seamonsters/blast

Wherein he turns into the DOG and she turns into the MOON and they talk to each other for the first time in ages.

DOG: If I could say anything to you right now, I would probably overthink it and end up saying something I don't mean, so I will probably just try to lick you all over for a very long time, and it would be just very friendly that's all, and already I said too much because I was overthinking everything.

MOON: I have no idea where you are right now, and I'm feeling exactly the same way myself, and I guess that just figures when you weigh out all the weight of the years between us.

DOG: It's not years, just months, which might be close to dog years, but it's not years, I mean, look at us, we're so young.

MOON: I feel very old, you have no idea.  And you can't lick the moon, I'm sorry, but you just can't.

DOG: Then I would ask you to sneak into my room through the curtains and you could lie down for awhile, just long enough to get away from all the people and dogs like myself who are looking at you and wishing things from you, because I know you're tired and need to rest.

MOON: You wouldn't leave me alone, it would be messy and complicated.

DOG: You're right, that's very true.

MOON: I wish I got bolder the older I get, just like you.

DOG: I don't know if I'm bolder, I'm just hungry, I just missed you, that's all.

MOON: I wish I didn't change my mind all the time, but that's what I do.

DOG: I noticed that.

MOON: You're always the same.

DOG: I don't think that's really true.

MOON: You always know what you want, and it's never complicated.

DOG: I don't think that's true, I don't think that's true at all, I just miss you and I don't know what to do with you, because you're here and I can't touch you, just like every moon I ever loved, but the next moon who comes and stays will want to stay for a long time, because I've rearranged the furniture and made room, and that's probably just enough, and there's a space through the curtain, that's perfect for you, you'll fit through if you come.

MOON: That's what you have to say to the moon.

DOG: Yes.  If you come, there's room, you'll fit, if you come, that's what I want to tell the moon, there's room.

And it's already so very very late.

seamonsters/gum

SIREN/SHE: Oh my gosh I love this gum.

HE: Oh my gosh what kind of gum is it.

S: I don't know, I'm not into labels.

H: Yeah, but I might want to buy it.  I mean, if you like it that much.

S: I fucking love it, it's so fucking awesome, it's the best motherfucking gum I've ever chewed, do you want some?

H: Oh my gosh, I do, I really do.

S: I'll give you your own piece, hahaha, not one that I've already, hahaha, chewed myself.

H: Hahaha, I don't care, I mean, I'd like the gum that's been in your mouth, I mean....hahaha, give me a clean piece please.

S: Clean.  Like I'm dirty.  Hahaha.

H: Hahaha.

(They both chew.  Pause.)

(SHE looks at HE.)

H: Oh my gosh it's fucking awesome.

S: Yes, you get it, I'm so glad you get it, it's awesome motherfucking gum.

H: I know gum and this is awesome fucking gum.

S: You know what I like about it the most?  It doesn't/ break--

H: It doesn't break when you play with it with your tongue.

(Long pause.)

S: Oh my gosh, yes.

H: You can wrap your tongue around it and kind of flick at it.

S: I love that.

H: You can flick at it with the end of your tongue and it's still so goddam rubbery and it feels so fucking good on your teeth and your tongue and you can keep on flicking at it--

S: Not too fast, I mean, vary the speeds, I mean, especially for the first like 8 minutes or so.

H: 8 minutes?  I could flick it for 16 or 32 or 64.

S: 64?  That's too long, that's just fucking ridiculous.

H: Not that I would flick the gum with the tip of my tongue for 64 minutes, but I fucking well could.  I have patience.  And my tongue is like, what's the word, it's in shape, right?  Like a muscle?

S: Yeah, it's a muscle, fucking right it's a goddam motherfucking muscle.  Yes.

H: I know my way around gum, I'm not new to anything.  I'm not new at all, but not like, what's the word, old, I'm not old to it, either.

S: Seasoned.  You're seasoned.

H: No, that's like saying old.

S: Seasoned is like spiced.  You're spiced.

H: Yeah.  That's ok.  Spiced.  And you're spicy too.

S: You don't have to lie to me to get me to like you, I mean, take it easy, I mean, slow down all of a sudden.

H: I'm sorry, I just stopped listening for a second and realized I had to say something so I just said something about the last thing you said but I wasn't really listening.

S: Oh my gosh, I fucking do that, too! That's so awesome.

H: It's fucking awesome.

S: It is.  Yes.

H: Oh my gosh.

seamonster/the body in shock

Oh my gosh, that was too much, it's hard to believe he just laid it out there like that, so bold and so free.  And all without really saying anything terribly important, I mean, he sounded mad almost, but there wasn't anyone to be mad at, not at all, so it was almost like something crawled into his chest and said, "Now go howl at the moon and say the thing that you want to say," and we're all like, "Oh my gosh, that was harsh almost, except, that was it?  That was almost harsh."  And he. meanwhile, is becoming he meanwhile, and that's something very, very new.

And meanwhile almost, he is in a side stream, a channel diverted, and he is on a raft with his Daughter, and she has not been here before, but she needs to be here now.  Because without the daughter, there really is no reason for any of this.  Because it might be true that there's something being unlocked, something about another daughter, but that's very far away, and in the meantime, this generation that belongs to his daughter, and not to him, is starting to come to the surface of history, and that's where the world continues spinning, and his magic is already something of a generation that's removed, that is to say, he is confused about his place in things because his place in things is very confusing at this very moment in time.  Between fathers and lovers and daughters, there are roles that are getting clearer and roles that are getting very complex, and really, at the root, it's probably very, very easy, and simpler than it all seems.  First. there's this scene.

