This was the third time that she slept with him. It upset her that he asked for permission. Why would he ask her for permission to do what he had already done twice before? It was as though he regarded them as a series of isolated incidents. He didn't think of her as forming an intelligible plot. There was no story outside of his erotic life, nothing to indicate that he cared about her at all actually. Just following a script to reassure himself that he wasn't doing anything wrong before he took what he wanted.

She felt miserable. The first time there had been excitement and hope. The second time there had been desire. The third time she was only able to think about the unbridgeable gap between them, because although their faces were pressed together, his question had shattered any illusion of intimacy. He concentrated on his body; she could only feel a weight pressing against her chest as the events leading up to this ran through her head again and again. She didn't want him to finish. She didn't want to have to look him in the eye and conceal her sadness from him. Would it be better if he left her alone? Maybe if he stayed she could cling to his hips and feel a little less lonely for a little longer.

Is it too late?

I haven't written in a long time. Anyway, the previous post seemed to provide such a nice little ending: not literal but obvious enough to appeal to my kitschy notions about art. (God, a pop song nearly had me in tears yesterday. I would say which one but that would only add to my embarrassment). But I hate to read a blog and see an haunting post from six months or a year ago, followed by a cessation of communication. It always seems like a suicide note. So I choose to continue this semblance of a narrative where I left off. It may be stuttered or stammering (I like the parenthesis and the semi-colon; they allow me to indulge my digressions while still demarcating the narrative itself), but you can chalk that up to laziness or artifice, whichever you prefer.

So where to begin anew? How about some artwork? Here are some works by Leon Bakst (1866-1924), costume designer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes dance company.


My girl Ida Rubenstein as Helen of Sparta.


And here as Cleopatra.


Vaslav Nijinsky in L'après-midi d'un faune.


Sketch of a model from 1905.


Oil of a dancer in costume.

The sheer variety of Bakst's work is amazing; these are just a few costume designs and a sketch. You should see his set designs (Just do an image search for "Bakst" and you will be blown away). To the modern eye some of it may appear to be garish, art nouveau Orientalism that was dated even in its time. But it's ballet, and it's fabulous, so enjoy it.

2/15

Man and woman seated at table, facing each other, in public space (bar or cafe).

Woman: So you believe in being straightforward. At all times. You won't even pretend to consider it? For the sake of decorum?
Man: No. Better to be consistent and truthful all the time. Then everybody knows where you stand. For example, if I asked you to sleep with me, you would say...
Woman: [Pauses, shrugs]
Man: That's your cue to say, 'Not in a million years,' or something to that effect. And then I would know where you stand. Wouldn't waste time trying to sleep with you.
Woman: And what if I did want to sleep with you?
Man: [...]
Woman: [Shrugs again]
Man: Well, I would think that the audacity of my question would render any such feelings moot for the time being.
Woman: [Getting up from table] You're probably right. But that disproves your original point. Sometimes subtlety is necessary. Sometimes even decorum comes in handy.
Man: [Paraphrasing Woody Allen] Don't you wish life was really like this?
Woman: [Shrugs and exits]

Des choses qui m'ont distraite, dans aucun ordre particulier

I try to avoid references to specific art or artists when I'm creating the autobiographical narrative that I use to make sense of my life (in fact if it were possible I might try not to create a narrative at all, and instead strive for some kind of universal, non-temporal meaning, but I digress). It seems to degrade both the art (in that attaching it to specific periods of my life suggests that what it meant for me in a given moment is somehow authoritative) and the narrative (I should come up with my own way of expressing what these moments mean). Nevertheless it seems unavoidable to incorporate some of the things that occupy my mind when I try to put everything in some kind of comprehensible order. I suppose that's what this is about, in part.

Yada yada.

But since I've been so lazy lately I thought I would show a few things that reflect the past few months of my life, in no particular order of course.

[Break]

The lovely Anna Karina, whom I came to know from Pierrot le fou.

" Unholy
I feel sick and unholy
My soul don't want to know me
I've been living like dirt
Hey lover
I've been touched by another
I guess I'm blowing my cover
I guess I'm blowing my life
Oh save me
Nothing's right for me lately
I was wrong but don't hate me
I've been doing it for myself "

[Break]

"Okay Gracie. Now do you think you could make the word 'went' for me? As in 'Gracie went home'?"

Gracie grabs her letter magnets and moves them into position. Three letters. W-E-T.

