Further Experiments in Living

Here at The Warren things work a little differently than I have become accustomed to. Here following is account of a new systems, mores, and design statements.

Today we have our first house meeting and we decide:

- meetings will be held biweekly instead of weekly
- check-ins remain intact!
- each meeting will be led by a different person (both the agenda and scheduling - which pleases me greatly and hopefully everyone will feel equally responsible for meetings)
- we won't have chore rotation but we will have a point person (on a rotating basis) to cover basic groceries, hoping that people can be fairly responsible for general upkeep
- one person is in charge of the bills

I make banana bread! But it's super dense because I use baking powder instead of soda. Oops.

I miss: cunts on the walls and a general collect-all-keep-all-find-it-all beautiful style, dance parties, a belief in home made remedies, a love of cleaning products that aren't meant to kill everything.

But -

It's nice and cozy and keeps me on my toes. I have to explain myself sometimes and that can be good for a body. The light tickles every corner of the house and there is always a slight smell of crisp leaves floating at the edges of things. And we still smoke cigarettes on the porch and talk about our days. People sing as they stir pots on the stove and we steal other people's internet (oops). Risto and I make fools of ourselves often and lustily. I am getting used to what seems upfront and on the outside and on the surface and in the pictures on the walls a slight boug factor. I like to think of us as secret agents out in the world, looking and acting normative, but sweetly, quietly thinking/talking/being radical slyly spreading our ways with mere suggestive and example.

It's different. We're different. That's funny but quite alright.

riding this bell curve into the treeses

today my heart and my bones are a little heavy--
it's a rainy sunday-long morning-eggs and toast and damp kinda day.
writing speed, distance, long steps and rotating wheels and flying heads,
displacement of thought, new forms of intimacy,
i'm breaking up with the world so we can figure out some other way to relate.
wait, nevermind.
i haven't been writing much so i'm a little scattered in my head; i've been thinking a lot about the past couple years, what i've become, the worlds i've brushed up against and chosen, transitioning into myself, the length and strength of relationships i'm starting to miss hard.
it's good to miss. it's good to miss. it's good to miss....
this new world is rich with food that grows on trees, grass like shag carpet and art hiding in the woods. everyone is harvester and cook and eater and sleeper alike, and we are all not so different than the marmots and the prairie dogs that dig their homes to curl up in each others' warmth.
it's funny being in a new Region, the pacific northwest, adjusting to these trees and the sea and the not-flat-ness that feels homey but also not quite like my home yet. i don't know what klickitat will be like. a new community of people that will be mine for a little while and then i'll move along, waiting for something else to snag me. pulling away from all the people and places that have snagged me in chicago, in the past, has left little holes in my sweater so i hope it doesn't get too cold here or i'll have to sew buttons back onto t.rex's flannel.
and summer...? summer? my feet are getting soft and white wearing socks all the time and as my biceps grow my arms get pale--what a tradeoff. i've been wearing the same three layers for the past three days. i've changed my skin a couple times though.

move-out week at the bäo (a thought in verbs)

sweeping painting moving smoking hoping poking hugging lugging missing packing sweating readying tracing pacing feeling singing washing reddening confusing checking double-checking dismantling renewing finding dreaming cleaning listening looking waiting waiting wanting wanting wondering

for the good life is out there somewhere, so stay on my arm you little charmer

from my journal at 7:30am today, or 8pm on monday 4 u, 

dunno if it will be interesting at all

what IS interesting, is that it is RAINING

not as hard as it did i'm sure during winknight's stay in summer 05, but wow i was soaked earlier walking to and from dance. i haven't seen a rain like this in... who knows. certainly not in washington nor in pune so far. so june or july in chicago. it's wonderful except that the water on the street is full of ambiguous matter.

ok ok.

i'm at home [in hyde park] talking to justin on gmail, skype, phone or something. he is at the baohaus, i have to go soon [to india? somewhere permanent, so there is an urgency] but i want to see justin before i leave but i project that he is reluctant or doesn't think it is important [or like seeing me when i'm about to leave would just open up new wounds or something so it's better not to see each other at all... a familiar train of thought for me]. i go there and find my vest/package, sand, no rock, cigarette wrapper from cigs i bought in bombay. justin is kinda sorta in the other room[i originally typed 'kinda aorta'!].. i don't think i actually physically see him. [second or third dream where this happens! i havent seen justin in weeks]. i go through give away boxes of clothes and take a striped shirt from ali. 

