fragments (why i cannot write)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that dtstant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

____Gabriel Garcia Marquez








cloudrunner, pinkyhonor

____i. (i hate summer)
a steady rash like the skin of a new snake being born inside me crawls under my armpits. across the expanse of my shoulder blades... and leaves spots and marks on my waist. chest. abdomen. my skin is always a little moist, like the snake i am soon to become, and movement becomes progressively more difficult so that soon i will renounce it to lie on the ground and slither around. i lick my lips alot, i feel they are always dry. i grow lovehandles, like some new puberty's breasts.
____i remember finally why i always hate summer. the Los Angeles summer was an anomaly in my life. a crisp summer, like something snapping cleanly into two pieces. like glass. or a fresh lemon chopped in half. a certain slant of unoppressive light- a gentle glide. fresh masking tape that sticks to anything. everything was clean and with delicate edges.
____the Australian summer is like living in someone's mouth. it is saliva and dogs humping your leg. it is a mouthful of dirt, a broken-down car on a nowhere highway. insects crawling on skin and mud and the air is soo humid you feel you are perpetually stuck in a misplaced cloud. a froth. mucus on every surface, you don't dare touch anything. the inside of cars are too warm with exhaled breath, and the outsides stink of decomposing skin.


____ii.
an elderly couple mows their lawn 4 times a week. the man topless, the woman in a sportsbra. their skin droops off their bones and any moment now will drag the whole lot of them back into a hole they've no doubt dug (and landscaped) for themselves out back. the scene reeks of postmortem.
____at lunch the woman finally straightens her back out enough to stand up semi-straight. she laughs outloud, turns to him, and says: hey remember that time-
(at which point he starts laughing too. (she laughing to hard to finish the phrase)

i don't think i can imagine anything more beautiful.


____iii.
his distended belly takes up half the car. his smell of cigarette smoke the other half. his watch is too bright a color of cheap, fake gold, and attracts soo much sun. out of the corner of my left eye i can see it slowly gathering momentum to turn into a star all on its own.
no no no. sometimes you just have to be that way. i can sleep anywhere. not in this car. too small. but in my other car. the one the fu*&ers stole... that one, i spent lots money on that one. i sleep in the back when i travel. i travel everywhere. Cairns. Port Douglas. Sydney. but sometimes you just have to be that way. save. i nod and drive on. he's right. why not? gave all that up years ago. the brothels and the hookers too. both. nodding. not sure. wouldn't have a clue. marijuanna. clubs. nah. enough. work all week, spend it on friday. nothing to eat saturday. what kind of life is that? not sure. wouldn't have a clue. i am political refugee. i can sleep anywhere. i nod. have you been back at all? yeah. about 50 times. really? yes yes. i used have more money, go back all the time. sleep anywhere. back of cars is best.


____iv.
i wake up and notice a strange blackness to my left. it glistens from behind a newly acquired skin of dust. i look up. it's a piano. i feel as though i have had someone sleep besides me all night. and morning is not soo empty as it usually is.


____v. (i am soo fu&^ing sick of this house)
the house wakes at 6. before me even. i stumble and open the door, and it takes on a life of its own after that. it creeks and wretches and spasms with sounds of wood snapping and metal grinding and tiles dropping and accented voices speaking. it exhales dust. everything dust. everywhere dust. and excretes shards of tile. builders' pencils. cans of RedBull and V. coke bottles half-full of red-cordial. drill bits under your feet, everywhere you walk screwdrivers and drill-bits. broken tiles. planks of wood. timber. the white plaster-dust of gyprock that will no doubt infest my lungs and eventually kill me. the walls have patterns of filled holes like a zebra. the house has its own life now, it's own color scheme. then there is the brown dust of sawdust from wood. the gritty toothlike dust of metal. more tiles, in haphazard pieces. tubs of paint, half opened, so an acrid smell has invested in the room. it is my room she says to me when i get in. not seeing myself fit enough to argue with a bucket of half-opened paint, i turn and walk another way. door handles sit mute on a counter top. the counter top is propped up on a cardboard box. LGK-R5447. regrigerator or something i think to myself. someone's left a fan on and it twirls the dust into eddies that would look beautiful if they were not darkening my skin and attracting all the bugs. the doors are open all day, every corner now has a resident spider. small bundles of acute angles stealing what little air is left. flying creatures live off sawdust and grow voices thick as wood. at night i swear i live in a forest.