i was gathering wood outside
found an entire tree that had been cut down
cut into thirds
so
big pieces
in decending order…
the largest gouged my hand
made a long rip across the palm towards the wrist
i winced through it
and carried up the hill
handing it up to Leo on the upper poarch
so we could burn it all night for the solstice.
then the blood started oozing out
i went to the kitchen and washed my hand thoroughly with Dr Bronner’s Lavender Soap
and then held it out from me
not touching anything
and hardly moving my hand
for about 4 hours
( i took a nap )
i haven’t washed my hand or got it wet or used it vigoursly since then
it’s been about three days now
i still have a dark line of clotted blood across my palm
i will wash it tomorrow
– it’s healed
and now i launch into a lengthy diatribe of my thoughts on disease and hygene
i’ve not been sleeping well (with Leo) for the last few weeks
it’s been getting progresively worse
i broke the french-press i use to make my complex herbal teas in
Leo got me a replacement last time we were in SF (last week)
we stayed up all of the solstice night (kinda)
as i did the night before
so i was totally sleep deprived
and made a tea to help me sleep really well
but there were things in it also to nourish my nerves
and, though restful, often enlightens dreams (mugwort)
we went to sleep shortly after 11 last night
(after watching episodes 1&2 of “Tales of the City”)
and i woke only hours later with the candels still burning
i surfaced from a dream i don’t now remember
thinking i’d never get back to sleep
and when i did
it wasn’t the most restful sleep
but very vivid:
have you ever been to China?
when i stayed there in 2001
the place we stayed (not exactly a Hotel… a Hou-tong House..)
had a little resturant area
where there were four glass vats
filled with grain alcohol
eatch containing a different blent of
roots
herbs
lizards
bats
horns
claws
i drank a few.
in my dream i was travelling
not only through location
but time
and gender
and beings.
i remember at one point in London (i think)
(no, it wasn’t… i was New york, yes… Brooklyn)
i had been walking all day
as if i were terminally lost
through a building complex
where they sold wonderful little breakfast burritos…
YES
before this i was at a family reunion
i had no energy
there was a dance
my brother was there
he played some polish music i had made copies of
then he had lost the original
i wanted copies again
as i had also lost my copies
but he had a back up i had made
this polish music
music of our family?
music of the owls?
a large man
it was a roller skating rink
i was sleeping on a couch
he had picked me up like a baby
he had thrown me over his shoulder
i was so weak
didn’t remember any of this
when i woke up
my brother..
i figured i wasn’t doing too well
— where is my “love interest”?
not OK
go for a walk
through brooklyn?
where i am
somewhere familiar
there is that old building down there
where the mexican resturant is…
to get a burrito!
but i feel i need something to heal myslf first
i ask for Jamica (hibiscus tea — lots of vitamin C)
there is a trouble with the order
i give them a $20
and they take forever to get me my change…
when it finally comes
it’s all in british pounds and pence
infuriated
i try to talk with them
— they don’t understand english
there is a seperate man, a cashier man at the end of the counter
he explains that the last man who came through was british and requested his change like that
— they women must have just made a mistake
he says he’d be happy to convert the money back to Dollars, but we have to go to a british bank..
so we walk out the back alley
and we’re in London
grimy streets, dark and grey
he walks into the bank
and i wait on the street
when we’re out
we walk back to the complex
and he stands in the Lobby
(large ciruitous rooms snaking back… extensive lobby, converence rooms..)
says
“isn’t this a nice room…?”
