some days, i am the master of all my furies

some days, no.

do all the right things: go see hanna while she is working at the café. speak briefly witha kind older french woman. visit the gallery of jockum norström: les étoiles s'en balancent. it is beautiful, almost naïve, but erotic and sad. a good discovery on a bad day, a darker fairy tale, for grown ups. a truer version of fantasy. go to the bookstore and look at back issues of art magazines, vintage porn, cheap paperbacks. felt very very alone in a world full of things and people. i argued with max once, when he told me how true he thought it was, that line from the movie: happiness is only real when it's shared. i suppose it's really a line from a book, a journal. it came quick on the heels of the thought, this something that really should be making me happy. walk through place de vosges. go into a shop full of old shoes and hats. you have to buzz to get in. it is a menagerie of old and lovely things. the man explains to me the way the shoes are organized, by year. old gloves in a box. he shows me some of his favorite things, asks me to try on a shoe. he bends down and holds the ankle of the the black sueded heel while i slip my foot in: vous devrez porter les haute talons, he tells me, ça fait une belle jambe. then, in english, that makes a nice leg. les vêtements sont en haut he says, je vais vous montrer. there is no way in hell i'm about to mount that narrow staircase in an empty shop full of ghost clothes with a man i don't know behind a door no one can get in. especially not a man who was looking at my foot like it was a steak. i have bizarre feet anyways, maybe it's a fetish within a fetish. the person who was the nicest to me all day, i have now mentally accused of being a rapist and having a foot fetish. the only reason i'm not in hell yet is because they are still trying to get it hot enough for me.

pass good things in windows: cameras stacked on cameras, old ones mostly. predominantly black, staring out, wide eyed, but glassy. the store of stringed instruments: orphée. they dangle from the ceiling and the walls, sprawl across workbenches like discarded bodies. there are some empty tables at merci, rare. buy broccoli for dinner. still, on the edge of tears in the grocery store. this is just really good looking broccoli, i should have told the checker, moves me. cook the broccoli. do some work. bake cookies. nothing's working.

did all the right things. then, a big mirror is held up to show my face and body. and the other hand reaches down, and opens the door to my chest. it pulls everything out, mumbling to itself: useless, useless. closes me up, reels the mirror back into the sky. everything sucks away in its own direction and leaves me to find my way home.

last night hanna brought me a swedish children's book. it is about a cat who goes looking for his playmate, fat rat. fat rat is hiding because he is afraid the cat will eat him. the cat meets all kinds of different animals while he looks for rat. finally, he finds him and explains he only eats ketchup. he and fat rat and nine other rat friends have a ketchup and cheese dinner. i love the swedes.

not this. not right.
versus follow through, finish what you start, be an adult already.

this blog is officially on the level of all those family blogs. and today i did this, then that. next, photos of my children and a psalm-a-day section. all i need is a couple of kids and a bible. i can rename it something encore plus stupide, comme: my journey through paree!! or, livin and learnin!! the neighbors are drunk and singing born to be wild.

nights of being wild: sweaty bodies packed into the basement, crushed tight up to the makeshift ring. the spicy smell of our heat, spilled drinks. a man with a feather earring is playing the piano wildly. between rounds, a long-haired blonde squawks out an eye of the tiger cover on the euk. poetry is read. punches are thrown. beer is spilled. back out on the street, it is dark, and everyone has a cigarette. the cold catches the smoke before letting it evaporate.



fuck you horace, i want some deus ex machina up in this bitch, i'm tired and i'm going goddamn grey.