daphne,
sometimes i hear your laugh, its ghost, and my whole body misses you.
i'm sorry i tried to kiss your nose. i hope you know.
you bastard,
you were never thursday. you are a goat, no you don't deserve that.
from now on, i will call you what you are: liar. pathetic. unforgiveable.
one day you will try to say my name and it will cut your silver tongue.
one day you will forget me entirely, while i will always work to undo you.
my beautiful friend,
i wish i would have known sooner you were trans. i wish we could have undone each other long before you announced the news on social media. we could have been bathroom buddies, truth tellers, holders of hands. to celebrate scars is to remember our travels. maybe together we could have seen the seams fraying, the tip of my chrysalis unsilking. it's okay, i'm here now, welcome home.
Friday, June 25, 2021
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
personal essay week 3 - quitting
5 things i have quit or tried to quit
--smoking (semi-successfully?)
--clown class, almost but i didnt (thank the gods)
--chewing my fingernails (complete failure)
--men (doing pretty good with that one these days)
--work (would love to NOT be selling my labor but have not managed that thus far)
“I’m at the hospital and I’m not sure how long I’m going to be here. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to work.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. But we can wait for you, you don’t have to quit. Do you have a rough estimate of when you’ll be getting out?”
“No I have no idea. I don’t know. I can’t come back.”
Two days after begrudgingly beginning a Wellbutrin prescription, I quit my job from inside the loony bin. The phone hung on the wall in the hallway between my room and the common area -- treacherous territory. At first I was self conscious about using this phone because what if anyone else heard me? Wellbutrin made me shameless. And it gave me a plan of action.
What a delight! I couldn’t sleep and I was barely eating, but now I had plans. I was beginning to feel human again, although the days vascilated wildly between “I live here now” and “worst.”
Humanity was short-lived. Once I was released, I was back on my damn phone, drinking, and yes even smoking again. Home had been a beautiful prospect in my mind, but it turned out all my friends were also suffering from mental health crises and no one wanted to make the same kind of art as me anyway. I tried to hold onto the fire I’d felt, the wellspring of ideas I had rediscovered, but I felt trapped by the constraints of the whole damn deal -- time, money, maintaining a corporeal form, the rigidness of the available paths. Look, if you squint, you can see your own death at the end there. Well then. Why not speed things along a bit? If I’m locked into this nonsense called “life” and can barely make any meaningful choices until I die, why not just become a ghost now? Ghosts can do anything.
--smoking (semi-successfully?)
--clown class, almost but i didnt (thank the gods)
--chewing my fingernails (complete failure)
--men (doing pretty good with that one these days)
--work (would love to NOT be selling my labor but have not managed that thus far)
“I’m at the hospital and I’m not sure how long I’m going to be here. I don’t think I’ll be coming back to work.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. But we can wait for you, you don’t have to quit. Do you have a rough estimate of when you’ll be getting out?”
“No I have no idea. I don’t know. I can’t come back.”
Two days after begrudgingly beginning a Wellbutrin prescription, I quit my job from inside the loony bin. The phone hung on the wall in the hallway between my room and the common area -- treacherous territory. At first I was self conscious about using this phone because what if anyone else heard me? Wellbutrin made me shameless. And it gave me a plan of action.
- Quit job.
- Move home.
- Make art with friends.
What a delight! I couldn’t sleep and I was barely eating, but now I had plans. I was beginning to feel human again, although the days vascilated wildly between “I live here now” and “worst.”
Humanity was short-lived. Once I was released, I was back on my damn phone, drinking, and yes even smoking again. Home had been a beautiful prospect in my mind, but it turned out all my friends were also suffering from mental health crises and no one wanted to make the same kind of art as me anyway. I tried to hold onto the fire I’d felt, the wellspring of ideas I had rediscovered, but I felt trapped by the constraints of the whole damn deal -- time, money, maintaining a corporeal form, the rigidness of the available paths. Look, if you squint, you can see your own death at the end there. Well then. Why not speed things along a bit? If I’m locked into this nonsense called “life” and can barely make any meaningful choices until I die, why not just become a ghost now? Ghosts can do anything.