it throws me into a reverie of the last time i was here…
having sex with my friend Harry Hawk on one of the couches…
i get lost in memory and start wandering past all the chairs and couches
elaborate velvetine, victorian, bright colours, chandeleers
somewhere in the back
i see a man
and there he is, It’s Harry
but there’s something different about him
he’s in a short-sleeved robe
open
naked
i nod at him and smile
he looks a little nervous
glances off the to side
i see a boy on the couch in the back…
‘ hi harry ‘
we hug
and it feels so good
he explains to me that his boyfriend is all pissy
they’ve been travelling and they just stopped through here
obviously i want to have sex with him
and it doesn’t take him long til he’s hard
in a deserted corner in the dapppled sunlight
and i say
‘ oh, that’s what’s different about you… when did you turn black? ‘
his skin is a very dark chocolate, totally smooth
(where, in reality, he is a short jewish man that is very furry)
” oh, my boyfriend had to go black for a shoot, so i took the meds with him… i’d not been black in a long time, thought it’d be fun for a while again… shaved my hair to make it more convincing ”
he’s hard now
we start playing around
and the room starts filling with people
business people
harry goes off
i sit down on a couch
lay down
start sleeping again
when i wake
i’m outside in a public square
trash and leaves blowing around
large, like the tuirellies
i’m really hungry
i go walking through the city (where?)
til i’m along a high-way through the middle of town
over to a place clearly marked as a health-food place
… long line
large glass-protected counters
you have to ask staff for everything
when i get to the window
i’ve noticed there is a large vat of liquid filled with black olives
and other things i cannot see
but it’s obvious one is only meant to drink the liquid…
so i ask if i can have 2 ounces of that
and some of those coconuts
and i point at various other things
and the man just looks at me and walks away
i wait
i wait a while
til i decide to ask someone else
he looks at me like i’m stupid
and walks off again
so i walk to the other end of the counter
and my child-hood friend Daniel is there
(he is the boy who introduced me to Ab-Fab and Pet Shop Boys and Morrissey, etc… he always pretended he was straight)
i ask him if he’s gay yet
he is bashful and says
” i’m working on it ”
and realize this nice boy i know over the counter is his love interest
and he waits on me
i ask him to juice those coconuts
and could i have 2 ounces of that liquid?
he says you’re supposed to drink the whole vat
‘ oh ‘
a few other things
but i leave the store without anything
still hungry
and now lost in a rather residential neighbourhood
with some goth/punk kids i know
we find a bag discarded on a corner
like an army surplus bag
i go digging through it
and find three bags
small belt-type-bags
one is empty
i decide to take it
then the other two:
one has binoculars
and that could come in handy too…
the other has a gun
but the type of gun that comes in pieces that you have to screw together
(like WW2)
i tell them this is the best kind of gun to have because it is un-traceable.
now i’m back in the hotel lobby
and i’m a vampire
and i’ve been living 3000 years
or forever
i’m a wolfboy
i’m fighting with this girl
we are chasing eachother
flying over things
changing shape
it is a struggle
well choreographed
we are well matched
and i lose her in a hallway
go walking through an abandoned area
to open a closet where i might sleep to re-gain my strength
and a stake flies out at me and pierces my heart
i’m going to die
and i remember that this doesn’t need to happen
i’m just weak
if i pulled myself together
i go through the entirety of time and collapse it
pulling anyone i’ve ever been, all the fragments of myself in the now
pulling them into my present being
old vieneese composer, black girl …
to many people to make sense of
now i’m must stronger
and operating outside of gender and time
i find this person i was fighting before
now i’m holding small metal sticks that can transform into various weapons
but our battle is one of words and intentions
i decide, this time, to let her escape
the scene plays over and over and over with different endings
there is a carousel
i am on the outside, watching it pass:
a closed metal room filled with naked people
a park with small dead shrubs; people sitting on benches
an old ruins with arches and crumbling brick
…
i’m on the carosel now
in every room
in every station
it spins larger than anyone can feel
i’m in the park
an old man
the battle consists now of surviving time
looking out at the world spinning by..
i woke with Leo bumbling up the stairs
handing me to phone
with the lady from the passport office
explaing the deal with my passport:
good til 2013
… if we are.
recently
someone told me he’s not interested in reading my journal
unless it has more FACTS in it
where i was, when, what i was doing
that i what i started doing with this journal
but i have degenerated into my old schtick of just writing about my thoughts and feelings
so
i’ll try and give the Facts somewhat regularly..
