In the vampire adventure book,

Turn to page 43.

You are a killer.
But you just don't see it, do you?
Just because there's always blood at your lips, doesn't mean your host is eternal, too. Not the way you are.
Look behind you--a trail of fleshy clothes, forms, skins, left behind like banana peels. A trail of blood types, blood tastes (did one have a sweet tooth? Was another vegetarian?), identities, uniquities.
From your side, in the history of your endless shoes, I could see where you no longer remember faces. I can forgive you for their deaths; i cannot forgive you for not knowing their faces, for not keeping them. The door is always open to you; you think you are cashing in one one, never ending invitation.
You are taking the easy way out; you will always be doubly hungry for it.

Gut Spillage (Storytime).

Harry Lime runs.

"Catch me and let me die wonderful."

This is the title of an art piece by someone or other.
It is also the reason I am very bad at playing tag and hide-and-seek: I have such a nasty tendency, such a nagging inclination, to die.

I am both what I am and am not what I was before. I do not wear masks. Not very often, at least. And in any case, this isn't one of them. A part of me, the newer one (but then, I suspect it was there all along--I've just begun favoring), the reflective one, the embarrassed one, is indeed, very quiet. Very pensive. Very humble. Very earnest.

But I am like this now because I was quite the opposite as a child and, under the right circumstances, today, as well.
I have always been very loud. I used to raise my hand for every question in class. I used to play tag. I was weird. I liked to yell. Scream? I think I thought I was a bird once. I used to have little half circles all up my left arm. I was a weird, visceral kid that didn't always understand the what or the why. I played rough. I liked playing with boys, but they didn't always like playing with me. Among other things, I used to always get in trouble at home for getting cut and scraped up, either playing outside or at school, where we ran and grabbed and tumbled and there were nails in between. I lied once and said the class rat had scratched me. We were just playing rough. We all messed each other up a bit.

We chased each other wild. i jumped off the railing and landed on my hands and knees in the gravel once. My heart was beating so fast I think I thought I could fly or something. That bird thing again. A rock got stuck in my palm. I thought it was the coolest thing ever after I stopped crying.

But even then, I had moments when I should have been loud, but wasn't. All backwards like that. I remember getting my head banged into a pole twice because I didn't have the guts to tell you to fuck off. I remember crying after being accused of something I didn't do, because when you're a kid, you can't prove shit to no one older than you. Especially a teacher. I remember hiding under desks, under beds, and running away from the very loud sounds that scared me. I remember being a coward.

I had one brave moment: one moment when I was a hero, not just on my own, not just in the safety of my own mind, but before others. Before a dragon. But then I was back to crying under the piano. But you can't slap that memory out: I remember being a hero.

I haven't played tag or hide and seek or hide and go seek in a long time; I'm a legit adult now, and that's not what legit adults usually do. I'm not sure what would happen if I did. Sometimes, I'm quite certain that I would end up dying in some poor fool's arms like a stressed out rabbit. They do that, you know? Heard it from a friend.


I remember your house smelled spicy and you had a leopard gecko. I liked your gecko. I wanted to like you. But how could I? I think I've spent my whole life fighting. I had an older sibling, for goodness sakes--what else was I supposed to learn to do.
I wish I'd learned a language. I wish I'd learned how to wear a skirt, sometimes.
But I didn't. I learned where to find roly polies and how to catch a garden snake (unwind them or you'll break them) and how to catch moths and frogs and grasshoppers (anticipate the jump) and that the best way to get over someone is to shoot arrows through a milk jug and I know how to climb trees (and test branches so you don't fall down and kill yourself) and how to cut up a good walking stick and how to play salt and pepper on the parallel bars (I was bitchin' good at that game) and--stuff that just doesn't count anymore.

I am a runner. I think I have had anxiety attacks before--I'm not sure. If there's not someone there in a lab coat with a textbook, I don't know what it is. I do not regret anything; I understand that trifles are trifles. But when I recall these particular memories, my chest gets tight. I breathe differently. My memory is crap--I don't remember enough to regret. But my body does, apparently.

