| Latest Posts | A Faint Coffin of Scents - The "Inert Me" Diary
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Entry 1 - (I, Mediterrany)
The attic is breathing. It's subtle. Soft and slow. Taking gentle gulps of air, one after the other, the sequence so perfect. There is a feeling of permanent inhaling and exhaling permeating the room. It's nice, in a way, being curled up in that inflating and deflating cocoon. Fragile, but by far not as much as I am. There is nothing remotely like having been shot. It costs nearly as much as shooting someone (I would know, I did. Make of that what you will. I can hardly care, right now. I'll be too busy working on my decomposition to the benefit of maggots.). But pain, old-fashioned pain of the flesh, beats moral considerations everytime. My blood has started colonizing the flooring, giving birth to pale, fungal tribes. I better hurry up and make up some good quotes before I lose the ability to write anything. And to think. It's time to vomit some bilious memories... before I give myself up to the attic. To the fungi and the maggots. To the [ erased by [ carefully crossed by Source] ].
Entry 2 - (Ere May, in dirt)
I feel like I broke contact with the social world years ago. Even booze won't help materialize the bonds of feigned interconnection, of fake understanding of the other. In the absence of self-comprehension, how could I understand anyone else? I have no idea how we work. I know I work badly, but I ignore how badly I work and if the thing climbing over my shoulder right now can fix me or will just deconstruct the whole building. In order to cope with the open, I use anger, anxiety and instincts as opposed to compassion, comfort and will. I found out that it is more than what's needed to span the whole spectrum of simulated human emotions, love included. I used to be an actor. I mean, work as one. A horrible job. It makes you want to leave yourself behind while you are having fun outside your skin. It's a manipulative business, in which the manipulator and the manipulated are multiples of you. I didn't quit because of that. I quit because my last role led to [moved to "S.F.2016" by Source] So, here I am, a scaffold around a skyscraper of highly volatile gas, awaiting the answer to myself and my personality, covered in moss and lycanthropic lichen, maybe now in possession of that answer as I am read by you, which I don't want to be, which might be an answer in itself. I don't want to be read through.
Entry 3 - (Ir = anti-remedy)
Description of a psychological state ___ It's old. It's a feeling from the past you thought too distant to catch you in its grip, an image from the womb, a fetal matter turned into a living, beating trap. The keys of the organic organ are opening up the player within one single breath of the machine. The song is deafening and undefined. It's an impossible photograph that's gnawing at your tongue, munching the words out, removing the poetry and replacing it with a thick saliva of compact sugary regrets. It doesn't look like it belongs to me, because it belongs to an age that was built out of innocence, and I'm guilty as a devil. I call it "Les fleurs du mal" [Source wrote a remark on the subject in the "S.F.2016" file]. It must be hilarious to hear me whisper the words in the breathing attic. I can't pronounce French. It must be [appropriately crossed by Source] hilarious. I must look very funny too. A pile of human rust, deformed by ill-intentioned ideas... And by a very physical [Erased by [crossed by Source]] It hurts.
Entry 4 - (Entire dry aim)
I can't bring myself not to care about lacking a foot. I have no use for it, but it definitely feels like a big loss. I half woke up this morning and it was gone. At first, I just thought, resigned : "The light took it.". The light is filtered through the panes and feeds the breathing attic. It keeps my heart soft but unmelted. I don't think I would feel so bad if I knew where it was. It's a real pain, not to know where a big [appropriately crossed by Source] part of you is. At least, ghosts can't really have phantom limbs.
Entry 5 - (I dare try in me)
I think I missed the opportunity to care about society when I was nine. I was a girl then. I don't think I'm anything now, but I'm not empty, which is frustrating to discover during a very long agony, especially since I invested so much time into becoming empty. I'm not empty, but I'm a lovely failure. Your perverse mind feeds on that, reader. You are not a light eater, you are an ant eater. Formic acid a delight. Well, [appropriately crossed by Source] you! When I was nine, there was a boy and his dog. The boy asked me to play with him. Not i̲f̲ I wanted to play, he asked me to play. I decided to play with the dog instead. The dog tried to bite me. I held no grudge against the dog, so I kicked the boy instead. What wouldn't I give to get to kick that boy again... Punch him, even, since he's probably grown up.
Entry 6 - (Die, my terrain)
Humus Sapiens. That's how I decided to call the new species I'm now a part of. The soil made flesh, the end product of rain decay, excrements, urine, lamentations and rejected ideas from doubtful minds. I don't filter, I gather. All the mud in the world. The light is licking the attic's wounds like a canine motherly figure attending to its progeny. My wounds... they are rendered useless by the biting pain of a wolfish paternal image. Okay, now you assume that I have some trouble with fathers, more than probably mine. Well, you can [appropriately crossed by Source]. It was only a figure of speech. [Private comment by Source : "Notice how she dodges the question by pretending to be confronting it."] Now. Light. Wood. Moldy. Blinding. Moldy light and blinding wood. I can guess what the finished stuff made from the remains of me will look like, I can even have a peek at it, at night, as more light curls around my lungs, two bagpipes filled with moist earth. I'm not afraid. I don't want company. Why the sadness then?
