(1 et cetera | EXPOUND) i hate feeling impermanent [26 Feb 2003|08:06pm] the world is so large. i feel there must have been a reason you chose to hurt me, C. some thing about me that called out to be hurt. i suppose i can't accept that it was just coincidence: how the cards fell together; like passing a person in the street every day & noticing them only on the day you spill piping hot coffee all over their sleeveless shirt front. what does this say about me? why do i need it to say anything? it's like the mandalas tibetan monks create: they can spend weeks at a time, rinsing sand into elaborate shapes; then, completing the mandala, the monks have a ceremony to destroy it: they swipe it across. the mandala is supposed to symbolize: anicca (anicha), impermanence. my life is a mandala then: i find myself effacing it rubbing it out out out only: we hold on to this life so tight so tight we tell ourselves we would like to let it go; tell ourselves it stresses us, bothers us, vexes us -- a hundred disturbances that never give way to sight, when light is caused by disturbance; i feel i'm spinning, madly, in a room, & i'm unable to focus on anything, any face for too long without becoming nauseated. in a world that makes sense: a world where all of our why's are answered, somehow, so we sleep easier at night. whether it is religion; or another person's arms; or the lit halo of a shot glass. this world is so large -- what is the point of even having finger prints? did you know: infants do not leave fingerprints -- fingerprint impressions are caused by touching your face or hair -- the oil stains your fingers so that you leave prints every where. unfortunately, this is all I am; and I have not figured out a good reason why this should stand, I should stand, as is. not fully, any how. i've no love to offer until i can offer a person that why. & don't give me the default as a reason: the fact that I am & since I've no real choice in the matter, I must love: i must love i must love

(EXPOUND) we'll have a seance to invite al green to our wedding [26 Feb 2003|01:25pm] [ mood | cheery; nostalgic ] 'i, i'm so in love with you/...loving you whether/times are good or bad/happy or sad...' i love oldies music. it's difficult to dance in a car, but i manage it.

(EXPOUND) the problem of writing a letter to no body or to every body, whichever comes firs [24 Feb 2003|12:00pm] [ mood | ambivalent ] dear god: i've considered writing letters to imaginary friends. though, the concept plagues me -- i can't pretend that they might ever receive the letter. i do not have to send this letter for you to receive it. i could have opened a phone book & chose a name at random -- found a stranger to send my letter to. i decided i'd rather be common place & send this letter to you. also, i figure this might save me some postage. though, internet journals go a long way towards remedying postal service expenses. well, you see, i am nineteen, almost. considering nineteen, i am looking back on my life & wondering what i've really accomplished. as many accomplishments as i might tack onto a list, i haven't accomplished anything in the present, anything wondrously substantial (when nothing is substantial) everything is sand, slippery, loose, atoms. splitting & reacting is built within us. yet: there are modern spiritualities (western or eastern) that say the human function (free will) liberates us from our reactive natures by giving us the opportunity to be proactive. this does make sense. but what is the goal? quick! i need to focus on some thing, on any thing, before my eyes tire, before my eyes knock into one another, before i knock into myself. so much of this is SELF. i want to tell you i have not been doing so well with this 'human' condition of mine. some days, i feel like giving it my all. then, there are days when i spit & crush anything that crosses my path. i turn my thoughts against myself. i'm not very proud of this. is this still the disease? i can't turn off my mind. or fully direct it at any thing for infinite amounts of time. eventually, my thoughts return to myself, my position. my entire psyche is based on processing the world in relation to myself & all sub-categories thereof. this is neither good nor bad. i want to do more (so do more)!. but what to do? i'm not too carefree with other people. i wish i were more so. i miss the friends who moved away, but when they were here, i might as well have lived in a different country. i am not very good at sustaining relationships. i must get to the bottom of that. i'm sure it has something to do with my childhood, et cetera. i wager if i were to research it online, there would be countless studies documenting the affect of sexual abuse on relationships (platonic/non). can you offer disclaimers to people? can't you just say: hello, let's laugh. hello, i've this much baggage, no, i don't believe in karma, but it's an imaginative impetus for your personal problems. right now, i am thinking about the hole at the base of the Buddha's back, & how i want to swim inside the blackness of it. the scalloped curve. i just want to fall asleep inside the base of his spine, strawing his light. i meant, also, to mention that i handled the situation with kent s. very poorly. i find human beings handle things this way. there really is no perfect way. the lack of perfection draws us, then. we tend to call the lack perfection. the stumbling, scattered butterflies, you know? even those. any way, my thoughts turn to many of my past relationships (non-platonic). & i am not lonely. mm. just been wondering, what they were made of? why i no longer speak to two of them, when i wouldn't mind talking with them, when i'm sure i'd very much like to talk with them, with regularity. though, i know why i no longer speak with michael. & i don't really know why kent & i do not communicate. seems the friendship unraveled after my visit. it turned cold to me. & i can't really say why. i didn't bother to ask him. i told myself it was better left untouched. i concluded that it wasn't worth salvaging. as he didn't call me after the letter i sent, i realize that i was right -- it probably isn't worth salvaging. in the pit of my heart, there is a spot that wishes him well: whatever form wellness takes, i don't know. this world has strange notions of production, and the face that often emerges in stead of my life surprises me, to say the least. in closing, i am still a friend to him -- i felt our situation too open-ended, though, & i needed closure. as i told him in the letter: it was completely self-motivated. i need to do more for other people.

