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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 ~ 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.