This pen is no good…

This pen is no good… My shoulder aches – my mind feels sorely abused. A bad habit of drinking too much and embarrassing one’s self in public. Shoulder still aching. S is on the telephone – while I’m waiting for a call. Perhaps I will write my sister a letter – then – but no. Maybe the thing to do at this moment is to finish a drawing. How big am I? I am very small.

Thursday night – of course – not feeling any much of a somethingness

Thursday night – of course – not feeling any much of a somethingness – no anguish nor angst. Here’s the situation – today was a day off  – got home late this morning/ last night at six am and those are double zeros in, inside the other, not eyes. Slept in, woke up, bought stuff. Was supposed to make a date with J from work but she and I missed the connection – either I missed the call, or something – we’ll see tomorrow what happened.
Time to change the music.

Better. It’s one o’clock.

I wish I had been able to talk to her today at least. Am I allowing L to fade? I don’t know how to approach her – too distant – because I don’t know how to comfortably, without confusion? Because I dread feeling ashamed?

It’s cold. The chair and table are cold as well as my fingers. I don’t ever want to sleep, I want to do everything now – tonight.
I’m tired, and I need to get up earlier than usual (one-thirty, two pm) tomorrow – to pick up a package and then go skiing.

It doesn’t matter whether I did or didn’t talk to anyone today. Today was a disappointing day longing for the warmth of company, interaction, forgetting the necessity of solitude – to protect myself against disappointment. Forget all that. Tomorrow I have an entirely different day in mind – to give it to myself more or less – rather than anyone else – prepared for that solitude – forgetting everything else) but still hoping, under the surface?) Don’t really have anything to write about – time to prepare for bed…

Day, train, Q, nose running from cold.

Day, train, Q, nose running from cold. Disgust snot. Wondering why thing have. Lessons in trying too hard. By next week everything would have sorted itself out. But who can say – or second guess tomorrw. A letter sent. A song. White dogs. Unknown past. Unreachable west… Time to leasve soon. Everything they ever said true. No one believes in you. What is best? Shuffle. Cold plastic running out of time and money. Two more can sit. And. and. Guided by margins. Prone to error. Too close to hell. Very uncomfortable. Wondering. Why things have uncomfortable. Decipher. Border. Tact. Need to retrieve. Do not hold. Can be very. Throw out. Williamsburg Bridge north East River. Project buildings. Predictable.

Sensitive to discrepancies in reality. Trying hard not to have a personal reaction. Clear. That phunk phaked. Return to inscrutable and strange. No time to find footing. School sports. What’s right for me.

PATH to Hoboken nutritionists. Ugly stained. I never saw it like that. That I have been turning my back on opportunity, that I have been seeking to circumnavigate fate. Please stand clear. I want to be the one to quit. Misplaced loyalty. I am the one to quit before the beginning – chicken shit.

WTC train back to Manhattan past eight o’clock pm – is it? I wouldn’t know. Laundry. I can’t fucking believe – so much effort for fuck all. Counter productive. Lesson in failure through trying too hard. Here already.

Nov. 16 now – but, wait just a bit, yes – that’s it.

Nov. 16 now – but, wait just a bit, yes – that’s it.

Counter productive learning experience. One less pair of pants. Never found my place. So – now what? Waste of time and effort, Grad school? That would be good – but what about money? Commuter clack suit, hat, ride next and, and sleeping.

…

Can’t believe it – what a bunch of assholes I’ve involved myself with. This sucks. 33rd Street Train into Grove Street I for the WTC PATH – 2/ 3 line back to Brooklyn. There is something in not being afraid. So many weeks for shit. And A. Should have known there was something wrong with that one from the git go. Now I need to re-write the whole letter, wait – last page of the letter. Uggghhh. Ugly. Near total disconnection and the need for a cigarette. Ah, humility, humbled, I feel so disgusting. Like Junior High, like mother. Just like everything I’ve ever hated. Church. A. Church camp. Love – n – Rockets concert. Goth. England. The restaurant. Working too hard for next to nothing. Denny’s. Village Inn. UNM. I swear they’re looking right at me. I’m the queen of Rock and Roll. Yeah Yeah Yeah. I love this world. Can’t make a single mistake. Oops. Flush, Gurgle. Game over. Painting with snot. Can’t make a single mistake. Oops. Flush. Gurgle. Selfish. Lazy. Stupid. My mind is like cheese. Full of hair. Color of the reflection of face. Color ot the reflection of cold. Next spot Nevins. When Newkirk. May learn. All loosers. Statitic. Winthrop. A genius momentum.

