Wikipedia
&
You will eat like a bird from the palm of my hand
Zola Gorgon
for #vii. lovesick
spring 25
Wikipedia
In the morning I wake up in pain and in the evening I go to bed in pain and in between those two I am in pain, but even while I am in pain, there’s a bunch of things I have to do, like eat, make money. Stay alive.
Hitobashira (人柱, ”human pillar”), also known as Da sheng zhuang (simplified Chinese: 打生桩; traditional Chinese: 打生樁; pinyin: dǎshēngzhuāng; Jyutping: daa2saang1zong1) in China, is a cultural practice of human sacrifice in East Asia of premature burial before the construction of buildings. Actually, I lied. There is a moment after dreaming where it’s quiet. Then I remember to search for the pain, and obediently the pain sets in. Discovering her bisexuality, she had her first same-sex relationship while attending Bryn Mawr College between 1904 and 1906.
Why did you have to make me think you were in love with me?
I accuse you.
The term ”lovesickness” is rarely used in modern medicine and psychology, though new research is emerging on the impact of heartbreak on the body and mind.[1]
My mind heats up with thoughts and scenarios and endless conversations going into nowhere, conversations between me and nobody, since you are not, strictly speaking, here.
Relying on a second-hand account, the text reports a story that some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection.
What was the point of all of this?
This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mollification process would ideally start before death.
Was it meant to be fun?
The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in the substance.
How could any of this be fun for me?
I can’t sleep at night. If I close my eyes, if I stop looking at the screen, I smell burning oil in the air and all over me. Burning oil.
AND I SEE THE LOVE PARADE. Triumphant wagon. You are happy. You ride with your true love. The wagon is surrounded by noble horse-riders, beautiful friends, and elegant soldiers – they protect you. After them come the commoners, and after that comes the rabble in rags. The rabble – anonymous even to each other, unable to look at each other, so deep is their abjection.
Time troubles me. I can imagine a future, but I’m not in it. Time is passing. I set timers on my phone like I’m waiting to do another shot of GHB. Each second takes me further from you, or closer to you. It’s not knowing —
[…] accounts of lovesickness attribute it, for example, to being struck by an arrow shot by Eros, to a sickness entering through the eyes (similar to the evil eye), to an excess of black bile, or to spells, potions and other magic.[17]
Can’t you tell me?
Baron-Cohen’s work in systemising-empathising led him to investigate whether higher levels of fetal testosterone explain the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorders among males[35] in his theory known as the ”extreme male brain” theory of autism.
I must be suffering from extreme male brain. My YouTube recommendations are almost exclusively videos of old men explaining Marxism and Hegel. I use them to fall asleep.
In ancient literature, however, lovesickness manifested itself in ”violent and manic” behavior.[2]
None of this would be all that bad if I just couldn’t feel anything.
In ancient Greece, Euripides’ play Medea portrays Medea’s descent into ”violence and mania” as a result of her lovesickness for Jason;[5] meanwhile, in ancient Rome, Virgil’s Dido has a manic reaction to the betrayal of her lover, Aeneas, and commits suicide.[6]
Somewhere in the world, there is a prison, and in the prison there is a cell, and in the cell there is a person, and in that cell there are other people who are, right now, torturing that person. This is happening, not just in one place, but all over, and all the time.
But it is not happening to me.
YOU MADE ME LET YOU IN and you entered me.
You made yourself at home.
A sickness entering through the eyes.
Despite its mixed reception, it became a cult film in England, noted by critics for its homoerotic undertones.
How could you treat me the way you did, still wake up and enjoy the sun?
One of his slaves had broken a crystal cup. Vedius ordered him to be seized and then put to death, but in an unusual way.
Enjoy the sun, her arms and her cunt.
He ordered him to be thrown to the huge lampreys that he kept in his fishpond.
Whoever she is.
Who would not think he did this only for display?
I don’t want to hate you.
Yet it was out of cruelty.
I want to love you like I used to do.
The boy slipped from the captor’s hands and fled to Augustus’s feet asking nothing else other than a different way to die – he did not want to be eaten.
Were you ever in love with me?
Augustus was moved by the novelty of the cruelty and ordered him to be released, all the crystal cups to be broken before his eyes, and the fishpond to be filled in.
And if you were, why did you stop?
I give you two days. If I don’t hear back from you in two days, we are done.
Ikejime (活け締め) or ikijime (活き締め) is a method of killing fish that maintains the quality of its meat.
