I’m the one with a collection of mismatched suitcases and a collection of keys belonging to nothing I own. I’ve given away or lost so many things yet I still feel restless, as if there’s something I forgot to take leave of along the way — something that might be taken away by force or surprise. It’s a fear of mine. I assuage it by living close to the bones, nearer to starkness than satiety, yet there are times I’m still overwhelmed, even frightened, by how much I appreciate certain comforts: A hot bath, a warm towel, a soft bed, freshly laundered clothes, a sunny day, a hand that entwines with mine even if fleeting.

Everything goes away, eventually.  The only sturdy bricks in the foundation of any life are imaginary. The earth teeters and quakes, and shifting winds drive people in and out of hollow doors. Tomorrow may not be like any day we’ve ever known. It can bring tragedy or relief, laughter or pain, and there’s no way to accurately guess what might be on the horizon or in somebody else’s heart.

So I take the hot bath and grab the warm towel while they exist, while I can, and I’m filled with immense gratitude for the clean robe that hangs on the hook, even if the night is cold and my hands are empty.

Simple things are often the hardest to come by. I take nothing for granted except the transient nature of people, places, and things.

Prescience is a fool’s game, yet I keep one ear pinned to the earth, always, while the other stays aboveground. I feel a need to know what might come up from the surface as well as what might come crashing down.

Feel it, feel it, feel it. Close to the bones of the inner ear, vibrating down into the sternum, spreading across the ribs like a breath or a warning, it is the cadence of life on the farthest edge, with all of its unexpected twists and dull-eyed revelations. It’s the sparks that flare and burn, the silent revolutions, the wild heart, and the roar of every hope that’s ever been set free. It’s the seeds planted in the imagination, overgrown and uncultivated, left begging for the order of a tangible garden.

You know me.

I need a wide horizon and an endless day of sun. I need to hold a starfish in my hand and paint a mountain over my eyes. I need dirt and pine needles under my feet, and sagebrush that ambles across a barren desert, or cornflowers and daffodils that bloom in untouched valleys.

Nature never leaves. It cannot be lost or given away, and even its unpredictability comes as no surprise. It knows no malice or hunger. It doesn’t dream or love or hate or wish for better than what it has known. It wastes no time on tears, questions, ambitions, or fears. It simply exists, needing and wanting nothing more than it can provide itself.

Nature steadies the uneven plane of humanness.

I need a haircut, a rock, a bright day, and someone who knows me.

You do, don’t you?

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Her paralysis would go away slowly, beginning with a tingle in her numbed arms. She would be careful when shifting positions, not fully trusting that the snake wasn’t just hiding somewhere, like under the covers or under the bed. She’d roll over slowly, lifting the sheets and blankets and peeking underneath. If she found nothing there, she would hold her breath and, as silently as she could, bend herself into a frog position at the end of the bed. When she could no longer keep herself from inhaling, she would screw up her courage and jump as far away from the bed as she could. On hands and knees, she would crawl around her bedroom, looking under the bed and dresser, inside of shoes and toy boxes, to make sure the snake was really gone. When she was sure it was, she would she get back into bed, rolling the blankets around herself like a cocoon. Wound tightly, with blankets covering her face, her suspended heart would begin beating frantically and loudly, like popcorn in a hot pan.

It was so many years ago, but today Hester Price sits on a straight-backed chair in a darkened corner of her small apartment, waiting for something to go away.

The busybody neighbor stands chattering outside as usual, with a cigarette dangling from her whiskey-soaked mouth, and her ancient red poodle panting at the end of a green leash. Her drunken voice carries over the metallic screech of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. Even with the windows closed and blinds drawn, Hester learns that the hostile man in #12 — the one who leaves angry ALL-CAPS notes in the laundry room admonishing others for their failings — is still videotaping neighbors from his upstairs window, hoping to catch the perpetrators of unleashed dogs, crooked parking, and overfull lint traps. He has made it his mission to track down the rule breakers so that they can be punished and held to account.

