By Myself.

In class assignment: Isolate a moment. Write "I remember" every time something from memory erupts. Then remove "I remember".

All the time I feared we may lose what was meant for us. Alone, I didn’t have anyone else. Silence could not be harmed. But what isn’t affected could never change me, and perhaps for some time now this absoluteness replaced all the other things I couldn’t depend on. How different I was before I came. And did you notice? That’s okay, too. Not everything is meant for memory, although we intend it to be. Meaningful, I think. At least, I don’t remember, the feeling of my hands. Whether absence was my punishment for going under too long, not considering what was meant for us. How I stared like I was fascinated by water, like I had found my eyes. In my bath, the body retains nothing it already knows. Wondering who I’ve become, hands wander in the shape of an opinion. And I, I push under; holding breath, I challenge consciousness, every time more severely. The heart pulsing is not something I can fall asleep to so I wake to whatever hasn’t happened. Leaving myself drained, I step out lighter, smelling of something, but can’t remember the feeling of my hands. We almost were close. Red, splotchy. My eyes see reflected a newborn child. I am numb to sensations coming from myself. My first feelings are never mine. I think. I don’t know. On the tile floor, I am kept clean. And if we are anything alike you probably know this and hear the sound of my body dripping wet. Which is why you call out, why I move. I am coming soon. Driven faster by fear of losing what was meant for us. From marble to rock, I’ve a moment still in being by myself, so I slow. Stepping on the outside, I’m aware only of the sounds I make. A moment more to wonder whether you can cause change, if not just be it—the feeling in my hands. This, you already know, before I wrote, will be how, be why I begin to write us. There’s less chance I’ll stay clean once I walk across the rocks. But it’s less likely we will lose what was meant for us if I do, so I do and I trip, thinking of the time we’re approaching and the harm I’ve already effected. In silence, you watched me cause my own mistake as if this was the first chance in seeing me, really.

JJJJJ

Can't believe in missed this one...

Survival

Heathers - Remember When - Live At MUZU Studios on MUZU.

I'm getting bigger every day.

Today is one of those days. I woke to the sound of a hairdryer blowing, my body smothered by piles on the bed. To open your eyes and immediately wonder in light whether it is the environment that is a mess or only yourself - what a way to spend time, if only a moment or two, it's too much! I know. Danced my tush off last night, after eating a six course meal. Walked east, hoping open air would pacify my nausea. Men everywhere. My ears hanging onto their words. After awhile all the eyes make me feel grotesque. They watch me become more, watch me be less. Today is one of those days I wish I were lighter. My skin tighter, my hunger controlled. Of course, last night wouldn't have been able to happen had I been unwilling to eat. This body I'm in never feels like mine because it is always changing, always shaping itself and deforming who I see myself as. These thoughts make me less of a person, although because of them I am who I am. It's just tough, confusing really, when you don't know if you'll make it in language, and when so many people tell you to use your image to succeed. That I can, that I should, that ultimately I will. It's terrible the comments - the compliments; how they make me feel pressure to maintain some ideal, that isn't natural nor maintainable.

Acceptance.

Last night I reached new heights. An epiphany. Acceptance.

I don't think I'll ever derive the satisfaction, the pleasure, the purpose of my life working in media. I always thought high; thought once I got a foot in, I could change the system. But the mass media doesn't want my morals, my ethics, the sobriety delivered in truth. Entertainment wants me to dream; a mentality I would have to fake. Ultimately, a behavior I would never succeed at. Sure there are directors whose films epitomize the theories and lifestyle I want to deliver in literature. And these are individuals I respect, admire, applaud. But unfortunately (because it can't be better known), they have done something I am trying to do. They have chosen not to be popular. They have chosen not to come easy. They have chosen not to accessible.

I was cornered into fiction probably out of an insecurity with not being an intellectual. Motivating me was my commitment to, once again, change the standards: what one expected and thought they could handle. Ultimately, I knew fiction reached the masses, the youth, the generations in development and I thought I could use the genre to manipulate one into sitting down with fiction only to discover psychoanalytical philosophy was entertaining, engaging, illuminating - fooling them into, not the imagination, but truth. This will forever be my intention - an aim I know, now, won't be a phase because last night I realized this mind body duality has been a lifestyle, my obsession, my commitment since I was a child.

