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AishuuToday's Lesson Is Topography
Published: 2004-09-30 05:53:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 38782; Favourites: 269; Downloads: 1915
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Description Hey, tonight’s lecture is on topography. Lie back and let me navigate, I’ve got all the maps. I will lead you down a course, discoursing as we go about those damn fool nights of two shots too many. Tonight’s lecture is no story, song, or rhyme but a lesson in math of the wildest kind. The geometry in our curves bends like so. Watch your footing.

Now, I’ve got some graphs for your ears which require closer examination.  

I knew a dead girl once. Upon meeting her in that dark corner of Serengatto’s (it means something in one of those love languages of romance lands) she said

"Do you remember dying?"

and I said

"First I'd like to remember living

lets return to this communiqué
once we find the ground."

I had never played words with a dead girl before.

We made visual love there, on those too small seats of Serengatto’s, our eyes conjoining in ways profane and delightful. So I knew her methods and wily means before we even said hello, or what passes for that in these parts. It was matter of fact, I had her by the eyes and the gin. Discretion passed on the evening and let transgression do all the talking.

That night I made the dead dance, with two glances and a touch upon the hand. Oh she said some other things too. We talked of the weather around here, the sort of breezes that come in low pulling all sorts of systems and fronts on with them. She liked that sort of weather.

Our jazz was smooth, we played it slow, but not too mellow. I found our rhythm and ran it up the base of her spine. I liked to watch her writhe like that, to twist in my wind.

That night in the aftermath, she told me she didn’t know why she couldn’t just stay in the ground and be still. I thought I knew, but I liked her where she was and told her to close those pretty eyes for now.

But what was she like? She was shaped, oh, like this, with cleft of breast, turns of thigh and a porcelain face. We'd smoke cloves and talk in sign like the deaf mutes we were. My first words for her were formed there, on the sweep of that cheek, right below the delicious bone. I remember that face, she liked to keep it cool and even, but I could never leave it alone, I gave those cheeks color and made those lips quiver.

She called me necromancer, I thought neuromancer, but maybe I was wrong.

So we came and went like that, with jazz smooth like our gin, in the back of Serengatto’s. She was in the crowd, moving to collective beats in the unconscious, conscious of those flows and feet, but then she died and quit. She wanted a messiah; I gave her a witch doctor with the voodoo cure to rigor mortis. She thought it good enough, for the moment.

And she loved the weather. We’d recline in long shadows with longer drinks and softer gazes and follow those patterns. Then the humidity would get intense, raising the barometer and we’d wander off somewhere to a restroom stall to go storm watching. The lightning there was intense, three strikes and I was out. I hope someone heard that thunder.

She was in the scene too, landscaping colors to fix the real with that edge that made it all right. But then she died and dropped out. I asked her why she stopped painting, she said

“A ghost can’t hold a brush” and flashed those eyes that made talking so pointless. Later I pressed her, in all the right ways and she went on about the only sort of art that made sense anymore. The sounds our bodies make when we move this way. Apparently she lost her brush between the sheets. That night the whole symphony came out and put on a show. They blasted strident notes with no care for measure or meaning leaving me so deaf I could hear her sweat hit the floor.

Once I asked her how she died. She just tossed those shoulders, just like this as if to say that such a fact was trivial. Then she’d eye me up and down, that sort of look that taps in and takes control. She said once,

“Are you sure you aren’t dead too?
Ghosts can burn like that,
with that sultry fire
you so love to kindle.

There’s no pulse
to your eyes.

Come on
Lets go bury ourselves
in that grave we love.”

And I turned up that soil, up and over for a grave for two. We got reacquainted with a kind of warmth the earth gives to those that work it right. I fell back and was buried. Later that evening we’d lie there smoking and the story would straighten, small twists down from 90 degrees. There was one before who killed her, but didn’t even put her in the ground. I thought it rude, and resolved to never do the same.

I don’t think she ever had a name.

On Tuesdays, I was giving these lessons in Serengatto’s and she’d sit in the back to play visual aid, aiding my visual with malicious assistance. All I taught was evacuation and amputation. Leaving the floor and cutting off infested thoughts to go watch the weather.

