I WAKE EARLY BUT I RISE LATE

Last night/this morning: L, M, Z & me. Lying in a field beside a seemingly-abandoned gas station out in the middle of the pitch-dark woods. Watching the Orionid meteor shower and eating clementines. Shivering under insufficient blankets, Z took my hand. I didn't know what to do. We were all crowded in close, talking about whether it was preferable to think of the stars as fixtures or pinpricks--the sky as a skin or a backdrop. Z, I barely know him. And it was not the ideal moment to say Sorry friend. You are interesting and you look like a rabbit. I mean that as a compliment. But. I have someone. Yes, he is absent. I don't know for how long. But I have him. The question being: when is the ideal moment to say such a thing? I took my hand away when someone asked the time. 3:15 AM. We left at the insistence of coyotes.

The aforementioned love being the one I flew to San Francisco for. There is perhaps too much to say here. See also: a room with sheer curtains. See also: being carried across a beach like some romantic cliche. See also: photobooth pictures where I unwrap myself like a mummy. See also: a museum of mechanical wonders, a city of Chagalls, a sadness called fog.

While on the west coat, I also visited J at Green Gulch Zen Center. It is so strange to see your best friend for the first time in five months. It is so strange to walk in a valley full of Japanese plants where few people speak and no one speaks loudly. A gong sounding every so often. He made us cinnamon tea and walked us through the Zendo. Bronze statues of Bodhisattvas and dim, natural light. Walking barefoot through their sacred space. My best friend has a shaved head and sleeps in a meditation hall with forty others. Otherwise, he is as I remember him.

Been daydreaming about tauroboliums. Bulls adorned with gold and garlands of violets before being slaughtered. The Roman who waits just beneath the stands, arms outstretched, as the blood runs down and bathes him. Purified, deified, feeling fine. How the loves of the first world were dangerous.

Ideal, ideal, ideal. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. Boomboom, boomboom, boomboom.

We finally discussed Dada in my Art History class. There was much scoffing from sorority girls. Joe and I decided to make Dada costumes for Halloween. I decided to only make art with a knife.

In other news, I am so disappointed that the Heene family hysteria was a hoax. I had this eager image of the moment when the balloon would be intercepted and opened up to find that child nestled like a baby bird, cradled in aluminum and sleeping.

FOR NOW, FOR NOW

THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN MY ABSENCE:

Houses I Have Come to Possess: 1. It's a quaint little cottage. What am I doing? Paying rent, washing dishes and (simply and impossibly) growing up? Thinking perhaps this burgeoning-adult-thing is all a great big sham.

Idols I Have Met: 2. Daniel Johnston and Eugene Hutz.

Grand Escapes I Have Managed: 3. Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. Currently writing from Madison, Wisconsin.

People I Have Kissed: 5. The most recent of whom I have become extraordinarily attached to in a short period of time. This is self-defeating, I know, as he leaves for San Francisco in one week. Leaving: the most stubborn of themes. Being left: I guess I'm good at it. A boy who worries what poem he will leave behind.

Parents I Have Reunited With: 1. But not in the way you would think. It has been five months since I last spoke to my mother. My possible-father, too, has remained something of an enigma. But I recently received an email from an almost-parent. Which is to say, the man I mistakenly believed my whole life to be my father--up until a year ago when I discovered he was not. Our communication is strange, given the 18-year misunderstanding of our roles. He owns a pecan orchard and works on an oil rig. I find comfort in his words but do not know what to call him. Somewhere between father and ghost. A reimagined myth.

Things I Did Not Realize I Loved: Perhaps Innumerable, Recalculating Everyday. The Midwest. Herman Melville. Drawing compasses on the bodies of sweet-mouthed boys. Big black dogs. Driving on the interstate. Explaining the American South to Others. Aural letters in which a best friend reads Le Petit Prince aloud to me. Kale. Antonio Saura. Writing poetry to Django Reinhardt. Dancing silly to Thelonious Monk. Pineapple curry. Cold showers. Looking up famous writers in the yellow pages and writing letters to them, without knowing if they are they. Lists as opposed to lengthy ruminations--how they function like memories. Bison, as they are the fleshy incarnation of my newfound obsession with Minotaurs. The word ambergris.

The Figure of Woman: HOW NOW?

The same questions are following me around. Just finished an extensive analysis of the female nude in art. In South Asian lit, I'm learning about Hijras and the third sex. A whole paper on the femme fatale. Back at home, I'm reading up on Tiresias: hey pal, no one ever made duality look so sex-y. And then there's the fact that I'm dating a girl without even knowing if I'm straight or not.

I'm feeling especially ambiguous lately. The questions are piling up in the backroom of things-I'm-avoiding-coming-to-terms-with. Lately, my head's populated with women: distinctions like devoted mother/devouring mother; an estranged best friend in Chicago for whom I feel real heartbreak; this mean girl that Stephen may or may not be seeing; this girl whose bed I keep waking up in without any of my confusion answered.

Staring at department store mannequins and seeing classical nudes.
Staring at piles of bones in anthropological digs and wondering what's a mother.
Staring at one girl's naked body and noting the dissimilarities to my own.
Staring at Serra Paylin clad only in the American flag.
How now how now how now?

Simone de Beavoir: Do women exist as a natural kind? Is it desirable that they should exist?

Last night, I went to my seven-year-old cousin's birthday party. Some kid's mother froze when I walked in. She just stared at me with big, wary eyes. I know whose child you are, she muttered. You are your mother's clone. I couldn't help but be disdainful. I practically spat my reply ("Not. Quite.") and left the room. Nothing gets me so angry as being compared to her--even though this woman only meant for a superficial comparison. Even though my mother's beautiful. In my dreams, I disfigure the parts of me that look like her. I think it was also the way this stranger worded it: "I know whose child you are." No. She does not know whose child I am. That's the problem. No one does.

As for the Body of Woman, I'm cutting away my origins. I'm stripping the fount. I lay my head on S's breast the same way I used to lay my head against my mother's chest as a small child. But that's all done with.

So what with studies of transgressive sexuality, ongoing practice in bicuriosity, and more than a few instances of hot-and-cold rage---it would appear that ambiguity's my thing.