don't judge, just write

this my pre-blogging motto. not to worry that my dreams of late seem to be about the end of the world and my thoughts of late seem to be about what a drawn out failure it feels my life has become. don't judge, just write.

we had already made the trip once. there were two levels: first, and already pretty high up, a town [much like Banos in Ecuador, that great little place under the rumbling -now blown again-volcano] and then higher still a vista over the clouds that stretched to the curve of the earth. just spectacular. [is this my travel envy appearing again as nearanddears draw cirlces around desirable spots in Nepal??]. Anyway, we'd had such a good time at that first town- - dancing, lining the streets, singing [much as was our Ecuadorian New Years]- that when my cousin Ecky was visiting we wanted to show him - to live that experience all over again though I knew there was no going back, really.

And so we climbed and wound up the first pass, looking down onto these first modest clouds. [lately i've been dreaming a lot about huge hills - as in my other days unrecorded dream of taking a joy ride in serbia, down, down, down, a windy road then super-steeply down until it dead-ended into dirt and there was no way to get back out. A surprising number of people lived there and weren't likely to leave. it was actually fairly nice place to live if you could accept life as a peasant]. (Sacramento?)

Anyway, back to this one. Maybe not much to it. I made just a little comment as we rounded a curve, something casual like "isn't that a pretty waterfall?" but was actually,"isn't that a mushroom cloud?" There was one, no two, and i felt a little proud for seeing them first. Within seconds there were more and more and at the same time the water (seems we were also near the meditteranean) was instantly FILLED with white jet skis and black jet skis - tens of thousands of them heading right towards eachother and insane speeds. We knew and were right that indiscriminate slaughter was what was next for us. It was and the dream degenerated into a fully impressionistic treatment of the subject. Not gory, per se, but all implied: fast, red, gruesome and extensive. Was this happening to the whole world at once or just the eastern Meditteranean?

When later I was picking through the rubble I saw that my mother had been pinned under a huge fallen bookcase. It was bad - her arm was back over her shoulder and had been extended to about eight feet in length by the impact. She was still breathing but I didn' t know what to do. It had happened, there it was, and no way was I strong enough to free her. I looked around and saw that others in my family were alive. My brother and cousin had stayed hidden behind a stack of large canvases in an arts supply store.
(kinda sweet that we're all trying to find cover in arts and literature to mixed effect -....but at least we've gone undetected.
maybe it's good to not have a very successful career after all).

i dunno. there was more. but i think once again i've woken up a little dumb. i wish it wasn't quite so loud here. i seem to be woken every day at fiveish by some sheet-metal gobbling truck. i hope to have a good day today but already i feel i need to dip back into sleep and try to save my family or find out if the end of the world is finished at least try to get to the top of the mountain. i'm not sure what the options are at the moment.


addendum. i did drift back enough to recall another section of a dream in which a particularly gifted student of mine was saying my name a few times over and said not to worry: ALL my students didn't hate me....

okay. i'll work with what i've got.
time to get a litte me-sized tree....

Inspiration

"A very favorable climate for professional writers and for all those who have something to write down..."

So says my horoscope. But what, what?

Okay. Don't make this difficult. Jump in.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was no longer a girl.
No. Terrible.
Okay.
Once upon a time there was a last leaf outside her window that when hit by just the right beam of winter morning light became a huge powderflaked lavendar butterfly from the Amazon. Come all the way here. This leaf was portentous. It brought good tidings. (tidings? is this a christmas story?) It fluttered there, granting a moment to be understood, accepted as a butterfly, not a leaf. If believed in as a simple loveliness fluttered up from the underworld (south america is not the underworld, you idiot), if understood as a magical thing, it would bring good things and a worthy story to tell to the coffee drinking would-be writer onlooker. Oh. ghastly. but go on...No go get more coffee.

um.
Curses.

The light has changed. The leaf is a leaf outside my window. No mistaking it.
A sliver of a magic moment, lost. Once again my Brilliant First Novel has eluded me.

Will get up earlier and try again tomorrow. But my horoscope will likely suggest I take a careful look at my finances.

from my friend, andy cohen

Today light is mute, communicates in sign,
vernacular hues of yellow, red and blue,
remnant green and brooding gray, this
impressionist state of unspeakable
absence here, in this playground, on this
late autumn scape where, I kneel in leaf
strewn mud, in lieu of prayer, my voice in
tongues, try to spell out the babble, try
to translate and address, the rambling
digressions of my manic eye; to converse
as if you were present, and light today
was bright,articulate.

i'm better now

nevermind.

seethingly misanthropic (for the moment)

i want to complain. but it's complicated because i might get busted. I want to complain about _________. it's not _____ fault. they are simply much more _______than my _______ and my _______ is _________ than the one before (even though that_______ seemed to have some astonishly unenlightened ideas about ______.. egh.) but i think even the most under_______ of them weren't near as ________ as ________. All those _________ _______s, those ________ _______. and the _______! how ___!!
geez!

actually this is helping.
I just feel so keenly these past few days like I am so fucking rarified in my concerns that there might not be any place left to really engage with people that isn't tainted by ______ and _______ and concerns about ________size.
i don't even want to share anymore because _______ _______ _______ period. but if i don't what can i do? just shop?

i'd also like to complain about not being ________ to after all that time by ______ AND then there's_________. I mean, GAWD!! it was really embarassing that my _______ was ________at_____. i have _________r than that. i wanted to leave the room knocking over all the _______ and the ________ly ______. that would have felt great. oh, the bondage of etiquette..

then though, _______was nice. and my house is quiet but pretty and the fire i'm sitting next to is nice even if i'm over-contributing particulates into the atmosphere.

what bothers me most is that i can't recollect __________, that if I admit it, I've lost ______, that sense of sense and innocence that WAS, was true and good, and our birthright. but it's as if it has long since (i remember the day it did) drifted over the backyard fence, rose up, vanished and just sailed away. it is probably fallen to some dewy field since and choked some small, grazing animal somewhere.

i am in a stinky mood, but because i feel that with my lack of _______, I, along with the rest, have betrayed ______the very heart of it without (at least enough of) a fight. but perhaps us worse, because we HAD it, KNEW it once.
(I am thinking of a Ray Bradbury story where everytime someone has a thought, the government, or somesuch, blasted loud music into the heads of the men and women struggling to think, to recollect and pull themselves together until they simply had no idea what they'd felt or wanted to say and so said nothing). In one way or another, this is all about that. Our collective 20-30 year slowmotionpaymentplanlobotomy. How _______ and _______ how alarmingly near to ________we are- all of us. Stunning we can even keep up the pretense, such a thin veil of _______.

_________, don't you think?

i just want to remember what i'm missing, because i sure am missing it.
i'm glad i can at least be so very clear about it because i am so much more _______ than ________. Which, I'm afraid, is also lie.