wildcat

EXPELLED ENERGY WITH the force of hurricanes upon my room; cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The process of hanging up T-shirts and putting away other articles of clothing (boxer-briefs, socks, jeans) is shuffling the cards and compartmentalizing all those madman distractions and neuroses that build up over the course of days, weeks, and months. I don't feel sane but I never do; at least I don't feel violently crazy right now.

We started hardcore editing the music video tonight. Three hours in the computer lab under vicious lights. We're playing with the colours and lighting, the distortions and dissolves more this time around. It's brilliant fun, even if I have an admittedly adversarial relationship with the program. I don't know what the girls think of me; I come across like a domineering top in an S&M electro-pop relationship. For their benefit, I have left out half the expletives I would normally level at a Machine Not Doing What I Want. People just don't understand how relaxing it can be to shout at inanimate objects, but maybe I have anger management issues. I had the song stuck in my head, and now must clean out my brain with mechanoid trance.

I revised my poem - "Half Digested Hair" - which was workshopped this week. They liked it quite a lot and offered a lot of useful criticism. I put in stanza breaks and rewrote quite a bit. I also changed the title to "My Mother in Menopause." This is perhaps the only poem I've ever really written about my mother.

I HAVE LOST three or four blog entries by this point, stopped after three lines each because the inspiration wasn't there. Swallowed by the void, a lot like the two pitas and humous that I just wolfed down. Food is good. Garlic is good. My brain seems to only spit up nonsensical idiocies. Anyway, it's been a crazed weekend and a sane weekend, and we finished the film on Friday night. Well, we still have to fiddle with the closing credits and - gasp - burn the thing onto DVDs. Which sounds good. After that, we have to decide on something for the third and final film.

I'VE BEEN CLAWED! No, not by one of my millions of adoring fans, but by two seperate friends in the past three days. The first was Joanna, rough-housing and drunk; she tried to stuff popcorn down my Superman shirt and razored open my soft and pliant flesh with her jagged talons. The look of horror on her face spoke encyclopedias, even as I couldn't find a mirror to inspect myself in. And tonight, as I played with her with a pen, Sambuca clawed at my fingertip and marked me, Queen Bitch (as Joy calls her). No pain, but drama and wild accusations. She is the only cat I care for, much as Joanna is the only Joanna I care for.

Went over to Joy & Matt's the evening, ostensibly to take Joy to the George & Dragon for a drink and to write, write, write. It was closed, it seemed, for health violations or some other shady reasons, so we returned to the house to drink whisky and sit on her bedroom floor while Matt was off jamming. We argued over religion (The Virgin/Whore, "Why is Jesus so fucking popular?" [J.W.] and Yoko Ono) in a good-natured way and took ten minute vows of silence off and on to scrawl incorrigible opening scenes in our rantbooks. I continued the one based on Frank Sinatra's mug shot. Matt came home from jamming and we chattered a bit, wrote some more, and then I left.

Called Michael to tell him I loved him before he went to bed, as I walked in the inpenetrable silence and clarity of Fernwood. It was beautiful: just rained, wet, crisp, and warm. The air refreshed with each breath, the opposite of Prince George's wearing husk. Everything felt hyper-real, as if I was on drugs, and I walked home with no music, only a few haggard bodies around (one, a photographer putting away a tripod kitty corner to the Belfry Theatre before biking off) and barely any traffic. I fought against heartburn and slinked home--

Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury honours Hunter S. Thompson
(Link courtesy of Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin).
Uncle Duke, a character who showed up around 1974, is based on Doc Thompson.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas continues; I've taken to reading it in the scraps of time on buses and on break at work. I'll probably sit down in a little bit and burn through the rest of it, and then shugger-shugger-shugger through the graphic novels I borrowed from the library. I feel high-octane with the short story I'm writing, which means I need to simultaneously inundate my brain with information.

