Product

Find y

        Who I am
x      Who you are
               y

y is our relationship. In some respects it is a question. What brings us together. I don't know the answer to that, only speculation. If our relationship, however, is the product of who you are and who I am, and assuming that we are different, then our relationship has a different value than the relationship between two other people. You and I, we have something going on based on the ways our tentacles have intertwined. You and the next person, you two have something else going on because your tentacles have intertwined differently. And when I will next meet another person, my tentacles will intertwine according to a different configuration. In effect, the product of two people meeting is never the same.

The product (y) being different for each relationship means that there is one variable that changes every time, that being the 'who you are'. Who I am, in terms of my relationships, always stays the same, as one variable. But the 'you' differs, and to you and I, the product is unique.

When I look at the relationships which involve me, into which I thus have contributed dough and rising, I feel there are many in number. There was a recent period in my life where I had formed many relationships, for want of expanding my social horizons, or other pretexts. They are all different. There is a common flavor in them, yes, but I feel a little possessed by them, and therefore pulled in different directions, because that flavor seems dissolved into the product. To clarify, I feel influenced by the relationships, because I feel involved in their going-ons and inner workings, because those fascinate me from the inside. The 'who I am', ever present in my relationships, I am finding difficulty distinguishing from the (y). Perhaps this would not occur to me as anything of worth save that I have been catching myself lately appropriating my language and way of being to fit in with a particular relationship. It is not simply a 'with some people I am loud, with some quiet' difference - though stripped to its basics it looks like that. Rather, I feel enmeshed and framed by these relationships, as if the product dictates who I am to be. With you I may laugh my ass off about random crap that I would not dare mention to another you lest you be offended. This could be called two-facedness, or n-facedness for those with n faces.

Meeting with people from different worlds, with different expectations, has reminded me that it is difficult to be open with everyone, and therefore to let the 'who I am' be added to the various products. Looking at them then, I find gaps in the ones where I have had to hold back. In those ones, I find one of two desires - to move further and enmesh the dough in so that the product tastes more like me, or to leave from it and abandon the product on the counter. To be honest with myself, I am not always sure what I taste like, because I don't experience myself outside of others very often. I should. With the amount of relationships and the variation that exists between them, I can sort of see an outward self, a general dough that gets mixed in. This self, if forced in a situation where more elements were to be multiplied, such as a group bonding situation, would be very refined, worked-off, weathered by expectations. It is a conformist self, more or less, depending on the freedom allowable in the relationship. It needs to react with the other ingredients and thus has to meet certain conditions which vary from relationship to relationship.

In an earlier post, I talked about how the perceptions of others shape who I am. This post could be a follow-up to that. I feel I have forgotten who I am, because I've been through the process of weathering for each relationship, and each time I may have felt like I had to change the 'who I am' to make a product I perceived would be acceptable. 

I think now to what I wanted. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be useful, to be needed. I got those things. I wanted my relationships to be open, to be places where vulnerability could be exchanged. I got that, to an extent. I didn't realise that the I who wanted all these relationships to be a certain way would change its mind many times, evolve in terms of what it wanted, forget what it wanted and then wake up lost somewhere in a club, in a car, in the night. I say it because I don't know if I am it anymore. I don't think so. I'm something else. Someone? I still have the moments of wondering, of searching, yes, but I think in their accumulation along the years, speaking from the now, they have made me into a different me. I care about what some people think, I don't care about what others think. What distinguishes them is how much I feel I am in those relationships. The ones where I can be closest to 'me', the ones where I have been most vulnerable, are the ones who I feel much more easily 'changed' by. I'm not who one person says I am. I feel I am more likely to be who many people, or an amount of the right people, say I am. In turn, I don't feel at liberty to assume an I that I am - thus I leave it up to others, and leave myself subjected to this tumble-drying, this weathering, this to-some-extent attempt to be the object of identification rather than doing it myself. I think I am asking people to tell me who I am.

Even among those though, there are some stark differences. I feel the gap in me between who I am and who I am perceived with a slight aversion, a weakness. There is a me for each relationship. Each is the same, but not quite. So the product is different in each case. And each you is different too. My birthday is coming up, and I am thinking about thanking those of you for your place, for what you have shaped, whether you have known it or not. You. And you and you and you. All different products we have made. I am somewhat of a product of our product.

