by Tamara Panici

        I open the day with my elbows and step into a portrait of surrealist attitudes and complimentary tones. I sponge or blot-out specific memories involving black eyeliner, tampons, and hormones while sloughing off others that involve magnitude, fires, blanket statements, and rape. I put on the reddest lipstick I can find then I accidentally pull out three or four eyelashes with a cheap eyelash curler. I make certain parts of my face darker and certain other parts of my face much, much lighter. I take a clinical approach to color. I subdue pores and accentuate freshness. I explore the concepts of line and color theory and am transposed by my inclination to accept clean angles and shades opposite to each other on the standard color wheel. I empty myself out into a bowl known as my head then I rummage through the dirty clothes hamper and pull out a black lace bra with extra firm inserts and dainty, embroidered straps. It smells of roses or dirt or human probability. Suddenly I am overtaken by several components of game theory and at least one million statistics I am indirectly responsible for producing. The TV mentions hernia meshes, implants, surgical procedures, and settlements. I listen though I am not the targeted ear. I am forced to give myself a purpose through sensorial experience this moment and every moment. Ears are a good enough reason to listen. The TV moves on to artificially imposed narratives spliced by artificial symphonies. I am, by proxy, existential and exquisitely corporal. I attach my mouth to the atmosphere and sway like a moray eel. I dial one number and then another. I begin to chip away at a sentence when a man’s face becomes boxed in or stuck to the TV screen. I am pulled into attention with curious sounds then I am given a visual display of plumpness. On screen and off screen roundness moves regularly and dramatically and figures go between being frenzied and being perfectly still. It is expected that I assume these figures consider their overt roundness assets to assert onto the prefabricated hierarchy. I introduce my own thoughts and they rise up like balls of heat. They burn in the cave where a dead man lives, in the cave where I warm my psyche and bury myself in embers. It is true: I am fueled and alight with theories and, though I am energetic and engineered through a mixture of genetic and human-made predisposition, I float like a piece of star post-explosion. I have come to a point in the trajection of the human imposed quantum arrow where I must imagine the rings inside of an old tree—their graininess, their symbolic or scientific representation of time. Everything is a kind of manifestation of time. My bones and my hair are both time. Even my teeth and spleen are time. This occurs naturally and fools me into the belief that I am indeed one completely detached entity in a world of completely detached entities. My eyebrows and lungs are part of the perception of direction. I am on an arrow unlike any manmade arrow. I am on a man-thought arrow. I try to stay still yet I move with the concept arrow and it only goes in every direction. I slice an unpeeled carrot then I open a jar of mayo (no hydrogenated fats or oils, no trans fats) and a packet of soy sauce (reduced sodium.) I make steps to go any route and end up stuck in a perfectly imbalanced shade of equilibrium. I consume and am consumed by the world. A man on TV uses the words dip and slip in the same sentence; this is meant to convey humor but instead conveys lackluster desperation. A voice says pre-Washington days. Then a commercial comes on and demands that I invest in windows that will save energy over the course of my entire lifetime. The commercial refuses to mention that the length of any lifetime is just an idea or a gamble at best. This entices me, but not to buy the energy efficient windows. I go on to eat cubes of cheddar cheese (reduced fat) and I tuck my socks into my pants. These are symbols of my intention to evade tangible tasks. I am in a mood to feel charged though I do not make a motion to switch out my current state. I flick myself on and off. I roll on the sofa then I roll over my head. I am the most pragmatic beast in the house. I am currently the only beast