I think I can't play tag because my body remembers something, goes "fuck that shit" and shuts down. I can't play tag because they work against me, body and mind--what is writing here? Some silent third, trying to make sense of it. But in those pitched moments, they work in concert against me: they write stories against me. Each is continually winding up the other until I am taut with madness; until something has been written into my blood.

Your face needs only to be seen so many times for the writing to start. Words will stick to you like a clot, whether they belong there or not. You are always being written about, edited, in some corner of my brain. In one hand, the manuscript; in the other, I am winding an anxiety. When I see someone who looks like you, the feeling is instant and sharp. Sometimes, depending on how much it looks like you, on who you are, and how out of context/unexpected it is to see you (not-you), I may stutter in whatever action or gesture I am making.

I have a history of being a bit gingerbread.

Human, After All.

Regarding authors who think they are the authors, all authors, every author, and by doing so, have let the pen fall from their hand too many times, like Serres, who is decidedly a punk.


Do not make plans; Gods make plans. The best plans of mice and men--they go wrong, too. But Godly plans? They end in plagues and floods and mean shit.
Be human.
Be the vapor of a word.
Be a game that will outlive you.
Do not plan what will come after the yes or no of a question; just ask.

Last week, I talked in class. Because it so happened that I had something to say. Because it so happened I had the space to say it. It happened. So?
The week before, I thought my heart was going to explode because of that person-by-person, circular tic, tic, ticking down to when I would have to. Have to. Planned to.

I am Olympia.
I am not anxious until I have been wound.
I am not human in that telescope, automaton without; I am human on the outside, inside, through and through withe the occasional gear. That incessant, long distance gandering through that bloody glass is what makes me mechanical. And the looker, too, with it wedged up to the eye like that.

No, don't go looking for legs and skin (as if they were something to put on); you've already got them. You are human, after all.

Vignettes

On the problem of going off shadows, the desirability of debts, the making of these debts, and the inability to discern where the author ends and the character begins.


What does it mean to see the reflection before the man?
And not even in a good, smooth-surfaced mirror, often--
upturned and fuzzy in the concave bellies of spoons,
dark and splotched through the protective screen on my phone, then the actual screen of my phone,
through a window on a door, just faint enough to tell me your behind me, or else you're far away, and in front of me, on the other side--
What does it mean? I have gotten a few good sketches of him, what I think he looks like. But I have had only these other reflections to go off of; I still have no conception of the roundness of his face, the declivities pushed behind his collar bones.

~~

I do enjoy collecting debts. More than I should. I want all the debts in the world. Not the money, not the things owed--the owing. The wanting. The holes. I am not entirely sure what would be taken when things are given, loaned away like this--there is some animal, some idea squatting in that hole. But at least for now, I do not know it; all I know is holes.

~~
I am just left of a klepto. A collector. A hoarder. Which means that sometimes, I am one. Just like Kreisler, who is just left of Ettlinger, is sometimes that darker man, sees him in the water as his own strange self.
So yes, you're right: it's not a phenomenon. It kinda is just me takin' shit. Because I felt like it needed a place to be, and the place it was, needed to be empty.
I've mentioned before: when I was younger and didn't have to fuss about books and school, I went outside everyday to catch stuff.*
Frogs, moths, snakes, (certain) bugs. But you always let it go, even if you want to keep it. And that's the other thing: you always want to keep it.
More time; more of it. A nice little pile of images. Of trinkets. Of somethings. I do not want the pile or the clutter, or even the actual object; just a symbol, a reminder that I have taken something. That I have made a hole somewhere else. That I am making a pattern. A shape. an etching. When the woodworker sweeps the pine shavings from his floor, there must be pleasure in it; in then looking at the thing that was holed out, carved, made. The object is never the pattern; never the reason. The mail.

~~

When I write, I write from that silly, writerly position where I am half myself and half a writerly inclination. This is problematic, because I will continue saying things that seem as if they apply to me, when really, I have begun talking of what is just to the left of me. I do not mark these switches, these alternations clearly, because that is a messy business--there are thoughts that are both my own and those of the character I am working with. When does Hoffmann become Murr? There is no single point; it is a slow, subtle transition. Abruptness is illogical. The snake that eats the tail of the snake that eats its tail: don't ask me to pull these two apart. It won't be pretty.

