forever obsessed with this album:
”
Where the workers stand in querulous rows
– awaiting dislocation
I will be there too.
When you’re cashing in your food stamps
When you’re sleeping in a cattle train
I’ll be with you
Pushing up against the ticket counter window
– face against the glass
Bleeding from the waist
– and kissing to be chaste.
It is said that those who will not rest have been cursed
To tramp like soldiers through the marshes
Or that blessed are the ones who leave the stage
Like babies falling fast asleep
So I twice am cursed and twice am stuck
Affixed to this corner of the earth.
That old river keeps on rolling but the old man doesn’t see it,
He just stands there with his eyes closed
Asking
“where’d you go?”
– “where’d you go?”
So wherever you may sleep tonight,
Be it bed or bedrock, home, or open field:
When you’re breathing slows and your eyes are closed
and you begin to yield,
then, whatever you have taken as your pillow,
May it serve as mine as well.
Underneath the weeping willow
I will wait for you forever,
My eyes forever closed,
asking
“where’d you go?”
– “where’d you go?”
”
is it wrong that i want a lover to sing this to me?
that that would be the ultimate comfort?
is this what i get for staying up so late?
i was going to write about what i’ve been doing for the last few days
but
instead
i wrote to lots of other people at length
had conversations
and cleaned the house
so now it’s nearly 3am
and i’m going to go to bed now
really…
but for the last few hours
i’ve been trying to shut down my computer
and had about 8 LJ windows open
so i’ve been learning a little bit more about my “friends”
upon checking in on devanand_tree / Danny, the kidd who got me started on this crazy LJ thing
i saw his last posting was a Quiz thing
which i never do
but it was funny
and reminded me of my good times in NYC with my Television addicted friends
(just kidding)
i laughed, thinking of Danny as Meatwad
and went off to do it myself…
if you actually want to see my results…
yesterday
i tydied the house
made the bed
built a fire
and waited.
drove down the hill
and waited
came back
and was sad
felt terrible
putting my energy somewhere
and having it fall flat
i said to myself
” i never want to do that to anyone again, i hate the way this feels ”
today
a guy i had talked with on line for most of this year
called and woke me up
asked if he could come over
(2 hours drive)
so i said “yeah”
and got up
started doing yoga
then checked my email…
on line two hours
listening to the new mix i made for a friend
i didn’t hear when the guy arrived
knocked on the door
rang the bell
and called.
didn’t even hear.
he left
i didn’t get him on the phone til an hour later
he was so sad
but didn’t express it
and i had done it
but imagine that omen
what a terrible way to start your new year
driving four hours in the foggy rainy snow
cold
for nothing
to be missed.
horrible
i can’t trust myself!
to cause such damage
i prayed
never to cause such damage again
humanity
what can we do?
feeling productive?
is it the moon?
i don’t know
i’m exhausted
but keeping myself from sleep…
last night(?) i went to sleep shortly after dawn
woke shortly after noon
and did some dishes
enjoying the sun break in the clouds…
i realized pretty quick that if i wanted to go for a walk
i should do it fast
coz things were getting ominous and grey out there…
but the house was such a mess!
Rick and Leo are both King Heathens (no, i mean Headonists)
there were wine glasses, chamagne glasses, absinth glasses
soup bowls, plates, desert, chocolate
a million pots and pans
all piled up
groggily
i waded through them
and when i noticed the sun had fled and left me with grey
i laced up my boots and headed out the door
realizing immediately
that i would not be able to walk the mile down the hill
and back up
and not be totally drenched
( i thought i might go fetch the mail… )
so
instead
grabbed the Matlock and Spade from the shed
and strutted off down the road…
these hand-made steele-toed Red Wing boots are a work out in themselves…
makes me feel like a heavy man
instead of the waif that i am..
(especially so sleep deprived)
i walked through the naked forest
to the small ravine before the crest of the hill that devides the plates up here
(granite from obsidian)
and set about figuring out how to fix the water problem:
when it rains a hugs pool forms that i have to drive very slowly through….
so i started digging a drainage ditch…
i was surprised
it worked so well
and the little lickings of water pouring down the embankment brought glee to my face
mud spattered all over my boots
droplets starting to scar the surface of the murkey waters
i dredged out a path down the forest into a suspicious pit (why was it there?)
the headed back up towards the house…
i kept wanting to fill in holes in the road..
but the rain was getting harder
and i was already coughing up phlem
“you’ll get pnemonia” some mother was saying in my ear
so i ran home and threw the tools in the shed
moist and hot
ate some dates and yogurt
and put on Badly Drawn Boy’s “One plus One is One”
both this CD and the new Rufus Wainwright’s
make me feel like these guys are just throwing together thoughts and feelings
in a lazily orhcestrated way
not really Art
just putting it out there…
follow this up by then watching Jim Jarmusch’s “Myster Train” tonight
it reminds me how easy it is to make art…
you just Make it
in today’s culture
we don’t need discipline nor any skill or talent
just free expression
OK
i guess that’s what my journal is
but i’ve got more to do than that
stay tuned…
but for now
i’m going to try to sleep
tea in hand
eyes going bleary
hopefully i’ll feel better when i wake
coz as i am now
i don’t want to go travelling or bearing or faerying or anything
i just want to stay home and taunt sex and read novels and cook for myself
sleep
right
answers come in dreams.
