Francis Picabia, Paroxysm of Sorrow, 1915

theses : sons

____The deepest mistreatment is one that requires very little in the way of treatment at all. It is a maneuver to refuse the very chords in one's being. One that does not organ any manner of speaking. The deepest mistreatment looks something like two humans who are busy miming smaller or less living versions of themselves. Mimicking the character of their breath. If spotted on the masquerade of a face, it should be documented immediately with a polaroid or two. A clue might appear as such: a mouth that has not hint of perforation, like the surface of a pond in which the koi have all floated dead to the top because of a reckless stocking behavior known to some habitat experts as 'blaming'. Kittens or puppies will usually be present as experiments in rearing. And this is just the beginning of a dilemma which would seem not to even have a beginning nor treatable end.

The deepest of mistreatments between two individuals always involves the introduction of some cute smallish thing with a body and eyes that can sometimes remind us of ourselves. It may even have eyes that remind us of each other, such as a son. This son, we will be prone to regret. But when first we chance to notice the depth of his eyes and his tiny boneless hands, we can no longer fathom the possession of such regret inside us, and so that part of our bodies that harbors our feelings about how that cute smallish thing came to be, pools itself inside the breasts and readies itself to be purged. We can then begin to wean it from our persons through the chest. But in such a case the child, hungry, will choiceless become its suckled recipient and allow this purge of regret to thrive in him as part of himself.

In particular, only-children become the recipients of such a mistrajectory because, typically, mothers by the second swollen-with-child know all too well the hangover of such an intensive purge of feeling and tend toward a more circumspect purging method of regret through the scalp in the form of grayed hair. True regret itself is colorless, odorless, and cannot be exchanged for earmuffs on colder days even if it tends to serve the same purpose. True regret in men has no easy release through the chest, and its outlet usually involves the exclusive growth of invisible hair on the head. But in a boy, an only-child, the feeling may become so intense that, mistaken for more primal urges, he masturbates incessantly and without sound. He is too young to tell the difference between his parents' regret and his own, between his lusting and a kind of guilt that aches to be purged.

Thus, living becomes primarily an intensive exercise to expel regret in whatever form it takes, especially once the skateboard has been permanently removed from under his lanky person, or the ball from his hand, and he must stand attentive to his surroundings and the other persons who might believe in him. Such belief gets sutured under the skin. And must in turn be bled. Simply said, he thinks he is unlovable. And by 'unlovable' he means untouchable. And by 'untouchable' he means unaccountable for any and all deplorable actions of the mouth or genitals thereof.

And there begins the story of the deepest mistreatment between two individuals; the story of the introduction of some cute smallish thing with a body that is born into, and weans from, our regret. If, on the other hand, the creature that is born or otherwise detained is a kitten or even a puppy, all three creatures involved should consider themselves lucky. The animal itself is glad that it cannot talk. But if it is a son, he will undoubtedly stand facing the corner of a room masturbating until he thinks he has exonerated himself from his parents' regret for having introduced such a lasting expression of each other's mistreatment. Such is the origin of 'caulking'.

From there he can go out into the world and announce the divorce that he was born of, avenging it in the form of suturing acts toward everyone around him with everything but kindness: the most refused and unspoken form of mistreatment. The most akin to 'blaming'. And all by maneuvers inaccessible to the chords of one's being. For without access, there can be no spoken way out of the deepest mistreatment and into the joining with another in the creation of something wholly other than surfaced koi, kittens or other cute, smallish instruments of our metastic and confused invention.

antitheses : daughters

____The deepest mistreatment is, in the end, a purge against being, against living, against all access to any kind of worth. If spotted on the masquerade of a face, it will usually cause one to envision what a mouth that has never once smiled could look like. It has a hold on words. As if all sounds were restricted to only the very other end of something that could be said. Not a silence, but rather sounds that themselves are the inverse of communication.