It’s Thursday and soon the garbage truck will come, with its gurgling diesel engine and steady stream of warning beeps. The left side of Hester’s apartment will shake as the communal dumpster is picked up with metal claws and slammed back down to the asphalt.

As she does every week, Hester considers how much she has to throw away or give away. She thinks about going through cupboards and closets and boxes, but the task seems daunting. Nothing is rooted; everything is impermanent and scattered, like a ten thousand piece puzzle with no design.

Besides that, there is the whole matter of going outside, where there are snakes with cameras lying in wait; snakes with sweat-stained shirts and in crisp black uniforms; snakes that hate without reason and strike without cause. There are pits and pits and pits, and no way to avoid them.

The pits were always there, of course, but The Stalker took them out of the darkness. He shined a malicious light inside and forced Hester to look until she understood that all the excuses she ever made, and all the hopes she once had of escaping, were futile.

The Stalker was an ignorant man, a miserable, squat figure with a lisp and a hairy neck, who read Soldier of Fortune magazines on his lunch break and hawked conspiracy theories to whomever would listen. He insisted that his wife home school their children so that they would learn The Real Truth, like how the federal income tax is illegal, and the CIA killed Elvis. For two years, Hester deftly avoided engaging in small talk with The Stalker – it wasn’t hard since the phones were always ringing in the customer service department – but then one day he came to work particularly excited about locking his eight year-old daughter in her bedroom all weekend for returning ten minutes late from a Girl Scout meeting.

The world, The Stalker bragged, would be a much better place if all parents were as strong and intent on teaching their children responsibility as he was. His daughter needed to know that 5:00 meant 5:00 and not 5:10. Ten minutes spent dawdling on a sidewalk could lead to bad influences; drugs, boys, pregnancy. He wasn’t raising a slut.

“That’s insane,” Hester said. “I can’t believe anyone would do that to a child. I feel sorry for your daughter.”

The Stalker’s response was vicious and immediate. He screamed so forcefully that he drooled. Spittle ran down his chin and onto his blue t-shirt as he ranted about the Bible – spare the rod and spoil the child – and who the fuck did Hester think she was to judge him – and this is probably why she’s single – because she has no values and hates men.

After a two-day suspension for his outburst, The Stalker returned to the work floor, quiet but seething. He took to staring at Hester with such hostile eyes that she wondered if her call to Children’s Protective Services resulted in a visit. She complained to management, but was told that as long as The Stalker was doing his job, there was no rule against staring at someone, even if they did it aggressively and for long minutes on end.

The Stalker grew bolder, and began showing up to work early. Every day, Hester found something new missing from her desk – a stapler, a pair of scissors, a roll of tape, a tube of lotion, a paperback book – but no one ever saw The Stalker take the items. “You can’t accuse someone without proof,” Hester’s manager said. “If it’s that much of a concern to you, don’t keep anything personal in your desk.”

Hester found her car tires flat after work twice, and her sideview mirror torn off once. Lunches that she left in the cafeteria refrigerator were found in the trash. Her home mailbox was suddenly flooded with religious tracts and pornography. “You need to calm down,” said the manager. “At this point, it’s he-said, she-said, and I’m not going to take sides in what appears to be a personality conflict.”

It was the janitor who caught The Stalker pouring urine from a bottle on Hester’s phone and chair. The Stalker was fired then, and Hester went to court to get a restraining order.

“This is all a lie,” The Stalker screamed at the judge. “She’s an atheist who hates Christians! She’s a lesbian who hates men!”

The judge granted the order, but the piece of paper didn’t help her sleep at night. The coiled snake returned, but this time it never really went away. It hissed behind her shoulder even when she was awake, bringing with it every memory Hester had tried to shed from her past.

It doesn’t hurt that much. Don’t be a baby.
I’ll kill your sisters if you tell.
I’ll destroy you, I’ll ruin you, I’ll make you pay.
You’re in trouble.
You never know where I’ll be.
I’ll always be able to find you.
You can’t escape.

