Spine

This afternoon I sat cornered in my closet/desk area, writing some thing. I swear, my eyes must look different when I write. My surroundings dissipate and my eyes absorb a reality that I see inside my head. My sister told me two nights ago that I need to start listening to people when they make points about my writing. I simply told her she should listen to me and get the fuck out of my room. She apologized minutes later--saying it came out wrong and agreed that no one ever tries to push anyone/give an honest opinion in a workshop. Not only is this true (hence why I end up being overtly honest and never back down from my blatancy--people need opinions, and criticism is inspiration, accept it) but 1) I've never been in a writing class that teaches craft or guides you with workshops 2) my writing has a point--it may not be polished because I am impatient (etc) and never edit--but it is highly designed and I would rather perfect and explain the points that are imbedded in my text, than subscribe to the points others propose I make.

So I began writing. Basically it came into being in two separate columns, than three, than eight. I was trying to pay particular attention to voices that came upon the scene. The interruptions, the layers, the silences--just like in actual conversation. Then I glued all the passages together to flow as a timeline may be read. However, the main thing missing is voice, speed and silence around the language. The best way I could approach it being understood is through recording. Music is beginning to take so a huge role in my life, that I notice my writing is trying to embody all senses and use all instruments. Voices need to be felt. Language cannot only be heard. I could work on the mechanics and layering for days--in time it will be fleshed out to more detail--but now, I am physically exhausted (as writing does to me-- a surge than stillness). I hope that readers become more engaged with words, how they are written, positioned and related. I hope as readers slow down and examine, they begin to see how an author can play with words and have fun with meaning. But more than anything, I hope authors begin committing to this, requiring this from their art. I hope they begin to expect more; to ask the reader to work, just as they have worked. Regardless, this is what I will do, whether the points go slipping between the translation or not.

All writing in normal script is the man's voice.
All writing in italics is the woman's voice (except if it is a word within a sentence).

We have been dropped here. Positioned in the fixture of a place, made sense by language, alone. Its parameters measure the length we can travel: –How far we can go— (The distance we can explain we went). Our relation, too, will determine how we are defined. It is a condition that affects us, influences us and will decide our behavior. We will be different because of it. You won’t touch me though, will you? I can’t say what I will do. I can only act to show you. How will you act? Nothing has been decided. Won’t you stand? Eventually, I may. Please stand, so I can see you. You can see me, if you have recognized I am here. Yes, but with sitting like so, your stomach goes missing and the soles of your feet disappear. I must take note of the length of you, so I can recall it later. Your eyes make me feel shy. They look out from where you are towards where I am positioned, and I feel withdrawn. But we aren’t Strangers—No, not to another. So we must respond as if we were familiar, as if we have already been accepted. Come, (waving her in) come closer. I re-cognize you. We’ve seen each other in the past? You’ve come from the future. I remember you as I wished I would. You are a memory the future has already decided. I’ll know you then, but there is no disclaiming, I have already discovered you now. See, how easy. And this is where we will begin.

Suspend yourself inside this engagement that encloses us. Remain here until no longer now. Lift your feet and let time carry you disorderly, illogically but within certain reason. Here time moves without routine. But why? Habit suffocates art. And you, artist, need to breathe, must move. The current beneath the surface (that divides you from below) will make sure to stimulate you and encourage your direction. Feel it? Hold the state of mind, you currently occupy, in the curvature of your palm. Carry it with you, confined, as it lays half awake in the deep bedding of your stained skin, stamped by the residue of sleep. Nesting there, safe, it won’t slip away—as it could through the compartments of your mind. You are controlling the matter of your mind, or so you will believe. Do you believe? I’ve accepted it as so. How did you begin the acceptance? After many questions, I eventually arrived at a single truth. And I have brought that truth with me and have it, existing now.

What does it tell you? That in you, there lived a child once, within you she let herself play. Was she beautiful? She was just herself. Then what is she now? She became you. But you are not her, because she is a person of the past. What am I? In the future, the sum of your selves, but now—here—you are subtracted from the day and half exposed in the nakedness of the night. Do I look different? One always sees differently behind the curtains of visibility—the light changes the appearance masks take to the face. One seems different inside his new interior, like a city whose streets change slightly underneath the sun of day and the lamps of night. Look around you; we are cornered by mirrors—a skyline of visibility, a sea of sight. Don’t you see yourself watching you? Ah, yes. But I am behind you and your back is to my face. How come you won’t turn and look at me as I speak? No, I see you in front of me and we are talking at each other. That isn’t what I see. Look, turn and you will face me. (turns, stops) You are behind me. The mirrors multiple and reflect our double. Where am I? A city in your dream. Who made it? You self-designed it, fabricated by wishes for the future and ruminations of the past. Will I remember my being here? Faintly, as though it was something you slept through. A trace of time, a trance of emotional reality you were removed from, just like dreams themselves. But I will remember the words we have exchanged. No, one never does upon waking. The dreamer may make memory of the images, but always reasons no one talked—that in dreams language does not exist, that in the dark speech wasn’t seen. But we see ourselves talking. We understand the language we use. Yes, we think that we are, but the dreamer who watches us can’t make sense of this higher form of interaction. Perhaps dreams existed before language had and this is our memory of the unexplained past breaking through into our conscious; the materials we weren’t able to explain formally at a former time. And that is how you know me? Because this dream, that involves both you and I, is not a design of the imagination, but is a dream that rested inside the memory of a previous engagement where we existed perfectly in the eyes of each other, but we couldn’t speak to make sense of it? Yes. It was then your hand slipped from mine, leaving the fingerprint that made you real on the glass of my eye. And as you walked away, your footprint left an impression on my mind, so you would never be able to leave me completely. But I left you before and am reminded of it now. What if I wake and find I have left you again? Why are you here, telling me this now? Because I am closer to becoming real in all realms of your unreal realities. I must stop my sleeping self from avoiding the ability to hear the language we speak. Sound is not the barrier. It is the code of speech. You must find a new means of recording our language. Quickly, before the last sand drops inside the figure of the hourglass. (looking up) I can start to see the light of day breaking through the veil of your sleeping lashes. I can’t have you go. I must transcribe the language of our voice that explains this time we share. I can make signs. Large signs. And I’ll walk with them within the parameters of this city we have been dropped in. I will walk until I have used up distance, until the streets will no longer let me travel further. I will press, so hard, these signs against the borders of the darkened sky, against the edges of the eye—that the dreamer will feel them penetrating her vision. And there and then, will be able to read our message clearly, the letters of our character, the engagement of our words. What will the signs reveal? What will you choose them to tell your other self? That I need you. How I lost you once to sleep, and have come here ever since to find you, make sense of you and keep you breathing. (holds her hand and kisses her) I had to show you, in case what I say is something that still won’t help you see.