RAMBLINGS, OBSERVATIONS, AND MISTRANSLATIONS

~JULY 28, 1998~

as i would have it, i have recieved quite a bit of interesting feedback on my previous, precocious imitation leather/imitation lover entry. it has given me a refreshed drive to address more than just my goings on. so, here we go again.

i'd like to think that everyone, in some small way at least, knows what i'm talking about. the emotion or ideas that i attempt to convey are not solitary, nor are they unique, so i suppose i hope to fucking god everyone else can at least see a portion, perhaps just a smidgeon, of themselves in the semi-convoluted mirror i present. some of you wrote you knew what i was thinking, that you had felt or thought about the same kind of thing rather recently, but the vast majority let me know that they didn't know what the bugger i was going on about. let us not blame their lack of insight or fear of confronting their own flaws, it's much easier to think they really don't know what's going on. now isn't that right sick, choosing pity over hate. i suppose neither is the best policy, but sometimes i'm forced to claim, you must know i'm just as flawed as all those perfect emailers.

but, enough of that. rant, rant, rant, is that all i'm good for, anymore?

oh, no. i've got some good shit, too. maybe.

it's called: contacting old friends. tonight, on a whim, i rang one of my dearest and sweetest friends, who is spanish but is now residing in holland with her sweet nothing. this was stirred into action by a previous phone call i made this week to my ultimate p.i.c. miss chris, living now in colorado, and i must say the thrill of catch up is juicy, juicy, juicy. so, i called belén, my distant sweetiebaby, and it was absolutely delicious. you know that there is something special between you and someone who can pick up and converse as if the last two years of silence didn't happen. and not only that, just revel in it. belén, to me, is the hottest tamale i've ever tasted, and rightly so. this is the girl that i will always attribute a myriad of firsts. she opened doors for me, addressed worlds that i'd never either thought about, or had had too much fear/immaturity to experience. in her brief excursion into my life, she built a scrumptious bonfire which still burns in my belly to this day, and y'all know i pray each night that it will never smother.

in the grander scheme, it's realizing that all that shit out there, all the people that chafe and wheeze, burn and sleaze through our lives, are not what it's all about. i will say that i am perfectly happy living in this crappy existence if it means that every so often i'm blessed with perfect understanding, whether it's within me or not. to have someone finish my sentences is more satisfying than the best orgasm i can think of. like i said to peter portensemal in a recent overture, i miss you because i know you give good conversation. how strange that someone as libinous as i is still ruled by the most cliché female desire: mental connection. but i won't insult my male admirers/p.i.c.'s by saying they don't desire the same thing, in fact an earlier conversation with the brazilian revealed that the best sex he'd ever had was with the woman he'd thought he was going to marry. so, i'll take that back. i'm just as shittily romantic as the next yo-yo. but i like it that way.

i'm not grandiose, and by no means do i expect to call any of you, my sweetie nothings, on point. all i'm thinking about are the boxes we give ourselves, or accept from others, and how disappointed i am in myself whenever i realize i've climbed into another, just to keep that comfy status quo. talking with belén has reminded me of a few things, and i feel like i've just had that breath of fresh air that i've been craving for months now.

fuck, i should have called her years ago.

~JULY 20, 1998~

i know you know what i'm talking about.

i think in spirals, maybe, not really circles. well, i guess i might think in circles, but they expand so quickly, so nakedly, that almost in a heartbeat, they no longer resemble spheres, but take on the rudeness of incongruity. it ends up the same way, i think, but perhaps the way i percept is a tad more schizophrenic. or maybe the way i percept that i percept is more languid than i can actually define.

and i hate it when people don't return my phone calls.

it's not really even phone calls, per se, just the idea of them. i hate it that some people don't think i'm worth their time, because as far as i'm concerned, everyone is worth my time. it happens in the online world, especially, email whores that taunt and tease better than any hollywood boulevard hussy eva could (nah, i ain't bitter.....why do ya ask?) and this kind of shit annoys me. why everybody has been bred to be so covert is beyond me, as i feel that honesty is not only due upon arrival, but required throughout the journey. a white lie here and there, of course, will not be that big of a deal, but i guess you have to pick your battles. the only problem with chosing between when to lie and when not to, is actually drawing the lines. and should you send out a pamphlet to all the people you know alerting them to the fact that, while you may lie over the score of the game you just lost, you won't lie about whether you're fucking their wife? are there any small lies?

