Why have I been denied?

As I sleep my teeth are set against each other in noisy abandon and I awake from troubled dreams with an aching face. Will I grind my teeth even in death? My final rest burning and disturbed?

And when will God come? Will he visit my grave when my body’s buried low and cold amid the mindless seeking of the worms? Will he come bearing flowers, sanctified and bright? Is it then that I shall find my peace, and my churning corpse mouth cease? Where is my rest? Why have I been denied?

Dame un besito

On the subway yesterday, I saw two indios, probably Mexicans, wearing starched white shirts, one with a crisp cowboy hat. They carried their guitars through the car and sang a traditional song, imploring, "Dame un besito, o dame dos." I started choking up, thinking about Texas.

I miss Fiesta. I want to go buy pumpkin empanadas and dance to oldies. I want to hear Tejano as old trucks pass by.

I sometimes can't bear to think about this place. Is this what I wanted? Is this really my life? My life is so small and dull. It is lost in the vast wash of New York City.

It's occurred to me that wherever I am and whatever I do, I'll be dissatisfied. And perhaps that's what I've wanted all along. Perhaps there is no peace for someone like me.

And perhaps this is why I desire men that are geographically inconvenient. Throughout the day, I calculate the time difference. There are three hours between us. Time zones mark the distance between my heart and myself. I am never devastatingly present. I am never forced to lose hope entirely. To be in one place would be to discover my finite self, so infinitesimal, only five foot eleven inches in the miles of New York, in the unfathomable light years of the universe.

An Analysis of the ONION

While reading the ONION, a free satirical newspaper based in New York City, I detected two basic comedic stratagems. For the first stratagem, let's look at the following three headlines:

"Nation Mobilizes For Beautiful Weekend"

"Dog Breeders Issue Massive Recall Of '07 Pugs"

"Modern-Day Martin Luther Nails 95 Comment Cards to IHOP Door"

In each case, a topic, such as pugs, is placed within a wholly different context, such as a product recall. Two disparate elements are combined. Throughout the article, pugs with health problems are treated as though they were defective mechanical products, as though people didn't attach sentimental value to their pets, which is, except in the case of working dogs, the primary use-value of a companion animal, and as though there were no concern for the actual welfare of the animals, but that the animal's problems were rather a concern because they were detrimental to animal's usefulness. This recontextualization of the pug is ridiculous, and therefore funny. At the same time, the ONION offers a searing critique of dog-breeders that continue to breed animals that are rife with health problems. The article's affected callous attitude towards pugs only adds to the humor. Callousness is often funny.

In the other two headlines, we see Memorial Day Weekend equated with a war offensive and a disgruntled IHOP patron equated with a man who changed the face of Christianity. These articles are essentially comic conceits. The writers end the article when the conceit is exhausted. A solid comic conceit will sustain the impact of the headline by demonstrating and solidifying the relationship between the disparate topic and context.


Perhaps somewhat less fertile and interesting is the second stratagem that I uncovered, that is, treating something totally mundane as news. It is a distant kin to the comic conceit, in that the mundane topic becomes funny because of its new context.

"Area Man Somehow Roped Into Arguing Passionately For Green Day"

I also recall seeing a headline a while back that said something like "Eight-Year-Old Packs Own Lunch" that was accompanied by a photograph of some junk food assembled around a paper bag.

It is the relationship between disparate elements that is surprising and funny.

Every time I make discoveries such as these, I feel I'm cheating myself in some way. I know that the more discoveries I make, the less I'll laugh. What comes to mind is the classic image of the comic standing in the back of the room watching another comedian, nodding his head and saying, "That's funny." Incidentally, I dream of someday writing a scholarly work on joke structures.

So I've decided to start doing stand-up again and I wonder if it's wise. A good set is the purest pleasure I know, but do I really want to spend my mornings frantically reading newspapers and science and culture magazines, scouting for joke kernels? Do I really want to go back to a life in which I interrupt conversations to take note of something funny I said?

