dreaminthedoor's Journal

10:41am: Sleep paralysis is a funny thing
This is how we, or at least I, die.
Hard-packed dust for road, periodic choking gusts, the truck is pulled over and the angle of the wheels bothers me. The sky is close and overcast [always overcast when I go]. Everything is steeped in sepia and sorrow.

Everything is ugly.

Ditches are matted with late winter weeds. The ferris wheel on the side of the road is missing, its support girders rusting and naked, the tallest thing for miles around. Trees, far off, too far off, are cover. The dark stinking beasts there are dangerous, but I have found their throats before. I understand their hunger and respect them even as my gore-crusted hands tremble after.

You go wandering away, always different, but you go. Perhaps I send you. I have done this before and there's no other way. He is too large, too fast. For once, I am prey.

He is pasty and hastily built, features blurred with fat, smells of bread and mold, sticky with heat and exhalations. I never see him move, he is always simply there. Doughy hand on my arm, I am too small. I'm not thinking about this. I'm not thinking about this...

There were stairs I was herded towards, a wall I'm pressed against. His teeth...I can't see his teeth. His weight pushes splinters into my neck. All I can grasp at are bent nails and rotting boards. He gives me a choice. Death or him. I am more terrified for having this choice.

I drop my weight, I break away. There is a skylight in the floor, thick with cracks. He is roaring behind me and his grasping hand slams me through. I twist myself upwards in the shower of glass. My back hits the concrete and the patter of shards falling about masks the crack as my neck snaps. It all goes numb, it all goes red as I see him laughing.

12:31pm: Ill Wishing
Her flesh is scraped and stinging, feet tickled by leaves, pale thighs bruised by bark. Her hair, a glowing copper wire conflagration, shimmies its way up the branches, slowly choking the life from the tree. Her hands are heavy with fruit, the speckled blushing apples held out to the birds, who flash in and out, taking whisper-swift sips of syrup from the dribbles down her wrists.

Her eyes are a fragment of the sky. You can see the dying place far off to the east where she cracked a hole in the firmament and pried away two shell-like shards. The mountains have since retreated. We can no longer touch the ends of the earth.

I watch from the grass, rumpled and flushed, the knife strapped to my belly. The apples she carelessly offers to the clouds will drop one day and the bones of my friends are waiting.

3:37pm: Your harmonies collide
The cuts on my fingers cannot compare, the holes in my heart cannot compare. The sky is wide and opening wider, a thousand punkass gusts ripping across the roads, puking dust, spitting stones. The son of the sun is drunk and stumbling, crumbling mountains into beaches, heaving mountains from the sea. The windows of heaven are glowing, are smoke-filled, are cracking with the anger of the angels. Their fists are trashing temples, crushing bridges, splashing teeth. Their blood is draining swiftly downward, soaking clouds with gold.

Raucous crow-call car horns as the overpasses crumble, our hands are brickward reaching and our tongues are thick with singing. Whatever ends the day, we dream. Whose hand will cut the chord, we scream. We wake, we walk, we stray.

12:24pm: Squeeze it harder
Echo white heat, knees rosy, fingers red as dawn, I am telling you I'm thinking here, stress steaming away, baking into the paint. Resonance conspires with time, eats away at the walls. When my wet, curly head lolls against the curtain, is there an exchange of injuries? We take away more than we put into our places, shaped by our ceilings, felled by our floors, filling our spaces with hum, flurries of skin and stardust. Everything that was is still here and we watch each other, crooked pantry door caressed by a great clasping of phantom hands. The ones that watched the rain from the windows, the ones that paced the front hall, the one who awoke in the dark in the bedroom, wondering why the stillness felt wrong.

Perhaps I will never tell how things delightfully skew when the gray light turns your face to art.

6:24pm: I am covered in your bruises
Brighter weather brings me out. Put my eyes among the burning leaves, wear the moon when I close them. Visited by frosty stars, kissed by the dying year, at night I roll and bang against the walls, my knees, my fingers, my heart. This spiral here, how we stare and never drop a whisper out of gut-stinking fear. What we wake doesn't go back, stretches up, I can't stop the impatient tears in the corners of your eyes. I can't be safe, I won't be safe, I can't gift you that illusion. Never would I be so evil.

These stories carry their way out, collapse into paving stones, polished with over-use. It goes away, away, away.

