Saturday, September 29, 2012

seamonsters/we're on a boat

They're on a boat.

NOT SAFE FOR WORK FAERIE: Everybody wants to be a pirate, but no one wants to go through the trouble of having to figure out how to rip people off, and just make a run for it.  The ripping people off isn't the hard part.  Everyone thinks about how that would work these days, because we're running out of things to buy things with.  The hard part is the making a run for it.  We all have too many things keeping us comfortable at home, and the idea of heading out into some kind of unknown just doesn't ever seem worth the risk.  It helps, though, just a little, when you meet someone you can project onto, and the other person is projecting onto you at the same time, and you realize that if you put these two things together, it might be enough momentum to make things really turn like something crazy and out of control, and when we first set out, because we eventually do, if we're brave, then those first moments are always filled with regret and anxiety, and so we cover it with a false sense of adventure.

HE: I fucking love being on a goddam boat, goddam.

SHE: It's the best fucking goddam boat that ever made its way into boatness.  Being out on the water, on the high sea, we're on the high fucking sea, this is where the rubber meets the road.  Literally.

HE: Not really literally, because there's no road, and no rubber.  We don't know how to steer, and even if we did, there's nothing like a road to show us where we're going.  Oh, no, I'm getting all gloomy.

(HE gets gloomy.)

SHE: There's the stars.  And the moon.

(HE's not gloomy any more.)

HE: Oh, my fucking gosh, I love the fucking moon, this is all we need, I used to dream about the moon, when I was just a little child-thing, I would dream about the moon, and I would wake up and I would think, "Goddam I love the fucking moon."

SHE: It's pretty, and we're like goddesses and gods, a little bit of both in each of us.

HE: This is awesome.

(It's too exciting to even make out, so they don't.  Except suddenly all the stars and the moon go out and it's very dark.)

HE: Wow, I didn't know that even happened.

SHE: That's alarming.

NSFWF: They unwillingly enter into that part of the night when the lights all go out.  It's something every sailor and mermaid knows, that crack in time and space when things go out.  They all need to rest.  But it's not a good time for resting, because they're on a motherfucking boat.  And this adventure just got off to a start, a really good start, except now they have absolutely no stars to guide them, and that feeling of none of this ever happening to anyone ever before sets in keenly, and so they have a long conversation about the first time they ever did everything.

SHE: My father was the clown who drove the car in the circus.  It was a very low to the ground car, and he was very tall, and his bones were always crunched in the wrong directions, and he was a very angry clown, a broken and angry clown.  He would take all kinds of pills to keep his pain bearable, and he would wash these down with a combination of mescal and absinthe.

HE: Wow, you're so exotic.  Where are you from?

SHE: It's a place so far away that no one remembers the name, because of the time difference, and the way sound travels.

HE: You remind me of the first mermaid I ever fell in love with.

SHE: How did that end?

HE: Not very well.  I could never hold her.

SHE: Because she was slippery.

HE: She was slippery.  So, so slippery.  And I was tied to the front of the boat.  When I lost her, I lost her forever.

SHE: No, not forever.

NSFWF: And it went on as you can imagine.  We have no film, and no fotos, there was no light.  And it wasn't until much later that they realized they were not who they thought they were, and that's just how love ends.

HE: I think we're in another sad story.

SHE: Oh, fuck.

(End of scene.)

Thursday, September 27, 2012

seamonster/phil ochs and all that goes with that

This is a dumbshow, a slow dumbshow for you, and it starts with the OLD MAN leading the HE into a hole in the center of their table, one that they jump through like they were suddenly able to turn into little tiny people and jump through holes.  Again, this will need some mirrors, or a projector.  Keep up, there's technology in this, we've already discussed why.

In this particular dumbshow, however, things get dark and sad way too quickly, and we see a hall of mirrors that reflect all that they've gone through in their lives, separately, a hundred lost and inappropriate loves, but that's just because everyone else is getting busy loving appropriately these days, but not in Europe.  They still understand what this is all about, what the stakes are.  Loving appropriately is exactly what their grandparents used to do.

