Day: September 26, 2005

Plunderification, bitches.


it might be a pickle
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

torro-toise

Sarah has graciously offered her home this evening as an alternative to tonight’s NIN canceled Korean Movie Monday. There will be no korean movie, but it’s practically the same thing, if you squint at it a bit.

My day’s gone by with nothing addressed. I’m going to be in desperate need for some food later. I feel like going to sleep in a public park, let them erect a fence around me, and just wake me up when this all ends. I’ll be a public exhibit, free of charge, until the apocalypse has come and gone to the mountainside. When the weather is nice for ducks, I may turn to my side and let the wind destroy my possessing dreams a little, but that would be all. The grass will grow around me and tickle my hair into fantastic shapes. When it gets dark, it might get lonely, but I fail to see how that’s any worse than my current overwhelming lack of comfort, and maybe little animals might burrow in my skirts. Squirrels curling up for the heat of my body and sharing the night with me. Pets with human eyes I never see.

Did you know Queen Anne was buried in a cubic coffin?

Whipping past reflective surfaces, I make it though the day without looking at myself as much as possible. Work has two change-rooms, one next to the other, that are walled on three sides with mirrors. This makes it difficult, so when I stand in front of them, I try to focus on the colours in my hair or the angle of my shoes against the carpet. People tell me I’m pretty and I want to bite them. Pretty is useless. Pretty is not a skill. There are mirrors in the back as well, one in the hall and a large one in the bathroom. I’ve hung manniquin busts on the bathroom mirror, and so far no one has moved them, but the hall mirror makes me twitch whenever I pass and catch myself in the corner of my eye. The manniquins, however, I have fallen in love with. My hands trail over their bodies when I dress them, and I feel remembered sparks of tenderness when I smooth their artificial hair. I want to take them home with me and curl myself around the hard plastic bodies, protect them from the people who treat them as objects instead of people. I feel for them almost the same way I felt for the people who were the BodyWorlds Exhibit. A deep abiding respect with an underlying current of wanting to know their names. It’s commiseration that runs like oxygen through blood.

I remember when I was beautiful to you

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.” “OH NO!” the President exclaims. “That’s terrible!” His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

The bottom of the world fell out beneath me when I saw you on the street. My lungs dissipated, my breath sinking out of view. I was in the wrong company to stop, with the wrong people to demand they leave me behind. I’m wide awake, wishing the lights were out, but knowing that it wouldn’t help at all. Sheer certainty makes your name a holy thing, hard in my mouth like stones on a pale horse. In between the click of my teeth against yours, there used to be rare moments of brevity. Now there is a vacuum. I am in no safe hands, there is no warming me. I told Michael the truth, that every night I wake up crying. Court was held on the front porch, a open floor on which to pour my wounded emotions. You looked away and wouldn’t speak. Instead there was a comment about speech, about thought, and then a turning around and away. I feel like I’m a symbol for every woman who stood in the street and cried out, “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.“

I carried a sword with me to the car. Black and silver, same as my hat. Same as my jacket and pants and eyes. The strap of my bag bit into my shoulder and I winced, hitting my knee when I leaned down to drop it into the back seat. The father sat in front of me, in the drivers seat, and reminded his daughter that her ex-boyfriend is now an age where he can be legally tried as an adult for rape. I saw where his direction of conversation was going five minutes before she did, and so I put a fist to my mouth, smothering bitter laughter and looked solidly out the window where she could not see my face. I wanted to believe in something beautiful again, so I tried to remember standing on the beach in California, but all I got was the memory of feeling incredibly unattractive on the white sand of Santa Monica.

Tomorrow is the Nine Inch Nails concert. I have a floor ticket, currently in the hands of Christopher. I feel like I should be excited, but I can’t seem to muster any enthusiasm. My hips are going to swing, it’s obvious, but there’s no spark yet. When I get there, I’ve been told, it will be inescapable, and I believe them, but that still leaves me wondering what it is that’s currently wrong with me. I am still glad to meet new people, but how burned out can a human be without losing basic functions?

Vote a 10 for me.
if only because Topless Jhayne would make a great name for something.

Then download this.