"the Female Gothic narrative of the persecuted heroine in flight from a villainous father and in search of an absent mother.3 Studies exploring a distinction between ‘Female Gothic’ and ‘Male Gothic’ had seen this plot as typical of female writers, while male writers tended towards a plot of masculine transgression of social taboos"

"In her Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (1995), another contributor, Anne Williams, argued for the existence of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ formulas, which differ in terms of narrative technique, plot, their assumptions about the supernatural, and their use of horror/terror.5 She looked back through the use made of Greek mythology by Freudian psychoanalysis to locate the origins of the Female Gothic narrative (typified by female point of view, happy ending, explained ghosts and an adherence to terror), in the myth of Psyche and Eros, as opposed to the Oedipal myth which underpins the male version."

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/TheFemaleGothic-ThenNow.pdf

Julia Kavanagh's last words, in French, were: “Oh Mama! how silly I am to have fallen.”

its frustrating to me how womens writing is always derided as sentimental or poorly written when the same flourishes that make them so are celebrated or imbued with Purpose in a man's. im thinking mostly of 18th century literature and how all of the classics save the obvious exceptions are men when women were turning out so much incredible shit that is hard to find now because as a culture we've left them behind. mens stories are permanent, womens are ephemeral. when a man twists convention we make allowances and call it style but if a woman does the same thing, she's seen as derivative. and "derivative" is always reserved for women, whereas men are inspired, men show lineage. and that lineage is only possible because we canonize men and we don't canonize women because we don't respect their art on its own, but only in relation to men's.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/11/17/unseen-even-of-herself/

"It’s unclear whether Madame Roland believed that a woman’s moral worth stood and fell together with her sexual purity, or whether she was simply ambitious enough to want to avoid disgrace at all costs. Either way, one of her surprising rhetorical moves was to depict her submission to a stifling standard of feminine virtue as a source of its own “voluptuous charm.” In the same way, she can argue that “the study of the fine arts, considered as part of a girl’s education,” should inspire “a taste for hard work … enlarging the range of her interests,” because “that is the way to escape boredom … preserve oneself from the perils of sin and—worse still—of temptation.” Madame Roland rarely distinguishes between the hard work it took for a girl in eighteenth-century France to cultivate a sensibility or widen the scope of her authority and the hard work it took for her to preserve her maidenhood. It’s as if she was more comfortable arguing for the former if she could extol the latter in the same breath."

Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least.

Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, Olympe de Gouges

also: https://www.clipular.com/users/5565137560272896/collections/gravity-grace

i keep getting outbid for this on ebay which im okay with since i only want it for this fukken cover!!

the most beautiful song ever

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

me being delivered from sin outside of my control

Diary Excerpt

I get flashes in my head the same way I get words I get feelings and those feelings are what I begin to write about, or want to begin to write about, but as soon as I sit down to write them they dissipate. On my way home I was thinking how odd it is to be sitting in traffic across from others sitting in traffic the opposite direction. You’re both sitting on display for each other and like all interactions for a second there is a connection. Of course, we run from any connection so the moment eyes are met we instantly pull away but like I said about being in cars with someone else, for a second there’s something electric between two strangers. I suppose everyone has an energy, actually I’m sure of it, and some energies are compatible with others and some reject others. It’s too simplistic to say some people have positive energies and others negative, it’s a spectrum if anything but even that requires opposite poles. Some people are warm in certain situations and cold in others and it’s keeping that in mind that we allow everyone’s full humanity to take hold in our hearts and minds. Without that understanding, we stand outside of everything but it doesn’t make us objective observers, but inhuman and unfit to observe. Everyone’s energies are volatile and depending on the day there will be a spark between two people and just as easily none. A lack of spark does not necessitate a lack of respect, on the contrary it requires more respect and understanding seeing as on any other day you could just as easily connect with the same person. Energies vary and by minding this we make life a lot more appealing for us. Condemnation is too easy and one should try to avoid it as much as possible. There are certain times when it is requisite: the rapist is one example, the unrepentant racist another. But most situations call for a deeper understanding and an opportunity to learn – it’s everyone’s path that’s different though our minds are mostly the same. If life were as easy as condemnations we would all be condemned and no room would be left for salvation. Transformative justice is key. If we can work toward a better world, then we can slowly edge out the hateful acts that make up much of our world today. I’m talking about feeding the poor, adequate housing, free higher education, and honoring emotions. Nobody wants to take these first steps, which seem cumbersome, because they believe that humanity is already rotten and nothing will come from changing it except dependency. The problem is, we’ve never really ever tried it truly. Nobody has committed to full communism and places that have tried failed through bureaucracy and sanctions and already toxic permutations of Marxist ideology. To think that humans are at base evil is a privileged position, although one encouraged by many religious sects. Of course there’s redemption but only the most well off are encouraged to seek it, or convinced they have no use to seek it. The poor are redeemed through their suffering; the rich are redeemed by attending mass. Their suffering is not encouraged, the only suffering that’s encouraged is one that keeps stasis. In this way it is understandable why the communists ban religion outright, but I can’t agree with that stance either. Religion is not an ill of this world but the way it has been enacted, interpreted, is. At its basis all practicing communists are living saints, but they seldom get recognized as such, because their goodness hasn’t been enacted through the proper accepted avenues. We recognize saints when they are abject and in hindsight, but often recognition is tokenizing already. The same way TV executives feel good about casting people of color in minor roles, the church elevates certain people through sainthood, but does nothing in its doctrine to encourage more saints. The blindness of the church is startling when we consider how many people are saints in spite of their religion. To have too many saints would be threatening. We have to be convinced that they are outliers, when everyday saints are all around us. Tapping into our saintliness is the beginning of transformation, both personal and political. Saintliness is next to revolution.

