the interminable time buffet

Is it possible?

possible
A	noun
	1	possible
				something that can be done; “politics is the art of the possible”

Photos render such false exuberance. I was looking back over some old photos and realized why I had been intimidating at one point in my life. You could see it in my demeaner, in the way my skin shone, and in the way my teeth sparkled – you could see an ebbing superstrength interlaced with my flesh. It was called youth. There was nothing that could not be done.  it was all – all of it, every last shred of it -possible.

I smoke too much now, I scream and run round in  cirlces all with out moving a muscle (and you can tell this by that spare tire stubbornly loged around my care bear tummy) . I am consciously deciding to invite that unbounded energy, that grotesque vitality with which I was so mercilessly endowed, back into my life, into my blood, into my craneum.  And while I’m waiting for its rsvp, I’ll be chatting up every postman from here to my discarded umbilical chord.

After all, just because lost illusions are staple fare at most time buffets doesn’t mean that you’re forced to add them to your plate.

Negative Mneumonics

Wiped right off, the photo did not speak. Like a bank going bankrupt, this was a photo without images. We stared for hours at the plate, hoping something would appear. “Still nothing,” said the dandy, in his grey felt fedora and blue tweed jacket. He was leaning over the counter waving the wet paper about with a set of tongs.

“Oh god… dammit – it’s got to show up at some point.” She sighed. Photographs were her mnemonic apparel. She needed them to remember, without them she had nothing. No history, no kin, no soul. She looked down at her feet, nervous and dejected. She needed to know what had happened, and the darkroom was giving up no answers so far. “what, did I leave the lens cap on?”

“If you did, it would have been the only thing you left on in your tomfoolery” he replied, smirking. He was a froward little bastard.

“I’ve been thinking my camera had become omnipotent, now i realize just how wrong that appraisal was.” She spoke mostly to herself. She put a different filter slide over the negative drawer, closed it and adjusted the strength of the light.

 ”I’ve got something, finally!” she shouted as she looked through the little nozzle of the apparatus at the processed negative. “And holy shit, do I look demonic!!”

“Stop shouting, I’m right here…”

“Look closely, there I am, beer in hand, and looking absolutely pitiful. oiii… but who’s that beside me?” He looked through the nozzle as her head made way for him.

“Yeah that’s me.” He looked up over at her, eyebrow raised. “I thought you had remembered all that. You don’t remember anything?” he asked.

“Of course not, or else I wouldn’t be scrambling for photographic evidence would I?”

“Charlotte, you don’t remember that we hooked up last night? It was marvellous, if I may remind you.” Now he was the one looking dejected.

“Look, one night of good sex doesn’t solve my short term memory problem, ok” She was repulsed at the idea that she had slept with that little rat. He was too slick for his own good, always looking studiously tousled. “Ok. get out of my darkroom. I feel like working alone now.”

“I just got here though. We shared some really good memories last night. We connected. And this is how you treat me?”

“Well, if your story is in fact true, then you made out with a ghost, because I don’t remember any of it; and so as far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen. Now go on, skedaddle.” she shooed him out of the room.

“I can’t believe you don’t remember!” he shouted from the other side of the door. With her back to the door, she smiled. Of course she remembered…. the sex just wasn’t good enough for a second serving. She walked back over to the enlarger, removed the negative from the drawer, and then threw it into the garbage. Now that’s one way of getting rid of the past.

FeedBack

I dare say that, yes, this world was once mine, My roots burrowed through this soil and bore life through like blue veins. I once sat in a green field as if it were my bedding, and watched the stars as if the sky were a mirror. I was connected to it viscerally. It was me and I it. It shone with prismatic clarity. I spoke in unison with all the chirping of the crickets. I had no idea that I was yet the primordial fool. I was ripped from it with anything but surgical precision. No anesthesia. It still hurts. Now, like Freud’s men-babes, I want to be granted re-entry to its cosmic, loving, outraged comfort. But it does not yield.

i missed the colours of that world, that unity and identity. But, like tinted flowers in fresh water, the coulour has drained out and I see what others had told me I ought to see for so long. The world has become a painting with its colour sucked out. Pigment resting on grey and off-white, and nearly-carbon-black. I thought it would never happen. I’m like the Little Prince who has lost his first sketch, and now cannot test if the adults around me understand where I’m coming from.

