Started writing this on September 16, with this opening:
No, I will say it, because this is my journal and yours only to read if you choose and I let you. I will say this because it is heavy on my mind, and also because the question is frequently put to me: "why" or "how" I do ... that thing I do.
It's nearly a month later and it's not pushing at my temples anymore, but I still want to say it.


Mostly I call it activism but it usually doesn't feel like it, because the change it aims for is so far away and often failed. Usually it feels like work, and the individual tasks so completely meaningless -- hours spent writing emails, booking rooms, designing pamphlets, putting up posters, and hours more just faffing around and freaking out and being generally stressed and ineffectual.

I am jealous (and consequently often dismissive) of those who seem to treat activism like a game. I can't imagine "the revolution" like some punk anthem (fun, fast, short, loud and lasting) -- for me the only resemblance social change bears to rock'n'roll is in it feeling such a Sisyphean labour. I dread getting up in the morning. I pretend I am not awake. I wish I didn't know what I know. I often feel useless, but never so powerless that I don't feel responsible. I am nearly always exhausted, even when I have been doing nothing. I am frequently paralysed by guilt.

Often I enjoy it, too. My allies are amazing people, full of hope and vision and spirit. Sometimes I am so ignited by the force of these movements I can hardly sit down. I get really excited when I see evidence of change or when I am feeling more of the shape of the world I want.

At my best, I feel like part of a grand and dynamic artwork whose unpredictable growth and development is as charming as that of any creature. At my worst, I feel I'm alone with a rock on a mountain in Hell. But even when I love it I wish I didn't have to do it. I think the process is as important as the outcome but I would love if it were already done.

But I do it because I need that alternative world to come quickly, for my own sanity and survival. I do it even though it'll take my whole life because whether or not I have children myself, more will come and no matter who they are, they deserve better than this. I do it because most of the things that make me happy would not be available to me but for those who fought before me.

One of my favourite poems is "Wild Geese", by Mary Oliver, especially the first part from "you do not have to be good" to "you only have to let the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves", but I don't really believe it. I wish I could just love what I love easily and leave it at that, but I live in a world at war.

The world I dream of is not static in perfection; history continues in utopia. But participating in a system that depends on mass deliberation is vastly different from attempting to transform one governed by politicians who treat civil society as an inconvenient interruption in the relentless growth of a nonsensical economy. I work for a day where it's enough to love what I love, learn what I can, and try to live with care and compassion.

Hey, I set up a reader account, estrangler_read, for friends without Livejournal accounts who want to keep reading this now that it's friends-only. If you want access to it, and thus my journal, please email prosaic--nospam--@gmail.com .

Thanks,

Lia

estrangler

I think this journal is gradually becoming "friends only", so comment if you want to be added to the access list. I mostly write about people and their immense capacity for love, art and injustice. It constantly amazes and terrifies me how humanity is so able to create great beauty and great suffering; I am daily reminded that the same imagination can be applied to both. I have added everyone on my friends-of list who I've spoken to in the last three months, or added me recently. I assume the rest of you are no longer interested. I will probably keep levels of access because sometimes I don't have the energy to respond to provocation with understanding.

Last night I had the house to myself and my non-Monash life. I giggled with Jackie about the decline of our comedy groupie status; scrawled half a dull and rambling letter to Dom; listened to Clare Bowditch and Crowded House and Dom's mix (dancing to a gorgeous Jolie Holland song about bedlam boys who may be barmy or bonney; I'm not sure); drew designs of vampire costumes and profiles of imaginary faces; read the introduction to a Penguin anthology of lesbian short stories; drank tea; cooked pasta with garlic, zucchini and broccoli; labelled the cupboards and wrote a shopping list and did the dishes and other delightfully mundane domestic tasks; and retired to bed early and alone. I think it's good to be an introvert now and then. I have been known as (and felt) an extrovert for so many years that I forget to allow myself quiet nights in which I can take on social roles if I choose but also retreat into my private self. I must remember too that the political is personal as much as the reverse, and to be a "good" activist requires a little hermitic, ambulatory philosophising sometimes. I feel I've been neglecting this lately along with my artistic/aesthetic interests. I think living with Sarah has made me think more about self-development or my inner life or whatever you want to call it.

