This Girl is Something

I am telling you what he does on Tuesdays: he shelves books about planned pregnancies between ten and twelve, then moves on to general parenting guidebooks in the afternoon. You have to get him between ten and twelve on Tuesdays; he has other shelving responsibilities other days (dictionary-reference Wednesdays, murder-mystery Thursdays, cookbook-biography Fridays, weekends off, odd jobs Mondays). But, I am telling you, on Tuesdays, from ten ‘til twelve, he shelves books about planned pregnancies for 8 dollars and 94 cents an hour.

Wear your purple sundress, the one that shows the angularity of your shoulder blades, your protruding spinal cord, and your little stomach bulge all at the one time. With your little stomach bulge, that purple sundress makes most people scared for you, because it makes it seem as though you are about to just snap in half. That will get him, that aspect will appeal to him, looking as though you are so fragile that you are liable to simply keel over without some kind of lattice.

Stand nearby while he shelves Smoking and Pregnancy: The politics of fetal protection. Try to look normal: pick up and skim through Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation: A Reference Guide to Fetal and Neonatal Risk. Hop from one foot to the other and tug at your hair while you are skimming. Actually, don’t tug at your hair, per say, just sort of flick it around. The point is to give off the impression of looking anxious but not depressed, the way you looked coming straight out of art school, when you spent two whole months thinking non-stop, “Either something is going to happen or it isn’t, right now, and I have been waiting a long time to become something and now I am not sure whether I can become something.” Anxious but not depressed, fearful but hopeful. Look fearful but hopeful, like you did coming straight out of art school.

Brush past him as you search out Keri Bowers’ Single Pregnancy Single Parenting: Creating a positive, fulfilling experience. He will not have noticed you yet, probably. Probably he will still be engrossed in his shelving, mentally ordering halfway difficult surnames alphabetically – Saunders before Sanders?; Morrison before Morissette?

Do not talk to him. Do not ask him any stupid questions like, “Where are the board books?” or, “Any plans tonight?” Just stand there and graze on single-parent pregnancy guidebooks. Do not even look up from what you are reading.

Eventually he will go back to his crate to pick up more books to shelve. He will see you on the way back. He will see you in your purple sundress, and he will stop. He will vaguely think, “I am twenty-four, I want something,” and will stand there and look at you for a long time. He will not know that you know that he is staring at your shoulder blades and spinal cord. He will turn the other way and try to stop seeing you in his head. He will think, “This girl is something.”

 “Did you need any help there?” he will say to you.

Say, “We both need some help, actually,” and point to your stomach and laugh a little bit.

He will laugh, but nervously, and ask, “How far along are you?”

Say, “I am twenty-three years along, but my little bump is four months.”

He will feel confused. In his head he will think, “I want to construct a life with this girl, her spinal cord and her shoulder blades, in rural Vermont, in a house backing onto a forest, with snow in the wintertime.” But then he will also think, “This girl is pregnant, what is wrong with me?”

Say, “My ex-boyfriend left me and I am alone and I am scared and my best friend told me to come in here today because she has seen you and believes that you could look after me and construct a life around me and my ex-boyfriend left me I am alone and I am scared and–”

emotional lit vs neutral lit

(this is sort of a reply to ben latini about whether online lit is too "dead-pan". ben, can you post a reply if you have enough time, either here or on your blog? this is an interesting topic, i hope this is sort of coherent).

In my brain, there are two main styles in which a person can write – one is overtly emotional, while the other is neutral (or “dead-pan”).

Here is the difference between the two styles: if an emotional writer wants to write about a sunset, they will say something like, “conn’s face was bathed in the deep, dynamically-shifting fiery glow of the life-giving, untouchable solar body, as, all the while, the northern wind caressed his skin.” but a neutral writer would say something more like, “the earth rotated so that the sun was no longer visible to conn.”

The difference is that the emotional writer continuously makes moral and qualitative judgements about what they are describing, whereas the neutral writer only expresses what actually happens, without including their own judgements.

So, when writing about the sunset, the emotional writer seems to be trying to say, “sunsets are more beautiful than other things, they bring happiness, and if you do not feel happy after seeing a sunset, then you are not normal.” the neutral writer, however, realises that there is no single “correct” opinion about sunsets, because all people have different emotional and moral responses based on their past experiences. the neutral writer, as such, seems to be saying, “the sun set, and you can find it beautiful or poignant or depressing or funny or disgusting, or whatever you want, but your response will not be the ‘correct’ response, and other people will have different responses to you which are equally valid.”