Leo bought me a year of paid membership on Live Journal for a gift!
i was going to do it myself, but he gave it to me, yeah!
in the last week
i watched
“Chappaqua”
“Devil’s Playground”
“Pink Flamingos”
“Female Trouble”
“the works of Michel Gondry”
“the Order” by Mathew Barney
finished reading two books
“Further Tales of the City”
and
“Roger’s Recovery from AIDS”
bought some CD’s on line as gifts from my mother
“Woven: 8-bit monk”
“the Kings of Conveinience: Riot on an Empty Street”
“Badly Drawn Boy: One plus One equals One”
“Rufus Wainwright: Want 2”
i ate a whole round of fig PanForte with kefir over the week in fort bragg for breakfast every morning
ate heavy meals of Lamb and beef and crab and shark with Leo every night
walked in the sand dunes with Stephen
and saw the last remaining Fen in california
(that is, small freshwater lakes near the sea shore… the rest have all been bulldozed in for Society)
stayed up all night the last night of mercury retrograde
to try and call old friends in Europe
(only left messages)
and then sorted through most of my old pictures in preparation for making a new picture web page for myself
created a small one for Eli
http://pics.elirarey.com/
(his page isn’t up yet, so i created this out of experimentation)
and then stayed up all night last night
for the winter solstice
staring at the fire
looking through tarot cards, i ching, leo’s face, myself
slept all day
started writing.
Domesticity at home.
i finished reading William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” last week
and…
it was a great read
great story
unlike, say “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson (who was probably very inspired by Gibson’s writing), it did not carry the weight of the world on its shoulders…
not even in the plot… ostensibly.
( i suppose it did… in its subtle way… i have to read more of his work, now, to understand just how… coz only in the end did it feel like it had the potential to…)
part of what i loved best was how most of the Human characters in the story were so flawed and very OUT OF IT
not on top of it
very confused and fallen and …
Human.
very Human.
however
one of the Non Human characters was half of the Personality of the AI that was trying to unify and break free… the namesake of the book
encrypted with much more meaning than “we” could ever fathom
he had locked the main human character, Case, in his realm of stored memories… personalities…
and explained to him that he could create this realm from people’s minds…
when Case said “but i don’t remember all this stuff to such great detail… how do you do it?”
the computer replied (something like)
“every human does– Memory is Holographic… but it is only great artists that know how to access it”
this interraction seems to be what resonated most with me from the Novel.
i’ve been obsessed with memory most of my life.
how i could remember the clearest of details from a novel that i read after or before my brother
and he was shocked
as he only rememberd the curves and shapes…
how i could remember the lyrics to “3000 pop songs”
how people, even now, are astounded by the details i remember
yet
most my childhood is grey and cloudy
near non-existant.
When i started reading John Crowley’s works back in ’99
i was entroduced to “the Art of Memory”
and learned more about it 2002 when i was staying in Italy on an olive farm
not able to converse with anyone, for i knew no italian and they knew no english (i cooked food for them instead)
and read Crowley’s “Ægypt”
which featured the man “Giordano Bruno”
burned at the Campo Fioro (and i was staying at a place called “campo fiorito”
after being caught by the Inquisition
he was the most famed in The Art of Memory
as taught by the Dominican order
(who probably got it from the greeks)
i feel i must find my way into my memories before i can step into my rightful place of power
(Maupin’s “Further Tales of the City”, finished last night, brought me back into the phrase “Those who do not remember the past are condemed to repeat it” through the ravenous ravings of Jim Jones)
and it bothers me to no end that most of my childhood is a could
(though, i must admit, certain land-marks stick out… like crags in the sea of dreams)
Reading Delany’s biography further frustrates me…
the deatails from his childhood he is able to conjur up
(he makes his own references to Wizard’s and their apprentances)
how can i use my imagination so beautifuly
if i cannot even use my memory with such grace?
i must set about finding these landmarks
latching onto them
and clinging to them
as bouys in the deep sea
to prevent myself from drowning
and further desolation
i will have to create the island that will turn these floating towers into trees in a place yet alive again.
