How She Overcame Him

2010-03-31T17:00:00.000-04:00

2010-03-30T19:04:00.002-04:00

good bye
i will miss you
i will miss the beauty of your smile, your hands

i never found you, not really
i never loved you, not really
we were sheep that passed in the night
unable to love one another
unable to forget

why did you waste yourself?
why did you lie?
why did i hate you so hard?
why did i lie?

the love is always there
just out of reach
in all the memories

your beauty
my isolation

my longing for an embrace that you never gave
what were you longing for?
did the men you grovelled for, did they make you happy?
now and then?

was it worth it?
did you have a good life?
i hope so.
i hope it was worth the love lost
i hope it was good a lot of the time
the times when i wasn't a part of it
i hope you were happy

i loved you and wanted so much
our relationship was one long continuous failure to connect

goddess bless you now
wherever you are, wherever you go
forever and ever
i do love you

but please don't come back
let this be the end of our story

j.b.b.w r.i.p

x marks the spot

2010-03-28T10:43:00.002-04:00

question: when you agreed to be interviewed, you told me that you wanted to call our talk 'how she overcame him." we've been talking for awhile now and i'm not sure what that phrase has to do with what we've been talking about.

diana: every step you take will bring you closer or further away from you who really are. walk away. that's how to overcome him.

question: is it a particular him that you are trying to overcome?

diana: in a way. individuals manifest aspects of elementals or archetypes. it's an ocean of feelings and attributes, forces pulling and pushing your identity to form itself. advertising and politics are tame games compared to the cosmic battle for your own soul.

question: him?

diana: we are in a time when our only god is a him and our men treat us as if we didn't exist as separate ego-identities. women have as much need to manifest their true selves as do men. our egos function the same way, as booster rockets to get us going til we are ready to let them go and float the rest of the way home. i know, i know, how to overcome him.... the way to overcome any him, from god to man and little boy, is to walk your own path, don't use him to define your identity or your purpose.

question: but you actually killed your father. if you could just walk away, why didn't you do that?

diana: it's a family tradition. my father killed his. and i don't have a brother to do it so i had to do it myself. he was expecting it.

you don't own me

2010-03-27T09:57:00.002-04:00

impressive functionality

bogustimulations
bogustipulations
tepid intrepid limp squiggles

pursed lips

emotional break down
sag
fold
empty
dance

cry, scold

she never loved me
and why should she?
is there a law that says your parents have to love you?
even if you aren't very lovable?
all expectation and hunger
longing for her embrace
or his
or anyone's really
anyone's at all

zinnia

2010-03-26T07:44:00.005-04:00

my grandmother loved zinnias. her sister loved peonies. roses have lost their odor. when the roses regain their odor, i will know that we are on the path again towards life. but zinnias are amazing, the patterning, the tempo of a zinnia, is truly refreshing. peonies are lush, falling all over themselves in wanton delight.

young love

2010-03-25T02:11:00.003-04:00

question: i had such a powerful dream of twinship embodied in a lover scenario and i kept looking for that. it took me a long time to realize that i was discounting the importance of the otherness of the other person.

diana: this is such a fascinating area of inquiry, the self and the other.

question: the chicken and the egg.

diana: the hunter and the hunted.

question: they arise together. separately but together.

diana: they call each other into existence, with their need of one another and their willingness to engage with one another.

xstatic

2010-03-24T17:15:00.003-04:00

i wish i could say i was sorry but i'm not. i've enjoyed my life. it's more operatic than most people's; that's sure. but i think that's changing. i think we are moving slowly into a larger view of ourselves as we prove over and over again what a wealth of talent and resources we have inside ourselves.

question: it's the think globally, act locally thing but on a psychological level. it's ok to think abstractly but we have to live actually.

wanton cruelties

2010-03-23T08:33:00.004-04:00

question: who can believe that love is so rare when it is the ground we stand on, the air we breathe, the foundation of everything we are. so why is it as hard to find as a rare jewel on the sidewalk?

vast indifference

2010-03-22T17:27:00.005-04:00

nothing. that's what i want to say when i think about my childhood, how i came to be what i am. but, if i shake that off, i have another skin, underneath how you judge me, a skin of delicacy and power that is all about discipline and walking my path with courage and facing the devil when i saw her in myself or anyone else.

question: but you didn't stand up to the devil when he told you to kill people.

diana: i dn't think you've heard anythign i'm saying. you keep thinking of killing as one thing, as one terrible thing. that means life is terrible because it's causes us to die. that way of thinking is religion not rationality. killing is interworven into life in an intricate way and is best handled with some respect adn delicacy because you, me, we are all part of the web of life and when it's cut, it affects us all. but killing itself is not a bad thing.

question: see? this is where you freak people out. i don't want to write that. and even if i wrote that, no one would let it get in the paper.

diana: that's ok. but i want you to know, to understand. i was taught how to participate in part of the dance that the "general" population refuses to participate in and i'm trying to say that being a butcher is not an ignoble profession.

question: yikes! what about mass murderers? are you lumping yourself with them?

diana: not at all. you have a plot of land. many things are growing on it. ot's a big mess. do you choose to weed it and clear it and plant it or pave it over with a parking lot? which action is more deadly?

question: the parking lot.

diana: but you are going to kill a lot more up close and personally if you decide to weed and plant. and isn't that part of why we have abandoned our land and allowed it to be paved over indiscriminately?

until then

2010-03-21T08:10:00.003-04:00

how long does it take to make a connection with someone? sometimes, it takes lifetimes of loving before a connection is made. i wish i'd been able to make a connection with my parents. but they were narcissists, a surprisingly pretty name for a fantastically ugly way of being.

question: we all project our selves and our stories onto other people but narcissists are unusual in that projection is the only way they relate. you get close enough to a narcissist

diana: and it's like entering a dance with the footprints already printed on the floor.

question: suddenly you realize that everything's scripted.

diana: when people stop laughing at themselves.

question: that's pretty much the end.

diana: yeah.

question: so. can a murderer laugh at herself?

diana: sure. i think so. yes. try me.

trouble in paradise

2010-03-20T18:47:00.002-04:00

javascript:void(0)question: nothing but trouble in paradise, right?

diana: no. in fact, it's because i found real joy and peace that i was able to turn myself in. i think paradise is right here and our bullshit is stuck on our eyes so thickly, we can barely perceive it so we call it a dream. in fact, the crap in our eyes is the add-on. the basic reality is wildly, extravagantly beautiful.

safety

2010-03-19T00:24:00.005-04:00

i'm not sure what safety is. when i feel the best, i'm not worrying about my safety, i know that. that's all i'm sure about, about safety. i think insurance has made us insane, thinking there's a way to walk the world "safely." if we have imagined it all. if we are each walking our dream, nothing, no insurance, nothing, can keep us from meeting what we have created for ourselves. so safety could maybe mean creating in a kind way, kindness so that you have that coming back.

question: killing with kindness?

diana: of course.

radical faith

2010-03-18T07:22:00.002-04:00

querulous

2010-03-17T14:39:00.002-04:00

she asked me to help her, but it was a ruse. it was a way of ending the discussion, throw herself on my mercy, because she knew i had mercy and she didn't have any, not when it came to winning.

the articulation of the conceptual models underlying these conversations, well, it begs belief. even i wonder if i was making it all up. how can we ever know someone else's motivations? how could i know whether or not she wanted me dead most of the time? if i felt rejected and neglected, maybe she wasn't meaning that. maybe, in her mind, she was only thinking of herself, only noticing her own soap opera of emotional longings, her own unfulfilled dreamscape. me, me, mine. oh yeah. that's all it takes to create paranoia in the other person. am i real? do i matter? obviously not. i can't be real if you can't see me, can i? is it legitimate to be real only to oneself?

post partum est

2010-03-16T16:02:00.004-04:00

don't be wicked. do be kind. don't be cruel. do be kind. don't be harsh but don't be soft either. find the middle way. let go of the truth and embrace the honey mead of languorous desires.

they waft
with an odor so sweet
you cannot mistake it for sadness
you cannot think you are in hell
but you have to be able to breathe it in
you have to be able to let it touch you willingly
inside
alter your being
the scent of life
the descent of beauty

the only way to know the now is to be in it. the only problem with being in somewhere is that we lose our bearings immediately. you can either know where you are or how you are but not both, some of the brain has to be spent on the immediacy of the experience.

sometimes you have to trust the love and let it lead you to where you need to go.

sometimes you have to turn your back on love and walk away.

somewhere you have to trust that you know what to do.

somewhere you have a way to do this thing called life.

so that was my dream, that's what she said.

question: are you sure she was an angel?

diana: no. i'm not sure of much anymore. i've been in this place for awhile. they don't want me near the general population. i might incite them.

question: the woman huntress returns.

diana: something like that. never mind that the hunter has an obligation to be as compassionate and elegant as the soldier or the scientist. sometimes i think they don't want women to do that because they don't want to admit that we have souls just as flexible as men's.

question: it's always easier to minimize the other's complexities.

diana: i'm too old for easy.

question: i know what you mean. easy loses its charm after awhile.

