Princess Boo - A Serial Story by Ssal Nogard

(No, this story is not about Princess Boo Boo or Honey Boo Boo!) 

CHAPTER ONE: 

I. Continued: Princess Boo Wakes Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed

The butler backtracked, walking backwards, hoping that if he moved slowly and unobtrusively enough, she would not notice him. Princess Boo often became that self-absorbed and would often forget the people she sent to the executioner’s. It was working. The butler was almost at the door when Princess Boo looked up, still chewing, and mustered “Oh yeah and don’t forget to check in at the executioner’s. He closes at five.” The buter bowed, resigned yet with a little twinge of self-satisfied victory. No one had ever told the Princess she perpetually woke up on the wrong side of the bed. For her, it was natural. For others, it was constant limbo. The most definite kind.

II. Princess Boo Tries to Figure Out How to Wake Up on the Right Side of the Bed.

Princess Boo finished her breakfast and took a walk between her castle and her father’s. It was quite a walk indeed and had there been any budling of conscience in her base metal attitude, she might have acknowledged that it was amazing that her breakfast was actually only lukewarm and not downright frigid when it reached her, as the distance from her castle to her father’s fairly took her breath away. That is why Princess Boo always took a walk after breaking fast. She needed to fill her tiny lungs with fresh air. Her perennial allergies got the best of her after a night indoors, and she had to cram her alveoli with oxygen. Taking a deep breath, Princess Boo closed her eyes (almost veering off the wide road paved for her alone, she wouldn’t even share it with the King Father), and exhaled, coughing itchily as post-nasal drip added two degrees of sourness on her puss. But the air lifted her spirits and Princess Boo traipsed along until she was almost at her father’s castle, a much older and more grandiose dwelling than hers. After all, his had been in the family for centuries, so if more family lived there, his should naturally be bigger, having undergone several expansions and additions, the King Father explained to his disgruntled daughter when she saw that her castle would not have the bells, whistles, and price tag of her father’s.

As Princess Boo inhaled deeply again, which is how she was able to pose so stilly for the Royal Portrait Painter, her nose tickled and she gave an “ah, ah-chooh!” Darn allergies, Princess Boo thought. She would have to punish the Royal Meteorologist for not warning her that pollen levels were high today. I really should get indoors, thought Princess Boo, the pollen is extra allergic today. As Princess Boo entered her father’s abode, she took out her nasal spray and deftly squirted more than the recommended dose into her sniffling nasal cavity. Being a princess, Princess Boo always spoke her mind, yet she also minced words, assuming that her subjects should always know what it was that she wanted at that exact moment. And so it was that her nasal cavity had the sniffles and the pollen was extra allergic today.

“Where is my father?” she asked no one in particular but loud enough for several to hear. A guard stationed at a doorway replied that her father was finishing the daily trials. Princess Boo walked past without a thank-you but with the smallest hint of acknowledgement. Noblesse oblige, Princess Boo’s nod of her outturned chin exuded, noblesse oblige. 

When Princess Boo navigated the labyrinth of corridors, she came to the tiny library outside the public hearing hall where the King Father held the daily trials. Princess Boo did not like to attend these hearings, always wrinkling her nose at her father’s invitations. “After all,” her father observed with as little emotion as possible, “you will rule this kingdom someday,” and here the king showed the sense of humor that was not passed to his daughter, “and listening to your people’s grievances now will make you a better judge, jury, and executioner tomorrow.”

“There will always be complainers,” Princess Boo spoke sagely, determined to continue taking care of her own concerns instead of wasting them on her subjects. “It’s like working for the public sector, King Father. Do you know why everyone hates going to the post office? You wait and wait and stand until your feet get corns and those corns get blisters,” at which everyone looked at Princess Boo, “or your blisters get corns” continued Princess Boo, “but the postal workers never work expeditiously until it’s time to close, and that’s only because we won’t pay them overtime for moving like starfish!” She was about to say “turtles” but instead remembered a documentary of sea creatures that aired a time-lapse video of two starfish battling to the death that she had seen on a public television channel, the topic being the public sector. Princess Boo finished with a triumphant nod and superior smile, expecting everyone to nod vigorously at her insightful observations. Princess Boo rarely had plain insights. Hers were of the kind that rose to the level of never-before-heard-of insightful observations. Like a century-old discovery not yet mentioned that day, joked the Royal Candlestick Maker, sending the Royal First-Floor Maid and the Royal Indoor Window Washer into muffled fits of giggles, after which they were next found in the padlocks, saved only by the tightening budget that prevented the executioner from offing three more heads that day.

Seeing Princess Boo flop herself into a cushiony seat in the ancillary library, the Royal External Window Washer hastened to clean the windows on the second floor, spilling his pail of cleaner and dropping his squeegee onto the Royal Gardener’s head below. Princess Boo was already mesmerized by her own research: the Right Side of the Bed. And could not figure how this would keep her breakfast hot by the time it was served to her. She typed in the search words: “right side of bed” and “hot breakfast” and retrieved half a million results from Bed-and-Breakfasts sites. Of course Bed-and-Breakfasts serve hot meals, that’s their whole shtick! But what does the right side of the bed have to do with the temperature of my breakfast? Princess Boo was nothing if not dogged and while searching thusly the “left-side-of-the-bed” and “cold breakfasts” simultaneously, she did not hear her father enter and sit beside her.

