Miss Haversham aesthetic

For/with ROSE:

A thoroughly Miss Haversham aesthetic.
we were in tattered white gowns very late 18th century. we were 16 years old with powdered messy blonde dreadlocks, half twisted around wired ribbon.
our hairs were very loooooooooong.

we were in the charge of a Roulhac-like figure who was dressed and coiffed to match us, but she was a littl emore put together. she wanted to take us to the country.
she tried to fix my hair, but it kept un rolling itself in spittle lace tangles.

we escaped.
climbing down river banks full of snow, a very un-virginian kind of Brown Dirt mixing in some color. we were lost in the woods and far away from Miss Roulhac Haversham..... we were throwing snow all over our fur hats and shawls and crazed petticoats.

Then we came upon a leanto that just barely housed yet another woman in tattered white.
She was like a shaman, she was a frozen princess meditating on the disintegration of grograin and chiffon.

Seed pearls freckled the mountain of her, crystal diadems crowned each silver eyelash. Were it not for the shadow of the lean-to, she would have blended into the wintry white, a mere sparkle in the atmosphere.

We sat in front of her as worshippers do those giant golden Buddhas in thailand.
she spoke about something - Femininity, the winter, the crystal moment of contentment buried in months of solitude. virginal, white hot, well lived.

a snake climbs fully into the womb

the king of cobras seduces a woman

she looks medea
that is, an old soul of mine, with callas’ eyes and that ridiculous application of eyeliner

the cobra winds its way into the womb and spreads its hood over the micoscopic zygote she is carrying. protection.
he coils his length around the baby as it forms, holding the head in place so that it doesn't get shaken.
no poison in the watery union - the snake drinks poison like shiva drinking the poisonous ocean

the boy is born fully man now and the snake has fused onto him, hood spread eternally, fangs drawn out over his face.
i coax his face out from the venomous cage, maybe to kiss

Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does, and the Great Failure of Cognitive Therapy

. I went to a therapists’ house for an informal session. she was going to hook me up; we were acquaintances. She had this deep soft couch i kept flinging myself all over
i was wearing this short chinese silk dress and no panties. i kept getting embarassed, not able to control my body as i was positioning myself on this couch in crazy ways. she seemed to understand and as she was talking to me kept covering me up in a motherly fashion

i don’t really know what i was going into therapy for.. of course, i was never sure of what i was there for when i was enrolled in therapy. it was like brushing your hair?

the therapist turned from understanding earthy female to attractive business-oriented black male, kind of in the vein of my old landlord. he analyzed a dream dave had had last night. i don’t remember which one this was. He had a lot of dreams last night.. we’ve both been storming brains in our sleep lately – lots of sleep, thankfully.

“How did this dream make you feel?” he asked. Instantly my heart began pounding and i started talking even though i had no idea what was coming out of my mouth, a throwback to my old therapy sessions, where i would often dissociate or become bored, instantly blacking out sound when we arrived at a real changing point, or when we got around to the pith of a problem I truly wanted to solve.

The dream in discussion i didn’t seem to mind that much. “At least I wasn’t a giant spider, sucking the life out of him,” I joked. (That’s the one dream I do remember from the previous night. Tried not to read too much into that one!) My heart was still pounding and I was reeling, perhaps it happens when i tell the truth – euphoria of naked speaking.

“See now that’s -------“ I heard ‘cute’ but knew that wasn’t the word he was saying, “When you do that right there, that’s it.” I giggled because i knew he could tell i was bullshitting, or dissociating, or just not able to integrate the sides of my brain when speaking truthfully. Was he flirting with me? A new kind of therapy? This could actually work! But I knew he wasn’t and that perhaps he thought I thought he was. Agh! Fucking cognitive therapy – so boring.

“Repeat after me; ‘F and U’.” Um, ok, like a meditation?

I kept mentally repeating it, but felt too silly to do it outloud. It was surprisingly easy to meditate on this nonsense. His phone rang. “Mind if I take it?” as he answered, “You can sit in the Metaphysical Waiting Room.” He tapes together three Scrabble tiles to give to me; F, U and another I can’t seem to figure out and sends me on my way.