In the midst of friends over, I found myself on my bed with my mouth hung open over this article. At some time I will talk about things I experienced as a child, that ultimately effected my self and shaped my life. From this, I know the first piece of literature I want to be remembered for; a piece my life has already been devoted to. It will be a split piece - two halves - and there will not be anything fictitious about it.

When I was asked to stay after class on Tuesday night, I was faced with a situation that is increasingly becoming more difficult to shake off. My professor, whose presence I have been in only twice, basically insinuated I was either on drugs, have lost my mind or am bipolar. He did not understand my shifting pronoun was intentional, that it was a mind body exploitation and a reference to myself as a child and as an adult, now looking backward. He proceeded to question whether I had any experience with reading fiction. And I proceeded to feel most uncomfortable and left after feeling obligated to apologize multiple times. I would have felt entirely okay had I been apologizing for just not spending time on the work and not reading the fiction, which all had been the cases. I had been up for 24 hours after a flight and a week long vacation - opaqueness was the result; why did my mental health had to be called into question - why inability to write fiction? And why, just because I am a writer, was I expected to be able to write about anything, all the time? Perhaps, the creative writer can.

My focus has been on post-modernity - a consciousness that certainly confuses the self, but these things were part of development, part of the process of finding clarity and making meanings Perhaps it was my fault for ever thinking creative writing/fiction professors would understand my philosophical slant. If I was trying to expose the psychoanalytic effect of the anorexic: seeing her actual self and wanting her ideal self, believing her mind (ego) could be severed from her body (superego) - than, in the fiction realm today one didn't understand why I just didn't write about not eating certain food or looking at how ugly my body is. But those things weren't what was important, and they aren't what the disorder is about. They avoid what the anorexic is always hungering for.

Perhaps to them I was always stepping into the wrong class. My other professors - outside of fiction - appreciated me, whereas the former thought I was all messed up. Again I was told that I was unwanted by the mass media, as if it were something I didn't already know and/or accept. Because of this, I have been feeling this overwhelming pressure to have an imagination, to invent tales and to disregard my thoughts. In entertainment internships, I see repetitively that the workplace has no handling on creative or even conscious control. I'd like to think producers are being critical when reality shows are edited for audiences, but they never voice an argument and therefore, the importance of the issue goes missing and people remain underdeveloped. They fail to be a substantial self freed of images and ideals. Small talk and kissing ass would be me failing as the person I have always been in mind. I

f my life aim is to reveal the core of individuals, to let ourselves be vulnerable, open and candid, to keep the youth from wasting time on complexes like I have then my career must step away from mass media to focus on one's relationship with the self. If I can't be heard in novels, than I want to be heard face to face. If I can't filter in confession, than I am devoted to helping the other confess. If I can't save lives with the written word, than I have every intention to do so with the spoken. Psychoanalysis. The merging of literature and self. Ultimately, the individual is the creative composite. The character I want to develop. The way I can impact others without compromising my self-belief.

Rachel: Chelsea, I love how your bag remains packed, as if you are here but leaving.

