first love

quotes by ivan turgenev from first love

"my father had a curious influence on me, and our relations were curious too. he took scarcely any interest in my education, but never hurt my feelings; he respected my freedom; he displayed - if one can put it that way - a certain courtesy towards me; only he never let me come at all close to him. i loved him, i was full of admiration for him; he seemed to me the ideal man - and god knows how passionately attached to him i should have been if i had not felt constantly the presence of his restraining hand. yet he could, whenever he wished, with a single word, a single gesture, instantly make me feel complete trust in him. my soul would open; i chattered to him as to a wise friend, an indulgent mentor. . . and then, just as suddenly, he would abandon me, his hand would again push me aside - kindly and gently - but, nevertheless, aside.

sometimes a mood of gaiety would come over him, and at such moments he was ready to play and romp with me, full of high spirits like a boy. he loved all violent physical exercise.

once, and only once, he caressed me with such tenderness that i nearly cried. . . then his gaiety and tenderness vanished without a trace. but when this happened it never gave me any hope for the future - i seemed to have seen it all in a dream. at times i would watch his clear, handsome, clever face. . . my heart would tremble, my entire being would yearn towards him. . . then, as if he sensed what was going on within me he would casually pat my cheek - and would either leave me, or start doing something, or else would suddenly freeze as only he knew how. instantly i would shrink into myself, and grow cold. his rare fits of affability towards me were never in answer to my own unspoken but obvious entreaties. they always came unexpectedly. when, later, i used to think about my father's character, i came to the conclusion that he cared nothing for me nor for family life; it was something very different he loved, which wholly satisfied his desire for pleasure. 'take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life,' he said to me once. on another occasion, being at that time a youthful democrat, i embarked on a discussion of liberty in his presence (on that day he was what i used to call 'kind'; then one could talk about anything to him).

'liberty,' he repeated. 'do you know what really makes a man free?'

'what?'

'will, your own will, and it gives power which is better than liberty. know how to want, and you'll be free, and you'll be master too.'"

/////
"zinaida guessed at once that i had fallen in love with her, but then i wouldn't have thought of concealing it. my passion amused her. she made fun of me, played with me, and tormented me. it is sweet to be the sole source, the arbitrary and irresponsible source of the greatest joys and profoundest miseries to someone else. i was like soft wax in the hands of zinaida; not that i alone had fallen in love with her. all the men who visited the house were hopelessly infatuated, and she kept them all on leading-strings at her feet. she found it amusing to excite alternate hopes and fears in them; to twist them according to her whim. she called this, 'knocking people against each other'; they did not even think of resistance, but gladly submitted to her. in her whole being, vital and beautiful, there was a peculiarly fascinating mixture of cunning and insouciance, artifice and simplicity, gentleness and gaiety. over everything she did and said, over every moment, there hovered a subtle, exquisite enchantment. everything expressed the unique, peculiar force of the life which played within her. her face, too, was constantly changing. it, too, was always in play. it seemed at almost the same instant mocking, pensive and passionate. an infinite variety of feelings, light and swift, succeeded each other like shadows of clouds on a windy summer day, in her eyes and on her lips. every one of her admirers was necessary to her. byelovzorov, whom she sometimes called 'my wild beast', or sometimes simply 'mine', would gladly have leapt into the fire for her. with no confidence in his own brains or other qualities, he was constantly proposing marriage to her, implying that the others only talked. maidanov was responsive to the poetic strain in her soul; somewhat cold by nature, like nearly all writers, he assured her fervently, and perhaps himself too, that he adored her. he composed endless verses in her honour, and recited them with an ardour at once affected and sincere. she sympathized with him and, at the same time, faintly mocked him. she did not really trust him, and after listening to his effusions for a while, used to make him read pushkin, in order, as she used to say, to clear the air.

looshin, the sarcastic doctor, so cynical in his talk, knew her best of all, and loved her more than the others, although he attacked her, both to her face and behind her back. she respected him, but did not spare him, and sometimes, with a peculiar malicious pleasure, used to make him feel her complete power over him. 'i am a flirt: i have not heart: i have an actor's nature,' she once said to him in my presence. 'all right then. give me your hand and i will stick a pin into it, and you will feel ashamed in front of this young man. and it will hurt you, and still you will be kind enough to laugh, mr truthful.' looshin flushed, turned away, bit his lip, but in the end stretched out his hand. she pricked it, and he did begin to laugh, and she laughed too, and drove the pin quite deep, and kept glancing into his eyes, which ran helplessly in every direction.

least of all did i understand the relations which existed between zinaida and count malevsky. he was good-looking, clever and shrewd, but something false in him, something equivocal, was apparent even to me, a boy of sixteen, and i wondered that zinaida did not notice it. but perhaps she did notice this falseness and was not repelled by it. an irregular education, odd habits and company, the perpetual presence of her mother, poverty and disorder in the house - everything, beginning with the freedom which the young girl enjoyed, with her consciousness of superiority over her surroundings, had developed in her a curious, half-contemptuous kind of carelessness and unfastidiousness. i remember how, no matter what happened - whether vonifaty announced there was no sugar left, or perhaps some squalid piece of gossip suddenly became public, or some quarrel broke out between the guests - she would only shake her curls and say, 'fiddlesticks!' and leave it at that.

but my blood, i remember, used to rise when malevsky would sidle up to her like a sly fox, lean gracefully over the back of her chair, and begin to whisper into her ear with a self-satisfied and wheedling little smile - while she would fold her arms and glance at him attentively, then smile herself and shake her head.

