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04.01.02



3.28.02

why oh why have I not journalled recently? I�ve been fired from ritz camera and the kindergarten for at least two weeks now. Still unemployed but hardly am I miserable. Actually; I�m not miserable at all. Until I begin thinking about money and then I get down and desperate for a few hours. The last time that happened was last week just before I went to arbor vitae to take part of dinner with canaan and jonna and amber and monica and the rest of the local anarchists. I vascillate between complete reclusivity and utter joy and bliss with people. So many sacred moments have been shared this last week or two - even the miserable ones like crashing on my knee as I ran to catch the AATA bus. And even though my knee was battered (still is - walking like a grandmother and having a walker have taken on new import) (and yes I have contemplated getting a walker.) Today while shrooming with Meghan, I almost lost the ability to stand while I was at Ritz Camera picking up film, making a fool of myself in front of Ericka, laughing hysterically and wholly unable to communicate.

(Yes yesterday Meghan and I shroomed. She came over here around 3 in the afternoon and we partook of the magic. Within a half an hour, things were noticably varying - the air began to take on new light and I spilled tea all over my CDs in an attempt to pour tea into my water bottle. It�d only been twenty minutes past consuming the shrooms and already I was acting goofy. We took to the sidewalks, feeling breezy and high. After we got cash and film, we sashayed down the sidewalk back to my house where we added layers of coats and hats for the impending chilly weather. Despite it all, it was warm and sunny and we frolicked in the grass, so very high. I told her about this tunnel that needed exploring. We hopped in her car and drove the four blocks there and jumped out of the car, walked across traintracks and nimbly descending steep slopes ridden with weeds and came to the tunnel. I assembled my camera and my coat, and we turned on the flashlight and began shuffling in, our backs bent over, our minds expanding in exorbitant awareness. I laughed, I screamed, I saw silt move and rotate into brick patterns. All was bliss until we came to a place where the tunnel narrowed too narrowly for our bodies to enter into. We quickly shuffled out of the tunnel and rediscovered light. ) (I�ll come back to the trip again later on tonight or tomorrow.)

anyway. I have to say ; seth! Seth! Seth! I saw him this afternoon briefly, and he embraced me with the most loving bear hug I�ve ever received. He poured out with love for me. It was so overwhelming that my jaw just hung slack in complete disbelief, meanwhile trying to act like I wasn�t losing it from being near him, trying to shake off his sincere beauty. He looked so deeply into me that it overwhelmed me, he hugged me with so much love that it scared me - could he possibly be this real and honest? He said: �KAITE! Thank you for your gifts! They mean so much to me!� I was surprised. I wanted to ask him something like: did the hat fit? Maybe it did. I don�t know. He couldn�t talk long because he had to work on some songs, practicing, etcetera, and then skidattle to the Ark to perform at 8pm - it�s 7:30 now so I should go soon. His rhythm guitar player has become suffused with Seth�s blessed love-energy. He hugged me too and acted completely graciously, interested and aware and caring for me even though he was a stranger to me. It�s amazing how much impact he has on people. And I asked Seth how the last two week of shows were, and he said: �Oh they�ve been great! So life affirming ....� I nodded my head, sad to know that it was his last night in Ann Arbor, that he would leave tomorrow for a long tour of the west, that I might not see him again, or at least not for a long time. Oh seth. God I have a crush on you. There is no one more illuminated, no one more real that I could ever imagine wanting to spend many moments with. He is a good moment waiting to burst. I want to kiss him and nuzzle into him. If I can�t have him, I might have to remain celibate and lonely for the rest of my life. The alternative is Matt, but he is nowhere near as loving as Seth, though equally as brilliant.

I haven�t seen Jai for so long, and whenever I read her livejournal, it�s full of misery and despair and self pity and I am just completely bored with it. I don�t know how or why Jeni accepts it. It would be impossible for me to love someone so lacking in love. Recently, I�ve felt that she should commit suicide, just so she can be done with eating herself up. The sad thing is: she�s so talented and smart and beautiful and alive it�s ridiculous. I don�t really want her to kill herself, but she needs to clear up her head big time. She knows it, I know it, Jeni knows it - everyone knows it.

Listening to Meredith Monk, and suddenly the opportunities for expression become so open and complete that I cannot wait to begin expressing to my heart�s content. Yikes!

I�m meeting Graham tomorrow morning around noon to record in his basement. I could record all day long. We�ll see where my mind and my spirit is tomorrow. I�ve been feeling good: calm, centered, aware and reading books, creative and constant. Happy to simply exist.

