So I decided to try and put the different personality disorders in little rhyming parcels with accompanying pictures. Here is how I chose to communicate the Cluster A disorders.
(paranoid)
(schizotypal)
(schizoid)
(anti-social)
Saturday, 20 August 2016
a preoccupation of words
(collective nouns I made up)
I was considering how to write books for curious children would be a dream come true, and then I had an idea for an illustrated series of sorts, which could be enjoyed by readers of all ages but most of all just gave me an excuse to indulge my love of words....
Friday, 19 August 2016
Monday, 15 August 2016
Two haikus, no need to choose.
My boy laughs easy.
He makes my heart sing in two
different languages.
----------------------------------
And above all things
I want my mother to know
how much I love her.
He makes my heart sing in two
different languages.
----------------------------------
And above all things
I want my mother to know
how much I love her.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
A dead body
Death horrified me only insofar that it horrified me.
Later I would come to learn from Cecilia, who told me with her nose a little upturned, that this is called tautology. Then, it was the only thing I knew for certain. I wasn't as grounded in moral grievances as Rachel, and I wasn't angry like Ollie, and yet I didn't remain white and clammy for weeks afterwards before disappearing entirely, the way Polly did. When it came to murder, I guess I didn't know how to respond- neither my brain nor my body had its own strong-willed sense of direction, so I reacted as I always used to when faced with circumstances that were more than a little confusing (not getting into music school, the aftermath of my first kiss, hearing the news of my great aunt Joan's passing)- I threw up next to the toes of my shoes, wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, had a glass of water. And that was that.
It was repulsive on a purely physical level. Surely that's not surprising. It was a horrific thing to look at- clotted blood and slack jaw. A dead body was and is a dead body, but that was and is all there is. The problem is in the context of it. Once you start considering heaven, hell, ethics, karma, justice, and the ripple effect of the event- the emotional impact it would have on all that surrounded it- it becomes more than that. More than it has to be.
A dead body is a dead body. That's possibly why I was not immediately averse to Ollie's suggestion that we needed to do something. With the body. Despite a lot of loud whispering, spitting and crying, we all found ourselves on the beach in the half-light of that morning, armoured with the no-man-left-behind attitude that we somehow managed to retain right through until the very end. There were lights starting to flick on in the windows of the houses that clustered along the bay. Boats were docked by the lifeguard station- he wasn't there, and wouldn't be for some time, for at best he was absent-minded, and at worse he was negligent, dangerous. No more dangerous than us, I suppose. But then again there had been three drownings in seven months. I've only tallied one so far. The one that Ollie and I carried in a black bag between us. It's still surprising how we managed to hold it up, just us two, with the others too overcome with something or other to touch it. It didn't matter, I thought, who touched it. If we were going to hell for this, we were already damned, and nothing we did from then on was going to do a bit to change that. Still, fear is an amazing thing, the way it fills you with the kind of godlike strength you only have the opportunity to experience once or twice in your life, probably, because it only comes in a welcome rush when you have got yourself in a trap so deep you need something like god to pull you back out.
If Cecilia, or even Polly, had been the one to tell you this story, the whole affair would have been more poetic. Lyrical. I don't think that this would alter the narrative even in the least. The way I see it, aesthetics can soften the blow, but like I said, dead weight is dead weight. This is how it went: we got the body into the boat that Cecilia untied, heard it sound hollow in the base, put some bricks into the bag, and then me, Ollie and Cecilia rowed out while Polly watched, white-faced, from the shore. She was looking at her watch, a nervous tic that I came to miss after she had gone. It made me wish that there existed some kind of search engine that was linked to a database categorising a host of people by their nervous habits. The ghosts of your past and their annoying, charming, identifying idiosyncrasies. Polly had so many, she could have broken the algorithm. So Ollie, Cecilia, the body and I rowed out. Ollie, Cecilie and I rowed back. We didn't say goodbye to one another. We all returned to our homes.