lies by omission, now there's a ball of wax. so, you fucked up once. why is it that we, as humans, can't face the fact that we're not perfect and laugh about it together? why do we feel the need to hide our flaws from the big bad everybody? of course i'm guilty of it, i write poetry about it all the time, about reinventing history. i hate regrets, so if i pretend that i've never fucked up, i've nothing to regret, right? well, surfacely, anyway. and i'm certain that you're guilty of it, but even the phrase "guilty of it" implies some sort of unnatural proclivity towards deceit that springs up out of rotten childhoods and scarred histories, a bloody disgusting thing that pains even the most easily corrupted. why be guilty of lying? why not just lie that you don't feel guilty? it amazes me how easy it is to just omit and forget something that perhaps, at the time, was crucial to the entire operation or situation. so, i'm going to tell you all a big ass fuck up that i still, to this day, regret. no sugar coating and no omission, i will only preface it with this statement: i was young and self-absorbed. still am, of course, but a bit more so at the time of this incident. i know this because when i look back on it, even the most thinly veiled rationalization wears on me.

i was in paris at the end of august 1995, and one day i was walking through the park, looking at le sculptures en plein aire when i was approached by a young man asking me, in french, for a cigarette. when i replied that i did not speak french, he asked me, with the most raw enthusiasm i've ever encountered, if i was american. i told him yes and, as unfortunate as it may seem (and terribly enraging in retrospect) i tried to get away from him as soon as possible. i was a teenage foreigner trained to fear strange men, how else was i to react? but i doubt even i could blame my actions purely on the wrongs of socialization. a half hour after meeting this young man, i was on the other side of the park writing in my journal, and he approached me, asking me if i wanted to get a cup of coffee. i really just wanted him to leave me alone, and i told him i had no money to buy a cup of coffee, to which he replied with a laugh, saying that he would make me one on his camping stove. only at that moment did i decipher a subtle eastern european accent beneath the french intonation, and i asked him where he was from. he said he was from bosnia. up to this point and, disgustingly, afterward, i was/am very uneducated about the actual causes/influences/reasons/horrors that have and continue to occur in the ex-yugoslavia. even at that moment, the only real reason i went to have some coffee with him was because i felt trapped and couldn't find a way to just blow him off without feeling too bitchy. while we sat underneath a crossing bridge, right on the seine, surrounded by a plethora of airplane blankets and camping gear and other random paraphanalia necessary for street life, this young man, aslan, made me a cup of coffee and told me all about his history. he told me about what yugoslavia used to be like, about his sister, his parents, the yugoslavian women, the war.....he painted such vibrant pictures in his broken english, asking me many questions, and his honesty was so fucking raw, his emotion and need so strong and alive and pure, i could not handle it. the enormity of that kind of human pain and depth still eludes me to this day, and perhaps is not something i will achieve or truly understand for lives/years to come. who knows? what i do know is that i left that day with my most regretted lie on my lips: telling him i'd meet him for lunch the following day at one of the libraries. here was a man, a twenty-two year old war refugee living on the streets of paris, who wanted to make me coffee and show me books. you can't know how much i wish to relive those moments, how desperately i desire to have met him that following day. but i didn't. and that's the fucking bitch of life: it's not perfect and neither are we. and i made a stupid call that day that i will always remember, but that doesn't mean that i should lie about being immature and silly and totally, completely self-absorbed. of the flaws i can see in myself, as i'm sure there are many i've no idea of, i want to be able to deal with them candidly, openly. i can't reinvent my history with aslan, i wish i could know what has become of him......where he's at, what he's doing. his brand of optimism deserves something sweetly delivered. perhaps in the grand scheme of things, it will prove to be not what i did, but what i didn't do, that will make a mark on both of our lives. i think of him almost every day though. maybe someday i'll meet him again. see, i must thank him, he taught me that everyone is worth my time.