I wish you would shut them up and be here. Their noises muddy the waters and I am impatient.

11:09am: Current line in the dirt - another 100 words
The pennants stretch for miles over the sea, fluttering fire pinks and obnoxious yellow, silk snapping away the seagulls. They wave from the tail of a rickety boat.

The boy is a stick Buddha, his arms and legs skimp and akimbo, his belly round and brown and filled with an angry roaring. He blows the handkerchief sail full, leaping up and down as he does so.

She steers, blue eyes and black hood, walking without feet, smiling with vermillion teeth.

Where the pennants end, the sea boils with dolphins, rubbery gray ripplings, leaping.

They know where the boat is going.

12:05pm: It can't come fast enough
Whatever it is has to come out, has to come out first. Through fists and winds and the stupid wistfulness of fall. Something in me is lashing out at the falling leaves, a whining, restless blackfoot beast, pressing against the ribcage, pushing the shout up, itching in the knees.

* * * * *

They don't tell you how sticky the mud is around a pile of corpses. The sky sags against the birds, wheeling over bones soot and white.

I could bring the wood down on the rock, call them all up again. But I am angry. This field of flesh, this stinking sea, fecundity rotten and willing. It's cleaning up someone else's mess and I would rather have nothing to do.

The goat bleats on the roof, horns caught in the gold-leafed tree.

Tonight, just go ahead and rut in the fireplace.

10:31am: 100 Word Story
She sits on the narrow window ledge, toes curled into the floorboards to hold herself there, stares out into a world on fire.

Chin on hand, fingers to mouth, she does not bite her nails, thoughtfully watching the siding buckle and curl.

She speaks to the faint, ugly angels behind her. They look defeated.

"This must be really embarassing."

One of them shuffles his feet, a dry scratching, his wings bumping against the walls. They look naked without their spears, currently scattered across the front yard, keeping the conflagration going.

"I'm going to enjoy watching you tell him."

She smiles.

9:28am: Glue the splinters
The stairway curves tightly upward, the wood is rough from lack of feet. Stars are sporadically nailed to the railing, feebly twisting in the night breeze.

I have made myself forget. Everything but dreams between childhood and now is dim and volatile, prone to imploding sickly when prodded and bleeding into the gray haze. I have to consult others for memories, by which I've assembled an increasingly bizarre recollection of myself outside myself. The perspectives they paint are highly saturated, almost flammable, fast and important. I want to disagree with them but my brain, that luminescent nautilus chamber, that reckless meat, just shudders with fog and faraway echoes, an ashy scrap of paper fluttering in my hands.

I spent my time a stumbling dreamer, grasping for far walls that never felt real, systematically shutting off outside stimuli in the hopes of finding a point in myself I could begin from. It shifted, changed colours, winked in and out, frequently sat behind my eyes so light spilled out, but none came in.

The images I see are deep and despairing, anger and pain and demons swirling on the skin. Something, something important, tries to get out, burns low and hard. I was the powder keg, frozen in the moment of exploding.

1:09pm: Where we find human bones in golden sand
The bluffs are green and filled with beasts, the path is thin and gray. It leads to a ditch-girded platform, rough cement, perfectly square, a tilted pipe trickling half-hearted water. It refuses the deep earth, runs faster and wider towards the cliff edge where birds will circle the waterfall, the roar of it wild, leaving red feathers to spin slowly to the river.

We stand and stare, a broken branch in your hand, my face flushed. The barge that butts its way through the murky brown is overgrown with trees, their roots trailing behind in the water, wrapped in the fins of pony-sized carp, blowing steam bubbles to the surface. The women have set up refreshments on delicate tables, perfect white dresses slithering over the mossy planks. They wave at the brass band on the wrought iron bridge, polished black traceries casting dappled shadows over tea.

Their noises are not far enough away. I will thump my way up the mazing path, hoping to find real silence before it all bleeds into the highways of the city.

11:14am: Looking for Alhena. A truck overturned.
A salted square, a moderate smile, dead beetles in the lights, red and black gloss of their shells, knife-wire legs. I wish they were still clinking about.

There is a hollow inside me, it swirls about in pale light, spills into my belly, becomes molten, becomes need but you are not here. I fill it with books and tea and conversations to my car, to the murmuring sea of meat. The cathedrals of my lungs, the dusty velvet of my veins, am I suppose to be aware of what's no longer there? The earth of my guts is blood and bone which feeds the ever-lasting spinal tree, branches of rib, tongue of leaves. They unfold, freshest green, crowd about, crown my ears, whisper a forever legacy.