ordeal or deals

2010-03-15T07:00:00.002-04:00

no more trauma drama baby i'm over you

2010-03-14T10:46:00.003-04:00

my mother

2010-03-13T12:09:00.003-05:00

i don't think i had the worst mother in the world but certainly she was among the categories of worseness. our lady of perpetual selfishness. our lady of persistent greed. our lady of a masochism that longed to blossom into sadism but never dared. but i can't say she was altogether useless. because apparently, according to the latest spiritual cognoscenti, i created her to act iin my life in such a way as would take me or challenge me to take the path that best suits my spiritual unfoldment. whew. that's a mouthful. she was a woman who smelled bad and so because known for her outrageously expensive perfumes. you were lucky to never have to smell what she really smelled like.

she liked to involve me in her sexual foreplays. it was casual and cruel, her perfidies but the way they felt to me as a young person was like that scene in bertolucci's 1900 where the black shirt mussolini groupie lovers take the young boy by the feet and swing him around in circles bashing his head in as they go and laughing. the first time i saw that scene, i thought bertolucci had read my life somehow.

little do we know

2010-03-12T07:18:00.002-05:00

question: i can't decide if i admire you or not.

diana: i know what you mean. i feel that way about myself.

question: the acceptable roles for women to play is so narrow and we're not used to hearing women speak philosophically about the world as we're living in it. and the academics are still slogging through some medieval feuds and alliances. i don't know how to think about my life when i factor my femininity into it.

diana: yeah. it's all well and good to want to be the equal of men but, in their terms? really? i can say honestly that i can keep up or better most men in the endeavors in which i excel. so, as a competitor, i do not acknowledge that being a woman is a handicap in any way. but i feel we are living half blind. i sense another set of experiences that could be available to us. but i can't articulate what that would be and i keep getting sucked into proving myself, again and again in a man's world to be as good as a a man.

question: but it's not a man's world. not at all. it's a world full of creatures, none of whom is the boss of anything really. all of us powerless in the face of the energies that surround us and yet creatively potent. there is a river of possibility that runs through everyone that is the essence of the female within.

diana: i like that.

kites

2010-03-11T21:04:00.002-05:00

i wish i could tell a story from beginning to end that encompasses all the factors that led to me, to what i did. but it's such a fine and complex weave of smells and silences. choirs resounding joy and fear echoing in corridors of powerlessness.

i want to conquer words the way i would a wild stallion or the way those invented creatures from avatar tame the wild flying creatures to be their partners and yet, of course, their minions, do their will. aargh. this is where i get stuck. i can feel my way to a grace that does not include turning other creatures into servants but when i attempt to dialogue even with myself, even in the privacy of my own mind, i am repeatedly coming up against the limits of a language meant for commerce and battle.

they say that dante's italian is the one spoken in italy now but it was from his native dialect basically and finessed a bit. when our languages no longer root in organized violence (extended to include theft and betrayal) then maybe we can get them to describe these places of extreme joy, these many ecstasies that ebb and flow and crash into us as we go from job to home to wherever we twitter.

just us justice

2010-03-10T09:35:00.003-05:00

the ass- assi- nations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were so different than the post-modern assassinations.

i think the distinguishing feature is the attitude but some people think the main difference is the purpose. the modern assassin, the assassin of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was a loner acting out rebelliously against the perceived elitist. the post-modern assassin is a groupie, an ideological bandwagon standing, self-sacrificing fool. needless to say, i consider myself a modern assassin. i act alone. i don't need or want to be caught. there is nothing self-sacrificing in my business, it's strictly self-aggrandizing. it's all about the money.

question: i think it's hard to follow what you are saying because you're wrong. i think the assassins are always the same, people who realize that they can make a difference through an act violence.

i eye aye

2010-03-09T07:23:00.002-05:00

words bring me so much pleasure and yet they are a constant barbed wire climb of ripping and tearing the symbol away from the truth of the moment.

hitler

2010-03-08T17:40:00.001-05:00

what a fuck up. working for the dark side is just a self aggrandizing version of suicidal. nothing glamorous except you want to take a whole lot of people with you.

gorgeous

2010-03-07T09:57:00.002-05:00

i know that everything worthwhile in life comes from some sort of loving.

frogs

2010-03-06T11:12:00.003-05:00

i want to blame her husbands and i'm glad that they're dead. i have not an iota of regret but i know it was her own authority that wrote her story to be one of self-annihilation. she filled her thoughts with hate and cruel critique and ate her soul into a frayed remnant. i think the men are often merely pawns in the hands and stories of women bent on their version of the end of the world.

ebb and flow

2010-03-05T07:48:00.001-05:00

my mother was always searching for a truth that she could look up. when in doubt, what do i do? because she had lost touch with her inner dialogues and had no connections to spontaneous emotions. she had controlled herself in order to gain position and power and the price was the loss of her connection to her organic self. she rotted from the inside out. and as she did, she became a heavier user of perfume. but nothing could hide the scent of her deterioration. nothing.

desire

2010-03-04T15:55:00.002-05:00

what i remember is the longing, the wanting, the waiting. as if life were always somewhere else while i was in a hell of isolation and perverse cruelties. all i imagined was escape and escape was erotic and then revenge. i have a weakness for revenge. i love to wallow in the imagined miseries of my enemies. watch them hung alive on barbed wire while carrion birds feed off their live flesh. i can be very imaginative. so learning the discipline of killing was like a relief. no it was a relief, not like anything but itself. like being able to breathe out of your nose after a long sinus infection; an entirely new experience of life. a far more connected and sensual connection to life.

catch a rising star

2010-03-03T19:28:00.002-05:00

question: it's terrible to think you're purposeless.

diana: so true.

question: but aren't we all powerless?

diana: it's probably in how you want to define power, right? there's a way in which everyone is equally powerful and equally powerless too but there's lots of other ways to have limited aspects of power and that's really where all the competition takes place, in the shuffling around of bits of power.

question: maybe we have to do that. i mean, if we weren't all busy trying to outdo each other, what would we do with ourselves?

but

2010-03-02T07:40:00.004-05:00

the way i see it is, i was a prisoner of war. not restricted in my move- ments but con- stantly under mental seige and always within a worldview that is usually described as kill or be killed.

so, of course, i was attracted to soldiers. at first, so that they would fight for me, take me out of the hothouse of death i was born into. but then, because they were the only people who understood what it is like to carry around death, like a bridal train.

a lot

2010-03-01T12:29:00.004-05:00

it happened like this. my father was an orphan, and he got hooked up with some really negative people and from that he got twisted around so that his whole value had to do with success in other people's eyes. and, in this society, murderers are highly regarded as long as they don't get caught. so many of our millionaires, well, that's another story. and all aristocracies. no, not now. i am telling one man's story here, not a whole civilization. so he found my mother, like attracts like; she had come to the conclusion early in her life that the Best things in life are at the top of the ladder and all you have to do is keep climbing and eventually you will get there. it doesn't matter where it is, as long as everyone else wants to be there too.

so they met and fell in greed with one another. each one thinking that the other one would buy their way to the top of the ladder and everyone would look in awe, genuflect.

unfortunately, it didn't work like that. put two killers in a bag, no one is coming out alive. i mean, they did remain physically alive but they eradicated what was left of each other's souls. ever after, neither one was capable of loving in the moment or even considering that there might be a life outside of butchery.

eventually they had me and immediately began the training. now, they had given up on each other but i could be the one who would take them to the top of that ladder. and so we advanced all together, if killers can be said to be together with anyone, we advanced. we got very good and very well paid but the price was higher than we could pay and eventually, one dark night it was mother against father. you know the drill, they even made a movie out of a relationship like this, with angelina jolie and brad pitt and this turned them on enough to cause them to be married but in my family's case, they didn't get closer, my father killed my mother's spirit, ran her off into oblivion.

she found my stepfather, who wasn't as good a killer as my father but he was average and was able to keep the charade of ladder climbing going without really ever being a threat to my mother. that's what she thought anyway, that's what she thought until she died, poisoned by her second husband. it was money to him, not social standing. he got all her money and then i killed him.

at first my father was proud of me, but then he got paranoid and when he jumped me in the night in marseilles, i was ready and i got him first. i don't know hoe they figured it out but they did and here i sit in jail now, waiting for my trial.

boys

2010-02-28T11:12:00.004-05:00

boys are so beautiful. not like men. men feel the same way about girls and women. so only girls are presented in pornographic iconography. and only young men, boys really, in the same. we do not wish to explore the complexities of adulthood. we deny them all. we don't admit to the thievery, to the lies, to the hellish, petty jealousies that corrode our confidence and our relationships. we don't want to talk about any of that, we don't seem so heroic if we talk about that, the seamy side of adulthood. so we don't talk about any of it. the only solution to life is to sacrifice life because life is too tawdry and complicated? that is the notion of a cowardly spirit, that is not an acceptable basis for a philosophy of life and i put it to you, that the more materialistic a society becomes, the more cowardly they become.

courage

2010-02-27T03:03:00.003-05:00

i can't love someone who has no courage. when she gave up her sovereignity, she gave up any reason to have courage. what had been courage eroded and then morphed to vengeance.
the final test in a murderous family is the parent-child battle to the death. if the child manages to win, they will be alive with the death of a parent on their conscience. if the child cannot win against the parent, they either die or are kept as a slave to the parental wishes.

dogs

2010-02-26T10:12:00.007-05:00

my mother told me that only unsexy women had to wear sexy clothes; that sexy women were not about to create even more of a stir by flaunting themselves. but i think she was horribly jealous of women who had the confidence to wear a stunning dress.

