The Language of Fish

Constantly Untangling Cranes

2010-03-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

And growing. but only in circles and dark wrinkled membrane. Many rooms through out a day are empty and perfectly placed, waiting for visitors and shoeless sitting in.
If I could just tousle and let my hair. If I could just care deeply and act with such intention. I seem to grab at suffering with clothes hangers. So many coats are added to the rack. So many bags and pillows in the back seat of my car. No room for the baby.

In the gap of transportation people dash cross streets.

I am untangling cranes and changing hand towels and wiping crumbs off the bed.
Your belly is the sweetest softest rest in. Under these sheets time is only. Fleeting Thought. What would you do? I sit in mountains. I walk alone.

Everyone is an empty row boat.

Vows. A commitment to Truth. The psychosis of relationship. Impermanance.

2010-02-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Turn to me. And pluck out eyes with eyes. I am just another who will die I know. But I want you to always be mine and with me in my bed, I want us to always be happy together. You wake up with dreams of a past lover and I go upstairs to make us breakfast forever. Peppermint and ginger are too sharp in the back of my throat when put into the same glass at the same time. You write songs you leave on your piano I read when you’re not around. I can’t read the books I want to when I want you on my neck. I can’t read the books I need to read when you are on my neck. The internet isn’t working. All the furniture in the place where I keep my stuff is gone. I sleep on a hard floor if you don’t call me in fifteen minutes. I make rules to make sure I’m not ruled by something like my want to be with you. Time is only sacred when I light candles and turn on music. A bath and salts. When I pretend to enjoy being lonely. I think about all the manipulative things I could say to you. The internet isn’t working. Who am I next to her? Asian women are a threat from now on – an entire race able to take you away. I am just books and bad credit. I am just twenty-three, and sweet. I am just white and soft and young right now. After I give birth to your children, I hope you know. That every woman grows old. Our children will have blue eyes and dirty blond hair. Have you seen my mother? You didn’t’ like me in the house where I grew up. You don’t like me when I’m sick or sad. You don’t like me every other month. Our cards read schizophrenic. You love me yesterday. OK. Well. Goodnight. I love you. You call me by my first name like it is a name you’ve given me out of your fondness. When you write songs about love, you say “you” but who are you referring to? Cause tonight it was “you” meaning her. like she is the “you” you have always referred to. The one you will always refer to. I’m not crazy. I don’t think I can do this anymore. My space is not mine without you. What would my room look like if it was yours too? Let’s move in and get all unconventionally domestic. Let’s always come home to each other and be more excited about it everyday. Call me, damn it, or I swear to God. I will sit here and distract myself all night long. I will not sleep well. And I will tell you otherwise in the morning.

in between my teeth

2010-02-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

In my sleep I speak out loud “He’s been daughtering his hands - they’re too soft for hot water.”
In the morning I read out loud a headline from the newspaper “Fangs and Feathers in Rare Fossil”
In the streets I call to people their names but they cannot hear me, their ears numbed by the sounds of civil and concrete.
In the night, I am quieted by ghosts in screens who tell me
not to speak or to think, not to think or to speak, not to speak,
but to buy and marry.
I floss and brush and rinse for it.
It’s on the top of my tongue,
(right where meat meets molars)
I’ve been looking even in between my teeth tonight.
For solace.
Mother writes me letters – she says, “ It’s in your bones.”
So I stretch and shake and peel back layers of pages of skins, of wishes for memories of sins.
What did I commit?
All I find are apples and ribs.
I seek the oceans for it (phosphorescent) and dredge up only old Spanish galleons, constitutions, stirrups and saddles. I find cowboys and ovens. I find suit coats and diamonds.
I’ve been told -
This country wears her hair long and braided. She wears an apron and spits on skillets, banging a triangle she calls for us all to come home.
In this earth there is nothing to find but the bones of soldiers and once erected stones.
I want my body back but it sits in cages and waits tables in diners.
So I reach down to put my hands between my legs and find shopping malls, I find legs crossed patiently, I find a fragile disposition.
I find wet and wanting skin.
I find dry and beaten skin.
In between teeth and the concave of space of living and the air that doesn’t feel like anything. In between the words that describe me and your understanding of them. In between the minutes that slip so quickly through the space between my fingers. In between my skin and your skin. In between the walls of my body, and the bubbles and holes of ozone, in between each breath. In between now… and now… and then.
This is where I live.

