“Being a man is not a particularity”

This morning I should be writing two abstracts, working on an annotated bibliography, marking essays, or completing my application for my new university. But I find myself on the couch reading the introduction to Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Last night I went and listened to the translators of the new edition speak. I sat in what felt like a gathering in an underground vault, bricks and chipped cement, at the Alliance Française, St Kilda. It was lovely to hear discussions of editing, translation, and the difficulty in working with Beauvoir’s all-too-frequent semi-colon. One translator believes Beauvoir’s grammar is reflective of her philosophical position, and that for this reason, a certain awkwardness needed to be maintained (as it wasn’t in the first translation). So I’m curious now to read it. My copy is the old translation, and I’ve only read parts, including the introduction. So this morning, because there’s a copy on the shelf of where I’m staying (which is great, but not great for my lack of discipline), I read the introduction in its new form. I read for semi-colons, but also in light of many statements made last night about the ongoing currency of this text.

Indeed, it’s a beautiful book and her writing, as always, is seductive. At many points I agree that this text is still relevant today, and needs to be returned to. Like when she says “every concrete human being is always uniquely situated” (p4). In writing about (and against) social science methodologies, this is something I keep finding and repeating, whether in the work of Haraway, Latour, Lyotard… it’s about challenging the metanarrative, or the tendency to make general claims about people, gender, or the social world. Though I don’t think Beauvoir stays ‘true’ to this sentiment, but rather gives a blend of general and specific claims. This perhaps beautifully reflects her belief in ambiguity. Though, without her stating that this is her political/literary goal, this claim might be a little too optimistic.

Elsewhere, I appreciate her (brief) reflection on the male body:

“Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularises it” (p5).

Lovely. Yet, I have to question the subject of this sentence. There is ongoing ambiguity in Beauvoir’s reference to the sexed man (the male) or the general man (humans), but in this instance she refers to the former, which is disappointing. Because this implies that women don’t also fall into step with this logic. Might it be that all people are prone (at times) to disembody the male human and constitute his viewpoint as objectively detached from his bodily features and processes? Elsewhere Beauvoir speaks of women’s complicity in sexual divisions, but in this example, objectivity and its privilege is only arranged by men.

In addressing woman’s complicity, Beauvoir states that “she often derives satisfaction from her role as Other” (p10). This is important, I would say. As is the recognition (not available in this introduction) that woman can also find power and freedom in otherness. But here, otherness is constituted through social arrangements of superiority/inferiority.

In discussing inferiority, Beauvoir commonly draws comparisons between women, proletariats, Jews, and black Americans. At times she says these Other categories are analogous, but at other times she highlights the differences of these otherings/oppressions. What isn’t clear is how inferiority is determined. As she doesn’t unpack this, the politics underpinning her argument (against inferiority/difference/otherness) seem to be a politics of homogeneity. But what about the usefulness and potentialities of difference? How might a politics of difference be constructed beyond structures of inferiority/superiority?

Beauvoir suggests that inferiority is having “fewer possibilities”. But what does this mean? Might this suggest fewer possibilities to be (like) men? In turn, might we ask about the possibilities of men to be (like) women? Can we males be granted a possible femaleness? Mostly, no. Perhaps this question is rarely asked on the basis/assumption that men have no desire to be like women. And perhaps this is the problem. If femaleness is not desired, then surely we must ask “why not?” We can also look for exceptions or examples of when femaleness (whatever this means) is desired. We might also ask “What does/can femaleness do?” Because what’s unsatisfying here, in reading this text 60 years beyond its arrival, is its (re)constitution of ‘lack’ as central to the subject of woman.

Today we know that femaleness can be (indeed it is) active, desirable, and generated through active desiring. This is what we feel when reading and experiencing the works of Irigaray, Duras, Leduc, Kristeva, Beauvoir, Calle, Cixous, Breillat, Ozon, Solanas, Wittig, and so many Others (this list continues forever). These are just a few who demonstrate, celebrate, and critically challenge ideas of woman’s inferiority; actively, politically, playfully, and ingenuously. I guess they’ve all pored over (written and re-written) La Deuxième Sexe (most not having to wait for a better translation). It’s nice to see that this work has been extended and implanted elsewhere, across various disciplines, genres, and oceans. But I guess, for me, this is a reminder that this text is less a contemporary argument (as was stated by many people late night) than an historical document.

Let’s now talk about misogyny.

If we continue to see The Second Sex as a contemporary document about the emancipation of women, thus sustaining a cultural belief that women are still confined (and complicit) to otherness (that is, being and not generating otherness), then we must ignore 60 years of work, art, philosophy, and politics that has moved away from a uni-directional otherness. Yes, “alterity is the fundamental category of human thought” (p6), that is, otherness is the only way through which we formulate knowledge of self and world. Yet, otherness is plural, transient, and multi-directional. And so let’s think more about how otherness is constructed through misogyny (or misogynies) in a more plural sense.

In asking where misogyny comes from, why is it not commonly thought that it arises from male envy? that men hate women because they can’t be women? Perhaps because the questioning of misogyny is always filtered through a cultural misogyny (that none of us can avoid), and a sustained (sometimes unconscious) belief that nobody wants to be a woman. Valerie Solanas and Monique Wittig made such claims of male envy. Many people thought they were crazy. But incomprehensible is different to crazy.

So the question (my question today, but a question that has been asked many times, perhaps even by Beauvoir herself) is: Can misogyny be attributed to envy? That is, women’s envy of men, and crucially, men’s envy of women? How might filmmakers like Catherine Breillat be useful in understanding these dynamics? Surely it’s not enough to only consider misogyny (yes it’s bad, yes let’s move beyond it), but to push deeper into its foundations and dynamics, to trouble and unsettle it. In men and women, what are the mechanics of misogyny?

Beauvoir’s work provides some insight into this, in part if we consider her misogyny, which is probably more evident today than at the time it was written. Because now we have decades of women’s writing (écriture féminine and beyond) to contemplate, engage with, and build upon.

Perhaps one current value of The Second Sex is the political potential of ambiguity and contradiction, as beautifully demonstrated by Beauvoir. For example, after setting up the argument against a universal belief in women’s inferiority, she later states:

“To see clearly, one needs to get out of these ruts; these vague notions of superiority, inferiority and equality that have distorted all discussions must be discarded in order to start anew” (p15).

Indeed! But maybe those first three words need further translation, or a significant footnote that maps the distance between feminist politics then and now. Because why would anyone’s goal be to see clearly, if clarity, thus far, has been cruel to women and most others.

And there's a permanence to the memory of a bruise

this is a line from my (current) favourite song on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's (current) new album. tomorrow i see them live.



i'm loving the album because it seems more pacey, racy, and invigorating than some of their earlier stuff. yet this song is one of the mellow moments. perhaps it stands out for being sandwiched between pulsating, energetic stuff. it's the pause within a busy day. its poetry is less speedy and therefore there's time to sit with it. three and a half minutes to catch your breath. then it's back to noise.

it's tuesday so i shouldn't have a slight hangover. but i do. work is difficult today. watching bored to death is not. but i must push on. i must shower actually. and then maybe i'll go buy that almond croissant i've been thinking about. maybe i'll pick up some groceries. and then maybe i'll do some work.

last night S asked me what it means to be a taurian. in 29 years he's never bothered to find out. i tell him some traits and he admits to having them all. later in the night i say "that's right! we're lazy". he concurs. we're lazy.

happy birthday M.

nostalgia and fantasy

an excerpt from my melbourne journal. yesterday...

I fell into nostalgia today. I went to Caulfield to see a curator speak about the Chris Kraus exhibition and then I found myself retracing my steps of 15 years ago, when I caught the #3 tram every day. I wrote like a maniac on today’s tram. Much to say, but nothing of value. As Kraus says, “Nostalgia is not active. Fantasy is active”. Writing backwards (about the old days, as though one might recreate them or capture a pure memory) is pathetic. From now on I only wish to write through fantasy, projecting a life that I could be living (but not pausing long enough to know if this is the case).

At the talk, the gallery staff member introducing the speakers catches my eye. In his first introduction our eyes lock several times. I have reason to look at him (he’s speaking) but why must he look at me? I feel a pang of something. Later, after the second introduction, he backs away and stands in front of me; very close. His perfume is lovely. I breathe him in. I want him. He’s balding, a little chubby, clearly gay, and dressed in a way that I wish he wasn’t, but still, I want him. At several points the speaking curator is muted and I slip into fantasy. I find myself speaking with him, holding him, my face pressed into his neck, inhaling him. I think he might want me too.

I can’t know if he wants me or if this is a fiction I’m writing. Soon enough the talk is over and I return to look at the art. He disappears and I’m saddened by my loss. We never got to speak. His scent never impressed itself upon me. And now, back home, I eat chocolate cake on the couch. This is not fiction but pathetically real. My wave of nostalgia carried me to Europa Cakes on Acland St where I bought the same cake I’ve always bought. First tasted 16 years ago, today's cake is as unsatisfying as today's passive journey.

The exhibition, however, did satisfy me. I wrapped it around me like the perfect cardigan. I wanted to stay forever (and yes, the thought that he might return was an added incentive). I flicked through the books. I bought one. I felt my pulse quicken at the thought of being this kind of artist; of making collage through the journeys of daily life, incorporating the books, ideas, and loves that impress me. I’ve known for a while that these are the conversations I want to have. But still, I keep it at bay.

