next steps

with sanity, comes sexdrive
comes thus, frustration.

oh well.

i ate pie today, and read more of 'middlesex'. lay in bed. napped. thought about things. realised that i need not like anyone by proxy, and can feel however i want to. one step further from the mania. one step at a time.

a part of me is filled with the desire to shove something in the gap as fast as possible. both physically, and emotionally. there is a space there. i feel unloved. there is a space there. i am not sure what happens next. there is a space there. i need to find Another, Another, Another to feel whole again. when i can see this is what i want to do, i can then consciously not do it because this is not the solution to a gap in my heart. i've got a space there, and my first desire was to place edgar back in there. love me again. be with me again. try to forget what fucked this up, try to pretend that this is what i wanted.

rather than realise i hurt because i feel alone, which has nothing to do with someone else, i felt inferior. i have nothing to prove because a man old enough to be my dad chooses to love someone closer to his age because it's a far more sensible option. of course i will be happier long term. of course i was being stupid. i mean, he lied to me, unintentionally. he promised he would always love me more than her, and would never leave me for her. he did this time and time again. and time and time again, i told him that he would leave me, and break my heart. i eventually believed him, after breaking up with him, because i felt so vulnerable that i was left relying on the old comfort of the stimulants that sex and love provide, rather than the calm logic that governed me, knowing her brand of madness was his type far more than my slow, stoic sensibility. he'd told me enough of his past for me to know that he would want to be with her, and that i almost can know that it will end as miserably as almost all of his other relationships have, with his interest slowly, than rapidly fading, and hers not.

he once told me 'i love you more than life itself, well, at least until you say something stupid, or you bore me. then, i'll never want to see you again.' he claims he was joking, and i actually do believe, weirdly enough, that his love for me IS the sort of love that won't be ended with a sly comment. but, by the same token, he wants a lover that will have a relationship end like that, when he gets bored, when she cannot wound him as i can, and cannot break his heart.

i look forward to getting bored of thinking about this, almost as much as i look forward to not being in love with him. it's boring me, the fact that my mind is in this dull little loop of self justification. but if i try and force sociability, it'll just hurt.

so i compromise, with movies and not bands. i don't beg for sex, i just ask, and am relatively indifferent if he won't give in (i mean, really, i can take care of myself.. .it's just the sex was incredible...). company that's non-threatening. i can deal with alone time now. i can deal with myself. i like myself. i don't want to be his girlfriend. at all. ever again, even slightly. but i still am in love with him.

an interesting mental position.

i imagine that if our ages had us closer things would be different. but, his age isn't my problem, it's his retarded inability to know not to make OVERARCHING promises about things he cannot keep, or the lies he tells himself. he may be old enough to be my father, but a lot of the time, i felt like he was the spoiled child, and i, the longsuffering, frustrated parent, annoyed that he could not even say how he felt. i think it is a generational thing, and honestly, i prefer men who can be MEN about their emotions, and not little boys.

not that i don't love him, all the same. just feel ruefully frustrated at him, fondly, hair ruffle, roll eyes, silly thing...

blogs are good. i scream at the sky and no one is listening. or maybe they are, but i keep the comments off in case of abuse from e's kids. though, kids, you got yourself a NEW lady to do that to, one who i hope has been forewarned of the angry teens wanting to rip out your eyes due to the fact you are fucking their dad. *sad smile* hope you deal with that ok, or that at least neither of them get your number, or level abuse at you. it kinda sucks.

lolita

i am actually starting to hate it, to the point of dragging myself through it. the lushness of the language is now more like overripe food, or something that's so overwhelming it's gross, because you can just smell that it is starting to rot. it is an ugly book for all the beautiful language. the relationships are ugly. the people are ugly. the setting is evoked wonderfully, lusciously, but through the eyes of someone so ugly as for it to colour the vision so thoroughly as to make it ugly too. haven't got that much left of it though, will keep marking time with it.

watching morrissey clips, in celebration of the fact he might.is touring australia in jan/feb. i need to pick a state.states to see him in - melbourne, cause the crowd would be good, the venue good, the excuse to go to melbourne good. brisbane, because it is home. both perhaps. now cure clips, to get over the pain of the .. underwhelming new album.found a wonderful, fast version of 'disintegration'.