this song found me again tonight
it had been given to me by my Leo Lover in Amsterdam
a Tango Singer from Paraguay…
he kept me on my knees
kept my eyes staring after him with his beauty
i read “The Beauty of the Husband” in various book stores around the city
28 tangos
“on a june evening, hold…hold beauty”
“i’ll be reborn”
my lover taught me
gave me the sheet to read in front of the class
i did
and found the song eventually
a war march
so dramatic and tortured
today it was back in my head
a prelude to the new year
some new year or other
i just read the lyrics
and thought
when could i ever post this?
now, obviously
as a journal goes
i’ve stayed up all night
my body is sore
i’m going to sleep now
but first
i’ll leave you with this song
(which actually follows my last post quite well
but mostly in that which i didn’t say, only drew around)
Hold…
PRELUDIO PARA EL AÑO 3001
Prelude for the year 3001
Music by: Astor Piazzolla
Lyrics by: Horacio Ferrer
Version en castellano
Renaceré en Buenos Aires en otra tarde de junio
con esas ganas tremendas de querer y de vivir.
Renaceré fatalmente, será el año 3001
y habrá un domingo de otoño por la Plaza San Martín.
Le ladrarán a mi sombra los perritos vagabundos,
con mi modesto equipage llegaré del más allá
y arrodillada en mi Río de la Plata lindo y sucio,
me amasaré otro incansable corazón de barro y sal
y vendrán tres lustrabotas, tres payasos y tres brujos,
mis inmortales compinches gritándome!fuerza ché!
Nacé, nacé, dale vida, metéle hermano que es duro
pero muy bueno el oficio de morir y renacer.
Renaceré, renaceré, renaceré,
y una gran voz extraterrestre me dará la fuerza antigua
y dolorosa de la fé para volver, para creer, para luchar.
Tendré un clavel de otro planeta en el ojal,
porque si nadie ha renacido, yo podré.
Mi Buenos Aires, siglo treinta, ya verás,
renaceré, renaceré, renaceré.
Renaceré de las cosas que he querido mucho, mucho,
cuando los dioses de casa digan bajito “volvió”,
yo besaré la memoria de tus ojos taciturnos
para seguirte el poema que a medio hacer me quedó,
renaceré en las frutas de un mercado con laburo
y de la mugre serena de un romántico café,
de un sideral subterráneo, Plaza de Mayo a Saturno
y de una bronca de obreros en el sur, renaceré,
pero verás que renazco en el año 3001
y con muchachos y chicas, que no han sido y que serán,
bendeciremos la tierra, tierra nuestra y te lo juro
que a Buenos Aires de nuevo nos pondremos a fundar.
Renaceré…
English version:
I’ll be reborn in Buenos Aires in another June afternoon
with a tremendous desire to love and to live.
I’ll be reborn fatally, it will the year 3001
and there will be a Autumn Sunday at San Martin square.
Little stray dogs will bark at my shadow,
with my modest baggage I’ll arrive from the beyond
and kneeling down on my dirty and pretty River Plate,
I’ll knead me another tireless heart of mud and salt
and three shoe shiners, three clowns and three sorcerers will come, my immortal accomplices cheering: Hey, you, let’s go!
Be born, be born, let’s go life, go ahead brother that it is hard
but good the task to die and to be reborn.
I’ll be reborn, I’ll be reborn, I’ll be reborn,
and a great extraterrestrial voice will restore the strength, old
and painful, of the faith to return, to grow, to fight.
I’ll wear a carnation from another planet on my lapel,
because if nobody has reborn, I will.
My Buenos Aires, thirtieth century, you’ll see,
I’ll be reborn, I’ll be reborn, I’ll be reborn.
I’ll be reborn of the things that I loved so much, so much,
when the gods at home softly tell, “he came back,”
I’ll kiss the memory of your sleepy eyes
to continue the poem that I left incomplete half way through,
I’ll be reborn in the fruits of a working marketplace
and from the serene filth of a romantic cafe,
from a sidereal subway, Plaza de Mayo to Saturn
and from an uprising of workers in the South, I’ll be reborn,
but you’ll see that I’m reborn in the year 3001
and with boys and girls, who have not been and will be,
I’ll bless the land, our land and I swear to you
that we will found Buenos Aires again.
I’ll be reborn…
it looks like we’ll have chrstmas after all this year, dear!
i always like to think of what i was doing a year ago…
i do it many times throughout the year
but especially on these days we use as Markers…
these… HolyDays…
i kept thinking to myself…
–i don’t even remember what i was doing during christmas last year–
but then, i ususally don’t.
what’d i do 2003?
i think i was at a Billy thing with Leo and then we spent the morning together?
looking through my email
i realized i was preparing to head to Brazil..
Yes
Leo and i were together
and then headed up to Heartwood together to attend the Billy New Year
and then i went down to SF for a week then LA for a few days
then… BRAZIL.
