Day: July 25, 2004

the sour of the bread
having been wrapt in plastic for
how many days now
of travelling?
the sour of yogurt i made last week
no
there’s something before that
…
tell me:
where was that?
where was i when i payd 20 pence?
or 2 rand?
what was it?
was it 2 yen?
i drank the yogurt through a straw
and was made to return it to whom i bought it from
carrying around the little glass container: i wanted to keep it
but the return is built into the price
that is: you’re not allowed to walk off with it
drink it right Here.
how old was i?
i feel like i must have been 7
or 15
but not the 15 i lived through
the 15 of 50 years ago
or was i 12?
could i have been 17 in england?
it must have been
when else
in this life
have i debased and confused myself so thoroughly to be innocent to that degree?
such wonders opening themselves
through the punctured purple paper lid of a glass yogurt container
plastic straw sticking through
empty
and such a grin on my face…
i left the house Days ago
and though i’d wrapt the bread in plastic to keep it safe in the freezer
i forgot to transfer it to a paper bag for travelling…
i forget so many things…
i forgot things needed to breathe
or they ferment in themselves
turn so sour
so rancid
yet they are still a comfort to eat
at those times
when all else also feels that way
what is there to compare?
the fan has been blowing wind on my face while i watch this film:
Léolo
whatever i have in my moustache…
i’d sucked that cock
so locked up in pants
it’d gone sour as well
the cheesy-yeast smell of thighs forever pressed into balls and foreskin
musking my face
i washed it with some soap he had
and what is this now in my beard?
this smell
like the miracle compound my mother gave me to de-tox years ago
that made me have reched diarreah and vomiting every day while i took it
a sour/sweet/pungent odor
now i can’t get rid of it;
the wind keeps blowing it my face…
so many things i’d forgotten:
the family of what we deem insane
the fear of following that
the obsession of blame
in isolation
writing in the journal every day
and the little boy in this story
rips them out and throws them away every day
and is that akin to these emails?
to these journal entries?
in the film
a man went through the trash
developing a relationship with the boy
by reading his poetry
in this great trashpit of cyberspace
some wade through these scraps and find treasures
gorgeous
as life is
i culled a few things from the movie to share:
{ female voices in latin christian chorus
give way to the Rolling Stones singing
“you can’t always get what you want”
when a 12 year old boy bets the other boys
5 bucks (canadian)
that he’ll fuck a cat.
the text is: }
Tonight Buddy Godin will be late for home.
His mom will check his fingers.
She’s worried her son might be smoking on the sly.
No, Mme. Godin
your son fucks anything that moves,
his dick is eaten by disease
he swallows any pill he can
just to forget you.
That bath you force him to take
before church on sunday,
just serves him
to prostitute himself with his hockey coach.
White meat sells better.
But no, don’t worry, he doesn’t smoke.
It makes him choke.
.
Sex I discovered between ignorance and horror.
Deep down, we all knew money was just a pretext…
and that he’d do it anyway.
(the music fades into buddhist monks chanting deeply)
For betting just defanged the fear.
The poor cat didn’t defend herself.
she’d been declawed.
Mme. Ouimet took good care of her curtainls.
How lucky you are, Miliou
Tintin didn’t have Buddy Godin for a neighbour.
(the scene ends by focusing on a cross on the wall while the sound of the cat screaming is heard)
———–
Because i dream, i am not.
because i dream
i dream.
because at night, i abandon myself to my dreams…
before i’m left the day.
because i don’t love…
because i was afraid to love
i no longer dream.
i no longer dream.
—–
You my lady
bold melancholy
solitary cry piercing my flesh,
offering it to ennui,
Haunting my nights
when i don’t know
which way my life should go
i have paid you back a hundredfold
the embers of the dream
left behind the ashes of a shadow of a lie
you told me to hear.
the white serenity
minute of eternity
was a dark-haired wicked waif
who pierced my sorrow with a sharp
and sacred breast
leaving only the remorse of seeing the sun
rise on my solitude
—
“and i shall rest my head between two words
in the valley of the vanquished”
Léolo

when you read these
can you see where i’m tricking myself?
and if you can
are you able to tell me?
point them out… let me know… make it clear?
and if you can
are you able to see where you’re tricking yourself?
and if you are
can you make it stop?
or do you want it?
would you like to get together?
work this out as friends… as lovers?
is that a bad thing?
a dependance to be shamed?
or is that the preciousness which we really seek?
and if love is pulling eachother into perfection
(like cyropracting… like salt water taffey)
what is a lazy sunday afternoon for?