After all the pictures, they come to a white table in the center of a floor that's bathed with blood.  Of course.  This is, obviously, not necessarily Costa Rica any more.  Because CR is a little different, a little safer from these kinds of old ghosts, especially the ones that stay in the ground after a genocide.  CR has a different history, but obviously this is not that, because here there is blood, and because there is a white table in the middle of all the blood, and this is where the two men have their tea.  It's some kind of special fucking feeling good and heal your inner child kind of tea, with a lot of motherfucking cardamon, because that's otherworldly it smells so fucking good it's otherworldly.

OLD GHOST: If I learned two things in this life...I mean that life...it's this:

As if from nowhere, a big white board appears with these words:

Your generation has always been afraid of acting on its own desires.
Your generation will come to its real secret identity when you start to act on your desires.
No one grows up until they act on their desires.
Hardly anyone ever really grows up.

OLD GHOST: Do you get the idea?

HE: I only get one idea.

OG: So?

HE: I thought there were two, two things.

OG: Oh.  Oh, my gosh, I think I forgot the other thing...

OLD GHOST fades off and HE is in a mist now, a red floor covered with mist, and through the mist, SHE comes back, all misty-eyed and mysterious.

HE: I thought I would see you again one day, but I had no idea the day would come so soon, on the same day I lost you.

SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.

HE: Oh, just you shush yourself.  I'm so happy.  I've been looking for you for at least an hour, and I thought I lost you forever.

SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.

HE: I have a complex.  I obviously have some issue that I still haven't worked out.  I keep doing the same things over and over, but I'm always looking for the same result.  That's real spiritual growth.  I thought we would be Orpheus and Eurydice all over again.

SHE: Beauty fades, death comes.

That RUDE AND NASTY FAERIE NARRATOR comes in and tells things that we couldn't know on our own, not without more background, not without detailed program notes from the dramaturg (*we don't even know what that is).

FN: I already fucking told you, you are Orpheus or Eurydice and the sad part is not even that, it's worse, it's that you don't know which one you are.  There is someone who misses you as much as you miss her, and she's lost, but so are you, and you both hear each other's voices every time someone pretty opens their mouth, as if you were stuck waiting for the world to sing to you the day it sang that day you were together.

HE: That all sounds terribly sentimental, and I've moved away from that altogether.  Now I don't even kiss the flowers at my feet, I stomp them while I'm on my way to eat meat pies.

(Long pause.)

FN: No one eats meat pies.

HE: It's a metaphor! Goddam, no one gets me.

FN: Oh, ho ho, kiddies, but that's not true, because I do, I get him, and I don't have the heart to tell him that his one true love is really gone forever, not ever really even born in his lifetime, and this before him is only an apparition, but one he will grow to love like a sister.

SHE: I just want to be friends.

HE: Oh, my gosh, this apparition just wants to be friends, and I don't really know how to take that, because I don't know if I really loved her, maybe I didn't want to be with her, but was just trying to get to her sister.

FN: You, sir, are the sister, sir, you are the sister you seek.

HE: I hate these kinds of lessons, I wish we could shoot some pool and I would try very hard not to think about you when you were pretending that I was someone you could love.

Now they're in a wormhole, one where everyone can play pool for as long as they like, because everyone has change for a dollar.  In this wormhole, everyone is just a little bit more naked than they were in other light, and because of that, all the ancestral ghosts wander through their pool hall a little bit excited, because something might happen at any given moment.

SHE: You're looking for someone.

HE: I'm looking for you.

SHE: You're not looking for me, I'm as dry as a ghost, and so easy to find.

HE: All right, I'm looking for someone.  Do you know where I'm supposed to be looking?

SHE: I don't know anything specific, I just see reflections everywhere, your eyes, windows, pool balls, and the empty glasses of broken men.

HE: She was here before, and I swear she looked just like you.

SHE: I'm always mistaken for someone else, I'm not who you're looking for.

HE: I wish I could promise that I'll believe you.

