Amanda Lovelie
Pass the
Mirror
I am the picture. I am the light and the camera and the particles that exist between the lens and my body. I know the value of that space. I know what happens. I know that the light and the particles in the dust and the magic twist together into a mishmash like getting a shampoo when all of the wet and soapy strands of your hair are twisted together like the hungry bodies at an orgy all fighting over their desires, and no one can see the faces of the people they know. And all of this is happening as I sit here so still and so quiet. I feel the click click click that penetrates me. It is the photographer guiding the light and guiding the dust. He is capturing me. He handles his dream catcher. I am not difficult to catch. I do not fight back. I do not try to run away. Because even if I did, he would still catch me. I am not fast enough. I don't want to escape. I like sitting here in his cage of light. I can be here forever. Because I am evolution. I am the earth, the diurnal Earth, that spins and turns and knocks the rocks about inside like socks inside a dryer. The Earth turns and changes and so do I, but the hunter catches me. And I am still. I stop growing. I stop changing. I stop aging. I am frozen. I am infinite. As long as there are eyes to see the picture, I will live forever. Is this my desire? Sometimes I question myself. I wonder. Do I want to live forever? There are times when I put one to bed and look at the others all sleeping that I feel like I am quickly fading. I am turning to dust. Returning to the Earth. Which is where I will go. But then I pass a mirror, and I see the sunset of beauty. It's a different kind of magic. Call me her majesty. Call me the queen. Call me a model because that's exactly what I am. At least for tonight.
I Am
Alive
I have seen the clouds run close to the Earth, and the Earth did flinch and cower. I have seen the sky turn colors that would dirty even the cleanest among us. What I see makes me soak in this tub so that I might purify myself from the pictures in my mind. My brain is filthy with the dirty clouds that I have seen gallop towards the horizon, trampling the dreamers and the mill-workers and the slaves of the city. I want to be above them. I want to lead them to obey me the way the bubbles in this bathtub follow my whims. They cling to me and want me. But they are soft, and they quickly disappear. Soon I can see all of me in the clear lens of the bath water. Because I have taken many baths tonight. I have felt the need to scour myself again and again. I have let myself twist like a typhoon and slip into the drain, and then I have poured myself out of the faucet again and again. Because I am in need of a baptism. Because the world outside is dark and messy tonight. And I am not a sinner. I am breathing. I am alive. Even though my mind is a cage, what's inside paces back and forth with a desire to be free. To run to the horizon. To float above the city. And in this bath of minerals and fresh clean soap I am born again. I am a mikvah. I am almost free. Almost totally spotless and perfectly fit and ripped.
Need
to be
Strong
I am the table and the chair. I am the lamp that burns so softly. I am the window shades that are pulled halfway so that the dress of the moon can fill the edges of my bedroom. I am the wind that touches me softly. I am the house at night that hums when I am alone. So rarely I am alone. This house is almost always a hive. There is always a buzz because someone needs his medicine or someone can't find his socks. And I am the one. I am the center of the atom. I watch it all revolve around me so quickly. But on a night like this I am struck by how noisy the house is even though I am alone. It's as if I can hear the house for the very first time. It is speaking to me. It is taking advantage of this intimacy, and it is telling me secrets. The house is whispering love songs to me. It is pulling me down its hallways and into its bathrooms. It wants me to open the windows wide and see the eaves and the dormers. It would have me look up at the noises that come unsettlingly from the attic. It would pull me down into the basement where the furnace howls so gruffly to itself. The house would make love to me tonight. It wants to see me naked. And I could be that for the house. I can see myself stripped and dancing down the wooden floor to the staircase and through the living room. I could be in front of the dishwasher with nothing on my body. And I could feel it vibrating as it cleans the knives and the spoons and the coffee cups in its belly. I could slide down into the basement once again. And I could fit myself into the dryer. I could let it hug me in its red hot arms. I could touch every light switch in the house the way I would like to be touched when I'm not alone. Because even though I'm naked in the house, I can't stop hearing the voices of the people who sleep in all the beds. Because they never stop talking. They never stop asking. They never stop whispering love into my left ear and then my right. And I can hold them all. My arms are strong. I have carried them all from one room to the next. And even the one who sleeps next to me is not so big that I can't lift him when he's sick or when he's needy. The house would have me be vulnerable, and I let myself be that just for tonight. Soon the hours will creep away, and once again I will need to be strong. I will be the beams and the rafters and the walls and the ceiling. I will keep the rain and the snow from dampening this family. I am the house, and they all live inside of me.
