tara's tierra

Why Microsoft Word Sucks and other Negative Comments on Dissertating as Told by a Grump on a Friday Night at 10:44pm

Microsoft Word, especially as designed for macs, sucks. Not only does it suck lemons, it also sucks eggs. Runny, yellow eggs.  For one thing, my version of Word has the weirdest, oddest bug that runs like this: I open a new document. I write a bunch of pages (let's say 38, because that's the # of shitty, illegible, verbose, vague, convoluted pages that I have so-called written in my current chapter). I get to about page 23 by scrolling around aimlessly, since that's what I do most of the time while I am writing, and realize that I had better put page numbers into the document because I am getting completely lost, dizzy, and discombobulated because I have no guideposts. So, I insert pages, as a normal person working in Word does to their multi-paged manifesto. Well, my computer is on a very expensive form of page number cocaine. It starts inserting pages, blank ones, by the thousands in between page 23 and 38 (the end of the document). You have to hit Ctrl+Command+Shift (or something like that) to get it to stop. I kid you not. So, I wind up with a document that is 23,423 pages long. It is seriously insane. It is so aggravating because to get from page 23 to 38, you have to s-c-r-o-l-l-l-l-o-r-c-s-c-s-ll  through the thousands of pages that have been inserted! Oh my marbles.

The good news is that this inane computer mystery usually results in one of my favorite angry human activities, which is slamming my hands as hard as I possibly can onto my keyboard, in a fit of rage only matched by the times I have jumped on top of my printer with boots on while waiting for some lame worksheet on how to differentiate the verb ensure from assure for a writing class with only ten minutes to spare before the blasted class starts. "Printer jammed." Blink blink blink. "Printer jammed." Yeah, fuck off, Hewlett. And you, too, Packard.  With all these geniuses like Steve Jobs in the world, why is it that printers and photocopiers (oh, don't get me even started) suck so much? Oh yeah, and Word for macs.

__

But actually, let's just face it, it's not really Word's fault, it's really my brain's fault that I hate my dissertation. I write these paragraphs that belong in the Introduction to the entire project, not the current chapter. Those are frequent. Then, I write sentences like this, "It seems to me that it could be very apparent that in the 1920s there may have been a tendency to write what could be called poetry..." Dammit all, Tara. Say what the hell it is you want to say and cut out the beating around the bush. Or I write, "As I will elaborate further..." which is code for, "I am too fucking lazy to talk about this b.s. right now, or ever, so please just remember this chapter as if I spoke eloquently about this certain concept that totally eludes me and always will." And then my favorite is my shorthand, "xyz" which stands in for, "information that will never be inserted but instead just deleted before I hand this into my advisor, or maybe, never."

Oh, and I also have this recurring nightmare that secret thoughts I have write themselves into my document without me even knowing it. I mean, stranger things have happened. So, I'm afraid that I hand it in and someone (haha. who am I kidding? The only person who reads this shit is my poor advisor who tries to be nice to me even though I know she secretly thinks, "How did I wind up with this insane girl who cannot construct a basic argument and clearly knows nothing about that which she writes?") reads something like, "God, I fucking hate this project and wish that Dwinelle burned down" or worse . . .It's the same way I sometimes wonder if I am mentally deranged and the whole world knows it but no one will tell me, so whereas I think I am doing a Ph.D., I have, in reality, been in a mental institution for the last seven years, and everyone just nods their head and tells me what I want to hear while conducting meetings that assess my "limited mental capacities" behind closed doors. Tragically-comically, the difference between the loony bin and academia has become more and more indiscernible with each passing year...

I also just have to ask the obvious question: Has anyone besides Heidegger, Hegel,  Judith Butler and probably one or two annoying loser phenoms I have met at Berkeley ever written a good dissertation? I mean these things are just plain awful. Let's face it. After seven, eight, ten, twelve years of learning, we really lack eloquence, sophistication, precision, and well, knowledge. When it's all said and done, the  best we can hope for, girls and boys of your thirties, is this gem of a comment: "If you wish to publish this interesting draft, you should research more deeply, expand ideas, reformulate argument, rethink topic, and well, possibly just start over. Have you considered the world beyond academia? I hear there is a lot out there for people like you. Of course, I myself have no idea what's out there since I was born this way. But news creeps in from the other side...and there are possibilities for you."

On that note..I think, if I may,  I propose, I surmise, I interrogate, I argue, I postulate, I pontificate, I  contradict, I believe, I sort of have this kind of idea...that it is time to put this cursed MacBook and all her unnecessary words down...at least until tomorrow.

