by Jade Sylvan
Once, in Bloomington, I’d asked a fifty-something interfaith minister about his conception of the self/soul as it related to our choices. Say I’m trying to decide if I should throw my empty water bottle in the recycling bin or leave it on the sidewalk for someone else to clean up. Am I looking for something that pre-exists inside of me to tell me what to do, or is it my choice that makes me into the type of person who would do that thing?
He paused for about ten seconds, then said, carefully, that some people believe in the soul and some people don’t, but either way, most of us can agree that we exist and experience something inside or around us that we label “self,” and that it doesn’t matter if our selves are created through our choices or our choices are emanations of our selves. Either way (or both ways), we are what we choose to be.
Then he said, You better make the choice you’re willing to die for because we all die for what we do.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Poem I Performed in Reims and Louis Remembered from the Cantab
Plates
There is a frigidity that does not wait for bonfires and Eastern Standard Time to wiggle into living bones. Dopplegangers linger terrifying and invisible, they shadow our every move, watch like voyeurs through bushes at our hushed conversations on futons after the kids are in bed—as you Google German sopranos and try on new shoes, your other life is always wrapped around you, a film of ether in the most floral parts of the brain. One step left or right and you could have been a cowboy, a screen actor, a witch, a freemason. Somewhere your hands are filthy with dirt from your mango farm, your pro tennis career, the dig site where you discovered a new species of dinosaur.
Demons only demonize, I tell myself. If they are so smart, why aren’t they standing here in a matter suit, like me, drinking wine and baking cakes, kissing and being kissed. No one kisses demons. They don’t even have lips of their own.
* * *
My roommate is eating an apple. I hate her mouth for how it snaps off the flesh in wet tears, hate the smack of her tonguing the fruit, the oblivious way she licks her lips, the way she eats all day and does not gain weight, but I love her because she has a mouth to eat and speak with, because she is human and wants and is fulfilled. It is a wobbly tightrope.
I try to concentrate describe something someone uneducated might call the soul. I am staccatoed by my neighbor lobbing limp beanbags at a slab of particle board. They fly like winsome empanadas flung from a catapult, land with thwaps. I do not know his name but he wears a fitted navy baseball cap backwards on his skull.
* * *
I want to love this place how monks talk of washing dishes—what once clean, now dirty, now clean—there is a cycle to everything, not linear like breaking plates. I do everything too quickly. My plates are always breaking.
I want to love the plates, want to wipe the flotsam slurry from their faces hard with glaze chanting om mane padme hum, want to clean them, dirty them, clean them again.
I made up my own Lord’s Prayer last week before scraping off my monkey fur with razorblades and heading out to the bar. I found the Body of God in day old bread the bakery leaves out on the curb for the bums. I never felt so hungry.
I want to go on vacation with my body and leave my mind at home to bury herself in algorithms and iambs.
I would seek out sensation anywhere I could, open my legs to the Mayor of Allston City and his denizens of beer bottle stab wounds, to the priest in Galway who lingered too long dropping God’s body on my pink flower tongue, to the teenagers by the bridge at the canal, Dr. Pepper bottles brimming with SoCo, to the old folks in their eponymous homes, to the sad aging swingers swapping bruised husband for bruised wife.
The inside of me is filled with broken plates. Have your way with me. Compared to you all I am six times a virgin. Let’s get right down to it. You cannot love in a straight line without breaking. There is no way back home.
* * *
I am not a singer, a poet, or an especially good friend. I prefer to be naked. All words are just clothes and they itch like thriftstore synthetics. Let me lie here in the dirt and let the sky cover me like heat, like milk. Paint me if you like, I will not notice. Bring your mouth to the crux of my thighs and drink the blood which is the origin of all life as I dream of sky burials, of the monks that hold the cubed human flesh out to the birds who clean the bones delicate as fine plates. Those birds were dinosaurs once, those monks were monkeys, and all of us used to be stars. Let us dine together. I have set the table. There is a place for everyone.