I want to rub myself against the works of Kraus. I will start by reading this book and others. Yet I find myself doubting the power of words on pages. I find myself hopelessly aware that this book lacks warmth, a perfume, and limbs with which to hold me.

hunger

regaining my appetite was a beautiful thing. it was difficult to find myself hating food and vomiting anything that i ingested. this was last week. the smell and sight and thought of food had me reaching for the red bucket. the head pain was also unpleasant. but there's something about nausea that just isn't me.

since eating again i eat more. i have insatiable hunger. i enjoy the taste of (almost) everything and once tasted i want more. i eat and eat and when i finish eating i think about what i might eat next.

my belly has returned. some people don't think i have a belly, but i do. it's big, round and happy. it's more enormous than it looks. it's satisfactorily full of vegies and tofu and cake and biscuits and chocolate.

i'm late-busy but not worried any more. i'm marking essays. i'm having late night muscle-relaxant baths. i'm in bed listening to beirut. i return to my doctor tomorrow. blood tests.

this time next week i'll be in another bed, another state, and looking after another cat. i'll probably still listen to beirut. i'll probably still eat like there's no tomorrow.

in last night's dream i bought ham from a deli. i felt compelled to purchase meat. after doing so, i didn't know what to do. i knew i couldn't eat it. the man refused to give me a bag for this strange looking ham and so i'm standing, perplexed, looking at it in my hands. it cost $35 but there's no way i'm eating it. i was annoyed that i couldn't have a bag and was left carrying this chunk of inedible flesh. also last night, j dreamt that i ate chicken. eating it off the bone, i didn't realise it was chicken.

my hunger invades the sleeping thoughts of my housemate. my hunger knows no bounds.

crazy stupid love

this contains spoilers (but it's not like you'd never have guessed the storyline).

i have a thing for ryan gosling. this means that i like to see him on the big screen. so last night i went with M to see crazy stupid love. on the way to dinner i pre-empt that it's not going to be a good ryan moment. i'm a little excited, but i try to downplay my expectations. for me, his magnetism is surely embedded in the characters he tends to play. as the junkie (half nelson), the criminal (drive), the abusive spouse (blue valentine), the teenage murderer (the united states of leland), and the man in love with a doll (lars and the real girl), he's really very good. his wounded-animal eyes are ever-present and they draw me into the plight of these troubled men. but as 'the hot guy' with huge abs, i'm not sure i can empathise. nor am i likely to want him.

my dubiousness was well-founded. this wasn't a good film. there were good moments, and a great cast that made it seem quite promising, but alas...

the highlight for me was marisa tomei's character. perhaps i should hate this character, how she's portrayed, and what she is given by this script. but i don't. she's the crazy woman. she's a recovered alcoholic, needy of a man, anxious, and uncontrollable when angry. on paper, she's the hysterical woman. but there's more there. for me, the skills of marisa tomei give her some vigour and warmth (probably more than the scriptwriters intended). or could it be that the backdrop of love-seeking schmaltz (as the driving force of every character) is what draws me to her, the single person who doesn't abide by the laws of courtly love.

she's unhinged, she breaks rules, she's not inhibited by social convention. she's a school teacher who screams abuse down the corridor at parent-teacher night. she's the loose canon that i often wish i could be.

as the film (which did have some funny moments) starts to tie itself up, i find myself cringing more and more. the bad boy (ryan) that baddened up the good man, falls in love and changes his ways. of course, monogamous love outshines all previous sexual interactions (which were cheap, empty, and as it turns out, not satisfying at all). the slutty man is redeemed, he reneges. He eats his words and gives himself to 'real love'.

and all the characters (bar the schoolteacher) are talking of soul-mates, true-love, and never giving up on 'the one'. meanwhile i'm vomiting on my shoes. thus, marisa tomei's crazy woman, bound for spinsterhood, was the best thing i could take from this film.

I exist

[...]

Last night, reading my words from many years ago, I remembered that I exist. I saw familiar words and sentiments that are all too present today. I saw familiar concerns about my existence. I saw that there is continuity there, in my life and my thoughts, and this was comforting. This is comforting. My words become my base, and my text holds me together. This is something I can rely upon.

i wanna be your man

he has the same name as another who left me beside myself. but this time it's different.

he drinks the riesling and i drink the beer that comes in a bottle in a paper bag. it's a small bar with graffiti on the walls. it's sydney being melbourne. nothing fits, including us. for most of the night we're outside in the rain, barely protected by the umbrellas above. but that's okay. i slide into his stories and they keep me warm. later, a guy offers to find us seats inside. he puts us in the hallway, on small stools beside a trunk that holds a mirror and some candles. we feel like this is a bathroom. a traffic of people passing, but mostly i don't notice. i'm somewhere else. surrounded by chalkboards, we add to the graffiti. i tell him my mother's name and he writes it up.

in the hallway/bathroom alcove we eventually kiss. we kiss some more. i never imagined...

eventually we tumble onto the street. we stand next to his bike and he gives me his number. another kiss and then a goodbye.

i plug myself into music and walk the walk home. the saints. this is the sound of me walking king street on a particularly pleasant evening. it rains but i don't use my umbrella.

hunger management

Catching up with J last night (it's been some months since he left town), I tell him I'm busy and scattered of late. "Busy making zines and going for drinks with people like me," he says. Yes, good point. I shouldn't complain about my somewhat bourgeois life. I have bosses and supervisors who let me work at my own leisure. I have flexible working times. I have income. Many people don't.

I read this article while eating breakfast, and it was sobering. I'm not good at understanding economics, but hunger and poverty I can grasp. In a tutorial some weeks ago we talked about the global economy as a space of neo-colonialism. As always, some students argue that people from developing countries employed in multi-national off-shore factories are actually doing better off than they ever were/could, so the global market isn't such an evil, destructive, neo-colonialist force. But (I say now, in hindsight), what happens when the economy turns sour? Who's first to lose jobs/income? Is this not a colonialist narrative, where labour (or another sacrifice of time/energy/belief/custom) is traded for 'a better life', but when the political/economic climate changes, the coloniser backs away, goes home, and doesn't look back at the ruin and disruption caused?

Is it just me, or is this statement from a Unicef report (reported on in the article) really fucked up?

"The limited window of intervention for foetal development and for growth among infants and young children means that deprivation today, if not addressed properly, can have irreversible impacts on their physical and intellectual capacities, which will, in turn, lower their productivity in adulthood; this is an extraordinary price for a country to pay."

The price is paid by the country, and the cost is lower productivity. I get that they're talking to economists, governments and policy-makers, but surely those bodies (and the people in them) can grasp the idea of hunger too. Do they really need a nationalist spin in order to address the problem?

Closer to home, 'Income Management' is going to be introduced in Bankstown (and other places in other states). I guess the NT Intervention was such a raging success that it's being rolled out to Western Sydney (and other 'problem' populations). It's as if some people/governments believe that poverty, malnutrition, child abuse, and unemployment are self-generated problems that arise in 'disadvantaged communities'. Might disadvantage be a product of something larger than 'bad parents' or 'uneducated people'? Might we all be turning the knobs of that particular machine?

shiny and new

This weekend we moved furniture around. Over the past months 'new' furniture has appeared or migrated into other rooms. Things have been screwed into walls, and furnishings have taken on new roles in new spaces. In all this, new spaces are created from old furnishings. Always, in the days following re-arrangements, there is a feeling of newness and pride. We look around us and say "This works. I want to inhabit this space." This is an ongoing project which threads itself back through my (and our) previous homes, all the way to childhood. It was once my job to dust and polish lounge room ornaments. I felt accomplished and proud when, with my own hands, I made things appear shiny.

This weekend closes with me in the bath, reading Bachelard on 'home as universe'. It's cold outside, but I'm doubly protected by these walls and this bath water. Bachelard quotes Rilke, who speaks on the joys of dusting:

I was, as I said, magnificently alone... when suddenly I was seized by my old passion. I should say that this was undoubtedly my greatest childhood passion, as well as my first contact with music, since our little piano fell under my jurisdiction as duster. It was, in fact, one of the few objects that lent itself willingly to this operation and gave no sign of boredom. On the contrary, under my zealous dustcloth, it suddenly started to purr mechanically... and its fine, deep black surface became more and more beautiful. When you've been through this there's little you don't know! I was quite proud, if only of my indispensable costume, which consisted of a big apron and little washable suede gloves to protect one's dainty hands. Politeness tinged with mischief was my reaction to the friendliness of these objects, which seemed happy to be so well treated, so meticulously renovated.

Bachelard says: "there is the striking line with which it opens: 'I was magnificently alone!' Alone, as we are at the origin of all real action that we are not 'obliged' to perform."

I'm left thinking about the satisfaction of clean surfaces, freshly re-arranged rooms, the folding of cleaned clothes. These make spaces immense, and in the shiny surfaces within my homes, I project my wishes for a life in order.

For Rilke, cleaning was not an obligation, and it was only when his maid was away that he took to polishing his desk (and remembering his childhood passion). But I assume that many of us feel obliged to clean and keep an order within the home. My sometimes incessant ordering/tidying feels necessary, I need it so as to keep going, to give a pseudo-foundation to the mess of my days.

