Rossetti, Study for Delia, 1853

Rossetti, Regina Cordium, 1860

All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of myself really quickly in passing,
in a toy-shop window or the surface of a shiny car,
I look pretty normal
until I realize what I am looking at. 

Croquis 4

In truth, I am angry with you for living too much in reality; it's breaking the rules. 

It was two or three at night when we met. I was a wild creature, feverish and spreading my disease remorselessly. I thought we were the same, and I followed you into the dark. You wanted to spend the night with your arms around me. I said no.

I want to go back. I'll close your eyes with my fingers and kiss them so you see a glimpse of the future. Don't let go, we only get this much time. 

and a whisper of a touch

She signals to him in the high mares' tales overhead, in the turns of phrase she has borrowed and lent, in the curled scar on his cheek; and by similar means he imagines he also signals to her: that their conversations go on, silently, in the downspin of a sycamore key. 

 - Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

 

Nighttime

Honestly,

If we would write books together, good ones, I would give up absolutely anything. I mean,
I'll have to keep you chained in the house,
because you drop little pieces of my heart wherever you go;
you don't pay attention.
But that should be doable, right?
For books, I mean, babies.
They'd look like the both of us. I think they'd have your passion and my mournful eyes.

"The night changes something in all of us, and the world looks different. Little details stand out which are normally hidden, and unsure of what we see, we become more guardedly fearful of what others might want. The quality of night isn't limited by time or the movement of the planets. You can carry it in your heart. There are people who live out their entire lives as though they were always in darkness."

It speaks to me

Sir William Russell Flint. Medea, Jason, Orpheus and the Hydra. 1910.

I feel like I'm made of bone dust and clay, and my heart is a wounded and desperate bird, launching itself against the inside of my chest, over and over again. I want out.  

I thought I sacrificed only my happiness for someone else's, but now he has it, and there is nothing left of me. 

Just words. Hi weird girl. I promise I won't make you give it up. This is just how I am. I love you. It's wrong because it makes you happy. 

At least I have written. As a hated child I never expected to be wanted, but hoped to write. So I know stories - I felt it in March, the joy was too great; it would steal from my future.

The Relationship Game: It's getting real

“I just have to accept that I’ve fallen for you quite a bit.”

Once the words are out, they aren't so easy to take back. You didn't even really mean to say them, they didn't take shape in your head before they rolled off your tongue, and now they're here. How will you react?

• Cautious acceptance. You are not quite ready for another love, but sometimes you have to take what life offers if you don't want to lose it. Turn to page 55: New beginnings.

• Almost immediate regret followed by months and months of denial interrupted by jealousy and bouts of passionate enthusiasm. You are gambling with happiness, but doesn't that make it more exciting? Turn to page 87: "Maybe that means that you can handle me."

• Feelings change. Avoid seeing your partner for an extended period of time, focus on other things, and write someone else when you're feeling itchy for a Friday night fuck. You're too young to settle down, and she will heal in time. [Game over]

#MeToo and Power corrupts

New York Times: What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?

Jezebel: What Are We to Make of the Case of Scholar Avital Ronell?

Most of us experience reality through filters: ideologies, basic beliefs, good and bad. But it requires active, constantly developing (self-)critical examination.

It's easy to conclude that general tendencies also determines specific truths. It's easier to think that the bad people aren't the ones you know. But easy isn't the same as true, and good people do bad things.

In the case of Avital Ronell, who was recently suspended from New York University on charges of sexual harassment, maybe she is just a misunderstood eccentric - although one might argue that pet names such as "cock-er spaniel" and "sweet cuddly baby" really aren't a necessary part of advising PhD students. I have no way of knowing if NYU is suspending her because of hard evidence or to avoid bad PR. But neither, really, does Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek when they and many other star intellectuals write to the university this May that:

"Although we have no access to the confidential dossier, we have all worked for many years in close proximity to Professor Ronell and accumulated collectively years of experience to support our view of her capacity as teacher and a scholar, but also as someone who has served as Chair of both the Departments of German and Comparative Literature at New York University."

