2 years (minus) 2 days ago

i've not written in days, owing to a lack of time and unwillingness to get up any earlier. unfortunately 5am has become le temps de réveiller de rigeur, meditating before sunrise and then spending the rest of the day in a combination of teaching and/or writing my thesis. this typically continues until sundown or just beyond, and by the time 10 o'clock rolls around i can barely keep my eyes open. i drift off to sleep seeing the strangest things, like last night's dream of a non-existent African-American Studies department at my university.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i've turned to the old reliable standby of the over-worked and under-slept: the cop-out. explaining our actions into (or out of) meaning is one of the mind's most well-practiced functions, and it never ceases to amaze me how many ways there are to under/stand a given phenomenon.

man cannot live by excuses alone, however, and so i turn to that stalwart companion of the cop-out: repetition. so, given that my class starts in 16 minutes, and in anticipation of the 15 hour day ahead of me, i (re)present what was happening around this time last year, when my yin and i went to see this man play his guitar:

Conor Oberst, Nebraskan

resolve/crumble

introductions were made;

the backdrop: patch-top anarchist
chatter, comparing flashlights in the dark.

topics: androgyny, honky-tonk,
Omaha hipsters, dreams of David Bowie.

searching
for a label
to name
thi/e/s/e
thing/s.

it seams to remain,
the stitching removed.

Manali v. Lakeland

i spoke to Jache yesterday afternoon, while waiting for my mother at a chain restaurant in Lakeland, Florida. we hadn't spoken in some time, and he asked about my yin. i told him she was in Manali.

"she gets India, you get Orlando," he said. "it's like yin and yang."

which one would you choose?

touché, i say, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i believe you can judge a lot about a town by two things: its thrift stores and radio stations. if this holds any bearing to reality, then i would say that Lakeland is one effed up place, in spite of its preponderance of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. the two thrift stores i went to were gigantic, nearly as large as the big box retailer where i bought 88 unbent spoons for the ridiculously low price of $23.54, and seemed to have a book to bible ratio of 2:1.

furthermore they were absolutely packed, not with quasi-slumming semi-hipsters wasting time (comme moi), but with people needing to go to the thrift store. i even saw one car in the parking lot set up with the seats down and a mattress in laid out. i imagined it to belong to the sunburnt bearded man i ran into at both locations. the second time i saw him, he was throwing away a toy car and i felt my heart breaking a little, wondering how long he had held onto it, or what it might have meant to him. was it a new purchase, suddenly realized to be useless, or a final souvenir of a life that no longer belonged to him?

perhaps in this question lies a larger metaphor, an understanding of how we relate to the world around us; perhaps questions like these are merely ways to avoid the sadness i feel when i encounter things that seem so senseless.

as for the radio, Lakeland is marked by dozens of Christian and country radio stations, which outnumber the rock, rap and other approximately 1.5:1. (note: all ratios are psychological rather than scientific.) i heard one man going on and on about the retina and what a wonderful, perfect creation it was. somehow this soliloquy worked its way around to evolution, and the program ended with the host informing the listener that Christians needed to be well-versed in scientific facts because the Bible is, in fact, both historically and scientifically accurate.

flipping stations, i stumbled upon a call-in show about that nutjob church in Kansas. a caller to the show told the host that, when he first heard about [name omitted for the safety and well-being of all sentient beings] he thought it was the work of "atheists" who had "infiltrated" the church in order to discredit true believer.

he really said this.

let me get this right: an atheist pretends to be a churchgoer for the sole purpose of discrediting churchgoers. ah yes, those devious atheist infiltrators....

it was hilarious, frightening and sad that this caller's paranoia and fears of persecution had caused him to project so strongly onto others. but still, i couldn't help but be disturbed that this man (white, male Christian) felt perfectly okay using the public airways to slander a minority group. no doubt part of my outrage has to do with my former longstanding affiliation with this minority group, but still...

anyway, i believe Lakeland (which sits halfway between Orlando and Tampa) serves as this incredible case study as to what happens to the mid-sized towns caught between urban centers. it has its own independent existence, it's not a suburb, and yet it still feel surrounded by the fervor and fever and foment of those scary ideas lurking an hour down the road. it's towns like these that bear the scars of America's schizophrenia, which has been dubbed so eloquently as 'the melting pot' by the dead and dying men that write our nation's textbooks.

