The Octopus Museum

by Brenda Shaughnessy

  Perhaps he was intimidated by how intimate the place is. Too small to sit comfortably really. Or maybe by how good I smelled in it, the spice sweat-sauna ripened me as a brown paper bag will sweeten out the mealiest pear.

  On religious days, of which there are many but few for me, I went to the Temple of the Three Mouths. I fed all three what they were hungry for, which took some guesswork and often-sketchy improvisations. Whatever the three mouths requested became a kind of omen for me.

  Mouth One, the mouth of physicality, was the easiest. Once, it wanted peanut sauce, which made sense because it likes protein and viscosity, form and content. Mouth two twice puzzled me, once wanting a blue video and once wanting to lick my arm!

  This being the mouth of love I wondered why it wanted such silly forms of it and could only guess that I came to it with deformed notions and therefore could only offer it debased versions of what I most wanted. Still, it made me sad.

  The third mouth I gave whatever I could barely keep from gobbling up myself. Chocolate tomatoes and books I couldn’t sleep for. Oils and petals and commotions I dreamt of on my luckiest nights. And the mouth would have none of it. I was refused every time. The mouth of abandonment.

  I thought this mouth meant something and then that something was inverse. I was always baffled. Until I could penetrate the mystery, make the third mouth desire what I have to give, I would continue my supplications at the Temple.

  My religious days were generally those days when my own company turned against me, when I couldn’t stand myself a minute longer. What my visits to the Temple did to assuage this in-skin repulsion I don’t know—and it only half-works. It was a form of religion after all.

  But, after I returned home, I felt a little relief, a snake in the middle of its shedding, knowing there was still this cylinder of self left.

  The Idea of Others

  An animal is scritching in the wall behind my bed. At first I thought it was some kind of water crackling in a heating pipe but what kind of water stops when you thump the wall? I don’t mean to be mean, I mean to make it scurry off, to send it to scritch somewhere I can’t hear.

  No, I’m not afraid—it is small, by the sound of its scritch. I’m not in Room 101, not worried about a gnarled whiskered rodent face chewing my eyelids in my sleep. I know these small animals, if it is an animal,

  are generally afraid of big, intelligent me so far up the food chain, capable of terrible violence if frightened. I know they know they can never physically get me and are only after a crumb or a drop, like everyone really.

  No, I’m trying to protect my peace of mind, my inner life, my pest-free dreams, from these unseen labors in a frenzy in the wall behind my bed. I was going to say it drives me mad and that is its fault, or was I going to say who am I to judge the urges and intensities of another species?

  What I’ll say instead is that I am part of the universe, privy to sounds parallel but unreachable, and on some other level, that I know I am alive, factually, unloving and alone.

  Sel de la Terre, Sel de Mer

  Oh funny, runny little god who lived in the sea we cut to ribbons! Tell us the big story with your infected mouth. Tell us the big story is so far beyond us we can’t possibly ruin it, but you’ll let us listen if we sit way in the back, quiet side creatures and marginal beasts.

  We don’t know what we’re doing. We catch a single wave, bless you with necklaces of spit, strut ashore to pose with our medallions and titles, having won. We make little boats and toss ourselves inside like a ride on a mechanical bull. When thrown we blame the weather.

  We can’t see anything in front of our face. Salt water stings and burns our eyes even when we’re already crying. We cover them with plastic goggles to ogle each other underwater. We know we are aliens in too deep, but we’ll never admit we don’t belong.

  We are the kind of storytellers that frustrate children at bedtime everywhere. “Once there was a little girl named [insert name] who was very tired and went to sleep. The end.” Come on! “Okay, one more story. Once upon a time there was a blanket who was so lonely.

  Its great wish was to one day cover up a little girl named [insert name.] Finally, after what seemed like forever and was actually way past 8:30 p.m., the girl came to bed, pulled up her blanket all cozy, and went to sleep. The end.” But you can’t pull one over on kids, who know when they’re shorted.

  Our only ways are the scammy, power-tripping ways and we know we don’t deserve it but we want to hear the big story. We need an old-fashioned plume of ink, all new alphabet, to blot out our lies, all the times we were too tired, unkind, and stupid to tell the truth.

  All day a rainy day so we stay inside. That’s how we see things: we close our eyes twice. That’s how afraid we are of what is. When the rain stops, we dive into pools of plastic water, mistake the sexual fingers of light for fullness of heart, for the goodness of our own gooey center.

  We thought we were so smart, always ahead of ourselves, minds flapping like a single flag, a mere reaction, a neural blip we thought was holy everywhere. Make us sit and listen to you. If you’re at the center the center might hold.

  Your countless eyes watching us, your arms radiating out in all directions, feeling for what’s next. Sound comes to us in waves and we dissolve into salt water when we’re most real.

  Home School

  SIMONE: What’s “emergency cash”?

  ME: Cash is money. So emergency cash is money you have in case you need it, for emergencies.

  SIMONE: In case you have too much cash in an emergency, you might need money.

  ME: Umm…no. Let me see how I can explain it….If you have an emergency, you might need money, but if you don’t have money you’d use emergency cash.

