Western Civilization is Dumb

I want to live in a tribal land…I want to shed myself of time, calendar, appointment, psychopharmaceuticals.  I like work, but want to do it to survive rather than for someone else who is so rich and where i am a cog in a  mundane concaved bubble. I want to live in a convexed nation, where we work outward for eachother.

And to even utter these ideas is to be the mockery of Western literary standards, if I was reviewd right now I would be taken as your typical teenager with angst – basic ennui in the form of selfish, “woe is me” utterings.

No woe for me, just a dreaming like an aborigine.

Recently Unearthed Vintage Katrin

I was going through my files and found this sort of odd piece from something I was going to submit to a paying blog job I had through Oxygen Media a couple years back. It’s pretty cute albeit retarded. (Kinda my life experience really):

It’s 2007, and that means next year we’ll be electing a new president, which means right now there are hoards of hot democratic political meat running rampant. This is the time to land a Kennedy.
This involves a trip to the fun, Dockers wearing, red sox loving city of Beantown!
There are a few pointers I have up my sleeve when trying to land a Kennedy. First one is to look at your breeding, were you born into the correct family to even come remotely close to marrying into a high powered political family? If not, then go pack up your things and head back to your trailer, because it ain’t happening sister.

If you are, then boy are you in luck, because Boston is the puppy mill of Kennedy’s, they’re just waiting in caucus purgatory for you to waltz in with your linen pant suit and snag ’em up.

How to get there: You can try the Chinatown bus; I recommend Lucky Star, it’s less known than the Fung Wah, but really whatever floats your boat, or bus. Now, why a bus you ask? Why would some Kennedy EVER even nod toward a lesser lady like me who would ride on a bus like this, and not a ferry to Hyannis? Well, I figure save your dough this way and then save up for the fancier things you need to do when you get to Massachusetts.

Hopefully you already have some boring white Bostonian friends from colleges in Boston who have connections through facebook. If this is the case, make sure your trip to Boston is planned around a mixer that you were invited to around something akin to this theme. Be sure you’ve subscribed to every Boston democratic facebook thingie out there and attend every event.

When you get there: Go to Newbury Street and Beacon Hill. Shed your New Yorkishness very quickly and thoroughly. If they sense edginess you are doomed.

Spotting a Kennedy: Pay attention to the dress and accent. If the accent is TOO strong, and slangy, they’ve grown up in Worcester and work at Papa Gino’s. If they have piercing blue eyes and smell like freshly shucked oysters from Chappaquiddick Island, you’re in luck.

What to Say: Keep things cool. Talk about Robert Frost, canvas sneakers, and Woods Hole’s best kept secrets. If you mention the roach you saw in your apartment last week and the man you screwed who had the world’s bendiest penis ever, “Oh, Bobby Jr. It was so funny, I didn’t know if he was just getting soft, or if like, he just had a really maleable one, you know?”, he’ll probably run, spit out his spritzer, or get his madras clad guards to escort you out.

In any event, if you really do want this Kennedy, you probably should have come from good stock, so if you aren’t, you’re really fucked actually. Maybe stick to your kind you slutty bitch, there are plenty of douchey assholes in New York that will settle for you and maybe help you spit out a couple of ugly babies eventually.

A Revelation, or a Kick in the Balls?

Perhaps I am growing up, or perhaps I’m just becoming more and more annoyed with myself (the latter seems unlikely, since I truly believe I already hold the world record in greatest self-annoyance of all time).  Either way, I’m actually realizing in tangible ways, why I am disturbed.  Sure, there are still the mysterious ass slaps from my demons, but in general I feel as though I’m coming more into a sense of understanding. Examples you ask? Fuck you that’s personal. No just kidding, I have no shame.

1.) CRITICAL - I am so critical of myself, that there is no wonder I’m always disappointed. I knew this before, but I chose many times not to see it in its shitty ugly face.  I have to be easier on myself.  There is a part of me that fucks up on purpose though, so that I am ABLE to be harsher. I am my own Piper Laurie in Carrie.

2.) FRIGHTENED – Now you would think with someone as brassy and open as I am that I would not be afraid of anything.  Not true.  I do believe all human beings harbor a great deal of fear, and that is what debillitates most of us.  My fear is absurd, however.  I fear things like happiness, and contentedness because I cannot define it.  Things I cannot define I like to run away from.  Is there ANY thing truly concrete and clear in this world? Yes, mathematics. And guess what? I am rotten at it. I am completely retarded (in the true sense) at it.  I am frightened that I may one day be happy completely and then it will be ripped away from me.  I am frightened that I am not enough, that I’m sub-par, that I will never achieve what I want, and this somehow is directly correlated with me shying away from the effort.  Yes, I’m taking small steps to get somewhere, but in the meantime, I’m scared shitless. Of what? Failing.  Because my whole life feels like one already, and one of the things that I ride on is that it will one day not fail.  Maybe I should fucking relax.