You might believe that because I seem impassive about all of it then I am more at fault than the others. But aren't the only true things- the only things we can be judged by- are actions? Actions are surely the only true things in the whole world. By this logic, any words that are spoken in an attempt to change these actions can't be anything but lies. We murdered a boy. It doesn't matter whether I regret it or not. It stays the same. It will always be the same. All the feelings that you attach to a dead body, the same way that you attach feelings to a work or art or literature, are just interpretations. Like I said, a dead body is a dead body.
Later I would come to learn from Cecilia, who told me with her nose a little upturned, that this is called tautology. Then, it was the only thing I knew for certain. I wasn't as grounded in moral grievances as Rachel, and I wasn't angry like Ollie, and yet I didn't remain white and clammy for weeks afterwards before disappearing entirely, the way Polly did. When it came to murder, I guess I didn't know how to respond- neither my brain nor my body had its own strong-willed sense of direction, so I reacted as I always used to when faced with circumstances that were more than a little confusing (not getting into music school, the aftermath of my first kiss, hearing the news of my great aunt Joan's passing)- I threw up next to the toes of my shoes, wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, had a glass of water. And that was that.
It was repulsive on a purely physical level. Surely that's not surprising. It was a horrific thing to look at- clotted blood and slack jaw. A dead body was and is a dead body, but that was and is all there is. The problem is in the context of it. Once you start considering heaven, hell, ethics, karma, justice, and the ripple effect of the event- the emotional impact it would have on all that surrounded it- it becomes more than that. More than it has to be.
A dead body is a dead body. That's possibly why I was not immediately averse to Ollie's suggestion that we needed to do something. With the body. Despite a lot of loud whispering, spitting and crying, we all found ourselves on the beach in the half-light of that morning, armoured with the no-man-left-behind attitude that we somehow managed to retain right through until the very end. There were lights starting to flick on in the windows of the houses that clustered along the bay. Boats were docked by the lifeguard station- he wasn't there, and wouldn't be for some time, for at best he was absent-minded, and at worse he was negligent, dangerous. No more dangerous than us, I suppose. But then again there had been three drownings in seven months. I've only tallied one so far. The one that Ollie and I carried in a black bag between us. It's still surprising how we managed to hold it up, just us two, with the others too overcome with something or other to touch it. It didn't matter, I thought, who touched it. If we were going to hell for this, we were already damned, and nothing we did from then on was going to do a bit to change that. Still, fear is an amazing thing, the way it fills you with the kind of godlike strength you only have the opportunity to experience once or twice in your life, probably, because it only comes in a welcome rush when you have got yourself in a trap so deep you need something like god to pull you back out.
If Cecilia, or even Polly, had been the one to tell you this story, the whole affair would have been more poetic. Lyrical. I don't think that this would alter the narrative even in the least. The way I see it, aesthetics can soften the blow, but like I said, dead weight is dead weight. This is how it went: we got the body into the boat that Cecilia untied, heard it sound hollow in the base, put some bricks into the bag, and then me, Ollie and Cecilia rowed out while Polly watched, white-faced, from the shore. She was looking at her watch, a nervous tic that I came to miss after she had gone. It made me wish that there existed some kind of search engine that was linked to a database categorising a host of people by their nervous habits. The ghosts of your past and their annoying, charming, identifying idiosyncrasies. Polly had so many, she could have broken the algorithm. So Ollie, Cecilia, the body and I rowed out. Ollie, Cecilie and I rowed back. We didn't say goodbye to one another. We all returned to our homes.
You might believe that because I seem impassive about all of it then I am more at fault than the others. But aren't the only true things- the only things we can be judged by- are actions? Actions are surely the only true things in the whole world. By this logic, any words that are spoken in an attempt to change these actions can't be anything but lies. We murdered a boy. It doesn't matter whether I regret it or not. It stays the same. It will always be the same. All the feelings that you attach to a dead body, the same way that you attach feelings to a work or art or literature, are just interpretations. Like I said, a dead body is a dead body.
