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The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

-Janet Fitch

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The Decor Bowled Me

Janet Fitch

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The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

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I Wish My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

I Could Hear The Icy Winds Of Sweden, But He Didn't Seem To Feel The Chill.

I Tried Writing Fiction As A Little Kid, But Had A Teacher Humiliate Me, So Didn't Write Again Until I Was A Senior In College.

When Most People Looked At Josie Tyrell, They Only Saw A Certain Collection Of Bones, A Selection Of Forms Filling Space. But Michael Saw Past The Mouth And The Eyes, The Architecture Of The Body, Her Fleshly Masquerade. Other Boys Were Happy Enough To Enjoy The Show, They Just Wanted To Be Entertained In The Body's Shadow Theater. But Michael Had To Come Backstage. He Went Down Into The Mines, Into The Dark, And Brought Up The Gold, Your New Self, A Better Self. But What Good Was It If He Was Just Going To Leave Her Behind?

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Falling In Love

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When I Read, I Want To Be Fully Transported To Another Place. I Want To Feel Things, Smell Things.

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Being In The Library Is So Addictive For Me That I Really Have To Exercise Self-control So I Can Get Some Writing Done At Home.

The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

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No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

To Know I Was Beautiful In His Eyes Made Me Beautiful.

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She Was Not Used To Being Cruel, But He Had Taught Her How.

Her Scruffy Innoscense To Impregnate With His Dreams. Reason Was Seductive, It Gave The Appearance Of Truth

It Was Only Natural To Want To Destroy Something You Could Never Have.

One Can Bear Anything. The Pain We Cannot Bear Will Kill Us Outright.

Without My Wounds, Who Was I? My Scars Were My Face, My Past Was My Life.

It's All I Ever Really Wanted, That Revelation. The Possibility Of Fixed Stars.

In A Perverse Way, I Was Glad For The Stitches, Glad It Would Show, That There Would Be Scars. What Was The Point In Just Being Hurt On The Inside? It Should Bloody Well Show.

I Understood Why She Did It. At That Moment I Knew Why People Tagged Graffiti On The Walls Of Neat Little Houses And Scratched The Paint On New Cars And Beat Up Well-tended Children. It Was Only Natural To Want To Destroy Something You Could Never Have.

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Dawn Tinted The Darkness Like Water Ink.

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I Felt Like An Undeveloped Photograph That He Was Printing, My Image Rising To The Surface Under His Gaze.

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The Stupid Things You Say In The Rain, That Can't Ever Be Washed Away.

I Imagined Kandinsky's Mind, Spread Out All Over The World, And Then Gathered Together. Everyone Having Only A Piece Of The Puzzle. Only In A Show Like This Could You See The Complete Picture, Stack The Pieces Up, Hold Them To The Light, See How It All Fit Together. It Made Me Hopeful, Like Someday My Life Would Make Sense Too, If I Could Just Hold All The Pieces Together At The Same Time.

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I Felt Beautiful But Also Interrupted. I Wasn't Used To Being So Complicated.

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A Cliche Is Everything You've Ever Heard Of.

Depression, Suffering And Anger Are All Part Of Being Human.

A Novel Is Like A Dream In Which Everyone Is You. They’re All Parts Of Yourself.

Her Fingers Moved Among Barnacles And Mussels, Blue-black, Sharp-edged. Neon Red Starfish Were Limp Dalis On The Rocks, Surrounded By Bouquets Of Stinging Anemones And Purple Bursts Of Spiny Sea Urchins.

Women Always Put Men First. That's How Everything Got So Screwed Up.

When You're A Little Kid, You Are Small, Your Life Is Small - And You're Terrifically Aware Of That. But When You Read, You Can Ride Arabian Horses Across The Desert, You Can Be A Dogsledder.

The Phoenix Must Burn To Emerge.

It's Their Skins I'm Peeling," She Said. "the Skins Of The Insipid Scribblers, Which I Graft To The Page, Creating Monsters Of Meaninglessness.

