Follow your bliss...

Modernist Short Story

Sun, 10 May 2009 03:50:13 GMT

Xenophilia

By Kristi LeGore

I was a shriveled-up parasite with alien features. A shrimp-shaped sponge curled up in myself

Floating limp in the sea.
I was one me.

It was dark every day. I counted on my translucent digits two-hundred fifty-seven twenty-four hour eras of darkness. I remember the first instance of color that invaded my liquid chamber, only a mere sixty-four eras after I gained consciousness of myself.

One day I saw light.
Little particles of white.
Falling snow upon my embryo.

◦

A bush of Afro-American hair was hunched over a mirror as a woman performed a
bronchoscopy on herself with a length of straw. Like a prize pig she snorted and dragging the palm of her hand up her face she wiped her nose. Like a house cat bathing herself she lapped her paw clean with a blotchy tongue and reclined her head back to have a face-to-face with God. “Ah melum alagh,” she praised Jesus, “grah ahh la,” she thanked him for this daily bread and when she tired of him she performed the ultimate gesture of disrespect. The Afro-American rolled her eyes so far backward that even the all-seeing Creator could perceive only their whites.

Not to be outdone God opened his mouth so wide that the skin between his lips split and the blood ran upward through his nostrils and filled his eyes. He wrapped his hands around one leg, starting at the thigh, and applied so much pressure that he crushed his femur. In some Italian city a volcano erupted and thousands of nameless people were charred and burnt alive like little insects drawn to light. God continued this process down the whole of his leg until he reached his fibula. He threw his limp leg behind his back and brought it forward with the force of a whip on a slave's back so that the bones shattered upon meeting the ground. In a city of Spaniards twenty-some bombs fell on the heads of innocent civilians and appendages rained down like confetti in celebration of war. When his leg was limp as rope God stuffed the crippled limb into his mouth and swallowed it down and his throat swelled like a snake digesting prey. Somewhere an innumerable number of Jews were gassed in chambers disguised as showers. God consumed the whole of himself until nothing but his swelled head remained floating in darkness. His jaw tensed as he stretched his muscles and his veins burst under the pressure and inching his bottom lip upward he inhaled his forehead and vanished. In the end there was nothingness.

The Afro woman, the sole witness to God's last supper, cannibalistic as it were, managed gurgled noises like a feral animal before everything went dark. Her body fell unconscious into the lap of her Caucasian lover and her belly rose and fell with her breath. The pocks in the white man's arm, if you connected the dots, looked just like the Virgo constellation. When he lassoed a rubber rope tightly around his arm the blue of his veins looked like wisps behind the celestial formation. Of course he thought of the holes in his arm as nothing more than proof of his masochism and begrudgingly received the way people tried to breath magic into every ugly thing. Hise own idea of magic came in the form of a pill and he melted it down in the depression of a spoon and drew it in to needles and kept his track marks fresh in protest of naive disciples. In a corner of the room black men of a spiritual nature smoked herbs of enlightenment in hopes of meeting Jah, whom they believed to be the true Jesus Christ as opposed to the Catholic forgery.

◦

As the temperature rose I began to wonder if my mother was a poor host. It became so hot I feared I would begin to melt and return back to the amorphous shape I once was. I had not known fear before and suddenly I was in a state of paranoia. I waved my hands in front of my eyes and my familiarity with myself was lost as my vision was blurred. I saw my hands in choppy slow motion pass before my face. I knew nothing of my heart before then, all I knew was that at some juncture I must have swallowed some living thing 1/100th my size. Suddenly the little speck of dust that once pulsed softly inside my chest was booming with such power I thought I would seizure. I was panicked and all of my thoughts raced so quickly I almost did not notice the smoky red cloud encompassing me. The devil himself was the morsel I swallowed and not a heart at all and he metamorphosed into vapor and forced his way out of me through route of my nostrils.

