she handed me a piece of paper and pointed to the figure at the bottom. $690. this doesn't include today's $190. teeth are really fucking expensive. no longer having pain is expensive. root canals are boring. and i'll probably fork out more for a crown, down the track, when my gutted tooth turns grey. i hear voices saying now's a good time to get 'dental cover'. but no. insurance is evil.
so now i'm just filling in time until i can eat. i'm swollen, yet hungry. i've not eaten today. it was a late night, a difficult sleep, an early morning, an indecisive wardrobe, a prolonged bus ride to uni, a lecture to attend with course readers to hand out, a coffee to group ourselves, a timesheet to fax, a dentist to visit. and then i'm here.
flirting with the idea of taking a sick day. flashbacks to being a kid, taking an afternoon out of school to visit the dentist. hating it, but feeling some compensation by being out-of-school, and the sometimes glimpse of daytime TV. then there was the drama of having a numb face - "can i have ice-cream?" - which doesn't really work in adult interactions. so i just perform this alone, through these words, and fantasies about being in bed with a DVD. because i'm so terribly uncomfortable. and so very brave.
fuck it. i'm going home.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
i-Produce
anais nin writes: "we gave ourselves to the press".
she refers here to the printing press that she, henry and gonzalo used (and struggled with) to produce books. sometimes a day's work produced one page. it was tiresome. but it was an escape, a ritual, an achievement. it was productive.
pablo writes: "i give myself to this thesis".
he knows that this is a potentially harmful and somewhat stupid way to approach things in life, but feels it necessary to repeat this mantra, for now. he was just reading about the self-governance of neo-liberal subjects (such as he, and you) who are forever occupied with the struggle to control their life, health, sanity, practices, memories, experiences... (ie. self). he's aware that self-governance is cyclic, that it just leads to further seeking of order, control, clarity. because self-control (perhaps any control) is evasive. it cannot be had. but we still push for it, and in doing so, we produce things. we produce selves. and our selves make up the machine that works towards a more productive human existence. some of us blame the system for pushing us too hard and grinding us down. but we are the system. perhaps we're too busy (producing) to notice such things.
i want to finish my phd, i want to write excellent things, and i want to create a self (through my work) that completes me.
pablo gives himself to his thesis.
she refers here to the printing press that she, henry and gonzalo used (and struggled with) to produce books. sometimes a day's work produced one page. it was tiresome. but it was an escape, a ritual, an achievement. it was productive.
pablo writes: "i give myself to this thesis".
he knows that this is a potentially harmful and somewhat stupid way to approach things in life, but feels it necessary to repeat this mantra, for now. he was just reading about the self-governance of neo-liberal subjects (such as he, and you) who are forever occupied with the struggle to control their life, health, sanity, practices, memories, experiences... (ie. self). he's aware that self-governance is cyclic, that it just leads to further seeking of order, control, clarity. because self-control (perhaps any control) is evasive. it cannot be had. but we still push for it, and in doing so, we produce things. we produce selves. and our selves make up the machine that works towards a more productive human existence. some of us blame the system for pushing us too hard and grinding us down. but we are the system. perhaps we're too busy (producing) to notice such things.
i want to finish my phd, i want to write excellent things, and i want to create a self (through my work) that completes me.
pablo gives himself to his thesis.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
new friend
My new young friend is just a friend. Two visits from him today, and tonight I was his mother. I made him lemon and ginger tea, felt his glands, made him comfortable. I gave him my company. We make good company, despite the stretch of years between us.
My new young friend is beautiful, but he is just a friend. Tonight I mentioned my confusion. "I would have jumped you by now" he said, if anything sexual was going to happen. I try not to take this as rejection, because it's not. To do so would be to put a higher value on my sex than my friendship, which is stupid. But is easy to do when one feels uncertain about the former.
If we had sex then things would turn bad, he said. And I knew this. I know this. I've said this to other people. But that didn't seem to remove its potential and my fantasising about it. Now I wish I was more adamant, more certain, more able to read and manage the situation.
But the signals were confusing. As Rod pointed out, his friends don't read Jane Eyre to him while he lies on their bed. How could that not feel romantic? So maybe I can't be too hard on myself.
My new young friend said he'll call tomorrow afternoon. We hug goodbye, once again, at the top of the stairs.
And I'm left humming this song:
My new young friend is beautiful, but he is just a friend. Tonight I mentioned my confusion. "I would have jumped you by now" he said, if anything sexual was going to happen. I try not to take this as rejection, because it's not. To do so would be to put a higher value on my sex than my friendship, which is stupid. But is easy to do when one feels uncertain about the former.
If we had sex then things would turn bad, he said. And I knew this. I know this. I've said this to other people. But that didn't seem to remove its potential and my fantasising about it. Now I wish I was more adamant, more certain, more able to read and manage the situation.
