Born to Die

Alone. Yes. Alone with the cats.

He lit a cigarette, and smoked it thoughtlessly before leaving it half done in the saucer. It slowly smoked away, turning itself into dark grey crumbs.

Yes. And perhaps he was tired. The light outside darkened to fill the room with an uneasy blue. The orange cat jumped on his lap, meowing and purring, rubbing her face against his.

He kissed her head, pecking it with his lips, as she snorted with pleasure.

And now, when these old feelings strike, and when he sees her naked body in his mind’s eye. Bare and perfect, soft and rounded and perfect; he can’t bare it.

He plucks up the kitty and drops her lightly to the threadbare carpet. He walks to the phone, and dials her number, fingers pausing over numbers, and heart choking each breath, each deep sigh.

  It had been her through the window, crying, tearstained, ramming her fist again and again into his peeling front door.

Her with the red hair, waistlength. But he’d seen her last week, getting off the bus outside the supermarket, and she’d chopped it all off.

‘You’ve reached Charlotte, leave me a message, and maybe I’ll call you back…’

The phone beeps, and he hears himself breathing into her voicemail.

                                     

She is a fragile bird, small and always on the sturdy side of plump, but lately she’s been looking so frail,

 so drained. She doesn’t eat much, just sits up late, and tries with an energy that is surely ebbing, to watch films, and get enough sleep, and get to work on time each morning.

It is the sight of her legs reflected in the mirror each and every morning, like milk, blinding – they make her shut her eyes/open/again.

She’s nothing if she’s not human. But you’d never know her grandmother was Chinese. You’d never know her father was a burnished Spaniard. You’d never know she has a graduate degree. You’d never know about the sad times, curled foetus-like and emptying slowly, her tears, into sleepless darkness. Each and every morning.

She drinks her coffee. She doesn’t drink it every day. She sometimes forgets to.

It makes her feel jittery and extreme. Even if it’s unleaded she might be up till 2 or 3am, writing frantic poetry on those blinding thighs. So white, almost porcelain, except for the popped blue and purple spider veins that stretch below the surface.

‘I want to be whole.’ She writes.

‘I want to be excused from this room of sadness, where the others nod, unnoticing and quiet.

Silently. I will leave.’

She’ll have to wear jeans tomorrow to cover her tracks. She’ll shower them off, those sparse characters, despised, in the shower tomorrow evening.

Normally she rides her bike to work, lets her hair be billowing in cold rushes of air.

No hair now. Just orange bangs, short back and sides. The barber seemed surprised that a young woman would want her hair cut by him. But she couldn’t be fucked with the false niceties of small talk with the phoney people at the posh salon.

She’d gotten it cheaper at the barber. No chit chat. Just the drone of the horse races on the radio.

The snipsnip of his scissors. The whir of the small razor on the goosedown of her neck.

The air blasting cool and cold and stunning against her face outside.

Perhaps she’ll scream out loud, just to get the sounds out, all the trapped words.

Standing on her bike, arms outstretched, flying down the hill of a peaceful street made a riot by her strangled war cries. Wake ‘em up. All of them. Rich conservatives woken abruptly in their queen sized beds, shaking their ugly aging heads at the way the world has become.

Today she takes the bus. Waits for it to arrive, and it's on time for once.

She recognizes the busdriver, when she looked more effeminate, he used to ask her for a smile.

She used to bear her fangs at him, her eyes boring into his nicotine stained, booze fumed existence.

He, like the rest of them, doesn’t take much notice of her anymore. Now that she is invisible, anonymous, androgynous, and almost smaller than she once was.

The others, the people, all primped and tired eyed, read books, or gaze out the dirty windows at the passing scenery. She watches them instead.

And thinks about the amazing sex she could have with them. The hurried groans shared with the balding businessman. Whipping the candy blonde in the corner, flogging her within an inch of their insanity and intimacy. Placing creeping tender kisses on the thighs of the elderly Asian woman, her fruit filled basket on the floor beside her feet. The pierced and lanky young man would be clutching, crying cumming. And the trans-man by the back door would be skin tearing, skin bursting, uterine tingling passion.

 This is the most erotic moment of her day. The only erotic moment.

