Flesh Ether, we'll just call it done.

My secret boyfriend Jack's playing behind the white sheet which serves as a backdrop and Heather is pleased I'm letting her take pictures of my bush.
I remember a being a child, a preteen, at the public swimming pool. Women all around, they were so huge, boobs flopping. I changed in the bathroom wondering how those women could be SO NAKED. I get it now.
I became unselfconscious about nudity the same time I started loving fresh tomatoes.
Incense is burning and I'm smoking on a stool and can't seem to get enough smoke to obscure my face. We want a smoke shot. The cigarettes are slim. It's not my fault.
Heather is taking photographs of me nude and I ask myself, what is she taking pictures of?
Without my clothes, my self is still buried.
Where is my self?
Under the flesh, muscle, is it in the bones? In my brain? My heart? She is not taking pictures of me, she is taking pictures of my epidermal.
"Why does one ask, 'where does the flesh meet the ether?" Cazo said at his art opening at Velvet months ago. Things are so obvious to him.
Before, before, I am trying to get everyone to rapture with me. I even sent out a facebook invite. This idea spawned by reading a few Douglas Coupland books back to back with a similar sentiment. It is page (3) in Player One, the chapter  CUE THE FLAMING ZEPPLIN. Karen is in an airplane musing about the book/movie the Langoliers by Stephen King where a bunch of people suddenly vanish, their clothes and earrings and walkmans and headphones left abandoned where their bodies once took shape. There are some people who wake up to this (something about the pressure). Karen muses, "What does it mean for someone to vanish?" Namely, what is US and what is NOT US.

Ok, wait. So. The Rapture. Let me explain. In it's most simplistic sense the Rapture is the end of the world. In theory the good will rise to heaven, leaving their earthy possessions behind. The bad will stay on earth. A blaze of glory. Floating to heaven. Eyes skyward. Trumpets. A sweet photography project.

The rapture project didn't work out. It was supposed to be a series of photograph shoots. I would take a series of THREE photographs for every person. Locations were random. Wherever you happened to be when the rapture would take place.
FIRST PHOTO: Person, full body, looking skyward. SECOND PHOTO: Same frame, person gone, pile of what is "not of the self" left on a pile on the ground. THIRD PHOTO: Detailed perspective of "not of the self" stuff.
I wanted to make a prototype so I took set up a stool with my camera on it, put it on timer mode and took a picture of me looking at the sky.
Second photo: I took all of my clothes, shoes and hair things and put them together in a way where it looked like my body had just disappeared. Then I realized, wait, wait. I had are that morning and hadn't fully digested my food, so it wasn't part of my body yet. So I placed a cup of maté, some chewed up tortilla chips and my nutritional supplements and set them by my clothes. These things were not me. Then, wait, wait, my fillings, they are not me either. I took slivers of tin foil to replicate fillings and placed them besides my clothes. What about my dead skin? That is no longer apart me.
And staring at all these things and then thinking about what else I needed to include, I realized that my whole body was not me.
 I was made up of the food I had eaten and the water I drank and the air I breathe. It wasn't just these things that supported my life, they literally were a part of me. My bones and blood and everything was just things I had consumed my entire life and the combination of those things, constructed by some divine intelligence made who I was. And I then I realized, I'm not separate from these things. I am, all these things.
If the rapture were to come, I would not rise. I am this earth. I am heavy. I am the universe.
I am one with the universe.
It's not nirvana. It's reality.
I couldn't go any further with my rapture project. It just got to complicated. It was too absurd to try and make an art bit out of a silly myth. It wasn't worth it.
So, what the hell is Heather taking a picture of?
Me? Or the Universe?



Heather said she owed me one for coming over on short notice and I told her this wasn't true. But I asked her to take a picture of me like the one Nelson Algren took of Simone de Beauvoir, doing her hair in the bathroom in heels. Wasn't the same. I'll try again in my forties.


Heather's so cool.

When the questions were asked
a deep breath was taken
creating space
for the answers
& slowly in clues & omens they came
The Universe answers

Depression

I want you to know, I want to live. I want to fight. But there is a part of me that wants to die. And this part of me gets in the way from the wanting to live part. 
Mom asked me the other day if I still think about suicide. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. She told me she read an article that kids who stayed up late were statistically more likely to be suicidal when they grow older. I used to stay up late to work on projects. Write stories. Draw little pictures. Nighttime was when I fely most creative. Still is. 
When my therapist asked me, several months in, if we should start about medication she mentioned there are cultures where depression is normal. I thought of this picture in a sociology textbook which discussed the Amish. In Amish communties depression in males is documented because they do not mask the disorder as alcoholism. Common in my culture. I was told in the French culture no one admits to being depressed but only says, "je fatigue."