female writers

i rarely smile in the self portraits i take, i've noticed. let's try and change this.
this is also an excellent way to make me write at least a line or so every day. i wonder why i don't smile. i smile a lot in real life. i guess, i look at the image on the screen, and i dislike how the smile mutates my skin and folds it around my mouth, my nose, and i feel self conscious about it. which is a little silly, because i try not to follow the beauty myth. i am also feeling more and more self conscious about my eyebrows. i've plucked them since i was 12, or so, when my best friend told me i had a monobrow. every so often, even now, a well meaning friend offers to do it, or instructs me on how much nicer my face would look with two slightly more distinct eyebrows, rather than a line of finer hair linking between them, and finer hair below them. the shape of them is still distinct, it's just not defined and preened. it's taken me 14 years to stop the habit of keeping them in the kind, socially confined ideas of how female eyebrows should look, and each time i study one of these pictures, i just want to take to them and make myself look 'better', before i slow down, and remember that this is just our socially conditioned notion of how i, as a woman, am supposed to look. i've come to think of my leg hair as attractive, and i love it, i love the way it feels, and how the air feels against it. i will not remove pubic hair. it's simple. underarm hair was my second most recent concession, but probably the easiest, because i think it's sexy as all hell on women. the warmth of it, the way sweat clings to it, the scent, i find lovely.

now it's just the damn eyebrows. i look at them merging between my eyes, and i want to think of it as poetic. i want to focus on the way the hair feels when i touch it, and how different it feels to how it has for the last 14 years. i remind myself that there is no substantial reason that it is less attractive than were i spending an arduous amount of time in front of a mirror, carefully removing each hair to submit my face to a more typical version of attractiveness. and, in the end, i don't tackle it, i leave them messy and merged, but still, i feel that little bit uglier still. i'm looking forward to celebrating them more, the acceptance of, no matter how small, i can play out the politics of identity, and consumption, and gender, with my own body.


while cooking dinner (a delightful pasta 'thing' my New Friend Fiona I Met Off Facebook told me how to make) i pondered something i often do. gender in writing. and how much it shits me when i realise male friends who consider themselves well read have read such a small number of women writers without realising this. i had one debate with a drunk kid (ok, i too was extremely intoxicated, and belligerent, as i tend to get when drunk and debating with people who assume i am stupid) who listed all these male philosophers, but could not name a SINGLE significant female one. i think i was using that as a proof of either his ignorance of feminism, or philosophy, or ... something, i dunno. but it's surprising how common it is - men who read, but only really read male writers. i know teen boys are like this, largely, from when i was working in abookstore - to generalise, they are more comfortable reading about boys, while girls will read about people regardless of gender. perhaps this is why girls tend to be better socialised, their lack of fear of gender transgression?

to be slightly simplistic it comes back to the fact, simple, that i can wear pants, and it's not transgressive. men, however, wearing skirts to work, with a gender identity of male, would have a larger problem. for me to be 'transgressive' through not wearing make-up, or plucking my eyebrows is a far less transgressive act than for a man to wear make-up and tidily, openly, pluck his eyebrows. does this make men freed from these stupid, idiotic beauty rituals that push women into time wasting, consumer, object based activities for hours, or simply deprived of choice? however, as i've mentioned in a blog-entry-long-ago, i don't think that feminism is about choice. that to me is bullshit. and i've explained why before.

i'm starting to readin dworkin's 'intercourse' - this book has particular interest to me for a lot of different reasons. one of which is the fact that i am, to a degree, a masochist, and a sub. and she critiques this solidly, and it makes me question my own desires in a really interesting, focused way. is this a way for me to avoid intimacy, to distance myself from a lover through pain and power play, detaching my own humanity from theirs in a desire to remain as seperate as possible in such intimacy? i tend to think that might have a lot to do with it. and insecurity maybe. it's making me question my own desires to the point of realizing that the desire only seperates me further from the act, and makes me more alone.
this doesn't make clear sense yet. will articulate more after dworkin.

vanitas

i am a compulsive photographer of myself with my webcam. i take them often. i like to document what i look like, and well, i have no articulate reason for doing this. so, as is only sensible, i'm going to call it conceptual art, and make myself take one photo of myself every day for a year.

i finished 'stone gods' by jeanette winterson today, sitting in civic under a tree after work. it's one of my favourite things, i've done it since i moved here; sitting under trees in civic, reading books.
it was an amazing novel.

zen flesh, zen bones

i ordered 'zen flesh, zen bones' - a translation of a collection of zen koans and works - from work, and bought it. this is unusual for me... i usually order something, leave it on the shelf for a few months, and then spend a few hundred dollars in a buying frenzy. but. i've wanted a readable introduction to zen buddhism for a long time, and it's an excellent, readable collection of important zen texts. and that is the way to understand understanding zen - through reading it, rather than explainations of it, second hand. it's a clearer, fleshier way to get to the heart of it. i think i have a book 'the heart of zen' which bamboozles me, but not sufficiently to clear my mind and be zen. in any way.

