ladyparts

Close the Loop

I thought about it most when I was scrubbing body oils off the walls of my apartment. I found that circular motions are most effective, they leave the least amount of dirt behind.

I walked through my empty apartment with my land lady today. The impossibility of anyone who did not witness the past week understanding what they saw felt

:::clean:::

As much as I want everyone to know what has happened, I don’t at all. There is something very sacred about closing a loop, a circle, completion. You cannot give it away, it must be earned.

I think we should think about this more often.

One of the most important things that I continue to learn is to do my best, work the hardest I can so that other people do not have to. If we all did that we would love more. We would be more.

I could have worked half as hard, we could have left the apartment half as clean, we could have complained at the state of it and demanded justice.

But what kept me going was the knowledge that if I didn’t do it (any cleaning task set before me) someone else whom I love, Peter or Theresa (the angels of Azusa Gardens), would have to do it later. I love them too much, they work too hard to be repaid with such disrespect.

I feel very grateful for getting to close the loop. And even more grateful to the saints who helped scrub off roach shit, sweep up carcasses, and sort through the car loads of things that people left behind.

Throughout the past week the proprioception was pretty fierce. My body held more of my stress then my brain was able to process. I think that’s why I am able to forget it all so easily now. My new apartment is…unfathomably zen and kind. My body is very happy and ready to ride bikes and sit on floor pillows in the early overcast morning air, thanking the cats for sitting in the yellow chair out front. It has only been one day, which seems terribly inaccurate. Thank you body, you make it easy to not say things I would regret.

Here are some photos from the final day. I did not take any in the thick of it.

(Oh, and those are egg cases not carcasses.)

Ode to a word I can’t remember

View from lady parts and Vimeo.

I am getting terribly sentimental sitting on the warm cement outside my apartment. I keep taking strange photos on my computer. Yes, I am a thief of the moment. How many times I have sat here and preformed sacred rituals with a treat from the panaderia and espresso with infinity and it’s terrific, glittering mirrors.

I have been so lonely here. I have listened to the silence, breathing it’s tongues of ash on the faces of leaves and branches, on you. The most loving and perfect lonliness.

One memory I would like to share happened last summer. I was heavy into reading old copies of The New Yorker and The Atlantic that I picked up from a thriftstore in San Diego. I picked up every Fiction Issue I could find. There was strange tension in the house. Heat. Sweaty and astranged bodies. But there where these stories.

And after finishing a few, out here, where I sit right now, and a cigarette, I wrote these poems.

I was going to include a picture of them, but I cannot find them.

I am moving away.

Yesterday when I was in the car with my mother and my sister, one thing lead to another and I got so damn weary thinking about all that I have become while here at this apartment.

I just owe it a night. A night, you know. I owe it some god damn silence with my face on it’s back, listening to it breath, feeling it’s warm skin on my cheek.

I really love all the people I have been here. I love all the other people who have been here, too.

What I am experiencing right now, this time of change, feels like this. A not so elegant, very quiet reading of excerpt, recored in the drivers seat of my car at 11:15 a.m. outside of my apartment. I read this for the first time at 17. It has a very special place in my understanding of ((( ))). everything.

I imagine I will feel this over and over like water cleaning pebbles in a stream. I cannot hold you in my hands tiny shaking bird. I am afriad. You are too good.

(The title of this entry is stolen from a poet whom I hope will someday gain the recognition she deserves. Her name is Christin Lee and she was in a poetry class I took.)

Fortunately

Last night I happily cracked open two complementary fortune cookies at the Cha Cha Lounge. We went for the happy hour: 5-9 p.m. with $1.50 PBR. The happy hour crowd was pretty chill. But the mania ensewed as hipsters arrived with cupcakes and candles and glittery heels. They just kept appearing everywhere, leaving us awe-struck in the corner. (Until one of the bar tenders asked us to move for a sec. while he got something out from the compartment underneath our booth. nice.)

Back to my fortunes, the first one read: “You have an ambitious nature and will make a name for yourself.” Heavy. The second one read: “The project you have in mind will soon gain momentum.” This one in particular is really good news because I need to get this senior show on the road. I really feel good about the combination of the two fortunes; I think some good things are in store (even though they are in Comic Sans).

Which brings me to my last point and reason for blogging this: remember that survey I asked you to fill out? Just wondering. And hoping.

::: Take Care :::

For you and your (lady parts)

For the past few months Matthew and I have been anxiously anticipating Paprika, a Japanese animated science fiction film, directed by Satoshi Kon¹, animated by Madhouse Studios and produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film is based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1993 novel Paprika, about a female research psychologist involved in a project to develop a device that will permit therapists to help patients by entering their dreams.
Sounds pretty rad, right?

