Contortionist: work in progress
The Contortionist.
"My parents loved very strongly. They would peer into each others' eyes for weeks at a time, during which I'd make myself busy with dolls and burying trinkets in the yard with elaborate maps and mathematical formulae that should thwart the most stalwart and dedicated treasure hunters. After placing doll sentinels, I'd unearth maps I'd made a year before and try to decipher them, all the while dodging dolls. The cyphers got more elaborate and my self induced forgetfulness more entrenched till I finally outwitted the year younger me and find the baubles and stupid little notes I'd hidden from myself.
I'd play at these things and wander back inside to find them still imersed in each others' gaze. I'd fall asleep in the dining room (under the table), so that I wouldn't miss a meal if they happened to come out of their love-trance. I awoke to pain. Mostly in my stomach, but also in my ears a little, and the bright light of morning is something I always hated. Something about the outside world, it's sounds and intrusive lights injected directly into my psyche caused me pain. I worried that they must hurt much worse than I and might starve, so I made them sandwiches and brought them plates and fed them. They loved each other so much, but I loved them very much also. They'd wake up eventually and go back to work and talk and teach and everything parents are supposed to do.
Children are naive, but they are less powerful than adults.
My parents would dare each other to prove their love. It started with just cutting my hair. A harmless infraction upon a life outside of their love. I was happy to be included. But as games of love tend to go, they became accustomed (desensitized) to harmless performance, they demanded more symbols of infatuation.
They needed to prove to one another that nothing, not even their love child meant as much as each others' love. It changed suddenly. My mother was drunk, I think, she demanded an apology from Herzog (my father) and broke something, a plate maybe, on the wall over his work bench. I never knew what they fought about, it was just loud and screeching and I wanted it to stop. My father must have felt the same way, he dragged me out of my room and cut off my index finger, crying (him. Not me). He gave it to my mother on a purple pillow and promised that he would do anything for her. It was the first amazing show of devotion I have ever seen. Of course she forgave him imediately and while they made love I silently stole my finger back.
You get used to pain if it means that you are involved in love, you just do it. Love is great. You Grit your teeth and let them remove your forearms. You grit your teeth even while they are bloodily removed because you are a part of something greater. Love is the most important thing in the world (the universe) and they couldn't love each other without me and I was so special to them. I was special to love. I was close to 17 years old when they decapitated me. It was a very startling sensation - at first- The intensity of their love was so soothing and silent and otherworldly. I felt a cool calm and a retreat into pure waves of naive love for what seemed like weeks. I didn't have sensation of my body, needs like eating or breathing, just being and being one and nothing with everything (I know that doesn't make much sense, but you have to believe that it was perfection). I attributed this night of simple beauty with the outside forces of my parents longing and magical attraction. Something was special about them, they were gods locked in an ever widening circle of perfection, and I was a part of it. I was happy.
I awoke half assembled. My parts, out of an intuition physically learned over years of avulsion and reassemblage, had met themselves and retraced their steps. Hansel and Gretel were backtracking the dislocation of my body through bloody breadcrumbs and tendons. I awoke to a terrible pain. I needed breath again, I needed to eat, I saw my mother's arm dangling off the side of our sofa from under a blanket and my imediate assumption was that she had been torn apart and was now feeling the waves of beauty and perfect nothingness that I had just returned from. But I noticed the blankets moving over the waves of her effortless contented tidal breath. The loud rushing of a city awakening dinned outside and scraped the inside of my skull till my eyes oozed what I thought was blood. It should only be blood. My life essence struggling to get away from burning scars as my joints became reaccustomed to their sockets, trying to leave my body again to be a part of pure love and the river of the world. To be nothing again. My body should long to be torn apart again, I was a symbol of love and important and I needed to get away from this noise and light and angry hunger. I should long to be a part of love and apart, nothing again.
But I was just crying. Simple, salty stupid tears. I couldn't ever be that good again. The world is - I was - just simple. Creatures trying to survive and eat and retain a little joy for a moment or two. Moving ignorantly and randomly. But I tried to cling to that being nothing even as the world rushed back to me. That feeling was empty but so complex, everything filtered down to a nub, a pure unit of... not even life... just being. Thought. Concept. But the more I thought about it, the more I drifted away from it. Away and toward the ruinous knowledge that my parents' love didn't involve me at all. They scarcely knew I existed. Maybe they didn't know I existed in any real sense, anyway.
I left home with my parents dozing happily. I wanted to see what was out there that they had seen, that I was waiting for them to show me for so long. The neighbors' houses were mostly deserted and falling apart. The road was uneven and led directly to Hedgeworm's Carnival. All the rides were going at full pace but completely empty. The lights flashed and carnies shouted at no one at all. There was no one in it but me. I self consciously rode a ride or two before Hedgeworm approached me.
'My dear, I was beginning to think you'd never emancipate yourself. You know, you don't even have a name yet? What should we put on your marquis?'
Now I'm the contortionist and I get to feel complete only when I'm totally dissembled in the big ring. I don't hear the crowds, I don't feel hunger I don't smell the stale popcorn or sweat or hephalump shit. I sense nothing and everything. It is moments of bliss that I live the rest of my life for."
In the dark, over the quiet rythmic beats of the train cars, Phenson turned to her and said "I think you and I have something in common."