Loki thinks that I am in the midst of a regression to what I was like back in 2004 or so -- not necessarily negative, but I think ey sees it as a rejection of 2005, Kanooka, & c. I think I'm reconciling my 2004 self with my 2005 self. (Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.) I certainly haven't moved away from the activism, appreciation of quietness, ecological awareness and (occasional) patience that ey has inspired and helped to develop in me, but I'm reclaiming aspects of myself that I'd lost last year.

I came back on Monday from a week in Tasmania feeling revived and not at all wistful. Seven days in five senses and three dimensions is such a luxury when one is used to ten minute snatches of audio. I may be doomed never to see Tasmania's forests for myself but I had a delightful time. I feel fresh and full of love. (Thank you, and your family and all the rockin' Launceston crew. Neph and Ben especially.)

I came back to Monash excited and joyful, and yesterday was a gorgeous day but today has been hard. It seems I am surrounded by people who are beautiful and suffering. I am finding it hard to draw inspiration without being drawn into the negativity. I have been dreaming today of running away again, perhaps to Our Nation's Capital with Loki at the start of Winter, while it still looks like Autumn -- see the trees go to sleep, see Dom and Diana and Deb (that troika of amazing women with names beginning with d living in the ACT), and perhaps Alex and Gina though they never seem to actually be in Canberra. There's a Whitlams song called "Melbourne"; the chorus goes: "In love with this girl/ and with her town as well/ walking 'round this rainy city/ what a pity there's things to do at home". I think it could also be about Canberra. I have things to do here (and I should learn again how to relax without escaping Melbourne, anyway). Not that I can get much work done in this atmosphere, amongst all this tension and hostility and hopelessness.

I still feel lucky though, to have this life in this time and place.

With such contemporaries!!!

So much love,

Lia

( A story. )

( A story. )

I am dreading Christmas. ( Read more... )

I encourage everyone to sign this petition, addressed to PM John Howard and Senator Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Immigration, to end the detention of children and separation of families. This petition is written and distributed by Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser, former Liberal Prime Minister of Australia.

Note for foreigners: 'Liberal' is quite a misnomer -- the 'Liberal' Party in Australia is usually the more socially conservative party, while Labor (not 'Labour') has traditionally been more supportive of progressive causes. The Liberals take their name more for their laissez-faire economic policies, which tend to benefit the middle classes, favouring less state interference with the economy. Labor used to support State ownership of services, subsidised essential goods and welfare. Now they're buying votes with promises of tax cuts, and a graffito beside train tracks spells it out: A.L.P = Another Liberal Party. The Democrats still have great policies but the actual party is in a state of chaos. The Greens have lovely attitudes but are lacking in real, detailed policies. Still, as an article said, 'better the ingenuousness of the left than the cupidity of the right'. And they're doing well at the Dems' old job of "keeping the bastards honest", I guess.

Please don't vote Liberal. < /propaganda>

stop crying. put your glasses back on. write. art made from pain may be ugly, but pain made into art is so much better.

//

inspired partly by anais nin's short story 'birth' from the under a glass bell collection and this non sequitur cartoon.

My sister is pregnant. Unprotected with a bartender in a parking lot and our mother loves it, her own soap opera. This is hardly a tragedy, but Mother is all dramatic empathy. She fills the house with her plans to avenge the honour my sister was supposed to have had. I must’ve missed that one.

They talk about suffering, their bodies, oppression and empowerment. They talk about patriarchy and motherhood. They talk about this with glances swiping at me, as though that could cleanse me of my birth defect. When they go gossipping through the shops, people think they are sisters. My mother enjoys this and doesn't bother to correct them.

These days, everything smells of bath salts and fresh bread. My sister lounges around, half-naked, her body overwhelmingly soft, heavy and pale. She is blooming like a flower, my mother beams. Secretly I think of a balloon stretched to bursting.

/

Mother remembers my birth, saying that it was far too long. I know that it was far too early, though I wasn't born premature. They call it labour. My grandmother was a Catholic. In her filial guilt, my mother tried to read the Bible. She stopped before the end of Genesis. She talks about the necessity of snakes and how only women bleed.

She says that pain belongs to women but is owned by men. This confuses me. I ask if she means that pain owns women. Sighing, she smiles like I will never understand.

