tuesday, 22 Jan 2013

Sometimes Fusun yawned so beautifully that I would think that she had forgotten the entire world and that she was drawing from the depths of her soul a more peaceful life, as one might draw cold water from a well on a hot summer day.

____from the Museum of Innocence 







Viktoria by Lina Scheynius


there's no reason to be early, but that's what i am. i make pleasant small-talk with the receptionist as i wait my turn. , when i come-back out it's time to pay. it's expensive being crazy i say with a smile. but she doesn't smile. mine recedes too, as an unrequited outstretched hand.


___*___*___*

it's a small package in brown-paper wrapping. is it a box of chocolates? i ask playfully.
- yes, we knew how much you'd appreciate that.
- yay.
___right there, sitting at the dinner table, i open the packaging:


_________FOUR

______  QUARTETS

_______T. S. ELIOT


most beautiful design imaginable. simple, minimal. with a plastic protective cover. it's... so. beautiful. i say as i flip through it, remembering various passages and feeling pleased to see them still there. ___

- you guys really shouldn't have - is this what you got at the bookstore last week? [he had sent me photographs of a big second-hand bookstore he'd visited last week]
- oh, i don't think we'd find that particular book in that bookstore. ___in fact, i can tell you, it can't be found in any bookstore in Australia.

i stop, abruptly. it's a decisive motion, but i fumble it a bit because i'm holding it like each page is made of lace and gossamer - turn to the first page.



_________copyright 1943



that's all.

- is this... is this , what i think it is?
- c'mon, it's your thirtieth [a matter that still hadn't been spoken aloud]
- yes. but. __this, this, is it...
- ___yes q. it is.

then there is silence as i look at it again. with new eyes. it's startling. i'm startled - i felt a chill pass through me , this book really is made of lace.

___do you understand what this means? i ask. no one answers, i guess they know i'm about to tell them what it means: it means this book, this bundle of papers is almost as old as these poems - at least - it's as old as the first times that people like us ever had a chance to know them... this book is a revelation. the first time something happened - something big and important and... a revelation. a new world happened when this book came out and the shopkeeper in a store somewhere first flipped through it in... [checking the first page again] 1943. my voice trembles as i speak. i'm holding a newborn - something that's a newborn even when it's 70, it's a fossil of a newborn. ___they nod but i'm not sure they find it as momentous as i do. we're glad you like it q. happy birthday.


___*___*___*

- how are you feeling?
- terrible.
- how are you passing your days?
- i take lots of pills. i used to put on my headphones and work [on the house] through the day. then i'd get dinner with a friend. and frequently have sex with them.
- and now?
- i take lots of pills. i work on the house. i try and be alone. i think i'm addicted to it.
- does it make you happy?
- no. but i crave it.
[sigh]


___*___*___*

dear q:
keep trying bro.
(and spend some time with your book)
sincerely, q.


___*___*___*

it's... so. beautiful. i say as i flip through it, remembering various passages and feeling pleased to see them still there [

______Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

(from East Coker by TS Eliot)]

blah blahs

i've understood now that i can never have back
all those things i've lost.
___except i'm still too young to know what i've lost ,


___*___*___*

all i think about nowadays is happiness, what it is,
where it comes from ;
why i'm impotent, barely able to sustain it for a few minutes,
before limp and flaccid i recede back into shame
___for never knowing where it is,
and my people must wonder why i can never know where i've
misplaced it this time,

like the irresponsible adult who's always losing his keys.


___*___*___*

there is so much i want(ed) to write about last week.

i went home.
i turned a corner and turned thirty.
i saw an ex, just for fun; and spent the afternoon looking through
her clothing and seeing her naked body as i remember it from
11 years ago, when we would race all over town between her parents' home, my parents' homes, whose-ever-home was empty for long enogh.

i saw friends. and their wives and their babies and their lives unfolding.
i haven't yet understood how i fit in with that. but i managed it well enough, for once.

i watch girls and archer, things they hadn't heard of. they give each other knowing glances as they make references to the coffee-cups and junk mail of life, details they know from daily blahblah. they ask me why i look so tired i say i went to the beach house concert last night. (they haven't heard of it, they'll look it up). i want to say, then, after the concert we came back to my house so i could show her the fort i've built with all my furniture in the middle of the room. and then we spent 5 hours having amazing sex, and how after the fourth hour even i thought we might be done. but she asked for a glass of water, and i went to get it, but instead of handing it to her, i poured it on her naked body, heard her say wha tha before i grabbed her and was lost for another hour.

