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

it was the strangest thing

it's like i just had the core of a novel
handed to me in my dream
but
i don't know if i know and understand
the characters
well enough
to write their stories
and
i guess that's happened before
but still
kinda weird

hope i didn't upset you somehow

i dreamed about
a really beautiful
and cool
girl
who was telling me
how she
got it
that i didn't have time for her

and
it wasn't that i didn't have time
for quantum entanglement
i just
couldn't enjoy that
simultaneously with being
stressed and pissed off
and
i couldn't stop that, ya know

i love you
and today is gonna be
if anything
worse

but
after 12 or 1 or 2
whenever i can leave
i should be completely free
until 8am friday

either you are all about me today

or i have a serious
neurological problem
because i'm working ungodly hours
and
i'm angry at my corporate overlord
but
i keep thinking:
if this keeps up
i might not be able to function

hit me up after 1:30
and
i'm probably going to bed at 3:00

i love you
my little ghost pepper

oh yeah

so, hotness
you've known me a while now
what do you think
what do you think i should be
when i grow up
i value your opinion

where do you think
my true talents lay

i know it seems like i might not be serious
but
i really am, serious

it was a small town, possibly mexico

we all knew him, somehow

i need a house for my non-conventional wives

later i met them
and they were pretty non-conventional
one had a little girl
i'm almost certain they were lovers
and they did bring some excitement
to our little town
i became friends with them

you understand
non-conventional
he smiled broadly

then i was organizing coffee
and sandwiches
and reading material
for, something
adam was there
giving commentary
not sure why
or how i should take that

then
there were fish tanks
i was feeding the fish
they bad been neglected
i was afraid the fish were not ok
some of them weren't, but most were
but some
seemed to be flying through the air

that's an old theme
i haven't had it in a while
don't know what it means
but
it means something

there was more
my brother was there
only it wasn't my actual brother
and there was a lot more
i can't remember
with the books
that was important
i just can't remember
books
industrial drip coffee machines
and
fish

words cannot express

earth

i think i was young
maybe early twenties
i travelled
with my family to a foreign country
might be mexico

we were either
buying
or selling
an estate, i guess

and there was some sort of magic
involved, i guess
because
there was this ritual
or ritual-like
scene
where we were digging through the dirt
and
a stack of famous rocks and minerals
beautiful hand-sized specimens

we took them away in boxes of soil
symbolically
carrying the land away with us


and then
i was in my grandmother's kitchen

crazy, unrestful dreams

it was some sort of reunion
there were people i knew
from work
from school
from television too, i think
i feel pretty sure i saw sam merlotte

i wanted to talk to fred (this girl who used to work for me)
and i kind of did
but then she ran up to the front of the room
and wrote on the wall

i want to live in a digital world
with analog sex

and drew this picture
that when she walked away
was gone

it was streaming, or something, too
stuff was on my phone
and i went to a screen on the wall
and synced with it

you have been to blah blah blah event
now
are you ready go order you christmas tree
one of the options was
not now i'm tired

fred had a long hyphenated name
i wanted to ask her if she got remarried

i thought to myself
she must have married the daddy
by which i did not mean
like the baby daddy

when she was in high school
she was a foreign exchange student
she went to france
and
she lost her virginity to the french daddy
this kind of horrified me
naive, i am, i guess

i mean, on the one hand
it was probably
good technique
not a horrifying first experience
that you spend the rest of your life trying to forget
but
on the other hand
it seems like
when you send your young daughter
to stay with a family
you should be able go expect
part of the protection to include
not, you know, personally deflowering her

but
whatever

woke up with a headache
yuck

i have to go to sleep now

i wish i could stay up

but
i
am
falling asleep

ok, so this is a little synchronastic

watch this with your mob of wallabies

i dreamed about australia

lake

chef sang yoon

was making soup

there were motorcycles

and
mogul type bigwigs
and
you were very excited
at the connections you were making
with the moguls
i think i was just gathering information
not even intel
just research, i think
but
it seemed like it was important

i haven't been able to remember my dreams, but i feel kinda schizophrenic

does that make any sense
i mean
i thought i kinda felt that way before
but
for some reason
i am stressed out, kinda bitchy
and
late, everywhere

i'm trying to do a detox
and i can't seem to get a good rhythm going

i'm not sleeping enough
and i'm not sleeping well

the one thing that's working for me
is lemon water, i can't get enough of it

but i have less control than i'd like over
what i eat
i want food that tastes good
comfort food
like sushi
and
delivery
chinese tofu homestyle

i don't want to cook

i want to write

but then
i get caught up
in looping interplays of story line

the things i don't understand
the things i think are one way
and then the other

the things i kind of thought i enjoyed
that now i can't stand

i know this isn't making any sense
but
i have to write something
or i'm going to die
and
i can't start
i don't know a metaphor for what i'm feeling

i don't even feel like what i'm feeling is contained within my body

and i'm not sure if that's good
i love you
and everything i start to say
sounds like it means something, different

