Having nothing better to do, I began to concern myself with the kind of girls that my friend Karly is friends with. They and her sister were the kind of girls that no one, except expert marketers, cared too much about. Real artists could not concern themselves with this kind of girl. Great literature has always been written about the kinds of girls who are fascinating. An interest in painting here. A white ruffle there. The sexuality of the fantastic has no place for the normal in literature. We who are artists often pride ourselves in liking the unusual. There is no unusual in this world, I’m afraid. The normal is a manifestation of the rational, not the imagination. But really, my friend, this is a good thing.
Well, lately I have begun to think that maybe the normal could have a place somewhere in literature. Although most people think I am the kind of girl that literature is written about, I am actually the kind of girl that Karly is friends with. I am neurotic. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Even though I am fat now, I actually have the heart of an anorexic. I am suicidally depressed. I have a strong belief in science. People do not take kindly to the real me. I share with these girls all these things.
Rachelle
Rachelle is a Cancer. She has an average face, an average body, and an average mind. Well, make that below par actually. She is the average specimen of femininity. She buys black shirts with sequins and has emotional outbursts about things like cats, cheating men, and ice cream. We did not see the Debra Messing movie The Wedding Date together because she had seen it already, but we might as well have. The whole time I was watching the movie I thought of Rachelle reading wedding magazines and in a white veil. Karly once told me that Rachelle had several subscriptions to wedding magazines, even though she had no direct plans to get married any time soon.
That’s not so wrong to dream of weddings.
My friend Mona got married very young and then got a divorce and now she hates the idea of marriage and whenever I talk of my fantasies of commitment she scoffs and tells me that is not what I really want. She is neither right nor wrong.
Rachelle has black hair and light eyes. She is below average weight and goes to the gym every morning at 5:30 a.m. Since she is anorexic, she says things like "pizza with no cheese, yum!" She has a boyfriend that goes to the gym with her sometimes and sometimes I have the overwhelming urge to cuddle with this man in a long and narrow bed. He is very sweet and she never seems to notice. I have always wanted a boyfriend who was sweet.
Rachelle is getting a Masters in Nutrition from the University of Maryland. She is TA-ing a class and she lives with several roommates. She often buys Karly pictures of herself with Karly in a cheesy pose from the photo store and puts them in plastic cheesy frames and calls Karly "my Karly." I don’t get jealous when I see things like that. I just smile at her obvious stupidity.
Erin
Erin is a Virgo. She has black hair. She is bulimic and likes to clean. She went to my poetry reading on Valentine’s Day and sat there looking upset, but Karly insisted that she was having fun and that she was just "tired." I can understand. I get tired and often the look on my face is not representative of my inner emotions. I once had a boyfriend who got tired a lot and when I was with him on Saturday mornings he would sleep for an ungodly amount of time and would wander around when he woke up for hours in a disgusting daze. Being tired makes you strange, and especially when you are at a poetry reading and the poetry reading is long.
Erin does not like Chinese people, which makes me feel odd when it is obvious. She is from Long Island and yet, she does not have an obvious Long Island accent. She likes pickles and is very style conscious. She reads Lucky magazine and shops at DSW and Payless Shoe Source.
One time I was cleaning out my closet of old thrift store sweaters and Erin insisted on helping me and then bossed me around the whole time. When I pulled out a beautiful magenta sweater to throw away, I had tears in my eyes as I placed it in the large grocery bag. With a smirk, Erin made me try it on in front of her before closing the bag. As I pulled it on over my head, Erin laughed so much her face turned red and she fell on the floor, rolling. "How does it look?" I asked her seriously, but she was laughing so hard she couldn’t answer.
Karly’s sister Amanda
Amanda has black hair. She is half-Jewish. I am all Jewish, although no one ever knows that for some reason. I have known Amanda the longest of all three girls. She is the most wondrous, since she shares genetic material with my best friend and being an only child, I find that endlessly fascinating. She is short-tempered, flighty, and likes my dog. She is a Pisces. She reads fantasy novels and reminds me of Brian, a long lost love of mine. She is smarter than you might think upon first meeting her, although she is not as smart as she thinks she is. Karly’s dad likes Amanda better than he likes Karly.