question: i think there is a reality that is sustaining us but that we have no access to consciously. the way there's the two nervous systems, you know? if you had to consciously control your heart or your breathing, you'd fuck it up, so it stays out of your control.

diana: yes. and that's why sages of all times work on creating trust within themselves so that they CAN consiously control events as critical as the heartbeat. i always assumed that my shadow, in jungian terms, had to do with my killer instincts and aesthetics, i mean, it's hard not to believe that i work for the devil, you know what i mean? but my shadow, psychologically speaking, is more prosaic. i am a depressive. a secret sorriness, a stagnant pool. murder is a step up, psychologically that is.

question: i am part dog.

diana: that's interesting. and somewhat unexpected.

question: when i was a baby, my parents left me in the playpen with our dog who had just had puppies. i was in there with the mother dog and her puppies. i think that has affected me deeply.

diana: you are full of non-sequiturs today.

question: everything is a non-sequitur.

diana: did you eat enough? you sound morose.

draft

2010-02-25T09:46:00.003-05:00

question: i don't disagree with you. i understand what you mean. we satanize and we sanitize in order to make the concepts simple enough so we can make yes or no choices. but now, computers give me hope. computers can only think in yes or no.

diana: not artifical intelligence.

question: wait, let me finish. right now, computers think in yes or no. that means people can let go of that type of computation use of their minds and begin to explore other, more creative, imaginative paths.

diana: not likely.

question: you know, the killer in you isn't as annoying as the cynic.

diana: sorry. but you're wrong. computers can learn and take information laterally and produce new results that go beyond it's previous limits.

question: and yet it's still a decision-based nodal model. we can do far more with our minds than that, indescribably more. because it encompasses thought beyond language.

diana: that is an interesting idea.

question: thank you for not being cynical about it.

diana: i agree with you about cynicism being worse than murder. i hear you.

everything

2010-02-24T00:04:00.003-05:00

my friends are everything to me. every day i am amazed that i am still alive and only only because they were there. i can't say that my family were supportive in any way. it was as if, in my family, the competitive nature was so powerful that there was no room for the expression of love within interpersonal interactions.

we were a family of killers; it was a kill or be killed incubator.

but i think you make a mistake if you think all killing is alike. as if killing were an area in which there was no science or art, no discipline.

these are ancient categories. killing is a necessary part of life. killing arises at the same time as life arises, it is one unit. so some killing is beneficial to life, otherwise life would not produce.

and some killing is more aesthetically pleasing and more honorable. some killings are more technologically advanced, engineered exquisitely. it's just another area of life. we should not be scared to analyze how it functions in human systems.

fuck

2010-02-23T07:37:00.002-05:00

question: why does every generation feel that they are the ones who invented sex?

diana: i don't think those greek boys felt that way.

question: what do you mean?

diana: that period of greece where it was in love with boys; when the boys came to consciousness of their sexuality, the men were ready for them, waiting.

question: i'm sorry, i'm laughing. i can't help it. those boys thought they invented the situation. i'm sure they did. they took credit for the situation. they thought it arose out of their extraordinary beauty. and how do we know that they didn't? maybe the prey determines more of the ritual than the predator. that's what they meant when they used to say, the man chases the woman til she catches him.

gorgeous

2010-02-22T09:13:00.001-05:00

it's spectacularly impossible to imagine, what if all the dreams in my mind come true? what if there was no delay? every thought, immediate upon being thought, materialized in front of me, immediately. oh yea, television.

question: there's something oddly disempowering about being given everything you want. it's thrilling to dare for something and it makes you stronger too. so that's love, right? love is the force, that, when used, makes the user stronger and, everyone in the immediate vicinity.

diana: can you believe that i killed out of love?

question: i believe that you think you did. but i think that's because you can't acknowledge your shadow. you want to make your dark sides just as light as your light sides.

diana: there's no top to the earth.

question: i'm familiar with the "there's no up" rap. but that's not the same thing.

diana: in a way it is. if things didn't die, then we'd be overwhelmed very quickly. the only way to keep creating is to allow things to dissipate, dissolve, die.

help

2010-02-21T14:03:00.003-05:00

hello world, was what i couldn't say. i had no way from the inside of me to the outside. the length of that distance kept me immobile. at least that's how i felt. i felt like i couldn't communicate and i couldn't move. everyone told me i was moving around maybe too much and i communicate as well as anyone basically. but not from inside. the view from inside was different. i could feel my love for this or that, my willingness to take part... or the opposite, my resistance, or distance i wanted to be from someone or some event and in neither case could i achieve my desires. my desires kept living alongside my reality for what seemed like forever and then people seemed to want me to give up my shadow self and then i finally, slow-wittedly, weakly, began to wander away from the death that was overtaking me.

intimacy

2010-02-20T12:31:00.003-05:00

garbage. that's what you find, when you get to know someone, the darkness that lurks inside, that garbage. that's what made me a killer.

question: but didn't you find beauty in there too?

diana: no. people have different fillings. some people are filled with goodness and other people are rotten inside.

question: that seems ridiculously simplistic compared to how you think about other things.

diana: not really. a kill is a simple thing, if you're doing it right. that's how you know if you're doing something right, it's simple.

question: i get that about expertise, how time slows down and simplicity rules but that is a result of a lot of trial and error lived experience. this idea that simple is better is often used for the exact opposite, so that inexperienced idiots can insist on simpleminded simplicity in order to avoid the great mysteries inherent in a lived life.

jiminy

2010-02-19T07:43:00.001-05:00

question: is it an example of the worsening of times that women are becoming more violent?

diana: how do you know that women are becoming more violent? and, also, is the more violent in the same curve ratio as men are becoming more violent? what i'm getting at is, since there are wars between men and women, wars between men and men, wars between women and women... i think you have to get your statistics straight as to where the increases in violence are, whether they are across the board or if one war is calming while another is accelerating, and then you can capture what you might call, the weather of war, make predictions. see if there's a maximum war amount that we can sustain or is it potentially infinite?

question: i don't think violence can be infinite since we have the means for complete annihilation, that seems pretty finite to me?

diana: i see what you mean. and i think this is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy of goodness or good news or second testament, that we know love is greater than evil because it is infinite and evil is not. they cut the part about life, the holy second testament used to say also that we had more lives so death is not an end because life is eternal but that was becoming too rabble rousing a concept, too kamikaze as a motivator. well, the muslims are having the same problem now, i imagine. their society is being represented abroad by folks who believe in life after so that they are willing to go to any lengths in this life to prove themselves soulwise.

question: the holiest people are know are the most difficult to get along with.

diana: i know what you mean.

question: it's as if a person's ability to be compassionate and truly interested in another person is inversely proportional to their allegiance to a godgiven set of rules and regulations.

diana: personally, i think god is way above rules and regulations. it's too clean for god. it's not his m.o.

question: modus operandi. well, he's had a few. he's pretty schizo if you ask me.

diana: we traded in multiple gods for one god with multiple personalities.

knowing

2010-02-18T16:50:00.006-05:00

biblical
knowing
that's the kind that interests me
heinlein or was in vonnegut who called it grokking? i read so much the books all merged together into one big book in my head where all the characters meet and interact. i used to dream in many cities at once. i'd be walking up or down the hill by the portrait gallery, coming from or going to the national gallery and i'd turn a corner and i'd be on a small street in paris, the old city, where i always get lost and find myself in a beautiful dream, that's when i'm awake when i'm there but in my dreams then along the way the street melts into a new york city street and on like that, rome was there. i walked these streets in my dreams while my parents yelled at me and my boyfriends berated me to come back to earth, to stop dreaming. stop. dreaming.
but why should i?
what better can you offer me?
all you do is yell, complain, bicker and whine.
sometimes, if i catch you in the right mood, we can laugh and make love and sing and eat good food and laugh some more. but sometimes i don't want to have to wait and watch for the right mood, like i'm catching a fish just to appreciate what's right in front of us. it mixes my metaphors. i'm in a place of beneficence and in order to get your attention i have to create an atmosphere of threat, danger, which might, if i'm lucky, turn you into an accomplice, and from there maybe we can get ourselves to what's right here. but often that threat does not morph in the way i want it to, it morphs towards greater violence. then what? no one can give themselves away and enter in. surrender demands an immediate forfeit. no one's going anywhere if someone has to surrender. then we'll all just stick around while we manage the prison population.

love

2010-02-17T06:42:00.000-05:00

2010-02-16T07:31:00.003-05:00

there is a war between men and women.

question: between men and men.

diana: yes. and between women and women?

question: a cold war, a nuclear capable cold war.

diana: between parents and children.

question: war.

diana: so the war between men and women is just par for the course, not singled out from other forms of relationship which are more peaceful.

question: that's how it seems to me.

diana: do you feel like you are warring?

question: sometimes, yeah; and that's usually when i chicken out, when i want out. i can't manage the war part. you have to have a gift for it, or grow up in a family where you learn the language.

diana: the language of oppression.

question: one of them anyway.

diana: in my field, you go through warring into and past and turn around and everything still is in the shadow of the warring. now, i was supposed to be moving on to a new level but i've gotten stuck here and i'm wondering if i'll die here, an eye for an eye, here.

no

2010-02-14T00:17:00.004-05:00

no matter what i do, i never know what's going on. do you? of course you don't. if you think you do, maybe you didn't get far enough into the mystery to be of interest to me.

