[Part 1: Riding Lessons]
I’ve made a decision that I don’t hate my nose after all. I don’t hate my nose. I don’t hate my nose. I took a good long look at it this morning in the mirror and knew that I could hate it no more. I just wanted to take one good goddamn picture is all. Every time a camera came near all I could think of was angles. Never could I just look straight on and smile, no. No I had too many yearbook pictures that proved as much– it was angles. Coyly turned a bit to the left, a little bit to the right, but never ever ever, you hear me, never straight on, you got that?
I came to realize that I had a problem with my nose right around the same time that Seventeen Magazine suddenly began to hold sway with me. I had no use for the menstrual horror stories or the latest pretty-boy actor strung up as teen girl bait. No, I liked the articles that one: clued me into the fact that there was something horribly and innately wrong with me, and two: how to fix it for under twenty dollars. I pored over the latest quick fix remedies for the acne I didn’t yet have, and ways to make the hips my hormones had yet to widen slimmer. And to make sure you felt like complete shit the models hired to portray these chosen disfigurements were the most ‘pretty-girl pretty skinny captain of the whatever committee wears a band in her shiny hair everyday which way to J.Crew I can’t today I have riding lessons’ kind of pretty. Every girl from Nebraska to New Mexico, California to Connecticut could relate to her because she lived next door to everyone, apparently. And we all knew there wasn’t a thing wrong with that girl and oh my god if they're saying that her hips are too wide then what the actual fuck do I look like in my jeans?
But really what got me in the gut were the noses. Slick and streamline, these were the noses of noble breeding that couldn’t be bought. They rose just-so from the face around them inoffensive from every angle no matter what. These noses were oh-so cute-as-a-button that they made you want to rip your own fucking nose off, promptly run to your parents, throw it in their faces, and ask for a fucking refund. My own nose was, in fact, what my mother affectionately called a broccoli sprout nose. A nonexistent ridge led to a perfectly wretched little squat of a nose, no definition, no contours, just an irritating blob. Noses like mine were frowned upon and summarily banned from TV, from film, from [?], Seventeen, Elle, and Elle Girl, Vogue, and Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, WWD, Glamor, Nylon, and every other magazine set up to put me down. I once sought refuge and reassurance in the pages of Essence magazine, only to find an article instructing sisters on how to best contour their nose. Some tricky Greeks set the standard and we all fell in line; nobody was immune. Not the big movie star, not the supermodel, or the lowly television actress.
So like I said, I came to the decision that there is no such thing as a perfect nose, and I would hate mine no more. And would you believe me if I told you that my nose spoke to me as well? “Listen,” it sniffed “you can cut me, chop me, altogether lop me. You could contour me and shade me, but you’d still hate me. You may want to change me or try to rearrange me, but here’s the deal: it’d be easier still if you’d just love me. Why don’t you just love me? I may offend a few, but what’re you gonna do?”

[Part 2 : Scrap By Blues]
Scrap by blues, oh, the scrap by blues. What I wouldn’t give to get away from my scrap by blues. No money I could spend cause I ain’t got none. No vacation I could take cause I can’t take one. No friends I can call they’re all rock bottom too, so when we talk to one another we’re just spreading the blues.
Scrap by blues, man, the scrap by blues. Seems the strings to my purse have each been cut. “Up by your bootstraps.” the rich are want to say when they’d sooner string you up and dare you to complain.
Scrap by blues, damn, these scrap by blues. Must life just be a battle to get by? I don’t fail for lack of trying, don’t let you see me when I’m crying. I get down and get back up, but it’s never quite enough. You can’t save when you ain’t getting, man I tell ya this ain’t living. It’s just a slow trickle death from your first to your last breath.
Scrap by blues, oh, the scrap by blues. What I wouldn’t give to get away from the scrap by blues.

[Part 3 : Le Horla]
14 août. – Je suis perdu ! Quelqu’un possède mon âme et la gouverne ! Quelqu’un ordonne tous mes actes, tous mes mouvements, toutes mes pensées. Je ne suis plus rien en moi, rien qu’un spectateur esclave et terrifié de toutes les choses que j’accomplis. Je désire sortir. Je ne peux pas. Il ne veut pas ; et je reste, éperdu, tremblant, dans le fauteuil où il me tient assis. Je désire seulement me lever, me soulever, afin de me croire maître de moi. Je ne peux pas !
Puis, tout d’un coup, il faut, il faut, il faut que j’aille au fond de mon jardin cueillir des fraises et les manger. Et j’y vais. Je cueille des fraises et je les mange ! Oh ! mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! Est-il un Dieu ? S’il en est un, délivrez-moi, sauvez-moi ! secourez-moi ! Pardon ! Pitié ! Grâce ! Sauvez-moi ! Oh ! quelle souffrance ! quelle torture ! quelle horreur !

[Part 4 : The Two Carolines]
When I was a little girl I had bible class, and one of the stories that my teacher told us was The Story of The Two Carolines. It’s about this girl and she was like the teacher’s pet at school. She was very helpful and kind and everybody loved her at school, but when she would go home to her mother she was bad, she was a brat, she talked back, complained. She was just the complete opposite of her good self at school.
So one day, unbeknownst to Caroline, her mother invited the teacher over to dinner, because I guess back then you did that still, and Caroline was in a rage. She was cursing, and yelling, and throwing a fit, talking back to her mother, just being a real terror, and the teacher heard her. So the lesson that we were taught as children in school was you should be good all the time cause you never know who’s watching. But I remember raising my hand, being confused, and I asked my teacher “How come Caroline just couldn’t be bad all the time?”

[Part 5: The Girl is a Ghost]
You ever lost yourself? I have and still do. I go out wandering and waiting for that ‘Ah-ha’ moment when everything seems ripe to fall into place. I put myself on shelves so tall that I was all out of reach even to me. I would grab and make fists, and try to fill them with the wisps of a girl I once was way back when. I’ve left myself on pedestals so high that try as I might I could not breath, or rather, I would not breath in the air up there out of protest. I would sway dangerously this way and that, but it’s okay because the fastest way back to the ground is to just fall down.
I once locked myself in a box so small, so tight that the thought of daylight was shattering. There have been days I’ve felt safest behind iron bars, no shit, actual bars, because even though I was locked in you were locked out. Kept far, far away from me.
I’ve been lost in a crowd of one. I need no other skin to hide away in I can just get lost like that. So good, in fact, that no compass could find me, no map could mark me, no clue left for you, just gone. It’s not hard to get away when you simply stay away. Not a trail, not a trace, not a hint of the place, just gone.