another answer
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t know how to communicate well. I thought that I was clever and it would be appreciated.
“So why are you so caustic?”
I admired someone, and he was my best friend for many years. I thought he was so clever, and he is.
“I don’t have the exact quote, but Groucho Marx sed in conversations he was always listening for the opportunity to get the top joke, the best putdown. But it never facilitated the conversation, it just ended it. I’m very caustic I just don’t let it out very often.”
– – –
Voices that I love
There are lists of things for me, but they may not be for you. You may or may not see yourself in it. My subconscious self is an evil genie. I thought to write a mystery, because we had this character called Smokey Grey and I wanted him to solve some crimes. I wanted to explore something that happened to me six years ago, but the endless revibe jive of my boomerang subconscious mind lays traps on me. I’ve called on others voices to help me find my own. The voices that I used are voices that I love, voices that I carry with me in my head with pain and reverence. I love good poets. It appears the mystery was solved: I have crime in my communication.
The worst pain I feel is to cause someone shame or sadness or anger or to feel that myself. Yet to shut out the voices is to shame myself and not write this constant static of caustic crush. It’s a regular Catch-22. I didn’t even realize what I did when I perpetrated it but now I do.
Another worst thing is my envy, the grave in which I bury admiration.
A third thing is my ego and to show others how intelligent I am. The act of giving mental medicine is an administration of a poison.
Meanwhile, another grape Smith found in the Universe:
“Kwik-witted flies can detect swatter threat: Scientists have discovered that flies have very bright minds and within 100 milliseconds of spotting the fly swatter, they move their bodies in the position that allows an extension of the legs to save them.”
Today’s paper, damped and dated. Reminds me of the flies biting my fingers when I’m trying to concentrate–arg–it won’t stop. I love his sense of humor, it’s something that keeps me entertained & is not meant to hurt or pull anyone in.
“Here’s another headline, twelve decapitated bodies found in Mexico.”
I got buddha buddy mind on the brain, and it’s a tricky universe. Some mysteries need explaining and I hope you want to read my game.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/08/29/mexico.decapitated.men/index.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/08/29/fly.swat.threat/index.html
– – –
polly tread lightly
There’s a mystery I gotta walk around, a good girl has to tread lightly, a good golly gotta support her man & friends explain the multidimensions of finds lest they are taken as mines in reserve. You know I loves you Smokey, there’s a fella wants to mime some questions. We got the calls for cast we think. I’m sorry I abused ya, wasn’t sure what’s the story, maybe someone wanted to sip yr sunshine cup in a bizarre complexity of coincidence that I can’t hold back because it’s darned interesting & I held that word in reserve for you (Smokey).
We’ve got missing punctuation, large and lower cases, fonts in verdana, letters sent in courier, what’s that?
Language plays that we all do to exercise the alter. Writing’s gotta come from findfields but you can choose yr footpath tender lest yr finds turn mines. You can put your heart in and out of art, like the mere menshun of a manhole. Tap into rage you don’t even feel. Kill a cat or seven and do a tap dance on his floor for more. The words just come out, they don’t mean nothing, but they’re enchanted in other dimensions. If I weren’t thinkin of you I wouldn’t admire ya anyways. All my friends are in my books. (They say yr worst nightmare can be yr best friend, and that’s a clue for whomever & who & me & you.)
Why are you so intent on solving the mystery?
Bodybags bein shipped out. People getting confused about real and not-real, the tick tack tapes in our heads we want to rid of like a coaxed witch tit for language, the things we need to work on and dare to be aware and brave.
That reminds me how Mom’s life was surreal with me around.
Like what?
She was my best audience & we joked I’d kill her. All those non-sequitors & did not follows, all those darts that were meant for me, not for thee, o my friends expounded upon like women in invisible jets (There are two, or three, or four, I haven’t counted, because I’m trying to figure out how to talk to women—we got a shared problem of clarity so often—we maternalize or woo but why we can’t be buddies and why does buddha have to be a boy. Buddha toy bodies in recursive illusions because it was there for the story.(
For instance?
Maybe I could show you some clues. We’re going to have to think about that and bat an eyelash or two.
Let me tell you a story.
There are the poetry thieves of Barcelona. There are pen pals right here. There’s a man with an eye patch at the cafe, or a sneak at a glance & wink for an ethic all the time, it don’t mean nothing, just something to illustrate a mystery. All these clues are here and as mature detectives we can talk about our ethics. Sometimes a voice is so very good you don’t realize you use it. Sometimes you don’t know what you writ until you wrote it, examined its possibilities from one o take, and it’s drop to yr death & regret. The other is a give touchdown dance of hello of an altiverse, I’m glad you found your archetype in this let’s shake hands and let me look you in the eyes and smile. It all depends on intent and establishing lines of communication and elaborating on the understanding, because the story’s complicated and not meant for sour grapes.