We were afraid that we would never get a chance to see it, thinking it would be a very limited release. But yesterday, while riding the bus into Pasadena, we saw that it is playing at this cheap theater. We dropped everything, got some bomb Mediterranean food, and went to see it.

Unfortunately, we left the theater two hours later very confused and tired. I felt like I had aged a thousand years and the entire world was dust, (this may also have to do with the book I am reading/was reading on the bus).

I won’t go into the entire plot; I just want to talk about two specific scenes. Let me also say that the movie is rated R, which I had forgotten.

The plot summery on Wikipedia describes part of the essential plot as follows, “Dr. Atsuko Chiba begins using a machine illegally to help psychiatric patients outside of the research facility using her alter-ego “Paprika.” Paprika is literally a “dream girl,” with her cute face and red hair, she is the more playful half of the serious, though attractive, Chiba.” This is literally the main focus of the film. The four other main characters in the film are in love with and, at separate times, take advantage of the only female character, Chiba.

In the most disturbing scene, Paprika, taking the form of a butterfly, is pinned to table with large holding pins. One of the male characters is running his fingers down her body as they argue, he threatens her. As he confesses his love (and she is protesting) he presses his palm onto the zipper in her jeans and it sinks through her skin. He proceeds to travel up her entire body tearing a seam down the center of her body and her head to reveal a naked Chiba underneath. And you see her naked fragile body handled in various ways for the remainder of the scene as one of the other male characters comes to save her. It takes a while for him to cover her with his coat.
The next scene I want to talk about is at the very end, Paprika realizes that everything has its opposite “Light and dark, reality and dream…man and woman.” As winds of change blast through the streets, Paprika returns to Tokita, where Chiba is. Disappearing into the robotic form, a ghostly apparition of a baby comes out of the robotic shell, like a womb. Sucking in the wind, the child (female and naked) grows until she sucks up the chairman himself, becoming a full grown beautiful combination of both Chiba and Paprika (naked). In this new form, she is able to consume the Chairman’s dream form and end the nightmare he created.

The tone of the movie was hollow and barren, which made ripping off the vulnerable character’s skin and later watching her exposed body grow from birth through childhood, puberty, and into adulthood, a very isolating experience. Also, the emphasis on the female form saving men from darkness is just one more depressing theme.

As there are many positives for being the only female among a group of male friends, there often comes a time when this very real and terrifying vulnerability rises and suffocates you. It’s strange how true this is for me because I have preferred male friends for a great deal of my life.

I am sure that there is a counter feeling that men experience. I do wonder if it is related to the body, which leads to a much longer discussion.

Watching this movie made me long to read some gender-blurring fiction, or fucking Annie Dillard.²

¹ _{Satoshi Kon (今敏 Kon Satoshi?, born October 12, 1963 in Kushiro, Hokkaidō, Japan) is the highly-regarded director of the anime films Perfect Blue (1997), Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), and Paprika (2006), as well as the television series Paranoia Agent (2004). All of his works as a director have been made by Studio Madhouse, where he is a staff director along with Rintaro and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. His films are characterized by psychological complexity, realistic character and background designs, and the blurring of dream and reality.}
² _{A recent review by The Washington Post reads, “Annie Dillard’s books are like comets, like celestial events that remind us that the reality we inhabit is itself a celestial event, the business of eons and galaxies, however persistently we mistake its local manifestations for mere dust, mere sea, mere self, mere thought. The beauty and obsession of her work are always the integration of being, at the grandest scales of our knowledge of it, with the intimate and momentary sense of life lived.” So there’s that.}

This is a love letter

Here.

The First

Here is another verbal cartoon from Dan Liebert

“Cough Syrup.

The cough syrup says on the bottle, “Makes Your Coughs More Productive,” which is so cool, because that was my New Year’s resolution. “

I think we are like pen pals. I think about pen pals all the time. I would send them tiny,
exquisitely wrapped packages.

This is my package to you.

It is something new that I want to try. Below is a survey. I was going to write the directions like this, “Please respond to the survey the best way you know how.” I then decided to add some suggestions.

1. You could copy and paste into an email, answer the questions and email it to me.

2. You can handwrite it off the computer (or print it) and mail your answers to: Laura Wing / P.O. Box 9521 # 1053 / Azusa, CA 91702

Your answers can be in any form you want, I only ask that they be the most perfect answer you have ever written or could ever write in this moment. I think you should either answer in a way that is very typical of you or extremely revolutionary, but you know best.

Ready,
This is a survey

What do you think is very magical?

Do you look at it with your eyes open or closed?

Or do you try different methods every time?

Can you hear me as you read this?

What does my voice sound like?

What is your favorite part about the blogosphere?

Did that question seem disconnected to you?

What is the best kind of story?

What is one of your favorite places to remember?

What is something that no matter the circumstances, you do everyday?

Most of the time, do you feel very small or very big?

What about right now?

Make it count.