Ante Aeternitatem

I’m so sick of making up a customized personality for each and every single person I come accross in life. like ‘oh, this person doesn’t listen to the same music as I do, let me pretend I like what they listen to, so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable and insecure about their taste in music’, or ‘this person doesn’t have enough intellectual depth to discuss certain concepts and theories, let me pretend to be dumber than everyone in the room, so they feel like they fit in’, ‘let me make fun of myself, so that a certain someone doesn’t feel unconfident’, ‘let me pretend that I don’t know how to write a long essay so that everyone feels reassured and confident’

At the end of the day, i go back home and attempt to hold onto my true identity which I am afraid i’d forget very soon, simply because I’m a people pleaser.

Aphrodite unfastening her sandal

Roman period

Provenance: Syria?

Beadnet dress, Egyptian, Old Kingdom, Dynasty 4, reign of Khufu, 2551–2528 B.C.

Was originally blue and blue green, to imitate lapis lazuli and turquoise. I did not know there were existing garments this old, and especially in a condition where you can clearly see its form. The MFA website explains it here: (also, His Majesty was a perv, clearly)

“When the female rowers of the king’s boat tossed away their regular clothing and slipped on bead-net dresses instead, “the heart of His Majesty was happy at the sight of their rowing,” according to an ancient author. The tale is about magic performed by one of the priests of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid and the king under whom the owner of this dress probably lived. The woman’s occupation is not known because she was found in an uninscribed coffin. Nothing remained inside except bones, a few scraps of linen, a headrest, and approximately seven thousand beads. Because of meticulous note taking and photography at the time of their discovery, the original position of the beads was recovered, and some of the original stringing preserved. With clues provided by relief representations, the shape of the bodice and the floral-pendant fringes at the bottom could be reconstructed. These fringes would have jingled seductively as the wearer walked. The faience’s vivid dark blue, light blue, and green hues have faded, but a hint of their original brilliance may still be seen. Although only the front part of the dress has been restrung, sufficient beads were found to indicate that the dress would have covered the back of the mummy as well. It is the earliest known bead-net dress, and one of very few from the Old Kingdom. Prior to its reconstruction, this type of dress was known only from representations painted on relief or statuary. Depictions of women in Egyptian art occasionally feature garments decorated with an overall lozenge pattern. This design is believed to represent beadwork, which was either sewn onto a linen dress or worked into a separate net worn over the linen. This beadnet dress is the earliest surviving example of such a garment. It has been painstakingly reassembled from approximately seven thousand beads found in an undisturbed burial of a female contemporary of King Khufu. Although their string had disintegrated, a few beads still lay in their original pattern on and around the mummy, permitting an accurate reconstruction. The color of the beads has faded, but the beadnet was originally blue and blue green in imitation of lapis lazuli and turquoise.”

You walk outside. The sun is blinding and fierce. You shield your eyes from the piercing light. You cannot see. You look around and notice that no one else is covering their eyes; no one else seems to notice. You wonder if the sun has always been this bright. You try to ignore the creeping thought that it seems to get brighter and closer with each passing day. You continue walking. You shield your eyes. You cannot see.

There’s a tumbleweed in the parking lot. There’s always a tumbleweed in the parking lot. It doesn’t matter which parking lot you’re in. It’s always larger than you expect. You have heard tales of tumbleweeds larger than cows, larger than cars. You’ve even heard rumors of some taller than humans. You’ve seen shows on TV where the directors throw in a passing tumbleweed for laughs. The directors don’t realize that these things truly are ever-present. They grow tired of being joked about. You hear them shuffle as they roll closer.

“Have you applied to Texas Tech?” a teacher asks you. You know nothing about Texas Tech yet you don’t remember a time when it was not a constantly recurring part of your life. You pass posters in the hallway and they all say the same thing. “Have you applied to Texas Tech?” “Have you applied to Texas Tech?” You have no intention of applying to Texas Tech. They say that the college is in your city, although you have never seen it. Months pass and the questioning continues. You repeat over and over again that you are not going to apply. Your acceptance letter arrives in the mail.

