A field guide to Jan-february

DIRECTIVE 1:

SHUN WELL-DESIGNED/AIRY/SPACIOUS PLACES IN FAVOR OF WARRENS. It is possible to live in tunnels and still see the sun. Trade normal bulbs for red ones, trade flashlights for maglights. All sources of light must give off a distinct color to produce a sense of chiaroscuro in all inhabitants of a room/cubby hole/bar table. Ask not what lighting design can do for you, but what you can do for lighting design.

DIRECTIVE 2:

AVOID THE TEMPTATION TO BECOME A MAGPIE. Or if you cannot resist this urge, indulge in it until you feel sick. Remember that time in the summer of 1973 when your mother worked at an ice cream store before going off to college (which meant moving across the Hudson and just above 14th street) and could not look at ice cream for six years after. 1979 was a funny year, after all. For Mom. Not for us, of course, we weren't alive yet.

DIRECTIVE 3:

MOVE SLOWLY AND METHODICALLY THROUGH ALL READING MATERIAL. Breathe as your read aloud. Pay attention to the punctuation. Listen to the author conducting your speech. Write out all your notes and do the review exercises. All other processes will fail you and result in poor grades and a reduction in your grade point average.

DIRECTIVE 4:

WELCOME WITH OPEN ARMS THE RESURGENCE OF NON-NARRATIVE DREAMS INTO YOUR LIFE. Things are returning to normal - you dream again that spiders have bred with cats and that Vlad can produce silk that looks more like gooey PVC that allows him dangle from the fan above your bed which sends you in terror tearing out of the house into the yellow summer light where a dusty pick up trucks waits that you get into and drive off in to go rob banks that are empty and you can simply take the money from. Things are as they should be.

DIRECTIVE 5:

IN THE QUIET MOMENTS, WHEN YOU HAVE PUT DOWN YOUR WORK, THINK OF YOUR DOTAGE. It will be a relief to grow old. Or not. Or possibly it will and it won't. You will be able to reminisce and think of the summer of 2009, when someone was not yet alive. Your bones will creak and the calcium build-up from old bruises will not go away. Possibly, you will become obsessed with restaurants and wine and dusty volumes like your grandfather. But you think not. After all, did he follow directives 1-4?

END TRANSMISSION. FOLLOW ORDERS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. BEEP BEEP BEEP! WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME?

A rememberance from spring

I wrote this down in April apparently, after Civ class one day:

I had a beautiful dream today in class. We were talking about why Kublai Khan would bother to entertain Marco Polo and his suggestion that the emperor convert to Christianity. The text gave us the impression that there were only public and political obstacles standing in the way of Khan submitting himself to the Nazarite, that underneath he knew that Jesus and his tripartite religion was the True Way. All this is obviously total crap. I dreamed that the Great Khan was a magnificent melange of all the regions his grandfathers overran. He was a gorgeous collage of Turkey and India and China and Mongolia and Jordan. He was this polygendered, polysexual celestial benevolent leader, who knew that his position grew out of chance and not God. He forgot no one. And Marco Polo was a pretty boy he kept around and trotted out at parties because he said such hilariously outrageous things. And the Khan would make Marco sit at his feet (when of course he didn't send him out on grand but ultimately meaningless expeditions) and he would stroke the little Venetians hair and smile down on him. Marco would talk about Christianity and the Khan would nod and indulge him, saying, "Of course, it sounds lovely, send me your priests to tell me more." And the priests would come and tell the fantastic stories of the Bible and everyone in the court would be delighted. And Kublai Khan would be pleased at watching his wives and husbands smile and giggle. And they would all talk late into the night about the panopticon and performativity and identity and promise each other walks in the gardens in their old age.

Mmmm, civ class. I suppose when I look back, that was about undermining a certain narrative of power, but also kind of realize it justifies and exoticizes another kind of power.

Lately my dreams have been taking place in a hybrid of all the underground train stations I have passed through in my life. They all have deep, vast lakes in them as well, which I inevitably end up falling into or swimming in or floating on top of. I wonder what that's about. I've also been walking a lot of places in Hyde Park without shoes on. It's a totally dangerous-cool-exciting feeling. I guess it says "I live here, I own this place, and no one can tell me what to do."

if you give a brain some ice cream, and then take it away

yes i will second rolly in describing saturday night's rave as a lake. i swam as a dance-filled genderconfused body through all the high school girls and the shirtless bros. everything was seeping with sex and straight at that but i forgot being uncomfortable and danced and danced. and then oh! the wonders of hyde park that i had not seen before. we do live in a [sometimes] beautiful place.

in other wise,
when so many of my days seem the same, i'm trying to gather little pieces that are maybe something other than chemically influenced moments.

inspired by the garden at 55 & woodlawn, which is full of tomatoes and cucumbers, jalapenos and marigolds (sometimes people on the street stop and wonder at the garden and once i gave some people some tomatoes and they were so confused and surprised, as if the lack of a cash register in proximity to vegetables was a syllogism or a logical gap)...tmo and i cut down a path through the weeds in a lot next to our house and i dug up the earth and it's going to be a garden. so far, only mint, but we're sprouting tiny seeds on the top of the fridge and there will be leafy greens and life. we're also starting a compost pile, hopefully. my interest in gardening is confusing to my mother.

also, i got a job at istra-under-the-train-tracks making coffee and putting gelato in little little plastic bowls. i haven't started yet, not till the 24th or so. at my "interview" he asked me to describe the flavors of the coffee and i said "bark" and he said "vegetal" so i got the job.

and at the character party on friday night, rolly and i went as a sibling-pair of runaways, trevor (8) and daisy (6) with stuffed animal friends (trevor and alfonso) and swedish fish. i remembered that parties are boring for kids even though everything is potentially interesting. we were on a hunt for monsters who eat children, but no one seemed to know where they were, or offered us roundabout ways to fix the problem--a unicorn, joining Jews for Allah, voting for a particular serbian candidate. in the end a woman from the future won the staged election; revolution was a close second.

and maybe that's it, for now.

update:
oh, also, tmo and i decided to get married so i can work in the EU and also to validate our sacred religious commitment to each other and so we can become a social unit of reproductive machinery. the first part is true.

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