Allied in Silence
Tonight I think I've realized something important. After writing a long entry to some friends about solitude and expression, about the wild and civilization, I realized that these thoughts too often come when I've had a few hours to think about them by myself. Its not that I need more talking to actual people, but perhaps that I need to spend more time in silence with others. Hours, perhaps many nights on end, where we act as if we were alone until something of substance arose, something of importance-enough that we break from our boxes and engage. I think about what would happen if instead of writing an email to someone to share a good thought at 2 in the morning, I just called instead. They might be pissed but there'd be dialogue. What, then, would it be like if I just went to them and woke them to speak right then. We'd have good tea and good insights. It'd be an allegiance of sorts; we'd be parties to a treaty. I won't waste your time with empty talk; I'll assume the same of you. But then when I wake you in the night you can assume its worth it, and you can rise and join me.
To Write About Such Things
Who are we to write about life? How dare we try and tame what is endless in the way that its wild? Well this is how we dare and why.
There are a dozen seats, filled by a dozen butts. Nine couch cushions, a broken sofa, a hammock and a lap. We are eclectic sitters. A woman leans in to engage a man, 3 cushions and a coffee table away. The painting on the wall isn't painting at all and these aren't walls they're people. We broke all the lights, ignited tiny flames; the walls hide in a background blackness and our faces, our chests, our moving mouths and shining eyes, have glow cast across them. And so our set changes when we wiggle, when we lean or laugh or move. We are the only structures here and the candles paint us. So when we move, the shape of the structure changes. And so the woman leans in and another man turns to listen and two walls, two walls of a dozen, are shifting their shape for conversation. This, I'm sure, is how houses are supposed to behave.
There's concern on the woman's lips, her fingers slip off a mug of mediocre wine to tell the man 3 cushions and a coffe table away what it looks like at the moment in her mind. Her wine ripples cause her hand shakes a bit; she's not nervous, she's restless. If only she could paint like candles do, free her thoughts from their twenty year slavery, offer onto the coffee table, centered in a twelve-walled room, the pure and potent story that's being authored behind her eyes - then the eleven walls would smile and cry - and their tears would change their shape, and the candles would know they're needed. Twelve walls with twelve wills all looking every day to light their little fires and provoke their neighbors to change shape. What can she say that brings him off his back to the edge of a couch? The man sits up toward her, hearing words like threads tying into his face, reeling him toward their source. The woman is changing walls. Its happening again and all twelve bodies know it, mass movement, the candles smile in excitement and agree to stay awake a little longer. The woman is overcome, her voice is the messenger from the piece of her inside her mind. A great garden stretched out beneath the dim sky of epiphany and awe. She has now, in her wandering, become lost in the garden, brushing aside the thistels and thorns which persuade so many to stay out of the thick, keeping to paths less wild. Eleven walls, now still and eager, listen to a woman, no longer fully present, as she screams truths from the garden inside.
It's beautiful, she finally says, standing solitary in grass and flower under star and moon, if only I could tell you, you eleven walls would crumble and weep sweet tears dripping down smiling mouths. It has happened for her, the eleven bodies know, they saw her leave the room and wander into the garden by way of a sentence spoken in the right meter, bouncing from word to right word until the beaten path no longer suited her. Deep red smiles look up from ceramic mugs at the smilers hovering above, watching this woman return to them from the garden. If only I could tell you all, she said, tell you all what I've seen there, she spoke through sobs, then I could move you, then I could change your shape. And eleven seats held eleven butts on eleven bodies all thinking of the gardens for whose description they dare to speak at all.
We are no one to write about life, about the forests of revelation, about the gardens which grow for our wandering under the great skies of epiphany; we are no one to write about such things, but we're the only ones to write about such things, the only ones screaming from the gardens into rooms which candles paint, and that is how and why we dare to write about such things.
There are a dozen seats, filled by a dozen butts. Nine couch cushions, a broken sofa, a hammock and a lap. We are eclectic sitters. A woman leans in to engage a man, 3 cushions and a coffee table away. The painting on the wall isn't painting at all and these aren't walls they're people. We broke all the lights, ignited tiny flames; the walls hide in a background blackness and our faces, our chests, our moving mouths and shining eyes, have glow cast across them. And so our set changes when we wiggle, when we lean or laugh or move. We are the only structures here and the candles paint us. So when we move, the shape of the structure changes. And so the woman leans in and another man turns to listen and two walls, two walls of a dozen, are shifting their shape for conversation. This, I'm sure, is how houses are supposed to behave.
There's concern on the woman's lips, her fingers slip off a mug of mediocre wine to tell the man 3 cushions and a coffe table away what it looks like at the moment in her mind. Her wine ripples cause her hand shakes a bit; she's not nervous, she's restless. If only she could paint like candles do, free her thoughts from their twenty year slavery, offer onto the coffee table, centered in a twelve-walled room, the pure and potent story that's being authored behind her eyes - then the eleven walls would smile and cry - and their tears would change their shape, and the candles would know they're needed. Twelve walls with twelve wills all looking every day to light their little fires and provoke their neighbors to change shape. What can she say that brings him off his back to the edge of a couch? The man sits up toward her, hearing words like threads tying into his face, reeling him toward their source. The woman is changing walls. Its happening again and all twelve bodies know it, mass movement, the candles smile in excitement and agree to stay awake a little longer. The woman is overcome, her voice is the messenger from the piece of her inside her mind. A great garden stretched out beneath the dim sky of epiphany and awe. She has now, in her wandering, become lost in the garden, brushing aside the thistels and thorns which persuade so many to stay out of the thick, keeping to paths less wild. Eleven walls, now still and eager, listen to a woman, no longer fully present, as she screams truths from the garden inside.