I used to be caught in a web of death, what a sensational way to put it! But how appropriate, considering its intricacy. I used to go through life as though dead, though I would still live in fear of tomorrow. There's something hilarious about the death-wish but I don't think anybody's elaborated on it yet, at least I haven't come across it though I'd love to. All my jokes are about my own death and pain because they've become foreign concepts -- no longer my world but a strong part of my past and it sometimes rears its head again but I banish it to my core unless in that moment its necessary to harness it. The dangerous part about mental illness is the desire to harness the power you have at the height of your mania -- the adrenaline rush of a constant flight -- the desire to do all and see all and get everything you feel you deserve. It's easy to skip pills, and find excuses to ruin your schedule, so that one day you can wake up and feel as though the world was everything and you could take it on again. But those days have become few and far between and its a positive because now you can sit, now you can be reasonable, now you can plan. With mania you are living for that moment, and that is important, and you should hold onto that. But you must have patience, and you must learn all your actions have consequences not just for others, not just arbitrary bullshit that won't morally affect you, but stuff that holds or withholds the keys to your future, and you do have one. At least this "you" I direct to myself, as I try to direct all of this to myself, as a moral exercise at least. The Tips on Radiance are all mementos to myself that I have a long journey ahead of me and it will be grueling work, but it is valid work, and my labor will pay off if I can just stay consistent.

I've written at least a diary entry or a page of my autobiography (which is hilariously presumptuous, I'll admit, and I love it for that) for the past three days, and I am positive I will have something of note by 2017 if I keep up with this. If I take my meds on time, and keep myself stimulated, and keep on working. 2015 was plot development, character building -- 2016 I begin to take what I deserve, and I do deserve it after all this time. That much I know is true.

I don't know to what extent I value posting on here vs. eventually getting published because who wants to publish what's already posted for free online? On the other hand, I don't know how much longer this site will be around but for brevity's sake it seems the best medium at the moment. I do have a lot to say but I also have got enough confirmation that people want to hear what I have to say and because this is a capitalist society, I want to capitalize. Because I'm terrible at work, at retail, at "unskilled" (though comprising a tremendous amount of skill) labor. And I need to find a way to live off what marginal gifts I do have, even if I can't always see them. I've submitted to a few places, and written a few things, and now I have to wait and the waiting is the hardest part but the rewards are beginning to show. When I'm at my most venomous I feel like the Jenny Holzer inflammatory essay where it says "I've been planning while you've been playing. I've been saving while you're spending. The game is almost over so it's time you acknowledge me. Do you want to fall not ever knowing who took you?" And now that I'm in a somewhat better place, for a while, I can say realistically I do want a vengeful sort of success against those that have harmed me, but not against the entire world. The "you" isnt a broad plural but a few singulars; the rest of the world im trying at least to regard with compassion and warmth because meeting more people everyday I'm convinced that's what most are made of. The main challenge of life is not how to live with people but how to connect with them. It's very easy to be tangential but quite another to intersect, and intersections are where foundations are built.

I wrote once I feel as though I'm reaching out over an infinite abyss for something just out of my reach but I think there's an invisible bridge underfoot slowly supporting me as I inch forward, and if I can just conquer my fear of the image of a void, the trip across it, I will get to whatever or whoever it is I'm reaching out to much faster than I suspect. So now I'm on the edge.

Much that seems farfetched about Bataille's way of thinking-his stress on the hateful and morbid aspects of sexual excitement, and his belief that cruel and unusual forms of eroticism can help carry a human being "to the farthest bound of possibility"--has been corroborated, albeit in more modest terms, by other students of sexual excitement, and by other aficionados of consensual sado-masochism. According to their testimony, it is indeed possible to heal old wounds and to experience a kind of mystical rapture through forms of erotic behavior that transform guilt into joy, pain into pleasure, torture into ecstasy, and (most miraculously of all) the wish to die into an overwhelming and unspeakable feeling of love: sometimes for another human being; sometimes for the world in its "unknowable and incomprehensible continuity," and sometimes simply for "what one is".

