printing press

I had this plan where if I took tracing paper and taped it to the mirror and traced my face I would remember it since I would be more involved in the creation of that one line drawing than I am in a whole roll of pictures. I push a button. The world slides by, advances.
I push a button. I push a button. I push a button and shut my eyes.

(They say we stop time every time we think about a specific moment, so I have been sitting, fist to my chin, willing this to happen.)

a violence like this.

When I was littleI would slide myself down into the tub under water and open my eyes while my hair fanned out around my face. I would hold my breath and stay as still as possible until I just couldn’t do it any longer. then I’d explode forward, born again, spraying water everywhere, gasping and coughing quietly into my wrinkled palms, wondering what it felt like to be my brother without the tubes and the machines and all the drip drip drip into your veins no bigger than mine.

It’s winter again.

I take baths and my knees stick out above the city water.
and I thought you would want to know thatI miss you.

hell, there’s plenty of light still left in your eyes.

It was marvellous to hear from Ben. Really, it was. I’d be a liar if I said that wasn’t the case. He’d been my best friend for ages. It’s sad the way things turned out, but what’s sadder is this whole mess, and make no mistake, it is a big, god awful mess. It sticks to my heart like puke to the sidewalk outside the Midtown, and I can’t avoid the smell. I could walk around it. I could pay my tab and go home. Instead I ignore the drunk puking on my shoes. I talk over the retching. I keep slinging drinks down my throat. I never look down, and no matter what happens,  I will never move from my stool.

song of the moment.

A black sheep boy revolves over canyons and waterfalls.
A black sheep boy dissolves in syringe or in shower stall.

He says
“There’s plenty of time to make you mine tonight,
there’s plenty of time to make you mine.”

He says
“There’s plenty of ways to know you’re not dying,
all right.
Hell, there’s plenty of light still left in your eyes.”

A black sheep boy grows horns,
Breathing smoke through his microphone.
The airwaves stretch and they groan, bleeding, birthing his black diapason.

Says
“There’s plenty of things to wear when you come to me,
every color of sleeve to be rolled.
Millions of rolling eyes that still cling to me.
Every language of king is concerned.
So why
did you bawl
from the spell of some old holy song
some liar laughed as he composed,
some liar I loved to control?”

A black sheep boy dissolves
In hot cream, in sweet moans,
In each dead bed and empty home,
In each seething bacterium.

Killing softly and serial,
He lifts his head, handsome, horned, magisterial.
He’s the smell of the moonlight wisteria.
He’s the thrill of the abecedarian.
See the muddy hoof prints where he carried you?

And there’s plenty of ways to claim his crimes tonight,
and there’s plenty of things to do on his dime.
And there’s plenty of ways to wear his hide tonight,
you’ve got yours, I’ve got mine.
You’ve got yours, I’ve got mine.
So why
Did you flee?
Don’t you know you can’t leave his control
Only call all his wild works your own?
So come back and we’ll take them all on.
So come back to your life on the lam.
So come back to your old black sheep man.

Says
“I’m waiting on hoof and on hand.
I’m waiting, all hated and damned.
I’m waiting, I snort and I stamp.
I’m waiting, you know that I am,
calmly waiting to make you my lamb”

-Okkervil river, So Come Back I am Waiting

i’m waiting, you know that i am. calmly waiting to make you my lamb.

I feel like my time is running out. Not in the sense that I will be hit by a bus on my bike and crushed under its wheels in some sort of gory display of “She was much too young, going much too fast, never paying attention and was she even wearing a helmet? Typical college brats” but more like I have been turned on my head and slowly, every thought I ever had, every last bit of me, is leaking out onto the pavement, through the cracks, into the ground where it will be stored until it flows up through the trees and out into the sky into nothing. Percipitation. Maybe if I stand out in the rain for an hour or so, I’ll feel like myself again. Then again, maybe not. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t. What matters more is what I do in the meantime.

Like last night. Last night I was out for a walk and it was warm and foggy and lovely, and really all I wanted to do was have Adam take pictures of me at every landmark, every place I frequent, from the Perks I always go to when I can’t sleep, to the giant paillars I always want to hug in front of the Royal Bank building way down town near the water. I wanted a memorial to me standing in the arches of the sculpture outside the AGNS. I wanted memories and tangible moments where I looked happy in my rubber boots and that same velvet blazer, greening around the shoulders and armpits from age, the one with the ripped pocket that I always wear with my stupid purple scarf. Still Life of a 21 Year Old Rag Doll. Smiling. The smile is the most important part. All the body language is necessary to the equation. I want to see my toes turned in and my hands relaxed at my sides or wide open as if embracing the word. I want to be squinting my eyes and wrinkling my nose and making a silly face, or just grinning and not caring about the gap in my teeth or the zit by my mouth or if my sweater makes me look fat. I want to be reminded I am happy in case I forget. I might forget. I’ve been documenting my life obsessively this semester in case I forget. I live in terror of old age and that blank space where things go when your mind decides you don’t need them anymore, regardless of whether your heart agrees with it or not.

I want to wrap you up, a dozen times in my long purple scarf, and when I unwind you and set you free, I want my whole world to pour out with you, so I will never leave any of it behind. I want you to be my brain. My blind eyes. My deaf ears. My mute tongue. My missing hands. And I will be the heart.

 

begin at the beginning.

I will build on this. I will make it a tribute to the sun. Just you wait and see.