my mother became vacuous, imploding and ending up as a complete nothing. my stepfather sucked all the life out of her. no, that's not fair to her, it was her that chose to leak her life out of her buttocks and collapse in on herself. the thing is, how many free women have you ever met? me? i'm in prison.

i like to think of opening sentences to great novels. but i don't have the patience to write a great novel. except my life, my life is my novel. here's one: it was always midnight. that novel is about someone in a dark place, right? you know right away. maybe you know the whole novel in the sentence, maybe that's why i don't have to write it. then how about, i live where the river bends. that one is about change, right? turning a corner, after facing an immovable object. or, the struggles of the living, that's what makes us heroes. that story would be about some sort of creative endeavor, creating a farm, a business, a family.

sometimes i like to think in titles: entitlement or freedom? i like that one. and women are another country, that's another good one.

oh, some

2010-02-13T11:20:00.004-05:00

sometimes i hate words. i can't breathe for words clogging up the arteries of feelings and sensations surrounding the act of breathing in and out.

sometimes i hate words because they behave like a prison to my mind. the two-thirds of my mind that i like to use is impatient with the notoriously dominant one-third. and words only come in one third well, as words. they appear in the two-thirds as images of various sorts, nothing escapes the two-thirds, after all. it's a sort of god if you will, at least in terms of omniscience of self, it sees all and feels all and remembers all. the puny one-third is kept around for basic skills that soon any robot will be able to replicate.

oh, sometimes i hate words.

parents

2010-02-11T08:42:00.001-05:00

in loco parentis. or just plain loco parents.
i had two fathers. one biological. one step. the biological one is the one everyone thinks of as a murderer. he's the one who's famous for his kills. my step though, he's the one who destroyed the lives of everyone he came into contact with.

querical

2010-02-10T09:33:00.002-05:00

question: i'm a querical person. Growing up, i was always asking questions. cunundrum is my favorite word.

diana: ah, you are in touch with the eternal quest.

question: the eternal question?

diana: quest, question, it's the same thing. well, almost. it's the opposite of lethargy, of just letting things happen to you. it's a way to be in the world actively without necessarily competing or killing as a modus operandi. the modus is the questing.

question: questing instead of killing?

diana: yes.

rave on

2010-02-09T15:37:00.004-05:00

often i want to scream. i'm not sure what would happen if i did. in my imagination, my scream cleans the world of all lies and twisted pain. my scream cleans the world of cruelty.

satisfactionary

2010-02-08T09:12:00.006-05:00

words aren't good for everything. words are very limited. some days, weeks, years, relationships, are wordless, really. words are a dance of meaning that may or may not have anything to do with what we are thinking or feeling or living. but we talk and we write. we fill the air and the ether with our words. as if all our words were as holy as the first word from which all things were made.

i long for satisfaction. doesn't everyone? but it is elusive; it's nature is elusiveness, that is why she motivates us, because we can never have her. she is infinity. satisfaction and infinity are one and the same; we can approach closer and even closer but there is no place called infinity, no state of satisfaction. these are the dream desires that pulse in each breath, all our lives long for absolutely no purpose other than that they keep the pulse.

question: for a long time i wanted to be invisible. i wanted to not just be ignored and disdained but, go all the way, and not be there at all. i read harlan ellison and identified as a person non grata. someone who offends the world merely by their existing. but i never did anything wrong. and you - you've done so many many things wrong and you don't want to be invisible; you don't even feel bad as far as i can see. even though you're in jail and you know you're a murderer. and i feel the weight of guilt and shame and terror at myself and i barely kill insects.

diana: you ask weird questions that aren't really questions. do you do that for all your interview because, if you do, i don't understand how you manage.

question: i never did an interview before.

diana: oh. why did you get sent to me then? i guess by the long pause here, that no one else wanted to meet me.

question: well, some of the guys wanted to do some stuff to you, if you know what i mean and some of the women were going to do some interesting things as well but -

diana: but your innocuousness made you the perfect representative to manage the interview. do you think they'll publish any of it?

question: i don't think it matters.

diana: what do you mean?

question: i think we're having a conversation that matters so it doesn't matter who else thinks so.

diana: the butterfly wing?

diana: yup.

tremble tremulous heart

2010-02-07T11:58:00.001-05:00

udders swollen and sore

2010-02-06T18:57:00.003-05:00

diana: do you know all the sins?

question: not really.

diana: i looked them up: Lust; Gluttony; Greed; Sloth; Wrath; Envy; Pride. Vainglory, Extravagance, Acedia and Despair were dumped but originally they were on the major sin list.

question: i don't know what vainglory is or acedia.

diana: acedia is a lot like sloth but it's more like lack of motivation, my favorite synonym for it is turpitude. vainglory is wanting to be famous and important in human's eyes.

question: whose else's eyes can we be important to? the gods don't give a shit. neither does nature.

diana: there isn't any point in religion unless you are in the mood to condemn life. if you're happy, you don't need definitions, solace is for the sad.

vociferous

2010-02-04T19:42:00.001-05:00

i maybe will take a plunge at becoming vociferous. i'm always behind the beat. waiting for, i don't know what. listening. i like to listen and then i am not sure when it's my turn to speak. i have lots to say. often it seems to me that, if i had less to say, i might be able to speak more often.

weird cracks in the pottery

2010-02-03T06:55:00.004-05:00

this picture is called city re sur rection

i can feel the urge to destroy as it runs through the opinion to create life. that's really all that's going on all day, the continuous decisions of whether to go towards life or bathe in the strong stream of death that runs, seemingly so free, seeming so free, so free, free. and the opinion to create life structural engineering human reconfiguring guilt shame joy and pathos, dance, effigies and the like, are a LOT of work and so there's this stream and it is calling me to death, come to me, come to me, bathe in me, it's what you really want isn't it? bliss? the end of suffering?

i heard that weird meant cracks in the pottery to greeks and of course, to a greek, pottery was like the computer or cell phone to us today. you never ever were anywhere without a pot in those days, pots did just about everything, there were every possible size of pot too, big small and in between and if a crack was in a pot, if the pot was cracked it couldn't do it's job correctly, it could not serve as a container, it's role vis a vis man and womankind and so the pot was cracked and weird. so, if you eschew being useful, you become weird and a crackpot, an inventor, someone who lives to create and not to exist as a vessel, filled with something other for the use of someone other.

xray eyes

2010-02-02T07:32:00.002-05:00

question: what do you mean by transparency?

diana: it means see-through.

question: to what?

diana: nothing much usually.

question: you said that you had x-ray eyes.

diana: i do. always have; sometimes they get very tired.

question: marksmanship?

diana: yes, exactly.

question: always elegant?

diana: always. a rigorous application of whatever yoga you are practicing.

yes i will yes

2010-02-01T20:48:00.003-05:00

so these terrible things happen to us.

and then what?

is it the quality of the torture that determines whether a person survives or is it the quality of the person? doesn't that sound absolutely evil to you? rating people on account of how much torture they can overcome or forbear. i can't help feeling that the dominant cultures are always warlike cultures and we keep looping back to that and going, omg! now what do we do? as if we are surprised. warlike cultures have as their purpose and pride ~ competition, defensiveness and stoicism.

i'm not sayiing that these qualities are useless or terrible in themselves but i imagine that people might have some chance at interpersonal happiness if competition were always taught in balance with merciful compassion; if defensiveness was always understood to be a delicate sensitivity that can easily pass into paranoia and a lone soul can never know for sure how far she has fallen into the pit of despond because defensiveness in its absolute form is a complete immersion in thanatos: the end - so you gotta have friends who periodically reset their clocks in sync with yours; and if stoicism were practices in seamless cyclicity with dyonisianism. ah, futurity beckons. what will the new age be like?

how is the green concept of a new earth different than the blackcoated politicians concept of the new world order? are they two sides of one coin? are we going to have to learn to get along with each other? right now that seems so incredibly unlikely but what about the next generation? surely someone who grows up watching sponge bob is not going to be freaked out by gay and/or interracial marriage and concepts of lateral communication and cooperative management of resources.

question: really? do you really think that there cannot exist a sociopsychopathpederastinfantilesadisticparanoidmurderousschizophrenic who watches sponge bob?

diana: yeah, really.

question: what about disney land?

diana: not the same thing, you don't watch disneyland, you go there.

zydeco

2010-01-31T00:30:00.003-05:00

the real problem with materialism, as far as i can see, is that it destroys friendship; and friendship is the bedrock of peace. the way marriage was toted as the microcosm of the state and, if so inclined, god and heaven.. the smaller interpersonal unit being the holographic, fractal of the larger society. so, an authoritarian, cruel state generally was filled with authoritarian, cruel families. we reflect, up and down but the down part is the generative part and the up part is always the narrow path and the slippery slope and the tightrope... we are raised by earth says the dalai lama and held down by heaven and so we are safely embraced.

i have been sad for so long, genuine, bubbly joy seems like exercise.

indecisions

2010-01-30T08:48:00.001-05:00

when we think of heroism, we think immediately of war. but that's not anywhere near the truth of our experiences here on earth with one another and nature in her seething, rambunctious glory. heroism is the act of self sacrifice for the greater good of the group. the church militant and the church missionary are outgrowths from paul's earlier incarnation in his life as saul, the good soldier. unfortunately, psychically, this has benefitted the other side in that we "christians" are taught from the cradle that the greatest act of heroism is self-sacrifice. and who is ready in the wings to gobble up all those sacrifices, great and small? ah, of course, the self-aggrandizing, culturally blessed upperuppers and their slavish elites.