"Okay Gracie. But that says 'wet,' like 'the floor is wet.' I think you need one more letter in there."

Gracie giggles and reaches for her N. I know she has trouble pronouncing this word, so I'm impressed by her ability to sound it out, and I tell her so with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.

"Good job, Gracie! Now do you think you can make the word 'tar'? Do you know what tar is?"

Gracie shakes her head. I don't exactly know what tar is either. How can I explain it to a six-year-old? I fumble over words as I try to describe a street-paving scene, a thick, gooey substance. I think I manage to convey a sense of it.

Next we have 'bar', then 'bark' (Gracie smiles, tells me about her cousin's dog, and demonstrates its bark for me), and finally, 'spark'.

She's a sweet kid, and completes her tasks without too much trouble.

[Break]

If Joanna were a character that I had invented, what would she be like? And what would she do? Would she have adventures in the vein of Tintin or Nancy Drew? Or would I take the more modern route and chronicle the excruciating minutiae of her life in the most pedestrian fashion? Would she write her own narrative with humor and energy or would the weight of listlessness flatten her prose? If she were anything like me... well, I hesitate to go down that road. Painfully meta.

Kinks

I think if I were an inanimate object, I would be a bookmark. Today I look around my room and I feel like the bookmarks surrounding me really capture my essence. More so than my toiletries, my clothes, the various knick-knacks I've collected, and certainly more so than my books (look at how many of them sit unread or unfinished, pieces of paper or cardboard marking the exact spot where interest gave way to apathy weeks or months ago). I've never really been one to keep photos anyway. If I did you can guess where they would probably end up. Today my bookmarked books remind me of myself: half-finished, they underscore my inability to really follow through on anything significant, perhaps too obsessed with possibilities at the expense of reality. Here, science fiction; there, a biography of Caesar; a French notebook that I never devote enough time to; Spanish vocabulary gathering dust. And then there's the heavy stuff that I don't even know why I keep; I hope it's not just a ruse to impress half-imagined guests. I hope that's not me. Bookmark as fraud.

Sludge

On Charlie Rose the other night I learned a bit about the sea squirt. A panel of experts was discussing the fundamental link between the brain and locomotion, and one professor adduced the squirt as evidence of this. Apparently, during their larval stage, the little guys have little brains and swim around, but eventually, when it is time to grow up, they find a good rock to attach themselves to, and proceed to digest their own brains as they won't be of any use to the mature, unmoving sea squirt.

It's been over a year now since I moved back in with my mother, and I'm starting to feel like a sea squirt myself. Digesting your own brain isn't as pleasant as it sounds.

(Well, it has its points.)

[Making concessions to the sludge.]

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

The portrait of Tolstoy on the right was my first encounter with the work of this Russian photographer (1863-1944), who in 1909 or so set out on a mission to document the Russian Empire in color. His technique involved three separate exposures using different color filters, which had to be recombined later to create a full color print. He also had a portable dark room with which he travelled around Russia, taking pictures of people and landscapes. Because of the long exposure times necessary, all of his photos of human subjects were posed. However, they are exquisitely detailed and intensely colorful, and I find it fascinating to look at such vibrant images from 100 or more years ago. They come from a time and place that are in some ways very difficult to imagine, but they also show signs of modernization, and at times it is hard to believe that they are so old.

Pretty peasant girls.

Jewish children studying with their rabbi in central Asia.

Uzbek prison.

Alim Khan, last emir of Bukhara.

Bridge over the river Kama.

On parables

Yesterday was a dark and rainy afternoon which seemed like the perfect time to relax and reflect but I never got around to it. Today is quite dreary and gray but just a tad too bright and the drama of downpour has been replaced by a tedious drizzle.
Lately I've been thinking about parables a lot. I recently bought a volume of Kafka's short stories in which I encountered a very brief piece that I thought was so cryptic and sweet I just decided I'd reprint it here:

"Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: 'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid all of your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost."

When I read this I just had to smile. I find the genre so compelling, I think, because of it's ability to pack so much meaning into so few words (almost like a poem in that sense), and because a well executed parable or allegory or fable or whatever you want to call it somehow points toward the incomprehensible, the void of signification, but at the same time communicates a sort of pre-lingual sense of awe. Its paradox is that in dissecting the impossibility of transcendence (of transcendental meaning), it at least points to where meaningfulness might be found (might have been found) if such a thing were possible.

