The Alcohol Journals

An Intervention

2010-08-14T12:34:00.001-04:00

This summer I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The beauty and horror of the book is that it seems to somehow enact its own theme: addiction. I became addicted to reading it. I woke up in the morning and grabbed it; I retired to the bedroom every night with it tucked under my arm. I consumed all 1079 pages, footnotes and all, in three weeks. I couldn't put it down. My life was Infinite Jest and the World Cup. When I finished it I placed it on my bookshelf, but my eyes always found there way back to its spine. A question about a footnote erupted, and I grabbed it again, tearing into its pages. I actually began reading it again. L. was horrified. And then I began to realize I had a problem. Somehow David Foster Wallace played on those addicted to words in his masterpiece, "grotesque in that way that flaunts its grotesquerie" (344). So I put it away.

After a disturbing phone call, I decided to front an intervention within my family. I wrote a heartfelt letter pleading with a family member to stop enabling and start helping my alcoholic father, and Infinite Jest once again appeared in my hand. Quoting furiously, I hurt for everyone dealing with addiction. Really hurt. My addiction to words is nothing like this, my addiction to writing will never plunge me into the depths of human existence. I will never understand what that is like. What I do understand now is that this novel is genius. It cannot be written off as a postmodern satire or critique. It is grotesque, and that grotesquerie will never leave you.

A passage on addiction from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace:

"Then came the day I lost my job to drinking.' Concord's John L. has a huge hanging gut and no ass at all, the way some big older guys' asses seem to get sucked into their body and reappear as a front gut. Gately, in sobriety, does nightly sit-ups out of fear this'll happen to him, as age thirty approaches. Gately is so huge that no one sits behind him for several rows. John L. has the biggest bunch of keys Gately has ever seen. They're on one of those pull-outable-wire janitor's keychains that clip to a belt loop, and the speaker jangles them absently, unaware, his one tip of the hat to public nerves. He is also wearing gray janitor pants. 'Lost my damn job, ' he says. 'I mean to say I knew where it was and whatnot. I just went in as usual one day and there was some other fellow doing it,' which gets another laugh.

---- then more Losses, with the Substance seeming like the only consolation against the pain of the mounting Losses, and of course you're in Denial about it being the Substance that's causing the very Losses it's consoling you about ----

'Alcohol destroys slowly but thoroughly is what a fellow said to me the first night I Come In, up in Concord, and that fellow ended up being my sponsor.'

---- then less mild seizures, D.T.'s during attempts to taper off too fast, introduction to subjective bugs and rodents, then one more binge and more formicative bugs; then eventually the terrible acknowledgement that some line has been undeniably crossed, and fist-at-the-sky, as God-is-my-witness vows to buckle down and lick this thing for good, to quit for all time, then maybe a few white-knuckled days of initial success, then a slip, then more pledges, clock-watching, baroque self-regulations, repeated slips back into the Substance's relief after like two days' abstinence, ghastly hangovers, head-flattening guilt and self-disgust, superstructures of additional self-regulation (e.g., not before 0900h. not on a worknight, only when the moon is waxing, only in the company of Swedes) which also fail ----

'When I was drunk I wanted to get sober, and when I was sober I wanted to get drunk,' John L. says; 'I lived that way for years, and I submit to you that's not livin, that's a fuckin death-in-life.'

---- then unbelievable psychic pain, a kind of peritonitis of the soul, psychic agony, fear of impending insanity (why can't I quit if I so want to quit, unless I'm insane?), appearance at hospital detoxes and rehabs, domestic strife, financial free-fall, eventual domestic Losses ----

'And then I lost my wife to drinking. I mean I still knew where she was and whatnot. I just went in one day and there was some other fellow doing it,' at which there's not all that much laughter, lots of pained nods: it's often the same all over, in terms of domestic Losses.

---- then vocational ultimatums, unemployability, financial ruin, pacreatitus, overwhelming guilt, bloody vomiting, cirrhotic neuralgia, incontinence, neuropathy, nephritis, black depressions, searing pain, with the Substance affording increasingly brief periods of relief; then, finally, no relief available anywhere at all; finally it's impossible to get high enough to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the Substance, hate it, but you still find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you finally want to stop doing more than anything on earth and it's no fun doing it anymore and you can't believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can't stop, it's like you're totally fucking bats, it's like there's two yous; and when you'd sell your own dear mum to stop and still, you find, can't stop, then the last layer off jolly friendly mask comes off, and you all of the sudden see the Substance as it really is, for the first time you see the Disease as it really is, really has been all this time, you look in the mirror at midnight and see what owns you, what'd become what you are ----

'A fuckin livin death, I tell you it's not being near alive, by the end I was undead, not alive, and I tell you the idea of dyin was nothing compared to the idea of livin like that for another five or ten years and then dyin,' with audience heads nodding in rows like a wind-swept meadow; boy can they ever Identify.

---- and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally dead serious trouble, because the Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smiley-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face On The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool- and Substance-crusted T-shirt you have worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, mire teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble is It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even thought the substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only the bars in every direction. You are in the kind of hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around. You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody agrees it's more like someplace very high an unsupported: you're on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward..."

A short selection about AA:

"[...]You are not unique, they'll say: this initial hoplessness unites every soul in this broad cold salad-bar'd hall. They are like Hindenburg-survivors. Every meeting is a reunion, once you've been in for a while.

And then the palsied newcomers who totter in desperate and miserable enough to Hang In and keep coming and start feebly to scratch beneath the unlikely insipid surface of the thing, Don Gately's found, then get united by a second common experience. The shocking discovery that the thing actually does seem to work. Does keep you Substance-free. It's improbable and shocking. [...] And this unites them, nervously, this tentative assemblage of possible glimmers of something like hope, this grudging move toward maybe acknowledging that this unromantic, unhip, clichéd AA thing -- so unlikely and unpromising, so much the inverse of what they'd come too much to love -- might really be able to keep the lover's toothy maw at bay."

The next paragraph is an example of the best black humor. Tears of laughter turn dark and nauseating.

"Only in Boston AA can you hear a fifty-year-old immigrant wax lyrical about his first solid bowel movement in adult life.'

[Insert Irish narrative - I won't post it, you must read this book]

"The man's red-leather face radiant throughout. Gately and the other White Flaggers fall about, laugh from the gut, a turd that practically had a pulse, an ode to a solid dump; but the lightless eyes of certain palsied back-row newcomers widen with a very private Identification and possible hope, hardly daring to Imagine...A certain Message had been Carried."

Pages 346-352

Too scared to intervene, I turn back to David Foster Wallace.

A Reaching

2010-07-29T13:37:00.003-04:00

What intertwines the ideas of beauty and virtue? The answer is erotic attachment, the visceral longing for beauty, and for that beauty to serve the purpose of reflecting a greater truth, to point to a mysterious beyond, something greater than our individual lives yet affirming each individual life, a life affirming beauty in the midst of unrelenting death and chaos. Darwin touched upon the beauty that emerges from indifferent natural laws. Freud understood the pychological implications of living in a world without the security blanket of religion, a substitute for our former image of our parents. Plato ascends to Beauty itself not by reveling only in the sensual delights of the body, but surpassing those for the sensual and intellectual delights of the soul, the psyche. Aristotle, above all else, understand how fundamental desire is to our search for meaning. We are searching for meaning, an all-too-human meaning in a chaotic and indifferent world. Nature does not need our meaning, it does not need our ideas of truth and beauty. We need to create a truth behind the beauty, to shape the chaos into something beautiful, to conform the limitlessness of the universe into palatable drops of meaning to enrich our lives. It is a Heraclitean paradox. The meaning does not exist in itself, the search for meaning is what truly exists. The desire is what is real, not the aim of our desires. In Plato's Symposium, I always wonder if the story of the ladder of love shows a way for humans to possess Beauty itself in the mind ,or if it shows we merely reach out for Beauty endlessly as a part of the human condition. I must say that it seems like our lives are a reaching, not a possessing; a process of becoming, never being; more flux than static.

Place Matters

2010-07-21T14:24:00.000-04:00

I never understood this so palpably until now. I'm sitting on a bench, which happens to be on a pier. The waves sparkle and crest, the constant sound of swirling and breaking against concrete. The sound surges into my body. The screeching of glee from a child. The chatter of teenagers. A sniff in the air from a passing dog. And above all else the permeating rays of the sun. They seem as sound, a low hum reverberating like bass. A perfectly blue sky, a cool breeze lifting singular strands of hair. I can feel them drift across my lips. I feel the sun on my cheeks. I smell the sea. This place is who I am right now. Equally the grey dregs of winter drear are my being during those long months. I do not agree with that place. I oppose it, in fact. I close my eyes and return to my day dream forest cottage. There my space is warm and sunny, the pine air soothes as it rustles the papers of my imagined home. In those dreamy moments I find the space to exist. Returning to the wintry reality breaks my heart.

2010-03-01T11:39:00.003-05:00

I hate finding a new doctor. I scheduled a doctor's appointment for early this morning. I made sure the office was one stop away from my apartment on the light rail. It's convenient. I get to the hospital, and no one has heard of my doctor. I call the office. No answer. The hospital refers me to a clinic, a few blocks away. I walk in the snow, a little groggy, a little annoyed, a little lost. Call again, no answer. I find the clinic I was refered to and guess what? My doctor only works on Wednesdays, and today is Monday. She must be at another clinic a few more blocks away on a street I've never heard of. Can I see someone here, I ask politely. "No" is my answer as the receptionist returns to her obviously personal call. (Remember, I'm new here and I'm more familiar with Tribeca than Jersey City.) Pre-coffee Dana erupts in an angry tirade and leaves in tears, wanders the icy streets sniffling and squinting in the morning sun, and gives up. Poor Luke get the brunt of my fury and more tears. We conclude I should look in Tribeca. Perhaps they will be more organized. I hate finding a new doctor.

2010-02-25T13:56:00.005-05:00

As if my windows were giant flat screens, I watch the big wet snowflakes rush to the ground in a mad dash. All of that movement stirs a quiet calm. I am tucked indoors with my mug of coffee, laptop and sweats, and begin to remember my first experience with snow.

The setting is suburban Texas circa 1990. I wake up. Something feels different. I scramble to the living room and gape astonishingly at the glass sliding door to the backyard - everything is white and glistening. It had stopped snowing, but the remnants are breathtaking. I open the door and an artic blast hits me square in the face. Maybe I should attire myself in something other than pj's.

My little brother and I rush to our closets. I think I put on at least 3 pairs of pants and five shirts. We run out and scream and play for what was probably fifteen minutes max. My hands are freezing, wait, I can't feel my hands! My thin cotton gloves are soaking wet from packing too many snowballs, and my clothes are soaked from those damn snow angels. I retire to the warm interior, and let my brother play by himself outside. He entreats me to return, but I am soaking my hands in hot water - oh, the pain!

Another anecdote involving excessive clothes:

Once again I have gotten myself in some kind of trouble. Mom gives me a talking to, and informs me that I have ten minutes to reflect on what I have done and then its spanking time. I shuffle slowly to my room and slump down on the bed. My dresser catches my eye. I have a plan: I put on every single pair of undies I own, and then pull my pants over this obvious hulk of padding. I don't remember what happened next, but I'll never forget what I truly believed was a foolproof plan. Another example of kid logic.

2010-02-22T00:26:00.006-05:00

It's a blustery winter night in Dallas. I pull long johns onto my lanky 10 year-old body, and plan to hunker down with a good book as I wind down another uneventful Christmas break day. This week's selection is Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. As soon as I situate the book perfectly on my knees, my little brother bursts into my room with his endless amount of manic energy. My plans for the evening will be spoiled unless I re-strategize around this little ball of fury. Frustration.

Epiphany. I clean out the odds and ends I keep in an extra bedroom dresser. I throw some blankets and pillows in the two gigantic cabinets, and tell my brother about Laura's long treacherous winter. Books in hand, we pretend we are barreling across the American plains in covered wagon with only our stories to distract us from the howling of the wind outside. We each cuddle up in our own personal cabinet with our books and mounds of blankets and pillows. I throw him a flashlight. He closes himself in his cabinet, completely entertained by our role playing game. A wry smile spreads across my face. Another save by a clever big sister.

2010-02-14T00:19:00.003-05:00

There comes a point when you look around and ask, "How did I become so normal?" I work two jobs, five days a week, bake bread and cookies, love my boyfriend and our cat, watch tv on my days off, and am addicted to the internet. I read magazines on the commute, listen to NPR daily, go for brunch once a week, drink wine at night, and worry about the future.

2010-01-31T23:16:00.009-05:00

My grandmother, the sweetest woman, would grab me and my brother as we walked in the door, and squeeze. Oh, how she would squeeze us, our arms jutting out lifeless as she swung our tiny bodies back and forth, as she sang in her southern voice,"Gimme some sugar! Oh, I missed y'all!" She always had cookies in the cookie jar, a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge, and the soaps blaring.

She always asked us what we wanted to eat - for lunch and breakfast. My favorite breakfast was her butter-soaked oatmeal, lunch was chicken pot pie or tuna salad sandwiches (if I could assist in making them), and dinner a hamburger patty with mashed potatoes and corn. She always made us dessert, too, which usually consisted of ice cream in a colored wafer cone.

One day I started a closet club (I was notorious for creating clubs as a child. I had a "sex club," but that story is for another day). In the closet club my brother and I would sneak two footstools and a flashlight into my grandmother's walk-in closet, and make shadow puppets and all the usual kid stuff. What I remember most, though, was when I told Joey to steal the whipped cream from the fridge. He did it obediently - like every devious thing I told him to do - and we spent the next heavenly minutes devouring whipped cream from can to mouth. I remember a lot of candy stealing going on in my grandparents house.

Speaking of food (I'm getting hungry!), Nan and Dad also hosted Christmas Eve dinner, one of my favorite times of the year. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day were mostly spent in Caddo Mills with my Dad's extended family that I never felt comfortable around. But Joey and I loved the magic of Christmas Eve with the grandparents! The things I remember from every year were cheesy grits, deviled eggs and pecan pie. I ate and ate.

I was a good eater. When my brother couldn't finish his summer lunches, I would make a point of asking (informing) my grandmother that I was eating his leftovers, and then having seconds of my own. She loved that I loved to eat her food. I wonder why now I have problems with an oral fixation and overeating....

My grandpa lived in the garage, or at least spent all day out there. Nan would knock on the wall to let him know lunch was ready. He always ate a snickers afterward. His favorite snack was peanuts. When my dad would come pick us up, my grandpa would bend over and give me a kiss on the cheek. He smelled of cigarettes and whiskey and I would turn away when his sandpaper scruff rubbed up my face the wrong way.

I love my grandmother. Nan, why did you have to die so young? At 14 you didn't get to know the adult me, and I think you would have lover her. And maybe recognized yourself in her a little.

