a stepping stone

all quotes from start where you are by pema chodron

"underneath all that craving or aversion or jealousy or feeling wretched about yourself, underneath all that hopelessness and despair and depression there's something extremely soft. . . when these things arise, train gradually and very gently without making it into a big deal. begin to get the hang of feeling what's underneath the story line. feel the wounded heart that's underneath the addiction, self-loathing, or anger."

"you breathe the anger in; you remove the object. . . now you own the anger completely. you drive all blames into yourself. it takes a lot of bravery, and it's extremely insulting to ego."

"your own pain is like a stepping stone. your heart develops more and more, and even if someone comes up and insults you, you could genuinely understand the whole situation because you understand so well where everybody's coming from."

"part of awakening is to cultivate honesty and clear seeing. sometimes people take the lojong teaching to mean that if you're not to blame others but instead to connect with the feelings beneath your own story line, it would be wrong to say that someone has harmed you. however, part of honesty, clear seeing, and straightforwardness is being able to acknowledge that harm has been done."

"this is tricky business. what's the difference between seeing that harm has been done and blaming? perhaps it is that rather than point the finger of blame, we raise questions: 'how can i communicate? how can i help the harm that has been done unravel itself? how can i help others find their own wisdom, kindness, and sense of humor?'"

"setting goals for others can be aggressive -- really wanting a success story for ourselves. when we do this to others, we are asking them to live up to our ideals. instead, we should just be kind."

from what raw ground

I.
granite, salt, half circle of brick
bread and marbles, meats and signs.
heavy hands in pockets, around matches.
clumsy.

put on a hat.
keep feet sneakered and pointed.
to work, to work.
must work, must move
on.

a chamber, a cave,
anything dark and echo-prone.
i came for something
to learn
not to have.

but will i leave?

II.
steps tonight, smoke again, spinach.
check check check, the little things, lists,
privileges. what does it mean
anymore? stay in your lane.

overheard conversations sound like wind
on the hill, fluorescence, downpours.
the phone call is for a bonfire,
i have things to burn.

i have things to bury.
don't we all

III.
on the walk, facedown and dead:
small brown bat.
which cat killed it
why it sits there

oh the sidewalk

i want to do something.
i don't

IV.
deep water is trapping, feels like lungs
covered in ash. but what of quiet eyes
caught me in their bluest
in my bluest

silence. i was so cold,
shivering with memory
and sickness. the belly lurches,
head hammers,

throw up
sink down

too far underwater, i thought
but it is happening so quietly, i think
almost like a betrayal
almost

V.
grass. we are standing. just
standing. small flags announcing
borders, boxes. something was organized,
not me.

not a hand, turning
not a corner, turning
not any of this

what narration cannot do,
though attempts are made.

VI.
we are standing, just standing.
eggs nearby, dozens.
i note: my blood, the table.
between, the proximate.
we take note of the movements.
i write, yes

and there is certainty. but what of quiet
eyes caught me, have been
catching me, have followed me
in their bluest
in my bluest

in the wind on the hill
through hat shoes sweater boots
plants paper apologies
in ripe water, warm flowers,
tender, ready eyes

your deliberate voice.

i surprise myself,
strangely willing.
crack

open, again.

how did you do it?

feel your way

all quotes from the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed

"hardness is not the absence of emotion, but a different emotional orientation towards others. the hard white body is shaped by its reactions: the rage against others surfaces as a body that stands apart or keeps its distance from others. we shouldn't look for emotions 'in' soft bodies. emotions shape the very surfaces of bodies, which take shape through the repetition of actions over time, as well as through orientations towards and away from others. indeed, attending to emotions might show us how all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we have with others."

"emotions are intentional in the sense that they are 'about' something: they involve a direction or orientation towards an object. the 'aboutness' of emotions means they involve a stance on the world, or a way of apprehending the world. . . emotions are relational: they involve (re)actions or relations of 'towardness' or 'awayness' in relation to such objects."

"emotions should not be regarded as psychological states, but as social and cultural practices. . . emotion is not what comes from the individual body, but is what holds or binds the social body together."