I think this piece really spells out the paradox, but it does so in such a playful way that doesn't seem to conform to the conventions of the genre. After all, transcendence (death) is serious business. And Kafka, a writer known for his depictions of angst and alienation and despair (see sketch above), here seems more interested in wordplay and wit.

Modifications

As you may notice, I've decided to spruce up my blog a bit with some artwork. It makes for a more fetching appearance, n'est-ce pas? Now, I'm no connaiseuse, and I'm not sure what draws me to these works, but they are some of my favorite paintings, so I thought I would go ahead and tell you a little about them. The nude at the head of the page is Valentin Serov's portrait of Ida Rubinstein, Russian ballerina and international star. Serov is an interesting figure: the son of an influential music critic and composer and his erstwhile student, his early portraits displayed a realism coupled with impressionistic tendencies while his later work took a decidedly modernist turn, as evidenced by this portrait from 1910. I admire Ida a great deal; she has a rare beauty I think: not traditional, but with a certain stoic elegance. I'll show you a photo of her as well:
See what I mean? She actually attracted the attentions of numerous artists over the course of her career, including the American Romaine Brooks, with whom she had an affair and who used her as a model for numerous works. I really like this work of Brooks', La jaquette rouge, also 1910 (a year before she began her relationship with Rubinstein), which I found at Sexuality & Love in the Arts with the following caption:

"I love [this] painting because it is of an 'in between' moment. The 'model' or 'woman' may simply be standing near a dressing screen, waiting a moment before getting dressed or before moving to undress to hold a traditional 'classic' pose. Brooks may have perceived this moment to be as beautiful and memorable as anything that was more commonly posed."

The model's slightly inclined head, her pensive expression, her hands folded behind her back, everything about her pose suggests a complete lack of self-consciousness, a being-lost that belies her nudity, or perhaps renders her more naked. And of course, I love the way the muted browns and tans of model and background set off the brightness of the titular red jacket. Quite lovely all around.

But let me get to the other pictures. In keeping with the balletic theme, the next work is Edgar Degas' Dancers at the Barre, 1888. Pastel, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, this one has been up for a while, and I just really love the blending of the colors and their overall intensity. I also thought that the warm tones would contrast nicely with the cooler tones of the Rubinstein piece (I've alternated between warm and cool going down the list, with the last picture being a bit of a compromise).

Next one down is van Gogh's Pair of Boots, 1887. If you haven't read Fredric Jameson's essay Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, you should get your hands on it. Jameson takes this painting to be a paradigmatic modernist work, and contrasts it with Andy Warhol's paradigmatic postmodern take on footwear, Diamond Dust Shoes.

I'll finish with another Serov. This one is called Girl with Peaches, also from 1887, at the beginning of his career. Simply put, I adore this painting. The way the bright light slants through the windows, the little girl's expression, her beautiful hair, the plate hanging on the wall, the peach clutched in her hands. Absolutely gorgeous. If any of you are ever in Moscow, please go see this for me. (I wish I'd had that outfit growing up too!)

Au revoir, longs cheveux!

La mujer sigue diciendo "Bye-bye, long hair" when I tell her I want it cut short, down to three inches on the top and even shorter on the sides, like a boy. I had wanted to shake things up and I had heard that a haircut was the easiest way to implement a radical change in one's life. Now, watching my jet-black locks fall away, I had to question the wisdom of such a choice, on two levels:

1. Is a radical change to one's physical appearance really significant enough to effect any real change to the person, the soul? Naturally, this line of questioning had been provoked by my continued reading of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is the question pursued in the second part of the novel, "Body and Soul." I won't bore you with too much metaphysical speculation, but I would briefly argue that the appearance of the body can affect not the subject itself, but the subject qua object. However, barring the possibility of our tapping into Hegel's Absolute anytime soon, subject qua object is really the only way a subject can be perceived by another, and therefore this perception indeed becomes important (in varying degrees) to any self-conscious being.