We’d sip long gins in the back and watch the clouds swarm in. Maybe I’m dead too.

But we made beautiful music, oh that raucous jazz. She liked to conduct and I liked to freestyle, method to my madness, but I could always break her tempos, with a few beats like so. I don’t have any of those old albums anymore; I threw them all out when she hit her high note. Those spells worked over time those nights; we each needed some of that juice to rise against the sun. She said necromancer and I said nothing.

Often times we’d go out. Out beyond usual scenery, but well within usual boundaries. She talked about the weather, under the stars, and my hairs stood up expecting a hurricane. Every so often, that story would flatten, one dent here and there subsumed in this plain and it would come out like this,

“His colors were different than yours, soft to your hard and blue to your crimson. He never took what I gave him, but used it anyway and didn’t think to return it.”

or

“He never moved like that, it was somewhat like this, he liked to give with each push until I toppled with him.” I tried to remember how to die for her, but never got that far. Maybe I should have tried instead to live for her, but that was never my style and the dead don’t much care for the living. When the sun crawled up from its own grave we’d head back to lights more familiar and think about long shadows cast by that gin we favored.

Once someone asked me my drug of choice, I responded, “Her eyes through that gin glass.” She got me up like that, going in directions undirected. Then she’d slide in next to me, one hand around that glass, the other on my thigh with a loose tongue wrapped around comments about the coming rain. People knew us then, everyone whistled our song.

It came to pass, in a past evening we left Serengatto’s and drove out in western ways, it was that old craze again in my car. Uppity feet with fumbling hands out past eastern shores, all over those hills and through those valleys. It was a slow drive and we became so wonderfully lost I let go of that wheel.

She pictured me a painting in a seedy motel somewhere. I didn’t know if I liked the dead breathing, but she did it anyway and I was art on a canvas by the time the sun was tapping out. Her strokes were light, like I liked them, and that composition moved me so, a bit of blending on the hard edges, a bit of coaxing on all the right angles. It called her done and she agreed, so I administered some art of my own. Pinned on that mattress I composed this prose in her ear, trailing whisper kisses on lobes so delightful. I called it done and she agreed. I think I gave her heart a beat, maybe blood flowed that evening, maybe she just died in a different way.

We woke up from that highway dream in Serengatto’s. Her painting found a wall and my words found a crowd. In that old bathroom stall we slipped quietly back into those old rhythms where colors fell flat and words didn’t say much. Not breathing is easier. Go back to sleep.

We lived together for a while, there was a loft for two and a bed for one, our math was often confused. I’d check her pulse there on our flat couch and look for the life in those eyes. Grey. I think she got tired of that old fashioned hocus pocus. Where’d the focus go? Not to Serengatto’s, we made new gin stains in new carpets and watched new fronts push old clouds out of foreign skies. I jumped through those hoops, upside down inversions on paths unknown. We started thinking about a new factor, playing additionary games and making our math incomprehensible. I bought her paints with a new canvas, she pictured a painting, and I started to breathe again.

So I came home to that house and she had painted me a picture. The red looked familiar and the bathtub agreed. “How crimson are my tears?” I asked her when she couldn’t answer. I was killed by a dead girl, I met her in Serengatto’s and we played old style jazz while tracing clouds in midnight skies.

Now I haunt the graveyards at dawn, I know a dead girl who couldn’t stay dead the first time. For remembrance, a eulogy:

Art is the life and when it left her she was just as dead as the rest of us. She was never one for the ice of this cold or the stillness of this quiet, and so she could not adapt to the ground. Birds ought to fly you know, and her wings were shorn when her brush ran dry. True tragedy is that; when the soul goes on ahead and leaves the body behind walking its days in a daze, waiting for the promised breaking that sets it all right again.

Just once I would have liked to see her breathe. Oh these games we play.

Yet in all her dying some true art was born, she had a hand in the molding, the forming of
this human being.

Art is the life, and this is me living.

There is a liberation in those words, follow this discourse, race along its course, where have my words gone and where are you now? There’s too many X’s on this map, a girl has died so I could remember what breathing is.