/

In my dreams, I see only in black and white but I know that everything is red. I keep expecting them to castrate me in my sleep. Or kill me.

My sister and her father were never in the world together. Mother says that his death and my birth defined her life. She jokes that life is terminal illness. She doesn't say that masculinity is a fatal disease.

I look like my father, though he doesn't know it.

/

They go to the hospital in whispers and warm clothes, to find out the sex of the child. The doctor has two children herself. She nods when they say that they don't care, really, it’s just curiosity. They chat about how beautiful and natural it is to have something growing inside you. Like a parasite, a disobedient tumour.

I hope for a girl.

I'm in love with the world and I'm not afraid of leaving it.

everyone should join sanspenandpaper. it's totally cool -- a creative competition community. and i totally got stamped.

if i could do my 1920s entry again, i would have filmed myself at a round table of glossy black wood, wearing lunette over black pants, holding a glass of something pale and sparkling. you can imagine where i would laugh, my tone of voice, how i would shrug and raise eyebrows and look away, the way i'd gesture for emphasis. the camera would catch me mid-speech.

sorry, i'm feeling like dorothy parker tonight. you know? i want you to wear my pearls so i can bite the string broken and let them pour over your body, flick them off with my tongue. would that be a jazz baby thing to do? i don't know, maybe not. i mean, i'm feeling very here and now, but my thoughts belong better in another decade.

i imagine this would make more sense if there were red velvet curtains behind me. a man in expensive sunglasses would smash a bottle of prohibition whisky, shout 'charleston!' and everyone would obey except the mafia whore who'd peel off her long gloves revealing sharp nails the colour of dried blood and declare that she wanted to fuck f scott fitzgerald quietly and quickly while a lady sang the blues in the next room. i'd laugh, pluck the cigar from between your fingers and whisper loudly, 'darling, if we don't hurry we'll miss the last of the night'. you'd push up your heavy wool sleeves to realise that morning was fast approaching and pull me outside to show me the bridge you were going to jump off the day i met you.

in the water, our reflections would be so blurred that i couldn't find the end of me and the start of you. you'd tell me not to worry and pinch me to prove my skin was there.

//

i love noise fest and so should you. "punk haiku" is great fun. the categories are: fancy, gross, hooked, obsessed, sober, taste and zone.

hooked
you throw me a line.
though your verse is nonchalant,
i'm caught like a fish.

taste
your mouth remembers
an espresso girl, strong, bad,
but she wakes you up

//

i am now a devianTART. please visit, leave comments, etc.

//

i made an ad/intro page thingy for my upcoming zine, slope, which i am very excited about.

//

i went to timbale cafe by myself for the first time. it was lovely but then i became very frightened coz my left ( hand started shaking ) like crazy again [like that time at your grandparents' place, nic, except worse]. sometimes i get scared that one day i'll wake up dead and then i realise that doesn't make sense. maybe i shouldn't drink so much coffee. but yeah, it was relaxing and nice. they were playing that band jem always raves about, cat empire. and 'tis funky indeed. one of the waiters complimented me on my edited che guevara badge [i wrote 'buy me' on it in white out]. i listened to fiona apple on the way home.

//

i wrote this on the first day of september this year, or earlier, i'm not sure. don't think i ever posted it.

o she makes my eyes shine, your words dream/ i'm so glad
you understand now, how sweet and warm it is
to be swimming in her slow hot-chocolate world.
sometimes when she laughs, i think/ maybe
even gravity falters a bit, until it regains its responsibility
and rises up to catch us in gentle arms/ like hers,
always embracing, clad in dark blue sleeves.
she says, she says she likes the colour blue
coz every one of its many shades is pretty/
it makes sense, she's beautiful in every one
of her many hues.

//

near my dry cleaners which is also a travel agent, there's a house being demolished. stencil artists have taken it over and it's beautiful, black paint on a white housefront with nothing behind.

consume because you are afraid,
think because youre able.

+

love is an unknown bird

i love it how tiny surprises can make your day. or spoil it, as on thursday when some boy on my tram called someone else a faggot. i don't know how he meant the word but i was proud of the girls with him who rebuked him for it. my heart started beating really quickly and i wanted to shout at him but i knew i wouldn't. i think that's the first time i've ever heard the word actually said aloud.

you know when you wake up smiling and you think you must've had a beautiful dream that you don't remember, but maybe you didn't and either way you don't care, coz fuck happiness doesn't need justification, it's just there and you take it with both hands so tightly you're scared you'll squash it, hell, maybe you will but it's here now and it's good, well, you know that? i think love's more like that than an unknown bird.

