Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Train Brain

Train north to the city. High school girl talking loudly to the boy next to her about becoming a meteorologist. Her skin translucent, her eyes green, her nose fierce ridges of cartilage.

He's in love with her. He leans into her clumsily, whitely. His white innocence is boring—a luxury.

She—her voice—trembles with frustration. He's too far behind her. Trying to talk to him she's just-about shouting.

But love has crippled him—made him stupid. He keeps leaning into her, unable to speak, to do anything interesting. He's using his soft, new body to defend himself against her intelligence. He thinks that looming over her is clever.

In Burlingame they de-board.

I'm reading Summertime, by Coetzee.

A woman in the seat across the aisle further complicates my journey by shouting into her phone.

Looking up from my book I marvel at the complexity of her ugliness. She hides the dissolution of her face with large whiteframed sunglasses. Even her voice is ugly. But she doesn't give a shit; she has urgent business—she's needed; through her phone she proves to anyone who might mistake her for her body (me) that she's not a body—a doomed, desolated body—but a voice articulating the vast, irrepressible ongoingness of the planet.

I'm not needed. I'm a curiosity—even to myself. I want this version of myself to die.

The good news is: I'm succeeding in killing him.

A night in the Mission will help.

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