owning the sap

andy p, houston, texas —

'i learned fascism in night school' —

at this point, i am not a socialist — which i regard as a bureaucratic form of capitalism, available in some instances already in the united states, certainly in canada — but i am now strictly a communist — end of the money system, end of the state — and so i find myself repulsed by socialists — who ought to be my comrades — when i encounter them on the streets or online. i have recently reached the insight that i should find solidarity — bonds and ties — with other eccentric folk even if their eccentricity is quite a different shade of oddity than my own. i think this is right — i am too fully individuated and differentiated — formed as such — to find a mirror, a double, a doppelgänger, or a queer pinko bro, and so i've reoriented my task as cultivating relationships with folks who are eccentric — like me — but eccentric in their own specific breed of brat — such as self-identified socialists; must, in other words, andy, be more open, invitational, and tolerant — like a christian.

justin trudeau is dreamy, even if i phantom voted for the ndp, as ever.

dave is a good example of an eccentric — yes, we're both interested in philosophy, we both have mental illness (mine more severe), and we both like art and music, writing, and so on, but dave and i are also entirely different variants of eccentric; in no way, is there a mirror or double in our relationship; we can only mirror for each other — outsider and eccentric; in essence, this is the vernacular definition of 'queer' and though i have always loathed that term since college, for no good reason, and now, in the face of my students, feel simply too old to refer to myself as 'queer' — i get it: not only have we resisted the one story that america has invented — grow up, get married, and have kids — but we are socialists, communists, anarchists, weirdos, maniacs, depressives, hiv+ barebacksters, and so on, it is important here — to 'own' eccentricity, and with others: the misfits, the puzzle pieces slightly askew that put into sharp relief that the entire picture cannot hold itself together, ever and despite.

the iraq war is in year 26. the globe has been nonstop war since world war the sequel. the estimates for the number of people killed in the 'war on terror' is at 4 million. makes you wonder why 60 dead faggots in florida even warrants news coverage — especially since this same news coverage won't bother to deliver up the numbers on the 'war on terror.' i read an article — in the la times of all places, couple months ago — that reported that of two separatist factions in syria who were fighting against each other — one side was funded by weapons systems from the pentagon and the other from weapons systems funded by the cia. friends: not conspiracy — idiocy.

the ceo of lockheed martin is a woman. hillary clinton thinks the way to solve the federal reserve otherwise bank heist — the fed being a private corporation controlled by the ceo's of the top corporations in the usa, at top: apple and exxon/mobil, that oversees the money supply in the country and world — hillary thinks the solution to the federal reserve fabulous con job since 1913 is to appoint more women to the board. please, start with mrs. lockheed martin — her company posted $46 billion in profits last year. take a bow, hon. the modern woman really can have it all.

but this issue of 'ownership' — own it, eccentric, and so on — applies to mental illness, too, and i think i have more trouble with owning the mental health problems that i have than with reconciling myself to — owning — the various eccentricities, queernesses, that accompany me with the every shift of my gait. first off, no one really knows how to react to mental illness, the madman says something essentially incoherent and illegible, which is the diagnostic criteria, in everyday life, for madness, and then there is no means of response, by the ostensibly sane individual, the feigned interlocutor, to the madman; the madman loses all voice and audibility — as sheer incomprehensibility — and the conversation dissolves into the puppet-show of this automatonic self-same and self-identical sane individual, who finds himself situated within the scene of his own horrified monologue — yet, at the same time, not speaking at all, in a monologue of reason in the face of the sound waves of the wails of the idiot of an unreason. madmen can only really speak to each other, which explains the violent alienation that patients feel in relationship to psychiatrists (who harbor their own madness) — to this point: sarah, yesterday, an md, family planning, said as much that there simply is some generalizable symptom — unthematized and unidentified — common to all of the psychiatrists that she knows in nyc. this symptom, in point of fact, is: hermeneutics, the absence of which is the essence of madness. in any case, i need to 'own' — despite my marxist tendencies toward the abolition of privately owned property — i need to 'own,' psychically, my tendency toward total craziness, yet i think the crux of the difficulty is that the other has no means of response, any at all, at their disposal in the face of a discourse (literally: wandering) that strays from the intelligible. i 'own,' yes, but alone. people don't speak the language of unreason, and so crazy people, such as myself, dave also, and leanne and dan, are vitally cut from semiotic rapport with the world. to start: men in the world would be wise to learn the language of unreason. chirographically, i am talented, polyphonically entitled.

