building a fire in central pak

why all these dreams about the park?)

i'm kneeling (oh, and why all these dreams about kneeling) (um. duh) by a fire that will barely light. my mother had put a wine bottle in it to get it warmed up but I'm afraid the bottle will explode (okay. not too tough there). I'm supposed to be calling back my friend dan to talk about my nieces. but I'm sitting by the fire. there is someone nearby giving a speech and he says something about being a force for light, or some political slogan. At the same time, I blow on the fire and it fans out in brilliant, high flames. The politician looks enormously pleased with himself and delighted at the coincidence. Later, a Russian intellectual, (himself a parody of the type) says I'm just playing into the hands of the media engine - all tricks and extravaganzas meaning nothing. I think he's a bit of an ass as I try to explain I was just trying to keep the fire going. Later I find myself at an Earth Gravity party, or something like that. It is 'a weekend for 'seekers' or Deadheads. I am aware that the Russian got to me a bit about playing along when I see the first woman in a circle get up and dance in a totally prescripted FREE way and all the others following suit without any deviation of style. It's creepy but I like my flowing Turkish pants, my white veil and the green cross I hold right in front of my face. There is some bit about Vermont. Images of big green and yellow cow barns, where if you get too high, you're likely to wake up. I liked the last one and wanted to wake up there.
I didn't. (sigh)

be a donkey not a sheep

My brother just sent me a link to an article by Garret Keizer in Harper's Magazine on our current collective moral obligation to civil protest. I don't usually post such things, in part because I agree with Steven Colbert who had a scathing 'Word' for people who can't seem to care, participate and act in their own lives, but can't wait to go home and blog about what they observed - (then referencing the use of stun gun on a student who went on too long amid a dead-bored looking crowd).
So, I do think it's important that we don't have illusions that our postings and musing constitute impactful protest. Nonetheless, at least kept here for my own records as I don't assume a readership, this article is a clear indictment of not trying, of saying 'it won't do any good.'

I will find some way to get in the way November 6th, 2007.
And hopefully thereafter. I'm sick of this shit.

Here's the article:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081720

the phone.

he is curled there, crying, on the phone learning something I will know soon. something new. something as bad, as much my news as his. I walk past him toward the door at the end of the dining room - the house, definitely theirs, a place I'm barely welcome. I rise onto my tip toes and, in impossible slow motion, finally come down in a smooth, fluid arc to my knees. i still don't know what it is. i try to be ready.