SHE: I wish you could, and I wish I could promise that I'm safe, and that I'm above all of this, but I'm very tired and very lonely here, and I want to believe the little things you say because they make things seem better.  But they're not.  And the one you're looking for is that same one you'll never find, and I want to help you find her.

HE: You'll help me, then?

SHE: I'll play with you.

HE: I think that might be the same thing.

It doesn't matter that there are secrets on the table, the numbers and the colors all point to clear actions and clear intentions, but no one plays without telling them this is just a game, and it is, just like everything, but they tell themselves that the game doesn't mean anything more than what it is, and it's true, but it's not true, because these are all very simple signs, and they want clear things from us, but we forget because we try to think ahead of it too much, and miss the simple things that are in front of us.  So, it's no surprise that when she sweeps the first table clean in just a few shots, that the one ball left is a yellow number five, which says, "This is your heart's desire, and it's not right for you, not not right at all, this is inappropriate, and to follow it will tear you to pieces at the edges of the river, and not to follow it will leave you as dry as the book you forgot to read, so you have to follow it, because it's your heart's desire."

And the game is over, but just begun.

Someone raises their hand.

SOMEONE: I don't have enough information, I don't understand this play at all, you need to include more dates and less videos about Shakira.

This starts up a video about Shakira, and everyone everywhere in the world starts to dance.

NF: Don't you feel the rhythm, it's the rhythm of the night.

SOMEONE: I don't feel anything but queasy, and I want my money back.

But it's just much too late, because the world is already dancing, and the dancers understand everything they need to understand.  But the music shifts too quickly, and it morphs into Phil Ochs playing his sweet, sad songs, and they make everyone remember the good old days of the revolution.

But oh my gosh this is the revolution right now.

HE and SHE don the appropriate beards, and drink something a little wicked, a little bitter, and a little sweet, just like life.

SHE: We need something small to change the world, something small, a simple and small action.

HE: The people are in chains and they need our help.  All the iPhones are bleeding, and no one is safe indoors any more.  We have no where else to go.

SHE: Which is why we need a small and simple action.

HE: Like some kind of pirate ship.

SHE: A little big, a little too complicated in terms of gender, but for right now I am so very happy in my beard, and seeing you in your beard, that I don't don't don't know how to say no.

(Next up: Revolutionaries on a pirate ship, on a boat, on a motherfuckin boat.)

Monday, September 24, 2012

seamonster/ohsonew


In the cafe
(At the cafe?)
The cafe

HE: I know that I’m not really here but somewhere at sea and I’m lost, but I’m happy to be here, where it’s warm and you are warm and I am warm.  I have plans I want to discuss.

SHE: I love discussing plans.

And she does, and he loves discussing plans, too, and they discuss plans.  It’s the favorite thing for the young people these days.  We all love to make plans because it feels as though we’re really doing something.  Except that not all of us here are so young, not really, not any more, and it’s sometimes easy to get so lost in discussing plans that we don’t allow enough time to do them, and it’s all a big discussion.

And this is when the first ghost appears.

He is older than any of them, wearing a hat like old ghosts do, and he starts to speak.

OLD GHOST: I’ve been away from here for longer than you can remember.  But you can’t remember anything.  And you think you know what happened in this spot, just a generation ago, but you’ll be wrong.  When I was here before, there were two people who looked just like you, and they were doing what you’re doing, planning a revolution, and this is the last time they ever saw each other.  But they did make a revolution.  They missed each other so much that it was their unsaid promise to each other to make the revolution they planned, and that revolution took their whole lives.

SHE: He never saw her again?

OLD GHOST: He never did.  (Cries.)  We’re all Orpheus and we’re all Eurydice, and we don’t know who we are because we never really know if we’re lost to them or they’re lost to us, but we know for sure that we lost.  We lost that war, but won the revolution.


HE: Goddam these old ghosts are depressing.

SHE: I think he’s charming.

HE: He’s way too old for you.  Look at him, he’s practically dead.  I’m young and strapping.

