MEXICO trip
I've been meaning to post an entry about my trip to Mexico, but I've been so busy with school that I've barely had time to digest it. I still don't have time, but I'm just apathetic enough not to care about work right now, and so I will write. Everything is in directives.
BUSINESS REPREHENSITIVE
Written by: SHEILA WILSON
[SHEILA is having a PICNIC by the ocean in CANCUN, MEXICO. The PICNIC is composed mostly of squid and soggy gelato. She sits in a sun-eaten world, back against a water-eaten wall, with the wind eating the sweat off her body, eating.]
[SHEILA sighs, stands up, and walks back to the RESORT reluctantly. She decides that she will look at everyone's teeth when they are talking in order to make the evening more interesting. You can tell a lot about a person by teeth, but she will not get into that now, because her feet are being burned by the beach, and she has bigger things to worry about. The GROUND is carnivorous. Her feet sink into the sand like long thin knives.]
[CUT to a shot of the very white teeth of a small MEXICAN GIRL with flaming coffee pouring between the cups in her hands. ZOOM OUT slowly]
[SHEILA wants to
slide wet finger along
dry teeth curve
set them
singing like a wineglass]
[CUT to teeth of BUSINESS MAN #1 at dinner who sits across from SHEILA.]
BUSINESS MAN #1: Are you wearing a bra?
SHEILA: Are you wearing a bra?
[There is uncomfortable silence until he suddenly smiles at SHEILA like his teeth have smiles. And those smiles have teeth.]
[A WAITRESS appears. She has small teeth, and obvious braces that are blue and pink. Her mouth is like a spiral-ringed notebook. As if she glued a slinky to each tooth, springs jumping out and dangling along with every lisped word. SHEILA knows that in the future, this girl will smile and be glad for her straight teeth and will not be sure if she is glad.]
[After dinner, SHEILA walks along the beach. It is dark and the waves are loud, but she is wearing headphones and listening to BRIGHT EYES and SUFJAN STEVENS, listening only to prerecorded and predictable sound. She looks at the sky and remembers building a planetary diagram in the third grade.]
[FLASHBACK to SHEILA sitting on the floor with Venus in her lap, her jeans gummy with glue. VENUS curses her. She gnaws on the rings of Saturn.]
[The next MORNING, SHEILA is in meetings, and draws faces on her nails with a pen. She buries the dead in her hands and imagines that their faces float up in her fingerbones, pressing cold feet to her knuckles and unbending their knees to push out in a slow rebirth through her fingernails. She is aware of dead things growing]
[SHEILA goes to Tulum and skulks along the ropes that restrict the temples, gathering every stone small enough to eat. THE ADOLESCENT BOY that has been stalking her for the past three days gets an erection when he follows her into the water, but SHEILA pretends she does not notice. SHEILA carries the rocks to the beach to write "HAVE FAITH" on the sand, but she runs out of rocks and time after “HA”.]
[SHEILA is already sunburned and upon returning to the resort she can see that outside on the beaches people are turning like rotisserie bodies.]
BUSINESS MAN #1: You look red.
SHEILA: Yes, I got some sun.
BUSINESS MAN #1: Looks like some sun got you.
[SHEILA feels irrationally frightened and does not know what to say, so she records this interaction in her business ledger, and eats FOUR REASONABLY SWEET STRAWBERRIES before tripping on her flip flops down two stairs.]
[That EVENING, SHEILA shakes the hands of SEVEN STRANGERS whose fingers are tiny nets that hold her still. SHEILA thinks WIFE #3 is wearing too much blush. Everyone discusses the BULLFIGHT, the milky spit of the BULL, the atrocity of financing such an act for tourists. SHEILA watches the blush like a fine powder of blood eating into her cheek. SHEILA wants to stand up and walk away, but remembers how TELLER, the physicist, began wearing large shoes when he was researching the atom. After discovering that there were more spaces between molecules than there were actual molecules in the world that made things up, he was afraid he would fall through the floor. SHEILA's long thin knife sinks into her steak, and she chews politely with her mouth closed while her narrow high heels keep her in her place. At the dinner table, THE MEN get so insanely drunk it is like a superpower.]
[When SHEILA returns to her room, the bed is turned down. A mint is on her pillow. Her TOWEL is folded in such a way that it looks like a BUTTERFLY. Sheila considers the WORM floating in her bottle of complimentary tequila, and then shakes out the TOWEL so that it is no longer a BUTTERFLY and wraps it around her shoulders. While holding the WORM and the BUTTERFLY, SHEILA discovers that a body becomes what you use it for. She impulsively grasps her own heel with her hand and shakes it out before realizing the full implications of this.]
