I'm the victim of a victimless crime. I would not repeat this year for anything. The negation of the self is the same as erasure, therefore no victim. We're so used to being victimized, we no longer count ourselves. Body count.
In a room of nine women and one man, in Spanish, we're the masculine neuter gender. Tyranny of language or, betrayal? Cilantro or persil? With a condiment request, the prisoner gives himself away, as we do daily.
Brian says writing is a monkish, solitary act, the intensity is so personal. This is what I've given up with this relationship – the personal, versus the social. This is where laundry, shopping, and cooking enter in a frilly maid's apron. We don't need to take the uniform off at bedtime, just hike up the skirt and you're ready for sex.
And how do we balance both worlds? For years I lived the writer's life, in my hut in the woods. I was prolific, but then I spent my talents on a man, an actor used to being watched. I, the writer, watching the actor, who has no lines. If he has no lines, his own, or otherwise, is he still the actor? Still, I watch. But the words don't come. I stay on task but I keep missing the appointments with my words.
Parsley or chervil? Cilantro or persil?
In a room of nine women and one man, in Spanish, we're the masculine neuter gender. Tyranny of language or, betrayal? Cilantro or persil? With a condiment request, the prisoner gives himself away, as we do daily.
Brian says writing is a monkish, solitary act, the intensity is so personal. This is what I've given up with this relationship – the personal, versus the social. This is where laundry, shopping, and cooking enter in a frilly maid's apron. We don't need to take the uniform off at bedtime, just hike up the skirt and you're ready for sex.
And how do we balance both worlds? For years I lived the writer's life, in my hut in the woods. I was prolific, but then I spent my talents on a man, an actor used to being watched. I, the writer, watching the actor, who has no lines. If he has no lines, his own, or otherwise, is he still the actor? Still, I watch. But the words don't come. I stay on task but I keep missing the appointments with my words.
Parsley or chervil? Cilantro or persil?
My grandmother said parsley goes seven times to the devil. Mary's parsley flags are tall enough to be trees, a mutant garden in the twilight zone. What a phantasm of witness is that?
Will versus shall. To do versus action. That straddling place between action, a verb, and inaction, a noun. To name it isn't enough. Passive witness versus active witness. A pronoun of ethics. Not just action, but right action. Knowing when to…
Will versus shall. To do versus action. That straddling place between action, a verb, and inaction, a noun. To name it isn't enough. Passive witness versus active witness. A pronoun of ethics. Not just action, but right action. Knowing when to…
Someone reads a book on insect dreams, another on the Chicago school of architecture, while a third in a blue cape reads a manual couched in the rhetoric of children's stories.
I feel like Kafka's cockroach trapped in a nightmare of a room and I can't fit through the bleedin' door. The train sways from side to side as we test the thickness of the air under the bay, all that water bearing down on us like a birthmother.
Instructions concentrate on... work with the I Ching, the book of changes. Everyone is looking for a metaphor by which to live. People making temporary sense of random acts of nature.
Then, the ego, afraid, said: There is no god. Afraid, it said there is a God, then it revolts, becomes a masterbuilder of elaborate ruses. There is either truth, or fact. All else is within the realm of religion, or poetry.
Linguistics at 4 AM. When I realize that the incomprehensible hunk of twisted metal on the front porch was once my car, that the explosion rocking the house like bombs being dropped—was my car. I became a victim of a victimless crime because I wasn't in the car. I was asleep on the couch where the truck hit.
The woman next to me taps her chest three times as if asking for forgiveness. How very Catholic of her. Mea maximum culprit. Classmates disembark, there goes my community.
On Bart we are all polite xenophobes needing a good excuse for eye contact, hence the proliferation of books on empty seats, which few are actually reading. She points to the signs of development, and I think, do I want this relationship now that we've made some sort of amends?
At night I replay the tapes: what needs to happen. Change, as I struggle between worlds—either witnessing it, or not.
Parsley or cilantro?
5/7/2003
added 9/17
Then, the ego, afraid, said: There is no god. Afraid, it said there is a God, then it revolts, becomes a masterbuilder of elaborate ruses. There is either truth, or fact. All else is within the realm of religion, or poetry.
Linguistics at 4 AM. When I realize that the incomprehensible hunk of twisted metal on the front porch was once my car, that the explosion rocking the house like bombs being dropped—was my car. I became a victim of a victimless crime because I wasn't in the car. I was asleep on the couch where the truck hit.
The woman next to me taps her chest three times as if asking for forgiveness. How very Catholic of her. Mea maximum culprit. Classmates disembark, there goes my community.
On Bart we are all polite xenophobes needing a good excuse for eye contact, hence the proliferation of books on empty seats, which few are actually reading. She points to the signs of development, and I think, do I want this relationship now that we've made some sort of amends?
At night I replay the tapes: what needs to happen. Change, as I struggle between worlds—either witnessing it, or not.
Parsley or cilantro?
5/7/2003
added 9/17
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