(no subject)
1.
I'm caged by scrutinizing glances: measuring my bones, the notches of my spine, the angle and shadow of clavicles and rise of the neck from this froth of bone and flesh. I'm Dali's Barcelona Mannequin; hewn through by prying eyes, layer under layer of convoluted mechanism: pelvis propped by an hourglass, heart an empty box, lid hanging by a hinge squeaking with rustic agony.
A cherry wood chest with a lock, achingly empty. The lid flaps and gasps, sucking in the surrounding air during an occasional desperate breath. Sometimes it won't breathe for days, months and years and I feel nothing but hollow, a hollowness that creeps along the aorta, through the arteries and infects my skin. The tin man from Wizard of Oz, wheezing and rattling through your friendly gestures, clambering over sulphur bricks to seize emotion. Love and feelings patiently line up outside this cankerous door, tumbling in when it chokes on its own stale air. Pandora's box, Pandora's daughter, Pandora's folly: oh but hope with its tattered wings beats and beats and never escapes, collapsing strangled by the noxious fumes within.
2.
I sit spinning my spoon in a caffeinated whirlpool. In front of me lies a maths paper scrawled over in red. The giant crosses turn, bloody windmills. The fans overhead swing dangerously and carousel. I continue to stir my soy latte.
3.
When she places the book aside she makes notes in her head. She remembers that we compose our lives like music, we give it symmetry and beauty and we arrange the haphazard clutter of notes and breathe meaning into the starched formations.
She was happy when she first came here. These days, she's forgotten to let the feeling settle in. It skims over her stepping-stone nerve endings; sensory fuses mapping her skin. It's a happiness that's worth tears. It squeezes you. Between it's fingers, between its pincers. And she flaps and flaps but like camphor moths in a spiral, she settles into that comatose half-wakening beneath panes of glass.
4.
We sit in the dark cinema watching Lost in Translation. It's perfect because its beautiful, it's perfect because it's amusing and it's perfect because sometimes we all speak a different language. Everything seems so familiar in the dark softness of the movie theatre. The rapid-fire conversations that barely skim the surface. The frustration. The way we weave half-truths and implausible excuses: things that aren't seen in the light.
Like a film ripped in two, it begins with a small tear we ignored between stills of yesteryear. Irreparable now but let me help you, let me tack you onto another story.
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
6. Sixteen short films at Tropfest, a blanket and sitting on the grass in the rain.
7. My first philosophy essay being postmarked and mailed, my ego in an envelope.
8. Residing in a college for a weekend of seminars and tutes on time and causation, fatalism and determinism, the paradoxes of time travel, self, dualism and physicalism, our personal constructs and identity and whether or not a soul inhabits our flesh.
9.
To end: I would cut it out as though it were a physical organ and then wrap it in gauze. I would dip it in wax and then bury it in the scented soil beneath a large oak and there it would mould and rot. But there would definitely be a knife involved, to slice and cut and carve my emotions and sever these ties that sink hooks into our skin. Didn't you know they existed? They exist. That's what keeps us dancing like mannequins, like stilted lifeless dolls. Hooks and strings that cause me to flinch if you move. For my sake, stay still.
I would cut it out because things never seem to end. They seem to stagnate, to give off a foul odor, to cause me to wrinkle my nose and dab at moist eyes, to keep my lids closed from meeting oncoming gazes, to tense and inch backwards. It's the stagnation, you see. The minute inching toward disintegration. It's the waiting for something liberating and horrible to finally transpire. To love is to long for death. Then discard these old rags of affection and squirm, naked and convalescent, toward life.
I'm caged by scrutinizing glances: measuring my bones, the notches of my spine, the angle and shadow of clavicles and rise of the neck from this froth of bone and flesh. I'm Dali's Barcelona Mannequin; hewn through by prying eyes, layer under layer of convoluted mechanism: pelvis propped by an hourglass, heart an empty box, lid hanging by a hinge squeaking with rustic agony.
A cherry wood chest with a lock, achingly empty. The lid flaps and gasps, sucking in the surrounding air during an occasional desperate breath. Sometimes it won't breathe for days, months and years and I feel nothing but hollow, a hollowness that creeps along the aorta, through the arteries and infects my skin. The tin man from Wizard of Oz, wheezing and rattling through your friendly gestures, clambering over sulphur bricks to seize emotion. Love and feelings patiently line up outside this cankerous door, tumbling in when it chokes on its own stale air. Pandora's box, Pandora's daughter, Pandora's folly: oh but hope with its tattered wings beats and beats and never escapes, collapsing strangled by the noxious fumes within.
2.
I sit spinning my spoon in a caffeinated whirlpool. In front of me lies a maths paper scrawled over in red. The giant crosses turn, bloody windmills. The fans overhead swing dangerously and carousel. I continue to stir my soy latte.
3.
When she places the book aside she makes notes in her head. She remembers that we compose our lives like music, we give it symmetry and beauty and we arrange the haphazard clutter of notes and breathe meaning into the starched formations.
She was happy when she first came here. These days, she's forgotten to let the feeling settle in. It skims over her stepping-stone nerve endings; sensory fuses mapping her skin. It's a happiness that's worth tears. It squeezes you. Between it's fingers, between its pincers. And she flaps and flaps but like camphor moths in a spiral, she settles into that comatose half-wakening beneath panes of glass.
4.
We sit in the dark cinema watching Lost in Translation. It's perfect because its beautiful, it's perfect because it's amusing and it's perfect because sometimes we all speak a different language. Everything seems so familiar in the dark softness of the movie theatre. The rapid-fire conversations that barely skim the surface. The frustration. The way we weave half-truths and implausible excuses: things that aren't seen in the light.
Like a film ripped in two, it begins with a small tear we ignored between stills of yesteryear. Irreparable now but let me help you, let me tack you onto another story.
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
6. Sixteen short films at Tropfest, a blanket and sitting on the grass in the rain.
7. My first philosophy essay being postmarked and mailed, my ego in an envelope.
8. Residing in a college for a weekend of seminars and tutes on time and causation, fatalism and determinism, the paradoxes of time travel, self, dualism and physicalism, our personal constructs and identity and whether or not a soul inhabits our flesh.
9.
To end: I would cut it out as though it were a physical organ and then wrap it in gauze. I would dip it in wax and then bury it in the scented soil beneath a large oak and there it would mould and rot. But there would definitely be a knife involved, to slice and cut and carve my emotions and sever these ties that sink hooks into our skin. Didn't you know they existed? They exist. That's what keeps us dancing like mannequins, like stilted lifeless dolls. Hooks and strings that cause me to flinch if you move. For my sake, stay still.
I would cut it out because things never seem to end. They seem to stagnate, to give off a foul odor, to cause me to wrinkle my nose and dab at moist eyes, to keep my lids closed from meeting oncoming gazes, to tense and inch backwards. It's the stagnation, you see. The minute inching toward disintegration. It's the waiting for something liberating and horrible to finally transpire. To love is to long for death. Then discard these old rags of affection and squirm, naked and convalescent, toward life.