5/3/16

When You Were All About Yourself

Last weekend was the opening for SLEEPING BEAUTY & THE BEAST, a new ballet by Katy Pyle and Ballez. There are five more performances beginning on Wednesday at La Mama. I play a Dying Swan. My part is not big, but ballet dancing is excruciating and difficult and I'm excited to be part of this. It's huge, sprawling, very Queer, heartbreaking, sexy, dangerous, funny, sad, and gorgeous. I can't say enough about it. In a way it's an interesting thing -- getting what I want in so many ways. To be part of something so fulfilling and supporting and engaging and challenging and important and social. I feel tremendously proud to be part of it and I hope you can come see it.



It's an interesting thing, too, to notice that even in situations such as the show, and some other places, where things are good, what parts of me still beat blue. What part still beats black. Where the red parts are. I feel at once bigger and smaller than I reckoned. Simpler, more straightforward, and much more complex than I thought I would be.

I know it's only natural, it's regular and ancient but I feel myself noticing how loud the birds are. It reminds me of the first night in Berlin, staying in the flat in the all-female building where Stevie was living on Oranienburger Straße. The birds were insanely loud and kept me up all night (all morning). I marveled at how loud German birds were, that anyone could sleep through them. Now I often find myself turning off my music to better hear the birds near my apartment. Anywhere where I'm walking or sitting. I want so much to be distracted. Pulled up and out.



Yesterday I had an hour in between work and analysis, so I went by DSM to see if the Golden Week merchandise was out, as it is in CdG's Japan stores. The theme is "collage".



The new collection wasn't there yet, but as I was leaving, I saw Rei outside the store. She was surrounded by assistants, staff members, and her husband, who was gesturing to the entrance where something was probably going to go. She was wearing a long black skirt and a golden leather motorcycle jacket. She did not seem small or diminutive and was impossible to miss. She had an energy, an aura, or something. I was shaking. I smoked a cigarette up the block and watched her wordlessly interact with those around her. She did not smile. It was beyond surreal. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about her, looking at photos of her, wearing her clothes, looking at pictures, thoughts, etc. that come from or relate to her. To see her as just a person up the block was disorienting. My Elvis. I wanted to interrupt her, give her a copy of my zine, ask if she would hire me, kidnap me, save me. I wanted to say "Thank you, Rei, for all of your hard work. It means so much to me." I was too shy, I didn't say any of these. Besides it would have had to go through her translator and she was surrounded by the staff members who certainly didn't want me butting in. I was wearing head to toe CdG, as I often do, because it makes me feel strong, makes me feel good. Active. Energetic. I feel so bad in so many ways and that's one way I feel good. I don't feel guilty about this.

Of course I can't calm down. I'm thinking that there's something I ought to worry about. I feel it prudent to worry. I wish I could harness, identify, control, locate, redirect whatever impulse or energy it is within me. I cling so hard to this: to this beating myself up. The only truth I feel confident holding onto is the one, the premise or world-view in which I am reprehensible and worthless. I was telling my Analyst I literally do not know who or what I am without this feeling, without this premise.

It's what I know, and all I know.

And I feel so frustrated. As if I've been working at a cross-purpose with myself. There is no self, no ego to believe in. What constitutes a person?

I feel a sense of urgent doom. Impending deaths, of all kinds. I feel as though I've abdicated. I've been toppled. I have assassinated myself. I've achieved power through a military coup of my mind. I've been trying to kill myself in fits and starts and I'm not done yet.



I ran into a someone a few weeks ago at a performance and we were catching up. It's a friend, someone I like a lot and whose work I've liked a lot and who I'd hoped likes me too. They were talking about someone else, someone who's moved out of town or come back into town or something. They kept talking about the like I knew them. I said I'm sorry I don't know if I know who you're referring to. They looked perplexed. Apparently I had met the person years ago. I said maybe I would remember if I saw them but the name doesn't ring a bell. They said "Oh, that must be it was because it was during the period when you were all about yourself."

What period was that, pray tell? Any who's known me for any length of time knows I've never been particularly about myself. I don't know. It's frustrating.

All I can do is be this thing that repels people, makes people angry/hate me. Taken in aggregate this is how, in part, I arrive at the worthlessness, right? All I can accomplish is upsetting people, driving them away from me and into each other. I spoke a lot with the Analyst, again, about radiation, about radioactivity.

I feel that I am radioactive. Maybe there's potential but as it is I feel myself being slowly poisoned. Unable to wrangle, contain or harness the energy burning me up. I can't even touch it. I just
know it's there.



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