Zines and context - I've been prolific lately, ok?

Back when I was doing zines all the time, I used to be able to see an image in a printed media document and take it completely out of context. To see the image as it is, without explanation, without external influence. I seem to have lost that ability. To see an image or phrase out of it's realm. Maybe I grew up and saw the context of everything and my childish creation of my own environment died with it. It all has extensive cultural and situational context and I can no longer see it outside of that. But I'm trying to find it again. I'm trying to see beyond. I'm trying to build my own aesthetic back. Full of the wonder and excitement that I've lost, or maybe just toned down. Same old introspective and random Blanche. Just with older eyes.

Lies I tell myself.

In general, I don't get involved. I let everyone else run around crazy-like doing their thing. When I'm attracted to someone, they're so rarely attracted to me, I usually don't bother doing anything about it and try as hard as I can to quell the feelings as soon as possible. Distractions are the key. When someone I don't like is attracted to me, I generally ignore it as much as possible. I stay out of it. This crazy bullshit is more than I'm willing to deal with and I get frustrated really easily.
Sometimes, however, I do get involved. Usually, something I've been trying to hide from myself bites me in the ass when I was wrong and the person does actually have feelings for me. And those feelings I'd been hiding from myself weren't hidden very well and I end up making a total fool of myself. “Err... so it would seem I think about you a lot more than should be normal and umm... I'm sorry for not noticing it sooner because... my emotions should be sending me emails instead of impulses I will inevitably ignore.”
This happens embarrassingly often. I must admit to a few things.
1.I am an extremely cautious person and this extends to matters of the heart. I try never to give it to people who have any chance of completely rejecting it. Meaning, I am so cautious, I usually fall for people I know already love me as a friend, so that I know that even if they reject me romantically, they won't reject me as a friend. I am therefore safe. I won't be losing anyone, not really. And friends are more important anyway, right? Romance is expendable and you can always find someone else to fill that void (I'm speaking metaphorically, but yeah).
2.Apparently, even when I try to step outside my comfort zone and take a chance with someone I am not already BFFs with, I still make the situation as safe as possible. I put a deadline on it. Something cataclysmic is happening soon to make either the whole relationship or the emotional closeness something I won't really have to deal with soon. Just in case. Hell, even with Max I got together with him knowing we were going to different schools and that I wouldn't have to be physically with him in however many months. This made it much easier to ignore future consequences. If it all ends soon, there's no having to deal with the reality of the situation. Of course, that's just a lie I tell myself at the time, but it works... sorta.
3.The fact remains that I screw up every serious relationship I'm in. I mean, not that I've been in many but both of the serious ones, based on how long I was with them, ended in stupidity brought about by me. And they both had long distance factors. I called Colin that day and he automatically knew it was breakup time. I didn't even have to say anything. Max … well, Max wouldn't listen to me when I told him I would never be the girl he wanted, so maybe that's not entirely my fault.
In any case, I hate this crap. I often just choose to opt out. Most men who like me have something inherently wrong with them (manipulative bastards disguised as nice guys) to make me really not like them. When it does happen, it's always fraught with some sort of crazy. I'm crazy, he's crazy, we're both not mature enough to handle a relationship. Whatever, it all leads me back to the same place. Driving home listening to 46&2 very loudly and enjoying every second. Mmm. I'm OK with that. I made peace with my solitude a long time ago.

Back to Jack

Going back to Jack Kerouac's prose is like going back to an old lover. With arms you know and touches you understand. His prose brings with it memories of comforts lost. Of moments shared. Though i feel so comforted in Jack's prose, i know it cant last. That all i'm doing is pretending again. Im pretending to be the same girl i was then. She loved those arms and lived for those touches. But im not her. I'm someone else now. And as much as i hate to admit it, Jack's prose doesnt hold me the way it used to. I am loose in his grip and distracted in his eyes. Not that i know where i am, i just know im not there anymore.
Maybe thats why i switched to scifi/fantasy. There's always something new, something different. Some new epic adventure. I guess i've become the kind of woman who is distracted easily and doesnt get touched like she used to. Maybe that says a lot more about me than i'm willing to admit.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