2002?
Ah.
i was in London with Yacov
he made a big to-do about Christmas
even though he’s a cHessidic Jew
he loved the festivities
which i found tedious as all hell
the gifts were all cheesy…
a bunch of kids came over
the boarders of the house…
these two sweet dykes from LA
and some Koreans and an Iraqi boy?
we were all drunk and stoned
cheap gifts
and i was at the end of my teather…
then i flew back to the USA the morning of the 1st to go directly to Eli’s house to help him with his family
as his dad had just died of a “Randomn Prion Related Illness”
(basically Mad Cow Disease here in Santa Rosa)
Right.
and 2001?
that was the year i lived up at the hermitage alone
and i’m pretty sure i went to the billy new year …
but i think i slept away christmas …
i think i just stayed in bed..
i had forgotten even that
but Eli had told me he’d called me and i’d groggily explained i’d not even got out of bed…
and i probably didn’t.
Defiance!
of what?
i remember, back in those years
(yes, i’ll just finish it off: 2000 i was living at Heartwood and we had a pajama party in the morning with four different kind of pan cakes and bacon even! we all watched cartoons with stuffed animals… then the billys came… and Sara… and she gave me mushroom tea…)
i felt like i was on the brink of time…
in 2002
after watching Amilie
i was so blissed out
somewhere in my heart clicked
and i realized if i just walked across time to where i had been wounded once there
i could heal it with a kiss
and as i turned my face
and the celestial winds of time began to blow
Yacov came running in from the kitchen almost screaming
“Dominic!!!! WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEA!???!”
to snap me back into place…
at heartwood that year
i had gone to a party at the big cobb house..
amazing really… incredibly beautiful…
i started talking with this Faery girl
and she offered me some mushroom tea a friend of her’s had made..
apparently she’d been on mushrooms for… months?
i drank it and took off all my clothes
i walked out into the winter night
found myself amongs frost-tipped grasses
and bare trees
i planted my feet and streatched out my arms
and let myself be as cold as they were
to let all the stuff in me die that needed to die…
i cultivated death
kept it close
used it as a tool
frozed
i felt reborn
and walked back into the heat of the party
and danced
danced til the fires burned down and there were only a few of us left
our lives huge merkabas extending out past anything as simple as space and time
we all got together in a tight group
three or four or five of us?
we started singing
and our song would spread into eachother and open us further
like a great organ
we harmonized
and expanded
resonating with eachother
and i knew
if we could just open fully
we could sing eternally
never having to breathe
cease
sleep
the sun would rise
and the light would shine throug us
and everything would be infinite light…
but we couldn’t
and when the song came to quiet
we all stood there awkwardly in evident defeat
condemned to another night of dreaming
and forgetting
and yet another day of stumbling through it all..
on the walk back to my place
i lingered around the now-wet and cold fire pit
and sara and saggi came up to me
i showed them my Kyanite
and sara danced around the word
“Mr. Wizard”
she called me
“tell me what it does”
and i explained
and i told a story
and we all told a story together
in the cold and the wet
and the bright light of the moon
going off to sleep alone
like i was
or in love
like they were
trundling through the mud…
then i spiral off into the dark pool of my thoughts and plans…
oh god
it smells so good in here
to light a fire…
drag in the whole manzanita tree picked up from the wreckage outside
roots first
burn
it smells so good
and now i’ve lit a fire
it’s not so cold
i look outside
and everything is bathed in light
oh god
it’s so
“BEAUTIFUL”
i shout into the forest
the forest without leaves!
bare forest!
winter forest!
“BEAUTIFUL”
i scream
and start running around
“AND YOU’LL ALL BE COVERED IN SNOW IN A FEW DAYS?!?!”
Leo told me a huge snow storm would be upon us by saturday through wednesday
WOW
a white christmas or something
it’s so fucking beautiful up here
the stars are all like glitter fish
like flassing daggers
swimming back and forth between the black branches
i made twittering bird sounds into the night
animals scattering through the leaves
i heaved my feet back to the house and opened the door
OH GOD! IT SMELLS SO GOOD IN HERE!
i got a driver’s lisence
got my passport
my mobile phone
got a laptop, digital camera
and 200 hundred books
too many clothes to wear all at one time
but not a kelly-green button-down like i wanted today..
8 pairs of boots
and a hankerin’ for a home…
“welcome back boy, settle in and stay a while”
i went to the Bank today and set up a
Saving’s account
a Secure Credit Card (to build my credit coz i never have before…)
and a Checking account
(so i can use paypal… a lot of people i’ve seen lately have this “donate” button… what a great idea! sometimes people hand me cash out of ability and appreciation anyway… now it can be done so randomnly on line, eh?)
now i can buy things
now i’m a full grown man
i don’t need to borrow your phone
or your credit card number
or your computer
or your shoes
i’m responsible for what i do
and i’m making a future for myself
putting something away…
(freedom?)
i’m giving myself til the Equinox to decide if i’m going to buckle down and get an apartment and be stationary in my own place for a few years
or head out of this country to tackle my other desires
any votes?
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