ANAÏS NIN. The subconscious
Who am I: a past self? another me? Which one? All? None? Am I an ancient soul trying to figure it out in a hostile world? Or just a modern alienated person? Am I all the people I’ve been? Or just fragments? Am I made of the energy left from the ashes of Alexandria’s library? Or just blood and bones? Am I the narcissist monster who can stand nobody? Or just I can’t stand my reflection? Am I an anxious body that constantly demands food? Or just I am overwhelmed by its weight? Am I the laughs with my friends? Or just I am sadness faking joy? Am I the books I’ve read? Or just I am the ones that are canon?
The fracture of myself is leaving permanent marks on my skin. I don’t know if I could hold together my past and future selves, I don’t know if I could forgive, I don’t know if I could purge all my sins.
To submerge into the subconscious and see through all the people I’ve been and all I have not been the only way to give peace to my soul, but the unexplored scares me, even though I’ve lived it. I will stay on the surface, attracting as a magnetic force emotions I can’t control, not even cope. I will bury my sensitive self, the one that cannot differentiate between private and public; the one that carries anxieties and fears; the one that is so close to submerging into madness.What was once fashionable, it’s overwhelming now.
Gertrude Stein. Perspective
She was like a shot of tea, like a fork of soup, like a cup of vodka. No need of making sense, no need of adaption. Actually, no needs at all.
She was like a tiny little secret door, like a hide pocket in your jacket, like the last sip of your bottle. Unexpected, desperate and comforting.
She was like Frankenstein and Achilles and Saturn. All men, all radical influences, all radical destruction.
She was like The life of Brian, Kill Bill and Shrek. No relation, no connection, no sense.
She was like a crappy poem, a fake autobiography and a weird-bored diary. All at once in an unreadable 10.000 pages volume.
She was like a close umbrella, a pen and a vibrator. Similar shapes. Different uses. All in your bag.
She was like a bitten hamburger, a plate of vinegar and a smashed cake. Not too bad but not too good either, if you know what I mean.
She was like a Tolstoy’s novel, a touristic I love NY baseball ball and a mat of yoga. Unexpected, unmatched and unrealistic.
Toni Morrison. Power
For Simone Weil, The Iliad is about force. It dominates every character. At the core, the epic is about owning the power.
For you, The Iliad is about destruction. Nothing is left but that. In the end, the epic is about the powers at play.
For me, The Iliad is about sorrow. It leaves a song of perpetual melancholia. In truth, the epic is about the desperation of seizing power.
Until you were gone, I've never considered The Iliad or your preference towards the rooted Paris.
That was till you were gone. Till your vengeful aura haunted me like Patroclus's soul haunted Achilles.
This letter is my song to you, to a loss like how I imagined the world would end. All at once.
Alejandra Pizarnik. Solitude
The beginning
The seats are
empty.
The theater is dark
Why do you keep acting?
The replies
The tears are
out.
The mask is broken
Why do I keep breathing?
The cameras are
on.
The makeup is done.
Why do I keep screaming?
The rumors are
true.
The madness is pure.
Why do I keep smiling?
The silences are
wide.
The solitude is suffocating.
Why do I keep dreaming?
The spaces are
taken.
The surrealism is reality.
Why do I keep worrying?
Yumiko Kurahashi. Transformation
The mud wheel is spinning, it’s time for the shadow to glow, to become a mask, and play with the bestiality within you. A strong, smooth, and symmetric shell that hides a pure pearl? You fool no one, are useless, they just reflect what your corrupted eyes want to see, a fragile beauty that doesn’t last. Swallow the poison, transform into what’s fighting inside, become.
Become a vulture, are you terrified? Vultures taunt life: rip, tear and crack the cadavers that pollute the earth; may all sins be forgiven for the executors of death. Feasts of putrefied meat and dense blood transform vultures into ugly reflections of what they do to dead bodies; but, the dirty work must be done: death must be transformed into life at any cost.
No need to justify or to make up for the fact that this is what the inner you look like. Vultures kneel before no being; even life is at their stake.
Jamaica Kincaid. History
Blossom out of the barren ground, contemplating the putrefied elements, holding what it might be my condemn, wandering if I can mutate my skin like a snake or if I’m condemned as a tree who is at the mercy of the soil, wind, and rain; luckily, there are no humans left.