I love Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo. I love that they shift between identities, slather through dense battlefields of reptilian cops, too fucked on mescaline to care about anything but the fact that if they were on LSD they'd be completely out of their heads with terror. They surmise horrific possible futures and hatch disgusting plots which you know they won't go through with - right? Right? They do anything they can to fuck with the heads of the middle class normals around them, even as the Fear sits in the back of their skulls. They pull out knives in diners and then ask to buy an entire pie.

It opens up first thing in the mornining, when the night skin peels away as thin sheets of dreams that you can't quite put your finger on. The Fear: the oh god, oh god while work crews outside and across the street tromp away at the latest big project - revitalizing an old age hospital - and thoughts are as one: money. No money, no money, it will be a ridiculous juggling act to pay for all things (rent, food, bills) at once. This is worse than the mounds and mounds of pasta in your cupboards, the overkill of pita bread and pancake mix. This is worse than carefully inspecting anything that might look damaged, as if to gauge just how much time can pass before a replacement is needed. The Fear is that survival jolt that collapses the dream architecture and brings up the failures of time, makes school seem less important (because it eats up time and prevents work shifts) even as graduation crests into view with only weeks to go. Weeks. The giant dark precipice of the unknown coming into sight, thrown forward and above it, looking down into all that can go wrong--

It is important to "get past" the Fear. Vitally. The operation of limbs is key, as is some small victory right away (paying the phone bill while seated in the dark at your desk, phoning the dentist's office to inquire about the cleaning appointment tomorrow because it isn't written down anywhere). Eating is also important: leftover pasta with mozza cheese and garlic-tomato sauce gives a solid sensation to the empty stomach and the heavy sensation cuts away at the inpenetrable Fear. Paying for stamps with change. Working on a short story with the words "Frank Sinatra" in the title, because misery is best used when converted into "Art."

I KEEP DREAMING that the universe collapses down to a single point.

My teeth ache from the visceral dentist's chair experience, which has a certain parallel with alien abduction or alien autopsy - one of the two. Maybe both. The unique flavour of blood in your mouth. I didn't have to look in any mirrors following the polishing with pumice stone, not under those hideous dentist lights that make you look awful, no matter what you felt like coming in.

But tonight is the video screening; I have a burnt copy of "Boom or Bust" in my satchel to take downtown with me and hand in to Brian after a cheap-o sushi dinner with Steff. I'm afraid I wasn't as energetic or excited by life as I could have been today, but my belly was empty of all things - including a universe shaped like a man, or a man shaped like a universe, or even a nibbly of cheese.

The only time we were ever
in the Garden of Eden, Boy--
which looked a lot like a dingy living room with wheelchair treads,
a mirror so large behind us, 1000 fibre optic angels
& the unblinking Television in front of us--
we ate fruit.
You interrupted my apple
with the sticker still on
by bussing at the air
& "Do you want some of my banana?"
Banana, banana, banana!
I wanted the the apple, still unpierced
by my incissors, there was no juice
yet in my mouth, just the saliva!
& you! Plucking whole strings off banana meat
to drop cannibal-like into your throat--
& your eyes, & your eyes
& your "Do you want some of my banana?"
& your mother in the next room
like a fibre optic angel from the Christmas store!
I just wanted my apple. I was hungry
& I didn't care if they threw us out
but you & your banana
but you & your banana
but you & your banana--

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk all rights reserved

WHERE ARE WE going tonight? Would you have had me write a paper about you, Allen Ginsberg, or would you have bent me over and fucked me under the name Poetry? Would you have required I take notes while you recited poems over and over, incantatory, would you have tattooed Mandalas on my buttocks, or would you have drugged me with hallucinogens as if to make a point? I miss the whorehouses of France. I listen to you, Allen Ginsberg, while you chatter on the box, electric, electronic, this your voice from the other side of Death! Allen Ginsberg, this is what you sound like dead. This is what you made of me, Allen Ginsberg, I blame you, you've been dead for years but we were alive together for a time, Allen Ginsberg, I will say your name over and over again because it's more Jewish than Moloch, Allen Ginsberg, you are a dream about reading Time Magazine with covers from the Sixties, on the subway, on the bus, on the bench in the park where the pigeons gather and people fuck at night---

