Once, I was me.

Once, I was a human, tricked into being part of a false world order, shoulders hunched as I type type type into a void.

Once, I woke up and remembered a twilight space between forms where the blackness stared at me and laughed.

Once, I was a blade of grass, shivering in the wind.

Today, I woke up and saw that the world had been replaced with metal and glass and synthetics, and I'm still smearing mud onto stone walls; there's something pounding at the back of my head, a reminder that I'm supposed to do something, that there's something I forgot to do; but my fingers are smeared with blood now; they streak across the rock in red red red.

Travel

I can't wait until I get into the extremely structured and orderly environment of the airport.

ruttin'

It’s hot, with a side of muggy. She don’ like it. Always dreamed of bein’ in a place where there ain’ the humid side of things, maybe e’en someplace where there’s snow. So she up ‘n packed, tellin’ Paul he could stick it where the sun don’ shine. Bastard didn’t deserve no better nohow, not after she caught him ruttin’ with the neighbor’s dog. Weren’t natural, jus’ like all that water hoverin’ in the air. Time she was movin’ on.

The change didn’ happen overnight. It was real gradual-like. The bus with its nose pointed north like a compass, air conditionin’ just sure to dry out your throat, stoppin’ for a bit of grub ‘n a piss every few hours. It weren’t ‘til the third day she could feel the change in the air outside, where it weren’t pressin’ down on her lungs as if she were drownin’ in her own spit.

Sometimes she wondered if Paul e’en noticed that she weren’t around no more. When she’d sleep, bus barrelin’ through the night, her head all a-lollin’ off to the side, the air conditionin’ burnin’ dry acid up her nose, she’d see him again with that dog, goin’ at it like a viper, his eyes turned inward. But the dog weren’t there: she'd just see herself on all fours, a cringin’ look on her face, the same look as she’d seen on that pup. A look that said she’d be grateful for a whippin’ as long as it come from him; the faithful bitch, crouchin’ for whatever crumb of attention her master might be willin’ to parcel out.

Wakin’, she scrambles for another piece of clothin’ to keep her warm, tryin’ not to wake the snorin’ fat man next to her, her hands shakin’ in the frozen cold. It were just the air conditionin’, she tol’ herself. She weren’t no man’s bitch.

Aubergine

When Mimi's mother finally died, Mimi immediately decided to squander her entire inheritance on a trip to Paris with her daughter, Rosemary. In their moldy-wallpapered apartment in Bedstuy, Mimi pulled out the only suitcase she owned and told her daughter to start packing. Rosemary packed her blue dress with the white flowers, her green dress with the white pockets, her pink dress with the black stitching, a single black ribbon to tie back her long blond hair, and her sketch notebook; Mimi packed her stiletto-heel leather boots and a few packs of Marlboro menthols.

Mimi found the most extravagant item in the world on her first day in Paris: a fuchsia-colored plastic purse with the two golden Coco Chanel C's glued to its side. She wore it high on her left shoulder and used it to start conversations with the Frenchmen in bars. Mimi would then say to them things like Je veux ramone avec vous and Voulez-vous un turlute? Rosemary was jealous of her mother's skill with the French language, of the way her mother could make all the men in a bar turn and stare just by uttering a single phrase. During the conversations, Mimi would give her daughter some francs and tell her to go to the café down the street and wait for her mother to come get her. Instead of using the money for a croissant, Rosemary used the money to buy a new colored pencil every day. After buying a colored pencil, she would then go to the café and order un thé au lait avec sucre, s'il vous plaît, and sketch until her mother came back. Her mother often returned with her head hanging low, her makeup smeared, wobbling on too-high heels, purse strap dangling in her elbow, with no man's arm to hold on to, but with a few extra francs in her pocket.

