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March 12, 2009Alexandra Jones is delightedthat Zahra’s spotted belly fur HAS GROWN IN SINCE HER HYSTERECTOMY.She wishes all scars could be so gracefully covered. MMM, YOUR SCAR IS SO SOFTand appealing and disguised. May I pet it? she asks her little one, Zahra, as she applies a full-body massage to her stretched-out form. She admits she has the same affectionate feeling about her own surgical scars, a gash on her back resulting from a lipomectomy (removal of a lipoma, a fatty tumor the size of a golfball, discovered in the Amtrak full-length shower room mirror the first day of a cross-country jaunt), and another from the lancing of a subcutaneous infected cyst. They appeal to her, they speak of her life. She likes her scars, they are like the unavoidable wrinkles resulting from living. She wouldn’t dream of purposely covering them. They are hers. ALEXANDRA HAS TWO OTHER SCARS,one on her left kneecap, from when a drunken (¡borracho!) companion led their moped into a ditch in Cozumel, which did not prevent her, bleeding, from wanting to shop for rugs; another from her slicing her right thumb open while washing a .25 thrift shop glass with a vertical crack in it, which her roommate had removed from the trash where she’d placed it (elucidating his incomprehensible cheapness). She almost passed out when she saw the blood trailing in the soapy water stream, which led her to believe that anyone who has been shot, as in every other movie, could not possibly retain consciousness while walking around, a la Jason Robards in “Once Upon a Time in the West.” SCARSSo many are mostly invisible, and show themselves only in our behavior with each other. Motherfucker, you are not going to scar me again! I will enlist all kinds of defensive and offensive behavior before I allow that to happen again. AS IF ONE CAN PREVENT INJURY.Mostly it happens when one is not paying attention. I let down my guard! And you rushed in and stabbed me! You stepped on the gas as I was crossing! You didn’t see me? You saw me, mofacky! I didn’t see you! Don’t even apologize. ALL RIGHT, CALM DOWNThis column follows the unholy triumvirate of wine, Facebook, and the American Idol results show. Alexandra Jones is concerned that Paula Abdul reminds her of someone (herself) who took a strong tranquilizer but still went out in public, got overly excited, and could not speak without tripping over her tongue. Alexandra is concerned that Paula Abdul’s cleavage is on performance-enhancing drugs. Alexandra is concerned that Alexandra has but one life to live, and is terrified of living it, at times. Alexandra Jones is delighted that she is snapping out of it, and coming back to the one life she has to live. WHY IS ALEXANDRAtalking about herself in the third person? Because Facebook Status Updates prompt her to, and she is of a mind to be ridiculous. Alexandra Jones…is embarrassed that she accidentally sent her last column link, “I love the smell of cat shit in the morning,” to Supervisor Carmen Chu, to whom she apologized, and by whom she was thanked for same. It led her to review the column and regard herself as others might. It told of her friend Ross’s being enamored with the smoked-salmon-smelling Porta-Potties at a Grateful Dead show, where that gang of hers all partook of LSD to the extent that, for instance, Porta-Potties smelled like smoked salmon. That story might not be amusing to any and all, for instance, Supervisor Carmen Chu, but it made Alexandra Jones laugh out loud at herself, in retrospect, especially imagining Supervisor Chu’s distaste at being exposed to such shenanigans. SHE’S STILL LAUGHINGat 1:00 a.m., and drinking wine. Oh hell, she can only be who she is. Utterly civilized, as Hans Castorp argues in The Magic Mountain. “…since the more primitive times man has had to his hand a resource, a means of mounting to the heights of feeling, which belongs among the classic gifts of life: a resource, simple, sacred, in the grand style…I mean the grape, wine, this gift of the gods to man, as we are told of old time. A God invented it, and with its invention civilization began. For we are told that, thanks to the art of planting and treading the vine, man emerged from his barbaric state, and achieved culture; and even today where the grape grows, those people are accounted, or account themselves, possessed of a higher culture than the Cimmerians, a fact which is worthy of our attention. For it indicates that civilization is not a thing of the reason, of being sober and articulate; it has far more to do with inspiration and frenzy, the joys of the winecup…” “There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells, / The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells; / The sun ne’er views the uncomfortable seats, / When radiant he advances, or retreats: / Unhappy race! whom endless night invades, / Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades… AH, NEW WINEwith honey-temper’d milk, we bring. Where’s the party? At 2:30 a.m., Alexandra suspects it’s over and time to go to bed.
The author wishes herself… ------------------------------------------------------------ New wine, with honey-temper'd milk I bring
Alexandra Jones thinks the poetry is naked enough without the poet herself having to be naked. copyright Alexandra Jones 2009 |
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