ON KATE ZAMBRENO’S GREEN GIRL, HBO’S GIRLS, AND KENNETH ANGER’S PUCE MOMENT

a while ago I was on spring break in new orleans and on the plane ride there I started reading green girl by kate zambreno. somewhere on the book someone compares it to the bell jar and I have to admit I thought, nothing can be like the bell jar, although I admired the aspiration, having written for a summer reading assignment for my 10^th grade honors literature class a continuation of the bell jar which consisted primarily of graphic descriptions of electroshock therapy.

the thing about the bell jar and the thing about green girl and also the pilot of the new hbo series girls and also kenneth anger’s film puce moment, which joyelle mcsweeney assigned for homework in what is going to be my last creative writing workshop ever, is that they are containers themselves for the specific dis-organized space of the one constant moment of being-a-girl.

this is a particular variety of genius, what I am going to call genius because it is a moment of endless and ultimate potential for the generation of an entity comprised entirely of the infinite ability to be Great, is one that can never be realized or attained – it has to be a being which is always a becoming. stein talks about this when she talks about the continuous present and how that is the substance of which masterpieces are made.

 

I was watching puce moment in my bed on my laptop with all of its shimmering dresses and thinking about how this is one of the last times it will be my job to sit in bed watching an experimental short film and think about it; just think.

 

two days ago I read an article about girls and it was interesting so I decided to watch the pilot since it was on the internet, and I saw that two of the girls were the same two girls from this movie tiny furniture which my netflix recommended to me a few months ago and which I did not totally love but it made an impression, particularly the girls. I was watching girls and drinking a pre-yoga coconut water which I had ordered in bulk from amazon.com because I cannot get the same brand of coconut water that I drink in new york in south bend and watching these girls buying smart water and luna bars and listening to mgmt with tao lin books on their bookshelves, and I thought ew that’s gross and I have totally been that girl.

 

I felt that same ewthat’sgross feeling pretty constantly throughout the entirety of green girl which is why I kept reading it. I could be in it, and it felt for me, as though it felt for me, and was trying to put me out of my misery via a radical series of electroshock shame, and in the story the green girl likes that constant death it’s how they stay alive. eventually time is all of a shade, and it is a whole moment which takes years, decades, and then one day, suddenly, I imagine, it is over. and then you are not a girl you are something else that was a girl once. and that is a moment.

today I went shopping for a suit and the only one I could find in my size was hot pink. I am very girl-sized. my girl-sized-ness is likely to be problematic as I search for employment not in a place like japan where girliness is a hirable quality but in new york city where I do not want to be just a girl in the city although I am certainly going to be one.

my yoga teachers often say when you’re most stressed, most uncertain, take a long moment just after you breathe, before you exhale, and you will become calm and singular and expand; grow.