Manali, on the other hand, has signs like this:

if only it was always that obvious...

regardless, on the drive home i found myself remembering the trip my yin and i took to St. Pete over two years ago. it was long before we recognized our physical interconnectedness (i think this would make a nice Buddhist euphemism for sex), and she convinced me to listen to Phish for all those empty hours across the middle of the state. i found myself having dozens of mini-revelations about the nature of art, creation and seva as i drove, exploding like the firecrackers i saw tossed out the window of a pick-up truck in Lakeland.

our attachment to the things we make binds us. i see it in myself: fear of judgment, fear of letting go, fear of losing the things that were never ours in the first place. Walter Benjamin believed art was special because it allowed the unconscious and conscious minds to come into contact in the waking state, and my own experience has taught me that the creation of art allows us to resolve problems, to work through issues in a manner that ultimately reveals that any perceived dilemma never really existed at all.

my task during these three weeks of near-solitude is to allow all these things to integrate more deeply, and in this spirit i've made a sankalpa to meditate at least twice each day, regardless of circumstance, fatigue or agitation. this is the gift i've been given in lieu of Manali, and i can feel it happening already. i see signs in the Sign of the Mouse, which is really nothing more than two circles stacked upon a third:

one might surmise my fondness of circles

i dream of insomnia and awake to the empty sunless room of 5am, knowing that my yin is enjoyed the cool mountain air of the Himalayas for both of us. i think of my mother in Clearwater, my father in the mountains, my brother concocting one mad idea for world peace after another – he would be proud to know i shopped at that Wal-Mart in Lakeland.

i think of the indomitable dinner companion, the half-Canadians, and the giraffes in Orlando, who look like trees walking in the dark. i sit up in bed well before 6 am, take out my mala beads, and begin repeating my mantra. i remember the night before, the years before, the lifetimes before this one. i see in my mind's eye seven hours before, when i encountered a smoking cross-legged bodhisattva sitting atop a newspaper stand in Yeehaw Junction.

what secrets does he hold, and why didn't i ask him for his picture?

timing

(part 1)

a letter arrived this morning

i woke this morning to find an email from a friend of mine, someone i haven't seen in years, and one of the only people (outside of my family) who has known me with some regularity and intimacy over the past two decades.

in my experiences few friendships evidence this type of stamina, and ours runs from meeting one another in a miserable, unintentionally atonal middle school marching band in 1989, through the unexpected punk rock reunions and antics of 1996, all the way to our last conversation, which probably transpired sometime in 2003.

ours was not the twelve tone of Schoenberg

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i only just realized that each of those memories is separated by 7 years which, as any good anthroposophist knows, is the length of human change. Rudolf Steiner wasn't alone in these ideas, and i have often heard my own teacher discuss how human beings enter a new stage of life every seven years, corresponding to the next phase of their spiritual development.

Rudolf Steiner, looking a bit like...

Skeletor

this, too, is beside the point.

the point is that my friend's letter was one of the most amazing pieces of writing i've read in a long while, simultaneously heartfelt, courageous, and comedic. it contained great phrases like "murderize", witty observations about Portland, and an unconventional melding of form and content that would cause Donald Barhtelme to blush from envy.

Barhtelme, looking writerly

(part 2)

some questions arose this morning

how do we account for the exits and entrances from our lives?

Mardou, somewhere in California

not the introductions we make, or the circumstances we escape, but the inexplicable ebb and flow of the people we hold dear?

