Communication as Weapon

A thin, blurred line stretches between open, honest, good-willed communication and igniting the wicks of explosives in the name of communication. The phrase “looking for a fight” unquestionably applies to the latter.

Why do people want to start fights? Discontentment, anger ultimately at oneself but more easily taken out on surroundings in flesh or form. It’s always easiest to have a culprit other than oneself. Taking the blame requires a strong sense of self, a grounded self esteem, and a knowledge and contentment of one’s identity – something that seems to become more skewed as the world becomes busier and more object-centered.

It is easiest to unload one’s naturally occurring darkness on loved ones – they are closest, they are most forgiving and understanding. Growing up, my dad would sometimes come in from a long day of hard work, and I remember thinking, “He’s looking for a fight.” Paired with my mother’s sensitivity to constant fights with my dad (initiated by either, but usually over something rather important), there usually was a fight. I question, was my father appeased? Did my mother fulfill her self-prophesied curse of stasis? Now, I look back and think of how difficult it must have been for them, pregnant so young, married so young, with no tools or guidance on how to tend to their relationship. When I was an adolescent and into my college-years, the next person “closest to home” who stuck her fingers as deep into a person’s tissue – this time, my own – as she could manage, was my sister. My sister tucked away her feelings and forfeited or maybe never really understood her right to free speech within our family until she was in her twenties. Going through a masters program in counseling helped her to precisely define her problem with clear communication and how important it was and is to relationships, and so was born her focus on being assertive. As she worked through many issues that has lain buried and covered in the thickest moldiest dirt, she would toss her messes at me, at our parents, in the name of “assertiveness.” Painful does not begin to describe what we all felt. But, would she have been able to move beyond the years of repressed emotions and thoughts without unloading? Probably not. Could she have participated in intensive therapy and worked through those issues there instead of throwing her inner hurt at those she loved? Probably so. But, loved ones forgive and can hopefully overcome their own pride to help. And happy emotions are only a small portion of many.

Then, there are those people who thrive off of conflict. One such person is a woman with whom I work. Currently recounting the details in my head reveal the laughable idiocy of both the situation and the woman whom I shall call “Ms. Me.” B was asked to participate in a faculty candidate lunch at work. At one of the lunches, this coworker of ours monopolized the conversation, as she is wont to do, and after about ten minutes of her monologue on a new yogurt shop on Magazine Street, B pulled out his phone to check his e-mail. After the lunch, the order of events occurred as follows: Ms. Me complained to the leader of the search about B’s unprofessionalism and sullenness throughout the whole lunch, and the search leader complained to B’s direct supervisor, who then talked to B. Two words for this affair: Bullshit Bureaucracy. Or maybe there are many words: failed communication, narcissism, disease, cannibalism, black magic. Strong, melodramatic words, yes. Where the communication becomes rather grimy and with what I began this post – igniting the wicks of explosives in the name of communication – was when Ms. Me approached me in my office the following day.

“I heard you were really upset about what happened yesterday,” she said.
“Yes, I was. There are a lot of things in this building that upset me at the moment. That was one of them,” I replied.
“Well, B was being totally unprofessional and sullen the whole lunch.” I felt the fingers of tension forcefully run up the back of my head, and started asking myself, “Why is she discussing this with me? This has nothing to do with me, except that B is my partner.”
And so what did I do? I participated in the conversation, saying things and giving answers in the attempt to get her to leave as quickly as possible, and then, I did what I always do: I psychoanalyzed her.
Unprofessional? Ah, I see what’s happening: projection. She’s talking about herself. What I really wanted to tell Ms. Me is how ridiculous she is and how I don’t care about what shoes she wears (her favorite topic) or where she shops. Many of us, albeit no one else in my place of work save a few, have lives outside of our jobs and shopping – fulfilling, creative, successful lives. And our jobs are just that: jobs (income). This is something I have to work on, because I become too emotionally involved, but I still know it, regardless of whether I practice it or not: a job is a job. But, I held my tongue and realized that Ms. Me was not being nice and attempting to smooth things over; she was really trying to scoot me into a compromised, uncomfortable position, yes, somewhat successfully, and delicately sticking needles into my skin poisoned with her own unhappiness and fear. That’s when my tension headache slipped away.