When the panic subsided and the devil had left me I wished to know this experience again but with my newfound preparedness. No proceeding snowfall yielded exactly the same results and over time the jolt the flurried miracle gave me faded. The snow stopped falling altogether shortly thereafter and the climate of my spongy spheroid changed. Sometimes with no perceivable warning I would get a rush and other times things became so clouded with noxious smoke I could not see. One day in September I was born out of my mother's uterus with a coloring my mother described as “Straight from the Lord's palette.” My father made that disrespectful gesture. From that day forward I sought the thrill of snowfall.

◦

At eighteen years old I learned to make a euphemism out of my condition. I am a coin. I am a story. I am a case of Jekyll and Hyde. People thought I was posing riddles and no one sought to solve me save for my parent's Rastafari compatriots. I had inherited the mixed skin and mixed creed of my parents' and the men and women who smoked for Jah saw me as some embodiment of their religion's history. An African through and through, “Dee ferst o dee Afreecans” they would say through clenched teeth as they inhaled the healing of the nation and smoke escaped from their flaring nostrils. A true African contaminated by “dee white man touch.” On the days when my mind belonged with them we sat in a circle formation passing around an ornate pipe and consuming cannabis. The wise old Rastafarians throwing themselves back with their arms spread wide and ready to take flight to commune with an Afro-Jesus in a holy field sometimes looked crazy to me. They looked fit to be exorcised as the whites of their eyes had taken on a constant tinge of pink and sometimes they reminded me of demons. My father denounced their crazy gibberish and on days when my mind belonged with him we sat in the corner of the living room smoking pot rolled up in crude toilet paper. My father favored his pot over the cannabis of my spiritual brothers because pot was “cannabis without the illusion of magic,” just the way he liked it. Magic complicated things, created illusions, and illusions were no better than lies.

◦

A balding man in the early years of his life once told me the wisest thing I ever heard. Examining the shape of his skull with the curiosity of a fledgling phrenologist my eyes regarded every bump and I felt my optics tremor in response. I lingered over his cranial bone trying to take measure of it and was satisfied. I imagined my blind white hands translating the braille of the bumps and lumps that covered his scalp. I would translate a pimple here or there into stress, a swelling into sexual frustration, a knot into abuse, and some indentation into vice because it is the lowest and realeist mark of a man's true character. The intangibilities of his character, of his wisdom and spirit, would remind me that life's beauty is found veiled behind gritty imperfect exteriors.

My black mind ponders religion and the beauty behind painting a Rastafarian god with the face of a ghost and calling him Jesus Christ, stripping Jah of his name to convert him into a tool of oppression. My white mind tries to smother these thoughts and I admire that he does not try to smother me while I lay sleeping. He tries to smother the lingering hints of equality between us and I am glad that he hates me for my beliefs rather than my skin color. I am glad that he hates the beauty within me and does not seek to translate the texture of my locks. His pale palm upon my sable scalp and matted dreads offers no further understanding, with not an inch between us we are alienated. Myself, split between two histories, we come to the agreement that deception is the ugliest apparatus masking the beauty of the physical world and bastardizing the spiritual one.

The shaman passed his hand over a group of many and deemed them ewes and rams. “Look at them,” he commanded under his burlap robe, “they are all sheep and you are the master of your own world.”

◦

I have lived my life. I have lived seventy years plus two-hundred fifty-seven days that I vividly remember while everyone else seems to have forgotten. I have memories and hallucinations and illusions as real as any idea. Was I a master of my world? Would I have rather been a sheep? My African brothers and I were a tribe of goats. Sheep travel in flocks to protect themselves from predators. They are almost as all-seeing as their God and their beady little eyes, full of fear and belief, see nearly 270۫ before they ever turn their head. The whole flock of them will walk backward so as to keep an eye on the enemy, this was as easy for me as walking with a mirror in my outstretched arm. And while I am content some days not to bother sheep would rather climb uphill than down, perhaps to meet their maker, as God dangles salvation in front of their noses from a gilded fishing pole. Shall I allow this illusion to pull the wool over my eyes? I am content.