Jache, somewhere in my living room

why are the people closest to us sometimes the ones furthest in geographic or temporal proximity?

my sister, somewhere in Baltimore

why do we sometimes find ourselves sharing our most precious moments with the most distant of strangers?

my shadow and mirror, location unknown

(part 3)

epilogue

i read my friend's email to my yin, who laughed aloud, and i eventually cut short my morning hatha practice so i could set about drafting a reply. my goal was to respond with the same beauty and honesty that my friend had shown to me.

it has since been sent, and i'm excited to see what happens next...

entropy, the Gita and milkbones

apparently this week is the week that my friends have decided to start falling apart en masse. the various maladies run the gamut from heartbroken-ness to accidental and self-inflicted hospitalizations, and it seems much of my time since Friday afternoon has been spent as something of a lay crisis counselor. but this is beside the point.

the point is that it feels good to lend whatever assistance i might be providing, and i was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about how every good act is its own reward, that it makes no difference whether one sees results today, or next month, or twenty lifetimes from now.

it took me a long time to really understand this (i'm understanding it still), and some of my favorite parts of the Bhagavad Gita are the ones that talk about the nature of karma. our "bad" acts yield "bad" results, and our "good" acts yield "good" results, but the highest aim is to renounce the results altogether, to know that we are not the one doing the deed but merely a vessel. Krishna tells Arjuna that even the lesser gods are bound by their karmas, and it only humans who have the ability to truly be free.

i think of this often, especially when it feels like i'm doing something "good" for somebody. i remind myself that, so long as i believe i am the one doing it, the best of all possible outcomes is another round of birth, another round of death, another round of collapsing the divine into small words i think i understand...

oh yes, one more thing:

last night, the morning after

from my journal, 4 May 2010

i drop off the recycling and realize i can leave the bed sheets with M_____. as i park, i'm nearly certain that i see N_____. she sees me see her and i park - the instant panic of apparitions and i feel Jache somewhere over the Atlantic, traveling to A_____ to escape her scars.

she does not follow me and i call Jache, leave a message. i walk to the building and see my old neighbor, who tells me M_____ no longer lives there. we talk some, but under the growing cloud of revelation as i begin to understand this is one of those moments whose transition and impermanence is undeniable.

i can feel it on my skin - birth, deaath, sacrifice and mourning - i can taste it. stronger than the cadence on the beach in September, more forceful than a kick to the gut. i sense

G____ and K______
Jache and N_____
M_____ and me.

i see all the living and dying present in every moment, and i feel a tremendous reassuring peace in all this spinning dizziness, the confluence of passing and emergence.

it was M_____'s leaving that triggered it, and in that instance i realized that this place, this concrete structure, this edifice of memory had finally been untethered from the portico of my mind. i watched it float away on a Monday night, trapped inside a balloon, engulfed by the deceitful aura of re/membering. i drove home eyes open, blindfolded in the dark.

i got home and talked with my yin, shared these things with less eloquence, and wrote a poem before the thoughts grew too hazy or still. i went to bed before midnight and dreamed of a revolution in the streets of Miami. i'm there with my yin-in-law and we roam the streets safely, knowing we are among our own.

Liberty City, 1980

just (since 9:13)

just got home.
just decided to write.
just talked with my yin.
just a mild case of poetry.
just listened to two messages.
just remember this is all a game.
just ten months until the wedding.
just one year until i finish my thesis.
just wonder what i will dream tonight.
just six weeks until we leave for summer.
just stacking one word on top of the other.
just don't care so much for right from wrong.
just regurgitating a form Saylor once admired.
just a sliver between the imaginary and the Real.
just thinking La Cienega leaves for India tomorrow.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just saw the swirling hypocrisy of time wither in the blink of an eye.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just broke my own rule about using "friend" as a verb.
just remembered the Fear of mid-February 2009.
just fifty-two minutes until my sister's birthday.
just wondered if Mercury is still in retrograde.
just learned Jache is flying for Africa tonight.
just spent four hours in a bar not drinking.
just experienced a parking lot revelation.
just learned my old roommate moved.
just "friended" my divorce attorney.
just have one research paper left.
just had french fries for dinner.
just read a rejection letter.
just turned off my phone.
just saw an apparition.
just stopped.

