Imperial Dream Log

2011-02-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Epic dream of Europe.

In southern Italy, I've brought my mother. Dave is with me. We're in a seaside ancient town - I've been here before. All of the islands are familiar. We flee the tourists in the center of town and creep into a dark cafe in a salty smelling side street. Grand tall windows that don't let in any light. We talk about tomorrow.
A girl comes in and I'm trying to speak Italian to her, and she's trying to speak English to me. It all works out. She invites us to her flat for the night. We fall into the den of Italian revellers easily and a performance is requested.

The girl wants me to accompany her on a song/performance piece. She'll be singing and playing the koto, and I'll be playing... this.
She hands me an instrument that is really a sea urchin, day-glo orange - and a plectrum.
To be fair, it's a deconstructed sea urchin, so between the caviar-looking clumps there are stringy bits and we all know that stringy bits vibrate in magic dreams. So I strum the strings for a twinky little sound - picking out one or two notes is nearly impossible because the strings are crisscrossed and close together. It sounds better if I run across the whole thing, like an autoharp.
we are to stand still while we play, an dlook straight ahead. we're wearing these white kimonos.
It goes over well.

Dave and I leave the next morning at first by speed boat. Dazzling sapphire waters and crazy towns built up on coastal hillsides.
We have to meet my mom somwhere near Venice. But we have a car and she's taking a train. There's also no predicting what will happen to her on the way there, so we decide to take our time and stop somewhere in between. Where do you want to go?, I ask him, feeling rich with adventure. Rome? Venice? Firenze?
He doesn't know, so I just start driving.

Next episode on the same trip, Dave has taken a side trip now and Jor is with me. We're in Germany, I'm still driving. Enter femme fatale car chase scene.
At the villain's order, I sit on the roof of the car, facing in. I'm carrying a set of 5 very long knives. like bread knives with all different serrations. She chooses two and the car sidles up to a bike rider. The villianess grabs the rider's leg and stretches it so that his foot is achored to the car. The man kind of floates alongside the car with the bicycle. The villianess then starts to saw the man's ankle, then longways into his shin. She's trying to break the bones apart, but the knives just aren't sharp enough. She seems frustrated to have purchased such flimsy knives. When at last she's severed the leg completely, the man goes flying off. She picks up "her" bit of the leg, shrugs, and tosses it to the side.
As if we were in a taxicab, we politely ask to be let off at the next corner. There's the German version of that long windowed dark cafe. We drop in, There are lots of customers, and just one table for us. I grab the salt and go back outside to cover up the blood on the street. Hopefully the police wont know we're involved. Oh. There are teh police. I sit on the cafe's stoop with the salt shaker wrapped up in a pair of socks. Too afraid to move. The cops question another man, look at me kind of funny, then walk away.
Back in the cafe, all is erased. all is sunny. Jor, you're here! You're finally in Europe! I look around and realize that this bar is one of the places that Dave and I played in while on tour. I feel at home. There are so many wonderful things to show him. We order some wine...

Cosmic Grocer Revue

2010-09-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dave and I vacation in Italy and quickly decide to stay. He takes a job with a produce delivery service whose reputation is akin to that of Mambo Movers in Philly. Which is to say that it's a decidedly masculine profession, but here in a classically Italian way - muscle-bound heroes parade their truck down the market and outside restaurants, chucking the required vegetables directly at their customers. Shopkeepers argue with their daughters about who will go out and catch the vegetables for the day.
It's no surprise to me that Dave has fallen into this comely clique, and with his vintage paperboy wardrobe firmly established he really looks like he should be delivering something.

Today it's raining and I take a little walk in the market to see if i can catch the truck and say hello to my sweetie. Sure enough, they've just all jumped off the truck and there he is in a courtyard, seeming to be looking for something (me, of course). The fine mist shakes its dewy fur all over us as we embrace and scuttle down an alley and into a cafe for lunch.

The menu is complex and varies from 9$ to 51$ lunches - dream foods of course.
We sit in a booth to pour over the menu and delight in our new city. How did we get here anyway? Hey ,do you want to start with mussels?

A series of characters invite themselves to our table - waitresses, madmen. One man shows us his hand-drawn comic book on the subject of the mighty produce vendors, portraying them as leopard skin bikini-clad vintage bodybuilders, arms full of verdure against the backdrop of the solar system. "Cosmic man!" he keeps calling Dave. We all laugh about it and I am so proud that my hot hunky husband is a cosmically hot grocer.

We never get to eating - I'm training to work at the cafe now. A blonde tiger of a young woman is explaining to me the interpersonal dynamics of the cafe. Who's zooming whom, who not to flirt with, whose affairs are openly discussed and whose are still secret (but not from the waitstaff). The guy with the comic book is also a waiter, and as I start realizing that I live in a place where a crazy disshevelled artist can double as a waiter at a mega-fancy cafe, it dawns on me once again that I'm in the right place.

My Own Personal Opera & Biking to Italy

2010-06-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

I have been cast to play myself in a brand new opera whose plot eerily resembles the last chapter of strife in my love life. It is written in the highly dramatic style of the great Romantic operas, and the love triangle is murderously melodramatic.
Before running off to my true love, I must escape the evil clutches of the former lover. Here ensues a full operatic diatribe between us, replete with glissando runs and castigating gestures. Singing out my grievances directly to him feels appropriate, as does the thunder of his response - calling all low strings to make us shudder! I'm enthralled by the darkness of the scene and the surprising richness of his voice - think "the castle" of Bram Stoker's Dracula- and laugh at the opera out loud as my ludicrous imagination becomes transparent as a dream. Certainly in real life I romanticized the ex as dark and mysterious, but in truth his voice was quite ugly in argument and I'll be damned if there was any castle.
The scene ends with nothing more than a shouting match and my character is swept into the arms of her beloved. Enter pinnacle of triangle. (It's worthy to note that no one else saved me.
I ran away from the evil one on my own.) Disappointing dream land did not clearly cast my husband in this role - instead it gives me a blurry face, an unimportant personage. Even so, I feel that he does represent him as he gives his solo and calm washes over the dream. Clouds part. The end.

-

I live in New York City. My best friend has become obsessed with a rich stylist from Central America who has invented a new liquor. We are working on branding and selling the new intoxicant - refrigerators full of the stuff - when the boss reveals that he's got AIDS and is going back to Venezuela to kick the bucket in the company of his family. My friend is distraught. I look out into the courtyard of our apartment building, at the grid of bricked up chimneys and stairwell windows, and see a prison forming. I realize I would be wasting my time to stay any longer.
I set out on my bicycle heading east. There's a tunnel that reaches all the way across the Atlantic. Cars and buses making their way through, dangerously. I decide to bike to Europe, then, since I have nothing else to do and I'm eager for adventure. I have no supplies, not even water. No passport, no nothing. But I enter the tunnel anyway. The road splits every hundred miles, taking one lane up to a rest area at surface level. There they are, the golden Mickey D arches, floating over the pure ocean. Ugh, I think, thank god I'm leaving America! I set back down to the tunnel and hundreds of miles feel like city blocks. Before I know it I've arrived at the office of my old professor in Florence - red eyed, exhausted and in need of a place to crash. They seem confused about my proclamation of having biked to them, suspicious almost. I'm so high on endorphins it doesn't matter what they think. I look out the window here and see a tree against the backdrop of a beautiful arched old doorway and know I've come to the right spot.
Brava, says the professor, but you should have been wearing a helmet. We'll see to it that you get a proper motorbike while you're here - and an iphone (seriously, brain).