This weekend: drunk on Friday night on the patio of Felicitia's, dancing to some decent drunken house music (a DJ? in Fellatio's?), the fag bar, everybody's a clone, Michael can't handle the idea of hippie fags with long, flowing hair. I don't care. Friday, pastries, too much sugar, Constantine, the Bent Mast for grease, horny sex, sleeping angels, waking up Sunday morning and bad brunch. Why? Why?

Otherwise: this paper will not die, nobody has a life until it finishes. Really. I feel like I'm stabbing Allen in the throat and all I want do is read Prufrock and Eliot in general.

With regard to the champagne-born-from-shit and the mechanoid clacking-clacking of insects, a small fly or bug of some description attempted to zip up my right nostril about five minutes ago, probably aiming for the small and drug-scarred expanse called my brain, my cortex, my noggin. Managed to prevent that, it quivered for a minute and flew away, away, away - probably onto bigger adventures, other nostrils, perhaps a more exotic orifice to spelunk. Really. Upon my festered brow, each insect an angel seen through a fallen filter; perhaps their compound eyes are just how we perceive them in this time frame.

With regard to last night's Constantine and frankly awful rendition of the character by Keanu Reeves, I have gone and consulted the Hellblazer comics again. I have, it seems, more than a passing fascination with dark-ass occult comics, I admit it. Clarice Sackville - an aged, gnarl-faced bitch if there ever was one, a hint of the Dorothy Parker. "Well, to your miraculous resurrection. Chin chin." Really lovely character. Anyway, anyway.

The essay is stacked at about four pages. Two to go. I have no idea what I'm writing; Joy and I chatted on the phone for a few minutes and we're both obsessed with Allen right now, and I've really hit the brick wall with being able to write a coherent paper - I just want to point at things (lines, sections, phrases, words) and say, "Look here. This is cool, wot? See this? Mega. Beautiful. Fucking dirty shit, man. Fucking dirty shit," and then breaking off into a very long poem of my own. While it's prose on the outside, it's definitely veering into prose-poem rather than essay territory. The question is: 12:30 at night. Dare I squeeze a few more lines from my tired fingertips or just go to bed? I have that class in the morning with Brian and let's face it, I can barely sit through half an hour before I scarper off nowadays, right? I know I've paid all this money (or rather, accrued all this debt), but my third eye seems to be half-opened even if I can't get my head out of my ass long enough to not casually dismiss major religions (opposite of my current life situational drive to be more accepting of different belief systems for the purpose of synthesizing them and loving everyone and all that shizznit). It's really difficult when you've got a decent view of what your life's lesson is, only you're failing miserably at learning it or practicing it.

I'm going to sit on my bed now with my two eyes closed while I try to open my third eye all the way.

The paper, as it stands, is done. I'm going to run through it again and check for basic errors. Then I will print it off and have done with it. There. I don't want to be maudlin, but. But. From my essay on Allen Ginsberg:

For final consideration, one of Allen Ginsberg's last poems: "Things I'll Never Do (Nostalgias)," written on March 30th, 1997. I wanted to discuss his very last poem, thought that it was this one, but this is the extent of the last collection. Still, this was the last poem I can find; it hit me so hard between my chest and my head and I can't quite explain, but to read this poem was sorrow and even that word feels ill-considered. To analyze this poem is to analyze it without consideration for technique, skill, or anything besides emotion. This poem is a list; a prayer containing all the things that he would never do or do again, because he was going to die. He was "[not] ever [to] return to Kashi 'oldest continuously habited city in the world'/ bathe in Ganges & sit again at the Manikarnika ghat with Peter," which means that he would not be burned on the Ganges, his ashes mixed with honey; his soul would not be released from the circle of Karmic rebirth. He would no longer "daydream of Bali." To look at the sweet and swaggering lines which drip with the named nostalgia of the short for this world, one might see the loose rhythm; sexual fever and Old Testament churning gives way to languid memory that mixes with epiphany. There is love, longing, and fear thickened together in these lines, even as they call upon Ginsberg's powers; his piling of images, details, places, nouns upon nouns. Each name is a protective ward. This poem reminds me of "America," with the implication of Zen: as each place is named, as each love is named, as each moment held up, Ginsberg is stretched out between them like a constellation, he is made one with them, and they sleep inside him for those last days.