'what induces you to receive monsieur malevsky?' i once asked her.

'ah, but he has such beautiful little moustaches,' she replied. 'and anyway that is not your province.'

'perhaps you think that i love him?' she said to me on another occasion. 'no! i cannot love people whom i find that i look down on. i need someone who would himself master me, but then, goodness me, i shall never come across anyone like that. i will never fall into anybody's clutches, never, never.'

 ////////
"the most violently conflicting feelings, thoughts, suspicions, hopes, joys, pains, tossed and whirled within me in a kind of mad chaos: i was afraid of looking into myself, if a boy of sixteen can be said to do such a thing; i was afraid to face anything -  whatever it might be - consciously. i simply tried to get through the day as fast as i could, from morning till night: but then, at night, i slept. . . the lightheartedness of childhood came to my aid.

i didn't want to know whether i was loved, and i didn't want to admit to myself that i was not. i avoided my father - but avoid zinaida i could not. her presence seared me like a flame. . . but what did i care what kind of fire this was in which i burned and melted, when it was bliss to burn and to melt? i gave myself freely to my sensations as they came, telling myself lies and hiding from my own memories, and closed my eyes to what i sensed was coming. this sick, sweet longing would probably anyhow not have lasted long; but suddenly a thunderbolt blasted it, and flung me on to a new and altogether different path."

 ///////////
"she tore herself from my embrace, and was gone. i went too. i cannot even begin to convey the feelings with which i left her. i never wish to experience them again, but i should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all."

 //////////
"'she is dead,' i repeated, stating dully at the porter, and making my way noiselessly into the street, wandered off without knowing where i was going. the past suddenly rose and stood before me. so that was to be the final answer to it all. so that was the final goal towards which this young life, all glitter and ardour and excitement, went hurrying along."

"perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose."

persephone the wanderer

by louise gluck from averno

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we known of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

Persephone’s initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
”home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivable,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

Asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
As we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

As an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs.
about her mother’s
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mystic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

untitled

problems:
 look like scrutiny
  found to stave off boredom
   contradictions in motion
    a crisis and yet
     keep up the pace
      peripheral or centrifugal
       flip it spin it lunge
        out of reach push
         the stories tease and read it
          self-soothing self-scathing
           never a dull breath
            for a reason

             pedestal
              pedestal
               pedestal
                pedestal
                 pedestal
                  pedestal
                   pedestal
                    pedestal
                     pedestal
                      pedestal
                       pedestal
                        pedestal
                         pedestal
                          pedestal
                           pedestal
                            pedestal
                             pedestal
gone

symbolic interactionism

by mira gonzalez from i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together

people walk from one destination to another

with looks of determination on their faces

they stare at me

and they say ‘where the fuck are you going’

i say ‘i am going to a place’

they say ‘fuck you’

and i have an intense feeling of being a pathetic asshole

and that feeling manifests itself in the form of frantic unrestrained

movement

i begin to realize that my face will never be inside of your face

and that we can silently communicate using a series of microscopic

gestures

and we will understand that the phrase ‘alone together’ is not an

oxymoron anymore

and i will resolve to never be happy enough to forgive you

and i promise that from now on i will only have emotions that can be

perceived as neutral

i wonder how it is possible that there are billions of people in the world

yet i am the only person on the planet

decalcomanie

quotes from this is not a pipe by michel foucault

"what is essential is that verbal signs and visual representations are never given at once. an order always hierarchizes them, running from the figure to discourse or from discourse to the figure.

this is the principle whose sovereignty klee abolished, by showing the juxtaposition of shapes and the syntax of lines in an uncertain, reversible, floating space (simultaneously page and canvas, plane and volume, map and chronicle). boats, houses, persons are at the same time recognizable figures and elements of writing. they are placed and travel upon roads or canals that are also lines to be read. trees of the forest file over musical staves. the gaze encounters words indicating the way to go and naming the landscape being crossed. and at the nexus of these figures and signs, the arrow that crops up so often (the arrow, sign bearing a primal resemblance, like a graphic onomatopoeia, and shape that formulates an order) - the arrow indicates the direction in which the boat is traveling, shows that the sun is setting, prescribes the direction that the gaze must follow, or rather the line along which it must imaginatively shift the figure provisionally and a bit arbitrarily placed here. it is not, in fact, a question of those calligrams that by turns bring into play the subordination of sign to form (a cloud of words and letters taking the shape they designate), then of form to sign (the figure dissecting itself into alphabetical elements). nor is it any longer a question of those collages or reproductions that capture the cut out form of letters in fragments of objects; but rather a question of the intersection, within the same medium, of representation by resemblance and of representation by signs. which presupposes that they meet in quite another space than that of the painting.

