In December, the world feels like a broken palace.  We wander the ruins at dusk, yanking out clumps of rye and talking about how there was once a garden here.  We trundle around in dirty voile dresses, talking about Miss Havisham and glass horses and headless cupids.  Down in the valley, the windows are glowing.  We can smell mushrooms, simmered in beef stock and butter, but we also smell crushed anise–something has passed by here, and broken the stalks.

To prepare escargot, you must first find a nest.  I don’t know how you will find it.  Perhaps you will find an outgrown garden, swollen with unplucked, wormbitten turnips, monstrous grey zucchini, soft carrots shrouded in curled shame by dry, crisp tops.  You will sit on a crumbling cinderblock, and you will watch, burying your cigarette butts beneath graveled hunks of soil.  If snails are capable of lurking, they’ll be lurking here.  What do snails do when they lurk?  They do what they always do, which is: snail around, and bite soft things, and make love to themselves.  Snails are incredibly creepy.  Their purpose in life is to increase snail-ness, by whatever means necessary.  Which means if you sit long enough, in a rotting forgotten garden, you will see a snail (after having lovingly snailed itself, perhaps over a period of hours) make a nest.

The nest will be filled with snails–perhaps fifty to a hundred.  The snail will dig the nest with its foot (which is also its whole body.)  The nest will be only a few centimeters deep.  Once the eggs are laid, the snail will cover them with soil, and then hie off, probably to go snail itself again.  Mark the spot with a stick, and visit it every week.  After a few weeks, the snails will emerge.  They will have spent their time in a typically snail-like fashion–eating their own egg shells, and then eating each other, in order to gain the strength to pull themselves from their graves into the wide world.  The great, wide world of snail food and snail friends and snail foes and general snailing opportunities.  The night was made for lovers, but also for snails, who are their own lovers.

The infant snails will be loathsome things–pale and clear and slimy, like discarded retainers.  Nonetheless, you must gather them up.  Force cold rough gloves onto your red stiff hands, and gather up these wriggling, transparent young snails.  You will wonder what is becoming of your life, and then you will put the snails in a box.  Preferably it is a wooden box, with holes drilled in it.  Add some soil to the box, and make sure there are worms in the soil (snails like to eat dirt, and worms like to eat dirt after snails have eaten it.)  Make sure the box is warm and wormy, damp and squirming, blind and questing.

What snails love best is a mixture of decayed matter and carrion, because they are the Devil’s own snails, but you must give them green things instead.  This is because snails will taste of whatever you feed them, and since you probably do not want to eat a mixture of decayed matter and carrion (I am assuming here that you are not a snail yourself), you must feed them beautiful and clean things.  The French like to feed them dill, or apples, or artichokes, or celeriac, or parsley, or cress, nettles, sorrel, roses, henbane, and yarrow.

You must keep your box of snails in the kitchen, that you might keep an eye on it.  Your warm, dark kitchen, from which the light fades by four in the afternoon, these days.  You must try not to sit in your warm, dark kitchen, sipping Carménère and staring at your box of snails.  This way lies madness.

The time will come for the snails to be purged.  If you do not purge the snails, you will have to eat whatever lies in their snaily stomachs, and so you must purge them.  The old method is simply to feed them nothing for a few weeks–for you to starve the snails, as they lurk in their little box, and drink wine to forget you are trapped in a dark kitchen with a bunch of creepy dying snails.  But nowadays we are more compassionate–we feed the snails cornmeal for a week, and then we make them fast for another.  They do not lose as much weight, this way.

After they are purged, you can boil your snails live.  Boil them for three minutes, or until they are dead.  Place them in a cool fresh brine, and then rinse them.

Your snails are ready for anything now, but I don’t care what you do with them.

I LOV MIE PRTY!

There was a party.  The party had: members of Congress, hounds, pomegrante vodka cocktails.  The party only played Bob Seger, at the party.