Sunday, June 20, 2021
personal essay, week 2
Frog prince twins sipping gin and snorting Torchy's. Mind meld magic in the grass outside the party. Sick so special man yr movie's really arty.
We blew by SXSW. Full contrarian status, I refused the widely used abbreviation, "south-by," and ran around shouting for weeks,* "We're going to southbee! southbee!" Big business tech tycoon nightmare carnival took over the whole town. When I lived in Austin, I hated the whole racket -- the traffic, the tourists, the lines, the logos, the litter, the excess. Well of course I still hate it, so even though I was ecstatic that we had been invited, I was determined to fully embody anti-SXSW values whenever possible. I stayed up late making homemade paper business cards. I insisted our crew get matching jean jackets, the Ghost Fleet.
We trash talk, we lip lock, we jaywalk for miles. We dumpster, we long fur, we sweet meat and smiles.
You know, of course, it turned out to be a lot of milling around, as is the case with so many conventions. We ate cole slaw sandwiches inside a massive, empty sound stage while the adults had barbecue. We became festival friends with a woman whose movie, in the “Midnights” category, was about a female necrophile. Before the premiere, we visited the new GOAT YOGA studio in same dang strip mall as the movie theatre. You can't make this shit up.**
While the world hurdled ever onward into the lie of neverending capitalist death show, I found myself surrounded by my best friends, my very favorite people, love bugs I've known for decades and buddies I’ve known only briefly, together, sharing visions, feeding on each other's passion, running from the juggernaut and WINNING. Day drunk, sun spilling in, what a ride. Somehow my favorite people, my best loves, all in one place at the same time. The overwhelm - the too muchness of it - the bigness of us made small by the drone.
Saturday, June 19, 2021
personal essay, week 2 quick write
prompt - write about a person who has been both a hero and a villain in your life.
CONTENT: mention of sexual assault, consent issues, drugs
CONTENT: mention of sexual assault, consent issues, drugs
We rolled all night. When we started to come down, we dosed again. We were sitting on the stoop, smoking, I’d imagine, watching the first hints of dawn beckoning over Druid Hill. Across the street, some techno hippies were breaking down the event they’d held that night in our collective’s warehouse space. You, always a character, never one down to turn down a conversation, probably hollered Hey. We were given a curosry head nod and everyone went back to business. Until a few minutes later. The head hippie passed his van and headed over to our side of the street. “Hey uh, there’s a bunch of smoke in the warehouse, I think something might be on fire.” Rolling or not, you sprang to action. Our rickety old building, nothing up to code, the physicalization of our deep love for community. Oh no you don’t.
Not having any kind of central heating (or cooling, for that matter) we used to keep the wood stove burning during any winter event. The stove itself was sturdy, but the pipe stretched jankily through a hole some punk had put in the ceiling years ago. I seem to recall there was duct tape involved. It seems a solidarity cinder had gleefully blown not up and out of the ceiling, but into it - into the insulation, between the roof and the also punk-installed ceiling tiles. Our warehouse was going to burn down and take our love with it -- food rescue programs, letter writing campaigns, zine library, the stage and the microphones and the amps, and the office containing the collective’s long and storied history…. not to mention the not-quite-legal home of several collective members. Simply put, a fire could. not. happen.
And so you, high as a kite, leapt up on a chair and started to pull the ceiling down. I scrambled across the warehouse, as well as the gardens, sheds, and three (absolutely perfectly legal) houses our collective owned, trawling for every fire extinguisher I could lay my paws on. I also texted our reluctant but fearless leader, Reagan, a woman whose coolness would shrivel you. Luckily she always woke up early (as gardeners tend to do) and it wasn’t long before she was on the scene. It must’ve been 6am by now. By the time she arrived, you were hanging from the ceiling, literally swinging from the rafters, a bandana over your face and an axe in your hand -- all that insulation and smoke floating down around you, a blurry vision.