* * *
Assiettes
(traduction)
Il existe une certaine frigidité qui n’attend ni les feux de joie ni l’heure américaine pour s’imiscer en frétillant à l’intérieur d’os pleins de vie.
Des sosies s’attardent terrifiants et invisibles, ils prennent en filature chacun de nos gestes espionnent comme des voyeurs à travers les buissons nos conversations etouffées sur des futons nocturnes après que les enfants sont couchés––lorsque vous googlez les sopranos allemandes et essayez de nouvelles chaussures, votre autre vie est toujours enveloppée autour de vous, un film d’éther dans les parties les plus fleuries de votre cerveau. Un pas à gauche ou à droite et vous auriez pu être un cow-boy, un acteur de cinéma, une sorcière, un franc-maçon. Vos mains par endroit sont salies par la terre de votre ferme de mangues, votre carrière de tennis pro, le site de fouilles où vous avez découvert une nouvelle espèce de dinosaures.
Je me dis que les démons ne font que démoniser. s’ils sont si intelligents, pourquoi ne sont-ils pas ici dans un costume matériel, comme moi, à boire du vin et faire des gâteaux, embrasser et être embrassé. Personne n’embrasse les démons. Ils n’ont même pas de lèvres.
* * *
Ma colocataire est en train de manger une pomme. Je déteste sa bouche et la façon dont elle s’arrache avec un bruit sec à la chair hespéridée en larmes humides, je déteste le claquement de ses coups de langue sur le fruit, la manière oublieuse dont elle se lèche les lèvres, la façon dont elle mange tous les jours et ne prend pas de poids, mais je l’aime parce qu’elle a une bouche pour manger et parler avec, parce qu’elle est humaine et désire et s’accomplit. C’est une corde raide bien flageolante.
J’essaye de me concentrer, de décrire quelque chose quelqu’un d’inculte pourrait appeler l’âme. Je suis interrompue en staccato par mon voisin et ses poufs mous jetés en l’air contre un panneau de particules. Ils s’envolent comme de séduisantes empanadas lancées d’une catapulte, et atterrissent comme des gifles. Je ne sais pas son nom mais il porte une casquette de baseball bleu marine, vissée à l’envers sur son crâne.
* * *
Je veux aimer cet endroit comme les moines s’entretiennent de lavage de vaisselle, de ce qui fut propre, puis sale, et propre à nouveau. Il y a un cycle pour tout, ce n’est pas linéaire comme casser des assiettes. Je fais tout trop vite. Mes assiettes se brisent tout le temps.
Je veux aimer les assiettes, je veux essuyer la gadoue naufragée sur leurs visages durs comme de l’émail en chantant om mane padme hum. Je veux les nettoyer, les salir, les nettoyer à nouveau.
J’ai inventé mon propre Notre Père la semaine dernière avant de racler ma fourrure de singe avec des lames de rasoir et avant de sortir pour le bar. J’ai trouvé le corps de Dieu dans le pain d’hier que la boulangerie avait sorti sur le trottoir pour les clochards. Je n’ai jamais eu autant faim.
Je veux aller en vacances avec mon corps et laisser mon esprit à la maison à s’enterrer dans des algorithmes et des vers iambiques.
Je rechercherais le sensationnel partout où je le pourrais, j’ouvrirais mes jambes pour le maire de la ville d’Allston et ses habitants lacérés à coup de bouteille de bière, au prêtre de Galway, qui prenait trop de temps pour déposer le corps de Dieu sur ma langue fleur rose, aux adolescents près du pont sur le canal, et leurs canettes de soda pleines de bourbon trop sucré, aux vieux dans leurs maisons éponymes, aux tristes échangistes vi
eillissants qui échangent mari meurtri contre femme meurtrie.
L’intérieur de moi est rempli d’assiettes cassées. Faites de moi ce que vous voulez. En comparaison de vous tous je suis six fois vierge.
Passons aux choses sérieuses. Vous ne pouvez aimer en ligne droite sans rompre. Il n’y a pas de chemin de retour.