MAGICAL FAERIE PRINCESS WHO IS REALLY THE NARRATOR:  Oh, ho ho, kiddies, but that’s the bitter irony, he is not so young, and not strapping, he has back issues.

HE: I don’t.

MFP: Oh, but he will.

HE: I bet I don’t.  I bet nothing ever goes wrong with me, in fact.  In fact, I’m at the height of my powers.

MFP: And after the height, comes the depth.  I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

HE: I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, and I wish you would all stop interrupting this imaginary time I’m having here with just me and my girl.  The one I knew when I was a teenager, and met again when I was well over 40, and now I get to have a nice cup of cappuccino with her and flirt like we did in olden times, I’m not nostalgic.  I hate nostalgia, and anything sentimental, especially our more sentimental writers, like La Rouche.

SHE: I’ve never read La Rouche.

HE: Oh, you should, he reminds me of what I would write if I were going to write about you.

SHE turns her attention away from the OLD GHOST and fully on HE.
MFP: Oh my gosh you are so fucking fickle, please figure out that heart of yours and get away from my boy until you do. 

MFP banishes SHE and HE is left alone with OLD GHOST.

OLD GHOST: You know that we’re related.

HE: I suspected as much.

HE broods with the OLD GHOST at the cafe, where he was so ready to be having a cappuccino with SHE.

But that’s how it is, isn’t it, kiddies?  Every day we’re met with our old ghosts, and we’re supposed to be spending time with them, but instead we brood about how we’re not with the girl, even though we never really know who she really is, and we even suspect that we’re not going to get her in this life, but will spend it pursuing her, in order to get distracted into finding what we’re actually here to find.

Monday, September 17, 2012

sea monsters/classroom lesson #1

Oh ho, ho, kiddies, this is when it gets tricky.

Something in him says, "Take this as a sign," and so he does.  Except that he is forgetting something very important.  He is supposed to take these things as a sign, except he forgets that not all the signs are for him.  Most of us do that when we are looking for signs, and that's why it's a terrible, vulnerable thing to be looking for signs, and we should remember that we need to look for signs always and know that they are not all for us, and most of them are probably not for us, but at best, they can be little guides to how we are supposed to be for a little while, in order to, in order to, in order to serve a purpose that is usually not for us, but for somebody else somewhere.

So when she appears to him, he is sure that she is there for him, and she might be real, or she might be an apparition come to torment him, but all the while, he forgets that he is really there for her, and he might be real, and he might be an apparition.

Most of the time we are apparitions to other people anyway, because we are there to represent something they want or need, and they put their wants and needs into us, which is a proper thing to do with an apparition.  And perhaps it is rather impolite to treat anyone like an apparition when one is not sure if they are real or a projection of the mind, except that everything and everyone is a projection of the mind, and it's very rare that any of us can escape that, even when we're trying to be very aware of how we concoct our own stories to suit our own narratives.

And if there was a way to make art that makes this known up front at the very beginning, then it might be interesting, or it might look like every other work of art out there (and not very interesting).  Because there are not very many interesting things out there, percentage-wise, so it's necessary to look at everything all at once as often as possible.

Somehow this all gets conflated when they are talking, and when they talk, this is what they say:

HE: I have been waiting for you.

SHE: You already said that, now tell me something interesting so I can know that I'm in the right place.

HE: It's you, you're the first girl I ever loved, or the last, I'm not sure if it matters, but I'm glad you're here, because I'm having a very weird time of it, trying to get from the end of the summer to the beginning of fall, and I would love nothing better than falling, because that's what fall is for.

SHE: But it's not fall yet, so I just want you to float there for awhile and answer some of my most pressing questions.

HE: Ask me, because I am yours.

SHE: Why am I here, what do I want, and where am I going?

HE: I'm sorry, I can't talk right now, I have to work out.

He works out.  And here, in the ocean, all he can do is swim some laps.  But this is the middle of the ocean, so he doesn't know where to start, or where to stop, so it is impossible to count.  And it takes a long time before he can decide whether or not he is done, and when he does stop, he is very unsatisfied with all of this, and he is wishing she would turn into someone else.

