i think i might be villette-ing myself. not that the first book was even close to being a jane eyre, and not that villette isn't a freaking FABULOUS book in its own right, but it's not the same as jane eyre. it's not. villette is a work of genius, but maybe it's not a masterpiece--or it's both a work of genius and a masterpiece, but it's just...not jane eyre.

it might be that i'm addicted to rewriting the book i know.

none of this matters, of course. i am interested in the process, though. it's almost necessary to pontificate about the process precisely because i'm so damn unsure of myself. i like things like ground rules, boundaries...there aren't any with the new book, except to get everything in there that feels like it ought to be there, which is helpful, in a way, but only in a way. i'm going to forget something, is the fear, or lie about something--put something in there that doesn't need to be there. the last book was kind of a flight of fancy; this one is sticking low to the ground, said ground as defined by what i know.

which is, i'm afraid, making it boring. but it's a first draft. it doesn't have to be interesting until the second. i'm not sure why i'm so focused on the end product. i seem to be preoccupied with what my brain wants me to be preoccupied with, however--there's something to that.

oppositions, and the way they twist. and eternal love, unfortunately. depression, and not knowing yourself, and the weird possibilities that hover between memory and imagination. an uncomfortable display of my current preoccupations, in fact. rrr. but i have to write it. it'd be stupid to reject a gift like the end of plot-block just because i'm kind of afraid--kind of really really afraid.

12

meditations of the beast

earth and sky

unbroken, tight
and unceasing as shackles--

air, light, dirt, everything,

unending, massed hostlike,

the press of hot things,

bodily and burned sacred.

break and writhe,

you, uncleanly thing,

and befoul heat itself

with your strangled release,

and you, dark receptacle

and you, dark receptacle

cleave to yourself

cleave yourself

and break yourself

and break yourself

for everything else

is too ready to spill you

if you dont spill yourself.

11

quietus (in translation)

i see your face

as if transient, in a dream,

my first and last love--

the retching

stickiness

of memory

and the wrench

of distance

a hand that wishes to

hold nothing

yet

lets nothing go

a wretched
and circular
desire.

i read your face

as if in memory

dearest

i read and rend your face

as if from memory.

a hand i once held

is over-full of memory

and my own hand

is over-full

of shadow--
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.

fullness--i was

robbed

of fullness,

and hang,

sick,

like a crescent moon,

somewhere between day

and hungering night

while night

empties her budget

into her own
hollowness.

10

milton

crush

flesh

to dark

ness.

the tower

built

of raw dark

the up-

thrusting

thing

against

its ideal

turn it

real

taste

of yellow

roses

the stalklike

mark

on creamy

forearm

i was in the darkness, though.

but it was a meat darkness.

i pushed my way out

and there was meat for days.

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?