thoughts (fragments)

these fragments i have shored against my ruins

____the Wasteland, Eliot












break-up, Federico Erra


my sister flew one flew too close over the cuckoo's nest. and my mom lies exhausted and mumbles as she tells me the story and i say, well with all your hollerin i was half worried they'd throw you in right with her. she doesn't laugh. smiles briefly. my sister laughs. she thinks it's hilarious. my sister laughs in pizzicatto. ha!. ha!. ha!. __(poor mom.
- have you learnt your lesson?, what have we told you about opening your big mouth?. there are consequences.
- i know i know. i know. iknowiknow. ok? i have LEARNT my lesson.
____- nonesense, you never learn. (that's mom interjecting).


*___*___*

"Burke, always genial and shrewd, taught me to ask: What is the poet (or critic) trying to do for herself, as a person, by writing her poem or essay? What Crane, in his seven-year agon (1923-1930) to compose The Bridge, sought to do for himself as a poet was not less than everything, and so survival as a person was intimately involved. ... I read this as Crane's gamble upon The Bridge (and finally upon "The Broken Tower")- if they demonstrated that he still had the shaping spirit in him, he would stay alive. If not, not."
__from: Centenary Introduction to The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, Harold Bloom

and so now i ask myself a bunch of things. here is Crane. Whitman. Stevens. Dickinson. Eliot. Ginsberg. these people who breathed life into artless pieces of paper. made black markings on pages resemble souls and insane-asylums and certain slants of light. i write a little-known blog. some articles for a website. sometimes i repeat words over and over for myself in my notebook because i like the look of them (or the sound of them (or the shape of them). maybe being a writer is not about writering. in any case i have no idea what it's about- though not for want of trying.

and what is this(me) psuedo-maybe-halfbreed-writerer trying to do for himself by writering these 'stuffs'?

hide. find. remember. forget. absorb. recreate. resolve. dissolve. explore. fathom. exclaim.

maybe nothing. maybe he just likes the sound of the tapping (of pens scribbling). maybe he's just real lazy and has nothing much better to do than this.


*___*___*

i was scared about getting scared. so i took my meds. i tried to write about it last night. but couldn't. four attempts. epic-fail.

how we're always late. always. don't know why. always try to be on-time. always always. set my clock and get up and everything always like a machine. but then there's roadwork. or telephone calls that drag on. or the only clean shirt isn't ironed and the only ironed shirt isn't clean. life has long tentacles. i smirk, this could only happen to ahSar. i imagine dad nodding over the phone. thankgod it's all over anyway. now i nod. yeah._ poor mom.

but then i don't feel scared. and that worries me. probably it's the meds. or that i'm a selfish bastard.


*___*___*

i've long been planning, in my head this is, a novel titled things i said at my sister's funeral. i thought it would be a fitting occasion to exorcise some demons. stitch some things together and glue some tinsel wings on it, and send it off. alternative titles are:

___- the memory-machine
___- the speed-freak's guide to midnight time-management
___- gravity

i struggle with stories though. i think stories are boring. i don't really care about people walking around and dialogue and character developments and subplots and that kind of stuff.

my writing should be like my vision. which is skewed. memory is not linear. certain colours are always too bright, others faded or erased, so things appear elongated and certain people appear too often, and others not enough. just like looking at old photographs. can't remember that person being there at all. who is that guy? or... no, you were wearing a dress that night. i know it. i know it. and she shakes her head. no. i know it, it was purple. and boots. brown. i know it. everything mixed and jumbled. in your head it is a choose-your-own-adventure, so last night, we sit on a pistachio coloured 2-seater couch, and i tell her two-thirds of a story about Los Angeles, and it turns into one-fourth of a story about sashimi and nine-tenths of a memory about a girl named Kristen Feyer and then back to Los Angeles again. that is memory. discursive vectors. not what was said, or left unsaid, but what happened in between.

and characters? stumblers and dreamers. obscenity users and amphetamine pushers. my characters have faded shoes and pockets full of sand from kissing girls by the beach, and drive cars that make funny noises and speak to young girls with bright eyes who drive brand new BMWs and tremble a little when you stare at them.

- you can't win at this.
[we're standing face-to-face, noses touching, we've swapped eyes so i can only see blue and in the dark light on the street she can probably see nothing]
- you don't know who you're messing with. [she smirks. i don't move. i sense her mouth opening. i feel a handful of warmth on my face. i smile. lips stumble around looking for a light switch, i move away a little. kiss her cheek softly]
- you can't do this to me.
- i thought i can't win.
- you can't. [lips are blind and needy. open mouth to open mouth, just a moment away from one another. the cusp of a new moment. a universe begins everytime someone enjoys kissing. i run my tongue along her lower lip. she goes to bite down but i'm gone already. what a dance.
- you can't do this. [of course the leash has to break sooner or later. love is a device that stutters. stutters and starts. stutters and fails. bodies are the same. conversations. even spring can't open it's big sleepy eye without a few false starts god dammit i'm freezing on the sidewalk i grab the back of her head and push her so far into me for a few moments- while our tongues arm-wrestle- i presume i'm thinking her thoughts.

i step back. she exhales. i kiss an eyebrow. i shaved tonight, i'm proud of this. like the when you first learn to tie your own shoe-laces you feel like a little man when you shave. so i don't mind rubbing my cheeks against her and kiss her temple.
- you can't do this to me.
- i win. [she sighs. i win. and step away and walk towards the car].


*___*___*

did i just tell that story to remember it? consecrate it? is that even how it happened? am i wrong in my conviction that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to everything in life? what am i trying to do for myself? am i doing it? am i failing?


*___*___*

i hadn't taken my meds for a few days and i was frazzled and frayed. hyperemotional and talking too fast and couldn't sit still and heart-beat like insect wings. mom sits with me, on my leather chair and i talk a mile-a-minute about who we are and where we are. what we are, but that's too hard that one. finally, it occurs to me and my eyes are very wet. we have to pray right now. i'm serious. it's like needing to pee really badly, there's no questioning this, this has to happen right_now. okay, okay she says.

less than a year ago i was stumbling down Santa Monica Blvd. and my ankle hurt and i couldn't walk straight. i slept on Martha's couch. i cried in O'Hara airport when Eman picked me up. someone asked what's next? and i just stared back at them until it got awkward. hello?. finally, i gulped and said, i really don't think there are words... i... . and it was all very French-film-weird.

a year ago i had no home. no real basic concept of the future. i misunderstood air. watched movies and hoped they would just leave me alone and i could sit in cinema 4 and live off left-behind popcorn and half-melted icecubes until some new(er)(est) life came to claim me and we could start again. less than a year ago.

i can't understand how soo much can be different. and i struggle to determine which was the dream. which of these lives is actually... life.
(and my therapist looks at me uncomfortably, and says sometimes i feel like you dissociate. like... not that you do, in a technical sense, but you have, to a small extent, ...personalities
- they're ghosts [i interject to make it easier for her]
- ghosts?
- yeah. people i've been.
- and they're still with us?
- with me. yes. always. of course.
- you can't lay them to rest?
[i smile:
- god no, they are too beautiful. but i am starting to forgive what had to happen for me to have them.


*___*___*

i will let a genius have the last word. at least someone who knew for what reason (for themself) they were wasting ink, pen, time and eyesight. i read this, i add a century to it, and i feel it. (dear world, how do these guys do it?)



____So the 20th Century- so
whizzed the Limited- roared by and left
three men, still hungry on the tracks, ploddingly
watching the tail lights wizen and converge, slip-
ping gimleted and neatly out of sight.

___from The River, Hart Crane