Whitman sleeps tonight (redux and context)

Jache once spent an afternoon trying to convince me that Walt Whitman was my "150 year old queer Brooklyn angel."

Walt Whitman, dead Brooklynite and poet

his explanation included an annotated portion of "Song of Myself", interspersed with snippets of our conversations over the previous two years (his and mine, not mine and Walt's). the nominal purpose of this encounter was to help "manifest our manifesto", an undertaking which, lamentably, has yet to come to fruition.

but this is beside the point:

Jache, living Floridian and poet

the point is that Jache is incommunicado at present, and i'm thinking of him. i wrote this a year ago today, to my best friend, my grandfather, and my 150 year old queer Brooklyn angel.

me and my grandfather, living and wordless poet

There is no sleep so sublime
as Whitman under a tree
in Brooklyn. I dream
of my grandfather

fresh cut grass
two cycle engine oil
and Childhood

nostalgia

spent on the front porch
chewing sprigs of birch
pine needles in the fall.
The redolence of spring

mingling autumnal decay

the smell of impotence
the taste eternal.

synecdoches, new york and otherwise

preface:

synecdoche |siˈnekdəkē|
noun
a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”).

yesterday morning:

a dream my hometown, between the towns, standing in the parking lot of a gas station where my father used to stop and buy me beef jerky. Jache drives up in his car, maudlin, determined, and suicidal. no words are spoken, but we see each other; he takes off around the curve and smashes in to the embankment. i run down the road trying to catch up to him. i see that his car is smashed, flipped, rolled over, and laying on its roof the. the windshield is shattered and smoke rises from the undercarriage. Jache is standing by the roadside, relatively unscathed. he stumbles off to continue his quest, and i feel a somber, terrifying certainty that his troubles have only just begun.

last night:

i watched Synecdoche, New York, trying to decide if it was a statement to which i am willing to devote two weeks of my life. i have seen it once before, but this time i watched with the eye of a would-be academic:

Philip Seymour Hoffman, note-taker

the film is interesting but disjointed, and the last several moments - from the time Caden formally cedes his role as director to Ellen - offers up an ambiguity that seems to undercut the first hour and forty-five minutes of the narrative. it is odd, but self-consciously odd.

unusual enough to trigger curiosity, but not truly bizarre;
subtle at times, but too pronounced to become enigmatic:

fade in from black, fade out to white;
it's 7:45 in the morning, it's 7:45 in chalk.

the world is crumbling outside the window.

in spite of this, the time disjunctions seem haphazard, as if Kaufman had a good idea but then got lazy. (as i, myself, am prone to do). basically, i'm unable to tell if the film actually interrogates itself in some incredibly nuanced manner, or simply comes up short. in one way, the film is as incomplete and incomprehensible as life itself, but something about the tone is off.

it is not the joyousness of simultaneity, but rather the nihilism of a mortality divorced from purpose. Caden's final words on the bench speak to his own failure of acceptance, and imply the existence of an extra-diegetic narrative certainty rather than the impossibility of continuity both within and without the film text. maybe in this way the film works precisely because it succumbs to the same flaws as its hero. maybe.

twelve hours ago:

i spoke to Jache last night, an hour after he wrecked his car.
he was relatively unscathed.

redux (2 March 2009)

writing more like Benjamin

I

Jache came over yesterday and told me about bodhisattvas. his explanation included: one sheet of lined paper (from his algebra notebook), black ink (from a ball point pen), and words (from the English language). the words were: "poet, artist, yogi" and connecting these words were lines of both the straight and squiggly variety. some of the straight line had a positive slope (where m≈1.73).

