Semper Augustus

I owe some of you emails and entry comments, so I wanted to just post a big umbrella message here to say that my appearances online might be sparse for the next two weeks. I'm (finally!) moving into the new apartment, while still trying to finish up grad school applications, and the internet isn't set up there just yet. So! Please bear with me. I will be back in no time and overloading you with content! You're all in my heart : )

Getting to know a person is such an interesting process of unraveling.

Circling, hitting on certain points, alternating brevity, pause, and elaboration.

I had a really beautiful weekend. Saturday I went to this spice shop in the Italian Market that I tend to go to about once a week for various things. They also carry teas, nuts, beans, grains, and some flours. Sam and I suspect the woman who runs it is an alcoholic because we rarely see her without a glass of wine in her hand. She's slightly abrasive and mean, but not in a personal way, and I absolutely adore her. When she was ringing us up, there was another woman in the shop that her daughter-in-law was helping, and the woman was being really loud and slightly obnoxious. The woman, the owner, gave us the ginger we were buying for free and rounded down our bill to the last whole dollar. She said something like "I give breaks to the nice customers, I like you guys." And then she looked at the other woman in the store, the one being loud, and said "but I charge double to the ones I don't like!" and we laughed.

At a used book and music store, we found some records, and I found the box set of Anais Nin's diaries. Sam bought it for me but said I have to wait until Christmikkah!

Yesterday, we found a little barber shop for Sam to get his haircut and it was really cute inside. I liked being there. After that, we had originally planned on going to the art museum to see the Gorky and Duchamp exhibits. But as we were riding our bicycles to the area, I pulled over and stopped Sam. It was so beautiful outside, I just wanted to ride around and have a picnic. So we rode around until we found a deli and got sandwiches and giant pickles, rode up along the Schuylkill, and found a nice table for an impromptu picnic.

It was just a really nice, beautiful weekend. Simple and light and loving.

And next weekend... we're moving into the new apartment!

Lately, I have been trying to be calmer and less phased by bumps and holes. I feel like the past few years have been a process of calming down. Although it is really more a factor of having less energy to deal with turbulence rather than my own effort being put into it. I get more and more quiet. I forget who I am in relation to others.

I've been watching a lot of Hitchcock films lately, mostly because I've never seen many of them. My mother saw The Birds as a girl and is utterly terrified and made me promise I'd never see it. But we watched that and we watched Psycho last night. I really liked the dialogue in Psycho. They all seemed very human and playful with each other. And of course, Norman Bates was incredibly creepy.

I've been knitting and crocheting, and I really like that. Jen came over a while to give me some guidance, which helped tremendously. She also suggested picking up a copy of The Crochet Stitch Bible, which I got a few days ago, and have been practicing patterns. I think the yarn I've been using to crochet is less than ideal, though. I bought it a long time ago and I don't remember what it is, but it just doesn't feel good in my fingers and doesn't have a lot of give. Anyone have crochet yarn suggestions?

I've been working on my research paper and am hoping to have the second to last draft done by tonight, which I'm sending out to a few people (although there could very well end up being many, many drafts carried on after this, depending on the feedback I get from people- Heather, I'm sending you one, too).

I'm spending almost all of December in Michigan to help my mother with some things. I'm not particularly gleeful about going, but I want to stay positive about it, or else being in Michigan will eat my soul alive. I have all these plans for when I come back. I want to start going to a knitting circle I found, and a book club meetup, and volunteering with Brat Productions, a non-profit theater group in Philly. And I'm going to try and find employment, at least part time, since I'll be done with the majority of my grad school prep work.

God, I am having an intense few days.

I went out for drinks last night and woke up terribly hung over. I honestly rarely drink, but have been more lately (and yet still only once a week), and it seems excessive to me. When I think about it, I realize that it coincides with my efforts to befriend peers of my own age, whom I generally despise, especially for this particularly​ vulgar hobby.

