Occipital, parietal, frontal, temporal

We are in a rainy weather system the past few days. The arctic outflow ended and gave way to a damp inflow. How and ever we are thawing after the deep freeze. It’s quite strange to adjust to above zero temperatures again. I miss the strobe sunlight that comes with the sub-arctic temperatures and low cloud cover.

I subsequently rapid-read Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie. I found it a very strong work indeed. The kind of intellectual work that provokes a mental and physical surge as the ideas ferment further, stronger, almost in a form of after shock,  once you’re finished. The reader is T’d up!  Preciado takes a mash-up approach between memoir, rogue essay and philosophical reckoning. Her ideas on and recording of  her bio-hacking- her – endocrine system meld with multiple essays exploring pharmacorpoporn, gender, queer history & activism, history of technosexuality, drag kings, Freud’s voluntary intoxication, the Pill, the future, the hairy arm, hotel drama and more, more, more.  I loved Preciado’s playful invention with language. How she remixes words and blends them to reflect her philosophical inquiries. (Bio-information empire, planetary invagination, prosthetico-comotose, pharmacorpornopolitical, biopolitical fictions, plastic fidelity)

Some of the ideas she posits reminded me of the panel I did with Lidia Yuknavitch, Shanna Germain and Yuvi  in Portland where we called for or discussed a literature of the body. Or Lidia did and I concurred. I remember connecting physicality and physical exertion with the creation of my prose and how one was informing the other in my case. The book made me think of Kathy Acker’s work and the swimming scene in Yuknavitch’s memoir.

Conveniently this weekend I was studying bones and most especially the bones of the foot. I am studying anatomy and muscles at the moment for an exam. I am very interested in the body in literature. I think this is clear in Malarky. I’m also very keen to create a BODY of literary work and criticism, so must keep the occipital, parietal, frontal, temporal skull bones firmly down and the brain within them bones nourished and ticking over to achieve this.