can't remember what i dreamed, but there were tattoos

i have things
things i want to ask you
things i want to know
but
i don't seem to be able

such a long and involved dream

and i only remember
riding
in a train or bus, not sure
first looking at
then pointing out to a boy
the glimmering landmark
a giant pyramid of tiny tiny lights
towering
yet ethereal
in the dusk sky

carousel

i dreamed of looking
for a giant carousel by the sea
it was supposed to be amazing
one end angled into the sea
jutting down
dangerous, seemingly
to rival a rollercoaster
but
i couldn't find it
where it was supposed to be
a bunch of ugly stuff
but then
halfway hidden
a round art gallery
like a fairy grotto
and there was more

but
i still wonder
if you could have this be
anything
any way
any how
is this the way you'd have it
or
do you dream about something different
sometimes
sometimes i think
maybe you say different
but
then
i think maybe
maybe i just want you to have said that

kissing you

i want to learn to kiss with you
to sit in the back of a darkened theater
and steal my hand upon your knee
to go to a drive-in, maybe
to smoke dope
to see the marching munchies across the screen a million miles tall
to get popcorn
and soda
candy
if you like
and then
back in the car
to kiss you
i can't remember what it's like
to kiss like that

and what i really want, right now
is that

today had a rather surreal quality to it

i literally do not remember last year
it's one long blackout drunken escapade
there was death
and
mayhem

but i don't remember it

the year before
there was death
and
mayhem

but i do remember that

but
it's weird
i don't feel like the same person, somehow

today i felt very detached from my own ...
what am i trying to say here
not from my life
but from my job
my circumstances
it was like somebody just dropped me into a body
like i was drivin it around
and it didn't really work all that well
my back got sore--  so so fast

yet i was able to be triumphant
in a petty little way
suck it megan
i whispered to myself
as i sold the last 19 bottles of the 2 cases of the prisoner
that my regional overloard didn't really want me to buy

but it doesn't really help me
and my
my mother is starting not to bother me so much

we had dinner at this place she likes
and
i like it too

and
i worried about you today
maybe, sometimes, i think you won't know what i mean
you'll mistake my meaning
i paint you this delicate beautiful wraith/waif, sometimes
i might puncture your membrane
with my callous tongue

is that a hold-over from my dad, a long standing belief about men
something psychological
or something you made me feel
when first i cried to you from my balcony window
high, chain-smoking, and watching dragonflies in the rain

maybe it's the beautiful tragedy of your poetic soul
fancy words for the thing that pulled me
from the start

maybe i've reified it in a maternal sort of way

or maybe
i just heart you

it doesn't have to make sense
it just is
and
i
had
forgotten
the mayhem

and
i'm not sure what that means

fiesta

I dreamed I was getting ready
for
it originally was an art show
but
gradually
it became a party
rather than trying to sell things
I was going to celebrate
it started with decoration
then flowers
white tulips
white roses
more exotic white flowers
then
dachshund riesling
and some other phallic referent wine
that was red
and beer

a very small boy
who was related
and had been ignoring me
squeeled and threw himself against my legs
which gave me pleasure beyond measure
my little boy

I had a pet bird
I think it was a parrot

anyway
looking back
it seemed like
pretty wedding-y

but
I want
that child

readings

this evening

now

what does he want from me

i know you're unlikely to be impressed by this

but
my sales were #10 in the company yesterday
for my dept.
i mean
not for the store as a whole

so i went back to work yesterday, but i put myself on the dl

so
got the manager's ok to have help
found the most linebacker-y guy i could get
i figure he probably is my weight class
but he's like six foot somethin
i'm all tellin him
what to put on the dolly
where to take it
where to take it off the dolly
this was radically unpleasant for me
[not that he was unpleasant about it
just
i don't like that dynamic
you work, i "supervise"]

i kid you not
after 45 minutes
he's like:
that's it, right
and i'm all like:
no, you got someplace to be?

anyway
he escaped as soon as he could
and then
i just had to help people buy things
i figure by Monday i oughta be off the dl
and there's not much moving things around i'd be able to do today
i might be tempted to do a little
lifting
gotta be strong
and not

you are kind of adorable

i hurt my back

i left work early
i couldn't stand or sit
or walk or move
without discomfort
and
what i really couldn't do
was
bend
or lift things
just couldn't

i've spent all day
soaking in epsom salts
and laying on heating pad
rubbing bengay

stretching

and

i'm worried

not that i'm permanently damaged
i'm sure i'm not

but
i've got another nine days of this

and
i'm not sure i can


that has distracted me
and
i did want to try to tell you about that dream
the balloons, in space
it was cool
and
i performed the heart surgery
it was
sort of
shamanistic

i love you
and i'm sorry that i haven't had much
the last couple days
i wanted to
i'm thinking of you

oh wow
hurt back and all
i just took that dirty
the particular angle i'd like you to rub my lower back
it's been drifting back to renaming everything in the garden
animate, sensual
for a while now

do you like that more
sometimes if you do i think that's good
sometimes i'm not sure about that
i wish

what i wish
is that i knew
something that i don't know currently, about you

but i don't mean
general stuff
doesn't need to be sexy

i wish that
and that i was as tough as i think i am

heart surgery and releasing balloons into space

superbad headache all day

going to bed now
i love you
angel

something to do with religion

at these festivals
community gatherings
he had this ascension ceremony
which seemed to be about him
but people
who followed him
were sometimes walking around in a daze
not sure what was going on
having been relieved of most of their debt

i can remember 3 dreams

the first I was a kid, I think
it was this house
and my room was tiny and shaped
like a pup tent
I was not pleased
too small
no place to hang my clothes
but the view and property were beautiful
there was a train coming by
in the near distance

in the second
it was like a Manhattan project
or what's the other one
Los Alamos?
but
this was quantum
and
not weapon-y
the guys working it
they had really strange senses of humor
they would make these tubes
for each other to get in
kinda like doggie doors
and
as a joke
they kept changing the opening
to be too small
and lots of poop humor

in the third
I frothed milk
seemingly endlessly
making café mochas
enormous
collander sized mochas
but I seemed pretty happy about it
I think I want chocolate
and I knew mine were the best

i'm going to bed now

i love you

parade building

i went up the hill to speak to the alien
about my son's birth right
but it turned out
the big spaceship on top of the hill
was a bunch of guys
in a house that looked like a flying saucer
one was my son's father
and we had had some sort of really elaborate
game (maybe) that we had made together
anyway
i started talking to the other guys
and they were all really nice
i was telling them
it seemed like i had had two cars disappear
but possibly i had just dreamed, really vividly
of having the cars
because i didn't seem to have any
actual information about the cars

anyway
when you finally showed up
we started putting bits and pieces together
and we ended up with a parade of
lessons for children
using goofy cultural references
so it was kinda fun for watching parents too
i went back home
and tried to record another one
but my equipment didn't work so well
and when i tried to play it for you
it wouldn't play
and there was just a big puff of orange dust
you were nice about it
but i think
it was somehow also supposed to explain
how i still wanted you around
how great we always worked together
how, now i was reminded about it, i
totally missed you

i don't know if you ever got that message
or really if you missed me too
and
my son didn't seem to be anywhere
in the dream at all
so
i was a little confused about that

i left work early because i'm sick

i went to bed about 3 hours ago
woke up because i have to pee
drank tea before bed
but
i had crazy dreams
baseball
baseball players
going to games
i can't remember, but insider stuff

but then also
signing people up for gaming systems
using email
but then too
an elaborate system of pictures
representing
favorite holiday moments, i think
turkey, fireplaces, whatnot
they were telling me a story
and i was representing it with
a photo montage i was entering
into the computer, right then
it was weird

back to sleep

i hope i didn't freak you out

maybe the religion thing
didn't make sense
it wasn't meant to be at all bad

i love you
nickels

this is not done, not right, yet but i literally can't keep my eyes open

my inner landscape has a broad big sky

desert

i don't meet you in the forest
in the circle of trees
my mind just doesn't go there

