I'm home this week, so am trying to get a headstart on answering my questions. To date I've logged 64 responses. Miles to go before the finish line. I'm not a natural writer. I struggle with the smallest of things. Must not think about the hundreds of responses yet to be achieved. Let's take one step at a time.

The process is frustrating but interesting at the same time. On the one hand, I'm reliving a little the writing of the questions; on the other hand, I'm seeing them differently now.

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Just completed reading Maggie Nelson's Bluets. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful book of 240 numbered sections, most of which are no longer than a paragraph. It is poetic and philosophical, Wittgensteinian in the way that it is organized as a long series of "propositions." It is a book about the multiple dimensions of blue. Nelson self-consciously sees the world, all aspects of her experience, through a blue filter. It is an unflinching book. I particularly enjoyed the ways in which she speaks directly about sex. For example , in this blue passage --

179. When I imagine a celibate man -- especially one who doesn't even jerk off -- I wonder how he relates to his dick: what else he does with it, how he handles it, how he regards it. At first glance, this same question for a woman might appear more "tucked away" (pussy-as-absence, pussy-as-lack: out of sight, out of mind). But I am inclined to think that anyone who thinks or talks this way has simply never felt the pulsing of a pussy in serious need of fucking -- a pulsing that communicates nothing less than the suckings and ejaculations of the heart.

I'm drawn to writing such as this which investigates subjectivity. Consciousness is a language effect. Writing is sexual (along a continuum, of course).

If I write into being a photograph of a naked male torso, cock tucked between its legs, and claim the image as my own, what then? The paradox of projecting the "tucked away"? Little Tommy Tucker?

I dunno. Much to think about.

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