Artificial Dissemination and the Liquid Trajectory

Do you ever feel like one of life's sales people? I hate that. I hate having to provide explanations, or have a spiel (or schtick, or load of crap). What happens if I simply always answer 'I don't know'. And often, really, I don't...... (Dave Graney has a song called My Schtick Weighs a Tonne).

"Take a Pretty Picture, Sex Dwarf"

I have been listening to the camp and beautiful voice of Marc Almond, and I go around wanting to bark 'sex dwarf' at people. AM plays it at home. Last night we spent half an hour or so saying 'bitch' in different, varyingly odd/revolting voices. And laughing. She loves Sex Dwarf.

I'm not sure what to think of the things Dad and I talked about while he was here. AM said she was amazed by how open he is. He's funny like that, he will just talk about anything, as if everything is just material/subject matter, and up for intense scrutiny. Sometines it is almost as if he is disconnected from his personal life. But then I think perhaps he is more connected to it than I am, because despite the weirdness of it, he embraces it and questions every thing that he does. We drank G+T and talked intensely. He said again that I know him better than anyone else. Yet for me it is quite a private relationship (it includes ZP of course, as everything in my life includes her). He referred to the conversations we used to have when I was a child. He used to come into my room and sit on the end of my bed and talk about LIFE, and probably there were times when I didn't understand. I remember talking extensively about the existence of god when I was 12 or 13. I don't remember what we talked about when I was younger than that. And he used to sometimes read the newspaper to me. How funny now to think of that. And how funny to think of myself as a child, and the fact that he knew me then.

He loves his iriver, and so again we listened to Sweat Lodge, which we first heard in Dublin. It makes him laugh so much, and even though BS was asleep one evening, Dad couldn't resist shouting 'I'm not an alcoholic' and something about being bald (lyrics from the song) as he was leaving my house. My god, he is so fabulously eccentric!

I haved been reading the most amazing book (Demian). It is one of those existential/transcendental/spiritual/religious books that makes you think ohhhhh about everything. Oh Herman Hesse, how I love you. So I have been quite heavily bogged down with thinking about Cain and Able, the concept of god and the devil as a split being, Abraxas, and the significance of images. It is one of those books, you know, that I know I will refer to (only in a personal sense) for a long time. It seems to be holding great personal significance for me at the moment. It resonates (I really am loathe to use that word, but I can't think of one more appropriate at the moment).

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth is a novel by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1919. In it, Emil Sinclair is a young boy who was raised in a bourgeois home described as a Scheinwelt, or world of light. Through the novel, accompanied and prompted by his mysterious classmate Max Demian, he descends from and revolts against the superficial ideals of this world, eventually awakening into a realization of self. The novel references concepts of Gnosticism, particuarily the demiurge Abraxas, and shows the influence of Carl Jung's system of psychoanalysis. Hesse said the novel was a story of Jungian individuation, the process of opening up to your unconscious. Demian was first published under the pseudonym "Emil
Sinclair", the name of the narrator of the story, but later Hesse was revealed
to be the author.

Bewigged and Begloved

Perhaps brightly lit, happy, harmonious, sanitised supermarkets breed a cretinous type of customer? These customers appear to be site-specific, although I know they are not. It is unfair of me to suggest that they are cretinous I know, when really they are just old and crusted. In Safeway in Prahran this morning, with only one check out open, I waited in line behind a string of unusual types. The cashier had yellow tinted glasses and a hearing aid (which made me wonder if he was attempting a Morrissey-style "the NHS is actually cool" thing), and had t hat gormless air of someone who doesn't think very much. (Sometimes I wonder if I should actually be saying these awful things about people, but then it is what I think, and what better place to express all my nasty unkind thoughts than the self-indulgent space of here?) Perhaps he thinks too much and is distracted by it?

I wondered today if perhaps often old women feel differently about money to young women. This is something I thought about in the car on the way to work. The old ladies in front of me at the checkout were not embarrassed to squabble over money, and accuse each other of cheating. One of the women, the one who was most noticeably slumped, had on a coarse blond wig and misplaced make-up. Her neck was dirty with a thick ring of loose skin and grot, almost like a tough rind. Old people have such strange skin, so blotched, wrinkled and multicoloured. It is fascinating and grotesque. Another woman was wearing a short sleeved top yet had on very thick gloves. She was tall and horse-like, with equine teeth and a long face. They were so floral, and I wondered how they would smell. It reminded me of the two women who lived near me at Liverpool St (in Hobart), who were sisters, and whose putrefaction was evident as they walked past our house every day. They were always together, always walking, and always wearing large overcoats, even on warm days. They would stop and talk to Tom, and said to me once that he was like the cat in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. KFG knew about them once she became a nurse, and sadly, told us about how they had died in their eccentric squalor with no running water and no toilet. There was shit (cat and human) throughout the house, and they were sick.