i meet you by the campfire
the campfire in the desert
but the desert is so dry
i don't know if i can
stand the heat
of the
eye
i
see
the twister
arc across
turn
press into the landscape again, and again


tundra, with the trickster ravens, stealing the light of heaven

all night

i worked on this wine deal
there was so much involved
i was trying to help some people
get their family back together
and
i was trying to make some money
but
i wasn't sure what i was doing was legal
so
when i lost my cell
and i kept getting these messages:

they say they found your phone
go to unit 22

they say they found your phone
we know you're busy right now
but we suggest meeting with us
unit 22

i decided
i had to hurry and finish
before these guys find me

it wasn't a restful sleep

i haven't been able to say anything today

i needed to do laundry
i didn't do it
i took a bath

i dreamed last night that my breasts
like tightened, or something
pulling into my chest
probably
because my muscles were sore from lifting
i moved boxes
from 7:30 to 2:30 almost constantly

my protocol is working
two aleves and an ibuprofen with an emergen-c
before work
i don't like it for my liver
but it is really helping with the inflammation

i think i use critical mass on the epsom salts



i'm 50 pages from the end in that book
and
ultimately
i don't think it can be
st this point
quite what i wanted
i mean
i guess i must have changed what i wanted a novel to be, slightly
well, not changed so much as discovered
that it was not complete so much as stated
somehow

because i am learning, i guess, about how being human is for him
[mostly we'll say]
but there's something
some bigger picture
that despite all his talk of singularities
i'm just not getting

and that is what i'm trying to figure out
if i'm writing something
for you
about you
because of you
whatever
that's the thing i'm missing

i don't think i mean like a moral
i almost mean a metaphor

i keep playing with the idea of landscape
i clearly want the questing and the desert and the landscape
the cross country and the cross roads
i have worked the images and the symbols
until they are
just are
us

but
i need to be saying something with the story
the bits of the story were all pieces
of me telling you things
and me telling me things
and maybe you telling me things
but that isn't the story
i thought it was

but
i don't think it is

i thought
the way to write it
is some sort of uncertainty magical realism
unreliable narrator
i like films like that

but this isn't film

and take american god's for example
it's a good book
i enjoy it
but
the ending
doesn't seem to live up to the rest of the book

no
i think i have to know where i'm going
i, as it turns out, have
structure after all

that little bit about the ravens
i have had in the book
in pretty much exactly that way
for years
often
i picture that as
the end

so then
i must have the story, right
but, no

that story
i could write that story
and i could give it a beautiful little human growth theme

no
no i couldn't
nor do i think the thing to write you is the image of our fantasy life

i could, i might write you bits of that
they become part of the images the symbols
but they aren't the story itself


so what is it you read the story for
what is it about me that makes me hard to turn away from
what is it about yourself that you learn by listening to me
and what do i learn about myself from my inability to turn away from you
and what makes this so much more real
than the stuff that i am medicating my way through

i was thinking the other day:
i used to think that i should start a religion
and, as i watch myself
i think that was not as all bad advice
[though it was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek]
i think that i have a natural tendency to look for meaning
and i think, now that i really understand the cyclical nature of religion
the growth that is possible by revisiting psychological states
year after year

i think that that, somehow, is the story

does that
make sense

cause i'm almost thinking i'm on to something

i had crazy vivid dreams

compassionate vampires
mutant powers
monastic order fighters
and the girl with the nickel tattoo

woven in
amongst all that
was me following you
and
some catch phrase about nickel
that said something profound about love
i wish i could remember everything
it was kinda intense

hope you are good
happy and healthy
i love you

i'm having a stressful work holiday season

if anything sounds weird
it just probably isn't coherent
I love you
and
I was pretty happy yesterday
but
today, less so

those last two were from a while ago

just now published them

they aren't apropos of anything, now
i guess when you publish it for the first time
it moves it to where you are at that moment

and more

the thing about bukowski's misogyny is
that it's so beautifly shows the break
that continued to break itself
and
the funny thing is
i saw enough pieces
footage of him with his wife
i think she kinda loved it out of him
i think i saw a couple pieces snap off
and
in the end
he was able to express the male-ness better
and
i mean, the women was just
true
on some level at least
i think it felt true
so if it's misogynistic, does it matter

we were building a restaurant

one piece at a time
with salvage
and whatnot
and what was developing
was quite a cantina

the waitresses were all done up
like catrinas
and then there was a more elaborately costumed catrina
playing piano

you had picked out the waitresses uniforms
lavendar and natural

three baths and 241 pages later

i have thoughts about what i want in a novel
in a way this is not new
i sort of knew this
but
a novel
for me
needs to tell me something about the person who wrote it
not anything about them, as such
but, rather, about how being a human is for them
like the planetarium of their synapses

really
i'm not talking about realism

murakami does this really well for me in wind up bird
or kafka on the beach
even though, really, what happens in those books
how much of that is real
none of it
all of it
who cares

it's all real

so, anyway
i was reading, i read something that made me stop
it was maybe trite, hackneyed
maybe something put in to explain away character development
maybe this wasn't him at all, but research
but
that isn't why i stopped
i stopped because it made me think of myself
like a verfremdungseffekt
suddenly i wanted to ask you what you thought

perhaps i have been going about our relationship all wrong
but no
i think i know what you get from me
no
but maybe i'm wrong

to the point where
no matter if it's trite and hackneyed
effective has got to count
to engage the reader directly
to relate the context of the work to their own lives
surely this was working for me, anyway

so here's the jist of it
[i'd like to run to you wrapped in a robe of some kind
ahhh but what to draw upon the robe]

men do not really want from women what they think they do
they want neither sex nor companionship
what they want
mystery
like the mystery
not
like a mystery

so
hmmmm
it seems to me
that what you want from me
is more like the unbundling of the mystery

although
that's a rather techno meta phor

which is why i don't describe the robe

maybe it's a mental dance of the seven veils

i love you

the last couple nights
it felt like
you were in bed with me
if you are doing something, in particular
I like it

i don't know what to think of me

maybe
maybe i'm premenstrual
seems maybe a couple days early
but it might explain the reason for the rollercoaster
somebody said a four letter word
and
i imploded

but
i've got other stressors

i wanted to hold on to you
i wanted to talk to you
i kind of almost wanted to argue with you
[i don't enjoy that
and it would likely not have come to that
but i felt this tension that must usually work itself out that way]
i decided that rather than argue
i'd rather have slightly aggressive sex with you

after i thought that, i felt better

you know
i'm actually more confused than ever

i'm watching this anthony bourdain show, parts unknown

and
i'm having this almost uncontrollable urge
to move to detroit

it's like america is happening in detroit

maybe
maybe it's just an effective/effecting episode

wild wild west

a girl I work with asked me if I had dyed my hair
no, I said
I didn't
I don't
it looks darker, she said
well, I didn't wash it

wait, she says, you don't dye your hair

no, I'm real low maintenance

you should totally have gray hair
that is so unfair

i'm wondering

i keep getting the devil

i mean, a lot
and i'm wondering
what does that mean right now

and i have no idea

i don't know whether it's good or bad
or
whether it's warning or giving advice

i don't think it's representing one or the other of us
because
this card isn't so much about an archetype
as a state of entrapment
more psychological than anything

but
i don't think that's going on in our dynamic
so
i'm confused

themes

last night's dream managed to get an unusual public bathroom, wine, school, and rock stars all into one dream

unfortunately, it doesn't really flow together as well in the waking state
plus, of course, i can't remember every bit

there were four varietals or blends [whatever, four kinds] of wine, but i feel confident they were all the same brand [for lack of a more specific]--  i think it's influenced by something i'm kinda into at the moment--  save me san francisco wines

my favorite of their wines that is save me san francisco soul sister pinot noir

although, full disclosure, i haven't had the cab or the chard yet.

and, strangely, even though i'm pretty sure i've heard these songs, i don't have em stored or anything.  the feeling i have for the wine isn't influenced by the music.


