On Being a Corrector

someone correct me if i'm wrong,
but i believe fruititarians eat everything that is biologically a fruit.

Sensitivity Hypothesis! Correct me if I'm wrong.

Y'all Been Warned, about them Killa Bees on the swarm Y'all Been Warned,
You either step or get stepped upon Correct me if I'm wrong but fake thugs

correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you the same person who blew my
mind with philosophical genius

luminary'. Does flashing your bum equate to being 'a personage in
the field of philosophy', again please correct me if i'm wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong, don't flame me

I'm presuming you're a man? Do correct me if
I'm wrong. Not that it matters much in this case

Laughs* As if! My mini skirts are way above mid-thigh. I mean, what the heck is
that all about?!? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's school, not prison...

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm
wrong _________________ "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish".

Nick has some helpful words on narcissism for me today.

My how I like the Jonathon Wilcke poems on Ron's site. For reasons that should be obvious.

Keep Your Sunny Side Up, Up!

Hey, I'm supposed to die on my birthday: Friday, January 14, 2022. That's if I'm pessimistic.

Thanks, Behrle, for the deathclock link.

If I'm "normal" instead of "pessimistic": Saturday, March 28, 2043. That's more like it!

Why It's Immaterial Whether You or I or Anyone Else Might be a Narcissist

or

Another Chihuahua Story

Just back from a shopping trip to Church Avenue. On my way I saw a woman standing in front of a shop holding a tiny white puppy that looked hardly old enough to be away from its mother. "Oh, so cute!," I said, "Is it a chihuahua?" "Yes," the woman said, pouring water from a bottle over the puppy, whose whole body fit in one of her hands. "How old is it?" "It doesn't matter anyway, because it's dead," she snapped, continuing to douse it with water.

One quality of a narcissist that I do not believe I have is this one:

Evokes fear in others: the web of mystery that the narcissist spins around himself makes others leary of him

"Evokes fear in others"... jeez

Of the 25 behaviors listed there that I believe I do not display, I very EMPHATICALLY believe I do not display.

Again, I could be wrong.

Big ol' list of the qualities of a narcissist here.

From that list, I believe that 2 of 2 moods, 8 out of 33 behaviors and 1 out of 4 defense mechanisms. Does that make me a card-carrying narcissist?

MOODS

1. Chronic (long term) negative effects: anxious, fearful, tense, irritable, angry
2. Rapidly shifting moods: a narcissist's mood changes daily


BEHAVIORS

1. Overly concerned about health

2. Excessive talking: leads to inappropriate self-disclosure as well as exposure about anything he knows or preceives about others

3. Overly dramatic presentation of emotion: could well be known as the "drama" queen or king (negative emotions), exaggerates the importance of his experiences

4. Jealous and envious: ridicules the achievements of others

5. A sense of time urgency: is impatient

6. Socially rebellious and does not conform to societal expectations:

7. Attention seeking: wants to be the center of attention and will do anything to achieve this (may dress in a different or absurd way or behave ridiculously)

8. Loves his reflection: expect to see a lot of mirrors hanging in the narcissist's house

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

1. Devaluation: negates anyone who inflicts a narcissistic injury

Kasey is, like, my idol.

OK, so introspection is one thing, all very well and good.

But public introspection? What's that [this] about?

More narcissistic supply?

Marianne asks, "Aren't all artists narcissists?"


What do **you** think?

OK, here's the stuff from the DSM IV (2000), as quoted on Vaknin's site: (following each is a self-diagnosis)

An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or in behaviour), a need for admiration and a marked lack of empathy which starts at early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.

At least 5 of the following should be present for a person to be diagnosed as suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

* Possesses a grandiose sense of self-importance (for example: exaggerates his achievements and his talents, expects his superiority to be recognised without having the commensurate skills or achievements); [OK maybe a little, but so reflexively that I was able to write the line David Hess criticized: "I have an exaggerated sense of my own unimportance."]


* Pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance and beauty or of ideal love;["Preoccupied with" -- no. "Unlimited" --no. I plead somewhat guilty to the last fantasy.]


* Believes that he is unique and special and that only high status and special people (or institutions) could understand him (or that it is only with such people and institutions that it is worth his while to be associated with);
["unique and special" -- sure -- like everyone else! "high status" -- fuck no. "special people and institutions" -- yes. definitely.]

* Demands excessive and exceptional admiration;[Not "demands" but desires. Not "excessive"/ maybe "exceptional".]


* Feels that he is deserving of exceptionally good treatment, automatic obeisance of his (usually unrealistic) expectations;[I don't know about "automatic" -- that is, I don't mind being a little pushy about it. Actually, this sounds more like my grandmother, Geri Goldberg, or "glamour gramma" as I called her, who was a Jewish-American QUEEN. ]


* Exploitative in his interpersonal relationships, uses others to achieve his goals; [I really do not think so, but correct me if I am wrong. Gary helps me to achieve my goals but I don't think I USE him -- he volunteers.]


