In My Room

I call this writing by graft. To quote Wilkipedia: “A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = (palin "again" + psao "I scrape"), and meant "scraped (clean and used) again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice.” So here I am with one foot in the past, looking toward the future and pissing on the present. I have a specific project in mind, a specific place where I want to take my photography. But first I have to take a detour to my 36th birthday, July 30, 2001. I’m thinking it sheds some insight on how I relate to women or something like that.
••••••
It’s my birthday. I turned 36 at the stroke of midnight.

DiSAPpEAR
HEre

My apologies to Bret Easton Ellis. I just finished reading Glamorama for the umpteenth time, and I’m feeling quite situational. I just wish I could namedrop like he does. It might serve to make the mundane a little more epic. This is, after all, about the difference between depth and shallowness, the ever grasping “I” that wants more than he probably deserves. It’s about doing that next right thing, living in the real world, and so on and so forth . . .

Oh, yeah, I’m so deep. The founder of the on line poetry club I’m a member of thinks I have such a grasp of the unspoken communication between men and women. Are you kidding me? Women completely confuse me. I live in the world described by Ellis in Glamorama where he writes: “At first I was confused by what passed for love in this world: people were discarded because they were too old or too fat or too poor or they too much hair or not enough, they were wrinkled, they had no muscles, no definition, no tone, they weren’t hip, they weren’t remotely famous. This was how you chose lovers. This was what decided friends. And I had to accept this if I wanted to get anywhere.” There is no lie here. There is a difference between recognizing something and accepting it. I guess you can say I don’t accept it, because it still hurts too much. I fall short in so many areas.
You live in a world where everyone is trying to carve out their own niche, achieve their own fame, and establish their own legacy. Relationships have a way of getting in the way of these things. In other words, if adding my name to the ledger of a young woman doesn’t offer her something of a boost, I’m just another interesting acquaintance she can talk with. The fact that I don’t press the issue and make a nuisance of myself makes me an acceptable acquaintance. This is all there is to it. Since I don’t have the wherewithal to make improvements to remove me from the “discarded” list, I’ll have to content myself with this.
“We’ll slide down the surface of things.”
You, Mr. Media, tell me what is sexy . . . what is desirable. I’ll listen. I always do.
Life is a script. I’m thinking back on Ellis’ Glamorama again. I’m so fond of telling people to “make their lives art.” Could I do this myself? Or, why can’t I do this? I think about the director telling the character Victor Ward in Glamorama: “You need, I think, to find a more fruitful and harmonious way to live.” Really. I don’t have a clue. How does one make their life fruitful and harmonious? Never mind. I’m sure it has something to do with God and conformity. Anyway, the devil reads Guy Debord.

And the devil is telling me: “We like you because you don’t have an agenda. We like you because you don’t have any answers. What if one day you became whatever you’re not?”

And I think this is what eventually happens. Become vacant enough and someone will step in to make your decisions for you. Or you leave a suicide note with a smiley face on it.

DiSAppEar
HERe
•••••
So much has changed since I wrote this, and so much has remained the same. My views on relations with women have changed a lot, but my mind remains unsettled. Where once I thought the sum value of my existence was to be desired by a beautiful woman, I know better now. My main problem now is the wherewithal to walk through that door and give someone my heart. Life is not about epiphanies, absolutes and transcendence, but rather about working through and the slow growth that comes with it.
A beautiful bartender at my favorite bar downtown helped to provide a yardstick on the progress I’ve made the past ten years this past week. A guy sits next to her at the bar on her off night and proceeds to tell her what I would have said ten years ago. He tells her how socially awkward he is, and then proceeds to say how women are only interested in status and money and whatnot. Obviously, my friend couldn’t wait to get away from the guy. I would have been that guy not so terribly long ago. I’m reminded of Molly Bloom’s moment of affirmation in Ulysses:

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

Have I reached the point where I can offer such an affirmation after working through the angst of frustrated desire for so long? Maybe. As a friend said, “Sooner or later, you get tired of being alone.”

In the meantime, the present as it were, I explore. I am a voyeur as it were. I witness how others interact and that’s enough for now. “In my room” is metaphor for how deeply personal my photography is. I’m working it out in my own way . . .