Long time no write, Prompt 23: The Great Destroyer

I kind of gave up for a while on that whole women’s creative collective. The jet lag and expensive Thai internet kind of got me after a while.

Nevertheless.

Prompt 23:

Write something truly absurd; write from the perspective of an estranged or deranged mountain goat, go on a drug trip and wander through south dakota, go to a dinner party with drag queens at an upscale restaurant in New York, or if it feels more absurd, imagine a peaceful moment with your family or a reconciliation with a long time enemy.

I awoke and found myself on the moon, the dust at my feet slowly forming into my own little kingdom. I looked up, and saw finally that the earth was no longer pulling the moon. The earth was now subject to my own lunar gravitational pull. There was something so fascinating about defying physics, so satisfying. What other laws could I break?

I noticed little shapes emerging from my little sand kingdom, tiny doppelgangers of those I knew in my past life on Earth. The people I once cared for, but no longer could. I considered them. For the first time, I was able to understand them, and I realized that perhaps in my great understanding, I was rendered incapable of caring for such fickle creatures. Yet I, in my growing power, and my growing self-awareness, was no longer fickle, I was absolute, and nothingness. I could only care, though only slightly, of myself.

And so I watched from my godly perspective as people I loved fell in love with someone entirely unlike myself. I chortled. Fools. There was no point in falling in love, I thought. I was like that once, those long conversations, the flirtations, that light, heavy feeling in my chest. I no longer had a chest. And so I watched, emotionless, as they fell in love and lied to each other. I will not stop this, I resolved. I will only let them hurt each other. Their pain became my amusement. Let them feel what I once felt, I said.

I watched with great amusement as countries waged wars against each other, and people against people. I was enchanted by the death-cries of thousands of soldiers, as they sang their final songs to heaven and their mothers. There was something so seductive in death, I mused.

I observed children born painfully into the world, only to face more pain. I saw abandoned children wandering the streets, old men sweeping their rarely-visited storefronts, and old women sifting through dumpsters for aluminum cans. I saw women weeping for lost husbands, dead and living. I saw men crying secretly over secret matters. I saw rage, the rage in his eyes when he realized–before he killed her.

I was the desperation that we all feel, to grasp the air, or the trigger of a gun, praying for an end to this chaos, for control–and yet they had none.

I did.

They begged for an end. I let it continue.

I saw entire generations of children lost in a vacuum, I saw women being taken against their wills, I saw men sodomizing children.

And I cared not.

This is the way of life, the way of suffering, I whispered to a man lying in the street, half of his face scraped off into the gutter.

I whispered the same to a woman holding razor blades to her wrists.

I will not stop you from destroying yourselves.

You must learn on your own, to become like me.

I smiled, and looked down.

I saw her lying in his arms, ever so peacefully, like I was once. I whispered to them, I will not stop you from destroying yourselves, little fools.

And yet their adamant hopefulness jarred me. I began laughing uncontrollably, furiously, and involuntary tears fell from my eyes.

They flooded into my dust kingdom, slowly consuming the little skyscrapers, the houses, the parks, carefully manicured lawns, the children playing, the women weeping, the men pretending, and everything became clay.

I pondered the clay, its motionlessness, its flat uniformity. Strange, how all the pain could become so plain.

I looked towards the earth, and thought the same.

Women’s Creative Collective Prompt 3

Go to sleep and set your alarm clock for 3am. Wake up at 3am and write whatever comes to you. It is the magical hour of slept over epiphanies, sandman soliloquies, the lucid writing in between dreaming and waking.

At 3am, I did not have to wake up.  I was trying to sleep. I could not. This was no magical hour for me.  It is 7:08 am now, Bangkok time.  I slept restlessly earlier yesterday evening, but I could not fall asleep.  Jet lag. And stress.  I have that same pounding sensation in my chest.  I got a massage today.  I couldn’t relax.  The pounding happened then too, and I thought I was going to die because I could not breathe.

It is sadness.

And I need healing.

There are always those types of people (I’m usually one of them) who looks around in developing or underdeveloped countries and thinks, wow, I’m lucky. I’m lucky I don’t have to be one of these poor people, the world is suffering so much blah blah blah I should be thankful.  Look how happy they are, these poor kids.

I’m in Bangkok right now, and I look around.  In the hotel lobby, 3am. 3 French guys flock in.  Giggling Thai girls in hand. It looks exactly like what it is.  I look at them. They’re taking pictures in compromising positions. I wonder what is going through all of their minds.

