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A Karmic Affliction New Orleans, 1867

REBECCA: October 6, 1863 Letter from: September 10, 1863: Naples, Italy My dearest friend Rebecca, I am saddened to hear of the boredom you are experiencing at home without me. I must say it delights me to hear that after all these years, my presence is of such importance to you, as is your presence is equally important to my sanity. I hope this letter reaches you in time to tell you that my attempts to leave Mother’s family in Italy in time to make it to your birthday festivities are currently at a standstill. We are experiencing a very unlikely, tropic-like rainfall that Father says will make it impossible to travel back to New Orleans in time for your celebration if we do not set sail within the next few days. The ship’s captain is the ficklest drunkard, as he refuses to ride out the warmest of storms. Although, you must know it would be my most bitter disappointment to not be there. I am praying for our safe arrival and to be in your lively presence once again. In response to your many questions of my time here in Italy, I must say that it is spectacular. The heart of the city sits on this ethereal bay lined with houses and architecture like you have never seen. I have heard historical fact that Naples is nearby an active volcano entitled Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the lost Roman city of Pompeii. I am inspired to be in the center of all this history. I must admit find myself at many points wishing that I could hear your opinions of all I am experiencing and that you could experience it with me. You have a tendency of maximizing my inspiration and the height of my mood. I feel lucky to know that I will be in your presence again soon. With my deepest admiration, William J. Grant I read over the letter that arrived from Italy from Mr. Grant about three or four times with a smile on my face which would have one believe I had slept with a clothes hanger in my mouth. Word from him was the most pleasing of birthday gifts for a girl of now seventeen years. In a surge of embarrassment from my foolish rush of red complexion, I slipped his letter into the velvet box on my vanity and threw my face into my palms. I then laid my dead down on my vanity and laced a spare button through my fingers, spinning it on the mahogany surface while I entertained myself with fantasies of what was possible after Mr. Grant’s arrival back to New Orleans. “Miss Rebecca,” an apparition of DeeDee appears within the frame of the mirror above my head on the vanity. I turn my head to meet her eye. “We must start dressing you for the evening.” MR. GRANT: October 6, 1863 Letter from: July 29, 1863 My dearest Willy, My summer days are filled with boredom each day that you are gone. I stroll down to the swamp with DeeDee on peaceful afternoons to read novels and sunbathe on most days. Although, I must say that it is not the same here without your comforting presence. I have made several attempts to entertain myself by exploring the Murphy family estate with Caroline, as their property is that of a picturesque dream. Their land like the paintings I have seen of the gardens of Versailles in Paris. I am obliged to say that while I very much enjoy my time spent with Caroline, my time with you is far more enjoyable.  Speaking of Paris, my mother has ordered me a custom powder pink gown lined with cream and fuchsia for my birthday festivities on the sixth of October. I do sincerely hope that you are back in New Orleans in the fall to see it, as your presence is of most importance to me. Mark me, your absence is bitterly suffered through. Setting my selfishness aside, I am desperate to know of your time in Italy. I have heard that your mother’s family is from Naples, is that where you have resided this summer? I wish dearly to visit somewhere besides London and Paris for dress fittings, as Italy seems like it would be the most exotic and exciting of adventures. I must ask, what is it like? Is it as enchanting as it is rumored to be? Have you been so lucky to see any ancient ruins? Please inform me on any and all questions that you are willing to answer. To respond to your question from before, I have come ahold of Jane Austen’s novel, “Emma”, and I am enjoying it greatly. I will lend it to you if you wish upon your return. My best wishes and prayers, Rebecca Jane Moore

