There's a swiftness to justice, I hope you know. The speed with which the righteous receive their punishment would shock you, I'm sure. You don't expect it because you've only lived among sinners and the morally corrupt, and justice turns her eye from those. Their lot is to expect comeuppance in each moment, each heartbeat, and never receive it, their nervous glances all wasted.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Sunday, June 26, 2016
6.25b
It's a hot day, and I've sweated in my clothes already. My beard is scruffy and my pants legs stained at the knees from kneeling in the grass. Yet, I feel very little shame in looking at her, though perhaps I should respect the distance between us, socially. Her dark hair goes all to ringlets at the ends, and her dress is light and airy, an almost-long affair that scoops up to showcase her knees. Her face has a sharpened quality that contrasts with the lines of her bare arms. I reassess the catastrophe sitting on the grass before her. I've got no reason to chase her and no chance to catch. I'm married. She's married. But she's magnetic. I have to know if she's worth wasting my mind on. I look at her with the same scrutiny as I would a sunset or a herd of deer standing in a mist-filtered valley, their attention not on me yet, but somehow getting closer and closer until I can see the muscles beneath their fine coats ripple as their heads snap up, they realize what I've been doing, and they bolt.
She's only now walking my way. I can see all of her for the first time, no tables or trees interrupting, nobody talking to her, and she has a matter-of-fact gait, a firm assurance of where each foot has got to go. I don't like it. Somewhere, deep within, there is a stir. I make a connection I don't want, between her and myself. She's a piece more human in this second, and I shudder to feel it.
As she gets closer, I can see her more clearly. She has the face of a girl who was pretty when she was young. Her father could look at her and predict it maybe when she was only five, only six—a terrible gift, to worry for a decade what will happen to your child when she finally realises the same. She has the face of a woman who's put her realizing long behind her, who's had suitors since boys wore suits and not just some button-up their mom picked out: the face of a woman who knows she's beautiful. It's not just me, this time. She knows it, too. Sometimes, you find someone so peculiar to your taste that only a very few people have gotten to tell them first what kind of delicacy they truly are, but this girl is ice cream, is chocolate. She's a lucrative industry that generates thousands of admirers from moment to moment, and her advertising campaign is the same dependable perfection that built the empire in the first place. It's the shape of her cheeks, maybe, just full enough to remind you she's young, but not commanding attention. Maybe it's the slight lift to her nose, or the way in which it has the most definition of all her face, as if it knew its job was to build upon the softness of her without distracting. Maybe it's the pigment on her. I hope not, but my hope has the misplaced yearning of a badly-informed art critic, a man who looks directly at the painting and wants there to have been one draft, one grand effort with a single vision made reality by a single hand, not realizing that the painter has drafted this same image a thousand times, leaning into the mirror and making a face to stretch out the canvas, her paintbrush a dependable tool on an every day notice with an everyday demand: perfection. Her eyes are dark from her ministrations with the brush, but she's gotten the wrong fish with this bait. I barely look at them. I'm more interested in the weave of the canvas, of the shape of its frame, of the light in the room, of the building it's in. Skin, bones, tone, body. I have to ask, though: am I only looking at the museum because I know the artist has been laboring? Does the prestige of her eyes make the vessel that carries them important, or would I want the same tour of the grounds if the building was a home, only, and not a public institution? She's the only one with power to run the experiment, and she's not willing to go without her mask, so perhaps we'll never know. Either way the truth lies, I look off as she walks by. I hope nobody has noticed I've been staring.
For a time, I wait to hear her. I want a sensory memory that spans the available possibilities. I have a hunger that sight won't satisfy. But the longer I wait, the more I know, even without getting the song of her voice. I'm frustrated. Her laugh isn't a cascade of cold water over smooth, round rocks. Her voice isn't the mountainside morning before the sun hits the tops of the trees. Her voice may be intoxicating to others, but either I'm inured to the poison, or just not drinking it. I want to check. I need to know. I shift and actually address her: a statement that turns up at the end to invite her to finish the thought as though it has been a question all along. Something a person says when they're not afraid of alerting the subject that they're being scrutinized, worshipped. She responds, and I don't hate her voice, but she's missed the actual question I've asked. I'm slowed for a moment.