There is nothing waiting for me. I have nothing to fear, nor anything to anticipate. I am at peace. Some necromancy left my mother always babbling in tongues while my father's liquid hocus pocus left him quiet. How am I to be left? I have known my obscure roots. Lived days as a man, a woman, black and white, a spiritualist, an atheist, a goat or sheep,

Lived days as two but never one.
Lived days as We but never Me.

◦

One last hurrah. I roll some powder into a ball of tissue and swallow. The taste is bitter and I have the urge to regurgitate. I swallow it down. On the days when I belonged in the circle of the Rastafarian search for enlightenment not once did I have hallucinations of Jah. But I believed. Now I am stepping away from the drugs of ceremony. A vision before all is black. I have deja vuous of the sensations of my fetus during the first snowfall. My body trembles. Life is in slow motion. I free myself of my father's inhibitions and my mother's naivetety and allow myself to be. I see my mother's stomach large and dark. Her belly button protruding like a release switch. It is almost transparent. I see myself. A little waterglobe. She laughs at a joke my father tells and her belly bounces up and down and the snow dances around me. Ha. Up. Ha. Down. I see myself being born. My body shaking. Not like a normal baby. Born with an Achilles heel. A fatal flaw. A hero. God. There is earth. A tangible thing. A quake, a tremor just like me, some natural disaster (but what is natural about disaster?) splits the world in two.

◦

The world is shaken like me. We are one in the same. I am the world split in two. I am not the master of my world for I am the world incarnate.

Do I dare disturb your universe? Unafraid to take your mind in the palms of my disembodied hands and jar it with violent shakes all the while whispering softly, but with conviction, in your temporal lobes, “Tuam libera mentem!” False promises that libera mentem will save your soul. I would ask that you become a goat like me and kick dirt and mud upon the sheep until their wool is black as soot. Together we could free them of their bondage by making them black like Us. Make the flock of them roll in the ashes of the Unforgivables, the Heretics, the Sinners, the Outcasts, the Castaways,

the Pariahs and the tragic Eves.
Each one fit to be You or Me.

There was no Jah Rastafari, nor Jesus Christ, nor Allah, nor Buddha, nor Brahms, Vishnu and Shiva, there was only We.

And everyone sat at the edge of the abyss,
Fishing for something that did not exist.

∞

Skipping class to write a paper...

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:43:06 GMT

The library is a great place to watch people behaving like animals.

Weird. Crazy. Scary. Animals. Putting their hands out to strangle librarians.

Everyone loves Magical Trevor!

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:38:08 GMT

I recently learned a new word; coprophilia. I recently learned that, supposedly, James Joyce and Jonathan Swift were coprophiliacs...and Swift has a whole collection of scat poetry, which I am unfortunately unable to find. I wanna check that shit out! No pun intended, honest.

Bah, I have to pack. I'm leaving for Virginia tomorrow night after work and staying until Friday night. I'm excited! And exhausted! But mostly excited! I need to charge my mp3 player, music definitely eases the four hour commute.

I stumbled upon this interesting lady, Emily Wells, might have to download some-a-that for the ride:

A Spanish Love Poem

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:07:13 GMT

Yo no te quiero así,
Yo no te quiero más que la luna y las estrellas,
Pero tal vez te quiero un poco más que esta tierra pequeña

Yo no te quiero así,
Yo no te quiero para siempre,
O tan profundamente como los océanos donde se perdió la ciudad de Atlantis,
Pero quizás yo te amo en este momento,
O por una hora,
Con un amor tan profundo como mi taza de café

Yo no te quiero así,
No quiero dar a luz a tus hijos
Y darles nombres tontos que escogí
Cuando tenía trece años,
Pero tal vez podemos adoptar un perro
Y pasearlo juntos mientras el sol sube o ajuste

Yo no te quiero así,
No voy a casarseme contigo
En un lugar exótico
En mayo
Con nuestros amigos y familiares viendo
Pero tal vez podemos hacer una promesa en el parque un día,
Bajo un árbol,
A toleranos con amor,
Siempre que podemos

Yo no te quiero así,
Pero tal vez - te amo
En esta manera.