I have been thinking about who I am in different cases, and I'm different, I conclude. How do I reconcile the differences? Take some, leave some? I am reluctant to make such decisions, because I find it hard to anticipate my best interests.

        Who I am
x      Who you are 
Our relationship

Now to find me.

Shovel

Dedication - committing to continuing a course of action beyond the point of commencement. The longer you slog through, the more dedicated you are deemed. It doesn't have to be a slog, of course, but from the point of view of who is calling you dedicated, it perhaps seems like a slog, because to them, the course of action you are committed to would not seem worth undergoing.

Let me introduce Ll. He is in his twenties, and an avid poet. I'd call him a serious poet, because he knows what he is writing towards and what he does with his words. He also has an impressive (to me) history of poems he wrote from adolescence up until recently, alphabetised, dated, revised, pending the next revision because, as he and Prof. Lisa Samuels from the University of Auckland said as well, poetry is never finished, just abandoned. He memorised some poems because of the sheer enjoyment he derived from them.

Now let me introduce Ee. She is also in her twenties, and an aspiring law student. I'd call her serious about what she is learning due to the amount of attention she pays to absorbing it, to understanding the ins and outs and caveats of legislation. She writes an impressive (to me) amount of notes from her hundreds of pages of readings, in order to understand what she is learning. She also seems to have a penchant for particular areas of law into which she has done more research. In addition to the work she does for her university courses, she has put her hand up to participate in other time-demanding law-related endeavours in order to gain more research skills, network, and widen her experiences in the field she aims to pick up a shovel in.

Both Ll and Ee are dedicated to what they are doing. They both currently live at home. Ll finished the law school in his district, but could not get a job so he stays at home, continuing to progress in the craft of poetry, what he is passionate about, while also putting his mind to other endeavours such as possible entrepreneurship and modifications for computer games. I deem him very intelligent because of the depth of knowledge he has about the things he is dedicated to. He lives in Romania. Ll, who lives in New Zealand, I also feel is very intelligent because she has excelled throughout adolescence in the things she set her mind to, sometimes academics, sometimes activities of service, and has gained and continues to nurture a set of professional skills that seem to transfer well and be easily applied in the situations she currently has to face, such as for an exam or in preparation for a seminar.

I'm not very interested in a comparison between Ll and Ee because they are on different sides of the world and consequently may have very different circumstances that push them to succeed, and that includes upbringing, societal expectations, and inner drive. I don't have access to an analysis of those.

I want to instead speak from my point of view, to provide a self-analysis. I am a student at the same university as Ee, though I study languages in more depth. She studies French as well, though law is her greater focus, and French is occluded to an extent. Studying towards a Bachelor of Arts, I have found a far less need for me to put in extensive, sustained effort in note-making or studying, in order to still do well enough (A- and above). I used to feel dedicated to what I was doing, until I met those, such as the two above, who were far more dedicated - because it was demanded that they be.

Let me talk about perception now. The Bachelor of Arts is not perceived to be an intensive degree, perhaps because, being in my third year and noticing this now, the skills and thought processes that I have gained and undergone can be said to focus on questioning norms. As a skill, this is useful in many ways, transferrable to several fields, though I don't feel like those fields are narrowed as much as I perceive they are for Bachelor of Science students, for example, or Engineering students. I feel like the workload I have been tasked with is not great in quantity. In quality, I am hesitant to compare, but in quantity, it seems like I have done much less than, say, Ee, to get the desired Grade Point Average. The general student public, who I generalise to operate at an average Grade Point level, B, would look at a student who gets an A grade and immediately think they study more, focus more, listen more, have bigger brains, care more. But from my point of view, I feel I do far less work than Ee, and other students like her, to get the Grade Point Average that I aim for. The comparison between degrees then feels moot to me, but I will venture to compare a few non-content-related things.

Law students need to succumb to more competition, while Arts students have less of that to contend with. The workload is different, and perhaps the mindset as well. I'm not sure which is worth more. I venture that perhaps Ll, who has tried both fields, is more passionate about the Arts side than the Law side. Like I said before, dedication seems to be demanded of Law students, Arts students not as much. And I think I have fallen into that trap and realised that there is a feeling of laziness about 'doing well in my studies' that Law students cannot afford to have if they want to succeed. Success to them means getting to that A and by nature of competition, beating the ones who fall short. Success to me used to mean the same, but because it is no longer valued, that is, because the higher-ups are not so bent on delivering praise for those who do well in Arts, my motivation has decreased. By praise, I don't just mean a pat on the back, I mean recognition. Arts higher-ups seem to be warm, though not because I 'do well'. And because 'doing well' isn't as appreciated by them, I don't feel it is as valuable to me, either. Not anymore. And now I realise that I held on to the idea of success as 'doing well' in the eyes of others. Since it no longer means that, and the other's opinion is only of relative importance, I go back to me, and ask, what is the success that is important to me?

