Plathological

decompression

Mirrors are tasteless, symmetry with no sense of personal space. I have no personal space. This is crass, reflective surface. Thirty pounds of sweat pours off me, racing to all corners of this town, looking for my concept of personal space. Come home with a few more zip-up hoodies. Run for cover. Oh God I need to move out. I need to move out. I’m heavy-hit built for loneliness behind large sunglasses; being around anyone for even a bit too long and I’m internally exhausted. I love people, I love people so much that I hang on their every word, but my psyche is ridiculous in its need for relative distance and air. You know binge drinking? The concept directly applies to my preference for human interaction. Two days on, two days off. Or whatever works. I need time to process people. I'm too sensitive to their actual energies, if you know what I mean. Seriously. It hits hard. Take it all in, puke it all out (usually by writing it all down, ALONE. Yeah, all caps: HEY.) Hey, I never had siblings, parents' one and only. My profile’s easy: Elton John was an only child, so was Jesus Christ (technically, as in: "the only Son of God." Would Sartre have been a purer example in this case? Oh God I'm going to hell). Please take from that what you will, and build upon it--large, spanning vistas on the Serengeti. Prissy umbrellas as protection from the sun. I taught myself how to be a child. Anyway, Missy Elliot, get ready to save my life. Many thanks.

Oh, and thanks, Vice. This is actually pretty spot on: Still though, it is a good day for me: I defied authority, I didn’t spend any money on food, and I puked. Exactly. Memory lane of hell. I sought help when I reached the equivalent of "day six" (two years in). Oh, survival. I'm much appreciating you again, Vice. The comments are intense. And comfortingly fucked up. To this person:

Subject: hot chick
Date: Mar 28 2006 05:09:14 PM
Author: art

what's the best way to induce vomiting? i suck at it

All I can say is, after a while, puking becomes so easy that it's literally the only thing you can do. Missy Elliot, please save the children. (NB, yes, above photo of me at age uno. haha, yeah. I still do that. totally.)

uh: "writing the body"

This afternoon brought a nightmare: a fleshy, kidney shaped bulge tore from my inner ear, dangled above my shoulder by a ropey ligament. A twisted, low-budget asymmetrical jewelry, bumpy to the touch like the outer edges of a quater or chapped lips after a night of screaming and surprisingly dry, a bunched bikini top left to desiccate on stone at low tide. My ears were never pierced, but no matter, this cascaded from the inside, contracting in the ventilated air of the auditorium like knobby, quivering hopscotch legs at the onset of spring. The paramedic was a girl my age, half back, half white, her hair all tight, slick curls. Difficult to tell whether it was my lengthy and hormonal indecision over what music to bring with me to the hospital (I'm going in for ear surgery! I want to immerge to something good! These could be the last songs I ever hear with both ears!!) or her revulsion at my indefinable appendage that eventually lead to the ligament dropping from my body altogether. We were still debating whether it was possible to reattach the tissue, blood all over the lint clinging to upholstered seats, when I woke. I spent the rest of my waking day like a rumor spreading through a mesh hall, hurting my pointer nail well, this is real time.
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Anyway: SERIOUSLY DISTURBED AT MY SUBCONSCIOUS OVER HERE. I forgot to mention that the OTHER affliction was that there was a CHIP IN MY EAR and I needed to REMOVE IT because it WOULDN'T STOP PLAYING MUSIC. Oh good chirst motherfucker. Funny, but sad.

flat picture plane

"go ahead and kiss her, you don't know what you're missing." b&s :)

