Untitled
This is a bit of a revision of the first entry. I take it back when I say I've felt "down." That's not quite it. And it's certainly not anti-social. And it's not even self-reflective. I remember earlier in the summer and in the year where I was down, and where I did have writing/thinking block, and I had to alleviate it by sort of forcing my body/mind to do things in hopes that my feelings would catch up. This included going out and being involved a lot when Amanda stopped speaking to me/ I didn't connect at all with what I was doing at school, and forcing myself to write pages of nonsense a day just in hopes that something would click. This all worked. Now it's more that I feel more optimistic about things than ever, and I have tons of things to say, but saying them has become sort of a practical problem because so much is going on. Now I sort of want, just for a day or two, some clear space where I can get things down, where I don't have to think about the phone, or exterminators, or laundry, or buying/making food. I think that's why I can't cry. I don't have the space or the time to cry.
Back again to my lunch last week with my friend from Middle School, which will be largely a re-articulation. After talking to her, I had no desire to talk to anyone, and I sort of walked around aimlessley for the day sort of wanting to cry and sort of wanting to shout but not able to do either. There was something about the interaction that violated how interactions of the sort should take place. We should have shouted "omg omg I'm so excited to see you!!!!" to each other. We should have offered some sort of praise to each other. She should have told me "it's ok, it was just middle school" when I expressed worry that I wasn't as nice as I could have been. And she certainly wasn't supposed to tell me over lunch, about 15 minutes into the conversation, at lunch, having not seen me since we were 13, that seven men went to middle school with had a contest about how many fingers they should shove up her vagina while she was passed out. Right?
She's, as I noted, fine now. She's in graduate school in New York, she works, she's fine. She told me in the most matter-of-fact tone what happened to her, and she named the names in such a matter of fact way. These weren't jocks - some of them were preppy, some of them were skater-ish, some of them were honors students, all popular to different degrees but all basically nice normal guys, all who have jobs and families now. She told me, which I'll reiterate: "I don't feel ashamed and I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like it's my fault. But I fucking hate these guys. I wouldn't mind if they died. And I'm fucking angry at the girls who stayed friends with them, and after they remained friends with them I could never *really* trust them." And there was something about the naming of their names - not that I didn't think they were scumbags and not that I didn't think it was mostly normal guys who raped people - that really just reminded me of every effort I've made and still make and probably still will make every day to be friendly to men who show every indication, even if it isn't flagrant (a few of these guys were, indeed, known for being excessively polite - some of them WERE excessively polite) of conceiving of women's bodies in the same way, a lot because sometimes I AM afraid to be perceived as the uptight, "vigilant," annoying angry feminist.
At some point, I sort of awkwardly - awkwardly because I knew she was utterly unimpressed with me - told her I had been carrying around some guilt with how I treated her in middle school. She, as I noted before, was supposed to tell me that I was just a kid, who cares. But she didn't. Fuck, why would she? I know I had subjectivity in middle school, I remember it, I hate when people think of "kids" as abstractions in that way. She shrugged in a way that made me feel like a narcissist, and said: "you know, I didn't notice it, but at least it shows you have a conscience that you can say that and have been thinking about it." By praising my "conscience," she WAS being genuine, but she was also acknowledging the legitimacy of my worry about my complicity. And we left, saying we'd get together again. There was no extraordinary bond between us, and there wasn't any dislike. It was all so muted. It left no opportunity for poetics, no feeling that it would matter tremendously to her if we affiliated again or not.
And it was all very violent, still. I've been listening to Tori's Boys for Pele somewhat obsessively since that interaction. It's brilliant, and I think it is one of the most difficult and painful CDs to sit through that was ever made. It isn't a comforting CD, per se. There is something about the ambiguity of the address, as if there is some way in which as much affinity I can feel with some of the intense violation she expresses, I'm being addressed peripherally, as I think everyone is. It's excruciating, I think, because there is some lost potentiality for affinity involved. That doesn't make it "pessimistic," or complacent, because its sort of scary anger and violence are inherently antagonistic, I think, to complacency, and considerng this, even acknowledging that there was a potentiality for a certain affinity that has been lost highlights how that potentiality can be taken up again.