Saturday, 6 August 2016
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Monday, 18 July 2016
Thursday, 14 July 2016
Moving images
In a face-on collision, the head lights are the first to go.
Something clumsy and indefinite throwing its shadow,
which goes tripping over tangled shoelaces and legends, or lies.
Blunt memories slide off a cassette ribbon. A birthday surprise.
Some things should never be said out loud, ever, even if they are true,
and the scripted lines you need to learn aren’t always spoken to you.
and growing pains and hunger pains can often be confused.
Bedside songs from an open mouth, open door, shiny and black,
and matching shoes, and matching shoes.
Monday, 11 July 2016
Talking Cure
The truth hits, after several years of ‘the talking cure’ that requires one to take oneself very seriously and ruminate on very long-ago events that are, of course, unchangeable and all the potential reasons why you seem to be intent on, and increasingly good at, ruining things that are good in your own life- all the people you could blame, all the ‘whys’ behind all your ‘issues’, all the theories concerning the possible antecedents in your past that could pose as explanations for your present day behaviour that has, for whatever reason, been evaluated as misguided, or maladaptive, or malicious, or masochistic- after all of this furrowing and finger-pointing and finding that your life has been full of reasons for you to be a fuck-up, and that knowing this doesn’t do anything to fix you or fulfill you, eventually, the truth hits. The truth is that there could be a real reason why there is a problem- why you are a problem- or there could be thousands of potential causes for these problems, but there could also be absolutely no reason at all. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The truth is that you can talk for hours about your past but that any ‘breakthroughs’ in therapy, where you confront (by talking about) the ghosts of your past that seem to still be haunting you, can’t mend anything. The talking cure can’t clean up the messes that you’ve made. Sure, you can get some things off your chest. If you’re walking around with a secret that’s eating away at you because you haven’t shared it, it’s healthy to talk about it. Or if talking is what it takes for you to finally give voice to things about yourself you’d rather not admit, it’s beneficial to say those things aloud so that you can fully realise them, because it’s only in realising them that you can see to change them. The problem, and the sad truth about talking therapies, is that no one is going to push you to say the words you really need to say. If there is some self-knowledge that you don’t have, if you are not ready to know it because it’s not what you want to know, or you’re not brave enough to see it because it’s ugly, then you won’t gain it, and all the talking in the world isn’t going to help you acquire it. It seems that all the theorising and re-thinking and re-living and finding fault that is accomplished in talking therapy sessions is to identify what was wrong, or who else might have done you wrong, and how that made you feel, how it still does make you feel. That would be a great thing if those things or those people could suddenly cease to have ever existed. Because that’s not possible, and because you can’t wipe your slate clean and if you haven’t realised it yet then you soon will realise that you don’t want anything wiped because your past is also responsible for whatever is good in your life and for whatever is good about you, all that you have gained and everything that you love, and have loved- you stumble upon the understanding that whatever meaning you think you have found is worth nothing to you. You are still exactly the same person as you were before the talking began. Your life looks the same, feels the same, and the problem remains. Being armed with reasons to explain why there’s a problem does nothing to protect you. The truth is that no one cares. Your therapist doesn’t care. You are their workload. They say that talk is cheap. In talking therapy, talk is worthless.