paul klee, the wild man

the second principle that long ruled painting posits an equivalence between the fact of resemblance and the affirmation of a representative bond. let a figure resemble an object (or some other figure), and that alone is enough for there to slip into the pure play of the painting a statement - obvious, banal, repeated a thousand times yet almost always silent. (it is like an infinite murmur - haunting, enclosing the silence of figures, investing it, mastering it, extricating the silence from itself, and finally reversing it within the domain of things that can be named.) 'what you see is that.' no matter, again, in what sense the representative relation is posed - whether the painting is referred to the visible world around it, or whether it independently establishes an individual world that resembles itself. the essential point is that resemblance and affirmation cannot be dissociated."

"resemblance presupposes a primary reference that prescribes and classes. the similar develops in series that have neither beginning nor end, that can be followed in one direction as easily as in another, that obey no hierarchy, but propagate themselves from small differences among small differences. resemblance serves representation, which rules over it; similitude serves repetition, which ranges across it. resemblance predicates itself upon a model it must return to and reveal; similitude circulates the simulacrum as an indefinite and reversible relation of the similar to the similar."

rene magritte, decalcomanie

"in decalcomanie (1966): occupying two thirds of the painting, a red curtain with large pleats obscures a landscape of sky, sea, and sand. beside the curtain, turning his back as usual to the viewer, the man with the bowler hat looks out to sea.

now, we find that the curtain has been cut out in exactly the shape of the man: as if he himself (although of another color, texture, and width) were merely a section of curtain snipped away by scissors. within the large opening the beach is visible. what are we to make of this? is it that the man, in changing places, having departed the curtain, exposes what he was looking at when he was still enfolded within it? or is it that the painter, in moving the man a few centimeters, has set against the curtain that fragment of sky, water, and sand that the man's silhouette hid from the viewer - so that thanks to the cooperation of the artist, we can see what is contemplated by the silhouette that blocks our view? or must we admit that at the moment the man turns to look at it, the fragment of landscape immediately before him has leapt aside, avoiding his gaze so that before his eyes it became his shadow, the black smudge of his body? transference? doubtless. but from what to what? from where to where? the thick black silhouette of the man seems to have been shifted from right to left, from the curtain onto the landscape he now obscures; the fold he makes in the curtain displays his prior position. but in the shape of a man's silhouette, the landscape has also been cut loose and transferred from left to right. the scrap of red curtain that remains bizarrely attached to the shoulder of this human landscape, and that corresponds to the small part of curtain hidden by the black silhouette, in itself demonstrates the origin and the location from which the sky and water were cut. a displacement and exchange of similar elements, but by no means mimetic reproduction.

and thanks to decalcomanie the advantage of similitude over resemblance can be grasped. the latter reveals the clearly visible; similitude reveals what recognizable objects, familiar silhouettes hide, prevent from being seen, render invisible ('body' = 'curtain,' says mimetic representation. 'right is left, left is right; the hidden here is visible there; the sunken is in relief; flatness extends into depth,' says the similitudes of decalcomanie.) resemblance makes a unique assertion, always the same: this thing, that thing, yet another thing is something else. similitude multiplies different affirmations, which dance together, tilting and tumbling over one another."

[Footnote: 'decalcomania.' the title embodies a complex play of ideas. decalcomanie means transference, transferency, or decal; it is also a painterly technique (often mentioned by breton) in which pigment is transferred from one side of a painted surface to another by folding over the canvas. finally, decalcomanie refers to a species of madness bound up with the idea of shifting identities.]

the best

distraction

quotes from the art of cruelty by maggie nelson

"trecartin's 2007 feature-length video, I-Be Area, while nominally based on the concept of 'virtual reality,' is a riotous exploration of what kinds of space, identity, physicality, language, sexuality, and consciousness might make possible once one leaves the dichotomy of the virtual and the real behind, along with a whole host of other need-not-apply binaries (the everyday and the apocalyptic, the public and the private, the utopic and the dystopic, male and female, gay and straight, among them)."

"'i love the idea of technology and culture moving faster than the understanding of those mediums by people,' trecartin has said, and his works aim to immerse viewers in this failed-to-upload state. the disorientation of this state is not that of grandpa befuddled by a fistful of printer cables, but rather the sort of psychological and physiological stupefaction more often associated with acid overdoses and schizoid breakdowns.