* Lacks empathy: is disinterested in other people's needs and emotions and does not identify with them;[Hogwash, absolutely not.]


* Envies others or believes that others envy him;[Yes.]


* Displays arrogance and haughtiness. [OK. maybe a little]

Conclusion: narcissistic traits are present, but there is no DISORDER as such. But the jury's still out on this one.

The most compelling, and most dubious (despite its pages and pages of references) website I have found on narcissism is this one of A.M. Benis' . Sam Vaknin's is longer and extremely informative, but it is not as strange. Benis (I really can't get over that name) puts forth the idea of narcissism, perfectionism, and aggression (originally Horney's personality triad) as inherited traits that are genetically traceable.

It sounds completely weird, like phrenology or the worst kind of bio-determinism. Vaknin, in a message board post politely debating Benis' theory, points out that

Exogenic and Endogenic pathogenesis is inseparable. Mental states increase or decrease the susceptibility to externally induced disease. Talk therapy or abuse (external events) alter the biochemical balance of the brain.

The inside constantly interacts with the outside and is so intertwined with it that all distinctions between them are artificial and misleading.

I couldn't agree more, but that doesn't make Benis' theory any less seductive, especially when I looked up his glossary of narcissism (which sounds to me like it would make a kickass chapbook title).

Some of the definitions which I instantly, discomfitedly (is that a word?), recognized as belonging to your (or at any rate my) favorite navelgazer, in otherwords me, myself and I (sideways kudos to de la soul!) are:

     >>adornment..... One of the behavioral characteristics of the unbridled trait of narcissism.  Other characteristics of this trait include expansiveness, exhibitionism, the desire for recognition in a sexual context, and the desire to stand in honor, with one's arms extended, above admiring others.  There is an instinctual urge for the individual to adorn himself in finery... According to this view, much of art is an extension of personal adornment, hence is an instinctual urge rooted in the narcissistic trait.

       >>chimpanzee..... Omnivorous African anthropoid ape.  Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans exhibit narcissistic posturing and the gingival smile of recognition.  The trait of narcissism is not a uniquely human character, rather it is rooted in an ancestral gene that evolved millions of years ago.

  >>gingival smile..... An instinctual smile revealing the gums of the upper jaw.  Seen frequently in N and NP individuals.  Absent in individuals lacking the N trait.

          >>laughter..... A complex behavioral response... The initial and final stages of laughter may mimic the narcissistic smile of recognition.
          >>limelight..... The reward of fulfilled narcissistic ambition is, literally or figuratively, honor and applause in the spotlight of recognition.

         >>narcissistic arms gesture..... A gesture of recognition in which the arms are extended to the front or sides, with the fingers slightly spread apart.  This gesture, like the gingival smile, is instinctual and has its genetic basis in the trait of narcissism.

more on gesture from a different page of the same website:

Gestures:  Deep bow, accompanied by sweeping arm.  "Joan of Arc pose", in which the individual's eyes are directed toward the heavens when accepting recognition in the limelight.  "Narcissistic arms gesture", in which the arms are extended to the front or sides, with the palms up and the fingers somewhat spread apart.  It is a pose often assumed by singers and by religious leaders.

  >>rage..... A mass discharge of a portion of the autonomic (sympathetic - parasympathetic) nervous system.  Subjectively, it is perceived as a type of anger.  The N and A traits allow the release of inhibition of two different types of mass discharges, allowing the occurrence of narcissistic and aggressive rages, respectively.

I find these eerily precise in describing certain aspects of my behavior that others have often commented on, much more so than the standard DSM IV stuff, which I will address after I put another coat of "California Poppy" colored paint on the bookcase I found in the basement.

Food for thought: Does the propensity for adornment (see the early archives of this bloggue) make all the citizens of India narcissistic? Are all singers and performers victims of pathological personality disorders??? (I'm thinking of the gesture stuff here.) Hmmm.

A Narcissistic (?) Exploration of Narcissism

Googling "narcissism" in earnest.

Rather anxious about it.

Someone said what's wrong with these personal blogs, in general, is their narcissistic quality.

Wanting to explore this opinion, also the injunction against narcissism -- an extension of a taboo on introspection?

Drew's wrong, I don't have that personality disorder (which Nick confirmed for me, thank you, Nick), and later I will explain why.

I do have marked traits, along with a fairly typical formation pattern for them.

More on some of the stuff I googled later.

Om. Shanti shanti shanti.

taking a break from cooking tandoori chicken (the box of masala bought at a bangladeshi place on the wildly multi-culti church avenue) to look up on google a conversion from celsius to fahrenheit, wandered somehow into joe deumer's blog where there is a very delicious -looking recipe for vietnamese grilled chicken. i will try it, tho not tonight, of course, substituting legs and thighs for breast because i just don't dig white meat. funny, though, how we both have chicken and cilantro on the brain! ok, back to the chicken...

I want "lip's" like the ones in Stephanie's spam...

Does no one think I'm funny? It's just my personal delusion?

I like to think of myself as a "one-woman think tank."

