There is this Joyce Carol Oates story called “The Boyfriend.” Have you read it? Here’s the first few lines:
She hadn’t made any mistakes, at least any serious mistakes, in quite a while. So she’d become complacent.
Her name was Miriam, she was thirty-six years old, tall, long-legged, good-looking, with a pale smooth freckled skin and honey-brown eyes set sly and slanted in her face, as if in irony.
Eerie, huh? Sound like anyone you know? I believe that in six more years, I will be this woman. I lifted today’s haiku shamelessly from this story, figuring that if anyone recognizes the quote, if anyone responds to me and says, “Miriam?” that I will then have found my soulmate. Or something
Here it is, totally plagerized:
Haiku 6
Tall and long-legged
eyes set sly and slanted, as
if in irony.
I missed a day in the Haiku Project, which kind of throws my plan, a little bit, because the whole thing was based in building something consistently throughout the week. But, I find I’m divesting from it. I’m restless. I’ve grown bored of myself and my games and my projects. I think that I am coming a little bit unglued. It’s unsettling and familiar and sort of like comfort food, in that I know it’s not good for me to follow my dark knotted path into the depths of my crazy, but it sounds so lovely, like a vacation, to be there. Temporary fits of semi-psychotic instability are the macaroni and cheese of my emotional life.
There are other stories by creepy dark writers about women named Miriam. It’s a theme, you could say- the “Crazy Miriam” story that marks every reclusive and brilliant writer’s descent into madness. Joy Williams had a Crazy Miriam story about a woman (named Miriam) whose husband (who she hated) was paralyzed in a hunting accident, and so she fell in love with a taxidermy lamp made out of buck’s legs bound together. She took that damn lamp everywhere with her.
That just as easily could be me in a few years, except for the part about the husband, I think.
Anyway. There’s a long weekend coming up, which means that whatever structure and schedule is keeping me accountable to my remaining shreds of social acceptability will be soon abandoned. If you find me wandering naked and mumbling by the freeway with a taxidermy lamp sometime on Sunday night (HOW FUN!) don’t ever say I didn’t warn you…
I think that everyone should go back and read my Frankenstein blog again. It’s the only thing that makes me happy.
-M
May 22, 2008 at 5:06 am
I think you’re perfectly sane and healthy, but still delightfully quirky with personality to spare. That’s what I think. Stop being so damn hard on yourself!
May 22, 2008 at 4:57 pm
macaroni and cheese is overrated. it’s not actually that good for you, i’ve found. tempting it is, though, i know. can you eat it for just one weekend without stocking your pantry with it? that is my recommendation. oh yeah, and no taxidermy lamp, please. call me.