Authorship

On the publication of secrets and the difficulty to read something that has been already been read and rendered a hundred times over by a hundred and one eyes that aren't mine.


Ha.

I hope you think I am a ghost.
I hope you think I am writing from beyond the grave, determined little student, just chugging away. I hope you wonder. I hope you pick one up and just look, because I will be looking, and somewhere between my page and your page, something will mingle sweetly, linger, discreetly, and I don't know if you'll know, but I will, because that's what authors do, and I'll get a kick out of it. A yip. A bark.

Ha.

I hope I am uncanny to you. I hope you see what I have written, see yourself, see this different self, and shiver. Because you are there--you may be sure of that. I have put you there. I want you to see yourself at the bottom of a riverbed; pressed into the stars; curled over the earth. I have no desire to render you; no, you must live so I can write. Paint. Feed? Ettlinger really was mad. His execution was all wrong. He should have been a vampire. He should have left his host alive. The larger flea must learn to eat a little thinner--it will be worth it in the end.

~~


But this, this other thing, is not mine at all. And I don't know if I can make it mine--there's so much noise and chatter and fussing and dining that I do not even know where to grab hold of it. I feel I cannot fulfill my role as a proper reader, a proper author--someone keeps opening their trap and trying to tell the story for me. I cannot reach the root or soil with these big umbrella leaves in the way.

Fanglings

What strange shapes we take between the legs of the table, after the feast has fallen around us.

A CWK inspired post, mostly pictures, legging into my TE.

Oh, Simon. First this, then that. Now little bumps on your head. Now little dents in mine.

What have you done this time?

I don't blame video games (I've taken my turn with the gore). I don't blame the media. I don't blame theatrical glorifications. What stains here is my own. I won't say the color; I won't say the smell. I won't say it was next up on my list of things-to-try-and-paint-with. It's not profane, it's not eccentric, it's not Freudian, it's not anything but mundane. And it's just a word I don't want to write right now.



I'm not very good at lying. But I'll do it now--I'll change a past thing for a future thing. What does it matter? There's so many lines lines lines lines lines, who's to say it isn't what I say it is.
No one, that's who. So shut yer trap.
I spilled raspberry juice from my last little painting expedition on my jeans and my feet. Fingers, too, but that's because I was using them to paint the background. It didn't really turn out so good, though. There--that's the lie. Just a contextual one; slightly to the left. Slightly forward. That movement is all that makes it false. But it's enough to cover something else.

"Fell asleep with stains, caked deep in the knees--what a pain."

I was always never more than a half acre a way from the front door when I'd fall into the creek. Sink into the mud island. Drag my calves through grass stalks knitted together with a hundred different spider webs. Play with soot-covered sticks from the fire pit. Crawl in the grass. And I brought it all in with me: dirt, grass, mud, soot, and sometimes the things I found in them. How I loved the things I found in them.

But this was not dirt. This was not filth. This was not anything worth blogging about, not when you're not here to remember it with me.

I am giving you a sham. A scam. A false symbol to fuck up and sacrifice. Joseph in chains--but not dead. An exchange is made. You get something to eat and maybe even spend; I get to keep Simon. Simon? Sorry. Joseph. They both have brown eyes to me. And the Joseph chapter in Serres didn't really make sense to me, so I've grafted him to Simon--the idea, not the character.


In this way, things return. They've wised-up proper and come calling again, sharper dressed, longer whiskered. Just left of the guillotine is a little crawl space--go, go, I'm pushing you there, out of here. Suffer again; but live again. Die Another Day--but not now. Not here. This isn't over. This isn't over. But it is--you won't come back the way you left. But that's alright, the good mother says, the bad mother says. Pasiphae does not make the same mistake twice. Bad mother. Bad romance. Bad child; bastard. But oh, how she loves him the second time 'round. They are so awful together it makes them dizzy.

