Girls with faces buffed smoother than dressed stone and cushioned, nude-glossed lips ushered Opal through a caramel maze of blonded veneer, past orchids poised in bud vases set into recesses.  In the unforgiving grasp of her pale pants suit she cared not for meridian synergies or lymphatic coaxing, occupied instead by the ferric taste persisting in her oral crevices, sour little allusions to the meal retained within the infinitely capacious reservoir beneath her ribcage and slowly suffusing her cold tissues.  The smocked girls showed her to a massage suite beneath a glass-block ceiling; the evening had turned it rufous grey but she scowled up at its transparency before stepping underneath it.  Rachel lay face down on a plinth of padded marble while attendants trailed garlands of herbs over her naked skin, avoiding the chakra stones set at careful intervals on her oiled torso.  Opal looked over her proportions with a jaundiced eye, aware how shortly gravity would start exacting the full price of its connivance in their splendor.  She lifted the gold-chained tote from the neighbouring credenza and tipped its contents onto the wood.  Rachel's eyes flew open.

"Invading the Lamb property again, in your endless quest for degredation.  You really are determined to ruin the chance you might have had with any Sotherby-Curtis, aren't you?”  Scrolling through the calls on Rachel's phone, Opal walked slowly around the plinth.  "You thankless little bitch."
“Nicholas Sotherby-Curtis is gay." the former reminded her as the attendants shrank from her shoulders and began devoting themselves to her feet.
“Which is why he needs someone to marry, produce two viable offspring and smile until their face hurts while he runs for governor.  I didn’t pay for those teeth so you could wear them down on deviant genitalia."  Opal touched a hand to her immobile hair, inspecting a vial of white powder from amongst Rachel's belongings.  "You are beyond pathetic.  What's next?  Snorting up this garbage until a frat boy wouldn't jerk off onto your face unless you paid him?  If the columnists pick this up I'll make sure you spend the next three seasons in residential care.  Stay away from that house.”
"Wil-liam is obsessed with me... he won't stop calling.  What am I supposed to do?  And who is that person they have over there?  Some kind of crazy dwarf?"

Opal frowned at the lilies in their wall vase, each bloom plucked of its velvety anthers so that they seemed blinded.  

“I sent over a housekeeper.  I want the place cleaned up before I use it for the group show.  And yes... she was petite... had a kind of... I think the word I’m looking for is milkmaid.”  Opal turned her head as she swallowed down the flush of pink saliva in her mouth.  “That love of your life is probably so exclusively obsessed with you he's bending her over something as we speak.”  She shot a glance toward the masseuses as they stood with wide-eyed stares, hands stilled upon their subject's ankles; the smaller girl knocked a bottled candle from the corner of the credenza with a nervous elbow, though Opal's reaction was tempered by the appearance of a receptionist at the panel door.
“Ms La Rue, there’s someone here for you... a Mr Lamb.  He’s uncomfortable about waiting any longer...”

Opal glanced back over her shoulder and addressed herself to Rachel.
“Go talk to him.  I have calls to make.”
“I have an irrigation, and he hates me...” Rachel insisted, bare flesh shuddering like refrigerated consommé.

Edward’s sphinx-like features brought her worst anxieties into focus as she espied him from the doorway of the courtesy lounge; Rachel mouthed an affirmation and lifted the collar of her plush white robe, crossing the quiet bar toward him as if he had been waiting for her all along.  He sat alone in a mood that stained the air around him like a halo in forboding reverse, a low glass in his hand.