Snow Owls
Until recently (two years after the second millennium was welcomed by humankind holding its breath) the snowy owl was thought to be the solo member of Nyctea scandiaca, a distinct genus that set them apart from all other owls. But when the millennium came, as the owls saw it, humans came newly equipped with smaller syringes and swabs, more wires that connected more machines, and yet the machines took up less space. The machines had ideas, and these ideas were what took up the space. Things could happen without collective human input, the owls noticed. Trees were coming down and no one knew who was deciding it, and the world over, these machines made humans less able to see further afield, and more desirous to be somewhere they couldn't even visualise. They had come and done tests and snowy owls were soon declared to be related, by genetic make-up, to the horned owls. Nyctae scandiaca was no longer special, suddenly a snowy owl was just another Bubo. The snowy owls mostly stay in their summer home, north of the point of latitude at 60 degrees north. Their nests are built in the northernmost reaches of the Arctic tundra- Alaska, Canada and parts of Eurasia. But renegade families have stayed south or else flown back down, as far as the American gulf states, Russia's deepest south, and then places not so far south but off the regular map for any snowy owl- remote regions among the outer hebrides where the British Isles lie. All the snowy owls moving in arctic circles caught wind of what happened to one of their kind who, flying in isolation, landed tragically in the tangles of a big ship with Ulunda written on its vast flanks, spitting steam. The owl had made it to Nova Scotia but couldn't come back to tell the tale (though none of the owls claimed to be missing a mate or family member, so none were sure who this lost owl would escape back home to). The lost owl was captured and later stuffed, filled up with human chemicals so it would linger on the brink of decomposition, and remains trapped in a suspended state of living death behind a sheet of glass in a place where humans can come just to stare through the pane. (This story is told in such a tone to warn young snowy owls from going rogue during migration periods or even migrating when no other owls were migrating). Ten and one years after the second millennium, or maybe ten and two years after (some of the stretch in between) there was a migration of snowy owls that winter, which went down in history. It was a mass migration, and thousands disappeared. They made new homes for themselves in an array of new places scattered across the American States. This was a shock to many, but it seemed to have started a new feeling, a new zeitgeist for spontaneous exploration in the place of regimented migration. There didn't have to be a reason anymore, and they didn't have to share the same destination goal. A year and another winter on, another even larger mass migration happened. Some snowy owls even got to Florida. There are theories among the snowy owls that this new attitude grew as a result of being stripped of their individual identity and broken out of their insular circle, made to be seen and evaluated not as snowy but as horned. And even if they were still being valued by humans for being snowy, they were written in human law books in the same category, with the same value, as the horned owls. Some snowy owls believe that the destruction of their special grouping, with all its specialness, led to the destruction of their long-standing grouping behaviours. Rituals no longer adhered to. Standard routes no longer taken. Snowy owls moving south, away from arctic places, finding new uncharted grounds to make their nests. Dreams about places such as Florida became more commonplace for the snowy owl. The new millennium had meant the start of upheavals, turnarounds, rapid changes, exceptions rather than rules, and the accelerating rate of change. It was a crescendo, an exponential curve. More changes, more quickly, and no time to try and prepare, no space in the mind to conceive of how to prepare for new circumstances yet to be thought of, but surely soon to become realised.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
A quick poem
It is a swimming pool lit up at night that your eyes remind me of,
or maybe a glass-bottomed boat, the underneath being
an adventure, rather than the measured depth of fear.
There was a time when my eyes were haunted, I am told
in retrospect. In truth, I was only hungry.
In mirrors I saw them as the inside of a snow globe.
Whatever it was that was stuck inside my head
for so many winters, falling to bits like the fake snow
inside that snow globe that was unmentionably large
and at the same time very small and soft.
Here i am, trying to undo what I’ve done by doing better,
and imagining the eyes that flit away from me
as jewels, turning into berries, turning into marbles,
turning into dwarf stars,
turning into all the ways I wanted to leave.
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
You are a...
You are a piece of music unlikely to be made.
A song about... potential, promise, promises.
Notes are samples of unusual sounds like... doors opening and shutting, birds coughing, humming heartbeats, sleeptalking, pills rattling in boxes, pages turning.
Written by... your boyfriend.
Recorded in... a basement.
An out-of-the-ordinary instrument played for your performance... pan pipes.
Produced by... an unknown individual.
Two genres combined to best describe you... acapella & experimental.
You are a game.
