June, 2004
musn't cage the le
there are a few interactions which have been perfect in the moment they occur, but surrounded by struggle and heartache. why can't we just leave them in their moments? why do we try to take those kisses and stretch them out into lifetimes? this seems doomed to failure. sometimes i lay quietly and remember those specific moments when it seemed like everything could be perfect. this morning i remembered one of those times, in a dorm room over a few detached idyllic days. total perfection, raw and new and sweet and complete in every way. self contained, like an egg. and where are we now? it doesn't even matter, because he didn't try to keep me then, and that is what made it all ok.
shameless lyrics posting
dont hold ongo get strong
well dont you know
there is no
modern romance
time, time is gone
it stops stops who it wants
well i was wrong
it never lasts
and there is no
this is no
modern romance
I HATE GAZPACHO
now that it is getting warmer in NYC, all the cafes seem to think they need to have some kind of cold soup. because they lack intelligence and/or creativity, they serve gazpacho.
i hate gazpacho. it is alternately to be viewed as:
a) watered down salsa you eat with a spoon
or
b) glorified v8 juice with chunks of vegetables in it
in closing, i never want to see, smell, or be near gazpacho again. and i pray that soup serving cafes across the 5 boroughs will get it together and come up with some other type of cold soup. or just fucking serve hot soup. who cares?!!!?
the end.
deja vu forever
why do i feel like i have been through this all before?
from the moment oliver and i set everything into motion, by kissing, i was confused, asking "have we been together before?" and it felt like i'd always been touching him, always been with him, always been conflicted about it.
and now, the familiar thought process of giving yet another person up, watching the emotions, the misplaced possessiveness, the desire to lash out, as peter fully detaches from me and moves into his new life. everything was so special and so unique, he was only one for me, or so i thought, and now it just feels like every other loss. every other ex, every other painful shedding of security, of hope. yes, he doesn't really love you anymore, you don't come first anymore, there is no where to go, yes, all the emotions. someone else sees him, they appreciate him like you never could, you understand, your failure is complete now. your failure is complete now and you can integrate it fully into yourself, stack it up on top of the other ones, piles of weight laying heavily in your chest, just getting bigger and bigger. work to forgive, work to apologize. "i'll never do this again." "i know what i did wrong and i'll never do it again." apologize to everything you see, to the sky, to the trees, to the doorframe, to the cat. feel anger, feel ashamed of the anger.
into my little heart
a memory:visiting the metropolitan museum of art with chocopa. (a memory within a memory: while there with chocopa i was caught in the memory of being there so happy with oliver a couple of weeks before. it had all been a grand adventure. it still is.) looking out the windows of the frank lloyd wright room at the snow, the sky clear and black and crisp over central park. in the sky, a huge blinking planet was attacking the impossibly docile moon with its brightness. we stared and argued about whether it was venus or saturn, i asked passersby if they knew. the conversations i remember centered around our dinner parties and hunting dogs, and wanting to be deeply inside another persons brain without having to ever touch them.
things are happening fast here. sadness rolls into excitement and then back again. but things feel right and proper.
I HATE YOU PLUTO
what an awful weekend. message from the universe, repeatedly over and over as painfully as possible: you have nowhere to go. you have no home. there is no safe place. and when you try to go to any of the places that might have possibly seemed like home, they've changed the locks.
i have to learn how to trust myself and feel safe in my own heart.
kathy said: "you don't believe there is abundance in the world."
she is right: saturn square sun.
survival mode begins now.
so i asked the mushroom, is there a pattern in the iching?
very distraught and discouraged tonight, but i perked up upon the prospect of casting the i-ching for the very first time. oliver bought me the wilhelm translation of the i-ching this weekend, and though i felt like laying down and dying before, i thought i'd cast it. sometimes in times of terrible discouragement and upset nothing pleases me more than putting my faith in divination - i did an online tarot reading too.
however it is important to note, before i share the results of my first interaction with the oracle of the iching, that my overarching feeling this evening was that of wanting to give up, of not trusting myself to be ok. of not being able to keep myself alive beyond the basic function of survival.
the basic gist of the i-ching is this: you throw coins (or sort yarrow stalks) six times, taking note of the numeric pattern of response. the numbers you get as a result of throwing the coins correspond to certain "lines" which form a hexagram. Each hexagram (there are 64) has a symbolic meaning which is set out in the i-ching, or, book of changes. so you look up the meaning in the book.
