fiction 

te de manzanilla soothes

manza
nee
ya:
the calm flower
youthful & impish in form,
wise in its energy

the sea is stoic
in the face of changing times

 

<><><>

I feel feminine and internal;
menstrating eases my spiritual energy.
my mind is usually knife-like and my spirit jumpy,
delving quickly and rapidly into texts, ideas, trains of thought
but with the cycles of the moon it becomes deliberate and smooth
equally strong in its motion but more fluid, and persistent in its focus
as a river slowly carves a sure path through stone


<><><>

airports

 

airports radiate cool blue streaks
like those electric light photographs that were popular in the late nineties

or a digital rendering of the expansion of the universe.

a pasty-faced golfer in sweat-wicking Nike has a watch that cuts into his arm.
His face is handsome, his nose triangular and regular in its form,
but he chews neon gum that he pushes through his lips with his tongue
until it bulges, bulbous and moist with saliva,
accessorizing his face intermittently
with a chartreuse orb of chemicals.

The atmosphere is misty with optimism and melancholy,
a grandfather with a salt-and-pepper beard gazes at nothing.

a very chic black woman with straight hair & a pearl choker throws around haughty glances,
texting with one hand, starbucks in the other

the peaceful melancholy is punctuated by clusters of twittering adult-trixies and tourists,
red-state dwellers who vacation on the coast, drink coors light on boats, wear baby doll t’s.

I feel the luminosity of the airport is conjured by a multiplicity of pensive individuals
together not like a herd of buffalo is together
but as a knot of silicon threads
slipping past each other in perpetual motion
while their spiritual consciousness remains elsewhere.

like yesterday I remember eating a cherry Pop Tart
in a home that no longer exists.
a Pop Tart like Proust’s cookie.

a deeply tanned woman in resort capris gets a hot tip on where to buy a Cinnabon.
her gal pal has a turquoise vaycay scarf that offsets her blonde bob,
and she kisses her balding husband with a loud smack
through a mouthful of sausage biscuit.
 

watching the news & not freaking out
on vacation,
I feel a luxurious distance between my self and evil
the possibility of atomic armageddon is safely sealed
beneath the plasma veneer in which CNBS lives
I (thought) (think?)
that as an American artist,
I have the luxury to make art that is about aesthetics,
not engage in the battles of Vaclev Havel & Kundera
but do I really?

‘the key to living under tyranny is to live as if life is normal'
or something like that,
says one of my guardian angels.
Is Nils Frahm eating Icelandic sweets on the bank of a cool stream?
a stream whose quenching, oxidizing flow is brought about
by the obliteration of our ecosystem?

Is he freaking out, or is he mentally composing peaceful symphonies?

I flick through my boyfriend’s texts
and am soothed by his use of emoticons,
his youthful panache and enthusiasm
his gentle affection.
feeling cared for has a sedative quality
and I long for his cool sheets & warm touch

 

<><><>

the superfly lady with the perm and the Cinnabon is Sky Priority
and I muse on starting a business called Life Rewards, where we sell badges.
We would sell a badge called the 10,000 dollars badge
for 10,000 dollars

I wonder if my vocalization style of articulating ultrabrief observations in a readable format is a postmodern Advantage, of Zenlike focus on my immediate reality, or a postmodern Neuroticism that interferes with my ability to conjure long, slow meditations that build to a subtle epiphany... whatever! I’m not Dostoevsky! I’m Katharine Anne Marais and I am part of the youth culture! The novel must be novel! (!!!) - - ok
 

<><><>

If the beauty of the airport is the harmonious multiplicity of individual trajectories, stories, and intentions, it is a challenge to fully subjectivize and delve into the heart and mind of each traveller, giving the airport its singular melancholy. The solo traveller watches the world slip past her, steeping in the fluttering gestures and overheard snips that wash through the air- a whirling eddy of the postmodern condition.

I arrive at seat 23E to see a skinny aging man with a gray buzzcut, full sleeve tattoos, and a satanic spike into his thumb in 23D.

I take my window seat and sidle up to the glass, inching as far away as possible.

He rubs his lips up and down the shaft of his straw, sucking down some latte as he peers over my shoulder.

How does a flawed democracy relate to today? Is it in my coffee? The answer is yes.
Is it in my music? no.
Is it in my train ticket? yes.
Is it in my relationships? inevitably yes- the choice to be reactionary or transcendent, believe in the subvenient rise of a fair, free, and equitable society, or to believe in an educational and political system that molds its citizens into a single form, the choice to give away everything you have to charity and have faith in your survival, to save it and build a life for yourself and your children, or to live alone in luxury- these things are profoundly real and they are self-defining and - -

I absolve into the slipstream of the jet and fully emotionally empathize with the cloud. We puncture its downy surface like a parasite, albeit one who means no harm and whose host is amibacle, letting us pass through its bellybutton like an open window.

Gliding on nothing, lilypads of microcumuloforms pepper the cerulean sea.

Drowsiness sets in. Labor! Thinking is labor! Envision the calabi yau and dream a beautiful vision for the scientist! Mentally design your future living room and figure out what you are wearing out this weekend! Time spent daydreaming is transformative. This weekend I am definitely wearing my favorite camisole because it is charming and has an elegant feminity without being cloying.

Ease into the woolen blanket which the lilypads have become.

Here (gestures elegantly throughout cloud interior), we see innumerable microcosms shimmering with photons of every color and then some. We see worlds suspended. We have entered what many believed to be an unreachable realm of the heavens- which you many now live in, breathe in and otherwise occupy for the short duration of this flight. Within this space we see entropy suspended and the once-fallen water risen again by the sun. The phantom Lazarus decked in a coat of prisms. Progenitor of rainbows, imp of the skies! Dream-catcher to light, and canvas upon which the sun paints. Here are the self-same clouds which adorn the Sistine. These angelic apparitions, once the realm of unimaginable distance, projected idealizations, and pure fantasy- have become touchable, manifest, part of our daily reality.