TO: the rise of Eastern Sun

2010-01-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

Dear day,
I'm sorry I haven't touched you today, I've been busy with envy, and dark rooms, and afghans, and cats, and I care not for these roommates, but they hang around more than you, sun, they are at least loyal. What can a person do who has no legs or money to walk the street or eat, and with the snow so thick and freezing my knees, I have every excuse I need to avoid you.
I have a warm body next to mine just as disenchanted and as sad as mine, and we want more and we know there is more, but we're so tired and growing older and I'm sorry but... what is out there is winter, and empty trees, too much to see and nothing to see. Give me something like a fire inside me, give me something like an explosion - give me psychological revolution. I need people rising up inside me with torches and bombs and screaming and making love - pulling the levers and ropes of my bones to move this poor mass of mine. Give me thunder storms and flowers and naked dancing feet - give me time and earthquakes, and I'll give my skin and my eyes and my wonder. I'll give my toes to your muddy grounds and there we will meet again.

until then,
- Me

New Years' resolution for nothing

2010-01-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

I could disappear here
I could evaporate into this wall and sink eternally into watching you wrapping your wires
and carrying away your keys -
avoiding forever strange advances
and waiting forever for another glance from under your black knit cap.
and nothing.

But on the first day of another year, I wake up here.
I am not wallpaper but flowered sheets and down.
I am whispering in your ear, I am these creaking floors.
Old pipes.
and ...
why pray for strength and dignity if I am not an I to hold such qualities?
what would light need to acquire to be light?

but I am hungry, still. and poor, (a state of which I shouted in a loud bar was a pre-requisite for enlightenment).

So should I sit here all morning while you snore and roll over
- making space in my stomach for nothing and illumination
or should I just make eggs?

The Weak of wanting #4

2009-07-16T16:47:00.001-07:00

I do not care for time.
I care only for forever.
If there is a forever
and nothing is forever
than there is nothing
than nothing is the only infinite.

Thank God.
We have Nothing to worry about.

The Weak of wanting #3

2009-07-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

Because I am not dead:

Every day I will sing.
If my voice is shy,
I will write.
If my pen has no ink,
I will dance.
Every day I will dance.
If nothing moves me
or if I am too dizzy,
I will make a picture.
If I have no canvas, no paints, or no brushes,
I will go outside.
Everyday I will go outside.
I will make a bouquet of wild flowers.
I will work in the garden.
I will sit.
I will breath.
I will bake bread.
I will read.

Because I am not dead.
I will sing.

The Weak of wanting #2

2009-07-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

I bought myself an orchid today
But I have not sat… still
And I miss my mister… still
I must remember to smile at mirror.
Money is numbers invented and pretended.
Let’s take a boat to a place with no name.

The Weak of wanting #1

2009-07-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

(From a dream, someone reads this to me)

Death to the Father.
Death to fear.
Write “Heart”
Heart, Heart,
Heart, Heart,
Heart, Heart, Heart,
five times,
and a list to commit.

The Weak of wanting

2009-07-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

A weak of wanting.
Of searching under every inch of magazine and wood floor studio and itchy skin.
Of separation from skin – from body touching crevice and round of body.
For Muse. For Muse.
I let the dreams tell me.
I cannot hunt her down with a gun and a net – I cannot cage her with such anger.
I must lay down.
I must, with heavy drunken eyes give over to the letters in lanterns, like moths and night.

Lullaby

2009-03-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Dear nervous voices
Dear checkered will
Dear shaking envy
Dear hunger
Dear hunger
Dear hunger
Dear Love, I have no other words for you than those I dare not utter
Dear Pride – you speak so soundly for me – so loudly and with such desperation
That dear… my dear famished desire
– you starving ghost, haunting walls of ribs and ceiling of brain

I wish only to hold you all, wrap you softly in my very tissue
And sing to you the songs my mother sang to me…

But I cannot, for the life, remember the words

But I cannot
For the life
Remember the words

When We Drink Bottles of Wine by Ourselves....

2009-02-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

I am not a God
I am not a Hafiz
I am not a Rumi
I am not a brilliant mind
But I have the hands of a man who has spent his life in the stock yards of old novels
And I have the body of an eight year old boy.
I have the tongue of an incompetent donkey -
And the will of a fly in a garbage pile

The fact is I can do nothing at all.

Everyone has already said everything that can ever be said
So why in the world would a girl like me try
to do something like have an idea.
Might as well sit here and drink myself stupid
– marry me away to another rich fool.

couples counseling

2009-02-10T22:03:00.000-08:00

today my therapist told me to have my body tell my brain what it is she wants from the other.
I'll skip the gritty details, but they had a good long dialogue.
brain committed to let body dance whenever and wherever she felt the impulse to do so.
It was quite a break through for the two of them.