2. Having accepted the idea that this change may be in some way meaningful, will it effect me negatively or positively? As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on this one, and I know I can't really expect much help from my lovely readers (I don't really look like Lauren Bacall). But in case any of you are wondering what kind of face to attach to my voice, I thought I might describe myself in brief. As I mentioned, I have black hair, along with light, slightly freckled skin and light blue eyes. I like to think the juxtaposition is striking. High cheekbones, pert nose, small mouth, I would call myself pretty, not beautiful. However, I am on the tall side (5'10") and I think my figure is a bit mannish and not nearly as graceful as I would like (hence my fascination with the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age; who could ever hope to make grace look that easy?) and it is this detail that makes me unsure of my new haircut: I've always aimed for a studied femininity in my look to make up for this lack of star quality, and I worry that my little boycut may be more than I can pull off. After all, I'm no Louise Brooks or Anouk Aimée, or even a mere Natalie Portman, and I don't want people to start mistaking me for a lesbian all the time.

But all this is going through my head and at the same time the locks are falling to the ground. I suppose the nice thing about hair is that if I really hate what I do with it, I can always let it grow back (this places it somewhere between clothes and tattoos in the hierarchy of physical adornments). That's why, aunque la mujer ha dicho "bye-bye," yo creo que mejor, au revoir.

Epigraph

"Tomas came to this conclusion: making love to a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep."

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I met a boy. His name is Paul and I feel great affection for him, though I'm not sure if I love him or not. Tomas's model doesn't quite seem to work in this situation. Of course there's sex. And that's great. We even sleep together sometimes, and it's also great. I've never been a huge fan of sleeping alone. Naturally I agree with Tomas that at times sharing one's bed can feel like a violation, and that certainly one must be selective when dispensing invitations. But I'm not sure that the mere desire to share one's bed determines (or is determined by) love. If Tomas is right then I love Paul, but sometimes I feel like I only love him in the confines of my own private little world, a world which of course doesn't exist. This world is contained in a bedroom, and here I love Paul and all the laying and sleeping and talking and fucking and staring into each other's eyes. They all feel like one single continuous act and when we do these things I feel for a while like a coherent being, without fractures, without incongruities. In this bedroom world there are no borders between perception and emotion. But this world doesn't really exist because if it did it would be eternal and in reality it always ends.

You see, Paul isn't happy with just my little bedroom world. Paul wants to share the outside world with me but in that world I cannot possibly grant anyone a monopoly over my affections. He wants to be with me always and so I am only too eager to be rid of him. He wants to protect me but I don't want his protection. He wants us to share all of our problems but I don't want to bear the weight. How can that be love? My rather obvious conclusion is that the Paul that I love, like the world he inhabits with me, is unreal, nonexistent, a utopian construction of my consciousness designed to compensate for the alienation I feel in public life. The Paul I love is just a body that I fill with myself, or a negatively tuned mirror that reflects my needs as fulfillments. I love his body. I love his smile and his laugh. I love that he loves me enough to humor me as much as he does, to tolerate my abuse and hypocrisy, even. But I don't love him unselfishly, so I guess I don't really love him at all.

Seeing a Stranger

I had to run some errands today so I took the subway into town. On the way back, I was riding down the escalator when I caught a glimpse of this girl, riding up on the other side. First I glanced at her, and I noticed that she was pretty. But then there was something about her face that made me look again. She wasn't exceptionally pretty; I took note of her various imperfections, none particularly significant, but altogether making her objectively unexceptional looking. The thing was that she looked familiar somehow, although I couldn't place her. My first thought was that she must resemble some actress or other, although which one I couldn't decide. Then the more I stared at her, the more I noticed her look. She seemed to be looking off at nothing, noticing nothing, but her expression was certainly not vacant. Something about her eyes, which would not meet mine, pulled me in. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted her to clear things up, to explain herself, to help me figure out why her appearance had sent such a jolt through me on an otherwise uneventful commute. I would say, "You look like an actress," and she would say, "Oh, yeah. ____ ____, right? I get that a lot." Then we would smile and part ways. Or I would say, "Do I know you from somewhere?" to which she would reply with a quizzical look and say "I don't think so" or, "Oh, hey, Jo, yeah!" and a quick catch-up conversation would ensue, followed by empty promises to keep in touch. But I was going down, and she was on the other side of the escalator, going up, and anyway her eyes never met mine, so instead I just turned and stared at her as we drifted past each other.

Je l'aime et je la respire

Read a book. Make tea. Tell me something. What do you want to hear? The sounds of wet, loving, foreign tongues. A cold rain. A forest. A bed of poison ivy. A secret patch of mushrooms that "broadcast on transcendental frequencies"- Robbins. A body of work, tatooed, stamped, branded, owned, sold, thrown away and picked up again.