Let’s return to this communiqué
once we find the ground.
Related content
Comments: 98

OrchidsHeart [2009-11-22 18:30:36 +0000 UTC]

This is amazing! Its written so seamlessly and flows in a way that seems almost definitely a natural progression of words and in no manner artificial. Fantastic!

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dip-N-dots [2009-09-03 23:06:28 +0000 UTC]

Such pretty words, I cried, and cried.

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Snowdeth [2009-04-12 17:15:05 +0000 UTC]

Oh Lord.
The best I've read in a very long while.
I absolutely love this. The way you use language is..orgasmic. Purely amazing.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

ScorpioRage [2008-11-07 02:48:02 +0000 UTC]

Wow. I haven't read much on deviant as of late. I'm glad that I chose tonight to poke around. Just amazing.

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justb [2008-11-01 03:24:15 +0000 UTC]

i hope you don't mind me posting this with a link in my journal. i love it so much.

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YaoiLover1301 [2008-09-02 09:03:24 +0000 UTC]

WOW that is something .. im still lost .. but i know its because i can't comprehend.. fantastic work..

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RavenBaraq [2008-08-18 03:33:20 +0000 UTC]

This is the kind of work you can get lost in. I can read it over and over and never get tired of it. The tone and the style are very smooth and flowing. I like it a lot, needless to say.

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Fiashak [2008-08-02 01:46:25 +0000 UTC]

gag... Wifi hates me!!!

I love this will comment more later.... Tried what now three times toexpress my emotions here and LOL. Asmuch as your work inspired beautiful andsad emotions in me ... My wifi has leftme wanting to thro this at the wall!!!!

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Fiashak [2008-08-02 01:25:49 +0000 UTC]

p

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CruzianRain [2008-07-29 14:04:03 +0000 UTC]

Like so many others before me, ( and many more after me, Im sure) I would like to say that this was truly amazing and beautiful. The words flowed off the page like a song, full of sorrow and lost, light and gain. To have found something so complexly written, and so open and pure is a delight to me. It is erotic, in its own way, but not in the raw, passionate style that erotic fiction is written in. This has more refinment and beauty to it then all the rest, and I truly enjoyed reading it, thank you.

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fudging [2008-06-03 22:15:32 +0000 UTC]

Wow. This may just be genius.
Easily a fave and everything else.

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plummetingjaguar [2008-02-10 01:03:21 +0000 UTC]

incredible piece. A breath of fresh air in a terribly stereotyped genre. Great work

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Strigiformes [2008-02-03 06:35:52 +0000 UTC]

I can't believe, in all the times I've read and re-read this, that I've never commented on it. Here goes:

This is amazing, and every time I read it, melancholy washes over me like so much gin down my throat. Never in all my readings and re-readings of this has that sensation ever failed to come, or even weakened in the slightest. I... you... This is amazing, that's all I can say. Coherency and eloquence are beyond me right now, mostly because I just finished re-reading it for, what now, the ninth, tenth time? I feel that if I say any more, I won't be paying the proper respect to this true work of art.

I'm proud that there are still those among us who value art more than deviancy. This is art in its finest form. You are an authorial god among insects.

Pardon my lapse into kindergarten thoughts, but: I want to write like you when I grow up.

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littlemissmoody [2008-01-17 03:11:58 +0000 UTC]

absolutely postively a joy to read. lovely piece. absolutely wonderful!

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Waltz-With-Me [2007-12-19 07:51:26 +0000 UTC]

This is excellent! Superb writing, and the concept is delicious. It was like poetry, it was so smooth. Great!

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Redder313 [2007-08-23 01:53:47 +0000 UTC]

Magnificent!The vocabulary is so colorful and represents the setting perfectly.

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angel-of-judgement [2007-05-16 01:41:45 +0000 UTC]

i dont htink any piece of writing has ever moved me this much. thank you

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angel-of-judgement In reply to angel-of-judgement [2007-05-16 01:42:52 +0000 UTC]

think*

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Imperialangel42 [2007-05-07 07:50:56 +0000 UTC]

"Greatness is achieved when you can take words and arrange them so they say precisely what you mean to communicate. True mastery is achieved when you can take words and arrange them in such a way that, through means of dysfunction and mindless repetition and imperfection, they make people understand something that was close to your intention."