However, I can assure you that it’s not novelty I crave – getting swamped by critiques of modernity has made sure of that. Perhaps I crave simplicity and virtue. I crave Socratic discussions on right and wrong modes of being, and return to a time when they actually meant something. I want to whole-heartedly denounce the stoics, the sophists and the cynics. But somehow, I can’t coherently summon the words, the argument, the care, the belief that they’re not altogether correct.

I wish i could still rely on partial information, and tout or denounce this or that from a glimpse of it. I wish I got angry at the news like I used to. And that injustice was still outrageous and not a just another matter of course. I wish I could stop having discussions about ideas in terms of the authors that first wrote them down. At least I’d have real avenues for discussion, instead of bobbing lackadaisically on this oceanic body of partial certainties, and monochromatic opinion. I’m tired of simulacrum. I want the real thing back.

Who’s with me?

*crickets chirping in the distance*

I stopped in the fire the other day
Watched the snow fall like parachuting marines
And thought about my uterus
I’ve carried it around all my life,
Barely recognizing it was there
Until it started giving me trouble
First it was the right to own property
Then the vote, of course
And now. It hurts.
It does unruly things
Keeps me worried and awake
It used to be so neutral, so nonchalant.
So non-confrontational,
Like a lone hippie in a head shop
Simply content, unassuming.
But now, it’s always lurking around.
Making rude comments and watching for my reaction
Like a brat testing the boundaries
A visceral gadfly

A blood-and-guts terrorist

A cantankerous Cunt

If this is a gift, as the propaganda proclaims
Then where’s my gift receipt?

Juxtaposed

On Tuesday, December 9th, the Toronto Star ran a story about the aniversary of the Universal declaration of Human Rights, which was signed on Dec. 10th, 1948. The writer, Olivia Ward, interviewed various intellectuals and human rights organization representatives, all of whom agreed that the declaration would most likely not pass if it were introduced to the UN now. No one would back the lofty ideals put forward by the declaration.

Meanwhile, on the facing page, a tiny little clip of a story reported that a dog in Chile risked its own life to save its hurt friend. The dog dragged the seriously injured dog from where it was lying unconscious in the middle of the freeway, to the safety of the road’s shoulder. It all got caught on a security tape.

Maybe the cynics were right. The only right way to live is to live like a dog. It’s unfortunate that we humans so often fall short.

No Reading A Loud Allowed

It has recently come to my attention that there is no single word to describe “reading a-loud” in the English language. Don, who is learning German, pointed out that the Germans coined a word for this action, and have thus outperformed English to a certain extent. I instantly thought to myself: this must be remedied. So, this is my attempt at outshining the Germans:

“To Read Aloud”

Basic building blocks:
kleu- “hearing, to hear”
legere “to read,”
lexis “speech, diction;”
legein “to speak;”

Amalgamations:
kleulex (too much like kleenex)
legerlex
lexlege (I like this one the best)

Verb-alization:
To lexelate or lexegate
Present: lexelate/lexegate past: lexelated/lexegated future: will lexelate/lexegate
Noun: lexelation/lexegation

Dictionary:
Lexelate/lexegate: to read aloud
Lexelation/lexegation: the action of reading aloud

Usage
“I stopped to listen to a lexelation/lexegation in the hallway.”
“A tall wo/man was lexelating/lexegating in the hallway”
“If you would like, I could lexelate/lexegate this for you

Why? Because ‘diction’ is not up to snuff.

I am starting to like lexegate better than lexelate as a word.