Sobs

Crying post. I'm not a crier. The last time I cried was some time in 2008, and I don't want to talk about it. In fact, there's only one thing that comes close to making me cry, and that's mentioned on this blog elsewhere.

When I was young, I used to have two crying "voices." I put that in quotation marks because I don't know what other word to use. What I mean to say is that these crying voices had rhythms and inflections that denoted two distinct styles; the first happened when I was disappointed or didn't get my way--that is to say, it was an emotional cry. The second was more rhythmic, like ah-hah-huh, fast, and this is what I cried when I got badly hurt, physically.

There was this time, I was probably 5 or 6, and I was running to and from my father in the hallway in our first house. How could you ever describe the rules to games little kids play? There are none. This game involved me running and touching my dad's leg and then running directly away. On this afternoon, I did this very thing a few times and then ran right into a door jam. I saw stars. A flash of light. I spent a few hours in bed, having learnied what real pain feels like. Ah-hah-huh.

Bottle of Slime

The urge to create art usually starts with a dilemma. The form could be about love, or conflict, or fighting something that went awry a while ago, but it's always ultimately about making sense of the world.

The world resists. It tells us that our choice is unimportant; that others' choices are more meaningful and more communicative than our own. It resists because we believe that interpretation is one of the singular acts that perpetuate one's identity. I believe I have a taste in music, books, clothing, art, language, thoughts, looks, etc. when in fact most of these things are made with the intention of persuading me to believe in their view of the world. I believe in some; some I don't.

Taste, and interpretation, is more about shutting other things out than choosing specific things. In other words, interpretation is the deselection, rather than the selection, of objects or characteristics which we notice. Most of my identity comes not from what I am, but from what I'm not.

Relatedly, the mark of age comes not when our attempts at art become more compelling, but when others' become less so.

I don't mean to say that the work of art becomes less powerful as I age, but rather, it becomes more isolated. It tells me not that X is more powerful than Y, but that the language of X is helpful in explaining the world while Y's is too difficult or irrelevant to understand.

The real task of interpretation is to attempt to understand that which does not validate your identity in any noticeable way.

I dreamed I killed a baby deer once. I even posted it to this blog. Let's believe I dreamed it again last night. I have to eat even in my dreams, and I was set upon eating a deer.

The spear stuck from its side, and as it fixed its glance past me, I imagined it was giving one of those looks where you try to see something that moves really fast, like a single blade on a ceiling fan, or a bee.

Who was I to interrupt?

Dentists

Antimetabole - the repetition of words in successive clauses but in transposed grammatical order

Young San: his teeth still shining, his shine still teething.