IF You Don't Know What to Do

IF You Don't Know What to Do,

Sit down
Take out a notebook
Make a list of every every every single thing you want to do.
Every every.
Don't stop until there is absolutely nothing left at all.
Stop
Let go of your breath
Sit back

Now,
Pick one.

E.E. Cummings

"Cummings, like quite a few modernist contemporaries, objectified langauge and even committed what we might call organized acts of violence against it. But this is violence with a cause, as Cummings’s linguistic innovations and typography serve poetic means within his philosophy. Theodore Spencer is accurate when he writes that through his typography Cummings “wants to control the reading of the poem as much as he can, so that to the reader, as to the poet, there will be the smallest possible gap between the experience and its expression” (120). Gorham Munson, writing as early as in the 1920s when Cummings was just at the beginning of his career, already realized that “Cummings makes punctuation and typography active instruments for literary expression” (10). The operative word here is active, action, process, and movement being prized concepts in the Cummings metaphysics. Norman Friedman highlights Cummings’s “obsession” with Making: “Experimental technique is the means whereby the poet tries to reproduce in the reader’s mind the vital flux of becoming which he (the poet) sees in life” (Growth 49). Something of this spirit is revealed by Richard Cureton when he says that “Perceptual immediacy for Cummings was not just an aesthetic principle: it was a central theme of his art” (“Iconic Syntax” 184)"

-E. E. Cummings’s Parentheses: Punctuation as Poetic Device - Roi Tartakovsky http://www.engl.niu.edu/ojs/index.php/style/article/viewFile/18/15

but maybe this is home

growing up in a place where the landscape is as meticulously manicured as its residents

(switch?)

romping amongst the fallen trees

like a survivor

we're still all play pretend

'

this world of make believe

when you're sad

when you're sad

wash your hands
go outside
drink a lot of water
take a shower
take two advil
take a dump

remind yourself that the day will end
and you might feel better tomorrow

On Heterosexuality

"Well, you know, minority politics has been a lot easier to sell than to just say, “Being human ought to get you human dignity,” full stop. If you can pin down the difference, if you can make the difference the salient issue, it somehow makes it easier for people to stomach the fact that they can’t go out and just beat people over the head. I don’t know why that is. I find it intensely frustrating."

- Hanne Blank,(http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heterosexual/)

And,

"I do think that the issue of gay marriage is a very interesting one to look at in the context of the history of sexuality, because what I think it testifies to is not so much the tendency that non-heterosexuality has to destabilize heterosexual culture, but the incredible depth of the investment that our culture and our government have in regulating the kinds of relationships that people have in their lives."

Also, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality - http://www.amazon.com/Straight-Surprisingly-Short-History-Hetrosexuality/dp/0807044431

why do people say
they absorb things like a sponge?
one squeeze and all's lost

“ ”

had it been an earlier time, your car would have been your carriage

i like this feeling

i am content

you are a beautiful person

ah, but see, flailing is a sign of life

Unadulterated Brainstroms on Ambien

These were from November 2009. I should probably continue writing things down because some of this stuff is kind of really interesting. I like that reading them now, I still know what I was talking about then, even if no one else will. I love Ambien.

11/11/09 - "IDEARS.txt"

on the transfer of energy between oneself and ones surroundings. CHi, AUras, comes somnipressure, a new technology invested in sleep therapy purposes finds your best potential mate on best communal sleeping arrangements. ONE TRUE LOVE=PERFECTLY COMPLEMENTARY PILLOW???!! >>> dating service ("Refreshing the tried and true meaning of 'SLEEPING TOGETHER!'"

Criticisms/THeoryies: Is it an ultimate equilibrium or does it change and flow as people change and grow? It's like the new "forever" is really "forever for now"

"Sometimes I feel like 'I love you forever' now really means 'I love you forever, for now.'"

"No, it makes sense. I just need to think of a better way to say it"

Technology junkies.

Okay, I do this a lot. It's basically this thing I do in my head, where I run a concept by, around and around, exploring it from head to toe, like wikipedia in my head and then I come up with the search term. Like reverse google search.

Sort of like a reverse processing flow of information.

Owie, thinking all that hurts my robo heart

What if you compared evolution to data decompression like an unzipping of a file? OoOoOoo like technology and advances are unfolding. But you know how an old computer can't always handle the file it's working on and so it works harder to open it and sometimes it crashes? That's evolution. Life is God in the ultimate zip file. We are the computers and life is the file we are processing. Or something.

Lady Gaga makes me realize it's really all in how you market it.

