zepplin

so i've been at home for a week now. home as in uxbridge. the hometown. the parents. the brothers. 

i told everyone i'd get in and get out. can't stand this town, i'll be back in a few days, don't worry.

but i'm still here. and its curious, to me.

my hair is getting long. i'm wearing pigtails right now. for some reason i feel like they make me look older in this dykey way. i like it.

its been 2 years since i first met the last person to seriously break my heart. and i finally feel like stella gettin her groove back. which is exciting. like deep inhalations. but also scary. like mourning the loss of a loss. or the loss of a focal point. or something. 

i used her as a muse in a lot of my poetry and photography. she occupied this part of my mind that dipped into creativity, and sorta wrapped herself around major synapses in a way that made this amputation tedious and painstakingly slow. 

i wondered how i would know i was over her. like actually know. you tell your friends (the ones who are sick of you mentioning her name to the point that you actually take a breath, or a sip of something, or mumble before her name) that 'no guys. this time. it's done. i'm over it.' but sometimes, lying is just easier. 

but i know i'm there now. it's not spiteful. it's not premature. it's the imagining 'i'll never love anyone else like this' conclusion; when you reach a point where that doesn't bother you. that doesn't make you ache. doesn't conjure memories of touches, images of glances, remembrances of the smell of her clothes on you. her skin. her laugh. 

it's when none of those things adds up to a smirk. or a sigh. or a second thought. it is in the past. 

i have these two papers due for my advanced american lit class, which was phenomenal by the way. fuck, i'm going to miss it. it was a half year 4th yr credit, and it spanned work from auden, to Fraser, to West Side Story, Company, Manhattan, Patti Smith, blues songs, Cole Porter, Lost in Translation, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Tennessee Williams- all looking at the representation of love. romantic love. 

the papers don't need to be more than 5-6 pages. but you know me. and love. i wanna say something that means something. and this semester, well thanks in part to this course, i've been reflecting about love and my place in it too much to actually get concrete ideas on paper. but in this last week, i feel more ready than i have in the last three months.

auden has this great fucking poem that reminds me of the hole i was stuck in (see above post-pinage). it's called the more loving one:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

but on earth indifference is the least i have to dread. that line. that fucking line. kills me. its that night in the alley when i was choking back tears as she ran after me, wrapping her arms around me and throwing her head back to laugh. silly jes. running away in the snow. finding a dead end. it's my petulance as a cheap ploy for attention as she is fawned over. its the poetry. its too much goddam poetry. 

this poem is comforting somehow to me. not only realizing that i woulda found good scotch-sipping company in auden's faggy ass (we are such kindred spirits. sigh), but that he knows, objectively, the torture inflicted on his heart. and that it will pass one day. but for now he's in the thick of it and not ready to see the sublime of an empty sky, so he writes a verse. he writes a verse. he writes a verse.

the poetry is never wasted, even when the heart is. 

oh my god, it's after 4am. i have been up late these days. i've missed being up this late, and not because i'm drunk somewhere. or just pouring myself into bed. or hooking up. 

but just, being awake because my mind is going. and feeling okay. and maybe creating.

like this painting i've been working on. gosh, i haven't done a painting since summer. i started it a couple days ago. it's a 20x24. good size. peachy abstract background. patches of red and pale blue. very visceral. i plan to paint the structural drawings of the USS Akron, a zepplin circa 1931. 

it feels good to be painting again.

i hate christmas parties.

christmas. holiday biz. blurrr. burrr.

god, it got cold. 

there's something comforting about the music i used to surround myself with during the holidays. i'm conflicted. relient k, this band from my high school days, is the sort of nostalgia i want sometimes.

but i mean, the god stuff? i dunno how i feel about it all at this point in my life. 

its like hymns. that regina spektor song - human of the year - it crescendos like the hymns i grew up singing often did. and it makes me feel so emotional. same with rk songs like 'i celebrate the day' or the more secular, 'i hate christmas parties'.

