a world full of phil collins

worth six hours on the road
to stand so close
to see so clear
a time to sing
a time to dance

stripy pyjamas
a time to refrain

space
beyond
bridges over peaceful waters
riding back in the dark

saturation

i have just/only enough left to write about watching the wind blow through the green leaves outside my canopy-level office window. suddenly it feels like winter is upon us.

it's not bedtime

but it feels like i'm done for a while.

"I have nothing to say and I'm saying it."
- John Cage

spinning on the dizzy edge

found
stunned
enough for now
words used up for a better cause than this
that this to which i owe it all
sleep
dream
sleep
dream
write
dream
write
sleep
dream

lemon tea

i think a time machine would be a good tool to have, for lots of reasons.

cutting and pasting.

erasing.

it all starts to look the same.

i think i should just quit while i'm ahead, and get me to a nunnery.

how long have I been out?

I wonder what the world will look like when I wake up from this dreaming...

headache

I have one
maybe several
but I also have new books, new curtains
and lately sometimes something to look forward to

surprise phone call
from the one
who wasn’t
done, and done
and good in the goodest way

something's (still?) missing
start, try, to fill it in...

blue

sometimes it is best just to lie down and close your eyes.

he loves me not

"professional distance"
his words
not about us, but so much about us
sat in silence for most of the rest of it
he thinks he'd like to let the sides grow in a bit

at least my haircut's hot
at least some guy checked me out in the office supplies store,
and the man in the coffee shop was flustered enough to give me back the wrong change.
ego deflation repair

a day of tales of delusions and fantasies and sadnesses

the man on the bus whose legs no longer work right, melted on the sidewalk, ignored until i offered my arm. left him three feet later at the coffee shop door - will you be okay? - i'll try...

cocky beauty queen announcing her move to the worst part of town

baby raccoon dead in the roof

a story that needs courage to finish itself

how many times can a heart break in one day?

in the midnight hour

sick. sleepy. boring. bye.

strange nostalgia

everything is foggy when you're sick.
i remember how delirious i used to get when i was a kid.
i miss that sometimes.

also, why does milk chocolate so often taste like bandaids?

here comes the rain again

Deluge and drought and dreams that go bump in the night
I don’t know what any of them want
All I know is sometimes it takes all I’ve got
to fight the urge to go outside and dance around in the rain,
Without ever really having grasped
just why it isn't
the way it's supposed to be.

By the time you’re ready to make the real apology it’s always too late
Door closed, lights out
Otherside,
send it out to the universe & hope it lands safely

Life turns you into everything you hate when you’re not looking.
So hard not to blink.
Time to start new.

I wish construction season was over and they’d put my bus back in service.

I always have to imagine that it’s the last time.
I could see in his eyes that he has started to do the same.

bizarre vegetable concoction

slept too much (if only there were no such thing as too much for sleeping)...
and my tummy still hurts.
sex, drugs and rock and roll...(yeah, not quite like that).

the weather is a little bit perfect the past few days.
and so...
i love the sound of cicadas, which is funny because they're actually repulsive little beasts. once i found one on the sidewalk, flipped over on its back and unable to get back to its business. i wanted to help it but i was scared it would fly up into my face or hair while escaping the ground. being the coward i am i laid a small twig on its belly, hoping it would somehow manage to grab on and use the prop to rescue itself. then i walked away as fast as i could. it wasn't there the next day, alive or dead...that's got to have been good news.

i still like to pretend that their song is just the sound of electricity buzzing in the hydro lines. its nicer that way...and i believed it for years at no expense to anyone - why let reality ruin a good thing?

limbo

it is easy to fight the sadness if you just pack your heart away into a little metal box and throw away the key. make sure you poke some holes in the top so it can still breathe.

full moon

i think it is important to note that we're in one right now.

new socks/cruel world

much as i often dislike my shoes, i would really not want to be in his even more.

irony and karma are lovers, of that i am sure. i can't even process the latest...the joke is so fucking sick my head wants to explode...that or it might just be the alcohol.

as for real life, it's (not) funny how he made me realize tonight that the stories my mom told me about romance (hers and my grandmother's) were all tales of impossible love. it figures.

i almost stood on my head today. that's something.

um...

my yoga mat is purple, just like everything else i own.

i think i will probably buy a pack of smokes tomorrow.

dance inside the funny farm

writing feels like effort today

butterfly on a telephone wire

crazy somalian preacher lady on the subway shouting about how mussolini massacred millions of her people

a friend who lost his partner last week and was just making his way back out into the world again

an well-dressed old couple who made me smile when he held her hand and helped her off the bus

something else that has, as usual, escaped me

it's so easy to disappear in public when you want to

we had a deal once that we were allowed to cheat on each other if he ever met annie lennox and if i ever met flea. funny they both got stuck in my head this week. them and corey hart...i digress.

