Monologue for an Onion
By Suji Kwock Kim
I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion--pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,
Of lasting union--slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.
You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil
That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,
Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,
Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is
Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.
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Sunday we went downtown to the National Museum of American History, which is closing on September 5th for nearly two years for renovations. The most popular artifacts housed there, such as Kermit the Frog and Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, are moving across the Mall to the National Air and Space Museum, which we also visited.
I had realized that I had not been in Air and Space since just after I got a digital camera, when I took pictures of the kids (quite young) in front of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega, and I wanted to see the Enterprise (Captain Kirk's that is -- the orbiter shuttle Enterprise is at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, which we have visited more recently). So we got ice cream and walked across the National Mall and went to see the aeronautical World War I exhibit and some of the historic planes and rockets, but along the way we made a terribly traumatic discovery!
The symbol for Pluto has already been removed from the entrance to the gallery...
...though it is still represented among the outer planets in this relative size display.
I suspect the big wall display on Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will undergo revision in the very near future. (Insert your own Uranus joke here -- my son did all afternoon.)
To further complicate matters, the museum has an outdoor display stretching up the Independence Avenue side of the National Mall, a scale model of the solar system with a ball-sized sun at the corner by the Air & Space Museum and Pluto as the furthest planet at the Smithsonian Castle.
People had left flowers and a condolence card, telling Pluto not to lose heart and that it has a strong spirit!
Otherwise I was pleased for The Daily Show, amused by the Spelling tribute -- all of Charlie's Angels looked great, Joan Rivers should call their plastic surgeons especially Jaclyn Smith's since she seemed not to be over-hyped like Kate Jackson or over-sedated like Farrah Fawcett -- sorry Blythe Danner didn't get in her usual jabs at the Bush administration and apathetic about the main categories, though I might watch 24 next season after avoiding it since the first season just to see Alexander Siddig.
Rose was quite entertaining manipulating everyone but I'm not quite sure what she has planned for Michael...I don't like the idea that she's just a meddlesome mother, I want her to have a grand scheme for the family and the Hill. And I totally love the idea of Pete and Eileen hanging out together, though for a minute before I realized Pete was just trying to make sure Michael was back for the surprise party, I thought he was jealous of Michael's girlfriend and let me tell you, THAT was a lovely thought! (Yes, do please tell me if you've seen fic anywhere!)
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