But she does turn into someone else, because we're always doing that.

HE: Please tell me a little bedtime story about how I visited you in Costa Rica, and you were a mermaid in the city, and you showed me your city, and I fell in love with the city, and when I fell in love with the city, I fell in love with you.

Ok, now this is a turning point.  Although we might know she is not from Costa Rica (we can tell because her accent is a little too specific to somewhere else, and her clothes have the marks of this somewhere else, subtle marks, sure, but we know because we've traveled and we're worldly, because we've traveled the worldly world.  And are in the process of crossing the seven seas (so far, the count is four).

But when he talks of love, she likes to think he is certainly referring to her and no one else, and that's delightful, and that's fiery, and that's so warm and romantic, that she is sucked into his salty breath and decides she can be from Costa Rica for awhile and he won't notice that she is not until something else happens, at which point she is hoping there will be something else to do.

Scene: Costa Rica.  Night.  Mermaids in the city.

HE: Your city inscribes on me before I even set my feet on the ground there.  You tell me there is a lack of history there, that the time before humans set their feet on the ground is more recent than anywhere, and that the real history belongs to the animals of the forest, and the things of the water, and I always thought that would be the place that I would feel most at home, becoming animal in other animal memories.  But you wrote me before I ever set foot there, and while I was being written, I was also writing you, because I didn't want to forget.

A scene in a cafe.

Begins with a camera on a table that captures only half a face, half a body, and inscriptions and signs that we cannot possibly see.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

seamonsters/this part



The films are done and he is ready to take on the worst day.
On the worst day, nothing at all happens at all, it’s like a Sunday, one of the days when everyone in the world is resting.  Or they say they’re resting.   They rest because it’s in their religion to rest, and those of us who are not in their religion don’t find anything very restful going on.  They rest very aggressively, and we do not, and that doesn’t matter in the belly of a beast, but it doesn’t matter, because it feels to him exactly like being alive on one of those Sundays, and he feels like he should be doing something the whole day but cannot do anything, because all the shops are closed, for one thing, and he’s in a monster, for another thing, and it’s just dreadful, because when restless people are left to their own devices, they come up with interesting things, except when there is nothing to do and that’s the very worst thing that could happen.  

So he thinks about escape.  And it occurs to him that to escape here would be to escape to somewhere else, and right now, the monster seems to be going in a direction that is interesting enough, because really, he has nowhere that he has to be.  Lost in the ocean is exactly where he wanted to be, and this is certainly that.

And so, for seven more days, and seven more nights, he is waiting, waiting inside the belly, and that will be the most important week of his life, not because anything happened.  Nothing happened.  But for the first time in his life, he got to learn how to love the waiting.  Not because there was something surely sublime or ecstatic on the other side of the waiting.  But because there is nothing on the other side of it, and this waiting is exactly this right now, and he is eventually not mad, but right now he is mad, wondering how anyone could go on like this, but of course, so many people do, this is exactly how most people do go on, and he is becoming like most people.  Suddenly, so suddenly, and suddenly nothing happens again.  

Except suddenly the sea monster gets so bored of this day that it opens its mouth and lets him out because it’s so boring that anything is better than this, and once he’s out, he’s

He’s just in the water, nothing more than that.

And all the things that he loves are phantoms, floating to the surface of the water to tell him everything he needs to know right now.

We should probably mention that he is a warlock, and these kinds of things happen to a warlock, because who knows why because.  

“Every incarnation of a desire begins with a wish, but most of us stop with the wish, and never go any further than that, but that, that, that, that is what spells are for,” he says, surprised he can speak so clearly when all there is to drink is salt water.

And that’s when the last person he would have suspected shows up, but of course, she was buried back there in the wishes, and this salt water is the perfect thing to bring her up from the bottom of the sea, and this is how that part of the story begins.  