zoombeautiful

2010-01-28T17:30:00.003-05:00

amidst my own languor bred from continuous mind and body examples of the complete irrelevance of me. if one less voice is heard, if one less smile is seen, what difference can it make? i hear an inkling tingling song of exotic pacific ocean meandering musings on the hundredth monkey having sex with a casual tourist, who sees the opalescent blue, green, gold, black butterfly and then stays long enough to experience the engendered typhoon. i dated a guy from india and he was all about "we are everything and we are nothing" in a thick tongue heavy accent, almost guttural but not quite, so i thought about that for awhile and i think i get what it means. but what he lived, in his daily life, was that some people are worth more than others and we should pay deference to them because they will defend their rights even unto the death of us. not only will the people who feel superbly worthy quite happily reject the humanity of people who they believe to be less worthy but it works the other way too; people who feel themselves to be less worthy quite calmly deny their "superiors" any superior qualities at all. we are each others' slaves upwards and downwards.

i wanted to escape the grid, find a way of living that wasn't hooked in to every little sway this way and that of fashion magazines and radio, tv and now the internet. go here, go there, feel this way or that... be sensational or be sensationalized but in any case it's all ok as long as you are pushed outside your core to the extremest points of self-exploitation and conspicuous consumption.

question: are you bisexual?

diana: not at all.

question: my friend said that all people are really bisexual.

diana: gee, that's a pretty broad generalization. how many people alive on the planet right now? 6,799,305,437 - that's today. who knows, in the far future that number might look incredibly large or incredibly small. it's such a mystery what's coming so it's even more mysterious thinking about how we can prepare for a future we can't imagine.

question: sometimes i think i can see into the future pretty clearly. not for myself, but a sort of general planetary vision.

diana: and which vision do you see? the one where there's lots more people or a lot fewer?

question: actually, population was never something i thought much about when i was thinking of the future.

diana: what were you thinking about?

question: sex mostly.

diana: another aspect to the population problem.

they laugh.

you

2010-01-27T23:14:00.005-05:00

at first it was easier to love you than it was to love myself. then i felt hollow, after awhile of loving out but not loving in. and then the hollow filled up with resentment and rage and terror and hunger and passion and exhaustion and by then i couldn't breathe. i would collapse randomly at events, suddenly choked and unable to stand up without leaning on something and prefering to sit and try and pull air into what felt like barbed wire infested swamps encased within my ribs.

i was living chaos and terror. i've had it explained to me a lot of different ways but basically it's that everything we experience at this point in time/space on earth has a cycle to it, an in and out or an ebb and flow or a low and high tide, a full and new moon, like the seasonal movement of the earth in it's planetary ellipsoidal dance. so i breathed out love and breathed in horror. and it took me a long time to straighten out that unhealthy habit.

xylem

2010-01-26T23:17:00.006-05:00

photograph credit/link: E. Iglich
http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Biology/botf99
/imagesfor%20questions/stemrtimagesf/sunshadelf.html

there was a wonderful show about music by the guy who helped the beatles, the sound engineer who produced their records. george martin. he did a series about music. somewhere in the depths of that sequence is a fantastic man who records the sounds trees make from the inside. the sounds of the xylem and the phloem as they pull and pulse the water throughout the plant, feeding. loving, working, singing. it's extraordinary. all music is contained in this. all life is singing. this is a wonderful thing.

wealth

2010-01-25T07:59:00.003-05:00

indeterminate occasions delinquent my perspective, i'm bored with perception now; now that i see how many people's perceptions are carbon copied. now i'm into conceptions. conceptions are the wealth i am presently interested in.

diana: do you struggle about being taken "seriously?"

question: i used to feel that way pretty much all the time.

diana: me too. i was convinced that my father and the men in my life were blind to my realness. i felt that, without exception, every male i ever knew over the age of 14 saw me as utterly two dimensional. no one ever considered i might have ego needs. nowadays i think there's a little more tolerance for women who have ego-needs but then they put themselves into the land of the sharks and fast lane competitions and then they're up against some pretty ginormous ego-needs.

question: i've been wondering if i'd enjoy writing erotica.

diana: that sounds like it might be a change for you. from interviewing murderers to grappling with the intricacies of felatio and cunnilingus.

question: i'm actually more interested in the emotional aspects of erotic love.

diana: sure you are.

verisimilitude

2010-01-24T09:48:00.003-05:00

it doesn't really matter what you say, no one is listening. they're waiting their turn and nodding the way they learned about in body language class or in supportive speaking training but if you ask them tomorrow what you were saying today, they won't remember. maybe you don't even remember yourself.

i used to think identity was a thing, a solid thing, an outgrowth of personality and experience and inner and outer intentions and values. but i was wrong. people are amorphous; every interaction they start back at the beginning and it's amusing to them if you show to obviously your shock that they are still where you left them and haven't at all moved forward in time.

there is a sculptural aspect to experience, to life, yes, of course there is; but when you think that image you perceive a static object, a point in space/time. all points are also waves. everything we see is light and light is, in all cases, both point and wave; but our ability to interpret sensation does not yet allow for us to perceive something's wave and pointlistic realities simultaneously. we can only perceive the wave OR the point.

so, i've let go of the pointilist view of identity, that it can exist, as if an object, solid. and i've leapt onto the perception of identity as fluid, as wavelike. maybe maybe maybe, i must concede, that maybe i enjoyed viewing human elements as objects when i myself was a young beautiful object and now that i have crossed that thirty-line, i prefer the hopefulness inherent in a wavelike perception of time.

ultima ne plus

2010-01-23T09:36:00.001-05:00

i don't know the difference between love and terror. i was taught to believe that everyone is in competition with everyone else, that there is no such thing as friendship, that allies are never to be fully trusted, the only thing that matters is winning, win and everyone will love you; lose and you will be lost.

question: do you remember the first person you killed?

diana: he was so beautiful. i could hardly stand to do it.

question: what was wrong with him? why did you have to kill him?

diana: he had offended someone with enough money to pay me to end his life.

question: you know, that makes you sound pretty horrible.

diana: worse than if a man said it?

question: yes, definitely.

diana: why?

question: i'm not sure.

the crucifixion is a dead end

2010-01-22T16:36:00.005-05:00

i don't know what's wrong with the christian religions. i don't get how they can turn a perfectly amazing philosophy into a turgid approbation of torturous imaginings. do buddhists have this same problem? i don't know. i'm christian. at least i think i am. does a buddhist go to her temple and stare at pictures of misery and injustice? not hardly. so why do we? how can we associate ourselves with this idea that we are not worthy except through the disgusting murder of a saintly teacher king? how can his sacrifice be justified, even at the buying of ALL our souls? frankly, scarlet, i don't want him to do that. i want him to hang and let us all take our small share of sacrifice and pain and live happily ever after with one another without torture, without racing towards self-annihilation and calling it god's call.

there is so much about the crucifixion that is so wrong. first just doing it to anyone sucks. thank heavens we have amnesty international now and make some attempt to rescue people from random acts of excessive violence. then is the problem of whether the jesus dude was the one sacrificed that day or if he ran off with his wife mary magdalene and founded the carolingian dynasty which led to charlemagne, most of us had to learn about him in school. and he was all for this whole catholic thing going on at the time. so that could be myth too. not urban myth because there really wasn't much urban in those days further west than italy. then, third, there is the whole thing about the way christians celebrate the cross. it's gross. we kiss it. we carry it. we beg to have one of our very own to carry. ok, weirder and weirder. because, if indeed he did do this so we wouldn't have to then why are we doing it too? makes no sense at all. the only thing i can think that works about the crucifixion is that it grinds into the brain with blinding clarity that no good deed goes unpunished so anyone, anyone with half a brain is going to run as fast as they can in the opposite direction and have some fun in life.

there is an angry god on the loose. he needs to be brought to a safe harbor or pasture or black hole and laid to rest. his rampaging is ruining the neighborhood, disturbing the peace, altering the atmosphere into fear and despair. we must lay this angry god down to rest. he needs to sleep for a long time and recharge and channel his rage, gear it down from rage, to frustration, back to despair, down to irritation, then, through discipline to joy.

shit

2010-01-21T07:29:00.001-05:00

i'm so full of shit.

question: what do you mean?

diana: i think of myself as someone who keeps her promises, lives up to her commitments.

question: you're upset because of yesterday.

diana: did you wait long?

question: about an hour. it takes about an hour to get here. so, about three hours i think.

diana: i'm very sorry.

question: a punctual murderess?

diana: i'm almost offended. or i would be offended if i didn't already owe you from yesterday.

question: what kept you?

diana: a little indiscretion.

question: oh.

diana: she's very pretty. sweet. but of course it's all a lie. you get more flies with honey.

question: you being the fly.

diana: well i'm not the honey.

suspicion

2010-01-19T19:43:00.002-05:00

it changed for me when i realized that i had turned my heart into a little stone. my mother had a stone heart. i didn't want to follow her example. as i began to massage and warm my heart, coax it into opening, i began to see what a tragedy i was. i had always accepted whatever they did to me, whatever truths i was told i had to conform with, i did, why not? what harm? we are born into this world, we might as well participate in it. but so much of it made me sick and what didn't make me sick made me crazy. and i must have, at first, hidden my heart away so it wouldn't be destroyed in the whirlwind around me but then i forgot that i had hidden it and it got denser, like coal to diamond dense but diamond hard emotion is not a good thing. anyway, i've been thinking about the harshness of the world and how we react to it and then that reaction makes us just another hardness of the world to face other people coldly, without mercy, without kindness and with no remorse.