Afterward, despite a day of not being able to talk to anyone, I reached out to a bunch of people and had an urge to reach out to a lot of other friends, some of whom I haven't talked to in ages but feel like I have some understanding of, even if I've fucked up in terms of how much I deserve to be their friends. I had no desire to explain logically to anyone how angry I was. I didn't know how to describe how I felt, but I knew I needed to feel comforted in some way, and I went to only people who I trust, deeply, to feel not an intellectual acknowledgment but a real deep and similar and somewhat intangible anger at what allows this sort of violation to happen. This has something really important to do with what community and affinity and trust mean to me. I'm not sure how to put it together right now, but I ended up feeling really lucky, I think, as I ended up reaching out to a lot of people and having a lot of excessively good conversations not because of this notion of technical "agreement," or "debate," or because of perfection or rightness or whatever, but because of some affinity that has something to do with a deep understanding of it and real desire for a world where this doesn't happen.
So now I have a lot of little nodes that I could analyze very powerfully, and I think the struggle now is to not get so involved in working out every connection every time that I can't get anything out in a way that can be public and legible. I've learned that sometimes its best to throw nuance away and just say something simple or what might degrade as "political" (like, "Don't go to that school, they hate women"), because that helps you move on, and that makes your address someone who isn't the disembodied fuck who is going to beat the shit out of you with disembodied logic and rigor that makes you feel wrong for feeling the way you feel, and it makes it addressed to....I don't know.....friends? Rather, I'm not disavowing nuance and intense 'close-reading,' but just a need for comprehensiveness and rigor that makes it too difficult to get things out, to share. I'm realizing lately how little my ideas are my own. Nothing I'm impressed in this particular way is because, primarily, it is smart, but because I recognize the something like the feeling that sparked it and ended up just feeling fucking comforting to have someone say it. A lot of things seem connected now and I'm secure about how to articulate the connections, not only because of me, but because where I'm unsure about the connections I know a really good amount of people I can go to to both open things up for me and ground me. If I have any sort of goal for my own work, it is to be legible in this way, and I'm still pretty unsure as to whether I can do this or not.
Back again to my lunch last week with my friend from Middle School, which will be largely a re-articulation. After talking to her, I had no desire to talk to anyone, and I sort of walked around aimlessley for the day sort of wanting to cry and sort of wanting to shout but not able to do either. There was something about the interaction that violated how interactions of the sort should take place. We should have shouted "omg omg I'm so excited to see you!!!!" to each other. We should have offered some sort of praise to each other. She should have told me "it's ok, it was just middle school" when I expressed worry that I wasn't as nice as I could have been. And she certainly wasn't supposed to tell me over lunch, about 15 minutes into the conversation, at lunch, having not seen me since we were 13, that seven men went to middle school with had a contest about how many fingers they should shove up her vagina while she was passed out. Right?
She's, as I noted, fine now. She's in graduate school in New York, she works, she's fine. She told me in the most matter-of-fact tone what happened to her, and she named the names in such a matter of fact way. These weren't jocks - some of them were preppy, some of them were skater-ish, some of them were honors students, all popular to different degrees but all basically nice normal guys, all who have jobs and families now. She told me, which I'll reiterate: "I don't feel ashamed and I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like it's my fault. But I fucking hate these guys. I wouldn't mind if they died. And I'm fucking angry at the girls who stayed friends with them, and after they remained friends with them I could never *really* trust them." And there was something about the naming of their names - not that I didn't think they were scumbags and not that I didn't think it was mostly normal guys who raped people - that really just reminded me of every effort I've made and still make and probably still will make every day to be friendly to men who show every indication, even if it isn't flagrant (a few of these guys were, indeed, known for being excessively polite - some of them WERE excessively polite) of conceiving of women's bodies in the same way, a lot because sometimes I AM afraid to be perceived as the uptight, "vigilant," annoying angry feminist.
