"the home front has dissolved,
reinforcements needed,
coordinates unknown.
send help."
Seems like every time I sit down to write in this blog, it starts with "moved again."
I've moved again, to Oswego.
It is hard to say if this time it was a mistake but by the way it looks it certainly was one of the most breathtaking mistakes I have ever made.
But I think it was a coordinated effort on the part of my guts and my glands.
Leading me on.
If you don't talk about it, does it go away?
If you don't look at it does it exist?
I think I found something important here in the smoldering ruins but it's buried in ash and too hot to touch yet.
The cold has come and time will tell.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Update, October
Life happens so fast now.
1) Michael and I broke up immediately after moving into our new house, which is in every way for the best.
2) My hand was forced and I put Onyx down earlier than Michael and I had planned. I drink to the fucking bravest soul the world has ever seen, my best friend and love of my life. Onyx, life goes on like always without you but I'll never forget you and have taken steps to ensure that. Stinky still sleeps with your dog toys, secretly quietly behind the couch in his own silence. We all love you and hope your pain has ceased. O-dog for ever.
3) Dating someone new, who knows how that will turn out. Life is unpredictable which is easy to say now but it's hard to stop planning.
A word on the recent economic shock waves.
BRING IT ON. I hope to god the economy is quickly destroyed and leaves room for a new synthesis.
Anarchy? Anyone?
More to say on that later, working out a couple different papers in my brain right now and it inhibits it inhibits the free thoughts.
Notes on boys with beards:
Thank you, sir. If you are the last squirrelly intellectual I ever meet, I could deal with that.
1) Michael and I broke up immediately after moving into our new house, which is in every way for the best.
2) My hand was forced and I put Onyx down earlier than Michael and I had planned. I drink to the fucking bravest soul the world has ever seen, my best friend and love of my life. Onyx, life goes on like always without you but I'll never forget you and have taken steps to ensure that. Stinky still sleeps with your dog toys, secretly quietly behind the couch in his own silence. We all love you and hope your pain has ceased. O-dog for ever.
3) Dating someone new, who knows how that will turn out. Life is unpredictable which is easy to say now but it's hard to stop planning.
A word on the recent economic shock waves.
BRING IT ON. I hope to god the economy is quickly destroyed and leaves room for a new synthesis.
Anarchy? Anyone?
More to say on that later, working out a couple different papers in my brain right now and it inhibits it inhibits the free thoughts.
Notes on boys with beards:
Thank you, sir. If you are the last squirrelly intellectual I ever meet, I could deal with that.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Update, July 2008
I haven't been writing recently. I've found that in periods of up-upheaval, introspection is painful and perspective impossible.
It is hard to think that betrayal has been the most constant thread in my life these last 3 or 4 years. And it's not to say that it has been the most prominent thread, but it has been there. To imagine my life in terms of a woven fabric, there would be many different and fantastic colors and textures. Yes, there would be an overwhelming presence of coarse raw wool representing drug use, depression, drinking, absence of feelings, oppressive loneliness, and the ever present failure. However, there would be silk interrupters of fun and friends and good weather and simple pleasures.
But betrayal is there all along, perhaps acting even as the warp.
Holding the rest there, the predominant structure.
This has been painful. Michael, a victim of its grating harp strings for the first time, is struggling as well.
We had had a plan and a force operating outside of us and independent of us has torn our plan apart.
So what now?
Now we examine the future critically. What are we doing? I never know what he's doing, as I don't think he does either. I watch him closely sometimes and it often appears that his actions occur only milliseconds after the thought, which is to say, there is no premeditation. Perhaps I constantly underestimate him. He is a photographer with drawers full of film and no photos. He is "in the moment."
I, on the other hand, revile the moment! The moment forces me into the next and the next as if I were stuck marching in this relentless band formation. How do I escape the moment? How to reverse one's fortune when one moment begets the next?
This is the impossible task at hand.
I plan and create "mind trajectories" for myself, convinced that if I believe that is the direction, that will be the direction.
So far this theory has met with failure. Betrayal in this sense is my anti-hero, the force driving against me. Failure is the aftermath.
I am right now meeting with some of my most authentic successes. They are paired with some of the most painful turns of event. Is this always the truth?