real ease

2010-01-18T18:02:00.002-05:00

so it makes a difference, if release is real ease or re-leasing.

question: how so?

diana: well if i am released from you and it's re-leasing, then i'm re-leased back to some other over riding authority. but if releasing me gives me real ease, then i am free.

question: i'd go with free.

diana: do you think about freedom much?

question: all the time.

diana: in what context?

question: i think about my freedoms and if they are the same for men and for rich people. i think about whether freedom can be given or if it must be assumed. i wonder what i'd do if i felt free. i wonder that last one a lot and it bothers me that i can't think of what i would do if i were free. that's how unfree i am.

diana: ah, i wasn't going to speak of unfreedom as i am now a prisoner. i was going to start us mentating on freedom, the way one contemplates flowers in a show garden. isn't that one lovely? isn't that one amazing? my freedoms have been enormous. i think this small space i find myself in now is a necessary contraction from having opened myself up so widely to life and all it has to offer. does it strike you sometimes that the world is unbelievably beautiful and magical? and against that backdrop, people are walking around acting as if it were the dreariest place, as if we live in a hell of unusual painfulness.

question: guilty.

diana: really? at your age? you don't feel exhilarated when you see what's out there waiting for you to make your mark?

question: after a few nasty bosses, a really nasty divorce, the split from my childhood best girlfriend, the death of my parents. no, i am kinda thinking this place sucks and life sucks and there isn't much point and then they send me to interview a woman who has murdered, well, you won't say, but it's a lot apparently, a lot of people you killed and i'm spending my afternoons talking to you for an article in a paper that will most likely be peed upon by more guinea pigs than read by human eyes.

diana: wow.

quality

2010-01-17T20:45:00.001-05:00

my father was obsessed with the difference between "first rate" and "second rate." anything he didn't like was "second rate," anything worthy was "first rate."
as time went on i got to wondering about the scale. ranking is a kind of measurement and measurement requires a scale. what is the scale from which we determine that something is "first rate" or "second rate"? it's reminiscent of the naziesque proclivity to categorize people. what is ever the purpose of that?
it turns my stomach to think that we can objectify ourselves to the point where people would rather buy a new standardized body part than experience and explore the knowledge in their own bodies. we have taken alienation to new heights.
i never meant to believe in peace. i didn't really think it was possible but i did wonder and wonder does wonderful things, curiosity is a great teacher. now sometimes i wonder how i got so lucky to create inner peace was not really a conscious choice, it was a sort of incremental change of heart from the hope that i could re-design myself away from the template i inherited from my father.

pregnant

2010-01-16T14:08:00.003-05:00

what does it mean that you can't get here except from a woman? once you're here, men are where the action is, generally speaking, though roller derby girls have changed my opinion on that somewhat. but in any case, you can't get here without a woman. but no one seems to think that there's anything philosophically or ethically important about that. maybe the reason women are enslaved is from fear that we will know that we are the gateways to heaven and earth. heaven in a sexual sense, earth in the birth sense.

omg

2010-01-15T20:58:00.003-05:00

i lived my life mostly in cities. i think in the country and in the suburbs, murder is as common as in the city but since it's more spread out, you don't feel it like a coating on every surface except in the bigger cities.

question: do you believe in god?

diana: i do. yes. but i'm not a big fan of religious institutions, except as repositories, like museums, of ancient beauty.

question: what religion are you?

diana: oh. i wouldn't go that far.

question: as far as what?

diana: as needing a religion. that's sort of like insisting everyone take heroin. of course some people need it, for the pain but for the rest of us, it's deadly.

question: i was raised a catholic.

diana: what's that word that means what you said is an impossibility, a mutually exclusive combination?

question: marriage?

diana: no. but that's really funny.

question: do you think everything in life boils down to food or sex?

diana: yes if you add death.

question: food, sex and death.

diana: that pretty much says it all. did you like being catholic?

question: i did.

diana: why?

question: it was colorful and the men wore dresses which i thought was funny somehow especially as they looked so serious. and there was a lot of singing. i like a lot of singing in church.

diana: and organs. i like a good organ in a church. and stained glass windows. and some statues.

not so fast

2010-01-14T23:32:00.004-05:00

it's peculiar. you wait for a long time for something but by the time you get it, you already want something else. this causes a plethora of symptoms having to do with desire and the impossibility of satisfaction. i think that's at the core of all addictions: a sort of perfectionism, an inability to accept the flawed nature of the self and others. a desire to end desire by fulfilling desire. an inability to accept the unquenchable nature of desire, to live the tightrope of perpetual splendors of desire. breathe and you foment more desire.

question: do you think they will acquit you?

diana: no. i have trust issues.

question: but you think they should.

diana: of course. everyone allows for self defense. if someone is threatening your life then you have to decide, will i let them take my life from me, or will i fight back.

question: non-violence is not an option?

diana: women are about two hundred years behind men, maybe three. we aren't up to non-violence yet. you have to go through warriorship to understand and implement peace. women are still on the threshold of willingness to take their violence and open it up to discipline in order to transcend it. shall i tell you the history of the world?

question: sure. should i ask you how you know?

diana: i read a lot. the world starts out like a crazy puzzle. figure you are dropped here in spirit and you don't know how anything works, everything is a toy, an experiment, an experience but lots of this is high risk and there's a lot of casualties what with people sticking their hands in the fire. but you develop some interesting awarenesses. there's language always and usually some sort of star analysis and with that a calculation of time based on the sun and moon. the cultures inundated with sun, those around the equators, seem to be less interested in the sun. the more northern lands built the round temples which were really nothing but a huge sundial that measures days and years instead of minutes and hours.

so then we get fire and that takes us ahead pretty fast to a new plane but i think in general women were sort of bossing the general social scene. however, a little after fire comes metals and that's when the men really take off running. once force is refined to the point of complex weaponry then you even have the basis for a hierarchy of work and the concept of military groups begins... so there's a lot of war for a long time and the men end up running things because women are basically interested in making life and though we have been successfully enslaved and given away almost all of our power individually, you cannot eradicate the feminine or the female from truth.

so now what? women are poised to come forward again and at least share power with men but our habits of power are prehistoric and actually more neanderthal than the men we joke about being. women's way of power is kill or be killed. you're on my side or you are on the other side. men are far more flexible after centuries of working together fighting they have come to realize that interpersonal relationships require a lot of flex, bend and flex, bend and flex. that's the key.

question: to the history of the world?

diana: bend and flex will inherit, yes.

my father

2010-01-13T20:10:00.002-05:00

my father was known by a few nicknames but one of them was rasputin and that's the one that affected what i was called ~ yes, rasputin's daughter.

question:have you ever been in love?

diana: oh yes. a few times. and in very different ways.

question: i've been in love.

diana: have you? did you enjoy it? how did it work out for you?

question: not that well; how about you?

diana: i'm not sure that the inlove thing is supposed to work out well. the whole thing is so angsty how can that end up in a good place?

question: some people seem to be able to ~

diana: for awhile.

question: that would be ok.

diana: how long would be good for you?

question: i think about twenty years is good, maybe twenty five.

diana: the problem with that, is, of course, at the end of that time, neither of you has the verve to go elsewhere so twenty turns into forty but the second twenty are pretty much a wash.

question: it's a conundrum alright. who nicknamed your father rasputin?

diana: i'm not sure.

question: because no one could kill him.

diana: yeah, and because he always seemed to have an agenda. he was always working something and it never felt good, whatever he was doing socially or culturally always sort of smelled bad. and the longer he kept those secrets, the more they festered. i think he died of an auto-intoxication of selfhate and rage.

life

2010-01-12T21:40:00.003-05:00

i don't like people very much. but i started out liking them a lot. i can't figure out what happened.

question: if you kill people, then you can't like them.

diana: that's not true. you can kill with compassion or cruelty just like anything else.

question: it used to be that women didn't kill or we didn't believe that women killed. in any case, we didn't put women in jail for killing because we didn't believe that women really kill.

diana: i know what you mean. it's sort of macho in people's mind, taking away life.

question: and women make life.

diana: but actually you need both genders to make life and both can easily take it away,

question: i have issues.

diana: me too. you want to go first?

question: sure. i resent that i went to school and left the world of women i grew up in and made my way in a world full of men and competed and won a lot, and lost some. i resent that because i can't go back. i'm not comfortable with regular women's life anymore.

diana: not many women in our civilization are. it's like war, work. i mean, in world war two when people got around, or in napoleon's war, when people got to see how other people lived by warring against them and also by the general mix of people in an army, there's a lot of random talk. people aren't relying on news to understand other people. the "others" are right there... and then they want what they see the others have, an education, status, whatever. and they come back from war demanding from their government, more. they want what is possible to have. well, now it's like that for women who work. we go out, we see what there is and we know we still don't have much of that, if any at all.

question: i'm not sure i want what's there. i wanted to go there because i thought what i wanted was there but what they want is there, what i want is in me... but i'm not sure how to make it happen.

diana: i don't have the answer for that. i bet you think i do, that i'm independent but that's silly. no one is not here. we're all here. we all have to live within the world as it is.

