Fins

when (in the future)

my mind grows stiff

instead of elastic

one day when you pull on it

it will snap

into many tiny pieces that will go

to conquer territory

in everyone else's minds.

from then on

you will hear my words

in your own mind

in my voice

until (in the future)

your own mind

snaps.

the first thing i will

be telling you then

(and everyone else)

is to take me

charred and flaked

to the ocean

so you can make me

into a pod of dolphins

sleek and shining

playing together

in the waves

just like i always

wanted to be.

A Secret

I am actually quite glad

That one day a moment will come

When all of you

Will be only my past,

Behind me,

And my future will be

White lightning,

An empty tunnel,

A ladder to the sky,

A door in the stars.

For that one brief instant,

At least,

You will all be memories,

Unable to hurt me,

Nothing to care much about, really.

The Signifiers Have No Value for Us Anymore

How abnormal is it that I have a sufficiently well-developed personal symbolic system that when I am at a concert and some random dude in a Halloween skeleton costume comes out before the lead singer to ask, "What kind of moth do you want to be?  The kind of moth who beats itself to death against the wall of the lantern, delusionally imagining it to be the moon?  Or the kind of moth who manages to sneak onto a space rocket and flies to THE!  ACTUAL!  MOON!, I don't even have to think before mentally responding, "I want to be the kind of moth who helps to create the moon on Earth with my own hands!"?

I think the problem with the symbolism here is that, as far as I know, most scientists think that the moon that we already have was in fact created on Earth?  On the other hand, I guess it was not created on Earth by the hands of moths, so maybe that's still okay?  Well, okay, the other problem with the symbolism is that moths don't have hands.  But the moon was also not created on Earth by the. . . legs of moths?  Antennae of moths?  Something?

Inertia

But when I search for you, you flee, Elusive, intangible, an idea, a ghost. I want to press my lips to yours, Breathe in your scent, Embrace you and be embraced, But the room is full only of shadows And harsh electronic lights. I try to trap you in sounds, whirring, Meaningless, but your whisper escapes me. I shut my eyes against the light Illuminating corners empty of you, Trying to envision you, Seductive, welcoming. Your absence beats like a presence. My heart and lungs expand and contract To some failed parody of your rhythm. All I want is you, and you are not here,

But when I run from you, you hang on, The feel of your body heavy atop mine. Your breath brushes my forehead, Your heady fragrance pervades the room, Your arms around me, mine around you. Then your fingers press down my eyelids, A cool touch summoning the dark. Your arms wrap around my ears, Muffling, dimming the world. When I open my eyes against you, You are everything in my vision, Any glimpse of light hopeless, Futile, unimaginable. Your heartbeat and mine are the same, One pulse, one heart, one self, Nothing between you and me Permitting any form of release,

Sorry for the tiny font size - the lines need to fit the given space.

I don't even understand how little water imagery there is in this poem.

How obvious is it what the subject matter is?

The Guilt of the Oppressed

I thought this post of Richard Seymour's was interesting for the less-stressed point he makes about the broader idea of the guilt of the oppressed, which he highlights as important not merely in patriarchal structures but also in capitalist ones.  I'm not sure I fully grasped his psychoanalytic analysis of guilt, but to the extent that I did it seems he may be talking about the ways in which our attempts to move on from the ways that we are oppressed and abused, to put on hold or forget our desire to get revenge for or cope meaningfully with or fully address our pain and suffering, actually lead us to feel guilty, not so much because of what we did, but because of what we can never do in the world as it is.  This is interesting because I have never been abused, but I did have this painful work experience in our capitalist economy last year.  And it is genuinely hard to grapple with questions of whether I was to blame for the ways it went wrong or whether the workplace was, even as obviously the ultimate answer has to be both.  Logically, there are lots of good reasons to assign greater culpability to the workplace, but it is certainly true that in our capitalist economy that doesn't really matter very much, and I had to move on.  Although thankfully now it is less powerful than it is used to be, it's certainly true that a lot of what I was experiencing for the past year was guilt, a very strong guilt that had a major effect on how I lived my life.  I find Richard Seymour's perspective on this, then, to be personally interesting - to provide a new way of looking at my experiences for the past year and to consider the role of capitalism in constructing my guilt.

_The Good Place_

The 80s

I was born in the 80s, and, I mean, early in the 80s, so you might think I would be used to 80s aesthetics.  Nevertheless, I just really don't like them.  I mean, after having watched the Blade Runner sequel, I remarked to multiple people that my main memory of watching the original is just how off-putting I found the actresses' haircuts.

I was just reminded of this again by watching a whole bunch of Bowie videos and performances spanning decades.  I don't always find the aesthetics of Bowie's appearances in the 70s attractive (not a mullet fan), but they are consistently appealingly bizarre.  Conversely, while in the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s Bowie's aesthetics were more normal, they were consistently pretty attractive.  However, the aesthetics of Bowie's 80s appearances were a thoroughly unappealing mix of conventional and unattractive.  Sigh.  The only partial exception is Bowie in the Screaming Lord Byron role in the "Blue Jean" video, but:

1. this is presumably meant as a parody of Bowie's own 70s personae.
2. it is literally a Byron reference.
3. although presumably unintentionally, it reminds me strongly of Torquil.

Certainly I don't find anything else about the aesthetics of the video particularly appealing.

Sometime this year I am intending to watch the "Love Cats" video again, and hopefully that will remind me that there are at least some 80s aesthetics out there that I quite like!