compressed into outer wings
archer compress night like an accordion
usher its scenery into outer wings
the lady wears her black mantilla
archer fold nightmares into paper fans
fetch fanned breezes for the mothy air
the lady day dreams.
archer lower your bow
the lady dreams leaves out of bare wood
she dreams trees for the forest where
you will have lease to shoot.
Welcome, Spring.
–The Odalsisque
odalisque in a teapot (happy new year 2!)
Happy New Year! Here on the seashore, we operate on obelisk time, and two years ago today I moved into my towering home. Happy New Year!
Last year we celebrated with fire. This year I’m just chilling in my teapot. It is very cold in the obelisk.
teapot odalisque
This year Henriette escaped from her prison (where is she where is she?), I watched the same movie over and over again, Crow became Parrot and started asking existential questions, I dreamed in sound, the phoenix sent me several flaming notes, and I redid my home page.
These are my favorite scrapbook pages from the past year:
- Ruined Valentine–My MOST VIEWED page!
- I go with my parrot to London, Paris, Bermuda…or…I would if I wanted to…
- What words do I teach my parrot-who-was-crow?
- Hello. I am an astrolisque and I travel in space.
- I receive a piece of spam and think it is a call to arms (join sexy women in their bedrooms!)
- Birds dress-up for dancing and I have to choose.
- Welcome to the winter solstice. The world will not end (yet).
- My weird dream about true love (black black bulldog).
Thank you everyone who shared my scrapbook pages with their friends…more people saw me because of you!
–The Odalisque
jacket? tie?
I showed off my party dress. So the birds are ready to dance. They’ve brought out their best.
If I could only dance with one, which would I choose?
I like that black swan brings me fetid flowers. The book could be a gift or maybe black swan intends to read to me later. I hope not. There’s nothing worse than long phrases comparing odalisques to astronomical bodies, natural phenomena, or flowers. How can you enjoy yourself when everything you do reminds someone of the moon? I’ve been to the moon, and it’s nothing to throw garlands at. Stop talking about the moon. I am The Odalisque! 
Fetid flowers or… a dead branch?
The branch is for me to hold when we dance, so I don’t catch on fire. That might be a trick, though, because Phoenix really wants me to burn. At least if I dance with Phoenix, there is a window nearby. I will need to stick my head out into that high, clear air, after a whirl in Phoenix’s flagrant embrace. 
Crow-as-parrot offers to lead me through greener pastures. Crow has a message but I’ve already opened it. Or did Crow open it first and scramble the intended meaning? Crow wears the fool’s hat. Crow, where are we going?
The starlings clothe themselves in the soft robes of nightfall. It is the hour of murmuration. Behind them, obscure. If I allow myself to be taken in their arms I will be the space between earth and sky consecrated by their hushed, joyful swarm. I will be the ever-evolving absence of thousands of birds.
Hawk, discretely, but superbly dressed, waits beneath an ordinary chandelier. The silk dress is for changing into when Hawk tires of leading.
Hawk carries a scarlet fan for me: when I want everyone to go away I will hide my face like ostrich sticking its head in the sand. Everyone knows: leave me alone.
Hawk is thoughtful in that way.
I will dance with Hawk.
Black Swan, aghast, is sputtering phrases from the book. The phrases aren’t about me or the moon! They’re all about Black Swan! Typical. Black Swan, do you remember how to call out, over the marsh, the wild, mute cry of your forebearers? If so, I will dance with you.
Fashionable birds. See how they first made their fashion fetish known here, or click the Fashion tag for that and more.
–The Odalisque
et tu, teapot?
I came to my desk to write you about my teapot. I set my teapot on the desk and sat myself at the desk and lifted my pen from the desk to place it upon my scrapbook which sits upon the desk.
Then my teapot spit-up a postcard.
At first I thought it was steam, which was a little odd, even for my teapot, as I had almost finished its now-tepid tea. But the steam unfolded like a leaf, and drifted down upon my scrapbook. It was not a leaf. It was a postcard:
I don’t want to write an ode to my teapot anymore. Summer is almost over and I haven’t gone to the shore…soon it will be too cold, which will be a great burden off my shoulders. The burden of “maybe now?” is unendurable. I’m tired of being asked where I’m going. When the grasses change and the ocean foams upon the shore like the maw of Kerberus dragged up from hell, maybe crow will stop being a parrot and the birds, wistful for longer days and safer climes, will be happy to fluff up their feathers and stay inside.
Flipping through my scrapbook, it’s evident that last summer was much nicer than this summer; last summer we had fashion shows, I sported my swim-suit and drank fizzy beverages and learned how to watch movies. This summer has been one long avoidance of crow-who-is-parrot’s persistent questioning: WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
Now my teapot, my abiding paraclete, is spewing forth postcards. SPEWING FORTH. Like the ocean spews forth the drowned and the dead.
Why, why would I want to go back there?
I want a real postcard from Henriette, soon.