Goddess of the Sea

2009-10-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

A comedy about war-torn Nazi Germany.
I'm helping an artistic wealthy Jewish family hide their treasured collection of ... giant toothbrushes as Nazis plan to invade and pillage their rural mansion. As we wind our way through the palatial abode, room after opulent room unfolds. The wife of the family is hidden from view until the very last room . She is finally found sitting in a chair reading poetry next to the most gorgeous Bosendorfer that has ever been crafted. This thing practically has elephantine halos hanging from it. It takes up almost the whole parlor. She complains she hasn't been playing or writing lately, black clouds covering her inspiration. Her husband assures me that she's a wonderful pianist, but seems a bit uninterested in motivating her at the moment, what with the purge going on.
We bury a giant toothbrush in the woods, only to look back on the house to see that the Naziees have arrived. What's more, the lady of the house has haphazardly buried her own prized giant toothbrush, whose head is sticking up out of the otherwise pristine garden mulch.
We reenter the house in hopes of saving her, or the toothbrushes?
I'm sitting at the kitchen counter with one of the daughters as the Nazi soldiers arrive, looking at a yellowing biography of Sergei Rachmaninoff, his dreamy visage winking at us out of the black & white photograph. The Nazis overhear me babbling to the child about the genius of Rach and the beauty of music, and decide that we can live. We hold our breath until they miraculously leave the premises. Then we flee, leaving the wife behind to mope.

We fight our way through the darkening forest and eventually make it to the sea. Swimming without any lifejackets or flotation device at all, swimming for our lives, I know it cannot last. We've all managed to keep our heads above water, but it's dark and the sea is getting choppy. Just as I'm about to give up hope, a woman's head, about the size of a stretch Humveee, pops up out of the water. Waves splash open to reveal down to her shoulders. Is she a colossal statue?
She stops the frantic storm for a moment to reveal herself, standing ten stories tall. Without a word, but a smile, she fetches for us a boat from the bottom of the ocean.

We sail with grateful hearts through a treacherous night of storming, to awake floating down a mountainous stream. It leads right onto a road of some sort. I leave the others behind to investigate. The mountain sits next to a bustling town. I'm spat out into the courtyard of a Greek apartment building; old women sewing in their laps and throwing scraps to their dogs. Next down the road is a market with fruits and everyone speaking Spanish. Trying to locate myself in the world, I figure we could have made it to Spain, but it's highly unlikely. Suddenly, with a shock of disappointment, I read on a little placard: Welcome to Reading, PA.

Funeral, Family, and 2 essential Yogasanas

2009-05-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

Without announcing the act of death, my mother informs me that today is my grand mother's funeral. All immediate family members are rounded up for a time in our old town in Ohio and I am to drive the coffin around in the back of my car, which, quite frankly, creeps me out.
It dawns on me that none of this is appropriate and that I must return to the house to get directions and dutifully herd the family where we need to be. My mother's directions are to a chapel outside of Philly, and the route is designated in a mixture of alien symbols of various colors (like an ailing ink cartridge) and poetic meanderings such as "the toll man takes his little toll", wobbly smiley faces and the like. I contend that these directions will simply not do. I get on the computer to find the address, and am pleased to find that the chapel is a lovely place with golden statues of the Virgin Mary and a red velvet backdrop. (David Lynch meets Holy Roman, with a dash of old Italian mini-cathedral)

Before leaving, Dave and I take side by side bubble baths in the living room with my family but a shower liner away. It's kind of disturbing to have them so close, but we really needed to relax.
I'm not ready to accept my grandmother's death. In fact, I'm not even sure that it's happened since no one is talking about it. To make sure, I go to her house - the old one in Lynchburg. She is sitting at her dining room table with the leaves dropped down, an exquisite set of lady's vanity utensils laid before. She appears to be writing checks.

I immediately see that she has passed, and this is her spirit, and that now is the time to tell her what I often tell her, the most important thing to say to someone that you love with your whole being. I am filled to the brim with a feeling suddenly - a radiant love, a spiritual force that envelops us. At this moment, there is nothing but love pouring forth from me and being returned by her. Her gooey brown eyes are bigger than normal, they reassure me that my speechlessness is forgiven. I say it anyway, crying joyfully.... "I love you so much, so much." She half chides me for being so sentimental and talks to me for a while. I don't remember what she said, too busy taking in the grace of her earthly personality, which I will miss so dearly. I try to respond at some point and she disappears.

---------------------------------------

At the chapel, the coffin is laid out. She appears to be sitting straight up. No, it's someone else.
How could they have gotten the time wrong? How terrible! At least the chapel is everything the website promised. Bodies are shuffled, coffins are wheeled about. During the changeover, I get lost in the annals of the backrooms and basement, the green carpeted stairs that lead down to the beauty salons of the dead. I see inept funeral interns tossing around body boards and playing bumper cars with caskets.

Finally, it's her turn. I'm sitting with the family. Justin has spontaneously taken a yoga pose on the floor to celebrate teh funeral in his own way. He has extended his arms into child's pose, and separated his arms into segments at the forearm, wrist and finger bones, cut vertically into cross sections.

Various things start to annoy me. There's so much noise, and people are just scattered everywhere throughout the chapel like a cafe! I am so upset, I take a particularly noisy little girl out of the room to shake her, turn her upside down and give her a talking to. Actually, no, I think I'm just entertaining her - her body is long and narrow like a doll's. I return her and she's quieter after that, but many people are still being rude and I go through the crowd giving dirty stares.

On the way back to my seat, I see Dave's set up a virtual airstrip of power adapters for playing music. I totally forgot we were supposed to play! It's the last thing I feel like doing really, so I bail, which disappoints him a little. He wanders off, and a strange thing happens.
The woman in the casket from before reappears, balancing on long lengs that don't bend. She's going through the chapel, bumping every person on the head with a wooden cross to bless them. This is an excellent technique for crowd control, I think. She scratches the top of my head affectionately with her postmortem french manicured claws.

My grandmother appears to be peaceful in her casket. The preacher begins to deliver his sermon, pauses a bit for the body to noisily relieve itself of its last gasses and air, continues extolling the virtues of this magnificent lady. She shifts around a bit in the coffin, makes a few faces, then settles into savasana, a soft smile on her face. How nice, we all agree.

