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Tomorrow In Review

marvelous things

Created on 2004-03-01 23:58:08 (#2383623), last updated 2006-08-04

1,074 comments received, 1,075 comments posted

Basic Account [Gift]

709 Journal Entries, 0 Tags, 37 Memories, 0 Virtual Gifts, 5 Userpics

Basic Info

Name:	the V O L C A N O

Bio

But, no, I'm never going to use the culling song again.
Never again.
But even if I did use it, I wouldn't use it for revenge.
I wouldn't use it for convenience.
I certainly wouldn't use it for sex.
No, I'd only ever use it for good.
And Henderson yells, "Streator! Did you ever call about the first-class crab lice? Did you call about the health club's butt-eating fungus? You need to pester those people at the Treeline or you'll never get anything."
And fast as a flinch, me flinching the other way down the hall, the culling song spools through my head while I grab my coat and head out the door.
But, no, I'm never going to use it. That's that. I'm just not. Ever.
-Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

Years later the artist who called himself Caliban had an art opening in a gallery. The Paintings were of monsters from the depths of hell, monsters with gaping mouths and huge bleeding hands. Sometimes Caliban set real bones and skulls into the thick smeary dark paint. Once he put an entire skeleton in. He called the skeleton Mister Bones. The paintings were huge and sold for lots of money but Caliban was miserable. He vowed he would start painting something beautiful. The trouble was, he never saw anything that he believed was truly beautiful. Until that night.
She was standing among the monsters and casting an eerie light onto the bleak canvases. In that light the monsters appeared to be transforming. They seemed to be getting smaller and weaker. Their mouths closed and their heads dropped sheepishly to their sides. No one wanted to purchase these watered-down versions of Caliban's earlier work. They left the gallery in droves until the only person left was a woman who resembled Nefertiti with blushing hair. Caliban approached her and said "What have you done to the monsters?" The woman smiled and it was like a temple full of candles, like a garden full of white flowers, like the spread of wings. At that moment Caliban knew that she was the little girl at the soda fountain in the jade-green hotel and that from then on he would never paint or love anyone else.
-Enchanted Hotel / Echo - Francesca Lia Block

"So I go storming through the apartment and I hear this groaning in our bedroom. Thank you," she said without missing a beat as I handed her the glass. "I opened the door and there they were going at it. It was as though the Discovery Channel had come to East Seventy-ninth street. I was completely taken aback."
"Yeah, I'd think catching your husband in bed with another man would be surprising," I said, trying to add to the conversation. Relax.
"Oh, who cares about that?" She said with a flip of the hand. "Everybody knows David swings both ways. What surprised me was the look of excitement on his face. I hadn't seen that look since his last prostate exam." She took another drink of her wine.
"So you kicked the hustler out?" asked Carmen.
"Oh, no. He was already paid for so I had no choice but to have a turn myself."
-The Queen of Harlem - Brian Keith Jackson