For those who don't know, I made the move. I'm in Brooklyn now. It's surreal. Tonight I train at my new cafe job on Bedford Ave.

Last night I did a stand-up set. I loved it. The audience loved it, I think. It felt right. The experience reaffirmed my desire to pursue stand-up again, now that I'm through with school and have the head space and time. I probably could've done more stand-up during school than I did, but there was the fear lurking, the same fear that keeps me away from attractive me during the semester: a fear of getting carried away. I've been there. There was a time when my obsession with stand-up was all-consuming. Then I got into Rice, among other things, and my participation in the comedy world waned. But anyway, so what, right? I'm ready to do it now...

But I mentioned this to my father and I all I got was discouragement. He said it was no life for me, an addict, that it would be too much of an emotional roller-coaster and that I'd keep bad company. He also said that I needed to quit dabbling and pick something and stick with it. But I'm twenty-four. Do I really need a life plan? That seems ludicrous. And what if what I choose is stand-up? He told me to pick the thing I love most and decide to be the best at it. What if that is what I love most? I suspect that stand-up, in terms of obsession level, is at least on par with fiction writing, if it doesn't surpass it altogether. And why do I have to choose? Who cares if I'm ever the best or not? I'm sick of career tracks. I just can't take all the discouraging words I've been getting from so many people lately. I'm at a crossroads in my life and all I want is somebody to pat me on the back and tell me I'm OK. All I want is some satisfaction. I don't need to be famous.

Alright, enough emotional vomit. The next post will be less personal.

p.s. I went bra-shopping yesterday. FUCK THAT.

pretty please

blah blah blah

Today I stopped by Fiesta to pick up a few necessities and to check out my new necklace: 14k gold cut to say "Texas." It looks perfect, cute but ghetto. I'll pay for it and pick it up tomorrow. I didn't have the cash today.

I think about what I'll miss about Houston:

The paleteros with their tricycle ice cream carts, gliding slowly to a chorus of bells. Many wear crisp, pale cowboy hats. Every time I see one I am tempted to flag him down and relieve him of a coconut paleta.

The parts of town that could be mistaken for a Mexican barrio.

Stuffing myself on the buffet at Bombay Sweets.

Third Ward. Grills. Slabs.

My typical Cali Sandwich meal: a tofu sandwich, an avocado smoothie, a mung bean ball. It costs less than five dollars.

Suffocating, sensual heat.

Texas thunderstorms.

Walls of jasmine.

Magnolias.

Azaleas.

Gregarious strangers.

Friends.


But seriously, what I won't miss:

Car culture.

Strip malls.

Aesthetically repugnant architecture.

Buildings air-conditioned to sweater temperatures.

Conservatism.

That people think you're crazy if you're a pedestrian or a cyclist.

The feeling that I'm missing something by being here.




Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. I've invested in a lap steel guitar. Watching Bob Wills clips on youtube makes me think I should actually learn to play it. I've been meaning to get another harmonica as well. I had it in my head that that would be a good instrument for an itinerate girl. However, the one I had didn't stay in my possession for more than a month. It escaped my bag in Croatia.

nightmare

I dreamed that I had a tumor, a kernel of poison, in my throat, the result of too many years of youthful carefree smoking. I craved a cigarette, but couldn't partake because I was obviously very susceptible to the negative side effects.

Later in the dream, it migrated to my brain. The doctors said it would have to be removed, but that its removal would have some positive effects. For one thing, my hormones would balance out and my breasts would deflate to a more normal size. They could operate today. Oh, but there's a chance you might be partially paralyzed by the surgery. This information leaked out as an aside, a reference to a future limp. Then she mentioned that my hands might shrivel up into talons. I began sobbing, asked what the chances were that this would happen. She said that it wasn't that big a deal. Lots of people got by with claw hands. I inferred that the chances were good that, after all was said and done, I would be left in this condition. I thought of the Minamata mercury poisonings, the famous photo of a mother bathing her daughter in black water, the daughter's hands twisted as roots.



