My you\u00adth\u00adful com\u00admit\u00adment to the iden\u00adti\u00adty of beau\u00adty with free\u00addom had been expe\u00adri\u00admen\u00adtal, in the sense that use\u00adful\u00adly reco\u00adgni\u00adzing one\u00adself as a girl was an expe\u00adriment. I had absor\u00adbed the com\u00admit\u00adment from the lite\u00adra\u00adture, trying it on like a rhe\u00adto\u00adric that I cal\u00adled pas\u00adsion, loving the inter\u00adior thrill of dif\u00adfe\u00adrence I felt as the tiny iden\u00adti\u00adfi\u00adca\u00adtions ope\u00adra\u00adted within me, inter\u00adpre\u00adting the thrill as my own emo\u00adtion, not reco\u00adgni\u00adzing that what this thrill cove\u00adred over was a wor\u00adried ques\u00adtio\u00adning, not yet lin\u00adguis\u00adtic, about the scorn that bor\u00adde\u00adred beauty\u2019s lite\u00adra\u00adry des\u00adcrip\u00adtion. The man-poets scor\u00adned what they desi\u00adred ; their sadis\u00adtic money was such that the object scor\u00adned was endo\u00adwed with the shim\u00admer of sex. How radiant we were in our gor\u00adgeous out\u00adfits and our bad moods ! Oh, and this igni\u00adted poe\u00adtry. Baudelaire scor\u00adned Jeanne Duval and eve\u00adry female he dal\u00adlied with, or at least did so on paper, Ted Hughes scor\u00adned Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound scor\u00adned Djuna Barnes, George Baker scor\u00adned Elizabeth Smart, eve\u00adry\u00adbo\u00addy scor\u00adned Jean Rhys. Proust did not scorn Albertine because Albertine was a man. The she-poets per\u00adished beneath the bur\u00adden of beau\u00adty and scorn. This is what I obser\u00adved. This was the for\u00admal sexua\u00adli\u00adty of lyric. Who was I then, what was I, when I, a girl, was their rea\u00adder, the rea\u00adder of the beau\u00adti\u00adful repre\u00adsen\u00adta\u00adtions ? Who was I if I became the des\u00adcri\u00adber, and how could I become this thing before per\u00adishing ? Would I then even reco\u00adgnize myself ? Because I saw the per\u00adishing eve\u00adryw\u00adhere. Daily I read it. The free\u00addom of desi\u00adring and its potent trans\u00adfor\u00adma\u00adtions see\u00admed not to belong to beau\u00adty, just to beauty\u2019s des\u00adcri\u00adber. Anyone without a lan\u00adguage for desire per\u00adishes. Any girl-thing. My ques\u00adtions emer\u00adged then as a mute, trou\u00adbled resis\u00adtance to the ancient ope\u00adra\u00adtion that I also cra\u00adved. Certainly the poem must become some\u00adthing other than this contract. I see\u00admed to have been wrong about most things, except for my will to write and to read. That and the stain. Even so, I did not want to give up on beau\u00adty alto\u00adge\u00adther, so gent\u00adly I set it to the side, and with it the phi\u00adlo\u00adso\u00adphi\u00adcal poten\u00adcy and free\u00addom of the bad mood. Certainly I would return to beau\u00adty, I would return to the bad mood. I would arrive at anger.<\/p>\n
For now I would conti\u00adnue to test the hypo\u00adthe\u00adsis of lust. I would test it in book\u00adshops, in museums, and at foun\u00adtains. I would test it, as I have des\u00adcri\u00adbed, in attic rooms, maid\u2019s rooms as they were cal\u00adled. As unfixed lust, in fact a maid, I would write, I would per\u00adam\u00adbu\u00adlate and per\u00aduse. I would for\u00adget not to stare. I would move towards what I desi\u00adred. I would make myself unders\u00adtood. What I wrote about in my hea\u00advy hard-bound dia\u00adry : about a girl living in a room, get\u00adting dres\u00adsed, buying food, fucking, the god\u00addam\u00adned tulips ugly in the dark. These were his\u00adto\u00adri\u00adcal records about things that might never have before exis\u00adted, if I were to judge by the lite\u00adra\u00adture. Before I began to write what I nee\u00added to write, an event that, to my consi\u00adde\u00adrable dis\u00adsa\u00adtis\u00adfac\u00adtion, would not begin for some years (lines such as \u2018even the mus\u00adking tulips\u2019 would assert them\u00adselves, unwel\u00adcome even at the moment of trans\u00adcrip\u00adtion), I had to set the record straight, esta\u00adblish an archive. This would be my foun\u00adda\u00adtion. I had to des\u00adcribe eve\u00adry\u00adthing, from the pers\u00adpec\u00adtive of the lust of a maid. I did it altruis\u00adti\u00adcal\u00adly, for the future. It would not be attrac\u00adtive. It would show my unkind\u00adness, the bana\u00adli\u00adty of my appe\u00adtites, the small lies I told, the wil\u00adful omis\u00adsions. My des\u00adcrip\u00adtions would not be about being seen, nor about the stri\u00adving for that posi\u00adtion within the lyric contract. Being seen by money was a form of incar\u00adce\u00adra\u00adtion within an enfor\u00adced aes\u00adthe\u00adtic constraint. Within this contract, aes\u00adthe\u00adtic judg\u00adments are the same judg\u00adments that assess finan\u00adcial risk. Is the girl pro\u00adduc\u00adtive ? Lucrative ? Accessible ? Against this odious assess\u00adment, I began the slow accu\u00admu\u00adla\u00adtion of the docu\u00adments of the incom\u00admen\u00adsu\u00adrable pro\u00adce\u00addures, pro\u00adce\u00addures for which I was not a sign, but an untrai\u00adned actor, a bad actor, a hack of a sen\u00adtence wri\u00adter, an ano\u00adny\u00admous fuck. If the result seems mere\u00adly deco\u00adra\u00adtive, orna\u00admen\u00adtal, it\u2019s because now rea\u00adlism has become ano\u00adther name for capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My you\u00adth\u00adful com\u00admit\u00adment to the iden\u00adti\u00adty of beau\u00adty with free\u00addom had been expe\u00adri\u00admen\u00adtal, in the sense that use\u00adful\u00adly reco\u00adgni\u00adzing one\u00adself as a girl was an expe\u00adriment. I had absor\u00adbed the com\u00admit\u00adment from the lite\u00adra\u00adture, trying it on like a rhe\u00adto\u00adric that I cal\u00adled pas\u00adsion, loving the inter\u00adior thrill of dif\u00adfe\u00adrence I felt as the tiny [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-non-classe","post_format-post-format-quote"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testanonpertinente.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}