i can't wait to see him again (no not that him, a different one).

eyeliner fetish

a nice looking man with two kids smiled at me today.
it's too bad all the good ones are always already taken.

where do i file a complaint? the past few years it has become increasingly, and now basically just impossible to find a bra that isn't padded. enraged is how it makes me feel, in a hulk kinda way. someone, somewhere has decided that normal-sized and natural is not okay...there is no way to escape the injunction to augment...the only brands that still make proper lingerie are all french, and they seem to have stopped selling over here...who knew pretty underwear was the key to understanding everything that's wrong with the world? grrr...

on the plus side, there's always eyeliner purchases to brighten up a life...
raven and mystery
both
dark and sparkly,
just like me

it's quiet out there tonight...

forgetting

i forget how much of a difference it makes, how much easier it is to be in the world when i engage in a daily practice which is physical/spiritual/artistic. i always swear i won't forget, and then i always manage somehow to forget. so i write this in order to remember, just before the lights go out on this round...surrender in savasana, sleep always accepts the invitation. i breathe for me.

or more like this

sitting

A few days ago I made an interesting physical discovery, and today it was confirmed with a cherry on top...it's about the fascinating connection between my deep calf muscles, my psoas and my eyebrows...though I'm sure you don't want about it in all its gory (actually), detailed anatomical glory.

Yoga makes me realize I'd make a good rock.

I feel like I should have more to say, but somehow I don't. Maybe it's tied to an idea that's been floating around in my head for a while...(paraphrased from Greil Marcus) the suspicion that to say everything may be worth nothing.

And so, silence remains. There should be a picture here, but I'm not sure of what. Maybe it's this.

is it friday yet?

going into intense yoga practice this week
if I start writing way out there,
it’s because I have spent the week contorting and meditating/hallucinating

caffeine pills

woken from nightmares by a nightmare...
can't go back to sleep, too much to get done
too slow, painting is gone
it's at least relief to know that the noises weren't in my head
the crazy thunder boom that i didn't think was thunder...
thought maybe a car had driven into a house?
was actually a massive explosion miles away from here
saw it on the news
balls of flame to rival any apocalyptic fantasy
reality acts like fiction
but i saw it on the news

light and cold

this morning when i woke up in the afternoon
headache
coffee
slate and orange and green up around the sky

on the way home
saw a house i've never noticed before
saw the dwarf apple tree first
always musta thought it was a space between two others
overgrown
boarded up windows
funny how sometimes things are hiding right out there in the open

wide awake at 4am
sounds like thunder, then an explosion
now sounds like rain
no way ever to know what's real

he loves me...

stepped out of my house into the brightest, bluest sky
the sunniest sun, the greeniest green
perfect weather
felt drops and suddenly it was pouring rain
sheets and sheets of clear summer shower
like the apocalypse in a parallel opposite universe
it felt like sacrilege to use my umbrella and miss the strange baptism
blink and i would have missed it, gone before i even got anywhere

maybe that's why i like history
ancient peoples knew their signs from god(s)
(okay, well, it's that and the pretty dresses)
something is most definitely afoot at the circle K

i'm a sleepy monkey tonight...dreams are calling to finish what we started last night.

untitled (thirteen) candles

do stupid people have dreams too? sometimes i wonder...

black cat crossed my path...i like them, it's good

same deep water as you,
leaning on the wall at the end of the tunnel,
driver slowed way way down, musta thought i was a jumper.
strange how robert smith's sadness leaked right out of my ears and into the path of a train...

another black cat and a bat in the sky
twilight not blue not grey, maybe orange and green?
red maple looked black, black, like a haunted house kinda tree
twilight
wind
a feeling that something big is shifting
i always know when it's going on...
they just never send me the details

cleaned out a closet (it's actually the spare room)
where we used to just dump all the stuff we couldn't deal with
all the things we couldn't agree on
all the things we never figured out...
it's maybe cheating to say i cleaned it out,
i actually just moved it all out into the open...it's progress...

do you realize how fucking weird...really think about this...how really fucking weird it is that we have collectively submitted to superstition to the point where we don't have 13th floors in buildings? i can barely wrap my head around it, when i think of all the other shit the world calls crazy...

is there really going to be a point break sequel? the thought excites me in ways you'll never understand...

i like trains

i just thought of a good dating test.

watch godzilla (the first one; japanese original version, not the hollywood one), and if the boy agrees that it is one of the best anti-war movies of all time then he is a keeper.

me and my shadow

this is one of the best things i have seen in a long time.

this is also one of the best things i have seen in a long time.

i think i decided today that windy is my favorite kind of weather.

crash

today was a day of false starts.
i woke up, said goodbye, drank some coffee, went back to bed.
woke up, ate pizza for breakfast at 2pm, tried to fix my broken thermostat...
a song a message
opened the window to let in the rain
not ready to start yet but
running out of time.

