Alone with Other People
Page 7
As the train took off toward DC Jordan watched the green blend to the gray, jerk to a pause then rewind as she sped forward, letting something outside of herself control her movement. She felt relief.
Jordan walked around DC aimlessly–forgetting about her glamor- ous gallery plans–positioning herself in front of shop windows but never entering, while her own plain, rounded, face stared blankly at the higher-cheekboned women that walked behind her at the faster pace of self-assurance. These were the women that were meant to be going off to the galleries to be fabulous. They could be picked out among the tourists as The Ones Who Belonged. After all, she was still trapped in this girlish self-consciousness, which the Gallery Girls had surely left behind. Oh, isn’t easy to build a trope of a person and put yourself in opposition to them?
The act of observing was Jordan’s main intent. She watched people biking alongside of the cars on the street and people walking their dogs alongside of the bikes. Against a tree that was planted into the sidewalk, she watched two squirrels hump. She wondered if the squirrels thought that what they were doing was provocative or if they just viewed the whole world as the whole world rather than in terms of “inside” or “outside” and “private” or “public.” For all she knew, she has happened upon two great performance artists right there. Here was the art! She thought, The Squirrel Gaze and contin- ued walking to escape it.
GIRAFFE. Giraffe. Giraffe giraffe giraffe, Jordan thought. In the middle of DC, [Jordan was unsure as to weather she was literally, geographically, in the middle of DC but the high volume of foot, bi- cycle, and pedestrian traffic coupled with the concentration of mu- seums and important seeming buildings suggested that she was lo- cated in a somewhat central location.] Jordan saw a giraffe standing inside of a giraffe-sized wire pen adjacent to a new apartment com- plex. The giraffe was positioned next to a sign that said, “LIVE ON THE WILD SIDE.”
A crowd of 15 to 20 people were gathered around the giraffe with facial expressions that seemed to suggest that they where also think- ing, “GIRAFFE. Giraffe. Giraffe giraffe giraffe.” The crowd that was building around the giraffe consisted of small people and large peo- ple. The small people were mainly children and the large people were mainly couples to whom the children belonged. The giraffe stood tall over everyone, even the large people. The average size of a giraffe is approximately 3,500 pounds. The crowd of 15 to 20 people, large and small, did not take up as much room in what appeared to be middle of DC, on earth, in the universe, as this one giraffe. Jordan overheard a large person say to his smaller person, “Oh, this is a video of a gi- raffe” in a confused tone. The smaller person grabbed the camera out of the larger person’s hand, pressed a series of buttons on the camera, and then handed it back to the larger person.
Jordan watched the crowd frantically taking pictures of the giraffe while the giraffe stood behind its giraffe-sized cage. Jordan want- ed everyone to become calm and silent. Jordan wanted to shout, “LOOK!” and point to something made-up in the opposite direction of the giraffe so that everyone would look at the made-up thing and not the giraffe. Simultaneously, Jordan wanted to calmly lead the crowd into the stomach of the giraffe. Here was her art. She wasn’t a Gallery Girl, she thought, she was an Artist. She wanted to raise her human hands into the air and say, “follow me” authoritatively, as if this was only an extension of a planned tour of DC. Everyone would follow Jordan into the giraffe because it made sense to do so. They would not enter the giraffe through its mouth. Even though the aver- age giraffe is 3,500 pounds its mouth is still not large enough to fit even a very small, small person. To fit inside the mouth of a giraffe a person would have to be comically small, or an infant. Also, even if a small person were small enough to fit through the mouth of the giraffe they would probably get stuck, at some point, inside of the giraffe’s extremely long neck. Instead, Jordan would lead the crowd through a hinged door that was located directly on the stomach of the giraffe that had been previously installed due to the pre-planned nature of the tour. The crowd had paid to see the inside of a giraffe and now, Jordan thought, it was time.
NERVOUS CREATURES
Adam’s posture is bad, like my own. Living a long time under
the earth’s gravity has increased
the slope of his back to a mild waterslide. The angle of
my back matches his & I
pretend it is because we are nervous creatures and we want to appear small.
Put an illusion on something, like two shapes whose angles create an image
in the negative space, and watch it become something else.
Adam walks to work and at night, when it gets colder
because it is October now,
he asks for a ride home
as everyone is released
into the parking lot.
I will take him home tonight.
The streetlights shine
on the tops of our heads.
He walks ahead of me
but he doesn’t know
where my car is parked
so he circles back behind me & I watch the ground
& then I watch his feet
& then I watch his shadow stretch out
to become enormous.
i know exactly what i want
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU OWN A LARGE ROUNDED STONE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
“In future textbooks it will be written
that as a practical joke Pluto was deemed a planet for 76 years by the experts on all that space matter,”
is my last thought before I turn off my bedside light.
“This American Life” is broadcasting from my opened Macbook.
Ira Glass says, “Money is a fiction” and other words
but I close my eyes and let myself feel
like I am suspended in space
moments before a black hole rips my entire body away from itself. Panic.
I open my eyes and the hyper-darkness becomes regular darkness.
A calmer sense pushes the panic to the side, jockeying for the majority of my emotions
In the regular darkness I try to re-locate the light switch by dragging my face and my hands across the wall.
From an outside source an illusion is projected onto my body
to make me believe that it is never whole.
Accordingly, I extend my arms and fingers to grab at things
and then pull them inward—consuming what I deserve, which is everything
that I want. It is okay to be selfish because
I can love my perception of self in the regular darkness.
Success. Calm.
I turn on the light. It’s too early to be in the dark. It is only 5pm.
Ira Glass talks about the people of an island called Yap in the South Pacific.
On the island of Yap they used large stone disks for currency.
These limestone disks weighed up to thousands of pounds
and as long as they existed, somewhere,
they could still be owned and the ownership could be exchanged for goods and services
Congratulations,
you own a large rounded stone at the bottom of the sea.
Closing my eyes in the light, making my world orange, while somewhere else
the experts on all that space matter debate
the two possibilities that exist:
Either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
Viewed from space I am indistinguishable from green and blue
amorphous masses.
I can disguise myself with distance and the concept of perspective.
Viewed from space, one cannot be certain whether I am an asshole
or a good person
or the entire Pacific Ocean.
Panic.
Gabby Bess (B. 1992) is the author of the poetry chapbook Airplane Food. She is the founder and editor of Illuminati Girl Gang, a publication that promotes female perspectives in art and literature. She lives in Virginia.
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