Perhaps the only space in which I can be 'magnificently alone' is in writing.

the strange case of the missing shoes

this morning, a friday, i mapped out my day. i would swim, i would pick up some groceries, i would return home for breakfast, i would get some papers together and take them to uni.

this week i've devoted all spare time to nutting out my (thesis) methodological issues. i need to firm this up, so that everything i write from now on fits a certain structure. otherwise i'll go on building this thesis - this house without foundations - forever. which, in some ways, is enjoyable. because when one room collapses, i just take residence in another. i rebuild something different. something more interesting, for now. an ongoing process. but the thesis isn't. maybe the ideas are, but the thesis has to finish. and i think i'm ready to mix some cement.

it's a little late, and perhaps a little crazy, to add laclau and mouffe's 'discourse theory' as one of the foundations. but i think i can. besides, they're into bricolage. and bricklaying too (see paragraph 8).

anyway, i swim and i emerge clear-headed and ready to push on with this day. i shower and dress and then... "where are my shoes?" i left them in the change room, as always, but they were gone. i have to explain my searching behaviour to a very elderly man getting changed and he tells me to go to lost property. with an outstretched arm he offers me his flip-flops. i decline, but i pause to enjoy this moment. he seems around 90, is bent over, with small feet and a japanese accent.

i speak to the blonde staff member, who is my favourite. a few weeks ago she convinced me to buy a monthly pass: "it's getting warm!" i explain my shoelessness. she apologises and says that this hasn't happened before. "were they new shoes?" "no, they were old".

so my plan changes, and now i walk home, in bare feet - "do you have far to go?" "no, just down the road". i've never walked barefoot on these streets before. a new feeling. the path holds the warmth of a nice spring morning. i remember that one of my favourite pair of socks are inside the shoes. my shoes, with soles wearing thin. but they probably had another 6 months in them.

the woman at the pool is shaking her head. "why would someone take them?" she answers her question: "i guess there are some weirdos around". she takes my number. she's going to keep an eye out and watch people as they're leaving, to check that they're not wearing them.

Laclau and Mouffe tell us that any 'thing' has multiple forms of 'discursive articulation' - "whether this stone is a projectile, or a hammer, or an object of aesthetic contemplation depends on its relations with me—it depends, therefore, on precise forms of discursive articulation" (1987).

and so, my shoes come to be missing shoes, or stolen shoes. "black and blue", i write on the piece of paper. the missing shoes generate various encounters, exchanges of words, sympathies, and comparisons - "i had a pair of flip-flops stolen from a pool once, on a really hot day", she tells me. we share moments of confusion. and here's me, talking to her, talking to the lifeguard, finding out which secret wall holds the 'lost and found' collection. here's me, furthering my relationship with my local pool, its people and its spaces. i write my name and number on the piece of paper. i belong here, more local than ever. i walk home in bare feet, more local than ever.

freedom

this morning i read a book. before i got out of bed and started the day, i flicked through a hundred pages or so. it was a nice way to start my weekend. because now i've many new phrases and sentiments to return to throughout the weekend. Like this:

"Once upon a time I was always talking of freedom. At breakfast I used to spread it on my toast, I used to chew it all day long, and in company my breath was delightfully redolent of freedom. With that keyword I would bludgeon whoever contradicted me; I made it serve my desires and my power" (Camus, The Fall, p97 of my copy).

Now the sun is shining. I just ate some bread with rosemary and potato in it. Prior to that I swam some laps. Prior to that I worked on chapter 5. now i'm going to wonder down the road for coffee and sunshine.

rolling with the punches

Dutch boarder tells me that he wants to move out. Tomorrow he's looking at alternative accommodation. He feels like he now knows what he needs in terms of accommodation. This is the second housing agreement he's broken since arriving in Australia. We agree to break the contract if he pays another 2 weeks rent, giving us time to find a replacement. Just now, at midnight, he argues why he may be justified in paying less. He says he's concerned about his finances. "What if I can take the other place tomorrow". What if you can't? I tell him why we need to agree on a date. I'm speaking firmly, rationally, explaining that his actions affect us and we need a firm plan so that we all know our responsibilities for the next two weeks. He sees that he is disrupting us. I tell him that yes, this is very disruptive to me. He mentions his sore back (blaming our futon) as a potential escape clause. "You might think I'm looking for excuses". "Yes, I think you're looking for excuses". He's a little taken aback, and we end, eventually, with him agreeing to 2 weeks. Though he calls me from my room one more time, to try one more line of argument. I feel my own Dutch blood boil. I re-clothe and re-enter the lounge room. "No". I speak of fairness. And fairness for all of us. His request is not fair on us. His actions have consequences. If he has to pay double rent for one week, then he has to wear that as a consequence of his actions, his decisions, and his breaking of the agreement. We have offered a compromise. Others would not. This is only fair. "Good night".

Who is this me that's spouting such things? This diplomatic and somewhat paternal voice sometimes arises. It's me having an adult moment in which I appeal to fairness, responsibilities, and courtesy. It's me getting what I want. It's me enjoying my own performance of getting what I want. Most days I wouldn't use these words and justifications, and it seems unlikely that they would work if someone used them on me. Though I probably wouldn't ask for such leniency. I'd probably 'accept the consequences' of changing my mind. Maybe that's my Irish blood.

Trying to locate where these moments come from is as ridiculous as racialising them. Highlighting the bloodlines of my deeds is just one tactic among many (like appealing to my star sign, the habits of my parents, or the environment in which I grew up) to tell myself and others that my deeds have roots deeply embedded in this person I call myself. But maybe my performance is just a tactic for getting what I want, here and now - always a momentary eruption. Such performances are guided by certain events or feelings (like tonight's tiredness). Sometimes I witness them as though I'm still in yesterday's armchair.

quark and raspberry jam

bagels with quark and raspberry jam. a short black coffee. the rolling stones gimmee shelter. everything is fine.

the backs of my legs are still wet from the rain that fell sideways and almost ruined me and my umbrella. on the couch now, and the cat sleeps at my feet. i haven't had quark and raspberry jam since this time 4 years ago. it's as though melbourne housemates J & M are with me now. rain outside, coffee inside, and tomorrow we'll probably take a stroll to the markets at the collingwood children's farm. we're likely to buy cheese, some bread, and one of those trays of almonds, raisins and dried peach. but today, in my shopping bags, are 3 cheeses. some habits don't die, they just adapt to new surrounds.

last weekend i stumbled and tripped myself up. it was a drunken stumble over a man. i spent the week frowning at myself. maybe i can blame D for giving me that book which is all about a teenage boy crushing on another boy and being too shy and scared to follow it through. it could be one of any smiths songs really. 'why didn't i give him my number... why didn't i rest my hand on his leg... why did i tell him that thing about that guy...' but anyway, so what.

last night i drank beers in surry hills with S who reminded me that 'relationships' are unnecessary. he doesn't want one. most of the time i don't either. but i stumbled, tripped, and forgot myself. which is okay. because it was a moment of tragedy to write up, reflect upon, and file away for later. S says he hates all novels because too often they focus on ideals of love, romance, and needing to be with someone. it reminds me of that book, and most other books i've read in the last few years. not to mention all those films and songs. was this just me trying on another narrative?

the man was pretty lovely. there was instant mutual attraction. and someone (but not me) could write it into a first chapter of a something. i was gin drunk, talking a lot, and very much forgetting everything beyond our transaction. in those moments i poured myself into him. when he left, i was left empty. i'd attached myself to his eyes, hair, lips, everything. i was gone.

anyway, S tells me i don't need that and i believe him. nancy sinatra is now telling me about some velvet morning. i wonder if that cheese on the bench has had time to soften. i contemplate a nice hot bath, a novel, and the caress of more fictions.

Pina, a film, a review

“What are we longing for?” This is what Pina Bausch asks of her dancers. This might also be what her dancers ask of the film audience. Pina is dead, but it’s not as simple as that, and nobody here speaks of her death. This is not a documentary that recalls her life but an artwork that extends and preserves her contribution to modern dance.

This film doesn’t rely on a typical memorial narrative, and its impact comes less from what the featured dancers/friends say of Pina, than what their bodies express through dance. Dancers voice short reflections of their time with Pina, yet in these scenes the dancer’s voice is played over a silent headshot. They breathe and twitch, offering an internal monologue. And then they dance a tribute to Pina.

The film has a unique rhythm that I didn’t fall into right away. It’s not a typical rhythm, but one that jolts, sprays and falls back into itself. Much like Pina’s choreography. For me, a dancehall scene was the moment I fell. Dancers are seated around the edge of a room, gradually rising (alone or in groups) and walking to the centre, towards a camera which might double as a mirror. They push hair from their faces, show their teeth, suck in their stomachs. This is a rehearsal but also a scene of self-reflection. Perhaps it speaks of the inward gaze of dancers, watching themselves as they might be watched. This gentle scene spirals into a loud, gyrating, dance. At this point, I also let down my guard and fall into the film.

By asking ‘what are we longing for?’ we learn that Pina is about unspoken desires that take hold of bodies and express things in new ways, beyond words, or perhaps surpassing the limits of a vocabulary.

Water, rocks, nature, industry… the dance moves from enclosed performance spaces to open public space amongst commuters and other daily rhythms. Scenes from a performance (Café Müller) are interspersed with dances alongside trains, highways, and swimming pools. The natural environment is there but often constructed, with sand and soil inside theatres, as well as rivers, rocks and rainfall. Emotions climb as more water falls, splashes and spits onto dancing bodies. As a three dimensional film, the audience can’t escape getting wet.

