A quiet hum pervades every corner. You listen with your ear pressed against the cold titanium door. Deep in the canals of your mind there is a whirring machine, a thing possessing what feels like infinite knowledge, some of it profound, all of it potentially trivial. What could be missing? Something. Something must be missing. Why are you still here? You could be at home with your private library! You know things are different now. Why hold out hope for more?
You can only answer...."I don't know".
You are starting to feel very silly indeed, but then-"Your lips are red....My face is red from reading your red lips...."
THAT VOICE. What is that voice? Something about it...the door opens and without warning....
A ballet studio. Precocious, poised young girls glare at each other from across the hall, pensive, breathing like stallions. In a single, undulating wave they begin to move, like liquid, like ribbon, they collide into a brilliant scarlet-tinted hurricane that unfolds itself in the form of a giant diorama - you see on the stage a younger version of yourself, face buried in a book. Greasy, glaring figures swirl about you, taunting you, making you strip off your clothes and laugh at their jokes. Violins stab your brain, reminding you that four times three makes twelve....
"My face is drawn....My face is drawn on with this #2 pencil...."
The slim, startling figure stands mere feet from your face. With her laser-like limestone eyes coolly beaming into yours, she drops the pencil into your open palm. Without explanation -with nothing more than pure instinct- you know exactly what to do next.
For endless, numberless days and nights you scribble furiously away at an infinite canvas, lines racing, scraping, bleeding into nothing and everything, eyeballs turning to dust, nose running with black tar, until you finally fall down on your sorry ass like an outgrown Beanie Baby in a Salvation Army thrift store. With hot little tears searing your greying cheeks, your parched throat clenched and quivering full of scoffs and allergies, a familiar hand slowly hovers outstretched into view from just within-without the wretched smog. Putting a finger to your lips, it silences your bitching. "Just like an amnesiac, trying to get my senses back...", coos a familiar voice, soft yet powerful, making a dozen rosy incisions every-which-where and slowly, delicately drawing out your smelly aluminum nerves, your microwaved spaghetti brain, your aching Jenga tower spine - Truth! Truth is beauty! She speaks again! OH, WHERE DID IT GO??!!!
Am I a supplicant? Am I lost in the scene? Could you quit me?? OH, NO!!! What would the neighbours say?!
"Mouth connects to the teeth, and teeth to the lies and the curses....Honey, can you reach the spots that need oiling and fixing?"
YES! NO! MAYBE!! OH GOD, HOW I WISH I COULD!!!
"H-" You foam at the mouth...
"E-" You fight your reflection...
"L-" You're looking to finish a fight...
"P!" You fuck with dynamite...
You are now running for the exit. She is running with you. All around you office towers collapse like moldy butter, huge round men made of cellulite and smoked ham play slip'n'slide in the streets with a sociopathic glint in their eyes, a handcuffed martyr with flesh the color of tough luck is tickled until he ejaculates money down the eaves of a sty, your grandmother slowly turns to plywood, channel fifteen tries to strangle channel three, Canada forces a laugh into the mirror with tears in its eyes and snot all over its ironic moustache, sushi starts making people grow noses on their taints, everything ever made is in your pocket and it's lowering your sperm count, discussions of what should rightfully be done to a vagina take place without a single one present, Walter Huston's character from Treasure of the Sierra Madre becomes the voice of reason, lipsticked pitbulls menacingly brandish aerosol cans atop gaily dancing horses, Wal-Mart sniffs a rose while Exxon shops for tupperware, so many voices, so much sound, so much noise, please don't cry....
With shattered glass all about her, eyes glistening with silvery tears, she softly projects through the small, narrow shaft of light - "They could take or leave you, so they took you and they left you - how can they be so casually CRUEL???!!!!"
The hurt heals. You really stare at her. You are not a cheerleader anymore. You can cut her open. Your body is now ready, and though power may not care, you can still freeze out your own little ice age where the shivers won't find you and that funny lightning calls you the tiger. It may not be a perfect plan, but it's the one you've got. And how it is is how it ought to be.
Happy Birthday, Annie Erin Clark.