//

everyone should do my meme:

<td bgcolor="#000000">Are you textually attracted to me?</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA"></td></tr><td bgcolor="#000000">What literary device do you most often abuse?</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA"></td></tr><td bgcolor="#000000">Do you believe in desirable verbosity?</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA"></td></tr><td bgcolor="#000000">One critic says...</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA">"another kid imitating Henry James and wasting whole pages of words in the process."</td></tr><td bgcolor="#000000">Another...</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA">declares the work to be of such immorality that it is in danger of "corrupting the youth" and condemns you to death by hemlock.</td></tr><td bgcolor="#000000">General Consensus:</td><td bgcolor="#DDDDAA">You have great potential, which is unlikely to ever be realised.</td></tr>

Reactions to your first novel... by estrangler
Created with quill18's MemeGen!

not your average anime/'who would you fuck' thing. i want it to get onto the list of most popular memes. so please post your results on your journal. thankye!

1. What's the biggest misconception about you?
i'm not as interesting as you think. or perhaps more so. most preconceptions about me are pretty well-founded, actually -- i am an intellectual snob, i do dislike most people and i'm very difficult to get along with some of the time. i guess the misconception would be that i'm always cynical, impenetrable, or overwhelming. i can be quite positive, affectionate and relaxed but then i probably won't be with you so i like these negative misconceptions coz it protects people somewhat from the disappointment that is me. people may also think that i don't use italics very often.

2. What's something you've learned about the world?
you'll learn as you go along. don't try to figure it all out coz then you'll have too much hope in some inevitably flawed template and you'll disfigure people by trying to fit them into your weltanschauung. evaluate things and people on an individual basis and your responses will be much more appropriate. codefied law may be necessary for a nation but go easy on generalisations. what else i got? um, there'll be some shit and some gorgeousness and in the end they may not balance but it seems worthwhile. what else i got? build up tolerance for crap, then you can go anywhere and do anything. avoidance means you spend a lot of time tip-toeing around things. which is boring. and ultimately more painful than something shocking and stabbing. what else i got? concentrate on moments, you'll actually remember them better than if you try to. and if you forget, it don't matter. it was good. it is gone. get some new. what else i got? don't listen to other people's "life is like.."s too much. that's theirs. you have to make your own. that's the fun of it, right?

3. Can you trust people?
i trust a lot of people because i don't think they have the power to hurt me. even if you spill my secrets, i'll deal with it. i've never regretted closeness with people. when i keep people at a distance, it's not because i feel i can't trust them but because i feel they won't understand. and hell, some people just don't need/want/deserve to know. i trust more people than i would actually trust stuff to.

4. Name some people of the opposite sex you KNOW you can trust:
trust with most things, for now [i mean, there could be situations where it'd actually be in my best interests for them to breach that trust... like if i needed serious, urgent help but didn't recognise it myself]: sern. andrew. dad. gus... really i feel like i can trust most people with most things but i wouldn't need to. i would debate the "opposite" sex thing but you've probably all heard it before.

5. What's your song and why?
i don't have a song. different ones for different moods. there is usually something by the beatles that matches me, but beatles is too popular to feel personal sometimes. placebo if i'm being melodramatic. cranberries' 'no need to argue' is pretty good for a funeral. eels is often fitting too. some instrumental tunes are anytime, but not specific enough for a time. and if you haven't heard ( darren hanlon's 'falling aeroplanes' ), you should.

6. Do you have a motto?
currently, janis joplin: 'Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.'

7. Don't you hate it when you find out some vital info a year too late?
i think what you're trying to say is that this happened to you and you really hated it. i sympathise but can't empathise. if your lover turned out to be your cousin... eek.

8. Don't you love it when it's vacation time?
yes yes and yes again! still, i would appreciate if your questions didn't pre-empt answers so much. and, as claire would point out, it should be "do you love vacation time?" coz the ambiguity of "it" could... ah fuck it.

