Astrid Magnussen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_oleander) wrote2021-08-26 05:58 am
white_oleander) wrote2021-08-26 05:58 am
Entry tags:
Room 210; Thursday Afternoon [08/26].
Fandom was full of little surprises, wasn't it? But Astrid had to admit, from turning into an animal, thinking you were a princess for a weekend, or being confronted with a corporeal visit from your dead foster mom, none of them were quite so surprising as finding in her mail that day a letter from Ingrid.
It had been...months. Maybe even close to a year. And as much as Astrid's brain wanted to just tear it to shreds and toss it in the trash unopened, her heart could only allow her to rush up to her room as fast as her feet could carry her so she could immediately devour the words that awaited her on that onion-skin prison paper her mother had available to her.
Dear Astrid,
It’s been four years. Four years since I walked through the gates of this peculiar finishing school. Like Dante: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita./Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura./Che la diritta via era smarhta. The third day over 110. Yesterday an inmate slit another woman’s throat with a bent can. Lydia tore up a poem I wrote about a man I saw once, a snake tattoo disappearing into his jeans. I made her tape it together again, but you can’t imagine the strain. Aside from you, I think this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had. She’s sure I love her, though it’s nothing of the kind. She adores those poems of mine that refer to her, thinks it’s a public declaration.
Love. I would ban the word from the vocabulary. Such imprecision. Love, which love, what love? Sentiment, fantasy, longing, lust? Obsession, devouring need? Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child. Afterward, she too becomes a person, and thus compromised. “Do you love me?” you asked in the dark of your narrow bed. “Do you love me Mommy?”
“Of course,” I told you. “Now go to sleep.”
Love is a bedtime story, a teddy bear, familiar, one eye missing.
“Do you love me, carita?” Lydia says, twisting my arm, forcing my face into the rough horsehair blanket, biting my neck. “Say it, you bitch.”
Love is a toy, a token, a scented handkerchief.
“Tell me you love me," Barry said.
“I love you, ” I said. “I love you, I love you. ”
Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.
Lydia lies on her side on my bunk, the curve of her hip the crest of a wave in shallow water, turquoise, Piaya del Carmen, Martinique. Leafing through a new Celebridades. I bought her a subscription. She says it makes her feel part of the world. I can't see getting excited about movies I wont see, political issues of the day fail to move me, they have nothing to say within the
deep prison stillness.
Time has taken on an utterly different quality for me. What difference does a year make? In a perverse way, I pity the women who are still a part of time, trapped by it, how many months, how many days. I have been cut free, I move among centuries. Writers send me books —Joseph Brodsky, Marianne Moore, Pound. I think maybe I will study Chinese.
“You ever go to Guanajuato?” Lydia asks. “All the big stars going there now.”
Guanajuato, Astrid. Do you remember? I know you do. We went with Alejandro the painter, as distinguished from Alejandro the poet. From San Miguel. My Spanish wasn't good enough to determine the quality of the poet’s oeuvre, but Alejandro the painter was very bad indeed. He should not have created at all. He should have simply sat on a stool and charged one to look at him. And so shy, he could never look in my eyes until after he'd finished speaking. Instead, he'd talk to my hand, the arch of my foot, the curve of my calf. Only after he had stopped could he look into my eyes. He trembled when we made love, the faint smell of geraniums.
But he was never shy with you, was he? You had such long conversations — conspiring, head to head. I felt excluded. He wes the one who taught you to draw. He would draw for you, and then you would draw after him. La mesa, la botilla, las mujeres. I tried to teach you poetry, but you were always so obstinate. Why would you never learn any thing from me?
I wish we'd never left Guanajuato.
Mother.
Astrid, now on her back on her bed in her quiet, lonely room, read through the letter again. And again, and again, and again, each time more voraciously, as if the spidery words, instead of satiating her hunger, only deepened it. There weren't words enough that could ever satisfy that hunger.
Alejandro the painter. Astrid remembered. Watching the line flow from his fingers, the movements of his arm. Was he a bad painter? It never occurred to her, as it never occurred to her that her mother could have felt excluded. Ingrid was beautiful there, she wore a white dress, and the buildings were ochre and yellow, her sandals crisscrossed like a Roman’s up her leg. Astrid traced the white X’s when she took them off. The hotel with screens and scrollwork around the door, the rooms open to the tiled walkway. You could hear what everybody was saying. When she smoked a joint she had to blow it out the balcony doors. It was a strange room, ochre, taller than it was square. She liked it, said there was room to think. And the bands of mariachis competed in the street below, the sound of concerts every night, from their beds under the netting.
Driving up from San Miguel de Allende in his toy-sized Citroen car, his shirt very white against his copper skin...
Was Ingrid admitting she made a mistake? If only she could admit it. Confess. Astrid might lie for her then, talk to her lawyer, take the stand and swear beyond a shadow of a doubt that she never. Perhaps this was as close as Ingrid would get to admitting a thing.
Finally, Astrid had stopped reading. She, instead, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then turned her head toward the side, toward her wall, its current brilliant image of a Los Angeles sunset over the ocean, and so many new thoughts running through her head.
Astrid wished they had stayed in Guanajuato, too.
Slowly, she rolled off the bed, leaving the letter, and went to get out the tarps and the white paint.