The soft spot glow from appliances, electronics, pin-sized bulbs glowing round with colour to tell you they’re plugged in, giving off no real spread of light but a whir like they’re about to take a breath in, always keeping a stronghold on all that blue light behind bubble glass, laws set in place, small glow for the possibilty of being turned on. They're not going anywhere tonight, tucked wires and indirect light. From my place on the couch, overhead lights shut off, I start to speak to those points as I drop off, subdued electric shine feet away, a lighthouse in my living room and completely outta my hands; I tell them they’ve always helped me sleep, You always have this noise you're about to make, and all night to do it in. Spoke to mum today for a good 40 minutes. She said, in Polish, Do you want me to send you that check from Uncle Ralphy? She meant Ralph Klein. That quote’s a direct translation from Polish. Uncle Ralphy--Mum, I love you. I love Alberta. I love going into government offices here in BC and being a total cunt and saying to the clerk, Well, that’s a very nice system you’ve got here, however, in Alberta, where our Dear Leader is an alcoholic cokehead, we do things like this. Alberta’s surplus, blatant lack of concern for anything or anyone, truly a province to detest. Just like me. Things are grand, things are seriously good. I enjoy being contested. It means I’m doing something right. Oh, Belle & Sebastian, the blues are still blue, yeah. Yeah. We are the sleepyheads, and you know me, I could just go on quoting like it's some part time job. It's easy to place bets on me, make a swift, discreet deal while avoiding my eyes: the only people I truly trusted are gone and I still sleep at night, or when I can, sleep right through your kisses.

for waking hours

Don’t you just spend your days thinking of murder, no overbearing silence. The spheres under your eyes punctuated with a grey well formed as smoke rings blown from a mouth with years of practice between each sentence.

"Meanwhile, I'm going to sit here untill tomorrow."

Tonight, Jaxon and I watched the live action version of Alice in Wonderland (1999). It came in a cereal box. Afterwards, Jaxon grew confused and shuffled around the apartment with fistfuls of fruit in each hand. Beat that. Unless you somehow fit tutus and the phonetic alphabet into a circle jerk, you really can’t. Sorry I held up that false promise there; that was rude of me.

back to basics

Kamikaze, morning coffee. The provocative equality of all nouns, having something left to clog the sink with. Watched 24 Hour Party People last night. It left me weeping, halfway through. Curtis in a coffin, my face tightened, pulled itself back into my hairline when the narrator leaned down to kiss Curtis on the forehead—it’s what I would have done. Too much is what I do, finding rooms where I can see my breath, it has a way of repeating its shape when I'm not speaking. I recommend, new film to love. If not only for the quote, “Don’t judge . . . .I was being postmodern, before it was fashionable.” Always back to subjectivity vs objectivity, company policy, asking only once, really the only endless debate, does temperature help you sleep.

You don't need anything else to understand Caro (bear with me, it all comes together)

Head drawn up early today to peel the potatoes before the bus ride outta town. Drawing it down again to the damp, starchy blade above the cutting board your hair will frame your face and you'll find Nightshade, member of Solanum; it doesn't mean obscured light, but destruction, Germanic root, tuber growth first thing in the morning. The potato, eggplant, and tomato are all Solanum plants. Solanum (some of its flowers resemble the rays from the sun. Strange: Solanum, the nightshade family, meaning destruction, and also: shapes the sun makes, connecting life giver to destructive properties) contains harmful alkaloids, which can be toxic, even in small quantities. Cocaine contains tropane alkaloids (tropane, belladonna genus, named after the Greek Fate, cutter of the thread of life. A characteristic toxicity); nicotine is itself an alkaloid, one of the most common, famous. Hot sauce (the chile pepper is a capsule that grows from a Solanaceous plant) is Capsaicin and works on the mucus and tissue of mammals that can sense heat (Thomas Mann relating mucus to emotional pain to illustrate the detachment of his protagonist. Detachment: not wanting to sense heat); it’s another type of alkaloid, though it’s not structurally related to the alkaloid nicotine or the tropane found in coke. Is it all coming together for you? And by it I of course mean me. A little of my morning research. Looking after myself, I referred to chemistry last night, thought I'd keep it up. When passed to you over the pharmacy counter, tropanes are used to inhibit neurological signals, can poison in larger doses, causing dry mouth, hallucinations, loss of body movement control--coordination (ataxia, which, strangely enough, looks and sounds a lot like ataraxia, meaning: peace of mind, serene calm), increased body temperature, dilated pupils or, you know: death, among other things (NB, Death Among Other Things will make a good title for me in the future. Put the comma in, take the comma out). This is making me feel like William Burroughs so, onwards, you're my disco, playing on the radio--CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT NAKED LUNCH, spatial disconnection--

