fiction-nonfiction, punctuation-depunctuation, enchantment-disenchantment
"Once he and I were children. Before this happened." - FLB
A quotation cross-section of my current situation:
1. " I spend half my time making fakecappuccinos for art students, the other half selling art jewelry and reproductions of Rothkos and Rockwells to rich people, and sporadically suck up to the museum director in hopes of getting hooked up with an internship. The girl I work with is a professional amazing cake decorator artist, I get free coffee and get more than minimum wage to pass my day around moderately important works of art. Basically, I couldn't be happier, even though I'm terrible at making cappuccinos and I still haven't regained my social skills." - me
2. "An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's." - Zooey Glass
3. "But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song." -FLB
4. "Beauty loved him more than anything, her Beast boy, but, secretly, sometimes, she wished that he would have remained a Beast." - FLB
5. "I loved him the way it feels when you get hot wax on the inside of your wrist and while it's burning, just as sudden, it's a cool thick skin. Like it tastes to eat sweet snow, above the daffodil bulbs--not that I've ever found it, but clean snow that melts to nothing on the heat of your tongue so that you aren't even sure if it was ever there. I loved him like spaniel joy at a scent in the grass--riveted, lost. I loved him so much that it felt as if it had to be taken away from me at any moment, changed--how could something like that be allowed to exist on this earth?" - FLB
6. "I watched him light a cigarette, holding it in his hand with the fingerless mittens, cupping the flame, protecting it, handing it to me, lighting another for himself. He said he thought smoking was a primitive reflex to the cold--like building fires. The cold inside, too. Our boots crunched through thin sheets of ice. I thought that if I were still crying my tears would freeze and I could give them to him--icicles to suck on. But he needed warming, to be kissed with the fire of a thousand cigarettes." - FLB
7. "I cried at night, sometimes, after we had made the sheets so hot I was afraid they would stick to our skin like melted wax. He told me over and over again, The songs are for you, you are the girl in the songs, you are all I think about when I pull you into the vortex of our bodies. I never really believed him." - FLB
8. "I could smell the odor of the raw wood, feel the clutch of his fingers, and we burst into flame like an oilfat chaparral in oleander time." - Janet Fitch
9. "Then he was kneeling in front of me, his arms around my hips, kissing my belly, my thighs, his hands on my bare bottom, fingers in the silky wetness between my legs, tasting me there. My smell on his mouth as I knelt down with him, ran my hands over his body, opened his clothes, felt for him, hard, larger than I'd thought it would be. And I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted." - Janet Fitch
10. "If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one's own universe, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. Three cheers for Eve." - Janet Fitch
I can't tell what role any of these words are playing in my life right now. They are a mosaic of things that are happening and things I wish were happening and I'm trying to map out a canvas to explain my enchantment-disenchantment fluctuations right now. It's a cross-section of my proverbial head. I am reminded of walking under the bridges of Owosso with Ashley and Tyler, and seeing where she had painted half of a face. I asked her why she painted the face at the end of the concrete slab, knowing full well it was the quasi-artist trick to cover up lack of confidence in symmetry, but I asked anyway. I told her she should have made it a cross-section, and on the perpendicular side drawn the inside of her head, her brain. She said, "um, like I feel like it?" and that always hurts me. People flaunting creativity but putting none of themselves into it. My heart broke a little, and I always try to cover it up with that group. I said, "psh, I'm just more creative than you, obviously." Then they called me stupid.
So that is how I feel.