the rock stars in the dream might or might not be related in any way to this train wine thing.  i really think it's more to do with this pumpkin cheese cake recipe i was looking at yesterday--  almost famous it was called.  oh, almost famous, i love that movie!  and it made me think about that summer afternoon and evening dancing around on the stage, and your bare feet, and how i thought being penny lane would be the highest calling, like ever.  i had forgotten that!


the school was good.  none of the typical stress over tests.  i wasn't going to math.  i understood in the dream that i wasn't going to math.  and i finally asked myself:  why do you sign up for math when it's a foregone conclusion that it is a pointless waste?  no body wants you to take math!  just skip it!

i was plugged in.  i was going to achieve something.  i was sure.

there were parties.  i wasn't really all about them.  but the place became the school became the place.  i wrote in restaurants, i wrote in bars, there was a crowd of people all doing some version of that, that or just partying.  that was how i ended up in the bathroom.  you're out, you drink, you need a bathroom.

but the scene in the bathroom was weird.  not sexy weird, just bizarre.

and the rock stars, they saw me.  shitting, i think.  and it's like that, and the story of what had happened before in the world's strangest bathroom, instantly bonded us.

and me and three rock stars kinda walked off into the sunset together.

the beginning!

i am gonna write something, i am

i'm having a little trouble
working it out
i'm sleeping on it tonight
so feel free to send requests by dream post

i love you very much

i don't know

sometimes

if you always know what i'm talking about

but

i have that problem, a lot

i hope you're happy and healthy

and having a good time

i'm waving my arms in the air, see

magician

i'm intrigued by the listening

what did you hear

i would love to know

either i'm just short circuiting

or
you are thinking about me today
i don't know
why that happens
but
you better want me for something
ultimately
or else
it's just all kinds of wrong
for you to be able to do these things to me

i dreamed you were sick and i had to get you medicine

this is where st. ferullian comes from


i talked to your office manager
i talked to
and went to see her doctor in the clinic downtown
and then i was on a bus to fairbanks
i think it was the 304
i had someone with me
for safety, i guess
but when i talked to the bus driver
he told me we had to transfer to get to you
we had to go to st. ferullian 15 miles out of fairbanks
to transfer
to get to where you were
which was where
i'm not sure

i don't know what you had
but you could die, i just kept thinking
my travelling companion
was it my aunt
was all like: i'm shutting this down now
we aren't hitching a ride to ferullian
but
he could die
i was quite desperate

i don't know
what all that is about
please don't be sick
in the dream it was
something like tb, or something

see i think this is obvious, but maybe i should say it

what i mean when i say that i pondered it
is this
there are things here
you are attracted to
brain type things
and
attitude type things

so
i had to ask myself
did that peak any interest

because you killed off my interest
in others
pretty effectively

and
no, i'm not interested
not like he would have been, ya know
just informational

it occurred to me
that you might think i was trying to make you jealous

i was trying to do almost exactly the opposite

i'm reading something

now, the last thing i told you i was reading, didn't get very far.  and you may remember that i said i'd been having trouble lately, which actually stretches for years now.  i read almost constantly on the internet, and i've read a bunch of books on judaism, but particularly with fiction i just can't do it.  even listening to audio books has been difficult.  i'm current on all the mystery series i was reading, but that's like tv.  anything else, not so much.

i just want the idea, i don't want the blah blah blah.

maybe now is as good a time as any to tell you that i am the world's slowest reader, probably.  this upset my mother.  she wanted to send me to speed reading classes.  normally i probably would have done it;  it would have helped in college to have time to read everything.  if it had been anything else, probably yes i would have done it, but i got an orientation for speed reading and i could tell right away that it would break something for me.  that was in ninth grade;  it was first semester and reagan was running against carter.  and i knew that i read for style.  i mean not entirely for style, content too.  i just knew that it would rob me of something vitally important and that i wouldn't be able to just turn it off and on.

i want to go to classes to learn to read slower, i said defiantly, and i held that ground.


i bought this book, for the name, pretty much.  i had decided i wanted to read this guy, not knowing much about him.  and then in an interview or something, he said two things that made me, in a completely non-sexual way [i know because i spent some time pondering it] give him an enormous kiss on the lips.

what he said was this:

1. you can break the rules, if you can pull it off
2. whatever really scares you, THAT's what you should be doing

now, i learned the first thing in art school, but i needed to hear it again.  the second thing i really knew, but i really needed to hear it again.

so i'm reading his book.  i'm 90 pages in.  but i was several pages in before i stopped.  how could i have read this far and not noticed?  the page contained some amount of writing, then it stopped and just moved on to the next page.

it was so much like something i would have done i just didn't notice it at first. 

thank you for smoking

i had a strange dream
we were in austin i think
we went to a coffee shop
it seemed like a work function, except
i'm not sure what the work was
nothing exciting
and
as we walked out, on our way to somewhere else
there was a decorative shrubbery
that was cut to say
thank you

but
it didn't just seem like background
it seemed like
like a message for me
but
if you're thanking me for anything
i don't know why

then
then we went to a hotel
and we smoked weed
and we spilled seeds all over the carpet

which seems symbolic

i'm such a chick

i think i need to talk about the whole pluto transit thing.  i didn't necessarily want to, i wanted to write a story, but i can't focus.  so this pluto thing gas been going on a while, and it's supposed to go on til 2023.  i am not sure i can deal with that much transformation.  i said i didn't want to be a writer, when last we talked, and i think that i was being disingenuous.  that's not quite it.  it was that i didn't want to be a "writer".  i want to write.  the reason i became not-a-writer straight off the bat instead of trying and then giving up like apparently most people did was this:  i wanted to choose what kind of whore to be.  when you do something for money, essentially, at some point you end up a whore.  this might not be true.  but it is what i believed.  and it is what i still believe to a large degree, even though it is not what i believe at all.  confused yet?

you see, i now believe that the only way anyone ever achieves any greatness is by doing the activity for the love of it--  if you had to pay to do it, you would still do it because you love it that much.


so, in my fantasy, and this is terribly un feminist, i don't work.  well, i mean i guess i do, but i don't.  i take care of you [do you need a lot of personal minding?] and the house and the kids--  and i write.  i write to you, and for you, and or the kids, and i'm hopeful something might happen with it, but in another way i don't even want to know about it.  is that over the top weird?


that's kinda what i'm already doing here.  and, to be honest, it makes me a little uncomfortable.  i can see that all these people in malaysia visited the other day.  i want to know why.  what did i write, how did it catch their interest?  did they actually read it?  are there some web crawlers in malaysia that hit a key word and zeroed in, or are these actual people hitting a key word and zeroing in.  either way it doesn't mean readers, necessarily.  i am annoyed and relieved.  i write this to you.  i'm not writing it for the general public.  but of course i am.  and that awareness creates a dynamic.  it's hard to separate them because i actually think this makes me better.  i have to choose my words carefully, i have constraints.  i think these thing improve me.  but i am not constrained by structure, which is nice.  i think i have issues with structure.  which is odd really.  don't i seem like the kind of person who would do well with structure?

aren't i, in fact, trying to do the quintessentially female thing with you?  tell me, tell me, in concrete terms, what am i to you?!  i mean, i'm being all cool about it.  hey, whatever, ya know but what am i spending my time doing, here man.  time's a wasting.  that's, at it's core, such a chick thing.  i am such a chick.

i have this friend.  she's got problems.  they aren't the same problems i'm used to, but they're bad.  i just want to shake her.  she has done some things i didn't like.  i let her know i didn't like them.  i never implied that i didn't like her, or that she was bad.  although, i did really believe [internally] that it was laziness that led her to do the things that caused me trouble, and it might be that she's just kinda stupid.  anyway, i think the general feeling of wow-you-really-did-not-live-up-to-my-expectations leaked out of me enough that she got it.

let me just say right now.  this is something that i'm aware that i do but rarely when i'm doing it.  i try very very hard to hide it, unless i'm really mad.  well, that's maybe not quite right.  i think, with a certain type of individual this dynamic works okay.  when the people are like the people i tended to hire, and like my assistant now, they rarely see the reaction, and when they do, it's so mild that it just removes the need for a conversation about it.  they say what their thinking had been, i say how that differs from mine, or i don't.  if i'm satisfied that that was the best decision for them at the time, sometimes i just rethink my reaction.  i plan out new systems of support so they won't have the problem any more.  it's very satisfying.