However, it has opened us up. We are willing and ready to move, we are no longer tied to Syracuse as the "cheap rent" and "easy" option. We are exploring. This opens up the option to me to go to the school that will really provide me with the learning experience that I want. I am aiming to go to a selective school, not because it's well known. I want to work for myself so a big name diploma will only get me so far. I want to work with good minds. I want to have conversations that will help me grow intellectually. This is the driving force.
So, how do I want to grow? Which direction? I've decided that grant writing might be a good money generator. Theoretically, I would want my job and my passion tied together, but since my passions are so ethereal, I can't imagine that happening. Grant writing seems like a good way to procure a salary and be able to work within my own sense of ethics.
Here is the second problem. I operate within my own separate framework. My ethics and ideals are not tied to my friends or my country. I identify with the individualist anarchist ideal. Voltarine deCleyre is my hero. I am lonely in the pursuit. I have no one around me to talk about this with, to expand upon my knowledge. I have constant battles to fight with no army. I am bored to death of the "button anarchists," and I don't believe their activism or collectivism begets anything but confusion. Perhaps I have become jaded, lost the path.
At this point in my life I am interested in studying the great theorists. I am interested in learning as much as possible, and creating dialogs about the ideas generated in the late 19th century. How have things changed? How valid are the anarchist-feminist ideas on marriage when applied to modern society and relationships? How do we think of the world as a whole? How do you begin to create enclaves of anarchy? How do we operate inside the framework of a larger society? How does an individualist anarchist educate and convert without invalidating their beliefs?
What is the world like now and how do we apply these ideas?
I need an anarchist support group, someone I could go to weekly and make that confession, "Hello, my name is Liz and I'm an anarchist."
Writing, philosophy, gender studies. How do I get that out of college? Do I go for writing and gender studies and do a masters in philosophy? Minors?
I'm looking very closely at University of Pennsylvania. Michael and I really want to go to Philly. UPenn offers what I want.
I'm hesitant to say that's the next step, but I think it is.
My "free tuition" card runs out in about a year and I will still be at OCC.
Financially, I'm in ruins now and am not looking forward to an additional $40-50,000 a year in debt and UPenn is one of the schools doing the whole "make under $100,000? Go to school on grants, not loans." I'll be an adult, fiscally independent. I'm an investment in the future,
whatever.
Moments beget moments and I ruminate on this as I tend my garden. This is the most liberating experience I can generate in my life right now. I, with my own labor, have generated enough food to feed my limited community. I learned and am learning everything I could. I pressed forward without hesitation. I applied my theory to the dirt. I had failures and successes. I modified my behaviors to suit the results I was seeing. I have carried water in buckets to nourish and have kneeled in the dirt to weed. Yesterday, we tasted the first sweet pea of the year.
It was a metaphor, I think.
It is hard to think that betrayal has been the most constant thread in my life these last 3 or 4 years. And it's not to say that it has been the most prominent thread, but it has been there. To imagine my life in terms of a woven fabric, there would be many different and fantastic colors and textures. Yes, there would be an overwhelming presence of coarse raw wool representing drug use, depression, drinking, absence of feelings, oppressive loneliness, and the ever present failure. However, there would be silk interrupters of fun and friends and good weather and simple pleasures.
But betrayal is there all along, perhaps acting even as the warp.
Holding the rest there, the predominant structure.
This has been painful. Michael, a victim of its grating harp strings for the first time, is struggling as well.
We had had a plan and a force operating outside of us and independent of us has torn our plan apart.
So what now?
Now we examine the future critically. What are we doing? I never know what he's doing, as I don't think he does either. I watch him closely sometimes and it often appears that his actions occur only milliseconds after the thought, which is to say, there is no premeditation. Perhaps I constantly underestimate him. He is a photographer with drawers full of film and no photos. He is "in the moment."
I, on the other hand, revile the moment! The moment forces me into the next and the next as if I were stuck marching in this relentless band formation. How do I escape the moment? How to reverse one's fortune when one moment begets the next?
This is the impossible task at hand.
I plan and create "mind trajectories" for myself, convinced that if I believe that is the direction, that will be the direction.
