What does it mean to have permission? (The question is, who do I allow to grant me permission?)

What is the difference between permission and consent? What is held in the worlds of these words? I see it as permission is dependent on a dependent relationship. If someone is granting me permission, they hold some kind of power over my actions.

Consent implies a power relationship as well, but of a different kind…

According to the dictionary, permission is formal consent.

Still, the question I’m grappling with is “who grants me permission?” Nevertheless, this comes after a violation in the poem.

rather than as opposed to or

My breath is held so I don’t do something without permission from a sort of corporation– constructed body– without the permission of a previously held agreement, or a third person who does not appear in the poem.

***

inconvenient time to feel creative. Have to make packets for LUMINA, comment on my classmates poems…

thinking about ownership & use of the article. When we grant the person who is spoken of agency or when we make her the passive recipient of circumstances. Or when we can build a tension between the two…

or, yes, she wants, she wants many things but not violation…

***

I just want to write but I have to be responsible now & hopefully class will be open to me altering or to rather than before we discuss the poem…

VII.

Adrienne Rich, from “Twenty-One Love Poems”

Thank you for the reminder Adrienne.

***

Last night I dreamt that my mother died & at first I reacted to it like I react to most death– calm, accepting, wondering too soon what I might be able to learn from it. Soon after, my entire body longed for her, to still be part of her. I couldn’t breathe & sat up in bed…

My poems would suggest I am still learning from my father’s life & death. My mother’s death would lead to the kind of mourning I usually write off as selfish… every death, in a way, is the death of a part of self, but if my mother were to die…

***

I am constipated with this poem & I know forcing it out isn’t doing any good, but the terrible reality is that I need one for class & I have no idea what is blocking this poem or other poems from happening this fall but I am terrified that I will stop writing, stop having poems come to me.

Fear of not writing is preventing me from writing.

***

What I might want to say: this means: I am okay with being the person you have dreamed of me being if only because it gives me the opportunity to find new ways to subvert it...

***

Reading Adrienne Rich on the bus this morning, I realized

nothing. Mere reminders of why I write, how it might be impossible

for the poem to give me freedom. To construct does not equal to control.

To reveal my desire isn’t to blow it out         to say what I want doesn’t mean

I will receive it.             Drunk at Macy’s, I told my mom I want to be a priest

sometimes, in church, the worst burning in my ribs. Since I was ten. I want

nothing of Christian history, no stake in its future but better living through poetry, better living through community, though singing together, through finding out what love actually is, whether it has room for drones killing families in Pakistan or my questioning the bounds of my relationship with Devin or how much space I can take up. Whether I’ll let myself be more than

a ghost (if I can assure everyone else is satisfied I can go without satisfaction because I never figured out what it is I like besides the satisfaction of others…)

this is changing. I try to change it.

***

Since I have stopped meditating, I act with less caution.

Each moment less controlled. Probably less considerate.

What is it to be considerate? How much to I want to consider?

***

How does caution serve me? How do I serve caution?

(Who would you be w/o yr story:: Byron Katie, I would be nothing because that’s what the my I is: the history stored in my body, the degree to which I reveal that to you, what you intuit from what I choose to tell & how I hold my arms when I tell you.)

(Would I be at peace to be nothing or be bored? I am already aware that I have so much freedom to imagine & construct. Not control. I just have to keep pushing this further to see where I can take it without inflicting deliberate harm on others…)

***

I want to tell others what I want without feeling shame for wanting it.

I want others to be able to tell me no without feeling guilty about not giving me what I want…

Ultimately, I cannot control others, cannot anticipate response…assumption…

***

I am haunted by the image of fallen orchid blossoms in the puddle of Jack Daniels on the sill above my sink.

I want to make a zine this weekend not because I have some fabulous idea but because I crave the action of cutting things out & making something new.

I hope to go see some queer experimental films.

I hope to be open to this poem.

***

Really, I want to lay in the middle of a meadow with Devin. One hour phone conversations haven’t been enough. I feel further away from him than I ever have. At the same time further away from everyone. Not unhappy, but incapable of articulating (or even seeing) what I want/need right now.

construct doesn’t mean control, though sometimes I wish it did, that I could choose

what my projects project, make yr I eye my I the way I build her

in poems. You see her differently than I see her & who is the I who sees

my I oh there is only winning in crafty use of we–

I – tupperware of my entire history. Little drips out.

Some one/thing/entity watches the watcher–

halfway to saying it doesn’t matter I’ll just envy those who question composition & keep on pretending I am consistent in my actions that they’re draped on this character– she makes sense…

***

Poem stuck. How, dear poem, can I create the best environment for your birth?