“Opal’s taking care of something.  Why don’t you get me a drink?” she smiled, lowering herself into the club chair before him.  “She told me about the group show... kudos.  Sounds like you're really building a name.”  When he did not reply she repeated herself, to no apparent avail.  “It's so weird... I mean, wherever I go, I hear somebody talking about your pieces, or about Wil-liam... it just feels like fate, you know.  And with Opal getting behind your work, that's... I mean..."  She tossed her golden ponytail back over a shoulder.  "You don't know where Wil-liam is, do you?  He's always wanting to hook up, and now I have some time for him I can't raise his damn phone... that thing is always broken...”  Edward set down his single malt and stared through her face into the space beyond; she blinked tightly.  “I knew it... he's with that hooker again... that son of a bitch...”
“That’s my mother you’re insulting.” he replied.  The thought of the two sharing an origin was a notion that disturbed her deeply.  
"What do you want me to say?  You think, out of all the people in the fucking world that I actually chose him?" Rachel snapped, glaring at him over the vegetable juice that had been set down on the table.  “You don't choose your soulmate, you fucking find each other..."  Rage deranged the stiff, pursed poise she had maintained despite her dread of him, pushing her down in her chair and darkening the tone of her petulant utterances until she became once more aware of his scrutiny.  Edward reviewed the length of thigh she extracted from her robe and draped over its twin, the two shallow creases that crossed her throat, and the lips that he had never seen naked; she offered them willingly, infusing the display with a languor that tightened the skin around her eyes and pointed her toes downward. 
“Do you dream, Rachel?” 
She laughed and looked up at the ceiling, the contents of her glass oozing over its lip.  
“Of course I dream.  I just... I don’t have the time to sit around remembering that crap.”  Emboldened by the question's obscurity, she licked her glass and favoured him with her best side.  “Ed-ward, how can you even be this messed up?  You're scared, I can see it.  You're scared of having to be your authentic self around another human being."  His gaze remained with her as her smirk developed.  "We all have to start somewhere.  What are you thinking right now?"

His pupils were cinched into stationary shards of darkness.
“I'm wondering how you look when someone fucks you.  When they're calling you Rebecca.  Thinking of their stepdaughters.”

She glanced away, flashing toothy acknowledgement at a passing attendant, tugging nervously on an earring.  Returning her blue eyes to his face Rachelle laughed, its pointless modulation an unwitting reprisal.
“No one talks ever talks that way while we're making love.”
“Do they ever say anything?”
She leant forward in her chair, grasping both its arms in a renascent fury.
"You really think you can run me off?  You don't have a fucking hope in hell." 
"Have you ever heard a tungsten blade passing through an adult femur?  I get the first four notes of Ode to Joy."  Rachel shrank back, glancing around herself as he rose.  "Come to the house again and I'll put you in three holes."

In the privacy of his sedan Opal removed the cosmetic dentures from her mouth and slid them into her handbag; without them, her voice took on a lashing sibilance, hissing past the points of her remaining teeth.
“Where have you been?  I had to tell the buyers you were at a treatment centre.”
“Argentina.”
"Whatever it was, I hope it bled euros." Opal remarked dryly, drawing the tips of her finger and thumb over the corners of her smirk to catch the lipstick in the creases.
“I was happy to correct a power imbalance for the good of the general community." 
“Is there such a thing?  Power is like Armani, darling... not everyone can wear it, but that's just nature in her wisdom.”  She chuckled and picked someone else’s hair from the collar of her jacket.
“Nature’s wisdom informs my lack of enthusiasm for vampyre juntas.”
"One day you're going to say that in front of the wrong crowd.  You of all people know that it's coming and it doesn’t care for your preferences.  Why not make it easy?  You may not be blood, but with your skill set I’m sure we can arrange to adopt you.”

A voice came to him as he slowed before an intersection, drifting over the shoulder of a woman remembered as she sat in sunlight on the steps of her house, braiding her own fair hair.
“To bow down is to die by your own hand.” he murmured.  Opal rolled her eyes at his disembodied prose.
“Everyone talks that way while they’re alive.  Crossing over brings clarity.  The Europeans have their own death squads... domestic ones, committed to their program, and they won’t charge six figures to implement it.”
“Peanuts, monkeys.”  
“Darling, I think the winged ones are different.  Things like this should always look like a choice.  It's lucky those stars on your knees are all in your head."

He pulled up outside her building and watched the doorman grimace to himself as he assisted Opal onto the footpath.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe do not reproduce
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dust  Nathan Gillam

    
The Stellar Other


I sometimes meet the lost at night
and stepping over Cerberus's chain,
you were returned to me
I took your hand and held it to my face
I saw you through our fingers
your eyes always the colour of the
scholar's dissertation
their darkest blue reserve
once more mine to remember.