The rest of her time she can’t bear to think, can’t bear to be bare, can’t bear to feel any pleasure, to think thoughts –

She keeps her hands still between clenched knees in punishment, eyes open/shut/again – unseeing – pillows and the mess of blankets, unslept in.

Yes. She saw him. She doesn’t know if he knows that she saw him catching sight of her.

She caught him in her peripheries. Snared him. And walked by him without a glance, without a single admission of his atoms.

But later, in the bathrooms at work, she allowed herself a tear or two.

In the intervening and integrated days, his skin hurt, and the hours intertwined with simple agony.

The hairs on his arms prickled, as if cold, and sensitive to the touch.

Weeping inside, to the cityscapes in photographs. The strange details of maps of far distant cities – Rome, Florence, Los Angeles, Osaka.

The paw prints, the stepping in puked up hair balls first thing in the morning, their constant mewling and dangerous winding around his legs as he emptied tins into bowls for them, their all-knowing, all ignoring guardian presence.

Their sensual stink, and complete and utter trust in his big kitty arms, as he rubbed their matted bellies. It wasn’t his fault they'd yowl in protest if he tried brushing them.

Every day. In a mess of kitchen shit. Drinking too much Heineken, and smoking too many American Spirits.

It had been her, running after him up the front path, just like it had been her, naked and searing in his bed. He’d slammed the door behind him, and covered his ears to her banging at the door.

‘Brian BRIAN BRIIIIIIIIIAN brian… Brian? Brian BRIAN!! Please! Please!!’

It had been her at the window, face streaming with desperate tears and make-up, screaming silently, mouth wide and face creasing with despair –

‘Let me in’- She mouthed at him through the glass. But he hadn’t.

And it was her voice he was talking to now  – though she would hear it in another place in time.

Perhaps she’d stand on his doorstep again – his words might reach her heart through the wires, and hang their heads in shame.

Perhaps she would listen, and feel the splitting of her chest, and sit and cry in relief, and jump up again almost immediately, and rush out the door.

It would be him – him pushing his way into the caverns in her body – she would be driving him, steering him towards the overjoyment – the complete and incomplete – piecing together all that insanity, and breaking it again – again – again – again –

it would be pleasure and it would be fragrant pain. It would be day old cat food, cigarette smoke sticking to the walls. It would be small purring creatures, rubbing their lithe bodies against – and walking over –

two deathly bodies beneath the sheets, still and silent, just a pulse flickering, the wings of a hummingbird, a butterfly, swimming over the veins of one neck – a chest – beneath two pale breasts – the spider veins – like a subway map – of four sleeping wrists.

Lana Del Rey is a singer-songwriter from New York.

Born to Die is her second album, released earlier this year.

She has received both lavish praise and harsh criticism, and perhaps this reflects the extremities in her music:

A voice that soars from low blue-singing - just a half tone off flat - to girlish highs that arouse even as they soothe.

Perhaps it is the cinema sadness of her sound, like the seeping huge cities of America, that drown your hope in illusions of grandeur.

My father would call it self-indulgence, and maybe it is that - but just maybe she's great.

Her songs are anthemic, they push me through impatient hours of waiting, and the fear that arrives with the tearing away of inertia. 

She is beautiful, incredibly, like an old movie star and it could be that almost blankness of her expression that lets her carry the feelings that capture my youth, our youth - and the loss of all those simple plans and dreams - on her face.

Maybe she'll flop and fail - but maybe, just maybe - she'll become a name on a gold star, a small golden gramophone - our poor little rich girl, who is really just a kid from New York.

Misery Is a Butterfly

Her body is too big, somehow incomplete -

or too complete, concrete.

Inconsequential.

Punchdrunk nights, pounding the pavement - her eyes glazed, so tired, endless fatigue...

Her feet sore, and the rim of the sky still lit with sunset -

it's pounding in her head, like her feet, the pavement

eyelids growing heavy, like the rest of her.

She's had men, and swallowed them whole.

They disappeared, mouthfuls of chocolate cake slipping and sliding down her throat.

She lived with a man, one who grasped her thighs and peeled her open - always satisfying, always leaving her longing for something else. Something more...