(patience)

***

Every poem an apology for not having control.

Wishing these almonds were M&Ms

Wishing I could climb a tree

Wishing I weren’t alone right now (look at me! look at me!)

Want to lay in a field somewhere & stare at clouds & not worry about whether they can turn into poems

Need to do something awesome / otherworldly / that I’m not afraid to write about

(is it fear or maybe it has been all along)

***

Poem, I am open to you–

Can we say that tolerance isn’t love? Does “tolerance” imply a stopping, an endpoint to the striving to accept? In what ways to I accept tolerance?

In what ways am I complicit with homophobia? With racism? With sexism? With classicism, with status-based oppression? What inside of me has not be overturned yet?

How to I enact my wealth? What stories have I told myself to get there? What stories haven’t I told others, about a former reverence for prestige, for wanting more or different than what I saw around me in Pottstown? What gave me the idea that I could go beyond / be different besides myself? Who pushed, who helped? Was it something I read? That I identified with?

Can I remain strong against the ease of falling into the isolation of (essentially) heterosexual monogamy? Can I go someplace and build a community, a new family structure that will keep me active in accordance with my imagination, with my worldview, in my relationship with Devin? Can I have children & a long-term partner & not reproduce what I see as oppressive forms of family? How can my worldview redecorate the history of the word, of the concept?

How can I begin to crack open & be honest with myself about my issues & complication with my body? After so many years of pretending I’m badass & fine, that sometimes I’ve been genuinely accepting? (I had a past of having no faith in the abilities of my body, of not believing that it could go/do/perform. I’ve been breaking these down recently…) How can I face that I have food issues, even though I associate these as weak/feminine? (I hate that pairing, cuz I think femininity has its own kind of strength that I haven’t entirely accepted yet.)

How can I actively challenge the homophobia of my friends’ families? When they don’t really want anyone to?

Can I change someone, really? Can I compel someone to change? Is it worth it, or is it a violence, an intrusion? What about in the context of dialogue? Am I open t0 changing, to being changed? In what ways can I change that is an opening & not a closing, a regression, a safety? When am I choosing comfort & passivity over adventure & creation? (FALSE DICHOTOMY!)

Why have I always assumed this is better, that my life means more because I’ve thought it out this way? It doesn’t mean that. It means its better for me. Maybe my artmaking, my relationships make it better for others? Why why why why why? Do I want a cookie for complication? Is the goal always to be happier, more happiness? More peace? More to share, to display, more richness? What else? Why else?

I will die someday– what is the best way to live my life & interact with others & be true to what I observe & my own inclinations that rose somewhere between “natural” & “artificial”?

Dream last night: talking to an artist that I went to college with, who I seldom talked to because she seemed so fascinating & together & I didn’t have the confidence to present myself as a whole person with whom someone would want to be friends. ANYWAY– we were talking about interesting things (queerness?) & I kept repeating myself– certain phrases, ideas– & noticing it, & pointing it out, counting the number of times I said certain things self-consciously. In the dream, I couldn’t tell if she thought it were cute or annoying that I wished to revise our conversations, or let her know I was aware of the flaws within the conversation. As though, in some way, this would make me seem “better.” (I do this in waking life, too, just not as extreme).

***

Oh, processing so many simultaneous trains of thought right now. Back to so many old queer warhorses– when to identity politick, when not to– purposes. When to intrude. When to identify.

I wish I could have transcribed my thoughts as I walked across campus this morning…

it goes like this: last night a. & I went to see Sarah Schulman give The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies’ Kessler Lecture. (EDIT: I forgot to mention the lecture was called “Ties The Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences.” Schulman not only discussed familiar homophobia as a phenomenon, but talked about the failings of visibility and normalcy as strategies for fighting homophobia (the they’ll-love-us-if-only-they-know us!) & suggested ways to combat it– direct action– confronting homophobic families, demanding they see homophobia as the issue, the cruelty!!)  This was after two days of feeling stuck in non-productive thought. (It’s not that I was having thoughts that were…anti-productive, it’s just that my mind wasn’t working through challenges, wasn’t actively building). Sitting there, a nostalgia that I’ve become used to crept up: nostalgia for my more radical self, the one that barely oscillated (to her detriment) into trying on more common ideas. In part, I missed the uneasy ease of having a partner who was also queer, having that to explain for me why queerness is so important to how I live my life. This lets it be about what it stems from: a description of an action, a decision made out of a certain desire…(though it also, admittedly, has to do with gender, too). 

