New Years Revolutions: Time Can Never Kill the True Heart

On December 30th, 2008, I wrote a post that I was going to post on New Year's Day, but I never did because I decided it was too personal in parts, or that I wasn't sure it was stuff I wanted to really say. I think I had a lot of weird situations I was navigating then. Well, I've always had weird situations to navigate, at least since starting autowin and until about a few months ago. I'm not keeping anyone else's secrets now, except for Colonel Sanders, who gave me the secret recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken before he died. One day I'll sell that shit on ebay.

Somewhere in the middle of this unposted post I wrote, "This year I resolve to begin with practice," and perhaps I did just that. Not like I'd anticipated -- but anticipation is just a fancy glowing crystal ball; who needs it.

A few days ago at therapy she let me go early. I couldn't think of any problems to talk about. I navigated briefly into the past, shut that suitcase, complained a bit about not having money, pitched the business to her in disguise as me working out my problems (Luckily that's how a pitch starts -- with a problem. then you state the solution, the solution is your business. Get it? Clever!). I attempted to get worked up about an upcoming three-day period when Natalie, Alex and Brookling will be out of town and then realized I was really just being paranoid. After I'd ranted for ten minutes about Prop 8, I was dimissed.

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I'm sure I do have problems, I'll have some this week maybe. But I gave up trying to change my personality and decided to change my life to better bring out the most functional parts of my personality. That makes it sound so solid, like Legos. But who doesn't love Legos. Asshats, that's who. I don't know. I want to talk to you. With you.

Anyhow this is what I wrote back then. [I just added pictures now] It's weird:

New Years Revolutions + Jaunary '09

I wanted to tell you that people never change. I know that sounds terrible, saying it like that? Especially from me. In September, only four months ago, I declared triumphantly: "... people can fuck you up but people can change. People will change, no matter what the stakes. People CAN change," and now I'm saying that's a lie. I wanted to tell you that people don't really change, not without a serious rock bottom (imminent death, eviction) and people change only when it's time, almost by default. Change can't be imposed by a mantra, an insight, another person or by anything so surface, no matter how resolutely these things poise to attack our stubborn souls. I mean and also people can change, to an uncertain degree of authenticity, with the right cocktail of regulated medications.

Somewhere between theory and the practice is the only me I've ever known. This year I resolve to begin with practice. It's never the bad behavior that bothers me in and of itself, it's the lingering guilt that these prescribed activities/habits are somehow responsible for the circumstances of my life and I feel, somehow, that the circumstances of my life are not enough.

If the circumstances become enough, logic dictates that guilt will then disappear.

When it's you alone -- guilt & other people & resolutions & declarations don't stand a chance against those tiny habits, your attempts to bridge the moat of your very existence, and then what changes is not YOU but the lie you tell me, or yourself.

I do it too I'm saying this to you.

But I'm saying I've seen people I love relapse consistently, sometimes innocuously, and I think nothing happens overnight, things happen exactly when these things better fit into your life.

So I'm saying people change but it takes years if it ever happens at all, so I think that's not people changing -- that's people growing up.

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"You're happy if the thing you naturally want makes the other person happy. If it's not that way, then I don't know. I guess you're in limbo."
- Richard Ford, Wildfire
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Because my story is the only one I'm legally allowed to tell, I'll tell a good chunk of it now. It's not different from other stories I know, that's what I'm saying, there's nothing too spectacular about it, none of my bad habits are that dramatic.

So for the first 14 years I vacillate -- through no fault or doing of my own -- between princess or criminal. It just depended on who was in charge. I had no control because my treatment wasn't dependent on my behavior. It was wonderful and terrifying, I couldn't sleep, I told a lot of stories.

This is the story of what happened next, in chronological order: Darkness. Then watching tv & eating & running away & darkness.

I change because I run away to boarding school and I grow up there. Here I am both supervised and happy and deliciously codependent on R. and then he leaves, and then I pop caffeine pills 'til I take too many to talk or work so I have to stop. Then I am happy, incredibly happy, and then boarding school ends so then I have starving & working out obsessively. Then starving & working out obsessively & overeating & throwing up & flirting & shopping. Then exercising obsessively & overeating & cutting & caffeine pills & throwing up & sedatives. Then I get sick and I am not allowed to work out. Then just starving. Then I get better, get head/body back in shape. Then boys. Drinking & boys boys boys.

Then I get out of control like my body isn't mine anymore, like it's a thing other people can do things to, so then I get a dumb loyal boyfriend. Then shopping & boyfriend's rules. Then this really slow feeling like I wasn't myself anymore, like I was dead inside, like I had merged with the wall-to-wall carpeting and I was the only one with a chance to go out. Then I get fixed with medication, feel like self again, but faster, and I break up with dumb boyfriend three days later. Then starving & drinking & working & working & working & shopping. Then I meet S., get addicted to him hard, we fall in love, he has control, he fucks it up.

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"Help, I've done it again. I have been here many times before. Hurt myself today, and the worst part is there's no one else to blame."
-Sia, Breathe Me
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Then drinking & inhaling anything crushable or already in powdered format & running & starving & shopping & playing The Sims. Then friends return from being abroad. Then inhaling & speeding & addicted to S. and still & drinking. Then friends rally around me and tell me I can change and I think they are right and decide to change. Instead S. comes over an hour later. Over and over. Then swallowing everything crushable 'til I was put on Wellbutrin to ensure that wouldn't happen again.

Then S. stops coming over. Why? Not 'cause I've changed but because I leave the state. In New York now. Working & hooking up with girls & drinking & shopping & smoking & meeting strangers. I wasn't happy, but I was having a lot of fun! Then I meet J. Lying. Go off Wellbutrin, break up with him a few days later. Hooking up with girls, drinking, lying, applying the same fervor to paying off debt that I once applied to shopping -- not 'cause I've changed but because I have more money. Again I have so much fun, occasional bliss, and big plum-sized patches of misery! but such fun in between.

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Do I change here? Not really. I just change my perspective on confidence or something. Also, The L Word, I get addicted to this new awareness of this new culture realizing that the girls I'd always liked might actually like me back. I read & watched & dreamed & went out and spent as much time around and inside those girls as I could & fought with people who'd loved me before all that and were trying to keep it up. Fun but darker than expected. I became addicted to the idea of girl-on-girl culture.

So then girls & drinking & drugs drugs drugs & cigarettes & girls & cross-town cab rides & throwing up. Then I start doing this 60+ hour workweek, but have to take care of M. who's now back from the hospital and I'm too busy for much else but still drugs & smoking & girls, almost because of it, and it's an energized, focused darkness that often bounces and becomes light. Then L. & I become BFFs and I try to make L. change, try to be a living demonstration of how people change, but maybe I hadn't really changed at all, I just talked a lot.

Then I was lying but with a partner-in-lying. We had party tricks & games. Co-dependent. Wicked fun, sometimes. Then drinking & drugs & girls.

Then I meet Haviland, she helps me to change no, she helps me to evolve, no, it's just harder to lie around her so I have to make my life a life I don't have to lie about. Then drinking & drugs & girls & lying. Then blogging & drinking & girls & starving & smoking but actually here is a period where things almost get better, start moving forward, so I celebrate by getting drunk and ruining everything.

Then I stop drinking 'cause I want to help MM stop drinking 'cause she'd almost died of it, and because now I have the internet, and smoking and then ... well ... now we have new things ... and this is where you've come in, probably. This is where autowin became The Real Secret. I'm not ready yet with the story of this, 'cause I can't keep trying to kill those things with storytelling or make it a trump card. I'm trying to be careful with that.

What I mean is ... did I change? Have I ever changed, or do I just replace one bad habit with another, one crutch with another, and as I get older, it's not even new addictions, it's just recycling old ones to fit the void of the day. Do the sickest people I know ever stop being sick? How do you escape a ten-year lie, a five-year habit, how do you ever do that? Is it just replacing one addiction with another? To meetings? To the gym? To balancing your checkbook? I have no problems because I am productive and healthy, because I work harder than most people who never drink or lie. Right?