2009-04-26T07:07:00.000-07:00

Time: Before the Current Era, Pre-Biblical in fact, Pre-Historical.....

The Earth has fallen off its orbit, making a wide elliptical shape that takes it further from the sun than it ever should be in certain seasons. The Earth has given up half of itself to sharp tall mountains of icy blue and black for this season, and everything living there is dim and struggling to survive.

I live in a town on the outskirts of the dim land, with many other people who go about in loincloths. There is a giant in our town whose name is Alex. He's a bit off but not exactly slow, maybe he's just "different" and we all treat him as such in our minds. Everyone's obsessed with getting fire for their homes...

We must take a trip to meet up with the head of the human community. This trip is very far away, so we take a prehistoric vehicle, not altogether so different from my honda. Arriving at the human capital, I first notice that a percentage of the people are wearing big black capes that hide their entire body and even the face. When we stop the "car" (it's made of stone), some agents pull Alex from the car and immediately throw one of these black robes onto him, saying, "He has the disease! He has it!"
This was how they marked the people who were going to die from the great human plague. We were not supposed to touch them. Anyone who was seen touching them also got a black robe. I thought of the many times I'd shaken his hand or embraced him ina friendly way, and then worried for my community back home. Would we all perish in this dark world before the sun came back to us??

Miss Haversham aesthetic

2008-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

For/with ROSE:

A thoroughly Miss Haversham aesthetic.
we were in tattered white gowns very late 18th century. we were 16 years old with powdered messy blonde dreadlocks, half twisted around wired ribbon.
our hairs were very loooooooooong.

we were in the charge of a Roulhac-like figure who was dressed and coiffed to match us, but she was a littl emore put together. she wanted to take us to the country.
she tried to fix my hair, but it kept un rolling itself in spittle lace tangles.

we escaped.
climbing down river banks full of snow, a very un-virginian kind of Brown Dirt mixing in some color. we were lost in the woods and far away from Miss Roulhac Haversham..... we were throwing snow all over our fur hats and shawls and crazed petticoats.

Then we came upon a leanto that just barely housed yet another woman in tattered white.
She was like a shaman, she was a frozen princess meditating on the disintegration of grograin and chiffon.

Seed pearls freckled the mountain of her, crystal diadems crowned each silver eyelash. Were it not for the shadow of the lean-to, she would have blended into the wintry white, a mere sparkle in the atmosphere.

We sat in front of her as worshippers do those giant golden Buddhas in thailand.
she spoke about something - Femininity, the winter, the crystal moment of contentment buried in months of solitude. virginal, white hot, well lived.

a snake climbs fully into the womb

2008-07-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

the king of cobras seduces a woman

she looks medea
that is, an old soul of mine, with callas’ eyes and that ridiculous application of eyeliner

the cobra winds its way into the womb and spreads its hood over the micoscopic zygote she is carrying. protection.
he coils his length around the baby as it forms, holding the head in place so that it doesn't get shaken.
no poison in the watery union - the snake drinks poison like shiva drinking the poisonous ocean

the boy is born fully man now and the snake has fused onto him, hood spread eternally, fangs drawn out over his face.
i coax his face out from the venomous cage, maybe to kiss

Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does, and the Great Failure of Cognitive Therapy

2008-07-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

. I went to a therapists’ house for an informal session. she was going to hook me up; we were acquaintances. She had this deep soft couch i kept flinging myself all over
i was wearing this short chinese silk dress and no panties. i kept getting embarassed, not able to control my body as i was positioning myself on this couch in crazy ways. she seemed to understand and as she was talking to me kept covering me up in a motherly fashion

i don’t really know what i was going into therapy for.. of course, i was never sure of what i was there for when i was enrolled in therapy. it was like brushing your hair?

the therapist turned from understanding earthy female to attractive business-oriented black male, kind of in the vein of my old landlord. he analyzed a dream dave had had last night. i don’t remember which one this was. He had a lot of dreams last night.. we’ve both been storming brains in our sleep lately – lots of sleep, thankfully.

“How did this dream make you feel?” he asked. Instantly my heart began pounding and i started talking even though i had no idea what was coming out of my mouth, a throwback to my old therapy sessions, where i would often dissociate or become bored, instantly blacking out sound when we arrived at a real changing point, or when we got around to the pith of a problem I truly wanted to solve.

The dream in discussion i didn’t seem to mind that much. “At least I wasn’t a giant spider, sucking the life out of him,” I joked. (That’s the one dream I do remember from the previous night. Tried not to read too much into that one!) My heart was still pounding and I was reeling, perhaps it happens when i tell the truth – euphoria of naked speaking.

“See now that’s -------“ I heard ‘cute’ but knew that wasn’t the word he was saying, “When you do that right there, that’s it.” I giggled because i knew he could tell i was bullshitting, or dissociating, or just not able to integrate the sides of my brain when speaking truthfully. Was he flirting with me? A new kind of therapy? This could actually work! But I knew he wasn’t and that perhaps he thought I thought he was. Agh! Fucking cognitive therapy – so boring.

“Repeat after me; ‘F and U’.” Um, ok, like a meditation?

I kept mentally repeating it, but felt too silly to do it outloud. It was surprisingly easy to meditate on this nonsense. His phone rang. “Mind if I take it?” as he answered, “You can sit in the Metaphysical Waiting Room.” He tapes together three Scrabble tiles to give to me; F, U and another I can’t seem to figure out and sends me on my way.

The Metaphysical Waiting Room was through the front door, where “outside” should have been. It looked like a Presbyterian church, lots of white, a balcony. I was in the South! There was a speaker at the podium (not a pulpit):
“F and U. Simple sounds; meaningless and easy. Repeat it everywhere. i do it while i’m waiting for the train. F and U. F and U. Don’t think about the sounds of them together; don’t think at all. Just repeat, over and over.” I look around and there are hundreds of people, some paying attention, others chatting, a few stragglers walking and reciting the letters.

Under the balcony in the center was a VIP section full of high ranking church officials and a lot of apparently very important African Americans, dressed to the nines – church gear was everywhere from robes and stoles to diamond hats and gloves. A man, apparently a proponent of interfaith ministry, walked up with a large sign advertising his new version of the Kaddish in Ebonics. “Why don’t I recite it for everyone here?” he offered.
My father piped up through black teeth, “Yeah, and I’ll get the Hammond out and throw a few chords in from some” -- pause for extra menace—“plantation tunes.”
The African American VIPs silently shuddered.

I walked up to the crowd and called on my dad, half to distract his offended party from his faux pas, half to shock him. I did appear a bit strange, flashing the tattoo and wearing a Chinese minidress. “hey dad, making new friends?” Our public relationship sometimes mimics this exact dynamic: him fucking with people and me having to fuck with him to make it appear that we are all a bunch of assholes and can’t help ourselves; in other words, “Please Forgive My Father, For He Knows Not What He Does.”

