March 26, 2006
flat picture plane
I treat my body like a freezer in a back room, household unit on its back, resembling a chest, keeping things frozen; I’m having trouble recalling conversations like I used to. Though less trouble than ever knowing what people mean when they say Good enough or, I smoke so much I grew tired trying to open a tight pickle jar today or, Death of Marat. He was writing a letter in that bath. Talking to me while I count cards, listen without overextending myself. All day yesterday, my brain’s physical properties a jigsaw puzzle, each piece housing a small part of a picture, nothing interlocking, steamy fuse a piece as big as the narrator on sunday evening, rolling into midnight after being picked up for a long drive. An extent never experienced before. Loving these people out of a paper bag. Three years ago my life made so much sense that it was killing me: I can eat this much, I will be naked everyday, this story will be perfect--limits set for myself. I can’t live in a world that makes sense. The little things about people that I don’t understand: Jaxon putting two closed, empty, milk jugs on top of the slimy dishes in the sink. I’m not sure what to do with them, why they’re there. Jaxon leaving browned pear cores beside him on the mattress as he reads the third in the trilogy. I’m sorry; I know what I’ve done. I don’t do it very often. I haven’t broken a heart in five years. Jaxon coming home after working on his lifeguard re-certification at the pool—no part of him has ever looked cleaner and still he showers because of the chemicals enclosed water leaves on his skin, blasts of chlorine he carries home as his hair dries, nostrils gone to husks. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to talk to about the fact that now, at any second I could break out into tears. When you lose your separation anxiety, what do you have left?
Posted by caroline at March 26, 2006 11:53 PM
You got a dead man in a bathtub. Full Stop.
For a man who's just been stabbed, his sheets are pretty pristine. Being a woman, I know from blood + sheets, and that ain't no murder scene.
I liked your psychedelic background better. It could light up a broom closet, hee hee!
ed,
being a human being, I don't understand the added benefit of bathing with one's sheets. Though, then again this was the French Revolution and, I've never been what's usually considered "frugal,"--tend to keep my laundry coins and dove soap coins rather separate.
did that broom closet give you as bad of a sexual complex as it did me? I will never actually recover from that.
My background kicked reality's ass as true supplement for a normally inaccessible reality, man. I’m sure he thought his dispensing said assignment on my shoulders was safe, since I was oh so comfortable with "rendering." Seriously--why couldn't I have gotten someone like Pollack? Then I could have actually gone home when school ended, instead of remaining in that ghastly chamber of an art studio, trying to "perfect" my shading or "Marat's cheekbones."
I will never recover from that injustice, either.
Ben,
I prefer my men covered in pig's mud. Pig's shit is pushing it, but only slightly.
Maybe there were no more beds available? Maybe he had to settle in the bathtub -- it's like student living taken to a whole new level: "For rent: 1m sq room, bed and bath, desk with good lighting for work/study, laundry facilities included." But you have to be careful, 'cause it's a rough neighbourhood.