sunday night sassafras
Hallo. T’is my first anniversary today so have been celebrating accordingly. i.e. consuming wine and prime rib. Yay Keg! Dan gave me a great book this morning titled “the 3am Epiphany” basically it’s a book of writing exercises – not ideas that are meant to be turned into longer fiction, just exercises to get the juices flowing. Like a run on the treadmill before the big game. He thinks I should post them here when I write them. It’s hard to argue with him because he bought me a nice dinner so…tonight, Exercise #76: 400 words on having a new identity. (this is free-writing by the way – no editing):
My fingers need oiling, and I don’t quite know how to feel about it. It’s only one hand that’s made of metal, one small aspect of my body, but it’s tough to think that it won’t change everything. I bet that my mother, a god fearing woman, would send me to pray before Mary herself for this- this silver-knuckled abomination. If she were here, I’d tell her that it was necessary. That the meat grinder took my old hand for a reason. It was all part of God’s plan. Besides, she always loved Robocop. It was one of her favorite movies. My mother had this propensity for violence - used to read me the truly old-testament bible passages, where Leviticus or one of his buddies was ‘settling differences.’ Indeed, I think she would learn to love my new hand. I would just need to convince her that the meat-grinder was smiting my previous one. No, the problem is me. My expectations. It feels like I’ve dipped my hand into some subcutaneous liquid and it was supposed to take over my entire body, but it stalled out just above my left wrist. Like, now a little tiny part of me is better, so the rest is inadequate. This is how Joan Rivers started, you know. She had her lips done first, but then realized her boobs needed to raise the game too. Her face, her nose, the little wavy part under her arms – she couldn’t stop. What if I can’t stop? What if I get so enamored with the efficiency of my one metal hand – how it grabs that pencil, how it presses that button, oh the sexy compression of air! – that I’ll want my forearm to be made of metal too. And then my Bicep. Soon it will be my heart, like a reverse engineered Tin-Man. With guts of steel I would conquer my fear, rise above my past, take over the world, or at least my section at the plant. God, who am I kidding. As powerful as it looks, reflecting the sun, sticking to the magnets on my fridge, I can’t treat it as skeleton key to a new and better existence. My lazy, blue-collar flesh will probably just leach onto it, rob me of it’s uniqueness. Might as well just avoid the crash and accept it: only one part of me shines.
Um, ya. Maybe less wine next time.
August 27th, 2007 at 11:14 am
I liked it. What’s strange is that the “voice” seemed male, to me. Did you have the narrator’s sex in mind?
August 27th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I assumed it was male while reading it last night for some reason. Re-reading I don’t see anything that pins it to male but that’s just how it sounds to me.
I really like the meat grinder smiting his hand, heh.
August 27th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Yep, intentionally dude-ish.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Very nice!
August 30th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I love the “reverse engineered Tin Man”. I love the Joan Rivers dig - making certain the distinction is made between fictionalized cybernetics (i.e. Robocop) and “real” ones, but clearly marking the gap between straight-up prosthetics (i.e. Terry Fox) and improved aesthetics (i.e. Joan Rivers). Very good all-round though - fun blend between the interpersonal elements of religion and maternal relations, with ye creeping tech-fear set against the backdrop of the worst modern fear of all - the existential fear of an unheroic, mediocre life. I dig it.