I am saving;caching;hiding;storing. Storying? Maybe--maybe. When you don't write, I certainly write for you. You're quite the zombie in my head. I am pushing this until it gets into the walls; until the laces begin to hiss away like eager little snakes (but that is wrong--they hiss when they are fearful). I will be putting this off until it grows blue. No; this is nothing to do with blue. Blue is thin here, blue is weak. Until it is azure.

Emergencey Blargh

I'm pretty sure I've met my blog requirement for the week, but just in case I didn't, here's a zombie post that's a chop and paste of a bunch of other old mee-space blogs. I'm pretty sure my dorm neighbors are shooting a nerf gun at the wall right in front of me, and it's giving me a headache, and I had to spit up four poems this week, so I'm just really not in the fresh-blog groove.

I'll give some context for each because, out of the context of that blog, these pieces are safer, and say less. Which is a curious thing.
Context will follow in italics.
Pictures added for fun-ness.

Games.

...I'm getting better, though, at least in theory. I wonder if everyone would know how to play, if only they sat and wondered about things for a time and dug around in their head a bit? Do we all have it in us? Or none of us, at all? There is such a fine line between playing the game and existing outside of it. But it is a sharp line--you are one side, and one side only; ever.

Today, I read that no player could become greater than the game itself. But if this is true, then what are you? No greater than the game, perhaps, but something more, something different from the players, at least. As far as I am concerned, you are currently, presently, and until further notice, a part of the game. And the game agrees.

I feel very divided. On the one side, I am eager; I am giddy. I know the rules, and I want to play. My hands shake, and the dice chatter between them. Thin walls and thick windows. Safe, and even a bit silly. But there is an illusory sense of danger (or perhaps it is something else entirely) that shimmers over it all, like crepe paper, and it elicits a very real sense of thrill.

On the other side, I am still scaffolding. I am not yet ready to play games with larger shadows than my own, and sometimes, I am not sure if I want to. I am very fond of familiar, comfortable things, slow things, easy things. Play, however, requires a great deal of running around, a great deal of care in gestures, in moving and changing and shifting things, just slightly to the left, so that a picture will be made. It is all very interesting, but all very busy, as well....

This was not a very old blog. This was before I swallowed my legos. This was before I lost (read: left at home) my book of rules.

Departures.

"I miss you."

If technology wasn't such a weird, convoluted thing some times, I'd tell you this, as plain and simply as it's been knocking against my brain the last couple of weeks.

It is a bit stubborn and unreal of me, I suppose, because I want to send you these words and be done with it. I don't want to have to worry about what it means if you don't send word back, or what it means if you do, or what you'll think I mean in either situation.

I want to tell you how I feel and then run away from it, because I need to say it more than I need to mean it at this point.

I still want to say this sometimes, but I'm not sure how much for me, how much for you. I don't think I was running then, but I would be now; you'd be uncanny now, unless you came to me, I think.
Which I wouldn't mind at all. I think.

Defenses.

...But, although I do agree with your conclusion that something larger, something profound awaited Birdie, I do not think I agree it would have been as convenient as seeing the sun over the hills. It would have been a lovely literary image; however, I do not think this pretty image does justice to just how messy the process of change truly is (especially that which Birdie attempted). Things are gained; but things are lost. For every timid step forward, we have taken five backwards--through the mud, the grit, the blood, slipping and sliding through the decaying symbols of a world that has begun to nibble and gnaw at your toes.

My point is: it takes more than a night to reach the dawn.

This is in defense of a character I felt got a bit lambasted by someone who I thought was above lambasting. Mostly, I just like the word lambasting.
But I believe this even more now; partly because I reread the story, partly because of Parasites. Transformations are hardly beautiful, immediate things. They are not magicked. They are tortuous and drawn out. They are ugly. They are monstrous. For me, a good werewolf book doesn't blur lines: you must become something awkward, something horrible and miserable before you can be fully changed. You must fever. You must be wretched for a time.
Then you get your daylight.

On the unending ends of things

This, here, this--I will never be rid of this, not unless I chase it out with something else, and then I shall be once again occupied. And even then--there is something of the first that lingers in the second, if only in their opposing but similar purposes, their trade-off (but cumulative, but me) existences.