#some of the writing in the movie makes me feel like a shriveled old corpse on the floor. in a good way obviously

[citricjoy]

the wording benson uses outside the elementary school is so fascinating, specifically when he gets in randy’s face and goes “you say nothing good comes from you ever reacting? well how about never reacting at all? do you think that’s safer?” like that word choice is so wild to me because it’s all benson. randy never says anything about feeling unsafe due to his self suppression, in fact he is pretty specifically concerned about the safety of others around him. and we know benson means personal safety because he follows this up by punching randy in the stomach under the guise of showing him the consequences of inaction. it’s bald projection by this point. benson once made himself non-reactive and obedient to feel safe, and his life was ruined. and he’s never forgiven himself for that

[ao731]

Ever since I was little, I’ve had trouble sleeping. At best I get 4 hours of sleep. And when I do get some REM sleep... my dreams are weird. I’m a believer that your dreams can tell you about yourself. But somethings...I think I’d rather not know.

I work in a hospital now. And as you would expect, its been stressful over the past year. Its caused me to have really intense stress dreams. With how absurd everything has been, sometimes when i wake up... i cant unravel what was real... what was a dream. Sometimes, I call out sick. Too disturbed.... just needeing a mental health day. So i figure i'll write it out here. Worst case, I get it off my chest. Best case, maybe someone can tell me what they think.

So last nights dream started in an apartment. Shaped like one i lived in as a kid. But with all the furniture and colors I’d enjoy as an adult. A pretty yellow kitchen table. A multi-colored rug. Big sailors chests and bigger sofa’s and beds. Cozy and lived in and warm. But I could feel it wasn't my apartment.I’d never been there. It felt so inviting and familiar but new and exciting. A place I wanted to be but hadn't had the chance before.

 I was invisible... sometimes this happens in my dreams. I'm watching from an audience perspective, but then it will switch to me being one of the "characters" of the dream. If I dont get to far into the dream. If its closer to one of those 4 hours of sleep days, then sometimes I can control it. 

So I’m invisible and I’m a man. I'm a bisexual cis-female irl but in my dreams I'm male sometimes. IDK why, I don't really stress my gender identity or sexuality much. Maybe I’m wrong about my labels but its w.e.. I dont try to change those things in my dreams. Sometimes I’m a woman, sometimes a man. Whats important is that usually in my dreams I’m fixing something. My waking life is always fixing something and it bleeds into the dreamscape. I realize that this is so unlike my usual dreams. There is no anxiety. No task. I’m just looking around this nice space and I’m at peace.

So I’m male this time and invisible. And I’m not the only one here. I realize there a man in the kitchen. I know him and I’m so happy to see him. I start watching my "boyfriend." But I don't have a boyfriend IRL. When I wake up later I will realize he looks like Kieran Culkin from Scott Pilgrim. I’ll find it strange bc I’ve never had a crush on him. Barely ever seen him. The last time I saw Scott Pilgrim, I was crashing at my sisters house. Nursing a New Year Hangover. We had drank wine and I hadnt had to fix a thing. Rare peace. When I’m awake I will think maybe that peaceful hungover feeling had something to do with it. That space of clinging onto a night of tingling skin and loose limbs and quietly watching a movie is why I’ve used this man’s face. 

So anyway, I’m invisi-stalking my boyfriend. Lets call him Not-Kieran. He's looking hella stressed. He knows I want to come over later to see him. Hes frantically cleaning. But in a way I’m comfortable with bc I come from a "We cant let anybody know we SIT" family yet we NEVER invite ppl over. Anyway, I’m watching him clean and I’m just so happy just looking at him. I’m amused at first that he thinks i deserve all the trouble of cleaning but then i start getting concerned for him. 

He's mumbling to himself. Smacking his palms against his head every so often. Apparently his coworkers and family are stressing him. Not-Kieran is not Out to them. This comes as a shock to me. It feels wrong hearing his secrets. But i stay invisible. i don’t choose this. i don’t have control over it. He wants our relationship to be more serious but cant tell anyone about me. he seems so upset and i want to comfort him. i don’t want to be invisible anymore but i cant become a character. Something is stopping me. Something does not want me to interfere. I can feel it in my chest. Something bad is going to happen. i stroke his face and tell him its ok. i love him and i don't need him to change things for me. i don’t want him to feel pressured. i want to tell him, that i just want him to be happy. but I’m nothing but a ghost to him.