Jache, at a Cat Power concert

II

many months ago i told Jache the story of Ramakrishna, a Bengali saint from the 19th century who was a Brahmin priest at a temple of Kali, the goddess of destruction and destroyer of illusion (which is why i smile every time i come to your house and see Kalis Funeral Home). Ramakrishna converted to Christianity one day (much to the befuddlement of the temple goers), promptly had a vision of Christ, and said "yes, this is a true path to god." he then resumed his priestly duties and stopped being a Christian. a few months later, Ramakrishna pulled the same caper again, this time becoming a Muslim. he promptly had a vision of Muhammad, said "yes, this is a true path to god," stopped being a Muslim, and resumed his duties as a priest.

Sri Ramakrishna

III

Jache came over yesterday and told me about bodhisattvas. the words were: "poet, artist, yogi" and he related them to the tale i had told him of Ramakrishna. Jache said: you're not a poet, you're not an artist, you're not a yogi. you're a bodhisattva, you're like Ginsberg, you are meant to play and dance in the world. Jache left and i felt clearer, letting his wisdom (he is only 21) wash over me.

Ginsberg, before he got old and fat

IV

last night i had the courage to call you back. i slept nine hours, soundly, after a miserable sobbing slumber and nightmares the the day before.

artwork created by a dream

V

this morning i looked up the word bodhisattva because, although it sounded nice to hear Jache call me one, i really had no idea what it meant. i found it in my fancy computer's dictionary.

idealized representation of my fancy computer

VI

bodhisattva |ˌbōdiˈsätvə; -ˈsət-| (also Bodhisattva)
noun
(in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.

portrait of Avalokiteshvara, taken from my altar

VII

the definition i found spoke to the conflict and churning i felt inside, the unquenchable thirst for the divine, the persistent ineffable pull of the earth below, the rose born to die in an empty lot, the beauty of decay - not just in juxtaposition - but within its own being. i heard echoes of Kant: the thing in and of itself, the thing in and of itself, the thing in and of itself...

Immanuel Kant, a dead philosopher

VIII

Jache asked about my dreams; i told him i had not remembered them in weeks... except for one about flying off of a cliff in a car. in the dream i looked at the driver from the back seat and calmly said "you have just killed us," and then slowly began repeating my mantra. i woke thinking, how odd.

envelope in which i received my mantra

IX

last night: i called you back, i slept nine hours. i woke this morning but did not remember my dreams. it is a curious thing because somehow this montage must have appeared in the night.

ubiquitous photograph of Walter Benjamin, harbinger of dreams

X

when the gods seek comfort, it is to discarded words they pray;

XI

in love with the constellations,
the peaces within the pieces,
the moments in between...

as ever

Raging Bull (or teaching Scorsese how not to fight)

i'm preparing to go teach Raging Bull

(obviously not really)

and find myself at a loss.

how to start?

where to begin?

i hear Aristotle arguing with Freud about catharsis.

a second Austrian, also dead, is making love to a French nobleman.

bloodshed and ejaculate ensue.

(the previous sentence contains two nouns, the second of which suffers from a long "a" sound in its more-frequent usage as a verb.
if it were French - like the nobleman - i would spell it ejaculàte.)

but this is beside the point.

the point is that this type of bawdy unproductive ramblingness is exactly what i'm hoping to prevent in my class...

[lapse 57 minutes]

i returned, feeling not unlike Jake after his final fight with Sugar Ray:

the blood.
the masochism.
the ropes against the skin.
the clever brutality of the camera.

i think of Jake.
i think of Jache.

he called last night and told me his woes.
i told him i heard little left of his life save the narration.

the bouts lost before the bell.

on turning 33

this one feels different.

i don' know why.

i don't think it's the math.
i don't think it's the trinity.
i don't think about it at all.

but i feel it.

i went for a ride today in a convertible, blindfolded, and had my chart read by a woman who isn't my mother. she told me my Gemini was ascendant. she told me i form meaning by means of montage and juxtaposition. i placed what she said next to the other thoughts in my mind and ate cheesecake under the watchful eye of a macaw named Taco.

i took off the blindfold and saw a room of friends i once knew as strangers. i read well-wishes from people i love in San Francisco. i did not want to think about the night ahead. my best friend cried in my living room. he asked me to give him permission to feel okay.
i walked him to his car and told him i was getting married.



i watched the woman i love age fifty years in the blink of an eye.
i loved her still. i loved her dying and frail.
i loved her after i was gone.

this body i call my own will not survive.
someday these words will wither into dust.