Yr a mysterious woman.
How did you use me?
I thought you were so strong Smokey, didn’t think about your heart, thot it always there for me and mine is there for you and thus I had you in reserve. I sed, Wow, Smokey, like to use you all ironic. Cuz you give me fine lines all the time.
How you ask of beality shapes what you see. I got magic with you Smokey, all these clues dropping from the papers. Insects in the news, power outages & back again, the altar that you made to alter what we do, the dogs you talk to on the street.* You’re the main magician and my ever dipping wishing well. It depends on how you worship less you less loose a warship. To use another’s words to ask an answer, there are so many things you can feel are your own, but they were meant for someone else. Loaded unintentions, slap happy slaughters of all the totters of different dimenshuns just because it sounded good to say when yr a babbler in yr brain to coax or trick a kid. Like when you do a collage, you collaborate, you take yr language from a picture, place it somewhere else because it looks good. & that’s all I meant, to explain a story to me from way back when, not now, not ever, and that’s a version of a proof.
To ramble on in little lambiguities is my game in plain language.
*real story
– – –
A letter to a friend
A letter to a good friend
I don’t engage in language unless it’s for real. I refuse to masturbate my heart or mind. I have had many failures of communication in the past. Ironically, this is one of the themes I was aching to write about with an incident that happened six years ago. & I can always see too many possibilities for ways to hurt the other. It kept me from looking in the eyes of people I admire for fear of burning them and being burned. I want to look everyone in the eye and answer with certainty. I see it happen all the time, they think you’ve got it all figured out, you’re supposed to have an answer as tho it’s a quick sound bite, as tho you can’t be a hypocrite or work the other side. What Crap traps we set for each other.
I had the concept for a book – Smokey Grey – a character Smith and I’ve been thinking about for three years. I knew I had a truth to communicate. All this builds and builds because I don’t even know what I’m asking when I write my lines. Truth is often revealed to me after I review what I’ve said, even in real life conversations, and it tends to have a stifling effect on me. I have to think there’s a way to reconcile shame with heart, to get over the hurdles that stop conversations, to allow us to embrace our sisters and work together in our rage, because it really is unfair, why should we shovel dirt over our graves of rage? How do we know what we say is for real? It’s a complicated dance, especially for women, and there are lots of footsteps to be followed and how dare you tell me my intelligence is crazy. That makes one want to hide behind a metaphor to protect oneself.
I don’t believe in perfect solutions and I have a tolerance for deviations that most people would find really weird. For example, most people masturbate, something like 95% of them but if you ask them about it they refuse to talk. I knew I could talk to Smith when he joked about cutting off his balls, killing his mother (joking about it) and celibacy for twenty years. This is one of many things that attract me to him. Even a single picture of him, his art, a poem, is enought to me fall in love with him. I am very afraid of losing him and the lack of understanding, as I laid my head on his chest and pull away for gaps of real beats, one, two stop, two stop, fourteen, forty, whew! one two, as he kept his head awake under anesthesia, paralyzed save for arms and head, feeling the deadness of his body. & how he got an infection and the history of how we’ve been ripped off by the u.s. medical system and why we live here for so many reasons – so many horror stories drive by – as he pulls his own stitches without waiting for me to explain why to stop but I halt for his autonomy. O Smith! I want to write about this. There is the fear of being startled by your ghost, ever, and why I want to have a reason to live after you’re gone.
I do believe in conversations and universal mind. I also believe that the act of understanding can be a breach of trust in a way in the way that it pulls one in. I’m not sure how to go about this other than to have faith, to not stifle myself, to move forward.
A metaphor for all of this is this: at a gallery in Cleveland, there was a hanging noose. The noose was not about a lynching. But if it was, so what? The noose was about the concept to be explored, and that is what makes great art, and that is why you can use swastikas in your art even if you do not happen to be Jewish. (I am.)
Now, someone kept slapping me with metaphors as tho they wanted to talk. I said, OK, I’ll listen and I see someone really needs a lot of help so maybe it’s ethical to share what I learned. But then I thought, How DARE I! But then I thought how I wish someone had helped me in the past and talked in real language. I really admire your guts, you’ve been a kind of fortifier and a mystery to me, and this was another theme I wanted to explore.
Love,
Kathy