I pleaded with her. I wouldn't be able to draw, to type, or to cycle. But perhaps I could still sing. I imagined a thin stream of a melody unraveling from my still, twisted form. I could dictate my novel, a novel all the richer for my predicament, saturated with my misfortune. I'd be like Flannery O'Connor, standing on the porch of her estate, leaning heavily on her braces. I wondered if I would be able to find lovers. The lookers I'd been in the habit of dating would certainly be off-limits.



I pleaded again. She didn't understand. I wouldn't be able to draw anymore, and I drew beautifully. Beautifully? She raised an eyebrow. Yes, beautifully. I walked weeping from the hospital, away from the unsympathetic doctor and my baffled mother, to call my father. To tell him what they were asking me to sacrifice. And as I waited for him to answer, I made a decision. I would live my short, heavy-breasted life unaltered by the surgeon's knife. I would let the cancer blossom over my cerebellum. I would draw and ride my bike and take handsome lovers until I died.

palimpsestic portraiture

I will select a portraitee.

I will select several photographs from their life, including one from the first month of life and one taken upon selection time. The current photograph will be a straitforward, centered polaroid on a blank background: anonymizing. I will arrange the photographs in chronological order.

I will paint the first in the chronological series. This painting will be executed realistically, in oils, on a square, hand-stretched canvas. When this is finished, I will take a single, clear, straightforward polariod photograph. I will then paint the next image in the series over the first painting. I will continue the process of documentation and painting over until I reach the most current image.

This piece will be hung with the process polaroids alongside.

This project creates a palimpsistic portrait. Each representation of self is swallowed by the newer representation. I create a painting with an invisible history. All paintings have invisible histories, but the raison d'etre of this paiting will be its invisible history. It holds its former selves within, much as a human being does. The polaroids serve as souvenirs. They are analogous to all the sentimental detritus that we accumulate to keep ourselves from getting cut adrift, from getting temporal vertigo. We have our history in our hands. We feel grounded, safe. We feel sure that things have happened to us, that our life has contained discrete conditions and events.

I will make a series of portraits in this manner, the final image in each will be a straight, centered shot on a blank background. They will be the same size. Perhaps I will extend this project to include place. A city is a palimpsest, after all. Ruins serve as a foundation for future ruins.

I have thought that I may do a self portrait with 24 layers. I would then continue to create a new layer each year for the rest of my life. If a person bought it, they would have to be willing to lend it to me one month out of the year so that I could add a new layer. I would draw up a contract. The last layer would be my last portrait before death. Hopefully I would die while in the process of painting this layer. That would be the most interesting possibility.

If you steal this idea, I will personally hunt you down. I will scramble your brains in with my morning eggs.

happiness by nationality

According to a recent survey, the world's happiest countries are:

Nigeria
Mexico
Venezuela
El Salvador
Puerto Rico

The least happy countries are:

Russia
Armenia
Romania

Why is it that I've recently become fixated on what are supposedly the world's most unhappy countries as well as the second happiest country?

How does Mexico stay so happy? I run through a list of cliches. Is it the close-knit families? The complex way they embrace death? The hearts on the line and the singing in the pulquerias? What answers does Mexico hold? According to Octavio Paz, the Mexican is a brand of stoic, costuming his loneliness with the colors of the fiesta. I need answers, Mexico. How, with all your scabbed street children, dispossessed indios, and one-armed beggars, did you find your way to happiness? Is it that simple Catholic acceptance of suffering as essential and cathartic? Perhaps it is this. Perhaps only by welcoming suffering into our lives may we find a kind of rest.



