I am wilting away at this desk.

Each day that goes by leaves me more silent, dazed, jaded and lonely, feeling interested or captivated by nothing. I feel like a vacant house.

Work sucks the life out of you.

I need a transfusion.

screwing around on the job

I bought one of those huge exercise balls that you can sit on. The kind they use in Pilates classes and stuff, if I could afford them. But I could afford the ball, so I bought it and brought it to work.

I work in a very small office with a door that closes. There are no windows. It's like an overlarge closet.

I have now taken to sitting on the big aquamarine ball instead of my annoying office chair and bouncing when bored. The ball is not inflated to its maximum capacity so it has a lot of give, and as a result you can bounce quite high. This is very fun.

Someday someone will walk in while I'm boing-ing up and down, but for now it's my little secret.

:)

hmm.

how to sleep? oh dear.

Thought I'd bust some prosety. [these are a little old]:You know, what the hell.

[for those new to my schtuff: prosety is a term i coined to describe my more creative writings, which tend to not quite be poetry but not quite act like prose either. So. -m. ]


_________

feelin
a bit like a scared shot,
a deer backin off back into the bramble,
send it up like a flare into the night sky over these woods,
imperial violet with your golden glare skittering an arcing armature sideways there--
slanting my face into white-lit illumination,
throwin shadows around.
i'm afraid of everything.

_________


What is this thing that moves me up and to the keyboard, to medicine, when I'd be so content to be pressed here, down by an equal and opposite force?
We all get it, we all understand the thing that makes you lie down under it like under the wheels of a merciful machine;
But I have no name for what propels me to move limbs and try to climb out of bed and into waking life.
How fascinating our will to go on, how nameless a force, that trope towards the next daylight, how silent an owner,
so stealthy it takes me creeping like a rapist.
The will to live, I think, though,
is still a cruel mistress,
a yanking leash round the neck,
no kinder than the will to death.
I’d like to have no owner at all,
my head all to my own
to lean my life which way I wish.


_________


Tuesday, June 11, 2002

yeah, that jam in the low back,
the base of spine
a spire and quick tighten,
a snag to catch on,
quick and tripping,
and i grit my teeth and grin,
reminding me that death's got my number
maybe not so much as others
but more than some,
reminding me to claw through each day like a metal folding chair
slammed square to the jaw and hard
sending the hours spinning.

links, links, links. She's not writing anything though! Fer cryin out loud!

Oh, but these are cool: the best product names ever, the weirdest and lamest. Click on each one for a little explanation.

http://www.shinolas.com/Awards.asp

Yeah yeah, I know my longer spiels have been limited the last few posts. So scroll down already.

I promise I'll blather on lamely about some point or another shortly. Got a few bits saved at home...

Meanwhile, I'm actually working.....

and did you ever think about the words meanwhile, or meantime? Implying that said time, basically time spent....well, waiting and doing very little of note, is....mean. Not mean in the sense of stealing your lunch money, but mean in terms of cheap, bitter, tiny, petty, stingey. Pointing up the fact, I guess, that said time spent doing little of note is the kind of time, and the kind of feeling, that makes you feel...slightly abused.

See? I wrote after all.

:)

-m.

another way to feel aberrant and worry...


http://www2.recoverycentral.org/tests/testalco.html


Currently worrying.

I have plenty to do here at work today, and yet...


bored

beyond

belief.

I can feel my brain trickling out of my ears.

I guess it's just that there are places I'd rather be, people I'd rather be with, and other things on my mind.

Tied to the chain of financial gain, here.

aw, but what on earth else would I do? Lie and stare at my cottage-cheese ceiling at home and get depressed?

I honestly don't know which is better.

thank you for saving my life

"i am not beautiful nor unique . just like you ."

a reply:

You're just like everybody else: there's no one like you."
-quoted from the gloria record

I would like to state, to the uninitiated, that at times I am an extreme pain at the ass.
To the few dear and wonderful people who have been so incredibly kind, and loving, at these times, I have to say,
thank you.

