ichi-go ichi-e
“There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.”
Most people have a point. A mission statement that underlined their product and a boilerplate broken down into Instagram ads. People don’t state their name when they first meet you; they speak their socially constructed gender based on what they’ve decided.
Someone gives you a name, so I guess it's better to have control and define your identity before someone else does.
Alarca says that whoever tells the story has the power. Are you saying people who speak the loudest have more authority over quiet people? Yes. She squeezed my shoulder and ran her index nail from my clavicle to my cheek when she said this. She has long fingers and paints her nails to match her chosen outfit. Every day. Today her nails are gold to match her orange and pink flower-print dress.
Sometimes Alarca takes her hair down from its topknot, and I run my hands between the braids.
Like serpents, I said once. She misheard me and thought I said ‘servants.’ I felt her sigh and she shifted away from me. Breaking contact.
I don’t paint my nails. I barely have nails. They split quickly. I don’t chew them, but it looks like I do.
Alarca is a paintress by day and a waitress at night. She can't wear what she wants at work, so a lot of effort goes into each outfit when she's off shift. Her attention to her physique impresses others and attracts clients, mostly women who want to look like her. They're usually too thin and too blanched like overcooked pasta. Alarca paints them blue and purple and blood red. They leave with sloppy smiles drawn in lipstick that smells like flowers. They skip out the door holding the canvas wrapped in linen in platforms that add an arch to their backs. Likely, these girls will ache in old age from their effort to stay in a container.
Boxed-in like the canvas they take home to hang on their wall.
Look, they'll say with their skinny hands, look at the beauty she saw in me.
The serpent.
The slave.
Alarca is a magician. She sees what others cannot see or will not see.
I see it too, but I don't convey it to anyone but Alarca. And even then, our relationship is tenuous, so we don't often speak about magic.
It's better felt, she said once. You don't have to explain it. You feel it.
We had been eating ice cream from its cardboard container. The edges were mushy and we set it on the steps outside our studio and sat on either side. I like to take a scoop and run my mouth slowly over the mound on the spoon. Alarca said this method makes me appear anorexic, counting everything that enters my body.
You can't quantify experience, was my response.
She shook her head and swallowed.
You hold back; it's proven in how you lick the spoon.
I didn't say much to her after that.
I can't parse out the sensation in spoken word unless its' been rehearsed. It's easier to write what I feel after I feel it. It's why Alarca does so much of the speaking for me- she knows what I feel before I do.
I'm lazy with identification. I only care about how things sound when I read them off the page. Lyricism. Poetry. Philosophy.
My boilerplate would be a list of objects and fantastic abstractions.
Pampas grass.
Hand-blown
glass.
Snap
scaphoid bone
sandpaper-toned nail
Polish.
In memory of Hilda Hilst.
Martha Graham.
incognito over
influence.
My Instagram story would leave people with a question about a sales pitch.
What is it to live an authentic life?
What does it mean to be you?
Am I a woman because I say I'm a woman or is it because of my sex? Is it a hare because it hops? How much teeth and fur is needed to design its identity?
When I sit down to construct a mission statement, I feel like I do in the kitchen. I'm a terrible cook and toss grains in pots and oil in pans like I know what I'm doing. I usually make oatmeal and cut up small slices of strawberries and dates to add at the end with a pinch of cinnamon. I once ordered takeout and plated it for a dinner party with four girlfriends; one of them knew and called me on it after everyone else had left.
I was not embarrassed. I admitted to my flaw.
People need to be fed, is what I said to her. She looked me up and down, kissed my cheek, and said goodbye. She doesn't come over to my place when I host dinner parties.
And that is fine by me.
She clearly doesn't like that I'm selling someone else's product.
People think you're in love with yourself, Alarca told me once. Your quietness is assumed as ego.
That's not my problem. How people interpret my actions is not my business.
It is; reputation is everything. You don't participate in conventional conduct. It's disarming for people to engage with.
That's not my problem.
We'd been eating spaghetti and I was using my fingers, it was a stupid idea and the sauce got all over my white blouse. It was a dumb statement to make.
Alarca didn't play into it. And I was grateful for her self-willed ignorance.
Photo source.