If I could choose the life I’d lead then I would choose another.

If I could choose the life I’d lead then I would choose another.

Variation on a Levellers song.

Sitting room on Holme Road, West Bridgeford, Nottingham. Seven minutes before I need to leave and catch the bus – should go look for change – see if I have enough to get there – the train station, but not too much.
Smoke one cigarette in the morning – but can’t really call it morning, not out of bed until one thirty  – afternoon.

Inspired to take inventory – inspired to write but now just a sad, chill emptiness. Thinking about history of cigarette smoke drawn into my lungs.
Just now remember S’s house when her father was gone to California to work for a while. The absence of tobacco smoke.

My head starts up when anyone passes by the window facing the sidewalk… May or may not have enough time to get a replacement student railcard. With luck it will be in the lost item place at Nottingham rail station, if they even have a lost and found. Maybe should get a general bus pass as well.
Time to find bus fare.

Miss this bus as well, nature is calling.

Ask about the images – ask about another, close the door. Ask yourself the questions you can’t answer.
Pick up your scattered possessions, all the things you’ve never owned, and leave.

Bumps extrusions pains aches pains

Bumps extrusions pains aches pains scaling skin itching redness infection pain

What is it? Her image. But what does that mean…

What is it? Her image. But what does that mean, as far as anything else? Could I even ask her to sit for me without feeling hopelessly ashamed? And because we work together at that particular restaurant word would get around. But would that bother me? Actually no – what would happen then?

I know that I want to create images but (I was looking at some old drawings) I feel I am slipping, sliding into stagnation – because of my outlook – because of something, a feeling: more painful now, toiling, not wanting to do a complete piece – but this now seems not necessarily so bad – my expectations of what I should do (through all I have learned) make what went before almost irrelevant, however much it still retains some meaning.

There is much to do but when I am feeling “inspired” at times I want to do everything at once all piled together and can’t concentrate on doing even one thing. I am a person who does this, I will be the person who does a certain set of things. Sometimes I try to establish my identity along these lines – by imposing a set of possibilities upon myself for the future- knowing that I can’t follow every momentary impulse and spend money randomly on whatever seems appealing for brief instances. I had written seven days (or so) earlier that a successful way to counteract the difficulties with limitations was to not spend money,time or effort on the things which I knew I did not want to do – to be frugal. Working for money, the lever which opens up possibilities – but it would be better to make my work and my possibilities the same thing. If artistic creation is a possibility – then make my work: artistic creation and so forth.
Expression is valuable.

On the other hand – something similar to what I remember Stanton Englehart saying during a high school art class field trip to one of his exhibitions at FLC – that:
If you wish to be a creative artist it is better to make a living through some other means than creative artistry.

That perhaps attempting to make enough money to eat, sleep under a roof, use for relaxation, use to purchase materials,  through creative artistry would involve suffering and limitation – and conflict as to negatively affect the act of creative expression to such a degree that it would no longer be meaningful as creative expression – an act of joy – and would merely become work – meaningless imprisonment – or prostitution.

But what if working to be able to live as a creative artist in a time and space separate from wok uses up so much of the self that the freedom for a separate creative space no longer exists?

As in The Hermit of 69th Street – NK uses sexual encounters with women to spark his writing fire – or tap into a creative flow – but at the same time he ends up writing much about sexual encounters with women.

If one works in a restaurant for a living and has aspirations of being a writer – won’t writing necessarily gravitate toward the experience of working in a restaurant? Would the same hold for a painter and painting?

In my own experience and searching for meaning in identity and action – working at the restaurant counts almost nothing – yet I am doing that more than anything else. But what makes this dedication possible? The belief that there is more…

…the problem with many movies based on literary works is that either they are nothing in and of themselves, a second-rate retelling of a story, or they become something so unrelated to the original work that they no longer express the same thing, mean the same thing, tell the same truth, etc. – even if this thing – this meaning is highly subject to individual interpretation. The first kinds of movies are better off unmade because they aren’t much more than a bad copy and the audience would (should) find it much more worthwhile to read the book and forget the movie.

