I walked away:

A blue shirt
where the collar leaned into
jasmine skin

A little green bulb
Bleeding racous beats
Sawing into sound-proof corners

The gleam of razored sunlight on railroad tracks
I heard the hiss, saw steam
Remembered...

I walked away
With heavy arms
And a breath I could not exhale.

Finally in touch with Roshni! I was really wondering if she'd taken one look at the college...or maybe been accosted by the head of the ISU...and decided to become a dog-trainer in Alaska.
All she says is that she missed me the night before last and that it is snowing where she is. Wherever she is!!!
I'm getting increasingly itchy as my time in Spain comes to an end. My only purpose has been to spend time with my mother...and it is a very nice purpose. I don't want it to end. My mum has grown to be the only person in my life who does not want to shape it. Being apart for almost 4 & 1/2 years has taught us both the importance of small doses. Neither of us are inclined to 'live with.' Aloneness is too fragile, to possessive. And therefore I fight passively against learning to 'be with.' The one choice I made when my brain had prickly heat. I am rude and rowdy and apathetic towards those who might have mattered. I had no conditions for togetherness. Perhaps that is why I now feel the expected conditions pressing on me. Familiarity. Disabled conditions that will allow me to be the saviour. A struggling rag of the 'prince-charming' concept. And above all a need for complete independence from need.
Hugs to those who have loved me/become victims of my ignorance.

I won a prize for Arithmetic in Kindergarten. 'The Musicians of Bremen'...a Ladybird Classic. What I remember most is the word 'Arithmetic' written inside on a card. In broken letters. My love for addition and mental multiplication came up to that word.
Later, when my marks decided that English was to be my chosen path, that I was perpetually the best arranger of words on paper...I did not flinch. I who forever shrugged off labels no matter what the cost, accepted that the written word would be my facist hacksaw, would chop pieces out of me, hang menacingly over my head if I dared to pull away. I chose to choose to obey.
Then came the phrase 'just words'. I foolishly ignored it and down swooped the Dementor Dictator. Just words....JUST words, just WORDS, it was said with a shrug, with palms outstretched signifying disregard, helplessness, comfort...the 'just' with soft stress on the 'j' or the 's', 'words' amplified as much as possible. When I ignored it, I had the pleasure of mass-understanding, once I singled it out, I didn't know what to do with it.
My 16-out-of-20 and 21-out-of-25 marked essays, my mawkish, over-sentimental journals, the fragmented scribbles I consider my forte....words.
Expression, medium, language.....words.
Arithmetic didn't bring me to addition and mental multplication. They brought me to 'arithmetic.'
When I touched the keys of a piano, I thought of the word 'touch.' I couldn't listen to classical music because there were no lyrics. Then I started making up music-word associations and writing them down.
I had 'lyrics' for every composition I heard. When I played, I thought of 'precision' and 'wrinkles.' I loved my 'metronome.'
I don't love words because they give me images. I love images when they give me words.

Now, every situation, no matter how personal is story-material. Not for marking. For arranging and playing with words. I love word-ambigrams. I adore the tight, toxic distance I have with a guy I love because I can juggle adjectives about it.

:)
'smile'

Masquerade

Are we really happy with this lonely game we play,
Looking for the right words to say?
Searching but not finding -- understanding anyway,
We're lost in this masquerade.
Both afraid to say we're just too far away
From being close together from the start.
We try to talk it over, but the words got in the way
We're lost inside this lonely game we play.
Thoughts of leaving disappear each time I see your eyes,
And no matter how hard I try
To understand the reason why we carry on this way
We're lost in this masquerade.
We try to talk it over, but the words got in the way
We're lost inside this lonely game we play.
We're lost in a masquerade.
And we're lost in a masquerade.

- George Benson

If Albee had been a romantic....'Virgina Woolf'...might have been thus shaped.