Broken Embraces

last year Jache and i spent Christmas together pretending to be Jewish, eating Chinese food and watching an especially bad Tom Cruise film. (apparently) the experiment tapped into a far stronger mojo than we had anticipated, because two nights ago i found myself at the movies with both he and my yin - this time watching an especially good Almodóvar film - in the shadow of a chuppah.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my last encounter with the man from La Mancha (not to be confused with the other man from La Mancha) found me retching and left me poetic, and i walked into the theater at 9:40pm with high expectations - i was not disappointed.

[lapse 2:15:00]

Jache asked me what i thought of the film's motifs and meanings, and i heard myself regurgitating just as i did fifteen months ago about Volver. this time, however, my viewpoint was skewed neither by nausea not endorphins. i told him

(approximately):

the film was textured darkness, wonderful and nearly noir, full of drugs and sex and film and film and film. it wass like watching a sculpture built by a blind clocksmith, and it brought up for me the problematic nature of reliance upon artifacts for the reinforcement of memory. how much of what we remember is based on nothing more than photographs and journals?

and

if one were to lose his sight (as does the film's protagonist), she would be left only with memory, a memory falling forever further from the experience of living.

as the shutters close, what remains?

the home stretch

by all empirical measures, i am presently in the home stretch of the semester, and as my research paper nears completion to the sound of Rachmaninov playing his second piano concerto, my yin is in the bedroom watching The Simpsons. the past week has seen long days, short sleeps, and copious hours spent in front of computer monitors.

at night i get a strange tingling energy throughout my body, whose cause or demise i've yet to discover. i started a book by Donald Barthelme and wonder what effect it will have on my non-sequiturs. i read Carrol on the beach and imagined thieves in the sand. Jache may or may not be doing better. i wait for the tingling energy to leave or subside. i wait, i wait, i type, i type...

walking in the park at night

it's been more than two months since Jim Carroll died, and over the weekend i read The Basketball Diaries for the first time. the journals are remarkable, especially for a 12-15 year old, and i spent some time on the beach remembering my teenage confusion surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio:

"Leo" (actually a Scorpio) is a little more than two years my elder, better looking, and substantially wealthier. the same was true in 1995 when the film version of The Basketball Diaries was released, and his casting left me utterly baffled. the crux of my dilemma revolved around trying to comprehend how a skinny white boy could possibly be a blue chip basketball recruit. eventually i learned that these diaries were written in the early Sixties by an eighth grader, and with it came the implicit realization of the perils of projected my own historical moment onto the art and lives of others. case in point:

Jim Carroll played basketball in a Manhattan without a World Trade Center, a world with two Germanies and two Vietnams, an America wrestling with the delusion of "separate but equal," a New York with Rockefeller Laws as well as a Rockefeller Center, and a Times Square closer to Burroughs' than Disney. i could have told you all of these things when i was 18, but i knew none of them. they were only facts, hollowed of the truth by my immaturity and hubris.

(but last night)

i walked through the park after dark, hallowed by the truth of contemplation and experience. i walked through the park, thinking about the immensity of life and the passing of poets. i walked:

thinking of Jache, thinking of adolescence, thinking of the romantic lies we tell ourselves when we are young and inexperienced.

i thought of how often the abyss is mistaken for the void and how one can ever know the difference without looking. i thought of a misspent youth spent searching for a bottom that isn't there and the wellspring of possibility that dwells within our lack of sophistication. i thought of the beauty and danger living inside our naiveté.

a voice in the dark interrupted my reverie:

(hey man, you straight?)

i walked in the park after dark, thinking of one Germany, one Vietnam, and a Manhattan without a World Trade Center. i thought of wrestling with the ghosts of our delusions. i smiled to myself:

you can still smell the Jim Carroll on me.