DAUGHTER: Daddy, there are ghost dogs all over the sea, and they're all white, pale dogs grieving in the sea.

HE: I thought it was just me.

DAUGHTER: Oh, daddy, you don't own all the hallucinations of the world, you don't own all the visions of the world, and what you gave to me, the gifts of sight you gave to me, were never yours alone to give, but came through your bloodstream, and that's very old.

HE: I think I knew that once and forgot.

DAUGHTER: I think you taught me that once, and I didn't forget.

And suddenly he is so sick, all of a sudden, that the hot peppers in his throat start to burn their way through his chest, and his heart is flaming, like hearts do when they are too hot, and now his raft turns into a classroom, and he is teaching the sirens something fun.

He is teaching again about the secrets of the ceremony, the one where you learn how to step outside your body through inhabiting it utterly, this is through song and dance and sex magic, and there's always lots of food with garlic and cinnamon and coconut milk, and everything that is good in the world pours over yourself like honey from the honey trees, and this is how we get to be transformed, by becoming ourselves so utterly that we leave ourselves finally.  He is teaching this all of his life so far because it's some of the prettiest things he ever learned, except, suddenly, here, it's starting to feel very inappropriate.

SIREN1: You've been talking this all over us for so long and you're all talky talk, you're a theory without a pulse, you're just narrating, you're not in your body, and I don't understand anything I can't inhabit.  Let's try this.  Let's try all of these theories.

HE: No, no no, no.  No.  Oh my gosh.  No.

SIREN2: I like taking notes.

HE: Oh my gosh.  That's good.  Good good good.  I like that.

SIREN#1 (WITH A BULLET): Can we try it?

HE: No, oh my gosh.  This isn't something we can do here.  We don't have the right clothes.

BURLEYSIREN: I've noticed that your clothes are getting tighter, are you working out, or are you trying to distract our attention?

HE: Nothing could be further from the truth, all of this is coincidental, everything is accidental, there are no intentions at all behind anything I do or say, I just think this is historically interesting and it will help us when we get to the final.  Which will be a multiple choice final.  Because we are becoming multiple.  And all of the answers will have to be correct, because everyone here can fit into this vast raft of knowledge.  Please don't ask me questions that will tempt me, because now, oh it's already too late, already, now just look at my head sweat, just look at the sweat coming from my head.  Oh my gosh.

But it's already too late because the music is on, it's hard techno thumping and everyone is moving, and it's like a rave movie directed by the bang brothers, just horrible, and he is trying to sleep on his desk because his back hurts.  The SIREN is crouched next to him, her head on his desk, puppy dog eyes.

HE: I feel like I'm missing out on something because I am so preoccupied about this pain in my lower lumbar-sacral-illiac region, I twisted something all out of shape, and honestly, just between you and me,  I think I did it when I was thinking about that one siren, the one who captured my attention when I first saw that first one siren, she had my attention and I was pumping hot molten iron to make myself forget her because it's just a disturbance, I have a disturbance in my blood and it looks like her, racing through my blood, and I was trying not to think about her and that's when I twisted myself out of shape.

SIREN#1: That's the sweetest thing you could have possibly ever said to me.

HE: (Now even more uncomfortable because he just spilled his heart all over the desk, and it looks so messy like that) It was just a metaphor.

SIREN#1: I love metaphors.  I could live in a metaphor for a very long time and not feel like I was missing out on anything.

HE: I twisted myself out of shape trying not to think of you.

SIREN#1: OH MY GOSH THAT IS SO GODDAM SWEET! I love that!  I don't know what kind of magic you have planned for me, Mr. Voodoo Man, but I promise you I will like it.

HE: Oh my gosh, this is very inappropriate.

SIREN#1: I don't even know what that word means, please teach me the etymology of the word.

HE: To take possession of something that does not belong to you.

SIREN#1: Oh my gosh, please do that.

HE: Oh my gosh, you remind me of that woman I met on the raft when I set off to get away from all of my obsessions and desires, and now you're right here, and my back hurts, and you want me to dance.

SIREN#1: TALK DEEPLY TO ME, THIS IS WORKING, GODDAMMIT, THIS IS REALLY WORKING.

HE: But I didn't recognize you until just now because honestly, I think I have a fever, except I'm not hot, my head is cold, please, feel my head, no, oh my gosh, don't touch my head.  See?  I'm confused.  I'm confused and indecisive because now I can't remember why I set out, unless it was to find you, and whatever happens after that might be an adventure, or it might just be something I imagined, a ghost dog, crawling across the waves, telling me stories in the dark so that I wouldn't sleep too deeply and forget everything that brought me out here.

SIREN#1: But this isn't the sea anymore, this isn't the sea at all anymore, this is something else entirely anymore, and all I want to do is pack you up in a box filled with basil and garlic, and carry you around my neck like a charm.  Because you are so charming.

HE: I'm really sick.  Oh my gosh, I feel really, really sick.

SIREN#1: THAT'S SO GODDAM CHARMING I CANNOT STAND IT ANYMORE YOU THINK I AM JUST GOING TO SIT HERE AND DO NOTHING??? OH MY GOSH!