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Finally,” he says, “I was waiting for you, and then I just gave up.  And here you are.”


sea monsters/2


He sets out.
That’s how it happens, it’s nothing surprising, it’s how things were leading, but it was absolutely astonishing to him when he found himself no longer on the land, and floating out to sea.
The very best thing about floating out to sea is that it doesn’t take very long to get there.  In fact, it happens right away.
He might take this as a good sign, that this happens right away, but it’s really just based on physics, nothing very mystical (perhaps there is no mysticism at all, just physics that we don’t understand yet), it would always happen right away for anyone anywhere who did the same thing.  Not to get eaten by a sea monster right away is really better, in the realm of signs, because it’s much more of an unknown, a possibility.  
Which he could go ahead and take as a good sign, but it’s not, because he doesn’t avoid getting eaten by sea monsters.  It happens almost right away, in fact.
But not the first night, which is sort of fortunate.  The whole first night is one of restless anticipation of what is going to happen next, And for the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t go to sleep thinking about what was lost.  He doesn’t even sleep really, restlessly thinking about what he might find.
The things he brought with him are lost on the first night, eaten by sharks, and he’s left with nothing, and this is very pleasing to him, and makes him not want to sleep even more, and when the sun comes up he is dazzled by the possibilities of this new day.  It feels like a rebirth.
And when he is thinking about breakfast (he never thinks about breakfast), he is eaten by the first sea monster (he is always eaten by sea monsters).

He is not swallowed whole, which would be convenient, but instead is bitten into pieces and swallowed in pieces, and he’s in the belly, in pieces.  It’s not the first time, and far from the last, and he is used to it by now so much that he does what he always does whenever he is torn to bits, he thinks about horses.

Horses made of marble, horses made of colored glass, horses made of porcelain and covered with real horse hair, real horses made of flesh, covered with beads of colored glass.  The first horse of the mind is not the worst horse, and certainly not the last horse, but the one horse to be reckoned with, because its teeth are filled with blood and hair, and its eyes are wild, and it has nothing good to offer that would be useful for survival, except words that might come in handy later.

“On the day before the first day, you will lose everything that you hold dear, and on the first day you will lose all the things you thought you could live without, and the next day is so much worse than any of them that there are very few who ever survive the panic that precedes the next day.”

Like it happens, like it always happens, he is put back together inside the stomach of the beast, and inside the stomach he must spend a day getting well, and he is forced to watch the films he was putting off until later, projected on the side of the belly of the sea monster, projected from the inside.

The first film is about a marriage that didn’t last, and the film is a collection of excerpts of all their arguments, always those bits and sequences and segments where he was arguing for something he wanted very much, but forgot what he was saying while he was saying it, so he said other words that just popped into his head and made everybody arguing very, very confused.  We all have trouble with words.

The second film is about a love that dies, and the film is a short excerpt of their last conversation, where he lost the thread, and wanted to keep talking but knew he would say something that popped into his head that had nothing to do with what he wanted, and it would be confusing, so he was silent, and it ended.  We all get to learn from our mistakes, even if this learning doesn’t get us very far.

The third film is about a love that never got born, and the film is a long montage about the first woman he ever loved, but nothing that ever happened, it was the thoughts they had about each other before it even started, and when the film is over, he is left with this image of the one he wanted before he ever had one, and that image is the one he always looks for all of his life, and the worst part, the very worst part, is that when he first had the image in his head, he knew he would look for her and never find her his entire life, and that would be the one thread that remained in all of his loves and losses.  We all have beautiful, stupid things in our heads.

HE: You would think that people would sleep together in my movies, but I suppose the inside of a sea monster is not a good place to show porn.

Why not?  It’s as good a place as any.  But that’s not up to us.

The fourth film, which is our least favorite by far, is the one where he and this recurring her are in a room, wishing they could be together but there is a large box of wooden swords on fire between them, and they can’t get close enough to touch, and they spend 8 hours not talking about the swords.  That’s how love goes when we take our inner freedom out and make a decision to remain in chains, and no one ever recognizes that’s what’s happening until we are all much older and that room is gone forever, and we never get to test our theory that the fire was always something in ourselves, and the best thing would be to take a chance on getting burned alive, because that’s what some of us want deep down, that’s what some of us keep looking for.