The strength and force of negativity overpopulates the world, and so many times, it doesn’t even take a verbal exchange to reveal the destruction. More often than not, I respond to such darkness by becoming angry or sad. Translating those feelings into positivity and health is difficult, taking much practice, but with the accompaniment of a happy sigh, it’s not impossible.

Songs

Recently, I played my first "real" show, opening for Kimya Dawson, whose claim to fame was the Juno soundtrack (but who has, however, been around for much longer). We played at the Big Top Art Gallery on Clio Street. I had delayed getting my father to tune the piano, so it was a bit out of tune, which is much more noticeable in the recording than I expected! Several of my darling friends and listeners have asked me about the song lyrics, so I decided to post them here along with the link to the recording. I have very little experience with microphones, so singing into one so that everyone could decipher the lyrics was challenging and not fully successful! Here are the recording and lyrics, and maybe one day, I'll get around to actually naming my songs.

Link to recording

Song One
Some say I’ll never return to me
Have we all started swimming without any gills?
Paint me a box (I like espresso brown)
But I’ll take what I can get

They feed us honeycakes
Until we slow and obstruct
Until there’s not much more than moth-eaten cloth
See-through, breathe through
Blow it away

Fish lips cut off
Blood flow sucked dry
I’ve started building my own
Some say it’ll soon be gray

They inject air into us
Until we slow and obstruct
Until there’s not much more than inflation
Explosion
Bits and pieces blown by the wind

Pearls in my eyes
Salted tongue
Until it’s numb
Contaminated water
Surrounds, smothers
Fingers still twitching
But a twitch is a movement
The reach sticks close to me
But the grip around my throat
Has already imprinted
Yet the skin glitter fades away

Goldfish return to flesh
Doctor batters the pearls
And flicks the tongue
Until it moves
Look closely
See the breath

Song Two
On a boat ride
Mirror images
Across the sea
Shimmering like glass
I reach out
But you’re already vapor

Settling into my baby crib
Milk trickles down the walls
With the rock-rock motion
Spider hands reaching for me
Eyes shut
I wish, I wish, I wish
I was vapor, too

Bottom-dwelling I am
Scraping my fingers through
Wet dirt and crystals
Bones of ancient fish litter the ocean floor
Gray, green, black
I breathe through my gills
Shapeless, faceless
A mass of skin
I know I can find it
I know I can find it
Something shiny, something breathless
Shapeless, faceless
I begin to run
I search for you
Hiding, unborn

I know I will see
Golden fins when you, when I emerge
I know I will see
My fingers on your hands
I know I can find it
I know I can find it

Encircling into my arms
One and the same
I reach up to feel the form of my face

Song Three
They have red streaks
Ornamenting their faces
Around them glowing heaps
Of regenerating, recalculating bones
“Tip-toe” is the order
But we feel the taint
Seeping up through our toes
“Hold your nose” is the order
“Don’t look down” is the order
This is when childhood builds up inside
A scream: “Just look at my wings!”

Born Creator

This is Earth
Fed and full
Stains the color of bricks
Melt into the dirt
Stains the color of ivory
Hard and rigid
“Quick and quiet” is the order
“Swallow down good” is the order
As much as we cling to the edge of this cliff,
Our chests are brushing the ground

Born Digging

Hopeful projection of the fateful path
Holds removable thorns, petals in our mouths
An ongoing rumble that we can call celebration
But we hunch, we whisper
Eyes wide and upturned
The blazing reflection of others’ chosen future

Born Creator

Song Four
My skeleton is made of feathers
Easily dispersed
As the fires rattle and roar
Everyone else has their cages set high, untouched

And there are galaxies
Swirling about us
Waiting black eyes absorb the stars
Like vacuums, we are

The walls collapse around us
Cages suspended in the air
And the wind starts raging
But we still suck in all the worlds of endless impossibilities

Knives forced by invisible hands
Red ribbons of life force unraveling
Left floating and flying
Never dead