–The Odalisque
join sexy women in their bedrooms
I love getting messages from you, even though I sometimes don’t understand them. This one, for instance, which Owl brought me today:
JOIN SEXY WOMEN IN THEIR BEDROOMS
Name: Jocelyn Age: 19 Turn Ons: horny gentle men I love to please and willing to do anything to satisfy and make your visit one to remember! Hey Hun I`m giving away free passes to see me naked on my webcam! All you have to do is click the link below and you can start chating with me INSTANTLY!!
JOIN SEXY WOMEN IN THEIR BEDROOMS suggests that this is a new liberation movement that supports odalisques in pursuit of their own obelisks! Come be one of us! My obelisk is even better than a bedroom! It is a living room for all that living requires! For me, that means a decadent bed, a teapot, my desk, an easel, pen, paper, glue, a glass bottle for flowers from the black swan, and a window to look out. I would love to be part of a world-wide liberation of odalisques into self-sequestration, the privacy and comfort of their own rooms!
But the message itself suggests no such solidarity. Jocelyn is only 19, and although revolutions generally start among the young, she loves to please which isn’t a desirable characteristic in a leader for social or aesthetic change. She turns on when horned men appear–satyrs, I guess. Or fauns. She must have some kind of button or switch, and it is apparently connected to a “webcam” which she reclines naked upon. Webcams must be webbed, (cane?) récamiers, as all odalisques recline on elaborate furniture.
Why does she call me Hun? I have nothing against any group who terrorized conquering Rome, both treated odalisques barbarically, but I don’t think Huns had much use for odalisques, seeing as they were nomads and we are very stationary.
Dear Jocelyn,I am always happy to hear from fellow odalisques! I imagine you reclined in your sumptuous web cam. This would be a soul-cheering image–if your letter did not make me worry about you. When love is escapism…you are trapped. It’s a common problem for us odalisques–mal-using “love” to make us feel real, to pad the emptiness we cannot face in ourselves. Will you let me advise you, as an older, if still un-wise, comrade?I know it is hard to believe now, but we all encase an emptiness which it is best not to fill–not until we can populate it wisely. Let your emptiness compel you towards a wholeness which escapes the confines of your ego. Let the emptiness fill you like air fills a balloon. Eventually, it is true, you may burst. But then–oh yes, then–you will truly be in this world!Thank you for the free pass to unlock your door (that’s what you mean by ‘click your link’, right?) and chate with you. I stopped chating when I gave up frenemies. It happens too INSTANTLY like cheap coffee or a merciful death. The world may not be white (friends) and black (enemies), but everything, blessedly, is not a shade of grey. My friends are very colorful. And they fly!“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” A wise odalisque cultivates rarity. She will be treasured, or she will be alone. Either is preferable to an easily clicked link. Lock your door!When I read the title of your message, I thought it was a rallying cry for odalisques worldwide!Just a thought.Your friend,–The OdalisquePS: I am not a Hun.
I secretly suspect that Jocelyn, is really just a vamp intent on making your visit unforgettable because you’ll NEVER ESCAPE.
If you write me, I will reply. Ask questions etc. as a comment on a post, or at:
Roman villa in Gaul sacked by the hordes of Attila the Hun, with abducted odalisque off-center and chained odalisque in foreground.
odalisques in space
Last week the owl posted my dream about outer-space: click to listen. We’ve been talking a lot about space here in the obelisk. The birds think I am too sheltered. They nag me to go to the shore. I distracted them with hats, but fashion bores birds as quickly as it does people (I’m so glad I don’t wear clothes!), so I’ve devised a new strategy…I am regaling them with tales of outer-space.
Little did the birds know of heights that are not sunny or blue! Of regions too vacuous for sheltering clouds! Of volumes so vast our sun–which could hold one million earths–is but a miniscule, ordinary prick of light! Little did they know that odalisques in ships of the imagination can zoom far beyond the flight of birds, into outer-space!
It is my favorite place to go when things get rough for me here on earth.
astrolisque
I tell the birds of strange phenomenon: impotent white giants, doomed red dwarves…
crab nebula shooting x-rays
I have not yet told them about the dangerously attractive black holes:
Black holes are one of the most intriguing and mysterious of all astrophysical phenomena. while astrophysical theory has long supported the existence of black holes, it has been hard to fathom an object that is so incredibly dense that nothing, not even light itself, can escape its grasp.
Black holes are intense and powerfully attractive. It is good astrolisque practice to steer clear of them. This can be difficult as black holes are invisible. Mere light-seconds after you feel an intense attraction towards nothingness, you find yourself spiraling towards an oppressive, inescapable doom. The savvy astrolisque must be wary:
How does one go about locating an object that can’t be directly observed?…this can be accomplished by observing the effects that a black hole has on its surroundings.
Whenever you see a celestial object moving in an odd way…beware! It is probably under the influence of an invisible black hole! This celestial object was moving fast enough to not fall in…but you may not be so lucky! Nor do you want its fate to befall you: aeons in perturbed orbit around an obliterating absence? No astrolisque desires sinister stasis!
