1. Rousseau’s Confessions / The Charterhouse of Parma / Journal of a Plague Year/ Borges’ Ficciones / The Apple in the Dark / Mary Shelley’s The Last Man / The Education of Henry Adams / The Professional Thief by a Professional Thief / The sorrows of Young Werther/ Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book / Jacob Van Gunten / Infancy and History.
2. Answer WHAT IS COURAGE? or Rousseau, upon the site of the deliriously beautiful aquaduct: “Why was I not born a Roman?” explain this, also how the air is at once cool and warm, how it is to have never felt like your heart broken in the romantic sort of way and what this could mean for developing empathy. “Life is real life is earnest love or fascination is my middle name” says Bernadette.
3. Various diseases with which I should be diagnosed: sinusitis, lack of competitive spirit, a lot of lecturing really and waking up in the middle of the night to say something cruel,the interior lives of near strangers, wanting to consume myself via long artistic processes as I once wanted to be consumed by love, speakable gratitude:
thank you,
also a detailed list of refusals: public, personal, professional, romantic, material, artistic.
3. There is no use of leveling critiques
unless one is enacting her own,
POSITIVE PROJECTS: Anything with instructions. Silhouettes of hair made via calico appliques. Dolce and Gabbana carved pumpkins. A list of questions: WHAT IS WRITTEN BY THE DAPPLING OF SUNLIGHT? WHY DO KITTENS NAMED MOSES ALSO HIDE IN BASKETS? How is that you have come to reject narrative?
4.THESE ARE CLOTHES THAT DO NOT CHANGE: the sailor collar, the sailor dress, the sailor jacket, the sailor pants, the sailor stripes. Crest punk. The years of affection for the glittery, gold brocade, black velvet, plum silk. Childhood’s plum velvet knickers and plum velvet vest. My brother’s little army jacket, me in my brother’s little army jacket, holding up Parallel Lines. Annie Hall ties, fedoras, trench coats, vintage girlscout dresses, doc marten’s from london, a black wool german army jacket, an old man’s black plastic glasses. Spandex, later, and babydoll dresses, high boots, hot pants, wet-n-wild lipstick, band tees, mustard fifties sweater with suede insets. Rose scented perfume, velvet bathrobes, silk things a lot, willful brew of luxury androgyny trash and accident. Undying love of little white socks folded at the ankle and mary janes. Undying love of fur coats. Undying love of bobs and of bangs. Undying love of rhinestones. Red and black flannel, brooches with bent needles.