My hands vibrate.

3.31.02

stupid month: in that I didn�t journal more often. Oybie foible. Tomorrow is April. What the fuck??? I have so much money to spend and it�s all got to be spent with my credit card: must buy mattes for my photograph exhibit. Must buy many burnable CDs with which to burn CDs. (I am shidaddling to Target this afternoon for such a venture.)

This morning I had dreams and I will elaborate, albeit briefly, upon one of the scenes. I�d just opened the doors to a hotel room where I was to keep. The hotel was in Russia, situated, I observed, on a sand bar in the middle of the ocean that was regulated by tides. It was a very wet place. I discovered, for example, in my room was a sandsilt floor, with crustaceans and seaweed for carpet, a thin layer of water glazed over everything, and several very large starfish on the floor of the room. I gasped and complained to the innkeeper, saying: �excuse me but don�t those starfish sting?� I pricked my finger with the starfish and showed her the pain. She seemed unfazed and was relentless in her price of the room. I solipsized around the hotel looking for another room, a more acceptable room. Instead, I found a wee little boy in the middle of catching fish. At this point, the hotel washed away in a tidal wave and I collapsed into sand. (Try explaining what Ohio is to someone from Russia and they will bedazzle you with gawks.)

Yesterday I spent four hours, presumably, recording songs into an eight track in Graham�s basement. The day before that, I spent another six or seven hours doing just the same thing. All in all, twelve songs have been recorded for what will be called �Basement Emanations�, and even though they aren�t the best songs in the world, they do hint at creativity, poke at ecstasy and generally make a gawkery of pop songs. So - My next step is to burn the twelve songs onto a CD and then burn them onto more and more and see if anyone will listen to them. I fear there are several things that people will find weird and/or unacceptable about my demo album: 1. All the songs are repetitive, catchy (albeit philosophical) pop songs. 2. The songs are highly chaotic, lacking the usual suspects found in most pop music - namely guitar, bass guitar, drums, etc. Instead, I improvised layers upon layers of vocals, added rhythm sections (blowing into an empty beer bottle, clapping, hitting sticks together, playing a very bad drum set very badly.) 3. My goal for a next album is to do it in a real studio not in a basement littered with beer bottles, old lampshades, a moldy drum kit and cobwebs and electrical cords all over the place. I also hope that this may, one day, lead to a decent recording of these songs that gives them the proper treatment they deserve. 4. I also hope that in a few years time, I learn how not to write catchy, repetitive pop songs. My goal is to write some songs with melodies instead of beats - I need to infuse more Cat Power and Meredith Monk in me.

So - there�s so much more to say: about Friday night at Arbor Vitae, getting stoned and feeling very disconnected from all of my �friends.� It�s a strange feeling to feel like none of your friends like you or really care about you or want your presence. At some point, I merely felt like I was just there and I sat there most of the night not saying anything, which became exacerbated after smoking, of course. In some ways, it was similar to Thursday night, at the house on Ann Street, for Seth�s goodbye party, in celebration of him leaving and his performance opening for the Nields. He was acting very strange and being friendly with everyone, giving everyone profoundly intense hugs. I think it�s because he is so nice with everyone and hugs everyone so overwhelmingly that it�s hard to tell where he�s coming from or if he really loves you or if it�s something he�s trying to prove to himself: to love everyone or at least give love to everyone. It�s really hard to be intimate with him because he�s loopy and profoundly chaotic. There�s something about him and Thursday night that has put my seth-crush into a spin. Usually, I can start talking with anyone and have conversation. It�s really hard to get that kind of conversation rolling with Seth for some reason. I�m not sure where his mind is coming from and I know there�s a lot up there. He even thinks he can heal people and do energy transfer. My knee got knocked up and really exacerbated the pain already there, it started bleeding again and I literally fell into a mess on his bed and John made me a bag of ice. Meanwhile, as I was trying to leave, Seth gave me this enormous hug and said �Thank you for your honesty. I went to your website and your photographs were just beautiful...� There was more that he said but I can�t remember it all. He held onto me so intensely that I was moved to tears. He compounded the situation by putting his hands on my knees and focusing them with energy, and he said: �It�ll be okay soon.� Like - he has that assurance that he really is that divine and that he can move energy and heal people. He really believed it. Completely. 100% faith. My knee is still an issue but it hasn�t been in too much pain. Of course, I�ve been taking it easy and trying to not stress my knee out too much. I said to him: �you move me to tears.� and it�s true. My face dribbled. I walked home on Thursday night shaking my head in utter confusion - suddenly everything I thought I knew about Seth was crossed out and replaced with unknowing and a feeling of - this person is much more complex than I can begin to fathom.

