Reality is perceived through your own body
Vimalakirti Sutra
One time, with E 14, we ate blueberry-cream-cake that was off.
Starbucks, Boulevard Montparnasse, Spring 2006. A clochard lets down his trousers rubs his ass against the window and does a number 2. I remember his blue beard and thinking This is really happening and how two years earlier with L at this film festival near the Champs-Élysées we had seen a short film from Belgium showing a similar scene and how we both got up and left the theatre. We found each other standing outside. As usual we did not have seats next to each other. At home, L cooked chai. With soymilk. We sat down cross-legged on the glass floor, which was also the ceiling of the studio I had rented on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and listened to songs by The Innocence Mission. I wonder why they are showing things like that? L said. Maybe because that’s a reality today, I said. It’s good to be here, he said and smiled. We both smiled.
I came here with him on our first date, before the Spider-Man 2 movie, we ordered plain rice & Malai Kofta. to share. I remember this now because she sees one of the waiters carrying a big bottle of Kingfisher to one of the tables. You never drink? he had asked and I had said No. Then I did my thing, spoke of Veuve Clicquot as the only possible exception, went as far as to specify how eating strawberries brings out the taste of the champagne more. Stealing? Appropriated from Pretty Woman, taken out of Richard Gere’s mouth. The one time I remember my mother saying something to my face that didn’t hurt was at the movies. You are a bit like her. The breakfast scene: Julia, Richard & lots of empty chairs, Julia wearing a cotton white oversized bathrobe, the table is long, the table is rectangular. Richard is sitting where father sat, father never read The Wall Street Journal, Julia flutters her wings, a croissant in her right hand for balance, she eventually sits, not on a chair, on a porcelain plate very close to The Wall Street Journal.
The main attraction of a penthouse is to have complete privacy from any overheard disturbance. E 17 is surrounded by sky and a terrace only. No plants. No children. No swings.
She watches The Hours on DVD. I saw it first in a theatre in Bangkok, I had to stand up for the national anthem, paying homage to the king. For some reason I fled the theatre before the credits started running. This time she lies on my sofa and listens to the commentary made by the three actresses. How art affects life. That every woman expresses art or the hunger for perfection differently.
WRITING
COOKING
GIVING A PARTY
I STOPPED LANGUAGE WHEN I WAS WITH HIM.
My language not unlike his string of lights had been taped against doors, the fridge and living roomwalls of E 17. I had entrusted him with the house key before leaving India for Paris to renew my visa. Over the phone he kept repeating L’s name and that he had found a photograph with a man in it. E 17 was alive when I returned. For some reason, Sushila hadn't cleared the garbage. Blue plastic bags tied together with yellow cotton thread filled with empty baby bottles of Bagpiper Whiskey. abandoned babies embracing,
He was an alcoholic & suicidal, a liar, a thief, an avoider. depressed. weak. beautiful. no education. beautiful. violent when drunk. beautiful. people pleaser. coward. beautiful. 10 years later, someone will describe him as a ‘Con Artist’.
What compels someone to fall for a Con Artist?
CAN ARTISTS BE COWARDS?
John Hamm described Don Draper as a coward.
James Baldwin wrote “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
Can you find the matching pair of monsters?
She buys a memory game. She can play it solo. It is an excellent game for developing concentration skills and memory skills. It contains 72 monsters. She will practice finding pairs of matching monsters.
In an homage to my beautiful Con Artist (lover)(boyfriend)(coward) (king)(puppy dog), I fired all the memories I had collected on my travels: the peace festival in Ubud after the terrorist attacks, bombed cars in the streets of Kuta; D, the photo journalist from America (we had sex in the freshly painted bathroom of an orange colored beach house and became cornflower-blue); the Balinese family, the night train from Bangkok, a ferry to Koh Pha-Ngan. Young American princes: J, the Wall Street millionaire, who lost all his money; M, the folk singer, who travels cheap, his parents reside on Madison Avenue; west-coast-M, the didgeridoo player, who hates his parents therefore takes their money; me, after a full moon party, without shoes.
I tore up all the photographs. I got rid of my photo albums. I took my poems off the wall. He couldn’t handle my art, mistook it for reality. I couldn’t handle him. I wanted to be as pure as he was, if that meant erasing content [my education, for example], if that meant living without ambition, if that meant living without lipstick, and forgetting who I was, if that meant leaving E17,
Why don’t you like my house ?
I like, okay! But not in daytime, too much light.