9. Name all the places you've lived:
two flats in shanghai, china [or maybe one... not sure]. two flats, a unit and on top of a milkbar, in melbourne, australia. i've never lived in a house with a backyard or even a hills hoist, for that matter.

10. What's your wedding going to be like?
did you just assume that i'd get married? well i've married a lot of people informally by handshake, but after i marry and divorce fryboy before the age of forty, i'm marrying jackie [who will have divorced sern by then] in amsterdam. i think we should use a canal as an aisle, won't that be gorgeous? i dunno.

11. Anything ya wanna say?
questions one to three were good. what happened after that?

Something under the train to make me Smile

For a few months now, I've seen this on a wall on my way home. Over a faded "I LOVE ASIAN PUSSY", I read

priceless
If you're wondering about your fortune, enough's enough. It's worth all the money circulating, just to walk into white waves on a weekday, or, say, stand at the window munching an apple, thinking sweet, sweet nothing, watching a tree. All the money changed hands to walk into an autumn wind.
jh 2002

I don't know if I ever wrote this

or just thought it. Sometimes my internal dialogue sounds so real that I expect everyone else to have heard it, also. I wonder sometimes, while I talk to myself silently, if I think about things too much or not enough.



I've forgotten already what the "this" of the bold heading was. No matter. Things slip through easily. But not so easily, if you know what I mean. Once I realise, I notice they've left scratches in the passage.

Just came to me that "passage" is "pass-age". The passing-ness.

Would it be better if I were less observant and more sensitive?

Even my emotions are pedantic. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You may beg to differ.

On your knees. Knees rhymes with ease rhymes with please. Pleasure. Leisure.

I can't focus very well at the moment. Words are bleeding into one another and dissociating themselves from their meanings. Every syllable is isolated into a mere sound unit. As I type, I am thinking the words aloud and they are rather like mouthfuls of phonemes tossed together like some meaningless salad.

Snowzine

Four months or so later and it's nowhere near finished. Haven't touched it for weeks. But here's an extract (abuse! praise! please!). I couldn't decide on friends, lovers or sisters, so I sort of blurred the three.

she tells me not to be scared. can't she see? my gloves don't fit, my goggles are fogging up, and i want to sneeze but i can't. she even radiates in the cold, the monster. ever apologetic, i stammer through ‘sorry’ and admit my fear.

'i just don't want to fall.'

'why not? falling's fantastic. hell, i wish i fell more often.'

i am left in her wake, again, just following, while she flies over virgin snow. she always has to be witty, always brave and beautiful, like some terrible goddess creature.

recklessly tangling my the threads of my fate, like her own knotted dreadlocks, i can see it so clearly. she'd toss up my stars like snowflakes and laugh when they landed in her mouth. do i defy, deny, discard destiny for my own ad-libbed version? of course not.

'come on, fall with me!'

the word 'fall' mercilessly spits connotations at me. american autumns, gravity, dusk, rome. fall apart, fall behind, fall from grace. fall short, fall into line.

fall for
1. To feel love for; be in love with: I fell for her shameless eyes.
2. To be deceived or swindled by: I fell for her sweet sweet lies.

fall foul, fall prey to. one fell swoop.

her perfectly parallel prints make me think of the ‘no overtaking’ double lines in the centre of roads. she will always be ahead. she reminds me of my elder sister, sometimes. mother says that when i was very young, i asked when i would be older than my sister. it wasn't fair, i thought, it isn't fair that she should always be older.

surely, some day i would surpass her? because as a child, age is everything.

but i'm older than this one. i'm a woman - dammit, even a WOMMIN. she's just a slip of a girl. too slippery for me, i guess.

the word 'slip' cruelly rearranges itself. those cursed anagrams. i tell myself that i'm too old for this, as if age still implies maturity, intelligence. all experience ever gave me was a collection of delightful mistakes that i hunger to repeat. i tell myself that i don't want to slip, spill into her lisp, lips. i tell myself that this is psilly. i tell myself that i'm not just a pusillanimous imbecile who can't ski. i'm better than this, or i should be. i am Caesar, fearless pharoah, impressive empress, invincible mogul!

then i remember the name of the bumps she swiftly glides over. how dare she conquer me so easily. i don't remember any surrender, just my already captured castle crumbling under her touch as she fastened my lift pass to my jacket zip. oh, i know, i am despicable.

she waves her ski stocks like fasces. the sun is out and i'm melting.

i trip again, keeling head over heel, caught only by the cold snow.