The King Father was a tall, bearded (naturally) handsome man. He would have been handsome even had he not been so good-natured. Actually, sternness also became his noble features, but he was slow to use negativity in his dealings both public and private. He never understood why his daughter was so generally ill-tempered, specially given that his late wife, the queen, had been extraordinarily even-tempered and had a smile that made people want to do things for her simply to have that bright smile bestowed upon them. He should have suspected when Princess Boo was still a swaddling papoose, all yellow and colicky and the Royal Physician ordered that Pea Boo (that was what the King Father called Princess Boo back then) get more sunlight. Her cradle was moved to a corner window for maximum exposure, and when the King Father and Queen Mother were holding each other gazing down at their precious bundle and the sun broke out from behind the clouds, the rays woke the slumbering infanta so that she bawled like a cacophony of unlidded Pandora’s boxes. The crown princess was moved to a dark corner where she gurgled and giggled at the dark, funny shadows that scared most young children (still even the King Father sometimes). 

The King Father was broken back to reality, glad that his reverie was ended, and gave an involuntary shudder by, “What is the right-side-of-a-bed?” his daughter asked, still poring through her search results.

The King Father did not know how to answer, given that his daughter obviously had never woke up in so much as a neutral mood. So he asked, “Why do you ask?”

“Must you always (it was always superlative with Princess Boo) answer a question with a question?”

“When I don’t know the answer, yes.”

“And when you do know the answer, you still won’t tell me.” Princess Boo snapped.

“Allow me my vicarious thrills, Pea Boo. If I had not been born a crown prince, I would have been happily teaching or professoring at some small intimate university.”

“It would have been a waste. Students aren’t there to learn, only get a degree to fill a line on their resume.” 

“Not all are like that.”

“Enough. I ask because the butler, who I sentenced to the guillotine and then the scaffolds before appearing before the firing squad (Princess Boo was weak on sequence as well) had the gall, the chutzpah to tell me that my breakfast is always cold because I wake up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“If you don’t know what that means, then why were you so offended as to condemn the poor butler not once but three times? Given that we are tightening the national budget that means that you were exceedingly offended.”

“Unh, I’m not stupid, King Father. Just because I don’t understand what someone says, doesn’t mean that I don’t know that he’s disagreeing with me in some way. He only dared say it because I had already condemned him.”

The King Father had a thought and leaned forward keenly. “Then why do you care, Pea Boo?”

“I care because someone might hear you call me ‘Pea Boo’ and I don’t care what the butler claimed, especially since it makes no sense. I’ve been Googling it for the last half hour and as I suspected, he makes no sense whatsoever.” Overcasually, which meant her voice was one key higher, “Just wanted to make sure, that’s all.”

That was as close as the King Father would ever get to a conscience in his daughter, so he sprung--he sprang, he jumped--at the opportunity. “Pea Boo, now listen. The butler was right--to some extent--sort of.” Princess Boo had started to twist her face into that stubborn look so that the king backtracked to save the precious opportunity at hand. Less disconsolate (Pea Boo, not the King Father), the King continued. “If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, then your breakfast is bound to be cold. But if you wake up on the right side of the bed, then your breakfast is bound to be hot, just the way you like it.”

“Why?” Princess Boo asked suspiciously.

“Because people who wake up happy don’t tend to notice unimportant things!” as if that settled the matter.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Which is why it should be hot!” Pea Boo, er, Princess Boo declared.

“I don’t mean that breakfast isn’t important. Why I just endorsed a public policy of serving free breakfast in schools. I mean that happy people won’t notice if their bacon isn’t sizzling because they’re happy to have a meal when so many others do without.” His daughter’s expression did not change, which meant she was not understanding.

“You’re not making sense, King Father. If my breakfast is cold, it could be caused by many other factors, such as taking a long time to transport it to me, which is usually the case.”

“Yes, yes, but we’re simplifying, making it a binary function, black and white. There’s ‘cold’ and there’s ‘hot,’ which represents ‘all temperatures that are not cold or are satisfactory with Princess Boo.’ We’re grouping ‘happiness’ with the ‘right side’ of the bed and the way you wake up as the ‘wrong side’ of the bed, (and upon seeing his Pea Boo’s sulky expression) for illustrative purposes only, of course. Therefore, if your breakfast isn’t cold, then it’s because you woke up on the right side of the bed!” Had the king realized how literally contrary his Princess Boo was, he would have given up right then and there. Or, he would have explained it to her in logical terms, with pencil and paper in mathematical terms. Unfortunately, the king was a touchy-feely kind of guy and often got ideas through to others by osmosis, whereas Princess Boo often explained ideas precisely in terms of steps, but used terms imprecisely.

Thus, “I shall think about it” was the best that Princess Boo could give her hungry father, who watched her with a new keenness not seen in his eyes since his wife died. Princess Boo noticed this too, and for all her dismissive attitude, could not find it in her heart to crush the King Father’s excitement, for she had never been able to excite him as long as she could remember, and that traced back to the days before her mother fell sick weeks before she died. Realizing that she was not her mother’s daughter, Princess Boo also realized that there might never be another time her father would be happy like this again. So she determined to herself to wake up on the right side of the bed the next morning.

Before leaving, her father smiled, “that’s as much as I ask for, though success might be nice,” he teased.  He was whistling as Princess Boo left the ancillary library, something that he had done often when his wife was around.

