mort mot juste

outubro 24, 2017

Today, tomorrow

You're older now and sometimes worry that you have done nothing with your life, 
And you won't get rid of the pictures of the parties you used to throw
In them you looked Happy, even though you weren't really ever that Happy back then
Right now you know you will never be Happy
Because Happy isn't what you thought it would be
And you're still not even sure what it really is
But you're calm, fed
Clothed and you still have dreams
But you don't write them down anymore
You let them come and go because it is Natural
And you know life is Natural and death is Natural
And nothing ever really shocks you anymore
Cause it all just is what it is, and what it's meant to be
And people are who they're meant to be
And the path is forward, Natural, unshocking
And there are fewer, smaller, quieter parties until maybe there are no more parties
But you go on because it's Natural
And sometimes you look at the old pictures of when you looked Happy, because that is also Natural
But you eventually put them away, because there is today, and today, and endless today still
And sometimes there is tomorrow
But we don't think about that.

maria 6:27 PM 0 vociferando estavam

i'm coming home VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII


(these are also on http://shescominghome.tumblr.com/ )
VI.
so one night after eleven hours of airplane panic i admitted to myself i had always been in love with rich and probably always would be. (i also got my finger smashed by the closing cab door. that second realization, three seconds into the whole screaming in my scarf, was the one hurt me the most. i did not wish for a broken finger.) it didn’t matter though, not to me, certainly not to him. i was trying to dry my hair with this overpriced, ridiculously small blow drier that made my hair look like old straw in the dimly lit hotel with no central heating whatsoever and oh yeah it was the night of the blizzard. i wore purple, rich wore black, i joked around, something about how morbid it was, his always wearing the same faded black shirts. he would smile, a kindly flushed, dead and dead-on smile. i would be pleased and smile on the inside. he would tell a disgusting story or a bad joke, i would keep drying, freezing, my hair looking more and more impossible to work with. i couldn’t hear a word, but i nodded repeatedly and that was convincing enough. i couldn’t sit on the chair either, the upholstering would stain my clothes an unpleasant shade of dirt gray, the green-blue floor looked nearly black from years of muddy, slushy shoes coming in and out and the inn not paying its illegal cleaning crew more than two dollars an hour so i sat on the lower bunk bed that felt like a wooden plank and shook just a little from the wind coming in the crevices of the windows, the doors. he knew, he pretended he didn’t. he didn’t know, so he pretended that he did. he’d always give me a little pinch on the arm whenever he inquired about my health, my mental health, about how was I doing these days, anyway? and how nice I looked, really, it was so good to see me. on the top bunk rich fell into a slumber, then into a sadness, then into a watch, then into a weakness then into the deepest sleep, and he dreamt of nothing in particular. oh, i knew. i never slept when he did. i slept during the day, after he’d left for the art galleries, the girls, the champagne glasses. the lines, and colors, and shades, and light and strokes (and sometimes real strokes, a dead old painter, tears on the young women’s faces, they never knew him: they knew other dead people, the recently dead – however fine, and laughing–, but not the snow-haired painters, they weren’t okay, they were dead and miserable. that made the short-dressed, trim-haired, makeup-eyed girls cry, big wet sloppy eyeshadow tears meaning they identified. they felt just like the dead old man, miserable in his grave of paintings, of black tie wearing vultures and shiny flooring… only they weren’t even dead. they weren’t even miserable.) rich had told me in a dream that when we were apart, we were him and me. but together… together we were no one. rich, i want you to know that that always worked for me. it really did. i’ll make some coffee now, and you will be here. i won’t have a desire to drop dead at your feet (never did, richie, never ever did) but I will miss your cheek accidentally when we kiss hello and go for your ear. it’s nothing sexual. i’m just really fond of your ears. friend, foe, go screw yourself or a lovely blonde doe. save me the ears and we can still be friends.
 … - - - …
 i had left belle’s with a note, several days prior. must have been the fifth time. some expensive chocolate on her candy smelling pillow and a piece of flowery stationery that read “thanks for letting me crash, you’re a goddess. here’s something for those sweet teeth”. i drew a happy face for a signature with an old, forgotten strawberry-scented gel pen. it had probably been under her bed since the 90s. belle, the clean freak, the control animal, hair and eyebrows and buttons all in place, military curfew, tidying rituals, had misplaced a pen nearly 12 years ago and she had taken no notice. all the times she cleaned, meticulously, how was that even possible? i took the pen with me, for she did not deserve to be exposed to it, to this imperfect, sinful even, gel pen of untidiness. when i was with belle or whenever i could feel her presence the atmosphere would be that of my sixteenth year. reckless, flowery, demented. strawberry scented, hospital scented, slightly autistic. a silky feeling about the hands. i wished that feeling onto her. i whispered it to her room as i closed the whitewashed door. breathed it in and out of me, in hopes she would inhale some of that stuff the following week. when you come back and i’m not there, belle, just assume. my breathing is. and it’s brand new.and then i was off. off to rich’s, to unimaginable made-up pain, frost bitten legs on tons of drawings flung into the bin. regular pens, uncertain walks in central park by the water. belle disliked rich. he made me dream. it would end up turning me into one of those girls. she hated those girls. but she loved me. she sent me hugs via email. she made me feel safe.
 … - - - …
 and on rich’s bunk bed (the top one) there was jo. jo’s voice, jo’s presence, jo’s witty comebacks. she couldn’t have stood me for longer than five minutes. she was his muse, she had the darkest hair and the reddest lips, she was always, always sick and/or injured. some new, terrible, flesh-eating virus that gave her no more than a headache. i gave her a headache, i heard her say once. i wanted to join the conversation. i wanted to tell her that i gave myself a headache, too. we should have been friends, me and jo. she tried to play the guitar. i would be willing to stand that, i really would. catching the same train would be easier if we could chat, make time go by a lot faster. jo was away somewhere in Africa, though. and she didn’t wish me dead, it was never like that, rich had told me.  
 … - - - …
VII.
As I became more aware of how the rain couldn’t really be defeated, I allowed myself to feel drenched, and the way my laces were untied and my hair was in disarray comforted me and filled me with the hope of better storms to come. I knew nothing I did could make any difference as to whether buildings would collapse from the heaviness of water (so much, so much water), nothing I did would make sense but the sound of my steps in the small puddles of mud. That was something I could recognize as real, mud, so thick, so sure of itself and of its role in the universe. I thought of the suicide just outside Belle’s place. She didn’t read about it in the paper the next day, for the next day had nothing to do with blood, gardenias, or the color yellow. They never published these things anyways, and the newscast avoided them as well, traded them in for the latest car crash, the newest medical supply scam, so they never really actually happened. As I treaded and feared and treaded that infinite lightning lit street I got a call, or at least my pocket vibrated, and I gasped, and fell on my knees, and nearly threw up on the pavement. The call was coming from Richard’s phone. Flights of angels vibrated me to my quick passing out onto the mud. My umbrella lay useless next to a pile of soaking leaves.
… - - - …
first, double-cross her heart
… - - - …
I knew this wouldn’t last, it was a slippery feeling, and I had no intention to hold onto it. Even as Walt and I went boxing gloveless together and nearly broke each other’s noses, “to remind us of our long gone father”, he said smiling, regretful, and even as I battled Rich and tackled with new love and ancient hatred I was aware that History, as one had said before, was just one fucking thing after another. Just pistols shooting meds, syringes spitting bullets, and ideas, books, and tea to keep us alive, warm, and fed.
I also knew the time would come, to give it all up to the rain, to drop the act I put on, and to stop looking so goddamned alive. I would then learn the will, earn the courage and grow the spine to trade every friendly smile in the world for a quiet day in isolation, up some mountain, some abandoned prison cell in the middle of rusty nowhere.
I couldn’t feel my hands, my cell phone had been ruined by the mud. My lips tingled and I would have instantly called Jenny, a wounded soldier, a cry for help, and an answering machine playing a catchy tune from the 90s. As I had expected, no one came, the streets were deserted. I would not get carried to the nearest hospital, where I’d have to explain everything, making it all the more meaningless.
… - - - …
The chinese restaurant I disliked was the only place you could eat without leaving the suspiciously empty tenement neighborhood. My stomach felt like an H bomb, so instead of eating I just cracked open a fortune cookie. The slip of paper read “In the scrabble of life, you only get as many i’s as to spell out Irony twice”. “Holy fucking shit”, I inadvertently thought aloud, and a brown haired lady with bull’s eyes clutching a small child gave me the coldest stare I’d ever seen.
… - - - …
what was the easy way?

