Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Learning fear
Your eyes are almost dead
can't get out of bed
And you can't sleep
You're sitting down to dress
and you're a mess
You look in the mirror
You look in your eyes
Then you realize
Everybody goes
leaving those
who fall behind
Everybody goes
as far as they can
They don't just care
They stood on the stairs
Laughing at your airs
Your mother's dead
She said
"Don't be afraid"
Your mother's dead
You're on your own
She's in her bed
Everybody goes
Leaving those
Who fall behind
Everybody goes
As far as they can
They don't just care
You're a wasted face
you're a sad-eyed lie
You're a holocaust
-Holocaust, Alex Chilton
There's one heck of a student at my new school. Very tall for a Japanese girl and skinny as they come. Her English is pretty good, but her voice reminds me of Orson Welles as Unicron in the Transformers movie: as deep as the furthest regions of Hell, plus I haven't seen her crack a smile once.
She's an undertaker, by the way. When she divulged this piece of information to me, I didn't grin like I normally would, I actually caught myself nodding.
Anyway, today the undertaker was part of a group of three high-level students who were at the mercy of my fat-headed self-eulogising titled instructor. I was in the booth behind her, her short, jet-black hair visible over the shoulder of the would be hip-hop kid that I was trying to wean off phrases like "very delicious."
With my student's head bowed over an apparently demanding workbook task, I risked a glance into the undertaker's class behind him. The somnolent drone of the twat instructor's voice seemed to fade as my eyes flickered to the back of her head. That's how it began.
It is noticeable that she always appears to move in slow motion, but I was powerless to look away as she very deliberately turned in her seat and looked directly at me, her black, dead eyes like a shark's set in her deathly pale face, radiating some awful knowledge or intention way beyond my understanding.
Instantly, I felt all warmth, all hope drain from my heart. Every instant of terror, experienced in various horror movies, condensed into the frozen crystalline paralysis of that moment: if this was real then so, too, were they. The world at the edges of my vision turned grey as I imagined that same figment of darkness winding a sheet around my unmarked body, the expression on her face not one scruple different from that she was wearing now.
She turned her attention back to her lesson, I exhaled. That was a close one.
I think I'll be taking my holy water with me tomorrow. The thought of students drinking my soul like cool-aid doesn't really appeal to me.
can't get out of bed
And you can't sleep
You're sitting down to dress
and you're a mess
You look in the mirror
You look in your eyes
Then you realize
Everybody goes
leaving those
who fall behind
Everybody goes
as far as they can
They don't just care
They stood on the stairs
Laughing at your airs
Your mother's dead
She said
"Don't be afraid"
Your mother's dead
You're on your own
She's in her bed
Everybody goes
Leaving those
Who fall behind
Everybody goes
As far as they can
They don't just care
You're a wasted face
you're a sad-eyed lie
You're a holocaust
-Holocaust, Alex Chilton
There's one heck of a student at my new school. Very tall for a Japanese girl and skinny as they come. Her English is pretty good, but her voice reminds me of Orson Welles as Unicron in the Transformers movie: as deep as the furthest regions of Hell, plus I haven't seen her crack a smile once.
She's an undertaker, by the way. When she divulged this piece of information to me, I didn't grin like I normally would, I actually caught myself nodding.
Anyway, today the undertaker was part of a group of three high-level students who were at the mercy of my fat-headed self-eulogising titled instructor. I was in the booth behind her, her short, jet-black hair visible over the shoulder of the would be hip-hop kid that I was trying to wean off phrases like "very delicious."
With my student's head bowed over an apparently demanding workbook task, I risked a glance into the undertaker's class behind him. The somnolent drone of the twat instructor's voice seemed to fade as my eyes flickered to the back of her head. That's how it began.
It is noticeable that she always appears to move in slow motion, but I was powerless to look away as she very deliberately turned in her seat and looked directly at me, her black, dead eyes like a shark's set in her deathly pale face, radiating some awful knowledge or intention way beyond my understanding.
Instantly, I felt all warmth, all hope drain from my heart. Every instant of terror, experienced in various horror movies, condensed into the frozen crystalline paralysis of that moment: if this was real then so, too, were they. The world at the edges of my vision turned grey as I imagined that same figment of darkness winding a sheet around my unmarked body, the expression on her face not one scruple different from that she was wearing now.
She turned her attention back to her lesson, I exhaled. That was a close one.
I think I'll be taking my holy water with me tomorrow. The thought of students drinking my soul like cool-aid doesn't really appeal to me.