The sky was blue all through June, and if you walked along the streets of our neighborhood you could smell cut grass; you could hear the low humming of bees. School had been out for exactly one week, and my best friend Jill and I were already bored out of our minds. We were twelve, that unpredictable and dangerous age when sampling shades of lipstick and playing with dolls seem equally interesting. We both had the feeling that this summer was our last chance at something, and not knowing what it was, we started testing our boundaries. We talked back to our mothers. We streaked our hair with a caustic mixture of of peroxide and ammonia. We spoke to strangers and didn't pick up after ourselves. By the end of the month we were climbing out our bedroom windows nearly every night.
We'd meet in Jill's backyard, in the moonlight, beneath a ceiling of distant white stars. We dressed in dark colors, so not even a sleepwalker could spot us. Jill wore black shorts and a black sweatshirt; she hid her pale blond hair under a baseball cap. I always borrowed my brother's old windbreaker and threw on the same pair of black jeans. What we were doing on those midnights, beneath a crooked apple tree, was plotting our revenge. It was not simply our neighborhood we hated, but the entire adult world, which, regretfully, we were soon destined to join. Perhaps this is what made us so giddy and daring, so sure of ourselves, so intense. Ordinarily, we were good girls. We baby-sat, we handed our homework in on time, we washed our supper dishes without being asked. But that was all over now. We made a list of people we hated most: those who had insulted us, or treated us badly, or ignored us. Those who were rude or nasty or full of themselves. The names of our neighbors appeared on our list, spelled out in Jill's neat, orderly script.
Mrs. Brandon, who owned the variety store and phoned your mother if you happened to take a pack of gum and forget to pay, was number one. Then came Mr. DiPietro, who screamed at his wife so loudly you could hear every word when you walked past their open window on warm evenings. There was also Mr. Richie, who had been our fourth-grade teacher, and liked to lock you in the coat closet if you talked out of turn. When our list was complete at last, it was time to take action. We worked at midnight, the hour when every street was silent and every house dark. With our neighbors safely asleep in their beds, we were as free as a nightmare to settle wherever we wished without witness, except perhaps for prowling cats, let out until morning. We wrote with pieces of coal on Mrs. Brandons garage door. We emptied an entire container of cottage cheese into Mr. DiPietro's mailbox. When people in the neighborhood began to talk about gremlins, we bit our tongues. We winked at each other and tried not to laugh. Deep inside, we felt the true power of secrecy and revenge.
-Rose Red / Local Girls - Alice Hoffman

By lunchtime we had realized we were shipwrecked. The lines were interminable outside the seven restaurants, the cafeterias, the packed bars, and in less than three hours they all had to be closed because there was nothing left to eat or drink. The children, who for a moment seemed to be all the children in the world, started to cry at the same time, and a herd of smell began to rise from the crowd. It was a time for instinct. In all that scrambling, the only thing I could find to eat were the last two cups of vanilla ice cream in a children's shop. The waiters were putting chairs on tables as the patrons left, while I ate very slowly at the counter, seeing myself in the mirror with the last little cardboard cup and the last little cardboard spoon, and thinking about Beauty.
-Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane / Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel García Márquez

Kane grinned wryly and lit another cigaret from the end of the previous one. He knew he smoked too much. And drank - but not heavily. Drunk, he was defenseless from the horrible tides of thinking.
-Journeys End - Poul Anderson

The quills dug under his fingernails and pried them off one by one. Blood oozed and scabbed in the raw wounds. The pain was excruciating but he couldn't cry out. His mouth was filled with kerosene and his hair was on fire. If he opened his mouth the flames would choke him. A hand exploded out of the ground. The slimy fingers crawled over his neck and cheeks, then hovered near his mouth. Slowly the fingertips began to pry open his lips. He twisted his head from side to side. Sparks flew from his hair. He mustn't open his mouth! He gritted his teeth but the fingers pressed and poked his lips trying to pull his chin down. Kerosene dribbled from the corner of his mouth. A flame burned his cheek. The tip of a crusted finger slid between his lips and rubbed against his gums and teeth. Sores opened at its touch. He had to scream! But the fire would eat him. More fingers squeezed their way through his clenched lips. A thimb pressed hard against his front tooth. He heard the crackle of the roots as they snapped and pulled free. Frantically, he pushed his tongue against the tooth to hold it in place. A piece of tooth chipped off and sliced his tongue. Fingers and thumb yanked the tooth from his bleeding gums. The pain! The fingers broke off another tooth, then another. If only he opened his mouth it would be over. The agony of fire would be easier to bear than this. End it with a scream! All he had to do was open his mouth. Scream! Just open his mouth and scream! Just...
Dawber jerked awake. His mouth was open wide in a silent scream. Gently he touched his mouth. The awful images that had terrorized his sleep were gone. He lay blinking in the dim light and swallowed hard. A hint of kerosene gagged him and he shuddered. The nightmare clung to him like a shroud.
-Teacher - C. H. Sherman

If I wake he rides me like a
nightmare:
I feel my hair stand up, my body
creep:
Without light I see a blasting sight
there,
See a secret I must keep.
-A Nightmare - Christina Georgina Rossetti