Armenia is obvious. Transcaucasia, along with former Yugoslavia and Israel/Palestine, seems to love to obsess over how their magnificent national destiny has been foiled in some way. They don't have what they're owed. This kind of preoccupation can only breed discontent. Why Russia? Because its major project, communism, has failed? Because the satellites have split, rejected them like teenagers seeking self-agency? I've heard that Russians prize a sense of suffering? Does this mean that they're actually quite content?

But why Romania? Is it their forlorn, heart-ravaging landscape? Is it the wake of Ceauşescu's surreal tyranny? Bucharest transformed to a crumbling waste of concrete right angles? I remember going on a mini-tour through Maramureş, Romania. As we passed through yet another wooden town populated with old people in traditional dress, my guide told me that this particular town had a reputation for melancholy. Why, he could not tell me, but they were known as the most miserable in all of Maramureş. I looked at the wood-slat roofs shining like fish scales, at spoiled, elderly faces of the residents, the unruly green of the flora. I couldn't see anything to distinguish it from any of the other area towns. Its name is lost to me now. Its wretchedness remains a mystery. I wonder, then, if that village would be considered the most unhappy place in the world. And still it looked charming. Still the spotted hens scratched after worms and tended their lovely spring chicks.



Where is this data from? How was this study conducted? How do we chart our emotions?

And why are so many of our recent heroes so stricken? We love the charismatic dispossessed. It is symptomatic.

At the end, I am left with more questions than answers. Beyond this survey, more generally speaking, as I move through life I continue to accrue questions. The answers I find are few and far between and almost always stumbled upon by accident or folly. And these answers, they will soon become obsolete. I know this and still I continue with my question-posing, still craving my temporary answers. Anything to orient me for a few days.

rock 'n' roll

Yesterday evening, the KTRU Outdoor Show was held indoors due to inclement weather, a.k.a. nearly-freezing rain. Despite the freakish weather, there was still an impressive turnout. Rice University's Grand Hall was thick with kids sporting skinny jeans and shaggy haircuts, as well the odd athlete and a fair number of nerds. I crowd surfed twice, once while 120 Days, a dancey group from Norway, was playing, and once during Ratatat's set. The second time, I got from the stage to more than halfway through the crowd. I probably in the air for the better part of a song. Aside from the rush, I love the feeling of unity that comes from being supported by a crowd, and then later reciprocating that support. Unfortunately, this feeling of unity was tainted by the fact that two different people tried to steal my shoes and many people were incredibly bitchy about letting me get up to the stage. One girl actually shoved me twice, which would've been grounds for a cat-fight if my temper were worse. I would've tried to crowd surf more than twice if certain people hadn't been so hostile.

But it's all good. My ex-boyfriend's best friend was on tour as well, rapping with Ratatat. I got to chat with him a fair bit and he gave my friends and me a tour of his tour bus. It had a kitchen, something like nine bunks, each with a little television, and a kind of rec room with a large tv and a game system. I asked them if they felt like sailors at sea and they responded that they did. They'd bought several pellet guns at a Wal-Mart and all had red welts on their bodies and faces. I hope that Ben will go in on some pellet guns and goggles with me so that we can battle.

Ben and Sarah and I threw PLEASE PRAY FOR MY EYE fliers into the crowd and I distributed a number by hand as well. I've made over 700 now. It doesn't hurt that I have hook-ups at a copy shop. One of the copy-shop workers and I have been covertly stapling them up around town and leaving them under windshield wipers.

Just a couple of days ago was the 13th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. I've been watching lots of Nirvana videos on youtube.com.

dreaming/waking

I dreamed a dream of New York last night. Attractive young men in the subway station, their eyes buried in bangs. One smiled at me and escaped down the steaming stairwell. All of us were waiting, seated on the steps, and a grizzled old man said something about the burden of being blind. From behind me, a boy with a black mop and a lisp asked him to tell us a little story from his blind life. Then I woke up.

Soon after waking, I remembered how my New York friends always tell me how difficult it is to meet somebody in the City. And I wish I could shake these fears. I wish I could stop caring about such things, live my life unfettered by romantic concerns. Life is still beautiful without a love interest. I will write it on my mirror.