VIII.
Dear Richard, I met someone with whom I could act just the same way I did with you. I was the most insufferable wise ass you ever seen; he seemed to get it. It made me miss you head first to the concrete, a raindrop to the window kind of thing. Please send me your new address so I can avoid dropping by, bumping into, and getting uselessly flustered at the memory of us. The us that briefly almost was. Love,

IX.
blood like lemonade

. .. .  -  -  -  … 

During the two whole years Isabelle and I spent avoiding each other a whole bunch of meaningful nothing took place. It did occur to me to tell her, to report, like in the olden days, golden pages in a liar’s little Bible. What I’d done. Whom I’d fucked. Turns out all it ever took was dialling three times three some lemon green tea and the minute I heard her voice I knew the seriousness of the mistake I’d made. her father was dead. mine, long gone. both of us could use a few days of willingly unknowing wistful looks and strawberry lemonade. New York was still stuck to my skin, a bad rash born from a winter’s collapse. I had not done, seen or lived anything worth telling. I missed her way too much. Which did not mean that I did not miss my dead just as much, only they weren’t a gleaming possibility in my end-of-the-tunnel delusions. I made plans to see her. I would be back, my hair a multicoloured tangle, hers a harsh, perfect cocoon. She would offer me a caffeinated drink that, during those two years, I had learned to detest. And it would taste like paradise bottled. Both found and deterred.