"feelings become a form of social presence rather than self-presence. in my model of sociality of emotions, i suggest that emotions create the very effect of the surfaces and boundaries that allow us to distinguish an inside and an outside in the first place. . . it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the 'i' and the 'we' are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others."

"the model of emotional contagion. . . is useful in its emphasis on how emotions are not simply located in the individual, but move between bodies."

"emotions in their very intensity involve miscommunication, such that even when we feel we have the same feeling, we don't necessarily have the same relationship to that feeling."

"the relationship between movement and attachment is instructive. what moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in place, or gives us a dwelling place. hence movement does not cut the body off from the 'where' of its inhabitance, but connects bodies to other bodies: attachment takes place through movement, through being moved by the proximity of others."

"the work i am most indebted is the work of feminist and queer scholars who have attended to how emotions can attach us to the very conditions of our subordination. such scholars have shown us how social forms (such as the family, heterosexuality, the nation, even civilisation itself) are effects of repetition. . . my argument about the cultural politics of emotions is developed not only as a critique of the psychologising and privatisation of emotions, but also as a critique of a model of social structure that neglects the emotional intensities, which allow such structures to be reified as forms of being."

"it also follows that we should not look for emotions only where the attribution of 'being emotional' is made. what is posited as 'unemotional' also involves emotions, as ways of responding to objects and others. i will not be equating emotionality with femininity. see campbell (1994) for an important critique of how women are 'dismissed' through being seen or 'judged' as being emotional."

"even feelings that are immediate, and which may involve 'damage' on the skin surface, are not simply feelings that one has, but feelings that open bodies to others. my analysis introduces the concept of 'intensification' to show how pain creates the very impression of a bodily surface. i also consider how pain can shape worlds as bodies, through the ways in which stories of pain circulate in the public domain."

"when we talk about the displacement between objects of emotion, we also need to consider the circulation of words for emotion. . . the word 'mourns' might get linked to other emotion words: anger, hatred, love. the replacement of one word for an emotion with another word produces a narrative. our love might create the condition for our grief, our loss could become the condition for our hate, and so on. the emotion does its work by 'reading' the object: for example, others might get read as the 'reason' for the loss of the object of love, a reading which easily converts feelings of grief into feelings of hate."

"the surfaces of bodies 'surface' as an effect of the impressions left by others. . . the surfaces of collective as well as individual bodies take shape through such impressions."

"i have been overwhelmed by how much 'emotions' have been a 'sticking point' for philosophers, cultural theorists, psychologists, sociologists, as well as scholars from a range of other disciplines. this is not surprising: what is relegated to the margins is often, as we know from deconstruction, right at the centre of thought itself."

after bei dao / after jean valentine

by eduardo c. corral from slow lightning

the skin of your deity smells like gasoline

your prayers are added to the pyre

a gold wheel spinning

once your voice broke out in a sweat

each word a salt lick

there are fingers rooting inside a violin

orchestral maneuvers

in the middle of the pandemic

you mistook a group of ghosts for an orchard

you, coward

fingers are rooting inside a violin to pull out

the last scraps of birdsong

a gold wheel spinning in your mind

like insomnia

dogs

"in capitalism, we are told it is a 'dog eat dog' world. in scarcity cultures, dogs are likely to eat other dogs even when food remains, in anticipation of the aggression of others. we are told to look out for ourselves because others will not extend kindness or generosity to us. when community members make choices presuming that others will fail them and are not trustworthy - that it is best to look out for yourself because no one else will - you are complicit in creating a culture where that is true. in cynicism, we anticipate the worst and so manifest it. the seven of feathers is a calculus based on the assumptions of how others will react. sometimes the world is bleak. we witness our community's collapse in moments when we would most like to see our friends rally together and take care of one another."

