of cannibalism, OCD, and bad work
A Sculpture at Dawn
Deep down, I feel as if I am a sculptor. Or rather a sculpture. Perhaps both. Lately I have worked on my feet. To secure a footing as it were. I chip incessantly at the once enormous plynth, now whittled to a tenuous hoodoo. It's life's work. I don't work. I dream. Blobs of unformed potentialities adhere to my body. Scraped gullies traverse abandoned ideas. My arms, once defined and potent, bare ritual scarification in forms representing memories of hoped for strength. Disfiguring additions cling to my torso. Every excess, every vain belief in blind youthful immortality, every bewildering moment of exile, bulge without symmetry. Legs remain. They are well honed trunks built up by marathons of avoidance. Feet blossom over-sized as Michelangelo's David. Within the planes of my face swelling appears, and just as suddenly, disappears. All is subject to malleable and mercurial change. Moment by moment I am aging. Still, I am young enough to cling to the future as a penitent clings to redemption. Still, I am old enough to witness, litigate, and judge my past. Still, I sculpt a dream of being present. There is a lot of stillness within me. Deep down, I feel as if I am on the verge of something.
I talk to my dog. I talk to my coffee. I talk to hear myself talk. I am heard by my scratched vinyl heroes who hold my hand when I ask. I am dismissed by mortality. Ghosts refuse to enter into a discussion. Period. They curl around my skin and sit mute. Scraping doesn't work. Ritual doesn't work. Ignoring them simply swells their peripheral egos. So I mold myself with blind alleys, false doors, and hidden passages. They are smart and know me. I am too afraid to fire myself. Afraid of the kiln. To remain plastic is my only hope against them. Maybe I was meant to be easily seen through. Maybe I was meant to cling and curl around skin myself. I talk to memories. I talk to memorize the way out of the maze I create in slip slick clay. My dog merely looks at the puddle created in my fits of sculpting. My coffee becomes cold and turns an inattentive ear to my monologue. But my feet remain megalithically planted beneath the cuts and tears with which I wound myself. Maybe I should have talked to my shoes. I used to be very good at that. I talk to musical phantoms, but they always just sing the same songs to me. Even if I clean the dust from between their grooves. I transpose myself into lyrics, "Andy walking, Andy tired, Andy takes a little snooze..." I talk to my dog. But she just doesn't understand.
Touch. Sixteen times. Touch. Now I feel just right. I touch. Eyes. Sixteen times. Touch. Corners of my mouth. Now I feel just right. I touch. I am revolted. There is no order. Sixteen times. I touch ordered eyes and mouth. I curl around order. My skin has dried. Cracked. The cells are defective. They are out of order. I don't want to touch them. Touching sixteen times. Now I am better. I talk to myself. But I just don't understand. My dog is my hero because of this.
I told you that his eyes betrayed him. I told you they were blanks. Something makes him afraid. I talk to him. He is the Birdman. Somewhere inside he understands. But he remains blank and moves in quick bird-like ways. He is prey. So am I. Just not the same kind. I am predatory when I hunt down things within myself. I kill them with sixteen blows. I kill my ability to see them or speak of them sixteen times over. And over. I would kill his blankness with a swipe. Same as I kill dust in grooves. I feel covered in new sunlight when I scrape away the lack of order in my soft clay-like flesh. He has order but it is alien to me. It is cold and frightened and blank and I am revolted. I would touch his eyes and mouth, but he has no self to be revived into predatory salvation. Salvation is like dawn. Hunting darkness like Diana. Shooting up, nodding out, and following the tracks down. I want him to wake up and stop being such a disappointment. He is akin to the false light from mercury lamps at midnight polluting the pure hunting ground of darkness. I dream. I talk to my skin and ask why I must hunt it. But it doesn't understand. It is weak and blank. Revolting as this is, I touch it sixteen times. I told you about his eyes. But you just scratched, stretched, and lay down in a puddle of sunshine.