anyway. i cast the i-ching using the coin method, as i do not keep yarrow stalks around the house. the resulting hexagram was 7-8-8-7-7-7. no moving lines. here is my ascii drawing of it:
_______ ___ ___ ___ ___ _______ _______ _______
wilhelm's explanation & translation of the meaning:
ta ch'u / the taming power of the great
above: k'en - keeping still, the mountain
below: ch'ien - the creative, heavenThe hexagram has a threefold meaning, expressing different aspects of the concept "holding firm." Heaven within the mountain gives the idea of holding firm in the sense of holding together; the trigram K'en, which holds the trigram ch'ien still, gives the idea of holding firm in the sense of holding back; the third idea is that of holding firm in the sense of caring for and nourishing.
THE JUDGEMENT
THE TAMING POWER OF THE GREAT
Perseverance furthers.
Not eating at home brings good fortune.
It furthers one to cross the great water.
To hold firmly to great creative powers and store them up, as set forth in this hexagram, there is need of a strong, clear headed man who is honored by the ruler. The trigram of ch'ien points to strong creative power; k'en indicates firmness and truth. Both point to light and clarity and the daily renewal of character. Only through such daily self renewal can a man continue at the height of his powers. Force of habit helps to keep order in quiet times; but in periods where there is a great storing up of energy, everything depends on the power of the personality.
However, since the worthy are honored, as in the case of a strong personality entrusted with leadership by the ruler, it is an advantage not to eat at home but rather to earn one's bread by entering upon public office. Such a man is at harmony with heaven; therefore even great and difficult undertakings, such as crossing the great water, succeed.
THE IMAGE
Heaven within the mountain.
The image of THE TAMING POWER OF THE GREAT.
Thus the superior man acquaints himself with many
sayings of antiquity.
And many deeds of the past,
In order to strengthen his character thereby.
Heaven within the mountain points to hidden treasures. In the words and deeds of the past there lies hidden a treasure that men may use to strengthen and elevate their own characters. The way to study the past is not to confine oneself to mere knowledge of history but, through application of this knowledge, to give actuality to the past.
what i think of that result:
holding firm. perseverance. holding together. nourishment, clarity of self. these are all things i need right now and i feel the oracle is telling me this. there is a message about real creativity coming from holding strong and persevering.
i also think that through the image of the taming power of the great, the oracle is telling me that there is much to be learned from it which will strengthen my character. it's referring to itself as a hidden treasure of the past.
and that is awesome. i am really amazed and feel very calmed by the i-ching tonight.
now i will sleep lots.
evidence
there is a hard white ball of fibrous tissue attached to my uterus. it's there because of all the things i have kept inside and not put into words, art, and dancing. this may seem like an oversimplification but i'm ready to celebrate life again, and stop the guilt and shame and fear because it doesn't enable action and instead enables tumors.
tired:
making decisions based on fear of scarcity.
...
someone in the small room i share with coworkers thinks its ok to spray lysol randomly. it makes me so angry. how would they feel if i started spraying roach spray into the air? its the same level of disgusting chemical, and yet, commercials told us it makes things smell better so it's supposed to be ok? grr.
trust
i am totally paralyzed.
dont say no just say you dont know
i am experiencing neverending emotional turmoil. i am sometimes mean and sometimes i hate myself! and i made a thing grow on my uterus because of all the hating! but tonight i looked for sublets in sf and emailed someone about one near the ocean. and i had a vivid understanding of ocean beach then, how cold it would be and misty and that there would be big displaced eucalyptus trees nearby. and even if i don't take that sublet the ocean is still there. it's there right now. imagine, right now, it's misty at the ocean in san francisco, the eucalyptus trees are majestic and swaying slightly. there is weird sea pod grass growing around and it's cold and desolate in that way the outer sunset gets. and that is home. that is home!
tuggy is here and the built to spill cover of cortez the killer just came on. and it seems that all my former lovers are in the arms of others, at least in my mind, and yoko is here knowing everything. and i am talking to women on the internet and it is SO GOOD you have no idea. and maybe i fucked up today but i can't think about it anymore, i have to go forward.
and tonight when amy hugged me and i looked at her i swear she was the most beautiful thing in all the planet, her eyes were so perfect. i'm not being a lesbo, i'm just saying.
hate was just a legend
and war was never known
fat white cat
last night i dreamt that i was riding my bike fast across the open playa at burning man.
yoko is so sweet, she is asleep on my belly with her face buried in my shirt.
i love sitting on my front stoop in brooklyn.
in other news: i am learning to stand up for myself. it makes everything better.
