Redesign

What is it about the experience of living that what you're doing matters so much to you? The ego the ego, so bound in by the ego.

The reason it would be really hard to acheive nirvana or some kind of state of zen in New York is that in so doing you might become prey to vermin that want your apartment; you also might find you have an apartment that others cannot comfortably visit.

An engaged couple is coming to spend two nights chez moi on Thursday. I am REDESIGNING the apartment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The extraordinarily-heavy-glass topped coffee table is gone. The LOFT has been dismantled. The couch-bed which used to be under the loft has moved to beneath the windows, where the media center used to be. The media center is against the opposite wall where the purplish trunk used to be. The trunk is the new coffeee table, in front of the couch bed. A NEW BED arrives tomorrow to go where the loft was. You don't have to climb to get in. If a mouse ever gets in there I won't blog anymore because I will die, mortified.

As far as I can picture it, it's all going to be very very inviting. You should all come see.

XOXOX
Alexis

p.s. Don't date people you have to convince about it. And if that makes you happy kid, you'll be the first it ever did. (Dorothy Parker. What if this was the only thing I ever said? I think it would suffice.)

Art and Academia

An art gallery opened across the street last night! This is so good. The owners were talking about the success of the opening and remarking that they think there's a need in the community, the community of my and outlying streets, for a bookstore and a free wireless connection spot to chill also and they're gonna get right on it. All this is very inkeeping with my horoscope about how generous I am and the surprise in store!

So i was thinking about art and pretension... I would say my thoughts there aren't very congealed yet (I am a walking sleeping person right now)

But I was thinking this morning anyway. I went on line to google search Norman Mailer and misogyny becasue I've never been able to find out why he's so known for that and all I've read was "The Executioner's Song" which I didn't find misogynistic particularly.

Still no answer there but wound up reading a completely amazing bell hooks essay about the misogyny of gangsta rap being a red herring for the white male patriarchy.

She mentioned how when all that outcry started (probably 1991 or something) Spin magazine had her interview Ice Cube and then hacked out most of the interview when she and he wound up respectfully discussing themselves rather than having some sort of "Black Feminist attacks Black Rapper" brawl.

But this blog is supposed to be about me. So I was sort of thinking that there's absolutely not one word of bell hooks' essay I don't find to be unequivocally true. But she's so SERIOUS. If you pay attention to the truth behind the structures that comprise your whole identity in society, well... what's the point... what's the point of that anymore than making a movie (She used "the Piano" to make her point about mainstream misogyny that DOESN'T get this big reaction like young black male reflections of the power structure do) that people are moved by without understanding that it's really pretty fucked.

I guess it's whether or not people having access to the truth is important to you.

I just think academics have utopian ideals and I don't understand why they don't just go do as the Romans do... what motivates them to point out the complexities when they know there's always been people who kind of got it and people who either don't or choose not to?

And as for being an artist, well, how do you retain your integrity when the ego is so important there. It's only my problem to the extent that mingling at an art gallery is a trip. It's really fun becasue people are so on. But that's also pressure... it's not a no-pressure situation, yet, the goal of an event like that is warm feelings, is it not? I gravitate more to that. But I'll tell you, there may be times in the course of the night that my behavior reinforces the white male patriarchy!

Blah blah blah. I can't wait to go home and eat in bed. I think I'm going to go on Craigslist and try to find a handy man to help me redesign my apartment, move furniture, throw out the loft bed, drill this shelf back up this Saturday morning. I am really out of it right now.

XO

My lobby 5:59 pm

Alexis: Oh, sorry, you're filming something?
Petite woman with jet black ponytail & European accent: Yes, yes.. New York Film Academy...just two minutes and we're out of your way...
Alexis: Oh no... go ahead... but what is it? I mean what's it for?
Ponytail: Oh,yes... a horror movie.

My sentiments exactly.

Idalia

You know how they say you have to be a genius to get a zero on the SATs? The poems on Atone for her hands with hammering remind me of this principle...

I like the one about "bite" ("You ready Yet?" by Josie) -- if I write more, I'll start making it more linear... i.e. you can group me with the schmucks who just try to get the highest score they can on the positive side, not solve the whole test and then answer backwards.

What am I whining for?

All cry cry cry on the computer.... when there are these fantastic hilarious MUSIC VIDEOS on the extended pizza network. THAT's where to put one's energy..., obviously not into all this boo-hoo mom crazy no boyfriend! :) :)

Contest!

So, goes without saying, the blogging is consuming me -- I think about what I'm gonna write about as I'm walking to work. Days I have a hangover = extra pensive over the minutia.

