A Misunderstanding By Aria Riding After I left your house I went to a new house. I burned down that house. And the house next to it. And I burned the nine guitars and three organs and keyboards and an antique accordion and a banjo and all the instruments you used to play for me, because I was sick of when you didn't play them for me and they just stood there or hung on the walls or took up all the space I could've used to fill up with my things instead…. And I burned the record collection because I'd spent two weeks alphabetizing it and I'd probably got a couple of them out of order and you wouldn't care enough to double-check if I'd screwed up.... I burned up all the things you didn't notice I'd cleaned, so I wouldn't be resentful that you hadn't noticed.... And the three hundred dollars you'd just taken out of the bank, because you were probably going to spend it mostly on vodka and I would drink slightly less of the vodka than you would…. And I burned up all your computer stuff so you wouldn't have to worry about those fifteen years of music you'd made and just hoarded, you could just take a look at what happens when people don't do something with their work, you know, have ambition to really get it out there. I burned up your procrastination.... And I burnt the cream-colored 1970 Mercedes that had broken on the way home from you buying it for me from a Swedish guy named Malcolm and we just kept it in the yard and had a few picnics in it, and you were going to fix it so I could have a car to drive, and then you didn't fix it and it just sat and sat in the yard and this was such a waste and so I burned it up. Also I burned up the cremated remains of your aunt who had died of breast cancer, who your family had divvied up and given you a little of her and you were keeping her in an Altoids tin, and I was getting addicted to her, smoking her, and she was burnt up anyway, and is again. And I burnt up the mummified cat you found under the housebecause seriously, the way you had it hanging in a frame, it really wasn't all that symmetrical. I made sure to burn up everything any of your ex's might have given you..... I made sure to burn up all the unicorns because the unicorn thing was never going to stop otherwise. I made sure to burn up your collection of identical red suitcases, because really, what you do, I'm just stopping you from hoarding. Same thing with that collection of identical brown button-up shirts, and the Switched On Bach record, you had twelve of those, how am I supposed to alphabetize twelve of the same thing. With F: for fire. I burned down our house so we could have fun thinking of songs with the word Fire or Burn in them, but there are none, and I was going to reference every single one of them here but instead: I burnt them. I burned down our house and our bed. I burned down the house so all the songs about fire could have special meaning for you and me, but I burnt all the meanings along with the house and the songs. And I made sure we could spend a lot of time in thrift shops getting identical suitcases in a color you liked better than red. I know you didn't like red very much. I made sure to burn up all my red clothes, actually I burned up all of my clothes, every single stitch, in case maybe you thought some of it wasn't that flattering and you weren't telling me. You always said you liked me better without a bra. I burned up your clothes too because it is really superficial, how much you care about having a particular unique style. And I burned up fifteen years’ worth of journals I'd kept, notebooks I'd filled up, because I didn't want you to read them, even though I don't think you would ever read them, I could have left them all open for you on the floor and you wouldn't have peeked, but just in case you wouldn't be able to keep my family from reading them after I died, I made sure to burn them up. Because I'm not always sure you can protect me from other people getting to my secrets, so I burned up that unrealistic expectation. And I burned all the photos of my dead grandma I had loved so much, and the photos of me as a child, and the photos of happy times I may have had once, so you wouldn't be hurt because I'd loved people other than you and had happy times with people other than you. I burned up the little blue plastic bunny-face ring from a vending machine, that I'd given to my grandma and she'd worn it until the day she died, and then I got it back but I didn't want you to be hurt because I might have liked this ring just as much as any wedding ring you might have picked out. Look, I even burned up the porch where we'd put out the bowl of food for the stray kitty to eat but then the raccoons would come up on the porch with their big pink rat noses and eat all the food, and so now there isn't a porch so we don't have to chase off the raccoons so the stray kitty can have her food. The stray kitty is out in the bushes, the scorched black bushes, I burned them up too, I'm sorry I didn't burn up the stray kitty, but she wasn't really yours, and she'll be stronger now that she has to find her own food somewhere, and just deal with this and adapt. I burned down your house to help you adapt. But it was still all a misunderstanding. About the author/artist: Aria Riding is a name once used by my sister. I started using it, to change how people thought of the stories when I performed them. Then several people began to perform stories, saying they were Aria Riding. I then started using the name to help publish the stories of friends of mine who have various forms of madness, who cannot handle the horrible grind of submitting stories themselves. Aria Riding is now being used by several writers of different genders, persuasions, mental health states, and ethnic backgrounds as a solidarity project. Through this experiment, she is trying to write a more complete author. Recent publications include Gargoyle Magazine, Atticus Books, The Adirondack Review, etc. A. Riding is the author of "The Exhibitionists," a series of interconnected triggers, or stories about the unspeakable present: the things we suppress, and continue to do while denying that we do them. Riding never goes out, is never seen, but her emissaries run Psychomachia Theater, a fringe space showcasing underrepresented/innovative arts/performance/letters (Seattle) and the dissident art/performance/butoh group Danse Perdue: website: www.lostdance.com.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
Categories |