Nonverbal phases
Pain levels interfering with desire to communicate. Minor communication feels unnecessary. I'm visiting my bf. Fortunately he accepts my variability. This visit he's been immersed in his interests & I love that. He showed me a streamer he enjoys. I thought the streamer talked too much lol.
I don't begrudge anyone their entertainments [2]. I don't want a world where everyone likes the same things; I just don't want different tastes to cause offense.
I've accepted an offer on my home. If it goes smoothly the sale will close by the first week of December. My bf is coming back with me to help me organize & process the next several days. I'm overloaded with doing things poorly through the pain. He helps me with perspective.
I have made a decision on how to process my stuff in a diminished state. I don't want to expend the energy it takes to sift through unknown Mystery Boxes of memories. First I want to identify the large items that I know I do not want to keep. These will be sold, given away, donated, trashed, whatever. There are friends, potential buyers, charities, and a nearby dumpster to accept those things. Anything that causes me pause & uncertainty, for now I'm just going to keep. I need to see how large this portion is. Can it fit in an already paid for storage space? Can it fit in my car? Only after that will I see the amount that I have to process. Yeah I hate that again (as always) I'm postponing decisions & putting off processing. I'm prioritizing. I have limitations. There will never be a time when I'm not forced to rank priorities, I don't think. There's more I could say but it is not high priority with my limited energy.
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[1] Weekly Rworld News — Princeton University sends me a magazine that they call Princeton Alumni Weekly that does not come out weekly. They just like calling it the PAW! (It used to be weekly.) I don't know if I'll ever commit to issuing weekly news updates, but I enjoyed making this graphic. The source tabloid, The Weekly World News, was a hilarious periodical (that seems a lot less funny now that disinformation is ascendant). In the 90s I had 2 WWN covers as t-shirts. One proclaimed numerous US senators to be “space aliens”; the other I can't remember right now — wasn't bat boy, but they also gave us Bat Boy! Go see the musical if you get the chance.
[2] I don't begrudge anyone their entertainments — Is that true? It's more accurate to say that I struggle to accept and respect the tastes of others. I greatly dislike gambling and real violence as entertainment. (I'm ambivalent about simulated violence. I feel there's so much in entertainment that it may prime some viewers to expect & accept more violence in real life.) My acceptance for the differing tastes of others is expressed in hope that my own peculiar tastes, especially my lack of conformity to the preferences of the majority, might be likewise accepted. I consider this matter an essential component of a functional society. Tolerance.
I would express ambivalence for some, regret for some, defiance for some.
I would assert that I am choosing to live in a manner that leverages every asset I have in service of long-term goals that might be considered unrealistic. I would explain that I prefer progress that feels slow and natural, that takes root within me.
I would explain my social norm breaking as an effort to resist what feels like a constant siege from outside influences that do not, cannot know what is best for me (and in many cases do not care; or are explicitly unconcerned with my well-being).
When the news event happened I wasn't immediately sure who it was. I'm old & the name resembles some from other contexts to me. And I even consume left political media. As I'm writing this I have a video paused about The Daily Wire's Mr. Birchum being appropriated as queer, even though the animated show is part of Ben Shapiro's attempt to “win the culture war.” I heard that & thought: “Culture War? A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.”
Post title comes from Gertrude Stein'sTender Buttons, an experimental prose poem that's been a foundational, inexhaustible influence on my creativity. I set up a bot to randomly post selections from the work@tender_buttons@mastodon.social
Tough question. When does life and experiences become a higher priority than art creation, and when does art creation become a higher priority than life and experiences?
He keeps a journal when we are apart. We have a long distance relationship that's getting longer. I'm not sure when we next see each other. He journals amazingly, recapping his experiences and feelings about them; sharing his creations; and posing meaningful questions to himself, to me, to all of us. And I am in pain. I feel moved by what he says and unable to reply meaningfully:
my answer to this could be long. I will try to write it soon, maybe as a blog.
And here I am, trying.
Binary thinking is seductive, easy to fall into. It's a trap. The answer cannot be that either art or living is the top priority.
10 steps forward, 11 steps back on a societal scale
It's a recurring thing for me that I do not understand other people's energy. My mother always had unlimited energy that she directed (and directed me) to trivial projects. That's how I feel about most people.
Like, I think if people aren't devoting energy to improvement of self and all humans then that's wasted energy.
I want only to improve myself and with it to improve all humanity... and I have no energy.
Baby, I feel not good enough.
I can say that I know with near certainty that my current inability to perform is due to chronic back pain. I can talk about potential causes & solutions [1] but I can also say there's always been something[2] preventing me from performing. I can say that it's ultimately how I am.
#ScribesAndMakers 8 April: Share a song lyric that resonates with you.
Like a lot of these prompts, a simple question can be a tough question. Lately I'm not listening to music very often. I go through phases it seems. And when I do I often don't even know the lyrics; I'm drawn to the sound of it. Like I love to sing along to the following in French to stretch my mouth: Eartha Kitt singing Je Cherche Un Homme & Françoise Hardy roaring Je N'Attends Plus Personne. Even though I like the words in those I can't really say that the lyrics resonate. If I were going to select a favorite Eartha Kitt song with lyrics I embrace it would be Lazy Afternoon, a short (2:22) song about appreciating nature languorously with a lover. Does that resonate? Yeah I love being able to do nothing in nature. But it's another love song & I don't want to imply that someone else is required to enjoy a lazy afternoon.
Am I overthinking? What some call a hashtag game I call an opportunity for reflection. I re-listened to my Frank Ocean favorites. “Why see the world when you've got the beach?” (Sweet Life) I listen to Frank for the melodies more than lyrics. Or tbh I am always conscious of his role as a closeted-then-out gay hip hop star when I listen to Frank Ocean. What lyrics resonate with my life experience? In music I'm often drawn to mixing meaning and nonsense, in songs by Bowie, Prince, REM, Talking Heads, Negativland, & They Might Be Giants.
Then I remembered a snip from a They Might Be Giants' song I don't even love. Towards the end of XTC vs Adam Ant is a repeating line that has resonated with me for years, “There is no right or wrong.”