But maybe she doesn't deserve the right to complain,

perhaps anyone who doesn't mind, or who at least keeps quiet about

the dimples and pimples,

on her back, neck, face -

should be slept with

surrendered to

as a reward for their acceptance,

for their silence, and lack of standards.

Now,

her eyes scan the bountiful thighs and belly of a mother,

serene arms gathered around the swaddles of a bare baby.

She

should like to curl around this woman, inside her, within her cells, her DNA.

And now,

as the lean purple skinned sensation walks by, she imagines herself pressing her lips to that sweet, shaven plum, greedily licking the surface clean and feeling

her

own

power

at creating this tension with another

raising the final cry from this woman's throat

and feeling a shock within her own vagina.

A Goddess may appear, unaware of her own glory-

her own curvaceous isolation

the stretchmarks silver on her golden skin, like burnishings,

like afterthoughts -

hairs bristling wiry curls - plumbing the depths of her

with fingers - moving beneath breasts

gently prying open buttocks, burying herself

in the layers of stinks and sweats

in her stomach, feet, ears, mouth.

Yes. She may catch herself on the odd day - her reflection in the bathwater -

flickering and shy among the bubbles

that drift over her rippling abstract self.

She stands at the mirror, on an even day

and spies a beauty she fears no one else can see.

Her eyes are molasses

rapids of hair fall over

the air above a back of

vast american sky.

In her belly is seed

in her belly are others unborn

ova, breathless and brave

ebb and flow each month.

In her belly, she stores her seed.

She is finite, when she dies she'll return to the winds and waters.

But right now she is endless opportunity.

She is complete.

Of consequence.

She is fluid, and binding - the strength

of glue-like mud that holds firm the roots of redwoods

the scent of strong chedder

her numb fingers after masturbation.

She is senses and colors

danger

ugliness

But she is undeniable, absolute.

If I let her go, will she sink or swim?

If I let go -

will she be free?

Misery Is a Butterfly is the sixth album from Blonde Redhead.
It is a moody, swirling mystery of music that will both hurt your ears and break your heart.
The music pulls together in my mind, the kind of messy isolation that will shock me during something mundane, like catching the bus, or eating breakfast.
This music contains all of my teeth grinding frustration, but it's fused with the unreal that appears when I close my eyes, and the longing filled fantasy of the feelings that happen after I've seen a movie like A Single Man, or In the Mood for Love.
These are just my experiences, they are in all likeliness, irrelevant.

Blonde Redhead is Kazu Makino, and twin brothers Amedeo and Simone Pace.
Kazu is from Japan, and the twins were born in Italy. They are based in NYC.
Their sound has matured from a nice rock and headbang box of wine, to the bizarreness of kombucha gone wrong.
I'm sure one day their music will become a delicious malt vinegar splashed on chips, but for now, bask in the strange fermentation.

The piece of writing above is dedicated to all those who identify as female, and who feel the pressure to disappear as summer comes to bake together those sticky thighs, and steam those parts of ourselves that we would rather ignore.
Also, to the secret erotic in all of us.
Those craven desires we harbor that we long to share, but cannot, even with ourselves.
One day, I will celebrate my sex, celebrate myself, my form, my reflection, alone, accepting, in soapy bathwater,
but not today. Not yet.

9

Do you remember when we were younger, younger than these days?

The darkness, the shade of trees and dappled sunlight between the leaves.

The tension, the unspoken between us,

mud on our shoes,

Wimbledon Common.

Remember the walk?

The anger, the steam off our skin as we rushed, the pavement,

our feet - and grass - stinging sinuses -

the endless, endless walk to the station.

Boarding in silence, a snake - big basilisk over London.

The streets are silent beneath the train tracks,

cars soundless, people quiet on their phones from behind these thick (not thick enough) tinted windows.

All of this beneath us, around us -

all of this infinity -

all in a days work.

The tiled tunnels, the smell of long hours in the office.

Quick worms trundle, screech, burrowing under the factory that this city has become.

The blue seats and green line, the yellow circle, funny names (Cockfosters, Bakerloo, Eeling).