So, reader...
Have you made up your mind yet? Do you hate me? Does my pathetic self repel you, or brings out pity... compassion, maybe? Maybe you think you fell in love with the dust of me you gathered through those few entries. If you think those questions are prematurate, then you haven't learned to live at all. Out of this diary, there is a world, filled to the brim with people you have to make up your mind about almost instantly. It is the way it goes. Go out and have a look. You are probably lonely. Now, at least. You take your time, or maybe you bite whole chunks of entries, hoping to get the full picture. The full picture is tiny. You have swallowed it without even realizing, a pill of homeo-pathetic remedy. Your present malady can't be cured by my diary.
[A comment by Source : "Hereafter, the writing becomes slightly more erratic, jumpy. Still clear, readable. The ideas expressed are no more anxious than previously. Should we assume that the change in writing is the result of a purely physical change?"]
Entry 7 - (Irid may enter)
Extinguish me. Is it too much to ask? I am glowing at 2 in the morning. The attic mocks me, taking short gulps of vitiated air, not bothering to hide its appetites anymore. I look at my luminous veins, roots, so many smiles that never showed up on my face at the right time, now fading, amorphous tubes carrying no blood, only muddy water. I'm not saying that I should have smiled more. I was never in the mood. Extinguish me. It's late. The neighbours are being raucous and the neighbours are all me, a jungle of chaotic sounds, different cacophonies. I want to throw up and swear at the same time. But the light from between the panes is absent and it's a reassuring thought. I feel calmer. I will try to sleep. Maybe I'll let myself sleep. Extinguish me...
I can picture them bent over my diary, discussing the meaning behind my words. "She's not meaning a literal, physical transformation. The whole 'turning into a monster' thing is only a way to express her inner, purely psychological transformation. Even the agony bits are not literal. It's only her old self dying, turning into a more mature, frightening self.".
It is very literal. I am turning into a monster. Well, more of a monster than I already am. I hope you could see the result before you found this. I hope you found me. I hope you caught a gaze from me, expressionless but to which you could give any meaning. You chose to make it mean reproach, if I'm lucky. Or hunger... I hope you feel useless. [A comment by Source : "I do... Oh, I do. More and more often. I haven't seen her... it. The result. But I have no doubt about the reality of the metamorphosis."]
Entry 8 - (Tiny armed ire)
My mother took a photograph of me when I was eleven. I remember the photograph because she wanted it to be "ideal", she said, which meant that we had to be careful so that I looked as less like me as possible. She erased me using various tricks, including a pretty dress she'd bought and that only fitted my body, not me, in such a way that I was forced to make it fit by changing, even slightly, the way I was... for the sake of the photograph. I burned the photograph not so much later. I had just turned 17 and I was still hoping that things could be put right by correcting the archives of me in order to regain some sense of what I was. The memories I burned much later, in a light-crazed attic. It was a natural process, a cerebral synthesis. Past into energy. A relief in consumption. Learning to leave the pulp of ancient identities that never stuck to my skin but which I still carried, apparently. Surprisingly. It is happening right now. I'm setting fire to old thoughts, and the scent of burning cardboard is exhilarating.
Entry 9 - (Entire mid-ray)
Going back in time is a relief. It must be sickening to do it physically, but just catching a glimpse of slowly dying memories feels good. Up to the point when most memories start melting and mixing, my father's limping superimposed on a boyfriend's hunting rifle. A friendly, bearded face out of a car accident. And, filtered, a few vivid, solid, undead moments from my past, more or less significant bits. I guess I'd better write them down.
First vivid memory :
A sloth gazing at me throught the bars. The zoo and its dust, mother and me. I vaguely realize, for the third time that day, that she probably doesn't care much about me. She isn't watching the animals. She is watching past that and into herself. She doesn't need to formulate her thoughts, I feel their substance flow through the veins and into my palms, in a way. In the way a six-year-old girl like me can feel things she doesn't yet consciously understands. The sloth I understand. It is easy. It can't feel like it has wasted its life raising a girl. I see a boy licking an ice cream. Vanilla. His mother pulls him gently towards the elephants. My mother has been standing still for half an hour now, disctractedly holding my hand in front of the sloths, reflecting upon her life. I start crying. The way a six-year-old girl copes with not understanding the pain she feels.
