#⌈ aesthetic. ⌋ — “ and how to unspool the nerves. ”

[ofveneers]

tag drop

[quietplanets]

WELCOME TO THE DREAMSCAPE, HECTOR YANG. WHAT IS A DREAM?

ANSWER: The body’s most honest communication with itself.

Hector Yang is Magnolia’s answer to mayordom (or martyrdom, depending on how you’re feeling). While there is a self-made hunger to the Yang family, a level of ambition that feeds the frenzy of the machine, Hector subscribes to a quieter life. Pragmatic, softer around the edges, built for survival in-as-much as he does his best to make the right decisions and they unspool in his hands like threads caught unawares. There is a sense of the revenant about him, that something haunts the corners of his mind; he is afloat, diligent, wondering about the way that life oscillates around him. Tender as an uncovered nerve, gentle as the night, Hector walks through dreams with a ghost touch. He lingers long enough to leave an imprint, the faint outline of a hand against the glass window of your mind, and he’s gone again; the greatest escape a man has is the dreamscape that opens up to him like the coming of spring. Hector is many things, but he is not prone to unkindness; he is not a trickster, not prone to Machiavellian behaviour; he did not perform any trickery or sleight-of-hand to land neatly on his feet as mayor. He believes in hard work, honours these values-- --honours himself most of all. Long nights, cold moons, neck pain from craning to look up, up, up. Hector’s aesthetic is crispness: he presents well, shirts pressed and shoes shined, affable to those around him. In private, his comfort fades to stiffness; he is ill-at-ease with himself and maintains distance from himself, as though he is uncertain of how to be still, and quiet, and whole. Parts of him he finds in the dreamscape; other parts he leaves behind. He is always on the move because stillness reminds him that there are things missing. Consider: a man constantly leaving himself behind / the watcher in the long night / wanted stars but he got slithers of stardust instead / water pooling through cupped, clasped hands / heart-on-sleeve enshrined in armour / desperate to do right and be right / morally upstanding / restless / wild youth mellowing to caution in adulthood / perpetually trying to amend for bad decisions / Religious Guilt Personified, perhaps

[descendinq]

Tea Time

    He carefully pushed open the heavy wooden door, careful to duck his hands into his sleeves when pushing on the metal handle and to stick right to avoid the charms hanging from the ceiling. Like always, he misjudged the height of the step down, smashing his foot a little too hard onto the wooden flooring and grabbing the attention of a small, rotund woman behind the desk, dark hair pulled into the world’s slickest and limpest ponytail. She snapped her head up when she heard the routine smack of his bare feet on her carefully cleaned floors and, like always, let out a worrying howl.

    “Oh, gods above, I just finished waxing!” He had a sheepish smile--her anger was always ephemeral--as he continued walking into the store, pulling a large wad of crumpled up cash out of his pocket as compensation for his ill manners. Three pennies, a dime, and a half-a-sprig of rosemary tumbled onto the floor as he turned out the pocket. His grin widened as he, albeit smugly, presented the woman with the pile of cash. She sniffed, narrowing her eyes into thin, hooded slits. “What's that then? Fifteen bucks?” He laughed out loud, then, shaking his head.

    “Fifty-seven,” He seemed excited. “And that's after I bought next week's groceries. It's nice to see you too, Ms. Binchy,” Her expression softened into something not unlike embarrassment, but before he could poke fun at the old shopkeeper, she turned her head and scoffed out her indignation.

    The shop’s walls danced with candlelight the way they always did and smelled of unpleasant herbal aromas mixed with the subtle addition of white sage. Ms. Binchy had reached the prestige of shopkeeping that, if all of her regulars continued coming on the basis that they did, she wouldn't need to lasso in anyone else with fancy aesthetics, and yet she played a bizarre mix of meditation music, soft melodies, and classical music anyway. The blond man recognized the current song, and, if he twisted in a surreptitious manner, could see the video playing on Ms. Binchy's computer screen. La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf. Meant for a different crowd, perhaps, than an older woman peering into an empty tea glass to view the leaves within and a young man with dirty feet and a flannel that was far too big for him.

    “Emmanuel,” Ms. Binchy cleared her throat--it was more of a cough and a hack, really--and held up her glass for him to see. “You see that? Love is in the air,” He--or Emmanuel, he supposed--didn't agree. There was a fly and some dust in the air, which was not romantic to him in the slightest. He didn't particularly like tea, nor did he understand how Ms. Binchy was able to look at the map of grime at the bottom of her glass and see something meaningful in it. He preferred actual leaves, like the leftover half-sprig of rosemary in his pocket. For protection.