Insert page #: 32,987.

p.s. I just read this over and have to say, for better or worse, once in a great while, I crack myself the hell up.

Jaime Saenz, a magnetic pull

There was a night long ago when I was awake at about 2am on 16 Essex Street. I was in my top bunk, with my sister sound asleep below me, and I had a comforter (it was Laura Ashley, I remember my mother saying this) with widely spread out flowers all over it in many primary colors. The wall paper matched the comforter except the flowers were all yellow. It was like having buttercups all over the wall. There was lots of white space though, which I liked, I remember, between the flowers. And they were scattered about in no particular order. I liked that, their randomness. Anyway, that night in bed, I remember feeling this sense of  mischievous secrecy in that I was the only one up, and I had my small blue typewriter at hand and I was probably talking to myself out loud.  Knowing me, I was probably thinking of all the swear words I knew so far, or all the items my cousin Abby had that I wished were mine. There was something sneaky about me, but I sensed that it would lead to lots of fun . . . that moment of self-awareness then has stayed with me ever since.

Jaime Saenz is someone I discovered when sitting in Guatemala at an internet cafe. I think I google searched something strange like, "depressive artists Bolivia," or some phrase that only made sense to me, and I started reading about Saenz. In all honesty, I am a terrible researcher, but certainly a unique one, because I come up with the oddest ways of saying things. You get 200 hits, I get 5. But my 5 are all gems. Anyway, ever since then, probably about 2002, I have been reading him periodically when the mood strikes me. He is an amazing writer. I read some of his lines and feel like they are running through my veins, like ice-cold water. His words would be glacier blue, not just because I am obsessed with blue. He is from La Paz, and sometimes I feel like I am in a teeny alley way near the plaza of San Francisco when I read him, ducking into a doorway to block myself from the wind. Other times I feel like I am tucked into a narrow twin bed with woolly itchy blankets thinking about how happy I am to be alone. And other times, like I just noted, I am brought back to a corner of myself that is formative not to anyone in the world but me. These formative moments are always so ordinary. They are simple. They are the minutes that no one sees of you, realizing, you are you.

Here's a beautiful section of Saenz that makes me breathe really deeply in thanks for someone else who was once in the world who felt the alienation that some of us still feel:

Nunca me sentí en el mundo como si fuera mi casa; siempre me sentí quisquilloso, susceptible y desasosegado, como un intruso o, en el mejor de los casos, como un mero visitante.

I never felt as if the world were my house; I always felt uneasy, exposed, and restless, like an intruder or, in the best of cases, like a mere visitor.

He also writes, and these lines inspired me to go back to Essex Street, "Aprendí cosas y cosas de la vida y de la muerte, del mundo y del sufrimiento en la oscuridad de mi cuarto, en la soledad de un rincón de mi cuarto, cuando mi madre, joven aún, me miraba con mucha pena, pues según su sentir, yo era muy retraído y huraño, y además muy tímido. . ." I learned things, and things about life and death, about the world and about suffering, in the darkness of my bedroom, in the loneliness of a corner of my room, when my mom, still young, would look at me with concern, because it was her feeling that i was very withdrawn, unsociable, and timid. . ."

His writing consistently pulls on the part of me that loves to have hours at night to myself so that I can sit up in my bunk bed and write without anyone asking me what I am doing, or can imagine bodies under sheets and blankets dreaming while I study them, peering at them, even touching them, from afar. And it's weird, but I feel like the other dwellers of corners know who else is up right now doing the same thing they are, those few lights you see when you arrive on a late bus into a city and think how reassuring it is to know that someone is up; someone who might be your friend. Saenz would have always been up, even if he was in the dark.

L'Abbe C and Excess

L'Abbé C is Georges Bataille's first enigmatic novella and relates the story of twin brothers (or two halves of one person?) -- Charles and Robert. Charles is addicted to vice, both drinking and devious sex, while Robert is a devout priest who by all appearances is wed to morality. However, as the odd somewhat "untold" story unfolds, we learn that things are not as they seem and in fact Robert is on the brink of madness because of his depraved sexual appetites for Eponine, a promiscuous libertine who likes to take to the drink and the boudoir, especially with brother Charles. Although the story iteslf is not full of explicit details, Bataille creates a dark, eroticized environment through his writing and perhaps most abstractly through the "filth" that Charles finds lying on the ground one day. This "filth" is not specified or named, but rather is an ephemeral, oblique presence symbolizing the moral decay and perverse desires of both the brothers: 

When I got outside the sun was just coming up and, as I passed in front of the house, I saw at my feet, under her window, a piece of stinking filth. I tried to imagine what lunatic had deposited it there and wondered what bizarre motive he might have had. (But the act itself was consistent with a complete disintegration) (98).

