Cicadas hum drones out the incessant small talk and rote repetition of fake cheek kisses from people who reek of cigarettes, rotting molars and stale pork pate burps.
Someone is visiting Peru, she is excited to see Machu piccu. Inca ruins are awesome I say, the Mayan ones are my favorite. Something about the sickeningly macabre pits for human sacrifice, and sports involving frequent deaths used to fascinate me as a child. It was simultaneously disturbing and compelling. I had bile creeping up my throat and yet I myself crept closer to the deep abyss where women were tied and thrown. I remember the look on my mom’s face when she was listening to the guide. She seemed resigned to a similar fate. I have always been enchanted by death, and the living. And what sort of stories the living make up about death. And who deserves it more.
The girls look at me with shock on their faces, “that’s …creepy.” One says with an awkward smile she is already hiding into a glass of champagne everyone tried to convince me was expensive but I knew to be cheap. The sort made of grapes which coat the inside of your throat with poison sap and bog down your glabella with the weight of Atlas’s sky, Sisyphus’ rock, and any other heavy and metaphorized and heavily metaphorized object known to man and preferably written about by the Greeks, or the Romans.
There’s few things I know with any certainty but one of them must be the reaction I get when people ask what I study. English literature. useless, low salaried joke of a major. Hunted for sport.
They ask what I study the way you ask if the dog bites.
“English”. Then comes the pause. Not too long just long enough for the numbers to flow. Four years. Tens of thousands of dollars. Shakespeare. Oh.
“So…what are you going to do with that? are you going to be a teacher?” my condolences, is what they mean to say.
It’s an extraordinary question when you think about it. No one asks what you’re going to do with having fallen in love. Or what you’re going to do with having seen the sea for the first time, or the millionth time. We reserve that sort of accounting for the things we secretly believe have no value.
I usually answer tritely. I produce respectable nouns like a customs declaration. They nod, grateful that I’ve produced some sort of answer that precludes them from discussing this further. We’ve crossed the border safely.
But actually, I don’t want to be a teacher. I want to become impossible to lie to. I want to feel everything and then put it into words. I want to take every ant and leaf and petal and pimple and write a book and write a million and then read a book and read a million and then write another.
Literature is the longest conversation humans have ever had about why they continue living despite every available reason not to. Why I continue to live despite every available reason not to.
That feels very useful to me.
I often catch myself over explaining, I’m unsure why I jump immediately to appease. To assure that there is some worth in studying literature, there is something there to grab on to. I’m unsure also why I’m surprised as though I do not myself subscribe to similar class prejudices and give more weight to STEM or law.
I appease using one main word. Academia. Academia, once heard by the common person creates a sort of mirage, one to hide the asper of my passions. Academia signifies dusty tomes, professors poring over difficult lengthy novels with wire framed glasses cigarettes and the light of the moon to guide them. Most cultures value academia, if not in practice in theory at least. Academia is absence of sun, academia is gloom and doom and all things I love. But unlike all things I love it is shrouded in the protective veil of “mattering”. It calls to mind intellectualism, the intelligentsia in fact. It reminds one of the days where being a scholar mattered. Though it is slightly outdated today, that matters little. Because however ancient academia is, it is still more alive than a white girl from the states who studies english literature in a province in Canada which is known by its people primarily for its dedication to the eradication of the anglophone population.
So to study english literature is bad enough, but to study it in Montreal is almost sacrilege. Blasphemous. Obvious questions arise such as why not study it in Boston (not enough money, or work ethic more accurately). Or why english in a French city?
I don’t really have answers for those people, and though it is terribly discomforting when a gaggle of girls who already think you’re not the right “fit” for your French boyfriend, who is, coincidentally the brother of one of the aforementioned girls, I always feel better minutes after the conversation.
Sublimation, distraction. Enough buzzwords about whatever they’re studying, be it law finance or stem, and they are once more content. No longer is their notion of higher education threatened on shaky stilts. Cheap champagne flows swiftly once more down lax gullets and the conversation is easily redirected back to the best parties in Lille, or the perils of studying labor law.