  SIMONE: Oh! If you run out of money, you can just get more money from the emergency cash that you have?

  Notes on an Old Holiday

  Old women must wear bright colors, or they disappear. Young women wear dark colors, trying to disappear and failing. Middle women are transparent, sheer to the ground.

  Rivers are ancient. They think we are mosquitos they don’t even bother to slap, we’ll be dead so soon.

  Young looks at old and thinks Old. Old looks at young and thinks Young. Neither recognizes herself as thinking anything.

  We must not accept that anything is precisely what it is. Except disco pants. Those are definitely themselves. If not for you, then for your children’s children.

  Bitten all over my ankles by French spiders. They’re leg men.

  It’s been twenty years since I first came to Paris. This is my eighth visit.

  Twenty years ago, I was a target of men. I walked quickly, with purpose, to avoid being hit, shot, or practice. Now—and maybe since my seventh visit—I can walk slowly, thinking, at last looking at lights.

  On the river, in the sky, in my own hair, silver glimmers I can sense like antennae.

  As a monoglot, in France, I fall back on rudimentary Japanese, a language I don’t really know. Often what I need to say amounts to “okay” so I say daijobu while weirdly bowing in a Japanese way to a French waiter. Then, correcting, I say c’est bon and that must sound so stupid, to say “It’s good” when a drink is spilled on me.

  I don’t want to be an old woman. But why not? I was sexy. I don’t want to die.

  It’s not bad disappearing into the world if this is what the world is like.

  I mean I mean that double meaning.

  I never used to believe I was part of the world that meant the world to me when I was young. But it’s me who changed, wasn’t it? Changed what it meant?

  I think my room is a little depressing. Aren’t all rooms? When you could be outside if not for the bugs, the people, the traffic, the smell, the heat, the hot rain, the terrible sense tha
t anything could happen to you?

  11 p.m. The trees lit blue and green made me think there was still a patch of daylight. Suddenly, to have the whole day back!

  If a reasonably long life, say 84 years, was divided into one single day, each hour of that day equals 3.5 years. When you are 14 years old, it’s 4 a.m. When it’s 10 p.m., you are 77 years old.

  I’m already well past noon; I should be finishing up lunch if I’m using my time well.

  Midnight–6 a.m.: 0–21 years. Still Dreaming

  6 a.m.–noon: 21–42 years. Morning Glory

  noon–6 p.m.: 42–63 years. Afternoon Delight

  6 p.m.–9 p.m.: 63–73.5 years. Evening Rush

  9 p.m.–midnight: 73.5–84 years. Last Call, or find another party.

  Map of Itself

  The idea of travel. The very idea.

  FOUND OBJECTS/LOST SUBJECTS: A RETROSPECTIVE

  Thinking Lessons

  No one is one.

  No one is no one.

  Is writing an act of listening?

  Or is to listen merely to passively search another for a portal to oneself?

  But portal lets anything through—and nothing stays.

  I love what’s sublime—beauty greater than my sense of beauty.

  Red is the color of surfacing, from the inside, eyes closed.

  My child does not belong to me. She belongs to herself. But she’s too young to have a child!

  What is a new way to learn? Could I ever answer and still keep my question?

  What are the most important questions, other than this one?

  Our Beloved Infinite Crapulence

  In Indiana, in the era of hell-wealth, way past deadline, someone on the account is sweating it, making metaphor from what is already a stretch.

  And because he wants to go home to his farm-fresh slowpoke foam, grown cold, we are eventually diagnosed with winter and treated to this marketing copy off a tube of cream: “Undry Your Skin” or “A Rainforest for Your Face.”

  I bought it. It seemed fresh and felt organic and like it would at least wetten me, skinwise. I can’t feel my old ambition to be wracked with anguish or to grow soft with loss.

  When I lose, I’m still so grateful! Does that make me a chump or a champ, eating victory mussels in the lamplight of my domestic tranquility?

  Gratitude often leaves me with nothing to say, as when I saw you in the toy store, I felt like a feral cat who knows only the dumpsters and the flu-scented sandboxes of now. Now that I’m happy I suppose I have to break my own heart just to feel something.

  Another person with my same name goes around impersonating others; now everyone thinks I’m the impostor.

  I want to tell her, “you know, you think you know me, sipping mahogany cider in the millionaire’s billiards room, but there’s such a thing as too much umami, and there’s no way to rest forever and then go on.”

  Someone once said: now that I’m happy I suppose I have to break my own heart to feel something. I should remember that. I should stop praying to my dead self.

  I should pull out my earbuds, and hear the world (my first love, my favorite store) without continually moving my oiled jaw hinge.

  I like a chemical mysticism performed with perfect innocence. The wet slit lit up and cut down the middle, a little spit, lip a little bit split. Love in the Candle Shop: Wicked. Peeing into a Plastic Water Bottle: Wasteful. These are scents.

  As is: Luck Be a Lady, So Spend Your Whole Social Security Check on Lottery Tickets Be a Gentleman. I want to smell like ceramic wind in the canyon, a brittle lust, a red-headed remedy synonymous with flooding.

