At The House of the Convalescent Muses
Afternoon-
We draw straws on the music. What choice to make on a day we might be killed for making repairs.
It could come any day, and if it does we'll just start over somewhere new.
Each of our selves ships a welcome regenerator.
The music turns out to be two-tone, decent. A whinny singer over strings without category.
A thing harnessed at the fingertip-cum-spindle needle of the goddess of lost musics.
At the end of her other arm a turntable, a vinyl record spinning out the repetitions echoed by her upspun victrola horn of hair.
It is a song we'll listen to on repeat to gage the amount of time spent in the lock.
The song reminds me of a young woman in a car on a hot day. The car is parked in the woods and one of its doors are open. She sweats thru her sundress which sticks to her skin and to the green upholstery. She sweats for the heat, but also for lust.
It's thoughts like these that make work go faster, or seem to. After all, it's not me alone on the job.
Evening-
After a time, we are in the greenhouse. There have been many rotations of the song, which make a day, and still it passes thru my head. I have almost all the lyrics memorized, and could sing it, start to finish. Just have to remember the first line. The first word.
They tell me I'm not a bad singer either. When we don't have music, one of us is elected to stay behind and run the watch. That person has to sing, too. Or play a kazoo, or read to us.
Marking time is the important thing. One of us was poisoned once, because of bad time keeping. It was as if she'd been out in the sun for days. Only once.
We take our meals in the greenhouse at the long bench. Tonight marks the end of a lot of work and we are very happy to have a ceiling of stars. The high curved windows are tinted with a twinge of blue and all stars light filtering down twinkle a precious indigo. High and bright lights accompany the food, which has come with beer, and is greasy. We must be growing firmer if the fare is like this.
I am getting full, but have one more piece of the meat, crispy and still warm. The beer causes vapor in the throat and the music of belches works a digestive symphony into the thudded air of the massive greenhouse.
The greenhouse tender, who is herself a Lily, always moving like a bright white flower on a long healthy stalk, fills our glasses. Fills them again.
She is a nurturer. Her hands dark and veined as bulbs deep in the ground.
Lily laughs with us, very pleased. She had chosen most of us, after all.
I received the invitation some time ago. It was a cryptic trust. But one immediately engaging. I know I belong because in this, the others feel the same as me.
Once, in the old life, we were painted nipples at the mirror bar.
Now someone is spending the first night of the rest of their lives dancing into and out of and into again, a slinky v-cut dress. Soft pink dye-melted to soft blue at the bottom where it swishes when she walks.
Gold the color of the chains across her shoulders and the chains across her toes.
God doesn't play dice—god IS dice—the gleam and glimmer of every lip-shined decision that doubled her steps alive over a black polished stage. Her smiling eyes mirrorballs casting tips way beyond amateur night.
Hours on the floor—not a minute older.
But there is no need to not be good, as we naturally are. Where once we ran ragged and craved white things—absences, cotton soft but strong as rock—now we know what we can truly be, and the message spills exquisitely like strawberry syrup over our chocolate hearts. We are no longer each crushingly wasted pieces of girl-glint rollerskating down, down a terrible tilt, our wheels disintegrating from under us—down into the drain of no art.
Now we are rightful owners of beauty at the speed of dream. Undiagrammed panoramas of love. When best executed, we are binary intuitions arrangements of psychological furniture suited to sex. The makers and reconstructors and rehabilitators who share it. We are in the picture. The visions fissiparous at the edges of joy. Working to repair the rips in the ship of light, proud as life.
Late-
From here, we draw straws again for who will use the dream machine—the one elected to keep the 'lights' on. Then we retire to the cozy magnificence of the parlour.
It is deep night, and if you were able to see clearly from the parlour's single wide window to the lawn and garden and grounds, you'd see also the pool- the spinning oval whence muses are cast. Born forth on occasion, as each of us had once been, now called back to account for experience. Splashing repeaters. Some have even stayed behind to die here. Their choice. Remaining fixed and silent as sculptures across the lawn before the horizonless woods.
Though each day be different, here and now is our favorite time. Cradled in the warmth and majesty of the parlour.
Deep sanguine, alizarine walls invite a womb. Gold laces many edges—further beveling the vintage veneers.
Oily cremes, pink and orange also swoon the room into existence among the lush accouterments of a fireplace, a huge fish tank alive with bright wounds of red fish in many sizes and shapes.
A massive landscape painting, almost like a tapestry, of a scene of idyllic conquest. Close and robust are the overstuffed armchairs and ottomans, and the fantastic scroll under our feet—a lamb-soft oriental rug.
Here, the parlour mistress plays the lyre. Her harp songs stirring the fish into swaying dance, and the fire to sparkle its stories from pure copper to flat patina.
The design in the carpet swims to life under each of us. Our musing settles restfully, like a dog's. And thus now we are- beautiful dogs with smart coats and artful eyes. All our soft ears caressed again by familiar music.
We are a maidenhood serene and powerful. Assigned to watch as one lucky choice is assigned an eternal dream, which is a brand-new desire in the living world. She is transferred as the castle becomes her—she, the aesthete euphoric. Feminized augur to a destination of culture.
At heaven's penumbra, mermaids are ejected along the mirrored pool.
Dawn-
We awaken re-transformed among the generous stares of the statues, not remembering our night duty. Naked, impishly curious, delightfully refreshed.
The garden calls us to the fruit that instantly warms us. The sun appears to crescendo the far hill precisely as we leap into the clear deep pool, cleansing all evenings sweat and morning dews.
With the crucible's blessing, light has swallowed the lucky elected- last night's dreamer.
Saints of the air fly down to dress us, and carry us to work. They give us the straws. We will have to produce the music from what was found and picked in the night before. Excavations of bayed tunes under the chandelier moon, back when we were hounds. Hunting with teeth for poems and strength and true love. Rehearsing for tomorrow's poem. Only too glad to howl for our next turn at being repaired.