It was an unusually overcast day in Paris the day Rosemary bought the colored pencil that was the color aubergine. She had sketched a purple tree, with blossoms like white pansies, their terrier-dog faces weeping red tears that flowed into the mouths of the blue-skinned babies crying beneath them (she had not yet gotten around to buying the pale peach pencil that was skin-toned). She was concentrating on getting the pansies to actually look like terriers' faces when le garçon came to her table. He handed her the check and told her that the café was closing. Startled, Rosemary realized that her mother had not come for her. It was three in the morning. As she gathered her sketches and pencils, she pouted for the sake of her absent mother and remembered all the other times Mimi had forgotten her somewhere. Walking quickly down the darkened streets, she kept her eyes forward and tried not to look at the homeless sleeping under piles of clothes in alleys and on street corners. She reached the hotel, a dark building with cracks in the stucco that stood above her menacingly, and went inside. There was no doorman or bellhop in the lobby, just the old woman with a twisted nose who nodded quickly at Rosemary as she walked past. Rosemary climbed the stairs to their hotel room at a run, skipping every other step. The red carpet that ran down all the hallways and stairwells was stained with a thousand mysterious stains, and Rosemary was proud to claim one stain as her own, a cup of tea she had spilled a few days before. She came upon their door quickly, turned the key in the lock, and opened it, expecting to see her mother crying on the bed, worrying over her daughter.

Instead, she saw something she could not place. It looked like a person's skin was poked in upon itself, the edges puckered, dark and endless, like seeing the pictures of her grandfather's hand where the bullet pierced it: a fleshy absence, a painful wound. She realized then that it was a man's hairy ass hole.

The man was kneeling on the bed, jerking his body forward backward forward backward violently, and though Rosemary could only see his hairy asshole and his dangling hairy balls and not his face, she knew that he was ugly. Her mother lay on the bed below this man, their “privates,” as her mother said, entwined like lover's hands clasped together in a theater. Rosemary heard her mother make sounds like a dying cat, watched her clutch at the man as if he, her tormenter, was the only thing she had left in the world. The man made deeper grunting sounds, like her father had on the toilet when Rosemary was younger and he had still lived with them. As she watched what she did not want to see, her mother slowly began to transform into a beast, a monster, a creature of extraordinary grace and of hideous beauty. Rosemary adored and feared and hated her mother, this beast. She backed out of the room, closed the door, and squatted beside it, her arms wrapped close against her chest, her stomach cold. It felt like hours before the door finally opened and the man walked out. He glanced at her once, but said nothing and left quickly. Rosemary smirked a little because she had been right: he was ugly. She stood up and walked back into the room.

Mimi watched herself in the mirror across the room with empty eyes, fixing her hair with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other. “I'm sorry I didn't come to the café, Rosie,” she said, her voice as empty of feeling as her eyes.

Though Rosemary hated herself for it, she forgave her mother then and there for everything. “It's okay, Mimi,” she said, remembering that her mother hated to be called a mother by any name. “But when are we going home?”

“A few more nights in Paris,” her mother said with a smile. “Some would give up everything for what we have right now.”

Thirty years later, Rosemary returned to Paris with her husband. The Paris trip was supposed to resurrect Rosemary and Paul's marriage, so they got a room with a view of the Tour Eiffel, and attempted to make love every night. The problem was that Paul had begun to remind her of the man with the hairy asshole, and she reminded herself of her mother. But Rosemary refused to put all the blame for the failed consummation on herself. As he aged, Paul was becoming ugly. At forty-eight, he had lost half his head of hair, most of it receding in the front, and a good portion of it thinning at the back. The rest of his body seemed to be growing even more hair: little black curls scattered between his nipples, fuzz sprouting from the finger segments above his knuckles, fur clustered around his navel, leading down to his hairy cock and balls, back around to his hairy asshole. His nose drooped, his ears stretched, and his cheeks sagged. Sex had become mere movement, with Rosemary closing her eyes and waiting for him to be finished. When he noticed, he would ask in his timid voice, “Are you okay?” He did not really want to know the answer. She would nod and smile in a soft way that gave him enough room to back away and pretend nothing had happened. They would lie side by side, not touching, breathing lightly. He would fall away into loud snores while she lay awake, hating his features that she had once treasured as uniquely “Paul.” She felt terrible about this. She wanted a normal marriage.

That night, while they were having sex, she imagined an ancient scene between lovers, male and female bodies entwined in perfect connectedness, like in the garden of eden. She imagined that what her mother did with men to make a living was sacred, not merely a carnal desire fulfilled, but the prophetic ideal union.

She felt something, then. Longing. She was not herself anymore, but was instead caught up in a recreation of something bigger than her. With her thighs, she urged Paul's hips to speed up in time with hers. She moaned. She could feel her belly button tingling, felt her body pulling him in. She clutched at his hairy back with her fingernails, painted the color of red wine. He finished before she was ready to be done, but she was so caught up some strange new feeling that she didn't care. They unstuck their skins and he collapsed beside her. They breathed as if they had just been running. He lay with his head on the pillow and his eyes closed.