Thank you Jim Behrle for saying I have a lot of good ideas. I'm certain I have a lot of ideas (although I'm not sure how many of them are even remotely good) but have a distinct lack of motivation and energy to realize them.

That's where Gary comes in.

What a team.

True, Jordan, there's too much praise in criticism.

What would happen if we really all told the truth about our opinions?

Total disaster. Mayhem. Endlessly reverberating enmities.

We know better, instinctively.

Or do we?

It would, perhaps, have been better to suppress my irascibility around the DW Henry comment on personal weblogs on Brian's blog.

Irascibility over erasability?

It wasn't personal, anyway, although I took the comment somewhat personally and on behalf of all of us diaristic fumblers.

True, too, that what's making me particularly irascible is the flu.

Drew completely misunderstood my joke about "gentile." I quite simply found the typo incredibly funny. For once in my life, I was being neither pedantic nor irascible, unlike my thoroughly irascible friend. It's burlesque, baby! Ba da boom!

xoox!

SEEMS like a lot of people STOPPED BLOGGING on or before June 17th.

WhAT"S the DEAL, PEOPLE???

come on! gimme fresh content!

i don't WATCH TV you know.

I'm just so mad.

Mad mad mad.

All the time I'm mad.

School's out, but here's a school poem from 1983:

GRAMMAR

There's a new school where all the pictures hang crooked. The hallways smell of scratched vinyl to the dead soul in the stroller with the round head that wants to be round. Also, a terrific crowding. Crowds. Dancing asses. The girls throw away their crinolines. The boys drink sweeter stolen water. Kids on payphones yelling and yelling. Kids in showers see elder features in taped mirror, putting on their "underfarbs." Bladders so full back teeth float, but night whistles to small horses, small horses to kids. And the kid in the devil costume sells poppers to passers-by.

"I see London," they say, hear a slow sliding sound, "see France," an unsightly rash. The queen of home in silver bikini and plumed headdress rides a baton, is the parade. At recess, the minority expresses herself against a brick wall. Cyclone fence cliques with hair clash with science types with digital watches. Bell tolls now and then for everyone. Binders so full back pages float. Homeroom period, the girl with no sex yet sits in back and all slam desks. Teacher turns grim and claws green, snorts smoke and ruler raps, clacks tongue and shoes down hall to principal. All are calm and bright. Globes. girl draws horse and it's sloppy, she says it's a "cartoon" horse. Turtle tank of football boys, scholastic book services, selected reading assignments, gold stars. White lines on cement, meaning games are reward or punishment for the kid who dreams flying over foursquare and no more teasing.

My Baudelaire

Since others are posting their Baudelaire Englishings, here's one of mine from 1982 or 3. English follows the original:

La Mort des Artistes

Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots
Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature?
Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature,
Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots?

Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots,
Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature,
Avant de contempler la grande Créature
Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots!

Il en est qui jamais n'ont connu leur Idole,
Et ces sculpteurs damnés et marqués d'un affront,
Qui vont se martelant la poitrine et le front,

N'ont qu'un espoir, étrange et sombre Capitole!
C'est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau,
Fera s'épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!


************************************************

The Demise of Artists

How many fucking times do I have to shock and jolt
     my spherical bells with the balls inside them
And kiss and fuck your impudent bottom, gloomy cartoon?
For a prick in the butt, of a mystical nature,
How many times, oh my quiver, must I lose my arrows?

We wear down our souls in keen, fine intrigues,
And we explode many a heavy reinforcement
Before thinking of the enormous Creator
For whom the infernal desire makes us full of tears!

This is why some never know their Idol,
Like those damned sculptors, marked with a scar,
Always hammering on their breasts and foreheads,

With nothing but a hope, weird and somber:
This is Death, looking down like a new sun
About to open, expand, and brighten
          the blossoms of their brains.

Ebonics Blender


Making protein drinks every morning, dreaming of an Ebonics Blender (tm):

Turn the Beat around
Shake!
Ax
Fuck up
Shaft
Whup
Whup upside head

and the reggae version: Stir it up...

Before you give me any grief about this, know that I grew up partly in Oakland and Chicago, so I have some familiarity with the dialect, K?

Drew wrote:

The music was very gentile. It was built up patiently and slowly.

As opposed to impatiently and quickly, the way Jews do things.

Thank you chris murray of tex files for your wellwishes... yes, I have the flu, quelle joie! But that didn't stop me from accompanying G. to a comic book convention today at the Puck building... agggh too sick though to be either descriptive or reflective today... how, when, will I get my head into around through all up in poetry again?

Just thinking a couple of things, today:

1) I like melodrama (in art, I mean).

2) They took all the good theory. That's why all we have left is a return to the cult of personality.*


*reactionary nonsense

crinklepowerlessly

in today's spam:

crinklepowerlessly

powderpuff-horizontal anna huff brawn

(is bruce writing ths stuff?)

Gary and I went to a BELLYDANCE EXTRAVAGANZA last night, staged by my teacher, Anahid Sofian:



Her special guests were these two divas:


Eva Cernik


Nourhan Sharif

YOWZA!

sick... swollen glands, weird dry feeling at back of throat... congestion... wah...

staying home eating ice cream... watching a Mehboob Khan movie -- yeah!