Struggle
and fear
scary undertaking
(there must be a reason i’m hiding from myself)
dreams have been thick lately
i don’t even remember what i woke up to yesterday
i remember it being pedstrianly important
to figure the right way to stab some one so they’d die with minimal fuss
what the fuck is that about?
but last night was the night of the new moon
and i read myself to sleep by reading the intro to Delany’s “the motion of light on water”
— he makes a distinction between what we remember and what actually happened
and how important each are.
it took a while to get to sleep
so i tuned into the energy coarsing through my body…
finding my way back to this world went like this:
i was living with my parents again
they had a huge conference centre out on a peninsula by a stormy sea
the grey and rain
the waves crashing below
the lush green
i was talking with my mother and she was asking me how my last semester at university was going
i had to admit to her that i’d hardly been going to any classes
just writing and art
or philosphy?
music?
she didn’t look dissapointed
just asked how i was enjoying them
and was i going to fail the rest of them?
my father walked in
and class was about to start
aslo
i’d not been attending classes here regularily
i was dressed in olive-drab long-johns
with a red jumper on
i was quite surprised to turn around and noticed the rest of the class was dressed in the same colour scheme
only slightly different clothing…
the class was kinda like yoga
but it was about developing discipline
about moving the body around the world
aligned with emotion and intention
i was getting lost in the motion
when i leaned out over the floor
and noticed that many of the boards had fallen into the sea
(*cut to a shot from the sea, show the cove*)
i remembered then that the penisula had a cove in it
and the ocean came right up to the floor of the house
some of the boards were 12 feet or more under water
the water was flush with the still intact boards
the rest of the students were gone
had they fallen in
i gazed down
huge floor boards
ceiling fan
glowling lightly under the dark murky ocean green
i started grabbing boards and trying to haul them up
catch them as they were breaking off and falling down
it was so dark down there
it could have gone on forever…
i had many slats of wood over my shoulders
and began to climb one of the carpeted walls
edging my fingers into the tops of the walls where the carpet curled before it reached the ceiling
the wood was falling off me
the floor was falling away
i was really tired of struggling
and just lay back on the wall
and gravity shifted for me
so i wouldn’t fall
and i relaxed and rested
———————————
sometimes i sleep with my eyes open
i mentioned this to someone recently
(the german farmer who was visiting, actually: he said he used to sleep with one lazy eye open… when he was a kid … i used to sleep walk too)
but didn’t know if i still did it
coz no one had mentioned it lately
but there are few dreams i remember from the past
where what my eyes saw while i was sleeping
was incorporated into my dream
thus
the large red-wood floor and ceiling fan was what was just above me in the bed
the fan
and the rich ceader wood of the ceiling..
i’ve been hauling in large boards from the old red-wood deck Leo had demolished this summer
we’ve been burning them
staring into the flames
the violent
controlled
unmaking
of nature
what took hundreds of years to make
undone before me in only minutes; hours
so much history
so many lessons whispered if listened to
or is that just the hiss of the water evaporating?
Ok ok ok
now wait a second
i don’t want any of you to think that i’m an advocate of coupling up
that’s not what i was intending…
but we’ve all got to start somewhere, eh?
being that my fetish is Connection
and i’m a bit of a slut
my logical end is having a family of people i have sex with
well, make love with
it’d be really cool if there were 12 of us or something
not all of us would relate to eachother the same way
but having a few in there
you know
i’ve heard about this
i know it can work
i dream it can work, so it must.
i just watched a film called “About a Boy”
i only rented it because “Badly Drawn Boy” did the soundtrack
and i like his work…
and the novel was written by Nick Hornby, right?
anyway
it was kinda a crap romanic-comedy
good music anyway
and every story is some fragment of the truth, right?
great bits in it:
there’s this 12 year old boy who’s mother tries to Off herself one day
he comes to the realization
that he can’t leave her alone
coz she might do it again
and then he’d be left alone:
there’s always got to be someone watching
or someone for a back-up
film ends (happy) with a big mis-matched family over for christmas
of single-parents and punk kid and hippy telephone operator
Great, huh?
