I’m sensing your resistance, reader.
Don’t set me straight.
I dream. I sing. I woo. I’m not you.

You don’t believe me. You want to be faithful to the story, consider me a rhetorical effect. You say my lover is myself, you who knows nothing of the other.

Evasion, perversion, death. “In all the pride of blooming youth I die,” — that’s how the story ends in your book — not in mine. I believe in revision & inversion. Your ending is my beginning.

Listen.

It’s cold. I’m alone. But, mind you, not defenseless. I’ve learned to parry blows, even invisible ones, speaking a language that is not mine. How to utter my complaint? You say, you’re tolerant. (Oh, how I hate that word.) I say, I’m not a patient and anyway my wounds are nothing to you. Whom should I court? Nowhere left to turn but myself, I kindle up the fires by which I burn.  All that is lovely in myself I love. If I don’t admire myself, will you? How gladly “would I from myself remove and at a distance set the one I love.” But will you let me? Your tolerance scares me. And your impatience, too.

Imagine.

The pool, the fountain, the looking glass. My refuge, my temple, my inspiration. And let it be fantastick! A shadow, a fleeting shade; shifting shapes in a pool of light, silver-clear and bright, an art like no other, a thing of life to love. Magic. I wrap my glance around the form I see, the form that gives me joy.

And when I bend to join my lips to hers, she fondly bends to mine. She burns with equal flames. And when my arms I stretch, she stretches hers. Your eyes with pleasure on my face you keep. You smile when I smile and when I weep, you weep. Your well-turned neck and shoulders; your spacious forehead and your sparkling eyes, your mouth dreaming in sweetness, your slow hands, your flowing hair. Stay with me that I may see thy lovely form, stay with me that I may hear thy lovely voice, for though I may not touch thee, I shall feed my eyes & ears and soothe my wretched pains.

In the dark I can be two. Me and her. Day and night. Ghost and family. Past and future. Strong & weak. Old & young. Angry & sad. Challenged & embarrassed. We fight and we argue. She makes me uncomfortable, but she speaks my language. In the dark — where we’re all strangers.

And when she leaves, I’ll be heart-broken. And when they kill her, I weep just as everyone else. In the dark.

You may say she’s not the real thing, a gay delusion — the the moment I avert my gaze, I’ll lose her. You may say she’s a creature of the underworld who shall not stand the test of bright sunlight — she’ll melt like ice, dissolve like wax. What do you know about us?

Those pretty flowers in your vase? Not me.

I’m falling in love with her.

Narcissus originally appeared on unguided tour on October 31, 2009.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

I’m allergic to roots, eradication is my profession.
If life means inscription and reduplication;
if Aristotle is suspect and meaning postponed,
who are my parents?

Deconstruction is my pleasure, my shield, my disguise. A stranger to joy, I have an answer to every question, a question to every answer.

Everything is text, everything is under control. With the unconscious in exile, Heidegger never seemed so much fun. Who cares that he was a Nazi?

Sophocles is passé. And so is Freud. With the word at my disposal, I’m your blind king, cracking nutshells. I am your prophet. I see what I want to see. The desolation of your town: small minds, big cars; short people, fat lives,  real estate agents.

Why did you ask me to live among you if you won’t invite me to your home, your dinner table? Alone, eating my words, I’m feasting on contempt, disdain, repugnance, scorn — recipes from the cookbook of my secret wound. I shall finish you off. Wash you down with the rash power of my anger. Every time I arrive at a crossroads, I force you to yield.

Such unremitting rage…, so dire a feud.

Let me start over, will you?

I’m a female Oedipus locked in myself. “’Tis thus the mind would fain, find peace, self-prisoned from a world of pain.” Say it again. “There is joy in isolated thought sealed off from a world of sorrow.” In the hospital of my study no one shall uncover me against my will. What I do to myself brings me most pain. For my disease infects no other but me.

So fine to look at, so corrupt inside.
What splendour rotted by the worm within.

What keeps me from revealing the details of my birth, my childhood?
This dreadful mark of shame! No family photographs to prove a caring glance, a loving memory. Father, can’t you see I’m burning? Mother, what can I love?

Who will nurse me if not myself?
Who will punish me if not myself?
Who will cast myself out if not myself?
Quick. As quickly as I can.
“Oh, pain; pain and woe! Whither? Whither?”

I’m not going to be revered for  my self-pity, my self-inflicted suffering, my vile rage.
He is a blind hero. I am an angry woman.

The sphinx is dead. Did I kill her? And why?

Oedipus originally appeared on unguided tour on October 26, 2009.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. … I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity and genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block… (Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory)

I’m sorry you feel that way. Try and look at it with my eyes.

You don’t know me. But you know of me. You don’t invite me into your house. So I visit you in your sleep. You don’t love me. But you desire me, sometimes. You need me. But you’re too embarrassed to admit it.

I’m not who you think I am. I’m not your sleep Nazi, your Stasi dream spy, the MacCarthy of the unconscious. I don’t betray and I don’t kill. I’m not the messenger of bad news. I don’t possess superior knowledge of your future.  I don’t demonstrate and insinuate. I’m not the problem. Freud, Jung, Lacan — they are your acquaintances, not mine.

I’ll treat you gently. You have nothing to fear. I sing to you in my sweetest voice, dance for you, act for you. I’ll be who you urge me to be. I can make you laugh, I can make you cry. My performances are sublime, some say uncanny. I’m your secret wish fulfilled. Rely on me, I’m discreet. More discreet than you will ever be. No one can know about our affair.

I don’t care about your sexual preferences or how much money you make. You don’t bother with the correct pronunciation of my name or where I come from.

Intimate strangers, that’s who we are.

Morpheus originally appeared on unguided tour on October 20, 2009.
All rights reserved (c) bettina mathes