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I Wanted To Hear What She Was Saying. I Wanted To Smell That Burnt Midnight Again, I Wanted To Feel That Wind. It Was A Secret Wanting, Like A Song I Couldn't Stop Humming, Or Loving Someone I Could Never Have. No Matter Where I Went, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

His Voice Was Cloves And Nightingales, It Took Us To Spice Markets In The Celebs, We Drifted With Him On A Houseboat Beyond The Coral Sea. We Were Like Cobras Following A Reed Flute.

...i Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Their Smell Of Beer Or Fifteen-year-old Whiskey. Men Who Didn't Come To The Emergency Room With You, Men Who Left On Christmas Eve. Men Who Slammed The Security Gates, Who Made You Love Them And Then Changed Their Minds.

A Fish Has No Concept Of Water.

She Was Sitting Cross-legged On Her Bed In Her White Kimono, Writing In A Notebook With An Ink Pen She Dipped In A Bottle. 'never Let A Man Stay The Night,' She Told Me. 'dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.' The Night Magic Sounded Lovely. Someday I Would Have Lovers And Write A Poem After.

We Have No Home, She Told Me. I Am Your Home.

At Least If You Were Ignorant You Could Do Wat You Wanted. You Had No Idea Wat Had Been Acheived In The Past. You Were Free Instead Of Chewed At By Bleeding Impotence, Dissolved Away Like A Pearl In Acid

These People Picked You Up And Played With You And Then Left You Lying In The Rain

She Should Think About Her Own Soul, What She Was Going To Do With This Funky Tattered Pond Dank Item. Dark And Stained, A Ruined Thing.

We Read So That We Can Be Moved By A New Way Of Looking At Things.

Poppies Bleed Petals Of Sheer Excess. You And I, This Sweet Battle Ground.

Just Because A Poet Said Something Didn’t Mean It Was True, Only That It Sounded Good.

How Vast Was A Human Being's Capacity For Suffering. The Only Thing You Could Do Was Stand In Awe Of It. It Wasn't A Question Of Survival At All. It Was The Fullness Of It, How Much Could You Hold, How Much Could You Care.

What Can She Possibly Teach You, Twenty Seven Names For Tears?

Whenever She Thought She Could Not Feel More Alone, The Universe Peeled Back Another Layer Of Darkness.

I'm Always Looking For Something New And Interesting To Say. And It Can't Be Something I'm Directly Experiencing.

I Watched Her For A Long Time, Memorizing Her Shoulders, Her Long-legged Gait. This Was How Girls Left. They Packed Up Their Suitcases And Walked Away In High Heels. They Pretended They Weren't Crying, That It Wasn't The Worst Day Of Their Lives. That They Didn't Want Their Mothers To Come Running After Them, Begging Their Forgiveness, That They Wouldn't Have Gone Down On Their Knees And Thanked God If They Could Stay.

That Kind Of Tenderness Couldn't Be Permitted To Last. You Only Got A Taste, Enough To Know What Perfection Meant, And Then You Paid For It The Rest Of Your Life. Like The Guy Chained To A Rock, Who Stole Fire. The Gods Made An Eagle Eat His Liver For All Eternity. You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.

What Is Real Is Always Worth It.

History Only Existed In The Human Mind, Subject To Endless Revision. 'each Man Kills The Thing He Loves'-oscar Wilde. You Kill It Before It Kills You, But He Was Wrong. You Killed It By Accident. Thinking You Were Doing Something Else. Shattering, When All You Wanted To Do Was Keep It Safe.

The Pearls Weren't Really White, They Were A Warm Oyster Beige, With Little Knots In Between So If They Broke, You Only Lost One. I Wished My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

The Cake Had A Trick Candle That Wouldn't Go Out, So I Didn't Get My Wish. Which Was Just That It Would Always Be Like This, That My Life Could Be A Party Just For Me.

It Wasn't Awful To Be Dead. The Stillness Would Almost Be A Relief. She Wouldn't Want Pain, She Wouldn't Want To Be Wounded Or Mutilated. She Could Never Shoot Herself Or Jump Off A Building. But Being Dead Wasn't Unthinkable.