But I went to the gym anyway, only a few hours later than usual. I did my running (I am getting so much better! I am not a very good runner naturally. My hips are very wide and does not lend itself to it. My gait is one that sways. But I am getting better. I sink deeper into my knees to align myself to stay straight and even. It is starting to feel less jolting and harsh, but nice, pleasant, fluid). But I couldn't stop thinking. All day I've been flooded with thoughts. I feel like I am spilling out everywhere. I jotted down notes to myself in the locker room and rushed home to write.

Hours later, I wanted to go out. I wanted to walk, to be among people. I wanted to open myself to the small chance that someone unknown might speak to me. I didn't need anything, so I made up errands. I put on my new wool patterned stockings, my favorite dress from Paris- black with gray lace trim and a plunging neckline, my mary janes, my new gray pea coat. I wore my hair down, as I have been lately, unlike in the summer where I wore it in braids almost everyday. It looks wavy and feral like this to me.

I got espresso from a cafe I had never been to before, but had been curious about. It was very quiet inside. I left. I walked to the tea shop. I walked to the bookstore, picked up some things, and sat down in the cafe to look through them. An older man was sitting at the table next to me and was talking to someone. He sounded like he had a distant French accent. I liked listening to him. I couldn't decide which book I liked better, so I got them both. I thought to myself: it is dangerous for me to travel in bookstores.

I got up to leave and looked behind me to get my coat. I realized that there was a man in the back corner of the cafe staring at me. He looked like he was in pain. He looked heartbroken.​ He looked beautiful. I stared back at him. I told myself to be courageous, to meet his stare. I showed him that I'm heartbroken,​ too. I continued staring at him, and he at me, as I went to the escalator. I stared at him until I couldn't see him anymore. I didn't want to let go of it. I wanted to go back up and hold his hand maybe, but it seemed too fantastic.

I paid, I walked home, I thought about strangers. Lately I keep thinking about someone I met a few months ago in the park. He wanted directions or something and we started talking, only I didn't really want to talk to him at first because I was on my way home from the doctor. I had an eye infection that day (which I learned, later, was an allergic reaction, was put on steroids, and it was fine) and my face had swollen up to epic proportions and I felt terribly vain and ugly and terrified that I was going to go blind and look that way forever. I hid behind my sunglasses. But he was sweet. He said something funny and that I thought was funny, too, and I didn't laugh, but I wanted to, and I wish that I had, because I think it would have comforted him. We talked about nothing serious or important, something fleeting, something simple, but it was charged and I liked talking to him.

I love it when strangers talk to me so much. It doesn't matter what it's about. Figs or books or sadness or directions (I love giving directions) (but I don't like being hit on. And I don't like jokes. Don't tell me any fucking jokes or I will glare at you with all the rage my comically small and nonthreateni​ng little body can muster. Because the joke isn't really for me. It isn't to make me laugh or smile, but to make the speaker feel validated in some way. Being made to feel obligated to laugh at something insipid is just infuriating to me and I feel like it demands so much more out of me than anything else. I feel really strongly about this. You can be funny, but do so spontaneousl​y, effortlessly​! Don't force it. Because I do like humor. But I like dry, asshole, sarcastic humor. Someone on the streets of NYC was trying to sell me his joke book one day as I passed through an outdoor market, and I was so upset with him for creating such a book, I told him exactly why, without reserving any of my thoughts on it. Maybe this seems silly to be so worked up about, but it seems like men find it very important to their masculinity to make other men, and especially women, laugh, and I feel like I'm subjected to it far more often than I would like, and I am just here to say: hey. Stop it.).

I need to change my life. I need to get out of this apartment more. Last year, around this time, I had decided to induce an artificial asylum. I wanted to be reclusive and silent. I wanted to recover from the past few years. I didn't want friends, and I was probably standoff-ish​ to people who tried to befriend me. I felt resigned and tired. I still felt soft, and not at all bitter, but just so weary.

I don't want this anymore.