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

Good night, everyone. Pleasant dreams.

Meeting Steph and Myla at five to discuss movie-making. We have one more project to go, the "four to five minute narrative" and the only ideas at this junction are Myla's observation about yoga and anything we can squeeze out of the Shaun Tan books for inspiration (The Red Tree and The Lost Thing). We seem to be very good at organic brainstorming where little bits and pieces ideas are sewn together and then produced as a film. I'd still like to do riff on Goddard's Alphaville, but that might be a little too complex for a five minute thing. Voice-overs might be fun to play with as well, again.

Otherwise, the relevant factors: Writing my 2012: A Space Apocalypse paper for Brian's Art & Technology class; I got an A on my Man Ray paper. The Art & Tech daily journals, which I haven't worked on in weeks. Need to write up my observations about Yoko Ono as Sixties Artfag Goddess. Have to bring back Brian's copy of Blue Velvet, which I honestly just couldn't get into. Workshopping the latest batch of poems, which is notable in that it's been several weeks since anybody's poem has made me want to actively prevent other people from being writers. Revising "Tundra is a Jungle" and "Indecent and Lucent." Seperating out kitchen stuff, DVDs, and various sundries for when Mike and Michelle move out in a few weeks time.

Also: chuck laundry into the dryer, so that I might have clean clothes. Empty dishwasher, so that I might have plates.

Off to school in an hour, probably.

The descriptive passages about Queen Elizabeth offered at the beginning of Virginia Woolf's Orlando are notable in their stark beauty, but also in their monstrosity - the Queen is this shambling figure weathered by age, but quite elegant in her finery. The longest passage about hands I've ever encountered. It was offset quite well by the opening descriptions of Orlando hirself, as a young boy. I'm inclined to read on, even as nothing has "happened" per se - Woolf chooses a compelling event to open the book with, and the prose is "rich" in a way unfavoured in recent literature.

The meeting with the girls was fabulous, and we're imbued with purpose and a concept. It straddles a the borders of comedy, horror, and fairy tale. I have to write some flashback monologues to be read in a thick, German accent; I'm going to be doing one of the voice-overs in the film. Looking forward to it. Steph's concerned that we're shooting to high for our means, but in order to evolve, one must ever reach beyond the envelope's edge--

Revising poems, Caroline drew my attention to Rimbaud with regard to one of them, so I've pulled out "A Season in Hell" again and devour it in random intervals. I love Rimbaud, he's such a bitch. He's so...overwrought. All the time.

The Question #5 came out today, and while the art continues to blow me away, I'm afraid the story in this issue gets a bit muddled - again - not unlike the morass of #2. Really. Lois Lane comes off as a bitch which might bother some, but I like her in this role: she's a strong investigative reporter who gets the story and wins awards as a result, so she needs to be a bit ruthless. Here, this vicious persona doesn't help her get the scoop, but she is consistent. The plot itself continues to become ridiculous, Lex Luthor trying to use Feng Shui to kill Superman while the Question prowls the streets, trying to prevent this. The cover is probably my favourite in the series; the messy psychedelics give way to the crouching Question in profile, with a woman superimposed over him, falling, with the Daily Planet and a white sky in the very back of the image. Clean, odd, and rather beautiful. Reminded me of Man Ray, for some reason.