"This is terrible," she said, looking up from the sheet of crumpled notebook paper, over her glasses.

"I know," I replied. "But sometimes I just find myself in a liminal space, like maybe I could burst out in every direction at once, except that I can't escape the stasis. Or maybe I'm nowhere."

"Well, see, that's just garbage. Introspective sloth. You're just too lazy to really ask yourself the hard questions and figure out why you feel the way that you do. That's why all you can do is spout twisted half-clichés and nonsense. What you've got to understand is that it's not enough to be authentic. It's not even enough to be honest. And they're not the same thing. No, the important thing is to be rigorous. To understand, or at least to come as close as possible. Or maybe to understand why you can't understand. But this visceral shit don't fly no more."

"I think I understand what you mean. You've got to have ideas, reasons. Otherwise, it's easy. And no one wants easy. But what if my ideas are so obscure that even I can't untangle them?"

"Then you don't really have any ideas."

Cupid's Trick

I took the bus home from work last week.  The rain had already sucked all of the autumn out of the leaves and the unseasonable warmth made me think of rot.  As we crossed the river I glanced out of the window and watched the runoff pour in from concrete drains.  I huddled into my jacket; it was damp and uncomfortable, but the AC was blasting cold air at me, and my leggings were soaked with rain and puddle-water.  The bus took a right at the end of the bridge and made a stop.  An old man had rung for it, and as he stepped out into the foggy drizzle, he slipped and fell on the curb.  The driver put the bus into park and got out.  With his help, the old man got up slowly as the other commuters idly gazed out at them or did their best to ignore them or ignored them without trying.  I was sitting on the opposite side of the bus, next to last row, so I didn't get a great view.  

I came home to an empty, dark house, just as I had hoped.  Something about the light in a dark house on an ugly day...I like it.  So I stripped off my jacket, kicked off my shoes, and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.  My first instinct was to turn on the TV, but I couldn't bring myself to break the stillness.  This kind of solace was something to savor.  So instead, I walked up the stairs toward the bathroom and wriggled out of my sopping leggings.  Without turning any lights on, I sat down on the toilet and studied my legs.  My feet were dirty in spots, and my toes had turned to prunes.  I lifted my left foot in the air, leaned it against the sink, turned it so that I could see the crook of my knee in the soft blue light.  Then I started cutting.

I'm an expert at this.  I don't do anything too deep or visible, and I never cut in the same place twice.  Even the closest inspection of my legs doesn't reveal any scars.  I just popped a blade out of a fresh razor and began making the slightest vertical incisions on the inside of my left thigh.  Parallel lines, three, four, five.  You don't need to cut deep to get a lot of sensation.  The blood looked bright black in the dark as it rolled down and dripped onto my panties.  When I was done I stripped the rest of my clothes off and stepped into the shower.  I let the blood trickle onto the floor for a moment before I turned the water on.  The cold shocked my skin at first, then it warmed slowly.  I washed myself, paying particular attention to my dirty feet, then stepped out, dried off, and put a bandage over my thigh.  I walked downstairs in my towel and found my kettle cold.  I had forgotten to turn on the burner.  I switched it on and waited for my tea.

Short Essay

"The more total society becomes, the greater the reification of the mind and the more paradoxical its effort to escape reification on its own.  Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter.  Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism.  To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."

-Theodor W. Adorno

Joanna reporting from Thanksgiving weekend.  Adorno writes that "there is nothing innocuous left," that even the apparently "simple" pleasures of life are actually lies which serve the forces of cruelty and terror and repression by concealing their very existence, by encouraging those of us who can afford it to ignore them.  For him, the only true pleasure can be found in contemplating "horror, withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity, holding fast to the possibility of what is better."  It is not a new argument.  It is, however, a call to action.  

From an ethical point of view, Marxism is not all that different from certain strands of Christian thought, particularly those whose ideology derives from the Sermon on the Mount.  It is this moral code that is taken up by Hegel in his discussion of Lordship and Bondage.  This exploration of a hypothetical first encounter between two subjects, or self-consciousnesses, describes the dialectical link between Fear and Desire that ultimately results in battle, and the emergence of one superior and one inferior subject (the beginnings of society, perhaps).  Hegel goes on to explain, however, in a characteristic twist of logic, that the apparently superior Lord is actually inferior, and the Bondsman in fact is superior.  This is because the Lord exists only as an empty vessel of sensation, a receptacle for pleasure and nothing more.  The Bondsman, on the other hand, acts upon the objective world, realizing a part of himself, effecting real change as he creates in order to satisfy the Lord's demands.  And in the process, he learns the (Beatitudinal) values of self-discipline and humility.