I Want Time To Write

There are an overwhelming amount of sensations I would like to actualize with words. So rather than solely feeling them, I can confirm their existence by sight. Somehow, because of this, I suspect we could - together - recognize the reality of our interior and perhaps trust that we can achieve permanence for one another. Maybe all it takes for us to be, is this acknowledgment: what makes the feelings of two seperate selves significant is the chance they are the same. What would we become if we didn't have to be strong, which is to say, if we let our feelings take advantage of us? What would you do if you let yourself go and from doing so achieved/received your desire? An overabundance of time devoted to self-consciousness prohibits the profound. I respect this opinion but have to add, it may paralyze as well. Was it Woody Allen who said postmodernists perform mental masturbation? Still, Woody, this right here doesn't make me feel like I'm grazing any base. Especially after last week, when it seemed pleasure was pursuing me, instead of I to it. Which is to say, I was more natural and did not dwell, even though I laid in a bedroom that wasn't mine for longer than I have ever allowed and looked upon some other without the will to escape being seen. During this time, I looked outward more than the reverse and discovered my eye became newly fascinated by someone I wasn't thinking about. I found us lucky and successful without regard to the goal of attaining a sort of selfish state. My eye saw without thinking, and this I believe is how I found myself indulged in pleasure. I am facing the fact that without activity, my smile is lifeless and my character paralyzed. I am committed to thought and live for conversation, but I can't stand the retelling of stories. Why? Because one finds themselves in explanation, which postpones the real and truly severes us from our sensual social self. And I don't want to hear myself sounding seperate from how I feel. And I don't want to stop my process within the present to live in a past that has already happened. This detracts from the pleasure and the overarticulation is an awareness where I am portrayed unnaturally - where in order to expound I must exaggerate; ultimately a romanticization that is humorous (in that entitites become an ideal) or tragic (in that analysis is not in tune with the moment's true time). Perhaps because I was seeing sense, sensuality and sensation in such different terms last week I inevitably fell from not thinking about where I was going (consequences, reason, logic). But the fall didn't hurt (or it hasn't, not yet, and if it does it will be a seperate chapter all together). What did happen is I had to bring myself up and think how I had fallen. Instead, the only thing I could think was: why can I not say but one word, that feels so easy and natural from within. There was such tension - how my tongue was tracing over that single word and yet, I couldn't sync it with sound to make it mean something. Maybe even to confirm we matter.


Message 1: Chelsea you are quite elusive.
Message 2: You are interesting, as always, but unclear.

- Is clarity a result of knowing one's self and being fearless? If so, what does this say about me? If I were clear and therefore, also the symptoms that come with it, would I have opposed the logic in remaining speechless, and just said what I feared I felt?

Ep, now I have an hour to write about masochism and sadism...?

2005 "My Future Has Been Planned Out"

A picture with then's post.
Today four years ago, my senior year of High School, I wrote this:

"My future has been planned out"

I am moving to the UK to pursue a modeling career.
I will work for Dazed &Confused
&within time create my own European magazine called Edge.
I will fly to Milan on the weekends for runway shows
&then grace the streets of New York for fashion week.
I will play foozball with Matt &go to pubs.
Then drink wine with my dearest Alex as we dance the night away.

- I haven't any recollection of who these Matt and Alex characters were. Also, I feel most disinterested in fashion. And this has been going on for the last 3 years. But to be reminded of my desire to create a magazine called Edge. Wowow, does that bring me back. I remember wanting the name to go down the right corner edge of the magazine. All in all on that Valentine's Day in 2005, my wants were quite superficial. I was absolutely acting a role. And my future prediction is rather dissimilar to the ones I have pursued up through today. The post went on to receive 45 comments. My sister never wrote in, just as she never reads my blog now, but the few times she did she knocked the socks off me:

Attention to the two who masturbate to the thought of making others more miserable than themselves -despite what mtv and the demons in your heads might tell you- stupidity is not a virtue of any sort. And you are so unfunny that you put shame to 'anonymous' users all around. go bathe your souls or read a book and learn the value of intelligence and then I can only hope that you've obtained enough confidence in yourself not to need to put down others or concern yourself with their life to the degree you have.

As Time Darkens, The Body Becomes Shadowed.

I look behind me to forget my future for a while. A green lawn turns yellow after lunch. Eyes feel brilliant discovering the change. Next to trees, flowers are insignificant. But alone, each dandy is wild with appeal. Fingers pluck pink suckles ornamenting the bush. Her palm becomes heavy with afterlife – it is nature, not everything is meant to show a vigorous bloom.

She takes no notice, that it will only be her that grows from this experience. A bead is at the bottom of every stem. She studies it in light and pulling gently, draws honey. Her tongue is sweet, her desires tender, her pleasures tasteful. Simplicity is why she smiles.