Would you rather live without ever knowing sweet? or salty?

I love my dad!

HA HA okay. Breakie time.

---

11/20/09 - "ambiennight.txt"
GREAT night

apparently involved getting loopy around 11:30, as evidenced by IMs to [person]

then decided to pull the mattress on the floor, best decision ever, slept so goood

then had a great draem involving me being a vampire and my parents handing me a gun for protection except it was the end of the world i lost my mom, met a girl, her turning into a vampire was pretty convenient though, then she died from eating an infected heart (or so i thought) then i ended up wandering around in dc trying to not get killed and not eat an infected heart.

found a stoner couple who i figured i could separate but they were nice and as it turned out i stumbled onto a vampire meeting area, made friends with the girl who's day it was to get the first kill ("glass day")

;eanred about jessica girl who went to csuci (ucsf) who's mom died but stayed with dad who hated her so she could pay rent

went to raid the houses and find people to eat

woke up

haha
hotdamn!

This dream was actually super intense. I remember feeling affected for a couple of days. Mostly about the part where I "lost" my mom and had a lot of feelings pertaining to guilt/abandonment/betrayal (me to her). Actually, thinking about it now is kind of intensely affective too.

On Health

"I did that thing I do in my brain when I try to figure out if I can act like I’m OK or not, which lately has been one of my strongest indicators of overall health — not health or happiness itself, but my ability to imitate those emotions or project those impressions or inspire those reactions. I am not certain that I am wrong to describe health that way."

(via autowin)

Are haiku cryptic?
If no one understands me,
am I smart or dumb?

Stephen Dunn

Those Of Us Who Think We Know

Those of us who think we know
the same secrets
are silent together most of the time,
for us there is eloquence
in desire, and for a while
when in love and exhausted
it’s enough to nod like shy horses
and come together in a quiet ceremony of tongues.

it’s in disappointment we look for words
to convince us
the spaces between the stars are nothing
to worry about,
it’s when those secrets burst
in that emptiness between our hearts
and the lumps in our throats.
And the words we find
are always insufficient, like love,
though they are often lovely
and all we have.

Stephen Dunn, New & Selected Poems 1974-1994

i like you. tell me something you don't think anyone but you is interested in

40 minutes of unedited internal monologue that maybe i'll go back to edit or maybe just end up feeling like I said too much which I did

We took turns, each of us trying to top the other in rounds of If-I-Won-The-Lottery, driving around Covina, having tried to drive up the canyon only to have been turned around by a policeman because some body was filming some thing, probably a car commercial or a dramatic racing crash season finale, who had decided that our turnout should be the filming location of choice.

I remember being tired and happy enough to not care that I was tired and nuzzling my head into that pillow in front of them. I remember alternating between being all sprawled out with my feet up on the dash and huddled up on my seat with my legs pulled up close to my chest, feeling girly and vulnerable but strangely also secure enough and comfortable enough to not mind feeling that way and also showing it too.

---------------------

There may have been heartfelt proclamations of love towards Lady Gaga and there may have also been Jameson at that point but it might have been some flavored Smirnoff or maybe that was the night with the Seagram Sweet Tea or all of those things or none of those things. She had sang over that one song and it warmed my insides but maybe that was just the drink talking. She sangshouted 'Gaga sounds better with you' and I think I felt warm because I realized it was true.

And maybe since the canyon was blocked off, that was the same night we went to Chatterbox where we thought we got roofied but then later that week I talked to that one girl at work who smiles nice and looks me in the eye and makes my brain kind of mushy and in the end i think i decided that it was probably the L.A. waters that did it or perhaps we had roofied ourselves.

before that part that we forgot, there was a real drunk but also earnest and honest conversation about the three of us and what we meant to each other, like how a year ago in my dark place, she had come and maybe glimpsed it and left me a post-it that said to mark her words she would be back and it had been a year later and she had.

i remember asking no matter what happened between them or them and other people that they keep me around because those fuckers changed my life and maybe even saved me a little bit. i remember our knees touching even though most of the time i feel like she actively avoids contact with me, maybe because this is a bromance that toes a line or maybe because i'm smelly or awkward or creepy or gross or maybe all those things or none of those things but i remember being grateful that she was okay with the contact this time or at least she put up with it because sometimes i can't keep all the needy in and i like the stupid things like that.