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ART

I think Jenny Holzer is incredible. I saw an exhibition of hers in Hamburg in 2002. I often seem to include art in here. What do you think of this image? It will be on my bedroom wall soon.

Do we all want to lie to back to front with someone who adores us? Am I back to front? Is everyone back to front?

Look Over Your Shoulder Just In Case

I wonder what is wrong with my mother. This isn't something I should wonder. Oh no. It is dangerous territory, because every time I begin to wonder, I then wonder what is wrong with me. The scariest thing is that there is something seriously amiss and I am not aware of it. KF talked about sickness and unhappiness, and ZP and I looked at each other in sad recognition. There is an interesting history of women and illness (unrelated to my mother believe it or not) as there is an interesting history of women and starvation (is anorexia our new word for protest?). My mother is perpetually ill. I refuse to be ill or made ill, despite the efforts she went to when I was a child. KF said that her mother was pleased when she was sick because she was 'calm'. Again, I wonder if some people are 'too much', if there are people whose excess energy and joie de vivre enervates and angers other people. As I said to KF on Sunday, for me it is about the intensity and excitement of living - it is about an excessively sensory joie de vivre. There are these incredible people who are irrepressible, who fire up and create life for themselves when they could just as easily shut down and give up. KF is obviously one of those. I love that.

A list of things I plan to learn in a hurry:

moderation
patience
chilling the fuck out
balancing different things in my life
switching on and switching off
how to fully relinquish control
how to ask for what I want in a polite manner

Echo and Narcissus

Cupid and Psyche

Today is all about lovers, love, loss and infinite possibilities.

CH called last night. She said that one of her friends recently had a baby and called it Echo. I don't know if it is funny or just silly. But then at dinner last night we spent a long time discussing AW and EJ's baby names (some of my favourites were Homeboy, Jewish, Just and Scrotum). I would have trouble with a name like Echo because I would want to call the kid Echo Echo Echo Echo Echo.

Orpheus and Eurydice




This next thing really appeals to me. It reminds me of a group of girls at school when I was in grade 9 coming to school and saying that they had a seance and contacted Roy Orbison. But really, imagine this:

Imagine John Lennon spinning in his grave.The ex-Beatle, who was murdered over 25 years ago, is the latest subject of a pay-per-view seance arranged by the producers of a 2003 attempt to contact the dead Princess Diana.That show made money but was slammed by critics as hitting a new low in television tastelessness."People say this is disgusting and I accept that criticism, but we're making a serious attempt to do something that many, many millions of people around the world think is possible," said Paul Sharratt, who heads Starcast Productions, which made "The Spirit of Diana." The Lennon show will air on April 24 on a pay-per-view channel and cost $9.95. Sharratt himself is a "non-believer," and admits to not being totally convinced otherwise after psychics attempted to contact the dead princess in the 2003 program. Nevertheless, it made for some great television, he said. Sharratt said he chose Lennon because the former Beatle, like Diana, is an icon and was also a deeply spiritual person. The special will culminate as psychics, colleagues and confidantes sit at a seance table for 30 minutes surrounded by infra-red cameras that can capture any "presence" or spirit that enters the room.

Aren't we all very spiritual people when we choose to be?

Perhaps this is in fact a spiritual person? I don't know who this is, but I like what this guy has decided to do with himself. It is supposed to somehow represent Echo and Narcissus.

When do we decide to be spiritual? How do we do it and why? I sometimes wonder if it happens somehow in conjunction with some transcendental realisation about mortality? Or perhaps it is the realisation of human neediness/desperation. I pretend to be solid, and not in need of anything spiritual (not like Sian, who I clench my teeth with derision over), but perhaps I am, and in fact everything I do learns toward the spiritual? The thing that is funny, and confounding, is that whenever I attempt to define something, it becomes absurd, and I realise that all I do is attempt to break things apart. That is how I feel safest. Perhaps though, spirituality requires you to desire unity and oneness. I believe that we are obsessed with the number 1, the idea of one. It seems to be what we wish to reduce everything to. When you can reduce to one, nothing else matters.

This is Echo and Narcissus. Echo on the left, speaking, Narcissus looking into a mirror, and Narcissus again once turned into the flowers.