Then Not-Kieran starts talking to someone at the door. I cant see them. But I know they are aggressive. I’m nervous and upset as they start to yell at Not-Kieran. From what i can make out they are saying he's becoming agoraphobic. How didn’t I realize this. Everything seems fine when we are together. But I have trouble remembering what together is really like. I just know for some reason this feels wrong. This feels surprising. The Man at the door knows something is wrong with my boyfriend. They know something before I do. How does he know when I dont. They know something is wrong with my boyfriend. But they don’t know what. They are tired of waiting to find out. 

They come inside and I still cant see their face. No. They dont have a face. Just a space where a face should be. A place I instinctively know I should not look at. They come inside and they are still yelling. Still aggressing by boyfriend. He’s accusing him of being sick. Or is my Boyfriend admitting he’s sick. I cant make sense of the argument. I get the impression that something is changing about Not-Kieran. He’s not physically different just something is dark in his eyes. Something is tilted in the way he holds himself. Something is sharp in the way he gestures with his hands. He’s not the gentle often worried person I know him to be. 

Then shit gets real.

Not-Kieran picks up a knife and stabs the Man Without a Face. He keeps going. There is blood everywhere. But there was blood there before. Why didnt I notice there was blood everywhere before. He wont stop stabbing him...then he stops using the knife....He starts using his hands....his teeth. There’s blood everywhere. My boyfriend is covered in this man’s blood and organs. He’s ripping into this man who knew something was wrong before I did. Then he stops. He stops and says “Oh not again” 

He pulls up the sunny yellow kitchen table cloth and theirs a body underneath. Warm. No. Not a body...body parts. He removes the cushions on the sofa and reveals more body parts. He doesnt open the chests. The freezer against the far wall. I know. I know whats in them. 

What happened to my boyfriend. I’m not repulsed by him. I’m not disgusted. There is blood everywhere but I keep trying to look in his eyes as he flutters around the room. Hands smack against the sides of his head. “Oh, not again...oh not again.” such a soft sweet voice. And why does it still feel like something bad is going to happen. That feeling in my chest. It wont go away. How could anything be worse then this? My boyfriend is a murderer. No, no. Something is wrong with him. Something changed him. I dont want to believe he could do this but his hands are covered in blood. I cant rub away the splatter across his cheek. The darkness has left his eyes but I know it could return. 

How can this be a surprise when somehow I know these old bones. Like flashes. Little movie clips, Sepia toned reels of eat part in the pile. Each person they once were. I know what he’s done. Know he’s been doing this for a long time. Somehow I know he eats them. Days after the kill, like a feral animal in the woods finding a carcass. Know the things he denies. He likes holding a piece thats cold against his tongue. He likes putting the pieces, the parts that used to be a person, into neat little piles and licking at warm blood. 

Until he remembers he’s a man. Until he remembers that something has happened to him. That he is diseased and he cant go out. Can’t go out and shouldnt invite anyone in. Ever. Until he remembers and he cries. The kind of cries that wrack his body. He pulls at his hair. Smears more blood across his cheek and he cries. Cries like a child. Wet and weak. Like his body is hollow and he cant stop. He cant stop crying he cant stop smearing blood. The blood is everywhere and it always has been.

His hair has grown out. It’s suddenly days later. I’ve never been invisible this long. Never been a ghost this long. Never had to witness someone else’s sins this long. Never been powerless to stop his hand from shaking. He’s sitting in a pile of body parts. Trembling, he chews on them. And lays them out into piles. Then changes the order of the pile again and again. Chewing, arranging, crying. I still want to tell him...It’s ok, I just want you to be happy. Maybe my body feels the horror, feels repulsed by him. Maybe my body is sick but I’m a ghost and I still love him.