October 13, 1977

On Nightclub Women

or

October Saintliness


Cry, forsooth! and cry to synthesize
         Sorrow of aracara birds
                   Winging their names through
                             Fashion on 4th
         Red chiffon clings to ghostly thighs
                  Tall Dancing,
                             Bouncing on the three
fiery teeth flashing exuberantly
         of sophisticated drugs
                   Painfulness in the scarlett
I am not like these women,
                   But saintly,
                             small.

from another penis enlargement spam:

your problems can be solved anglophobia i

Another Lookalike
Sherman (the boy, not the dog, who I believe is Peabody -- do I have the names right?) has always reminded me of Drew:

More Celebrity Lookalikes

Here are Gary's CELEBRITY LOOKALIKES:


Gary Oldman


David Bowie


Tom Petty

A line from one of today's spams:

corn Korn (n) abhorred verachted

OK, that's a funny typo. Of course it should be satin coverlets, but I think sarin is more ostranenie-ish.

September Fairfax

September 17, 1977

And it is raining again, the warm rain.
I want to be wrapped in the satin arms of humans,
Wrapped in the silent arms of warm rains
Sarin coverlets
The affinity of moisture and the warmth
Of the rains, of the strong-armed rains
I am warm and raining affinity --
comfortable in the human knowledge of the greening
The satin greens of chickweed after rains.
The banishment of drought
The coming of winter -- inside rainy winter --
White-star flowers of chickweed remind me of
The museum in wintertime, stuffed, drought-stricken
Dry, dried-up reatures
Juxtaposing the wet, satin green aquarium,
Alive with rains.

CELEBRITY LOOKALIKE

It's time to play CELEBRITY LOOKALIKE!
Here are the celebrities who are totally copping my look:




Gloria Estefan


Boy George




Cher

Here are three of my favorite enka singers.



Misora Hibari


Ishikawa Sayuri


Sakamoto Fuyumi

I have many more where that came from...

OK, Nick thinks he's so cool typing up his notebooks from 1965. Here's my answer, a poem from 1976, when I was TWELVE! Hold on to your pumpkins, people...


December 4th, 1976

"I am not what I should be"

Thus I think, but quietly.
Voices listen and suppress themselves,
Straining to hear and straining not to strain.
Perhaps they do not strain.
Perhaps I only want them to.

A thought, like a goblinesque Ariel
(but how poetic!)
appears, index finger raised
In determination....
But no --
The radio that is my mind
Has switched to another station.
It is ominous; like church music
And much like me.

Ariel returns --

      "I am precocity" he says
      "Watch me, watch me be different"
but his half-brother,
     diffident Modestly, appears --
           "but I am not worthy!"
     And their father, Frustration, keeps
me within him.

Ariel pounds within his confines
Swearing at this Caliban father;
He knows this to be deja vu.

Hope is Ariel's mother
Sorrow is Modesty's.

I am but a child.

My era, my generation; we are silent.
I am lazy, and a spokesman for
the glories of Yesterday. I am
guilty of a deep and exalted
crime: Nostalgia, another
child of frustration and sorrow.

Is Ariel the embodiment of Now? Is Now
caught within the legendary tree? This tree
was the tree of knowledge that caused Man to
sin against his creator, but the tree of
Yesterday. The tree of knowledge is only one of
its many saplings.

     Yesterday goes on for so long.
          So long.

O merciful and mysterious maker of many.
      Is it you I can blame?

My own branch of yesterday is not very long
but I like it anyway. I like to pretend it's romantic,
but it's not rally because I capitalize my Is.
It is colorful though, and not broken in too
many places. It is a very perverse branch.

           Ariel is a very perverse creature.

Symbolism and
      simple vision sound

          alike to me.

I never believe what I write.

God be with you.

Stephanie's banner ad says: "Save on Christening Gowns."

OK good, my prayers have been answered. Today it says "dog obedience training"... oops -- now it just changed to "haiku hut" -- what a strange and various world this is!

Gary says that if I post something like,

"birds birds cats and birds, i love cats and birds, birds,"

these stupid banner ads saying DIVORCE: PROPERTY and SAVE THE MARRIAGE

will go away.

now he just said that i'm not going to get rid of them because i'm going to be reiterating them when i post this blog.

so, i repeat, banner ads, go away!

Last night Gary and I watched Lars von Trier's Medea. It was extremely yellow, murky , dreary, and arty, and it abandoned my favorite artifices from the original play (which I'll be teaching today) -- like the CHORUS, for example. How can you have a Greek tragedy without a CHORUS? I didn't totally hate it, although it was sickening, in a way. And I couldn't figure out why they were all wearing Comme des Garcons outfits.

Anyway it was a huge contrast to our usual Bollywood fare -- and NOT, may I add, a very favorable one.

Gary made a perspicacious comment: "That was like San Francisco poetry."

