the house on alabama street, anne bancroft, and talking to hot chicks about bugs

i fell asleep on the sofa about nine
woke up about three
went to bed
and slept about ten more hours

i feel, let's just say, not rested and refreshed

so, i don't know whether to attribute it to residual illness
or depleted adrenals from too much coffee
or depression creeping back in
or
all of the above

but
i had a lot of dreams
and i remember a fair amount

i had a very long conversation with anne bancroft
about judaism
my understanding of judaism
from my reading http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465086322/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=3849421529&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=501558003326234742&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_35pvezhg3w_b
[earlier edition]
in high school
right up through to today
with my lack of connection to the cycle from tisha b'av
through yom kippur, rosh hashanah, sukkot
talking in depth about what i do connect to

and she said:
that's all very intellectual
do you know who connects to judaism in that way

but i don't know what she answered

the house on alabama street had been renovated
my mother was showing me
and she and my step-father had two beds
with this antique crib between them

are you expecting a baby, i asked
no, she said, it's just a decoration thing
i thought that was very strange

mommy
[she really only likes to be called mommy]
can i live here
i miss it so much
but, i don't know what she said

i walked around the house
there was a door on the side of the house
that was never there before
really
it was a different house
but of the same feeling, built in 1908-ish
the door opened up about three feet above the ground
had no stairs
they were clearing out brush from the long drive
talking about what the crack house apartments down the way had become

and then i found an elevated apartment
like a garage apartment
but it had never had a garage
it was small
covered in wisteria vines
and there was a girl in her mid-twenties there with me

i don't think it was her apartment
i think she worked from there
i was saying
i didn't mean to trespass
but i used to live here
you could hear happy little bug noises from outside
it would be crickets all night while you sleep
and it was dark and shadowed
even though it was day

like a member of the wedding the movie
i was thinking about that the other day
i was in chick-fil-a
and i saw a woman in thong sandals
and her feet reminded me of your feet
and i missed you intensely
and then i thought about the old nanny in member of the wedding, the book
telling frankie [f. jasmine] about seeing someone's thumb
having it remind her of her dead husband

i read that in high school

anyway, this girl was maybe not beautiful, but
she was cute-hot
she was hispanic
but she seemed to be morphing through
from cuban to puerto rican to maybe even filipino
and the morph was distracting me

and she said something about pulling the wings off fish
and i'm shocked:
you don't torture animals
do you
no no of course not

and i tell her about gigi
finding a slug in the house:
come here
watch this
pouring salt
it started to bubble and dissolve

make it stop

it's too late for that

how upsetting that was

so
am i turning into a southern writer
all of a sudden



i love you
i hope everything is beautiful where you are
i hope


someday