Sick but not down
I'm sick & my ear is crusty & throbbing.
I want to rip out my throat & stuff the hole full of leeches soaked in chamomile. I think i may have gotten too into the voice of the narrator of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It's been a really easy read, but his images are so violent. Not just because they're descriptive & jarring, but also because it seems that whenever the character doesn't have anything to say, he explicates brutality toward even slight offenders. It's an awfully pretentious piece of writing (not sure if it's just the character) but i am still curious 119 pages into it, so i'll probably finish it this week. The beginning features descriptions of a woman dying of cancer & that was so fleshy, painful; it reminded me of Aunt Mary's slow death & made me queasy. I think i might still be reading because of that grip. Remember.
These are some of my favorite lines thusfar:
p14 "...break them over my knee, their spines like dowels of balsa."
p27 "Also when that one woman, the one with bone cancer, locked herself in the house & burned it down."
p39 "She'd had five wigs, at least, over a number of years, all of them sad in the way wigs are sad."
**the notion of being "owed" after tragedy & trauma
p55 "...we lose weeks like buttons, like pencils."
p55 "...as the Civic crashed into the ocean's mulchy glass..."
p122 "I try not to think of the antiques--the mahogany bookshelf, scratched, or the circular table with the nicks in it, the needlepoint-covered chair with the cracked leg. I want to save everything and preserve all this but also want it all gone--can't decide what's more romantic, preservation or decay. Wouldn't it be something to burn it all? Throw it all in the street?"
But i refuse to be sick. Today i peeled back a portion of broken wall & yelled whispers to fill it. I sealed it with mesh & as much compound as i could scrape together, but i think i put too much in, the words & loves seeping out from behind the cracks, their lushness keeping the project from drying. I'll leave them there to dry out, to run slowly out of air. When i see them again, they will be parched but forgiving & i will either add more to them, or lick them away with salt, sand them smooth with grainy memories.
Today someone asked me, "Are you a boy?". I couldn't really get past the rudeness of the question. I think i replied, "I don't care."
Tomorrow i will lay in bed & draw stars on the ceiling just to count them.
I want to rip out my throat & stuff the hole full of leeches soaked in chamomile. I think i may have gotten too into the voice of the narrator of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It's been a really easy read, but his images are so violent. Not just because they're descriptive & jarring, but also because it seems that whenever the character doesn't have anything to say, he explicates brutality toward even slight offenders. It's an awfully pretentious piece of writing (not sure if it's just the character) but i am still curious 119 pages into it, so i'll probably finish it this week. The beginning features descriptions of a woman dying of cancer & that was so fleshy, painful; it reminded me of Aunt Mary's slow death & made me queasy. I think i might still be reading because of that grip. Remember.
These are some of my favorite lines thusfar:
p14 "...break them over my knee, their spines like dowels of balsa."
p27 "Also when that one woman, the one with bone cancer, locked herself in the house & burned it down."
p39 "She'd had five wigs, at least, over a number of years, all of them sad in the way wigs are sad."
**the notion of being "owed" after tragedy & trauma
p55 "...we lose weeks like buttons, like pencils."
p55 "...as the Civic crashed into the ocean's mulchy glass..."
p122 "I try not to think of the antiques--the mahogany bookshelf, scratched, or the circular table with the nicks in it, the needlepoint-covered chair with the cracked leg. I want to save everything and preserve all this but also want it all gone--can't decide what's more romantic, preservation or decay. Wouldn't it be something to burn it all? Throw it all in the street?"
But i refuse to be sick. Today i peeled back a portion of broken wall & yelled whispers to fill it. I sealed it with mesh & as much compound as i could scrape together, but i think i put too much in, the words & loves seeping out from behind the cracks, their lushness keeping the project from drying. I'll leave them there to dry out, to run slowly out of air. When i see them again, they will be parched but forgiving & i will either add more to them, or lick them away with salt, sand them smooth with grainy memories.
Today someone asked me, "Are you a boy?". I couldn't really get past the rudeness of the question. I think i replied, "I don't care."
Tomorrow i will lay in bed & draw stars on the ceiling just to count them.