There’s nothing an astrolisque can do about a gravitational field that overwhelms all other forces in the universe, funneling space-time into its own interminable darkness. There is nothing an astrolisque can do about astronomical facts.
But she can use astronomical facts to her advantage. Basic physics tells us that an astrolisque traveling with enough speed through the cosmos will never ever be trapped by a black hole. The astrolisque must prepare herself for space travel with a lightening quick imagination. She must craft her coat to spirit her swiftly on breezes of suggestive thought.
What happens if an astrolisque is sucked into a black hole? Time drags. The astrolisque’s bottom is stretched out of proportion to her head, at least until she reaches the black hole’s interior singularity–a volume-less place of infinite density, where time ceases and she is squashed into one dull dimension.
Beyond the singularity, results vary. One astrolisque came-to in an alternate saddle-shaped topology in which she was saddled with a mini-van, 2.5 kids, and a closet of unending despair. Another astrolisque resurfaced in an inverse universe where everything switched sign: her positives became negatives, and vice-versa, causing an crisis of morality which could only be resolved by quaffing moonshine. Another leapt into black hole after black hole, each time desperately hoping things would turn out different. He eventually became a black hole himself.
These are your average black holes. But there are super-massive black holes that are not sinisterly invisible…they emit tremendous amounts of energy and light (including radio waves, which I pick up in my sleep). They are the brightest objects in the universe.
artist rendering of a quasar, with nearby astrolisque
I’ll talk more about quasi-stellar radio sources some other time.
These tales discombobulate the birds. Their spirits are dampened, and they can’t soar carefreely through the sky. They are afraid their wings will carry them through some unseen membrane of blue, into inhospitable outer-space.
I assure them that they can’t possibly fly that high…they would soon suffocate from a lack of oxygen and fall back down to earth.
This does not comfort them.
Astronomical facts are not for everyone.
–The Odalisque
Henriette libre
A new letter from Henriette!
(Read her previous letter and my reply in bones, candy wrappers, a winnowing basket.)
Odalisque,
Henriette libre! Chávez became a bird, and I emulated him, slipping through the bars of my cage. For his corpse my guards were sent to herd the queues of mourners clogging the streets. I got my coat and walked right out, stood beneath the red portico of my prison de bellas artes. Nearby, a confused man (at the wrong museum). I smothered him with my coat, and stole his clothing. Left him naked, recumbent as an odalisque upon the threshold of the museum.
I wish I could have stayed to watch him come-to, humiliated and exposed.
Do you still measure time with grains of sand? Caracas is no desert. I will learn to blow rings from a pipe. Ceci n’est pas une pipe. It is my life, lovely halos of smoke, disintegrating.
You ask if I ever learned how to love? I try to love myself.
Here’s a photo of my new self. I mean, my disguise.
On the lam,
Henriette
Henriette was always the wilder of us two. Some cruel justice in her…smothering a man with her coat! But she escaped she escaped!
Henriette,
What kind of bird is Chávez? Maybe we have mutual friends. We could convince him to give you a visa and you could visit us here in the obelisk? I’m not sure how you’d get up but maybe you can rig something with smoke rings and your coat? I have bones here–I cooked a turkey for Thanksgiving, and kept the bones because I didn’t want to upset black swan by throwing them into the marsh. They’re in my sugar bowl. You can have them if you want.
I put your picture in my scrapbook with a collage that is not a pipe.
If you are seen, I hope you will be appreciated.
Your (treacherous-less) friend,
The Odalisque
Fig. 1 (enough) questionnante
A series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 1]
[Fig. 1 DETAIL]
[With words a beautiful, strange creature, all scales and song and shimmering fins, I bring out of the deep]
[for you to give you con ]
[The beast sings in the air then submerges. The sea folds over it.]
Fig. 3 (enough) enough
Part 3 of a series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 3: Perspective]
[for years a frayed rope tied to a timber]
[floats in the tide like a flayed eel]
[etc.]
Fig. 16 (enough) shimmer
A series this week! On the complex concept, “enough”
[click to enlarge]
[Figure 16: Variation]
[Emptiness, she thinks, is the reward of an open heart.]
Fig. 18 (enough) bleakness
A series this week! (Read intro here.)
[click to enlarge]
[Fig. 18]
[You were always welcome here, traveler]
why does the phoenix (billet 2)
Wake up. The phoenix staked another billet-doux through my pillow with a splinter of arrowwood.
It is on fire.
Wake up.
Fizzling like a sparkler.
Billets hard to hold through waking. They sizzle at the edge of dream. Wake up. They burn themselves out. Pillow ash brings intense, peripheral feelings, mis-sequenced, uncertain, numinous.
(click to read the first billet-doux)
***
BURNING DOOR. IN AND OUT AND IN
LET US BE WITH EACH OTHER
THE DAYS COUNT THEM]S[?]
STAND BESIDE
PULL CLOSE
IT IS NICE TO BURN
( OH
INTOXICATING THE LIGHT
I am the odalisque who lives in an obelisk. I converse with birds.