but this woman, she just reacts without much thought.  i take that as a lack of caring about my job and the performance of it, but that's not fair, because it doesn't have anything to do with me.  but she's broken, and now i've given her the wow-you-really-did-not-live-up-to-my-expectations and it set off a landmine.  i think i have to find a way to fix it.

i kind of resent it.  i see why she runs through guys.  she does this.  and this is a super turn off.  you don't love me.  why don't you love me.  i do a lot for you.  she's told me this from her own perspective.  much longer and more complicated, but essentially the same.  this build up proceeds the stage where the guy leaves her, or where she says fuck it i don't need this shit and leaves him in what i think amounts to a preemptive strike.

i'm not sure i never had that break, maybe i did, i don't remember it.  but i really do not like feeling responsible for her whole collapse as a human being.  that our friendship means that i have to be sorry that she screwed up.  that i have to plug up her insecurity holes.  i'm having a bad reaction to that.  on the one hand i feel bad, i want to fix it.  on the other hand, i feel so much less of the friendly feelings that have bolstered her up when she had this before [i'm now realizing].  it's kinda crazy, but my instinct is to buy her flowers.

and i don't ever want to be that to you.  i'd rather be like, later dude, than to degenerate into that kind of shit.  i have issues i have to resolve.  i've told you some things i needed.  i don't think i was vague.  i'm not sure how that's gonna all play out.  there are aspects that don't favor the game i thought i was playing, but i would rather play with you rather than call all the shots.  and, ultimately, i'm not sure who will have the advantage.

the fact that i'm playing the long game may cause me to end up being bitter for missing my chance at the puppyfish, or it may make me decide that i have to get a job making a bunch of money and have insemination.  i think the first is more likely.  but i really hate myself bitter.  i'm really afraid, to be honest.  i will have to make changes.  and i don't think that the things i suspect maybe you want me to do are going to be very effective pieces of the puzzle that is the changes i have to make.

i guess that means i can't really factor you in.  and i don't really see how i can not.  round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.


he's gonna read that and think, what exactly

you know

you know something
there is something that you know
that you know i want to know
but you won't tell me that
and
i gotta say
i find that distrustful

but
i'm playing along
not making a big thing
and, i think i ought to get some props for that
because
it is either really cool of me
or it means that i'm a fool
and not in a good way

so
what i think that you should do
is tell me something

something you think i want to know
so keep your state secrets
but give me some currency
as a show of faith

if you can

not something you think i want to hear
i want this to be the truth

i'm lookin at you malaysia

ok
that's a lot of hits
in a short period of time

tell me
really
manly funk
that's what brings the heat?

scent of

so
i decided that i need a scent for you
i can't help it
that's just a fiction that i'm going to have to write
i need the sensory stimuli
and, of course i'm not going to create a body scent
because you can't unwrite that stuff
no, i'm using a cologne

preliminary testing was not totally successful
the contender:
thierry mugler men

it has coffee, cocoa, patchouli, it's a bit much
but those are things i liked
it's like a gourmand oriental wood scent
it has a jarring quality, at first, and for a while
but once it's dried down it starts to be close to what i want

it's a little exotic though
and, of course, i'm mixing it with my body chemistry
it would be better with some manly funk


i looked up the notes i'm that interest me
i don't really get anything

just a little hint of bay, not too much, and green pepper
some herbal notes, not too green, sage maybe and smokey pinon
coffee, vetiver, whiskey, tonka bean, and maybe just like a drop
of carnation which give this spicy note
that doesn't read specifically floral

that get's nothing

of the ulta choices thierry mugler men is the closest

and it's refillable, which is nice, but i just don't see you wearing that
or gaultier, which is also nice
they just seem a little frenchy

maybe i should smell old spice again
i think i like old spice
i think that's where the bay comes from
probably tied to closely to my father
not a good idea
i really want to discourage any cross pollination there

or juniper, spruce, ozone, seaweed
because i could see you wanting something cleaner

l'occitane has some nice ones
here i need to smell it again
but
i think this might be it
cade

i spent a lot of time pondering the dragonfly

i like dragonflies.  i always pay attention to them.  i don't see them often.

there was one day that i was feeling something very strong about you.  it was during a period of time that i spent my time drinking coffee, smoking, pacing the patio thinking of what to write next.  which doesn't seem much like what i'm like now.  i don't think i'd want to go back to that, not exactly that, even though i think of it as the best time of my life.

it's probably not that different than college.  except i only smoked a tiny bit in college, and now i was a pro smoker, well, not now.  in the interest of clarity that seemed best.  now i smoke, but i don't smoke, if you get my drift, but lately i've been thinking of stopping that again.  it's not as expanding as it once was, i don't think it gives me what i need, and i don't like the fuzzed edges that hang around the next day.  what i want, what i really want, is hallucinogens.  but i'm afraid.  and i mean i think with good reason.

i don't have a normal mind, it's just wired differently.

crazy people make me uncomfortable.  they always have.  i'm like looking for a pattern.  one of the most frightening things to me was that one time i had a conversation with a schizophrenic woman without realizing that that was what i was doing.  no, she didn't make any sense.  i don't remember what she said.  there was something to do with a trash bag.  there was something to do with lightning.  this was maybe 2000.  i just kept asking her what she meant about the lightning.  finally a friend came up and pulled me away.

what were you doing?  you know she's schizophrenic, right?

no, i'd had no idea.

so the idea of hallucinogens frightens me.  pot used to make you see things, i remind myself.  so, which side of that argument are you taking, exactly, i ask myself right back.

dragonfly

i take this very literally as a sign.  even if it's not a sign from god, or the universe, or synchronicity cosmically linking me to this dragonfly through a fractal map of chance or destiny take your pick. then that only means it is a sign from me.  which is just about the same thing if you ask me.  that dragonfly captivated me.  there is nothing else in the world that could have pulled me from that dragonfly.  so it means something.

so, meaning.  what does it means.

it took me three times longer to describe that dragonfly than it felt like it took me to write the rest of what i wrote.  and today when i was researching dragonflies, i cried.  now i may not be a trained psychologist, but i say that if you cry over something relatively banal you've hit some sort of serious psychological paydirt.  

this was the video that made me cry

so, yeah, it's an allegory.  for death.  for change.  for rebirth, in a way, because the dragonfly doesn't just change form;  the dragonfly can't even visit the life it had before, that life becomes dead to it.  which is essentially what i'm telling myself with all this astrological talk about pluto.

sometimes what i think about you is that you think i have talent.  that what you really want to do is mentor me.  that it's all pure and innocent and i just become like a child of art to you.  when i think this it makes me angry with you, just so you know.

regardless, some big change is clearly coming.  i've dicked around long enough.  the dragonfly apparently has a two year cycle attached to it.  so either a two year cycle is about to end or a two year cycle is about to begin.  but even that is vague, because it could be that i leave this job after christmas [which i'm thinking i probably should, it's really not right for me] and then there is another two year cycle to the next big jump.  which i guess with that pluto on the mercury thing on some level i want to think is writing.  but that is not what i thought i wanted.

why does it feel like i'm being hoodwinked somehow?

tombo kachimushi

and, some more. i'll go back and title these later

i drove around.  looking for a way to the beach, not finding it.  when, at last i found it, there was no parking. and i didn't really care, didn't even want to see it.  i'll go back later, i said to myself.  i didn't really care about it except sunset, i needed the sunset.  maybe eat something.

i have eaten a couple of times at the little place next door to the motel.  once at the place across the street.  this doesn't seem an exploration kind of place.  the timbre is fine, legitimate, but without much range.  so the place next door and across the street seemed to offer representative, if not popular options.  i had tried to go to the popular place and there was a waiting list, but it didn't seem worth the wait.

i realize this is a fairly common trait for me.  i will wait.  but i don't like to.  for example:  when crispy cream donuts came to my town it was a huge deal.  people would wait in line for an hour to buy donuts.  i was never one of those people.  i run the math, i don't want it that bad.