Whilst some dancers share words about Pina before they dance, some just stare into the camera, breathing. I found the unspoken moments most affective here as this makes it difficult to read their dance to Pina. We’re reminded that these are not simply performances, but conversations; a communication between dancers, students, teachers, and friends. We’re reminded that sometimes emotions can’t be voiced, but are best worn through our gestures and our art.

A shy dancer recalls Pina asking her “Why are you frightened of me? I didn’t do anything to you”. Then we cut to her dance where there is no trace of fear; only brash, intense, flaunting. In such moments we become Pina. Watching proudly, we are touched.

The film begins with seasons, and these seasons, in the form of dance, appear throughout the film. We’re reminded of the changing environment and how this shapes expressions and uses of our bodies. Years pass with seasons, and so we have the passing of time. This film, these emotions, and these relationships (sometimes exceeding 20 years), are a passing of much time. We know from the dancers (speaking and not speaking) that this is all about Pina. And we learn that Pina is all about everyone, because she knows that in human gestures lie strange maps of emotion, honesty, and desire.

Pina asks her dancers to give honesty. They dance (for) her, for us, but also for themselves, in celebration of a lost friend. Yet any expression of loss is complicated by the fact that Pina is still very much alive in this film, and in the bodies of the people she touched.

(photo by William Yang)

deproduction

another month, another day, another week of feeling as though i haven't done enough. the demand to be productive eats into me, and then i rebel by (this week) watching Mad Men into the early hours of most mornings, and then i wake up tired, underslept, and more grumpy about my lack of discipline. my rebellion annoys me, despite such pleasures (i just finished series 4 this morning. so amazingly good).

so anyway, this is an ongoing cycle of 'self-work' that i do, trying to be productive, coming to resent this, eventually abandoning it and giving in to pleasures, and later feeling like a failed citizen. then i pledge to start over again the next day/week/month. it's boring, i know. it's a central contradiction in my current life, this not wanting to embrace neo-liberalism and its slogans of progress, freedom, individuality, etc. yet at the same time getting entrenched in my own lack of progress, my desire for accomplishment that is measurable (in words, chapters, or a tidy database), and not being able to measure the value of my weeks/days/months beyond certain structures of productivity or achievement. and so i continue beating myself over the head and promising a better future, a 'next week' in which i excel, get things done, move forward, etc. and on it goes, repeat until death.

yet, my rebellion does nourish me, and perhaps i need to take note of this. perhaps i can reflect on two hours ago when i sat in the park, in the sunshine, and wrote a postcard to JB. i laid on the grass, re-read his postcard, and wrote with green ink. the ink, the sun, the grass, his words, and my thoughts of him all conspire to make this a beautiful moment. as i'm about to leave the park J calls. i return to sitting in that patch of grass where he tells me of his travels and the books he's read, one of which he will post to me. i ask him what it's like having no fixed address. he sounds happy and this makes me happy.

postcards and phone conversations with faraway lovely people, in the park, in the sun. this is a good day. i should be glad that i'm lazy and 'unproductive'. i should see more merit in this sharing of words and time with those i most care about. why should it be that those relationships are to be fostered in 'down time', when one is not working and producing and participating in a more pervasive and dominant economy? what about economies of friendship, love, and caring? why must they be sidelined, and why do i so often accept this as necessary?

like many, i cast my values outside 'dominant cultures' (for want of a better phrase), yet i guess i don't live up to my ideals as much as i think i might. because i fall back onto a need to control, build, and progress my abilities in ways that make me socially and economically legitimate.

but arguably there is legitimacy in sitting on the grass with postcards and phone calls. when i left the park i felt quite accomplished. i felt grounded, content, and as though i have a right to be here, in a world that i am connected to, through these enduring webs of friendship.

i might do some work this afternoon. or i might pick up that marguerite duras book that i've taken from the shelf. and i'll try not to care that i'll have no visible output from such reading.

cultural tourism

i'm holidaying for the weekend, by the beach, with a family of friends. this is when i hear about the thing in norway.

i'm at a coastal town market on sunday when i overhear a conversation by a stallholder and a friend/customer about their views on immigrants. his tables are lined with old glassware and ornaments, some of them quite nice. he talks about his family, or family friends, who came over here not having any english, "but they learnt". she says "because they were proud". she tells similar stories. back and forth they validate each others phobia of the newly arrived. he says something about "our flag", and "not the Iraqi flag". she says the good ones (her european friends/ancestors, presumably) don't forget where they came from, but at least they become Australian. at one point, with much gusto, she says "it just makes me sick". at this point i walk away, out of earshot.

whilst lingering and listening, the glassware around me transformed into potential destruction that i might cause to interrupt this conversation. "here's what i think of your immigration politics...". but no, of course i don't. i wouldn't. but in an alternative life (the one i might write, but not live), i pick up a magnificent ornament and thrust it to the ground. i do it again, and then again. i thrust glass upon glass to double the shattering. i smash more loudly, more viciously. i put my whole body into this. i kick, i shove, i throw, i grunt. my anger builds and rolls out of me, beautifully focused on my unfurling destruction. when i stop, so does all sound. no more shattering, and no more talking. there are no more statements from those two people. there's just a mess of pretty ruin. they probably don't know what to say now. and nor do i. but my hatred is gone. and i walk away and feel the warmth of sunshine.

some people might say...

life away from facebook is nice. my only concern is that some people might take my disappearance as a personal rejection, as is likely to happen in a space where your friendship becomes reduced to a digital link. if you take away that point of mediation does the friendship fall down? i suspect it often does. but that's okay, because i don't need 180 friends.

the friendships i need will continue via interactions that aren't so faceless. i suspect these will be friendships that never became too digitalised anyway.

deleting my avatar brings many good things. here's a list:

1. i have less opportunity to read reams of mundane 'self statements'.

2. i don't spend time asking why such statements needed to be broadcast.

3. i don't have to mediate a response (or non-response) to everything i see/read.

4. i don't have so much white noise to contend with.

5. i don't often say "i know" when people tell me something about themselves.

6. i have one less reason to get angry about people.

7. i have one less space in which to judge people.

8. i have significant less opportunity to procrastinate, and more time for other things that make me feel more accomplished in my days.

9. i feel less lonely.

10. i have more room to think about my privacy and why this is important.

another good thing is that i write more. most of this is not available to friends and acquaintances, which is great, because they don't need to read it. and i shouldn't need to have it validated (liked) by them. it's a private space in which i process events, feelings, things, and it only serves me, which is how i need it to be. there's a different tone in my words when i'm not fitting them to particular audiences. there's less room for me to perform what i think i need to. but there's also more confidence that something will come of this, someday.

deactivating another self

i just deleted facebook. it's been on the cards for a while, and today is a fitting time to pull the plug. many people have heard about the hatred i feel for that site. but i guess i was reluctant to quit because it afforded me much time to play, and some sense of support. but right now i don't want to play. i need to disconnect from any space in which i feel compelled to perform a certain kind of self that needs approval and response. because today i'm different. today i don't care. today i can offer no consistency, no comment, and no desire to be 'liked'. i'm frightened by the idea of witty banter. give me depth. give me privacy.

give me a bed, a room, a hug, a cup of tea, and gentle words.

right now i'm experiencing a loss; something akin to grief. in such times i can't tolerate much of anything that isn't listed above. after a few days absence i checked facebook this morning only to be angered by overt (but unsurprising) performances of 'being wonderful'. i deactivate. problem solved.

i still have a fog of sadness, but that's kind of nice. i guess i don't want to have to feel like it should be any other way.

violette time

this morning feels quiet, but really it's not. there's cars and planes and wind through the leaves of plants. there's noises of people on the street below. i wonder how violette leduc would capture this moment.

she would give the leaves and planes some motivation for moving the way they do. they're competing. they're restless. or perhaps they're dying; falling from the sky. she would place her own withering onto them. or she may locate her joy in them. or in the sound of the dog barking, or the stacking of crockery next door. there's a rhythmic pulse that she disentangles from her surroundings. she bleeds into this chair, this paving, these plants. each time she touches earth she is digging inside herself, looking for a lost feeling. she is beyond self. at this moment i understand.

for a few seconds i felt alone, despite the sounds and plants and the sun that strokes me. then the cat arrives. she sits on the table directly in front of me. she says "i am not alone". she surveys the moving plants and her ears move sideways and forwards to capture the many sounds. she falls into the sunshine. she folds into me.

fucking monogamy

last night, when we should have been having sex, we talked about monogamy. the best way to not have sex is to talk about sex. yet we need to talk because he's a monogamist. and we've been spending a lot of nights in each others' beds.

there's much that i like about him. in our musical and intellectual tastes we are alike. politically we are aligned. and so there's a lot of groundwork that doesn't have to be done here, as we consistently find each other on the same page. but then there's this.

i feel reluctant to write about him as i'm aware that some readers might know him (or might come to know him). i've made an effort not to talk about him here. but this blog is my therapeutic space and i feel the need to process/write this. and i feel that this issue reflects many conversations i've shared with many friends. so here i will continue that thread.