We have lots of scars underneath our clothes and they age so beautifully.

8 hours is a long movie, and we are beginning to suspect that this sea monster is one of the worst kinds of artists in the world, that it might not even matter if the work is good, it’s too long and we’re forced to watch it, and then later, the sea monster will ask us what we thought, and when we start to answer, the sea monster will interrupt and tell us more than we ever wanted to know, and that part will take longer than the movie, and all we will be thinking about is that something in our lives has been lost and we’ll never get it back and we’ll hate that fucking sea monster, but we have to be nice because it knows someone important in the industry who can help us eventually.



Thursday, September 13, 2012

Sea Monsters I Have Known

Ok there's this.
Back fresh from another war, he is not ruminating, because there is no time.
However.
Every month or so, for about three days, when the moon is doing something particularly witchy, he finds himself back at the feet of the ocean, not putting his feet in intentionally, but not avoiding the waves, and so he is getting very, very wet.
It's nothing really significant, except there has been a turn recently, one that took a month or a year or maybe even more, some unkind undercurrent that was making him crazy at night, until he decided to give himself over to it, even if it made him unkind in turn.
And it is of course impossible to know what anyone is thinking ever, because the one who is thinking is never able to completely capture all of their thoughts, maybe only a tiny percentage of them, and usually the tiny percentage of the thoughts we do know are the ones that we narrate to ourselves, and that is always only partial and terribly incomplete.  But everything is terribly incomplete, or else we wouldn't spend so much time wondering about the ones who seem to know us well enough to complete something that we can't complete ourselves, and this is where children, ideas, and all the horses of the mind come from.
There are a lot of horses in this.
But this is some of the narration of what he is thinking to himself at this very moment by the sea.
HE: This is half the story, but there's more than half that's left of the story, I know that for sure, but when that shell closed itself up and the shiny thing inside disappeared from my sight, I knew that this was definitely an ending.  But like all endings, it marked something of a beginning, and the beginning is always built on the ancestors of that idea that makes it necessary for another birth.  So.  I will go back to the sea, setting out on the water, armed and dangerous and ready for something that I could not possibly have expected, except I sailed into its very mouth so I must have known what I was getting into.  Is exactly what I will tell myself when I am swallowed by the thing that scares me the most, or the thing that I love the best, or maybe they're the same thing?
And that's how it starts.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

back to dog/melancholy, fever, thoughts splatter

this is already over the top way too much before it can even work itself out there's no time there's just no time, i'm in too many cars again and looking out the window wishing they would roll it down just enough to get my nose out so i can really enjoy this city.  there are so many things i miss, and so many things i can't smell from in here.  but, there is that, and there is that other that, and then there are also those and those and they all look so inviting, but oh, nothing plays itself out very well on the stage of everyday experience, but maybe that was just august, and maybe august is already well over, and that's just fine.

i don't think it has to be much more complicated than it already is, i don't know if can be, and i'm pretty sure none of those things will happen in the world, they were like blowing thoughts into soap bubbles, they shine in the sun and look like something innocent and lost, and they go away, they don't even explode, it's much softer than that, and i'm left here wondering why my tongue doesn't work in these kinds of situations, but maybe i'm not supposed to speak very well, not here, because maybe i'm not supposed to speak at all, so i'm only going to try it with those who know the language, and aren't looking for my ghost.  i'm guilty as anyone of that, it's part of my melancholy nature.

but i will say this.  at the end of the day, there are more cards running through my fingers than i can count, and far too many to keep track of, and the thing that started all this turned out to be truer than they've ever been with me, and accurate like a bow and arrow, so.  everyone has questions and needs something from me, and my fever is high and there is a place in my wrist that broke when i was getting myself together and forgot to finish getting myself together, so, like i do, i show up at the door with my belt only half on and sweat running down my back, and i'm just so not myself at all.  this is not a problem, i just have to learn how to walk again, but that's all familiar ground, except the ground itself is not so familiar.