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"I think people can change dramatically, but not completely. I mean, I've changed a lot since we met, but not completely. I'm still a junkie. I'm still reckless. I'm still everything I always was, but I've been conditioned to hide it better or suppress it. The instincts never change."
(A friend)
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I'm trying to put all habits - -anything you'd resolve to stop doing -- on the same playing field. Like drug addiction is just a good example, but this isn't about that,it's not even about licking the edge of those solid addictions like you're starving for a reason but scared too.

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"In real life, every day you might come to a new conclusion about yourself and about the reasoning behind your behavior, and you can tell yourself that this knowledge will make all the difference. But in all likelihood, you're going to keep doing the same old things. You'll still be the same person. You'll still cling to your destructive, debilitating habits because your emotional tie to them is so strong--so much stronger than any dime-store insight you might come up with--that the stupid things you do are really the only things you've got that keep you centered and connected."
- Elizabeth Wurtzel, Now More Again
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This is about how I wanted to tell you that people never change. Whatever our relationship is to that pit between our heart and our hips that stores all that is compulsive, comforting, familiar, habitual, uncontrollable ... the part of us so essential that it's immune to others' desires.

So one must find another way to evolve or one must trick those same destructive rotations into a new song.

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"The problem with your life is behavior, not disclosure. Secrets are what addiction calls foreplay. If you want to live a life that you can be honest about, live one that is worthy. The answer to life is learning to live."
- David Carr, The Night of the Gun
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What I mean is do what you can to make your dreams come true. Don't assign value to the things you can control and the things you feel you cannot, just control the things you can control until that side tackles the other.

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So I guess my New Year's Resolution/Revolution is to do what I want to do and I think from there the rest of it will fall into place. (Dec '08)

Sunday Top Ten: Top Ten Non-Emotional Wounds Like Steel in My Palm

[You guys, this top ten might be kinda bad! Hey have you read Autostraddle? It's awesome! Dinah Shore live-blog and etc!]

The story goes that Josh had a show to play that night and did not want to work his shift that afternoon at [redacted] Pizza, this cheap on-campus spot staffed by local hipsters and frequented by drunk University of Michigan undergraduates at 3 AM [like many things, it's a lot different now than it was in the mid-90's, possibly under new management, thus the name redaction] and 'cause his boss wouldn't give him the night off, J arrived on time, went into the back room, pulled out a tomato and a giant knife and proceeded to slice his hand right open. He was promptly sent home, hand bandaged, and made the show. THAT IS SO PUNK. Like Neal Cassady's dirty bandage waving in the wind, unraveling as he unraveled on the road .

I've told that story before, I hope it's true, that I haven't enhanced it retrospectively too much. That wholehearted embrace of life's little hand-slices is inspirational to me 'cause I do shit like that all the time -- not on purpose [though it has been, at times, in other lifetimes] but 'cause I'm clumsy. Ridiculously accident-prone. Bruises and scratches like nobody's business, or issues with sharp objects that've also been nobody's business, in their own way. I can just say things like that now. I've discussed, previously, my propensity to burns & bruises. Today I will cover my most memorable injuries.

Sunday Top Ten: Non-Emotional Wounds

10. Flying is Hard -- Playdate Wristbreak - late 80's

Cindy -- flat on her back, legs in the air -- claimed rocket-launching powers. She vaulted her brother successfully and I wanted to fly too, like my andro-hero Peter Pan, so I innocently lay on her feet and kerpow I flew for a brief glorious millisecond before landing triumphantly belly-down, my wrist slamming square atop a discarded softball.

Did this mean I was broken? That I hadn't flown?! Absurd! The swelling concerned the Moms, but I didn't want to get Cindy in trouble (always, even then, a desire to protect the pretty girls).

When two weeks later I still couldn't swing a bat my Dad made me go to the doctor. It was broken. I was excited to have a cast so everyone could sign it. It made me feel popular.

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9. Trouble with Balls - late 80's

Wheels Inn was magic -- a shrine to everything forbidden in normal life: waterslides, mini golf, buffets and room service. I tried showing off at the bowling alley -- and for me showing off means doing categorically ridiculous/foolish things and then whining later when I'm bleeding -- with the heaviest ball. Banged my chin right on it, and it split right open. Dad scooped me up onto his shoulder to remove me from the premises and I left a bloody trail behind me, talk about the Special Olympics of Bowling.

It hurt like holy hell but I wasn't giving up Skittles & video games that easy (always, even then, ignoring pains to maintain shimmery pleasures).

By the time we made it to the doctor a few days later it was apparently too late for stitches. The scar remains, hidden under my non-existent chin.

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8. The Cheese Finger Slice - early 90's

Mom took my brother to a movie I didn't want to see (yes, I've always been this impossible) and I wanted a grilled cheese (obvs!) and couldn't find a cheese slicer so I just used a large knife (always, even then, "resourceful"/idiotic).

Unfortunately at the age of 12 my knife skills were fairly underdeveloped and I sliced off the side of my left index finger. This particular scar is absolutely permanent and hasn't changed in 14 years. It's very noticeable.

That Hannukah I got cheese slicers as a brilliantly original gag gift from three (3) oh-so-amusing relatives. Now I just buy pre-sliced cheese, who has the time.

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7. FYI, I Still Have My Toe, Do Not Have Summer Wardrobe - early 90's

A few weeks after slicing off my finger, my diary states the following:

"We celebrated Cinco De Mayo at school on Tuesday. Me and all of the girls had a Mexican Restaurant. It was a hit! When we were setting up I dropped a table on my toe. It was bleeding and is bruised underneath. It's supposed to fall off soon. We went to the mall today and I got the most cool summer wardrobe ever."

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6. Palm Slice #1 - '95

When you're 14 you'll take any job you can get. Furthermore you'll comply when, after slicing your hand open, your boss tells you to sit it out, wait for the bleeding and the near-fainting to stop, 'cause you aren't legally allowed to use knives and therefore cannot visit the ER (always, even then, convinced any deviation would get me fired immediately, no matter how shitty my job). I didn't miss a beat, and the bleeding stops faster when we're all denying it together. The scar faded fast, too. I liked pretending it was my lifeline.

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What happened between '95 and 2002? Did I stop running into things? I started running away, I started running, I got sick all over and couldn't move, my life got dull and crazy too. There's a scar on my left calf, and I know when I got it (2000), but I don't know how. I got my energy back and catastrophe then, too.

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5. Palm Slice #2 - '02

Livejournal: "Today at the grille, a glass cut my hand open. it broke, and while breaking, sliced across my hand and it gushed blood forever. Which couldn't be more perfect, because every 20 seconds I get a big rush of pain from whatever nerve I sliced open, and we have to move on monday and I am going to be in tip-top shape to carry furniture. but i did get to go home from work early and [redacted ex-boyfriend] brought me Quiznos and my favorite drink ever, Diet Air. [It actually doesn't taste that good, but the name is pretty incredible.]"

Amendment: (Always, even then, writing things to make them true.) He was CERTAIN I could get worker's comp! This's the dude that made me go to Wal-Mart instead of Meijers to save five cents on a notebook. Waitresses don't get workman's comp for Chrissake. He was over the wound before it healed, so I broke it back open moving furniture & boxes 'cause he felt the cut was an invalid excuse. What the fuck do you want from me, I asked, bleeding all over the new desk I'd told him was too complicated to put together but he'd insisted on getting anyhow and then making me assemble with my hand wrapped up. Always, even then, I thought he could see me and I wouldn't have to spell it out (showing, not telling).

Look, douchebag, I model through it, I wanted to say. I don't cry over spilled blood. I'm not just whining, that's your job. Instead of saying those things I had an affair. La-la-la.