Going on from this, i see emotional writing as a sort of propaganda, because emotional writers use emotions as a way to manipulate readers into thinking in ways that are not rational and as such, do not allow people to see things “as they really exist.” like, some writers use 9/11 and the war on iraq as tropes. tropes are things which allow a writer to elicit a certain response in a reader without the reader actually processing what they have read. so, as soon as you mention the war on iraq, some people automatically feel sad or angry, for no reason at all. you could walk up to somebody and say “you caused the war on iraq, you bastard!” and they would probably feel guilty automatically. emotional writers do this, too. they might be writing something and then slip something in like, “later on, lucille was killed in the concentration camps” and people will think, “holy shit, lucille was killed by the nazis, she must have been a good person, that is so sad.” And then the reader will automatically be “on lucille’s side”, and feel empathy for lucille. that is stupid - lucille should be judged (if at all) on the things that she did during her life. but emotional writers who use tropes want to bypass this sort of rational judgement of people and things. it is like that movie “reign on me” where adam sandler played a man whose wife died in 9/11, the whole movie was propaganda, because it told the viewers, “you have to feel sad for this man, it is the only possible emotional response you can have.”

So, this means that people who write in an emotional way scare me because i know that they have an agenda beyond merely “showing the world as it is.” their agenda is to make me think that some things are “good” and some things are “bad” and that some things cause happiness and some things cause sadness for every single person in the world.

But people who write in a “dead-pan” way do not scare me. i can tell that in real life these writers must be open-minded and accepting, because these sorts of writers realise that all things are arbitrary and as such, they do not privilege one thing over another. these sorts of writers would not say, “oh my god, this restaurant is fantastic!” or “i love this book so much, i read it cover-to-cover, the author is a genius!” or “that person is such an arsehole, i hate him.” why not? because these things are not concrete. you can’t say that somebody is a “genius” unless you can explain why they are a genius and you can’t say that a restaurant is “fantastic” unless you can explain what aspects of the restaurant make it appeal to you. people who are “dead-pan” make everything concrete, which is “good” because it links everything to something specific that exists, which makes it impossible to lie. so, a “dean-pan” person would not say “this restaurant is fantastic!” but would say “this restaurant has organic vegetarian food, and i have enjoyed most of the meals on the menu”, and they would not say, “that person is an arsehole”, but would instead say “that person stood me up on a date” or something more specific. the “dead-pan” person (or writer) does not express things using exaggerative adjectives, but expresses things by using descriptions that are tangible.

Neutral writers say, “everything in the universe is made from atoms and atoms are morally and qualitatively neutral, so your brain can think a horse shit is the most beautiful thing ever if it wants to, who cares?”

components of a world where people would not have to buy self-help books or "escapist" novels

i just got a job at a bookstore. i've only worked there a couple of weeks and already i have sold a lot of self-help books and "escapist" novels. these books are "bad", because they make people believe that they have some sort of problem that they have to either fix (with self-help) or ignore (with "escapist" novels). so when somebody feels depressed, they are told to think "i have a problem inside myself, i need to consume something in order to fix myself or ignore myself". but people are NOT told to think the opposite thought, which is: "i feel depressed, and so do a lot of other people, maybe the problem is not within myself, but is actually external to myself. maybe the reason i feel bad is because the structure of society is making me feel bad, and the solution is not to change myself, but to change society."

so here are the components of a world in which people would not feel the need to buy self-help books or "escapist" novels in order to fix or ignore themselves. there are eight parts:

1. everybody sells what they make directly to people that they have a "real connection" with (a chef would only cook meals for people he is friends with because he would like them to enjoy the food; a writer would give their books only to friends because she wants to share her "true emotions" with them" etc.)

2. there would be no reproductions - no photocopies or CDs or printers. (every time anything is copied, it is no longer connected with the person who created it. it is just a "thing" that other people can consume without thinking about how it was made.)

3. if somebody is feeling "bad", they are not told that the only solution is to "get better". instead, the person who is feeling "bad" tells their family/friends why they are feeling "bad", and society changes (perhaps improves) in order to make it so that nobody can feel "bad" in this way again. (like, maybe somebody feels anxious because they have no way to talk to people when they are feeling lonely, so a town square would be constructed so that this problem never happens again etc).

