novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- invisibility, forced or marketed you have always been a night owl. (perhaps, you force yourself to admit, this is why you haven't been writing anything since you moved into the warehouse -- you have barely been there all summer, especially at night, only coming home to sleep and then leave again.) night owl. all of your art, writing and erstwhile projects seem to spring into activity at night. you wonder why that is, and you also spend a few moments contemplating the term night owl because it is redundant, really: owls are by nature night creatures. night movers. you are a very literal person. then you think about how you took your mother to sav-on this afternoon, so she could stock up on travel-sized toiletries. you wander the isles, marveling at how sav-on has been restructured since your last visit to ventura. it seems like everything has been given a face lift. you stop beside a display of SKIN FIRMING GEL! CELLULITE BUSTING CREAM! products and the like, and wonder why people choose to spend their money on flimsy hopes instead of music. all three of the record stores you remember have gone out of business, but at sav-on beauty products that promise miracle results are flying off the shelves. the air around you shifts imperceptibly, and you register a tiny woman at your side, her pouffe of white-blond hair barely reaching your shoulder. she does not acknowledge you. silently she reaches past your hand for a bottle of anti-cellulite cream. her movements are slow and deliberate. you watch her with your peripheral vision and notice how stretched her skin looks, particularly around her hairline where it meets her forehead. face lift. you wander over to the shampoo isle to check on your mother, who spots you and instantly grumbles about how she can't find tiny deodorant. you peer into the grocery cart, amused that everything for the trip to wisconsin has to be travel-sized. it is almost like a decree. like she is preparing our family for camp. we're going to feel like giants,you say. everything here is tiny. she ignores you and plucks a bottle of men's spray deodorant from a bin and examines it. the axe effect. before you can warn her, she sprays herself with it, sniffing the air. mom, you say, i used to teach a paranoid-schizophrenic kid at school who was obsessed with that stuff. he saw a commercial for it, and the commercial said that if you used it, the spray would do something to women's pheromone levels and make them attracted to men. so the next day he came to school covered in the stuff and kept standing extremely close to all of the female staff. your mother scrunches up her face and flaps her hands in front of her body, as if to get rid of the starchy, moist smell. you make jokes about freud and blatantly step back a few paces in mock horror. and then you begin to muse on the lengths people will go to make themselves attractive. you try to remember this feeling; perhaps it will help you in the future, if only to make you feel justified in spending so much money on records. 11:47 pm - 07.27.05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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