He beings to speak again. Just the same small and sweet tone he uses with me. But he cant see me. Can’t feel me touch his face. He’s talking to someone else here. I turn and sitting on a chair is a corpse. Its dry and burnt black. Skin like a dehydrated mushroom. Yet wet in places like something pulled from a swamp. It’s hair is twisted and matted hanging limply around a shriveled face. Nude and yet it’s body is so barely recognizable. Was it a woman. A man. Maybe I’m not supposed to know. It has no hands or feet. Just gestures with its stumps as it answers him. It speaks to him so lovingly. I know this man...this creature...though I’ve never seen them before. They werent in the perverse reel of carnage and cannibalism. I know him anyway and I know they love him. Do they love him just as much as I do?

 They’ve been here the whole time. Saw him with the Man With No Face. Saw him with countless others. He’s been here the whole time. But I didnt see him. I didnt see the blood. I didnt see this man that loves my lover. But I get the impression that he’s seen me. That he sees me still. His eyes have no pupil no color. Just a midnight dark orb in a shrunken skull. But those eyes turn in my direction as he speaks to Not-Kieran. Speaks in a soft lovely voice. Soothes him til he stops crying and beings to clean up the piles that were ppl. Speaks calmly and warm as my boyfriend rubs blood off his cheek.

The Shriveled man in the chair knows I still love him. He knows I know his secrets now. Knows I will be by this afternoon just for the chance to touch his face.

[invertedeidolon]

The Longest Library #4: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (Or, Eidolon feels their OTHER age just a little too clearly and needs a nap now)

(This is a series in which I attempt to read and review all (or most of) my library of 297 books.)

Rundown: A unicorn gets lost in that thing that happens where you exist in a weird, neverending pocket of time and when you finally leave your room your family is like 'oh my god we haven't seen you in three months! The dog died while you were gone!' except for her she doesn't look like hell because she's a Fucking Unicorn, but she does figure out that literally every other member of her race has gone missing from the world. She travels with a baby-faced magic man and a bitter but not yet broken older woman to find out where the hell everyone is. 5/5, makes me feel ancient and tired but no longer lonely.

So as a reader, almost all of these reviews (more like reflections) are just that: reflections of myself. So I'll be talking a bunch about the things that spoke to me and my soul. It might not necessarily speak to others in the same ways, with the same words, however, my ratings are based on how enjoyable I think others might find them, and I hope that in seeing that something could speak so richly and deeply to me, that others might give it a chance in the hopes that it might speak to them too.

This is a book that speaks in my language. It's a way of describing things that's a step to the left of your average descriptions, but the images they invoke are visceral and heavily textured.

From the very first page:

"She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery"

God damn. God DAMN. Mmm. Tasty.

"The door did not swing open, and the iron bars did not thaw into starlight. But the harpy lifted her wings, and the four sides of the cage fell slowly away and down, like the petals of some great flower waking at night. And out of the wreckage the harpy bloomed, terrible and free, screaming, her hair swinging like a sword. The moon withered and fled."

AUGH. FUCK. YES. FUCK ME UP, PETER. MMM.

"The magic knows what it wants to do, he thought, bouncing as the horse dashed across a creek. But I never know what it knows. Not at the right time, anyway, I'd write a letter, if I knew where it lived."

So, Schmendrick (the baby faced magic man I mentioned before) has the same feelings about his magical talents as I have about my own, magic or no. My own magic comes and it goes. It's incredibly intuitive in nature and almost refuses to yield to order, logic, or ceremony. Same with my art, my writing, or anything that comes from the spirit. Even things like expressing my emotions feel this way. It's there when it's there, and it's not when it's not, and it's not when it's there. It doesn't feel like a part of me at times, despite being the purest description of my own soul when it decides to take form. Like an absent parent that never once hugged you but knows exactly what kind of candy bar you currently like and that you're nervous about your first boyfriend and the way he talks to you sometimes and how lonely things are getting. I grow resentful for it's absence, and have not grown welcoming to it's presence. It's something that needs to be worked on soon. In fact, Molly's sentiments on first seeing the unicorn kind of describe it pretty well:

"And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up; barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come, why do you come now?"

