05 I 2002 - 18:07 - verba7

Remember last time, when I said "perhaps"? It's not "perhaps" any longer - this is the response to the January Alchera assignment. This month, I'll be including the terms of the project. Fancy that.

This time, it was born of the tape loop of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 that is playing in my head and some reflection as well - reflection on my own nature, on the nature of my desires, on what there is in me that I might not quite want to face.

Give a time that's worse, give me a time that's later: this, then, is me.

This is an unwarranted, unwanted honesty, then - you don't have to read it. But this is me, too.

Before I begin. Feedback - always appreciated, just [email protected]. I write normal entries, too: click on the "previous" button at the bottom. Thanks are due to the people who proofread for me and gave me comments: Al, Frannie, Raych - and to G., Oz, and T., who agreed to have me send it to them. Whee.

Project No. 03

Begins: Tuesday, January 01, 2002

Ends: On whatever day January 31 falls

Project Theme:

Complete a project involving the following elements:

a subway station

addiction

something broken

Be creative--your piece doesn't have to be centered around the aforementioned "ingredients." However, all three must be present in some form or another within your piece.

...brat fola...

twilight:

the city stirs as it finds its people coursing through different arteries, flowing out from the office buildings to their homes, and it waits, quietly, for what it knows must come on a friday night:

and then the second rush begins in earnest, people rush from their homes and they gather at the latest meeting spots: South of Market, the Castro. the fog rolls in, the bridges fill, and streetcars hum.

you look out over all of this - easy enough to do in a city with so many hills, and something twists within you. maybe i'll go out, you think, and leave your small apartment for the brighter lights of clubs which aren't much bigger.

but they're full of people, and people are something you can stanch your loneliness with - this, half-thought as you pull on your coat and turn out the lights. thoughts like those are the one's it's hard to respond to, caught off-balance as they swim just beneath full consciousness. hop on the bus, take it to the subway, get there fast: half-intelligible through the static of the speaker come the few stations in their order: Montgomery, Powell - you wonder whether you should get out, see what's happening South of Market, maybe not - out past the rest of the downtown group, to Church and then to Castro.

(same old tired advertisements by god why don't they change them)

and now there are people around you, surging, out the station but never as crowded as it is in new york or tokyo, with only about eight hundred thousand people it's never so bad and you

go out to a club to dance, then, that's what you came out for, and you dance with people who mean nothing to you and you just get sick of it all, want to erase the dirges in your head with cheery bad disco music, lose bach (which although it sings with emotion is so hard to pierce) in a wash of romance and sweat and you know it can't be, can't be with any of the people who stare, because they look right through you

and those numbers in your pockets are accidents, they weren't really meant for you. you're in love with the fate you've imagined for yourself as soon as you were old enough to imagine it. a battery of doctors stopped you hurting yourself - you still have the scars on your arms - but they didn't reach inside you, didn't pull out the emptiness it's become your goal to destroy.

pain destroys it - it's one of the few things that does. and that need for pain is buggering you, tearing you up in the heat of its desire, but you let it ride because the haze of pain drives everything away, it's your best friend, you don't have to worry while it's there -

and that's part of the numbers game, that you're sick and tired of hearing mumbled pity when fingers trace your scars in the night, in the half-light, by the moon, that you're smart enough to realize that perhaps no one really motivated by love can give you what you need and still live. and you pass by these people, having given up on their love a little while ago, and no one goes here for love anyway, not really, not these days. no, you look now, and reject because they won't give you the pain you want, look too nice, and through a series of bars until you walk out into the night

which is moist now, cool wind tugging at your jacket, bearing arms of fog on its back and coming over the hills. it's late and you don't want to be alone but don't want the company you can find

and something drives you to walk back to the station alone, even though it's late and, of course, dark, and you've been told ten times over that nights the young men who've something to prove to the world will lie in wait here, and that something - if you reach down far enough - is so obviously that same love-dance you do with pain directing your steps now.