he believes that monogamy is radical on the basis that in queer culture it's not the norm. he doesn't like cruising culture that prioritises sexual gratification at the expense of broader and less personal goals. nor do i (despite partaking from time to time). but i don't think that non-monogamy is all about sex, or cruising, or sexual gratification at the expense of all else. for me it has been a useful method to explore bodies, intimacies, desire, and self. it's about being open, experimental, and yes, it's about being sexual. it's about reducing limits placed on the body and thereby falling into situations where you otherwise might not. situations where you learn valuable lessons about the culture you inhabit. (for me, anyway)

he seems to think that non-monogamy privileges sex as immensely important. i disagree. i prefer to think of sex as potentially mundane, something that we just do from time to time, like eating, bathing, drinking coffee, or masturbating. sometimes we want it and sometimes we don't. sometimes we do it because we want pleasure. there are different ways to do it, and different people with whom to do it with. alone, in the presence of another, in groups, online... anyway, surely to cordon this pleasure practice from all others, and to relegate it to the space of the couple 'at the exclusion of all others' is to suggest that sex is immensely important (and immensely private). surely the best way to de-privilege sex would be to avoid monogamy. it might also be the best way to de-stress the couple relationship (so that two people are not made exclusively responsible for each others' sexual happiness). i'd argue that a culture of monogamy (or attempted monogamy, as is often the case) is itself an example of the prioritisation of sex as a pleasure practice above all others.

i don't think this is comprehensible to him. he is staunch in his beliefs, much like me. he argues that non-monogamy is an individualist pursuit to control your own pleasures whereby sex is only ever about you and your body. but this argument does not stick. monogamy is also all about you in its subjective aligning of self with another. it is about constructing a new cellular identity in which you move between self (me) and the couple (us). that movement is ongoing because the self is never fully swallowed by the couple, yet i would argue that there's less room for other intimacies when involved in that particular dance. of course many intimacies belong to friendships, but monogamy can put a strain on these too, particularly when monogamy funnels itself into co-dependence.

and i guess that's a deeper (and personal) concern that i have - that i might find myself in that space once again.

as someone interested in collective politics, and the political possibilities of bodies and intimacy, i don't like the suggestion (or accusation) that my belief in non-monogamy is due to me being a self-focused individualist. rather, i believe that shared intimacies, made more possible by non-monogamy (whether sexual or otherwise) are powerfully disruptive to particular systems/regimes that feed into global misery. if you believe that traditional formulas of coupling, families, and property ownership are destructive (which i do), then avoiding (and dismantling) traditional regimes of love, patriarchy, and propriety seems key. and what better way to start than by saying yes to non-monogamy.

perhaps i'm less focused on pleasure than intimacy, and as we spoke about it more this morning, i found myself spiking a vein of my phd argument. my final chapter has the working title of 'pleasure', but in a sense, my goal is to rescue pleasure from sex. in sexual health discourse pleasure is constituted as risk because it's seen as an always potential corruption of health; a powerful force that one falls prey to. here, pleasure leads us blindly into unhealthy actions (eg. sex without a condom). but i'm arguing that pleasure stretches well beyond sex acts, into spaces of friendship. when we have sex and talk about it with friends, comparing notes etc, this too is a practice of pleasure. then there's the pleasure in health practices as well; that is, one's ongoing pursuit to control one's body. there's also pleasure in relinquishing control. i suggest there (and here) that pleasure is not purely sexual, nor is it always about momentary gratification (ie. do it now, think about it later). it's about setting boundaries as much as its about crossing them. it's about the ongoing negotiation of sharing time, intimacy, experiences and stories. it's amorphous. and to think that it lies at the core of the sex act (beyond all other action) is to support the idea that sex is the most important thing we have.

sex is mundane. my thesis is boring. but i guess i do think it's a conversation that needs to be had. but it's a difficult line to walk, because i'm not saying i think there's a freedom in talking about sex (the sexual confession does little but reinforce that sex is core to human existence). but i guess i'm saying that it would be nice to conceptualise sex differently (as mundane), and perhaps one of the nice side effects of this would be to make negotiations of 'sexual health' (or healthy and ethical sex) a little bit easier. perhaps.

and while things remain unresolved between 'us', i guess i can thank him for pushing me back into the headspace of my thesis. and also for the swift realisation that my thesis arguments are entwined with my bodily practices. once again, my sexual politics exceed 'me', and i find myself in an unexpected situation.

homo-identity-phobia

is it wrong to not care about the little furore over the removal of gay posters in brisbane bus shelters? because i really couldn't give a fuck.

i guess what makes me care less (and also feel quite agitated), is that people are getting angry, emotional, and somewhat 'activist' over this. but it's a kind of activism that means you have to 'like' and 'post' rampantly on facebook. it's a sad activism. she who posts loudest is the one who feels the most, right?

and i'm annoyed that it's quite militant. and i'm (just a little bit) aware that my response might also be militant. fighting anger with anger.

like in many segments of the social world there really is no discussion here. you're either a redneck or a progressive. you have no choice not to be outraged or supportive of such devastating oppression. oh please!

as a man who fucks men i guess such ads are aimed at me. but i don't identify with these images; if anything i quite despise them. i don't need to see posters of two people in love while i'm waiting for the bus. i don't need to be reminded that 'my people' are a species that prioritises fucking. and i don't enjoy the gay poster boy aesthetics used by acon/qahc/vac. there's a certain brand of fag here, and it's not appealing to me at all. so sure, take the posters away, i don't mind. and maybe ask some questions about what's being marketed here. what does it mean to sell gay sexuality back to the gays?

what does it mean to sell (predominantly) white, clean, middleclass sexuality to the queers on the street? i'm not suggesting that i'm not these things; i am suggesting that these are not the standards that i wish to salute, protect, or even 'tolerate'. gay health advertising is not my favourite thing, so the more that posters are defaced and challenged (and rendered unsatisfactory), the better. but who has a moment to contemplate this amongst the shouts of homophobia?

an instantaneous politics of 'shut it down now' cannot have time to reflect on what's being sold by a dominant discourse of 'rights' and 'protection'. do we have the right to disagree? do i have a right not to care? must i always be a traitor? in a loud politics of victim vs. oppressor, where our sexual preferences (as in what we 'like') define our being, then maybe i can't be constructed any other way.

notes from underground

"I stood in the falling snow, gazing into the hazy darkness, and thought about it."

once again i try to work from home but fail. i do a couple of small jobs, clear a few emails, eat a couple of breakfasts, and then i see that he's online. brazos delgados. i say hello.

more than two hours later i'm saying that i should go. i'll return to my breakfast and my feeble attempts to work. he will return to his x-box race.

for the first time we heard each others voices and we marveled at the strangeness. of course we sound different. he has a drawl, rounded vowels, and a higher pitch than i imagined. he sounds warm. at times he's sarcastic. he's still everything i want.

it rains all day, and all my plans to leave the house don't eventuate. the cat is restless and so am i.

tonight i finish dostoyevsky's notes from underground, and wedged into my thoughts is this sentence: "Without power and tyranny over somebody I can't live".

brazos delgados

scenes from a weekend.

friday night: i'm at a pub for D's birthday. i went alone. at one point D (somewhat drunk) says 'come and meet my sister' while attempting to take my hand. my fingers stiffen and do not accept his hand. during the evening his friends suss me out and ask me to define my relationship with D. i can't tell them that we fucked a few times and then he went cold on me, yet he sometimes flirts with me and makes me want to kiss him.

saturday morning: i'm sitting outside, amongst plants, speaking to J on the phone. the cat sits on me and i tell J that this is unusual. he says she often sat on him. i suggest that she feels his presence and is attempting to get close. i stroke her fur while we talk about ways that our paths might cross.

saturday afternoon: upstairs at the café he waves his arms around. two skinny men who speak a similar language. we talk academia, teaching, our politics and struggles. it's a nice moment in my day. we are knitting a bond with our words and gestures. we part on glebe point road, my hands in pockets.

saturday early evening: we meet at zanzibar, but i'm not sure why he suggested here. C is visiting from melbourne. i want to hug and kiss hello, but there's too many straight men watching too much football on the tv. we move to another table and here we embrace. we talk about men. in discussing my pseudo boyfriend i ask for advice.

saturday night: my pseudo bf meets us at the pub and he's awkward. we're awkward. we leave C and make our way to his friend's party. we eat pies, we buy wine in erskinville, we piss through the wire fence by the train line. the party is small and i'm surprised to know someone - a young man whom i spent most of the night with, chatting about pop music. on the way home, pseudo bf says he was a bit jealous. i'm drunk and so is he. it's cold but i don't feel it. we hold hands but i don't feel it. he says he's not sure how much i like him. i can't remember my response. perhaps i just closed my eyes and dreamed of reno, nevada.

friday night, saturday, and sunday: i chat to a young man from reno (via mexico). we talk about his skinny arms. he wants to fix them at the gym, but i like his arms. i also like his humour, which is like mine. we give ourselves to one another in written words. we pour each other into gaps that we carve into our lives. he tells me about the empty space in his bed where i'm welcome to sleep. words flow, and i want him more and more. he's too young, too far away, and too beautiful, but i can't stop wanting him.

in today's spanish lesson he teaches me 'pon tus brazos delgados alrededor de mí'.

lost words

i've been quiet. i'm trying to break the flow of a self-focused contemplation that is at the core of this blog. i'm seeking to move away from self. i can't divorce my self from my words, but i can try to project my contemplations further than me. solipsism is rampant. i wonder if an alternative approach is possible.

