Alice #4

So I'm working on this writing project of not adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" but something about her, using her character as a jumping off point for something...this is the most recent fragment, using place...you won't really be able to see the Alice in here at the moment, eventually it will all hopefully come together, crossing my fingers for some illustrations:

Nothing like the half desert here with mountains rocky and a creek by the way by the side of half shrub trees. Trains at night lights bright white on the rockside that climbs a kilometer above my feet. Echo at the rattlesnakes that don’t or won’t make an appearance in the crunchy gold grass. Drive into town five closed restaurants and a diner small town life in this hot dry place. Still.
It’s true about tire dust flying up into the open windows in my mouth my hair my eyes, gritty scrapings with blinks. The taste of this place like the lack of a smell here. Put my boots down on gravel for a minute, scrape around push around small rocks that get close to my toes through holes in the rubber in the leather. My shins sweat under jeans and laces dusty up to the knees. Maybe 2 3 people in center town. They look at me my car brush hair off their foreheads and go somewhere. This could be a place for a fall but not mine. At the diner I order toast with marmalade take a bite and leave it for coffee. To go two cups for the road, back in my car and I’m gone.

stuff I've been writing, not edited, kind of streamy

the streets are rain-marked
unlike the barrennes I've coome from
Along one road
everyday another
partial end to true one
I remember waiting
though I never did
as the fractured memory of memories
replaces knowledge
the cut off point
when hollow stomachs
and dry eyes loosen themselves
wet with salt
I am in this moment
torn with the moment
five steps from the house
across the street
in Portage wind
orange sweater
watching the cross of streets
deciding I would leave soon
it isn't love but a discontent
sewing with my fingers raw
I can't seem to make anything
hold
hand defies my attempt to bring
lives together
places dictate my meaning
and a room of my own is not this one
train light on the
deserted mountain side
curled and mangled in
the backseat
every noise a shock
three hours sleep, heat
to burn so much skin
exposed
through clear windows

I want a best friend

I was talking to a friend about the need for a best friend last night. All through high school, my greatest desire was for a best friend. Someone to spend all of my time with, who had almost everything in common with me, where it was kind of the two of us against the world. I saw this in friendships around me, and so much in my head. I was just so lost and alone, always searching for this elusive ideal, I suppose the other half to myself. I put this ideal onto others, and whenever I met someone that I clicked with, this hopeful image overshadowed their actual personality. This image has been with me forever, and it’s always centered around myself as the outcast reveling in not being alone in my quirkiness. That I’d never met someone like myself, so everything about me felt wrong. I could never accept myself unless I was mirrored back to myself. Books, art, movies, music, I could never enjoy it for what it was because nothing was me in any of it. Aspects, yes, but not the whole parts combined of me. And I never really understood that this was teenage angst, that this was the search for self, that for most people this manifests itself as the intense search for their soul mate.
And really, I have been searching for my soul mate, in different forms than I guess most people do. But what about the possibility that different aspects of different people combine as a whole to create completion. This steadfast rule of just one other person seems almost ridiculous. And I impede myself in this search, as I have these pre-formed ideas of what said person should be like. So much so, that when an opportunity presents itself that I don’t recognize, I don’t let it develop into anything. I build up these crazy walls so that I both don’t recognize amazing people, and then won’t let them in when I do recognize them.
And I’ve had so many, it’s painful to look back(which I do often) and name them. In the act of naming is a recognition. Of what I’ve done to myself in the name of finding a place where I fit. Most of you probably don’t even know who you are , and are still a very important part of my life. I’m sorry that I’ve been so lost to myself that I’ve only recognized your beauty when it doesn’t directly relate to mine. That I’ve literally left some of you behind as I go from place to place aimlessly. Exile and outside is all that I understand. Leaving and loss is what I dream of because I always thought that there would be nothing else but that for me...to make an impression as I walk out the door, on a plane, in a car. And I hate this, I want it to be gone, I want to relate, to love, to experience full joy. To tell everyone that I’m so afraid of being rejected that I can’t open myself enough to let someone offer me something. And even if they do break down the shell enough, I still can’t accept any of it. Oh, what a silly conundrum I am. I am in love with so many people( in the sense that they amaze and wow me constantly) but but but.....Just know, even if you never read this, that I am in love with you(and I mean all of you), completely wholeheartedly.

