Why is it that the greatest pleasure often hurts? Are things so sloppy deep inside that I can’t pull the joy apart from the agony, so I have to settle with getting both at once? Maybe the joy is so powerful that I will take any amount of pain with it, as long as I can have that joy. Allan deSouza suggests that jouissance is an excess of pleasure that is so great it can only be experienced as pain. I wonder if this has something to do with the intense joy felt by St. Teresa of Avila during her raptures?

I realize that above I talk about disgust and seduction, as well as pleasure and pain. I think that all of these intense feelings live together in the same place.

I’m trying to conjure up impure, mixed up feelings using pictures and soft sculptures (more accurately stuffed toys). I’m picking out images that elicit mixed feelings for me. My pictures often reference fashion, because fashion is a way of trying to wrap up all those messy things that live inside, a way of wrapping up the body’s sickly, desiring chaos in desirable glamor. The soft toys are supposed to give you conflicted feelings, too, but through touching them instead of just looking. Many are dirty, but comfortable like an old toy. They are shaped like body parts and organs, but feel like teddy bears.