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4. Falling is Like This - Summer '03

Then I slipped on the rainy porch. It hadn't been ... sealed, or something? So the rain slid on the wood and so did my feet. Hurrah! Dusted my shoulders off and got in the car to go to work! I can DO IT! HURRAH! GAME ON!

"What the fuck happened to you?" my manager said when I limped in. Isn't that weird, how at first it feels like it'll pass and then it takes over your entire body? My left side felt like it'd been removed from my body, thrown into a meat processor and then stitched back on.

I thought my back was wet from the rain but it was wet with blood. Whoops.

"Go to the ER!" She said.

"But I'm the only to-go person on this shift!" I protested. Restaurant managers never tell you to go home, I've worked under very disgusting conditions before.

I wanted someone to save me or something, I think? I got home with my seat pulled right up to the steering wheel. I couldn't walk up the stairs so I collapsed on the landing and called my boyfriend from there.

He took me to the ER, and was quietly pissed that I'd made him leave work (why did I do that? to prove he was better than the last one? wtf?) to take me there, so then later my Mom came and he went back to work. He'd made me stay in town that summer with no friends, who else was supposed to take me, I thought. I could've waited, I know now.

I had an x-ray, I'd bruised my hip-bone or something. Oddly couldn't move for the rest of the day, then felt miraculously healed two days later when my BF and I were going to Toronto.

Luckily all the Vicodin came in handy later that summer when everything went to shit and I grasped for anything, anything at all, that claimed to kill pain.

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3. Kill the Messenger's Foot - February '05

my GIANT feet are better now seeeeeee

In February of 2005 I was run over by a bike messenger on 47th street, his fault. I was too preoccupied by my conviction that he had thirty children in Nigeria to feed to actually care to follow up with his employer. My skim mocha was lost, my soup was salvaged, and I was per ushe convinced it'd be fine and the pain would pass until it didn't. Then as always I walked back to work, even walked up the stairs, and then the swelling literally made my shoe come untied.

Swift-footed Ingrid took me from work to the Metropolitan Hospital emergency room, and sat with me there for eight hours 'til Krista got off work and relieved her. The foot was swollen to twice its regular size, and post X-Ray and uninsured I was refused free painkillers and ordered instead a week of house arrest with "fluffy pillows." That was when I first started calling myself Emily Dickinson. My Cocoon tightens - colors tease- I'm feeling for the Air- a dim capacity for wings -

J & S came over with food, drugs and magazines; British glossies with pull-out photos of skinny girls with large breasts. I applied for internships and took [now vanished] photos of my foot and hopped around while Krista yelled at me for not using the crutches. Krista ran errands for me and Natalie brought me yogurt and Ingrid made me breakfast. I slept a lot. I got the internships, opened a gmail account!, I fixed my life ... I thank the messenger.

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2. Autogear Handslice - December '07

As reported on this here blog: "Anyhow, yeah at about three or so, I was moving a box and somehow managed to get my hand caught on this pesky nail and it sliced clean through the skin on the front of my hand between my middle finger and my other finger and it was really intense ... I thought "I wish I knew someone who'd accidentally cut herself with a crack pipe before who could provide emotional support during this trying time," and luckily, I do, so I called her, and she provided said support ..." (read all about it here ) (scar remains, a nice white line. Everyone would yell at me for picking at it) (always, even then, running late and therefore clumsy)

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1. Election Legslice - November '08 - Election Legslice

Obviously my most glorious injury of all time was live-blogged on Election Day 2008, as you may recall. I was standing on a flimsy IKEA cabinet to screw in a curtain rod and I fell through the cabinet, thus inspiring a nail to journey straight up my leg. 'Cause I was so excitant about the election results, I forewent suggested journeys to the doctor/hospital/ER and dodged tetnus-related questions. Here's a flashback screenshot:

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My favorite part of this particular scar, besides that it reminds me that the past is real and the night that Obama won, is that when people asked me how it happened I can respond: "You know how people sometimes get pissed off and like slash someone's tires? Well since I live in NYC and don't have a car, this bitch got fresh with me and I was like whatever and she was like whatever and then instead of slashing my tires she just like slashed my leg." And then they think I'm really punk.

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Always, even now, preferring the story over the shots & stitches.

Autoportrait 3.0

[Autoportrait]

It's April of last year. This is where I've started to begin; April of last year. We're in Malibu and the wind is as perfect as wind has ever been. You're looking at the beach because you recognize a celebrity and her dog down there and she's huddled in your hoodie, her whole body squeezed up inside it 'cause she's always cold and even colder now smack between the pool beside us and the ocean below. She's so tiny in there, like a girl, and now looking back I remember it like this: it's because it was your hoodie, that's how you made both of us feel sometimes, like a girl all wrapped up. And alternately, like something torn of its surface and alone. But maybe that was just me. It's just easier to imagine or remember that it wasn't just me. I mean I feel smarter that way.

The wind picks up. We put rocks atop our construction paper and our crayons throw caution to the wind.

I come back to this beginning [Malibu, April] because this is the scene that opens the novel [fictionalized, of course, with everyone playing someone else, including me] I assume I'll eventually finish, otherwise this whole thing [my life] is kinda anti-climactic. In the novel, we are there with our crayons when I get an email on my phone from my other half, who I haven't heard from in years -- I've lost him, that much is true -- and it turns out he's in LA but he doesn't know I am too.

When I tell vosotros, you say, Clearly we are going to stalk him right now. My friends love me like that, drive faster for me. It's a novel. This didn't happen.

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Malibu in April was a place where everything felt perfect except me. And you and you and you and you and you, and her. It was like crying and laughing at the same time, it was the opposite of fucking & laughing at the same time. The air and the sky, and how at night the stone floor would get so cold, and how I slept so easily next to her because I trusted the silence so bad. I was torn up from all sides, like a fistful of frayed rope.

The three of us in the sunshine; three jellyfish with hoods up and phones out but unimportant, dream on, shades shading.

See -- I'd decided to go to Malibu only a few hours before I got on the plane to go to Malibu. I was still packed from the trip to China I never took, and though that dream had been dashed a few weeks prior to Malibu I had not yet unpacked because I was very busy self-destructing in New York, crawling with blades flared across those creeping warm dumb almost-spring days. Then you called me from the airport and said do you want to go.

That was the week when my heart crashed. I don't mean broke. I mean everything breaks my heart but my heart still works though, I mean that my heart crashed.

I was alone at the time of the crash. There were no witnesses. Or there was one witness; later. Your finger on my skin, and maybe I told you it was your fault and maybe I didn't but it didn't really matter, it wasn't her fault, I mean it wasn't your fault, I mean it was my fault, I mean nothing is anyone's fault except my own and cracks like blades and I had a magic pill that made me forget. It kills me now not to remember.

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In Malibu we spoke in little bright charges of electricity and then retreated like lights going off. We drove like nothing bad had ever happened. Does she know, she would ask, does she know? Does she know?

No, of course not. No one knew. We thought we knew and we didn't.

Something changed that week inside me. I mean it changed before I went. In a way I knew what I had to do but I decided instead not to do it because I was scared that if I did what I had to do that I would end up alone and heartcrashed. I mean that writing this I have to pretend like you'll never read it. You, and you, and you and you and you and you and you it was not just you, or even just you, vosotros, you, you ah'tem, ah'ten.

I mean that now as I write this I am heartcrashed to know two or three things I know for sure: that you will not read it, and that you won't either. You weigh against one another like steel and iron, like fire.

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In the past week, three people have mentioned to me that it's still hard to see themselves, here, sometimes, in the right kind of light. If I get you at a bad angle. If I was in the right place at the wrong time. I was, I guess. I love the wrong time. I am the wrong time, you're a circle and I'm a fist and an angle. No, I'm a circle.

It's just that I don't know that much about the right time except that I'm determined to prove to you that right can come out of wrong, that right doesn't need to be new. Like I don't trust my own decision to always prefer the blank slate. Like I don't know what I want so I just feel like right now I am trying to remove myself from everyone who could be impacted by that decision.

