A Blood-Red Portrait in Relief
Broad strokes in bright colours stand erect at the entrance to my subconscious. Numerous opening and shutting of eyelids cater to my waning sense of reality and I’m awash in a field of uncertain dreams. Nightmares lift, vivid and grotesque, my feeling of the world. There are dogs and pilfered plantations of id and ego, carelessly thrown aside by the nihilistic bourgeoisie.
Walking towards my home, I encounter a weapon. I cannot say of what type, but suffice it to say it merits fear and great respect. I’m unsure as to why I am lifting the weapon off the pavement, or placing it beneath my coat, only it is done, and I’m speeding home, paranoia turned to 10.
I’m standing just inside my door, the lights are off, the silhouette of the television framed by the light of the window behind it. Stunned silence permeates the room, rendering my body stoic and statuesque. My shoes scuff the floor, and I end up at my bedside where I deposit the weapon by a lazy drop. It tumbles and bounces a couple times. I lift the quilt to prevent it from bouncing off the bed.
TV on. Bedclothes applied. Mixed drink in hand. I’m watching The Master, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s on because I have only recently seen my very first Paul Thomas Anderson film, There Will Be Blood, for which Daniel Day-Lewis earned an Oscar for his patient and arresting performance.
Eyelids flutter, and I’m seeing Joaquin Phoenix doing odd things, like faux-fucking a woman made of sand. With the remote so close to me, I could very easily turn it off and spend a relaxing evening asleep, with not so much as a sound besides the intermittent rush of cars down my street. Instead, I remain motionless, entranced by slow cannabis-induced exhaustion, and a stream of oddball images. I place my drink to the side and drowse. The cat is scratching at the door.
there are streams streams streams streams streams of gray the spectrum of black and white and gray streams streams streams streams streams cascading relentlessly off a barely defined cliff face the color gray, the peak the colour of steel, the base the colour of lead, the sky the colour of fog, onto a boat amidst the blue oceans, but just off the coast, clearly and vaguely in line with my own vision…no I am inside the boat. This single stream of “time” is aligned specifically broadly with other streams, one in which I am on the edge of a skyscraper, a la The Matrix. I look down, heroically, without pause, without hesitation or fear. I’m crouched and theres a crawlspace in front me. In another there is a hotel room. Ancient 19th century interior design sensibilities are ostentatiously put on display with raucous abandon. In another I’m a psychedelic’s dream, cyberpunk architecture and transport making love.
Joaquin Phoenix is on screen, the director is using a close-up. His character is nervous and wound tight, gritting his teeth and chuckling, and I open the door for the cat and then close it again.
Enter [stage right] the antagonist, or the lover, whichever synonym you prefer. Blonde hair, thin body, light skin, careless dress. smoker, drinker, habit-former, lover of animals and dogs. mind washed clean of morals, and spirit separated from character, no tangible connection to our idea of humankind.
Early morning daylight shows its face through the cracks in the blinds over my window just above my bed. My bladder is full.
In the hotel room one of my dear friends, with whom I am in no way acquainted in waking life, enters slowly, like history, and then all at once. A dog has been killed, its body lying in the corner of the middle of the floor. I know my dear friend killed it.
I turn over in my quilt, with one glance at my phone.
blonde lover walks in, lips red, eyes white no black, she does not see me, she guts my friend, fingers as claws slicing and screwing through him, his chest cracks, she is dowsed in blood
somber reflection at great height, streams streams streams of gold and red and white and blue, painting the sun with extravagant strokes, careless and ready. a walking body, shapeless and hapless, strides across my vision, dead animal beside, the lover who is my lover drips amorphously from the rim and the soul of the sunset into perfect semblance, moving forwards and backwards in an instant, melting slowly and then traversing reality instantaneously. She ends beside his hazy form, and her fingers are blades, bright and sharp and flowing, and his body is inside out and outside in and his blood a fine mist like the base of a waterfall, and the sound of it is nonexistent and forceful.
I’ve removed the weapon from the confines of my quilt and deposited it upon the floor. The metal responds against the wood floor with an almost inaudible thud. The sun is higher, the foggy morning blue has dissipated into a warm midmorning glow. I turn the TV off.
I feel as though I’m walking along a path from the back to the front of the boat’s cabin, but inhabiting the entire line all at once. My vision is arrested by a view through a window, a woman standing over a man who I cannot see, and she’s gutting him like a fish. I see and feel and fear this exchange for the sparest of seconds it inhabits, but continuously like a looping tape recorder or a skipping record. It’s over in an instant and dragging on for eternity. The feeling wells up inside me, morphs and transmutes into physical understanding, his/my spinal column is being caressed by a vice, our guts are being splayed open, and an eruption of blood, magmatic in its form, sashays into view. I turn and run, head racing heart pounding, feet swimming across the floor as if I’m levitating, I reach the door …
I’m holding the weapon in one hand as I douse my face in water with the other, glancing at the clock then at the bathroom mirror, batting my lashes to disperse the tiny pearlescent droplets. I wipe my face with a towel, the weapons cold steel gently caresses my cheek. I blanch and then notice the invitation scrawled invisibly on its menacing form. It slowly winds it’s way down my face, brushing my neck, tapping my collar bone, conversing with my wrist. It holds there for seconds…minutes…for a moment.
I steady my breathing and close my eyes. I’m imagining the cybernetic spaces my future inhabits, the dark underbelly life that my soul finds solace in, with grit and grime glued to the inside of my vision. Neon signs and electric wires dance effortlessly and sinuously and spark and FLASHFLASHFLASH —
gasp
Blood traverses my arm with a measured flow, dripping onto the white carpet beneath my feet. It forms a portrait in relief that I at once recognize and thereafter misremember, charmed by ignorance. I cannot describe it except to say that it bears a striking resemblance to whatever lies dormant inside of me, a premonition of my own discursive/recursive existence.
