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The Island Of The Map Makers' Wife
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| This. |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|07:30 pm] |
I'm always interested in the erotic, and not so much the pornographic. This concert performance of Mysterious Ways has always been my lodestar for what is erotic and evocative, what is powerful and compelling. Nothing given away, because that's boring. Giving it all away is boring. The dialogue over what could be given, maybe, is eternal and so much better than the alternative.
The red belly dancer.
In particular, I've always appreciated the balance between male and female in this performance. Him. Her. Balanced. |
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| Recommendation |
[Sep. 21st, 2009|09:01 pm] |
When I find something I love, I tell people about it.
I love the soundtrack to Braid, and the songs are for sale on iTunes. The music wasn't commissioned for the game, it was composed by musicians and artists because they were going for a certain sound... and the game designers picked the music up later.
A track listing. Maenum by Jami Seiber is my favourite. Click the link on that page to go listen to the song.
Absolutely amazing. |
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| Getting Well |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|12:44 pm] |
I'm getting well. It seems like I was literally poisoning myself by drinking too much caffeine, and I sense that I may have been low on Vitamin C as well. I've switched from drinking tea to drinking one bottle of juice every day, and not a juice cocktail with added sugar! Real juice. 100%+ of my daily vitamin C.
And no caffeine, or little to no caffeine.
Instant results were felt.
This summer has been a struggle. Not an extreme kind, but a struggle. Every weekend was "booked" with a "vacation" to a cottage/family members' home/etcetera. I didn't do any laundry, I didn't get to clean house, I barely gardened and that snowballed into a yard full of 6 foot high weeds. I photographed River Alph twice, holding up thistles that went from the top of his head to the ground.
So I stopped with the caffeine, I started with the juice, and began to confront all the things that are in my way. All the threads I've left undone, unhandled. Bills unpaid, projects that are desperately needed (bathroom renovations, window replacements) and more.
Some of these projects (the renovation in particular) have reared up like cobras and bit me in the face with their reality.
Some of the projects were just dealt with (like the garden) and I am better off for it.
I just wanted to let you know that I'm making it better.
Last night, we went to the fair where I photographed rides. I'll be editing those photos tonight. My camera needs to be serviced, which I'm going to get handled immediately. It's full of dirt and the card reader is malfunctioning, causing me to lose image files. I can handle that.
I'm even beginning to perform again at work, producing good work and once again advancing in my understanding of the job I do. That's big. My salary is our bread and butter - I must work harder!
But I'm getting better.
No progress made on finding a therapist, but I'll get there. My aunt's death and my mother's side of the family is still a problem for me. I still need help. |
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| Mapping by time, by mood |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|03:30 pm] |
I am depressed when I wake up.
I don't want to get out of bed. There are a lot of options for what I can do with my time and all of them are overwhelming. I choose to do nothing, and then feel sorry for all the things that aren't being done. When I do get up, it is because I have chosen to do only One Thing and usually it's the thing with the least steps. When I am depressed, I become acutely aware of all the steps involved in daily tasks and I can't handle it. Something could wrong with each of those little steps and I just don't think I can take it. If I get up to make tea, and I spill the milk, will there be a dishrag to clean it up? If there isn't one, I'll have to go find one. What if I can't find one? I'll lose all this energy trying to discover what the sweet fucking hell my boyfriend did with all of them. It is better not to get angry and tired, I will just stay in bed. If I want to garden, I will have to unlock the shed and I am never sure where the key to the shed is, or really what it looks like. Better to not even try. I will stay in bed, even though my back is getting sore and my mouth tastes horrible. I will focus on having a shower, maybe, later. River Alph climbs into bed with me and quietly snoozes by my side. He's horny as hell but is trying to contain it because I'm so miserable and not in the mood.
I am depressed in the middle of the afternoon.