She spends a little too much time, longer than is dramatically interesting, packing him up, which of course soothes him utterly, and he is left not so cold anymore, but with a temperature that is drastically increased, because he recognizes her as someone who can cross through many different worlds at once, and oh my gosh, he reallllly likes that.

She wears him like a charm, and the trancedance becomes so much more groovy than we would have suspected, and by the morning, everyone looks a little bit more like they did the night before.

Oh my gosh I have to take a break from this.

too personal for this right here

Somewhere on a raft, stuck in the middle of a sea of complicated relationships, and all of them or none of them are happening in time.  I can't tell.  I don't know if this is a beginning or an ending or somewhere in the middle, everything has its own music and I'm hearing a lot of different songs that I don't understand.  Somewhere between the Sirens and the song of Persephone when she's going under there are elaborate tangos, and I don't know any of the rules or protocol, but I seem to be dancing.  I liked the lightness of this at the beginning, I liked the lightness at the end, and in the middle I'm always given too much time to start to wonder if I should be here at all.  I always wonder if I should be here at all, whenever there's a break in the music, and that's the worst thing to wonder, because it tells me that I'm not enjoying or afraid to enjoy the ride.  There are sweet noises and notes, and bats fly around my head, and blackbirds come with news, and no one's saying what's really on their mind, so we're all left trying to guess each other's real hidden motives.  And I don't really know mine.  But something about another beginning, that sounds nice, but I don't know if that's really on the table, and I'm not sure if I'm in a position to offer it to the table, I don't understand the table, it looks very messy and complicated, and there have already been lots of meals and no one's cleaned up for weeks, and I'm pretty sure I was there for at least some of them.  I don't relate to myself these days.  I'm too torn around the shoulder of my father, and all the reasons why I want to live in another country.

When I come back to myself, when I'm done resolving these revolving things, I will set out a more proper meal, and it has to come after I've made the meal for the dead.  But in the meantime, let me just go on record saying that if something were offered, I would very likely take it, because the caving in of my belly recently, the new muscles under my skin, and the layers of muscle that are drawing tighter around the nervous bird in my chest tell me that I'm very hungry, but not starving to death, and that is my favorite place.  And I just imagine, in a very short amount of time, when these knots start to untangle, that I would be a good companion, especially for those kinds of journeys that don't have a clear end in sight.  If it's a planned trip, with lots of stops for sightseeing and rethinking the destination, where we wonder if we're eating right or having the right kind of fun, I don't think I need those any more, because I know more than I did yesterday, and what I'm longing for can't be written in temporary images, the ones who keep rethinking themselves for what they mean, and don't know what to make of me.  I like a very complex fruit, one whose sweetness sinks into the tongue like rain, one whose bitterness feeds my fire, one who inspires me to speak tangos in the air, one with the consistency and sureness of the earth.  

seamonster/ploddingplotting

Ok just so I have it here....
Use Susan Kozell's Body Project...skin of performer projected into space, spectators act with the projection, projection is projected to performer in remote location, who responds to their projections...an active infinite loop, like in the social world...whenever two people meet, no one knows what the other will do, that's why they are other...in this case, the other is self/performer and other/spectator...

For this, though, for sea monsters....something else....not doing an experiment with the technology, but something else....
There is an endless sea between them....they inhabit other worlds, even though they seem to be sharing the same space....he conjures her up from the depths, she comes wearing the skins of old lovers, and he doesn't recognize her as someone he doesn't know but has been missing for a very long time....likewise, she dreams about him in her depths, and when he conjures her, she shows, but she has control of her projection, and is only ever at the most half there....and when she is in her own space, her depths, she brings his dreaming body down to her to help her drown in him....

So they are always looking for the other and the self in this.  Obviously.  Hahaha.  It's all very obvious and simple.  Just like life!!!

So I want to use something like this in a more performance/theater oriented way...the idea of self inflecting and infecting the other, and being inf/l/ected (inflexion) (note to self: inflexion and inflection are the same, but I think it makes me sound clever)...

Also possibly using Paulo Henrique's Contract with the Skin, close ups of skin projected behind performers performing themselves (and so many others)....

But the idea here, the technique, technology...for the parts where they are onstage together but not together (on boat?  in hell?), it's a skype conversation...she's in other room and he is holding her on a computer....and v-v....sometimes she is projected on wall as a large face, and him too to her....and sometimes it's their whole bodies on projection...but life size, so the one missing the other can try to interact with the virtual body, and the bodies are life size...please note these need to be life size (just like in life!!!) and make sure that I want to say life size even one more time and I will not.

Oh my gosh I am so very very nervous these days and my stomach is in knots.