The Metaphysical Waiting Room was through the front door, where “outside” should have been. It looked like a Presbyterian church, lots of white, a balcony. I was in the South! There was a speaker at the podium (not a pulpit):
“F and U. Simple sounds; meaningless and easy. Repeat it everywhere. i do it while i’m waiting for the train. F and U. F and U. Don’t think about the sounds of them together; don’t think at all. Just repeat, over and over.” I look around and there are hundreds of people, some paying attention, others chatting, a few stragglers walking and reciting the letters.

Under the balcony in the center was a VIP section full of high ranking church officials and a lot of apparently very important African Americans, dressed to the nines – church gear was everywhere from robes and stoles to diamond hats and gloves. A man, apparently a proponent of interfaith ministry, walked up with a large sign advertising his new version of the Kaddish in Ebonics. “Why don’t I recite it for everyone here?” he offered.
My father piped up through black teeth, “Yeah, and I’ll get the Hammond out and throw a few chords in from some” -- pause for extra menace—“plantation tunes.”
The African American VIPs silently shuddered.

I walked up to the crowd and called on my dad, half to distract his offended party from his faux pas, half to shock him. I did appear a bit strange, flashing the tattoo and wearing a Chinese minidress. “hey dad, making new friends?” Our public relationship sometimes mimics this exact dynamic: him fucking with people and me having to fuck with him to make it appear that we are all a bunch of assholes and can’t help ourselves; in other words, “Please Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does.”

The Last Drop

As younger children (myself about age 12, justin 10), we are gathered together with my family - pops, grams, grace, mom, talking about the most legendary family stories.
There's the story of pops and his twin painting their neighbor's car, of mom's dog peanut getting stolen by the crazy lady, and others.
'I've got one!,' Justin pipes up, 'the 'Last Drop''.

Transported now with no narration, we are by the sea, my mother, brother and me.
We are on a castle, an old black fortress standing high above the water. We peer over the side, about a 150 foot drop to the water, the stones stones flaring out like a long skirt.

As is his nature, baby Justin (now appearing as the rambunctious 3 year old) flings himself over the edge of the castle with the death-thirsty glee of a toddler-sized evil knievel. 10 exact seconds of panic as we watch him fall into the water.

My mother, quite uncharacteristically, does not cringe. With a ferocious strength and no words, she crawls over the side of the castle and jumps off into the water in a swan dive that looks like a dagger sticking the sea.

Landing safely near the foot of the castle, Justin's striped shirt is visible under water. He's holding on the the fortress, but not with much. She swims under to grab him and resurfaces in time to be seen by a man on a ski-jet. The man is weathered, with red skin and a lion's mane of sun curled blonde hair. a Poseidon. The steers his jet around for a while before picking them up.

Back to our family room, I rush over to Justin and hug him, glad he's alive. 'It's called 'the Last Drop' because I was on my last drop of breath' he says and we all swell with love.

I. Earthquake II. Garnet Molar III. Music

I. Earthquake
In my father's house, the telephone rings. A pre-recorded message a la telemarketing, "This is Linda from Brilliant Systems. I'm calling to inform you.... EARTHQUAKE." I am so scared but just barely manage to mouth the word. A dull roar "Earthquake!" All present crouch, the rumble takes my insides and pulverizes every soft part. Brain jellies in its shell.
I hold my skull with both hands tightly.
The quake continues for another 70 second eternity.
No one is left.
I inspect the damage to the house. Walls split in half, floorboards cracked apart. The house is about to fall in two equal parts. I think, the earth breaking, and the epicenter is my father's house? Of all places...
I find my father on the ground floor, tearing away at the point of breakage. He's throwing floorboards aside to uncover the fissure in the earth. I warn him not to disturb the earth further.. we could fall in and die.
He tells me not to worry.
We uncover the great crevice, ore gleaming like newly cut fool's gold from the fists of the planet.