You are so dearly loved.

I don't know if I can ever adequately make it up to you.

the gun to the head

I'm at work when I hear it: even through my door, the unmistakeable shriek of a very young child.

I don't mind kids. I adore them, actually. I taught art to kids for years and years and it was really rewarding. But they were all ages 5 and up. Put me in a room with a kid four years old or younger, and I'll be clawing at the walls within seconds.

Lately (ok, ever since college ended, or maybe since I left my ex of six years, about three years ago) I've been feeling really lost, and questioning the meaning of life and all that stupid self-indulgent crap that overly intellectual people do when they can't find a way to get preoccupied with the practicalities of daily survival.

I'm a single woman. I live in a big city. I'm finding out a few things about myself (I am a mean drunk; I am a committment-phobe even though I didn't start out as one; I am a slob but I truly hate that I live in a mess; etc. etc...) and have discovered and explored a lot within the last few years (from art-raves on dowtown brownstone roofs to the ins and outs of Big Sur, from life as a ho to life as a big fat liar, from dissolving depression to fluctuating and wildly oscillating hope), but I don't feel as though I've made much progress towards stability (do I even want it?) or happiness (would I even know it if it bit me on the nose--and once again, would I even want it? Isn't "happiness" for the cowlike and calm--that is, boring?).

And kids. Issues of kids.

I'm still a damn kid. Well, no, I'm not, but if my dad can stand up and yell that in confusion and protest, then I can too; I'm less than half his age.

There is a prevailing and subtle attitude among women, poisonous and invasive, infiltrating every thought and evaluation of self. It's pretty strong here in the office where I work, with two women popping out babies in July, one having hers last month, and three buns in the oven as of yet; plus the non-preggers ones often have kids too, young kids especially. Some of the women are calm about it, but many are really fucking shrill, shrieking whenever they see a photo of another drooling baby--"Eeeeeeeeeee, she's soooooo cuuuuute!"

I am single. No, not even a single mom. I have nothing to offer up as evidence that I can reproduce. I can't even keep plants alive. I have considered buying a robo-cat--you know those things--so as to derive the character benefits of caring for something, but in case I stay out late one night it won't die or anything.

The pravailing attitude that I hate and am still a victim of is that My Life Is Less Meaningful If I Don't Reproduce. I Am But A Blip In The Universe Amounting To Nothing Without Contributing Organic Matter That Will Go On Long After I Bite The Dust.

You can know this, be aware of it, and even understand that, to a degree, you yourself sit there and wonder what the fuck life is about if you don't at least keep the universal chain going--who are you to drop the rope, the weakest fucking link? selfish bitch! ten billion women died in childbirth to ensure you'd be here today to pop one out yerself--you can know that you're more than an incubator, you can want to believe that you could search out a purpose in life other than caring for children,

but the worry still lingers and nags in the back of your head, haunts you (at least) one week of every month when you're reminded that even your damn emotional state is tied to the pivotal importance, that penultimate goal of reproduction--you can't even fully own your own damn moods, they're partially staked out and leased against your will to children you may never have, may never want--

argh.

I can't escape from the fact that I am scared I won't find meaning in life. Kids are, I think, an easy way out. They are the way out most women take.

Most women are relatively happy.

Many are not.

I dunno. I guess I better hit Toys-R-Us and pick up that Robo-Chi Cat.

or I could stay dependent-free forever, if I wanted. There's too much freedom in the world, I sometimes think, and I am bewildered by the multiplicity of paths I could take, even though I am aware that they all seem to--seem to--lead to very little that means anything at all.

people often say something to the effect of that "Deep down, we are creatures of love, and we channel that warmth and humanity at our deepest levels. It is fear and anger that are the veneer, that adulterate the truth, that overcover the goodness within." Okay, very few people say those exact words, but many people mean them and believe them.

I am finding that I think the oppsite is true. At our cores we are terrifying, any pretending at humanity or kindness stripped from us, any veneer of nobility or grace gone, and we might as well be animals in a pavlovian experiment, responding only with the base elements of fear or rage to whichever stimuli set us off.