There is no sea in love.
You have to cross over to compassion and bring the c back...

seamonster/future

He sits with the fortune teller, already a bit of a fortune teller himself, but neither one can see the future at all, only signs that show where things are pointing, but no way of knowing how to get there, because the there is already always somewhere else.  And he is somewhere else, always somewhere else, can't keep himself in his head these days, and not here on a night when the moon is almost big enough to eat, but not yet, he's so hungry and it's just not enough, the moon in the sky is just not enough.  The dogs are always speaking, though, they always show up, and they lead the way, there are directions, and the directions always are already always the same: stay close to water, keep your eyes open, and keep your mind clear (as best you can, it's perfectly reasonable that the only thing you can see are those same shadows made by the moon on a night when it's not big enough to eat, not yet)...and it suddenly occurs to him, because there are cats around every corner, watching him to pounce on him or to hide from him, he can never tell which, he must look more menacing than he ever imagines ever, that this is a rehearsal and he is being criticized, and he might not be the only one playing.  The dead are watching very carefully, and they think this scene was played too quickly, and the clothes weren't quite right, they didn't anticipate the night, and that leather might look all right under certain lights, but under this thin (too skinny) moonlight, no one really believes that it can do anything to keep the cold out.  The dialects are all wrong, they need to be more authentic to the time and place, and should be rooted more firmly in race, class, and gender, and the pitch should be more perfect.  And his hands tremble too much, especially when he is around her, and his eye is starting to twitch too much, especially around her, because of the things that are going unsaid, and the dead want to hear the words out loud so they can believe the story, because they don't believe the story.  As much as he loves the dead, he wants to say thank you and offer them another piece of sweet bread, another cuban coffee, another shot of rum, but it comes out wrong.  He says:  I hear what you say, and I believe what you say, but this isn't your rehearsal, it's this moment that's happening in time, and it's happening to me.  I would love to play every moment perfectly, but then it would not be a moment in time, it would be something else, and this is happening to me in time.  And the worst part of everything is that it won't read right for you, it will never translate for you, and you'll never believe it, because you don't hear the music that I'm hearing in my ears right now.  This music is making me sing, it tightens my body and makes me pull myself together, sometimes so hard that I might start to tremble.  But it's not for you.  This moment is one that I live through in time, and it's something that only the living can walk through, and that's why you are jealous of me, and you can see further down the road, far enough to point out the directions for where things seem to be going, and that's why I'm jealous of you.  But there are some songs that the dead cannot hear, they are there for the living, and I'm on this side of the grass, and I'm hearing songs that make my heart start to hum, and if I tried to explain them to you, they would fall short because they are not your favorite songs, even though they might be repetitions of the ones you knew when you were living in bodies.  Living in a body is terrifying, you might remember, and I just want you to remind me of why you are jealous, because I'm too hungry by now, and forgot what it means to be waiting on the moon.

seamonster/him again

I don't know how to bring something like that to life, but I know what it feels like when it works.
If I could retrace my steps backwards, and remember every single little thing I did, in this season of falling, I don't think even then I could trace any kind of useful map, because these things always unfold through their own momentum, in their own time and space.  I think the things we do at our little altars to make something come to life are already in motion, long before we walk into the room with our robes and our candles.  But I know there are secrets that set things in motion, and if I hadn't done these secret things, I wouldn't have to pretend I didn't do them, but in truth, I did, I said your name before I knew your name, and I said it out loud in front of too many spirits who were already paying attention.  I didn't think they were watching us so closely.  But I think I understand that they were watching closely because it was already unfolding in our direction, and even though I don't know how to turn things back, I don't know if I really would, or if I really should, because your face makes me smile, and there's something here I'm supposed to learn, something I don't know yet, something waiting for me here, and when it stops being interesting for you, I'll make a prayer and blow out the candles, and I won't make a wish.  These are hard days, and I don't know why things are unfolding the way they are, and I don't see any map up ahead, all I can see are the maps we laid out behind us, the ones we unfolded when we were curious to see how these things would play out when we were awake, awake as children, making new games in a forest that already knows our secret names.  

seamonstermonkey

Now this is going to get a little bit narrator-y, as if that weren't already the case, so much is happening that it has to be explained or we will just lose everyone, and if we lose everyone, then the basic principles of solid dramatic form might not be in place, and that would create mistrust and suspicion, when we all know that we really all know exactly what we're doing here.

It's not as complex as it seems, or if it seems simple, then it's much more complex than that.

He's on a raft.  She's on a raft.  They're not the same raft.

What is she doing on the raft?  We're not showing it, because we'll have to find out later, and it might be surprising.  There should be centaurs and pomegranate wine (everyone drinks it here, or eats the seeds, because we've all been resigned to being in between places, stuck between one season and another, stuck between one unsafe place and another.  There are mad faeries and a wake for the recently dead, and the ones who are missing, and it might be too much to mention that she is missing him.  But, oh, she misses him, and sees his words coming up through the waves, and she sees his face in the stars when she is contemplating her place in things.  It's romantic, and very unsure, and probably romantic because it is so unsure.  We all hold onto things that we long for when we don't know where we are, and sometimes that's the best way to find out what we really miss.  Stuck somewhere in between spaces, we realize our heart's desire.

He, meanwhile, is seeing her face in the stars when he is contemplating his place in things, and this is important insofaras what happened to the story before.  In the middle of the ocean, he conjured her, remembered her from the land of the dead, and brought her back to life in his desire to speak with her.

He just wants to talk to her.

And she just wants to talk to him.

But somewhere in that space of dreaming old phantoms back, she began to shift, and it is becoming very apparent to him that she is not that other or another other, but something else entirely, something her entirely, and he doesn't know who she is.  And it would have been something else entirely if he let her live in his realm of projection, but.

