Bukowski

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Finals

My head is swimming with theory--dense, inaccessible theory. It becomes significantly less dense and more accessible when you relinquish everything you believe and let your mind wonder into the possibilities of outlawness.

I am writing an 18 page paper on Nella Larsen's passing.

I am deconstructing the relationship between Irene and Clare using Judith Butler's essay on desire.

Here are some points:

Irene is working towards Black uplift, she identifies as a Black woman and has a bourgeois agenda re: sexuality and the race. Therefore she has assumed the role of "straight, proud, strong Black woman" bent on maintaining the structure of the nuclear family and race identities.

Enter Clare...an outlaw. Clare acknowledges no boundaries and this is terrifying to Irene. Irene reads Clare's boundarylessness as a threat to that which she seeks to uplift. Clare is depicted as a mullata, thus encapsulating 2 oppositional identities--Black and White. However, she does not seek to maintain the racialized identity structure (or at least not privately). In this I would consider her a human "trickster," a popular motif in African American folklore...except as Larsen is writing in "modern times," she does not have to don an animal costume (though routinely she is compared to an animal). Through the use of trickery, Clare unnames herself racially leaving her space to move freely as she desires. To Irene this is entirely taboo and offensive as it challenges her ideas of bourgeois Blackness. However, Irene is attracted through this and it takes Irene's presence to bring this out in her.

Enter Judith Butler's "Desire": Irene is in cahoots with the narrator to retell this story and it is through her memories that this story becomes told. I want to argue somewhere (maybe here?) that Irene is creating a myth explaining her desire to be boundaryless. Anyway, using Butler's essay we can see the ways in which Irene is constituting herself through Clare--Clare can escape in ways that Irene can't...i.e. racially, sexually (as a White woman, Clare is able to flirt and not be punished or threatened with harm). However this desire becomes too much and in the end Clare is destroyed (it's less important by who because these are, after all, memories being retold and the point it less of "was she pushed?" than "she needed to be destroyed in order for Irene to continue on with her bourgeois existence").

With Clare dead, Irene has killed the part of herself that wanted to break free and therefore she can continue to "progress" and "uplift" her race.

Through introducing the subject of miscegenation, Larsen is evoking an entire history of Black women's vulnerability--not only physical but also as far as identity goes. With the introduction of White blood, Blackness becomes destabilized and in a society that works quite hard to define and police race, the fusion of the two identities produces a lack of clear identity (this is seen in Irene's refusal to accept Clare's "lack" of racial identity (accept in the face of Bellew, her White husband who uses her to assert his own racial identity much in the way that Irene does).

Anyway, I haven't started writing yet but I have been poring over articles and books all morning in the bowels of the library.

I don't know if anyone read that entire thing but the story itself is about 100 pages long and it's pretty good. I think it's got alot of stuff to say if you just peek below the text. Either way, I would rather be with my friends right now or even, cleaning my room. Oh well, at least the nightmares will stop once this paper is done.

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This is how I love you

You roll over and over in bed

and I tell you,

"I love you so much that I would let you pee on me"

I know neither of us wants to do this

and this is why I say it

I am meaning to be sweet

and romantic

in my own special way.

"I mean it," I assure you.

You laugh and look away

embarrassed.

I hope you got the point.

I am saying that you have me

all of me

to use at your disposal.

You can smash my bones

and tear at my flesh

because I am yours.

I trust you not to hurt me

and this is why I can give myself to you.

I am giving you this body

which seemed meaningless before you breathed life into it.

A walking corpse in my unwaking life.

So I wanted to remind you that I am thankful

to your hands for the shape they give me

because before you, I was shapeless.

"I just wanted you to know," I add.

"I know," you say, "thanks"

I roll over.

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a thought while picking my nose

I think that most people would be happier if they just accepted themselves completely.

Even those actions and parts of ourselves we hide from our closest friends and lovers

I mean the sour body odor, the putrid flatulence, the pubic hair and fingernail clippings.

I want to write you a letter telling you that I love even these things about you and if you give me time you will learn to love my own disgusting features.

Hope springs eternal

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I'm a cross-dressing homosexual pacifist with a spot on my lung

"Helter Skelter".

It's like you can hear the rapid pounding of the pulse and the rush of the kiss that feels vital. The kiss that begs the body to stay a while longer--this is better than that, here I can prove it. Wrap your fingers around the neck and pinch, pull, tug my strings. The guitar squeals and in it you feel the pulling of hair and the pinch, pull, tug of teeth clenched on your bottom lip asking and begging you, "please stay a while, just until it stomps the ache"

And when it's gone you still feel it pulsating through the auditory nerve--a phantom presence that will haunt you even when your skin starts to sag and pull away from the bone. This haunting tremors and then breaks through the surface and washes over the body, focusing on the corpus, right in the pit of your stomach.

This is where they say you can find a straight narrow route right into the heart. Through the pit of the stomach, where the ache has settled. And with a sudden jolt, it shoots straight to the place you try to protect--your heart (or at least where it used to be).

"Music's the only thing that makes sense anymore, man. Play it loud enough, it keeps the demons away."

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desire: J. Butler and a bottle of wine

the elusive object of desire is a necessity

it constitutes the subject

if the subject attains said object

the subject would cease to desire...and therefore cease to exist

therefore the subject must always be longing for desire in order to survive

desire will only shift once you think you have it--if you ever get that close.

nevermind, the triangulation of desire

or desire as a mirror

I don't know what I desire.

I am grasping at a phantom void.

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"Bluebird"

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I pur whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the

works?

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

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