!!! no apologies...!!!

Pithy words today from Elk Lague, who writes,

The more we love Owls
the more we expand
our ability
to love




(Personally, I couldn't agree more.)

I was Cruella's Godmother

This is a very sad story, so brace yourself.

Two of my students, Haruyo and Hajime, a cute and groovy couple living in Brooklyn, bought a little longhair chihuahua puppy. The puppy was flown out from Minneapolis and H & H met her at the airport.

Haruyo told me she was looking for a good name for the puppy. I started to suggest Mexican-sounding names -- Carmen, Maria, Frida, etc. I suggested Lolita (cute for a puppy, right?).

Then Haruyo told me she liked gothic, bondage-y stuff, and could I find a name that fit that "mood"?

How about "Cruella"? I said.

They named the puppy Cruella!

They quickly became attached to her, to her tiny little silken self, but they were worried because she had no energy, she just slept and when she woke up she would shiver and shiver.

One day she seemed in especially bad condition, so they took her to the pet hospital. The hospital staff laughed when Haruyo told them the puppy's name.

Cruella didn't last the night. The vet said she had hydroencephalitis.

The next day, Haruyo and Hajime took her to a secret place in Prospect Park and buried her beneath a beautiful tree. Cruella had not yet had her shots, so she had never been outside in a place where she could run freely.

Hajime says, now she can run around and play as much as she likes.

RIP, dear Cruella...

The Pedant in Me

The pedant in me... just has to say it...

Li... it's abAlone... not abOlone...

unless... that was maybe... deliberate...???

i just appropriated nick's lynx list. thanx nick, i hope you don't mind...

i feel suddenly very e x p a n s i v e

OK, let's try again. My links no working.

Who's more beautiful?

Waheeda Rehman (note my earlier misspelling!)



or...


MadhuBala (which means "HoneyMaiden""!)



????????

I am hopelessly -- hopelessly! -- entranced by both of them...

Mermaid Parade

Who's going to the mermaid parade this Saturday? Any desire to go as a contingent, marching- or non-marching?

Let me know!

These Banner Ads

These banner ads are totally giving me the creeps.

Go away banner ads!

What's really on my mind:

Who's more beautiful -- Waheeda Rahman or Madhu Bala?

If you don't know who these women are, I really feel for you.

In the Doghouse

Yeterday, Gary used the expression, "in the doghouse."

I laughed because the expression is so 1950s, so easily literalizable in cartoons and sitcoms (descending scale: wah wah wah).

I remember the first time I learned the expression, in third or fourth grade. I don't remember any of the normal lessons from the bitchy teachers I had during those years, with the exception of one time we burnt sugar until it carmelized -- oh and another tine being forced to make that capital cursive Q that looks like a deformed "2". I also remember getting IQ tests (but not the results). What I definitely remember are the visists from guests artists. One guy taught us some songs from Man of La Mancha, which you KNOW I loved.

I learned "in the doghouse" from a man who came to teach us Japanese ink painting. He explained the expression, then said that if we made any stray marks on our paper we would be "in the doghouse."

In the doghouse.

Some Babies


Some babies the avant-garde tradition throws out with the bathwater:

**epiphanies

**human beings in difficult situations in which they are compelled to make ethical decisions

**descriptions of suffering




**the mechanism of identification

Wow, the things you find when you google yourself. Here's a whole newsgroup devoted to the creation of LOVEDOLLS, whose founder's handle is "nada".

We're Going to Paris

Gary and I are going to Paris for two weeks at the end of July. It's pretty much Gary's first time to go anywhere!

Radical honesty.

I Hate Her

I hate her, as, I think, no other.

"Why can't I fuck who I want?" she whines in a statement of purpose or manifesto of craving for validation masquerading as a poem -- surely, it's in lines, and steals some effects from a poem of Waldman's that was never much more than repetitively and simplistically self-glorifying to begin with, but it never attains anything beyond a statement of that horrible, to me totally distateful, craving.

It's a rhetorical question, because of course, quite blithely, she does. The answer, though, or one of many answers to such a manifestly selfish question, is that to routinely go marauding through other people's relationships (this is her pattern, her script; she may as well be a robot) is to rip the social fabric, to do harm (certainly emotionally, and potentially physically) to all the parties involved (Buddha: "First, do no harm."), and generally to rouse the sinister energies of the universe. It disempowers all. It's a game of war, not of love. Look, I would say to her, if I felt there would be any value at all in doing so, we've all been hurt, tossed around, abandoned. Why do everything in your power to perpetuate that cycle? It will only come hurtling back at you with greater greater greater force, as for example, this deep, deep hatred of mine.

My hate's not unmixed with compassion. That sounds weird but it's true. The truth is that I've never met anyone who exudes pathos more palpably. And, therefore, I was always kind to her, even though I never felt any liking or affection for her, even though I thought she was a cringeingly awful writer and performer. I don't think she could deny that I was always kind to her, as kind as I could be without getting sucked in to her whirlpool of endless neediness, that querulous falsetto voice fading away in self-pity. How he could have been drawn in to such a vortex is still a puzzle to me. Such is the nature of weakness, folly, and peccadillo, I guess.