I often pass as straight, whatever that means. I date a man who sees himself as straight, mostly. I desire women, some things feminine, how those relationships work & Devin is attractive to me because he has an element of that femininity (along with other important things). Often, he doesn’t understand why it is so important for me to be outwardly queer. He likes that I don’t “wear it on my sleeve”– & I try to explain why it’s important not to render that part of myself invisible, but I can be understated by nature&…

What is an excuse? What isn’t? What is tolerance vs. real love? This is a false dichotomy. It is somewhat practical to look at things this way, but I am invested in Devin, his growth, ours together…

Why is it important for me to appear queer? It’s more than a descriptor of my desires– it’s a ground for my brand of imagination. It implies not L-G-B-T– it implies that the relationships I want to form are not simply cultural reproductions. That I have questioned the dominant models of relating to others, of being intimate, of presenting my gender. Out of questioning, in that space, I have written myself something new– in this blog, in my poems. Sometimes in my interactions.

& I live in this way, & I do this work, but how does it look. The muddy area in sexuality/identification/gender. How feminine sometimes in the mix with how Idahoan. My femininity pulls from inside jokes about wealth (the fake pearl earrings I genuinely love & don’t want to give up), a thrift-store sensibility coupled with what I see as more of a dyke one– make-up-less, flat shoes. Is it beyond what I put on?

I’m not quiet. I love an excuse to talk about my transgressions.

***

Back to the subject. The lecture. This idea that we’re abetting familial homophobia by giving primacy to the private family unit. By feeling like we can’t call it out. I was reading Ariel Levy’s piece on feminism in The New Yorker on the bus this morning, & it reminded me of the pitfalls of identity politics, why I’m not the hugest fan– the idea that all people with a similar identification can band together to receive something often to the detriment of others. A bigger slice of the privilege pie…

I don’t think calling out a friend’s family on homophobia, of revealing homophobia as the issue rather than desire or presentation or identification, is necessarily a function of solidarity– we all identify as this thing & therefore we’ll bash in yr door. Should it be? Do I want it to be? Can identity predicate this intrusion? Or can it simply be from the desire to queer the family structure, of saying my community, this person I love needs this from you…

How does it function in my own family? In my household I am far from silent about my activities & desires, but its not like my family thinks they can learn something from my experiences, or are even interested. We have been connecting much better since I started dating a man. As for my extended family, it’s something that’s being touched now that it seems safely past-tense, even if it isn’t. Tolerated, not supported…

Yet it’s not like they treat me like I must be unhappy. Or happier now that my partner is male (BECAUSE my partner has a penis). &I usually call people out on their gender/sex related assumptions.

The one time I didn’t: my mom’s husband telling me, after talking about what I want / something that was bothering me in my relationship, that I need the counterpoint. The balance. I nearly bit my tongue off.

Tomorrow, or tonight, I’m going to talk with my mom about vision. How I wish she would have handled my queerness & why. How I wish I would have handled my queerness & why. How I intend to present it in the future.

***

(Cuz its not all past tense, it does inform my life now maybe even more than it did while I was with Molly. Or as much.)

***

I have no conclusion. I’m not sure what I processed, if anything, if it’s all redundant. I feel tempted to slip into Situationist terms, or D.H. Lawrence– not wanting to be an image, to reproduce reproductions endlessly. I want to exist in tension with that– use it & make the images my own while likely leaving some intact (like look how I was going to talk about wealth in this entry, too, but I’m going past it, claiming lack of energy when really what I might need is a clear screen).

***

Another note, more along the lines of this week, its 2 AM train rides & morning coffee with cinnamon & soymilk:

“To write poetry, one must waste a good deal of time, one must simply ‘be,’ one must wander around with no particular aim, and it is precisely from such a lacuna that poetry arises. It is hard to explain, like most important things. But in today’s world it has become harder and harder to waste time. Artists are desperate for the simplest thing on earth: being.” [Mary Ruefle]

I want to be tired

& unclothed, for this stomachache to go away. To feel inspired

at a more convenient hour…

So much of my art might be the result of dealing with not ever knowing what it means to be “good”…

(not sure, though)

Up to get the coffee maker out of the cabinet. To list the things I will want to write about at work in the morning: families & homophobia, the ability to change (others). marriage. isolation. eating eating eating.

so many new thoughts…

…flicker of the surge protector across the room. Impressive rib cage. Full, yet empty, yet time to hydrate.