My boyfriend joins me for a few minutes away from the hubbub of this terribly boring party, if you can even call it that. Which I struggle to. Even dinner parties among my small family of four have more excitement than this. Some dissonant cover of Ed Sheeran’s shape of you plays uncomfortably in the background, ill-fitting in all the wrong places. By which I mean even if you think you have found a note you can dance to by the time it rolls around again the pitch has been multilayer into something unrecognizable and the sway of your body now looks discombobulated so you must relearn the next few chords and cross your fingers there is something there to grasp at. There is never. But an interesting game to play if you are drunk enough. Which I am not. Because as I already mentioned I am with my boyfriend’s family who already frowns down on me enough as it is. For example I was getting ready in a blue shimmery dress which flaunted my every curve in a modest enough way whilst simultaneously ensuring I wouldn’t be lumped in with the sheep wearing black. And they told me to change into something more sober. So here I am in a black dress while flaunts my every curve in a modest enough way while ensuring I will be like every other girl here.
Of course this was not a directive, but more of a suggestion. However the tone in which it was delivered left little room for negotiations or nuanced deliberations. It was the tone of a family who had been invited to a boring party with boring ugly people, a tone which was terrified of bringing someone who would shake up this snooze fest and draw unnecessary attention to themselves. Opinions.
Some people don’t enjoy opinions. Others forming them about them. Opinions in general. In contrast, at the small age of six my tennis coach was laughing to my father already about what an opinionated girl I was. I got chastised for this most obviously. My father too did not like small talk being spread about him, or by extension his property (family). But it wasn’t only opinions, it was admiration. And to admire someone means they shine in a certain light. And who wants to be outshone at a party they invited you to?
Anyways, I digress. My boyfriend came to join me. He asked me why not join the rest of the group, make small conversation. Join in the fake belly laugh one man has perfected so well it almost makes me want to laugh for real. But then I see everyone else faking it and feel this unsettling desire to not rock the boat creep in, so I fake a small laugh and slither away into a back corner to propagate my nicotine reliance. I look at him in shock, that he doesn’t know enough about me by now to know exactly why, though he claims to know me by heart. “You have so many interesting things to say”. He follows up. As if this lack of desire to join this “dinner party” (facetious, I’m out of synonyms for boring so I will resort to calling it what everyone else is because even if I’m not drunk I am tipsy and too sluggish to come up with my own ingenious term, apologies) has to do with me. And my lack. Instead of them and theirs.
I tried to explain to him already the distinction between the haves and the have nots. The moon. The sun. Ruminate on that if you will. Oh. A gentleman has just entered the pool. Maybe things will get interesting from here on out. Though I doubt it. The guy who got in was the most interesting one here. So doubtlessly none will have anything of import to say; seeing as how if there was anyone to say anything deep or witty about a an old man diving into a pool at midnight sharp, it would have been him. Shame. A damn shame. The owner of this villa. Nestled in the mountains of Porto Vecchio. He built it himself some twenty odd years go, worked as an engineer with energy companies in Ukraine and Moldova. Someone with something to say. Unlike anyone else here.
Where was I. Haves. Have nots. I do wonder sometimes if it is terribly cruel of me to have such biases. But some people don’t shine don’t even glimmer don’t even GLISTEN. I want nothing to do with those folk. But as I type this I wonder if I am lying to myself? Do I subconsciously view myself as a have not? I hope not. That would be horrible. But. No. As one of my favorite authors once said,
“I have an apple that thinks it’s a pear. And a bun that thinks it’s a cat. And a lettuce that thinks its a lettuce.”
“It’s a clever lettuce, then.”
“Hardly,” she said with a delicate snort. “Why would anything clever think it’s a lettuce?”
“Even if it is a lettuce?” I asked.
“Especially then,” she said. “Bad enough to be a lettuce. How awful to think you are a lettuce too.
Hmmm tall glamorous French girls. And yet. Why do I have this deep rooted adamance that they are empty. I wish to awake from a nightmare, screaming, for once. Well not for once, but with witnesses for once. I wish for people to point and stare and whisper in hushed tones. To wonder. Probably likely mostly definitely to fear…
I doubt I’ve ever been feared in a way I deserve. I doubt anyone has ever been wise enough to do so. Maybe I have not given enough reason. I should work on that. Here is a list of things I think I could work on for people to fear me: I think:
Disappear , with no notice. After extended period of time come back. And never explain or mention it.
Kill someone and get away with it. Someone evil so all horridly cruel people fear me. (Men)
Fly.
Scream, loudly without thought for others.
Laugh whilst covered in blood. Mine or anyone’s. No difference to me. Although if my dear readers see a difference please make me aware I am open to notes.
