{october 28, 1999} ......,............................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
i close my eyes and shave my legs. it is a good feeling, tasty. memorable last shaves include the sunken bath in peter portensemal's london flat, hungover and frenetic, a drip drip drip the only sound in the sleeping halls and the bottom of my shower, delightfully inebriated, with the door open and the cat napping on the bathmat. cozy.
i have been a fan of cozy lately, so it seems. many investments to increase the comfort of my solitude, in these supposedly harried, crushing last moments of the 20th century, i am dreaming. it is an altogether new experience for me to not want to be someone else, force myself into a different shape, or wish i could be in an exotic locale. i actually like the feeling of being at home.
like cleaning the kitchen, sometimes i fancy i shall die an old maid, just me, my vcr, and my vibrator, and these days i must admit that the fate does not sound that bad. i feel as if i open my mouth i won't be exactly sure what to say and there is something mixing up inside me that has no shape nor language, just an impatience and an iron door-knocker on my lungs. tap-tap-tap.
walking the talk, i suppose. a craving to finally grow into my skin, it feels so close. self-exploration and these damn expositories will not be for naught, i can only pray. there are moments i feel certain i am a breath away and then others where darlings in my life point out a new detail and i find myself whirlwinded back to ten years old. no, make that fourteen. i certainly knew who i was at ten.
the idea that we spend our whole lives attempting to get back to the childish simplicity of our youth is not lost on me, how can it be? the biggest motive behind "wage-slavery" is retirement, not fulfillment. look towards the future, etc., and perhaps value it more than the present. but when does the future become the present and the present okay to revel in? will that be a can of ravioli or fresh grilled salmon on your plate?
tomorrow i leave for san francisco to spend halloween in a bird mask and black velvet. i haven't explored s.f. very much at all, i'm looking forward to strolling the streets and snapping shots. it seems weird to say that i crave the time alone, but maybe i do. is it okay to delve further into my reclusiveness?
words. cramp and keen, drug and clean all the black listed thoughts i think too much about. sometimes i think this space should be purely academic, other times i think it should perhaps be more frequent, less posturing, more honest and clear.....
i haven't talked much about being or feeling alone, maybe i have, but i don't recall. something tonight makes me want to step out and spill. this has been a harried last few years, very surely the last five have been a drama in self-discovery, and as such i am a constant ocean of emotion. sometimes i can control it, other times not, but i like feeling, i enjoy the drag race, as i am simultaneously exhausted by it. what my loneliness is comprised of is my inability to actually put my finger on what i want, but how can i find this out without being alone? is it fair to open myself up to someone when i don't even know what/who i am? and then, of course, comes the argument of perhaps this actualization will benefit from outside forces, which i do wholeheartedly agree with. at times it seems so certain, so simple, and others it feels complex and backwards, stupid and foolhardy.
frustration.
didn't i buy something for that?
i am working a lot and maybe it would be easier, more comfortable, to have someone to come home to, to share and laugh with. but then i think perhaps it would be hiding, moving away into the realm of trying to become who my lover wants me to be. i guess i don't trust myself in some manners, scold myself for past actions and decisions, and chide myself to try opening my eyes to a world of which i presently cannot conceive.
perhaps it all lies in re-evaluation. people coming in and out of my life, i must attempt to understand why sometimes i feel left behind, or walked out on/abandoned, because it just doesn't seem fair to them to feel as a victim, in essence, disrespectful of the gifts they gave me during the delicious moments we were able to get whatever the fuck the other was saying. shouldn't i truly appreciate what each person has to contribute to my life, no matter how seemingly trivial or negative?
someone extremely dear to my heart once jotted down, " i am never lonely. i am always only. emptiness and apathy go hand in hand." i just now thought of it, of him writing it and giving it to me. it was when we had first met and my attention could not be swayed, his words an easy addiction, and it strikes me now as it did back then: raw and simple and cold. for a few drops of surreal, one is certain perfection sits across the table, only to revel in the shattering reality of flaw hovering in all psyche.
and when you least expect it, a holocaust. god bless it.
yours, kat
{october 18, 1999}.......,............................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
i sometimes think only in empty colors. i mean, vibrancies that don't exist in our modern conception of nature. clean. open......
real.
sometimes i think in impossible, and i am not the only one. there are nations of us, you and me who grab onto light posts and drink in a naked tea, not afraid of what someone told us to be, afraid of what we told ourselves we couldn't be. you and i fear who we can't bear to accept.
what if that part of us is a dentist? or a professional golpher? would that make it more real, if it had a specific predilection? probably not. it would still feel like a distant cousin of our great second aunt, (although i must admit i'm a rather talented golpher.)
this evening visits in an autumnal mist: october extraordinarily warm and appreciated. i am cozy against my sheets, and watching films that take me to who i could have been, were i to have been a maiden in the forties, or ingrid bergman. who would i have been if i was audrey hepburn?
this is a feeling of desertion, accompanied with the knowledge that i am still here, again, with and for myself, and it is not bittersweet. rather, it watches me closely and forgets the present tense of every verb: future only, and a few past tenses.....only in regards to explosives, of course, and mirth.