Why, a couple of people have asked me, do you focus your anger on her instead of on him? It's a valid question. He's equally culpable, maybe more so, being perfectly well in possession of a delicate but powerful little word: "no." He also gets the brunt of plenty of anger, believe me. But the fact is that I love him and he is my dear partner, my muse and companion and helpmate still -- and I am coming to understand some of his motivations for doing such an awful thing that tests the very limits of my capacity to forgive. We grow, reach, stretch out our arms. Breath fills the bodies. Love! Not pure anymore maybe (my therapist says, "there is no pure love" -- and actually she's right -- I say as much in _Swoon_: "We just keep opening up the same old wound.") but love nonetheless. Take that, rapacious rapacious toxic strumpet!


p.s. May she be buried up to her neck in the metaphorical searing desert of her own making, and may the variegated stones of approbation be hurled at her for eternity.

It's 3:27 a.m. Gary's in Washington hanging out with Tom and Rod. I'm bleaching the bathtub. My hair is in weird twisted-up mouse ears (like a natural mousketeer hat) plus a bunched-up ponytail in the back, and I've got my red cat-glasses on. I look like I should be a character in Ghost World, or like a trendo-nerd (if an aging one) bumming around Telegraph Avenue in 1984. I'm up so late having first had lunch with Adeena, then come home and had a nap, then gone to Home Depot with Alex, our super, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Bollywood film star Shah Rukh Khan. I bought new handles for the bathtub-- the old-fashioned kind with the four rounded... what would you call them... spokes, I guess, and the informative little "H" and "C" in the center. A new super-adjustable chrome showerhead with a long hose -- a cheap and practical sex toy! We were at Home Depot for too long of a time, but I amused myself by grabbing masses of paint samples as I have long cherished a wish to paint the living room some other color than white, but I'm getting overwhelmed by the possibilities of not just color but also technique-- put my colorwash brush to use again? Rag on? Rag off? Sponge? Add sand? Do faux marbling or veining or patina or... nothing. I can spend long times gazing at the paint samples, holding them up inquisitively, squinting my eyes this way, that way (that's a Creeley allusion, folks, one I make over and over again -- but does anyone ever notice?).

Anyway I'm bleaching the bathtub in preparation for its new handles -- like giving it a bath (giving the bathtub a bath!) before it puts on its new clothes. I also wrote a sample unit for a textbook publisher tonight about a knife thrower who, in trying to break his previous record, accidentally (of course) threw a knife at his assistant's head. The assistant happened to be his girlfriend.* Why do we hurt the ones we love? Ugh! I just typed "one's" -- I HATE that. Gary and I just noticed yesterday that my copy of Keats' Poems (an edition from... I don't know! It's undated! But it has an introduction by William Michael Rosetti -- does that give anyone any clue? I would put it sometime before World War II but really I have no idea) actually reads, in gilt letters on its cloth spine: KEAT'S POEMS. Isn't that a little hard to take, fellow pedants?

By way of Keats to Kasey, who is my hero for championing Shelley and that glorious poem in particular. Ode to the West Wind, my friends, is *poetry* -- to hell, I say, with high modernist austerity and low modernist colloquialism. Blah. Blecch. Sick of it. (As usual, I overstate my position to irritate my perpetually irritable readers into responding.)

I have been almost painfully resistant to blogging lately ((except for sending a naked photo of myself to JI(S)M)) for a number of reasons, not least of which is a deep shock of a personal nature which may be extremely obvious for those of you who read me with any attentiveness. It's not an insurmountable shock, though, rather one of those kinds our good therapists deem "opportunities" -- would that we could make some actual monetary profit off of them! Still, I find that in those rare moments my mind is left idle it has been flying to fantasies of theatrical revenge I imagine I'm much too dignified and enlightened ever to enact, but the feeling of not having any complete catharsis in this matter, particularly a purging of the psychic violence that churns in me around it, is most enervating. Sublimating it into poetry is probably the best option, but the problem is that the emotions keep getting in the way of the Kraft. I guess that's what Charlie meant about the "subjective lyrical interference of the ego" -- although I always took that to mean "femininity" in yet another instance of characteristic essentialist overreading. Like the (man)poet just wants to say, "bitch! leave me alone! i'm trying to write!"

So that's been my major resistance. Another has been a course I'm teaching now at Pratt -- "Text & Context" -- nifty -- here's a list of some of the writers (and artists) whose work I'm teaching: Nick Piombino, Frank O'Hara, Mike Goldberg, John Keats, John Berger, Robert Smithson, Terry Williams, Gerhard Richter, John Taggart, Adrian Spatola, Diane diPrima, Ed Sanders, Sherman Alexie, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Greil Marcus, Hugo Ball, Jackson MacLow, Clark Coolidge, Phillip Guston, Steve McCaffery, Maggie O'Sullivan, Tan Lin, Cecilia Vicuna, assorted comics artists, Euripides, Carolee Schneemann, David Antin, Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper. I'm teaching this material to a small group of visual arts students, all Asian (Korean and Japanese) except for one French woman. I won't say it is not a challenge, but it is also a pleasure, especially when I get my students' papers and reading journals and I see that they actually grok some of the central (and admittedly obscure) concepts I am trying to impart to them.