That has always been a powerful moment that whenever I see it in the movie (and especially having finally gotten to read it in the book), I've come to understand it deeper, and deeper. Only now realizing that I've lost an entire decade of my life to a violently interrupted life and feeling like if my talents weren't stifled by years spent crying, in pain, and not really wishing to be dead but wishing I Weren't, I could be ten years ahead. And only now does it come to me, in fits and starts, when I've been displaced and scattered and turned to half-a-person, not when I called desperately to it, needing something, anything stronger than me, and being given nothing. Why now? I've gone far enough without you. Molly forgives her. I myself become pale with a feeling of unworthiness.

"The rind of the country cracked, and the flesh of it peeled back into gullies and ravines or shriveled into scabby hills."

There's just so much TEXTURE in a lot of these descriptions. I feel like the background artists in the movie could have done something a bit darker and grimier, although the movie did skip over the fact that the land was in a magically induced famine, to technically it wasn't relevant. Although I feel like the land itself being so scarred makes the king and his whole atmosphere come into sharper focus.

"Drinn opened his eyes and gave her an angry look. 'WE earned nothing," He protested. "It was our parents and grandparents whom the witch asked for help, and I'll grant you that they were as much to blame as Haggard, in their way. We would have handled the matter quite differently." And every middle-aged face scowled at every older face.

Boomers.

"The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock."

Not going to lie, this part made me laugh.

"No hooves could have made these, Molly thought dazedly; the earth had torn itself shrinking from the burden of the Bull. She thought of the unicorn, and her heart paled."

"The Red Bull did not know her, and yet she could feel that it was herself he sought, and no white mare. Fear blew her dark then, and she ran away, while the Bull's raging ignorance filled the sky and spilled over into the valley."

The descriptions of the Bull especially capture just how heavy and menacing and seemingly mindlessly terrifying it is, not just physically (which is very effectively communicated mind you) but psychologically. The unicorn's terror is my own. There's no fear like the root of you realizing the person in front of you is intent on soul-murder, yet wholly ignorant of their own deeds. Being run down and forced to submit, forced to die, and realizing the blind, animal nature of your attacker. It's how they are. Like blaming a wolf for eating cattle. It can't be reasoned with.

"If she would try one more time to escape- but she was the Bull's and not her own. The magician had one glimpse of her, pale and lost between the pale horns, before the wild red shoulders surged across his sight. Then, swaying and sick and beaten, he closed his eyes and let his hopelessness march through him, until something woke somewhere that had wakened in him once before. He cried aloud, for fear and joy.

What words the magic spoke this second time, he never knew surely. They left him like eagles, and he let them go; and when the last one was away, the emptiness rushed back with a thunderclap that threw him on his face. It happened as quickly as that. This time he knew before he picked himself up that the power had been and gone."

You know, doing anything that has to do with having a soul is exactly this exhausting sometimes. I get excited and talk about my interests more energetically than none? I feel like I just shouted it at the top of my lungs and violently shook the person I was talking to by the shoulders. They say I was even toned, quiet even, but I'm out of breath and my heart is in my throat and I feel a little sick in the arms from it.

"For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it."

*sips the words like fine wine* *inhales through their teeth* MMMmm fuck yeah~

"I am myself still. This body is dying, I can feel it rotting all around me. How can anything that is going to die be real? How can it be truly beautiful?"

See, I have the opposite problem, where I feel like I've been long dead, and people keep digging up my corpse and forcing me to walk on broken, stringy legs, the moist, forgiving soil not even yet dried. I can feel it living all around me. How can anything that is going to live be unreal? How can it be truly horrific? I'm supposed to be a memory by now.

"Prince Lir's face bent toward her: older by five dragons, but handsome and silly still."

I love impactful but unconventional measurements of time and space like this. More of these please. 'You've been gone since seven arguments ago! And you know how slow the old man is to anger.' 'I've aged by three national crises in the span of two weeks, please help.'

"...holding her voice together like the edges of a wound."

*licks the goddamn wine glass like an animal* MMPH

"There was too much to hold, too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full."

"I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, though I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret."

I have been small, and some part of me is small yet. I am full of terror, and hunger of death, though I cannot utter a noise, and I cannot die.

Please read this book.

Have a song that I really like and will likely make an old-fashioned AMV out of it at some point.

4 down 293 to go.