SWITCH

i'm wrapping electrical chords around irons, playing "like a virgin" by madonna, britney, and christina [remember that vma performance where they kissed and it was scandalous?]. then scene change to wearing wobbly high heels (like from the kingfisher swimsuit calendar model reality tv show) at a dilapidated opera house. amulya mandava is claiming something about rewriting/organizing some great music masterpiece of orchestral music by a composer i don't like but i can't remember who, now. the stairs are difficult. i hear someone say "it won 2 tonys". when we get to the lobby i'm with granny, granddad, and mom. the opera-food-place is baking $3 cookies and granny remarks that they're finally baking their own, and needs to throw something out. 

SWITCH

in a mildly dilapidated grand building [the opera house after being abandoned in 50 years? which reminds me of the train station in bombay... marble floors and nice stairs, but dirt and funny smells everywhere]. i'm finding anastasia and ali, they're in class or something. i'm doing something with blue ink. it's raining and coming through the roof. i pee while walking down the grand-ish stairs [same scene as walking down stairs in opera house, only no high heels and i'm with a&a] . i'm not wearing pants. there might be more. a&a are nonchalant, not interested in me.

then? the interview with the nice couple, how they met. through craigslist. a cute ad. they have fun! they do such n such! then i see he has a computer. on the side of the building. it is big, about 3 feet tall-- looks like "tsunami dream" comp of my dad's. outside, still colonial bombay architecture, 

THEN do i go to the part where i am part of a murder scheme? i waylay someone (the target?) by reading something to them, and then a guy down the street shoots them. i move on and question the ethics of what i just did. maybe that person was hannah because i also dreamt that i read a long sentence from a yellow paper that was my high school transcript with multiple clauses, conflicting imagery, weird vocab, also claiming that india was in africa. hannah said "what does that even mean?" ad we're like yeah wtf i dunno. 

also at some point i'm stretching in some kind of gym class and my legs look more like granny's and a little diamond-like shaped (like harlequin babies) and some dude shares that he used to know a kid who had it who could never poop. but that when he was a kid his poops were too watery. maybe the kid with weird skin died? or had some other strange ending. 

============

that's the end of my journal entry. wow it was boring, but i was so excited writing it this morning. i can pretty much clearly identify where all of these images situations and feelings come from in my conscious life, so in a way, i thought that sharing this with you all lets you know how my unconscious is processing the stuff i'm seeing thinking feeling and talking about. instead of writing those things down directly. home, love, place, bodily discomfort, language, death, buildings, art, where the fuck i am/am i.

Slip Sliding Away

To do to prepare for going home:

• forget about cigarettes
• have back-up, secret place to smoke them just in case
• debate merits of bringing your laptop
• think of questions to ask your parents (dig inside your self for a lack of awkward)
• think of answers to questions your parents will ask you
  
• plan to excavate your basement (since it's in the jaws of the tag sale these days) for favorite scraps
• frantically try to clear away any administrative tasks to have a "relaxing vacation"
• reminisce about the times when your backpack was bigger than you and you wore a uniform and your dad drove you to school on his way to the train station and you had to shake the headmistress' hand after an older girl helped you out of the car
• try to pick a book, fail
• second guess your decision to buy a plane ticket
• pack the grubbiest, second-handiest clothes you own
• leave room for bringing back costume pieces
• get bored, jump around to Man Man for a while
• switch to Crystal Castles
• finish stuffing things in the bag, leaving folding in the past
• alert the one friend you actually want to see as to your whereabouts/travel plans
• steel yourself! hold on to what you've built!
  

A Poem For the Summer

So the tide goes in and out
dishes, laundry, and magazines washing up on the shore
and sometimes they wash out again

Imagine our little collection of rooms
many-frame captured
so we can watch the piles go up and down
books hopping
from couch to table to bed

to bed again we go
but not solely so we can get up in the morning

each night we dream the walls of our house bigger
dreaming so hard that they bulge and spread
until everyone we know and don't know is in our house
sharing the blankets
paisley, checked, striped,
plaid, and cartoon-covered

everything smells of skin warmed by being outside for too long
a slightly charred offering
a prayer for time to slow down a little
and let us dream a while longer
in our little collection of rooms