X.
so as it turns out it is actually quite possible to have the same psychotic break twice. at least it’s what rich told me in the café near the streets i walked as a drunken teenager.
get yourself together. 
i listened carefully and wondered if maybe i myself could be in the midst of a psychotic break and this was all a huge cosmic misunderstanding we’d all laugh about later on. i could feel the walls with tasteful black and white pictures hung closing in on me. i couldn’t, however, feel richard’s hand casually touch my own as i struggled to breathe and tried to look normal after all these years. 
get yourself together.
anxiety was not an option simply because when that happens, I tend to forget where I put my house keys entirely and I really, really, really just wanted to take him home with me. the café played music that sounded like a small bird interrupting a symphony. it was absurd, I could barely cope with looking at him from up close. my brain is melting down but my poise is beyond reproach. this is how he remembers me, i thought, this is how he should see me now.
get yourself together.
richard, darling, what can I say to make all of this suffering seem worth your while? kissing is healthier than shaking hands.

XI
Our plants die of overwatering and I’m crying relentlessly, he suggests I take it easy, or take some plastic plants home from the decor store. I can’t for the life of me figure out what makes him tick. i mean what ticks him off. we’re not strangers living in the same house as the old cliché would indicate, but we know each other so well that i often mistake him for myself. I gasp and faint at the sight of red meat, he redefines our route to work -and play- so as to avoid all meat markets in the neighborhood. he hints at me over breakfast one day that our life is the closest to perfection as it is humanly possible. he does so with a slight nod of the head, a tilted, serene smile. i do not accept that: not because i disagree, but simply because perfection is frightening, and it petrifies me. what comes after perfection? there seems to be life after death, so I’ve learned from every religion I’ve ever eagerly tried to practice. I’m as sure of it as I can be, as sure as I used to be about how plants wither when left unwatered - and yet, I can’t, or won’t, believe the answer to this, to us, is as simple as “no one ever really dies”. it seems to me the only possible outcome of reaching perfection is immediate termination. Which is possibly the reason why I have always liked beginnings way, way better.
I’m agitated, I can’t sleep. I eat candybars by the dozens. I hang from the chandelier. he tells me it’s a fracture hazard and suggests I hang from something safer. there is no irony in his voice, only love.
He knows he can’t protect me - he is not naive, neither is he young - not anymore, anyways. But he diverts our course away from the butcher shop again. We are on this walk, and it’s a sunny day, one of those winter marvels we get as a reward for living where we live, and I know the poignant truth, we are made of red meat and bones and blood and we cannot be avoided, we cannot be made different, we cannot bend without breaking. I do not accept this, but I take his hand and also I take the second left turn. It will get us where we’re going faster, besides, I must start practicing, I must try and walk by the butcher’s without fainting. 

XII
I felt like I had to write him a letter, even though he was sitting right next to me. I wish I could do it in our native language, I do. But feelings don’t work like that, they don’t just leap out of us in an appropriate, sensible manner.
I felt like everything was redundant. I couldn’t touch his arm in a different way than I had the day before, or the hundred days before that. I couldn’t tell him that I loved him in a more meaningful tone, volume or tempo than I had during all this past year.
One year, counting. How did this happen? Not so long ago it seems I was sleeping twelve hours every night and having nightmares about his death, his funeral– and during the day, as right as rain, fire and thunder, I would be attending the real funerals of acquaintances, family, friends and pets, then sleeping some more. What changed, I wondered, and what bizarre occurrence turned me into someone who had everything it would ever be worth having, risking, and consequently losing?
My addiction to candy gets worse. I purge by ingesting nothing but water for a whole day. I haven’t put another cigarette in my mouth since last summer– that’s a lie, but the ones I have smoked I can count by holding up four of my fingers like a child who’s really quite proud of her age.
Richard, what have you done to me? I have crossed a line with no return. I fumble in my pockets for an excuse to leave the house and think: a note from work, a doctor’s appointment (on a Sunday afternoon?), a grocery list. Instead, I find a napkin containing one of his incidental love notes. “The dogs are fed. There’s coffee in the pot. I’ll be back by noon”.
Richard, now that you’ve made sure that I have no reason whatsoever to go around hurting myself and using the resulting blood to paint pictures, what am I supposed to do with all these hours in all these days?
So I write him a new letter. It contains a grocery list, an idea for a novel I’m too scared to write. I say, What if it’s garbage. He says, What if it ain’t. Not really, though. He actually really says, I know you, and it won’t. I pick up pens, pencils, an empty notebook, but I don’t start my novel. I don’t finish the one I’ve already started, either. I write him a letter about us, as he sits right next to me.


maria 6:25 PM 0 vociferando estavam



ao rés da fala