Bloody teeth.
Beat someone up.
Get robbed at gunpoint and save everyone.
Reveal myself as a secret operative with a network so deep and vast a man’s swampy ass would quiver.
Disappear. Again. For good this time.
unedited word vom version i wrote on the lounge chair by the pool at the villa during this “party”
The hum of cicadas drones out the incessant small talk and rote repetition of fake cheek kisses from people who reek of cigarettes, rotting molars and stale pork pate burps.
The moon is tall in the sky, her white stilettos cast shining runways on the surface of the pool. The villa is lit up by tastefully placed golden lights, the sort that are invisible except for the light they emit. Up high in the mountains of southern Corsica I can see the port bobbing tranquilly from here, and behind me the dryness of the arid woods threatens to suck me into its heat and trap me, like a bug encased in amber.
A girl in a frumpy romper is explaining her upcoming trip to Peru, she is excited to see Machu Picchu. Inca ruins are awesome I say, but Mayan ones have a special place in my head. Something about the sickening, macabre pits for human sacrifice, and sports involving mandatory death used to fascinate me as a child. It was simultaneously disturbing and compelling. I had bile creeping up my throat and yet I myself crept closer to the deep abyss where women were tied and thrown. I remember the look on my mom’s face when she was listening to the guide. She seemed resigned to a similar fate. I have always been enchanted by death, and the living. And what sort of stories the living make up about death. And who deserves which more.
The girls look at me with shock on their faces, “that’s …creepy.” One says with an awkward smile she is already hiding into a glass of champagne everyone tried to convince me was expensive but I knew to be cheap. The sort made of grapes which coat the inside of your throat with viscous sap and bog down your glabella with the weight of Atlas’s sky, Sisyphus’ rock, and any other heavy and metaphorized and heavily metaphorized object known to man and preferably written about by the Greeks, or the Romans.
There’s few things I know with any certainty but one of them must be the reaction I get when people ask what I study. English literature. Useless, low salaried joke of a major. Hunted for sport. Though hunted may be a strong word because most are so busy looking down at me from the tips of their big noses that their target would be obscured by the peaks on their faces.
I often catch myself over explaining, I’m unsure why I jump immediately to appease. To assure that there is some worth in studying literature, there is something there to grab on to. I’m unsure also why I’m surprised, as though I do not myself subscribe to similar class prejudices and give more weight to STEM or law.
I appease using one main word. Academia. Academia, once heard by the common person creates a sort of mirage, one to hide the asper of my passions. Academia signifies dusty tomes, professors poring over difficult lengthy novels with wire framed glasses cigarettes and the light of the moon to guide them. Most cultures value academia, if not in practice in theory at least. Academia is absence of sun, academia is gloom and doom and all things I love. But unlike all things I love, it is shrouded in the protective veil of “mattering.” It calls to mind intellectualism, the intelligentsia in fact. It reminds one of the days where being a scholar mattered. Though it is slightly outdated today, that matters little. Because however ancient academia is, it is still more alive than a white girl from the states who studies English Literature in a province in Canada which is known by its people primarily for its dedication to the eradication of the anglophone population.
So to study english literature is bad enough, but to study it in Montreal is almost sacrilege. Blasphemous. Obvious questions arise such as why not study it in Boston (not enough money, or work ethic more accurately). Or why english in a French city?
I don’t really have answers for those people, and though it is terribly discomforting when a gaggle of girls who already think you’re not the right “fit” for your French boyfriend, who is, coincidentally the brother of one of the aforementioned girls, I always feel better minutes after the conversation.
Sublimation, distraction. Enough buzzwords about whatever they’re studying, be it law finance or stem, and they are once more content. No longer is their worldview attacked, their notion of higher education threatened on shaky stilts. Cheap champagne flows swiftly down lax gullets once more, and the conversation is easily redirected back to the best parties in Lille, or the perils of studying labor law.
My boyfriend joins me for a few minutes away from the hubbub of this terribly boring party, if you can even call it that. Which I struggle to. Even dinner parties among my small family of four have more excitement than this. Some dissonant cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of you” plays uncomfortably in the background. By which I mean even if you think you have found a note you can dance to by the time it rolls around again the pitch has been mutilated into something unrecognizable and the sway of your body now looks discombobulated so you must predict the next few chords and cross your fingers there is something there to grasp at. There is never. But an interesting game to play if you are drunk enough. Which I am not. Because as I already mentioned I am with my boyfriend’s family who already frowns down on me enough as it is. For example I was getting ready in a blue shimmery dress which flaunted my every curve in a modest enough way whilst simultaneously ensuring I wouldn’t be lumped in with the sheep wearing black. And they told me to change into something more sober. So here I am in a black dress while flaunts my every curve in a modest enough way while ensuring I will be like every other girl here.
