They tell people that they have gifts, that they are special, that they envy their propensity for vision when it is the vision that drives them mad. It is the vision that becomes a burden. It is the vision that finds you sequestered, forced into deprivation and isolation. It finds a prisoner and sets her chemistry ablaze. It will run away at nine and slumber. When it wakes or when it stirs in its sleep, you will never be able to decipher its message. The vision will not liberate but berate you. It will not stop until it is tired. The mind becomes a Trojan horse and it is pregnant with gifts for your daughters and sons who will feel themselves plagued by divinity, too. It is not liberating when you wander the world in shame not knowing why it does not look the same to you as it does to them. It is not liberating when people have the audacity to envy and exploit what they are desperate to perceive as a gift. As a vision. As a revelation. As the awe-inspiring and horrific face of a God that bears sharpened teeth and not blessings. You find psychosis erotic, but it is ugly and primordial. The name of God is the name of Fear and adoration. If you could see and hear the angels you would find them terrible too.




Thanatos and Eros

I am cold, hard, depersonalized, libidinal apathy. I am dripping rancid nectar: a little girl with nothing between her thighs. A lack of sex drive. A lack of life drive. Try to get me wet. Can you touch someone who can’t feel and make them want you? You can’t make me want you because I don’t want. Try to tinker with me. Try to manipulate me. I view you in the same butchered and lifeless way as you do. Like meat. Like momentary amusement. The thrill of the chase and the ecstasy of the execution is so much better than the flesh itself. You won’t be enough. You don’t want to seduce a person who does not truly understand what it means for organisms to coexist.  I am a female void, I am a black hole, and I will consume you forever in unfulfilled cosmic intercourse.


I'm 21 years-old now and enjoyed a pleasantly casual birthday.







Puberty in reverse






Chaotic healing


There is a moment when I become an entity of pure chaos. I am lost in it. I am one in it. I am oblivious and obsolete in it. We are consumed by the drive for complete and ecstatic annihilation: you to end it, me to seek it. Like snakes, electrical currents are writhing in my skull. They glisten like our bodies. I reach for a bottle of pills, little powder jewels that melt in my hand. You reach for my neck, and for a moment perhaps you recall a childhood memory of hunting pheasants. Life is delicate and little necks are easy to snap.
My tongue peeks out. It is a blind serpent, seeking the palm of my hand. I find myself licking sweat and lapping up pills like an animal. You tighten your grip like a vice. I struggle to swallow. I feel my cheeks flush, asphyxiated and aroused. Something warm, wet, and hungry presides between my thighs and it reminds me of the trauma of puberty.
I am unable to reconcile the paradox of womanhood. It makes me hungry for the grave, and I know that Coatlicue still beckons me home. Her voice is choked now by the fingers on my throat. I spit blood and pills. They look like pomegranate seeds. You are screaming the kind of vitriol that only love can speak. My body goes limp. Your grip loosens. We collapse on the bed like stars and stare into the ceiling. It begins to resemble the limitless terror of space and it is still unfolding.



Pencil, paper and misanthropy


I enjoy cataloging the progress of whatever I do; the finished product is sometimes less important to me than the evidence of how I got there; so hold on to the souvenirs because they are the only way of revisiting that particular fragmented moment in time.















Ungrateful child.

It smells of old dust and dampness. Coiled steel, painted horses, the moaning of old springs and pinched flesh. Something crouches sexless and amorphous. A flight of stairs winds too tight, too dark, too narrow for breath to reach. Dissociative rigid amnesiatic. She makes a better doll than a child. She does so little yet whimpers too much, each time her little wrists get smacked and blush! Raised rabid with reptilian survival instincts: they won’t want you if you’re dead meat. Challenge a mute to scream a little louder, and kick her when she chokes. It hurts, but it will grow back. Disconnected intrusive indelible: "unremembered and therefore unforgettable".

Living Death

Some people look for ghosts but don't want to find them.
I am pallid flesh. Sallow. I bear the wound without the injury. I look to it like a glyph in a Dead language. I am rootless and potentially rotten . Hel's lost child. Irrevocably doomed. Immaculately tainted. Haunted. But I am the architect. I put the ghosts in my bones. I gave birth to them, they are a part of me, and I made them a home here. It was me all along. Me, myself, and a cursed lineage. I am not the host but the Queen. I am my own abuser. I am my own Monster. I am and always have been the hungry all-consuming Darkness. I am.