I've been depressed for a very long time. I started taking pills more than a year ago. The pills I take are called Citopram. It stimulates my neurotransmitter to release more serotonin. I take 20 mg in the morning with my iron, B12 and Omega something something. 


When you are waiting in the waiting room for your doctor they have you fill out the 


Goldberg's Depression Test. 
It says things like:
I find it hard to concentrate when I read. 
I think I am uglier than most people. 
I feel like a failure. 
I find it hard to do trivial things. 
I find it hard to make decisions. 
I feel I am being punished.


You grade the answers based on your level of agreement. 


I had my dose doubled to 40mg a few months after the initial assessment. The doctor told me I might feel less empathy. 
I'm continuing to take the original dosage. I break them in half. It means I only have to go every 6 months. 


When I told my mom I was on medication she was disappointed. In High School, when I would say i was depressed, she would tell me to say I was sad. 
I was sad when I should have felt happy. Like accomplishing something. Finishing a project. Standing on the mountain top.


I told my brother and sister first. My sister seemed annoyed.  My sister gets upset when I tell her I'm sad. She tells all I need to do things that make me happy. Go on vacation. My Dad tells me my friends or job isn't good and I should get new friends and a new job. 


My brother said the only thing anyone has ever said about the issue which had made any sense, "I have no idea what you're going through, I have no opinion." For Christmas he bought me an inexpensive laser tag game and Memory game. 


My doctor says my hypothalamus is like a raisin, shriveled up because of a lack of serotonin. The medication would help make my hypothalamus become fat and juicy. One day I wouldn't need to be on medication.  


Camus says suicide is the one truly philosophical problem. 


Every once in awhile I will stop taking the pills. Sometimes I forget for periods of time. Sometimes I want to see what happens. The same things happens every time. It takes a couple weeks. My life becomes overwhelming. I feel guilty. I don't feel ok around people, I don't feel ok alone. I don't feel ok at all. I don't want to go to yoga. I feel guilty for not going to yoga. No one likes me. I want to eat all the time. 


There is a deep well of sadness - like an underground lake. Dark blue and cold and beautiful. When I am depressed I am in that place. It is difficult to explain. I feel buried under a thousand feet of scar tissue. When I am here, on the shoreline of this lake, I want to die the most. I hate being here. With all my heart I hate this place. I am all alone here.


Taking pills doesn't mean I'm happy. Taking pills means I don't have to be in that place. When I cry, I cry until I forget, like a baby. I get distracted. I stop crying. I make tea. I cry when I jog alone. I get a few miles from my house and punch a tree and say, "FUCK YOU WORLD!" and cry and cry and keep running. 
To be crying all the time with no tears coming down your face is hell. To be crying and wishing to not be alive anymore is hell. To hate life is hell. To hate the vessel you are in for no reason besides you are breathing is hell. There is no why. It just is. Maybe a bad habit. I don't blame it. I just want to get away. 


The frustration that comes from explaining depression is defending it as not a choice. To pin something that is a feeling or emotion outside of the realm of choice makes people uneasy. From a philosophical basis, it skirts free will and our ability to create ourselves. It makes claim that we are a confluence of circumstances. It skirts responsibility from the individual to make themselves who they are. 
Is taking pills taking a way of taking the responsibility of creating my life? Am I cheating myself? Am I cheating nature?


I find talking about depression is easier when I describe it as a tumor. When I describe the depression as not being a part of me but something that grew and became attached and I can live without. Something that grew and became rather than always was. 


Talking to my therapist a couple months on the pills, she tells me I am still myself. The pills did not change who I am. Being who I am is still my responsibility. 


But I'm afraid. I'm afraid I am cheating. I am afraid I am really supposed to die. That the universe has called me to take my own life and I am cheating. I am being selfish. Killing myself weighs heavier in my thoughts than going on vacation. It is on par with my life options as is getting into a new relationship. Buying a car. Moving to a new city. What right do I have to use modern pharmaceutical technology to extract my responsibility from answering the fundamental philosophical questions, to live or to die? 
It's easier this way. It's easier to help people. It's easier to work on projects. It's easier to feel good about myself when I accomplish something. It's easier to talk about sadness when it's not so deep it hurts to touch. There is still a heaviness in my understanding, having been to a place of sorrow. 


I haven't lost my empathy. I am still me. I want to live. 

Nowhere

Reason #458 why I make a terrible friend
I forget to use code words when talking about drugs in text messages.

This zine was supposed to be about what a dick ex bf James Ryan is but I got lazy and now I just don't have what it takes to tear him up. And now we're friends who don't fuck and get along pretty well. He is such a dick though. Don't ever date him. He'll treat you like a whore and fuck all your friends. Other than that he's awesome.