          On some hot summers, on the days where the city streets are as dry and dusty as desert bones and your father decides he has had enough of this crowded city life (and often has he brought up that he has had enough of this city life), you visit your grandparents’ country home down in the barrio. There the air is hot and lush with foliage; here sweat seeps from the pores of your neck in the hot day’s sun down to the toasting rubber of cheap slippers, here the weeks are filled to the brim with sweet mango nectar straight from the towering fruit tree at the edge of your grandmother’s garden, all fenced in by their little crooked black gate.

http://www.businessinsider.com/disgusting-mysterious-sea-monster-washed-up-on-an-island-in-indonesia-2017-5

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/12/massive-creature-washes-indonesias-serum-island/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/massive-sea-creature-indonesia-island_us_5915e11ee4b0031e737d59ae

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4498088/Giant-squid-carcass-washes-remote-Indonesian-beach.html

sitting on the bottom of a boat loading ramp with your grandfather just after the stars come out. he shines his flashlight out over the swamp to show you all the alligators resting on the banks. you can see the little bit of devil leftover in their eyes when the light’s on ‘em. gator-fire, he tells you. you turn to ask him why they’re so bright just as the last truck pulls out of the gravelly lot behind you, illuminating his worn face for just a second. his eyes flash red-orange in the headlights.

with a little practice, you can tell your future by crushing a mosquito onto your skin and reading the portents in the blot of your own blood

you go out on the gulf one day in the rickety little fishing boat you’ve had for years, the one streaked with rusty fishblood stains inside and too old and ugly to sell. you’re a few beers deep when the dolphins show up, dancing around and splashing, giving you a show in return for a handful of your baitfish. they stay long after they’ve finished eating, slapping your boat with their tails and spitting water at each other. you toss them the rest of your bait an hour later, chalking your empty buckets up to bad luck. you don’t notice the shadow that’s been circling the boat all morning, kept at a distance by the anxious dolphins and larger than any shark could be.

there are old men with small coffees and pastel shirts who skip church to sit in the park on sunday mornings. they try to teach you to play dominoes every time your mother takes you there. you’re not very good, and they chastise you kindly but urgently in spanish as they take your worn stone pieces and change them around to help you lose less awfully. they sweat into their straw hats and you catch the pained, frightened looks on their faces when you leave them without really having grasped what they tried to teach you. it’s almost like they need you to learn. like there are higher stakes than the pennies they loan you to gamble with. there are different men in the park every weekend, always strangers. you should have paid attention.

never fall asleep on the ground. the kudzu creep will find you and take you.

you’re driving to work early one morning, the acrid smell of smoke from a controlled burn on the northbound side of the road digging at your eyes. you’re headed south. you slow down to let a rabbit run in front of your car, out of the safe green forest on your side and toward the blaze on the other, disappearing into the smoky underbrush. rabbits aren’t too smart, so you think nothing of it until you have to brake for a family of deer, three more rabbits, and a tortoise the size of a manhole cover to cross in front of you all at once, into the small inferno on the other side. you see a black bear follow their path in your rearview mirror when you can finally start driving again. you pull into the right lane to put a little distance between your car and the safe green forest on your side.

the three a.m. dew in the grass feels good on your feet as you wait for your dog to stop inspecting the darkest corner of your yard. when she yelps suddenly and runs back to you, you assume the rustling and hissing you heard was just a possum, a raccoon, maybe a cat. you’re too tired to get the flashlight and make sure, so you walk back into your house, your bare feet leaving dark red smears on the tile.

tourists feed the alligators when they come, leaving picnic garbage in the waterways and throwing food to them directly. the gators eat, the tourists snap photos and leave, and the people left behind lose dogs and cats and limbs when the beasts are no longer satisfied with hunting, finding themselves more suited to hand-fed sacrifices.

if you don’t like the weather in florida, just cross the street. there’s something strange over there, and it’s definitely worse than the rain.

You return to the old Baptist church for Easter service, feeling a little guilty for staying away so long.  But you are greeted warmly by the church-goers and invited to share a pew.  Gruff old men shake you hand with fingers curled and knotted like oak branches and soft old ladies hug your neck and half smother you in affection and thick perfume. Everyone inquires about you, your family, and the various details of your lives with honest familiarity.  You have never seen any of these people before in your life. 