My knees are turning black and blue, and all the polish had been shattered off my toes. There are cuts and scrapes. My feet have bloody blisters on them. The muscles in my left leg feel as though they had been wrenched or strained terribly. I do not know how this happened and I view it now like fingerprints rising from a crime scene, one in which I may have been the murderer but my memory has been erased, and I watch with amnesiac horror at the evidence slowly surfaces.

I remember someone telling me once, "When you tell me you are sorry, I just hear that you want me to forget what you did." And I wanted so much to say how sorry I was, but then, then I couldn't. Because I didn't want him to think I wanted to be absolved, my trespass forgotten.

I hadn't really done anything that wrong, but he was unkind. I guess I was too.

And there is guilt too, horrible, useless to everyone, to all involved, but still bending me like a spoon, leaving me dull and numb and without much sensation.

In our lives we all go about with the view of us as the little earnest protagonist, the main character, but I wonder now.

There is evil in us all, and we can all be stripped of anything worthwhile, until there is nothing good there at all, nothing redeeming, to the degree we might as well be dead.

the truth is everywhere

phrases on common household products and various and sundry forms of paperwork:

redemption value

automatic withdrawal

I'm sure there are more. I'm keeping my eyes open.

This is brilliant. And disconcertingly identical to a life I lived (ten years spent working only in the afternoons will do that to you) and many of my friends live.

http://www.oddtodd.com/index2.html

If I weren't broke, I'd send this guy money.

the law of diminished returns

things you think are going to be very simple and requiring only a brief amount of time actually almost always turn out to take an inordinately large degree of patience (which, since you were expecting otherwise, you often tend not to display) and car trips and effort on your part, things like the purchase of various and sundry household items, exercise equipment, inexpensive gasoline, medicine, a nice present for a friend, a place to take your recyclables, explaining repairs to repairmen, getting keys copied, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.


that's about all I have to say on that subject.

don't mind me, I'm just passing through

All the time, as I drive around LA and look at houses and apartments, I am completely at a loss as to who the hell lives in these things. Where ARE all these people, making that much money? I can't honestly figure it, that there could be enough high-paying--or even enough medium-paying--jobs in LA to populate all those homes and condos and apts!!! It's nuts! I mean, someone tell me where the hell those people WORK!!

Now, I know LA is a big city with a relatively high per capita income, at least if you exclude recent immigrant communities. But c'mon--there just simply aren't enough movie studios, white-collar service industries, tech companies, ad industries, tall expensive office buildings, etc etc etc to people all these gargantuan homes, overpriced apartments (845 for a studio--a fucking studio, 1820 for a two-bedroom, utilities not included?!?), ugly stuccoed condos, quaint guesthomes that go for 3000 a month, ten billion split-level ranch-style houses on hills! Is there some shadow-city of underground trust-fund kids? What the hell is going on?!? Do I live in some alternate universe or something? Where ARE all these people, with all this discretionary income? How could there possibly be that many high-paying jobs? I dont know who the hell these mystery people are, but this city is full of them.

I feel like a ghost, moving among them. A poor person. But not a poor person with community, like the Latino community near MacArthur Park where they hang balloons in the park and have birthday parties every single day, or like the Russian immigrants haggling over coupons in line at the market and then walking back to their apartments, slowly trudging their way up the hill together, the ladies always walking arm in arm. No--I feel so isolated, a white girl with no community, no culture to hold me up, the daughter from a middle class nuclear family, teetering around this overlarge city where I'm the size of a squant and nothing is sure. My only community is my friends. I live from paycheck to paycheck, and they just raised the rent.

I went to a school for real smart kids (or real rich ones) where I was told that if you were just educated enough people would throw wads of money at you. I have found that this is not the case. Often the opposite is true. And I'm left with student debt, useless knowledge, a diploma I never picked up rotting away in some vault over at UCLA, and nothing but a bitter hollow rage when I look and see and cannot understand why all these people have things I do not. I work just as hard. I am probably smarter.