This sinus infection is the root of all my powers. The sinus infection has disabled the "give-a-fuck" node in my brain making my immune to the pierced arrow of truth. I've debated for sometime to make a doctors appointment so my energy levels can return to normal. If I don't have the sinus infection I will start caring about really dumb things like I used to. I just can't go back to that.

It makes me so sad sometimes to not have anyone to share these hilarious moments with. Watching youtube some documentary about these siamese twin girls in High School who share a body but have two separate heads and hearts. Gaaah I want that SOOOO bad! Have another person who is super similar to me and we could watch funny shit all day and laugh and laugh and laugh. It would be so great.

My spelling has become dogshit lately.

Friends

Hard to explain. There are five of us here. We are accessories. We make their lives miserable because we work together.
Hobart

Microwave 1
Microwave 2
Refrigerator
Coffee Pot

This is a story about Coffee Pot

Flowers in the Winter cry in trashcans

Who was it that said that incredibly sweet thing about the lilies in my house?
Staring up at them in the late morning maybe, maybe in the evening - feeling sad for them with their provocative shape, protruding genitals, petals, palms stretched back all the way enticing a bee that will never come. It is winter, not just that, they are indoors.
I stare at them, probably drunk and romantic, feeling sorry for them and he tells me they have fulfilled their destinies when I smell them. Tickle their stigma and pistil.
And I smell them. All the time.
I sleep with the dead ones cupped in my hand near my face. Find them crumpled in sheets in the morning.

Michelle asked if I want honey with my tea. What will it be like when the bees are gone? Of course, I want honey with my tea.

Used to spend my money on roses. Before they died all the way I would take them into the backyard and lay them so they could, in their last days, feel the dew on their petals and would be spared the humiliation of crumpling before our eyes.

Words

Been buying things to define who I am. This is very postmodern of me. This is very American. Or is it human? Don't judge a man until you have walked in his cowboy boots, even if they fit him just perfectly and only rub you the wrong way as you cross the desert. Even if they jangle on your feet like a child trying on mommy's high-heels.
Been buying things to prove to myself who I think I am. Let me explain: I am getting farther away from finding who I am by buying things, of course. What one needs to do is find an ashram in Bali under the direction of Ketut Liyer and undergo an indefinite amount of time thinking about nothing. This is a joke.
Spiritual tourism is very postmodern. Or very American. Or bullshit.
Been watching hours of the X-Files on Netflix because I've been needing to check out of the ego for awhile. Life is too fucking long.
People used to say, as they always say, when I was a teenager, when I was in High School that these were the best years of my life and were going to go by so fast. Who the hell were these people? In High School I made myself aware for the rest of my life that High School did not go by fast. Painfully slow.
As a child I reminded myself that when I had money of my own I would buy candy, because as a child I did not have money of my own and needed to ask permission to have candy. Now I buy candy.
Tired of finding out who I am. It seems like it should be obvious.
The Dalai Lama does not understad self-loathing. He went to a conference where the subject of self-hatred came up and it just didn't compute for him, if compute is something the Dalai Lama does at all. Doubtfully.
The Dalai Lama also did not understand the joke of a young and fucking stupid reporter who was interviewing him:
Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, "can you make me one with everything."
The Dalai Lama is not a postmodernist. He probably doesn't understand why people in this culture don't know themselves. He probably doesn't think Dumb and Dumber is funny.
Temet Nosce.
Written above the Oracles door in the Matrix. Know thyself.
A psychic told me how I was going to die, just not when.
Said I was going to be at work putting reduced fat cream cheese on a microwaved soft bleach white bagel with a butter knife, put the butter knife in my mouth to clean it off, walk towards the dishwasher with the knife clenched between my teeth, hands free, trip and have my brain impaled. My last few moments I think no thoughts and can speak no words as my hypothamlamus has been ripped in half and as I feel a rush of DMT I am vaguely aware this is the best moment of my life, albeit, understanding this without the context of words. Psychic says no music will be playing when this happens. So, I have been wearing my headphones lately.
But we all know, there is no avoiding the inevitable. Though the most troublesome bit is the reduced fat cream cheese.
I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.
Seattle (pronounced See-Tull) sucks. Wrote it a letter and shoved it in The Stranger sidewalk dispenser. Dear Seattle, fuck yourself.
Wrote it on the napkin of the Cupcake Royale where we spent 10 dollars and pissshit coffee and cupcakes made primarily of white flour and bullshit. Drove the hell out of there.
Last week stayed the night in Seattle on our way to Orcas Island and Patrick told us about the "Seattle Freeze" where nobody makes any friends because no one is a local and everyone hates non-locals. People will tell you their life story at a bartop, he tells us, but never invite you back to their house. Perpetual loneliness ensues.
I asked Patrick, why:
"No one knows, some people think it's the asian and scandinavian cultures mixing. Some say weather. There are many odd articles."
The only good things about Seattle are
1. Patrick
2. Dan Savage
3. The animal masks at Archie McPhee's.