Day of the Triffids

This morning AM and I were talking about snakes and the contact they have with the ground. It seemed somehow funny to think of an animal moving forward without legs, wings or fins. And they feel vibrations through the ground. Their little muscular bodies rub against the ground. They don't rub themselves raw, and they aren't lubricated. Imagine shedding a skin, and not mourning it.

I am disgusted by the Commonwealth Games. Apparently the opening ceremony cost $50 million. It was hideous quasi-'cultural' artifice. What are we doing? It scares me when something so huge happens, and the majority of people don't seem to question the validity of it. So what happens to the village (with no air conditioning) when it is over? Today the MCG must be like the stinking greasy condom from a drunken fuck. The bloody queen sitting there next to John and Jeanette. I know we are in the minority in thinking these people are revolting, yet I feel absolutely justified. How can people value things that I don't? We know how to handle ourselves, like excited teenage boys on the verge of ejaculation. I'm on the verge of something too you know.

The Wig Librarian

The tram driver I had this morning had excruciatingly long fingernails. Somehow they made me angry. Someone else I know has long fake fingernails, which also make me angry. They are caked with a brown scunge that the wearer doesn't even seem to be embarrassed about. I found myself apologising every time I touched someone on the tram, despite the fact that we were packed in tight enough to really inhale each other. We seem to shudder and recoil when we touch someone accidentally, as if that contact is so charged that it may be painful. And it is strangely intimate. There was a girl/woman in front of me whose neck was arched into my face, whose tag was out and I couldn't decide whether I should put it back in for her, embarrassedly, or pretend I hadn't noticed. Of course, due to tram etiquette and general appropriateness, I chose the latter. We people are funny aren't we?

BS's mother was here over the weekend, and AM and I loved her. She told us about her father eating a run over chicken, and a woman who had a 'wig library' for women who had cancer.

AM and I cried during Shameless on Monday night.

"A Boy in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush"

"yet you start to recoil, heavy words are so lightly thrown, but still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you....but now you know the truth about me you won't see me anymore, well I'm still fond of you, but no more apologies."

I was desperate to see ZP all day yesterday, and when I saw her I held onto her and breathed her in. I had a most awful dream about her the night before last, and I woke up at about 4am feeling sick, and I wanted to ring her but knew I would just cry.

I am surprised by my ability to cry at times when I don't realise I need to. Any kind of emotional change produces an effect in me. Today I feel overwrought and saddened by the failure of things. Nothing emotional is ever simple. The world I exist in will always be intense and tempestuous, and I refuse to calm down and accept flattened out blandness. We'll only live for another few years.

Tenebrous, Tenebrae, Tenebrism

I think Dario Argento is a strange man. I watched Tenebrae recently, and although I laughed at the axe through the head (and other parts of the body) murders, I also wondered why he wanted to display this gore. There is something satisfying about the spray of blood that comes from a taut piece of body, as if the innards are always straining to escape. There is something almost akin to the surprise intensity of orgasm in the sudden break of skin and the bursting forth of a tide of gore. There are these sudden bodily things, that continue to excite us, and perhaps they are part of the reason we continue to live (surprise!!!). Moments.....

Tenebrous (despite it being such a beautiful day) and slightly sad today. But perhaps I am just all about the emotional overload. I can't help but wonder about how meaningful it can possibly be when it is always on your sleeve?

I'm also fuming.

Scopophilia and the Pleasures of the Flesh

What is good about going to the zoo? For me, nothing, but reaffirming my dislike of it. I looked at the animals and felt angry and embarrassed. It seems as if we humans simply have a desire to own things, to somehow capture and contain the essence of a thing. Are we envious of the idyllic lives of animals and so need to scrutinise them? Where does this immense pleasure in viewing come from? It seems so strange that to express love, care, admiration etc, we need to possess the thing. We need to look at it, and not in a simple and fleeting way, but stare intently until we are able to discern its difference to ourselves. I wondered what it feels like to be stared at, commented on, laughed at. And although we are happy to imbue animals with human qualities (funny how many people refer to an animal as 'him'), we won't afford them the same dignities as ourselves. It fucking disgusts me.

Again, I am very very sure of the reasons I don't eat meat. I wish I didn't have to participate in the things I feel are wrong.

I have been thinking about the work of the Starn brothers. Especially the large horse photographs, and the big photo/metal globe-like things. I want to make something big and revolving. At the moment the idea of revolving very much appeals to me. I'm in a revolving state. I like that they are concerned with light.

And Neil Gaimon has a blog.

