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when quarantine started i thought it seemed dramatic when people said we would all suffer some sort of trauma from going through all this but now i definitely get it. working really really hard to take care of my mental health & i hope everyone is taking care of themselves. its just not great vibes out there. there's only so many ways to say it.
i read this interview today about mushrooms
which brought me some joy. the world can be magical and everything is so so connected even if it doesn't always feel good.
moving into my own place on friday :) i'm really excited for the change and the chance to have the space to heal a little, finally. my brain keeps waiting for something to go wrong, but this good thing is really happening.
started reading mary gaitskill's essay collection. i always think of this article that said her writing gives an overwhelming feeling of permission. maybe i have already written about this? but i find her perspective to be healing exactly for that reason. it feels like love to find someone with a perspective so similar to your own, because you then just get to fall into the feeling of acceptance and having a place in the world. in particular i love that she is always crushingly honest, and somehow does it without leveling judgment on the darkness that honesty can reveal. the first essay is about how she became a born again christian at 19 and read the book of revelations. immediately this resonated--i went to an odd catholic grade school where the days were fairly unstructured and we were often taught the more cultish aspects of catholicism due to the anything-goes nature of the curriculum. i was learning about stigmata and how the world was going to end in my lifetime in fifth grade. every other thursday or so we would go to confession, a process which involved waiting all day in the church while several grades took turns talking to the priest. we were allowed to either journal or read the bible while we waited.
i remember journaling constantly in those years, and writing these really sad and sometimes violent short stories, which is something i've also only ever seen replicated in gaitskill's writing (thinking about "two girls" here). i think being raised in the really binaristic thinking of a western religion like catholicism, where things are strictly good or evil, every action necessarily one side of a coin, makes you fascinated with turning over every stone to see what's underneath. so i was really interested in looking through the bible for the stuff that actually seemed interesting--not all of the moralistic stuff, which didn't resonate with my overall experience in the world where people already seemed unduly cruel (all of the pious adults around me were the worst ones)--the parts that felt true because of their sadness, absurdity, and incomprehensible mysticism. i specifically remember reading the book of job and thinking that it was literally insane that the loving and merciful god i had learned about all my life inflicted so much pain on someone just to prove a point to the devil. like, what? there was just so little plot consistency in the bible, no divine character development to account for all of the strict yet conflicting rules and concepts constantly leveled by god or in service of him. it all drove me crazy, but i like to be driven crazy (i had a friend who told me this, "i like to be driven crazy" about their experiences with falling in love. i 100% agree). because of this, i was totally obsessed with god, and how terrified and out of control the idea of a divine power could make me feel. and then i read the book of revelations, and thought it was amazing. it was the thing that made me love the bible, and what still makes me remember my religious upbringing as intriguing and mystical, rather than simply terrifying and traumatizing. actually, it doesn't need to be binary--it was a truly nauseating combination of both. the book of revelations made me sick to my stomach, and i obsessed over the apocalypse for years after that. it's that good.
mary gaitskill's essay about revelations addresses a similar idea as ted chiang's "hell is the absence of god,"--what if there is a god and he really doesn't care that much? what if the world is both randomly painful, and ruled by an omnipotent god? while on acid, i also had this thought. i imagined that you meet yourself when you die, and god is an essence of your own humanity. at the time i was also frantically trying to put together a jenny holzer meme on my phone, and kept thinking "when you die, you ask god if you did a good job, and god just keeps saying, hey, do you know how to use photoshop? you do right? can you help me make this jenny holzer meme on my phone?"
at the end of the essay, gaitskill gets at the same point. she writes that after she grew up, grew out of religion, she began to realize the terrifying combination of indifference and rigidity that she perceived in god was really a reflection of what disgusted her about herself and others. all we can do is project onto god, or the concept of god, all the time. like with people, our attempts to connect with each other also require us to connect with ourselves, and it helps to understand that our perception of the other is always influenced by that fact.
the only other thing i have to say about this is the dream gaitskill recounts in this essay reminded me of the killing of a sacred deer, and i wondered if lanthimos is a gaitskill fan. it would make sense!
