I can’t stress enough how terribly but wonderfully long this endeavored moment took, so that I could find myself within this carousel world. It took half the drugs known to man to get me to this state, but it was worth the burning.
With a wide smile and watermelon gums, I sit here and look at things as if they were the gilded butterflies that sat upon my shoulder and wept as my time in this life ticked and tocked away across the endless chasm of the mind’s void. Whatever that means.
It is important to mention that I didn’t feel my smile. I saw it was there, reflected like a fraction of a human being in the straight smart mirrors standing tall beside my armchair. I don’t reflect, I refract. I break these meaningful moments into a more coherent state so that I can understand them, but even then they start to glow and reach a different part of my brain, the part that has more to do with feeling than thinking.
My hands are starting to shake, which makes the blood start to leak down my fingers in thick rivulets, making maps of the directions I find around my life and never choose to follow. I stare and stare, trying to decode what each of these defined strokes of blood wetting and sinking into my skin are, not even attempting to remember how they got there in the first place, not even registering the sting-sting-zing of the throbbing cut in the crotch between two of my fingers, which is evidently the cause of all the sticky red liquid on my hands. Still can’t remember how it got there.
My body won’t respond to the pain. Which is wise. I never knew my body to be so wise as now. My limbs sit as amoeba creatures, the fingers a draping bunch of bananas reaching over my rainbow-arc knees. My chest rises and falls, falls, falls, falls, expands with new air and then falls falls falls falls….expands, burns, burns, itches, coughing.
In the violent fit of cough-laughter that follows, liquid begins to make its steaming way onto my face from behind my squeezing eyelids. On the desert of my cheekbones my tears and sweat evaporate into the hot blown suns of the ceiling lamps. My tears are the only thing that seem to be reacting to my brain. My brain is screaming, leaking, trying to flee. But not really. It’s not trying hard enough. I close my eyes and imagine the vultures of my face’s desert dipping from the sky in black jagged strikes to pick at the white and gray matter obviously pulsing away within my skull in such a useless manner. If only the world could be so helpful that I could have real vultures.
When I open my eyes again, my vision is straddled by the brightest lovemaking between a kaleidoscope and a meteor that there’s ever been. It makes me exclaim aloud my happiness and rumbling desire for sensation.
Then I look around and see that the room is absolutely empty. The walls seem to bend inwards as a tent or a hug or a net to catch stars in, but one that never fulfills the desired intention. I run my nails up the skin of my arms and look down, unable to bear looking at the vast expanse of ceiling that is now shimmying upwards and out to so many places that I never will see. I feel more stings in my eyes; swords, arrows, syringes shot chock full of champagne dreams. Diamonds fall from my face and onto my knees. They collect and reflect the emptiness of the room with all their shard sharp prisms. I gather them into my hands and swallow them because I can’t bear to look at loneliness anymore.
* * *
We all stared at her, as we came down from our highs, hypnotized by the pathos induced by watching her drink her own tears. I moved closer to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, burying my stubble-almost-beard into the crook of her neck. She just kept staring straight ahead, bones compressing, almost shrinking inside the loop of my body. I hoped she’d come back soon, and breathed in some deep burning breaths while I waited.
4 comments:
Wow. Ok. Ummm. I'm kind of overwhelmed. This was very intense. I will attempt something coherent, but I may comment again upon rereading.
The language was absolutely beautiful. I'd say sublime, but I've been reading too much Kant lately to use that word without splitting hairs about its meaning, so I'll just say it was beautiful -- in a very overwhelming way. Naturally, it was tedious to read because it was very metaphorical, little happens, it was kind of prose-poetry, but I think you wanted that. I like how detached the consciousness is from the body, how everything becomes abstract, it worked very well. Still, though, I found this piece oppressive, uncomfortable, even confusing at times. I'm not sure why. Too many visuals, maybe..."I close my eyes and imagine the vultures of my face's desert dipping from the sky in black jagged strikes to pick at the white and gray matter obviously pulsing away within my skull in such a useless manner." That's a lot of stuff, right there. I understand you probably wanted it that way, for the prose and conceits and everything to be overwhelming and kaleidoscopical like an acid trip, but at times I find it's a little bit too intense and I can't follow anymore.
I also think it's more efficient without the last paragraph. I find the style is too similar. If you made it entirely different from the rest, using very simple sentence structures, obvious metaphors, it would clash nicely with the rest and portray the alienation between the characters, the division in experience. I hope that makes sense!
Having read this a third time, I now feel ready to have a coherent response.
Smarta, you, uhm. I really love the descriptive. The metaphors are absolutely delicious, and so vividly, blindingly sensual. I got really clear, amazing images from the narrator - absolutely stunning. It was incredibly overwhelming, but I don't think it would have been as good a piece if it wasn't. ("the brightest lovemaking between a kaleidoscope and a meteor"? Where do you get these phrases?)
The switching around with tenses was confusing, as was the somewhat stream-of-consciousness style, but I think that's what you were going for. There was a nice sense of the surreal throughout - I can't actually comment on the accuracy of your description of a drug-induced high, but I can say that it fits with what I know about the subject.
Like Charles, I like it better without the last paragraph. I think it takes something away from the vivid experience that the narrator's having, bringing us back down to a reality that feels...wrong, somehow. I mean, the contrast is great - might have had more effect if there was more of a difference in style - but I really liked the piece a lot better without it.
This piece was amazing and bewildering in so many ways. First, the language was just beautiful. There were so many metaphors and images that I loved, I can't list them all. It's just dripping with surrealism, but after reading this a second time I think I can see the train of thought going here. The change in tense was a bit weird at first, but I think it really works well. The speaker starts in a solid state of mind, reflecting on this experience, but then the timeline warps and she falls in and out of the dream. It's not really time moving slow...more like each moment is infinitely larger.
"My tears are the only thing that seem to be reacting to my brain. My brain is screaming, leaking, trying to flee. But not really. It’s not trying hard enough."
Ahaha I know exactly what you mean here. Everything is desperately frantic but sluggish at the same time, and I think you portrayed it well. I agree with Charles that it's uncomfortable at times, but I think that's part of the effect.
"My body won’t respond to the pain. Which is wise. I never knew my body to be so wise as now."
I don't know why but I ADORE that line.
I say definitely ditch the last paragraph. It takes the reader out of her mind and then suddenly this guy appears, and you're like, "What the hell get out of my dream, man!"
As has been said by Charles, I'd agree that it was pretty intense, and the images were overwhelming, but I guess that was the point? ditch, or change the last paragraph, though I liked it in and of itself...I'll try to comment more later.
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