There were certain things about his interaction that struck me in strange ways. Plus, I was stoned, and after a while, I just left the conversations, and went into the bedroom and danced by myself. I heard Jenny Waterbu murmur: �Oh look, Kaite looks so peaceful.� I danced behind the closet door so that I wouldn�t be too much of a spectacle. But dancing so much made my knee throb and swell. And I�d been dancing slowly - with almost tai chi like movements. Not your typical dancing, to say the least.

I walked into that party after viewing Kandahar, a movie that didn�t feel otherworldly or profoundly moving. It was interesting to view and step into Afghanistan for a short time. I can visualize the countryside and the people better now, perhaps. On the way out, I was munching free popcorn and I ran into Elaina, the ex-girlfriend of Mohammed. I hadn�t seen her in ages and she had changed a lot. She�d now converted to Islam and was wearing hijab and she coaxed me into the basement of Starbucks where we spent the next hour and a half talking, mostly about her and the confusion over her pregnancy and her relationship with Mohammed. She mulled over every detail and laid it all on the table. She wept and wept and wept. I should have been more compassionate but there was nothing I could do but listen. So I listened and it became very clear to me why Mohammed might have a difficult time being in a relationship with Elaina. I could barely even end the conversation, and I badly needed an escape when it was time for us to part. I was glad to step into the party of throbbing hippies, everyone dressed in some strange clothes - people I knew or had known in different moments... Jenny, John, Ruth, Lacey, Amy, Kate, Seth, among others were there. Someone rolled two fat joints and we all got very stoned. I had some interesting conversations with John and Jenny before I got stoned but once I was high, I became almost entirely internal. I�d completely forgotten about Elaina.

I felt something akin to a murmuring movement betwixt my loins twice during the evening, akin to a snake trembling in the engulfing of my vulva, and they both happened while Seth sat right next to me, despite feeling confused with the way he interacted with me and with others. I observed him and the way he talked to people, the way he implored me of my impression of this John Scofield CD he was playing. There was a funny moment that I think shall serve as a perfect metaphor for him. There was a word he needed to find. He had the meaning, just not the word - it�d somehow lost itself somewhere and he asked me if I knew the word. I knew it not. Then, in succession, he stopped everyone in the room until he�d asked everyone if they knew the word and : he found the word he�d been looking for! His persistence paid off and he learned something.

He had this way of moving his face and his body that was a complete performance, whether or not he was aware of it. He looked like a greek god or a famous actor. So perfect; just radiating all over the room.

When he put his hands on my knee, I could FEEL heat moving into my knee. He tried it a second time after my knee�d been kicked. I couldn�t feel it so much that time. Seth takes up lots of space and entertains even when he�s not on stage. I think that kind of intensity can get in the way of being open and intimate with him. Especially since he commands so much attention with so many people. Me: I�m the type to run away to the corners and sit by myself and read books rather than hug everyone. I�d rather dance by myself and be completely free and liberated rather than teach others how to dance or dance with them. I think we come from different philosophies, meanwhile being both very spiritually inclined.

Clara had some scathing remarks to make about Seth on Friday night at Arbor Vitae. She bitched away about how he�d skipped on the rent and about how everyone�s just like �Oh Seth! We Love You� and then when he leaves, they�re just like �Ohhhh Sethhhh� (with a dash of rolled eyes). She bitched about him for several minutes, to which Jenny Boyer protested and said: �But he�s Seth.� At which point, she turned her head and glanced at me with this look of imploring. I couldn�t say anything in defense of Seth. I wasn�t sure where I stood with him or what I felt about him any more. I may not see him again for months or years. Who knows. I don�t really know what he�s like because he�s so open with people without being really vulnerable. He�s not as honest as me. While I�ve got my palms bleeding in front of everyone, showing them who I really am without any fear or any need of recognition, just being completely honest - he�s hugging everyone and trying to heal them all. Besides - I can�t afford to go on a tour of the country. I have to make money and be �responsible.�

I need to write quickly about Wednesday�s shroom afternoon with Meghan, and the subsequent Thursday night when she crawled into my bed at four in the morning and I was unprepared for it, and I couldn�t cuddle. (I think I hurt her feelings - I felt she took it personally - me being unable to be friendly and cuddly and awake and ready to smoke a bowl at 4 am. She�s nocturnal - I�m not.) (I�ve been trying to contact her since, to no avail.)