I say I want to die, but I am not sure that Death is what I want. I say I am alive, but I am unconvinced and ambivalent. How might I learn to live when I have only ever been certain of two things: the inevitability of Death and the closeness of it. The closeness intoxicates me. Some people seem to exist closer to her than others, and by no provocation of their own; it is a sweet stench that lingers in still places. Nauseating notes of rot and chrysanthemums might be detected in the quiet moment between a heart beat. Some people are alive but see ghosts because they have been living as one. They are visited by apparitions and are compelled to chase them futilely. An umbilical noose is caught in the branches of Yggdrasil, which has borne only rotten fruit for twenty years. I was a ghost at five weeks. I slept too long and was inseminated by a Death wish. I didn't want to be born. Was I meant to be born? Escape is a little womb in the Earth.


Reflections on being well-acquainted with places I believed were exclusively reserved for the old and infirm



At work I found a signed copy of the book 'Naturally Thin' in a bag of donations. I skimmed through the pages expecting to get a few chuckles, but was sourly disappointed. The only thing about the experience that evoked anything reminiscent of joy, was the fact that someone decided that this book was trash and kicked it out of their possession. A book like that belongs nowhere better than the trash. What accomplishments can this author boast? Furthering a vitriolic empire that makes its money off of desperate people? Name-branding and endorsing eating disorders as a lifestyle choice? Posing in a bikini three weeks after giving birth? Trash. Books like these are trash. Unfortunately, they are not a rarity either. In fact, they help to compose a billion dollar industry that permeates nearly all of the modern landscape. It's as simple as turning on the TV, walking outside, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting in a doctor's office to suddenly become privy to the world's obsession with dieting.



This particular book claims that a "naturally" skinny girl is hiding inside of every female. What is cleverly veiled behind cheap rhetoric, is that this girl requires unnatural methods to be unleashed. Likewise, a chiseled, virile, strong man with post-Photoshop abs is sulking inside of every male. He too is waiting and growing impatient with his own slovenliness. The diet industry does not discriminate by gender, it merely changes its face. It is our self-contempt that makes us malleable, and our desperation that sharpens its teeth. Failure to attain the ideal is not only expected by the diet industry, it is depended upon. If we do not see our own weakness and fallibility, then we would not need to turn to anyone else for their hallowed advice. Our failure has been preordained. They don't want you to think it is because you are being exploited by an unsympathetic industry, but because you are inferior. You always have been.You are the exception. You did not reach Ascetic Sainthood. You are still soiled by your dependence on corporeal pleasures like nourishment and hunger. You become the embodiment of original sin, of flesh, of guilt. You spend your days and your paychecks on diet pills and books as if they were the Sacrament.




Is it because not everyone has a uniform body type? Is it because diet does not dictate genetics? Or is it because you did not try hard enough? Because you are flawed? Because you are imperfect? Because you lack will-power? Because you need me? Because you need a tyrant to bark their commands at you? Because you are not perfect as you are? Because perfection exists? Because you are hoping that once you've been whittled away, you might be able to see your bones? Because someone might notice you? Because you might die? Because you think sickness nourishes you like scorched earth? Because you might get close enough to your own skeleton to reach inside of it and give back the rib you've borrowed?

Joan of Arc heard voices. I hear voices. I hear them everyday. Sometimes they are the bellowing commands of God, with all his fearful glory. He tells me what to do. He sends me on circumvented crusades to the Grave and each time I come crawling back, still ripe with the stench of imminent Death. I hear him as I sleep, as I wake, as I begrudgingly eat, remorseful for every morsel. This is not Holy. This is not a Gift. This is not the voice of God. This is the seductive threat of a psyche under siege. This is what will kill me. I'll be happy when we begin to invest less money on the diet industry and more money into mental health. I'll be happy when there are more options for psychiatric treatment than there are for weight-loss aids. I'll be happy when eating disorder rates stop exponentiating. I'll be happy when the guilt stops. I'll be happy when our collective death-drive either loses its allure or succeeds. The only thing some people gain from this war is an indent of their broken bodies in a hospital bed. Some day, that is all that will be left.