What is it to see rather than fail? What is it to be rather than a mutant? What is it to remember rather than destruction? We’ve been watering the land with blood since the dawn of time and when it came not in a bang or a whisper, but rather with a scream at a time, I knew it, we were condemned, we’ve always been. It wasn’t quick; it wasn’t beautiful; it wasn’t amusing; it was what we deserved.
I keep wondering who used the dresses, bras, trousers… I see floating around. It doesn’t matter, they don’t exist anymore; I don’t either, nor that I care I was the last scream, there is nothing left for me; I will never experience the feeling of my skin on someone else’s, or the warm of the sun on my face, or clean clothes after a hot shower. I have no forgiveness; neither do you.
Virginia Woolf. Vision
Drowning should be panicking, but I’m rather calm falling into a long dream from which I shall never return. My thoughts flow like a river, leaving traces of color that wind around my body, protecting me, taking me to a place where no one can hurt me, but myself: you’re here. Time and space don’t affect me: I can’t taste the coffee you pour into my cup, I can’t hear the conversations floating around us, I can’t feel your fingers running through my skin… I can see you,
“And that’s enough” you finish for me, the image I’ve created finishes; reminding me you’re not really here. The limitations of still being conscious. I want to get rid of awareness, deep down into my inner self, deep down into you.
“Wanna go away?” You ask.
“Where to?” But I’m already getting up.
“Don’t know, we’ll see.”
You hold me in your arms; I close my eyes while we swing gently in a crowded square. Spinning in an uncoordinated dance, like being the two humans left and, in fact, we are; at least here. I open my eyes, I’m in the water again; like a dead body drifting with light drops running on my face. You get into the transparent water. I smile feeling like a wrinkled flower: with creases and nooks, but still beautiful, still alive, still desirable.
“How is it?” My voice is barely perceptible.
“Like a crack in an empty space, a painful second, and then, perpetual silence.”
I’ve been dreaming about my death: fall, hit and empty; quick, scary, and calm. There is comfort in being in a void where I don’t really exist.
“A long meditation?” our lips are close to each other.
“Surely it’s lonely.”
I throw myself for the last speck of human contact before I turn into obscurity.
María Sabina. Healing
The ethereal being I’ve been claiming to be is nothing more than a lie; my feet refuse to leave this earthly experience, they’re growing within the soil, nurturing the bad seeds that destroy any chance I have of being human again and don’t let me metaphor into my natural form, or any form; only fragments of what I could be: the wing beat of a hummingbird, the haul of a wolf, the faith of a prayer…; the essence but not the body, the executor hands that performed healings and helped others are gone.
If I am nothing, why can I still feel the air sneaking through my skin, through my hair, through the orifices of my nose…? If I am nothing, why do I still grow old? My skin is covered with wrinkles and my bones are cracking under a heavy life. If I am nothing if my life is long gone, why I am still here?
I will lie down, let the time consume me, and, hopefully, I will disappear into what ails me, I will be gone.
Joy Harjo. Bravery
If a woman is punished for deciding to get rid of unwanted pregnancy so should a man that abandons a child. We, women, shouldn’t be tied to burdens that reduce us to a uterus with legs; like a wild horse, we should run away from a life of impositions. It’s no longer enough to be spiritually free; women should regain their bodies, their space, plug into themselves, and destroy the artificial robots tied to men that have been created.
The imposition of being a ‘woman’ haunts me wherever I go, whoever I want to be; like a dark fog that surrounds me trying to convert me into the perfect ‘woman’ of a misogyny society. Sometimes I can hear it: “shave your underarms”, “don’t curse”, “stop eating that much”, “that’s not how you’re supposed to seat”… Sometimes I wonder if how I behave and how I look are somehow linked to my sexuality or my gender: can I be bisexual and feminine at the same time? And, I’m still feminine if I listen to Metallica and paint my nails green? Sometimes I wonder who other people consider me to be: do my clothes show my true self or are just too extravagant to be taken seriously? Sometimes I wander around of how I am supposed to be and how I am not; what I embodied a long time ago haunts me.