Then there's the Horned Hand with its foamy ass beers and good tours.

Kombucha

Baby Mix Tape

Caught some geo-keshers in the lawn today.
They were here and gone. Left their little treasure and kept a new one. I was able to share in their discovery. Maybe I was a part of their discovery. A couple and their adolescent boys.
There are secret places all around us, waiting to be found.

Why does the robot man on the phone call himself John when we know he is not really a man? There are obvious lies abound. Told me I would get a ticket for two on a cruise if I answer some political questions. Sounded to good to be true.

Someone told me loneliness is the most constant human condition, we all share in it, but I disagree. I believe there are some people who live their whole lives without feeling lonely. Most of us experience it anyway, because our thoughts are mostly invisible.
It's for this reason I never understood why people so readily dismissed the Borg and having a computer chip in one's brain.
Disclosed this the other day leaning against a wall at a busy venue during an intermission talking to Kelly and "Matty." I told them I wouldn't mind having a computer chip in my brain because it would be easier to access information and if I were ever to be kidnapped it would be easier to find me.
What I don't tell them is how I am terrified of loneliness. What people fear about Big Brother I crave. Constant companionship. Constant monitoring. The idea that at all times someone cares enough to watch over me.
Sure, my anarchist friends would draw away from me as would the Christian ones who have read the Left Behind series.

Want to hear something fucked up? When I first discovered what rape was I wanted to be raped. Because I wanted someone to want me. A sick small sliver of love. I was just a little kid at the time too.

What the hell is wrong with me?

More on the subject of loneliness: sometimes I want it SO BAD. In the company of boring people mostly. I would rather be alone. One interesting person is worth a thousand boring people doing interesting things.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!
- Kerouac

Thee Silver Mt. Zion's Efrim Menuck does not hesitate from using too many words. Use as many as it takes. Just keep the tone interesting.

Haven't been learning. Just assimilating information. Being a newly acquainted mac owner has made me more postmodern, more American, could you say, less human? Unsure. What I have discovered about all this is how inorganic my thinking has become, albeit, less complicated. Considering going to Thailand all I simply look it up on google maps, locate key cultural paradigms and subtleties, key phrases, research choice blogs of American travel in the region including the list of what is in their backpacks, become acclimated with the wikipedia description of the place and local politics, perhaps thumb a National Geographic, research current events through NPR, listen to a few podcasts and radio archives of historic and current upheavals and I feel fully secure and in the know with my future destination.

My language skills have become mush. But I am exposed. I am temporary. I am a wealth of knowledge.

I feel nervous for my teeth all the time.

On the subject of identity there was a time in my teens when I applied to work at Fred Meyer's. They have this whole series of hoops to jump through, one of them being a multi-page personality questionnaire with one of the questions being: do you trust your friends? *Always *Frequently *Sometimes *Rarely *Never.
We also walked through video scenarios depicting morally sticky situations. There was one where two men are hanging in a warehouse unloading some fruit when one man admits he is hungry.  He grabs some fruit and begins to maw down on it. Freeze frame. What do you do as the other coworker?
Walking away from the experience I felt shaken by the depth I was asked to go into myself. Shaken by what they wanted to know of me. Of course I lied. Said I always trusted my friends (imply overly naive?) and would report the fruit thief to my supervisor (heartless?). Fucking bureaucracy.

Cops at my work. Panicked recalling the negative comments I made about Palestinian human rights and Monsanto via a text to my Craigslist boyfriend. I feel weird because I am wearing fuzzy boots and no deodorant. Plus, I reek of garlic from the pesto I just had from lunch. No time to be arrested.

Clock

I've seen four pacifiers on the sidewalk this winter. Abandoned by soft mouths. An omen for what? Stop reading into it. A guy who does not work with me but is here at my work asked me if I had kids. Then he asked how old I was. Then he told me my clock was ticking after twenty-five. My therapist has tried to convince me otherwise. Telling me I had a lot of time to decide. I don't think I will ever decide. It will have to be an accident. If someone asked me, where ever I was before I was born, if I would like to be alive, I think I would spend an eternity making the subject so incredibly complex I would never make the choice. THE CHOICE.
To be or not to be. Thank god, it wasn't an option. Thank god, I don't always have to make decisions. Thank god, for accidents that define who we are. Thank god, existentialism is a myth. Thank god, god is dead. Thank god.