This is where everything started to turn.  When he was looking at her face projected in the stars, he saw her projection and began to project all of his desires into that.  And somewhere in there, she started to become real.  While he was distracting himself from the pains of the day, while he was starting to become aware that it was the color in her face that triggered an immediate response, a kind of restless relentless rest, he started to associate her colors with the colors around him, and that was the moment that his time on the raft with the dead men started to turn into color, from various shades of gray.  There's something about an obsession that can bring out the colors in the rest of the waking-dreaming world, because the one who is forlorn is looking for the colors of the one who is not there, and the one who is not there is making the world a place of color, because the world is where he knows he might find her.

His mind is giving himself something to look for, one could say, and that might be reasonable.  But there are very likely other forces at work here that have nothing to do with his mind, except notice that it is become very receptive to projections, and the projections that start to come

Are much too lucid to speak of here, and besides, they are interrupted because the father has just fallen again, and this reminds him that this is, this certainly is, fall.  And even though he is there in his body, and even though this is about the father, no one could possibly expect him to be very focused, just as she is not entirely focused on the centaurs, because that Brass Goddess is very busy making images in the sky to keep them moving forward.  Because even though this is a story about the dead, it is also and always already a love story.

seamonster/gender trouble

He just goes on and talks and goes on talking, even though he is no longer making any sense.

HE: This is all taking a lot longer than I originally suspected.  There are men all around me, and there are dreams behind me, and messages coming through the waves that I don't understand.  Nothing is writing on me in a way that I can still read it by the morning, and every day there is more travel with these old men, going to a place that I don't feel safe, and have every reason to believe does not really want me there.  All the men here are sick and heartbroken, and they talk about the last good thing that happened to them, and they tell me stories about what it was like to lay with a woman they loved, and then lost.  And it feels like the waves are filling up with the songs of these women, and their hearts are lying somewhere between oceans.  And I can't remember what I lost, or what I miss, or what it was that I was trying to get away from, but I know I can't stay here very much longer, because when I stop moving, I stop wanting, and when I stop wanting, I stop knowing the things there are to know.  And tonight I feel like all my ghosts have left me, and I'm left with a napkin covered with the lipstick traces of a woman that I will never understand, and tonight, she is the only thing that I could imagine missing.

Oh, he has been haunted, he has been chanted and cursed and forgotten and broken to pieces and remembered at the edges of an old canal, and if he had his wits about them, he might understand the channels of his own heart, and if he were awake enough to let himself fall into his real dream, then he might start to see the films playing on his heart, and he would see that there is a heartbreaking beauty in his heart, something ready to be born in the world that few men ever get to see and live.

seamonster confessional

Oh my gosh, this has gotten so complicated, or maybe it just seems that way inside his head on this cold night, where all the old lovers have turned into leaves and pages o hojas tal ves of the book of his chambered heart.  He wants to be thinking more about why he's here, this is something about his father, or something about fathers in a larger sense, something like a rescue, but he's not sure who is being rescued here.

It's hard to know, becoming charmed by a phantom in the world of the living and being drawn to connect to the blood in his family bones in the land of the dead, both of these have the potential for rescue, and perhaps we all get to rescue each other in some way when the sun sets and another day goes to bed forever.

And oh my gosh this is too much text, no one will ever read it.  (Please signal if you have by knocking three times on something pretty when you see me).  And oh my gosh this is suddenly the start of something else entirely.

From where he was sitting on the raft, he could not see the water, but when he moves, he sees into the water, and there's a message there.

HOW RU N HOW DID IT GO U OK N WOTNOT

And he's thinking that this is probably something from her.  And for him.  And that makes everything so very exciting because no one else will know they are talking to each other through the water like this.  He writes back.

I M OK SO HUNGRY I M ALL HUNGR 2DAY THISE DAIS

He writes again.

THESE DAYS

She writes back.

:)

And you can probably imagine, this, how long can this go on?  And you can probably answer, this, this can go on for a very, very long time.

His face is hot, his head is hot, he can't tell if he is like this because he just doesn't eat very much lately, he understands this is an adventure, this is an important adventure, and maybe much more important than he'd intended, when he set off to get away from all the phantom limbs that were pulling him and yearning for him in the middle of the night.  He understands something important is happening, and he hopes certain things and he is worried about certain things, and it's hard to keep anything really straight.  Straight, of course, is radically over-rated and we need to reconsider how language invests values that we don't notice until it's written in our bones, and that's a hard tattoo to remove.  But there's this.  His head.  Hot.  Something like a swoony hunger is come over him, something very much like a fever, something very much like a very swoony hungry fever, and if he could write more than a few characters at a time in the water, he might say this:

I see you hiding in the cupboards in the kitchen in my head, your eyes are always peeking out from behind the coffee cups when I'm on the verge of waking up, telling myself this is something too much like a dream.  I can't keep track of my hands, they run all over everything I see, and I can't see the things that are there, because you're distracting me.  I'm not complaining.  I'm not complaining.  I'm a hundred versions of myself at once, and the one that speaks might not be the one you see when you're walking on wood planks in the dark.  I'm looking into white light tunnels, and not even close to dead, just dreaming, and I suspect you're out there somewhere in the dark, and everyone I can't see looks exactly like someone who could be you, so I'm trying to be on my best behavior.  But this is not me complaining, this is not how I complain.  And when I'm trying to find my keys again, I keep getting interrupted because you've written on the walls by the door to my room, and I can't quite make out what you said, but I know you said it to me, and that's probably just enough right now, you become becomingly, a ghost in this world of everyday objects, hinting at something less everyday just below the surface of everything that I'm trying to touch, a touch I'm losing, all the touch I'm losing, I've lost touch and this is not a complaint this is how I am at the beginning of something that I dreamed about and forgot, and you reminded me that I was waiting for you.