When you got home from Jan’s house (although looking back, I highly doubt you were honest about where you’d been) you found me at the table in Middle House, though everyone else was asleep. A member of our sister commune had called out another (long-term, prominent) member as an abusive predator. There were a lot of emails. When you found me, I was reading Batman’s letter in which she confirmed yes, this person pushed the boundaries of her consent as well. You put me in your lap and I read what Batman wrote: her history, multiple rapes, monstrous men. You offered me lemonade -- we always drank juice straight from the jar, I didn’t think twice about accepting. I hardly noticed the bitter taste; I was trying to swallow heavy stories. Tears pricked my eyes and your prick -- well I’m glad everyone else was asleep. My body began to move without me telling it to. My mind couldn’t process text anymore. Thursday, this stuff is really fucked up, I feel really weird, I am not in control. How long before you giggled, “Oh shit” and remembered what you’d done to the lemonade? And how could I ever have thought your offering it to me was an accident?
Not having any kind of central heating (or cooling, for that matter) we used to keep the wood stove burning during any winter event. The stove itself was sturdy, but the pipe stretched jankily through a hole some punk had put in the ceiling years ago. I seem to recall there was duct tape involved. It seems a solidarity cinder had gleefully blown not up and out of the ceiling, but into it - into the insulation, between the roof and the also punk-installed ceiling tiles. Our warehouse was going to burn down and take our love with it -- food rescue programs, letter writing campaigns, zine library, the stage and the microphones and the amps, and the office containing the collective’s long and storied history…. not to mention the not-quite-legal home of several collective members. Simply put, a fire could. not. happen.
And so you, high as a kite, leapt up on a chair and started to pull the ceiling down. I scrambled across the warehouse, as well as the gardens, sheds, and three (absolutely perfectly legal) houses our collective owned, trawling for every fire extinguisher I could lay my paws on. I also texted our reluctant but fearless leader, Reagan, a woman whose coolness would shrivel you. Luckily she always woke up early (as gardeners tend to do) and it wasn’t long before she was on the scene. It must’ve been 6am by now. By the time she arrived, you were hanging from the ceiling, literally swinging from the rafters, a bandana over your face and an axe in your hand -- all that insulation and smoke floating down around you, a blurry vision.
When you got home from Jan’s house (although looking back, I highly doubt you were honest about where you’d been) you found me at the table in Middle House, though everyone else was asleep. A member of our sister commune had called out another (long-term, prominent) member as an abusive predator. There were a lot of emails. When you found me, I was reading Batman’s letter in which she confirmed yes, this person pushed the boundaries of her consent as well. You put me in your lap and I read what Batman wrote: her history, multiple rapes, monstrous men. You offered me lemonade -- we always drank juice straight from the jar, I didn’t think twice about accepting. I hardly noticed the bitter taste; I was trying to swallow heavy stories. Tears pricked my eyes and your prick -- well I’m glad everyone else was asleep. My body began to move without me telling it to. My mind couldn’t process text anymore. Thursday, this stuff is really fucked up, I feel really weird, I am not in control. How long before you giggled, “Oh shit” and remembered what you’d done to the lemonade? And how could I ever have thought your offering it to me was an accident?
