I thought that maybe she had gotten thinner since the last time i saw her, but as i stared at her from across the room the lines on the side of her face slowly began to resolve in my vision. Clever, i suppose, even artful. Not any thinner, though. Still, i would have never thought to so carefully sketch in a smooth jawline with concealer, gracefully feline, to separate my face from my neck. Really they’re still the same, one right after another, but the girl gets points for trying.
I was made to truly shudder by someone talking about how his friends should all switch to a BA program from a BS. Sure, i’ve conducted similar conversations in my day, but his line of reasoning was so incomplete that i think he may have entirely broken his point. Still, it wasn’t my place to interrupt him so that his friends could hear what a BA of Journalism really consists of, no matter how much i might want to.
Days are very systematic, consisting of: waking up, checking rank, working, learning, and walking. There are more repetitions of each depending on the day, and the only way i’ve been able to keep track of where i am or where i’m going are the people that i encounter in between. Last night on the train two girls were talking in Creole, and one of them noticed how my eyes kept peering over my copy of Suicide whenever i could make out a few words of French. They were from Immaculata, and we spoke briefly about Classical Sociological Theory and the continuous length of Lancaster Avenue before i got off … only to find that i had de-trained a stop early. At first i was a little nervous, but i eventually found my way back to Lancaster Avenue and began my walk to the concert.
While life is slowly becoming routine again, dreams are getting more and more disparate with each passing night. At the end of last week i fell asleep with a playlist of music on, and my dream seemed to take place entirely within a single play of “Seams“, though it seemed much longer than four or five minutes. The setting was plain, just walking around in my old house talking to my mother and to Elise. However, at the onset of each chorus in the song i slowly began to unravel — literally to come apart at the seams. At first i hardly noticed, as the first chorus is quite short; the sensation was not dissimilar to stripping off wet bathing trunks. It was during the second chorus that i began to become really alarmed, as with each line some small part of me would loosen and fall to the ground. Skin came unclung from my legs, it unwound from around my midsection, it came off like fallen leaves from my chest and back. My mother and Elise did not notice, though, still blithely talking to me as we walked around inside my house. Each line now was an eternity … long enough for me to lose another part of myself to the inexorable process of coming apart at the seams, and to watch that part turn into so much dust as it hit the ground.
As the final chorus began i was so weak that i could barely support my own weight for the walk into the bathroom to check the scale, and even as i read it the pointer was get lower and lower. Suddenly i was singing too, “i wonder if anyone will notice,” and as i began to move towards the next line i found myself sprawled on out on my back, watching in horror as the last of me fell away to reveal my ribs and the beating red heart within. In just whispers now i was keeping up with the lyrics, endlessly repeating “at the seams” until i saw movement in my peripheral vision. Elise was suddenly there, crouching beside me and reaching out as if to lay a hand against my exposed ribcage.
Instead she extended a single slim finger, which slipped between two bones and allowed her to brush her fingertip gently against my heart. My insides collapsed upon themselves at her touch, unable to properly communicate the feeling i was enduring. At that moment the song resolved, and my eyes opened.
The first thing Elise asked when i told her about it was if the effects were realistic or like stop-motion animation. My eyes must have widened a little — because they were the latter, and it had been the first thing i thought when i woke up.
I do not think we will be making videos for my Songwriting class, but i can ask tomorrow afternoon. Anyhow, that concept would be entirely out of my budget… and, for that matter, so would “Under My Skin.”
Why am i awake, again?