2046

les compliqués...

c'est toujours la même histoire.

sometimes it IS what it is

"a list of all the things that the sea does is not what the sea is." - art and lies; jeannette winterson

transcribed carefully into my journal sometime in the summer of 2006 (not yet 19). i thought this quotation was profound at one point. hmph.

what would that girl think of me now? what would i say to her?

1. invest in a sense of humor.
2. not everything has to be metaphor, you know.
3. it's okay if the sea is just the sea. you can ride the waves or choose to be crushed by an overwhelming sense of self-entitlement.
   
4. let's face it - you need a new plan of attack. the only thing that's growing is the size of your ego. that, and the width of your waistband if you don't put those doritos away.
   
5. it could be worse. you could be mixed up in some international drug trafficking scheme that comes back to haunt you ten years later and get thrown into federal prison for 15 months...wait a second.
   

but she's a little bug to be crushed

we are the generation that "likes" the statuses of our exes.

gone are the good old days when you would just “accidentally” spill your drink all over the new girl’s white chiffon dress and call it a day. find another man ASAP, instead of post albums upon albums, invading their mini feed with pictures of yourself performing beautiful-sexy-confident-HAPPY-WITHOUT-HIM and then crying yourself to sleep every night because in actuality you feel kinda-all-by-your-lonesome.

so what if it’s a little cyber lie? and yeah, maybe the new girl’s beautiful, but YOU’RE keeper of his past. she doesn’t know what “peanut butter sandwich without jelly” means – you do.

why is it so impossible to draw the line and stick to it? must you always feel compelled to leave a lipstick stain on his social media existence? spend hours poring over her profile pictures, comparing the size of her nose to yours and the distances between your eyes?

if you were a real person, you’d tell him off without batting an eyelash and MOVE ON with your life. instead, you stare green-eyed and small in front of that computer screen at work, wishing you could delete the little whore off the face of Facebook and then tweet about it to your seven and a half followers:

she’s a slut @newgirl and who needs him anyway, i’m fabulous just the way i am #jealouspatheticex

the human touch

“i thought of…my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it.” – from the dud avocado; elaine dundy


there are scientists building robots. it turns out that of all the five senses, touch is the hardest to replicate in mechanical form.

think of the irresistible urge to run your fingers through his hair each time you see him. every strand and follicle registered by a map of pressure points distributed across your skin. it’s as if you could see texture with your fingertips.

each man felt different in your hands. blindfolded, you could still probably identify who was who according to the invisible sensors embedded under the skin of your fingers. (yes, there is scent, of course – but now you learn that scent can be manufactured and easily replicated.)

the same scientists tried to replicate human skin by creating thin sheets of plastic embedded with layer upon layer of what they called “nanoparticles.” when this film of gold and semiconductors “touches” an object, a small electric current causes some of the nanoparticles to LIGHT UP.

more pressure, more light. less pressure, the lesser it lights up.

right now, they’re still looking for the appropriate “detector” to capture this map of lights and register the image, texture, and feel of the objects being touched. it’s hard to say if robots will be wearing this skin any time soon.

but for now, each time a hand touches the back of someone’s neck, or grazes a naked shoulder – you imagine the entire city lights up in a blink of an eye and goes out just as quickly.

“a knowledge of pleasure, a pleasure that comes of knowing pleasure, a knowledge-pleasure.”

-from foucault's "the history of sexuality," vol. 1

(just some philosophical musings okay?)

I. the discursive power of sex

western man is a “confessing animal.” in the church, in the asylum, in the court of law, and in the microcosm of the household. we claim the Victorians were sexually repressed. counter-argument – they talked about sex ALL THE FREAKING TIME. it was THE secret to exploit.

II. scientia sexualis – the science of sex

why did the Victorians talk about sex so much anyway?

because there was some TRUTH to be told. Truth = the search for knowledge = the fluid structure of power = circulated through discourse. you are what you talk about. and if you talk about sex, you are your sex.

and as long as we’re on the subject of categories: good-healthy-normal-sane-socially-acceptable-sex VERSUS bad-unhealthy-abnormal-insane-socially-taboo-sex.

the Victorian stethoscope was trained ever so attentively on the sexual impulses of children, mad men and women, criminals, homosexuals, perverts, freaks, you name it! pillow talk became science talk.