♥
hazy
oh god, i have The Headache. i need the coffee. it's not quite time for me to leave the office under the pretense of lunch (where lunch = breakfast) in order to caffeinate and wake up.
the morning is the same as all the others... on the train at the same time, having an oliver-made slightly weird smoothie, switching to the A from the F at jay street. all the smells, all the people. into work at 10:45 exactly, just on the edge of being somewhat insultingly late, but i don't think anyone has ever noticed. or cared for that matter. the work, it gets done. listening to KCRW. the routine is strong and of course the impending change in it means i appreciate every nuance so much more.
after a fairly intense weekend of standing my ground in my relationship, getting a paper done, feeling free to actually love instead of fear, i couldn't sleep till 4am last night. i was up and down. my stomach hurt, i thought i would be sick. at some point i got up and made tea but then realized i was too tired to drink it and finally got back in bed next to oliver. he put his hand on my back and i fell asleep. woke up wondering where he was, roaming around the house confused.
...
/m toshok dude i'm supposed to stop eating sugar /m toshok because of the fibroid /m toshok but like /m toshok i can't /m toshok i mean /m toshok i'm sure it's *possible* /m toshok but i don't see the point of life without mochas [08:29] <*toshok*> i can help you /m toshok but i don't want to be helped
...
GAZPACHO UPDATE:
my fave local cafe had a non-gapacho cold soup yesterday. that is why they are my fave.
HAND WASHING UPDATE:
though some of you seemed to believe that i was trying to disavow myself from the obligation of washing my hands AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON, that is not the case. in actuality, i enjoy washing my hands a reasonable amount of times per day, as it keeps me from getting zitty (i touch my face a lot) and from getting diptheria after being on the subway. however, when i pee 5 to 7 times a day due my copious water consumption from my bunny cage, washing hands each time seems like total overkill. so i stopped. i wash the first time i pee (after subway), and sometime in the afternoon, sometimes maybe before i go eat lunch. it's going fine.
the wicked witch of the west
from my desk in midtown, i can see carnegie hall across the street and many other things, such as a few patches of sky. i was just outside having a peaceful late lunch in central park and things were reasonably normal out there. a man sat on a bench whistling at the squirrels and making a hand motion at them. when he did this they would leap obediently to the bench to receive a peanut. i'm sure he has spent hours in the park training them to do this. a man dozed next to me, sitting up on the bench. he had tattoos behind his ears. a woman walked by leading a tiny white dog which had pink dyed ears and tail. all was proceeding as normal.
but now, out the window, i see that the city has grown very dark in preparation for a much needed summer storm. the combination of the tall buildings and ominous sky makes for quite a dramatic scene.
it's been a busy few days. no time to think very much, just scurrying around fulfilling errands and obligations. the movers come tuesday and next week is my last week at work. that was sudden, right? back to california with me.
ps. i am messing with the archive stuff on the site today, so if the righthand stuff looks broken that is why
cages
i can't sleep. i don't understand why i have to do this. it was non-negotiable. why? i am angry.
if you love someone, why would you want to make them go through your shit with you? next time i am depressed and say something hurtful on chat, only to be told later that i am "abusive," can i remind him that it is "abusive" to me to want me to go to a place where it is a given that people will not like me?
why do i have to go?
seasons in the sun
this weekend i went to a wedding (pics here) like the ones from tv. it was a jewish one and people wore the little hats and there was a funny grinning DJ who played things like the fresh prince (gettin jiggy wit it) and sweet caroline (everyone sung along). he also played the havah negila (sp?) and they lifted the bride and groom up in chairs! and there were drunk men sweating with untucked shirts falling out of suit pants as the night wore on! also there were little blond children running around in pink dresses and being adorably loud at all the wrong moments! see? JUST LIKE TV!! there was a big white tent and everything!
the wedding was upstate in nature. oliver and i stayed at THE ALPINE LODGE which featured 70's decor with a bavarian theme. we had a big bed with silky curtains around it and a huge bathtub which we definitely made use of. everything in the room reminded me of an RV from 1978.