But, fortunately, I got my head out of the ‘what makes a woman’ quagmire and I managed to decorate it with flowers of my art: my makeup palette is full of color and so is my closet; I’m sensitive, I pass through a wide range of emotions in only a week; I’m a feminist that keeps trying to support every woman, including herself; I like my reflection and I’m okay with the days I don’t; I crave for affection but I still only let few in; I’m in love with stimulation but to slowly fall into meditation is a pleasure; I eradicate my maternal instinct because it will end me but I still look at maternity with admiration; I’m satisfied with how my body looks but I’m still worried about how people react when they see it. I’m just a woman who doesn’t fit and doesn’t want to, into an ideal image. I’m not what you told me I should be, I refuse to. I’m in constant change creating my garden out of the mud.
Sandra Cisneros. The body
Is it normal for my abdomen to form protrusions and not be a block? Is it normal for my breast to be petite and not stand out from my bra? Is it normal for my underarms to grow out hair and not be smooth? Is it normal for my face to form wrinkles and not be static? Is it normal for my legs to have stretch marks and not eradicate them? Is it normal for my hair to turn gray and not dye it obsessively? Is it normal for my skin to have blotch and not cover them?
Is it normal to obsess over a body? Tell me, it is? Having a body is sorrow or joy? Is my body powerful per se or rather at the mercy of what it is supposed to be?
Sylvia Plath. The dark
The oracle: intense mental states that turn her hair into a long white tangled mess that flows like a cascade; a crystal ball cracked furiously along with blood veins that mark the intensity of the visions; hands that turned into claws a century ago faded into black because of the poison that emanates from her anger; a constantly vigilant eye that moves forward her three dummies —past, present, and future— as she nurtures from the horror that creeps up on human lives.
The oracle, known as ‘the bloody lady’ always asks the same question to the seekers of destiny: “do you still dream about the people lost in your memory, fabricated by your nostalgia and romanticized by your broken heart?” She was obsessed with death, it kept her alive and, as she was living in the dark, she casted every fool stupid enough to let one of her claws into their skin into a shadow at her mercy.
How ended her reign? There are different versions of the same story that lead to the exact final: her disappearance; someone says she was buried alive hoping that would be enough to kill her; others state her end was with one scream at a time, or maybe the weight of her visions drowned her. But, just in case:
“Oracle oracle on the dark … who is going to kill us all?
Mary Shelley. Loss
In memory of who I once was, here lies the person who, without realizing it, taught me a lot of things, not only about life but how it’s okay to feel extraordinary about someone and how an attachment turns into abandonment quite quickly.
For creation to take place destruction must occur; that’s why flowers blossom on cemeteries, on your grave. The transition between death and life metamorphosed itself into the symbol of renewal. What a cruel irony: the cycle of life turned out to be a poison that not only sterilizes but gives the greatest hope just to be taken away in a painful bleed.
Flannery O’Connor. Humanity
How people make you feel says more about them than about you. I’ve been considering this and been thinking about people who wait for you to tie your shoe; people who smile at you as soon as you make eye contact; people who seek you out to tell you some good news; people who listen to you and support you even if they don’t understand you; people who are happy of seeing you; people who worry about you; people who stand by your side when everything is falling apart; people who have your back; people who stand up for you; people who remember you; people who laugh with you; people who sent you memes that made them laugh; people who tell you every little detail of anything; people who laugh at jokes that aren’t even that funny.
People who, on purpose, are going to take care of us.
Zora Neale Hurston. Story
Are you here, mother, to purge my sins? Or just to verify I’m drowning in the dark river? The purgation of the soul before death should be done by a priest but, the shadows govern this house, you see them? I once had one too, tied to me, at my service but still reproducing my flaws. I was glorious and still, failure never stopped haunting me; even now, personified in you.
May I confess to you? Don’t act with repugnance. We both know why you are here as we are sure this is our last encounter. You know, black cats a known for bad luck and I need it, I don’t want to end up in the same place as all the people I’ve crushed. An eternity of condemnation is what I am seeking: flames will consume my skull while my soul will transform into a demon at the service of the following ruler of the condemnation, the next voodoo queen.
My naked skin enjoyed the caress of the animal’s bones. Its skin is at your house, I don’t want you to forget the sealed destiny of your daughter. Long live the queen, mother; long live the queen.