To be good might be to keep going down my to-do list but this feels important. To celebrate–

• Ducts.org is publishing “Adorable // Manly” & “Authenticity of Address” (!!) I’m probably more excited than one might usually be about this, but it’s my  first “professional” publication (&I’m even getting $10 for it!) I will probably be obnoxious & post the link everywhere once it goes live. Though maybe its not “obnoxious.” I’m working on changing my perspective on different kinds of “self-promotion” that may not be “self-promotion” at all– simply sharing, starting conversations. Approaching the world with a modicum of self-worth.
• Jesse & I are making this tonight:

Sweet Potato, Eggplant, and Spinach Madras Curry

• Currently finding myself obsessed with Joni Mitchell’s debut album, Song to a Seagull. I’ve owned it for a few years, but its just now that I’ve given it the close listen it deserves. The influence of “classical” music on the rich emotional range of the album is obvious– I don’t think Joni’s voice gets more intense on any other album.
• Went to the gym for the first time in a month yesterday. Forgot my locker combo, but it felt good to go on the elliptical.
• Sarah Schulman lecture on Families & Homophobia tomorrow (!!)
• Time with my mum this weekend– I’m going to approach it as our Thanksgiving, my time to give thanks for her & the life she has helped to provide for me, since I won’t be home for the actual holiday.

I need to give my weekend hibernation the credit due to it– listening to my body & resting when I need it has cleared up a few misconceptions about what was causing me anxiety & sadness last week. I feel so open to what’s ahead of me. I don’t just want to stay in this feeling– I want to go forward…

Today is designated as my sacred writing day cuz I meet with Marie tomorrow & I’m not sure how I feel about where my thesis is at. Okay, I guess. It is where it is, where it only can be right now.

A theme that keeps popping up lately has been the role of the subjectivity of the artist– the artist’s I. My I. Do I attempt to make myself consistent? Am I building a whole? Let me preface this exploration by saying I feel it is irresponsible not to question who the I of yr poems may be. Does it blaze through, as a false whole? How does the organizing principle (the I) of yr poems deal with past selves.

So many poets I love posit this I, this self-making, as phantasmagoric– ghost, fortunately or unfortunately, embodied. I’ve grown to prefer looking at the I as an art project, a construction, a Christmas tree. The only issue I see with this is who is in charge of the building? Who or what has the agency to create? This is where I like my understanding of Spinoza– all complicated intersections, collisions in time….

I feel like I do this well in poems about the dead. My dead Daddy poems. This may work, ironically, because he is ghost, ghost that I give form in my poems…

am I doing as much for myself? How can I show the seems of this without deadening emotional response? This is important to me…I’d like my poems to be a contemplative space, but what I’m practiced at is creating feeling. This requires, so often, working within the familiar tools of language. It’s like writing a symphony (duh)… creating expectations with language, subverting them while not breaking outside of the language. Disruption (whether by drawing attention to pronoun trouble, or the problem of the typical personal mythology of the first book) can often draw the reader (by which I mean me as a reader) out of the emotional space into a thinking space. It’s somewhat Brechtian– allowing the audience to have an intellectual reaction, to incite change…

But what do I want from my poetry? Is my aim, ultimately, to have my reader question her/his/hir I, their subjectivities? While that may be an undercurrent of a lot of the non-lyrical poetry writing I do, I’m not sure if my poetry has broken into this. It really is a lot more about imagination– the I may be ghost, construction, coincidence, but because of this, because we are not bound, we are free to imagine ourselves, imagine difference, different lives, different ways of relating to one another, of communing with the dead, of questioning the boundaries of ourselves& how we conceive of ourselves, of seeing who effects this.

I have this conversation with myself about my work, but does this need to enter the poems? & how? It would be a risk. A huge one. Part of me wants to say it will appear when I’m ready for it to, that I need to trust the visitation cuz that’s how I do the writing that is most helpful for me, that challenges me to question how I’m representing myself  to myself & relating to others.

Challenge vs. Happiness is a mighty false dichotomy, I’d like to think…

***

holy shit I want an egg sandwich with sausage. probably fake.

***

Is it irresponsible not to write myself as a ghost when I feel more like a projector?

Today, I took care of myself by sleeping in, cleaning my space with lavender-infused vinegar, & drinking copious amount of tea. Reclaiming order.

Yesterday, I took care of myself by eating (mostly) healthfully for the first time in weeks, walking home from work, & asking for what I needed. I dealt with my fumbling. I proceeded to be open & kind to someone I find it difficult to be open & kind with, & the evening actually ended up being fun.

