peevish narcissus
��������� �����wavering - this reinvention, this odd redemption cannot be handled soberly ...the past three nights have been fraught with illicit activity! most of which was alcohol and loose tongues. the slow shift of group and mind, fuzzy and blankhearted all at once, twisting and tearing against the bonds of commonsense before staring at a mirror in twisted loathing.
i resent the way you make me like myself, mike doughty says in a song. the
- -sorry, lost my train of thought. soundtrack is counting crows. the slow, thoughtful drum beats and the lanky voice of the lead singer, all creeping vines of the sunday indolence ...
i have a play to write by thursday. a scene to pick out for directing. and suddenly all i can write is poetry and all i can do is stare glassy-eyed at my reflection, as if i will get caught between the two, and wander through that dim eternity .. (have you noticed when two mirrors align, at the far ends of their reflections it gets very dark? as though in eternity is is always murky?) some sort of peevish narcissus. allergies tickle through the changing air. my stomach revolts as it tries to synthesise the alcohol i imbibed last night - drank. ending up on the lawn outside by the lampposts with three girls i didn't know. one gave me a raspberry cigarette that tasted nothing of raspberry. the other one, a redhead, laid in my lap and the other one, a blond, was massaging my back.
"ugly casanova!" i would proclaim intermittently. running my finger over their lips, the soft lip of a girl, and then over the jagged horizon of their teeth. the broken cityline of teeth, their earnest, trusting eyes. so drunk, and they so sober ... the air of the tobacco crept over everything, like a more sentient smog, soundproofing lungs and killing alveoli like wilting flowers. rachel, the black haired one, leaned back and blew smoke in my face. i inhaled and said "secondhand suicide," and for some reason it was beautiful. but only for that moment -
the slow pollination in another group - poetry is resounding inside my crazy head. in every language. as though i am becoming a conduit for the voices of some other plane? HELLO HUBRIS.
at seven am i woke up and padded down to the soda machine. i paid $1.25 for a bottle of diet coke because there was nothing else. the acrid taste of aspartame sucked all the moisture out of my mouth. the half-drunk bottle of it still sits on my desk: it's for sale, if you want it.
a book of aristotle's poetics, a slim volume. some other plays piled up to one side - the downwards-dripping of sunlight & pollen, wanderlust and indolence ... insatiability. the colour of my new air-force shirt looks great on redheads.
unwind.