I don't like being consumerist and try to avoid it whenever possible, and the envy I'm discussing here is not an envy of things, or of power.

It's an envy of stability. Of sureness. These people in their rich lovely homes (all identical down every subdivided street), they may not have community; and the Russian ladies may have community, but no money. But they both have safety. Stability. If they fall, their money or their community will pick them up.

And I'm left still tottering along the tightrope, without a net.

Why I love my roommate:

Our home is now officially blessed.

why i like my friends:

today I am driving to Long Beach to sew massive bunny feet. Yes, rabbit paws about a yard long. The ears now apparently max out at eleven feet.

Ah, innovation.

The Guardian: "Christians have rewritten parts of the Bible to appeal to youngsters using mobile phones, it emerged today." Way to target that youth demographic, you totally righteous spiritual-type duuuudes. Like, yeah, man. Hey, brahs, any of you fellas want a burger? Dude, Jesus is, like, way cool.

[cynicism from an agnostic. pls ignore.]

the slow, inevitable process of decay, or everything falls apart. some things sooner than others.

I just bought this new underwear two weeks ago. Ok, fine, its a trashy iridescent blue thong. With sparkles. Yes, little sequins all over it. I had a roommate once who had the craziest, trashiest, goofiest underwear (we're talking metallic and rainbow and little silk and plastic flowers and silkscreened and ten bazillion clashing colors and holographic prints and how-the-hell-do-you-put-this-string-on kind of things) which I'd always see hung everywhere in her room, since as every true collector of trashy underwear knows, you gotta wash this stuff by hand and air-dry it or it'll melt, disintegrate, or poof into the ether (or into the hands of some creepy upstairs neighbor cruising the laundry room).

So I asked her why the insanity, and she told me that she simply thought it was fun, and funny, and a pleasant sort of diversion, and she just simply had a penchant for collecting the craziest underwear she could find. And I realized she made complete sense and began doing it myself too.

(Watch, now my site's gonna get all these sicko hits from people running pervy keyword searches on google for "trashy" and "underwear." Ugh. Hey, you, I graduated from a UC with a magna cum laude! I am more than my underwear! Fuck off!)

Ahem. So anyways, I bought this glorious new thingy, and now two weeks later and two gentle delicate hand-washes later, it's shedding sequins like you won't believe, and I'm finding them everywhere--god knows how they migrate, but they're all over (oddly enough, the underwear appears to remain intact, and it's hard to find any missing sequins--almost as if they were magically manifesting themselves, some eternally renewable resource of blue sequins)--and now, now, scariest of all,

they are appearing here at my workplace.

I have so far counted five on the hallway floors here. It is very disconcerting. I don't want to pick them up because I feel it would be somehow incriminating: "Me? Heh, heh haha, aha...ha...er, no, no, these didn't come from me, no, of course not..."

Five sequins and counting. We'll see where we stand by the end of the day.

by the way, I know the archive links are invisible. I am lazily working on this thing. What is the funnest thing is that I began this constructions stage almost immediately after I plugged this site into a "Blog hot or not" thingy (No, I won't give you the url--it's a sick little form of self-promotion alternating with self-punishment and I won't make you a party to it) and now since the site is so craptastic my rating is prolly vying for the lowest on the hot or not scale. I'm happily surprised by how I have not been over sensitive about this, since I'm usually the type to take any negative criticism harshly. I actually am finding it funny. Which is a relief, 'cos now I have time to actually make this site the way *I* want it, not the way that scores higest in some effin focus group or something.

There is an ongoing dialogue in the world of the net, one that I keep seeing pop up over and over, with no clear answers yet--only questions. It regards the notion of "privacy" in the digital era, the information age, whatever you want to call it. "Whatever shall become of Privacy?" bemoan a segment of the argument, while others thrill for the day when there is no privacy, since as we all know (right?) privacy is largely a space we engineer in order to behave dishonestly.

