What happens is this. They say they want money, but they don’t. They want love. They say they want the truth, but they don’t. They want love. They say they want to make a difference, but they don’t. They want love. They say they want attention, but they don’t. They want love. They want love. They want love. They want to possess it and then, once possessed, to discard it.
I like the pain of contrast. I like putting different ideas side-by-side and observing how they behave. Animals at dusk, in the glade of the vanities. Under the lights, masks on stage. Vassals kneeling on the studded battlefield. Do they rise to circle each other, warily? Do they reach for one another? And when they touch, do they then flinch from the blaze of contact? Or do they ignore each other, pallid and impassive? If it doesn’t rupture immediately, does the connection deepen? Do they whisper about me, do they form an alliance? What then? How long until the threshold is crossed, the seal broken, the contract shredded, and they turn on me?
O crassa ingenia. O caecos coeli spectatores. The stars must think us perfect, paranoid fools.
What happens is this. From the tiled floor of the fun house, my neck cuffed in a ruffled clown collar, I pick up a long list of horrors and I train my gaze on them. It’s an earnest effort, though it has the blush of voyeuristic perversion, the blandness of stupidity. The mirrors spin around me. I rotate the pages, I flip them over, I stare at the typewriter script, but still I cannot get my brain to understand what I am reading. In the long shadow of that incomprehension, the animals, the masks, the vassals are totally still. They wait to see what I will do. Some part of my heart lets out a long shuddering breath, as though trying to keep from crying. Gamely, I continue reading, but that part of my heart resists, that part stays sheltered in place, and I never have more contempt for myself than in that moment.
The most heroic thing I have ever done, the most cowardly. The loveliest photo of me, the ugliest. It’s all in the angles, isn’t it? But which one was me? How closely have I been captured, to the degree? Both, neither, you say, but that only leaves me as the bruise in between, where I can be heard but I will possess no meaning, like noise, where I can be seen but I will occupy no space, like smoke.
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