Related reading and resources:
Eating Disorders and the battle with Insurance:
(Article one  Article two)

Not every body is the same but every body is an efficient machine that requires and deserves help and health. A well-intentioned diet can easily become disordered. If you plan on altering your diet, do not take it in your own hands but consult with a qualified nutritionist or doctor. If you are concerned that you or someone else has an eating disorder, do not hesitate to get help. There is a solution out there, but early intervention and continued stable support is key. As hard as it may be to unconditionally love yourself or your body, understand your inherent worth and learn to protect it.
It is probably pretty evident how disorganized I am; my thoughts get up and wander around the recesses of my brain arranging themselves without permission. I wax and wane, I change, I abandon without warning. I am not an impulsive person or a particularly re-evolving person, just a chaotic person. It takes its toll however, because eventually a schism occurs between my Self and my thoughts. I can't control the latter and I can't always feel the former. Anyway, what I was meaning to say is that it's been a while since my last movie post. Seeing as I am cooped indoors tonight, I might as well make one. I have the time, and that is certain. I am lazy though, so don't expect any Sistine Chapels. 


"Film is Like a Dinosaur in a tar pit"
 A collection of my favorite films that no one ever wants to see with me.



INLAND EMPIRE | DAVID LYNCH
The first time I saw Inland Empire I was about 15 years-old. It was, at the time, revolutionary. David Lynch  supplied me with the stepping stones to the world of surrealism. Inland Empire was the film that took the drudgery of cinema and made it exciting again. I felt like a voyeur in another person's nightmares. At the time I was dabbling in film-making, and a switch flipped in my head upon seeing this movie. It began to dawn on me how similar the camera can be to the brush. It was creatively liberating because I was introduced to an entirely new side of a familiar medium. I took my mom to see Inland Empire. The appreciation was not mutual. She does not let me chose the movie anymore.


BLUE VELVET | DAVID LYNCH
I have made the mistake of overestimating this movie's accessibility. A co-worker that I may or may not have had a crush on once asked what my favorite movie was. I told her Blue Velvet. She went to the video store, rented a copy of it, and a week later gave up. "I tried watching it five times", she said, "I had to watch it in chunks, but I just couldn't do it." I think that was the turning point, in which I considered her magical vagina not nearly enough to compensate for the fact that we had little in common other than a penchant for flannels and skinny jeans. This woman was a gorgeous idiot with nice hair, a women's studies degree, and a bumper sticker of Hillary Clinton. I like to imagine her curled up in her WeHo apartment with her yappy lap-dog and her "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" tee shirt on, while Isabella Rossalini parades across the screen gloriously degraded. Golden.




CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST | RUGERRO DEODATO
The first time you see Cannibal Holocaust and you're stoned and still in high school, it's an experience sorta like having God part the clouds to take a piss on you. At the time, we all agreed that this was a movie that would be best left somewhere and forgotten about. We did exactly that for several years. Then, one day, I decided to have a movie night at my house and invite a few good friends. They were intent on seeing Cannibal Holocaust for some reason, so I obliged them. That night though, a few unexpected guests showed up. Cute, innocent, naive, sweet guests. Guests that had no idea what they were in for and were about to have their first impressions of me pissed on. One of said guests had been in a terrible accident in Iraq and had a pretty extreme case of PTSD that may or may not be catastrophically triggered by a movie with far more gore than plot. Somewhere between turtles being ripped open and native women being raped and impaled, the population dwindled. "I....have to get up early" some said, "I'm getting tired, gotta go". By the end of the movie, a crowd of about ten had become three. The survivors ended up being some of my best friends, proving that the best relationships are created with blood and guts.



GOZU | TAKASHI MIIKE
I love Gozu because it is the perfect melding of genres. Part crime, part body horror, part Freudian fairy tale of outsiders and reincarnation. This was another movie-night at my house and I needed to recover myself from the Cannibal Holocaust fiasco. Predictably enough, the movie nights to follow were much smaller and no more war veterans showed up.


