From Inside A Lion

painting by me, photo by shelby ursu

I am writing these poems

From inside a lion,

And it's rather dark in here.

So please excuse the handwriting

Which may not be too clear.

But this afternoon by the lion's cage

I'm afraid I got too near.

And I'm writing these lines

From inside a lion,

And it's rather dark in here. 

-Shel Silverstein

I paint from inside a lion, vomiting watercolors I don't take seriously; they splatter like jumping beans, cry like a kid who ate too many Skittles.  

 Painter Joe Sorren says  it's important to capture the atmosphere between you and your subject, the light that makes the air pink.

Study of Portrait of Painter with Brush  by Joe Sorren

I don't think I've ever done that, even with acrylics.  

Katie and I talked about our freshman years of college.   For me there was high school and sophmore year and, in between, this:

I want to delete my Facebook. Let's all do it.  Without the noise, it's an empty room; we can take off our shoes and socks and cry.  

This Song's About Being Trapped in the Snow

My brain's Arcade Firing, firing and inspiring, despite--or maybe because of--this tin-can on the side of the highway, my home, Indiana, PA.

I dyed my hair black.  Surprise!  I'm not a hipster, just a Neil Gaiman fangirl who listens to bands that sing about strip malls and kids digging tunnels in the snow.

The car was a poor, stuttering beast, a salt-eaten dog with tires spinning in place until, suddenly, it was gone.  A cartoon dust cloud lingered on the pavement.  

In Pittsburgh, there's a High Street, or at least there was--kids kept stealing the street sign and hanging it in their apartments.  I have a picture of a lily pond in my apartment, and a bottle of Gentlemen Jack on the mantle.  I don't live in Pittsburgh.  I live in Indiana, on Oakland.

I draw bone trees.

The sun is a window.

 Ever run through the forest and pretend you're a wolf?

I'm still running.

Can we ever get away from the sprawl?

Belvedere's Shaking Hands

I've never had Belvedere Vodka, but there's two bottles on my mantle, tall, opaque relics left by the French exchange student who lived here before me. The land lady says he tied air fresheners to the fan to cover the smell of what he was smoking. Threadbare, he ghosts the windows of my apartment, shedding traces of his presence, little fuck-yous that I, with parenthetical asides and (reader beware) a flurry of footnotes, arrange into a story line.

His name, reader, compatriot, was Belvedere Vodka.

Naturally he was a tortured soul, a sleepless, V-neck of an artist whose eyes saw Van Gogh's starry night but whose hands--swollen, putty mitts-- dropped spare change in grocery lines.

Upon entering his eyes, the stars looped his brain and turned his blood to plasma, which, you recall, is the fourth state of matter found only in distant galaxies, the capillaries of a hummingbird, and the smallest bud of a tree the moment before lightning strikes.

The plasma accounted for a peculiarity of Belvedere, a

shaking of the hands often passing for a tick; or, as his parents told their friends, tourettes, a neurotic disorder typical of socialist leaders, beautiful women, and great, misunderstood artists.

Mr. Vodka's parents were richer than God. They had, on more than one occasion, invited God over for a bottle of Inspiration; and, if Vodka Senior was feelingphilantrophic , a tour of The Factory. Belvedere remembered one Christmas when God, being his usual drunk self, knocked over a shelf of Campbell's soup cans that bled on the concrete. This soup, or blood, was mixed, bottled, and shipped with the rest of the Inspiration, and accounted for the production, among one artist, of some very peculiar silk screens in the summer of that year.

Upon coming to America, Belvedere made a point of eating Campbell's soup for lunch, a routine entailing the literal digestion of God.

(Here, reader, the author must deliver on the promise of parenthetical commentary. It is not my intention to offend any parish, sect, or individual who doesn't find God at the bottom of a soup can. I will say this, however; There are as many ways of coming to God as there are bottles of Inspiration --I myself find him in greeting cards-- and we shouldn't criticize Mr. Vodka for what, to me, is an expression of genuine prayer)

On the mantle above the fireplace, Belvedere kept four bottles of Inspiration. When his hands shook--and they always shook--he would unscrew

On the mantle above the fireplace, Belvedere kept four bottles of Inspiration. When his hands shook--and they always shook--he would unscrew one of the bottles and paint.

