Jamie Krasner A VENOMIST MANIFESTO

The void is alert, searching the sweet tempt. Time scatters smoke. The void dances in the breath. Fashioned without poise, it pisses futility, the sober solid. It writhes, drunk on the mush. The solid self-destructs; it abandons infinity. Knowledge glimpses infinity, it knows no duplicates. The posers tantalize. They move the void. Infinity soothes the void. The witch face tenses gaze with Siamese cat eyes. Venom seethes the belly bound. We wait. ________________________________________________________________________

Searching for truth in the whole is an act of futility, bringing us closer to death. It is self-destructive; an action performed to kill action. We exist in moments, each changed from the next. Thus, change slices experience. Experience is understood through the fragmentation of time. Our identities are pieced by these fragments, connected by a moment in time, but never ceasing to static; as time moves outwards, it opens, as do we, create a space in which fragments exist and connect, constructing the ever-changing idea of our non-absolution. External structures are based on abstractions that help us to justify absolution. We’ve created structures through only our perception. Perception has caused us to assume a solid nature, however, we must accept that all truths are relative. Absolute decays. Perspective is infinite. The void is not empty; it is amorphous. Fragments exist in this space, and they challenge the void. We progress. The void is not seen; it exists as a fragment as well. The fragment is small but compact, consisting of dust. The void contains, but is never filled. We feed on the permanently partial1. We collect fragments and force contradictions. Opposites are only black and white now. They are the memory and the premonition. We see2 color. The verb defines. The senses love the solid. We construct the external with absolute because of perception. All our earthly constructs are thus based on the solid. We must realize the internal is a void. The internal and external create one another, and they are the same. I wasn’t told these things as a child. I’ve never been much of a reader either. Too many times, I’ve tried to understand without the action. I wanna face something that never existed. Be it. I‘ve always been a rebel then. I’ll never do what I’m told. I’ll always choose mine. I do what I want. It’s so annoying how you think that you like know what I’m all about. It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s just that did you ever stop and think about who told you that? You told

1 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” 2 Relating to the sense; a perceptive device

me that I looked like Avril3. I know I wear that hat a lot, but it doesn’t mean that it’s me! I go shopping all the time, and I’ve got a ton of hats. Can’t you understand that I’m like more than just it? I’m a total spas. It’s cool though, cos I know you’re thinking that, okay this girl loves hats, but like what about the nail polish and the lipstick. Umm, they’re totally different, I know they seem the same, but trust me, I wouldn’t get them if I didn’t think I needed them for something. I use them a lot. Sometimes I like to draw with them in my notebook. I really love the way the nail polish creates layers, and the opaque lipstick is a great companion to the transparency of the polish. I guess I sort of need them both. Whatever, the other day I lost that hat I always wear, and I was really missing it. It was cool though cos you said that I looked different without it, and I was like definitely thinking about the next hat I wanted to buy. Maybe next time I’ll be Eve4. I found this thing in the trash the other day. It looked like something that I had seen, or maybe been before. I didn’t know how to use it, or what it signified. It’s face was not appealing, I’ll say that much. Actually its face had a certain air about it. It struck me with a certain feeling of unease. It had a bitch face. Yea, you’re a BITCH. However, I have to admit that the shaft connecting to the face was really nice – very smooth and easy to handle; though the handling was of the most concern to me because I didn’t know which was the handle I should be handling. I wrapped each of my fingers around its tight little body so I could feel the curves of it slip into the grooves of my hands. The plastic felt warm between my fingers. This thing was mine. I owned it, and I could use it for whatever I wanted. (What would that be?)

Another day, someone saw my thing and called it by another name, a B name. I guess it was her name because she sort of resembled the thing. It seemed wrong, though. To me, she would always be Bitch (my). Kenneth

“OMG, guess what?! I met this really awesome guy this weekend!” “Really? What’s he like?” “He’s really hot; super tan and the perfect face.” “Woah, that sounds really nice.” “Yeah, and he’s totally ripped with really deep blue eyes.” “Ughh, amazing! What are his abs like?” “They’re like perfectly chiseled, hard abs, you know?” “Yah, did you touch them?”