But Wednesday�s shroom trip was the most amazing thing that�s happened to me, short of the ecstasy trip and having sex with Anthony and Tod and being next to the ocean. It put me into a completely altered state of consciousness. I completely lost track of time. Time did not exist. I imagined that this is what every moment of life really was like, only we had to put up boundaries and borders so that time didn�t feel like it did then - but if we took down the boundaries, time could essentially stand as still as it did on shrooms. I thought about so many things, became so creative and crazy. I laughed and bounced around and lounged in my room, just being content with existing, content with looking at pretty things. I realized that this is all that really matters - that nothing matters - that I could kill myself and be completely at peace with it. I�d never been so at peace with myself. I felt like this is the state of consciousness that Antonin Artaud must have lived in - existed in. In that kind of cosmic awareness. I felt completely connected, boundariless, completely capable of giving love with everyone or anyone - especially Meghan. We had so much fun jostling all over the lawn at that park next to the Huron River after scuttling through the tunnel. We clasped our hands and, despite our feet being cold and it being Michigan, we had a lovely afternoon of laying on the grass and looking into the sky and seeing movement in our vision, content to hallucinate and feel like we were ancient wise women that had sprung from the earth. When we returned to my room for the requesite clean pants and warm shoes (both our pants and shoes had gotten drenched in the river, as we both accidentally fell in.)

She said I�d really gone completely crazy. Couldn�t believe how crazy I was - how I�d lost it. Meanwhile, I�d never been so content and comfortable with being, with existing, with being completely crazy, with being happy and radiant. I thought about Clayton and Stacey and Jeff and Anthony and Seth and Tod and Ani and Jae among other people. I thought: so this is what they�ve experienced. I wanted to experience that every single day. It was an ecstatic being of nonbeing. So aware, so awake, so ecstatic, so cleansed and happy just to be. But I realized that this life was nothing and that meanwhile everyone else DID exist with borders and boundaries and that this was transient. But the transience of it didn�t hit me until Meghan had dragged me to the Rising Up Poetics and just as we sat down, I realized then that sexism and racism and egos and �proving themselves� did exist. I couldn�t perform. Immediately upon my arrival, Jenny implored me with: �Kaite, you wanna performm, don�t you?� Amber coaxed me into it, so did others. I offered them a namaste, saying: �I�m too at peace with myself today. I can�t perform. I have nothing to prove. I simply am.� Twenty or thirty minutes passed in the blink of my eye and suddenly they were packing up. We�d arrived fashionably late. I drank some tea and showed Meghan the upper level of Hathaway�s Hideaway. She wanted to get a tempeh burger at the Fleetwood, so we walked nextdoor and read poetry and talked about very strange things and I ate french fries while she gulped down her tempeh burger (she�d not been that hungry in ages, she swore.) I wasn�t hungry at all. I had no needs. Didn�t care about money. Ate the french fries as a passing fancy. Drank water to purify myself. Even that night, as the high had noticeably worn down, I wrote pages and pages of strange poetry, inspired and hearing funny words shout in my mind. I emailed spontaneous poems to Henry, Michael, Jeff, Tod, Lisse, Christine, Matt, Tim and others.... Then I returned to my room and wrote some more. Sigh showed up at my door and we talked until 2 in the morning, at which time I had to sweep him outside so I could sleep.

Life has been good, but I�ve been living so solitarily. I wake up in the morning, my naked body found in empty sheets, sharing this body, this life, with no one and wanting to wake up next to someone. What�s strange Is that the other day when Meghan crawled into my bed at 4 in the morning, I didn�t have it in me to be friendly, much less to cuddle. When I woke in the morning, I wished she�d spent the night, wished she�d not taken my rejection personally. I was exhausted, still stoned and very muddled, mentally. I thought about Anthony for a good hour upon waking this morning. Been thinking about calling him. Today is Easter. Seems appropriate. Tried calling him a few days ago and he picked up the phone. In a moment of panic, I whispered �I�m sorry,� and hung up the phone. I wondered if he recognized which phantom he�d been visited by. I think he is still the source of my despair and I need to talk with him, just to resolve some things and see if we can�t be friends. The book �Grace and Grit� has inspired me to forgive him, to see if he can forgive me, but I don�t know if he is capable of that. I fear he is still consumed by his anger, his hatred. Meanwhile, I am unconsumed by anything but emptiness.

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