Exactly what Hegel meant to describe by his thought experiment is obscure, but there can be no doubt that Marx read the piece historically, with the Lord representing the ruling class and the Bondsman representing the downtrodden workers.  So Marx's ethic is clearly aligned with that of the Sermon.  But while Christ promised his poor flock the Kingdom of Heaven, Marx was a fierce atheist, and so religion, like the pleasures scorned by Adorno, comes to be viewed in this discourse simply as another distraction, and worse, a lie told to conceal the real horror that surrounds us.

In the past century, of course, we have attempted to compensate for God's absence by creating aesthetic productions whose beauty can help us escape the prosaic awfulness that increasingly surrounds us.  But although this may comfort us it cannot save us; the Nazi obsession with aesthetic perfection is no coincidence.  For this reason, and for many others, perhaps, the beautiful can no longer be beautiful; only the ugly can.  And only in gazing upon the horror of reality (the reality of horror), and in it discovering the possibility of realizing a better world, will we be able to rediscover the truly beautiful.

Preventative Care

I am getting fat.  It's not too noticeable to the naked eye yet, but it will be soon if I don't do something about it.  See, I noticed that my jeans were feeling a little snug lately.  (This is not something I do particularly often; as an emancipated woman I feel able to shed the pressures of patriarchal society and not worry about my weight.  This time, however, I was faced with real empirical evidence of weight gain, and I don't want to be one of those emancipated fat girls.)  Needless to say, (and without mentioning any specific figures), I was a little surprised, and quite disappointed, by the results.  Wearing tight jeans has proven to be an effective early warning system, but now that I am aware of this trend, I am unsure of what to do about it.

You see, as far as I can tell, there is no medical consensus on this issue.  Some say carbohydrates make you fat; others say fat makes you fat.  Some say exercise; others, dieting.  Every time I turn on the TV there is another weight loss method advertising itself as The Solution.  One would think, with the amount of money being poured into this problem, we would be able to have some doctor come on TV and give us the real answer.  But then I suppose nobody would be able to profit from the general lack of health and self-esteem.  Now, it seems reasonable that a combination of exercise and a reduction of overall caloric intake would probably be most effective, but that sounds hard, and I don't want to commit to the long, difficult path without hard scientific evidence.  I want a decision to be made for me.  If we had Marxists running the show, somebody would have already reached a consensus, and we would all feel a lot better about ourselves and our habits.  Everyone in the gulags was thin.

Good News

Hey guys.  Sorry I haven't written to you in a while, but I have actually been busy.  I got a job!  Well, it's more of an internship really.  But at least I'm getting paid something.  My mom was really getting on my case, as I indicated in my last post.  And the whole escort thing never really got off the ground.  It was one of those things that are fun to think about, but wouldn't work out nearly as well in reality as they do in my fantasy life.  Anyway, my mom called up her friend Stephanie, whom she has known forever, and Stephanie told her that she needed an intern to help her out in her capacity as an insurance industry representative.  See, the insurance companies are lobbying extra hard to maintain their grip on the American healthcare system, and what with the new bill being debated in Congress currently, there is no shortage of work.  (Don't worry; this blog will not turn topical).  So, I have a paid internship at least through the Fall, to be terminated once these sharks devour and kill the impulse to reform.  (I hate performing menial clerical tasks for these reactionaries, but, hey, a girl's got to make a living).

So, the job is okay.  Unfortunately, I don't directly answer to Stephanie.  She just helped me get the job, but she's too high up to be bothered with micromanaging mindless office duties.  My immediate boss is this guy named Trevor.  He's a real asshole.  Thinks he's doing God's work here slaving away to make the Gala Corp. lobbying machine function more efficiently.  Plus he leers at me constantly.  I mean, I don't mind a little attention, but I would rather put up with Pumba's shit than this.  He's probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and he still wears a fake tan and gels his hair up like a schmuck.  He's one of those guys whose idea of flirting is making sexist comments and innuendoes that aren't even witty, and then play-acting like he's hurt when I shut him down.  The thing is, I'm brand new here, so I feel as though I should tread lightly, but if he doesn't cool it I will have to talk to Stephanie about it.