or maybe i'm just bored with my self to the point that i seek drama elsewhere.

i'm not going to write about my day, my men, or the conversations that i make, because these don't matter today.

i've developed an addiction for reading and watching news footage from the "The Arab Spring", and in particular, the conflict in Syria.

facebook is different now. Each morning I find dozens of videos taken from handheld cameras in unknown Syrian cities; of protests, or buses passing below someone's window, or close-up footage of men bleeding and dying. these videos are not yet edited or spliced into 'news footage'. they're in arabic so i can't understand the context or the voices speaking. but i can understand screams, songs, chanting. i can hear tones of anger or hope.

this morning there was a man with blood on his chest and face, and other men screaming, holding him, praying for him. another person films him, with a shaky camera hovering above, flinching and stumbling around the scene of blood and screams, inserting another body (my body) into that space. soon, the camera is spinning around the scene, capturing every direction and all shapes and colours, and i grow dizzy. i'm unable to comprehend what i see. but i hear the cries, and i sense that my incomprehension is shared among those at the scene. i don't know what's happening, and nor do they. how can this be comprehensible?

i fall into this footage and i'm dizzy from the action that whirls around me. some decades ago, i could not be part of this dazed experience of war and loss. this reminds me that yes, this is painful and immense, and yes, this is happening. and perhaps the clean edit of a news story, or a feature film depiction, is part of the problem in how we come to narrativise war and loss, because these are constructions that do not resemble the moments found here. why should we make sense of these things? why feel like we can understand what's happening? what happens if we agree that we cannot?

unknown places

J came around this morning. i was in bed reading that author whose other book he borrowed from me. the one he returned all scratched up and worn. he felt bad about that but i said he shouldn't. i love that it has his fingerprints all over it.

i'm sad that he's leaving town. i should be happy and excited for him, but i can't be. so it's a slightly sombre coffee and chat today, because i can't not think that this is the last time we do this. somehow i find myself telling stories about my wild aunt. his eyes shine. perhaps he is my wild aunt: elusive, driven by unknown forces, running away to unknown places.

as a child, aunt christine was my favourite. until my parents told me she was crazy. though they probably used the word 'troubled'. in telling the story today, i realise that i want to know her once more. i feel sad for her troubles, which weren't troubles so much as differences, which her family tried to extinguish.

christine was never good with men. she often ran away with the wrong man and returned with bruises. or maybe pregnant.

i don't know J's man, and have only heard the difficult stuff that has tainted my view of him. i want his wrongness to be a reason for J not to run away with him. but maybe i'm just pretending that these 'don't go' feelings come a place (of rational judgment) other than my own emotional need. because when we talk, sitting in my lounge room (or in the park, or at that café, or standing on the street below my window), it feels really good. and really good is sometimes really hard to find.

not sure if you'll read this J, but thank you for all your lovely words and hugs. i'll see you in paris. x

thirty six

so this is thirty six. but my birthday is postponed because today (which will start after i sleep) is too full for such matters.

today is me finishing this chapter and preparing that lecture. thursday will taste sweeter.

i hope at thirty seven that i won't be writing such chapters. i hope at thirty seven that this thing will be done, made, finished, gone. i will file it away under 'over and out'.

but of course, not all of my wishes are granted. my boyfriend for a day project is not going ahead. perhaps it was built to fail. maybe i need to wish for something i really do want, because i don't want a boyfriend. all my fictional and future BFs just aren't cutting it. parisian lover hasn't replied to my email, bike boy is in the waiting bay ("let's leave it til may") and boyfriend for my birthday never bought a train ticket.

i've no time for boyfriends or boyfriend projects, but perhaps i can resume other projects on thursday. yes, on thursday i can sit with paper and scissors, and resume my cutting of naked men.

here's a preview, courtesy of mila's igadget:



i want a boyfriend about as much as i want to write another thesis. actually, no, anything would be less troublesome than thesis. thesis steals my sleep.

happy holidays

it was difficult to wake up. and it took a few attempts to leave the house and get to the pool. but eventually i got there. and the swim was great. and the raspberry and sour cream brioche was amazing. and the coffee hit the spot. good morning? yes it was.

then back at home i realised that i've lost my glasses. the new and rather expensive ones. i spent the following hours calling and searching. they're not at that person's home; they're not in that share-car; they haven't been found on a bus... fuck knows where they are.

then my computer at uni doesn't boot. then it does but it's really slow and i make the mistake of rebooting it. the IT person doesn't show up. then the coffee shop person didn't understand my order. i repeated it, she nodded, but i'm pretty sure black coffee shouldn't be cloudy. i drank it, even though each sip felt like a punch.

my feet are dragging and my eyes are foggy. i've given up trying to improve this day. i'll just write my thesis now.

all i want for my birthday is a boyfriend

2011 is my year of over-commitment. it's also my year of the art project. i just committed to another that will happen in less than 2 weeks. so once i write a lecture, mark a bunch of essays, and re-write that thesis chapter (fuck!), i will have a birthday project to attend.

my project involves recruiting a boyfriend for 24 hours, that is, for my birthday. my project begins with pretending that all i want for my birthday is a boyfriend, and surprise! there he is. his name is daniel. he'll arrive on a train from interstate. we've not seen each other before, only in photos. we're friends on facebook though :p

we'll have to do all those things you do when you're boyfriends. dinner, romance, etc. and then we'll break up the next day. hopefully it'll be a respectful parting, and we'll have just 'drifted' or something like that. i hope we can still be friends. i hope there's no tears this time round.

part of this is about moving away from last year's birthday, when N didn't take me to dinner (i was left alone and i cried). last year was pathetic, but this year will be fun. my boyfriend will take good care of me. he'll sleep in my bed, spend time in my home, and just 'be there' for me.

"let's all melt down together"

the sun is shining. this morning it caressed my back as i marked essays at the dining room table. now it strokes the right side of my face, as i sit at my desk. it casts a reflection of me in the monitor. i'm wearing glasses. i continue to startle myself, but at least i've started forgetting that they're there (when they're there, because often they're not). i don't want to become too dependent on seeing things clearly.

S told me a nice story last week about how he likes to have morning blurriness before he puts his contact lenses in. i imagine his partial blindness as a comfortable nest, a waking up, a ritual of not-yet-ready-to-see-the-day.

always nice to re-frame what might otherwise be thought of as our body's failings.

today, in the sun once more, i sip coffee and talk about other body failings, about a friend's negotiation of illness, medication, and feeling well. he chose not to take the medication because of its side effects - a choice with consequences, but one that feels right. a choice i've not yet had to make. my body feels trivial and small next to his.

elsewhere today: i read about death (a friend who lost a friend). i hear about a HIV zine that used to appear next to dancefloors in the 90s, with rants about being sick and skinny and dying. i talk to someone about her menstrual body aches. and all these stories remind me that we're all falling apart. this is incredibly comforting. because it's not pleasant to feel like you're the only one falling apart. so together we can laugh as our organs give way and our limbs fall off. together we can extend our bodies or not (with pills, glasses, or other apparatus). together we can dance to this:

the ethics of the adventure

yesterday i found myself purchasing simone de beauvoir's the ethics of ambiguity. i had no intention of buying it. i didn't even know it existed. but i felt compelled.

i read the first chapter in victoria park, away from the conference i'd been to that morning. i felt more attached to words on a page, and the grass under my body, than the words and faces of speakers at the conference. i needed something more grounded, more alone, more me.

after reading the first chapter i scrawled an existentialist rant in my notepad. it goes something like this:

"By uprooting himself from the world, man makes himself present to the world and makes the world present to him" (p12).

[This] suggests an ambiguity of distance/closeness. An 'in' that relies on an 'out'. A denial of self to get to a self. A circular motion of self-recognition [that always eclipses itself]. Like writing. I recognise myself in the words I write, and less so in the urge to write, or the tension that brings me to the page. But to enter the page I forget myself. I extract myself from myself (I write) and through extraction I come to see myself as me (a subject unified).

The parenthesis (Beauvoir references Husserl)
I parenthesise myself. I pretend a voice that echoes from within. Or, from the hand. It writes as though unmediated, as though natural. A spilling of self in ink. As artist, I express, through line and symbol, the story of who I am. As though I am a thing with borders, definition, morals, and purpose. I crystalise a self, for purposes of continuation, to know my worth, to know that I can exist (which is to create)... I have perfected this narrative of self to the point that it is accepted and believable. I carve myself in words, and the expectation (of everyone) is that I do so - [in this] there is social acknowledgment of 'me'. And this me-ness is my only true pursuit. I write to know me. But because I cannot fully know me, I'm returning to the page, again and again...

"the original scheme of man is ambiguous: he wants to be, and to the extent that he coincides with this wish, he fails" (p23)

this morning, in bed, i read chapter two. i learn about 5 kinds of 'men' - the sub-man, the serious man, the nihilist, the adventurer, and the passionate man. i see myself as the adventurer. The adventurer "has to declare himself" (60). "He throws himself into his undertakings with zest, into exploration, conquest, war, speculation, love, politics, but he does not attach himself to the end at which he aims; only to his conquest" (58).

and yes, i'm feeling uninspired to finish 'that project', but i have enjoyed the process/conquest/journey. but there are other journeys (which do excite me) to be had. and my urge to jump ship is easy, because i care little for the destination.