Never have I read such a piece that has demonstrated that so well as your little creation. It was pieced together so well and it complemented itself so perfectly at the end that it didn't even have to make any sense to me. Your strong and confident style stayed pure through the whole story and I'm so glad people can recognize great writing these days (even if it is for the wrong reasons).

The world is a better place because you had the balls enough to write what you truly believe - 'Art is the life, and this is me living.'

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victenn [2007-05-01 12:27:53 +0000 UTC]

i cant begin to explain what i felt reading you. all i can say is thank you.
you made me dream.

V.

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PrettyInQuotes [2007-02-25 16:06:21 +0000 UTC]

This was so awesome I melted on the inside.

It was the best thing I've read in a long, long time.

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AgnesVita [2007-02-17 00:45:36 +0000 UTC]

Oh..

..you connect words in a way i've never even imagined before. It's beautiful.

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RachelAngelica [2006-11-24 02:21:09 +0000 UTC]

I'm speechless. Well, almost: the only word I can say is "amazing."

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small-deaths [2006-10-21 01:45:52 +0000 UTC]

Ah-Maz-Ing.
I love it.
<3

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ink-4-blood [2006-09-14 04:02:10 +0000 UTC]

I'm two years too late, and still loving this.
It doesn't feel erotic, it doesn't feel romantic, hell, it doesn't even feel like a story. It supercedes that. This is more like a dream. A really good, really long dream.

The kind you can't wake yourself from.
The kind that takes your breath away.
The kind that suffocates you in your sleep
Before you realize
You were sleeping.

I love the repetitions, and the word choice, the ideas behind it. It's all so philosophical, like an upside-down pyramid, balancing on the tip of reason, supporting the weight of a million layers of brick-like ideologies and logics that have no meaning except what is portrayed on the outside, the imagery and romance of it all.

Complicated, this. And I hope I explained my thoughts well enough.

Two years, far too late. But far too wonderful to have brushed off.

Marvelous work.

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lianaigreentea [2006-08-13 17:56:51 +0000 UTC]

I first read this quite a while ago, but I'm late with the comment. Reading it again, this piece still blows me away. All at once, it's tragic, musical, and even a little bit hopeful. The writing is beautiful, and it leaves such a strong feeling in the reader. Also, the repeated line is a great touch. Amazing work!

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shah-rhe [2006-07-23 22:36:54 +0000 UTC]

It's entrancing. I've read through this a couple of times and every time I find some line or sentence or paragraph that makes me fall in love with it all over again.

And it wonderful to find someone on DA who isn't just writing homoerotic Harry Potter fanfiction and goth poetry.

You win.

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Arcanaea [2006-06-19 01:23:21 +0000 UTC]

I know its been said a thousand times before, but I'll have a go at it as well.
This is beautiful. Theres something musical about it...
Very few things move me like this did.
Come to think of it, very few things move me at all.

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SodiumRabbit [2006-05-03 17:46:27 +0000 UTC]

I dont know what it is but it has interesting chord progressions and a cadence which, if i get some piece and quiet, will let myself cry at.

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Kerosene-Dreams [2006-03-13 22:23:10 +0000 UTC]

You're a god. I'm in awe of what I just read. WOW!


THANKS <3

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diabol [2006-02-25 22:11:55 +0000 UTC]

have words ever touched me like this?
i doub tthat, but still, what is it that makes this set of static words have such a dynamix meaning that changes every time i read it?
i kind of belive in souls now.. or maybe it's more like the shintoism kami..
one of them definitely is in this text.. i wonder wether it can leave it?
would love to see that, would love top see the change..
so much

it's truly a tragedy and a blessing at the same time that the art of poetry and prose are one of the forgotten realms of dA, tho they are more devious than anything else here..

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srom [2006-02-17 06:57:01 +0000 UTC]

that's nuts.

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FreakinAlbatross [2006-02-04 19:55:28 +0000 UTC]

Your words are hot

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xclockwork [2005-12-29 05:29:47 +0000 UTC]

Honestly, you make me feel full inside.