They took my anger away and left my heart, my hunger. I am grateful, grateful, ever so grateful. This calm is a new dress and I wear it like a prom queen. The worlds inside expand and I am still here, making rainbows with my hands, blessing the road map of scars with traces of spit and puckered whispers.

10:21am: We're making bigger buildings. We're scaling up our hearts.
I.
Where you all be will rise dust, rise wind, gather storms of dirty air and white blood. Returning to the stream of heat, your delivery into far gardens where the fingertips of your gods curl, nibbled by belief, pocked with grief for your fear and the death of your eternal enemy. You will find your heart there, the heart will rend the throat with grief, the split of your tongue will whisper a name, that name will guide you. What is now is right and wrong and we will move to the place of beautiful delivery.

II.
The city is a circle, the planet a sphere, it moves in unhurried paths through space and duration around the sun, which itself moves in rhythms ever more complex. This process extends downward as well, as the strange organisms we are composed of work in concert in fractions of a dimension, all the way down to the dark pits where the unit that is the soul resonates. We are lines along programmed paths and require outside impetus to start creation. Our vices are used to slow us, our passions to force us down new byways, in the hopes that we will reach a crossroad where orbits no longer intersect, where instead is the unexpected.

The olive branch in the hand becomes a weapon, the fear becomes fascination. We are reminded that we are not chaotic beings, must push it down our throats, must choke on our own inertia until we learn to escape it.

III.
On the other side of time is a hole lined with blue glass. It is deeper than a heart, wider than your sight, slick as your mother's skin. Everything that has ever been is etched into the walls and as you go, the story grows. Those who come, who fall with faith, who taste the blood on their tongue and hear the scream in their brain, will read the history of all and come away with understanding. The strong will push on, fall further, the resistance growing as they drop, for knowledge of what is to come is a painful beauty and not to be wished on anyone. At the bottom, where no one has been, is a child whose limbs are fine silver, whose face swarms with eyes. A bottle of blue glass in held carelessly in his hands.

2:11am: Warning: Not the Salty Sweet Prose
How does one learn where you are on a scale of fucked up to okay? From familial declarations of "You've always been depressed." to looking up and realizing months have swam by without me noticing or really caring, I'm beginning to suspect it's more towards the former. I had my episodes as a child/teenager. I breathed a deep sigh upon hitting 20 that I was no longer a victim of puberty and that soon, my body would settle and I would be in control of my mind and my body again.

I waited...I waited. I seriously thought I was okay after awhile. "It's my family." "It's my relationship." "It's my enviroment." "I just can't seem to let go of anything." Discovering the hypoglycemia was wonderful. I've always starved myself, whether through creative negligence or attempting to spite someone/be thinner/whatever stupid excuse. All of a sudden, I could be completely okay if I just ate every few hours! Keep the blood sugar up...feel for the first time in my life that I wasn't a robot wrapped in foam rubber.

"It's winter."
"It's the shot."
"It's....is it really me?"

I got off the shot anyway, but now, despite my love of elephants, I'm dealing with a huge one in my room: I am, in fact, starting off in the negatives every day. This is not something I can fix and the best I can do is cope. It's not being lonely, it's not not finding a job, it's not being sick all the time or having cold sores or being stressed, it's having been depressed for almost every goddamn day of my life.

Now what? For once, even my show of false confidence collapses. This is something I am unprepared to deal with. I...can't fix myself! But I can't just say, "Well...I'm fucked in the head. Y'all will have to deal." That's not life, that's not really an option.

[Medication and psychiatric care are all but out of the question. I don't really trust either, the medication because of past negative experiences with doctors being stumped regarding my physical reactions and not meeting a psychiatrist who wasn't at least as fucked up as I am.]

How do you cope? How do you look up, knowing you're at a disadvantage, and keep slogging on? I couldn't even handle my life when I thought I was okay. For all intents and purposes, I have been a nasty, little troll. I have been a big, whiny baby. I can only imagine how much I hurt my friends when I forget them while sleeping 10-12 hours a day, barely remembering to eat, thinking maybe I should do some work? You've forgiven me, I suppose, because you know me better than I know myself. It doesn't excuse it, but it's shocking to find LIAR written on your forehead and everyone knowing but you.