Sleep refuses; not even dreams, just the rhythmic click somewhere in the room. My radio refuses to produce Inner Sanctum or The Shadow - nothing but static. Something about the bed, cold and dead under me. Instead, the spirit operates my fingertips and I write. Restless and alien, I am driven by those stories in my head again; I can feel them palpitate in my ribcage like a butterfly giving birth to a king.

When one feels at odds with the universe, wear a hoodie, with the hood drawn. Especially drag at the hood until it ducks down past the eyes. Mystery is maximized, and everybody knows that dark thoughts are had. Construct origami warnings of doom, and then float them down a river.

Heavy into research for my final Art & Technology paper, tentatively titled "2012: A Space Apocalypse." Bits and bobs:

"A fearlessly creative thinker, McKenna's contributions to science include the theory that psychedelic mushrooms spurred humans to develop consciousness and language; and the 'Timewave' theory, described by chaos pioneer Ralph Abraham as 'the first model for history that significantly transcends that of the ancients.'"

"In the final transfiguration, director Kubrick and co-author Arthur Clarke suggest that evolutionary progress may in fact be cyclical, perhaps in the shape of a helix formation."

"Population, computing power, speed of transport, the sheer amount of known information, and most other things that involve humans, are all increasing at an accelerating rate. The rate at which they are increasing is increasing."

Regardless of potential quackery, it's fun to look at End of the World things.

I read poetry obliquely, picking up on some line that catches my eye and then working backwards and forwards or up/down at will - like picking up a new album and starting on song three, working your way back. Do I not have the attention span for a conventional reading? Everything reduced to fragments, not unlike stanzas - but not the stanzas listed on the page, not always in the order that they're there (the first time I read it). Fragments, and then a clean straight-through reading, or something. What do these things mean? What image / sound catches my attention and holds it? Must I reduce everything down to quotations, Bartlett's, must I quote myself? Sometimes I read one stanza and want that to be the entire poem, sometimes it's just a couplet, sometimes it's a line. Everything is shrapnel.

1. Critique five poems for workshop class.
2. Write 5.5 more pages for my Art & Technology paper.
3. Write bits and pieces for the final movie script.

Completion is necessary at this junction in order to preserve sanity. Personality can be compiled as a series of bubbles, abstracted constructions with convenient labelling and/or masks. Immortality.

The "not sleeping" thing has begun to crack apart my already fragmented, and let's face it, tedious sanity. Last night I was up until three, thereabouts, with the covers over my head and a catalogue inside it. Things to get rid of, sell, divest myself of. That and a scandalous critique of one of the other music videos in the class, the 8mm thing that should have been a good idea but man--

Ideas burn in my head over the next video, I'm going to scribble them down at work on little pieces of paper, in my rantbook on my lunch break. Ideas about transformation of purpose and the existential dread of things no longer imbued with meaning. This is an idea I can put the full weight of my prowess behind.

I'm also horny for the Nine Inch Nails right now. And beautifully dressed - pinstripes are on today's forecast. Fuck. The. Bank.

Pedal to the metal, Bitches.

Waking up on the other side, below the bottom of the ocean, is waking up in the arms of the Bad Mother, blood-spattered with knives, and in the arms of the Bad Father, who holds nooses. These are the serial killer parents imagined during fevers.

They don't bother with vengeance in the Broken City: "murder" is their word for "love." Open wounds sing.

Miserable in the shadow of thousand-floor skyscrapers that rape the sky, we run; my Bad Parents and I. The two of them explode buildings and fuck atop corpses. I can think of nothing but escape, graduation, and a way out of the gut-ragged advice given by the Bad Father while he licks a boy's stomach and then sticks a knife in to curdle the blood!

I break off when they're not looking and making my way through 40-Watt streets, looking for Heaven, I advance past buildings made of molten glass and screaming virgins until I find them, my friends: Caroline (with eyeliner stigmata) Casey and Stefan. Casey and Stefan fluctuate, mutate, and transform, they identify as tricksters.

