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in a dark clime
Sep. 5th, 2003 09:58 pmIs there a limit to how much a person can cry before they dry up, or pass out, or die?
If you try to strangle yourself, your body steps in to save you; you pass out and thus your grip loosens, you breathe again. You'd need a pair of hands which wouldn't have second thoughts.
To drown yourself, all you have to do is breathe out. Then you sink, and you keep on breathing out until you have to breathe in; you instinctively try to come up for air, but you can't get to the surface fast enough to do so. Your body intervenes too late. I can't help thinking that concrete overshoes would simplify matters somewhat; though of course there are aesthetic considerations. (There always are.)
Anything else involves the use of inanimate objects, things which are subject to our whim; with tools in our hands, we are all gods. The rest is silence: silence, and a sharp edge, and blood fanning out flames on the water's surface. Aesthetic considerations.
When I was a child -- I thought as a child, and so on. But the point I set out to make is that as a child I had a vision of a log cabin filled from floor to ceiling with fireworks. A vision of myself, anointed with petrol. A vision of the rasping invocation of the final flame. ... The reality would be a damp squib. It always is.
The other vision was slower, quieter. Frozen slowly. Darkened wholly. And I wore the prettiest clothes because I wanted to be beautiful at the end. The reality was full of teary phleghm and messy pain and retching guilt and dirty blankets, and it hurt, and it hurt.
Words are clean and can be manipulated. The body is chaotic, oozing; it observes no niceties, no boundaries. I wrap myself in words, binding the sterile signifiers tightly around the rotting, bursting flesh.
( soundtrack to a life )
If you try to strangle yourself, your body steps in to save you; you pass out and thus your grip loosens, you breathe again. You'd need a pair of hands which wouldn't have second thoughts.
To drown yourself, all you have to do is breathe out. Then you sink, and you keep on breathing out until you have to breathe in; you instinctively try to come up for air, but you can't get to the surface fast enough to do so. Your body intervenes too late. I can't help thinking that concrete overshoes would simplify matters somewhat; though of course there are aesthetic considerations. (There always are.)
Anything else involves the use of inanimate objects, things which are subject to our whim; with tools in our hands, we are all gods. The rest is silence: silence, and a sharp edge, and blood fanning out flames on the water's surface. Aesthetic considerations.
When I was a child -- I thought as a child, and so on. But the point I set out to make is that as a child I had a vision of a log cabin filled from floor to ceiling with fireworks. A vision of myself, anointed with petrol. A vision of the rasping invocation of the final flame. ... The reality would be a damp squib. It always is.
The other vision was slower, quieter. Frozen slowly. Darkened wholly. And I wore the prettiest clothes because I wanted to be beautiful at the end. The reality was full of teary phleghm and messy pain and retching guilt and dirty blankets, and it hurt, and it hurt.
Words are clean and can be manipulated. The body is chaotic, oozing; it observes no niceties, no boundaries. I wrap myself in words, binding the sterile signifiers tightly around the rotting, bursting flesh.
( soundtrack to a life )
