It Feels Like a Movie

Stop fishing for compliments, if your not getting them it’s because that person does not want you to have them. Rather compliment them until they become awkward and excuse themselves to talk to someone else. Enjoy fun, but hover your bedroom floor once in a while, it’s covered in your hair. Only your hair. Don’t use your emotional intellect for evil. You are smart enough to know the tricks you play to put off the inevitable.  That relationship will die, the credit card will not pay itself, you will not loose weight through sit ups and love can be a trick biology plays on you. Not always. Learn to tell the difference.  Indecisiveness is a sign of weakness. There will always be a better coffee shop further along the street and their will always be sushi but sometimes you have to make do. Hide your light under a bushel, bring it out on special occasions and not to validate your childhood. Your tastes are maturing and changing but you are never gonna be one of those girls who can tell an anecdote with thoughtful timing and correct detail, so store them up to be written down in the guises of other characters who are more articulate. Maybe learn to be more articulate.  Start embracing awkwardness and embarassments. Dance with mistakes and failings and move on. Move to the isle of skye and have a torrid lover affair with a fisherman who is far too old for you but the stories he tells as he lays his cod soaked fingers on your stomach.

Reading reminds me to write, writing reminds me to experience life, experiencing life makes me want to be alone to write.

The aggressive and the insane can be like psychics, they have a series of ten or twelve seemingly random comments which hammer home a particular truth to the individual walking by. They have to laugh it off as they realize they have been wearing their flaws and fears like a suit jacket for months now.

I was reading “The Sexual Life of Catherine M,” over a Best Western free breakfast when I heard the cultural hierarchal tones of a French couple behind me. I wanted to ask them what they were doing in this breakfast bar in Arizona, where the “healthy breakfast,” was egg whites cooked in butter but I listened to them order another pancake instead. They knew it was not free, but yes, they would pay. I felt confused, they from the land of artichoke hearts wanted to eat more of these badly prepared pancakes. They were too sophisticated for this place. I wanted to show them my book of sexual liberation and say me too, me too. Instead I hated myself a little and went back to shoveling eggs into my mouth, reading my book, and thinking “it’s just sex dressed up.”

The moment the pilot realises the plane is going to crash is one of quiet resolve. He quickly comes to terms with his demons, failings and regrets in life before turning to his younger co pilot and describing the limbs of the women he will never sleep with.

He presses the small red button to the left of the pressure gauge and the music of a recognisable classical song floods the plane. The chords swell like marshmallows in a microwave expanding from premium to economy class, filling  the ears of the nearly dead.

The pale and robust head of the cabin crew sighs like a punctured balloon. Oh well, he thinks, he had a good run. He fell in love once and had his photo taken on top of some Aztec ruins his father told him about as a child.

I catch his eye and I realise this sudden explosion of music is something other then a beautiful interlude marking the halfway point in our journey. It is the airlines signature swan song. I lean back in my chair and wonder if this will finally induce relaxation within me on what has been an otherwise long and tedious plane journey.

On this plane I ate chicken and bacon and potatoes, drank whisky and wine and finished half a chocolate moose. I allowed myself every potato because the portion seemed so small but I can feel the fat seeping through me like the oil dripping off last night’s farewell bread. Not that it matters now anyway.

I so hoped the mentality you gifted me would stick before my untimely death. You called me an athlete and I wanted to imagine myself as one so I could feel better prepared. This big group of strangers scares me and there is no leg room and the eyes of the man next to me… I did not enjoy being dry skinned window-shopping for him. I suddenly feel guilty about my undone to do list. It flows like the commercial overtures of this, my last piece of music. 

If this plane is crashing what would you know?

The pilot is loosening his grip on the steering wheel now and the pale blue eyes of the head of the cabin crew whose eyes sort mine sits with his head between his legs. But I do not follow suit as I want my death to be an inconvenience and I want them to struggle to find my head.