I will forget you completely. I will tear you out of my mind.
It involves the insertion of a spike quickly and directly into the hindbrain, usually located slightly behind and above the eye, thereby causing immediate brain death.
Next year when you see me, I’ll have a beautiful girlfriend. I’ll be rich. I’ll be the president. I’ll be the greatest dancer in the world. I’ll kill myself and be dead.
And I wish you unwell.
I wish you ill.
I wish you terrible health.
I wish you pain and suffering.
I wish you profound, life-ruining regret.
AND I SEE LIFE STRETCHING OUT IN FRONT OF ME like a woven carpet being rolled out. I see the dogs, the overjoyed dogs, slobbering and leaping for love at my feet. The shadow of the cloud on the mountain.
I’m sorry, I take it back. I can’t say how sorry I am to make you leave.
The coroner’s report said that ”the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed”.[80]
My cat licks his paws, the bus still comes, the same drunkards scream outside my window, and all this would be fine if I could stop myself from feeling.
Pain motivates organisms to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future.[2]
I wish I could rip me out of myself. And be like you, a person that doesn’t need me.
For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets was the eating of the Ortolan.
Unreal that a person can feel this way, all day long.
These tiny birds—captured alive, force-fed, then drowned in Armagnac—were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God.
Unreal that a body can hold this pain.
To pass the time, I read Wikipedia. AA shares the view that acceptance of one’s inherent limitations is critical to finding one’s proper place among other humans and God. Such ideas are described as ”Counter-Enlightenment” because they are contrary to the Enlightenment’s ideal that humans have the capacity to make their lives and societies a heaven on Earth using their own power and reason.[57]
But what good is empirical knowledge if I can’t trust the evidence of my own eyes?
A single word from you and I would instantly forgive you.
This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.
I would forget all of this.
You will eat like a bird from the palm of my hand
I have received your rejection letter.
Please explain this rejection to me?
This time I will win
Not the lamb but the slaughter
I look forward to your response
God created me this way for a reason – he created me this way because it pleases him to watch me suffer.
Well, if it pleases my creator to see me suffer, then I too should want to suffer, and bear this suffering gladly
YES
GOD
YES
to please the creator and not the creation
YES
This time
GOD
This time I will win
Not the lamb but the slaughter
”When I look at you I feel like I am breaking you on the wheel –”
(The woman clothed in the rays of the sun)
YES
This time I will win
(The woman clothed in the rays of the sun)
GOD
”When I look at you I feel like I am torturing you to death”
forever reflected
in the mirrors
of her eyes
YES
But you are no longer looking
Dear God forgive me but I am so lonely, lovesick, horny in my soul
Explain your letters to me? Explain your mysteries, ways, and your signs because my human mind has no way to explain them. I call for you. So call me.
anything but silence
This time I will win
we shall live like brothers
your hand in my hand
like those legendary lovers
just like husband and wife
(The nearer one got to the centre, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits everything was foul, dark and infested with toads, vipers…)
clothed in the rays of the sun
Is it fortunate or not
to go through this guiltless
ashamed & in pain
faith renewed each time
the rays of the sun
I draw a map of events in my mind
I watch the past, wind it back, and watch it again
(here comes the sun)
This was the day and this was the place
the kiss, the place and the moment
the moment my heart leapt up
I gather evidence
the moment my heart leapt up like a dog
I am no longer asking
(A woman’s face, crawling with flies in a kitchen quickly darkening at dusk. ”I thought it would be different with you”)
I am no longer asking you (or anyone) for help
since I know you cannot save me
Not the lamb but the slaughter
the rays of the sun
those legendary lovers
(Your lips, your eyes, the insides of your thighs, the inside of your knees, the inside of your mouth)
Let me wash your clothes, let me braid your hair
Let me win
I am no longer asking
legendary lovers
(clothed in the sun)
Let me win
Not the lamb but the slaughter
like a bird, you will eat from the palm of my hand
like a dog, I will come when you call me
Not the lamb but the slaughter
Not the lamb but the slaughter
Not the lamb but the slaughter
YES
GOD
YES
Zola Gorgon is an artist, performer, and writer, based in Berlin. She is a member of the art and writing collective Purgatory Magazine and hosts a monthly show with Cashmere Radio.
purgatorymagazine.com
https://cashmereradio.com/shows/zola-gorgon/
differensmagazine.com 