While I was most excited to return for Rebecca’s birthday as her biggest surprise, I knew what was coming; I knew she was in love with me. As hard as I have tried, I have learned throughout my seventeen years on Earth that I do not possess any romance in my soul. I have loved her dearly as my closest friend since childhood and have admired her beauty as any man with sight should. It is with sheer and agonizing disappointment that I could not return another soul’s romantic affections, not even the one I hold the dearest. What I could admit to myself is that I wanted to see her more than anything for her birthday and to make her evening as special as it could be, even if I could not give her exactly what she wanted. Her mother, Mrs. Moore, summoned me to surprise Rebecca for her birthday by awaiting her presence on a tiled bench outside the living room doors. I was to wait for her to find me and promptly propose marriage. I felt a pit of dread in my stomach at the thought of lying to friend whose happiness relied on the impending marriage she would be in for eternity in God’s eyes. I wished her not a loveless marriage, but for a romance that consumed her soul. As I am a shell of the man I was raised to be, I had to conclude that the man who would make her happy would never be me. REBECCA: October 6, 1863 I glided down the vast staircase from my bed chamber to the grand foyer to greet my awaiting guests. As a crowd of heads came into view, I soon realized that all eyes were on me. It was in this moment I knew that I craved the spotlight, thrived in recognition, and reveled in admiration. The social scene of the elite of New Orleans were guests at my home for my celebration of becoming a woman, as Mother would say. Mother had promised that this night would be full of delightful surprise and fulfillment as I have never had before, as a child of ages previous to seventeen were not capable of appreciating such pleasures as that of a woman coming of age. I was enchanted by the possibilities that the evening could bring, although I was thoroughly disappointed by Mr. Grant’s absence. I knew that wherever he was in the world, he was wishing me the happiest of birthdays and most sublime happiness for my special day. “Oh, Rebecca!” Caroline rushed to me from the other side of the room where she was stuck chatting with the town’s most notorious flirt, Mr. Ellis Dudley, a very promising young man in all other areas but personality. “How stunning you look on your birthday! That pink is stunning against your chocolate locks. How envious all the young women must be of your beauty this evening!” her compliment may have stirred discomfort within me if it were from another woman, as I would have questioned her motives. Although, Caroline’s gentility always shined through her playful ignorance. “I must say Caroline that you have not a thing to envy, you are a most unmatched beauty,” I embraced her with the love and comfort I would a child, a kindness I never often shared with anyone but Mr. Grant and my siblings. Besides my recognized kin, Caroline was the only person in the room I did not find completely insufferable and I planned to spend it at her complete disposal. As soon as my pledge to Caroline solidified in my mind, Mother approached us while we giggled in the corner of the room and pointed secret fun at Ellis Dudley’s many attempts to seduce any and every woman in the room. “My darling Rebecca, I do have a surprise for you outside. Do you mind, Miss Caroline?”  Mother inquires of Caroline, her sharp eye giving her no room to refuse. “Of course not, Mrs. Moore, I would never stand in the way of Rebecca’s happiness!” Caroline quickly grabs my hand and winks, as if she knows what is to happen next. As Mother is gliding me through the many little crowds which have manifested throughout the room, I stop to ask, “where are you taking me?” “To the rest of your life, darling girl,” she leads me through the French doors which accent our patio. It is at this moment when I see where my surprise awaits. Mother kisses me on the cheek and closes the door behind her, vaporizing into the background noise created by the party.