***

I probably needed to be messy for the number of days that I was messy. For whatever reasons, be it my relationships, another one of my close friends getting married, my dirty apartment, disorganization everywhere…

now I get to go through that beautiful yet challenging process of rediscovering peace.

Not a stagnant peace. That’s not what I want– I want challenges, growth, discomfort, but all from firm, steady foundations. From a sense of inner calm, that I’ve tasted & know I can have.

Relationships are kind of like poems. Architecture. Form. They give shape to phenomena– feelings, desires, challenges– that are already there.

I could go someplace interesting with this if I felt I had the energy, & maybe I do…

The “standard” heterosexual relationship is a received form. History, society, etc. have provided its why, its endpoint– marriage. The relationship ends up serving roles, tasks get done, some needs are fulfilled. Marriage can be said to have its own list of purposes. Received. People are likely to augment, if they don’t get caught up in the words, in the history of the words & the meaning that they create. Couples end up living out the whole history of marriage. Everything they’ve read has the possibility of shaping husband or wife. It’s there, somewhere.

The thrill of queerness for me has usually, in part, been about radical possibilities in relating to others. I can’t remember the last time I wrote about this, though… was it two summers ago? In creating new forms, much beyond woman/woman man/man. With Devin (though he would not pin this one on queerness, per se, more on his nature, whatever that means…), this became starting a conversation about why we are doing this, what we get from one another besides safety & silliness. Our relationship gives us a space from which we can question anything. A space where we can be vulnerable & cultivate a love that illuminates the love all around us. That lets us peek into the big-L Love. A space that pushes us to grow, to take risks. We share a commitment to personal growth.

Lately I’ve been developing what could be considered another new form, another creativity in the space between my friendships, some that deal with repressed emotions/feelings/ideas, etc. & some that have never had to, & my monogamous sexual/love relationship. When a. & I talked about what we might do from the point of acknowledging our mutual attraction to one another, we decided to create a space in without repression, within which we can be intimate, for the purpose of challenging one another. Personal & artistic growth. I don’t just want our form to be radical, but our content– I want this to be a space from which I am pushed to the edges of possibility, where I learn to handle ellipsis, the unfinished, the unsaid/unsayable…

I have to admit that the roots of this…this is what I had been getting from her, anyway. We’re working with things that were already there. It feels powerful to put intention behind it. To make it something.

***

I listened to every Joni Mitchell album I own while I cleaned today, & I am missing, of the pre-jazz experimentation albums, Clouds & Court and Spark on vinyl. I would like them.

Going home next weekend. Thinking a lot about what I need from my mother/daughter shopping excursion- new winter jacket, black boots, panties, a welcome mat. I want a compost machine for Christmas.

***

Too tired to process much more. I miss Devin– I’m in the mood to spoon with him, for his hand to be on my breast. Thanksgiving will be wonderful (it’s creeping closer.) I need to buy my Christmastime ticket, too. & to figure out how I’m going to afford to pay to ski.

Sleep now.

I have ten minutes to dislodge whatever is lodged in my tired head that is preventing me from re-writing.

Dislike that my art hasn’t become a place to question subjectivity– in the meat of it– in fact, my speaker tends to be this fairly consistent construction of how I imagine I might want to be if I were consistent– some badass, some tenderness, a huge dose of how I might want to live my life. All personal mythology. I write a character…

I want to take a nap rather than go to this talk & I just had two cups of coffee& I wanted to run today, not to rip a run in my only decent pair of white pantyhose. I’m getting fat. I’m falling into some unhealthy habits. Had a necessary conversation with Claudia last night which means I didn’t call Devin until after midnight which means I didn’t get to sleep until after 1, rhubarb pie in my belly. Weird dreams of running into my middle school band director in a lingerie shop. He once called me high-strung. To my face. As I cried in his office about feeling overextended. 13-year old me.

I’d almost like to claim I’ve learned it isn’t worth it– to overextend, to work miserably toward a goal that will probably not be as rewarding as working & being satisfied within the process.

***

Am I happy now? Is that what I’m doing now? If I don’t write about whatever invasive thinking I observe within myself, does it make it more or less real? Do we act within patterns because it feels safe, illusions of consistency? What happens when two patterns intersect, not exactly bad ones… but what risk to take? If any? Or build something new, always my favorite answer– the thing I derived most from queer studies, queer living. That might be what I’m doing now, I hope, but how…?? Everyday blogging? Writing this out until something comes to light. Meditating until something comes to light.

***

Have to go to the talk but will probably not run & try to write instead about not running, maybe, or hopefully about beauty & sex/desire or my Spinoza self portrait or something else entirely.