"We deplore the damage that this legal proceeding causes her, and seek to register in clear terms our objection to any judgment against her.  We hold that the allegations against her do not constitute actual evidence, but rather support the view that malicious intention has animated and sustained this legal nightmare."

"As you know, Professor Ronell has changed the course of German Studies, Comparative Literature, and the field of philosophy and literature over the years of her teaching, writing, and service.  She is responsible for building the field of literary studies at New York University, but also throughout Europe as a result of her brilliant scholarship and spirit of intellectual generosity."*

Just because you know someone, just because they are brilliant literary scholars or leading feminists or really nice when you're around does not mean they always act that way. Reality is complicated, and only by understanding that, I think, will we be able to really change it.

...

Interestingly, the arguments against Reitman are strangely familiar (paraphrased): 'he took too long to report the harassment, his superior is very influential in her field, he gained influence and popularity from her favoritism so he must have wanted it, that's just the way she is, he is just angry he isn't as succesful as her.'

And then there's the new interesting additions: 'he's gay and from Israel, so...' and 'because of the cultural history of patriarchal repression, only men can be sexual harassers, regardless of who holds the power in the current situation.' 

P.s. You should all read The Power by Naomi Alderman

*The quotes are from a version of the letter uploaded to Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. I haven't been able to confirm its origins, but the responses of those who have signed it suggest that it is at least mostly as they sent it. 

I killed myself as creator

I taught myself to love loneliness because I had no choice, and it gave me talent, drive, and ambition. With time I lost the need to love it, and I forgot to practice. When I find myself alone, I am now afraid. I know not what to do or where to put my hands.

I am too much and I feel every sharp edge with a keen pain bordering on pleasure, and I drag myself along walls to make sure I sense every change in texture. I collect moments. I trace lines in bodies I care for to remember how they are built and claim people's bones for myself. I crawl close to you and stare intently with my mole-girl eyes at your chest to imprint on my mind the pattern of your body hair and the little cluster of stars just under and a little to the left of your heart. Or the scars on your knees. Or the deep pin-hole wells of emptiness scattered in your irises.
I get anxiety attacks that can only be cured by:
remembering I am my own person and can take back my life and "promise no one has to die"
your calm voice telling me that everything will be okay
getting the fuck away from everything.

I am too much and I hate it. I will buy a new suitcase (Expensive. Red leather, vintage) and pack down all my feelings and desires and expectations and hopes along with the ripped-off keys of my keyboard and get the fuck out of here. The blank page'll take the too much until just I am.

“You are what you eat”, or, you are what you rub yourself against in the early morning hours, lick on in a darkened corner, and seek to forget. 

Pick me up and take me to the ocean.
Leave me where the waves break against the rocky shore.
Go home and sit down at your desk.
And speak of us or love no more. 

I have been loved by something strange and it has forgotten me. 

Your hands are coarse, you have stars on your chest.

If that night in Berlin was the only thing I ever got from us, it would still be enough. I was weightless and you were the world. 

You never did read The Necrophiliac. I guess it was a strange gift to win over a new over with. Trust me, it really is a very beautiful book.

No one has been as beautiful to me as you, and no one has looked more like a monster. You appear to me as in visions, and we have walked together in myths spun while we moved, I still see the thread in your hands. You smell like a dying man, you know. Or one returned from death. Is that why you steal? 

"I never loved you," you said. But you see, I know that you did. 

It's my story too.

Naked in the dark

It is time for us to be brave.