But the youth are lucky because they don’t think of that. They don’t waste playtime concerned with cause.

In the backyard, she has no limitations and the unknown doesn’t exhaust her. A hammock leans, the palms wave. The afternoon appears to be yawning, but she’d rather not wait for dreams. Parents let their children go.

A fence doesn’t determine how far an eye sees. Columbus didn’t stay between the lines and he lived beyond his death. We learn from adventure. Our Muse is Courage, our life force Curiosity. Inhibition doesn’t define us or decide who we are becoming. In youth the imagination is free to wander and picture who or what lies beyond an arm and a leg’s reach. Facts don’t disturb us yet and we aren’t anxious for our reality to change or think it can, know it will.

We write our own chapters. We share our own lives. And sometimes, even she likes to sign a different name. But never encouraged by fear of who may read our words, who will see our mind. On paper, an unwrinkled hand doesn’t avoid the superficiality filtered through the everyday. Whether we live for our self then or creation is a product of age, we sound better not trying to impress. Genuinely, the child is proud of a merging ego – thinking she’s been promised a lifelong friend.

Dad is testing chlorine, as Mom watches from the kitchen cleaning lunch off dishes. I follow, while everyone has her in mind. Although it’s never been said, we all hope for the same: please let us remember these times.

Where there was water for him, there is earth for her. Feet walk godlike, careful not to crush a snail’s shell. Attached to bark, a butterfly’s wings are folded from sap. Her breath provides mobility. They both proceed, not crushed by death. She believes caution and compassion are all one needs to keep the living safe. Should I warn her now or let her continue exploring? In memory I will be insensible and her knees will bruise either way. At this time, it’s too late to save her. She has already happened.

Trailing behind, like a tail, her blanket is soiled by dirt. Each stain lends character. Shh, Mom is the only one that likes things to appear new. But even when she sees her daughter in need of a deep scrub, and says a child’s carelessness is a clever way to end up in timeout, Mom will still close her eyes a few years after hoping a stain’s trace will lead her back to a vivid memory. Lead her back to a time when everyone was a bit younger and children encouraged us to be brave, to be careless; when the child tried to teach those looking down to be free.

My fear is I don’t know myself as well as I’d like. That my fascination has been disturbed and my attention now is fixated on intangibilities—minor sensations that the poet is intent on exploding, expanding for the eyes of an audience that will never show. Hell the writer rarely is attracted to cinema because intelligence isn’t awarded and his difference is always translated without care for the screen. I fear my attention now is fixated on inexplicable compulsions to discern meaning in ideations that don’t literally matter. I fear I went to college as a writer and became a critic. I fear being labeled “dense” is really no different than dressing up in a costume no one understands. I fear my personal library is the best thing I have going for me, but with it and because of it I will only achieve solitude—a self-designed, a self-imposed think-tank. I fear I am female whose feelings can’t make you feel. I fear the translation: I am a female who has forgotten how to feel. But most of all, I fear the rate at which I forget a character’s fabric, the texture of experience, the pattern of life. I fear the dark where dreams can’t be seen. My assignment today was to write three childhood memories subjected to mystery. Sensations circling the unknown. I have never done these exercises and it’s best I do, but I can’t deny the difficulty. I thought backward and in mind could see nothing. I fear I am unmemorable, my experiences undistinguishable. A lemonade stand there, a goldfish here, a bunny in a bag, a tent and a father with a blistering body from sleeping in the sun. Otherwise, the lines you read are lies by imagination, times I haven’t seen or known in body. My mind is patchy, my feelings underdeveloped, my attachment severed. The past four years are speechless. I spent many hours traveling alone, narrating the disparity between exterior and interior vision. And what I came up with in mind is something I’m not confident I can tell you. But to me—and this is the critic or as the professors say, “poetic philosopher” speaking—the few mysteries I could discover from my past are exactly what made childhood so special. I lived. I didn’t question, not in the way that prevented me from acting in the present. Pulsating through my every piece is the nostalgia for youth—a memory of a Self I do adore—where I lived unconsciously, when I was fearless and unaware of time or theory, and when I didn’t judge that certain being as naïve.