You’re in trouble, you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.

Hester sits with her knees drawn to her chest. The neighbor gossips, the garbage truck beeps, a dog barks, and nothing feels safe. Hester’s thoughts stutter and tremble. She feels the cruel futility of sand ladders and muddy ropes – of climbing and falling a thousand times only to be back in the same place. She’s exhausted. She’s ready.

She leans her head back and offers her neck.

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‡

1. Beyond the Crowd, Into the Fog, the Fragment of a Child’s Heart

The air is littered with a thousand distractions, and the ground beneath her trembles from the weight of the crowd. The dissonant hum of voices swell and swarm in the humidity, almost drowning out the decades that hover around the Elephant Woman like ghostly companions, whispering their stories and tending quietly to their scars.

There’s a foggy cloud of white that surrounds her, and this is where the Elephant Woman lives — inside the pale cool that keeps the clamor at bay, and the distractions to a minimum.

It is meant to be a shelter, but the cloud is still unstable, too often letting itself be carried away by whim or want of surprise. After all these years, there is still a fragment of a child’s heart that rumbles inside the one that is aged and weathered. It is this child’s heart that occasionally peers through the cloud curtain, hoping to see something new –- yearning to be enchanted by at least one more thing before it is pulled back into the safety of the cocoon.

It is the child’s heart that still surprises the Elephant Woman. Not that she has retained it, but that it is still so stubbornly resilient –- still bent on running down green hills, under blue skies, only to burst through shimmering mirages again and again, ending face down in the dirt.

Still, the Elephant Woman allows the child’s heart to exist as part of her own, not because it brings her joy anymore, but because it is innocent and without device. And even though it has never found a place outside its cage of bruised ribs, the Elephant Woman believes it should have.  It is this failure, above all, that she feels as both injustice and a regret.

2. The Skin & the Arrows

Outside of the cloud, nothing is predictable anymore. Affection, anger, tenderness, and so many other things have become arrows; randomly flying, skimming, piercing.  There’s a feeling of skinlessness among the crowd. Instead of a nakedness that might stand vulnerable but natural, there is the sensation of having been peeled back and rubbed raw.

The girl who paints the Elephant Woman’s face has black hair pulled back with a red ribbon. The tickle of the brush and the girl’s candy-scented breath feels more invasive than usual, and the Elephant Woman bristles, exhaling deeply as if to expand the white cloud.

The girl is biting her lower lip in concentration, and her hands feel stiff and unsure. The Elephant Woman stares at the girl, and sees in her nervous eyes only the desire to be friendly, to be liked. Suddenly, the arrow of intrusion becomes a protector, a mother — a strong desire to make the girl happy.

And she does. The Elephant Woman infuses joy into the girl until her head is tossed back with laughter and her face is beaming with confidence, but the effort is exhausting, and takes far more discipline than the Elephant Woman has at the ready anymore.

She knows, though, that she will always stand between the arrows and the innocent. Her nature is to fiercely protect what she values and loves, even when her strength is flagging.

3. Inside the Tent

The colors are bright, gaudy, and familiar. This has never felt like her natural habitat, but there was a time she felt braver here –- less gray behind the paint, more sure-footed and predictable.

On the sidewalk, a mother stands with a toddler on her hip. Both are wearing red coats with leopard skin collars. This is a detail that will stay with the Elephant Woman for the rest of the day. She will see the leopard skin purses, the leopard skin print of sunglasses, the leopard spotted shoes.  She will distract herself this way to avoid the overload of everything else. The thousands of hands, sticky, white, beautiful, stained with labor. The faces sagging with disappointment or overlit with excitement. The lost, bright, violent, happy, empty, soulless, tearful, and loving eyes.

There are too many arrows, all of them unpredictable.

There is a stampede left in her chained feet, but the chains are thick and heavy, and there really is no place left for her to go.

She thinks about leopards and their life in the wilderness, fighting or starving their way through a precarious life, and she realizes that life in captivity is not that much different –- it’s just a different fight, and a different type of starvation.