Other than Trevor and Stephanie, I really haven't had the chance to meet any of the people here.  I was hoping there might be an interesting crowd, but, let's face it, we're a small department in a multinational corporation.  I don't think that interesting people exist here, or if they do, they don't expose the interesting aspects of their personalities at work.  This is a place where verve and vim come to immolate themselves.  Even the place's physical surroundings reflect the death of personality: an office park, surrounded by pavement, somewhere in outer suburbia.  

Okay, so maybe I'm being a little bitter.  On the plus-side, I get to car-pool with Stephanie since she only lives a couple blocks away from me.  I really enjoy her company on the commute.  It's odd, because I've known her for so long as my mom's friend, but I really think that now we are getting to know each other on our own terms, unmediated.  It makes me optimistic about the possibility of meeting somebody at Gala Corp. who isn't a tool.  Moreover, she demonstrates that it is possible to work in such a cretinous environment without losing your mind or your soul.  So on that note, I begin my journey into the rabbit hole of the corporate world.

I had coffee at dawn today...

I had to wake up extra early this morning to drive my mom to work, because I needed to borrow the car to run errands.  My mom works at a garden store a few miles down the road.  It's actually a pretty cool place.  They have rows and rows of trees, shrubs, and plants awaiting purchase, along with sculptures, fountains, an army of gnomes, a fleet of flamingoes, and anything else that the suburban housewife a la mode might desire to spangle her lawn with.  Naturally, the fertilizer and soil supplies also attract the stoner crowd.  As you might imagine, then, I don't really care for the place when it's busy, but on weekday mornings it's quite pleasant.

So anyway, I found myself sipping coffee at this early hour, waiting for my mom to get out of the shower, and thinking about how I've still failed to do anything about this situation, living at home.  I mean, sheesh!  Maybe I should apply for a job or something.  But dammit, not now.  I just really don't want to establish any ties around here.  It would just make it harder for me to get the hell out of here.  I guess I could go back to waitressing part-time at Timon & Pumba's.  Pumba's always had a crush on me, so I could probably get the job back pretty easily.  Just flirt with him a little.  Of course then I would have a guilty conscience for having given a loser false hope.  Not to mention the fact that he would constantly bother me on the job, hitting on me, doing me favors for which he would inevitably expect repayment, and hassling me when I finally rejected him.  No, no job is worth that.  Still, I have to do something to get my mom off my back.

"Sweetie, maybe while you're out running errands today you could pick up some job applications."

Mom stepped into the kitchen and poured herself some coffee.  Being a single parent means she does twice the worrying and triple the nagging.  

"Yeah, I might have a look around to see who's hiring," I replied, hoping to placate her temporarily.  

"Alright, because I hate to see you laying around like this.  You keep on talking about moving out, but you need money to do that, and anyway it's not healthy.  You're a young woman now, and there's no reason that you can't be doing something productive while you figure things out."

"Well, actually Mom, I've been checking out this website, richlosers.com, where these millionaires try to find young girls to be their playthings.  I figure I can hook up with one of these suckers and put my college education to work on him.  You know, dazzle him with my wit and erudition.  Then I can trick someone into marrying me."

Mom chuckled at that.

Still, it might not be a bad idea.

We lose count...

I almost sat for a painting today.  I woke up early, and, bored, decided to wander down to the old part of town.  It's a really nice place to go if you just want to get lost for a little while: the streets were all built before there was any kind of municipal government around to mandate a grid system, so each lane and alley curves whichever way it wants, bending back on itself, finding paths and squares that seem to pop up out of nowhere.  If you ever get really lost, you can just walk downhill, and eventually you will find your way to the river.  Anyway, I decided that it was one of those days, so I took a bus down to the main drag of the old town, disembarked, turned left, left, right, and soon found myself hopelessly lost.  

It was cloudy out, and chilly enough that I was glad I had brought a light jacket.  The trees were full of bright green leaves, but cast no shadows.  The wind picked up  and the cast-iron gates and brick facades of the old houses took on a slight menace, guarding the comfort of their interiors against me, mocking me.  It would rain soon.  This had been stupid.  I made my best guess as to the direction of the river and started hiking that way.  By the time the first drops began to fall I had spotted the freeway.  

