―
L’arbre et la Chrysalide de Bachir Lazhar
Marina Abramovic meets Ulay
“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”
I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
―
Anne Sexton, from “Red Riding Hood” (via commovente)
somethingreallyfuckingawesome:
Margot & the Nuclear So & So’s - Broadripple is Burning
(Source: venturaistakingabreak, via the-messenger-of)
entering the courtyard-
it looked like versailles six years before,
a paradise on earth.
the pulse of the earth climbing into the soles of our feet,
traveling up our spines and lodging itself in our hearts.
you should have
one shot of vodka, here have a beer.
running through an empty house with angels.
one shot of vodka, here have a beer.
i am in over my head, drowning. dear gravity, are you there?
no more balance. let yourself sit-
no no have some water, lighten up, wouldya?
here i’ll pour it. everything will be
okay, don’t you worry your empty little head.
it’ll be okay, okay? ok.
here, come with me maybe if you’d like like
don’t scream- but what if i make you? don’t look at me like that.
don’t
say those things.
don’t say anything.
don’t do it.
here i’ll stop talking. just don’t
move. i’ll be gentle if you’re kind of like a pile of rocks that can’t move.
here, let’s have an earthquake, shall we?
you can be
trapped
in your own head. blink
i dare you. blink one more time.
you’ll think you can close your eyes
and then you’ll be right back under a pile of rocks
as heavy as your me
forget, you say- but what if this weight is my anchor.
would you like to recount the events for us, miss?
would you like to take a tour of my dreams, sir?
we’ll enter through paradise and leave through
hell.
People are protesting silently, black cloth over their mouths. Others are watching the TV on mute to avoid thinking about their own suffocation. Today, I opened my mouth only to find that a piece of cloth had fallen down into my throat and I could not speak. There is a horror to walking down the street and seeing your executioner in the notches of someone’s spine, there is a horror to a friend who hugs you so tightly you forget how to tell yourself to breathe. There is cloth everywhere, and when I open my mouth to speak there is a mute button.
1.
I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.
2.
The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”
3.
Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.
4.
The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.
5.
You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.
6.
Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”
7.
You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.
8.
I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.
9.
I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”
10.
I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.
11.
I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.
12.
Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.
13.
I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”
14.
The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.
―
Miles Walser, “A Sonnet of Invented Memories” (via pigmenting)
(via commovente)