"My parents loved very strongly. They would peer into each others' eyes for weeks at a time, during which I'd make myself busy with dolls and burying trinkets in the yard with elaborate maps and mathematical formulae that should thwart the most stalwart and dedicated treasure hunters. After placing doll sentinels, I'd unearth maps I'd made a year before and try to decipher them, all the while dodging dolls. The cyphers got more elaborate and my self induced forgetfulness more entrenched till I finally outwitted the year younger me and find the baubles and stupid little notes I'd hidden from myself.
I'd play at these things and wander back inside to find them still imersed in each others' gaze. I'd fall asleep in the dining room (under the table), so that I wouldn't miss a meal if they happened to come out of their love-trance. I awoke to pain. Mostly in my stomach, but also in my ears a little, and the bright light of morning is something I always hated. Something about the outside world, it's sounds and intrusive lights injected directly into my psyche caused me pain. I worried that they must hurt much worse than I and might starve, so I made them sandwiches and brought them plates and fed them. They loved each other so much, but I loved them very much also. They'd wake up eventually and go back to work and talk and teach and everything parents are supposed to do.
Children are naive, but they are less powerful than adults.
My parents would dare each other to prove their love. It started with just cutting my hair. A harmless infraction upon a life outside of their love. I was happy to be included. But as games of love tend to go, they became accustomed (desensitized) to harmless performance, they demanded more symbols of infatuation.
They needed to prove to one another that nothing, not even their love child meant as much as each others' love. It changed suddenly. My mother was drunk, I think, she demanded an apology from Herzog (my father) and broke something, a plate maybe, on the wall over his work bench. I never knew what they fought about, it was just loud and screeching and I wanted it to stop. My father must have felt the same way, he dragged me out of my room and cut off my index finger, crying (him. Not me). He gave it to my mother on a purple pillow and promised that he would do anything for her. It was the first amazing show of devotion I have ever seen. Of course she forgave him imediately and while they made love I silently stole my finger back.
You get used to pain if it means that you are involved in love, you just do it. Love is great. You Grit your teeth and let them remove your forearms. You grit your teeth even while they are bloodily removed because you are a part of something greater. Love is the most important thing in the world (the universe) and they couldn't love each other without me and I was so special to them. I was special to love. I was close to 17 years old when they decapitated me. It was a very startling sensation - at first- The intensity of their love was so soothing and silent and otherworldly. I felt a cool calm and a retreat into pure waves of naive love for what seemed like weeks. I didn't have sensation of my body, needs like eating or breathing, just being and being one and nothing with everything (I know that doesn't make much sense, but you have to believe that it was perfection). I attributed this night of simple beauty with the outside forces of my parents longing and magical attraction. Something was special about them, they were gods locked in an ever widening circle of perfection, and I was a part of it. I was happy.
I awoke half assembled. My parts, out of an intuition physically learned over years of avulsion and reassemblage, had met themselves and retraced their steps. Hansel and Gretel were backtracking the dislocation of my body through bloody breadcrumbs and tendons. I awoke to a terrible pain. I needed breath again, I needed to eat, I saw my mother's arm dangling off the side of our sofa from under a blanket and my imediate assumption was that she had been torn apart and was now feeling the waves of beauty and perfect nothingness that I had just returned from. But I noticed the blankets moving over the waves of her effortless contented tidal breath. The loud rushing of a city awakening dinned outside and scraped the inside of my skull till my eyes oozed what I thought was blood. It should only be blood. My life essence struggling to get away from burning scars as my joints became reaccustomed to their sockets, trying to leave my body again to be a part of pure love and the river of the world. To be nothing again. My body should long to be torn apart again, I was a symbol of love and important and I needed to get away from this noise and light and angry hunger. I should long to be a part of love and apart, nothing again.
But I was just crying. Simple, salty stupid tears. I couldn't ever be that good again. The world is - I was - just simple. Creatures trying to survive and eat and retain a little joy for a moment or two. Moving ignorantly and randomly. But I tried to cling to that being nothing even as the world rushed back to me. That feeling was empty but so complex, everything filtered down to a nub, a pure unit of... not even life... just being. Thought. Concept. But the more I thought about it, the more I drifted away from it. Away and toward the ruinous knowledge that my parents' love didn't involve me at all. They scarcely knew I existed. Maybe they didn't know I existed in any real sense, anyway.
I left home with my parents dozing happily. I wanted to see what was out there that they had seen, that I was waiting for them to show me for so long. The neighbors' houses were mostly deserted and falling apart. The road was uneven and led directly to Hedgeworm's Carnival. All the rides were going at full pace but completely empty. The lights flashed and carnies shouted at no one at all. There was no one in it but me. I self consciously rode a ride or two before Hedgeworm approached me.
'My dear, I was beginning to think you'd never emancipate yourself. You know, you don't even have a name yet? What should we put on your marquis?'
Now I'm the contortionist and I get to feel complete only when I'm totally dissembled in the big ring. I don't hear the crowds, I don't feel hunger I don't smell the stale popcorn or sweat or hephalump shit. I sense nothing and everything. It is moments of bliss that I live the rest of my life for."
In the dark, over the quiet rythmic beats of the train cars, Phenson turned to her and said "I think you and I have something in common."