i still hate my job, but i'm working on acceptance and patience. i think it was given to me as penance for being a wildly ungrateful sad girl for most of my adult life. i truly feel like i am in purgatory lately, but maybe that's the nature of being an adult in this time period. everything is eternally impermanent, and we have no choice but to perceive time as a spiral rather than a straight line. it would be nice if we had solid community, meaningful work, social safety nets, or homes, but at least we have a few good friends and the simple pleasures of glossier and $7 cold brew. and a reoccurring, never-ending adolescence that doubles down on the narcissism each go-round. i really am sick of myself.
i received a particularly well written email today--funny, warm, well paced and unassuming--that made me realize i'm not really that great of a writer. c'est la vie!
watched the paris hilton doc and i think she's an enneagram 9.
fall weather reminds me of all of the best times in my life: going back to college and seeing my friends, walking through pilsen and talking to my friend at the book store and checking out vintage shops. i have an associative memory of happiness linked to this specific weather change.
in honor of this, sophie and i decided to get day drunk like we used to in college but ended up drinking less than a half a bottle of wine each. probably for the best.
i saw a license plate that said VOID right in front of me on the highway yesterday but wasn't able to get a picture.
thinking about when lana said "i need your body to stand on, your name to define me, on top of being a woman, i'm scared." thinking about how she had to become an artist because she wanted to be a muse but couldn't rely on anyone to interpret her correctly. thinking about how exhausting it is to take responsibility for my own life and grapple with the duality of every choice, how every choice feels like a sophie's choice, on and on, forever and ever!
today's poem (from yesterday)
there has always been a man in the past
i dreamt i found him at the basilica of st. louis
where i sat next to a bishop
with long yellow robes that overflowed
and covered my legs
i texted him
are you a man or not?
he replied
why don't you sit with me?
come over
we met in the humming catacombs and
there i saw our lives as a series of dropped pins
he took the lipstick from my hands
and put it on himself,
he is a man
i pound my fists on like a wall
until the dream opens
and he falls out of me
finished vagablonde by anna dorn a few days ago. i was able to get through it quickly thanks to my newfound ability to concentrate and because it was an overall fun read. the protagonist goes off her antidepressants and quickly spirals into intense daily anxiety that she is forced to self-medicate with alcohol and adderall. a lot of this really resonated, especially the spot on descriptions of anxiety--the protagonist is often set off by the thought of space, this idea that we are completely adrift and that there is no true way to be "grounded" and safe due to this fact. she will be driving down the freeway, or in an important meeting, and these intrusive thoughts cause her to panic and dissociate. this is basically my exact experience, though space isn't one of the specific thoughts that terrify me. the protagonist is generally narcissistic and insufferable, and not even always in a fun way or interesting way, but her struggles felt true.
reading the tao teh ching today. i appreciate the meditations on emptiness, though i struggle with philosophies that disown deep and passionate feeling. i guess ecstasy and passion are probably of the ego, but i think we love them because they seem to give us a taste of the divine. i like to think that if there is a universal spirit that flows through everything, it allows for more than inner peace. but clearly i am attached to and over identify with feeling, my enneagram type says as much.
today's love poem
i pummeled into this world riding a horse
holding a handful of wands that i can never put down,
carrying a figmented grief that foments in the bath of me
beauty is never a priority here
we could have it but we choose otherwise
and you are a beautiful thing that i found
when people ask what's the use of you
you can say the arrow in your knee,
the soft bend of light that flows through you
like a leaded window or a plastic platform shoe
with a goldfish stuck inside--
a glass slipper for the modern woman
or anything trans-lucent, reflective, and fragile as life itself
you came into this world levitating several basins
floating carefully and merging with god's wind
spent today viewing apartments before picking up my bike from the shop. for the most part felt very good. i am thanking the antidepressants but i think it has something more to do with feeling a sense of forward motion and of spending more time in the city. so much of my mental health depends on being around people. i remember being so comforted in college by the sound of people talking, watching tv, and walking around as i tried to fall asleep in my dorm.
