things could be worse if i had a monster for a child.
At first he drank milk, almost like a normal baby. Then in his third month he grew those little pointed teeth. He’d bite me just enough to break the skin and drink my milk mixed with my blood. It made his father proud.
I’ve always been a nice girl. I’ve done what was asked of me, without complaining. I’ve sat quietly in church on Sunday morning. I’ve helped with the children and with the chores. I haven’t ever been any trouble. The very first thing I did that they didn’t like was to marry my husband, alien or monster or vampire, whatever he is. No one approved of him, even though they didn’t know he was a monster, of course. I thought about what it meant to go against my parents, then I decided if a woman gets one choice in this world it ought to be a choice of who she marries. So I did.
I have to go. I hear my baby in the house, hungry again. I’ll feed him with my blood and my anger and my fear. I’ll raise him into a true monster, a monster even his father will fear. I’ll raise him to bite the world until it bleeds, and laugh as it cries, and suck it dry.
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Good for you Vanessa! Not all that sounds like revenge is revenge, just giving the world back what it has always hypocritically offered you as it’s best. … I don’t really know why, but I too have felt so pissed off the whole day that I could easily be the monster husband and wish our baby sucked your blood and fear and anger to grow more monstrous than me, to be able to do to deeds I’m too coward to even think.
Still a little comment to the death story:
Comment by valid-i March 26, 2008 @ 1:35 pmExactly. Art is interesting as long as it can be looked as a psychological puzzle; analyzed like ones shit (stools of the brain : ), but revelation, threatening, manipulation and propaganda are not something I want to find when I enjoy art.
And what’s the difference? … I don’t really know, but you Vanessa master the difference nicely.
art of any kind is a conversation, i think. so, what i write isn’t mine, and i don’t control how it is read. since i’m not in control, when i get an idea i just try to express it as beautifully as possible, and because of the blog format i also try to be as succinct as i can and have some kind of punchline if i can think of one.
and the meaning happens not from what i impose on you as a my reader, but on the intersection between the words i wrote, what you know of me, and everything you bring to it. sometimes you might see something that i never thought to put in, and that’s just as much the meaning as what i was intending. whoever’s subconscious its coming out of, yours or mine or society’s as a whole if you see it then it’s in there.
that’s why its so easy to be a literature major, i imagine. because whatever you decide to make up is correct as long as you can justify it. but when i was younger i never did very well in lit classes because i always wanted to find the actual truth and when i was young telling me there was no one objective truth didn’t cut it.
Comment by vive42 March 26, 2008 @ 4:21 pmI have to tell you, Vanessa. This story was so disturbing to me, I didn’t even know what to say.
Comment by Mrs. B March 26, 2008 @ 4:31 pmThat’s not to criticize it. It is just an honest expression of how it made me feel!
mrs. b- it’s actually a huge compliment, in a way. art that doesn’t make you think or feel anything is pretty pointless, wouldn’t you say?
it’s funny you should say that though, because i had the idea for this story days ago and the image in my head was very disturbing to me as well, so much so i couldn’t bring myself to write it. in the end i was able to tone it way down- in the original idea the monster baby was eating the mother alive. i felt like this final version was more of a cross between horror and empowerment, rather than straight horror.
Comment by vive42 March 26, 2008 @ 4:38 pmHmmmmmmm, let’s put that monster baby out for adoption, or just out. Since you give us permission to bring our own meaning to all art (which we can’t help but do anyway, you and I both know), I would let that monster baby starve to death, giving him no blood, anger, fear. In my experience, we all have a monster baby in us, no matter who the father is, and let’s not feed it. It’s like the wolf story shared a few days ago, what you feed is what you get more of.
Comment by Che March 26, 2008 @ 6:42 pmThanks for putting the monster baby out there for the rest of us, so we can remember not to feed our monster babies.
NChe
Che
Comment by Mrs. B March 26, 2008 @ 8:20 pmGreat post.
I agree. Let’s all lose our monsters.