If This Was A Sandalwood Pyre She Would Have Thrown Herself In And This Paper She'd Become Would Have Caught Fire And She And Him Could Sail Away Like Two Birds.

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I Think We're Starved For A Life Of The Senses. We're In The Garage, We're In The Car, We Drive To Work, We're In A Windowless Cubicle That's Gray And Beige. In A Way, It's Funny That We Consider Ourselves An Advanced Culture, Because People Who Live In So-called Primitive Environments Still Enjoy The Richness Of The Smells, Colors, And Sounds Of Our World. We All Crave That.

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What Happened To A Dream Without A Dreamer?

She Was Such A Bad Actress. She Never Said Her Lines Rite, It Was Something Perverse In Her Nature. And Wat Was Her Line Anyway?

How Can I Shed Tears For A Man I Should Never Have Allowed To Touch Me In Any Way?

A Person Didn’t Need To Be Beautiful, They Just Needed To Be Loved. But I Couldn’t Help Wanting It. If That Was The Way I Could Be Loved, To Be Beautiful, I’d Take It

I Almost Said, You're Not Broken, You're Just Going Through Something. But I Couldn't. She Knew. There Was Something Terribly Wrong With Her, All The Way Inside. She Was Like A Big Diamond With A Dead Spot In The Middle. I Was Supposed To Breathe Life Into That Dead Spot, But It Hadn't Worked.

Now I Wish She'd Never Broken Any Of Her Rules. I Understood Why She Held To Them So Hard. Once You Broke The First One, They All Broke, One By One, Like Firecrackers Exploding In Your Face In A Parking Lot On The Fourth Of July.

Let Me Tell You A Few Things About Regret...there Is No End To It. You Cannot Find The Beginning Of The Chain That Brought Us From There To Here. Should You Regret The Whole Chain, And The Air In Between, Or Each Link Separately As If You Could Uncouple Them? Do You Regret The Beginning Which Ended So Badly, Or Just The Ending Itself?

Although She Was Giddy With Exhaustion, Sleep Was A Lover Who Refused To Be Touched.

If Evil Means To Be Self-motivated, To Be The Center Of One’s Own Universe, To Live On One’s Own Terms, Then Every Artist, Every Thinker, Every Original Mind, Is Evil.

I Took My Mother's Knife And Played Johnny Johnny Johnny On The Playhouse Floor. I Was Drunk, Stabbed Myself Every Few Throws. I Held My Hand Up And There Was Satisfaction At Seeing My Blood, The Way There Was When I Saw The Red Gouges Onmy Face That People Stared At And Turned Away. They Were Thinking I Was Beautiful, But They Were Wrong, Now They Could See How Ugly And Mutilated I Was.

A Cliché Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

She Kissed Me On The Mouth. Her Mouth Tasted Like Iced Coffee And Cardamom, And I Was Overwhelmed By The Taste, Her Hot Skin And The Smell Of Unwashed Hair. I Was Confused, But Not Unwilling. I Would Have Let Her Do Anything To Me.

How Many People Ask You To Come Share Their Life?

You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.

That Was The Thing About Words, They Were Clear And Specific-chair, Eye, Stone- But When You Talked About Feelings, Words Were Too Stiff, They Were This And Not That, They Couldn't Include All The Meanings. In Defining, They Always Left Something Out.

Whenever She Turned Her Steep Focus To Me, I Felt The Warmth That Flowers Must Feel When They Bloom Through The Snow, Under The First Concentrated Rays Of The Sun.

A Cliche Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

I Love Derrick Brown For The Surprise Of One Word Waking Up Next To Another. One Moment Tender, Funny Or Romantic, The Next, Visceral, Ironic And Relevatory-here Is The Full Chaos Of Life. An Amazing Talent.

The Night Crackled ... Everything Had Turned To Static Electricity In The Heat. I Combed My Hair To Watch The Sparks Fly From The Ends.

But I Knew One More Thing. That People W Ho Denied Who They Were Or Where They Had Been Were In The Greatest Danger.

