Allen Ginsberg makes me cry at my desk sometimes.

In San Francisco Ginsberg saw a $1 an hour psychiatrist, Philip Hicks, who asked him what he would like to do. "Doctor," as Ginsberg recalls his answer...

"I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever. Never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now, and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I'd like to keep living with someone - maybe even a man - and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. Then he said "Well, why don't you?" I asked him what the American Psychoanalytic Association would say about that, and he said . . . if that is what you really feel would please you, what in the world is stopping you from doing it?

A brief excerpt from David Burner's Making Peace with the Sixties (Princeton University Press, 1996)


Oh god. My thoughts exactly.

Mirages of Matchstick Men (and you).

Sublime Oh Nine.

Made it through, didn't I?

It's not so cut and dry as beginnings and endings in some respects. And I don't know what I want to say right now, but I know I want to say something. So writing, sitting here on bones and in skin that isn't as uncomfortable to be inside as it was at this time last year, feels more right than I know or have any words to type. I need to say something honest, start this year with honesty. Be a real, apologetically honest human being.

hon·est (ŏn'ĭst)
adj.

1. Marked by or displaying integrity; upright.

2. Not deceptive or fraudulent; genuine.

3. Equitable; fair.

4. 1. Characterized by truth; not false.

   2. Sincere; frank.

   3. Of good repute; respectable.

   4. Without affectation; plain.

5. 1. Of good repute; respectable.

   2. Without affectation; plain.

6. Virtuous; chaste.

All of them. And find out what I've actually been hiding from all these years, and if it's really as scary as I've made it out to be in my head.

It's hard to trust, but it gets easier the more you do it.

And splitting yourself into a million selves? Easy. The only part of it that's a little tricky is maintaining them. But finding yourself, being one single self? Harder than it looks.

But it gets easier the more you do it.

Happy New Year!

and you just keep on getting closer.

crystallized from Fake TV on Vimeo.

Hi, hi, high.

Wednesday mid-morning coffee break.

Sometimes I just don't feel like using my words or my brain because sometimes it all just comes out the same way as it did yesterday and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who knows what I mean.

Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes I don't want to write I just want to look at pictures of Anita Pallenberg in 1968 and study the angular sharpness of her face and wear more fur smoke more cigarettes draw my eyes black and heavy and wake up at whatever hours I want.

Sometimes I just want to be horrible and not care and not bite my hands, not hate my arms every time I pass by a mirror.

Sometimes I don't want to read about hope or love or see any more long-legged girls in beautiful outfits that I could never fit into or afford.

Sometimes I want no one inside my head but him and I take back everything I've done and...just, sometimes, oh.

Oh. Suck it back, stamp it out, oh.

The universe giveth and the universe taketh away.

Dear asshole that stole the one thing I own that I actually care about (a.k.a. my bike) while I was out of town for the weekend cottaging with the man of my dreams,

FUCK OFF AND DIE.

Love, and many exes and ohs,

Lush

Hyperventilation.

Wait, weight, fans, hands, nap time with yellow zigzag crosses in my eyes. Burnt skin, extra skin, birthday dinner, new rock n' roll, nervousness. So many sins and I can't breathe without them (or with them either). It makes me start, stop, sneak, wonder.

I asked for definite plans to no avail - more guardedness, more one-ended phone calls and tales of time rather spent alone. Leave me alone. Stomach empty, leave my lungs dry, water bottle filled and CD cases packed full of secrets in verse form because even poetry and music feel way too fucking crushingly honest lately in my bedroom still littered with liquor boxes and lies and ink-stained pillowcases.

What about what studies have shown and movie metaphors and sun-soaked Mojave wrecking yards that I see as beautiful alone? What about the dates alone and daytime promised to be spent together and always postponed? What about the hours of talking words and showing yearbooks? Old scars and dents on my calves haven't healed that fast, and neither has my head (it probably never will).

The laughing voices of men in button-up shirts outside my window are making me fucking insane, feel fucking insane, don't feel anything or just feel like my insides are trying to get outside, are moving too fast, are not letting me sleep. Text message wake-up calls in place of broken alarms shut off by fingers of faded black polish after drenching heat bike rides, story time, novel lies, search words, slutty girls.

And all I can think about is a Sunday night of hair bows with dark roots and all I can feel is wheels stuck in reverse upon streetcar tracks and pedestrian pushes on hospital avenues.

Weird, strange, fantastic fucking week I've been having...or was that already evident?