Random Thoughts on Bodies, Things and Pieces

I straddle lines. I always have.

It beats against my breastbone and I hear the tiny cracks beneath my feet growing like a crevasse.

I have legs that seem to go on forever, athletic throwbacks from running track in High School. The legs have a mind of their own, straddling things like Tall Man with Egos against my better judgement. Of course, my ass isn’t that great. I wish it had a dimple, or was plump. A scrumptious ass does look…edible. I need something to justify the sway in my jeans.

I’ve always loved the color of black cherries…all that dark blood swirling. So I painted my hair that color some years ago. It often smells like my chocolate shampoo. My dog smells like cornflakes. I wonder why.

My cat has stripes on her back, when she curls up in a ball she looks like a hairy tortoise. My other cat, the orange and white tabby will be 17 years old this summer. I don’t think he’ll make it. Neither does the Vet. He used to weigh 12 pounds, now he’s barely half that. His name is Mo, short for Mozart, because he used to walk up and down the keys of my piano as a kitten. His long hair always made him look fatter than he was, so I got to calling him Big Man, even back then. I still call him that today.

I look around my house and I notice that I have a lot of mosaics. Silver mosaic vase, antique mosaic Tiffany lamp with a dragonfly pattern, painting framed in bronze mosaic glass. My home is filled with fractures. Small pieces of reflective tissue, casting off different patterns depending on the light or the night, or what’s right. I danced naked in my home once after an entire bottle of wine. I rarely, if ever, drink alone. I can’t recall why. I do remember that my naked reflection caught in all those cracked surfaces seemed like abstract pieces of a swinging soul.

I crushed several dark roasted peanuts between my teeth this afternoon.
I needed some quick protein and I like the heavy peanut butter flavor of the dark roast. Sometimes my skin feels just as charred, not from the sun but from the way the air in an empty room can flashburn the skin. Right now all I want to do is sit perfectly still, to prevent the cutting.

Last night I went to my hair colorist to restore the black blood in my hair. He greeted me with his long hair braided indian-style and called me the Ever Shrinking Trace. And for a split second I worried I was shrinking inside as well as out. We discussed my thinning hair. My once glorious, thick red hair is evaporating. He said if it keeps up like this I will beg him to cut it shoulder-length. It was all I could do to not cry. I’ve kept my hair long for 30 years. I told him the doctor said it was due to stress and weight loss. Its called Telogen Effluvium. Sounds like a fancy drug for sneezing.

When I was 10 my Mom, tired of washing and fussing with my hair because I wouldn’t do it myself, cut it all off. Short like a boy. Even though I was a tomboy, with my dirty knees and tanned skin from spending all day outdoors, I was mortified. I hated it. I remember building sand castles at the beach that summer, leaning over to pile wet sand into my bucket and missing keenly, like church bells from a distance, the feeling of my hair swinging against my cheeks.

Going shopping today. Need to find a pair of suspenders and a lollipop. Heading to a “Bad in Plaid” party tonight where all the guys wear kilts and the woman dress as naughty schoolgirls. Felt great about that yesterday, now I’m going to have to talk myself into it all over again. I bought the plaid miniskirt already. The idea of men wearing kilts commando style just might put me over the edge. I wonder if there will be anything with a mosaic pattern there. And how beautiful ugly I will look in each shard. Will I walk from the parked car to the pub deliberately stepping over all the cracks and dents in the sidewalk? Like that yip-yip dog in “As Good As It Gets”. Will people notice my picasso face? How distorted it is? How the blood running in my veins is compartmentalized into a myriad of different thoughts and feelings? Do people recognize when they’ve had their millionth thought for the day?

I don’t want to shrink inside. I don’t want short hair or thinning hair or cracks in my heart.

Maybe I’ll buy a black trenchcoat instead, something sleek with lots of pockets. Just so I can slip on a pair of black open-toed stiletto’s, with nothing on underneath but a red lace bra, matching panties and garters. Instead of heading into that pub I’ll walk alone in the dark, listening to the solitary click of my heels against the pavement. Maybe I’ll turn a corner. Following a crack in the ground that disappears straight into a brick wall. I’ll stand up against that wall with nothing but dark hair framing my face. Open wide my trench coat and with legs straddling that crack tilt my head back and suck, in great gulps, all the fractured bits of me floating around like mosaic ghosts. I’ll swallow them and take them in until all those lines and fractures and cracks are nothing but simple geography.

I will feast upon myself.

I will savor every luscious fucking bite.

I will moan, out loud over the blessed, sacred, ecstasy of my whole.

I will be a hot angle in the moonlight.

(c) 2008 mstrace

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Tags:

blood, body, complete, cracks, fracture, fragment, mstrace, sexy, straddle and trenchcoat