Bob Seger himself came.  He was crying and had wind in his beard.  He could not believe all the things that had happened to him, nor all the feelings that the things inspired.  He picked up a small girl in a starched white dress.  He gave her piggy back rides while the congressmen looking on, frowning.  Then he gave the girl some free lotion.  The girl liked Bob Seger and thought he was very good at making lotion.

Making Lotion

The congressmen felt ambivalent about the party, but then they started drinking!  They were like, whoa, I can’t believe how drunk I am.  They were like, I’m going to make out with Bobby.  No, no, said the other congressmen.  Don’t do it!  I will, said the congressmen, just watch me.  They went up to Bobby and started flirting but then got embarrassed and ran away.  The other congressmen watching were like, OMG, ha ha ha.  Bobby was worried, because he thought maybe they were making fun of him.

Flirting

The congressmen were like, let’s go in the bathroom and put on lipstick and nailpolish and tie our shirts in knots under our breasts so we look like sluts.  The other congressmen were like, okay!  Then George Stephanopolous wanted to come, and they were like, you’re not a congressmen, but they let him come anyway.  They dressed up sooo slutty and then came back out into the party and all the animals were shocked!  But they laughed!  And Bob Seger picked them up and gave them all piggy back rides, because that was what they really wanted anyway.

THE (happy)  END

These are the ten things the boy has:

1.  4 wives – one for each mood.  Here are his moods:
a.) acquisitive
b.) inquisitive
c.) dastardly
d.) drunk

1a.)  She was born in Russia; when she impersonates men she swaggers; her house has a lot of glass in it; she is obsessed with the following -
a.) small, personal regimes, like when people are in denial about certain things, or work too hard.
b.) how to have a burgeoning spa business
c.) learning how to enjoy winter
d.) slips of the tongue.

1b.)  She was born in southeast Brazil; has never learned to dance; approaches homeless people in a very giving type mood, keeps her glasses in a sock; has never wanted the following:
a.) diamonds
b.) a purse with more than one pocket
c.) to know what people look like when they are sleeping
d.) a picture of herself standing near a monument.

1c.)  Is from Bryn Mawr; her teeth hurt; has written two books that are quite boring, as they are plotless, ties her sweaters about her neck in order to make fun of others who do so; thinks the following are sinful:
a.) poorly kept nails on hands that hold things in cold weather, rendering the entire hand chapped, stubby
b.) Taking stories about people who are selfish too seriously, i.e. being morally moved by things, but in a way where you feel superior
c.)  Swimming in medium-warm weather
d.) cheating at games

1d.)  His friend Brent, who does not know he is a wife, nor that he does not have enough obsessions.  Brent has never worried about the following:
a.) What mailmen think of him
b.) A good way to spit
c.)  If his cat has any pattern-recognition
d.) If he likes the tapestry that covers his window.

2.  A sack of diamonds.  Brent and No. 2 do not want it, No. 1 does; No. 3 thinks she deserves it.

3.  Two parents, almost dead, with shy hair.

4.  A scholarship to West Point, because he is the fastest runner you’ve ever seen, and you might cry to see him run, it is the only beautiful thing about him, and perhaps because of this, painfully beautiful.

5.  Wonderful sneakers- they are holey, grey and maroon, smell like death.  They are wonderful because he runs in them; they are transformed by the elegance his body attains, in the way of ordinary objects they take on a surreal importance when considered from the perspective of loss.  Because we are up to 10 things, but this boy lost his feet, perhaps because of the diamonds, perhaps because of a chill fall, so now he only has 8 things:  here are the last two:

a.)  a picture of himself at a hockey game, circa 1987 or so, one tooth fucked, his dad has coffee, he has some – wait for it – Sunny D; they are cold at the ice-skating rink, and are wearing puffy coats.

b.)  a self-important cat with eyebrows, a bit off tail, clipped nails.

Let's go to a nunnery!