Mr. Vodka was no great talent. His perspectives were crooked and, except for a handful of boneless contortionists, impossible to achieve given the constraints of gravity. His buildings grew taller with distance and his streets vanished to both sides of the canvas simultaneously so that his cities resembled upside-down stars. His art never surpassed student-status, though it should be noted that upon seeing his painting, a four year old girl in Pennsylvania scratched her left calf and asked her father if she couldn't have some more of what he was drinking.

On Sunday afternoons, Belvedere played chess.

His favorite piece was the knight, it didn't matter which color. He liked the way his finger slid down the horse's neck. Once be began stroking the curve, he couldn't stop; the cursive c motion glazed him with a tired, hypnotic calm.

When his Inspiration ran dry, he slipped a glass knight under his pillow and pulled it out whenever his hands shook. Under the pillow next to him (he had a queen size bed) he kept the October 2008 issue of Rolling Stone and 99 cents.

Here, my poor, victimized reader, another comment. These items, as well as Katherine Hepburn's autobiography--a plain book with red borders he kept next to the ashtray—are the cancerous bones of American culture. They prop up a flickering, movie-screen skeleton that spills milk and cries for Coca-cola. To Belvedere, these items were more than skeleton, or a literary motiff; they were America itself, as real as the grocery lines and the great yelping stars that made his hands shake.

Every day he wrote a letter to Katherine Hepburn. He never got a reply. True, she had died five years ago, but this seemed very poor excuse for not replying to a letter, especially one he sent every day and that always contained the same message:

Ms. Hepburn--

You are a star.

Do your hands shake?

Love,

B. Vodka

A Terrifying Parallel

Her pores are deep and personal. On her right shoulder, a scab; sometimes she scratches herself raw.  You see the scab when she Fouettés. You see her ribs, frailty, the sad, straining eyes of an artist striving for perfection.  Then, because you  spend hours writing and rewriting (shit, all of it), because you have a scar from when you buried the Bic pen in your wrist, because you know what it's like, Christ, you know what it's like; you cry.  

This is why you go to the movies.  You want to feel.  With her performance, Natalie Portman reaches between your ribs and rips out the sleepless, eatless nights.  The parallel is terrifying.  Haunted and red-eyed, you draw perfect circles and splatter them with paint.  You write stories that you hate.   She's a dancer; you're a painter, a writer, a photographer.  You're an actor.  You're dying to get it right.  Just this once, you want to get it right.

Black Swan is a two hour film that's over in fifteen minutes.  In Requiem for a Dream, director Darren Aronofsky masters time; in Black Swan he transcends it, taking you to the place where art lives.  The score rattles your bones.  Tchaikovsky's original Ballet Suite evaporates the theater, leaving you alone with a screen deep enough to be a mirror.

On the car ride home you rest your forehead against the window, watching the film on closed eyelids.  You run to your room and turn on Tchaikovsky.  You close the door.  You write:

Black Swan is a terrifying parallel.

Forgot about the theater;

See the film again.

 

A letter to J.D. Salinger, to be read with the pages slightly bent, on the train from Rutgers to Penn Station

Mr. Salinger,

You created me.

I thought of Hemingway. I thought of Eliot, Faulkner, and, bless my heart, I thought of her, that patron saint of women going to college in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sylvia Plath. I never read her; She just seemed like someone I should think of. According to my father (a reliable source, who, no longer interested in teaching literature, drives to Pittsburgh and drinks with Jewish politicians, returning most nights to his study to write, not type, but write, what I imagine is the tired, parenthetical commentary of someone stuck looking out a window), she committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven.

Curious, I turned the dial on

our gas stove to 400 F and jammed my scalp into the wrinkling air.

It wasn't even hot. Two disappointing minutes later, I retracted my scalp. Plath, it seemed, had the luxury to dedicate an entire evening to dying, a luxury I desired, but, on my student budget, couldn't afford.

My luxury was detachment. It was a privilege especially for, but not limited to, those on student budgets. Like a plastic bag in the wind, I brushed over the pavement in an anonymous train of fence posts and carousel horses. Shuffling along, observing much, experiencing little, I bumped into Holden Caulfield. Our connection was instant. You know what they say: when a body meets a body coming through the rye...

