BACK THEN

Archaeologists, when writing about extinct civilizations, approach the habits and lifestyles of dug-up pasts with a reverence that is both condescending and puppy-like. Puppy-like with enthusiasm and awe; condescending because it becomes well-defined on the glossy pages of the article that compared to us, the Egyptians, the Mayans, the people who built Angkor Wat, were like toddlers with plastic hammers considering what was technologically available to them. Yet, (with the eyes of astounded parents observing their two-year-old) look at what they did, isn't it amazing!

If life was terrible sixty years ago, with no tampons, epidurals, or soap operas for the women trapped inside their pine kitchens and nothing but 9-5 for the slight men in their fedoras, then can you imagine the suffering of humans 600 years ago, and then, all the stabbing and eating and feral viciousness of humans 6,000 years ago? Digging them up out of the tar pits we find our petrified medals for having advanced so well from that, the hard and short lives our unfortunate and beloved ancestors. It's a myth: it makes us feel good to believe that we are moving forward. Forward to what? There are just many more hands on board now.

I am having a hard time accepting modern life--if he would just slap me around for wanting another man, this would give us both real relief. Instead, it's silence and his fingers stuffed into my nostrils (that is weird, isn't it) when I pretend to sleep.

Today, yesterday, last weekend.

Brazilians are leaving Boston in droves because they can make more money back in Brazil now. I was at a party of paragliders, some of them Brazilian, one or two with broken bones. Flying squirrels in my head. Freddy goes into another room so that we can pretend not to know each other for a couple of hours. There's an upright piano; just looking at it makes me anxious. Is this going to continue to get worse every decade--what do they call it, piles?--the veins falling out of your ass because you can't please yourself and you keep straining? I can't stop music even though it would be the best way to get myself healed.

We invited a couple of musicians over for dinner, and as I was unfurling the tablecloth onto a plank outdoors, a pair of my black lace panties flew out like a crow. They'd been stuck there from the laundry, and I was embarrassed but grateful that they were my one sexy pair out of the shredded rags in my drawer. People should send me new underwear instead of CDs, books, and short stories they've written. I must come across as a real nerd.

(A light-hearted poke: I love writing to your occasional music, S., and B., I'm enjoying your sporadic and defensive emails.)

MUST, MUSTY, MUSK

Continuing thoughts on smell: Christopher Brosius, responsible for the infamous Play-do scent, has, with his website image of secretive vials that look like they could contain snake venom or cyanide, and his cryptic monikers and descriptions, made my nose salivate for synthesised odours. (The last time I had perfume about my person was when I lent my shoes to Iliojuet who'd been blistering and bleeding over cobblestones during our two weeks in Lisbon. She felt self-concious about how the shoes smelled after she'd used them, and hosed them down with something that reeked like grave lilies around her lily feet. First I put the shoes in the bathroom and shut the door, and then I put the shoes outside my hotel room, and finally I threw the shoes away.)

I ordered five samples of CB perfume absolute, which is carried in an oil base rather than alcohol as is commonly used. The scents are also available in a lighter water base, which I don't recommend if you want to scent yourself, since the stronger oil base will last longer but is still subtle and will not travel far from your skin. Introverted scents! You will only be smelled when another person wants to smell you. They are intense but close. No more gagging on "Old Lady with Purple Hair at the Symphony" and "Teenage Boy at Prom".

I played a little game with these samples, testing them on strips of watercolor paper as well as on my wrists and on Freddy (who abhors perfume). It is really true that the same scent worn by two different people will smell different, and maybe more so in an oil application. The scent changes drastically as it cooks on your skin, and is much more unpredictable on skin than on the paper. I am still against wearing scents, but this was really fun.

In the Library: Quiet (like a library!), and after a half-hour it's too powdery on my skin to be interesting (which is a tendency of my own skin--it smelled different on Freddy.) Fresh out, it is vanilla pipe smoke, old dry paper, and very slightly cardamom. The furniture polish was too softened for me to catch, but Freddy noticed it right off.

Memory of Kindness: Pow! Stridently green in its first few minutes, and then becoming sweeter. It really is like crushed tomato stems. I rather liked the toxicity (nightshade) factor--Freddy hated it, but agreed that it became more attractive as the initial strength mellowed down. This one lasted the longest on my skin, and didn't become powdery. Mingles nicely with summer sweat.

Just Breathe: On the paper strip, it was like walking into a mod 60's house with mahogany beams and wall-to-wall windows. Different woods, humidity coming off of moving water, somehow it smelled a bit like my grandmother's tatami tea-room in Yokohama. On my skin however, it turned into an elevated version of a Bath and Body Works white tea lotion and became soapy and sweet, which was still pleasant, but nothing as fetching as the scent all by itself.

Black March: I keep opening the bottle to smell this magic. Alive or something, and really tricky. It smells like an incontinent old lady in a flower shop on the paper strip, but it is amazingly sophisticated on the skin. There's really dirt in there. Then the florals come out without upsetting its metallic balance (the flowers are stronger on me than on Freddy. On him, there's more of a rain smell.) There's a disturbing wet-panty feel to it in the finish. I have to concede, this is a work of art. Unfortunately I can't wear it because it turns into mush on me, losing the eucalyptus edge it had in the bottle.

