Plurabelle Helena Iona Lovebird

Resolutions?

2009-12-10T12:55:04Z

I'm still working on the ones I made five years ago.

guillotine_song @ 2009-12-10T12:48:00

2009-12-10T12:44:38Z

Pluto is grinding on my midheaven, kicking my Moon, Mars and Jupiter in Cancer. I want to stay home, shivering next to the heater as I drink cup after cup of Barry's tea and immerse myself in novels and non-fiction which have nothing to do with my dissertation. I want to have a full thought of my own, rather than half-thoughts tangled with images of science-fiction apocalypses, philosophical digressions on modernity, and the pub punditry of strangers. BUT

I may just be deluding myself. A fear of the unknown and unfinished and unplumbed. Time to get my feet in mah boots and cinch the belt on my trenchcoat tighter. Now get out the door.

Note to Self

2009-12-04T14:48:30Z

pityfest will ensue if a fair amount of vino is consumed while making pot pie!!!

the solution in such times is to read, read more poems and sinewy prose... anything to distract my brain from wandering down booby-trapped halls of memory/self.

guillotine_song @ 2009-11-16T20:58:00

2009-11-16T20:55:13Z

I am so freakin' exhausted. Two more weeks to go!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/28/artificial-hymen

2009-10-29T15:16:14Z

"cinematographic makeup" for the boudoir

guillotine_song @ 2009-10-27T19:56:00

2009-10-27T19:56:17Z

"Knowledge Acquisition" - SIGH

guillotine_song @ 2009-10-04T15:42:00

2009-10-04T14:50:14Z

Posted in my cubicle is a full-sized newspaper clipping of a photo taken of a poet declaiming atop rubble and charred manuscripts, surrounded by other poets. Why Twitter when you can conduct a forum under a blue sky? Of course there are bodies and poems and events harsh and beautiful that exist off-line. I don't know why I have to remind myself with a picture, but there he is, gesturing, with a rolled sheaf of papers in his hand, while men (not a woman among them) clutch cameras, lean against the bombed shell of a car, squint with cigarettes perched on their lips.

guillotine_song @ 2009-09-29T19:59:00

2009-09-29T19:06:18Z

Totally grumpsville, fighting back a cold while the clock ticks toward the last day for registration and a due report. I trawl Facebook and Google Reader at my assigned desk, with a view of the water cooler, squished in by my neighbor's clutter of mismanaged files and opened boxes of food, as my inner Virgo bitch flexes her meticulously maintained manicure. ANYWAYS: Life is otherwise ok, just going through the details, which is typical of September. Which is why I can't wait to kick her out of my life and get to October, my favorite time of the year: peat fires, crumpled leaves underfoot, hot toddies, lapis lazuli skies by seven pm. I can wear my brightest lipstick without feeling too much. "Lipsticks should be like Sharpies: psychologically indelible."--lipstickeater.

Calling Lady Hecate

2009-09-22T13:14:26Z

I have a major border to cross, but the signs are vague and hard to read. How do you call upon the goddess of the crossroads? Lady of magic, ghosts, storms, wild animals; also known as the Distant One, who rescued Persephone from the arms of the Underworld's king.

Summon the Lady with a dream. Or is it: the Lady summons what I need in my dreams?

Last night, a coyote came to my bedroom. The canyon behind auntie's house contained dream-time, mixing lawnmower squalls and echoes of Indian tribes (Kumeyaay? Luiseño? Cupeño? Cahuilla?), a suburban wound wild with scrub, runaways blooms, and animal cries, of both hunter and prey. My cousins used to make bows and arrows from oak, twine and bamboo skewers. Skinny killers, with mischievous smiles. Coyotes, we were told, snatched babies and pets from unguarded yards; don't stray too far, that was the injunction.

The dream-coyote licked my palm.

That was all.