“Happy Birthday, Miss Rebecca,” the apparition of my dearest Willy Grant accessorized with a yellow rose stood at the center of my private garden. His presence was of such delight to me, it was as if I forgot how I melted in his presence. He pushed back a lock of his now grown out chestnut hair and spoke again, “I hope that you are happy to see me.” “Oh, Willy! You do not know the happiness it brings me to see you here!” I threw myself into his arms in excitement and wrapped my hands around his neck, he followed with his arms gently around my waist. “How did you make it back so quickly?” He sat back down on the bench and ran his hands through his hair, which had grown longer than it had ever been before his voyage to Italy. He kept his eyeshot from me as if his view was glued to the gravel below his feet. “Father informed Mr. Moore of our safe arrival back to New Orleans just two days ago,” he finally picked his gaze up. “I was then vastly invited to the party and sent to the jeweler.” A tone in his voice seemed to drift into a melancholic tune I had never once heard part from his lips, “do you mean to say you are disappointed to celebrate with me?” Insulted by his clear irritability, anxiety raged inside of me. I wondered what I had done to dismay him. “No, Rebecca, as I have said on many occasions, I enjoy your presence more than any other woman in New Orleans,” he continued, “of course I am thrilled to celebrate with you.” “Excuse me if I struggle to comprehend why you seem in such discomfort,” a pulsating sense of irritation flushed out my joy and overflowed me with confusion. He raised a tiny, red-colored velvet box from his pocket and raised it up. “I am supposed to propose marriage to you this evening,” he placed his head in his palms and heavily sighed before he continued. “I have dreaded this moment from the minute we met those so many years ago, because in the deepest parts of me I know that I could truly be married to you. Although, I desperately wish that I could.” “And why is that?” was all I could manage to say without falling over and crumbling into myself. He stood up and pranced around the garden while he gathered his thoughts, he threw his hands in the air and began to speak again, “I cannot marry you because I cannot betray you,” his voice, an almost scream, alarmed me beyond my senses and caused the hairs on the back of my neck to become erect.   “How would you be betraying me by granting my most desired of all wishes?” A struggling tear escaped its duct and I bit my trembling lip to stop from crying. Willy darted over to me and cupped my face into his palms, “oh, no, Rebecca, you do not understand.” The pain was undeniable on his face as he wiped the tears from mine in a frenzy. “It is not you, there is no one for me. I have come to the most unsatisfactory conclusion that there is no romance in my soul. I could never take a wife.” I backed away from him in pure disgust and anguish, the betrayal he so desperately wished to conceal me from had already surfaced. “You have been revealed to me as the phoniest of all men who is so cowardly to not face what has been there since our very first encounter. Forgive me if I say that I wish for you to leave so I can enjoy the rest of my celebration and keep any shred of respect for you that I have left intact.” “Don’t you see that I am trying to not do wrong by you despite the many pressures of our families?” he pleaded to me, tightly grabbing my hand so I could not walk away. “I would never wish for you to be subjected to a loveless marriage. I care too much for your happiness.” I looked down to the floor and shook the blanketing tears off of my face, “please just let me go, I must not see you again so I can learn to love someone else,” I snatched my wrist from his tight grasp and wiped the tears from my face. I reentered my home with the brightest of all smiles decorating my face. I did not wish to speak of such humiliation on my birthday.

REBECCA: February 22, 1867

Caroline and I decided to take a stroll through the public gardens in the height of the afternoon. On a cold February day, the afternoon was the warmest peak of the day’s heat. I wanted to speak with her of her pending engagement to my dearest friend, Mr. Willy Grant. The romance had shocked me, as Grant had never been one for more than a fleeting romance; as I was victim of his charms many of times. “Have you set the wedding’s date?” An opening casualty to start a conversation which would inevitably be weighed down by dramatics. My best friend was to be married to my dearest, longtime crush. I felt owed an explanation if not an apology. Caroline remained silent for many moments; I observed her manner as she put together in her mind what she wanted to say. “Rebecca, Mr. Grant and I are not in love,” her beige blonde locks blew in the wind with the poise of a graceful stallion, her lips-stained fuchsia like a porcelain doll. She was the true cliché of a beauty in the peak of her life, like myself, Caroline was chained to the affliction of loving a man who would never love her in return. “He never loved me either,” was all I could manage to say, ashamed to melt in the shame and discomfort from the sight of what felt like her superior beauty. “If he ever loved, Rebecca,” she paused, choking back her grief, “I am quite certain that while he is incapable of romance, that he loved you the most.”