Serpent’s tongue
Lion’s roar
Slapping away with eagle’s wings
Then cradling you, my feathers in your teeth
As you claw for freedom
This is not the humanity you thought it’d be
Because this should have been the end

Song Five
Mine
Yet yours
My star
My steps to the heavens
My dream

All my weary traveling
Beaten, bruised
I cry out for you
By one

Mine
Yet yours
Sing me to sleep
My star

More on Balance

"Bright days leave me feeling depressed and alone, exposed; when the clouds are so close you can touch, though, heaven seems very near. How do people live in places where the sky never scowls? The pretty and the picturesque are fine indeed, but give me the sublime anyday: I prefer a landscape–a skyscape!–that expresses the entire gamut of human moods, both surly and sweet."

A new take on the weather. The quicksands of blowing black patterns have swallowed me to where I let a gray day affect my 24-hour mood, I let one negative comment wring me dry, and I stew. Observing, reflecting, and meditating all snooze in the back seat when I grumble; I finally gather enough aggravated creative energy that pours out of me in songs, in essays, in short unfinished ideas. If only I could draw in and expel each and every day. Oh, Balance, you really are the key to success.

Birth and Death

I have piles of dead winter leaves swept to my side fence where they cover small patches of dirt and oyster shells. Through the three-inch-high cast-offs of last season peak green weeds. There are hunter green weeds with flat, teardrop-shaped leaves. There are rich tropical green weeds with flat spreads of sand dollar leaves, and there are kiwi green weeds with small, soft heart-shaped leaves in clusters of eight or nine so velvety to touch. Recently, we New Orleanians had a series of three or four rare overnight freezes. I worried about my knock-out roses in the front yard, but they fared well. I lost my huge tropical plants, although they had seemed hardy enough. And though it really is no surprise due to the nature of weeds, the weeds never died and continue to grow.

I always loved weeds as a child. My dad, of course, hated them because of their invasive nature. But, for that very characteristic, I loved them. The sheer strength they showed by sprouting up anywhere and everywhere, persevering through even our rare southern winter freezes, and their ability to take over any other greenery or even creep up through cement amazed me! Weeds undermine our attempt at straight lines of hedges and manicured lawns; weeds defy the illusion of sought-after structure.

As I observe the fair commingling of crunchy dead laves and sprouting weeds, the silence covers the air like lace. And I think of the cycle of birth, health and growth, illness and decay, death, and rebirth. It reminds me of how aware of this cycle I was in 2007, when my first nephew was born and weeks later, my grandfather passed away. It was the first time I fully realized and understood the life cycle, the first time I tasted of its flavorful balance. Of equal importance, where there is birth, there is death, and where there is death, there is birth.

On the Spineless

Attempt. I try to surround myself with people zealous about improvement – in themselves, in society, in others. I’ve struggled with perfectionist tendencies throughout my life, for good and bad. Being a perfectionist has led to obsessive and controlling behavior with my own actions, reactions, and thoughts. I have found true contentment a very difficult feat. The more I’ve evolved, the more I’ve worked on turning my perfectionist tendencies around – learning to be okay with mediocrity, living in my thoughts without trying to accelerate them, yet challenging myself in daily life. Through the selfish act of introspection found in yoga, story and poetry writing, and music composition, I have felt gratified to see the change in myself and the positive effect on others I can have.

Barrier. Something that directly counters this growth is the overwhelming amount of black mold spreading from those around me. They just want to exist, the just want to hate those with convictions about the world in which we live, they just want to smudge the colorful explosion of reaction. I try to focus on these people’s positive qualities, but sometimes, they have an inescapable and gooey film that constantly surrounds them. If I or anyone else touches it, the disintegration begins: warped features, rank and poisoned breath, the usurpation of the skeleton, leaving only a floating mass of mold spores taking shape.

Capture. Humanity basks in the iridescent and illusive claim on knowledge made known by thunderous and iron voices. The lack of one's foundation makes no difference at all; the reality of softness beneath the seen armor does not matter. On the contrary, the appearance of strength sucks in humanity, and once inside, there's very often no escape. Once inside, humanity melts into the goo just like the skeleton that was maybe there before.