“a murderous desire
for love”
what makes it so i dream of robert?
such bitterness
standing with his new lover on a beach
watching the water smash against the rocks
the rainbow umbrella algae puffing in all its beautiful colours
me making a million snide comments…
“oh, when i was with him he wasn’t like that.
oh yes, he’s got ton’s of things he TALKS about doing”
grrrr
he was famous
and apparently he went by many different names
and everyone knew him
and i was still torn between wanting to be with him
and hating him for not calling me back to him with love
wanting to work out our lives and dreams together…
but
before that
weren’t we in a resturant?
me with one of my friends
and Robert’s new lover, Cliff?
instead of bitching
silently slamming my head against the table as Cliff and my other friend talked.
What’s going on?
i’m dreaming again.
Why am i dreaming of robert?
The Absinth and the movies are not to blame
is everyone in LA obsessed with Movies?
good?
not good.
not as interesting as what happened before
(and, oh fuck, what i’m going to do to myself today)
i’d gone out two days before
to meet up with a guy in Silverlake
but couldn’t get him on the phone
(i drove round and around with the man i was staying with, him telling me what LA used to be like, what used to be there, what that was; how he used to go out, but doesn’t so much now)
so met up with another instead
Thug Letters tattoo’d on his belly
“B F A”
“bad fucking additude”
but he’d just had a big sitting laughing buddha added below them
on his big buddha belly
HA!
he knew a faerie friend from long ago
Spiral
and we all had lunch together
which mostly served to make me feel
yet again
how i was becoming more and more a cynical monster (again)
(despite my wishes)
there was talk about dissapointment
but i was the winner
and it went from there to some conversation
“mother died”
“chocolate”
“best job of my life, though”
“LA isn’t what it used to be”
but where is?
they dropped me off at what they said was a really good used bookstore in Hollywood: Counterpoint
it was terrible.
so i walked out the door
and realized i was RIGHT where Russell used to live
that is
where i first came to stay in LA
across from the Scientology Celebrity Centre
Ugh.
i made some phone calls
couldn’t do anything that really felt good.
but i remember at the beginning of the phone calls
i was sitting in the shade on some steps of a little driveway
and i talked about how great the day had been
how sunny
surprise old friends
hearing the changes of people’s lives
the tale of the city
unfolding
blossoming
rotting on the vine…
by the end of the last conversation
i was walking through Hollywood (walking through LA anywhere kinda has this effect of me, but specifically Hollywood)
and getting more and more desperate and sad
to the point that i was talking with the same person
but an hour later
and telling him how much i hated this town
(laughs)
i walked into Boarders books while i was still talking
and wandered through the Sci Fi while i was ending the conversation
eventually he was asking me driving directions around Manhattan in rush hour
and saying he felt really bad not being able to be where he was supposed to be
when i pointed how he was just lying and i was over talking with him now
he’s pretty good and picking up on when to get off the phone with me
… once i’ve gone over my threshold.
i found some books i wanted
but i didn’t really want them
so i went to find Lao Tzu
found him
but his section was a deplorable mess
Tao mixed with porn and yoga and a million other things it didn’t belong with
so i started the process of collecting the Tao
organizing it
then delving into it
i opened the first one i picked up
(which happened to be the Ursula K. LeGuin translation i’d just heard about)
to Chapter 38
i opened every other book and compared that chapter
i was shocked at how different the translations were
yet it seemed they mostly worked on two paradigms
i flipped some coins
and decided to walk away with Two
poetries i resonated with in rather different structures
one i may keep for myself
one i may leave with my parents
both i want to read
i left
and found the first man i was to be meeting
had called me many times
so now was the time to meet him
and he came on so fucking heavy
hot
picked me up in his car
and kissed me while he was driving me round the streets of Hollywood
we went back to his house and had 1000miles-an-hour sex
not that it was over quickly
but the energy was so firey and fast we were burning eachother up
it was pretty hot
and fun
and cuddly afterwards
allover: Nice.
then he left me to take a nap!