Second vivid memory :
Weight of the night on my pillow, heavier than my skull. I'm twenty-five but feel like I'm five, so lost inside so much darkness that I can't quite grasp. Shadows cause disturbances in the air, the way ink flows. I want to get up and drink some water, but the night won't let me. If I get up and drink water, I might be distracted from the chaotic mass of my problems, soaking the chaotic mass of my hair under my head, and the night doesn't want me distracted. It wants me aware even more than it wants me awake. Before I can think, my hands runs unders the side of my bed, feeling for something unknown, the molasses that makes dread itself, and actually touches something. I start laughing out of pure terror as my fingers retract from the thing, too late or too early.
Interruption/Intrusion :
My heart constricted by the boa of doubt makes me turn to the light coming in between the panes. What if I keep dying forever? What if the feeling of getting closer to a climax and a relief lasts, remains constant? I gaze down at my stomach. The bullet wound has completely disappeared, eaten away by a heavy dust or something similar. If I turn my throat the right way, I can almost sing clearly. ... See them hide under my bed Hear them laugh and speak and plot! I don’t want to disappoint them, I don’t want to grief their joke, they seem so busy… Little monsters under my bed But my bed is so empty You know [A comment by Source : The last part seemed a bit strange, so I researched it. As it turns out, it corresponds to the lyrics of a song by the band Pin-up Went Down entitled "Intrusion". The song ends on an eerie note that may or may not be relevant. [further discussed in "S.F.2016" in the dedicated section]]
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Third vivid memory :
"You mean pretend?" "I mean playing a part." I remember a bit of dialogue. The man's face. A face that would change so much over the course of such a short time. (I am nearly him, now. Who would have thought my inner side would change so little while the exterior is turned so quickly?) I remember the pulse in my wrist, playing in Hell minor inside my mind, and me saying "yes", that I would do it.
Entry 10 - (merry in tedia)
Sleep is back, the full thick smoke of it, arms fully open to welcome me, but I don't want to go back to it anymore. I feel it scratching at my side, my shoulders, trying to get me to be its friend again. The fact is, I know I could sink into a cocoon of false promises, but what's the point? Besides, I like feeling time flow through my skull, the darts of every second sink. I love the sound of too much missing noise. I take great joy in munching minutes, my guts hungry for large chunks of hours, hungry for nothing else, in need of nothing but time... and devastation. The tribe of fungi which had finished colonizing my blood not so long ago has now bent down to the sun in hideously primitive prosternation, grey dots already piercing their fragile translucid caps, like rain on (through?) a paper hat. One drop after another in slow motion, except slow motion is normal motion here, feeling every drop of time on my cap, my hair drooling... what's left of my hair, anyway. Just realized nothing's left of my hair. It's actually... a tendril-like entity? I don't know. I feel like I should have the right to know as it is now a part of me, but a monster's rights are not exactly stated. ... reader, you really want to read my degradation to the last melting bit, maybe pretend to be living it alongside me as you are reading. Ain't it right? Do you realize that I'll find myself unable to write long before that happens? Unlucky you, left without a proper ending. I am spoiled, and so should your reading comfort be. Be fair, I don't provide too much of an obstacle from were I am. And you still have pages to read, haven't you? Have I written more of it or will I have to stop here? ... I'll have to see for myself.
Entry 11 - (My dire retina)
The eyelids of my right eye have been sealed by a waxy substance, like an envelope concealing visions I have experienced. I think th Me. My scaffold. The foundation of myself. The print of blues on myself flattened into a blueprint of my new structure. Me. My scaffold. A sad thing so close to an achievement. A thing of collapse, a melting candle, the drops frozen in greasy hesitation as the flame blinks in an out of existence. Me. My thing of dark cement. A so-tired so uncertain, built out of unbuilding. The recipient of forever missing motion. Me. My self-inflicted identity. My auto-sedimenting, my compost-making machine. Me. An aimless mission, a wandering thought. A badly-printed consideration. The ink of flowing ideas. Flowing out, irreversible. Traced map to everynowhere. advancedaggregateofthoughtstoo strongtoforgiveandforgetandapo werfulblindingmachinethatfreeze stheguiltintovastcolloidalmists and acageoflightandbitsoffleshbrou ghttolightasfleshonfleshleftto tthefleshoflightandlightof
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Sincerely no one's,
Rainy Meredit _____ _____
[A comment by Source : The diary ends here.]
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Hello, reader. Thanks for violating my privacy.
You are lucky I'm not around to witness you break in.
I sincerely wish your discovering of my secrets to be synonymous with disappointment.
Anyway, enjoy the read. I'm sure you don't have much better things to do. The world's all going to [appropriately crossed by Source].
You'll end up at entry one if you keep turning the few blank pages that should come next.
You'll get there, eventually...