There is a freedom that the Elephant Woman craves, but having never known it she can’t give it a name. She can only imagine running, unchained, down a green hill, under a blue and golden sky.

4. The Things Left Undone Will Never Be Done

Late at night, she wraps the cloud around herself and her decades of  companions. She sways to one side then another, back and forth, until her skin falls back into place, and the child heart is cradled into the aging one.

She knows that soon the cloud will turn dark, and there will be no need to protect anything inside or outside of its shelter. The final night will fall, the last of the stars will be extinguished, and the last rattle of chains will be heard. The innocent girls with red ribbons in their hair will go on without her, barely remembering the day they were given the last of someone else’s love.

There are words that echo in the valley she runs towards. They speak of ignited hopes, half-sparked dreams, and new enchantments, but the Elephant Woman knows that she could live a whole other lifetime and never be done, so she doesn’t dwell on what she might have missed or left unfinished. Instead, she pulls the white around her and prepares for the silence and stillness.

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Dr. X smiles, but I don’t smile back. Not just because I think she has it too easy, which I do, but because there is a steel hook digging into my chest and it’s making me want to cry. I won’t cry, though, because crying makes me even uglier. My face squishes up, my lips get twisted, and my tiny brown eyes disappear. I don’t like to cry, but when I do, I want to be alone, where there’s no one around to ask questions, and I can bury my face into a pillow.

It’s stupid, anyway, the things that make the hook appear. Today it’s yellow skin. I hate my yellow skin. I hate that I am the color of jaundice, and dry leaves, and bile and piss. I hate that I don’t know the man who screwed my mother and left. I hate that my mother won’t tell me who he is – I want someone to blame. I want someone whose eyes look like mine to stare back at me and tell me that I am loved. I want someone to say that they are sorry and really mean it. I want to scream at someone and then be forgiven.

Dr. X leans forward, her sterling silver Cross pen suspended over a manila folder. One day, I want a pen like that, something heavy and opulent, maybe as a gift from someone who thinks my words are that important.

“Here’s what I think we should do,” Dr. X says. I look up from staring at my rough hands and yellow arms and see that she is still smiling. There’s a hint of white lace visible over the buttons of her freshly ironed blouse. Her breasts rise and fall like a metronome. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. When she blinks, her lashes almost meet the arch of her brow. The hook digs and digs.

“Since you’re not that comfortable talking, I think you should journal your history for me. You’re a writer, so that should be easy for you, shouldn’t it?” All the sudden, I get a sensation like lead in my veins. I feel heavy and stuck and halfway dead. Writing is the only thing I have left. It’s MINE – please don’t take it – it is mine, and it is untouched, and sometimes it is even beautiful. And when it’s not beautiful, it’s terrible in the way I need it to be, like a madness that keeps itself contained.

Dr. X’s silver pen taps the folder. My last name and first and middle initials are typed in crisp black letters on a white label with a blue stripe. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want pieces of my life split off and typed up in forms, or scribbled in shorthand.

My breaths feel ragged and there’s a sour taste in my throat. Still, she called me a writer, and I don’t know why her recognition stirs me in a way that feels hopeful, but it does, even if she didn’t mean it in the real, adult sense of the word. She only meant that she knew I wrote, not that I was any good at it, or that I might stand a chance in hell of actually ever becoming a real writer someday.

I feel stupid for realizing how much even Dr. X’s faint praise means to me, but under the lead and behind the hook, my nerves are tingling, and words begin to fly in my head, colliding and embracing and looking for a story. Beautiful words, like wild and oeillade, amethyst and bell. Burning words like love and anguish, hunger and fear.

Dr. X interrupts my thoughts. “Listen,” she says, “I don’t want you to worry about things like grammar or spelling, this is just between you and me – no grades, no judgments.”

