Thoughts on an Aesthetic

Katelyn Eichwald, Untitled, oil on paper, 2011

i'm annoyed at brooklyn raw bare wood metalworking leather linen with the top button left open

which reeks of nothing but money and a bon iver fetishization of realness and utility

utility in my world is the sweat-yellow arm of the couch with a shirt draped to hide it

but i have said "fetishization" so many times this week that i'm starting to think i don't know what it means

though i am getting better at pronouncing it

i say it with bitterness like i deserve something better

a rabbit in another woman's arms

i know, some people just like to drink their whiskey like that

i'm no line of flour to the door

i have ideas about cool too and sometimes i can't get up from under them

i can't define myself against something all the time, especially an aesthetic so bloodless

and i understand that our objects have twisted and cruel origins these days and it is attractive to know what you're getting and where it came from

though as usual we want the appearance of honesty, not honesty itself, which grows darker on the edges

j. crew can make that hand-dyed wool cardigan look like my dead grandpa's, but it isn't my dead grandpa's, is it

like pain in a dream

what do i have against wealth?

oh everything

but is that ok or do i need to get over it?

it's the hatred you feel for your lover's ex

self-care, like cleaning your fingernails

nobody owes me anything

except love 

from the universe, not even from any person if they don't have it to give

art students walk into work with thick-soled boots and carhartt coats like dockworkers

but if carhartt coats weren't so stiff and uncomfortable i would wear them too

i love my dad's workbench in the back of the garage but i hate the sight of a pretty woman with premature gray hair in a 

topknot and a black silk shirt sitting at an identical workbench in a photograph

though god knows i wear enough black these days and the workbench doesn't know anything except what it is

and i bet she knows how to saw shit and that she's good at the things she does

what does she feel when she touches it? maybe she feels like a fighter

or maybe not

our target bookcases tremble

michael put them together himself

he screwed one of them on backwards

but it still holds my books

the couch i sit on crushed my mother's watch into her wrist

i think about it when i lean back on the cushions

the curtains on the window are the ugliest things i have ever laid my eyes on, they look like scars on a dirty body

do objects have integrity?

i'll kick all the things in this room with my bare foot, see what breaks

is my mother's crushed wrist worth less than my own?

the objects in her hand are her bones