What the how? Why not #SOCS ?

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Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt is “project.” If you’ve never tried steam of consciousness, it’s something worth pursuing, especially if you feel blocked. You must write SOC from the weekly prompt (you can use “project” as a verb or noun), and then ping the site back. Make sure to follow the rules.

Here’s my entry. (The art was my idea once I finished. It’s not part of the game.)

Sitting across from you

I watch you wrap your pasta

around your fork, delicately,

as though it will break and

fall apart before it reaches your lips, and

I listen to you telling me your plans for us,

safe plans to relate on the evening

you left your toothbrush on my bathroom shelf and

I failed to object,

not because I wanted to see it there but

because you left it while I prepared breakfast

(croissants, strawberries, café au lait with

cinnamon and shavings from imported Mexican chocolate)

so that when I spotted the brush,

standing upright against my mirror, a

semaphore shimmering with semiotic significance, and

embraced the fait accompli,

I knew the inevitable moment arrived, that

moment when you project the new me into

your vision of our future,

the real me rendered null by project after project to

move my collection of vintage Charlie Parker LPs to storage,

hide my paintings in the closet,

purge my shelves of vintage erotica

collected with care over a dozen years,

purge every thing within me that

speaks of me, and

we will marry, raise your child and

maybe produce another.

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The installation “Cow Turd Contemplating Kasama Cats” that I would have created were I really an artist.

Women projected me before,

projected me into an art critic with a steady job,

a graphic designer with a flat reminiscent of

Frank Lloyd Wright

(postmodern Wright with smart devices and Kusama prints) and a

steady income to support

little blonde soccer stars,

a professor of art,

with tenure no less, and a

steady income to put the children through private school.

I never panic.

I project a future of my own,

always the same.

In a month or two

you’ll realize your projects failed, that

I’d rather paint, spend my life with

projects of my own making

—a cowpie sculpture,

a painting of the Pope’s penis—and

one morning the toothbrush

will disappear to make room for a

hairbrush, or lipstick, or compact, a

new signification of the projects to come.

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