Apeiron, or, How We Keep Missing the Mark

 

1.

Hello, are you The Acrobat? I am Alexandra, The Comic Book Tattoo.

Where would you bite me if I gave you permission to do that, once?

Where would you kiss me?

How would you want to hold me?

And did you hold me once, many years ago, in a dream?

The fragilest, smallest touch of our fingers then, index fingers touching index fingers, middle fingers touching middle fingers, almost not but I feel it, and as I look at our hands almost intertwined I feel such a rush of excitement I lose my breath, my knees give, I feel my body electrify as a current of immense, overpowering want floods me.

I don’t remember what color the sky was, only that it was bright, the moon was there, and inside the hedge a dove cooed.

I wake up and realize I am aroused and lie very still trying to let the feeling pass in its own time, and it takes a long while before my body calms down again.

An ancient reminder of how one is helpless before emotion set in motion when it lives inside the secret moments between what is called realism.

2.

It is so slippery

I’m trying though

The space between moments is slow for me now, then fast, when I think of running my hands on every inch of a body, then slow, as reality trickles down my spine and touches me where I wish to be touched.

What is it, exactly, that you want from us?

There is no warmth in this body to give, there is no semblance of love when we are alone, we only go from one instant to the next, sleep, nourish our body, cleanse ourselves, cocoon inside this sheen of good intentions and momentary honesty that bounds us to nothing at all but gives us the humble, almost artless, feeling of a sincere, simple life.

The lady who sells sticky lollypops in hot pink and alligator green and fluorescent yellow like sugary baubles flashing in late summer darkness of moth-ridden night air curls her strawberry blond hair into delicious locks and pulls tight her emerald green pantaloons on her body; she descends from Pirates and you do not want to mess with her.

The billboard comes down and I call it, yes, I want it here, I want to have a billboard in my room, I’ll put my own name on it and look at it before I fall asleep.

I scratch at a leaf and the next thing I know I have murdered the plant; it turns out it needed the wax cover to survive the conditions here.

It isn’t putrid but tropical.

It isn’t heinous but suspecting.

It isn’t unbearably oxygen-free but filled with the tangy aroma of self-love,

the flowers don’t know what to do with themselves so they keep pushing new blooms, confused since she is always alone and loves no one but herself.

The poplars are seeding as I walk my usual walk by the river. Populus rasumowskiana, a Russian import, seeds the air full of white fluff, and I am reminded of the family Labrador, Néro Alexanor, whose ears and eyebrows and whiskers would gather the white as he was romping on the lawn and he would remind me of a character from The Pickwick Papers. 

I blink and it is hours later, and the sun is nearing the horizon, not quite down yet but getting there, coloring the insects yellow and orange and transparent and dazzling as it goes, the flying creatures of the evening keep bobbing up and down in the air right above the tall blades in the meadow; a field that once was wielded for crop but is now a hunting ground for the animals of the riverbank.

What do you want from us?

We have it contained, I have my billboard in the corner there, and now I travel down the hillock to fetch my cheeseburger and fries. The man sits by the counter, eating, young as the day we met. It is rushhour so there is no room for me. I hear the sound of the merry jingles as someone wins the prize. I think of the lollypop lady with her golden hair handing out surprise gifts with purchase.

I love you, I think, no matter what you said to me and how outrageous your arguments were after.

(“No one will love you.”)

A wish?

A prognosis?

I understand, you are The Fortune Teller here, and you are finishing your burger and fries in a hurry because you have places to be.

Back at the factory Spike and Drusilla are packing up unsold candles and ceremonial gowns.

My athame is hidden deep in my clothes, since I have a feeling I am a foreigner here, and you did badmouth me all over this fair, didn’t you?

The Strongest Man in the World became my lover then, I was happy to fall into his arms, and found myself unable to love him like I loved you – How fortunate! What an incredible stroke of exceptionally good cosmic luck!

I put my feral love away and look at what happened to the poor plant after I touched it.

I am Midas but no one wants to turn into gold, in the movie Goldfinger is the villain and Bond goes after him.