* * *
Je ne suis pas une chanteuse, un poète ou une particulièrement bonne amie. Je préfère être nue. Les mots ne sont que des vêtements et ils démangent comme des fibres synthétiques glanées aux puces. Laissezmoi étendue là dans la crasse et laissez le ciel me couvrir comme la chaleur, comme du lait. Badigeonnez-moi de peinture si vous voulez, je ne remarquerai même pas. Posez votre bouche à la croisée de mes cuisses et buvez le sang qui est l’origine de toute vie alors que je rêve de funérailles célestes, pour les moines qui distribuent la chair humaine en cubes aux oiseaux qui nettoient des os aussi délicats que des assiettes fines. Ces oiseaux furent un temps des dinosaures, ces moines furent des singes, et nous étions tous des étoiles. Dinons ensemble, voulezvous. J’ai mis la table. Il y a une place pour chacun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gertrude Stein
Dareka’s apartment was up the hill from the Belleville Metro stop on the Right Bank. He shared it with another artist, a thirty-two-year-old musician (male, pale, with a dark beard) and a twenty-three year old American graduate student (female, short, Jewish), and it was about as nice and clean as you would expect. The only two remarkable particulars about the place were the view from Dareka’s room, where, he showed us, if you climbed out the window and stood on the very edge of the fire escape, you could glimpse, just over the rooftops of the surrounding cityscape, the corona of the Tour Eiffel37, and the fact that it was about a ten-minute walk to Père Lachaise.
Julian spread out on the pull-out couch in the living room to take a nap. Caleb and I slumped at the large dining room table, staring into space for about five minutes. Then Caleb said,
Do you want to go now?
I paused, then sighed. I didn’t look at him.
I’m just worried we won’t be back again, said Caleb. I mean, aren’t we supposed to stay with someone else the rest of the time in Paris?
Yeah, tomorrow we’re staying with Dareka’s band-mate. Some woman who’s name I forget.
Do you know where she lives?
No idea.
We should go now.
I know.
We walked up the winding, hilly streets to the somber stone wall that surrounded Père Lachaise. The entrance closest to Dareka’s apartment was the farthest away from Oscar Wilde, but was the closest to Gertrude Stein, whose grave I’d never seen. When we walked in, a groundskeeper and a guard were talking by some sort of official-looking shed about three meters away from us. The groundskeeper was leaning half of his body on a shovel38. One of them said something to us that I didn’t understand.
Quoi? I asked. He repeated it, but I was too flustered by the interruption to separate the words into meaning.
He said it’s closing in less than an hour, said Caleb.
I thanked the groundskeeper and asked him if he knew where Gertrude Stein was. The way he pronounced Gertrude Stein, I wouldn’t have understood him unless I already knew what he was saying. He told us the section number and pointed us toward it. The guard also handed us folded tourist’s map.
It was farther from the entrance than it looked on the map. We walked past block after block of sectioned-off gravestones and ornate, temple-like monuments. One section was a dedicated Holocaust memorial, its centerpiece an eerie expressionist sculpture—a twisted bronze conflagration of writhing ghosts.
The section the groundskeeper named was a large grey square of land rowed with rather anomalously plain grave markers, all dull grey or glossy black. Gertrude Stein was not indicated on the map, so we had no choice but to walk up and down every row of gravestones and read each names.
Row after row, she wasn’t there. Sometimes, as we made our way down a line I would spy a heavily-decorated grave a few meters away and conjecture that that must be it, but it never was. Some of the graves were so covered in flowers I had to move them to read the names. Most of the adorned names had been dead at least several decades, but I didn’t recognize any of them as famous. When I moved the flowers, even just to read the names, I felt weird about it. I always put them back.
As we started to make it closer to one edge abutting the stone wall of the cemetery, the graves began trading their French for Hebrew and their crosses for stars of David.