So far this theory has met with failure. Betrayal in this sense is my anti-hero, the force driving against me. Failure is the aftermath.
I am right now meeting with some of my most authentic successes. They are paired with some of the most painful turns of event. Is this always the truth?
However, it has opened us up. We are willing and ready to move, we are no longer tied to Syracuse as the "cheap rent" and "easy" option. We are exploring. This opens up the option to me to go to the school that will really provide me with the learning experience that I want. I am aiming to go to a selective school, not because it's well known. I want to work for myself so a big name diploma will only get me so far. I want to work with good minds. I want to have conversations that will help me grow intellectually. This is the driving force.
So, how do I want to grow? Which direction? I've decided that grant writing might be a good money generator. Theoretically, I would want my job and my passion tied together, but since my passions are so ethereal, I can't imagine that happening. Grant writing seems like a good way to procure a salary and be able to work within my own sense of ethics.
Here is the second problem. I operate within my own separate framework. My ethics and ideals are not tied to my friends or my country. I identify with the individualist anarchist ideal. Voltarine deCleyre is my hero. I am lonely in the pursuit. I have no one around me to talk about this with, to expand upon my knowledge. I have constant battles to fight with no army. I am bored to death of the "button anarchists," and I don't believe their activism or collectivism begets anything but confusion. Perhaps I have become jaded, lost the path.
At this point in my life I am interested in studying the great theorists. I am interested in learning as much as possible, and creating dialogs about the ideas generated in the late 19th century. How have things changed? How valid are the anarchist-feminist ideas on marriage when applied to modern society and relationships? How do we think of the world as a whole? How do you begin to create enclaves of anarchy? How do we operate inside the framework of a larger society? How does an individualist anarchist educate and convert without invalidating their beliefs?
What is the world like now and how do we apply these ideas?
I need an anarchist support group, someone I could go to weekly and make that confession, "Hello, my name is Liz and I'm an anarchist."
Writing, philosophy, gender studies. How do I get that out of college? Do I go for writing and gender studies and do a masters in philosophy? Minors?
I'm looking very closely at University of Pennsylvania. Michael and I really want to go to Philly. UPenn offers what I want.
I'm hesitant to say that's the next step, but I think it is.
My "free tuition" card runs out in about a year and I will still be at OCC.
Financially, I'm in ruins now and am not looking forward to an additional $40-50,000 a year in debt and UPenn is one of the schools doing the whole "make under $100,000? Go to school on grants, not loans." I'll be an adult, fiscally independent. I'm an investment in the future,
whatever.
Moments beget moments and I ruminate on this as I tend my garden. This is the most liberating experience I can generate in my life right now. I, with my own labor, have generated enough food to feed my limited community. I learned and am learning everything I could. I pressed forward without hesitation. I applied my theory to the dirt. I had failures and successes. I modified my behaviors to suit the results I was seeing. I have carried water in buckets to nourish and have kneeled in the dirt to weed. Yesterday, we tasted the first sweet pea of the year.
It was a metaphor, I think.
Monday, June 16, 2008
vengeance
I've been away a long time and maybe you were wondering about me.
I say "you" like you're there, like you're nusteer or ems or someone else who has been quietly lurking or that I wish they were quietly lurking.
I always do that, don't I? Walking away and then coming back to you when I really need you, when there's no where else.
My kitten just sat in the open window through a hail storm and I love him for it.
Here at this house we are losing our minds. All three of us physically ill and lonely.
Despondent.
Angry, betrayed. We thought we were building a life, we thought that the flowers we planted were flowers we could watch bloom but I'm just going to be turning them into the dirt like the blooms had passed their glory days already and were rotting brown against the dirt.
The paint on the wall still peels away instead of singing with the fresh paint fresh that gives me migraines.
These windows stay naked and watch from the outside at night.
Bardo Pond, The Melvins, loud noises and movies in which the woman dies to atone.
These are the things dragging me forward now.
If you can make us cry...
They said, "we didn't know you had real feelings but you were crying." I said, I want you to think of it more as my anger leaking out of my face.
I'm rubbing my eyes trying to get the dullness out but it stays.
But it stays.