You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you.
All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog.
People really need somebody they feel superior to. So stay downtrodden.
People need somebody the can send a check at Christmas. So stay poor.
"Charity" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
You're the proof of their courage. The proof they were a hero. Evidence of their success. I do this because everybody wants to save a human life with a hundred people watching.
-Choke - Chuck Palahniuk

A: The way I see it... The way I see it... I'll tell you what the antichrist is.
-Short Plays and Monologues - David Mamet

I walked over, brisk, slipped through.
Outside, it was much quieter, darker, the yellow of inside turned to the black of outside, the silhouettes of tree trunks and the metal climbing structure, and there was only one person out there, many feet away, turned to the side, moving his arms, a tall thin shadow.
And for a second I thought it was my father again. Still trying, still standing with his left leg behind him, still preparing to go running. And I wanted to head back in and close my eyes and get home and away instead of watching again as he tried, every backyard tested, the smell of burning grass on each block, the strangeness and largeness of his effort causing me physical pain, but then the man lowered his arm and the moment cleared and he became himself. A different man, younger, standing close to a mess of odd equipment.
And in another second, I recognized his shape.
The science teacher had a bubble wand made of string in his right hand, and a cigarette in his left. Leaning down, he dipped the wand into the bucket of soapy water, lifted it up, and pulled back on the string to form the bubble. It bloomed out, rainbowed and loose, jiggly, a belly of a bubble, and then while it wobbled in the air he brought up his left hand, sucked in on the cigarette, and, putting his mouth right to the open gap in the wand, released a puff of smoke inside. The smoke formed into a pearl within the curving pink and blue walls.
I tried not to move. The smoke and soap trembled together.
Attempting to keep it all balanced, he moved to seal the soap bubble around the smoke, but just at the last second his wrist twisted and the whole thing popped. The soap vanished and the pearl unraveled.
Fuck, he muttered. I smiled.
The air smelled like soap and ash; the liduid soap was the same brand I had once eaten in bar form, and so the clean smell reminded me of sex and vomit, but the dark smell of burnt paper and tobacco lit me up inside like gold; it was that familiar combination, illness and desire. I felt right at home.
-An Invisible Sign of My Own - Aimee Bender

Max stood dumbfounded, the shrillness of the little girl's cry stabbing his eardrums.
The little girl continued to sob into her mother's skirt. "It's him, mommy it's him." The mother examined Max more closely and a glint of recognition entered her eyes. She pointed at Max. "Oh my God, that really was you! You're Max Andrews from Sellevision! That WAS your penis!"
-Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs

"Goodbye, goodbye," we say at the gate, the smell of water, of sod, of sweat, small perfumes in the air. Our secrets are safe with each other. We go our separate ways.
Alone in the stadium in the last chill darkness before dawn, I drop to my hands and knees in the centre of the outfield. My palms are sodden. Water touches the skin between my spread fingers. I lower my face to the silvered grass, which, wonder of wonders, already has the ephemeral odours of baseball about it.
-The Thrill of the Grass - W. P. Kinsella