"Little kids shooting marbles
where branches break out into the sun
into graceful shafts of light...
I just want to be pure."

(August 1, 1949 - September 11, 2009)

that's what she said

this week my favorite professor described the origins of Halloween as a pagan holiday, situated at the end of the harvest season. for those who celebrated, it was a form of ancestor worship - a recognition that the death part of the life cycle was upon them. they believed that the boundary between the realm of the living and the dead was especially thin during this time, allowing passage between realms.

i realized yesterday that much of this week has been just that for me. i've been moving from one task to another, unable to shake the feeling of being displaced in time. past lives have surfaced of their own volition; recollections of the fictions i've called myself, memories unburdened by nostalgia.

i've smelled the late September air of Chapel Hill in 1997, i've felt the January dread of New Brunswick in 2002, i've heard the October sunshine of Lake Lure in 2006. this morning i even felt the November mania of Manhattan, when i had just returned from Kansas City.

i was on my way to Paris, standing blindfolded on the edge of the millennial abyss, wearing a Cheshire smile and oblivious to the portent descending all around me.

i've somehow channeled those people these past days, and last night i went to visit Jache at his new apartment and tell him these things. we stood in the parking lot at midnight and he spoke of circles. i didn't realize it until this morning, but this strange feeling has been just that. i've been sleeping less and dreaming more these past weeks, and i cannot name the reason for the change. but i've been here before.

we cannot help but live with the selves we were, and i do not know if the realms have gotten closer or if the boundary has merely grown porous. i suppose it does not matter. either way, i have lived my whole life straddling worlds, and i used to wish i could simply fall on one side or the other. (a black bird once said nevermore). i've been unknowingly exploring the difference between channeling these ancestors and being possessed by them... perhaps i'm becoming accustomed to the liminal.

dots>connections

at present, i'm in a small rectangular room with three computers, one iced tea, one bottle of water, fluorescent lights, and lots of books. i hear chatter in the hallway outside and feel an odd, lurking dread in my stomach. the past weeks have been hectic, and it seems (momentarily) i see more dots than connections.

but this is beside the point.

the point is i'm getting together with Jache tonight, and i packed my bag with various totems and implements of witch-doctory before leaving my apartment. between now and our rendezvous on the beach, i plan to sit in a larger rectangular room and talk about Marilyn Monroe's vagina.

today's ingedients:

i dreamed last night in hubbub, of Mardou poisoning the talent pool in San Francisco and Amanda Palmer on television, proclaiming her new album the Epic record of the year. there is an older woman two blocks east carrying a ripped picture of me in her bag and a swimming pool, but no nudity is involved. there is a red-headed girl i knew in high school and my fourth grade girlfriend, the one i didn't call all summer.

dreams populated from the spinning wheel of time.

i spoke today to one former student and one crying student. i ate a lox sandwich on matzah while reading The Joys of Yiddish. i went to work and did nothing. there was granola baking and diet soda in the cup. my sister found her asan and Jache called to tell me his woes.
i told him crazy people do crazy things. profundity abounded.

let us celebrate this bleeding absurdity of life.

about last night

he's crying

parking lot

on the sidewalk between

in a

parking lot

twelve medication

illness

[her]

chemo

drama

side effects

his father's money

and

the new girlfriend

left inside.

Scrabble, Jane Fonda and Jache

i spent last night playing Scrabble and reading about Jane Fonda's orgasms, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i received a communique from Jache sometime in the middle of the night, and although it has been more than a year since my flirtation with text messaging, this one has refused to leave my mind. i teetered between concern and disturbance for most of the morning, and only just now did i call and leave a message:

w

or

ds

fall

short,

is

t

he

re
simply

not

hing
to be sa

i

d

?

eight days a week

(the full moon tonight)

my yin is somewhere in west Vancouver,
beating back Bible-bearing Catholics,

and

Jache is somewhere in south Florida,
mournfully maudlin and misbehaving.

is
this
beside
the point
?

(the prime number on my wrist)