Dedication breeds success, I still feel that. My desire to 'be' a 'writer' means that to succeed I have to dedicate myself to the craft. But I have also tasted that it is difficult to be recognised in this field. An other may comment on the writing, say it's good because of this or it is falling short here, and one improves with this criticism, but because Science and Law field-shovellers are built up to reach a certain standard by higher-ups, or rather they have to strive to reach that standard set to them, and need to in order to succeed at what they are doing, it seems that what they do is much more recognised in the world. It features more. Society has carved places for them, because of the practical services they offer. Writers have to write their own place in society, and then frantically wave their shovel in the air to be noticed, unless of course their crop circle formations, their artforms, are noticeably impactful. Ll's poetry seems to me like it can be impactful, and it fulfills him more than the law work he underwent; at least, that's my impression.

With the realisation that my success is no longer guaranteed by someone else's opinion of me and my work, I feel a sense of freedom, one perhaps dangerous. I feel like floating with the wind, a balloon that doesn't have to be restricted, but at the same time, isn't tied to a string so can easily float away and never be seen again. What am I working towards? I can define that. What feels scary is that I feel I could define it wrongly, wrong meaning that it would not be recognised at all. Somehow, however I do define my success, it has to include the opinions of others. That is what I have been realistically taught. I cannot rely totally on my own whims because I don't live in isolation, so someone else ultimately still has to approve of what I do in order to make it successful on a societal level. I may be pleased with something on a personal level, but the success in terms of purpose has to include the other. Though I may be writing from me, I can never write just for me if I want validation, whether that be in the form of comment, or in the form of monetary sustenance.

I can choose my public, but I have to have one, in order for my writing to mean something, because it can only mean something if the other picks it up and they connect the dots I dot for them. Dedication then, has to mean shovelling from me to them, digging trenches and learning the best routes to reach them, to teach them. I of course have to have something to teach, and I must commit to getting to the other. Getting to them, that is my success. I realise because of this that delivery is important in helping the receiver receive. So I hope I have been clearer in delivering this message.

Thank you to Ll and Ee.

The Thumb and Forefinger, not Touching

Nothing is not nothing coiled like a slither of air between the bottleneck of my body and the spiralling carvations of the cork that is my head and spine. It's nothing that I want to put words to, some measure of understanding that I can take out and put outside of my chest and onto a forward surface so that I can look at it, see it. It's nothing that I want to remove, sever as if a limb, but then not really because I want not to bleed heavy blood, because I think it would be blood of weight. It feels weighted when it courses, unnecessarily so but, perhaps weighted because I've weighed it down with repetitions of the same word. So now it has become a product and the mind is just talking about heavy blood.

The scapegoat. Nothing is the scapegoat. And the words that come to dominate and appear as if bearing meaning, are not with thoughtchild. They are scapegoat scapegoats. Peel back the placental layer and I get what's past nothing, the beyond difficulty with which to express. 

This coiling is like a writhing trying to curl into tangible emotion, something pickable from a dictionary, something of the matter of a referent. Even if it doesn't quite reach that point of isness, the pre-isness itself ought still be a referent, but it's just harder to point to. That's why I want to incarnadine it. And I know it's not it, yet, but it must be something. Just because I don't know how to name something does not mean it isn't it. The coiling is a mass, a nebula, an oh-look-going-on-stuff(then proceed to flail hands) - but I just don't know how to show before, how to show a before with pointers and flashing lights which I have none of.

My hands are not enough that I resort to mental abstract images of space and expansion and contraction and intangible things that are microscopically tangible. This is probably the process of the mind trying to turn in on itself, turning in on itself. There are layers, and stairs in an optical illusion climbing up from the first floor to the bottom floor, except there are different dimensions, no floors, but I can walk up and down and get to in betweens and feel like I am somewhere but there's no corners in the room to call that place a room and there are no horizons to call that place a field or an open area so I'm just at that crossroads inverted comma helix. 