What?
But the lethargy lapses and I'm already drawing conclusions. Why, if she's pretty, doesn't she also have a powerful mind? Why, if I've spoken to her once, do I feel the sinking in my gut that reminds me of disappointment? Why have I judged her when I don't know her?
It's that initial taste of the gait she uses: solid, everyday, dependable. It's the realization, fair or not, that I love the makeup on her eyes. It's the three sentences she dribbled out to me. She's only pretty, nothing more. (How can I say that!? She's gorgeous in a way I know I'll remember later. Am I minimizing its effect on me? No.)
She's only now walking my way. I can see all of her for the first time, no tables or trees interrupting, nobody talking to her, and she has a matter-of-fact gait, a firm assurance of where each foot has got to go. I don't like it. Somewhere, deep within, there is a stir. I make a connection I don't want, between her and myself. She's a piece more human in this second, and I shudder to feel it.
As she gets closer, I can see her more clearly. She has the face of a girl who was pretty when she was young. Her father could look at her and predict it maybe when she was only five, only six—a terrible gift, to worry for a decade what will happen to your child when she finally realises the same. She has the face of a woman who's put her realizing long behind her, who's had suitors since boys wore suits and not just some button-up their mom picked out: the face of a woman who knows she's beautiful. It's not just me, this time. She knows it, too. Sometimes, you find someone so peculiar to your taste that only a very few people have gotten to tell them first what kind of delicacy they truly are, but this girl is ice cream, is chocolate. She's a lucrative industry that generates thousands of admirers from moment to moment, and her advertising campaign is the same dependable perfection that built the empire in the first place. It's the shape of her cheeks, maybe, just full enough to remind you she's young, but not commanding attention. Maybe it's the slight lift to her nose, or the way in which it has the most definition of all her face, as if it knew its job was to build upon the softness of her without distracting. Maybe it's the pigment on her. I hope not, but my hope has the misplaced yearning of a badly-informed art critic, a man who looks directly at the painting and wants there to have been one draft, one grand effort with a single vision made reality by a single hand, not realizing that the painter has drafted this same image a thousand times, leaning into the mirror and making a face to stretch out the canvas, her paintbrush a dependable tool on an every day notice with an everyday demand: perfection. Her eyes are dark from her ministrations with the brush, but she's gotten the wrong fish with this bait. I barely look at them. I'm more interested in the weave of the canvas, of the shape of its frame, of the light in the room, of the building it's in. Skin, bones, tone, body. I have to ask, though: am I only looking at the museum because I know the artist has been laboring? Does the prestige of her eyes make the vessel that carries them important, or would I want the same tour of the grounds if the building was a home, only, and not a public institution? She's the only one with power to run the experiment, and she's not willing to go without her mask, so perhaps we'll never know. Either way the truth lies, I look off as she walks by. I hope nobody has noticed I've been staring.
For a time, I wait to hear her. I want a sensory memory that spans the available possibilities. I have a hunger that sight won't satisfy. But the longer I wait, the more I know, even without getting the song of her voice. I'm frustrated. Her laugh isn't a cascade of cold water over smooth, round rocks. Her voice isn't the mountainside morning before the sun hits the tops of the trees. Her voice may be intoxicating to others, but either I'm inured to the poison, or just not drinking it. I want to check. I need to know. I shift and actually address her: a statement that turns up at the end to invite her to finish the thought as though it has been a question all along. Something a person says when they're not afraid of alerting the subject that they're being scrutinized, worshipped. She responds, and I don't hate her voice, but she's missed the actual question I've asked. I'm slowed for a moment.