3.) UNABLE TO RELAX - That last sentence above perfectly brings me to this point.  Thankfully, in this world, there exists a thing such as slumber. THIS is my ultimate relaxation technique, but unfortunately, once you are conscious, it totally doesn’t work.  Now if I could nap while conscious that would be perfect! But no, all the other things people do like meditate and shit, completely backfire on a nut job like me.  Ask me to meditate and I will stress out about the fact that I cannot relax and think of nothing. HOW DO YOU THINK OF NOTHING?! HOW DOES ONE “CLEAR THEIR HEAD”?? I cannot clear my head! It’s full of crap! All the time! I cannot release all that noise. Give me a break. The pressure of relaxing is just too great for me. It stresses me out.

Ok, so there are a few examples of things that I am “OWNING” (queer). No but seriously, I am trying.  I luckily, feel really blessed in terms of awesome people in my life so that I feel a support system throughout my existence.  This really helps when you are trying to work on shit. Not that I’m burdening them with my baggage, I just mean, it’s nice to know you are loved, so that maybe, I’ll be able to love myself more too.

Revisiting the Neurotransmitter Department

It has been a while since I decided to stop by this office, and for good reason too: It’s a fucking chaotic mess in that place! Hell has not quite broken as loose as the last time, but it’s still a bit off.

I decided to buy a couple of classy wall hangings to spruce up the place. Just for morale!

This first one has reminded me that I have to live.  This is in due part to medication working but also because I’m sort of making myself forget about how bad my life is. Partially because it technically IS better. The second is a note to my seratonin to get the hell of its ass and work harder already. I do not have all day!!!!

I bought these for all the kind neurotransmitters to wear on their axion lapels to remind all of us that I made the Dean’s List at my University.  Triumph!  Now we must all remember to still do well in school to stay on the damn list. This feat is riddling my already shaky soul with anxiety.

Overall, the visit went well. The board meeting is coming up next month and although nervous, I think it will go off ok.  A lot of men have tried to break into the department and destroy the neurotransmitters, but the SSRIs are still heeding their oaths and making me strong.

Bravo, I say.

My Blog is Back Babes in the (Internet) Woods!

It is finally back, and my wonderful friend Lori Mocha guided me through the transition period back to wordpress from Blogspot.

Things have not been the dandiest lately, but when am I ever elated? Not too often, except when I’m painting chickadees and eating soup.

I’m having a hell of a time trying to get personal administrative duties underway, and decided I need to hire help. Well I don’t have the money for that but if I did, here is a list of professional people I would employ to help me manage things:

• Standby Cardiologist: I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a heart attack before I’m 30, so I’d want Dr. Herz (google translate to know why that’s his name) to be there in case
• 24 Hour Psychotherapist: I don’t think this needs an explanation at all
• Soup Chef: I believe I explained above, I love soup. Am I an old lady? At heart yes (and my heart is probably that of an old lady’s as well). I’m a good cook and can make a mean soup, but I’m also busy and tired a lot
• Language Tutor: I would love to come home everyday and be able to learn tons of languages in my free time
• Massage Therapist: This is an obvious one, but I’d really really like one
• Grant Writer: I would keep a grant writer around who’s sole job for 8 hours a day would be to try and get me a grant so I can do the arts for pay, but oh wait if I was rich I probably can do this anyway. Huh.
• Mute Hot Male: I’d want a hot man around just for me, but I really prefer that he say nothing
• Maid: Along with the massage therapist, obvious, but really, I can’t clean anymore, it’s boring.

Ok, that sums up my wishes for today. Have a good day.

I am Manfred Mann

That’s right, I’m blinded by the light and revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

I feel as though the past few weeks have felt like an ongoing nightly race. I’m running along the highway, wet and panicked, constantly blinded by the lights of oncoming cars. (This is in part accurate should I choose to travel by highway as I do not drive, so if not by bus, foot would be the alternative – and c’mon here I’m writing a metaphor so shut up).

I’m still on this highway right now too. I’m only writing this in the middle of it. It’s not some end of the journey, not some HUGE epiphany story that I’m trying show everyone here. It’s just sort of a mid-way posting. A quick call from my wet panicked race, with the rain and bright lights beating down on my already flattened head.

