{"id":1283,"date":"2014-08-30T00:52:25","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T00:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2014-11-07T10:56:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T00:56:58","slug":"the-invitation-to-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1283","title":{"rendered":"the invitation to cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Old-broken-keyboard\"<\/a>I remember discovering\u00a0this poem once, which evoked that\u00a0particular kind of feeling – a cross between pain, nostalgia and something else – that is akin to the feeling you get when you put your tongue into the place where your tooth used to be.<\/p>\n

This was many years ago.\u00a0It was a poem by C. D. Wright – Tours<\/em> – a reading of which was\u00a0filmed for the United States of Poetry<\/a>. This is the final stanza:<\/p>\n

The last black key
\nShe presses stays down, makes no sound
\nSomeone putting their tongue where their tooth had been.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, I opened a book that’s been on the\u00a0shelf in my new home for weeks now. And which I’ve been avoiding. My Former Partner read this book when it was still in manuscript form. At that stage, I didn’t know that she was having an affair with the author. Perhaps it hadn’t yet begun. Perhaps the sharing of the manuscript was a part of the seduction.<\/p>\n

it doesn’t pay<\/em>
\nto think about these<\/em>
\nthings<\/em><\/p>\n

My FP\u00a0told me there was a character in this as-yet-unpublished work that the author had told her was based on her, that was<\/strong><\/em> her, but that I shouldn’t bother reading it. It was based on a dream, she said. Or something like that. I should wait till the book came out, in its edited form. My FP\u00a0told me that the author had asked her whether she should cut the character that was based on her.<\/p>\n

Today, I am alone in the house. The lunch I thought I was having is cancelled. It is cold. I have assignments to mark; a novel to work on. Washing and ironing and vacuuming that will not do themselves. I open the book and flick through it until I find the passage with the character based on my FP.<\/p>\n

I find\u00a0her, in this other\u00a0woman’s words.<\/p>\n

The character has ‘a long-term partner, ten years or more’ but she has been hooking up\u00a0with the narrator for ‘months now’; they meet for coffee, and sex.<\/p>\n

I read the passage over<\/em>
\nand over<\/em><\/p>\n

[two paragraphs
\n244 words
\ntwo bodies
\nbeneath a freeway]<\/p>\n

putting my tongue<\/em>
\nwhere my heart <\/em>
\nused to be<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0It is something, I suppose, to have their affair immortalised in print.<\/p>\n

It could, so easily, have been cut away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember discovering\u00a0this poem once, which evoked that\u00a0particular kind of feeling – a cross between pain, nostalgia and something else – that is akin to the feeling you get when you put your tongue into the place where your tooth used to be. This was many years ago.\u00a0It was a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1,12,383],"tags":[694,696,149,695,697],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Old-broken-keyboard.gif?fit=250%2C168&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-kH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}