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The intensity of the loss was superseded by the intensity of these bodily eruptions.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.

the rebel and the meeting

i have a meeting with Director in less than an hour. i didn't sleep well last night. i don't think this should be as stressful as it is. i know what i want and what i will ask for, and i feel justified in asking for it. i guess the discomfort is in not knowing the outcome. or perhaps suspecting the outcome: he's likely to defer to my supervisors and ask that i resolve things with them. but i won't do this. i'd sooner quit.

i was just reading Camus's The Rebel on the way to uni. not sure if that's a smart thing to do. but it does make me feel somewhat justified in following my gut instinct on this. it reminds me that knowing what i want (without having to fully understand or qualify this want) is enough.

one of the passages accompanying my journey:

I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion.

divorce proceedings

an email from uni today reminds me of the tasks i was meant to complete. i'm given a date. the said tasks are to meet the satisfaction of my supervisors. i doubt this is possible, so i won't try. my stomach is knotted. i feel shut down by such emails and their formal requests which contain subtle threats of eviction. and yes, there will be failure. i'm buying time, i already know this. but still, such words trigger that part of me that doesn't want to fail, even if it's for the best. and hence this tension, this stasis that sees me unable to process my next move. 12 days to go.

i should be grateful they waited until february. all i know is that i can't be in the same room as them. yes, it has come to this. once again i embody the naughty child. or the rebellious teen who just wants to say 'fuck you'. and there i am on campus, avoiding people and offices. because i'm angry, tense, scared, and extremely bitter.

i'm guilty before the trial begins.

things were better when i forgot that i was a student.

at least i got paid for the experience, and continue to do so (for now). i'm a bad investment. or a mis-managed one. either way, they lose too, which is nice. and in the next few weeks, each occasion in which i spend (their) money will contain a gentle, angry whisper of 'fuck you'. because now that i'm a grown up i have to disguise (and purchase) my rebellion.

maybe i'll stay home today and read camus.

another monday gone

there was a man installing benches in the kitchen. there's a cat asleep on the bed. the window next to my desk breathes cooler air today. it's late afternoon and i feel that today i was unproductive. though jessie and i emptied cupboards and readied the kitchen. though we talked about a project we can do in april. though i went and bought groceries. though i sent a few emails. though i confirmed a meeting about a job... i still feel like i haven't done enough.

there's a pile of books next to me to read - fuel for our project. but it's getting late and soon i have to go to petersham.

yesterday i had a coffee date. he messaged to say he'd be five minutes late. he didn't turn up. at one point there was a guy that looked like he was approaching me and then turned and walked away. he didn't look like i expected (he had facial hair unlike the photos i'd seen), but i'm never much good at recognising faces until they're up close. waiting, i keep checking my phone/clock, and i imagine (in the space of another 20 minutes of standing and waiting) a host of scenarios where that man was him. maybe he knew me from something else, maybe he got scared, maybe we have mutual friends, maybe he found me too hideous... but i shall never know because he didn't answer my messages or calls. i walked home, pissed off that i'd given this time to waiting, and to dreaming up stupid scenarios of rejection. and it really doesn't matter, yet it took some time for me to realise this. i kept saying "but this has never happened to me before".

later in the afternoon i'm swimming with essy at victoria park. after each lap we have small chats. in fragmented discussion we share small observations about the pool and its people. i like this combination of swimming and talking. my usual swimming is an indoor, silent, solitary affair. this is pleasant. as is the changing weather and the rain that falls on us.

then i walk home, assaulted by wind so lovely. i walk into it with my hair and clothing stretched and flapping behind me. i'm very much awake. i awoke from a dream of a week of intense heat. i guess i can only appreciate this wind because of last week's assault of humidity, sun, sweat, lethargy. and so maybe that discomfort was a good thing.

i buy potatoes. i cook dinner for my family.

my insatiable one

Today I return to 'the project'...

Yesterday I heard Suede’s My Insatiable One and I thought of you. I thought of us as two tall, lanky men, drinking in a small bar. And there we are walking along the cold streets of London and Paris, being wistful and carefree. We softly collide into each other as we stroll drunkenly and dreamily, without destination, talking and not talking. I look at the river.

We're wanting each other without ever going there. We're imagining futures together in the quiet of our own thoughts – oh, the places we could go. Insatiable longing, languid and warm. And your hand sweeps through your hair, putting it back in its place. And I watch and wait for you to tell another story. I want to put my arm around you, or pull you closer, or fall into you. But I just fall into your words and stories as I echo the pattern of your steps. Your feet are smaller than they should be, just like your hands which could easily fit inside mine. Your arms are crossed. My hands are in pockets. I watch you, I see the river, but everything else is nothing I see. I imagine I’ll fall into the river and drown, smiling.

I stop, I let myself go soft, and I fall to the water. Hands in pockets, I let the current take me where it will. Some days later I wake on an Australian beach. It's hot, there's wind, and my skin is bare and sticky. I sweep my hair from my face. I can see and hear everything. I vomit until I cry.