    On the basis of protection, he recalled why he consisted the empty store that day. Empty glass charms were lined up against the back window, various shapes and sizes but all reflecting light like a color show with a heavy whitening filter over it. He moved over to them and grabbed a fistful of the ones with tapered ends, wrapped an excessive amount of string around all five of his right hand fingers, and made sure to snatch a few sprigs of each herb on his way back to the counter. It took him a while to unspool all of the string on his fingers.

    “Why don't you just hold it?” Ms. Binchy went off again, grumbling as she punched in some codes to an old-school cash register that screamed every time a button went down. “You look like a fool doing that,”

    “I am a fool, Ms. Binchy. It's a lot easier to be stupid and honest than stupid and dishonest, you know,”

    The cash register's screaming stopped for a minute as Ms. Binchy scrunched her eyes together at him again. “Well, now, I said you were a fool. Not stupid,” Emmanuel smiled, big and bright, but Ms. Binchy was too busy being embarrassed and a shopkeeper to notice. “Here's your trinkets and string, varmit. You want a bushel of this or should I leave it loose?” Emmanuel pointed to the red ribbon spool on the wall with his left hand as he re-wrapped his fingers with the string. It was hard for him to bend them when they were like that--finger sausages. Ms. Binchy didn't seem to find it very funny, but he tried his hardest to grab the little bag with the bushel of herbs and glass containers. His struggle seemed like it would last an obscenely long time, as Emmanuel was in no hurry to leave the peace of Ms. Binchy's “Tea Time” and return to the chaos that was the city. However much he loved his forest and her shop, travelling between the two locations was not the safest. A barefoot, singing man dancing his way through the alleys and streets of Denver, Colorado? It didn't matter that he was a pacifist vegetarian with a tendency to flee from his issues, he never left the house for the city without an iron pair of brass knuckles and three sprigs of rosemary in his front right pocket.

    His mind had fogged over while he was wrapping his fingers, until eventually he stopped moving, leaving the strings limp and slowly unraveling from their forced form. Ms. Binchy, pouring herself another cup of tea, didn't look up until La Vie en Rose ended and the shop was cloaked in suffocating silence.

    “Emmanuel?” She sniffed, her voice revealing her hesitation. “Whatcha doing? Your string is coming undone,” Ms. Binchy's concern was most definitely not about his string coming undone, but Emmanuel knew what she meant. He spiraled, sometimes, into places he didn't understand, didn't remember. She brought him back when she was there. When she wasn't, the birds usually shouldered that responsibility.

    “Thank you,” He smiled vaguely, not confirming if the gratitude was late and intended as a general shopkeeper-patron interaction or if his thanks held deeper levels. Ms. Binchy was used to this by now. She had all kinds of people come by Tea Time, Emmanuel knew, and if she wasn't easing him out of a breakdown he didn't know the origin of, she was helping others. They, however, usually understood where their fears and anxieties were coming from. The small shopkeep opened her mouth, probably to offer an embarrassed grunt like always, but before any noise could escape her mouth, the heavy double doors jingled and someone's shoe heavily hit the ground.

    “Oh- that's, uh, not as deep as I thought,” It was a woman. She offered Emmanuel and Ms. Binchy a sheepish smile as she brought her other foot down onto the creaky floor. Neither the shopkeep nor her regular patron said anything, and the awkward silence seemed to be making the woman uncomfortable.

    “So, um- you sell crystals and tea bags, right?” She flattened her hair self-consciously, her hands adjourned with many types of rings. Emmanuel felt like he was unable to move but slowly falling, like water that just began to freeze in an ice tray.

    Ms. Binchy nodded, not at all awkward and uncomfortable like both of the patrons inside the store were. “Sure do. Tea bags are beneath this here counter and the crystals are by the window,” The woman smiled and turned to head to the window, but Ms. Binchy spoke up again. “Hey. You, uh- you must be new, huh? I haven't seen you around here before,” The woman smiled, adjusting her denim coat. Emmanuel idly wondered how he managed to stay as still as he did as long as he did, slightly bent and with string rapidly unraveling from his fingers. He felt a hot rush of shame as the woman glanced at his hand.

    “I'm not new,” She smiled, waving her hand and laughing from nerves. “I learned about this shop a few days ago, and- well, I thought I should check it out. I'm Margie,” Margie. Emmanuel was reminded of a magpie. She then turned to look at him, again confused by the man who only followed her with his eyes, and he felt his knees shaking. When she finally turned away and went to grab some crystals, he finally moved his legs into a better position, slowly and tense like a feral cat. His throat was closed.

    Other people entered the shop with him on occasion, and he was just as tense around them as he was around Margie, but at least he recognized them. There was Michael and Donna, the older couple that had their tea leaves read every other Sunday; Ophelia, the fifteen year old closeted girl in both sexuality and religion who came for the herbs; Ryan, the banker who recently went through a divorce and was using witchcraft as an attempt to thwart her ex-husband's new relationship; Renee, the quiet and short woman in her twenties more interested in the religion than anything Ms. Binchy actually sold; and most often, William and his young child Carson, the pair that came in, bought tea, and exchanged knowing glances with Ms. Binchy. Emmanuel knew what he was afraid of and, embarrassingly, longed for the day he would be one of the people receiving such knowing glances.