(EXPOUND) advice from w. t. stace [10 Feb 2003|08:07pm] "it is better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong."

(EXPOUND) my father's birthday & a budgeoning artist [09 Feb 2003|09:06pm] my brother zev is left-handed, & he is a wonderful artist. many of the great artists were left-handed. so, zev was drawing this wonderful caricature of this woman on his crayon box -- & in comes my father, commenting, making suggestions while zev is attempting to draw & zev loses his concentration, messes up. he throws a fit. my father walks out, and zev is crying & i'm sitting there, not knowing what to do. zev gets up and shuts the door so that nobody can come in. & i want to tell zev that it's only a picture, but then i realize that it is a lot more than just a picture to him. & it would be stupid & insensitive of me to say: it's just a picture. so, i tell him he is right, it is terrible that it'd been messed up, but he could fix it, sure he could, & if he didn't, well, then maybe there'd be other pictures? i don't know. what do you say in that situation? nothing. so, eventually, zev calmed down & he looked behind me at a wall splayed with pictures, cute, little apartment paintings, you know, the kind where they've some obscure cabin in the middle of the countryside, left justified, too, and there's a field to the right of the cabin, sprinkled red with poppies and green with field grass & honeysuckle. zev took a look at the pictures & said, y'know, those artists are very good, but i bet i could be just as good. they don't have any distractions, & i have so many distractions. artists are lucky because they get these private rooms & nobody can disturb them, because, if you do disturb them, you could get arrested. they could even have guards to guard the rooms & make sure nobody could get through to disturb the artists. ha, how wonderful is that? he was: if you disturb a real artist, you get arrested. i wanted to remember the moment so i wrote it all down on a scrap piece of artpaper he'd torn -- i placed the paper on my lap & wrote as he talked. he looked at me & asked how i managed to write on the paper when it bent like a wooden bridge. the kid's a better artist & poet than most people i know. i'm in love. also: it's funny -- my father told zev that his artwork is good enough to be placed in a museum. for the remainder of the evening, zev kept drawing with the sole intent of having the pictures showcased in a museum -- he would ask me, do you think this one is good enough to be placed in a museum? do you think they would like this kind of paper? his ambition & drive awes me at times. zev wants always to be the best. he's a perfectionist. i used to be that way -- only, when i think of it, i'm not certain i had any reason to be the best. or maybe that's just my present lack coloring my memory. sometimes i don't think i've any ambition. i feel dried up already. i cautioned myself about this -- knowing the answers to questions i haven't yet experienced. it ruins it for you, y'know? i admire zev.

(EXPOUND) i could have made you happy / if you weren't already [06 Feb 2003|04:05pm] [ mood | intent ] you finally surfaced from the water. had we visited new england, sat at a pier where the barnacles are blue as crushed lapis or frozen berries, the resin caught under my finger like raped flesh / & imagine i pushed you into the january water / imagine we had fought before & made up with our bodies like weeds coursing through the flowering countryside / the weeds your eyes cannot discern, as you shoot by in a sleek car with the windows down & the wind jostling your scalp / we found the lake in the late afternoon & the water cut off my legs at the ankles / when i tipped you into the water the navy waves folded over you like pajamas in a bed / & i waited for you to surface / i waited for the trembling creases to budge like an angry cat's back arching, like the mountains quaking up in my bed spread, i watched you surface why is the surfacing hardly ever worth it you rose & your face seemed to spill from the water, so sad, & you were always too heavy for me to carry & i did not offer my hand to you you climbed out beside the dock muddy fingernails i kicked the water, you went home. we never spoke again. this is just to tell you that i am angry. i've heard it told that anger is a mask for hurt. yes, i am hurt, too. you have too many reasons to feel down, so i won't be telling you any of this. i do not know what good it would do or how it might benefit our situation. you do not care enough to share any thing with me. your words are all you have, & perhaps, that's why you feel so empty. you had me once. in a way, you'll always have me. i must say: i am forcing your presence from the aperture of my heart, that thin opening, no wider than a young bird's beak. the light scatters like lay off the vodka, will you?