New York is six weeks away.

itch

I feel a desperate need to leave. These are some of the places I want to go.

Uzbekistan:


Romania:


Mongolia:


Croatia:

gripe/gratitude

I'm sick of:

-being so broke that a six-dollar meal is a splurge, so broke that I nearly have an anxiety attack when I open the electricity bill.
-inconsiderate drivers.
-being single and feeling like I'll never meet anybody that measures up to all my standards.
-living in a slum-ass apartment that leaks and has roaches and noisy drug dealer neighbors and a lawn that hasn't been mowed in months.
-my shitty procrastination/stress approach to school.
-my time being spoken for by schoolwork.
-waiting for Houston to end.


I'm grateful:

-that everything is temporary.
-that I have parents that help me out financially.
-for my creative gifts.
-for the Williams Prize.
-for everything I've learned the hard way.
-for my five years.
-for NYC and its buffet of men.
-for my travels, past and future.
-for my gorgeous, wonderful, generous friends.

Yesterday

Yesterday was good. It was my fifth sobriety anniversary and also the launch date of R2, the Rice Review. At the launch, I found out that my story "El Santo" had won second place in the Williams Prize in Fiction, a $250 prize. I plan to spend all or most of the prize money on gold jewelry. I wasn't counting on the money, so I feel it's wisest to spend it frivolously. Any other use of the prize money would encourage me to factor future possible prize money into my budget. Of course, I realize that I'm still stuck in a superstitious, magical way of thinking. I don't care. It's not my job to be rational. My first purchase will, of course, be a Texas necklace bought from Fiesta.

I dreamed last night that I'd gone on a trip to Japan. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be. It all lay before me. All that was left to do was to move to Japan.

I recently viewed The Story of Floating Weeds(1934) by Yasujiro Ozu. The camera dwelt upon still objects between shots of actors. It was transcendent. You can see echoes of this technique in Bresson and Herzog.

Please pray.

I am posting these fliers around Houston. Why? To make people pause. Perhaps they'll giggle. Maybe they'll think about it later. Perhaps one or two will try to figure out whose eye is in the picture. I've made over 200. Somebody is bound to pray for me.

On a serious note, my eyes are messed up. It might be conjunctivitis.

Fiesta

I bought a one-way ticket to New York City for May 20th. And so an era is closing. As the days grow warmer, my departure approaches. And just as before in London, as I am planning my escape, the city unfurls its blossoms to me, a last ditch effort at seduction. Azaleas, magnolias, and flowers whose names I do not know. Flowers that beg me to learn their names. The city is fecund and dewy. It rains most nights, a warm, heavy rain, decadent like a monsoon.

As I stroll through Fiesta, the Latin-American supermarket, selecting Mexican pasteles, I feel almost wistful. For some reason, they always play oldies over the intercom here, a fact which, I admit, has influenced my devoted patronage of this place. I have memories of grappling with a mound of avocados, bobbing my head to Little Richard, dancing in the aisles as I pick breakfast cereal. I remember coming here with Zarla, when we still loved each other without reservation, and lurking in the produce, covertly ogling the poet Adam Zagajewski, watching him fondle pears. On my way out, I pass the jewelry counter. You can buy pendants of gold or silver, cut specially into the shape of your name. I am considering getting one. But instead of Nancy, it will say Texas.

Transcendent Face

Winter in London is a claustrophobia of darkness. The night crowds out the day. Cloud cover and mist linger for weeks at a time; the water fowl in St. James Park huddle pathetically on the banks of the pond while pink-footed gulls skitter over the ice-crusted surface. By January, I was desparate to escape.

