Some humans disable themselves, while some disabled are more than human. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have one leg and be happy: to get up at 4am every morning to hobble down 2 flights of stairs, take 3 different buses in a wheelchair to get to the corner of Michigan and Randolf and sell Streetwise by 6am, during rush, when people are using 2 good legs to speedily get to work and deftly avoid your wheelchair while holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a phone to their ear with the other.
It is never enough to be reminded that one has two legs.

Stars and Teaspoons

“How, if with paper and with pencil I went out into the starry night to inventorize the heavens? Who shall tell stars as teaspoons?” (Melville, Pierre)

A Blog Darkly

Does my diary reflect me clearly or darkly? I hope more clearly than I see myself, because otherwise I'm cursed.
I've been told I that I am comfortable in my own skin, and that I can be read easily. This means that people might see me more clearly than I see myself, which leads me to believe in the clarity that they see in me. It's a relief from the darkness that I can't see through in myself.
Am I an enigma only to myself? If so, that is a bad sign. I put my hope in this: that I cannot lie; if I do, I cannot forget that I did. It is extremely difficult for me to pose as someone I am not, or to pretend to know something I have not fully understood. If it is so difficult to lie to others, it should be the case that I cannot lie to myself, and that I am being honest with myself at all times.
How come then I do not know what I want? If I am being honest with myself--which I do not entirely trust--then with honesty comes ambivalence.

Just a single Strich from the persona to the personal! But what a difference. The entire subject bundled up in a single stroke. The goal: to embrace the impostor, however imposing it might seem.

Twice is coincidence. Thrice is fate (jokes, religion). The critic
tries to find fate in something that doesn't even happen once.

On Costumes

There are two kinds of children at Halloween: those who put all their effort into their costumes, making sure that every part of their costume is right, becoming the character; the other kind knows that all they have to do to get a bag of candy is to put on a wig, maybe with horns; they keep on their winter jackets to keep warm. The latter become successful businessmen, comfortable in life, the former become artists and teachers.

Cannibalizing Cannibalism?

Tobias Schneebaum died 2 years before I saw his biographical documentary on his life. To use cannibalism in the 60s as a way, perhaps, to gain publicity, I wonder if he could not stop the machine that he started. Being forced by producers and directors to return to Peru at the age of 78, where he ate human flesh once 45 years before, he admits at the end that he does not see himself as a cannibal, "but then one always looks at oneself quite differently from the way other people see you."
He also admitted of living hand-to-mouth. He never had money and never will have money, and prefers it that way. Only at 50 did he finally come to terms with life. What strikes me with all this is that he does not feel like he needs to conform to the way people see him. There is a certain contentment in his life, one that I am searching for in mine. It's not a love of life - one cannot sustain that feeling - nor a fascination with it, but a connection to life that is inseparable from one's desires. He's gay and always wanted to be a painter. The way he lead his life was always directed in fulfilling those desires.