We're trapped in this land that Hell pales before, so we seek asylum in an Intergalactic Hindu Temple, cathedral-sized; this is called the Temple of Penetrating Light. Ganesh is the door-man with his vast elephant head, but he won't admit us until Caroline and I get married; the walls open and we are taken away from the intestinal streets, into the house with one billion silver stairs...

So, something bad happened to my mum on her drive down to Victoria today; one more crisis. I'm not supposed to talk about it, but it involves Chiliwack and some questionable driving decisions. Anyway, anyway, she's in one piece.

Otherwise, trying to balance her visit, Brandon's visit, and the final weeks of class. I'm wobbly in the head. I'm in the middle of my very final paper for my undergraduate degree.

Last night was good, went over to Joy's after a long session with Steff where we put together the script and storyboarded the final film.

I'm lonely tonight and I'm going to sleep with the quilt mum made me a few years ago, because it's been sub-arctic at night--

The movie has no chance of being the movie in my head. I have made peace with this. The first night of shooting was bumpy, it had some definite bumps, and did some planning so that it'll be smoother this evening. Not that we'll be done - Myla and I have to shoot a flashback sequence while Steff's in Mexico now, and I'll be logging and capturing all by my lonesome on Tuesday morning. Apparently, I'm borderline autistic enough that I want to just be in an editing suite going at this thing with tooth and claw! It has a chance, but frustration builds. Steff was on edge because we were shooting around her family and I think her father made veiled comments. Myla spent the night placating Nick and Katie so they'd act well. I think I was just being an asshole, but I've never quite managed to put a full-on filter between what I think and what I say.

But, I came home to wine and food. Brandon's in town, so we stayed up last night until 1am with Christian, Michael was there until just after midnight, we drank and babbled and made incredibly crude comments. I think the bitch factor was still flipped on my brain, but I had fun and caught up with Christian and Brandon and there was Michael, cuddled up with me on the couch. All was well again.

Today, we meet at 5 to go over early and set up before the actor arrives; this is smart. Before that, however, I'm going to see The Incredibles at Cinecenta with Michael; this is beautiful.

But the real fucking story isn't that we accomplished so much tonight while filming, or that Steff's dad shocked everyone by being a really goddam good actor. The real goddam story is that I'm apparently fat according to some little twinky fag at Prism tonight - THE FUCK. My gut is, apparently, "not hot." Oh, I'm sorry that I don't walk around sucking my tummy in all the time. He couldn't decide whether or not to keep his button-up on or take it off with the stupid TANK-TOP (Fuck, I'm sorry, is it really the Nineties again? I'll alert MC Hammer) underneath. He made out with Brandon but we decided he was Johnny Fuckface when he failed to beat Dan to death for the right to the name "Dan," and called this friend of Nathan's, Emily, "fat" as well.

As if to make me feel better, the universe provided a straight guy who bought me a gin & tonic, a sweetheart theatre major named Julie who told me I have amazing bone structure, and some nineteen-year-old who grabbed at my crotch twice for no apparent reason. No touchies! Fuck? Fuck!

This entry was brought to you by the letters "Candied Apple," "China White," "Doctor Pepper," and "Double Fisting Rum-Cokes and Gin-tonics." And the number "Paralyzer" (The fuck? I'm back in Prince George? Drinking paralyzers at the Underworld? Bar fights? Fuckfuckfuck!)

This entry was also brought you by my giant flaming potty mouth.

PS. I miss Michael.

It seems that Darling Wildcat has lost some of its focus lately; it also seems to have I haven't written much of anything lately. I started a story on my lunch break at work yesterday, and while it doesn't have a title yet it most certainly has an ending in my head. We'll see if I have time to work on it over the next little while.