I was raped
E14 carries her sexualities like an umbrella, the kind you don’t mind losing,
her latest verbal umbrella I was raped
E14 gifts me how none of her three children happened consciously, except for one daughter, she speaks the daughter’s name, the wind is very strong, my neighbor and I are standing in the staircase, we are waiting for a low-intensity cyclone unlikely to cause much damage, the wind velocity is expected to be around 70kmph, it is the first time that Mumbai will be close to the impact of a cyclone in 10 years, the name of the wanted daughter must have reached Nariman Point by now;
At Worldbakery, sipping chai. She sees faces. Familiar faces. She sees longing. She sees the faces of people who “do” India: Lonely planets on spiritual safaris. She sees the faces of people who look like him but don’t have his silence. Local faces waiting for the next best foreigner girlfriend: to give love & lies to, to obtain a visa from;
The drummer from East-Berlin tells her how he got kicked out of an ashram Not fair he says I have been coming since ‘87. The fingers of his right hand keep finding her shoulder. Now, at least there is no compromise. Systems. Power. I don’t want to gossip
Please don’t touch me she says
You look European he replies. It takes time to get used to the roughness of India
She looks right into his East-Berlin eyes. She knows I would have lovehated witnessing this situation: A German tourist who justifies his abusive behavior by blaming India for it.
Now I remember you: You went on a journey when I saw you last, with your Indian puppy dog!
She tells him the dogs name and that he was my Con lover.
Con Artist stands for confidence artist.
I LOVEbelieved his lies.
Late 19th century (originally US): abbreviation of confidence, as in confidence trick.
Conning = something that emerges from living in society
[B Madow]
[Osho]
[E14]
[Summer 2019: Someone describes the president of the USA as a Con Artist]
Con artists are helping society to become more conscious.
Conning is their way of expressing their art, their hunger for perfection a better world.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
I castrated a cow this morning.
What do you do?
She goes to the movies with the quiltmaker who lives on the ground floor with two dogs. Brokeback Mountain. She cries. The quiltmaker cries too. It’s about when you keep stealing love from yourself the quiltmaker says.
The quiltmaker is 52. She dislikes the ‘energy around swimming-pools’. Has lived in India for 15 years. Wants to fall in love again. Is still married. Wants to fall in love again. It was a business. 15000 €. He wanted to go to university. He paid me 15000 €
I have never been paid in such a cold way! Dilip collects the rent. Cold, because she keeps her money in the fridge. Next to her passport. He is flattered. Responds to her observation that I have seen people in Paris eat out of garbage cans and that I am curious to see how India is going to deal with its new desires [ambitious economic growth] by saying that the people who work at call centers at night to match US working hours are restless during the day and therefore have redeveloped an interest in yoga and ajurveda. He concludes It’s all about balance.
“Marriage gives us an identity.”
“Foreigners are prostitutes.”
Language does not care about what men do for a living.
Sons might work as prostitutes.
Language is not a judge.
Language is not a bad mother.
Language invites us to be precise.
While she had been busy living up to his beauty = erasing her history, he had been offering love-intercourse to Westerners.
I judge women for their language conduct. Like the old woman I used to visit to get information about his past with the SexTourist (Social Worker) from Canada. She gave it to me freely: C’est mon devoir! I returned to her as if on automatic pilot. I visited her to collect the truth collect pain. I visited her to suffer.
Power cut on her way up. She is stuck inside the elevator. In a much appreciated role reversal the previously unfriendly neighbor provides assistance. A chair to climb on, to free herself from the stuck-between-two-floors-elevator. The previously beloved neighbor in E 14 who I worshipped as my ideal mother watches the scene and accompanies her to E 17. E 14 does not want to see this gay movie because I am a mother. Gay advertisement makes her angry. Not natural she says. Maybe for some time but then one should move on. E 14 gives a lecture on Wrong holes and on how true orgasm is achieved. E 14 is one of the foreigners the yellow sari on the second floor despises for their sex-making in the streets in the eighties.
India. Skin-reader. Bollywood movies capture best what rain does to the sari of a women and the shirt of the hero.
India. House. for people who don’t feel anything at all and for people who feel too much of everything. Like a hospital where people die and are born at the same moment. India is for the weak and for the strong, it allows. Westerners. the luxury to take poverty risks whilst on return tickets. it allows. Homecoming
Poverty is what usually comes up when people language about India in the West. Isn’t it very poor? they say and expect to hear something I refuse to gift.
