Such desperate, wanting things, young women we are. I’m in this cot in the Scottish Highlands, heated blanket blaring warm onto my bare thighs, clutching the duvet and praying to my gods. My gods: literature, good coffee, good sex, rough sex, dick, Dick, and fragile, tempest conversations. Also: Kali, Kraus, Barthes, and Acker. I’m a guest, a young woman staying alone in a painter’s house. Her art is on the walls of the place as if to say I make things. I get jealous when they talk about previous houseguests, but not for any particular, scathing reason. Nowadays I’m more comfortable in my own skin, more cognizant of my worth. I don’t need to concern with myself with other people too much, which is good. Hermitage feels possible in a way it never did before.
I’m twenty today, ripe with youth and liquefaction! What a pleasure it is to spend a birthday in the Highlands, amidst art and books and a little black cat that makes me sneeze … I’m thinking of that one Wednesday lyric: “We invented kissing and comedy.” Makes me think of him. Him is so obtuse of a concept. I know he’ll never love me like I want him to, nor will anyone. But then who will! Me, I suppose. I’m committing myself to loving myself today, condemned to meaning in the right kind of way.
Frank O’Hara talks about ‘Personism’ which might be the “death of literature itself” It involves “evoking overtures of love without destroying love’s live-giving vulgarity” and sustains the “poet’s feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person”. That’s how I feel when I address these blog posts to him, or mention a ‘him’. That it’s not so much about him as it is about what the invocation of ‘him’ does to the writing. Does that make sense? It’s about how writing about him, enlivening him, brings loveinto the poem. Or the piece. Whatever this is. I want my readers (null concept) to feel loved. I want to write whatever I write and feel hugged by it, warmed by the words.
Today we (painter, husband, photographer friend, and me) took a hike along the Great Glen Way and found ourselves at a tearoom/pottery along the Loch. There was this brilliant painting of a woman spread thin above a cabinet of ceramic doings. I bought a silver bracelet and a print of a painting done by the potter’s mother. I drank delicious coffee with hot milk pressed into it, almost like a lino print.
I feel rejuvenated and full! Finally, I can eat! I’d like to bask in this feeling of contentment and make some good art. Some questions I have for the artist who owns this rustic home: What does sadness mean to you? How does it materialize in your art? You make art about Palestinians, about climate anxiety and genocide… How is the subject matter not heavy enough that it just crushes you whole!? Also: Where are your brilliant sweaters from? Are you satisfied? Are you happy?
I am happy. I think that is all that matters. It’s fleeting…but so is sadness! Oh, to be young! When I had sex the other day the thirty something year old got so heated thinking about my teen-hood. I love that you’re nineteen, he said. Well, not anymore! I’m twenty! I don’t need to satisfy anyone but myself, and what a privilege that is. Goodnight and Helloooo adulthood! I am ready to seize the day ahead.