Tribe of Ukrainian Fighting Women

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:55:29 GMT

150 Tough Ladyfolk

Crime: A Cross-Cultural Consideration

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:08:33 GMT

"Up to this point your post is the one with which I most agree. The American mentality is individualistic and the idea of community is lackluster at best. "Survival of the fittest" best describes the way people today live their lives. Somehow I still believe that people are innately good, but the world we live in is cut-throat. Especially when everyone is clamoring at once to get up the social ladder.

The wealthiest of the population aren't willingly charitable, if it weren't for the government forcing taxes to support social programs there are many people well-to-do who wouldn't throw in a dime. How sad that a government has to intervene to force people to be humane and support/care about one another. United we stand is a joke, mostly everyone is looking out for him/herself. But that is what we have been taught, if we acted otherwise we wouldn't survive.

America stresses the values it does (wealth, success, and power) because it's not a realistic possibility for everyone to achieve. The standards for doing so have gone up exponentially and if you are not born with a silver spoon in your mouth it is near impossible to gain the status held by the wealthiest percentage of this country. But that is how this country works, it is about control. If you, me and John Doe held the same wealth and power as any political figure or billionaire what means would there be to control us? Everyone can be bought and sold, getting away with crime would merely become a bribing game.

America is, to its natives, the greatest country in the world but the population has become naive through its isolation. To me it seems unforgivable that a country with as many resources as ours would let so many people suffer in poverty and unlivable conditions. It seems strange to me that in all the years poverty has grown as an issue no solution has shown itself. We can go to the moon, clone cats, and treat cancer but we can't offer livable conditions for our people? I don't buy it, I know it sounds like I am spouting conspiracy theory, but the lower class is a lot easier for a government to control than the upper class with its power and connections.

Anyone and everyone can commit a crime under the right circumstances. Some people do it for the thrill, others out of necessity. There are too many possibilities to go around making blanket statements and blaming poor morals. I think you will find very few people who share the EXACT SAME moral code. What is true for one, is not so for another. Abortion and gay marriage have become issues of moral debate in this country, "morals" are not cut and dry or universal. In Amsterdam prostitution is legal, and in some countries so is the sale and public use of marijuana, one person's opinion does not validate or void the opinion of another. Further, I could never condone forcing a country of unique individuals to abide by the same beliefs, with the little freedom we have left we should hold onto it a little tighter.

I think it's sad that if someone doesn't conform to the majority's way of life all of a sudden they are "lazy" and "immoral," everyone has a story. Some people choose life on the streets and others are victims of poor fortune. Maybe because most of us are middle class we think we understand how tough life can be, but we have no idea. We've lost our sympathy because we've been fed the idea that someone eating out of a dumpster has the same opportunities as someone who can afford the most expensive delicacy. The next job interview you go to try landing a job wearing the most beat-up thing you own that reeks of the city street and find that it's not so simple to live up to the standards of the 'American Dream.''

"La Maja Vestida" by Francisco de Goya

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:16:18 GMT

Ella se llamaba Malena la maja y era una marinera en el barco que se llamaba La Marrón. Ella era una mujer que robaba a los pasajeros y después tiraba los cuerpos por la borda. Ella se divertía su vida en el mar hasta un día ella conoció al Príncipe de Lamballe, Leandro el Ladrón. Con cada día Malena se enamoraba de Leandro. Ellos hicieron un plan para huirse de La Marrón y casarse. Uno noche Leandro y Malena saltaron en el mar y nadaron a la orilla. Ellos cambiaron sus nombres y vivieron vidas ricas y contentas y juntos robaban la población de Valencia.

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:43:29 GMT

Drawings with LSD.

If you wait too long for the perfect moment, the perfect moment will pass you by...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:28:42 GMT

I don't know why I find this so addictive, but I do.