II. Garnet Molar

Traffic is stopped on the highway. There's been a great discovery in the ditches lining the road: a mile stretch of cardboard boxes. I inspect the line, accompanied by another who is at times a small girl friend from my childhood and at other times Jor. The boxes hold skulls, bones and some clothes.
Some skulls so old they looked rusted. Some flattened, some crushed. Bones are mingled in no order. I wonder if this is one killer, or a collector? The girl and I curl feet over cardboard ledges, catlike. My body has become small and light, like a child.
I want to take a bone back to my lover as a souvenir of this adventure, but they all seem too large to steal. Jor pulls oversize hideous Christmas sweaters out of occasional boxes and grinning heinously, sneers, 'We'll be needing this one.'
I reach the end of the cardboard mile. Identical bones have bored me. The very last box, however, holds only jawbones. Fillings, gold teeth, bridges, then deeper into a smal box are special single teeth, some made of precious or semi-precious stone.
The turquoise, garnet and rough emerald are perfect sized treasure. I select a large gleaming garnet, in the shape of a wisdom tooth. This will be his present.

III. Music
I'm briefly onstage with my violin, wrapping up a set with a large band and some variety of boyfriend. Jim Waive is to follow us, solo, with his guitar. He walks off stage and sits in a corner. Electric artful tones escape his instrument for a moment, and he turns off the electricity. Beautiful acoustic sounds follow, a dark and stormy experiment with cowboy motives, Jim's characteristic thumb pounding technique, and impulsive improvisation. I am spellbound by the new music, ever knowing Jim could make strange art if he ever wanted to. I reel with delight afterwards, thanking him.

Broomstick Ride

The Walt Disney Corporation has hired me to assemble a montage of witch imagery from cartoon material.
I work from a central seat in an IMax theatre, alone, arranging the witches with my mind. They fly about on broomsticks, superimposed on a cloudy pink sky - city pink, persistent. I make them divebomb near one another. The screen is a flurry of bristle and hag. It fills me with glee to have such a silly job.
My boyfriend surprises me in the midst of my work and I suddenly feel embarassed about it. Cartoons are so childish! But his delight over the witches sweeps my fear away - 'i knew you were a witch', says he.
We look down at my shoes, now pointy and black. I grin at him and hop on a broom, inviting him to ride on the back (like geezer Harley riders). We fly.

Mummy Money

Newspaper headline: "Tut's mummy crumbles to dust!" and a picture of the barren coffin.

I ran to the Egyptology Dept. straight away to investigate the veracity of this unsettling news. I clearly have some sort of student/scientist security clearance, plunging directly into the room with Tut's sarcophagi.
There are five coffins nested in one another: I fish them out one by one.
The outermost is a huge rough marble with faded rusty streaks, then a detailed golden coffin more akin to what one expects of King Tut. Inside that, a rough red Roman clay that is more of a top shield with the young king's portrait painted atop. The innermost layer was a woven husk containing the body. Contradictory to the news article, the corpse was still there, barely dust under the wrappings, which still held his shape perfectly.

I was relieved and delighted that he'd stayed put. I knew that if he had disappeared it would have been of his own volition, probably an attempt to escape the drudge and rigor of the Egyptologists.
Just then, the spirit of Tut took on a smoke form that rose out of the linen and hovered above its coffins. His presence communicated to me wordlessly: He wanted to go out... would I take care of business? Would I tell no one that he'd left his earthly rind?
Of course.
Tut's vapor slithered around the door frame and out.
I looked down to the ancient bandages and saw that he'd left me bribe money...
monies, I should say..
crumpled up dollar bills, old french francs, and ancient gold coins....

