Dear Love

I'm giving up on you for now.

Love,
Me

Self-Respect and Selection

I've been meaning to make a post for a really long time. I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of self-love and self respect. There is a beautiful essay by Joan Didion I read a few weeks ago on the topic. The power of the idea we have of ourselves in affecting our behavior and perspective.
It's a hard thing to carry. Sometimes, it just happens. One has a firm idea of who they are, and little regret alongside of it. Sometimes, it is a struggle.

I've also been thinking about the process of selection. Selection as a service. I am sure this relates to love in some way. Our ability to love. Most immediatley, our available energy to love is given to selection, and the process of selection can be a loving one. It all boils down to choices.

Choosing to love ourselves. Choosing what parts of ourselves to love, and those parts that we choose to ignore to make it easier to love what we have embraced.

I wanted to read books yesterday

This was a good sign. This represented a desire outside of my loneliness. This showed me having focus and interest. I was pleased. The weather was beautiful.

Books on the agenda:

1. Joan Didion - A Year of Magical Thinking
2. Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
3. Zadie Smith - On Beauty
4. Joan Didion - Whatever book "Goodbye to All That" was excerpted from
5. Something by Paul Auster
6. On Bullshit
7. . . .

Deft reflections

"In a world where God died a hundred years ago and computers, not oracles, predict the future, romantic fatalism veers dangerously toward mysticism."

"Through romantic fatalism, we avoid the unthinkable that the need to love is always prior to our love for anyone in particular."

-- Alain de Boton, On Love

Love means

taking away the safety net.

You Cannot Wrestle a Dove

I lost my wallet that day. Stressed out and irritated, I rode my bike from my friend Taya's house on one end of SE Portland to a party I'd been invited to on the other side of Southeast.
At the party, I saw Jon from far away noting two things: He was beautiful, and two, he looked like trouble. A boy so pretty that you knew immediately you could either never have him, or that if you had him, he would break your heart.
Tight pants, thick brown sweepy hair, and giant pink lips aching to be flicked with a pinky finger.
We were introduced, "This is Jon."
"I hate you."
"Why do you hate me?"
"I just do."

Dear God, he was flirting with me.

A concert later, a party later, we twisted warmly together. So sweet, tender, and naive. So much wanting to feel and experience love, I hurled myself into the possibility. I was smitten without hope.

After three weeks, I become high strung wondering what was happening. I tried to discuss the matter with him. I only wanted a little assurance as in "hey, I dig you too, and let's keep hanging out," but later that night, Jon said it,

"I love you."

I was lying on top of him when he said it, and he had whispered it in my ear. It was like someone cut a slit in his face where his mouth was, and this little bird flew out. It was caught in the room. Neither of us knew what to do with it as it flew back and forth, hitting the walls. I wanted it to be good, so I caught it, and decided to keep it. It was the first time I believed in it.

I don't know what he was trying to do then. I wanted those words LATER. I think he wanted to latch onto the idea of loving someone just as much as I did. Use those three words to solve all problems. He wanted to experiment with loving me, and being the innocent, naive girl that I was (and mostly still am), I went along for the ride, hoping it meant so much more than it ever did.

Obviously, the shiny luster faded, our youthful vigor faded towards one another. Chalked up to infatuation, desire, and lust. One could even say puppy love, but this experience still hurts me to remember. It was the first time I believed, and I ended being shown as nothing but a pure fool.

Re-Statement of Romance by Wallace Stevens

Re-Statement of Romance

The night knows nothing of the chants of the night
It is what it is as I am what I am
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes

That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

Love Over Time, Love makes History, History makes Love

In the middle ages before the era of courtly love, love was conceived of as a relationship shared between man (or woman) and god, a strictly religious endeavor. This can be seen in the Shewings of Julian of Norvich, and the Book of Margory Kempe. Two texts that depict women in LOVE with God, seeing god as their husbands, going into ecstatic states akin to sexual orgasm over their feelings.

At this point sex between human men and women was often referred to "the debt of mariage." A chore to be performed with your spouse, but not something that would inspire emotion or affectation. I can see this a trickled down perspective from the greeks who found love between men as a sensitive, visceral experience, but love between men and women as generally more focused on procreation.

With the dawn of the Renaissance, the notion of courtly love evolved, thereby creating what we generally think of when the terms love and romance are tossed around. The term originating obviously from the idea of "courting," the wooing of young royal women that would occur in the courtyards of royal palaces, and exagerrated in the sonnets of Shakespeare. Courtly love, (exemplified in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde) portrayed heterosexual mating as a vehicle to transcend our earthly experience, and bring our consciosnesses closer to God.