Let Go.

2009-02-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

whispers march their manipulative ways into my ears and down further through and into my throat where I have no say - and probably never have. If I'm speaking, please don't listen - I am being held captive by the weight of a brain that won't let go.

"You won't like me when I'm happy

so please, God, don't make me happy."

Bang Bang

2009-01-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

With irony and American desperation I strive to emancipate myself from the most resilient of plagues: ego/self obsession/ Narcissus himself.

New Year's Resolution = A vow to change everything with the knowledge that I have not the power to do so.

journalings of a slut

2008-12-28T10:13:00.000-08:00

Dizzy.
Hot in my chest and back.
Tightness in my stomach.
they are all familiar feelings. I am hungry.
I ask, instead, 'how do I get to the airport?'

This is a funny time of year - when instead of hiding it deep with the lint in our pockets we chase attraction like a tiger will trail embodied fear.
We ignore the morality and niceties of a decent friendship and let our pursuers pursue.
We don't say yes and we don't say no.
We instead lay empty under temptation...
but only because it's something to do.
It's a funny time of year when winter reaches his dry hands deep into our purses
and sucks our skin of soft and calm.

some advice:

2008-12-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

when Muse comes to dinner, you let her stay and get as drunk as she wants.

When my conscience flips coin

2008-12-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

Have you ever ridden on the back of an elephant?
I did once, in India.
They wore chains around their ankles.

They stood in a family -
two with a baby

and screamed

The men around them
fed them
bananas
and beat them with sticks,
shouting,

"no one will ever love you like I do!"

Now
As I sit at the table where we eat all our meals -
and talk to our selves
and lie to each other
And lie to ourselves
and talk to each other
and eat all our meals

I can only think in how many ways I've betrayed my science
and in how many ways I've loved you
And I can only think in how many ways I've said "never again"
and in how many ways I've love you

like when I rode the elephant
just to say I'd done it.

Because God is a Man and all our heros have deep voices

2008-12-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

Why, with every creative impulse….
Does straddle an apathetic and yawning pause across my…
Everything?
Everything
Sits with always an impossible whore of a question
I cannot answer and I cannot ask.
Why do I write like I’m running away – like I won’t be caught dead in a sentence?
Why can't my mother tell me where I come from - why we have no words - no story to tell?
I can only see what
I am not
and sulk bitterly in His absence?

contact

2008-12-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

Relationship with another body starts soft and subtle like the hesitant breath of a hand landing, like a bird, upon a back.
Or the timid whisper of a glance
Or the tepid gesture of a head resting gently on another’s collar bone.

Within the pain of relationship lies the uncertainty of our lover’s heart,
Our lover’s interest
Our lover’s trust.

Within the pain of relationship lies sweetly the sense
of forever and never – of a language erasing the spaces between.

And together
we must remember
we have everything we need.
And alone
We must remember
We have everything we need.

Within the dance of romantics:
*we fall heavy on our hip bones
*we fall heavy into emptiness
*we fall heavy into love

Within the dance of everyday:
*we hesitate. We hesitate. We hesitate.
*we pace the same path in the grass over and over again
*we stop for a moment to catch our breath

Within the dance of forever:
*we hover in question
*we stretch to unfathomable design
*we sooth our confusion with another skin
*we stop for a moment to catch our breath

Within the dance of earth and animal:
*we sniff each other from behind
*we leave quietly without trace
*we chase connection like our last meal

Bones are no monument compared to the strength in which we are capable to stand – honored by the weight of another.