Those are the two main reasons for resistance... but I think, when I grope around in my consciousness, I can find another one... something about liking to play by myself sometimes. There are so many blogs now (and don't misunderstand me, more power to all of them, of course) that the thought of having to engage with all that's going on in all of them is kind of overwhelming. Rather like the thought of having to engage with All of History, as all of the children of High Modernism still seem to feel they have the duty to do. Just want... a little private time sometimes... in the dusty corners... of my thoughts...and feelings...

...if only so that I have more to turn inside out into gesture or declaration...? What about you, my friends, do you think the notion of "interiority" is just wrong, a wrong, misleading metaphor? And if it is wrong, why, why, why does it feel so right?

New topic: Here's something that happened to me yesterday. I call it...

THE THREE MEAN GIRLS

Three mean girls got on the F train yesterday. One (Girl 1, in a turban and some kind of strange earrings) wedged aggressively into the corner seat perpendicular to me and the other's swung around her, though there was a woman sitting in the outer aisle seat (I was in one of the seat facing the doors). First they accosted the woman: "You lookin at me?" -- much impudent chatter, swinging around the poles, sticking out breastbuds in ratty tight t-shirts. When the person sitting next to me got off the train, I slid over one seat to the left. Girl 2 (broken tooth) , standing, looked at me disgustedly, "aww... I wanted to sit there.. She knew I wanted to sit there and that's why she moved over." (Although logic dictates that she would have wanted to sit next to her co-hoodlum.) I ignored her, so they all started to bait me. Girl 2 said, "What ARE you?" "What do you mean?" I said. "I mean are you Chinese or Irish or... what?" "Do I look Chinese?" "Are you being rude to me?" [Say what?] " [with as much teacherly compassion as I could muster] No, actually, I was just wondering if you've been having a bad day," to which Girl 1 found the perfect opening," You the one having a bad day -- a bad HAIR day [admittedly, what with all this ongoing humidity, my hair is out-of-control frizzy, but most people admire it anyway... I have to say, this stung, what with all the emotional issues that have been raging recently...but did I let it show? maybe only a little:] " "I don't see why I should talk to you guys, you're way too mean." Girl 2 checks out my shoes, and in a kind of verbal peace offering, "aww man, she wearing Diesel. That's cool, she's OK," but then they all three started hassling other people on the train. An older woman sitting across the aisle, a real New York type, with rectangular glasses, loads of costume jewelry, a Louis Vuitton handbag (but casual rainy day clothes) looked at the girls severely, full of the elderly-person non-intimidated authority I for a minute really wished I had, and said, "You girls ought to be ashamed of yourselves, talking to people that way. You need to be respectful of people." Then, very adeptly, she changed tack, telling one girl she was pretty and another that she was cute --"How come she be pretty and I just be cute?" Girl 2 said). Asked how old they are, said she guessed they were sophomores in high school. I stupidly piped up, said I guessed they were in 8th grade [only because I once had to teach a T & W class of totally obnoxious 8th grade hellions that these girls reminded me of]. Girl 1 turned to me and said witheringly, "Was I talking to you?" Girl 3, who was slightly nicer than the other two, said they were in 6th grade. 6th grade? Jeezus. By now the whole adult population on the train is in on the indignation at the freshness and near-violence (which sorry I haven't really been able to depict here) of these barely-teens. An older man, quite portly, scolded them very powerfully and not, I thought, unsorrowfully, "Do You talk to your mother like that?" Everyone was shaking their heads. The New Yorky lady with the LV bag, who'd been humoring them, was preparing to get off at her stop, Bergen St.; "All I know is, if you live in my neighborhood, I'm going to kill myself!" she said perkily. Everyone laughed. The girls actually did get off at that stop too. I'm sure that the lady had too much fortitude to kill herself over such a thing as that. The woman with dreadlocks sitting next to me clutching a bible with gold charms of crosses, etc., in her hair, had some pithy words of condemnation for the vicious little maenads, but I can't remember them. The guy sitting on my other side hoped they would be incarcerated as soon as possible. I just remarked that they would probably be sick or pregnant first, that they were unadulterated ID, that not only does "it take a village", it takes the whole subway. The first lady they hassled made the mostly --but not entirely-- true remark that it "was not their fault." Yes, I said, that's the sad part.


OK, it's now 4:43 in the a.m., I have no signs of sleepiness, I've got to go rinse out the bathtub. Would you all please dissuade me from 1) staying up so late and b) getting into long digressive narratives?

Thank you, and goodnight.





*She survived, but it was all captured on live TV.

Here's a faint and tiny excerpt from a song from "Koi Maneuver", a tape I made in 1990 with Herman Bartelen in Japan. Love is...!audblog audio post

Nick Piombino writes,

To love is to return.