I bought 'Unless' by Carol Shields today. Paid a ghastly amount for it but since I was locked out of the house...and consequently out of my half-read material...
I'm half-way through it and it typifies my reading preferences. Plentiful use of metaphors, some form of intense, psychological 'wrongness' and for all its rich verbosity...strangely matter-of-fact. Seriously, in most of the books I read either someone ages backwards, or sits on a street corner wearing nothing but a sign reading 'goodness' or whatever.
I also have this thing for extra-marital stories, instances being 'The Bridges of Madison County', 'Lolita', 'The Maid's Request'. The first is a bitter-slightly-sweet romance, the second a gorgeous narrative on obsessive romantic and sexual ideals and the third is a silent, attentive awareness between an ageing artist and his maid...apparently having tangential reference to Da Vinci.
The anonymity of these relationships attracts me. They are extra-marital sometimes in the sense that neither party is married, sometimes where one is or one marries merely to be close to the real object of desire. I abhor unfaithfulness and not even in 'Bridges' is that word mentioned. It isn't glossed over either and it pleases me that neither character refers to marriage while discussing the outcome of their own relationship.

Another day in Nerja with lots of meat and cheese and alcohol. The local cigarettes really suck. I am as yet receiving e-mails which promise to increase the size of my penis by 3". Perhaps the senders are eminent psychologists who are convinced that I am suffering from an extended Electra complex.

I just checked out some artwork by Dave Mckean. Let me confess that I am no art connoisseur. I find images in words and am rarely able to do the reverse which is probably why symbolic art attacts me. I love swirls and shapes and wonky stuff. Mckean is wonky. Scary-wonky. I was looking at some images he created for the Skybox Master series. I'm putting up the link so have a look. My personal favourites are The Bee-Giver and The Scary Man.
Adios.

The room was tiny,dimly lit by red-shaded lamps, inhabited by several Vague Human Characters. I was seated on a chair attached to the top of a steel pole about 8 feet high. My head touched the ceiling and when I looked up, it too was steel and my reflected face was huge and puffy, daubed with soot. All I could distinguish was a little, white scar cutting into my right eyebrow.
The VHC's asked me why I was there. I told them it was to make up for being with other people the rest of the time. They never looked at me or at each other...instead they looked at the reflections in the ceiling.
I had no shoes on...my feet were wrapped in dirty, mummy-like bandages and then re-wrapped in sheets of steel. The chair was a swivel, but it only worked when I looked upward at my reflection. The faster I spun, the more the VHC's disintegrated. Or at least their reflections did. My own face blurred. All except for the scar.
Sometimes it looked like a fingernail.
I decided it was a foetus.
My fingers were smooth, polished steel as I raised my hand to stroke it. The eyebrow curled and grew moist around them.

Hola de Espagna

Apart from nearly being arrested in Paris, I managed to reach Malaga without too many hitches. Had my first meal at Oh Calcutta! last night. Lovely mussels and some version of an Italian stew and chocolate mousse. As of now I am wrapped in a woolly pink robe having my hair vigorously towel-dried by Mum.

Nerja seems an idyllic paradise. The only businesses here are shops, restaurants and bars with the odd bank thrown in. No hotels...instead people rent apartments or cottages for vacations. This is actually my second trip here, but the first doesn't really count. I left 98% of me in Calcutta that time. This time I'm here completely. The strange thing is that there's no consciousness of being 'away.' Last time I gazed at the sea, upon sunsets. I gloried in soaking in the bathtub (which I still consider the ultimate luxury). I was the ultimate tourist. Ok, I didn't have any paella and this time I've deigned to 'be introduced to the fine art of wine-drinking' which I vetoed last time....but it's completely casual. No thrill at flying 11 hours or being on the Continent. I might as well be the bored businessman next to me on the flight who spent his entire time reading the Wall Street Journal and making copious notes on his air-sickness bag.
This time my thrills come from the electric mattress-heater in my bed, being put to sleep by Mum...oh and Mum's new pink-framed glasses.