When two individuals embark on those ambiguous utterances that are often expelled during lovemaking when one person does not love the other, but instead pretends or undergoes an uphill kind of trying, so begins another refraction of the deepest mistreatment. Another maleficence to be pointedly observed, in the minutes after the slurring of their two bodies together, as a kind of distance and pretending-to-sleep. A haunted expression on the face is a common sign of 'trying' and becomes a trap for all surrounding light, appearing, for those interested in the paranormal, to resemble a dead person who can still climax, known by members of the opposite sex as a 'creep'. Such 'creeps' are technically dead inside their torsos but manage to walk, smile and lay astride another person while reciting the memories of the life they had lived. Recitation here can appear, to those who are eager to believe that all people are actually alive, as a real present-day experience and can have all of the vividness of one. So watch closely. The face will usually betray such a betrayer of living. His or her eyes will dart rapidly and unnaturally.

Once the character behind the masquerade is ascertained (by performing any number of incantations laid out in the bestseller He's Just Not That Into You), if the 'creep' is a man, he will often all of a sudden resemble a giant walking erection, but one that is unnaturally hard or robotic and may in fact be unsafe to handle without gloves. If, as in some rarer instances, the 'creep' is not male, she will resemble a walking gaping mouth, but one that will be rattling on about something or other and carries bits of its life around in the spaces between the teeth known to some as 'purses', sometimes even asking the person who accompanies it to hold them while it hazards other objects there. The choice is then ours. If this technically dead person is particularly adept at accomplicing our urges, then we may be swayed to endure the uncharming thrill of a new, or at least yet unclassified, kind of necrophilia called 'compromise' which, if repeated incessantly and without sound is known in some circles as flatlining. 'Compromise' has an etymology that goes all the way back to when the selection procedure for choosing a date for the Senior Prom was exclusively based on facial symmetrics, height and weight ratios, and proclivities toward similarly shaped extracurricular balls, rather than a genuine enjoyment of their person, assuming that schoolgoer had really begun 'their person' at all.

Again, when someone wittingly or unwittingly partakes of a creep, kittens may or may not be present, but the likelihood of daughtering is considerate. The introduction of a daughter into the inarticulable madness between two creatures who are so hidden that they have all but ghosted, is yet another facet of the deepest mistreatment. A mistreatment that blaming would not even do justice for; that is beyond the scope of. And she, that baby girl, has but one single wish: to be fathered by someone other than a technically dead person or a compromise that began the elimination of the possibility of a living family.

The limping along of such a threesome: one technically dead person and two other wounded ones, was referred to as 'triage' long before there were medics in wartime, before war was so militaristic, and before those who were wounded could be helped by someone other than themselves. This trio of familial disaster had the perfect name to be adopted by armies who began to supply medical assistance to their men. And this daughter who was conceived by such connivance between two people that it is almost unbearable to watch, has but little in the way of hope to know anything but such 'triage', and has but little to enforce actual healing. As a smallish figure against the looming world, she will be apt to run around naked well into her twenties, but then only by way of intoxication, and as a recourse to a fashionable new camcorder predation for cute smallish things gone wild. By 'intoxication' her mother meant 'denial'. By 'denial' her father meant 'away'. And she thus will have a sense of herself that is so small as to be unseen unless she is unclothed.

Here it is that the regret, introduced as a daughter by way of the hazardous regions of a hug, is always and from the very start of her adorable round eyes, instantly voided through attention. Only when others' eyes fixate upon her will she hum under her breath her very own anthem by the name of Unregrettable, her altered cover of Sinatra's unforgettable "Unforgettable" with only that one word replaced. Any and all hereditary regret could, she will learn, be temporarily voided by such attention. Again, she is too young to tell the difference between her parents' regret and her own. Thus, the resound of her body becomes an echo for the eyes. Eyes of men who stake their claim inside her, and void her there.