"am i making choices that privilege my wellbeing to the detriment of others? are my choices informed by the assumption that other people will do me wrong? further, ask yourself: are members of my community, family, or friend group looking out for me? do i trust the people around me? the seven of feathers does not suggest you are wrong to imagine other people could be disloyal to you, or make choices that come at a cost to you. instead, it asks you to examine the ways you could disrupt that."

no!

by mueen bessissou

his wounds said: "no!"
his chains said: "no!"
and the turtledove which shielded his
wound with her feather
said: "no!"
"no!" for those who sold and bought
gaza's silver anklet.
they sold the bullets and bought a goose.

quaking goose!
stop for a moment.
and listen to him
saying: "no!"
pity him; he did not die under neon lights,
between the candlestick and the moon.
pity him; there was no formal announcement
or a dumb funeral.
no moaning poem nor song.
songs!
let me compose, if only one line of verse,
that i may recite it to all the men with
long and false beards.

stop quaking for a moment
and listen to him saying: "no!"
like the solid fence of a horse in gaza.
everyday, he gets killed one thousand times,
quaking goose!


from a lover from palestine and other poems

the promise

by marie howe from what the living do

in the dream i had when he came back not sick
but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn't speak, as if
there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn't break.

his silence was what he could not
not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living,

as we do, in time.
and i told him: i'm reading all this buddhist stuff,

and listen, we don't die when we die. death is an event,
a threshold we pass through. we go on and on

and into light forever.
and he looked down, and then back up at me. it was the look we'd pass

across the kitchen table when dad was drunk again and dangerous,
the level look that wants to tell you something,

in a crowded room, something important, and can't.

true stories

by margaret atwood

i

don't ask for the true story;
why do you need it?

it's not what i set out with
or what i carry.

what i'm sailing with,
a knife, blue fire,

luck, a few good words
that still work, and the tide.

ii

the true story was lost
on the way to the beach, it's something

i never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light,

my blurred footprints
filling with salt

water, this handful
of tiny bones, this owl's kill;

a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,
the glint of an old picnic,

the hollows made by lovers
in sand a hundred

years ago: no clue.

iii

the true story lies
among the other stories,

a mess of colours, like jumbled clothing
thrown off or away,

like hearts on marble, like syllables, like
butchers' discards.

the true story is vicious
and multiple and untrue

after all. why do you
need it? don't ever

ask for the true story.

cyborg aesthetic

 [photo of rihanna, one hand over eye / taken from an illuminati conspiracy theory website]

all quotes from chapter 8, "a cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century" from the book simians, cyborgs, and women by donna j. haraway

"this chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. . . the cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. it is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence."

"the relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical domination, are at issue in the cyborg world. unlike the hopes of frankenstein's monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos. . . [cyborgs] are wary of holism but needy for connection."

"pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the spectre of the ghost in the machine. . . but basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. they could not achieve man's dream, only mock it. they were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. to think they were otherwise is paranoid. now we are not so sure. late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert."

"the boundary between phsyical and non-physical is very imprecise for us. . . writing, power, and technology are old partners in western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. . . our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile - a matter of immense human pain in detroit and singapore. people are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. cyborgs are ether, quintessence."

"a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints."

"consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. with the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in 'essential' unity. there is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women. there is not even such a state as 'being' female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. . . chela sandoval. . . has theorized a hopeful model of political identity called 'oppositional consciousness', born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class. . . sandoval's argument has to be seen as one potent formulation for feminists out of the world-wide development of anti-colonialist discourse. . . as orientalism is deconstructed politically and semiotically, the identities of the occident destablize, including those of feminists."

"cyborg feminists have to argue that 'we' do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage. . . but in the consciousness of our failures, we risk lapsing into boundless difference and giving up on the confusing task of making partial, real connection."

"one important route for reconstructing socialist-feminist politics is through theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology, including crucially the systems of myth and meanings structuring our imaginations. the cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. this is the self feminists must code."

"to be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labour force; seen less as workers than as servers; subjected to time arrangements on and off the paid job that make a mockery of a limited work day; leading an existence that always borders on being obscene, out of place, and reducible to sex."

"the permanent partiality of feminist points of view has consequences for our expectations of forms of political organization and participation. we do not need a totality in order to work well. the feminist dream of a common language, like all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experience, is a totalizing and imperialist one. in that sense, dialectics too is a dream language, longing to resolve contradiction. perhaps, ironically, we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be man, the embodiment of western logos."

