How can I explain it,
there is no explanation.

I am a vessel,
but not in the sense
that a woman is a vessel
to carry a child in.

I am a vessel,
in the sense
of an empty space,
surrounded by a form.
I am an egg-shell
without a yolk.
......................................
We had a conversation...
you said that I am an individual,
I said I am not.
I was not speaking metaphorically.

You said
"when you look in the mirror,
do you think 'thats me' and not
someone else, looking back at you through
the glass"

I said
I see a body.
You said
'you see YOUR body'.
I said
no, in fact, I dont even see a WHOLE body,
I see PIECES of a body, disjointed.
........................................
I am a black form
with a Noh mask on.
I do the dance of a wife,
learning all my movements
in solitary,
but they are only the movements that will be
the sum of the whole play.
.........................................
my emotions do not come from me,
they come from the ground up,
a whistling wind.
I need another person
to paste a label on me.
You have pasted 'wife'
on me,
others paste different things on me,
and its much like papier-mâché,
strips of labels
making an outside form....
.........................................
I have nothing inside,
and no characteristics of my own.
This is my reality,
and I use
'I'
'Me'
'Mine"
loosely to describe
this form,
to avoid confusion.

02/06/2009

Author's Note: *in a Noh play, a traditional japanese style of theater, all the participants in the play, from the actors to the orchestra to the choir learn their parts individually, never rehearsing together. it is a fine art, much like learning to be a geisha, and they start as very young children, learning to play a specific role--the hero, the villian, the hero's companion, or the villains companion. all parts aside from the hero and villain wear noh-masks, which are stylized in order to show expression from the way the lights hit it, or the angles that it is viewed from.

Posted on 02/06/2009
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