I no longer dream about the end of the world, but of something stranger still; I dream that everything is well. 

by Marta Sokołowska, martaso.carbonmade.com/

A lot of us are only pretending. The truth is, once society became this patriarchal, there wasn't room for most men in it any longer. The military ranks have been reallocated and renamed a number of times. Currently the fourth link in the chain of command on any given ship in the Navy is Future Hero because there just isn't enough decorated officers left. The higher ups are constantly seeking to rid themselves of their rivals; thinking that, in theory, only the most powerful opponents are a threat, but quickly realizing that as soon as they've emptied a seat someone else is already shuffling to fill it. So, this island nation of ours has become a society of the old, the weak, and of women dressed as men in constant fear of awakening the jealous wrath of their superiors, but in greater fear of the farms we would otherwise have to live out our lives on. Led toward the final night of the nations by strong leaders, ultimate alphas, who are physically incapable of thinking of anything but their own glory in any given moment. The waters are waiting darkly, and I grab your hand, smiling warmly as we hide together in plain sight, hoping to wait out even this.

- dream of a flooded, global Pan-America governed by military forces and men who have become almost like animals after the spread of some testosterone-boosting disease.

We'd been wandering for a long time when we arrived here, to the After. Nothing ever ends up here unless it's already happened, and we've constructed a hut for ourselves out of broken glasses (they cut, but they shine prettily where the light is let through) and things-we-once-hoped. I've been trying to sleep at night. It was one of the things I could never do in the Before. But I still have trouble. You, however, have adventurous, colourful dreams. I wonder if you realize where we are. 

Venus

Maybe she is still there somewhere?

Choose your own adventure: The Relationship Game

Distraction
After the 5 hour argument you go out to do some shopping. You’re still hungover. For some reason or other you don’t see the car approaching until you're halfway across the street, but suddenly it’s roaring towards you at 200 an hour. It’s swaying, like the driver can’t decide what to do.

• Stop dead in your tracks, hoping that the car will have time to move out of its trajectory towards you. [the car is too close to you to avoid hitting you as you are standing there, frozen, in the middle of the street. The impact kills you. Not instantly, but close enough. You never get to say goodbye but at least you were thinking of him when it happened. Game over.] 
• Run forward, in the same direction you were walking. [you narrowly escape the horrible collision to find yourself panting on the sidewalk, a kind pedestrian asking “are you okay? That guy drove really fast!”] 
• Run back in the direction you came from. [get hit by another car and cause a series of crashes as you are still in traffic and several cars are approaching on this side of the street after the light has switched further up]

Pass through

I was sent to Hell because I was tricked by one of the others doing the test. We were a whole group questing together, trying to solve the mysteries of equals and seperates. If you did it wrong, you died. But as happens - often, he tells me - one forgets the details once below. I remember a garden and hollyhocks, and I remember kissing someone. I asked the god of Death, when I arrived, whether I could wait for someone I knew. He told me I would have to travel through first. Now I no longer remember who I wanted to wait for. I think there were several people in my life who were special in that way. But the air was pleasant that day in the garden, and the one who tricked me had felt like a friend. A woman, I think she was.

First it was complete darkness. Then things appeared. Different rooms I had once inhabited in one way or other which I will now walk through. How ever long that takes.

There was a baby. We sit together in the bathtub and the baby is laughing. He is so fat and happy. Then he is below the water and there is a tear in the world. We sit by the window. Baby is happy, and we are cuddling him. Then he drops him, just like that. I guess I'm supposed to figure out why. Or to accept it before the rooms will start being about other things.

I feel pain down here when I touch the smoldering iron doors that sometimes appear. It doesn't hurt me though I try to avoid it. It's just something to pass through. 

Rituals

I want to lead you to a clearing in the woods, and light a fire made of stuff outside of History with fireflies and jumping sparks and smoke that smells of pine. I want to dance together in a broken circle, more than memories, becoming moment, glee, and sounds in fleshy forms.

I want to be alone.

I want champagne.

pain.

We walked into the cold sauna together, and the elevator makes sounds, a sort of low humn, as it carries us through the belly of the building, and you often taste like smoke and sugar, too much; I remember how high you'd drive me, surrounded by stars, I've tried nothing else like it. You were the only one alive in a room filled with the dead, they were dancing, I was deep inside you.