There it is. I'm rather clueless now how to proceed. Do I really deserve to ask for help? Not really. Am I going to anyway? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. There is no way I can do this by myself yet. If you have any idea of how to cope, please let me know.

3:40am: It's a late night rhinestone dream.
You may hush. Everything has stolen a little bit of breath away. My hair is blood clot brilliant once more. Christmas is not red and green, it's red and white, it's red and gray. The snow, the snow, the snow won't go.

I miss my friends. Maybe wings on my feet will bring them closer.

1:48pm: Sweet dreams are made of these
Your memories a small thing of lace and willful forgeting. I'm heavy with a stone in my belly. You are all that I need. All that I need.

I try not to be so so....florid when I write here. It's a great wash of colour over me, a bath of silk and tiny gold ornaments. It messes with my words and they become a sponge soaked with blood. Perhaps there's nothing to be done; perhaps this is the way I want it; perhaps this is how I actually look and think of things...in terms of tiny rainbow water droplets, in deep colours and Maxfield Parrish sunsets, in the tingle of a heart and an electric eye. I'm breathing dreams every day, the gray corner of an empty bookcase in a quiet office sends me elsewhere. Perhaps, with my desire to keep my cosmic dust musings private, it's best I don't speak of those "mundane" things. In the end, I'm happier this way. You don't hear my concerns about my belly [No! No! No! I know it's not bad!], my hypoglycemia, the people I flip off in traffic, my trials with my asshole ex, how my turtle keeps trying to hibernate, how much I dislike Flash MX 2004...these are the things not to preserve. Blow them away like tar bubbles.

I will dye my hair an odd colour. I will wear striped woolen thigh highs. I will wear short skirts in winter. I will glue a rhinestone to my lower lip. I will cry during children's movies. I will continue to have a hobby of collecting hobbies. I will still be your darling and I want *all* of you back with me again.

11:03am: Forget me in the morning
I feel the demanding memory, the strange swirl of guts, the sick sweetness. But it's not true! I am, if I may be honest, simply forcing myself to believe that these washed-out bloody traces are still important, that I remember and feel as I used to.
The past drops away behind me. I am climbing a mountain of loam, my feet caked and happy, heavy and powerful. A deep blue mist obscures the things that have been and while some may lament such a fuzzy, unfocused view of what-went-on, I can't say I mind. Eagle vision forward, ho! Bring your feet up and suck in your simple joy that the sky is blue and the ground is dark.

Your life is the sea, fisherman. You call what you will to the surface.

11:13am: News for you
"That is the man? He is very ugly, brother."
"He...he is. But he is the one we need."
"I don't want to, brother. I would rather not need at all."

He is crouched on his broad, flat feet, keeping balance with his long, stained fingers perched
lightly on the sands, watching the playful roll of the tide, the slender white swell of the foam
writing strange writhing letters on the shore. He looks to be reading them, his long, sunburnt ears
twitching in thought and giving him an air of comic wisdom. The muscles in his arms are tense,
stacked like children's fists on the bone, accentuating the careful and hypnotic scar patterns that
wind up from the fingertips and disappear into his shirt. He squints [always squinting] towards the
blood red ball of the sun, looking for all the world as if he were about to leap over the endless
sea and swallow it. His grin says maybe he will run across the sky and pluck stars like posies and
have the moon for desert, perhaps use his massive fists to pound the clouds so hard it rains.

In truth, Grimmek Makch is enjoying the sunset, idly pondering if the greatest of the elders could
use sunlight for their magics, creating great hurricanes and showers of gold, make the dead whole
again, create mountains in the desert. His finger absently draws a circle and a peak and a stick
figure with its arms out-stretched, as if calling on the grains of sand that form the shape of its
sketchy little life to grow and condense and burst into a great, snow-ravaged peak like the wild
ranges of the north. As quickly as it's drawn, the middle finger sweeps idly over the sand and
removes the tiny magician and his miniature miracles from existence.

More likely, thinks Grimmek, the sunlight has already mixed with everything in the world, and is
magic and miraculous enough. The hazy violet clouds of twilight are rolling in over the sea and he
stands, having won his staring contest with what the southern people call the Great Fiery Eye of
Von, the one-eyed, shaggy-maned beast that prowls the sky during the day, watching for people to
foolishly leave their homes that he might paint the sunsets with their entrails and feast on their
souls.