Right?

Here's a classic but well-written discussion on it, at the overwhelmingly pleasant read docrpm, a beautifully designed and intelligent blog referred to me by a friend. If you'll check out the comment posted, you'll see the common refrain that Privacy Is Bad.

For the most part, I think people only have three major reasons to be alone and have privacy.

1. Because they have the belief--consciously or otherwise--that something thay have done is wrong or damaging to another, and they wish to escape blame.

2. Because they believe--again, consciously or otherwise--that they have committed some act or display some quality that makes them undesirable or bad.

3. Because they have the wish to explore inner psychological / emotional phenomena which are necessarily interrupted or made difficult to examine in the presence of others (the “I need some time to think” thing).

While it's all well and good to call for a society free of the first two points, I worry about a privacy-free culture. No way are we going to be comfortable when our intimate acts of unkindness, callousness, overt agression, or just plain grossness are laid bare for everyone to see. And I think that having no privacy, no safe and quiet space to think alone, in peace, is a very big problem.

But wait! you say...We can just go camping or for a drive or something, and then we'll have that time alone without having to argue for privacy.

I guess that's true. But there's a more subtle form of space that we need. It's the silent space formed by being disconnected from the blaring siren of popular culture and commercialism, the sense of calm that comes when you know that your interactions--should you choose to have them--are unmonitored, unfettered, and unjudged; it's apparent in how I feel nervous every time I sign up for a new email account, and why I often throw in false information when asked for my birthdate, the place where I live...

If we live in a world where anyone--with the right technical knowledge--can have access to my intimate information, the basic numbers and measurements that identify me as me--we may be able to drive to the mountains, go decompress in a high desert hotel for a few days, whatever--but there will always be that buzzing hivelike feeling in the back of your head, reminding you that people know who you are, know things about you. Sometimes we don't want to be known. It's a kind of freedom. One with imprecise and blurred boundaries. That sense of self. Where do we begin and end?

I'm all for honesty, and I think the idea of a utopia where we all fully know and accept one another's true selves, unadulterated by the brick walls of Privacy, is a beautiful idea. What warmth, what understanding, what fullness, what acceptance.

But as we all know, utopias really don't happen.

If a shift is coming in the way we relate to the concept of privacy, I suspect it's a long way off, and it will likely have just as many problems as our current ways of being.

I have been really broke lately, and am now reduced to consolidating my last laundry quarters, buying gasoline, and using said gasoline to drive home to my folks' house, whereupon I will soulfully ask for just a few more pence to get me through til Friday, when I get paid. And they'll pretty much have to hand it over, as I will be out of gas after that drive with no other way of getting home. I feel guilty and even ashamed about this, but I have no options.

I had to go to the drugstore this morning, though, to buy Zantac. Yes. I could never be homeless: my health care needs are too costly. I was also out of toothpaste and had considered using baking soda, but that's just gross.

I got my generic zantac and then cruised the overwhelming toothpaste aisle. So many, many options, about twenty full feet of dental care, and all at six bucks a pop. I didn't have that kind of money.

And then I saw it: the eetiest-beetiest tube of toothpaste, as small as you can make 'em before they become travel size, and a handy two dollars and thirty five cents. So I got that.

Once home I opened the thing to find that about one-third of the toal length of the tube was taken up by a space-age, bizarro cap that somehow had been ingeniously designed to deliver a little star-shaped pattern of toothpaste, carefully keeping the blue gel separate from the white goo, and probably encapsulating the sum total of two years of hard labor from some unlucky first-year just-out-of-art-school product designer.

It was brilliant, but a waste of packaging of course (when did the western world embrace the belief that your white goo must be separated from your blue gel anyway?), and probably no one will ever think much of it.

Lately at my job I've felt a lot like that imagineered hapless product designer, laboring away at my little version of an ingenious bottle cap that no one will spend more than two seconds observing, never fully grasping the complex workings on the inside, and then having it tossed out and not thought of again.