but i feel like, there's still a space for enjoying this music. i feel like i'd be a hypocrite if i did it in secret. like the anti-porn people. i read somewhere the the red states in the US statistically consume the most porn. i mean, just own it.

but sometimes its not that simple i guess. we'd rather die for our supposed political convictions than admit folly. 

i don't really know what this post is about. i just miss writing. excavating secrets feels right. 

at this point in my life, things are going well. i love writing for arthur. i love this community. i love making things. i love writing poetry. and get this, i am in-like with school right now. all these things leave me feeling a generally satisfied.

but something in me chimes this sense of disquiet. like my heart is broken but i don't know why or how to go about mending it. or like i've forgotten something. or forgotten what i've forgotten. and my desire for intimacy flares in hot and cold. like i am this consistent dissonance. 

hmmm. i have more to say but haasleton's is closing.

eggnog

as i walk along aylmer toward macs

you

a pair of you 

interrupt my first decisive steps of the evening with questions

of where are you going

are coming to the burning hell

i dance and i

i mull about cover

i mull about mood

and then i leave you with a maybe to mull under the surveillence of flourescant lights

about eggnog

IT'S ON SALE

do i want two for $6?

why doesn't it come in a reasonably priced 2 litre jug?

why two separate cartons

wait, one is only $2.89

can i even drink one?

i certainly don't need $6 worth, even if i am saving

i don't even know how much i'd be saving 

okay i'll get one

and a pepsi

in case i don't feel like the taste of eggnog when i get home

 

i pay the cashier with exact change plus one cent

which i tell her to keep

because i actually hate pennies

full on loathing

they wage wars on my tiny pockets until i cannot bear the fury

any longer

and i grab them in fistfuls and fling them at the sidewalk

the sidewalk who thankfully hasn't pressed charges

yet

 

but i keep this to myself

and give the woman nothing but grins and salutations

that are over-compensating but she doesn't know me well enough

to know the difference

and i think maybe i've made her night

but maybe thats the kind of ego that she

writes angry 'i work at macs poems' about

and fuck,

i wouldn't blame her

and i'd probably hate me too

 

i bound down toward the intersection and i can already see my house

living 'right downtown' instills less the feeling of community

and more the feeling that the villa auto wash is my neighbour who

i should courtesiously have tea with rather than

begrudgingly walk by

 

the streets are damp and it reminds me of my favourite weather

i could say that it is my favourite weather

but with the city nudging us with holiday cheer

by blaring yule tide from the clocktower

-yes, today i found out where that bloody shit is coming from-

i find that i feel less nosthalgic and more

creeped out

even though i cave after 5 minutes in earshot

and hark the herald with the best of them

 

the signs are there

people have their twinkle lights up

we've simulated carolers

and my calender on my macbook desktop

says its almost december

but it feels

like spring

and i know its neither

i'd blame the impending apocalypse if i thought i could actually

handle one more friggin

2012-mayan-calendar mention

but i can't

its just

mild out

 

i get close to my door

and pause before the stairs

i don't even remember if i like eggnog

but for some reason

what i am sure is

that 

it won't be last time i stagger toward my door

cradling a carton of it under my arm

 

i go to the kitchen and grab a glass

a plain glass that my mom says is cheap and the kind that breaks really easily

but i like it because it comes in jes sized narrowness that i can get my hand

around easily and still feel classic about

ain't no sippy cup

it's a glass

i bring the materials to my room even though my apartment is vacant

set things down on my vanity

and proceed to pour

full

and i bring the nog to my lips

staring back at me with each sip

we did this

its pretty good

might taste great with whisky in it

i text emily

hey. bought eggnog. it might taste great with whisky in it

sip

she texts back

i agreeeeeee. i love rum and nog. big D smiley face.