Probably sex. And money.

It’s not that difficult here, to get all the bodily pleasures that you want, and for cheap.

But then the harsh realization: there is no love here.  Everything is meaningless.

The richest people here are the poorest. And they live no happy lives. They sit across from the biggest mall in Southeast Asia, limp babies in their arms, holding up empty cups for a spare baht.  And yet in their desolation, they are rich.

I wonder that if survival from day to day was the only thing I had to worry about, if I would be all the happier.  Perhaps not. But I would be so much richer.

Jessica- that’s my name. It means wealthy in Hebrew.

Perhaps this is a sign.

Women’s Creative Collective Writer’s Workshop

http://womenscreativecollective.org/blog/?page_id=8

I decided to try my hand at a writer’s workshop again. A women’s workshop this time.  This should be interesting.  I tend to dislike most women writers.  Don’t kill me.  There are some brilliant minds out there.  After all, women are great communicators. But the problem is, women are just too complicated, and we can’t even understand each other sometimes…plus, half of us go insane at some point in our lives.

Today’s prompt is a little lame, I’ll admit.  It’s about nuts. Poems about nuts. Desserty poem.

I dislike both nuts and poems.  I’m not allergic to either, but I prefer to avoid both. So instead, I will write about going nuts. And perhaps being deserted. 

Women in literature tend to be insane.  Example: the lovemad woman in literature.  I have no idea where that paper is from, nor do I quite agree.  Classical male literature may lobotomize women’s psyche by belittling her insanity as merely a result of her hyper-emotions, but I do think it is possible to be lovemad, or just plain insane, even today, in a society that allows women to “speak for themselves” and not be “imprisoned in their homes, in their social roles…”.  Madness is not confined to societies or time periods, and is not a result of repressed speech, or being abandoned by a lover.  ”Lovemadness” is not limited to women either. Othello, hello. Men and women just tend to express it differently.  Men tend to exert their frustration on others, and externalize their pain (working out, becoming violent, drinking).  Women tend to internalize their pain, and end up prisoner to their own thoughts. 

I think that herein lies the reason that I like male literature. Writers are forced to externalize their pain in a forced, constructed, and thus controlled way. Hemingway, O’Brien, are good examples.  Their writing is often autobiographical. And they have a way of not just expressing their own pain, but a universal pain that others can somehow grasp. They deal with the pain of war, of death, etc.–things that merit insanity. When a man can express such emotions and pain so succinctly that a woman can understand–that is good literature. 

Perhaps I just haven’t read a good amount of female literature. I like the Brontes’ work. I hate Asian-American women writers (yeah, yeah ironic because I am AAW). Sylvia Plath frightens me. 

I think if anything, it is the uncontrolled realm that women writers often plunge you into.  It leaves you vulnerable, hurting, and unresolved. And if there is a resolution, it feels oddly misplaced. The new house after living on Mango Street–it’s a little too quiet, a little too peaceful–and disconcerting.  Perhaps I do not like female literature because it is something I already experience everyday.  Sylvia Plath, I hate to admit, could have written a darker version of my autobiography.  The madness, the pain, I understand it already.

I much prefer male madness–it’s simpler, perhaps. It’s more universal. It’s not as dark. It’s more palatable, more digestible. There are less jumbled emotions, and more productive actions. Men somehow seem to avoid the prison of the mind, though they often get entangled in feelings of inability, paralysis, and worst of all–emasculation.  That’s when things get really bad. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a strong advocate for all-testosterone fiction. There’s something to be found in balanced literature. I’m not a big fan of Vonnegut, if you want a good example of male literature about the insane, just as I’m not a big fan of Plath. They are too extreme. If anything, they frighten me when I realize that my thoughts run in the same direction, and to see these characters plunged into the darkness of their minds…not fun.  

But there is something similar between madness in male and female literature–its fixation on the gender labels, or any other containing label: citizen, soldier, husband, wife, lover, ex-lover–though the labels themselves can be used in reference to identity, when they become a source of paralysis, madness ensues. 

Literature needs a certain degree of vulnerability, candidness, openness, and yet control.  Murakami, I feel, does an excellent job at this.  He takes you on a controlled tour of the human soul and mind, and shows you all of its weaknesses, through the normally neutral, though emotionally sensitive narrator.  And though there is some hopeful finality that he often taunts you with, and you know it could never happen, it still might, just maybe… 

Maybe it happens after

The End.