And that's probably more than enough for right now thank you very much that's just plenty thank you very much he just said way too much thank you very very much I assure you and adore you.

seamonsters/half

On the way to the underworld, he gets a note from her that explains everything, in sixteen different versions, and everything that would have made sense no longer does.  But the sense that things were making was not necessarily good sense, or anything like reasonable sense, which isn't always a bad thing.  So.  He tries very hard to talk to the dead about his dreams, but they make no sense to the dead, because the dead have already dreamed those dreams themselves, and worked it out for themselves so that when they dream, they dream about us, in a boat, somewhere in the middle of an ocean, where it's safe.

Nothing with the dead is really safe, though, because look at where there best thinking got them?  It's not safe.  He's trying to explain art movements from their century, and they're upset with him.  They're upset with him because he's trying to tell them in reasonable discourse.  And that's the absolute worst language with which to speak to the dead.  Because they already get it.  And if he were paying attention, the one on the side of the living, she already gets it, too.  But it's complicated because he has things that he could say in reasonable language, things and reasons he thinks that he's ill.  His head is a mess, a hot mess, and he's thinking about how he hasn't been a hot mess for so long that it's almost like he got used to being distracted by much less interesting things.  But this is all so terribly interesting, these fissures and hair cracks that come at 1 in the afternoon at ten in the evening that last til it's morning and make sense to someone who's already dead, who's already dead, they make sense to someone who's already dead.

He's got pomegranates in his kitchen of his heart's desire, and when the dead are not looking, on the long journey over there, he opens one with his teeth, and eats 16 seeds just for good measure.  This is a place I would like to be caught, he is thinking, here in this kitchen of my heart's desire.  This kitchen is where I go when I want to wander, and now that I'm really at sea, all I want is to wander back and find out how the story goes, but my hands are tied and my tongue is being used by dead men, in order to make prayers by candlelight before the rains come back.

seamonstermonstrosity

They are on a fuckin raft.

HE: I love this raft.  I'm sorry there are so many people here.  We hardly get a chance to talk.

SHE: I would just keep telling you the same stories over and over again, anyway.

HE: I don't really care, I just like the cool way you look at me when you tell me stories.

SHE: This would be a good time to declare your love for me, in a public setting, because it will test your mettle and show me that you're really serious.

HE: You can take my word I'm serious, even though I'm not sure who you are yet.

SHE: I'm not the present, because I never land, so I must be something from your past, or something from your future.

HE: That's perfect, that's exactly what I fall in love with.

SHE: Tell me out loud, but I'm going to be honest.  I'm going to act embarrassed, and then I'll pretend this isn't happening, and then I'll pretend I didn't hear you, and for a week or two I'm going to avoid you altogether, just so you are off kilter just a little bit, hating me and loving me in the same breath.

HE: I think that's dangerous, just because I know of a guy who has that memory disease, and he gets stuck in time, and for the last year he's been stuck in this place where he declared his love for the woman he married, and she was silent like that, so he's been living in that space of being off kilter.  And he's really off kilter, too.  He wears kilts even though he's Mexican.

SHE: I don't think culture is something you can own, anyone can wear a kilt, it's uncanny like in Freud.

HE: You know what that does to me, that Freud talk.  It's really unfair.  I'm unhinged with Freud talk, and it makes me want you, want you, want you.

SHE: But.

HE: But there's all these people.

Another raft floats by, with figures from the land of the dead.

DEAD MAN: We have news about your father, it's an emergency.   You come with us.  Beauty fades, death comes.

HE: Oh, I have to go.

SHE: Just in time.

HE: No, this is the worst timing ever.  Please just tell me about the movie stars I remind you of, so I can work on becoming them the next time we meet.

SHE: Ok.

He gets on the raft of the dead, and they float away.

SHE: I'm carrying cock rings around my neck, to remind me of what I've always considered the ultimate act of desire and submission.  My neck is torn, I cut it in the brambles in between worlds, I was escaping, and all the pomegranate trees tried to capture me.  They can cut me, but they cannot keep me, but I have scars that you can never imagine.  I'm calling up my vicious graveyard spirits tonight, and they'll visit you in your dreams, to remind you of how things could be, and how they ought to be, and on a still October night, they might be the same thing.

