2001-10-23 9:27 a.m.
effortless onions

Identity is a caress to me lately. Everything in front of my eyes lately, media play (the shaping of "bin Laden"), The Prisoner, Bergman's Persona, Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, talks with D. about our roommate and Synanon and Peer Gynt...all of it speaks to the impermanence of identity, of how people can change on a dime or hold their onion skins, their layers of self around them like a blanket, tightly, protective, greedy almost for that small comfort.

Certain kernels keep me lit, day in, day out, floating in my center like some etheric power source, tiny batteries of soul, and they're all so simple and tenuous. Writing, moral code, soul, rhythm...I hope they're enough.

Why am I thinking about all of this? For a project D. and I are working on, I have to do a character sketch today of me, as another person, as a redrawn sense of self who'll be projected into a tweaked now for a terrible ride.

When I reimagine myself, I see myself more like S. and her real education, her real writing time, someone who's finished a damn project she's started. Someone who can complete a vision.

More on her lovely self in a minute.

I've been told I don't sound like myself on here, like my "voice" isn't me. I wonder how our words paint a picture of us. If my unfinished shimmer stories were all someone had read as a representation of me, I think I'd never make friends again...they'd think I was a powderkeg.

I think this is my flowspace, somewhere the mood and my fingers carry me into fresh directions, warmth, tumblng, like clothes in the dryer but without circles, only freefloating gravityless paths, like I'm flying, which I dream about doing.

And then I settle.

S. is wonderful. She came to my work yesterday for lunch, and we laughed, snuggled, and ate empanadas by the stank Wall St. seaside, dreaming of an existence without work. We jam on such raw levels that I have to laugh...we're two grown-up kids, not too adults, and I feel great about that. I don't think I could be who I am if I were just an adult, concerned about kids and equity and the stock market and Yankees games. My head's lost in a fresh ether of my own making, and I like who I've become as a result.

Intimacy's overtaken us like a flood of chocolate and coffee, where we're blissing out in the beauty of it, but scared of losing our taste for it all. I don't want to do that at all. She is too much fun, in all of the effortless ways. I can't stop smiling when I think about her.

I have to take work a little more seriously (i.e. -- coming in on time, not talking two-hour lunches to be with S.), or I'm gonna get canned.

speaking of which...more later.