I-Be Area takes incapacity - to absorb, to make sense, to cohere, to sort, to concentrate - as its starting point. . . then it amplifies this incapacity by turning up the speed, the color, the hysteria, the flicker. image or speech overflow is no longer a problem, and certainly not one that art could or should aid in solving. . . it is our 'abstract plot of now,' as he calls it. trecartin's ability to sustain us here for some real time often feels like a miracle, in that such an ability seems as if it should be, by definition, also beyond the artist. that is to say, the art often feels as if it is moving faster than trecartin himself could be - which is likely why his films, when combined with his youth (I-Be Area was finished when he was twenty-six), have had something of an awe-inducing effect on the art world."

"koestenbaum notes that trecartin's work is about radical distraction. . . but recartin's brand of distraction doesn't rely on any simple use of the imitative fallacy - that is, 'contemporary life is mind-scrambling, fragmented, and distracted, so my art must be mind-scrambling, fragmented, and distracted, too.' it is too tightly orchestrated for that - too layered, too well performed, too purposefully edited, too intelligently perverse. however bawdy and hysterical, trecartin's videos draw tight rings of action: they are condensed, fast-moving world creations that make an intense demand on our attention. and the animating paradox of this world, as koestenbaum has put it, is that 'trecartin's characters concentrate on distraction.' however frenetic I-Be Area may be, its distraction is not of the same order as that of, say, the idiotic pop-up balloons and crawling tickers that have become staples of the television screen. to stay with I-Be Area all the way through - to listen to every word, to follow every decision and cut - requires a keen effort. you'll get the most out of it if you, too, can concentrate on distraction.

of course, you may not remember much of what happened; you may not remember any of the characters; you may not even be left with an image. if your experience resembles mine, you'll be left with something far more amorphous - a kind of vibrating memory of the unnerving psychic state the work induced, or captured, or invented (and, perhaps, a notebook full of scrawled lines that sounded great at the time, such as 'my personal really concise pussy is developing a very inner monologue which i will not reveal to you as i become dynamic')."

"both foreman and trecartin work from a conception of the human, or the 'real,' borne out of contradiction, fluctuation, incoherence, and perversity; both offer immersion in their vision without rehashing the avant-garde fetish of terrorizing the audience or the mainstream one of chaperoning it. 'we abide by cultural directives that urge us: clarify each thought, each experience, so you can cull from them their single, dominant meaning and, in the process, become a responsible adult who knows what he or she thinks,' foreman has said. 'but what i try to show is the opposite: how at every moment, the world presents us with a composition in which a multitude of meanings and realities are available, and you are able to swim, lucid and self-contained, in that turbulent sea of multiplicity.'"

the myth of control

from too perfect by allan e. mallinger and jeannette dewyze

chapter two

"the whole reason obsessives construct and embrace the myth of control is to fend off anxiety; and when an experience contradicts the myth, if they can't ignore or reinterpret the experience, the anxiety returns with a vengeance. they may even develop physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach problems, sleeplessness, or dizzy spells."

"when obsessives lapse while dieting or trying to quit smoking or drinking, they may have trouble moving beyond their lapse and refocusing on the goal. . .  not because they seriously think one slip will make them fat, sick, or drunk, but rather because they lost control. they failed to make themselves do what they decided to do, and if such a slip occurred once, who knows where it could lead?"

"one patient told me she hated to miss even a single workout because it made her feel she couldn't trust herself, and that frightened her. this all-or-nothing thinking occurs partly because obsessives rarely live in the present. they think in terms of trends stretching into the future. no action is an isolated event; each is merely a part of something bigger, so every false step has major ramifications. . .  obsessives tend to envision the worst possible outcome of a scenario and then worry as if such a scenario had in fact come to pass. or they will mentally magnify small personal gaffes into something far more serious."

"by their nature, emotions sometimes defy control, and this unruliness disturbs the obsessive. also, through their extremist lenses, many obsessives unconsciously fear that any show of emotion could lead to their humiliating themselves, devastating someone else, being rejected, or even losing all self-control. . . when their feelings are starting to surface in therapy sessions, many obsessive patients will deliver an intellectual analysis of them, change the subject, joke, or focus on something trivial - anything to avoid actually feeling and exploring this perturbing part of themselves."

"some may repress their feelings so effectively that they do not know what their feelings are; they come to believe they were born without the normal emotional range present in others. this causes them pain, as they sense themselves to be defective in some core way. in their wish to seem normal (to themselves and others), these people may fake whatever feelings they think are appropriate in various situations. or they may unconsciously compensate for their perceived defect in an altogether different way, by idealizing it. . . people who take this path disdain feeling as evidence of weakness. they sneer at emotional people and admire intellect and reason. they thus convert the pain of feeling defective into pride in being 'strong'."

"my patients use a subtler strategy to control those around them: they strive to make people think well of them, always. the main objective underlying this strategy is to leave no room for criticism. in early childhood we learn which behavior and abilities are labeled 'good' by parents, teachers, and others. many obsessives master these skills, developing a brilliant facility for identifying those attitudes and behaviors considered virtues in each new social setting, and then adopting them absolutely. thoughts or impulses incompatible with this image of perfection are suppressed or rejected."

