VERTIGO

Today I have several thoughts. I choose the first of these thoughts to be my body and lay myself on the couch in front of an old movie (that’s what I was thinking about). I just lost the scene.

It’s the falling that counts. Today I put myself together with an old movie. In it, innocent bystanders take note of varied body positions and vocal exhibitions of a man falling. Have I put myself into that movie? If so, there is a scene where I fall into several thoughts at once. I choose the second of these thoughts to be my body. I give my body a name, stand it upright and kiss it all over, circling its outer perimeter. Count the spasms there with my tongue two at a time and swallow them whole. I am now drunk on my spasms, self-inflicted, put back together.

I push my body to determine its will to return to me, instead I fall apart all over again, three-fold this time. My body, along with its name, drops further down, back to where I have been laying in front of this old movie. Have I put that movie into myself’? If so, how? If so, I return to it. It’s the falling that counts and I keep feeling pockets.

Today I fell apart into several intricately shaped game pieces, but don’t recall doing so until now. I dropped them into my pockets. Now I lay, feeling these pieces in my pockets. You are in them too. You are the muscle there. You kiss these pieces of me, slide them around your tongue’s perimeter in a game. You set it up that way so we both end up winning. I feel pockets, I return to them all over again. You save us with your standard argument, your communicative techniques. You kiss, you drop.

Today I lay on the couch devouring several thoughts at once. I drop myself into a glass of wine. Tongue, name, and all. Fall into it, return to it. I watch an old movie regarding the memory part of the brain. That’s the whole plot of it.

CALENDAR

Now it is Wednesday, day of broken glass in the kitchen. I get home and read about a birthday, play silhouettes and why not? A first impression is a swivel chair of embarrassing moments. Anything will do. Of course there is a small table between days, I put it there and explained penetration to you. Curved, about to break down like a boy rubbing his eyes with his fists. I am one of them.

 

I smoke and drink and this is Sunday: “Remind me again, there are how many muscles in the mouth’?” I think of something small enough to hide inside a gun.

Next week there will be a note for me. I will be standing eager in the front door like a twin about to fall. I’ll be stuck in this and want to touch it, feeling, in all actuality, four days at once penetrating my body. Hard, but totally at ease with it.

MAN (LIVING IS LESS THAN FABRIC)

There’s a thing called softness
and it lasts the rest of your life.
She has it — her radical lips spilling over
like pansies on ledges.
When she kisses, pale window panes
can’t keep my heart still —
feeling all that is given one piece at a time.
I sew these pieces together, quilt them
in front of mirrors
(she’s pansy kissing my buckets).
In front of mirrors to study the affect of her gifts
upon my face: expressions.
Her gifts, softer than air, and petals threaded together.
“Give. Give to me,” I say, looking back.
And she’s there, behind me, studying in-coming clouds −
curtains to lend privacy.
Give. Give.
“Living is less than fabric,” she says,
“a little more than ledges put together two by two.”
Brushed, soft lips spilling over me.
Softness is the skill of making others feel all that comes and goes

piece by piece, all that weaves in and out of the eye.
Forever.

INTRODUCTION TO OPENINGS

by David Welper (June 2007)

During the past few years, I have become more and more interested in movies.  I am drawn to the idea that a single person sitting on his or her couch and watching a movie alone in the dark is a very intimate relationship.  I expanded on this idea. 

As a person watches a movie, he can “lose” himself in it, become part of it.  Just as equally so, he can let the movie “lose” itself in himself.  In other words, the movie can become part of the viewer’s own life.  He carries characters with him for the rest of his life, for he has seen them and they are part of his memory forever.  This direct “one on one” relationship with a movie is one of the main concepts of my book and is the primary driving force behind part two of the book.

I then thought about the cliché Hollywood-ness of Hollywood.  The glamour, the riches, the beautiful people, our obsession with our favorite stars.  The voyeurism of it all.  As if we not only want characters to be part of our lives, but we want the actors to be part of our lives as well.  We want escape from our lives.  We look toward Hollywood for the solution.  Hollywood cannot have its Hollywood-ness without people wearing certain masks or putting on a show when they’re not even in a show.  Their lives are the show and the fans go crazy over it.  We want out of our lives and into their lives.  Interesting that even though the famous are real people, they are still just characters...no matter how real they are.  This sums up the central idea of part one.

The most “personal” part of the book is part three.  Here the main idea is that of the viewer coming full circle back to himself, pulling in all of the concepts of the book and interpreting it for himself.  Making sense of it.  There is Hollywood and it is “out there” somewhere.  There is the viewer’s personal environment of his own house/home.  And there is the viewer as Person (not viewer as Viewer…big difference here).

Finally, there are several sub-concepts throughout the book that sort of tie it all together: Relations (physical, emotional, creative and intellectual), (mis)communication, (mis)interpretation, time and memory, gender, obsession, biopsychosocial effects of media and technology, creation (of houses/homes), conception (of motion pictures), and construction (of life). 

This book has gone through a few different titles (I’m not the best at titling my works).  I finally decided on Openings because I feel there are many functions of this word when describing the three main themes of the book.  For example: opening act, opening scene, my door’s always open, an open relationship, open wound, open mind, etc, etc and so on and so on.

AMERICAN MOVIES

for Dulce on July 1, 2004

There will be something great inside you, but for now there’s nothing sadder than a crush that pulls back slowly or an ambulance whipping by from behind. Which one of you is in a dying situation right now?

You might find ways to get through crying scenes. A new tattoo, a foreign mixed drink on the rocks to prove life is one continuous long shot of possibilities, having certain body parts pierced.

When I’m at a party complete with gowns or at home with peanut butter ice cream, I don’t try to explain fashion. Nor do I completely overlook it either. I don’t analyze the glamorous act of smiling once in a while.

Whichever comes first. I will be a gentleman in a slimming suit taking you out to a movie where in God we trust, all knocked out elegantly by special effects twenty minutes at a time.

TOURIST

In a postcard there are children, double-sided with heat on their backs and lyrics chiseled into their bodies. All of them New Mexico backup singers spread out as if open pottery means open fire.

I imagine them chiseling into each other, communicating one by one in line. Then rain filling in their bodies. This is music, I tell myself, and imagine them speechless. I fold back repeatedly and address them to you: in Paris. An outward note like in that photo of the Rio Grande years ago. What other spaces are large enough for a man to lean over?

There is a foot cut off at the edge of this postcard. I imagine what is engraved there. Something to the extent of: I have learned to love this. I send this to you.