Grimmek, of the sensible Weed People, knows there are no such things as gods and chuckles, thinking
of the wide-eyed pale worshipers of Von, who walk and work only under the soft light and madness of
the moon. Long ago, he swam for two days to visit their port capital of Hamman, a strange whispery
city of heavy black woolen doors and no windows, listened to the soft silver flutes that announced
the ending of the day and coaxed the stars that hid in the deep void beyond the sky to come and be
joyful, the great monster has gone. He had annointed the front steps of the homes of the sick with a
warding spell and they had given him a dagger that never lost its sharpness, as bright and curved
and slender as the crescent moon.

He had gone home to the sand forest and since then had taken amusement in watching the antics of the
god-beast, Von. Could the all-seeing entity watch the earth for victims on an over-cast day? Grimmek
stretched and grunted in pleasure as his long limbs contorted and his joints popped with rhythmic
regularity. He sauntered up the beach, his fingers tapping his knees. The beginning of the sand
forest was as abrupt and sharp as a stone wall. No willy-nilly undergrowth spoiled the smooth ridges
of silica. The massive smooth-trunked trees drove their roots deep, showing nothing aboveground as
if disdaining the possiblity of tangling with another's roots, these silent lords so careful of
never stepping on each other's feet. Even in the growing dark, a murky green haze filled the air,
seeming to whisper in the forest's silence.

The Weed man brushed his fingertips against the silky gray trees as he passed, his perpetual day
squint widening slightly in the dusk. Were the trees not in the way, he liked to joke to his very
rare company, one could see for miles through the forest. As it was, he had learned to adapt his
vision for this strange place and signs of any passing beast or being were noted by him from nearly
a mile away. Grimmek was not the forest's keeper [for the forest kept itself better than his whole
tribe could have tried] but he was certainly his own and liked to know who would seek here or for
him. A small golden bloom of light a half-mile away betrayed a campfire and two small shadows
against the silvery trees. Children, or pictsies then. Either way, he would not go to greet them
without protection.

He crouched facing one of the stately ashen trunks to keep any hidden watchers from observing his
effect, and scraped at the powdery dust packed against the base. Whispy puffs floated upward and he
snorted, stifling a sneeze. When a suitable pile was collected, he slid the shimmering knife from
his belt and stared thoughtfully at the scar patterns along his inner arm. To extend that swirl near
the wrist or work upward near the armpit, adding to the elaborate swirling knot of scarflesh that
radiated out to the shoulder and the chest? He frowned in concentration and carved carefully around
the wristbone, a brilliant red crescent seeping droplets onto the dirt pile. He wiped the knife on
his shorts and bent closer to the dust now running over with his blood. His voice was deep and
smooth as milk, and the words poured out in a whispered cadence.

Come, come, bright things,
your home of earth has made you
face and waist and eyes and legs
You will watch me, birthed of my blood,
and mixed with the dust,
your sight is sharp, you follow,
know my right and wrong,
and keep me safe.
Come and see, my fellows.

The dustpile seemed to suck the blood into its growing center. Now heavy as mud, now darkening a
heavy red, shapes moved under the surface and split off from one another. Nine shapes scarcely a
foot high made themselves crude arms and legs and saggy round heads with two smooth dents for eyes.
They made a soft slurping sound as they moved, nothing that couldn't be mistaken for the whispering
of leaves and stared at his face with a singular intensity, following an invisible point located
somewhere on his brow. He nodded and stood, sheathing his knife with a smooth motion, and set off
towards the glow of the fire.

Several minutes later, his spirits pattering and squelching along behind him, leaving no marks of
the passage in the sand with their strange, pointed feet, Grimmek came upon the clearing. A small,
pale girl in a shapeless black dress sat barefoot in front of a silent fire, polishing a tiny,
patent leather ankle boot. She sat on a dingy satchel almost larger than she was and grimaced at her
work. She ignored him entirely, an angry silence hovering between them. He sighed and grinned and
waved a large hand towards the fire.