Remembering routes in our heads, till they become second nature, till they're instinct - unnoticed - mechanics -

Earls Court - Hammersmith - how long till we get home?

I hope it never ends.

On the bus, Emilia's guitar banging against my legs and in the way, but I don't apologize, no one does here. These Londoners and their manners.

Feeling stressed and dazed.

In love, bowled over -

our lives so far and so long on the same path,

now at an ugly fork.

I began to despise you, because you refused to understand, or at least show me that you might grasp this - this - this.

You sank within, and turned away.

I didn't know you anymore, and you didn't want to know me anymore.

Your face growing smaller on that platform on an early morning years ago.

It didn't occur to me that I was losing you - had already lost you, and would never know you - the you that is now.

Describing you: private, poised, sarcastic, dry, independent and dare I whisper it, glorious.

The selfish one disappears - she who hurt you and was senselessly cruel all to often.

But the lonely me yearns for you everyday.

And I'm caught off guard - when I laugh, or glimpse my face in the window of a moving bus - and they're yours.

The laugh, that face. Your jokes, your smile.

In my burning shame, and out of my guilt.

Broken promises and sleepless nights.

In and out.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry and I'm sorry and I'm sorry and

little sister I'm so sorry.

~

When my sister introduced me to Damien Rice, and I scoffed and closed my ears.

It wasn't until I was in the process of severing myself violently from her that he came to soothe my pain.

Such raw angst. Such freeing agony.

Voices merged that I stumbled too, doubled over in the heady mixture of anger and love.

Damien Rice is an Irish singer/songwriter, often accompanied by the beautiful Lisa Hannigan.

These songs are from his second album, released in 2006.

Beloved by sensitive poet types, wannabe singer/songwriters, the broken hearted and potential drunks the western world over.

I can't hear these songs without thinking of my magnificent sister,

without feeling hope for her, pride in her (though I've done nothing for her), grief covered in defiance, envy at her effortless talent and ability to carve her own way.

I know that even when these songs come to lose their meaning, they won't lose their power to make me chuckle quietly, even when I'd much rather weep.

Talkie Walkie

My stomach always too full, my mind always hungering for more.

Always in my green dress, hide those thighs, even if they stick to the leather seats of the car.

Out of sight, out of mind.

All kinds of crazy. All colors.

The warm wind, the grey skies, the Coromandel hills, big and green.

Breath at certain intervals, touch only certain people, eat and drink only certain things - don't want to be triggered into a binge and then the angry purge.

Don't want to feel this endless anger, this hopelessness, this desire to die.

All kinds of crazy.

I feel sad knowledge when I remember this.

My seventeenth summer.

Caught, trapped, too terrified to come up for air -

but longing for something out of reach,

watching the light on the water above me,

and I'm not myself,

swimming away,

relieved to be leaving that version of me behind.

The car rides, the pain of the hunger in the early hours of the morning.

Gnawing nausea, deprivation, the sinking feeling.

What is that feeling?

Staring up through the window, the clear sky lightening, and the dark leaving me with a moon so full and bright, my fluids are pulled inexorably towards it.

I am levitated, eyes open and closed and captivated, in prayer.

Get me away, keep me safe.

I don't really know what I was praying for.

 I had been in love, not the previous summer but the one before, with an unassuming gentleman. I think I startled him more than anything. My full female body, my youthful immature mind. I don't think he knew what to think.

Possibly he found it funny, or flattering. A little inappropriate.

Now, two summers later, I found myself walking in the long, wet grass while he set up his stall beside my parents', again and again at the same summer fairs.

I didn't feel much for him anymore, but the template of him was lodged somewhere deep inside me.

And now, and now... here...

A man of him, the shadow of his face in this face.

I shudder at my reaction, to him.

Harder to breathe, harder to stay still, the light a little too bright.

My body confused, my mind angry.

Who is he? How dare he come back to haunt me now!

In broad daylight.

Why is he interested in someone like me? I both want and don't want him to look me full in the face and smile.

I both want him and don't want him.

The harrowing weight of this.

Telling my husband, because I need to be entirely honest.

My husband nods, a mystery.

He is calm, and sad, and sits and waits till the tide of catastrophizing and attraction ebbs away.