The second kind of movies should not be indebted to a literary work – would stand better as movies in and of themselves, movies as movies rather than movies based on books, because the film becomes meaningless through its distortion of the story – and the book/ written text loses meaning through the film and comes into conflict with the film when the audience assumes they are one and the same thing. When the film/ movie expresses something completely different from what can be found in the written text – and the audience assumes they have gotten both stories for the price of one.

Such films are usually a disappointment to those who read and have read the original written story. Though this complaint is only really valid if the movie purports to be the same story – as in (Disney) The Rescuers – but a movie like The Great Mouse Detective, though based on A Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries is actually a film in its own right and doesn’t do a disservice to “Holmes stories” because – first it does not pretend to be The Purloined Letter (any more that The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist pretends to be The Purloined Letter?) – second Sherlock Holmes has become something more than mere literary works, it is part of our cultural iconography. “Based on,” all creative work is “based on” other creative works. This is unavoidable. Even the notion of “creative work” only exists because there is such a thing as creative work and creative works. We write because there is language. I draw because I have seen other drawings, because I see, because at some point I got a hold of some crayons, maybe a pen or pencil – but these marking tools had been made – already made for the purpose of marking – writing is a more organized form of language – a painting an organized image. In the last century we have turned from centuries of continued organization to disorganization (reorganization?) – Deconstruct? Organize? Disorganize? Reorganize? And on toward chaos… Now I begin to tread waters I really know nothing about…

DANCE

Library

Library, Nottingham “Poly” Clifton campus – reading The Mill on the Floss.
Men outside rasing a flagpole – clear day, sunshine – blue sky without a cloud.
Flowers of Evil, TV Sky.

Haven’t been to see the countryside. All city life – must go to Staffordshire for a weekend – catch up on school work – not put chocolate chips in mugs of coffee and not spill drink on shirt while running to the bus in the morning with H.
Come through this all-right – farty farts – but that’s not my fault?
Want to go outside – should do a lot of work during the week – get out of bed! Can do. I like early mornings – then the first mug of coffee! Yum.

Man taped together – scotch, tape and bits of string and rubber band. You can make noise – modern music is interesting – all happened within twenty years. Thirty at the most. Maps and maps and maps.
Traveler wandering “childhood” today is a day from long ago, cool, cold fall like the fall that used to be – no clean clothes, lingering odors of cigarette – not a childhood day – then.
But yet again so much like La Plata Canyon, church in the log cabin, herbal teas and coffee, log fire in the wood-burning stove, first service then Sunday school – members of the church teaching through C.S. Lewis – sometimes.
(School girl instincts – arrested social development.)

Sometimes lunch with the Gs – P and T? Yucky name! Daughter named after a character in The Lord of the Rings?

Scotland or Ireland for spring vacation? Soft hands – no work – want to get out and chop wood – rugged, rural outdoor type life.

Women can now be priests – vote carried, Government wants to cut? wages – lost at NERTS last night but not by that much. Rook on a twisted tree.
Now noon, day should be heating up, middle of November. Could turn out to be a warm day, won’t though – too far north.
Questions questions only needed to write the word once. Mind is? clearing from the horror. Can’t go back to work in Durango though. Goldmund – tending toward that fiction slightly.
Wonder about S. She is still asleep or just waking in Iowa – where it is just a little warmer than it is here. Oh, E – such a twisted, broken thing – “cutting off legs to walk” don’t draw or even doodle anymore – Western World – repentance – enjoy it too much – therefore it isn’t good to do. Too much clutter now I’m trying to write – and don’t know where I am, can’t judge the words objectively. How do they come across when I haven’t written them? How do they compare? How do I know!

Can’t really get a sense of writing – like in class, workshop – too involved in the personal vision to be able to tell if the words realize that vision – is there a wall, or short-circuit between insight and expression? A line has meaning in and of itself – a line exists on the page. Words have no inherent meaning, especially in English – maybe the “oriental” languages do, more so – as expressed through calligraphy based on pictograms – but I guess that too is not expressive – when written with a mechanical pencil in neat lines.

