last night to p

my reflex would be to ask if i'm pathetic. whether you think i'm pathetic. and that's another hole, the one i've dug myself. and here is where i tell myself that it doesn't matter what you think. and that i have to trust you, and you have to trust me. that i'm getting somewhere with this.

funeral home

now i'm just heading directly towards crazy, and i have to be stopped. i'm not only mourning and wallowing in all my past losses, but what's fucking retarded is this mourning of anticipated and future losses, before i've lost anything. when the fuck did i become a mortuary? enough of this shit. really.

holes

I’ve said I’ll come out of this stronger. I really believed it. But now I’m having my doubts. What if I sink deeper? I’m fighting and fighting, but maybe I’m trying to do too much alone? Maybe I’m not fighting hard enough. Maybe it’s as simple as being with people. As simple as going out and switching to a normal day job right now. Like in the next two weeks. It doesn’t even matter what. I suppose I’m supposed to be strategic at this age, with all the waste that’s already been perpetuated, but I can’t wait around to make the ‘right’ move. And classes don’t start for another two months. I look at a typical day here, and think, holy shit. I’ve really isolated myself.

I’m in this place and I have to work really hard to attempt connection, and it doesn’t seem to be happening. Not really. I work at getting out and making friends, and I’ve met a few nice people – and giselle is strong; but there’s something missing too. I can’t stop trying, I know I could be trying harder, but at what point is there supposed to be a payoff? And at what point is it just no fucking good? I think that’s what makes that loss with J so hard, because, even with that borderline’s idiosyncracies and flaws there was connection there, on many levels – or maybe I’m fooling myself on that too? I just know that it felt good. It felt good having someone in the other room while I read in another, it felt good to be challenged and to challenge, it felt good to explore the city and make it ours. Maybe his disappearance reveals that there’s nothing here for me.

I’m so embarrassed to keep writing about him, but it’s bigger than about him and his absence. there's no doubt that his vanishing left a vacuum, but I think his presence may have allowed prolonged avoidance of other issues. I think his being there just masked this larger hole that was there all along. And with him suddenly gone, here it is, black and deep and in my face.

So i have this fucking hole, and i don't know what i'm supposed to do with it.
do you fill it up? with meaning you construct? or is that the same as covering it up? or do you just let it be and go about your business, just marking the location so you don't fall in? or do it gets smaller and less forbidding over time? staring down into it sure as hell doesn’t seem to be helping. Or maybe that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. maybe you have to stare it down until you stop crying. Or until you just accept it.

but everybody else has holes. what are they doing with theirs?

questionnaire

this is an exercise for those of you who know me, in getting feedback and dialogue on what my next steps for work might be. i found it on a gay lawyer's blog from which i've directly lifted the questions, for now.

i don't know if this idea is good or bad for me, but if it has some merit, i'll revise and tailor it to make some conclusive use of it. of course, i can answer these questions for myself, but i was curious what people who know me have to say. it's put in this format so as to solicit direct and constructive response. there's nothing wrong with stating what my limitations or weaknesses are because everyone has them - they don't make me a stupid or rotten person. listing them simply helps me to focus on which of those issues can be improved, and which of those are perhaps a mismatch and from which i should redirect my energies:

* What are three things I do really well?
* What are three things I don’t do so well?
* Based on what you know about me, what job or experience have I liked the best in the past?
* Based on what you know about me, what job or experience have I liked the least?
* What are three things you can imagine me doing?
* What’s something you can’t really imagine me doing?
* How do I get in my own way?

if these questions help, i'll expand on them to include more specific ones relevant to particular choices i've been mulling over; or to make certain i'm not idealizing a new direction. the point is that i stop isolating myself in all these different aspects of my life. the point is to open myself up for discussion, as well as to expose myself to people to think whatever they're going to think about me and for me to get over it.

istanbul by schjeldahl

he goes in for the show, but ditches it for istanbul's layered city

[it's also a concise story of the art biennial form, [as opposed to the super-money art fairs]], and i love how he describes the one work in the show that impressed him: "The piece is an immense minaret, in cast aluminum, that is propped on a steel framework in the attitude of a Scud-like missile. I’m not sure what it says, but it scared me."

how do you get to do this?

i'd love to work with kids like these.
look at their cnc page, under 'information' is a simple summary of the technology.

raining still

went to a talk by ellen lupton, who was thoroughly charming and funny, with M who told me over dinner that she almost became a nun - twice - but couldn't deal with the blind obedience and bathroom sharing.