“I Hunt Black-and-Tans” reads the bumper sticker of the mud-streaked pickup.  It’s jacked up too high for you to see into the bed, but you’re pretty sure that not all of the reddish stains leaking out from under the tailgate are clay.  You bring the dogs inside that night.

The schools are closed.  Weather alerts interrupt every radio and television broadcast.  The governor had declared a state of emergency.  Standing on the back porch, you can hear the tornado sirens in town, eerily faint in the distance.  The sky above is a beautiful, cloudless blue and the breeze smells of honeysuckle.   

Uncle Earl’s death is a shock.  He was old, sure, the eldest of twelve siblings, but still hale and spry.  He was fond of telling folks about how he’d only ever had to go to the hospital twice in his life – once when he had pneumonia as a child and then to get pins put in his knee back in eighty-six, after Larry’s bull knocked him down.  Unlike many of Uncle Earl’s stories, you know that this is true because Aunt Bea and Uncle Mike and even Momma can vouch for it.  Aunt May, the unexpected widow, seems to have wilted from the shock like a tomato vine in the heat.  She tries in vain to make the dinner after the funeral seem like any other lively family gathering. She even cooks her signature roast, though the kitchen and the laundry room and parts of the front bedroom are overflowing with dishes from friends and neighbors.  “She’s coping in her own way,” says Aunt Bea in an undertone.  You nod solemnly just as you bite down on a piece of gristle.  Something clacks against your teeth when you spit it out and you discretely fold your napkin to hide the tiny screw. 

The subdivisions encroach a little further each day, full of yuppies and yankees.  “Worse than kudzu,” you mutter, with a disdainful eye on the new paved roads and neat plastic fences.  “Maybe we’ll have a good frost this year.” 

Granny complains that the rooster crows at night.  You’ve never heard him do it, maybe because you are a sound sleeper and your room is on the other side of the house, facing the garden.  But she fusses so much that Grandpa finally tells her to just butcher the damn thing, it’s not like he’s laying any eggs, and Joe down the road has half a dozen roosters if she wants to get a different one.  So she stews the offending bird for Sunday dinner and buries the head and the guts in the bean patch, pleased to have gotten some use out of him.  She is also pleased to have gotten a decent night’s sleep, all bright-eyed and chipper at breakfast the next morning.  You barely hear her through the lethargic haze in your mind.  Hoarse, muffled crowing kept you awake all night.

Everyone knows when hurricane season starts.  The National Weather Service awards tags on the lottery system and publishes the harvest restrictions and bag limits.  Tropical storms may not be taken.  Hunters under age sixteen must be accompanied by a qualified adult.  No more than two named storms may be taken in one day.  Night hunting is punishable by fines and jail time. Category fives and above may only be taken in group hunts consisting of three or more individuals over the age of sixteen.  There are no restrictions on the harvest of tornadoes, including those spawned by hurricanes.  

Out-of-towners passing through on the way to the beach like to laugh at the names.  Fall fairs for rattlesnakes and peanuts.  Monuments to boll weevils and coonhounds.  Highschool mascots of twisters and gamecocks.  The old folks nod silently with smiles that don’t reach their eyes.  The strangers don’t understand the fickle powers that govern our lives.  The old gods, forces of nature and wild critters, must be respected and placated and content to leave us alone.  The younger powers, our allies, must be remembered and honored so they remain faithful.  In the blight years, when the cotton withers in the dry summer and the hay rots in the wet fall, the old folks don’t smile at all when the strangers laugh.  And if some of the travelers fail to reach their dingy motel on the gulf, well, it’s awfully crowded down there this time of year.  They won’t be missed for a long while yet.  

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.  How many times have you heard that line, even said it yourself?  You’ve read of dry desert heat and it sounds almost peaceful, like the clean cut of a sharp knife instead of this slow, choking bludgeoning.  