When I say the meaning of love I'm saying the meaning of potatoes:

Seamus Heaney, From "Clearances", In Memoriam M.K.H (1911-1984)

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remember her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives ---
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

This is just so you can all make fun of me

1. Baby lax, cut with. Or my intestine can’t handle it. In any case: cocaine bundled in porn mag shreds, “I’d love to fuck,” bleached blond on the flap told us.
2. A lot of roadworks going on today, streets blocked, men in holes, helmets poking up from the underground. This will hamper my ability to get to public washrooms quickly because I will, as alluded to above, be shitting all day, with ferocity.
3. Yeah, hardcore. Remember what Ol' Dirty said: I'LL FUCK YOUR ASS UP.
4. I totally slept in leather last night! I’ve justified myself! I’m justified!
5. Clearly need to set bigger goals for myself.
5. For those who haven’t seen me yet: two days ago, I chop-styled the shit outta my hair and gave myself the most obnoxious, art fag bangs.
6. Neue hair= Bettie Page + 1970s rock & roll (second part of equation as defined by Graeme, props). Anyway: BANGS!
7. Caro’s stupidity: 3, Caro: 0.
8. Choice quote from last night: “I love my Daddy; he raised me on plastic bottled vodka and rolled smokes,” I said.

the usual, on-going 1970s nostalgia

I’m solving Victoria’s homeless problem by helping the downtown bums with their crossword puzzles. Need a four letter word for plank? That sounds easy, how about dock? No, huh? Try pier, does that work? “Yeah, that works,” he said, “eye before eee.” In Calgary I used to go in for pitchers with the younger bums, sometimes I would make out with them in the park at night. And how do you do your bit? I tend to stick to the things I know: text, booze, and tongue. A university education put to good use. That’s the extent of my creepy tendentious mini-rant and no, I don't have any STDs, you stupid fuck. But I assure you, I'm flattered that you'd think of me in that way . . . you stupid fuck.

kitchen confidential

No, I really don’t think you understand exactly how much chili sauce I actually put on my food. This is an all around issue so, I would, in my usual manic way, actually advise you to call and ask Jaxon for the salvation of your peace of mind (looking for gram count?), but it’d just be embarrassing for all concerned when you found out how few taste buds remain on my tongue. This somehow comes across as the subtlety of trash to me. The finer points.

someone took this rad picture of me with my camera on saturday. who was it?

world's fattest racehorse, saturday

some strange girl named lisa, and some guy named jesus

these guys? they just write all the time.

Yes, but a *stately* gong show.

I wasn't sure what you guys were going for, at the time. Now, fully sober, I understand.

gong show, you say? SPEAK THE SLANG

Well, that was smooth. THERE GOES ANOTHER LAWSUIT. I suppose there are some choice quotes of mine from the house mansion party on the steep hill last night that I should probably document. “Give me more soco, I feel I have the right to use you,” among them (I've picked up this "honest and assertive" thing "lately." It makes me speak the truth in even tones to men I may or may not have fucked in my past). I think I remember being the most malicious cowboy sweetheart to many sweethearts last night, the majority of them female. “You WERE doing coke in the bathroom, bitch-- don’t LIE. Look at your hair.” I think I applied the word “bitch” to more things than has ever been witnessed in the gansta underground. It’s such a versatile word. I don’t think I realized all the infinite applications of that word before I was drunk enough to hallucinate (?) tall Russian (?) men in long navy blue coats holding wine glasses and . . . .coming onto me??? Look, bitch, I can barely stand. Psssstttt, Bigelow, get RID of that guy. Get RID of this figment. And also: last night marks my most hardcore anti Chad Kroeger rant to date (fuck you, I had to go to their website because I like to have the correct spelling of the names of those I publicly humiliate). You’ve never seen me go off like this. Oh no, bitch, you didn’t. Four in the morning arrival back home. Those were the trenches, the Jesus. Was there some guy named Jesus last night? Explaining his name to a group in the foyer when we walked in? My use of the word foyer makes this an actual question. Yeah, that's right, I would remind you of Brody Dalle, wouldn't I? Anything to do with my eyeliner and the fact that I can't actually stand? Maybe. Hey, if she sucked Rancid's cock as an underaged cunt that's good enough for me. London calling, blaze a blaze. I should just start sleeping in leather, to justify myself.

