La Vie de La Chatte

Okay, this is a story I have to edit for the National Magazine, Polyphony. It's so bad, and the extended metaphors are so strange and confusing, that it's simply hilarious. It's not terribly long, and you just have to read this. (Sorry I can't do links with my laptop.)

Matris Nostrae Gremium[1]

“Embrace the challenge of identifying your admirer,” he scribbled across the sheet of blackened paper that chose to lay her head upon his lap. He continued writing, but he never duly expressed the emotions that she elicited. The glint of her eyes empowered him, seeping through the head of a needle into his arteries – something maternal, yet incestual: it reminded him of his mother’s lap. He sat there – as a child – enjoying her expressions of strength. He enjoyed her lap, and he missed it. However, he could never return, locked within the uselessness of the present, the fear of what was most likely to come. He looked beyond the corner, beyond the receptacle that withheld other sheets of paper – other darkened reminders of hate, across which he had written (no, across which he wrote) - about his love of the earth. “The unnecessary challenge of leaving his bed,” he scribbled again. “The longer I write,” he thought. Her eyes reminded him of his cat, who withheld the soul of his grandmother – every woman he had ever known, no… every woman he knew. “I haven’t known many women,” he thought. “A withdrawal into a world of celibacy,” his conscience reminded him. Yes, his conscience… independent of his body… beyond the magnetosphere of his will. Yes, the magnetosphere… he thought of his body as a planet that orbited some distant star, while his thoughts returned to the sheet of blackened paper that chose to lay her head upon his lap. His hand dragged the pencil across that darkened reminder, the pencil trying desperately to capture her image: a child chasing a butterfly. It never accomplished that: it only obliterated her face, shamed him. Nevertheless, the blackened sheet of paper spoke to him, offering a suggestion that sounded more to him like derision than anything constructive. “A bestial man,” he thought, looking at his reflection: the illustration he had drawn – no, he drew – upon the blackened sheet of paper. He took a deep breath, and he spoke to the boy (or the girl, he couldn’t identify gender any longer) sitting at the table beside him, “The ugliness of my words – and my images - paralyzes me.” The piece of blackened paper left his lap, and she (or he?) promised to return; however, he (or she?) never fulfilled that promise. The sheet of paper shed her (or his?) skin, became something he could not grasp. He wanted to draw him (or her?), desperately. Desperately, he wanted to draw her (or his?) blood: most likely the color green… He wanted to inject it into the earth; it would pass into the roots of a tree. After entering the roots - ascending into the viscera of the organic tower, climbing the locks of the foundation, and kissing the girl who held the strands of her hair like an elusive temptress – it would fill the cells of an orange, which he could eat. “Yes, eat… he would eat her,” he thought. The piece of blackened paper returned. However, it appeared to him as two individuals, each of an ambiguous gender, each of an ambiguous sexual preference. They asked him to follow them, but he rejected the offer. “I will not entertain you any longer, but… if you stay… I will decorate you with images of beautiful roses… and the wandering souls of everyone who bears my surname, but no longer inhabit this reality… we will recreate them, so that they can destroy us… no, so that they can end the pain that they wrought upon us – the curse of our identity.” Yes, our children will kill us: they will progress, while we will regress – desperately clutching (and yet afraid of) the things we learned as children. They will grow to dislike us, but – beyond death – we will enjoy an obliteration of all things; let them knife us. “An endless sleep,” he thought. The sheets of blackened paper accepted his offer, and they gave him their bodies. Into his mechanical pencil, he inserted a stick of whitened led; while he kept the attention of the sheets of blackened paper, he decided to draw their images as pieces of fruit. His subconscious quaked maternally: “I will rear you, but you must not depict them as humans because they are not.” No, he thought, “My left hand – seated at the right hand of God – will offer the sheets of blackened paper a piece of my genetic material. Hopefully, their hands – the fingers of each of which resemble one pedal – will not reject my offer.” He scribbled across the sheet of paper, and the lines of the illustration that followed the tip of the pencil across that void - that blackened sheet of paper - resembled another familiar figure: the body of a girl whom he once loved. He grimaced at the images of his mother that consequently filled his mind. “Freud,” he thought, while he completed the portrait of the face of the body… Yes, not the body’s face, but the face of the body. His mind had conveniently – no, his mind conveniently - stripped that face of any of her recognizable features. He loved her – but he could not identify her: “Something maternal, yet incestual: it reminds me of my sister’s legs. I love her. I really love her… damn her, and the things that she regards as taboo: I want to touch her, and I will.” He continued scribbling across the sheet of paper, which rapidly became the image of his mother; he could not resist the authority of his hand, which rendered an illustration of that lap where he had witnessed – no, where he witnessed – his mother’s expressions of strength. He could not avoid it: he loved her – his mother - too. He finished the drawing, and he presented it to the identical sheets of blackened paper. They disliked the portrait… Too distorted, they said. He couldn’t find a word that described the mixture of emotions that their assessment of his work elicited. They paid him, and they left him. Without adding to his collection of work – a collection that would remain trapped within his mind’s eye (incorporeal, if you will) as a result of the paralysis that he mentioned earlier - they abandoned him; they never remained to keep him company. Therefore, he remained childless, and the illness continued to mitigate his will to live. “Exorcise me of my impotence, free me of that demon. I can’t cure the illness of my identity while she inhabits my thoughts. I want my children to know something other than what I’ve known – no, other than what I knew.”

Yeah.

Ca va?: amused

OMG I am in LOVE with this college:

www.middlebury.edu

It's beyond amazing - this has the top writing program in the country! It even beats UNC at Chapel Hill. It is amazing. Mrs. Hancock told me about it today, and I was skeptical because, well, it's in Vermont. It's cold in Vermont...not to mention ridiculously far away (over 15 hours, people! Fifteen!!). But I can't help it. I'm just enamored.

I don't think Keegan is going to take this well. Of course, I haven't been accepted yet, but Mrs. Hancock thinks that the NCTE award will give me a significant edge. And this school doesn't care about SATs - they are more focused on my stronger points.

Oh, the writing program is blissful. It is bliss, I tell you. Bliss.

But why must it be so far away? *looks sad*

Ca va?: contemplative