Aven, rough draft, part I

Every morning, young Aven’s women dressed her in gowns made of smooth silk and lace that ballooned to her feet. They curled and pinned up her glowing gold hair. They shined her shoes and ironed her stockings. Every evening, Aven would return from running around the estate grounds and romping through the nearby woods with her silk dress torn and streaked with thick, black mud, her hair falling down around her face, and her shoes scuffed (or sometimes missing). Her women would toss her in the tub and scrub her from head to toe. She’d sometimes be denied dinner and sent straight to bed. Bright and early with the sunrise, Aven’s routine would begin again.

Aven liked to smile. She liked to look you in the eye, and hold your gaze as though your eyes were her very own to manipulate. Looking someone in the eye affected them; whether it made them think you wanted them or you disapproved of them, it affected them nonetheless. She thought that showing the whiteness of her teeth was like showing the centers of her eyes. She liked to do that as well. Even at such a young age, Aven knew her power over others. She knew that all she needed to do was lift her crystal eyes at another being to make them nervously grin, grit their teeth, or leave the room as though a gust of hurricane wind blew them from sight. Just like that.

Aven had no mother. The mother she was supposed to have died while giving birth to Aven. Her father raised her in an estate surrounded by woods on all sides. A small dirt road, nearly unable to be traveled, led to the estate, and due to its excessive bumpiness, few people visited. The only people surrounding Aven attempted to influence her development by holding a stick over her head, leading to short, even steps when they were watching and running and knocking things down when they looked away.

Now, Aven is 16. Aven sits with her right ankle perched on her left knee, her lacy underskirts visible and frothing around her legs and feet. Her palms face the ceiling in her silky gray lap. Lacework extends midway down the tops of her hands that are pressed into her lap and partially up her arms before the gray silk begins again, hugging her arms and smoothed up across her chest. Pearls adorn the collar of her dress just below her collarbones. Sun-kissed skin unfolds from beneath the dress and up into her face - high cheekbones, rosebud lips, small pointed nose, and gray-blue eyes in stark contrast to her tanned skin. Where one expects to see neatly combed and tucked hair, maybe in braids wound around her head, one finds a shock of short golden red hair tussled on top of her head. Aven sits at the far end of the ornate room full of hunter green and royal blue and shimmering gold. The rest of the people in the room sit at an oblong mahogany table in the center of the room. They discuss Aven, and they decide that a holiday to her great aunt’s house is an excellent solution.

Yes, there have been boys whenever there is one around. He may be a stable hand with the smell of manure all over him or a cook with chicken guts on his hands – it did not matter to Aven. It isn’t as though Aven is a nymphet; more accurately, boredom inhabits her very veins, a boredom she and everyone else hoped would pass with emerging from adolescence; but, as Aven sees it, nothing in or about her life changed as she moved beyond adolescence. Her responsibilities – or lack thereof – remained the same; her interactions with other families and friends stayed just as minimal as before. In fact, emerging from adolescence caused Aven to behave in what her elders would label “rebellious.” The random boys bored Aven more than ever so she took to more public and visually shocking behavior – witty interruptions at the dinner table, not caring for her expensive gowns and in fact sometimes recreating her gowns by cutting off parts or layers, and finally to her most recent feat, chopping off her long and flowing hair. Aven thought that to get anything to change around here, she needed to draw immediate attention and response, and her choices proved successful as now, she is able to go away for a short holiday. Of course, her superiors do not find Aven’s going away to be an award; rather, they see it as a punishment: being sent to a small house with far less luxury and accessibility. No stable hands there. Great Aunt Ida does everything herself and will most likely force Aven to do the same. The girl needs to learn some responsibility, they mutter.