Once she saved 1500 dollars to buy an ugly, brand new, grey sofa and matching chair for her new apartment which is owned by Karly’s father. She owns very little clothing and the clothing she does own, does nothing for her.
Once I had the flu and she, Karly and I went to a movie about Indian children growing up in brothels. It was called Born in Brothels and it was very good, except the narrator was annoying. We were supposed to go to the 7:30 show, but when we got there at 7:32 she insisted that we leave and come back because she cannot stand being late for movies.
I don’t care about being late for movies, but I know what it is like to be upset because you are late for something.
So, having decided to go to a later movie, we three wandered around for two hours. During that time, Karly and Amanda went to get ice cream and being very tired and sick I waited in the car, lying down. Amanda insisted that I sit in the front seat while I was waiting because she thought it was safer. This sort of gesture reminded me of my grandfather and of something of myself, and it was in this moment that I realized I truly loved her.
Story
Karly, Amanda and Erin all went wandering through the woods. Rachelle was going to go but she was too busy—something with her boyfriend. The three girls walked along the path. I was there too, except I was sitting in a large tree overlooking the wooded path so that I could see everything. Along the way the three girls met a man named Tom. But not a man he was a bird and as his eyes looked longingly while they all talked so that Tom got into them. Tom got into me too I could see it immediately except that it was a low stare. I once knew a man like Tom except that man was married. Erin noticed a rock she liked so she put it in her pocket. Karly was jealous of the rock so she sat and cried. Amanda didn’t like all the crying so she ran along the path away from the others and got lost. A fine mist fell over the trees and suddenly materialized into a strange otherworldly figure. "My name is Fred." the figure said to Amanda and Amanda said, "Amanda." "Amanda" she said "that’s my name." The dark fell into an overturn. The sky was purple, orange, and then grey. I suddenly got sick from watching the girls and vomited all over myself. My grandmother parted the skies and handed me a towel to wipe myself, but then my grandfather came out of the sky hurriedly and did it for me. As he wiped the vomit off of me I told him I loved him the best and he said – as plain as day –"I know."
Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet. She was not only a descendent of Modernism and the Romantics, she was a poet that cared about her own feelings so much that she cared about yours. She had some fucked-up shit happen in her life, but who cares about that? We all suffer and that has everything to do with poetics. Have you ever heard of Modernism? The Nazis called Modernism primitive and the work of the brutes. The only brutes on this earth are the dogs and those are the things that I love. Do you wonder what I am? You are reading the work of a great poet, possibly one of the greatest ones of your time. If I am standing in front of you right now, you are listening to the voice of one of the greatest poets of your time. Do you take time to analyze greatness? I don’t think you should bother—you will never get it right. I am both a Modernist and a Romantic. All poetry that is good today is some combination of modernism, romanticism, ethics, and faith. Take note. All poetry that matters today has feelings in it. You can refute or deny this with your lack of them. You can wrestle against feelings and make funny words for it. Take a look in the mirror. You were born a child and you will die one, too. When you are in your grave all that you will be able to say is mommy. You are going to die you know and so am I. That’s it. You were born to die. Take the things you say because you can’t write poems and figure out how to write some. Go to the grocery store and buy some food. Sit alone by yourself and think of how it is, the way it really is. There are a million cells of fluid rushing in your veins. On earth a thousand rivers rush through. The only thing that keeps you contained is the faith God has in your every breath. When you are mean, you let him down, so don’t be. Read Plath. Hell, read Stein. She was a woman and she would have approved of you—you man, you woman, you dog. Bark your last breath while we all swim along a river. There are children playing around you. They know more than you will ever know.
You were once a little girl with starry eyes. Now you’re a sad young man and no one knows why. –The Magnetic Fields
I.