The National Film Theatre put on a Buster Keaton Festival with live piano. At the time, I'd never seen a Buster Keaton film. I went to The General out of curiosity. And then I went to another and then another. Until I was living from Keaton film to Keaton film, spending all my extra pounds and pence into the pursuit of just another couple of hours with him. His universe was in a state of entropy, and yet he kept on, undaunted, or perhaps because he simply didn't know what else to do. And then there was his face, haunted and still as a daguerreotype, strangely beautiful, the most ravishing man I'd ever seen. I would sit in the theatre and while laughing, would pine for this dead man. He soon came to occupy my daily thoughts and I determined that I would find a man with such a transcendent face.

I found one. I acquired a man with a face that made me nervous and wistful. Blue eyes in a dark, Spanish face. I often felt self-conscious walking next to him because I felt he made me look plain. We spent time in London, Prague, Vienna and Budapest. It was wonderful, carefree. In Bulgaria, it wasn't as easy. By the time we tried to transfer it to the U.S., it was going downhill. But I couldn't let go of his face. It was bad hoodoo. He wasn't what I needed in more ways than one. I stayed miserable longer than I should've because I was bewitched by his beauty.

The next one I dated was less attractive. It was still a mess. I learned from it, but he's honestly somebody whose warning signs I should've seen much earlier. I remember thinking to myself, "This guy seems really unstable." And yet, I proceeded.

And now what? I'm nursing a couple of crushes, but they'll probably come to nothing. I've got no confidence in my judgement. I feel like I should be assigned a boyfriend by someone who knows better.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Teeth (draft)

Felicia, my dumpling, knocked out her teeth for real in the 1997 black-out. She was winding down the stairwell in her apartment complex with a basketful of laundry balanced on her head. She was thinking of that Peace Corps poster with the African woman that has a typewriter balanced on her head neat as a teapot. Not your average nine-to-five.

Then the lights went. She tumbled through the blackness and bit a stair. The teeth clattered out of her mouth like dice. She didn't regain her composure until the lights came on again. She sat up. Her mouth lay in ruins on the concrete step. It was like the hand of God reached out and touched her, she says. It was like the Holy Ghost gave her a little shove from behind.

I heard an old Indian legend that a dream of tooth loss foretells death.

My dumpling is a phone sex operator. The hotline's schtick is GMILFs. She's twenty-seven, but the dentures age her voice. They like her muffled way of speaking. She riddles her voices with cracks. When she signed on, they sent her a helpful binder of material. Page two was a cheat sheet of outdated sexual euphemisms. She told me that more than once a caller has staged his telefantasy at Luby's. Then I told her to shut up.

So Felicia stays home with the cordless phone and the helpful binder while I leave to catch the bus. I am a security guard at an office park and man it kills me, this job. The lobby is one of those that's just full up with fake ferns and mirrors. I hear the chiming of that elevator when I go to sleep at night. There's nothing to do but puzzle over crosswords and think of Felicia sprawled out on the queen size talking about making whoopee in that crinkly, muffled voice. It makes me want to spit into the oversize silk ferns. Used to be when I came home, Felicia would have some mashed potatoes or some Easy Mac ready for me and we would chat and joke. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, I said once. She didn't laugh. But that was a long time ago. These days she just leaves a frozen burrito out to thaw and I am left to my own devices. She could at least put it on a plate, I think to myself. But it's always that damn lone burrito, frigid and forlorn on the bare counter.

She tells me she's lost that old feeling. We met at a laundromat, Bill. That's a bad sign enough. It's kind of romantic, I say. Like a worn-out movie plot, she replies. I think about telling her that Indian legend. Then I think twice.

Now I can't sleep at night with her breathing in the bed next to me. I recall the dentures in the glass on her nightstand, leering in the dark. I recall how when she takes them out of her mouth, it looks like somebody has punched her face in.

Sometimes a Mentodent commercial comes on the tv and I see Felicia get this wistful look as a senior citizen bites into an apple. It's the sound that gets her, a sound crisp as a slicing blade. Nobody with dentures can really pull that off. It's a fantasy, Bill. She says, it's applesauce days from now on.