    But Margie? She was new. He didn't know her intentions, her desires, her fears, how her hands twitched when she was looking for things or if she was even shaky at all. She didn't look like it. The crystals didn't click against one another when she grabbed one out. The music began playing again. Some pop song he didn't know. He couldn't turn to look.

    “Do you want your change?” Ms. Binchy’s voice was much less than a whisper. It was a miracle he heard her at all. He slowly jerked his head in a strange, negative fashion. “Okay, bud. I'll save it for next time,”

    Those were the releasing words. Next time. There would still be a next time. Margie would not replace him, not even as she slowed to a stop in front of the glass vials and grabbed three, nor when she grabbed more expensive string than him and wrapped it partially around her slim index finger to hold it. His lip quivered when she grabbed seven sprigs of rosemary. More than him. When Margie turned again to approach the counter for tea bags, Emmanuel stumbled and fell in his haste to leave, smashing an unknown number of vials in the bag. He felt like crying, but instead he stood and let one of the string spools fall off his fingers.

    The heavy wooden door jingles again, and this time, two small feet jumped onto the creaky floor like they were splashing in a puddle. He was close to the door, then, and the sudden movement caused him to audibly suck in a deep breath. A tall man with groomed brown hair stepped down carefully, one of his hands holding those belonging to the small feet.

    “I'm sorry,” William quickly apologized, moving Carson to the side so neither of them were in the way. “I didn't hit you, did I?” Emmanuel felt his brain expanding and his chest tightening and his eyes somehow focusing and blurring at the same time so he closed them and focused only on listening. His ears were ringing.

    “No,” To Emmanuel, his own voice sounded like nails scratching on a wet chalkboard, but when he opened his eyes, William didn't look like he noticed. “You didn't,”

    “Good,” William’s arm jerked to the right as Carson grew impatient, a little toddler who didn't yet understand disrespect. “Have a nice day, Emmanuel,” He didn't notice the shaking in Emmanuel's legs nor the redness of his eyes nor the shattered glass rattling in the bag. The two men did, however, make eye contact, and that was the push that sent Emmanuel over the edge, screaming, boiling, he was bubbling over there was something coming, something he could hear and it was coming and

    He left the building silently before anyone could see him cry and ran as fast as his legs would take him because he was running from the safest place in his world and the cement hurt his feet and Margie was new and his vials were broken.

    He collapsed on his front porch step, bloody feet mixed with dirt and river water and mud. His grin was blinding.

[herecreepwretch]

...

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a vision:

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a praying mantis in an arid field whose camouflage is of being half- eaten, whose limbs are wild mercy to that latent calm of deception - and I? I was that mantis's terror adjacent an animal's nails, teeth. I was that terror indefinitely, un- fixed to the extent that peace was, if there, a concatenation of terror.     terrible, to be helmed by dust, to be lent to molt, to so unassumingly evaporate. however, I cannot judge my faculty of judgment - well, let's duly acknowledge a certain aporia; I promise it'll spiral into its own ends of import, like shipping lanes deliver the mechanisms of their own exponentiation and obsolesence - and I have no desire for sham attachments or the dragnets of pride and reckoning.     less is more: translation of every account pushed to the margins of the ledger until the discreteness of the vital and immobile were rendered a rounding error? your countenance just a floor for higher ballets, the start and filmic stop of some wave's demi-plié.

<>    

a man told me this was religion. yeah? I'm not so sure, submissives. any point on the curve is inferior to another, sans exception. even the infinite is stuck in its approach, clotted with exclusions as it recognizes now this, now that as the requisite excess of new limitations - has the beast a manner, a routine? yes? then it is a number washed by cascades of asymmetry, plucked ripe of worry over whatever isn't prime. here says MAMA: plainer demarcations result only in delay of when you'll be cut by your own keys; every lock sharpens in accordance with how the switch dulls. here says SISTER: I haven't been to the salt flats since the second divorce but in my dream I had no reflection - the horizon, indistinct - and so no way of analogizing my body with itself as I walked across plains I knew were level and yet never mine to ideally determine as such. I was a video game. not a character, the game entire. do you know that feeling, little brother?

<>  

no, I'm sorry. I have no clue what that's like. are you all right? "I wouldn't be ok in your situation" is a phrase I keep hearing more and more these days, as if our estrangement were negotiable in terms amenable to imagination, i.e. we were streams of information. it hurts to believe we're not, you know, but unfortunately the metaphysics doesn't work out. quodlibet est, aut non est - guarantees are absent as auguries. a mystic, too, dissimulates           in Empirical hope that the pasteboard mask is warped and misperceived flesh - and she's a comic, she is! I wouldn't neglect this.