in summation, i fell asleep last night trying to identify the proper word to describe patrick; dan thought 'lame' or 'dick'; leanne thought 'pussy'; lori thought 'douchebag' (i'm sympathetic to this one); peter thought 'loser'; and trevor said it wasn't worth trying to symbolize it; i myself am torn between 'sap' and 'drip.' for now, i'm going with 'sap' — i've always liked this term, it's a bit retro and odd, out of its time, and i think it does him justice — which is what i want. lori's preferred term — 'douchebag' — is probably proper designation for all stupid science jocks (from which he is cut) but his infraction is more specific, special even, than just taking a break from the biochem textbook to snowboard. i wouldn't count snowboarding as a sport.

the only way to 'own' manic depression is to understand it as a x-man evolutionary advancement — and, yes, if you care to listen to me, i consider myself from the future and also not of the homo sapiens species — though i'm not one to go in for that grand fable of our sad times. to wit: doesn't the big bang sound like a fairytale of the atomic age, which is when the theory arose? — but to 'own' manic depression is to understand it as a plenitude rather than a deficit, a plus rather than a minus, a presence rather than an absence, and so on — to, yes, elevate it to the dignity of das ding, the thing, the most precious in the real — that which the symbol can only asymptomatically approach with wit and will. my love at first sight elevated p*trick to the level of das ding — at once, in the moment — and i suppose i am in the process of elevating mike from ula to this dimension, too, yet it doesn't feel as intense, perhaps because i'm in the midst of recovering from the burn of the coffee grinds.

i know a lot of people — and i know a lot of folks who i would consider exceptional — but i always return to myself as the best person that i know. i realize that perhaps even most people do not like themselves all that much — i'm always floored in my classes when during introductions students will confess, at my inquisitive prompt, that they don't even like their first names — ! — while i can easily say, and for a bit of time, that i think michael is the finest name in the anglo west. dan, who is also manic depressive, tends to agree with me, about manic depression, as both a cross and crown — and refers to it as 'special' or a mark of a kind of 'privilege' that ordinary stupid science jocks wouldn't be able to approach or recognize. paquin, who i just saw yesterday, in town to help out miller reel from the dear john letter, is also manic depressive, but i think he views it as deficit, minus, absence — and perhaps in his case, his symptoms, the effects of the meds, his therapy, maybe for him, in summary, the manic depression is simply a bother. well — it is certainly a bother for me, it interferes, constantly and consistently, it rises, predictably, but, in my case, i am provided with my own privileged health care, i think because i am a phd and professor, and when i am inpatient — 2 years, and on — i am prepared a bit to return to the world — '72 hrs till the classroom, dr. williams' — but i think that if i weren't with an advanced degree, a college drop-out or troubled drug-abuser, if such were the case, then perhaps i would be consigned to a group home or even institutionalized in a hospital, for the long years. there is a bit of mad professor imagery at work in my care in the hospital — and i like it, and i believe it, even if such tropes and metaphors are to the margins during these long psychopharmacological holocaustal winters — even if the mad professor is quaint in the face of zyprexa and eli lilly's greedy descendants. makes me wonder: will patrick take a biochemical microbiological etc position at astra zeneca — when he's out?

i trained in piano for 10 yrs as a child and though i dashed from the rehearsal hall for the seemingly last time at the exit of high school i am now thinking of returning to the music hall. as faculty, at this small community college in south boston, i am eligible for a quantity of free private music lessons — which i shall take, along with the free writing course at emerson in the fall — and then i will purchase an el cheapo keyboard off of cl. i will start with joplin and then return to the playlist of my famed high school band, mister bluevelvetere, and our one-hit wonder, "the girl at the gap," to be updated as "the fag at j.crew."

it's a bit of a swelter out of doors today and i will remain in until the party at sarah's in the eve — and even then, don't count me out for bowing out —

love andy

updated my okc profile @ smartandfunnyand

i'm not just saying this: i bet patrick's penis is avg to small size. i think i always thought this might be the case — it didn't bother me in the least — but i had it pegged that way, at the outset. not entirely sure why my fantasy was structured that way, at its origins.

the worst part, after a few weeks, i can identify: i got him so wrong. that does genuinely humiliate me. i wonder if it gives him satisfaction or if he too, in a certain way, feels like he's disappointed me and, even, himself. did the 141 let even him down? he faces the mirror-site and must confront this weird crazy kid who totally fell in love with him for no good reason and then was utterly let down by his lame response. he has to live with disappointing himself. i just have to live with my disappointed fantasy.

and i still kind of like the guy!

but, that he's struggling with being gay, he may not even be privileged to enter the dimension of ethics. he has to concern himself with something much more mundane and prosaic, though irresolvable and irreparable, childish — castration.

good luck, old boy!

andy

to the person who wrote to me at the michael address as '141faggot' — i will write about that angle, it's fascinating, but i am too tired at the moment to graffiti the fact sheet with this dimension of the tale — soon!