My Days (II)

Music:

Liberation Von History, 2002 album by Wechesel Garland. Subtle, fuzzy electronic music. Don't ask me I cannot tell you anything more about this music than what you can hear for yourself. Or I can tell you about the man - a friend, not lover - who placed this CD on my desk, his eyes wild and distorted slits in smoke rising from an incense burner we had used as an ash tray. The man has problem with his eyes and his heart, a disintegrating castle from which familiar and unknown characters are running with their arms outstretched like books spread open--

to die. Because all stories are born to die within those who look at the world in hate. I was a passerby in lights dissected. "Here, here," he tried to shove the CD--endless CDs!--into my chest but it wouldn't crack. Nothing I could do about it except to throw the shield I'd been carrying to the ground the moment he walked.

Smoke:

I would smoke and I would smoke and I would smoke until I woke up heaving. My heart ached. My lungs were smash while I swam laps in breaststroke backstroke freestyle across the pool of old men who could kick to dissolve the spidery veins around their ankles onto my thighs or a clumsy woman grabbing me by the waist. 

Accidental attacks. I swim fast and turn a blind eye to others. But not fast or nimble as kids in a swim team who can flip or curl up in water like animated inflatable toys to wiggle out of danger.

To protect myself from other kinds of accidental attacks, I cleansed everything in my studio flat--from window frames to my bookshelf, down to the electric socket beside the door and the door--with a lemongrass scented cleanser. 

Ultimatum to self: "Smoke another cig in this flat and you're a loser."

Heat:

It gets warm in my flat--I pace around a lot. I shouldn't be pacing around as much because of a minor injury to my right foot that went unnoticed for too long and it's kept me off the dance floor and hiking trails for months now.

The truth is I don't miss dancing Tango at the moment. I miss the fun, but not the emotional connection. I've been walking along this long, occasionally circuitous path in that forest in my imaginary universe, where the trees are bent or they combust in such unison that the forest looks like a fold-up mirror open in flame, in tune with my tears and roots sprawling underneath the soil. I'm singing solitude and the song has many cadences. It's a row of bells hanging from my door frame. 

My foot hurts, anyway.

Hair:

Last week I visited my hairstylist of 10 years for that massive haircut I'd put off for months. That waist length hair was literally weighing on me--I'd even rest it on the back of my chair while working on the computer. 

I was just broke. Or I felt broke and my hairstylist is expensive.

We said, Let's do shoulder length, a bit longer. Let's do straight bangs covering the eyebrows so that I can brush that fringe in front of the mirror everyday to put on a new persona. The young guy who worked the chemical treatment ran the ionized straightener down my hair, looked at my reflection in the glass and I saw the lights in his eyes change.