This Transparency

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.
Rimbaud, The Drunken Boat.

2005, April 13

[today i began reading a book on love; the definition of it as a starting point. every time i think of love, i automatically begin training my mind and body on how to reject it (the feelings &person i associate the possibility of potential with) from now on my phone is turned off; i cant handle phone calls, just leave a message. i just want to concentrate on my future; if that means clearing my path of others.. okay]

-April 13, 2005.

A shame, I was ever so fatalistic, so seemingly guarded. The problematic about words though is they are the result of an idle body opposing a fragmented mind, that and exaggeration. I have kept journals since I was in elementary. At a certain age the material changed significantly. The angle was elsewhere. The moment I became aware of my own self-consciousness, I stopped recording action and the chaos of happiness. The moment I felt the weight of others was the moment I stopped writing about pleasure. I avoided the superficiality that is so often evident in the everyday. The summer I experienced love was the season I stopped romanticizing memory, figuring a translation discredited sensation and was too removed from the real. After the spring, once I reread seven years of entries, I promised if I were to begin writing again I would be ambiguous. What I discovered in the journals was a story that had taken control of me, a perspective that determined me from afar. I had forgotten pleasure on the page because I was committed to living it in life. What has happened now? Two and a half years since then? A density - a result of discovering voice and resisting a conscious commitment to my obsessions, my query. Then there are the translations of my lived experience - a compulsion to find meaning, so I never regret - a result of feeling responsible for truth, for promising my self, a result of the ego and the inability to invent a life which isn't mine, a result of dissatisfaction with self, the desire to be in dialogue with those I can't speak naturally with, a result of anxiety, an anxiety that overwhelms my ability to think elsewhere, a self-consciousness that deters me from feeling, an image disorder that exhausts me and prevents me from living beyond my body, a result of being a journal-ist and perhaps not a novelist. What has happened now, always? An audience. The result? Ambiguity, to keep you unnamed, unrealized, to keep my memory of you a mystery, a truth I can deny.