i did wait in line for the freedom train when i was a kid.  i still remember that.  it was like the carnival coming to town in the thirties and the whistle stop presidential campaigns and yoyo contests before the old serial westerns and a myriad of other americana bonding events.  it was just the one available for my time and place.  and in a sense, i knew it would be that for me, that's why i wanted to go.

i drove by a place that had lazy in the name.  here, this'd work.  it was perfect.  a slightly commercialized version of the places i'd been, along the gulf coast throughout my childhood. maybe that's what was wrong with this place.  it seems too familiar, but different.  too much like places i'd been that had more contrast and drama.  this was beautiful.  safe.  closed in.

the, i can't help it, at-this-point-i-have-to-tell-you-it-was-a-flamingo pointed the way to the big outdoor menu:  walk up, read, decide before going in what's wanted, don't waste anybody's time menu.   three things looked good to me.

conch, i'd had bahamian conch chowder the first night.  this offered conch chowder and fritters for dunking.

grouper, which i like, generally.

or there was the pot, the one everybody loves.

well that was too good to pass up.  i'm mean, if your going to bother to come to this restaurant here's what we think you should get, and look, we still give you choices:  oysters and clams or either alone.  i mean i simplified it.  the original resembled things from elementary school in complexity and diction.

i had found the perfect place.

the inside reminded me of a place i went with my mom as a kid, called moby dick's. honestly i don't remember it well.  it was a bar.  my mom went out to a bar with her friends and she took me. her friends all thought it was funny.  i liked it, but then any time i mentioned it she got kind of weird.

do you want to sit inside or outside?

outside.

i order unsweet tea and ask about the pot.  they steam those shells in beer.  that sounds good, simple, with celery, onions, old bay.  all oysters, i like oysters.

you know your how to shuck your own oysters?

no.  oh, maybe i shouldn't get that.

i'll show you how.  it's easy, she says.  something in the way she says it makes me think of hard northern winters.  like maybe it isn't going to be easy after all.  maybe this thought showed on my face, because she said this:

if there are some you can't get we'll help you.

table across from me there were three roughly blonde women having drinks.  one of them starts screaming violently at what seems from her tone and demeanor to be a football game.  i look around to see how i missed the tv.  the table of women immediately in front of the tv, did not have my same reaction.  they thought she was yelling at them.  maybe.  i'm not sure i believe that, but maybe.

she's a cheese head.  her friends are glad she didn't bring her cheese head.

they left shortly after.  An old couple came in and sat down at the same table.

is this sun too much for you?

no.  we love it.  the man, he went further, he upped the ante:  we don't get enough up north so we're going to just soak it in.

ten minutes later they moved to another table.

i had an optimal amount of bright shade.  the air flow and temperature were also pleasantly like the beach town i grew up with.

an enormous dragonfly.
buzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

he is the color of tarnished silver, but gleaming.  his metallic quality doesn't seem possible;  i actually consider whether he might be fake.  clearly i am meant to notice.  ok, got it.  dragonfly. daydreaming.  that didn't seem right.  illusions, no.  all the associations i have for dragonfly, fail.


with martial movements, sharp, bright
this dragonfly, here
directs my future journey



the oysters came.  she showed me how to shuck.

she brought me drawn butter and lemon wedges.  what else do you like with them?

i don't really know, i said.

i'll bring you an assortment to try.  see what you like.

turns out horse radish.  pop open the shell, wipe the knife.  cut the oyster loose, dunk it in butter, put it back in the shell.  squeeze on some lemon, dollop on some horse radish, eat the oyster with the fork.  don't resist the urge to drink the remaining buttery horse radish slurry.

there were at least two women at the table behind me.  they were talking about her canadian clients needing to buy supplemental insurance to travel to the u.s.

there was something very rewarding about having to work for my oysters.  shells, enough to start thinking about a future driveway, they seemed so many.  at some point the old couple left.  one of the women at the other table had gotten louder.  a few minutes later she came up to me, slightly startled me, her face so quickly in my face, her eyeliner so hard and unflattering.

is that the pot?  she asked.

yes, with only oysters, i answer.

well.  is it good?  would you order it again?

yes.  it's very good.

do they open them for you?

no.

she looks slightly shocked.

but it isn't hard to do.


she seems to want more from me.  judging my veracity, perhaps.
 

alright, let me smoke, and then just free type and see what comes out

one thing i've never told you about our fantasy life is that, very early on--   before i'd worked out the whole skull ring thing--  i used to imagine you'd meet me with a ring.  you'd give me the ring, sometimes followed by the emergence of a secret surprise wedding that you had planned.  the ring was always something you designed.  the details of the dress and the wedding very simple and very matter of fact, but beautiful, tasteful, made poetic by the beauty of the gesture.  no big brew-ha-ha. no other people even.  just a vegas chapel or captain of a ship.  i never focused too much on the details of these things.  because, of course, it wasn't the fetishization of the details of the event or the item that interested me, those i sketched in broad strokes;  what interested me was that you had planned it--  what you would think that i would want.  of course, it's still me painting the broad strokes, and i don't like tacky or ugly.  my whole life people have bought me gifts for various things at various times, and i'm grateful or not (to be honest, in varying degrees) but generally not truly satisfied.  my likes are so odd.  my tastes so specific.  i almost never can really use the thing.  but, they took the time, spent the money, i feel tied to it.  and, in the end, i feel like they really shouldn't have bothered.  i wished they hadn't.  this is a pain of mine that i have largely managed to solve.  i manage to convey the wish for cookies they baked rather than something they bought.  or, ya know, whatever, it's not important

the thing is that it doesn't mean i don't like gifts.  i love gifts.  i just love them to be spontaneous and spot on, ya know.  that just pretty much doesn't happen.  like hardly ever.

so, this surprise wedding, it's perfect.

it just so happens that the way that this just oh so casually happening wedding can just go off without a hitch to become this effortless poetry, implicit in that fantasy is the groundwork of you knowing me well enough to pull that off.

but no, maybe that's not even right.

it's supposed to be like the first time you and i collided in that doorway.

the total effortlessness of that moment.

our wedding would be like that,  the symbolic embodiment of that.

not the towel moment.  that's what our life symbolises.

that feeling that the atmosphere changes, like molecularly, and there's a slipstream or something.  i still have that.  i still don't know what you smell like.  i know i've hugged you when you must have smell.  when you wear a shirt for four days straight it has to have a smell, even if you do not, and the smell it would have would be your smell.  it would give me so much comfort to have your smell to think about.

i'd have gone mad from the want of you if i had that.  

i don't.

you know how i said there are different cards that represent you or me

well over the last several months
you have developed a preferred tarot deck

it's weird
hard to explain
i don't know how much of life
you just feel in that sort of just-know-this way
but
when i do the tarot
i often use the "choose for me" option
for deck and the "one card" option for how many

and, somehow
this deck seems to be the one that almost always comes up
when i am asking a question directly of you, specifically

see

although, come to think of it this one too

i can tell you more about the sadness now

now
don't get me wrong
the vanishing likelihood of the puppyfish
the fact that it's happy happy blood time
and the fact that i'm still exhausted from my promo set
these things all contribute
but
none of those things
seemed like what was going on
and now
now i can somewhat unhappily tell you
i have some sort of mild food poisoning

i should recognize the particular way
that illness makes me feel
sad, irritated, slightly hmmmm

i don't know whether to say
pixilated
or
like the way an old tv got fuzzy
and the image would kinda roll
like that, but sped up
there's a new technique like that
but i don't know what it's called
hence pixilated [which i know]

if i was feeling better
there's some stuff i'd have picked up

and
i don't know
maybe i'm wrong
but did i hear both a consider the source
and
a declaration of love
poetically double entendre-d
just sayin
dogfish

i feel more comfortable driving

and
i guess i perform better
in my own head
when i've had a chance
to spin my little pre magic


i'm a little sad too

maybe later i can explain why

i need you
and sometimes
i wonder if i'm strong enough

rule of thumb

I dreamed about baseball

and
alien rescue
they seemed dead
but
they weren't
had to get in
and
safely extract