What a great idea
i slept
and only remembered
that trying to get to sleep
was blocked by Tori Amos
and what was it?
i think it was “silent all these years”
– “year’s go by
and i’m stripped of my beauty
until finally
there is nothing left
One More Tragedy
you know, we’re too Easy Easy EASY
. So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts…
What’s so amazing about Really Deep Thoughs?
boy, you best pray that i bleed real soon: how’s that thought for you?”
why was this in my head?
i was dreaming
He woke me up and took me out to dinner
on the way out
he explained his cat
19 years old
he’d had it for 9 nears
inherited it from a friend who’d died.
the cat moved Very very slowly
the cat was blind
it felt its way around the house
up and down the stairs
would sit there and cry
as cats do
oh
dot
dot
dot
there was lots of conversation
and .. in the morning
he had to be off early
so he dropped me off to drink some Acai
and i started reading all the fluff around the Taos..
the introductions, etc…
and made a few calls
in an hour
one of them returned
and in another 40 minutes
he was there
and it was driving around in a car
and being told about the way it used to be…
went back to his house and did my morning yoga
wonderful of course
he sat there in his chair like he was watching TV
and
occasionally
would take a picture
(grin)
the sex was good
cuddling, loving
without making a big deal of it
long passionate sex
with a nice connection
that was what it was
on and off
cuddling, napping, sex
then stories of living
travelling
and what LA used to be like
old lovers…
as he took me to a Mexican Resturant out in Pasadena
and i ate a lovely machaca with amazing salsa
and as we were leaving
he caught off gaurd
i stepped backwards
and tripped over a firehydrant
falling on my ass and rolling backwards and up in the street
with only a little scrape on my left elbow
i’m only telling all of this
to denote the context
coz when i got back to Rico’s…
(where my stuff is, where i stayed Thursday night)
i felt kinda happy, tired, Nice.
nothing much to mention about it
but in just a short period of conversation with Rico
and having finished a new CD for Eli
i noticed my heart was wide open and sore
and was this from all the quick-and-drop loving i’d just been doing?
what was this?
i’d made a Cd for eli all about loving
and i wanted it to talk to him about loving
and the difficulty and pleasures
but i also wanted it to show-case a Song i’d recently become obsessed with:
“Clark Gable” by the Postal Service
which features such great lines as
“so i called you:
i need you to pretend that we are in love again…
and you agreed to”
upon burning the CD
and writing the title on the cd
not
“baby, i love you”
as the working title was
but
“and don’t forget to keep it with you”
which was a truncated version, that was supposed to be followed by “when our time is over”
i realized i was a coward
not only for these little things
but for loving people that i couldn’t or wouldn’t love
for all my relations!
loving Eli only in the safety of fantasy
being cruel to him when i’m with him because i was so scared
and then
just realizing i was scared
and what triggered all this off?
being around Rico made me want to be drunk and stoned and smoking cigarettes
:he’s really beautiful to me.
when i had just recently left Robert back in 2000
Rico had written me and sent me a little picture:
he looked very hot and very sexy
and in my mind then
reminded me of Robert
it’s been four years
and i finally just met him a few days ago
he’s even MORE beautiful than i thought
and there’s just oodles of things i love about him
i instantly found myself projecting into the future around him
of how i wanted him in my life
blah blah blah
i came back in here (the computer)
and started writing
freaking out
being really hard on myself
(not this writing, another one)
and i freaked out about Leo
in that i had to admit to myself that i don’t love him in the strange un-realistic obsessional passionate way that i do when i “fall i love with people”
but that
in staying at the house
that isn’t mine
and having him feel like i owe something to him for being in his life
(now, i would say i have to agree with that: if you have someone in your life they should respect you… but to be made to feel like it is owed…)
just made me feel like i had to flee
and faced with all these fears and harsh-self-judgements
i realized
yet again
that the next phase of my life
involves not only the exciting experience of not being a slut for a while and having “A LOVER”
but also
Living Alone
making my own money (which i’m mostly doing now)
and paying my own rent
and having my own place
and really
thinking
in america
the only place i would want to do that is NYC
because i wouldn’t have to have a car there
and i would have all the benifits of being in the city
…mmmm
couldn’t i do portland again?
no…
i think NYC or outside of america
certainly not LA
not SF
grrr
ok
i’m spinning
let me get back to the story
(laughs)
i talked this out with Rico
things came to light
and comfort was felt
we decided to have some Absinth
and then go watch a movie
“monster”
oh, justifications and “doing what we have to do”
oh.
i felt very bad after the movie
which i think is probably an OK way to feel
but i couldn’t go to sleep like that
so we put on “Twin Falls Idaho”
which i thought was just a crappy vehicle for post-model narcissists to play out more of their bullshit
i fell asleep
this morning
Robert
Fame and Failure
and waking to a Hard Heart.
is that what my dreams are serving to do?
return me to safety in the morning?
where i didn’t love anyone, nor feel remorse, regret. care.
just a bit angry
and ready to write about it
(laughs)
balancing
waking up
burned the CD for Jim too…
Daddy Jim
who needs his own daddy
and i wonder
oh
i wonder
how much longer am i going to be able to pull off all this loving
this trying
this loving
keep on
babe
keep on.