As we walked down the last row on the very edge along the pathway, we saw a large stone-framed bed of stones. The stones were sized from grape to golf ball. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, all filling this vast rectangular stone bed. There was nothing remarkable about the stones other than their placement and company. They all were just stones you could find anywhere on the ground on the cemetery. The headstone also was stacked with these stones, as if the stones were water and could flow off the headstone into the stone bed. The stones were all grey as the sky or black as closed eyes. The headstone was wide, clean, and geometric, with only the words GERTRUDE STEIN carved on its front and only the words ALICE B. TOKLAS carved on its back.
I stood looking across the large stone bed at her name. I probably said something in my head to her, whatever she now was. Something very heartfelt, I’m sure, and very unoriginal. From the other side of the headstone, Caleb took a picture of me looking.
I walked around to the back of the headstone alongside Caleb. The letters were sharp and deep, and I knelt and touched them.
When I stood up, I saw, placed at the very apex of the pile of stones on the headstone, one rock that was not black or grey, but deep burgundy red. It was shaped like a heart39.
I don’t know what I should leave, I said.
Do you want to leave a rock? said Caleb.
No, it doesn’t feel sincere. It wouldn’t mean anything to me.
Well, what else do you have? Or we could walk around a little bit and find something maybe.
I kind of want to take a rock.
Okay.
Is that terrible? Is that wrong?
Caleb shrugged. I don’t think anything’s wrong if you do it for the right reasons.
It feels right. I want to take a rock with me. I’ll put it on my altar at home.
Okay. Then take a rock then.
I reached out and lifted the heart-shaped rock reverently off its cradle. If anything ever feels right, it felt right.
What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? said a nasal, Irish-accented voice.
I looked over the headstone to see a slim, frail, white-haired man wearing a sweater vest and a backpack. He was holding his smart phone horizontally aimed at the grave, apparently halted in the process of taking a picture.
I walked around the grave to stand near the man, and Caleb followed. I showed the man the rock. I was going to take this because I always leave things at graves, but here, it felt right to take something home. Is that wrong?
The man wouldn’t make eye-contact, he just shook. How can you even ask that? Is it wrong?
I evened out my voice. I’m sorry. I’ll put it back. I’ve never heard anything about taking something from a grave if it’s sacred to you.
Go ahead. Play the ugly American. He shook his head making grunting noises of disgust.
I mean, doesn’t the staff clean it all up eventually anyway? I said. If people for the past eighty years have been leaving stones here, I’m pretty sure it would be more than overflowing by now, unless it’s been cleared out a few times.
God! He made more grunting noises and squinted at me out of the corner of his eye. Fine, take it, he said. He held up his smart phone and took two more pictures, previewing them both before glancing at me one more time with unmitigated disdain and walking away from us down the path.
I looked at Caleb40. He shrugged. I pocketed the rock.
Through the clouds
we could see that the sun was low in the sky. Père Lachaise would be closing soon, and Wilde’s grave was on the opposite edge. We navigated as quickly as we could, Caleb with his short legs and me with my worsening limp, along uphill paths threaded through monuments and mausoleums. The markers were more frequently in the rococo style nearer to the center. They gradually became more modest as we climbed away from it. We were both out of breath. The sun was setting, and the wind was cold when we finally got there.
The grave was immaculate and encased by four unceremonious glass walls. The stone angel41 swept along its place42 clean and unperverted43. For a moment, panting, we both just stood there. Kisses of desperate saliva and lipstick smeared across the glass like children’s car-window mouth-prints. Someone had written, Oscar, je t’aime, in red lipstick across the lower left of the barrier’s face.
A young blond couple walked up behind us carrying the same map the guard had given me. They spoke to each other in German, looking at the map and pointing at the grave in turn. Then the girl stepped forward and stood smiling in front of the glass while the guy took a smart phone picture. The guy said something in German and the girl said something back and then she turned around and kissed the glass while the guy repositioned himself and took some more pictures. Caleb and I stepped backward a few paces to get out of the shot. The wind stung my face and made my fingers go numb. I wished I’d brought gloves.
When the German couple stepped away to huddle together and view the pictures, I looked at Caleb. He’d taken his camera out of its case and stood there with it half-poised.
I guess I should kiss it, I said.
Okay.
Right? I mean, that’s the only thing I can really do.