we had lunch near woodstock then drove to red hook and had hellos with our sweet friend heidi who lives near there. heidi had she-ra and he-man dolls in her car, though i didn't actually see them, i believe her when she tells me such things are occuring.
i have a baby tooth that never fell out and it's going to go soon. it's been loose for 20 years but i think it's finally really loose.
i told jim all of this before i told you, except the baby tooth part, and about she-ra, and i kind of think the version of the story he got was better.
ok ow sleep.
ps. i fly to sf july 3. CALIFORNIA HERE I COME, RIGHT BACK WHERE I STARTED FROM
pps. oliver is awesome.
the tooth fairy wants to fuck me
[13:49] bobby: i went to the dentist i'm still under the influence
[13:49] bobby: *nuzzles*
[13:49] le elly: of what?
[13:49] le elly: one of my teeth fell out last night
[13:50] bobby: *affection*
[13:50] le elly: it was a baby tooth that had never fallen out
[13:50] bobby: no2
[13:50] le elly: and last night it totally just gave up
[13:50] bobby: it hung in there for a while though
[13:50] bobby: you gotta give it credit
[13:54] le elly: totally
[13:54] le elly: i knew it was going to go soon
[13:54] le elly: and i really wanted to keep it
[13:54] le elly: but it came out while i was brushing my teeth and went down the drain
[13:54] le elly: :(
[13:55] bobby: no tooth fairy =(
[13:56] le elly: the tooth fairy came anyway!
[13:56] bobby: score1
[13:56] le elly: the tooth fairy brought me a pair of really nice pink thong panties
[13:56] le elly: i think that oliver and the tooth fairy are in cahoots.
yay
today is the first day in as long as i can remember that i have been able to just do what i want. my office is closed because they are moving cubes around, so i got to sleep as late as i want. much as i totally love oliver it was great to wake up alone with no sweet yammering boys distracting me from my own silence. i slept and slept and i laid around and i haven't spoken to anyone except the woman at naidre's who made me a mocha.
i am living with oliver and egg for a little while before its time to fly back to sf. yoko is still in my old apartment, all by herself with no furniture. she is lonely but i haven't moved her into olivers yet. today i went to visit her and she had dragged a little stuffed bear into the doorway. hello yoko. i love my cat.
yesterday i got all upset about going back to sf, worried that i would feel the same way i did before i left there: a distinct lack of opportunities. since then i've gotten two job callbacks so i feel a lot better about that.
i'm so happy today! i am decompressing from all of the stress of the past few weeks. the move, meeting olivers family, all of that. i am calming down and i'm just happier than i've been in so long. decompression.
life soars on
NATURE'S TIME IS CUBIC AND PERPETUAL. LINEAR TIME IS WRONG AND SUICIDAL.
...
fuck. i'm so glad that my job is about to be over. i am interested in getting back to studying.
i have been reading a book called "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America," by Peter Washington. it's a really interesting and engaging narrative history of the Theosophical society. but the most interesting thing i've learned from it has not been about Theosophy but about the Mormon church. An excerpt from Washington's discussion of Joseph Smith's ridiculous founding of the Mormon church:
Given to visions of God the Father and God the Son while wandering through fields, Smith was cautioned by both against joining any of the existing churches on the grounds that 'all their creeds are abominations'. He responded by founding his own church, inspired by an angel called Moroni, who appeared in September 1823 and told Smith that he would find buried in a nearby hill some 'Golden Plates' containing a new gospel in a strange language. The plates were accomponied by two magic stones, Thummin and Urim, fastened to a magic breastplate which Joseph should wear when he wanted to translate the gospel. He recovered the plates, which he hid under his bed and eventually transcribed the Book of Mormon, sometimes with the help of Urim and Thummim and sometimes simply by hiding his face in his hat and consulting a magic stone he had earlier used (unsuccessfully) for finding buried treasure. Though the semi-literate Smith dictated his translation to a scribe, he consulted the plates in secret, sitting behind a blanket strung over a rope while his scribe took down his words from the other side of the room.
i think many of us knew that the Mormon religion was based on something bizarre, but the extent of it was really unknown to me until i read that paragraph. here's a page about Smith's 'translation' of the Book of Mormon.
