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| fig.023) Thin Man (this fish) |
After the fire, the stinging ember of its broken flame, the old house sits and it creaks a lot like a little bit of joy. It's the day after the water has melted apart, when there are sandcastles everywhere but not near enough to the sea. It's the day when I remember the night that everything nearly opened up. The night that I sat up in bed, both of my eyes were filled to their depth with an impossible panic. I couldn't feel the sheets anymore and I couldn't think of Elizabeth's name either. Instead I heard the deep and heavy trucks. The crackle of bull horns that slam into the indecent walls of brick and lumber like they're whiskey finding itself a good wife. I look off into space. Between us, I know my hand is sitting there. I look at the glowing door and I scream like I'm a hot little girl that's burning up from too much heat.
"It's all, touch me. It's touch me if you can because I'm being silent now," she says to me. I can see her sitting at home, agape in the rickety science of her rainbow schemes. She's sitting in her good chair and well enough for being in the sun. But for me it's been a long night. I'm here and my shoulders are super tired. I pull out my chair and sit down in the empty kitchen. It smells like fresh paint or maybe it's dried avocado, I don't know? The cupboard doors are leaning against a wall near the corner and the counters are dusty. They're speckled in roller spray and not very interesting otherwise. My forearms are thick and they're manly from hard use. They're also sore.
"I'd like to say thank you but I won't, because," I'd like to say this to her but she's not here. She's back at home in her sombrero where she's counting all of our secret chickens as they bask under the limitless sun of real fiction and its pretense. "Let me tell you this, all of the dolls should be as quiet and as tough as you," she's said this to me before, maybe a dozen times or more.
I rub the edge of my eyebrow with a moist finger tip and search in my pocket for the cigarettes that I know to be there. Class turns itself around and over and backwards while it waits for the shot. It needs something strong and sweet to move itself forward. Or it needs a little salt and flame. It needs a bier for it's math or some invective to liven it up. There are two glasses sitting on the stove by the door. Their bottoms are stained with lumps of old brown beer gone dusty. I wonder, how did I get here?
"You've always known that if there were glittery rainbow unicorns prancing around then even they would hate you. They would hate you and leave you as they spit on you because you're a degenerate that doesn’t deserve any nice things. They would make fun of your haircut and steal the chair that you're about to sit in. Then, when you fall flat on your ass, you'll know an important life lesson. You'll know why they cut the cake but won't send it," as Elizabeth has always known. Her are eye's are warm and gentle. They've beheld many things that I've wished to touch.
"There's blueberries, butterflies and a warm toast of bread. I'm right here as if I were led. I've been working on this for days and it's been keeping me awake at night. I've never been good at sleeping, nothing has changed that accept now I'm busier."
All of the people are just so damned tired, they're all worn out. They can't even run for congress. They can't paint pictures or write anything clever when they're so sleepy. All of their schools are broken. Now they're like cracked jars that are a little bit foggy inside. They sit alone holding onto their last drizzle of muddy sluice on the highest shelf, out of the reach of the children and cats. Everyone says they know someone that knows something else, that's school enough for now. They've got it. It's a sort of tableaux vivant, in the middle of a wonderful shoebox. Wistful bale of twine, shaggy and lost down the well of time again.
I know this. I should be better at exercising my empathy for others, at recognizing the esprit de corp that's so necessary when making the most of a challenging dynamical group atmosphere so vast in both its shine and sparkle. I will only learn the joys of being privileged enough to be part of this glorious avant garde once I can begin to knit the team sweaters that will symbolize our unity as beautiful humans working as one in this bold and risk taking institution which is currently working so hard to unfold the mysteries that are going to deliver us from the rancor as it resembles an old man with his cloudy beard and his bushy eyebrows looking deep into a distant and hopeful future where doors never close and the windows never shutter.
"Let's paint this and then roll in the sin of our sins," This is how you title your work. This will set you free. This is where your fire goes to become a flame.
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