Wherein Annie reads to us from her work. Trigger warning for those whom get triggered.
Into the Void
From the Diary of A Snail
Hello and welcome to the new podcast from the diary of a snail. Oops! I'm Annie K your host or hostess is the case maybe. This podcast is gonna be mostly just me reading my work which is writing that's done via a process of appropriation and it's really hard for me to categorize it beyond that but it's somewhere between guess it lies at the nexus I would say of like philosophy psychology memoir fiction and poetry and art and data oh I'm stopping there and I'm gonna start reading this is from the book that I'm working on tentatively titled same bad different dreams or between a joke and a prophecy a note to the reader this book is a poem that is a collage more and more the text feels itself a sort of creature beyond my grasp is a property of other people as if it had been written by somebody else but it is the same book and from this kind of thought has emerged a new conclusion which is that the book is alive and potent and fruit defying a collage is an interpretation it bursts from the breathing aperture from end to kill it bursts with a full-bodied report a collage is a true real entire interpretation and an interpretation that wants to create something new doing collage means creating a whole new world with elements of this existing world doing collage is low art and it's easy everybody is included in collage I wanted to put together what could not otherwise be put together and I think this is often the aim of a collage I wanted to break the scale and I wanted to break the angles in perspective because I want to express the world that I live in not the whole world as the entire world but the whole world as the entire world fragmented one of my hopes for the work is to demonstrate the fragility of the norms and conventions ruling our social order and then how easily they can give rise to something dark and frightening when it comes to making something the matter at hand is always shaped by hard knowledge talented method writing is a plea in favor of the second chance it is a plea in favor of acts against why let X equal choice philosophy linguistic psychology post structuralism and deconstruction let Y equal waiting in the wings part one truth is the first casualty of war one where shall we begin since there is no beginning why not start where you arrive or before what first entices you if you are diligent you will enter little by little into the entirety to in September of 1943 with an allied victory increasingly likely Gertrude Stein wrote the one thing that everybody wants is to be free not to be managed threatened directed restrained obliged administered the only thing that anyone wants now is to be free to be let alone to live their life as they can but not to be watched controlled and scared three and big cities and small towns around the world the ties that bind human beings to one another are afraid punch in a very beautiful piece of writing said that man is the future of man in other words the future is not yet created not yet decided upon we then we here are the ones who will make it each of our gestures will help fashion it for the family the family is not an interjected object but an interjected set of relations the family as a system is internalized internalization means to map outer on to inner it entails the transference of a group of relations from one modality of experience to another modality of experience namely from perception to imagination to memory and to dreams within the family leaving the family may be experienced as worse than murder or more selfish than suicide dilemmas abound if I do not destroy the family the family will destroy me yet I cannot destroy the family in myself without destroying it in them and on and so on then as in the middle of a bridge in the middle of a walk in the middle always whether of a book or a conversation or making love it was born in on me again that I had never done what I wanted and out of not doing what I wanted I'd grown up inside me this thing which was nothing but but an obsessional plant a sort of coral growth which was expropriating everything including life itself until life itself became this thing which was denied but which constantly asserted itself anyway making life and death as it were at the same time five here I am in my studio faced with a mass of scrawled to death papers the little word pointless comes puffing from my pipe and circles the room chasing down a thought nothing else moves and contrary wise where does the peeling of a personality begin I wonder where is the tap that holds back confessions six everywhere and all the time I write I write while I chew a cutlet run on gravel sweat and crowds invent myself somewhere else often nothing but adjectives disgruntled gloomy grumpy beginnings of sentences under the bed etc for ticking objects whatever comes to mind incidentals without decimal points about lapses of time and displaced phases about intervening time about doubt and distances and the detachment they give seven among some artists exists a desire to lay claim to a certain degree of mental derangement or dissociation in the mistaken belief that there is something artistic about madness but one of those artists whose work is a manifestation of true isolation and marginalization whose work is an expression of real stigmatization and of actual madness what else do you want to know all our words and all our science measured against reality are primitive childlike and still no matter what I will stay this person that no one accepts as me clear skies and I feel better again eight eat of sitwell on eccentricity any dumb but pregnant comment on life any criticism of the world's arrangement if expressed by only one gesture and that of sufficient contortion becomes eccentricity nine trigger warning I was raped by man I'd met on a dating website this was 2021 the pandemic increasingly alienated after the rape I had a breakdown my cousin Michelle told me you've had a breakdown she'd say or you're having a breakdown I didn't respond standing on the edge staring straight into space watching the spaces on the periphery trying to encompass the whole what is the name of that place the infinitesimal hinge between later my family my cousins aunts and uncles stopped speaking to me they would say it was because I was crazy out of control inappropriate and vicious the rift boiled down to a simple case of denial in the wake of the 2021 assault I told my extended family about the abuse I'd sustained in childhood at the hands of my father sexual abuse suffice to say they didn't believe me except Michelle but Michelle I didn't have to tell she knew already don't tell me your father abused your Francis she said using an old pet name for me I was quiet for a moment then began to cry eventually my aunts and uncles cousins cousins wives and children and myself all tired of the fighting in other words we'd reached a dead end and we went our separate ways I wandered round galleries and bookstores I ruminated on trains I walked the streets of the city all through the night speaking vociferously to myself sometimes I cursed throwing things one night I slammed a box of coconut water down in the middle of the street another night I threw a can of soda as hard as I could it was through some scraggly bushes and rolled down a scruffy gulch on the outskirts of some park not the best my shrink admonished gently not a great idea to throw things I shrugged my shoulders I didn't care I was somewhere else maybe one says to oneself in a moment of complete madness it would be possible to disappear entirely maybe that would be for the best I wrote an awful lot fucked around intense yet disinterested affections always even naked in bed under the thrusting body of a different man and a different man again a thousand miles away many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person to move on to the next the phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising then falters on the upswing at the point of transition I came close to dying along with my other self so i'm just going to now backtrack to just let you know what where the language and those and and what you've heard so far has come from um so i've got um ashless i've got oghast wrote down the cathedral is dying translated by elizabeth chase geis bueller david's wimmer books janet malcom two lives gertrude and allis yell university press new haven in london rd laying the politics of the family and other essays vintage books the division of random house new york 1972 and henry miller tropic of capricorn grover press 1961 grinter grass from the diary of a snail translated by ralph manheim a hellon and kurt wolf book car court praised jonovich jovannovich jovannovich new york in london 1972 and shattered forms allen s way suny university profit press sorry um and steven a mitchell hope and red encycl analysis basic books 1993 and diane arabis quoted in a letter in a letter to robert benton and harald hayes about the eccentricities project circa november 1960 appearing in diane arabis revelations random house new york new york printed in germany 2003 and i believe that's where we're at at ono we've also got judeth herrman md trauma and recovery basic books 1992 and 1997 um so thank you so much for listening this has been the first episode of from the diary of a snail i'm your host annie kai