Gods in Stones in Mountains in Love

Trekking through forest on a lazy sunday afternoon with my best friend and my lover. A rare intrepid spirit shared among us. The mountains surround.
At a clearing in the woods, the toes of a colossal statue peek out at us.
I run out to find that the toe belongs to the foot of a god. The god is carved into the mountain. He stretches as high up as we can see. Standing upright, he is steep.
Ancient indian god, Brahma.
We set out to climb him, up his skirt and smooth chest, the beads of his marble necklaces, over the sharp features of his face.
Above him is another statue, and then another.
We climb over the yellow knee of Vishnu, the purple breasts of Pavarti. We climb up and up without much resistance, the marble surprisingly easy to grip.
Feeling the shapes of their bodies and our small flesh scrambling over them like mice.

At shiva's leg, trickling water starts to form the mouth of a stream.
I follow the brook up his side. The water picks up a current at his trident, enough to swim in fully submerged.
There are some jagged rocks in the stream, but they are avoided by leading with the arms.
The current carries us silently, swiftly, without any effort on our part. The water breaks from the mountain and takes the form of a bridge or acqueduct. We are suspended for a mile over the a valley connecting the godly mountains.
Divine, divine, the trees and mist that breathes to them!
Divine the mountains that hold these mountains!
Wondrous to be here, right to be floating, giving this journey all our hearts!
The water is warm; we toss our clothing into the abyss.

At the foot of the river, there is a miracle: opposing currents meet.
Water falls down from the hair of Kali, crashing into our upstream current.
The result is a watery equivalent of fireworks.

A second mountain of gods and goddesses offers itself to us.
Trees are visible on either side now; more protection, proximity.
Wet hand and footprints on the chest of Hanuman; we dry ourselves in the air.
These carvings are smaller than the others, and easier to climb.
Over halos and triple headed demons, narrow bellies and almond eyes.

I run my hands over the eyes and noses of each statue, like a blind person learning the face.
At the top, two figures which are far older than the rest and have some paint on them. Their style is less monumental, more suited to the size of a temple.
'These are the originals', I guess out loud. 'The inspiration for the whole series.'

Ganesha, his black trunk laying down the length of his body to his dancing feet.
I crawl down it, feeling the ridges, admiring the painted green brocade of his dress, the gold on his bracelets. My lover is laying atop the statue of Ganesha's consort*, head on her belly. I meet him there, after feeling the curves of her red waist and breasts, touching her cheek.
Finally my hands grow tired and I head for him, curl up on top of him, wrapping him in my small frame. My own mountain.
We make love atop the goddess. Neither the gods, the goddesses, the mountains seem to mind.

*The consort of Ganesha is an dubious term to use here since Ganesha is depicted with various companions. Often, he is pictured with a kind of generic human female or shakti. In other depictions, he is accompanied by Saraswati (goddess of culture, beauty, music) and/or Lakshmi (of wealth, abundance). I can't profess to know which of these was really in the dream, but i'd like to think my dreambrain was kind enough to perch us on top of Saraswati...

Red Opera Lady

I've landed a job at an opera house where Jor is, of course, the prima donna. Unfortunately, I was too busy scurrying around the orchestra pit and the dressing rooms to take much note of the performance itself.
At times it seemed that my job was to be the opera house mouse: the pace at which I whizzed through each room was astounding. The rehearsal rooms with open violin cases and lanky trombonists opened into the smokey office of the opera house manager. Women in velvet robes with ruddy arms, rubbing powdered elbows in the w.c. Waxed moustaches grazing highball glasses at a brass bar, suspiciously intimate with their smuggled cigars. The silence of polished black dress shoes as they crush a relentless red carpet.
Rolling red carpets! From the ticket booth to the foot of the orchestra pit! Red silk walls! Every lip of every banister, every lobe of every ear, every cuff over every shirt tipped with Gold!
Red and gold....
It should be mentioned that the audience is dwelling in the year 1883, while the next person that i encounter is clearly contemporary, as i also seem to be.
In one of the private rooms reserved for parties, a couple in their 50's is arguing. They are both apparently employed by the theatre (writers or directors of some sort?) and are oblivious to the performance happening. Indeed, they are wrapped up in a marital battle.
"You're disgusting! What ever possessed you to say something like that!" The man seems to be a perfect asshole, keeps berating his wife in this way. She falls apart during his tirade, and when he leaves, practically collapses on a floor cushion, next to a low table with a glass top.
I immediately sit on the floor next to her. I feel the floor, as if inhabiting my body for the first time in this dream. Admiring the jewel tones of her skirts and shoes through the glass table, I form the opinion that she seems too adorable and intelligent to be treated this way by her husband. I tell her so, I let her cry over it. She comes to after a while and a bond is recognized when she stops crying. We both look up, into the height of the room that surrounds us, into the baroque painted ceiling, and laugh at the fake clouds.