  Weathervane Rusted Stuck. A Stranger’s Phalanges. The South Mouth. Fiercely Phlegm. Fun Old Lady. So Parachute!

  And now we eat. The eponymous eating. Don’t want butter, don’t want salt. Dinner is thinner but it’s not my fault. We’re having fungal celebrity of beef cheeks tomorrow so get yourself hungry!

  For lighter fare I prefer the Soapish Fish braised in its own frothing broth, served with an aromatic retraction of statements previously made in the shade of a giant, genetically-muddled-with fiddlehead fern, infused with expelled chipmunk breath.

  I…I love this local company, especially because for every order—and this is so cool—they make a tax-deductible contribution to honor and support the world-famous Pacific Garbage Patch, in your name.

  Letters from the Elders

  Dear Humans,

  One word: plastics.

  I won’t withhold everything I’ve learned. I’ll tell you plain. You will miss plastics.

  I wish that, when people called it Cling Film instead of Saran Wrap, I’d have just let it go. It was a regional thing, not worth losing my long friendship with Mary over it.

  Everything was plastic. We thought it was hygienic. We put it in our eyes so we could see better. We put plastic earbuds in our ears so we could listen ourselves out of any situation. We’d take food that was half-plastic in plastic containers, put it into another plastic container, heat it in an electric box of metal and plastic, and serve it to ourselves, guests, and families.

  We’d coat each strand of our hair in plastic spray. We covered our houses, our cars, ourselves, in plastic. Every medicine, every little pill and dose had its own little plastic compartment. We stocked the reservoirs with plastic leeches which leached plastic into the water supply, so we shipped new water out to everyone in tiny plastic bottles.

  The ocean was like a toddler’s bathtub, plastic toys and junk everywhere, crowding out the kid, poisoning every sea. It got so even sea salt was part plastic.

  But you know all about that.

  We thought we were throwing it “away” until “away” threw itself back at us. This was our near-destruction, and it was well-deserved. We served it first. Some people like to point fingers but I’d like to point out that our fingers are basically plastic.

  You’d press your plastic keyboard buttons all day so hard and fast the letters wore off, absorbed by your fingertips. Invisible tattoos like CRAZE and PLUM replaced your fingerprints. Babies came out with flexible plastic fingernails that fell off and grew back “natural.”

  If you want to know what we all could have done differently to prevent the situation we’re in now, I have one word for you: everything.

  Peace,

  Ned “the relatively well-liked former mayor of the town formerly known as Peterborough, NH” Grimley-Groves

  Dear Bella,

  I’m writing this in case there’s any chance you’ll see it. If you’re still alive to see this mess. I’m not sure I wish that for you as I still love you. I never stopped. Many years ago I wrote a poem for you and imagined, even though our lives took us far apart, that I would eventually have a chance to give it to you. I’d hoped one day I could read it to you in person. As it is, this is my only option. If you are reading this, I hope your life was filled with love, even if we couldn’t be together. If it’s not you reading this, well, I hope you enjoy the poem, whoever you are.

  Mare Nostrum

  The most embarrassing thing

  was when you threw me

  back into the water,

  an old shoe you’d hooked.

  It must have been, for you,

  like dreaming of Italy

  and waking up panicked, miserable,

  on the stalled connecting red-eye.

  For me it was bunions

  growing in reverse, holy water

  running in the gutters

  I’d drink like a fish.

  If I’d been more serious, kinder,

  less reckless, more trustworthy,

  more like you, maybe I wouldn’t

  have seemed like such
a joke.

  Ouch, is this painful, after all this time.

  You must have been right

  not to love me. You’re practically

  Italian by now and I’m still blushing.

  Love forever,

  Your Francesca (not my real name, but Bella—also not her real name—knows it’s me)

  Dear Humans,

  It’s me, again. Ned Grimley-Groves. I just had a couple more things to say, since there aren’t so many places anymore that accept letters that could maybe be read by others. And I guess there aren’t that many elders left anyway, which is sad. So I’ll get to it.

  You will miss waste. Not bio-waste, which will be everywhere since there’s nowhere for it to go anymore. But you’ll miss the luxurious wastefulness and the way our waste became invisible to us. Wasting everything was what kept us warm, sleeping cozily, and so clean all the time.

  We were ridiculously clean, so clean it often made us sick! We’d clean our countertops with bleach and then wipe it up with a plastic sponge and soap and hot water and then throw the sponge away because bleach was toxic on surfaces our children might touch.

  We’d tell our children to wash their hands after we cleaned the countertops. Hell, we’d tell our children to wash their hands if we saw a bug! Look, I don’t know how much good it does to describe all this; we already know it. Is this for posterity? Or so the kids will know how it was?

  I’m just kind of losing my momentum here. Is anyone reading this?

  Well, in any case, if this “Letters from the Elders” project is ongoing, or if it reaches a wider audience, or if anyone needs me to be the editor, or to work on outreach or really anything, I am available and would love to do it.

  Right now it seems to be only Francesca and me contributing letters, but if it becomes a bigger thing, or an archive of sorts, or a forum where people could communicate with each other—and you all, whoever you are, need someone—let me know! I have experience!