[[ oh, what's this? Time for some plot progression finally? Hell yeah it is! Anyway, bits and pieces, especially Ingrid's letter, taken from Chapter 31 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Door and post are open, with probably work-related SP caveat! ]]
It had been...months. Maybe even close to a year. And as much as Astrid's brain wanted to just tear it to shreds and toss it in the trash unopened, her heart could only allow her to rush up to her room as fast as her feet could carry her so she could immediately devour the words that awaited her on that onion-skin prison paper her mother had available to her.
Dear Astrid,
It’s been four years. Four years since I walked through the gates of this peculiar finishing school. Like Dante: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita./Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura./Che la diritta via era smarhta. The third day over 110. Yesterday an inmate slit another woman’s throat with a bent can. Lydia tore up a poem I wrote about a man I saw once, a snake tattoo disappearing into his jeans. I made her tape it together again, but you can’t imagine the strain. Aside from you, I think this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had. She’s sure I love her, though it’s nothing of the kind. She adores those poems of mine that refer to her, thinks it’s a public declaration.
Love. I would ban the word from the vocabulary. Such imprecision. Love, which love, what love? Sentiment, fantasy, longing, lust? Obsession, devouring need? Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child. Afterward, she too becomes a person, and thus compromised. “Do you love me?” you asked in the dark of your narrow bed. “Do you love me Mommy?”
“Of course,” I told you. “Now go to sleep.”
Love is a bedtime story, a teddy bear, familiar, one eye missing.
“Do you love me, carita?” Lydia says, twisting my arm, forcing my face into the rough horsehair blanket, biting my neck. “Say it, you bitch.”
Love is a toy, a token, a scented handkerchief.
“Tell me you love me," Barry said.
“I love you, ” I said. “I love you, I love you. ”
Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.
Lydia lies on her side on my bunk, the curve of her hip the crest of a wave in shallow water, turquoise, Piaya del Carmen, Martinique. Leafing through a new Celebridades. I bought her a subscription. She says it makes her feel part of the world. I can't see getting excited about movies I wont see, political issues of the day fail to move me, they have nothing to say within the
deep prison stillness.
Time has taken on an utterly different quality for me. What difference does a year make? In a perverse way, I pity the women who are still a part of time, trapped by it, how many months, how many days. I have been cut free, I move among centuries. Writers send me books —Joseph Brodsky, Marianne Moore, Pound. I think maybe I will study Chinese.
“You ever go to Guanajuato?” Lydia asks. “All the big stars going there now.”
Guanajuato, Astrid. Do you remember? I know you do. We went with Alejandro the painter, as distinguished from Alejandro the poet. From San Miguel. My Spanish wasn't good enough to determine the quality of the poet’s oeuvre, but Alejandro the painter was very bad indeed. He should not have created at all. He should have simply sat on a stool and charged one to look at him. And so shy, he could never look in my eyes until after he'd finished speaking. Instead, he'd talk to my hand, the arch of my foot, the curve of my calf. Only after he had stopped could he look into my eyes. He trembled when we made love, the faint smell of geraniums.
But he was never shy with you, was he? You had such long conversations — conspiring, head to head. I felt excluded. He wes the one who taught you to draw. He would draw for you, and then you would draw after him. La mesa, la botilla, las mujeres. I tried to teach you poetry, but you were always so obstinate. Why would you never learn any thing from me?
I wish we'd never left Guanajuato.
Mother.
Astrid, now on her back on her bed in her quiet, lonely room, read through the letter again. And again, and again, and again, each time more voraciously, as if the spidery words, instead of satiating her hunger, only deepened it. There weren't words enough that could ever satisfy that hunger.
Alejandro the painter. Astrid remembered. Watching the line flow from his fingers, the movements of his arm. Was he a bad painter? It never occurred to her, as it never occurred to her that her mother could have felt excluded. Ingrid was beautiful there, she wore a white dress, and the buildings were ochre and yellow, her sandals crisscrossed like a Roman’s up her leg. Astrid traced the white X’s when she took them off. The hotel with screens and scrollwork around the door, the rooms open to the tiled walkway. You could hear what everybody was saying. When she smoked a joint she had to blow it out the balcony doors. It was a strange room, ochre, taller than it was square. She liked it, said there was room to think. And the bands of mariachis competed in the street below, the sound of concerts every night, from their beds under the netting.
Driving up from San Miguel de Allende in his toy-sized Citroen car, his shirt very white against his copper skin...
Was Ingrid admitting she made a mistake? If only she could admit it. Confess. Astrid might lie for her then, talk to her lawyer, take the stand and swear beyond a shadow of a doubt that she never. Perhaps this was as close as Ingrid would get to admitting a thing.
Finally, Astrid had stopped reading. She, instead, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then turned her head toward the side, toward her wall, its current brilliant image of a Los Angeles sunset over the ocean, and so many new thoughts running through her head.
Astrid wished they had stayed in Guanajuato, too.
Slowly, she rolled off the bed, leaving the letter, and went to get out the tarps and the white paint.
[[ oh, what's this? Time for some plot progression finally? Hell yeah it is! Anyway, bits and pieces, especially Ingrid's letter, taken from Chapter 31 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Door and post are open, with probably work-related SP caveat! ]]