The courtly notion of romance, characterized by fay passive women, being wooed by charismatic and clever gentleman remained. In the 18th and 19th century, parlor culture arose in Western society. Groups of women and men would gather in the salon or parlor of homes, and socialize. Seen most vividly in the novels of Jane Austen. In these novels, women dominate the enclosed sphere of the home, and men enter into their space causing change. Women await the attentions and power of men as lynchpins toward action. Women are the static bodies, and men are the kinetic ones. Balance and happiness achieved through union of the two extremes.

I'm not making a point but trying to explore the movement. I'm sure that many of these points have already been documented especially in Foucault's "History of Sexuality."

The victorian era also saw an increased focused on emotional and sexual repression, valorizing stoicism and celibacy. I need to do some more reading as to discern the origin of this movement. Obvious influences are Christian puritanism, but it can't possibly be that simple.

I have to get back to work but I hope to write more on this later.

First Humiliation

It was the first time I stayed the night at his house. I was 17. He was 19. He lived with his mother.
We had been fooling around in his bed, and it was late. We settled in for bed. He got up to go to the bathroom. He went for the door to the hallway naked. "Wait," I said, "Aren't your going to put some clothes on? Your mother might come out into the hall?"
"I'll be fine," he insisted, and he exited the room. I heard him go into the bathroom, and sure enough as he left the bathroom, I heard his mother come out of her room. "Andy, The noise from your room, it sounds like static. I can't sleep. Can you try to be more quiet. What?! Put some clothes on!"
I wanted to die. I clutched the covers and curled into the fetal position. I was mortified. The noise was obviously the bed, and his mother just saw him standing buck naked in her hallway with a girl in his room.
Andy returned to the bedroom, and got into bed. I could barely look at him. I was so embarrased. He tried to be affectionate with me, and I refused, not budging from my curled position. My refusal upset him very much, and he started to cry. He was like "What's the big deal?" My humiliation made me insensitive and resentful towards him. I wouldn't be touched, and his weeping did little to soften my feeling toward him. I wish I could have disappeared in that moment.

Goo

"I love David Lynch." That was the first thing we allowed each other to say. We didn't want to throw the phrase around. We agreed to resist saying the simple three word phrase of infamy. We talked on the phone everyday, for hours. I was 15, and had been messaged by Matt after he read my poems and stories in an "ezine" that I had uploaded into a "zine forum" on AOL SPIN online. My zine was called either "Oddball" or "Peculiar." I can't remember which.
Matt introduced me to Jack Kerouac. We read the poems that we wrote back and forth to each other; his poems were abstract, symbolic, and laden with pop culture figures, and possessed a rhythm I envied, and my poems were always more sincere and heartfelt. 2 hours at a time talking about the cure, and sex. We were always discussing our sexual habits although neither of us had ever seen one another, being burgeoning horny adolescents. We were dependable voices on the other end of the line.
"I love David Lynch" transformed into "Goo"(a la Sonic Youth, no connection to any form of baby talk. We were mixing our love of pop culture with the affection we felt in conversation). The phrase was shortened for ease, and "Goo" had a better punch to the tongue. Our previous phrase of affection was too cumbersome, and ridiculous to say. I don't remember when it happened, but one day it hit and there was no more need for code words anymore. It was the first time I heard the phrase "I love you" from a boy. I think I've heard it from 5 boys, and I can only count 2 circumstances where I felt it has mattered in retrospect. My long telephone conversations with Matt are definitely one of the two.