question: if you are that accepting, then why kill people?

diana: it's not personal. it was a job.

question: killing your father is personal.

diana: yes, but i didn't kill him.

question: but -

diana: but they say i did. but i say i didn't.

question: but i've heard you say that you did.

diana: i meant i hurt him so hard that he couldn't keep up his hypervigilance, he lost the will to challenge and defeat. and so he was an easy target. don't be silly, no one asks a child to kill her parent.

question: i think you're lying. because you don't want to go to jail.

diana: i'm in jail.

question: i know. but if you can convince them that someone else killed your father, you can get out.

diana: the problem is philosophical. the distinction has to do with how we are alive, with the essence of what makes alive alive as opposed to dead.

question: this sounds like bullshit to me.

diana: i like you better now.

kitchen

2010-01-11T15:59:00.002-05:00

is there a way to communicate that isn't ~ slander, a con, a strategic maneuver, a sales pitch, a seduction, an assertion of power?

joyful

2010-01-10T21:45:00.002-05:00

it was your dream to be creative but you loved power more. you made a mockery of your life. drinking in the poison.

question: how did your mother die?

diana: her husband poisoned her.

question: your father?

diana: no, he tortured her but he liked her alive. he thought she was beautiful. my stepfather, on the other hand, despised her. but he despised everyone. i've never known anyone more poisonous so it wasn't that big a surprise when she was poisoned. sometimes you can see these things coming.

question: was he caught?

diana: oh no.

question: but you're sure?

diana: oh yes. i hated my mother more than i hated my father, by the way. i'm not sure why. sometimes i think i might be a mysogynist.

question: i don't like women much, as a general rule.

diana: why not?

question: they justify their slavishness with rabid, depersonalized, competitive behaviours. sometimes i think that materialism is primarily a female disease and that men go along with it but women set it in motion.

diana: yes but origins were all so long ago, it doesn't really matter who started this shit. it's definitely shit. that's all that matters, and everyone is infected.

question: but, if we can imagine what it is to be free of that infection, that means we can achieve that ~

diana: i agree. can you imagine yourself free of competition? of rage? of aggression?

question: sometimes.

diana: i can't. i think i'm too infected to ever be a utopian, joyful person.

question: maybe there's a joyful but non-utopian health too.

diana: never thought about it.

question: you know, post-modernism is all about the breakdown of purist ideologies, the exposure of purism to the light of holographic, fractal, relativistic realities.

diana: i don't read that much.

question: sorry.

diana: no problem. for me, joy is an ultimate. one of those things that you can't have til you're dead.

question: seventeen virgins.

diana: sort of, yeah.

i love you

2010-01-09T22:47:00.002-05:00

no matter how hard i try, i can't figure out why it's so difficult to love. we all seem to want to love but when we are alone in a room together, it's not so easy to love. we stare at each other. we blame each other. criticize. i don't think that's what love looks like. love looks like conversation, work done together, snuggling, accepting and the occasional flare up too because if you feel too uptight to blow off steam then it's not love either... it's as though, since the middle ages and the invention of romantic courtly love, we have made no progress at all in conceptualizing and creating viable ways to love one another. we are awkward showing affection, appreciation, acceptance. take a walk on a crowded street, listen to yourself listing all the things that are wrong with this person, with that person. listen to the lies you make up, which is fine, you don't know these people, you're making it all up. but why aren't you making up amazing stories? why aren't you saying, this one is a genius. this one is beautiful. this one is great in bed. this one is so warm and lovable.

hate

2010-01-08T11:31:00.002-05:00

i hated so many things growing up. i hated my parents. i hated the cold war iciness. i hated myself. i hated feeling awkward. i hated feeling alone. i held hate like a staff i leaned on, a staff i fought with, a staff that carried me out from the horrors i was raised in and among.

but my hate is tired now. my staff is whittled itself from overuse down to a toothpick i carry in my breast pocket.

i worry about people who are stuck in a bad situation but are not allowed to hate, either because of their religion or they live with a brute (male or female)who reserves the right to hate as if it were a privilege. but i also worry about people like those brutes, who have no other consciousness outside of their hatred.

hate is salt. too much will kill your heart. not enough will keep life tasting like baby food.

question: who do you hate now with your toothpick size staff?

diana: small things can be more powerful than large things. no one. isn't that great? i don't hate anyone anymore. but i have a pure thread of hate i reserve for times when i need to spice up my energy field. all i have to do is look around and i can usually find something to hate.

question: like an energizer pill?

diana: exactly. but it only works after you've exercised a lot of your hate. you can't start out knowing how things work. you have to do a lot of things before you even begin to get the gist of what's going on.

gargantuan gargoyles gaggle giggle gurgle gasp

2010-01-07T21:06:00.003-05:00

several days ago i was seven years old and today i'm nine months old and cresting out of the womb.

question: do you think everyone is a killer?

diana: you know i do.

question: but some people are better at it than others?

diana: you, for instance, how many people have you killed?

question: none that i know of.

diana: any abortions?

question: no.

diana: would you?

question: i don't know.

diana: killed a lot of bugs i bet.

question: a lot of mosquitoes.

diana: ants.

question: oh yes.

diana: my, aren't you the bully? you only consider killing things that are much smaller than you are. i, on the other hand, contemplate, organize and effect killing goliaths.

question: shibboleth.

diana: absolutely. everyone who is anyone is also a murderer. but don't think it's always bloody. perhaps they have simply murdered some of their own dreams. you can live nonviolently but not nonmurderously. it's impossible to exist without countering other existences, combining, overcoming or destroying.

question: are all relationships about power?

diana: yes. but some are about power-over-others and some are about power-over-self but you cannot play music without making a sound.

question: i have thought that maybe i have, done that, made music without sound.

diana: with another person?

question: more often with than without actually.

diana: i am jealous of that. don't get paranoid. i don't kill from jealousy or greed or any sinful reason but rather from reasoning about sin. i am guilty of only one sin, judgement.

question: killing is a sin.

diana: oh. you are frustrating me. i thought we covered this. breathing is killing and creating both. living is an continuous act of murder.

friends and enemies

2010-01-06T20:33:00.002-05:00

friends and enemies ~ there's not much difference. not really. you engage with them and you change. other people you just ignore.

question: have you ever had friends?

diana: i've had lots of friends. how about you?

question: loads of friendly acquaintances and a few good friends.

diana: nah. i'm friends with everyone.

question: but you have killed people?

diana: oh yes.

question: i thought people who killed people didn't like people.

diana: would i kill a friend?

question: yes. ok, would you?

diana: would you?

question: not unless they went rabid or something.

diana: sure. that's the same. it's a judgement call. once you decide that it's either you or them then it's not so hard to carry through the rest of the way.

question: is it bloody?

diana: no. i wouldn't be able to handle that.

question: could you have been a murderer before there were guns?

diana: hard to say. but i feel like you are demonizing me. i think that is completely unfair. i think your whole culture, our culture, is demonic, feeding on people's pain, feeding on the lives of others, murdering people slowing and making a profit all the way. i do the same thing very quickly and generally painlessly.

question: thanatos -

diana: yes.

question: then do you believe in eros? the will to live and love?

diana: yes. but i don't feel it inside me as a directive any more. it takes awhile but eventually strategic thinking robs a person of their poetry and without poetry there is no love or life. but, i don't feel sorry for myself. i understand that everyone is necessary, everyone plays their part. my part is to end things, lives, dreams.

question: do you have enemies?

diana: i don't think so. i think as a person i'm fairly non-descript, low-key and everyone knows me in yoga class.

question: you do yoga?

diana: i'm very good at it. it's great for sex too. and focus of course. you should try it if you don't already.

question: is there anything you'd like to add?

diana: i think friendship is what the world is missing. love is a crazy potion, an ocean no one can ever safely navigate... but friendship could be based on care and respect, friendship relationships could build a bridge of lightlove strong enough to alter our relationships to everything. i think we were once friends with the world around us and that's what's called eden but i think it only exists in the womb and in the time when we are all space gas and elements... after that, it's impossible to ignore the spectacular singularities which we apprehend as differences and well, what i'm saying that, if we were friends with the world, we could be friends with each other or maybe it could go the other way, it could start with us.. but until then, and that's like saying you want to crawl back into the womb, but until then, pick your enemies as carefully as you pick your friends. and dance. it's only the dance that will make a difference.

empathy

2010-01-05T23:00:00.002-05:00

empathy is really the a of the emotional alphabet. empathy is what makes it possible to even make sense of emotions. but that's not how i was taught. i was told that competition and rage were the basis of human interaction and emotion. i was taught to kill or be killed and to never trust anyone, what they said, what they did.

the problem with all that paranoia is that its basic stance, using emotional perceptions to fuel disengagement, alienation and fear, minimizes our abilities to realize our potentials. our conversations, our peculiar reminiscences shared, our ideational harmonies, create the human world. when all our conversations, our reminiscences are discordant, when all we say and think is about the slights and betrayals done to us, the losses we have sustained, the blows to our pride, the gross humiliations... well, the psyche inflames itself and rampages. we see the results all around us and we bemoan it as fate when it is merely bad emotional communication skills. quite simple, really to heal. but there are powerful interests keeping us from experiencing that healing.

question: did your father teach you how to kill?

diana: yes.

question: how did that happen, exactly?