slipstream in the breach of time

the future seems
both
clear
and unimportantly vague
I will love you
you will be however you will be
and
it's only the coarse survival issues
that remain up in the air
but somehow
high though I'm not
I figure to have some sort of future
so maybe the trick
is to find a way to leave behind everything
that makes me think I don't

she looks out
staring across into the middle distance
ravens remind her of kids in a school yard
strangely warmed in the cold
I love you ernest

i like to think i'm rothko

but
maybe i'm not that nuanced
shoes really opened my eyes today

is there a purple power ranger

i lost myself
in structure
i found myself
in lost-ness

i live in a world
where the sky might be green
or purple
by turns

and i don't want that to stop

i want the normalcy to stop

when i was four years old i was initiated into something
by the spirit in the tree stump

then there were all those messages with the suicidal birds

i can't live in the just-the-facts-ma'am world
i don't need to tell it
that
bad

i wish i could remember what i dreamed last night

it looks beautiful

I set everything on a slant

a good dream, at last

I dreamed
that someone from corporate
came to see me
to commend me for selling
so much wine
we went to a cool little bar and grill
in austin
and
she gave me four bottles of the wine

in actuality
this year, I've been down in comps
for a lot of reasons
but this last weekend
I moved it from 1.8% under
to .6% under
which is $5 or $6 thousand
on top of regular weekly sales
so, not nothing

and
it's not really something I did, exactly
but it is because the buyer
did exactly what I told him I needed
to be successful
so
maybe
it is something I did

whatever
the dream was cool

i dreamed that i couldn't get anything done because

I had to spend all my time
showing people where the bathroom was

I am doing a promo change
so maybe
I just knew
everyone was going to irritate the fuck out of me

boy will my arms be tired
and
I'm super stressed
and, maybe
premenstrual
hurray

I feel
weird
and
strangely
like the world might end

my work

the girl who helps me
just sent me a video

it's adorable

sometimes
sometimes i'm all like
crap, i am so far behind
i think i'm gonna have to come in early
she often closes on friday nights

so
a few times she has texted me
it's all set up, you don't need to come in early

i really like those texts

so today
we were talking about the tasting
i was asking her suggestions
for sweet wines
what did she think we had enough of
has to be red, there's a sale on red

when we got it all ironed out
she said she was going to do her best to get it all done

and, i told her

i really like those texts

you really like [thumbs up] them

yes, i do

well, i'll send you a text to let you know i got it all done
and
a picture

she sent me a video
[i'm not gonna learn how to place that here]

[text]
hey e____, this is the wine dept
and this is the set up
i replaced the other red wine that was a syrah
[move in on replacement syrah]
because we didn't have any more of the, uh the one with jaqk [voice raises uncertainly]
yeah, we didn't have anymore of that jaqk stuff
so i replaced it with this
also, trash can and cups are in this door
[move in on open cabinet door]
over here, and that will be closed
[closes door]
[door bounces back open]
[closes door]
also, everything else is set up
you might need more towels
yeah, you don't need to come in early tomorrow--  you're welcome

like in that teenage girl tone
like thankless me

but i think she's using it ironically
because the last thing i said to her was

thank you for all you're hard work

this illustrates my point

cypress, white pine, and now, bamboo sap

i've been having these long complicated dreams
and as i'm waking up
i'm thinking
i got to remember that
but then it's gone, and i can't tell you about it

i went to the mall
and there are these super aggressive cart people
they try to rope you in
and
i don't want to buy their stuff
i mean
i probably do
but i don't
and i don't want them to waste my time

but
it's hard not to engage with them

at one point
this guy is handing me a sample sachet
and i'm saying

no no no

are you using anything on those pimples

he asks about my basically healing cystic acne under my jaw
which probably wouldn't be visible if i could just not pick at it

yes

i can't stop now
i'm on a mission

i'm going to buy skin care
he's selling skin care
but
he is israeli
and
if i let him talk to me
i will end up with a charge i can't afford to pay
and an entire new line of dead sea skin care
which i will love and use happily
but which i do not need
because
i am using a bunch of korean skin care
which i have spent almost a year refining and whittling down
to just the key items
that i am super happy with

but
for some reason
israeli sales people
[at least the ones i've met so far]
have some hypnotic power over me
and the whole sales process
becomes
somehow
sexual


spending a bunch of money
the inevitable
outcome

i bought my first amore pacific item

abstract of of a whirlwind

snatch
a snatch of conversation
whispers
around the edges
memorial of dreams
i try to coax
from random memory

over the top
crawling across
good
to the last
drop

it's the darndest thing

you remember that beer i couldn't get

well
hmmmm
what is the best order to tell this story

i had asked for a sign
i been asking, most days
and i'm sure i get em
but i don't know how to interpret em, apparently

this one either

he comes waltzing in, like 10 minutes before i'm supposed to get off work
and he's all like:
i am exhausted from all the hoops i had to jump through
but i got you a case

we'll see if it shows up tomorrow

and, i mean, realistically
one case is symbolic

but
really
what is that a sign of



you
sound happy
by the way

everybody at work is sick

i cannot get sick
i'm going to bank some extra sleep
if you can join me at the campfire
we can have coffee in the dreaming

if not
i'm not dodging you

love
e.

i slept late

and when i woke up
i both had a headache
and
felt the need to cry, lightly
not hard body wracking sobs
just kind of water leaking from the eyes
but
it has continued throughout the day today

i don't know
somehow
my spelling all that out
made me feel a loss

i don't know
if i didn't want you to know that stuff
or
if i wanted you to know it
and now
admitting to myself
that you probably don't
somehow means
that, again, no one understands me
or
if it's just the poetry is diminished for me, somehow

but
i do feel
that it's somehow related to what i wrote yesterday

i just feel, sad

i'm going to bed

i thought about not telling you
but
i don't know whether that's the right or wrong thing to do now

and
i'm crying again, fuck

I gotta stop naming these "thoughts"

today would have been my grandmother's 96th birthday
or maybe i'm wrong about that
maybe it's
well
plus or minus two years
i can't make the math right for the triangulation facts

i finally got my recorded reading from the astrologer
it wasn't really what i wanted

she spent a lot of time talking about:
when i see x in a natal chart
it means co dependency issues
blah blah blah
when i see these signs
or these houses
in the north and south nodes
and you have both
blah blah blah

boundary issues

REALLY??!!

YA THINK??!!!

come on
don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs
i know from my boundary issues

it made me mad

i've been working on em intense like for
i don't even know
and i'm having weekly visits with my mom, remember

but
she doesn't know that
and i did say:
whatever resonates

so i have absolutely no room to complain
she gave me some book learnin i could work on
and, hell, maybe i should do it
it's not like i'm completely fixed

her point was
that i'm right
there's big stuff coming up in my transits
and, to make the most of them, i really should get fixed

only
it was kinda interesting, what she actually said

we are all made up of electromagnetic energy
and
when we have boundary issues
it tears holes in our energy fields
and then the electromagnetic energy from the transits
it hits us on one side
and just passes right through and out
and we don't get to keep any of the good energy in our field


she also said
that
even though i have capricorn in my chart
because of the degrees [or something]
they are sitting in the house of aquarius
so
i'm just all kinda detached and think-y

plus
i really need to start my own business, apparently
my north node says it is like a destiny thing or something

she didn't spend any real time explaining the things i'd like to have had explained
and a lot, really a lot on the not so much

apparently 2014 is my jupiter return
in the house of babies

and
in the near future
[again no specifics--  a few years]
pluto will be sitting--  right smack on
my mercury
but it's pluto all round for like seventeen years
but
when pluto was on her mercury
she became a writing machine which has never left her
and now she's written a bunch of books she wants to sell me

that's not fair
she gave me a list of resources
only one of which was hers
but then
she gave me hers
which she must have decided to do after she pitched it to me
ostensibly because i was so patient
which i don't think i was, just especially
i just didn't bitch to her