Catherine: I would give a lot to see a Goddess.
Arturo: Every woman is a goddess.
Catherine: Oh, please! Does that line actually work on the women in Cuba? Or just the tourists?
Arturo: I don't need "lines" in Cuba!
Catherine: Throw themselves at you, do they?
Arturo: There, sex is not so complicated; it's not so strange.
Catherine: The Workers' Paradise is a Lover's Paradise!
Arturo: A man and a woman want each other; they go to bed. In Cuba, fucking takes place between the sheets, not between the ears!
Catherine: "Dark eyed stellas light their fellers' panatelas!"
Arturo: Cuban women know what they want, yes!
Catherine: You, of course!
Arturo: They do not invite a man into their bedroom and then turn their back on him!
Catherine: Well, put it in your next book, why don't you? Oh, that's right, I forgot; you can't write anymore!
Arturo: SHUT UP! CALLATE CABRONA! SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
Catherine: NO! NO! NO!
Arturo: No. It's alrigt. No.
Catherine: No.
Arturo: He hurt you? Didn't he?
Catherine: Time to go.
Arturo: Edgar in the box.
Catherine: Edgar who won't stay in his fucking box.
Arturo: Catherine...
Catherine: Just GOOOOO! Please. Before I call the police.
Arturo: I don't think you will do that.
Catherine: No?
Arturo: You never did before. Did you?
Catherine: You have no idea what I'm capable of. What are you waiting for? Oh, right, I never paid you, did I? Well, what's the tariff profesor? Is there a special charge for this, on top of the yard work? For the hard work on top?
Arturo: You owe me nothing. Nothing at all.
Catherine: I'm not a fucking charity case.
Arturo: No thank you.
Catherine: A deal is a deal.
Arturo: It is my gift to you.
Catherine: Well, I can't accept that.
Arturo: Too bad for you then.
Catherine: This is stupid. For Christ's sake, you need the money! I can see that.
Arturo: I don't want your money.
Catherine: I insist!
Arturo: There is no price on this! Not on my heart! It is a miserable thing but all I have left and it is not for sale!
Catherine: I don't... I'd rather you didn't leave... like this.
Arturo: Life has many disappointments.
Catherine: Yes.
Arturo: What he... what he did to you, Catherine... you know that wasn't right.
Catherine: It crossed my mind, yes.
Arturo: You are the ghost in this room.
Catherine: One of them.
-By the Waters of Babylon - Robert Schenkkan

One afternoon I came home early from school. I made my appearance to be counted at homeroom and then I casually walked out of The Factory. It was a beautiful day and I had seven dollars. I was thinking I could go see the Amherst Cinema and see the German film that was playing there. So I decided to stop by Dickinson street to get another five dollars from my mother.
And when I opened the front door, there was Fern with her face burried between my mother's legs.
My mother was sprawled back on the sofa with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Fern's head was moving from side to side like a dog gnawing on a rawhide bone. They were both naked, my mother's blue nightgown draped over the arm of the sofa; Fern's blouse and skirt in a heap on the floor.
My mother didn't notice me at first, but Fern opened her eyes and turned her head toward the doorway, keeping her mouth on my mother. She looked right at me and for just a split second, I saw real terror.
-Running With Scissors/The Burning Bush - Augusten Burroughs

We ran to the church. My mother panted along behind with Michael in her arms. We arrived at the church just in time to see the last of the boys leaving the altar rail where the priest stood with the chalice and the host, glaring at me. Then he placed on my tongue the wafer, the body and blood of Jesus. At last, at last.
It's on my tongue. I draw it back.
It stuck.
I had God glued to the roof of my mouth. I could hear the master's voice, Don't let that host touch your teeth for if you bite God in two you'll roast in hell for eternity.
I tried to get God down with my tongue but the priest hissed at me, Stop that clucking and get back to your seat.
God was good. He melted and I swallowed him and now, at last, I was a member of the True Church, and official sinner.
When the Mass ended there they were at the door of the Church, my mother with Michael in her arms, my grandmother. They each hugged me with their bosoms. They each told me it was the happiest day of my life. Tehy each cried all over my head and after my grandmother's contribution that morning my head was a swamp.
Mam, can I go now and make the collection?
She said, After you have a little breakfast.
No, said Grandma. You're not making no collection till you've had a proper first Communion breakfast at my house. Come on.
We followed her. She banged pots and rattled pans and complained that the whole world expected her to be at their beck and call. I ate the egg, I ate the sausage, and when I reached for more sugar for my tea she slapped my hand away.
Go aisy with that sugar. Is it a millionaire you think I am? An American? Is it bedecked in glitterin' jewelry you think I am? Smothered in fancy furs?
The food churned up in my stomach. I gagged. I ran to her backyard and threw it all up. Out she came.
Look at what he did. Thrun up his First communion breakfast. Thrun up the body and blood Jesus. I have God in me backyard.
-Angelas Ashes - Frank McCourt

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