They dug a new well when they got an electric pump way back before you were born.  The old one got filled in.  It left a scar in the yard just off the porch steps in the form of a shallow, circular depression.  You used to like to play there as a kid because the grass was always a little bit thicker and greener.  Sometimes there were mushrooms.  But your daddy would fuss when he caught you there and drag you away with a hand tight on your arm.  It was years before you noticed how everyone else avoided the place.  The treads on the steps were more worn on the side furthest from it and whenever anybody was walking across the yard, even if they were in a hurry, they’d swing wide around so as not to step on it.  Later still, a storm blew down the weather-vane.  The next night, the loss of its creaks and groans makes it too quiet for you to sleep.  As you lay there, a rhythmic metallic clanking reaches your straining ears.  You’d always assumed that it was part of the weather-vane turning.  Soothed by your familiar lullaby, you begin to drift off even as part of your mind worries over the sound like a dog gnawing a bone. It’s a little different all by itself but you’re sure you’ve heard it before.  Just before sleep claims you, you recognize it from a visit to a friend’s grandparents’ farm, which is even older than yours.  It’s the sound of somebody priming a pump.   

The aurora shines above your house every night.  It traces strange words in blue and scintillating green, and one night it writes your name in trailing script.  You stop reading it after that.

Ice fishing in winter, you stand with the line disappearing into the hole cut in the ice.  The exposed water is as black as a pupil.  Nothing under the ice is visible.  Fish take the hook and the line jerks at the same tempo as an unknown person tapping the nape of your neck with their pointer finger.  Each one is pulled into the grey winter light, thrashing and fighting.  You fish until something pulls the line down hard.  Harder.  Too hard to hold and your pole bends in half until the string snaps.  That is when you know it’s time to move off the lake.

Every day in the distance the mountains stand up like the arching spines of some ancient subterranean-dwelling creature swimming through the earth.  Every day you see the purple flanks, the dribbles and fields of snow receding to the peaks in the summer, crawling down low towards the town as winter comes.  Every day the mountains creep closer.  Every day you are nearer their foothills.  Every day the mountains.  Every day the mountains.  Every day.  Every day.

You feed the ravens.  They learn your face and bring their friends and family.  They talk to you with all the strange sounds and gurgles and caws and croaks they can produce.  You feed the ravens and they begin to bring you gifts in turn.  Buttons and discarded paperclips, ticket stubs, hanks of bright thread.  Small bones.  More small bones.  A tiny skull to match.  You realize that the bones can be fit together to make the image of a skeleton.  You realize that you have no idea what kind of creature this skeleton could be.  You stop feeding the ravens.

In a small room in Fairbanks they have tuned music to sing along with the earth.  It booms for tremors and shrills high for sunrise, and those who enter can spend hours in its grasp.  When they emerge they remember nothing.  When they emerge they feel drawn.  The land here loves its people so much, it wants to swallow them alive and whole.

Whales beach themselves on the sticky muck bordering Cook Inlet.  With eyes nested in wrinkles they slowly suffocate under their own weight.  People sink in the muck and the tide comes in for them.  Cars sink in the muck.  Everything sinks in the muck.  The only things that can survive the muck are the clams.

Blueberry season.  People and bears zigzag the mountainsides, picking as much tart fruit as they can.  Some take the opportunity to divest themselves of other things.  A grizzly bear shambles away into the treeline, cradling a swaddled human child in its hairy forearm.  You look closely at the berries.  You say nothing.

On the drive to Fairbanks you encounter a herd of caribou walking on the road.  You tap the brakes and glide into their midst.  Antlers bounce around you, heavy heads bob up and down as the herd lopes along.  You can no longer see the road.  You can see only caribou.  You can see another car in the distance, crawling along through a herd of caribou, a herd of caribou which extends to the horizon.

There was a moose waiting by your car this morning, watching for you.  Waiting for you.  You call into work and say you’ll be late.  You call into work and say you can’t come in.  The next morning the moose is still there, still waiting for you.

The summer nights trick you into staying up late.  The summer nights aren’t night at all.  The summer nights are filled with air as soft as down, soft light that paints everything you see with the richness of each color that was buried in it under the hard night of the sun.  The soft summer nights invite you to work in the garden.  The earth is dense and cold, but the light softens it.  You work in the garden all summer.  Finally the days are shorter and you realize how long it’s been since you stopped, how long it’s been since you slept.  You have spent all summer in your garden.  All those months without sleep.  The fireweed bloom high on the stalk.  The mosquitoes hum to you from the lupin.  Now winter is coming to lock you in your skin.