Bataille goes on, through the narrator of Charles, to point out the unsaid (the secret, as Yerushalmi would say of Freud) that is always covered by writing itself:

My narrative doesn't quite measure up to what one expects such a book to be. Far from emphasizing that which is its purpose, it somehow conceals it. If I do get around to saying what is most important, if I insinuate it, if I speak of it -- it is, ultimately, just to leave it further in the dark (131).

A few weeks ago I was discussing Archive Fever with a friend of mine and our professor. The archive, a place as well as a law, is distinguished by a death drive -- the desire to repeat itself, to eradicate itself, to undermine its own existence. It is also characterized by the secret which it conceals, the answer to an unanswerable question that is whispered, insinuated, hinted at by partial traces of, in this case, "filth." I just started reading Gilles Deleuze's Masochism, which includes Masoch's novel Venus in Furs. All these authors -- Masoch, Sade, Derrida, Bataille -- are dealing with the excessive desire to go beyond the limits of language, the limits of coherence, the limits of what can be uttered out loud. They conceal the originary secret of our own depraved appetites, while dancing around it, archiving its outcomes.

Right there on that line between what we say (and repeat, and repeat, and repeat) and what can never be said is where our desire lives.

"Don't just do something. SIT there!"

Tonight I spent a solid half an hour learning how to stand. I went to my fourth full Stress Care class at Alta Bates, where the first 30 minutes were spent talking about foot position, spinal curvature, and pelvic angles. David Weinberg, the fantastic instructor, told us to pretend our pelvis was a flower pot and our spine a flower. Grow daisy, grow. After a long day of grading essay after essay, it was internally amusing to spend an hour focusing on standing and breathing.  I learned that in general I am a pretty poor stander (self-judgment), in that, I lock my knees and tend to curve my back. I might be able to talk about post-colonialism and what the term obfuscates, but stand? or sit still?! Not so hot, Daly.

Part of the mental exercise tonight was talking about "unpleasant events" that had happened over the course of the last week. In doing the exercise, I realized that many unpleasant events I experience are also pleasant events at the same time. This might seem like an obvious statement, but it is something we take for granted. The most challenging conversations we have, the most difficult professional obstacles we have to overcome -- they are neither good nor bad, nor satisfying nor disappointing, but a tangled mix of many sensations and feelings at once. Taking the time to notice such things is part of unlocking the mystery of  the ever elusive "inner peace."

Despite my cynical nature -- and believe me, I hear my cynical side piping up all the time in the sitting meditation: "Tara, what the hell are you doing?! You have real work to do!" or "What, Tara, are you some kind of new age Berkeley freak?! Get off the kool-aid. You've been here for too long..."-- I sincerely have found this work to have had some real, tangible impacts on my life. For instance, for the first time in so long, I am no longer reacting to things around me without thinking them through. I let things sit for a few days before I "act," which has led me to make more informed and calm decisions than I have in a very long time.

Additionally, I have started paying attention to my own antsy-ness. It is not that I do not get antsy now, but rather, I am more aware of the situations, people, and events that cause this feeling and I remind myself to pause and assess the things I can actually change about myself or my circumstances and to let go of those that I cannot in relation to such situations. This sounds like AA jargon, and in part, it is. It is about pausing, taking a deep breath, and recognizing what (and as lots of us have brought up in the class, who) can and cannot be controlled.  I don't think anything dramatic has shifted in me, but rather, a few very small things have "turned" and these slight turns have significant effects on so many areas of my life. I feel, for the first time in a really long time, that I am directing my life from a centered self and that I am taking responsibility for who I am and who I want to be.

Anyway, all this to say, when one slows down life a bit and stops reacting, one really gets to the root of the self and the self's fears, denials, evasions, and coping mechanisms. There are no "magic bullets" to any of life's problems, but sometimes just standing there, feeling your feet on the ground, and remembering to breathe is better for you than any radical action, decision, or movement.

David has said a few times: "Don't just do something! Sit there." See what happens if you start doing this. I swear, it will slowly begin to make a difference in your life. You can roll your eyes and scoff at all those yoga-mat toting hippies, but there is something to it. Doing nothing but breathing and staring at the wall may be the hardest but best thing you can treat yourself to.