I guess this is the way it goes when you work for someone else in a capacity such as my own, but you'll have to cut me some slack for feeling a bit let down--I was a teacher for quite some time, and that was way different. Then I was a molder of young minds, a planter of the seeds of ideas, nursing dreams into being for others. Now I'm just an...employee.

I have the desire that it be otherwise, someday. Soon.

Yeah yeah, me and everyone else who wants to get paid for doing what they love, independently.

Ok, so I ripped this from the LA Weekly 'cos I don't have the time to write my own review. But this pretty much sums up what has been the best show I've seen in this town since Shellac about two years ago. And the more I consider it, I'd actually rate it higher than Shellac.

THE FIRE SHOW
at Spaceland, July 25

We are proud to go out on our own terms. The market-driven advertopolis that is the music industry has not bowed nor bloodied us. Nonetheless, we mourn the watered-down, formulaic, media-centered mediocrity that music has become. Music needs new blood and new passion; fresh ideas and fresh commitments to resist the charms of money, fame and comfort.

--statement on the Fire Show's Web site, announcing their final album release
(Saint the Fire Show, Perishable) and tour

And then they were gone, in a final blast of pompous, petulant self-immolation. The Fire Show are/were good enough to deserve to be missed, although given the attendance for their final (and only ever) performance in Los Angeles, they won't be missed by many. A real shame, because tonight F.S. demonstrate all the attributes of their two and a half albums: the ambition and the brilliance, the poetry and the deeply, almost desperately felt politics, the fireworks and the bomb-dropping. Reduced to a duo 'cause no drummer could stand them (my inference), the Fire Show double themselves: For almost every song, they start on drums and bass and sometimes vocal; with the rhythm established, recorded and triggered, they switch to guitars and vocals. Olias Nil and M. Resplendent literally play with and against themselves.

F.S. have often cited the year 1979 as a direct influence or precedent, and the reason why is apparent tonight: This is Gang of Four and Margaret Thatcher, Public Image and the dawn of Reagan, the Sandinistas and the impending birth of the Minutemen and the Cure. Stark, dubbish funk with punk penknife and splatter; left-wing epics constructed from right angles, made by (sm)art school punks interested in the feet and the brain, the ground and the lofty heavens. With F.S. determinedly grave-bound in a final gesture of refusal, that means an awful lot of important territory -- from the ankles to the shoulders, from 1980 to tomorrow -- will be left unexplored. Premature euthanasia? A beautiful suicide? Maybe a bit of each. (Jay Babcock)

Measure me in metered lines, in one decisive stare, the time it takes to get from here to there.
I'm unconsoled, I'm lonely, I'm so much better than I used to be.
Terrified of telephones and shopping mall, and knives,
and drowning in the pools of other lives.
Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony. Get clobbered on by courtesy,
in love with love and lousy poetry.
And I'm leaning on a broken fence between Past and Present tense.
And I'm losing all these stupid games that I swore I'd never play.
But it almost feels okay.
Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty,
armed with every precious failure, and amateur cartography,
I breathe in deep before I spread these maps out on my bedroom floor.
Leaving. Wave goodbye. Losing, but I'll try,
with the last ways left,
to remember; sing
my imperfect
offering.

-the weakerthans, "aside"

Diet Land--just like disneyland, but with more paper bags


I checked my hotmail account to find this spam, courtesy of hotmail itself, there in my inbox [along with other prepackaged ads for tv shows (american idol) and various web-based products (hotmail at a monthly rate, anyone? anyone? hello?)....but this struck me as particularly sinister, positioned as it was directly adjacent to an ad for school supplies:

"For dieting ideas:
"There is no time like now to get your weight under control. Sign up for WebMD’s Dieting Dish for the latest studies on nutrition and weight loss from the world of dieting."