[Thousands of years older, SHEILA crawls out of the ocean and her skin is like bath-soaked bread.]
BUSINESS REPREHENSITIVE
Written by: SHEILA WILSON
[SHEILA is having a PICNIC by the ocean in CANCUN, MEXICO. The PICNIC is composed mostly of squid and soggy gelato. She sits in a sun-eaten world, back against a water-eaten wall, with the wind eating the sweat off her body, eating.]
[SHEILA sighs, stands up, and walks back to the RESORT reluctantly. She decides that she will look at everyone's teeth when they are talking in order to make the evening more interesting. You can tell a lot about a person by teeth, but she will not get into that now, because her feet are being burned by the beach, and she has bigger things to worry about. The GROUND is carnivorous. Her feet sink into the sand like long thin knives.]
[CUT to a shot of the very white teeth of a small MEXICAN GIRL with flaming coffee pouring between the cups in her hands. ZOOM OUT slowly]
[SHEILA wants to
slide wet finger along
dry teeth curve
set them
singing like a wineglass]
[CUT to teeth of BUSINESS MAN #1 at dinner who sits across from SHEILA.]
BUSINESS MAN #1: Are you wearing a bra?
SHEILA: Are you wearing a bra?
[There is uncomfortable silence until he suddenly smiles at SHEILA like his teeth have smiles. And those smiles have teeth.]
[A WAITRESS appears. She has small teeth, and obvious braces that are blue and pink. Her mouth is like a spiral-ringed notebook. As if she glued a slinky to each tooth, springs jumping out and dangling along with every lisped word. SHEILA knows that in the future, this girl will smile and be glad for her straight teeth and will not be sure if she is glad.]
[After dinner, SHEILA walks along the beach. It is dark and the waves are loud, but she is wearing headphones and listening to BRIGHT EYES and SUFJAN STEVENS, listening only to prerecorded and predictable sound. She looks at the sky and remembers building a planetary diagram in the third grade.]
[FLASHBACK to SHEILA sitting on the floor with Venus in her lap, her jeans gummy with glue. VENUS curses her. She gnaws on the rings of Saturn.]
[The next MORNING, SHEILA is in meetings, and draws faces on her nails with a pen. She buries the dead in her hands and imagines that their faces float up in her fingerbones, pressing cold feet to her knuckles and unbending their knees to push out in a slow rebirth through her fingernails. She is aware of dead things growing]
[SHEILA goes to Tulum and skulks along the ropes that restrict the temples, gathering every stone small enough to eat. THE ADOLESCENT BOY that has been stalking her for the past three days gets an erection when he follows her into the water, but SHEILA pretends she does not notice. SHEILA carries the rocks to the beach to write "HAVE FAITH" on the sand, but she runs out of rocks and time after “HA”.]
[SHEILA is already sunburned and upon returning to the resort she can see that outside on the beaches people are turning like rotisserie bodies.]
BUSINESS MAN #1: You look red.
SHEILA: Yes, I got some sun.
BUSINESS MAN #1: Looks like some sun got you.
[SHEILA feels irrationally frightened and does not know what to say, so she records this interaction in her business ledger, and eats FOUR REASONABLY SWEET STRAWBERRIES before tripping on her flip flops down two stairs.]
[That EVENING, SHEILA shakes the hands of SEVEN STRANGERS whose fingers are tiny nets that hold her still. SHEILA thinks WIFE #3 is wearing too much blush. Everyone discusses the BULLFIGHT, the milky spit of the BULL, the atrocity of financing such an act for tourists. SHEILA watches the blush like a fine powder of blood eating into her cheek. SHEILA wants to stand up and walk away, but remembers how TELLER, the physicist, began wearing large shoes when he was researching the atom. After discovering that there were more spaces between molecules than there were actual molecules in the world that made things up, he was afraid he would fall through the floor. SHEILA's long thin knife sinks into her steak, and she chews politely with her mouth closed while her narrow high heels keep her in her place. At the dinner table, THE MEN get so insanely drunk it is like a superpower.]
[When SHEILA returns to her room, the bed is turned down. A mint is on her pillow. Her TOWEL is folded in such a way that it looks like a BUTTERFLY. Sheila considers the WORM floating in her bottle of complimentary tequila, and then shakes out the TOWEL so that it is no longer a BUTTERFLY and wraps it around her shoulders. While holding the WORM and the BUTTERFLY, SHEILA discovers that a body becomes what you use it for. She impulsively grasps her own heel with her hand and shakes it out before realizing the full implications of this.]
[Thousands of years older, SHEILA crawls out of the ocean and her skin is like bath-soaked bread.]