The rest of the day, Princess Boo thought long and hard about how she was going to wake up on the right side of the bed the next morning. She attended dancing class and tripped twice (her shoes didn’t fit right), she scored an A- on her oral French exam because she could not pronounce the French “u” sound. (“Do I look French to you?” she asked her language instructor.) Princess Boo struggled with the answer that everyone seemed to know except her. As a result, during lunch she did not notice that her soup was cold and during dinner, almost forgot about her dinner until her ice cream melted and was no longer cold. She couldn’t figure it out, she frowned in concentration as she scooped the last spoon of liquidy, room-temperature ice cream, but she wouldn’t give up and she also couldn’t ask anyone because although she didn’t know how to wake up on the right side of the bed, she did know that people seemed to think something was wrong with her because she didn’t, and wondered if that is what they meant when they said she always woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

III. The next morning, Princess Boo opened her eyes. She started to roll over to the right side of the bed, but the puzzle that had stumped her all of yesterday was as real as the down poufs floating in the air above her. No wonder her allergies never subsided, as she involuntarily reached for her nasal spray on the left side of her bed, almost falling over the edge because there were so many things on Princess Boo’s nightstand, which was the size of a long dinner table that could seat a ballroom. As she realized she was about to rise on the left side of the bed, Princess Boo stopped. She rolled flat on her back and looked at her slim figure under the down blanket, up at the ceiling, to the left where on the far wall the sun shone through the burnout velvet curtains she had installed, and the right. Oh yes, Princess Boo said to herself, My bed is in the corner. With the right side against the wall, no wonder Princess Boo always woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Now, how am I going to wake up on the right side of the bed? This was a riddle worthy of a Minotaur, thought Princess Boo. It was a shame that she had had the monster beheaded. After all, it would not tell her how to get out of the maze, and Princess Boo had no time to negotiate with it that day. But shame did not as yet turn to regret, as Princess Boo was a scrapper.  Being slender, Princess Boo started pushing the wall against the right side of the bed. Not budging. “That’s what I get for insisting that my bed frame be made of solid oak.” Pushing again, “Unnh, I should have had it made from pieces of oak,” she regretted between gritted teeth. Out of breath, Princess Boo pulled a crowbar she had hidden under her mattress, “In case of burglars” she explained to each new maid, who found it and would inevitably look at it wonderingly. Digging the sharp end between her solid (and single) oak bed frame, Princess Boo pulled with all her might. The little leverage she had increased until she was able to move the bed several inches from the wall. Comparing the space between the right side of the bed and the wall to her waist, Princess Boo thought she could squirm through. Sometime during this complex maneuver, the butler came in with her breakfast tray and found the crown princess stuck between the bed frame and the wall.

“Are you okay, your Highness?” He asked.

“Uh, yes,” Princess Boo’s voice came out from under the bed.

“Do you need some help?” the butler asked inquisitively, Nosily, Princess Boo thought.

“Ah, no, I’m almost,… I’ve almost,” and the bed opened up from the wall and unceremoniously landed the Princess with a thump on the floor by the wall. “Oof!” crawling back to the left side of the bed, Princess Boo snatched up a bottle of pills that she had dropped and never bothered to pick up (“Refill my allergy meds” she had ordered one of her servants) and clutched it in her right hand, waving it victoriously as she squirmed out from under the bed. “Allergies, picking up my allergy pills is all,” dusting the bottle as she plopped back in bed. She hurriedly settled into her breakfast position, fluffing up her soft down pillows, dismissing the new butler because she didn’t want him to see if her experiment failed, and dug into her bacon. It was cold. “I probably took too long getting out of the right side of the bed,” Princess Boo reasoned. Otherwise, my bacon wouldn’t have gotten so cold. I’ll have to get out of bed faster tomorrow morning, she thought, which triggered some deep buried memory. Long ago, when she used to have breakfast with her mother and father, Princess Boo complained that breakfast was cold. “Perhaps,” replied her saintly mother, “if you got out of bed faster, the food would still be hot when you arrived for breakfast.” 

“Why can’t the Royal Chef just cook breakfast later,” Princess Boo asked churlishly, irritated at the morning sun for being so cheerful as it bounced into the breakfast hall.

“Because if you expect the rest of the world to start working before you get up, the cook has to cook for everyone, not only our family.” Which didn’t sit quite right with Princess Boo’s worldview of things, especially in the morning. Although Princess Boo was sad when her mother died, she thought that breakfast would always be hot because she wouldn’t have to get out of bed, walk all the way to the breakfast hall where the morning comestibles would be cold by the time she arrived. For some reason, breakfast was still cold, and this was beginning to really bother Princess Boo.

Sometime during the day, after calculus and during target practice, Princess Boo had an awesome idea. She called the Royal Builder to her. “Yes your highness?”

“I want you to move the wall of my bedroom adjacent to the right side of my bed.”

“I beg your pardon, your Highness?”

“Move the bedroom wall that is next to my bed. On the right side.”

The Royal Builder thought Princess Boo wanted to enlarge the size of her bedroom. Thus, “Is that possible?” is what the Royal Builder thought, but what he actually said was, “You mean you want your bedroom to be bigger in size?”

“No,” impatiently, “I want the wall next to the right side of my bed to be moved so that I have more space to get up on the right side of the bed. Notice I have all the room in the world to get up on the left side but absolutely none on the right. I need some Feng Shui in my bedroom.”

“Why don’t you move your bed away from the wall?” asked the confused Royal Builder.

Why not indeed? First, Princess Boo had a vague inarticulate feeling that this was cheating. Also, the nightstand on the left side of her bed extended the entire width of her room, which was lengthy indeed, there were so many items that Princess Boo needed on her nightstand just in case she might need it in the middle of the night. She certainly didn’t want to get up and fetch it and calling one of her servants took too long, she was usually asleep by the time they got there. Abstracting from the fact that her nightstand reached the far wall where her long vanity table held many of the items that Princess Boo didn’t want to get up to fetch in the middle of the night, Princess Boo’s bed could not be moved, even if she had felt like cheating.

“I’ve thought this through and it can’t be done,” snapped Princess Boo. “The nightstand would have to be shortened, and I would have to decide which items to take off because they wouldn’t fit anymore and that would take a lot longer than moving the right wall!” Princess Boo loosed an arrow that hit the target bullseye, ending all discussion.