I still dream about her, that she didn't die and that she's still in her kitchen making lunch, or that she came back so I could finally say goodbye.

2010-01-24T16:12:00.011-05:00

2009

I always believed 27 would be a formative year, and that something would happen - internally or externally - that would change my life. Something did happen - I became comfortable in my own skin. I was happy. Some highlights from 27 for posterity:

Shedding my comps study ritual
Eating cookies and drinking smoothies at 61C
Jess's lessons in meanness
Balloon antics with Jamie
Rehashing my Christian past with Chris, and finding some much needed closure
Laughing with Zack because life is like a circus
Receiving bacon as a payment for services rendered
Fleeing from Pittsburgh tornadoes and finding shelter in vodka and gin
Coming home to my two men in our cozy treehouse apartment
The never ending bibliography fueled by the library never more than a few steps away
Morning glories
Tonic chasing sunbeams
Snowflakes and 28 Days Later
Deadwood, Madmen, Breaking Bad, Daisy
Disappearing in Boston Christmas snowbanks
Weekly meetings with Sarah, my anchor
Fast and furious Ethics course
Kierkegaard ponderings with Gabriela
The trauma of apartment hunting in Brooklyn and Manhattan
Comforts of a country home with family
Walking the steamy raccoon-filled streets of Manhattan with my ladies
Surviving the move to New York
My Petrarca alter-ego as Cachetona Mama Pitufa
Jersey City Light Rail as my car substitute
Early mornings and late nights at NJCU
Baltimore Thanksgiving - wine and trivia
Learning and perfecting bread baking
Rockefeller blizzard with Luke, Allison and Brian
Christmas in Texas
Festive New Years in Philadelphia with George, Katherine & Remi

2009-12-18T14:24:00.003-05:00

My mother bends over me to give me my goodnight kiss. Her oversized belly keeps her from reaching me, so I jump up and throw my arms around her neck. It is Easter night. I sleep on a futon. I used to have a waterbed, but I didn't like it, so I opted for the exotic pillow mattresses my father brought back from his stint in the Navy. I am four years old. My Easter basket sits on my dresser. When my mother--8 months pregnant with my brother--leaves the room I snatch the basket and shove it under the covers. Feasting ensues.

2009-12-17T14:11:00.003-05:00

An urge to write has welled up once again, but I am so woefully out of practice I feel shame at the mere thought of publishing anything that could be read by others. But it seems the blog as a cultural phenomenon was smothered to death by Facebook and Twitter with all its overly addictive snippets of information, so I will blunder on here. It gives me a sense of motivation to at least correct spelling mistakes for the watchful few.

I am so corrupted by academia that any novel thought I may have is bound up within a tight metaphysical structure, which leads to either bland or mystical scholarship (but enjoyable teaching!) So I'll skip all that. Maybe I will jumpstart this process in the same way I initiated my first blog, which was a dream journal. Instead of dreams, though, I want to record my waking dreams, which always take me to my childhood.

I sit waiting for the train surrounded by empty-eyed crowds, and my mind flutters away to distant memories, like I am returning to the crumpled pages of a bedside stalwart, or pushing play on a video that is waits patiently everyday. I am a perpetual remember-er, mind hazy with all those memories floating about, aflutter in waves of nostalgia. I have always been this way. I remember feeling nostalgia for the smells of my Montessori school when I returned from summer break every year - I left that school when I was five. Even now a certain generic soap in public restrooms sends me all the way back to that old-fashioned schoolhouse of Ave Maria in Garland, Texas. How does my mind contain so many memories from my first years of life at my first school? And all my shenanigans?

One of the teachers was an older nun. I liked her. One day she asked the class, "Raise your hand if you can say something really, really fast." I raised my hand and blurted out some gibberish. She scolded my for trying to trick her. In my mind I did say something coherent, but it was so fast even I couldn't understand it. I love young minds!

2009-07-23T19:10:00.005-04:00

In April, I began to write, "A moment of clarity. A breakthrough."

I had nothing else to say than those meager words signifying a change, the meaning obfuscated. How was I to summarize the moment when my familiar pattern of avoidance and numbing emerged from the dark corners of my psyche? When all the fragmented pieces of my identity (that I am all too aware of) suddenly seem to be part of a whole.

What I was faced with was an intellectual and emotional reckoning of my childhood self with the adult self. All my fears and dreams suddenly have a source. All my yearning for the ineffable, to unfurl this invisible blindfold, to be submerged in pure affect, to feel every titillating experience with full force, to be wrapped in words and feel their immensity - all of these had a beginning. Likewise the frustration with my passive shyness as if I were adrift in unknown static - all this, too, had an explanation, or at least a point of departure.

I sought therapy in March 2007 after I was accused of cheating on a midterm, which happened to fall on Valentine's Day. I couldn't handle the trauma of being confronted by this vision of myself that I abhorred. I was also under an undue amount of stress from teaching my first class, reconnecting with a mercurial lover, and the daunting task of presenting a paper at an upcoming conference in Rome.

I had also struggled with this sense of blindness since my budding adolescence - a feeling that something dark was lurking and that I could not see it, only feel its presence within me. I remember asking my mother about this, whether it was some demonic force - the only language I really had to describe this strange and new feeling within me. I told her I needed help, that something was wrong, something felt amiss. I felt like a serpent had wrapped itself around me, like Satan in the tree of knowledge, and that its embrace was blinding me.

In high school I had reoccurring nightmares about incubi hovering above me with their icy claws pawing my body, strung up by fear. They would possess me, become one with my body and soul. Being a Christian was supposed to give me power over demons, power through the blood of Christ, but in my dreams I would invoke his name and the demon could not be stopped. Salvation anxiety - was I a true Christian, was I really good? I still treasure this idea of goodness that I float around cloaked in restlessness and anxiety- Lilith caught in her own deadly storm.

S. and I recognized this impossible ideal that I floated around like a gravitational force. A standard of good that no one can reach, least of all myself. Other people that don’t meet this standard I consider as good, but not me. Good is always doing what is right, never hurting anyone, whether it is intentional or unintentional. Yes, these words passed through my lips. I couldn’t believe it.

Confrontation is difficult, especially when the criticism seems unfounded. I am not a cheater (Duquesne), a liar (Pino's), a slacker (61C), and something about being told I am these imperfect things cuts through to the core of my self-image. What is my self image? I seem to have two - the child and adult. What other criticisms in the past have haunted me? Shyness from friends, laziness from my father, and selfishness from my mother. She told me rarely, but I found an old journal before I moved to college that described her fear that I was selfish and would always be so, a prayer to God. I was always the good one, although perhaps not the most endearing.

Part of me wants to keep up the chase, forget the breakthrough, prolong the yearning for truth; I am a procrastinator. I am always on the run, chasing after an idea without the time to let it fully form. I always grasp it just in the nick of time, and then let it loose once again. I like the rush. But this time I want to hold it long enough to give it a name.

I'm moving soon, and I want to pack, pack it all up in easily accessible bundles. I want to pack up Pittsburgh: Who I have become here, how I have changed, and to create a meaningful image I can return to, visit and use a as platform to launch myself into something new, to unlock all those latent potentialities, some of which have withdrawn to the depths in my five years here. One image that helps is this holding that memory of trauma or fear in my lap, to recognize it, let it out sometimes, inspect it and put it away when that is best.

I am a woman now. I became a Christian in high school - able to funnel a new and scary emotional capacity into an image of myself and the world I loved. I became an intellectual at Baylor - able to understand why human beings experience various emotions in their lives and applying that to my own. I became an adult in Pittsburgh. I feel I am beginning to weave these two parts of myself together - the emotional and intellectual.

At the cusp of this breakthrough I am learning that there is more to weave together in order to open up possibilities in my life. My adult self and my inner child. All of those early experiences imprinted on my soul do not hold a language explaining them. I do not need to explain everything, but I do want to learn more about how my past enters and effects my present.

It is the end of July and I have one week left in Pittsburgh. I ended my meetings with S. last week. Two years and four months of a strange, intense and enlightening relationship. Her last words to me: Open brightly.

2009-03-04T16:09:00.002-05:00

Everything is muddled and confused. I feel drained of energy. Is it the long winter, the grey days of confinement, the immobility of a frozen life. I fantasize about moving somewhere with warm winds tousling sun-streaked hair, sun blinding sight, ice cubes slowly melting in sweet beverages that cool my throat as it slides down my body, sweat dripping down naked thighs, the sound of leaves rubbing against one another, and the cicadas singing wildly in their branches, desert, ocean, lakes, mountains, anything living. I need nature, I am obsessed with the word: nature, one, self, beauty. Words that tumble again and again inside my brain.

I want a dog, a lovely little bundle I can run with in the park and who can sleep next to me every night. Yes, he would terrorize my poor cat, but it would be worth the risk.

No more leg warmers and scarves and layers weighing down my Texas soul. I hate the cold and grey, and I will never chose to live in a cold climate again. Except for a brief stint in New York City, I wouldn’t consider anywhere else. My sanity is not worth it, I am withering, I want to flourish, I want happiness. I want to walk and feel alive. I want to teach philosophy, but if I could not find a job somewhere beautiful, I could teach anything, or wait tables, or do anything. Maybe I am spoiled, but I think I know my priorities. Withering away in a dying city is not one of them.

I can’t think, I can’t write. Nothing inspires me anymore, those words that used to flow so mystically from my being seem like form letters I force out on cold keys. I’m only writing now because the sun is beaming in through the window on my face, reminding me that I can live once again. Writing used to define me, my therapy. Now even my therapist seems bored by my uninspired complaints against life in Pittsburgh. “Are you really moving? Are you leaving it up to the cosmos again? And does this cosmos have a name?” I am wishy-washy. I say I like to leave things up to chance, to open up to the chaos of the universe, but maybe I am just lazy. I do like surprises, but I hate tedium even more. Ho hum, what is happening? Where am I? How did I end up here for so long? I am 27, I thought I would have had more adventures by this time in my life. Instead I have lived in Waco and Pittsburgh as an adult. I am a wanderer, and the horizon is calling.

2008-12-04T13:51:00.002-05:00

I suppose I should formally announce that I am ABD (All But Dissertation) as of Tuesday night. I passed my comprehensive exam - a two hour oral evaluation of the history of philosophy by four experts in their respective fields of ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary.

To give a glimpse of what the past few months of my life have been like, I posted a link to my renovated dream blog. I am haunted by the philosophical past:

http://danalita.blogspot.com/2008/11/after-few-espressos-i-remembered-my.html#links

2008-11-08T02:25:00.009-05:00

Domestic Goddess

flour dusted body
invisible clouds of oven heat
hot crunchy granola
cinnamon & butter chocolate drops
swimming anchovies
massive arugala salads in glass bowls

romano & rosemary crackers
slightly burnt
cream of wheat with agave swirls

tomatoes ripening on unseasonable vines
spiced apple cider
decapitating spindly ginger dolls
bubbling lavender oil
freshly whipped cream atop it all

2008-10-27T11:28:00.006-04:00

my soul.

one part philosopher, two parts helium.

http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/index.html

2008-10-24T15:06:00.000-04:00

Don't we all love Palin?

http://palinaspresident.us/

2008-09-28T14:34:00.009-04:00

I tried to start a post. This is what happened.

---------------------
Anger, growing frustration directed toward self, compulsive shopping, psychic prisons, anxiety concerning dissertation, wrestling with image as woman-child, weight gain, brain fog, life fog, obsession with the thoughtless act of cleaning, Deadwood, a reversal of the lover-beloved structure, money fears, sleeping in, a family member with paranoid schizophrenia on the way to homelessness, the best conversation with my dad, the phone calls I need to have but can't seem to make...

Daily Life: Sleep in, research grants and dissertation, become anxious and water plants.
----------------------

This week I have been sick (again). I am not as angry. I have been talking about my Christian past at the cafe and in the analytic session. I bought a new computer and a winter coat.

Reborn at last.

2008-05-19T15:21:00.002-04:00

It's funny when you realize you're happy. It almost seems impossible. It's not ecstasy or elation, nor a balanced awareness of perfection.

It is lounging in the sun laughing. It is couch cushions and chamomile tea. It is floating around in frosty pints of beer. It snatches the cat and sneezes. Happiness is fun.

2008-03-21T19:13:00.002-04:00

After a bottle of champagne I write a note to a dear old friend:

I have a penchant for torture. My life, broken, a record of repetitions, continues on. And I love it. I don’t think I could exist without a taste for bitterness. I could be happy, as Jenny Lewis says, and I can’t remember why I hated so, and why I still do. I’ve been listening to her and Edith Frost lately. I hope you can see me. Maybe I am a little more fucked up than you remember. Maybe.

------------
No matter what anyone says, I am brave. Even in my repetitive failures I risk it all, and suffer, maybe needlessly, but I know what I am in for. So don't feel sorry for me. A little self-hate makes life interesting. Although I am am ready to be done with that life. I thought I was ready to move on, but I was convinced to give it one more whirl. Well, this ride is making me sick. I think I am getting off.

2008-03-05T13:30:00.001-05:00

Zeus, seduced by Danae's big brown eyes, impregnates her during this golden shower.

2008-02-26T10:04:00.001-05:00

As much as I thought things would be different, it is evermore the same, disappointingly.

2008-01-01T11:15:00.001-05:00

Corona
by Paul Celan

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.

2008-01-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

2007 Revisited

January
-Awkward New Year’s celebration with Luke, Allison and Mike
- Resign myself to Luke once again
+ Teach first philosophy class at Duquesne
- Teaching induced anxiety that lasts all year
- 25th Birthday
+ Spend time with Mom and family in Cleveland for birthday
++ Taine is the best roomie ever

February
- Lose friendships with Mike and Allison
- On and off with Luke
- Valentine’s Day: Midterm Exam
- Nervous breakdown when accused of cheating on Midterm

March
+ + Begin Psychotherapy
- Onslaught of migraines for the following months

April
+ Spend 10 days in Rome
+ Dazzle the crowds with my paper at John Cabot
+/- Become closer to Luke upon return

May
+ Decide upon dissertation topic and advisor

June
+ Trip to Baltimore
- Say goodbye to George
-/+ Teach summer intensive “Ethics”

July
+ + + Christine and Mary visit Pittsburgh
- Sign lease with bipolar woman in Wilkinsburg hole
- - Move belongings out of Squirrel Hill with Taine and Luke
- - Say goodbye to Taine

August
+ Farwell trip to Niagara Falls with Luke
- - - Say goodbye to Luke
- Camp out in empty Squirrel Hill apartment for two weeks
- Two weeks of sweltering hell in Wilkinsburg; gain subsequent beer-weight
+/- Move to Edgewood
+ Begin serving at Pino’s
+ Go blonde

September
- Morning commute through congested Squirrel Hill Tunnels
- Latin 9 am
+ Teaching “Basic Philosophical Questions” at Duquesne
+ Twice a week puppysitting Sadie
+ Weekly dissertation meetings with Dr. Miller

October
+ Rekindle friendship with Mike
- Sleeping and watching television in excess
+/- Halloween Party
- End friendship with Luke

November
- End potential relationship with J.
+ Good conversation with Spencer
+ Meaningful and emotional conversation with Osvaldo
+ Thanksgiving with Mom and family in Cleveland
- Sick for two weeks I spent with Mom

December
- Talk to Luke after months void of contact
- Sad, emotional, violently ill, dramatic and volatile Christmas
+ + Sharing Christmas [and life] with Christine
+ + Rekindle friendships with Luke and Allison

2007: Resignation, withholding, therapeutic exposure, teaching joys, dissertation buzz, depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, abandonment, numb, paralysis, reconciliation, hope

2008: happiness, inwardness, passion, wakefulness, energetic studying, creative selfhood, sharing, balance, intellectual stimulation, change

2007-12-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

This may seem like a platitude, but what the hell: I am learning to take care of myself. I am trying to work through my feelings of responsibility, guilt and dependence. I am and have been drawing inward. I am an inward being, but I have always drawn energy from my interactions with others.

