mouth-to-mouth-works

Piensa en esto: cuando te regalan un reloj te regalan un pequeño infierno florido, una cadena de rosas, un calabozo de aire. No te dan solamente un reloj, que los cumplas muy felices, y esperamos que te dure porque es de buena marca, suizo con ancora de rubíes; no te regalan solamente ese menudo picapedrero que te ataras a la muñeca y pasearas contigo. Te regalan –no lo saben, lo terrible es que no lo saben–, te regalan un nuevo pedazo frágil y precario de ti mismo, algo que es tuyo, pero no es tu cuerpo, que hay que atar a tu cuerpo con su correa como un bracito desesperado colgándose de tu muñeca. Te regalan la necesidad de darle cuerda para que siga siendo un reloj; te regalan la obsesión de a atender a la hora exacta en las vitrinas de las joyerías, en el anuncio por la radio, en el servicio telefónico. Te regalan el miedo de perderlo, de que te lo roben, de que se caiga al suelo y se rompa. Te regalan su marca, y la seguridad de que es una marca mejor que las otras, te regalan la tendencia a comparar tu reloj con los demás relojes. No te regalan un reloj, tu eres el regalado, a ti te ofrecen para el cumpleaños del reloj. - Julio Cortázar
Think of this: When they present you with a watch they are gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air. They aren't simply wishing the watch on you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it's a good brand, Swiss, seventeen rubies; they aren't just giving you this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and walk along with you. They are giving you—they don't know it, it's terrible that they don't know it—they are gifting you with a new, fragile, and precarious piece of yourself, something that's yours but not a part of your body, that you have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny, furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist. They gift you with the job of having to wind it every day, an obligation to wind it, so that it goes on being a watch; they gift you with the obsession of looking into jewelry-shop windows to check the exact time, check the radio announcer, check the telephone service. They give you the gift of fear, someone will steal it from you, it'll fall on the street and get broken. They give you the gift of your trademark and the assurance that it's a trademark better than the others, they gift you with the impulse to compare your watch with other watches. They aren't giving you a watch, you are the gift, they're giving you yourself for the watch's birthday. - Julio Cortázar

ΔT THE THIRD TICK OF YOUR WATCH.

WHEN ΔRE WE LEΔVING?

And when______________________________________________________________________________
the animal____________________________________________________________________________
is dying______________________________________________________________________________
its heartbeat_________________________________________________________________________
becomes a raindrop____________________________________________________________________
that blossoms into drizzle____________________________________________________________
until the heart itself opens__________________________________________________________
into a mouth of storm, that’s when it sees____________________________________________
the music rising from the warm breath of ancient rocks:_______________________________
buried story of the rewilding world. each present thing ascending_____________________
into a crescendo of vertebrae: spine of an ephemeral beast____________________________
of dancing spirits. a tide of voices moss creeping up the stone walls and old fiddles_
echoing the answers and the questions and the answers and the questions_______________
and the answers and the questions and the questions and the questions_________________
almost like a conversation but more like songsheet____________________________________
invented the fairies and a bog________________________________________________________
the exact size of our connection______________________________________________________
caressing our bodies__________________________________________________________________
as we fall asleep.____________________________________________________________________
Last night____________________________________________________________________________
I dreamt______________________________________________________________________________
I was_________________________________________________________________________________
a wave._______________________________________________________________________________

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?

SOMETIMES IT'S HOTTER, BUT MORE LIKE BLISTERS. AND THEN IT'S COLD AND WET. I DONT FEEL LIKE MYSELF.

I MISS THE DARK. AND THE WAY IT FELT EASY AND COMFORTABLE. THE WAY IT IS WITH PEOPLE YOU'VE KNOWN FOREVER.

YOU MIGHTN'T RECOGNISE IT ANYMORE. ANYWAY, ITS GOOD TO BE BUSY, TO BE NEEDED.

I CAN'T REMEMBER NOT KNOWING IT.

I USED TO LIKE THE PACING, THE RKYTHM OF IT. BUT NOW I JUST FEEL TIRED ALL THE TIME.

AT LEAST THERE'S STILL PEOPLE THERE. THERE'S NO ONE HERE.

BUT YOU LIKE BEING BY YOURSELF.

ΔT THE TIP OF OUR EYES, WHEN WE WΔNT TO PUT SOMETHING IN OUR MOUTHS TO MΔKE IT OURS.

it starts with a subpar whistle
in an effort to distract myself
from digging my nails into my palms.

the whistling is thin and high in my head, so I hum to myself
just low enough to feel the vibrations in my chest,
connecting my voice to my body

crooning to myself under my breath quiet

the same phrase over and over, a flippantly picked mantra.

no meaning behind any of it of course, it's simply the sensation of
holding the same straight tones until they waver, slowing the melody down
so i can savor the vibration of each singular note and needlessly embellishing preexisting embellishments to rejoice in the limitless extravagance of sound.

no pressure to create something which will haunt me permanently, the sound vanishes with no trace. I fill the space, drown out what needs to drown, and leave room for seconds.

I nose my way through different tunes for minutes or for hours, not thinking. I revel in the rise of my voice and the echo that comes after.

the world is dying, but I can feel that I am here in it.

TO STOP THE WORLD FROM DYING.

SOMEONE'S BΔCKYΔRD.

WHY DID I HΔVE TO LEΔVE?

SO THEY CΔN FIND US.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.

The house we bought on Griffith Avenue is falling to pieces from the inside. You wouldn’t know it except on a September afternoon, looking at the red brick facade through the bus window through the waving leaves of the plane trees through the iron gate waiting. On an afternoon when the light angles itself just so to cut through our window to light up the rising damp along the base board. To glint off the scale off a silver fish frozen for a moment in its ray. The red clay bricks perspire red moisture, keep the air too moist in winter so we cut a hole in the wall to let the house breathe. But that hole keeps breathing things back in from the back yard, the silver fish in the sink and the mice breeding in the cup board and the tree root coming up through the floor board from those waving planes of light intersecting on Griffith Avenue on a September afternoon.