She writes portraits
Or rather
she has found someone
who writes them for her
She considers herself a compiler of assets
Her collaborator could be
compared to an archivist
Someone who analyses content
It was no easy task to find someone
suitable
for the extent of her documentation

Sometimes she asks herself,
why recompose something so compostable
as the memory of someone?
When you miss someone,
what is it, you miss about them?
An image, a picture?
Where in your presence do they reside
when you forget about them?

The way they look at you when they ask;
should I get you a coffee?
Their voice on the other line,
breaking up through a weak connection,
telling you they are on their way,
and the way they smell
when they come pick you up from your work
Waiting outside,
the way they look
at the people passing by
and the passers by
gaze on them
How they speak
to someone over the counter

You lock eyes,
for the first time
How did they feel the first time you touched?
The way they get dressed,
asking for your opinion,
what color suits them the best?
The way they undress
How they fold their clothes
after they’ve been washed

Open the fridge, open a window,
ask for a lighter, gaze at something odd,
in the periphery of your shared frame

Is it the way they touch you
when they try to reach you,
reach through you,
that stays
when everything else has departed?
Was it all just a
sophisticated déjà vu?
The things she had seen before
was perhaps just a
confused hippocampus?

It’s not that I roll back my eyes
and let her demon possess me
Our deal is that I
create new stories
and narratives
from fragments of her life
She holds the seeds in her hand
and I tell her
where to disperse them

I am her ghostwriter
But she is the real ghost
Our roles really confuse me sometimes

When things get to my head
I like to chew eucalyptus gum
and light some incense
that smells like a herbalist
got abducted by a team
of researchers from Primark
to formulate
a scent for their
loungewear section
It’s not very far off
I actually got my incense
from the TK Maxx-store
opposite my flat
It was just there,
in the abandoned mess
on the floor,
a few months back,
when our pipes had started to freeze

Today I light the incense
and I tell myself;
I need to set my own boundaries
I make time for her
similar to my therapist
making time for me
in their calendar
With patience,
understanding
and a firm border,
and not with bewildered compassion

When I once ask her about all of this
composition of self,
she tells me this:
One of the strangest part-time jobs I ever had was surveilling an art installation in a blue-chip gallery in the western parts of the city. I would arrive there at 10.45 and get dressed in my full black suit. The gallerist was obsessed with lookalikes and I’d been hired because I looked just like someone else. She wouldn’t tell me who. It was ridiculous. She’d just unfavorably look over at me whenever I’d arrive. “Get dressed darling”, she’d say and I’d slide into the straitjacket of the day.

You can always tell when affirmative language has been hijacked. It’s like the vowels have gotten drunk in some outcast place of the city, and then crawled back to the bright light, asking for permission to never go stray again. That’s how you become robotic. You ask for permission to never fuck up again. In order to receive that permission you need to sacrifice. I’m not sure what was with this woman but she paid my bills and she enjoyed dressing me up like her little mannequin. She never asked any personal questions, took absolutely no interest in me as a person, and smiled mechanically whenever I answered a question of hers with more than a syllable. For three months I guarded an installation in her gallery. It wasn’t like I was her gallerina, or assistant of any kind, I was profoundly remote from any kind of intellectual property the gallery solicited. I was just there, in the white cube corner locale with its wide windows exposed to the side-street of the fanciest high-street there possibly was, at least in my bank of knowledge.

For a solid 8 hours I would walk around the art installation in the middle of the space. It was a mini-version of the gallery, with glass windows and with a plush-sculpture of another janitor overseeing the space. The plush-janitor had been squeezed into the same uniform I’d been made to wear but wore a bunny head and angel-wings. So much for the lookalike. In hindsight I find my own role in the piece ultimately perturbing. But at that time I just didn’t care. When you’re part of a crew - I mean whatever that means to you - like you know your place – wherever that is for you – all other places just come off as obsolete. Like being in love. Your sight gets smudged for better or worse.

People would enter and I would greet them, tell them some words about the exhibition, and ask them to step into the simulation once they felt ready. Within the cube they received some VR-helmets that kept them occupied for approximately 40 minutes. During that time I would just stand at some place in the gallery, often with my hands interlaced, lightly resting on my sacrum bone, looking at the people walking by on the outside.
I had warned her before
they could turn visitors like myself
into prisoners
they could give her a role
in their horror fiction
they could turn her into
a mere piece of furniture
in their living room
they were not on the outside,
trying to break in
instead they proliferated by cultivating
a seductive habitat
for their services
Inviting us to join them

All of their fixation on feedback,
I’d tell her,
is just a false negotiation of space
you just have to keep moving,
beating out a path with your own hands

She liked being my material
to help construct my
breathing organism;
a different system
It’s like once a week
I would make up my mind
tell myself
I was ready
Go ahead and write all those messages
Caught my breath after each one
It was like a marathon
in mercifulness

Each time,
vague apologies,
Tell myself I was ready
Promises, promises, changes,
yes, I’m going through changes
Cross my fingers
This time
is gonna be different
Decision-time
it’s just gonna be different
this time, I cross my fingers
Non-habitually,
this time
is gonna be different

And then it happened
I passed through the mirror
Of my own image
And arrived in the backstage area

I used to like to know where you’d go,
when you’d go
But now I just think of you
as one of those trains,
arriving and departing,
whilst I’m standing here
waiting for my own journey

and then she whispered:
we all live in a memory now

<3 - 2023-12-29 13:36:28 - <3<333333

adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:37 -

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adolphus50@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:35 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:33 -

Developer - 2022-10-06 00:56:25 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:09 -

- 2022-10-06 00:56:08 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:06 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:56:05 -

shannon_boyer@moneysquad.org - 2022-10-06 00:56:03 -

joan14 - 2022-10-06 00:55:57 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

- 2022-10-06 00:51:14 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:13 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:12 -

118 Yundt Burg - 2022-10-06 00:51:11 -

Suite 574 - 2022-10-06 00:51:03 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:45 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:44 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:43 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:42 -

nico.franecki@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:40 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:38 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:21 -

- 2022-10-06 00:50:19 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:17 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:15 -

baylee_harris@bdcimail.com - 2022-10-06 00:50:13 -

lonnie46 - 2022-10-06 00:50:08 -

E - 2022-04-11 00:22:06 - so beautiful

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- 2022-04-11 00:20:38 -

*_* - 2022-03-31 12:01:05 - I love it!!