Not for the past semester. Interaction has been minimal, and yet I have had great conversations with some of the most important people in my life. And I have become comfortable by myself - I have even had some great times just me, the cat, Thai take-out, a bottle of wine and a movie.

But I am no cat lady.

Which is why my resolution for January 2008 is to expand my horizons a bit, open up, and draw inward when I need to, but not all the time. And not feel I need to, but to desire otherness when I want company, and not to feel guilty when I want solitude.

Today was good. I slept in, read Kant, went for a run in Frick park with Miller and Sadie, listened to NPR, and headed out for my local cafe, 61C. I talked to my cafe crush (a year and a half long crush, and this is the second time I have talked to him). Now I am about to head out to my favorite bar Kelly's with one of my musician friends. A good day. Especially after three days of solitude. And I am wearing my cowboy boots, which just makes everything a little brighter!

When I return from visiting Christine and her family in Maryland for Christmas, which is going to be amazing, I will have a completely new routine - living with Sadie at the Miller's, writing my final seminar paper for grad school, working at Pino's, planning an independent study I am leading with two fantastic students, and creating myself anew.

Twenty-five sucked. I plan on making twenty-six memorable as a year of change - inwardness, passion and challenge - for myself, and no other.

I love you all, but I have always given myself mini-panic attacks when I think of how I am not being the friend I should be, which makes me fulfill this fear.

And as for romance, I need a breather for sure. I have absolutely no romantic pull right now. For the first time in my life, I just want to be. I don't want to be in love, fall in love, deal with love. Funny, my dissertation is on desire and eros. Maybe there is a little pull there, but it is not mixed with explosive emotions like it used to be. "Eh."

....
Merry Christmas!

Thanks for listening...

2007-11-20T15:50:00.000-05:00

“I wish to bring back to mind my past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul. This is not because I love them, but that I may love you, my God. Out of love for your love I do this.”

“In the bitterness of my remembrance, I tread again my most evil ways, so that you may grow sweet to me, O sweetness happy and enduring that gathers me together again from that disordered state in which I lay in shattered pieces, wherein, turned away from you, the one, I spent myself upon the many.”[1]

[1] Augustine, Confessions, II.1.1, 65.

2007-11-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

November 19, 2007

I am sorry if my long lost words hurt you. Like Augustine, I am confessing the past to better know myself, to love the self that was always in love with the Other, to find myself in my musings about you and others, to relive who I was in order to know who I am. You may have been a sick poet in my eyes then, but you are not a bad friend now. You were and continue to be an ever distant but ever close love.

2007-11-20T15:42:00.000-05:00

December 11, 2005

It’s funny how when seemingly committed to a life of freedom and experience, one will retract all that she finds meaningful in personal relationships for the sake of comfort. I sought refuge from the pain of a long-distance relationship with a man who emotionally distanced himself to the same extent. I follow the path of extremes: a man I am close to but who is physically distant, a man who is physically close but he distances himself from me.

Is there something about me that necessitates this dialectic of remoteness and proximity? Is it an impossible feat for a person to share himself intimately with me if we are in physical proximity daily? Maybe my problem is that I will only meet people where they are willing to go; I won’t cross that invisible boundary without the other person taking the first step. Am I respectful or fearful? I fear making myself the fool, of rejection, of the vulnerability attached to making a bold move, or maybe of frightening the other with the amount of myself I am willing to share.

I can’t help it, I desire intimacy on both levels: physically and emotionally. Is this too much to ask for? And the lack of either drives me crazy. I am just as depressed now as I was last semester, especially since I thought I was proceeding in the direction of having the best of both worlds with two different people. Alas, I am not the center of the world and cannot have the impossible.

Is it better not to have anything? Would it be better to resign from the physical proximity if I cannot have a meaningful friendship? This seems to be more confusing and aggravating than anything else, as if I did not have the power of speech to express an impending need. I still cannot take the first step…probably because I know what the reaction to this would be. And I fear rejection like the fear of God the fundamentalists tried to instill in me.

I am like Sisyphus. I continually struggle with the same damned boulder: rolling it up and watching it roll back down. This twin predicament that binds me. However, I have the freedom to step out of this nightmare. But doing so leads me to a path of uncertainty and solitude. Is this really the right thing to do? Or am I being melodramatic and overly hasty? Balancing the scales of joy and sorrow, the sorrow end seems to be the predominant characteristic of my life the past two months. So common sense would say in order to be happy, change must occur. I am tired of thinking. I am tired of waiting patiently. I am tired of being left feeling empty. It would be nice to be able to talk to someone I care about as much as him.

“The place of fear”

This is definitely not a relationship. This is mutual comfort, not sharing or loving (or even respecting).

Why he only calls me at night: To sleep in my bed, to sleep next to a body, to continue a habit, to resume a semblance of normalcy in his life, to reassure himself that he is not alone. He reveals much when he tells me I am a comfort to him, that I help assuage his loneliness. I am a kind of physicalized form of therapy for him.

Every night he has someone to sleep next to. That is why he is so quick to leave in the morning. I am not a real person to him. This is not real. I am like a place marker in his life. He has a woman to sleep with and eat the occasional meal with.

This is such a strange limbo I live in. Do we both look at each other and imagine different people, or imagine relationships past, or see anything at all? Why should I care? It is the disease of Pittsburgh that breeds indifference. Its snowing and everything is cold and pure. I should care. I don’t know why I hang around here. In five years these people won’t even remember my name.

2007-11-19T17:45:00.000-05:00

Foul was the evil and I loved it.

In a perverse way, all men imitate you who put themselves far from you, and rise up in rebellion against you.

Who can untie this most twisted and intricate mass of knots? It is a filthy thing: I do not wish to look upon it.

Sadness wastes away over things now lost in which desire once took delight. It did not want this to happen, whereas from you nothing can be taken away.

I desire you, O justice and innocence, beautiful and comely to all virtuous eyes, and I desire this unto a satiety that can never be satisfied.

-Augustine's Confessions, Book II

2007-11-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

11/13/07
Am I rediscovering God? Kierkegaard’s voice touches my past and present.

God is my new self. Oceanic feeling…for myself. A way to fashion myself from nothing. I am alone. So alone. I desire so much, and nothing. I want beauty. I want to weep. There is solitude, and there is being by myself. I want a deeper loneliness. Pure nothingness. I cannot be a nihilist with an oceanic feeling. I am not a cold stone. I don’t understand. I can’t grasp it, but I want it so badly.

If this is the bottom, am I returning to God in a moment of weakness? I can’t motivate myself in this dreadful bore of a life. God gives everything an absurd height that I fill with the vortex of my horrific black stillness. My cavernous waters. Stagnant and calm.

I have no fight left.
Without tenderness I am nothing.
I am wooing myself. I need to cultivate tenderness for myself. Romancing the self.

If Kierkegaard and Levinas are two opposites sides of the anti-Hegelian coin, then I am turning this coin over to experience the passion of inwardness, of Kierkegaard. I have always identified with Levinas’ ethical command of the Other, the face of the Other, because this is who I am. I submit to the Other in love. I love loving, I love giving all of myself to another, falling dangerously in love, my passion is always You, oh precious Other. And I exist within this love as a sweet breath taking you in, all my lovers, my friends.

So is God the Other I can now direct my love to, to breath in and treasure above all else? No, this is not what I want. I want to consume my own breath as a fragrant offering – not to You, but to myself. I always said I wanted to be God. Now I know, I am God. I have been God all along. And when I feel this oceanic feeling, it is a love I cannot direct in any one specific person or place, because it is a passion for inwardness – the Infinite. I am the immensity I crave.

I will never be happy. I will never be enough.

I am a specter.

I prayed once. In a place once crowded with desperate tourists, at night it is the loneliest specter. Breathtaking. I prayed as I sat staring into the dimly lit Vatican, as I stared at the giants beholding me from the heavens. I offered up an ironic gift to an old friend.

The sculpting of a beautiful and transparent creature—my new aim. What standard will I use to judge my creation? The Vatican prayer.

Am I insane? I confess too much.

What happened to you, mysterious moon? I prefer the flickering flame, glowing red in the darkness, and the taste of my lips. You are too distant, and I am too sensual. I want so much to hold you, to hold a lover—the only comfort I find, the only distraction, the only essence to this silly existence.

My life is repetition. The moon, white wine, a cigarette buzz, coffee highs, candle light, bridge fantasies, falling in love, the Other, biting lips, sensual longings—its all folding in on itself.

And yet I yearn all the more.

.
.
.

2007-11-14T10:01:00.001-05:00

10/30/07
As if I haven’t been fooled enough by him. As if I haven’t played a role in his fantasy world – his proposed double life, the life of drama, of novel proportions. As if I haven’t recognized myself in this role before. I have once again let myself be fooled by this deception. Real friendship? Lasting love? No, the only thing he wished to gain from me was the hope for meaning in his pitifully bland life, void of romance and adventure except in his star-struck eyes. Struck by the light of his narcissism.

It is time for me to move on – beyond a life of nostalgia. Looking back, was it so grand? The separation was harrowing, but why? I was always imbued with a sense of disappointment, wanting more, needing a true friend, and honest lover, someone who could recognize the reality of otherness in me. To complete this recognition I feel so profoundly. I love the otherness, I want the oceanic feeling of the otherness filling my soul, of becoming one, feeling something so beautiful, haunting, frightening. I never had this; I always yearned for it. I was always accepting him into myself, he was always pulling himself out, of darting away from my eyes, avoiding the sinking in that would envelop him into my soul. I was always other, he always same. I became him; he never became me. I disappeared and raged within this dissolution.

As if I have never written in my journal, “Fuck you.” As if I wrote these things in preparation for letting him back in, of letting him retain his grasp on me. It was a human grasping I enjoyed. Lie to me. I love the lies, and I love hating you. Hurt me. I deserve it in some sick way, for being such a nice person, for being so willing to love and devote myself to another as perverse and lost as you.

2007-10-19T08:55:00.002-04:00

I kiss him, and
later, alone, I cried.

He looks at me.
I kiss his eyes.

I take his hand.
I clutch it.

Like a woman in labor
I take his hand.

I grasp it to hold myself inside.

His alien pain-
a wordless prayer,
an absent touch.

My soul,
bewildered,
absorbs it as my own.

2007-10-19T08:55:00.001-04:00

August 2005

To a sick poet, obliged only by words:

What is your obsession with the text? Words to you are like widows and orphans of the great religions—calling you to responsibility: a wall built by your own hand, brick by brick, word over word, poet after poet. How does the word bind you? The text is not a church of words. What are words? A word is a word is a word. And you are obligated by these fluttering transients. Is this another form of your selfishness, your intellectual ivory tower, your academic narcissism? You live in a phantom world where words build upon your own private tower that pierces a landscape full of beauty and otherness—if only you could look out upon the world. Instead you wander the halls of your tower alone, pretending to experience the world outside.

This is the cave allegory cave, but more phallic and textual. You choose a text and pretend it is a window to lived experience. It is not an openness, it is a stone. You could use the stone to construct a path, winding and endless, into a damp forest, alive and wild where the stones guide you, and are overtaken through time by the tangled roots of trees. Instead, you use these words to enclose yourself in an imitative life that is so contrived you mistake scholarship for play. You can’t even play openly, freely. You copy and alter, and then say it’s your own. Play is perverted through an ethic of the text, book-ethics.

You have tricked yourself, love—you think you need books to shelter you. At our first meeting, you spoke of those who inspired you, and yet still emerged as a poetic presence with your own struggle and silence. Now you contrive a struggle and rely on the text for your identity.

What do you think you need to experience so urgently? Nothing. Not a book, a passage, a word. No more representations, no more imitation of the real. Taste your own words. Drop them into the abyss, let yourself play. Play outside in the open as a pagan, not a priest of the word, not within Borges’ labyrinth. Let yourself be in the event, the happening of your own experiencing and thinking. Let go of your church of words and come face to face with poetry and thought.

2007-08-26T23:36:00.001-04:00

8/24/2007

Why psychotherapy? What am I hoping to gain from this experience? A greater self-knowledge? A cure for my symptoms – of what, passivity, sensitivity, sluggishness, emotional outbursts, anxiety, loneliness, blindness as a yearning for that which I cannot articulate? Aren’t these the human condition? What is the difference between my experience of these “symptoms” and living? Do I want to substitute one symptom for another?

I believe I have functional symptoms. I think this writing is a symptom.

Constant need for recognition, human contact – even if this contact is with myself, or reaching out to an anonymous audience. The hope that someone gives a damn. It is a hope that all cultivate, but none see the need in others. So none of us give a damn, yet we all crave this attention. I most of all. Why do you think waiting table is so gratifying on a certain level? I enjoy the meaningless chitchat with strangers. I love it, I thrive on it. Making others smile as a reflection of my own. Approval. Tell me again how cute and wonderful I am.

Aren’t I getting to old for this played-out act? I’m the elder now. I’m not the cute little girl I used to star as. What could my revamped self-projection possibly be? I am tired of the cute naïve girl. It’s tiring, but change is difficult. Who do I play? No role seems to fit. The role of mother is haunting my dreams, as well as seductress. This may be too classic a case to deem worthy of reflection.

The unconscious – isn’t that my hot pursuit? That symbolized by dream-waters? That which I try to traverse over without spiraling into it violently? But the unconscious is not pleasure, and I desire this above all else, right? The unconscious is the terrifying cavern, the apocalyptic organ hymns in my nightmares, the drowning force, the unrecoverable – death, le petite morte.

It’s too hot to think. I will say nothing of consequence.

I want to be cool and in the arms of an untouched lover.

To sleep soundly.