The day is fading. Where did all the time go? Have I even eaten yet? I am already exhausted and my head is up, my eyes are open, my brain is on, but I feel completely lost within my comfortable surroundings. I'm not doing enough, not working hard enough, I don't want to work at all, I don't want to do anything. The sun is too strong, I'll get a burn, my throat hurts from my allergies, I can't go outside anyway, I'll get thirsty and I don't know where my water bottle is, the job is too big for me, I can't let my boyfriend do it because I SAID that we would get a house with a yard and that it would be MY job to care for it. I am defeated before I think I've even started. I've heard from River Alph that there's a hornet nest being built in our garden shed. Another straw on the camel's back and I'm creaking dangerously. I never get into the garden and I can't remember where my afternoon has gone, what I was doing. Memory blank out. I am beginning to feel like my brain is a Gordion Knot, and I just need to knife my problems in half. Suddenly, I remember that the only way TO unknot the Gordion Knot is to just DO IT. I get up suddenly and hit the ground running. It has probably taken me two hours to decide to do something. The sun keeps fading. Rain comes. I garden anyway.
I am depressed before bed.
I am jet lagged and I feel like I don't fit. I finally fall into bed at 1:31 and I'm not even tired. My whole circadian rhythm has shifted to "depression cycle" and I desire sleeping in late. Nighttime is the best time to be awake. I reprimand myself but there's no point. With a sigh, I try to sleep. Beside me, River Alph sparkles in my dull lamp light as I leaf through a book - he's sweating in the heat. I throw the duvet off him and he moans, rolls over. Poor bastard... I fan him with my book and he giggles sleepily. |
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| On letting go of Neil Gaiman, because he's dating. |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|11:41 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
I don't know what's wrong with me. I've developed an aberrant crush on Neil Gaiman, and I can't imagine why. What the hell is it about him? His need for black clothing, his out of control popularity? And why am I affected? I'm never affected by fads. But clearly, I'm affected by the fad of lusting for Neil. If this affliction were a town, it would be named Ridiculous and it would be populated by all the nerd writer girls and at least half the nerd writer boys. The town of Ridiculous would be pathetic in nature, because the populace would be wandering around in a haze of "I wonder if Neil would like me if he met me" and doing absolutely nothing else, aside from re-reading his books and poetry and obsessively scouring his blog and clicking the links he puts out.
Years ago, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shadesong mentioned links from Gaiman's blog and I tried to read it, but I just couldn't. I wasn't interested in him at all. Time passed and someone somewhere linked me back to it, insisting that there was this one entry that was ever so clever. Something hooked me... probably, it was Coraline. I read Coraline first and was enthralled by the evil, and then I read American Gods. That's when he earned my respect. American Gods blew my mind the way Terry Pratchett's Small Gods had blown my mind.
So I'm wondering what the fuck is wrong with me when months ago a picture was posted of Neil Fucking Gaiman (an endorsed nickname, I'm not being all "angry" or something) sitting on a roof with Amanda Fucking Palmer (who completely rules for all the right reasons in crazy unreasonable ways) and I thought "wow... the sexual tension... what is wrong with me today? they're just sitting on a roof."
I don't consider myself brilliant at reading body language in strangers but something about how they were sitting, not touching, inches apart, on a roof in the night made me realize that there was some manner of insane sexual chemistry... and I was transported by jealousy.
And that.
Is crazy.
I moved to the town of Ridiculous and bought a condo. I papered the walls with press photos of Neil Fucking Gaiman and padded the floors. I began to sleep on the floors, with semi-gloss Neil photos watching over me. Everywhere I looked was Neil. My little cave was so complete in its insanity that other people came to visit and some even hoped to stay. The other residents of Ridiculous thought this little Neil altar that you could crawl into was kind of a great way to express one's Neilphilia. I threw them all out, screaming and throwing empty aluminum cans at them. They were trying to steal my Neil, they had to be eliminated.
And just recently, at a benefit show, I suppose the cat was let out of the bag (although I'm sure it's been out of the bag for a very long time) that Neil Fucking Gaiman is dating Amanda Fucking Palmer and the coming together of their middle names was celebrated in the Town of Ridiculous by all the fan girls and fan boys simply screaming "FUCK" as loud as they needed.
We now pray for a break up, and a random chance meeting with The Black Clothéd One. So he can, you know, like, casually find us and realize that we are the latest, greatest Amanda Fucking Palmer.