I took it to mean: Wait just a little while longer.

guillotine_song @ 2009-09-07T13:12:00

2009-09-07T12:19:43Z

We are broke but nevertheless we scrounged together twenty euros for two plates of fish n chips and a side of mushy peas for my birthday dinner last night. No vino, as we are trying to skip the morning-after lethargy and nausea.

Afterwards I had a video conference date with six college girlfriends - New York - Baltimore - Houston - LA - Galway. From Berkeley to other, unexpected parts of the world. Being able to tap into the easy flows of time represented by such technologies or communications platforms as SKYPE depends on privilege and access. I don't forget this fact, even as I hunt for that rare twenty-pence coin for the Sunday paper.

grumble, grumble

2009-08-22T18:56:18Z

My writing never fails to mortify me after publication. A paragraph re: Jean-Louis Baudry on dream as a metaphor for the cinematic apparatus, reworked for the dissertation, made it online in the original form. I re-read it, noted again its failure on two levels, but I have resigned myself to this paragraph's existence. Perhaps all critical work exist as reminders of the critic's failure to apprehend what s/he knows or understands later, and every succeeding essay is an effort, I hope, to correct those failures, whether logical or stylistic. I know the improved paragraph, which keeps me from gnashing my teeth any further than this post.

guillotine_song @ 2009-08-20T14:46:00

2009-08-20T13:51:11Z

This morning Jimmy woke, alarmed over the loudness of my girlfriends, even in his dreams. I laugh, and laugh, and wonder at how vibrant everything is in raintime. You'd think everything would get washed out by so much wet, but no, colors are more saturated, patterns vibrate.

An anxious dancer is a bad dancer.

2009-08-17T14:14:47Z

Dancing shoes should be soft and squishy and not-too-clean. Mine are a pair of tan Portuguese oxfords from the St. Vincent de Paul's, with broken stitching at the heels and black scuffmarks on the sides. I'm never anxious in these shoes because they aren't pretty and they can take whatever trials I'll put them through, in the quest to get my body to that dark, sweaty, stinky place where no anxieties can go, only joy, joy, joy. Give me jazz or Northern soul and I am the happiest person on the dancefloor.

do all paths lead to the library?

2009-08-17T14:06:25Z

Goodbye Sinead, laughing secret-hippy lady of the hybrid ecologies. Tipsily reunited her with K., who got us one last round of drinks, myself pastis, diluted with water from small carafe. Hurriedly packed her up and into a taxi. Woke up the next morning, mopped and swept her apartment with Marilyse; and finally submitted my dissertation. Whew.

I will SURVIVE today

2009-08-12T10:40:24Z

. . . armed with a flask of coffee, MLA handbook, and I-Tunes. Duuuuude. Wrote a crackpot conclusion in the wee hours last night, on post-postmodernity. Almost done... and then I'm gonna hike a mountain. Hideaway in a camper beside the beach. Disappear into charity shops. Sit in the sun (when I finally see it)... and read every Terry Pratchett novel in the city library.

what's the craic?

2009-08-11T18:02:53Z

Dark creamy stout; chocolate cake-in-a-mug (read: CHEAP STUDENT, runny-yummy, midnight dessert); winning dance-offs in bare feet.

Dissertation = not craic. But gettin' there. The universe is like "HERE, MORE GOOD VIBES!!!" Even if the sun won't shine till August 15.

mercurious in virgo

2009-08-06T10:32:23Z

My dissertation supervisor must have swine flu. Not responding is so unlike him.

Hello, greasy grey morning! Sticky hair, filmy spectacles, oily coffee.

I dreamt my father told me to get rid of the coffee. I poured it into the kitchen sink. The coffee became a black pit, with snapping teeth. Dirty utensils sprouted moth wings and flew out of the sink and followed me around the house. I swatted them, gave up, and opened a window for them to escape.

Next time I dream, I'm gonna look for windows. I rarely notice windows in dreams.

vanilla-marbled fudge

2009-08-05T18:13:40Z

Whoa. Sometimes you just have to be direct: "Dad, are you mad at me?"