He Is The Earth and I the Spark

In a spiritual realm, a cosmic University, run by the gods, old old beings who instruct a class on our solar system.
There is a model of the planets similar to the models we're familiar with from grade school.
Each planet is a rubber ball, suspended in space and moving in orbit.
The peculiar thing about this model is that it is weightless. I lead the class in flying from one planet to the next, a difficult task since the model is roughly a kilometer wide.

We begin with the first planet: oddly, there's no sun. Little mercury flies in its hard red rubber almost too fast to see. I put my hands near its path and feel its heat.
I find venus but tell the others not to touch her; she's mostly made of gas... but isn't it lovely?
We skip earth because i want to take a closer look later, to try and find all of the continents.
The earth model is too large to be of scale, but it's very realistic; blues and greens and moving clouds.
Mars is dusty and sterile jupiter, in his majestic transparency made me want to fall through him. someone holds me back. I lose the others at saturn, turning about and swimming through the planets to see what i can see.
'This Universe school is fantastic... they even make models of the moons of each planet! there are moons of our moon!'
I look for earth and it's not there anymore.. outside the gravity-free rink i go, past pluto. Here lies the earth; resting, out of motion and orbit. A closer look reveals that the earth and all its colors are made of man sleeping, curled up tight into a ball. A cat sleeps beside him. The man is wearing clouds and mountains.
I crouch down to discover that his face is my lover's face.
I kiss his arm to wake him and he unfolds before me, waking up as in a normal morning, smiling and surprised to find me there.

We break out of the planetarium to go play with the cat, who morphs into a dog of some sort.
The field we've found is narrow and surrounded by ancient buildings. There are old old men repairing the ruins, some in long white biblical tunics, others in modern construction gear. There are plenty of others playful dogs and people out, throwing frisbees and whatnot.
'i'll be right back' i tell the dog and my lover ' i have to get him a toy'. I return with a rubber gun in a holster.
'Wow, you made that?' says he.
'Yeah, i don't think it really fires, though.'
I take the gun from the holster and find that although it is rather rubbery, it has moving mechanical parts. I cock the gun and shoot it safely into the air.. hope i don't hit any planets.
A golden spark from the barrel looks like toy gun sparks, but larger.
At first it seems that nothing was really shot: then, in a flash, a giant white dove comes zooming towards us from the direction the gun was fired.
The dove's wings are engulfed in flame, but they are still flapping.
Oh no, i think, i've killed something... this is so spiritually incorrect, what's more, the dove is the sign of peace! Certainly they'll kick me out of Universe school and worse.

I run around wildly trying to follow its path. It continues flying till it's completely burned black. Then the dove drops somewhere i can't get to.
One of the ancient stone workers turns to me and speaks in a language that i've never heard. His tone is ministerial, spell-binding and calm.
I understand intuitively that what i've done has set off a chain of events that is not bad at all. Something had to die; it was inevitable.
At the other end of the park, people have gathered in celebration. Out of the ash and bones and feathers, a girl was found.
The girl is the Messiah.
The ancient comes to me again and leads me to her, thanking me for giving birth to the little girl Jesus.

Pantheon of Porcelain

Thematic relevance: Digging through treasures in my dad's basement....