My mum's made it safely back to Prince George, and Brandon's on his way back to Colorado. Some good visits with both of them, and we also managed to get things done on the video. Brandon got me way too drunk on Thursday night - as evidenced by my deplorable drunk post - and Friday night we hung out with Joy, Matt, and my mother. Good times.

The launch was last night, but I didn't go - instead I cuddled with Michael and we watched three episodes of The Avengers with chocolate. Beauty.

Thing which annoys me about the Kaballah: there are ten spheres, or sephira, in the Tree of Life; one of these corresponds with the Sun (Tiphereth, or "Beauty") and one corresponds with the Moon (Yesod, or "Foundation"). Joining the sephira are twenty-two pathways, each one corresponding to one of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. Two of these pathways are "The Sun" and "The Moon" (Route 29) - except that the "Sun" pathway leads up from the Moon to Mercury (Hod, or "Splendour") and the "Moon" pathway leads from Malkuth (Earth, the physical plane) up to Venus (Netzach, or "Victory"); neither of them comes anywhere near the sephira that correspond to the Sun or the Moon. This is a bit confusing.

Instead of going to Michael's family dinner, I went to Joy and Matt's for pasta with seafood sauce, salad, and garlic bread. Caroline came too, holding in her hot little hands a pair of Polish chocolate bars with the unexpected name Diana. Joy and Matt are cat-sitting for Jess, Stinky & Jimmy were there and I rather think I react to them differently then I do Sambuca - I'm fucked, darlings, with allergins up my nose. Sneezing. After Matt left for band practice, the girls and I watched Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and marveled at its cinematography, its costume design, it's dialogue--

Making a small amount of headway with this short story, which is a bit more cohesive in my head now. I still lack a title, however, and while that can be liberating, it also leaves me unable to achieve sufficient thrust in the strictly narrative sense. I'm going to work on it for an hour tonight and then procrastinate from doing my essay tomorrow by puttering with it. I only have three more pages of essay to write, so I have a bit of flex time.

But the question is, the question is (Oh god, Oh god - have I embraced italics again?) -- can you possibly live in this world here, today, now? Without being headfucked by body issues? It feels like I'm surrounded by gnostics. Caroline was talking about getting acupressure tonight - apparently they only do it to solve a particular problem (i.e. anxiety, or something). I wonder if there's a treatment for body issues that doesn't amount to some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion. Anyway, I have pores you could fly battleships through and nothing's going to solve that tonight.

Well. Well. Existere rejected "The Mushroom Cloud Called Sadie Valentino," and I didn't like the wording of their rejection notice, which came in my e-mail. I should probably (hello) attack the story with a vengeance and rework parts or something, but it's late and I'm about to work on the new story. I suppose I'll submit to the Fiddlehead next.

Put on a large load of laundry when I got home tonight, it chugs away beneath my feet, beneath the floor, and beneath the underneath air. I have Ginsberg enumerating on my headphones, Bukowski's next, I'm going to work on this new story and work on this new story and work on this story, which sits at two paragraphs and glares through me like I was sunglasses. O Audience, you must be my sun--

Sylvia Plath blathers "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" on media player and I'm on page four. Page four. I'm torn: flesh out this first flashback or just go on and come back to it later? The scene breaks were a surprise. Stephen comes across as a bit of a shrew, the generic best friend berating his buddy for being an ass, and I need to get deeper down into that. Why, exactly, are they friends? Did they ever get drunk together and have bad sex, and now just don't talk about it? I'm sure I'll be horrified by it within the next half-hour, contemplate deleting the whole thing, wail at the top of my lungs, try to be invisible, and take off all my clothes. Occasionally, the process of writing a short story is like having an unhappy orgasm.

The dialogue is unsurprising. Fuck. What am I thinking, with this?

Acquired from Dorian.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Probably Sheila Heti's The Middle Stories - a series of pseudo-fables which range from moderately comic and whimsical to downright dark and vicious. I think my favourite is still the two-pager about the girl who keeps a little tiny mermaid trapped in a jar and subjects that mermaid to endless torture and abuse. There also one about a boy who falls in love with a monkey, and marries her.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I admit nothing!