And from the first I saw the muses
all attendant at your birth
Fortune had bitten you and left her kisses 
ringed around your neck
her favourite son, you were her gift
to all who never knew her.

And
if you had
 been raised by erring wolves
no one would have ever known
to look at you
you errant Adonaïs,
your perfect clay proclaimed you from afar
while the smoke rings took your fox-like laugh
into the blacklight.

And if your
mother never heard you
and your father never saw what they had made
forever deaf and blind may they remain.
They threw an alpha, ne plus ultra
and to me
your gifts
all seven wonders
and I knew you were my people
born with stars upon your knees,
and even from your height
you would go down on them for me.
You heard with one, but smiled with both
our harmony a whole
 wordless and perfect
as the moon
ilargia,
todas las estrellas
y la luna.

You gave Strange Fruit to me,
her voice, and not its portent
and in your bed your body
spoke the language of its blessed shape
I felt the word poured forth amid the dark miles that I passed
all broad and full-blown
driven deep against the slow roll of your hips
your hand a sweet guest and my private whore
Enkidu, incandescent
milk-white, midnight
shameless and unlettered
you loved like you had never seen the sun
but had been made to show me stars
and as I lay under your shoulders
your wordless mouth could mute the bard.
You graceful
bright and crownless Solomon 
I should have made your bread and washed your feet.


It is a bitter thing
to know
our children left
before we could explain ourselves
there are no prayers 
for small things
lost 
to ribbon red.

And I
did not agree to lose you
to relinquish you to chemistry
that Nemesis was never anything to me,
but followed you
until you fell into that falling sickness
so unlike Caesar's malaise
already crawled behind your aegis,
your silver stolen,
darkness knotted round your arm
your hand lost to a fist
and when your blue
went down behind your lids
no Orpheus could sing you to the light
your left, that double bind
your ruined side had found you.


Sometimes
there is something to be said
for Nothing
but we already knew
there's no Elysium.
When we go down with stars upon our knees
it is to nothing
and it drives the hardest bargain.
Nothing
could give no more offence to your creators
than to offer you in pieces
to return you to the Garden,
with a smile, wreathed in laurel.

And to 
whoever may have found what you had left
my sincere regret,
my deepest sympathies.
To have laid you low
and drawn the black around veinte dos veranos,
twenty-two summers
your bones not even grown
more gifts than you would ever know laid out in shallow silver
and when they weighed your heart Asclepius would weep
beside the stones.

Some days
your loss is something fatal in itself
caught in my throat
to breathe or move will be to join you.
 That is what it is to lie with Nothing
you took me down and widowed me 
and left me on the ground
to burn my eyes out in your ashes.



The stars upon your knees are on my own
and I
have always worn them as you wished.
Inside me you have lain so undiminished
Fortune finished with you
perfect clay forgotten
and I
would trade her bitter, graceless favour
for another day
to lash the muses, change your name and
feed the years to Cerberus,
that punishment they all deserve.

I found that I could play when you had gone
and now my heroes wear your colours,
delight their lovers with your smile.

Never dream
that no one lights a flame for you
no sun sets on a day
without my hands upon your face
upon my life, you are still loved
always the scholar's dissertation
and my songs will wear the lustre
of your endless constellation.

     
    *  

Sans focus, I know, sorry about that- we've both got snotty Beluga eyes at the moment.  This was the most active phasmid I have ever seen.  Spring must be here.

Thank you, thank you.  I needed this really badly.  You might not think you do, but just trust me.
I'd like to buy the world a toot and this makes me feel like I already have.

Mortality has loomed large this year, walking up to us under a number of guises then ripping off the hood and blowing its smoke in our faces.  Death is a lot of things- expected, unexpected; affecting and indifferent.  Sometimes it's not about the demise, but more the life- what it was and what it could have been.

Death narrows the field, both for the living and the deceased; it removes another friend, lover, familial figure, whatever from the living spectrum, and, inversely, turns off the light on everything the dead once were, so that they exist only in the impressions they have made on us, no matter how resplendent and deserving.  That is so fucking bitter and almost impossible to come to terms with.  No one gets a statue any more.