The primary theme is... word play.
The number of players is... 2 plus.
Components required to play are... a pen, paper, the mind.
The length of the game is... eternal unless you stop it.
Lessons learnt from playing may be... friendly mendaciloquence, and the limitlessness of language.
The winner... can get there by the stretches of their imagination and variation in use of vocabulary.
You are living with multiple personality disorder.
The number of personalities you have is... 9.
Most prominent personality is... sentimental, emotionally imbalanced, erratic and enigmatic.
First became aware of it when... I began to be an angry lesbian.
The good that comes of this is... I see through many different eyes.
The biggest fear surrounding this is... that I will become the angry lesbian.
Treatment is... Validation Treatment (used for dementia, though it has very little/no empirical evidence in support of it, concepualised by Naomi Feil in 1992)
When the least prominent personality looks in the mirror she/he/it sees... a bored person with a ponytail and too much foundation to conceal acne.
You are an instrument.
Played by... someone who is still learning.
Most commonly used to play... lullabies or songs that you can sing along to.
Made of... tinny metal.
Looks like... an arrangement of haphazardly arranged keys, not necessarily in order of length, that are knocked on with a spoon.
Played most often... in solitude, at dusk.
A famous musician that might play it would be... Fiona Apple.
Never used to play... R'n'B
Kept... on a shelf.
Someday used to write a song called... The Black Echo, The Gold Coin
You are aging in reverse.
Marriage will be... potentially a part of my life.
The handicap associated with old age you are born with is... poor mobility and bad eyesight.
You will date people of an age... that doesn't matter so will vary between the people I date.
Scientists will be allowed to study you because... of my willingness to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Strangers don't get told about your condition because... it sounds mad to explain it.
You will live out your childlike death... wherever I end up, with people I end up loving.
When you die you wish to appear... in my early 20s.
Number of children you will have is... zero.
You are homeless.
The street corner you frequent most is... the warmest one.
The last person to offer you a place to stay before homelessness was... John.
You sleep... hideaways on the Heath, like the hollow tree, in any hallways I can talk myself into, anywhere indoors I can exchange for unpaid work, probably with a few strangers, and otherwise anywhere that is warm or where I won't be picked up and put in a garbage truck.
You were kicked out of your last home because... I was messy.
You lost your job because... I was bad at it.
Your greatest fear as a homeless person is... winter.
The most common amount of money you are given is... either nothing or a considerably generous sum.
The hardest part of being homeless is... the cold.
You are a genie.
Instead of a lamp, you are rubbed out of... a paperweight.
The number of wishes granted to each individual is... 48.
The one thing no one is allowed to wish for is... something that compromises the free will of another.
You refuse wishes to... psychopaths and anyone under the age of 17 unless their situation is critical.
The percentage of wishes to actually make a positive effect on the world is... 15%.
Introduced as... a transient well-deserved miracle.
Became a genie because... I died and came back as one.
You are able to breathe underwater.
The sunken treasure you seek out is... somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.
Your chosen body of water for a home is... a lagoon.
The body of water you spend least time in is... rivers.
The underwater creature that haunts you is... a trigger fish or spiteful stingray.
You discover an ancient underwater city and name it... Drowned Town or Over-Spill City.
The newspapers call you... Gill Girl.
You can safely swim... 80,000 leagues under the sea.
You take a pet and it is a... an anglerfish because it will light the way at night.
You are having a recurring dream about alien abduction.
Most willing to conclude that you are actually being abducted are... John, William and Adnan.
In the dreams the purpose for abduction is... to provide information for the aliens.
The most common things that aliens say is... 'Do not panic, homosapien.'
The famous person abducted with you is... Sasha Baron-Cohen because they confused him with his cousin.
The aliens have not made themselves known to all humans because... they are running an observational study.
You are singled out because... of the possession of a vulnerable & malleable unconscious mind.
The number one question you ask them is... 'Are wars fought on your planet?'