_________________________________________________________________

Oh yes. And: I lost my lens cap. If anyone finds a canon lens cap by some miracle, I'll be a happy little girl.

Nothing else needs to be said, ever

someone found this site with the following search words: the depressed narcissist.(!!!)--hell yes. well, searching person, look no further: IT IS HERE. IT IS ON MY BUSINESS CARD. MY PERSONAL TRAITS ARE HERE, TO SERVE YOU BETTER.

wait, what's this? the motherfucking view out my bedroom window: a fishhead bell. please don't question me again.

runaways

postcut golden years on the map

10 grams of trans fat later . . .

the essential one lacking a bit too much focus

DIESEL

I doubt you're getting sick of these

a good model is hard to find

a few post-cut to break it up

reserved, at all times

my little underground

one of my favourites, probably because I like grain

I'm liking these

I think my camera misses you more than I do

Xavier, precut

I have no sense, manners, or good taste and thank fucking god because then I'd be more than half a person and that would really suck

Ok for real, welcome to the quiet neurosis of Caroland. I’m such a little bitch:

1) hating over.
2) poundsign poundsign.
3) only a time to deal with shit in my life.
4) Jaxon’s really starting to see that and it’s allllllll cool now.
5) He seems to have stopped trying to needle me.
6) fuck running away to Calgary.
7) & you all laughed when I said larping and polish sausages in one breath.
8) high fucking five, I'm a fucking rapist:
9) morrissey gets questioned by the feds and eminem cracks me up like one big cosmic joke.
10) & now you're alllllll going to laugh when I say that if I were a guy, I would have hung my balls out and written that Superman song myself, cause that's really all I have the moves for ("what you maria, fly through twice" hahahah).
11) As it stands I'm just your black magic and two dollar love, go right. I'm not trying to wake you up, I'm not trying to wake you up.
12) i.e.: self expression, go!
13) team "go"(!)
14) "You're a real punk rock chick," the blond said to me on monday.
15) "Uh, no, no I'm not," I said, "but that really turned me on."
16) "woe, you know," boy says, "doubleyou-o, o, o, o, o . . . .oooo . . .o . . .eee dee for past tense."
17) Damn straight: in the beginning, there was semen, and penis envy, and apocrypha, and my backwards penchant for doublestandards, doubled plus plus pound equal.

acknowledged collar bones

Everything around me light, flaky as skin peeling off a sunburn. Everything in me wanting some ecological change—my hair weightless, strands spread with chemicals, refusing to take a particular shape. I keep messing with it, a free standing structure—roadside, my head a freeway with no passing cars. Using only charm, we set up his blind punk friend with a random blond at the bar. Call her away from sitting by herself and take her home after she tells us she likes old lady drinks much like sherry, leaning forward into the table and giggling during her own descriptions. The blind punk has only her words to focus on, her fat jogger’s palms streaming sweat on his crew cut, the way her body cuts air as it moves to the presentation of his room, the enlarged photo of the back of his patched jacket on the wall. And us, two twigs ready against each other for tickle battle, or fire tricks in the pitch black of the bathroom so we can see the motion of flames more clearly, us on the fringes wearing stripes and sporadic leather can only focus on the same sound of her voice, high pitch muffled from our place on the kitchen floor. She keeps yakking and we keep commenting on her lack of silence, release. Red beer cans at our feet. I sit beside him on the linoleum, our backs against the cream cabinets, legs pointing towards the closed bedroom door. We feel smug with all these whispers in open space. I say so and so should strike out on her own, band constraining her vocals to their cheap chords and he kisses me on the cheek like he can’t help it, right before swiftly rising for the bathroom, but I don’t know that yet—he could be rising for anything. For example: we keep going outside for walks though smoking is allowed inside. Trying to get away from something by walking in a straight line there and back. The blinds in the living room don’t work; we can’t pull them down all the way, we don't like most people. We yank at the dangling white chord at the window in turn and they sprawl at the bottom like a rooster’s tail, words at the tip of the tongue, peels of white asparagus wet from a clean blade, a still frame of a sudden snow storm. Fucking blinds, it should seem like a cruel pun but the blind punk’s in his bedroom, touching breasts no one in this house will see tonight and the sun's already up and I've learned not the think about the size of the couch or how we both fit onto it, too heavy to fall.