like i start to say:
meet me in dreamland tonight
let's set free the bears

which i mean in a very extended metaphor-y john irving way
i stop
and think, both
that there are ways you might interpret that, wrongly
and
how wrong it is that i seem to be too a.d.d. to read
for a long dry spell
there is irving that i should have read
which i have failed to read
and
both of those things make me anxious

do you ever feel that way

my fantasies of you are kind of blossoming tonight

there's pictures

flashing across your stomach

across your back

as you sit

or walk

or lay

shirtless

there's venturing out

across the ice

out from the cabin in the woods

maybe you've gained a little weight through the winter

but there's a smell of warming in the air

so crisp it cleans you

and i want you like the smell of the sun in the laundry

i had a crappy day

i hope yours was better

hello

i've been feeling you all day


come visit in dreamland tonight

i'll be waiting by the campfire

since i can't write coherently

i spent a lot of time today
thinking
about whether i ever stopped having my mid life crisis
and i'm not sure i ever did

in some ways
i feel
like i've grown a lot
but it certainly isn't the way most people measure it

even as far back as
when i was going to go away to college
there was this one thing i kept coming back to
the places i liked
didn't give grades

at start of term
they had a contract
what i want to achieve

i felt instinctively
that that would be so much better for me
i felt like i would modify myself, always, for the grade
the making of the plan
freeing me up
to go beyond somehow

i'm sure i could have told you much more clearly then

but
i think
my sense about myself was right
i have to really fight myself back, sometimes
from going for steps up the ladder
even if what is at the top is not something i want

and don't freak out
i'm still drinking coffee

but i was recounting stories to my mom
and i realized i'd never told her before
and that i'd forgotten them
and then i realized
i may not have told you
a critical facet of my personality

i have this inner union organizer
talking about what i won't do

kind of an extension of how i introduced myself to you
for years
about what not to expect me to be

i'm both very very
whatever it is i am, nice, is that what i am
i don't even think that's right
but
people like me
i work and play well with others
and
stubborn
and, apparently a little more particular

on my last adventure
i found some oaxacan creatures
there was a coyote that i thought i should probably get
the trickster has been a totem
and i never had a proper totem for him

i didn't buy him
i kept getting called by a largish purple camel
which i also didn't buy
because he was too expensive
why i was so drawn to him
what did purple
or camels
have to do with me

sleigh/sled


i just figured that out



pretend
you're me

maybe what i should do is tell you how i have answered the question

i don't remember the first reaction
it just didn't really register at first

then
then i thought maybe
it was a
if we're still together at x time...

then
then i thought maybe
she was pregnant
and either
threatening not to be
or
somehow needing it
in other words
maybe
noble

i liked this answer
though it hurt
it gave you
a reasonably good reason to be giving up
a negotiation point
that you'd held onto
for many years

then
then i thought maybe
maybe she was crushing you
nagging and looking in corners for the absence of dust
and you just thought it would be easier
easier all around
if you gave her security:

i love you baby
so much, in fact, that let's get hitched

or
that she threatened to leave you

that you weren't sure about me
what you thought about us or me or you and me
that you didn't want to be alone
or
you didn't want to be without her specifically
that she was the one you couldn't let get away

that i was, mostly, important for creative juices
flowing, and whatnot
something you didn't want to loose
but not something you needed--
you're plenty creative

fires to be put out

if it's meant to be...

that's consistent with usness
you could still use the loss
honor me


but
through the depression
i found
the only answer that really worked

he did it because he wanted to

he's a grown man

i just don't know why

i have questions

but
not reading questions

thoughts, ideas, questions

in search of a metaphor

i almost forgot

i had a strange dream last night

i can't really remember it

there was a car
we were traveling in it
and there were clothes
and blankets
everywhere
night swimming in a sea of cloth

and there was
cake
a giant ruffly confection
which you shaped
square to round
with some fancy hand gestures
and the wink of an eye
presto

and
there was
sad to say
i stepped in some shit
and
there was a whole comedy of errors
about that

you know what they say about me

i'm not sure i know, though

i can live apart from you, if i have to

that's established, i guess
but
i hope
it is also established
that i can't live without you
and
that thing i said
about being able to
completely manufacture you
unless i'm doing that these days
is completely wrong now
though
i thought i could
since i did ten years ago

as much as it hurt me
when you did that thing
if i coulda lived without you
i woulda done it then

i keep getting this weird feeling

and i don't know
if it's just
paranoia
or
what

but
i keep feeling like
maybe

i've upset you
or disappointed you, somehow

and
if so
i'm sorry, really sorry

maybe i coulda done better

i feel like
this is going to work itself out

i don't know how
but
i assure you
if i did know how
i woulda done did it

i'm thinking about you

i love you
and
i really hope
that
with everything
all the craziness
that
i have been
mostly
whatever you needed
that
you're better off
for knowing me
sometimes
i worry
that
sometimes
i'm a distraction
or
too big of an influence
but
hopefully
not


probably just
a mood
it's happy happy blood time

i love you and i hope i see you in my dreams tonight

we could talk
or
we could not talk
just lay some knowledge on me
mind meld style

what does it all look like
from the inside
out

debbie heather in leather...