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I was someone else before you and you. The red bulb and drawing on her back, the girl who lied and the girl who cried, Brooklyn and Harlem and red red red and smoke in the air and the secrets you share alone and naked that you can't explain, which is what makes everything exactly what it is.

And now when we talk about the way we were back then (before you, and you) -- before I knew the jellyfishes I know now.

I don't think I could do shit like that anymore, I said, I mean. Now you can't pretend like you don't get what you deserve when you get it.

Dra-ma, she said.

I don't want to do anything we won't remember, I'd said then.
But it's fun, she'd said.

I don't know that girl back then. I was all desire, no want. I was patient and fast. I dug that Radiohead last night, she said the next morning a chunk of years ago. I love the things there isn't time to say at the time. That was years ago. One day I too would no longer want to remember.

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I was born with three wishes, but I didn't know any words. My head like a cannonball and flames to the brain. I wasted my first wish on words. My second: no one can leave before I'm ready. Third wish = Infinity.
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Now she's picking glass out of her foot with tweezers.
I missed the part when she stepped in the glass.

"Don’t hurt me," she says.
Her first wish.

I ask her if she wants a the middle or the end of the sandwich

and she says she wants the end. She says she likes the ends of things.
"I like pretzel ends, I like hot dog ends, Twizzler ends. The ends of things."
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When she wrote me and said It's stagnant, and you don't like that, I said you're right even though I'd never really thought that before. I never thought I craved change because I didn't like staying still. I always assumed I craved change because where I am never feels right. By "assumed" I mean "I've always known."

But did I tell you about how the air in Malibu was so perfect, how everything was so perfect and airy, how slippery it is on top of a rainbow and skating.

I'm telling you the air was perfect. I mean it when I tell you that I think it was in the air. In Malibu, remember? Where we were when this story began, and a place we will never be again. Those were the last moments of that dream. So there it is. Behind me. I had mentioned, after all, the ocean.

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I've never been good at describing the weather 'cause it always just seemed so obvious. Now I'm obsessed with it. I want to know about the wind and the ocean and all the things that people who like life like to be close to.

Maybe that was because that was the week I realized that everything was so much larger than me. The good and the bad. That's when things started changing in me. In the fall I decided I wanted to be infinite. In the winter I hid in the middle of everything.

Now there are so many yous, there are so many shes, it's like the universal you. The universal she.
The memory, which we can forget if we want to,
or change when we re-write it,
or eat it, and keep it in our guts forever
like o
like h
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When I re-write you, I will make the breeze breezier. I will make your eyes bluer even if they weren't blue in the first place. I pick blue because it's the color of sky. You will laugh at me when I say this.

And now I feel like you laughed at me from above and she laughs at me from below and here I am in the middle, nowhere near the ends of things. And I can't hear. Because isn't the wind terrible.
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Which is to say none of the pronouns I so carelessly employ necessarily apply to anyone specific, I mean that.

I wish we had a proper vosotros.

I'm sort of on my own right now, in a weird way. Not for reasons I can explain. But I am, in my head. Oh, no one ever makes sense.
It feels almost like when I stopped taking the anti-depressants years ago,
like coming up from underwater onto a shore that looked black to you but golden to me.

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The night before I left for Malibu (before I knew I was going to Malibu), I was on the phone with her and then you arrived and I told her my Mom was on the other line but she wasn't, and never would be. Not at that hour.

And I saw you. And we were together for a moment or twenty in the darkness. And then you left. I felt like a very very bad person, which was sweeter than saltwater. Maybe that happened or maybe you didn't.

I called her back. "So anyway ..." I began.

And we spoke like only simple things had transpired between before and now, like nothing had changed, maybe she'd had a snack or I'd put on my pajamas, like we are two little rocks of love that are stronger than time or change or memory or anything. That's something. You need two or three things you know for sure, a person and maybe two or three more people who are like rocks. Then you can have wind on top of the rocks which don't move. The trouble begins when you mistake Malibu for forever. When you mistake anything for forever.

And the next day I slept until I couldn't sleep anymore because every waking moment was hard. I woke up and you called and asked if I wanted to go. Of course. Of course all I ever want to do is go. I didn't tell you that I'd gone until I got there and you were mad at me for going. But I was safe.

And I went.

++

We came back laughing. We took two Valiums each, or maybe you took three. Then we were really flying. Nothing hurt. I'd always hated flying but I wanted that flight to never end. Our seats were large, we pretended to be rich people because you pretended to be a rich person all the time and I went with you wherever you wanted to go.

And I loved you so much in that moment. As a friend, perhaps I had never loved you or needed you more as I did in the air that day, coming back from where you had taken me and feeling you'd never take me anywhere again. I always knew, you know.

Hiding in your hoodie, and the Valium you put into my palm.

The food they brought us on trays. We flew through sky and clouds and the world was as perfect as it had ever been.

++

Nobody ever really changes. So you take it or leave it.

++

I've always wanted to run away with someone crazy.
Instead I came back to someone who made me smile.

Instead now I

++

I think of Neal Cassady,
I even think of Old Neal Cassady the father we never found,
I think of Neal Cassady, I think of Neal Cassady.

I've got a postcard super-glued to my desk of William Burroughs trying to stab Jack Kerouac with a dagger. I did that 'cause I opened a super glue bottle and it got everywhere and so I had to put something new on top of it, so I put this postcard on top of it and after all this time it is still here on the desk from the whorehouse. "That's what you call it?" She asked me, once. "You call it 'the whorehouse'?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said to her.

++

The ends of things.



Then you left, and I wasn't ready.

Autowin Book Club #2: Lying, by Lauren Slater

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"Sickness demands compassion, but even so, one can be forgiven for wanting to throttle the narrator of Lauren Slater's latest book, Lying.''
-Rebecca Mead, "Stranger than Fiction: Lauren Slater's Lying: A Memoir."
The New York Times, July 16, 2000
++
Angela Hayes: "What are you trying to accomplish in writing Blue Beyond Blue [a book of fairy tales]?"
Lauren Slater: "I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything through the book. The plan wasn’t to put the stories in a book and publish them. My goal was the same as it is in my other writing in that I wanted to create a world through words that was palpable and tangible and could stand on its own."
- A Conversation with Lauren Slater.
small spiral notebook, Summer 2005
++

I have a lot of feelings about this book because speaking of lying, have I got some stories for you. I mean it -- that's just how beautifully I've worked it all out, that my life's narrative and this book's narrative have come together unexpectedly but perfectly, offering numerous "factions" for me to weave into a multi-layered tale of drama & intrigue relevant to our discussion of Lauren Slater's memoir, Lying. Butttt ... I'm not gonna tell these stories. Of course, I can tell whatever stories I want to, but wouldn't that be silly, to do that, just because I can.

I've been asking "why the lies?" a lot lately, and though I've found answers for many of the situations begging this inquiry, I haven't found an answer to justify -- or even understand -- Slater's lies.

Here's how I see it: you can lie to protect people, lie playfully with postmodern intent, lie 'cause you can't help it, lie 'cause you're pathological and it's what you do, lie to save your ass. I've accepted lies, overlooked stories I should've been looking over and trusted when I shouldn't have. But generally the liars I've loved are people with hearts -- thus me loving them in the first place. They display, somehow, a degree or remorse, humility, self-awareness, responsiblity or, lacking all these things -- at least a reason, even if it's a fucked up reason.

Furthermore, I've lied in my writing. I've lied to protect people, lied about a fact to get at an emotional truth, lied to clean up a narrative, lied to protect myself professionally, legally or emotionally.

But I can't seem to figure out exactly why Slater is so entitled to her lies, besides "Because I can."

