i'm passing notes

about Ram Dass and DMT with my sister in Baltimore. Mardou had already warned her about witchcraft and Swiss beheadings, to beware the ghost of Anna Goeldi. but all this is besides the point.

the point is that i opened that mylar journal today. i spent more than hour transcribing, until i reached 24 January 2000. January 24 is the date when great men like Winston Churchill and Thurgood Marshall choose to die, and degenerate men like John Belushi and Oral Roberts are born.

"what will you be having today?"

(i turned 23 that day)
and i'll have:

a little from column A,
a little from column B.

the object in question is:

one composition book.

outside of the composition book is covered with:
silver heat-shrink mylar with which:
i once designed a set piece for:
a famous dance company.

measurements are 7 1/2 inches x 9 3/4 inches.
page count is 100, college ruled.

the first date in the composition book is 18 January 1999.
the last date in the composition book is 4 March 2000.
the paper is filled on both sides.

three pages are torn from the composition book;
i do not remember their contents,
or why they were removed.

page count is now 97.

two weeks ago

i woke up as if from a dream, but i had not slept.

i was gripped by the Hunger and so i sat, eating peanut butter crackers in the floor and thinking about the cockroaches that would come if i did not put my scraps away. i scraped peanut butter from the jar and marveled at how there would always be more to scrape out, how the jar is my mind and what an impossible task it is to ever make it clean.

i began to doubt the possibility of enlightenment.

but then i realized it was only the shape of the jar that made the task so difficult, that perhaps next time i would be born with a different container for my thoughts. and then it occurred to me:

perhaps instead of using a knife or a spoon,
maybe i could just rinse it out with water.

gonzo

what does a man do when he's left with only a shadow of what he might of been, sitting next to pile of cocaine in a house full of guns? what becomes of a Doctor of Journalism when he becomes the story, stumbling in a room full of Wild Turkeys?

where did these beasts come from?

i watched archival footage of a bald dead man run for sheriff on the precipice of his fame. he recounted the pillage of a woman famous for her Beat marriage, and constructed a monument in his back yard using nothing but hubris and rubble. he died every day for 25 years until only a suicide remained.

i drove home sad and put on Maria Callas,
mournful for all the things that might have been.

feel the sway

i walked to work today, mantra in mouth with a bottle of water in my pocket, wondering how i was going to find balance. i arrived to an empty theater and did paranayama in the back hallway.

there is more than enough time for everything.

and so i find myself at midnight again with miles to go before i sleep, knowing that nothing can be lost on a well-worn path - even if we don't know where it leads. i suppose the whole thing (life) is an experiment, but tonight it feels especially true.

i just finished a re-write, and there is still an artist statement and biography and syllabus and research outstanding. i'm missing a collage and learning a new computer and thinking (at times) of her.

the days are getting noticeably shorter now, and soon the weather will break. i feel the sway, i know it will fade... and then i will move onto the next.

it's almost midnight

and i'm walking on one leg with my tongue sticking out, trying not to taste the bitter in the bottom of my cup. i drank no coffee today, made no calls to speak of, encountered no calamity. there is no reason for this insomniatic malaise and yet...

there is a spot i'm trying to scratch, and the words aren't working.

i sat cross-legged and shoeless,

in a room full of doctors - but not the kind that help people.

we discussed the sunset moth, and the longer the night went on the more she looked like [her]. two thousand dollar tales of engine malfunction strewn amongst snippets of Kurosawa and Godard.

i ate pinto beans and cornbread, remembering my great-grandmother and discussing sign language with a beautiful woman whose island voice spoke Caribbean mysteries. jokes were made of auto-didacticism, and before the night was through i found myself texting Mardou, telling her that Woody Allen's diganosis was correct;

she is, in fact, Vicky Christina.

