Saturday, midnight. I’m high and I decide to take some artsy pictures of myself. A little risque, show my breasts only slightly, embellish them with flowers. I do this because I dreamt it. I must perform all acts I dream of if possible, sometimes even the wild ones seem attainable.
Nevertheless, I analyze these pictures. We often scrutinize our appearance because we know it so well. But I’m still high so my vision is more forgiving, I look alright, not terrible, not great, but I am satisfied. Suddenly my gaze catches that one of my mirrored self. I am in the bathroom, my large mirror before me, she looks back at me, dark hair, black eyes, a girl, a woman, a living thing, a human. I am terrified at the realization that that sack of flesh is me. That I am the being looking back at me. I am literally just a collection of artifacts: bones, muscle, flesh, eyeballs, hair. I am observing this animal, I realize she is an animal and that I’m observing her.
My friend once said being photographed intensifies his self; he feels more himself when he has picture taken. I do not, my reaction is drastically different. In the bathroom, I realize I am not myself, I am a literal piece of flesh, I do not exist.
What am I then? Superfluous being, bird bones, a fusion of bubbles. I have lost my identity, I never had one to begin with.
And that is the bitter truth, one we protect with being ever so precious and self-aware. Scrutinizing our thoughts, analyzing our feelings, hypervigilance on the body, creating a illusory trajectory for an unreal self. A thing, a thing, a thing. I am not here to induce a reckoning upon the concept identity, or want you to lose the concept of yourself. But please, dear reader, I implore you to hear me say this: it is a concept, you are not real. Every time you exert boundaries upon yourself, every time you draw up imaginary rules, every time you commit yourself to someone else’s principals, you are writing with invisible ink upon a chalkboard. You an experience, not a body, not a gender, or not even a self. You are floating in space as you read this, you are here, you are nothing, you are not real. This exercise in the utter realization of the unimportance of your physicality is here to remind you to release yourself from these attachments.
I should take nudes because this body is a sack of dying flesh. I should forego beauty and propriety because none of that is real and neither am I.
To reiterate my point: scene at a public restroom. A mother to her daughter, as she examines her own unkept experience. “Why didn’t you tell me I looked like a crazy woman?”
“You don’t look like a crazy woman. You look pretty.”
A child’s response. A true response. So much of our appearance revolves around a critical nature, a need to assimilate and integrate. The child will learn to question her image when she grows up, she will not think she herself looks pretty but rather that she looks like a crazy woman.
But what does a crazy woman look like? What does a woman look like? It is, once again, not a conversation of gender but rather one of perception. We are obsessed with our own perception rather than the general reality of what we really are: flesh, blood, bone; a mammal, thoroughly animal.
These nudes are pictures of an animal, a mammal, there’s no Alice, stop being so darn precious about it. And that’s my wish from this nebulous substack, that you acknowledge your attachment to the personality/body/identity you created and how it holds you back. It’s not real, drop it and experiment. Drop it and rebel. Drop it and be free. Fuck that. Who cares. Try it.
And if all else fails, come back to that old skin of yours, you are an animal after all. Wear it. Burn it. Above all, take nude pictures of yourself at midnight.
“Of Spring”
Cross the river over troubled water Buy new bedsheets to not sleep in Get drunk on wine and jazz on a red night These are the rites Carnations in white; unopen, unripe Crescent moon when the boys are in the swimming pool The owl flying at dusk and the night getting warmer These are the rites The camelias falling; the air perfumed with truth The lovers plenty when desire is enclosing As the thunder rolls in and a storm breaks me open These are the rites Of birds singing, as I undress in front of my window Of things moving, as I stand nude Covering my breasts with roses; one pink, one cream, honey on my tongue as I wrote this These are the rites of spring god, it's wonderful to be broken
“MARY LENNOX IN THE GARDEN”
KEY IN THE MOUTH THE WINTER TURNED SPRING MOVES FROM HER CROWN DOWN HER VERY OWN TOES TO THE ENGLISH HALLOWED GROUND FORSAKEN AND FORGOTTEN THE RED ROBIN WHISPERED THE PATH OUT THE WOODEN DOOR NO ONE WANTED IT SO SHE TOOK IT FOR HER OWN MARY LENNOX IN THE GARDEN KEY IN HER MOUTH FLOWERS IN HER GARDEN BLUEBELL, DAFFODIL; PRAIRIE-COLORED ROSES BLOOMED IN HER HEART, A DESERT AN INDIAN TREASURE OUTWARD BORN SHE CALLS FROM THE HIGH HILLS OF THE YORKSHIRE MOOR MARY LENNOX IN THE GARDEN KEY FOR A MOUTH SHE TOLD HIM SHE LOVED IT WHEN NO ONE ELSE CAME AROUND SHE CLAIMED IT LIKE HERSELF, LIKE HER CHILDHOOD BLACK DRESSES WITH DARK BLONDE TRESSES SHE PLAYED WITH ROPE AND FOLLOWED THE ROBIN HOME ONLY THE KEY UNLOCKS SACRED DOORS
Fabulous work 👌🏽
I love this !!!!!!👏🏼