Diaphanous. Imperceptible. Hostile.

2007-07-20T20:39:00.000-04:00

Parting with my best friends - the women that have witnessed and shared my self-formation, like sisters, with outbursts, hot tears, laughter, and dancing - is a taste of the year ahead of me. My being will be, and has begun to be, a state of parting. I visualize it as being pushed into an abyss, the vertiginous solitude that looms in the corners of my mind during chaotic moments. This will become reality - both physical and mental for the first time. The thought of this space leaves me weepy. A dear person expressed a curiosity of who I will be in this dark space. Perhaps this curiosity will be a fixed point of light orienting my life for the next year. I don't want any "patches" - easy distractions. I want to experience this fear that I have always had - loosing everything, parting with what I find most meaningful in life - the people I love. I don't want to replace them with others. I don't know what I want. I'm just sad. The same kind of sadness I felt watching Christine and Mary walk away from me yesterday. I love them so much, and I love the people that have shared my life in Pittsburgh. Everyone is leaving, while I stay.

2007-07-03T13:01:00.000-04:00

Dissertation Topic continued...

Dear Ms. Johnson,

I've been in touch with a friend of mine (Jason Byassee), who's a rising
Augustine and patristics scholar. I mentioned the possibility of a
dissertation on Monica and asked him for his sense of the literature. His
reply confirmed my suspicion that you're sitting on a gold mine, that
rarest of the scholarly topics -- the untapped. He wrote:

"I doubt there's much scholarship ON Monica, I don't know of any, though
everyone's interested in her. Interestingly at around the same time or a
little earlier to the east Gregory of Nyssa is writing with his sister
Macrina as a major interlocutor and teacher in On the Soul and the
Resurrection (I think). So it became fashionable for a while to speak of
Macrina as a 4th Cappadocian, to say how important she is as a teacher to
one of the greats. The problem: everything she "teaches" him appears in
other texts on Gregory's own lips, she seems more of a character speaking
his lines than anything else. Monica by contrast has more personality,
more depth as a character, obviously portrayed with sympathy but not
without vices, I think something on her would be really interesting, and
wouldn't have much precedent in secondary scholarship, believe it or not."

2007-06-25T17:02:00.001-04:00

I have a dissertation topic! Woo!

2007-06-02T11:21:00.000-04:00

Roma Pictures:
http://www.ringo.com/photos/album.html?albumId=42043525

2007-04-28T13:18:00.000-04:00

Well, I am still alive! Since I last posted, I have been driven across the Roman suburbs to a gorgeous beach, where David paid for Lana and I to receive full body massages from a Chinese woman. Later that day I went to a reception at John Cabot for the conference, which was quite pleasant, followed by two anarchist taking me to the lagest squat in Europe.

Friday I presented my paper, which was wildly successful. I have now offically earned my honorary elbow patches. Today I ditched the conference in search of beautiful clothes and shoes.

More later!

2007-04-26T04:58:00.000-04:00

Wednesday April 25 is a holday commemorating the American liberation of Italia, so everything was closed, including the internet cafes. hence no paper writing for me. I decided to walk to John Cabot University, the conference that brought me to Roma in the first place. Why not take a jaunt to the Vatican while I am out. Hotel Colors, which I highly recommend, is couched above the Vatican and Castel d'Angelo, and next to Piazza Cavour, the restaraunt where Davide works. The Vatican is pure tourist chaos. I hate it. Unbearably hot, crowded, and vendors selling cheap sunglasses, belts, purses swarm the streets, chasing any unsuspecting newcomers with their illegal wares. To the Tiber it is! I walk along the Tiber River, and cross to tranquility of a tree lined walkway. The graffiti is cast against ancient walls. I am unrelentingly lost at all times - I always without fail walk in the opposite direction. So instead of ending up in Trastevere, I walk the cobbled sidestreets ending in Campo di Fiori.

Hunger and fatigue set in, so I sit down at a trattoria on a small street theat feeds into the Campo.

More to come after I return from the beach with Davide and Lana, a Ukranian woman, and the reception at John Cabot tonight....I present tomorrow! Ah!

2007-04-25T06:04:00.000-04:00

A Man with a View
Tuesday I was a nervous wreck. I consumed a pot of espresso on the balcony while reading for my paper on Walter Benjamin. When it became difficult to walk because my legs were visibly shaking, I decided to forage for food in the neighborhood. The hostel is very close to Castel d'Angelo and the Vatican, so I ended up on a touristy side street. Mos tof the tourists were Italians, but the food was not as glamorous as Monday night. I ate and read Benjamin and people watched. Afterwards I decided to take action. I would go to the supermarket and buy groceries so I would not live on one meal a day anymore. On returning to the hostel, my legs were still shaking, mind you, I walk with a limp. Oh, yes, my left heel is a giant blistery sore. So I walk on my toes, which is actually hard on the legs. So I return, eat a banana, and then my anxiety about my paper is compounded with my anxiety about meeting David at 4. I try to take a nap. Its 4. I pop putside and hop in his car after a quick hug and friendly greeting kiss.

Now this is amazing. David takes me outside the city, but still Roma, to a magical spot sitting on a hill overlooking the city. Its breezy and warm, David and I sit under a canopy and drink frizzante, he orders me a chocolate gelato. We talk about politics, American and Italian culture, philosophy, the art of balance, psychoanalysis, taosim, and film. He takes me to a nearby park with an even more breathtaking view. We return to the congested city. I am already nostalgic towards that moment of peace standing above the city in the cool breeze. Weaving in and out of traffic - I realize I have an urge to drive like a European, which is why my driving makes so many nervous - we stop at Campo di Fiori for an afternoon drink.

He buys me the best vino rossi, and we sit in comfortable silence, drinking, eating olives, artichokes, sun dried pomodora, fungi. He asks me what I want to do. He must go to work. He owns the restaurant I visited yesterday. I remain there as he leaves. He wants me to come to the restaurant later, but I decline. I still have a jacket, so I will visit him tonight after the Night Tour I signed up for.

I stay for an hour and a half as the square darkens and people, of the beautiful people, emerge from all corners. I decide to check out the English pub. I grab a heffeweis and sit outside. After bumming a cig from some fellows, they invite me to join them. Max, 36, is a sax player in band. The other man, a young looking 40 plays guitar, and the other is an Indonesian from Bali that is in school for massage. We hang out, drink, and they treat me to pizza. I walk home slightly drunk and happy. My roommates greet me with laughter at my two nights out late all by myself. Hauke, a German, and Ludovico a Frenchman tell me about their travels, and we all drift into sleep.

So now it is Wednesday and I am feeling that anxiety creep up on me again. I must finish my paper, but I really want to go to the beach today, but I have a tour at 6:30, and then I must meet David after that. Oh, why did I sleep in this morning? It was worth the breakfast - fresh strawberries, yogurt that tastes like cream, almond puff cookies, and espresso. I feel right at home here.

Adventures of One Lonely Woman in a City Full of Italian Men

2007-04-24T06:04:00.001-04:00

Mondays are not supposed to be this exciting. I start off today on the wrong foot, or rather the wrong shoes. I walk to the nearby Castel d'Angelo on the Tiber, overlooking Vatican City. My goal is Piazza Navona, the most touristy and famous Piazza in Rome. I wander down Via Emmanuel, a huge street with lots of shops, wander in and out of stores, buy some batteries and postcards, practice my Italian and of course come across a plethora of mini piazzas and ancient buildings. As I decide to dart in a dark alley to escape the glaring sun and traffic, I reach Piaza Navona, where I sit on a bench and take some pictures. Then I wander down some narrow roads, and buy some jewelry from a clean empty and pricey shop. I walk outside and there is the Pantheon. I realize I am forming some major blisters, so my new mission is boots. Unfortunately, the cobblestone of the charming and more authentically Roman streets are becoming more and more difficult to traverse. I walk to Sacra Piazza, buy some strawberry gelato, and walk across the Tiber in search of Campo di Fiori. Instead I find Tiber Island and the outskirts of Trastereve. I am far from home, and I cannot find adequate footwear, so I decide to head back to the hostel for a siesta.

The Low
An Italian asks me for the time. Non capisco Italiano. Do you have the time? Si. "What is your name?" Well, that is how it started. It wasn' the first approach, but it was closer to a real conversation more so than the "Ciao, bella" etc....so I give in. Miguella is his name. Bronze, well-dressed, about 26 with thick wavy sandy brown hair and green eyes with flecks of yellow, how could I say no? He wants to show me around Roma because it is his day off. I will entertain his Italian ways until I become bored. The thing is, I was bored almost the whole time. I kept thinking, this will become exciting eventually. But after him taking me out for un caffe, and then hopping on various buses in search of boots, and the hand holding, and the caressing, and the kissing, it was all contrived. But I wanted to see what would happen. I think I was too tired, hungry, and soar to soak up the entire experience. I only eat one meal a day, it seems.

So, the absolute low was when Miguella convinced me to see his work's corporate housing. I told him I wasn't interested, but I was curious to see what it looked like inside. Behind the prison-like metal gate and the front door, was an open atrium with broken marble and ceramic tiled floors, trees, birds, the sound of water running along rocks--a fountain hidden somewhere, I guessed. It was magical, like something from A Secret Garden or Great Expectations.

I followed him up to the room, very hesitant. He already had chided me for this, and my response for not wanting to make out on the bus was, "I'm shy." In the room, a dark musty humid box with low ceilings was papered entirely with yellowed white and blue tea-cup designs; he gestured for me to sit on the bed...you can see where this is going. I told him I was leaving. He said I could leave anytime, but I should sit and rest a while, it was so calado outside. I sat uncomfortably, and then decided to leave. The worst part of the day was him holding both my arms down, pinning me between him and the bed. I wasn't frightened, I was just annoyed. I fought back, and left.

Then, as fortune would have it, I became imprisoned between the front door and the iron grate. I knocked on the glass of the door, I yelled, "Miguella." No one came. I shook the bars. Oh, shit, I am am trapped here forever. Excusi, Excusi! I called out to passers-by. Parli englese? A woman stopped and pushed all the buttons on the call box, which were beyond my reach from the gate. She was late for an appointment, and left me in the care of an Italian couple that did not speak English. Eventually, someone buzzed the gate, and I was liberated. That was the best part of the "Low" experience.

So, you won't believe it when I tell you that after all of that, Miguella followed me and returned me via bus to my hostel. He lifted my dress on the bus and snaked his way into my panties, while I, oblivious, held on to his body for support. No, no! I screamed. He was confused by my slip. Apparently slips are not popular in Italia. Outside the hostel we made out on a bike for a few minutes. I wasn't into it, I wasn't into him. He could tell. "I just want to turn you on." Sorry Migulla, it is never going to happen. "I have to go now. Ciao!"

My siesta is two hours long. I dress my wounded feet, don socks, shoes, and jeans, and head out for dinner. I choose a nice restaurant in Piazza Cavour, a table outside. I order acqua frizzante, vino rossi, proschiutto e bufula as my antipasta, and gnocci con salmon and spinach as my primo course. God, it was so good. My first meal.

The High
I notice a well-dressed man pacing up and down the street, talking on a cell phone and barking orders at the servers, one of whom is from Ecuador and we strike up a disjointed conversation in Spanish. The man approaches me and asks in good English, Are you American or French? We begin to chat. He is the owner of the restaurant - a handsome man in his forties who knows a little about the art of conversation. We hit it off and he joins me. Two bottles of wine, tiramasu, and because of the cold night air one black button down jacket and hot tea later, all free of charge, of course, we are cruising around Roma in his car, listening to Areosmith. Ha! I was smiling and laughing at the absurdity of it.

We walk around the crowded streets of Trastevere at 1 am. I am tired, so we head back to the hostel. On our way a blond boy, maybe 18, runs toward our car in the middle of a busy intersection. He raises his fist and jumps on the roof of the moving car screaming, teeth bared, mouth gaping, eyes furious. He acts as if he will bash the window in with his fist. As his hand nears the windshield, he stops and jumps to the next oncoming car. I am horrified and in ecstasy. I laugh and scream.

I slept well last night, but I don't feel well. I spent the morning reading. My feet are in extreme pain. Tonight I am meeting David again. He says he has a surprise for me. We'll see.

2007-04-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

It gets a little lonely in one of the most romantic citys in the world when you are without a lover. So, as part of my travelogue, let me recount my adventures thus far to you. First, after arriving in the stinking Rome airport, I walked outside into the chaos. In broken Italina, I asked, Parli englese? No, ok, Dovè Termini Station? The man I talked to was fluent in English, formerly married to a native of Ft. Worth. He sent me off the beaten track. I watched the bright and shining Leonardo Express choo choo away, as I was left hauling my lòuggage into a graffiti-ridden train. About twenty minutes into the trip, I realized we were travelling through rural cuontryside...with plentiful sheep. Where is Rome? I asked another man who did not speak English. No Roma - Napoli! was his response. I panicked and ran downstairs and frantickly asked a shy Italian how to stop the train. Nothing. He finally conveyed to me that he was geting off at Ostiense, my stop, as well. Ah, Roma! All this Roma? Shew! I gesticulated. He led me off at Ostiense, and he meekly waved goodbye. So different from the gypsies who had entered the bus earlier, with four shopping carts filled with junk - broken appliances, clothing, old VCR's and crying babies.

Now all I had to do was follow the original man's advice, and find Bus 130. Oh, there it is, hop on! I hopped on and spoke more convouted Italiano - Dovè Via Bozzio? Wrong bus. Oops. He gesticulated for me to cross the street and hop on the next 130. No charge, of course. Then I proceed to sit at a bustop for 45 minutes, staring at the petrol station across the street, which consisted of a few pumps on the side of the road. Hmmm.

Next bus is a cute young man, who has no idea where my destination street is. I point it out on a map, and away we go. I saw half of ancient Rome on that bus ride, front and center. He lets me off at my stop, free again, but his time with a warning about having a biglietto primo I ride the bus. Ok, gotcha. Now my keen sense of direction jumps starts, and I walk about half a mile in the wrong direction. Tired, hungry, and hot, I think maybe Hotel Colors does not exist. But I find it, and shower, and chat with the receptionist about the tours offered during the week. I decide to take a leisurely walk to see the view at Pincio, a place my French teacher, Madame Vojtko suggested.

I walk down Reggio something, and it doesn't take me long to get to Piazza del Poplo, although I have no idea what or where Pincio is. The Piazza is the beginning of Italy's largest park, the biggest park in a city of this size. It's gorgeous. I take some pictures in my camera that lacked film at the time. The park was filled with couples, like all of Rome, but these couples were embracing and rolling in the grass, which I thought was indecent and lewd...mostly because I didn't have anyone to be indecent and lewd with. Oh, poor thing, I know. So, I wander aimlessly trying to find Pincio, and I came across it and was surprised at how cool the view was - literally, a cool wind fingered my hair delicately as I hung over the wall and soaked up Rome like I have been soaking in the Italian sun. Now my goal is the Spanish Steps for some shopping, however, I end up on the Via Corso, miles and miles of high end fashion. Ahhh. I found my perfect red boots in exquisitely soft and supple leather, but they did not have my size. Damn it. Along the way, I stopped for un caffe and the most delicious simple sandwich of cheese and...Italian ham...prosciutto or capicola I think.