"last night everything broke"

and by everything, i mean the Internet. but this was only the tip of the Q, as i sit here in my room with wet underwear and socks strewn across my bed. the dryer is eating quarters, and everything is going according to plan... but the plan is messed up.

i started working on a syllabus for an imaginary class yesterday, and last night i watched Brown Bunny which was boring as well as crude. i spoke with my sister in Baltimore who informed me that the new boy is falling short of the horizontal. and, when i slept, i dreamed that i was shoveling mud amidst punditry concerning the former lovers of a friend recently referred to by Japanese authorities as "the decedent."

this is the second law of thermodynamics, and it is a beautiful thing.

hubba hubba, what an (older) woman

she had me the first day of workshops, when she said: "they've organized everything out of existence." wooden shoes and Hello Kitty, using her check registry in lieu of a calendar, always asking what time it is with a Buddha hanging round her neck. she makes speeches to oak trees in her back yard, and there was something comforting about her declaration: "technology changes so fast,
you can ignore some of it and it will just go away."

just back from the hospital

i was visiting an 84 year old who once abandoned ship to avoid being taken into custody by the MPs at the end of the World War II, or as it's sometimes called (by me) The Deuce. his time after VE Day was spent primarily in the black markets and brothels, but eventually he washed up in South Florida and ultimately escaped military justice owing to his war record and savoir faire. but this is besides the point.

the point is that leaving the hospital i ran into a friend of mine. she was there to see her cousin who is in Hospice, dying of cancer.

and getting married.

it was the most beautiful thing i heard all day.

blame

i want to blame it on the low pressure, or the sound of the rain, or my obsessing over a new computer before bed. but i think maybe it was the dream.

i woke at 2:22am from a dream of [her]. we were on speaking terms, but she didn't seem to realize that i was gone; she didn't seem to realize i wasn't ever coming back. it was almost as if it was beyond her realm of comprehension, even when i reminded her what happened during those first three weeks away. we were talking in a car in the town where we used to live, there were Japanese weeping cherries throughout the parking lot.

i do not know if i will return to sleep this night.

i like the sound of the rain, i like that everyone else is sleeping. i like that they shut down the school tomorrow, i like that school is part of my life again - i like that she isn't.

we threw banana peels

all the way to Dade County last night, making pit stops to lick blueberry pie from small jars and discuss the Mensheviks. Saylor and i debated semantics and berated semiotics, listening to Brian Eno and John Cale as Tarah drove us to North Miami.

we smelled the ketchup as it wafted across Biscayne Boulevard, making its way through the prostitutes and destitutes that litter US-1 from Key West to the Fort Kent Bridge in Maine, where johns bicker with the working girls over exchange rates. we played putt putt, and there was scattered talk of vrittis and anthroposophy until Tarah threatened to start shaking the bushes.

she tried to coax imaginary kittens from the dark, but a giant black rat kept vigil, and the kittens never came. we returned to all night diners feline free and drank milkshakes that never came, talking about how one December night with Stravinsky changed my whole life.

when Saylor asked why i run my experiments, i told him it was for nights like these.

Mardou called from Frisco today;

we spoke of karma, and our romance that wasn't. this time last year i didn't know her. this time two days from now i was in love; it can happen that quickly.

but it wasn't meant to be.

it took me months to see, but i still remember that night in May when i saw her and it was gone. the repartee was still there - and she was still beautiful - but whatever once was... wasn't. i felt free that night; it can happen that slowly.

later that week i wrote a poem; it was a prelude to a goodbye to a beautiful woman with pale blue eyes. with her i am still waiting to see; i am still not seeing that it isn't meant to be.

this is the dance:

i want to love without exception or expectation.

(i'm not there yet)

remember

words are sweet, but a man cannot live on words alone.

it's 11:21pm

and i just got back from picking up my friends from the airport. they had a successful trip to Vancouver and reported that - had i been there - would have fallen in love with two of the beauties they met there. but this is besides the point.

the point it that they encountered a field full of bunnies while in Canadia. i asked, with equal parts curiosity and terror, precisely what day did they encounter these bunnies?

Wednesday.

and so then the freak out began, as i related to them the dream i had last Wednesday night.

there is something bigger going on here.

"beautiful sorta"

i am cheating.

i feel like writing, but i have nothing to say so i am resorting to Ryan Adams and hoping - DEAR GOD! there's been a change in plans.

i just went to Ryan Adams website to cut/paste the URL to link his name and discovered it much altered from the last time i was there. Ram Dass, the Humane Society, Amnesty, and the UFC?!? it appears that my favorite degenerate (and fellow native North Carolinian) has completely lost his mind. and i suspect a girl is to blame.

i know how he feels.