The town of Ridiculous is, in a word, lame. Who does this? Who has this kind of a crush on someone like Neil Gaiman. He has very silly hair and he's way too busy - how could you even date him? Just as all stalkers give up on Martha Stewart because they can't keep up, how can any man/woman fathom dating The Neil? He's so fucking BUSY! How will Amanda Fucking Palmer do it?
The town of Ridiculous has it figured out. (Remember: our population is also our HR strength. If we have a question about Neil Fucking Gaiman, this town will have 3 answers and a 4th "thinking outside the box" option too.) Our answer is that Amanda Fucking Palmer is made out of magic and unicorn vomit and the distilled righteousness of all bipolar maniacs everywhere. This enables her to be The Most Interesting Person Alive, which has ensnared Neil Fucking Gaiman.
I can't be positive, but I'm quite sure that Ridiculous is plotting a way to capture and distill the charm of Tom Selleck's mustache, which is considered the equivalent of unicorn vomit. I assume a second work team is conducting a feasibility study on how to create an artificial essence of the "righteousness of all bipolar maniacs". I mean, come on. Have you ever met someone with bipolar disorder? They're FASCINATING. They've had intense lives and they've done a little bit of everything and frankly... well... they're just so goddamn interesting.
Meanwhile.
I lie on the bottom of my padded cave and all the semi-gloss photos are shredded and I'm wearing a scare mask made of an 8x10 glossy photo of Amanda Fucking Palmer. Do you think it would fool Neil Fucking Gaiman? Probably not. I don't think my hair is right. As I lie on the floor and the riots in the streets of Ridiculous carry on (they're burning cars and tearing their clothes, it's a full on Greek chorus out there) and I consider being a fan of someone else for awhile. I wonder if Patricia Briggs will take me on.... |
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| Reader's Requests |
[Jan. 31st, 2009|06:09 pm] |
magnifelyn asked me for photographs of the space in our new house that is all mine. And I have mentioned in the past that I'm not blogging because I hadn't set up my home office, and then once I did, I was whining that my wireless internet was not receiving. This is what happens when I allow River Alph to install the wireless router in the basement, and I know perfectly well that it should be on the top floor. We have arguments about this kind of stuff.
So here are some photographs of my (not working very well) home office. It's halfway done. At the moment, it does not resemble the room you see here. The television is gone, and instead there is a third bookcase (identical to the first two) and a tree and a big white shelving thing that we removed from our master bedroom closet.
When magnifelyn asked to see the room the first time, it had a boxspring, 30 boxes of books and untold amounts of garbage in the room. A bedframe was in there. It was very ugly. I had to step over big piles of things to even get to the window. They were dark times.
The room isn't done yet: I have curtains in the works. My mother is making them, and they will be magnificent. More photos to follow.
Why is the room green? I don't know. I got it into my head that the room was going to be spring green. It could very easily have gone a different direction. The room should fill up, presently, with all the bills and paperwork related to our lives. We have many renovations to undertake and I think of the spring green home office as our brain centre. Why is the room where it is? I don't know. It was the smallest room and it's adjacent to the master bedroom. We did up the second largest room for our family and friends who want to stay with us.
...that's a lie.
What happened was, I was afraid of losing "me" when I moved in with River Alph, so the spare bedroom may just happen to have, for no particular reason at all, been painted the colour of my bedroom when I lived alone. And the bed linens are mine. They are my favourite. And the curtains are mine, and the curtain finials are mine. In fact, the spare bedroom has all of my favourite things. So maybe it would be fair to say that in the spare bedroom you will fine a portrait of my life before him, before we moved in together. And I can happily visit my old life, and I can sit on my old duvet and I can touch my old pillow and pillow cases.
It's a very nice room. It's very personal to me. But it is not "my space". Well, it is, but it isn't where I go to be alone and do my own thing. For that, I go to the green home office. The office needs more work, but it's pretty damn good as things stand right now, so it goes without saying that I'm pleased. |
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| Now. |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|07:41 pm] |
Now I can't sleep. Today was a terrible day.