I wandered into Trevini Fountain, and saw some funny sights, took some pictures, was alarmed at the hoards of tourists, and quickly headed for the Spanish Steps. On my way I grabbed un machiato, with real espresso, and my god, it was like butter. I have never tasted coffee that good in my life. Of course, its Roma! While drinking I see a men's clothing store called Tru&Trussardi - Luke, are you a Trussardi?

Now I am a pro at wandering - the crowds always lead you to a tourist hotbed, so I made it there in no time, and alas, found more high end shopping. It was hard for me to keep from buying D&C white leather motorcycle jacket with matching badass shades, but I held out. I did buy some knock off sunglasses for a gift, and was harassed by the vendor after I bartered him down half price. He kept grabbing my arm and pulling me into his fleshy noxious body. I recoiled and fled, with a smile, Ciao, friend!

At this point I am exhausted, and jump on the Metro, getting lost after I exit, but finally making it back to my room for a nap. Now here I am. I must edit my conference paper. Pooh!

Buonosera!

Dana

2007-04-15T15:57:00.000-04:00

If you would like to see the academic projection of myself, you can always check out my latest foray into procrastination and self-congratulatory blogspaces:

http://danamjohnson.blogspot.com

Tales Of Mere Existence

2007-03-08T10:36:00.001-05:00

How to Break Up

2007-03-05T19:57:00.000-05:00

3/4/07
Who am I? I return eternally to an ecstatic state brought on in public places by my cerebral response to Radiohead. Who am I? A student perpetually experiencing life for the first time, a schoolgirl communing with eyes in a dark mirror, a philosophy grad plunged in depression and cynicism. I exist in the café, in my bed, in the classroom, on streets. I cannot disparage the circumstances I have found myself in as the overarching excuse of my life. I am here. I have brought myself here. I create who I am with every darting glance, every broken eye-meeting, every expectant smile. I want to give in to the urge: to give and receive pleasure from those whose eyes constantly meet mine. The moral hold that clings to me reduces this to a mere impulse, and not feat. I am alone. Should I not be jubilant in solitude and rebirth? Or does it make me more lazy, or more impulsive, or steeped in boredom? As a recovering Levinasian, I find the other is my crutch. Without the mirror of recognition in another’s eyes, I feel trapped in my own stagnant puddle.

On This American Life there was a piece on child logic. I still live by those conventions. When people ask me simple questions, I am paralyzed because my child logic does not grasp normative adult claims. There is nothing more interesting than myself. It is all I care to write on; myself reflected in another. If this were the case, I should make a concerted effort to experience more. Less time typing in cafés. Gather the chaos towards me, as my good friend (who does not believe he is a good friend) would say. I am a passive collector. I let the chaos come to me and wash over me. I revel in this coming, but I am hesitant to meet it and engage it. I need a destructive outlet for the chaos that wells within me. I am not strong enough to loosen my grip, or to step out of my self-imposed prison. This garish prose attests to a stirring. I need help.

I am equally reclusive and licentious.

2007-02-08T09:50:00.000-05:00

It has been awfully cold here.

2007-01-01T23:33:00.000-05:00

I have been having intense maternal urges lately. So I had to shift to baby pictures...of myself.
I am still this same little person.

2006-12-21T12:24:00.000-05:00

I am becoming increasingly silly in my paper-writing:

Why is it so difficult to begin? Why does the prospect of beginning a new assignment cause my heart to race and my skin to crawl? Sudden paralysis (aporia) or a burst of energy leads me away from beginning and tumbles me into the maelstrom of procrastination. Faced with a task, I run—arms outstretched toward that which is other-than-assigned. Is it the pressure to perform, or is it the desire to prolong the anxiety of a new task? The procrastinator’s dilemma (and a graduate student in philosophy, at that)—to write or not to write; to research or reflect; to be scholarly or creative; to be Sisyphus or Prometheus? Do I steal fire from the philosopher-gods and make it my own in an act of rebellion, or do I do endless research on research of research on the history of philosophy? I run to Derrida for guidance: Derrida, how do I begin? How do I begin to play, to deconstruct, to keep my promise while keeping my secret, to understand procrastination and to reach the moment of decision within that self-perpetuating structure?

2006-12-03T01:32:00.000-05:00

ok, so I am a little buzzed and disheveled and thoughtful. I pose this to you: two people in the past two days have said I am passive. I know, I know, who cares...but it's killing me, smalls! What does this mean? Should I care, or let is glide over me like the rest of life, apparently? And isn't this part of my charm? Is my passivity temporary or is it a lifestyle? Urr, late night questions....

2006-12-01T17:00:00.000-05:00

In blogs o' past, I have tried to express myself in words. Now that I have a camera phone, I have delved into my selfhood through the visual arts. This seems a less valid format, more superficial or narcissistic. Why do we privilege words over photography? Somehow using words to describe myself has more authority than the physical image of my body. Must self-reflection favor language? Do we favor speech over writing? If I could actually articulate my thoughts in speech, could I get closer to some illusive idea of the truth? And what about musical expression? Not that I could ever begin to create beautiful sounds, but is that a form of self-expression? Of course. I don't know what I am getting at, really, except that the profusion of dana-images is only a way of trying to understand myself, in the same way I use blogs to work through my strange little thoughts.

2006-11-28T12:19:00.000-05:00

The best of friends for twelve years and counting. And we still laugh at the same things. We still love dream state during laser tag. We still puzzle. We still have our idealistic sense of hope for the future. We still are accountable to each other, in a different way, but just as caring and protective. We still giggle over boys. We still know each other through and through. We still experience things together (almost simultaneaously) regardless of distance. And we still love each other only as kindred spirits could.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving in Boston proved adventuresome in a "sexy bitch" kind of way: Christine and I frequented the mob-owned cigar bar in the North End, smoking from hookas and partaking of the culturally offensive decor. (Black face watermelon ash tray. Ouch.)
And we couldn't help but look seductive cloaked in our cherry scented hooka smoke.
But then these dudes tried to hit on us. Sorry for the offensive material, but this was Christine-Dana time, so screw those bros! We became cartoon superheroes as we released our bitchiness onto the world.
After a series of come-ons and free drinks, we became indifferent to their advances.

2006-11-01T19:01:00.000-05:00

Halloween Party Pictures!!

Go to my Ringo account for more!

http://www.ringo.com/explore/member/album.html?albumId=40730737

Michel and I are on a secret mission...

Nice group pic. who is that sexy blonde? And who photoshopped in that Red guy?

Help?

What a pair!

HOT mods!

2006-10-30T08:49:00.000-05:00

This year's Halloween bash was a success!

Highlights of the evening included martini glass smashings, couples-only slow dances, Dana handcuffed riding Dustin throughout house, French maid using her "tickler," Foucault applauding Dustin's adoption of Mark in Big Brother program, Diana the butterfly and Dana "Domino" parading for all their lovely lady lumps, George the sexiest Bond ever, Mike blends fantasy and reality when he becomes a blonde, Taine and that unruly halter bow--why won't it just untie?, Jim "Red's" manhattan result in mass drunkenness, Patrick hits on Taine "Tiffany Case" and is rejected, tall nerd serves halloween cupcakes and ghost cookies, ...well the list goes on and on. Spencer, this party truly would have made you proud.

2006-10-24T12:45:00.000-04:00

2006-10-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

2006-10-18T08:40:00.000-04:00

Since I met Dustin, my weekends have been much more exciting. However, this past weekend was particularly adventuresome. It started off…very well…until my morning ritual of sipping coffee lazily was interrupted with enthusiastic reminders of the time. Today we were taking a day trip to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. So, I eventually gathered my wits and sulked my way to the car. (Minivan, even.) Hot bagels piled high with melting cream cheese enhanced my mood as we wound our way around the autumn-ridden Pennsylvania hillside.

When we pulled in to Fallingwater we were perilously close to ecstasy—we were finally here! The man who greeted us was not so enthusiastic, and his black pony-tail only made the bad news more ominous. Tickets had been sold out for 6 days, but we could put our names on a waiting list and walk the grounds. Well, what the hell. So we grabbed the apples we bought on the side of the road and began our trek.

Wandering around eating the best apples ever, we saw a tour guide introduce himself to his group in front of the house. Dustin and I walked around the corner. He picked me up so I could peek inside the living room windows. It looked oh-so-cozy! We were now behind the house, and there was a terrace directly above us. We joked about climbing the rocks and jumping on the terrace. When the tour group left, Dustin did this. Then he demanded I climb up to.

“No! Are you crazy? We’re going to get caught! No! I will not do this!”

Five minutes later I was scrambling up boulders and hopping in Fallingwater. We broke into a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The glory didn’t last for long. After joining a tour, we were pointed out and escorted out, while simultaneously being buzzed by the front desk. We were next on the waiting list!
So Dustin and I took the official tour, and I, of course, was giggling the entire time.

After lunch we took a hike. Being confronted with the sign “End of Trail” we continued on, walking down railroad tracks. I could hear the river. Dustin suggested we cross the tracks and hike down the steep slope towards the sound of water.

“No, we’ll get lost! I’m not wearing the right boots. I’ll hurt myself.”

Five minutes later I was hiking down a steep path and then hopping along rocks lining the river’s shore.
“Dana, you should hop out here on these rocks in the middle of the river rapids.”

“No, I don’t feel comfortable doing that.”

Five seconds later I was posing for pictures in the middle of the river.

On our drive back we saw about seven black cows lined up on the side of the road. C’mon, we had to stop for that. Here is my favorite cow:
Then we wound the day down by playing with Photobooth.

2006-10-10T11:13:00.000-04:00

I received a gift this morning. It was ever so gently placed on my dresser in the early hours, so that when I awoke to the smell of brewing coffee, I would notice its surprise presence. And even though I was too tired to notice any enticing aromas, and I slept in hence missing class, I was still speechless and giddy when I finally rolled out of bed and (sleepy-eyed) discovered the gift.

I once described Christmas as magical. My mother would stay up Christmas Eve and scatter little "surprises" throughout the house. It wasn't just about the huge mound of gifts under the tree, but about the little additions that made the Christmas morning tiptoeing a mysteriously foreign experience.

This morning it felt like Christmas. Thank you for all the gifts, especially the enchantment of surprise.

2006-10-06T18:23:00.000-04:00

sophisticated lady

smoldering temptress

hip grad student

innocent lamb

I need an intervention. I have acquired a rather nasty addiction: shooting myself with my new camera phone. It's amazing because I create a new person every shot I take. I can't help flipping it out everyday whenever I have a spare moment, trying to capture a fresh angle, softer light, a shining smile, a stranger's face. When I look at these images, I see a someone who is other than myself, while knowing that it is a representation of me. A faint trace of self-sameness in each camera photo mixed simultaneously with the image as an object outside of my grasp. I own these pictures, but they are not mine, they are not of me, they are barely a creation I imbued with reality. More like strange mishaps. I don't know what I am doing when I take a picture, it just happens chaoticly--I click a button and there is an image. I move the phone a fraction, and there is a new image, a different woman in the viewfinder, another stranger that is somehow connected to the other dozens of pictures and the photographer herself.

What happens when I take my image as an object given to myself? Is it totally outside of me? Is it connected to me beyond the perception of it? It is related to me, but in a more intimate way then a subject to an object. But it is also not another subject. It is the image of another subject--a subject that happens to be me. So do I take up this image in the same way I would take up another subject. Of course not, I take it as an image, a mirror image, an image of what I call "me." I call me. I call to myself. I call myself. I call myself I call myself...(Ah, strange mixture of Hegel and Derrida today).

2006-09-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

So I wore my dangerous dominatrix boots yesterday, and other than the undergraduate cat calls, and a very humorous, "Hey, buddy!" followed by "What a snob!" as I walked by unphased, it would have been another uneventful day in the life of a passive aggressive woman. But something happened that made me feel very good about myself. I shot a guy down. His lusty glances will no longer be tinged with that gleeful hope for future collaboration.

This man is a parking attendant at a mental hospital, and when I illegally park, for the past two weeks he has very generously runs up to the car and offered me a space in his lot. People can be so benevolent, I thought, until I saw his eyes wander up and down my body like a road map, lingering at certain curves in the road. Oh well, another idealistic dream flutters away. But yesterday was the day he mustered the courage to ask me if I liked coffee (who doesn't) and then the inevitable "why don't I treat you for coffee Tuesday."

And here is where I shined. I told him exactly what I thought. "As flattering as that is, I don't think so. No, I really don't think so." No excuses, no apologies, just no.

How's that for the most non-confrontational woman in the world, guys?

2006-09-18T14:56:00.000-04:00

Nothing of ourselves beclouds the glow
Of snowflakes melting back into air.
--Bonnefoy

She sang, as though speaking to herself."
--Bonnefoy

She thought, as if speaking to god,
something beyond flesh speaks.

Strangers never spoke a word
lending vitality to this conversation.

She kept thinking,
as though thinking itself were a god--

Who grants eternal life
who holds you in his twilight grasp,
who locks you in memory,
who never stopped to drink from the pool
like all the other gods.

She kept thinking.
Past the trees,
Below the pool,
through the portal
into nothing.

2006-09-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

First a bomb threat at the synagogue next to my apartment, now shootings at the student union on campus. Things are not boding well in Pittsburgh.

Five Duquesne basketball players shot

By Jim RitchieTRIBUNE-REVIEWSunday, September 17, 2006

Police are searching for a man who shot five Duquesne University basketball players early this morning outside a campus residence hall.

City police said two were in critical condition at Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, Uptown: a 23-year-old man who was shot in the head and a 21-year-old who was shot in the elbow and shoulder. The other victims were treated at local hospitals and released. They include a 23-year-old man shot in the foot, a 20-year-old shot in the wrist and another man shot in the shoulder and forearm.

Police did not release the victims' names. The shooting occurred about 2:15 a.m. after a verbal argument between a man and the victims as they left a dance at the student union, police said.
The man followed the victims as they walked through campus. At Vickroy Hall, the man pulled a gun from his waistband and shot at the victims. He then fled toward Forbes Avenue.

Police described the man as black, about 5 feet 4, wearing a white T-shirt. The suspect is not believed to be a Duquesne student, according to a university statement.
City homicide detectives had not yet located a suspect. They asked anyone with information about the shooting to call their office at 412-323-7161.
Extra campus police officers have been assigned to on-campus residences, and the university is offering counseling for victims and other students.