What else is he to do?

What else am I to do?

Sit on my hands, and just accept that these things happen.

My therapist said that this would happen.

I would be pursued, I would be tempted.

But I have a choice.

And in my deepest, most beaten and broken of hearts,

I know that my love for husband is huge, compact, real and unbelievable.

A visitation from my past will be just that, a visit - brief - and then the veneer of this person and this situation will peel away.

And I will see this with such clarity that I will draw a sharp intake of breath, and then let go of the pain.

I hope.

As I swim away from her again, the old me, left floating in the waters.

I circled her once, twice.

I let her have some peace, let her sink to the bottom, in her green dress, with her long hair.

I swim away, and instead of tearing my chest open in an attempt to rid my body of the men of my past, I let my body absorb them, and release them in exhale when I reach the surface.

I feel sad knowledge when I accept this.

An attractive person that represents so much more than just attraction.

A knot in my stomach that will loosen with the passing of time.

And a breath for patience, a tightening grip on my husband's hand as he smiles at me, understanding.

And just this. Remembering. This. 

Air are Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel. This french duo stole my sisters heart the summer that I just wrote about, and I would hear these strange, subtle melodies through the thin walls of our home.

These songs threaded together the long car rides around New Zealand that summer, ticking down the minutes of my life, stifling my breath from festivals to fair grounds.

I can't listen to this music without thinking of that time of my life.

These soothing sounds help me to remember that all things come to pass, even the tough times.

These soothing sounds now make me smile, and lull my screaming brainwaves to a calmer level.

I hope that you enjoy these sounds, these songs, this music.

I hope that you might possibly understand what I wrote today.

Within and Without

I am before you, ready.

My body is perfection, the scent of me makes you salivate.

You will sink your teeth into me (before the night is out).

You will taste the best parts of me, we will become one.

Before the night is out.

I know that you're not awake, that you don't understand.

I know you haven't thought it through.

You haven't seen the facts, written on packaging, smoothed over.

You're just as blind as the rest of them.

They, who pushed me onto the platform, who locked me into the rack, and who locked it into me.

(my sisters, beaten into submission watch on, all pain hidden behind broken eyes).

They, who artificially inseminate me, over and over.

They who rape me.

They who take them, my beautiful children who kicked and grew inside me.

I cry for days and weeks, but they don't return my babies.

The grief is always there, it has never subsided.

They, who have shut me away, they who have made me for nothing more than my body.

They, who are deaf and blind to my suffering - they who look on, through the bars of my cage.

I'm just a sumptuous vessel, fed to become bigger for their burning desire. They want me, they fantasize about me.

But they don't want to know me, don't want the commitment, the entanglement, or the knowledge that will ruin their moaning, groaning pleasure.

They are deaf, and they are blind.

I've been shaven, I've been plucked, I've been scraped and skinned and dressed up.

I've been beaten, dragged and tazed.

They tried to knock me out, to make the end painless,

but I was awake while they pierced me, and sliced me open.

They strung me up with chains, and drained me.

And now my beautiful, regal body is bare.

My rolls of fat are gone. My mouth is finally silenced.

I cannot protest their treatment any longer.

I am simply delicious, erotic, naked, -

bred for nothing more than this -

here, now,

you will sink your teeth into me (before the night is out).

You will have me, the best parts of me.

Before the night is out.

Right now, the memories of my existence flash before me.

I smile bittersweet, watching from the ceiling, as you finish, too quickly for any real pleasure.

Pointless, and sad.

Inside you there is the truth, and you secretly, knowingly suppress it.

Enjoy your feast (the killing, the cutting, the raping, the kidnapping).

I wish you easy digestion (breaking what was me into fecal matter and artery blocks).

I'm almost glad that you don't know that I've been sentient this entire time.

Maybe I'm just a stupid cow, a fat pig, mutton dressed as lamb, totally chicken and as cold as a fish.

Maybe I'm nothing more than stolen ova, or the milk from a mother's breasts.

I could be nothing,

I could be everything.

Instead, I'm dinner.

Bon appetit.

