Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. --Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

what is that private cause that a person has to create, to bring meaning in their existence? of course this isn't a question to be answered, but to be experienced. in every day, in the space of the private terrible moments i answer and reanswer this. there is so much, to feel to exist within, but both moments described in the quote were moments of blackness, when consciousness evades you. how are you expected to remember how to live, to really live if the moments in which you do are blotted out, are too heavy for remembrance? or is that the true task, to recreate it in an infinitude of different ways, the moments of life of anguish and joy? this something kierkegaard mentions, this life, is it a repetition of births and deaths, perhaps there is nothing in between

summertime

everything is hotness now. the air is dense, it is difficult to breathe. everything is ending and shriveling under the hot sun. it is so hot. i can almost imagine everyone here, their brains liquifying in their skulls and seeping out slowly. words becoming more disjointed, collapsing suspended and lost somewhere in the air. and me, eyes closed with my tongue out waiting for the fan to evaporate my speech into colder places.

the space in your heart is so black

i love the idea of black hearts, of black suns, of black stars. it speaks of the unknowable, vastness of the inside of the human. black pupils,mouths opening to the unexplored darkness of parted lips. voices are darkness, they form around the sounds and create immense wells. what are humans to each other than portals to the infinite expanses? what are ideas but pools of hidden darkness? there is no light without the beauty of darkness to frame it, carry it along.

growing into a name

one of my pet obsessions is my childhood. i think i could say with a fair amount of certainty that all children exhibit various neuroses, with some transforming said neuroses into less suspect behaviors and others repressing them into tiny packages which explode during stressful times in their future adult lives.

it's always so disarming to find the childhood inside of an adult's eyes, as the days progress i find that i'm less troubled by children then i used to be. sometimes i fancy that you can see the sum of all of a person's childhood in their eyes and laughs and movements and their very being. as g. said in class today, all it takes to know a person is to see them live out two weeks of their life, all three meals, all their interactions. and i see it in y., in her healthy walk and her manner of breathing. this is a woman with a memory like a crystal goblet of wine. nothing artificial, nothing diseased. she told us about a drink in russia for sick children called oxygen cocktail and how she used to read up in a tree.

i saw a little boy today after work, stopping in the cafeteria. he was purely absorbed in looking for the perfect purchase. there were only three people in the cafe besides him, and we were all looking. he was so nonchalant too, and so secure. he asked the price of everything and considered. i looked at the cashier to see if she were looking at him in suspicion of stealing and she did, several times quickly. i looked at him openly. he was very attractive, i always found focused people to be so attractive. as though attention were a deep inner pool, a swirling magnetic field.

now i see childhoods everywhere. it creates such a strange feeling within you, as the repellent voyeur, as the invisible one to be held responsible for all the unanswered questions. i can't stop seeing it now, all these children-adults, all these girlwomen and boymen. all these transformations. we are always becoming