Rosemary knew that she was no longer herself. She felt like she didn't have the right to be in her own body. She was exhilarated with the strangeness of it, the feeling of power it gave her. She never wanted to leave. But as she caught her breath, the feeling began to fade. She reverted back to hating the man lying beside her. Maybe she hated him even more than before. She no longer wanted the intense feeling of being taken out of herself. She waited for Paul to fall asleep, then slipped on a dress and wandered out the door.

She went to the small courtyard attached to the hotel and sat on one of the rusted benches. The large sycamore looked calm in the darkness. The shadowy gates around the edges of the garden looked menacing. The stray cats came over. They crashed into her legs with full force, stroking themselves in this way. She didn't pet them, even though they continued to demand it of her. Instead, she watched the leaves on the tree. She watched the leaves and imagined that they were each a little dog face staring back at her from the depths of the earth.

The Sidewalk

I was out for a walk yesterday evening around sunset, the world painted in orange and violet. Meandering down the sidewalk, I saw two people approaching me: a man and a woman. They were taking up the narrow sidewalk, embroiled in a conversation.

Perhaps I should have moved to the other side of the sidewalk, where I'd come face-to-face with the woman. She would have moved behind the man, giving way without thought to a fellow traveler. I could see it in her face, the unconscious prepping to move aside, to make way, to be pliant and moveable and a "team player" in the greater scheme of life.

I, too, had the impulse to move that way, or perhaps to move off the sidewalk altogether to make way. To be compliant. Malleable.

I had just put together a website for myself, just finished it that evening. Just published it, cringing with every press of the button, sure I shouldn't force myself or my work on the world like this. Everyone says that you need a professional-looking website in order for the world to take you seriously, to begin to treat you like a professional, but I felt guilty. Guilty of making way for myself instead of others.

I was still on a collision course with the couple walking toward me. Instead of moving to the other side of the sidewalk, across from the woman, I steeled myself and kept walking. Sure, I moved to the edge of the sidewalk, but I didn't move off it. The man barely glanced my way as he barreled toward me. I thought he'd move eventually, either behind or in front of the woman, but he didn't. He just kept moving forward: he is man, not compliant or malleable. The sidewalk is his domain -- the world is his domain -- and he's not going to move an inch.

As he got ever-closer, I had to quell my urge to just move off the sidewalk in to the grass. How many times have I moved out of the way, moved onto the grass? How many times have I stepped aside, how many times have I not stepped forward?

I held my ground. He just kept moving forward. When he passed me, he nearly pushed me off the sidewalk. He never did glance my direction. He never did notice that he was taking up the entire sidewalk. Instead, he pushed the woman next to him to the edge on her side, and pushed me to the edge on my side -- without even thinking about it, he felt his place was the center of attention. He felt he had the right to step forward.

I looked back at him, aghast. And then I realized that the person I was most aghast at was myself: it was because of me, and others like me, who constantly step aside, that men like that think it's ok to dismiss women on the sidewalk. It's so ingrained it's not even thought about. And my own habits are just as deeply ingrained: I feel guilty when I don't move out of other people's way; whenever I put myself and my work out in the public eye, I'm sure that my work should step aside.

But not anymore.

It is my right to walk on the sidewalk.

Story Three, 7 July

(This one we had to take either one of the previous two assignments and turn it into a play.)



------ 
La Boucherie

Scene opens with PALAIS, who stands behind her father, LORENZO. LORENZO holds a long, thick knife. They are in “Boucherie Rue Atélier,” the family butcher shop in the 20^th arrondissement of Paris. It is 1881.

LORENZO stands in front of a large chunk of meat. The meat rests solidly on the wooden cutting table which is behind the display of cured wares. The cutting table is stained deep brown from blood that will not come off.

The boucherie is covered in red and purple and blue. Sausages hang in front of the windows. A cured cow's head is placed among the other cured meats in wooden crates that have been risen to hand-level with wooden crates stacked below. Pig's ears, feet, snouts, and jerky strips are lined up in the display crates. As an attraction to get customers to come into the store, LORENZO has cured an entire piglet and dressed it up in a child's clothes. It stands in front of the door, one arm raised in the direction of the shop, beckoning.