but the whole idea of it is a good message
especially how the story weaves in this cocky british guy explaining up and down how he needs no one
he’s got his life filled up with meaningless activities
it’s fun to see him get caught in a trap he’s created
and is forced to experience his feelings
so the other bit that hit me was how he realizes that he’s Nothing
and where that was always nice before
as soon as he met some he actually LIKES
finds her interesting… she spins his heart and leaves him feeling stupid and “in-love”
he realizes he has nothing to draw her into his life
coz he doesn’t have a life
just watching TV and buying things
i, momentarily, was carried on that wave
but came off it pretty quick
realizing i DID have a life and interesting things in it
but even writing this right now
derails me a bit:
i had some anonymous guy comment on one of my postings while i was in NYC this October
and he made that very accusation: that i had no life
i
of course
got tipped off into my insecurities about it
i’d have to admit that he was pretty exacting about laying out my weaknesses
and shadowing all of my acheivments
and it only took a day or two to pass
which gets back to something in my heart
where i know it is a strong drive not only for me to have a life to Impress and Attract interesting people into my life
but to also then be able to share these things with them
i assume it’s the same kinda drive my dad has to obtain things that look really materially impressive
big house, expensive car, etc…
just our different values
and this movie is kinda about that
a character making a shift from superficial material possesions to actually having a life based on human interraction and emotional gratification
all of this making a slight paper-cut on my finger when i think about my own difficulties with relationships
‘ i love you, keep your distance.. but hang around… i want a hug.. but not for too long . . . ‘
hmmm
tired of being emotionally retarded
(is this where this was going? i guess so)
[yeah for journaling]
but
[sigh]
here i am on planet earth in the body of Dominic
and workin on it
(however feebly i am…)
i need to get a good script writer in here that will cast a scene like that for me, eh?
[actor or writer, boy, which one ya wanna be?]
-[can’t we colaborate?]-
so
today i was presented with a challenge
i came to a deeper understanding of this whole Seattle journey
when, writing to a friend in Prague, i realized i had no intention of actually staying and living in Seattle
None
i’ve been making plans for months to head to Europe in the summer
and visit old friends
then head south for new amusements
Prague, Greece, Turkey, Iran? India.
what trick am i pulling?
Leo: i’m terrified of the Real intimacy presented there
all the “i love you”s throw me into a catatonic confusion
i jumped at this dream and suggestion as yet another Out
that being said
i have good reasons for not wanting to Commit to him
it’s true: he does not satiate me in the ways i need from my Lover
nor does the Hermitage
though i love it here and Him
i’m growing
and i need more flow
community
different
something else
and the continuing of this journey
the more i need to taste and hear and learn to speak
back and forth, boy
here. now.
i don’t want to hold your heart in my hands
i want to caress it
kiss it
and it’s whole beautiful carcass
but not to own…
i wrote an email to my friend Michael up in Seattle
explaining
and assuring them that i did still want to visit, but did not want to commit to Commiting… that it must be taken in hand as it comes..
he called me and we talked
and he surprised me
he Challenged me
if you are close to me
either from reading All of these words
or knowing me and being with me
you will hear me talk of my interest and desire in Monogamy as a new experience for me
Michael asked me if i would be willing to Take the Test and if we both are on the same side of the coin
to be monogamous while i am with him
well yes, wow
how exciting
so many new facets to explore
i was genuinely excited
and upon hanging up the phone after the hour long conversation
i sat and asked myself about it…
what about all the hot guys in Seattle and Vancouver that have been asking for my visit?
what about all those that i can find…
by trolling the park
surfing the net
compulsively
hmmm
what’s more important
to keep up this compulsive pattern of sex
or put a wrench in it
not by abstinence
but by steady loving
Ha!
Hmmmm
A Challenge
mmmm
Spring time: great time for a Challenge.
Yes.
Ok
Thank you world
here we come.
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