When they're old, maybe surrounded by their own mistakes, it is easier to let them leave, even if our business with them is unfinished, because they've had a chance to represent and demonstrate.  We're left to sort through it and decide how hard to cry, and that's an almost logical process.  It has a map, you can see the way out from where you stand.  

When they are young and so full of inestimable qualities, it's like the world has marked them for destruction as some sort of crowd-control procedure; see what happens to the unicorns?  We ghost them.  Exhibit courage, difference, beauty, insight, any special kind of excellence and you'll be next, until it feels as though it's only the people of Walmart who remain.  Alexander McQueen barely made forty and fucking Ralph Lauren is still three hundred and twenty six and breathing our air.  The loss of the paragon is a vicious collective punishment, unbearable because they were never allowed the chance to find their stride; only to fuck up once, and then be zipped into a bag.  The cruel and stupid grease the way; the illegality of drugs is killing the gifted even as I type the words.

A plague on both their houses.

We are a society that eats our young and I can't see that ever getting easier to deal with- on the contrary; I feel it more deeply all the time.  

The ones we love are so often taken without our consent; not always- I was content to let my father go after all his suffering.  But when we lose suddenly and too soon, that rage is double-edged and splits us open even as we swing the sword.  Don't pretend that isn't happening to you if you're having trouble letting go.  Breathe, and drop the weapon, if it takes you twenty years.  Sometimes you have to be old enough to have given birth to them, and that's a hard, hard road and very lonely.  Their absence locks you into a place where you feel you can't survive without their hand.  Life becomes a choice between electrocution and coronary excision, every day when they are gone.  Calluses and scars become your friends, and I hate those guys.  

Is it wrong to want them back?  Writing the book allowed me to avoid that question for such a long time, even though the theme is so overt; I don't know how that happens.  So many things can stare you in the face, never speaking until spoken to, until you question them.  Are forced to question them. 

Hope I'm not shitting on anyone's parade today.  Just thought I'd purge some tarry residues while I'm still so fucking high on life with rhinovirus. 

Have a brown flower.

 Josh Arlington

Above: an Adaro sea deity from the Solomon Islands.

The freedom and breadth of perception that allowed the unknown artist to represent an oceanic spirit in the manner depicted above is pretty breathtaking, really.

The union of the entire fish with the anthropomorphic body, complete with strange, swirling tail and piscine mascots is a perplexing and poetic amalgam.  Strange that the northern peoples of my own ancestry did not seem to have constructed or worshiped such intimate embodiments, despite being almost as dependent on the sea as the islanders of the Pacific.

Did christianity abolish such archetypes?  Why have I never seen anything like this from them, even on cave walls?  Maybe I just need to look a bit closer.

The solar motifs on the Austral Island house post to the left are far more familiar and indeed, almost universal.

These are pendents from the Sepik River region in Papua New Guinea.  The one on the left is worn over the heart to protect it from arrows.  That on the right is held in the mouth during battle.  I cannot imagine my own reaction to someone rushing toward me with this figure gripped in their teeth whilst intent on my death.

Detail from a ceremonial scoop carved from hardwood, Austral Islands.

A necklace of human teeth and fibre, Kiribati.

Hanging from a wall at the rear of the exhibit, this was nonetheless the kind of object that necessitates contemplation, much of it spent sweeping my tongue over my own dentition and wondering how many people it required.  I feel a strange dearth of offence or even empathy; it is a naked thing, oddly mute and aesthetically neutral though there is a distant beauty in its polished ivory and softly lustrous dentine.  In imagining it around my own neck,  I can almost hear the quiet, clattering little patter and click of the teeth as they shift with my movements.  Some of them seem old and worn, others relatively untried.
The incisor to the bottom right was turning bad when it was removed.  Was it sacred or profane?  Respectful of the dead or contemptuous of their existence?

I prefer to contemplate such items in ignorance of their specific context.

While I am sometimes disgusted to the point of generalized misandry with the masculine contingent as a whole, in truth I have always found myself far more at ease in the company of men than other women, gay, straight or misc.  I've never been sure why, but perhaps it is their guilelessness; that quality of succinct and unabashed simplicity that is such a hallmark of the worthwhile man.  They are children of privilege, by and large, born into a favour that, as women, we will probably never fully understand but sometimes... I forgive them.  