diana: there's no exactly about it. it's like cooking. creating a killer, is creating a dish, you have so many factors, nothing can be exactly one way, the elements determine the procedures just as the procedures alter the elements.

question: was there ever a time when you resisted this training?

diana: i never knew it was training. i thought everyone was like us.

question: what do you mean?

diana: when i was growing up, all the families had sad mothers and overbearing fathers. many of the fathers beat and/or had sexual relations with their children and with other men. some of the fathers sent their wives to get shock therapy. rarely did these men engage in the activity we call making love with their wives. most of the wives died without experiencing passion or even orgasms. the cruelty we lived in was simply the way it was, the water we fish were swimming i - so, rarely were objections voiced or even contemplated.

don't stop

2010-01-04T16:43:00.002-05:00

some people are the product of passion. do you know what i mean? some people were made from more passion than other people. i wonder, when they go all the way and have only test tube babies ~ because, by then, females will have degenerated their personalities, cut and deconstructed themselves into perfect specimens lacking any complexity at all and no one, not even the smart ones, will want to go through the labor of childbirth ~ if they will miss that factor in the personality or if it will be a big relief to have all calm people, made the same way.

i had a baby once. it was an accident. every bit of it but i wouldn't change it for the world. i'll tell you about it sometime but it's dificult to know where to start. even though people watch a lot of tv hospital stuff, there is always a doctor there, some representative of a structured, analytical frame work. but, my experiences are off that map, on a whole other territory of beingness. and when i have tried to tell people about it, there is a considerable lack of interest. so the birth thing was amazing but i think i have to explain a lot of other things first. and maybe you could ask some better questions?

crash into me

2010-01-03T11:43:00.003-05:00

it was like ice. it was like fire. and my body was electric, a generator of electric visions. lights danced in my head. a lightshow to the music my body was making with its rhythmic movements. slow and then rocking and stop and go and edge and slide and in and down. and breathing. and his breathing. another layer to the symphony of us in the dark. the stars' song audible coming closer to us the more we moved. we were bringing ourselves to the stars and then suddenly back into my interior fire and light and waterswirling bringing me to him and more to him and more. and then. then there was an emptiness in him that was filled with the dark of compleat creation and an answering emptiness in me and these to emptinesses were communicating through the hole in him and the hole in me til the fluid ran from the hole in him and entered the hole in me and truly there was perfect alignment of beingness with nothingness.

i have never been able to recapture that experience with anyone else. i've never met a man who understood his emptiness. the men i have known think they have a fullness that they pour into me after stimulating the pump for a suitable amount of time. this is also an exciting event because friction causes tremendous energy and sparks but not a bit nearly like the connection of the two emptinesses. to allow the flow of the universe through you is something spectacular. for two people to do that together, at the same time, is the perfect wave.

an emotional alphabet

2010-01-02T21:10:00.002-05:00

question: you mentioned, in one of your earlier poems, the phrase, "emotional alphabet." what exactly do you mean by that?

diana: emotions can be communicated but not unless there are some agreed upon standards for their communication. that's an emotional alphabet or grammar or lexicon. but i like alphabet because if all we agree on is the alphabet, then we don't take for granted that we are all seeing and believing the same things.

question: are you talking about conformity?

diana: i guess so. but conformity is camouflage, it's not real. we can imitate each other but we can't become the same form as they are. form is as unique in people as in any other manifested perceivable entity. i was thinking about eating, after our conversation yesterday. i was thinking that i sometimes think that everything is food.

question: that's a bit fava beans.

diana: of course. that's why that concept works. but what if it's not creepy? what if it's simply the way nature works?

question: the snake that self devours?

diana: you know about that?

question: yes.

diana: the circle of life. we annihilate each other but it's fun.

question: wow.

diana: you don't think so?

question: no.

diana: but that's what you're doing here. you are here to take my story, to take my life, to take my thoughts, to take my feelings and you will get paid for altering them so that your audience will be able to devour them.

question: (no statement or sound)

diana: does that upset you? to notice that you are as much a cannibal as anyone else? as me, for instance? should i tell you a story while you are catching your breath? i was standing on a cliff, overlooking nothing at all, and i was swept away into the sky and met a beautiful man, he looked like an american indian, long black hair, broad shoulders, eyes that laugh and cry all at once. this man embraced me and we hovered over a canyon and he pointed out the people in the houses, some were happy and some not so happy. but all of them completely involved in their own moment, their own story, their own desires fulfilling or despoiling. a world in motion. then i was back on the road, walking home. when i got home my father beat me. there was no reason why. amazing shift in perceptions for one day. surrealism isn't unrealistic. your realisms are all selling you something. see the world my way, no mine and on and on. but you will notice that only some people thrive, only some people are able to stay immune to the piranha. anyway, i met the indian man finally, i knew it was him. we spent an, of course, magical night together, speaking very little. but you said i had to be careful about what i speak about.

basic needs

2010-01-01T22:22:00.004-05:00

question: in order for our reading audience to understand, we would like to begin with a cursory examination of your early influences.

diana: i -

question: please wait until we have finished asking the question.

diana: i saw this. on tv. you get penalized if you don't hear the whole thing but only if you didn't guess right. what if i know what you are going to ask?

question: please.

diana: k

question: clearly, we are not allowed to ask you whether you are guilty or innocent. but we want to understand what could have caused you to even be considered as possibly having committed the crimes -

diana: is there a question?

question: the first thing you remember.

diana: eating. i remember milk pouring down my throat sucking, the effort and the flow. later, my mother told me, she used to smoke cigarettes at the time and so i was also experiencing a cascade of ash and her blowing the ash off me which probably complicated the central pleasure of effort, sucking and warm gushing milk resulting in an increase of mental activity and that is precisely an increase in sensual awareness.

question: we were thinking more like, the first time you went swimming.

diana: i was always in water. i can't remember ever not swimming.

question: do you have anything you'd like to tell us about your early life?

diana: i'd like to say that i was unhappy. i'd like to say that the world echoed in loneliness from the time i can remember, i remember a void around me, as if i was being protected for something special and at the same time, as if i were quarantined away from people in case i might infect them with something deep and dark i carried inside myself. like a human pandora's box. but other times i felt like a cocooned butterfly unable to understand where she's been or what she's becoming but not at all unhappy with the idea and process of disconcatenation.

question: ok, thank you, diana.

diana: you are more than welcome. you are a blessing to me in my hour of need.

question: what do you mean?

diana: i need to move forward with my life. my life can't be over because my father is dead.

question: maybe you thought when he died, you would be free of him and happy.

diana: and instead i'm on trial for his murder.

new year's eve

2009-12-31T19:37:00.003-05:00

well, this is the last day of not-doing. i am breathless and filled with unrealistic fears, breathe out, breathe out...

tomorrow i'll be allowed to answer questions. apparently, since i am still undergoing my trial, i'm not allowed to say whatever i want, there will be censorship. but, hey, why not? maybe that's better really, maybe it's good to have some control over our psyche's outpourings.

'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at such a petty pace'

tempus fugit

into a new year

What

2009-12-02T16:36:00.002-05:00

What can you tell me about money that would be a surprise? Can you tell that's what we're arguing about now? the negotiations drag on. Blah and Blah but not Blah minus three hundred million tri-blahs from Norway. omg. I wasn't born. I'm just sneaking this in, honestly, i can't wait to start this blasted thing but my manager says i shouldn't sell myself short, though what my height has to do with it, i can never understand. But she gets frustrated, flustered and red in the face and she always gets like that when something is really important to her. So - well, why not? if she cares that much, i can hang. But we aren't born where i'm from, we are conceived and then we slowly appear, manifest into existence, it's hard to explain and they don't think you care where i'm from or how we do things, they said that you'd want to know how to help yourselves. This is a big self-help planet, they said. But it helps me to get some of it out because sometimes i think i'm imagining it and if i say it, or write it, or whatever this is - then it's, well, it remains more real to me. not a solitary fantasy but a shared reality. So i like seeing the differences, especially as regards ownership and stuff like contracts. i think, because you all come out of a woman's body, you have a thing about bodies and who is who and which is what and how. it's not like that with us. on the other hand, we have the same, or really similar, emotional qualities, the same emotions are available to us - we don't use them exactly the way you use them here.

Don't

2009-11-30T22:02:00.003-05:00

Don't get me wrong. i do want to do this, it's just that we're still arguing terms: what is reality? what is art? how does an expression affect time? how long is affect? are realities convergent, or overlapping somehow? can people influence one another or are we singularities - in every aspect? dreaming isolated dreams into infinity. so, like i was saying, i do want to tell you my story but we're i want to be clear about the terms. i want to live up to my contract, so i want to agree to what the contract entails before i begin my attempt to live in this form. i'll be in touch. asap. icu2, Diana

Who

2009-11-29T20:24:00.001-05:00

My name is Diana.

How

2009-11-20T11:53:00.004-05:00

i don't know how but i came into the world. i mean, i read about a lot of ways that people are born and conceived and i sort of understand that unfolding of potential from the seed and egg, bloating the being til it bursts into form.

i don't know how i'm going to do this but i need to tell you my story. or her story. our story. how we overcame him.

how we broke free of all of it and came here, to where you are, to where there could be a benefit to others from the telling of our story, our stories, so the world will know its self. so we will know our selves, be proud of what we have done. how we have furthered life, defeated a little piece of death.