She’s Never Where She Is,' I Said. 'she’s Only Inside Her Head.

What Was Beauty Unless You Intended To Use It, Like A Hammer, Or A Key? It Was Just Something For Other People To Use And Admire, Or Envy, Despise. To Nail Their Dreams Onto Like A Picture Hanger On A Blank Wall. And So Many Girls Saying, Use Me, Dream Me.

We Strive For Beauty And Balance, The Sensual Over The Sentimental.

We Parked In Back And Walked Down The Stairs With Their Polished Brass Railings, Past The Old-fashioned Kitchen. We Could See The Chefs Cooking. It Smelled Like Stew, Or Meat Loaf, The Way Time Should Smell, Solid And Nourishing.

My Hatred Gives Me Strength.

Take My Advice. Stay Away From All Broken People.

Once You Get Below The Floor Of Our Personal Identities, We're All Connected. Perhaps That's Why We Can Move Into Others' Lives.

Personal Identity

I Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Men Who Made You Love Them Then Changed Their Minds.

There Is No God, There Is Only What You Want.

There Is No God

...the Men Eyed Her With The Automatic Mix Of Curiosity, Lust, And Aesthetic Judgment They Always Gave Young Women, Subject To Object, The Way You'd Stare At An Animal. She Pretended Not To Notice. To Remind Them She Was A Person Was Too Much Effort. Objects Bore No Guilt.

And If There Is No God? You Act As If There Is, And It's The Same Thing.

There Is No God

Most People Write The Same Sentence Over And Over Again. The Same Number Of Words-say, 8-10, Or 10-12. The Same Sentence Structure. Try To Become Stretchy-if You Generally Write 8 Words, Throw A 20 Word Sentence In There, And A Few Three-word Shorties. If You're Generally A 20 Word Writer, Make Sure You Throw In Some Threes, Fivers And Sevens, Just To Keep The Reader From Going Crosseyed.

Appealing To The Five Senses Is The Feature That Will Always Set Writing Apart From The Visual Media. A Good Writer Will Tell Us What The World Smells Like, What The Textures Are, What The Sounds Are, What The Light Looks Like, What The Weather Is.

Never Apologize. Never Explain.

She Laughed So Easily When She Was Happy. But Also When She Was Sad.

In A Train...smash. In His Arm Her Last...breath.' He Had Loved Her. But He Hated Himself More. Such Suffering, So Much Pain. And He Thought It Made Him Hateful. As If Suffering Was Shameful, Disgusting, As If Pain Were A Crime. Who Can Judge Another Man's Suffering?

Purification In Fire. Public Cremation

A Couple Of Times, I Could Have Turned A Trick. But I Didn't Want To Start. I Knew How It Would Play. When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

Love's An Illusion. It's A Dream You Wake Up From With An Enormous Hangover And Net Credit Debt. I'd Rather Have Cash.

The Poets Are The Standard Bearers Of Language. Their Work Lives Or Dies Word By Word. When I Write And Can Hear A Clunky Sentence, I Try To Write Up To The Poetry That I Have Recited Beforehand.

Life Should Always Be Like This. ... Like Lingering Over A Good Meal.

Loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow.

I Hated Labels Anyway. People Didn't Fit In Slots--prostitute, Housewife, Saint--like Sorting The Mail. We Were So Mutable, Fluid With Fear And Desire, Ideals And Angles, Changeable As Water.

The Story Of Her Life. God Gave You Everything Just To Take It Away. Just So You Knew Exactly What You Were Missing.

As A Person With Terrible Handwriting, I Love The Computer. I've Waited All My Life For The Computer.

Many Women Get Involved With A Man That You Pretty Much Know Isn't Suitable And You're Kind Of Breaking Your Rules, But He's Attractive In Some Unknown Way. And Then He Doesn't Even Realize What A Sacrifice You're Making By Being With Him And He Dumps You!

Here, Here Is My Dark World. You Carry It For A Change. Im Out

After All The Fears, The Warnings, After All, A Woman's Mistakes Are Different From A Girl's. They Are Written By Fire On Stone. They Are A Trait And Not An Error.