As one of Bataille's besotted erotic heroes describes the experience in Story of the Eye, "It struck me that death was the sole outcome of my erection" and that "the goal of my sexual licentiousness" was "a geometric incandescence (among other things, the coinciding point of life and death, being and nothingness), perfectly fulgurating." 

the passion of michel foucault, james miller

I actually need a journal because I need to get everything out and without obligation to make it nice, or easy, or accessible in any way. Maybe I'll take up writing with a pen and paper and make it even more private than this blog nobody reads anyway. I feel so much like everything is a performance and there's an expectation that you will always perform flawlessly but I don't want to perform at all, I want to "be". And that sounds corny saying it and someday I'll be able to without commenting that I GET it sounds corny but it still applies. For the past 6 months my dilemma has been how do I be genuine while still being self-aware? And now I'm realizing that this drive, or desire to come across as self aware as if its some barometer of intelligence is stupid. It's stupid to perform, or to make a show of knowing that I perform, any of it. What I want is to laugh without analyzing the reasons and talk without each word being weighted. Something is affected in my writing when I know I have an audience, and I hate it and want to get away from that. I want to keep an audience because I want people to be invested in me because on my own I find it hard to be invested in myself, but I don't want my writing to suffer from that, and I don't want it to be false.

how do I avoid being corny but take myself seriously - the question of 2016

answer: i can't all the time but eventually and once in a while i will get it right

I'm learning to be wary of intense periods of growth, not because they're bad necessarily as much as I feel no control over them and that scares me. There's pressure to create as much as you can during this time and also pressure to not burn out. Do I say everything I want to say right now or do I hold it in for a future date, so I don't run out of things? I always thought being a good writer means you never run out of things to say but I always feel like I don't have anyhing to say so how can I be one? Maybe I'm not is the easiest answer and will take some time to convince myself out of.

Now that I'm out of school for the quarter I can focus my energies on writing and reading. I know to write better I need to read more and I want to go back to doing that. The more I expose myself to new things, the better my writing and subjects will become. What I've done is locked myself out of Tumblr and now I need to lock myself out of Facebook. The culture of instant gratification will not take me down with it, I am determined. Because I am too sensitive to it, I have to set boundaries.

What does it mean to feel extremely ashamed of being who you are and doing what you do - even if you are morally pure? If that means anything anymore. Shame is useless, as is guilt, and I need to find a way to dispose of them because they aren't helping me at all. Still... I do feel shameful working on myself when there's so much to be done in the world. Like, I don't think I'm deserving of my own time. Or that any creative endeavor of mine is automatically self-serving and undeserving of focus. It's true I need to get my mind off myself, but it's also true that I can benefit from constructively working on myself. Sorting out the difference is the hard part.

I genuinely don't think most people want the best for me and I'm like, always crying about it. Self-worth and abandonment and dissociation are my biggest obstacles at this point in my life. I really do want to get better... And I want to be able to live genuinely or at least close to it.

1/6/15: a message to everyone I have ever met

I know I can be disappointing but please don't lose faith in me.

There was a point when every day was a new trauma but I think, I'd like to think, I've reached beyond that now. I looked in the mirror today and I look old.. I'm still young but overnight I've changed. The only way to describe my latest psychosis is "ecclesiastic" - there's always the epiphanic moment in melodrama when the music swells and the heroine is filmed in a close up soft focus looking up and I think I've reached that point. My whole life is stretched behind me and I see it so clearly and for once it's not in horror. I've reached a state of calm I didn't think I ever could and I don't know how long it will last. Everything feels like I'm at sea.

I don't want fear to define me anymore - of anyone or anything or myself or my feelings. There's still trepidation, but I want to work on what I can and I know that that is so, so much. Maybe the calm is affected, maybe I'm posing as a yogi for the first week of 2016, or maybe this is a real moment I'm experiencing. I've spent the past year doubting my experiences and sorting out reality and now I'm inclined to follow it through to the end. It's not impulsion that drives me, but a knowing probe into my possibilities. I wonder if I'm past my prime? But then, I still haven't accomplished much.

Once I've made up my mind, there is little that can change it. This can be a blessing or a curse - it means I'm very moral but I also risk bordering reactionary. How can I be more malleable but stick to my convictions? Do I need to be more malleable? I'm always second guessing myself as it is... I'm doing it right now. What I have decided is I want to live, and I want to write, and I don't care if its ever acknowledged as significant because most likely it is not. For me it is beneficial and its in these small victories I find hope.

In 2016, I don't run from happiness. In 2016, I am sure of myself and my worth and determined to assert it. In 2016 I transcend not through madness or death but through living and experiencing as much joy as possible. It's not impossible to feel a genuine emotion because this fear is genuine too... and I know I can love and I know it takes work but it's not impossible.

Do you hear it calling you?

I do and I'm not afraid anymore.

I want to live a happy life and I want to be happy but everything is effort and I'm so tired already. What I've promised to myself is I will not let my illness kill me because despite everything I want so badly to live but it's hard when terror clouds your mind every second of your day. Every time I think I've escaped, I'm entrapped again - the eternal face-off between myself and I - How can I heal when the one I want to murder is myself?

There must be a secret I don't know and I'm determined to find out. My best revenge will be a long life lived, and my sweetest victory. I know I can succeed - that much I've got sorted out. And now I will fight to fulfill that potential because to do otherwise would be something more tragic than my current existence, and I won't accept it.