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deedle270 [2005-11-23 02:54:16 +0000 UTC]

this is absolutely amazing, the best writing ive read on this site so far, is this about an actual person or is it completely fiction?
<3
mich

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islagrey [2005-08-30 05:10:51 +0000 UTC]

Achingly good.

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severthecore [2005-08-15 21:43:56 +0000 UTC]

It is strange to think I have never read anything better in all my life that what I just finished.

I might be deprived (or maybe depraved) but whatever I am, I am in love with this.

Excellent, incredible, superbly executed and completely complete.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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psychodrive [2005-08-03 04:08:17 +0000 UTC]

This is ridiculous. Remove it now so we can all pester you to put it back.

Bloody hell, I've lost my train of thought. Here it is.

At first, I was inclined to believe this was literally about necrophilia and it was beautiful. So, as I continued to read, the actuality unfurling itself before me I was enthralled. I want to congratulate you for that developing reality.Without the art, this gorgeous, vibrant being has withered and paled to meat, trampsing about her daily life. And, yes, the attempts to revive her exist and are true, but often-times, folly. The circular nature of the text itself and the characters as the main character attempts to revive her, is quietly drained, and eventually, survives despite her, is executed marvellously.

Delicate. I haven't read something quite like it for some time.

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khisanth [2005-07-10 06:14:57 +0000 UTC]

reminds me of old school melodrama film screeneplays or something that should be listened to with a saxophone. Very intense and intriguing, thanks for this.

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gordoncg [2005-06-27 09:25:44 +0000 UTC]

crap jk
this is really really good

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RhayningAcidity [2005-06-26 20:18:46 +0000 UTC]

This is the most beautiful thing I've ever read. Your words flow flawlessly and seem so effortless. I'm in complete awe . This is amazing. Many compliments from a fellow, yet less talented, writer.

Dark Prodigy

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RipeFuckingHate [2005-06-25 09:05:54 +0000 UTC]

Amazing. I really really love this. Absolutely marvelous job.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

binz [2005-04-16 22:05:45 +0000 UTC]

i am so damn proud of you. you deserve every last bit of what everyone's had to say so far. you're just so exponentially cooler than i could ever be...and if you DARE reply and say you aren't, i will disown you. i swear it. and i can't believe i never favorited this again! oh, well. hopefully one more won't make that inflated head of yours pop. congrats, skinny.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Aishuu In reply to binz [2005-04-17 01:48:15 +0000 UTC]

The stories tell me - I cant take the credit. Muhammad couldnt describe it or explain it - he simply responded to it We have opened you. Im like that - though not the messengar of God.

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binz In reply to Aishuu [2005-04-17 22:11:02 +0000 UTC]

i'm sure mohammad and abraham and jesus and them said that, too... well...if they did, it was only because God told them so. but i bet they were still damn humble about it.

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imdstrbd [2005-04-13 04:34:06 +0000 UTC]

thsi piece is so melodic and sensual in the rhyme and flow. i'm at a real loss to express how much i like it. consider it fav'ed!

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Dark-Jessica [2005-04-13 03:23:14 +0000 UTC]

I don't even know what to think about this. This might be the most beautiful thing I've ever read. I loved the tempo and flow. I think I'll have to read it again to understand it better, but it makes me want to read it over and over again anyway. Great work!

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PlumBlossom [2005-04-13 02:26:33 +0000 UTC]

Art is the life, and this is me living...

wow.

Wow..

.....you move me.

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maygun [2005-04-13 02:10:06 +0000 UTC]

i love this so much. thank you so much for posting this. the line that reads, "True tragedy is that; when the soul goes on ahead and leaves the body behind walking its days in a daze, waiting for the promised breaking that sets it all right again," was so perfectly written to illustrate what is happening in my life right now. i could cry.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

CidOtaku [2005-04-13 01:33:27 +0000 UTC]

Gorgeous wrok. I really loved so many lines, they all flow together so well. I especially loved this line: Once someone asked me my drug of choice, I responded, “Her eyes through that gin glass.” I really need to check out the rest of your work. Great job, and congratulations on the Daily Deviation.

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