i have also been thinking about how funny it is that i was in a sorority, and how i always try to qualify it to people, when really it is very "me" to hate belonging to any structure unless its for the purposes of getting fucked up. i met my first love that way and one of my best friends, though i also met some of the worst people i know, and i feel ashamed of what greek life represents in the world. it is truly a hot bed for abusers and has abuse built into its every structure. so many of my friends were harmed by the men we met in greek life, and the sorority system basically grooms women to accept abuse in any form. i was completely gaslit and manipulated to accept things i never thought i would accept, having always been outspoken to a fault in high school. the fact that i entered into the greek system at the same time i entered into a highly toxic and manipulative relationship (and struggled to leave both) is no coincidence.
what i will say is that it helped me make friends and learn how to pretend to be a somewhat normal person in the world, and i still feel sentimental about the experience of living in a house with 8 other women who all shared clothes and pets and made me not feel ashamed of my own femininity. though it was that bond that likely pushed me to accept things that were unacceptable, i can't negate the concurrently positive effect it had on my life. it felt very close to having a family and to this day i still value the community i had during that time. i felt like a total outcast until college and it felt good to be under the wing of something, surrounded by so many loud and confident women until i became one myself.
i think it is important to me to be able to hold two contradictory truths at once. a horrible force can also be formative. both alienating and comforting. i loved "a secret history" because i felt that it got at this dynamic, the lengths people go to in order to belong. i think something primal gets turned on, especially if you feel that you have never in your life belonged before. it is special and terrifying. i think that most people believe they would never get seduced into a cult and i think that most people are absolutely wrong to believe so much in their own agency. we are always operating at the level of our deepest drives, which are for the most part mysterious to us. the result is that we end up in situations we never thought we'd be in, beholden to people and things we never thought we'd value.
i am fascinated by the words beheld, behold, beholden. this idea of being held by beauty, with a debt owed in return, so that we are always in its hold. to be beholden is to be responsible to something else because we made a deal without realizing, thinking that being held was free. i think there have been many times that i have struck such a deal, just wanting to see or be seen, behold or be held.
"when one feels 'self-obsession of some sort," said ethnobotantist kathleen harrison, they should 'spend two minutes looking at a single leaf.' when we look at a leaf or a tree, we don't judge it. we don't think it looks fat or ugly. we don't care if it's rich or impressive. we don't ask for explanations. we just let it be. providing oxygen and making our spaces more serene. not unique, just here."
"...i also see how radical love is, because it laughs at all the dramas, especially the drama of winning. human life is a kind of myopia, everyone walking around, seeing only what's in front of them, or not even that-- passing each other by, embroiled in our little dramas to such an extent that we miss out on everything; making big what is small. these desperate grasps at our own meaning!--when really our lives our meaningless. our lives are meaningless, but life is not--life is hilarious and wonderful and brimming with joy. life is pure freedom and it contains everything--even this dismal, grey human world."
today's poem
we all lay dog piled drunk on the bed
secretly holding hands
people just want to share one breath
people just want to cronenberg out,
pulse together for a while
these fingers are your fingers
attached to my hand
feeling your tongue
which is inside my mouth
i dreamt that you held my head
between your hands and beheld
in a room full of pink modular couches
and instagram palms
beauty thirst, love starvation
at the heart of every
garment torn, hair ripped out
i could cheat and scream and leave
a million times and i would still be
the one who loved you more
and i will continue to bear witness to that
peel sticky garlic skins and behold
your cherubic malaise
on every empty day i feel god,
on every night i'm drunk
and careening about i feel like,
ok, this is why i'm here
i'm here to vomit on my coat
and break my nose on the sidewalk
there are 100 days left in my year
and i'm here to be influenced
generally going through a tough time but want to keep updating. my friend told me that she heard putting your bare feet in the grass clears out the "static" in your body. savoring my freedom and the fact that i can do whatever i want tomorrow for the whole day including the grass thing in order to try to feel better.