I’m sorry, I say, but words like violence break the silence and the plant is already dying now.

I am that powerful.

So what is it, exactly, that you want from us?

We are brilliance incarnate, but only within these walls. I look in the horizon and I think I see a silhouette of another city there, but here we are, at the carnival, working the rides and telling each other off and I think The Acrobat looks kind of familiar and interesting, but then I remember: I likened myself to an acrobatic performer, once.

That was before I knew you.

The Strongest Man in the World is a big softie, so I need to keep myself in check; when he gets all benevolent and saintly and I wish to go on a rampage, do you know how that makes me feel?

Like dirt, that’s how.

 

3.

All these separate lives, never really connecting, and I just can’t connect at all anymore.

Rules about writing:

never use a non-committal generalization when you can speak from personal experience. Using bland, overall, blanket sentences makes one appear obnoxiously superior to one's reader, like you feel you have all the answers and are looking down on everyone else. No one wants to keep reading text like that. Be humble, only use your own voice, never assume, never use common when specific is handy.

The best and most powerful tool at one's disposal is a killer first sentence. It needs to pack enough force to draw the reader in from the first moment she reads the first words.

These are lessons you taught me, and I have lived to see them to be true; my own work has become tighter and more and more personal, and I have grown to loathe non-commitment and bland generic sentences, and always notice how an author begins their story.

I miss talking to you about writing.

 

4.

I vowed never to love another the way I loved you since it brought with it this funfair I still can’t escape, and the memory version of you, the healthy, beardless, intense man is my torturer; timeless, endless. So, you win. What you said in the end I took to heart.

Unlovable.

Unlovable.

The Strongest Man in the World doesn’t live here on the island, he lives in the city across the pond, and he tries to love me and he does.

But isn’t it such an unfair exchange?

The wreck with its love remainders and the cocoon is like home now.

I do voicemail.

I record hundreds of voicemails and send one or two.

It’s the 21^st century version of writing letter after letter after letter only to burn them later.

 

5.

Last night, The Ripe Chokecherry Moon was bright and orange and shone inside my room from a deep lapis lazuli sky: the moon woke me up and I wasn’t sorry. When I went to bed the sky was pastel green, aquamarine and turquoise, and I missed The Strongest Man in the World. I wanted to curl up next to him and tell him how love isn’t exactly a variable: I love. The blood on the moon communicates to us it is true.

But I need for love to be calm, now, instead of ravaging the land, torching everything in sight. I need to love slowly since I loved you with the abandon of a madwoman and our love crushed the both of us.

The Acrobat lingers at the back of the line, I hear language I find hard to follow and can’t make sense what is being said there; the barrier of language. I do not understand.

This makes me feel weak and outdated, and I find it frustrating the only ones who understand me at the fair are you and the lady at the lollypop stand.

Here, it is always twilight and none of us remember how to leave. Only, you left years ago and the beardless man eating at the counter is but a ghost. I converse with no one.

When I see The Strongest Man in the World I lose the chaos for a bit, but it is an artificial calm, like benzodiazepine, only more pleasurable, since The Strongest Man in the World brings my body to absolute release, he has a mystic’s way of navigating my skin, but I still feel unsound sometimes.

At the factory, they are clearing things away. I had a gig there earlier, it went well, and Alex was quiet, but here she is, not quiet, now.

“I wouldn’t dream of seducing you, Alexandra.”

The Acrobat shares youthful good looks with how I used to look, not you, Alex, not you, and I remember how Chagall’s The Flying Man was trying to kiss me when I was The Acrobat in this troupe. Now, I have become The Flying Man, and I don’t understand this language of theirs at all.

The acrobats flock amongst themselves and seem to have no interest in conversing with the rest of the group.

Alex, stop lusting after them, no one will love you, remember?

The sky is every night of a different shade of deep blue bordering on ink the way it does this time of year.

6.