"and the best thing you've ever done for me

is to help me take my life less seriously

it's only life, after all....."

it's important to realize that we're all just as fucked up as the next person, and that they're just as fucked up as us. maybe if we felt like we could share this thing called life more openly with one another, there'd be less of a gap between us and them. i don't know, i'm just spiralling, and doing a damn nasty job of it. but there, i've shared with you but one of the many gruesome fuck-ups i've made, and just a small chapter in the whole book of my lifetime mistakes, no doubt. i hope of nothing more than making you go, "hmmmmm.....maybe i'll look her in the eye next time."

and i know you know what i'm talking about.

~JULY 10, 1998~

like when you find a painting, five years old and wrinkled, dusty.....softly splitting posterboard with an old paramour's initials painted on it.....or like when a poem, a crinkled letter, a shotgun flash of what it was that made you want to kiss that person's navel slips akin to gossamer between your fingers.....that's what these last few days have been like.....naked, shining. tastes so reminiscently new.

i went flying on tuesday night, in a cessna with a friend who is a pilot. we sailed/careened/swooned around this city, above the rooftops and steeples, toy plane in the sky. imagery cannot compare, purely due to it's clunking verbosity, to the sunset i witnessed while up in the pale blue evening shade. i felt like a fly on the city's wall......all i could see down there, bits of lives i witnessed for a fruitless second, the touch-n-go of the observer's time. how refreshing, to be and feel so removed, yet so intrinsically part of it.

on molded pond has multiplied in vegetation over the past couple of days. it is a jungle in here, i love it. now if i could just swing those hot temperatures.....i'd be good to go. tomorrow is a swing dancin' shindig here at the greenwood compound, and miss amy and i have kegs and gin and patent leather shoes, just waiting to be worn to the souls. it's caused me to be ever attentive and become a clean freak cuz i don't wanna have people trampin' over my dirty knickers. guess that's what we call hospitality here in the pacnw: no dirty panties hanging from the rafters. i hear, in birmingham alabama, that's the makin's of a good, ole fashioned hoe-down.

but i really must stop reading bathroom walls.

~JULY 6, 1998~

"we americans just don't understand the power and appeal of hatred."

this struck me. i heard it on the radio today, some npr commentator speaking on the nature of age-old conflict in other parts of the world. this man had, apparently, earned his assumed expertise in the observation of war and pain during a prolonged stint in the military, but the naked blanket of this statement laid sour on my tongue. americans know hatred not because we are better or worse than our neighbors around the world, but we know hatred because we are human. hatred is such a base emotion it is inspired by the most base of ideas: the survival instinct. that coupled with the sheer tenacity of attributing meaning to our lives could be the cause of every major insurrection and movement in the world. young soldiers in bosnia and serbia are not fighting for the relishment of instinctual hatred, they are fighting because that's what they have been told is important in life.....they are killing eachother because the thought that perhaps this war is not of the upmost importance has either not crossed into their minds or is so ludicrous, they have successfully abandoned it along with all other questions regarding the matter. it isn't about loving hatred, it's about loving meaning and belonging and feeling that what you are doing is of some consequence. perhaps americans don't understand that, surrounded as we are with the disgusting, rotting gourds of inconsequence.....we cannot fathom the anger and pain of the rebels in chiapas, because we don't understand what it's like to have nothing, truly nothing, and have even that taken away. certainly, there are factions of this country who are affected by such raw necessity, but by and large, the density of our nation is clearly displayed in our preoccupation with whom is fucking whom.

"how's dan doing, is he still married?"

overheard this in a restaurant tonight and groaned to my dinner partner, "how sad that such a statement is so natural." i remember jonathan telling me one night that he seriously believed a man was nothing without a woman that loved him. that struck me because i suppose we all feel that way, to some degree. we are nothing without friends, we are nothing without a lover, we are nothing without the acceptance of our peers. without love. juxtaposition jason has said that he is so secure in the fact that he has an interesting personality and a sharp intellect, that he doesn't need someone around all the time to reinforce that. and i must say that i am simultaneously surprised and saddened when someone says something to the affect of, "wow, i'm impressed that you (blank.)" surprised that they noticed me at all and saddened that their initial thought of me was that i could not envelop such an idea or talent or skill. on meditating upon the idea of commitment, i think it all comes to priorities: whether the blanket idea of commitment itself is more important than the person you are committed to. and whether or not your feelings and treatment towards them is fair.....because being committed to someone is more than just wearing their ring and coming home to them, it's realizing that there is more to that person than you will ever know, than you ever can know, and being comfortable with that, not frightened by it. if the plurality of people was more profoundly worshipped by this species in general, perhaps so many divorces would not occur, or so many loveless marriages. emotion, by and far, is a hot commodity, and i think that if you find that person that makes your knees jiggle and you don't have to look at their bank statement to rationalize a sexual encounter, you're one lucky chicken. i'm only 22, though, so this may all be hogwash by the time i'm thirty, but that's okay. it feels right today.