The basement is crammed wall to wall with stuffed bookshelves. Of course my father's library is completely boring and outdated. Christian theory books from the 70's, gardening manuals, etc. I need shelves in my apartment, and am thrilled to gut the inferior literature from these perfectly fine pieces of furniture.
Some shelves have little collectibles on them. I find a cute figurine of a reclining woman on a triangular shelf...interesting. My mother is trailing behind me at times in the flesh and other times as a ghostly voice: either way, she is bemoaning all of the injustices my father inflicted on her during their marriage, that he deserves none of these things, why do i even want any of these things?, but it's good, she supposes, that I'm here and in the process of healing my relationship with him. Still, something in her tone implies that my very interest in being here is a monumental deception...the only thing she could never forgive me for.
I try to tune her out but, as usual, the pull of mothering mother is too strong to just ignore.
She prattles on.
I find a shelf with a number of porcelain figurines. Their features are soft and painted on with delicate strokes, slightly faded.
There's a green-gowned lady wearing a halfmoon on her head. I turn it over to see what stamping it has: Europa.
Then a Wonder Woman figure, in full leotard/cuff/whip attire. Her stamp says "Artemis". Ha ha, I think, someone took pop iconography to the temple! That's perfect! Archetypal figurines! And who left these to my dad in their will? He does tend to take strange neglected things from the houses of parishioners who've passed.
Another figurine is wearing pink exercise garb a la Jane Fonda: she's supposed to be Hera, of course. There are others I can't connect or can't remember. A leopard-skin swathed jungle lady, one in front of a microphone, a saint, etc.

This dream fades into another. It's Halloween and I'm 14 years old. My mother has wrapped strands of my hair with silver paper. At the end of each tendril is a little silver skull (damien hirst eat your heart out, for the love of...). She has invited two musicians, both male and older than myself, to stay at the house. (Much like the days we'd have travelling poets come through to enlighten our small town bohemian outpost and fall in love with my mother in a matter of hours regardless of their age.)
I'm fascinated by them, naturally, but being a teenage girl I hole up in my room. I change the music a million times, trying to come up with something cool enough to entice them. I tear down the wall decorations and paint and glue and cover the walls with new art that would show how very mature, astute and artsy I was for my age. I cultivate the atmosphere of a toothsome lolita and drench the air with premature gasps, mouthing the words to songs. I start to remove the wrappings from my hair to find that they've bleached it almost white...
Knock at the door.
Oh, it's just my brother. Beacon of purity. I instantly feel a little guilty and turn the music down. He's offering me some fresh ginger-pear concoction, graceful and oblivious to my sinful climate. I sit with him and start to calm down. Guitars down the hall plunk on.

Bats, Foxes, Soiled Dove.

~Beside the bed is a giant wicker basket. It is bigger than the bed and full of baby foxes.
They shuffle themselves in a riot of fluff and tumble. Cuteness is barely tolerable.
The tireless motion looks like a fur version of a game-show booth with flying hundred dollar bills, or a flock of mink drenched opera ticket holders happily throwing themselves into a giant drying machine.
The purpose of this furry menagerie is dark, but not upsetting to me at the time. We've been instructed to make a blanket out of the fur big enough to cover the giant bed; a natural task for me and my conspirator in evil extravagance.

~I'm lost in a city, taking bus after bus to an unknown location. Some ladies exit a hat shop near my bus stop and start chatting me up about my pregnancy (news to me... but one gander at my belly below, and behold! seven months in utero). I should be wrapping my neck more carefully in this weather, they say, and what am I doing drinking coffee? It's tea, I reassure them, and open my cup to show an oily bird. Feathers wet and iridescent call out a softness in me, and I get on the bus with a warm feeling and ambivalence to being lost.

~My love and i have finally moved in together, and since we've had to give all of our previous pets away, we decide on our next friend from the animal kingdom: a bat.
I've ordered some sample pet bats in the mail. They come in oversized square plastic bags, color-sprayed and slightly dehydrated (think mexican chiles, or craft store feathers). Sorting through the bats, I seem to lean toward the green and black spotted one, half-fearing that it's too wild for him, half-knowing that the very premise of colored bats is too wild.