Everything inside me freezes. Dr. X thinks I’m a moron. A dropout punk with dirty sneakers, a GED, and no future. I didn’t drop out of school because I was an idiot, but because I needed to live. I needed to be safe, I needed work, a roof over my head, and something healthy to eat. She should know that – I told her that already – but apparently she didn’t listen. Or she thought I was lying. The cold hook digs deeper, and in an instant I find myself hating Dr. X, and despising myself for liking her.

* * *

At home in my studio apartment with its dirty, threadbare carpet and faded sleeper bed, I sit at a Formica table and pound wire sharp letters down the throat of my Royal typewriter. At 3:00 a.m., I am sweating and the ashtray is overflowing, but the hook is still and the anger is gone. I open my windows and let the salty, chilled air of Santa Cruz wash over me. The 40 pages I have partially tucked under the typewriter rustle. I have no desire to re-read them. They already feel foreign to me, like some abstract theory or punishing science, but mostly I am afraid that I broke every rule and proved myself to be inept and unpolished. A common trait of the amateur, I once read, is the overuse of bruised adjectives and bloody metaphors, and I used both, too many times.

After a few hours of sleep, I spend two of my last three dollars on a black calligraphy pen from the drugstore, and I draw Dr. X’s full name, Lyndal Xavier, in Roman script across a white linen envelope. My history is not a gift, at least not one that’s worth much, but it feels like I’m giving something away, and I want it to look nice even if the inside is ugly. I drop the envelope off with Dr. X’s receptionist before I head to the plant where I work swing shift, counting out diodes and capacitors for the assembly line. It’s a mind-numbing job, but I’ve learned how to split my focus. While one side of me counts in sets of ten, the other imagines that the phone will ring and Dr. X won’t want to wait another four days to see me – she’ll want to see me in the morning – she’ll want to help me plan my future. She’ll tell me how to get out of this paper hair net and blue cotton smock and into college.

* * *

Dr. X doesn’t call, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from imagining all sorts of things, from an unopened envelope to a derisive laugh to a shrugged shoulder. By the time our appointment comes, I am high-strung and anxious, overflowing with hope and resentment although neither of these things make any sense. Dr. X isn’t a savior, she can’t rescue me, but I can’t help but think she knows the secret to things I don’t know. Like how to get out of a hole, not be nervous, and how to be the kind of person other people want to get to know.

Sandi, one of the ladies at work, called me book smart and life stupid, and I know she’s right. I had more books than I ever had family, and I loved my books. They never screamed, or punched, or called me names. Still, they didn’t teach me anything practical, like how to hem a pair of pants, balance a checkbook, or make a dinner that didn’t come out of a box. I taught myself all those things when I left home, but there are other things I just haven’t grasped, and it makes me feel stupid and inferior and set-apart.

I don’t think Dr. X – I don’t think a lot of people – know what that’s like, and it makes me feel resentful, even though it’s not their fault. That’s just the way it is, and sometimes I rub that feeling in on purpose for no good reason. I’ll go to a park or a mall and I’ll watch the mothers with the babies on their hips, or I’ll watch the giggling teenagers shopping at stores I could never afford. I’ll watch and let the hook dig into my heart until my eyes water. And then I’ll hate myself even more for never being the kind of child someone wanted to hold, or the kind of carefree, laughing girl with lots of friends.

Sometimes I walk through the suburbs in the evening just to see the bicycles abandoned in driveways, the lacy curtains pulled back from windows, and the girls in ponytails sitting on the sidewalks with buckets of chalk. I do it even though I know it will hurt. Some kids cut themselves, some do drugs, or drink. I just watch, and it’s a pain I give myself, except that I know that one day I want to be in one of those pictures, and not outside. I want to be in one of those yards with the green grass and yellow roses — in the house with the real beds and the fingerpaintings on the refrigerator. I think Dr. X must know how I can get there, and more than anything this is what I want from her. The secret about how to go from the outside in.

Dr. X holds my pages in her hand, and there’s a big silver clip that leaves them open to the middle. The middle is where most of the Big Ugly is, and I can see that she’s underlined sentences and written notes in the margin.