INTIMACY | PATRICE CHEREAU
Intimacy is an uncomfortable film, but a really powerful film. It's sparsely shot and delves beautifully into the dynamic between two men, two very different relationships, and the same woman. The film is dwells as long on the naked body as it does on obsession, infidelity, and loneliness. It's amazing how empty and distant two people can be when physically engulfed in one another, and it's terrifying to see what can be created in that emptiness. It is so startling and so painful that they actually manage to make the act of sex seem almost asexual.

POSSESSION | ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI
I don't know why I like this movie. I don't know why I like any movie. I am no authority on what is and is not "good". I think this is a good movie though. I think this is an exceptionally good movie, even if only because it managed to work its way under my skin and stay there. Maybe I am something of a pervert, but this is my favorite Romantic movie. Is this not romance? I don't know. I don't really know.

ANGST | GERALD KARGL
This movie is phenomenal. A very kind person in internet land suggested it to me, and I have not been able to stop talking about it ever since. It may not be a conventionally enjoyable film, but what an amazing piece of work it manages to be! It contains some of the most original and inventive camera techniques that I have ever seen. Even more impressive, is the director's ability to put you into the mind of a serial killer. You feel his detachment, you feel his blood-lust, you feel his excitement and his fear. It's a surreal experience but perhaps not the kind of movie that I would recommend to the uninitiated.



BAD BOY BUBBY | ROLF DE HEER
This movie is the one good thing that came out of my being single. Last summer an old friend from high school and I decided to start hanging out. We had zero chemistry, but he was a 22 year-old faced with what he interpreted as the possibility of sex. So, we started hanging out. I think our lack of chemistry was obvious so by "hang out" I mean sitting on opposite ends of the couch in his basement lair watching movies. What began as an awkward, bleak, dystopian nightmare turned out to be a very funny and charming movie. Maybe it was the wine speaking, but Bubby managed to make the evening alright.


IRRIVERSIBLE | GASPAR NOE
Nine minute anal rape scene with no music and a completely stationary camera. Sound like a good time yet? I know I have met the love of my life because "You bleeding or you wet?" has become our punchline of choice.  

I STAND ALONE | GASPAR NOE
I would like to know what it is in Gaspar Noe's head that allows him to create movies that are simultaneously exhilarating and bleak. This movie is powerful in its minimalism. It is cathartic because it revels not in the bowels of France, but of the psyche. However, some might be deterred by the recurrent themes of alienation, nihilism, misogyny, and incest. It ends and it leaves you completely polarized. Was this a happy ending or not? Is our protagonist a hero or not? Is he right or not? Does "right" exist? Is it our duty to search for it?


TAXIDERMIA | GYORGY PALFI
Movie nights at my house were an interesting debacle. The premise of Taxidermia looked promising and I had not seen many Hungarian films. The movie is bizarre and visually rich, unpleasantly so. Meat, flesh, vomit, semen, life, and death pummel you in this film. The awkward part of this film was the long scenes of self-induced vomiting and gorging. Wouldn't you know, some of tonight's movie guests were eating disorder patients. Ooops?


SALO | PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
This is one of my boyfriend's favorite movies. It is not my favorite movie, but it is one I certainly admire and appreciate. Few other films incite as much disgust and confusion from people when you tell them that you "enjoy" it. There are lots of comparisons to A Serbian Film, but Salo is so superior it is almost laughable. I would really encourage watching or even re-watching Salo because there is more to appreciate in that film than the shock alone. Pasolini was a talented director. I think that fact gets unjustly neglected. Salo is a good film. A Serbian Film should only be seen on first dates with men (or women) you don't like.


MARTYRS | PASCAL LAUGIER
This was the movie that we watched after Bad Boy Bubby. He had said that he liked "shocking" movies, and I took this as an invitation to a metaphorical dick-measuring contest. "Cannibal Holocaust is cool" he said. "Have you seen Martyrs?" I retorted. He had not seen Martyrs. He probably never had any desire to see Martyrs, and after that night, would never have any desire to see me again. You see, he was a little more delicate than he had lead me to believe. The night ended with him stiff as a board peeking through his fingers. We haven't spoken since and are now happily dating other people. Once again, cinema proves to be an excellent way of thinning the herd.


THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER | THE DEVIL
In the mood for a horror movie? Now there is no need to look any further than the children's section! I don't know what was going on in these people's heads when they decided to make a movie like this and market it toward children. I am an adult and even I contemplated shitting a brick or two. If you know a child and you would like to ruin them by instilling in them a preternatural fear of abandonment and mortality, show them this movie! A "loveable" cast of household appliances will teach you important things about the world, namely that nothing matters. Seriously, nothing fucking matters. Everything good will leave in the end. The movie manages to slap itself together with a trite and predictable happy ending, but it doesn't feel like it. The happy moments feel so contrived and so thinly fleshed out when compared to the rest of the movie, that it feels fake. As far as I know, the movie is about a bunch of severely traumatized junk (come one, look at that electric blanket and tell me that it does not have PTSD) as they discover that life sucks. Their optimism? It comes off as a little sad and misguided because they are ultimately against the biggest opponent of all: Death and decay. We all die, we all rust, we are all bound to the same fate. There is no evading that, no matter what the final moments of the movie try to imply. It's a crash course in Nihilism for Toddlers!


FANTASIA
This was my favorite movie growing up. It still is. And yet, I'll probably never in my life watch it again. This is one of those movies that is universally accessible and actually gets better with age. The cliche of "timelessness" actually applies. I sat down to watch this movie with my boyfriend one day. In the middle of Rite of Spring I was gripped by an aura that felt more like a psychotic sensory hallucination. My eyes welled with tears, my pulse pounded, fear seized me, and the world dropped away for all of five minutes. I collapsed in bed with an intense migraine and slept like a baby. This movie is so good that it gave me a migraine.


THE NIGHT PORTER |
James Cameron and his capsized ship of shit can lick this movie's boots for all I care. Again, I may be proving myself to be more of a pervert than I would like, but this movie is one to make my heart flutter. Whereas other girls have The Notebook, I have The Night Porter. Controversial for its portrayal of an ex-nazi officer as the love interest of a former concentration camp victim.


VIDEODROME |
I really enjoy most of David Cronenberg's exercises in science fiction and body horror. Videodrome is, in my opinion, one of his best (closely followed perhaps by Scanners). Videodrome is not a movie that no one wants to see with me, per say. It is however a movie that I probably would not choose to watch with anyone other than my boyfriend on account of how horny it makes me. I'm sweating to think of it.


BERLIN BABYLON | HUBERTUS SIEGERT
This is a documentary about the wave of new architecture in Berlin, aptly accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack by Einsturzende Neubauten. I initially watched it because I am a fiend for all things EN and I had already known of and enjoyed the soundtrack. The movie itself was really lovely. It trumped my expectations. It is also good to have sex to. Just throwing that out there. It is the one time architecture might actually turn me on, which is funny seeing as it would most likely put your average person to sleep.


PIRATES II: STAGNETTI'S REVENGE |
I saw this movie for the first time in the hospital. As soon as we got outing privileges, the girls and I went to the Hustler store in Holly Wood, spent so much money that we got two free complimentary gifts: a hot pink strap-on and a porn. Pirates was our porn of choice. We went back to the hospital, walled ourselves in the room, and watched all sorts of glorious penetration and cheap CGI. It's a wonder what sorts of things begin to seem amazing when you're cooped indoors all day every day.
Outside of a hospital setting/cases of extreme cabin fever, I'm not sure how many peers of mine would be willing to sit and in all seriousness watch a porn. With pirates. And lesbian hate-sex. It's their loss though, this thing was a comedic gold mine.

SHOWGIRLS | SOMEONE TERRIBLE
This is my dad's favorite movie. That is all the evidence I need that he is insane. This is my favorite movie too. It's Black Swan but with Las Vegas whores. I have a very specific ritual I follow when watching this movie:
Step one: turn off lights.
Step two: turn off your brain; if possible, remove brain and leave in safe cool place until the movie is over to avoid damage.
Step three: Obtain copious amounts of marijuana. Smoke it.
Step four: Turn on Showgirls.
Voila.
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