What?
But the lethargy lapses and I'm already drawing conclusions. Why, if she's pretty, doesn't she also have a powerful mind? Why, if I've spoken to her once, do I feel the sinking in my gut that reminds me of disappointment? Why have I judged her when I don't know her?
It's that initial taste of the gait she uses: solid, everyday, dependable. It's the realization, fair or not, that I love the makeup on her eyes. It's the three sentences she dribbled out to me. She's only pretty, nothing more. (How can I say that!? She's gorgeous in a way I know I'll remember later. Am I minimizing its effect on me? No.)
I no longer stare. I literally don't see her again, even though she's ten feet away over my right shoulder. I now know if she's worth wasting my mind on. I rock back in the grass and start forgetting her, start focusing on what I will take from this day—friendships, exhaustion, scrapes on my hands from climbing a tree, but not her. Her husband is back there with her, a man who looks lucky when you first see him, but might be cursed, when you think about it, because I have a choice of whether or not she comes with me in my mind. But she's going home in his car, and he has to live with stolid, plodding, physical perfection, a trait other men will talk about, from which he gains no benefit now, only headache and worry, and from which there is no reprieve. She certainly can't give it to him. And when the paint can't draw him to the museum anymore, when the building crumbles at its foundations, what is left inside? The artwork of a master and a doddering docent who's dumbfounded at his piercing questions. But maybe she's as cursed as he, and her decline will reveal nothing: he will always be the admirer and never the critic, and her carefully manicured grounds, the stately columns, the marble façade, the curling stairways and graceful arches will all decay, and he won't question "wasn't there more," because he's too enthralled by the artifice and forgets to question the art.
I crumple the blueprint I've been drafting of her and discard it. She's not my wife. My wife is in Oregon. My wife is a refurbished flyswatter factory, all exposed ducts and brickwork, overlaid with murals and neon. She's a nightclub that reminds you of industrial decline until you see inside and the weight of the wrought iron trembling bass drum clubs your chest and you're left suffering to the beat of loud music, unable to escape or unwilling to, drawn to press yourself against the crowd until you find your hands outstretched against the very stage itself, your voice hoarse from screaming you forgot, the outside of the building forgot, the neighborhood forgot, the borough forgot, all is this moment, all is one, until the music flares and the crowds escape, and you're left standing in the ankle-deep refuse, weeping, willing the band to return, begging the crowd to assemble, beating at your chest because you know the moment has passed and you're left with a factory again, a bare concrete floor and a slowly crumbling smoke stack. My wife is not anything like this woman, and I envy her husband the slow decline of his art museum. I wish my explosion could have outlasted the night.
[The first line of the final paragraph used to read "I crumple the mental portrait I've been drawing of her," which isn't fitting.]
I crumple the blueprint I've been drafting of her and discard it. She's not my wife. My wife is in Oregon. My wife is a refurbished flyswatter factory, all exposed ducts and brickwork, overlaid with murals and neon. She's a nightclub that reminds you of industrial decline until you see inside and the weight of the wrought iron trembling bass drum clubs your chest and you're left suffering to the beat of loud music, unable to escape or unwilling to, drawn to press yourself against the crowd until you find your hands outstretched against the very stage itself, your voice hoarse from screaming you forgot, the outside of the building forgot, the neighborhood forgot, the borough forgot, all is this moment, all is one, until the music flares and the crowds escape, and you're left standing in the ankle-deep refuse, weeping, willing the band to return, begging the crowd to assemble, beating at your chest because you know the moment has passed and you're left with a factory again, a bare concrete floor and a slowly crumbling smoke stack. My wife is not anything like this woman, and I envy her husband the slow decline of his art museum. I wish my explosion could have outlasted the night.
[The first line of the final paragraph used to read "I crumple the mental portrait I've been drawing of her," which isn't fitting.]