So I dedicate this series of lovingly-intended objectifications to the beautiful M, who never exhausted my regard.

Let's inaugurate this category with something for the connoisseur- Mr Walken.  Smooth but strange.

Yes I would.    

The hushed sound of movement over the cedar needles carpeting the ground around them lifted Bede’s head in the pre-dawn darkness.  From the heart of the expiring fire a figure lifted a blackened branch and brought it with her, weaving a slow path through the bodies strewn about them.  Bede watched her white legs moving beneath the carnivore print of her stolen dress; ignoring all but William’s sleeping form, she stood so closely by him that her hooked toes almost brushed his careless arm.  Slowly, she lifted the branch in both hands.  
“Rana...” murmured Bede, keeping his gaze deferential as he addressed her.  “Il’jiit Sachiin il’avai’ia shai’la.”

She looked down on the object of her foray with eyes that streamed unceasingly, conceding nothing of her intent, and for an airless moment he believed his petition had failed.  But with the charred limb in her hands the creature turned instead toward the pale face of the house standing beyond the unmown veldt.



Edward’s sedan stood at the edge of the grove, front doors splayed and headlights dimly-coloured by the dying battery.  Susan had lain with her head under her pillow against both the music that had issued from its system and various arrivals and departures; the ordeal greatly reduced her compunction at hauling a garbage bag of bottles and cans amongst the fallen.  The bollchu vat lay on its side like the body of an abandoned spacecraft, the French contingent scattered as though by a percussive blast around the hearth and amid the clean bones of the spit roast, vodka bottles and discarded clothing.  One of them groaned, feet lying in the beer-doused charcoal, and pulled his shirt over his head.  Susan plucked up the packet of Continental cigarettes beside him and lit one for herself.  The body she took to be William’s lay on its face in a bed of needles, hands upturned by its sides.  She lifted the clattering rubbish and dropped it beside his head.
“Answerphone.” he murmured without moving, the word muffled by his posture. 
“Mr Lamb, I just wanted you to know I used the kitchen tongs to pick up a used condom, so you'll have to buy some new ones.  Tongs, I mean.  I couldn’t find a shovel.”
“In the car.”
“What is?”
“The shovel.  In the boot.  Check the... no, wait...”  With a deep breath and supreme effort William rolled over and sat up.  “Don’t."  Beneath his open shirt pine needles had stuck to the demonic features drawn in several shades of lipstick over his chest and stomach; a long tongue descended from the pictograph's chin to the region still marginally concealed by the deranged buttons of his fly.  The same colours were smeared around his mouth, over his ears and on each side of his neck.  She stared at the strange imperviousness of his smooth features to the abuse accorded them, handing him the cigarettes.  He placed one between his lips.  “And er... don’t turn around.” he added, flagging the sound of someone struggling with their jeans and urinating in the trees behind her.  
"I still have South African techno stuck in my head."
“Sorry... alujha DJs." he sighed, unaware of the minor indiscretion.  "I'm so sorry about this... it’s all that fucking texting nowdays... it's all OMG, GTFO, LOL... every petite boum you put on gets out of hand.” William explained.  He held out his hand to her and she relented, hauling him to his feet, from which he kicked an automatic pistol beneath the legs of its faineant owner before it could attract her attention.  “B’s still here, I think... we’ll get it sorted.  Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.  I'm the housekeeper... you're the groundskeeper.” she assured him, dropping her cigarette onto the remains of the fire and walking after him to his brother’s car.  He sat down in the front seat, staring blankly at his reflection in the mirror and using his shirt to wipe the colour from his face.  “I do need to talk to you about something, though, if you’re up to it.”  
“I know it was loud, and I will make it up to you... in fact, have some time off... go crazy til Ed gets back.  I’ll get Luc and Étienne some aprons.” he sighed.  “They’ve probably got their own.”
“Mr Lamb...”  He closed his eyes at the sound of it and she smiled briefly to herself.  “I was in my room last night and... I saw something.”  There was a note of hesitancy in her voice and he looked up from making an attempt to start the car.  Someone had stowed a shopping bag stuffed with the gigantic terminal buds of two dozen marijuana plants on the back seat, filling the interior with their thick olive smell.  “I think it’s probably better if I just show you.” she concluded.

