“Count to four, breathe deep, visualize perfect silk lungs, plentiful oxygen…” So told herself Constanze. In the midst of her usual panic attacks, she would mentally recite such words of wholesale comfort to get her through. (Many people talk out loud to themselves to digest or upchuck the shit they are fed.) These attacks would always leave a spasmonic echo through her body. And her veins, one big tangled mess. Like mush thrown into an anxiety-powered centripetal spinner. Only a couple of scratches were left on the surface to ignite flashbacks of comparable illness. After such an attack, she would hide her fingers in her hair and laugh the whole thing off like someone trying hard to appear nonchalant as it starts to rain dildosiand squid. Saintly figures have always embodied the half-supremes, half- mystical white glow and the fuz|zy Hypothesis which iheavenly onlookers inspire.
Lone fingers of; instantly- consumable favours descend from the invisible barrier of fathomless skies. The long fingers take hold of expired hopes and disposed-of wishes that have been pissed away after multicolored nights on the bar stool. As ah alternative for the hopeless, for those who find; themselves lingering in frozen stance awiy from thjeir blüe-printed desires with théir canaux vitaux all empty of lifeblood> the saints are around the córner of religious skepticism, picking away at their ruby- covered gums while “on call«” Once on duty, a saint hardly has time to pick away at his gums. His demanding tasks often require indispensable reminders of their necessity and beneficiaries. By simpje means, adoration symmetrically fits the description if indispensable way of reminder. Here comes into play the flesh- filled subject with his wish held out like a counterfeit document. A few routine- like sessions of ass-kissing, numerous times a day, with the help of intermittent verses of desperation and voila…wish granted and sifted through the long saintly firigers.
Having never been a subscriber to the wish ordering list associated with domineering characters who might be living “up there” Constanze shrugged off all possibility of her own hopes in a waiting room where agnostic dust gathered. Her birth happened somewhere inside Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (adagietto)j The symphony’s movement stems from a long sigh of the; what-now that follows every great cataclysmic episode and all the imaginable personal disasters in one’s fucked-up head. To acknowledge her own birth in such a secure place amiss the middle of a thick musical score was a feeling of great cbziness for Constanze. The coziness which forcefully-fed; religion had never transmitted to her with all its broken circuits, cheap bribes and staged miracles. With complete precision, Constanze could recall from her childhood how, in church, she dexterously explored underneath the pew to find old pieces of chewing gum. As her expertise in this domain grew she could correctly identify how many Sundays ago the gum had been hidden underneath the bench. (Purposely, Constanze never took into consideration that sometime during other weekdays, some solitary faithful could have privately placed the gum there.) Sundays were her only instrument for the measure of the gum’s value. When she was busy feeling the familiar landscape formed by the gum, tedious sermons would soon become vaporized samples of cheap cologne that quickly evaporated away from her consciousness. From that time on, Constanze had trampled on the path of we’ll-all-be-a- bunch-of-bones-soon-anyway. She drew herself down to a modern sector of unattachment to everything and everyone who made out through her narrow cracks of privacy. A la débauché was her official destination but even that was not something that she would admit to herself. Her head mostly hung diagonally like someone who never really could find the necessary balance to walk wide beams of low altitude. All of this was before the odd day of reversal came.
The odd day when beggars don’t pay attention to the twenty-dollar bill that falls to their feet. The odd day when new celebrities pawn their precious fame for a few bags of obscurity. Such an odd day was not to appear unnoticed, even to the eyes of Constanze which had long been covered by curtains of indifference. When individuals’ wishes or desires send them into turbulence, the ball and chain of pursuit can be carried around by them without many signs of awkwardness. Constanze was no exception but the odd day straightened her head’s angle and had her throw superstitious glances from the corner of her eyeball. On the day previously mentioned, Constanze woke up and for a long time she sat on the bed’s edge, avoiding to look up to the ridiculous picture on her wall. The sight of it just confirmed a new unwelcome insecurity that had crawled up her slimy doorstep. Another curtain was needed. So she let her hair fall in her face and tipped her head downward where the sight of her feet waited for her. Her penguin-positioned feet. Hard had been. Constanze’s protective shell which had never failed to absorb the high-frequency oscillations of change. Now that the shell had fallen off, an outer lining of scabs and rattling pus attracted the many predators whose fingernails shine through the thickest of clays. From the odd day on, Constanze had a wish and she held it out like a counterfeit document, the way a rat would hold its sawed-off tail.