++

"I'll tell you about lies. There are white lies and black lies and many shades of grey lies. Some lies are justified. Lies told out of kindness, lies that preserve dignity, lies that spare pain. Everybody's a liar dear."
-Abraxas in conversation with Jenny, The L Word

"What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change. It's the currency of the world."
-Dan, Closer
++
++

Maybe, since I've already written all my good stories but I'm not done talking about myself (oh man! I've barely even started! Watch me go! memememeeme!) I could tell you a story about someone else, but say it was about me, 'cause it's a metaphor for how I really feel, which is detached. I was just talking to Alex about Lying, which she loved or hated or maybe didn't read at all, and she said she would've liked it better as a novel, like James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning.

I said Bright Shiny Morning doesn't stand up to bright & shiny mornings themselves, which I actually love, because I'm not really a vampire as I said, it's just a metaphor for how I really feel, which is hungry and heartless and pale. That book I talk about that I'm writing is basically A Million Little Pieces with a lesbian reveal on page 256, with extra drunkenness and unemployment. It might not be about that at all, but that doesn't matter, 'cause it's a metaphor for how I really feel, which is abandoned and lost because of my mother, who was mean, and because of my father, who I never met 'cause he was on the road selling things, and then he died, thus becoming the inspiration for the book Death of a Salesman, which is actually a play, but they print plays in books now, because of the Industrial Revolution, which is a metaphor for the theater, literature, death and my father.

Anyhow back to Alex, who only read half this book. Speaking of lesbians and halves, I'm not actually gay or even a bisexual, it's just a very current marketing angle and besides, boys are impossible to communicate with and I'm tired, and bisexuality is a metaphor for how I actually feel, which is conflicted. I'm inspired by Lindsay Lohan, Haviland, and Alex who did not read Lying 'cause of the internet, which I don't believe in, but the internet is a metaphor for how I really feel, which's alienated and lost without my mother, who doted on me like a princess, but not a real princess like Tinkerbell, who might not look real, but feels very real to me.

Anyhow if you want to read a good metaphor for bisexuality you could read Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, which is one of the reasons why I'm gay, or metaphorically gay, but mostly it's because of my mother, who missed my college graduation for the WNBA finals, and is not really a social worker, but a nun, and a saleswoman, and Tinkerbell, and the only gay in the village. The End! DISCUSS.

++
"I love that there's a secret
behind every secret I've ever told."
-Stephen Dunn, from "Loves"
++
"I had not known, until then, that beauty lived beneath the supposedly solid surface of things, how every line was really a curve uncreased, how every hill was smoke."
-Lauren Slater, Lying: A Memoir
++

I hoped Slater was attempting to explore one of the following ideas, which interest me:

- Lying as a Valid Storytelling Device in its own right: Slater argues in her introduction to The Best American Essays of 2006 that "Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future."

Similarly, I'd argue that deception is a natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of total honesty, only to return to our excuses, our withholding, our salesmen and our politicians, our exaggerations, our rapid, minute white lies, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined life of storytelling. I'd argue that truth and lies aren't good vs. bad, there's tons of nuance, and I find investigations of this stimulating and compelling reads. From time to time, Slater does explore this issue: "Why is what we feel less true than what is?" (pg. 162) and so forth. At these times, she's poised and interesting, vivid and educating.

But ultimately she doesn't seem to prove this point for anyone besides herself. She argues that truth is nuanced and therefore she can write an un-true memoir, but she doesn't argue that anyone else can (or should), nor does she ever explain why her story needs to be told at all, or why it matters, or why this experience is so crucial, so vital -- just begging to be addressed -- that she needs to go through all this metaphoric struggle to begin with.

-In order to make "sane" people understand the crippling nature of mental illness, we must explain it in physical terms: It's difficult to be a privileged white girl writing about mental illness without being scoffed at, call it the Elizabeth Wurtzel effect.

I understand first-hand how much more impact one's description of mental illness becomes when it's manifested physically, or visually.

When I explain I'm having a major depressive disorder episode, I get eye rolls and frustration/confusion -- "snap out of it." When I say the fibro is making my whole body throb and ache (why? 'cause I'm having a major depressive disorder episode) I'm supported and helped.

But, ultimately, this is just the point I want Slater to make. It's not the point she's actually trying to make, though the beginning gives me hope: "I wish I had epilepsy, so I could find a way of explaining the dirty, spastic glimmering place I had in my mother's heart."

Ultimately, she convinces us that her story can only be told as a metaphor rather than through the facts themselves. But beyond that ... so what? We get only that she CAN, and so she will, 'cause she's a liar, and she must. But why must she tell her story at all? I don't know.

Is it because she already told her story, and it was time to write another book and she doesn't like writing about things other than herself? If it's all one big post-modern exercise, than perhaps we should've been informed of this, rather than being lead to believe the story was somewhat true and somewhat untrue -- as in, she isn't just lying about epilepsy, she's lying about all of it. She's writing a novel with her actual self as the main character. Which is neat, and fun, and cool, but she could've done that without all the dwelling on the revolutionary self-importance of her lying and her compulsion to do so.

Does she do her subject justice? What is she doing at all? Postmodern memoirs like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are fun, playful and adventurous, but Lying feels self-righteous, especially 'cause she fakes seizures in hospitals without recognizing the time she wastes of everoyne around her. She's so self-centered, it's hard to care much about what happens to her.

Though she's willing to cop to being a liar or a bad person, she's not ready to accept responsibility for the effect this could have on other people, or for how this reflects on her quality as a person.

Undoubtedly, she's a gifted writer. I mean, she's so good! She spins a brilliant sentence and a compelling page. I underlined, I loved the quotes, there were sections that spoke to me clearly and directly. I'd read it again in a heartbeat, I looked forward to picking it up, and I'd recommend it.

Yet at the same time, she sometimes made me feel sick to my stomach. It was often too close to home. I sometimes wanted to punch her in the face.

And the more I research Slater, the more confused I am about how I'm supposed to feel about this book. So I'll stop talking and ask you how did you feel about it.

1. In The New York Times review (The Last Word) of Lauren Slater's book "Unpacking Skinner's Box," Laura Miller writes: "[Slater] is not above manipulating her readers, while technically avoiding inaccuracy, if it will make the tale more potent. This recklessness is both the kernel of her talent and her nemesis; she is forever threatening to cross the line." Do you feel this applies to Lying?

2. In her New York Times' review of Lying, Janet Maslin writes: "It is not likely that the reader's interest in Ms. Slater's medical and philosophical condition will rival her own." Does it?

3. How did you react to the love affair with the poet teacher at Breadloaf? Haviland and I reacted very differently to it, and I'm curious how other people felt.

4. Does it matter to you if the story is true or not? Would you have read it differently had it been a novel?

5. What was your favorite scene?

6. Do you think this book would've been written differently now in the post-James Frey internet age, when facts are more easily and instantly verifiable?

7. The primary difference between a memoir and a novel, as I see it, is the meta-story implicit in the memoir. When reading Jeanette Walls' Glass Castle, to pick a popular example, the story is not only what's in the book, it's also the story of a woman who survived homelessness and insane parents and lived to tell the tale, and eloquently. If her story isn't true, then it's just the story, which is fine, but that's a novel.

There's some things I want to tell you, and you can tell me how you feel about them, and if it changes your feelings about this book.

So What She Lies, I'd Lie to Her Too:

a) The forward is presented as a letter of endorsement and praise written by Dr. Hayward Krieger, Ph.D., a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Krieger does not exist.