Now, off to sit some more I go...

Flowers in the Air

I'm sitting here munching on a mix of Planter's peanuts and chocolate bits. It's a delicious combination, somewhat like an organic reese's peanut butter cup. And I have spent the day primarily by myself, besides a couple of hours, and done a significant amount of work on my dissertation and myself.

For the first time in a really long time, I have no idea where life will take me tomorrow, and I have no idea who or what I particularly desire. I opened so much up the last three years and explored areas of myself I had never explored before with intense depth and breadth. I had three people, very different people, tell me they loved me and that they thought I was amazing. Some meant it more than others. And I had three people, the same three people, tell me they actually had no idea what they really wanted and in fact, wished I would go away. And in the midst of that, I too went through ups and downs of total clarity and utter disillusionment, of saying too much and saying too little, of giving way too little and then giving way too much, of asking for presence and asking for absence. In a Planter's nutshell, it's time to regroup, retreat, and reevaluate the way I have been living because I cannot seem to get things right, mainly because I have been focusing on other people and not myself, and looking to others to solve problems that are at root, my own.

And so, yes, everything is somewhat in the air. But it's not a bad thing, now that I have some perspective. I'm not reacting to anything or anyone anymore. I am not caught up in other people's searches for self and familial peace, and I have a better relationship with my own family and friends than I have ever before in my life. So, I'm going to hang out in my clearing, plant my own flowers, and simply enjoy the pleasure of my own company.

Life as it Unfolds

Today I went on a hike with someone I have known since seventh grade, when I was on the Strikers travel soccer team and ran up and down the midfield with my unbounded lung capacity. Sucking on oranges, downing gatorade drink boxes. As I was walking along the dirt path in Chabot, I was thinking of dirt paths at Devil's Den in Connecticut where I kicked rocks and got dust in my socks while avoiding small gartner snakes that seemed wild and scary. I felt like I was in a timespace somewhere between Fairfield, Connecticut and Oakland, California and that I was 32 and 17 all at once. This happens really frequently lately. Here and there and nowhere at once.

* * *
Walking by the park later, what a beautiful day, I saw so many people. Some were playing frisbee in red t-shirts and beige shorts and others were eating Trader Joe's pretzels and sipping $7 red wine on their blankets in the sun. Kids were cavorting around with dirt underneath their nails and inch worms in their sandals, and furry dogs with drippy mouths were trotting in circles, bumping into each other, giving high fives. I have a longing inside, I thought, to be one of those people in the park that seemed to be living as if they had sprouted from the very grass below their feet. As I walk, I keep banging up against this glass box that they are contained in. I feel like a 17 year-old at the Boston Aquarium on a high school field trip. Look at the axolotl. Look at the shark. Look at the people living a Saturday. The museum of daily life.

* * *
I am in a fold of life. It is a strange fold, between time zones and spaces, between bodies and minds. It's a fold in which I am lying down. Sometimes, while lying, I try to meditate. And sometimes I perch my little birdie head out from the fold, and peek out for a second. Down in my fold, I don't know quite what I want or quite what I look like. I don't know who I desire, or what desire even feels like. Did I desire once and what was that feeling? If once is as good as never, Walter Benjamin, when will never ever happen once, again?

* * *
I'm outside walking through the arcade of life. Looking through the glass windows, seeing images that paralyze me for a second, never thinking I could have possibly dreamed them up days earlier. I see outlines of figures and former selves dancing on tables and sleeping in hammocks. I'm in an alley way, a tunnel, a passage between. And I am not sure how long I will be here.

Fanon Quote for a Weary Day

"I should constantly remind myself that the real leap consists in introducing invention into existence. In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself." --Black Skin, White Masks, 229

Alice on the Ocean

When I get home I shall write a book about this place... If I ever do get home. --Alice (in Wonderland)

Thanks to my hairdresser, I just downed a bunch of drops of passionflower vine -- not wine -- because it is supposed to be a natural remedy for quieting the brain. I was sitting there getting highlights today and we really had a lovely conversation about so many things, including passionflower. And since I am spending quite a pretty penny to be slightly more blonde, I might as well get all the advice I can while I sit through the tedious foils. I think I see a cheshire cat...

I have been gathering red rose petals of advice from many people of late, and all of it is quite reaffirming. Some of it is even unsolicited, like the woman today waiting for the 18 bus on Shattuck who just started rambling to me with no invitation, spoken or gestured, for a good 10 minutes. She told me stories of the  way time is experienced by the tiniest of worms, whose life cycle is 24 hours, in comparison to human life-cycles. She was a strong 70-something year old who had a lot to get out. She advised me "don't go into academia," a thought I could only laugh to myself about. Ummm, it's a little late to turn back. 