Of course this was not a directive, but more of a suggestion. However the tone in which it was delivered left little room for negotiations or nuanced deliberations. It was the tone of a family who had been invited to a boring party with boring ugly people, a tone which was terrified of bringing someone who would shake up this snooze fest and draw unnecessary attention to themselves. Opinions.
Some people don’t enjoy opinions. Others forming them. Other forming opinions about them. Opinions in general. In contrast, at the small age of six my tennis coach was laughing to my father already about what an opinionated girl I was. I got chastised for this most obviously. My father too did not like small talk being spread about him, or by extension his property (family). But it wasn’t only opinions, it was admiration. And to admire someone means they shine in a certain light. And who wants to be outshone at a party they invited you to?
Anyways, I digress. My boyfriend came to join me. He asked me why not join the rest of the group, make small conversation. Join in the fake belly laugh one man has perfected so well it almost makes me want to laugh for real. But then I see everyone else faking it and feel this unsettling desire to not rock the boat creep in, so I fake a small laugh and slither away into a back corner to propagate my nicotine reliance. I look at him in shock, that he doesn’t know enough about me by now to know exactly why, though he claims to know me by heart. “You have so many interesting things to say”. He follows up. As if this lack of desire to join this “dinner party” (facetious, I’m out of synonyms for boring so I will resort to calling it what everyone else is because even if I’m not drunk I am tipsy and too sluggish to come up with my own ingenious term, apologies) has to do with me. And my lack. Instead of them and theirs.
I tried to explain to him already the distinction between the haves and the have nots. The moon. The sun. Ruminate on that if you will. Oh. A drunk gentleman has just entered (belly flopped into) the pool. Maybe things will get interesting from here on out. Though I doubt it. The guy who got in was the most interesting one here. So doubtlessly none will have anything of import to say; seeing as how if there was anyone to say anything deep or witty about a an old man splashing into a pool at midnight sharp, it would have been him. Shame. A damn shame. The owner of this villa. Nestled in the mountains of Porto Vecchio. He built it himself some twenty odd years go, worked as an engineer with energy companies in Ukraine and Moldova. Someone with something to say. Unlike anyone else here.
Where was I. Haves. Have nots. I do wonder sometimes if it is terribly cruel of me to have such biases. But some people don’t shine don’t even glimmer don’t even GLISTEN. I want nothing to do with those folk. But as I type this I wonder if I am lying to myself? Do I subconsciously view myself as a have not? I hope not. That would be horrible. But. No. As one of my favorite authors once said,
“I have an apple that thinks it’s a pear. And a bun that thinks it’s a cat. And a lettuce that thinks its a lettuce.”
“It’s a clever lettuce, then.”
“Hardly, why would anything clever think it’s a lettuce?”
“Even if it is a lettuce?” I asked.
“Especially then,” she said. “Bad enough to be a lettuce. How awful to think you are a lettuce too.”
Hmmm tall glamorous French girls. And yet. Why do I have this deep rooted adamance that they are empty. I wish to awake from a nightmare, screaming, for once. Well not for once, but with witnesses for once. I wish for people to point and stare and whisper in hushed tones. To wonder. Probably likely mostly definitely to fear…
I doubt I’ve ever been feared in a way I deserve. I doubt anyone has ever been wise enough to do so. Maybe I have not given enough reason. I should work on that. Here is a list of things I think I could work on for people to fear me: I think:
Disappear, with no notice. After extended period of time come back. And never explain or mention it.
Kill someone and get away with it. Someone evil so all horridly cruel people fear me. (my dad)
Fly.
Scream, loudly without thought for others.
Laugh whilst covered in blood. Mine or anyone’s. No difference to me. Although if my dear readers see a difference please make me aware I am open to notes.
Bloody teeth.
Beat someone up.
Get robbed at gunpoint and save everyone.
Reveal myself as a secret operative with a network so deep and vast a man’s swampy ass would quiver.
Disappear. Again. For good this time.