"First and foremost, we are concerned about our students and are praying that each of them has a full recovery," said Duquesne spokeswoman Bridget Fare. "We will offer support and services to the victims and their families, as well as to our other students who may have been affected by this tragic incident. This type of situation has never occurred before on Duquesne's campus. The University is cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation,"

The university was not releasing more information this morning while the investigation continued.

2006-09-15T21:10:00.000-04:00

In the black pupils of the other whom I submit myself to, I finally see myself as being, and my pursuit for the in-itself can end. I am no longer nothingness. The other who humiliates me in my objectivity absorbs my subjectivity. Masochism is “[a] perpetual effort to annihilate the subject’s subjectivity by causing it to be assimilated by the Other.”[1] Hence, the Other is objectified through the subject’s masochistic cause, while the subject attempts to objectify himself by being “fascinated by my self-as-object.”[2] The masochist is not concerned with consciousness of the self, but consciousness of an object that reflects his or her own status as an object or in-itself.

[1] Sartre, 493.
[2] Sartre, 492.

2006-09-02T12:28:00.000-04:00

What does he truly fear? The beginning of language, the commencement of speech from his lips, the beginning of desires imposed upon him by the speech of others? To part your lips, then gather enough breath to pass over expectant vocal chords; to force a leap into the harsh reality of words created by you alone. To be Icarus and know your fate; escaping the labyrinth, you step into the beginning and discover your self. The wings your father so painstakingly formed and shaped are prone to dissolution, and yet you fly towards the sun to follow a destiny that is your desire. To abandon Daedelus, Father, for the god of the sun. That flaming mass is your greatest desire, your father the architect of your demise. Foucault wishes for an impossible savior, an Apollonian discourse carrying the subject safely away from any semblance of freedom, those damning flames that cannot be perceived directly:

I would have preferred to be enveloped in words, borne way beyond all possible beginnings. At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me, leaving me merely to enmesh myself in it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself, when no one was looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instant, in suspense, to beckon to me. There would have been no beginnings: instead, speech would proceed from me, while I stood in its path—a slender gap—the point of its possible disappearance.[1]

[1] Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 215.

--Excerpt from a current paper. Mental blocks suck.

2006-09-02T12:20:00.000-04:00

8/23/06
My entire life force has been dedicated to the impossible task of breaking free from the discourse that has shaped every thought, every word, every nuance in my being. What does it mean to be free? Will I ever find that space of redemption where I can think freely, step out of the river that has eroded streams winding through my mind, is there a way to love without loving the idea of love implanted in my mind? My body is shaped by this discourse. The wrinkles forming around my eyes, forehead, mouth. It is the speech escaping lips, vibrations of the English language. My face turns upward (if I were Russian, for example, all lines would be down-turned). I have American orgasms. I smell American. I sweat America. Even the dream of professorship is an American ideal (recorded in Roth’s The Human Stain—we all want to be petite French feminists). So when I despise America, is this a banal form of self-hatred? My desire to live among outsiders, is this a desire to leave myself behind. To get out of myself. I wish to melt into you. Will another all American man set me free? Will a foreign man break this enchantment? Feel my breath upon your neck. Don’t say no to me. Will this ecstatic Icelandic artist pull me out with her melodic words? Will Bonnefoy? Will Lacan? Will Heidegger? All these French. All these Germans. All my philosophy books attest to my ennui. I will take the sun in my mouth. I live in two worlds: sleep and dreams, boredom and mysticism. And once again I say nothing. Nothing new. I am not wired to say what I experience in these dreaming moments.

I am in philosophy because I want to decode my soul.

2006-07-21T06:44:00.000-04:00

My body rejects change. The past year has almost completely dissolved from my skin. When I awake, I enter confusion. When I sleep--in cars, in grocery stores, sitting on couches or cafe chairs, my eyes absorb, but my mind is a buried cicada. Seven years entombed in soil. I am an insect. Or have entered the collective hibernation. Moments of cognizance strike me down, as if shot full of adrenaline or cocaine. Euphoria's shadow twin is twice as pleasurable, reminding me than I am not only filled with blood, but glass. As the sands shift away into glass, my body reviles the impossible transformation. Hate or lust, I cannot escape becoming out of nothing.

2006-07-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

Scary story o' the day:

Third grader with Asbergers said, with the prompt of "what do you see on the cover of Balto: The Bravest Dog Ever, the following:

Let's vaporize the teacher.

Then...

We'll rip her panties off and flush them down the toilet! Then burn all her clothes!

Later...

Collect all the ear wax from her ears and throw it in the toilet!

After calling his mom, who sat with him through the rest of class:

This workbook is "Syllable Smart?" More like Syllable STUPID.

So utterly creative. Such skill with language and images. But as my student--completely baffling, jaw droppingly-funny, and simultaneously devastating for classroom morale. And there was no way to communicate with him. When I asked him to promise to follow the rules, he did so.

Then...

Slowly elevating two crossed fingers, he sang a clear tick tock sound with accompanying motion. Then stared me down. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Deliberate. Cruel. "Do you know what this means?" Tick Tock. Tick Tock. "It means I'm lying!" he sang to me in outright defiance and triumph. It was Good Son quality. Beautifully orchestrated.

I dare anyone to look into the eyes of this Other and treat him like the age he is. I was humiliated.

2006-06-17T18:10:00.000-04:00

Cute Story 'o' the day:

I was reading "Little Bear Goes to the Moon" to little ones, and I asked, what does Little Bear wear when he pretends to go to the moon?

My answer: his space helmet.
4 year old's answer: Ben Rothlesberger.

Ben Rothlesberger of the Pittsburgh steelers was hospitalized recently when he received wounds from a motorcycle accident. He was not wearing his helmet.

2006-06-16T21:26:00.000-04:00

A new echelon of reality is blooming within, and what a frightful horrid reality this is: work. I finished my first backbreaking week of labor in what I assume is considered normal in the adult world. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the patron saints, and maybe some prophets, Moses, and Abraham and all other “floaty things” a la Grizzly Man: Please help! I don’t like devoting all my time to my job. It’s not a bad gig, don’t get me wrong. I teach reading to all age levels--I have a classes consisting of four year olds all the way up to the elderly. Fulfilling work, enriching lives and minds, working with all types of people, healing the world in a way. But what about me? I have no time to be a single woman. I was looking forward to that this summer. And now I just have those two cats who inhabit the same apartment as me. A cat lady? This is certainly not acceptable. And now look at the time! Hmph! I have to lesson plan. It’s my day off and all I have done is work. For this job. Preposterous!

2006-05-27T11:27:00.000-04:00

As far as where I am and what I am doing, the greater DC area for teacher training in a private reading program should suffice. I now work 10 hour days with a 2-hour roundtrip commute. Lifestyle changes reveal how quickly the human body and mind can adapt to extreme circumstances. No more lazy days, no more lingering in the many cafes sprinkled across Pittsburgh, no more Seinfeld twice a day, and I certainly don’t have as much time to reflect on myself, which was previously my favorite activity. Another drastic change is that I am completely and utterly single, a status I have not had the privilege of in four and a half years.

Recently I dreamt of a sophisticated jazzy Taylor Hicks-like man. This pop-culture American Idol make-out dream I attribute to my work day: role playing children between the ages of 5 to 11 for roughly 5 hours each day. It would take too much time to explain, but this is part of training—modeling lessons in front of a pretend classroom. But maybe I have judged my night fantasies too quickly. Am I in love with Taylor Hicks? Do I want to have little American Idol babies? Have I become infatuated with this southern man and his fame? Or do I just want the fleeting attention of an older man?

So as far as where I am and what’s going on in my head, I think I am having an identity crisis. Having a full-time job as an ambitious adult, but playing the role of a 5 year old for half the day; thinking philosophically about who I am in relation to the world around me, and watching mind-numbing television like American Idol at night; day dreaming about the dating scene as a single woman and the plethora of possibilities, and wanting the meaningfulness of a committed relationship. Is this part of the adapting process? Am I going through so much change at once that my life can only be understood paradoxically? I have never known what I want. And I like this. It leaves some mystique in my everyday actions. But its not easy coming off a year of routine into this completely altered lifestyle. I undoubtedly have been too complacent this year. Kittens, tasty food prepared for me, communal Seinfeld ritual, a beautiful apartment, a good sex life, and an easy job. Now I’ll be working long hours with no semblance of the life before. Well, at least not until the fall semester begins.

2006-04-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning my New Mexico adventure. The first triumph was Luke successfully handling four and a half hours of plane time. Only a few panic attacks, leaving almost undetectable bruises on my forearm. I believe men are more afraid of dying. Women fantasize and anticipate the death moment, as the sagacious Allison put it. Flying over the desert and imagining a fiery crash gets me off, you could say. I role play the "English patient." Well, we are renting a car and driving to Santa Fe today, then the conference in Albuquerque, then another trip to Taos, recommended to us by a kindly man that calmed Luke's nerves on the treacherous descent over the mountains.

2006-03-16T10:56:00.000-05:00

Classtime (without proper book) post 12 hour day on campus:

Whirling roaring rhythm. Sound rocks back and forth, a sheet of rain hitting bricks, waves rushing over concrete, rattling noise consumes consciousness. Is this a book I see before me? Come, let me touch thee. Ha! I am swaying, held by the sea for this moment that lasts exactly two hours and forty minutes. I am thrown, lost to any sense of self that appeared before the rhythm. Everything is seen, heard, felt under this suffocating sea; my eyes roll back and forth as if floating sea foam on a rolling carpet. I see my life in flashes as a foreigner, a fragment of glass imbedded in sand. Classrooms and crucifixes, swimming computers, overstuffed bed, neon overheads, mascara clumps, indifferent cats, notes scribbled on yellow paper, glossy-lip taste, shower drain, black liquid, hamantaschen crumbs, viscous keyboards, electrical wires cross sky. All these sticky objects float with me.

I always feel like I have just walked in from a downpour, the kind with no lightning or thunder, just dreary raindrops. My hands and feet are wet, my clothes are interweaved with mist, hair damp. I walk into an air-conditioned space that slowly defeats the humidity. Chilled and steamy.

Aphrodisia should be more alluring than this. Writing more fluid and orgasmic, a natural excess. Instead, the chill. Uncomfortable, stiff, grimy, self-engrossed, eyes bobbing, body pale pink and purple, hunched shoulders, expressionless—there is no everyday. When we wake the constant groan of rain on glass meets us, waves on rocks, drinking fountain metal, distilled plastic, salt and weeds, backbone on haze, cold limbs with humid taste. I am no comforter, I am a mourner. Fragments, ruins, this corpse will make its way into the constellation of days.

2006-03-01T20:36:00.000-05:00

At 24 I find it amazing that several paradigmatic shifts have already occurred during my lifetime. The one I am currently engaged in entails an all consuming meaninglessness characterizing my existence. I have no core, no burgeoning lotus within, no layers of meaning to be peeled away, cherished, and surpassed. Just the dark and chaotic waters of the ineffable. I guess you could say that I have jumped into my allegorical river. Isn't it funny that we can read books explaining the sex is a discursive construct, that the self is split and is always other to itself, that we invent and reinvent ourselves providing the meaning that cushions our delicate souls...but in the end it's just rhetoric. Sure sounds profound. Until it finally registers as your own "reality." The unconscious river uncovers its scaly stones for an instant in time--a flash of lightning, a pulsating entity that covers itself in mystery as quickly as it was revealed.
Everything you hold dear was given to you by someone else, by a law that you did not create, by a cultural norm that used to make so much sense.

Marriage, for instance. Always seemed so natural. The exclusive possession of someone's sex organs, a contract legally binding to ensure the male's offspring is his. A breach of contract still punishable by death (albeit in far away backward lands). Duty to serve your other half, the one completing you. You are not good enough alone, so another is needed to provide food, money, security, children. And you are held to a contract that demands all of you. You will never love another again. Forbidden. Love is horded away.

Or do you prefer the myth of the soul mate? It sounds much prettier, doesn't it? Two become one. Two people, one mind, heart, soul. A dull life when the other follows you around mimicking your every move, hanging on your every word. Get a life. Oh, wait, I am your life, you are my life. Complete boredom and stagnation. If two people are going to spend their lives together, wouldn't it be natural if they remained open to living? Would you prefer a corpse-mate? What makes life interesting is experience, and if another person can bring in his or her experiences to share with you in a creative way, that sounds like love. I experience god. Okay, tell me about that encounter. What is god? Who are you? I experience void. Wonderful, tell me all about it.
And don’t forget the best part—as Foucault says, one creates new desires, new pleasures, new selves that resist normative principles. That sounds like fun. So why do most people end up marrying, divorcing, remarrying, ad infinitum? Maybe these people do not see the meaninglessness in everything, the contrived and forgotten nature of the self. We are all just a moment away from the dark pulsing unconscious. Let the river emerge.

2006-02-21T14:20:00.002-05:00

Sitting in class (without proper book) after 12 hours on campus:

Whirling roaring rhythm. Sound rocks back and forth, a sheet of rain hitting bricks, waves rushing over concrete, rattling noise consumes consciousness. Is this a book I see before me? Come, let me touch thee. Ha! I am swaying, held by the sea for this moment that lasts exactly two hours and forty minutes. I am thrown, lost to any sense of self that appeared before the rhythm. Everything is seen, heard, felt under this suffocating sea; my eyes roll back and forth as if floating sea foam on a rolling carpet. I see my life in flashes as a foreigner, a fragment of glass imbedded in sand. Classrooms and crucifixes, swimming computers, overstuffed bed, neon overheads, mascara clumps, indifferent cats, notes scribbled on yellow paper, glossy-lip taste, shower drain, black liquid, hamantaschen crumbs, viscous keyboards, electrical wires cross sky. All these sticky objects float with me.

I always feel like I have just walked in from a downpour, the kind with no lightning or thunder, just dreary raindrops. My hands and feet are wet, my clothes are interweaved with mist, hair damp. I walk into an air-conditioned space that slowly defeats the humidity. Chilled and steamy.

Aphrodisia should be more alluring than this. Writing more fluid and orgasmic, a natural excess. Instead, the chill. Uncomfortable, stiff, grimy, self-engrossed, eyes bobbing, body pale pink and purple, hunched shoulders, expressionless—there is no everyday. When we wake the constant groan of rain on glass meets us, waves on rocks, drinking fountain metal, distilled plastic, salt and weeds, backbone on haze, cold limbs with humid taste. I am no comforter, I am a mourner. Fragments, ruins, this corpse will make its way into the constellation of days.

2006-02-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

This piece is entitled "Dana and the Bitch"

Christine, obviously thrilled to be in Pittsburgh, really clicked with my friends when she demanded chilled Fuji bottled water instead of what she referred to as "Pittsburgh piss." Dana, unphased, put on her best Shirley Temple face. Let the photo shoot commence!