My father is fine: he's full of morphine and he's happily snoring in his bedroom.
I am on his laptop, in the dark, in the place where I started.
I started writing on a computer in this two bedroom condominium, looking out over farmer's fields and the tops of trees. I dreamed about owning my own house. I dreamed about getting out of the house and running out to smell the fields. I would've. I would've...
Today was a very bad day.
Everyone has been very nice and very forgiving about it, even though I cried. I was supposed to bring my father home from the hospital today but it happened sooner than I thought it was going to, and I wasn't near my cellphone. I missed 7 phone calls from the family, trying to find me. It's all my fault. I left my cell phone in my purse and even when my phone is right in FRONT of me, I still miss calls. So I missed seven phone calls. And they came to my house to get me, and they rang the doorbell, and I was in the shower.
And I didn't hear the doorbell either.
I was very upset when I found out and I shed many hot tears because I did something SO BAD that nothing I could ever do would make up for it. Nothing. I did a bad thing that I cannot take back. I am surprised that everyone forgave me. I don't know why they did.
Maybe because they decided I could never take it back, and yet they're stuck with me because I'm family. So they said to themselves "let's let it go. She can't apologize."
So I shed some hot tears and I wondered if I should kill myself but that's just silly. It's better to have something to eat and to maybe get some sleep this century than to kill yourself. And cutting up your arms is just so stupid and drama-rama. THIS IS HOW SORRY I AM, it doesn't say. More like, it says "pay attention to me and not Dad, who got shafted today".
So I didn't do that because killing yourself is just dumb. I realize there are some dead people, like Kurt Cobain, who might want to reply with a comment that says "are you calling me dumb?" and I would say "I'd probably call you Ghost" and then he would be annoyed and write a celestial song about his annoyance. Or maybe we all get reincarnated and he's already a fresh water dolphin in China, swimming along and worrying about pollution. He's probably got some nice dolphin calls mastered already.
Where was I going with this.
I can't sleep. I'm so tired and my father is asleep and I TRIED to sleep (tried is an anagram of tired, which is funny because when you're tired you'll try anything to sleep and usually you're observing the "try" in the past tense as the things you tried failed to in the face of your tired).
....I am very tired.
I was developing a migraine because I can't sleep and because I had screwed up so badly and I took Advil for it, and then everyone was very forgiving, so now my head doesn't hurt but I can't sleep.
I just can't sleep. |
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| Charity |
[Dec. 6th, 2008|10:36 pm] |
I give money (through the internet) to people who I think are deserving. Earlier this year, I donated money to a guy with a house blog that I love. He's restoring a home that his wife bought for a dollar because she loved it so much. They're living really hard lives under really hard circumstances in a beautiful house that's eating up all their money and all their time.
I had to tell the guy that I wanted to give him money, and then I had to make him put up a paypal button, and then I had to get my own paypal account and in the end, I gave him $100 USD. He was completely surprised and in return, I got a card with a hand drawn pen and ink sketch of the house on the front.
It surprised me to find that he had great penmanship.
I just gave money to Help Vera.
I have my reasons for helping Vera: mostly because I'm safe from her situation and other people are not so lucky.
I'd like to ask the people on my friend's list to donate a small something to Help Vera, if they can. If it helps, the target amount of money needed is just under $12k and the money collected is just over $7k.
There's an auction going on, too. You might find something at the auction that would be a perfect gift for someone you love. Here's what I would buy:
Astonishing X-men, Volumes 1-10. Signed by Joss Whedon and the artist, John Cassaday.
A Jayne hat! If I didn't already have one, I would buy one. (Why yes, I do have one!)
A pair of hand knit socks. (Cozy!)
A copy of Under the Mere by yuki_onna, who I admire very much. Her book is only available on her hard drive, so you'll be getting the ONLY copy of the book. Think on that! People are already bidding up to $165 for the book. OH MY.