spoke with my mother tonight and had a very interesting conversation about the rough-n-tumble online world. i don't really have run-ins anymore, now that i have pretty much relegated all personal relationships to analog, but it is interesting just who and what comes out of the woodwork on this sticky planet. so much self-exploration happening it's bound to get a little messy. i enjoy it, of course, because i wouldn't be throwing my half-baked ideas out there if i didn't feel the need to commiserate with those of the same ilk. sometimes i sound like myself, sometimes i sound like somebody else, but i'm always here, waiting. blinking in the eye of the cursor. that cataclysmic butterfly, the electrohussy with her mind in her ascii.

it seems that simplicity can exist without us even knowing it.....that if we just turned the page......ah, yes, it would all work itself out. when i miss my lovely o-so-much, and think of what new and delicious and exciting and laborious pains he's going through up on his fishing-boat-adventure, i thank whatever gods i believe in at the moment that for a bit, i was able to glimpse his simplicity, in cool moments when he wasn't complicating himself with worry. we all have something to learn every day, every year, every lifetime.....and who am i to judge the importance of each and every lesson, or to dictate the order in which they are presented and learned? all i have to hold onto is the simplicity of now, and i do, even though it's harder than fuck and sometimes makes my head spin. carpe diem, perhaps, is the quintessential "easier said than done." that's why i love it, but that's also why it drives me crazy.

right mom?

~JULY 3, 1998~

always attempting to be the first to point out my flaws, i must inform you that i am icon-crazy. i'm not exactly sure if the lickle piccies i create could even be considered icons, perhaps by industry definition they are not, but all i know is that given the mere shadow of a reason, i'm all buggered out to create a new pic. this ramble is in reference, of course, to the newest fixture here at imitation leather/imitation lover, the book. yeah, that's it, right up under the intro. whaddya think? click on it and it'll take you to the chintzy, but free, guestbook i've got goin' on now. someday it'll be a swankier guestbook, but for now, we all must make do with my limited knowledge. still makes for a good time, though.

so, taking a look at the details of all the lickle tansies that swank through this here site has revealed that i've got quite an international array of admirers. i suppose that's what one would hope for being on the www, but it's so nice to know that i'm contributing to the deliquency of yugoslavian and swedish netters. like i told mah schweetie e/mat, it's good to know that he and i ain't the only ones perusing our work!

i have been going crazy with plants lately, and i just can't seem to get enough. everytime i turn around i'm saying, "you know, a plant would look really good there." on molded pond provides an absolutely delicious atmosphere for plants, it seems, as they seem to soak up all the moisture in this place. it's almost tropical. helps me not miss the jungle so much, you see. one of my co-workers, miscreant matt, advised me that perhaps i should grow a fruit tree. i might just do that. imagine the pure joy inherent in chompin' into a freshly grown lime after you knock back that shot o' tequila.....now that's achievement.

speaking of achievement, i have just joined The Word of the Day (here's the address if you want to subscribe) listserve and i'm lovin' it. if yesterday's word, succès d'estime, were a disease, i'd have it. it means "an important yet unpopular success or achievement." of course, i am a legend in my own mind, so perhaps that's what lends me the feeling that i'm under appreciated by the gen pub. you tell me.

oh! i nearly forgot! a friend of mine sold me his old scanner for muy cheap, so be prepared for even more desperate pieces of art gracing these pages. now i can scan spam in the piracy/privacy of my own home!! oh, all the delicious options.....i can hardly wait. beware.

tomorrow is july 4th and i'm really only into holidays to see mi familia. after the family bbq and partay, i'ma head on out to da lush house to attend the 12:01 a.m. shindig there. more fireating and nancy-boy behaviour, i'm sure. buncha dj's spinnin', though, and i hear somma the clan might drop some onstage. yummy. you know me, i'll do anything to play with fire.