i've recovered old shawl of cashmere and am picking at that between the alpaca one.... i've just fallen in love with the stitch pattern in 'victorian lace today' and the ease of knitting with alpaca, the laceweight of which is infinitely stronger than the cashmere - as much as the cashmere is feather soft, and so light and airy as to feel like it's not even there, the constant breaking shits me. the silk is softer, and about 50 times stronger. it withstood all sort of abuse in my many attempts at self-designed shawl. so my 4 cones of silk stare at me, me at them, and i play with the current shawls. i am deeply excited about being knit-proficient enough to embark on one of the giant, spiral shawls in 'victorian lace today'. oh lordy that is one exciting lace book. and 'a gathering of lace' and 'artic lace' are so so So high up on my list of things to knit.

hey, i get paid for my 'brow' contribution! whattya know! i will get a knitting book, and/or yarn with it to celebrate Knitty Article Publication. and if any of my lovely knitty angels are interested in reading about the Knittyboard, you can order it through 'the lifted brow' link to your right.

i have had too much coffee today. v. at the IMA ended up with a ten minute rant about book distribution in borders verses in other brisbane bookstores, followed by a run down of my favourite books, and the necessity of stocking translated literature in order to gain a fuller experience of contemporary international publishing. yes. coffee makes ranting. hm.

before anime and byron

last night, lachlan and i went to 'before anime' at goma - a series of early animated shorts from japan. it was increeeeedible. the animation featured papercut figures with the most exquisite japanese paper, in really wonderful shapes. the stories were strange, but far less strange and terrifying than early western animation, which is one of the most deeply disturbing things known to humankind. i have seen some shorts of it on our local tv station and it just makes me want to curl up in the fetal position.

but it's a great series, looking at the fringes of japanese animation - my main interest in anime is the aesthetics of it - the plots generally don't do much for me... though i did love howls moving castle and spirited away - admittedly howls moving castle is based on a fantasy novel. but yeah, it's easy to see where the richness and beauty of contemporary anime comes from in seeing these shorts. we left after the first session - l. tired, me knowing that two hours of surreal cartoons would send me over the edge into crazytown. we'll probably try and catch the first 'beyond' next week - lifted brow launch though, so i'm not completely sure if we'll have time. tis all very exciting.

other news - in an attempt to stave off lack of work boredom, and for my own interest, i am embarking on a 'romantic adddventure!' currently i am reading 'byron, life and legend' - the most recent scholarly biography of byron. part of it's importance is the fact that the author had more access to the john murry archive than previous biographers, thus allowing her to properly investigate the role of his bisexuality in forging his identity as a poet and an individual. ---side - pet hate of mine is labling byron gay - he wasn't. he most definately had carnal desires for womankind. this desire to pop people into one binary or the other shits me. my interest in his sexuality is not for categorising purposes - it's just interesting in the context of his romantic - small r - verses.---- after reading this, i shall embark upon reading his complete works. following this, i am cautiously optimistic that i might, might, might have enough $$ to afford the two volumn shelley biography put out last year.... if not, it'll be that US copy of 'shelley, the pursuit' we have at work, which i haven't read since i was 17 - almost 5 years. then, onto the complete works of shelley. i also want to get a copy of the miranda seymore biography of mary shelley - for context - and then i'll read what works of mary's i can easily get a hold of. current book desires match this interest. i want a proper, updated, scholarly complete works in multi-volumes of both shelley and byron. i am also wanting to go... into... the... past... and investigate coleridge as well. i love christobel. and not just because of 'the cure' b side of that name. admittedly it is one of my favourite cure songs. but yes. my complete works are old. and incomplete and i want copies of the letters.

happysigh. i am going to keep a journal of reading while i do this. not sure if it'll be virtual or paper as yet. at the moment, i want to do a Big Rant about what a vile mysogynist ( i swear to god i spell that differently, and wrongly, every time) byron was. he really was a grotesque, amoral human being. i find him facinating, and i adore his work, but as a human being, ... he was dubious to say the least. i mean, despite space for exaggeration, his frequent comment of 'i detest that sex' towards women is just hideous. and there is only so much appologising one can do on the basis of social context. shelley, despite his constant dragging m. around while pregnant, and his cheating (though, in the context of his ideas of marriage, that perhaps has more to do with free love than with cheating per say) at least has a solid respect for women as human beings. i also find the strong notion of class that completely pervades this time really, really interesting.

shawl continues along merrily, especially during my daytime tv watching.

PUPPY!! and Jumper is finished!

alllright! i finally finished lachlans jumper. images will be up soonish.

today, i am going to meet my younger sister - aka, my parent's puppy. animals are family members.

very excited.

read second story in 'bridegroom was a dog' -which utterly blew me away. the use of description manages to leave you off centred the whole time, yet it is so beautiful. the images are sketches of scenes which are both unclear and evocative. the next paragraph will then move and clarify the image into something else. she uses the language not just to create a surreal landscape, but to show the reader how language is not fixed, the world is not fixed, and there is a sense of alienation in all of us towards our external landscapes. very happy.