And here I find myself alone.

A Putting-Together

Adiff erentper sonImee t,adiff erentgreetin gtha tco mesto greet,fr omadif ferentmo uth. Iwond erwh atit isgo ingt obe li kewh enI meet upw ithth epeop lecomin gtom ybir thdayi nles st hantw omo nths. Onl yt opu tha ti ntoperspecti ve. Justi tstrik esm ea sint erestingt hatIc anb ediffer entt odiffer entp eople. Ev ent heot herwa yarou nd,peo plear ediff erentt om e,t oo,l iked ifferentlyre constituted,wi thvaryi nggap si nthei rknowled geabou tea choth er. Ho ledse lves,ho lierf romd ifferentan gles. Wh oreal lya mIgo ingt ob et othe m? It' sfu nnybecau seId on'tk nowwh atthe yse ewh ent heyloo ka tm e,a ndsometime sIdon 'tse eth emi nawh ilean dIl oset ouchwi thwh atIth oughtIap pearedt oth em. S oIr emakem yself,c onstructmysel ffr ompu ttymentall yknead ed. Th isi sm e,o rth is. Thethough tso fothe rssl ipth roughdifferen thole swh ileIa mmad ein tosome thingels eb ythe irpuzz lespiec e-pu tting-to getherability.

Ther ear egap si nt hemaki ng,pl ughol es. Wh oar ey out om e? Its trikesm ea sfun nyt hatIco uldb ediff erentt oyo u,es peciallyi fy oud on'tp aymuc hattenti ont owha tI' mlik ewhe nyo ud ome etm e. Wat chSurvi voran dth econt estantsa repl acedi nsit uationsth atpu sht hemt oc ompromisew hatt heyar ecomforta blew ithsh owingo fthems elves. It' sb eens aidtha ti ti sag ameth atinev itablys howsy ourtru ecolo urs. Wh atar eth ose,th oughr eally? Ther ea res tillh oles,f illertha ti sfill edb yt heimagina tion. Peoplear en otstra ngerst ofiction. Thati st os ayth att heyk nowh owan dt oactua llyfic tionaliseth eoth eri na natt emptt og eta nid eao fw hot heyar ereally. Fac tsa rebuil tli keto werss ot heyca stas hadowove rus.

J esu isu nputtin g-togeth erpa rle spensé esde sautres. J'a ip asd esouff le,o ud'ar gentd epoche. J'exi stese ulementd anst ontêt ee nc emom entd electure. J'a iu nevo ix,cet te-ciqu ipe utêt reju steu nchouchot temento uu nvo ixd'u nh ommequ et ucon nais. C' estt avoi x. Tac ontribution. J'a ij ustec hangéle sespac espou rqu et ulis esc eq uej'a iéc ritav ecu neau tredi mensiond'ésp rit. Qu is uis-j e? Va s,do nne-m oiu np eud eca ractère. Unp eud'arr ogancepa rceq uej 'aip arléd ansd euxlang ues? Etj' aic hangém esprop resrègle s,pl uso um oins?

I'me xperimen tingw ithh oles. Differen tarrangementso fh oles. Th ethou ghtss tillfi ti n,d othe yn ot? Giv esom eonedif ferentd etailsa boutwh oy oua rea ndunl essyo upur poselyerron atethe m,mis leadt he m,the ywil lpu ty outogethe r,o ra tle astaversio no fy ou. Ia mlea dt obeli evetha tsom ehowth etr uthal wayssl ipso ut,ev eni nfragments.

Rejoice and Be Glad

Amen.

Not Allowed to Be

Life gave me a hand but I haven't learned how to deal. So I sit here trying to figure it out, and I walk around the house in my mind, leaving to previous tenses and hypothetical scenes where I do something that I later take back. The steps lead me through the lino-lined corridor out of my room into the dining, then left to the lounge, where I look outside through the window and the white fabric curtains to the orange and red leaves still icicled on thin branches, and cars pass underneath, from onewhere to twowhere, and then I walk back the same way, catch a glimpse of a body moving closer in the mirror and then turning right down the corridor and into my room again. That is the pacing routine I carry on whenever I am at home alone and am thinking about something.

This morning I woke up with a sense of happiness that I see as a shadow in the light of the day. It begged me to think about how there are these contours drawn that slip behind and follow me. I look at the silhouette often, its loyal scraping against the furniture and lino as I move, never leaving a trace, except to me, except to tell me that it's there.