You have never had the urge to own cowboy boots but somehow, without your knowledge, you have accumulated three pair in your closet. The Rodeo calls.

Once a year, the Riverwalk is drained for cleaning. This breaks your mind as the river is otherwise murky with an unseen bottom. You question existence itself. 

The Battle of Flowers is a local holiday. Why are we battling over flowers? Why are we having a parade about it? Nobody knows. 

If humans suddenly disappeared, the oak trees around the Alamo grounds will grow wild. Without their human overlords, the trees will grow and twist and tear the old mission apart.

1604 is a road with no beginning and no end. You are on 1604 forever. You will live and die on 1604. 

No matter what time you leave, it is always just too dark to be twilight. The streetlights are always on. It is always just a little bit chilly.

You are sitting in the bus station. The bus is so late you hope they’ll honor your ticket for the next one. The bus is so late you wonder if the interstate changed directions again. The bus is so late it has lapped itself and come too early. Either way, you think you missed it. You sit in the bus station and you wait.

You watch the road outside your window. The white dashed lines flash by. The road curves and the lines keep going straight ahead. They paint themselves over cornfields and farmhouses. They bleach into the mountains. They shave segments into cows. They are Morse code. Not there yet, they say. Not there yet.

There is a man smoking on the corner. He holds a phone in one hand and a zippo in the other and his cigarette in another. You take off your headphones and stop a kind-looking woman with a grocery bag. Excuse me, you say. What city is this? She nods approvingly and says, Yes it is.

Someone asks you a question. When you answer, nothing comes out of your mouth but the smell of gasoline. You haven’t used your voice in weeks. You try tapping out morse code but all you manage is road stripes, dash-dash-dash-dash-dash–not there yet.

You have been on a layover for an hour. Your phone battery is at 42% and you hope that is enough to play music through the next leg of your trip. Someone has carved the name sam into the corner of the wall where you sit. You trace it over and over with your hands. sam, sam, samsamsamsam. They finally call for boarding. You get on to the planebustrain and fall asleep. It lurches to a stop several hours later and you depart blearily, slinging your backpack over one shoulder. You find a place to sit and hunker down. Your phone battery is at 42%. Someone has carved sam into the wall where you sit.

You stretch your legs and want a cigarette. The moon is bright and bright and bright. You rummage in your purse for your lighter. You hear the freeways because of the cars. You hear the cars because of the freeways. There is a lighter somewhere in your purse. You rummage in your purse. You rummage in your chest.

The person in the driver’s seat gives you a nudge. You take your feet off the dashboard and your legs are asleep. Rest stop? they ask. You nod. There is no one else in the parking lot. You run cold water over your hands and take your hair down. You put your pen on the sink. You leave and buy chips from the vending machine. Forty minutes later you realize you have forgotten your pen. So it goes. The next time you stop, you just buy a soda. Your friend uses the bathroom and comes out with something in their hand. You forgot this, they say. They hand you your pen.

You are counting license plate states. You find a new one. You shout. Your co-travelers curse. You tally into your notebook. The tally is number two hundred and three.

You buy cigarettes at a gas station chain where the lights flicker on/off/on/off. The clerk behind the counter has five-o'clock shadow on his eyes. The whole place smells like beer and the liquor fridge is empty. He asks to see your ID. You look different now, he says. You look at yourself in the convex mirror behind the counter. You watch yourself blink. What state is this one? he asks. It takes you five minutes and an entire cup of lukewarm coffee to realize he’s asking about your ID. You have been standing here for much too long. The line behind you is getting impatient. You mumble an answer. He ignores you and waves his co-worker over. He squints and points at you.

You know it is breathtaking and beautiful, so striking that you are not sure you believe it even though you’ve never known your senses to lie. It is beautiful and yet there is something creeping at the edge of your vision, floating behind you and twinkling like a distant star, always blinking out of existence as soon as you turn your head.