made some (maybe not so) innocent bad jokes that I think are going to cost me more than i expected
which was none

sometimes i suck, today is one of those days
fuck
baby
a guy who makes me feel like i'm lying in bed getting punched in the gut is always bad news anyway

i sent the monkey monk off with my last peach to keep me safe, to make sure that the one who calls out the darkness wouldn't return
reminded of his absence,
how do I get him back without sacrificing the ocean I sent him to guard?

properly nuts - it’s a phrase that haunts me,
phantomwise

imagine if we were on the same side?
the ego must be quiet or its all going to end in tears

“Of this same flimsy, magic stuff our dreams were woven in the night - nothing, with all the pictures of the world in it.” (Hesse)

quit playing games with my heart

I just tried to play solitaire but I opened up my calculator by accident instead. It actually confused me for a second.

How do I get myself into situations where I have to defend my honour against random strangers? I guess it’s the price I pay for an all night pass into the realm of the infinite...the force demands balance. The thing I love about this writing business is that the more full of shit you are, the more people think you're a genius. I'll admit I pat myself on the back from time to time - it sounds something like this: Omigod I am a fucking genius sometimes! (no one is reading this so it’s okay to brag, right?)

I am a badass and just sliced cucumbers on the counter with no cutting board (I’ll regret it in the morning, what else is new?)

So it seems I have discovered (a little too late but not so late that it doesn't still count) that the key to being able to write non-fiction is to read fiction. Good fiction. Genius fiction. Crazy fiction.

Thesis detritus: The fish told me to write and so I wrote, and now it's time for some zen-like platitudes. Here's what I realized today: there is a real difference between knowing and doing, between wishing and being, between creating and living.

Er, don’t look at me for answers...if I had any I would have written the book, gotten rich and made my way out to one of my many mountain village homes (I'm was thinking maybe BC, Ukraine, Japan, and Ireland...do they have mountains in Ireland? They have nice voices there, anyway. I’ll make it work somehow. Hmmm, and I guess I'll have to add the monkey sanctuary to that now - yeah, 'round these parts we just call them all monkeys, but we like all kinds) where I will be attended by hot dark-haired men with nice sideburns who like to stay in bed all day...when they're not busy making me dinner.

Right, so since this blog is actually supposed to be about boys and my misadventures in romance in preparation for the writing of my own great, groundbreaking novel (about same), here is a pickup line I thought of just now:
"Hey, wanna go for a ride on my merry-go-round?"

I fucking hate it when you ignore me, and you know it, don't you?

Hmmm, I hope I haven’t shot my proverbial wad here. Back to work. A bientot. (how do you make accents on this thing?)

you just never know

I love days like today when I can have all the windows open, when some of the silence ends, when the songs I love make themselves heard, when there’s light and promise in the air and pink lemonade in my fridge.

I got a FB invite from a producer in New York who was clearly adding to her empire through a suggestion of common friends, but I figured what the heck? and lo and behold, a little bit of guts and a click or two, a few hours later I found myself engaged in some lovely casual wall chats with one of the greatest performance artists in all the land. It’s so easy to forget that sometimes all you have to do is show up, say yes, open the door...even if you’re not sure why or how you’re doing it…the magic always wins if you let it.

With his good wishes now I will go to write...straight into dreams if the gods are with me. There's a painting on the line; second choice, but we've all got to touch base with reality from time to time now, don't we?

cherries and peaches

absolutely nothing happened today.
it was great.
i woke up just before 4, and now i am going back to bed.
the end.

shadow dancing

this is how it plays out in my head:

he writes back,
"What am I supposed to say to that?"

and I write,
"Anything.
(Ha ha, you walked right into that one, Mr. Dobler!)"

that's quality Rushmore worthy material...no?



i need to get a life.

"It was lovely to be tired."

A few days ago I was inspired to go back to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and relive my falling in love with Joyce. Smiling out loud on the subway, having to stop every paragraph so I can read it over and over and over and over until it sinks in and the picture sets behind my closed eyelids...it's so beyond my own grasp of language to really describe how he makes me feel...it's close to that thing of having no need to move on, when a few words (as like a certain kind of touch) can make you perfectly content to stay forever...maybe this hunt is only about replacing that feeling from when I was a kid and would lie in bed all day with my books...fantasy fantasy fantasy...where it all makes sense.

So back to this world, it seems it was worse than he let on. Tomorrow I will once again spend visiting hours at the mental hospital, a place I forget some, most, people never see from the inside even once. But I've never managed to master the whole walking away thing...probably I guess never quite convinced myself to believe in it.

Today was full of tiny episodes of the "too fucking vivid" variety (apologies to Tom Robbins). All I want to do now is sleep.