one of my vendors at work
was telling me i couldn't get this one kind of beer
which everybody wants
and it's local
but
i can't get it
and he's all like:  it's not my fault
and i'm like:  i'm not saying it's your fault
i'm saying who ya gotta sleep with to get this damn beer
apparently
send paperwork to the brewery and distributor
NOW for NEXT YEAR
from corporate

well, shit, that might as well be an act of congress

so
i'm all like:
well how bout i just stop carrying all their beers
if i can't get the ones people really want to buy

oh
but that would just be hurting yourself

no, not really
they can buy that anywhere
i can use the space

oh
well
that would hurt me, then
it's not my fault
people are always chewing me out about this

i don't think i am chewing you out especially
but
if you like i can start chewing you out
and then you'd be able to see if you could tell the difference

like, seriously
ever since i got this new guy
every time i see him
i tell him i want this stupid, limited edition beer
that everybody is ape shit crazy for
and he says:   ____ more weeks
this is the first time i'm getting this triplicate paperwork bullshit

and i did not mention that

everything i was saying was directed at the brewery

sheesh

and i know that's bullshit, anyway

i had a fill-in, temporary, sales rep get me two cases of one of the limited edition brews
they have an allocation
and i'm not willing to be nasty enough to get part of his allocation

so
whatever


i mostly feel like i somehow cheated myself
because through however i answered her questions
i gave her room to think that i wanted advice on how to fix my life
when i was trying specifically
not to get advice

i wanted expert information, yes
but, ya know, the kind she was qualified to give me
and i guess i don't really feel like that's what i got

also
she said that my chart was at odds with itself

and i guess i took a little umbrage with that
because i had just decided that it was beautiful
how the different parts
balanced and completed me
without my really needing anything or anybody to give me balance

and what i wanted
was a sense of how that balanced integrated whole
was affected by major upcoming transits
and
that didn't seem to be at all what i got

so
maybe
maybe my mistake was
i didn't paint her a picture
i didn't make her see me and know me
and feel what i wanted and needed from her
so that she could give me what i wanted
i was
withholding
because i didn't want to lead and bias her
and she mistook that for being closed off

i told her i didn't feel good about giving her all this information
and i didn't want advice about my freaky life-style choices
and she
for some reason
took that to mean that
i thought she was judging me
would maybe try to cause problems for me
[she told me my information was safe with her]

but
to be honest
i really don't care
not even a little whether she judges me
i never really care about that
i mean, i don't want to hear a bunch of blah blah judgy-ness
but
ya know
think what ya want

the fact that i don't know what i want to be when i grow up
might mean
that i have boundary issues
so that i can't separate myself from others enough to know what i want
but
i don't think that's how my boundary issues work

i think
my lack of direction professionally
stems from my ambivalence about the things i'd have to do
to do the things i want to do
i think
i always can see just a little too much
about the ugly irritating under-belly
and it stops me from being able to commit myself fully
plus
money
and issues

and besides
what i'm doing right now
that's a job i can do
that lets me earn not really enough money
but i have time to devote to you

i'm kind of a recovering work-a-holic
if i got a good job
there would be no time for you

and
i know you don't think so
but actually
you have been my priority
well, after my boundary preservation, i guess
because
there have been things
that i think
you have wanted me to do
[maybe i'm wrong]
that would have fucked me up, bad
if they didn't go well
and there was absolutely no logical reason to think they would
just from the observable facts

maybe you don't see my perspective
or maybe you just saw what you wanted
or maybe you were a little bit in denial
i may not have all the facts

i have loved you
with a commitment that startles me
fully aware that i may be fabricating the relationship
in whole or in part
and can never really know which

the level of uncertainty
caused me a lot of stress, for years
and, as a consequence, i have periodically questioned my motives
what am i getting out of this
is this a sign of poor self esteem
is this a sign of a larger issue with choosing someone emotionally unavailable
but
i've never really seen you as emotionally unavailable

when i see you as whipped
[which i try really hard not to]
it is a big turn off
but i have seen you as locked in
even before you were locked in
which is why i had to drive away
if i had stayed
and ended up living under a bridge
i would have only have had myself to blame
and i would have lost respect for myself
so i couldn't

and i don't have a lot of money
so i don't have the ability to follow you around the way i did

and
i'm sure you had your reasons
but
you kinda took away the dream
of my being the one
and i didn't really want to follow you around
you hurt me
and you made me mad, really really really mad

and why did i love you anyway
what the fuck was wrong with me

and the answer is
i just love you
i don't love you because of, like reasons
i just love you
but
i don't completely trust you
and
i know you love me
i just know that
but
i'm not sure why
why you need me
or what you need me for

and
i'm not sure how long
i planned to keep my life open, hanging
while i figure it all out
you being part of it

if i felt really called to something big
would i have faded away into the woodwork
i honestly don't know how to answer that

you
you are the big thing i felt called to
and i have poured myself into you like you were a calling from god
which is kinda how i have felt about it

but
i don't know what god ultimately wants
maybe
maybe i helped you get back on track
or
maybe i inspired you
and maybe that is all i was supposed to do, ya know
if that's the case
i have to be okay with that
that's the deal i made with god when i was a little girl

contrariwise
maybe
maybe this is a journey for me
maybe i have imagined you from the beginning
maybe this whole thing is to lead me to what i'm supposed to do
[i don't actually believe that i've imagined you
or our relationship to one another
but if that's the case
i have to deal with it and complete the mission]

and if it turns out that i'm crazy
then
i'm a failure
but not before that
because this is a process
this part of my life
where i become
i don't know what yet

but
oh dear god, yes
there is escapism
rampant through this whole, whatever it is i'm doing
but
it is creative escapism
is is not from thanatos



william shatner
[stay with me, this is not as random as it seems]
i listened to one of his books on a long road trip
he talked about how
he has never had a plan
except to leave himself open to things, basically
and
that, if he had a plan, he really would never have done
any of the things that have made his career
but
since he was open to whatever
he's had some good adventures

and that is what i'm doing
although
i didn't have that as a plan
i guess i do now

i have stuff i need
and
some of it isn't negotiable
but
i'm responsible to me for that
and i have boundaries
and
you may not have liked them
but
you had
at every point along the way
the ability to change the equation
so
if it hasn't been exactly the ride you've wanted
there's that whole tango-ing business


just do me a favor
if
if you at any point
did anything
to punish me
[and i'm not saying you did]

think
think really hard
if that's the kind of thing
that you can promise yourself
that you will never do again
and, if you can promise that, then lie to me about it

because
i never ever want to be with someone who would punish me
i've done that, i think
and
it's a boundary, going forward

that is the one thing
the thing i thought
that i couldn't think
about you
and
i don't believe it
but
it pulls, a little, sometimes
does that make any kind of sense to you


am i done with this entry

what is he gonna think of all that

am i capable of having a mature relationship

should i be concerned that it chose the cat people tarot to answer that question

is there anything you want to tell me in conclusion


last night
i dreamed about snow
and car chases
and stuff i don't remember
and
a santa suit

i have no idea


should i even post this at all

i love you

i've been getting 9 of wands
quite a bit, lately
and
that is a card that seems to vary quite a bit
from deck to deck
it has
kind of a girding of the loins
before battle
vibe
but
in some decks
there is a
those who are about to die salute you vibe
and in some
it is more about the courage before
what might very well be
ya know
henry the fifth-ish

so then
i have this deck
i think i mentioned
or maybe i just meant to
is hard to read
but
for some reason i was called to read with it anyway
and i asked:
what will be different
the next time i see him
because
there has been a certain element of
painful consistency

and
that's not completely fair, maybe
but
this is in my head, ya know
so, anyway
i got this card
which i wasn't sure quite how to interpret at first
but
i have decided now
how i am going to interpret it, anyway
but
then i realized that it is the 9 of wands, too

and that just
made me
wonder

how to interpret the larger pattern

anyway
no matter what it all ultimately means
i love you

thoughts

in the same way
that you change tarot cards over time
i do too, except
mine tend to change
based on the question
or your feelings
or whatever
mostly

