The Duet of the Divided Self
It ain’t Sonny and Cher. It’s better than that.
Crisis negotiations between my old and new self has hit a nice and fairly easy-going plateau this last week.
A kind of amicable stalemate has been formed, a placid tolerance.
The old self has accepted its many faults were not necessarily of his own invention and the new self is growing slowly into the idea that it is her basic human right to thrive on her own terms.
There is even a haze of contentment settling on the old storm riven table that played host to years of argument and counterargument.
Why, maybe we could refurbish this here abattoir and make it a powder room for Missy, she’d like that now her presence is trickling through me like a rivulet over a rock.
I have a lot to be thankful for now I’ve found her.
True, the old ways crashed and burned; they did so because they weren’t built properly, you see.
And along she came like a streak of ectoplasm in the whistling sucking of the void that threatened to slurp me up.
It was the closest I had ever got to being annihilated.
I shuddered on the lip of the cliff staring in the mirror, beholding the ruins.
She was a dash of hope like raspberry cordial in a glass of gutter water.
And I went for her.
Blessed Loins of Jesus, I ran toward her though the air-raid sirens were piercing my sky like the trumpets of Avenging Angels on Judgement Day.
Best move I ever made.
Foolhardiness plays its own role in the act of bravery.
She doesn’t permit me to get too maudlin or self-goring, two mechanisms that have whirred and clicked inside me since the dawn of my time here.
“Tranny on Welfare, Tranny on Welfare”, the old self scoffs and she enters the fray with the poise of a prize-fighter and a look in her eye you’d find among the prophets.
Sneers are plucked from such thoughts, bent into the outline of birds in flight and scatter in the sight of her stare.
Such mockeries are no longer permitted in here.
The senate is being purged of dissenters.
There shall be no show-trials, but baleful influences are no longer acceptable.
We are reluctant and watchful.
I know she wants to add a few high kicks and a glimpse of arse to proceedings but she’s marshaling her energies.
The time must be right.
The proper attitude is a gilded construct that needs time to form.
Not like the other shanty houses my thoughts would reside in, all worn and mildewed like old pamphlets on the Sacred Heart you’d find in the bin of a church.
No.
I am her handmaiden, the chief orchestrator of our slow morphing into life.
Subtle changes to the old formulae are made, watchful, analytical eye on the surges of delight and withering anti-climax found in the flow of everyday life.
Silver-lined storm clouds are gathering, promising the beginning of my own personal Belle Epoch if I keep our head and heart together.
I sit crouched in my little orphic bunker, savoring her ultimatums.
