Listening to: Frou Frou — Breathe In
IT’S SNOWING HERE! But of course my joy had to be dampened with the knowledge that there’s more than 15cm of snow back at homsies. Sigh. Yesterday was exciting; I learned how to play squash (but I will still call it squish); our boy’s varsity team won 1-0; and it seemed that between 9pm and 11:30 too many people were a bit too tipsy. But now everyone’s awake and not-expelled, so all is well in the land of Über-Prep.
As promised, I have a short story for you. It’s not the one that’s being published tomorrow, because that one’s far too long (4+ pages!) for a meager blog post such as this. This one is titled the soulcage.
They awoke early to the rooster’s nasal caw. He strutted up and down the hall, pecking them out of their cubbyholes, nipping at their sore heels. The girls emerged from their nests like bees from a hive. some stepped down on their toes like the ballerinas they’d once longed to be; others slumped and slipped and slithered like mud snakes. When they were all out, the rooster swaggered about them in a few loose circles, examining with a dull black eye the sad and tired countenances on their beautiful faces. Then, with the order to prepare themselves, he sent them out a small hatch door hidden behind their cubicles.
–You’re lucky. You look so ugly today.
–What are you talking about? We’re all super pretty, remember? We’re beautiful.
–IF YOU DO NOT PREEN WELL, WE WILL DISPOSE OF YOU.
The girls washed their faces above cracked mirrors in a tiny room with walls of peeling lead paint. They searched, hopefully, for new blemishes on their flawless skin, complimenting each other on their bed head and morning breath. They sighed over the beautiful clothes that the weaverbird gave them, clothes that in another life they would have coveted. This splendor only reinforced the irony of their plight: they were imprisoned because of their beauty; this was meant to be a gift. If they had been less appealing to the eye, they would be free.
–My feet! They expect me to walk all day in these?
–Well, you did it yesterday, didn’t you?
–QUIET! NO ONE COMES HERE TO HEAR YOU SPEAK.
When they started walking, the sky was gray. Nobody fed them at all that morning, which was okay with the girls – if they became emaciated and their hair began to fall out, they might be sent home, and anyway it was difficult to walk on a full stomach. Even though there were few observers beyond their glass cage, the girls filed out of the hatch door and down the hall in a long procession of stiletto heels and Fabergé eggs in birds’ nests of hair. Their footsteps echoed off the checkerboard marble floor, bouncing off the endless walls and ringing deep within their eardrums.
–Ohmigod!
–Is she okay?
–WHO ASKED YOU TO STOP WALKING?
One of the models dropped with fatigue halfway through their first walk of the hall. The crow who stood guard by the singular door became enraged, screeching that it was their task to please the audience. Not that the audience was unentertained by the young girl’s plight – catastrophe was drama, after all, and watching humans simply walk was amusing for only so long. From where she lay on a moldy couch near their cubbyholes, the sick girl watched her compatriots promenade. The clouds pressed against the windows above them, heavy like a sheet of dark lead poised to drop and bury shards of glass into their souls. But they knew that the glass would never break, just as they knew that only such a death would ever end their torment.
–If it rains, and the birds leave, do you think that they’ll let us go back to sleep?
The idea is that you’re supposed to be able to read the left-aligned stuff with the right-aligned italics like fragmented thoughts/overheard words in the back of your mind. It works for some people, not so much for others.
I’m reading Animal Farm right now. It sucks how well-intentioned governments devolve, no? Hobbes is right; everyone fails at morality. Life sucks.
But not really. And that’s because we have PHOTOGRAPHY, which those poor saps on the Animal Farm never had. Here is a little blurb about said art form that I wrote for the art mag:
My camera is a gun. Sometimes people duck before I shoot, but I don’t shoot to kill — I shoot to capture. With my weapon of mass depiction, I hunt down beautiful moments. If they’re not beautiful to begin with, I’ll make them that way or fill my SD card trying. That’s part of why I love photography: with every picture I take, I can save something fleeting and make once-in-a-lifetime last a lifetime. I can rewrite history, stop time, and make fiction a reality. And after spending so much time behind a lens, life becomes more photogenic. I lift my spirits with the knowledge that even my darkest moments could look great on film. Then I can remind myself that life isn’t always so dark; in photos, all the world is a play of light.
I’m sure that I’ve mentioned before that almost all of my favorite photographers are Russians/ Eastern Europeans, which really doesn’t help with my obsession with that part of the world. One film photographer in particular goes by the name Oprisco; I don’t know his real name, but his stuff is kinda awesome, even if his entire website is pretty much gibberish to me ‘cuz it’s in Russian. But here is some of his work:
Stunning, no? He also makes me really want a medium format camera so that I can shoot with 120mm film. Maybe one day I’ll ask for a Diana, even if the people on Flickr would disapprove. Yes; if you hadn’t noticed, the photographia link has been changed from my Carbonmade portfolio to my newly-created Flickr account. Never fear, though — you can still find my Carbonmade via our du sujet de… page.