AngryBlanche gets a 20-second spot

This is your typical bitchy rant. No getting around it, I am still pissed off, almost a week later. I felt the need to write something about it because... I'm pretty passive aggressive and, to be honest, the subject of my annoyance likely won't listen to me in person anyway. Also, I'm hoping this will help me get over my feelings of violent rage.
In keeping with this aesthetic, the format of this will most certainly be a "Shitty First Draft" a la Anne Lamotte. I will not stop, it will be in the second person, and there is NO obligation to read it. Seriously, just cuz you feel the need to support my creative efforts, does not mean you have to read this raving rant about someone you probably don't know.
That said, let me set the scene.
There are, admittedly, extenuating circumstances that made last week particularly frustrating. I will acknowledge that things possibly wouldn't have come to a head last week were these circumstances not present. But they were. And everyone but you knew it. One of those things that gets around because people talk and look at each other and pay attention to their surroundings and their friends. But you weren't looking, didn't want to, and instead drowned yourself once again in more drink than could down a cow. Not a rare occurrence, and I admit to not expecting much more from you. Most days, it's entertaining enough. Loveydovey drunk that you are, I can usually write off the bullshit you say to the obscene amount of alcohol in your system.
This time, however, your head-up-your-ass attitude was just the last straw on a heap of obnoxious bullshit I've been having to deal with from you for weeks now.
Now, I could deal with the whole "Oh, I love you, I want you to be my future ex wife, you're just sunshine and rainbows!" shit normally because it usually stops there. I mean, it annoys me for various reasons, but there's a lot I can simply ignore. It's when you start talking about sex with me (strap-ons and otherwise) and touching me and stuff, that's when we have a serious problem. Of the "Oh HELL NO!" variety.
First problem: I have known you for approximately ten years. TEN YEARS. Means I met you when I was about SIXTEEN. Now, a lot's changed since then, but that's still seriously weird. I remember you when I was sixteen and bright-eyed bushy tailed all dorky kid at a dorky school super into The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of which you were a member. All of you guys were so brotherly type taking in young strays and teaching them to be crazy and comfy. It was a nice environment back then. But I was sixteen. I was the kid. THE kid. Like a tiny protege of the cast. Now that was a long time ago, but... still... thinking about that makes this new dynamic super fucking creepy.
Next problem: I've known you for all that fucking time and you didn't notice that I'm not all sunshine and rainbows? Did I have to send out a memo? Are you seriously that shallow? "Hi, umm... I know you still think of me as this girl who eats sunshine and shits rainbows but... I'm really a fucking violent smartass piece of work and I'd appreciate it if all previous versions of me be stricken from the record. THANKS!" Who have you been speaking to these last few years at the club that you think I'm some happy-go-lucky girly girl? Are you fucking blind? Not only am I smarter than that image makes me out to be, I'm not nearly that smiley. I am not a member of the Power Puff Girls. I haven't even watched the Power Puff Girls in at least eight years. A lot of shit happens in ten years that changes a person. I was barely that smiley girl then. Now if you think that's all I am, you're just fucking shallow. I realize that this is, actually, a common misconception of me. Most guys I am around think of me as this pigtailed bouncy rainbow girl. But if a guy gets to know me a little better, they notice that 70% of that is an act. Mostly an ironic comment on that image. I promise, I'm fuckin smarter than that and don't you forget it.
Another problem: Touching me like that is inappropriate. Period. Get your fucking hands off me, I don't care how drunk you are. Next time, I won't try to quell the urge for violence, I'll just elbow you in the throat. And yes, THIS is the girl I expect someone who's known me for ten years to at least have an inkling of. Some idea that I am capable of anger, violence and more rational thought than a fucking cartoon character. Did you need this memo? Should I have sent that? Oops, I had that on my calendar for next week.
And Another: This all went down a week after I ran into you at a different bar and you totally ignored me, chasing some OTHER TAIL. So don't you talk to me about love and whatever, cuz you were not about to give up on that other girl to chat with me about anything. Was it cuz I was with a couple of dudes? Never stopped you from talking to me before. Means you only talk to me when you're hyperdrunk and wanting to get some ass. Thanks, yo. Fuck off.
Last on my list: And we've come to the straw that killed the camel. I didn't think I had to update my facebook status that I was WITH HIM for that last week he was in town. You know, I didn't think it was necessary and, really, I didn't care. Everyone with two eyes was fully aware that he and I had been hooking up all week. But not you. You didn't notice the week before when I let him kinda claim me and yeah, guess who I chose above you? Him. Why? Because he knows I'm not some sunshine-chewing pigtailed Bubbles wannabe. Oh yeah, and you just kinda piss me off.