MR. GRANT: February 2, 1867 The suffocating pressure to find a wife from the desires of my father had cracked and crumbled my impenetrable ego. I had realized my foolish mistake of chasing the pursuit of freedom as soon as Rebecca stood upon the altar with Mr. Moreau, a man far beneath her in grace and position, to become his wife. I could have learned to love her the way a man is supposed to love his wife, as I had loved her as my dearest friend with the same lustful desire of every other man who has been in her presence. It was just weeks ago that Father gave me an ultimatum-marry by summers end or forfeit my inheritance. I could never handle the struggles the peasantry of humanity faced after living the most privileged life. As the reality of the consequences that came at the denial of his request, the idea of having a wife did not seem as insufferable as poverty. It was at the beginning of the month of February that I had begun courting who was second best, the beautiful socialite and best friend of Rebecca, Miss Caroline Murphy. I suffered through long strolls with her in gardens, seemed captivated by her deepest desires, and shared with her stories of childhood. With all of her radiance and striking beauty, there was a plainness and mediocrity to her that bored me to tears. I compared each conversation and day of foolishness with those of my dearest Rebecca. I knew it was an injustice to compare the two, yet I could not help to notice that these two women were incomparable. As Caroline and I walked through the Garden of Botany, (a touring exhibit which just arrived in the city), I kissed her in the middle of a pathway of cacti; only to get her to stop talking. I dropped my face from hers and got on one knee, “Miss Murphy, I will not excite you enough to tell you that I am in love with you, but I do know that I will learn to love you the way a man should love his wife and the mother of his children,” I cringed at the words I was feeding her, knowing they should have been told to someone else a number of years ago. “I have decided that I want you to marry me. I want you to teach me how to love,” I looked into her bright hazel eyes as she eyed the ring Father handpicked for this proposal. I saw that she had not listened to a word I said. I recognized fantasy in her eyes. She saw nothing but the ring, heard nothing but the question of marriage. “Oh, my,” the familiar voice of a scorned woman appeared in the vicinity before Caroline could give her answer. I turned to see who the woman’s voice belonged to. It was no other than my dearest friend, Mrs. Rebecca Jane Moreau, fashioned with the swollen stomach of a woman with child. “Oh, Rebecca!” Caroline gasped at the unexpected presence of our estranged friend. “Please do not be angry with me! I did not plan this to spite you!” Rebecca gazed deep into my eyes as she formulated her response to Caroline, “I am not angry with you, Caroline. I could never blame you for not being able to deny yourself such a profitable marriage.” As she said this, she held Caroline’s hand in order to reassure her against her anger, and to spite me with the betrayal she appeared to feel from my selfish actions. “Wait!” I called to Rebecca’s backside, walking away from us in a fury. “Rebecca, wait!” I caught up to her and caught her arm, in means to turn her towards me. In the action of her turning to face me, a sense of lust and recognition in my love for her overcame me. I cupped her chin and kissed her with the passion of a man in love. The spark which ran through my body at the slightest hint of her touch was euphoric and familiar; a kind of sensation one would feel in a warm bath; comfortable and elated. Rebecca removed herself from me, and with a tear shedding down her face she responded to my gesture. “No,” as she said this, she ran her hand down my arm and looked over my shoulder to Caroline. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

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THE SAGITTARIUS

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THE CAPRICORN: poem by sophia noble

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Lesbos, Sylvia Plath / How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, Florence & The Machine

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Preraphaelites & Plath ~

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Text: Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (1965)

Images:

1. John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-52)

2. John Everett Millais, The Martyr of Solway

3. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Aurelia (Fazio's Mistress) (1863, reworked 1873)

