9 PM:

My roommate and I were discussing animal torture, after I showed her a video of a camel
being slaughtered... i said that the way it died moved me, that its expression and
vocalizations had been lie the evocation of pure terror...when the camel died it started
banging its head against the ground lie a hammer. my roommate said she didn!t want
eep watching, she could barely watch. i ased her why, i told it was "ust an animal and
plus it was already dead. and i told her i truly thought death was no great thing, but that it
was important to see whenever possible, because it is something that is very very real. my
roommate, who is a dominatrix, looed at me and maybe she didn!t say anything but
maybe she said, people i can watch, but i can!t watch animals.
#$: PM
I got up from the couch, my body wilted, I had an itch in my throat, I felt lie I wanted to
sing but i could barely move my tiny finger. I went to go shout but I could only s%uirm.
the thought of the itching in the bac of my throat raced around my head lie an
unchained animal. otherwise i was feeling o, but i couldn!t escape this feeling... which
was lie a feeling of deadness but also of fear, lie I was afraid of something that I was
#$$& sure was going to happen... dead fear, i thin this is called dread. it is a feeling that
after a long time of feeling it, it becomes normal and almost seems lie it!s your spiritual
mission. so its not really that bad, in fact I hate to thin of where I!d be without it. but it
can be uncomfortable, or unsettling, or overwhelming... so i had turn up the music. we
were listening to some raw urban type music which was maing us feel very
interconnected with the environment. which was a good feeling. i turned it up even
louder, the speaers became more engorged, i was vibrating with the sensation of the
music, and i hoped that... well, you can only fight sensation with more of it.
#$:'$ PM
my roommate started telling story. it was about a sexual experience that she had had the
night before. there was very long bac(story where she had been at a party, and there
were numerous characters there that i!d never heard of... some of these people were her
friends, some were potential suitors, some were assholes. and all these characters had
their own stories, which i new only fractionally and these subplots were being
introduced and then abrpuply discarded. my attention was wavering, i was distracted by
the cat, which i could see in the corner of the room. i ept on thining about this cat,
which to me was a very sad animal. i could scarcely imagine such a life. this cat was
desperate for affection but afraid of anyone who even went near her. in every sight of the
world she saw potential enemies, but they were more lie undefinable phantoms thriving
in the recesses of her consciousness. sometimes they wuld emerge without warning. you
could be holding this nervous body in your hands and then it would lash out at you for no
reason, with a deep hiss that came from the belly. so i was watching this animal, which
was watching me from the distance, and i could see in her eyes that she could do it would
ill me, i could see that my roommate was wrong, that animals are "ust as guilty or
innocent as us humans. and then my roommate was taling she was saying i met this
other guy and we started taling and he ased me if it would be o if he could sleep over,
because he was really tired and he had to wae up really early. and since he wored in
williamsburg but lived in harlem, and the party was in bed(sty but we lived in bushwic,
it would "ust mae sense for him to sleep over... unless that wasn!t cool for some reason)
my roommate said i would if i could but i don!t have an extra bed and he said, is that
really going to be a problem) so they ended up bac in her room and she was still not
really into it.