(In the seventies, the federal government insisted on building an interstate highway through town.  Initially, they were going to plow down all the buildings in their way, but the protests of various neighborhood associations and historic preservation societies scuttled that plan.  In order to issue forth a big "fuck you" to those who had stood in their way without having to go through all the red tape that bulldozing would have required, the government decided to simply build an elevated freeway right over the neighborhood.  This little piece of history affected me only insofar as it afforded me a dry spot to wait out the rain.)

So I ran underneath the overpass, settled down on a nice concrete barricade and huddled next to a supporting pillar against the cold.  As you may have anticipated, of course, I was not alone.  Across the street was an old man standing behind a desk, displaying some paintings.  A street vendor.  God only knows why he would choose to set up his kiosk here.  He couldn't possibly get many tourists.  But I supposed that he had probably moved down here in order to evade the rain, like myself, and would return to the surface once it had passed, in order to be ignored rather than invisible.

Well, I ordinarily would not have gone over to speak with him at all.  I'm rather shy, you see.  But having spent all this time looking for adventure, I figured I owed it to myself to meander on over and see if there was anything interesting to experience.  So I plucked up my courage, put on my most cheery face, strolled up to the ancient figure, and gave him a friendly, "Afternoon."  He repeated back to me, and with a gesture invited me to take a gander at his paintings.  

Now this was interesting indeed.  These could not have been the product of an entire life's worth of study and dedication.  They were children's paintings.  They had to be.  And not very old children either.  Old enough for crude stick figures and sloppy, disproportionate attempts at shapes and patterns.  Seven, eight years old?  I did my best to conceal my grimace, realizing at the same time that I must be in the presence of a complete psychopath.  I glanced at him again and noticed his demented expression and his leering eyes.  Now I had to think on my feet.  The guy probably had a collection of shrunken heads hidden in his decrepit tenement.  I could be beaten, raped, tortured and mutilated if I didn't get the hell out of there.  So, thinking myself mighty clever, I pointed at one of the more horrendous doodles and asked him to wrap it up for me.  As soon as he bent over for a piece of twine to tie it with I took off like lightning.  I knew that I could follow the freeway to the main drag, and there I would be safe.  Jesus.  You think you're in a nice neighborhood and then shit like this goes down.  I guess that's why I don't like cities.  Anyway, after running a couple of blocks I dared look back and didn't see anyone following me, so I decided to drop my pace down to power-walk.  I was still a bit shaken up when I got on the bus to go home, and I accidentally spilled my change in the aisle.  Fuck.  Well, at least I had an adventure.

Day Four

Grrr... That is it!  I am packing up my things and I am moving on!  Last night I met an old high school friend for some drinks.  I was so bored that I would have gone just about anywhere, but as it happened, he called me, and we arranged to meet at a local watering hole.  We had a few pints, shared a few laughs, then had some more.  By the time he suggested that we go down to an old hangout, a hidden beach on the river, I was more than tipsy enough to assent.  The path was tricky to navigate at night.  I had been wearing heals, and my bear feet suffered much abuse at the hands of the roots and rocks that rose from the trail in scattered protrusions.  At one point we had to cross a creek, so I grabbed ahold of my friend, and we rather intimately clambered over rocks and waded through the stream together.  

Arriving at the beach, we sat down in the sand, I dangling my naked feet in the water, he following my example.  The conversation turned to the topic of old lovers, which of course, combined with alcohol and two bored and lonely people, can be a most dangerous cocktail.  Around this time, my buzz wore off enough for me to realize what I was doing.  I also began to notice my accelerated heartbeat and the nervous tightness in my chest.  We reached a pause in the conversation, and my friend tried to hold my hand.  I panicked, withdrawing quickly.  "I'm sorry," I muttered, embarrassed.  I hadn't disliked the feeling.  A few more drinks and I probably would have permitted him all kinds of excesses.  I simply couldn't escape the feeling that it was a bad idea.  This was backwards progress.  To quote Lou Reed, "You're still doing the things I gave up years ago."  No hard feelings, I told him, but I would be leaving town soon enough now and I just didn't see it going anywhere.  He was polite and understanding, and we walked back together, this time separated by immeasurable distance and silence.

When I got home and fell in to bed, I felt a deep dissatisfaction.  I think that this is a watershed.  I'm giving myself four days to get my act together and then I am hopping on a train and I will seek out adventure and consume it no matter how desperately it tries to evade me.  

Good night.