But the signals were confusing. As Rod pointed out, his friends don't read Jane Eyre to him while he lies on their bed. How could that not feel romantic? So maybe I can't be too hard on myself.
My new young friend said he'll call tomorrow afternoon. We hug goodbye, once again, at the top of the stairs.
And I'm left humming this song:
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
reflections
We meet at the bus stop and he says he's cold. He doesn't want the jacket that I'm not using; that's in my hand. The bus soon comes. He speaks a bit too loudly, but I'm not too fussed. He's intense, but again I'm not fussed. I'm used to it now.
I make us coffee and we sit on the couch. He reads aloud from the Sun-Herald. Trash. He asks if he can tear a page out. "Take the whole thing if you want". He wants to borrow Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. He starts reading this aloud too, and we try to make sense of it. He wants us to read it together again soon. He touches me, shows me how cold he is. I forgot. I forget that other people feel the cold more than I. I remember the heater in his room and how thick the air was. But he stayed for a couple of hours, so he must like me. I like him, but not his age. Way too young. I start thinking aloud about when I'm next free but he cuts me off, reminds me that we're neighbours and we'll just be in touch. There's no need for planning. I like this.
He's too young so I just want us to be friends. But he fascinates me too much. And the flick of eyelashes leaves me a-gush. As does his voice, his politeness, his face. And I adore his angst. Mine was never so beautiful, so direct, so contemplated.
I read in the bath, but the words are slipping away and I can't care for that book tonight. I put it down and reach for Anais Nin. She takes me where I need to be. There's passion and emotional struggle and wanting to make things with words and kindness. I wonder how much I've carved her into my own being, over the years, through reading these diaries. I sometimes catch myself, as her, surrounded by sad men, listening and caring. Wanting them, and sometimes having them. But often finding disappointment because they can't give in the way we (believe that we) give. Maybe we feel tortured by them, but we're really torturing ourselves. Yet the struggle seems necessary to feel alive, and to exist in an otherwise flat ocean between our wanting and its objects. Our struggles create waves, yet we think they come from elsewhere; beyond our doing.
I read:
In the case of withdrawal from a friendship it is difficult to tell whether it is the withdrawal of feeling which kills the warmth, or whether the warmth was a reflection. As soon as I withdrew, Robert revealed his coldness, or was it always there? To what extent do people have an independent life or reflect each other's warmth? To what extent do we call into being what we believe, see, wish in others?
(Nin, January 1942)
I make us coffee and we sit on the couch. He reads aloud from the Sun-Herald. Trash. He asks if he can tear a page out. "Take the whole thing if you want". He wants to borrow Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. He starts reading this aloud too, and we try to make sense of it. He wants us to read it together again soon. He touches me, shows me how cold he is. I forgot. I forget that other people feel the cold more than I. I remember the heater in his room and how thick the air was. But he stayed for a couple of hours, so he must like me. I like him, but not his age. Way too young. I start thinking aloud about when I'm next free but he cuts me off, reminds me that we're neighbours and we'll just be in touch. There's no need for planning. I like this.
He's too young so I just want us to be friends. But he fascinates me too much. And the flick of eyelashes leaves me a-gush. As does his voice, his politeness, his face. And I adore his angst. Mine was never so beautiful, so direct, so contemplated.
I read in the bath, but the words are slipping away and I can't care for that book tonight. I put it down and reach for Anais Nin. She takes me where I need to be. There's passion and emotional struggle and wanting to make things with words and kindness. I wonder how much I've carved her into my own being, over the years, through reading these diaries. I sometimes catch myself, as her, surrounded by sad men, listening and caring. Wanting them, and sometimes having them. But often finding disappointment because they can't give in the way we (believe that we) give. Maybe we feel tortured by them, but we're really torturing ourselves. Yet the struggle seems necessary to feel alive, and to exist in an otherwise flat ocean between our wanting and its objects. Our struggles create waves, yet we think they come from elsewhere; beyond our doing.
I read:
In the case of withdrawal from a friendship it is difficult to tell whether it is the withdrawal of feeling which kills the warmth, or whether the warmth was a reflection. As soon as I withdrew, Robert revealed his coldness, or was it always there? To what extent do people have an independent life or reflect each other's warmth? To what extent do we call into being what we believe, see, wish in others?