He is a character invented by Ms. Slater, who -- when called out for this blatant misrepresentation -- sent a letter to the NY Times as Dr. Krieger expressing "his"/her outrage at this discrediting.

b) Ms. Slater was born in 1963 and began at Brandeis in 1981, which puts her at Breadloaf Writer's Conference in '81 -- according to the narrative she was 17 and it was the summer before college. She cites Francine Prose as an instructor and Mark Strand as a visiting poet. Prose did not begin teaching at Bread Loaf until 1984. Mark Strand's years:'73, '82, '84, '85, '92, '93. Slater did, without a doubt, attend Bread Loaf (she describes it in detail in her well-written introduction to The Best American Essays 2006), but she did not attend at the age of 17 in 1981 under a different name, as she says in this book. Consequently I doubt she had the affair she describes either.

c) Ms. Slater's memoir "Prozac Diaries" apparently is the true memoir she claimed she wouldn't be able to write. In Prozac Diaries, Slater recounts growing up with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and depression with two sisters who were not mentioned in Lying. The book was praised for its honesty and passion. Apparently she then felt the need to write another memoir about herself, but with a different syndrome than the one she already wrote about. This sort of makes my head hurt just to think about it.

d) In Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah: Lauren Slater's book "Lying," on blogcritics.org, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti -- who is also an epileptic -- has this to say about her description of the illness: "For all of its cinematic imagery and consistent with epilepsy symptoms (for the most part,), it's lacking some of the personal detail that I would expect from an epileptic, and also, for someone with temporal lobe epilepsy, a condition for which hypergraphia is a major concern, the book is remarkably short. It's that Slater is almost too perfect in her fucked up, epileptic fugue and the tale she tells that gives rise to doubt."

e) There was quite a stir over Slater's book Unpacking Skinner's Box, in which she "re-tells" the stories of major psychological experiments. Take a gander at this particular argument, from beatrice.com.

++
"Is the urge to make meaning a misguided human coping mechanism that gives a false shape to our existence? How best to live? To die?"
(Lauren Slater)
++
"Thoughts?"
(Haviland Stillwell)

Multi-Media (VIDEO and WORDS): Sacred & On Fire With the Same Force That Made The Stars (Live Through This)

[A few days before the day I moved out of Planet Harlem, Stef and Alex and I went to the roof to BBQ paper because when there's nothing left to burn, you have to set all your bank statements on fire. I made a video of it, and it's at the end of this post but it's not on YouTube 'cause it's This-Post-specific. We burn some crap screenplays I penned in 9th grade but we read them first. We're wearing clothes found in the netherlands of my closet and I was way too immersed in The Sads to bother with makeup or the hair-iron. This raw beauty is what garnered "When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You Have to Set Yourself on Fire" the Best in Show award at this years Festival of Excellent Films. Basically, it's like when we won the Uh Huh Her contest, but sans-prize-pack.]

One thing I've been noticing lately is all the people. I've always known this city was teeming with people -- people who live here, people who work here, and so on. But, for all I've spoken of Emily Dickinson and agoraphobia I didn't realize the precisely how self-centered & insane my Planet Harlem Apartment world had become until just now. 'Cause just now I've been thrust right back into people-world again, all at once and all over, like Dorothy landing in Oz except dirtier and with less choreography.

See, due to circumstances beyond my control (or so I tell myself to make myself feel better) that left me sans-home as of September 1st, I'm currently living in Long Island with Alex and her parents and commuting daily to and from the city for um ... Alex's job. Also, for about six weeks now I've been off the juice. JK ... kinda. More on this later.

Anyhow. In Long Island I wake up at 7, we get on the train at 8:26 so Alex can be at work at 9. By 7 P.M, I'm feeling boring and sleepy. The body beats out of habit, my heart isn't even warm. See, I used to be a superhero and no one could touch me, not even myself.

++

About six weeks ago my doctor switched up some of my meds. Though I'd been taking the same RX for about five years, I'd found a way last year to use those capsule-sized lifelines into a fresh & bad habit and it was killing me. I'd been disciplined and healthy with it for years until May 2007 and yet when faced with emptiness at that time I chose to fight chaos (unemployment, new home, strange schedule, changing social life, internet-world) with chaos. I was foolish enough to think I could establish self-discipline with undisciplined strokes.

I felt real good, but what good is it to be a genius superhero if you're going faster than the speed of light towards obliteration.

In the emo cave I was always chasing something, like I was in a race that was also a tape stuck in a loop. The nature of race was clear when I started it; I was racing to keep up with my ex's mania in hopes we'd eventually share a moment or two eye-to-eye.

Time went on, and though my problems changed, my behavior didn't. I wouldn't even notice how much crazy I was talking until someone came over, or a roommate dared utter a word to me. Any word, of course, sounded like "firecracker" or "boo!"

++

And that's why lately life has felt like some kind of shock therapy -- like I'm all cutting and no edge. All these people everywhere ... it gives me perspective. I'm one of millions, not one in a million, and now I'm forced to face how fucked up my whole existence has been for the last sixteen months until six weeks ago, maybe even longer than I want to say, 'cause there's so much I might never let go of -- and maybe I don't have to.

Also, I'm really tired now.

Falling asleep has been easier, but waking up is harder.

After waking up there's breakfast and then rush hour on the train. Once in the city, I've got no apartment to go to so I'm automatically surrounded by people and at their mercy so I'm modeling through the devil's baby in my uterus or vicious allergies. People, people and then more people in theaters, delis, restaurants, jostling for a seat at Starbucks, parking my body & heavy bag on the floor at Penn Station or Barnes & Noble or on Central Park's big wireless lawns where people are running & biking & beaming with beaming bright buoyant bountiful babies in expensive strollers, at the gym at rush hour with the people soaring towards absolutely nowhere like gazelles on thumping slick black exercise machines, and I'm navigating the rocky roads between hunger and longing-withdrawal and the library, the 1 train, the A, the C, the D, the E, the N-R, the 2-3, the 4-5-6. I'll go to Natalie's or see my therapist or when I go to this one job I go to I'll see those people.

The every train, The going and going more, next stop, last stop, stop stop stop.

And when I want to have a fit about something, like how expensive it is in the world, or how many people's cell phone conversations I've been forced to overhear, or how many private acts I've accepted that I must now do in public ... I just can't. I cannot have a fit in my car or my room. I cannot have a fit at all.

In me-me-me world when I needed a fit I'd go lie on my bed & cry & moan and stare at the ceiling hoping to break through and throw or stare or scream sharply at my phone with despair, refreshrefresh refresh inbox (1) fucking a it's the goddamn hrc again. I'd think about breaking walls like I've said before but I never did break any walls 'cause I couldn't afford that kind of security deposit.

It's not that I never left when I lived in P-Harlem because I did. But ... when I did, usually Caitlin would pick me up in a car so I'd avoid all the people, and I always felt safe with Caitlin, wherever we went. And anyhow usually we went places to see other familiar faces.

Those faces were anchors grounding me safely distant from the kind of social anxiety that builds up when you've not spoken to a stranger in days, when you've not only been inside your own head for too long but crawling around in it, building a new library in there and scaling the walls and jumping from its roof. Anyplace unfamiliar gave me paralyzing fear but now that evens out over the day 'cause I'm forced into society so much that each little encounter is no longer The Only Social Interaction With a Stranger of my day. So there's less consciousness and pressure, it's no longer this minute but just the way things are.

At the end of the day I'll see Alex and at Penn Station late at night there's so many people, like the girls who are still wearing the things that girls like that wore in the mid-nineties which makes me feel like nothing changes except the brand of expectation clinging to their longings.

++

When I read posts from last summer and autumn I can spot the times that I was beetle-buzzing through my own brain like a run-on hornet. Details, linkage, obsessive proof-reading and revisions. Words and more words.

And so I was reading Sam Anderson's obit of David Foster Wallace, and he says this:

"For Wallace, a thought could never actually, in good conscience, realistically, be finished — there was always one more reversal, one more qualifying clause, and an honest writer had to follow them out. Hence the famously never-ending sentences that spun off, even more famously, into never-ending footnotes. The black hole of his self-consciousness drew everything into it, even and especially self-consciousness itself. But that compulsion to be exhaustive was, apparently, exhausting."

I can't -- and don't intend to -- compare myself to Wallace. He's a genius, I'm a weirdo. He's published & famous & legendary, I'm a weirdo.