On myspace, they ask "do you trust other people easily" and last week I would have thought, well... it gets easier every day. I have been letting people in and have new friends and
now
it's all
gone.
"the ground will be soaked through with blood and from the tops of the black towers of hate and the word vengeance will ring clear like the bell toll at the last hour.
beware."
I wish I could have a show.
Hang words in a gallery with jugs of cheap wine and plastic cups.
And people could marvel at the words, whisper ... "oh this is her dark period, this kerning is so intense here, see how she uses "black" and "tower" next to each other,
to call to mind the smoldering remains of the orcs?
the show would look like this:
the ground will
blood
the
the word
like
the
I say "you" like you're there, like you're nusteer or ems or someone else who has been quietly lurking or that I wish they were quietly lurking.
I always do that, don't I? Walking away and then coming back to you when I really need you, when there's no where else.
My kitten just sat in the open window through a hail storm and I love him for it.
Here at this house we are losing our minds. All three of us physically ill and lonely.
Despondent.
Angry, betrayed. We thought we were building a life, we thought that the flowers we planted were flowers we could watch bloom but I'm just going to be turning them into the dirt like the blooms had passed their glory days already and were rotting brown against the dirt.
The paint on the wall still peels away instead of singing with the fresh paint fresh that gives me migraines.
These windows stay naked and watch from the outside at night.
Bardo Pond, The Melvins, loud noises and movies in which the woman dies to atone.
These are the things dragging me forward now.
If you can make us cry...
They said, "we didn't know you had real feelings but you were crying." I said, I want you to think of it more as my anger leaking out of my face.
I'm rubbing my eyes trying to get the dullness out but it stays.
But it stays.
On myspace, they ask "do you trust other people easily" and last week I would have thought, well... it gets easier every day. I have been letting people in and have new friends and
now
it's all
gone.
"the ground will be soaked through with blood and from the tops of the black towers of hate and the word vengeance will ring clear like the bell toll at the last hour.
beware."
I wish I could have a show.
Hang words in a gallery with jugs of cheap wine and plastic cups.
And people could marvel at the words, whisper ... "oh this is her dark period, this kerning is so intense here, see how she uses "black" and "tower" next to each other,
to call to mind the smoldering remains of the orcs?
the show would look like this:
the ground will
be soaked
through with
blood
and
fromthe
black towers
of
hate
hate
the word
VENGEANCE
will ring clear like
the bell toll
at
at
the
last
hour:
hour:
BEWARE.
Monday, April 21, 2008
movin'
Well, at the beginning of the month I moved in with Michael on Westcott Street...
I'm realizing now, after weeks of exhausting social interaction and comings and goings of many loud people... Michael and I are really hermits and should just stay that way because we're happy like that!
Our roommate Joe Mama, while a nice guy, is super social all the time and his friends tend to be bone heads who can only talk about like, beating the shit out of people, the hardcore scene circa 1999 or girls, in the most horrendous terms.
I like most of them on a one on one basis, but you get them all together and I'll give it about 15 mins before that time that kids put the dog (named PANZER)'s balls in his mouth. Hardly enlightening stuff.
Everyone once in a while something hilarious or worth while will come up but they're so used to just trying to out piss each other that it's very tiring.
I'm exhausted.
There is also a large male ego living upstairs, with a need to be right. I think, more accurately he thinks everyone else is wrong.
Blah. I'm just tired from it and ranting a bit.
I've been around ALL the time because I've been out on disability from work because I injured my hand.
This is the stupidest story ever, so of course I will flesh it out for you here on the blog.
The girls of our apartment (me, Brittany on the second floor and Brooke on the third) with the help of Brooke's husband Josh are going into Garden Mode and putting together plant boxes to grow some veggies for the summer. Brittany takes her cats out on leashes and they hang out while we're all hanging out so I decided to take Sir Edward Teller, our youngest kitten and my Chosen One outside on our harness and leash set up. He's kind of high strung but fairly well dis positioned. He was tied to this metal wash tub that we were putting trash in and he went to chase after something and the tub shifted. He freaked out when he heard the noise and started running around in circles, all the while pulling the tub a little bit every time and scaring himself further. He was doing these crazy flips in the air so I got a hold of him and was carrying him into the house when he turned around and bit my hand.