ramblings of a pseudo intellectual

2008-12-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

As I finally sit myself down to write this paper at 12:15pm on the day of which it is due, I am flooded with the thoughts of the last few weeks behind me – of the time I’ve had to think about this project and the time that decided to take other forms. Last night, as I set my alarm clock for 8:15am before I went to sleep at 1:00am I thought, ‘I need as much time as possible to make this project happen.’ I promised myself that I would wake up early because I needed the time, because at the time, my perception registered a lack of it. Of course, this morning was a different story: after struggling with the sickness in my throat and head, unable to breath, unable to sleep, my perception of time (because it suited me) was that I had plenty of it – I could sleep one more hour… I could sleep at least one more hour.
When I woke up with anxiety at 10:00am I walked down stairs to make myself some tea and quick breakfast, and the day proceeded to produce more obstacles than just a simple “lack of time”. As I manically maneuvered around my brother and the foul smelling clutter in and around the sink, my perception of time was quickly becoming clouded with the overwhelming stress of space. If I was going to make breakfast, I would first have to clean the kitchen. If I was going to clean the kitchen, I would first have to wait for my brother to finish making his breakfast.
I only had a few moments to stand paralyzed with the space vs. time conflict when the fire alarm started sounding loudly from upstairs. My brother sat comfortably, eating his breakfast burrito as I raced upstairs to discover the trashcan in the bathroom overflowing with flames, pervading the rest of the apartment with suffocating black smoke. At that moment, the reality of a paper to write, a performance to produce, and a breakfast to make was, simultaneously, made inconsequential and twice as paralyzing, in relationship with the immediate reality of a minor catastrophe. My hands shaking and my face expressionless with shock, I sat myself down to write a paper; and it quickly became apparent to me that I needed to put myself in a calmer, quieter, smoke-free environment in order to focus.
For the past few weeks my, oh-so, strategic planning for this performance has consisted mainly of a single image running repeatedly through my head. This image was basically made up of me being video taped while watching and reacting to a prerecorded video of myself. I realized that the concept I had taken on with the image I had created was much too large to fit into a ten minute performance or a five page paper. It became quickly obvious to me that I needed more time, as I tried, in the last few hours of deadline, to imagine what I would need in order to put it into fruition and how I would translate it logically onto paper. I should have been working on this for weeks in order to have given myself enough time to even know what questions I needed to ask.
Stomping quickly through the snow, on my way to find some peace and quiet on campus, I found myself thinking of the seasons. Specifically observing winter, the season that seems to slow time – freezing moments and bones in space, also quickens as snow falls quietly in the course of a few hours, transforming our reality and our perception of time. In a day, the sun can melt it all away, and we are once again speeding through the streets to our next destination. With a somewhat vague reference to the profound poetic notions of birth and death in all of the cycling seasons, I ask the questions: in our material reality as performers / human beings, can we / do we experience infinity? What is time? What is reality?
When recounting her experience of the televised replay of the 9/11 attacks in her excerpt “Never, Again” Rebecca Schneider writes,
The twin nature of the attack, a kind of violence of ambivalence, made
the terror manifest at the level of ‘replay’ - but replay as real.
The space of time between one tower and the next was itself the space of a replay
in the realm of the ‘real,’ making the inevitable televisual replays that followed also
(impossibly) ‘real.’ The repetition at the level of the image seemed to evidence the
primal lie of trauma: something has been missed, we were not there,
it must be seen again, it must be replayed as it cannot have happened ‘once’
– in time or in singularity. It cannot have happened except to have both already
happened and to have not yet occurred.
The digitalization and mediatization of the attack made it possible to witness the tragedy repeatedly (an infinite loop). An individual could watch it and react to it for the first time, and then rewind it and watch it again – magnifying, slowing down, or fast forwarding moments, making the “real” event a performance study.
It is my sense that it is not just the digitalization of a moment that holds it, frozen in time, but the reaction of the observer in “real time”. Through my performance, using a projector, a laptop, a video camera, a TV, a mirror, and myself, I will attempt to create a sense of infinite mirror. In exploring the concepts of “real time”, past, and digitalization / virtual reality / “hyper real”, my goal is to PLAY. I don’t foresee myself answering any large questions, or giving my audience anything to think about except for, maybe, more questions. Considering that at this moment in time, I have yet to experience the actual performance, and it is only a concept replaying itself for my imagination, I have only vague ideas of how it will manifest itself in accordance with my intentions.
My hope is that through the lens of a manufactured infinity, my performance will represent a few concepts that have recently come to me about time and reality:
Time is masturbation – a deep involvement in the manipulation of our own psyche to persuade ourselves to believe we are not alone (within the workings of society) and, at the same time, separate ourselves as individuals from the rest of humanity. The loss of a perception with time is a moment of connection with the present, and with infinity. This morning, when my reality was proving to be in conflict with, what I considered to be, limited time, my perception of time adapted to suit my reality.
Schneider explains “Recognition as a precondition of vision means that we see only what we can recognize by virtue of having seen it or imagined it, or something like it, before.” This seems to subtly support an idea that maybe “reality” is a grand form of narcissism – we exist in a world that we see only through our individual awareness. We project ourselves into some kind of reality. We create and are created by our surroundings, therefore, it can be said that our “reality” rests, essentially in an infinite mirror.