oh

it's rum that you use with eggnog

right

hmm

 

i go back to watching

the best part of watching is my ring

my big ring

all the powerful people had to have worn big rings

king arthur

ghengis kahn

shaq

every thought and movement is punctuated by

the big ring

'yeah i'm going to that party'

puts hand on wall and glances over at big ring

'well when i was young'

cups goblet with big ring hand

'well thats an interesting thought, frances'

leans back and clasps hands

staring casually at big ring

 

i think i've come to rely on it these days

my interchangeable two big rings

this one

and the one that ruby said looked like the mayan...

nevermind

i used to wear this jade one but it broke at a show

i got it when i was 11

me and my brothers all the got the same one

i was the only one who still had it

anyway it broke and its sad but we all hang on to things

and the big rings let me decide on my gender

in my mirror

when i can

 

after a bit of lauryn hill

i decide i only need one glass of nog

and go into the living 

room

my roommate, now home 

asks if i was drinking a carton of milk in my room

no...

its eggnog

i would sue the city if i wasn't so tired.

there was a lobster boy

with very lobster hands

should you look his way

you'd see the fabric of a man

he lived in any town

like all the rest

and smiled with his feelers

and laughed with the jest

but every night

before he went to sleep

in a boiling pot

of water, he would creep

to the edge

screaming out and

into the night

because lo--

this human world was not

is not

made for lobster boys

there were things we could've done

to welcome lobster hands

but we did not

do not-

despite our demands, and so

all of our wishes

of love for this boy,

our watching him

squirm about with joy--meant nothing

when night fell

(and it always fell)

because the screams

would go unreconciled

and his little lobster heart

which we told him to conceal

would shrivel like a prune

in spite of all his zeal

as he wrote his story

onto the air (of the night

not to inspire

or aide in the fight

but) to terrify

future lobster boys

as they lay awake

cascaded in noise-

the harpooned gasps

of a dying thing,

and a city looking

for another king.

blowjobs.

i had a really interesting bar-hopping slew of conversations yesterday with a close friend. about sex. about things we craved, and things we were scared to want. and how - as much as we may deny it at times - you really can't fight chemistry.

and i mean, chemistry chemistry. lab coats and brains and stuff. like the energy of attraction being less about abercrombie and more about electrons.

cuteboy, as i will henceforth refer to him, was at the spoon today. startled me a little because he was the first person i saw as i came bounding up the stairs, and as soon as i saw him my heart skipped and i remembered dancing last saturday. and trying to explain to the close friend what i wanted, nay, craved these days: boys.

boy energy. loose around the gender part, but just this zing of sensation i feel around intimacy with individuals more masculine than myself. and yet, not all masculinity, because i have not yet been able to enjoy/desire (or even really pursue) sex with nontrans men.

speaking with this close friend...who needs a cool name too...ummm....teddy. talking with teddy, i learned that she too has a dilemmna involving maleness. teddy has feelings for a nontrans man. has never experienced such a situation. but her identity is very centred around being more or less a 'butch dyke'. what does that mean? she is afraid of entirely letting go with said person because what if she really connects? its scary, this gender thing. this identity thing.

i feel the implications of feeling attracted to trans men and not nontrans men. its not about crushing as soon as i know they are trans. but something in me senses some sort of gender awareness. it is perceivable in demeanor. in energy. it is for the same reason i am oh so attracted to genderqueers and gender variant people that embody that masculine energy that is different than my own.

and then. there's this girl. we shall call her, woolf. woolf is dating a queer nontrans boy. and is really into said person. but seems conflicted as to what that speaks of her queer relatively lesbian seeming identity.

and so. of three of us 'queers' there is this conflict around masculinity. and fair enough. masculinity is given power.

for me, it is not that i see remnents of female identity in trans men. hardly. i very see and feel a masculinity about them. one that i am often attracted to. but perhaps on a chemical level, i am not wired to desire nontrans masculinity, though i often entertain the idea of it and will likely attempt to pursue it again.

i respect woolf and teddy. and their desires. but understand how difficult these waters are to navigate. teddy running away with her beau could be interpretted by the queer community as a loss. and to the hetero world as a gain. and as only natural. and place her past queer history in a box of 'just a phase'. and so it is easy to understand why she would be scared of 'seeing what happens' with this boy.

woolf talking constantly about her queerness is understandable in the same vein. her parents are excitably asking questions about the 'boyfriend'. this can feel like a devaluing of one's queer identity, especially if greater excitement is displayed over a, generally speaking, hetero relationship.