As Aven waits for the carriage to draw around to the front of the house, she sits on the wide steps that form matching right angles with the stone walls that hold up the roof over the doorway. That’s where Aven sits – in the doorway and out of the rain. She watches the fat raindrops plop on the steps just before her toes. It’ll be nice to be away from all this rain. Depending on which direction the rain has moved this fall, Great Aunt Ida’s house is either far enough south that the rain has almost certainly passed over the south already or is still far enough north that it will not arrive at Great Aunt Ida’s cottage until the end of Aven’s stay. Aven wears a plain wool dress today with sturdy dark shoes instead of slippers. She feels much more comfortable in this dress than the silk ones, but she’d still rather wear boy’s pants tucked into boots than a heavy old dress that limits her movement so. Childish, they say. She’s so childish. Really, Aven just likes to do things herself. She likes to use her hands, and she hates being waited on.

She hears the wagon sloshing through the puddles on the side of the house – a huge stone mansion with small square windows dotting the front and sides. Aven stands and smooths the front of her dress before her tall, slim figure darts down through the rain to enter the carriage; the carriage driver doesn’t even have time to walk to her with an umbrella.

Possible apocalyptic story

Look into those trees over there - the black pines to the right of the paved road. If you look closely enough, you will see me: bony, pale, dirty, shaved head starting to stubble, gaunt face. You probably can’t even determine what color my eyes are. Well, I’ll tell you: they’re blue. And since I have little to no hair, I’ll tell you the color of that, too: dark brown. Normally, I have more weight on me. Normally, I’m not stumbling through the woods. Normally, there are cars on the road. Where is everyone, you ask. Not here is all I can say.

Ten. My bones ache, and the thin skin covering them is scraped through across my knuckles and on my ankles. The dead leaves crunch beneath my bare feet, my fingers grab at the trees as I stumble. My spotted vision gulps down the skinny trees to my sides: dark and crackling like fireworks waiting to go off. I look away and down only to find carcasses of rabbits and birds. Everything carries the sound of popping; some anonymous thing will set off everything, and the fireworks celebrating death and birth will sound. I smell death; everything has the smell of ripened antiquity. I think, what else can die? What else can we give up? And the answer is: me. I can die. I can be given up.

Inspiration

I have always adored fairy tales and in college, was able to explore them to a certain extent in a terrific woman-centered study: Angela Carter (the inspiration behind my blog title), the Brothers Grimm, and the underlying propeller of fairy tale creators - the folk tale. So long ago, the original fairy tale - the folk tale - consisted of gore, deceit, you name it. I was going to try and recreate some of my penned research from college, but upon revisiting my college essay on Angela Carter's "The Erl-king," I've decided to cut and paste here. Maybe rereading something I wrote at a creative time in my life will inspire me to make new:

To understand the original goal of the literary fairy tale — pre-Angela Carter — one must grasp the concept of the oral folktale. Folklore is determined by culture, and although the basic stories and themes remained the same, whoever was reciting the tale held the power to manipulate, dramatize, sexualize, twist comedic or squeeze the gore into the tale. Details resided in the narrator’s mind and tripped out of that mouth over the air and into the listener’s ears. Within the oral folktale lived the chronicle, the myth, the legend, and the fable, and out of the oral folktale grew the literary fairy tale. Sometimes called the oral wonder tale, these tales were similar to fairy tales in their climactic structure and memorable characters. Some of the folktales differed from each other, such as the myth, which typically attempted to explain the beginning of humankind or some natural phenomenon by way of a story with supernatural occurrences. In the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, people began to write down these oral tales, and they slowly began to form the modern day literary fairy tale. One specific author writes the fairy tale, and this allows for its difference from the oral folktale, in which many individuals compose the tales as they tell the stories to family and friends, dragging it in the dirt then rinsing it off to make it new, a new unit through composition and re-composition.

Rereading this brings a few things to mind: college (or forced construction) and employment (or forced deconstruction). College has the ability to provide students with a comfortable environment in which they can explore, think, talk, argue. The classroom proposes a place in which to do something, but outside of the classroom, where are we? Looking for comfort, looking for the "right place" in which to express ourselves, and taking initiative to build that kind of network is difficult (fingers pointed at me). I've returned to my favorite medium: writing. And it's taken me a good long post to get to my point-I'm going to write to rediscover creativity that I feel has trickled out of my body and down the street and into the gutters since I've been working 9-5 jobs that merely utilize my organization skills. Writing to enliven a flow of thoughts, emotions, and to see the animation of architectural sketches.