The Prodigal Daughter

not to ever spend another christmas with my family again.

“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything, solitude, hardship, exhaustion, death. We’re Proud of ourselves, but when you think about it our enthusiasm’s a sham. We don’t want other worlds. We want mirrors.”

—
Solaris

“I could tell you what’s happening, but, uh, I don’t know if that’d really tell you what’s happening.”

—
Solaris

turned the dial around to the
wrong number before the major 3 times
because of the feeling that
you get when someone’s eyes are
pressed into your back
in order to get it open
there was an extraction
and then a return

Been on a Cronenberg kick. Enjoy:

I first discovered Douglas Coupland when I was a teenager in the Hunterdon County Library. I was browsing listlessly through the fiction and the title of one of his books caught my eye. It was Shampoo Planet. After reading it I was hooked and immediately read Generation X, Microserfs, Life After God, and Polaroids From the Dead. My obsession kind of drew to a close as I left my adolescence. I read some of his other books during my adult life and did enjoy them. His books are intelligent and humorous views of modern society. I wasn’t really aware that Doug has also made films and visual art, but it doesn’t surprise me.

I was delighted when I discovered his youtube channel that has shorts advertising his new book The Gum Thief. There are 9 shorts all together. 2 of them describe characters in the book and the third describes one of the characters’ attempt to write a book. They are all very entertaining and it seems to me like a brilliant way to promote a work of fiction. This is one of my favorites:

Look at the channel >here< .

been trapped in this year like a bad dream. it’s been a year of utter disappointment in myself and surroundings. i found myself in the city of brotherly love again and it was all repeated. a sense of linear motion through a year on a straight line. that line does not go up, it just goes forward. the same rerun of desperation, desolation, and the feeling of being boxed in by the silver and brown buildings. scott once told me he hated it here because you can’t see the sky. i now know more then ever that he’s right. the sky grounds you. it lets you remember that we are hurdling around space like maniacs at the helm of a too big cruise ship crashing into an iceberg. the fucking titanic.

this is self reflection like i haven’t done in a while and so let’s be completely honest. i gave up on a life that was over before it even started. i left him out there with his cold selfishness. after that a peice of me felt like it had been taken out and that’s the cold truth of it. i have muted feelings if none at all. when i wrecked my mother’s car against that telephone pole most of it drained out of me and for a short time i was a happy fool. death stared me in the face and winked. my grandmother’s body laid a slab of chilled flesh and probably painted to look asleep. i decided then that’s not what we are. i decided that our bodies, if nothing else, contain an energy (if not a soul). we carry personal histories and i realized that as we cleaned her things out of her apartment. they were all just things anyway. and i hated the way we held onto them for sentimentality. even if i am the most sentimental loser you’ve ever met.

for a while i considered giving up writing. it seemed that poetry was a pointless expression of my own self absorption. that’s why i attempted the transmission series. it was a chance to write something that was only connected to me through observation. it had little to do with my own personal life. it was a way to observe and comment. i lost steam with it somewhere. i wasn’t sure what else to say with it. or what. if it even mattered. i still consider not writing. but this here, right here, it very important. there is no other way for me to get this out of my system which has been clogged and corroded as of late. i have been living in a past that doesn’t even exist. i have been clinging to memories that help no one. all of these things have prevented me from writing, friendships, lovers, family, and myself. this is only a part of me and it’s an ugly part.

i loved him so much and all i ever wanted was to give someone my love. to show them how big it was and let it belong to someone because sometimes it’s too big to hold even for myself. it’s not a fear of being alone. it’s a fear of not being able to let someone see who i really am. all of me. your family accepts you because they have to as do your good friends. but a stranger, now there’s a trick.

it’s not as if there haven’t been any other contenders. there’s someone right now, but i feel so wrung out that i can’t even tell what his intentions are. i feel like he should read this. then he would know how crazy i feel most of the time. how desperate and sad and pathetic i feel sometimes. i am not always funny and light hearted. i am not always so understanding of where YOU’RE coming from because i’m too wrapped up in myself. yet i acknowledge that. i know that everyone has a right to be selfish and we all are at times out of necessity. i feel fear to let anyone know who i am prevents me from doing so. it’s a rat eating its tail.

i let myself binge out on cocaine recently because i wanted to feel numb. it made me a sexless talker. it was a way to talk and not feel that fear. it made me lucid, but i hardly had control over my own hands enough to write. i decided that once it was gone i wouldn’t abuse substances so much anymore. i want to be clean from all of that. i want my mind to be clear and i want to start taking care of myself. i want to find the story that is important for me to tell even if it is comprised mostly of my own. sometimes i feel like i only have one good thing in me (artistically). i need to get it out but i don’t know what it is. i have all of the necessary components. i know how to make the letters dance into words and then into sentences. philadelphia doesn’t have to be what i’ve made it into and i’m fully aware of that.

that feels so. so much better.

electric light candy canes
dance in the windows
like scissors
the white has closed us all in
the heat is on and that’s all there is
keeping us warm in the white

the kids are slashing tires
“15 years i been doin it
and i been drunk all those years”
overheard from a window to the street
and then a scuffle

bent over with a long straw
found in the wallet of a returned jacket
all there is to do is talk and when
the white is all gone a sense of relief
a sense of a grinding halt