It's funny how I finally really like myself while you are hating me. Little mice running for their lives, running from the Master. I cannot do it. I cannot do it. I cannot do it. I did it. I was free. I was my own night sky. Wearing white roses in my hair, and how much I am needed. It's as the prophesies foretold. Remember?

Running water and the sound is always somewhere in the background.

Le olam. The whole world is possessed. 

I have been so loved the last 10 days that if I am never loved again, it would almost seem reasonable.

Inspiration for the coming days:

paintings by Albert von Keller

Let the record show

The first months of 2018 was a time when life almost fell into place, and all that was good was just within reach. Slippery promises of okay, soon to be lost. 

"her heart felt bruised so that all manner of little things hurt her."

                                                              - Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness.

1:28

October: Let me kiss your bruises.
September: You said I deserved it.

June: Everything I touch has been poisoned.

April: We are seized by an uncontrollable longing for remote places.
March: The whole world is possessed.
February: Slippery promises of okay, soon to be lost.

January: the perfect non-committal romance for the post-obligational society

"I get a little bit Ghenghis Khan,

don't want you to get it on with nobody else than me."

- It's been 6½ hours. Why did you leave me in the dark? I can't get out.

- It’s a new universe. (other worlds)

- lo and behold, drama follows you everywhere. 

- Awesome.

Polyfonia, post-anxiety attack, 20:17, 2018. 

- Please.

Postscript.

Coming for you

a musical journey

writing: LV

"God knows you've tried, but you can't let go of what you used to have. From the people to the little comforts that made your everyday aboveground pleasant and so easy compared to this. You don't feel there is anything wrong with clinging to those memories although some people certainly like to blame you for it. You just want to see the sun again! Humanity wasn't made to live in the dark!"

"As a servant of the morrow, you do not let yourself be chained in grief and inaction because of things that happened in the past. Instead you work hard and with determination to improve the future for your community and for those you love. This drives your research, where you are meticulous and calculating, yet daring in your theories that usually go further than those of your colleagues. You strongly believe scientific discoveries will be instrumental in leading the way forward for humanity, and as such, one must have the courage to go where the evidence points."

"You don't believe in nourishing dangerous fictions with empty promises that everything will be okay, and you don't have a whole lot of fucks to give about ancient emotional hang-ups that keep people from doing their part. You aren't here to make sure everyone feels "nice", you're here to make sure the barely functioning machine that is the budding society of Thermopylae is well-oiled and that all the parts are running at maximum effort. So when someone from SURFOP is freaking out, putting their team in danger  by making shoddy, emotionally charged decisions out of fear or anger or whatever, you are the one who're sent in to teach them to calm the fuck down." 

lotka-volterra.se

Life hacks #2

Do you also find social media tiresome and emotionally exhausting? Scroll through the feeds just before bedtime to convince your body to give in quicker to the near-death-experience that is sleep.

Lonely? Aquire a radio. The incessantly blabbering voices will trick your mind into thinking you have company, and you help prolong the unnatural lifespan of an outdated, but culturally significant medium of mass communication.

a well-made blazer will make any outfit look professional.

Rethink your anxiety attacks. Anxiety embraces are ice cold, adrenaline-filled hugs. At least something is touching you, even if it is just your own ultimate failure to function. It's been so long.

Are your current worries eating you up? New, more time-sensitive worries make for the perfect distraction!

for an added spicy touch and to escape the sense that every movement you make is just a part of the repition of an endless pattern of pointless biology, whenever you make love, imagine that the sun is burning out and that the destruction of all life as we know it has begun with the crackling opening of the skies and the screams of fleeing masses running through the city about to be swallowed by the earth. Feel free to share this fantasy with your partner. Secretly, we all want to be chosen last - it's the perfect non-committal romance for the post-obligational society.

Life hacks #1

"Blinking brings memories of your wide-open eyes and fear now has the form of your frown."

Darkened, double-eyed, skin against skin, and the faint, postponed breaths of the starving still drawing life. Lay me in water.