Sunday, June 20, 2010

Spazzmatic fingers are trying to steady themselves in the warm space between here and my low ceiling. I see no calligraphy obsessively scrawling itself out on the invisible parchment I keep in front of me. I hear a shrill harmonica trying to make itself known, but I don't have any extra space in my ear canals.  I do feel the pointed heels of a Harlequin girl standing on my collar bone. She's taking in long drags of what smells to be foreign smoke, laughing while I try to settle into something more serious. Her painted lips don't part, but she's making her presence and her intentions obvious. She's preaching single-mindedness. I wouldn't mind listening to her sermon if it didn't distract me from being a habitual thinker, criss-crossing different optic paths every other day. But she is the only one I find myself talking to; it's a one sided conversation with a silent clown. If I starve myself of her influence, I feel like I used to; a super charged version of a teenage girl who does impossible things. But if I give in to her crooked smile, I am hoisted up into this parallel universe where there is nothing but limited speaking and infinite physical contact. I'm going to let her stay on my shoulder for a while, kicking up her fishnet legs, hissing at intellectual pursuits. I enjoy being purposefully useless, with no dancing calligraphy making it hard to see in front of me. And, it steadies my hands.

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