Powder in all its' myriad forms was in her purse and that made every day fantastic. The soft blur of tears edging into her field of vision was quickly attacked by a tissue before returning to darkening her water line with the dull eyeliner pencil. Her face without makeup was not the face she was constructing right now. It was harsh, it was blemished, it was honest. She didn't live in a world where your sparkling personality gets you far, she lived in the real world where a pretty face and contagious laughter sold for tens of thousands in contracts and merchandise.
She hadn't put the foundation on. She forgot it in his car and she couldn't go and get it. She had to work with what she had. Powder, red lipstick, black eyeliner pencil. The fluorescent bathroom was not the ideal place to do makeup, it exaggerated her flaws. The eyelid on one side that was perhaps a fraction of a millimeter lower than the one on the right. The bluish vein that in the right light at the worst times would appear under her right eye. She knew people didn't pull out their wallets for imperfection. They wanted it hot off the presses, unreal, soft focus, laughing, and utterly perfect.
So powder went over that forked vein and the eyeliner tricks went over her eyelid's gravitational imperfection. The bathroom still smelled of antiseptic and her fingers trembled. You'd think she'd be calm after the thirteenth time, but her heart still raced, her mouth quivered a little as she dabbed some of the blackish red poultice onto her lips. There was a molasses sheen to it, a sheen and gloss that a director not only wanted but demanded.
She could already feel the warm limelight against her, the beads of sweat being edited out with camera tricks and lighting dispersion. She could sense the light refracting from her lips and contrasting with her porcelain veneers all set to dazzle the audience. She could hear the laughter of the audience warping in and out of pauses in her speech and beyond that she could smell the ozone of the universe fading around her as the director called out instruction between takes.
[[ACTION!]]She lost time.
Her head swirled as she tried to reel back through the hours since she left the restroom at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's studio and was only able to turn up burnt out memory fragments.
It was night-time now, so it had to have been hours, and she was sitting on the concrete floor of the cold archives where they keep old reels. She was surrounded by the dingy metal cases strewn about as if she had been frantically searching for something. She can see a few titles including "The House with No Doors", "Suddenly, Last Summer", and "Devil's Double'
The test projector stood ready to be used.
[[Place "The House with No Doors" in the projector.]]
[[Place "Suddenly, Last Summer" in the projector.]]
[[Place "Devil's Double" in the projector.]]
The projector clicks and hums. The picture that flickers into view is that of a couch, a lamp, a bookcase, and a window. Outside of the window is blank, it may even be another wall.
A woman is sitting on the couch with legs for days, a stylish short haircut, and with cigarette smoke obscuring her facial features but offering glimpses of perfection. Her voice calls out, "You can't get it all, you can't have it all." She almost sings it.
The camera begins to zoom in on the disappating smoke, her face coming into view.
You now see her perfect face. Fully.
"You can't have it all. What do you see?"
[[I can't see, but I can imagine different possibilities.]]
The projector clicks and hums. The picture that flickers into view is that of a woman tending to flowers in a courtyard.
She's smiling and tending to a venus fly trap. She speaks as she tends, "You know it's quite hard to feel at home any-which-place you might end up. Some places are scary because they're foreign and you're afraid of that distance from home. Other places are comfortable beyond what you're accustomed to and the muscles you work in your normal environs don't get quite as stimulated as in the new space and sport."
She looks towards the camera, "Always one must adapt. And never concede on those critical qualities that keep you in demand, that keep you in vogue. What qualities could you stand to abandon?" She takes a drag, watches, and waits.
[[I could do more and wish less.]]The projector clicks and hums and the picture that flickers into view is of a woman sitting on a park bench.
"I wanted to thank you for giving me the best day of my life - filled with cotton candy, silver bullets, and dreams a-plenty." She says chirpily into the camera. She stands up and smoothes out her apron, "You see, I may be just your normal homemaker and problem solver but I still have my flights of fancy. I still have my dreams. And I suspect that when I kick the bucket, those dreams won't up and vanish. I suspect they'll linger and steep, mature and age, even when I'm long gone."