The questions come at me in rapid fire succession. Tell me when, Dr. X says, tell me how, how did you feel about it? (I told you, can’t you read?).

Were you angry, were you sad, you know it’s not your fault, don’t you? (Yesyesyes).

Your time is almost up, we’ve got a lot of issues to deal with, but first I think we have to deal with your depression.

I’m not depressed, I tell her. I’ve just become too aware of the world, and everything hurts. I thought I’d find peace out here but people hurt, and loss hurts, and not being liked hurts, and being alone every day and not knowing what to do or how to do it hurts. You can’t fix that with a pill.

Dr. X stands her ground, and hands me the slip. “It will take a couple of weeks to feel a difference, but take these twice a day, and Mila,” (she pauses, looks me deep in the eyes, as if speaking to an imbecile), “be-careful-not- to-skip-a-dose.” I watch her Laurel Birch earrings dangle as she waits for me to answer. Cloisonné and silver, a glittering bird amidst cheerless blue flowers. Dr. X’s eyebrows are arched like question marks as she waits for me to answer.

I feel pale and lost and angry and frustrated and broken and beaten and the hook digs and digs and digs and digs. I take the slip, but I already know I’ll be a no-call, no-show for my next appointment with Dr. X.

It’s a humble revenge, but I think – I really believe – necessary.

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The do-not-care was, at one time, intriguing. The shock of worldly disengagement, the thrill of social laziness, the nothing matters except me, us, and this moment of it, left me feeling displaced but somehow lucky –- as if I’d accidentally stumbled upon the cure for a lifetime of raw nerves and anxiety. Do not care. Nothing matters. Have a cigarette.

The Winston Woman loved her cigarettes. I remember how she’d tap the box swiftly several times against the palm of her hand, deftly remove the cellophane, and then tenderly slide one of the tender white bodies out of its shiny red dress. With a one-handed flick of an antique silver lighter, she’d set her nicotine love on fire, caressing it between curled fingertips as she slowly inhaled a smoky kiss. Sometimes there would be rings in the exhale, perfect o’s that dispersed, one right after another, into stratus-like clouds.

The smoke seemed to bring about an air of confession, but being guiltless left the Winston Woman with little of importance to confess. Instead, she’d speak of inconsequential things with a sweeping, heady charm. The meeting she forgot, the ninety shades of white she found at the paint store, the employee who made a show out of cleaning her desk and phone every afternoon.  The most hollow trivialities were fattened with dramatic gestures and laughter.  There was something tough-but-vulnerable about the Winston Woman that left me wanting to take her side in any argument.  Of course she missed the meeting – it was scheduled too early. Ninety shades of white were 88 too many. Her employee was an obsessive, anal-retentive prig.

And nothing really mattered during these storied times except her, us, our sequestered moments, and our silent partner — the ever-present, collusive cigarette.

There came a night, though, when the last of the nicotine lovers lay used and finished, tamped out in the dirt in front of a remote Montana cabin, where we had gone to escape from asphalt and traffic. A check of coat pockets, luggage, and the car came up empty. Unfortunately, it was after 11 p.m. and the nearest store, 35 miles away, was three hours past closed.

“We have to go,” she said.
“There’s no place to go. Nothing will be open until the morning.”
“Something is open somewhere, we’ll just keep driving.”
“Just go to sleep. We’ll leave as soon as we wake up.”

Her voice started rising and within minutes the carefully constructed Winston Woman began falling apart at the seams. She began to panic, her  voice edged with fear and anger.  She’d never be able to fall asleep. Who chose this place? It was hell. How could there not be one 24-hour market anywhere around?  Her brown eyes narrowed at me as if I’d somehow conspired to make her miserable.

We drove a choppy 22 miles on dirt roads in the black of night until we reached the highway, and then 53 miles until we spied the yellow lights of a sleepy all-night truck stop with an ancient cigarette vending machine in its lobby. I scavenged my car for change, finding just enough for a pack. On the drive back, after smoking one cigarette, the Winston Woman slept with her face pressed peacefully against the glass. Her do-not-care look was back, her features smooth and relaxed, her mouth slightly open as if anticipating her next fiery kiss.