Gum Traders

I followed him around at lunch time. He wore a bright puffy winter coat, and we would sit outside the cafeteria, eating tater tots from a paper cup, and pizza wrapped in a plastic bag, steam condensing on the inside. I liked to hear him talk and stare into his black curly hair, note his smooth skin and wide features. Of course, in 7th grade, I didn't think about it that way at all.
I'd call him on the phone. He'd tell me about science fiction stories late at night. I'd lie on the floor with ear glued to phone in the dark in my parent's or sister's room on school nights. We talked about Nirvana, and our favorite books, our ideal mates.
We were "rockers." With such a title interests included: our collection of band t-shirts, our cassette tape collections, our distaste for that which was not rock, and a new found identity in being outside and different than everyone else in our jr. high, digging the latest hip hop jams on the radio. Our friends wrote "Rap is Crap" on their backpacks in white out.
The rockers found their lunchtime home in the middle of the athletic field. We stood in a circle talking non-sense. We believed that we didn't care what people thought of us. We were rockers. People thought he was crazy, and that I was a lesbian, because of my short hair.
We wanted to show everyone how much we didn't care. One day, we decided to trade gum to show our disregard for germs. We started by spitting it into one another's mouth, aiming from afar. Within minutes, the gap between us closed, and with our friends chanting, egging him on, "Do it! Kiss her!" our lips met, my first french kiss. We pushed the gum back and forth in one another's mouth with our tongues. His mouth and tongue were broad, and I remember the motion seemed to happen so naturally.

Firsts

The month of April will be a month of firsts on my blog, a series of posts about first experiences. For all of us who feel that we are at the beginning.

So what is the first first? Do I start with physical contact, the first time a hand was slid underneath clothing, or infatuation, the first time that dominos fell in the mind to trigger those marquis flashing lights that "Yes! I am attracted to this person," or most traditionally kissing, the first time two lips met to feel the heat of the other person's lips and the strange wetness of another's mouth, like slugs groping in the dark?

encouraging accquiesence and discouraging struggle

For me there is always a huge dark line between that which I know is real, and how I feel towards the veritable elements of my life.

Knowing and feeling on a most base level, and their split. I want to accquiess to the boundaries of what is real, in lieu of struggling with the way that I feel. My wants and desires are not logical, not in tune with reality.

I want to take care of everyone. I know that I can't.

The spaces between reality, and desire, are where emotions originate.

Memory # 2 / The Origin of Trouble

"Can I have a pack of American Spirit Lights?"

"That'll be $4.25."

Memory # 3 / The origin of Trouble

"Do you have a car? Can you take me home?"

"No, but I can take you to my room."

Memory #1 / The origin of trouble

"This is Jon."

"Hello, it's nice to meet you."

"I hate you."

"Why do you hate me?"

"I just do."

Love Art Lab

Annie Sprinkle is doing a 7 year art project all about her relationship with her partner, Elizabeth Stephens. In describing the live performances put on by the couple, Sprinkle says "We create a theater/performance art show about our relationship exploring artificial insemination, breast cancer treatments, queer weddings, art experiments, aging, sexuality and more. As a response to the war, anti-gay marriage sentiment and the politics of breast cancer, we invite everyone to a genuine celebration and critical public exploration of the deepest realms of romantic, sexual and familial love to bring about positive social change."

The website includes photos of art exhibits and performances put on by the couple. Each year will explore a different facet of love, and each year is represented by a different color of the rainbow.

www.loveartlab.org

I love to see art projects where the artists is able to say "My life is art." Without artifice, the feeling and emotions experienced by a person are ART. I personally think that there is a poetry to each moment we experience. Sprinkle's art project embraces this. Our everyday emotional experiences can be reflected and appreciated.

Reminds me much of Tracy Emin. When I was in Amsterdam, there was a tent, in which Emin had sewn the name of every person she had ever slept with. Is one's kissing book art? Why not?

ANTM

America's Next Top Model is back in season. I'm a happy camper. I watched the premiere last night. Most of all I wondered how it must feel to NOT be picked. Women live their entire lives subconsciously believing that the ultimate achievement for a woman is to be beautiful, and then you work really hard to get on this show to be told that you are not good enough. You do not hit the mark of beauty.
I imagine the long term effects could be crippling. One could make a similar argument about American Idol.
On the contrary, I wish Janice Dickinson was still a judge. Even though she was a mega-bitch, I think her criticism was usually more thoughtful, and instructive than Twiggy.
Janice worked against the demure female personality. I miss her aggresiveness.

Link

I'm going to be a crafty spinster someday. Just like these old australian ladies who knit an entire room with knitted cakes, record covers, and hamburgers. It's like YaYoi Kosama. Everyday art!

Meditation on the Idea of Love -- Excerpt: Everything is Illuminated

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily . . .None of it moved her. She adressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.


If we were to open to a random page in her journal -- which she must have kept and kept with her at all times, not fearing that it would be lost, or discovered and read, but that she would one day stumple upon that thing that was finally worth writing about and remembering, only to find that she had no place to write it--we would find some rendering fo the following sentiment: I am not in love.


She had to satisfy herself with the idea of love--loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't really care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.