The Other One, the one who is draped with the trappings of power, thinks he is cool. He is blind. He is new. He thinks he knows things. He thinks he sees things. But he is just talking to the camera that he thinks is recording his greatness for posterity. Puffed up beneath his expensive clothes, he imagines himself placing the black cloth of judgement on his head. He looks at you as yet another inconsequential piece of an inherited jigsaw puzzle that must be remade. He spews self-righteousness. His scripted arrogance seeps into your hard won safety. To make you do what he says without question. Chosen as an example, he will make you cry. As bullies do, he will beat you up without witnesses. Spotless due to being inured to himself, he will eat you. He believes that his table manners are so refined that the bits of gristle won't show from behind his tailored teeth. But he forgets that his breath already reeks with the pleas of past innocents.
I don't know him. I know his kind though. I saw him once. I saw that the corners of his mouth were tight. His lips were conscious of the image he had carefully imagined into existence. He thinks he is a very important man. I want to touch his eyes. They sparkle. They hold fast to mine as a narcissist's would. I want to place sixteen motes in each of them. I want to make him feel the revulsion that I feel. And I feel that he is without order despite his loud proclamations that he is order incarnate. That he, unlike his prey, embodies order. I want to talk to his expensive watch, his expensive clothes, his expensive coldness. I want to unveil the ghosts that curl around his eyes and mouth. If I were a Bishop I would capture him. I would make a penitent of him. I would become him when he looks at me. I would not brush my teeth after I ate him. I would bless the corners of his mouth as I made him stand naked before my sixteen benedictions. I would anoint his eyes with just right touches. Instead, I have to wash my hands until they bleed. One washing per each of the sixteen bars of soap sitting by my sink. My dog laughs when I think these things. I know she understands not brushing her teeth.
The phone rings. My wind chimes create a soothing pattern of random clacks. A fan pushes air across the room. It ripples the curtains. I am a sculpture at dawn. I am filled with rotting supermarket flesh. The phone rings. I practice talking and can only sputter and wheeeze. "Hello?" comes out "aeeho." The phone rings. I touch the corners of my mouth, index fingers reaching toward them in a Sistine-esque plea for reanimation. The phone rings.
"Hello..." It is Henry. He doesn't know I think like this. I like him. I will be normal. My dog looks skeptically at me as I relax and think about skateboards.
Henry says, "Hey...what's happening?" with a bored distance I understand.
"Same old stuff...um...you know." I say, looking at the fan.
"Yeah...I know. I'm going out tonight. Going to see some music. Want to come? John and Charlie will be there. They want to see you, you know."
I start to pace around. I envision the skating sequence in "Five Summer Stories."
"Maybe...I'm kinda busy." Red urethane skateboard wheels flow down some hill in the 1970's.
"No you're not. What do you have to do? Nothing. So just come already."
Henry may not know my thoughts but he knows I don't do anything. He wants to be my friend. This is the only problem with Henry.
"No really...I've got some stuff to do. But, if I can get enough done maybe I'll meet up with you guys." I'm not going. I haven't in years. But Henry just won't stop asking.
"Okay...you're really a piece of work, you know? Come on and love me blah blah blah. Are you playing any music lately?" asked Henry.
"A little...guitar...just for myself." I imagine sixteen guitars. But this just makes me feel sick. There would be ninety-six strings. That would mean eighty strings don't belong. That would mean one thousand two hundred eighty sets of sixteen touches. That would mean twenty thousand four hundred eighty touches total. The one guitar left would be wrong. Is wrong. This is why I need randomness as well. I need the wind chimes. I need the curtains to ripple. I need to be able to sculpt. I want to fashion more alleys, more doors, more passages to place my touches in. To make things just right. To keep the ghosts out.
I must not think about this. My math is wrong. But my feeling is right in it's wrongness. Instead, I think of the skateboard. Four wheels. One board. Sixteen is divisible by one and four. Four boards have sixteen wheels. Four is less that sixteen. I can handle this. I crouch and gain speed on my imagined board.
"That's cool...I learned a Alex Chilton song yesterday." Henry always learned songs. But he always used the wrong chords. I always wanted to talk to his guitar and ask how it felt about this. But that would be weird. I only talk to things in my head or my dog or my coffee cup. I used to talk to my Converse Hi-Tops but now they are made in China.
I told him, "Yeah...I know how to play 'The Ballad of El Goodo'...the Big Star song. But that's it."