The Last Drop

2008-06-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

As younger children (myself about age 12, justin 10), we are gathered together with my family - pops, grams, grace, mom, talking about the most legendary family stories.
There's the story of pops and his twin painting their neighbor's car, of mom's dog peanut getting stolen by the crazy lady, and others.
'I've got one!,' Justin pipes up, 'the 'Last Drop''.

Transported now with no narration, we are by the sea, my mother, brother and me.
We are on a castle, an old black fortress standing high above the water. We peer over the side, about a 150 foot drop to the water, the stones stones flaring out like a long skirt.

As is his nature, baby Justin (now appearing as the rambunctious 3 year old) flings himself over the edge of the castle with the death-thirsty glee of a toddler-sized evil knievel. 10 exact seconds of panic as we watch him fall into the water.

My mother, quite uncharacteristically, does not cringe. With a ferocious strength and no words, she crawls over the side of the castle and jumps off into the water in a swan dive that looks like a dagger sticking the sea.

Landing safely near the foot of the castle, Justin's striped shirt is visible under water. He's holding on the the fortress, but not with much. She swims under to grab him and resurfaces in time to be seen by a man on a ski-jet. The man is weathered, with red skin and a lion's mane of sun curled blonde hair. a Poseidon. The steers his jet around for a while before picking them up.

Back to our family room, I rush over to Justin and hug him, glad he's alive. 'It's called 'the Last Drop' because I was on my last drop of breath' he says and we all swell with love.

I. Earthquake II. Garnet Molar III. Music

2008-05-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

I. Earthquake
In my father's house, the telephone rings. A pre-recorded message a la telemarketing, "This is Linda from Brilliant Systems. I'm calling to inform you.... EARTHQUAKE." I am so scared but just barely manage to mouth the word. A dull roar "Earthquake!" All present crouch, the rumble takes my insides and pulverizes every soft part. Brain jellies in its shell.
I hold my skull with both hands tightly.
The quake continues for another 70 second eternity.
No one is left.
I inspect the damage to the house. Walls split in half, floorboards cracked apart. The house is about to fall in two equal parts. I think, the earth breaking, and the epicenter is my father's house? Of all places...
I find my father on the ground floor, tearing away at the point of breakage. He's throwing floorboards aside to uncover the fissure in the earth. I warn him not to disturb the earth further.. we could fall in and die.
He tells me not to worry.
We uncover the great crevice, ore gleaming like newly cut fool's gold from the fists of the planet.

II. Garnet Molar

Traffic is stopped on the highway. There's been a great discovery in the ditches lining the road: a mile stretch of cardboard boxes. I inspect the line, accompanied by another who is at times a small girl friend from my childhood and at other times Jor. The boxes hold skulls, bones and some clothes.
Some skulls so old they looked rusted. Some flattened, some crushed. Bones are mingled in no order. I wonder if this is one killer, or a collector? The girl and I curl feet over cardboard ledges, catlike. My body has become small and light, like a child.
I want to take a bone back to my lover as a souvenir of this adventure, but they all seem too large to steal. Jor pulls oversize hideous Christmas sweaters out of occasional boxes and grinning heinously, sneers, 'We'll be needing this one.'
I reach the end of the cardboard mile. Identical bones have bored me. The very last box, however, holds only jawbones. Fillings, gold teeth, bridges, then deeper into a smal box are special single teeth, some made of precious or semi-precious stone.
The turquoise, garnet and rough emerald are perfect sized treasure. I select a large gleaming garnet, in the shape of a wisdom tooth. This will be his present.

III. Music
I'm briefly onstage with my violin, wrapping up a set with a large band and some variety of boyfriend. Jim Waive is to follow us, solo, with his guitar. He walks off stage and sits in a corner. Electric artful tones escape his instrument for a moment, and he turns off the electricity. Beautiful acoustic sounds follow, a dark and stormy experiment with cowboy motives, Jim's characteristic thumb pounding technique, and impulsive improvisation. I am spellbound by the new music, ever knowing Jim could make strange art if he ever wanted to. I reel with delight afterwards, thanking him.

Broomstick Ride

2008-05-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

The Walt Disney Corporation has hired me to assemble a montage of witch imagery from cartoon material.
I work from a central seat in an IMax theatre, alone, arranging the witches with my mind. They fly about on broomsticks, superimposed on a cloudy pink sky - city pink, persistent. I make them divebomb near one another. The screen is a flurry of bristle and hag. It fills me with glee to have such a silly job.
My boyfriend surprises me in the midst of my work and I suddenly feel embarassed about it. Cartoons are so childish! But his delight over the witches sweeps my fear away - 'i knew you were a witch', says he.
We look down at my shoes, now pointy and black. I grin at him and hop on a broom, inviting him to ride on the back (like geezer Harley riders). We fly.

Mummy Money

2008-03-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

Newspaper headline: "Tut's mummy crumbles to dust!" and a picture of the barren coffin.

I ran to the Egyptology Dept. straight away to investigate the veracity of this unsettling news. I clearly have some sort of student/scientist security clearance, plunging directly into the room with Tut's sarcophagi.
There are five coffins nested in one another: I fish them out one by one.
The outermost is a huge rough marble with faded rusty streaks, then a detailed golden coffin more akin to what one expects of King Tut. Inside that, a rough red Roman clay that is more of a top shield with the young king's portrait painted atop. The innermost layer was a woven husk containing the body. Contradictory to the news article, the corpse was still there, barely dust under the wrappings, which still held his shape perfectly.

I was relieved and delighted that he'd stayed put. I knew that if he had disappeared it would have been of his own volition, probably an attempt to escape the drudge and rigor of the Egyptologists.
Just then, the spirit of Tut took on a smoke form that rose out of the linen and hovered above its coffins. His presence communicated to me wordlessly: He wanted to go out... would I take care of business? Would I tell no one that he'd left his earthly rind?
Of course.
Tut's vapor slithered around the door frame and out.
I looked down to the ancient bandages and saw that he'd left me bribe money...
monies, I should say..
crumpled up dollar bills, old french francs, and ancient gold coins....

Gods in Stones in Mountains in Love

2008-01-30T10:50:00.000-08:00

Trekking through forest on a lazy sunday afternoon with my best friend and my lover. A rare intrepid spirit shared among us. The mountains surround.
At a clearing in the woods, the toes of a colossal statue peek out at us.
I run out to find that the toe belongs to the foot of a god. The god is carved into the mountain. He stretches as high up as we can see. Standing upright, he is steep.
Ancient indian god, Brahma.
We set out to climb him, up his skirt and smooth chest, the beads of his marble necklaces, over the sharp features of his face.
Above him is another statue, and then another.
We climb over the yellow knee of Vishnu, the purple breasts of Pavarti. We climb up and up without much resistance, the marble surprisingly easy to grip.
Feeling the shapes of their bodies and our small flesh scrambling over them like mice.

