Monday, Aug. 11, 2003 | 2:05 AM

The in-betwixt and between nature of my current existence coupled with the loathsome oppressive heat wave we�re experiencing makes me feel like the metaphysical equivalent of a hot dog slowly roasting over the fires of hell.

I look around my apartment and there�s so much stuff. Part of me wishes that a flood or fire would take this building out and I could start anew, unencumbered by objects. I have been slowly making headway in getting rid of things-- giving them away, selling them. But there are still so many things to be cast off and I wish I didn�t have the responsibility of dealing with them. How on earth did I acquire all of these shapes and colors and textures that feel real enough but are less real than what�s inside my own head? They haven�t any use other than to be constantly underfoot and in the way.

Back when I convinced myself that I was some kind of yuppy and time and energy were devoted to the acquiring of possessions (oh not just things but people�I treated people like things too) I wanted to set up a stage and scenery for myself in which o act out some safe house wifey neurosis. I replaced VERBS with NOUNS and now I am left with the shell of their various meanings. NOUNS are permanent�fixed in time and space. VERBS are experience. They move. They are unencumbered. That is what I want. Fuck all these magnets and rugs and barware. I want to eat off paper plates on a bare wooden floor and drink vodka out of plastic cups. I want to sleep on a mattress with no sheets or blankets. I want white walls so that I can project my thoughts on to them and create new paintings in my head every day. I want one pair of jeans and one bra (but make it a sexy black lace bra if you please.) I want millions of books, but when I�m done reading them I want to give them away to beggars on the street. I want to say, �HERE, here are some words for you to swallow like seeds and in your stomach they will blossom and grow into a beanstalk you can climb up and out of yourself and then you won�t be hungry anymore.�

I am tired of the illusions that THINGS represent. The illusion of joy that a day of shopping would provide. To hunt through a store for an item�an antique, that would suggest to the outside world the sort of person I would like to be thought of if anyone should deign to visit my house for a party. FUCK THAT. I am the sort of person I would like to be. And I want the freedom to continually reinvent myself without the sullen gaze of various articles of furniture willing me to be who I was when I purchased them.

As I become more and more of myself and less and less the vacant slate I was, once upon a time waiting to be written on with other people�s chalk, I am less and less in need of the mirrors of materialism.

If it weren�t against the law, I should like to set fire to some items and toss them out the window.

Especially my sheets and blankets which I find more and more loathsome, for sentimental reasons of course.