...this is ridiculous.

Formula Z

2008-12-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

I was born into a corner.
Thought it might be something to shoot a dove
wear her wings in my hair
howl at the moon
and rub myself down till the sun come up

But don't kiss my mouth
cause I taste like a wolf
been prowling the streets for another body to bare

I was born into an algorithm.
Thought it might be something to set fire to fairy tales
make love to the dark skinned
bind the bookends to my back bone
and dance round the inferno

But I make the shapes of equations in my bad dreams
can't hold me while you lie next to me

And don't trust as my nails scratch down your back
that I have anything to give you.
I've been spread too thin across this bed
and all that's left is a notion

I was born into an empty stare.
not a single cell will understand you

I was born into a photo copy.
my father holds a gun and sits in a rocking chair

I was born into a broken rear view.
Don't know my mothers maiden name
and my skin is see through

I was born into an algorithm
I was born into an algorithm
I was born into an algorithm

Menstruating

2008-07-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

So right now – it’s possible I’m already dead.
And all I’ve left behind me are books half empty
pages lazily entered
maybe a date and a few first sentences of suicide notes.

I avoid sleep – I’m not sure why.

Before I woke up this morning to anxiously awaited blood on my sheets, I dreamed I had a baby girl; and I was so happy to tell all the nurses that my baby was wobbling and shaking because both of her mothers were dancers.
But I don’t have a lover – and I don't remember how to dance.
In retrospect I think the reason my baby was shaking was because she had no bones.
She had big curly hair and no bones.

Waking Up

2008-07-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Made art in your bed
In my sleep
This morning
None of it was very good – “these sheets are anarchists”
It gets too cold without you in them.

I look at your fathers flowers - your smile underneath
I’m going to buy a ticket today
Maybe write a letter to a pretty girl – I wonder about our postal possibilities…
I pretend to do math with my chipped painted fingernails.

Mary said “You are really in it Zoe; you are so in it.”
I might agree, but I don’t believe it matters.

Time is two teacups in your window sill.

Your plane could still be in the air.
Or maybe you’re already there.
Maybe you are eating good food and making good talk with your good friend.
You could even already be walking up the stairs of your house
– warm with your sweet family.
Maybe you’re telling stories to your grandchildren.

Sleep is so deceiving

I took some music from you.

I will miss you until today

Wisdom Teeth #2

2008-06-30T13:42:00.001-07:00

Been going to sleep to hallucinations - commercials even interrupting.
Been slowly fading away with perfect paragraphs of prose - desperate to grab hold too tired to write it down.

Last night it started something like:
Turns an explosion in my intestines... (I realize now that sounds like diarrhea)

Then another started:
She is crying - she is looking, mad into my eyes and screaming "I miss you!"
She is wearing a corsage that someone else gave her.
She's not one who is prone to such a grand romantic gesture as having a really bad trip on ecstasy and spilling her heart all over the parking lot- but, what the hell - it's prom.

****
brain killing pain killers been wrecking my head

Wisdom Teeth

2008-06-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

There is a sharp white pain in the back of my mouth - it slowly marches its way into my brain, and it may just be the drugs, but I'm feeling ok about the whole ordeal.

I saw you big and blasted in lights of fame and it made me feel a little nauseous.

With a dead language...

2008-06-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

There's nothing much I can say.
There are boundless amounts of books, of words I could betray.
There are thousands of excuses
- abused excuse after excuse I could use to convince and confuse.
I could whine my whole life - spitting bloody "whys?"

But why?

My prayers are empty - infused with words like "Oh God, Please."
What does that mean?

Where can I invest in words that can be tasted - words that crawl under your skin.
I want words that defy their definition, their connotation, their history.
I want words that don't need to be uttered to be heard - they inherently course through our veins.
If we could find a language in which the encyclopedia sings - maybe someone would listen.

Let me know if you find something.

Narcissism

2008-06-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego.

The term is derived from the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus.

In psychology and psychiatry, excessive narcissism is recognized as a severe personality dysfunction or personality disorder, most characteristically Narcissistic personality disorder, also referred to as NPD.

Sigmund Freud believed that some narcissism is an essential part of all of us from birth and was the first to use the term in the reference to psychology.^[1]

Andrew Morrison claims that, in adults, a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allows the individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.^[2]

The terms "narcissism", "narcissistic" and "narcissist" are often used as pejoratives, denoting vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.