poison & sunlit fur
The world breaks everyone, and many are strong at the broken places.
Ernest Hemingway
I hid this for a long time. Mostly because I sent it off to a publisher, but also because it’s without a doubt my most personal piece on RB. It was accepted by the publisher and recently I read it aloud at the book launch. Yasemin Sumner (who also had a story published in the same book) and Luckyvegetable said my voice didn’t tremble at all. I think they were being kind.
After all, when you read your diary out to a room full of strangers, you’re allowed to shake a bit.
poison & sunlit fur belongs to the following groups:
A New Aesthetic.... Divine and Otherwise , Lesbian and Bi-Women's Art, Melbourne & Victoria, Pleasure & Pain, Short stories - Spherical Scriptings, The Red Writing Room, The Word Tree and WMGDecember 1982
You wear daisy chains in your long blonde hair and choreograph dances to Joan Jett. You run your fingers over the spines in your parents’ bookshelves and imagine the font spells your name. No man is as special as your Daddy. Your world is golden.
December 1985
You’re congratulated for smoking by the tough girls in the toilet block, though the menthol makes you reel. You skip school for the first time and take the hour long train ride into the city to see “Desperately Seeking Susan” at the cinema. You long for a life as bohemian as Susan’s, and wonder if your feet will ever find New York. At Christmas your neighbourhood holds hands and sways in a circle to Band-Aid’s “Feed the World.” Your hope is exhilarating.
December 1989
You learn to drink black coffee and smoke Gauloise in a medieval city where you see your first snowfall. You finish your last year of high school in French and write your diary in the dialect of Brussels. You’re totally, brutally alone. You pretend the demons dancing at the corners of your eyes are only shadows. You know what’s coming.
December 1991
You take fourteen anti-psychotic pills in the hospital where you live. Your hands shake so much the words wander up and down the page and sometimes, you can’t remember writing them. The clothes are all white but you see splashes of crimson against your eyes whenever you blink. You hear your doctors contemplate shock treatment, and you feel a thrill amongst the terror. The demons no longer hide from you. They take you by the hand, and your feet barely touch the ground. You lead the dance.
December 1994
You speak three languages yet can’t put a sentence together in any of them. Each time footsteps travel past your window you crouch under the sill, shaking, until they pass. You score your morphine from the Lord Street punks and watch your bruises spread. You have green hair and a lip ring, and Hole’s first album installed on your stereo. You pull your hair out by the roots, roll it into little balls, and line them up on your windowsill. You wish the voices spoke French.
December 1997
You take Irish classes at night school and tremble when people sit next to you, but the smell of new books is delicious, and you breathe it in deep. You realise with wonder that the sickness hasn’t rotted your intellect, and your fists begin to unclench. You throw yourself into feminist punk and teach yourself drums to 7 Year Bitch and Bikini Kill. You have a fake name in the massage parlour where you work, and learn dark lessons about men. You’re down to five pills a day.
December 2000
You pour out words of snakes and Nietzsche, tattoos and Medusa, tequila and Berlin until your wrists ache. You get 99% for Linguistics at university and berate yourself mercilessly for that missing 1%. The zines you write for only have a print run of 200,but you drink champagne when they sell out. You remember the art of seduction, and buy your first red lipstick.
December 2005
Europe calls again and you wrap up your life in Australia. You are wildly in love and dance in the dirt under Merri Bridge to a gypsy band. He teaches you bass to Nashville Pussy and pins blankets to the windows to block out the cameras when your voices awake. He writes songs about you, and you listen to them as the plane takes off. You cry, but the solitude is secretly intoxicating.
December 2007
You know where you belong. Your Melbourne flat is filled with Flemish dictionaries and Art Nouveau prints. You have pagan tattoos, a linguistic degree, and a honey martini named after you. Your lover broke you this year, but you turned to acupuncture instead of morphine. You buy your first stilettos, four inches high and fire engine red. You can’t quite strut in them yet, but you will.
You’re down to three pills a day.
Lisa Jewell
I almost feel naughty, as though I’m peeking into your personal diary….and I guess that is exactly what I am doing but with your permission.
You’ve certainly been through a great deal, achieved many things and found yourself in a state of contentment with red stilettos (which have come to represent a great deal)…
You say, you’re never truly heal – this is one of the first time, I’ve heard someone admit the truth…for all the clichés in the world, there are pains that fade but remain a part of who we are always.