Ah Tony: My Octogenarian Love

When I swim I feel as if I put myself back together, after the day of taking myself apart. When I stop I feel that beautiful rush behind my eyes, and I relax into the water and wonder if I want to drown. I saw Tony, who I haven't seen for a long time. He used to ask me where ZP was because we used to always swim together. It is terribly difficult to understand what he is saying, but I persevere out of a sense of awkward enjoyment. Other humans can always provide some pleasure. Tonight he asked me if I would go to the casino with him. I said I am not into gambling, and he said that I didn't have to gamble. I don't know if I am into gambling or not, I've never really tried it in earnest. He asked me to go to his house for dinner (yet again) and I said perhaps one day I will. As he rubbed his eyes like a child, he told me about the chillis he had used today that had made his eyes sting, and he talked about the healing/therapeutic powers of chilli. I feel the same way about garlic......as some of you very well know! He's a funny man (remember AB, when you met him and couldn't understand what he was saying in Italian anyway?), and I worry that he will die in the steam room. Another man told me recently that he was taken away in an ambulance recently because he collapsed in there. Still, he complained to me today about how they won't let him lie down in there any more.

I didn't even drink very much on Friday night. I danced with CG while AM did OTHER THINGS. ZP was incredibly drunk and had to go home. I sat at a table on my own for a while and weatched people, and noticed how many people looked happy, and were dancing, laughing, kissing and touching each other. It was one of those funny moments of interprestation where I could have decided that it was sleazy and awful, but at that moment it looked beautiful, sensual and terribly human. I admired the fact that there were so many people in a room moving and laughing and feeling. We all look at each other, and smile, and desire each other. The greatest pleasure comes from the possibility rather than the result. I went to bed very happy, and pleased to be alone in my room. Funny, you know, recently 2 people have commented on my room. ** talked about it last night, and about partnerships and owning things together. I agree, and I am scared of being an adult and sharing my world with anyone. But one of my problems with that (and psychology) is that I don't think things are so easily reducible. You can never adequately control conditions/history/situation. I suppose (as always) for me it goes back to critical threory, and not science or empiricism. What do they mean to me? At times very little. It feels like a cheap contradiction sometimes, because my understandings of reality have to be based in mutuality and empirical interpretations. Perhaps I can't stand stability and answers? I know I seek to complicate things.

I occasionally have these self conscious moments when I become aware of what I am doing, and question my need to do it. Is it some crazy narcissistic drive? We never know when to call ourselves legitimate, and when experssion of the self is acceptable. I've wanted reality to be some kind of scary unhinged Baccanalia at times, because I have wanted to push everything to its limit. It is a contradiction, because sometimes excess and over experssion embarrass me and make me angry. Bugger, you know what? Most of the time I don't know what to think. I am having this big thought vomit because I spent an hour swimming and I always feel different afterwards. I wonder if I will delete this tomorrow?

"I know I don't want you.....I feel broken, I feel broken, and miles away"

Fervently, I cleaned the bathroom, whilst singing and getting wet. I scrubbed the tiles in the shower and felt a bit primitive. It was a good therapeutic comedown. When I woke up this morning I was compelled to rearrange things subtley in my room/life, which involved me opening a box containing old letters. I found some beautiful letters from MP, and despite telling AW and EJ that I don't seem to care any more, I fell onto my bed, clutching these letters to myself and cried for what seemed like a long time. It astounds me that I can go for so long without noticing that perhaps it is always just below the surface. Is it possible to ever stop loving someone? I felt that pain again, although in a watered down and brief manner, but still, it is there. I don't know how to assimilate this experience into who or what I consider myself to be now. It makes me sad that I can't answer my own questions. How can I go from knowing someone so well, and being familiar with every part of their body, to not knowing them at all. Just after we broke up he came over and talked to me while I was in the shower. It was weird, and I said "is this ok?" and he just laughed and said of course it was. Then we became physically shy with each other, not out of awkwardness, but out of inappropriateness, and it one of the saddest things ever.

My mother says to me that she has to think of my father leaving her as like a death. She is grieving....of course. And she talks to me about it and I feel like a war veteran, and I say things like "it will take a long time". I remember the things LA said to me, and how I thought I couldn't bear it any more, and how I couldn't wait that long to feel better. And now it seems dim and distant. There was that night when I had to stop driving and call ZP because I so desperately wanted to crash my car. What is my mother feeling? Sometimes I don't imagine her feeling anything other than anger and hate, but she must, because even though she is only just human at times, she is human all the same.

It is a sad day today and I don't think I want to say anything else now.