But I relate to one thing -- I relate to the words upon words. 'Cause when I wrote like that I was certain to not only address my point, but all examples, counterpoints, not only my thesis but yours and all the thoughts I'd ever had about it, and I'd play devil's advocate and people's advocate and lozo's advocate and feminism's advocate and sometimes my own advocate too. I wanted to speak to everyone and I wanted to shoot myself down before you could.

I wonder if DFW felt like his head might explode, if he was tired like I am.

I think it was good to be in my head so completely, like I needed that phase. I needed to live a life that didn't make any sense -- I mean you think you know but you have no idea -- but to me, to my reality (which contained only me & my people) -- it was a cool life. 'Cause you know what? We had a time.

And I'm sure I'll have phases like that again throughout my life, those rushing manic surges that sometimes enrapture an artist to do whatever she can to chase the dragon into dawnlight, towards wherever it is that stars become people and people become poets.

I miss the night-fires, I miss the abandon and the rampant self-destruction. I miss knowing everything wasn't right but not caring because I was so alive, because it was so fun or so vivid or so full or because I hit the streets with all I had. I miss absolving myself of responsibility for myself. I miss the future we used to talk about with such generosity. I miss the stories we believed in and I want to write the ones we never told. I want so many things.

++

Sunday Top Ten: We Didn't Do It

"We think of our lives as a series of events ... of things happening one after another. But it's just as accurate to see our lives as a series of things that don't happen to us."
(Ira Glass, intro to "We Didn't" episode of This American Life)

She did it, she boarded and flew all the way across the country, away from New York's industrial erections and valiantly towards somewhere that made up for its failed promises in baths of well-lit potential and it wasn't just her who did it. People move in body if not in mind, and finish novels and start revolutions and quit jobs and lose weight and get really into yoga and sometimes I do and I will but when you think about it -- and I have, 'cause I have a lot of thoughts happening at once in my head -- there's way way more things that I didn't do.

Sunday Top Ten
We Didn't Do It

exhibit a: things i was gonna do

10. California Here I Come

I didn't move to California or Michigan but I L.A apartment-hunted online. I didn't say goodbye to all that and disappear like heaven on wheels but if I'd had the financial means I would've left this apartment before they asked me to but I didn't so I didn't. I didn't move to Walden Pond but I looked on craigslist for cabins in the woods. I didn't leave for the summer or the winter but I packed for both. I didn't move to Australia but I downloaded the form to get a passport and left it on my desktop where it still stands today, awaiting my attention, having survived the acquisition and subsequent fall of a new passport in the meantime.

9. You Had Time

I didn't write my book. I took a lot of notes. Mom & I voyaged to the Michigan storage space to excavate the artifacts of my little life and Mom said she'd kill me for losing the key to my locker's lock 'cause we had to pay for a chainsaw 'cause I was supposed to hold onto the key but I didn't. I read books for research and I assembled my notes & research & wrote an outline, marketing plan, etc. But I didn't write the actual book 'cause I'm not ready for such substantial truths and so I decided to write a novel instead but I didn't. But I will. "Did you know it took Diaz 11 years to write Wao?" I wrote to my agent. "This segues neatly into my next topic ..."

8. Falling is Like This

I didn't jump out the window but I did forgive you except for the few times later on when I didn't. I didn't overdose on anything though I felt my heart beat so hard inside my chest I thought it might leap right out of my body on legs of its own, bound across the city and get on a plane and leave me all alone, heartless. I didn't ever go heartless but I did get sad and mean. I thought I could make it all better and I tried but I didn't.

7. Out of Range

I didn't apply for an M.F.A. program but I sat at B&N with books and copied down lists of the best schools, sent out for brochures to put into the file folder "Graduate Programs." So I didn't move to a room of my own in Iowa City where it'd get so quiet at night that I'd feel my sober heart beat like a horse. I didn't move to Missoula to forget about reality and embrace my past friends as characters.

6. And Darling

I didn't write back to many emails & I've got 182 e-mails in my draft folder and some of them are for blog-readers. I generally try to discard drafts rather than keep them but sometimes 'cause of auto-save I didn't.

Of the 182 e-mails I never sent: 33% = to exes, 33% = jobs , 20% = angry rants to friends & 10% = emails I thought I DID send but didn't.

These are the titles of some of the emails I didn't send: Sancho is Not Retarded, obvs it's me so it's not good news, STOP., Typist Position, that's fine I'll send you three emails in a row I'm not above that, portfolio samples, copy gig, part-time assistant, your blog makes my firefox crash, fall or silence, UPDATE, room for rent, communication, re: apts and such, Pick Me! So Qualified!, um., guestbian blog, the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs, this is stuff for my book that i am going to write about myself because i am self-centered, home is where my habits have a habitat, some things i wanted to say to you.

exhibit b: things i was gonna do

5. If I Gave You my Number

I didn't try to track down anyone's phone number when my phone got stolen so I didn't ever keep in touch with anyone I knew before that time though I didn't ever say I would anyway so I didn't.

4. Take me Anywhere

I didn't go to Reno or China or the West Indies but I researched plane fares and packing lists and room rates. I didn't go to Paris and I didn't apply for Yaddo but I did download the application & inserted it into the "writing-work related" folder and I bookmarked some web pages.

3. Walking With A Ghost

I didn't start The Factory but I watched Factory Girl and started to read The Diary of Andy Warhol but I didn't finish it. I looked at warehouses online all over the country but I didn't look at any in 3-D but I still believe in it and I'll make it happen, I didn't yet but I will.

2. Fix You Up

I didn't make my resumè into the kick-ass thing it wants to be but I did look at resume examples and read books about resumès and made ten different copies of my resumè for different kinds of jobs but I don't like any of them. I didn't put together a copywriting portfolio but that's 'cause Brian didn't send me my samples and I asked him twice. I didn't call Natalie's temp agency and I didn't work at the new Starbucks just to make it go faster and I didn't start that Sacred Altar business with Mary or sell that teevee show with Carly and I didn't send that new pitch to New York Magazine and I didn't do the Best Idea EVER yet but I WILL.

1. As Cool as I Am

I didn't stop writing this blog. I didn't do another comment contest or make Autowin totebags or black shirts or continue Great Mysteries of Life or The Year in Review. But I mean I'm still writing this blog. That's something.

I thought the whole world was gonna change in January and it did but it didn't change exactly how we'd expected. But when I say now that I feel like things are falling in place I'm not taking about magic anymore, or blessings or karma, I'm just talking about people and stability and change and calm that's tangible. It's like the year of magical thinking, and if you haven't read it I'm not giving anything away when I quote the last lines: "You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. [John] told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

I love ending a blog on an obliquely optimistic note. I think if I sound vague, it's 'cause I feel vague too. Vague ... but good.

I'm trying to think of the biggest thing I didn't do and I'll write about that later but first I'll ask you; what didn't you do this year?

Stuff I've Been Reading: June & July Super-Special

Hello and welcome to "Stuff I've Been Reading," a weekly variety show starring Barry Williams (the original Greg Brady) and the number one flirt herself Haviland Stillwell. I'm your host Riese. Today's show is going to be a blog post about Stuff I've Been Reading, a.k.a. the (bi)monthly auto-win segment inspired by Nick Hornby's column by the same name at The Believer. (Prior installments of "SIBR": Jan., Feb, March, April/May ) Hornby's mission statement, and mine: ""A Hilarious and True Account of One Man's Struggle With The Monthly Tide of The Books He's Bought and The Books He's Been Meaning to Read.""

This month I combine June & July into a Big Reading Sandwich, like World Book. More about Auto-Win Book Club #2 at the end of this post. Guess who wrote a book? Mia Kirshner (Jenny from The L Word)! OMG, what if I WROTE Some of her Parts? Like, the memoir? Then we could vote on what's better, my edition of Jenny Schecter's Some of Her Parts or Mia's book I Live Here, which's not about the toolshed, it's about people with real problems, like in Africa and stuff. It's not out 'til October, but probs most of you know a thing or two about waiting.