Girl diagonal from my cubicle – mine for a moment, what face?
It is not the sound of language. One can hear the primeval lyricism and poetry in a voice – even those American voices – even those because they are not so “new and different” a sensation for the ear – I hear the voice behind the voice – unfortunately all English accents for the most part – are pleasing now – the voice behind the voice speaks – in silence – still completely unable to make judgments – but the face begins to speak.

Aristocracy of fame replaces monarchies of birth – the film stars and pop stars are the new feeble inbred royalty  – royalty now a tabloid star – rise of the artisans and theatre to the top – actors actresses singers and strippers – the big life, the in crowd.

I should be able to write something that produces the same sense of wonder and amazement as the life I live. This?

Wishing for a pencil to mark in the margins of this book I’m reading. School is for interactive learning – not private, personal learning – though that too can be gained through interaction. I’m always struggling towards an insight through statements of authority, “This is.” But do I need to make assertions of my own? Language is a tool and a toy – a substance to be bent and molded – Fuse the rational and irrational, emotion and (what word?) Intuitive knowledge and “book knowledge.” No such thing as rigid, workable system – like the Scientific Method.

If the “universe” is not a strictly balanced causal system then there is free will – it isn’t all as firmly tied as “science” would have us believe – especially those sciences, such as biology in previous years, what about psychology? There are no twelve steps there are no right, final answers. Look at physics… re-discovery of non-Newtonian universe, re-describe – but is that all meaningless- and?

Dark patches in the limbs of a tree against pale blue autumn sky.
Are they leaves not yet fallen or are they birds?
I am the leaf I am the bird.

Why does poetry almost always sound so schlocky and contrived?
Because some writing is broken up into different segments, rather than paragraphs, sentences, phrases on a page it becomes “poetry.” Have I tried rhyme schemes and alliteration and hell I don’t know what all about verse, and in school we’ve had it so often – my mind does not retain.

- I “completely disagree” that some story J thought was “good” because the “character” had a “voice” was actually all that good – I thought it was “false” and empty and contrived – like something that was one thing trying to be another – dishonest – no spine.

Song by Jesus and Mary Chain Bum dum dum – like it used to sound!

-waiting for the girl as she takes on half the world

-just like honey

See how this is all tied to her and makes me sick! Not sounding at all the same – X obscurity – because what I’m trying to can’t be said in words.

I wonder about my own relational judgments – like a book dislike – because of them – get it or don’t and wonder what they see in it and completely miss what you yourself could see in it.

If I’m going to create something I will be throwing myself into their hands!  Unfortunately B (well at least the impression I got from presentation in class of “writing group”) was off – like Scientific Method applied to the actual lived practice of generating science.
Even the Inklings… weren’t at all what she seemed to be saying they were – Tolkien seemed to work in the “rarefied air” of his own created world – but then, he did share work – so inevitably the reactions of the others would have some effect… one must do it and write and share and write again if one is ever going to do it – one must be Zen to be Zen.

It doesn’t seem that yesterday was yesterday

It doesn’t seem that yesterday was yesterday – perhaps a random day some week or weeks in the past, but not yesterday.

As soon as I finish that potential tattoo drawing – I will finish with potential tattoo drawings for a while and concentrate on drawing from real life, drapery, statues, people, etc. and work on shading, tonality, realism for a time. But after a good few months I am at long last nearing completion on this one particular design. My wrist and all the fingers, and the tendons in my forearm, yes and besides that I’m beat – wrist and fingers ache – so why write? Well, good to see ya, no time to get at it now – so I’ll say goodbye until next time.

I can already think of tomorrow as today

I can already think of tomorrow as today, the sun will be rising in a few hours – the blackened blister of despair has swollen and quickly burst – but still lingers – oozing? clearing? festering. A dark inescapable five minutes or so of absolute hopelessness – or so it seemed. Wallowing in incompetence – and unable to see past my own failings, inadequacies, stupidity, waste, foolishness – the whole question of money overwhelming.

Now the ink is leaking out of this pen, staining my fingers; the sun will soon be rising -  can hear the clock ticking I do not in the least understand this  mystery of existence – especially when considering what others seemed to have experienced – and is only known? Through conversation, stories – I did this – it was this way – I saw this heard this – what? is there really such a place as Indonesia? Baffin Island? Was I ever really in Prague? Upper Gornal? Kidderminster?

