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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 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.