that's what i want to tell them about. but they're talking about when babies should start speaking. so i stare at the music videos playing in the background on the tv. i love this tune he says, as he goes to turn it up, followed by: but i never heard it on the radio, i don't know what it is. I say: it's A$AP.
- what?
- A$AP Rocky, it's the new A$AP LP.
- i've never heard of... that
- it's good. as demonstrated to us by this awesome tune. [sensing things getting a bit awkward, i add: ] and the Kendrick Lamar album is great too if you're-
- oh that's fantastic!
- [saved]

sometimes i feel like the greatest disappointment my hometown ever spawned. other times simply a straggler.

in any case: i'm far now. too far.


___*___*___*

i had a panic attack. i can't be here for two more years. i have to be, but i can't be. i'm very scared.


___*___*___*

six years ago i met a girl. we spent about two months together. i spent about two years after that trying to get over it. there's more to it, but it's a familiar enough story. ___i'm reading the museum of innocence, which in many aspects has an uncanny resemblance (in its details) to my story. it is horror to read. but compelling. especially because Kemel Bey and i have gone in different directions. and our museums are very different places. but still. i think orhan pamuk has spied on me.

thoughts (fragments)

la notte by marta bevacqua


THINGS I AM THINKING (OF)/(ABOUT)/(AROUND)

white tiles are crisp. like snow.

i am nearly 30 i dream of escape and hate myself for not doing it enough.

will i ever impregnate someone and have to sit in a crisp white room waiting for her abortion?

what are the names of the future people i will meet who i will love and who might will could (hopefully) make me feel something

why don't you care anymore q? why?

if i will live my fantasy of spending my birthday with a bottle of rum lying on the floor of my house staring at the ceiling imagining it is a sky that i can reach out and touch (escape, escape, escape)

there is a carpenter helping me with a few jobs on the house. this bothers me. i don't like needing help on my house. i see it as an extension of myself, and therefore, it should only be me who does anything to it, with it, for it. i feel emasculated. inadequate. needy. i hate these feelings.

am i still an interesting person?

maybe mom's right. maybe i need a girlfriend. maybe my therapist is right. maybe i just need friends , or at least to permit people to befriend me.
___ i think i want a pseudo-skanky girlfriend this time. someone who gives lapdances and drinks too much and gets angry and starts c-bombing everyone. who calls me crying at 3am because she can't find her leather bracelet. who matches her tutu with docs. who uses me and leaves immediately after f&cking me. ___(maybe i think it'll justify me , who i am, what i do... to be objectified for once and not objectifying.

how come i never tire of listening to Hospice?

i can explain exactly how i feel right now, i feel very much like this:

jono winnel

and so it was.

12 days ago i climbed a mountain. i didn't really care about the mountain at all. i just wanted a good workout. ( object. if. ying. )

are you my friend?

i really want to tear out my kitchen. don't tear out your kitchen q. i really want to. don't.

don't talk to her. don't text her, don't call her don't talk to her. walk away from her on the dancefloor, don't stare at her don't smile don't scowl just don't don't. (all i want to do is slam her against the wall and hold her shoulders and kiss her hard. (like last time) you know how that all ends q.

maybe i just need to stop believing (hoping?) there's more. (of what i don't know - but just... more).

i can't shake Shame off me. i mean it, i didn't breathe for the whole thing, i've never seen anything quite like it. and when i don't want to think about i can still hear carey mulligan singing new york new york (i'm not going to link it because i don't want to ruin how powerful a scene it is in the movie. in its context. where it belongs. in its unhappy home amongst 120 other minutes of tension).

"do you think i should be an alcoholic?"
"do you want to be?"
"well, we're not doing the pills anymore... so..."
"so you want to drink instead?"
"just considering it."
"what about just talking?"
"i don't want to be reliant on speaking to you."
"why not?"
"... makes me feel inadequate."
"but being an alcoholic is okay?"
"fine. how about sex? i have a friend who's a sex addict."
"you think that will work?"
"not really."
"you sound disappointed."
"i am."
"that being a sex addict won't make you feel better?"
"no. in myself."
"what?"
"even my unhealthy coping mechanisms are inadequate."
"something is up with you today."
"amen."

what day is it?

screw this.