The Winston Woman paid the cashier and my eyes followed her outside, where she slid into the passenger side of a waiting car. I saw her shoulder move in a familiar way as she tapped her cigarettes against her hand, and I realized that I did not miss her or her daily rituals. I picked up a bag of tangerines, a loaf of bread, and a pack of Marlboro Lights, and then fed my change to some worthier cause on the way out.

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Do you know that Wim Delvoye has a farm in China where tattoo artists cover pigs in elaborate tattoos? They put the pigs on high tables where there is no chance of escape, and spend hours puncturing them with needles.  Afterwards, they show the pigs in art galleries and exhibitions.  People show up – they pay to see this.  The pigs then get slaughtered, and their skins are sold to the highest bidder.  Delvoye, whose other art includes birdhouses dressed in leather, and x-rays of people taken in the act of coitus, has been wildly successful.

There are no accidents, everything happens for a reason, life is a folly, a fool’s game, there is no rhyme or reason.  Accidents happen,  buck up, be strong, find your bootstraps. You’re on this earth for a reason, better days are coming, look ahead, don’t look back, learn from your mistakes, learn from history. You’ve got to stand up, stand tall, back down, back off, be gentler, take some pride, you’re too proud, don’t be so arrogant. Look out for #1, remember there’s only one you, don’t be so self-serving, remember you’re not that special.

The other week, a 13 year-old Somali girl was raped.  When her family filed a complaint, they sentenced the girl to death by stoning.  They buried her in dirt up to her neck, and let a group of men and boys throw rocks at her until she was dead.  I know, it’s the culture, right?

You’re too strong, it’s not all about you, no woman is an island, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, stay strong, be stronger, tomorrow’s a new day, things will look different in the morning, get real, face problems head-on, think of something else, think positive, luck will come, think it and be it, the world is your oyster, the world doesn’t revolve around what you want, give yourself a break, put your nose to the grindstone.

Right here, in America, a woman didn’t want to be with her husband anymore, so he threw acid in her face.  She lost her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth. That’s not our problem, right?  I know. The thing is, see, it really is. . .the same human impulse to injure someone, to leave a punishing mark, exists on a smaller scale all around us, and we cover it up in self-blame and platitudes, and create this false paradise where our minds and emotions – that thing called spirit – is so disconnected from our physical bodies that it supposedly can’t be affected by any actions except our own. It’s this lie, ingrained and long-told, that is killing our compassion and ability to empathize.

You need to love yourself more, you don’t love yourself enough, be humble, you’re too confident, you come off as a bitch, you’re intimidating, look people in the eye, don’t stare, don’t be so intense, laugh more, smile more, if you smile too much people won’t take you seriously.  There are no problems, only solutions, no obstacles only challenges. Try, try again, keep trying, if you had any talent at all you would have made it by now, why don’t you find something else to do.  Rise above it all, take a breather, be realistic, pay attention, heal yourself. See, the problem with you is. . .

Yes, I know.  I have no tattooed pigs.  It would never have occurred to me to tattoo a pig. I am closer to the pig, and feel more for her, than for the artist.

You can’t afford that kind of thinking.  No one wants to hear the pig’s side of the story.  They want bright and colorful amusement.  Something they can laugh at, make a calendar of, display on their coffee table, or frame on their wall.  A conversation piece, a knick-knack, a little something to gab about at the water cooler.

I would rather rescue the pigs and damn those who collect tortured skins as art.

Don’t be an idiot.  Pigs cannot buy their own farms; artists can and do.  Stop making excuses.  All any of us can do is find our own version of the painted pig, parade it around, and hope it’s successful enough to buy us the freedom to do what we really want to do.

You’re really fucked up.  Wim Delvoye is fucked up.

It’s a fucked up world we live in, and see, that’s your problem. . .

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