Breathe
Like Me
When I was young and going to school, I had to take a class on art. In that class we were asked to make a mask. We had to mold it from our own faces and paint it so it looked like us. And then we were told to paint or write the things we love all around the edges of our face. It was a task I never finished. I feigned illness because I didn't want to do it. I was afraid to freeze my face in any one expression. I did not want to commit words and colors to who I was or who I would one day be. I was very young, but I knew that this was not the way I wanted to spend my days. Let me learn arithmetic. I could write 100 essays. I wasn't even afraid to pull apart the molecules that were so carefully represented on the charts inside the textbook in my chemistry class. But I refused to make my face. I refused to create my face like it was a promise to the person I was at that time. And as I grew and changed and became a woman, I would never again make that sort of vow. In later years I formed the face that I wanted the way that I wanted it to be made. And I could make it and remake it and remake it again. I wouldn't paint around the edges. I wouldn't scribble words. I wouldn't line my cheeks or stuff my ears with ink that would one day be past tense. I want it to be a living work of art. I wanted to know that there would be no mask left behind to sit on a shelf where every parent could see. No. My mask would be alive. My mask would breathe like me.
The Universe
Melts
In very ancient times, sometimes a man or a woman could transmute. Their hands might be a similar size or their muscles might be able to do the same task. It wouldn't have been surprising to see a woman half pregnant standing in a field lining up a shot on a buffalo. There might be a man somewhere inside with the herbs he had grown in his own garden, cooking near a fire so the smoke would cure the children who were sick. Yes there was a time like this, but I don't live in that time. I am a woman. I like being a woman. I have the hands and the shoulders and the hips of a woman. I give birth. I don't touch a slingshot or an arrow. I am happy to travel up and down the aisles of a supermarket with a baby or two hanging from my neck. I am curved in places that make any man glad to have hands. In fact I make it difficult. I tell him that his eyes are his enemies. That the warmth he feels spinning in his stomach Is a poison or a cancer, and the tingling in his fingers is desire. I don't mind being desired. In fact I prefer it. I don't want to have hard palms. I don't want to have muscles in my back. I like to be soft where I'm supposed to be soft. And I only like to be strong enough to carry a child. This is my reality. This is the time in which I live. It is not a prescription. It is not a command. It is my embrace. It is how I hug the universe. And when I hug the universe, the universe melts. That's what happens when I hug anyone. They feel the spinning, they feel my grace, and then they feel lucky enough to take a deep breath and squeeze me just a little bit closer to them. And then they know I’m a woman even if I am not their mother or their wife.
The Cage
People with eyes look at me. I warn you. Don't look away. Because I am here to tame you. I will dominate your imagination. You will sit quietly on the steps and listen to the things I have to say. And I'm not going to speak to you with my voice. I'm going to speak to you with the tremors of my body. Because my body is going to move in ways that your eyes will find hard to resist. I am hard to resist. Because I am curves and I am strength and I am delicious. I am fingernails. I am stockings. And I will be the jailer of your mind. You are living in a cage. You are under my control, and there really is no safe word. Because I won't let you escape. I don't need your consent. When you opened your eyes, you gave me the power to be your jailer. I don't need you to call me anything. In fact I would prefer that you keep your mouth shut. I will sew it closed. And I will pull the air out of you. I will watch you suffer because there is a certain amount of distance between us. Maybe a million miles. And yet you would like to know what my perfume smells like. You would like to know what it feels like when I whisper in your ear. You would like to feel the accidental brush of my hair against your skin. But you cannot know those things. Your mind is in a cage, remember. The only thing you can know is everything I want to show you. That is all you have left. Just your two eyes. And in just a few more moments, I could close them both for you forever.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Amanda Lovelie
Artist Statement
“Scottish Gal following my dreams in the plastic world, sharing my story along the way. I’ve got a passion for plastic perfection xoxo”