Saturday, June 25, 2016
6.25
I saw the most beautiful face today, attached to a woman who was herself attached—a chain no one can measure—to a man. Bitter, that was. I don't know her, and I guess I wouldn't want to. First, because I felt a scathing fear course through me at how long I felt compelled to stare at her, trying to measure the depths of her, so I could find out if she was too big to fit in my imagination. Second, because I told her niece that she had eyes like Hera's, and the little girl tattled on me. Cow eyes.
I'm not sure we would be friends. She didn't say hello to me, nor I to her, and any opportunity of that has evaporated long since. I don't think she wants or needs male friends who struggle replacing their minds every time she smiles, and that's what she would do to me, I guarantee. I found myself scanning the room, surreptitiously, trying to crane my neck to see her once more, however briefly.
I left this and came back, and I want to delete it, make it disappear, erase it for a million reasons, but I'm leaving it. I think it's interesting, seeing into how other people think, especially about things that are mildly embarrassing. I do want to try again and do her justice, though. I want to remember what I felt when I had my first impression sorted. I want to remember and do no dishonor to the utter impossibility of the situation.
Friday, June 24, 2016
6.24
Distressed, my joints creak. The staples pull at the wood of me, tearing through the old plant matter now preserved in a box-shape that contains me artfully and well. You slam the lid of me, cutting off light and hope, storing your sadness in with mine, a safe place, a vault for unwanted emotions. You turn the key, dropping it, walking away.
Where are you now, love? Why are you, now?
I keen and howl at the frightful keyhole, my only source of light. I miss you.
Where are you now, love? Why are you, now?
I keen and howl at the frightful keyhole, my only source of light. I miss you.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
6.22
"People say they can't afford things. Bullshit. Just buy what you want." His rough hands have seen combat in the jungle of Vietnam, twice. His now-thin arms have held a wife for fifty years. His watery blue eyes have seen more than lifetimes. Now, those hands bag my purchases and the arms wave vaguely to punctuate some point. The eyes laugh as he talks to us. "On vacation, you see some of the craziest things." He pauses, for effect. "A buffalo, shitting." We all die, laughing. "My wife and I have a whole wall of photos. You just collect things."
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
6.21
His fingers spread the pigment, bringing him as close to the act of creation as he could get. It didn’t feel enough. He didn’t feel it. He laid bare his veins and spliced in his blood, the deep crimson streaked through the velvet black. The sting of paint brought him a closeness, and he was satisfied.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
6.19
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, my main task has been to cavitate the still waters of friend's dreams. I've introduced an element of tragedy to the narrative of his life that I never intended, but what use is there in sorrow? It was necessary. His dreams were not my dreams. His life was not my life. Right? Is that not the way of the world? To tear the very heart from a flesh monster we like to call love, just to service a megalomaniacal urgency that wells up from under the surface of a deeper pool we never swim in, not of dreams, its surface glass, but of nightmares frothed by selfishness?
Thursday, June 16, 2016
6.16
Failing seduction, the man in the mask would capture her. He swore that, and marked the promise with blood. When he grabbed her wrist, he found it too warm and life-like, and he dropped in horror at himself: at what he had planned to do.
Friday, June 10, 2016
6.10
I'm filtered through so many layers, now. I miss the days when it was possible and necessary to face my gods and fight my heroes every day and each moment. I had no role models, they all dying at the first faint blush of morality, I killing these demipotent magnates with calculated ease. But my current self is too refined for such measures. Now, I rethink myself entirely too often for my false gods to fall. Now, I'm focused internally more often than when I once flexed mind and destroyed the images of my heroes.
What has become of my safety, my self-protected existence?
Friday, June 3, 2016
6.2
In what cloud were you born, frail princess? I fear you, in a way that drills deep to my animal self. You are not like me. Not like any of us.