~

If what I wrote made you feel anything (because I know you feel something) please consider that feeling, let it stay awhile - even just a moment - before you push it aside and think, 'They're just animals. I don't even like animals that much.'
Maybe just hold the thought in your mind next time you pull a frozen roll of ground beef out of the freezer. Pause and remember. This was a sentient being.
Yes, the tsunami of emotions that may follow with the facing of the truth is devastating.
Yes, it's strange adapting to a life without murdered animals for dinner.
Yes, it's hard.
But it's better to face the facts, and come through the grief as wiser, stronger people.
We can't hide our heads in the sand forever, even though every societal impulse tells us to.
It's okay, we're not alone.

Within and Without is the latest album by the band Washed Out, spearheaded by Ernest Greene.
It's been said that he started the chillwave movement. I think the label is silly, the music seems much deeper and moodier than the name implies.
This was a recommended album on  Amazon.com, I gave it a preview listen, and was sent into a world of sad bliss, if there ever could be such a thing.
The mixture of the music and visuals makes an unusual combination with what I wrote, but I like it because it reveals something, even if all it reveals is that we live behind a strange, lonely facade.
I hope that you have read this far.
I hope you will continue to read.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns

He's just a dude, on the old end of middle aged.

He runs through the colors, too bright, brighter even than the shade.

The sweat glistens on him, droplets shine on skin too tanned for a white man.

Cracked brown, bandana on bald head.

Pounding of running shoes on the sizzling pavement.

Another morning, as the traffic begins to roar, an Auckland morning.

Too bright in a matter of minutes.

He doesn't seem to notice.

My great love. My bridge to the outside.

My staircase, spiraled - to my own unknown dreams.

The one who knew me better than I ever knew myself.

The one who gave me my voice, the one who taught me.

The songs of endless summer, the blinding sunlight, and the breeze flowing through open windows.

Drive me through the hills, carved with a smoothly jagged knife.

Crafted with worn, dark hands; they sing to us of days never known, days gone.

Days when we never knew eachother, when you were younger.

Days when you felt like I did - alone, lost, and looking somewhere for some semblance of sense.

Where is the point? What is the point?

It doesn't matter when your hands are on the wheel.

This education I've recieved has left me empty.

Now I cry, spurned and helpless.

Did you ever teach me anything worthwhile?

Do you know that you broke my heart?

Eighteen and nowhere to go, but away from you.

All I want is to be held in your arms again.

The safety and the smell of your sweaty, sinewy body.

Held again, by the moments - just you and I and the road.

Flying over highways of thought. Dreamlike skies casting orange on us in the sunset.

Your voice spinning gold to my naive ears.

(I knew they were lies, open to loose interpretation.)

My deciever. My greatest love.

Now he breathes, notices no absence.

Does he ever recall this angry girl?

Did I break his heart?

He just keeps running. Foot after foot, gasping catching breath.

 Prayer after prayer resound in his mind.

He listened with breaking ears my confession about the man who began to steal my innocence at the age of six.

Chipped away, till there was nothing left but an ugly chaotic insanity.

It was something we tiptoed around, something we'd all much rather forget.

The last time I saw him, he seemed glad to say goodbye.

I'm sorry for all the trouble.

Perhaps we'll cross paths (in the aching Aotearoa sunset that sings with lost love).

Maybe I'll be able to fall again, so completely in love with him.

I still go there - the place amongst the trees - a black road - chiseled between the rock faces of a gorge.

He's there. Silent and waiting.

~

My Father gave my sister this album for her fifteenth birthday. I stole it, like I stole everything from her.

I grew and changed to Joni's ancient moans and to her friendly calls to arms.

Her secretive, mysterious tales painted my unbearable summers till I was desperately, gaspingly free.

But now all I can do is listen; and yearn for my captivity.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns was released by Joni Mitchell in the winter of '75.

It features such greats as Graham Nash and David Crosby singing backup vocals; and James Taylor on guitar. You know, back when they were cool... ;)

This shabbily written piece of nonsense is for my Dad, who introduced me to all things that really matter in life.

I love him so much my skin hurts.

I hate him so much my skin hurts.

And I miss him.

C

My head whirls with electron orbitals. The elements that make me, make you.