It was one of the most incredibly painful things that has ever happened to me, and I just was sort of staring at it for a few seconds. I managed to call my boyfriend, and the two of us just stared at it. I washed it off, and it immediately started swelling up. It wasn't really bleeding and Broke (training to be a nurse) wrapped it up for me and we went about the rest of the day normally. I was exhausted so I went to bed early and realized that the pain from my hand was almost paralyzing and that it had swollen up to more than double its normal size. The next morning I woke up to go to class and realized it was hospital time.
A few hours later, I had been lectured on how dirty cats were, pumped full of antibiotics through an IV and received a tetanus shot. (still not fun, 20 years later). I was not happy but I thought that was the end of the story.
The next day, the swelling and redness had expanded past the line the PA had drawn on my hand at prompt care with the strict instructions to return if there was ANY sign of the redness or swelling going past it.
More IV antibiotics, and an ex ray, and an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon because they thought for sure that the infection had gotten into the bone.
Mean whilst my hand is literally some of the worst pain I have ever experienced and I am taking antibiotics and 800mg Ibuprofen and Tylenol 3 (which is giving me roaring migraines) and sleeping all day. Edward is loving all this mom time.
The ortho said that I had most likely partially severed a tendon and put me in one of those half cast deals with strict instructions to do nothing NOTHING with my hand or my tendon would completely snap.
Here I will remind you that this is from a CAT BITE.
Amazing, but true.
So I did the cast thing for a few days, and believe it or not I got really sick of not being able to do anything for myself. I couldn't even eat Ramen noodles.
I took the cast off but currently am still on disability. Which is cool and lame at the same time. It's giving me time to get my school work done, yes. But it has also been the 70s and 80s all week, which has pretty much kept me really busy doing NOTHING and BBQing.
I'm supposed to go back to work part time for a few weeks, but I'm looking for another job right now that will pay a little bit more so I can work less next year.
I'm HOPING that I will be able to find some kind of co-op type job that will involve farming and urban farming, because I'm way into that idea right now and would love to spend my summer out in the sun doing some physical labor and learning something valuable rather than spending my time inside a cubicle (that is not even MINE) and worrying about stupid work drama.
(side note: I went in to work today to get my disability status adjusted and apparently the rumor was that I was out due to a spider bite... awesome... remind me to use my spidey sense next time I'm there....)
Wow. I can tell I'm procrastinating because I'm SURE this post is longer than both the story I'm supposed to be reading and the paper I'm supposed to be writing.
Peace out.
I'm realizing now, after weeks of exhausting social interaction and comings and goings of many loud people... Michael and I are really hermits and should just stay that way because we're happy like that!
Our roommate Joe Mama, while a nice guy, is super social all the time and his friends tend to be bone heads who can only talk about like, beating the shit out of people, the hardcore scene circa 1999 or girls, in the most horrendous terms.
I like most of them on a one on one basis, but you get them all together and I'll give it about 15 mins before that time that kids put the dog (named PANZER)'s balls in his mouth. Hardly enlightening stuff.
Everyone once in a while something hilarious or worth while will come up but they're so used to just trying to out piss each other that it's very tiring.
I'm exhausted.
There is also a large male ego living upstairs, with a need to be right. I think, more accurately he thinks everyone else is wrong.
Blah. I'm just tired from it and ranting a bit.
I've been around ALL the time because I've been out on disability from work because I injured my hand.
This is the stupidest story ever, so of course I will flesh it out for you here on the blog.
The girls of our apartment (me, Brittany on the second floor and Brooke on the third) with the help of Brooke's husband Josh are going into Garden Mode and putting together plant boxes to grow some veggies for the summer. Brittany takes her cats out on leashes and they hang out while we're all hanging out so I decided to take Sir Edward Teller, our youngest kitten and my Chosen One outside on our harness and leash set up. He's kind of high strung but fairly well dis positioned. He was tied to this metal wash tub that we were putting trash in and he went to chase after something and the tub shifted. He freaked out when he heard the noise and started running around in circles, all the while pulling the tub a little bit every time and scaring himself further. He was doing these crazy flips in the air so I got a hold of him and was carrying him into the house when he turned around and bit my hand.