Today I am cataloging letters. Putting them to rest, neatly tied up, hoping that they won't leak, that my embalming methods have been sufficient. Organization​ is not always necessarily a burial, but it is today. It is a loving memory. But then- it was always a loving memory, wasn't it? It was all echoes, nostalgia, palimpsests.​

And I am performing alchemy. I must turn something that was once imperative into a flight of fancy. The tequila(1) produced insufficient​ results- no gold, but only the ocean rushing in my ears like thunder, crying only occasionally​, but easily, quietly(2).

1.) I went to Village Whisky last night. Supposed to have the best bartender in town. I still prefer the speak easy, but I liked this one quite a bit as well. My drink was outrageously​ strong. I was drunk before my second glass. (Had I eaten? I don't remember.) They had a full pickle menu. We ordered pickled tomatoes with ricotta and tapenade and some oysters from the raw bar. I don't remember falling asleep. But I remember waking up in the middle the night, still grasping onto the end of a dream where I was calling for a waiter, but then crying out because I had a charley horse behind my knee. Behind my knee.

2.) Crying has never been easy for me. I have to focus in order to not go straight into a panic attack. Growing up, it was ingrained in me that I should not, under any circumstance​s, ever cry. From my father, in ways I'd rather not mention, but also from my figure skating coaches. I grew up doing it competitivel​y. When I was still very young, I would sometimes cry when I fell too hard. They screamed at me for it. I learned to suppress tears by holding my breath.

The unmentioned 3.) The use of footnotes- to spiral into each word, memory, idea, phrase, without distracting from the narrative, but to continue revealing- because these words, these words- it is *words all the way down* (4). Someone who is now a good friend of mine once accused me of never revealing something in its entirety at first mention, that each thought always had several layers interacting with it, and that our conversation​s, because of this, had cyclical properties. I would like to note here that I can't footnote everything I say. And isn't this true of everyone? Am I really doing something so out of the ordinary? I'm not *excessively​* secretive- I feel like I'm pretty open- at least to people that I would like to be open to. Perhaps I'm just too sensitive about people giving me shit over this type of thing.

4.) I've come to hate this anecdote from its overuse, and I think there are several versions of it. A Mayan woman questions a scientist or a philosopher,​ because her world view informs her that the world sits on top of a turtle's back, and he says something to the contrary.

"What's​ underneath the turtle?"​ asks the big bad scientist/​philosopher.

She pauses and thinks. "It's turtles all the way down."

I had a friend who appropriated​ this idea, replacing the turtle with a stomach, and this idea of endless consumption,​ and I rather liked that.

Oh, October, you have failed me. October is not supposed to be defined by heartache, but light! Whimsy! And apples!

Over the weekend, Sam and I were walking around the city, having a conversation that we've had many times at this point, speculating as to why there are rubber bands all over the sidewalks of Philly (has anyone else noticed this? Jen?). His theory is that they are coming from mailmen who have poorly designed pouches.

"I feel like it's an art project waiting to happen."

"Rubber bands of Philadelphia."

"Bound," he said, in an over dramatic way. I laughed.

"I hate our sense of humor. It is too much a product of our Beloit years. I need fewer layers of irony in my life."

"Like maybe only two or three?"

"Oh, no. I want to collapse the whole spectrum."

I want seriousness, I want lightsomeness, but I do not want irony. It creates so much distance. It makes me feel bitter. And I do not want to become hard. I've worked so hard to make myself soft. And I have such over dramatic feelings, but I do not want to think of them as over dramatic. I'd rather think of myself as completely naive than separate myself from my fears and desires through irony.

Two lines, from two different writers, that I'm thinking about:

From Baudelaire's Au Lecteur:
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
-Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!

(English:
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
Hypocrite reader, - You! -My twin! -My brother!)

And (unfortunately I don't know German, so you'll settle for only the English):

From Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
I allow myself to be deceived so as to not be on guard against deceivers.

I'm thinking about what it means to be double hearted, both for the heart in question and for the receiving heart. I'm thinking about what it means to know and love someone.

I'm thinking about honesty. I'm thinking about these lines from Baudelaire- he uses "tu", which is the informal "you", and he uses it deliberately, to diminish the distance between self and other.