“Yes your, Highness,” bowed the Royal Builder.

“And make sure it’s completed by morning,” stopping the Royal Builder in his tracks.

“Ah, as in tomorrow morning, your Highness?”

“Of course. And remember, don’t move my bed. Leave it right where it is in the corner. Move the wall. And don’t try to pull a fast one either. I can tell the difference.” Princess Boo was notching another arrow. “Darn it,” she thought, “I forgot to measure the width of my room. How will I know if he moved the wall or my bed by shortening the nightstand?”

Princess Boo’s bedroom really was that big.

Part II: Princess Boo Wakes Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed

II. Princess Boo is Served Cold Breakfast in Bed.

Jasmine tea (hot) and chai tea (super sweet) rounded out her morning meal (it was half-past noon).

Princess Boo scanned her breakfast tray suspiciously. Something was missing… “Ah, hah!” she pounced. “Where is my ice cream? You know I only eat waffles a là mode!”

The butler stuttered. “Well, well, your highness, you said you like crepes a là mode but not waffles, at least not in the mornings. Ice cream so early in the day makes you shiver.” Brrr! The butler shivered. He knew he was in trouble.

“What are you saying? It’s midday and fairly warm for this time of year. As a matter of fact, if I weren’t a princess I’d be perspiring!” Princess Boo dug into her waffles. They were cold and stale! “My waffles are cold and stale.” Princess Boo pronounced.

“Si-since your breakfast is so cold, your highness, it’s almost as if you had ice cream…”

“Off with your head!” Princess Boo made a swishing motion with her arm. Princess Boo had little sense of humor, and none at her expense.  By this time, the butler was fairly shaking in his boots. “To the galleys you go! I shall oversee the firing squad myself!”

Her poor butler perspired at the thought of being beheaded, then hung, then shot, and wondered if he would be allowed a last smoke after they blindfolded him before the firing squad. It gave him some consolation.

“Why is it that no one can ever serve me my breakfast hot?” Princess Boo wailed as she glared at her meal.  “All I ask is a hot meal without excuses and all I ever get is ice creamless waffles. How can a princess subsist?” she asked through mouthfuls of blueberries and chocolate loaf. For all she ate, Princess Boo cut quite the slender picture of a princess. The royal portrait hanging in the Hall of Monarchs flattered Princess Boo. When the Royal Portrait Painter had painted Princess Boo’s official portrait, Princess Boo had to inhale the entire time because pictures add ten pounds on a person “so make sure you paint my good angle.” Princess boo warned. “I don’t want to have to repose to have my portrait painted again!”

And thus the official portrait of Princess Boo III was painted with her good side facing the Royal Painter. Make sure you don’t exaggerate my pout!” she cautioned the Royal Painter, blue in the face, Princess Boo that is, because it was difficult to shout commands while one is inhaling for prolonged periods of time. She had heard her aunt observe to her King Father that Princess Boo had such a royal pout as to put all pouts to shame. Princess Boo was very proud of that pout but thought that a royal portrait necessitated modesty. There would be plenty of times to pout, Princess Boo reassured herself as she struck her most regal expression for the Royal Painter, which consisted of impatience, irritability, and noblesse oblige, the latter of which she thoroughly did not understand. It was a term her mother used to use.

Well, here she was and another excellent opportunity to pout, if not give a downright fit.

“Perhaps, your highness, it, it is because the kitchen is so very far away from your rooms,” stammered the butler through Princess Boo’s mental grumblings.

“What was that?” Princess Boo demanded. Did the Royal Person ask for your thoughts?”

“Well, your highness, you did ask me why your breakfast is always cold. You see, it takes time to get from the kitchen to--”

“Then run faster.” The Princess fairly spat.

“Your highness, it is one point five leagues from the kitchen of your father’s castle to the top of your castle.” Replied the butler, who had run many marathons and had measured the distance with a pedometer. “When my predecessors used to bring you breakfast in your old room in your father’s castle, the distance was half as much. If there were a kitchen in your new castle--”

“You expect the royal treasury to pay for two kitchens when one will suffice? Off with your head!” Princess Boo exclaimed with a swish of her hand. Which didn’t explain why there were two castles. Yet everyone knew it was because Princess Boo needed more closet space. And as her King Father placed a firm foot down on extravagant expenses, (the townsfolk were grumbling), the second castle had no kitchen.

The Butler, emboldened by his impending beheading and subsequent hanging followed by death-by-firing squad, squeaked out, “Maybe your breakfast is always cold because y-you frequently wake up on, on (gulp) on the wrong side of the bed.” There! He said it! And thought a chorus of saints gasp in horror somewhere in heaven.

“Your highness to you!” corrected Boo. Actually, the butler had been trying to say “your highness” but all that would come out of his poor throat was “y-you”. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have every heard!” scoffed a now red-faced Boo. “You mock your princess, serveling?” That is what Princess Boo called her servants when she wanted to belittle them. It also rhymed with “sniveling,” which PB also frequently called her servelings. 

“No, no, your highness. It’s that people who get up on the right side of the bed usually don’t complain (another collective gasp from heaven, the angels this time)—I mean—don’t get served—I mean, get served breakfast hot, the way they like it that is!” Poor, ill-fated butler.  If only he could explain, but his nerves were making him shake as a condemned man. But Princess Boo was no longer hearing any of it. As near she could, Princess Boo enjoyed what was left of her cold breakfast and decided to tell the King Father all about the incompetence, nay, the incompentencies of her serving staff. (She rarely used “serveling” in front of the King Father. He didn’t approve.)