LORENZO

It is time, Palais, for you to learn how to be a proper bouchère.

PALAIS

Papa, I told you before. I will cut meat, but I will not be a bouchère. I want to be a novelist.

LORENZO

Novelists! Novelists write lies! And besides, everybody knows novelists are all gypsies and sodomites.

PALAIS

Papa!

LORENZO

Eh, but it is true. You do not understand, you are young. Come! Stand beside me. Watch.

PALAIS stands at her father's left arm.

LORENZO (ct'd)

It is of the most importance to find the way the cow wants to be cut. You must listen when the meat speaks. This piece of meat, here, you see it? On the table?

PALAIS

Yes, papa.

LORENZO

I know this meat. I can hear it. As I cut--

PALAIS watched her father's wrist begin to move in twisting, up-and-down motions. It pierces the meat, and she hears the sound of the meat's resistance against the knife, a soft tear, like paper ripping. Her father's knife slides through easy and clean.

LORENZO (ct'd)

I hear this meat. It comes from the fields, it eats grass all day and shits out round pies that heat in the sun. The cow lies in the shade where flies buzz and it flicks them with its tail. Palais, you must remember the meat for what it was, and listen as it whispers to you how it must be cut. There are many ways to cut a cow, but a true boucher will know just by the whisper of the meat.

PALAIS

But papa, I have been cutting meat for years. I have never heard it whisper. Dead things do not talk.

LORENZO stops cutting and puts down his knife. LORENZO puts his left hand on her shoulder.

LORENZO

The meat will tell you if you will just listen. I know. I am the greatest boucher in all of Paris.

PALAIS

(wryly)

Yes papa, you have said.

LORENZO

And now, it is your turn.

LORENZO hands PALAIS a clean knife. There is still have a large chunk of the original slab of meat that has not been cut. PALAIS takes the knife and stares at the meat.

PALAIS

I can't, papa.

LORENZO

You can, my daughter. You must.

PALAIS

I will hear nothing.

LORENZO

No! Lies! You will hear. You know meat. You are no stranger to it. Tell me, Palais, tell me, how does it look?

PALAIS

Like the setting sun.

LORENZO

And how does it smell?

PALAIS

Like iron. Sweat.

LORENZO

What is its taste? Its sound?

PALAIS

It tastes of roasted hazelnuts. And the sound, like... like sucking up water.

LORENZO

And how does it feel?

PALAIS

Like flesh.

LORENZO

You know meat, Palais. The meat will speak to you, all you must do is listen, please, Palais, take the knife and slice the life so that we may hear it sing!

PALAIS, a determined look on her face, cuts into the meat. COW enters, a woman wearing thin white cloth over her naked body and a large black-and-white papier-mâché cow's head as a mask. COW stands and stares at LORENZO and PALAIS, still cutting, who in turn watch COW. Off-beat music, with drums and cow-sounds, begins.

PALAIS

(amazed)

I hear it, papa. I hear the meat, like a whispered ghost on a grassy hill with others black-and-white stinking hides, while the calves were all taken away, grass like life itself like the sun herself, with prying hands, milk that should have been for babes and gone away into buckets, human hands clutching, perverse, overgrown fetuses, sucking and slurping the white life, cycles that seemed to never end... until the milk ran dry, and they carried her away to hang upside-down, blade along the throat, watching the life spurt out in gushes of thick red juice...

PALAIS drops the knife and it clatters to the floor as COW exits. There is a long moment of silence. PALAIS begins to tremble.

PALAIS

(whispered)

I heard it.

PALAIS looks at her father.

PALAIS

You are not the best boucher in Paris! Only the cruelest, to know of such horrors and to continue anyway! The meat tells me what it has suffered, but I will never be great!

LORENZO is silent. He does not meet his daughter's eyes.

PALAIS

But now that I know, now that I have heard... what else is there for me to be but a bouchère?

LORENZO looks at her and PALAIS looks at him. As they stare at each other, the lights fade to black.

Story Two, 5 July

(Here, we were supposed to take the first assignment (set in Paris), and make it take place in New York. I did something a little different.)

