Monday, September 06, 2004:
"I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone"
--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

"the Enchanted Forest"
installation/set materials:

feathers, synthetic, white.
feathers, real, found.
twine/rope, 100 yards.
velvet cloth, blue and burgandy, 12"x14"
branches, varying shapes, sizes, lengths, all found.
belgian linen canvas, cut into ribbons and scraps.
duck cotton canvas, 4 pieces 10ft x 10ft.
microcrystalline wax, white.
beeswax, honey tan.
eggshells, drained, intact.
twigs, small and clipped.
carving/grafting knife.
hot glue gun.
glue sticks.
staple gun.
tacks.
hot plate.
fondue pot.
glass bowl.
tapestry needle.
tape recorders.
tiny microphones.
camera with automated trigger flash.
extension cords and cables.
leaves.
owl.

To Make:
"an evening at the enchanted forest."
feather/branch carving sculptures
feather antler headdresses
feather cloak
feather skirt
twine hanging string sculptures
wax eggs in twig nest

Monday, August 30, 2004

"i think the city is killing him."

after biking over the williamsburg bridge and back the upside-down flag waving and bell ringing and riding downhill with calves flexed in anticipation and happiness, even after adam and tyson sweated their way through another set in my steamy basement and i stood transfixed by the twin wooden sticks that the drummer plys as his heartfelt trade, yes, even after all that, i had nothing to say to anyone in conversation except: "i think the city is killing him."

yesterday was one of the happiest days i've spent in the city that's killing him, red-faced and riddled with flea bites like flakes of hot chilli pepper spread all over my body.

"what do you think you should do?"
" i dunno, i dunno how to swim."
"well why is he so insistent on crossing the east river?"
"i guess its something to do. some people just need something to do."
"what the fuck is this, a stupid raymond carver short story about stoicism and the left-unsaid!?!"
shudder. "i don't like carver, everybody loves him. eileen really likes him. anyway, dude, its my life dude."
"dude. oh yo here comes that guy you're in love with, the one you draw all those pictures of. you're a terrible artist"
"i know, its so sad, i can't draw. my sister is so good. i just want it not to be so shitty."
"what?"
"the dying."
"yeah well you're asian."
"i need a hug."
hug. sniff. snot. drip. beer. spit. the city kills in its sleep. we go to bed at dawn, staving off the damage done in its wake, limbs dripping with exhausion and fatigue rolling down my face in salty waves. none of my friends got arrested, so this morning at seven thirty we sat around in a wobbly uneven circle and recounted the stories that happened to us throughout the night. i could only think that the city is killing him, and i can't swim, and who's to say whose drowning anyway?

Blog - 11:07 AM

i've been at eileen's fabulous new apartment for the last 72 hours due to flea-ridden conditions in mine and she's not even home anymore. she's gone off to see m so here i am on her computer dreaming evil hitch by hitch o'er the plain houses, 'light by light, lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. a woman like that is not a woman, quite. i have been her kind.' gosh i am just as obsessed with that anne sexton poem now as over ten (shit has it been over ten years!) years ago when i first discovered it at little fiftenn in a library somewhere. i am always in a library somewhere, but not always listening to depeche mode thank goodness. the parsons library is great, you get credit for reading vogues and visionnaire and women's wear daily.

these last couple of weeks have been so intense and crazy. that's all. school starts in a day. i'm preparing for the big switch over to the philosophy department, but all i want is to be in the wood panel encaustic technique class with Thomas Nash. the two gallants show by pratt/black label bike crew house was the best show i've been to since i moved out here. max said eliza said thisbikeisapipebomb was ridiculously amazing at the Aa house. i'm not sorry i missed it. i'm only sorry to have made myself cry like a maniacal baby searching for its only teat all day and night. it was my fault. come back to me. now i see, i really really see.

sen's been out here for over a week, been in jail and back, and i haven't even senned him for more than ten hours. the fashion parade saturday was weird and ridiculous, who is anyone to tell me who not to call? max and jesse tried to persuade me to go to the other raised by wolves show earlier that day at virginia's beach, and i had to bite my tongue and swallow real hard. my saliva tasted a tad bitter today. but we made fried eggs and fried rice and fried tomatoes and tofu and steaming heaping bowls of ramen noodles fragrant with green onion and garlic and that made everything in my mouth all okay.

louis is going off to the belgian congo in a month to help his friend, a documentary filmmaker, translate french while they teach the people there how to make their own movies. he also wants to film short instructional videos on aids home health care for the vast numbers of Congolese who cannot afford hospice care. wait, i'm not finished. he also wants to transcribe all the Congolese women's oral histories down and on film since apparently there is such a high widowhood rate. for all these things louis is needed. i feel like a heap of soiled and soggy diapers when i listen to this fellow history major. other history majors: jen thompson, also over-achiever for the state of sainthood in mehmet dosemeci's eyes. mehmet dosemeci, no saint. nima amini, my drug dealer of yore. noah strote, best roommate a girl's ever had. john rosenberg, smart in a different way. and more. i've been such a malcontent lately. struck in the face by morbidity's giant lightning blow, always tired, always sick, always allergic. drugs fuck you up. dont do drugs.

i want things. only three things: you, your bicycle that you gave me and i left last man standing on the curb, and alex s. maclean's book of aerial photography, for the motorcycle tracks made on ice, rings spinning out and out, a nod to eternity. i can gouge out my heart but i cannot give up my eyes, i can give up my love but i cannot live and be blind, fumbling in the darkness cursing for sight. and more than any being in history you make me see, and thus you make me me. hee hee. no more earnestness. i'll leave that to steven chen. "you know i was at urban outfitters the other day looking at window treatments and it felt really nice to be domestic for a change." uh-huh.

ps: there's this adrienne rich poem i love, she not only fucks with shelley's ozymandias, another one of my favorites, she too plays off eliot's glorious fabled j. alfred that i mangle and butcher in my measly attempts at song (shall i wear my hair behind? do i dare to eat a peach? i shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk along the beach. i have heard...) anyway, i found it on poets.org and here it is, its great.

"Diving into the Wreck"
Adrienne Rich
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.