"what you had, what you lost"

Ryan Adams is singing Fleetwood Mac in my bedroom. i am typing with the computer unplugged, wishing for lightning just a little bit closer, wishing for more time and less hours. wishing for none of these things and laughing all the while at the futility of grasping the things that were never mine to begin with.

nine years ago today i flew to North Carolina to visit a girl i loved.

one year ago today i mailed that woman a letter she never read.

today i flew back from Charlotte... knowing the difference.

hotel+airport=

i am not going to write anything i want to write. i'm not going to write about the one i didn't see yesterday, or the one i'm staying with tonight, or the one who turns 29 tomorrow.

i am not going to write anything i want to write. i'm not going to write about the one picking me up tomorrow, or the one with the same name i live with, or the one with the same name debating sex fests and Bob Dylan in Baltimore.

i'm not going to write anything i want to write because i do not feel comfortable. i am in a hotel near the airport, the air conditioner keeps cycling stale, and there is something to be said for beds on the floor. if this trip had been punctuated, it would have been all commas, but what i really need is a period

i'm not going to write anything i want to write, [text deleted].

the Trial (transcribed 1:41am)

the house is full of Amish children, all locks and hats. [she] arrives and i lose my bearings, along with my lawyer and family in the process. there is a Rabbit (talking as Sparrow) telling me that there was no missing link, that he had looked over the case and the pattern that almost wasn't there - wasn't.

he told me that he saw the emergence of pride and hubris,
and a fall to match.

i tell the Rabbit (talking as Sparrow) that he is right, that i have come to accept my fate, that whatever is supposed to be will be.
he tells me one more thing, but i cannot make out the words through the rattling of his cage.

court is coming in session, and as i walk away it begins to dawn on me that the Rabbit (talking as Sparrow) is the Judge.

some circles are bigger than others

i leave in less than 4 hours.

yesterday morning i ate breakfast with a practicing witch and spent my night changing light bulbs with hammers. i woke up shortly after midnight with the taste of dry in my mouth and the wound still weeping, waiting for the sutures to hold and thinking of Rimbaud. when i came home (pre-dawn) there was a stray cat awaiting my return. these are all auspicious signs, but this is besides the point.

the point is that somethings cannot be put into words, and:

"some girl's circles are bigger than other girl's circles." [approximately]

(re)reading Bukowski

a dear friend of mine introduced me to Charles Bukowski in the late Nineties. he was at school in Gainesville, i was in Chapel Hill. our temperaments were complimentary; he wore the mask of the artiste while i chose that of consumate poseur. i visited from time to time, but was quick to dismiss my friend's literary interest as the result of a local band being named after one of Bukowski's novels.

on my last trip to visit, i stumbled across an autobiography of John Holmes in a local bookstore and bartered it for a collection of Hank's short stories. i found the stories boring and needlessly grotesque.

i reread South of No North this weekend, and something had changed. perhaps it was the documentary i watched on its author, perhaps it was my own experiences in the intervening years, perhaps it was losing the book in a complicated departure from my ex-wife, perhaps it was learning that Porn King went out of print shortly after i bought it and currently commands nearly $400 on Amazon.

i reread South of No North this weekend, and it touched me in a way i wasn't capable of imagining when i was 23.

it's 6am

and i just got back from taking two friends to the airport. they are going to Vancouver, and - if my recollection of time zones and the international dateline are correct - they should arrive in Canadia sometime two Tuesdays ago, 5 hours from now. but all this is besides the point.

the point is that i came home in a driving rain, listening to sad songs after an exceptionally poor night's sleep. i woke up (the first time) thinking that she lured me in with lollipops, and i tasted razors in the sound of the revelers outside my window at 1am, after dreaming of her, narrating my own nightmare.

when i pulled into my parking lot Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" was playing. i thought to myself: so true, so true...

attachment v. expectation

i love what i wrote yesterday, and that makes it hard to write today. i feel the desire for that to be the page people see (should you happen to read). this is the subtle madness of attachment; this is the cruelty of memory.

i love what i wrote yesterday, and that makes it hard to write today. i feel the desire for this to be better than that (should you happen to read). this is the creeping insanity of expectation; this is the tyranny of projection.

but all this is besides the point.

the point is that if one of those giant dancing monkeys flipped a metaphysical coin, you could call it in the air: expectation or attachment?

and one of the meanest lies we tell ourselves is that there is something better than what is.