wounded warriors/october light

My father has not stopped talking since he fell.
It's half anxiety, and half morphine, and another half (there are always a few worlds involved in any accident) is from that impulse to talk ourselves into being when we are not so sure where we ourselves are.
It's a mistake to think that silence means you don't think about it any more, but I'm in a place where I need words, even if they are half felt.
There are the four firemen, horsemen coming to announce this isn't an apocalypse, but the business of bloody bones, and a fight between the living and the dead.  Nothing resolutely shaking the foundations, but they do bring up old bones that are uncomfortable to live with in a hospital room.
There is the admitting nurse, who was asking him about suicidal thoughts when she shut the door on me, before asking him if I had caused the wounds on his face and arms and legs.  There are lots of old wounds on that old man's body, and it'll take x-ray vision to separate the fresh ones from the old ones.
There are the two young nurses, flirting and talking about steampunk alice in wonderland, getting a vicarious fix from watching him react to the first hits of morphine.  I like to watch, too, but it gets to be a little too heavy when his eyes start to flutter, and his blinking takes him back and forth between the here and the not here.
There are the two x-ray technicians we waited for, and then I hunted for, hiding in a room watching videos on their laptop.  Guardians between the gates of the living and the dead, with no power to heal, only power to see.  Blessed holy seeing power.
And then there is the night nurse, rolling asperging eyes, insisting on a chair, my mother broke her shoulder, and he needs a chair, and I didn't trust her rolling eyes, but not enough to sleep in a ball next to my father's twitching body, and the dance of his twitching feet that lasted until the sun came up.
And then there is the blonde angel, a ridiculous and trite archetype, an envelope of truth hidden in her pocket, and more morphine for the bones that continue to talk, and keep his teeth moving in his jaw even though his throat is too dry to hear the stories about dancing girls and stolen cars, and a thousand taverns in south milwaukee.
And then there is my daughter, come to the room to make things light, lighting up the face of an 88 year old man who accidentally forgets where phoenix is.
These wounded warriors are sharp, their tongues and minds are sharp and exploding.
I remember when my daughter used to pull her arm out of her socket playing, and the visits to the medical places where she screamed one moment and sighed the next, and I remember thinking that I can't imagine anything worse than seeing your own flesh and blood in pain.  Old blood, young blood, it's all part of the bloody business of bones, and I'm walking into the next season that refused to yield for 100 endless nights, this was not my decision.
And then there is the te amo cigar, a cigar named revolucion, this is an old place, and there are old ideas thumping in my veins, somewhere between compassion and grief, there are old ideas pounding in my veins.  

film

a shopping center where they are featuring a guest appearance by the moon.  the moon appears to everyone, but he has a reflecting heart, and so does she, and when they are in line, something makes them see the moon in each other's heart and they fall in love with each other.

there's this magician of course who is responsible for them recognizing each other, thru his complicated love spell, and when the magician goes home he plugs himself into his twin double.  in the mornings, they unplug and decide who will be in the world that day.  and of course it's not surprising that the magician couple is the boy & girl from the shopping center, only older versions of themselves.  i'm sorry if it seems too heteronormative.

seamonster/repetition and revolution

He wants to move forward, but he doesn't know what that is.
She wants to swim, but she doesn't know how deep this is.
They want to understand each other just a little better, but they don't know where to start.
It's the hardest work, excavating the world of the dead for some hidden thing that the living are convinced they need to move forward or deeper, when the excavation itself is the movement and the depth anyone needs to come back to life in a darker season.
There's a fear that this next part will be unbearably lonely, but in truth, they couldn't be lonelier.  And there's no cure for that.
He keeps meeting twins, they come out of boxes, they swim past his eyes when he is falling asleep, they make their way into some of his secret sleeping spaces, and ask him questions about the journey ahead, and he asks them questions about the journey behind.  They dress in fancy clothes, and they dress in revealing layers of complicated underwear, and they drink cappuccino and wine with fruit, and they sometimes cover his forehead with their ideas of what a first kiss would feel like.
Whether it's the first kiss or the fifth, he's starting to convince himself that he remembers them all, and the ones that stick in the holes in the teeth the most are the ones that were nothing but frustrating, when things got lost in their mouths on their way through the complex processes of translation, or those pecks where the mouth would not open, like a flower that refused to yield to the bee.
He remembers all the times he felt pretentious and stupid and lazy, and he remembers the times when he felt like he had been sprinkled with fairy dust, something that would protect him on his way from here to there.
The way from here to there is long, and now there's no more here except for this particular here, no memory of origins, the place where you can tell your children, "This is the place and the moment when I first stepped out."  And there's no there, nothing particular, just a vague sense that sometime very soon they are going to be elsewhere, and elsewhere sounds threatening and promising.  But sometime very soon, one of those will win, something between threats and promises will win, and then they'll start, but for now they just sleep, forgetting that they could be sleeping in each others' arms, forgetting that this is about a search for the twin.

seamonster/spellbound

The MAD AND INAPPROPRIATE FAERIE is very excited tonight because so much has happened and there's so much we have to tell you.  For one thing, a spell was cast, and for another, it seemed to be working.  They were on a pirate ship, but now they wake up and realize that it's really just a raft, and oh, they are floating.  Except.  There shouldn't be an except.  One raft is enough for anyone, and all sorts of things can happen on a raft, but look.

This is the problem here.

The raft is really too fucking big.

It holds way too many people, it can and it does, and when they wake up, it should be a brilliant morning, and it might be, except there are dozens of people on the raft with them, and they all have questions.

But he has more than anyone.

HE: I really think I need to start thinking through my own motives about all of this.

SHE: I don't think it's altogether necessary to think through anything, because when you're on a raft at sea, things tend to work themselves out exactly the way they're supposed to work out.

HE: But what are we supposed to do with all of these people?

And here, it's true, all of these people are listening to what she might say to this, and for the first time, being on the raft seems like it might be real, and even more, she is starting to feel like she might be real, like one of those souls that get called back from the dead.  And she is obviously expected to make a speech, and so she does.

