Mr. Splitfoot

by Samantha Hunt

The first two days without a phone, my insides are jumpy and nauseated, a true withdrawal. My veins ache for information from the Internet, distractions from thought. I’m lonely. My neck, lungs, blood hurt like I’m getting a cold. The world happens without me because I’m exiled with no Wi-Fi. I wonder if my shoes have arrived yet. Maybe Lord is trying to reach me with news of his divorce. I have a parade of grotesque urges. I want to push little buttons quickly. I want information immediately. I want to post pictures of Ruth and me smiling into the sun. I want people to like me, like me, like me. I want to buy things without trying them on. I want to look at photos of drunk kids I knew back in high school. And I want it all in my hand. But my cyborg parts have been ripped out. What’s the temperature? I don’t know. What’s the capital of Hawaii? I don’t know anything. I don’t even know the automated systems in my body anymore. I don’t know how to be hungry, how to sleep, to breathe.

People select their identity from hundreds of shampoos, supplements, and suppositories. Dove + Garnier Fructis + Finesse + Crest + Secret.

he asks me, as if Ruth’s become invisible. That’s fucked up but that’s what happens to women. We grow up into ghosts. No one wants to screw Ruth anymore

“Motherhood,” she says, “despite being immensely common, remains the greatest mystery, and all the language people use to describe it, kitschy words like ‘comfort’ and ‘loving arms’ and ‘nursing,’ is to convince women to stay put.”

“You need to remember artifice,” she says. “Art isn’t a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. Beauty doesn’t equal art, and it can’t just be the world in a package. It’s got to take the world and mess it up some. Add the artifice as a lens, right?”

“A walking artist. OK. I like that. That’s good. Walking can definitely create things. Thoughts. Footsteps. Lines that intersect. Lines that connect us historically. Ley lines, right? You could connect every place in New York where daisies grow. Or the places where girls named Lisa live. Or sites where meteorites crash-landed. Right? What would that map look like and how would you read it? What message is that map trying to tell us?” I like the idea that Ruth and I are walking artists, as if our tracks leave color behind. Blue and green. Orange painting the map we make each day. But if everybody in the world were a walking artist, the land would be so jammed with traces of everyone who ever came before. Haunted, polluted.

voice is power and submission, spirit without religion.

Religions need women. Who else would do all the work?”