But I digress. In all seriousness, Alice, it is about getting home.  In fact, I am really at home with myself of late. I am incredibly comfortable with who I am and what I want, and what kind of life I would like to build for myself. I am content with the decisions I have made in my life, and I am at peace with the place that I am in, despite the ongoing work I do everyday to articulate even more clearly to myself my own desires. Although they change slightly, I think I have mainly arrived to a place of great clarity, soundness of mind, and calmness of spirit. I know how to communicate openly with friends and loved ones in my life, and I know that it is okay when others don't agree with every word I say or every decision I make. I feel a lot, but I am not afraid of any of my feelings, whatever they are, because emotional range and depth are to me, an essential part of being human. I learn everyday, admit when I am wrong, believe in myself when I am right, say I love you, say I am sorry, say I am happy, say I am angry and I know that I deserve to expect the same of others in my life. 

Everyone of us is on her or his own life journey, in her or his own rowboat, exploring "this place" and trying to "get home."  I think we need to recognize, all of us, when we are doing too much rowing for others as well as when they could use a rest from their paddling. We also need to ask for help when we need a rest from our own rowing, and accept it when it is there.  It is a precarious balance.  People who can navigate the waves are the ones that impress me the most, not those who choose a safe harbor simply to avoid the spray. If you never got wet, what would be the point of living? There are dots of colored boats all around me in my ocean; and yet they are all so far away. But Alice is relentless in her pursuit of adventures in wonderland: ups, downs, and the sheer magic of trying to understand this place called life, rose by rose and card by card. 

Bells Chime, My Spine Aches

Last night I went to my first two hours of an eight week, plus retreat,"Stress Care" class.  It is really a meditation class aimed to help one reach the "non-discursive" part of the brain. If I arrive, I will tell you, because I am quite sure my brain is faulty. It never turns off. Not even at 4:43am. Not even at 5:21am. Your brain is sleeping and at rest? Mine is hypothesizing about where I will be in three years and where I was three years ago. Another big part of the class is finding the beautiful thing called presence and learning about how to live without judging, or at least, not mixing say, eating a great meal, and judging its quality in the same bite. Of course, I wanted to point out, if the food was rotten, wouldn't it be essential to our vitality to judge it? Nothing is black and white, of course.

Anyway, there are seven of us in the class and we all seemed rather nervous. I realized a lot of my nerves were coming from the fact that I was not sure if I would be "good" at the class, which is telling in and of itself as to why I need to be there. I also realized as we were sitting in this circle how difficult it was for me to simply sit in the circle. I wanted to shift my weight or go to the bathroom or crack some joke to lighten the mood. However, after an hour and a half, I actually really did not want to leave. The teacher had this amazingly calm voice and when he was explaining concepts, he would look directly at me sometimes. I kept thinking, "I bet he can see how nervous I am inside. I bet he thinks, 'wow, thank god that little lady is in this class'." Again, good to take note of. Why be so self-aware?

We talked for a while about mindfulness and thoughts. We talked about the pesky thoughts that settle into your head and won't go away, the kind that keep resurfacing and cluttering the mind's ability to be present with something as simple as washing one's face. This really nice older guy said that he cannot sleep because he has done so much wrong in his life that he cannot forgive himself for his past. I felt so bad for him, because I was thinking, shit, I am only 32. Imagine how much regret this guy must have! I think I can't sleep?! In all seriousness, the old guy and I had a lot in common and the teacher was so helpful in terms of dealing with thoughts. He emphasized that you have to be "kind" and "compassionate" towards such thoughts, and thereby kind to yourself. He was saying, when such thoughts enter you do not try to kick them out of your head, but rather "be with" them. A way of "being with" them is by "inviting them to tea," but never "feeding them cake." Metaphorically, this was quite useful to me. "Come on in pesky thought, have some tea, drink a few sips with me..." and hopefully, tranquilly make your exit.

The hardest part of last night was doing sitting meditation. We sat at the edge of our chairs, with our feet flat on the floor and our backs straight. Our hands were placed on our knees. If you want to try this at home, I highly recommend it. I kid you not, it was so hard. I was sitting like that, thinking about the fact that I was sitting, feeling that I was sitting, wondering if everyone thought I looked weird (why would they care?! Good-bye, narcissism), and hoping I did not suddenly fall out of the chair. Then the teacher told us how to meditate. I picked a spot on the wall to gaze at and I began paying attention to my breath, as he suggested. I put my hand on my stomach and felt myself breathe in and out and in and out.