The last book you bought is:

The Pharmacist's Mate, by Amy Fusselman. Acquired from SUBtext for exactly two dollars and fourteen cents. I got through a couple pages and then got distracted. It's a delightful book in theory: slim and broken paragraphs, each one divided by white space. I'll try and read it again in a little while, once school is finished and everything doesn't feel like procrastination.

What are you currently reading?

Virginia Woolf's Orlando in slow, exacting increments. I think it falters only because of when I'm reading it; far away from the time it was written. I long for more action in my stories, but this was written in a time when the description went on for pages and pages and you had to really carefully keep track of where people and objects were in relation to each other. That said, it's quite jaunty in places and certainly provocative about gender for its time.

Five books you would take to a deserted island. (The classic question)

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. This is ostensibly a novel, but I think it's secretly one of the longest prose-poems ever written; even in translation, it's hard to get away from Calvino's beautiful use of language. Beautiful.

The Book of Questions, by Pablo Neruda. I think this one would definitely require that I have ample pens and paper with me on this desert island, because I'd want to sit around writing poetry. Neruda invests such emotion and such absurdity into each couplet question that you have to answer, even if the question makes no logical sense.

Collected Poems, Allen Ginsberg. Duh.

The Paris Review Collection, with writers writing something on everything, from sex to death to divorce. It has enough variety to keep me interested, and an captivating Raymond Carver story.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie. Some of the puns run into decidedly naff territory, but overall I think this is one of my favourite books for the sheer imagination going into it. And imagination is KEY.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Joy, because I know for sure, for fact, for real, that she has more books than me.

Michael, because I want him to have Cheeses of the World with him on the Desert Island.

Samara can wax poetic about poets like nobody's business.

Update: I really fucking hate this. Fuck fuck fuck.

Just wrapped up shooting for "By Lamplight," the horror film we're doing for video production class. Went well, got everything done within about an hour and a half; I'm meeting Myla later to capture this last section of footage and then we can actually start the process of editing. Could be quite brilliant if everything fits together all right. We had to cut down my final voice-over quite a bit, because we weren't sure how long the final sequence would be.

The wonder: stumbled home from the Fine Arts lab, drunk on fluorescent lighting and a severe need to sit down, lie down, something down with nobody I don't know around. Really. Myla and I giggled too much while we edited, stressed out over things, and struggled with our empty stomachs. But we've got a good start on things: we made it into the last scene, got most of the footage on the timeline, and we can go from there tomorrow. We started to play with some of the effects a bit, but we're leaving most of that for a day or two. There's a flashback we're going to make black and white, and maybe we'll add some sepia tone to it as well; I think in a lot of cases we're going to need cross-dissolves to even out the cuts between shots.

Time ticks down. One week and the movie's due. I kind of enjoy that sense of impending doom that drips, drips, drips down the back of my throat. I'm going to finish the 245 journals tomorrow and hand in the paper.

Handed my paper on Kubrick's 2001 and Terrence McKenna's "Timewave Zero" in to Brian this morning and sat through some experimental film. Oddly, two of the projects were from video production last semester rather than this art and technology class. Anyway, there was a soothing experimental film which suited the early morning, but would have benefitted from a dose of LSD. After that was a deplorable "music with stock footage" thing that wasn't bad, per se - but I gapped out before halfway and it was really, honestly, nothing I hadn't seen before. I ducked out and read some stories from Odder Jobs, returned the video camera, and took a bus back down to home.

Going in later tonight for editing purposes. I want to get to work on the flashback sequence, make it really beautiful with sepia tones, fading, and slow motion. I think the montage of Lenore - the old lamp-maker's lost love - could be slowed down and fiddled with some more. There's also a clip from the flashback that needs to be shaved down by a couple second just to end on the correct note. This is the nitty gritty, this is the part I love--