---------------------

i remember talking heads on the jukebox that night, if that night was actually the same night that we tried to drive up the canyon to look at the stars and if it was, then that night was also the one i managed to have a drunk but maybe halfway decent conversation with the bartender with the hot back tattoo and the beautiful smile, who i tipped a lot and felt this overpowering need to be friends with.

i vaguely remember her telling me how she used to work on the campus i work at now, at the big hotshot place that maybe einstein and his wife had stayed at with all the other smart people who i imagine discussed atom bombs and string theory, quarks and neutrinos and stuff over coffee and a bagel or maybe eggs.

---------------------

sometimes i feel like i'm on the cusp of dissociating entirely or psychosis even or maybe that i am really actually a sociopath but enough of maybe a regular person to be freaked out by it or maybe this is what a sociopath looks like when they have a lot of feelings or maybe a sociopath that sucks at being a sociopath.

i think maybe i'm crazy mostly but just sane enough to know that i'm crazy and to feel the need to not be myself because maybe i think my crazy is the unacceptable kind of crazy and also because i think this is probably not how everyone else feels all the time.

---------------------

sometimes when i think about happiness, the feeling i get is like i am maybe remembering someone else's feelings because i can understand the feeling but remembering it feels a little surreal and maybe a lot contrived.

if i'm honest though, sometimes in the moments of happy, i do forget myself and don't think of any of these things i'm thinking about right now at all and even if i tried to, i could wave them off real easy but maybe that's how happy works. happiness is really just a solid distraction.

---------------------

sometimes i feel kind of broken, but not always in a sad way, lately more in the way that i think sid's toys from toy story would feel compared to andy's toys and then i wonder in a passive, curious, thought-experiment kind of way if this will ever change, if one day i will just wake up and realize i don't feel broken anymore, where happiness is the baseline and being sad becomes only a thing that incidentally happens to you

---------------------

i feel like i don't have anything to offer to anybody and that maybe nobody really has anything to offer to anybody else except that maybe they think they do and so they go and do it and that makes it something to be offered but i don't do anything so i still have nothing to offer.

i havent been royally fucked up since that night i got arrested coming back from the avalon aside from the ambien i may or may not have been making advantageous use of lately because the haze feels like crawling into a blanket whose scent i've grown familiar with that covers the whole world and makes everything just fine because then it becomes okay to not think about everything all the time and that's nice even if it's just for a little while.

---------------------

i think maybe i am really actually right and that i am a truly sorry excuse for a person and that i am a waste of resources and probably also life but i don't mean it in a sad crying way, just in a neutral that's-the-way-it-is sort of way. which is probably still maybe a little dysfunctional to think but i think that is okay. i think it's maybe okay that i feel this way because i think i still want to live because then i can still see everybody else live and you know what they all tend to turn out to be pretty lovely great wonderful things and i think that maybe seeing everybody else be people is good enough for me.

(suprising)

Hello again Pensieve

You know that thing they say about people surprising you.

I would like to be

In full Pavlovian form, I can feel my whole body start to relax already, even though I just barely popped two a few moments ago.

The urgency to word vomit all over the internet has pretty much died, but I'm thinking that this could still be, maybe, a worthy romp in the loopy parts of my head.

The good doctor refilled my prescriptions today and after having me fill out a 10 point checklist for a variety of mental perturberances, upped my dosage on Lexapro.

Except that I haven't even been taking them.

Although after today, I'm thinking that maybe I should. Because yes, I did feel better, but no, I don't know how comfortable I am with me feeling that kind of better.

I'm also seriously considering getting the name of that crooked Dr. that someone had told me about because I feel like I stumbled upon a very good pharmaceutical cocktail and it would be just lovely to have it readily at my disposal.

[Note to self: Removed a malformed thought about James Franco.]
[Note to self: Link to the article and his short story from Esquire]


But I'm pretty sure that the Ambien's kicked in because when I close my eyes, I see a movie.

Goodnight Pensieve

---

we are lost and found
but love is gonna save us

new religion

[Initially, I considered exploring how historical Jesus and Lady Gaga might embody the messianic Christ-figure and why they might be driven to do so in relation to Carl Jung's theories regarding the collective unconscious and the human quest for wholeness/the Self, particularly noting the unanimity in their conviction and efforts in emphasizing the role of the symbolic. But I think that would completely change the tone I'm going for, so instead, I'll go in a more partial, earnest direction.]
-------

"I used to walk down the street like I was a fucking star... I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth." - Lady Gaga

A lot of people have been asking me what made me go for it, to actually cut my hair. I usually answer with how I felt it was time for a change or that I donated 10 inches to Locks of Love. And while those are legit responses, the new 'do has seriously been a long time coming. I've wanted to for so long but never did anything about it. And the truth of the matter is, I got the final boost I needed because Gaga made me brave.