She lifts a box of Lux Brand Soap from the park bench and holds it up smiling to the camera, "Where were you when I perished? Did you ever wonder about my dreams and what they'd become? Get the finest clean, the shiniest glow, using Lux Brand Soap, the soap of stars." She extends the soap box to the camera and turns it pouring the white flakes into the air where they linger and rise to the top, creating clouds and septic snow.
[[Reach out for the box.]]Everything about her is like smoke uncurling and unveiling different realities behind its thin gauze. Her hair swirled through innumerable stylish small haircuts. The colors shifted into myriad colors of hair. The very most unsettling part was her perfect face swirling feature by feature through all of the gentle features of different silver screen actors and actresses. The eyes were hollow, but present. Difficult to describe that hum and blur.
Do you know what color my eyes are? Look at their [[color]].
[[Is the movie still playing?]]
It is and she's watching you.
You turn to look for the way out and there are no doors where you are now.
You don't get a sense the windows will be a fruitful avenue either.
She lights up a cigarette and rises from the couch. "Honey, sink into it. You're no better than anybody else."
[[.]]She smiles like a hungry crocodile, all teeth showing, then speaks, "That's a wise choice. Less time wasted with regret, more time tasting victory. Even if that victory has its' costs, you still have the time to sweep those shards under the nearest rug, don't you?"
She walks closer and closer to the camera and although her eyes are not quite possible to make out as they scroll through different shapes and hues and pupil sizes, the one consistant mark is that they're looking directly at you.
"What do you have to hide? What didn't you do?"
She stops and takes a breath, her inhalation begins to loop. Her face tensing into a vaguely painful expression wince and relaxing, over and over and over.
[[The film burns out.]]That's not a great feeling. Images that proved you were you, that you existed at that time and place were now up in smoke, burned in the very thing that gave your form some greater relevance. The light that gives is the one that takes.
You feel as cold and empty as one of those film cannisters.
[[.]]For a moment, you feel the dusty box and the heat emanating from her fingers before the woman's face bursts into a blotch of burnt film. You could feel it as if it was your very own face. Your fingers close in grasping nothing but air and the smell of ozone lingers.
You miss what you saw, but you know it's time to put the film cannister away once and for all. It's time to stop replaying the greatest hits and to begin making them.
[[Call your agent.]]"Wolla? Wolla, dear, I need a new gig. This one is taking bits and pieces out of me. My body can't continue."
"For a little while longer? A little while longer and I'll be nothing BUT a little vile wronger... You understand don't you?
Don't you?"
You earn the tickets, you get to eat. (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.] (click: "earn")[You earn the tickets, you get to eat.]
[[.]]Oh god, get out of it.
'What?'
Stop that moping! I mean, Christ almighty, it's beautiful.'
'I'm beautiful?'
No, I mean well- yes, but only as part of a bigger ALL.
'Oh.'
Yeah you're WERrying about one part of the ALL more than the whole ALL evenly. And it's skewing your perception of time.
'Time is diff-'
No, it isn't, and I'm done with that excuse. Time is the same for you as it is for the rest of us. It's where verbs go into nouns.
'But that's variable!'
That's the point, you dingus! You have a choice. Change the verb, change the noun.
'I don't know where to begin!'
'Yeah, that's called individuality. A lack of reliance on predefined structures.'
Oh that's why things tend to go wrong!
'That's a false assumption, you're mixing your fear of the future with your rational faculties again.'
"Things tend to go how I choose to make them go."
'"Now we're getting it.
[[ -isten ou- ]] Itsenou shines a light on you.
You hear moth wings and you think you might hear a fire, but you're unsure.
You hear radium striking and the clash of something.
You hear the gusts flowing between the hairs of two eyes winking.
I told you it was beautiful. Nouns and verbs, mountains and trees, the dead and the living, the new and the now. ALL that light just shimmering. All of then and now shimmering in a cloud in the void.
Gratitude can't ever possibly cover it, but it's a gust in the right direction.If you look at her eyes, you see the Form of the Eye, shuttering through all variations of Eye. From symbolic to realistic, the saturatation and intensity, and myriad images combined to offer only a bright light suggesting at the ultimate Form. It's positive space seen as negative. You are unable to say one color, pink seems acceptable.
What else do you see?
[[I can't see, but I can imagine different possibilities.]]