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“Yeah, his skin is so smooth I like can’t resist.” “I love that! Soft skin is so nice on a guy.” “I know! His skin isn’t really soft, though, it’s sort of slick, but extremely smooth, and he doesn’t have a hint of hair on his entire body!” “Really? That’s pretty intense, I mean is there a reason for it?” “I don’t know really. Maybe he’s a swimmer or something.” “AHHH, omg that’s so amazing.” “Yea.” “How tall is he?” “Um, he’s pretty short.” “Oh really? Like how short” “Like really, really tiny. I can like basically fit him in my bag.” “Wait, that’s insane!” “I know, he’s like really small.” “What about his hair?” “He likes the “wet-look” – it’s sort of slicked back and really hard.” “That’s hot.” “Actually, it’s like basically the same texture as his skin, and really, really hard.” “That’s kind of weird, though, right?” “Um, yea I don’t know what’s up with that…OMG but he’s like totally amazing and the best in bed I can just like do whatever I want with him cos he makes me feel so comfortable. I’m never getting rid of him.” “Ahh, you’re totally in love!” “Yeah, I know.” My memory is shifting. I’m too much in a moment. When you went away I kept your underwear, but I haven’t used them. The smell of you on my pillow held the memory in place, but I think the smell has become me now. I saw a picture of you and I tried to remember the time it was taken. It was really hot that night. (I sipped the steamy tea.) Yesterday I came across the same picture and recognized the tampon sitting on the stool in back of you. (OMG I have my period.) You’re in my head, and my memory of you is felt. I recognize its origin. You’re not here now and I’m not there either5. I’ll change separate of you, and this will slice the memory. I’ll hold onto the picture and watch it as it morphs. I’ll mold it with moments. The picture is me. Note to Dern: Sitting there I can see you, and me. Sitting, and I know, you’re just like me. That stare, I know. And I see it. Again, and Again, and Again. You step back, hard.

5 Idea of the “Diaspora”

It is. I know. I love you. I know. Again. I love you so much – your hair, the way you look. Something about you challenges me. My vision of you never complete. Are you thinking about, That time. Please, don’t. It only seems. And you are seemingly, Awesome. I don’t wanna play with those stupid dolls and have a tea party with her. I know she likes it, but it’s so boring. All the dolls do is sit. There isn’t even real tea. I’m gonna play super soakers with my brother; we get to use real water and spray it at each other. She only likes to play tea because the things are pretty and pink, like her room. My mom painted my room pink, before I was born. She knew she was going to have a girl. I covered the walls with posters; the drippy smiley faces are cool and I got a bunch of Smashing Pumpkins and Beck ones from my brother. I think they’re cool too. I like their music, and I love to play music. I play music with my dad a lot, and I listen to it with my brother. I want to be a musician because I like making it. Every time I sing a song, it never sounds the same, so you get to say a lot, and people listen to you. Even the boys like it. Me and my brother have a weekly class called “being cool.” Last time he showed me how to walk with my hips swaying from side to side. He showed me how to do it and I did it, just like he did. Then we burned incense. Fashion6 Sheer world. Deep V’s. Black hell. Shape Space. Fashion.