(Nin, January 1942)
Saturday, July 3, 2010
knowing about knowing and when to sleep in
i lie in bed with no intention of getting up. this is my day of nothing. a day i've been craving.
last night, around 8pm, i sent my chapter to supervisors. it's the first complete chapter draft. all paragraphs (no notes) and all structured. i'm a bit satisfied, though was wondering if it would send me over the edge. weeks of whole days working on a single argument is not good for my sanity. at times i felt that everything i ever knew fell away, had to be pushed out of me, so that my attention could be specific, and this beast could be conquered. i spent all those hours with all those words. even when i moved away it was there, like a virus. the shower was a site of realisations of things missing and connections to make, and i would have to make mental notes, constructing numbered lists to write down once i could. all-consuming and not very fun. music was my only vice, though this changed too, and i started hearing lyrics of metaphors of madness. i discovered Of Montreal. brilliant stuff. but then (having learnt to doubt my every thought), i wondered, 'were they?' so i listened to them repeatedly to make sure. perhaps mirroring other repetitious habits. the song below will always be linked to 'the production of knowledges around young people's sexual health'.
i need to not think about it for a week, yet here i am, thinking about it. i need to ease myself off this.
though it's good now and as said, i'm a bit satisfied. i ended up (as usual) writing something different to what i set out to say. i found myself saying that the production of knowledge is an always collaborative affair, therefore, health work that seeks to improve young people's knowledge levels of sexual health is questionable. because how much do they need to know? their health is not entirely theirs, and nor is knowledge. as per Lyotard, knowledge is more about competence, less about learning and reciting facts. knowledge is not exterior to practice, and intensifies around events such as STI diagnoses, which require multiple agents and relations of trust. as a collaboration, sexual health involves the individual, yet far exceeds her and her knowledge. but knowledge is never static, as much health work seems to suggest. its movement can be seen in the shifting statements that science and health have made over the years. 'what sex does' is always shifting ground. all knowledge, like any good infection, constantly mutates.
anyway, the soundtrack:
last night, around 8pm, i sent my chapter to supervisors. it's the first complete chapter draft. all paragraphs (no notes) and all structured. i'm a bit satisfied, though was wondering if it would send me over the edge. weeks of whole days working on a single argument is not good for my sanity. at times i felt that everything i ever knew fell away, had to be pushed out of me, so that my attention could be specific, and this beast could be conquered. i spent all those hours with all those words. even when i moved away it was there, like a virus. the shower was a site of realisations of things missing and connections to make, and i would have to make mental notes, constructing numbered lists to write down once i could. all-consuming and not very fun. music was my only vice, though this changed too, and i started hearing lyrics of metaphors of madness. i discovered Of Montreal. brilliant stuff. but then (having learnt to doubt my every thought), i wondered, 'were they?' so i listened to them repeatedly to make sure. perhaps mirroring other repetitious habits. the song below will always be linked to 'the production of knowledges around young people's sexual health'.
i need to not think about it for a week, yet here i am, thinking about it. i need to ease myself off this.
though it's good now and as said, i'm a bit satisfied. i ended up (as usual) writing something different to what i set out to say. i found myself saying that the production of knowledge is an always collaborative affair, therefore, health work that seeks to improve young people's knowledge levels of sexual health is questionable. because how much do they need to know? their health is not entirely theirs, and nor is knowledge. as per Lyotard, knowledge is more about competence, less about learning and reciting facts. knowledge is not exterior to practice, and intensifies around events such as STI diagnoses, which require multiple agents and relations of trust. as a collaboration, sexual health involves the individual, yet far exceeds her and her knowledge. but knowledge is never static, as much health work seems to suggest. its movement can be seen in the shifting statements that science and health have made over the years. 'what sex does' is always shifting ground. all knowledge, like any good infection, constantly mutates.
anyway, the soundtrack:
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
always reading, never writing
last night you took me to the closing night of the film festival. it was nice to be part of its ending, since it consumed so many of my days. our days. and so often we sat together and grimaced at the noisy people behind us. at the halfway mark i stopped leaning into you, and stopped rubbing your leg, because you called it as friendship. i was glad you did this, because i didn't know how to read it. you said it was sad and i agreed.
last night i drank too much red wine and i wanted you. but i hid these feelings. because maybe it was just the red wine. then you gave 3 kisses at the bus stop. my mouth, my neck, and you blew one as i moved away. or did i imagine that? and it was an uncertain ride home. sadness, again, and i was unable to reconcile what this meant, how i felt, where we were at just now.
this morning, on another bus, i thought of you. i thought of that morning when i walked out of your bathroom and you were slowly and coyly dancing to johnny cash in your underwear. at that point, this morning, i really did want you.
hounds of love, kate bush. this song is you, right? though maybe it's me too. and maybe it can be applied to everyone who's ever feared their own desires (ie. everyone). but maybe i'm still in a red wine haze and reading too much into things.
last night i drank too much red wine and i wanted you. but i hid these feelings. because maybe it was just the red wine. then you gave 3 kisses at the bus stop. my mouth, my neck, and you blew one as i moved away. or did i imagine that? and it was an uncertain ride home. sadness, again, and i was unable to reconcile what this meant, how i felt, where we were at just now.
this morning, on another bus, i thought of you. i thought of that morning when i walked out of your bathroom and you were slowly and coyly dancing to johnny cash in your underwear. at that point, this morning, i really did want you.