At some point, I sort of awkwardly - awkwardly because I knew she was utterly unimpressed with me - told her I had been carrying around some guilt with how I treated her in middle school. She, as I noted before, was supposed to tell me that I was just a kid, who cares. But she didn't. Fuck, why would she? I know I had subjectivity in middle school, I remember it, I hate when people think of "kids" as abstractions in that way. She shrugged in a way that made me feel like a narcissist, and said: "you know, I didn't notice it, but at least it shows you have a conscience that you can say that and have been thinking about it." By praising my "conscience," she WAS being genuine, but she was also acknowledging the legitimacy of my worry about my complicity. And we left, saying we'd get together again. There was no extraordinary bond between us, and there wasn't any dislike. It was all so muted. It left no opportunity for poetics, no feeling that it would matter tremendously to her if we affiliated again or not.
And it was all very violent, still. I've been listening to Tori's Boys for Pele somewhat obsessively since that interaction. It's brilliant, and I think it is one of the most difficult and painful CDs to sit through that was ever made. It isn't a comforting CD, per se. There is something about the ambiguity of the address, as if there is some way in which as much affinity I can feel with some of the intense violation she expresses, I'm being addressed peripherally, as I think everyone is. It's excruciating, I think, because there is some lost potentiality for affinity involved. That doesn't make it "pessimistic," or complacent, because its sort of scary anger and violence are inherently antagonistic, I think, to complacency, and considerng this, even acknowledging that there was a potentiality for a certain affinity that has been lost highlights how that potentiality can be taken up again.
Afterward, despite a day of not being able to talk to anyone, I reached out to a bunch of people and had an urge to reach out to a lot of other friends, some of whom I haven't talked to in ages but feel like I have some understanding of, even if I've fucked up in terms of how much I deserve to be their friends. I had no desire to explain logically to anyone how angry I was. I didn't know how to describe how I felt, but I knew I needed to feel comforted in some way, and I went to only people who I trust, deeply, to feel not an intellectual acknowledgment but a real deep and similar and somewhat intangible anger at what allows this sort of violation to happen. This has something really important to do with what community and affinity and trust mean to me. I'm not sure how to put it together right now, but I ended up feeling really lucky, I think, as I ended up reaching out to a lot of people and having a lot of excessively good conversations not because of this notion of technical "agreement," or "debate," or because of perfection or rightness or whatever, but because of some affinity that has something to do with a deep understanding of it and real desire for a world where this doesn't happen.
So now I have a lot of little nodes that I could analyze very powerfully, and I think the struggle now is to not get so involved in working out every connection every time that I can't get anything out in a way that can be public and legible. I've learned that sometimes its best to throw nuance away and just say something simple or what might degrade as "political" (like, "Don't go to that school, they hate women"), because that helps you move on, and that makes your address someone who isn't the disembodied fuck who is going to beat the shit out of you with disembodied logic and rigor that makes you feel wrong for feeling the way you feel, and it makes it addressed to....I don't know.....friends? Rather, I'm not disavowing nuance and intense 'close-reading,' but just a need for comprehensiveness and rigor that makes it too difficult to get things out, to share. I'm realizing lately how little my ideas are my own. Nothing I'm impressed in this particular way is because, primarily, it is smart, but because I recognize the something like the feeling that sparked it and ended up just feeling fucking comforting to have someone say it. A lot of things seem connected now and I'm secure about how to articulate the connections, not only because of me, but because where I'm unsure about the connections I know a really good amount of people I can go to to both open things up for me and ground me. If I have any sort of goal for my own work, it is to be legible in this way, and I'm still pretty unsure as to whether I can do this or not.