A girl one day entered a nunnery, because she was mad.  She stayed at the nunnery, because the novitiates were beautiful – flushed and embarrassed.  Also, she liked the gardens, where the Mother Superior set cocks to fighting each other, in order to illustrate the libertarian tendencies of God.  “He gives even the simplest creatures a sense of individuality, an ego to defend,” she said.  “The strife that lives in the hearts of these cocks is but one twenty-third of the strife suffered by Man.”  Sometimes the cocks would fight each other to the death, and this too the Mother Superior applauded: “Would that we could resolve our conflicts as simply – for God prefers death to strife!”

In fact, after a few days, the Mother Superior decided that there was really no good reason for the nuns and novitiates not to have such an outlet, and so she set up a small boxing gym in one of the lower refectories.  She set them to fighting immediately, and it gave her no little pleasure to lean back in a battered armchair and cheer this or that one on.  Sitting in the sun, her wimple askew, she would exhort the nuns to hit harder, to hit faster, to abandon themselves to violence.  “Some say the id is the devil’s work, but I say that the devil is God’s work,” she said.  “Yes indeedy.”  The nuns fought clumsily at first, but, spurred on by the exhortations of the Mother Superior, soon became proficient, and then lethal.  “Kill her, Sister Honore!” yelled the Mother Superior.  “Send her to her Maker!”  The Mother Superior encouraged the nuns to murder each other, as the more sinful they became, the greater would be their pleasure in the forgiveness of their God.  “After all, it is no great feat for Our Lord to save a mere thief or gossip,” she said.  “But a murderer – there God does his best and most skillful work.  Do not deny him the honor of his sacrifice – make it worth it.  For His Son to die for a few white lies is nothing – for him to die for a mass murderer is sublime!”

The angry young novitiate flourished in this atmosphere, and soon became undefeated.  Her hands developed a permanent grime of blood, and her oft-broken nose gave her a rakish air.  The Mother Superior loved her best of all, and many was the night they spent in each other’s arms – the noviate flushed and rough, the Mother Superior flabby and ardent.  “Let’s make Him forgive us again,” the Mother Superior would whisper into the novitiate’s muff.  The novitiate would writhe, filled with rage still, as well as with a suffocating, sexual guilt.

The nunnery soon became known as the most holy convent in the region.  “There they test God to his limits,” it was said.  “They are so secure in His love that they will do anything to try and lose it – debasery, debauchery, mass murder, cannibalism, lesbianism, cussing.  They have a saying there: “Why ask Jesus to save with a drop, when you can ask for a cup?”"  The convent became known as “The New Passion of the Christ Nunnery and Gym.”

One evening, her fist buried in one cunt, her head in another, the young nun had an epiphany.  “I do not care that God loves sin,” she thought.  “I don’t love sin.  I’m tired of it.  God will have to learn to love me as I am.”  She extricated herself from the tangle of limbs, swatting off questing hands, and took a nice cold shower.  She washed the blood from her nails, threw on some khakis and a tee, and walked straight into the nearest temp agency.  Her life became a bland whirl of work and tv, and she liked it that way.  Occasionally she longed for physical contact, or the thrill of guilt, or to crush a life beneath her hands, but overall she was happy to be clean and modern, dull and free.

The bandit’s cousin was beautiful, and because of this he carried no money in his pockets.  Women liked to buy him things, and men were afraid of his cousin.  He did whatever he wanted to, and he thought that he was cool.

And he was cool, in the sense that people thought that he was, and in the sense of being cool, but not in the sense of having character, where cool is very narrowly defined.  But he did not need character, and so this was well enough.

He was such a very lovely man that women were forever pinching at his bottom, and old women trying to kill him: they thought it was not fair, him being so beautiful, they so old.  One woman though, instead of trying to kill him with poison or thin knives, attempted to build a time machine.  It worked, partially – she could send fruit back in time, or other items smaller than a fist, and simple in structure.  But she could not send her body back in time, because it was too large and too complicated.  Her plan had been to keep her brain in this time, but to send most of the other cells of her body – breasts, face, legs – back in time, so that they could become simple again.  But her body had grown beyond the scope of machines.  And so instead she sent back her heart – she made her heart become a child’s heart, clear and greedy.