Who would want to be an actor? Play out public drama? The meaning of all this lying, cheating ignorance, misrepresentation – why does my mind only seem to be working less than half the time? Its efficiency an act of getting the most things done in the least amount of time? If, when I write, I underline the words most problematic, will this bring me closer to knowing what is, what can and what cannot be comprehended or communicated? If I keep my mouth shut what will happen to the words that don’t escape? Words – only words? Is less better? Sometimes less is better – but one needs 1) to eat 2) to sleep 3) to drink water 4) to breath. What else does one need? Love? Sex? Enemas? Television? Regular baths? a sense of humor? Needs for what? Why do I say such stupid things? What am I trying to do? Is writing – creating the visible word – a praiseworthy endeavor, in the sense that – all those who write are somehow admirable? I find myself more and more unsure of anything – attempting to exert rational control over my existence , do this – this – and this and subsequently this: x – will follow. X being a greater happiness than I am at present moment experiencing. Beyond the membrane a clear, indescribable? ineluctable? imperceptible light? or calm? is this a recollection of the moment of birth and if so what is birth?  How many times, when, how, in what way is something born? In the dawn of the world when that which is me first became – was there anything which was not me – how am I distinguished for the not I – is the blanket, are the blankets, pillows, is the bed – are those books – is this wall – are all these not I – without them would there still be an I? In one sense – which will be referred to as the immediate – yes, for I can leave the room – leave all in this room and I am still I – but there is also the conviction that nothing can cease – that if I leave the room the room is still there, but that without Sirius, or even Sadal Melik, the entire order/ disorder fabric of the universe would be altered and that a universe where Sirius was not  is actually inconceivable, and in this sense I and Sirius are one – without Sirius, no I; the two are dependent upon each other – and if a speck of dust somewhere in the fibers of the carpet were not – then Sirius would not be – nor I, nor blankets, Indonesia, or Prague which brings me to think this question – what is time? Must be unlike any conception commonly referred to – and how ignorant I am of so much of all that others have already thought and written. Books Box Words Words…

Noise of early morning traffic on Agua Fria below – a sound – below – a dryness at the back of my throat. Thinking suddenly about trying to uncover what it was like to write The Brothers Karamazov, or Crime and Punishment and then pausing to hold this long enough to be able to write it down – as it was already fading – falling backwards ladder to ladder – or stoking a fire – piling on fuel that can’t all possibly burn at once – white hot ferment or suffocation? bloated

Sometimes – when reading or thinking – I hear the voices of people from my day-to-day – mainly work – reciting – and so a thought or a sentence read  now will sound this person speaking – now that – saying words I have never heard them say in their own distinctive voices.

How would you be free? Focus on emotion – but the ever-presence of work tends to subsume all; it is always there – and seems to be the one major presence – you must go to work. But how to make it small – like water off a duck’s back? By not obsessing or reacting or taking it seriously. But what all these words are I’m not sure – what they mean – but I know I feel the presence of an answer – one that keeps recurring – fades – perhaps is even lost for a time but then is there again – maybe it has changed – I could trace its genesis – but never sketched it a definite face it would be hard to say how different it has become from once was when unknown in days or years past.

I would like to concentrate on simple everyday – am I only haphazardly shoring up against the flood of desire – is there a rock upon which my house is being built? I think: I do not want to spend money – but then – NO! I must have skis – I have extra cash from overtime – I imagine owning a climbing rope, a season’s pass, getting a new tattoo  but I don’t have the money – CREDIT! spend (but not uncontrollably) a sudden craving for company and eating out, coffee, a book, so many things and all so easily attainable… how do I deny myself – having spent so much on fleeting indulgence in lust and auto-eroticism? Why deny myself something probably much more healthy, longer lasting, and beneficial?

Therefore – the place to start in this project – newly reborn – for the nth time – is (to start) by ceasing to spend money on the unnecessaries – cds, going out (restaurants, bars, coffee, etc.) pornography and all related sexual fantasies, books (use the library instead.)
Phase 2 – start to do some budgeting – based on $800 a month – all x-tree money should go into savings.