along with our fellow squidmates

FOLLOW ME, MY SQUIDS, AND YOU WILL BE PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOU'VE EVER KNOWN

Talking the talk.

It's winter today, I realize. For once, I have gloves. I usually never have gloves.

Today, I am bored in class. Not just in math (which honestly is a given), but in design as well. We go to the theater and we are told how it works. This always breaks my heart a little. "I know, I know," I want to say, "but can I climb on this?" And the TD tells us all about how hard it is to make art. "I know, I know," I want to say, "but can I climb on this?" By this time, I have to remember that the feeling of my heart breaking comes from my brain and that I am, in fact, dandy.

I go to art school for the first time today. I am a little nervous because of some ingrained message from the time I spent as an "upright citizen" that makes art schools seem so...precious to me, but there is something wonderful in the weird triangular staircase down to the basement, in the metallurgy workshops, the buzz of people, the high industrial ceilings with sweet hand-painted signs to tell you where you are, and clanging echo. It is very different that what I am used to. I spend a handful of hours playing, my head often close to the ground or falling out of a spin. My hip hurts because I push a little to hard, but I am no worse for the wear.

Today, I sit on the bus back from downtown and I look at faces. Michelle has recently told me a story. She says, "I saw a woman on a bus and she was like this (big wide-eyed, amazed face) and like 'new shoes really, I just bought these, but I think I'm going to return them' face never changing and just a mask!" She makes the face again. I make the face. I look like a blow up doll. I promise myself I will practice in the mirror. So on the bus home, I look at faces hoping to find Michelle's woman. But, everyone is tired and falling asleep so I spend my time staring at what look like death masks to me. It is a little frightening. To be less scared, I look at the notes the man next to me is writing in his limegreen notebook with red pen. His handwriting is terrible but I read something like this, "Are there certain humans born with spiritual capabilities? I have the impulse to say so. Yes, I suppose you could reach awareness and then through awareness enlightenment. But there is a long distance between awareness and enlightenment." He leaves a big space. He writes, "I imagine!" He leaves another big space. Then he writes a block of words I can't read from my angle. He gets off at 47th street. His writing has made me feel better, oddly.

Which is to say, today I have been vague and cloudy, but watching. Peering, listening, creeping even. I wonder how much watching I can do and how much I have done and what that watching all adds up to. Do you know?

Gabe's Ballad: Balmy Summer Nights

Frankenstein appeared on the river and he leapt into a pile of smoldering leaves. He turned and saw the herd of oxen bearing down on him. "I'm really not that artistic, but like BAOOOOAHHHAOOOHAHHHHH," and scarred for life in the best way ever, the boy leapt down the rocks and pummeled to his death. But an old woman found his shoe sticking out of the junkyard of life. She unwrapped her shawl and filled the shoe with her spit. Pass, she threw it to the leapard that had appeared in drag on the rocks. The leapord adjusted his polka dotted tophat and smiled with a devious grin. "My my, what have we here." I'm just listening to this, but I'm bored BAOOHHHHAAOOWWOWWW. I think I see the development of a crazy cat woman. The woman drenched herself with the loafer-spit and laughed manically. My head is empty! said the leapard. No, that's what they said. Fake fishing. I'm leaving this room, BAAAAHHAWWOWWW. Now stop a moment, fuckwad, let's backtrack.
Frankenstein, looking for meaning in his life, decided to teach the leapard to dance. The leapard stretched out his elegantly painted claws to flip the switch on his stereo which began to blast songs of the old ages. She stood on one paw, her whiskers quivering in the moonlight. They meet a dolphin that can walk on land. It teaches them techno. They entered into a romance, all three of them, that will go down in the annals of polyamory. But their love affair did not last long. It shone brilliantly like a star, and then burnt out. That is all. Shortly thereafter, and only briefly before the apocalypse, there was a festival of mammoth proportions. Hamsters on a wheel, a human ferris wheel. They were celebrating the coming apocalypse and engaging in orgiastic raving. Religious leaders commanded them to eat 300 clementines each and glues the skins to their skin. Unfortunately, the jubilant people could not find enough women named Clementine. Many many miles away a woman named Clementine rode through the ocean in a small boat filled with marshmallows. Clemetine was omnilingual, she spoke all languages, including the language of the ocean and the trees and the wind. But when deprived of marhsmallows, alas, she was deaf and dumb. BAAAOOOAAAOWWWOWW. She ate all her marshamallows, called the apocalypse, but didn't hear it, so she survived. Vegan marshmallows will not save you on a boat. Don't eat marshallows because the apocalypse will get you.