Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Fear and Trembling

Child: "I want to die with you."

Mother (laughingly): "No you can't".

Afterwards the child has visions of her parents rotting in their graves. Her parents as skeletons with black holes for eyes and black spaces between their ribs. Their wedding rings gleam against the darkness and the immaculate whiteness of their bones.

The door is cracked open and a beam of light penetrates the darkness of the room. Her parents' laughter floats upwards. They are having dinner downstairs at the big dining table, beneath the crystal chandelier. She hears the clatter of knives and forks, and the music of her mother's jade bangles clinking against each other. The child is filled with a profound and unbearable love. She doesn't want her parents to die. Love and fear assault and trample her, like the invasion of a million Huns. With her heart plundered and ravaged, the child cries herself to sleep.

. . . . . .

Was afflicted with a nightmare of the earth convulsing: a massive earthquake, but could not decipher if it was really the earth quaking, or if it was I who was trembling, thus making my own world seem to heave.

I was afraid, but it did not occur to me to scream, because I succumbed, and to scream would have been to protest. Maybe fear itself is a sign of protest, but I swallowed it.

I rode the earth's violent tremors with the same effortlessness as my fear. It was a consolation to be effortlessly afraid. Electrifying liberation to assume the role of coward and not struggle against treachery. Lucidity breached the tumult, like the unexpected flare of an idea when submitting to the vagaries of thought, but stronger. Fear is always self-confrontation. The extremity of fear was the extremity of myself throbbing to the same violent pulse as the heaving earth.

Monday, November 12, 2007

My Lady Crush

Elle gets stared at alot. Sometimes I watch other people stare at her. Elle is half Japanese, and half I don't know what. She walks with the elegant and slightly haughty gait of a ballerina with hips that sway imperceptibly. Her lustrous long hair nearly reaches her waist. It's hair to die for, like in the pantene ads. If you were to touch it, it would feel like silk, like cashmere. Her voice could be an aphrodisiac. It doesn't matter what she says. Profanity eludes her. She curses like she recites poetry. The professor makes her read out loud because she's good at it. The melodic lilt of her voice, the perfect articulation, the rhythmic ease as if she doesn't need to pause to breathe...You could admire her blind. She is effortlessly exquisite and unaware that she is so. That's why she is effortless: she is unaware of her allure. If someone told her she was beautiful she'd smile politely. Composure never fails her.

Sometimes I notice my classmate's eyes flicker with desire when she casually tosses her coal black hair over her shoulder, when she crosses and uncrosses her legs, when she frowns in concentration...She doesn't know that she is being watched. If she became aware of her magnetism she might abuse it. She might defiantly stare her admirer down. Her admirer might blush, turn away, then chance another glance because he finds her irresistible, and her defiance even more so. Her beauty makes her unapproachable. That's the only thing that's keeping him back. He's told me so. "I wouldn't dare", he says, half-laughing to let the torture out.

It's not necessarily Elle's beauty I admire, it's her ability to attract. I am obsessed with attraction. The greed of each other. I wonder what Elle's admirer would do to her if he got the chance: whether he'd be timid at first, hardly daring to touch his Helen, his Madonna, his Venus. Perhaps his desire would become barbarous. I don't know if Elle is capable of ravishment, of sweating and panting in an unladylike manner. Elle with disheveled hair. Elle with limbs flung in disarray. Elle undone.

Now I understand why I keep looking at Elle. I want her unravelment to be my own.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Malady

The ennui of my current condition is intolerable. I am possessed by the useless languor of monotony. A detached sluggishness has overcome me, and I find myself wishing for the intensity of emotion. But when rage and the spit of my soul finally come to the fore, I will yearn once more for the repose of boredom. This calm fatality perturbs me, or rather, I feel as if I should be perturbed. Tomorrow, or weeks from now, I might erupt into something else, but right now this hibernation is of the worst kind.

A few days ago, I found that I was removed from myself in a way that is difficult to describe. I was in class taking notes, and for a split second found that my hand was moving at its own will. My hand was a machine having no relation to my inner presence. I had become my own observer in an almost clinical sense. It was a moment of amazement, terror, and utter alienation.

I went to him in a half daze. I needed him to tell me who I was, and to save me from my soul's amnesia. I'd have believed anything, just for the sake of conviction. I'd have made him my faith. I don't know why him. I told him I wanted to cry about nothing. My need for him was perilous. I didn't care. Desperation is when you don't care. I needed someone to drag me out of myself. I couldn't have liberated myself on my own without the horrid feeling that I was indiscriminately defecating my soul on the sidewalk. I couldn't, just couldn't, without him.

But today with my placidity I can do without alot of things, even him. He was only crucial in my moment of need, like how I can suddenly become Christian again during a crisis. Today, I can easily ignore him. Tomorrow I might need him again for my intoxication. The cruelty of my nature frightens and disgusts me.