"every story that begins with original innocence and privileges the return to wholeness imagines the drama of life to be individuation, separation, the birth of the self, the tragedy of autonomy, the fall into writing, alienation; that is, war, tempered by imaginary respite in the bosom of the other. these plots are ruled by a reproductive politics - rebirth without flaw, perfection, abstraction. in this plot women are imagined either better or worse off, but all agree they have less selfhood, weaker individuation, more fusion to the oral, to mother , less at stake in masculine autonomy. but there is another route to having less at stake in masculine autonomy, a route that does not pass through woman, primitive, zero, the mirror stage and its imaginary. it passes through women and other present-tense, illegitimate cyborgs, not of woman born, who refuse the ideological resources of victimization so as to have a real life. these cyborgs are the people who refuse to disappear on cue."

"why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin?"

"monsters have always defined the limits of community in western imaginations."

"cyborg imagery... means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. . . a cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted. one is too few, and two is only one possibility. intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceases to be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment. the machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. the machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. we can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. we are responsible for boundaries."

"cyborg gender is a local possibility taking a global vengeance. race, gender, and capital require a cyborg theory of wholes and parts. there is no drive in cyborgs to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experience of boundaries, their construction and deconstruction."

"i would suggest that cyborgs have more to do with regeneration and are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most birthing.  . . we have all been injured, profoundly. we require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender."

lemonade.

finally.
crying for ten minutes straight near the end.
less the music / more the visuals, the narrative, the honesty, the poetry.

 

(poetry by warsan shire)

i am accused of tending to the past

by lucille clifton

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

on violence

all quotes from the wretched of the earth by frantz fanon

"decolonization is always a violent event."

"the colonized world is a world divided in two. the dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations. in the colonies, the official legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or soldier. in capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious, the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the exemplary integrity of workers decorated after fifty years of loyal and faithful service, the fostering of love for harmony and wisdom, those aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order."

"the 'native' sector is not complementary to the european sector. the two confront each other, but not in the service of a higher unity. governed by a purely aristotelian logic, they follow the dictates of mutual exclusion: there is no conciliation possible, one of them is superfluous."

"challenging the colonial world is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. it is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different."

"the intellectual who, for his part, has adopted the abstract, universal values of the colonizer is prepared to fight so that colonist and colonized can live in peace in a new world. but what he does not see, because precisely colonialism and all its modes of thought have seeped into him, is that the colonist is no longer interested in staying on and coexisting once the colonial context has disappeared."

"the colonized intellectual learned from his masters that the individual must assert himself. the colonialist bourgeoisie hammered into the colonized mind the notion of a society of individuals where each is locked in his subjectivity, where wealth lies in thought. but the colonized intellectual who is lucky enough to bunker down with the people during the liberation struggle, will soon discover the falsity of this theory. . the colonized intellectual witnesses the destruction of all his idols: egoism, arrogant recrimination, and the idiotic, childish need to have the last word."

"whether it be in the djemaas of north africa or the palavers of west africa, tradition has it that disputes which break out in a village are worked out in public. by this i mean collective self-criticism with a touch of humor because everyone is relaxed, because in the end we all want the same thing. the intellectual sheds all that calculating, all those strange silences, those ulterior motives, that devious thinking and secrecy as he gradually plunges deeper among the people. in this respect then we can genuinely say that the community has already triumphed and exudes its own light, its own reason."

"the colonized subject is a persecuted man who is forever dreaming of becoming the persecutor. . . this impulse to take the colonist's place maintains a constant muscular tonus. it is a known fact that under certain emotional circumstances an obstacle actually escalates action."

"in the colonial world, the colonized's affectivity is kept on edge like a running sore flinching from a caustic agent."

"stating the principle 'it's them or us' is not a paradox since colonialism, as we have seen, is precisely the organization of a manichaean world, of a compartmentalized world."

"the existence of an armed struggle is indicative that the people are determined to put their faith only in violent methods. the very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decide to express themselves with force. in fact the colonist has always shown them the path they should follow to liberation. the argument chosen by the colonized was conveyed to them by the colonist, and by an ironic twist of fate it is now the colonized who state that it is the colonizer who only understands the language of force. the colonial regime owes its legitimacy to force and at no time does it ever endeavor to cover up this nature of things."

"the violence of the colonial regime and the counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity. . . the colonist's logic is unrelenting and one is only baffled by the counterlogic of the colonized's behavior if one has remained out of touch with the colonists' way of thinking."

"to the expression 'all natives are the same,' the colonized reply: 'all colonists are the same'. . .the theory of the 'absolute evil of the colonist' is in response to the theory of the 'absolute evil of the native'."

"the work of the colonist is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the colonized. . . for the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonist."

"europe's well-being and progress were built with the sweat and corpses of blacks, arabs, indians, and asians. this we are determined never to forget."

"the basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anticolonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. what matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences."

"colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their police force from our territories. for centuries the capitalists have behaved like real war criminals in the underdeveloped world. deportation, massacres, forced labor, and slavery were the primary methods used by capitalism to increase its gold and diamond reserves, and establish its wealth and power. . . and when we hear the head of a european nation declare with hand on heart that he must come to the aid of the unfortunate peoples of the underdeveloped world, we do not tremble with gratitude. on the contrary, we say among ourselves, 'it is a just reparation we are getting.' so we will not accept aid for the underdeveloped countries as 'charity'. such aid must be considered the final stage of a dual consciousness - the consciousness of the colonized that it is their due and consciousness of the capitalist powers that effectively they must pay up."

"it is clear therefore that the young nations of the third world are wrong to grovel at the feet of the capitalist countries. we are powerful in our own right and the justness of our position."

easily led

what does it matter

if i smoke at my window
-the tall one-

i am on my knees
on a stool
i have moved bones

like the president
or his wife
on television

unlike the show
my legs tremble
hand shakes

death remembers me

what does it matter
if ten years went by
or five or two or
none

what i feel in my blood
is a type of prayer
that i cannot
finish

4.29.16

The Verb to Be

by André Breton
translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow

I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a terrace by the sea. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of insignificant facts like seeds that leave one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss that forms on a rock or the foam that rocks in a glass. It’s a boat riddled with snow, if you will, like birds that fall and their blood doesn’t have the slightest thickness. I know the general outline of despair. A very small shape, defined by jewels worn in the hair. That’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no clasp can be found and whose existence can’t even hang by a thread. That’s despair for you. Let’s not go into the rest. Once we begin to despair we don’t stop. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o’clock, I despair of the fan towards midnight, I despair of the cigarette smoked by men on death row. I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no heart, my hand always touches breathless despair, the despair whose mirrors never tell us if it’s dead. I live on that despair which enchants me. I love that blue fly which hovers in the sky at the hour when the stars hum. I know the general outline of the despair with long slender surprises, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms against a floral wallpaper. I don’t remember anything and it’s always in despair that I discover the beautiful uprooted trees of night. The air in the room is as beautiful as drumsticks. What weathery weather. I know the general outline of despair. It’s like the curtain’s wind that holds out a helping hand. Can you imagine such a despair? Fire! Ah they’re on their way … Help! Here they come falling down the stairs … And the ads in the newspaper, and the illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, beat it, you dirty sandpile! In its general outline despair has no importance. It’s a squad of trees that will eventually make a forest, it’s a squad of stars that will eventually make one less day, it’s a squad of one­-less-­days that will eventually make up my life.

sleep-scattering

poems from song offerings by rabindranath tagore
translated by joe winter

77

the pain the soul bears, and life's being
of pain, alas, even from birth's freeing --
     o let your flame tower high and higher,
     spare not, admit me to the fire
     though frail, all earth-bound pale desire
          into its ashes fleeing.

o sound the call, the call that must be,
     why needlessly postpone it?
this blind entanglement of the heart,
     tear it away, disown it!
          now may the crash of thunder break --
          so let the noise your conch will make,
          pride-shattering, sleep-scattering, wake
               into a brilliant seeing.