She can then go out into the world and liaison herself between a kind of technical death and a kind of compromise. To her, the only two certainties. Each against which attention may be propped, sutured or otherwise triaged. Each against which any other maneuvers pale. Each against which there is no true release from what she was born of but perhaps by her own pooling and weaning through the chest in the direction of a smaller version of herself. For what her parents had harbored helped to create a woman who subordinates herself, ultimately, in subordination of the past.

syntheses : ends of the past

_____If, by the act of some wholesome fate, a creep and one who endures to compromise should bear no cute smallish thing, the world should consider itself lucky. For a non-daughter is unable to be seen, clothed or not, and thus is unable to repeat the inarticulable madness of our regrets. For a non-son is unable to spoil the corner of a room.

This much is sure: there are two persons, animals, or koi who have spotted themselves with a polaroid or two. But who while for the moment having embargoed themselves from titles such as 'creep' and 'compromiser', have yet been unsuccessful otherwise. Both are those who tried to tamper with the other's version of their size and their worth, the other's version of need. Both are those who have mistaken almost every tangible form of kindness from the opposite sex in their proximity.

The son mistook them as some measured attack on the coordinates of his being, and who has so obstructed himself as to appear as if he might believe that what he has been guarding could one day be caught up in a gust of wind and swept away. As if a 'being' was something that could, if unperturbed, live exactly as it is: inaccessible -forever. As if the masquerade of his face could render him unaccountable. It was he who thus enacted the most defensive mistreatment: a depthless silence to be endured by even those who did absolutely no deserving thing but perhaps believe in him.

The daughter mistook them as some attentive gesture towards her, and who has been bent on cloaking the regret inside her with the most unequivocal song of denial, a bastardized form of loved. As if 'alone' might be a kind of approaching storm for which shelter must be sought. As if there was a shame in her that could not be beaten and thus, was joined. As if the inventive masquerade of a man could somehow reinvent her. It was she who thus detonated the most blinding mistreatment: a tumult of misrecognition endured by even those who may not have endeavored to really recognize her at all.

Successful or otherwise, we all will doubtless believe what we wish: mistaking our parents for ourselves, or accomplishing our own manner of spoken from deep within the chords in our being. Simply, there is a way out of this hell. This 'hell' being nothing more or less than the mistreatment of oneself and those in close proximity. But first we must admit that we are, embarrassingly or otherwise, here. And that for some hellish reason, there is no more correct place for us to be. But how it is that we pronounce ourselves up and out of here is worth our apprehension.

Two people who have for so long mimed the characters of smaller creatures that hide or similarly forage for their contentment, must determine what, if any, actual living human being may still be performed from inside them. Two people who now sit at the opposite ends of the past, noting its asymmetry, must find some more sustaining relation to themselves than what had been saddened into them by their parents, if ever they are to ascend from the deepest of mistreatments. Two such people for whom the word 'parents' is always exasperated by a long wind; who might well be relieved to hear that 'parents', could no longer be used to describe two animals who will never, even in the deepest of heat, need to mate again.

Even if we never mate again, we will surely still be the same two creatures who endeavor to reconcile ourselves with our needs. What dares to abscond with our time: 'need': a concept absurd in its paradox: what could approve our contentment, and what, if we allowed, could destroy us.

From this vantage, all we can determine is that the circular mistreatment of each other was somehow arrested or otherwise restrained. When we finally halted our bodies from mounting such compromises, we were relieved to discover that our regret was still untouched inside us and had not been implanted in some other living thing.

It was then that what had been suffocated within our torsos could obtain another chance at such a paradox, at such a life. We could again be infused with something of a choice, something of being, something which has the melody of an anthem we both can sing. For there is one less child in the world who must be born of such reaches of mistreatment.

As it is, we can now freely sit at our opposite ends of the past and vow to be better, to conjure more honest speech from every chord in our being, to abandon the masquerade of the face for a more certain gaze. As it is, we can now begin to access the will to accept other persons' belief in us, and salvage our worth from what had created such small, less living versions of ourselves. Just because our regret appears circular, because it rotates within us, does not mean we must resign to its logic, its perfect ruin. Simply, there can be one less compromise against loving.