(EXPOUND) i think my computer has a virus [05 Feb 2003|10:02pm] i've spent an enormous amount of energy criticising the way other people survive. that is my defense mechanism. it gets old. to think of it, i feel i've never left third grade, when i first returned to America. the kids were cruel, & i was oversensitive. i've never known how to laugh at it, bounce it off my shoulder like water on a windshield. i'm not a shield. i do not want to be what i'm not. another note of criticism: my poems are hardly tell a clear story. what is it with poems & clarity? what was that line: so that even if you've never been to the south of china, you could read a poem about the place & really go there, through the inner-connectedness that spans all of humanity. yeah, i guess that's a great impetus for writing. i'm just a boo hoo monger, what can i tell you? even intercourse does not knock me out for long. i refuse to stop clinging to the pathetic ghost of the past. let's say the poem does not make sense: you can sit with a group of people in a half elipse (the chairs never form a full circle) with the air dangling between your bodies like limp circus baloons, the kind children release into the sky before they learn about density. you will sit with your fellow poets & read your poem aloud , like God on mount sinai only, unlike moses, they will return your poem through uncircumcised lips: they will not miss the dangling modifier in line six that stumbled on the clasp of your tongue; they will miss the sweat behind each article each unpronounced line break; they will miss you sitting up at night punching the images into the narrow bodies of finite letters; they will miss the subject of the poem, or, upon finding it, funnel it through their fists like excess ketchup. it's not enough! it's not enough! we can't hear you we cannot hold the poem alive in our hands like a wet shivering toad. there is a hunger in an audience some times i enjoy feeding them. i wonder where i'm dissolving when i was five, i came down with a terrible cold & the doctor had to be called to give me a shot i took a bath before he came and i sat in the sunken white grave, watching the last of the water swivel down the drain

(EXPOUND) [05 Feb 2003|01:22am] & i love the way he touched her hair & laughed & said, i love your romantic world. i loved the way we sort of cuddled on the bed/ the way he told me my hips were fine / though, i can't say i was happy to care about my body / but i enjoyed the peanut m & m's / & a cat purring under my touch / & usually, cats shy from my touch / those capricious i-do-not-get-along-with-other women cats / the cat was male / so i guess that's why he liked me so well / & we talked about the past / & i realized it's not either or / as i've realized over & over again / & how i want to hold on to this happiness / how my grandmother worries i overstayed my welcome / so she tells me to come home when i feel it's before overstaying / before it's too late/ what is that irritation under her skin / along the door knob of her shoulder / all of the talking / cuddling with gayle / bandit purring / i loved how simple it all seemed / how the past few weeks floated between us like a shiny apple in a bucket of cold water, the one face smiling flat & red up toward your black mouth / i used to dive for jewelry when i was a kid / my mother would drop her wedding ring in the pool & i would dive for it in the deep end / i would spend hours diving for things / i loved that game / sometimes, i wondered if i could find it / what if it disappeared? / things had disappeared on me in the past / my doll, america, my dad / my eyes would turn round & red from diving so much in the chlorine open eyed / i loved to show her how good i was at it / i wanted to impress her so much / & this reminds me: i need to get more excited with the girls, when they show me something, i need to show them how impressed & in love i am right now: i do not care about any of the old insecurities & i know you have a process to go through; that you are just human & i held you up to something that you weren't. i hope you didn't realize this. it's not a good feeling to be made into something you're not. let it be, right? well: i still hope you mature & give me a call now & again. i love you very much as you are

(EXPOUND) [05 Feb 2003|01:07am] at this moment: why be any thing more than this. i feel so happy. i lovelovelovelovelovelovelove

(EXPOUND) [04 Feb 2003|03:12pm] you do not need to know the how's of walking in order to walk, not the deeply intricate reaction of muscle to cell to blood to the very energy that your cells feed on in order to propell your legs forward. i do not need to know the creator's how, or even, really, the why. the deeper you search for such answers, the harsher reality becomes, the more bitter life tastes. we can't handle this sort of knowledge. we need to do. we need to be love, not think love. & also! i do not know how to handle the situation with you! i do not know when to reach you how to reach you, if i should reach you, i only know that i cannot stop thinking of you, & i want to feel your attention again, focused on me.

(EXPOUND) menu [31 Jan 2003|12:38pm] January 31, 2003 - 1 apple - 1 mug of coffee - 4 vitamins & there is dinner to eat, yet.

(EXPOUND) une idee [24 Jan 2003|08:17pm] I resolve to read all self-assigned books alphabetically; this relaxes any tension over whom to read. Though, this system will most likely collapse -- I may as well give it a try.

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