Both of these pieces remind me of something so naked and bear, something which crosses from one heart to another. Recognizing damage and insecurity in another, recognizing it as your own, and, hopefully, compassionately, without harshness, for the despair is shared. I think to receive something like that from someone else, and to not admit to it, is so tragic.

Into each other, we turned our harlot eyes...

I suppose that that is a large thing to ask though.

I'm not sure if this makes sense, the thoughts are connected very clearly in my own head, but I'll leave them be.

I feel silenced by beauty today. There is sunshine and crisp air and a slightly unruly wind. And it is October. Everything is magic in October. I feel quiet and peaceful, even while noticing the stir of undercurrents within myself, within others. Nothing can touch me in October. I am too happy. The light seems to fall at a different angle, the temperature reminds me of birth, of the ocean, of being cradled, the falling leaves, the smell of decay- these things are peaceful to me. The world slowly dying, resigning itself to winter, to silence, overturning its fecundity.

All the lights are starting to burn out in my house and they're too high for me to reach them. Soon, I will wander a house lit by candles and jack-o-lanterns and I will be very, very pleased.

Today I'm finishing up my first draft of the research paper I'm writing to use for my grad school applications. I want to have it done by tonight so I can use all of October to edit and revise it and to work on my cover letter.

I've been seriously working on my writing for about two months now and I'm starting to understand the process more at this point, although still immaturely. When I first started, it seemed so obvious: just write. But there are cadences to the day that I follow naturally, that I have to be aware of, things that I need, attitudes I need to adjust. I feel like I'm at a point where I am figuring out how I work best in this environment, what strategies I can use, that I'm still new and that it's okay to make mistakes.

I just want literature to completely permeate my life. I want to read and write constantly. I want conversation over books. I want someone to recognize when I'm citing a poem.

On Twitter, @anaisnin mentioned a paper that I'm using for my research (Lynette Felber's The Three Faces of June: Anais Nin's Appropriation of Feminine Writing)- a paper that has been troubling me over the way in which the author uses "presymbolic/literal language" vs. "figurative language". I sent her a message asking her about it and gave her my thoughts and she said she would get back to me. But just this small, brief exchange was absolutely thrilling to me.

Today I'm dressed like a little girl. My hair in braids, my black rose ring and barrette, black wool stockings and a black cotton dress underneath a dress-length green baby doll sweater that buttons over the bust and has a hood, my new black flats, glasses.

About a year ago, I saw an older woman with long, wavy black hair come into the coffee shop wearing a shabby dress and clutching a doll. She looked terrified and haunted. I just wanted to wrap blankets around her and embrace her.

( Salad Season )

( Okay so I just watched The Graduate and I've been thinking about it. )

Lately, I crave emptiness of all sorts.

Absence. Idleness. Space. Silence.

I have a constant feeling/pressure leak that I cannot keep up with my desires. My heart palpitates when I think of what I am running toward (death?). It is when I resign that I feel soothed. More and more this resignation seems to to indicate an acceptance of my slowness- a pace that I truly prefer and require for the things I wish to possess.

Walking around Tyler State Park on Saturday, I tried to walk slowly in order to notice the less obvious lurking under leaves and within tiny nooks. I thought: one must have to live very slowly in order to obtain these secrets. Some of the sweetest flowers I found were so private and hidden, they would be lost entirely by swiftness.

I would simply like to slow down, but the slower I travel, the more I realize that I would like to go slower, as if endlessly, down a spiraling pit of details (but also stories, but also dreams, but also wonders). But even within this whim I find myself wanting to hurry my deceleration, to rush and conquer it.

I attended a dao zen retreat several years ago that gave us several activities to perform during our stay and at our own leisure. One of these activities was to walk a certain distance or time period (I don't recall how this activity was measured), but to walk it at an unbearable slow pace- to the point that for some of the participants, mere balance became an obstacle for how low they held balance on one foot while the other passed over in step.