What transpires is a reluctancy to be transparent. Most of what I live in body never makes it back to the journal. What I do on daily bases, how often I sleep, what I do once I wake, the routine, the surprise, the event. For example, last night: a curly haired dude on my couch, had on a Modest Mouse shirt under his overshirt, followed the band around one show to the next, a devotee I suppose you could say, or is it a fanatic?, thought he looked good, hadn't seen him in awhile, he called attention to my hair not being blonde, I thought about time, whether the speed gave it more or less value, Chad knocked on door, friendly high spirits, could cats play?, no I'm on the way out, we rode the elevator down, thanked curly haired guy for introducing me long ago to hypem.com, said he was responsible for my new music internship, talked about Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, walked a street over to friend's, I wore black and gold, met someone new, drank rose, danced in my friend's shades in front of her mirror, said I wanted to be in a dance video, had a vodka cranberry, organic vodka (I think it was called Rain.. jazzy bottle indeed), took a cab to Terminal 5, said I never dance at concerts, too much in awe, sometimes unfortunately too aware of my body, want to get out of it, can't, they said they didn't believe me, I said wait and see, never listened to Black Keys, was there ready and willing, got a beer, hate beer, never drink beer, drinking beer, liking beer, text message: "You doing anything in the city tonite" "Black Keys baby" "Info?" "Sold out concert at Terminal 5" "I see..." "Do you? How! Are you here? :)" "In lespirit" "You are sensation" opening band, dancing, surprise surprise, sister disappears, messing around with people in audience, laugh about what it would be like to be "that person" who won't let someone pass through the crowd, sarcastically flirt with some guy, tell him he is going to have to tell his girlfriend to move ahead, fires back "she isn't my girlfriend," I tell him to dance, ten minutes later, he gets my attention "how are you? can you see?" "no, no, I think you might have to cut her at the ankles." "you got an ax?" I laugh, thinking if anyone ever heard this it would sound absolutely hostile and terrible, but it's fun and I like not having to make sense or be rational. Send a text message to someone I actually have the urge to see, receive message, confirms how much I hate messages, the void in distance, how I need face to face to feel in any way more so in the known, sis is back, mixed drink for me in hand, nice, girls are complaining, at first I let it go, then it just becomes foul, boys with Xs on their hands are bitching about smoke, telling girls they are with that they have seen plenty of those "weed cigarettes" before and those are okay, but cigs are just nasty, I'm dancing, we're dancing, we're going crazy, the three of us turn out to be the only dancing, I have a guy in front of me, he is a stand in for a prop, he doesn't move, but I'm grinding, my friend's gloved hands are grabbing air, hypnotic, I watch some dark hair pearly teeth guy talk with a girl, he looks like Alex Nahai, I'm loving this, their behavior is telling, I hope they end up back together, somewhere, kissing, they have to, I've never seen anyone speak with a smile, he's got it down, I make this known, we're so close to the stage, it's completely packed, somehow I am able to do 360 spins the entire night, eyes are staring, people assuming we are on ecstasy, if this is ecstasy I'm for it, some girl that cut in front of us bitching to my sister for having her body touch hers, I remind her she was the one that stepped in front of us, she doesn't stop bitching, I tell her I was being easy when I said she was killing the mood earlier, but now she is determined to destroy it, they stop bitching when I ask them how this can be the worse thing that has happened to them tonight, then remind them where we are and how good this is, then they start dancing and at one point even manage to laugh, I smell like garbage, I wonder whether people think my twin and I are in some sort of relation, guys on second level waving down, getting my friend's attention by pointing to her glove, shows over, they motion us to the left, the brother of the singer from The Black Keys wants us to go backstage, we go, friend acting starstruck, adorable, more beer, everything is lax, not what I think people expect, uncles in the corner, the brother's birthday, 15 minutes until 27, M&Ms, dark chocolate, can't get enough, never thought I liked M&Ms, loving them, mirrors jagged all over walls, 5 4 3 2 1, happy birthday, no one really cheers, feels weird, it comes with age I suppose, go downstairs, Geoff, Alli, me, she smokes a cig, we watch, take pictures, look at pictures, see picture of his puggle, staples all down his stomach, swallowed an ornament, I'm not really sure what happens, what the hours were filled with, but it was nice, friendly, and we were all sorta just there, together, they say he likes me, I don't catch on to any of that, slaps my ass on stairway up, tell him that was my back not my ass, ask him when he is coming to Miami, ask him whether he's ever been, says no way no way, not hip enough for that, not one for hours in the sun, I laugh, what has MTV done to the image and assumption of my hometown?, closing place down, going to some bar, my ass is still being talked about, "It's just I never have been an ass guy, but" "But how do you know if you've been with the same woman for 9 years?" I never know what to think, is someone always fleeing the relation?, excited about potential, possibility, sensation from achieving the unknown?, cab back, cab stop, bathroom break some ex's apt, driver upset, understandable, cab start, smoke, text message, invite to go again tomorrow night to Black Keys, tea, phone shut off, Chelsea Lately, pizza, cat knocks 19$ vegan green-tea pizza on floor, lying on ground, 3:50am, wake up on ground to buzzer buzzing non-stop, think it's the neighbor, sister isn't budging on couch, close eyes, 4am still buzzing, "Shit, Alli, it's the delivery" "Okay okay" "No get up", thirty seconds later, in one gulp I take down a mint-chocolate chip shake, wake in a mess of make up, paralyzed body, spread chocolate frosting on toast, happy that I danced after I thought I wouldn't but knew that was the only thing I want, the only thing I need.