the book is full of all kinds of really interesting data about the proliferation of cults and seances that happened in the late 1800's and early 1900s and it explains so much about our modern day perceptions of religion as well as the genesis of the new age movement. it's really fascinating and very engaging.
that is all.
brooding at 11:24am. what happens
brooding at 11:24am.
what happens when all the fights are over and all borders have been lifted? is that supposed to be when the contentment comes? the daily routine, the sweet little moments that make up every day of your life together? i'm confused. i feel lost and unseen. i know it is all in myself though.
sorry to be intense
over the past few days i've been increasingly depressed and lonely. it's not the kind of loneliness where you want people around you, but it's the feeling of wanting to be deeply seen by another.
the feeling exists on the abstract layer: a feeling, ethereal desire, a longing that is unfulfillable. like the feeling of longing for a person or object you have only encountered in a dream. have you ever had a dream like that? you wake up lonely for the impossible stranger you met there? you spend the day missing them. that's the way this is, in its abstract layer. it is a generalized longing for an unattainable relationship with a person or system; a longing to be seen and held completely and thoroughly.
i have visions while i examine this longing. the visions are of a large white shimmering but slimy octopus like creature which envelops me totally in a Giger-esque horrific manner, sliding it's tentacles into each part of me, into my heart, into my stomach and my mouth, around my neck. it's not terrifying though, the creature/being/idea is benevolent and takes the empty space away. every empty space is gone. i can breathe easily inside it's embrace, i breathe air made of its parts.
there is a more mundane tangible layer of behavior that lives below this abstract visionary layer. it manifests as distraction, a need for attention, a need for some kind of sex. the desire to have hands in my mouth or any hole, but to have the hands really mean something, to have the hands represent the whole world. it's a generalized dissatisfied longing, unfulfilled and often ending in blame and despair. looking into computer screens and thinking of past lovers, looking for some answer to the desire.
it's nothing more than a consuming human need for wholeness, i suppose. to look outward for that completion, for the idea of a total love that is a cocoon to slide oneself into and never breath on one's own again. of course that is counter-intuitive to what we know is the truth here: i must go inside and look there for the connection. the need for poetry, for sight, for swimming in the ocean, for being under the sky, for taking care of my body, for reading books and being whole and alive, it can come from inside and nowhere else.
but it has been the kind of week where i sit awake and look at oliver sleep and want to just wake him up and make him do something, fight with me or fuck me or just talk to me. make something happen, lover. but needs like mine are really no one's burden but my own and when the aching comes only i can fill it.
i met my lord on a narrow street
tendering the official resignation letter today at work. tomorrow is my last day.
i'm conflicted about going back to SF sunday. what else is new i guess. me, conflicted? never! i'm actually considering just not going and staying here in new york for longer. that decision could happen anytime before i'm scheduled to fly sunday. but of course every day i feel a different way, and i'm learning that decisions really suck for me, so it's pretty much based on whatever my whim is sunday i guess. there seems to never be a reason to do anything over anything else. when i get out my trusty legal pad and make a list of pros and cons, i come up with the same answer: most situations are potentially wonderful if you work hard enough to make them that way.
i'm in that same uncertain insecure place i get where i don't know what to do because i don't trust myself. it's really been a theme for a couple of years and its really tiring.
i'm listening to one of toshok's favorite songs, and that makes me happy. hi toshok.
consulted the i-ching again last night, and got the same hexagram i got last time consulted it with basically the same question. there are 64 hexagrams so that's pretty strange. the message of the hexagram is "opposition" - the cominging of fire and water, man and woman. natural opposition creates order in the world. this time i got moving lines though, and the extended interpretation was pretty creepy and insightful. i'm really in love with the i-ching.
my father is going back to iraq in a couple of weeks. i'm really scared for him and worried about it. i haven't really said much about it or talked about it.
sometimes i feel like i don't have anyone to talk to about the things that upset me and scare me. i think because so many people have told me i'm dramatic my whole life, starting with my family, then continuing with a string of boyfriends, that i've really had a hard time standing up for my right to just be an emotional person. someone recently told me that that's what therapy is for and that i shouldn't count on lovers or friends to listen to me when i'm upset. maybe they are right. luckily this is my journal so i can be as upset and theatrical here as i like.
it's really difficult not to act out of fear.
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