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Some Good Advice for Kate Gilmore

If you're gonna have to crawl through a splintery plywood tunnel, wear a long sleeve shirt for chrissakes! If you still want to be able to show your cleavage, maybe you could build yourself a different venue for that part of it. Maybe like a stage or something.

Better yet, next time you're out, just go down to Home Depot (if you have those in New York) and get yourself a Sawzall.

Horses chew on wood when they're bored in their stalls. It's called cribbing. They don't have access to lipstick, though. Consider yourself lucky!

Don't try so hard! Smile!

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Up to Date

In the beginning I was sold into a sinful situation. It rained for days on end. I was always wet. I touched only cold skin, saw only glazes on eyes. Their ceramic lips lay cracked on the linoleum of a kitchen where all that ever got cooked was goose.

After that I signed my papers and walked off carrying a stick on my shoulder, a picture of my loved one's face, and some chipped mugs for nostalgia's sake. And some chopsticks and sake for exotic's sake.

I went out to the big city and came into myself at last. I took off everything to become a mundane dancer. I remained healthy but no one clapped. I clapped for myself but no one clapped or asked me to sit on their lap or do my mundane moves on their lap which included miming doing the dishes and stuffing envelopes. I used an imaginary sponge to wet the glue on the envelopes. That was my best move. It contained so much.

I moved on from that after I got too old. Some people thought I should have quit while I was ahead, but I decided to wait to quit until I was a behind. Which I did, and that turned out to be an excellent choice because I made the cut for a team that I later decided was the wrong side but I played their game and followed their rules for a time. The untimely demise of the referee was later blamed on me for something I did before but I really can't talk about that until my court date comes up.

I was courted for another time by an attorney. We dated casually for some time but our relationship quickly and suddenly fell into disrepair and I changed him out for a mechanic who really understood how I was put together. We ran away smoothly.

At last I felt truly whole enough to finally break down. It was too much for him-my shambles, my screws that came loose. He thought I was nuts. He knew I was nuts and bolted. He took off with a lady who was better put together. I, having already taken everything off multiple times, decided I would start lying. I lay still and waited for fate to decide my fate. Turns out my fate is to wait, apparently. That is, currently.

***

Called Off

So you wish and wish and hope and pray and one day you'll have had enough waiting at the altar and you'll take your bouquet and hand it to the priest and say, Hold onto that, Put it in water, Put it on your father's grave, Put it up your ass for all I care. I'm done with this pose, this stance, this frozen dance, this empty finger, a figured future, rows of relatives unrelated to me, a dress that chokes my words, a veil that allows for one last secret to be kept which I can now lift off and tell as I retrace the steps my father led me along only minutes, hours, or was it a half life ago. I'll shed and walk, with no organ, with no suspense, with everyone disappointed or relieved or indifferent and a flower girl who's not yet old or experienced enough to realize what's happened throws some rice at my face. It's quiet and I'm bare, no longer white but blotchy-fleshed, bruised, stubble on my calves, enlarged pores, some labored over scabs. So at last this part is done and in the aisle I'm at last unprepared for anything and I reveal what I've been hiding up there at the center of attention and I say, I was never in love.

***

A Big Question and an Answer

So this is where you start. You take your turn. We go counterclockwise. We roll the dice. Are you tired yet of this game? Are you bored? I'm a bad sport. I tip the table over, sending the pieces scattering across the tiles. I spill the sodas and leave everyone standing around looking at each other. Whoa, what's her problem? I'm having a hard time staying with the objective. I don't believe in the end. I don't believe it's worth playing to win or worth winning or even worth playing. Why draw a card? Why wait your turn? Why sit back and strategize? Why sit there and eat popcorn and sip orange Fanta when you just don't believe you necessarily even want to be sitting here at this table let alone in this house in this neighborhood with all the yellow lit windows on this night when somewhere else it's daytime and there are people who've never even heard of this game?

I actually have an answer to that:

Because you are not there among those people and their camels who have never heard of this game. You are here in this neighborhood on this night in this curtained house sitting with these people who were generous enough to include you in this pointless diversion. What will you do after you tip the game board, spill the drinks and startle the people? Run out the door and tear up shrubbery? Piss on marigolds? Howl? That's just dumb and melodramatic. You'll feel stupid and soon be cold, bored and lonely. You'll probably actually have a better time if you stay put, play to win just to generate some kind of thrill and roll the dice with your own particular panache. Step the plastic piece that stands in for you the allotted number of spaces when it's you turn and conversate about this, that and the other, glancing now and then at the black windows reflecting the lit interior scene back to you, knowing that some freak could be looking in and you wouldn't even know it.

***

A Deep and Sensitive Soul

It's not easy being a deep and sensitive soul. When everything RESONATES with deeper meaning, when nothing is simple, when everything means so much more than it seems. When what seems to be a simple interaction actually holds poignant truths about the human condition, getting through a day resembles walking through a field of emotional land mines. It's not easy FEELING so much. It's not easy when your nerve endings quiver with every fluctuation in the atmosphere of mood. For example, I turned away a orphan boy who asked me for a crust of bread because I actually like to eat the crusts. His eyes filled with tears AS IF he were very mournful. Because of my exquisite sensitivity, I saw those tears as symbolic of a deep longing--a longing that cannot be fulfilled. A more shallow sort would just see tears, while I saw the suffering of the humanity, banishment from the garden. In another instance, I broke up with a boyfriend who couldn't really understand me because he just didn't have my depth. I slept with his best friend days later in a drunken coke binge and when my ex boyfriend called me a crazy bitch, I heard generations of victims cry out in pain. See, this is my problem--everything has all these philosophical implications. I heard the beseeching Job, the forsaken Christ, I heard the agonies of every soul that has raged against an indifferent God, every broken spirit who has shaken a fist at the unblinking heavens. I heard centuries of injustice in that strangled cry, and I wept.

***

Thought Bits

Went to sleep thinking. Woke up thinking. Think of something pretty. Like pink. Like pencil marks drawn with ink. Now there is something that'll make you stop 'n' think. Stinking thinking is what you call insisting on negativity and a bad attitude. A sour disposition, a princess dispossessed of her rightful claim to happiness, an heiress written out of the will to power. Sitting around thinking, fingers stuck to foreheads and eyes looking away at the invisible world of thought. I wanna see thought--not hallucinations--or maybe so now that I think about it. Boring thoughts, repetitive thoughts, agonizing thoughts, hellish thoughts, ripe thoughts, juicy thoughts, dead thoughts, thoughts that cause trouble, second thoughts, thoughts that make you feel bad, thoughts that make you feel good for awhile only to make you feel bad later. Thoughts about things that matter. Thoughts about things that don't matter. Thoughts about matter. Thoughts about immaterial things. Material thoughts. Electrical currents. Currently thinking about art as a Plexiglas divider that some people see and some people don't and some people take for granted and some people (the blind) take for granite (very smooth granite). Insidious thoughts. Incidental thoughts. Coincidental thoughts. Thoughts about teeth. Bites.

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Papers