and - look, it's the cliche, because you turn into an alley (guided by some preternatural sense, you think - and look, there's your Latin again when you thought it was lost, praeter beyond) and there are the thugs that the shows on the tube which call themselves dramas love to portray

and you've got sense enough to feel an honest terror now, a chill coming up over your bones before you begin to fight back against what, after all, are only overgrown boys armed with fists, and you remember the last time this happened and you find your strength in anger directed against the world, against the forces that have put this darkness in you, against - really, yourself, for your upbringing, for your demons

and you give quite well but you spin back against the concrete anyway, arm twisted, snapped in the first minutes, and now you think of ending, of warm black fuzz which rises to meet you and it appears you're being reminded of your size

five foot two will give you just more than one and a half meters and don't you forget it

and every pound you never gained is making itself felt now and those boys now, they're looking more smug than ever because - look! they've proved their dominance again on someone who was Weak, and you think they're satisfied, you dare censure them for it? - look at yourself, damn you, broken on the sidewalk, feeling that pain that throbs beneath the surface, flooding your arm, your bruises, your fractured leg, and this has happened again and you look for it? there's nothing for it now but to wait, and now the cold bites more than the pain ever did, because pain, pain might subside after a while, get replaced by shock or a warm feeling that will still manage to fill that hole in your spirit

but cold, cold when it comes from inside or outside is treacherous, will seep through your fiber relentlessly, and when you can't move -

better just to lie still, to wait for someone to come, and to keep yourself company, emily dickinson and - no, just emily dickinson:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -

no...

No Rack can torture me -
My Soul - at Liberty -
Behind this mortal Bone
There knits a bolder One -

You cannot prick with saw -
Nor pierce with Scimitar...

ah, but that's it then, isn't it? that you're not free, not free from yourself and your despair and your rages and that's what this is about, then? and you've realized this long ago and each repetition will make you grow only colder, only deader, only more eager to be rid of this body:

and that's the point, then. to find release is all it is, and fool fool fool you for not having thought that out sooner - and again, you already knew this, have replayed this a thousand beatings past and:

still there's nothing, then. that's what troubles you most is that still you feel nothing where there should be will to live well. and you want to reach inside and twist, really twist until something dies and takes you with it. but there's nothing to take away

and you're left with your rituals, your mortifications of tired flesh.

"tir'd with all these, for restful death i cry -"

first line of one of shakespeare's sonnets, yes? fitting in a way, though removed from context, as blood leaks from your mouth to meet the advancing cold from the ground and your arm refuses to move and you've lost it, lost any control you had over even your own body

and you start to tear because now you've gone and dashed it all to pieces quite literally and you fear you will never repair this shattered trust, this shattered peace you had built up

and voices are coming from the distance, getting closer, and you make a pact, made to be broken, with whatever is above you in the great structure of this world, that never again will you let it get this far, that you will turn yourself around, abandon your demons, seek treatment, if only they will help

and you know just as surely that although they will help you, your demons will be back soon, begging you to take them out again, drawing you in again as soon as you're whole

and you see a short life of cycles in black and doom, different cities different people and there's nothing left to say before you pass out and end this particular sequence

because you don't want their gasps. you don't want their pity. what you really want is for them to turn away, to revile you, because then you will feel justified in some sort of martyrdom and the world will fit a pattern you can make sense of

there is yet some dignity if one is wholly rejected by the world, spit out whole because one is lukewarm

but the pattern is spoiled by random kindnesses, and random is the way of the world, and there is no hope for you to die at peace with yourself and the world, and that's the way of it.

you get this, then, as you float off.

there's no peace to be had.

That's it, then, for this entry. Have a good night. Don't leave too cheery, that's the spirit.

Oh, and the title? Comes from a poem by Nualla ni Dhomhnaill. The full poem, which is in Irish Gaelic, is Feis ("Carnival") and the relevant stanza runs:

Leagaim s��� tr���hrat id fhianaise:
brat deora,
brat allais,
brat fola.

The English translation, which belongs to Paul Muldoon, runs:

I lay down three robes before you:
a mantle of tears,
a coat of sweat,
a gown of blood.

So it's that gown of blood I've taken, but it sounds so much better as the other...

J