No, he just forgot to call me.

Then we launched into an uncomfortable conversation via Skype re:, um, Jim's job status and when my fellowship would come through. (Perhaps I shouldn't have been so direct.) This entailed a little "white" fudging cuz, well, it would be too complicated telling my Dad, Mr. Literalist, the truth, as some of it isn't what he would like to hear anyways.

Now, I can go back to, um, procrastinating on my dissertation by looking up Cambodian singers from the 70s on Youtube.

the department of missing correspondence

2009-08-05T16:35:53Z

Arrgh. Why have all the older men in my life stopped responding to my messages? First my dissertation supervisor, now my father. I think he might have read that entry on my "ass of a brother" and my thirst for beer. Dad, it's called the Internet. Do not take it seriously and do not read your daughter's diary if it behooves you to read about beer and brothers-who-are-asses. At least my parents haven't found this one! Yeesh.

runs with werewolves

2009-08-05T13:52:06Z

About a week before my dissertation is due! I wish I had a beer. Sloppy joes. Tacos with lots of jalapenos. Something crunchy and hot. The night slinks in late, bats her long lashes, every little hair on my arms and legs go zing! I ate an indecently dressed lettuce salad, breaking an impromptu fast, and noticed the moon: full. Time to put on some Turkish psychedelic, high ('s okay, the upstairs neighbor had the spin cycle on), as high as I am on life, corny, cheesy, yes, but I feel really abundant, despite the 20 quid to my name and a dissertation that I've been rather slow to edit these days.

guillotine_song @ 2009-06-02T23:44:00

2009-06-02T22:51:34Z

I watch the fuzzy-bummed cygnets bumping along with their mom and pop. The canal is their world.

Meanwhile I am overwhelmed by all the information streaming through my Google Reader. I subscribe and unsubscribe. I am at turns sad, happy, crying, overwhelmed by the things I see and read. Can you put your emotions on mute, as if consciousness was a machine?

Izzzz PHIL here? Where is Phil? In a jar, looking out. In a jar with her books, they pile and pile. Notecards too, and streams of highlighter, dazzling her eyes. Casting a film over the real, if it's still here.

I miss... long midnight walks with OTL. Barefoot California nights. Embraces from bestest friends. Talking like I know what's what. Getting told to stuff it, and loved anyways.

The Company of Wolves

2009-03-30T09:39:57Z

Thin gold hoops. War Gaming, The Predicament of Culture, Saturday's Guardian. Chessboard, folded over and locked. A highlighter, red pen, black pens on the floor or concealed in the crevices of an ugly brown leather sofa. A blossom-embossed black leather wallet, fading at the edge where it folds (the animal that it came from, unrecognizable). Paper, folded, scrawled over with notes on utopia, post-modernity, the invention of decolonization (the trees that the paper came from, forever gone). Somehow these things were attracted to me. They collected at this juncture in my life, traces of the struggle against irrelevance and meaninglessness. You know when those Internet tarot sites ask you to think about your question before you click? I can't think of a question, and that worries me.

Facebook mystery

2009-02-27T01:19:39Z

I was added as a friend by Turkish Trotskyists and a Turkey-based Trotskyist group.

(I read the first chapter to Marx's Ecology by John Bellamy Foster. Appearance is appearance . . . the pure form of the world of appearance is time . . . appearance is the alienation of essence . . . from Epicurean thought, Marx advances towards his theory of historical materialism, as well as the concept of alienated activity within the capitalist system.)

guillotine_song @ 2009-02-15T01:25:00

2009-02-15T01:26:32Z

P.S. It's also okay to take things back. Not everything, but some things. Inconsistency is okay. Just don't erase everything. No archive, no scars, no stains = no "Phil".

guillotine_song @ 2009-02-15T01:14:00

2009-02-15T01:15:35Z

Dear Phil,

What are we going to do with you? Have a beer! Don't let a dead king get you down. It's okay if all your thoughts can only find esoteric expression. XO YOU