'oh so you broke up with kristen. so are you back to men now?'

'i hear you're dating ben! does that mean you're done with girls?'

blah de blah.

i roll my eyes at myself, because i have written another blog post about sex. but i think its interesting - just like dissecting our human functions on a microbiotic level - that we want what we want. but we deny what we want too. for the sake of the movement. and our identities. and ourselves.

lately i have been dreaming about blowjobs. giving. but i have also desired receiving. i am thankful that i am more excited and less ambivalent about my fluidity.

even cows get the blues.

i hate the employment centre lady. she incessantly harps on me for using the internet for anything other than job searching. what freakin ever. no one else is heeeere. it happpens to be thundering outsiiide. takkkee yourrr mandate and shoooove it.

ahem.

hate is a strong word. i have not been feeling quite so strong lately so using it feels good. artsweek is now over and i must go take my exhibit down and stash 8 large scale super hero self portraits of myself SOMEWHERE in my apartment. seeing as my roommate has decided to move back home with the parentals, leaving me high and dry, so i'm sure having my face all over the living room will aid me greatly in the new tennant shopping department.

win-win.

snarky is coming easy today. why? well...i'd been having reoccurring fantasies about sleeping with a close friend. and simultaneously i have been on-and-off reading this book about open relationships. it talks at great length about intimacy - explaining the topic in one of the most astute ways i have yet to read. and it gets to the topic of friends, and picks apart the notion of "dude. we can't sleep together. we're friends" in a rather smart fashion.

and really. okay. so...in order to sleep with someone, if i can't have no-strings sex with a friend i must:

a) court someone new until we reach date #three/five/nineteen (whatever your holding period is) and we're allowed to bone

b) pick up a random

c) pimp myself

d) pay for sex


c is of no use, as i am living in peterborough and wary of the sex worker scene. d, well, i'm broke. i already tried a this summer. and the romance and stuff was lovely, but immediately after the sex, i was told that they couldn't do the open/poly/thing and were more into someone else.

and so i'm left with b. again. and pick ups have their fun. and sexy. but sometimes, i crave a little more than that. a little more intimacy. like wendy points out in her book, intimacy can be a really connecting conversation. and sometimes sex can, well, be like a handshake. or doing laundry. or eating a sandwich.

anyway. now said friend is all upset at me for putting them in the place of having to reject me. and also thinks i value our friendship less for proposing sex. ugh.

it's fine. no really, its fiiiiiiiine.


in other news, i am off to guelph soon soon soon to give an anti ableism workshop. you can even register online (a fact that i discovered when googling my name. vain. yes.)

<>

i am excited but also nervous. i have given many a workshop at this point. but i mostly stick to sex (as a reoccurring theme). so i will undoubtedly bring up sex, and hope that is okay.

speaking of, my good friend iris (who now lives in guelph...which is happy/sad...i miss her...and if she is reading this, so does elliot, and we gushed about you at a bonfire party quite drunkenly...straight gin = direct transit to sloppy town....but happy also because it means i have fun people to visit when i come to do my workshop!) is doing a paper and needed a topic.

one of those, pick your own adventure kind. so she wants to discuss accessbility in a philosophy way (since that is her major) and i brought up blindness and porn.

sites like porn for the blind are indicative of what exists out there. mainstream hetero porn 'adapted' for the visually impaired. iris found the actual voiceover hilarious, but resultantly unsexy. and i talked to her about how its quite an accurate testiment to how we view 'dis-ability' in the first place.

i would like to keep going with this conversation, but the employment centre is closing soon, and bitch lady will probably tell me to leave because i am breaking the rules again. even though no one is in here. but me. as per usual.

