Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

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www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 Olympia E. Eller San Francisco USA If there is a dark and hostile power which traitorously fixes a thread in our hearts in order that, laying hold of it and drawing us by means of it along a dangerous road to ruin, which otherwise we should not have trod--if, I say, there is such a power, it must assume within us a form like ourselves, nay, it must be ourselves; for only in that way can we believe in it, and only so understood do we yield to it so far that it is able to accomplish its secret purpose. - E.T.A. Hoffman, The Sandman[1] I wait. Seth says he's on his way. He said so just before midnight and now its 1:30 in the morning. I don't expect him to show up until 3am or 5am or 7am. He's done this before. He's said he'll come over and then doesn't show until hours later. He comes once everyone else in my building, the neighborhood, the entire city, falls into a state of slumber so complete, we find ourselves truly alone together. No one else has ever even seen us together. No one knows we know each other. We become the only people awake on Tuesday at a time in the morning that does not even exist for those who are asleep. We build upon the allotted number of hours in the night. When he comes, the night seems to go on forever. The little game we play is a matter of preying on one another. Right now he has the advantage because he's not here. He hasn’t come yet like he said he would so I suppose I’m at his mercy because I’d rather he was here. “On his way,” he said. Which is to say his way is the way he goes. His way goes on. The onward way is his. When words go through so many iterations, meaning collapses. The repetition falls flat and what remains is only an echo of an echo. That’s where art comes from – echoes. Sometimes, I feel like its not him I’m really after, but some kind of performance, as if he and I were an artwork, being created. “On his Way.” Is it true? Is he really on his way? I don’t want to lose sight of this. And how can I keep it here unfolding still, my hope. If Seth came to me earlier during the hours when people are awake, it might seem like we were a couple. But I’d never call it that. And besides, I wouldn’t want to have an audience. I wouldn’t want anyone to know. I like secrets because they give me something to think about when everyone else is talking about one thing like the way hair grows on a newborn and my thoughts are somewhere else, somewhere unattainable. Behind the daytime, our hours stay hidden. And if my friends knew what I have been doing, they'd try to stop me. They’d think I have a psychological illness. Am I hurting myself? Should I be cured from this self-loathing that is so exquisitely my own and which Seth enables me to express? In the hours I spend with Seth we don’t seek to remedy this. We spend our time doing cocaine usually or sometimes we drink cheap Chardonnay, listening to opera. If at some point we can find the edge of things, the edge of feelings, then we see something light up. We see the material of this behavior, like finding the paint on the canvas and seeing it for what it is, a trompe l’oeil illusion. That is enough. One time he tried to suffocate me with a pillow. He fucks with my head. I don't care if we ruin ourselves. That’s why we meet when no one else is awake to criticize. Our time follows a different clock. Our time ignores the overbearing system, which insists on mindless cooperation. It is the only time we really have, to make of our time what we will, because it is actually so rare to be able to fill the time without any consideration for others. Vol. II. Issue. III 268 September 2011
www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 I pinch my own nipple to stay awake as I lie on my bed. All around, I see things that I would clean up if it were the daytime. Toenail clippings. Eyelashes. Dust. Brown leaves in plantpots. The tangled folds of blankets. I wonder if he notices these things. Thumbtacks in the wall with necklaces hanging down from them. Stacks of coins. Fuzz pills on my sweater under the armpit. A brochure about bookbinding. I rub my cold, callused feet against one another. My picture frames match the wall color, stark white. Blank index cards are stacked next to the blank CDs. Slatted doors. Plastic drawers. Cords lie on the floor that each draw lines from the desk to the printer on the other side of the room. Headphones hang on the wall. A USB cable and a gold chain bracelet are intertwined. A clipboard holds scrap paper with the blank sides up. Some of the cords lead towards hidden electrical outlets. A heavy curtain bears down on a weak curtain rod. Everything is held together with safety pins. His tie hangs on a coat hook. I don't know if he knows I still have it. I get up and put it around my neck. My face goes by in the mirror. I've already applied mascara to my eyelashes so they flicker, as if separating scenes in a movie when I blink. They’re like little black-feather-fans. From behind these tiny feathers, I gaze at the wall. My feet sink into the floor until I’m sitting cross-legged down there. I lay down with my eyes still swimming through the contents of the tiny room. As usual they pause on Olympia who is pinned up on the wall. Olympia. Take that word and unfold it. It’s an unfolding word. Any iteration of Olympia is packed with countless contradictions. Form lashes out at content. It is an endless duel. And yet I can only approach Olympia from a great distance, as a satellite. I have to see her as though she were something apart from me, outside of myself. It’s because I can’t see what he sees. I look at her as if I were Seth, looking at me. It is Manet's painting of Olympia, painted in 1863. It displays a prostitute, a rich French courtesan lying in pose, copying the pose of Titian’s Venus, painted in 1596. She looks out, square to the viewer’s gaze with a look of certitude. She accepts flowers from a dark skinned slave. A reprint of the painting is framed on my wall. My father picked it out of a stack of prints from a street peddler outside the Louvre. He took me to Paris to visit my great grandmother’s gravesite. He and my mother had just divorced. I was only nine, but I remember him choosing Olympia. It was odd of him to choose a naked woman as a gift for me. In the familiarity of my room my eyes land on her unintentionally. This room is the only room that can’t keep secrets from me. Not a day goes by without the vision of her face appearing in my head between sips of coffee or the sight of her arms, while I walk by parking meters along the sidewalk. Here in my room I indulge again, seeing a bouquet of flowers painted pink, white, green, held by the slave who is painted as but a shadow of thick paint next to Olympia’s blinding porcelain complexion. Whore. Olympia accepts what she can take from suitors and from slaves. Prostitute. Supplicant for previous artworks, repeated artworks that disseminate over time. She's holding a pearl. This painting caused a scandal, they say. To declare this whore’s portrait a piece of art was an outright insult to the established protocol for true, pure, sanctioned art. And with the burgeoning modernist impulse, this protocol suspended in thin air, becoming an unattainable edict, an unsupportable construct even though Manet painted rich fabrics in an overly planned composition. Isn't she pretty with those glittering eyes, glittering jewelry, and porcelain skin? She’s the representation of a real-live model who waits for the painting to cease so she can let down her hair and unlatch her choker from her elongated neck. She can accept kisses up her arm, laugh at desire, run with desire, fondle Manet's desire, and then steal his paintbrush to paint the face of a Vol. II. Issue. III 269 September 2011
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