The "world of dieting?" There's a whole world dedicated to dieting? And I didn't know about this? I mean, c'mon ladies, I always wondered, but I never really believed there could be a whole other solar satellite dedicated to the pursuit of physical perfection. And here I was, totally missing the whole boat. I always wondered what you gals seemed so immured in discussion about during bridal showers and at lunch break over your Jenny Craig prepackaged $38.00 entrees the size of my left fist (thumb excluded), but I never hoped in my wildest dreams that this was a real world unto itself. But now....now I know. And knowing is half the battle. Soon I can be emaciated--or at least obsessed to the degree that all topics of discussion other than body weight and exercise are off-limits--just like the rest of you!!! Yay! Finally I'll fit in! Let's all be friends and bond now over our latest Shape magazines!

I really don't know what else to say on this topic. I guess it pretty much stands on its own. All that's left is to make pre-teen girls feel inadequate for not having index fingers long enough to gag themselves with. "What? Can't purge like the other girls?!? Don't worry--with Carpa-Grow, your fingers will be long, lovely, graceful, and attenuated enough to choke yourself in three short weeks! Just four easy payments of $19.99! Be sure to ask your parents' permission first--but don't worry, they'll be so proud of you when you lose those extra inches off your 13-year-old hips!"

Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke.

how's the weather

Subtropical Depression:
A subtropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained surface wind speed (using the U.S. 1-minute average) is 33 kt (38 mph or 62 km/hr) or less.

Subtropical Storm:
A subtropical cyclone in which the maximum sustained surface wind speed (using the U.S. 1-minute average) is 34 kt (39 mph or 63 km/hr) or more.


What's your wind speed?



By the way, I went home today to hand in the rent check. After I put the envelope in the manager's box I went back to the apartment to catch a quick catnap. Paused in the bathroom and absently flicked on the lights. The lights, and the vent, that have not worked every day for the last month. I just wrote about it this morning.

The vent shuddered creakily to life, and the light came on without a hitch.

Weird.

maintenance inertia, or the tendency of things to remain still unless acted upon

The light in my bathroom has not worked for three weeks, maybe a month now. Also the wall socket on the exterior wall of the bathroom, it doesn’t work. So it must be something with the wiring in the wall.

Before they went out, I would sometimes try to plug in hairdryers and such into the socket and hear spooky sizzling, popping noises coming from inside the wall, and the hairdryer would only go on at half-power, no matter how high I turned it. Then it stopped going on altogether, so I had to go across my room and plug in into the the power strip for the computer.

I suppose I could call the management about this, but she’s not too bright and I can just see the whole wall going up in flames right now when she sends out a lackey to handle it. This job calls for an electrician, a professional, and I donno how fast she’d hire one…so I’ve been sitting on it. I suppose I’ll write a letter soon enough. Currently I’m burning candles in there, and this makes me feel more…spiritual. It also makes me feel more...hazardous. And I have to say though, after a month of peeing in the dark, it’s becoming a bit tiring. If I want to pee in the dark, I’ll go camping, thank you very much.

And I hardly ever go camping.

Pills click and skitter in my mouth against my teeth, bouncing one into the other, shiny and cracking, delicate and perfectly pitched, making me want to bite down to taste what surely must be sugary candy shatters, little crackles of incandescent sparks, shards of glassine delicacies, sweet and far removed from nature.

They make my stomach hurt so horribly, and I think how terribly, how awfully I abuse my poor and broken body, how it doesn’t know which way is up anymore, doesn’t know when it hurts or is happy, doesn’t know when to sleep or to wake without the medicines, my stupid numb and stumblingly wordless, useless frame, a marionette held up by chemical strands, spiraling synthesized glittering molecular structures.

This is the life of so many women, and it is mine as well.

“…the day she dies the neighbors came to snicker.
Well that’s what comes from too much pills and liquor.
But when they laid her out just like a queen,
She was the happiest corpse I’d ever seen.
I made my mind up back in Chelsea.
When I go,
I’m going like Elsie.”
-from Cabaret

question: are these things art? if so, what kind--graff art? guerilla art? just a pain in the ass?

http://www.rikkirockett.com/diaryamerica/diary/diaryamerica.htm

http://www.circlemakers.org/