Kythryne is offering to make you a piece of jewelery from Wyrding Studios that is equal to the value of your bid. Keep in mind, if you bid $200, you will get $200-worth of bling but all the money for the materials will come from Kythryne herself. You get to dictate what you want in terms of colour or jewellery type, so if you were thinking that you wish you had a fairy crown but just couldn't find a reason to buy yourself one, here's your chance to blame it on Vera. It's easier to blame it on Vera, too, when you're wearing a fucking fairy crown. SRSLY.
alankria is offering to send you a story on a postcard or in a regular card every month for the next year. As a person who subscribed to the Omikuji Project, I cannot rec that enough: I love getting something mysterious and special each month.
There are tarot card readings, books of poetry, books that haven't hit the shelves yet, and rare/hard to find books up for auction. The pieces by Yuki_onna seem to be hot, hot, hot.
So bid.
It could be you.
It might BE you.
Donate a dollar, or buy an item.
*nods firmly* |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 6th, 2008|01:45 am] |
| [ | music |
| | You and Whose Army? | ] |
The rain is loud on the church roof. The water coming off it, rocketing off the roof in the dark -
like someone pulled the plug and it's all -
(gushing water)
I tell you, I am made of broken sentences and wet leaves in the streets, being lifted up and torn up and thrown around, coming down with delicate little slaps on the pavement.
And the church is being really loud. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 5th, 2008|03:34 pm] |
I am all blood and ashes. I am a dark room where the thoughts of "oh God!" are only rustles down near the mahogany feet of big pieces of furniture, big thoughts, that were meant for bigger houses or bigger minds.
I am the wet stuff and the dry stuff unfortunately thrown together, red and black and white and teeth all over.
I am just
You are so
I can't even finish
Big pieces of red black wood in dark rooms in dust, with little rustling thoughts weakly trying to be said, thoughts hoping I'll pick them up and put them together into strings of meaning and maybe arguments, and is it too much to hope for perhaps a conclusion or two?
But this furniture doesn't fit this room and so nothing moves, everything is paralyzed in awkward positions, with just enough room for me to be blood and ashes in the middle, stuck in the act of a polite propinquity that I can't bring myself to violate. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 2nd, 2008|04:21 pm] |
I have learned a truth about people everywhere.
People everywhere believe that wrong doers will be punished with wrong doing and with badness. Therefore, if you are afflicted with a wrong, with something bad, the reverse logic is coded into how we think.
That you must have done something wrong before the bad thing happened to you.
You push too hard.
You didn't push hard enough.
You didn't lock all your windows.
You didn't lock all your doors.
You shoulda thoughta dat first.
This weird cult of blame and "logic" that happens in people's heads when the Bad isn't happening to them.
The most egregious, most outrageous examples of it we have begun to call out. Think of "you shouldn't have worn that dress". I remember reading one girl's account of being raped at a party. She hid it from her parents but the police were onto her and she had been talking to them, so she realized she had to tell her parents.
So she did.
And they said "what were you wearing?" the night she was raped.
And she said to her mother "the Miss Piggy sweatshirt you made me".
And if that doesn't answer the question with some very serious finality, and in its own way illuminate how retarded the question was to begin with...
Anyway.
I understand this now.
I understand that many people have this coded into them, that it is coded into me.
A weird cult of "you must take ownership of the Bad Thing That Happened so that you can get better".
Take ownership for your anorexia, admit that it's your fault you're so desperate for control, admit that you eat to reduce yourself so that men don't see you and you are non-sexual, take ownership of it so that you can say "I control the Bad Thing in some way, and I can defeat because the Beast is mine" but it's a lie.
It's a lie.
Sometimes, bad things start. They just start happening.
It's not that you did something bad, there is no karma in place. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 17th, 2008|11:40 pm] |
There's something occult about handwriting. How many letters of the alphabet make you trace counter clockwise circles?
Typing is so much better, so up and down. Forward and backward.
No circles. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 13th, 2008|03:36 pm] |
Last night I sat up in bed and from every book on both my bookshelves extended white two-dimensional hands, the hands of all the characters in the books.
Some of the books with bindings pointing out, oh my God, they were rattling on the shelves and bumping around as the hands inside them reached out to bang on the back and top of the bookcase and shelves.
I screamed at them to put themselves away and, leaking disturbed vowels that dripped like fallen leaves in Times New Roman, the hands put themselves away.