next post. sound porn. and the question of whether or not i can get grant funding to create my empire. maybe if i file it under 'experimental art'. or even...um...'sexual health aid for the blind'

xoxo my darlings.

terracotta

a friend posted a photo on my facebook wall the other day, of a woman named Florence Pickner, dated 1912. no face, back to the camera- just a picture of her back. scoliosis about as pronounced as mine. 

and i don't know why but the picture made me uncomfortable. 

perhaps it bore too much resemblance to some of my own work. or maybe it was because, in trying to find the original source, i googled 'scoliosis' only to find dozens of images of the same vein. 

faceless. spines either intact with curve or wearing scars and correction with a sort of brazen-reversing pathos. 

the search led me to flickr pools of scoliosis spines, scars, befores and afters, and comment upon comment praising God, other sources of beauty, and perseverance. 

why am i angry?

i am hardly the only one here. maybe i'm sort of sick of humans sometimes. her scars but still rebellious spine in one picture. her 'unaffected' face in another. 

"hunny, you're still a pretty face" (blogger)

right. 

gahh. this girl...left a comment on her artsy self portrait. to the effect of:

Went to bed last night crying over everything scoliosis related. Being frustrated at the fact I can't lie flat on my back. Frustrated at the fact I still feel like a hunchback and my back feels heavy. It ached so bad, my spine felt like it was still twisting, despite being healed for just over 7 years now, and ripping out of my skin. 

where's the room to be a hunchback and like it? where's the room to not cry yourself to sleep because your body is resisting the surgery you desperately wanted to correct the curve?

i am not trying to sweep over anyone else's experience here. yeah, pain. yeah, hurting. but what about the ways its not those things? what about the spaces for great?

and of course all of this got me thinking about sex and gender. how i embrace my trans friends desire to transition. how that surgery should be free. but how there is this part of me that squeaks and squirms from somewhere deep inside. for those who want to say that sometimes their body isn't home, but because of other people. how i'd like to be in between. in between the tiles. 

and there's privilege there, granted. being okay with being perceived as girl because of my boobs, my height, my femininity.

i think about cultures that (before colonized with the white way of gender dichotomy) esteemed those who felt themselves to be two-spirited, pan-gendered, and differently gendered. 

i get called a lesbian. i get told how i'm supposed to behave accordingly. by queers. by allies. its easier at times to interact with the 'ignorant hetero world' for this reason. because its like drag for me. i use the body i have and the garments and i play a role. it is a believable act and no one questions my authenticity. it is assumed.

but female drag in a queer event? swooning over gay boys? no no. you like pussy. you like lumberjack attire. wait- you're wearing plaid and going to go practice salsa? where is your dress. tsk tsk. 

rambling again.

but back to backs. 

my back is my back. i don't know it any other way. it curves a fuckload. and it tires me out sometime. but its mine. sure, i could try and 'correct it' too. but surgery is painful. and expensive. and it would change me. maybe i'd be happier. maybe i'd pass under the radar a little more. i'm no 'pretty face' so perhaps i could use the pretty normal points. 

i've been asked when i'll move on from what i've been doing artistically. explore a different subject. and my response has always been 'when it feels finished' but i half worry that it never will in my lifetime. 

i like the world at my angle. 

its not inspirational. its not even that fascinating. but my back invites conversation, which sometimes inspires me and sometimes offends me. either way, my body is how i know the world, and how i've become able to assert the importance of my presence. 

blah blah. so my art is provocative. its only half provocative because i'm showing people shit they don't want to see. or so they say. but they love looking. and seeing someone who isn't sad at all. its weird. its quirky. i'm fucking with you, and i know you realize that on some level. 

can't a kid just being a hunchback? 

i guess its tied to my appreciation for artists like Lady Gaga. sure she's just as vapid and blonde as the rest of the A-list celebs. but she likes wearing things and saying things that people feel weird about. and i like that. 

today i am wearing red pants and a terracotta shirt. its yummy.