it doesn't have the traces of the things i lost anymore, it's all very new, and i always tell myself that if i see the city i live in like a visitor, i will love it again.  and that happens.  but it's all strange again, and that's the part that makes me trip, trying to pretend like i know what i'm doing, when i'm really hoping the shifting maps in my head will get me to the next place on time.  and my sense of smell is coming back, and this is when i fall in love with you all over again, this desert that doesn't want me dead, this brick that's not trying to cut open my soft spots, and these rocks that hold something i can't even speak of (hint: beauty, truth, and mirrored reflections of everything in our very own bones).

i don't know if it will come back, but right now i'm not so sure i'm sad it's gone, because i really don't remember the smell at all, just ghosts of smells that made me crazy too deep into the night to turn back, too late to tell myself this wasn't at all important and i would sleep without falling into other worlds.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

sleeping dog

that didn't go so well, i thought, the dog didn't sleep at all, is what i was thinking, and she kept me up all night and by the morning i was a mess.  we do what we always do, we collected our pay and figured out how to make things run by taping the wires back together, and then we ate candy and salads and watched old comedies and thought about all of this all too well.  too sharp, i'm not sleeping anymore and growing sharp again, and don't have time for the things that i could make time for when there was time enough to sleep.  my floors are hard to walk on for all the open books, and it might look as though i'm teaching the dog to read.  but the dog's not here, we sent her away for the night so we could sleep a little better than the night before, and the moon is deciding to cool.  just as we predicted with our magic and moon maps.  there's an order to all of this.  i remember, because i'm so sharp these days.

except, i do get the sense that the performance of myself is becoming exhausting for everyone, manic and funny in crowds, and manic and morose on my own, taking the opportunity to swallow the heaviness of the air here.  this time of year, you know how it is.  and meanwhile, everyone wants a healing again, and dancers are coming out of the woodwork with plates of food, and it should be the best dinner party anyone ever had.  but i never was good at knowing how to dress for these things, always a little too bright or a little too much understatement, and there are very few who tell me that i look more relaxed these days.

so there's this.  i caught a glimpse of it a long time ago, and i sometimes held onto the shape and color, but it always went away because i didn't take the time to swallow it whole, not like this time, and this time was a monster stomach ache that lasted for days, and when i woke up, i found myself here writing this.  having grown too fond of the dogs always at the door, i had to learn the hard way that they don't stay away forever if you lock them out for just one night, and in the end, there's always more where that came from (no end, this is impossible, an easy puzzle to solve but hard enough to live).  distinctly, there are three living inside me these days and they change faces fast enough that i don't know when they come or when they go, but the one thing they have in common is that they all seem unable to say their feelings honestly in the moment when it matters, and later one comes clawing after, and later one comes to the floor to sleep at my feet, and later one narrates me in a way that i recognize it as something that i had hoped to be but never thought i could in this life.

there's more dark red these days, and every kind of love is fraught with its own kind of stickiness.  so i keep repeating, just give me one night, i need to sort these clothes back out again, they all got tangled up in the wash, and i need to work through this knot, it's half covered in disappointment about the politics of women's bodies, and half entranced in a conversation over a cappuccino at the train station, where the metro might take us farther away from each other than we could imagine, or closer to the next destination that seems packed with a new adventure.  i have these things in my blood that don't go to sleep, they never go to sleep, and when i don't sleep, i catch more than glimpses of their robes, i catch the taste of blood in my teeth and this does something else to my blood, and the rest of course is a secret.  but.  i need one more night, because these clothes are on the margin of art and life, and in truth, i am much too smart to wish for the sentimental things, like wishing that something would come true for a change, or like wishing this wasn't another scene with the slow kids at high school lockers wondering if the other one was going to make a move, or if it's time to go to the mall and play video games.

i need one more night to work these things out, wishing the clothes would untangle themselves on their own.  but they won't.  they need tireless hands with hairless fingers to play on the knots and make wishes before cutting them apart.  just one more night, with the same dog at my feet, and a moon that just won't shut up, and an ocean that still makes me grow still, but never still enough to sleep.  i need one more night before i open the door.  you all out there, you can just wait.  

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...