Do I even want it to end? I’m not sure yet. There are parts of it that I enjoy, but also parts of it that are killing me. The side swipes from the occassional wrecklessness of the passersby that I sometimes am too careless in dodging. I fall often, and sometimes want to lay there and cover myself in rain and let it envelope me and drench me, and maybe not move until someone discovers me and takes me away.

All I know is that I probably have the tools for making it easier, but I don’t have the capability of using them at this juncture.

Right now though, I’m going to hang up this gay metaphor and go back to doing what it is I have to do in the real world – which frankly – isn’t too much fucking different

Flitcraft via Auster via Hier

Now, I’m not planning on abandoning everything and starting over. But I’m considering it. I had a Flitcraftian experience on Friday. I did not nearly die from a falling beam – or in Auster’s book, his Flitcraft almost gets hit by a falling gargoyle. But, essentially a similar fate was nearly bestowed upon me.

Yes I could have died. And upon not dying, I considered just leaving my home and everything in it and taking a plane somewhere and starting over. I have no husband or boyfriend to abandon. The only thing would be my ridiculous material possessions, apartment, job, and friends (who I don’t think I would REALLY abandon, I would be in touch certainly).

Strangely, I just started reading Paul Auster’s The Oracle, yesterday evening. I know the story of Flitcraft from reading The Maltese Falcon a while ago, but had not thought of it when I was faced with death on Friday. Reading Auster last night I was thrown back into the face of what happened. I thrust my book down and walked into the bathroom and stared at myself for what seemed to be an hour, but probably was only a few moments. How is it possible that I picked up this book at The Strand, before my not even having read the back, literally picking it up because I enjoyed the color and title and wanted to read another Auster book. It was $4.95 so I shoved it among the other books I was getting and that was that. Was it a strange coincidence? Some sort of universe trickery? Who knows.

My brush with near death was not quite the same as a beam falling randomly, I put myself in death hands a bit more than these convenient literary nuggets of chance. Nevertheless, I did not expect it and am now dealing with these issues.

I would like to start over. I would like to leave this wretched fate of mine and try something new. I don’t want to lose the people I love, surely, but I want to lose the part of me that I detest and has formulated this life of mine.

Maybe in the end it means I want to leave me. As narcissistic as this sounds, it has to do with a shedding more than a dwelling. I’m hoping I can start anew in a way that doesn’t wreak havoc on my current world too much, but I fear if I do not abandon enough, I will never be able to start anew.

Duende

Frederico Garcia Lorca spoke of Duende, as do still the Andalusian people. To them, and to him, it was a sort of dark instinct – inspiration that came out of raw truth. To be able to see the light only by accepting it’s darkness. To produce beautiful meaningful art to him, meant that it had to be birthed out of Duende.

I wonder if being depressed has to do with Duende. Strange how both words somehow flow similarly Duendepressiones. (The original term for depression was the Greek Melancholia)

I have accepted (to sound totally queer) my demons. But Duende doesn’t seem to enter this idea of DEMONS!! RAHHGH! in such a spiritually dogmatic way. It seems as though it’s more of a seminal secular darkness. Harsh human pain turning into something free and feathery, or vice versa.

It is comforting to realize that this pain so many feel may be so strong because of the yin and yang aspect. For example, when I fall into my depth, the pain as William Styron says is “most closely connected to drowning or suffocation – but even these images are off the mark” [pg. 17“Darkness Visible; A Memoir of Madness” by William Styron] —I will talk about the indescribable aspects of this condition at a later date— But this suffocation I feel is also interconnected with the strong elation and intensity at which I see beauty, how I feel love so strongly so quickly (romantic, and otherwise), how when I’m feeling “stable” (whatever the fuck that means) I am able to see stars on Earth, and relish things and feel love with bombastic aplomb.

I am not bi-polar, because this is me all the time. Yes, there are circumstances that arise that can trigger extra breakdowns…but most of the part it’s a battle of dark and light and in between daily, mostly resulting in the need to relish and feel and love. When I see darkness, for better or for worse (clinically, worse, artistically, probably ok) I embrace it to get to the light. I think accepting my darkness and fusing it to my life can help me see the light, even though this may kill me too early.

I suppose I have to try to manage my Duende, the same way everyone must manage theirs. I just hope that trying to manage Duende doesn’t defeat the whole purpose to begin with.

My Generation (will) Blows (up?)

I woke up with this topic because of being up late last night reading snippets of Norman Mailer’s correspondence of 1945-2005 featured in this week’s The New Yorker (”In the Ring:Grappling with the twentieth century”) It starts with a letter to Beatrice Mailer – his “Sweet Baby” – from overseas at war.  At one point he desires the A-bomb for his own self-interests so he can be with her (so the war will end) and she in his arms again. However, he quickly realizes the terrifying idea of how one weapon can wipe out such a grand sweeping amount of humanity and rescinds his own utterence.