Shirley Jackson. Family
Have you ever realized that our lives are made up of so many people, that it is impregnated by the essences, the marks they leave on us? So many lives we are a part of and so many lives have created us. Who are we? the people our pictures show: a contemporary ‘hippie’ with little braids hanging on your hair with a hilarious laugh and holding as much beer as your hands can hold; or the people we believe we are: a Romeo looking for love with no sense of shame who loves to make people feel good; maybe we are the people imprinted in the memory of those who loved us: a day-dreamer with a complicated relationship with spirits and the most caring person we’ve known.
We are all of that or we were. We’ve attended a thousand funerals of the people we used to be; and the hippie, the Romeo, or the day-dreamer may or may not be still a part of us and it is ok. Still, there is something that remains unchangeable: being unapologetically ourselves, while laughing fully-belly and debating without arguments if a recording of a toad croaking can be used as a tool to communicate with them (brilliant minds working hard). It can. It will not make a difference in the history of humanity, but it will give us a sense and pleasure along the journey.
Mirabai. Devotion
I want to rub my soul against yours. Being extremely passionate and feeling radically sublime on the daily basis of a routine. To get home blindly drunk after a party and eat cereals on the floor directly out of the box. To go to the cinema as an excuse to eat popcorn and end up half making it in the dark of the very back row. To turn the volume of the music up and move badly on the improvised dance floor of our kitchen while making breakfast. To try to fit in the bathtub because it’s supposed to be romantic and end lay on the wet floor of the bathroom because there is more space. To try to emulate erotic films and have more laughs than good shots for a supposed made-home video.
This is what I can offer; is it too much to marry someone with whom making regular everyday shit memories? And remember them as a journey that began with: do you wanna get drunk and stay the night? And reach its climax with: hold my fucking hand, loser. We’re going to be weird under the traditional partner system.
Anne Carson. The intellect
Do you want to understand me? Discover the plagues of my mind and its delights or do you just want to know me?
No, don’t be naïve, there are differences between understanding and knowing. A person, a mind is like a volcano. Knowing a volcano is hard but manageable: study geography, the geology, the eruptions and the calm periods, the demography surrounding it; when it was formed, and the development… Everyone can get to know a volcano. But, to understand the volcano you have to become the volcano: how it is to erupt and cry rivers of lava; how it is to be feared, loved, or despised; how is it to be the source of the inner soul. To understand means to become, it implies loss, love, and lust; one’s religion, tradition, and intellectual growth; a constant fight of the multiple selves one’s holds.
Do you want to understand me? These are the books I’ve read. Go ahead, understand me.
Janet Frame. Belonging
Stay always beside me
or erase your existence from my life.
But don’t leave me alone,
drowning,
in your absence.
Where I cannot find you.
Emily Dickinson. The Soul
How have you survived this long when you are so violently self-destructive? How have you constructed an inner world when the unknown rule your life? How have you claimed to understand pain when you don’t know what love is? How have you dear to wear white when you are burning in God’s flames?
Tell me just one thing: is it a spiritual life enough contentment for not having a real one, and enter death pure as the day you started waiting for her?
Audre Lorde: Justice
Witches are princesses who weren’t saved by a prince.
“In our community, there are some values you must follow, some rules” my mom used to tell me. “It’s like fighting for yourself but swallowing anger and loudness. You get saved, you get a life and you don’t get blood in your hands. Simple”. A fake smile always crossed her face after ‘simple’.
Witches are princesses who were forced to save themselves.
While I grew up the stories about unicorns, castles and crowns were always replaced in my mind by snails eating dead snakes, by rivers of thick black blood, and by dead eyes that hold the weight of suffering.
Witches are princesses who had to live in someone else’s world.
Fear and subordination were a part of our daily life, mixed with kindness and mantras engraved in our skin: witches should burn, witches should burn, witches should burn… I embraced it
Witches are princesses who set the world on fire because witches should burn.
And so, you shall burn with us or against us.
Sappho. Love
The desire of the beloved, lead by intimacy and deep roots that hammer the heart.
We had it. And, as I want to feel your skin against mine; as I want to scrape you till you bleed; as I want to set my tears free while you guide me in a compass through the room; as I want to come home to a warm bed and lousy jokes; as I want to… as much as I do…
It’s time to take flight before the fire consumes me.
Because yes, my beloved, I love you; but it’s not enough. And, as much as it savages me, it will never be.