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MY OTHER WRITINGS

What I Said When I Saw Salvador Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus at the Tate Modern

My Inaugural Poem for President Obama on Amazon

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus - My Take on Salvador Dali's Take on the Mythology

Yes, this is about Salvador Dali and his painting the Metamorphosis of Narcissus, but slight, but interesting detour, Ladies and Gentlmen. Excuse my ADD-ness.

Slight Detour: Yes, I not only got to President Obama's Second Inauguration (no fluke, you doubters!) but I ALSO got to the OFFICIAL Inaugural Ball! Details to Come.

Check out my Open Letter to President Obama and An Inaugural Poem I wrote for President Obama. Background Notes to the poem I wrote in Honor of President Obama's Inauguration are available in Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

If you're like me, you always get mixed up between Narcissus, the gorgeous but oh, so vain dude who expired because he couldn't stop gazing at his mesmerizing expression in the water and Icarus, who flew with wax wings so high the sun melted his prideful attempt to soar to heaven while attempting to escape the island of Crete. Even their names sound the same. (Both have an "a", an "r", a "c", an "s", an "i", and a "u".

Okay, so Narcissus didn't quite drown and Icarus wasn't an Adonis but all the pictures of Icarus make him look like a Calvin Klein centerfold (oh, la la).

Here's the Masterpiece. You gotta' look at it while you read my little lyrical poem. I can scarcely remember gazing at this painting at the Tate Moderne. (Yes, I added an "e" on "Moderne." The architectural style of the museum is so chi-chi, but I like it anyway.)  All I remember was saying, "Wow, this painting is small" because in the books it's so larger than life, and "Wow, this painting is larger than life."

Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali at the Tate Modern

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

          by Ssal Nogard

I live.  In a state of rare existence

    of luxurious existentialism

in which I can tolerate, gorge.

And thrive.

I do nothing of service, produce nothing

Creation no… and much consume.

          I am one of those idlers of the world.

Who of necessity do nothing, necessity being

       nothing to me. 

For me there is only idolitrazation

         and adoration, of myself.

In the mirror.

My mirror tells of a place

  where colors do not blend between objects but only

                  within

               an entity, so smoothly, even

            in their contrast. 

A clarity of pure air, gases so invisible the objects

   behind,

in front, between

   them almost had a visible outline

where tranquility muffles a rarefied tension.

           Where souls enjoy their existence

and moan.  their delight. 

It is a place of great beauty

     and distinction of light and colors.  glowing

       blended with darkness and cream.

Everything is beautiful in this place--

     including I: Narcissus.

     I can hear them, my brothers and

sisters to the back of me, posing

       wailing,

and wondering

       where I have gone.

But they would not come with me

    to the water

where they could be happy

       gazing at themselves in

          their happiness.

       For you see, I was the happiest of them all

so beautiful was I--am I!

    beautiful and free

and with no longing to lift myself

               from the edge of these

    waters, pristine and still

no ripple to mar

     none of my beauty out

My reflection unfiltered and purely--Me.

       I came to lounge one day.

    It was hot, and I.  thirsty, and

these waters were so beautiful

           we had to be together.

I lay down, by the still, still banks

         and cupped--a hand of waters

to drink.  And drink I did. Oh, coolness

      quenched!  Wetness.   .  . ..like silk,

             calmed my throat and I sunk

      to sleep.

But it was a strange water.

           For when I woke, I was thirstier than

before and lifted a handful

     to drink.  And grew thirstier--and I

       tasted the saline, a kind of

aphrodisiac for man

 a kind of immortalized liquid

watered down

                for man.

And it was me,

       (when it was not me

    who wanted anything

             but the idle of life).

         who became idol to

                                   myself.

I needed more, more

    than my single hand could cup,

       and so lifted myself on my elbows

and cupped both my hands to--

     see.

I saw, the most beautiful

       sublime

   of the divine

       Creatures

looking me

           full in the face

       from my two cupped hands.

Staring and I

  thought with terror that

          I might drop him.  that

I should never gaze at him again, exactly as

       do I, now,

        then

             For even so, he was falling

       from my hands, though

      I cupped him tighter

              still.  To see him,

    gaze at him idolize him

          forever.

He was strangely

      so imbued with a current, snaking

   its way underneath

his skin, sending

         it into tiny a-quivery convulsions

   The saline!

   The cursed aphrodisiac of the gods!

And still he was slipping

     becoming narrower, skewed

       distorted Beauty beyond means,

  and my power to save him…

       And so I drank him.

So that he could be

  with we--eternally.

  Beautiful forever.

  Yes, I had to

       taste him--yet

     another gulp.

  To quaff my

         newfound need to

     gaze at him.

  I had to raise another hands-full of

poison to my adoring worship-, wistfullest eyes and

         drink him. Before he

    fell from me,

my hands were incessantly cupping

       and lifting and drinking

my lips made love

    with each gulp of desire.

I drank and drank

       and bowed down

on the bank.

             on which, I was kneeling.

I can no longer see

       myself anymore

There is nothing

     to see,

         no face to

  gaze puppishly

at the face beauty in the water. 

There is a lump where my

     love used to be--one that

       I cannot see, but feel--

  sitting heavily in

the water.

         I grow stiff

     into substance

 growing from within

my bones overtake

             my flesh.  Hardness.  Like

muscle broiled in the sun.

I can hear (with what?) the clouds

     melting into themselves,

       but not into the sky;

afraid to step past

     the demarcation.

I groove the road

     I will now never take

             and let it, wind and go--

   where I will never.

And my hungry dog,

     eats red flesh, to add on

  to his.