Thursday, June 10, 2021
transcribed voice memos from my dog walks
6/7/2021, 1:51pm
sidewalk squat to get a picture of a gutter egg
two doors down real live robin puddle sputtering full robin
and here’s these sticks
the sticks of men
there’s a dead bird
a dead bird in the yard of hte sticks of men , oh god
he had a lawn and it killed them all
the dogs dog dogs dogs with some paws ouch oh jesus
i’m not ever gonna get used to this - what if i - okay
i don’t know if they can still here me
these dogs these dogs noses and paws
tj’s tryin to wiggle away fey
they never liekd it how i rhymed
Thursday, June 03, 2021
personal essay class - week one quick write
cramps grumpy crumpet. blaring bleating trumpet. sticky fickle carpet. yr never gonna stop it.
when the bell rings in there, swings in there, sings despair, try not to care but hey you over there,
you can't escape the ding ding ding ding crushing twisting cramping.
how about that now, how about you talk to her. what did she ever do to you!
like conjuring my inner critic, i will pluck you, uterus, out and set you up right here on the futon.
it's real hard to get them out.
the bleeding never bothered me.
you know i can't abide a lie!
middle school was murder, seats stained, jeans ruined, cruel laughter in the corners.
this is so boring, i'm bored of myself.
are you writing or reading or even thinking? which one are you doing! pick forgodssake!
you got self conscious and that's okay. are you feeling too vulnerable today?
do we need to go in another direction?
i didn't mean to pick on you. it is just the body of me that is talking right now, so it only made sense.
a sweet bright drop-
you can't stop the squiggles. little worm in there, nast. a lonely sequin on the doormat.
every day i nearly die, and so do you, and so do you.
yr world has really shrunk, huh. all there is, curled and contained. the bedroom. the kitchen.
the walls. the ceiling. the face of yr "honey."
(in tarot, the figure of the World is intersex - non-binary - in between - across - trans)
but what about the ant on my pants?
and waht about these fucking cramps?
if i have a body (and so far, i do) will nothing make it quiet?
the World isn't in there. it never was and never will be. the World is too vast and vibrant to be just this. the oven is not the cake. mammals think we are so brave.
don't worry, we're all still god, and so are you, and so are you. i am the white hot center of a web of love, and so are you, and so are you.
the center of me tunes its frequency to the center of Things. it's cool to vibe in, but don't linger. you can't! catch hold of the knot that brought you here and climb back toward it, back to bones and blood and oh, cramps. sing yr thanks to every moon + every womb but bless the earthworm, the slippershell, anemone. all things god and so are you and so are you: a sweet bright drop.
when the bell rings in there, swings in there, sings despair, try not to care but hey you over there,
you can't escape the ding ding ding ding crushing twisting cramping.
how about that now, how about you talk to her. what did she ever do to you!
like conjuring my inner critic, i will pluck you, uterus, out and set you up right here on the futon.
it's real hard to get them out.
the bleeding never bothered me.
you know i can't abide a lie!
middle school was murder, seats stained, jeans ruined, cruel laughter in the corners.
this is so boring, i'm bored of myself.
are you writing or reading or even thinking? which one are you doing! pick forgodssake!
you got self conscious and that's okay. are you feeling too vulnerable today?
do we need to go in another direction?
i didn't mean to pick on you. it is just the body of me that is talking right now, so it only made sense.
a sweet bright drop-
you can't stop the squiggles. little worm in there, nast. a lonely sequin on the doormat.
every day i nearly die, and so do you, and so do you.
yr world has really shrunk, huh. all there is, curled and contained. the bedroom. the kitchen.
the walls. the ceiling. the face of yr "honey."
(in tarot, the figure of the World is intersex - non-binary - in between - across - trans)
but what about the ant on my pants?
and waht about these fucking cramps?
if i have a body (and so far, i do) will nothing make it quiet?
the World isn't in there. it never was and never will be. the World is too vast and vibrant to be just this. the oven is not the cake. mammals think we are so brave.
don't worry, we're all still god, and so are you, and so are you. i am the white hot center of a web of love, and so are you, and so are you.
the center of me tunes its frequency to the center of Things. it's cool to vibe in, but don't linger. you can't! catch hold of the knot that brought you here and climb back toward it, back to bones and blood and oh, cramps. sing yr thanks to every moon + every womb but bless the earthworm, the slippershell, anemone. all things god and so are you and so are you: a sweet bright drop.
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