It was then that she finally understood the bandit’s cousin – he was a purely stupid specimen, uncapable of love.  Had she succeeded in becoming young and lovely again, he still would have cast her aside.  And so she joined with the other old women in trying to kill him.  They said to her, “Why did it take you so long to understand?”  She replied, “I had to go back in time.”  They said, “You are a bimbo.  He has always been a bigger bandit than his cousin – you were just too stupid to see it.”

(But a part of her hoped that they would not succeed.)

1a.  Fergie stands for something to some people, and that is boggling.  What does she represent?  “Ethnic Other Who Has Worked Her Way Up?”  We have a J. Lo.  J. Lo is enough for J. Lo.  Is it because there is a new generation of teens every 6 months?  This is what it seems like.  This is also what it seemed like when I was a teen.

1b.  Is Fergie’s trashiness her appeal?  The peeing?  The shame songs, speaking into existence her desires – all of her songs, until “Glamourous,” (btw, sorry that I keep misspelling “glamourous,” I can’t help it, all spellings seem wrong), have been about how desirable she is?  Is she really all that desirable?  Does everyone want to f her?  “Glamourous” is about how she’s tired of people wanting to f her and how she is tired of her image.  How can she be tired of fame when she has only been famous for 3 months?  Is she trying to convince us she is famous?  Does this actually work? Can it benefit me?

Me:  I am so tired of getting raises.

Boss:  O RLY?  HAVE RAISES!(in my fantasies, everyone talks like GOTH MINISTER.)

Me:  I am so tired of being so very attractive.

Stranger: ATRRECTION, attraction – I hAABE it for YUUUU.  WHERRE IS MY STUFF!!!?(in my fantasies, everyone is confused but me.)

Me:  Fergie, what’s going on with you?  I’m tired of understanding you.

Fergie:  I WANT TO FIGT SOME SITH.  aLL MY HUMPS ARE BELONG TO US

BUSINEZ CONIcTIONZ

To describe a thing accurately, he thought, you must know its trajectory.  This is why he dropped everything he ever cared about.

He thought that if he did not tend it, and it still flourished, that it must be true.  But the only thing that ever lived in his garden was morning glory, and the only actions he ever performed were based on fear of consequences.

So he thought he was a morning glory and fear type of person, but actually, he was.  He did not have to be, but he happened to be, because he did not try to become anything else.

So he built for himself a robe of morning glory and burrs, and swanned around in it, shouting “I am the only realistic person who ever thought, lived, or felt!  Pale before me, for I am you.”

Then he was upset because no one liked his art.  So he wove strands of grass into it, saying, look, I have varied myself.  I have become more complicated.  Are my complications lovable?  I cannot speak to you until I have told you all about myself.

But the breadmakers and cobblers of his town disdained this, and so he built a castle out of morning glory and copper, and it burned him, and to him the burns said, I am real, because suffering is the most real thing, because it is the thing that always remains, when I am not trying to avoid it.  Only the unavoidable is real.

And no one wanted to go inside of his castle, because it was muggy inside, but he said, You are afraid of the truth.  No, they said, I am just avoiding your castle.  You will never avoid my castle, he replied.

And then he built a tin army, to make it true.  He made everyone work in his copper castle, for tin soldiers, and he said, How fortunate they are that I care so much about them -  I do not allow anyone to live in ignorance.  I am the epitome of reason.

HAAPY IN SERVICES!!

The spice of love is hate.  The opposite of love is indifference.

At least so thought GOTH MINISTER, as he painstakingly appliqued butterflies to a baby duck bag in preparation for his sister-in-laws baby shower.

DUCS NO STPO STOP IT

WHY PREG, he thought.  FAT, SCARY TO BE. I WOULD FEAR BABY PLUS BODY.  MAYBE JUST MY OPINION? !!!!!?  MORRISSEY IS NOT PREG EXCEPT THOUGHTS.

Nonetheless, he was resolved to be supportive.  He was going to slip a copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” into the baby duck bag.

DUCS WHUT AR YOU DOIN OUT OF TAT CUPPE!