This piece is entitled "Well, What's Cuter than THAT?!"

Christine post-Fuji.
Dana, as happy as can be, as usual.

2006-01-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

Happy new year, everyone!

2005-12-30T02:16:00.000-05:00

Why my family is cool:

2005-12-29T01:08:00.000-05:00

Why my family makes me sick:

Sitting in my old bedroom slightly buzzed. I'm trying not to think about this place where I lived for so long and the people still trapped here. It feels as if my absence from this house left it more chaotic, filthy, and meaningless. Of course I think this. Of course my presence gives people meaning and structure. To give this to myself...And no one else seems to understand how awful it is for me to come here. I sat on the couch today reading. As soon as everyone left the room, I couldn't keep it together. Everyone is dying. Its like that scenes from "Gia" where this beautiful model's body rots from the disease she carries, how her flesh melted from her bones as she layed conscious on the hospital bed. That is how it feels being here, especially in solitude. I begin to think. Last night I though about how exactly two years ago I layed in this same spot, panicking, scared about my future, about moving on and being so far from my love. I never thought I would be laying here now, two years later, with absolutely nothing to show for it. What have I done these past years? Who have I become? And I have to return to this hellish place less alive than when I left, a fate I never imagined! I've noticed I have picked up some nervous habits. Do I look as insane as I think I do? How have I completely lost the ability to communicate?

Why am I so self-absorbed? What about my mother's newfound dedication to her job, the only thing she has control over in her life, the only thing that keeps her going. A place where she can go and have the clean order I spoke of earlier. And my father's deepened detachment from the world into childlike distractions? And my brother's constant need for approval from his friends--he has even changed the way he talks, but not what he smokes. Maybe this suffocating anxiety is caused by the fact that no one has really changed, only deepened their respective delusions. And maybe this reflects on my own fears about my life, and how I have so little effect on my on family. I have always held a strict barrier between myself and the men in my family, but it is strange experiencing how little they know about me, how they act like a stranger is in the room when I enter. And I don't know if I would want it any other way. The fact is, they sicken me. This whole house makes me ill. I constantly have to choke back my nausea. I'm not sure why.

As a child I saw everything as magical, beautiful, pure, supernatural. I was the center of the universe. God spoke to me, I was going to be a saint. I suppose this beauty was my delusion, hence the abundant trips to the library to feed my eager mind with this fantasy. I still feel this illusion of a hidden beauty. And this I call self.

2005-12-19T18:48:00.000-05:00

the charade

2005-12-17T23:37:00.000-05:00

We begin in darkness
Light turns to flesh
Lingering

Turn outward,
touch the distant walls.

Earth trembles, falls suddenly, shouts
Taking away what is given
Womb vomits infant
Both holding the self

Centuries and a handful of fleeting moments
Our time will soon end
Flames that consume the frailest body

Fill the room and drift,
burst into surrounding streets.

Body as ash
too seductive to rescind
Living road for the corpse
I saw you burn
Soul alight with passion
Mythology bewitched me.

Cold stars and wild winds
will save no one.

2005-12-04T17:53:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, Niagara!

When you're in Canada, there's always something to be thankful for.Jared eats the rainbow that crowns Niagara Falls. Apparently the Thanksgiving feast did not fill him with the beauty of lightness and peace that he was expecting.

Luke and I find solace in the future possibility of ridding ourselves of this stain we call Duquesne, and leaving academia far far away, in the dark part of our souls.

Allison agrees with our sentiments as she kisses the rainbow for good luck and good riddance to Pittsburgh--the hope that sweetly hovers in the horizon like this beautiful shower of rain drops and light.

2005-12-04T17:53:00.000-05:00

Well, folks, its that time again. Time for frantic attempts to complete papers on time for the love of god! Instead I have been submitting papers to conferences and writing emails and blog entries. And I have to teach tommorrow, damn it! Just so you know, I am fucked, guys.

My very own Sex & the City commentary:

Its funny how when seemingly committed to a life of freedom and experience, one will retract all that she finds meaningful in personal relationships for the sake of comfort. I sought refuge from the pain of a long-distance relationship with a man who emotionally distanced himself to the same extent. I follow the path of extremes: a man I am close to but is physically distant, to a man who is physically close but he distances himself from me. Is there something about me that necessitates this dialectic of remoteness and proximity? Is it an impossible feat for a person to share himself intimately with me if we are in physical proximity daily?

Maybe my problem is that I will only meet people where they are willing to go; I won’t cross that invisible boundary without the other person taking the first step. Am I respectful or fearful? I fear making myself the fool, of rejection, of the vulnerability attached to making a bold move, or maybe of frightening the other with the amount of myself I am willing to share. I can’t help it, I desire intimacy on both levels: physically and emotionally. Is this too much to ask for? And the lack of either drives me crazy. I am just as depressed now as I was last semester, especially since I thought I was proceeding in the direction of having the best of both worlds with two different people. Alas, I am not the center of the world and cannot have the impossible. (And I certainly would not want to be in the situation of the two men in the triangle.) Is it better not to have anything? Would it be better to resign from the physical proximity if I cannot have a meaningful friendship? This seems to be more confusing and aggravating than anything else, as if I did not have the power of speech to express an impending need. I still cannot take the first step…probably because I know what the reaction to this would be. And I fear rejection like the fear of God the fundamentalists try to instill in us.

I am like Sisyphus. I continually struggle with the same damned boulder: rolling it up and watching it roll back down. This twin predicament that binds me. However, I have the freedom to step out of this nightmare. But doing so leads me to a path of uncertainty and solitude. Is this really the right thing to do? Or am I being melodramatic and overly hasty? Balancing the scales of joy and sorrow, the sorrow end seems to be the predominant characteristic of my life the past two months. So common sense would say in order to be happy, change must occur. I am tired of thinking. I am tired of waiting patiently. I am tired of being left feeling empty. It would be nice to be able to talk to someone I care about as much as him.

2005-11-04T20:41:00.000-05:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago after seeing Lhasa in an intimate venue, and I fell in love. This writing about death and love seems appropriate at this time.

Soon this space will be too small
All my veins and bones
Will be burned to dust
You can throw me into
A black iron pot
And my dust will tell
What my flesh would not
--Lhasa

A mythology that eases one inside burning meaning: We begin in darkness, as a point of light strange and small. Time stretches on into eternity. Light turns to flesh as we acquire veins and bones, sensation and thought that turn outward to touch the distant furtive walls. Our world closes in on us as we ourselves grow stronger and larger. Sight and sound push us out of self-awareness into a lingering darkness. Our earth trembles, falls suddenly, shouts and caresses. After centuries, that protective mouth slowly suffocates our pulsating body, and we have becomes too much, our world too tight, too small—we sense our fate. Our time has come to an end; the world will take away what it has given. And when the womb vomits the infant, this violence attests to the awaited event. But our life has not ended; it has just begun. We learn to use our feeble bodies in ways unknown to us before. And we discover new horizons within our body, within our mind, exceeding both but holding the self. After what seems both centuries and a handful of fleeting moments—a few faces and tears and dreams—we realize this world has become too small. Our body has cracked and crumbled within these constricting walls. Our time will soon end.

You are, as you say, on fire. Pero no cuando deja de amar, despues cuando ti miro, cuando te quiero amar, cuando levantas, mi amor. You burst within flames that consume your frail body and ignite your hunger. You hunger and thirst for a world that no longer suffocates that heat—a frightening energy that exceeds these walls. No, not when you stop loving; when you stand alone so tiny and insignificant that you fill the room and drift into other rooms while bursting into the surrounding streets. You emanate eros.

I feel that I sometimes acquire a light that burns black. My body would be better as ash. Moments like these I sense the burning. It numbs my lips and heightens other sensations. When will I go outside? When will I be ready? When will this space be too small? It constricts and blinds. Are these other parts of me calling out to be realized? They will consume me while my body vomits that which I call life back into the earth. Sometimes I feel prepared for this violence. Other times I feel the comfort of my world is too seductive to rescind. Is philosophy preparing for death? Preparing a living road for the corpse? You were not a corpse tonight. Because I saw you burn. You gave me your soul alight with passion and this mythology that has bewitched me.

You will be beautiful as the ash of cold stars and wild winds. But you are wrong in one sense. Those three words, my dear, will save no one.

2005-11-01T22:44:00.000-05:00

Halloween Party

I don't have to relay how awesome my halloween party was, all I have to do is post the evidence.

2005-10-31T10:12:00.000-05:00

My pastor from Baylor died Sunday. He was an amazing person. I am thrown.

His death was so absurd, senseless, theologically damning.

This is the last sermon Kyle wrote:

Live. And Live Well.BREATHE. Breathe in and Breathe deeply. Be PRESENT. Do not be past. Do not be future. Be now.On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day, roll down the windows and FEEL the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of the sun.If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.Get knee-deep in a novel and LOSE track of time.If you bike, pedal HARD… and if you crash then crash well.Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done—a paper well-written, a project thoroughly completed, a play well-performed.If you must wipe the snot from your 3-year old’s nose, don’t be disgusted if the Kleenex didn’t catch it all… because soon he’ll be wiping his own.If you’ve recently experienced loss, then GRIEVE. And Grieve well.At the table with friends and family, LAUGH. If you’re eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke. And if you eat, then SMELL. The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven. And TASTE. Taste every ounce of flavor. Taste every ounce of friendship. Taste every ounce of Life. Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift.

Waco pastor electrocuted during service

By David Doerr Tribune-Herald staff writer
Monday, October 31, 2005

Mourners filled the pews of First Baptist Church Sunday night to grieve the death of the Rev. Kyle Lake, who was electrocuted earlier in the day as he prepared to baptize a new member at University Baptist Church.
Lake, 33, was stepping into the baptistery, a small pool used for baptisms, as he reached out to adjust a nearby microphone, which produced an electric shock, said Ben Dudley, community pastor at University Baptist Church. Several doctors attending the service because of Baylor University's homecoming rushed to help Lake, who collapsed, Dudley said.
Church members called 9-1-1 and efforts were made to revive him by administering CPR before emergency medical service personnel arrived, Dudley said.
Lake and a woman being baptized were taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center, Dudley said. Medical personnel tried to re-establish a regular heartbeat for about 45 minutes but were not able to resuscitate Lake, he said.
The woman, whom church officials declined to identify, was taken to the hospital as a precaution and was not seriously injured, Dudley said. It did not appear that she was standing in the water at the time of the accident, he said.
“At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying to figure out what was going on,” Dudley said. “Everyone just immediately started praying.”
Two East Texas Medical Center EMS ambulances and two Waco Fire Department units responded to the emergency call at about 11 a.m., said Jimmie Mauppin, Waco Fire Department assistant chief.
Lake died at Hillcrest at about 11:30 a.m., Dudley said.
Lake had been the pastor at UBC, which is heavily attended by Baylor students, since 1999. He served with the church since 1997 when he received his master of divinity degree from Truett Seminary.
Church members and Baylor students went to First Baptist Church Sunday night for a gathering to explain what happened to those who were not there and to comfort the grieving.
Baylor administrators, including interim President Bill Underwood and Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, interim vice president for student life, attended Sunday evening's meeting.
“Kyle and the other staff have been very gifted in reaching students and making the Gospel come alive for students,” Oliver said. “It is a huge loss for the university community.”
Paul Stripling, emeritus executive director of the Waco Baptist Association, said Lake had a special knack for reaching out to young people.
“He had a dynamic in reaching young people that was very, very helpful and innovative,” Stripling said in a telephone interview. “He brought to the table some new ways to reach young people in ministry. And he was a master at it.”
Blair Browning, a former church leadership team member, agreed.
“He was really unique because he was laid back without being watered-down,” Browning said during a session with news media prior to Sunday night's gathering. “He was very relational. I think we all gravitated to him because he looked cooler than all of us, but he was really smart. ??? People that would never have darkened the doorstep of a church felt comfortable talking to Kyle.”
Lake, of Tyler, earned a bachelor's degree in speech communications and religion in 1994 from Baylor. He is survived by his wife Jennifer and three children, twin 3 year-old sons and a 5-year-old daughter.
“We will move forward as a church,” Dudley said to the UBC congregation gathered at First Baptist. “I don't know how, when, why, where, or what's going to happen, but we will continue as a church in the community because that is what Kyle would have wanted.”
UBC, 1701 Dutton Ave., was founded in 1995 by Chris Seay and Christian music recording artist David Crowder as a mission of Beverly Hills Baptist Church. The church has grown steadily to a congregation of about 600 members.
Funeral arrangements are pending, but a visitation has been scheduled at 6 p.m. today at Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home, 6101 Bosque Blvd. Information on funeral services will be posted on the church's Web site, www.ubcwaco.org

2005-10-28T10:10:00.000-04:00

Philosophy seeks truth, but will never attain it. Why pursue the impossible? Why prolong strife? You will never reach orgasm. Consummation is not in the cards.

This is what I told my class today. Oh, if I could have recorded their faces! I taught today on a play that this class was required to see. I wrote up notes comparing it to the project of philosophy, specifially that of Plato and Descartes with a splash of Sartre...And ended up giving them a taste of my own philosophical gourmet. I am energized and hopeful.

I was able to do this because the professor (An uber-Catholic) was absent. I implored them to ask questions like, "Why am I sitting in this classroom? Why do I care about my education?" and passionately asked them if they wanted to be awake and alive, or sleep and dream comfortably, not knowing, myself, which was the better way. I didn't lecture, I was preaching. I was a philosophical priestess. Finally, these kids were exposed to something other than arguments for the existence for God, which "just doesn't do it for me." I asked them if they thought they understood God any better after learning Anselm's argument. Maybe they were afraid to disagree with me, even though I told them I didn't think there was one right answer, and that I could easily be misled.

I can't believe I ranted so much. I started going off on the thematic question for the class, "What good is philosophy?" and briefly sketched the change between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment, using Nietzsche's "God is dead" as an example. Philosophy is dangerous, that's why society has made a place for us in academia, where we can feel satiated, but not cause too much damage. Philosophy subverts all previously held assumptions, after all. (I hope I haven't ruined them for my professor...)

Well, I will count this as my first philosophy class taught, because the other one was supervised and structured. I feel all warm, fuzzy, and excited now!

2005-10-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

Is it telling that my "Ads by Google" are for insomnia pills? Even this computer program knows how insane I am...

2005-10-18T01:21:00.000-04:00

more of the l ittle monster...

2005-10-07T10:10:00.000-04:00

Beatrix, the new kitty!
oh my gaaawd!