So I'm walking, rocking out a little, slipping a little, bumping into people a little, thinking thoughts, making observations, thinking a good place to start toay's entry is probably the slush all over the street, and then I tried to think of a way to describe the color -- as in "There's Xxxxxx-colored slush all over the street." But my brain could not deliver. What's the same color as the slush, readers-of-my-blog-not-residing-in-Santa-Cruz? The best I could do, and this says something about shots of Jameson + five hours of sleep, is that where it's particularly wet, I think I've seen baby poo that color. This was a blog I hoped would never have those words in it though. I'm reluctant to say my tone's "poetic" but more poetic than that would be nice.

So that's the contest: what color is the slush?

I love my college roommate. She's visiting from Chicago for an art history conference. We had a very nice time last night eating sushi, not having an allergic reaction, and drinking in Queens, Borough of Dreams. She was annoyed by me this summer when I visited her. Guess why? No... no... it's not a write-in contest -- that's the slush... It's because SHE was tired of how I let guys objectify me. That's one for the books everyone. I love that though. My friendships with some girls go really deep - This one's always been my great defender though. (I have another story about that but I've got to stay on task here. Okay- well I'll just keep it within the parenthses... This girl selling me crappy exstasy in a Parisian club once said I was stupid because I didn't understand "Do you have a pen?" was code for "Follow me to the bathroom to for a drug/money exchange" and my roomie busted in, like put her body between us, and was all "She is NOT STUPID." Hey... right?) Interestingly enough, she brought along a lesbian last night. She was cool. But as much as I think sex with women is super super hot and love I mean LOVE my close girls AND find that I always can meet at least one woman at work who can be trusted and says funny things NONETHELESS I think I should stay heterosexual overall (ladies, though, I've really been thinking about you. you are great.) It's men that have fucked me over. I'm hard pressed to think of times a woman's fucked me over. But, see, that's cause I generally do the sex thing with men. If I had to do a whole bunch of realtionship stuff with a girl we'd be messing with eachother's heads all over the place I'm sure... at least that's what I've observed from the (admittedly not many) lesbians I've talked to... and the person I know who did it for a while but that was pretty long ago got her heart a bit much broke too...

I dunno.... maybe I should go on the internet and get lesbian. It might be fun to receive/ inflict heartbreak from/on girls for a change.

Is this offensive?

XOXOX
Alexis

p.s. saw a terrible idea on the news feed in the elevator! More on that soon

Terrorism

Terrorism has undermined my optimism. Terrorism has undermined something American about me, that maybe I wouldn't have realized was American had it not been undermined.

September 11, 2001, just before the first plane hit the first tower, maybe 20 minutes before, my boyfriend woke me up to say bye, he was going to class -- I went back to being what I think we called "a happy cat" a term for that particular sensation I experienced when I was able to sleep in and he had to leave for class and nobody raged. When I woke up a half hour later, sun was streaming in and I actually, consciously, thought the words "the world is at peace." I am the least psychic person in the entire world.

I feel I've been taught a really large scale object lesson on how my personal moment-to-moment senations are unrelated to, well, anything... So it's weird sometimes, when I'm on the subway, listenting to say, Suede (Oh my God--- I took all E's music off his computer and put it on my ipod and SPEAKING OF CLEAN N CLEAR how about converstaions about whether it's "Suede or L Suede of The L Suede or The London Suede?!) and feeling transcendent and great and like smiling at EVERYONE and simulataneously realizing that the combination of caffeine and poppy tunes and vanity fed and assuaged for the time being does not mean that I'm not just as susceptible to becoming a terrorist casualty as if I were, say returning from a day of (failed) teaching (attempts), feeling way beyond tears or the word "exhaustion", and writing a poem in purple skinny marker, the only one I have left, about how it would feel to be blown up in a subway, and overusing the word "mangle."

Weird hunh? If not for terrorism, I wonder if I would have really believed all the delusion of grandeur stuff -- I mean that my moods were indicative of "energies" around me or possibilities in the future or something? Probably not, but it is weird feeling so many different things on the subway isn't it?

kiss you
-A

Smells!

For a pretty long time, when it comes to mes personal products, I've veered towards products that smell like bark more than fruit, and in the "smells clean" range - "natural" more than synthetic... I mean that generally I smell less like "clean n clear" amd more like "a bed of nettles" after a shower.

The other morning just before waking up I smelled in a my sleep a pretty syntheticish clean smell... it made me feel love.... it reminded me of summers in the dorms at Dickinson... back in the day when I DID use clean 'n clear... and so did everyone else. It smelled so good. It smelled like happiness when happiness was brand brand new. It smelled like the inkling of a self-knowledge. Way back before self-knowledge was quotidienne.

