turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer

i’m tired of being interesting. fucking sick of it. i want to be ravished and then ravaged. where’s the boiling passion that can’t be contained? is it that i have too tight a grip on my weapons– my words– my walls. i’m condemned to the world the unrequited. which is fine. i doubt i would have much to write about if it was the other way. i mean, look at yeats– had not maud gonne of spurned him there would have been no voids, no gyres. i feel my heavy words weighing down on me every day. i try to write them away, but they grow in density, swell in girth. i feel most cathartic when doing one of three things: writing, cooking, and tending. the last two might in fact be part and parcel of the same package. however, the latter-latter often comes to bite me in the proverbial ass. i try to make myself whole by darning other people’s souls. although i ask for no return per se i expect some form of symbiosis. on occasion there is no reciprocity. and i am leeched upon. suckled until desiccated. what would once have made me feel raw and fragile now makes me impenetrable and resistant to others, and while i absolutely love people i find myself unable to interact with genuine sympathy. what was once a mask i could put on becomes seamed to my face. while it does not affect my preexisting relationships, i fear it will affect future ones. i turn inward and look at the ever replenishing source. when sitting on a train in poland i watched my reflection in the pane. i watched as trees and lights crossed and distorted my paler sibling. i had been nursing a broken heart that the summer’s length and heat had only exacerbated; then i realized something so obvious– i whispered to my inversed sister ‘in the end, girl, it’s only you and me’. so, let them exhaust me– my resources are deeper than you or i can measure. just try to consume me– my well will only grow deeper.

mum’s the word

i barely ever post. this is my second post of the night. somewhere between ferry rides, beach walks, fading chestnut flowers, ice cream, and bad attempts at post-modern cinema the weight of anxiety came down on my chest like governments on the internal corruption. the semiotic significance of a non-verbal gesture just sent me from comatose near-sleep to wailing against the heavy sunday night air. crying while biking is my therapy. i claim i’m interested in writing a small attempt at a thesis that plays with sapir-whorf and lacan– the idea of the real– what is beyond language and how that might be effected by the specific dominant language of the speaker. thus, for different people what is beyond articulation shifts and changes– perhaps it isn’t a universal human abyss of inability. kind of an odd idea. i have to think about whether or not it is in opposition to universal grammar. currently, it is half-formed and not fully coherent. today i feel the real– i cannot really articulate why i’m so upset, but it has something to do with how tiring communication is. sentences, according to the prescription, should not end in ‘is,’ at this juncture i will relish that is.

regent park

“are you a christian?” she asked me.

i paused. looked at the toddler slung over her shoulder and said “i think i’m agnostic”.

“that’s our house” she motioned with her chin, “the one with the flowers in the window”.

i dropped the boxes down on the doorstep that i had been precariously biking for her. there had been a sale on diapers that couldn’t be passed up.

we shook hands and smiled. as i attempted to straddle my breaking bike she called out “i would never of guessed”.

the ideal i

i’ve always figured i just had a bipolar narcissist-complex, i have a rather obscene collection of photos of myself and probably look in reflective surfaces in an amount that straddles the neurotic. one of my good friends even enjoys mocking me on my jpg shrine to caroline. but, it’s been this strange irreconcilable feeling about the two dimensional me and the actual me. some thing drives me to stare at her– just because she is so other. see? i’m doing it right now, going on about myself. increasingly i’ve become obsessed with how much i use the first person pronoun, especially in instant messenger conversations. it upsets me when i feel as though i’m over indulging in the ‘i’.

but, in a bit of an unheimliche succession of events a few weeks ago i watched this video and then read lacan’s “mirror stage”. it’s a relief to have identified this strange disparity and anxiety. it’s prolly pretty palliative, but, for now it will suffice.

glottal

you learn to tune it out. the littlest bits of white-sight– white noise is all frequencies at once, and thus the result: a void. like the flickering addresses in the liminal state between webpages. the no-space, the white space. the same way you can observe multiple fields instantaneously, with only one actual focus– is the mirror of how our society has trained us to love. right now, i’m torn between loves: the friend, the unattainable, the concepts, the rare one that’s genuine and punished for it. of course, love isn’t confined to sexual interests and conquests– it’s in the smaller actions: a friend bringing you faulkner while you’re sitting in the hospital with tissue damage on your left heel.

delish

while procrastinating from studying i went gallery hopping on queen west; the mocca usually disappoints me, however, this was wonderful: Balint Zsako | Works from the Bernardi Collection.

o, and photos are up from my trip.

all a-jitter

“the beet is the most intense of vegetables. the radish, admittedly, is the more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. beets are deadly serious…..”

carmen, where in the world are you?

off to south-eastern africa tomorrow. slightly nervous, unsure what to expect in zimbabwe, should be interesting.

i fear they will not sing to me

“you asked me who i thought i was before. i said maybe i was a fish because i love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe.

if you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, i was the sea.” – francesca lia block

this is not a bomb

i threw an art show the other day, incidentally bigger things were going on in the toronto art community.

thursday 4 pm, ingi jonsso made a statement about our fear fueled culture. the culture bit down on that juicy worm without a second thought. this is probably the best article on the subject, the others i have read are very subjective.

the following is a comment left on the CTV article:

g.
Isn’t this the same school that the two guys that were charged with killing and torturing kensington the cat (all of course in the name of art)went to?
and didnt they do some horrid art ‘piece’ involving baby chicks while there as well?
hmmm…. seems these kids better stick to nude sketching and bowls of fruit, much safer for us all…. lol

there has been a very negative reaction regarding this piece across the board. and although it is a shame that the aids benefit was postponed indefinitely, it really highlights how helpless we are as a culture when it comes to these sorts of attacks. rather than react, which obviously helps little when bombs go off in crowded places, people should be promoting preventative measures. i’m not talking about security checks and metal detectors, i mean social awareness an grassroots bridging. fear fuels fear.

but the main reason this statement bothersome: “these kids better stick to nude sketching and bowls of fruit, much safer for us all,” that line infuriates me. i wonder what would of happened if this had taken place in montreal? toronto and i are not getting on this weekend as a result. the art scene here disappoints, as does the cultural disposition towards it.