5 days left of actual in-class time...where did this year go? I'm exponentially excited for next semester, I even got out of General Astronomy (which I heard is God-awful) and am instead taking Screen Writing. About this I'm pretty freakin' stoked. I'm also stoked about how my grades are shaping up so far -- I fo' def did amazing on my British Literature mid-term. Woot woot, raise the roof. :)

Believe in your dreams. :]

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:08:14 GMT

"The Aspidistra Flies" by Stars

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:36:30 GMT

All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't hide my love for you
All the rain on Thamesside
Couldn't stop shining through
I dreamt of you last night
Lying next to me in blue
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't hide my love for you

Run to the window and call out my name
We'll meet where the sun goes to hide from the rain
From the rain, from the rain

All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't hide my love for you
When everyone else is hiding
Rainy Sundays drunk at two

You'll whisper sweet lies to me
And one of them will be true
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't hide my love for you

The gloom of the city at evening is still
You whisper come to me
And I always will
Always will, always will

All the rain in this town
And still the sky is blue
Saint James Square is teeming with doves
And that sunset they flew

Across the darkening city
To an attic room for two
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't hide my love for you

I counted all the lights
They don't shine as bright
They don't pierce the night like you do
Like you do, like you do
Like you do, like you do

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:22:48 GMT

Long time no post. Thankfully dull days are not to blame, I've been especially busy and especially living lately. New possibilities abound and more often I've noticed the little (positive) changes taking place around me. Though it's hard to miss the negative, nothing is any worse than usual. My dad is home once again and so am I (back from Ocean City), but I'm occupied enough to not get caught up with the tension it brings. And of course being especially passive doesn't hurt much either.

My Spanish professor talked to me quite seriously this morning, I was up in the library almost an hour early for class and she presented me with a clipping from the school paper...It was about opportunities to be an English teaching assistant in Spain for 9 months. They offer grants so that everything is covered, and above that you earn some semblance of a wage teaching. That's a pretty hefty pro/con list to struggle with...I'm flattered she finds me so adept, but by the same token I'd also become a year behind with school. Either way, it's a pretty amazing thing to think about, as Profesora Castillo put it if I would do something like that I "could pretty much write my ticket anywhere." What a resume opportunity, and what a chance to become fluent...what a chance to give my grandmom a heart attack. :P

Anyway, this is amazing(ly out of my price range).

Peace and Cheerios! :]

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:39:59 GMT

Today I realized just how much fender benders suck. Poo on life and failing brakes.

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:10:26 GMT

Petunia?!?!

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:06:34 GMT

Going home tomorrow to pick up my last paycheck and pay my car insurance. Hopefully seeing a few people while I'm in the area, maybe try to see an early movie on Friday with my crew-peeps??? Let me know if you guys are free because I don't think I have your e-mail addresses! I'm thinking Juno, maybe? Perchance? Anything and everything works for me, I'm not picky.

Hung around with Chelsea today, though for some reason I didn't get out of bed until 1 o'clock when Valerie called me. I think I woke up, saw rain, and decided it was not worth the effort to pull myself out of bed after getting only a few hours of sleep. We watched The Office for a few hours and then took a long walk on the beach tryin' to pick up hunnies. XD There were actually a few surfers out on the water which was pretty cool, and the weather was fantastic. In fact, the weather has been pretty darn fantastic EVERY day we've been here thus far. Living here is essentially the best vacation anyone could ever ask for.

Chelsea and I got back to the apartment around 5:00 and when Laurie got home we had another "family dinner" as we watched the Style channel and chowed down on some ziti. I'm so glad that we all manage to get along so well and the one thing that I really value the most is that we're <i>always</i> laughing. It's such a delightful and refreshing feeling, like everything is good, all the time. It makes me realize what I felt was missing at home, as sad as it is to say.

I think I'll be here through February but after that I need to get back to my responsibilities and obligations. I know I'll miss the shit out of everything I've gained by being here but it's done a world of good for me.  I feel like a different person, I feel like a happy person, but most of all I feel extremely fortunate that I could take the oppurtunity to get away and get back to those feelings.