I saw a hand from American Gods touching a hand longingly from a book of poetry and they didn't want to let go, they were holding on. They saw me seeing them and the hand of poetry put itself away quickly, in an orderly fashion. The hand of American Gods made a rude gestures and pushed a sculpture off the shelf and then made itself into a two dimensional fist that slid outta sight. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|09:27 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | attracted | ] |
I am just crazy for Salman Rushdie's face. Is it wrong to want to make out with him this much? I'm head over heels for him. When he smiles, I feel like I want to eat him. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 22nd, 2008|09:51 am] |
Why does a tree always grow in front of the main entrance of an abandoned building? The cleared land around the building will go wild, but may not develop trees.
And then, the first tree appears and fills up the front entrance. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 18th, 2008|02:40 pm] |
My manager bought me flowers.
They sit on my filing cabinet, in a fish bowl with water to keep them hydrated. I want to keep them in the cellphane so I can take them home neatly.
So, what happened was, I turned around and looked over my shoulder at them sitting there in the shady corner.
And I got up and walked over to them.
I wasn't going to take the cellophane off, but I saw that the cellophane was split down one side, and with trembling caffeinated fingers, I quietly fitted a few fingers in and touched them.
Smooth stems leading up to flower heads.
I noticed that I was stroking the outsides of the flowers with my finger tips.
I guess the insides are for bees and the outsides are for people. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|07:46 pm] |
Dear Grandpa,
It has not been a year since you died. It has been something like a year and two months. This is not a good time to write about your death because it's lacking in evenness. I have not waited an even five or three or twelve or six months. It's been fourteen.
Mourning goes like that.
Grandpa, I never told you that the night you died, I was out taking photographs in the Museum of Civilizations. My battery died, and all I got were beautiful digital photos of a wonderful ceiling mounted sculpture made of cut glass that changed colour constantly. The best pictures are of the sculpture when it was so blue and indigo that it is almost black. Here: I will show you a picture of it.
That is what I photographed that night. I didn't go home afterwards, I went to a friends house and we had hot, greasy pizza together. We edited our photographs. I sneezed a lot. He drove me home. I remember him dropping me off here
It was one of those nights where everything was perfectly fine and nothing was wrong. When I got in, I didn't check my messages for the first hour. Then I did. My father called to say he was sorry, you were dead, and he was saying it like it was worse for me than it was for him. My father had been confused, he had called me at work to say that I needed to get a plane and come down as soon as possible because you were fading away and that everyone was coming in, but I couldn't have gotten that message in time. Everyone made it and you died surrounded by your children. You were in a coma.
You probably know that: it was your death, after all.
So I was very upset and I called other people to tell them that it was over and I left. The friend I had been with that night ended up dating a friend of mine, and I ended up dating the River Alph. That was the last night all four of us were single, I think. After that, we four paired off.
There are stages of grief I'm told, and one of them is anger. I never experienced the others, I don't think. I experience acceptance immediately, but the stage of anger was truly out of control. I hate the church. I hated your funeral and how it was handled. I hated everything about your death.
Grandpa, you were the first person I saw in my life as a corpse. Although you had been embalmed, it was like a strong wind and come and blown hard on your face, your flesh was swept around in the way that death changes face. It was like the strong wind was still silently blowing on you, pressing your cheek down.
My cousins were flattened, reduced to tears.
Your death was not their first death, but I think it was very hard on them and I do not know why. Perhaps they did not see you as much. Perhaps they felt they'd missed out on the end of your life and perhaps they felt that they had missed out on you. Perhaps. Or perhaps setting eyes on you made it real and all of a sudden, they expressed their grief all at once with their crying.
And it made me terribly terribly angry.
I wasn't angry at anyone or anything, I was very angry at the situation. I handled it by being someone that I was not. I made a point of greeting everyone at your funeral and talking to them about you, or more accurately, by listening to them talk about you. Everyone said you had great dignity.
All I know is, I held the hands of many older people.
I hate embalmed corpses.