I hear my brothers burst into a deeper shade

                 of pale

           while they frolic by their own pool undaring to wander

   and claim a

              pool of the gods as I have.

       “Look!” they cry “Narcissus

    the handless would

   drink!”

         I howled in

  bleached amaranthine 

    grief as a

           cripple does

 when he cannot do what others

       do, the simple,

  the moronic tasks.

       Yet can do I a

    thousandfold in

the fiendish mind.

and my dear love,

       bent in strategy,

    on a box of red and black

           contemplating me as

  I contemplate myself,

        Considered myself to

      the utmost, being fascinated

             with none other.

  I feel the mountains evaporating in a crunching

         break, releasing the

lighter parts of themselves

            

                               to the heavens and

         sinking lower, dripping

     in love

and somewhere a

       hand lifted

        me from position.

    its last two fingers

lifted my knee

       and its forefingers

lifted my

       shoulders

       And feel my shadow

    extending twice

          as the gods lifted

  their one concerted

              hand to lift me

     from my

           idolization

  Its thumb lifted

my chin and my brain cracked

          in curves

  My hair, once flowed like veins, even more so

     and my face of beauty was

          supported thusly

          by the cracked

     finger of the gods.

From my mind, (as it ever was so)

     grew the consummation of

   my desideratum

          white, dazzling-white,

  and pointing in every direction.

                 It is so beautiful that I

lift to pluck it but,

  to take myself rips me in two

       before offering myself to myself

So I kneel here and

    gaze and see my

       beloved gently (loving me)

swaying in the wind

     and know my love

           can survive if I

   abstain from my

                   desideratum of myself.

    oh, to idolize without

       touching.  It is beyond me and that is how

it survives. 

 

*~~*~~**~~*~*~~**~~~*~~*~

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Other Paintings by Monsieur Salvador Dali that are cool:

The Persistence of Memory (La persistence de la mémoire) by Monsieur Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory - La Persistance de la Memoire Interpretation

Wow, I had no idea there was a Salvador Dali Museum in Florida. Talk about missing something when I was down there.

Salvador Dali Unknown (I call it "Tower Man")

The painting above reminds me of a story I once wrote called: "Tower Man." Gotta' rustle that up somewhere....

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

Atlantis Rising - Ever wonder what happened to the advanced civilization of Atlantis?

Okay, folks, this is what happens when you let germaphobia take over.

 

Atlantis Rising

The sun sparkled through

    the very white sky

    down on the white pillars

of Atlantis. 

      It was

   a very clear day--the air was almost perfumed. 

The dampness soaked,

         sponged up the dust particles

     and the centrifugal winds blew everything

away from the land. 

For that is how the Atlantians wanted it

   to be. 

They wanted no winds from

       the outside.  No blowing in

     of noxious vapors,

no weeds tumbling in tainted soils,

  worse yet, no earth that had gone

        dead and infertile.  No rivers ran

 into Atlantis, no river running tars

  into the lakes, and piers, sticking the water

             vessels in place. 

This was Atlantis, zenith of beauty

   divine, where the trees rustled the air

 to create the soft zephyrs.  Where the water jumped

    from the oceans directly to fall

          upon the land, and no foreign waters

had interloped on this oasis of isolation in three

     thousand years. 

Atlantis was immaculate. 

  Inside a pink marble dwelling S stood

at a basin, washing the fruits, that she had picked

   that morning.  Seeress L was acting head seeress

 for Atlantis and the cherries really

       did not need washing.  Nothing did

in Atlantis.  This was why the sun shone

   so pristinely in Atlantis. 

Between the magicians

       and the seeress, Atlantis would be yet

  today.  But a darkling broke through

one day.

      

       He masqueraded as an immaculate drop

  in the air.  When the magicians saw him,

 they coaxed him

     into their sterile paradise. 

And then he changed

   to a boy, a golden boy

       with golden curls,

and was soon chosen to be pruned

 for the brotherhood.  They were those

who kept the lands clean. 

      He became master magician and spent his days

thinking of seeress L

   while he contemplated drop

 by drop

which to admit

         into the promised land of Atlantis. 

In his boyhood form, Darkling had seen S.  She sat

  in still repose of a statue high

       atop a hill.  It was her time

of transmutation.  She sat there

 contemplating the evil virus. Soon,

                                                  soon, in a few hours, days,

                             she would see the cretins.

        Cretins crawled on her skin, slithered in

   and out of her pore, inside her womb, to the tip

of her body hairs.  They would rear

        on their thousand legs in exultation. 

  S was still defiled. 

She felt them and screamed. 

   She jangled her body, throwing it

          on the ground, smearing her breasts

  against the sharp rocks to annihilate

the filth from her body.  S tore at herself

       for days.  Picking each virulent disease

       from her body. Darkling had watched

in humored fascination as S lay close

to self annihilation.  In the form of droplets,

     he had rained down upon her then, to quaff

  her sores. 

Darkling took S back

       to his dwelling, a canopy of monolith leaves

    that upended in rising prayer in the sun

  and in the rain, shielding and closed, folded,

          clasped together in sorrow

during the sometimes,

     the limbs would let a few drops of rain

   through and changeling asked them

to do this

       for him for S’s wounds were grievous.  She slept

  in delirium, tearing at herself

 screaming of the wretched filth

       on her. Darkling pinned her arms

     down to her side and kneeled above her.

Phobia had given her almost

      a man’s strength and he had trouble

    keeping her down.  Once, she seemed

 to sense what he was and blindly kicked

    out hard. Darkling rolled over

in pain and S slept soundly

       the rest of the evening.  After a few days,

 S subsided into beatific repose. 

