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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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From One Demon To Another (Letter To Sophistica)
Dearest Sophistica, We'll come around in a moment to all the things we need to come around to, including Mr. Yahoo's recent attempts to go legit, but first I have a question for you: Has it ever happened to you that someone, however innocently, stabs you in the heart with a statement, a sentence, a simple collection of words? You can feel it going in, you accept the hurt because you can�t do anything unacceptable, you can�t scream or cry or lash out. Has it ever happened to you? I�m sure it has. So I have to ask, what is the record�either official or your own personal record--for how many times can you take that statement out, pull it right out of your chest, out of your aching heart, and shove it back into your heart and get hurt all over again? How many times can you use it to hurt yourself? How many times will it work? How many times can you take it out and put it back and still have it hurt? Is there, like the infamous Tootsie Roll pop question of how many licks it takes to get to the center, a specific number of times that a statement like that will work, or is every statement different? And then, if you�re really good�if you get really good at this game�you can even play it right in front of the person who just stabbed you in the heart and see whether you pull their words out and shove them back into a new spot, an unhurt-until-right-that-moment spot, and do this over and over and convince them, the other person, the person who just sliced into your heart, however innocently, that they haven�t really hurt you (or, if you're really good, you can keep them from noticing that their words just left a gaping hole in your chest). You can do things like say, �Well, I�m glad to know that,� or, �It�s good that we discussed this.� I was watching Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle last night. (Have you seen it? See it.) And there�s the scene where Dorothy Parker�s fallen in love with the married man and she gets pregnant and then finds out that he�s cheating on her too (with an actress played by Gwyneth Paltrow of all fucking people. I mean, who could compete with that?)? And later, after he�s dumped our dear Dottie for another woman, she meets up with him at a party and she says to him, �I�m sorry I ever learned how to take my clothes off.� (And that�s an immediate forfeiture of the game, that is--admitting that, I mean--as far as I�m concerned, but how difficult it was to not head straight for that line as though it were some watering hole in the desert that I was traversing at just that moment. I so wanted to use that line, it was such a perfect feed, such a perfect, �Line!� line, the way actors yell it out during rehearsal when they�ve forgotten what comes next.) Instead of yelling though, I sat there and thought of Magdalene's most recent diary entry, which, in addition to chronicling the latest in her premarital affair, has her admitting that I was, to her, a kind of addiction. An addiction that she had to break. She actually uses the word "addiction" too, dearest. And after reading that, how can I ever trust karma again? How can I say that I don't deserve a knife-in-the-heart-like statement? Was I unduly cruel to Magdalene and thus deserving of cruelty?Did I slice her heart with what I intended to be the best of intentions? Did I hand her a situation that she had no recourse but to use to keep cutting and cutting and cutting away at the parts of herself that wanted and deserved and expected to be loved and appreciated? And then I open my yahoo account to send this to you and I find waiting for me some bulk mail from Weight Watchers (who demand your email address in exchange for a perusal at their site) only to find that I can improve myself in ten different ways WITHOUT SURGERY. And I can add one to the list of ten, because it's not surgery exactly when you cut out your own heart with someone else's words, is it? It's more like performance art for one. A single serving sized performance art piece. Yoko Ono never had it so bizarre--not in public anyway. And did I ever tell you that I once, as a New Year's Resolution, resolve to learn to love Yoko Ono? That was seriously one resolution that I tried to keep for a long, long time--not like that silly "I'll lose weight this year--really!" resolution, but one that I approached very conscientiously, very purposefully, and one at which I failed very miserably. And what did I learn from that? Well, for one, I learned that you really should never resolve to bend your heart to the tune of a biwa. Talk about performance art. I'm becoming quite the expert. And enough melodrama--however mellow-dramatic I wanted it to sound. I forfeit the match willingly. I want to talk of other things. I want, for example, a doctor update. What is going on with your quest to find appropriate healthcare without having to resort to a sock-puppet lawyer or tape recording every visit you make to your "doctor"? I am still immobilized with utter disbelief at this woman's inability to take seriously the health of her patients. Maybe I want to live in an ideal world, but I think you might have better luck with someone who is committed to the sacrifice of live chickens for all this woman seems to understand about science and/or modern health care. (And I realize, too, that I just insulted witch doctors everywhere by comparing them to the kind of care and concern expressed by your health care professional, but I'm throwing caution to the wind when it comes to my judgment of this doctor of yours.) So, update please. And x? I spoke to him on Saturday. Un-fucking-believable. That is all I have to say on the matter. I sputter otherwise, and I can't have that happen today of all days, when the word of the day is "self-control" (because you need that kind of discipline when you're performing self-surgery, however performance art-based it is or needs or seems to be). Oh, god. Why didn't the Aka just finish the job when I handed him the knife the first time? Yours in wonderment, Sub.
More lies:
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