june 8, 2023

blog post #3

Hi sweets! Ugh okay. Most insane sleep of my life, I had - what my mum is calling - religious epiphanies in my sleep. I'm definitely going to write up a short story on it, but I'll give you a low down: this antiquated Italian bookshop, filled with sapphire and ruby-encrusted journals of leather from animals the signor working there had killed. Across from these, which he told me cost thousands and thousands of some mysterious currency, were first editions of every novel I've ever loved. Not just recent ones, but Dante's Inferno, Chaucer, Dickens, the bloody Bible was there. Of course, this isn't a novel but I'm sure you're getting the point. Anyway, yeah, the books were delightful. And the bookseller had this apprentice who looked just like a boy I used to love more than anything, who then took me to a couch at the side of the shop and showed me this book. It was horribly grotesque, a book documenting these awful...I don't know quite how to describe them. I'll just give what I suppose is the historical description. (though, as far as I am aware, I made these up.) In Greco-Roman times, emperors had their slaves and servants, tens of them, forced into these boxes, after which are filled with gold, drowning everyone inside. The gold was let out, and left are these squares of frozen gold bodies, each one teeming to escape from the glittering mass of figures. These were then buried with the emperor, as some sign of adoration, calling these "statues" Carcals. Back to my dream, I'm aghast at this macabre coffee table display. I look into the backdrop of the shop and to my fucking horror is one of the very carcals I had been reading about, and on top are these beautiful and horrifyingly large crickets. They're 3 ft in size, these crystalline bugs. And very soon two are crawling to where I'm sat, over my arms and skin, whispering with their mandibles in my ear. And the handsome apprentice, that boy I'm sure I knew, is singing to me and telling me not to touch them, to pay them no mind, to only look at him. I'm paralyzed in fear, but both the owner and him are telling me they're harmless, only curious of my presence in the shop. Abruptly, I stood up, and swinging my long white dress, I proceeded to dance with that boy around the store and the bugs and the carcals, like the store wasn't a mausoleum of words and creatures, and that boy I loved, and those poor servants trapped in that fucking tomb of gold.

Did you guys know Dudley Moore was 5'3? Ridiculous. But also, when he's leaning by the car in Arthur (1981) and tells Liza Minnelli to "get in" I wouldn't care about his height either.

love,

- t xx

Ps my stupid ex boyfriend just dropped off a get well soon card that he made, and it's upsettingly funny. How does one consistently hate a man when he displays above adequate comedy skills? Let me know in the chat room pls.