an exposition

“she looks at it down there among the grass and blackberry bushes, irretrievable: that it is there is profoundly significant, its loss and its inertia have the expressive violence of objects in dreams.” ~ theorem by pier paolo pasolini

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high school. i copied an emily dickinson poem into my composition notebook and i annotated it thoroughly and when the teacher collected the notebooks for grading i prayed that she would see it, no, i was sure she would see it but i prayed that she would honor me with a response or a recognition. i do not recall receiving such a thing. i was so silly. i was such a child. it was a silly imaginative optimistic and frankly pitiful thing for me to do and i remember like yesterday how terrified i was to do it and yet how i almost had no choice in the matter for i knew it was something that had to be done. i’m sure she saw it, noticed it, briefly. i wonder what she thought. i wonder if she knew that i had placed myself there in that annotated poem¹ just for her.

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the woman laid on the balcony. the woman took off her clothes and laid on the balcony. she shivered with anticipation, with anxiety, with a knowledge that this was the first time in her life she had acted with truth. she shivered with purity, she shivered with the warmth of the sun’s rays on her bare skin, she shivered with the feeling of time inching by as she awaited the certain presence of the eyes that would befall her body. she shivered with a vulnerability that contained an almost unimaginable sweetness. impossible to savor. she shivered for a quick moment. she shivered for a century. she shivered. she waited. her clothes sat balled up beside her. she threw them off the balcony. they landed in the grass. she shivered and smiled like a saint and a tear fell softly from the corner of her right eye for now it was all irredeemable, and she shivered for her freedom. she had acted before understanding and with that she had redeemed herself; she had submitted herself and at last empowered herself. it was as if she had been born again. she lay there, naked, completely naked, absolutely naked and newborn and free, and she waited, the sun melting into her skin, her skin pressed into the wood of the balcony, she was free but still fearful, and footsteps moved casually up the stairs, and she shivered for she was almost there and it didn’t matter if she was ready, and finally, finally, finally

the eyes²

rené magritte - le pain quotidien

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this is how i desire. i wait to be seen. i need a risk. the risk never matters. i choose carefully. when i act in this way it is very rare but it is very true. when it feels like it is time, there is no telling what i might do. i slip open a secret piece of myself and i leave it there and i hope that my subject decides to take it. a great honor. but understand: more invigorating than if/when the subject touches or takes myself-as-an-object, is the act of selecting a piece of myself to make the object, and then the act of placing it there, and then the act, oh god, of walking away, of leaving myself up to fate. the ecstatic vulnerability of the unknown, fatefully temporary.

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desire isn’t always about such petty and simple things such as sex and love. it is about seeing and being seen. that is all that desire is.

some people have told me that they have felt seen by me. like i’ve had some ability to see them in an instinctual way, and open them up. i don’t know. yes. maybe. sometimes, yes, certainly. other times i think i just tell them the truths that they have trouble seeing for themselves but that are right smack there.

anyway. desire as seeing and being seen. i feel seen by those close to me. in some ways. in the ways that are important- basically in the ways that allow me to trust. it’s good. but i think i have this fantasy… about being seen in a way that i cannot yet even know. it’s a complete dream. i love to believe at times that this dream may be nearing possibility through the vehicle of a new person i have happened to cross paths with but no, i’m still waiting. am i foolish? but is this not the absolute purpose of it all?

“split personality” (1954) gertrude abercrombie

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i would prefer that we all stop hiding so much. maybe it is not about myself at all but a movement that i am trying to begin.

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to be seen so as to experience a confirmation of oneself?

or

to be seen so as to be freed from the bounds of oneself?

1. after i wrote this i wanted to remember which poem it was. i’m still very uncertain, but i think it possibly could have been departed to the judgement:

“departed to the judgement,
a mighty afternoon;
great clouds like ushers leaning,
creation looking on.

the flesh surrendered, cancelled, 
the bodiless begun;
two worlds, like audiences, disperse
and leave the soul alone."

i love this poem. at the same time, i feel that it might have been a bit of a longer poem that i remember copying into the notebook. i’m not sure. i wanted to share this anyways however since at the very least it was one of the dickinson poems i loved most as i was reading her in high school.

2. this passage is inspired by a chapter in pasolini’s theorem (i suppose also the scene in the film but it’s been a while since i’ve seen it) but it is not at all any sort of retelling of the scene, or interpretation of the scene. i just took inspiration by some of the circumstances of the scene.