A Response

I always seem to become defensive around you nowadays. That's especially funny as I'm always the aggressive, unsympathetic, detached, confrontational, volatile one, yeah? In my typically convoluted style, I think maybe I resent your (inadvertent?) influence. Whenever I go to start a sentence, I find myself using your idioms. Whenever I go to listen to a song, I remember you telling me how great it was. Sometimes when I am thinking of other people I even remember how I probably would never have met them without you.

You're not a crush, you know. I need reciprocation here. I'm not like the rest of the world who loves you easily with little knowledge. It's not good enough for me if you only like me out of your general respect for humanity. I prefer things individual and intense and okay, maybe a little elitist, maybe a little prejudiced. No, not prejudiced -- judgmental. Maybe that makes me a horrible mean person but it's the only way I can feel that things are real. I'm happy for people I don't care about to hate me so long as everyone who loves me does so truly and aware.

We already know how we differ. You give people the benefit of the doubt. I give people the honour of scepticism. Acceptance as a base, affection as a privilege. To me, being friendly has nothing to do with being friends so I'm civil at the best of times. I can only do things passionately, absolutely, so... okay, let me explain. If I didn't know you as well as I do, it would be because you didn't let me. You see?

Anyway, I'd appreciate if you didn't make me feel guilty. That's my reserve.

( enneagrams and other survey results )

(

so, i challenged, head cocked to side so that my long glass earring was touching my bare right shoulder, what are you? a fascinating person or a great artist?

his reply is fast enough to catch my tongue on its retreat into my smiling, smirking mouth, both nonchalant and nervous.

why, he says. (how darling! how debonair!) wilde himself was both.

oh, dear.

)

oh i'm so pissed off. every time i explain, she claims to understand, then every time again, she'll plead and beg and it's not becoming.

mother, your god is no longer mine and i suffocate in your church. i even felt guilty awhile but now i am confident about my beliefs and you cannot compete with that. you think i'm just lazy, impious, immoral but it's so much more than that. if i have a church, it is the world; if i have a god, it is the world; if i have a heaven, it is the world; if i have a hell, it is the world; and all my saints are sinners are human are living and breathing like me. if i have hope, love, faith, or any such virtue, it is as mortal as i am, not divine. i cannot understand something divine and i don't see why i should wish to when this here and now and this is so/too much already. we make this world good first, yeah? we make ourselves good. the log in my eye. just like jesus said. mother i am fruit of your womb i am child of your flesh but i am not your sin, i am all mine and beyond nature i can see no other mother. xoxo your daughter who hopes she will be closer to prodigious than prodigal.

and also: 5:24pm || sunday, 07-sept-03
sorry, that was very emotional and somewhat cryptic. i know that the former isn't necessarily a bad thing, but i feel i should clarify it a little. [and maybe this is all related to how i can't write poetry or fiction any more. and how even my insecurities are recycled, because you were first to be jealous and now i guess it's reversed. sorry.]

well, i have had a catholic baptism, several reconciliations, and even a confirmation. [they're all catholic rituals, by the way.] i've taken communion countless times, attended mass regularly for years, led prayers and readings, altar-served, been involved in youth groups, sang in choirs, played flute for concerts... just about everything. as a child, despite some minor reservations about the catholic bureaucracy, i did actually believe in it -- as well as one can believe in something that she does not understand. [which, in my opinion, is not well at all.]

i mean, you have to have problems with a church that has a ceremony "confirming" your faith in year six [i would have been eleven]. i don't know about the rest of the world, but i was nowhere near emotionally or intellectually capable of making such a huge decision at that age. and even if i had been, i would probably have changed my mind sometime later. belief should not be immutable and eternal, because truth isn't [truths aren't?]. at least, the revelation of it [them?] comes in bits and pieces, now and then.