Let me set the scene. There are birds everywhere and not just birds. But black birds as big as mountains and small grey birds the size of your thumb. The sun is not even around. And the sky is flat, watercolor. The colors of the water are purple and blue. Chris, I am waiting for you in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. I am sitting on the blond wood chairs reading a book about violets. In Roman times, Tyrian purple was a way you called something royal. I had forgotten, now I remember. And what a thing it is to remember – to lay the sunset out in your mind. Or sitting in the grass all alone in the sunset. The lights are yellow, blue, and purple. There are birds everywhere They are many sizes. What is the size of your memory of the sunset? Violet is the name of my child. What is the name of yours?
II.
Dear Chris, I have not eaten dinner tonight. But will I ever eat dinner? When will I ever eat anything worth anything that is worth eating. I never will. Those two boys are talking now in little whispers. I hear the sound of their whispers in my ears, it sounds like grey smoke. It is a little micey in my ear. The mice of conversation is black and grey. I hold a sun of dark violets up to my heart and my heart glows in comparison. Do you see my heart? It sucks water from the earth. It is the water of the earth. My poor heart. The two boys they hold the heart. They say, “O how lovely! A little heart!” “But I am not little!” my heart says. And no, no it’s not. The tired man is daydreaming of an island. There is a fair maiden who drinks water from a seashell. And with the wind, she is so lovely. Her skirt is pink and orange. I am their child. The dead tired man. The fair maiden. I am the girl soldier of death and beauty. If we are in the garden, then do the two boys talk to us? Do they want to kill us? Do they want to kiss us on the cheek? I think we are wolves in a garden that do not have a home exactly, but do not want one anyway. I would break the china of the house. You would be far away on an island. Is it better to be a wolf? My mouth opens and it gleams with teeth. The teeth aren’t sharp. Your teeth, far away from me, are far back in your mouth. They do not gleam.
Now anyway, the two boys talk:
Boy 1: Are you?
Boy 2: Yes
Boy 1: Here is the thing.
Boy 2: The saucer?
Boy 1: No the shift, the code breaker.
Boy 2: I never knew of a code.
Man and his dog: The Code! You two know The Code.
Boy 1 and 2: We do?
Girl on the Island: They do.
Boy 1 and 2: We are blind.
Girl on the Island: I know.
Wolves: Where is the meat?
Girl on the Island: Is not the meat beautiful?
Boy 1: It is. It is red.
Tired Man: This is my child, Red.
Wolves: We like children.
The Limit: I am the limit. I replace you.
Girl on the Island: I am going away. I am the limit.
The Limit: Where is the meat?
Wolf 1: That was my meat anyway.
Wolf 2: No, that was your heart.
The garden shifts. Oscar and Violet run around.
Birds are circling. They haunt the children.
Wolves: We go inside now.
The Limit: So do we.
Moss grows everywhere in the garden. A music plays and it sounds like a flute.
III.
Dear Chris. There is nothing smarter than the whole world. I just wanted to say that. But no, not even Picasso. Chris. My brain is empty with nothing but regret. It sits like an old bar of soap and I can’t get rid of it. But regret for what? I couldn’t even mention. Anything I have ever truly cared for. Even though I know I have. But gently cared for. There were only a few things I bothered. To gently place from one room to the other. Like you say her earring. Or your brother’s totem that is now your totem. That is nice.
IV.
Dear Chris, it is summer and I know there are nice things, but I can’t think of them yet, but one is silence. Its yellow light stretches everywhere, I can’t forget it. Chris, I never want to be a tough woman on a train with divorce papers. I never want to be that masculine. I will be a boy who thinks of things with you, but I will never be the tough one. I never want to be anything at all. That is my problem. I wish I could flutter from one thing to the next and wear the mask but never take it. Beneath the mask is something awful. That is why you wear a mask, as something’s awful underneath it. No, there could be other reasons.