And the one thing I can say for myself, the one thing I know...if you had asked me earlier, yeah, I probably would have said "I have absolutely no skill-set, I am good at nothing." This is true, this is true, but it is not so concrete. The one concrete thing I can say for myself is that I live and breathe and feed and breed off of connection. I need people, I need closeness, exposure of soul, love, touch, and that bond that I can snatch in flash-bulb moments so well (maybe I am good at something!). Flashbulb moments are few and far between, and I don't have enough people willing to commit. If you give your being to me, I will repay you in full. I am ever-eager to rip out my soul and wrap it in a bow, give it as a gift. And, on that note, a final few notes:
"All that I've got, and all that I need, I tie in a knot and I lay at your feet." - Joanna Newsom
"I would have ridden on a reindeer or the back of a bird, I would have gone to the North Pole and I would have woven a blanket out of the threats of my body. I would have ripped out my hair and had implanted a wig of long silver blond strands, cut my body and sewn on whole new parts. I would have flayed my skin to find a more perfect whiteness beneath. I would have given him my eyes or my heart so that I could live in him, lying in her arms. At least then I could be close to him. These are things of stories and I couldn't do any of them." - FLB
A quotation cross-section of my current situation:
1. " I spend half my time making fakecappuccinos for art students, the other half selling art jewelry and reproductions of Rothkos and Rockwells to rich people, and sporadically suck up to the museum director in hopes of getting hooked up with an internship. The girl I work with is a professional amazing cake decorator artist, I get free coffee and get more than minimum wage to pass my day around moderately important works of art. Basically, I couldn't be happier, even though I'm terrible at making cappuccinos and I still haven't regained my social skills." - me
2. "An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's." - Zooey Glass
3. "But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song." -FLB
4. "Beauty loved him more than anything, her Beast boy, but, secretly, sometimes, she wished that he would have remained a Beast." - FLB
5. "I loved him the way it feels when you get hot wax on the inside of your wrist and while it's burning, just as sudden, it's a cool thick skin. Like it tastes to eat sweet snow, above the daffodil bulbs--not that I've ever found it, but clean snow that melts to nothing on the heat of your tongue so that you aren't even sure if it was ever there. I loved him like spaniel joy at a scent in the grass--riveted, lost. I loved him so much that it felt as if it had to be taken away from me at any moment, changed--how could something like that be allowed to exist on this earth?" - FLB
6. "I watched him light a cigarette, holding it in his hand with the fingerless mittens, cupping the flame, protecting it, handing it to me, lighting another for himself. He said he thought smoking was a primitive reflex to the cold--like building fires. The cold inside, too. Our boots crunched through thin sheets of ice. I thought that if I were still crying my tears would freeze and I could give them to him--icicles to suck on. But he needed warming, to be kissed with the fire of a thousand cigarettes." - FLB
7. "I cried at night, sometimes, after we had made the sheets so hot I was afraid they would stick to our skin like melted wax. He told me over and over again, The songs are for you, you are the girl in the songs, you are all I think about when I pull you into the vortex of our bodies. I never really believed him." - FLB
8. "I could smell the odor of the raw wood, feel the clutch of his fingers, and we burst into flame like an oilfat chaparral in oleander time." - Janet Fitch
9. "Then he was kneeling in front of me, his arms around my hips, kissing my belly, my thighs, his hands on my bare bottom, fingers in the silky wetness between my legs, tasting me there. My smell on his mouth as I knelt down with him, ran my hands over his body, opened his clothes, felt for him, hard, larger than I'd thought it would be. And I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted." - Janet Fitch
10. "If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one's own universe, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. Three cheers for Eve." - Janet Fitch
I can't tell what role any of these words are playing in my life right now. They are a mosaic of things that are happening and things I wish were happening and I'm trying to map out a canvas to explain my enchantment-disenchantment fluctuations right now. It's a cross-section of my proverbial head. I am reminded of walking under the bridges of Owosso with Ashley and Tyler, and seeing where she had painted half of a face. I asked her why she painted the face at the end of the concrete slab, knowing full well it was the quasi-artist trick to cover up lack of confidence in symmetry, but I asked anyway. I told her she should have made it a cross-section, and on the perpendicular side drawn the inside of her head, her brain. She said, "um, like I feel like it?" and that always hurts me. People flaunting creativity but putting none of themselves into it. My heart broke a little, and I always try to cover it up with that group. I said, "psh, I'm just more creative than you, obviously." Then they called me stupid.
So that is how I feel.
And the one thing I can say for myself, the one thing I know...if you had asked me earlier, yeah, I probably would have said "I have absolutely no skill-set, I am good at nothing." This is true, this is true, but it is not so concrete. The one concrete thing I can say for myself is that I live and breathe and feed and breed off of connection. I need people, I need closeness, exposure of soul, love, touch, and that bond that I can snatch in flash-bulb moments so well (maybe I am good at something!). Flashbulb moments are few and far between, and I don't have enough people willing to commit. If you give your being to me, I will repay you in full. I am ever-eager to rip out my soul and wrap it in a bow, give it as a gift. And, on that note, a final few notes:
"All that I've got, and all that I need, I tie in a knot and I lay at your feet." - Joanna Newsom
"I would have ridden on a reindeer or the back of a bird, I would have gone to the North Pole and I would have woven a blanket out of the threats of my body. I would have ripped out my hair and had implanted a wig of long silver blond strands, cut my body and sewn on whole new parts. I would have flayed my skin to find a more perfect whiteness beneath. I would have given him my eyes or my heart so that I could live in him, lying in her arms. At least then I could be close to him. These are things of stories and I couldn't do any of them." - FLB