For a fuller discussion, see today's -fait accompli-

Jordan Davis writes,

I was given the "love is" assignment in second grade -- a line I
remembered from it was:

Love is a baseball card

But then I found a copy of the poem, which my composer ex-uncle set, and
which when it was performed at my grandmother's church in DC appeared on
the cover of the program that Sunday, and the baseball card line was
nowhere to be found. What was there was this line:

Love is a feeling -- your curiosity pulls you away.

I was seven.

Michael Magee writes,

MY ANGIE DICKINSON #58


Love is an R for Language --
Brave and Rosanna Arquette
Powerhouse -- as a Mother --
To cope -- with the disappointment

A struggling -- Mississippi --
A funeral home heiress --
The Nature of Love is matress mambo --
"Big Bad Love" is Best

Love is a criminal -- "trying" --
Affluent -- codependent
Volleyball after Signing
Synonymous -- with Jack Palance --

Love Is A Ball
Love is the Air
A timid henpecked Book -- "keeper" --
Whose first Elke Sommer provides --

My lady love is coming down
In "Circles" -- around a homeless Woman
Named Grace misquoting the Beatles --
Forgives me my pine needles

Jim Behrle writes,

love ism.

Lanny Quarles writes,

Love is an heliourobouros mantis-beast whose 40 rows of solar eyeballs
are all agog-in-pop-schlupping-spheroexcrescence (or radiant in eyeball-radiation)

or

Love is the explosion of seeing...

or

Love is Kara (my wife)..

Stephanie Young writes,

Well, I typed up a million 'love is' statements here and they all seemed
equally sappy and dumb and missed the mysterious 'it' by a gazillion miles.
Something in there about the quality of sleeping in the same bed with a
person. Falling asleep at the same time. Love is /as removal of the outer
dress: self consciousness.

Tommy, at free4freakyfun, writes,

My buddies and I wanted to build a website dedicated to M.I.LF's. You know what MILF's are, right? Mothers I'd Like to Fuck! We're talking sexy, older babes that you'd give your left nut to fuck. We're just average guys but we had an idea, a little cash and a camera. We went on a search of sexy M.I.L.F.'s that needed cock. You know, the type that are neglected by their husbands. We hit the supermarkets, shopping malls, playgrounds, beach, anywhere we could find some sexy mom's that we could talk into having sex with us on camera.

You know what the poetic punctum of this priceless passage is, for me? It's that stupid apostrophe: mom's. What's up with that [as the teenagers say nowadays]? I'm also interested in the synechdochic, apostrophized use of the word "cock" here, not to mention the arbitrary precision and jocular colloquiality of "you'd give your left nut to fuck."

Unfortunately, he didn't do the sentence completion assignment properly...

Kasey Silem Mohammad writes,

Love is a cat's paw pressed gently against your nose.

It doesn't matter how dumb it sounds, 'cause it's true.

Henry Gould writes,

Love is. . . a word. A word is. . . a person. A person is. . . Love.

Tom Beckett writes,

Love is a landing site.

Jack Kimball writes,

Love is.

(but couched in all kinds of weird stuff)

Michael Helsem writes in:


love is a disproof of the primacy of the visible.

"The identity cetificate is invalid" [in nyah nyah nyah nyah voice]

Remember "LOVE IS..."?

Love is, among other things, mundane.

Send me your "love is" statements and I'll post them here.

Subjective formalism is, admittedly, onanism. But so?

The onanism of another can be plenty stimulating.

Then again, it can also be disgusting.

Form! Context! Paradigm!

Kasey writes:

I want to join Nada's speculations on a "formalism of the emotions" with Ron's concept of the poetic exploration of natural forms, but I don't know how.

I think it's because, KSM, that they are entirely alien concepts. Ron's poetic exploration of natural forms, at least as it's played out in his work, is more aligned to mathematics -- i.e. copping for a poem the structure of a nautilus as it is based on the Fibonacci sequence. The result is structural containers to be filled.

I have almost never been able to work that way, except when, like a hermit crab, I steal someone else's structure wholly and inhabit it with my own body. For me this is also a way of stealing someone's syntax that I covet.

The "poetic exploration of natural forms" seems to me to have some age-of-reason-y, empiricist overtones. Objectively, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's entirely different from my way of working and also of just being in the world. I don't trust empirical observation at all, although I know nothing could be more logical. Maybe that's why I don't trust it.

"The boundary of blur" indeed...

A formalism of the emotions would be very difficult, maybe impossible, to describe empirically, because each subjectivity brings with it its own set of memories, associations, and interpretations.

So maybe it's a SUBJECTIVE formalism. Is that even possible?

I know that certain kinds of utterances, certain grammatical arrangements, certain words and even phonemes, tend to produce in me corresponding feelings. Those feelings are what I exploit/explore in the acts of writing and reading. Don't know how likely the same items and combinations might be to produce similar reactions in another.

Gotta go outside -- more on this later.

SUNNY DAY, EVERYTHING'S A-OK...