<>

still, I recall his face. there's a kind of pain that deracinates secrets as you live the foundation of the other's life in explication of the injury of your own. their physiogonomy unspools before you - all aged tracts of skin known imprinted in synchrony with vain gambles of nerves. obsession is alchemized into blood, their disfigured blood into serpentine obsession. oh honey, I'll always be the one closest to the opaque subtleties of your affairs. parents, siblings, friend, spouse, child: they seek to exchange, to advance, to divide you in dividing you from you and themselves. our relationship obtains prior the possibility of a split, like the rules of architecture concern the integrity of buildings. we vary lest we both collapse.

<>  

and who is the rule? and who the structure? beats me, babe. I thought I had the answer once, and then once again, but I gave up after that. are you familiar with the late joke in the very, very first Simpsons animation, Homer's quasi-lullaby to Spinoza's idea of a cursed being, the developmentally frozen Bart? "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind."? I have to notify you, audience. when I wrote the above verses, my memory was that Homer delivered those words to Maggie. it was a rapturous image, far more rapturous than it is currently. for Spinoza's idea of a monstrous entity is of an infant prized free of generative momentum. this, you'll agree, is a deprivation whose severity outpaces eternal adolescence by magnitudes. there's a sublime intensity in the original conception - an infant as a finality in nature. if you'd reject it with horror, why not reject the dignity of stalled humanity more generally? it's an open question. it inexorably is, mate. when I got the news about it being Bart, and not Maggie - when I brushed up on the truth with my phone - I was sitting by a ping-pong table as one person I supervise squared off against the other person I supervise. the baby of my most immediate boss stretched her arm out and ostensibly indicated the activity as, soon enough, one of hers same as it was ours. you can't dwell in the present.

<>

forget about it. The Simpsons is older than me by two or four years. my mother, influenced by my father, didn't let me watch it as kid.   something something ironic depictions of abuse unexcused by an exhausted Verfremdungseffekt. someting something the pseudo-therapeutic narcissism of generation X. the narcissism of the boomers was authentically therapeutic, he'd have said. fair's fair, dad. christen me in a century. regardless, depravity is found in glittering grass, if you teach yourself the methods of ascetics. and depravity has its uses. look, you're going to violate someone. best make it a pedagogical experience. a womb is a door, not a machine, and few knock (a bodhisattva, perhaps, with a knack for parable) despite the expression. an ancient fantasy and its contemporary bloom in an occulted mantra: women are rituals. heed the graven circle.

<>

I walked around this island with a girl who'd shaved her head. she clung to my shoulder, fearful of the dark. you fear it because it's alive to you, I ribbed - the night is a cyclops you dread you might wake and be seen by. yet there's no positivity in darkness. a shadow is refuge from polymeric chains of appearance - it'll never return your gaze because it's the blind and blinding recusal of every eye. sotto voce, i faux-stammered: it's that mirrored celestarium, sunk in light, that's the threat!

<>

I wish it'd happened like that. that's a lie; I spread lies to reliably scaffold their opposite as befits any post-Romantic clod and melancholy addict. what happened was simple, and mild, and meaningless like observing an insect move towards nourishment while sipping wine and listening to rain-sounds recorded in the Amazon in 1999 is simple, and mild, and meaningless. a girl I was fond of inhabited     her anxieties transparently and vulnerably and I offered her my path of abstract escape in intention   that manifest shelter would follow, or grow, or be produced. but I have come to agony in shades. and she, to trust the sun. there are strata of black like curdled densities of liquids. you must arrange them as ladders. they are what ladders purely are: apportioned voids, idle zones between distributions of skeletally-wedded purpose. madam, I did the math

<>

and we haven't been spared a remainder. hey, my gnostic youth, the alien engine of this slow abandonment of a buried conservation: death and aesthetics are one. lowest to the swallowing ground, they're aware of what is most foreign to any cycle or spill of broken lines. the contours of your visage, I'll see them differently. I saw them differently as I spoke to you today - angles you hid in profiles were managed wholly without context. it won't last, your confidence. it'll oscillate. it will not. and whatever the state of lost resolve you'll meditate on that world you left, are leaving, and ask what it was who you were, and of they, of who it was which it was and were to would be. fine. I love you. I love what I don't know about you, which is a definition of love when it isn't a declaration of moral psychosis. independent of sanity, it continues though to approximate the irreversible gift, the slack catalysis, of salvific attractions - the case study's assertions? he would accept nothing that could be named as real.       he would accept nothing that already prevailed as a lodestar of virtue.