At shiva's leg, trickling water starts to form the mouth of a stream.
I follow the brook up his side. The water picks up a current at his trident, enough to swim in fully submerged.
There are some jagged rocks in the stream, but they are avoided by leading with the arms.
The current carries us silently, swiftly, without any effort on our part. The water breaks from the mountain and takes the form of a bridge or acqueduct. We are suspended for a mile over the a valley connecting the godly mountains.
Divine, divine, the trees and mist that breathes to them!
Divine the mountains that hold these mountains!
Wondrous to be here, right to be floating, giving this journey all our hearts!
The water is warm; we toss our clothing into the abyss.

At the foot of the river, there is a miracle: opposing currents meet.
Water falls down from the hair of Kali, crashing into our upstream current.
The result is a watery equivalent of fireworks.

A second mountain of gods and goddesses offers itself to us.
Trees are visible on either side now; more protection, proximity.
Wet hand and footprints on the chest of Hanuman; we dry ourselves in the air.
These carvings are smaller than the others, and easier to climb.
Over halos and triple headed demons, narrow bellies and almond eyes.

I run my hands over the eyes and noses of each statue, like a blind person learning the face.
At the top, two figures which are far older than the rest and have some paint on them. Their style is less monumental, more suited to the size of a temple.
'These are the originals', I guess out loud. 'The inspiration for the whole series.'

Ganesha, his black trunk laying down the length of his body to his dancing feet.
I crawl down it, feeling the ridges, admiring the painted green brocade of his dress, the gold on his bracelets. My lover is laying atop the statue of Ganesha's consort*, head on her belly. I meet him there, after feeling the curves of her red waist and breasts, touching her cheek.
Finally my hands grow tired and I head for him, curl up on top of him, wrapping him in my small frame. My own mountain.
We make love atop the goddess. Neither the gods, the goddesses, the mountains seem to mind.

*The consort of Ganesha is an dubious term to use here since Ganesha is depicted with various companions. Often, he is pictured with a kind of generic human female or shakti. In other depictions, he is accompanied by Saraswati (goddess of culture, beauty, music) and/or Lakshmi (of wealth, abundance). I can't profess to know which of these was really in the dream, but i'd like to think my dreambrain was kind enough to perch us on top of Saraswati...

Red Opera Lady

2008-01-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

I've landed a job at an opera house where Jor is, of course, the prima donna. Unfortunately, I was too busy scurrying around the orchestra pit and the dressing rooms to take much note of the performance itself.
At times it seemed that my job was to be the opera house mouse: the pace at which I whizzed through each room was astounding. The rehearsal rooms with open violin cases and lanky trombonists opened into the smokey office of the opera house manager. Women in velvet robes with ruddy arms, rubbing powdered elbows in the w.c. Waxed moustaches grazing highball glasses at a brass bar, suspiciously intimate with their smuggled cigars. The silence of polished black dress shoes as they crush a relentless red carpet.
Rolling red carpets! From the ticket booth to the foot of the orchestra pit! Red silk walls! Every lip of every banister, every lobe of every ear, every cuff over every shirt tipped with Gold!
Red and gold....
It should be mentioned that the audience is dwelling in the year 1883, while the next person that i encounter is clearly contemporary, as i also seem to be.
In one of the private rooms reserved for parties, a couple in their 50's is arguing. They are both apparently employed by the theatre (writers or directors of some sort?) and are oblivious to the performance happening. Indeed, they are wrapped up in a marital battle.
"You're disgusting! What ever possessed you to say something like that!" The man seems to be a perfect asshole, keeps berating his wife in this way. She falls apart during his tirade, and when he leaves, practically collapses on a floor cushion, next to a low table with a glass top.
I immediately sit on the floor next to her. I feel the floor, as if inhabiting my body for the first time in this dream. Admiring the jewel tones of her skirts and shoes through the glass table, I form the opinion that she seems too adorable and intelligent to be treated this way by her husband. I tell her so, I let her cry over it. She comes to after a while and a bond is recognized when she stops crying. We both look up, into the height of the room that surrounds us, into the baroque painted ceiling, and laugh at the fake clouds.

He Is The Earth and I the Spark

2008-01-16T10:28:00.000-08:00

In a spiritual realm, a cosmic University, run by the gods, old old beings who instruct a class on our solar system.
There is a model of the planets similar to the models we're familiar with from grade school.
Each planet is a rubber ball, suspended in space and moving in orbit.
The peculiar thing about this model is that it is weightless. I lead the class in flying from one planet to the next, a difficult task since the model is roughly a kilometer wide.

We begin with the first planet: oddly, there's no sun. Little mercury flies in its hard red rubber almost too fast to see. I put my hands near its path and feel its heat.
I find venus but tell the others not to touch her; she's mostly made of gas... but isn't it lovely?
We skip earth because i want to take a closer look later, to try and find all of the continents.
The earth model is too large to be of scale, but it's very realistic; blues and greens and moving clouds.
Mars is dusty and sterile jupiter, in his majestic transparency made me want to fall through him. someone holds me back. I lose the others at saturn, turning about and swimming through the planets to see what i can see.
'This Universe school is fantastic... they even make models of the moons of each planet! there are moons of our moon!'
I look for earth and it's not there anymore.. outside the gravity-free rink i go, past pluto. Here lies the earth; resting, out of motion and orbit. A closer look reveals that the earth and all its colors are made of man sleeping, curled up tight into a ball. A cat sleeps beside him. The man is wearing clouds and mountains.
I crouch down to discover that his face is my lover's face.
I kiss his arm to wake him and he unfolds before me, waking up as in a normal morning, smiling and surprised to find me there.

We break out of the planetarium to go play with the cat, who morphs into a dog of some sort.
The field we've found is narrow and surrounded by ancient buildings. There are old old men repairing the ruins, some in long white biblical tunics, others in modern construction gear. There are plenty of others playful dogs and people out, throwing frisbees and whatnot.
'i'll be right back' i tell the dog and my lover ' i have to get him a toy'. I return with a rubber gun in a holster.
'Wow, you made that?' says he.
'Yeah, i don't think it really fires, though.'
I take the gun from the holster and find that although it is rather rubbery, it has moving mechanical parts. I cock the gun and shoot it safely into the air.. hope i don't hit any planets.
A golden spark from the barrel looks like toy gun sparks, but larger.
At first it seems that nothing was really shot: then, in a flash, a giant white dove comes zooming towards us from the direction the gun was fired.
The dove's wings are engulfed in flame, but they are still flapping.
Oh no, i think, i've killed something... this is so spiritually incorrect, what's more, the dove is the sign of peace! Certainly they'll kick me out of Universe school and worse.

