I think that all creative work is inherently representational, self-consciously or otherwise. So when women are represented as creatures with no intelligence of their own further than how best to dote on their man this is simply employed for the purpose of communicating something experiential that cannot be reduced to its politics, but is felt. This idea of course has its limitations, in that it can ignore the very real influence of the political in everyday life. Also, I know I am hypocritical about it. When it comes to something I'm not particularly passionate about at the moment I'm thinking about it like the prior I dismiss it as mere representation, but when it comes to something I have some investment in at the time I see it more in political terms, such as the way some people look at contemporary USA and say it's going to hell because I think that shows they're dismissing good things and only seeing bad. But on a basic level I think it is all representations of parts of humanity that transcend political reductionism.
I realise that the same is thus true for everything I think. So I'm content to say "oranges are delicious; if it wasn't for the fact the last few bites are just not-nice-tasting pulp they would be the best fruit ever" or "that person's shirt is fucking stupid" or whatever general value judgement because I'm aware that it's only my opinion. This means that I am comfortable stating value judgements as though they're True. But if I keep that up will I come to forget the more subtle feelings and believe my words?

Also, I am so embarressed by this blog and by so many things I have written to people and shown people of myself and it feels like I let these huge slippages appear in the me I want to show to the world that others don't let appear so I just look like the biggest retardloserevaz. This has a lot to do with trying to be in the world in particular ways by only going through particular motions of awesome ways of being without actually having the full context of that awesomeness, such as deciding to be honest about particular things that really have less to do with honesty that with other things, or thinking it would be great to build a community of such and such people by writing one thing but never really working on the more important parts of that. So I've decided I must self-regulate more and bottle things like creative impulses up more and not let anyone know and then maybe they'll actually grow and only be shown to the world when they are worthy.

let's live and breath our eulogies

A few days ago, an American writer named David Foster Wallace killed himself, finishing off a more than twenty year battle with the hell of depression. I hadn't heard much of him before he died, but when he did, the McSweeney's website posted a tribute to him, and I thought I'd have a look at his stuff. I borrowed a book of essays called A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again, and i have been blown away. His writing is so impressive. He was amazing. Check him out. And it inspired to to write the following (i think i was thinking along these lines before, and his death jsut really pushed me along).


Sometimes people die. And when they do, people who knew them start speaking, weaving this poetics around them, around the idea of their lives and who they were and what they meant to the world, and sometimes this is falsified, so that Joe Blow across the road who used to yell at you to shut up and stay off his lawn when you were a kid but who once gave you a cookie when you were crying after you fell of your bike one day but who you don’t really know anything about, has posthumously become this emblem of saintly generosity and the best in humanity, and we must keep his memory alive.
But the people who are still living usually don’t get such treatment. What will we say about them after they have died? What will we say about our girlfriends, our boyfriends, our best friends, our parents, our sisters and brothers and favourite lecturers?
There is this poetics that is mostly reserved for the dead, or else the distant idol, that brings such an appreciation of their lives. I remember going to the funeral of some old man many years ago – maybe my grandfather, maybe someone else’s, I don’t remember – the things that were said about him there amazed me. Apparently, he had done all this stuff in his life that I had no idea about because no one ever really talked about it, especially as he grew old and senile and became in some ways a burden to be put up with out of duty rather than this person worthy of admiration. Because when you live with people day in day out you easily forget things that would render them worthy of such worship in a eulogy, or else you don’t think of this half as poetically as you do after they’re no longer with you.
Maybe sometimes we should all pretend our favourite people have died, and weave beautiful mythologies around their lives.

spinning pretty somethings behind my eyes

I hate lack of communication. When you’re over there and I’m over here and all we have are the spaces in between and the spaces in our heads. Sometimes it feels like you don’t exist. But then sometimes it feels like I don’t exist. It’s symptomatic. But it’s hard to hold onto something when you’re not sure what it is because it’s not there now and you doubt if it ever really happened at all, but you have the memories, but sometimes they’re not enough. But sometimes they certainly are.
This weekend has been nice. Friday was a nice day, spoke to an acquaintance outside of class, he happened to sit next to me at the library and really need my help with something, right after I decided that I really need to be more open to building relationships with people rather than always being ruled by the way that has hardly ever worked for me before. But it would seem to make sense to live by that if it’s all I’ve ever known, if it always goes wrong, but then I assume I’m just doing something wrong in myself that can be rectified over time as I try to learn. And then I waited for a bus which didn’t come for ages and then when buses finally did come they were full, so I waited for half an hour, and I was frustrated and annoyed but simultaneously having a good time just standing there and the evening was beautiful and the bats were materializing out of the sky above the city and the afternoon colours turned to night colours and I knew it was going to be a good night, knew it in a way I’ve never felt before. Party at Bob’s was fun, with the breaking of a tap I don’t understand how and much talking to people I think although come to think of it I can’t remember that much talking…no there was talking…I think…it’s fading like a dream. And upset walkings with myself at some time but no one knew I was gone of course, and lots of drinking and niceness and waking up the next morning to niceness and loves, but with no recollection of how I got where I was even though I was told I wasn’t completely carried there, and then Saturday’s chief occupation was being hung over and spending hours trying to make myself eat because when I’m that hungry I can’t eat so it’s kind of a vicious cycle. And I voted, which was way exciting. And then some tasty tapas for dinner and then sleeping and loves and then working and then reading Regina and Amanda’s blogs and being so so jealous of their amazingness and now typing myself.
Then I need to do an essayish thing about doppelgangers for Thursday and a draft of a biographical thing about Jorge Luis Borges for Friday and then two weeks off uni in which I will write an essay about a street art exhibition in Newtown and finish the Borges piece and then come up with ideas for my final assignments.
Insight for the year (a breakthrough one pour moi): it is worth doing stuff.
Much loves