today jackie and i saw this piece at acmi, which was fantastic and made me cry [but it was dark so no one could see and i've perfected the art of doing everything that means anything silently and while shouting banter]. it was called prayers of a mother [see here], by kate murphy, showing her mothers' hands [centre screen] and the reaction of the artist and her seven siblings over five screens. mother [who remained faceless] held a crucifix, rosary beads, and prayers and said things like how her "greatest prayer is that each one will come back to the faith". the square outside had a line that jumped out at me: The children's reactions to their mother's speech vary greatly, from perfect empathy to perfect resistance – some are moved to tears, others laugh or squirm – as if literally trying to peel apart the religious from the familial within themselves. oh GOD. [whose god?] my mother's not quite that extreme, but she still makes me feel like i've betrayed her. and i suppose if god is suppose to be everything, then there's not much we have in common. but are they compatible, our world-views? i'm sure there's some german word for that. weltanschauung. our weltanschauungen. it is love, and not german philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next. [oscar wilde]

then: 11:05pm || sunday, 07-sept-03
talked to mum about it. she seemed none too pleased, but accepted it. apparently i hadn't made myself clear. i hope her masochistic obsession with confessions [how very catholic] doesn't manifest itself again.

so i said -- to be continued, tired --

i said i'd still go to mass at christmas and stuff. as a family thing. it's a tradition that goes beyond church. but maybe she'd think that nothing is above or beyond god, nothing human. i don't know. but for the time being i think this is resolved.

i thought that i'd never have to do these tedious explanatory over-intellectualised analyses again, but then it came up again and i realised that every new person i meet will require one, so to save myself some time and effort, i figured i'd just write it all out clearly once and link people to it.

so if you already know about my perspective on relationshit, don't read this.

to skip socrates for once...
gotta love plato, but i have to say that i'm utterly unsatisfied by the popular use of the term "platonic". damn semantic shift ::wry smile:: because to me, the dichotomous classification of relationships into "platonic" and "sexual"/"non-platonic" is utterly arbitrary and rather contentious.

firstly, these definitions focus on what i consider a irrelevant and private characteristic of relationships. the expectation that one should introduce someone as a sexual [or even physically intimate] partner when they are primarily friends seems as ludicrous to me as introducing someone as a person with whom you sometimes share milkshakes. sure, you could choose to constantly stress to other parties that you share milkshakes, but as a piece of information, you have no obligation to make it public.

secondly, these definitions are quite ill-defined. it seems clear enough -- sex being a simple set of physical actions. but wait... are back rubs sexual? kissing? sleeping together [literally]? long tight hugs? perhaps not, yet any people who engage in all of those activities with each other will inevitably be suspect of some torrid secret. i'm a virtuous little virgin; don't fuck with me. anyway, at what point are you supposed to announce to the world [albeit through the guise of some euphemistic label] exactly what you do with someone? and why are people more curious about what your bodies do than whether or not you agree about cultural relativism or the function of art in society?

but all this would merely be an annoyance if it were not for the connotations. yes, i'm more likely to be physically entwined with someone if we're emotionally close, but not vice versa. it's certainly no requisite of intimacy. for reasons of which i remain ignorant, it has been decided that at some half-random point, people should be committed to monogamy. if this all works for you, that's cool by me. however, it just doesn't suit me. it seems so absurd. it seems to mean that i can love as many people as i want, but if something accidental, unimportant and "non-platonic" happens on top of that and then continues to happen, i have to explain that whoever it involves isn't the only person in the world who has a body [whether happenings are actual or potential]? gah.

hey, a lot of my best friends do the "going out" thing. i just don't get it. i don't like defining things because it seems like confining them. i don't like commitment because it implies that i'd stick with something no matter how crap it becomes. i don't like telling everyone everything i do with everyone because i don't think it's necessary and i generally don't like hearing about how some girl whose name i barely remember was fingered at the after-party of a school formal. yeurckh.

[this isn't quite the same as polyamory anyway, i think, but a lot of people think of anything open as greedy. i think it's generous to share. whether one or many, it's never greedy if you give as much as you get.]

well, i think that is all. feel free to support or abuse me on this.

xx re-posted xx

i've just been called an

overprivileged white boy

who doesn't know many ethnics by someone on a neo-nazi site [i found it while looking for lenin photos for claire].

i know these things exist but it's still fucking scary to come across one.

feel free to harass them with me. i posted the following message to their guestbook: ( Read more... )

[from this comment thread.]

one great paradox
ruby: it's a lot easier to be difficult than not.

very true, but i'm trying.