I run around wildly trying to follow its path. It continues flying till it's completely burned black. Then the dove drops somewhere i can't get to.
One of the ancient stone workers turns to me and speaks in a language that i've never heard. His tone is ministerial, spell-binding and calm.
I understand intuitively that what i've done has set off a chain of events that is not bad at all. Something had to die; it was inevitable.
At the other end of the park, people have gathered in celebration. Out of the ash and bones and feathers, a girl was found.
The girl is the Messiah.
The ancient comes to me again and leads me to her, thanking me for giving birth to the little girl Jesus.

Pantheon of Porcelain

2008-01-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

Thematic relevance: Digging through treasures in my dad's basement....

The basement is crammed wall to wall with stuffed bookshelves. Of course my father's library is completely boring and outdated. Christian theory books from the 70's, gardening manuals, etc. I need shelves in my apartment, and am thrilled to gut the inferior literature from these perfectly fine pieces of furniture.
Some shelves have little collectibles on them. I find a cute figurine of a reclining woman on a triangular shelf...interesting. My mother is trailing behind me at times in the flesh and other times as a ghostly voice: either way, she is bemoaning all of the injustices my father inflicted on her during their marriage, that he deserves none of these things, why do i even want any of these things?, but it's good, she supposes, that I'm here and in the process of healing my relationship with him. Still, something in her tone implies that my very interest in being here is a monumental deception...the only thing she could never forgive me for.
I try to tune her out but, as usual, the pull of mothering mother is too strong to just ignore.
She prattles on.
I find a shelf with a number of porcelain figurines. Their features are soft and painted on with delicate strokes, slightly faded.
There's a green-gowned lady wearing a halfmoon on her head. I turn it over to see what stamping it has: Europa.
Then a Wonder Woman figure, in full leotard/cuff/whip attire. Her stamp says "Artemis". Ha ha, I think, someone took pop iconography to the temple! That's perfect! Archetypal figurines! And who left these to my dad in their will? He does tend to take strange neglected things from the houses of parishioners who've passed.
Another figurine is wearing pink exercise garb a la Jane Fonda: she's supposed to be Hera, of course. There are others I can't connect or can't remember. A leopard-skin swathed jungle lady, one in front of a microphone, a saint, etc.

This dream fades into another. It's Halloween and I'm 14 years old. My mother has wrapped strands of my hair with silver paper. At the end of each tendril is a little silver skull (damien hirst eat your heart out, for the love of...). She has invited two musicians, both male and older than myself, to stay at the house. (Much like the days we'd have travelling poets come through to enlighten our small town bohemian outpost and fall in love with my mother in a matter of hours regardless of their age.)
I'm fascinated by them, naturally, but being a teenage girl I hole up in my room. I change the music a million times, trying to come up with something cool enough to entice them. I tear down the wall decorations and paint and glue and cover the walls with new art that would show how very mature, astute and artsy I was for my age. I cultivate the atmosphere of a toothsome lolita and drench the air with premature gasps, mouthing the words to songs. I start to remove the wrappings from my hair to find that they've bleached it almost white...
Knock at the door.
Oh, it's just my brother. Beacon of purity. I instantly feel a little guilty and turn the music down. He's offering me some fresh ginger-pear concoction, graceful and oblivious to my sinful climate. I sit with him and start to calm down. Guitars down the hall plunk on.

Bats, Foxes, Soiled Dove.

2008-01-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

~Beside the bed is a giant wicker basket. It is bigger than the bed and full of baby foxes.
They shuffle themselves in a riot of fluff and tumble. Cuteness is barely tolerable.
The tireless motion looks like a fur version of a game-show booth with flying hundred dollar bills, or a flock of mink drenched opera ticket holders happily throwing themselves into a giant drying machine.
The purpose of this furry menagerie is dark, but not upsetting to me at the time. We've been instructed to make a blanket out of the fur big enough to cover the giant bed; a natural task for me and my conspirator in evil extravagance.

~I'm lost in a city, taking bus after bus to an unknown location. Some ladies exit a hat shop near my bus stop and start chatting me up about my pregnancy (news to me... but one gander at my belly below, and behold! seven months in utero). I should be wrapping my neck more carefully in this weather, they say, and what am I doing drinking coffee? It's tea, I reassure them, and open my cup to show an oily bird. Feathers wet and iridescent call out a softness in me, and I get on the bus with a warm feeling and ambivalence to being lost.

~My love and i have finally moved in together, and since we've had to give all of our previous pets away, we decide on our next friend from the animal kingdom: a bat.
I've ordered some sample pet bats in the mail. They come in oversized square plastic bags, color-sprayed and slightly dehydrated (think mexican chiles, or craft store feathers). Sorting through the bats, I seem to lean toward the green and black spotted one, half-fearing that it's too wild for him, half-knowing that the very premise of colored bats is too wild.

White Warm Petals

2007-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

The wedding is to take place in my father's church.
The view is from the back balcony, looking on the whole sanctuary.
The floor is not visible, being covered in a thick blanket of white roses and chrysanthemums, orchids, albino palm leaves. The flowers emanate a kind of heat that makes them glow and appear to flicker.
{Reminiscent of watching a blizzard through a wall of glass, wishing there were a way to make snow warm.}
I know that outside it is cold, so this white heat is a kind of miracle.
I'm to be married, but the church is empty of people besides myself.
My dress is one I've been saving for years. Antique heavy silk, pearled.
There is a whole satisfaction with this moment.

At some point later, I am slowly waking. Memories of the wedding party coming to me even as I see that the whole wedding party has passed out on the ballroom floor. Yes, I married Him (thank god it's Him and not Him), yes my mom and dad were actually speaking to one another, yes, the walls were covered with champagne. Yes, we had sneaked off to get silk-less in the water. I want everyone to remain asleep so that I can keep drinking in the moment.

A girl wakes up loudly next to me; young bride, can't find her bra. She complains that her wedding was freezing. I chuckle silently. ha ha. I won!

Forgotten Lovers & Shimmering Orchestra

2007-10-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Digging in a closet, through old tea sets and strange looking antique objects.

I find a forgotten lover in a shoebox. He unfolds to man-size.
Our backstory: A plane crashes, kills his first wife and son. We have a short carribean affair, the heat of which returns to us in this moment. in a sensation that can be compared to a fresh burn.
Something very big that I'd erased from my memory after we'd split.
He seemed particularly distraught about his son, even years later. He's aged. But he's got a new wife now.
Still with that eye that is half twisted metal, half satyr-winking to doe, “You know, we could have been found if we’d wanted to. But we two are are far too elegant.”
~
Exiting a school of some sort, an unrecognizable man sitting on a rock whips around to address me, 'Well, if it's not too much trouble, would you marry me?'
'Sure, I need a husband to cheat on.' my mind is disembowling itself with laughter.
( I vaguely remember I'd dated him once as a teenage expirement. He's rather preppy in appearance; not my type at the time.)
What I really said to him was 'Yeah, sure.'
After all, he's not bad looking, and is clearly very formal and stable. This could come in handy one day, and I'm so tired of trying to find the difference between all the others.