Henry snickered. He knew I sucked at the guitar. But he never acknowledges that I at least play the right chords. Whenever he has come over, he tells me that my guitar is out of tune. Then he proceeds to re-tune it into some dissonant version he swears is correct. Then my chords don't work anymore. I always have to wipe down the neck after he's touched it. But I like Henry. He understands mostly.
"Okay...so you're gonna come, right? Don't answer...I'll just see you later."
"Ayeiiee," I wheeze. It was supposed to be "bye" but now I'm starting to twitch. The phone is off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. Off. I am prey. I am a prayer. I am. The beginning. I self-stimulate...until I am just right. This happens in seconds. If this happens when I am in public, I just cough and make covert touching gestures. Nobody says anything. I know that they stop and watch. But my friends are courteous people. If they weren't I would think about them. Think about how they were ordered. Think about their eyes and mouth corners. My mind carves a turn on a skateboard.
The Other One, and the Birdman, both work with my girlfriend. The former is her new boss. The latter is a scared little automaton who used to act like he was her friend. That is until he realized he was prey. He just shrivelled up. He was always blank. My dog would not want him to look at her. She understands how wrong blankness can be. I said he was empty. He has dead children stuck inside his eyes. They keep the light out and blankness in. He thinks being negative space will save him. But he forgets that there are many games being played at once. One tactic will work for one, but not all. He makes me want to check that my ghosts are still living out their quiet lives somewhere away from my mouth and eyes. I don't want to touch his eyes. They are filled with ghosts from the void. Still I would touch him, if it would make him fit the order he has created for himself. I would make him as blank as his eyes. Then he would be just right. But he doesn't even qualify as food. That's why the Other One leaves him alone.
My girlfriend is definitely tasty. The Other One wants eat her years of experience. Devour her hierarchy. In this game, the Other One has a lot of power. But out here, where I play, he would be just like the Birdman. And that would be it for the Other One. I can feel my abdomen bulge with misplaced clay. I need to shower. Maybe I'll go out tonight. My girlfriend understands. She knows I have a light signal in my head that is usually amber. I am cautious. It is disorganized out there. There are lots of Other Ones and I don't always know if they are in a game where they are safe from being exposed. I don't always recognize prey. And not everyone is self-predatory. But everyone thinks I am prey. That's because I am cautious. I don't let them know about their eyes and mouths.
I put a CD on and push the fast forward button to create random sounds. I turn up the volume. I repeat this sixteen times. This gives order to randomness. I have never worried about sound. Ears don't reveal things. They merely allow things inside. Things which fill you up. Seep into the hidden places. The places where thoughts must be banished until they can be ordered. Places that are safe from ghosts. Sound seals up the cells of the wasp nests that I must fashion out of my clay. Sixteen cells per nest. When I need it, sound can sooth me with randomness.
Each cut, smoothing, or addition to my sculpture has a tone. Each tone a color. Each color a number. Each number a secret. Each secret is food. Every secret is prey. I hunt myself. This self-cannibalism worries me. I don't talk to myself outloud. When I have, it makes me cry. When I cry it is like being close to the kiln. I am not ready to be fired. My work is not finished. Despite this, my skin betrays me. My clay is drying out. Perhaps I am on the verge of something.
Deep down, I am tired. I have worked too hard thinking about the order of things. I must shower. I think I'll use a kitchen knife for my next scarification project. My arms feel heavy with newly accumulated weight. I decide that my new scar must be a circular labrynth. Patterned after perambulates used by monks. A walking meditation on my arms. After all, my feet remain strong. This is because I must stand up. My arms need some of that strength. A scar will do. Sixteen interconnected circles. I must walk. I must tire. I must take a little snooze. I wish I was Andy Warhol. He was quiet. He was at ease with order and randomness. No one touched him. He didn't like to be touched. I would have touched his mouth before he died. I wonder where he went when he died. He was monosyllabic. Oh. Um. Wow. I want to speak monosyllabically. It has sixteen letters. Wow. Oh. My dog doesn't understand sentences. She would have understood Andy Warhol. She told me so. Deep down, she said, "Yep."