4. everybody would be connected with only one or two degrees of separation from everything that they buy or do. so if somebody wants to eat meat, they have to kill the animal themselves, or if somebody wanted to exploit another person (sweatshops etc) then they would have to see the effects of their exploitation on the people they are exploiting. this would make everyone directly responsible for all their actions. it would make people feel as though their lives are more valid, i think, because they would feel as though they are living more "fully".

5. there would be no "working hours" because there would be no "work". people would just have a single "life" which would involve eating and creating things and entertaining and being entertained, there would be no distinctions between "creator" and "consumer", or "work" and "play". also, nobody would have power. (this is workable, i am completely sure of it).

6. people would be free to express their "true thoughts". this would make it so that people do not feel as though they have to lie in order to "fit in" with society. it would mean that people can communicate with each other properly. it would mean that people feel as though they exist fully both inside their heads, and in the "outside" world. it would mean that there would be less "bad things" happening (like shootings or robberies or pedophilia etc) because people would not need to "bottle things up". like, if somebody was thinking about being a pedophile (or robber, murderer, whatever), then they would feel free to tell other people about their "bad" thoughts, and other people would not judge them, but would help them to stop thinking about wanting to do things that are hurtful and destructive. (i think that the majority of people who do bad things, do these things because they do not ever tell anybody about what they are thinking, so their thoughts just get more and more distorted from reality).

7. people would be able to do anything as long as it doesn't annoy anyone else ("anyone else" includes animals btw). so they could take whatever drugs they want and could do anything they wanted without feeling "trapped" by their gender, religion, race, age, amount of money they have etc.

8. people would recognise that everything that make comes from the environment, so they would only make things that are completely necessary, and would "relearn" how to enjoy things that are not man-made objects (i would call these things "nature", but i think that the word "nature" is bad because it turns "nature" into an object - sorry, that is probably confusing).

anyway, read "contributions to the revolutionary struggle..." by raoul vaneigem. i did. it is pretty good. it isn't all that abstract, it is very concise, and it made me feel both depressed and hopeful.

comment, and we will create a world together, where people do not have to buy self-help books or "escapist" novels.

i want to live my life in complete abstraction

this is a poem or some shit, whatevs, just read it. also read "growly" by brandon scott gorrell. i don't know how people should talk anymore, maybe people should not even talk at all instead of saying things that they don't mean. i don't get it, is society going to collapse if people say what they are really thinking? i also say things that i don't mean and it makes me feel bad when i do, other people must feel bad about it too. (these are the things i was thinking when i read "growly").

reality is not as good as things that are abstract.

i want "god", "revolution", "beauty", "transcendence", "love", "fame", "globalisation", "art" and "happiness" and "a psychiatric disorder"

but these things do not exist, they are abstractions.

i want to be "perfectly good" and alternate that with bouts of being "perfectly evil".

i want to live my life in a completely abstract manner.

i want to believe that perfect things can exist even though nobody has ever found them and i know at a subconscious level that nobody ever will.

 

space aliens live in complete abstraction,

also advanced robots,

but i will be the first homo sapien ever to live my life in complete abstraction.

here is an example of my complete and total abstraction:

segsdgfkhgfahofjhgofajhfjalghjsaghadgkdsaghdskagdagsahfhfshgdgdgg

paperwall has things from me and aidan blake

i am not dead. i am alive but have been really busy trying to do things for money and external validation - i.e. working & studying for exams & writing essays. i will post more soon.

my poem "we are sharing true emotions" is in paperwall #7, and also a story by aidan blake. i do not know aidan blake, i can't find anything else by him (but i haven't looked very hard yet).

paperwall is cool, check it, in issue 6 there was a story from ofelia hunt and a poem from tao lin and i liked both of them.

also, chelsea minnis has a new poem called "dung cart". it made me think "if i could articulate my feelings perfectly at this present moment, and express those feelings in a loosely organised string of words, it would come out this way." if i write a novel, it is going to be about an 18-year-old white boy who wants things that are not dung carts, but realises that he has to feel content with dung carts because dung carts are the only things that exist. then the novel will end and the reader will feel some sort of emotion, i am still trying to work out what emotion they should be feeling though.