I sit down with him and a crowd quickly gathers around us. They are trying to tell him what to do, how to propose, how to tie his shoes, what color the grass is.

'No', he stops them, 'Listen to what THEY are saying.' Points to our left.

To our left is a band of string musicians. Fiddlers with no bridges, sawing an uneven tremolo that, when shared with the other instruments (guitars? lyres? dulcimer?), creates the most shimmering euphoric music.
I am delighted and because of his gentle attention to the music, decide to abandon that guttural sarcasm with which I accepted the proposal.

Cemetery Lovers

2007-10-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

my lover and I havabsconded from a wild party to the gentle sanctitude of an old old cemetery.

colors are distinct and in three. the glossy green of grass, kelly green, irish ghost green.
the white of marble, spotlit as if by theatre footlight. the definite black edges that begin as moldy fingers on the statues and plaques of the tombs and extend to the whole night nothing sky.

we are playing, we are rolling, we are making love. i am posing, i am upside-down, i am hanging from a white cross.

no names on the tombstones, and no names on our lips. just laughs and the lucid thrill of love.

i tell my mom about it. she says 'outdoors? well, at least you didn't make a mess.'

'no, it wasn't like that' i try to explain without getting explicit.

she reminds me that the dead are there; i can only feel the living.

Wet Grizzly

2007-10-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

In a circle of friends, in a circus of beasts. On a trek, a caravan, safari.
A costumed Rose shows me her lion, then a man holding a lamb whose fleece shines black and copper. Every person seems to have their signature animal... not like a pet, like a partner.

Monstrous grizzly, the river stinking precedes him. Others shrink back in a mixture of fear and repulsion. The bear graciously hauls his body and his pounds of dripping fur toward me, holding his arms out to embrace. I see his belly, rubber white, dripping.

Although I was somewhat turned off by this bloated humanoid belly, I let him take me in, holding for a long time, sopping and bonding.

Joke on a Cliff & Porcelain Squirming

2007-10-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

My brother and I exit a garage on fancy road bicycles. We see identical twin blonde ladies take off in identical sports cars. The cars are painted in the gawdy style of energy drinks, yellow and blue zigzagging lines. They each have a bed of sorts attached to the back with 2 mini-swimming pools inside. We laugh and ride away.
Down the street, a butch's bright blue Evil Kneivel styled motorcycle has broken down in a smokey mess. We stop to help her, but attention is diverted when she points to the enormous canyon 'over there'.

'Over there' is a music festival that has located its main stage at the very edge of the canyon's cliff. There's an oldtime band playing. Some of the members include the requisite bearded guitar player, an Asian fiddle prodigy or three, a cool cat rockabilly with a gleaming white upright bass, and a Tibetan monk playing the ukelele and tambourine.
An unplayed banjo catches fire and slowly tips itself off the cliff, followed by each member of the band.
We laugh some more, and ride off.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In my apartment, but within an imaginary apartment building.

Men have broken into my aparment while I'm asleep. I'm too tired to deal with them, so I take my blankets and curl up on the smoothed marble stairs that lead to my landlord's flat. I'll alert him later.
His friends file past, up and down the stairs, and invite me to brunch. Once again, I'm too sleepy to move, so I just drift off while they go about their business.

When I finally rise, I enter his apartment. He's not there, but his darling roommates are. They are a hip boy-girl couple and I like them immediately. We talk about art (Early Christian, Symbolist, Modern) and pets (kittens, iguanas, boys). The girl says she wanted a dog, but the landlord won't allow it.

'So I got this', and she puts something in my hand that feels both cold, dish-like, and alive. I open my hands. The pet is a human figurine made of blue-glazed porcelain. Like the figurines you used to get in the 100-packs of Red Rose tea bags. He's hard on one side, more gummy on the other. The posture is a yogic contortion. One leg is completely behind the shoulder and head, while the other is stretched out. It's the latter leg that can wiggle. He makes a kind of high pitched giggle/coo.
'How very charming!' I say, 'Where did you get him?'
She's not telling.

Corpse and Family Things

2007-10-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I’m examining my own corpse, from the back. The skin’s been removed and the flesh is partly carved off, the remaining muscle is dry and yellowed. I trace up the spine with my fingers, looking for proof of the pain I had when alive.
It's not clear whether the 'me' who is touching the dead 'me' is dead, too. I could be an afterlife, angel sort of creature, removed from my earthly woes, or it could just be my consciousness, with a sensitive finger....
By the neck, I can see my main injury. The vertebrae are thin, and set crooked at a point marked by a flat red line.
‘There it is,’ I say out loud, satisfied.

-------------------------------------------

In the old apartment on Central Ave. (where we lived after the divorce).
I’ve returned home after a very long absence. The house is kind of dark, as it always was to avoid mom’s migraines. We’re preparing for a move of some kind, but not moving together. I live far away and have left behind all that is here. Similarly, my mother is about to give up this stockpile of memory and antique.

The heap of treasures looks nicer than I remember. The dining room has a chandelier, the sideboards are old and elegant, there are amazing tablecloths, dresses, pops’ medals and souvenirs and other richly meaningful items as well as pure luxury items.

Justin’s old room seems to be the only space that is comfortably lived in. (It is worth mentioning that in real life, this room is 10’x8’ with a very low ceiling. We could never understand how he handled it.)
He’s taken his bed out, and the little wood-panelled closet is now a little den to sit and smoke in. Candles are lit and music is playing.

I get the feeling that the move we're preparing for has something to do with San Francisco and perhaps a lover. A stipulation of this move is that she can’t take anything with her. This angers me, that she would leave her family history behind for a whim. Why can’t we just set up our things in the new place and live fabulously, not having to deny the past?

I become angry with her for not taking care of the things properly. They’re just sitting here neglected in this dark place. Why don’t we ever hang out here? Why don’t we turn this space into a warm inviting place for family to interact like family?

She points out that I was the one to leave the house. In essence, it’s my fault that these things are here, unused. It’s my fault that the family is ambivalent about one another.
We go into my old room, which is also stockpiled with items from my youth and more things that used to belong to pops. Blue cameo, old poems, donated designer dresses. I cry, grieving the realiziation that I’ve missed out on our family because I wasn’t present to it in my youth. Too busy running away from our problems, trying to be somewhere else.

Some dogs come up to greet me. They don’t touch me right away. They each have placards around their neck with instructions on how to meet them without getting bit. ('Call me Iz, and don't come too close. I'll come to you.' says one.) I’m afraid of their paranoid maneuvers, but pet and love them anyway.