I was a 5 year old in an 18 year old body. I watched Nickelodeon cartoons. A lot of kids smoked when they were bored. I didn't smoke, though the habit came highly recommended, and I liked to watch my classmates roll cigarettes. In the honors program I encountered boys who quoted Nietzsche but who never slept outside, and girls who, despite their Goodwill-thrifting,kept their heads in the oven. They were phony, and I was phony for thinking they were phony. Not wanting to judge, unsure of who I was, I did what any girl with a father subscribing to the Times Literary Supplement would do: I stopped eating.

I was a lot like my father. The less I ate the more I looked out my window.

It was in this rib-caged state that I read Franny and Zooey.

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid, necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless--and sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."

She was right, Franny, God she was right. I kept reading.

"You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right — God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

I started eating potatoes.

"Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again — all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and — I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense."

Then, finally, I cried.

"I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

J.D., your book changed my life. It fed me, shinned me shoes, and pushed me on stage. It saved me. I'm not a poet, only a freak user of words, but I keep writing, if only for you and for the fat lady--If only for Christ Himself.

I know you're still there, reading the December issue of The New Yorker, riding the train from Rutgers to Penn Station. I hope this letter finds you, because you always tell the truth, because you can look at beauty and not want any of it for yourself, because you saved me, because you're a slightly-balding man who deserves a letter from a slightly-starving girl.

Love,

C.C. Welsh

Resolutions for a Classy Lady

I just closed the cover on what trashionista.com calls the "face of chick lit" : Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. The book, for me, was a throw back. In high school, I went through a Jane Austen phase, a three month period where I read Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park. I also watched the BBC 1995 film adaptation of Persusasian enough times to have Wentworth's last speech engraved on my eardrums:

"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

For me, Wentworth, not Darcy, is the quintessential Austen hero. While in England I stayed in Bath, the city where Persusian takes place. Standing before a Roman townhouse was a statue of Jane herself, brunette and bonneted just as I imagined her.

Bridget Jones's Diary is undoubtably a nod in Austen's direction. It's in the spirit of Bridget, as well as in the spirit of every Austen heroine (except the annoying ones that spend 10 pages talking about ribbon), that I pen this list of resolutions to aid in my development as A Classy Lady:

will maintain ballerina posture

will refine laughter so sound less like llama

will not vandalize bathroom stalls with mantra "Live, Love, Fuck"

will cease theft from Goodwill

will take calcium supplement

will cease use of word "legit"

will buy less lattes

will buy less, in general

will fit back in size 2 skinny jeans

will get 8 hours of sleep (per night, not per week)

will write or paint every day

while writing or painting, will not open Facebook tab on Firefox

will stop talking in doorways

will stop pretending diet soda is okay

will stop making fun of hipsters

will read more Dostoyevsky

will read less James Patterson

will, at all costs, stop talking like Bob Dylan

will manicure nails

Will use Bath & Body Works products

will watch more black & white movies

will cease pursuit of men who look like Che

These I seal with a kiss.

stuttering fool

I'm an ink blot, an out-of-tune piano jarring C-sharp. Dog-earring the pages of your book, I spill coffee on your IKEA armchair. I'm a ballerina tripping over Converse. When I talk, it is always too loud. I stutter. My fingers grease your car window. That night, I squabbled Beatles lyrics in the radiator mist:

Day After day, alone on the hill

the man with the foolish grin 

is keeping perfectly still

It was your favorite album until I scratched it.  You told me a million times not to clean your records, that you would take care of it, but that didn't stop me from scrubbing the vinyl with steel wool.  Now, the song buzzes and skips.  Paul McCartney sings with a stutter; his blackbird is an angry cockatoo.  I wanted to buy you a new record, but gave the money to a man with a styrofoam cup instead.  

 The night you turned twenty-three, I was climbing a mountain of Brillo boxes. I didn't know it was your birthday, or that you were alone.  When I found out, I started to draw you a picture, but stopped when The Simpsons came on.  

I never finish anything.  My canvases are half-painted, stories half-written.  Half-empty glasses litter my bedroom, waiting to be spilled.  

 I don't apologize for missing your birthday, or offer to wipe the window of your car.  Instead, I give you half a yellow moon.  Shoelaces untied, I race you to the top of the hill, pointing as I stutter "s-s-sky!"

But nobody wants to know him,

They can see that he's just a fool,

And he never gives an answer,

But the fool on the hill,

Sees the sun going down,

And the eyes in his head,

See the world spinning 'round