LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2020-10-15 23:24:14 (UTC)

list

"Thanksgiving Song" by Grouper

October 11, 2020 Sunday 8:52 PM

I feel better! I couldn't really cook last night, so I decided to walk to the pizza place and get food there,

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October 15, 2020 Thursday 11:24 PM

1. I wish I would vomit

2. If I have to read one more page of Kathy Acker's "Don Quixote" I will grind my right-side molars into a fine, yellowish white powder. I have always hated poetry in whatever form it comes. Which is maybe a-literary of me (and also doesn't explain why my profile picture is a quote from a T.S. Eliot poem). But I am just not patient. And I also don't believe in reversing the power of language. I "believe" that you "can" do it. I just don't think it's useful to me. I like language as a tool for organization (because that is what i need it for). I don't like it as a thing of fragments. I like it as a thing that moves together and forms a whole. Not as pieces. Even as I say these things, I don't know what is true and what is not, which has been causing me endless frustration (and I can also feel myself wanting to format like Kathy Acker and god-fuck it, I'm going to continue to display her influence throughout this entry because I've had to process her garbage for the past hour or so):

3. I think the reason I am so bad at speaking in class, is because I have ideas that just. End. I don't draw much of a conclusion or a rule from them, and as such those thoughts can't be drawn to other non-existent thoughts or conclusions that I also haven't had. Basically, if I read sentence A and it makes me think of idea B, whereas someone else might process those two things and then come up with interpretation C, I instead just... stop. They connect interpretation C with interpretation N, etc. I am still stopped. Why don't I draw conclusions?

4. The easy answer, and probably the most true one (occam's razor? does it apply here?) is that I'm stupid. I'm dumb-stupid. Very stupid dumb bitch not-smart not. My back hurts. Anyway, I'm dumb, I see all these abstract things, I am frustrated and stunted by ego—but that's not quite right, because although some part of me is frustrated by ego, I don't feel that I *should* get it, I just feel bad that I don't.

5. I've said it soooo many times. I just. Don't trust myself. My perceptions. Any of that. I don't trust any of it to be legitimate and corroborated.

6. Maybe that is why I can't stand the abstract. Because I am untethered contextually (I will admit, Acker said something really beautiful on this subject, but I can't remember what it was. Something about how poet's talk with poor grammar and made-up words because language is community and they are always alienated, struggling to communicate, blah blah blah. But I mean the context thing. Yes. In a separate paragraph, sometime before that poetry bit, she wrote about being suspended in a dark pit and being unable to recognize herself or her environment because all things are defined contextually; which is how language works a lot of the time. I remember learning this in Lit Theory when we were reading Saussure. How one language uses the same word for "sheep" and for "mutton," and as such, that word has attached concepts which range from living sheep to sheep meat. Whereas, in english, the word sheep usually denotes a living thing, and mutton always denotes the meat. But if we didn't have the word for mutton, the word for sheep would fill that space like water. Wait, no, this is not what I meant to say. Or what I meant to talk about. This network-language stuff is not the same as context-definition of things. Unless it is. Because language is, unfortunately, a two-way street—it is the vessel for understanding, but it is also the only way things are understood. But no. No, nevermind.

7. Anyway I am untethered contextually; I don't trust the abstract, because I use language to contradict my inherent abstraction. My personal rebellion is order. Which makes perfect psychological sense to me (I'm on more solid ground now that I've returned to logically ordered words with immediate, rather than nested/oblique/deeply referential significance). I am someone for whom stability is kind of a luxury, due to a lifelong mood disorder (unspecified). I am someone who used words to try and understand that disorder, to try and control it. This all seems very natural.
8. I don't understand abstraction. That's fine. I probably don't need to feel shitty about it. I feel shitty in general, so I *do* feel bad about not being able to understand, but whatever. After my fitfulness on Saturday, I went for a long walk and basically spent a long time alone. I felt much better the next day and for the days after that, but I feel fitful and anxious again. Really anxious. Like, nauseated sort of anxious and repeatedly digging at my skin (with nails and ends of pencils) and biting my knuckles sort of anxious. Frothing self-loathing.

9. I overslept today and missed an appointment with accessibility services . Which would not be a big deal, but being kind of where I am right now mentally, half-considering skipping class tomorrow

(I don't know if I can handle talking about it. Not only because we will be in person and the acoustics of an entire silent room of <10 people is WILDLY different than a bedroom on mute at home—no, also because the book has a lot to do with sex, and I'm anxious, and I hate sex, and I hate my body. Basically, the book is triggering. I don't dislike it because of that, I dislike it because I'm bored by its floatiness, my own disinterest in its apparent goals. But I can't deny that I am definitely disturbed by the idea of discussing love and sexuality and femininity or whatever in literature class tomorrow. I don't want to do that. I desperately do not want to find a small clear space in my head, into which I will then pull the relevant details, so that I may construct a vaguely intelligent-sounding response that will just barely escape the closing doors of my mouth, and will have blocked the regular intake-output of breath.

Honestly, I am very anxious. I feel blind. By the time I reach the end of a sentence, I can't remember where it started or why. I keep having to go back and re-read.)

Anyway, an endorsement from the accessibility services would reduce my stress. But as it is, I think my professor will be understanding if I opt out. However, I also wanted to request an extension for my midterm, because two other classes pushed back their assignment due dates, which means 3 class assignments now coincide with this upcoming weekend. Really good! Don't know how I'm supposed to ask for that if I'm also asking him to forgive me for missing class. Assuming I do miss class. Although the more I think about it, the less feasible the idea of leaving the house seems to me. Maybe if I can just participate from home... that would be okay. Ok. Good compromise, self! Cool. Conversation settled for tonight... this will be revisited tomorrow.

10. The ease with which I speak in english sometimes makes me feel guilty. Or inadequate. "Ease." Well, the point is, the material of language is not a problem for me. It is more the content I've had a hard time wrassling.

11. Okay. At this point, I'm just procrastinating to avoid the last 15 pages of Acker's Don Quixote, which, I maintain, WILL directly result in the fine-ground bone that was once my right-side molars. They already ache.




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