Had a moment of intense happiness today although tired and cold, sitting on the corner of Cortelyou and Coney Island Avenue waiting for the B68 bus, eating two absolutely perfect Medjool dates.
Thinking that I am neither beautiful enough to relax into beauty in order to hypnotize people nor homely enough to relax into homeliness and just be pure consciousness. It is a tense middle space.
I would like to learn to speak the language of men. I mean, not to capitulate to them, but for the sake of dramatic breadth, and also for attention.
I do notice that when I post on certain “Aspergerian” topics, like “poetics,” below, I get a flurry of comments from men. Hi fellas! Come here often?
If I post instead on the fact that Conway now has the most amazing selection of t-shirts for no more than 3.99 apiece, plus these great prim cardigans (I bought three! Teal and black and grape!) for only 10.99, will anyone care? Will anyone actually go to Conway? Will anyone comment? Ladies?
Conway, like many of the places that poor people shop, has the most insidious smell. At first, one thinks it is cat or rodent pee. I think instead it’s just the offgassing from all the toxic cheap materials of the no doubt unethically produced items for sale there. But still: $3.99. Just sayin’.
The magnolias are decidedly Out, and early cherry blossoms, too. This afternoon though there were a few freakish puffs of snow flying around, and I thought, ooooh, poetic… magnolias in the snow! And then I remembered the name of the lipstick I used to wear as a punk teen, and its horrible taste: “Cherries in the snow.” Blecch, but the most vivid vermillion, really.
Because I don’t watch TV, I find out about a lot of pop-cultural phenomena through the backdoor, by google-searching for flarf purposes. I didn’t know, for example, what “The Watchmen” was, or who “Amy Smart” was, until I inadvertently found them in a search for poetry. I find out other things, too. I knew, of course, that Krafft-Ebbing was the author of Psychopathia Sexualis, but I had never actually looked at the book. What beautiful writing! It gets horrible and violent in parts, but there are gems among the cruelty and offal, and the latin terms for sex acts are great fun: “Maxime delectata fuit lambendo anum feminarum amatarum, lambendo san- guinem menstrualem amicae.”. Because Google Books is so wonderfully obliging to provide a plain-text version, here are some quotes:
Veronica Juliani, beatified by Pope Pius II., in memory of the divine lamb, took a real lamb to bed with her, kissed it and suckled it on her breasts.
St. Catharine of Genoa often burned with such intense inward fire that in order to cool herself she would throw herself upon the ground crying, ” Love, love, I can endure it no longer “. At the same time she felt a peculiar inclination to her confessor. One day lifting his hand to her nose she noticed a peculiar odour which penetrated to her heart ” a heavenly perfume that would awaken the dead “.
“A Russian prince, who was very decrepit, was accustomed to have his mistress turn her back to him and defecate on his breast; this being the only way in which he could excite the remnant of libido.” [EWWWW!]
Another supported a mistress in unusually brilliant style, with the condition that she ate marchpane exclusively.
I am sure that must have made her very sick, unusually brilliant lifestyle notwithstanding.
Otohime 
I was about to ask if marchpane is the same as marzipan. I was just wildly guessing. Then I looked it up and it’s true. Whoa.
There used to be a Conway’s near my office. On days when, distracted by sadness, I forgot to put on a belt, I popped in and bought something barely better than cardboard to cinch my uniform. I forgot to put on a belt today, actually, but Conway’s is long gone, and most of the cobblers in the neighborhood, my backup for belt-need, are “closed for renovations.” So, pants, stay up on your own for a change.Yes, posting because of your shaming remark about men and Aspergerian subjects. I’m sure you were just observing. All the same.
St. Catharine of Genoa — no big deal. I do that, like, every other day practically.
I am glad to know about Conway, but, alas, I am too far away. The next time I’m in New York I need to come with more money and allot more time for shopping. I get compliments all the time on that jade fish/bird pendant you spotted in Chinatown. Do you remember it?The lipstick color I wore as a teen was Revlon’s “Toast of New York.” I was not a punk teen, alas.