{Life's too short to even care at all}
Just below the morning lies a table sleeping. Its edges are round, if a little rough, and appear to expand and contract like a breathing chest. A too-short life happens on this table, taking place and space by the throat in some sort of not-always-memorable violence. On this table this morning was sand, powdered thin but felt awhole, into a face, mine. And this face only knew its contours to be of cheek and jaw and nearear through the fingertips of two familiar hands, drawing them. Their contact;- the contact brought within me a great sense of safety and warmth, one I hesitate to attribute in daylight to anyone, but under the morning, know well to be someone's because I remember the minute texture by the shadow the memory casts upon the day man.

{A dark world aches for a splash of the sun}
Below one of several passed mornings, at the curvature of the night I felt the same so-familiar ache of warmth and affection. It was as physical as I can call of that sleeping table. It was an else of an embrace, just a holding. And when the morning came above, I felt the affection dissolve under the covers, reconstituting a shadow that would be unveiled as I pulled the sheets off me and walked out of my room, trailed by it.

Daylight, as it corners rooms now, as it covers even the undersides of couches and hinges, yearns to reveal shadows. And the shadow, when I look back, looks back at me, grave-silent, potential, delayed deeply, deeply deferred by distraction, owned by destruction. I can't imagine it white. Yes, I can imagine it, and the limboing teeter-tottering undulates with a desire of a freedom I cut and remains.

{I'm waiting for this cough syrup to come down}

I'm no longer sure if I was ever sure that I had Aces in my arteries, because I've always hesitated to play them. 

Marrow

Was told to write into the gaps, to widen them with some filling so that they no longer feel like missing teeth. Yet all that seems to come about from sitting here are days after and descriptions of flowers that they passed by in their walks together. Think of one person, that isn't who is talking. Think of another, and no longer listen to the gap. Now it's covered in words, in things battered and oiled over for easy sliding. Care for me while I photosynthesise.

Don't know what days begin with suns and which begin with shadows that lengthen, because the doors are shut and they aren't opening for anyone but the fairy of fire alarm sounds. Each day is a new beginning, and I confess I have nothing to write about on this scripture of an evening. I wanted just to press. I found a gap and felt like imprinting it with some sort of code so as to vacuum up its contents days after and be content with having written worth. But this worth will be measured in moments gone, and it is those I cannot fathom how to count, because I look back and see gums receeding, progressing to that state of bleeding where it is no longer worth cauterising. That is a blind state. It is a state when I look back in the powder room of echoes and pretend to pindrop systems and logic onto empty platters. All I get is shrimp, and an empty tube in my cocktail.

Very safely, do I think about the moments that have gone with a layer of gossamer overturned. Over time, and over re-membering, I have sewn images into the fabric so that the background of stars doesn't feel so distant. But oh, I seem to be tampering with reality. No, I'm not, I'm just passing up the opportunity for reality. Memory works by disguise, by hiding itself in a cell and pretending to be the nucleus, even though it has already gone. Whatever I'm chewing on, captured thoughts from belowtimes or cannon ball prosthetics, the words don't feel like mine, and the words I use are really flagging down things that are no longer present.

It's why I call it re-membering (I am taking Bhabha's term without permission). My family is everything and anything, put together how I like it, or don't but do anyway. They are just gaps on the surface of the tree. Memory allows them consistent enough figures, but one's memory can faultify and then what remains are the gaps that are filled anew with otherthings. Hats. Defibrillators. Caterpillars. Words with more than one L.

What I am putting together here, is a dentist's work, a something, but I can see it crumbling between my virtual fingers and puff away in the winds, meaning it's nothing. And yet, I have probably learned something from the doing.

Correcter Abjection

t.here
in the.re
between u.s
neither of /u/s/
but i.s
seeming
dotted... dotted...
following otherwisdum.b
sill-hoo.est.t.est-ce
cut up
repre/ss/(end)ing
shoulds

Dejection

Have that care-away insignificance saying things to me, like I'm fine for feeling dejected when I see him post a heart on his she's page. Pin the jealousy on the asinine, that's the hour theme, and my left buttock has just been stabbed. I don't know why I like it - it's an extraneous feeling, not belonging to the spectrum I'm accustomed to describing. Yes, it's jealousy, it's been that way for a long time. I thought I'd moved on. I'd blogged about it. I wrote the feelings out of the damn emotion script so that I could have a different hue to my experiences. But even now, in the light of my reading light, I feel the same rib-xylophoning sensation, tenderly rough on my insides. It's jealousy, still tuning me out. I come alive with it, when I notice it radiate like some uranium in me, poisonous, toxic, but damn rich, damn rich and desirable because it's inspiring in some strange, dump, metal-container way.