Susan helped him to his feet once more and together they traversed the lawn; the golden pheasants had been joined by the young peacock gifted by a guest and the jewelled quartet clucked contentedly by the pool where they picked winged ants from the sandstone.  She led him into the shade beside the house, walking backwards from it and peering up into the lime-green canopy to point out a limb some six metres from the ground.  

“I’d dozed off and then realised I’d forgotten to close the curtains, so I sat up, and there was someone sitting there.  The light shines into the tree, so I saw it really clearly... they were looking right at me.”  She frowned back at him, surprised to see that he required no persuasion.  He walked to the trunk while she continued.  “On that branch there... the one that comes out toward the window."

William emptied his pockets onto the ground and caught the lowest limb, swinging upward and climbing into the elm.  Susan located his feet amongst the dappled, glowing foliage.

"Right there, where you are." she called.  He sat against the trunk and saw the silvery bloom had been rubbed from the bark before him, supporting her claim.  From his position he could see directly into the garret, the paisley of her quilt and the lax drape of the clothing hanging from the bedside chair all perfectly apparent. 
“If I had to tap a pervert it would be Luc, but his victims are usually more than willing... and I don't think he was climbing anything after Cay was done.” he replied.
 “If he was the one inside with you, it wasn’t him...”
 “Are you sure?”
 “Yes... it was a woman.”

Descending, he hung for a moment and allowed his grip to slide from the bark as he digested her remark.  Though it was only faintly-limned, she did not enjoy the way his unease correlated with her own.  

“Dark hair, some sort of dress, definitely female.” she added, folding her arms.  “I don’t mean to be a princess or anything, but my rooms are private... maybe you could let people know that next time you have a... thing?  Anyway... I just wanted to tell you.”  William frowned as she lifted his black record bag from the grass.   "Um... is this yours?"  He accepted it from her, shaking the dew from it.  "You said something about me having the day off..."

He shrugged absently.
"Pas de probléme."

"I wouldn’t mind a swim later.  Let me know when everyone’s gone.” she called, pausing in the sun by the corner of the building to shed her apron and pull the pins from her hair, the prospect of a providential afternoon lighting her grin.  William murmured a distracted reply, then looked back across the lawn to Bede, who stood alone before the grove.


C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe all rights reserved do not reproduce
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I was talking to someone the other day about this site and how I thought it was A- going well and B- far busier than I ever imagined it would be, especially at such an early stage.  "That's great..." replied the Person.  "So how many followers do you have now?"  Again, I was surprised; that A- they cared, and then B- that anyone would care.  Do you?  With the notion still rolling around my head I had a quick look over a few other blogs and found that at least half had a wall of faces depicting their loyal legions.  Because I have an IBF (intrinsic bullshit filter) they had never really registered before, though it did also strike me that the like button, once so universal, seems to be dropping off into deserv'd oblivion, presumably as a result of the many schemes and abuses it has attracted.  (The like was the first thing I personally tried to efface from this site; I say try, because as you might have discovered for yourself, it's a tenacious little fucker.)

The whole idea of liking and following is deeply vexed, and yes, I know it's increasingly fashionable to be remote and mysterious and unsociallymediated but this isn't about that.  Openly dissing the whole thing will probably piss some of you off, but then I don't know... if you made it through the first paragraph you're more than likely feeling some sympathy with this bat-winged sentiment.  Don't get me wrong- I appreciate anyone who has taken the time to read my work and decided they were interested enough to come back- don't think I'm bitching about that.  I love you for it.  It's just that the prevailing terminology really should be reviled by any critical, self-respecting adult.

It's patronizing to both sides of the equation, as though writers compose for clicks and eyeballs, and as if the audience sweats in the pit, blinded by their radiant celebrity.  To the vast majority of the actively creative, this budget majesty is especially galling, given the generally low esteem in which which we are held, no matter how many people claim to respect the occupation.  Respect is a demonstrable thing, and the fact remains that we're generally not respected to the extent that our efforts can support a reasonable or even any standard of living, no matter how hard we work.  There aren't many starving plumbers and most people probably wouldn't just like and follow the person who paints their house or walks their dog.  Many consider artistic expression frivolous and treat its practitioners accordingly.  What could be more fitting a tribute to that trifling esteem than a grid of selfies and shitty icons clagging up a sidebar?

I'll never ask my readers (and I even feel bad using the possessive here, lol) to follow or like me here.  I'd much prefer you to consider or enjoy or revile or discuss.  Privately, even, because I'm so hardcore like that.  'Like' is just such a piss-weak word anyway... if they gave us an adore or a detest button, I might consider it.  If you enjoy my work and would like to see more and want to give feedback that matters, practical support is the most meaningful way you can express that.  Read the book, buy the book, tell other people.

So I'm sticking to the good old RSS feed for the peeps who like to browse and check back regularly, and I encourage you to use it yourself.  For those who aren't sure what it is (and there's no reason you should know, for all the love it gets), the RSS feed is the little white badge at the top right of the page.  You click, sign up very briefly and painlessly, an app monitors your chosen websites and one glance tells you when each one is updated.  It's discreet and grown-up and won't bother you with alerts or nag you to read anything- I hate that shit too.  But it's a great way to collate material from a number of sites that you would otherwise lose track of and/or don't want cluttering your bookmarks bar.  It's a sort of  'perhaps have a look at this when you have time'  button.
Give it a try if you haven't already.

For antiRSS-ites (and I am told you're a powerful tribe) who want to keep tabs on what's going on here, there is always Tumblr.  I really fucking dislike Tumblr but I find it's the least intrusive/tentacular way of standing on the side of the internet with a cardboard 'will blow you for attention' sign.  If I post something cool here, it usually ends up there, so if you're looking for a regular tipoff you could do worse.  If you'd like to (sigh) follow me on Tumblr, there is now a button under the RSS badge.  Usually.  It comes and goes.  I'm the Blackthorn Orphans there too so just look that up if all else fails.

drosophila, yay!  Exhibiting testes and sperm, erm ewwww.   molecularlifesciences

My MAC Ablaze and Magenta lip pencils arrived today too, the lipstick and latter from my trusty MAC pimp, Shezza, who imports the good shit from the US and distributes it amongst NZ'z cannier slap fiends.  I'd been putting off buying this lot forever and after a little windfall decided to splash out.  But enough about that.

The Magenta pencil is on the blue side of that shade and will knock some of the pink out of lipsticks like Full Fuchsia and Girl About Town if you're looking to matte them down and take them toward mauve.  It's very tenacious on the lips and will stain so consider that if you need to be rid of it in a hurry.  Ablaze is a curious shade sitting right in the junction between orange, apricot and light, warm red; I'd call it a tangerine coral but that's not very helpful, is it?  I bought it precisely because of this chromatic singularity and will use it to give a less girly look to some of the hybrid corals I like to mix up.  Ablaze would make a nice liner for a range of warm reds.  Texturally, there's no surprises with either of these pencils; they're hardish and waxy but perfectly usable, give a great discreet line and never 'grease out' into wrinkles etc.  They'll tame and contain MAC's amplified and creamsheen formula lipsticks.  I recommend them both.

A word before you hit the button- this is the risqué version.

Such a difficult song to illustrate but now I cannot now think of any other images that could accompany it, and that is surely the mark of a successful video.  Nick Knight invited Björk to record aspects of her sexuality and these are apparently the scenes veiled behind the pale gradients and alluded to in the visual rhythms.  When you know this, you can see so much and yet there is no intrusion; the shapes might speak to you in tongues, but you know all the words and understand completely.  

Just as these images have affianced the song, the piercing of human flesh seems so perfectly evocative of the brutal ecstacies of love and lust, the rapture and peril of engagement.

Why is this mutilative impulse so universally appreciated?
Do we really suffer arrows through our hearts?

And would it stop us if we did?