I don’t see the tansies until I’m right on them, this is how myopic I am now, and the Empirists and the Monarchists, the Purists and the Exhibitionists, the Sovereignty and the Aposteriori Lawmen, all the suckups and my own inner pleaser - I have painstakingly removed the people from the front, the people is silent since I no longer aim to please - all of these worrywarts turn up at the event wearing the bitter herb crowns on their heads as I claim my space with Alexandra, for what else is going on here but a metamorphosis?

You can’t possibly want anything from us, can you?

Mrs. Dalloway sheds her skin; The Acrobat she once was is gone, she died when I met The Fortune Teller, a slow and painful death of youthful optimism and satisfaction being my own self carving a small path in the world: no, you made the alarm go off, and thank you! I hate you.

The spark turned into a flame that destroyed us and it will ruin the next one and the next one, because I am the kind of fire that will only be put out in death, and I am glad to put my love away. The Strongest Man in the World doesn’t deserve it, he deserves soft and silky things and someone to make long, lingering love to him every morning.

But this island has a fiery lion loose now, and everyone is afraid.

 

7.

The Acrobat comes close to me as I stand by the paintings, but their face is distorted, I can’t make the contours or details of their face, and even though I talk to them and they reply, I cannot understand.

The coffee they serve at the counter tastes great and I gulp it down trying to figure out The Acrobat’s face and what they are saying.

I take their hand as the crowd begins to swarm towards the exit, then immediately and profusely apologize because I forgot myself. But they are unfazed by this, and as we move with the crowd deeper into the rooms of the factory, they, in a subtle movement, take my hand. The rush is such I feel a sense of slight nausea go through my body, like a flash of colors.

Just then, you walk by outside, passing the large picture windows, looking straight at me but not acknowledging in any way we know each other. You see me, your eyes search for meaning, those beautiful almond-shaped eyes with light brown lashes, and I see you see my moment of solace with The Acrobat and I have the smallest particle of time to be upset and embarrassed by this, then you are gone. The windows are merciless in their strict, partly view of the world and you are gone, how merciful of them. But The Acrobat still has no distinguishable face.

Will Alexandra turn into The Bearded Lady in the show when her allure fades?

Or has it faded already?

Listen, Alex, listen.

8.

I draw The Sun and think it means to proceed, but The Moon whispers not to trust it, and is this the manuscript, now? Did Alexandra find it in the dream about the nightmare Coney Island, trapped inside the fair to forever ruin both their lives over and over, to wreck her affair with The Strongest Man in the World who loves her and not in a fickle way but like a grown man, and this mature feeling of his can be deeply hurt whenever I borderline.

Case closed, funfair dreamer.

No more chances, what are you doing? Whose hand is it that makes you writhe with pleasure? Are you on the trapeze, really, with that perimenopausal body of yours? Yes, you do fit in the costume, good for you, but unfortunately, we measure time here with coffee spoons and not by how well you have managed to preserve your figure into middle age.

What, then? What do you want from us?

I can’t even talk to The Acrobat, they are all so young and limber and only flock amongst themselves because they are all young and limber and have nothing to say to the rest of the group.

 

9.

Everything starts to get on my nerves.

Why do I create and make these lives of others golden instead of living my own, one, life? I feel like a secret murderer only no one knows.

The Court Jester tries to give me advice, it is logical and to the point, so off with their head. Don’t give me what’s logical, don’t give me what’s right, and most definitely don’t give me I’m only saying this for your own good. I know now, what it is you want from us.

Echoes of motions repeated, echoes of motions discovered.

Tansies are good for so many maladies.

My skin turns into silence.

Hooves sound different on the hard dirt road from when the horses walk on the soft soil of their designated walking path.

It is benediction you want, is it not?

I love here slowly and I think slowly and so very slowly I

All art for this piece, used with kind permission, by the immensely gifted, stunning visual artist Zaneta Antosik. I adore how you see the world around you, thank you so much for your gorgeous, detailed, and very unique artwork.

 

Thank you Tori Amos and Martin Gore for lyrical input.

Thinking of Franz Kafka, the unassuming, closeted king of dark surrealism in bureaucrat's clothing.