"Whether he succeeds or fails, he goes right ahead throwing himself into a new enterprise to which he will give himself with the same indifferent ardor" (59).

however, "Favourable circumstances are enough to transform the adventurer into a dictator" (62). oh dear. but perhaps more distressing is my hatred of and detachment from others (which i prefer to call independence).

"His fault is believing that one can do something for oneself without others and even against them" (63).

so i guess the life of an adventurer is not all (ethical) fun and games. and there's quite a sting in that last statement which reverberated after i read it. perhaps today's mantra can be found at the close of this chapter:

"I concern others and they concern me" (72).

planning, fucking, doing

yesterday i packed up my library desk. i brought a large bag of paper home to sort through, and hopefully discard. too much paper. too much weight. one weekend task is to reduce my load, and to clear some space for thinking my next move. i have not yet quit the project that generated all this paper. three years, and on it goes.

meanwhile, i'm thinking about other projects. like the one with jessie where we spent a day in the shopping centre (a contested space). i read over my notes on yesterday's bus and i think there's some nice moments there. we don't have long to assemble something though.

then there's my next zine, in the flesh. written last year, i need to publish it, once again to reduce my load and to create space for new projects. it's quite revealing, but the more i read of sophie calle's work the less i care about my privacy. this morning i read about early works, such as le divorce - a photo of her holding her ex-husband's penis while he pisses (an excuse to touch his penis one last time). and now i'm simmering with ideas for my projet d'amour. jb and i don't communicate as much these days - we always apologise for the gaps between emails, and explain how things are busy. but it's probably time to incite some more dialogue, which i can do by offering him another dedication d'amour.

last night X and i drank wine, ate cheese, and practiced speaking french. we listened to records and talked and during madonna's burning up we made out on the couch. then we moved away from madonna, into the bedroom, where we fucked. it was unexpected, which made it all the more lovely. but it may have complicated things for him. for the second time in 7 days there's awkward moments after sex with a friend i should perhaps not have slept with. but the complications are not mine. i only feel pleasured, and lovely.

for some months i gave much time to thinking about touching and kissing and fucking. i was tense with simultaneously wanting and not wanting. today, and over these last few weeks, i feel expressive. currents of pleasure move through me, and i feel that there's some sort of aura that brings more men into my embrace.

yesterday i found myself advising someone to think of the big picture and plan for the future. perhaps i too could follow this advice. because my difficult (heavy) project is still unresolved. i need to sort that out. yet in other ways i do think beyond tomorrow. such as my ways with the biker, whose birthday it is (he was impressed that i remembered). i want him, but i don't need him. and i only want him when he's ready to want me, which could be a while. so i practice the art of patience and it's easier than i thought it could be. in the meantime, there's much to do.

teaching

today is grumpy. i constantly yelled at students (as best i could) for talking during the tutorial. i was angry for the students who wanted to listen, who made eye contact, who wanted to discuss things. the noisy ones mostly contribute to the class when they want answers on how to write their essays. when i offer tips, they're usually not listening. so they'll do poorly. and that might satisfy me. except i'll have to wade through their shit essays.

in an ideal world this would be a reality tv tutorial and i'll evict the dodgy half so that the rest of us can have a decent discussion and make some movement in our understanding of things. but we have to contend with the babble of those who don't care. and so movement is slow, if it happens at all.

i'm going for a swim now. it's been a while. 2 weeks in fact. and maybe this is why i'm so vague and grumpy and cantankerous today (and other days). grr...

cool rider

he packed a spare helmet on the motorbike. we rode from bondi junction to bondi and back again, my legs pressing heavily into his. i held onto his waist. my fingers felt the softness of stomach. he noted that i was more relaxed on the trip back - my body was less tense and i moved with the bike, with him. i attributed this to alcohol. but it was more than that. "clearly i like you very much". we kissed. i went home, on a train, electric.

sydney

it's nice to be home, though i'm tired and sluggish. this is typical of days involving flights, shit food, too much coffee, and not enough sleep. i should have a bath. i should read. i must map out my week.

i almost deleted the last post because today, like all days, i feel different to yesterday. and this is good reason not to delete. i need to remind myself that i'm inconsistent.

emotions sprawled themselves over my last few days. was probably quite necessary. being away from home is usually when this happens. not that home is without emotion, but home is where i'm more grounded - there's my bed, my books, my things and me. enough familiar material to grasp onto and lever myself from moment to moment.

adelaide

i guess i'm really disappointed. i always knew that you didn't trust people, but now i realise that this extends to me too. and i can't handle that.

i defend your manner to others. i say that you're really a sweet person, you're just a bit abrasive, that's all. and i think of moments when you reveal yourself to me, as lovely, gentle and somewhat fragile, and i take this as evidence that you're one of my people. but are you?

these last few days you've suggested (and shown) that you consider people based on how useful they are to you. you take what you can get, then you walk away. i've seen this in how you interact with your previous friends. when things get too familiar, when you're drawn into that space of sharing yourself with someone, you leave. you find something new.

i guess i shouldn't feel at liberty to criticise you in such ways, as you've pointed out. but isn't that what brothers do? these are things i would like to hear about myself too, even if they are hard to swallow. but they come from a space of love.

you're young, you're scared, you're more fragile than you care to admit. and for such reasons i excuse your cruelty. i've never been a parent before. i would've prefered to be your brother, but it seems you don't want that either. which leaves me at a loss, because i'm not sure we can be friends. in friendship i need more.

i assume you won't read this. if you do, you should know that i write this because i'm trying to process my anger. you should know that my anger is not directed at you but at that difficult space between us.

happy mardi gras?

saturday is my slow day. sleeping in, reading, several breakfasts, spinning records, J dropping in for a chat, cat on my lap, me sinking into the bed, the bath, the couch. i like saturdays.

i finished reading Patti Smith's just kids. i spilled some tears into the bath.

despite loving it, it left me a bit angry. because it's another story of another dead homo. such a familiar story. it's another HIV/AIDS tragi-drama, this time beginning and ending with Robert Mapplethorpe's death. it's another death that arrives too early. it's another incomprehensible loss (for author and reader).

the book is more that this too. the book is powerful in reminding me of the need to rebel, to push on, to make art, and to make life happen. throughout the book there's an almighty sense of anger. and beauty (writing and art) spills from this anger. and that's somewhat validating for my own anger. and so the early death is fitting in this context, as it generates more fuel for creating life/art.

only beautiful writing can move me to tears. and the dead homo narrative is a powerful generator of tears because it reflects a pain familiar to me. not because i've lost someone to HIV/AIDS - i've never been to one those funerals - but because i've experienced much art and literature that arises from it. i often find myself reading the work of dead homos and getting upset at my loss. the sense of injustice is not only theirs, but mine/ours, because we have to learn to live without more of their work.

i'm angry that i'll never get to read a 4th volume of Foucault's history of sexuality. i'm angry that Patti Smith had to watch her friend die. i'm angry about Keith Haring. i wept all the way through Timothy Conigrave's holding the man. i've shed many tears for AIDS-related death, and i'll keep shedding. and no doubt i'll keep wanting to punch holes in walls, in the hope to bust through to a place where there's no more loss. but people still die, so it goes on.

and perhaps every homo reader, or coffin-bearer, thinks 'that could've been me'.

yet the story of the dead homo, killed before his time, and because of his circumstances, stretches long before HIV/AIDS. i read those books too, and i cry some more. i punch another wall. perhaps because i start to think that it's the homo's lot to suffer. he must fall, in death or in misery. cast out or down, in a casket or on his knees, he embodies the eternally sad pervert.

and maybe that's why so many of them want to get married - to break the curse of the tragi-fag narrative. but possibly only creating another sad narrative of the tragic hetero-fag, as helen razer so beautifully points out.

tonight is the mardi gras parade. i guess if i had my way the crowd would be marching from a place of anger, frustration, and a need to tear down institutions (like marriage). and i can't help hearing many whispers from many graves, and the echoes of much art and activism, all saying "that's not what we fought for".

interlude

this morning J and i gave a paper to the arts organisation we've been working with. i was unprepared and planned what i'd say on the train trip over. i surprised myself by having a lot to say and saying it with ease.

this afternoon i taught 28 first year undergrads. week one. we talked about discourse. but mostly we talked about our favourite films, tv, books etc, and i encouraged them to argue with each other. they're pretty feisty, so it worked. now we have a semester's worth of material and in-jokes to draw upon.

now i'm lying in bed. resting, napping, recharging.

later i'll have a drink with that guy from bondi. when he mentioned that he rides a motorbike i felt something stir inside me. i forgot myself and became michelle pfeiffer's character in grease 2.

next week we'll be tearing down the highway, 100 mph, leaving this goddamn city that strips your bones from your back. we gotta get out while we're young...

aftermath

and then my bravado leaves the room.
and then i'm left thinking
maybe they're right.

inter-generational schooling

i said thank you. i nodded. i stood and left the meeting room.

my new 20 year old friend sends text messages asking me where to find particular buildings on campus. i either send him to the wrong place or i don't know. today i didn't know. today he suggests we have coffee so i can debrief about my meeting. how could i refuse this? it felt so perverse that it felt right. we met by the library and moved off campus, further away from the crowds and the meeting that just took place. and there i am in a café talking about it all to someone i'd not yet met; someone who could easily be a student in my tutorials. or maybe i'm perverse for making this seem perverse, because maybe it's fine to communicate with another adult person who just happens to be young. because he's quite lovely and interesting, despite my pre-judgements of 'those young people'. but there i am, sipping coffee with a man who's undecided about what to do for his 21st which is coming up. i'm supposed to be in a better place than him (with all my experience, wisdom, and learning), but something tells me i'm probably not.

we'll meet up again next week.

taking responsibility

and i actually have a smile on my face. because i see what's happened as ridiculous. it's official: my research progress is unsatisfactory.