but
right now, mostly
i am showing up as the high priestess

although
either today
or yesterday
i actually got
the high priestess, the star, and the empress
as well as the frog mother card
although
i'm not saying that they all represented me
i just thought it was odd
or cool
or both

happy happy blood time

BLAST FURNACE

i keep trying to think of things to tell you today
and i'm not having trouble
trying to think of them
they're tumbling out
smothering each other

but the one that chews it's way to the top is
BLAST FURNACE

it really wasn't that hot today

90 said my phone
real feel 93
nothing

but
you'd go outside
and it was like the surface of the sun

and
i had no traffic
zip, zap i'm there
i stopped, got gas, drove pointlessly around
filling the time with driving that was supposed to be drive time
until, finally, i said
this is stupid, i said

i parked, windows down
i'll just wait
i use the google
i look up the weather where you are
where i think, you are
i do that, sometimes
i got a whole list on my phone
plus
some places i want to go
and
taipei

taipei was pre programmed
and by the time i got around to deleting it
i realized
it's almost always raining
in taipei
when
my phone, gives me
the weather
it plays it out for me
so i get

raindrops and lightning and thunder

taipei stays

and it's still hurricane season
tracking the gulf
but there's been a little fall, just a little
this has been a mild season
nothing at all to complain about
and complain'n well that never does any good anyway
summer didn't even start till may

but today
i was sitting in the car
actually kind of enjoying sweating
i mean, seriously pouring sweat, maybe it will dislodge blocked pores

no
it's getting creepy obsessive with the skin
i closed the window
and sat there with the air conditioner running

i can't remember what i thought

that's weird, right

it wasn't just me, the heat
everybody noticed it

have you been out there

in the night kitchen

when i was a kid
my dad used to tell me:

i almost choked to death last night eating cheese and peanut butter

seriously, like a lot


so
for some reason
[not doing myself a mischief]
i just realized, the other night
i have no idea why that would be a desirable thing
it always sounded disgusting
but
i never liked peanut butter
but
now
no stranger to the night kitchen myself apparently
was about to eat a spoon of peanut butter

ok
possibly more than one spoon

when that thought entered my mind
i had cheese
i had tillamook cheddar
and i thought, hmmmmmmm
still doesn't sound good

but
this was
apparently
something my father was willing to rick his life for
regularly

and suddenly i had to know

this was jif
i don't know what my father ate
i vaguely think skippy

the peanut butter
totally drowns out the taste of the cheese

i tried a tiny bit of peanut butter
it still drowned it out

the texture
was good
something in the pleasure level of say
new york cheese cake

but
how much, at a time
must he have needed
to almost choke

and, of course, meta chimes in
why
did he feel the need to tell you about it

i'm in a weird mood

maybe it's pms
but i'm not sure
i'm off cycle again, i think
maybe
it's trying to re calibrate
so that it'll be at the right place at the right time
or
maybe not

maybe i'm just a little late
but
there's a desperate angst
that has no real source

i'm trying to decide between going out and trying to have an adventure
or
staying in and trying to have an inner journey

i tweaked my back a little sleeping
it's just like a back rib attachment or something
i've been trying to stretch it
and it's better
but
maybe it would be easier to fix
if it were like a pop-able situation

i wish
there was some big insight coming
i paid money to get my chart done
and i'm kind of regretting it
i haven't got it yet

but she asked these questions
which i answered, vaguely
unconventionally
and then
in the notes
i felt compelled to add:

i feel weird about telling you all this stuff.  i don't want personal advice on how to handle my freaky life-style choices.  i feel like my life is about to  shift somehow, but i don't know how.  maybe i'm still just having a mid-life crisis or maybe there's something cosmic going on.  i want to know which way the wind is blowing, if that makes sense. am i in a saturn return? is there some area i should be working on?  what resonates for me?  and i'm not sure what period of time we will be talking about here.  i just felt like i was supposed to get a reading from you at this particular point in time.  does that make sense?

because it's been like a month
of email and waiting
and
blah blah blah
and
i no longer feel like it was a good idea
but it did seem like something i was supposed to do
at the time

i was talking to the guy who said before i'm like yoda
about jehovah witnesses
and
in the course of door to door missionaries
i brought up mormons

but
i told him
i think the function
within the organization is totally different
of the mission, i mean

mormons have a brief period of mission
between high school and college
and it is my belief
that this serves
more to cement them
get the desire to question
out of their heads
so that
when they rejoin mormon society
they are cleared to move up the chain
and learn whatever all those
levels of secrets are

also
that it has an
us against them
effect

kinda like
[i'm not implying an us against them mentality in pesach]
how
at pesach you are supposed to experience "i was a slave in egypt"

the mission
psychologically reinterprets
and the end of the mission reenacts
the symbolic journey to the great salt lake

and
i didn't go into that much depth
but
it didn't seem all that complicated or deep

but
he said:
wow, you really think about the psychology of things


which, i guess, means that other people don't


so
i guess
we'll see

sometimes
when i'm all cryptic and not up
i feel like it's better for me not to talk to you
because
i believe you have certain things you need from me
and i try very hard to give them to you
and
i don't really feel like this is what you want/need

maybe i'm wrong

red edelweiss 1975

i smoked, a little
then i walked across the room, kitchen to bathroom
while in transit
this alien beam, or something
when i sit down i'm humming edelweiss

what is that about
what is edelweiss to me

when my mom used to pick me up for thursday visits
we would go to memorial city mall
we'd eat at the york steak house
we'd shop around
we'd end up at haus edelweiss more often than not
the place had cuckoo clocks
i had kinda a thing for clocks

[i never really realized that before just this moment] 

but the song
that's about the music box

[now this is not the maltese falcon it's just a jewelry box
but it was amazing]

i wanted this thing, so much
it was a regular girls jewelry box
you open it and the ballerina dances

but instead of my little girl one
which was cardboard
pink satin lined
white tulle tutu-ed dancer
lost forever in a pirouette
to the tune swan lake

this one was larger
rounded
red
leather
velvet interior
white satin evening gown
slowly twirling
to edelweiss

i had asked for a sign

at work
everyone was buying wine for weddings
well, not everyone
but
two groups
all the outside vendors showed up early
or on time, which rarely ever happens
the girl who helps me
was actually scheduled to work
and
the one who just got certified
wanted to learn the ropes
so
I had help
and I was feeling pretty good
although
I wasn't quite sure what the message was

when I got home
I was kinda super pissed
by the facillities clusterfuck
but
lots of physical activity
calmed me right down
probably want to remember that

i had this thought today

i'm not sure if it had significance
from like my perspective
but then
meta
or whatever takes a double

you remember the picture of me
dance recital
chest out
arms wide
looking more like a merman [ethel] than waif

well
that dance recital was the day my brother was born
and my father was there
which
i gotta say
probably did not help my relationship with my stepmother

so i though about
what that meant
and, i mean, it was different times
he wasn't going to be at the birth

but he got to skip out on the labour
or had to sacrifice a precious moment with his wife
his beloved
the mother of his child
in order to be there for me

and
i'd never seen it quite that way before

this was the second time she was racing down the street pushing me, office chair mach 5

i couldn't write it down
i'd forget before i got halfway through
i grabbed my phone
and it has a note taking device
i just discovered recently
and have only used to give myself ironic pep talks
so far

i recorded the important points:

there were two couples
sort of
or really
maybe not
maybe there was one
maybe there weren't any

but there were trying to be

and
the characters were:

a not as young as she used to be, slightly diva-esque
new age media icon
well known in circles

a mid-thirties up and coming self-help guru
not especially tall, slightly balding, kinda scruffy bearded charismatic
whose countenance fairly glows genuine

and

the girls
i don't know what the girls do
one is in her later twenties, 26 or 27
the other is maybe 23 or 24

the younger one
is in love with the older one
who is her friend, but doesn't really believe it's mutual

the older one isn't really
that into definitions of things
and
really
is maybe open to anything

the guru has been trying to melt the new age ice queen for a while now
she worked with him on a project
and she is trying to parlay that into a mainstream jump

the kid has been
flirting with her friend for a while
and it seemed like it might have been working

and then
she and the guru

click