i was in a room
with you
and debbie heather
and
a toddler
yours, for sure
not mine, i think
an adorable little boy
i was playing with him

debbie heather was modeling a leather dress for you
she was going to her high school reunion
and clearly
she wanted to spend some time with you before she went

she turned to me:
i don't guess i could get you to leave us alone

no, i will, i say

and i turn
going to catch the bus
which has just started to pull away from the bus stop

there is some kind of magical action
tiger jumping
swishing tail
and then
i run
i jump
i grab the bus
and hang mid-air
while the bus drives a few blocks down the street
my dress hiked up around my ass
until the bus stops and i get on board
everyone claps

then we are fooling around
and not fooling around about it
i can't remember the specifics
but
hot, seriously
not, though, intercourse
and i had come many many times
when
finally
you pushed into me

and i was like:
oh god yes, finally

but then
you didn't start to move in me
you just filled me

and
my first thought was:  noooooooo
but then
my next thought was: yeeeeeessssss

and then
we worked together, somehow
and
whenever we were alone
i would touch you
and kiss you on the back of your neck
which was leathered from years of desert life

and i was so proud of myself
because
no one could tell

i was
controlled

debbie heather in leather, tiger tail, and a whole lotta shakin goin on

I'll have to write this later
when I get a second
but
I just want to assure you
the fact that Debbie heather is in leather
in no way indicates
that I did
or
in any way
have a desire to
it's just pertinent to the story
I've never been attracted to her
but
I talked to her in the dream

redux

i can't remember most of them
but
i do remember
night before last
i dreamed i had a friend
and she thought she was gonna help me out
or something
so
when i went to sleep
she gave me breast implants

now
A) i don't want breast implants
[like
if i had a double mastectomy
i would not get them]
B) i don't want my breasts bigger
[like seriously
i would kinda like them smaller
but
i would never have them reduced
because
hello
both surgery
and
they fucking remove your nipples
and slap them back on
and then
like maybe
you can feel them
maybe]
C) they hadn't made a small incision
they had cut across my breasts
horizontally
about an inch below the nipples
and sewed them back up
kinda frankenhooker

i found this really upsetting

they aren't really bigger
she pointed out
i guess she was a surgeon
they are just shaped better
and i used saline

holy crap
you used saline
that shit sloshes
if you're gonna disfigure me
can't you at least make me firmer

and
it didn't look like it was gonna heal that well

it was a terrible dream

and
i guess the shoes i've been wearing are slightly flatter
or something
because i've been waking up with leg cramps
and
frankenhooker night
was thigh night

please
when you get to dreamland tonight
please come see me
or
send happy dreams my way

this sucks
and i hate it

i love you, papi

the magician card

at different times
there will be a card
that will just keep popping up
the emperor
was telling me something
i didn't want to believe a while back
the tower seemed to be
chasing me
at another time
well
lately
it's the magician
and
i think
the magician is you
the new card that represents you
the way the emperor did
and
i think
that's a powerful sign
of something
but
not sure exactly what yet
thought you should know though

dessert

last night
i don't know if it's just because i'm detoxing
but
i dreamed about dessert

i was at some festival
and
every booth i stopped at
had dessert
in fact
i think
maybe there was a new one that might not exist
kind of a reconstruction of apple pie

the center
not chunks of apple
but clear golden gelee
on some kind of crumble crust

like something the sushi bar might create


and today
all day
i wanted you

so badly

intimacy

i guess
is part of what the birth fantasy is about

i feel this strength, this certainty
that i can actually do this thing i've always feared
and
not just feared
it disgusted me
the idea
the very idea of childbirth

i never had some rosy beautiful womyn-image of it

as soon as i saw the pictures of the afterbirth at eleven
that was something
wrong

the movies in college
just confirmed
that it hurt

but
now
i have this certainty
that it is a physical feat
that it can be done
that i can do it

even
if maybe
i can't, or won't get to

but
to do it in a hospital
to have my power taken away

to have you there
it imbues you
with qualities
i have never had in a partner
or maybe even in anyone
and

maybe you are like that
strong
able to believe
and
maybe
that's a little what we do for on another anyway, ya know

but this
this is hardcore
this is the kind of belief in each other
that creates something from nothing, understand

but
on a whole other level

i have had a bunch of ideas

for things to write
telling about my day to day
and
i've started a detox
and i've got some negative stuff coming up

i want to decide
what shakes out

metaphor-wise

cause i can go a buncha ways with this

hope you're tearing it up
or whatever

i love you tigger

birth of the puppyfish

should we do it under water
i'm asking
because it makes a certain amount of sense
but
it isn't necessary from my point of view

what is necessary
is
you

are you up for that

because the way i've got it pictured
[and, full disclosure
this was influenced by things i read
from raw home birthing]
i build this nesting environment
[it's some kinda chick instinct]
then
it's feeling like it's time

so

we make love

[i swear to god]
this works some kind of magic
because your seed is magic prostaglandins

then
or maybe during
you have a little nip of colostrum
healing
vitality building

and then
we bring him into the world, together

i don't want a hospital
hell
i don't want a doula

i want you

could you handle that

i don't want to go to work today

today
i want to spend the day
in bed with you