That's what's talking right now. A disease. In the sense that it is not an ease but dis is a familiar ease by now. I have learned not to battle it and somehow I find myself liking feeling this way. Imagine getting accustomed to poison. I don't know how it works, I don't know what kind of bad it's doing to me. I have suffered suffered from it in the past, but I still take it. It's a chemical that my brain secretes though, and as such I feel some volunteer-freedom from it because I can't control it when the receptors receive and then poppy-send my opium down to the general torso area. I feel jealous. Or something to that super-effect. I feel not like I'm meant to receive that heart - not consciously - though there's a webbed shadowy corner that would be most pleased if it housed his heart. I feel more like there's a spider living there, and it crawls out when it sees potential prey play out behind the dining room table. Translate that to Facebook. I used to think much of this, now I think much less. I used to project a broom to thrash the wallfuck out of that bitch, crack the dwelling, yet I would be the one dwelling next time. It's what happened when conscious me decided it was time to move on, and subconscious me needed more time, a little more venom, a little more convincing.

It was decided then, that people would create, read copulate, and I would sit my sinister ass down on the chair to wait. So whenever another heart was passed over the table with the salt, and the spider came out of its den, I stopped chasing it with a broom. I strove to do what I'd tried and failed next to reluctance to do before - to love it, to embrace the feeling as a mother would embrace her crying child. I don't know then, if this is it. I feel jealousy, and although it has the same edge-of-screen red warning palpitation that being poisoned has had before, it's bearably accepted. I don't know why I still feel jealous, or maybe I know subconsciously, and maybe I don't want to think about it anymore. But I like the feeling. It allows me to write things like this post. It's a feeling with a fuel and a fire and somehow they combine. It's warm, and I like it when I can have my hands cupped and the wish comes true. Didn't even remember I'd asked for this, but it's here, so I must have, somehow.

Not sure if this is good or bad. I feel it's fine to just let it be. I'm eager to know what it means, but I don't want to interfere. That's correct, the presence of reluctance. It's in the building. From another angle, I can see myself longing, having that wonderfully scary picture of him walking away under an empty sky. There's freedom. And something tells me, it still hasn't been picked. Its fingers are just bent around the cliffedge, one right angle, the other trying to be right. I haven't picked freedom because I still had hope to be trapped. Genie grants my wish. But my shadow has moved far enough away that I can see it was only a half-wish that was granted, a brazen want broken-masted in the wind.

Wait for it to snap off, vacuumed by passing hours or the resolve that can happen within them. I am saying this resolve isn't going to be thought-out by me. No. It will come in its own time. Perhaps with its own blog post. 'Til then, I fester and the chemicals parade through my veins while I wade through the chemistry of nonmescript living.

Abjection

Now, I don't feel like self-censoring. I don't feel like watching the film play out and analysing the angle shots and the way the characters speak, even though I see myself in it, speaking in a particular way, walking in a particular way, keeping to myself in a particular way. I learned in my Writing Selves paper just last Monday about abjection, the state of being neither a subject nor an object. I haven't quite been able to put together words puzzle-piecefully enough to understand what it means but the feeling of it, I feel.

This is an attempt for my mind to stand under and pretend it has bare feet. Wordweb dictionary simply defines abjection as a low or downcast state. But that is the feeling of it. What does it entail, thought-wise, world-building-block-wise. Let's talk in one. If one goes about one's day thinking of oneself as the self, the self would be the subject. I realise I may now be getting simplistic. Bear with. The object of one's doings is usually outside oneself. I give cake to Anne. Cake is object. Anne is object. I is subject. Linguistics denotes these things. Linguistics mark the path for what our thoughts do, how they combine and imbine. Now, one can be both a subject and an object when one looks at oneself with distance, that distance implying some sort of consciousness unbelonging of the original subject but not able to be present as the object. So I screwed up the last sentence, and in that breaking of it, one can see the mutual exclusivity of subjectness and objectness. So if one is looking at oneself from a mental position that excludes the self, one is operating in an abject view; they are neither subject nor object but an absurdist atomised sobject. The abject state is thus one of looking-glassness, one of chained detachment.