Human food they like most is... sushi, toast and hot dogs.
Aliens look like... something very similar to us.
You are your own parents.
You do not change... my conception.
You name your actual self... the same, but I'm Daisy Christabel King from birth.
More often, you... adapt to become more open-minded.
Less often, you... disappear or detach from the past.
The secret to being a good parent is... empathy, supportiveness and open-mindedness.
The dream you follow in spite of parenting is... being a psychotherapist.
You are bring a dead person back to life.
This will be done by... inexplicably-presented opportunity.
The person that will die to accomplish this is... myself.
You bring back... Ella.
Close second is... James' uncle.
You bring them back because... they needed more time.
The biggest fear attached to this is... playing God and its consequences.
You suspect that this person will describe the afterlife as... that which cannot be communicated or understood by the living.
If this person does not remember who you are... it will not matter because I will be dead.
You are a building.
On your roof... birds make nests and rain collects and the ghosts of chimney sweeps leave sooty trails from midnight dance parties.
The purpose of you is... non-existent. I am not useful.
The tragedy that took place inside you that caused you to be haunted involved... accidental falls down flights of stairs.
When torn down, the building you would like to replace you is... a school.
Your most unique feature is... behind-bookcase secret rooms.
You are located... somewhere cramped between other buildings.
Your average temperature is... below 5 degrees usually.
You are dedicated to... a fictional character.
You are a ghost.
You haunt... people I knew, in a benevolent way.
You are seen by... the select few people who have hurt me considerably, glimpsed behind them in mirrors.
Your unfinished business is... finishing up making it up.
You physically interact with the world around you by... leaving symbolic objects places, tying up shoelaces, or writing messages on dusty surfaces/condensation.
The ghost to keep you company is... someone who died on the same day but who is much older.
You are yourself in a previous life.
Your profession is... a cabin boy.
In a past life before this one you were... a concubine.
In your lives, you have given to the world... time to hear people in it.
The best thing about this life is... camaraderie onboard.
The worst thing is... getting scurvy.
You are currently related to this past self in... issues with food, messiness, respect for authority figures, attention needs.
Your names have had... Omar, Oksana, Bertrand, Mohammed, Johan, Kjeldsen, Emerald, Peggy, Clifford, Flavia, Septimus, Kitty, Joan, Elijah, Vakhtang, Wilhelmina, Xu, Bob, Mavis, Prudence, Friedrich, Miguel, Iqbal, Rochelle, Seo-Jun & Christabel.
Monday, 13 June 2016
Be good or be gone
I'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore.
If you do, and if you have a spare second, could you leave a comment?
I love this song, so after the cover was recorded I put together some old footage to go with it.
If you do, and if you have a spare second, could you leave a comment?
I love this song, so after the cover was recorded I put together some old footage to go with it.
Saturday, 11 June 2016
Thursday, 9 June 2016
Star-birth
In the darkened basement rooms, in between stacks of knick-knacks
from dated telephones to sculpted Tutankhamun heads to racks of clothes
dragged out of previous centuries (or from off of other film sets),
among the shelves of cameras, tripods, lenses, structures on wheels
and small cranes, with my eyes getting caught on every sight,
a perpetual snag, and the moths that pound their thousands of wings
in my chest, that make it so tight, flapping at vibration rate
in the place of a steady beat. But I find they completely placate
when the tall guy with the long hair and the Indian girl
with the dimples offer me their gazes and their smiles, silently
cheering for me and for the film they are making in the air-conditioned
subterranean space while the sun bakes on parks outside and people
sleep deliriously in pools of sweat, at home, on transport, in offices,
on lawns, in the big world of seasons, in the big world of social grace
and of reasons-- it's enough to make anyone forget, it's unreasonable--
and here, away from it all, I glimpse the creation of another world-
as whole and as seasonable, made out of midnight musing and
coffee-break conversations, built out of an arrangement of heavy
black blankets and angled light bulbs, everywhere light falls
the space it is intentionally orchestratedly using to throw just so
the shadows and illuminate the life into an idea. Those ideas that patiently wait
in the noisy room that I can't allow to open its door today.