It's beautiful, she finally says, standing solitary in grass and flower under star and moon, if only I could tell you, you eleven walls would crumble and weep sweet tears dripping down smiling mouths. It has happened for her, the eleven bodies know, they saw her leave the room and wander into the garden by way of a sentence spoken in the right meter, bouncing from word to right word until the beaten path no longer suited her. Deep red smiles look up from ceramic mugs at the smilers hovering above, watching this woman return to them from the garden. If only I could tell you all, she said, tell you all what I've seen there, she spoke through sobs, then I could move you, then I could change your shape. And eleven seats held eleven butts on eleven bodies all thinking of the gardens for whose description they dare to speak at all.
We are no one to write about life, about the forests of revelation, about the gardens which grow for our wandering under the great skies of epiphany; we are no one to write about such things, but we're the only ones to write about such things, the only ones screaming from the gardens into rooms which candles paint, and that is how and why we dare to write about such things.
Walling our World
Let me tell you about burnt orange paintings of wine bottles and hanging guitars whose heads are held by five hooks on a length of black wood. Let me tell you about magazine page after magazine page ripped from their bindings and tacked on college students' walls. Let me describe for you the evolution from a snobby resentment to an air of accepting harmony that dog hair in ubiquity leads you through. These are the things that wall our worlds.
Spoon collections, coasters, collages of holiday cards in the shape of christmass trees - our walls document our idiosyncracies. I love that humans try to recreate the quarters of their soul on the dry wall of their homes; it makes judging people that much more convenient. They allow us to foster our addictions to silence, to chaos, to practicality and utter eclectic futility. With their help we can pick our nose in peace and further the dialogues which, if considered technically, would all be considered monologues if that notion wasn't a bit frightening. We can masturbate, and we can put dirty underwear back on, shave our backs in secret and look at dirty pictures of the "wrong" sex. We can recite the same stanza till the words stop bitching. We can be a competitively legitimate hip hop king and project runway queen within minutes of each other. We can consider pizza rolls and a salad "good enough." The walls receive our fists and vases meant for the heads of cheating boyfriends. They wear crayons and poop and the Tonka-sized tracks of obscure farm machinery.
They peer at us in young love's songs, they know our professed count of "days depressed" is an order of magnitude smaller than the truth. They look over us as we grin at our acquired tastes and the company those tastes win for us. Forest green for the wall that holds my lover's back as I lift her skirt with kisses; smokey jazz-club-bar-light-blue for the wall next to the windows where the city always sits. But its not just the walls. Its the throw rug and the pillow that share you with your bed, the lamp that squiggles 'cause you were sick of being straight, the ceiling fan you leave on, even though you're cold, 'cause you have blankets and you like the 'wur.' This is the stuff of settling in, and the stuff of branching out. Sometimes I feel like even though it all doesn't judge me despite it knowing my weakness for ice cream, it would if it could. I wonder if the inhabitants of inantimate cages sooner or later defect to the nature of their walls, or if the stuff of synthetic habitats acquires vitality in discrete acts of jealous theft.
Spoon collections, coasters, collages of holiday cards in the shape of christmass trees - our walls document our idiosyncracies. I love that humans try to recreate the quarters of their soul on the dry wall of their homes; it makes judging people that much more convenient. They allow us to foster our addictions to silence, to chaos, to practicality and utter eclectic futility. With their help we can pick our nose in peace and further the dialogues which, if considered technically, would all be considered monologues if that notion wasn't a bit frightening. We can masturbate, and we can put dirty underwear back on, shave our backs in secret and look at dirty pictures of the "wrong" sex. We can recite the same stanza till the words stop bitching. We can be a competitively legitimate hip hop king and project runway queen within minutes of each other. We can consider pizza rolls and a salad "good enough." The walls receive our fists and vases meant for the heads of cheating boyfriends. They wear crayons and poop and the Tonka-sized tracks of obscure farm machinery.
They peer at us in young love's songs, they know our professed count of "days depressed" is an order of magnitude smaller than the truth. They look over us as we grin at our acquired tastes and the company those tastes win for us. Forest green for the wall that holds my lover's back as I lift her skirt with kisses; smokey jazz-club-bar-light-blue for the wall next to the windows where the city always sits. But its not just the walls. Its the throw rug and the pillow that share you with your bed, the lamp that squiggles 'cause you were sick of being straight, the ceiling fan you leave on, even though you're cold, 'cause you have blankets and you like the 'wur.' This is the stuff of settling in, and the stuff of branching out. Sometimes I feel like even though it all doesn't judge me despite it knowing my weakness for ice cream, it would if it could. I wonder if the inhabitants of inantimate cages sooner or later defect to the nature of their walls, or if the stuff of synthetic habitats acquires vitality in discrete acts of jealous theft.
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