Instead of reading through all of his letters sequentially – I skipped ahead to his last letter after reading his first.  Doing this put me through some sort of surreal correpsondence space-time contiuum that rendered me very still.  In his moribund last letter he reveals a sense of greater impending doom than with his A-bomb musings.  This is not because of his older age at all I believe, in fact, he seems at peace with where he will go.  But he’s at a loss for where the 21st Century is headed, quite aghast at the state of things and through his eloquence and keen observances, not old fashioned experiences, he seems to assess our modern age with aptitude.

I am young. And from looking back at history – to the “doom” of past ages, the way past ages have been destroyed, have rid themselves, I must say – I feel as though this age seems to be especially close to annhilation.  Why and how do I know this? I don’t. I’m an uneducated sack of shit. Just kidding…No but I do know some things.  And part of it seems that technology, apathy, incredible self-indulgence and just the state of the union in my own ignorant country seems to be leading to this.

I am writing all this now I think in part, due to fear of what the our administration might be (if the Republicans take office) and also to the way a lot of people my age behave. I being one of them.  Even the intrinsic way of communicating Mailer has, writing about things in such an ethereal ocular beauty of which we somehow lose nowadays (not trying to be hippy-ish).  I feel as though I am nostalgic for a past I never lived in.  I love facebook, love ipods, love technology! Do not get me wrong, it’s not what I’m saying. I think progression is a fascinating important evolution.  My point is that so much humanity gets thrust to the wayside when technological advances appear at such lightening speeds. 

We don’t know where we are heading.  Mailer says “This is the first century that weighs upon us like an incubus”. I think because so many new things flash upon us in such rapid succession that at any moment something even bigger than an atom bomb could exist that rip 6 billion human faces off in less time it takes for one neurotransmitter synapse to fire.

Mailer died almost a year ago (November 10th, 2007) and missed the good-fortune of witnessing the end of days. (Aka Palin/McCain flooding the Earth with oil and Christians).  But he along with so many of his generation, even though I am not part of his generation at all, will stay close with me.  I will treasure my past human because they are a part of me.  I will treasure their styles, their technologies, and their beautiful ways of communicating that are so lost.  Maybe, I will be able to talk to lovers the way he was able to – through letters with ink, where a real tear drop could even fall and an eyelash could lay and talk of an H-Bomb would be eons away….

I Fainted

Yesterday morning I fainted on the train. Again. Contrary to popular opinion, I happen to be a very petite lady.  My mother is the same way and has always been fainiting all over the place – at least almost fainting.  In March I fainted too – at the exact same time – right before getting off at Union Square which is my stop on the way to work. 

Being a fainter, (I can now call myself that, it sounds like painter which makes me sound artistic and interesting, right?) I am worried about a few things.  For one – I’m worried I will one day hit my skull, for another I think maybe I have a horrible disease and will die shortly.  Either way, I know I need to drink more fluids and eat a little in the morning.

What really got me though was the enormous amount of attention I received from this occurence.  A true Florence Nightengale lady who looked like she should be everyone’s mother propped me up on a seat from the floor and put my head between my legs and massaged my shoulders (!) until we got to Union Sq.  Then she helped me out and I almost fainted again up the stairs.  Of course, there was a  medical student right there who immediately layed me down and put my head on a big bag that felt like a fluffy wonderland given the circumstances.  He whipped out his stethoscope, took my heartbeat and demanded the crowd that had formed to give me sugar. I look up in my haze and hands are being thrust towards me with mints, gums, a granola bar, juice and some other Sean Connery looking man miraculously has a big bottle of cold water that he hands to me - James Bond himself gave me fluids. It was like Christmas! (but Christmas on some sort of hallucinogen).  I couldn’t talk very well either but I managed to get up and an MTA EMT dude asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. I politely declined.  I looked at my crowd of helpers and thanked them all profusely saying in a very drugged sounding voice “Thanksh you all so much, you are all SO niccee”. Whereupon a few of them gave a sympathetic chuckle.  The EMT walked me to the stairs leading to the world and I gave him a hug and he laughed as well.  I got to work in one piece somehow and plopped at my desk, stunned.

Anyway – I’m not saying that fainting is great – it feels horrendous before when you know it’s coming. It’s extremely panicky.  But hey, if I feel the need to be loved by strangers I can just not eat in the morning and I’ll get tons of attention! Kidding…I don’t want this to happen again, but I am very thankful that I managed to receive this amazing outpouring of love and help from people I’d never met and will unfortunately never see again.