and when ian sees her, it’s been so long that he’s forgotten what it feels like to see her again, to be with her in all her amandaness again, that energy, that excited state that pronounced her and defined her, that announced her. he hugs her, and it all comes back to him, when he’s come home again, the solidness of her, her body pressed close to him, the smell of her hair. and even though he can never be enough for her and she can never be enough to him, just holding her now is enough to come back home.
Category Archives: words
project snowflake: notes: tom
she shows me her film and i don’t know to make of it. she did it on the computer i bought her and i think what a waste. i try to smile at first but when the actress goes to the bathroom and sticks her fingers in her mouth on her knees in front of the toilet, we can see the fingers right in there “nice and deep”, she says, “notice the rack focus?” i feel like gagging with her. i see the bile and focus instead to the emblem on the plasma screen and while a part of me wonders what they used for it, i’m distracted by the sound and turn to amanda. “what is this shit?” i ask her but she’s transfixed, in some other fucking place like usual, some place she’s told me i don’t belong. i wish i could grab hold of her and snap her out of it, just as the actress wipe the spittle with the back of her hand. i wish i could her hold her and bring her back to me, as she smiles and i hear the actress flush the toilet in this stupid fucking movie amanda has made.
project snowflake: notes: amanda
they write on me with their cocks and their tongues, with their dirty fingernails digging into my hair. harry knows, harry says he knows and he looks at me like i’m a piece of shit but he doesn’t know anything. he smirks like he knows when he knows nothing of it, he knows nothing about it but he tries, goddamn how he tries to look right through me. and my cunt answers to him like he’s calling it to his fucking fingers, like all he has to to do is snap those coarse fingers of his and it should just fucking jump to his whim. i push him onto the bed because he doesn’t fucking know like all the rest but he’ll do for now, he’ll do because he fucking tries. even when he gets it all wrong, his fingers get it right.
project snowflake: notes
do any of them know? does someone need to know? should there be a confidante? no. no confidante. although the idea is appealing, someone to interject some (version of the) truth of amanda, possibly bring in some history, i.e. the sumerian king and his punishment of bashing the offending woman’s teeth out with a tablet of clay.
harry knows, or suspects. doesn’t care? accepts? another twist. no, no. too many.
points to hit-
1. meeting each husband
2. her death
3. each husband meeting the other
4. each husband identifying the body
5. scenes from her childhood
6. on the set of first movie
7. premiere of first movie at festival (?)
not necessarily in that order, nor conclusive
from Moviemaker’s Master Class by Laurent Tirard, the section on John Boorman, “Directing is really about writing, and all serious directors write.”
voices, voices everywhere and overrun her, they write their stories on her and she eventually frames, puts them in the picture. they write and talk about her, all over her, their words on her skin, they skin her alive, and she puts them in the frame, mocks them, seduces them, uses them, discards them, over and over, they talk and she gets them in the shot, shoots them all down, scripts them until they no longer see themselves, stupid and blind with their talking, with their pointing, their figuring of her, as if they could figure her out and she’s got them all splashed across the screen, she’s got them in 35mm.
write about him
write about the cold and wet, the chill and the unshakable feeling you’ve been here before you’ve grown tired of it. write about the sound of this voice as it gurgles up what you so desperately want to hear but cannot make sense of. write about the feel of his limbs, the flap of skin as it wraps around the bone as you grab hold of him before he goes. the soft feeling of new leather that’s been beaten over rocks and casino tables and the touch of women who forgot his name. write about the few strands of hair stuck to his skull and impossible to clean. everything begins with a promise he breaks but ends with you keeping it.
project snowflake: 3. storylines: amanda
amanda is an aspiring independent filmmaker from spokane, washington who was kicked out of her home when she turned eighteen. her father left her when she was relatively young but her mother soon remarried a rancher. the rancher was a good man, strict and fair, but let her mother have the most say in her upbringing.
the little one chokes
the little starts to cough that turns into a choke. playing poker i am frozen looking for the color of her face. someone says, do the heimlich and i get cross the room looking for color and see a face full of panic. i wrap behind her and tilt her forward, two fingers just below her sternum and wonder if the placement is right but i push anyway. once, twice, i don’t see anything come out but she starts to cry. can’t cry without air, she starts to cry and i am relieved. i pick her up and hold her tight and she bawls that she can’t breathe. i laugh a nervous tension and whisper in her ear, if you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be able to tell me.
merry x-mas
merry christmas to my extended family, scattered across the city, without collared button down shirts, without slacks, without fine stockings, without a home to call their own. merry christmas to the fools and the war mongers, the drunks and the diseased, the addicts and the lost. merry christmas to the childless couples and the children without love, to the stray dogs sniffing through dumpsters, to the whores huddled together over a bottle of wine. merry christmas to the abused whose bones never seem to mend right and the thieves who can never seem to have enough. merry christmas to all the wretched, all those without hope, to those that are mired in despair, to those that remain sleepless, to all of us that have the faintest memory of dreaming and what any of it means.
merry christmas
presents torn open and mouth agape, the little one says, over and over, i wanted this, i wanted this. and she goes through the pile, a wasteland of wrapping paper. my sister-in-law announces her pregnancy, eyes welling up, the family grows. outside my brother-in-law says, it’s nice today but i wish there was snow. and i wouldn’t have minded a snow storm either, something to cover up the lawn, the sidewalk, the limbs of trees, one big push before the new year and have winter move on its way.
randomness
somewhere there’s a hotel of santa’s imported from around the country belligerent & snapping towels at each other.
there’s a woman utterly convinced that the priest & tv crew of a paranormal-based reality show are exorcising her grandmother.
my cousin, who is thirty five and divorced takes it upon himself to give his two younger cousins, both sixteen, “the talk” about boys and girls.
and why is it every year feels less and less like christmas?