Dear Vanessa,
I am not quite sure were you agreeing and adding, or correcting and teaching (you are welcome to do that too) in your response to my comment … I think you were agreeing and adding : ) but anyways I feel I want to make sure I’m understood, and that I also did understand you:
I was trying to say that though I’m always figuring out your stories, they are still only art to me. ONLY ART, and I’m unable and unwilling to see any hidden real life suicidal/dying to purging/farewell letters in a form of old Tom story, which I suddenly thought others wanted me to see in it, and to turn cautious and directing with my comments.
I make my living through art; sell paintings and sculptors, mostly portraying myself … pierced, crucified, naked, eaten by – or turned into different animals and gods and objects. Conversation (as you mentioned), expressed feelings, critique, even speculations of my logic are welcome, but would be quite unpleasant and paralyzing, if my work influenced the way people treated me in my every day life; pampered, fostered or guided towards something prettier, happier and healthier. And that is something I don’t want to happen to you either with your art! However harsh or scary or sad … or pretty, the images in your stories might turn, you have the right to that inner realty of yours without people expanding their reactions (brought to them through your work) to any other areas of your life.
I’m clarifying this because I feel I might have led the other ladies think I’m trying to read your “real” reality through your stories, and I’m not.
… What then is the difference between “the real” reality, and the reality in ones art, if art is something you pull out from your guts and turn into something perceivable? In other words; why wasn’t your death story a death story we should have acted upon, though it obviously was your mind that put forth those thoughts:
You said you needed to learn there is no actual truth before you became a good writer. I would say the same thing in other words; you needed to learn that everything inside you was worthy, and you just needed to stop discriminating and controlling and squeezing your thoughts into an externally pushed idea of an “actual truth”. And that’s art; your whole, wild reality that no one besides you can outline and control, (… and here comes the difference) whereas “the real” reality is something we need to control together as a mankind, through the democratic (majority pleasing) rules.
… This same thing by the way you need to learn with your body; all of it is worthy, all of it is art! not just the limited, democratically outlined and accepted parts and shapes.
I’m not sure, if I made any sense with this comment either, but I’m just going to think you well understood me already before this confusing explanation … actually the next (anger restriction) story strongly indicates that you did : )
Have a good day.
Comment by valid-i March 27, 2008 @ 9:17 amvalid-i, definitely i was agreeing and adding. and i should have mentioned that i know my ideas on art arent anything new or interesting, i just wanted to express that once it leaves my mind it becomes yours and mrs b’s and che’s and everyone else who reads as much as it is mine.
so for some of us on some days the idea of raising a baby of anger to take revenge on the world might be freeing and empowering, and for others of us on other days it might be horrible and frightening. and its funny that i was trying to say that before i’d even seen the reactions of anyone but you and myself to this, but my own reactions were conflicted so i guess i assumed other people’s would be as well.
it’s nice not to feel angry all the time, but i think i’m someone with a tendency to see injustice and react strongly, whether its injustice towards me or towards others. and that’s not a bad thing, even if it means i’m a more angry type than some people.
Comment by vive42 March 27, 2008 @ 11:09 amValid-i….I would LOVE to see some pictures of your art! I love to see what you all do. I’m not a creative type and I genuinely value creativity in others.
I look at the works of you guys and it makes me more attuned with the fact that there are a lot more feelings in the world than seem apparent to me. I’m a checklist oriented administrative type business person. That’s how my mind works. You all “expand” me.
Comment by Mrs. B March 27, 2008 @ 2:57 pmYou are a deeply sensitive and caring person, Vive, as I think all of us responding to your art are.
Comment by Che March 27, 2008 @ 3:23 pmFor me, it helps to work on an issue of injustice. As you know, I am very active doing just that. It helps me not to get eaten by my anger. However, one of my psychiatrists did tell me I don’t hold onto anger long enough to protect myself sometimes. I’m proud of you allowing us to respond in our own subjective way to your art. Yes, once a piece of art is out there, it’s meaning to everyone seeing, reading, hearing it is subjective. If we are looking at a flower each person will see a different flower, the Native American’s taught me the concept in the book Seven Arrows.
I do think everything we do or say or create is a mirror of what’s inside us complicated creatures. Never the total picture, but a piece of it. I also believe that our responses are a mirror of what is inside each of us.
NChe
Intresting..
Comment by pinklotusflower March 29, 2008 @ 12:48 am