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a bad romance

1. I am floating. I move my head beneath the water and watch the surface shake like champagne bubbles. The water is dancing and it is peaceful, a peace I do not wish to be free of. The light that shines down on me illuminates my bathtub makes the bubbles glisten as if I were really bathing in a pool of fizzy golden nectar. I yearn to keep this peace forever, under the water where no one can find me. Where the outside world is indistinguishable from the sounds of my own thoughts. I am alone, and I have never felt more content inside this glimpse of loneliness. My bath smells of roses and chamomile. The aroma sends peace through my body as if God jarred the mixture himself. My heart starts to dance like the champagne bubbles that now break apart as I lift my head out of the water. I am grateful for the rare moments I experience with a blank mind, free of the constant battle my conscious has with itself. As the water loses its warmth and shifts into a temperature too lukewarm for my liking, I remove myself from the tub and wrap myself in one of the green and cream-colored tropical towels I picked out as “his and hers” towels for the doomed relationship that was Doug and Margot. As I wrap myself in the towel, the memory of Doug wrapping me in it and pulling me into his arms feels so real that I immediately rip it off and run naked into my bed. I lay there and let the fan make my body so cold that all I can think about is how uncomfortable I am once goosebumps start to trickle down my body. That technique works for about sixty seconds, and then his face is back in my head again. The thick head of dark hair and almond eyes that gorge into me and give the cutest wide-eyed look that ever existed. It was a look he’d always give me when he must have wanted me to fall even more in love with him than I already was. There is only one way out of this, and that is to think about the man who takes up the second half of my heart. Jimmy is familiar, he is a boyfriend and a brother all in one. No one can make me laugh, smile, or cry like he can. He is the one I have loved since before I finished puberty, he knows me completely and inside and out. He has the power to hit every nerve and ignite every crevice of me. His beauty is his hair, a golden oasis that I wish I could explore for the rest of my life. This is the deepest evil I have ever known, existing amongst two things in the world that I want so badly that it feels like a need and not being able have either one of them. Except for the mere blink in time that I did.

2.

The sun is setting over the grass fields we used to play in once upon a time. Our preteen ghosts wander the endless green and walk right next to each other, hand in hand. Jimmy and I sit against the wall of an old handball court, looking at each other and smiling. Now we’re laughing because we can hear our oldest friends, Annette and Brad enjoying each other’s company right behind the wall that divides us. Jimmy pushes my hair from my face and pulls me in for a kiss. The familiarity of kissing a boy you’ve been kissing since you were thirteen is a comfort neither of us have ever been able to let go of these last eight years. He looks at me now with a remorseful tenderness that I do not recognize in him. He knows that our time together is over. We have completed this part of our journey, and it makes us both want to claw our way back together in cowardly nostalgia. The sense of malaise we both experience without the other’s presence is unbearable, which only pushes us further apart. Jimmy grabs my hand now and laces his fingers between mine. “I love you, Margot, so much,” I spot a tear about ready to break loose from his tear duct. “I just don’t think I’m in love with you anymore,” he looks as if he has just broken his own heart. Even though he has spoken my feelings exactly, this cuts me deep like a knife. My soul feels like it’s bleeding out and drowning us both in a pool of my blood. “I know,” tears that I have been denying myself for months are now erupting from me. “I can’t say that I’m in love with you anymore either, but I love you more than I can possibly explain.” He pulls my head into his shoulder and strokes my hair. Stay calm, sweet girl, I will never leave you, is what he says to me with this action. He really has never broken that promise. Even when we have wanted to kill each other, I have never completely lost him. He is mine forever, my best friend and my soulmate who is no longer meant to be romantic. I break loose from his grasp and look forward. He moves his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in. I am warm, I am content. We watch the sunset together and enjoy the last moments we will ever have as lovers instead of just as friends. He is mine, I am his, forever.