I know you’ll not break again, this I see in your eyes, the way you express yourself, the way you hold yourself with such beauty and strength.
Thank you for sharing this…I feel really honoured to have read it…
gordontant
Bellmusker, if this is fiction its an amazing piece, if it is fact, then thank you for giving us an insight into your life.
Jessica Tremp
Bell! Yes!!!!!!!! I know this would have been hard to present here…so proud! there’s nothing like feeling home in your skin!!
Pagly2
you now have control of you…and that is sooo god…be strong and stronger…....you can…........
hugs…so many hugs…....
transmute
I love this brutally honest yet sensitive insight in to you. I feel like I’m being lead through a long house, and each door that’s opened reveals a different room, and the last one is the one you’re sitting in now, waiting to greet people.
Anne van Alkemade
I am sad for the places you’ve been. I sometimes think the hardest person for us to love is ourselves – accepting where you’ve been, not wishing to change a second of it, is because it has all contributed to the sum of who you are now. It must be a wonderful realisation to like who you are. Well done, and all strength and power to you.
Thank you for sharing.
Paul Louis Vil...
A piece laden with Honesty.
I was imagining the places and people as I was reading your words.
I am in awe of your talent and ability to open my eyes wide and drop my jaw with a single phrase.
loramae
Intense to the point of causing me the reader to hold my breath…Your honesty is refreshing…
bellmusker
Thanks to all who’ve responded to this – it means a lot to me. Nothing like a new year to bring out the self-indulgent reflection! I’m not sure how long this piece will stay up, but it needed to be written…..and without a doubt, it helps me to walk into 2008 with my head held high.
Thanks again.
drpepper73
I am proud to know you. Without your past you wouldn’t be you and it makes your writing that much more amazing. I love this piece.
Mummified
Bell, I love this. amazing work. Faction in action. Have a good writer’s meeting in Jan. I’ll try to get to the February one. :-)
mick8585
Sorry I havent stumbled upon this earlier.
Bravery , intelligence and sanity sometimes do go hand in hand.
Its a pleasure to know you.
PJ Ryan
bell, this is breathtaking … beautifully written … the concept you’ve used to share some of your journey is brave, raw and well written
You pull your hair out by the roots, roll it into little balls, and line them up on your windowsill. You wonder why the voices don’t speak French
this took my breath away xx
.
CrapWriter
This is an amazing journey if not sad in places. But, towards the end shows a great testament of character and glimmers of hope. A brilliantly written piece and concept too. Well done.
bellmusker replied
Thank you; I appreciate your comments. This is probably the most honest piece I have here, and for that reason it gets hidden at the bottom of my folio, because I find its rawness so hard to take. Occasionally, when I need to be reminded of how far my healing has come, I breathe in deep and flick it near the top of the pile. It never stays there long, but you caught it there tonight. And your comments on it will help it stay there just a bit longer. Thank you so much.
Melissa Vowell
I could not for a moment claim to know half of what you do or be nearly as wise… but I understand “I wouldn’t change a moment”
Erin Lyall
This touched a nerve, yesterday. It gave me chills! You were so brave to read it out, thank you for that.
bellmusker replied
Thank you – my voice shook, but I wanted it read aloud, amongst friends. Thanks for your comments, Joelene; they’re much appreciated! I’m glad you were there to listen.
Seanchai
i can’t pretend to know what happened between the syllables of each day, but yet they shine thru and make you beautiful.
thank you isn’t enough.
friartuck
Respect ;-)
natapee
wow just want you to know in sharing this work you are helping so many others. thank you for your honesty. I could have kept reading on and on. I hope to keep reading.
bellmusker replied
I never thought of it that way, but I’d love if that were true. I know that reading about others in a similar situation truly helped me heal; and still does, to be honest. Thank you for your support, and by all means, please feel free to keep reading! The ink always flows…..
Soxy Fleming
I was reading this and hoping I was reading fiction. As someone else commented, if it is fiction it is amazing. I can’t and won’t write down my stories like you have. I’ve talked to myself a lot about that. But whatever your life has been and is now, it is a life of intense passion. Intense people have a big problem, themselves! Intense people have to live however they can, and that they manage at all is truly wonderful.
bellmusker replied
I do agree with you on that last sentence in particular….Perhaps you don’t write down your stories Soxy, perhaps they come out in some of your gorgeous artwork. I’m not sure you can be an artist without intense passion!
Taine
Wow Bell – your brutal honesty & such passionate way with words has really moved me so much.
It sounds as though you have lived life to the fullest, experiencing things that have both, lifted you up toward the Heavens & brought you close to your own personal Hell.
Even though some things Never heal completely, the scar tissue which hides them is always the strongest.
Thanks for sharing.
Mel Brackstone
How strong you are!!!!!!!!!!
bellmusker replied
No more than most, I think…...but thanks Mel, I appreciate that! Very, very much.
Damian
Thanks for the insight into your experiences Bell; that’s quite a timeline. I’m not sure if it’s polite to ask, but I wondered where the demons are now that you’re not leading the dance?
Do you have a link for the book it’s published in?
bellmusker replied
Thanks Damian…..and thanks for the feature; much appreciated.
It’s not impolite to ask about my demons, but it is brave! Most prefer not to acknowledge them, and I do understand this; my own family take this same path, and I truly can’t begrudge them that.
My demons still circle, but I can honestly say that they don’t often land. I’ve finally found the right combination of medication, faith and serenity, and I have a damn good life. But I know that they hover, and that, in the end, I have very little control over them swooping. My mother getting cancer, a brutal breakup – these sent me to the underworld again in recent years, and I heard bells ringing in my head with a ferocity that terrified me.
But the difference between the girl from December 1991 and the woman writing now is that I carved those steps back above ground, and they’re still there when I need them. I’ll always climb back….a little darker, my scowl a little fiercer, but I know I’ll heal.
I always do.
I will be taking medication til the end of my days, and I’ll never be the life of the party. I will, however, always be well aware of my ability, and ever grateful for the simplest joys.
As for the link to the book, well, it contains my real name, so I will bubblemail you with details. The demons of my paranoia will never really be stilled.
But I’ve lived with worse. I have no real reason to complain.
Thank you for asking.
Margot Saffer
Thank you.
I return your honesty with gratitude.
A short, sharp, yet honey-soaked female contemporary, urban buldingsroman
bellmusker
Mmmmm, honey-soaked…..that brought a smile to my face! And thank you for reading, Margot. Appreciate it.
Arletta
Wow! That was intense, to say the least.
(sigh) One’s life always sounds so much more glamorous, when not living in it.
Congratulations.
Dayonda
EEEEOOOOOWWWWW! I’m glad I ‘forgot’ this step in my journeys! It’s excellent writing, however, even the English Teacher in my agrees. I enjoyed reading it, very much. Thanks!
Matthew Dalton
Bell I’ve been thinking about this piece on and off since you sent me the link.
Now I’ve have been sitting here for some minutes trying to think what it is I want to say. I want to say what I shouldn’t say. I want to say:
It’s so beautiful Bell.
darbyland
wow. i’m probably about the same age and have lived half your life.
bellmusker replied
Ah, but some of it I wish I hadn’t lived…..actually, I lie. It’s hardened and healed me, in some exquisitely twisted way, and I don’t think I’d change it. And at the very least, I got a story out of it, hey? ;-)
samara108
i reiterate the comments made…amazing piece.. enjoying reading your work… reading the dictionary is paying off, you have a real ability to create texture /image/idea with words.. i like this journey through your life you take us on in this paticular piece, and the end is fantastic!
bellmusker replied
Thank you! This is my personal favourite amongst my writing on RB, although most of the time it hides at the back of my folio. Occasionallly I put it at the front when I need to relearn my lesson from it, as I seem to do this week; not entirely sure why yet.
Oh, and as for the final paragraph – I damn well can strut in those fire engine red four inch stilettos now! And it feels glorious! :-)
Leith O'Malley
You really are something Bell.
I get the impression that with everything you have been through you have always found a kind of liberation through literature.. engulfing yourself with it, surrounding yourself with it and eventually finding freedom in it.. through your own writing.
I share your love of black ink. For you literature, for me art.
It is the one constant in my life. I can always trust it and its always there. It’s so intoxicating at times though and all encompassing. This urge to create.. create some sort of truth, some way of understanding the world or some way to escape.
There is no doubt you share a similar passion for literature and are driven to write.
Exhibiting or being published is an achievement and all the stamps of approval and pats on the back are good for the ego (not).. but its the love of creating, the fascination and infatuation with it, whether it’s the being alone in a room with a blank canvas or in your case staring down at a blank page in a moleskin.. that’s the real reward.
Those moments. Those moments when the world stands still and your own world is just starting..
I hope you can find more moments like these Bell. Clearly you have much to say to the world and we can’t wait to listen.
Congratulations is in order!
bellmusker replied
Ah Leith, when I read this I had so many words to pour your way; to thank you, to applaud your adoration of black ink, to show that although our mediums are different, they sit beautifully next to each other in the pews before our muses.
But I wasn’t sure I could tell you adequately just how much your message made me sit here with my hand on my chest, blushing and smiling and delighted….so inspired, and so moved by what you think of me, and my words. Thank you, so much.
And congratulations are in order for you – bring me stories of the exhibition!! How I wish I could be there :-)
gemmalemma
Holy hell.
I’m sorry I haven’t any more eloquent words than that.
But this is so…...wonderfully poisonous. It’s the type of emotion that engulfs and grabs hold and doesn’t let go.
bellmusker replied
Gemma, if I can get a holy hell from a reader, then I must be doing something right! Thanks so much for this, and the favourite; I love the passion in your writing so your thoughts on my work are much appreciated.
Kaiya Knox
First off, I’m sitting right next to Gemma at the moment. She’s my best friend, you see, and when she sends me a link on AOL Instant Messenger and (at the same time) shouts in my ear, “READ IT. RIGHHHHTTNOWDAMMIT!” I listen. And I’m glad I did. I wish I had more words to express how wonderful this is, how moving and inspiring. But I can’t. Maybe later, you know, after I’ve had time to let my mind mull all of this over.
If not, then, well. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this with us.
bellmusker replied
Thanks so much for this comment, Kaiya…..I have to say that I just love the image of you two sitting side by side reading my work; it made me beam into my whiskey glass! This is my most personal piece on RB and I tend to hide it more often than not. A comment like yours reminds me why it’s still up, and makes me feel less wary of leaving it there. Thank you so much for that :-)
nadine henley
thought I’d come by and treat myself to another of your pieces, bellmusker – and such a treat it is. What is so amazng about this, whether fact or fiction, is that it is written with such poignant detail and powerful imagery, and not a trace of sentimentality. That last line just rocks! You give me courage.
bellmusker replied
I always, without fail, get a jolt when I see someone has commented here. I have to admit Nadine, that this piece is 100% autobiographical, in all its brutal truth. Thank you for saying it’s not sentimental; psychosis doesn’t deserve sentimentality, and I strive to avoid it. And your last line here rocks – I can’t imagine anything better! Thank you.
loopyb
I’m so proud of you – and I LOVE YOU!!
bellmusker replied
Right back at you, my lovely woman x x
Yoanna
I believe I know a thing or two about the violent spaces you have been through.
But life is a long journey.
Ana as trivial as it is – the road is the end.
/ I am glad you made me notice your profile.
I suspect I will be a frequent visitor.
But I come like fog – “on little cat feet”. Silently.
:)
bellmusker replied
Yoanna, my road has tripped me up on many an occasion, but I regret few steps along it. That’s not a bad position to find myself in, really, and I have no complaints :-)
Thank you for coming to peek at my profile; you’re welcome here anytime, little cat feet or not!
Emraldae 20 days ago
i have a confession to make… instead of paying attention in class like i’m meant to, i’ve been reading your work.
i have to say, i find everything of yours i’ve read so far to be intriguing, wonderful and they give me a sense of hope.
out of all the pieces of yours so far, this one seems the most personal, and it must be hard to share with people.
one more confession i need to make: this piece makes me feel very connected to you and even though i haven’t been though most of this, i feel i can relate.
bellmusker replied 20 days ago
I’m so, so pleased to hear that my writing gives you a sense of hope. I often realise how much darkness pools from my words, but the theme of regeneration is entwined through almost everything I write. Thank you for seeing that; I really appreciate it.
Ah yes, god yes, this is the most personal piece I’ve ever written, which is why it’s hidden up the back of my folio! But you know just between us I meant every word.
Thanks for popping your beautiful head in here to take a read :-)