I have experienced this state many times before, but with a name to give it now, and a Wikipedia entry existing about it, it somehow seems more... bearable. Like it's a thing. And I don't have to go searching for it because it's an idea that's crossed someone's mind before and that leaves me comforted to some extent. Permitted, say.

I feel perhaps it would be useful to also differentiate between the state of self-consciousness and abjection. While they blur, like tearful rain, there perhaps is some difference. Maybe they are like containers, one smaller than the other and in the other. Being conscious of the self is not necessarily inducive of a downcast state. One can be at peace with their inner body, with what they do. As such, I could say that being self-conscious excludes any idea of comparison with an external being or internalised external ideal. The focus is the self, and it is not in contrast to another perceived self elsewhere. Abjection, however, stirs in the pot of context and circumstance. One sees oneself as if from another inner mind, conscious that one is not fully embodying the experience of living because one is not fully unaware of oneself anymore. I notice here I imply that living fully embodied means living without awareness, or perhaps as awareness. Those two are different, vastly, but empty difference. From that other mind that identifies difference somewhere and thus is detached, kinda, the object becomes the whole of the self. And in the watching, one is thinking, one is seeing difference, perhaps because of what one has learned, perhaps of the situation one is in. As not the whole, one is not seeing the whole when one is in this abject state. Yet this viewpoint is rich in feeling.

This is the world viewpoint of the marginalised. I was reading a chapter from Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" for my Selves paper and felt that what he was describing was a state of abjection, of seeing the black man as a fact in dejective contrast to the more malleable 'fact' of the white man, the latter being privileged in the dichotomy. He was looking at himself from within himself, but seeing blackness, a frame of reference and a mental structure assembled by history and bequeathed by conflicts and attempts to figure things out. He was in an abject space, writhing, tormented.

I like this word because it describes how I feel oftentimes plimbing in the mond. I went to a 21st birthday last night. Was quite looking forward to it, partly because the birthday girl is a close friend, partly because I know her boyfriend went to a lot of organisatory trouble to put together a gift for her and I wanted to see her receive it. The party was themed, I went as a Geek, quite eagerly so. The costume allowed me to feel good because it gave me permission to act like a geek, or if that's not blurry enough, weird. I had an excuse (just for show) to loosen up. I don't tend to be loose at clubby-manypeopled parties because I generally don't feel appreciated by them. There is a lot of apathy going on, and I don't enjoy being in apathetic spaces. The theme gave me the boots to dance like a like a virgin on the dance floor dance floor dance floor. Felt good, not because I was dancing well as a geek - because it still felt weird {abject} - but the fact that people were laughing made me content with it. It was kind of like a reassurance that what I was doing, even though it was weird, was accepted in some way. They were unlikely to repeat what I did, or go that far - not sure they could, since their frameworks are differently shaped in this respect, I feel - but I got some feeling of okayness out of it which is why it pleased me to do it. That okayness overrided any need for mental analysis of what I was doing. I was aware that I looked weird, but somehow the space seemed okay to be weird in, and that eased my mind. It made me enjoy my night more. I still had attention on myself, as I automatically seem to have at such parties, but I was not downtrodden, or more mildly so. This was a minor state of abjection. Last week's 21st, for another good friend, was an occasion for more properness, properness which I did not feel I delivered and thus I felt more abject and apart.

I thank you [you] for coming last night. I realise there were times when I left to my own devices, and I realise it was not your space of utmost comfort. It was not mine either, but somehow I felt more at ease in it. You were there with me, and that was enough to make me feel at peace, like it didn't matter. You reminded me that I was watching a movie, a film where people got drunk and chatted during speeches. Not the best movie. But a movie you and I were playing in. You looked beautiful in the blue.

On the way home from the party, I wasn't very talkative. A friend in the car mentioned that I was tired and didn't want to talk. I let her go with that explanation. Truth is, I didn't want to talk, not because I was tired (though I was getting tired, too) but because I felt comfortable in my state of abjection. Apart, but not. That middleness had and has something to it, something I like. Yes it is a state of low energy frequency, but I feel a glowing river below it, a reminder that can translate to things always passing, things being fine. Maybe this isn't abjection at all. I like the word though.