The American poet who suggested I shouldn’t write poetry (“Your vocabulary is very poor.”) successfully managed to reverse my guilt: So you never write about poverty and you live in India?
The American poet who lived on a Volcano for 20 years dislikes the color worn by the
people of a certain never-born-never-dies Indian guru because He conned women. She is a self-aware-woman who thinks of Beirut before putting words on paper. How can you not? she asked me over herbal infusions in Paris I have met people like you, why is it so important to go back?
It’s the air. I want to say to her It’s the air, but I don’t. We are not friends. I wonder who pays for her apartment. And how to explain air to someone who uses phrases such as “People like you?“
Toni Morrison wrote “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
Uninterrupted supply of power is a luxury. She sits with five candles. E 14 brings a hand-painted light bulb and two belated Christmas gifts, I will love you always, She places the gifts on the floor and replies I love you too. E 14 nursed me when I left him, she was all I had, E 14 has been my best [con artist/bad mother/]-friend, she doesn’t invite E 14 inside.
Inside = E17
[E14: Is he beating you? He doesn’t beat you? I don’t understand what your problem is. Are you having sex? How can I still have sex with him? That’s what your problem is]
E14’s approach to language is different, is longing (is survival?)
The word ‘abuse’ is not part of E 14’s vocabulary.
therefore leaks,
E14 didn’t steal my sunglasses, she borrowed them because Money is only energy. Will you really wear them? Do you really need them back?
Vocabulary = Movie
Vocabulary = Narrative
This narrative is crazy.
Con artists are good at making people pay for things they want or already have and feel they don't deserve.
Con artists are trusted because language is not needed for the relationship to flourish, in fact, the more language is absent, the stronger the relationship.
Betty Francis, Don Draper’s ex-wife, understood this late in the series, Don had remarried;
Betty to Don à propos de Megan, his new wife and former secretary: She doesn’t know that loving you is the worst way to get to you.
Language sleeps on top of the fridge. She empties the fridge and moves language inside the freezer compartment.
E 14’s youngest daughter leads a secret life. Sometimes she comes home drunk at night. E 14 asks her for advice. I feel everything she feels. She thinks poor girl. I think that E 14’s youngest daughter will need to drink a lot more to get over the fact that her mother even takes away the fact that she is drinking. I think that I did to him what E 14 does to her daughter. She invites E 14 inside.
6/4/2020 dear c, i read E 17. then read it again. the notion of loving = conning. maybe you will balk at this and rightly so. you aren't saying that loving equals conning, but you also aren't not saying it. you're saying, maybe, that loving and conning accompany one another, while at the same time being vastly different planets. the love planet and the con artist planet that orbit the same sun. maybe when we stand on the con artist planet, we can see the love planet more clearly, and vice versa. this lovingconning splits us, fucks us up/wakes us up-- extremes that live inextricably--big heart/no heart, simultaneous birth/death. allowing that homecoming. the homecoming to staying in between, not one or the other but straddling them, ever-precarious. this struck me in such a timely moment. it is such a hard way. of growing up. also, i love the ambiguity of the 'she' self and the 'i' self but i wonder if the piece might benefit from a subtle moment of the feeling behind that coming to light, a strong emotional moment of getting what that feels like...to be 'her', to be 'i'.... somewhere in the piece? love, k 6/5/2020 dear k, to be 'her', to be 'i'.... what it feels like to be
Christine Herzer is a poet and visual artist. She lives and works in Paris.
Recommended Reading: I loved Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan. I've also just finished two wonderful, small books in French Stephane Bouquet’s NEIGE ECRAN and Lydie Dattas’ Le Livre des anges.
I'm currently reading Norman Fisher’s When You Greet Me I Bow. Listening to music by The National and Christine and the Queens has inspired new drawings; I find both artists's writing/lyrics deeply inspired and inspiring. I keep re-reading the lyrics to FULL OF LIFE. I keep looking at Paul Klee’s 1939 drawing ‘Forgetful angel’. I feel blessed to own a postcard of his drawing. It does everything without giving anything away. I have been drawing my own angels, often with eyes closed. Immersing myself in Klee’s writings about art and his theories of creation, I discovered what he called “the gray point,” “the ‘cosmogenetic’ moment,” “a non-dimensional point, a point between and at the intersection of dimensions, or at the crossroads […] an original center from which [all] can spring and shine on all other dimensions.”
I am grateful to the editors of Asphalte Magazine who published excerpts of Air originally in their FILM issue