For the first minute or so, I was really into it. I mean, I don't think I was actually "thinking"! It was a small miracle. But of course, suddenly, I got completely afraid. If I were not thinking, if I were not telling myself something about myself or about someone else or about tomorrow or about yesterday or about that evening or about my dissertation....then who the hell was I?! And what in god's name was I "doing"? For the rest of the time, I tried to regain a minute of peace, but it was thought after thought after thought as I tried to recenter and focus on my breathing. Chime chime. Finally it was over after an endless four minutes! And to think, people go for days!

We all shared our thoughts on the experience and all of us had the same reaction: stiff spines, inability to concentrate, fear of "letting go", intrusive thoughts, thoughts of needing to go to the gym, it was really quite amusing.

When we left, I felt very different already. I did not turn my cell phone on when I walked home, and tried to think about my steps on the sidewalk. I actually ended up crying and crying when I got in the door, not because I had discovered anything bad about myself, but simply because I had discovered how much work I have to do in terms of sitting still and being. I want to be able to sit in a chair and enjoy it, or wash my face and feel the soap, or eat dinner and actually taste the food. I really do want to access a part of my brain that is not about telling stories or creating narratives or about feeling this way or that. I want to access that place where I just be and feel the ground below me and the air in me.

Small steps. Lots of tea. And no cake!  But I am really quite excited.

Satiating Hermeneutic Longing

Doesn't that title sound like the name of a porno movie? Or is it just me? It is not. It could be, though.  The life of a graduate student in literature is full of hermeneutic wanting, desiring, yearning. We want to understand how to interpret so many texts: theoretical articles with their requisite backslashes, parentheses, and puns, novels, epic poems, crumpled faces of students, mutating masks of professors, our purple-eyed selves in the mirror. How are we to put it all together and what, exactly, is supposed to fall out? Is it a bound dissertation? Is it a furry rabbit that suddenly launches itself into our laps from a deep black hat? Is it a hug from some mentor that is an acknowledgment that we exist as a human being? The hermeneutic longing is simply never satiated. Meaning is always around the corner, up on the top shelf, beneath a blanket, or out in the recycling bin. It is floating around like dust in the wind, and we grasp at it like kids in a backyard with an empty peanut butter jar running after lightning bugs. Night dawns. The blinking commences. A choir of cicadas sings. As soon as we finally catch that little glimmer of substance, the cracks in the jar wear too thin, and poof -- the light is out, the chase is over, the meaning has quickly died.

How to capture the  pain of war? I began reading Vallejo's two collections of poetry, Poemas humanos and España, aparta de mí este cáliz and found myself climbing up his words like a rock climber on Everest. They are precarious words, full of edges and sharp turns, full of breathtaking views -- but wait -- views of what, exactly? In fact, much of the view is of a partial scene. It is like looking at a stage with a bunch of body parts strewn about it and tons of black holes and metal shards. It is like looking at a painting that has barely survived a fire. There are blackened edges about to crumble, that are disintegrating into nothing; there are lines and form, but they are blown out by the destructive force that has whipped through the canvas. The poetry, when chewed, leaves the mouth tasting like burnt leaves and cigarette ashes. It is dusty and damp and acidic and cloaked in an untouchable gauze of death.

Well, then, what to do? I turn to Pablo Picasso. And his painting, Guernica. And what does this visual art turn mean? I try to explain it to myself, to understand this longing in myself for more representation. The black, white, and gray monochromatic mural pulls me into its figures. I find myself tossed about between the images, like a sock in a washing machine, sticking to one thing or the other but only really experiencing the spaces in between the items. Behind the bull and above the baby, lies ashes. From behind  the woman and beneath the lightbulb death's tentacles grab at me, wringing me out as I spin.

I bounce around on these planes, between Vallejo's poetry and Picasso's images. I swallow the words and I wrap myself in the painted figures. I eat the tale of the horse and I jump up and down with urgency on Vallejo's image of death. It is that desire of possession -- of pulling someone's hair and at the same time, tasting them -- that is the hermeneutic desire. I want to understand, I want to gulp it all in, I want to feel the very fleeting moment of the firefly just as it enters the jar, just before the light goes out. It is between the image, between the word, between the genres where that spark of longing is satiated, only for a split second.

I long to understand because I never quite have . . . and I hope that I always will.