{october 4, 1999}.......,...................................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
in the battery street tunnel, months of summer exhaust have coated the panels in a feathery dust which hangs from the dull white tiles like velvet or a virgin. every night as i go 25mph too fast around the too-tight corner (smears of paint in the popular vehicle hues of forest green, burgundy, and ash -- not to mention the generous streaking of sticky rubber -- peeking through the slippery curtain) i play a different song. sometimes i sing it, or sometimes it's al green, or pj harvey, or cesaria evora.....but each night the tunnel switches into it's own groove.
it is something that breathes alone. everybody's always passing through and the thunder or crush of frustrated taxi drivers must surely begin to chip away sanity at some point. one night the tunnel chose billie holliday crooning strange fruit and hollowed eyes flitted underneath the gossamer bloom, making it difficult to make out the road or keep one's left foot from slamming on the break. lazy spirits haunt tunnels because of high exposure, less work, maximum audience potential, and so one can virtually find a ghoul for each occasion, harping on the wire. feeling moody? take a walk through the caverns.
the best tunnels are, in fact, caves shucked by uneven land shifts which force the rerouting of waterways slowly over many centuries. imagine all the process, each grain and minuscule dripping second, as a crack in a rock becomes a room fit for a picnic (hard hat and construction lights donned, of course.) the few times i have descended into dribble-chiseled grottos i have been humbled by the mere craftsmanship, and the peace -- the balance of industry and art.
it's vertigo, really, to see so much and want to drink up all of it, but to forget one's straw or, more importantly, that one can drink perfectly well without a straw. often the exhaust veil in one solitary tunnel can incite such imaginative wanderings i curse myself for not carrying around a tape recorder, and i think, well, is this it? am i crazy?
and i suppose the only answer is yes -- misfortune only in that such a simple answer took so fucking long.
{october 2, 1999}.......,...................................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
"what's a free flux of pure consciousness like me doing in a place like this?"
went hiking through a park, down to the beach and next to the sewage treatment plant (fucking love the natural feel, man) -- with the sun calling out one of my favorite written descriptions of all time: from stephen crane's red badge of courage, the last paragraph in a short chapter ending with, 'and the sun was pasted like a red wafer to the sky' -- and i didn't bring a camera and i laughed quite a bit. steps down the hill flew into history as the crisp cousins of slimy rainforest ladders, slick with moss and unintelligible universes; found baby socks and harassed my hiking partner with unapologetic imitations of meryl streep in 'a cry in the dark': 'a dingo!! a dingo got my baby!! a dingo!'
life is good.
it has taken me (and y'all know you can fess up and make fun o' my shit for all the ranting and whining i been doing for the last TWO YEARS) quite awhile to say that independently. life is good. just me, up here, dancing my ass off and imbibing in tapas and sangria with my mother.
this day last month was spent in an expensive london hotel room reliving my crushing spring vegas experience. trashy films, room service and the usual seductive mini-bar calling out my name with it's toy soldier rum and thumblina vodka, i tried desperately to remember exactly why i do all the shit i do. things got sorted out....."sometimes i'm impressed, sometimes i'm depressed, but mostly i'm just a flotation device".....and i have changed a bit more and i like myself a lot more and things, strangely, have started to make sense.
por ejemplo: three years ago i dated a man who wished to teach me how to play pool. his approach was mathematic and geometric and he would come to the table armed with charts and graphs. his lips usually had ink stains and his literary proclivities dabbled far too much in ayn rand for my taste, but oh mama! that man owned the game, and this he knew. when he felt he had taught me as much as possible, he cut me loose, left me to my game, prayed ever-so-silently that i'd become a shark worthy enough to be put on his resume. he became a disappearing act executed so perfectly, it was almost dull.
about a year later i ran into him in a supermarket and he intimated that he'd like to see how i'd blossomed in my abilities since last he'd seen me put stick to ball. i ran home quickly and dug out my chalk drawings and tape measure, certain that he would be so incredibly impressed with my pool technique that he'd stick around long enough to.....well.....you know.....girlish dreams, etc. of course, i performed miserably, as i had not practiced in months (i actually didn't care for the game much,) and expectedly, he was only around to witness my disappointing cue ball stylee.
i had pretty much given up the game (save a few scattered bloody-mary drenched sunday mornings) until this past spring when the owner of my precious seattle compound bought herself a pool table, spending three solid weekends in the garage, schticking it up in the usual unimaginative beat-style: velvet paisley curtains and a vinyl mini-bar. some people like to adjust their engines in their garage, my landlady likes to adjust her skirts. since the purchase, i have spent copious amounts of solitary moments knocking the balls around and never getting any better. i decided that i needed to remove my previously physics-stained idea of the game and really just get into the "click." see, pool is all about the click: click of cue on ball, click of ball on ball, click of ball in pocket, click of aerosmith tape coming to an end, click of ice cubes in empty glass, click of memories battling it out behind the 13 and 5. pool, for me, is largely a game of nostalgia. i wager too much, lose quite a bit, and always come out with a bleary-eyed appreciation for gravity. it isn't about the winning, right? it's about the battle, the strategy, the imagination. journey not destination, etc. so, gladly, i can scream at the top of my lungs: THERE IS NO POINT.
and life is good.