"May I sit with you here?"
Her washed-out rosebud lips were bent into an ugly scowl and she glared at him, seemingly incensed
that he would force her to acknowledge his presence. Spitting fiercely on the shiny black leather,
she rubbed vigorously for a few moments before allowing herself a tiny nod in his direction. He
crouched in feigned gratuity before the bright flames, the moon was rising but it was several hours
till the midnight chill. The girl thumped the boot down loudly and threw the rag perilously close to
the fire. She shifted silently on her satchel perch and pulled out a pair of thin, dingy stockings.
She seemed to wrestle them on to her feet, the toes no larger than pearls, one poking through the
cotton. Grimmek watched her out of the corner of his eye, seeing her button her boots on with great
care and then stand, stamping her feet once, twice, against the hard-packed sand, then shaking out
her voluminous sack-like dress and her straw-coloured hair.

The girl turned away from him and her high voice pierced the heavy silence.
"What is his name?"
Grimmek looked up, wondered if she was mad, and almost swallowed his tongue as a tall boy with slick
dark hair clad in dusty white clothes stepped out from a patch of darkness, his deep-set eyes
glittering strangely in the firelight as his gaze flitted from the Weed man to the girl.
"He..he's Grimmek Makch, one of the plant people who farm the corral and weave bright flags and
do...strange...magics..."
His pronunciation of Makch was with a hard 'k' instead of the proper back of the throat inflection,
and Grimmek reminded himself to correct the kid before they parted. The boy's words tumbled over
themselves strangely, as if wanting to leave his mouth as quickly as possible. He stood and held a
hand out with the palm up to show courtesy to them both. The girl simply stared as if she had never
seen such a gesture before, but the boy seized it hurriedly, his palm soft and slightly damp.
"I assume you saw our fire and came to..."
"He has *things* with him," the girl snapped, "I don't like them."

The boy gazed questioningly at Grimmek, and the Weed man realized why his eyes looked so strange.
They were horribly bloodshot, filling the whites with angry reds and giving him an almost animal
appearance.
"Are those your...wards, Grimmek?" asked the lad.
"They spirits I always bring with me," replied Grimmek, "they do no harm to those that don't harm
me."
The boy glanced towards the girl, his fingers knotting furiously about each other.
"She......will not have..."
"They stay. If you're wanting help, and you're looking as wanting as a dying fire, you'd learn to
not insult your host."
The Weed Man smiled disarmingly at the brother, who stared back blankly. Grimmek's smile was wide
and fascinatingly perfect, the too many teeth forming straight pearly rows.
"But," the boy stammered, "it is our fire. We are the..."
"Sssshh," hissed Grimmek, raising a long, stained finger, "then you don't know the sand forest to be dumb
enough to say that."

The pale girl stamped her foot again and glared at Grimmek.
"What do you want then, ugly man? We are lost and you are no help." He'd never heard so much venom
in such a sweet voice before but his grin widdened.
"Now we get to the bartering...too fast and with no meal shared, but better than the welcome."
Grimmek settled back against a tree, long, broad feet spread dangerously close to the fire.
"Then this then," he said, "you tell me how you came to this place and I'll help as I can."

6:12pm: The trickle of salt down my back
I have been basking in the heat, a limp, pale lizard, cheeks red and hands trembling even as I stammer, "Better this than snow!" It's true; it's very true. Better this than the chill of the senses. Let me stare bright-eyed into the sun, let tiny curls cling to my neck, let my lips part like the curtain to the Play of Wonder as I watch the lightning bugs rise in trembling waves over the cornfields. My knees are green [four leaf clovers uncountable, you heretics], my feet are cracked, and I wear audacious sunglasses when I drive.

I've been slack in my writing. My new project is an illustrated story collaboration with a quite talented friend but he draws much more slowly than I scribble. Fair enough, it'll get done when it gets done.

Confession: I like to name characters in my stories after ingredients found on strange bottles of things under the sink. Ssshh...

2:09am: In the morning in the evening in the summertime
This is a story of a sister and a brother, the two that go together, the rock and roll, the black dress and pale eyes and and and...

There is a light on in my foyer. This whole place smells of wood and rain. Wild winds are blowing through my home my heart and I will change. These habits, these houses you build from punishments and pain and grief, we wear them like tin stars and lightweight fripperies, I have no desire for these these...

I am learning to punch. I am learning what work should be. I am keeping my hands and tongue strong and reading the new words.


There is room for one on this mountain. There are millions of mountains.

9:03pm: I am in love with everything today.