Just a bunch of atoms. I like that. We're nothing really - we're simpler than we think.

A nourishing thought.

I walk down 65th in the blistering rain and wind, a cold hand shakily clutching my umbrella.

I always feel resigned to how much colder it is in Greenlake than it is in beloved Fremont.

Only a 15 minute busride away, and I'm staring at piles of ice on the sidewalk - from the snow that has already disappeared from our paths and driveways - back in sunny, sunny Fremont.

I know nothing about biology. I'm starting from scratch. Studying from an ancient textbook that Ben bought the year I was born. Yes. He was out of college when I was born. :)

I wish I'd paid attention all those very few years ago when I was in high school. Two years of staring out windows in despair, my long, greasy hippy hair hanging around my thin face. Not listening to Mrs Reynolds, because I didn't have an opinion on her. She was just - blank in my mind.

She taught us the periodic table, to the tune of the alphabet song.

'Hydrogen helium boron beryllium oxygen magnesium - AL-U-MINI-UM!'

I've retained nothing much. Just the smell of the old tables in the science classrooms. Just the feeling of being left behind by the kids who applied themselves, who miraculously (or so it seemed) understood.

Bunsen burners and petri dishes. Microscopes. Staring at the fog outside, the drizzle rain, longing for something else - to not be me.

If I give you one of my electrons, we'll have an ionic bond. You and I and table salt.

I'm only on the first chapter of Ben's mouldy old textbook, but I'm already feeling a little disenhearted. College seems so very far away, so very unattainable. I'll need to work fulltime while I go. That's okay, but it's the job that's not.

It's the job that's nonexistent. The empty bank account. The few cents to my name.

One day, I'll get there - I promise you! One day, I'll know the difference between all sorts of atomic bonds!

I'll be rich with knowledge, I'll have a degree, and I'll have a little self-confidence to my name.

Today in therapy, I worked through a memory of my sexual abuse. I told this particular memory over, and over - and then again. And again.

To be de-sensitized.

I was more concerned for my therapist than for myself. How many times can you listen to people repeating, endlessly - their memories of abuse and neglect? How does she not go crazy? How does she not see the people around her, and not venomously hate them for all the terrible things each of us has done to one another?

Over and over again.

'How did you feel at the time?'

'Powerful, almost grateful I was the center of someone's attention.'

'How do you feel now?'

'Strong.'

'How did you feel at the time?'

'Irritated, annoyed. I wanted him to stop.'

'How do you feel now?'

'Afraid, disgusting, ashamed.'

'How did you feel at the time?'

'Angry, helpless, weary.'

'How do you feel now?'

Broken, grieving, a screaming child in my stomach and chest.

'I feel disgusting. My skin is crawling. I feel uncomfortable in my own skin.'

Over and over. And all I can do, is sit captive, eyes closed in her office.

Cars pass outside the window.

I'm tired, oversensitive, I could fall asleep if I turned the lights out in my mind.

But eyes opened again. And we scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday, when I'll brave the Greenlake icyness once more. Underdressed, shivering as I wait for the 26 bus to hurry up and come get me.

Worrying once again, about how little I know about biology.

Worrying that I don't entirely comprehend all this chemistry stuff - it's like math, it's just too logical for me.

I like to complicate things.

Then again, all I am is a bunch of atoms, and all you are is a bunch of atoms.

These songs come to you from Rex, a Brooklyn band from the 90s. C is their second album, and cited to be their best, though for me, this awaits to proven.
They were Curtis Harvey, Phil Spirito and Doug Scharin.
There isn't a whole lot of info out there on the internet about them. I do know from my super-sleuthing that they were an invaluable part of the Slowcore movement, and that this album came out in '96. The rest is sort of mysterious and murky, and no - there were no music videos made, so we 21st century lot are left with our imaginings set to these lush songs. I have no idea what became of them post '98. Where ever they are I hope they're happy.

I'm very glad that the atoms and molecules that make up each member of Rex decided to covalently bond in a non-polar sort of way, and create this absolute beauty. It is simple, but not minimalist - it is extraordinary, yet understated. Complete and utter stunningly bad 90s hair awesomeness!
Enjoy.