It is the silence that suffocates you more than anything, more than the lack of oxygen, the pressure on your lungs that feels so foreign. It is a silence so crushing, and then there is a whisper. Radio broadcasts from an earthly war long past bounce between the stars, and occasionally you catch a glimpse of one, full of static and desperation–or, you think you do. You can never really tell what’s real, out here.

You are floating somewhere inside Ursa Major, and while each bone is light years from the next, you cannot help but feel like you have indeed been swallowed by some great beast, devoured whole and left to decay in the everlong darkness.

They say we are all made up of stardust; it is supposed to make us feel sacred. Instead you feel compressed, you look at the vastness and feel it pulsing inside of you, the bright stars calling every molecule home. You see planets, bold and looming, you feel yourself being pulled into their orbits against your will.

Skeletal concrete piers, reaching like broken fingers into the grey water. Eighty years ago they were a crucial figure of the industrial waterfront. Now they are crumbling.

Six hundred gulls in the grocery store parking lot.

“A high of seventy degrees today,” the weatherman says, “cooler by the Lake.” Snowflakes kiss your eyelashes. It is July.

You are barefoot at the edge of a vast beach. The sand is impossibly hot. You run toward the water, but the waves shrink away. You have been running for hours. You never get closer.

A foghorn sounding on a clear night.

Scorched sticks and blackened sand mark the remnants of another campfire. You were here all night. There were no other flames.

The town reeks of rotting fish for days. No one mentions it.

The hottest week of the summer, there is an E. coli outbreak. No lifeguards are posted because, officially, the beaches are closed. Hot bodies press against each other, straining to reach the water.

Large, strange bones flash white in the shallow water, tumbled smooth by rocks and waves.

The lakefront glitters silver and gold. The gold is warm afternoon sunlight, kissing every waves. The silver is hundreds of thousands of tiny dead fish, their scales glinting with every movement of the water.

The lighthouse a few miles away flashes its lantern. Again. Again. You stare into the darkness, counting the seconds between rotations, matching the rhythm with your breath. It takes a little longer each time. You begin to feel faint.

There is no sand. There are only a hundred million zebra mussel shells, cutting at your feet.

Ships of sunken iron ore, a hundred thousand tons of metal rusting at the bottom of a lake.

This beach is popular with joggers. You nod at them as they pass you. Something begins to nag at your mind. Something familiar. His face. Again. Again. There is only one jogger, who runs this leg of beach over, and over, and over.

An ice cream truck on a damp morning, its tinny music muffled by the fog.

Your keys were here just a second ago. You put them down on the table, turned your back for a moment, and now they’re gone. “The house spirits don’t want you to leave,” your mother says. “Leave out some honey for them. Maybe you can negotiate.” You do as you’re told, before they take something more precious from you.

You’re walking back from the olive grove along the dusty road that leads to the village proper. The sun is setting and the warm breeze rustles the reeds beside you. The rustling continues when the wind stops. You feel their gaze on you and look over to see them: black figures with no discernible features, watching without eyes from their place among the tall grasses. Never play in the reeds, you were always cautioned. Now you know why.

Tourists ignore the ruins behind your home. They aren’t beautiful, not preserved or retouched like the Acropolis. They are bitter reminders of a fallen civilization, smashed into the earth by hundreds of invaders over time. This temple is scarred and desecrated. The air sparks with the anger of the ancient gods.

Fresh spring water trickles down the mountain, chittering and babbling. You stop to take a drink and notice a small child playing nearby. The child beckons you to follow it up the stream, and you do, until the creek gets wider and deeper and the rocks become treacherous and you realize there was no child. You’re knee-deep and alone.

The caves are a shelter, you’ve always been told. The caves are where your ancestors hid from the Turks, where brave priests preserved our language and traditions by teaching them to daring children in the middle of the night. When the moon rises, you can still hear their whispering. 

The parties run late. The music echoes from the town center as you leave the orange glow of the festival behind, chased by drunken British schoolboys on their spring break. You weave through the twisting alleys of the village until you reach the sea. The Aegean is a friend. She will gladly swallow them. 

A deep melancholy has taken you. Your body is weak right down to your bones. Your grandmother, dressed all in black, gives you a necklace bearing a bright blue eye. She spits on you, then gathers the women in the garden for murmured prayers. Together, they chase away the Evil Eye.