"obsessives believe that knowledge imparts a protective power. a related form of 'vigilance' is the obsessive's tendency to worry, as if internal fretting over anything that might go wrong can actually prevent it from happening."

"their 'fairness doctrine' helps them to hold on to the illusion of control. and intertwined with the conviction of cosmic justice, most obsessives hold a belief, also unconscious, in what i call the cosmic scorekeeper. . . this notion enables obsessives to believe that they can control their destiny by being good or bad. they can guarantee themselves safe passage by making the scorekeeper owe it to them. they do this by piling up a track record of self-denial, sacrifice, industry, diligence, honesty, and loyalty rivaling that of a saint. they try to avoid behaviors, feelings, even thoughts that will subtract points from their stockpile of sacrifices. . . before doing something 'selfish,' they may need to earn it by performing some distasteful (but noble) duty."

"like many other obsessives, every time things begin to go 'to well' for her, dory braces herself for the scorekeeper to balance them out. similarly, if she has some bad luck, she wonders what she did to cause it. did she step on the figurative crack in the sidewalk? did she have overly selfish or hostile thoughts? did she feel too much pleasure? or let herself become too optimistic and confident, jinxing herself? the minute she finds her 'misstep,' she feels better because she can tell herself that she can prevent the misfortune next time by simply behaving differently."

"if they work at something such as school, therapy, or staying healthy, and their efforts don't succeed, they may feel cheated and resentful. . . time after time she expected fairness and was disappointed and outraged when she failed to get it."

"when she and a group of friends were deciding where to go for dinner, jennifer knew immediately in her own mind which was the best choice. she refrained, however, from explicitly trying to persuade the group to go there. 'i didn't want the whole decision to be on my shoulders,' she said. (in the next chapters we'll take a close look at how perfectionism commonly provokes such fear of decision-making.) instead she insisted that the choice made no difference to her. the more the group discussed other possibilities, however, the more jennifer inwardly chafed. almost in spite of herself, she began to try unobtrusively to influence the decision toward her preference, casually mentioning a few advantages of the spot, noting a drawback to one of the alternatives. and yet almost the moment the group did select her preference, jennifer found herself regretting she had ever said anything that might have tipped the scales in the decision. all the way to the restaurant she worried: about whether the same chef was working there; whether everyone in the group would like this type of food; whether the service would be too slow. later, when one of her companions voiced a minor complaint about his meal, the comment deeply upset her. she had assumed total responsibility over the whole experience, as if it were within her control to make everything work out well."

chapter five

"obsessives tend to be especially sensitive to demands, either real or imagined, that are placed upon them. one aspect of demand-sensitivity is the tendency to 'hear' demands or expectations in an exaggerated way."

"whether or not the obsessive person complies with them, they are exquisitely attuned to . . . unstated obligations. in fact, they hear them as if they were shouted through a bullhorn. placed in a new situation, their first concern often is getting the lay of the land, discovering what the rules are."

"people who need to be above reproach are often most comfortable when they feel their decisions and actions are being dictated by outside forces. . . in the obsessive's worldview, where conscientiousness is king, it's better to be fulfilling one's duty than satisfying one's own needs."

"the costs of unconsciously disowning one's desires are high. . . when most of your activities feel like obligations, you can reach a point where nothing gives you pleasure, and life feels meaningless. you don't feel like an active participant, taking what enjoyment you can in life, but instead experience yourself as a passive recipient, grinding away at the obligations that are laid upon you. . . a solid sense of self requires a consistent awareness of your volitional side - what you want. without that anchor, you wind up feeling insubstantial and passive, and you may feel more vulnerable to external influences, especially the wishes of others. because you feel (at an unconscious level) as if your sense of self - unanchored as it is - can at any moment be overrun by more powerful outside forces, you are compelled to guard against people who seem strong or intrusive, or who get too close."

"gerald saw a clear connection between his oppositional adult self and the child who so often had felt threatened by his mother's demands.
'one major source of confrontation was food. even when i was hungry, i resented how my mother controlled my meals. she gave me more than i wanted; she made me eat foods she knew i didn't like without giving me the chance to say no. it was like i was an extension of her needs, as if she were saying, 'if you eat, i'll be happy.' i was just mirroring something in her. i felt that if i just automatically complied with whatever she asked, i'd be asked to do it again. and i'd be asked to do so many things, i'd always be reacting and never stopping to know what i wanted.'
'and what then?'
'i wouldn't be there. i wouldn't exist! there would be no i!'
eventually, gerald found a weapon. 'the weapon was holding back,' he told me. 'if i didn't eat, it drove my mother crazy. if i withheld affection, it caused my parents pain. it made me feel powerful, in control'. . .
i would describe gerald as intensely 'demand-resistant' - that is, inclined to balk at various expectations simply because they are perceived as demands. as gerald discovered, demand-resistance is closely connected with interpersonal control. first, it's a way of safeguarding one's fragile sense of self by refusing to be overpowered or controlled by others. second, it is a way of reassuring oneself that one can have a subtle impact on - and control over - others by frustrating them. . .
a small percentage of people, like gerald, consciously recognize that they feel resentful, not only when someone tells them what to do, but when they feel even a subtle expectation or pressure. some may have a reputation for being stubborn or oppositional. but it's far more common for demand-resistance to be nearly undetectable. inwardly, the obsessive may have some hesitancy when confronted by certain demands. 'i get a tightness inside, a tightness in my gut,' is how one patient described it. 'i feel a suppressed anger.' but often there are no external signs of this private turmoil. in other cases there are outward signs - procrastination or inability to stay with a task, for example - but the foot-dragger himself is bewildered and often dismayed by his inability to do what he consciously thinks he wants to do."

"even self-employed obsessives can experience inner demands as somehow coming from the outside. with no boss or supervisor to blame, they focus their resentment on the work itself, their clients, or their dependents (who are 'making' them work). when demand-resistance sabotages their on-the-job performance, many obsessives start to feel demoralized because normally they take pride in their ability to work effectively. for many, the 'solution' to this dismaying turn of events is to rationalize their resentment of, and alienation from, their work in ways that enhance rather than hurt their self-image. since practically everyone regards conscientiousness as a virtue, that in itself often provides the perfect excuse. the obsessive tells himself he's a victim of exploited conscientiousness. . . his feelings of victimization explain his negative attitude toward his work, and meanwhile his demand-resistance goes undetected."

"perhaps even sadder than its impact on his work is the damage demand-resistance can inflict on the obsessive's experience of his leisure-time activities. one painful consequence of the conversion of 'wants' into 'shoulds' is that at some point the obsessive comes to regard even potentially joyful activities as burdens. an obsessive may take up a project or hobby with a pleasant sense of anticipation. but somehow 'i'd like to knit my husband a sweater' becomes 'i really ought to work on that sweater' - something that should be done, exactly like an external demand. the person begins to slog through the project, rather than relaxing and enjoying the chance to be creative. sometimes this unconscious resistance doesn't affect the actual performance of the task, but often it does. for instance, the person may begin procrastinating. in extreme cases it can lead to the abandonment of one hobby or personal goal after another. . . 'i get the feeling that as soon as i put a goal down on paper, it becomes an obligation!'"

"many obsessives also have a fear of dependency, and of intimacy. . . demand-resistance can inflict more serious damage on a well-established relationship. . . sheila felt a lingering hurt and anger when she underwent major surgery and her husband, gary, acted cool and distant. why did he behave that way? not because he didn't love her or was insensitive to her need for nurturance, but because he recoiled from the expectation that he give such nurturance."

"since his demand-resistance was unconscious, gary blamed his lack of compliance with his wife on other factors. he told me he didn't want to 'set a precedent': 'i feel if i did break the ice and open up a dialogue, it would be a constant expectation, that i'd have to sit and talk every night. i have this feeling that precedents are being set all the time, and they'll be thrown in my face in the future.' although gary expressed apparently sincere love and respect for his wife, he often felt irritated by her, a pattern i've seen repeatedly among resistive obsessives. often they will harbor resentment toward the people, institutions, or rules they feel demand them to behave a certain way."

"'i don't want to make a commitment of friendship to her right now. i don't want to set up expectations - i don't want her to come to expect my time or energy. i don't like to feel that people have claims on my time,' judy said. even the thought of such demands made her feel panicky. 'i just want out. i feel in danger of being smothered. to be around people, i have to do it on my terms instead of shared terms or their terms'. . . 'i feel i might never really know my self unless i resist in this way.'"

"the most important step in overcoming demand-resistance is recognizing the demand-resistance consciously as it is happening. oddly, i find that many people are able to make changes as soon as they are able to recognize what's occurring. . . start paying attention to the number of times you think, feel, or say 'i should' or 'i have to' rather than 'i want.' if you are demand-resistant, this way of thinking is a self-protective habit that has grown out of proportion, causing you needless pain and undermining your sense of autonomy. . . don't let the ownership of your life slip away. realize that even when you are pressured to do something, the decision to comply or not is entirely yours."

first things at the last minute

by robert hass

The white water rush of some warbler's song.
Last night, a few strewings of ransacked moonlight
On the sheets. You don't know what slumped forward
In the nineteen-forties taxi or why they blamed you
Or what the altered landscape, willowy, riparian,
Had to do with the reasons why everyone
Should be giving things away, quickly,
Except for spendthrift sorrow that can't bear
The need to be forgiven and keeps looking for something
To forgive. The motion of washing machines
Is called agitation. Object constancy is a term
Devised to indicate what a child requires
From days. Clean sheets are an example
Of something that, under many circumstances,
A person can control. The patterns moonlight makes
Are chancier, and dreams, well, dreams
Will have their way with you, their way
With you, will have their way.

am / pm

forgetting something

by nick flynn

Try this—close / your eyes. No, wait, when—if—we see each other / again the first thing we should do is close our eyes—no, / first we should tie our hands to something / solid—bedpost, doorknob— otherwise they (wild birds) / might startle us / awake. Are we forgetting something? What about that / warehouse, the one beside the airport, that room / of black boxes, a man in each box? I hear / if you bring this one into the light he will not stop / crying, if you show this one a photo of his son / his eyes go dead. Turn up / the heat, turn up the song. First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines.

afterburn

by jennifer militello

Things too thin inhabit our dreams and we take on
their starving. We live until hunger
takes on such a shape that it is shoulder blades
in everything and sounds up in the trees. Then,
such ghosts. Such bones without skins doubled over.
A starless night every night and starlessness
is ashes or newsprint on the hands. Living
is barely a flock of birds the way it moves
like falling; it must be the cure for something,
the last lit house on a dead end street
or a hunger with two minds, drawing children
to the damp sheds at the far fence of their yards.
There is an entire August storm in everything said,
and to open the violent hives of remembering,
we imagine marigolds, birds drowned in the creek,
the lights left on in a room left behind.

wall / quilt

after sunset

by joyce carol oates

from women whose lives are food, men whose lives are money

broken walls of waves

said to be the atlantic

sweep toward us

wave upon wave

so much is breaking

so much is happening

for centuries, here,

so much has happened

unrecorded

irretrievable

droplets of water

bubbles of bright flesh

we stand here

hypnotized

again and always

and once again, again,

hypnotized out of flesh

jarred by the earthquake

of the sea

we are waiting

for something

we are waiting

for something to record

how icy the shock on our bare feet!

a hundred yards away a vendor sells

stickers for the bumpers of cars:

the proclamation of the achievement

of the replication of--

the recording of--

we are waiting

again and always

and again, again,

stalkers of meaning

human and cold

REMAINDER

by rae armatrout from just saying

string of empty offices,

illuminated, festive?

*

people exist

to attach importance.

*

i practice

high speed de-

selection.

*

the difference

between nothing

and nothingness

is existence.

*

my dead friends

don’t visit me;

they say i didn’t

know them.

*

you are cautious

indolent, stubborn,

skeptical, gentle, tense.

*

at sunset, pigeons

practice synchronized flying.

*

thus “are” becomes “is”,

“is” becomes “ness.”

*

let the burning spill

extend.

crisis

 from ana patova crosses a bridge by renee gladman

"as a country
this was our crisis: getting other people
to see what we were seeing. and it
wasn't as if there was this multitude of
idylls we simply couldn't share but, rather,
for the most part, there was only one
idyll and for everyone else a void. the
people on the train took my hallucination
as a sign of their own suffering. you were
better if you could hold a picture in your
head, a scene or many scenes. but, i
wasn't trying to be better. i was trying
to breathe and not hear what people
were saying about this day in their life
of the crisis. people suffered. they woke
in a morning, before the sun rose. you
didn't want to know. it was to be their secret, but
all day they leaked their words, and i
leaked my words. in the silence following
my vision i couldn't help but say
'mostlip' as people gathered around me.
then said 'gap,' then said 'triumph.'
your words, your words, someone
admonished me. 'goodnight,' i
completed the list. people cared for me
in long minutes of awkwardness in which
i swooned and held my eyes closed in
shame."

"you began to take on other
people's sentiments, because of the weight
and translucence of the scroll, because
the threads of the paper did not take well
to ink, because ink was all there was.
'jandovirr is changing,' i wrote into
the scroll one day. 'it has changed.' but,
when i noticed these words appearing
all over the scroll, sometimes saying
jandovirr, sometimes mohaly or cit
sahaly or names from other parts of the
city but all the same vague observation-
changing - when i saw this i began to write
in greater detail: 'the manhole cover had
been replaced; kiva's was packed with
people, they seemed like foreigners. a
couple stood on the corner waiting for a
light that was inoperable, they waited,'
and wrote out tracks of details of my
seeing, until i started to see these
particulars repeating along the scroll.
you worried that the crisis was following
you and, because of how closely it
mirrored your thinking, that you were
the crisis."

"'to think of architecture is to do what,
ana patova?' she asked me when the
reports came out that our population had
been decimated by three years of
bewilderment and a feeling that one had
been ghosted, the total number of
inhabitants now only an eighth of what
it had been. 'why have we remained?'
you wondered when you sat emptily.
the crisis made you watch it and so did
architecture, which you did until it
devastated you, then beyond that point
(you still looking at it).my thinking of
architecture resulted from my thinking
of the line, how the line made narrative
regardless of whatever else it was making,
and narrative presented enclosures for
your questions about living, and living,
for the most part, required space, which
turned out to be a definite field of study.
but, in order to enjoy architecture i
realized i needed people, so i didn't
know what to do when they began to flee.
i wrote a book in which i explained all of
this; it was one hundred and eighty-three
pages and said 'crisis,' 'crisis' in every
chapter and used drawings to illustrate
the 'empty feeling,' which i believed to
be the cause for everyone's leaving. not
everyone could move about a city as if she
were traversing a remote highland, as if
she were the last pedestrian in the world.
not everyone could say 'farewell' all the
time with her exhausted body, clambering
over some pole."