But what happens when I can still hear them/me.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never failed to suggest my being there. And yet, never was I always. So who was responsible for the deception: the voice or the ear? I swear I wish I knew for it is definitely deceitful, being it feels difficult—the constant activity and ceaseless changing or at least the expectation that I am never not being. To live up to this fate requires a high I have never been confident I can maintain. Maintain without crashing. Chipping tooth and splitting spine on spiral downward. And even during plunge toward passive tense, I’d persist in inhaling. Truly, addicted to life force. But even now, I cannot promise whom I will end up as. And I should never know! Because when this much awaited and insignificantly anticipated event takes place, I will not be present. Ah, I may care here and now, but ultimately whatever I am captured for and seen as won’t matter much to me. So don’t dare to find a way for me to hear it. I promise my body won’t be wanted back once I am finally free of its encumbering existence. (It isn’t mine, even though, yes, I may be attached to it or it to me, but you see, this happens often, this attachment that is). Keep myself away! I give you and all others permission. But this matter won’t happen soon—at least I have my Self believe—so it is of no critical concern, simply let us promise not to betray our promises. And anyway, really, there is no way of knowing who we are or which one of us will forget to live first and in doing so, be finished with time. But this doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to figure this “I” out. Already, always, again and again. Until…Oh, enough! Already? Yes yes, enough!

But my words must go on because the thoughts won’t die out.

It was unfortunate. My voice. How when heard, it never keeps listeners from assuming I am someone I, myself, haven’t felt I live being. And even if they themselves would argue they are not defining me as one way or an other, it was no doubt unfortunate they attached certain qualities I never regarded myself with having. This voice of not me, but my words, I ask you: How is it we permit you such power to project who I am heard as and what I am not thought to be? Yet another controlling me!

Why? Yes, I wonder too. The class of bobbing heads rise up, fall down over the mere utterance of love. A trope, I think, for attachment. But I don’t share that. I don’t let myself sound as critical as I know myself to be. Inside me this urge to shake, to smother, to laugh and roll my eyes. Twenty-three females theorizing love, standing in for the lover, others speaking on behalf of the beloved. The dialogue of crushes set their faces aflame. A word I’d rather stomp out when I hear injected with importance in the claim, “I have a crush on Tom Cruise. He’s so wonderful and perfect. So well traveled and affected.” I can’t help it. I can’t help my hand from jetting through air. Reaching out, me! me!, my voice it has something it wants to say, would like to ask. “I think this whole notion of the crush is underdeveloped. The mere use of it is a reminiscer for childhood. And so far the class seems to define the crush as an unattainable object of undeserved fascination.” My voice has said too many words, together falling very, very short of a question. To them, the truth is I am how I sound. Right now, I am a smattering of fear and right then those whispering girls fear who I am. Who cares who I was at birth when no one is comforted by who I have become. Crushed by abandonment. They fear their future is reflected in me.

Those girls whispering. Across the table. They free their mind, unraveling my core with a narrow selection of words. Plunging depths without remorse for my interior. Those whispering girls. Epitomize the distance between self and other. I share my Tuesday and Thursday morning with those girls, their whispers. Those girls that always whisper. And when there isn’t a shallow vowel rubbing out through throat, they scribble words on loose-leaf. Tear my waist in half. I catch their eye as they are breathing “hang’er up” with pen on paper. What’s worse than whispers—ink, the irrevocable trace of having been.

To survive, I become drugged—a passive unfamiliar stateless self. My eyes close to escape sobriety. To escape committing to a promise. The promise of being some way I am not certain I will be, continually. To escape the practice of commonality, control, clarity—indulging in sense, not sensation—pledging to be not I but one and the same—to escape nothing, I close my eyes.

See, those whispering girls were always absent, until they began sharing their Tuesday and Thursday mornings with me. Until those meaningless girls became visual. Until those girls took it even further! Until they became phonetic, physical beings. To escape what I know they know, to escape the self I am seen as, I close my eyes. Blind behind lids, I abandon their being. Again and again. Their exhaustion allows me to be free. Allows me to be me, the me I'll think myself to be. In blackness, reflecting nothing, they are all the same: in visible and no one. For each other, we are back to being as we were. Not sensed. Safe. Fortunate to be unknown.

Thought Him So Beautiful

Alessi's Ark - The Horse