coulda, shoulda, woulda

You know those moments where you had an opportunity to say something or do something but you didnt take it? And you think about it later and continually kick yourself for keeping quiet? Those moments plague me. Probably because i'm too cautious to ever take those opportunities when they come.
This blog could be called Coulda Shoulda Woulda and i could post one such moment every week, and what i would have done, and never run out. Stretching as far back as i can remember and with a wide range of topics, reasons for keeping quiet, and reactions i should have had.
One surprisingly rich source of such moments is a Philosophy of Religion course that i took in the winter of 2007 (i think).
On the very first day the professor (yes, the dude was actually faculty) was only trying to explain why we were only going to be studying judeo-christian philosophy in the class. I had no problem with that. There's rich philosophies there and well worth a quarter of study. Though i was disappointed, i had been expecting it so i didnt mind. All the professor had to do was state the mission of the class and be done with it.
Instead, the professor starts talking about Aztec and Mayan sun gods and blood sacrifices. Of couse, having been several years since that class, i've forgotten the specific words he used, but he said something like "well that isnt logical, so we're not studying it" and made the practice of worshipping the sun, as well as blood sacrifices, sound downright silly.
Now, though i would have pointed out how racist that was, that wasnt even what i would have argued against.
The logic of worshipping the sun versus worshipping the judeo-christian god would have been my specific concern.
How isnt it logical to worship the sun? The sun actually gives life. Scientifically proven to feed plants and provide humans and animals with food and a warm enough planet for survival, the sun is The Source. In fact, Aton got it right. Dude, all things, all creation, all life (and thus all ideas, all thought, and thereby all gods) on Earth exist because of the Sun. So, exactly how isnt that a logical candidate for worship?
Alternately, you want to worship a god you cant see or feel or scientifically prove the effects of? Why? What exactly is the logic in that? There's nothing there. Its a mere figment. An idea. A concept. Worshipping the concept of god is like worshipping the concept of zero. Actually very much so. Just as philosophers play with the concept of god, see it move and transform observational realities, mathmaticians and scientists play with zero, and see it transform observational realities. Try dividing by zero and the universe explodes. Try rationalizing god and you'll end up in some kind of horrifying death circle of madness forever looping logic around your pinky finger until your intestines explode. I know this. I took the class. Got an A- i think.
So either trap yourself in infinite madness, or worship a physical entity that you can feel and see its effects all around you and inside you. Im eating a clementine right now that wouldnt exist were it not for the sun. So i figure worshipping the sun is pretty damn logical.
Then we come to the logic of providing a blood sacrifice to the sun in order to ensure that the sun does not stop providing us with pretty much everything. Just doesnt seem that far fetched to me. Think about if you saw the earth die every year without the sun in the winter, only to be reborn in the spring when it comes back. The rebirth can only happen after the death. So i figure it makes sense that someone's got to give their life, to die, in order for the sun to return. And it would be an honor. Give yourself for the greater good of the crops and the town and the civilization. And to return the Sun's favor, which it has bestowed so generously. It was a hard time to live in then (being any pre-industrial agricultural society) and so much depended on the sun, that anyone would probably do anything they could to ensure healthy crops. Now, i dont know those religions well enough to say whether that was the actual reason they made blood sacrifices or not, but thats just what the professor was arguing wasnt logical.
It just seems more logical to me to give something back to a god, in whatever form it takes, than to continually request from them. It makes sense to me that gods often take human attributes, so what happens when you constantly beg and request from a human and give nothing in return? They get pissed off and probably yell at you. When the sun gets pissed off, i'd imagine you'd get pretty hungry, as would your friends and your animals and all the plants around you.
It just shocked me how blatantly ridiculous these accusations were. And they were throwaway comments, as if it was widely accepted truth and we should move on to more important (read western and white) ideas. The professor went on to say more ridiculous things in effort to illustrate simple points (including one about the Jabberwocky which made it very clear he'd never bothered to actually read the poem. I should have spoken up about that one too) throughout the quarter. I gave up complaining because it was so obvious no one else in the class cared at all. So now i have a blog topic. Lucky you.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Earlham and Ulysses