Soundtrack-"Left and Leaving"-The Weakerthans
Open this door, leave me to nowhere, and I’ll find something someday. In this moment of love and blood I have nothing left to put into this quarter slot, to pay for my entertainment and joy. No joy in the morning, my coffee’s cold, never hot enough until I heat it at least three times before every sip. Letters too many letters I have mailed that mean nothing to the receiver. Weaker than I was before, but stronger of heart ( you’ll never know what I mean by this) I’ve chosen a new type of taste today. The one of never leaving the house, but not being able to be comfortable where I am. Progress isn’t here today, she’s gone on a little trip to Victoria. The ferry ride always gives her chills.
Benevolence is not the motivation for any of my so-called action. For action in my head is merely passivity, and if I drink myself to genius tonight, I will accomplish only the success of illusion. Maya does not treat me quite right, I have no illustrious visions to keep me occupied . Only blanks and floors so beautiful I spread my blanket out and try to sleep. Bones sore even though flesh pillows itself after nights on the floor. I slept in the doorway, blanket only covering my hips, the rest of my body sprawled out into any space possible. Dizzy for two days afterwards, unsure of what had crept into my system, I read beautiful comics all day while Adriana took a bath, listening to Teresa Stratas singing Kurt Weill.
The road song is singing in my blood again. Two weeks seems to be all that I can stand in any place, no matter how much or little I know it. Snow the first time tonight, taking out the garbage after I cleaned out, not up, the bathroom in the basement. I want to be back in Winnipeg, not for the place or school, but the space. The imaginary memories and what ifs I could have created. More like this fictitious desire I have to be alone in some city as barren as that place. It’s too lush to be lonely in Vancouver. But I lie when I say that this sense is loneliness, because truly it is more like a combination of wistfulness, nostalgia, and general grayness. It has nothing to do with being alone, and everything with just being.
So just give in to sensation and this ever possessing loss of nothing you ever had anyways.
"Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty"-weakerthans

art #1 of who knows how many

I am obsessed with art. With pretending to look, create, and interact with art. Some need to put down everything in timelessness, perhaps? Or just get it out of me. I think that's what it is, this mumble, jumbled whispers of voices in the back of my head-not true voices, just ideas. Could-be's and maybe's not fully formed anything. In fact, the formation from sense to actuality is painful, stressful, and wholly undesirable. yet I try, and begin, over and over.
I don't want to make anything, really. I don't want to feel as if it is necessary for me to attempt again and again to make something, anything. The pressure of creation, when others tell me that I am a creative person, but I just don't know. I don't really feel like an anything person, honestly. I suppose that I can do things, but I never have the desire to begin. I'm just pretending to be an artist, which really means that I shouldn't be one, because if I really were one than I wouldn't be having this constant argument with myself over whether I am or not. I would be doing things, writing, making things, creating.

Such a push to invent, to be spontaneous and NEW all of the time. Newness, the stench of plastic and chemicals, bright color soon to fade. So much pressure on everything.

shortness

I don't want to leave the house. Before, I was so anxious to never be at home, at least three places a day to visit were necessary.

first of first of something, I suppose

I accidentally erased my first post. I tend to erase a lot of things. My internal editor is always at work. Too bad my writing one never comes out to play. Stream of consciousness it too rigid a word for how I write- and at the same time, too lose. I do select, but I never go back to the same piece again. It seems so gone once something is out of me. The repitition of theater non-workable in my writing life. I feel as though I'm supposed to introduce myself, talking to nobody as I am I see no point. What is my point in starting this up? To write with the sensation that it is being read, whether or not htis is the case? To try and remove myself from the everyday isolation of being unemployed, not in school, and living with my parents again? More like to revel in this nothing-to-do-ness. I will not edit here. Journal, work-posting, whatever I feel like at the moment. Sleep for now, though.