what a bunch of stuff, yo.

my mother would say it helps me build character. i'm sure it does. but man, just go go go... and with very little verifiable result. it's not like i'm actually writing shit or anything, getting myself into the zen of flow. it's just reading and reading and transcribing and reading and talking and so forth. and i am really not sure where all it's leading.

i got an email today from someone i went to school with before. haven't heard from her in three years, and it's kind of odd, because she was one of those people: a little young, the type to get drunk and forget to pay the bill (i cleaned her puke off the pub floor once, and smoothed her brow more than that), somewhat insecure, and the last time i saw her she was weeping about how we all move away from each other, and then lose contact, and move on, and life is like that. but of all the friends i've kept in touch with, she was the one to simply disappear. as for me, i've found that i can't shake the need to hold on, to keep checking in, to pump so-n-so for information on so-n-so, very hard to simply let go. just who i am, and yeah sure, i've cut people out but that's different than releasing...

and i haven't yet talked about this here because i feel weird about it, a new style of being n all. but i had a friend this winter break who really upset me. she basically wrote me an email saying (subtle subtextual paraphrase) that i am not, nor ever will be, welcome in her home or to hang out with her in the vicinity of her home because we flirted over a year ago, which hurt her boyfriend's feelings. she actually said that life is complicated, she's pregnant, blah blah, and i just felt like: wow. see, i understand that life is complicated, but who says that one person's life is more complicated than another's? i sort of feel that all her words were in one direction, and all the truth was brooding somewhere else: which was, she made a choice--this is what she wants: X, and this is what she doesn't: Y. but she's going to make it all formal and meaningful by sayings she's pregnant and life's complicated, when the truth is that what she's talking about is not complicated at all. it's the simple path. she wants the simple path. and sure, i understand this, although i do not even a little subscribe. she doesn't want to have to deal with someone who she has mixed feelings for--shame, whatever, weirdity, ghostliness (this is the life of the L-word, the Thing she didn't choose), annoyance, and how uncomplicated is that?

why is it that the older i get, the more symbolic i mean? but complication; oh yeah, that pregnancy thing. the rest of her life, a little kiddling, etc etc. is that complication? because fuck, i thought things were complicated in my life too... probably bound to a life of solitary oldmaidhood, and yeah sure, i bet that's not complicated at all. you know shit's weird when Jane Austen is someone whose life you look to. but somehow motherhood promotes a potential bubble, to be used or not: hey, i'm changing my life radically and i've thus somehow realized The Way. but so few perspectives open for us who are looking at a life without reproduction. and maybe it's not that i've even chosen to be without reproduction. so's to say: i love children, and babies, and generation, and little details, and hearing about birth, and how the body changes, and how so many different lives grow. but i'm probably not going to have that (with the exception of my little s-godchild and any nieces/nephews), and it would be nice to have a model to help me be happy and helpful... rather than having someone yank "complication" on me, and make me feel like a little turd pile for the choices i'm not even sure i made. so here's a choice for you:

a) this is okay; tell me i'm not worth making the effort for. i'll hang out and we can smile, and life will be good, and awkward lunch with nothing attached is soooo cool, and i won't ask to hang out, and i won't hope you say something nice, and nobody needs to go out of their way for another, blah blah blah, this is the life we lead, so very hefty, full of the flesh of my body, the flesh of all yours...

b) no, this is not okay: 1) finagling, whining, begging, attempting (not for sex, but for a friend); or 2) tell her what an uninvited bum-fuck deal this is, or 3) move on, move on, move on. I.E. life is weird when you realize that silence is the only ethical way to open your palm.

but back to where i was. post anger. post complication. post decision making.

a friend got in touch with me today, and i danced this evening because hot damn, what a deal the body is (i've asked my students to consider dancing alone with their eyes closed versus the dancings they might do with others--and yet not one of them commented in their journal about the difference between being a body and being perceived as a body, and here i am trying to get further inside). i'm tired and numb and full of information. i was happy to hear from someone i hadn't for awhile--the happy drift did me well.

and i've been going to playwriting interview lectures - for the tenure track position here at SAIC, and boy, does it make me wonder. i need to get off my ass and make shit, because i think i'm smart enough sometimes, but i haven't found my way to this deal: publish, publish, publish, and then you have the chance to try to live within the kind of questioned existence and collaboration you shed like light, and breathe. i could be a good teacher -- i mean, i sometimes am, when i am most myself being a person with masks, and less myself as a person nervous. that's hard to phrase differently, but teaching is performance, and the more you perform, the better the class goes, and i don't mean the empty kind of performance, but the kind where you stand up there alone and unsure, and pretend you are nothing but brave. it has not so much to do with knowledge and brilliance, and everything to do with the vulnerable willingness to be present. ah, teaching.

oh, and oh, i want to talk about the crit i transcribed, which blew my mind. but you'll have to wait for that... because. i have to go do a little work before i fall asleep. so, this is me, letting go in the moment.