recently a friend and i saw an exhibit of two of yayoi kusama's infinite mirror pieces. they were timed, and we spent two minutes inside each along with six other visitors. they were filled with her characteristic organic shapes protruding from surfaces, glowing faint colors. but once inside i found myself much more preoccupied with the reflections of strangers that surrounded me. i struggled to find a place to gaze that did not feel like staring. but then i thought : that since so many of the images were 3, 4, 5 reflections deep, it was unlikely that anyone would notice me looking at them in this way, since it would require very precise alignment of their gaze. so i stared at the other guests and their gestures and chatting with one another. i imagined a new iteration of the exhibit, with one large box into which say 10 people are placed for 10 full minutes, which is brightly lit, and contains nothing other than the guests and the mirrored walls. or even better; a tiny mirrored room, as big as a couple bathroom stalls, into which precisely two people are placed.

there's always that thing that's somehow so important it's the most important thing that's ever been, and you need to say it, you really need to say it, but it's not safe, you don't know how, there might not even be a way to say it yet, there might never, but you need to say it, but you can't, but you need to, but you can't, and time passes. this is the time passing.

title track is the kind of groove that makes you feel like you can't physically express even in dancing just how groovy it rly is. its a faintly painful feeling. no matter how much i jump and shake it continues to exceed me.

first time ketamine was to this album

it went through my hand, up my arm, and out my shoulder where it touched

will i listen again? idk but not for a long time

i puked also.

in 2010 my mother's mother died. she lived on the southern side of town by the sanchez art center. growing up she had never let my mom get her ears pierced. eventually my mother moved to san francisco and got her ears pierced. a few years later her mother got a divorce and followed my mother west. when she got there she got her ears pierced twice each, in addition to a tattoo of a butterfly. i have a bunch of her old earrings. i also have the last painting she ever made. it's green with some broken glass and wire, also green. she had always driven this dark green scion car shaped like a cube. she got into a terrible accident at the intersection by the community center, which totalled the box car. although she wasn't directly injured, she suffered a heart attack immediately afterward. she was stabilized by doctors, but the process led them to discover an issue with her mitral valve in her heart. it was very similar to an issue her ex-husband, my mother's father, had had years prior. she underwent open-heart surgery to replace the faulty valve with a pig's valve. the surgery was successful. she went home soon after. i remember the first time i saw her again after the surgery i gave her a hug and squeezed so tight that my parents cried out and leapt forward to pull me off of her. she wanted to get a new car just like her old one, but it turned out that it was no longer being made, and she couldn't find anyone selling one. she got a honda civic instead. a few months later she died in her sleep. it was the first time anyone i loved died. the instant the words left my mother's lips, my sister and i both burst into tears, perfectly simultaneously. later that day, my mother played back answering machine messages. i heard a few moments of my cousin kenny's voice, panicked, asking aunt katherine to call him immediately, it's an emergency. then my mother clicked to the next message. after my grandmother died, kenny lived in a few foster homes, and then lived for a while with Ann & Reeba, an elderly lesbian couple from the church our family attended. later, he moved to arizona to live with his father Bill, my mother's brother. Last year bill had a problem with his mitral valve. he recieved a porcine transplant. a few months ago, my mother went to the doctor for an ear infection, and while there, her doctor detected a murmur in her heart. they diagnosed an issue with her mitral valve. three days ago she underwent heart surgery (non-open; they used a catheter) to repair her valve. we were all very relieved she didn't need it replaced. the surgery went perfectly. the surgeon called it "boring". she reacted poorly to the anaesthetic, and has been perpetually intensely nauseous since awakening. her neighbor in the cvicu makes small talk with the nurses constantly, all through the night, and it drives her crazy. the chairs in there hurt my back. i keep thinking : i'll be next. it doesn't come with any feeling, even. i keep waiting to feel something about it. frankly i keep waiting to feel something significant about my mother's surgery in general. my dad cried like a baby when she woke up afterward. i've only seen him cry two other times; once when i was a kid, and he was leaving on a two-week business trip for which he felt guilty (although i only remember the crying and the embrace, the context comes from my mother later on), and once when he was accompanying me to a driving exam, gave me incorrect directions, told me to switch lanes illegally (there was no one else on the road), began yelling when i froze in confusion and sat still while the light turned green, continued yelling as i panicked and began crying, had me pull over, listened to me sob how i was terrified of driving and didn't feel ready for the exam and didn't want to take it and had tried to tell him that but he hadn't listened, switched seats with me, drove me home, and cried in the driveway apologizing. my sister told me she'd been crying basically non-stop. i hadn't noticed. the last time i can remember seeing her cry was 5 years ago or so, when i brought her a drink and she said something pointlessly rude in response, and i decided i had had enough, and i had tried to tell her that the way she had been treating me recently was hurting my feelings, and she had started crying and said she felt like i was the one always doing that to her, and i had paused because i hadn't expected her to say that, and i said that i just didn't agree, and i paused again, and then i said that even so i was sorry for those times and that we should hug and try to be kinder to each other, and she hugged me, and left the room. she told me that she had been crying non-stop on the way down the elevator on the first day after, and i said wow, i haven't cried at all, it's weird. and she said she feels like i'm not really a big crier. i protested. i cry all the time, i said. ok, well, for me i cry at like, anything. like if the movie tries to make me cry, i'll cry, she said. i guess i'm not like that, i said. i mostly cry by myself, from my own thoughts, i said. yeah, that's not what i meant. she said. but i'm still a big crier! i cry a lot, i said. ok, well, that's not really what i meant, though, she said. i meant more like, i cry at like the littlest thing, you know? she said. yes, i know, i said, i just spend a lot of time crying, i said. ok, well. okay. she said, and looked away. after me it'll be her.