Fishtown Hooker

2007-10-08T21:14:00.001-07:00

Early 1940's. On a darkened street full of litter. Warm night, especially when wearing a suit and bow tie. I've been conversing with a harlot whose face reminds me a lot of a cheap Anna Pavlova. That kind of thin cupid's bow mouth, twisting offers for sex into presidential portaits. Crooked tongues and a kiss I think might be worth the danger.

I offer to take her away in my car, and lead her into a black automobile. As soon as we slip into the backseat, I reveal my true identity as a cop. I pull my badge on her, and arrest her on the spot. Jor's driving. He's my partner. Between the two of us, the hooking beat is hot. Prostitutes of both sexes are shit out of luck, and we've got no sympathy.

Coming from a moralistic standpoint, this is very interesting. We are using our success in the police force to cover up a highly illegal interest of our own. It's not clear exactly what this is, but i'm sure that opium and puppy trafficking are probably involved. Our own queerness is seamlessly integrated in this mess; invisible in fact, against the dizzying contradictions of law and order.

Dark Eyes and a Skeleton

2007-10-05T04:17:00.000-07:00

Digging around in my father's house for treasures. He has objects stockpiled. Gifts from parishioners, useless trash, and things recognizable from my girlhood.
I sneakily try to make off with a nice blue porcelain gongfu set, a jar of chutney, and some parts from a sparkly mobile. He's so stingy, I have to be careful. He'd rather throw something away than give it. contrary to this assumption, he's actually quite open about everything, ready to get rid of everything he has and make a new start with his new house/object collection.

My brother is there, too, and it seems were are in a rush to leave the old house. I don't want to make him uncomfortable by forcing him to be alone with dad, but I simply must retrieve my bicycle from a girl's house that I was friends with at age 12. I go to her house to find not only my bike, but a dashing gaunt Ukranian pop singer in need of a fiddle lesson.

Of course it makes me nervous to give a lesson to someone so attractive, foreign, and relaxed. So I feign a familiarity and tell him all about how i'm feeling at the moment: Missing my hometown, nostalgic thanks to the visit with my dad, excited for the music of the future, etc. then suddenly 'let's get down to business. play something for me.'

He takes out his violin and bows a sobbing 'otchi chernye' with all the emotional prowess of ... well, a Ukranian pop singer. I fear for a moment that I have nothing to teach him. I pull out my fiddle, and the tuning is stubborn and strange. It is fixed after some manipulations, and I dazzle my student with a flashy Hungarian number. 'you can learn it in to time, you're a natural. only thing is, it's mostly in third position.'
'Whaat ees theyrd pozishen?'
Sigh.
I draw him a chart of the strings of the violin and ask him to fill in the notes on each string. He writes in complicated jazz chords, and I realize that this will take a very long time and my brother is waiting... so, I must go. Goodbye, cute Ukranian! Hello, tiny bicycle!

Returning to my father's house, my brother has collected his stockpile. Dad's old purple Harley, the skeleton of his long lost newt, his geode collection and some family photo albums. Diego, my old chihuahua, is there too, having been graciously returned to me from an ex-lover. It seems all the dear things of the past have been obscured from us until now. Although it is nice to have the things back, it is clear that we are both on a new path and that the journey along it cannot be begun soon enough.

In a rare display of generosity, dad suggests that we all go get last minute chiropractic adjustments. We consider it for a moment, but turn him down. We're eager to get on the road, plus there's nothing he can really do to fix the spine of our family anyway.

liederhosen and teenagers

2007-10-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

My sister is trying to escape high school with her girlfriend stuffed into her book bag. "Hi!", Candance says as she pops her head out of the bag, with the friendly excitement of a newly adopted kitten. I give them my blessing and make G promise to text message once in a while.
~
Getting ready for the Symphony concert, I can't seem to find anything to wear. I dig through my roommate's many boxes of unforgivable fashion, finally coming up with a pair of handmade liederhosen. PERFECT! But a little short for me. Does it make my thighs look too big? No matter, they're the ultimate statement for October ... and stuffy classical audiences.
~

The Piano House and the Dagger

2007-10-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

In a Museum, or Palace, or a palace that is a museum.

A blurry figure gifts me with this weapon 'for protection'. it’s just the heel, the blade’s been broken off. The protection mentioned is of a magical sort. The dagger dates from 1792 but the crystal into which that number is carved is movable, and changes the numbers from 1792 to 1892 to 1756 to 1792. The maker and city of origin is also inscribed, but the letters keep scrolling as you hold it up to the light. Antonius become Anatoli, Tivoli turns to Turkmenistan. The rest of the object is beautiful mahogany, rosewood and ebony with an inlaid eagle fluffing its feathers. I keep it in my hand as I stroll through the living museum.

The next room contains a parlor with a piano slated to be from the 16th century (although, little brain, the modern piano hadn't been invented by that time. In any case...).
At first the piano appeared to be just a beautiful keyboard set up like a box grand. Heavy ornamentation all wrapping around the legs, inset keys, a lustre to the ancient wood body.

I walked around the back of it and entered the piano as one would enter a house. It was not of house size, but of the size made for a child or gnome. The house is still considered to be part of the instrument. The walls are covered in yellow brocaded silk, it has windows and a staircase.

I wish I could play the outside while still being inside.
At this moment, the piano is played by someone...
The piano's curator/security guard enters and instead of kicking me out, drops his duties and lays down on the miniature stairs.
We talk about listening to the piano as if listening to the dancing leaves of autumn. Look out the window, you can see them, he says.
I feel that i am inhabiting the thing i love most. Every sound and sensation is beautiful, rich, delicious, and somehow, wonderfully mine.

The Black Bull

2007-10-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

I am with a group, visiting some indoor establishment that has something to do with care for large animals. We observe a healthy horse and it's keeper, showing off the success of this place. The
The group is led elsewhere just as I see a bull being walked into the center of the space on its hind legs and hooked up to expose its throat. A man stands behind it and as he prepares to cut the jugular.The slaughterer seems to have a ritualistic purpose, but the setting is so utilitarian that the overall effect is one of blasé Satanism. I cannot tell for the long black hair whether this is a goat or a bull.

The man begins to weakly saw into the throat of the beast, and I immediately start chanting silently ‘om mani padme hum’, and raise my gaze to meet the bull’s.
he stares back angrily.
We communicated with our eyes and thoughts. ‘you can’t help, why are you doing this?’
'om mani padme hum. I’m trying to let you know that you’re not dying alone. I'm here to comfort you.'
He still is restless and fights with himself as the inept butcher unsuccessfully slices through the neck. I keep my eyes fixed to the bull’s eyes, he doesn’t look away.
As I continue to send loving kindness to him, he finally recognizes and says to me, ‘there’s nothing left to do but die’. I tell him, ‘that’s right. You’re dying. Relax and let it happen.’
The vein is opened in a gymnastic arch, his black body painted wet. I turn away before witnessing the soul leave his great body.