BOOKS BOUGHT/RECEIVED
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Dìaz
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett
How Sassy Changed my Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
The Worst Days of Your Life, edited by Mark Jude Ponier
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

BOOKS READ
Veronica, by Mary Gaitkskill - (re-read)
Live Through This,, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
How Sassy Changed my Life, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

I was talking about books and re-reading w/a blog commenter on facebook (I'd like to make this sentence as geeky as possible. I should add: "while reading babylon-5 fan-fic & watching re-runs of Quantum Leap."), and he asked me: "How do you know if you really like a book if you only read it once? Reading a book for the first time is like having sex with someone for the first time ... it's new, and it's exciting, but none of the bits quite line up like you're used to, and it's always a little bit confusing."

[Just as a sidenote; he also compared creative writing vs. literary criticism to sex in a recent comment.]

I'm currently in withdrawal over Mary Gaitskill's inability to pound out a Joyce Carol Oates-ian nine novels a year. I eat M.G.'s work. I'm hungry. So I returned to Veronica. I loved it! Again! I'm re-reading all my favorite books now from now on. I realized I'd missed much of the present-tense voice (w/its trees, moss, grass, etc) the first time around. Caitlin read it simultaneously for the first time so we could have mini-bookclub.

If I had to compare re-reading Veronica to sex, I'd say it'd be like having sex with an ex you know you're going to fall in love with all over again, and that this time around it'll work. That never happens in real life, that's why I love literature.

I'd suggested Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction as a book club selection, then got it anyway. Firstly, so glad I picked Oscar Wao. (which clearly I won't talk about here, 'cause that's what Auto-Win Book Club is for!) I read it in about two days, 'cause I thought I'd include it in a review I penned for a new magazine, but didn't finish in time.

Anyhow, if you thought you'd like LTT, you should get it, 'cause it has some really perfect moments, I'd recommend it. OK but -- Secondly; though the collection's got a great-line up (e.g., Eileen Myles, Bell Hooks, Cristy C. Road) and several intensely compelling pieces, I did yell at my wall and scream at Tinkerbell about it.

Here's why: most essays aren't about creativity & self-destruction so much as they're about rehabilitation from creativity & self-destruction and advice on how to stop self-destruction. I know that's wise, but it felt preachy, I was expecting more about how to lessen the harm and incorporate various 'self-destructive' behaviors, not escape it. Myles's contribution, about obsessive toothbrushing and alcoholism, "Live Through That?!" is a stand-out - exceptional piece. Other highlights include Silas Howard's San Francisco addiction memoir "Friends as Heroes" and Toni Blackman's poignant "Rappin' my Wounds." An excerpt:

"Your insanity is his insanity. His crazy belongs to you ... you want to love him ... want to make the nonsense make sense ... he has used your secrets as weapons in verbal warfare. He berates you and puts down your work. He tells you how to speak at meetings, how to stand in line ... he was taught that criticism is love. It is not ... He wants you to be different, to be like him, think like him, talk like him and you want to simply be. Even his best attempts at apologies feel like intentional disses." (pg. 138, Toni Blackman)

But what really got my goat is that of all the pieces, only ONE addresses incorporating this self destruction into their lives (sans "my work is MUCH better now that I'm sober/eating/whatevs!" waxing poetic) -- and it's a bipolar writer arguing that other bipolar peoples should eschew "cutting off" "so-called symptoms" with medicine/treatment and rather explore their inner beings and untapped capacities. Then she mouths off about how she loves her cello and sometimes she sits down and talks to it and all bipolar people should damn the man, fuck all kinds of Seroquel, mental health is just trying to keep us DOWN!

That's fine, I hope she never hits or berates her daughter/son or girlfriend/boyfriend, like um, Toni Blackman's ex-boyfriend, clearly all he needed was a cello or maybe a viola. Moving on.

How do I consistently end up w/Virginia Woolf by the pool? Key Bisquane's windy bluesy wind nearly stole A Room Of One's Own, and I found myself on the Ro-Boat deck reading Orlando. Anyways, you know how when you're exercising, you're pumped up thinking how good this activity is for you rather than how good it feels right that minute? It was like that. I kinda felt like Woolf was playing with us, but in the funnest way possible, like "I'm Virigina Woolf and I'm gonna write a crazy-ass story where all kinds of bizarre shit happens and it's kinda mostly about/for this girl I la-la-love! There's pictures! Oh, and it's gonna be GOOD!" I found it super interesting/monumental from a queer studies perspective, filled in a lot of gaps from bisexual studies books I've read.

Anyhow, speaking of page-turners -- haha! No, this one really was. I'm bursting with big revolution ideas lately and I'd been hoping to read How Sassy Changed my Life, since it came out, we saw it in a D.C. bookstore and nabbed it, I read it immediately and everywhere, then made Stef, Caitlin and Haviland read it. Hav stole it away to L.A., and then mailed it back to Caitlin who's in New Jersey with cholera.

HSCML is packed with "ooo! ooo!" moments -- "OMG, Jane Pratt and I have so much in common!" I squealed about teenage-girl-in-the-90's nostalgia (omg! postal mail was so important!), like a trip down one of the only adolescent memory lanes I'd still find charming. A bit kiss-ass at times, but I'll kiss Sassy's ass any time. I'd like to start a magazine one day but first I need my own cooking show called "One-Pot Cooking" with a guarantee no meal will require washing over two (2) dishes.

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I think lately I'm especially drawn to books which provide glimpses into the evolution and maintenance of various community-oriented/collective arts. I ordered The Andy Warhol Diaries during my intense phase of obsession, it's approximately a bajillon (20,000) pages long. If Andy Warhol had a twitter feed (and you KNOW he would), this'd be it. Everywhere he went, all he ate, who he saw. I'll never finish it. It's an epic.

I got Learning to Love You More (Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July) at The Whitney gift shop when Alex, Caitlin and I went there with my Mom for the Biennial. July & Fletcher started a website in 2002 that invited visitors to accept assignments, complete it following instructions and send in a specified report (writing, photo, etc), this book's a collection of those things. Internet gimmick books aren't how I usually spend my money, but something about this mission -- which garnered heartfelt stories and photos from all over the world that truly penetrate a breadth of human emotion -- seemed way more beautiful than Stuff White People Like. I read it on the subway with Alex and Caitlin mostly, and then finished it at home. Howevs, I don't want to see anyone's parents kissing ever again.

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Book Club!

I want the next Book Club book to be by a lady-writer. Though I loved Wao like SO MUCH, I was thinking that I wouldn't have ever recommended it to a friend so we could talk about it together (though I would recommend it simply because it's so good), like Veronica. Which isn't to say Veronica's a better book, it's just a book that for some reason struck a chord with me, that made me want to scream and recommend and gab. I'm gonna try to pick a book like that this time.

Wow. It's way harder to think of books by ladies I'm eager to read -- probs 'cause men still outnumber women in what's "out there" in the media so I'm more aware of their output. I've got heaps of women writers I still need to read pre-death, but those are older books and I like newer things for book club.

When I love a lady-writer I LOVE her, I never love a man-writer with the same intensity except Stephen Dunn. But, it's kinda lame that with all the feminist and literary blogs I read every day I don't have anything on the top of my head. Maybe women don't write as many books 'cause they have their period or have babies. BAKE ME A PIE WOMAN thank you.

Auto-Win Book Club #2 ... I'm really intrigued by the first one, I've read a lot about it and it would be fun! But in the interest of a democratic process, take a gander:

What it is, by Lynda Barry
Lying: A Memoir, by Lauren Slater
Diary of a Mad Housewife, by Sue Kauffman
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
Family and Other Accidents, by Sheri Goldhagen
Break it Down, by Lydia Davis
The Best of Everything, by Rona Jaffe

Tell me what you like, grasshoppers. Personally, I love bears.