hounds of love, kate bush. this song is you, right? though maybe it's me too. and maybe it can be applied to everyone who's ever feared their own desires (ie. everyone). but maybe i'm still in a red wine haze and reading too much into things.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
digital divide
digits are fingers. they are also numbers. i guess it's the same word because we count with our fingers. but we do many things with fingers. we touch things and make things and grab onto things to make a hasty escape from numbers. or maybe that's just me.
i want digital to mean 'of the fingers' but mostly i use it to speak 'of the computer' or other equipment that operates via batteries and electricity. i'm not a fan of that digital. i like fingers. give me a knitting needle over a mouse any day.
of course fingers use digital technology too. but as i type, i forget my fingers. i'm not looking at them, what they touch, or how they move.
today i've been trying to get a sound file off a digital recorder. to no avail. i've looked at instructions (despite my instructional illiteracy) and i've watched youtube instructional videos. it seems you just plug it in and it works. but it doesn't. silence. nothing. and nowhere to go from there.
i once had a washing machine that used to break down. i could fix it. i once drove a 1978 torana whose gear shaft would get stuck in reverse. i could fix it. a screwdriver, a spanner, some banging of metal, and off i drove. i didn't feel particularly skilled. these were simple tools, simple rules, a matter of putting things back in their place. things that could be seen, felt, and hit. it was dirty work that blackened my fingers but there was a satisfaction in fixing. these were not skills i wanted to learn, but had to learn. if i had money i would probably not have taken them up. but i didn't. and so i did. and i grew accustomed to the joys of fixing things in my life. personal items that kept my life functioning as it did.
but now, today, things break and i have to phone somebody. i phone the landlord who phones the plumber who phones me and then i phone my housemate and this goes on for a while until the problem is fixed. phew. but the problem is beyond my reach. there's no spanner in my hand.
and so with my broken hard drive. there's a man who plugs it in, and listens, and says the head is broken. it's a delicate salvage operation in a dust-free room that will cost $500-600. i can't be there, of course. there's no spanner. once again, i'm dislocated from the things i break. i'm made stupid by the modern art of fixing.
i like to fix things. writing is about fixing. editing, changing, adapting, making something from words. and sometimes it feels like a car stalled in peak hour traffic. but i hammer away until i can get moving once more. i own it. there's a sense of control and achievement. a great sense of achievement when things work. and this is more satisfying than a wage (i would never work as a fixer of things). it's completely non-monetary. $500-600 can't buy me the words i need. generating some necessary skills can though.
this might go some way into explaining why i really wanted to throw this digital recorder against the wall just now.
i want digital to mean 'of the fingers' but mostly i use it to speak 'of the computer' or other equipment that operates via batteries and electricity. i'm not a fan of that digital. i like fingers. give me a knitting needle over a mouse any day.
of course fingers use digital technology too. but as i type, i forget my fingers. i'm not looking at them, what they touch, or how they move.
today i've been trying to get a sound file off a digital recorder. to no avail. i've looked at instructions (despite my instructional illiteracy) and i've watched youtube instructional videos. it seems you just plug it in and it works. but it doesn't. silence. nothing. and nowhere to go from there.
i once had a washing machine that used to break down. i could fix it. i once drove a 1978 torana whose gear shaft would get stuck in reverse. i could fix it. a screwdriver, a spanner, some banging of metal, and off i drove. i didn't feel particularly skilled. these were simple tools, simple rules, a matter of putting things back in their place. things that could be seen, felt, and hit. it was dirty work that blackened my fingers but there was a satisfaction in fixing. these were not skills i wanted to learn, but had to learn. if i had money i would probably not have taken them up. but i didn't. and so i did. and i grew accustomed to the joys of fixing things in my life. personal items that kept my life functioning as it did.
but now, today, things break and i have to phone somebody. i phone the landlord who phones the plumber who phones me and then i phone my housemate and this goes on for a while until the problem is fixed. phew. but the problem is beyond my reach. there's no spanner in my hand.
and so with my broken hard drive. there's a man who plugs it in, and listens, and says the head is broken. it's a delicate salvage operation in a dust-free room that will cost $500-600. i can't be there, of course. there's no spanner. once again, i'm dislocated from the things i break. i'm made stupid by the modern art of fixing.
i like to fix things. writing is about fixing. editing, changing, adapting, making something from words. and sometimes it feels like a car stalled in peak hour traffic. but i hammer away until i can get moving once more. i own it. there's a sense of control and achievement. a great sense of achievement when things work. and this is more satisfying than a wage (i would never work as a fixer of things). it's completely non-monetary. $500-600 can't buy me the words i need. generating some necessary skills can though.
this might go some way into explaining why i really wanted to throw this digital recorder against the wall just now.
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