in which a girl/woman/technical adult attempts to live life as a warrior forest nymph who wears combat boots and catches bullets in her teeth, but who actually ends up just sort of sitting in closets and eating homemade peanut butter cups instead
“I’ll never forget the day Marilyn and I were walking around New York City, just having a stroll on a nice day. She loved New York because no one bothered her there like they did in Hollywood, she could put on her plain-jane clothes and no one would notice her. She loved that. So as we we’re walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says ‘Do you want to see me become her?’ I didn’t know what she meant but I just said ‘Yes’- and then I saw it. I don’t know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her. I had never seen anything like it before.” - Amy Greene, wife of Marilyn’s personal photographer Milton Greene
Here at the Light Emporium we sell light.
Bottles of light.
Fluorescent lights and
streetlights and the light that falls
across the faces of your neighborhood buildings
at seven a.m. on a large march early spring
morning.
Purple and Green. Red and Black.
White lights — the ones you get when a car
is catapulting towards you at forty five miles
an hour. The near-death light. The DMT light.
All the ones that you can imagine — here: in little
glass vessels. Organized with the Dewey
Decimal System. 423 if you want to learn the language of
light. 700s to master the art of it. And 900: the history
of light, from the moment it was separated from
the darkness.
Buy them. Eat them. Stir them into your
morning coffee. Inject them straight into your
veins. Do you want to become the light? Here,
come to the Light Emporium. Where our sole
purpose is to give you everything
that takes away the dark corners that
keep you awake at night.
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear
a body littered with ugly things.
But God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well?
The wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight
(Drunk and driven by a devil’s hunger)
Drive your son like a railroad spike
(Into the water, let it pull him under)
Don’t you lift him, let him drown alive
(The Good Lord speaks like a rolling thunder)
Let that fever make the water rise
(And let the river run dry)
And I said
Hold my hand
Ooh, baby, it’s a long way down to the bottom of the river
Hold my hand
Ooh, baby, it’s a long way down, it’s a long way down
Hold my hand
Ooh, baby, it’s a long way down, a long, long, long way
Hold my hand
Ooh, baby, it’s a long way down, it’s a long way down
take a moment to realize you have never seen your face in person, just reflections and pictures
some scientists agree that if you saw a clone of yourself, you wouldn’t recognise it as you, because our idea of what we look like is so different from what we actually look like
#??????? #??? #??????????????? #tHIS IS MESSING WITH MY HEAD
and honestly, never let any man tell you that you’re too conceited or that he thinks you’re too full of yourself. dr. angelou said some real shit about how modesty is a learned adaptation that people use to cheat themselves out of acknowledging their own greatness. we learn to make ourselves smaller for the world, to accommodate others, to make men feel better and bigger in comparison to us and i’m not here for it. i’m all about remaining humble, but modesty is for the birds. if you smart, be smart, if you pretty, you fucking pretty. if you funny, then own it. whatever is inside you that is good and true and better, embrace that shit. never let people forget that the universe took its damn time cooking you up and the fact that you exist and have made it this far means you’re a miracle by virtue of being alive.
