Potent

This picture bothers me because it doesn't really make sense. Apparently the word "potent" can used as a noun, which it wouuld have to be in that sentence (here's an excerpt from dictionary.com), but was the writer really referring to a T-shaped form? It's strange.

1. a fur having a pattern of T-shaped forms, placed in alternate directions and having alternating tinctures, one metal and one color, so that all forms of one tincture face the same way and are between, above, and below forms of the other tincture facing the other way.
2. a T-shaped form used in potent or counterpotent.
–adjective 3. (of a cross) having a crosspiece at the extremity of each arm: a cross potent.

So, hmmm, what?? Whatever. Somebody wrote it on a table at the Nublu bar. And I like to imagine a stranger recognizing it or ... this is better, sitting down at that table and remembering this photo, seen here. It's just a fantasy with mildly grandiose aspects. Which reminds me of two things - one on grandiosity, another on the book Nadja.

Obviously grandiosity is just one side of a coin which, when flipped, lands frequently on the shame side. A few months back I noted to Mischa the difficulty I was having with incorporating her positive feelings about me into my perception of my relative worth or worthlessness. I could feel, within the space of several minutes even, a reaction which swung from a sense of being not good enough for her at all (or for anyone I might be attracted to) toward the other end (but stopping midpoint) in thinking, but wait I'm pretty awesome too, perhaps I do deserve to be liked and even loved. If the pendulum kept going, which it could only do if I was alone and smoking marijuana or sufficiently distressed, I might decide that I was too good for everyone, although I really haven't had this feeling since meeting Misch. That feeling only comes if I haven't talked to anyone in several days or however long. What I want to say about this range of perception is that not only are both extremes false but that this tendency is exacerbating my career crisis. We won't go too much into the crises today since I have decided in my real journal that there is no crisis, and I can accept exactly where I am and that it is where I'm supposed to be, and that idea is final. But, I feel like I am frozen between being nothing and being the greatest artist that ever lived. hehe. Don't judge me either I know some of you people are also delusional! But am I really delusional? We won't ever know. Perhaps I am so talented that I will never produce anything! Perhaps I have already written and destroyed my greatest poems and no one will ever read them! I realize these types of statements belong to a mildly disordered personality. But I really, really really always wanted to be anthologized and remembered forever and ever and like the Greeks in battle achieve immortality through greatness and my photos the best black and whites ever like Marilyn Monroe on the beach. I want(ed) to be a combination of all the greatest of the greats!

But then of course the problem arises that EVEN if I were great, most people don't go to college or even know what an anthology is, but they probably wouldn't understand the first thing about me EVEN if they "learned" about me, if I were dead, even if they saw the DOCUMENTARY made by the best director ever and an extremely hot, skinny actress playing me, but even if they did understand me, it wouldn't matter because I would be dead and wouldn't care anymore! There are so many problems with the need to be great. As it stands, I haven't really done anything worth documenting (by admitting this it shows my personality is not disordered very much at all). And anyways all the documentaries are full of lies and misunderstandings and not everyone sees them plus everyone who might see them will die too, just think of all the libraries and archives filled with information; only a few librarians care and it's just impossible to everyone to know everything worth knowing. But if you are canonized, at least college professors with have to teach people about you. But you have to kill yourself.

Oh fuck it who cares, I need a career! Here I am and I've been a receptionist for five years or something! Meanwhile, it took me all this time to get enough confidence to start writing songs with other people and sing them on a stage, one song after another, not just one solo but the whole fourty five minutes or however long the show lasts. God I hate singing on stage. It's just not fun, all I can think about is how gross awkward horrible boring I am and I want to run off that thing. I feel that I am torturing people to beg them to come and make them listen to it. I used to get nervous enough for even one karaoke song or solo in the a cappella group, now, like I said, it's all me, ew! But on the other hand, I feel I am a genius and sometimes when I'm going to or from practice it's like I'm sleep walking because I'm going over the words and melodies in my head and see or hear nothing else. And I think every person who wants to be any sort of artist also wants to be a genius or secretly thinks they are one. OR maybe that's just the feeling of excitement of creating something and it is such a big feeling that I interpret it in a strange way and other people don't, they just think "oh I'm a small time painter, maybe I'll show my work in five to ten galleries before I die but it's pretty average and I don't mind if it makes a small splash." Anyways Misch came to my shows and she said to me, there must be some part of you that feels good about my success and achievement, and I didn't want to admit that some part of me was proud because the second I admitted feeling good that would open me up to further criticism, yes from inside, but it felt too vulnerable, to admit that. Better to say I'm shit and know it has to be a little better than that. But so much of the time I wish to god I could stop wanting to write and sing so that I could settle down and be a teacher.

I want to be a teacher. I do. I don't want to plan those stupid lessons though, or develop a classroom management plan, or grade homework, or stay late, or teach an extracurricular activity, or arrive early, or take anymore classes myself besides educational psychology which I took twice. But I really like the idea of helping kids become literate so they can go to college and read the canon. Also, teaching them to write, I could help them get their little minds organized and let some of the feeling out - this idea is special to me. I don't want happy kids, I want the messed up ones. I have no use for healthy, happy people, period. In the office where I work there are these three girls who go everywhere together, mid-twenties, white, shoulder length brown hair, heterosexual, super happy, friendly, one guy hangs out with them who I fucking hate, actually I hate them all. I mutter to myself when they come up all the things I can't say because I'm the receptionist. Anyways, I'm a heh heh psycho, next topic.

The only thing I really want to say about the book Nadja, is that I finished it and believe that I basically understand it, and the main point of that book is that the speaker want to know who he is, and he settles on surrealism as the best method to discovering himself and feeling understood also by an audience, namely the reader. Nadja more or less represents surrealism, her personality and lifestyle embody it's most important aspects and values, including automatic response and writing versus calculation, freedom versus logic, mystery, symbols, signs and revelation versus science, etc. Large paragraphs in the book are essentially poetry, meant to be read several times and understood like a painting full of related images, not strictly interpreted; Nadja is supposed to be confusing but intuitive. How did this relate too my opening paragraph? Oh yes, feeling that certain images - taken from billboards, advertising, graffiti - were potent and significant even if unable to say why - and faith in the feeling rather than deciding, "but it doesn't make sense, so it's means nothing."

Well, Karamasha is on her way to me, this instant. She is probably walking in the cold rather than taking cabs and trains because she thinks she has to burn a certain amount of calories each based on whatever she eats, and when I spoke with her earlier she was consumed (no pun intended) with anxiety over several issues: the calories and exercise to prevent imminent fatness (height 5'7, weight 119), what we might eat for the rest of the day, and also serious concern over getting a good seat on the bus we will ride to Philadelphia this evening. If we sit near the back, she might smell the bathroom in which case she will have to wear a surgical face mask. She insists though, that it's not the smell but the germs. If there is no smell, she will still know about the germs, but reminding her that there are always germs all around us is not reassuring. Then she is irritated and reminds me in a high pitched voice that it's not rational. In fact, all questions about the subject get this response, so all I can do is hope she brings a surgical mask for me, also.