I have pledged my life to your Keeper, and he has put you in my charge, but that is not why I protect you. It is there, in what I first said, that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. Your skin is dark like a warm night filled with fireflies and no moon, and your eyes follow curious things like the edges of groups or the places where walls meet. Your hands move too fast for your mind and your feet throw you forward into new places, whether you will or no. You are unlike my solid self, and for that I have grown to like you. Perhaps the old adage is true, that fragile flowers are better because they could so easily be bruised.
Perhaps this letter is too forward, ma'am, but I feel like it is my duty to let you know how I feel. The callow fool today who asked you why you--well, he wanted to know the rhyme of your perpetual movement, but he was exceedingly rude--he asked a question I would have made him swallow, were I in charge. I think he has never seen someone who looks or acts like you before, and he wanted to feel comfortable. He wanted you to be the one who stood out in the room, but as soon as he asked it you saw how he fled. We all saw him for who he really was: the only monster in a ballet of otherwise-persons, and suddenly he was the one who stood out in the room. He was the person we would all go home and whisper about, not you. I hope you know that.
I fear you, and I know I have said that already. You should begin to feel why. I fear that one day you will turn to me and let me know I have been unnecessary. That shouldn't be a burden on you, and it shouldn't put you off it when you know the time is right. But I fear you should one day leave my side and that will be the day I truly know how alien you are. For right now, I can convince myself you're like me, but different. You've seen the words I use in this letter. Please, let me hold to that conviction just a while longer. The day you crush my illusion, I'm afraid, is the day I wake up from this very pleasant dream.
I suppose now I'm just rambling, part to keep the letter from ending there, part to hide that I did say fear, perhaps didn't mean it, and now wish to explain it away. But that's the worry when writing with ink, you see--nothing is reversible. That's a problem I don't think you've ever faced. Forthright! Direct! Other-worldly!
I'll be burning this letter. I wish you knew the questions I ask here, regardless, so you might accidentally answer them. Maybe then I wouldn't fear you so much.
--Yours--
Kenji
I have pledged my life to your Keeper, and he has put you in my charge, but that is not why I protect you. It is there, in what I first said, that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. Your skin is dark like a warm night filled with fireflies and no moon, and your eyes follow curious things like the edges of groups or the places where walls meet. Your hands move too fast for your mind and your feet throw you forward into new places, whether you will or no. You are unlike my solid self, and for that I have grown to like you. Perhaps the old adage is true, that fragile flowers are better because they could so easily be bruised.
Perhaps this letter is too forward, ma'am, but I feel like it is my duty to let you know how I feel. The callow fool today who asked you why you--well, he wanted to know the rhyme of your perpetual movement, but he was exceedingly rude--he asked a question I would have made him swallow, were I in charge. I think he has never seen someone who looks or acts like you before, and he wanted to feel comfortable. He wanted you to be the one who stood out in the room, but as soon as he asked it you saw how he fled. We all saw him for who he really was: the only monster in a ballet of otherwise-persons, and suddenly he was the one who stood out in the room. He was the person we would all go home and whisper about, not you. I hope you know that.
I fear you, and I know I have said that already. You should begin to feel why. I fear that one day you will turn to me and let me know I have been unnecessary. That shouldn't be a burden on you, and it shouldn't put you off it when you know the time is right. But I fear you should one day leave my side and that will be the day I truly know how alien you are. For right now, I can convince myself you're like me, but different. You've seen the words I use in this letter. Please, let me hold to that conviction just a while longer. The day you crush my illusion, I'm afraid, is the day I wake up from this very pleasant dream.
I suppose now I'm just rambling, part to keep the letter from ending there, part to hide that I did say fear, perhaps didn't mean it, and now wish to explain it away. But that's the worry when writing with ink, you see--nothing is reversible. That's a problem I don't think you've ever faced. Forthright! Direct! Other-worldly!
I'll be burning this letter. I wish you knew the questions I ask here, regardless, so you might accidentally answer them. Maybe then I wouldn't fear you so much.
--Yours--
Kenji
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