Friday, November 28, 2008

What Can Be Learned

today i explained to my mother that blogging is like an on-line diary. i think i 'referenced' Live Journal and said something like, "word origin: web log." my mother asked why i needed 7 blogs. she referred to my groups of friends as "artist circles." i felt worthless a little. i thought, pluto is no longer a planet.

i then shared cheese fries with my mother and sister.

i considered adding a comma to my blog title. (it could be added in one of two places or both: after "soft" and/or after "kitten".) the fact that i didn't actually do it is another example in my life of being thwarted by meta-consciousness. if i could be just self-aware enough to think, it would be funny to add a comma, it will amuse me, this blog is amusing to me and that is why i keep doing it, instead of continuing on to think something like, why, it wouldn't matter, blogs are dumb, your blog is dumb, you are an asshole for keeping a blog because the world is fucked, write a check to Ndugu so he can go get some melon, you never help people, 'you have changed', then my life would probably be 'better off'.

*

i am reading Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper, and of course it is brilliant. one third of the way into it i realized that anything i write is obsolete. i tried to incorporate 'the author' into stories without knowing that Plascencia had already done that perfectly in this book.

if everyone who wanted to see 'the author as a character in a fictional work' would just read this book they would say, "That never needs to be done again," and then they could be happier, better people and live lives in the service industry and not try to write shit that has already been done before--and much better that they ever could--but they don't know about it because they are too dumb or lazy to have read the right books.

if anyone wants to see 'language as a crippling force still but one that's unable to hinder human love' in a work of fiction they should just email ChloƩ C. Jones and ask for chapters from What Can Be Learned (working title) and read them and then they can say, "This crushes my soul enough that it will be a long time before I ever need to feel loved by a piece of fiction again because I feel so loved by this piece of fiction," and then they can move on with their lives, maybe get a math degree so that they no longer work in the 'wrong genre', they can just watch TV and touch themselves a little and then fall asleep and then in 40 years they could just die without anyone noticing.

by "they," of course, i mean me.

*

i feel happy right now. my sister keeps talking to herself underneath the christmas tree.

i explained Text abbreviations to my mother. she then later dropped POY into a sentence, explaining, "Poop On You." i want to understand why my mother's brain doesn't function like this all the time, or at least more often. i kept on wanting to tell her things about David Foster Wallace that Cush and i have talked about lately. i told her about the pressure i feel about loving my family, how i don't want to feel that way. she asked me a question about food, and went back to reading the paper. i thought about Aimee Howard. i felt guilty for thinking that, and for wanting to shake my mother.

my hoodie makes me feel beautiful. my mother keeps telling me to 'retire' it. i feel beautiful alive. i am feeling far less temptation to gamble than i was before i started this blogpost. i feel like this blogpost is coming to a close, and that i can face the world, the sad world of Milwaukee's east side bars, Schlitz, and people i want to touch.

*

i am pretty sure that this picture of a kitten with its ears burnt off is what i feel like deep inside. don't worry, friends: this is a good thing. it feels good to feel like this cat looks. because it is alive and now someone can love it.



4 comments:

annie h. said...

"i feel beautiful alive."

ChloƩ Cooper Jones said...

Whoa. Thanks for the Chlo-hype...? Thanks. I think.

I love you.

This was really beautiful to read. So much better than your crappy fiction.

JKs!

I love you.

kari f. said...

for thanksgiving i went to a bar and ate cheese fries and drank pbr and jim beam. i thought i would feel sad when i went to sleep, but i didn't i felt warm and content. i fell asleep thinking 'next year will be different'

gabe said...

Tomorrow I'm going to go to a record store that seems to almost exclusively sell emotional rock and roll. Can I buy you something? Florida is hoarding all of this music and we need some crippling music in the midwest, too.