Not today, but when I do, there will be so much light, I know
that it will seem that a star has become, not of me,
because I am not a star, and nor did I ever really want to be,
I just wanted people around me to be happy and laugh when they
looked at me. I wanted to light up their dark so things wouldn't be the way
they seemed to be, but they seemed to stay when night came
and fell and fell on me and my spark was blotted out, I tried but
could never spark the same. People would say they missed it, just
missed the chance to see it, but I was turning transparent,
I was feeling that I ought to be invisible, like dust, and I was too
much of an intrusion, a burden, an obstacle, too much and too apparent
and I told myself I was an eyesore until my eyes got sore too
and if there were stars, I couldn't have seen them. I saw only threat
where I'd left a vacant place where I should have had an identity.
In those basement rooms, I almost hear the crowds behind the noisy door
and the moths too, all communicating in a hum, 'Soon, not yet.'
But a star will become of me. That night that came and fell before
will get up and walk elsewhere willingly, shadows will shrink away, afraid,
and the shadows will no longer have faces or features to frighten me,
they will not be blind places. There is so much to be made
that is star-flecked, part of the star army, the night's apostles,
I could feel it, even in the darkened basement rooms, the light on me.
via GIPHY
from dated telephones to sculpted Tutankhamun heads to racks of clothes
dragged out of previous centuries (or from off of other film sets),
among the shelves of cameras, tripods, lenses, structures on wheels
and small cranes, with my eyes getting caught on every sight,
a perpetual snag, and the moths that pound their thousands of wings
in my chest, that make it so tight, flapping at vibration rate
in the place of a steady beat. But I find they completely placate
when the tall guy with the long hair and the Indian girl
with the dimples offer me their gazes and their smiles, silently
cheering for me and for the film they are making in the air-conditioned
subterranean space while the sun bakes on parks outside and people
sleep deliriously in pools of sweat, at home, on transport, in offices,
on lawns, in the big world of seasons, in the big world of social grace
and of reasons-- it's enough to make anyone forget, it's unreasonable--
and here, away from it all, I glimpse the creation of another world-
as whole and as seasonable, made out of midnight musing and
coffee-break conversations, built out of an arrangement of heavy
black blankets and angled light bulbs, everywhere light falls
the space it is intentionally orchestratedly using to throw just so
the shadows and illuminate the life into an idea. Those ideas that patiently wait
in the noisy room that I can't allow to open its door today.
Not today, but when I do, there will be so much light, I know
that it will seem that a star has become, not of me,
because I am not a star, and nor did I ever really want to be,
I just wanted people around me to be happy and laugh when they
looked at me. I wanted to light up their dark so things wouldn't be the way
they seemed to be, but they seemed to stay when night came
and fell and fell on me and my spark was blotted out, I tried but
could never spark the same. People would say they missed it, just
missed the chance to see it, but I was turning transparent,
I was feeling that I ought to be invisible, like dust, and I was too
much of an intrusion, a burden, an obstacle, too much and too apparent
and I told myself I was an eyesore until my eyes got sore too
and if there were stars, I couldn't have seen them. I saw only threat
where I'd left a vacant place where I should have had an identity.
In those basement rooms, I almost hear the crowds behind the noisy door
and the moths too, all communicating in a hum, 'Soon, not yet.'
But a star will become of me. That night that came and fell before
will get up and walk elsewhere willingly, shadows will shrink away, afraid,
and the shadows will no longer have faces or features to frighten me,
they will not be blind places. There is so much to be made
that is star-flecked, part of the star army, the night's apostles,
I could feel it, even in the darkened basement rooms, the light on me.
via GIPHY
Friday, 3 June 2016
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