90

strike me more, i will endure it --
     let the blows come.
with a harder tune now make
     these life-strings thrum.
as yet the melody in them waking
is minor, its full tune not taking --
a crueller cadence, by your making,
     let it become.

kind compassion, o my dear one
     is not the whole.
in tender music's play let me not
     lose my soul.
let all fires explode and quiver,
let all winds cry out and shiver. . .
with all the skies awake, deliver
     the all and sum.

absent

quotes from in the realm of hungry ghosts by gabor mate

"psychological isolation tips people into addiction in the first place, and addiction keeps them isolated because it sets a higher value on their motivations and behaviors around the drug than on anything else - even human contact."

"if the differences between my behaviors and the self-annihilating life patterns of my clients are obvious, the similarities are illuminating - and humbling. i have come to see addiction not as a discrete, solid entity - a case of 'either you got it or you don't got it' - but as a subtle and extensive continuum."

"addictions, even as they resemble normal human yearnings, are more about desire than attainment. in the addicted mode, the emotional charge is in the pursuit and the acquisition of the desired object, not in the possession and enjoyment of it. the greatest pleasure is in the momentary satisfaction of yearning. the fundamental addiction is to the fleeting experience of not being addicted. the addict craves the absence of the craving state. for a brief moment he's liberated from emptiness, from boredom, from lack of meaning, from yearning, from being driven or from pain. he is free. his enslavement to the external - the substance, the object, or the activity - consists of the impossibility, in his mind, or finding within himself the freedom from longing or irritability."

"if in doubt, ask yourself one simple question: given the harm you're doing to yourself and others, are you willing to stop? if not, you're addicted. and if you're unable to renounce the behavior or to keep your pledge when you do, you're addicted."

"you may even devote your entire life to a passion, but if it's truly a passion and not an addiction, you'll do so with freedom, joy, and a full assertion of your truest self and values. in addiction, there's no joy, freedom, or assertion. . . addiction is centrifugal. it sucks energy from you, creating a vacuum of inertia. a passion energizes you and enriches your relationships. it empowers you and gives strength to others. passion creates, addiction consumes - first the self and then the others within its orbit."

"my relationship with rae loses vitality. because my internal world is dominated by obsession, i have little to say, and what i do say rings hollow in my own ears. because my attention is pulled inward, the interest i offer her becomes dutiful, rather than genuine. when i'm in one of my addictive cycles, it's almost as if i were engaged in a sexual affair, with all the attendant obsession, lying, and manipulation. above all, i'm absent. it's impossible to be present when you're putting up walls to keep from being seen. intimacy and spontaneity are sacrificed."

oh no

what comes after a word like that

(you know)

the right word is not "puddle"

not "mess"

not "loss" or "lifeless"

the right phrase was not

"come down"

nor "stay up"

(i see you)

"don't drown"
could be said, held

under

writhe

ache

echo

moan

writhe

ache

echo

moan

writhe

ache

echo

moan

no words

are stones

to step

a way back

way back
back

rest here.

throb

&

hold

the enormous

terror

it's fascist

will be said

queer, will be said

sad will be said

thrown back

all wrong

all wrong

4.28.16

nothing

by margaret atwood from true stories

nothing like love to put blood
back in the language,
the difference between the beach and its
discrete rocks & shards, a hard
cuneiform, and the tender cursive
of waves; bone & liquid fishegg, desert
& saltmarsh, a green push
out of death. the vowels plump
again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers
themselves move around these
softening pebbles as around skin. the sky's
not vacant and over there but close
against your eyes, molten, so near
you can taste it. it tastes of
salt. what touches
you is what you touch.

the last time

by marie howe, from what the living do

the last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his hands and said,
i'm going to die soon. i want you to know that.

and i said, i think i do know.
and he said, what surprises me is that you don't.

and i said, i do. and he said, what?
and i said, know that you're going to die.

and he said, no, i mean know that you are.