Ocean city's been "super cute!" :]

At least the police are right next door?

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:21:58 GMT

So I guess it was around 11 o'clock when four strangers were all set and ready to walk into the apartment...because Brandon's partner's secretary gave them a freakin' key...how quaint. And apparently the upstairs fire escape door was open?? Also comforting. I'm glad no one is trying to hassle any would-be sexual predators with little nuissances like locked doors or anything.

G-r-e-a-t...but all is well, thankfully.

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:32:59 GMT

The apartment (and my roomates) are so totally Ace of Base!!

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:41:29 GMT

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd --Voltaire

I'm finally leaving tomorrow. In a mere number of hours I am going to attempt to break whatever this hum-drum thing is into which I have fallen. I need a mental break. I need to be alone, in a way that just is not possible at home. Things have settled into contentment here, but I'm afraid it is because of wrong reasons and intentions. I need to get away and do something mentally productive. I want to write again. It's been so long since I've put pen to paper for personal reasons and I miss it. And I miss a feeling that I feel I've lost. There is a time I remember when I was always happy, it was unspoken and unconscious and I often took it for granted, never thinking it would have reason to leave me. But I've let myself fall into discontentment by neglecting things that were once important to me, I don't want to fall apart while there is still a time and a chance and a way to keep myself from going under. I have a lot of living that I want to do and I am set to start doing it. I want to be done with living in this box that has been created for me, I want weekend getaways to unfamiliar places and I want new experiences and...perhaps I am expecting too much, but I'm willing to bet that I deserve it now more than ever.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:11:51 GMT

If you lived in your heart, you'd be home by now.

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:13:48 GMT

So...life...has gotten significantly better since my last, short but angsty entry. I'm "moving" to Ocean City come January 1st, but I think my stay is going to be substantially shorter than anticipated.

I need some time away, to chill out, get myself back together. I plan on being obligation free until the 23rd when classes start again. I also plan on many trips back to good ol' Hammonton while all of my college kin are still around.

I've been realizing a lot of things lately and this new perspective is doing a good job of making me feel better.

That's good times.

And I've been having lots of those lately, between hanging out with Regina, and Tequila/Margarita Night and Sue's Christmas party...I feel like a completely different person since I've finally gained significant down time.

I think alot of my stress came from the fact that I was beginning to fear a breakdown, too much stress and emotional baggage and hardly enough rest. I've been feeling better on so many levels.

And I'm looking forward to Ocean City more than ever, looking at it as less than a move and more of a vacation, a hiatus from my day-to-day sentence.

On a lighter note, Christmas was muy excelente. I got a Nintendo DS! Badass! It's led to addiction, however, and my neck is stiff from being glued to it for so many hours. I also got a portable DVD player so I can easily kill all of the break time I have in between classes next semester. And I finally have snuggly winter clothes! Yay!

The days ahead are looking up, seeing as tomorrow is my last day at Walmart...you may applaud at your leisure. A break from the retail scene is most definitely in order, I need to nurture the itty bitty soul I have left. I am gonna miss the fuck out of my coworkers though, but that's what visitation rights are for! :]

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:42:49 GMT

Straight A's motha fuckah. :D

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:29:40 GMT

I'd hate to think that one day we all become our parents...but it's what she tells me...

I'm down with gravity....

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:17:24 GMT

Went to this cool music store in Voorhees last night with Val...I got 10 CDs for $13! I picked up a few artists I've never heard of, mostly chosen based on the merit of their coverart...if that's not a sound system (excuse the pun) for judging musical ability I don't know what is. We then proceeded on to Taco Bell, the Olympus of fast food...it was delicioso, as always.

Meh...work at 9:00.

Hahaha, this is way too true...

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:09:34 GMT

Sociology Project...

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:50:41 GMT

I think I'm re-creating the "Free Hugs" campaign for my Socy project...hopefully the strangers I hug aren't as creepy as the strangers in WalMart. :D