the best looking boys at day camp

Remembering hunger. Me? Maybe a little too morbid, sweating daylight with nothing but the sheets over me. The perfect time in my life for Belle and Sebastian, fox in the fucking snow, let yourself. Whisked away to mansions with hot tubs, vodka, the space as expansive inside as it is outside, paintings all over the walls, skinny boys with lyrics, guitars and shaking hair, me on their stick laps and no idea how those legs can hold me though I can fit into their pants with ease, money, money, the sun about to hit these rooms, and us back inside now, dripping hot water all over the hardwood, towels wrapped around our shoulders because it’s still night and it’s still cold and we’re in the middle of nowhere and the white cloth to break our fall if we slip with tumblers in our hands, everyone else gone to bed so we smoke inside on leather couches and he talks about his strange childhood, like everyone else. In a family of adoptions, he was one of the actual children. Didn’t stumble on my language there, “Oh. So you were one of the actual children.” In the morning he shows me the most terrifying, giant, hairy and epileptic rabbit I've ever seen in my life. And before all this, Jaxon throwing me against walls because he’s jealous, throwing my stuff all over the apartment because there may not have been anything else for him to do.

Boy on the bike, what are you like
As you cycle round the town?
You're going up, you're going down
You're going nowhere
It's not as if they're paying you
It's not as if it's fun
At least not anymore
When your legs are black and blue
It's time to take a break
When your legs are black and blue
It's time to take a holiday. [B&S]

object lesson 1

The fever pitch is that I keep thinking people have died in the night, when they finally reach sleep as the sun rises. After the coke, I walk home myself and I’m a hyena finding soft songs to fall asleep to at low volume, room for five discs in the blue light of the room. Body darting up, down with my eyes as they scan the music rack, a framework--nails and slots holding sounds. When I wake, I use what’s left of the milk in two cups of tea, the first with two bags in one cup, stronger and more bitter than the second. Last night at the convenience store’s counter and till, I pulled one carrot shaped chocolate from the display after the other, used the green hook at the chocolate’s end to hang each in succession on the open collar of Jaxon’s shirt. “You want all these things,” I proclaimed. Maybe Graeme was right; maybe I was just trying to be funny. Nothing in me wanted chocolate. The symbolism in my life running rampant. Before going to dance last night, I found a giant, old mirror propped in the mailroom of my building’s lobby, reflective surface against the wall. With strained arms, I lifted it up two flights of stairs, a mirror the size of my body. Well, here’s a mirror, a mirror the size of your fucking body. It can't be anything but some sort of found curse, what a coincidence. I don’t know where to hang it. I placed it in front of the television, a mirror covering a screen. It really extends the room.

Went to Vancouver on Wednesday to see the Animal Collective, stayed the night. Visited my brain-twin Mariko above the staple shop, went for indian food, drank my face off, bought a hot pink hoodie. Amazing show, fucking amazing. And, hey: I'm actually pretty sad right now, gut-sad. I don't know. It's all sad, sad, sad, you guys. Yeah, uh-huh. I'm disturbed with everything. Not weeping so much as shaking. I have all these feelings and I'm not sure what they are, what in pity's fuck they're supposed To Be, but things are leaving me pretty fucking sad. Kind of let down, staircases and spiderwebs in corners--set me down there. This day will be filled with prose. It's time to write.