To anything at all.
So I dressed up as Jason Statham for Halloween and no one said anything. And I practiced my accent for weeks and weeks. Life is full of bitter disappointment.
I would love to say something without irony or distance or metaphor, but my tongue is frozen (the weather changed), and I'm trying to convince myself that the real things stand in for the metaphors just fine, except they resemble each other too much for that to be true. I'm unhinged. My axis is spinning, and I might be the one being spun, in a hundred different directions at once, and when I land, sprawled out on the floor dizzy and reeling, there are these things that seem true:
This may or may not be a rehearsal, but it is a repetition, this is a complex series of revolutions and repetitions, and it's impossible to figure out exactly what these repetitions are for. But we are given roles, and all we are supposed to do is play the roles that we have been given, and, I think, I might be wrong, but I think, follow our desires, even when they are conflicted, or maybe especially when they are conflicted, or maybe even more especially, when there are road blocks everywhere. I think that might be the game that our ancestors played, over and over, through repetitions of revolutions in a hundred countries, in a hundred dead languages.
I think this might be a poem about rescue, except it's in disguise (see above, tongue frozen, etc.)
This has happened before. This is not my moment to figure out what is happening or why, it's a song that's sung by the dead to the living, something that follows us with their breath, hot and thick on a night like this, speaking in shadow songs through the thin veil of the moon (just got thinner, bright behind a blue tunnel made of sugar and that secret list of all the things we really want).
There are several points I would like to speak to first, several pressing issues that I want to address primarily, except I forgot all of them and can't even find a place to start (it was all theoretical probably, and I need nouns to keep me connected to the thread of things these days, and images of secret writings, hands writing in whispers across bodies that are decidedly other). The veil between objects gets thinner, and even the living and the dead start to get themselves confused, the dead are eating and the living are too anxious to eat, lost in daydreams about the blue sugar tunnel between themselves and the moon, and it's almost too late to notice that the veil between people is also worn away, and at our most sacred moments we start to speak like each other, because the tongue is the voice of the body's sweat and muscle, and everything makes sense without any complicated introduction.
Except. There is this, this one thing, this one pressing thing. That I forgot, or maybe I just can't speak about it in most places. But it's written on my tongue, on the underside, the part that is covered in sugar, waiting for the vision to kick in so that the ceremony makes sense. But it never does, the ritual never ever makes sense until long after it's over, unless it is a poor ritual, faked by angry children who pretend they know more than they do, and charge way too much for a reading.
Those unlocked faeries come crawling out of the hole in the moon and start to watch the patterns, and the songs they sing that harmonize with the dead are the songs we like, the ones with the beat that begins on the lips and ends on the hips; seven mermaids come crying to the door, worried that no one has taken the trouble to ask them why they are so happy lately; five foxes surrounded by eight wolves, and everyone is hungry and nervous, and it would take the perfect song to remind them that the veil between one dog skin and another is very thin, and we are always at our best when we are made vulnerable to each other; under this thin light, under this thin veil, under the watchful eyes of the dead, we are best when we are vulnerable, hungry and cold but entirely sure that we are who we think we are, and a hundred other things besides.
So I dressed up as Jason Statham for Halloween and no one said anything. And I practiced my accent for weeks and weeks. Life is full of bitter disappointment.
I would love to say something without irony or distance or metaphor, but my tongue is frozen (the weather changed), and I'm trying to convince myself that the real things stand in for the metaphors just fine, except they resemble each other too much for that to be true. I'm unhinged. My axis is spinning, and I might be the one being spun, in a hundred different directions at once, and when I land, sprawled out on the floor dizzy and reeling, there are these things that seem true:
This may or may not be a rehearsal, but it is a repetition, this is a complex series of revolutions and repetitions, and it's impossible to figure out exactly what these repetitions are for. But we are given roles, and all we are supposed to do is play the roles that we have been given, and, I think, I might be wrong, but I think, follow our desires, even when they are conflicted, or maybe especially when they are conflicted, or maybe even more especially, when there are road blocks everywhere. I think that might be the game that our ancestors played, over and over, through repetitions of revolutions in a hundred countries, in a hundred dead languages.
I think this might be a poem about rescue, except it's in disguise (see above, tongue frozen, etc.)
This has happened before. This is not my moment to figure out what is happening or why, it's a song that's sung by the dead to the living, something that follows us with their breath, hot and thick on a night like this, speaking in shadow songs through the thin veil of the moon (just got thinner, bright behind a blue tunnel made of sugar and that secret list of all the things we really want).
There are several points I would like to speak to first, several pressing issues that I want to address primarily, except I forgot all of them and can't even find a place to start (it was all theoretical probably, and I need nouns to keep me connected to the thread of things these days, and images of secret writings, hands writing in whispers across bodies that are decidedly other). The veil between objects gets thinner, and even the living and the dead start to get themselves confused, the dead are eating and the living are too anxious to eat, lost in daydreams about the blue sugar tunnel between themselves and the moon, and it's almost too late to notice that the veil between people is also worn away, and at our most sacred moments we start to speak like each other, because the tongue is the voice of the body's sweat and muscle, and everything makes sense without any complicated introduction.
Except. There is this, this one thing, this one pressing thing. That I forgot, or maybe I just can't speak about it in most places. But it's written on my tongue, on the underside, the part that is covered in sugar, waiting for the vision to kick in so that the ceremony makes sense. But it never does, the ritual never ever makes sense until long after it's over, unless it is a poor ritual, faked by angry children who pretend they know more than they do, and charge way too much for a reading.
Those unlocked faeries come crawling out of the hole in the moon and start to watch the patterns, and the songs they sing that harmonize with the dead are the songs we like, the ones with the beat that begins on the lips and ends on the hips; seven mermaids come crying to the door, worried that no one has taken the trouble to ask them why they are so happy lately; five foxes surrounded by eight wolves, and everyone is hungry and nervous, and it would take the perfect song to remind them that the veil between one dog skin and another is very thin, and we are always at our best when we are made vulnerable to each other; under this thin light, under this thin veil, under the watchful eyes of the dead, we are best when we are vulnerable, hungry and cold but entirely sure that we are who we think we are, and a hundred other things besides.
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