It was one of the most incredibly painful things that has ever happened to me, and I just was sort of staring at it for a few seconds. I managed to call my boyfriend, and the two of us just stared at it. I washed it off, and it immediately started swelling up. It wasn't really bleeding and Broke (training to be a nurse) wrapped it up for me and we went about the rest of the day normally. I was exhausted so I went to bed early and realized that the pain from my hand was almost paralyzing and that it had swollen up to more than double its normal size. The next morning I woke up to go to class and realized it was hospital time.
A few hours later, I had been lectured on how dirty cats were, pumped full of antibiotics through an IV and received a tetanus shot. (still not fun, 20 years later). I was not happy but I thought that was the end of the story.
The next day, the swelling and redness had expanded past the line the PA had drawn on my hand at prompt care with the strict instructions to return if there was ANY sign of the redness or swelling going past it.
More IV antibiotics, and an ex ray, and an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon because they thought for sure that the infection had gotten into the bone.
Mean whilst my hand is literally some of the worst pain I have ever experienced and I am taking antibiotics and 800mg Ibuprofen and Tylenol 3 (which is giving me roaring migraines) and sleeping all day. Edward is loving all this mom time.
The ortho said that I had most likely partially severed a tendon and put me in one of those half cast deals with strict instructions to do nothing NOTHING with my hand or my tendon would completely snap.
Here I will remind you that this is from a CAT BITE.
Amazing, but true.
So I did the cast thing for a few days, and believe it or not I got really sick of not being able to do anything for myself. I couldn't even eat Ramen noodles.
I took the cast off but currently am still on disability. Which is cool and lame at the same time. It's giving me time to get my school work done, yes. But it has also been the 70s and 80s all week, which has pretty much kept me really busy doing NOTHING and BBQing.
I'm supposed to go back to work part time for a few weeks, but I'm looking for another job right now that will pay a little bit more so I can work less next year.
I'm HOPING that I will be able to find some kind of co-op type job that will involve farming and urban farming, because I'm way into that idea right now and would love to spend my summer out in the sun doing some physical labor and learning something valuable rather than spending my time inside a cubicle (that is not even MINE) and worrying about stupid work drama.
(side note: I went in to work today to get my disability status adjusted and apparently the rumor was that I was out due to a spider bite... awesome... remind me to use my spidey sense next time I'm there....)
Wow. I can tell I'm procrastinating because I'm SURE this post is longer than both the story I'm supposed to be reading and the paper I'm supposed to be writing.
Peace out.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Thurs Dec 20th 2007
oh, just go away.
Here it is the truth.
No one picked me up but me.
No one fixes you if you say no. No one fixes you if you say yes.
It just happens you just have to make it happen.
I'm finding that i really don't know anything, that I have to go back and re-read all the books. That I remember everything but it's so jumbled. There are big holes. Sometimes I say things and they are just wrong. But I can't tell because for years I've just been taking this stuff in and just shoving it in there, like, thinking that that was going to be okay. Like I would remember your name AND your face, together at the same time. It's like I have Alzheimers now. Like, sometimes it's just blackness and sometimes it's still 1941. Sometimes my sentences have all the correct words but none of the correct syntax.
Dear Miss D, I'm wondering if you have found the same thing.
People say when you stop, you go directly back to where you started. Which i guess is true, but I was never there. I was a child, and I have all the experience now. I say, "when I was doing xxx" and people look at me like, how old are you really? Have I aged? I look the same. Less sallow. Plumped up. Not so grey, less smeared make up. Doesn't cry violently but it seeps out now. Like, I'm leaking. Miss D do you find it all leaks out?
I take dayquill and it hurts. I eat too much sugar and it hurts. I get the shakes, the fear.
Like, if I go back I'll die for sure.
It's an erasing time. It's reckoning.
This next year will be all apologies. Like, everything I can do now is an apology. Like, they will follow me around forever.
So, I'm sorry.
These are my own twelve steps, with 10 removed.
1)There is a problem. It is mine and not yours.
2)I'm very sorry.
1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,2,2,2,2