2005-10-03T12:37:00.000-04:00

I taught for the first time today. It was okay. I sold out, though. I listed premises and conclusions on the board, along with "key words" such as a priori. I also doodled and tossed my chalk around. I remember explaining why there is something rather than nothing, all the while creating a swirly on the chalkboard. When I started to draw a line out of it I became aware of this strange behavior and (in my stoner voice) said, "Uuuuhhhh, I don't know why I am drawing this"...to which my professor noted that it was hard to draw a diagram of nothing. And then I drew it again and did my stoner voice again "Woooahhh, nothing." I guess I was entertaining myself. Then I was distracted by one girl's answer to a question I posed and I became nervous and read my notes. People were sleeping.

Overall it was...okay. I was too formal in one sense and too casual in another. I teach again Wednesday and plan to keep my students wide awake. (You would think the fishnet stockings I wore today would have helped. Oh, philosophy is just not sexy, and no matter how hard I try, I don't know if I can make it seductive enough...to fool myself...)

other updates:
Allison brought home a kitten of mass-cuteness. Pictures soon to follow.

2005-09-07T10:07:00.000-04:00

Allison and I don conductor hats in a gesture of roommate accord.

can y'all handle this?
*insert train noises here*

2005-09-02T10:46:00.000-04:00

Luke and Mike: the happy couple.

I love taking pictures via the phone. Here I am expressing my alter ego known as "The Nay Train" which stems from my nickname "Da-nay-nay." And there is Luke looking like the grumpy old man that he is!

2005-07-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

I want to live. How do we live? I have turned everything off, I am completely passive. Is this what people do? Live as ghosts, less than that, live as the rat trained to follow one path in the labyrinth; there is nothing outside the labyrinth. Wandering in the cemetery, someone asked, "Are you mourning?" I mourn my life. We all choose to mourn or rejoice...or join those of stone. I want dreamless sleep, I want to forget everything: my memories, who I am, who I wanted to be: this is what I exult. Can I wake up and be one of those who rejoices amongst graves, knowing that someday I will return to that dreamless sleep? I want to die, but return knowing what I have done and that I am capable of peace.

I have always wanted the impossible. It is telling that I am happiest walking alone in the cemetery, which is really what all of this is. That coffin I call my apartment. We are all rats scratching walls that enclose. And if we escape? We run to the forest and starve or rot in walls feeding on refuse. And if our rat souls had our way we would just lay around artificially stimulated until our bodies no longer held the capacity for such pleasure.

In times of distress, one seeks sanctuary in bliss or calm or forgetting. We all seek happiness so reverently. Bowing down to this floating ideal, we sacrifice what would perhaps give our lives some meaning.

Why won't anyone speak? I certainly can't. But I would if someone would join me. You crooked dark currents--no one will ever join me. And that is why I will keep myself and stop pretending that I can give to anyone else. This is all a joke anyhow.

...you who communicated so honestly with me....will I give you what you yearned for so patiently: a response?

2005-05-11T12:44:00.000-04:00

Well, folks, its summer again. I can't tell you how much I love warmth. Sitting in my apartment with the windows open, fan blowing, translating German--oh the nostalgia of it all. I feel content, I feel comfortable in my skin. Its also nice to have a regular schedule, an actual regiment of work. I see people I like every day, and that makes ALL the difference in the world. (I'm talking to one of those crazy guys now!) And I just feel good. Right now that is all that matters to me. I want to feel good and I want those around me to feel good--simple.

I think this state of mind may be due to the warm weather. Its hard to be brooding and melancholy on days like this.

2005-05-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

Here is Christine's analysis of my paper in the style of previous viewings of our favorite animated film "Pinocchio" (1995-that was 10 years ago!) Christine has had a long history of analyzing my poetry as well, and when I say analyze I mean very deep readings...

CRAVING DESIRE, BITING OUR LIPS IN EXPECTATION, SQUIRMING in ANTICIPATORY DISTRESS, I SURGE, it SUBMERGEs, DISSIPATEs, and RE-EMERGEs. CURLED, SOAKed fingers CUP my BODY. the RIGIDITY MELTs in SWEET GRINDS BETWEEN PLAYFUL MINDS. I PULL, but he HOLDS SWAY as he PLAYS IN-BETWEEN LONG legs that OPEN UP. SICK, PERVERSE.FREEDOM: INTIMATELY BEYOND MANIPULATION. DEPLOY, COME INTO ME. STRANGE, CLOSE, DIZZYING REPETITION.

POSES betray SECRET, INNERMURMURINGS. WHISPERs DART through my PASSAGE. THE POINT I FEEL STARTsto RING AGAIN, PUTTING the URGE, the RHYTHM, the MINGLE, and the ECHO TOGETHER. URGES GET OUT and ENSNARE my MOVING VICTIM. I am BEYOND COMFORT. SOMETHING IS OPENING UP from being NESTLEd WITHIN my HEART.

We are CLUTCHING TOWERS. WAVES PENNED INSIDE are CRASHing ON our SHOREs. COME and ABIDE, my PRECIOUS. There can be NO REFUSAL. I make SEDUCTIVE TURNS, AFFECTIONATELY DWELLING on this DOOR OF POETRY, so DANGEROUS and so RARE. ARE WE THE ONES TO COME? BECAUSE IWOULD LIKE TO COME, I WOULD CERTAINLY ENJOY THIS COMING. [didn't haveto change that at all! haha.]

LONGING, DARK and POURING, RETAINs my RESERVEDNESS, LOCKs UP my INSIDEs. COMING, I SUCCUMB TO MACHINATION INTENTIONALLY. SEEKING PERVERSE, THWARTED NEARNESS, I ABANDON my RESERVEDNESS, MEETING the BREAK, LEAPing NOISILY. LISTEN!I am GUSHING, HAVING FUN, MAXIMIZING PLEASURE WITH THE LIGHTS OUT. BREATH is RELEASED from EXPECTANT LIPS during the GIGANTIC WITHDRAWL.

2005-05-02T15:32:00.000-04:00

Latest addition to my sublimation via Heidegger:

Heidegger’s words are the breath released from expectant lips: silent, withdrawing, expressing the swaying that weighs heavily upon the lips, but denying speech. That breath cannot release the totality of be-ing, rather the essential swaying of Seyn can be hinted at through the withdrawl of all those banal words that make up the language we work within. This also explains the strange being-language of the Beiträge: echo, last god, gigantic, the ones to come. These are simple childlike words, unlike the convoluted traditional philosophical jargon: categorical imperative, modus tollens, hypostasis, doxic modality (I could go on and on). One cannot delimit be-ing to a set of propositions.

Strange and simple, Seyn itself is esoteric. Be-ing is not first experienced while immersed in text. It is first experienced as that void in the body after a release of breath–it is first intimated at during the experience of abandonment and the resulting distress. Something is missing, but what? Be-ing is that which we have forgotten, although that forsaking has left its trace on us. Similar to a craving we can’t place–an unnameable desire that plagues our life and leaves us biting our lips in expectation–forgotten and abandoned be-ing leaves us squirming in an anticipatory distress.This is the experience of our epoch in Western history. We are all biting our lips thinking, "What am I missing?"

2005-05-01T21:29:00.000-04:00

Due to a certain interest that has been made known to me, I will post sections from a paper I am currently writing. I specifically formulated it as one of my typical blog entries, so for those who couldn't care less about the esoteric work of Heidegger, this should still pose semi-interesting reading--and it attests to my current state of affairs, which could be characterized as somewhat insane with a touch of playfulness. (Yes I am turning this is for a grade.) If you get bored after the first paragraph, skip to the last one for some fun pop culture allusions.

Words surge and dissipate into nothing; words submerge you, the reader, drowned and forgotten. But you re-emerge with the trace of the word-moments remaining hidden and curled within you. The glass shifts its way back into sand. Metaphysics is shattered but never dissolved. It erodes into the gritty sand of the beach that soaks in the sun’s blaze, it crosses over into the earth that cups the body. Words begin to melt away from the cold rigidity of ice sculptures into that sweet substance that grinds between playful toes. These words we encounter have a pull on us, but is it the words themselves, or is it something beyond the word that holds a sway that plays forth in the in-between of gods and humans? We are reminded of something long past and open up to the future through the words of poets—ironically enough, this is sometimes articulated through the work of those sick poets: philosophers. In particular, I refer to the esoteric work of Martin Heidegger, a philosopher whose counter-word is not without difficulty hashed out in the minds of those who devote their young lives to studying the most perverse writers.

The word as freedom: Heidegger is more concerned with the world (Welt) where the beginning of freedom can be found. The poetic word–the word beyond words for Heidegger–motions to this stepping into the open world that is intimately connected with Seyn. If Seyn is beyond words (and the word), then how do the words Heidegger deploy come into play? The words of the Beiträge are strange, and yet close to us. They ring out in the fugue-like repetition that–although causing a dizzying effect–echo a incomprehensible secret that calls for articulation. But where is language when we need it? To think language as music may be the response Heidegger poses in the Beiträge. I have no language to articulate those inner murmurings that whisper to me and then dart away from conventional communication. I am tired of all this bland argumentation—the manipulation of a passage instead of putting words together, of the point by point proofs of our tenuous assertions. Once again I feel the urge to start again, start as a child. That’s the only vocabulary we have, if we want to say anything at all. We must blend words into the rhythm of notes that mingle with each other and echo incommunicable thoughts.

Heidegger urges the reader to get out of the text, to escape the words that ensnare the reader-victim, to open up to be-ing and go beyond philosophy. After all, hasn’t philosophy failed? If metaphysics cannot help us answer the question, "But do we know who we are?" then a turn to something is called for. By getting out of the text–all of our precious philosophy books we carefully nestle in various book shelves within our homes, our lives, our thoughts–we can begin to live the thought that emerges from the words of these texts. We will never know who we are if we remain in this state of comfort: clutching our books to our hearts as we drift into sleep. Security-books are the bricks of our ivory towers. We are penned inside while the waves crash on the shore outside. Something is opening up out there, but we continue to abide in the world while refusing the earth. And the ones to come never forget this refusal. Truth is never forgetting while moving beyond.

Heidegger turns to the poetic dwelling, especially that of Hölderlin. Poetic dwelling is the exit from Western texts that Heidegger sees opening up. The door of poetry opens, but do we (by this collective I refer affectionately to those in my field)–do we have what it takes to open up to this dangerous, seductive philosophy of the future, all the while never forgetting the first beginning? Are we the few and the rare? Are we the ones to come? Because I would like to come, I would certainly enjoy this coming. But I don’t foresee this happening in academia.

Academics don’t come; they sit in their dark offices alone for the majority of the day pouring over research, so that they may retain these jobs that lock them up inside. Academics forget that their original longing was that of coming. Academics forget–that is, if they succumb to the machination of the university. Heidegger writes texts geared toward an audience versed in philosophy–hence the "public title" of this work: Contributions to Philosophy. I think that academic philosophers have come to this place intentionally. We are seeking something, otherwise we would be lawyers or doctors. It’s the seeking that becomes perverse, thwarted by the institution, and slowly abandoned throughout the years. Academics run the risk of forgetting to think (denken). Whilst meeting the next deadline, preparing for class, and catering to the bureaucracy, something is lost. Heidegger takes this up historically, I take it up on the level of my experience now. Who has the "utmost courage for solitude, in order to think the nobility of be-ing and to speak of its uniqueness," who is willing to break with convention, to leap into the abyss, the unknown, the ungrounded ground of what it is to be here now?1 When the "nearness of the last god is silence," how do we academic philosophers work within this reservedness, this reticence–how do we listen instead of noisily arguing with one another?2

Again, we must exit the text eventually, but after a familiarity with what the text offers has established a kind of wonder within us. This is not the wonder of be-ing, but a substitute wonder. Heraclitus and Parmenides did not have philosophical texts to immerse themselves in, so those of the first beginning expressed something closer to be-ing. They were like the children who have not become inundated with words and language yet, who can still think words like music–the state that Heidegger so desires to open into. This is why he discusses truth as alethia. One does not forget the past, the tradition, the texts that have brought history to its present state–but one also wishes to return to that child-like newness and wonder. However, this is impossible.

Heidegger yearns for the impossible–Seyn. Striving for the impossible opens up the future, clears the way for Da-sein to leap into the abyss toward the other beginning. The first beginning is the song being played, while the other beginning is the song not yet played: both are one song, a repetitious fugue that never forgets, but is never the same. Heraclitus said this when he exclaimed that although we step into the same river, we never really step into the same–its always changing, always in flux. Hölderlin, one of the few and the rare, ushers in the coming of the other beginning (a continuation of this river-song in flux) when he speaks of "you yearning rivers" that provide a futural darkness, a refusal of "sultry dog-days" for that which "casts prophetic shade."3

The public title of this work stands for something: Contributions to Philosophy. Although Seyn is the underlying river that–sometimes gushing, sometimes silently trickling–guides this musical text out into the open, beyond the river into that unsayable sea of Seyn. The Beiträge is intimate; it speaks on intimacy–the intimacy of Be-ing.

Seyn must remain unreadable. To render Be-ing "readable" would be to collapse thinking altogether. Thinking cannot be reduced to a "Seyn for Dummies" manual. If it were that easy it would not be thinking. That is the problem with our culture today. Thinking is passe; fun is in. After all, Cyndi Lauper asserted that "Girls just want to have fun," which became a catch phrase in the eighties, replaced by the similar truth claim of the contemporary college-inspired "Girls Gone Wild," where the entertained are now the entertainers. Culture is the absolutely other-than of Be-ing. Culture abandons Be-ing for an imperial sort of truth: having fun, maximizing pleasure. "With the lights out it’s less dangerous/ Here we are now/ Entertain us/ I feel stupid and contagious/ Here we are now, entertain us/....a denial" is an oft heard chorus from the ‘90's classic "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. Obedience to this trend is our culture–obedience to the pleasure of the entertained-entertainer type of truth.

2005-04-24T19:36:00.000-04:00

Trakl

Silence lives in empty windows
The ghostly moonlight glitters on it.
Icy fields complain in the darkness
Silence inhabits the blue spaces...a long afternoon
Deathbells of metal
Feeling the soft light of madness.
Shadows twist on the hill hemmed in black decomposition.
Twilight full of silence and wine
Silently God opens his golden eyes over the place of skulls.
O the forest, softly lowering its brown eyes from the slim lovely hand of the abandoned.
In the dark mirrors the sorrow of our ivory hands rises into an arch.
Yet always, there is the self, black and near.
It is gray face wasting away in the moon.
The dead paint a sneering silence on the walls with their white hands.
A fever's dull glow sends poisonous flowers blossoming from my mouth...
Where I am alone with my murderer.
Sparrows fall out of warm skies into green pockets filled with decay.

The dead forest widens--
A cold radiance flutters over the streets.
Through black branches comes the ringing of grieving bells.

lights drift confused

footsteps in a fog of blood

I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods

2005-04-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

we watch the world breathe
exhaling nothing.

the curving breast releases
that which lives in stone--
an empty horizon.

there is no tomorrow somewhere,
solamente un beso de la luna.

when i am broken,
will you see?