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Limp doll. Plastic Fuck. Finger Fall. Skin brow. Snake. Fashion. Sick lips. Slipt tits. Touch yourself, Business casual. Desert ice. Static. Yawning as you fist me Tasting the choke, Forever. Fashion.7 I want to be the girl I saw in that movie, The Craft. The girls are witches. I want to be a witch. When you are a witch, you are the ultimate girl because you have the appearance of a girl, but a power that you can use to control things around you. On the outside, it makes you a freak, and that’s what I want to be: half girl, half spirit. I want to light candles, and make perfumes, and cast spells with objects. It sounds girly but these things give me power. Let’s be witches together though, like the girls in the movie. I know you are like me, because we realize that we don’t fit into form. Actually, we don’t want to, we like it. Let’s take our differences and use them for magic. Slinky was a slut. She used her sex too often and everyone teased her and called her slutbag. She was. Every person she used her sex with knew she would use it again, with another, so they knew they were being used. They called her a slut and made it seem bad, which let them take back the power they lost in her. Slinky was devastated because the word defined her. She stopped using her sex, and that power was gone. Where did it come from? The story makes me recall the girls I saw in that movie, The Craft. The girls are all witches. Each of the girls has some quality in them which society has deemed

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abnormal. One is a slut, one has terrible burns, and one is black, and they are all Girl8. Thus, they carry with them two definitions: one human and one non-human9. The reaction for these girls is not to become one, but to accept their freak hood by adding yet another definition. They become witches. I went to this show where everyone was thirty years old, but they were trying to be teenagers. Went into their closets and wore all the same things that they had when they were of the teen age. They even sounded the age they wished to assume. I could obviously tell they weren’t, but that’s because they weren’t actors. Actors assume through the internal. Or do they really? The show reminded me of those witches in that movie, The Craft. Three of the girls are teased by qualities that make them non-human. They allow external forces to infiltrate their internal. It is because they praise the defining quality of the external, which forces them to act out against it. As witches, they search for the power within objects. These objects act as symbols to charge their emotions, but do they really? Emotions come from the internal. These girls are reliant upon the external to heal their internal. The internal must hold its own power though. The natural witch’s power comes from within. She understands the Balance: we must not let the external sit on ourselves; we must take things in and use them to create. We must Invoke the Spirit: take all of the fragments existing outside of ourselves and breathe them in. See them in you. Merge them with yourself, and then choose to use them.10 Get outside of yourself. See yourself in others, then enter yourself. The mirror is external. We see ourselves in the mirror. Is this the process of using the external to see the internal? The mirror is broken. Actually, it’s flat. The external world is fractured. It defines in static. The internal consciousness exercises choice, but it must fully understand and accept this fragmented state in order to use choice. Truly admit your existence as fragmented. The search will end for an external solution (there is no absolute) to make you “whole.”

The external is the internal. Their relationship is symbiotic. The internal must mimic the motion of the external. The external’s motion was birthed from the internal. The internal existed as an external before it opened. It learned to contain by being contained. We come from the void.

Society loves myth. The myth dresses the form with set function. It defines what is natural. It disregards potential in the void.11 The void knows neither natural nor

8 The witch coven, a place where witches gathered (usually 13*), sharing the idea that each is connected by internal and external matters; sharing our difficulties to give us more power is synonymous with the idea of Feminism *A cyborgian number, close to human and also non-human. It is a number associated with evil. It exists as a fragment, can not be broken down 9 This is the idea of a “Cyborg” 10 The “use” can remain internal to effect responses to the external 11 We define what is normal by biological function and attach it to form. The void has no form, so it’s potential functions are endless.

unnatural. Its function is pleasure in process.12 In the void, process builds. The solid form disperses, splintering fragments. Fragments are partial, but they find connections in the void.13 Fragments flux in the void.

Spinning inside, venom writhes. It oozes the puss.14 Fluid runs. Drinking never ceases. The void swells venom. Venom licks. It titillates silently. The venom’s dance is slow. It’s potency visceral. Venom sweats. External deems static.15 Inside, it pulsates. The toxic end is sliced from its source.16 The venom regenerates. Dreaming17, it pillows the void. The Venomist regards her power.

12 Take “pleasure” out of ontology of self: the idea of sex as reproduction. Put pleasure into epistemology: the pleasure in creating (then it could be about the event, or action of sex) 13 The seriality of being, fragments all share a common origin 14 i.e. pussy 15 It paralyses its predators 16 Cutting off the umbilical chord, signifying a separation of baby from mother 17 A state of mental action