I Couldn't Imagine Owning Beauty Like My Mothers. I Wouldn't Dare.

I Emitted Some Civetlike Female Stink, A Distinct Perfume Of Sexual Wanting, That He Had Followed To Find Me Here In The Dark.

I Wandered Through The Stacks, Running My Hands Along The Spines Of The Books On The Shelves, They Reminded Me Of Cultured Or Opinionated Guests At A Wonderful Party, Whispering To Each Other.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing. That Doesn't Mean My Books Are Autobiographical.

She Was A Beautiful Woman Dragging A Crippled Foot And I Was That Foot. I Was Bricks Sewn Into The Hem Of Her Clothes, I Was A Steel Dress

Don't Turn Over The Rocks If You Don't Want To See The Pale Creatures Who Live Under Them.

They Wanted The Real Mother, The Blood Mother, The Great Womb, Mother Of Fierce Compassion, A Woman Large Enough To Hold All The Pain, To Carry It Away. What We Needed Was Someone Who Bled...mother's Big Enough, Wide Enough For Us To Hide In...mother's Who Would Breathe For Us When We Could Not Breathe Anymore, Who Would Fight For Us, Who Would Kill For Us, Die For Us.

In Our Exterior Life, We Can Be Only One Person. But In Our Imagination, We Can Be Anyone, Anywhere.

Her Hatred Glittered Irresistibly. I Could See It, The Jewel, It Was Sapphire, It Was The Cold Lakes Of Norway.

What Was The Point In Such Loneliness Among People. At Least If You Were By Yourself, You Had A Good Reason To Be Lonely.

...you Know The Mistrust Of Heights Is The Mistrust Of Self, You Don't Know Whether You're Going To Jump.

I Wondered Where He Was Now Whether I Would Ever Hear Him Again. Whether Someone Would Love Him, Someday Show Him What Beauty Mean't.

Isn't It Funny.i'm Enjoying My Hatred So Much More Than I Ever Enjoyed Love. Love Is Temperamental. Tiring. It Makes Demands. Love Uses You, Changes Its Mind. But Hatred, Now, That's Something You Can Use. Sculpt. Wield. It's Hard, Or Soft, However You Need It. Love Humiliates You, But Hatred Cradles You.

She Was Starting To Think There Might Be Such A Thing As Karma - That Repetition - Maybe You Lived Through The Same Thing Over And Over Until You Stopped Caring. Maybe Eventually It Got Less Intense, Until It Was Just Nothing.

I Thought Of My Mother As Queen Christina, Cool And Sad, Eyes Trained On Some Distant Horizon. That Was Where She Belonged, In Furs And Palaces Of Rare Treasures, Fireplaces Large Enough To Roast A Reindeer, Ships Of Swedish Maple.

A Book's Flaws Make It Less Predictable.

Who Are You? The Band Sang. I Tried To Remember But I Really Couldn't Say.

She’s Not As Pretty As You,” I Said “but She’s A Simpler Girl,” My Mother Whispered.

How Right That The Body Changed Over Time, Becoming A Gallery Of Scars, A Canvas Of Experience, A Testament To Life And One's Capacity To Endure It.

As An Artist, You Can Never Get What You Want. What You Do Never Approaches What You Want It To Be.

You Were My Home, Mother. I Had No Home But You

Wasn't That The Way It Always Was? You Didn't Know, You Couldn't Tell, You Just Let It Happen... Perhaps They Didn't Know Themselves. Sometimes The Line Was Very Fine.

I Nodded. A Man's World. But What Did It Mean? That Men Whistled And Stared And Yelled Things At You, And You Had To Take It, Or You Get Raped Or Beat Up? A Man's World Meant Places Men Could Go But Not Women. It Meant They Had More Money,and Didn't Have Kids, Not The Way Women Did, To Look After Every Second. And It Meant That Women Loved Them More Than They Loved The Women, That They Could Want Something With All Their Hearts, And Then Not.

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