  Her face was smoothed of all feeling,

like the marble statues the Atlantians favored and the

       marble dwellings and lived in.

       Her hair fell about

          in dark waves and masses.

Darkling took a handful

  and breathed in deeply. 

  Her lips were red and swollen

          from the fever, her cheeks sunken

         and aquiline, black, dark,

    aquiline flower,

an exotic delicacy. 

  Her body was scabbed

and bruised.  The tiny breasts

      were torn, the nipples pulled to such

   an extent they constantly stood erect.  Her legs

   looked as if a bird of prey had leisurely

sunk in its talons

          and scraped. 

 Even the insides of her legs

     had not been spared.

  Darkling shuddered.  He could see

         her thighs in their perfection without

    the dried blood and in her bleedings.  It was

    a sin. 

This cleansing of Atlantis

       had reached morbid heights. 

    Darkling reached for S, her eyes slightly askew,

           parted.  He fingered the scabs, fury

 rising in him.  This body

     should be for loving except

     for the guilt of a regimented

superstitious society.  The innocent

   were dragged down, killed

       by their own hands. He kissed

  the lacerations like kissing dew

in a flower bud

         so as not to spill it

              or drink it up. 

     The scabs were not completely dried

 yet, were still moist.  Darkling’s hands

    drew higher, up to S’s sex, where even

  this she had not spared.  Indeed, focusing most

       of her ravings, and attacks. 

He assuaged it softly, introducing himself

           nonintrusively, as a gentle breeze, stirring,

 but frictionless.  S whimpered

 and lifted her eyes weakly.  

     “Is it gone?” She asked.

  “It was never there,” Darkling assured her.

     “But I feel it.”  S begged weakly.  “I can feel

       each one viral creature crawling

                  over me without shame, defiling me.  And me

       allowing them to multiply.” 

“There’s nothing left of them.”—Darkling.

     “Then,--I passed?” S.

“Yes,” he, sickly.

He moved his fingers

         more insistently.  And, she

hesitated. “Are they still there?”

“No, you are clean.”

     “How can it be when I still feel them?”

“Your tactile senses need a bit

     of pruning.  You’re overly sensitive

to the wrong things”.

   And Darkling drew up S’s fever high

       and broke it. 

Afterwards, S lay again,

           calm, clean untroubled, and a tear

  had slipped from her sleeping eyes. 

  She awoke one night

       thereafter.  Darkling was beside

       her sleeping.  The trees had stopped

     lifting up their prayers and had bowed

             down clasped hands for the night,

content.  The stars were shining

   myriads in the sky so low

   and close S reached out. 

“Try for something closer,

       and use it as a step.” Darkling said, took her

     hand and kissed her,

and then his lips to hers. 

“Will it count?”—she.

“Of course.”

“You should have left me be.”—she.

“I was only trying to help. “

“You cannot.  And should

       know better than that, Darkling.”

“Your wounds were-- mortal.”

      She--“The least of my concern.”

“When do you go?”

          “When I am pure

to be a temple priestess.”

“Pure enough to have me come flocking on to you?”—sadly

     and smally smiling.

“I must share my purity.”

“And I thought hot moved to cold.”  Darkling

     flicked his tongue like a lamb.  S moved.  Darkling continued,

“Well, perhaps when I’ll feel

         like a bout of purity soon.  Until then,” and

Darkling entered her in full, retearing

     the scabs as his did so.  He fell gently

    above her, licking each wound

as it were a marvel, and wrenched

         himself in her

  until she felt nothing

but the blood oozing between her legs.

That was the last he had seen her

     before she had presented herself

     before the temple.  Her wounds

 had been cause for much

        jubilation.  Here, was a Atlantian

       who could devour from her body the evils

that beset the land. 

They would share

       in her purity.  The men  present,

    brotherhood and magician had clamored

for her. 

The seeresses had worshipped her.  Seeress S

     was marked.  She never healed.  No,

   it seemed that her body grew

       in sores.  The scabs grew

in a profusion of jeweled colors. 

         She was their brilliant sacrifice

         to immaculacy. 

Every evening she stood

      between the main temple pillars, a gauzy

   petallike dress fluttering about her

   finely lined body.  Her hair was pulled back

       and tied with vines.  When she recently

cleansed a sickly, her hair fell askew,

          astray, and about her face in love curls. 

     Her arms were bare, revealing

     the skin pulled tautly over bones

that made indentations

      where the shadows played between her bosom and the light

   fell on shoulder grooves,

          marked with the higher love to which Atlantis

was rising. 

Darkling stood from afar, leaning

   on a marble pillar that stood alone in the street. 

    It held no home, no place of worship, only stood

because it stood and enjoyed

   its glaring functionless unabashed. 

    The Atlantians had not dared to pull it down.  

     Darkling climbed the temple steps as the sun

fell behind the high temple, behind the pillars

   where S stood, the light razing

the edges of her silhouette. 

The shadows between her bosom

       grew darker, her body was etched

   in light, and shades of gray

gave roundness to her flesh.  An illusion. 

         Her body was spent, desiccated. 

       The blood had flowed perpetually. 

She had served the Atlantians of the land.  They

       were cleansed.  And now

  it was time for them to divest themselves

  of the possibility of future contamination. 

Darkling halted

               a step before he reached S and fell

           to his knees, burying his face

           between the whispering folds of her robe. 

   He could smell the fragrant stagnance of blisters

    and the fetid welts. 

He took her hands in his, finer

       than a newborn’s.  The cuts

 were not there.  He looked up. 

S--“I need them to work.”  She looked puzzled. 

   “Your face.” 

D--“I flew into a tree limb.”

     S took his face in her hand

        and smoothed the disfiguring mark

like stone before the wind. 