3. “I miss the days when the only man I was in love with was my father,” Annette is moments from deep sleep right next to me, and this causes her to giggle right out of it. It is a part of our annual tradition that we have a sleepover the night before she goes back to Missouri. This goodbye will not be so bad because this will be her last miserable year in the state she hates. She will return to me, the sunshine, and palm trees right here in California in only a few months. Annette is my best friend, my sister, my most trusted confidante. I can communicate to Annette with a breath, a stare, a simple phrase; when we are together, we are one. “You’re ridiculous, Margot,” her fake irritation always charms me, makes me believe I’m funny. “Now let me sleep, I have a 25-hour drive in the morning,” she drifts back into almost sleep, but I am wide awake. I hold onto these last moments with her because I am terrified for the ones that come after. She is my only real friend, the only one that actually cares whether I live or die, whether I’m happy or sad. She’s the only friend who hasn’t betrayed my pathetically gullible trust. “I love you, Annette,” I whisper to her sleeping subconscious, as if this fact isn’t as clear as day to her. If I’m being honest, even one more year without her will be a hard one to get through. She will abandon me to my own devices, and secretly, I wish I was the one that had to go to school in Missouri to play soccer. In Missouri, I wouldn’t be haunted by the ghosts of old boyfriends, I wouldn’t be crippled by the pain of the past that looks me in the eye every single day I pass by my high school. I could be someone different entirely. That is what I have always wanted: to be someone else entirely.

4. I have a funny obsession with mirrors. I write about them, I dream about them, I stare at myself in them incessantly in hopes that I will someday find myself beautiful. Many people awe over my beauty, compliment my luminous skin, ask me where I get my hair done, and how I stay in such good shape. I do not see what they see. I see the lumpy prepubescent girl I once was. I can almost see the frumpy, Pillsbury dough poster child that once looked back at me through the façade of the pretty girl that looks across from me now. I can still hear “you’re a fat, worthless piece of shit, Margot,” coming from my seventh-grade bully’s mouth at each moment I allow myself to feel pretty. I sit and stare at myself in my ceiling-to-floor length mirror and examine what’s looking back at me. I am the picturesque symbol of a self-hating narcissist, a term I have just coined in this very moment. I see all the beauty and all of the ugly in myself all in one blink of an eye. The image of me is as if Janis Ian and Rachel Green were walking nervously along the same tight rope where the center is a deadly pit of fire. I crawl back into my bed covers and shut my eyes. I see myself as I want to be. I am laying in a field of bright red roses, the sun filling me with warmth under the shade of a eucalyptus tree. My mind has taken me to my Eden. I lay here for a while and dream of a different life, a life in rose fields that go on forever. I wish to stay here eternally, even if it isn’t real. I do not wish to leave this paradise, the only place that has ever truly felt like home. I wish to stay blissfully alone in another realm of reality.

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““It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that great sins of the world take place also.” -Oscar Wilde

••photo by me••

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1001 Grams (2014)

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*inspired by my current netflix obsession”

THE SIGNS AS THAT 70s SHOW CHARACTERS:

aries: fez

taurus: kitty

gemini: caroline

cancer: bob

leo: leo

virgo: donna

libra: jackie

scorpio: kelso

sagittarius: hyde

capricorn: eric

aquarius: midge

pisces: pam macy

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S.m.zhao

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lady lazarus falls in love

I made you out of clay

To pretend this imposter was you

I dressed him up in

Red,

White,

And blue

To make him look like you

I put on my prettiest dress,

Most sparkly earrings,

Wore your favorite perfume,

He did not compliment me,

Did not tell me I was pretty,

He did not swoon

I took him to our favorite place

Where the sun sets and becomes the moon,

We sat in the dead grass

On the edge of sunlight

He did not kiss me,

Did not caress me,

Or find me witty,

I could not make someone more like you

Unless I bottled your DNA

He is not made out of clay,

He is you

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smoking a blunt with Sylvia Plath

me: this is some good weed huh Sylvia

Sylvia Plath: [hits blunt] black blood dances around the witch’s hut. i dream of myriad deaths ensconced in poppies. i am the witch. i am the blood. i am sweet death in all its forms.

me: …alright

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“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”

— William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

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“Angry, and half in love with you, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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“I am both worse and better than you thought.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath