~...amuse gueule~*~amuse ghoul...~

[print out posted on Sasha's door]
Every human heart is human.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[...and a little below that]
We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.
~Ayn Rand

Can't sleep. Throat hurts every time I try. Can't stomach much either. Must've been something I met. Tried working on the thesis last night--wound up breaking keyboard against the wall. Damn-damn-damn. (MN: apologize to neighbor.) "Borrowed" keyboard from library. (Left I.O.U. check.)

Be Kind to Humankind Week? Cute. You, fuckers.

Art show's this Friday.


( what I'm submitting )


( what I'm debating )

( {delivered to the Library office to...Jack} )

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative...

That said, I tip my hat to the Master of Mad Ends and Long Adjectives: Thank you for making my childhood that much stranger. Speaking of horror, I have to A) finish the show paintings this week or admit defeat and B) start pounding my research into a palatable thesis for the Headmaster. Sure, it'd be nice if that research was something more than polluted hearsay and recycled biology notes, but--

Also, both Dr. Quinn and Kostya called last weekend. It's becoming a cozy little tradition, really, them calling and me not answering and all of us pretending Halcyon was my personal decision. (It was a choice, there’s a difference.) I warned Kostya that if Josiah calls I’d put my cellphone in the microwave. Tori, though…her, I miss talking with.

Sometimes this feels so much harder than I thought it would.


[taped outside Sasha's door]

( P.O.L.A.R.O.I.D.s )

( PRIVATE: Excerpt from e-mail to Dr. Gideon Quinn )

In honor of Foot Health Month, I am going to...

...go find the hardware store. (It's a dobe thing.)

Here's hoping they lied about the rain the damn, damn, DAMN rain..

Here’s an offer for the bored and weird and perpetually underpaid:

The Cooking Club Co is staging a little gastronomic enterprise in town. We need some able bodies to help spread the word—and hang some posters.

Person who hangs a poster in the most creative place gets fifty bucks or five pounds of premium chocolate/coffee.

(And before any “genius” rises in inspiration, let me make clear that sticking a poster to any part of anybody’s anatomy—your own included—doesn’t count as creative. Respect your body; use your brain.)

( Copies of the posters can be found outside the Zephir House entrance )

( Email: to Ita )

[a printed copy is also taped on Sasha's door]

---

When the Vegetarian Kisses the Carnivore
by DeAnne Lyn Smith

She feels like a cheat, sneaking
headphones into the opera,
whiskey into the synagogue.

Blood urges up to the swirls
of her ears and if some
bone pure part of her pretends

her tongue grilled against her lover’s
is not a gamy thrill, the pink
blush begs otherwise.

She closes her eyes, lets
the dim taste of steak knives
bleed into her mouth the way

beets color water.
Of course she can differentiate
between tendon and root,

which is not to say she hasn’t
heeled down on midnight
cockroaches or clapped mosquitoes

troubling the air above her lover’s spine.
When the vegetarian kisses the carnivore,
her mind’s caged statistics

go wild, pecking and scratching
at the wire, shedding feathers
under fluorescent lights.

Her thoughts are peppered with free-
range footprints of all shapes and sizes:
cloven, three-toed, five.

She learns convictions can bend
like cartilage. She’s learning love is,
if not unprincipled,

at least undisciplined,
a chef wiping spatulas on his sleeve,
licking his finger, dipping it back.

---

Good God, but I'm starving lately.

As the decades go by, a painter's life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete. James Elkins

On a similar note: I need to restock my art supplies. The exhibition's rescheduling leaves less elbow room than comfortable. But. C'est la vie. I'll just have to contact my collaborator earlier than originally planned.


[private, STUDENTS only]
Any psychics/witches/mental-magics-miscellaneous who know 1) CPR and 2) how to keep their trap shut, and are interested in scoring an easy hunk of cash, contact me.
[/]

Steel must seek steel,
or hate make out of joy
a whet-stone for a sword. -Hilda Doolittle

How does one go about making a sincere point without overexposing its intentions? (Maybe Josiah was right: nobody does.) Either way, I hate writer's block and need to stab something.

Piste, pronto.

The matter should be official by the week's end, but:

Early Morning: Science: Biology
Mid Morning: Abstract Sciences – Science behind Magic
Late Morning: Art: Painting
Mid Afternoon: Psychology
Late Afternoon: Philosophy
Early Night: Astronomy

All places are distant from heaven alike, and so on, so on. I'm sure to find a new use for those night vision binoculars eventually.

Speaking of nocturnal insights, can anyone tell me anything interesting about the current Supernatural Feeding instructor? (Particularly concerning what he offers in regards to the infamous liquid diet?)

Also, has anybody ever met our Headmaster?

Rumor claims there was pool in Heaven. With Heaven gone...is the game extinct as well?

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

A possible flashback concerning a possible occurrence in the thoroughly impossible lives of some pretty odd people. Emphasis on possible and impossible oh boy is somebody going to whip my a$$ for this malarkey.

Characters: Sasha, Mircea/"Jack" with mentions of the fact that Cassandra had a really lousy childhood.
Lyrics: © Tory Cassis
Warning: NOT CANON! Unless/until the owner(s) of mentioned character(s) say(s) otherwise.
Summary: Past meets prescience…and doesn’t like it.

( Leaning on the Stair )

I'm achy, I'm dizzy, and there is a suspicious amount of woolly lint in my pockets.

Emergency breakfast, STAT.

Mostly apples my ass, you snaggled-toothed hag!

My guide is a vampire.

I didn’t expect that.


[message to Dr. Quinn]

My guide is a vampire. Why the hell did you send me here?

( I trust everyone. I just don't trust the devil inside them. ~Troy Kennedy-Martin )

( [message from Kostya on Sasha’s private cell] )

I lost a friend last night.

( of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry flowering above sister grass-daisies' pink tiny bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs— )

It’s a bit late in mentioning, but: I have a new guide!

...though there seems to be an epidemic of that lately. Still, my joy is undiminished. The last candidate was pleasant to look at, but jittery and vague (or so the rumors preached.) This one makes scrumptious rugelach and seems to be Russian, both excellent points in her favor. The downside to this development, of course, is loosing the chance to consult with someone of similar kind—but it was very good rugelach. As Kostya would say: Нет худа без добра.*

Finally, things are looking up.


[*There's no bad without the good.]