Wild Hunt: I think I was hoping for a fresh kill. No dead stag, but the pine needles and spongy moss are there. This is a sexier and more masculine smell than the others. The dirt note is similar to Black March, but there aren't any flowers. It's powerfully evocative in the bottle. What is it in my skin that turns all these into icky sweetness?

In conclusion, if you love perfume, wear CB I Hate Perfume and save us sensitive types from choking in the glorious halo of your odour.

More archival clips, circa 2002-2003, found on the porch in a wet envelope (to assure you that I am not actually contemplating the big S)--

Suicide Note No.1
A bright fucking expedient lemon. I am afraid to sleep on it--that is when damage is done--or does it just happen--or is it done, done, and then completed by another, another one, or another piece of gloria halleluiah--it sleeps when I wake, and waked to hurt when I slept--very stealthy my god is, my worshipped states and statues.

Suicide Note No. 2
Who the fuck are you?, I says to the clown.

Suicide Note No. 3
Tonight I got in a brawl. This was not out of hate or rage or a violent emotion. I just thought "This is an excellent opportunity to hit someone," so I did. His glasses flew off. Had my lesson today. He was pleased with the Bach. He said that he would get me a scholarship to the RAM, which is fine, but I hope he doesn't expect me to fuck him. I know he expects it. I want to cut my life into thin raw slices with the edge of bad thoughts.

Suicide Note No. 4
John is supposed to call or come over, and I don't mind as long he does the talking. Bonkers bored. Saw that theoretical physics guy and wanted to talk about Ouspensky, but he was with a girl. Which is so fucking stupid, I mean, to not be able to talk for want of having a cock attached to me. John just called. It is 4:03 am. I am going to go crash on his bed of nails.

Suicide Note No. 9
I lost nos. 5-8. He fucked too hard and hit a tender spot somewhere, around those waving branches. Maybe people with ADD fuck similarly. It was strange and forced and bumpy. But I want him because he smells like Daddy did before Daddy started stinking and smelling like hospitals and dried up organs.

Suicide Note No. 10
Cramps today. Hangover cramps, food cramps, sex cramps, playing the piano too much cramps. Played at the coffee shop last night. Nobody came. I mean nobody. Had to drink four cups of coffee just to stay awake while playing. John came at the end. John and me were the only ones there. Made out in the parking lot.

I keep moving, thinking the next day will be the one to explain all the days before it, and it does usually, but it doesn't explain what follows. All hanging over a pedalled low note. So I just keep moving.

I will practice arpeggios and Bartok, and come home with just enough energy to make myself come. This is funny: dinner tonight at Freddy's. He looked worried. He told me to cut down on the uppers. He thought my box of mints were amphetamines, and I'd chomped through the whole tin. He says I am constantly jacked up. That's ironic because it's my lack of energy that makes me flail all over.

Suicide Note No. 10
Kyle called. He asked me if anyone reminded me of my father. I said no. He wants to know if I'm seeing anyone. I said no. He wants to know why I won't say yes. I say I don't know. He knows. He knows about being insatiable.

Daddy singing with his dogs, Daddy sliding down banisters and popping balloons with his cigar, his big hooked nose, his protruding eyes.

I danced at John's place around three in the morning. He chased me around the coffee table. We kissed on the couch until that English dude in the bathroom farted really loud. We sang and played his guitar.

No. 11
Supposed to catch a plane. Out of the fucked up clotted mess of dead cultures, the catholic churches, the despots, the shivering beams of Europe. But I can't find my purse. What is in my purse? Slaveri things. A ninety-year-old woman will die with her purse by her side, stuffed with fifty-year-old kleenexes and a half-eaten banana. She wants to finish it, it must not be wasted.

Me wants to disturb the syntax with the lexicons of my own impossible symbols and stretch and transform what could be a digestible sentence into so tough a meter that is passes right through our tracts as clanks to the wooden floor scraped thin by moving furniture, clanks and falls to the next floor underneath it, and then to the one underneath that one as gold coins or watches measuring the time of their own descent. How could I do this to you. Countries exist only on the face of their coins. Catch a coin by its tail, and it can't destroy you.

No. 12
It is 7 am, not in itself bad, but three hours of scratching and tossing in John's bed of nailing before driving home for a shower and a breakfast of my twentieth bowl of ramen this month--which is only ten days into itself--is actually bad, as well as the year-old birth control pill that I just ate. The main thing is I am tired of being bloody. The road to hell is paved with tampons and ramen noodles.

No. 13
Las estatuas sufren con los ojos por las oscuridad de lost ataudes, pero sufren mucho mas por el agua que no desemboca...que no desemboca.

Is this Lorca? I can't remember. I learned Spanish that month and forgot it in a week.

COLLECTING

He knows. My brain sloshes in a suspension of his words
And in the morning what I've drunk
Rises up the tongue minute by minute to beat the sun

Preoccupied by one last part
that remains to be occupied by him
That heart-shaped hollow where
warmth gives to a litter of brainless brood
Nubby and eyeless, white like the blind
Each one special
Each one left behind.

I lie stretched open and wait
He does me wrong
He stitches together my slash
To keep everyone else away

I only let him
to save them all
from falling out.

--from a while back. 2003?