SHE: Vinegar and roses.  Scorpions crawling out from under my skirts.  Catholic school uniforms, nun habits, centaur horns, and a very useful balm.  My first methodology, and my first methodological error.  The habits of the sun and the moon.  The way we love in outer space, where there's no gravity and no sound.  Those embarrassing moans that escape me in public, when I'm remembering what I wished for last night.  The worst love letter I ever received.  Too many feathers on my doorstep for me to sleep comfortably.  Am I supposed to be convincing you all of something?  I'm not sure if I can convince anyone of anything, because I don't like it when someone convinces me.  If I already know it, then I usually decide to know something else, and if I don't know it already, I remain unconvinced.  It's not a curse of my age, it's the curse of the age I live in.  Everyone's a liar with rotten teeth, and the sweetest songs always mean that by morning, someone is going to try to steal my jewelry.  I'm not here, I've been gone for a long time, I'm not here, and neither are you.

HE: I don't think so.  You're crying, and that means you've landed back in your body again.  Welcome home.

SHE: I already told you! I cry at the very least little thing, especially where you're concerned.  It doesn't make us real.

A very inquisitive looker-on has a very good question.  The FAERIE acknowledges him.

LOOKER-ON: How do you resurrect the dead, and isn't it always a question of transubstantiation.

HE: I love the idea of transubstantiation, because it means we can be the next thing whenever we need to, and it means that this skin is permeable.

SHE: Oh, my gosh, you never read theory, you just skimmed it!  What a dick.  Skin is always permeable.  You don't need any religious metaphors to know that.  Good gosh, people, what has become of us, we're all just getting stupider.  I need a night light.  I need a thicker blanket.  I need a full-body pillow that's stuffed with the feathers of all the birds I eat over the course of a love affair.

HE: I don't eat chicken, but when I do, it's always followed by a very fine cigar.  Not one of those stogies, and not one of those little prissy panatela goddam jobbers.  I'm talking dark fucking wrapper around a thick fucker, something with a little time on it, a little bit of bloom even, oh my gosh I goddam love cigars.  And when they bloom, it's like spring.  And when they bloom, they taste like you.

SHE: They smell like death.

HE: You smell like death.  That's a compliment, really.

She gets very, very quiet, and it's so uncomfortable and awkward on this raft.  No one wants to say anything, and it's so quiet no one even wants to cough.  But everyone else but her suddenly really needs to cough.  They all try to cough very quietly, and there are some successes, but a lot of failures, too, including ones that are terribly violent and embarrassing.

But it's not what you think at all.  She's not offended.  In fact, she's embarrassed, because she understands that she's been recognized, and that he is not who he pretends to be, but is something much, much less larger than life, and is landed himself in a body that is open to her, and if he understood this, he would not be able to sleep for another 400 nights.

sea monsters/i am haunted

Things do start to take a particularly peculiar turn when you've been out to sea for so long.  The longness becomes longing for the times when you were lonely in the midst of a sea of people you don't recognize any more.  We all go there, we get to that point where we forget how broken we were when we were where we long to be, and we think the way our brokenness feels now cannot be worse, but we forget that time when, just yesterday, we were waiting in the club for the one true love who decided not to come at the last minute.  We've all been in a room in our underwear, and everyone there could see the marks of the last bad thing that happened to us.  Some of us learn to wear these for what they are, warrior marks in a long war.  Some of us just spend the rest of our lives hiding the marks, thinking we would be better off if nobody knew.  Some of us, the most unlucky ones, don't ever realize that we've been scarred.

HE: You remind me of someone.

SHE: We've already covered that by now.

HE: No, not her. I'm not talking about her.  I'm not even thinking about her.

SHE: The one you miss the most.

HE: Right, this is someone else.  You remind me of her, that someone else.  I never told anyone that before.  Because it's never been true before.

SHE: I think it's all entirely perfectly normal that, when you are excavating the bottom of the sea for your favorite ghosts, that you'll deny that the ghost you're resurrecting is the one that you're resurrecting.

HE: Oh, my gosh, you read my mind.  You do that, too?

SHE: All the time.  It's my favorite thing.  I look for the person that I miss the most, and at some point, it's usually sometime around 3 or 4 in the morning, I'll start to see that person very clearly, but the next morning they're always gone.

HE: They're always gone, yes.  How do we make them stay?

SHE: There are those who say that you only make someone stay by seeing them as they are, but no one really knows how to do that.

HE: Because we're all phantoms.

SHE: Yes, we're all phantoms.  We're all a collection of ghosts, our own inherited ghosts, and we also get to play the role of the ghosts the other person misses the most.

HE: So it's impossible.

SHE: Yes, and those who understand that make the best lovers.  Because they know how to be more than one person at a time, and when you're that many people, there's a chance that one of those will stay, and that's how things stay exciting.  Otherwise, love would just be muscles that resist and respond.

HE: I'm already thinking of what you'll look like when you go, what your face will look like when you don't love me any more.

SHE: Are you a witch?

HE: Of course.  That's why I'm making a secret potion to bring you to me, against your will.  You won't be able to resist, only respond.

SHE: That could be the best news I've heard in a very long time.

(They are floating, and we, we are traveling.  In this space, we are setting out for all the places we wanted to be, the places we didn't know we missed.  And this is a canal before a civilization even lived there and knew how to use it, and this is a civilization that we read about but understand that we'll never understand, and this is a city that we do not recognize, and it's unrecognizable enough that we can probably start to call it home.)