Just now I put on some bath and body works hand lotion, which I'm glad was here because my hands were very dry. But that stuff just smells like shit. It's not the smell I'm talking about at all.

XO

I'll never be David Bowie and a joke

I used to know a girl when I was 15 who would feel very sad sometimes that she'd never have an older brother. Can you feel sad about the impossibility of certain things being facts in your life? If so, you are probably, but not definitely, a girl.

A joke:

Once there was a heterosexual married couple. The husband liked to ride his motorcycle long distances, and he also dreamed of a trip to Alaska. One day, God spoke to the man. The guy was like "Oh my God, it's God!" etc. etc. God told him he'd been a good man, so what could he do for him? He thought it over a while and said, "Please create a highway from the continental USA to Alaska. I want nothing more than to ride my bike there in a straight shoot." God said "You've got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea how much work that would be? The implications? That's an incredible deistance... the maintenence alone... Try again." The man said, "Okay, well, I'd like to know... why does my wife feel sad? Why does she cry? What is she thinking? What's makes her feel so sad sometimes?" God said "So... two-lanes or four?"

In my unfunny version of the joke, God says "That's because she'll never be a man. And sometimes this gives her the sensation that she's not achieving some potential she feels within herself, but simply has no model for acheiving."

I think the general accessibility to celebrity and genius and all that comes with it, could make girls of us all, in this sense. Plenty of great guys will never be as cool as David Bowie either. David Bowie is the most awesome person ever. You will never ever be him. You can only be you. Envy. Living with envy. We're all women.

I don't understand anything

Before I get into how little I understand, does your work have individual szie portions of Honey Nut Cheerios and Rice Krispies. If so, you should mix them. That's my offering. It's not much but...

I had a nonsense argument last night which spanned a lot of things I just don't get and, you know, quelle dommage. I still slept well. And dreamt I ran into John Lennon on a terrace and he was willing to talk to me and first he acted like no, he wasn't dead, but then it turned out he was. It was a trick.

There was an article in New York magazine, which is often a pretty reprehensible magazine, to me, becasue it's so into "style" by means of a lot a lot of money. But this article was about the kids coming up now and the blogging and social networking which has been something I've been noticing I don't understand for the longest time. I thought it was a really great article. The woman who wrote it noted that she used to lock her diary with a physical lock as a way of showing how she felt removed from her interviewees. What a great point. But basically her thesis was that everything's changing. And, also, people aren't going to be humiliated-feeling in the near-future. They're all going to feel like celebrities when they're humiliated and handle their scandal... or something. It's a new world.

Gwazdor and I are going to debate the merits of documenting every detail of your life for the internet.... such as screwing, eating, thinking, accumulation of acquaintances... in this space in the coming days/weeks. I'm still not clear on which side I'm taking but hopefully Gwazdor'll bully me onto one sooner than later.

Then I mentioned the New York article to someone else... who I kinda like... and got really angry because he already knew about it from Gawker. That website is awful. They made fun of this good article, too? Can anybody do anything for God's sake... see if everything's going to be on the internet now... and the internet has the right to publicly scorn anything put publicly on the internet because it's public...

I mean, it was a better article than I could have written about it all I think, and it made a lot of good points. How come anything done by anybody gets trashed on that site? It's kind of sad how nastiness pervades everything. I was reminded by boy-I-like that the site is not God. It's just a funny site. The issue was really less that I think the site is God than that I'm disturbed by how often this same person puts things & people down and how I formed some link-up between his persona and the Gawker website in my head for a minute. Fun to date me, no?

How many things I don't understand am I up to now?

The next one everyone already knew I don't understand but how do you go out with someone... because I completely don't get it? I thought I wanted to, but now I'm not sure, because before you even get to enjoy it, wait: I should say before I even get to enjoy it.... oh fuck it. I just freak out. In short: I want the person to think of me like Marshall or Randolf or Homer or Xena or Kelly thinks or thought of me... but they don't, because they think of me only as they've known me with them... which is like, dumb and insecure... becasue of the sex element.. or whatever other elements... and I can't figure out if I'm more true to myself alone or trying to get them to get me or not bothering trying to get them to get me. Oh hey-- I like the last one actually. So I'll work with that.

XOXOXOX
Alexis

TGIF

Image image image image self-image image image image image self-image image image image image image image image self-image image image

Or maybe it's more like self-image self-image self-image image self-image self-image self-image image image

Such was my analysis of existence after smoking a little outside the venue I went to last night to check out the band/ singer-songwriter + guy on bass for whom I may soon attempt back up vocals... after a day of reading Gawker... which I think I'm going to stop doing.

Don't get me wrong. That's okay. That's how it should be. Or I mean, that's just how it is. :)