the only bohemia to be enjoyed
would be a self-made one
inasmuch as one can and does 'make oneself'
in a world in which originality is a rapidly dissipating illusion
we are—everything is—quotation
we lift emotion from poetry and song
because it fulfills a double act of consumption as well as expression
we are told by cinema and advertisement what to covet
and how to mistake it for necessity
i sometimes wonder if everything has not already hardened to artifice
i sometimes worry that i am always being lied to
I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made life wonderful, it's made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
"My insides don't match up with my outsides." "Does anybody's insides and outsides match up?" "I don't know. I'm only me." "Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside."
[ Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ]
delirium.
i already know where i want my ashes scattered;
nobody can accuse me of lacking foresight
- - - - -
Our cult of death is also a cult of life in the same
way that love is a hunger for life and a longing for death.
Our fondness for self-destruction derives not from
our masochistic tendencies but also from a certain variety
of religious emotion.
-- Octavio Paz, as quoted in Ana Mendieta's unpublished notes
mortality is an awesome power
and i am humbled
terrified.