My cousins C and T didn't know what to do, and their mother lead them up to look at you, and all evening long they wandering back and forth, looking and then looking away. I shared a bed with C after you died - it was very strange to sleep next to a girl that age... is she twelve? I think she is.
But you were dead and I saw you all waxed and propped up. At your funeral, what I needed was to listen to people talk about you before we buried you. I needed to hear more about you as a person, I needed that catharsis of talking it out. What the fuck was that Catholic shit? What. the. fuck. I hated the church for their bullshit which is so completely meaningless. They had nothing to say that had anything to do with what I was feeling. I understand that they were being very traditional and they were performing a Rite that is essential to completing your time on this earth, but I cannot stop being angry over how it felt.
C did a reading and I did a reading. After she did her reading, I turned my head to tell her that she'd done really well and as I dropped my guard for a second and forgot that I was grieving, I suddenly burst into tears myself.
I did not go up to receive communion, I'll have you know. Hmph.
And you - dead. You, the corpse. I saw you, dead.
I cannot get over what it was like.
Your rosary wrapped around your hands, beads laid out so artistically.
I think we buried you with a salt shaker, and I may have gotten my wish, we may have buried you with two silver dollars.
That was painful, actually.
We buried you with a pin that you may have had made for Grandma. It was a war thing, some kind of insignia. I forget.
I saw you dead.
I saw your flesh, dead.
I saw your body without life, sagging.
If I have anything to say about your death in public, I will say that you died at peace, feeling no pain, surrounded by your family. As deaths go, it was a good death.
If I have anything to say about your death in private, it is that I am slowly becoming less angry about it all, but I am not exactly able to NOT be angry right now. And also: I saw you when you were dead. I saw that you were without life, and some how this is horribly private and terrible.
This is a very terrible thing. My grandfather, the man with the dignity, I saw him dead. I saw your flesh sunken.
I saw it.
It was terrible.
And now, that uncanny feeling that some wind had come and blown against your face and changed the shape of you has become my lasting memory of your death.
My father has commissioned a portrait of you, based on a photograph I took of you. As the artist paints it, he is sending us copies of the layers he does. We get to see all the underpainting. It disturbs me deeply to see the underpainting because I feel in a sick way that I am seeing God's hands paint you up from skull to muscle to tendon to skin to hair to colour. It revolts me, and it reminds me again of how you looked when you were dead.
Also: the artist is painting your upper lip wrong. I should tell him, but I'm too polite.
This is my letter to you. I think of you often, and I don't cry about it much. In truth, when I think about your death it mostly is expressed by some weird form of horniness, which I understand is something to do with affirming life and dealing with grief. This is why my head is, right now. I am dealing with it, it's going to be fine.
You are missed.
I inherited a carnival glass dish, which I think you would have liked, and tea cups.
The Hudson's Bay blanket, which is a five pointer! Woof, it's very nice.
Your picture is in my office. People ask who you are: I think it is obvious that you're my grandfather, but people still ask. Perhaps, when you died, you looked young enough that you could be someone other than my grandfather.
Love,
Me |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|02:32 pm] |
I make so many little cuts and slashes on you, and I wait to see what comes of them, but that's not how it feels to do what I do.
It feels like a small curiosity that becomes an burning need to dominate you and then I cut you, I slash you, and sometimes you give in and sometimes you don't, and when you don't I feel like I've lost. Even lying on my back on the floor when I'm totally wrong, I still may fight to dominate you, even with your foot on my throat.
What it feels like is I'm killing us and this contest of wills is just my confusion of feelings overwhelming me because I'm a victim of patterns that I can't control. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
I can't stop myself from pushing you down and you can't help but fight for yourself and so we go down. I see us as birds, battering each other with our wings as we plummet. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|11:49 pm] |
Ooo I confess I made those little cuts on you, I made them and they wept red tears of blood and then they wept white tears of hopelessness and I feed off them, I do. I harvest you and you're all purple and blue and white all over and your heart beat races and your eyes glaze like glass marbles, and they rolled in their sockets, but you're nice and runny like a fine cheese and you taste good.
I confess
I made a lot of small cuts
On your arms
On your legs
On the curvatures of your torso |
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