9:56pm: While stories are written in the shower
Will you carve constellations in my skin/perhaps send dreams of far wormholes/wrap nautillus-like about my temples/spend silver coinage on sweets and memory?
I lost your words in the woods as I ran/sand sucking at my heels/pearlescent breath coiling up around your neck/soft-barked trees hanging you like a kiss.
Wisecracks wait in leather jackets/wait in gauntlets/wait for promises/wait for enemies and melodies and deferences wept/you bring to me an asterisk/it dangles from my lips/another secret kept.

12:06am: I am once again burning in clear time. Spring has come haltingly, sliding on its rump, unabashedly rumpled and rude. One day there's sunshine, the next my fingers are blue. I can't rely on such a fickle gentleman and have to build my own engine in heels and reckless hopes. To say it's working will get you both kissed and slapped as certain shocking revelations have driven me from familiar shores and I am stuck learning to walk on water with my hands. I am predispositioned to be indolent unless inspired by competition or praise. I will charm and play and produce but only if someone will *notice*.

I am such a spoiled brat.

I write more than ever but in highly satisfying, restricted, and frowned-upon mediums. I am enjoying that no one but me will care and it brings me a discipline I am sorely lacking.



Last night I watched the Transformers movie for the first time. I did not cry when Optimus Prime died, but only because I was amongst crowing cynics who would have ripped the eyes from my throat. Peer pressure will keep us firm.

2:22pm: How to spend a dollar in Mexico
Intro:
All of our mothers gathered together one day long ago and God spoke to them. Your children are new and old, bright and crass and big. They are chance and sense and mad wild orgies. Watch them.
He left and the mothers chuckled into their hands and the sussurations of their whispers made the gentle spring breezes.
"So it was with us," they said, "but we would not expect Him to know."
God was a man back then.

Event Horizon:
Pity made the passport. Money could not solve it, waiting could not bring it near. In the end, it was the illusion of crying [for what other good is a cold?] and a woman attached to a mole that fixed it all and made the world okay. I was able to go to Mexico, where a glittery, ink-streaked bomb was waiting for me. Fabric was made ready for wear, clothes were washed, teeth were scrubbed and eyes were polished. I packed everything and was prepared for nothing. Customs doesn't tell you you might be an international star and not know it.

Jueves:
It was every stereotype you ever saw. Downtown was coloured like a box of children's chalks, palm trees pulled you away from the dusty sun, amd mustachio'd men gunned their trucks down cobblestone streets and whistled at the little gueralitas in their pale skin and short skirts and heels. We were ambassadors of beauty, after all, brought here because the camera loved us as much as fabric did. Let us not fool ourselves.

11:26am: You are not your body, baby.
Says the girl with the glasses, My eyes have been broken. For four days now, they squint and squirt hot tears and vibrate and hurt. The mote in my eye has become a pixel for this slick, beastly machine has betrayed me with a severe case of eyestrain. Rain does not wash away the slime and the grit. The chill winter wind does not soothe the heated nerves. It is a testament to reality, says the girl who dreams. My astounding focus, applied liberally to paint and plastic and veils [my new project is such a fun thing indeed], collapses when dealing with the gaudy storefront of the computer screen. Say what you will, says the girl making a hushing motion, but we are staring into a lightsource and my eyes, they ate it for awhile.

They're still eating and I should not be here, so I will go.

5:02am: Duck duck duck....
The tub is slick and clean and white. Bluish is the water that swirls that flies down that I drink from the showerhead despite the tickle on my tongue. Clean in and out. 70% water is not enough! There are speckles of ruddy and black flesh on the bottom, pixie hell riverstones. They don't tell you these things before you become a woman...the blood we can deal with, the pain, the hate. They don't tell you about the flesh. Normally disguised in a clot-camo suit and wrapped in shrouds of toilet paper, this one parades freely on the currents of my feet, leech-like and impudent. They don't tell you one day you will talk with your own meat, which is alarmingly large and speaks in Guilt. I wasn't even one of the chances. You took away the chances. It could have been someone just like you. Done with the bath, it's sucked away as I watch for I have to get the last word in.

"Nice try, but there are no guarantees. I won't gamble my wonderful only self for a potential immortality. I don't need it. I can't use it. There is too much to do and I'm in no position to worry about you."

I think it's a talk girls all have when we realize it's not just Us in Ourselves.