-----

The Butchered

Before there was memory, there was instinct. You emerge, blink twice at the circle shining in the pale sky, so close you might lift your nose to the heavens and smell it. You have always known that it was really only the ground underneath you that was moving. Sunrise is your favorite time of day, sunrise makes the fields drip with water, and the wet feels cool on your legs, like your mother's tongue. You seek the tenderest patches of grass while the ground you stand on moves, tilts. The sun's angle shifts like it was blown by the wind. Straight above you, it sucks moisture from the grass and makes the blades warm with light. You seek shade under a crooked tree. The others join you so you can sweat together: black hides and black fur, nostrils flare, nostrils snort, hooves kick at dirt, tails flick at the biting flies, teeth clip grass and tongues twist to guide the clumps towards the back molars, bulging eyes wide, alert. You know them all, your herd. There's that one, with the twisted ear, and that one, with the white spot on his chest, or that one, who often smells of his own shit. Those ones over there have found better shade under another tree, so you follow slowly, along with the rest of the herd, playing sentinel to the grass along the way.

Time passes because that is the way it has been and will always be. Existence moves in one direction only. Your body grows because this is the logical course of things. The idea of nations and borders does not exist, so you do not know that you are in a place which some call Texas, on a wide spread of land, with a trailer parked on it. You have a hole in your ear, with a numbered piece of plastic strung through it; but 247 is as arbitrary as the clouds, and you are you regardless of how anyone else identifies you. The fences that cage you are arbitrary as well, and the only reason you don't stray past them is because they block your way. You know that it was not always like this, but for you there has never been anything else.

You do not dream of being anything else; you are always a cow. Sometimes, you dream of grass that tastes sweeter than any grass you've ever had, sometimes you see humans as giants above you, and sometimes you dream of the fences disappearing and fields that go on forever. You do not dream of having wings, of taking flight, of climbing trees, or of burrowing underground.

You sleep with the herd at night, their legs tucked under their black barrel bodies under the black sky with shining flecks of flight. The ground does not stop spinning when you sleep. Some days it is so hot you feel your mouth begin to foam and your tongue to swell, and the water in the trough is gone too quickly, so you find shade and everyone tries not to touch, waiting for the earth to spin out of reach of the some so that it will be cool again. Some days it is so cold you huddle with the herd for warmth and every breath comes in little smoky puffs like a morning fog over the fields. Some days there are blackbirds that come to peck at the grass grains. Some days it rains and your hot hide seems to hiss with release. Some days one of the herd lies down in the grass and doesn't get up so the humans have to come with their ropes and haul the carcass away.

One day that should have been like any other day, there are men with sticks who hit you until you walk through a narrow passageway, nose to tail with the herd, squished into darkness. You huddle together as if it were cold, but it is hot, hotter than ever before. You see nothing but empty black, smell fear in the sweat of those pressed up against you. You begin to wonder if you really are a cow or if you were instead born as a blade of grass and you are now in someone's belly. The others begin to low softly, but soon there is a roar louder than all the herd, and the earth is moving too fast and you are being jostled against those around you and you lose control of your senses. There is only hot, sickening fear that pulls at your insides and makes you feel like you're falling into the black that surrounds you.

When the world stops shaking and there is light, you follow the herd away from the endless, starless darkness. But this is not the field, this is another narrow passageway, the only path to follow. The scent of fear grows stronger, and the nervous moans pervade and echo in the tight space as you walk, each one of the herd with dignity, one hoof at a time, at their leisure, climbing the ramp. You begin to hear death-cries ahead, and you wonder what could be happening, because this has never happened before. Never so many dying all at once. The space is so small you can't turn around. Your nervousness urges you to move forward. Before you understand, the cow in front of you is flying through the air, and now you imagine that you all might have been birds, that being a cow was the dream. You, too, are forced into the air, with a pinch at your legs, and your head hangs. You see motions before your eyes but the world is moving strangely. A jolt, a sudden pain, worse than the biting flies, worse than the hot sun or the cold wind. You can't move, but you are conscious. A soft moan from deep in your throat, like a question. When they slice your throat, you do feel it, you see the red spurting in time with the throb of your body. You blink twice at the circle shining in the pale sky. As your memory fades and tells you that you are nothing but a cow, that cow is all you could have ever been, your instinct remains, reminding you that maybe you were a blackbird, a blade of grass, or even the earth itself.