LITTLE ANIMALS MAKE ME TENDER, he thought.  ISN’T IT WEIRD THAT BABIES AS WELL FEEL TENDERNESS FOR LITTLE ANIMALS?  I GUESS THAT’S WHAT MAKES THEM HUMAN.

HUMAN ANIMAL

IM WORRYIED!

So Fergie “Ethnic Other Ethnic Okay Not Ethnic” wearing silver high heeled Roman sandals cutting into her tanned calf flesh rounds, with capri cargos cinched below the knee, so that she looks even shorter, plus a yellow belly shirt even though that has been outlawed by fashion lo these many years ago, but how else would we know that she is not actually fat, which is something Britney Spears and other short not fats used to pull so that we would know, even though we kind of did know, and what will they do now! plus a cropped sage green jean jacket plus TOO MUCH HAIR done in braids so that we can see how the ends of the hair are like nothing, because that is what hair does when it gets too long, is doing her “ethnic okay” strut on a cement street when who should she run into but GOTH MINISTER in black weird fade skinny pants even though he is a little pear shaped for them to work, plus a minister no collar button down paisley shirt, plus a vest that he scrap booked himself, with dyeable Salvation army heels that are not dyed but just kind of dingy and yellowed, but he likes them that way, but the heel is separating from the sole on one part so he is kind of hobbling, and he is offbalance too because he has a shoulder man purse on one side and a garbage bag full of presents for his enemies on the other side because he likes to give his enemies presents because then he can have moral superiority, even though they never see it that way but it works for him, and for some reason he also decided to tuck his penis up under one side of his pants cuz he didn’t want a bulge, so it is “dressed left” and sometimes the head pinches under his belt in a not unpleasurable way.

Up to trickses!

Fergie:  Do you know who owns the local store?  I need to have some items.

GOTH MINISTER: How does who owns the store affect it?  Don’t you just need to know where the store is?

Fergie:  I experience a lot of circular reasoning.  Like, when I need to go to the doctor, I ask if I could take a shower inbetween takes, or maybe a tell a dog off.

GOTH MINISTER:  Sometimes I care about things for reasons for ego.

FERGie:  RESons REASONS reason for ego.  I need a reason for ego plus maybes some cigarettes?  OR pickels?

GTH MINISTR: JUST HAVE SOME EGO> HERE> ITS URS?>JUST HAVE IT>IT”S FREEEE>  DON”T ASK PEOPKLE FOR THE FREE HINGDS>No one ever told you you didn’t have any agency.

having ego being real!

Fergie:  You mean I can decide to do things and then do them/?

GOTH M: Yes, and it is easy.

be easy on yourself pls

Learning

“Things being what they are,” he said, “creates a quandrary.  For he who states this, wants something.  He wants to speak it into existence.  By saying ‘It is what it is,’ he is trying to say ‘Tis,’ or ‘Yes.”

“But,” the boy replied, from the depths of a large red chair,”why is ‘no’ better than ‘yes’?  Isn’t ‘no’ an avoidance of responsibility?”

“Yes,” said the man, who had thin grey hair and a supercilious air.  “But an avoidance of responsibility is also an avoidance of ownership.  And ownership is the death of dignity.  Ask any slave of love.”

“I don’t know what it is to be a slave of love,” said the boy frankly.  “I’m just not there yet.  And I don’t think that you know what it is.  I don’t think that you’ve ever loved anyone better than yourself.”

“Who does?,” asked the man, as he waved a full brandy snifter beneath a long and vulnerable nose.  “People usually don’t have that sort of thing put to the test.  Except on TV, notably the show ‘Lost.’”

“I don’t get to stay up that late,” said the boy, “so again, I don’t really know what you mean.”

“You are a dear and skeptical boy,” said the man.  “I am almost as jealous of you as I am fond.”

“We don’t know each other very well,” said the boy.  “I appreciate it, though.”

“Someday, my boy, you too will be a slave of love.  And that will be a lousy day.”

“But not today,” said the boy, as he threw a ball through the open study window, startling a flock of pigeons.