Sometimes i miss Earlham so thoroughly that it aches. This time, just a rocking chair, fit for the meetinghouse, set it off. Other times its a smell or a taste. Something i could only get there. Sometimes its just a feeling.
Earlham is its own smell. Maybe the air is different inside the bubble. Its in the atmosphere there. Im not talking about monkey chow either, its like... coziness in a smell. Just like how Ben's car smells like independence, Earlham smells like that feeling you get when you're under blankets and you're safe and warm. The sun on your face while napping in OA 3rd floor. The walk through the Heart to Lobill. Third floor of Carpenter or the basement of Runyan. It all smells like that. Maybe smell is the wrong word, but its in the molecules and you breathe it in when you're there and like nicotine or childhood you crave it when it's gone. At least i do.
A part of me will always live there. I forgot her there like my pretend friend Penny got left at the mall when i was six. The ghost of EarlhamBlanche lives in the mosaic in the mailroom. She lives in Hoerner, in OA. She lives on the swing, in the chem labs. That part of me lives on but separated and maybe all of this, this blog, this reading Ulysses, this half-assed nod to furthering my education is an attempt to bring her back. Welcome EarlhamBlanche back to her natural home somewhere in my left ventrical or my occipital lobe, wherever my capacity for being multiple people at once lives.
Its funny how different EarlhamBlanche is too. Reading Ulysses i realize Stephen Dedalus is an annoyingly broody Hamletesque adolescent that i can nonetheless relate to, which is somewhat embarassing. I mean look at this whiny introspection. EarlhamBlanche would love that part best(and the part of me that came back from Earlham did kinda fall for him. Residual affection remembered from Portait? Maybe) Maybe im not relating my life or the people i see on the street to mythology... oh, wait I totally do that.... anyway, Leopold Bloom is much more adult. He quit worrying about existentialism and resolving his aspirations with his existence. He's actually more interesting to read because of it. ColumbusBlanche sees the difference and appreciates Bloom more, despite my affections, despite my ability to relate. I guess that shows what value i place on my introspection.
So what does that say about my whiny, Hamletesque angst and my inability to resolve my aspirations with my reality? Put up or shut up, i guess. Maybe im just a Telemachus waiting for my Odysseus, walking along my shore in anxious contemplation. Maybe i make too many metaphors already and i dont need more. Maybe its something as quotidian as a smoothie with whipped cream and a black and white muffin from the jazzman cafe in the coffee shop.
Whatever i am subcosciously searching for, i doubt Stephen or Bloom can help me. Stephen needs a serious dose of reality and Bloom is... preoccupied with the oppressiveness of reality. And i wont ever get that EarlhamBlanche back, which i should have learned from the loss of CAHSBlanche (same scars like the separation of conjoined twins- CAHSBlanche lives in the theatre, the humanities room, the courtyard, laughing and dancing, languishing in the depths of education and youth). I never learn lessons like that. Life should quit trying to teach them.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Winter

There have been very few moment where i have ever enjoyed winter for winter's sake. i come from people (specifically my mother) who cannot abide coldness of any degree. Any temberature under 70 degrees fahrenheit and she needs a sweater. While i am not of such an extreme, i do not enjoy cold, slow-moving winter molecules, which tempers my view of the whole season, really.
But there are some moments where winter's cold can be a sensational ecstasy.
Basketball in middle school was a horrifying torture. A hideous montage of humilation and shame as Jhonen would say. In any reasonable school with a normal number of students, i never would have been allowed on that team. Had they not needed bodies so desperately, i might have been spared the endless basketballs to the face and hurt fingers. As it was, at least three nights a week in the winter, i had basketball practice.
The best thing about it was definitely when we got to go home. No more dropped balls and Ms. Sue's exasperated looks. No more hesitations in my defense and running away from the ball on offense. When Mother finally came in to get me, i got a few hours of freedom.
But above all of the emotional relief was the pleasure of walking outside in my uniform, still sweaty from the suicides, into the prickly quiet cold. Sweat chilled my skin, goosebumps erupted and my hair stood on end. i wanted to stay outside forever, or at least until the sweat cooled and my lips turned purple. Mother would try to get me to put my coat on, but i knew she'd had the heat turned up in the car and i'd been so hot for so long it was hard to give up one of the few bodily pleasures i had at that age. The cold air clensed my lungs and i felt finally free of my torture, of the body that hated me, of my inability to play a simple sport. Just for that moment, when the air first hits and blows everything else away. Before mother starts yelling at me about my coat, before i remember i have to do it all again tomorrow, before i remember all the fresh embarrassment from today's practice and all those before it. That brief moment, when you're an awkward and tired twelve-year-old girl covered in sweat and you walk out in the superwinter cold and take a deep breath. Mmmm.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9