I find it somewhat strange that, at least within the English language, the word slow has an exclusively negative connotation. Negating speed, losing velocity, dense, boring, tedious, dull. Synonyms include: apathetic, crawling, creeping, dawdling, delaying, dilatory, disinclined, drowsy, easy, heavy, inactive, indolent, inert, lagging, leaden, lethargic, loitering, negligent!, passive, phlegmatic, postponing, procrastinating, reluctant, remiss, slack, slothful, sluggish, stagnant!, supine, tardy, time-consuming!, and torpid.

Antonyms? Active, busy.

I lingered over every word in this list to think about their consequences. Most of the synonyms seem to be attitudes that can be expressed by slowness, but not necessarily slowness itself. For instance, slowness doesn't necessarily imply apathy, but it can express apathy. But, then, why wasn't savoring included in this list? Does one not eat slowly in order to savor a particularly decadent meal? Or again, slowness can be a method of delaying something, but it can also be a method of thoroughly examining. Stagnant surprised me, as did inactive, as I think of slowness still requiring some movement.

Elsewhere, I found it listed as restricting, anchoring, choking, decreasing, detaining, diminishing, hindering, holding back, impeding, waiting, lessening, reducing, retarding, stalling.

Mostly I found it surprising that it was set as an opposition of advancement.

I prefer: dreamy, idle (in the way I have described it above, as capacious), imperceptible (the secret, the hidden, the unseen), leisurely, lingering (savoring!), ponderous, prolonged (I imagined prolonged, tormented desire here, thrillingly painful), and quiet.

I truly just wish for the calm -- which only seems strange because my life, outwardly, is fairly inactive. But I do feel busy. I wish for calm and emptiness in order to fill it to the brim and begin again. I wish to scale back in order to explode a magnified vision and explore all its tiny threads. I wish to fall deeper into each moment in order to feel its breath passing on my skin.

( some pictures from Tyler )

I just read Ignorance by Milan Kundera, which is about nostalgia and two Czech immigrants returning to Prague after the fall of communism. References to The Odyssey are woven through the narrative as they think and discuss the idea of return.

It made me think of saying goodbye when leaving somewhere permanently or a long time. I generally try to avoid this moment. It feels awkward and forced for me; I cannot yet feel the pain of missing that particular person, I can only anticipate what it might be like, and that anticipation feels false. I prefer to leave the friendship open, as if it were continuing, but changing form. To understand a person through both presence and absence.


( Nostalgia )

Just custom designed this feather pin for a wedding party!

I've been looking to try something new with feathers and loved the opportunity to create this piece.

I'm currently reading A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. This is the first book I've read by her, although I've read her articles in The New Yorker (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE The New Yorker? It's one of my only current subscriptions, the other being Omikuji, which all of you should seriously considering subscribing to! "Omikuji" means "sacred lottery", and is a cyberfunded project by Catherynne M Valente, one of my favorite contemporary writers. Each month, she writes a short story that is unavailable through any other vendor, and one subscriber is selected to receive a unique gift. They are mailed electronically or through the post and can be purchased for one time or year long intervals. To me, it feels like a special way to connect reader to writer.) Senses is one of the best books I've read this year, full of interesting little pieces of culture and science.

I mostly wanted to post about it so I could include a selection of Epicurus that she mentioned and did not intend on so many tangents in such little space, but nonetheless! In the Taste chapter, she describes the Roman mindset. Fighting boredom with decadence, she writes, "Orgies and dinner parties were the main diversions, and the Romans amused themselves with the lavishness of a people completely untainted by annoying notions of guilt. In their culture, pleasure glistened as a good in itself, a positive achievement, nothing to repent. Epicurus spoke for a whole society when he asked:

Is man then meant to spurn the gifts of Nature? Has he been born but to pluck the bitterest fruits? For whom do those flowers grow, that the gods make flourish at mere mortals' feet? ... It is a way of pleasing Providence to give ourselves up to the various delights which she suggests to us; our very needs spring from her laws, and our desires from her inspirations.

I'm taking my time to read this book, the way one might take time to chew more precisely and savor a favorite dish, letting it sizzle and evaporate on one's tongue.