III. the deployment of sexuality, a.k.a. power over life

if there is a discourse of sex, then there is a reverse discourse of THE OTHER sex.

but first, let’s talk obsessively about sex within the Victorian household in order to NAME that which is forbidden to be named and give the bourgeoisie a SEXUALIZED BODY! and not just any body, but the right kind of body that will then go out into the world and set the standard for all you OTHER BODIES.

before, there was the king and his sword: disobey the king and OFF WITH YOUR HEAD! power came from the command over one’s death sentence.

then things started to shift. the king slept around a bit. he no longer looked at you from above, but all around you and in you. you became a walking security camera trained at your mother, your father, your siblings, your cousins, your next door neighbor, your teachers, your friends, that kind of creepy uncle you always avoided at family reunions, your own body!

this is called “bio-power” where they implant that little interpellation chip in the back of your brain that tells you – HEY, I’m THIS body and not THAT body and WHAT body are you anyway?

we went from OFF WITH HIS HEAD to INTO HIS HEAD; from death sentence to life on parole.

IV. so why are we so obsessed with being UN-repressed now?

because we think it has something to do with our freedom. sexually LIBERATED, right? mm not-so-much. when we realize that the Victorians already did it – talk about sex incessantly, that is – we also find out that the subject just isn’t that black and white.

it’s not so much about emerging from an era of sexual repression, but understanding how we came about to believe that we were ever once “repressed.”

the interview

young thing sitting across the table from you. what are you talking about? you're a young thing too. young enough to not know what you're doing, interviewing a senior from the new school who's applying for an internship in your department.

you giggle something about having just graduated yourself last summer, then squint at her slightly crumpled resume, wishing you had had the balls to major in literary studies with a concentration in creative writing as well. instead, you stuck with safe and respectable english language and literature (like choosing a beige sweater over a plum or chartreuse colored one). whatever, it's all about the strong writing skills, no?

and applying said writing skills to a worthy nonprofit cause. i'm sorry, what's that you said? grant writing? oh yes, of course. in two weeks you'll wonder why you ever entertained the thought of becoming a professional grant writer, holed up in your blue gray cubicle computing sentences like some binary code. you almost betray the fact that you secretly hate your job, but then you notice her face fall apart in slow motion and then immediately switch gears, lying through clenched teeth about how "supportive the team is, really. we're all here for the same reasons, right?" more nervous laughter--this time noticeably louder on your end of the table. you hope your boss can't hear you through the wall. this is a disaster.

all you want to do is put your hands on her shoulders and give her a good shake. say: "WAKE UP, KIDDO. it's spreadsheets from here on out. kiss metaphor and caesura and deconstructionist theory goodbye. boy, what i'd give to be reading some milton right now. even if i still hate milton, except for the pretty parts in paradise lost. what was it again? walking hand in hand...wandering, slow: 'through eden took their solitary way.' you motherfucker motherfuckin' smartass, milton.

ah, and baldwin. god bless baldwin and his giovanni's room. there are two types of madmen he wrote: those who remember and those who forget. i'm of the remembering party; repeat flashbacks of how did he put it? 'the perpetually recurring death of their innocence.' shit, i could LIVE off of that, but i can't. i can't eat, drink or pay rent with those goddamn crazy BEAUTIFUL words. words. WORDS.

i once scribbled post-it notes all over the walls, the wooden floorboards and on my body. i gave birth to THE word. i smoked and drank too much, stayed up till 3.am. weaving word after word into sentences, built bridges out of paragraphs and entire civilizations of close readings on theory, art, literature, film you name it. now, i still smoke and drink alone too much. i put myself to bed by midnight every night (god forbid i turn into a pumpkin) and wake up to ride the city with the angry commuter mob and sit down at my desk where i type meaningless meaningless words for nothing to sell nothing and discover nothing in return, go home and come back just to do it all over again."

you shake her hand and tell her it was a sincere pleasure. it's almost sad how certain you are that you'll be seeing her again in two weeks. and yet, you've already forgotten her face. you try to place the features, but fail. what did she look like? you can't seem to remember anymore.