Requirements For The Making Of A Myth

requirements for the making of a myth

there must be blood. wait. start the story with a hero but it’s not clear who yet. it could be the brave one. it could be the smart one. it could be the king. enter the gods: they choose the one you don’t expect. it is the lowly, about to be raised. cue the quest, hero exit stage right and prepare for battle. in the beginning he will be weak but remember this is just the origin. magic begins to weave its way in in the form of a sword, a poem, a monster. the sun drives across the sky and in the evening there is a possibility of love. foreshadowing? in the night the visions come and so do the monsters. first battle: the hero is almost defeated until- here are the gods. they are making plans and waging wars and placing bets. hero, they are using you for their own gain but you do not know it yet. you won’t know it till the end. it is not the end yet so you trust the pretty woman who tells you what to do and which monsters you must fight. variation: the hero does not battle actual demons and instead performs tasks. or: they wage war on their own demons caused by the gods and their petty actions. next, the hero kills the first monster / rescues the first maiden / finds the first impossible item / does the first of many things. all of this before a fortnight ends and maybe there is love if the hero is lucky. the hero is happy and the myth ends well. the myth does not end. life continues on and the hero is in debt to the gods who saved their life that first time. (insert a thousand quests and wasted days in the service of someone who does not care about you). somewhere along the line, a god is angered. a god falls in love. someone steps on someone’s toes and the hero is inextricably drawn in. hero, you should know you are being used. you will not know until the end and the blood. exit hero, cloaked in darkness and a god’s spite. here comes a sword, a wall, a destiny they cannot escape. heroes are fated to kill (someday not to but instead to die) and yet, they plead “haven’t i killed enough already?” this will be the last quest and it will be the one they cannot stand. enter the blood. cue the rivers and floods and oceans of it. this is how the hero will pay for the assistance and favour of a god: with blood and with their life. leave behind sorrow and a wrongful sense of justice. leave behind gods who mistakenly frame heroes in the sky and call that an honour that makes up for their sacrifice. the only relief is that heroes will not be forgotten, even if the gods last forever. that is the point of this myth: heroes are fleeting and so are all humans. you are in service to a force greater than you. freedom is an illusion and so is this life. exit magic, wisdom and gods. end myth. blood still stains the corners of its pages.

mid-life crisis

there should be a word in between young and old for that middling feeling you have when you're not quite dead yet but you're still dying slowly. except in between isn't like a "halfway there, here's the tipping point oops now you're old" there's this whole entire section of your life that isn't young and isn't old and is something entirely different, which is why it needs a name and a word so that we can all write the address down and visit it. this is where we should live, in that strange middling in between that isn't in between at all and is instead like someone dropped the bottom out from under you and now you're falling into the dunk tank, cold and wet and shocking but you can still see clear through the water and glass to the rest of the carnival you're just not a part of it.

in light of recent events i think it’s understandable that my voice is a little shaky & that i can’t speak any louder than a whisper. scar tissue is building up in my throat layer by layer & i can feel it begin to grow. this is a reminder every time i open my mouth that burns take a long time to heal. even years from now i don’t think that i will ever stop rasping my way through explanations of my fears at night when i am alone & a list of reasons why my voice shivers when it rains & how i always sound like i am the rough-hewn edges of a dock scraping against the murky water, waiting for someone to jump off it.

SCAR TISSUE :: o.m. 5. august 2016

U.S.S.R (Ukrainian Remembrance)

i am in love with the way she says Ukraine like it’s not a place but a presence & the little trill in the back of her throat where it resides, waiting to be released. on the way home she tells me home is not a home anymore, or what it used to be; i’m not sure of the translation. she remembers as a child living somewhere that wasn’t here & how it felt to have to lose her words to find new ones. i am ashamed that i love her voice so much when for her it means she will never belong but there is nothing i can do to tell her. now blue-blonde-purple hair swings in my face as she turns the key & opens the door into a world of 33 letters, made up of people fleeing from the past. her accent stays in the air with me long after the door closes on all her words, shut in the back of my throat. i try out the sounds in my mouth to find they aren’t as strange as one would think & that maybe a presence could live inside all of us if we let it, or learned to grow to love it. inside they rejoice because 24 years ago an empire crumbled to its knees. now they celebrate to the sound of the warbling voice of time singing along to old national anthems, only it can’t remember all the words so instead it just sings freedom, freedom, freedom & hopes everyone understands.

about tuesdays

i’m working on a project and cutting my fingers open in the process. can we have a thing about tuesdays where you don’t ask me what’s wrong and i don’t tell you nothing today’s just a grey day, a tuesday and you don’t worry when i am angry for no reason and sometimes i might scream a little just a little it won’t hurt and i might be sad so sad that you won’t know what to do other than to do what you always do, which is worry and ask pointless questions? i’m just trying to make sure that i don’t hurt you when i’m like this. that you understand i am and i am not myself. can we have a thing where you don’t try to get me to make promises you know i won’t keep like the one you always say that goes now promise me that if i leave you won’t hurt yourself and promise me you won’t be dead when i come back? if you can do that i can’t promise anything more than to stop cutting up my fingers in an effort to paint the roses red because it’s still a tuesday so the best i can do is maybe i won’t kill myself in a place where you would be the one to find the body.

love her. love her. love her.

there was one time i tracked orange paint all over the room in the shape of a star.

i was painting (of course you know that) and trying to cover up the words on the outside of a lid and i painted it red first, because i thought blood covers everything

except it wouldn’t cover this and i couldn’t understand why the paint wouldn’t cover up the stupid white letters that didn’t mean anything for god’s sake who wants to read ‘SALSA’ on the top of a universe in a bottle?

so i painted the top orange instead and that covered up the words easy and i don’t know how i managed it but i got orange paint all over my foot (or at least that’s what i told my roommate) because really i was waiting for the paint to dry and i wanted to feel like i could’ve been something special.

there went an orange star i put on my foot, out of spite because everyone always said don’t get paint on you dear

and it just kept growing and growing and growing along the bottom of my foot because i had to even out this side and stretch out that point so it looked proportionate but that made the other side look too small until i had a star stretching from my heel to the ball of my foot and all the way around

i let it dry and walked around with it for an hour or two until i had to wash it off and down the bathtub

the paint gathered all around the drain and left a ring of orange that won’t go away no matter how much i scrub and i didn’t mean to tell you all this its just that i cried when i had to wipe it away

i know it’s silly but it felt daring and special and wild and it was just a stupid star that didn’t even look pretty

besides i hate the colour orange when i’m sad because it looks too happy like it’s bloody smiling at me and saying i should be happy too and i just can’t

but i didn’t hate that star because it meant something to me and it reminded me that i could be special if i tried (it reminded me of blue ink and a bathroom sink) only less existential and contemplative.

anyway i’m only telling you this because i thought someone should know just in case the water comes back up stained like a northeastern sunset drifting below the horizon or the inky black night receding to leave a morning star in its wake.