S3 is the first of my supervisors to speak and she says she hasn't seen me take responsibility for... i'm not sure what, because i was too amused by her use of the R word. she's putting her hand in the box of keywords and wielding the words that infantilise me. this matches my research arguments about what happens when researchers and health promoters talk about young people needing to be 'more responsible'. the utterance is an action and that action is an infantilisation whose only response is akin to 'fuck off. what would you know anyway.' i argue that it's an unfair action, because it disregards what's there, the practices in place, the efforts and concerns already operating in/around the subject deemed irresponsible. it's a swipe that re-installs a hierarchy. and it's stupid. but good on her, because it worked. the panel took hold of such keywords and in the end, echoed everything my disgruntled supervisors had to say. quel surprise!

tomorrow is payday. drinks are on them!

narcissus

the project continues.

today i wrote this, then i sent it to my fictional lover.

The tragedy reaches a higher level when Narcissus, at the moment when his tears disturb the pool, realizes not only that the loved image is his own, but furthermore that it can disappear.
(Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, 104)

At that small half-oval kitchen table in Paris, my tears were part of a realisation that this image was about to disappear. In realising that the object of my love was an image that I had created, I knew that it would soon be destroyed. I would soon be dragged away from that site of reflection. That is, the place by the river where I intersect with Paris and with JB. That is, a place of love.

Ripples, like words of an email where he says we cannot meet again. My image shatters. In the days leading to this moment I’d been increasingly drawn to the water’s edge, to the image, to the love I was fostering. Unlike Narcissus I knew that the image was my own creation and therefore believed I could not fall. Armoured with knowledge, I thought myself invincible. I continued to look at the image, to revisit that place, to conjure feelings that I knew were fictions. Yet no armour shielded my eyes which continued to drink from the water.

And then this day, at that table, the water ripples and the image is lost and the loss surges within me to bring forth tears. My tears offer another layer of disruption because they conceal not only the image, but the absence of the image. But still, this double erasure leaves me mourning a loss that is greater than an image, for it is a loss of self.

These tears might also be armour, for they blurred my vision and created bodily convulsions that distracted me from the focal point of my loss. In this moment my attention shifted from an external love object to an internal chasm. While I could not see the absence I could certainly feel it. My loss was not physical, because the absence of his body and mine had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was the loss of a reflection (of my self) that I had come to love. At this moment I stopped, I faltered, I cried. I did not see my tears, nor did I feel their hot and cold on my skin, because at this moment I had no external presence or surface. With closed eyes, sobs erupt from within. Convulsions, sounds, tears, but none of this happens through physical consciousness.

The intensity of the loss was superseded by the intensity of these bodily eruptions. I was aware of the chair beneath me, the music around me, and the light from the window, but I had no awareness of my external presence in that room. A mess of emotion and bodily tissue, I was uncontained and spilling outward. Most present were the internal passages through which my sorrow pulsed, raged, and erupted in tears and gasps for air. When suffocating, there is only internal struggle. I forget his lips and his hands. My need for air (that is, for life) rises and seizes me. I mourn a loss at the same time that I clutch at life. I am feeling something that engraves itself into my soul and will be written there forever. This is not a ‘something’ that I can easily give words to, because it’s nothing that is familiar to me. And it is not locatable, because it puts itself everywhere, in and around me. It’s a feeling. It’s a moment and a spasm that I will never again feel in its entirety. It was here, but now it’s over there.

From here to there is a journey I cannot trace for I’m too busy living, breathing, and writing myself into the next chapter. I lift myself from the chair, I dry myself off, and I walk into another room. I am met with a silence that is beautiful; made tranquil through the absence of bodily spasm. This is not unlike a post-orgasm transformation. In fucking, my body has a saturating presence where I am all skin and touched surfaces. This physicality reaches its peak at orgasm and then falls away, like water sucked back into the ocean. I am left with quiet bliss. My body melts into the bed and absorbs everything; the pleasures receding into some internal cavern. I lie still as the sediment settles, deeper and deeper into a place I cannot fathom. I no longer have a body. Or rather, it was over there, but now it’s here.

I sleep so that I can forget. I fuck so that I can forget. I fall in love again and again so I can etch over these old words with something new; like waves that continuously renew the shoreline. I fall because I have to. I forget most of what I know about reflections and fantasies. Forgetting is necessary so that one day I can return to the river to reflect.

the emperor's bricks

today is spent reading on the couch. then there's time sending and receiving phone messages from a man i don't know. flirting. building potential futures but with enough cynicism to not expect much. he seems nice enough.

he told me there's a fine line between bossy and assertive, and i fall on the good side of that line. he knows how to say the right things. this raises him above the others who sometimes appear in my phone. of late, all i get are disembodied words. i'm bored of this.

after my mid-afternoon shower (breakfast was not long before) i play some music, including this:



all the kids have always known
that the emperor wears no clothes
but they bow down to him anyway
because it's better than being alone

these lines always resonate, but today it makes me think of my relationship to 'the institution' that is 'the university' that is the edifice of knowledge production. the institution excludes as much as it incites, it punishes as much as it encourages. i'm a product of the institution, although i never entirely see myself in this way. but i am. these words that you read arrive at my tongue (and fingertips) through the education that i have been submerged in for over a decade now. and when i realise this (as i increasingly do) i feel like some philip k dick character who imagines he's outside the machine, fighting against the machine, only to wake up one day and realise he has devoted his whole life to sustaining the machine that destroys him. for such reasons, and in such moments, i come to love such songs.

because the emperor wears no clothes. the institution shields itself with its superior knowledge and its rich insights into all things known. but this is an invisible fabric that only the institution can weave and wear, fooling itself that others cannot comprehend, for they do not see what is here. and what they do not see reveals their inferiority (their need to learn).

obviously i'm spinning a fairytale here. some of my favourite people belong to the institution. most of them resent it as much as i do. and maybe we think we can change it, tear it down, brick by brick.

and sometimes we bow down to it because it gives us what we need. the institution is fueled by an ongoing surplus of insecurities, our needs to belong, to be smart, and to be employed. belonging to an omnipresent yet detached machine is particularly attractive to those of us who long to be exterior to a world we loathe. many of us smart-bots subjectify ourselves as 'alternative'. we study from afar, and we critique those things beyond our selves, but often in doing so we forget to critique that platform from where we project these insecurities.

being smart is as performative as any role we might take on. but this performance boils down to wordplay, the right texts, the right theoretical allegiances, and the right friends. the institution is naked but for a network of invisible strings of sentiments that shield it from crass society. the institution allows me to be smart. it also allows me a level of dissatisfaction through which i can bond with others also wrestling the machine. this machine is probably no different to any machine, like the ones we study and critique.

i don't know what the future holds. maybe in a couple of decades i'll be so far inside the machine that i'll forget what the world looked like before i had letters after my name. maybe i'll be one of those bots whose struggles morph into keeping the machine alive because the machine has pierced my being and i can no longer tell its pulse from my own.

i can only hope that this song, and all the other songs, come back to haunt me.

collaboration and gratitude

i've just hit the send button. there's no turning back. what i sent was the review form and accompanying documents for next week's postgrad review. in the morning both of my supervisors will discover that i no longer want them. i feel a little bit nervous and a little bit mean. i read those words on those documents so many times that they no longer make sense to me. today was lost to writing 2000 words.

word of the day: collaboration.

i asked a bunch of postgrad and academic friends to help me out, and five lovely people gave up portions of their day to read over my documents and give detailed feedback. these are friends who know of my situation. i'm glad i did this as i think my case is much stronger now.

feeling of the day: gratitude.

now it's very late and tomorrow i have an early start. all those other emails didn't get sent. nor did i do anything other than read and edit those 2000 words, over and over, morning til morning. tomorrow is for doing other stuff. and tomorrow is looking pretty good right now.

hard day at the offices

i'm so not used to the workforce. not that i would even call this proper work. i'm starting a new routine of many small jobs with flexible hours and sporadic workloads. only 2 of my 4 new jobs have started and already i feel exhausted, but happily so. today a supervisor (workplace, not phd - a much better species) mentioned a friend who may know of more work if i'm interested. because i'm crazy i said 'sure'.

4 jobs is 4 lots of administration. i'm filling out tax forms and signing employment contracts every second day. today i had a proper OH&S briefing. tuesday's was more like: "there's the door, there's the toilet, if there's a fire we leave".

i have 2 new desks to work from. next week i'll have another. which is just as well, because soon i'll have to give up my favourite one in the library. 5 desks (including this one at home) is probably enough.

soon i'll be catching more trains and less buses. soon i'll be tightly scheduled. next week i have no free days. thankfully, none of this is permanent. i know the circumstances of a casualised workforce are fucked up, but it tends to suit me for now. my fear of commitment sees me enjoying each tick of the 'casual' box on that tax form. flexibility, impermanence, unclear future... these are good things. as is taking a breather from studies.