I don't want it to sound like cutting off my hair is some big emotional ordeal because it wasn't, no sweat. The magical thing about hair is that -Surprise!- it grows back. I've never been one to freak out about that. What it IS indicative of, though, is this bigger picture where I finally feel free enough to start learning how to embrace who I am, who I could be.
It's sad that the steps I take to be more myself should cause such unease in others. Really though, your discomfort stems from an irrational place and frankly, the energy you put into it is entirely unnecessary. I'm sorry if who I am makes you feel awkward, but why is your convenience worth the cost of my well-being?
More and more, I'm realizing that the distinction between truth and lie is a subjective one. And because I can no longer rely on that line, I am seeing just how important it is to find my own set of truths. When they are mine, I can believe them. In the dark, I can recognize them and I will know where I stand. It's crazy that I didn't know this. I knew it but I didn't know it. Like in the biblical sense. But this reflection wasn't meant to be on the Word of God.
Today, I want to explore the Word of Gaga.
So, 'know,' like in the sense that Gaga meant it,

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

Lady Gaga's been likened to a modern-day Trickster. Similarly, in the Manifesto of Little Monsters, she relegates herself to the role of the Jester. Yes and yes but as far as archetypes go, I can't help but think of how much Gaga is a modern-day Jesus.

"I just I felt like a freak. I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can create their own space in the world."

As I understand it, historical Jesus must have commanded a great presence to have been able to inspire such intense affect in people that they would give up everything at his simple call to "Follow me [him]." That same mesmerizing, bigger-than-anything-we-know kind of presence was what elevated Jesus from man to movement and it is the same presence that I feel emanating from Gaga, stirring the hearts of all the Little Monsters, transfiguring art into revolution and it is that very same presence which I have found myself unwittingly yet profoundly affected by.
But I think, of all the crazy things regarding my current fixation of Gaga as Redeemer, even more bewildering than being utterly intoxicated with and irresistibly drawn to the works and vision of just another mere mortal is that little ittybitty part where I believe her.

"...I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone because I love you that much."

I don't have any special insights about her or what may or may not be her "true agenda," but I see that and I believe it. What is faith other than unwavering trust in the face of the unknown?
She says to Be Not Afraid and I am emboldened. Though I may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because she's already been there and made it her bitch. Her rod and her staff disco stick, they comfort me and give me courage.
The irony of considering Gaga as my own sort of personal Jesus has not escaped me. Gaga's iconography is rife with the occult and with this I have without a doubt ventured into Worshipping-False-Idols territory that the First Commandment was all "You shalt not" about. But the world 2000 years ago is just not the same one I live in today and God help me that she is just so damn relevant.

"It is in the theory of perception that we have established our bond, or the lie I should say, for which we kill. We are nothing without our image. Without our projection. Without the spiritual hologram of who we perceive ourselves to be or rather to become, in the future.
When you are lonely,
I will be lonely too.
And this is the fame."

My Lady, My Gaga!

---

O most gracious Lady,
I offer you my freedom,
beauty,
truth
and love.
dysfunctionally yours,
one Little Monster

"Insofar that choice and responsibility are possible through language and consciousness, it seems only natural that the therapeutic process of choosing is a verbal or awareness process."

- Prochaska, J. & Norcross, J. (2010). Systems of psychotherapy.

what do you do
when you find people so easy to love?

people who are easily lovable don't need my love
and what do i have to offer when the only thing i have is a thing you don't need

i try and love you from afar
but i'm sorry
i'm finding it hard to keep it in my chest
when you are so beautiful

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

They work.
I feel better.
But this way,
everything feels more real.

Today's the day I realized that I could be loved

It's cold outside.

Dear New Jersey,

A few days ago, I had a moment when I really wished you weren't so far away.

Because you see, a few days ago, I came out to my mom.

And being that you're the one that went gay for me over that summer,

And also seeing how New Orleans was the closest thing to a real relationship I've ever had,

I missed it for a bit.

And since I'm already being so embarrassingly honest, I might as well admit that I also have you to thank for kickstarting me down a road where I'm not absolutely repulsed by what I see in the mirror.

So, even though none of this really matters to you anymore, thanks. FOR THE GOOD TIMEESSS. HAHA. Nah, but really, for not ruling me out, even when I had already.

Word.

Regards,
Irvine

P.S. Happy birthdayy