Agatha Christie. Trickery
Wanna play a game?
I count to three and we both tell a twisted lie.
One that hides the deep truth about ourselves.
Something between suspicion and deception.
Something that consumes you.
Something that maintains your breathing.
The missing piece of yourself.
One that you have the luxury to be desperately needing it.
Come closer, there are some thoughts inside my mind I don't want to be conscious of.
They will make me realize that life is a constant spiral and I don't have any time left.
"I don't deserve to be loved" I whisper.
"I may be able to" you whisper back.
Anna Akhmatova. Endurance
They are executing us, persecuting us, imprisoning us. The new era, some say. The terror, exclaim others. What shall I endure in this dessert of propaganda, police, and spectrums?
What shall I be when mercury is slowly floating through my veins, collapsing my legs, my lungs, my throat, and my brain? I can not longer be an individual, just a melancholic subject that between staying in pain and avoiding pain chooses not to be, not to feel.
And, suddenly, their tales become yours and the world is a perfect reflection of their story, and you just stay there, immobile because, instead of changing their tales so they adapt to reality; they change reality so it adapts to their tales.
Charlotte Perkins. Freedom
Memory is running like a needle in and out of my skin.
But, can someone remember something that never happened?
Can someone remember something I invented when we were cuddling in bed?
Can someone remember that I expanded so I could live there with her?
Can someone?
I remember one, two, and three teaspoons of sugar in my black coffee. None in yours. Smash avocado in white toasted bread and a natural, or so says the label, orange juice we bought in the market nearby.
I remember the smell of the grass in the blanket and your pink shocks unmatching your green sneakers. The beer, the grapes, and those chocolate cookies none of us like but always end up bringing. And the orange sky, slowly fading under our eyes.
I remember the dances in the kitchen before bedtime and your greasy homie tracksuits. How you used to tie your hair in a bun and say: 'a chingarle mija'; before doing anything, at all, in the house. You used to kiss me all the time.
Forugh Farrokhzad. Rebellion
It’s been a while since I left a pen run through a blank paper…
“We are not going to act against the regime. It’s over”. In a café an ocean away from home, these were the last words he said before I spit a ‘motherfucker’ to his face and left the table. No, wait. Just before I walked out the door he tried to convince me of something, I didn’t want to hear it. I simply told him ‘váyase usted a la mierda’, and I walk away, and cry, and think about all the things I should have yelled, incriminate, threat; and didn’t.
I already knew you when this meeting happened. But, till now, I’ve never talked with you about it. And, apart from this time, I would never will.
Lately, in the barriers of my isolation, I’ve been punishing myself with recriminations and sadistic thoughts. Was I devastated after his words? Yes. Was I furious? Yes. Was I desperate? Yes. Was I disappointed? No.
I gave up hope a long lifetime ago and till that reunion, I only acted out of expectations. Pity, isn’t it? My rebellion was led by others' conceptions of me, by others' actions, and by others' hopes. And I’ve failed first my comrades who fought for what they believed, second, you and all the love you’ve given me, without conditions; and third, but not least, myself.
Remember when you told me: if we don’t leave this town we might never make it out? In the end, we would have never made it out of it alive. I’ve prophesied it and as I’ve always been thrilled about my independence not even death is going to take it from me.
As the author of the strangest and most ridiculous love letter, I’ve ever read: goodbye.
I love you, no matter what.
F.
Eileen Chang. Fate
Can I still blame fate? Can I still believe in outside forces? Can I still hope that events will, eventually, fall into place?
Or, on the contrary, must I assume, once and for all, acceptance?
Hanging on to the fantasy of what could have been gives you immediate pleasure and a last-longing disappointment, but acceptance has been too raw to bear, till now:
I want to be loved, I want to be taken care of, I want to be chosen…
But it’s too much to ask for someone who thrives upon troubled romances and betrayals but can’t handle a little filtration with a guy she likes.
But, I must wake up from this ephemeral fantasy and start again in a reality from which I’ve been running away my whole life, living it with the witty style that only opium can give the sensation of having.
Leslie Marmon Silko. Community
Suddenly, you are ten again, in the back of your parent's car falling into the darkness.
A place where the 'take care of each other' rule still applies.
And then, you realize that, sometimes, exiles are taken willingly.