If I would be an artist I would make one giant womb room, with huge cushiamic cavities. Actually I saw Yayoi Kusama recently, this boat:
It’s supposed to be priapic, you can’t see easily but the the protuberances are badly sewn, padded things. It looks more like an inside thing than an outside thing to me though, a bodily chamber filled with cilia.
*goes back to sleep*
Anyway, enough of that.
Creepy dolls
Do you know the story about Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler?
This is the doll that Oskar had made of his ex lover, Alma.
He had it made five years after they broke up, and after he had returned from the Front where she had encouraged him to go after they split, and where he got shot in the head. He sent the doll maker, Hermine Moos, many, many detailed instructions, sketches, and measurements for her, and eagerly enquired “Does the mouth open? Does she have a tongue and teeth? I hope so”. I don’t think she did, but when the doll arrived, Kokoschka, with his waiting wardrobe of especially made Parisian garments, was extremely upset to find that the silk stockings wouldn’t go over her legs as they were too feathery. Yeah, my legs get a little furry sometimes, but this is something else. Her whole body was covered in feathers. Perhaps Moos thought thought they were as soft as a woman’s skin? Or maybe she just made a big mistake and needed to cover it up. My mum did that on my sister’s wedding dress, when she scorched it with the iron. She embroidered a pretty heart with “Grace 4 Robert” on it, and all was saved. So, whatever reason, that’s what she did and Oskar really didn’t like it. (Moos, not my mum. He didn’t know my mum).
That’s the end of that. I was thinking of that, and some work by other doll makers, (Hans Bellmer, a Japanese maker whose name escapes me…) some of which I find I have a quite visceral reaction to, particularly when they are puppets of pubescent girls.
I’m not going to make a doll of my dearling, since I want her to remain that way, and I don’t think my present is creepy, but I did make her a gift.
Less painkillers now, less routine, but I can choose.
1) Don’t take the painkillers: hordes of children creep from the cracks and stab me. Not with swords but like, knitting needles or something. Then they sit on me. They turn out to be /really heavy/ children.
2) Or I could take them. Then I’ll be veeery sloooow and sleepy and quite puzzled.
The result of 1) or 2) is, in either case, a very sleepy me.
It’s not helped by the nightmares and the… what do you call something that happens in your sleep, sounds like a nightmare (or a very bad case of paranoia) but isn’t, because it’s true? I’m quite convinced I’ll die in my sleep, because on the edges of conciousness I know I’m not breathing properly, and I have to wake up and sit up. I do but just before, it feels like drowning.
The actual nightmares still go like this. Consultant comes and sews me up. I can feel it. Grins like a frightened dog (a BIG white grin, in the dark ward, cheshire cat like) and disappears.
This is what I should do every day:
eat four different painkillers, in six different batches. And anti nausea, and anti constipation, and anti itching pills.
eat a handful of vitamins.
rince my nose twice.
rince my teeth three times, with the medicated stuff.
do my physio twice.
cycle, for at least half an hour.
Drink lung tea, three times a day.
Also bathe, clean teeth, eat, and sleep.
Sometimes I don’t do all that.
Oh, and the therapist was shit. I pointed out it was difficult to work towards a goal of accepting my illness and finding a way to get back into a job that doesn’t overtax me and that I’m happy with, whilst simulateously being expected to attend hospital for a day a week, more whenever they fancy it, on a course of treatment, date of completion unknown, date of completion of mind numbing meds unknown. And also whist carrying round a small, permanently attached chest drain. Albeit in an attractive rabbit print bag.
I didn’t even start on my slightly psychotic theories that God is laughing at me, and has set me up with several useful talents, and a complete inability to fulfill any of them, as a cosmic joke with other gods, so they can all put bets on whether I’ll achieve something, or not, and what I’ll try and where I’ll go next. You know what Thor and that lot are like. Anyway, I hadn’t even mentioned it when she sent me a short letter cancelling the meetings, saying it might be better to continue when all this is over.
Over. Ha!
In the rain, it sounds like someone is licking the house. Huge, snuffling, sucky licks. This is not comforting.
Dearling left for Beograd at 4.30 this morning. She left me Monkey:
We got Monkey from a craft fair at which the very clever Sally Nencini was doing a brisk business. “Aw, he’s so lovely!” cooed the Dearling. “Look at those spindly arms and legs! Just like you!”
Humph. Anyway, all my Great Plans at using my time without her wisely have come to nothing, so far, since I started a blog and then mostly slept, waking up a little sad and lost. Which was the ideal state to answer the phone to the counselling assessment triage lady who phoned just then. I find if you answer the phone mid-joke, they feel a little cheated, and if it’s mid-howling-misery, you don’t make much sense. Or you don’t answer the phone at all, which isn’t helpful. So, mild melancholia is good. I also did a fine balancing act between “No, of course I’m not going to kill myself right now” (because otherwise they only phone you every day, all well meaning and “How are you” , big sympathetic eyes visible over the phone line) and “…But you never know” (because otherwise they bury you so far back in the queue you won’t see anyone till January 2013, or worse, you’ll get to January 2013 and it’ll be group counselling. Who wants to discuss thier carefully calculated theories with a bunch of ninnies? One ninny, as the psychologist often turns out to be, is quite enough.)
I watched XXY the other night and was found myself envying her position and, well, her genitals.
It’s a film about an intersex child, brought up female, whose father has protected her from the medical establishment so that she can choose for herself which gender she’d like to be when the time is right. Seems like this time has come, as she is caught happily banging a boy whilst her elders earnestly worry about which bits she might have cut off, or sewn up.
From the look on her face, I don’t think she wanted anything cut off! Or sewn up, either. So yeah, I’m pretty envious. I want a penis! But not to be a boy, just a girl with everything, and also a penis. It would be a magnificent penis, sturdy yet elegant, pale and unblemished (and certainly not hairy) with a delicately rosy tip.
They would call me… The Happy Hermaphrodite.
But you can’t, because maybe I’ll also talk about baking; vegan baking, or foxes. Possibly dentists. Dentists are peculiar, either asking a person on dates or threatening to pull out thier teeth just because a person bit them. Dentists should be used to that kind of thing, like a circus trainer putting his head in a lion’s mouth and then complaining to the lion when he gets his ear nibbled.
So you’re going to look pretty silly if you’re start going on about the happy hermaphrodite, when I haven’t mentioned my penis for ages, and instead am on about apple pie, you see.