        In the wake of her touch lay new skin

      and from her fingertips dribbled blood.  “No!”  Darkling

gripped her wrists away from him.

S--“I must.  It heals me. 

     You heal me.  Remember, dear

         Darkling, when I was on

 the mountaintop, and you brought

      me home. 

         Did you expect to change me

                as well as save my body? 

  For all my sickness,

      better to slake the dry cuts

  than grapple with the morbidity of Atlantis. 

I am her daughter

      consummate.  Millennia of preoccupation

   with the microscopic squalors of the body. 

   Do you think

         we could have faced our souls?   Disease keeps us

alive, it keeps us

      moving to cleanse ourselves.  And I told them

   that purity would be the termination of life. 

   They resisted.  They laughed. 

They said that I would baptize them

            and lift them up. Soon they will not

    understand purity for the children grow up

not knowing darkness, filth

    and the blackness that comes to the soul

    when the light blinds the eyes. 

Fly away, Darkling!

              To something lasting, a land,

      a love, a fancy.  Better a joyful condemnation

    than a bleak salvation.  For myself,

I stand here

          when the waters will give us our final

baptism.”  The people of Atlantis had a plan. 

         They would now forever

     protect Atlantis from the evils of the world,

                 the voracious, toxins, the venal efflusions,

exhumes. 

    They would encase Atlantis. 

Darkling rose and lifted S

       by the waist and bore her to a corner. 

      The stones lay cold beneath her spine, cooling the sores

   upon her back. 

Darkling found her beneath

      the many folds of her dress.  She was sickly

  to the sight.  “Do I offend you,

righteous Darkling?  Is my body too unclean

       for you now?  Now that I have cleansed

  a thousand Atlantians?  Will you riff me aside

       as the rest when they have partaken

of my functionality? 

                            If I am the cleanser

          where does the sickness go?  They raised me up

                  to throw stones at me.  Leave me,

darkling, before you stone me.”

     He brought himself

       down on her, sobbing,

turning his eyes from this misplaced soul

   in a mismatched body and soul.  S lay

   underneath him, engulfing his sobs

           in her bosom and whispering to him

 of different places,

         sordid lands where she would see him

         soon. 

     He lifted himself and swallowed her in his arms.

“Come with me S.  Come with me and I’ll scrape

            every last scab from your body

           and bury you in righteous disease.”

   And he began scrawing at the crusty skin,

       sucking at the flowing

blood and throwing his body

                 over hers to stop the disease. 

   S laughed softly, lowly.  “What will it be,

     my Darkling?  Will you save me

or change me?  to save me

         is to defile me.  to change me

      is to heal me.  you cannot have

both.”  Darkling rose,

      howling to his feet, dragging S’s body,

      rasping her knees

                        against the cold stones. 

 They reached the entrance where Darkling

   raised her high

                   and cast her down

                         the temple steps, a bundle

of wisp and blood

            and laughter. 

The Sorcerers gathered in a ring and raised

    their upturned palms to the sky. 

    Two points, on opposite sides

       of the land of Atlantis, appeared

with a fiery fearsome silence. 

   These two points elongated, becoming lines,

               curved lines that began encircling

Atlantis, lines encircling, rising from the holy waters

   of the land of Atlantis

                     rose its way into a ring above the land. 

     A division, clear

     and absolute

            so that the birds flying at that moment

who were unlucky enough to get caught

     in the growing, rising ring, fluttered

         and writhed until the growing band

choked them still. 

  It grew up

     and it grew down, the line of circle became a surface,

   encasing the rarefied air

            and the whiter light of Atlantis. 

The air was pushed up and down,

     creating mammoth winds and tidal

     waves. 

  The water rushed upon the land

         as the weight of the semidome

lowered itself upon the earth.  The waters rumbled

     in discord at being severed and roared in

     to devastate the crystalline encasement.  The weight

was too much. 

          Atlantis was sinking. 

  The Magicians scrambled incoherent

   unweaving spells as the waters

fell from atop, for there was only a small circle

       at the top of the dome

still missing

and the seas fell in heavy torrents

      from above, cracking the magicians skulls wide open

   for the foam to sizzle them

             in a thousand different directions. 

The sky and earth trembled

   and Atlantis, slipped, dipped,

     and bobbed, the zenith of civilization,

like a fish out of water

     into the oceans, as the dome closed in

        on itself, sealing the top

     and the bottom of Atlantis in its watery tomb. 

For millennia more, a bird of prey

   could be seen swooping

     down towards the water, its talons

at the ready, its curled,

curved, hooked nose open

         to snap at he waters

     all the cretins of the sea which floated

at the surface and flagellated

              where the currents bore them, millions of them,

  uncountably infinite, naked to the seeing

eye, yet there nonetheless.  And the bird

     takes these endless dives, soaring up

    and falling down, to keep the waters

               around Atlantis clean, for the sepulcher

                    which holds a thousand sets of bones means nothing

to it save

  the turgid waters around the bones washed white

       with sores of a delicate frame,

     its hips still swaying

               in the current. 

***************************

Later, another time, another place.

  “S, there’s something crawling

        on you. 

        I can see it, almost.  But it is certainly there

    as you and I. 

              And I can feel it, can’t you feel it?”

She looked at her arm, perfectly white

     and round, and brought it

        to her mouth.  “Mmm, yes, and it tastes

  so good.”  she purred. 

   “Hold me a little tighter, love,

          I want to keep the buggers

between us warm.  Even they need love.” 

   He pulled her closer while the buggers crawled

          their ways upon

and between them, the friction

    of their motion and bodies igniting a fury in S

    and Darkling that burned for many nights.