On a tree-lined lot, there is a red car. I am sitting in it. The doors are locked. The treetops are made of circles, so that every top of the tree is a green flat scene. No, the doors aren’t locked, they are only broken. No, they aren’t broken. They are only smashed. No, they aren’t even smashed, they are only listening. To the light of the heavens so they seem ajar. No, they are not ajar. The nighttime is as blue as day. O heather blue of day sky! You are white frost and you aren’t drunk or high, out of it, no you don’t have Alzheimer’s. No you aren’t dead. Your mind has not left you and gone away out of the lot to another place. No you aren’t even gone. White heather flower that stretches up thru the blue like an intense feeling that never leaves. O let it never leave you, this sweet regret. It means you’re living.
V.
I have a mask. And beneath that another. And beneath another. And beneath. But the whole is stupid. I never meant any of it. It was a relief to take off my soccer pads in a lit car. I was alone.
I can set the scene again.
Black birds have tipped their wings in red. And red-tipped wings shine across the sky. The sun is beating on your farm. There are pigs with hooves that eat other pigs. The elder pigs eat each other. The fall rain soaks through the house. There is a pail that makes a warm sound. That is me.
There is a plant that blooms with a small red flower. No the flower’s grey. But it’s not sad the flower’s grey. No, not at all.
You are cutting things up and taping them together. You remember my mistake and think it was not a mistake. You remember your own mistakes and think mine was not so bad.
Would you sail along the river from time to time if you could? Even with your farm would you go along and wave along the hillside and stare at the sky? Would you bend your head this and thataway? I would.
Would you cut the light to bring in the day. Cause you fell asleep and the light was on, and now it’s day. There are your hands on your arms. And you turn the lights off. And the sun is all around.
Your wife comes in. Her heart is full of palm trees. But she isn’t a wife at all, but something like California that is expansive with oranges.
Oranges are ducks in the ocean. I lay tunes along the waters of the world and I am not distracted by my tunes. I do not leave the tunes except when I am done with them, but I never am done with music. I know beauty. Very well in fact I know it. It is something like silence, and all the gestures do not make it. But they make it in you. You make the beauty in you. That is how you know.
VI.
It is summer still. I am very thin. I have thin arms that move in circles while I walk. I can do this. Chris, I walk along the path to get to the bus to a city where people will not greet me then when I get there I will wander through the snow to get to your farm where your wife will greet me with oranges. All ways of communicating are false. Words are growls. Your dog growls at me as I approach and then he wanders. I wander with him. I am a wolf and I wander the perimeter looking and thinking. I start to think and I keep thinking. I keep thinking that the things that don’t know what we are but we love because they are beautiful are the best things. Then I remember moments of great communion. The Holy Ghost especially, although I have never exactly felt it. And I realize that something else is best although I may never catch it. Or even know it until after. You only know things until after. That is the law. The sun is great as I wander and think. Your wife throws oranges and you catch them. She is doing a pirouette and baking a bread in the snow, to which the dog and I eat, except I am a thin thin wolf and the bread does not go in. You do not notice. You go on your way and don’t feel the gentle tides full of fishes.
VII.
It is summer again I am not unhappy. So much as I am bent over the awe of beauty, the fear and wonder of its cause. I am planting flowers — the violets I have read of in the book. In the garden beauty is endless and all giving. It is all plentiful. It only asks for nothing. It is expansive, specific, and intense. It is none of those things too. That is why we love it. I think of you in a farmhouse. I dream of my happiest moments and think of this: a swimming pool where everything was very bright - the hot pink suits and sunglasses, the brittle water, the way the air was green, the flowers pungent. I think of the way the world is still in the face of the book you are reading on your farm. I am in the pool of my memory when later you will have to go to dinner and then gently fall asleep. When you wake, the next morning will be full of beauty too and beauty will know you are listening. I think of the things that don’t seem to know what you are, but they really know what you are, trains. I think that there is no reason to be afraid of hearts and blood, but it all makes sense. The still sun is flat on the horizon. The still concrete is hot and flat. The pool’s water is clear and turquoise. There are the prettiest colors on the earth all around me and the many things that I love.
Dorothea Lasky is the author of AWE (Wave Books, 2007) and Black Life (Wave Books, 2010). Currently, she studies creativity and education at the University of Pennsylvania.