"it was the city,
but was unreachable, was violent, without
victims and without perpetrators, and
violent, though there were no crimes."

"what i slept in was created by
my mind; it was a question of void space,
my sleeping. it began as empty, black
space then was transformed by light, by
ribboning, by the secreted presence of
another. another person touched my
sleep and shapes formed. i knew who
she was; i called her name. she could
not come in body. so there was this
sleeping geometric holding feeling, and
there was outside architecture."

"we had been walking for hours,
looking for a happening, a boundary
event that would put an end to the crisis,
not an extraordinary occurrence - some
magical intervention - but a small act out
of a cabinet of everyday acts that we'd
witnessed numerous times and never
noticed and never saw the way through.
we thought it would be a speech act, so
began to look for instances where we
might chance upon bodies in unconscious
speech: we looked through people's
windows. but windows looked into houses
whose structures were no longer reliable.
it had become impossible to say that you
were contained, to say 'hello, the house,'
as you once had. the object world, we
noted, was drawn on by shadows."

"meanwhile, the eye witnesses the story
of what we were when we happened,
when the last person left and the first
person returned as if the same moment,
as if the inhale began in the exhale, that
first person leaving, who belonged to all
of us, and what we became in his
leaving: our reaching for our cups. we
were holding space and making space
through stillness, looking for structures
to reflect what we were seeing, which
was nothing. i wrote about buildings,
and for the first part of the crisis this
kept me occupied. i was holed up in my
home. i slept on the books i wrote, which
i'd glued between boards and given
unassuming titles like slow and tired, but
these books were my life's work; i knew
once i'd finished them i would never
write again; rather i would not need to
write or live or sleep, it felt like. when i
changed my mind about this, when i
changed my mind - but, it was me and it
was l. and it was z. and b., and we were
all high on coffee, and sometimes pills,
waiting for some storm to come, some
document from abroad."

"the notion of thinness, i thought, as
the two of them sat on either side of an
important threshold that neither seemed
capable of seeing for the six hundredth
time in their history, was this sitting here
between them and who i was supposed
to be now in this new emergency, when
ana patova and luswage amini couldn't
cross this bridge, again. it wasn't so much
a line between us as a bend in time, a fold
where one had to walk through fire, or
believe this to be the case. luswage
amini believed she could not get across
to ana patova as long as ana patova
remained in ravicka. 'luswage amini
is in france' became the material of
that thinness. i put my arms through
them, both of them at the same time: i
put my left, i put my right. i waved my
arm about inside myself and tried to look
down and peer at it, to see it through the
thin window of my body. my arm was in
her chest when amini stood up and leaned
over and grabbed ana patova's ear and
whispered something, that i should have
heard since my arm was in ana as well as
in luswage, and in me. i didn't hear what
she said so ana patova didn't hear, or i
couldn't feel through the book i was
writing that she'd heard."

"spaces moaned. they were of an order
that had nothing to do with what we
felt when we were in them; they had
become impossible to write about,
impossible to enter, impossible to leave.
you wanted to say 'space, space' to
create an index of where you went and
what happened to you, you wanted to
say 'cafe,' you wanted to say 'alleyway,'
you wanted to say 'bedroom.' 'train,'
was a place you needed, 'museum,'
'cemetery.' you gave names so that
you could return to the walls between
experience; you stamped time onto
things so that you could recognize the
walls. spaces moaned; they did not
want your walls. the names i gave
most often did not fit. i walked 'outside'
into a 'closet' that was supposed to be
a 'yard,' because the light of 'day'
had come up and 'people' were waiting
for me and 'books' wanted to pass
through themselves and other books,
and 'language' needed to be made.
i woke and stretched my body and
felt pain in my hands. 'today' was
a broken index. but, still, you felt the
presence of 'world' there inside the
room (and outside the room). it couldn't
be avoided and asked to be opened and
was open all the time. but what you did
with where your body went, how you
wrapped words around it, calling it
something that might be useful to others,
who also did not know space, which was
everyone, was of an order inconsequential
to the space you inhabited."

two poems

by sherwin bitsui from flood song

in a stadium of afterglow--

    i parcel ounces of my body for each acre grazed

    spear my hands with my sharpened knees

        to keep some kernel of this trail my own

    some piece of the idea of now

        before it becomes was.

/////

this windowless house marrows my veins with thinking.

scraps of venison leaf the picture frame.

a stoplight dangles from the sunbeam of a birth song

billowing from stratus

    to cumulus

        to nimbus

            to drought,

as the ache of ten cedar trees silences the dull ax.